Carlos Allen: that's my jam

so this guy Carlos Allen is running for mayor of DC. He seems like a weird guy and he claims to be the "first Afro-Latino in history." Apparently his platform is that he stands near people:



Plus he crashed that White House party along with the Salahis:

Morangate?

so apparently, President Obama said, off the record, to Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran that he thought Kanye West was a jackass after his outburst at the VMAs. And apparently (link here) Moran then Twittered about it. However, that isn't on Moran's twitter feed anymore, so he must have deleted it, as Politico reports.

Now to me, the main problem with this is not that the President thinks Kanye West is a jackass, but that Moran twittered off-the-record stuff. ABC said it was a mistake, so maybe it was honest. I would guess that Obama's remark was in response to some question about West, since both are from Chicago and all. But in any case, I think Obama's right, Kanye is a jackass, and I have no problem with Obama having an opinion about this kind of thing. I doubt he watched the VMAs, but the President being up on current pop culture events is cool with me.

Brainwashing

so I hear the President is giving a speech to America's schoolkids. Apparently that's a bad thing, as a bunch of folks are complaining about it. Honestly, it seems like people will oppose anything Barack Obama does. Here's what the President says the speech will be about:

"I'm going to be making a big speech to young people all across the country about the importance of education; about the importance of staying in school; how we want to improve our education system and why it’s so important for the country. So I hope everybody tunes in."

The Department of Education is circulating lesson plans to schools with questions and such:

The guide for pre-K through grade 6 suggests questions students think about during the speech, such as "What is the President trying to tell me? What is the President asking me to do?"

The plan for grades 7-12 includes a "guided discussion," with suggested topics: "What resonated with you from President Obama's speech? What is President Obama inspiring you to do?"

The Cato Institute responds by saying

"It's one thing for a president to encourage all kids to work hard and stay in school – that's a reasonable use of the bully pulpit. It's another thing entirely, however, to have the U.S. Department of Education send detailed instructions to public schools nationwide on how to glorify the president and the presidency, and push them to drive social change."

Honestly? It sounds to me like they're asking about listening comphrehension -- what is he saying?

It's ludicrous. People need to take a step back and think for once, instead of this bizarre knee-jerk reaction to everything. This kind of garbage drives me insane and I think it's damaging the country.

More Wikipedia funniness

so this is pretty funny - more Wikipedia hilarity. The page for my state senator, Tim Burchett, was edited to add this:

It is believed that Sen. Burchett controls a small band of pirates on The Tennessee River for the purpose of promoting his upcoming mayoral campaign in Knox County. It is believed that Burchett's wife married him for his impeccable sense of style, however it is actually because the couple are avid cryptozoologists. Once retired, the couple plans to divide their time between cryptozoology and ufology, another one of their passions.

It got taken out, however.

Previously, Burchett was best known for sponsoring a bill that made eating road kill legal. No joke.

Rep. Barton and the Energy secretary

so this is a pretty bizarre video. Congressman Barton from Texas is asking a question to energy secretary Steven Chu.



I don't get it. It's almost like Barton is acting stupid to get Chu to seem stupid. Is Barton is trying to stump Chu or look like a funny guy or something? It doesn't make any sense. Since when is "how does oil get to Alaska" a good question to ask the energy secretary?

Or maybe it was a roundabout way to try to debunk global warming - "well, it used to be warmer in Alaska, because plants and animals were there, and they died and eventually became oil, so thus global warming is bogus." Is that what he's going for? I am so confused.

Yahoo! Buzz and anti-Obama people

so I've noticed something strange recently on Yahoo's news stories -- there's a feature called Yahoo! Buzz, where you click "Buzz Up" on any Yahoo News story and you can comment and rate other people's comments with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

What I noticed is that almost every single comment and rating is anti-Obama, even when the article in question is only tangentially related to Obama. As of today, Obama has a 63% approval rating and rising, with only 26% disapproving, yet seemingly everyone commenting and rating on Yahoo! Buzz stories is anti-Obama and the Democrats.

The anti-Obama comments have huge numbers of thumbs-ups alongside them -- the thumbs up/thumbs down ratings are cumulative ratings, so if there are 50 thumbs up, that means 50 more people voted thumbs up than thumbs down on that particular comment. There are very few pro-Obama comments at all, and the ones that do exist disappear under a huge number of thumbs-downs (if a comment has a negative enough rating it gets hidden). It's a pretty weird phenomenon -- does Yahoo attract conservatives? Do liberals not care enough to vote thumbs up or comment? Is there some concerted effort to make Obama seem less popular?

Most of the comments generally say that the media elected Obama, he's a socialist, he's a dumb bumbler, and various other conspiracies and pot-shots.

Here's a couple examples: an article on Al Franken being in the lead in Minnesota, one on Obama's dog (the first comment being about Chappaquiddick), the recent pirate hostage situation, taxpayers not spending their refunds, and so on. All the Yahoo Buzz responses are extremely anti-Obama.

In doing a little bit of sleuthing, it looks like the people who have the most thumbs-ups on their anti-Obama comments either don't have their Buzz activity public or they've given huge numbers of thumbs-ups without giving a single thumbs down. Here's a couple users from the taxpayers article I linked above: jessi, Noodles, Cogito - more than 1300 thumbs ups between them and not a single thumbs down. Another random anti-Obama person I saw on the Franken article, Informant, has given more than 1000 thumbs-ups and only 7 thumbs-downs. It's pretty bizarre that these folks would read so many comments without seeing one they disagreed with.

The numbers of comments are crazy too: Informant posted nearly 2000 comments while Cogito and Jessi have posted more than 7,000 comments combined -- that's a tremendous amount of comments. And those are just random ones I picked who had the most thumbs-ups on their anti-Obama comments. You can try it yourself and get the same results.

It makes me wonder what's up. Is this a group of extremely motivated Obama opponents? Are people sharing usernames? Is this some strategy from Rush Limbaugh or Fox News or some blogs? Are these thumbs-up links embedded somewhere so people can quickly go through and vote yes? Or maybe they're some kind of bot that votes for anti-Obama comments. I have no idea, but something is fishy.

Jail Marion Barry

so today I was reading the Express on the bus, and saw an article about how Marion Barry has once again not paid his taxes. The former mayor and current DC Councilmember didn't pay taxes on most of what he earned from 1999 to 2004, but instead of going to jail, the judge said "ok, make sure you pay them next year." He didn't pay them next year, so they gave him three years of probation. And guess what? He didn't pay them in 2007 either.

Federal prosecutors say he hasn't filed on time in 8 of the last 9 years. That's ridiculous -- why is he not in jail? If any other person did this, they'd be facing a huge fine or in jail. Prosecutors want him sent to jail, but they give the judge a way out too - she can have him come into court to explain his actions. And if he doesn't get jail time, prosecutors will request a two-year extension to his probation. What? That's already happened twice, he should go to jail. Ridiculous.

DCist writes about an NBC reporter who talked to him, and Barry claimed not to have heard anything about it. When the reporter offered to show him the complaint, but Barry refuses. I'm so tired of this guy.

Photo by JamesCalder, used under Creative Commons license

Rush Limbaugh

so I wrote about the Inauguration rental bust awhile ago, and how a lot of other folks have written about it too. An AP writer contacted me about it, which is pretty cool, and I spoke to him for awhile about lower-than-expected crowds in DC and how almost no one was able to rent their place - basically, it was all hype. They only used one thing I said, how much we tried to rent our place for -- but I can understand using only that, as they only have limited space.

Then I was looking where the AP article got picked up (some random places, like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New Zealand Herald) and I found a mention on Rush Limbaugh's site (story #12):

"Andrew Wiseman isn't having much luck, either. He and his roommate were excited about the chance to make a profit by renting out their row house in northwest Washington. They posted an ad in December on Craigslist to see what would happen. At first, they asked for $2,500 a night. With no takers, they have slashed the price to $1,800" a night. Wait a minute, now. They wanted $2,500 a night? Isn't that called evil profiteering? What would the Obama Messiah say of this! That is gouging. I mean, that's worse than Big Oil ever thought about doing! It's speculation and gouging at the same time.

Of course, Rush (or whoever writes for this site) misses the rest of the story, that tons of people all over the DC area were doing the same thing due to a lot of media hype about big money to be made: people including (Republican) Fred Thompson, who made headlines trying to rent out his condo for $30,000.

But anyway, it's pretty cool to get singled out by a dope as big as Rush Limbaugh.

Marxist VP Candidate Ineligible to Serve

so this was kind of a random thing - I saw some posters in the Columbia Heights neighborhood in DC saying something about ending "evil gentrification," and the website listed was votepsl.org. The website is for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a Marxist political party that's on the presidential ballot in a few states.

I was browsing the site and thought, "huh, the vice presidential candidate, Eugene Puryear, looks really young." His bio says he's a student at Howard University. Maybe he started late or was a grad student, but I couldn't find anything else about his age - his Wikipedia page just said he was born in Charlottesville, VA (until I updated it).

Then I Googled him, found his Facebook page and added him, and it turns out he was born in 1986, and is thus 22 years old. That makes him ineligible to serve as vice president, since you have to be 35 (and fulfill the rest of the requirements to be president). Here's a picture of his Facebook page, since you can't see it unless you're his friend on there.

Of course, this is a moot point, since the PSL will not win the election, but hey, it's interesting.

Palin as President

so this is amazing:

palinaspresident.com

The sidewalk to nowhere

so here are McCain supporters lining up to see him speak in Pennsylvania. Another reason why I'm out in Virginia every weekend.

Why I'm volunteering for Barack Obama

so as some folks know, I've been canvassing in Virginia the last few weekends, and I'll be there again this weekend. I'm also going after work today to the new Obama office at 803 Florida Ave NW to see what I can do. Here's why:

For one, I support Obama's policies on the environment, taxes, foreign policy, etc. I worry that McCain's plans are either too similar to Bush's or are just plain harmful. And I also just believe in Obama as a leader. But the other reason is more selfish.

I remember how I felt the last two elections when Bush won - it was a terrible feeling. How could this happen? What's going to happen to the country now? And what could I have done?

That was the main one, and it's why I'm out there on the weekends, skipping fun stuff like wiffleball and sleeping late to go walk around Virginia neighborhoods and talk to voters. And it's not like volunteering is not fun - it's very rewarding and you're making a difference. As you guys know, I'm a little bit on the lazy side, but I didn't want to feel helpless again as the US elected another bad president. I wanted to do all I could to prevent it.

That's why I'm out there, and that's why I hope you all can come with me.

DC Obama office now open!

so there was no DC Obama office for a long time, but now there is. It's at 803 Florida Ave NW, right near the U Street Metro. Folks can come in pretty much any time to do phonebanking, etc. Here's the hours:

M-F 5-9, Sat 11-8, Sun 2-8

Palin's speech last night

So I watched the Republican convention last night and I got pretty angry. Sarah Palin was just doing the same old Republican tactics - half truths, specious arguments, and flat out b.s.

For example, Obama is going to raise this tax and that tax. Yes, he is - on rich people. He's also cutting taxes on the middle class.

And according to Palin, we're about to win in Iraq but Obama is preventing us from doing so. Oh, really? The militants are about to lay down their arms, the Iraqi government is competent and able to govern the whole country, and we can remove our troops? That's news to me.

Palin also got in a dig at Democrats and San Francisco. You know what? People like San Francisco. They like it because it's beautiful, people are nice, and it's a good place to visit. Some (not all) Republicans hate San Francisco because gay people walk around freely, the city recycles, and they vote Democrat.

The one that makes me the angriest, however, is the constant implication (and sometimes flat out statement) that Obama and the Democrats are anti-America, put the country last, are defeatists, etc etc. As an example of this, Palin cited the fact that Obama made a speech mentioning a bunch of wars the US fought in, but never uttered the word "victory." What a stupid argument. Clearly mentioning World War II without saying "victory" means he is un-American.

I'm so sick of this crap. We have parties because we disagree with one another. Palin, McCain, Bush, Cheney, and some other Republicans seem to believe that if you disagree with them, you hate America. That's bullshit.

I hope that people see through the constant half-truths and nonsense, but you know what? We can't just hope, we have to put some feet on the ground too. We need to make some calls, talk to people, register voters, go to do door, anything. I'm going to volunteer for Obama - iif anybody else is interested, let me know.

Obama - Tim Kaine?

So there's been a lot of rumors about Obama picking Virginia governor Tim Kaine as his running mate. I'm not so enthusiastic about it. Kaine's a good guy and he's from the South, a swing state, etc, but I'm not blown away. He's not that well known of a guy nationally, he's also pretty young, doesn't have foreign policy experience, and just not super inspirational. I'm not sure who would be better - Bill Richardson? Lots of foreign policy experience there. Some governor? Good question. Whoever it is, I hope it's not Hillary. That would be a great example of shooting one's self in the foot. Or one's party.

W.

so, wow. Just wow.



Found this via Famous DC. I wonder if it's going to be a conspiracy type movie, or a more factual one. Either way, I'm there.

Fundraising

so today I was called by a political campaign, and they asked me to donate. I'd already donated, so I said not now. The girl said, well how about in a month or so? I said sure, and she got my info and said she'd send out a packet then. I said great.

Then five hours later, I got another call from a smarmy sounding guy who said he was doing "quality control" (didn't say for whom) and wanted to confirm my address and that I had said yes to donating. It seemed odd and sketched me out. I asked if he was working for the campaign, and he said "we're doing work for them" or "working with them" or something. It was weird. Maybe I'm easily sketched out (and it was from the same phone number, when I checked back) but why do that? I mean, is there a rash of campaign staffers putting down fake donations? Seems odd to me. I thought maybe it was some kind of weird push-polling or opposition research or something. Probably not the best impression to give if you're trying to get money. Yikes.

John McCain is your jalopy

so this is the funniest political satire I've seen in awhile. It's a website that says "John McCain" followed by old people jokes: he "worries about 'Red China'", "is reading Parade magazine," "had a bowl full of Werther's Original," "sent you 10 dollars for your birthday" etc.

There's also a Hillary one and an Obama one, with Hillary doing bad stuff and Obama doing super nice stuff.

The Chicago Tribune wrote about it.

so sometimes I think the TV media is wrong on purpose. The Super Tuesday primaries are a big example, they've been saying for weeks that after today it's all settled, the end. Then lo and behold, it's not! Big story! What happened! And they have a suddenly lot more to talk about. It's happened a bunch of times before, seemingly after every primary. Obama won Iowa! Huge! He's president! He's going to win New Hampshire! No wait, Clinton won New Hampshire! She's back! Etc etc, on and on.

I think they jump to conclusions too quickly so they'll have something for all the talking heads to talk about, then when their conclusion is wrong, they have even more to talk about.

so this is awesome