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Daily Digest: GOP Convo Burns Up the Tubes

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, September 3 2008

The Web on the Candidates

  • Watch Along with Bloggers in the Know: If you're following along from home with the Republican National Convention action coming out of St. Paul, you may well want pop on over at some point to C-SPAN's new RNC '08 Convention Hub tonight. The site serves as something of a one-stop shop for major online coverage of the Republican gathering. But beyond that, it also provides useful pointers to what's bubbling up in local blogospheres. Like, saaaaay, the Alaskosphere. Consider devoting a share of your multi-tasking during this evening's address by vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin to tracking the insight coming from bloggers who know her best. (We're playing with the idea of calling the Alaskan blogosphere the "Tundrasphere," instead. Let us know your preference.) Also on the watching along front, the well-crafted official Republican National Convention website has a wealth of useful info, including a detailed schedule of convention events. #

  • FISA Breaks into Delegates' Teevee Boxes: The Washington Independent's Ari Melber has a look at how the ever-evolving Get FISA Right online movement is using micro-targeted cable TV ad buys to get their civil liberties message out in St. Paul this week. #

The Candidates on the Web

  • Brown Out-of-Bounds on Bounds?: CNN journalist Campbell Brown gave a high-temperatured grilling to McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds on his contention that Sarah Palin's experience as commander of the Alaska National Guard gives her meaningful foreign policy experience. The video of our media hard at work has quickly become a YouTube hit. One copy of the clip posted by the video wing of the Talking Points Memo empire has gotten more than 285,000 views. Someone less than thrilled with the exchange? John McCain. He cancelled a scheduled interview with the network in reaction. CNN, however, is unwilling to back down: "Campbell Brown did what journalists do... She asked fair and important questions in a respectful way and was simply trying to get a straight answer to a straightforward question."#

  • Getting to Know Palin: Politicos are prepping for tonight's Palin speech by pouring over a video of a 2006 gubernatorial debate between Palin, former governor Tony Knowles, and an independent candidate. Palin, we all now know, went on to win that race. Some on the left are spreading the clip in the hopes of inoculating the public in the event that Palin turns in a similarly strong performance in St. Paul tonight. For its part, yesterday the McCain camp sent around a video introduction to their vice presidential pick. Good for them. You know what's not so good for them? The video mostly consists of just excerpts from Palin's speech from Friday. On that point, JohnMcCain.com still has no biographical information up on Palin. By way of contrast, BarackObama.com offers a bio and accomplishment list for Joe Biden -- and a detailed backgrounder on his wife Jill Biden. #

  • "Am I Getting Punked Here?": A bitingly snarky "voicemail" left by John McCain asking "Senator Sandra Palin" to be his running mate is near the top of Digg's U.S. Elections section. (via Claire Silberman) #

  • RNC DNC BSG: Not sold yet on either the McCain-Palin or Obama-Biden tickets? There is another option: Tigh-Roslin '08! The campaign site for Saul Tigh and Laura Roslin and has some great resources, such as a discussion on whether voting machine manufacturer Diebold is a Cylon front. Beyond the fact that the joke campaign has something to do with the television show "Battlestar Galactica" and that the two featured characters look something like the Republican ticket, I really have know idea what it means. But I'm guessing it might be pretty funny if I did. (via Boing Boing) #

TechCongress and Beyond

In Case You Missed It...

Nancy Scola (yeah, yeah, yeah, that's me -- I have to find a better way to phrase these self mentions) reports that online wonder Ron Paul drew a crowd to Minneapolis last night that was impressive enough to erase doubts about the Texas congressman's ability to convert his considerable online energy to powerful offline momentum.

Micah Sifry looks at which videos out of last week's Democratic National Convention are picking up steam online, and finds a few surprises. John Kerry's a smash!

And Zephyr Teachout implores journalists to get thee to Godblog Con, a gathering of Christian bloggers happening in Las Vegas later this month.

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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