Sarah Palin Punk’d by radio show

A Canadian comedy duo makes a prank call to Sarah Palin and convinces her she’s talking to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Pure comedy gold.

Upcoming funnies from the 2008 Presidential Election

We’re going to be linking to the funniest of the funniest videos from the 2008 presidential election throughout December.  Why?  Well frankly, there’s no political news to cover, so we’ll be covering what happened before November 4th.

In our research thus-far, the pro-Obama folks were far more creative, so if you were hoping for a McCain victory this year, I hate to say it, but tune out for December, because there isn’t much good in there for pro-McCain folk.

For pro-Obama voters, I promise you will be entertained.

The Internet Shapes Politics

New York Magazine’s John Heilemann is leading a panel at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this morning on “The Web and Politics.” Joining him is San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Arianna Huffington and Joe Trippi.

The session jumped right off with Heilemann saying the Internet played a disruptive role in the 2008 election in the same way television played a disruptive role in the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy to president. Neither medium was new in the respective elections, but both “came of age” and swung the election towards the winning candidate. Kennedy, in particular, used television ads extensively in his campaign to reach the American voters directly, and embraced simple things like makeup:

The televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon was probably the most decisive event for the election of 1960. The growth of TV as a new medium, and declined use of radio marked a significant change in how campaigns are ran today. For the TV appearence, Nixon refused to wear make-up and therefore appeared unshaven, tired and sweaty under the lights. Kennedy, however, did wear the make-up and so appeared cooler and more composed than Nixon. Kennedy, before the debate, returned tan and attractive from vacation. Not only did Kennedy appear to be better groomed, and handsome, his suit was navy popping off the grey back drop. Nixon’s suit was grey, blending in to the curtain behind him. With these factors combined, Among TV viewers agreed, Kennedy won the debate. Richard Nixon’s deep, strong, radio appealing voice won over all radio listeners, they agreed Nixon won the debate. Nixon entered the race ahead of Kennedy. Television as a new medium changed presidential elections from this point on, marking the election of 1960 significant. Radio voice failed to prevail over now “candidate centered” television campaigns.

Huffington says flat out that if it wasn’t for the Internet, Obama would not be president. Trippi notes that Obama’s YouTube spots gathered an aggregate of 14.5 million viewing hours. The Internet was used by candidate previously, he said, noting the Howard Dean campaign, but Obama really leveraged it fully with online video, blogging, social networking and fundraising.

The panelists also note how mainstream media tends to fail in politics, simply reporting on what each candidate says without saying who’s right or wrong. The blogosphere, they say (particularly Trippi and Huffington), tends to call out factual inaccuracies better than mainstream media.

Howard Dean showed that the Internet could be used to raise lots of money online, say the panelists. But Newsom says social networking is significantly more powerful and allows for the creation of much more meaningful connections between the candidate and voters. “I’m addicted to Facebook,” he said.

Newsom also notes that “every single thing a candidate says, and how he says it,” is available online for people to review and judge. And he questions whether candidates today are more authentic or less authentic now that they have to be “on” all the time.

Pro Obama Opinion Piece

I’m going to vote for Barack Obama. But you probably guessed that.

A few readers have, from time to time, chastised me for my enthusiasm for Obama, so I’d like to explain.

First off, I’m not someone who believes that a vote for a third party candidate is a wasted vote. On the contrary. No national election is ever going to be decided by a single vote, so I think you should vote for the candidate you believe in. People say that’s wasting your vote, but you can just as well argue it’s the other way around. When your vote is one of a hundred million, it counts for a lot less than when it’s one of a million or two. In that sense, a vote for a third party candidate counts more, not less. But, people always say, what if everyone thought that way? Well, then we’d elect the candidate we really want, not the lesser of two evils.

So that’s how I’ve voted most of my adult life. Usually, but not always. Sometimes the choice is so stark that I have to go with the lesser of two evils, quite deliberately. So I voted for Nader in 2000, but in 2004 I felt I had to vote for Kerry. I had no illusions about Kerry, but the evil of the Bush presidency was just too great. I knew the effect of my vote would be infinitesimal, but it was at least something.

I understand that the Democrats and Republicans are in many ways two wings of one Corporate Party, and I realize full well that most of today’s Democratic politicians are basically what Republicans used to be before the Republicans swung so hard to the right. That said, I don’t buy that there’s no difference between the parties. If Gore had become president in 2000, for example, he never would have invaded Iraq. It never would have even occurred to him. The Democrats aren’t progressives (there are a few exceptions), but they are better than the Republicans on most of the issues I care about. Of course that’s faint praise indeed.

So a Democratic president is preferable to a Republican president, but that still doesn’t explain my vote. After all, as I said, my one vote won’t affect the outcome. So why vote for Obama? And why enthusiastically?

At bottom, I think it’s not so much the laundry list of Obama’s positions, it’s more a question of who Obama is and what an Obama presidency will mean for this country.

First, as to who Obama is. I think he is self-evidently a man of rare gifts, with a level of emotional intelligence and maturity that is unequaled in American public life. He is a true grown-up, in the finest sense of the word. He embodies grace. It may sound like I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, but that’s what I sense in the man. And I am obviously not alone.

Second, as to what an Obama presidency will mean for the country. Think of where we’ve come as a nation. American politics has become so cheapened, so coarsened, so brutalized and corrupted and dumbed down that I think it will take a leader with Obama’s gifts to pull us back from the brink. Think what it will mean to have a leader who appeals to what is best in us and not what is worst, who talks to us like fellow citizens of a great democracy, not like members of Jerry Springer’s studio audience, and who genuinely wants government to succeed.

There are lots of other reasons why an Obama presidency will be good for America — Obama’s standing in the eyes of the world; the transformative effect his presidency will have on American attitudes about race; Supreme Court nominations — but for me it’s really more personal. It’s the reasons I gave above. And it’s this: I want to live in a country where Barack Obama is president.

Early Voting Snaffus

“I don’t have time to complain about the rules,” a harried county election worker snapped back. “I just follow them.”

Early voting across Florida is bringing record turnouts. But it’s also exposed, as the Miami Herald points out today, how Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature two years ago “made it harder, not easier, for Floridians to vote.”

The legislature mandated a cut-back in early-voting hours and limited the number of early voting polling places a local election supervisor can establish. Supposedly, the legislature acted “to save money.” As a result, now, there are only four early voting locations in Escambia County and just two in Santa Rosa County.

Supervisor of Elections Main Office
213 Palafox Place, 2nd floor
Pensacola (downtown)

Supervisor of Elections Branch office
292 Muscogee Road
Cantonment

Lucia M. Tryon Branch Library
5740 North 9th Avenue
Pensacola

Southwest Branch Library
12248 Gulf Beach Highway

The Elections Office
6495 Caroline St, Suite “F”
Milton

South Service Center
5841 Hwy 98
Gulf Breeze

All locations will be open today (Sunday) from 11:30 am to 3:30 pm. Tomorrow (Monday through Saturday, early voting locations in the two counties will be open from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.

The scant locations and limited hours are causing long lines in both counties. While we were standing in line over an hour yesterday, we overheard another voter complaining about the long wait, the abbreviated hours, and the gas it took to drive to the distant early voting polling place.

“Can’t you do something about this?” he demanded.

“I don’t have time to complain about the rules,” a harried county election worker snapped back. “I just follow them.”

Elsewhere in Florida, it’s a “nightmare”, as Mike Madden reports for Salon.com. Still, early voting as allowed in some 32 states is bringing record turn-outs, according to the Los Angeles Times. One million have already voted in North Carolina and over 900,000 in Georgia. That’s “double the pace” in both states compared with the 2004 election, AFP News service reports.

In Oregon, which blazed the trail in the 1980’s with its innovative vote-by-mail system, state officials reported 281,781 returned ballots as of October 23.

Interestingly, Oregon’s experience with mail-in ballots has led to a substantial reduction in annual election expenses. While “counties have seen their post costs increase… the overall cost of running a mail election is far lower than a poll election.” For example, in the largest county in the state:

At one time, Multnomah County had 2,000 people working at hundreds of polling places. This election, there will be 200 to 300 people working at a single office, said elections director Tim Scott.

Moreover, voter turn-out in Oregon has been around 80 percent of all eligible voters, an order of magnitude or two greater than the best participation rates in the other 49 states.

It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Did the Florida legislature’s sudden interest in saving money on elections have more to do with voter suppression and its fundamental distrust of democracy than with economic efficiency?

Source: http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2008/10/early-voting-florida-snaufs.html

Michelle Obama stars in robo-calls

Like John McCain, Barack Obama has used robocalls as a means of advancing his presidential ambitions. Usually, however, the Democratic nominee’s spots are more positive in nature or simply designed to push back against McCain’s efforts.

Voters in Virginia are now receiving one such call delivered by Michelle Obama urging them to get out and vote… early.

“We all know a lot is at stake in this election, you can’t risk not letting your voice be heard, and heard early,” goes the recording.

The Obama campaign hasn’t left any stone unturned when it comes to getting people to the polls. And they seem completely devoted to having their supporters get to the polls early.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/23/michelle-obama-stars-in-v_n_137297.html

Celebs Impact 2008 Presidential Race

Film director Sue Kramer (Gray Matters) is the mastermind behind the YOU VOTE campaign. She answered a couple of questions about how the project happened.

How did you come up with this idea?

I was fortunate enough to be asked to be a co-chair of the creative coalition’s presence at the DNC and RNC conventions this past summer (other co-chairs were Tim Daly, Kerry Washington, and Tom Fontana.) I had been working all year and was very involved and obsessively reading everything and trying to be as educated as possible. When I went to the DNC I felt that the country was united. When I listened to Obama’s speech I felt he was talking about non-partisanism and he was so inspiring about unifying the country and I walked away passionate about the country. Then I went to RNC and I felt different and it wasn’t because I am a democrat. I felt like their speeches were about division so I thought to myself what could I do to show that this country is unified and that this is not about us and them, or he and she.Hollywood has been criticized forever in terms of being completely democratic and only caring about democratic causes, especially because people think Obama is a celebrity endorsed presidential candidate. I wanted to show that all my conversations with people who came with the Creative Coalition were really more than just being a democrat or a republican, that people cared about the country as a whole. So I came up with this idea and approached Robin Bronk at the Creative Coalition and asked if they would be interested in this video.

Robin introduced me to John Paul DeJoria who owns Paul Mitchell products and he gave us a grant for production and I called my producing partner Jill Footlick who produced Gray Matters and I started rallying the troops asking people to work for free and they said yes and one by one we started getting celebrities.

From the time I came up with it to the time I was finished was just three weeks. Everybody wanted to be involved and were passionate about the project.

W&H: What do you hope this accomplishes?

SK: I hope this gets people out to vote for the candidate of their choice. I want to show it in a passionate and positive way. This is your right. This is the moment and you need to go for it.

W&H: Why is the Margaret Mead quote so integral in the video?

SK: It’s one of my all time favorite quotes. It’s been hanging in my office for the last ten years. I believe in it so much because I really believe it just takes a small group of people to make incredible things happen. Many people get scared and say that I’m not going to cast that first stone because it’s not going to make a big difference in the world. But it actually does. That’s why I put the vote dance in. Because I wanted to show that this is a joyful experience.

W&H: Talk about the You Vote anthem - Today.

SK: I called my composer Andrew Hollander who also writes songs with his wife Dana Parish. I called them at 11pm and told them that I was looking for an anthem — something powerful and joyful. And she said well I’m really busy let me see what I can do. When I woke up the next morning at 8am there was an email with the song. They went to the studio and recorded it. We worked on the lyrics and now everyone is commenting on the song.

W&H: What’s next for you in your career?

SK: I am deciding between two films (that I have written) to shoot in the late spring.

The video is going to be seen on 1,000 movie screens and on Verizon cell phone and of course and all over the web.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-silverstein/celebs-get-on-the-voting_b_134094.html

106-year-old voter chooses Obama

A 106-year-old American nun living in a convent in Rome could well be one of the oldest voters to cast a ballot in the 2008 US Presidential election.

Sister Cecilia Gaudette, who last voted for President Eisenhower in 1952, has registered to vote and says she will vote for Democrat Barack Obama.

Although hard of hearing, she keeps herself informed by reading newspapers and watching TV at the convent.

“I’m encouraged by Senator Obama,” she says.

“I’ve never met him, but he seems to be a good man with a good private life. That’s the first thing. Then he must be able to govern,” she adds.

Sitting in her modest office in the convent where she has lived for the past 50 years, the diminutive nun appears uninterested in the row inside the American Catholic church over Senator Obama’s support for pro-choice policies on abortion.

Asked about her hopes for the US under an Obama presidency, she says: “Peace abroad. I don’t worry about the Iraq war because I can’t do anything about it. Lord knows how it will end.”

“It is very complicated,” she said. “Those Eastern people are not like we are.”

But despite taking part in the 4 November election, Sister Cecilia does not intend to return to the US.

“I have no plans for the future. I am too old to go back to the US. Life has changed too much.”

But she still watches “very important events” on TV. The election comes under this category.

Palin Booed At Flyers’ Game

You never know where you are gonna find a political scoop, but Lynn Zinser at her NYT hockey “Slapshot” blog just posted that Sarah Palin, in her much-ballyhooed appearance dropping the puck at the Philly Flyers’ opener, was greeted by “resounding (almost deafening) boos from the Flyers crowd.”
The biggest problem: when Palin came out to onto the Wachovia Center ice Saturday night — greeted by resounding (almost deafening) boos from the Flyers crowd — the the two hockey players who had no choice but to appear with her in that photo op were turned into props in a political campaign.