10 posts tagged “election”

Every now and then, the MSM comes in useful.

   From the Disney group, a story on Hillary Clinton, portrayed as a union-hating board member of Wal-mart between 1986 and 1992, which shows that not all of the MSM is in love with her. Or that the tide is turning in the lead-up to what I saw TV5 in France called super-mardi.
   Does anyone believe that she was so naïve that she did not know that Wal-mart products sold during its buy US-made drive were being made in Red Chinese (and other) sweatshops? While board members might not know about tactical moves on companies they serve at, I don’t completely buy it.
   Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that, according to the TV news report, Sen. Clinton now distances herself from her Wal-mart past, saying she no longer agrees with its principles and that she respects the rights of its workers to unionize.

This was interesting today. The Daily Telegraph reported on the campaign spending (specifically on make-up and grooming) by Nicolas Sarkozy and his rival Ségolène Royal during the French presidential election. Despite being thought of as a conservative newspaper, it painted a rosier picture of Mlle Royal than M. Sarkozy.
   First up, Sarkozy’s (over-)spending was the lead-in to the story, even though Royal’s was much higher. Mlle Royal’s spending was left to the third paragraph.
   Secondly, the standards used to round off are biased in favour of Ségolène Royal. Here are the figures I uncovered, compared with the rounding that the Telegraph did.

• Nicolas Sarkozy, spent €34,445—rounded in The Daily Telegraph as €35,000 (I would have rounded it to €34,000 or said ‘around €34,500’)
• Ségolène Royal, spent €53,581—rounded in The Daily Telegraph as €52,000 (I would have rounded it to €54,000—correspondent Henry Samuel shaves off a hefty €1,581 for the socialist leader)

Reimbursements:

• Nicolas Sarkozy was reimbursed €11,482—The Daily Telegraph reported €12,000 (I would have rounded it to €11,000 or said ‘around €11,500’)
• Ségolène Royal was reimbursed €17,220—The Daily Telegraph reported €17,000 (I would have used the same figure)

In every case, it might have been easier just to report the actual figures.
   The message, unless the figures I got from the French media are wrong: overestimate the spending by the right and make it look like the President is getting more state funds; underestimate the spending by the left and understate its burden on the state.
   The Telegraph might need to re-examine its mathematics.

Ooh, I love it. The usual Red technique of scaring people from having free speech.
   Mr Andrew Moore has set up a website called Don’t Vote Labour. Whether you agree with Mr Moore or not, he has a right to express his political view. He is not endorsing any particular candidate: he just wants Labour out of power.
   The media are trying to make him feel bad for expressing his view, as far as I can tell. The stories are all over the news today: Mr Moore, they say, will be investigated by the Electoral Commission as his site could be a breach of the Electoral Finance Act 2007, which covers, inter alia, website communications. Judge for yourself and see if this is the gist of the articles, which are making out like something very terrible has taken place.
   Bollocks.
   Not only has Mr Moore not heard from the Electoral Commission, the Commission spokesman contacted by the NZPA suggests that no investigation has even taken place. Read his quotation carefully. Nothing has happened yet.
   There is more nothingness to the article than in an episode of Seinfeld.
   Some pro-government journalist probably stumbled on the website and decided to make life hard for Mr Moore and hoped to scare him into taking it down.
   The effect is that it has popularized it: the media have done all the marketing for him.
   We have to be very careful about reading these articles and whether something is in the past or future tense.
   I say that Mr Moore’s site does not even fit in to the requirements of an election advertisement under s. 5 of the Act.
   Any prosecution would have to be under s. 5 (1) (a):

(1) In this Act, election advertisement—
   (a) means any form of words or graphics, or both, that can reasonably be regarded as doing 1 or more of the following:
      (i) encouraging or persuading voters to vote, or not to vote, for 1 or more specified parties or for 1 or more candidates or for any combination of such parties and candidates:

but if that were the be all and end all, subs. (2) would not exist.
   I reckon that the site is excepted. If it’s considered a news media internet site (a wider and wider definition these days), then it fits under s. 5 (2) (d):

(2) The following are not election advertisements: …
   (d) any editorial material, other than advertising material, published on a news media Internet site that is written by, or selected by or with the authority of, the editor or person responsible for the Internet site solely for the purpose of informing, enlightening, or entertaining readers:

or how about paragraph (g)?

   (g) the publication by an individual, on a non-commercial basis, on the Internet of his or her personal political views (being the kind of publication commonly known as a blog).

It’s not a blog but one can easily make an argument on why Parliament put that part in parentheses.
   I’d happily swear that Mr Moore, with his site, is doing no more and no less than what a regular blogger might, and he should not be penalized just for being smarter with his web design skills. He’s simply organized his opinions better so we can see access them rather than trawl through dozens of posts to get them all.
   For years I worked on websites and put up what might amount to blog entries in 2008—but I did them in good ol’ HTML and made them look like regular web pages because I don’t always think the blog æsthetic looks nice.
   Mr Moore shouldn’t be penalized on his tastes, either.
   And, let’s face it, if you manually typed in dontvotelabour.org.nz as I did, you are pretty sure what political position the site has taken. Or if you clicked on the link here. Mr Moore is not shoving his website down our throats—which makes it just like a blog that we have to access ourselves. This is not from a push medium like TV or print.
   I think any judge analysing the rationale of why words under s. 5 (2) (g) are parenthesized would come to a conclusion that Parliament meant for a wider definition and that those words are merely a guide.
   And before you think I am launching into Labour, I would have written a similar post defending a webmaster who set up a Don’t Vote National or Don’t Vote Greens website.

Hillary Clinton has upset over the anti-Obama comments made by one of her reps.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iviufLueJCRqiUapUAxXQ3yACUqAD8THFBOG0

So he’s gone from her campaign.
   There are two interpretations:

• if you mess with Hillary over expressing your own free will, then the Patriot Act is going to look like a walk in the park;
• Barack Obama is her choice for running-mate. So leave the man alone.

   And a Clinton–Obama ticket is going to be hard to beat in marketing terms because both candidates have had a huge MSM build-up.
   Who does the GOP have? Romney–Huckabee? Now that I say it, it sounds pretty good, but it also sounds like it belongs to an episode of Bewitched as a rival agency to McMahon & Tate. Damn, Obama is just an exotic surname in an age of internationalism. A marketer’s dream.
   Thompson and another yet-to-emerge Law & Order cast member? Somehow, I think we won’t see FDT in the vernacular with Fred polling so low in New Hampshire—except maybe as a typo when someone is trying to type FDR.
   Giuliani and someone that the Democrats will rip into? McCain and … um … well, heck, just McCain?
   We are talking a lot of lost ground in terms of publicity here for the Republican Party. It needs to wake up and stand united, and with someone very, very credible that will beat the Democrats on substance—then brand it all correctly.

I believe Sen. Barack Obama is right to have admitted to drug use, including cocaine, in his youth. It serves several purposes:

• disarming Republicans or journalists who want to snoop;
• if he’s prepared to admit to this, then it’s unlikely he has more skeletons in his closet.

And one of his campaigners gave a good response when it was raised privately by someone working for the Clinton campaign: ‘Senator Clinton’s campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he’s talked about the lessons he’s learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country. He plans on winning this campaign by focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people.’
   It actually sounds like the sort of line Bill Clinton used in 1992.
   However, I am worried on numerous counts. I would prefer a leader who had stronger principles as a young lad, showing that it is possible to not take a ruinous path. I have a problem with the prospect that young people will say, ‘Hey, I am smoking pot, and it works for me now, so dammit, I’ll just keep doing it till I have the realization Barack Obama did.’
   It takes the responsibility of refraining from drug use away.
   I admire Sen. Obama for owning up to his past and telling us the lessons he learned—but I do not think I would run for office if I had his history. Then, being drug- and tobacco-free, I cannot truly say I know how he thinks. Maybe this is a good way to remove a lot of the guilt and to encourage those who have taken drugs to get off them. Personally, however, I don’t see it.
   Sen. Obama comes across, image-wise, negatively to me—not because of the drug past but he just seems like yet another typical politician. As with Sen. Clinton or Mr Giuliani, he tries to say politically nice things.
   I think Americans might want a straight talker as their 44th President. I still don’t know what half of these candidates vying for their party’s nomination stand for based on their voting record or press statements. And when I do, they come across as hypocritical.

Kerry Prendergast is back as mayor here in Wellington for a third and final term, according to the Fairfax Press:

She won 21,603 votes, with her closest rival Ray Ahipene-Mercer on 10,700, a majority of 10,903—an increase on her 2004 winning margin. Third place went to Bryan Pepperell with 9915 votes.

I wish her well for this term and hope that some of the grander initiatives for innovation and the environment are seen through. The 2010 election will be a tricky one: the start of a new decade and with it, new expectations. It will also be a free-for-all when Kerry steps down.

I know white people all look the same, but has anyone noticed that Hugh Barr, running for Council, whose advertisement is on Kent Terrace on a trailer, bears a remarkable resemblance to the fictional Rt Hon James Hacker MP? Subtract Mr Barr’s glasses and it is Paul Eddington. On that note alone, Mr Barr stands a very good chance.

I began logging some of my predictions at Facebook for fun. My first was that Nicolas Sarkozy would win the French presidential election, which has come to pass.
   I have had no major 9-11-type events, just little, trivial things. I dreamt that the French president was a woman in a dream over a month ago, and since my dreams are never literal, I concluded that it would be Sarkozy. Unfortunately, by the time I logged the prediction, it was becoming clear, after the first round, that Sarkozy would pip Ségo.
   The group is just for fun, though if we start getting a better-than-average score, then we might have to admit to having some abilities.

When I think about my career with fingers in different pies, it’s not that unusual. Sen. Fred Dalton Thompson of Tennessee, whom Americans will know from Law & Order and whom most of us foreigners know from Die Hard 2, could hold down representing his state and plain representin’ on TV and film.
   I kept saying that Republicans might find a candidate who is well known. Could it be Mr Thompson? More people have seen him than Sen. McCain. Only former mayor Giuliani has a higher profile.
   But all these guys do not have much hair.
   Americans always have trouble voting for someone who has less hair than his opponent, whether for a presidential, senatorial or congressional race (there are some exceptions, of course). You can be black or female, just not bald.
   “Hat tip” to Dox² for the video below.

Sen. Kerry: ‘I voted for using humour in my speeches before I voted against it.’