benmurray / washington d.c.

Inauguration 2009

I’ve been absent awhile, but thought I’d write a few notes about the past week so that I don’t forget it.  While the photos and videos won’t be going anywhere (backups!), I fear the raw emotion felt throughout this city will fade in time.

I’ve always been a sucker for parades.  Whether it was my grandfather’s recordings of bagpipes and drums played on full, the countless parades my parents took me to as a wee one, or my affinity for bright and shiny things (haha), heralding trumpets and banners have always claimed a soft spot in my heart.  It goes without saying that the inauguration of a president ranks right up there with the greatest celebrations in the world.

I even went to George W. Bush’s second inauguration, ticket in hand, just to see how it all went down.  I was so torn between thinking “holy crap this is amazing,” and “wtf? I’m actually enjoying this?  BUSH!? COME ON!”  Alas, whoever it may be, the fact that our nation can transfer power without bloodshed or strife is pretty amazing in comparison to the rest of the world.

This week we inaugurated our 44th president, and the pomp didn’t disappoint.  This time, though, the pomp didn’t matter.  What filled me with emotion wasn’t the revelry supplied by lights and banners or the institutional showmanship, however spectacular they may be.  It was the realization that this style of politics that has jaded me throughout my education in high school and college has finally come to an end.
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The Hompeage of Change

It’s not yet 48 hours since Barack Obama was projected the President-elect of the United States, and his transition team has launched the homepage of his Change movement, change.gov.  What will he do with it?  We can be sure that it won’t merely be used as a static repository of news releases and policy platforms.  His campaign revolutionized the way a Presidential candidate interacted with his supporters through the Internet and it certainly won’t stop now.

However, his new media team will certainly encounter antiquated hurdles set up years ago to regulate government use of the Internet.  Will White House servers stand up to the traffic load? They’ve had a rocky start so far.  Will broadcasting Presidential communications over third-party systems like YouTube and UStream be permitted?  Congressional offices are still prohibited from using YouTube on their official websites, even though few follow this rule.  How will the National Archives and Records Administration handle the countless new ways of communicating his message?  It’s not a matter of filing memos and official documents into cabinets anymore, as we learned quickly with the Bush administration.

Change.gov, looking very similar to barackobama.com, may not have much going on at the moment, but it absolutely sets the tone by first asking for stories from its visitors.  It says a lot that the very first function of the site is to listen to American stories of the election and what it means for them.

It is clear me that despite the hurdles and challenges of transitioning an online campaign from the limitless bounds of private operation to the often musty and choked corridors of government bureaucracy, that his administration will stop at nothing to engage the populace in their government in ways we’ve never before seen.  There’s so much more to come.

Palin Countering YouTube

Republican nominee for Vice President Sarah Palin has been taking a beating from her interviews with Katie Couric on CBS.  The clips on foreign policy, newspapers, supreme court cases and domestic issues have become viral hits this week, all of them exposing the less-than-prepared side of Palin.

Well, it appears the campaign has gotten smart and started advertising on YouTube, no doubt looking for keywords matching Palin and CBS, ensuring that their ads will appear next to the damning videos.  Good thinking, but it offers an interesting juxtaposition.

Website Fail

This morning, John McCain is announcing his running mate.  If I were making the biggest announcement of my campaign, I’d make sure my website works.  It has looked like this for about two hours.

Update: Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Making Videos Longer

When creating advocacy videos for YouTube or other electronic media, the general rule is to make it shorter than 5 minutes. Even better is 3 minutes. Then, why is Barack Obama’s campaign churning out 20 minute videos? Because people are watching them.

Link to video

Body of War

I attended the Reel Progress screening of the new documentary “Body of War” last night at the E-Street Cinema.  It’s the tale of Tomas Young, a soldier transitioning from a wounded Iraq War vet coping with his injuries to a vocal critic of the war.  Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro directed the brilliant, personal look into his life, marriage, injuries and activism.  Eddie Vedder wrote two moving songs that perfectly fit the film’s tone.

Where most documentaries would shy away from personal tales about recovery like relations with his wife, catheters, erections, etc., this film takes in stride.  It isn’t about numbers or figures, talking heads or political motivations.  It’s just a look into one soldier’s life and his quest to find voice in ending the way and bringing his fellow servicemen and women home.

Tomas was there last night, along with Sen. Byrd, Phil Donahue, Ellen Spiro, Ralph Nader and other personalities.  Byrd was featured throughout the film as one of the most critical of the war.  His vibrant orations were a perfect fit to juxtapose the talking points from the White House.  He didn’t refrain from throwing a few fists and yells during the screening either, even if his oratory is a little quiet these days.

It’s opening to the public in Washington this Friday, April 4th.  Don’t miss it.

Hillary Wakes Up to Facebook

In what could be called the slowest response to the Facebook community yet, Hillary Clinton finally got her own Facebook application today, 6 days before what is arguably her most critical step in the primaries…and it’s not even from the campaign.

The “Go Hillary” application is designed to unite Hillary supporters, recruit them to sign up more supporters, contribute, make calls, host events and compete with each other for points based on their activism.  Unfortunately, the application is probably too late to have any real impact on the primaries.

Obama has over 640,000 supporters on Facebook, while Clinton pulls in 125,000.  The lack of support could be a result of low youth support in general, but is no doubt aided by the lack of opportunities to funnel the youth support online.  Obama’s application has a Digg-like rating system of news, videos and other Obama tidbits.  It also places a nice box on supporters’ profiles indicating their support of the candidate.  Clinton’s doesn’t appear to do any such thing, at least for this user.

In this case, once again, Obama is the Mac and Clinton the PC.  Too bad, for such a great candidate.

via techPresident

Clinton Injects $5M, Obama Matches in Donations

Hillary Clinton announced today that she is loaning her presidential campaign $5 million of her own money. Barack Obama responded with his own campaign – to raise the same $5 million in individual contributions. Looks like he’ll do it in about one day. I pulled this graphic from the email his campaign manager sent this evening asking donors to match her loan.

Now, it may seem like he’s kicking her while she’s down, but the huge headlines declaring that Hillary’s campaign coffers are running dry and that her campaign staff is now searching through trash bins seems a bit a over-the-top. She’ll make the money back quickly in contributions and power through March.

But, it is, as always, a fascinating look at how the Internet has driven these campaigns. Obama raised $32 million in January, taking $28 million of it online. That’s 87% of his fundraising for the month. The reach of his campaign and the number of small donors this online system can engage is staggering. With PayPal, Google Checkout and other ready-made online checkout systems, contributors needn’t even get out their checkbooks.

Maybe Just Ban the Paultards

Astute Wonkette commenters picked up on a recent gem from the Ron Paul forums.

“Does anyone fear that the internet will be attempted to be taken away from us because of the “threat” RP and we have posed? Assuming Paul doesn’t become President, the people “in charge” will have to know that we are all fired up and organizing on the internet for the long haul to make sure the Constitutional candidate in 4 years does win.. I fear they will try to take the internet away, somehow, and then it will be back to hitting the streets, which isn’t bad, but you get my point…”

Yep, I get your point, and think it’s a pretty good idea. Who is it exactly that is “in charge?”

via Wonkette
The Ron Paul Forums 

Freedom to Tinker with eVoting Machines?

Microsoft‘s recent bid to acquire Yahoo!, I was looking around to find out where the anti-Microsoft folks from 1998 have ended up. They were witnesses, journalists, economists, congressmen, etc. One was Ed Felten, a professor at Princeton. He has a blog (“Freedom to Tinker“). And he found something interesting recently.

He found two sets of unattended, electronic voting machines at Princeton. It is well documented that these machines can be tinkered with to affect the vote outcome. Proponents of the machines assure they are always well-protected to prevent this from happening. Apparently, not so much.