A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
posted on Oct 7, 2008 - View this thread

If you missed the VP debate last night, you might enjoy this video of VP debate highlights in song and dance by Michael Gregory. (Also available: Running From Your Shadow, presidential debate highlights in song and dance.) DLYT
posted on Oct 3, 2008 - View this thread

"You know, we spent $3 million to study the DNA of bears in Montana. I don't know if that was a criminal issue or a paternal issue..." (previously) The infamous bear study bought up by McCain in the first debate is one of his favourite pork barrel examples, but little actual information is given about the study. Here is the website giving details about the project, with more info, a quick fact sheet and a podcast. This is one of the rare times when a candidate will air an opinion on science in a popular setting....
posted on Sep 29, 2008 - View this thread

Nate Silver, the proprietor of the fantastic electoral projection site FiveThirtyEight.com, notices that the presidential betting market on Intrade is behaving very oddly: "[S]ome individual trader or some small group of traders are shorting all the Obama contacts in bulk and resetting the entire market. The markets then organically climb back upward until the rogue trader strikes again six or eight hours later."
posted on Sep 24, 2008 - View this thread

McCain calls time! John McCain has asked that the first presidential debate be postponed and he will suspend his campaign so he can focus on the economy. No response from Obama yet. But it may be due to his approval rating, The latest FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll shows Obama has taken a 45-39 percent lead.
posted on Sep 24, 2008 - View this thread

Rusty Shackleford over at right-wing anti-Muslim jihad blog The Jawa Report has posted that the Obama campaign, in an effort to portray Sarah Palin a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, is engaged in a smear campaign through the use of viral video and astroturf techniques on You Tube.
posted on Sep 24, 2008 - View this thread

Obama: The Price of Being Black
posted on Sep 22, 2008 - View this thread

Have we seen this election before? Life imitates art as the current election cycle continues to echo the fictional 2006 Preisdential Election on The West Wing. Will the debates then be live and unmoderated like the seventh season episode "The Debate"? Will the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate suffer the same fate? And what would two-term President Josiah Bartlett say to Senator Barack Obama? (Final link warning: fan fiction by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin)
posted on Sep 21, 2008 - View this thread

Perhaps you were wondering if Barack Obama is a muslin? Or perhaps a muslim?
posted on Sep 14, 2008 - View this thread

Have the wheels come off the straight talk express? At least one sleeping giant woke up today: the NYT finally gives Sarah Palin a thorough vetting and the results aren't pretty. The McCain campaign's aggressive - and many say dishonest - tactics in promoting Palin may have sparked the beginnings of a media backlash. Camp McCain's reaction: We don't care and intend to stay on offense. And about that offense, they will soon have some help: Group With Swift Boat Alumni Readies Ads Attacking Obama. How low will things go? At this week's Values Voters Summit, 'Obama Waffles' with racial stereotypes were all the rage.
posted on Sep 14, 2008 - View this thread

Don't Think of a Maverick! George Lakoff offers some tips on framing to the Obama campaign.
posted on Sep 12, 2008 - View this thread

Craig Mod, who you may remember was the developer of geographic news attention index buzztracker.org, has developed a new interface to the 2008 election: Everymoment Now.
posted on Sep 10, 2008 - View this thread

Despite his carefully cultivated “maverick” image, McCain is playing it traditional and conservative by using HTML 4.01, the W3C spec from 1999.
posted on Sep 9, 2008 - View this thread

"Political content aside, the discussion provided a lovely example of how a term from literary theory has established itself in American political discourse." via Language Log

"We may expect the following. Language will be carefully crafted. Advertisements will focus on personal narratives. The campaign will employ “attack” advertisements that emotionally sway voters. Policy will be sketchy with vague descriptions that emotionally satisfy Americans while offering scant details. The emphasis will be on creating narratives that resonate with the values, beliefs, and identities of prospective voters."
– Literary Gulag, on Lakoff, Nunberg, Westen, and the narrative of the 2008 presidential election.
posted on Sep 9, 2008 - View this thread

"On the weekends, he favors two-hour bicycle rides at a Secret Service training facility outside Washington, where he sometimes asks companions and agents to ride behind him so that he can have the illusion of riding alone." With all the focus on the upcoming election, what of George W. Bush?
posted on Aug 31, 2008 - View this thread

Fear and Loathing in Denver, Colorado - August 24-28, 2008.
posted on Aug 29, 2008 - View this thread

On the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, Barack Obama accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party to be their Presidential candidate with a speech so well-crafted that Pat bloody Buchanan couldn't stop raving about it, and had to be cut off by his fellow broadcasters. It was an occasion so historic that McCain chose to release an ad congratulating his opponent.
posted on Aug 28, 2008 - View this thread

At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong.
posted on Aug 20, 2008 - View this thread

When art imitates life. The Onion once again.....
posted on Aug 20, 2008 - View this thread

It's official. Obama has won the Democratic Party nomination for the US Presidency. In response, McCain has launched a "verbal sortie" against him and the media has already begun disecting Hillary's campaign.
posted on Jun 3, 2008 - View this thread

"People are talking, but no one is really listening. For all the fun and fantasy that can be had following this election on the internet, the overriding impression it gives after a while is of tuning into thousands of people as they sit in their cars and complain about the traffic." David Runciman on "The Cattle-Prod Election."
posted on May 30, 2008 - View this thread

Canadian freelance writer and comic-book vandal Chris "MGK" Bird surveys the field of Obama's potential running mates.
posted on May 19, 2008 - View this thread

The Democratic Primary Season in 7 Minutes.
posted on May 6, 2008 - View this thread

The hidden factor in Hillary Clinton's rebound: committed Republicans voting in open primaries who want to prolong the messy battle for the Democratic nomination, encouraged by right-wing radio hosts like Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh. Or is Hillary just suddenly more palatable to conservatives than multi-culti Obama?
posted on Mar 17, 2008 - View this thread

Derrick Ashong A camera-wielding interviewer collars Mr Ashong in the street and starts to pepper him with questions. The interviewer assumes that his victim's casual appearance—he is wearing a baseball hat, a shell necklace and is chewing gum—betokens an equally casual approach to politics. “Do you have any specifics?” he demands aggressively. “What are their policies?” Mr Ashong delivers a series of carefully argued replies that could form the basis of an editorial in a serious newspaper. Emotional responses count too.
posted on Mar 4, 2008 - View this thread

In 1980 Ronald Reagan surrounded himself with economic thinkers that challenged the prevailing Keynesian doctrine with supply side economics. In the same way that Arthur Laffer and Milton Friedman drove Reagan's thinking. A new generation of economists from the University of Chicago are advising Barack Obama. Will behavioral economics change politics the way supply side economics did a generation ago?
posted on Feb 26, 2008 - View this thread

Obama Reggaeton from the Tejanos wing of the Viva Obama movement. Love the big, white hats!
posted on Feb 22, 2008 - View this thread

In trademark style, Lawrence Lessig today announced the creation of a congressional exploratory committee. If in the next few days he decides to officially enter the race, he'll be running in the special election on April 8th to fill the CA-12 seat recently vacated by the death of Tom Lantos. A run by Lessig would likely be seen as a new front the the technocratic, post-partisan movement Barack Obama is attempting to catalyze; Lessig was a colleague of Obama at the University of Chicago law school, helped to draft Obama's technology plan, and is describing his potential run (his first attempt at public office), and the larger Change Congress project he also announced today, as an attempt to save Congress as an institution from the corrupting influence of money.
posted on Feb 19, 2008 - View this thread

20 minutes or so on why I am 4Barack. A very thoughtful and eloquent comparison (transcript) of the core differences between Obama and Clinton - by Creative Commons CEO and Professor Lawrence Lessig.
posted on Feb 5, 2008 - View this thread

How Obama is branding himself in graphic design
posted on Jan 9, 2008 - View this thread

Pride and Palpitations over Barack Obama's victory in Iowa.
posted on Jan 6, 2008 - View this thread

This Flash tool from the New York Times shows you how many times each candidate has named each of the other candidates, suggesting which candidates the others perceive as worthy of addressing. It's a very neat and efficient visualization tool. Guess who everyone can't stop mentioning?
posted on Dec 21, 2007 - View this thread

Bill Clinton on Charlie Rose - on display: Thoughtful Visionary as well as Political Animal; cf. Howard Dean and Jimmy Carter.
posted on Dec 16, 2007 - View this thread

"I'm not sure the sight of Obama Girl jiggling her junk in pink panties emblazoned with the letters OBAMA across the back is going to move voters in New Hampshire ... but damn, nobody's jiggling for Giuliani, that's for sure." via, also ...
posted on Jun 15, 2007 - View this thread

The Battle to Control Obama's Myspace
posted on May 2, 2007 - View this thread

Let's play 20 questions. 20 candidates for President, 20 personalized questions.
posted on Feb 16, 2007 - View this thread

“President Barack Hussein Obama – it does have a ring to it, doesn't it?” – Who’s hot for (and who’s not for) America’s up-and-coming presidential wonderboy.
posted on Dec 15, 2006 - View this thread

The first black president of the United States.
posted on Jul 28, 2004 - View this thread