A Majority of Americans Place Trust in Democrats' Ability to Lead US Economy

Download "Birth of Words" (mp3)
from "Very Best of the Samples 1984-1994"
by The Samples
What Are Records

More On This Album

written May 11, 2007

Those poll obsessed pollsters at Gallup reported today that a majority of Americans are more confident in the Democrats' ability to handle issues related to the economy. Gallup asked people within its sample group to rate the extent to which they have confidence in Democratic leaders in Congress, Republican leaders in Congress, Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and President Bush to “recommend the right thing for the economy.” 54% of those polled said they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in Democratic leaders. Of the four groups, President Bush had the lowest support with 43% of Americans placing trust in his ability to lead on economic issues. According to Gallup, this is the first time in the seven-year history of this particular pole that a majority of Americans voiced more confidence in Democrats compared to the other three national leaders on economic issues. The bar graph below charts the results of the poll.


Perhaps the most notable finding from the poll, is the percentage of self-described Republicans who placed more trust in the Democratic leaders in Congress to do the right thing for the economy. 34% of Republicans sided with the Democrats whereas 27% of Democrats placed more confidence in the Republican leaders in Congress.




Technorati Tags: giant podium, music, politics,economy,Gallup,Bush

The Candidates' Perceived Closeness to Bush: An Asset or Liability?

Download "The Drop" (mp3)
from "En Route"
by Four80East
Native Language Music

More On This Album

written on May 3, 2007

So far it appears that John McCain is the lone Republican to be openly critical of President Bush. Will any of the other Republican candidates use tonight’s debate as an opportunity to join McCain in distancing himself from George Bush’s handling of the Iraq war, or the debacle surrounding the firing of the U.S.attorneys, or perhaps the woefully mismanaged Hurricane Katrina disaster response? I can't imagine MSNBC's Chris Matthews not asking at least a few hardball questions with the intent of provoking the candidates to proclaim their support or disapproval of Bush's job performance.

According to a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted April 20-24, 76 percent of Republicans said they approved of Mr. Bush’s job performance. That seems to be reason enough for a candidate not to voice sharp criticism of Bush during the debate. However, only 32 percent of overall respondents in the New York Times/CBS News poll said they actually approve of the President’s job performance. As New York Times writer Adam Nagourney notes in his article today, “That is something certain to be on the mind of all the major Republican candidates on Thursday night — aware that they are not speaking, say, to a Republican audience in Dubuque, Iowa, but a national audience watching on MSNBC…”


Technorati Tags: giant podium, music, politics,debate,Republican,New York Times Poll,John McCain

Republican Candidates Set to Debate Tonight

Download "Note To Self" (mp3)
from "Hope In Isolation"
by The Martino Conspiracy
Aspirion Records

More On This Album

written May 3, 2007
Tonight marks the first televised debate among the ten Republican presidential candidates. The event, slated to run 90 minutes, will be televised by MSNBC, which also carried last week’s Democratic debate. The politico.com is co-sponsoring the event and will stream it live over the internet. In a very cool Web 2.0 twist, the politico is also accepting questions submitted via Internet from visitors to its website. The debate will feature three ten-minute segments during which time the candidates will have 30 seconds to respond to questions submitted from Politico readers. So far, more than 3,000 questions have been submitted. Will my question make the final cut?

With ten candidates in the mix, the debate will surly prove a challenge for any of the candidates to get serious air time. In last week’s debate, Barack Obama claimed the most speaking time with 12 minutes. Tonight’s debate will end up taking the form of an intense elevator pitch competition. Perfect for those of us with short attention spans and a touch of ADD.



Technorati Tags: giant podium, music, politics,Republican,debate,politico

Democratic Candidates Square Off in First Debate

Download "ave cruz"

(mp3)
from "CéU"
by CéU
Six Degrees Travel Series

More On This Album

written April 27, 2007

The eight democratic contenders participated in their first major debate last night on the campus of South Carolina State University. Sadly, I missed the entire event, but not surprisingly there’s no shortage of print coverage of the debate in the blogosphere and mainstream print media to fill me in on what I missed. Based on the reports I've read, foreign policy topics (notably Iraq and Iran) produced several testy exchanges originating on the left-wing side of the party from Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich . Overall, the pundits appear to agree that overall the debate was a rather tame affair that produced neither any regrettable emotional outbursts on the part of the candidates nor a shakeup of the current front-runners -- Clinton, Edwards, and Obama.

In the hope of finding a video replay of the event I went to MSNBC’s website, but all they are offering is a measly 13 minute 50 second segment from the full 90 minute debate. What about the other 75 minutes? Oh, I should point out the network is offering a full length transcript if you have the time, patience, and will power to click through 20 web pages of text. So the network is providing a full transcription, but not the full video. If this were year 2004, I would cut MSNBC some slack for this omission. Offering 90 minutes of video in the form of multiple shorter segments is not an unreasonable expectation.

The next major debate features the Republican candidates on May 3 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA. MSNBC will again televise the debate, but in a very creative and interactive twist the Politico.com will stream the event over the Internet and provide viewers an opportunity to question the candidates in real-time. Finally, the debate forum meets Web 2.0. And hopefully, this time, MSNBC will make the full length video replay available afterwards on its website!!!

Technorati Tags: giant podium, music, politics,debate,MSNBC,Democratic,Republican

Geekalicious Political Website

Download "Modern Living" (mp3)
from "The Rise And Fall Of Modern Living"
by The Shakes
Teenacide Records

• Buy at RealNetworks / Rhapsody

More On This Album

written April 24, 2007

GEEKALICIOUS! Perhaps that should replace the delicious tag for marking creative and unexpected new uses of youtube. The fine folks at Expertvoter.org have created a website that organizes youtube videos of the presidential candidates by policy issue. Want to know what a candidate’s thoughts are on the war in Iraq, immigration, energy policy, health care, or some other not so trivial policy issue? The Expertvoter website seems to me to be a fun if not quick and dirty way of discovering where the candidates stand on a variety of policy topics. At the very least, the website makes for a nifty digital photomontage of Brooks Bros suits.

Romney Discusses Biggest Issues Facing America

Download "Make Me Feel So Good" (mp3)
from "Chill Pill Vol. 2"
by Jazzelicious
Groove Gravy Records

• Buy at eMusic

More On This Album

written April 23, 2007

I finally tore myself away from the Yankees-Red Sox series to indulge my fix of You Choose ’08 videos. First up: Mitt Romney describing the “biggest issue that America faces” – a lofty enough subject for any serious presidential contender. In the span of 1 minute, 48 seconds, Romney goes on to identify not just one, but eight whopper issues facing the country:
1) The spread of radical Jihad
2) Nuclear proliferation
3) The emergence of Asia as an economic competitor
4) A deteriorating family structure (is this code for Romney’s opposition to same sex marriage?)
5) Better schools
6) Better health care
7) The environment
8) Energy independence

Shouldn't Iraq be at the top of the list? Other hot button issues left out of the great eight: global climate change, free trade, and immigration.

Top Six Presidential Fundraisers Suckle on Large Donors

Download "Uptown Up" (mp3)
from "Funk Overload"
by Parker, Maceo
What Are Records

More On This Album

written on April 17, 2007

More news on the fundraising prowess of the presidential candidates in Q1 – 79% of the total funds raised by the candidates came from large donations ($1,000 or more per donation). Small contributions of $200 or less accounted for only 14% of total candidate fundraising in Q1. The Campaign Finance Institute out of the George Washington University provides a break down of the relative contribution of donations of various size for each candidate. Looking at the top three Republican fundraisers, Romney pulled in 88% of total funds from large donors. Giuliani wasn’t far behind with 87% and McCain with 74%. The top three Democratic fundraising also relied heavily on big donors. Clinton’s share from the $1,000+ donation set was 86%. For Edwards it was 77%. Obama, however, seems to have broken away from the pack with respect to leveraging small donors. Though large donations filled the bulk of his campaign chest, he did manage to pull in the largest share of small donations of the top six fundraisers at 22%. This fact bodes well for the Obama campaign as it indicates that he is building a strong and economically diverse base of support. The percentage share of donations of $200 or less were as follows for the other top fundraisers:

Clinton – 9%
Edwards – 15%
Romney – 6%
Giuliani – 7%
McCain – 19%

Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani Lead All Candidates According to Latest Gallup Poll

Download "Jersey City" (mp3)
from "The Frequency EP"
by The Frequency
Ropeadope Digital

More On This Album


written April 10, 2007

The survey-obsessed folks at the Gallup Poll released results of their latest round of polling of the Presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton leads the democratic field by a wide margin -- 38% versus 19% for second place Obama and 15% for third place Edwards. On the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani enjoys a comfortable first place lead with 38% support compared to 16% for McCain and 10% for Fred Thompson. Mitt Romney trails far behind with just 6% support among those polled.

Does money matter in predicting who leads in the polls at this early stage? These Gallup results point to mixed results. Hillary Clinton raised about $1M more than Obama, but her commanding lead in this Gallup Poll suggests she’s getting more bang for the dollar. “The survey results suggest that while Obama may have had a great deal of financial momentum in the past quarter, it was not matched by any increase in voter support,” says Frank Newport of Gallup. Romney raked in $23M (almost $10M more than Giuliani) yet he’s trailing far behind in the Republican field. What’s not clear is how much the candidates actually spent in Q1. That data will be reported April 15. Check out the graphs below for the Gallup results.

$106 Million Flows into Candidates’ Campaign Coffers in Q1

Download "The Prevaricator" (mp3)
from "Optimism"
by One For All
Sharp Nine Records

More On This Album

written April 2, 2007

Senator Hilary Clinton and Mitt Romney crushed their respective party foes in fundraising for the first quarter ending March 31. Clinton’s campaign pulled in an impressive $26 million while Romney raised an equally impressive $23 million. Both figures far exceed Q1 presidential campaign fundraising levels from previous years. The other big fundraising news of the day was Senator McCain’s lackluster yield of $12.5 million.

How successful was Barack Obama? That question remains to be answered. His campaign has until April 15 to disclose Q1 figures. All told, the candidates raked in nearly $106 million though it’s not clear how much of the tally for each candidate is earmarked for the general campaign versus the primary campaign. With more states, including populous California and New York, proposing to move up their primaries to February 5, 2008, it’s even more important for the candidates to shore up their financial base early on. How much will a seat in the White House cost? With nine months still remaining before the first round of primaries it’s scary to think how much more money the candidates will inhale. Below are the tallies as of today.

Clinton $26M
Edwards $14M
Richardson $6M
Dodd $4M
Biden $3M
Total $53M

Romney $23M
Giuliani $15M
McCain $12.5M
Brownback $2M
Total $53M

Tommy Thompson Enters Fight for Republican Nomination

Download "Valldemossa (radio edit)" (mp3)
from "Valldemossa"
by Richard Dorfmeister / Madrid De Los Austrias
Sunshine Enterprises

More On This Album


written April 1, 2007


Tommy Thompson threw his hat into the ring today, becoming the latest entry in a growing field of Republican Presidential candidates. The former four-term Governor of Wisconsin and former Secretary of Health & Human Services during George W’s first term announced his candidacy on ABC’s “This Week” program. You can watch the video replay here.

During the show, George Stephanopoulis politely questions Thompson on his views concerning Iraq, health care, and the Gonzales scandal. On Iraq policy, Thompson said he would have a “completely different Iraq strategy” than President Bush. If elected, he would put the matter of whether US troops should stay in the country up to a vote by the Maliki government.

Certainly it’s a good policy to know whether the Iraqi government officially wants U.S. troops on the ground, but if Thompson was President today would he favor the sentiment of the Iraqi government over the sentiment of a majority of both chambers of the U.S. Congress in deciding whether and when to yank out the troops? On the subject of health care, Thompson believes every American should have health insurance. His idea is to aggregate uninsured individuals into a large group and then let health care providers bid on serving the group -- an auction of sorts. Thompson calls himself the “reliable conservative” in the Republican field. He doesn’t have an official website up yet and will no doubt be pressed to kick his fundraising activities into high gear.

John Edwards Powers Up on Social Networking Sites

Download "Beige Stationwagon" (mp3)
from "The 3rd Annual IODA SXSW Opening Day Bash Sampler"
by Canada
ioda

More On This Album

written March 26, 2007

The John Edwards campaign has established an impressively deep social networking presence on the Internet. His web site provides links to no less than two dozen online networks. Here’s the list of sites I found on his official website:

43Things, del.icio.us, essembly, facebook, flickr, gather, myspace, partybuilder, youtube, ning, metacafe, revver, yahoo! 360°, blip.tv, CHBN, vSocial, tagworld, collectivex, bebo, care2, hi5, xanga, livejournal

What, no Ortuk?

In contrast to what so far appears to be a rather meager online social network presence for Hillary Clinton, the Edwards’ campaign is social networking on growth hormones. I haven’t heard of many of these sites -- sparks my interest to click thru and see how Edwards is using these sites to build his base.

Check out Techpresident.com

Download "Tropical Depression" (mp3)
from "American Diary"
by Greg Joseph
High Wire Music

More On This Album

written March 25, 2007

While reading SFGate, I cought a passing reference to a very cool new political blog called Techpresident.com. The blog site differentiates itself from other political blogs in that it focuses on how Internet technology is being used by the candidates and their supporters to shape the 2008 election. From Techpresident.com:

“The 2008 election will be the first where the Internet will play a central role, not only in terms of how the campaigns use technology, but also in how voter-generated content affects its course. TechPresident.com plans to track all these changes in real-time, covering everything from campaign websites, online advertising and email lists to the postings on YouTube and who's got the fastest growing group of friends on MySpace.”

The blog even includes nifty charts and graphs tracking the number of YouTube subscribers and views per candidate. As of March 25, Barack Obama outpaced all other candidates (Dems and Republicans) measured by total number of views with 2.7 million YouTube views. Hillary Clinton comes in a far distant second place with about 75,000 views. Poor Chis Dodd has only a wee bit over 5,000 views. Do such metrics indicate which candidate is most popular at a point in time with voters in general? I doubt it. I would wager that Democratic supporters are far more active on social networking sites compared to Republican supporters. I will need to research that guess in future blog post.

Old High School Classmate and Ex-Con Dials Up Barack Obama

< Download "He Said What?" (mp3)
from "Live at Jazz Standard Volume One"
by Russell Malone
MAXJAZZ

More On This Album

written March 23, 2007

A front-page story in the WSJ reports that Keith Kakugawa, an old high school buddy of Barack Obama, made a surprise (if not unwelcome) phone call to the presidential hopeful last week -- almost thirty years after they had parted ways from Honolulu High School … and within a week of Kakugawa being released from prison. While Obama went on to college and political stardom, Kakugawa pursued an alternative career path that landed him in prison three times in connection with cocaine possession. Kakugawa apparently dialed-up Obama from a pay phone in L.A. to catch up and perhaps receive a helping hand.

The WSJ duly notes that Kakugawa is now homeless and living out of a “battered, dulled-silver 1989 Mazda 626, with nearly 156,000 miles on the odometer.” What’s worse is that Kakugawa doesn’t even get to claim sole residency in the car – he’s sharing it with another dude (a hip-hop rapper dubbed “Bobby Bang”). Wow! That’s some insightful, detail-rich factual reporting. I can’t help but think that voters now know more about the crappy car that Kakugawa is sadly calling home than it does about Kakugawa himself. A cover page story this is not. I wish Kakugawa well and hope he gets his life back on track, but evoking that sentiment is certainly not the point of the WSJ story. I’m not sure what the WSJ had in mind when it decided to run this as a page one story. Is this campaign fodder? Am I missing something here? I wag my finger in shame at WSJ. Next time, please publish a story that will help me to better understand the candidates in the upcoming election - distant as it is.

New York Joins the Super-Duper Tuesday Bash

Download "Cold Days From The Birdhouse" (mp3)
from "Fourteen Autumns, Fifteen Winters"
More On This Album



written on April 9, 2007


New York Governor Eliot Spitzer signed off on legislation today bumping up the state’s presidential primary from March 4 to February 5. New York joins a growing list of states that have moved up their primary dates to Feb 5. Dubbed “Super-Duper Tuesday,” February 5 is shaping up to be a key milestone in the race. So far about a dozen states will be running primaries on this date, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Utah. Another dozen or so states are considering a similar move. The AP quotes Spitzer stating, "Moving the primary date to February, we will help secure New York's large and diverse population an influential voice in selecting the 2008 presidential nominees." This front loading of the primaries will no doubt place significant strain on the candidates’ abilities to allocate stump time in each state leading up to the primaries. Frontloading is also likely to be a huge sink for campaign dollars as each candidate splurges on television ads. Will Super-Duper Tuesday (BTW – couldn’t the pundits come up with a better name than that?) steal thunder from Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire or make success in these earliest of primaries all the more critical? Regardless, there stands a good chance the party nominations will be locked up just a few short weeks after the Iowa Caucus. Click on the links to check out the primary schedules for the Democrats and Republicans.


Technorati Tags: giant podium, presidential elections, politics, democrat, republican, political blog

MySpace to Run Presidential Election in January ‘08

written on April 5th, 2007

In the latest election development in the Internet space, CNET reports that MySpace plans to hold a virtual presidential election on January 1 and 2, 2008. Given the millions of users on MySpace, this event could in fact prove to be the first real significant barometer of the public’s preference for candidates. With the election dates set for the first two days of January, the MySpace election could even end up trumping both the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries as the bellwether indicator for each candidate’s electoral viability. MySpace President Tom Anderson stated: “"Iowa and New Hampshire may be selecting delegates, but the MySpace vote will be the first test of where candidates stand in the election year."

Each of the candidates have created MySpace profiles and TechPresident.com is tracking the number of friends each candidate has on a weekly basis. As of today, Barack Obama leads all candidates on MySpace with over 92,000 friends -- nearly three times the number of “friends” as claimed by Hillary Clinton. On the Republican side, Ron Paul leads the field with a little over 5,000 friends. Only 5,000 friends!! I don’t understand this. Why don’t the Republican candidates have more of an active base on MySpace??? Obama’s effectiveness in raising significant funds via the Internet (about $7M) clearly demonstrates that the Internet space matters in this race.

Download ""My Sword Hand's Anger"" (mp3)
from "National Anthem of Nowhere"
by Apostle Of Hustle
Arts & Crafts

More On This Album

Technorati Tags: myspace, Giant Podium, election, politics, Presidential