US Politics – Page 2

Obama supporters learned nothing from Hillary victory–pushing women toward Palin with stupid misogynistic comments

Take a look at the website comments on any major site, such as Friendfeed, the Washington Post, wherever. Throughout the absolute vitriol being thrown at McCain’s VP candidate Palin is a surprising echo of some of the misogynistic comments we heard about Hillary in the primary. Questions about her looks, snide remarks even. Comments that she’s not fit to be a mother and a VP candidate. People reading into her tone of voice, clothes, etc. Everything they did about Hillary during the primary is being echoed and repeated about Palin.

Are Obama supporters so deaf to the world they can’t see this? Open mouths and closed minds has become the norm in politics today, but if they’re not careful their going to end up driving more and more Hillary voters away simply because of the way they’re attacking Palin.

As always, Google is showing the trend here.

We’ll have to see if they get the memo on this one before they do too much damage.

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From a media standpoint, the Obama speech was utterly clobbered by Palin announcement

Ok, I’m not talking politics / policy–I’m talking news cycles.

This is a homerun for the Republicans.

Take a look at CNN.com, BBC, NY Times, Washington Post, wherever. Who is on the top? Obama and yet another big speech to thronging masses of supporters, or McCain’s announcement of Palin to be his VP?

Obama’s speech was late last night–10pm on the East Coast, 9 Central. This is an hour after ‘primetime’s hot spot but was good enough to get into the morning papers. However, McCain’s announcement has turned EVERYONE into talking about Palin, good bad or otherwise. No one is talking about Obama’s speech. Right now–no one cares about his speech. It’s a Friday and no one is going to be talking about Obama over the weekend–they want to talk about the new new thing. The hot story for this weekend cycle is going to be Palin, not Obama.

Like I said, this isn’t politics–this is news cycles, and the Republicans really trounced Obama on this one.

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Who is Sarah Palin?

Hotter than Hillary

Yea, I wasn’t that up on things this go round so I haven’t really looked at the short list of McCain VP candidates, but it appears that Alaska governor Sarah Palin is going to be named as McCain’s VP today in Dayton.

Plain is the governor of Alaska (good with NASCAR dads) and a mother of five (good with disgruntled Hillary types). She’s only 42 years old and was a beauty queen before working her way into politics, first as a mayor of a small town and then up to the governor’s mansion. She’s married to an Eskimo and her oldest son is serving in the Army in Iraq.

Definitely more of a buzz about her than Biden.

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Putin's paranoia now becoming visible for all to see

Growing up in the KGB you’d expect someone to be a bit paranoid. Hell growing up in Russia you’d be paranoid. But a good intelligence officer usually has the ability to separate fact from fiction, and take the propaganda with a grain of salt.

That’s not the case with Vladimir Putin.

Putin seems to live in his own little world in his mind. Surrounded by like minded and equally paranoid advisors, Putin has a history of making rather strange comments over the years, despite first-hand knowledge in many cases that they were false. So it should come as no surprise that today he said the entire operation in Georgia was orchestrated by the United States for the benefit of one presidential candidate. Of course he didn’t specify which one, nor is he aware that most people couldn’t find Georgia on a map if they tried, but when you’re a bit off to begin with, things like this don’t really matter.

“Why… seek a difficult compromise solution in the peacekeeping process? It is easier to arm one of the sides and provoke it into killing another side. And the job is done.

“The suspicion arises that someone in the United States especially created this conflict with the aim of making the situation more tense and creating a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of US president.”

US officials responded diplomatically but with a growing sense of ‘get this guy some mental help’:

“To suggest that the United States orchestrated this on behalf of a political candidate – it sounds not rational,” White House Spokewoman said.
“Those claims first and foremost are patently false, but it also sounds like his defence officials who said they believed this to be true are giving him really bad advice.”

One wonders how long his grip on power will last.

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CNN: Reporters staking out Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine for VP announcement from Obama

Pandora Internet Radio to shutter their service soon?

A pretty interesting tech article in the Post today about the 900lb gorilla in the room for Internet radio. Despite some of the best traffic numbers in their company’s short history (thank you to the iPhone) the start-up company Pandora may soon have to shutter their service.

“We’re approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision,” said Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora. “This is like a last stand for webcasting.”

At issue is the onerous rate that Internet radio stations have to pay for their services.

Last year, an obscure federal panel ordered a doubling of the per-song performance royalty that Web radio stations pay to performers and record companies.

Traditional radio, by contrast, pays no such fee. Satellite radio pays a fee but at a less onerous rate, at least by some measures.

As for Pandora, its royalty fees this year will amount to 70 percent of its projected revenue of $25 million, Westergren said, a level that could doom it and other Web radio outfits.

I’ve always said the short term greed of the existing content players could kill the medium of Internet radio before it really got its start. No where in the computations are the added per listener cost of Internet radio–it costs more to have more people listen, unlike traditional radio which has a one off broadcasting hardware cost no matter if 1 or 1000 people listen to their station.

Sen. Jesse Helms brokered the last Internet radio survival package but he has passed away. Some on Capitol Hill are trying to find a solution, but the recording industry’s deep pockets full of cash going into the re-election campaigns of many members is hard to ignore. This is one issue in which money talks far more than Republican or Democrat (one of the worst on this issue is the Democrat John Conyers but one of the ones trying to save Internet radio is the Democrat Howard Berman)

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Obama needs to get away from the trendy 'urbanites uber alles'

This is an interesting article about how cities have basically become political ‘monocultures’ where one party dominates overwhelmingly. The trend has accelerated in the last 20 years (much to the demise of the city overall, many would say). Places like San Francisco are now so closed-minded politically they have very few new ideas despite a constantly changing population, and utter contempt for people ‘not living in urban environments’ is starting to creep into more and more political discourse. The term and mentality ‘fly over states’ to describe that area between the East and West coast is what cost Kerry the 2004 election.

Obama is strong in these places, but can run into problems if he follows city-dweller’s advices and biases (a la the ‘bitter remark’ that most city folks just accept as a fact, despite the fact that it played like crap in other areas of the country). The article points out that Obama, if he wants to win, should really ignore his base (basically) and concentrate on puling enough votes out of red areas to make things competitive.

In recent months, the city-centered media such as CNN, The New York Times and National Public Radio have jumped on the urbanist bandwagon. They have promoted urban chauvinists’ contention that high gas prices and legislation to limit global warming would end the era of dispersion. This return to a more urbanized demography, some Democratic bloggers suggest, would assure a new liberal ascendancy.

Whatever Obama may believe personally, he would be well-advised to distance himself from such sentiments. For one thing, identifying with people who celebrate the demise of other geographies may offend the majority of Americans who prefer to live in “retro,” lower-density environments. Suburb- and countryside-bashing may turn on editors and readers of The New York Times, but it hardly constitutes good politics.

It’s a good article, and I’m not an Obama supporter by a long stretch, but this does talk about some interesting demographics worth noting.

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Obama's vanity easy fodder for critics

Pulling no punches, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer goes after the narcissism present in the Obama campaign in a blistering attack.

Americans are beginning to notice Obama’s elevated opinion of himself. There’s nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted “present” nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

Ouch. Krauthammer is infuriating the Obama-tons who troll the Internet seeking to squelch any dissent or criticism of their candidate. The comments section of the Post on this story is already filled with far more vitriol and bile than anything ever said about Bill Clinton or George Bush (well, somewhat similar on the latter). It’s enough to make someone vote against Obama just to smite these types, though I have another standard for my ballot this November.

As I said somewhere else: I always try to vote for a President who is smarter than me but I will never vote for someone who thinks he is.

You know which way I’m voting.

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