This interview with Sarah Palin makes me feel like a hypocrite.
At first I was really disgusted by Palin talking in front of a turkey slaughter house. When I thought about it for a minute, I concluded that these turkeys are being treated ten times better than the turkeys poultry, beef or pork that you buy at the supermarket. The truth is that people need to eat and farms need to produce food. Food means killing innocent animals in ways that may seem cruel and are cruel in fact. This is where that crunchy feeling of hypocrisy comes in because I will be savoring that poor, defenseless creature when it is sitting on top of my mom’s kitchen table.
America is a nation that needs to adjust itself to the flux of time. This was the main idea of the constitution, a system of government that adjusts to the progression of society. It is very very hard to change the constitution (which is a good thing) but it is not impossible. Our founding fathers knew that systems of government that do not allow for change, eventually perish because times change and people change. Understanding and embracing change is the key to progress.
I heard both presidential candidates speak. My conclusion is that Barack Obama represents everything that makes America the greatest nation on earth. He is the result of the melting pot in the same way that cream rises to the top.
Barack is the type of person that will do what is better for everyone in our nation and not just the republic. He understands that America is not just one race, one culture, one intellect or one point of view. He sees that we will prosper by collaboration and not by division. His opponent on the other hand is, as Obama has stated before, more of the same.
Obama will trigger major progress in the states by investing in areas that have been overlooked in the past. Our government needs someone like Obama to bring back the energy and charisma that are catalysts for achievement. America needs to re-enforce its diminishing status as center of the world. I doubt that McCain will take steps to strengthen America’s position. As a Nation made up of people from every corner of the earth, we should have a government that reflects that fact. Obama will change America’s popularity and influence, the same way he changed his own popularity in the primaries and the general election; by listening to the people.
Knowing your people before making a decision is key to good decision making. Finding a middle ground that benefits both sides will be key to prevent individual nations from making policies that only benefit themselves. In our current era, all the countries in the world are economically tied and we depend on everyone to maintain the lifestyle that we desire. Since we depend on everyone, we should be on good terms with everyone. This is why foreign policy is vital.
Obama’s knowledge on how the modern world works, including the new frontier of the digital era, will be key in having the upper hand when it comes time to making new foreign policy to put America on top again. We don’t need any more wars to spread democracy. It is proven that we can co-inhabit this earth with communist nations and dictatorships. This is why we do so much business with China. It would be ideal for democracy to be the only political system but that will never be the case. What we need is someone who can collaborate with these nations and pressure them to make changes in their systems to improve things people care about, such as human rights, environmental policy and health policy.
This is why Obama is the person we should choose as a president.
“Wassup 2008″ was directed by Charles Stone III, It features Stone and several of his childhood friends - Fred Thomas, Paul Williams, Terry Williams, and Kevin Lofton.
From Facebook.com:
“Wassup 2008†commercial spent around around $6500 according to Stone. All of the people that participated where volunteers and all sets where obscure public areas or private sets they used free of cost.
The feedback from the community at boing boing was unusually positive. No racial comments or talk of not being qualified to hold presidency. there is a chance this may be censored. The worst comment was someone calling the movie propaganda.
The first 16 comments where marked as spam.
these are the comments:
Leedster618 (6 days ago) Marked as spam ” *sigh* Funny but ultimately pointless…”
246forsale (6 days ago) Marked as spam “change fo-sho foo! cept that iss gonna be change fo da worse!”
gregarious24 (6 days ago) Marked as spam “Funny commercial, but what a crock.
Barack Obama will not fix the housing crisis, or the credit crisis, or the Iraq War, or natural disasters.”
fallinsk8er (6 days ago) Marked as spam “Vote for communism…er…Obama!”
ImTheDarkcyde (6 days ago)
Marked as spam
“1) It’s closer to socialism, 2) would you care to explain why that’s a bad thing, or would you rather just insist it’s bad because the mccaniac said so?”
BrianElstad (6 days ago) Marked as spam
“lol it’s more like
Outoftouch/religiousidiot ‘08″
More of the words used in the comments section include: WHORES 4 THE BANKERS , Assassination , race war, muslim/terrorist/space alien, Rome, IMMIGRANTS, Hitler, satan.
Positive comments included the words:
Speechless, 6 stars, FUCKING EPIC, FTW, High Art, Internet 100 , mcCain 0, Obama is Hope, Funny, Awesome, Amazing, well done, just to name a few.
after the 40th comment, the comments stopped being labeled ad spam.
ohsnazbot (6 days ago)
“people posting anti-obama comments for an obama video. YOU’RE SO EDGY!”
Eventually negative comments concerning race and advertising methods/ propaganda came up, along with Socialism, Communism and making references to Hitler.
priorzola (6 days ago)
“CONGRATULATIONS tool you are the 1 billionth neo-con use of the HITLER analogy to date”
The question now is; can everybody do what Obama did the week before the elections of 2008 (buy 30 min time slots on most of the major the networks except ABC?) in 2012 election?
Obama’s Half Hour Campaign Ad
“More than 33.5 million people watched Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s half-hour prime-time political ad Wednesday night, according to Nielsen Media Research.” - Rebecca Dana from the Wall Street Journal
“According to papers available at CBS’s headquarters in New York, the campaign agreed Monday to pay $961,000 for the entire 8-8:30 pm time period. It wasn’t clear whether that was in pattern, meaning it would run across all time zones at that period.
NBC will sell Obama the half-hour time buy for $891,250 gross and $775,000 net, according to documents from NBC available at its 30 Rock headquarters.”
The “Wassap 2008″ video received a substantial number of views in the first five days of its life on Youtube. According to Viral Video Chart over 3 million viewed it.
* Discovered 24 Oct 2008
* 3,282,186 views
* 14 duplicate videos
* 1,141 blog posts
* 9,086 comments
These numbers show a big shift in media consumption and viewership that will definitely re-shape the way the politicians communicate their message in the future.
“I Got a Crush…On Obama” By Obama Girl
this video came out in June 13, 2007.
According to Viral Video Chart these are the number of views:
Discovered 14 Jun 2007
10,354,031 views
1 duplicate videos
1,748 blog posts
55,942 comments
The bottom line is that video content being created and distributed by means of email, social web sites and mobile web browsing, shows that the landscape is changing for media distribution.
Barack Obama’s campaign spent around 10 million dollars in air time purchases and production costs to air his 30 min. television Ad.
The ad ended up reaching 33.5 million viewers.
This is roughly around $0.30 average spent per person to see the Ad.
Ben Relles spent around $2000 on the original Obama girl video and to date, the video has been viewed by around 10 million people, that’s around $0.002 average spent per person.
Charles Stone III spent around $6500 for his “Wassup” video and reached 3 million people in a week. That is an average of $0.0019 spent per person to view the video.
The numbers are clear indicating that traditional media has a new competitor. Presidential candidates, organizations and individuals have a new medium of broadcasting a message with out the need to spend large amount of money. The effect of the conversations that occur in the “comment sections” of the social web sites where the videos are hosted is unclear. But we are gaining ground on the effect of these social interactions on the web.
So far McCain has spent $10,855,000 and Obama has spent $17,445,000 on Advertising. One thing that the candidates have not done, is to call upon the power of the people to create content to support them. It will be interesting when user generated content begins to out-power content generated by presidential campaign funding. This phenomenon is already taking place but it is hard to quantify due to the lack of data available to analyze.
If the government is to really help out the economy, they better put a lot of new laws in place to prevent individuals from capitalizing on the failing of corporations.
I saw this interview of McCain by Meredith Viera on NBC the other day and was a little upset by the facts presented. Why are a handful of people getting wealthy while a couple of million are laid off. There should be a law making CEOs liable for their misjudgment. When leaders make mistakes they should be punished not rewarded. If a company grows and makes profit, bonuses are a good incentive. The concept of “Golden Parachutes” is skewed, and should be outlawed. Its pretty much encouraging people to make their companies go bankrupt if they have exhausted their benefits.
Luckily we have smart representatives like Marcy Kapture that can defend us from these issues. The problem is that there are more greedy CEOs than caring Representatives and Senators. And Majority Rules in our political system.
Basically the point is that we (the U.S. people) need to find out what is really going on inside corporations that hold assets that affect us directly. Some of these CEOs are no “George Baileys” and are our to make a buck at anyone expense.
We need to learn from Enron and start looking into these companies. The problem is that our own president is one of those selfish CEOs. Back in 1977 Bush started a company called Arbusto Energy that later merged to an other company called Spectrum 7. Whenever a company is sold or merged into an other company, the owners benefit from the sell/Merger in the form of shares or actual cash. In this case it was shares and Bush became the CEO of Spectrum 7/ Arbusto. Later a company by the name of Harken bought Arbusto/ Spectum 7 for a substantial amount. This purchase most likely not only increased Bush’s stock share but also his salary.
At the end of the day Bush cashed in and sold his shares, which is normal if you want to move go in a different direction professionally. The problem is that Harken Announced Substantial Losses shortly after bush sold his share. This was viewed as insider trading and was investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Bush had enough strings to pull at that time that its plausible the investigation died in the bureaucracy of the system. Even after this mess he managed to make more than $14 million on the purchase and sell of the Texas Rangers franchise Baseball team, for which he only invested $600,000. These numbers are suspicious and definitely need to be looked at by a team of specialists hopefully not associated by the government, and make the information public.
And we definitely do not need a “tool” that cannot think for himself when it comes to the economy. We need someone that can think on their feet, someone who can make a rational decision by having a dialogue with the experts, not an a tutorial session. This is why McCain is not up to par with the role of president. If McCain gets the presidency, all of Bush’s mistakes and crooked business will be hidden for an other 4 years, potentially for ever if something is not done soon to expose all these financial twists and turns.
By looking into the past elections, I am predicting that the following States will vote in favor of the following parties.
Dem. 10 Maryland
Dem. 3 Vermont
Rep. 3 Alaska
Dem. 5 West Virginia (swing) Rep. 34 Texas (republican vote has declined over the past 2 elections, will be interesting to see what happens this year) Rep. 9 Colorado (swing)
Analysis of Maryland, Vermont, Alaska, West Virginia, Texas and Colorado:
Maryland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland
Maryland has voted Democrat for the past 4 elections (since 1992.)
Bush’s approval rating is 36% and polls show that Obama leads McCain 53 to 40%
If race is an indicator then the demographics are also in Obama’s favor since there is a 30% population of black voters.
Vermont http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont
Vermont has voted Democratic in the past four presidential elections, and their 2005 32% approval of Bush suggests that this trend will continue in November (SurveyUSA). The most recent poll was a hypotethetical Obama - McCain match-up from late February in which Obama was leading 63% to 29% (SurveyUSA). There is no party registration in Vermont but voters must choose which primary they will vote in; of 421,987 registered voters in the March 4th primaries, 155,280 voted Democrat (and 59.2% for Obama) and 40,120 voted Republican (70.8% for McCain) (Vermont Secretary of State). We predict that this comparative vibrancy of the Democratic party as evidenced by historical and recent elections will give the state to Obama in November.
Alaska http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska
Sarah Palin seems to be enthusiastically supported by her traditionally Republican home state. We predict that the Republican trend in every presidential election since 1960 will continue, and that the state will go to McCain/Palin.
West Virginia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia
West Virgina had voted consistently Democratically prior to the 2000 Presidential election, when they voted for Bush by a six point margin. They elected him again in 2004 by a thirteen point margin, but now give him only a 27% approval rating (Rasmussen). In addition, Democrats are “currently holding the governorship, both senate seats, two of three house seats and both houses of the state legislature” (Wikipedia) as a result of the 2006 mid-term election, suggesting a swing back to the left.
The most recent McCain - Obama match-ups are from June 2nd and show the Republican with an eight point lead (RCP), however the state voted decisively for Hillary in the May 13th primary 67% to 25.7% (NYT). Subsequent efforts by the Democrats to unify the party might sway once-staunch Hillary supporters to Obama and away from McCain. We predict that these trends, combined with the 665,234 to 347,760 lead that the Democrats have in registered voters (AP) will give the state to Obama in November.
Texas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas
Texas has voted Republican since the 1980’s. In 2004, 4,526,917 voted for Republican and 2,832,704 voted Democrat. With numbers like these, it is clear that the state will remain Republican.
Colorado http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado
Recent Colorado polls indicate that November will be an extremely close race, with as low as a 0.4% lead for Obama in a six-poll average that has been narrowing over time (RCP, Rasmussen). Historically, however, Colorado has voted Republican in every election but one since 1980 - in 1992 Clinton won with 40% of the vote, Bush Sr. received 36%, and Perot received 23% (and perhaps the Republican base was split by Perot’s candidacy) (CNN). Most recently in 2004 Bush won with 1,101,255 votes to Kerry’s 1,001,732 of a total population of 4,861,515, but Bush’s approval ratings were at 35% as recently as 2006 (CNN). Current party registration numbers put the Democrats at 946,277 and the Republicans at 1,024,504 (AP). The demographic is primarily white (91.91%) with 4.74% African American, and 3.19% Asian. Colorado has a Democratic Governor elected in 2006, and the President of the State Senate, Peter Groff, is African American (Colorado Independent). Obama has received $5,023,519 of contributions in the state, to McCain’s $1,849,772 (FEC).
These factors make it difficult to predict an outcome for November, so further analysis of the February 5th primary results is required. Romney won the Republican primary by 60.1% to McCain’s 18.4%, while Obama won the Democratic primary with 66.6% to Clinton’s 32.3% (NYT). Obama has had a strong organization in the state for many months, and their work might be easier with much of the population concentrated in a handful of urban areas (Wikipedia). The recent Democratic National Convention in Denver (where Obama’s acceptance speech drew 84,000 people (AP)) may serve to re-energize this organization to campaign throughout the state. Thus, we predict that Colorado will go to Obama in November, although by a very small margin.
…and now some quotes:
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821)
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)
