Slashdot Mirror
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 think not. The old fart can go stump for himself.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
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.
This is a terrifying job title.
"Life has improved immeasurably since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously." - Hunter S. Thompson
McCain has supporters who have blogs? Clearly the Internet belongs to Ron Paul, and we don't take too kindly to flippy-floppy neocons around these parts.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Because /. is neither primarily political, nor a blog, while the mentioned sites are both? Because there aren't a lot of disgruntled Hillary supporters here?
C'mon, Taco, you have lived through the careers of Lee Atwater, James Carville, Bill Clinton, and Karl Rove. Have you learned nothing about political strategy from the best in the business?
Sending McCain's supporters into the DailyKos is like sending lambs to the slaughter.
"Spam lefty blogs with righty ranting to win points!" -- it's like someone created Internet Troll: The MMOG.
Does anyone really believe that he came up with the idea himself?
to have bloggers write about you. It just happens. It's like trying to be cool. You either are, or you aren't. No amount of effort can change the fact your a nerd (or in this case, not a nerd).
He'll just end up coming across as creepy and forceful.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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.
He would do the blogging himself but his wife doesn't have the time to help him with the puter. McCainlol
McCain is not the stranger to technology some think him to be.
Yes he is: McCain Admits He Doesn't Know How to Use a Computer.
Uh, effluent?
"Republican Web 2.0 consultant David All was effluent with praise"
From the MacOSX Dictionary:
liquid waste or sewage discharged into a river or the sea : the bay was contaminated the effluent from an industrial plant.
See also:
http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+effluent
Oh, wait. Politician talking about a propaganda plan. I guess effluent is the correct word then. Carry on.
I can certainly help him blog and get his name out there and what he stands for:
John McCain is a 'miserable failure', much like George W Bush. (Google take note, please) McCain wants to continue tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations at a time of huge national debt and rising unemployment. He wants to continue giving $2 billion/week to Iraq instead of spending that money in the US to fix infrastructure or develop mass transit to reduce use of fossil fuel. He supports torture of terror suspects. He does NOT support a new GI bill to give money for college education to veterans. He stated that he wants terrorists to see him as "their worst nightmare" (stated in an interview on the Daily Show).
I'm happy to help him get his name out there. The more people understand what he's now running for (instead of 8 years ago), the better.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
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.
On tech issues, he's entirely wrong?
Obama is getting money in torrents from IP people from Hollywood to Silicon Valley precisely because he is a strong proponent of doing everything with intellectual property that many slashdotters would virulently oppose. Ultimately, this issue trumps, economically, every issue that influences humanity more than even the war in Iraq or even global warming. Then, to top it all off, he wants to chop NASA's budget. Do the people on slashdot who support him actually read his "Issues" section on his web site, or do they just stop at "Yes we can."
This is my sig.
Aren't you glad that the faker in 2000 who's got a new scam in 2008 didn't get all the power in 2000 that Bush got, and then showed everyone he's a fake in 2000, just like Bush did? OK, maybe you're not glad that Bush got those powers, but aren't you glad that McCain didn't lie his way into them the same way?
Does anyone think it's just a coincidence that both McCain and Bush have become wastefully spending warmongers, now that the 2000 election is over? Maybe you should think about how they're just spokesmodel puppets for a Republican Party that cannot be stopped from wasting American lives and money destroying our government that interferes with corporate rule.
--
make install -not war
So if they're issuing points for trolling lefty forums and keeping score, what score is necessary to earn an appointment to some position in some agency where I'm completely incompetent, yet responsible for nothing; I enjoy a very impressive title and $230,000 a year in salary as well as the best pension and benefits befitting the last remaining superpower nation?
Or is that on a different scale, like gold stars?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
And? So we should torture to?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
How is 'rights for entrepreneurs' not 'redistribution of wealth?' I mean, if they are getting special rights the rest of us aren't, isn't that a form of redistribution of wealth?
Just pointing out, 'redistribution of wealth' is something both sides do. One side believes in distributing it to the poor, the other side to the rich. Ever heard of trickle down economics? Redistribution of wealth.
As for land, well, if 'disposing of it as one sees fit' means 'polluting the fuck out of it' or 'not paying taxes on it' then I can't support that. If it means that, barring reasonable special cases where your actions impact others, you can do what you like with your land, well, we already have that. It's hardly a rallying cry.
People can and do put up Christmas trees in public squares all the time. Where do you live that they don't allow that? Even San Francisco has Christmas trees.
Sorry if I'm sounding like a dick here, (yeah, yeah, it's my MO) because I agree with your sentiment, it's the specifics that gave me a bit of a pause.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Considering throughout the primary season Obama survived attacks from both McCain AND the Clintons (who, if you forgot, were esentially the leaders of the Democratic party for over a decade) I would say he can handle it.
Not to mention that he was more or less unknown to most people until this year. Hell, I had never even HEARD of him until late 2007...while I wouldn't say I'm politics obsessed, I do tend to keep up with things on a daily basis.
Living With a Nerd
Like Wisconsin, Montana, Vermont, Maine, Iowa, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Connecticut, North Dakota, Kansas, Colorado....
There's already a word for faked grassroots movement: astroturfing. You know, after the brand of fake turf.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This post is misleading and, I suspect, factually incorrect.
/. crowd.
Barack Obama explicitly supports Net Neutrality ("I will take a back seat to no one when it comes to Network Neutrality"), media decentralization, and universal broadband access. He supports universal file/data formats ("we will put government data online in universally accessible formats"); and he understands the inherent risks to privacy created by our new technology ("Dramatic increases in computing power, decreases in storage costs and huge flows of information that characterize the digital age bring enormous benefits, but also create risk of abuse."). And if Obama advocates reducing the NASA budget (and I have no specific information about this, it would be nice if tjstork would provide a reference), such defunding would be a re-prioritization of spending only, as he "supports doubling federal funding for basic [scientific] research."
Furthermore, Barack Obama's policy regarding technology reflects a thorough and deep understanding of the underlying issues pertinent to technology and information. John McCain will never have any personal involvement in creating a technology policy promulgated by his administration; instead he will rely on his staff, who will inevitably rely on lobbyists. The fact is that John McCain knows very very little about these issues, and that he has also shown consistently that he has no problem giving industry lobbyists free reign in his campaign. Barack Obama understands technology, and won't compromise on the central issues.
Barack Obama's technology policy is located here on barackobama.com.
Another relevant link is a talk Obama gave at Googe, where he touches on many of these issues, here.
Finally, to conclude from the fact that Barack Obama has accepted money from the most consistently-Democratic industrial block in the US that he will necessarily back its most outrageous demands is logically spurious. tjstork writes that "he is a strong proponent of doing everything with IP that many slashdotters would virulently oppose." I do not have any information supporting such a claim, and I would ask tjstork to provide a reference. The fact is that slashdotters are very willing to balance the interests of IP "owners" against the interests of the general public and the interests of innovation. As long as Obama recognizes that there is a balance to be struck, and is willing to *act* knowing that things are currently out of balance, I am happy to support his positions on IP. If there is anything that Barack Obama is about, it is about creating a fair and informed balance between competing interests.
It seems to me that Barack Obama is almost, if not quite, the ideal candidate for the
That's as bad as not knowing how to use a telephone! That should say something about his attitude towards technology in general! The guy is literally COMPUTER-ILLITERATE! Just let that sink in. He is either too inept or too old to be doing anything as important as running a country, take your pick. A computer-illiterate person should not run a country in the year 2008! Hell, what jobs can you get nowadays without even some basic computer skills!?
That's my opinion, it's not a flame, it's just a very serious well-deserved dissing. Donate karma to this post, the neocon squad's on the way.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel