But I will say this: It's one thing to be excited and overcome by emotion, but really -- when a speaker is saying "Thank you...thank you...thank you...thank you very much...thank you" before even having started his or her speech, it means they want you to be quiet.

Thus, it falls to me to present two points regarding racial diversity at the conventions which you won't hear from the mainstream media:

Point One: The media have made a big deal out of the fact that you see a lot more black, Hispanic, and Asian faces in the crowd at the DNC than you do at the RNC. And that's quite true. However, none of these so-called journalists care enough about the truth to remind you that the Democrats have quotas for their state delegations. In other words, Democrats aren't electing more minorities as convention delegates because they freely choose to do so. They are forced to do so by party rules which specify that a certain percentage of delegates must be women, blacks, Hispanics, etc. The Democratic party, at its core, does not trust its members to actually demonstrate the "commitment to diversity" they like ot talk so much about. So they stage-manage the process to ensure that they have enough smiling black, brown, and yellow faces in the crowd to prove to the media how diverse they are. Now, one could reasonably argue that Democrats would still elect a more diverse delegation than Republicans without the quota. In which case, one is compelled to ask: Why have them? The answer is that they mirror the quotas the Democrats would impose in all aspects of our lives, beginning with our schools and offices. Again, find me one member of the mainstream media who has mentioned this, even though they all know it. I guess it would be too inconvenient to share this truth with the masses.

Point Two: The media has criticized the Republicans for not having minority speakers in prime-time slots. Again, the accusation is true. Republicans simply do not have enough minorities elected to higher office, so their big names tend to be white males. However, note the hypocrisy: Last night the GOP convention devoted an entire hour to speeches by ordinary folks who happen to be minorities - black, Hispanic, Asian. I saw those speeches on C-SPAN, which broadcasts the conventions gavel to gavel with no commentary. However, if you were watching CNN, you would not have seen or heard these speeches, because the network deliberately refused to show them. Instead, their reporter was interviewing the youngest delegate to the convention, a 17-year old blond white boy with a crew cut who even I thought looked like the poster boy for the Hitler Youth.  Later on, switching back and forth between the two networks, I noticed C-SPAN had a lot of camera shots showing ordinary delegates, many white but also showing black faces and Pacific island delegations. On CNN, though, the only delegates whose faces were shown were white, and most of the time they focused on Cindy McCain or other superdelegates.

Question: If the GOP is so bereft of minorities, why is CNN afraid to let voters see the ones that are there?

Again, I'm not trying to pretend that the GOP doesn't have to do a better job of reaching out to minorities. I'm just trying to illustrate the appalling way in which the media doesn't trust you to figure these things out yourself, but deliberately manipulates what you see and hear to make *sure* you draw the "correct" conclusions.

Poi ho seguito il lavoro del mio vicino di scrivania (che e' simpaticisismo e sempre sorridente) che si occupa di budget per gli eventi ed i viaggi. Anche lui ha lasciato il suo lavoro per seguire la campagna. Ovviamente il settore finanziario e' fondamentale e lavora a stretto contatto con fund raising e deve esavere le richieste di bdgt. In questa campagna anche il bdgt e' aziendale e professional.

Dopodiche' mi sono affacciata al settore communication new media: facebook, twitter, sms, myspace, youtube al servizio della politica. Devo dire che quest'area era quella che mi interessava di piu' ed al tempo stesso quella su cui ho maggiori info. Parliamo anche di C-Span e dei congressman americani, delle loro abitudini e di quelli italiani con un piccolo spazio per i nostri tristi (anche quelli!) sexgate. Diciamo che l'origine di tutti i mali italiani l'abbiamo rintracciata nel non avere dei database chiari e accessibili con adeguati programmi (vd plusthree incontrati in precedenza) di gestione. Geniale idea che mi e' personalmente venuta in mente per niente politically correct, fare un ring tone con le intercettazioni telefoniche compromettenti dei politici, not so nice but really funny!

E per ieri sembra essere abbastanza. Giornata conclusa con un'ottima notizia, prossima settimana si parte: swing states!!!!

Last night McCain’s healing work-across-the-aisle message took a pounding as the speakers played to the right-wing crowd in St. Paul.  And a strange-but-familiar crowd it was.  As my wife and I watched – on C-Span so we could see everything without the talking heads interrupting – we noted that it was very white and very old.  We joked that if we were drinkers and wanted to play that game where you take a drink of beer every time you see a minority face in the crowd, you’d have never gotten a buzz.  It looked like an AARP State Convention in Utah.

So, let’s talk change.  McCain promises a bipartisan approach to government and indicates that he yearns to reach across the aisle and work with Democrats in Congress.  Well, that message was quickly obliterated by the strategically hidden President Bush who appeared by satellite link from the White House and who rallied the radical right delegates in St. Paul with a one liner about John McCain not being stopped in his agenda by “the angry left!”  The cheers were rousing as the “angry right” figuratively took out their pitchforks and shook them at their brothers and sisters on the left.

The media had been promised a healthy, or is that poisonous, dose of “red meat” when former Senator Fred Thompson took the podium.  He offered a heroic blow-by-blow account of John McCain’s prisoner of war experience, but then mysteriously added, “That doesn’t qualify you to be President of the United States.”  Strange!  But then the peppery red meat was served up as promised when Thompson retreated to the turf of the 1988 Republican convention where he accused those who don’t agree with him philosophically of being unpatriotic, baby-killing traitors.  The crowd roared its approval.  This is bipartisan civility?  I, as an honorably discharged veteran of the US Army, was once again reminded that the Republican party – who makes much of their “love” of the soldiers – only really loves soldiers who agree with their narrow views of what America should be.

Thompson attacked Barack Obama by saying that he refused to “defend” the unborn and newborn babies of America – a gross misquote of Obama’s position of allowing God to decide when life begins rather than speaking for God.  Gee, now who is it that has a messianic complex?  Could it be each member of the Religious Right who presumes to speak regularly for their Creator?  My question for Senator Thompson is this:  Who defends the newborn baby with financial assistance and medical care if needed?  NOT THE REPUBLICANS!  They’re against government “handouts.” Who defends the poor child who goes to bed hungry each night because his single mother is unable to support him?  NOT THE REPUBLICANS!  That horrible “welfare mother” should take care of her own child.  Who defends the child who depends on the public education system?  NOT THE REPUBLICANS!  They don’t want to pay taxes to public school districts.  They would rather get a voucher to retrieve their tax dollars and spend them in an all-white private school for the privileged. Who defends the child who needs a college education in order to get a good-paying job?  NOT THE REPUBLICANS!  They have cut funding to public colleges and universities as well as cut back the availability of student loans to those who need them.  The Republicans are NOT pro-life; they are anti-abortion.

That brings us to Senator Joe Lieberman, the Kool-Aid drinking Senator from Connecticut.  First, I want to thank the good people of Connecticut for sending him back to the Senate.  At the podium last night ‘Single-issue Joe” turned his back on all of us who are desperately hanging on by our fingernails against a right-wing social agenda that is intent on imposing its narrow religious view onto our government and thereby upon us.  His single-minded focus on the Iraq war and a long-standing personal friendship with John McCain have clouded his judgment so completely that he is ready to throw away everything else he believes in.  His message to social moderates and liberals?  “You’ll have your chance in four to eight more years.  Right now we have a foreign war to win.”  He knows full well that by the time four to eight more years pass, that McCain/Palin will have stacked the Supreme Court so full of hard-line conservatives that only the youngest among us may live long enough to breathe the fresh breath of freedom again.

Missing from this great hot fart of Republican rhetoric was any mention of the economy.  The message from the Republicans is clear:  Don’t worry about paying your mortgage or grocery bill.  Don’t worry about losing your job to the third world.  Don’t worry about health care. None of that’s important.  Instead, you should be worried about your neighbor’s reproductive system and evil liberals who are out to ruin your lives.  So knowing they have nothing to offer the American people in a time of great domestic strife, John McCain has trotted out Sarah Palin to champion the cause of the newly resurrected Cultural Wars of the 1980s.  Now, that’s the kind of CHANGE I’ve come to expect from the Republicans!

Now, those of you who are loyal readers probably wondered why I took a pass on criticizing the television news media today.  It’s because they almost uniformly recognized the hot air in the convention hall for what it was: political rhetoric with nothing to add to the national debate.  And just when Sarah Palin thought it was safe to go back into the water, the McCain campaign admitted that they had only done a quickie vetting of Governor Palin two days before her rollout.  McCain had only really met with her on the matter for two hours on Wednesday.

The savvy media quickly picked back up the story of Palin only minutes after the delegates exited the hall and a new narrative began.  Even Norah O’Donnell – and we all know I have had nothing good to say about her journalistic chops – expressed real exasperation and puzzlement and maybe even anger that McCain had so cavalierly made such a major decision.  And, of course, Rachel Maddow jumped all over it and with her always-sharp focus pointed out the real issue here.  It’s not about Palin, she asserted, it’s about the kind of decision maker that McCain is.  She rightly wondered out loud if this is an indication of the way he may make other decisions of importance that come up in his presidency.

Those concerns were echoed by Mr. “Morning Joe” Scarborough this morning as he asked Republican guest after Republican guest whether they would pick somebody they knew for such a short time to be their second in command.  The Kool-Aid Brigade tap danced gingerly around the issue and spouted the Republican Party talking points on the VP pick, but to his credit Joe asked each of them who their chiefs of staff were or Lt. Governors were and how long they had known them before they elevated them to such a high level of responsibility.  Uniformly, the Republican Pols on the show had to admit that they had known those they trusted with so much power for years.

Mike Barnicle put it in every-day terms when he pointed out to a Republican who was touting the experience level of Palin – and they are asserting that she has more “executive” experience that even McCain himself – that if you went back three years ago and had some business to transact with the then Mayor of Wasilla, it would be to purchase an ice fishing license.  The whole gang on camera erupted in laughter.  Good one, Mike!

I do have one bone to pick, and that is with Michelle Bernard who appeared on MSNBC last night.  She seems to be caught up in the “woman” aspect of Palin’s pick and has abandoned her seeming fascination with Obama.  She pointed out that Palin was an excellent pick for moderate and conservative women, and that women on the left side of the blogosphere were questioning whether a mother with Palin’s family should be Vice-President.  In fact, all of the criticism I have seen on the net asserting this point has come from the extreme right along with such comments as “a woman’s place is in the home, PERIOD.”  Let’s be clear, we on the left do not believe that and have fought hard to erase that long-used dodge to hold women down in the workplace.  So just in case Ms. Bernard’s assertions are correct that left-wing blogs are taking this stand, Left-Eyed Jack says: Knock it off!

At any rate, this morning’s Gallup Daily Tracking Poll shows our man Obama eight points ahead of McCain and pegging in at 50%.  If this is correct, it is great news.  I have always felt that once we get to 50% in the polls, we will have reached a threshold that greatly improves our chances.  It is altogether possible that McCain’s pick of the risky Palin may be blowing up in his face.  Let’s hope.

Keep fighting the good fight!

Dear readers, today I will not focus on the media and what may be amiss therewith.  I have decided, instead, to celebrate the truly history-making moment that was played out in Invesco Field on Thursday evening, when Barack Obama became the first candidate of color to ever step to the podium and accept the nomination of a major political party for President of the United States of America.  It was an overwhelming experience for this old white man, and if I live to be a hundred, I will never forget it.

As Mile High Stadium began to fill up in the bright Colorado sunshine, I switched my television over to C-Span because I didn’t want to miss one moment of the most unexpected event in my lifetime.  It brought to mind another.  I was born and spent my childhood and teen years in Oklahoma.  At the end of the first day of school in my second-grade year, I sat on a bright yellow school bus as it wended its way through the waving golden wheat fields that lay between Oklahoma City and my hometown at the time, Edmond, Oklahoma.  Besides being the first day of school, there was something else different that day, and that was the fact that in a seat near the front of the school bus sat what we called a “colored boy” and his sister.  The boy was around ten or twelve; his sister appeared to be younger than my seven years.  It was the first time in my life that I had ever seen what we would call today an African-American except through a car window.

You see, in those days, the mid 1950s in Oklahoma almost all schools were segregated, as was much else in our society.  Not only were Blacks not welcome in white public schools, they were also not allowed to go to the Oklahoma City Zoo, or ride the rides at Spring Lake Amusement park which sat across the street from the zoo.  So my only exposure to “colored people” was as my Dad drove the car through “that part of town” on the way to my Grandmother’s house in Oklahoma City.

So when I saw the black boy and his sister on the bus, my curiosity began boiling like water on the stove.  My stop was the last on the route, and as fate would have it, the objects of my curiosity were next to the last.  I usually sat at the back of the bus because you got bounced around when the bus flew over the wooden bridges that lay between my school in town and my house in the country, and that was great fun to a boy of seven.  But this day that became less important and less exciting.  As the bus let others off along the way, I kept working my way seat by seat toward the black children at the front of the bus.  I wanted to meet them and talk to them, but I was still afraid of the prospect.  Finally, we were the last three people on the bus, and I slowly moved to the seat across the aisle from them and introduced myself to the boy.  His name was Edward.  His sister was too shy to talk.  Edward and I had but a brief time to talk before his stop came up, and our conversation must have been about boy things that are so common to us all that I don’t remember a word said.  But I remember to this day how I instinctively knew that we weren’t that different after all.

Sadly, Edward and his sister were never on the bus again.  I was sorry to see this because I felt I had made a new friend, and I didn’t understand the politics of the time that probably led to “other arrangements” being made for their education by those who controlled such things in our all-white town.  As my life moved forward, I held no more than the barest memory of this truly unique moment in my rural-white-boy life.  When I was in the fifth grade, my family moved into Oklahoma City, and I finished my education in a segregated part of the school district centered around Classen High School.  A year or so before my graduation, US District Judge Luther Bohanan ordered the Oklahoma City School District to come up with an integration plan.  There was shock and outrage in our high school and community.  How dare a Federal Judge interfere with our right to attend our neighborhood school?  My class counted itself lucky to graduate before a plan was put into place.  We didn’t want to go to school with what we were calling by then “negroes.”  I wish today that I hadn’t been so easily swayed by the harsh and uneducated rhetoric of my peers and their parents.  My parents, to the contrary and to their credit, did not agree with those who so nakedly showed their prejudice.  But, unfortunately, I was trying desperately to “fit in.”

As a result of my narrow upbringing, I still never knew an African-American until I was drafted by the US Army in 1968.  I still remember when, after training, I was deployed to Germany.  I was amazed, and not in a good way, to see white German women dancing with “negroes” in the Enlisted Men’s Club in Frankfurt when I arrived.  It was truly shocking to me.  But then, by the grace of God, over the next 18 months I was able to serve and live side by side with some of the greatest guys I have ever known, many of whom where black.  We came from everywhere: New York, Alabama, North Carolina, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Georgia and others.  And then there was me, a young country-born boy from Oklahoma.  Suddenly, I was “out in the world.”

We were stationed at a small town in Northern Bavaria just outside Nurnberg called Zirndorf, Germany.  And in that period I became the me I am to this day, and a lot of the credit goes to my buddies who shared that experience.  We were Battery A of the Second Battalion, Sixteenth Artillery, an Honest John rocket-firing unit, stationed near the Czech border to defend the Western World from the Soviet Threat.  Inside our picturesque barracks we worked together, lived together and played together, and in that remarkable time among the enlisted guys, the racial differences faded and disappeared.  But the same was not necessarily so from the top, and in 1970 a commission was established by the Post Commander to address the grievances being voiced by the black soldiers at the post.  I was privileged to be asked by the black enlisted men of my battery to represent them on that commission, because they trusted me to take their issues to the commander and believed he would listen to a skinny white E-4 more than he would to any of them.  I did just that, and was proud to represent my friends. Although in the years after I came home from the Army I have had many black friends, the demands of my career left me little free time, so I somewhat lazily failed to follow my heart by pursuing an active role in the civil rights movement and pursued my own well-being.

After 14 years of court reporting, I was offered the chance to leave my profession behind and become a teacher, passing on what I had learned to a new generation. In the following years I had the privilege to teach some of the finest trade and community college students in the world, but the greatest pleasure I ever got was when I was assigned by the community college to teach an introductory program in the Criminal Justice Department at M.B. Smiley High School in Houston.  Smiley is a school that has a 93% black enrollment, so many of my colleagues – all white, I might add -- were not comfortable with the assignment.  Lucky for me.  I volunteered and got the prize of a lifetime.  While there, I had the most satisfying teaching experience in my life.  The students treated me with exactly the same great respect that I treated them.  I came to love them, and they came to love me.  The college closed the entire court reporting program the following year, so I was unable to return to a new bunch of eager students.  But the great memories of that year -- pep rallies, football games, going with the Golden Eagle Band wherever it went that year, and all the parents, teachers and students I met that year – those memories will remain with me all the rest of my life.

So as I watched the stadium fill at Invesco Field Thursday, as millions of us across this nation waited in eager anticipation for the moment when Barack Obama stepped on that stage, I wept.  Not for myself, but for the boy and girl on the school bus all those years ago, and my buddies in the Army, and my students at Smiley High School, not tears of sadness but tears of nostalgic joy as I hoped that all those who changed my life and helped me understand were somewhere out there watching with me.  I hoped that they were feeling the wonder of the moment just as I was, and I wished I could have them all in my living room so I could hug them and show my appreciation for what they brought to me.

No matter what happens from here forward, we have seen a change this week, and I thank Barack Obama for restoring my hope and inspiring me to dream a bigger dream for myself and others.  Just like an old man in his living room, America has been crying for a change, and Barack Obama has answered that cry.  May God bless him, and may God Bless America.

Left-eyed Jack

NEW YORK (AP) - Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was seen by more than 38 million people.Nielsen Media Research said more people watched Obama speak than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final "American Idol" or the Academy Awards this year. Obama talked before a live audience of 80,000 people in Denver.

His TV audience nearly doubled the amount of people who watched John Kerry accept the Democratic nomination to run against President Bush four years ago. Kerry's speech was seen by just over 20 million people.

Obama's audience might be higher, since Nielsen didn't have an estimate for how many people watched Obama on PBS or C-SPAN Thursday night.

So far there have been some good speeches that I have seen from Bill Richardson, Al Gore, and Joe Biden (again) and those were of course the ones I was looking forward to seeing.  Other than that I haven't been paying a lot of attention.  Stevie Wonder was playing, as well as will.i.am and others.  Also, when a group of vets came on stage to support Obama, Gen. Wesley Clark was onstage.  It was good to see him included, and he did get quite a bit of cheers just at the mention of his name.  Good for him.

The crowd is fired up, chanting, and excited.  It's really impressive to see.  The RNC is going to be so boring lol lime jello all over again.  And yes, I hope so.

-X-

Truthdig | Aug 27, 2008

AP photo / Charles Dharapak

Bill Clinton reminded Democrats on Thursday why he’s one of the brightest stars in the political universe—and a great cheerleader to have on your side—with a rousing speech in support of Barack Obama.

Aides were reportedly worried that Clinton might be booed when he made his entrance, but instead he had to ask, beg and, finally, command the crowd to stop applauding.

The former president touched on a number of important issues but had his most moving line on the subject of military force: “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.”

Click here to see it in HD (plug-in required), or check it out below:

C-SPAN:

Listening to Harry Reid mention snake oil convinced me that he was certainly an expert on the subject.

While he was describing the traits of a presidential administration, I could have sworn he was referring to Lyndon Johnson instead of George Bush. His description of the administration was certainly more characteristic of and consistent with Johnson's.

When Reid chided the Republicans for ridiculing Jimmy Carter alternative energy initiatives, I couldn't fail to wonder why, if the ideas were considered so great at the time, that a Democratic president couldn't get a Democratically controlled Congress to go along with his ideas. There must have been more of a problem than the Republicans.

Harry Reid apparently considers oil some sort of demon. He's quick to point out that any current oil drilling will take 10 years to be productive, a point, by the way which isn't exactly correct when people who are familiar with oil drilling are asked about the prospects. The fact that he and Boone Pickens keep pointing to regarding the United States having only 3% of the world's known oil reserves are based on relatively old data, may not take into account discovery of large deposits of oil in deeper parts of the Gulf of Mexico late last summer and completely disregard the fact that Congress has prohibited exploration to seek out new oil deposits in many parts of the Gulf and in nearly all of the areas of the eastern and western continental shelves. In other words, while numerous new deposits of oil have been discovered in many parts of the world in the past 10 years, oil companies have been prohibited from doing the same exploration and development in American controlled waters. New oil deposits have been discovered in Indonesia and Brazil in the past 10 years helping those countries to become energy independent and to develop their economies while the United States has been limited to importing increasing amounts of oil.

While France has been safely using nuclear energy for the past 50 plus years, a Democratically controlled congress has prohibited the United States from building new nuclear reactors for nearly 30 years.

Harry Reid ridicules the prospect of producing more oil because he says it will take 10 years. How long will it take to develop and implement an alternative energy source consisting of wind and solar power? He fails to mention that those prospects are 12 to 22 years in the future. In a recent presentation before a Congressional committee an expert on offshore wind development stated it would take 5 to 7 years for the technology to be perfected. And that estimate didn't include the time it would take to implement the technology once it had been developed. It's understandable that the Democratic leadership might be unaware of these facts since no Democrats even attended the hearing.

Pickens Plan Presentation Before Senate Committee

Harry Reid's speech amounted to a lot of hot air and political posturing based of questionably lofty ideals with no substance. He ridicules any attempt to try to achieve any form of energy independence through developing any oil resources we may have by discounting it stating that any increase in domestic oil supplies would take 10 years. Yet he doesn't explain what the American people are supposed to do in the intervening 12 to 22 years while solar and wind power are being developed.

Harry Reid talks of energy conservation. Where are the examples from the Democratic leadership ... or do they believe in leading by example? And where is the explanation of what the American people are supposed to do while waiting to be delivered from Harry's Demon? Where are all of those electric cars and the cars that get 40 miles per gallon that the Democrats keep alluding to? Are they going to spontaneously appear once Obama becomes president?

Harry Reid's simple-minded tunnel vision would be a riotous joke if his unadulterated hypocricy weren't nauseatingly revolting.

One thing became obvious after listening to Harry Reid. It really doesn't matter whether Nancy Pelosi has given an indication that offshore drilling might be a possibility ... because Harry Reid hasn't. Pelosi can play all of the politics she wants by letting it leak that she has given permission for Democratic Congressmen up for re-election to tell their constituents that they're in favor of offshore drilling. Pelosi says, "Tell your constituents anything it takes to get re-elected."

Because, if Pelosi doesn't continue to block any bills regarding offshore oil exploration and drilling, Harry Reid will.

Frankly, they don't care what 70% of the American public wants. After all, they're Democrats and they know better than the American public what's good for America.

I first saw this video posted at Rage's blog, Down on the Brown Side. His blog is awesome and I highly recommend folks check it out to see what this conscious brother is thinking and doing in NYC.

That being said, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich's speech a couple days ago at the DNC was the shit. I was so sick of all the pundits on CNN talking about how "no one was firing up the crowd" on the same day that Kucinich gave this speech. See how fired up the crowd gets when you give them a progressive populist message? That's because those are the kind of politics that the people are hungry for in these bleak times. And yet, the Dems continue to move to the right in an attempt to appeal to everyone (I was really not inspired by Joe Biden's Cold War-esque jabs at Russia and China and his call to send tons of troops to Afghanistan in his speech last night). As one of the last staunchly progressive voices in the Democratic party, I hope that Kucinich doesn't continue to get marginalized by his own party.

Also notice how Kucinich's speech was only televised on C-SPAN, which brings me to my next schpeal. You don't hear this too much on The Cheddar Box, but God bless this old white guy:

Who is this old white guy, you ask? That's Brian Lamb, the founder and CEO of C-SPAN. I've come to appreciate C-SPAN more and more lately because of its position as a television station airing nonstop coverage of government proceedings and public affairs programming that is unedited, uncensored and commercial free. According to it's wikipedia entry:

Uncommonly for a television network, C-SPAN is operated as a non-profit organization by the National Cable Satellite Corporation, whose board of directors consists primarily of representatives of the largest cable companies. C-SPAN accepts no advertising; instead, it receives nearly all its funding from subscriber fees charged to cable and DBS operators. Contrary to popular perception, C-SPAN receives no funding from government sources.

In its early days, cable companies tried to replace C-SPAN with revenue-producing channels. As stated above, C-SPAN is funded by the cable industry; thus, the industry loses money airing C-SPAN. However, C-SPAN had developed somewhat of a "cult following" among political junkies and citizens who had always wanted to see what was really happening with their elected officials. Avid C-SPAN viewers often refer to themselves as "C-SPAN Junkies," "SPANners," or "Spanheads".

Over time, the cable companies and the general public realized that C-SPAN provided a desired and much needed public service; a "window" into the operations of Congress. C-SPAN has never had the ratings of major networks, but it has a devoted following.

It's crazy to me that in the hyper-capitalist cable industry that is so centered on ad revenue, there is a space for politics that is unedited, commercial free, and paid for by the cable industry itself! That means C-SPAN'S existence actually loses money for the industry, but they keep it going because the people demand it. Bananas. So even though I might not always be glued to my seat while watching a four hour session of the joint House and Senate Printing committee, I appreciate knowing that if I really wanted to, I could watch it on C-SPAN.

C-SPAN online is the place to be for all things convention. C-Span Convention Hub.

Run. Don't walk.

A funny about Hillary Clinton.

A funny about Bill Clinton.

It was surprising but what was even better is that they contacted me to let me know it was being used.

I realized they took a few minutes to let me know that my work was being utilized as part of their coverage.

That was smart and good public relations.

There are always new things to learn and this was a good one for me. Being interactive in our blogging efforts is important and I forget that lesson sometimes. If it's a two way conversation instead of just one way, there is a sense of ownership on both sides.

Observations on a Wednesday morning.

Senator Clinton has released her delegates from voting for her at the Democratic Convention. It will be crucial for the party to lick it's wounds, heal the rifts and fully support the Democratic nominee: Senator Obama. Already outside the convention there have been protests suggesting that Clinton was cheated out of the nomination.

Such talk will not help is such bellweather states as Ohio. With a quarter of Democrats leaning towards McCain or undecided Clinton needs to encourage her supporters to actively vote and work for a Democratic President. In Ohio McCain leads by 1.5%.

The Democrats have transformed their political machine. That will be crucial in tight states. But the last thing any political party needs is one at odds with itself. The time for bitter recriminations and self reflection is after the General Election - never when you are asking the electorate for power. If you cannot govern yourself you do not deserve to govern a country.

If Clinton can get her avid supporters to put the party before the candidate and realize that a Republican President is not in their interests on the issues - that is what counts. She needs to be guns blazing with McCain in her sights and why Obama needs the Democratic Party's full support. In short a cheerleader to rally the party.

However this will be at 3 am GMT (10 PM Eastern Seaboard). So reflections on her speech will be after Cornflakes. Strongly recommend C-Span to people in the UK - more then just something people watched in episodes of The West Wing. Includes live feeds of the convention.

When I am not at my computer, I am out running errands or doing tasks around the house. My wife and I try to sit down to dinner together away from any TV. We spend evenings on our back porch with our pets, enjoying our woods. A neighbor suggested we hook up cable TV out there and I thought he was nuts.

Now that I have a broadband alternative to the tube, I have, as Seth Godin writes in his blog, “three, four or even six hours a day not spent doing virtually nothing.”

When I think about TV now, I think of Bruce Springsteen's song, "57 Channels and Nothin' On.” I used to watch too much CNBC, but I got tired of being shouted at by Jim Cramer, Larry Kudlow and the rest. I feel like CNN, Fox News and MSNBC are just trying to entertain me so I won't zap them with my remote. It's not all noise. I am often rewarded by PBS and C-SPAN, but I DVR shows and then never watch them. The only TV that gets any use in our house is the one in our bedroom and I only turn it on late at night to help me fall asleep.

Nielsen (no relation) says Americans are watching more TV than ever, about four hours a day, though we are also surfing the Web nearly an hour, too. I wonder if there is a growing demographic that, like me, is so disinterested that I am not making this up: I could not tell you anything about Britney Spears or Paris Hilton. I did not watch any of the Bejing Olympics because I had so much other stuff going on. I feed myself a steady, voracious diet of business, technology and political news from a greater variety of online news outlets and blogs than has ever before existed. So if Angelina Jolle doesn't make my Google Reader, she for all practical purposes, does not exist.

I may have more in common with some teenagers than with folks my age – not the first time :) The New York Times reported Sunday:

For children ages 10 to 14 who use the Internet, the computer is a bigger draw than the TV set, according to a study recently released by DoubleClick Performics, a search marketing company. The study found that 83 percent of Internet users in that age bracket spent an hour or more online a day, but only 68 percent devoted that much time to television.

2004 was the first time in my life that I, a political junkie, forgot to watch the news-less political conventions, except for the acceptance speeches. This year, it'll be the same. I have other things to do. If I miss something good, there's always YouTube and Twitter.

UPDATE: Even though I don't watch much of it, I like having it available when I want it. That's why I am exploring ways to save 40% on my cable/broadband bundle.

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True, they were supposedly being arrested and tried not for their actual faith but for openly declaring their convictions and for bringing up their children in the same spirit. As Tanya Khodkevich wrote:

You can pray freely
But just so God alone can hear.

(She received a ten-year sentence for these verses.) A person convinced that he possessed spiritual truth was required to conceal it from his own children! In the twenties the religious education of children was classified as a political crime under Article 58-10 of the Code -- in other words, counterrevolutionary propoganda! True, one was still permitted to renounce one's religion at one's trial: it didn't often happen but it nonetheless did happen that the father would renounce his religion and remain at home to raise the children while the mother went to the Solovetsky Islands.

I saw some of the Polygamy and Associated Crimes hearings on C-SPAN a few weeks ago. It was almost more than I could bear to watch, we are not as far away from the conditions characterized by the statement above as one would like to think.