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.

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.

Barack Obama at Ben's Chili Bowl

so Barack Obama was at Ben's Chili Bowl on Saturday. Pretty cool.



Ben's is an old, famous place on U Street in DC. It's pretty great. He's eating with the mayor of DC, Adrian Fenty.

The Inauguration rental bust

so I wrote about the Inauguration rental market disappearing a few days ago on DCist, and now lots of mainstream media types caught on too - the Washington Post, New York Times, UPI, City Paper, and an upcoming AP article (which they interviewed me for, which was pretty cool.)

So in short, the articles about people renting their places out for big bucks during the Inauguration has spawned more articles about people not being able to rent their places out for Inauguration.

The Obamas in Washington

so this is a pretty cool article, it's asking whether the Obamas will go out in Washington more than George W. Bush. It mentions a few spots, like 2 Amy's (which I think is overrated) and Ben's Chili Bowl, and is one of the few articles about D.C. that talks about the city itself rather than just the institutions of government. I hope there are more to come.

Obama!

so Obama won! That's amazing. I was in Adams Morgan, DC when they called the election, walking down 18th Street. I heard chanting "5... 4... 3..." coming from the Duplex Diner, so I ran over and saw just as the graphic showing they predicted Obama to be the winner came up. Everybody went nuts at the bar, and my friend and I ran the four blocks to 14th and U Street, where a street party had already been happening. It was pandemonium.

There were hundreds of people all over, in the street, climbing on bus stops, chanting, singing, cheering, hugging strangers, giving high fives, on and on. I hung out in the street and met up with my friend, and we caught most of Obama's victory speech standing in a doorway of a bar on U, then met up with my friends who had been volunteering for Obama in southern Virginia. We went to DC9, which was an awesome atmosphere, and drank some there. Then at last call, about 2:30 am, we went back outside and it was still pandemonium everywhere - people honking, running around with flags, jumping on their cars. It was an amazing scene.

And I made this video from the night.



And I got quoted in this article (second page).

Don't forget to vote

so this is pretty funny. Don't forget to vote and don't let excuses get you, or else this might be you:

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

Obama's font

So if anybody's wondering, the Obama campaign is using the Gotham font. I was looking around for it because I like their typeface, and through a quick Google search I discovered it. Good times.

Here's more on it, pretty interesting stuff.

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.

so it's been a few days so my memory is not perfect, but here's what happened election day (with photos, which are finally online).

We woke up late-ish due to being out late the night before. We had James's BMW, because he was out with his friends at the Hillary campaign. We found some coffee place with bagels on the main drag in Manchester and ate there then we walked around downtown a little, which was hopping with people and energy, and headed over to Obama HQ. They sent us to a precinct's volunteer base, which was an house under heavy renovation somewhere in the north of Manchester.

The volunteer staff guy was kind of a twerp, for lack of a better word. He was maybe 22 and was not exactly welcoming - there were these 40-year old upper middle class ladies and us, nobody said hello and thanks for coming, and he was ordering everybody around: "You WILL do this, you WILL do that," etc. The ladies were visibly pissed off. Our pals the Texas senate staffers, who we'd been hanging around with every night, later told us they experienced a similar thing at their precincts.

So we got our turfs, the areas where you walk around and talk to folks, and we headed out. Ward got one nearby so he went walking around alone, while Wilson and I got one in Manchester so we drove there. It was about 1 pm by now and most folks weren't home, we only managed to talk to a few folks and only one or two were Obama guys. One house had a ton of kid toys in the yard and an igloo built out of snow, so Wilson and I got photos in it.

Eventually we walked past a Planned Parenthood with Ron Paul folks outside holding anti-abortion posters and reading Bible verses. We decided to talk to them and the staff there, so Wilson engaged the protesters while I went in to say thanks and such to the staffers. There were some pink-shirted counter protesters inside and they were appreciative. Wilson had been in a civil debate with the Paulistas about the role of government and taxes and so on, and we pressed on. Soon after we met a guy with an Obama press pass on. He turned out to be a reporter for the Philadelphia City Paper, akin to the Washington City Paper. He walked around with us and we gave him a ride back to the precinct so he could get some photos.

However, when he arrived with us, the twerpy guy and the other staffers freaked out, they all clammed up and said he couldn't take photos. But we didn't care, so we dropped off our canvassing packets and got out of there quickly so they couldn't bitch us out. The reporter took some photos of us with the Obama signs outside and then we gave him a ride back downtown. Then we all returned to HQ, where we met a lady who had been in the Air Force. She was pretty cool and was only up for the day, so she hung out with us. We got a hold of the Texas folks and went for lunch downtown. People had been telling us all day we were going to win, and Obama was up in the polls, so we were feeling pretty good.

After lunch we went to the Radisson for some reason then walked around downtown. Wilson and I decided to try to head down to Nashua, about a 20 minute drive, where Obama's rally was taking place. It was supposed to be packed and was ticket only, but we figured we'd try. We had some misadventures getting there, we stopped at a polling place and then the wrong high school, but eventually made it to the right spot. It was completely mobbed, hundreds of people outside, lines around the building, and who knows how many people inside. We waited around a bit but decided to head back to Manchester to meet up with everybody at Milly's, where the Obama staff and volunteer folks were going to be.

Back on the interstate, we were on an exit ramp type thing and needed to get over to the main part. Wilson was driving and we drove over a median which was hard to see, no shiny strips or anything, and we basically went airborne, landing with a splash in some kind of puddle, so water went all over the car. We kept going, and the car seemed to drive ok but we obviously had a flat or something, and we took the next exit. There was a gas station right off the exit. We looked at the car and found that three of the four tires were popped. We asked the lady there where we should go and she suggested the Sunoco next door, so we rolled over. After calling a few tow shops at another gas station, to get a neutral opinion, they all said they use the Sunoco for flats, so that worked out well. Unfortunately it was too late to get the tires fixed, we'd have to wait til 7 am tomorrow. We called James to tell him of the disaster, since it was his BMW, and he hung up on us. Then he called back a few minutes later and gave us Bret's number, the guy we were staying with, and hung up. So Bret showed up fast enough and took us to Milly's, where Ward and the Texas crew were.

We watched the results roll in, with Hillary up immediately, and the energy in the room dissipated. Unfortunately no places in NH had pitchers, so we'd have to wade through the crowd and get six packs. They ran out of Miller Light and Bud Light soon enough. So we were pretty down and drank there for awhile, leaving sometime after they called it for Hillary. James showed up at some point and there was a bit of a standoff, James at one end of the room and us on the other. Then Wilson went to talk to him and I guess James left. Then we headed over to possibly Strange Brew and definitely JDs, it gets a little hazy at this point. I know at JDs we met up with our Hillary pals and some other folks bought us dinner, which was nice. The Hillary types wanted to debate and stuff, but I was having none of it, I was sick of political stuff. Ward got photos with Tim Russert. It was cool going to JDs at this point, since we'd been there something like 5 nights in a row, all the waitstaff recognized us and such.

Then eventually we went home, driven by the Hillary folks, and crashed. Wilson went down at 6 am to get the tires fix, and by noon we were on the road home. At least James has a good story for the next time Wilson messes with him.