Twittering the first presidential debate

My Journalism class Twittered the presidential debate this past Friday here are some of the major observations:

• The buzzwords of the night were : “change, security, economy, wall street, and main street.”
• The candidates practically refused to address each other directly as observed one of my classmates: “Now taking bets on who’s going to attack first. My guess: Jim Lehrer if they don’t start talking to each other.”
• McCain dated himself a number of times, whether this was intentional to play up his experience or not is anyone’s guess, but it didn’t seem to play well with the college-aged crowd.
• Both candidates pretty faithful kept to their stump speeches and continued to give nothing except vague details:

                      ”obama is only talking about what he wont cut and not what he will.” 

                      ”Colleen says ‘i think what we’re seeing here is that noone knows what to do about this economy crisis.’”  

                       “my friends what to hear more about what McCain will do instead of why Obama sucks”

So overall there were no blow-ups collapses, or knockouts, which was reflected in the post-debate coverage – “there was no clear winner”

Presidental Debate

So the first presidential debate has come and gone, the winner? a toss up. Some polls from CNN say the public thinks Senator Barack Obama was the winner, but overall both candidates offered little.

Personally I thought Senator John McCain sounded good on his experience and on foreign policy, and Obama held his own, but neither were throwing knockout punches.

Both candidates said what they have been saying for most of their campaigns and didn’t deviate much from it. Factcheck.org says both candidates stretched the truth, but in the ways that they have been doing for most of the race.

On the other hand, is a debate with no clear winner, the candidate who has the momentum going into the debate really wins, because the other candidate fails to turn that momentum around, in that sense Obama could be declared the winner.

However, the same CNN article notes that debates may not tell much, Kerry received a 5 point bump in the 2004 polls after similar post-debate assessment to Obama. But then dropped 5 points after the last debate, where he received almost the same numbers, only time will tell.

John McCain suspends his campaign

This was one of the craziest stories this election I think. Senators Barack Obama and John McCain were working on a joint statement about the economy when all of the sudden McCain says he’s suspending his campaign to go to Washington and work on the bailout plan. I don’t know if this has ever happened before, but it seems like a pretty extreme move.

Of course, the GOP hails it as a great and selfless move to save the American economy, and the Democratic party says it’s political pandering.

I feel like it’s hard to see this one as a selfless move, everything in a campaign is a calculated political move, just as I’m sure everything Obama does on the trail is carefully considered and calculated. Not to mention there were a few things I found particularly fishy about the move

First, McCain quickly mentioned suspending the debate and reshcudling to…drumroll please…the date of the VP debates, why would he suggest that unless he wanted for some reason to reshcudle the VP debates? I’m sure Sarah Palin, even if she is ready to go toe to toe with Biden, would benifit from more time and preperation.

Also, McCain said he would only come to the debates if there was a plan in place before he left, but clearly he did attend the debates, and there is not a plan in place, and how helpful he was while in washington is also debated.

This blogger sums it up well, it was a resonable move for McCain since he was loosing ground in the polls, particularly because of the economy, and this may have stopped that slide some, then if Obama followed him it looked like..well…Obama was following him. Overall I’m not sure how much good it did though.

More ‘Elitist’ Fundraising from Obama

This story broke in the middle of last weekabout senator Barack Obama holding a fundraiser with celebrities such as Barbra Streisand. The McCain campaign called Obama out on the move saying he was two faced in talking about being with the people of America, then going to a fundraiser with celebrities.

“‘(He) talks about siding with the people, siding with the people — just before he flies off to Hollywood for a fundraiser with Barbra Streisand and his celebrity friends,” McCain told a rally in Vienna, Ohio, a critical battleground state. “Let me tell you my friends, there’s no place I’d rather be than here with the working men and women of Ohio,’” said a statement on the RNC website.

While the timing may have been bad from Obama, it didn’t seem particularly unreasonable for him to go to a fundraiser that I’m sure was scheduled months in advance, besides isn’t this the sort of thing all candidates do? as a matter of fact it is.

Besides that, both candidates have been to a number of high profile, and very lucrative fundraisers, neither of them drawing fire from the other. I think this was a case of bad timing on Obama’s part and McCain took a quick shot at it while he could. The story didn’t gain a tremendous amount of traction beyond that day, and there was sufficient response noting McCain’s own fund raising efforts that it did not seem to effect the polls, but who knows about the minds of the voters who may view this as another thing to add to the list of reasons Obama is an elitist.

Some real fake sites

Altavista is a search engine that has been around since 1995. The page is simple and has many of the typical search engine features, ( web, images, video) and also adds audio and news searches. There is an “advanced search” option, and a link to the “babble fish translator” which is free and widely used to translate text directly from or to many different languages. There is nothing which would indicate the the site is fraudulent or selling a particular product besides ad revenue form the search engine. A search on the owner of the site reveals it is owner by Yahoo! and registered to MARKMONITOR INC, which appears to be a fraud protection agency

This blog bills itself as a dog politics site “The Political Blog For Dog Owners: Wake Up & Smell The Dog – There’s A New Breed Of Voter In Town” but fits few of the standards for being a legitimate, reliable website. First of all, the last post was in April of this year, and is a lengthy plug for a book written by the owner of the website. Besides that, most of the other posts seem to be simply anti-PETA, and the graphics on the side spout the same message. There are some sites sourced, but they are all one sided accounts of PETA hating. The author is Barbara Haywood, who there is not a lot of information on google about, but wrote the book promoted on the page. John R. Henderson mentions you should see what the purpose of a page is, and the purpose of this one seems to be persuade and sells, rather than inform.

This website is a comedic site, and while none of the information on it is false, the site is about water, and how dangerous it can but, but calls it by it’s scientific name – dihydrogen monoxide. While the site looks fairly convincing at first, it can be easily deduced that it is a fake. There are a number of chincy graphics on the page, something Henderson warns about, and the site is supposedly a part of the “Environmental Assessment Center” an agency which a google search reveals does not exist. The site also says at the bottom “Note: content veracity not implied” and is copy written to an individual, not an organization. There is a place on the site that describes what the site is an is for also, so any sort of search beyond the surface would reveal the truth behind the site

Dead Heat

After the conventions one thing has become clear, this election is going to be close. For the months leading up to the conventions Senator Barack Obama was showing a small lead over Senator John McCain, and in the weeks since the conventions McCain has had an even smaller lead over Obama. This past week? They are drawing dead even. The McCain campaign owes a great deal of its post-convention success to the addition of Governor Sarah Palin to the ticket. She faced immediate scrutiny following her selection on issues like her unmarried daughter’s pregnancy, and the ongoing investigation into the firing of a public safety commissioner she may have had a hand in, but now that the initial controversy has more or less blown over she is winning over two groups McCain has had trouble with – core republicans, and independent voters.

Now that the race is in at a statistical tie, both camps are dreaming up ways to take the edge. Obama campaign may be bringing out the big guns, namely, his running mate Senator Joe Biden. Biden, known for his quick wit and ability as an attack-dog may be entering into that role in the coming weeks. It’s anyones guess as to whether this will help or hurt Obama, who’s campaign has thus far been predicated on staying away from the mudslinging that usually permeates presidential elections. On the other hand, democrats have been clamoring in recent weeks that the reason McCain has been gaining in the polls is because Obama’s responses to McCain’s ads have not been strong enough. We’ll see how that one pans out.

But this was all before one of the defining issues of this election and of this year had broken out – the crashing of some of the United States’ largest financial institutions, and ensuing plummet of the stock market. Polls and history suggest that a faltering economy is good for the campaign of the party opposite the incumbent’s, in this case Obama, and he is wasting no time in seizing on the opportunity this could be for him.

Five Sites for Journalists

www.wikipedia.org – While not to be taken at face value, wikipedia is a fantastic source of aggregated background information that usually has links to reputable and citable sources about nearly every topic.

www.google.com – A lot of powerful tools if you make your own front page, including the ability to quickly scan headlines from a number of RSS feeds, and gmail provides a lot of great organizational tools.

www.hoovers.com – Basic information on most major companies, with financial reports.

www.poynter.org – A site that not only has a lot of current news and active bloggers, but tips for journalists and job postings, seminars and “webinars.”

www.fedstats.gov – A portal for any publicly published statistics taken by a federal agency from “Abortion” to “Wholesale trade”

I am, and don’t call me Shirley

Every week there is at least one political story on the campaign that makes me do a double take and ask if it is really a story. When more and more stories come up from the dregs of the blogosphere and get filtered through reputable news sites like Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s pregnant unmarried daughter, and wild accusations are everywhere, it is interesting to take note of where these stories came from and some possible reasons why. I will be trying to do that kind of analysis with this blog on some of the most interesting stories that come up every week.

I am a moderate democrat and will be voting for Obama in this election, but I think both campaigns make some pretty wild accusations of each other, and I intend to analyze the news from a non-partisan angle.