Election speech/music videos

The US elections are over next week so bear with me. The fact is that there is just so much cool US election stuff out there that iIwant to share it all. So give me some credit for sifting through the pile and presenting you with only the very best.

This time, it's speech/music videos. . .

Communication is music. A great speech has rhythm and dynamics and introduction and theme development and climax and resolution and all the other qualities you find in a sonata or a ballad or, if truly great, a symphony. And there is no doubt that Obama is a great speaker. Don't take my word for it. Just check out his nomination acceptance speech or his speeches after the Iowa or New Hampshire primaries. They are truly awesome.

But back to communication as music. This video from will.i.am intertwines Obama speech patterns with music and it's deeply moving.

And if great communication is great music, then disjointed, comical communication becomes disjointed, comical music. Yes, you guessed it, Sarah Palin also has a video which transforms her speech patterns into music.

Obama under my bed; Palin in the trash

This is just too funny.

More money than you can imagine

For an election campaign, anyways. Tonight will see the airing of Barak Obama's 30 minute infomercial - an extended campaign ad with both taped and live components. Some of the taped components were filmed by Davis Guggenheim, whose father was the campaign documentarian of Robert F. Kennedy. Considering that Obama's speeches are scripted by a man who worked closely with Ted Sorenson, JFK's speechwriter, it seems that Obama has a fondness for that particular school of Kennedy associated talent.

According to the NY Times, this ad will be shown on NBC, CBS, Fox, Univision, MSNBC and two cable networks that cater to African-Americans, BET and TV One. Ross Perot is that last presidential candidate to run 30 minute ads; eight long infomercials to an average of 13 million viewers, with one of them getting 16.5 million viewers.

This media shot will cost $3million although some reports peg the price tag at more like $6million. Just to put it into perspective, the entire national Conservative Party campaign in the past federal election came in at around $22million for everything. In the last provincial election, all the political party spending put together didn't come close to $3million (I suspect it was more like half of that, numbers have yet to be released).

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. In October, the Obama campaign spent more than $100million and is currently running about 7700 commercials a day. McCain, because he accepted public funding, is limited to a campaign spending ceiling of $84million for everything - he's only running less than half the number of ads and can't afford anything longer than 30 seconds. A detailed breakdown of who spent how much on what ads can be found here.

McCain has had to make choices in where he spends money and he's chosen to play defence. While Obama can spend big money everywhere, McCain, has had to reduce his advertising in swing states like New Hampshire and Wisconsin so he can advertise in states he must win, like Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

If you are living in places like Washington DC, Virginia or Florida, you will find that almost every prime time show, daytime show and news program is saturated with political advertising. Mostly Obama's.

If money is the mother's milk of politics then Obama must be close to drowning.

Shepard Fairey

If you are following the Obama campaign (and what Offal reader could resist), then you will run across the Shepard Fairey Obama poster. He originally developed two: Hope and Progress. A first print run of 350 was sold out within minutes for $45 a piece. They started to pop up on eBay for as much as $10,000 in no time. What started as a poster of a politician had quickly become an pop culture icon.



And what becomes iconic quickly becomes a target for parody. Here are some of my favourites:



You can count on the other side not getting off easily.




There is a fine collection of other Obama poster parodies here.

Iceland hikes rates to 18%

According to this report from BBC NEWS, Iceland's interest rate up to 18% from 12% as they struggle to stabilize their currency. The IMF has already loaned them $2billion and the Icelandic central bank figures they need another $4billion to do the job.

Meanwhile, the Icelandic crown traded internationally for the first time for a week on Tuesday, with the value slumping to 240 to the euro from Monday's official fix of 152.

They have a deep hole to climb out of before they see daylight again.

My own Christmas book list - Frank Moores

Inspired by the Bond Papers Christmas book wish list, I offer my own choices. . . .

One of my earliest political memories was the provincial election of 1972 when Frank Moores defeated Joey Smallwood. The local newspaper printed a score card of all the candidates so you could track the results at home as they came in on the radio. I remember sitting at the kitchen table, keeping track of the results on the scorecard until I was shooed off to bed. By the next morning, the political world of this province had undergone a seismic shift. Smallwood was gone and Moores was in.

I never knew Moores although I met him once. I do know people who knew him very well. I know a lady in Manitoba who met Frank when she was young. Her father was a federal Tory politician and Frank would drop in from time to time for a drink and a chat. She recalls that he seemed to keep company with a variety of attractive female companions.

He seem to have inspired a fierce staff loyalty. My old next door neighbour was his private secretary (I believe that was her job, she didn't talk about it too much) except for a fierce glare at anyone who might utter any disparaging word about her former boss, even years later.

Like many other people, I heard stories about Frank Moores. Lots of stories. Some very funny stories. And more than a few profane and ribald ones. He was the kind of guy around whom stories swirled.

The publisher's blurb says:

Thirty-five year old Frank Moores, retired millionaire, woman-loving, scotch-drinking sportsman had never been to a political meeting when he announced his candidacy as a Newfoundland Member of Parliament in 1968. Moores was a likable, unlikely politician, and the people of Newfoundland were ready for a revolution. Moores won the popular vote in the provincial election of October 1971 but the number of seats was tied. For three months Smallwood clung to power amidst constitutional wrangling, bribery, intrigue and adultery, but Moores triumphed. He immediately called another election and won a substantial majority. In an administration beleaguered with controversy, he introduced sweeping legislative reforms and restored democratic process to Newfoundland, then retired, and began his third career as a powerful Ottawa lobbyist in the Mulroney years.

I'm hoping this book will have a fuller sense of the story; I figure it's worth the $25 or so to find out.

Sign Wars (a little more)

I mentioned before about the dark side of sign wars - simple theft of the other campaign's signs. But just like every other competitive exercise, as soon as one side tries to seize an advantage (in this case by lifting signs), the other side will compensate somehow.

In the US McCain-Obama sign wars, one creative fellow decided that if they were going to keep taking his lawn sign, the next time they would have to take his whole lawn too!



Meanwhile, across the trenches on the other side of the battlefield, the thinking is that if a small sign is easy to steal then a big sign is hard to steal. So he put up a big sign!

New York Times makes endorsement

From today:

Mr. Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation’s problems.

In the same time, Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism. His policies and worldview are mired in the past. His choice of a running mate so evidently unfit for the office was a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed the accomplishments of 26 years in Congress.

Obama in Virginia

Here are some photos and audio of an Obama rally in Virginia.

So what, you might ask.  Well, in the presidential election of 2004, Bush won their 13 electoral votes over Gore by 52.2% to 44.4% (Nader took 2.2%).  The most recent poll results have Obama up 51.5% over McCain's 44.5%.

That's a turnover of 15.1% points in a very reliable Republican state.

Nationally as of today, Obama has raised $621,984,626 in total with $133,696,693 cash on hand and just 12 days to go. 

Obama is no longer a campaign - he leads a movement.

US election images

There are lots of great US election images out there - here are just a few of Obama.

Barack Obama - the early days

This video is worth checking out: it's a series of interviews from 2001 to 2004 which provide some sense of Barack Obama before he became a political god.

Back then he sounded more like the constitutional prof that he was than the national figure channeling Martin Luther King before teeming crowds of thousands.

Political reaction(aries)

I would have thought that the US white power nazi and assorted groups would have been very active in this US presidential election. It seems not so much. The New York Times reports that they are doing the best that can but mostly they are too marginalized, weak and divided even on the issue of whether Obama is really all that bad.

On the other hand, more mainstream groups like the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated, seem to be filling the gap with foolishness like an illustration of "Obama Bucks" -- a phony $10 bill featuring Obama's face on a donkey's body, labeled "United States Food Stamps."

More creepy is this report from the Washington Post which tells the story of the racism encountered by Obama campaigners:

They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

Meanwhile, some local rednecks get themselves organized in West Plains, Missouri. These local enterprising political stars put up a billboard reflecting their sophisticated political views.

Not too far away is the obligatory hanging-in-effigy incident. USA Today notes that:

The hanging of the effigy around the neck is seen as racist symbolism because it harkens back to lynchings of black men by white mobs, especially in the U.S. South, decades ago. Obama is aiming to become America's first black president.

No kidding.

And then just when you thought you had seen and read it all, you come across this huge steaming pile of absurdity. RightPundits.com, which received a secret copy of Michelle Obama's Princeton dissertation says that:

The excerpts show that Obama identifies with black militancy, utterly obsessed with race in America and her own blackness. It is a fundamentally racist document, shocking when considering that this scholarship is the product of a presidential candidate’s wife at a great university.

In the land of free speech, anything goes.

Thank you for your service

I hope he stays near.

Sign Wars update

I received an email:

You wrote: "I always looked on sign damage as the unimpressive work of political campaign amateurs. Clearly others disagree."

Would you mind explaining what you mean by "others disagree"? I am in agreement with your thought on that it's opposition campaign followers who are doing the destruction/vandalism.

Interesting question.

Generally, I think there always a percentage of signs that get knocked over or punched in or taken due to any of random vandalism, the disgruntled and bored or special cases of metal illness or what have you or the casual bump that knocks down a poorly planted sign. That happens all the time in every election to one degree or another.

There's a big difference between those random acts and deliberate predation. That is uncommon, though not rare. It's not common enough so that when it happens, you notice it and vice versa. It's the damage that falls way outside the norm that's the tip-off. When a whole parkway disappears or all the 4x8s in an area are spray painted the same way, it's not an accident. Often, but not always, it's predation. If it happens a second time, that confirmations predation.

Search media reports and the stories pop up. Some are whining candidates making baseless accusations, no doubt. But there are also the cases documented by legal action or even just videos and photos of people caught in the act.

And I'm leaving aside the issue of fair comment versus vandalism. I know the "record of lying" case took in more issues than just simple vandalism. The line is not as thin as you would think. On some levels, some cases straddle that line between vandalism and free speech. A fundamental underpinning of civil disobedience is "do the crime, serve the time".

I still think sign damage is the unimpressive work of political campaign amateurs not necessarily attached to a campaign though they might be. It's an unusual campaign that tolerates it; some candidates set explicit derectives prohibiting it.

It's just foolish on a whole bunch of levels for all concerned.,of which the ethical and criminal problems are just two.

Campaigns need to keep their eye on the ball and remember that the goal is to get your point across to the voters. But as obvious as all that might be there are people who think otherwise; signs just don't self-destruct or evaporate.

Wholly bizzare

This video sent chills up my spine.

This is how the Arab/Muslim world will frame this US election. Did you catch the fact the clip came from the Aljazeera tv network?

Sign wars

Political signs around here are free; campaigns just give them away. Locally, these are usually the first advertising expense of the campaign (after design).

In the US, signs are sold to raise money for the campaign. They are not an expense, they are a profit center. The handsome sign on the right can be yours for a measly US$8 ($3 for 500 or more) plus appropriate taxes and shipping.

These cost the campaign less than $1 each in volume. And I can guarantee you that the sign company who hooked the Obama contract will retire after this on the volume they will order before the campaign is done.

There are many fronts on which campaign wars are fought. The air wars are the media advertising and talk radio appearances. The ground war is the volunteer house-to-house canvassing organization. Then there are the sign wars: who gets them out the firstest to the best spots and the mostest by election day. They are erected by the campaign corp of engineers. who can pop up vertical 4x8's across the city like mushrooms after a summer rain.

That's the overt part of the sign war. The dark side this war's covert exercises are the signs that evaporate in the night, destroyed, marked up (a la Ray O'Neill) or otherwise defaced. In the Federal St. John's West By-election held in May 2000, I remember that all the campaigns (except the Reform, oddly) saw massive damage to signage.*

Now that we've come out of a nasty federal election in which sign wars played a part again, I think it's worthwhile to keep in perspective that sign wars happen in other places too.

But when you are making $7 per sign and people are willing to replace them, the crime is a whole lot less financially traumatic to the campaign.

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* I always looked on sign damage as the unimpressive work of political campaign amateurs. Clearly others disagree.

Insurance for bloggers

The Media Bloggers Association is now offering the same training, legal support and insurance previously only available to traditional media organizations. This will include BlogInsure, a first of its kind liability insurance program for bloggers which provides coverage for all forms of defamation, invasion of privacy and copyright infringement or similar allegations arising out of blogging activities.

NL bloggers should be quick to follow up on this.

Federal Election ABC Aftermath

Two interesting articles on trying to foretell the effects of the federal election of federal-provincial relations.

The New Brunswick Telegraph figures their province is in the catbird seat. They just elected 6 Cons out of 10 seats so they predict they can plough ahead with their "energy hub" projects with full federal support. The NL future is not so bright:

A major factor was Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams' acerbic campaign against the Harper government, which succeeded in shutting the Conservatives out - with six of that province's seven seats going to the Liberals and the other to a New Democrat. But Mr. Williams has also shut his province out of any representation in the new government. That's where revenge gets you.

Then there is Ontario and the contrast between the incendiary Williams approach and the more low-key McGuinty tactic. The Globe figures that while McGuinty has some room to play with, Williams has not so much:

But what if the day isn't done and what if Mr. Harper has a long memory for those who have crossed him? What does Mr. Williams have left the next time he wants to be threatening? Will the Liberal and New Democratic MPs from Newfoundland be able to protect his offshore energy accord when the equalization scheme is reviewed again?

Life has become no less interesting.

Behind the scenes at "I have a dream"

From the New York Times obituary of John R. Reilly, a close adviser to a string of Democratic presidential candidates since the Kennedy years:

On Aug. 28, 1963, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech before 250,000 civil rights supporters in Washington, Mr. Reilly was given an unusual assignment by the Kennedy administration.

As the television correspondent Roger Mudd wrote in his book “The Place to Be: Washington, CBS and the Glory Days of Television News” (PublicAffairs), Mr. Reilly told him that “he was stationed at the Lincoln Memorial, equipped with a cutoff switch on the sound system if the rhetoric got too inflammatory. ‘We had a turntable hooked up to play music, if necessary,’ Reilly said.” Mr. Reilly had picked a 78-r.p.m. recording of Mahalia Jackson singing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”

Imagine if he had hit that switch. . . "Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty he's got the whole world in his hands!"

Unite(?) the Left

This election, the NDP ran as good a campaign as it was possible to run under the circumstances. It was tight, well-scripted, logistically near-flawless and fully funded for the first time. They had a leader who, arguably, made fewer mistakes than the others (outside the occational skinnydipping dopehead) and reached out to people and places ignored by previous NDP campaigns.

The national NDP results were pretty good. The party attracted 2,517,075 votes or 18.2% yielding 37 seats and 67 second places. Compare this to the 2006 general election where the party attracted 2,589,597 for 29 seats and 53 second places. And the budgets? $13,524,525 in 2006 compared to an estimated $20,000,000 this time.

But after spending almost 50% more money, or $6M, the party attracted a mere 8 additional seats and a relatively minuscule number of additional votes. And they never broke the 20% barrier.

Have they, as one comentator put it, hit the orange ceiling?

It's time for the NDP to explore the idea that they have gone as far as they can under their current party structure. The question is Are theose in charge of the NDP is willing and able to pay the required price for greater success.

Can they cut the formal structural ties the party currently has with the Canadian union movement.

To put it another way: Would you vote for a party which reserves 25% of policy convention delegates to affiliated union organisations? Or would you vote for a party which reserves 25% of leadership convention delegates to affiliated union organisations? Yet that's standard operating procedure in today's NDP party.

Would you feel any better if 25% of your party's delegates came from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce? Or maybe the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League? Isn't one special interest group equivalent to any other?

Tony Blair, early in his tenure as leader of the Labour party faced this choice. He had the courage required to make fundamental structural changes to his party. He cut ties to the British labour movement and thus modernised his party to turn it into a real alternative to the Conservative party.

Is Jack Layton ready to do the same?

Which brings us back to the Unite the Left movement. This is a popular trope among casual political observers and the argument is a simple one: in order to confront the menace on the Right, the Liberal party and the NDP (and possible the Greens) must and should unite under one banner in order to prevent vote splitting.

After all, didn't Reform and the Progressive Conservatives successfully unite? Sure they did. And it took years of negotiations, talks and compromises to make ithappen. Couldn't the Liberals and NDP do the same?

In the long term, it's possible.

But Canada does not want or need the further polarisation of national politics between the hard-right to center-right umbrella that is the national Conservative Party on one side and a creature of the Canadian union movement on the other.

No responsible federal party should ever be as beholden to national organised labour as the NDP party is now.

If there is to be a true Unite the Left movement, the NDP will have to agree to shed it's formal union ties as a precondition to those talks.