[US Elections] McCain Campaign Untruths

Image via Wikipedia As much as I tend to post a lot of viral videos that I find interesting or that are topping sites like the Viral Video Chart, you may have noticed that more and more I tend to avoid posting all the political ads flooding the airwaves given I'm pretty much fed up. Sure, I'm not in the US and it probably shouldn't matter all that much to me but frankly the ads seem to be getting nastier and nastier between the Obama and McCain campaigns, and more and more the Republicans seem to be resorting to greater and greater distortions of the truth as the pillars of their campaign.

CNN did a short segment on many of the less-than-honest messages presented in many of the McCain-Palin political ads and speeches that just further reinforces my belief that this campaign has really gone to the dogs.


#7 - CNN Fact Checks McCain: Verdict He's Not Telling Truth

[Viral Video Chart] Hockey Moms Against Sarah Palin

Image by earthpro via Flickr Ever since Sarah Palin was announced as McCain's running mate as vice-president, she's been all over the place trying to get media attention. She does a great job in rallying crowds in their favor, oftentimes by making some pretty bold pronouncements about various issues that will always remain near and dear to the Republican voter's heart.

Of course this leads to a lot of jokes, barbs and satirical attacks on her person and regardless of your political views, you have to admit they're pretty funny.

Here's one such original video that was pretty subtle and I have to admit for the first few minutes I almost thought it was real, haha.


#6 - Hockey Moms Against Sarah Palin

[US Politics] The Big Winners in Iowa

Barack, keeping hope alive in America... by Marilyn M.

Well that was certainly interesting.

The results are pretty much in and the Iowa caucuses have come out with some rather surprising results. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama managed an impressive lead of 8 points with 38% of all votes with Edwards following with 30% and Hillary Clinton thereafter with only 29%. For the Republicans, it was small-scale Mike Huckabee who managed to take a significant lead of 34% of the votes followed by Romney's 25% - a 9 point lead with 95 percent of the precincts reporting. Thompson and McCain had 13% while Paul only managed 10%.

It's interesting to note that Clinton didn't rank second (although some may argue it's only as matter of one percentage point) which somewhat says something about how people have been receiving her rather strong campaign thus far. Obama's victory wasn't about convincing long-time voters to support him but to get new young voters out of their homes and into the polls despite them previously being largely vocal but not very good in terms of the actual follow-through.

This year's Iowa caucuses saw an amazing turn-out largely driven by younger, newer participants and this is precisely the kind of support that may carry Obama throughout the rest of the campaign unless his competitors change tactics significantly.

Of course this is just one state and we still have a long road ahead of us before the actual presidential elections in November. Still, if Iowa is any indicator, this can be pretty much anyone's game and only the most dynamic and determined candidates are going to make it to the finish line.

[US Politics] Hillary Goes 2.0

Today it has been announced pretty much everywhere that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has officially announced her intent to make a bid for the US Presidency. While this information doesn't surprise anyone, the manner in which she made this announcement is what catches the interest of the Geeky Guide.



Instead of the usual press conference or some major campaign rally, Hillary chose to make her announcement through her website HillaryClinton.com, a definite first in this political arena. A series of videos and informative pages can now be found on her page for interested voters and supporters.

Why this medium? Is this her way of showing she's in touch with the younger crowd or some poppycock like that? It's hard to say at this point, but she's definitely trying to play up to the internet community. As part of her announcement to form a presidential exploratory committee, she has stated that starting Monday, January 22, 2007, she'll be participating in a series of web chats with anyone who's interested in order to touch base with the people and get their views and ideas on how to solve the problems plaguing their country today.

She definitely needs to do something to set her apart from the rest, given that this early in the race, her biggest opponent is not coming from the Republican party but from fellow Democrat presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who announced his intent to run earlier this week. Support for both candidates is fairly significant at this point but it remains to be soon which of the two will ultimately win the candidacy seat in order to represent the Democratic Party.

Now, does anyone feeling like chatting with Hillary next week? ü

Related Links:

• CNN.com - Hillary Clinton launches White House bid: 'I'm in'
  
• TIME Magazine - Hillary's Run: The Obstacles She Faces
  
• TIME Magazine: The Racing Form

[US Politics] US Mid Term Elections

Note: This is a test entry using the Google Docs & Spreadsheets if this works well, we might just create all future entries from this here rather than from Blogger beta. If you notice anything significantly different, feel free to leave a comment to let us know about it.

The recently concluded US Congressional elections this week were a major sweep for the Democratic Party given they now control both the House and the Senate, a first in more than 12 years of US political history. While the race for the House was pretty much a sweep with many surprise seats won in some traditionally Republican states, the US Senate race was closer then could ever have been expected with the final decision coming down to the states of Montana and Virginia. While Montana's race was more of a waiting game given how long it took the results to come out, Virginia had everyone guessing up until the last minute. To clinch things, the state of Virginia has a provision that allows the losing candidate to ask for an automatic recount should the margin be less than 1%, which was the case this year. However, the Republican candidate George Allen chose not to exercise his right in a rather surprise move which in turn cemented Democratic control of the Senate in the coming year.

Many international agencies and political groups are definitely hopeful for the future of the US Government. With a truly bipartisan government, President George W. Bush may be less gung-ho to "go it alone" in the future when faced with strong international opposition to some of his more dramatic ideas and pronouncements from topics as wide-ranging as the future of Iraq to US Energy policy.

The results of the elections has also triggered a number of surprise changes and announcements as well such as the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld , which was announced shortly after it was clear the House was now under the control of the Democrats. This was followed by an announcement by Dennis Hastert that he would no longer lead the Republican party, which would have meant him assuming the position of House Minority Leader given the power shift. Another change just beyond the horizon is the increased likelihood that John Bolton will no longer continue as US Ambassador to the UN when the time comes to consider his term. The Democrats have always been strongly opposed to his nomination to the post and will definitely act on this particular appointment as soon as the opportunity arises.

What does the future hold for all of us with a split US Government? It's hard to predict anything at this point, really. We'll definitely see a radical change in US foreign policy when it comes to Iraq, whether this results in a speedy pull out or a more staggered exit strategy. Either way, I'm sure we're going to see an end to the US occupation of Iraq one way or another. We're also going to see a renewed focus on domestic needs and the US generally pulling back from too much involvement in international affairs, I expect. While the Legislative arm can't really dictate policy, Democratic control of the various committees will ensure the control of the budgets needed to get a lot of Bush's plans in motion.

These are most definitely interesting times ahead.

[US Politics] Dirty Republicans

By now, you must be trapped in a location without power and access to mass media, which is someone I used to be because of the storm that hit the Philippines recently, not to have heard about the latest political scandal to hit the US Republican party. At the time of this entry, Google News has collated at least 1,533 news articles about the Foley E-mails and his subsequent resignation.

Things like this always manage to pop up as the US election season heats up on its way to its inevitable climax. It guess this is most shocking because of course the public is used to Republicans being stereotypically anti-homosexual and to have one of their own practically ousted in so public a manner is definitely a blow against the party.

Being curious myself, I tried a search for [copies of Foley emails] and ended up with these results. Can you fault me for my curiosity? I want to see exactly what all the fuss is about, haha! I managed a quick screen shot here:



The first result - http://tailrank.com/603480/Mark-Foley-s-Emails-To-Former-Teen-Intern - leads us to a Tailrank entry linking to another blog - Pushing Rope. It's one of those rabbit hole results that give you a variety of leads to the article. Tailrank had a link to a PDF file hosted on ABC News, but it was just one email. The Pushing Rope blog had manually re-typed some of the emails in question but of course there had to be more.

The second result - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/foreigndesk/detail?blogid=16&entry_id=9346 - is more promising than the first since it refers us to ABC News' The Blotter and to ABC had one of the IM conversations and links to the other emails, which I couldn't get to load at the time of this entry. The Raw Story was more brutal since they posted some of the emails directly into their article along with an image of a MySpace profile associated with the case.

I ended up stopping here - the IM conversation was enough to have even me squirming. It's both shocking and scary that a member of the US Government can get caught in this kind of a scandal, and perhaps moreso that the media has managed to get access to the emails and even the IM conversations related to this case. Talk about Big Brother,eh?

Let's see where all this leads to - we might end up with a Democrat-controlled house once the elections are over.