More Change Than You Can Believe?

Veteran Democratic Party campaign strategist Joe Trippi has calculated that YouTube videos posted by the Obama campaign, which have amassed 14.5 million hours viewed, are the equivalent of $46-$47 million worth of paid advertising. Add the large volume of citizen-produced videos to that total and you can see why Trippi maintains that, regardless of the election outcome, Barack Obama marks the end of the television presidency.

Joe Trippi speculates that, if Obama wins, he might transfer the net support of my.barackobama.com to the White House. A social network numbering in the millions could be quickly mobilized to pressure special-interest allied Congress members who oppose popular legislative initiatives.

In comparison, Trippi says that the Republican Party's internet strategy is the equivalent of rubbing 2 sticks together.

Visionary ideas are often met with skepticism, but timing favors Joe Trippi. A financial crisis has Americans paying closer attention to Washington, D.C. The potential exists for a democratization of the federal government that citizens of all political parties might embrace. Key elements for such a shift would be wired access for the populace, and a newly-elected President Barack Obama's leadership ability. Will it happen? I don't know, but I do know that The Internet Changes Everything.

Joe Trippi's remarks are from a discussion today, hosted by Simon Rosenberg of NDN. It was broadcast on C-Span.

TARP Reaches From Pittsburgh to Cleveland

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)-funded acquisition of Cleveland based National City Corporation by PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., of Pittsburgh, will be a template for government intervention in the credit crisis. Len Boselovic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Thomas Breckenridge of The Plain Dealer reported on the $5.6 billion deal in Sunday's P-G. The U.S. Treasury is supplying PNC with $7.7 billion to support the National City bailout. From the article:

Cleveland's economy is suffering because National City and other banks have restricted credit, said Raj Aggarwal, dean of the University of Akron's business school. He was stunned by the number of businesses who said they couldn't get credit.

"To me, that's exactly the kind of thing we don't want, as a nation and as a banking system," Mr. Aggarwal said.

In an interview with the business staff at The Plain Dealer, National City CEO Peter Raskind was clear that agreeing to the acquisition was a difficult, but necessary decision:

A National City doing business at less than full octane, you've got to question how helpful is that to the community? How helpful is that to employees? That's the frame of reference that I'm thinking about versus a strong and healthy and a perceived to be strong and healthy institution.

Reasonable people could disagree on this. That's why I made the comment that I did. And let me be clear about this, because I haven't actually said this, so I will: I feel terrible about this.

I mean, let's be clear. There's no ambiguity about that. I feel terrible about this. That's why I couldn't get through the employee meeting this morning without stopping every sentence or two. There's no debate about that.

Mr. Raskind isn't the only one that feels terrible about the deal. Quoting again from the Post-Gazette:

"Without regard to the economic and psychological impact on our community, Treasury made a coldly calculated decision to push National City off the cliff and use our tax dollars to help another bank scrape up the remains," said U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Cleveland Democrat who voted against the bailout.

U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Cleveland, said Congress should have given Mr. Paulson and other regulators a blueprint on how to use the $700 billion instead of letting the Treasury secretary "play God."

"He has picked winners and losers," Mr. LaTourette said. The first winner he picked was Goldman Sachs, where he came from. ... The chickens have come home to roost in Cleveland in a horrible way."

The addition of National City offices will expand PNC operations into the Midwest, and make it the fifth largest bank in the U.S.

Can We Vote Already?

I just scanned the news headlines on several sites. The ad infinitum presidential campaign has become ad nauseam. Television and radio are worse. Barack Obama might be progressive, but the Republican campaign ads here in Western Pennsylvania are definitively regressive:

Obama is a socialist … palling around with terrorists … unethical … who will raise taxes on the middle class.

If Sen. Obama responds directly to these accusations, I fully expect the McCain camp to break out in a chorus of I'm rubber, you're glue. Everything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.

Update, a day late: I'm concerned that regressive Republican tactics might garner Sen. McCain some votes at the cost of widening the polarization of the citizenry. On Wednesday, Glenn Greenwald noted that recent attacks by right-wing politicians have fallen flat, leaving the perpetrators to backtrack or apologize “for insulting liberals or impugning their patriotism."

Greenwald closes on this hopeful note:

We're gradually seeing not only the demise of the right-wing faction that has dominated the Republican Party for decades, but also the death of their ugliest and most toxic tactics. When numerous right-wing figures crawl across one's television set desperately denying and abjectly apologizing for attacks on the patriotism of Democrats and liberals, that is potent evidence that, at least as a matter of political rhetoric, a genuine sea-change is taking place.

On the Road … Until PodCamp Pittsburgh 3

This page will be on hiatus while I travel next week. In the meantime, please visit the links in the sidebar. I hope to see you at PodCamp Pittsburgh 3 on October 18 & 19, 2008.

The Mercurial McCain

"You're putting out stuff that is unbelievable George, and it's got to stop … and your ads have got to stop."
Sen. John McCain addressing Gov. George W. Bush at a Republican Presidential Primary Debate in 2000.

Senator McCain was so stung by accusations attributed to the Bush campaign that he admonished the Texas governor: "I don't know if you can understand this, George, but that really hurts. You should be ashamed. You should be ashamed."

During the primary campaign for the 2004 election, there was a rumor that John McCain might become John Kerry's running mate. The possibility of a unity ticket was appealing to some Democrats. They respected Sen. McCain and were anxious to end President Bush's partisan reign. Reportedly, McCain was not interested.

Four years later, Sen. John McCain is waging a campaign that should give pause to Americans of every political party.


Thanks to TPMtv

Trashing-Out the American Dream

The Inland Empire, a large area east of Los Angeles, bills itself as "The Heart of Southern California." For years, the region enjoyed vigorous growth supplemented by spillover development from neighboring Orange and Los Angeles counties. Today, growth is not the operative word in the Inland Empire. "Jingle mail" and "trashout" are more appropriate. Jingle mail is what a mortgage lender receives from homeowners who drop their house keys in an envelope, and abandon their home and mortgage payments. Some lenders try to salvage a portion of their investment by short-selling a foreclosed home. For instance, a 5 year old, 4 bedroom house in Beaumont, CA, is being offered at auction with bids opening at $10,000. The failures of creative financing have spawned desperate attempts at solutions.


Foreclosure Alley and the Trashout

John Plocher runs WSR, a real estate sales and management company in the Inland Empire. In the last few years, his company has grown from 3 employees to 73. A prime reason for WSR's growth is the trashout. KCET television correspondent Lisa Ling interviewed Mr. Plocher as one of his crews performed their sad, surreal task.

In Other News

In 2003, a substantial number of Americans opposed switching our military focus from Afghanistan to Iraq. They believed that those responsible for the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, were still in Afghanistan. The previous year, a senior adviser to President Bush had labeled such critical thinkers as the “reality-based community."

On September 9, 2008, The Wall Street Journal reported that as many as 4,500 U.S. troops will redeploy from Iraq to Afghanistan by January, 2009. According to the Journal's Yochi J. Dreazen:

The planned changes represent an attempt to preserve Iraq's recent gains while freeing up modest numbers of additional forces for Afghanistan. Senior U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have said they need at least three additional combat brigades, or 10,500 to 12,000 more troops. The plan being announced by Mr. Bush would meet less than half of that request.

Two weeks after the Journal report, ABC News investigative reporter Brian Ross wrote that:

US intelligence analysts are putting the finishing touches on a secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan that reportedly describes the situation as “grim," but there are “no plans to declassify" any of it before the election, according to one US official familiar with the process.

[…]

Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan at the Rand Corporation think tank, called the situation in Afghanistan “dire."

“We are now at a tipping point, with about half of the country now penetrated by a range of Sunni militant groups including the Taliban and al Queida," Jones said. Jones said there is growing concern that Dutch and Canadian forces in Afghanistan would “call it quits."

“The US military would then need six, eight, maybe ten brigades but we just don't have that many," Jones said.

The eyes of America are on Congress as they attempt to deal with the growing crisis in the financial markets, but the economy is not our only priority issue. The situation in Afghanistan deserves more attention, in the news and in the presidential debates. That is reality.