Campaigns And Technology: Is Your "Tube" Red or Blue?

It amazes me to see how quickly politicians adapt new technology into their campaigns. I was a little apprehensive when I first noticed the trend a few years ago but since then it's kind of grown on me. It shows me that they are able to keep up to date in a rapidly changing world.

While browsing through Senate candidate Sherrod Brown's site today I came across an impressive list of blog resources that showed this trend was rapidly growing along with the whole "Web 2.0" movement. Among the sites mentioned and services offered were:

• Buckeye State Blog


• DailyKos


• Digg


• Facebook


• Google Blog Search


• Numerous RSS Feeds


• Odeo


• Ohio2006


• Smugmug (pictures with a Creative Commons copyright)


• Technorati


• TPMcafe


• YouTube

If I wanted to I could be Ted Strickland's friend on Myspace or have his blog posts show up on my Livejournal friends page. I could even buy Ted Strickland tea bags from his online store. The Democratic Party also has a Flickr group. Ted Stevens must be having a fit about all this stuff blocking his "Internets" (everyone else calls them emails) from going through the tubes on time.

Strickland Leads A Lot Of Polls

These poll numbers all came from Ted Strickland's campaign site but they match up with numbers I've seen elsewhere.

SurveyUSA 9/21
Strickland 56%
Blackwell 35%

Rasmussen Reports 9/20
Strickland 54%
Blackwell 35%

Ohio Poll 9/20
Strickland 50%
Blackwell 38%

Quinnipiac University Poll 9/19
Strickland 55%
Blackwell 34%

AARP Fixes "Don't Vote" Ad

A few weeks ago I complained about a 3/4 page ad in my local paper by the AARP simply saying "Don't Vote" and had the URL dontvote.com near the bottom. In a very rural area an ad like that is just a mistake and I couldn't believe they didn't notice that.

Thursday the ad appeared again but this time it contained the following text and, unlike the last one, prominently displayed the AARP logo.

Until you know where each candidate stands on the important issues. Find out what their stand is on health care. Hear what they have to say about Social Security. Make sure you know how they'll vote on retirement security issues. And then please, go to the polls and vote with an informed opinion. To learn where the candidates in the Ohio Congressional District 6 race stand on these and other important issues, visit dontvote.com or call 1-800-830-7844.

The first ad was nothing short of a pathetic mishap but the corrected ad shows promise.

Rush Limbaugh Must Still Be On Drugs

Rush Limbaugh is an idiot. It seems that on his radio show yesterday (9/22) he encouraged people to lie to Democrats about when the election is.

I mean, you take a look at the average Democrat voter registration drive, you can take for every hundred thousand voters they register, the cumulative IQ would probably be less than a pencil eraser. So when it comes time for the election, half of them can be fooled in saying, "No, it’s not Election Day. It’s tomorrow, Wednesday." And they show up on Wednesday to vote when the polls are closed, and the Democrats claim a trick has been played on them. That’s how stupid some of their voters are.

As if advocating voter disenfranchisement wasn't bad enough, he went on to talk about how it worked before.

You think I’m lying? That happened. Republicans did a dirty trick and sent a flier out a week early and said due to unfortunate circumstances, certain precincts, Election Day will be held on Wednesday, blah, blah, blah, blah. Democrats heard about it, this is such a dirty trick. They were worried because they knew it would work, because half their voters are stupid idiots! They have to be when you look at the way they vote.

I assume that pertains to the poster that was passed around African-American communities in Florida before the 2000 election that stated residents should deal with all outstanding fines and warrants before coming to vote on Wednesday. Of course there could have been other cases as well.

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Quote of the Moment: 9/23/06

The following statement was made by Jerry Falwell during the September 13th, 2001 episode of the 700 Club about the terrorist attacks.

I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively try­ing to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face, and say, "you helped this happen."

-- Jerry Falwell
9/13/2001

People like this are the reason we need seperation of church and state.

Is Osama bin-Laden Dead?

That appears to be the question of the day after a French Intel document speculating along those lines was leaked to the public. The unverified document claimed that bin-Laden may have dyied in a cave of typhoid fever a month ago.

Could this be true? Is this the "October Surprise" that Karl Rove has been telling Republican insiders to expect?

War Death Toll Surpasses 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have now killed more Americans then the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Now the death toll is 9/11 times two.

U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now surpass those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America’s history, the trigger for what came next.

The latest milestone for a country at war came Friday without commemoration. It came without the precision of knowing who was the 2,974th to die in conflict. The terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

An Associated Press count of the U.S. death toll in Iraq rose to 2,696. Combined with 278 U.S. deaths in and around Afghanistan, the 9/11 toll was reached, then topped, the same day. The Pentagon reported Friday the latest death from Iraq, an as-yet unidentified soldier killed a day earlier after his vehicle was hit by a roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad.

-- MSNBC

Republicans Removing Copyrighted Picture From Attack Ad

It seems Ohio 2006 is winning the war to have a copyrighted picture removed from a Republican attack ad against Democrat Matt Lundy, though the Republicans seem to be dragging their feet with the withdrawal.

Jeff Coryell, a lefty political blogger from Cleveland Heights who uses the moniker Yellow Dog Sammy, is treating Republican state Rep. Earl "Marty" Martin and three Cleveland TV stations like a fire hydrant.

Fed up with Martin's refusal to stop running a TV ad that uses a photograph of his Democratic challenger, Elyria Assistant Safety-Service Director Matt Lundy, that appears to have been lifted from Coryell's Web site, Coryell has sicced his legal beagle on the stations and the production house hired by the Ohio House Republican Campaign Committee.

"The advertisement contains an unauthorized derivative work based on an original photograph that Mr. Coryell created, and is therefore a copyright infringement," lawyer Subodh Chandra wrote in a letter sent Thursday to TV stations WKYC-TV 3, WEWS-TV 5 and WJW Fox 8 and Midwest Communications & Media in Columbus. The letter threatens a lawsuit if they do not stop using the photo. Coryell says the photo was taken from an interview he did with Lundy at a Bob Evans restaurant in Avon on Aug. 21.

Although Coryell and his lefty blogger buddies have been pounding Martin and the OHRCC for ripping off Sammy's intellectual property, House Republicans so far have resisted demands that the OHRCC change the ad.

Contacted this morning, however, House chief of staff Scott Borgemenke sounded more conciliatory.

"It looks to me like it's the same picture, but I'm trying to get verification on that and what do we have to do legally," Borgemenke said, adding that the OHRCC expects to make a decision by the end of the day. "The most we'll look at doing is pulling down (the ad) next week, prob Tuesday. It'll be the same spot with a replacement picture, but we've not concluded that we have to do that yet."

UPDATE:
House chief of staff Scott Borgemenke says the House would rather switch than fight.

"We think we're fine legally on it, but we are going to work over the weekend and change it," he said. "It's not worth the fight. It's going to be exactly the same. We're going to swap out photographs over the weekend."
- Ted Wendling

-- Cleveland.com

Of course they still refuse to admit that they did something wrong.

Group Claims Low-Income Voter Registration Attempts Are Inadequate, Files Lawsuit

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has filed a lawsuit claiming that the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services isn't doing their part to help low-income people register to vote.

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Strickland, Brown Still Lead In Polls

Polls are still showing Democrats ahead in Ohio's top 2 elections.

For the fourth time in three days, a poll on Ohio governor's race shows Democrat Ted Strickland with a double-digit lead over Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell.

A SurveyUSA poll released Thursday shows Strickland leading Blackwell 56 percent to 35 percent among likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

The same poll shows Democrat Sherrod Brown ahead of Republican incumbent Mike DeWine in the U.S. Senate race in Ohio, 52 percent to 42 percent.

The telephone survey contacted 900 Ohioans between Sunday and Wednesday. Of the group, 788 were registered to vote and 490 were judged to be likely voters.

-- Akron Beacon-Journal

In case your too lazy to read all that the results were:

Governor

Strickland: 56%
Blackwell: 35%

Senate

Brown: 52%
DeWine: 42%

Monroe County Still Leads Ohio in Unemployment

My county is still leading Ohio in unemployment according to the latest numbers.

For several months in a row, Monroe County has had the highest unemployment rate in the entire state of Ohio.

In August, the state's unemployment rate slipped a notch. Officials said joblessness stood at 5.7 percent in August, down from July's rate of 5.8.

The national unemployment rate for August was 4.7 percent, a full point lower than Ohio's.

State Department of Job and Family Services Director Barbara Riley said Ohio's labor market showed little change last month.

Monroe County's unemployment rate for August was 9.3 percent. -- WTOV 9

Republican Candidate Steals Photo From Democratic Blog

Ohio 2006 Elections is making the news due to Republican Speaker of the House Jon Husted's use of a Creative Commons copyrighted image (from this post) in an attack ad against Democrat Matt Lundy.

Jeff Coryell, a Cleveland Heights Democrat who blogs under the name Yellow Dog Sammy, has his own complaint about the anti-Lundy ad. He said the Ohio House Republican Campaign Committee, which produced the ads, stole a picture he took of Lundy during an Aug. 21 interview at the Bob Evans restaurant in Avon and put it in the ad.

“This is theft, plain and simple,” Coryell said.

So far, he’s not getting any satisfaction. He said he has yet to hear back from Martin and can’t reach anyone with the GOP campaign committee. But he intends to wait and see what happens before he takes any further action — which the former assistant U.S. attorney said could include a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Martin said he doesn’t know if Coryell’s complaint has merit and has forwarded it to state Republicans.
Borgemenke said the issue is being examined, but won’t the ad won’t be changed whatever is found.
“We won’t change the ad,” he said. “He can take us to court if he wants to.” -- chroniclet.com

For more information check out Ohio 2006's blog post.

Hugo Chavez Endorses Noam Chomsky

It seems that Hugo Chavez's mention of an old Noam Chomsky book has created a huge demand for the book.

During his two-hour rant on Bush's satanic identity, the communist leader took time to plug Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Domination" recommending that all Americans read it, and it looks like they might. Despite his supposed hatred of capitalism, Chavez's impassioned endorsement has jolted sales of the linguist's 2003 book from relative obscurity to Amazon's top 5 in less than 36 hours. Watch out Oprah!

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New Poll: Will the Democrats Take Back the House?

I've put a new poll in the sidebar (or you can vote below, they all send votes to the same place). It will be open until 11:59 P.M. September 27th.

Will the Democrats take back the House this November?

Yes No

Create Free Polls

Previous Poll Results:

Question: Should Ken Blackwell be able to run the Ohio November election in which he is a candidate for Governor?

Yes: 80%
No: 20%

Only 5 votes total.

Ney Gives An Inch, Padgett Wants A Mile

Bob Ney's handpicked successor Joy Padgett, who won the recent special primary election, is now calling for his resignation. Not only that she is saying that Congress should expel him if he doesn't.

Bob Ney has admitted to a serious crime. He will pay the appropriate penalty mandated by law.

The overwhelming show of support for me last night from all across the 18th District demonstrates that voters are ready to move away from the past, and move forward to a new day, united behind my positive vision of better jobs, lower taxes, improved education opportunities, and our shared values of family and faith.

This campaign proved that voters are not interested in the politics of negativity and personal destruction. They responded to my positive vision of leadership with integrity, boldness and a clear plan for the betterment of our district. That is what I have been campaigning on, and that is what I pledge to continue to focus on in the weeks and months ahead.

-- Joy Padgett

Article can be found here.

Bob Ney Resigns From Committee Leadership Positions

My local news is reporting that Bob Ney has resigned from his two committee leadership positions. Read the article for more information.

MSNBC Looks At the Ohio Valley

MSNBC has an article about the Ohio Valley area. It's always nice to see that the media know your area of the country even if it looks like they didn't look in to it as well as they could have.