Archive for: April, 2006

Kos’ Minion Has Trouble Counting

Apr 22 2006 Published by under Candidates, Democrats, Politics

PoliticsGeorgia10, one of Kos’ followers, has an amusing post arguing that the Democrats have a clear, plain agenda.

If you haven’t noticed, Democrats have been making a concerted effort to explain in plan and simple terms what Democrats stand for. Yes, Democrats have finally trained themselves to drop the clause-laden, inaccessible rhetoric of the past, and are beginning to embrace a much more effective method of educating voters about the Democratic Party.

Read further into the post, and you see ample evidence of the clear, simple plan…

Dean said that Democrats will fight for a six-point plan… last fall, Rahm Emanuel laid out a five-point plan on Meet The Press… earlier this month, Senator Kerry also described in plain terms the Democratic agenda [Seven Points]… Senator Kennedy’s new book, America: Back on Track, is centered around seven main points…

Six points, five points, seven points, ten points–the general idea is that Democrats are taking affirmative steps to shatter the myth that “Democrats don’t have any ideas.”

Nobody has argued that the Democrats aren’t full of ideas. By my count, and Georgia’s post, I figure there are somewhere between 5 and 10 of them. The trouble is they’re the same 5-10 ideas they’ve been trying to sell for the last 5-10 years, and voters aren’t buying.

Finding a new way to package a bad product doesn’t make you an effective seller – you still need to close the deal. Given that your sales force can’t agree on how many ideas you have or how to sell them, you’re still having trouble with that step.

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Politicos, Cartoons, And The Web

Apr 22 2006 Published by under Politics, The Internet

PoliticsThe InternetWired Magazine takes a look at the use of animation in politics this week. It’s not a bad article, but you can tell it’s written by a guy that doesn’t spend much time tracking this stuff.

Animated political ads got their start in 2004 when JibJab hit it big with a parody called This Land starring presidential candidates John Kerry and George W. Bush.

Actually, Steve, political campaigns and groups fighting political battles have been using animation to make their point for years. the League of Conservation Voters had a great ad titled Bear Votes going back into 1999-2000. Patrick Ruffini had been doing flash animations at the RNC back in the ’02 cycle. On the Democrat side, a company called Free Range Graphics was doing a huge amount of political work for groups like Amnesty International in the late 90s.

To suggest that nobody had used animation in politics before 2004 makes you look stupid, Steve. Maybe you should do some research before you write. You remember research, right? It’s that mundane detail that separates journalists from two-bit hacks.

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Some Advice

Apr 21 2006 Published by under The Internet, Yuck!!!

National Center For Men's EyesoreIf you want to be taken seriously as an organization, you can either avoid the web or you can spend the resources to have a professional quality site. Having a web site that looks like your neighbor’s kid built it in 1996 is not an option.

The National Center for Men visited Howard Stern to promote their “equal reproductive rights for men” campaign. Intrigued by the oddity of their agenda, I went to check out their site and found the eyesore you see here in miniature.

You’re better off not having a site if the other option is having a crappy site. Something like this piece of garbage makes you look like a fly by night operation not a national movement.

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Planned Parenthood Condom Spot

Apr 21 2006 Published by under Marketing, Sex

SexSan Francisco’s chapter of Planned Parenthood has a new TV ad promoting condom use. It’s edgy and somewhat sexy which means two things – 1) it may actually be effective and 2) the “teach abstinence” crowd will hate it.

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I’m More Afraid Of FEMA’s Reaction To The Bird Flu

Apr 21 2006 Published by under Disease, Government, Waste

GovernmentDiseaseA new poll out indicates that American’s have little confidence in the Government’s ability to handle a bird flu outbreak. That’s not a huge surprise to me. I have little confidence that the government can handle most of the things we ask of it. My low expectations are rarely exceeded.

Now we have the bird flu. The media and the government have done a fabulous job of terrifying the public. So now I have a month supply of canned goods, water and other essentials stored under my stairs next to enough duct tape and plastic to cover my whole house..

I was only six the last time we freaked out over a breed of virus that was supposed to wipe us out. The government handled that one beautifully. The immunization killed more people than the virus, but that’s ok. It was dealt with in typical government fashion – fix it until it’s broken, then fix it again.

The one person who seems to have this whole thing in perspective, and the one guy getting the least media attention, is apparently the one guy that we should listen to the most. He’s not a professional bureaucrat like the head of HHS. He’s an expert on infectious disease at the National Institute of Health. What’s his take?

“It won’t be what you see in countries in which there is no regulation, in which there is no incentive to compensate farmers, in which the people, who are so poor, when they see their chickens are getting infected they immediately sell them or they don’t tell anybody because they don’t want them culled,” [Dr. Anthony] Fauci [the National Institutes of Health's infectious disease chief] said in Tuesday’s interview. “That is a critical issue that is fundamentally different than what we see in Western Europe and that we will see in the United States.”

It is entirely conceivable that this virus is inherently programmed that it will never be able to go efficiently from human to human,” Fauci said. “Hopefully the epidemic (in birds) will burn itself out, which epidemics do, before the virus evolves the capability of being more efficient in going from human to human.”

If not, we can practice unnatural selection by killing off our own with an unnecessary immunization the way we did in ’76.

Go Government!

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