Archive: Category: TechPresident

The American web is buzzing with activity around Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's proposed $700 billion bailout bill, a test if there ever was one of the new balance of power in the digital age. On one side, we have the most powerful and well-financed sector of the economy pushing for urgent and sweeping action. On the other side, we have a bunch of disorganized minorities ranging from anti-Big Government and taxpayer groups on the Right, open government advocates in the Center and progressive and labor groups on the Left, each for their own reasons starting to question Paulson's proposal. Will Congress pass a "clean" bill, one that gives Treasury near-dictatorial powers to buy up distressed assets with taxpayer funds, bailing...

It appears that someone has hacked into one or more of Sarah Palin's personal email accounts on Yahoo! and published some of the contents on the web. According to an entry on Wikileaks: Circa midnight Tuesday the 16th of September (EST) activists loosely affiliated with the group 'anonymous' gained access to U.S. Republican Party Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account gov.palin@yahoo.com and passed information to Wikileaks. Governor Palin has come under criticism for using private email accounts to conduct government business and in the process avoid transparency laws. The zip archive made available by Wikileaks contains screen shots of Palin's inbox, two example emails, address book and a couple of family photos. The list of correspondence, together with the account...

Two current examples of how bloggers are not just commenting on the political news of the day, but actually making it: Al Giordano and Bill Conroy of NarcoNews were the first to report that one of Sarah Palin's first acts upon becoming Governor of Alaska was to equip the governor's mansion with a tanning bed. How did they come up with this fact, which has been confirmed by Alaskan officials? Giordano explained on his blog: "The investigation began as the result of a comment posted here by a reader (you know who you are; uncloak if you like and share the credit!), a comment I didn't approve because it made a rather fantastic claim: that one of the first things Governor...

On August 30, 2006, Senator John McCain co-signed a letter to "Ms. Sarah H. Palin" of 245 West 5th Avenue #28, Anchorage, AK, 99501. He, along with his co-signers former Governor Michael Dukakis, former US Rep. Bill Frenzel, and former US Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, were acting in their role as members of the board of Project Vote Smart, a nonpartisan citizen group. They were asking Palin, who was then one of several candidates for Governor of Alaska, to agree to take the "National Political Awareness Test" and tell citizens her positions on issues of concern to voters in her state. They noted: Modern day political candidates often heed the destructive advice of political parties and consultants who tell them not to...

This video of Ralph Nader in a soliloquy with a parrot is just too good to pass up. It was filmed in Salt Lake City, UT, while Nader was visiting Rocky Anderson, the city's former Mayor. Nader discusses the lack of coverage of his campaign, addressing the parrot by its name, Cardozo. He also ponders dressing as a panda to get attention. The plaintive soundtrack completes the picture, making this video as good as a Saturday Night Live parody. Hilariously, the Nader campaign posted this video as a response to one of a person dressed in a bear suit walking the streets of Galveston, TX, as Hurricane Ike approaches. That video has more than 500,000 views. This one, not so...

Friday, the Obama campaign released a new ad mocking John McCain for being so "out of touch" with current realities that "he admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send an e-mail." It seems as though a meme that started gaining traction back in June at the Personal Democracy Forum plenary, where Edwards blogger Tracy Russo lambasted McCain deputy internet director Mark Soohoo for defending McCain's admitted internet illiteracy, has now been embraced by Obama directly as a way to raise doubts about his rival's fitness for the White House. Unfortunately, the language of the ad oversimplifies the issue (though it's hardly as big a distortion of the truth as McCain's recent attack ads). In fairness, McCain...

Michael Brown, the man who made "Dear Mr. Obama," the viral video that is currently exploding on YouTube among supporters of John McCain and the Iraq War, is a professional film-maker with about a dozen years of experience under his belt running a company called Testimony Pictures. He's made one full-length feature, and lots of shorter videos, mostly for the Christian market. (You can find some samples of his work here and here.) But, he says, "I've never done anything like this before," and he is completely overwhelmed by the reaction to the video. Over the course of a half hour phone call, he told me that he is independent of any political operation. "I don't know anybody in the McCain...

If you are one of the 41% of Americans who think the US invasion of Iraq was not a mistake, it looks like this video, showing a wounded veteran, Army Specialist Joe Cook, speaking in support of John McCain, could be your viral video of election 2008. As of this morning, "Dear Mr. Obama" has garnered more than 4.8 million views since being posted on August 27. Cook's heartfelt and straightforward attack on Obama for calling the Iraq war a mistake is clearly striking a chord, and my guess is this video will soon be hitting the cable channels and the mainstream media. Which raises the question: Who made it? Was this made by someone with ties to the McCain...

They're also having a national election in Canada, in case you haven't noticed, and in honor of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's dropping of the writ (that's what they call the dissolution of Parliament and the calling of new elections, I'm told), we're dropping our own writ, adding two new charts to track how the Canadian candidates are doing online. For starters, we've got a Facebook chart tracking the daily count of how many "friends" each of the candidates are garnering, and a Technorati chart showing how often their names are being mentioned on blogs. What do these numbers mean? The web is both a great barometer of interest in politics as well as an organizing and communications tool. Friending someone on...

Online fundraising seems to work best when underlying receptivity to a message combines with a sense of urgency. Thus, last week, immediately after John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his VP pick, his campaign received a huge wave of donations -- $4.5 million in the first 24 hours, reportedly. That was the Republican base waking up. Now, I suspect we are going to see an even bigger haul for Barack Obama today and tomorrow. If the Palin pick woke up the conservative evangelical community that, until now, was lukewarm on McCain, the hard-edged speeches from last night's Republican convention, which were watched widely (compared to Tuesday night, when GOP ratings slumped) by voters of all stripes, are not just firing up...