techPresident - John Edwards - Comments

Are we really discounting the impact of computers?

liberalart — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 12:16:07 -0400

@Freedomfighter:

... the computer can help officials but it is really more of a secretary's tool...The computer is still largely a way of inventorying information.

Another means of inventorying information is an obscure technology called books. The cultural elites always going on about how great books are, but frankly I don't trust anyone who's read one. Why read a book when your secretary can give you the gist...

What's really sad about this comment is it's total lack of any sort of business understanding... Republicans are supposed to be business friendly candidates? Ask any CEO if the computers or internet have impacted their business. The internet is more than Amazon and Wikipedia, it's the primary conduit of information and interaction for our economy. When's the last time someone kept books, traded stocks or conducted any financial transaction on paper; the 1970s?

The point isn't that McCain has a secretary to read to him, it's that computers and the internet have changed the rate and means of information storage, exchange and human interaction for all of civilization.

Techie or Non, just because some folks don't understand it or have no access doesn't matter. Some folks in the US still don't have access to running water. But then, why turn on a spigot when your secretary can bring you a bucket of water?

The most absurd thing about Freedomfighter's post is that he made it on the internet using a computer. Clearly, computers have more uses than porn, minesweeper and itunes, and the next President needs to understand that...

steve ofner | liberal art

So Tracy-

Nick S — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:14:42 -0400

How did John Edwards' mastery of the interwebs work out for him? Oh, that's right.

Ditto!

junothiall — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:34:20 -0400

Freedomfighter - ditto, ditto, ditto!

FF said:"The fact is, the computer can help officials but it is really more of a secretary's tool where the executive simply asks,"what emails did I get today?" and "send an email to so-and-so about the meeting".

I am certain McCain makes use of a computer but it would not surprise me if he does not have one. The computer is still largely a way of inventorying information."

And the internet is filled with unreliable information that you need to check, double-check, and triple-check to make sure you get your facts and figures correct.

War is deadly, that's why everybody wants peace.

It was once thought humans were the only creatures who fought wars, but closer observation of animal life has discovered wars between ant colonies and chimpanzee tribes.

In terms of just outright numbers:

Civil War - 363,020 Northern dead, 281,104 wounded
199,110 Southern dead, 137, 102 wounded
71.8 Billion between Union and Confederate dollars,
$970Billion today
WWI - 126,000 US dead, 134,300 wounded, 4526 POW, cost $33Billion in 1918 dollars, $465B today
WWII - 408,306 US dead, 670, 846 wounded, cost $360Billion in 1945 dollars, $429B today
Vietnam - 58219 US dead, 153,356 wounded, cost$111Billion in 1975 dollars, $440B today
Iraq(03 to 08) 4109 US dead, 29,978 wounded, cost $845Billion

Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. Before y'all jabber on about Iraq, study what we did to ourselves on this continent in one war.

Don't overstate the case

Freedomfighter — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:37:42 -0400

This type of discussion is immensely frustrating because people quite literally do no understand the gap between non-techies and techies.

Computers and the internet have proven great for the following:
porn
music
movies
games

The fact is, the computer can help officials but it is really more of a secretary's tool where the executive simply asks,"what emails did I get today?" and "send an email to so-and-so about the meeting".

I am certain McCain makes use of a computer but it would not surprise me if he does not have one. The computer is still largely a way of inventorying information.

I hate to tell people, but much of what computers do, have only come around in the last ten years and much of what computers have done has not really helped people.

When I see the antiwar movement talk about how "bad" the Iraq war is, I ask, can you name a war with a better outcome than the Iraq war? They can't because they have not read any history.

http://www.widecircles.com

johnsmith5082 — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 05:01:57 -0400

We are all watching a parallel university,they made a number of creative students.Always welcome for your advertisement.
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johnsmith
Highly relevant, efficient advertising to forum, blog, wiki and other types of web sites. Drive large number of visitors to your website and build quality links.
http://www.widecircles.com

The Edwards news unfolded as follows:

Thu, 15 May 2008 23:17:48 -0400

At 5:04pm Political Rader on abcnews.com confirmed the endorsement.

At 5:13pm MSNBC displayed a breaking news banner "AP: Edwards Endorses Obama".

At 5:16pm the full details were discussed and aired on MSNBC and CNN.

By 5:17pm the details were up on CNN.com -- the time it was tweeted.

"Meanwhile, Edwards' homepage is stuck on January 30, 2008."

bhschenker — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:46:17 -0400

The reason the homepage is stuck on Jan 30th is that there are very specific rules by the FEC of what you may and may not do with your website post election. Debt retirement is about it, I'm sure endorsements wouldn't fly.

Brett Schenker
5B Consulting

Twitter?

EricFrenchman — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:52:30 -0500

Do you seriously consider Twitter usage a measure of someone's technological expertise?

Eric Frenchman
Chief Internet Strategist
Connell Donatelli Inc
www.connelldonatelli.com

This is a great chart, very

Zephyr Teachout — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:58:13 -0500

This is a great chart, very useful.

One of the fascinating aspects of this campaign cycle is that campaigns largely have not figured out--as many of us predicted they would--the most effective way to use out of state support. Those of us on the Dean (and I imagine Clark) campaigns felt like we found out that people were willing to do extraordinary things--and spend hours doing them--but we didn't quite figure out the most useful way a Vermonter could help in NH, or a North Carolinian in SC. We asked people to make calls and canvass, but assumed that in 2008 a new revelation would come along, or develop, where we figured out more ways for out-of-staters to be really useful.

I'm inclined to think its a good thing for democracy that we haven't (as frustrating as it is as an Obama supporter in NC) -- its good that by and large, local organizing is going to make more of a difference than extraterritorial electioneering.

How does that relate to Micah's post? The LOCAL offline meetings organized in the way these campaigns are trying are going to be all the more important -- and while Obama's doing the best, the numbers here are still trivial compared to what you'd need for a massive local impact.

Other campaigns using Eventful

Alex Hunsucker — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:04:52 -0500

Actually, Ron Paul and John Edwards are not the only campaigns using Eventful extensively. Huckabee, Thompson, and Obama are all using the site in the same way to message supporters in primary states about upcoming events.

Obama has let everyone know throughout Nevada about all his appearances, as Huckabee has done in both MI and SC. Huckabee has even asked his supporters to Demand him around the country so he can use Eventful to notify his supporters and build crowds in future primary states. Meanwhile, Fred Thompson has posted an Eventful calendar on his website about his Iowa and South Carolina bus tours, not only letting his supporters know about events, but also all of Eventful's users, as well as our 500+ data syndicators.

Many of the campaigns are using Eventful to build crowds at campaign events through our local messaging tools, actually turning online activity into real world crowds.

Both political parties are ignoring the web

davidfarrar — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:58:20 -0500

While political candidates are increasingly cognisant of the communicative power of the web, I venture to say, most political parties are absolutely frightened to death of the web's vast communicative power. Whoever has the power to effectively communicate, has political power. It is precisely for this reason the communicative power of our major political parties has largely been taken over by the moneyed interest and the political elite, least someone tells the people.

As a classic example of this process in action, please go to," How to throw the 2008 election".

ex animo
davidfarrar
The National Online Party

I don't know if it was machine tampering

Liza Sabater — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:03:49 -0500

I have been following the controversy. The Diebold machines are not just prone to tampering. They are also prone to error. And given that there is no easy way to verify their results or audit the machines, something has to be done in order to properly verify a county's tally before releasing the numbers to the board of elections. I am not just talking about New Hampshire. I am talking about each and every precint that is using Diebold.

Exit Polling Holds the Clue to New Hampshire Obama Loss

bacalove — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:32:20 -0500

Exit polls are the clue to the mystery of what happened on Tuesday night regarding the New Hampshire primary and the clue to the losses of both Kerry and Gore. Exit polling both in the Kerry and Gore contest had them both aheard and they are white men. Yet at the end of the day, exit polls were wrong, it had nothing to do with Race then and now. This keeps happening over and over again and no one questoins why, how long are we going to sing this song "what went wrong with the exit polls". Exit polls had Obama way ahead and at the end of the day he lost by 2 percent.

I cannot believe the so-called Intelligentsia of the media are so bewildered and so baffled as to the wide discrepancy between the exit polls and the polling and the so-called actual vote in the Obama total for New Hampshire'sTuesday night primary. In the very first two vote tallys done by paper ballots put in boxes, the exit polls were not wrong, and Obama won those voting places by a large margin. The reason for the later discrepancies are due to MACHINE TAMPERING. The Powers that Be were not ready to give Obama the victory. It happened with Gore, it happened with Kerry and it will happen with Huckabee. HOWEVER, IT DID NOT HAPPEN IN THE IOWA CAUCUSES BECAUSE PEOPLE STAND UP IN THE LIGHT OF DAY AND ARE COUNTED. The Powers that Be cannot control that. And, until we address this secret weapon of the Powers that Be, the people cannot vote their true choice into office, that would be like putting the power into the People's hands -- imagine that! The Media, as a whole, is acting negligent and irresponsible and has an obligation and a duty to inform the public and question all options. Not a duty to stay silent, like they did after 911, and we got into a war that should never have been. It was not racial that skewed the voting total, as Obama has broad appeal to all races, sexes and ages. May be the so called intelligentsia would like us to believe that so we cannot see the truth. They keep questioning and saying -- even the exit polls when we ask people said Obama was ahead. What went wrong? We can bring up questions and scenarios and ask can a computer hijack an airplane? Of course. Can a computer hack/change votes? Most Definitely! Now they are having a debate over ID Cards when the debate should be about how to have a voting system the people can believe in. INCREDULOUS! WILL THE MEDIA FAIL US AGAIN?

vote fraud against Obama and Paul

JMalone TN — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:35:53 -0500

Clear Evidence Of Widespread Vote Fraud In New Hampshire

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
January 9, 2008

There were several major vote fraud issues to arise out of the New Hampshire primary revolving mainly around Ron Paul and Barack Obama, who were both seemingly cheated out of third and first places respectively as a result of rigged Diebold voting machines and deliberate malfeasance in the counting of hand-written paper ballots.

- Obama had a 13 to 15 point lead over Hillary Clinton heading into the primary. Nothing occured that boosted Hillary’s numbers immediately before the election, in fact immediately after the staged crying incident, many pundits argued it could only have harmed her chances. And yet Hillary somehow managed to instigate a near 20 point swing to defeat Obama by three per cent. If not for her 7% swing as a result of Diebold voting machines, Hillary would have lost to Obama. If Obama was struggling he would probably contest this bizarre outcome, but he is likely to accept the results simply to save face.

- Going into New Hampshire Ron Paul was polling in the early teens and was a strong bet to take third place behind McCain and Romney. Four days before the vote, Rasmussen had Paul at 14% - a significant lead over Huckabee on 11% and Giuliani on 8% - and yet Ron Paul finished with just 8%. Proof of clear vote fraud, allied with the fact that Paul’s numbers show a 6% swing from normally accurate pre-polling forecasts, clearly indicate chicanery was at hand, especially considering the fact that Paul lost those crucial few percentage points to Giuliani as a reuslt of electronic Diebold voting machines which are known to be wide open to tampering and fraud.

- Going purely on hand-counts, which as we saw in Sutton were by no means angelic but at least harder to cheat on than Diebold voting machines without getting caught, Ron Paul would have won 15% of the vote and finished third. This figure would have more accurately correlated to the pre-primary polls rather than the ridiculous 8% he was eventually given.

- Numerous districts reported totals of anything up to 22% for "other candidates". What on earth does this black hole of "other candidates" mean? How can one vote for a candidate that is not on the ballot without spoiling the ballot paper? The district of Lisbon reported 22.5% votes for this mysterious "other" candidate, while in the large district of Londonderry, the "other" candidate received 10%. Many are now alleging that these "other" votes were merely siphoned from Ron Paul to keep his final number low.

- Rudy Giuliani, the 9/11 candidate who beat Ron Paul thanks to the aid of a 3% swing on Diebold voting machines, received 9.11% of the vote in three different towns. Coincidence or somebody’s idea of a sick joke?

- The New Hampshire town of Sutton admits that it voided every vote Ron Paul received. The Congressman got 31 votes and yet due to a "human error," Sutton reported zero votes for Ron Paul. How "human error" can explain not counting 31 votes in succession for one single candidate is beyond the pale and Ron Paul’s campaign should ask for a recount across New Hampshire immediately.

- As soon as people went public with the fact that their votes in Sutton had not been counted, other districts where Paul had supposedly received zero votes, such as Greenville, suddenly changed their final tallies and attributed votes to the Congressman.

"UNBOUGHT and UNSOLD" by Chisholm

Xustice — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:32:20 -0500

The other canidates owe their soul to the company store! Do you?