Because of Internet

Hilarious informational video from 1993 about Internet. I'm just glad that Internet still maintains its civil, courteous tone after all these years.

http://myhogtown.blogspot.com/2008/09/flashback-cbc-tv-explains-internet-in.html

The McCain-Palin Gossip Challenge

Okay, so we are learning (again) that "facts" and "issues" don't really resonate with a great number of American voters. If you look at the last two presidential elections, they resemble this one in that the facts and issues were clearly on the Democrats' side, but the Republicans successfully diverted voters' attention to mischaracterizations of the candidates' personalities.

In 2000, it devolved into which candidate we would most like to have a beer with (or in Bush's case a Shirley Temple, I suppose). In 2004 it was framing Kerry as a French, flip-flopping windsurfer.

These tactics are highly effective in swaying American voters because in general the electorate is woefully uninformed and is trained to consume media based on an Us Weekly type personality profile format. This format has two modes: poignant, regular-person fawning and gossipy freak mongering.

So far the Republicans have been very effective at propping Sarah Palin up as a "just like us" angry small town mom and deriding Barack and Michelle Obama as sly, deceptive political insiders.

Our challenge as liberals is to forget about the issues and go for the gossip. The people who vote on issues and facts made up their minds months ago and are voting Democrat. The hardcore Republicans were never going to vote rationally anyway. It's the uninformed/undecided/independent voters that are up for grabs. These people really don't hear issues or facts. That stuff is, like, really boring. Independents liked the People Magazine profile of the Palin family with its whiskey-tango-friendly, messy baby drama. This helped Sarah Palin gain a 90% name recognition within like a week.

We can't win this election relying on Americans' sober analysis of the issues, obviously. So the challenge is, liberal bloggers, go out and find the freaky dirt about McCain and Palin and repeat it over and over.

The following have been tried and not worked:

• Cindy McCain was a drug addict
• The McCains are really rich (only Democrats aren't allowed to be rich because that makes them - gasp - hypocrits)
• Sarah Palin is a scary Jesus freak (that's a plus in the United States)

New and new-ish stories the outcome of which is unclear:

• Track Palin was a drug addict
  
• Bristol Palin smoked pot
• Sarah Palin used a (now hacked) personal email account to conduct state business to cirumvent public disclosure laws
  

But we need something really, really freaky. Did Sarah Palin have sex with her teenage daughter's baby daddy? Did John McCain, Larry Craig, and Ted Haggard have a meth and Viagra-fueled threesome? Did Cindy McCain let her dog die due to neglect?

Come on liberals, you do gossip better than anyone. Take your sights off of Britney and Mylie for a minute and set them squarely on McCain-Palin.

UPDATE:

• Sarah Palin's Other Man
  

Sarah Palin/Miss South Carolina: The Cringe Factor

Compare:

Fear Not, Democrats, We Always Win in the End

There is a lot of anxiety floating around Democratic circles lately and everyone seems to be freaking out except for Barack Obama (he's an old pro, folks, he's already thought through your angles). But I have come to bring you the good news: liberals/progressives/Democrats/whatever always win in the end.

Take Sarah Palin. Is this not just a shameless aping of the Hillary Clinton campaign? Without the historic Clinton candicacy within the Democratic party, do you think Karl Rove would give Palin the time of day? I'm kind of surprised they didn't just shoot the moon and go with Condeleeza Rice.

On pretty much every issue, Democrats get it right, Republicans get it wrong, and everyone comes around to the Democratic position in the end. Examples: civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, environmentalism, the Iraq war...

The vast majority of people agree wholeheartedly with the Democrats, so the Republicans create noise and sideshows to distract people. Eventually, though, even the Republicans are forced to change and come around to our side.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said so prophetically, ""the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."

Just What Is This "Community Organizer" You Speak Of?

So all day I've been hearing Republicans, including Laura Bush, say they just don't know what a community organizer is. One guy on NPR actually said, "No one's told me what a community organizer is."

You see Barack Obama was a community organizer before he was an Illinois State Senator and United States Senator, and Republicans say he's really unqualified to be President because they are baffled by the term "community organizer".

What could this community organizer possibly be? Is that even English? I think I've heard of "community": it's like this thing where people live among one another, not separated by vast amounts of land or gates and they somehow manage to coexist, generally without killing each other. Okay, check.

Now, "organizer": let's see, we used to have these books that we would put calendar and address entries into called organizers. So if a person is an organizer, maybe he or she would sort of set up dates and places for people (or the "community") to meet and put their concerns into some sort of order.

Come on Republicans, stop playing dumb. Or are you not playing?

Cheney Waits Until Last Minute Again To Buy Sept. 11 Gifts

Hilarious article from last week's The Onion:

Cheney Waits Until Last Minute Again To Buy Sept. 11 Gifts

Donate to Barack Obama

Okay rather than just get pissy, here's the link to donate to the Obama campaign:

https://donate.barackobama.com/donateinvite

Poor little Republicans

A running theme through this presidential campaign is the defensiveness of Republicans. We democrats are elitist. We think they are stupid. We don't respect their family values. Christianity is under attack.

So the minute they get someone "like them" like Sarah Palin (although I doubt many of her supporters charge their state $60 a night to sleep at home), they are energized! She's a mother! She shoots animals! She speaks their language! She talks to God!

You know what red staters? Go ahead and vote for these dipshits. Vote with your God and your family and your guns. My economic outlook in my blue state looks pretty good actually. I can still afford to shop at the Whole Foods cheese cave. You don't even know what that is, do you? I walk to work so I don't really give much of a shit about gas prices. I'm actually looking to remodel my kitchen. I'll be fine. You red state folks on the other hand will be even more fucked than you are now if we get 4 more years of this nonsense.

Ooh, you can't afford to drive your Chevy Tahoe to work anymore? Vote McCain-Palin! Your prefab 2 bedroom just got foreclosed? Vote McCain-Palin! You don't have any health insurance or savings or beer money? Go ahead and vote Republican.

What do I care? Hit yourselves over the head with a hammer some more. A lot of us blue state elitists will come out smelling like fucking Chardonnay.

What will you smell like?

You lie, Hockey Mom, you lie!

I am starting the think that this Sarah Palin lady is kinda crazy. Granted, crazy is the Republicans' stock and trade, but seriously what kind of nutjob accepts the veep nomination and a couple of days later goes, "Btw, my 15 year old is pregnant. Totes not a problem, right? See you at the convention!"

Now we get the outrageous lying about her position on the bridge to nowhere and her charging the state of Alaska $50 a day to live at home while governor, both of which decimate the entire theme of the McCain campaign, and what have you got left? The poignant, People-Mag-ready, hockey-mom-raises-a-Down-syndrome-baby weepfest. Is this enough to sway an election? For the Republicans, sure. For the general electorate...doubtful.

"Hi, I Am Here to Bug You"

So if you have worked in any crowded part of Manhattan in the last five years (I seem to only work in crowded parts of Manhattan), you are probably familiar with Children's International. This is the organization that sends bright-eyed twentysomethings out in the street to sequester and shake down office drones on their way to Starbucks, ostensibly for the benefit of starving children.

Being generally misanthropic and unsympathetic to children (or at least not more sympathetic to children than other people), I've always been annoyed by these people. I usually don't have much time or interest in giving cash (or as they would prefer my credit card number) to a strange young person with a clipboard and a jacket.

Now the Voice has done a little reporting on the subject and it turns out these branded street beggars are neither entirely altruistic nor particularly shady. Yeah, they get paid by the hour and get fairly substantial bonuses if they get a lot of contributions, but what a pain in the ass it must be to harass people all day for a living, so they're definitely not in it just for the money. (I've always wondered this about summer punks as well: isn't it more work to bother and piss people off all day than to, you know, just get a shit job somewhere?)

All in all, the fresh faces of Children's International generally irritate me. I wish there were a little pin you could wear saying, in effect, "don't bother, I'm going to hell anyway".

'Got a minute?' The young bleeding-heart carnivores who hunt you down on your lunch hour