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From the category archives:
Politics
The computer network serving the Missouri House of Representatives was the target of a sophisticated cyber-attack earlier today. At approximately 2:30 p.m. Central Time, the electronic voting boards at the front of the chamber went dark for several seconds. When technicians brought the boards back online, they were playing the motion pictures, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Dave.
Members of the House were prevented from evacuating the chamber due to a breach of the security system that automatically locks all exits, and had to sit through the two films –showing simultaneously– which ran for almost two hours.
“Why in God’s name didn’t they at least letter box the damn things?!” lamented one frustrated state rep when finally freed from the chamber.
A little known group of cyber terrorist calling themselves Celluloid Bandits are claiming credit for the attack.
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I didn’t follow the story of the arrest and conviction of Jeff Smith last year. Here’s a couple of grafs from Wikipedia:
“Jeff Smith was a Democratic member of the Missouri Senate, representing the 4th district, covering the western portion of the City of St. Louis. On August 25, 2009 he pled guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and resigned his seat. He admitted his involvement, and attempted cover-up, in two federal election law violations committed during his 2004 campaign for Congress.
Each conspiracy count is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. He resigned effective August 25, 2009 and was sentenced to 1 year and a day of prison. He also was fined $50,000. His lawyer requested Smith be sent to a prison camp in Marion, Illinois.”
This morning I learned from @chadlivengood that Mr. Smith (@jeffmsith7027) is on Twitter. Seems Mr. Smith emails his tweets to a friend who posts for him.
I’m a curious why he has access to email but not Twitter? Anybody help me out with that? Would love to interview someone with the federal prison system who could illucidate.
Are there lots of federal prisoners on Twitter? Is there a list somewhere? What –if anything– does this say about social networking? Do prisoners within the same facility follow each other? Would it be tacky to do @fakejeffsmith feed with humorus tweets. Yes, I’m pretty sure it would.
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“Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers “at the expense of hardworking Americans.” Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it’s not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing. Then he got elected.”
Oh dear. Who’s my favorite political reporter? Who’s the guy I always turn to for the hard, profane truth? That’s right, Matt Taibbi. The graf above is the lead to his latest piece in Rolling Stone. And this, sums it all up:
“What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe it’s our fault, for thinking he was different.”
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Obama can and (I hope) will do good things during the remainder of his term(s). But he has already demonstrated (to me) that he is not man I supported and helped elect.
It’s tempting to rationalize that he’s smarter than W and less crooked than Cheney et al, but I hate it when the neocon goobers play that game so I won’t.
The “surge” in Afghanistan pushed me over the edge. I can’t convince myself the decision wasn’t politically motivated. (Big sigh)
UPDATE: (12/5/09) This story by Peter Baker in the New York Times (yeah, I know… I know) about the process leading to the decision to send more troops (and a little reflection) has brought me to the conclusion that I can not know what is in the heart of this –or any– man. Excerpt:
“Unsatisfied, the president posed a series of questions: Does America need to defeat the Taliban to defeat Al Qaeda? Can a counterinsurgency strategy work in Afghanistan given the problems with its government? If the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, would nuclear-armed Pakistan be next?”
If politics played a role in the president’s decision, God help him. But I can’t know. And I can’t lead… I’m not sure I can follow… but maybe I can get out of the way.
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We’re seeing major (for us) spike in traffic to one of our blogs from link on Huffington Post site. Radio Iowa News Director O. K. Henderson has been doing a super job of covering “town hall” meetings in Iowa. And breaking news, as she frequently does.
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I was semi-hooked on posterous the first time I saw it. I love the simplicity. In concept and design. Send an email and it pops up on your posterous blog. Just that easy. Most of my blogs were on Typepad or WordPress and I really didn’t need another one. And I didn’t have time to move one over.
Yesterday I received an email from posterous, explaining how easy it was to import posts (including images, links, videos, etc) from and existing blog into posterous. So I decided to try it on politix, my place for pissing and moaning (during the Bush years) and clapping my hands (for the most part) since Obama took office.
The import as flawless (as far as I can see). Took maybe two clicks and about 5 minutes. Nice.
If you’ve thought about blogging but didn’t want to feed and care for a “traditional” blog, consider posterous. See something interesting… copy a few lines… paste it into an email and hit send. A blog post.
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Politicians running for office will always flood the airwaves with 30 second ads. As many as they can afford and the TV and radio stations have time to sell them. I don’t think anyone much believes them, we just have to endure them.
Forgetting the First Amendment for the moment, what if political campaigns were banned from running adds on TV, radio and cable channels. How would they persuade us to vote for them?
Twitter. And a website/blog. That’s all they could use.
The idea came to me last night when I saw the following tweet:
Honestly, I’m not sure who John Burnett is, other than a Missouri legislator from Kansas City. I started following him because he was among the first legislators to use Twitter. And he’s good at it.
As for the tweet above… I don’t who Rep. Frame is or the first thing about SB 243 or whether it is, in fact, anti-consumer. My point is Twitter makes it hard to spin, bullshit, obfuscate and maybe even lie. I’m convinced that Rep. Burnett really believes the bill is anti-consumer.
When limited to 140 characters, it’s harder to NOT be open and authentic. And if you do stretch the truth, you can bet one of your followers will point it out.
So here’s my plan for some future campaign:
You can set up your website/blog and your Twitter feed whenever you want. The earlier the better. But you have to feed the beasts and you better be good at it ’cause they’re all you have (plus YouTube and Facebook and other online components). All pull, no push.
What about complicated issues and policy positions? That’s what the web/blog are for. Twitter is can point us there.
What about “ghost twitterers?”
I don’t think that would be a problem because I think we’d know in about 15 minutes if someone else was writing your stuff. Keep in mind, I’m not talking about eliminating debates and news interviews. Just the 30 second ads.
I’d apply this to PAC ads, too. If you support clubbing baby seals, set up a website and a Twitter feed. But no more TV and radio spots.
This seemed like just one more smays.com fantasy when I started writing it but I think it could happen. I doubt anyone would/could ban 30 seconds spots, but if viewership continues to drop and the web becomes the best way to tell your story, politicians will move in this direction. Kicking and screaming.
PS: On a not-quite-related note, what’s it worth to Amazon when a United States Senator tells here 23,000 followers how much she loves here Kindle?
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From Springfield TV Reporter David Catanese’s blog:
“After finishing a serious interview with a trio of reporters on various topics, Sen. Claire McCaskill suddenly whipped out her own mini-cam to turn the tables. McCaskill apparently wanted to put Tony Messenger, Jo Mannies and I in the uncommon role of answering questions. Then, I begin filming McCaskill’s experiment shooting us. The Senator asked for quick soundbites and hit me with a tough criticism about my own blog — that it’s video heavy.”
If you’re reading this, David, I don’t think you have too much video (for a TV reporter) but the center justified text looks newbie. You should drop that.
Did not see the Senator’s video on her YouTube channel yet. Here it is. And any pol that carries a Flip in her purse gets points in my book.
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