Nice video on the work of bloggers in the Big Tent: “Link TV Producer, John Hamilton, meets several new media journalists who are covering this Democratic Convention from “The Big Tent,” where beer and high speed wi-fi flow copiously..”
From a Twitter contact John Culberson, US Congressman, 77th District, Texas:
“I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen’s ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc – outrageous and I will fight them.”
Hmm, sounds serious: “The Committee on House Administration is considering a new rule that could bring this trend to a screeching halt. The Committee is considering the adoption of new rules that would require outside websites such as YouTube to comply with House regulations before Members of Congress could post videos on them. Under the proposal, the House Administration Committee would develop a list of “approved” websites, and Members of Congress could post content only such websites.”
Latest on Qik on 9 July:
C4′s Jon Snow interviews Gore Vidal on the US election campaign..
Barack Obama’s comments on culture have got him into trouble. Sounds like he doesn’t understand how culture and politics interact, which is sad. But then what politicians really do in a positive sense? After all the culture of mainstream politics is itself I believe in a difficult position to really understand the varied culture people in the real world live in day to day. I’m sure that’s what in reality puts a lot of bright people off going into politics. I know I’d rather channel my desire for change through social networking and cultural change where you have a better chance of connecting with individuals in a real two way conversation.
Obama made the remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday – before a very different crowd from those he has been courting in Pennsylvania and Indiana – after he was asked why he was not doing better in Pennsylvania. (SF Chronicle)
“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” Obama responded, according to a transcript of the fundraiser published Friday on the Huffington Post.
“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” he said.
MEMPHIS/AP – Republican Sen. John McCain says Martin Luther King Jr. “seems a bigger man” than he did 40 years ago on the day of his death.
McCain stood outside the motel where the civil rights leader was slain. The presidential candidate said, “The quality of his character is only more apparent. His good name will be honored as long as the creed of America is honored.”
All three of the remaining presidential candidates marked the anniversary of King’s death. McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to the city where King died. Barack Obama spoke of King in Indiana.
Obama said King “preached the gospel of brotherhood; of equality and justice.”
Back in Memphis in 1998.
* See my article on the 30th anniversary on this blog.
Obama preacher video. I can see watching a bit of it why Obama’s come in for criticism. Anyhow, guess on the positive side ‘all’ Obama has to do is back up his talk about transcending racial differences, with some real transcendent action. Now that should be interesting to see. Would win him some votes too, and deliver real change. Not sure how it would help the US economy though, but maybe there doesn’t need to be a direct connection?
Plus Obama’s speech on 18 March addressing the preacher’s words..
…”They’ve married the incredibly powerful online community they built with real on-the-ground field operations. We’ve never seen anything like this before in American political history.” (That’s the Obama campaign, btw;-) (Rolling Stone, March 2008) — follow-up blog at ‘Portals and KM‘, March 17, 2008.
“Barack Obama has taken a major step towards becoming America’s first black president by winning the Iowa caucuses in a stunning victory that left Hillary Clinton, the presumed front runner, languishing in third place.” And in the year marking the 40th anniversary of MLK’s death, kind of appropriate.
If you like following the US election, you’ll love this:
“We are happy to announce the launch of Wonkosphere.com, a free web service which helps you stay on top of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Race. Wonkosphere tracks over 1000 political blogs and web sites to provide timely and unbiased analysis of the 2008 Presidential race. Wonkosphere measures the buzz share and tone for each candidate every four hours, and highlights the most representative and influential posts. Crawdad’s patented text analysis technology provides the engine behind Wonkosphere.”
Related Reading
Analysing the Bush team’s words after 9/11
A previous blog post on this blog which also references a report from Crawdad Technologies, who produce Wonkosphere.