February 26, 2009
Jabs at Gov. Bobby Jindal Keep Coming
As a politician, you know you've screwed up a speech when Tina Fey and associates begin to take on your persona.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's likeness to Page "Kenneth" is pure gold for SNL's Tina Fey and the cast of popular TV show 30 Rock, who are known for mocking Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential election.
Gov. Jindal came into the national spotlight Monday night to deliver the GOP's rebuttal of President Obama's Congressional address. Liberals and Conservatives agreed that Gov. Jindal's performance was severly underparr and a huge disappointment from the person dubbed as the GOP's latest and greatest next hope. A believable similarity between the 30 Rock character and Gov. Jindal can be found here.
Although monumentally bad national speeches aren't typically a clear indicator of electability (remember Bill Clinton's keynote speech at the '88 Democratic National Convention?), there weren't Facebook groups around to be made as online memorials like the Facebook group Bobby Jindal is Kenneth the Page, which has accumulated 11,557 members in the past three days.
Posted by Buzz Webster at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 23, 2009
State of the Union Address Online
CNN and Facebook will be live-streaming Pres. Obama's first State of the Union address to Congress on CNN.com/Live.
CNN and Facebook will be teaming up once again to deliver interactive coverage of the event. On February 24th, President Obama will be addressing a nation that is growing more panic-stricken by thoughts of recession and economic turmoil every day.
CNN and Facebook first teamed up to present Pres. Obama's Inauguration and set a record breaking online coverage. CNN.com Live's online coverage will begin at 8am in Washington and run until 5am on February 25.
On Facebook, the status updates for those using CNN.com Live will be published in their News Feed with hyperlinked tags that read "via CNN.com Live". Users' friends can click the link to watch the CNN.com Live coverage.
Republican Sen. Bobby Jindal's rebuttal will be also be covered.
Posted by Buzz Webster at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 17, 2009
Social Media Trumps Gov't Bureaucracy
A formal alert system of text messages or phone calls may have saved lives during the worst wildfire in Australia's history.
In the aftermath of the worst wildfire in Australia’s history, authorities and survivors are questioning whether a formal alert system of text messages or phone calls to warn residents of approaching wildfires might have saved lives.The sweeping wildfires that blazed across southeastern Australia last week killed 181 people.
The AP reports, “In Victoria, there is no formal alert system of text messages or phone calls to warn residents of approaching wildfires.” Australian officials reported that the fierce intensity and fast-changing direction of the fires make sirens, email and other warning systems ineffective, but Victoria state Premier John Brumby said, “A national emergency warning system for wildfires should be considered, and that he wrote to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd about the idea months ago.
The Australian Newspaper reports, “Attorney General Robert McClelland, working to expedite a nation-wide warning system utilizing cells and text messaging claims that the system was ready for deployment months prior to the fires but was delayed due to bureaucratic inefficiency and political wrangling.”
Social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr, as was true in the cases of the Mumbai Terrorist attacks and the California wildfires, were the first, most credible and raw sources of information during the disaster. Mark Parker from SmartSellingBlog reflected on social media and the wildfires saying, “It angers me that as I was getting official reports from credible, reliable sources this same information was taking hours to get distributed into the mainstream community. The TV either wasn’t up to date or the networks felt it wasn’t important enough to run anything more than hourly updates – it’s not like they don’t know how to use ticker updates.”
(The Australian) Plea on Automated Emergency Messaging
(NY Times) Australia Wildfire Suspects Are Freed
(AP) Australian official: Wildfire deaths will pass 200
(ABC) Social media explodes in wake of deadly bushfires
Posted by Buzz Webster at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 09, 2009
Online Republicans Vent Frustrations Over Stimulus Package
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Republicans are outraged over three GOP Senators who have pledged support for Pres. Obama’s recovery package.
Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Pennsylvania's Sen. Arlen Specter have gone rouge from the GOP to back Obama’s stimulus package. Their support of the stimulus package would give Democrats the 60-plus votes they need to overcome a Republican filibuster. Specter said Friday night that the agreement wasn't perfect but it was necessary.
Collin’s has said that her final vote on the bill is not a “foregone conclusion” and the Republican Senators can change their minds during the final vote on the merged House-Senate bill.
Disapproval from Republican bloggers and GOP leaders is reverberating across the Web. Newsmax reports that GOP bloggers are infuriated by the three "defecto" senators. One blogger named steelfish wrote on the Website FreeRepublic, “Arlen Specter is DONE. He won his last primary by less than 1 percent against a real conservative of Pat Toomey. And only because the President Bush came to PA and campaigned for him. He is DONE.” “They are frauds. RINOS" Republicans in Name Only, wrote a blogger named Croupier101 on the Fox News blog site.
The Maine Republican Party has received a flood of e-mails from people across the country, the majority scolding the Senators Collins and Snowe for their support of the bill.
President Obama has expressed his disappointment with the lack of bi-partisanship taking place and is utilizing the millions of e-mails of supporters he collected during his presidential run to encourage Economic Recovery House Meetings. In an email to supporters over the weekend, Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe wrote, “America is facing an urgent and unprecedented challenge. The economic crisis requires bold and immediate action. It’s up to all of us to make sure friends, family, and neighbors know the facts about this plan and how it will affect them and their families.”
The deadline that President Obama has created for the stimulus package is Feb. 16th.
Internet is new 'fireside' for Obama's Economic Recovery House Meetings
Obama team stimulus sell: bully pulpit, social networking, phone banks
Posted by Buzz Webster at 02:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 04, 2009
$9 Billion Dollar Broadband Bailout Or 'Cyberbridge to Nowhere'?
Will the $9 billion dollar broadband proposal help jump-start our economy?
The New York Times reports that those proponents of the $9 billion dollar broadband proposal, part of a $900 billion dollar stimulus package backed by the Obama Administration, think that expanding broadband will provide the jump-start our economy needs right now. It will create jobs, build crucial infrastructure and expand the information superhighway to every corner of the land to give local businesses, health care clinics and schools an electronic edge.
Although there is little to dispute on the benefits of providing more Americans with a broadband application in rural and urban areas such as access to online health care and virtual college courses, but some critics are arguing that the benefits of this proposal cannot be fully played out until at least 2015, during which time it will take to spend all of the money on infrastructure to deliver broadband services in these areas.
As the NYT reports, "the most immediate goal of the stimulus measure is to pump new spending into the economy."
(NYT) Internet Money in Fiscal Plan: Wise or Waste?
Posted by Buzz Webster at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
