Keep your Blackberry under your pillow

Posted on August 13, 2008 by Steve Mays

Former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach — a Republican — endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday morning. I think my friend and co-worker Kay Henderson broke the story. It got a lot of national play and her blog post generated 3,000+ page views. I’m sure we got a bunch more at RadioIowa.com. I asked Kay how she got on the story so early:

“I sleep with my blackberry. I woke up at 6 o’clock, checked the ‘berry, and went back to sleep. As I sort of floated out of dreamland I must have heard or sensed the vibration the ‘berry makes when there’s an incoming email. I pulled the ‘berry from underneath the pillow and read the email sent at 7:14 a.m. from a source in the Obama campaign, alerting me to the fact that former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach would be endorsing Obama in a few hours, during a telephone conference call being organized by the Obama campaign.

I called the newsroom and gave Matt – our morning anchor – the details for him to include in our next newscast, then roused myself from bed and walked into my home office. I started blogging by feel, as I hadn’t found my glasses yet. By 7:45 a.m. I had a fairly complete blog post up about the news. It included text from a speech Vice President Dick Cheney gave at a Leach campaign fundraiser in 2003, explaining the Leach-Cheney-Rumsfeld connection.

I kept updating the post through the day. An addition at the top – the opening Leach quote — came from a noontime interview. The McCain folks emailed responses, which got to my email box by 1:50 p.m.”

A couple of things in Kay’s account stand out for me. If she had waited until she got to the office to check her email, she might not have had the jump on the story. Should all reporters sleep with their Blackberry under their pillow? Well, yeah, if you expect to beat Kay on a story.

And that she blogged the story before having her Cheerios. A whole bunch of political reporters follow Kay’s blog.

And while the technology is cool, there’s no substitute for having the contact in the Obama campaign.

Obama Fund Raiser

Posted on June 10, 2008 by Steve Mays

Picture_1

Remember the first time you had your picture taken sitting on a pony? Or in Santa’s lap? Or that first prom photo? That’s exactly what it was like getting my picture taken with Senator Barack Obama at last night’s fund raiser in St. Louis. Assuming of course that you waited in line for two hours with 250 other kids and paid two grand for that pony picture.

This was my maiden voyage in the world of political fund raisers and I had no idea what to expect. My friends Henry and Lorna were there too, all of us first-timers. In fact, a lot of the people I met and spoke to were first-time contributers. I thought that was interesting, given that it cost $2,300 for the privilege of having your photo taken with the man that that might be the next president of the U. S. But these were true believers and everyone seemed happy to pony up. (no pun intended)

It’s just a guess, mind you, but I figure they took in more than half a million from the VIP’ers and –at $500 per– another $200,000 from those that heard Senator Obama speak but didn’t get to shake his hand. Closing in on 3/4 of a million dollars. Not big by GOP standards but not too shabby for a couple of hours.

So, what do you say to the man you hope will be your next president when you have about 10 seconds with him? I had narrowed my remarks down to three possibilities:

“O. Kay Henderson says hey”
Kay is the news director of Radio Iowa and interviewed Senator Obama numerous times during the early days of the campaign for the Iowa Caucuses. I imagined the senator responding with something like, “You know Kay Henderson? No shit?! Tell the girl hey back.”

“I’ve been waiting all my life for a president with a good jump shot.”
I scratched that one quickly given the racially charged atmosphere of this campaign.

“In the sixties we thought we’d change the world. You’ve made us believe again that we can.”
“You did, you did change the world” was the senator’s response. At least that’s what I heard. I confess I was pretty star-struck. Which surprised me a little. The aides hustled us through the line quickly and in a couple of days we can go to a website and download that pricey photograph. We’ll share it here, of course.

I guess I’m really “all in” now, as far as campaign contributions. And I’m glad I had last night’s experience. There was a very exciting vibe in the room throughout and I kept trying to imagine a John McCain event sparking the same tent revival feel that pervaded the evening. I think they’re gonna need a lot of swift boats.

PS: Henry (retired MD) gave Senator Obama a tip on how to stop smoking. ~~Not sure what Lorna said~~. Lorna reports she said, “I hope we’re not sucking your energy.” A nice thought but kind of risky in such a noisy room.

PPS: I didn’t get any good photos because I didn’t want to move around or risk a cavity search by the Secret Service guys. Here’s the VIP line before it got long and rowdy. If you look closely you can see the “x” taped on the floor so the Senator would know where to stand.

UPDATE: Leading Democratic fundraisers predict that Sen. Barack Obama could raise $100 million in June and could attract 2.5 million to 3 million new donors to his campaign.

Role of social media in Obama’s success

Posted on June 7, 2008 by Steve Mays

Podcating News points to (and excerpts) CIOZone article that takes a look at the IT strategy behind Obama’s campaign, which includes Chris Hughes, who was one of the three co-founders of Facebook and now runs the campaign’s my.barackobama.com, which itself is a sort of social network.

"The Web site allows the campaign to be “owned by the masses,” Spinner says, but he encourages even big donors to complete the transaction through the Web site, saving himself the time it would take to drive to their home or office to collect a check. Although hillaryclinton.com eventually matched most of the features of barackobama.com, the Obama campaign embraced the Web more enthusiastically and fielded many of those capabilities about six months ahead of the competition, Spinner says. “The DNA of everyone working on the Obama campaign is very much a startup mentality, where what matters is how you build it, how fast you roll it out, and how you tie it together.”

Six months. A long time in the online world. Will be interesting to see how the McCain campaign does in this space.

John McCain’s YouTube nightmare

Posted on May 30, 2008 by Steve Mays

“Six of the top 10 videos returned by a “John McCain” YouTube search Thursday pegged the 71-year-old as inconsistent, extreme, wooden or a combination of the three. (The one clearly favorable piece came from the McCain campaign and focused on his Navy service. Contrast that with a YouTube search of “Barack Obama.” It’s a swoon fest, with virtually all of the top entries featuring the Illinois senator at his eloquent, uplifting best.” — From LATimes.com

Damn. This McCain video has been viewed 1.5 million times. Pre-YouTube, his opponents could have assembled this video easy enough. And they could buy some TV time and air it. But YouTube just changes everything. How do you answer something like this? “They took my remarks out of context” is getting pretty lame. We’re entering (we’re IN?) an era when everything is recorded and everything shows up on YouTube.

Word Diet

Posted on April 28, 2008 by Steve Mays

Scales I’ve never had a weight problem so I’ve never thought much about counting calories. But I seem to recall reading or hearing that 2,000 calories a day would be about right, depending on your weight and level of activity.

While I don’t overeat, I do have a tendency to talk to much (and listen too little). I’m wondering if I could put myself on a “word diet.”

If I allot myself 2,000 words over a 16 hour day, it works out to 125 words an hour.

If you knew you had a meeting with your boss coming up, you could be silent for an hour or two and bank the words you would need.

And if you could come in under 2,000 for the day… save ’em up for some emergency (drinking with your pals or a fight with your spouse).

The problem, of course, is counting the words. You’d need some device that monitors your speech and displays the number of words, with a little beep to warn you when you have less than 25 words in an hour.

If I could do this, I think I’d sound (be perceived as?) smart as hell. Deep. Thoughtful. And who knows, if you had to ration your words, you might choose them more carefully.

When you hear someone talking about what a great president Bush has been or McCain will be… instead of blurting out “Bull shit!”… you’d save those words rather than waste them.

I can’t really count my words but I’m going to try a one day experiment and pretend that I can. I’m not going to say which day it is until after the fact. I’ll report here.

Blog posts and tweets do not count against daily allotment.

Reading Hillary’s mind

Posted on March 27, 2008 by Steve Mays

I admit it. The political campaign has been my O.J. trial. I can’t pull myself away. I think I’ve said before that I suspect this will be the last election I get my knickers in a knot over.

I’ve been thinking about the “Tonya Harding” analogy. If Hillary doesn’t make the finals, Obama damn sure isn’t going to.”

I think Senator Clinton and I are the same age: 60. So I’ve been trying to “get inside her head,” as the Quantico profilers say.

“I’m not gonna win the fucking nomination. After all I’ve been through. Barack will beat McCain like a red headed stepchild. And probably get a second term. Eight … long… years. Jesus H. Christ! In 2016 I’ll be 68 years old. Damn, I’m telling you… I will NOT go back to Iowa.

But if I can jam Obama enough for McCain to beat him, I can take Grampa John in four years. Shit, I’ll only be 64.

Bill! Run out to the car and bring me the tire iron. I’ll tell you what to do with it when you get back.”

John McCain’s Magic 8 Ball

Posted on March 26, 2008 by Steve Mays

Eightball
One finds the most amusing things at 23/6.com. Like John McCain’s Magic 8 Ball. A clever post with a delightful headline ("John McCain will turn this war around right now if you don’t shut up").

Q: Do you remember where you parked your car?
A: My feet hurt.

Q: Would you bone Hillary?
A: How about you say that to my face?

Q: When did you have your last bowel movement?
A: Would you like some hard candy?

Spooky how dead on the answers all were.

Open letter to Congress, the Pentagon and leaders of the free world

Posted on March 12, 2008 by Steve Mays

Bottle_beach_letter_inside2 We need your help. We need your help to stop George W. Bush from starting a war with Iran. George W. Bush no longer represents the will of the American people. 77% of Americans disapprove of Bush’s job performance and do NOT support attacking Iran. But it’s been a long time since Bush cared what the American people think.

You could say we have the kind of leadership we deserve and you’d be right. Even if you believe –as I do– that Bush and his cronies stole the 2000 election, we allowed the vote to be close enough for him to get away with it. We know we fucked up and a lot of us are trying to rectify our mistake.

But it now seems clear that George Bush plans to launch some sort of military strike against Iran before he leaves office. Dick Cheney has been conspicuously absent for months, working on this disastrous scheme.

As embarrassing as it is to admit, we –the American people– can’t stop our president because it’s been a long time since he cared what we thought.

But maybe you can buy us some time. We just need keep him in check until November. Assuming McCain doesn’t win. In that event, America –and Iran– are fucked.

Our congress probably doesn’t have the balls or the votes to stop this madness. Our generals and admirals –with a few exceptions– will put their careers ahead of their country. So it’s up to the rest of the world to stop Bush.

We just need a little time to clean up the mess that is the Bush administration.

PS: I’m hoping for some six-degrees thing here. J-Walk gives me a link.One of his readers emails it to a friend in Germany. She knows the woman that cleans the home of German Chancellor Angela Merkel…. and so forth. It could happen.

Political cybersquatting

Posted on March 8, 2008 by Steve Mays

“The election has “triggered an avalanche of cybersquatter activity,” according to NetNames, a domain name management service. Speculators have registered nearly 2,000 domain names related to presidential candidates as of last week. Names related to Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy made up over half of the registrations, followed by Mr. Obama with 635 and Mr. McCain with 269.” — The Caucus (the NYT politics blog):

I didn’t see a lot of creativity in the domain names listed in the Times story. HillarysFatAss.com and UppityAfroAmerican.com were conspicuous by their absence.

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"There's no way to sustain anxiety or depression when you're out of breath." — F Is for Fugitive (Sue Grafton)

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