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Daily Digest: Enter Bob Barr, Exit the Nanny State

BY Joshua Levy | Monday, May 5 2008

The Web on the Candidates

  • Remember 1992? The year grunge forced flannel shirts on the backs of millions of Gen Xers? When Aladdin was the top-grossing film? Oh yeah, and the year when Bill Clinton won the presidency? He and VP Al Gore were so dashing, flying around the country with their wives.

    A new Facebook group called Spirit of ‘92 wants to reclaim those glory years, though it’s hard to understand that because the “Recent News” blurb is dominated by paranoid privacy warnings like "If any member does not trust another, their concern shall be given to one of the administrators of the group. While some may see this as unnecessary, it is required if we are going to share the truth among people we trust." That kinda kills any communal spirit the group might have inspired (there are only 56 members)… spirit of ‘92 indeed!

  • Another Facebook group has had a bit more success in the kumbaya department. This morning I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who dislike George Bush! reached its goal.

  • Barack Obama continues to be a favorite of Hollywood, and this weekend Tom Hanks announced his support in a video on MySpace. Hanks — always smart and self-effacing — knows that a celebrity endorsement doesn’t mean much to voters. “As an official celebrity I know that my endorsement has just made your mind up for you,” he says sarcastically. Nevertheless, he’s serious, and points to the historical moment an Obama presidency would usher in that, he says, would be the most significant shift in American politics since the day in 1797 when the presidency passed peaceably from George Washington to John Adams. But wasn’t Bosom Buddies awesome?

  • Is there a real Lamont Williams? It’s unclear if there’s a robo-man behind the robo-voice in the robo-calls placed by Women’s Voices Womens Vote in North Carolina, which some allege were designed to intimidate black voters. Last week we discovered a Twitter feed from “Lamont Williams” that was decidedly not real; this weekend Wired’s Sarah Lai Stirland got fed up and and asked if the real Lamont Williams could please stand up. WVWV claims Williams was a voice performer they hired for the ad, but Stirland hasn’t been able to track him down. So here’s an echo: Lamont, we know you’re out there. Please get in touch.

  • Craigslist founder and customer-service rep (it’s his term) Craig Newmark has already come out as an Obama supporter, but he reiterated that support today in the Huffington Post. Newmark’s big issues are ethics reform and transparency, and for him Obama is the right guy. “You want some “change” that’s for real, this is it. Barack is part of the team who wants to change politics by getting rid of a lot of the bad guys. Hillary, not so much,” he writes.

The Candidates on the Web

  • Ron Paul isn’t on the campaign trail much these days — though that didn’t stop him from getting nearly 15.9% of the vote in Pennsylvania — but now he can start touring for his new book. Titled The Revolution: A Manifesto, it’s sure to reignite Ronulan fires across the land. Some Paulites have already migrated over to the comments on Amazon. Amazingly, he’s already won an Amazon straw poll calling him the Best Writer Ever. We kid.

  • Thought the presidential race was getting tiresome? Not to worry — Rep. Bob Barr may be running for president as a Libertarian (watch out Gravel!). We know he’s serious because he set up a YouTube channel, which can barely contain his screeds against liberty-haters everywhere. Check out this one, in which he talks about decapitating nannies or something.

News Briefs

RSS Feed friday >

Google to Charlie Rangel: You Are Dead to Me.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) might be facing particularly challenging reelection odds this year, at least acording to Google: based on its new Knowledge Graph interface, the search engine says that the very-much-alive Congressman died on November 20, 2004, as Colin Campbell first reported for Politicker via Azi Paybarah and Anthony Adragna. GO

friday >

Roemer to Americans Elect: Thanks Anyway

Americans Elect announced recently that it would suspend its online candidate selection process, leaving organizations in several states with an open slot on the ballot. Naturally, potential candidate Buddy Roemer is not enthused. "I am taking the next few days to review with supporters how best to proceed from here," he says. GO

Chris Anderson Says That Nixed TED Talk Was Rated "Mediocre," Links To It Anyway

TED's Chris Anderson responds to criticism of how his idea-spreading operation handled a talk about inequality — and posts video of the talk online. GO

Was the "Ricketts"/Fred Davis Obama-Wright Ad Pitch a Good Deal?

As if the content of the now-discarded plan for a new Super PAC-funded attack campaign against President Barack Obama wasn't controversial enough to grab attention — it would revive attempts to link President Obama to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright just before the beginning of the Democratic National Convention this summer — the now-discarded plan featured a two-page pitch for a pricey social media component meant to boost its exposure. GO

Facebook's Growing Political Importance, Visualized

To commemorate Facebook's impending IPO, the Sunlight Foundation's* reporting group has a new story chronicling Facebook's increasing political spending. Accompanying the story, though, is an instance of their Capitol Words tool that shows Facebook's increasing relevance in Congress as well. GO

TED: Some Seattle Billionaires Have 'Ideas Worth Spreading'; Some Don't

A year ago, Microsoft mega-billionaire Bill Gates gave a talk at TED about state budgets and education funding, entitled "How state budgets are breaking US schools." It was an attack on state budgeting practices. All but one of the fifty states are supposed to balance their budget, but Gates argued that most states used gimmicks "that ... GO

Summer Olympics to Stream Live From the UK — For Some

The BBC announced its plans yesterday to broadcast its live Olympics coverage of London's Summer games to PCs, mobile-devices and Internet-connected televisions, Reuters reported.

With a free Olympics application for Apple and Android phones, the BBC says it will be offering up to 24 live streams and video highlights clips, and plans for over 2,500 hours of live programming ... that is only available to viewers in the UK. NBC also plans to stream online, but the majority of free viewing of the Olympics will only be available to existing cable TV subscribers.

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CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Will Have Some Tech-Politics Commentators

This should be interesting: CNN nightly news program Erin Burnett OutFront is out with its list of political commentators for the general election. Some of the names are familiar in Internet-politics-land. The gang includes Upworthy's Maegan Carberry, who was previously director of communications at Rock The Vote; Sasha Issenberg, who ventures into our corner of the political world frequently while documenting the new science of political campaigns for Slate; and Ben Smith, veteran political blogger turned BuzzFeed's top politics editor.

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