Republican debate, msm framing unbelievable

ABCNEWS declares Huckabee and Paul winners of today's debate

Yea, I thought. On the day all the major central banks had to pump massive cash into the system and two days after another major bank had to take 10b dollars in losses related to mortgage lending... someone in the press bothered to think that the credit crunch and housing collapse were real issues, bothering real people, and that some politicians had solutions....

Then I went and checked all the other news about the debate on news.google.com. As I write, that's 731 articles worth, in all the national papers.

I forced myself to read the top 20 articles above, and it's like there were only three people on stage, all in a beauty contest...

If Lew Rockwell's blog hadn't pointed at the abcnews article that "loved the focus on the national debt" I'd have missed hearing anything about what concerns me most.

All I can say is, watch the show for yourself. Or read the transcript. Decide for yourself. Don't waste your time reading 20 freaking articles written in the mainstream press, as I just did.

Or, if you just want to hear from Ron Paul, here's his excerpts. What's he saying that the rest of the MSM can't hear or publish?

Aside from this major quibble, the format was far too short per question, but many of the questions were good, and the time was allocated a bit more fairly to all the candidates than I've seen before in this election.

Labels: election 2008, John Mccain, Mitt Romney, msm, Ron Paul, Rudy Giulliani

  ¶ 4:41 PM 0 comments

  Presidental politics and the LAMP stack

I was curious as to what software was powering the presidential campaigns this year, so I did a brief tour of the top websites with LWP's http HEAD command.

It's kind of neat that Romney's otherwise wealthy campaign is using Linux, and no wonder that Fred's technologically clueless one is using IIs, and perhaps I could draw an inference that Hillary's campaign is so uncool because it's not run on a Mac? (Why don't any of the campaigns use a Mac as a web server?) Obama's running on a Personal Web Server, whatever that is.

Democrats

www.hillaryclinton.com Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
www.barackobama.com Server: PWS/1.1.29
www.richardsonforpresident.com/ Server: Zope/(Zope 2.7.8-final, python 2.3.6, linux2) ZServer/1.1
www.dennis4president.comServer: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
johnedwards.com Server: Apache
joebiden.com Server: Zope/(Zope 2.7.8-final, python 2.3.5, linux2) ZServer/1.1

Republicans

www.mikehuckabee.com Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
www.mittromney.com Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
www.joinrudy08.com Server: Apache/2.2.4 (Unix) PHP/5.2.0
www.ronpaul2008.com Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
www.johnmccain.com Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
www.fred08.com Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

The final tally: Of the top 6 Republican campaigns, half use a redhat derived Linux, half use IIS. Of the top 6 Democratic campaigns, 1 uses IIS, another uses PWS (Microsoft I think), the other 4 use Linux, or at least, Apache.

I could draw two conclusions from this. Either: Open source is a clear win in the presidential arena for all candidates - or: there is a marked preference for Microsoft in the top-ranked-by-the MSM contenders.

Now, of all the campaigns running, Ron Paul's is the most interactive and untinged by broadcast mediathink. Rudy Guilani's web page has, first on the page, "watch our new ad", and "get your Rudy bumper sticker, only 9.95", while Paul's has a flash message that circulates between donate, supporter messages, discover and imagine, who is Ron Paul, and pointers to videos, and even a supporter spotlight.

Ron Paul's campaign and supporters are almost entirely powered by at least three parts of LAMP - Linux, Apache, and PHP. I can't easily determine from here what the database back ends are, but I would assume it's either postgres or mysql on that side, too.

www.ronpaul2008.com Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
www.teaparty07.com: Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
www.ronpaulblimp.com Server: Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS)
www.ronpaulgraphs.com Server: Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS)
www.ronpaulforums.com Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat)

Now, if I wanted to be truly fair and journalistic and geeky this morning, I'd survey a few other candidate's supporters' websites, and talk about how google news, myspace and youtube and technorati actually work to bring you the news you are looking for, but I have a few other things to write, and some Blimp handlers to find so I'll leave this at this for now.

Labels: Barack Obama, election 2008, Fred Thompson, hillary clinton, joe biden, John Mccain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rudy Giulliani

  ¶ 6:56 AM 0 comments

  Too tired to go on tonight

As of 10:11PM, the Ron Paul campaign has got 3.55 million in donations for the day. Odds are good they won't crack 4m by midnight, but I expect by morning that barrier, too, will have been exceeded.

I have blasted the MSM a lot in this blog lately, and I can imagine a few ways that the spin will go down tonight and tomorow, but I'm too tired to write more tonight. I confess to chuckling a little about what the talking heads will say without writers to back them up... Before I sign off, though, I just wanted to point to this google trends graph of interest in the top candidates from netizens. You'll note the wide disparity between demand (internet queries) and supply (news stories).

Earlier this week, I deleted the flash player from my machine because I couldn't stand filtering television anymore.

In the course of events today it was sadly easy to forget the imposition of martial law in Pakistan, the mass arrests of judges, and chaos there.

In the back of my mind today, I kept wondering, what would Ron Paul have done differently, there? He may well inherit that whirlwind one day.

Good night, and good luck.

Labels: election 2008, hillary clinton, John Mccain, Mitt Romney, msm, Ron Paul, Rudy Giulliani

  ¶ 6:46 PM 0 comments

  some statistics on the geographical distribution of those interested in Ron Paul

Due to my dissatisfaction with the MSM polls, I dug a bit more into google analytics today regarding the hits to my blog regarding Ron Paul. Here's the breakdown by state:



Pretty interesting. Fascinating how the 2nd largest total of unique reads (461) came from New York, the home state of the leading candidates of both parties. I also dug a bit more into where the blog hits came from:

lewrockwell.com (referral)	4,608	58.87%
google (organic)	1,355	17.31%
(direct) ((none))	570	7.28%
gumstix.org (referral)	323	4.13%
images.google.com (referral)	128	1.64%

I also found that over a third of my regular non-Paul reads this month came from a funny piece I'd written years ago about chair hanging sex. None of my other serious pieces come even close. I sure hope those readers go away satisfied, as that idea never turned into the career I'd humorously hoped for. Sigh.

The most interesting piece of data I've seen today regards the number of people that list their employer when making a campaign donation. What the author calls The Corruption Quotient is here.

And, if you care about the entire series of articles in this thread about the election, not just this little piece of it, click here

Labels: election 2008, hillary clinton, online polling, Ron Paul, Rudy Giulliani

  ¶ 1:27 PM 4 comments

  Getting confrontational, remaining deadly serious about debt

Ordinarily I'm a quiet, unassuming guy. Really. My current outbursts are caused purely by a lack of surf to take out my aggressions on. I prefer to work together with people on a common quest for understanding.

I just asked a simple question of the right, in their own forum, redstate, About deficit spending.

And just to keep matters evenhanded, I'll ask the same question of the left, as soon as I find a suitable forum.

I look forward to any good explanations offered, because, frankly, I haven't a clear idea of why deficit spending is preferable to higher taxes.

Sure wish I could get my other questions answered by anyone in the race.

Labels: democrats, hillary clinton, Mitt Romney, national debt, republicans, Ron Paul, Rudy Giulliani

  ¶ 10:30 PM 0 comments

  Fox News debate results

I thought McCain did well by campaigning on his record. He got a standing ovation, showing some of his old fire, for his zinger about why he missed woodstock - "I was tied up at the time".

Giulliani got in the most "real-folks" sort of commentary, talking about being a yankees fan and things like that. He's a very good demagogue with a common touch no-one else present has.

Mitt Romney also campaigned on his record... saying that we can do everything the democrats want done better, faster, and cheaper, basically. I didn't care for most of what he had to say.

Several third tier candidates invoked the constitution and what the business of the federal government was, a welcome change from previous debates. They all kind of blended together for me, however.

And Ron Paul? He came in a distant 4th. He evidently didn't clearly hear his first question, and didn't answer it directly, and every other question he turned into a statement about how reducing our commitments abroad would allow us to pay for better social programs at home. He got thrown a softball question about how and why he had refused medicare payments and the associated paperwork and despite that perfect chance for a homily story that could touch hearts - he turned that question, too, into a foreign policy question. I would have liked him to have answered his questions more directly. He stumbled over the question of a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage, but pulled himself together at the end:

"This should be a religious matter. All voluntary associations, whether they're economic or social, should be protected by the law. But to amend the Constitution is totally unnecessary to define something that's already in the dictionary. We do know what marriage is about," Paul said.

Guilliani said that marriage is also a civil matter and got a laugh by saying he'd performed 210 marriages in NY but wasn't sure if they were all between a man and a woman.

Mitt Romney said:

"The status of marriage, if it's allowed among the same sex individuals in one state is going to spread to the entire nation. And that's why it's important to have a national standard for marriage," he said. "My state's constitution was written by John Adams. It isn't there."

Mike Huckabee said:

"When our founding fathers put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, those 56 brave people, most of whom, by the way, were clergymen, they said that we have certain inalienable rights given to us by our creator, and among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, life being one of them. I still believe that,"

I can't help but remember that Sam Adams and John Hancock were basically smugglers who would have been hung had the British caught them. And that they would have hung with the priesthood. And that I would have been glad to have hung with them all.

Giulliani got off a good zinger on Hillary Clinton:

"I've been very critical of her, but I want to tell her I agree with this one. Quote, Hillary Clinton, 'I have a million ideas; America cannot afford them all.' I'm not making it up. I am not making it up," Giuliani said to laughter. "No kidding Hillary — American can't afford you."

Fred Thompson, after being an unimpressive and slow starter all night, got in the last words of the night somehow. I just spent 5 minutes trying to recall what they were, then I flashed on that cialis ad I'd seen in the first segment, overlaid by the windows XP window. To close out the debate. .. Thompson said something about being the proud parent of his 4 year olds.

On the whole, as national debates go, it wasn't horrible. I think I'd rather have curled up with a hot woman, preferably one that believed in plural marriage, birth control, and voting with her feet. A good book would also have been preferable. I suppose I'm going to have to force myself to sit through more debates, lacking either of the above. Sure wish I could get some of my own questions answered.

Labels: debates, election 2008, fox news, John Mccain, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rudy Giulliani

  ¶ 7:17 PM 1 comments