Barack Obama online exploits
p2pnet news | P2P:- The US Presidential primary season is in full swing with millions of Americans ready to vote this week in the “Super Tuesday” group of state primaries. The surprise of the campaign thus far has been the emergence of Democratic Senator Barack Obama, who is battling Senator Hillary Clinton for his party’s nomination.
Obama has garnered strong support from younger demographics – particularly those aged 18 to 30 – who pundits argue are drawn to his emphasis on change. Somewhat overlooked, however, has been the role that technology has played in Obama’s success. In fact, he has actively courted the youth vote more than any other candidate both by embracing the use of technology as well as by prioritizing technology policy issues.
The Obama campaign’s use of technology, particularly social networks and the Internet, make Canadian political parties’ online activities appear positively primitive by comparison. The campaign’s website, which can be individually customized, includes supporter blogs, videos, local events, and a myriad of ways to contribute or participate.
Obama has also emerged as a powerful presence on social networking sites. The official Obama Facebook support page has more than 300,000 supporters. There is a similar presence on MySpace, where the campaign has nearly 250,000 MySpace friends, and on YouTube, where the Obama channel has been viewed nearly 12 million times.
The cumulative effect of this substantial online presence is to connect with youth on their terms and in their environment, fostering a new generation of politically active supporters.
Not only has Obama actively used technology to campaign, but he has also prioritized technology policy, adopting detailed positions on issues that have been largely ignored by most politicians in the past.
For example, he has promised to support net neutrality legislation, which advocates argue is needed to stop Internet service providers from establishing a two-tier Internet. His technology plan states that “network providers should not be allowed to charge fees to privilege the content or applications of some web sites and Internet applications over others.” It continues by focusing on several other key Internet issues including strengthening privacy protections in the digital age as well as increasing enforcement actions against spammers, spyware creators, and phishing websites.
The same policy also emphasizes access concerns. It promises to update universal access to telephone service and electricity by providing for universal access to high-speed broadband networks. The plan also commits to having government serve as a model for Internet use by improving Internet access to government documents and by appointing a Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. federal government.
Digital copyright concerns have also become part of the campaign, with Obama emphasizing the need for balance, acknowledging that “as policymakers, we are in a constant process of examining our laws to ensure that the protections we place on intellectual property are sufficient to encourage invention without hindering innovation that builds on previous work or unfairly limiting consumers from using the goods they purchase in a way that is fair to creators.”
While cynics will suggest that a long list of campaign promises means relatively little, the fact that Obama has seen fit to even address these issues represents a dramatic change in the prioritization of technology issues within a major political campaign. Viewed from a Canadian perspective, few, if any, Canadian leaders or political parties have even established positions on these issues.
Political parties regularly claim to covet the youth vote, yet the Obama campaign has demonstrated that attracting the attention of younger demographics requires more than just a splashy webpage. Instead, he provides evidence that net neutrality, broadband access, and digital copyright have moved beyond mere business concerns into front-line political issues that cannot be easily ignored.
Michael Geist
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]
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February 5th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Why Barack Obama Should Not Win on Super Tuesday
Hillary Clinton remains the best choice for Americans â perhaps for reasons you have not considered.
My family and I have been fighting in the trenches and the sidelines for not simply equal rights but equal access and equal future possibilities for nearly 100 years in America and two hundred more abroad.
I was drinking out of âBlack Onlyâ water fountains in Selma, Alabama and getting scarred from it while my mother screamed on the sidelines at a crowd of my âpeersâ beating me to a figurative pulp. My mother previously led the charge during World War II to integrate the Womenâs Army Air Corps â and she was successful.
If you read my columns written over the past 20 years (available here) I think you know I believe America has done a fair job ridding itself of institutionalized racism, but has done poorly in the arena of societal racism â the kind thatâs tough to measure but is out there among us nonetheless.
The past seven years of George W. Bush has not helped. If anything racism and bigotry is on the rise and bolstered by the phoniness flaunted by the Bush Administration and its maintenance men. The wink and nod âsignalsâ from the White House â and particularly from Bush cronies, mouthpieces, and supporters has been despicable. Look at New Orleans as only one example.
Mr. Bush has supported private and parochial schools that marginalize Americans of color. He has scoffed at those talking about reparations for slavery. He has stood back against the backdrop of Condoleezza Rice and before her Colin Powell to prove his âinclusivenessâ â this as he sent thousands of boys and girls of color to their deaths in our so-called âvolunteerâ army.
Tell me, is it volunteering when you choose to join something because you canât pay the rent and feed your family?
I cringed the other day when I heard an Obama supporter come up with the fantasy that the ânewâ generation of Americans, Black or White does not embrace the old tired Black leaders like Vernon Jordan or Jesse Jackson â it instead embraces Barack Obama. Iâm sure that Senator Obama himself must also have squirmed if he heard that statement. Without men like these there might not be a Senator Obama.
It is Vernon Jordan who first said, âAmericaâs dirty little secret, racismâ commenting thirty years ago on Californians â supposedly the most liberal Americans ââYesâ vote on Proposition 13 which shredded property taxes and along with them almost every great social program in the Golden State.
Proposition 13 crippled the Black community for many years, along with government-sponsored safety net apparatus, education, the health care system, and more in California.
When Californians had the chance the voted for Greed not Need they chose the former.
The was the opening salvo in what was later called âThe Reagan Revolutionâ and although Mr. Reagan himself was not as callous as those that surrounded him, and surround the Bush family to this day â the attack on the underprivileged had begun and that ball was picked up and carried for the next three decades.
We had lost the war in Vietnam. Now it was time to make war on the poor.
The only respite from this kind of thinking was Bill and Hillary Clinton. From 1993 through 2001 both â as much they dared â they tried to roll back the avarice that engulfed America. They were up against the toughest opponents â moronic bigots and American corporations who believed at that time that their only responsiblity was to their stockholders. They believe the same thing today â but cover it with âcorporate responsibility programsâ some of which are fine âand some which are disgraceful in their planned incompetence.
Somehow the mainstream media twisted Hillary Clintonâs push toward a better and fairer system of health care as something evil. And I mean evil. She still pays dues for that effort â a laudable one â even as Americans who can afford it â engage in what we call âmedical tourismâ which is a nice CNN-type term that means â searching for an affordable way to stay alive.
Let me add that I am no pushover for the Clintons. When Bill Clinton signed sordidly titled âWelfare Reformâ legislation in an atmosphere of fanfare I parted ways with him politically. He might argue that he had no choice â but thatâs untrue. Many of us âleft the foldâ at that time. I donât know that Hillary Clinton would have signed that bill â but I cannot and you cannot, in retrospect, know this either.
My problem is that I donât know if Barack Obama would sign onto the concept of welfare reform. In fact I havenât heard him talk about the miserable poverty poor White, Black, and Hispanic Americans find themselves in today and facing tomorrow. If anything Senator Obama is running a lily white campaign and unfairly accusing the Clintonâs of making an issue of race.
What a terrible lie.
It reminded me of the kind of twisted logic men like Roger Ailes â of Fox News â use to confirm their lies. In fact the only one talking about poverty in America was John Edwards. Hillary Clinton could not talk much about it either. As a front runner she would seem to be pandering to the Black community and âplaying the race card.â That is an incontrovertible fact that is proved by Obamaâs feigned upset at Bill Clintonâs remarks which were â in no conceivable way â racist. And sadly, as a front-runner she could not bite the hand that feeds her. Not yet.
That aside â the fact remains that Hillary Clinton, despite her faults and ours, does deserve to be the President of the United States. It makes no difference that she is woman. She has been a great two-term Senator for New York, a terrific first lady in the White House and in Arkansas â and a person true to the American Dream. Believe me, thatâs not an easy task â staying true to something.
There are so many deals that have to be made â so many different constituencies to serve. America is a far more complex and frail experiment in Democracy than one might think. More than this Hillary Clinton â paid a dear price to serve the American People and she also paid personally for Billâs shenanigans â a bigger price than did he. She paid that price for all of us too. She proved her mettle and her soul and stood by her husband.
I think she proved she will stand by us too when our chips are down.
Donât underestimate this trait. Donât make fun of something we have far too little of in this world today â loyalty and empathy combined with good intellect and heart.
Now to Barack Obama.
What a fine man. I am so very proud to see him in victory. What a grand leader he has become and will continue to be. His freshness on the national political stage is evident and at once invigorating. There is no question that I would vote for him against any Republican comer. But these primaries and caucuses are not about teaching the GOP that it must moderate its far right agenda. These elections tomorrow are about picking the right candidate to run against the power that has destroyed our nation.
We face a tough choice tomorrow â a choice between Hillary and Barack â and what a tough choice it is.
I worry though. I worry what will happen to our nation when the choice comes down to Barack Obama and whomever the Republicans finally choose as their presidential candidate â and take my word for it â John McCain does not have it in the bag yet â and may not be that man. Yet if McCain does end up the GOP nominee, he will be forced to toe the neocon line. If he doesnât he wonât be supported in a way that will allow him to compete.
And make no mistake â America is just weighted down with bigots and racists. No pollster can tell you how many of them there are â but history can gives us a clue. I always hark back to Tom Bradley â the great long-time mayor of Los Angeles who was beloved by both everyday voters and business. He seemed a shoo-in for Governor of California. The polls showed it â and everyone believed California would be the Golden State with a russet Governor.
It didnât happen. And it didnât happen because of the extremists, racists and dimwits that we must allow to vote. There is no question in my mind about this; none at all. Voters simply lied to the pollsters â as they are doing now. The lie: âOf course we will vote for a Black President from an Islamic background whose family lives in Kenya! After all, heâs a Christian now.â
Let me tell you what the Republican Party is apt to do with Obama as the Democrat candidate for president.
First, they will begin whatâs called âwhisperingâ campaigns. These black-box campaigns have been around a very long time. Theyâll start by wondering, quietly, what Obama might do if Black Americans began demanding more attention â like in New Orleans â or worse, what if they rioted in the cities where many are shunted into slums that rival Mexico City.
GOP neocon strategists will convince white born-again pastors to preach between-the-lines attacks on Islam and maybe even people âof colorâ They have gone this far before â believe me. They usually wait on this tactic until the Sunday before the Tuesday election.
They will whisper to each other and to their kinfolk this and that lie about Senator Obamaâs family, his peccadilloes made up or not, even his children. Some of them are so evil that they will pray that some crackpot murders him.
Mostly these tactics come from the very ultra-right of the Republican Party, but remember these nuts have been empowered by the Bush Administration mostly from looking the other way â although Mr. Bush himself might be loathe to try such tactics on his own, and maybe from his own heart he has no idea the evil that surrounds him and what it is capable of.
Fueling the fan of bigotry is an age-old political tactic. Do not fool yourself into thinking that opposition party operatives are not capable of such verbal terror. You have already fooled yourself into believing the other âbig liesâ from the neocons. You already cheered when we invaded Iraq to stop Saddam from hitting America with nukes and chemical warfare. Youâve already been duped plenty â and you will be again.
I will be again.
Then there will be the television ads. These will be less indicting â but far more frightening and powerful. They will feature Obama standing in the midst of only Black people. They will pull out of context everything possible from the thousands of hours of film clips of Obama speaking â featuring the most inflammatory âun-Americanâ statements he has made â or statements which seem to favor Blacks over Whites or Hispanics. They will attack Oprah Winfrey and her boyfriends, Stevie Wonder, and anyone else with the guts to back Obama.
Just as the neocon GOP man eaters turn on their own â as they have now â gnawing at the spent guts of Republican John McCain and using the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes of Fox News, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, David Horowitz and the rest of this trash to do it. Do you think they are not capable of the same or worse versus a Black candidate â who Ms. Coulter reminds us â has the middle name of âHusseinâ?
It will be a disgrace â the most disgraceful political campaign ever witnessed in these United States. It will make the theft and the lies surrounding the Gore presidency look like a Disney cartoon. It will make the lies about John Kerryâs service in the military from the trumped-up Boat People â look like a fairy tale.
I am ready for Barack Obama as President of the United States. I think heâs a great man with a great future. Yet I believe he has not yet earned this position, and that he will be abused and worn to a shadow of himself and in the end, he may fail. The Republicans and their bigoted 20% will win turning America into more of an international criminal laughing stock than she is today.
We cannot allow this to happen. We cannot survive another four or eight years of neoconservative backroom blundering.
I know that some of you will say that Iâm a shill for Clinton, or worse that I am the racist.
What I am is a realist. I know what America is capable of â good and bad. I am willing to put my reputation on the line urging my fellows to vote smart and not heart.
I say vote for Hillary Clinton tomorrow and do everything you can to support Barack Obama for the same spot in 2012 or 2016.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:41 am
see video: FRAUD on Voters by The Nation and Chris Hayes, Part 1 (Obama violates international law)
February 5th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
TROLL ALERT! re: first post
February 5th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
^^ To me it looks like a Hilary supporter’s long and windy comment post more than a troll trawling.
Cheers!
February 5th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
While an aide to Sen. Barack Obama, who spoke at a town-hall meeting yesterday in Los Angeles, tried to explain away the altered policy changes, analysts excused him, noting the passage of time and less-liberal competition.Barack Obama, senatorial candidate 04, is very different from presidential candidate of 08.Videotapes of debates and speeches obtained by Washington Times shows Obama took positions during his Senate campaign on nearly a half-dozen issues ranging from the Cuba embargo to health care for illegal aliens that conflict with statements during his run for the White House. For example, in MSNBC’s Oct. 30 presidential debate, Mr. Obama hesitantly raised his hand and joined with most of his Democratic rivals to declare he opposed decriminalizing marijuana But as a U.S. Senate candidate, Mr. Obama told ILL college students January he supported eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana use or possession. When confronted with the statements on the video, Obama’s campaign offered two explanations said the candidate had “always” supported decriminalizing marijuana, suggesting that his 2004 statement was correct. Then after The Times posted copies of the video on its Web site, http://www.washingtontimes.com, yesterday, his campaign reversed course and declared he does not support eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana possession and use.
What is Senator Obama going to say to republicans when asked why he favors granting drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants as Obama has admitted twice in debates? About Obama’s present position that undocumented workers will not be covered in his healthcare proposal, yet when he was running for the Senate he said that children of undocumented workers should get the same healthcare benefits that citizens get? when they begin to ask him about negotiating in unstructured summits with the leaders of Iran, North Korea and Cuba without preconditions? What will Senator Obama say when Senator McCain asks him why he said in 2004 that he did not know how he would have voted on the Iraq war authorization and that his view of the Iraq war was not different from President Bush’s? What will Senator Obama say when Senator McCain compares Obama’s votes to fully fund the Iraq War in the Senate to Obama’s rhetorical opposition to that war? What is Senator Obama going to say when Senator McCain questions Obama’s claim to be “the most qualified person in America to conduct the foreign policy of the United States”? What is Senator Obama going to say when Senator McCain says that Obama is not one of the most qualified members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to lead this country in today’s dangerous world but instead one of the most absent? Senator Obama has not conducted a single policy hearing as chairman of the subcommittee on European Affairs of the Foreign Relations Committee?
February 5th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
OBAMA LOOSES JOBS FOR MINORITIES
Ms. Obama, VP Chicago Hosp, that charges minorities 6 times as much, isnât cold hearted enough, she also caused hundreds to loose their 11.hr jobs, to be more efficient she said! In 05, elected to the BOD Westchester-based TreeHouse Foods, she received $12,000 and $33,000 from a subsidiaries, in Nov announced closing its La Junta, plant, that claimed the jobs of 153 workers, most of them Hispanic! Huge blow to a rural town jobs paid a starting wage of $11hr, Company pays top execs like MICHELLE OBAMA tens of millions a year while destroying middle-class America. Raises the question not only about corporate values but about Barrack Obama’s own values. Specifically, while he bashes Wal-Mart, why does his wife, make $45,000 and up a year serving on the board of Chicago comp that pays her a very hefty amount of money while laying off mostly minority workers in economically deprived areas? No. 1 customer is Wal-Mart???
February 5th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Obama said he goofed on votes angered fellow Democrats in the Senate when he voted to strip millions of dollars from a child welfare office on Chicago’s West Side. But Obama had a ready explanation: He goofed! Also announced he had fumbled an election-reform vote the day before, on a measure that passed 51 to 6. The next day, he acknowledged voting “present” on a key telecommunications vote. He stood on March 11, 1999, to take back his vote against legislation to end good-behavior credits for certain felons in county jails. “I pressed the wrong button on that,” he said. Obama was the lone dissenter on Feb. 24, 2000, against 57 yeas for a ban on human cloning. “I pressed the wrong button by accident,” he said.
But two of Obama’s bumbles came on more-sensitive topics, he backed legislation to permit riverboat casinos to operate even when the boats were dockside.
The measure, pushed by the gambling industry and fought by church groups whose support Obama was seeking, passed with two “yeas” to spare — including Obama’s. Moments after its passage he rose to say, explaining that he had mistakenly voted for it.
Obama would later develop a reputation as a critic of the gambling industry, and he voted against a similar measure two years later. But he was clearly confused about how to handle the issue at the time of his first vote, telling a church group that he was “undecided” about whether he backed an expansion of riverboat gambling. And, months earlier, he had voted in favor of a version of the bill.
Obama’s vote sparked a confrontation after he joined Republicans to block Democrats trying to override a veto by GOP Gov. George Ryan of a $2-million allotment for the west Chicago child welfare office. being responsible,” said Sen. Rickey Hendon, accusing Obama of voting to close the child welfare office.Obama replied “I understand Sen. Hendon’s anger, I was not aware that I had voted no on that piece of legislation.
February 5th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
RON PAUL FTW
February 6th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Yup, Ron Paul FTW. And enough of this forced integration. Cultures cannot live together without one dominating the other. People want to pretend that isn’t true, but then they’re surprised when the inevitable occurs. Or more properly, they want their culture to dominate and when it doesn’t, they’re pissed, though they’d be just fine if they were on top.
February 8th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
“Cultures cannot live together without one dominating the other.”
Where the heck do you live? In that box that shows pictures?…Or probably acording to it?
February 10th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
A Clinton (obviously) can win against a republican but can an Obama? Obama next to McCain looks like a thin feather weight doesnât he? And then I donât only mean physically.
Stics
March 5th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
In response to the 3am phone call answer add of Sen. Clinton’s, she needs to be reminded that of all she mentioned in regards to her experience for answering such a call, that particular call is not a scheduled event!. That is a “thinking on your feet”call. Obama has not said this.