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McCain Asks Supporters To Campaign On Blogs
Vote McCain in 2000! writes "McCain is not the stranger to technology some think him to be. McCain is now asking supporters to stump for him on blogs. Republican Web 2.0 consultant David All was effluent with praise for this outreach, calling it 'smart' and 'unique.' McCain's blogger outreach section has a handy list of political blogs which might be interested in hearing about McCain, such as the DailyKos, Crooks and Liars, and Think Progress. You can even report your posts to the campaign and 'receive points for your success,' though the page doesn't say what exactly the points are good for." Slashdot is not on their suggested blogs list. Can't imagine why.
I don't know who this "John McCain" is today, but he's definitely not that man I supported in 2000. I never thought I would see a John McCain who backed Bush, supported unprovoked preemptive wars, wanted to cut taxes at a time when the country is $9 *TRILLION* in debt, and sucked up to the religious right. But above all else, I NEVER NEVER NEVER thought I would see a man who was a torture victim and POW stand up and support that very torture by HIS OWN COUNTRY.
I was obviously naive to believe in him in 2000, to believe he was anything more than just another hyper-ambitious Washington scumbag who would sacrifice anything to win. I won't ever make that mistake again.
I guess he wants to hear from supporters. But this FORMER supporter wanted to chime in too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
He must have recently seen this:
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=John+McCain&word2=Barack+Obama
It depends on how many disaffected Hillary voters still lurk there. DKos has been none too kind to Hillary supporters, and the general tone there towards them is one of incredible condescension at best, and mouth-frothing vitriol at worst. Most Hillary supporters have left the site, but it's worth putting forth a modicum of effort to find them there, nonetheless.
I think it's a smart move: get moderate Hillary supporters to believe that McCain wants their vote more than Obama does. You saw shades of this in the praise McCain heaped on Hillary in the weeks running up to her exit. It could also be enough to give him the election in November.
Encouraging people to use a medium doesn't indicate you "get" that medium. You need to immerse yourself in it and really grok it's ins and outs, as well as it's pitfalls and strengths.
If he really got the web, he'd know better than to turn a bunch of anonymous trolls loose with permission to bandy about his name.
People who "get" the web understand that communities need to be groomed by moderators.
but then again, commenting on a katz story is almost as self-serving as the katz story itself. -tensionboy
Every single negative stereotype you can think of about Democrats/liberals is exemplified by some of the comments on that site. Pulling out words like "racist" or "homophobe" in the middle of a conversation because someone has a principled disagreement with you. I asked once upon a time why that was any better than Republicans who pull out words like "cut and run" if you disagree with them -- needless to say that didn't win me many friends and I got about 30 replies explaining why it was "different" when Democrats do it as opposed to Republicans.
I consider myself a staunch Democrat and a liberal/progressive in most areas and that site still seems to extreme even for me. Half of the people that contribute there seem more interested in punishing the Republicans for the last seven years then they do in moving forward. They all seem to be extremely pro-Obama yet none of them pay anymore than lip service to the part of his message about disagreeing without being disagreeable and ending the partisan rancor in Washington.
I'm particularly concerned with the O'Reillyization of our political discourse. The manufactured anger. The one-sided reporting. Automatically assuming the absolute worst intentions of your opponents instead of assuming that they just have a principled disagreement with you. I flirted with Dailykos for about two weeks before my head started to hurt and I couldn't take it any longer. Ditto for Keith Olbermann. Tried watching him -- eventually came to the conclusion that he is little better than a left-wing version of Bill O'Reilly.
I would love to see a site where people on the left, right and center could come together to discuss the issues in a calm and principled manner. Hell for that matter, I'd love to see some real journalism that didn't slant to one side or the other. Closest thing I can come up with is the Newshour on PBS.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
No, I have to admit it was trollish (not flamebait, though--I was actually hoping for a chuckle or two). Heck, I'll gladly accept the karma burn for it.
The sad and sorry thing is that I am a registered Republican, and I will probably not be voting for McCain, I definitely will not be campaigning for him, and I certainly will not encourage others to support him. Back in 2000 McCain was a person whom I could respect--one who stood up for his principles. Today it looks like those principles have been prostituted on the altar of political expediency and "electability."
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
I think it's a smart move: get moderate Hillary supporters to believe that McCain wants their vote more than Obama does
This election has come down to race, sex, and oil.
Obama won the nomination because he won every state that had a large black population, and they overwhelmingly voted for him, and then, he split the white vote with Hillary. So now, McCain is reaching out to those white voters and po'd women that probably won't for Obama.
The PO'd women is a huge factor. If McCain picked a woman as his VP - say, Kay Hutchinson, then, that would be a smart move on his part, as, every time Obama attacked McCain on his age, it would serve to remind Hillary supporters that if McCain dies, a woman becomes president.
All McCain has to do now is flip flop a bit on drilling ANWR and off the coasts, and he can attack the Dems on supply. Let Obama defend not drilling for oil, or not supporting coal to liquids, when the price of gasoline hits $5/gal this November, and when diesel hits $6/gal. He'll make the AGW proponents happy, but no one else, and that's not enough to win an election.
McCain wins easily, carrying 40+ states.
This is my sig.
I would never expect a guy his age to come up with something like this. I would expect him to delegate it to someone with an order along the lines of "Hey college guy, get me on the internet!" He doesn't need to know how it is done, just as long as someone on the staff knows.
"McCain's blogger outreach section has a handy list of political blogs which might be interested in hearing about McCain, such as the DailyKos, Crooks and Liars, and Think Progress."
I don't know Think Progress, but DailyKos and Crooks and Liars are prominent left-of-centre blogs. People who post there are probably quite familiar with Mr. McCain already, though that familiarity wouldn't be the kind his campaign might like.
This sounds to me like it isn't really about campaigning for John McCain, though. It's about setting a bunch of true believers loose to swamp sites that offer opposing viewpoints with trolls. If what I've seen is any indication, these blogs can soon expect to be flooded with posts that feature all caps and lots of pure, unadulterated nonsense.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
which makes him one of the most pro-human-rights republicans in the Senate. I wish he was just a bit stronger.
I think we need to stop defining other parties in terms of our own definitions of what human rights are.
I mean, what if, instead of arguing over Democratic visions of human rights - redistribution of wealth, freedom of the press, and rights for minorities, and combined that with the Republican view of rights for entreprenuers, rights to keep and bear and arms, dispose of ones land as one sees fit, and so forth?
It seems to me that if we had a society where some folks could, gasp, put up with a manger and an xmas tree in a public square, and others could gasp, accept gay marriages, then, jeez, we might have a country where people respect each other more. Hell, we might even be all "growed up and stuff".
This is my sig.
The largest headline on the page is Gitmo Bay Detainees Win Round at High Court.
You know, I hear Obama has an entire company dedicated to him too.
"Ticker: Obama lead on McCain growing in polls"
I thought so.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
How'd that whole "owning the Internet" thing work out for Ron Paul?
Got him a whole BUNCH of campaign money for starters.
The corporate media had to go to blatantly refusing to mention his existence to make up for that. He got started about four to six months too late to win the nomination on word-of-mouth alone in the face of media silence. (Doubling time for that is about 2 months.)
But hang in there. While the presidential seat is a trophy, the real battles are for congressional seats, the parties' political directions, and the meme structrure of political debate. That's longer term than one presidential race. That's what he got into politics for and (after beating his head against the wall for decades) he's doing just fine on those fronts right now.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
My fiance is a 3rd grade special ed teacher, and many of her friends are teachers in public schools as well.
In addition to that, many of the problems in public schools also go back to what and HOW the teachers are allowed to teach. Did you know that in certain counties, if a teacher does not teach the curriculum as dictated by county law, they can be fired? It doesn't matter if the kids understand what is being taught or not...teachers can be FIRED if it isn't taught in a specific manner.
Trust me, I used to think exactly that same way that you do. Now that I am able to see what my fiance has to deal with, I assure you that the problem is not incompetent teachers.
After talking to close to 100 teachers over the past two years, I gotta say...a LOT of the problem lies in the tools they are provided, not their proficiency in using them.
You can't be expected to build a skyscraper using wet paper bags and staples.
Living With a Nerd
It's amazing how much he's changed since then, isn't it? As a registered Democrat, I could actually respect the McCain of 2000. Now he's been voting against his own reform bills, supporting torture, supporting telco amnesty for spying on Americans, and pretty much everything else you could think of.
By the way -- the summary article got something wrong:
McCain is not the stranger to technology some think him to be
No, the McCain *campaign* is not a stranger to technology. McCain most definitely is a stranger to technology. When asked whether he was a Mac or PC person, he responded:
"Neither, I'm an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get."
That's right. A president who, this day in age, doesn't know how to use a computer. Makes his policies on tech issues make a lot more sense, though. Back in 1999, running for the White House, this was remotely excusable. Today, it's just sad. A year ago, I set up a older woman who has brain damage with a Linux desktop and net access and she uses it just fine.
"Are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon." -- Primer
But at the moment, they're tolerating him. They'll vote for him regardless, at this point.
What I envision is McCain popping the clutch and shifting the Republican Party in a direction they won't like--but doing it too late for them to even consider not voting for him.
I could be wrong about the timing. He might wait until he's in the White House (I still think Obama's going to flame out) and do it there, when they can't do anything about it. But I'm 100% sure it'll happen.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
What slam? That was 100% true. It took her a while to get used to things (scroll bars were a big challenge for her), but she does just fine now.
Go on, explain to me how someone who doesn't know how to use a computer is expected to remotely understand the issues at hand. At least Senator Ted "Tubes" Stevens, the butt of many jokes on this site, uses a computer.
"Are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon." -- Primer
I agree that he probably hasn't changed as much as I'd thought.
In 2000, I registered Republican specifically so I could vote for him in the primary. Bush was just scary back then. (Turns out, I underestimated how scary).
I was part of the effort to encourage him to run again in 2004. He declined to do so, and instead threw his full support behind Bush and started supporting all of his policies, including support of continued torture of suspected criminals, which he was very loudly against up until that point.
He's no longer the man we knew in 2000. But, I'm willing to concede that that's most likely because we never really knew him, rather than because he's actually changed.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
I think there are quite a few paid Republican Trolls - especially on the Washington Post (I mean aside from the editorial staff) - there was quite a drumbeat of posts that looked very similiar of people claiming to be Clinton supporters who would never vote for Obama, and then any article about Bush gets some Bushbots in high gear. Isn't this kind of disturbing? - I was told once that at Italian Opera houses people would be paid to go to the opera and applaud (loudly) at the end - on the one hand it is sad republican have to pay people to say good things about them, but it is really kind of fascist in the way they try and manufacture consent and make it appear there is general support for really unpopular positions....
No, McCain moved from being 'sort of' a conservative (or at least as close as one gets in the Senate and still remain electable) to a Bush yes-man and neo-con shill.
I can list a dozen ways he's shifted toward the neocons (off the top of my head: nation-building, torture, abortion, tax cuts for the wealthy in wartime, warrantless wiretapping, campaign finance reform) -- can you list some ways he's shifted to the left?
You guys need to get your story straight. It was, actually, a preference. McCain implied he felt that Iraq was just like Japan and Germany, countries that we've "occupied" (in his terms) for more than half a decade. The sheer ridiculousness of either implying either country is "occupied" (we have troops stationed in each, but not in an occupying sense), or that Iraq is anything like those two is what makes McCain's comments all the more ridiculous. Ironically, the right tends to complain we're misrepresenting him by pointing out he was making that comparison.
"Dude, McCain said he wants to eat babies"
"How dare the you on the left misrepresent McCain like that! All he said is that if the Chinese eat babies, then he'd like to eat one too, as he heard they're tasty and delicious."
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Says a lot about his attitude, though, doesn't it? I hope, for all our sakes, that the quote in question was completely facetious. Otherwise people are supporting a candidate who doesn't consider it worthwhile to sit down and learn how to check his email.
> "It's a sad state of affairs when your voting for the lesser of two evils"
This sad state of affairs has everything to do with the people who think that third party candidates are worthless.
I think it's an interesting contrast that Barack Obama knew that a bubble sort is a bad way to sort a million 32-bit integers. Although I think it's necessary, I'd hate to see a debate on technology between the two candidates.
On second thought, maybe I'd love to see one. They could have Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens moderate!
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Actually not. I'm probably going to vote for Bob Barr, and no, I'm not a Ron Paul nut. Still, I find it interesting that you're accusing me of being a troll, when there's someone who goes and moderates everything you post just based on your past record.
And judging from many of your comments, you are the shining example for trolls everywhere.
Still, it's funny that the leftists have no problems with the antisemites within their ranks. That used to be something that was so rich, white northeastern Republican chic. Not anymore.