I’m watching the Daily Show right now (Comcast in Washington, DC), and I’ve already seen 4 ads about clean coal (it’s 11:20).  Within the same commercial break, I’ve seen both of these commercials:

Washington’s metro stations and train cars are plastered in yellow ads with mermaids holding black rocks and the URL thisisreality.org. US News has an interesting blog post on the “reality campaign” here.

It’s clear that this debate is gaining momentum in this time of economic downturn. It seems that the stimulus bill, with its provisions for developing green jobs and sustainable energy sources is, perhaps, having an impact on our national energy outlook. But in the spirit of “shovel ready” projects, is clean coal the answer?

The fact is, there is no clean coal right now. Clean coal requires the development of systems and technologies that are not currently available. The “clean” part of clean coal is the idea that carbon released from the combustion of coal can be kept out of the atmosphere – using carbon capture and sequestration. Time Magazine, by no means a paragon of left-leaning values, explores some of the technology hurdles in this January article.

The NY Times has an interesting piece on how the stimulus is bringing back the clean coal rhetoric that we heard during the Presidential campaign last year. This is why the metro ads are back up and the Daily Show is alternately being sponsored by the pro- and con-clean coal lobbies.

[A digression on my personal views: Don't get me wrong - I think we should invest in research into clean coal through standard research mechanisms found in NSF, DOE, and EPA. I just think it's premature to invest in clean coal plants when the technology is fuzzy at best and certainly completely untested.]

What I find particularly interesting about these lobbying campaign is that one is far more sophisticated than the other. The Reality Campaign is hipper. It uses irony and some of the more recently popular advertising tactics, like the serial ads that don’t mean anything until you put them together (see mermaid reference above), or an unusual and annoying sound to recapture a viewer’s attention in a TV ad. Besides this, the creative is brilliant. What better way to draw attention to the drawbacks of coal than to choose a canary as your mascot?

On the other hand, the America’s Power campaign follows the typical political ad, simply replaying parts of Obama’s campaign speeches. While this attempts to capture the energy of “the moment”, I think they’ve missed their chance. The “Yes we can” chant at the end of the ad is so January 19th. From Inauguration Day onward, Obama has taken a much more sober tone in his speeches and with the economic troubles continuing, the sense of hope many of us experienced is being beaten down by layoffs, disappearing 401Ks, and the number of nominees with tax problems. I know Obama’s popularity is still up there, but we are no longer chanting “Yes we can!” So this campaign seems to have missed the moment altogether. I think it will be far less effective than the quirkiness and irony of the Reality Campaign.

Thanks DCist, for bringing this video to our attention:

(courtesy Flickr user christaki)

FACT: DC residents do not have a vote in the legislature.

This may seem like a silly issue, but it’s a matter of principle. We in DC are less equal than the rest of Americans simply because we live in the nation’s capital. The absurdity lies in the fact that Wyoming has 40,000 fewer residents than the District, but has 2 Senators and a Representative in the House (all able to vote) representing them in Congress. To add insult to injury, the city’s budget must be approved by the House of Representatives each year – where we the citizen’s of the District do not have a vote!

FACT: Several bills have gone before Congress to give DC a voting Representative in the House.

I understand the argument that we don’t want to add a single seat in the House that would almost inevitably always vote Democratic. But the proposals include a second seat going to Utah, which would almost inevitably always vote Republican and whose population growth likely warrants another seat. And yet, this hasn’t been passed.

So DC’s non-voting Delegate in the House, Eleanor Holmes Norton, makes a speech about this at the convention (at 3 pm when no-one is in the convention center) and the DC delegation holds a protest outside the Denver mint.

But the voting rights song brings up important messages:

• Education: We’re ranked 51st in the country. Granted, it’s not a one-to-one comparison, but even among cities, we’re low.
• Poverty: Income inequality in the District is the highest in the nation.

And there is no state funding to support schools or infrastructure – only the city. And the District’s Mayor and City Council must have their budget passed by Congress each year. I know I was pretty astounded when Mary Landrieu decided to step into local DC policy last year as chair of the appropriations committee. What does she know about DC?

In short, I love the song even though it will be as ineffective as every other attempt, I also noticed Hillary Clinton’s omission last night, and I demand the vote.

Wow. I’ve been watching CNN’s DNC convention coverage because it’s the only thing covering ‘all’ speeches at the convention. Of course they skipped Sebelius, who I wanted to see, talking through her speech with their ‘analysis’.

Mark Warner’s keynote was good – focusing on science and technology (yay!). But Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer really brought down the house. He was so authentic and personable. I understand he’s apparently not a “rising star” in the party, but he sure is a great speaker. The DNC was probably right to use him as the primetime lead up to Hillary’s speech for his amazing delivery.

He also seems to have been the first speaker to really challenge John McCain, and made a point of challenging him on the issues: global warming, alternative energy, the economy. Great ‘heartland’ issues for the DNC.

Great job Schweitzer. I don’t know much about you, but to my mind this speech is equivalent to Obama’s 2004 convention speech in my mind. I’d love to see you on the ticket in the future.

Oh, and CNN skipped the first half of the speech until they realized that it was getting amazing reaction from the crowd (not that the “sound on the floor” meters budged out of the green).

So Obama’s announcement of his VP selection should be occuring literally any minute now. He’s planning to campaign with him on Saturday, and thanks to the airtight lock on the name of the selected candidate, even the future running mate doesn’t know his fate. So he’ll need at least a day to turn over whatever business he’s currently working on (whether as Governor, Senator, or Congressman).

With this heightened media attention, expectations are extremely high. Obama’s been great with timing his announcements thus far, creating a lot of media buzz by making the media wait (and also by doing things unconventionally).

But can he meet these expectations? Everyone – from the ardent supporters who signed up to receive the txt as soon as they could to the media to those more casually interested – have been at such a heightened state of readiness. Won’t the actualy discovery be a let down after this week-long adrenaline rush?

Think about the number of people just waiting for their phone to buzz with a message. They’ve been on the edge of their seats for a week now. And there’s no way to make everyone happy. I would think that the huge level of anticipation makes the likelihood of a huge letdown higher.

In the end, it’s probably worth the risk. Obama is, as usual, dominating the news.

Sandra Roelofs

I had the unusual opportunity to meet Sandra Roelofs, the Republic of Georgia’s first lady, when she and her husband were on a state visit to Washington, DC last spring. While President Mikheil Saakashvili met with Bush and other state department officials, Roelofs toured medical facilities in the area.

I was struck by her genuine commitment to making a difference. Originally from the Netherlands, Roelofs was not raised as a member of the political elite. She met her husband in Strasbourg while studying at a human rights institute and they were married before Saakashvili was recruited into politics in 1995. After they moved to Tblisi, she worked in a number of professional positions until her husband was elected President. She also makes it very clear that she did not take her husband’s last name, and that she is the “first lady,” not the “President’s wife.”

As first lady, she has continued to support several causes. She has focused primarily on medical care in Georgia – a passion that was renewed after giving birth to her second son in a Georgian hospital. She was struck by the care she received from her nurses and decided to enroll in nursing school. She was due to complete nursing school this summer, and begin working in a clinic about twice a week.

At the same time, she also continued her work championing reproductive health. In 1998 (six years before Saakashvili was elected President), Roelofs founded SOCO, a charitable organization that today focuses primarily on improving maternal and child health in Georgia. This blends with her role as chair of the Reproductive Health National Council under the Georgian Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. She has been an international advocate for many issues.

Now I wonder what life has been like for her since the conflict with Russia started. Will she still go into work as a nurse a couple days each week? If her husband is ousted as president, will she independently continue to have an impact on Georgian society? Would she return home?

I’m fascinated by these questions, and have wondered about this a lot since the conflict began. Roelofs seems to be in a very difficult situation, with little control over where her life goes from here. With a platform to some extent independent from her husband’s political career, how will she ride out the conflict that appears to be ripping apart this country, and how will she continue her advocacy work?

She has been in Beijing with the Georgian Olympic delegation (which includes 2 Brazilians) for the past week, and was part of the decision to stay at the Games. The only news relating her to the conflict is a condolence note she wrote when a Dutch journalist was killed by Russian forces.

As the incredible images from Obama’s Germany speech blanket the US press – of hundreds of thousands of Germans waving American flags – I think back to the “early” days of the primary. Several times when Obama gave speeches, he would attract such large crowds that not everyone would be able to fit inside the venue. In those cases, he seemed to make a point of talking to them afterwards. Whether it was saying a few words from the steps of the building, or shaking hands for an extra 20 minutes, we saw images and stories in the media of overflow people that Obama took the time to engage.

Now that he has the nomination wrapped up, I haven’t seen those images anymore. Did they only work when he was an underdog? Are the venues he now speaks at too large for him to overflow? Or did his schedule get too full to spare the extra 20 minutes?

Whatever the reason, I think his campaign should bring back those moments. In the heat of the (never-ending) race, he seems to be losing the incredible energy that came from the millions of regular folk who support him.

Perhaps this image has to end – he has to show he’s establishment (or at the least, established) now in order to win over the tens of millions of voters who did not participate in the democratic primary. But still, that impressive image of popularity, and the effort he gave back to them in return, was so powerful to me.

The other thing that was powerful, that I think he’s lost, is his platform of change. Obama stood for change in the Democratic primary. He still stands for change, but it’s less clear-cut now. McCain’s rhetoric about change and his insistence on his policies being different from Bush’s have muddied the waters.

In order to recapture the energy and excitement of the early primaries, Obama needs to rally everyone around an idea. Change is great, but what is the change? Pick one thing and have it be your major election platform.

This week both candidates are trying to present their economic policy this week. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. I think it’s very important, and I can’t wait to see what they have to say. But this isn’t exciting. It’s wonky! And I don’t really have the tools to understand it. I doubt most of the country does.

As I finished reading The First Campaign today, one of the issues Graff mentions really stood out to me: universal health care. He cites some interesting statistics:

• Iin 1994 56% of Americans believed that “the federal government should guarentee health insurance for all Americans.
• In 2008, 64% of Americans believe the same thing.
• In 1990, healthcare was an $800 billion problem.
• Today, it’s a $2 trillion-a year problem.

In the campaigns, let’s not get caught up in the small details. Someone please just say, “It’s unacceptable that not all Americans can afford healthcare. As President, I promise to make sure every American has access to quality care without bankrupting themselves.”

I know, I know. I wouldn’t be happy with a plain statement like that either. But just say it and fill in the background info later. Or say it and promise to work with Congress – Democrat or Republican controlled – to get this legislation passed within your first two years in office.

I want the candidates to stand up and BE for something. I’m tired of the hedges and the qualifications and the meaninglessness of many of their statements. I’m especially tired of the slightest slip of their surrogates being national news. November can’t get here fast enough for me.

With 2008 as The First Campaign of the web 2.0 age, it’s interesting to look at how different campaigns are using social media. By now, we all know that Obama has an advantage over McCain simply because he personally has some familiarity with email and the Internet. Obama is tweeting (or rather, members of his campaign staff are), but McCain doesn’t have an official feed. Someone has set up a twitter feed from the John McCain polfeed site, but this does not demonstrate a commitment to social media.

Tom OKeefe demonstrates how stark the web 2.0 differences are across the board:

But what about smaller campaigns that don’t have the staff and money of a Presidential campaign?

Going down the list of states with Senate races, here’s what I found on Twitter*:

Alaska
Ted Stevens (R) v. Mark Begich (D)
Stevens has no presence. Begich’s feed features his blog posts (45 updates & 85 followers). There’s a second Begich feed that appears to be anti-Begich (10 updates & 18 followers).

Colorado
Bob Schaffer (R) v. Mark Udall (D)
Schaffer has an account, but nothing on it. Udall has 74 followers, but seems to only be posting every 2 months or so.

Maine
Susan Collins (R) v. Tom Allen (D)
One anti-Allen feed, only 7 updates.

Minnesota
Norm Coleman (R) v. Al Franken (D)
If Franken is priming his audience, I think it’s about time he get on stage. He’s got 166 followers and no posts. On the other hand, FrankenSense (pro) and FranklyFranken (anti) may be picking up the slack for him.

New Hampshire
John Sununu (R) v. Jeanne Shaheen (D)
Shaheen has an impressive 628 followers, 60 updates, but strangely is following 4,139. What’s up with that? I randomly checked 4 of the people she’s following and none were from New Hampshire.

New Mexico
Steve Pearce (R) v. Tom Udall (D)
Udall has 139 followers, and tweets like a genuine person:

Taking questions from the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau in Mescalero, NM. Met J.W., who was in my dad’s WWII squadron!

1 day ago from web

@crystal: thanks for all your hard work fixing this! 11:36 AM July 24, 2008 from web in reply to crystal

North Carolina
Elizabeth Dole (R) v. Kay Hagan (D)
Dole has a profile, but no posts yet. Hagan has a negative feed against her only set up this month. 5 followers to date.

Oregon
Gordon Smith (R) v. Jeff Merkley
Interestingly, there’s a negative feed against Merkley that appears to be from the Democratic primary. It hasn’t been updated in 3 months.

Virginia
Jim Gilmore (R) v. Mark Warner (D)
Warner’s got 187 followers and is keeping a running log of his activities.

*I left the race off if neither candidate had a Twitter account.

But just the stats don’t give us the whole picture. Social media is about having a conversation. Are any of these tweeting politicians actually doing that? Tom Udall’s feed certainly takes full advantage of Twitter as a social media tool. He (or his campaign staff?) are even interacting with Twitter support staff.

Michael Whitney at TechPresident points us to an interesting example of sub-optimal use of Twitter – libertarian Presidential candidate Bob Barr. Unfortunately, the tone of the tweets is too advertorial, so it may not work to his advantage:

Please check out my new video and pass it on to your friends http://tinyurl.com/6n7acg

2 days ago from web

http://tinyurl.com/626kgw 01:11 PM July 13, 2008 from web
Please Tell People About Me And Recommend That They Follow Me On Twitter! www.twitter.com/bobbarr2008 ~ Thanks 08:14 PM July 10, 2008 from web
Please pass this link on http://tinyurl.com/5vvlh9 08:13 PM July 10, 2008 from web
McBama two sides of the same coin – Please digg http://tinyurl.com/5vvlh9 08:08 PM July 10, 2008 from web
Please tell all your friends about me and check out my website www.bobbarr2008.com 08:04 PM July 08, 2008 from web

War. Huh. What is it good for?

Let’s take a look at war’s tag cloud from the view of traditional publications and online social media publications. I would predict before running this analysis that the more traditional print publications would be more theoretical with big ideas, while the social media publications would focus more on today’s wars. (Note: the results from Technorati, Youtube & Google are recommended searches or tags from the search engines themselves and are not tag clouds.)

Let’s see how well my prediction works:

Mirriam Webster’s definition of war looks like this as a tag cloud:

Encyclopedia Britannica’s tag cloud for war looks like this:

When I search Technorati for blogs tagged with war, it suggests the following tags are related:

iraq politics bush terrorism israel news iran middle east military lebanon

Youtube’s search results for war recommend that I also try:

Google’s related searches include:

vietnam war peloponnesian war war definition world war 1

According to a tagcloud from Wikipedia, war is:

There are some interesting results here. The dictionary and encyclopedia provided largely expected results. Wikipedia’s also seem fairly similar, with some surprising entries. For example, “youth” is one of the key words in the cloud, perhaps reflecting more of a social commentary about war (that it’s often the young who are sent).

The other social media results come from related searches, and as such display a different kind of information. These are terms that are often associated with war by users while tagging their content or by users searching on the term “war”. Technorati’s list of related tags provides an overview recent and ongoing wars.

On the other hand, Google’s suggested searches focus on older wars. Perhaps with the plethora of information about today’s wars from news outlets and blogs, fewer people are using search to find information about contemporary wars.

Youtube has particularly interesting results in its recommended searches, and also in the videos that are returned for the search. Most of the recommended searches refer to video games and movies. Nearly all of the videos that are returned in the top 20 for this search are for video games, comedy routines, or songs. The lone exception is the following; a song that plays to images from the Iraq war:

On the other hand, searching for “Iraq” in Youtube, nearly all of the videos in the top 20 are related to the war (with the possible exception of 2 videos on Marines seeing UFOs in Iraq).

Interestingly, a search for “Iraq” in Technorati pulls up mostly posts about politics in the U.S. In fact both of the searches on “war” and “Iraq” pull up headlines from the Politics section of the site.

As promised (though late, again), I’ve done a quick analysis of the websites dedicated to Western Sahara. Unfortunately, I was not able to find much that was relevant in the blogosphere by searching for Moroccan Sahara, so I’ve opened the scale of this a bit (!) wider to websites that come up in the first page of a Google search.

Before I get to that, what I did find interesting in the blogosphere were the videos. This was something I hadn’t explored much when I did my earlier Technorati search on Western Sahara. A search for “Western Sahara” brings up videos on culture, news, and the conflict.

A search for “Moroccan Sahara” has some videos on culture and several on travel, but most focus on the conflict.

My Google searches presented similar results to this. “Western Sahara” brings up official country information sources like the CIA World Factbook and a Google map of the region. The remainder of the links on the first page of results seem generally pro-self governance, but are certainly not propaganda.

“Moroccan Sahara” is, again, full of travel links. They’ve clearly won the tourism war. As expected, there is no official country information associated with this search (it would all be under Morocco), but there are 2 other links of interest: www.moroccansahara.net and www.westernsaharaonline.net. They are both pro-Morocco. I find it interesting that Western Sahara Online does not appear on the first page of the “Western Sahara” search.

Finally, a Google search for “Polisario“, the Sahwari movement for independence, includes many news articles and pro-idependence links.

It’s interesting to see that while the pro-Moroccan propaganda forces have cornered the search market for Moroccan Sahara, they have had no success breaking into the top results for either Western Sahara or Polisario. Significantly, none of this has spilled over to affect “Morocco“.

What is it like to live in a region largely at peace but without government? We’ve heard many stories about war torn regions where there is little to no government control, but what about those places that actually don’t have a government at all?

Western Sahara has existed in this state since the 1960s when it was released from Spanish colonization. “Release” is the best word I can come up with, as control of the territory has been disputed since that time. The United Nations has listed it as a Non-Self-Governing Territory since that time. With little pressure to resolve the dispute from the outside world, the two opposing governments of Western Sahara (Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic – SADR) vie for recognition from other countries.

So what are Sahrawi bloggers saying?

New Sahrawi Satellite TV Station
I started over at Global Voices, and discovered they just began coverage of Western Sahara on July 5th. Their first highlight notes a brand-new TV station run by the SADR or SADR-sympathizers (I’m not entirely clear which). This seems to be the first one, so it’s interesting to see how the blogosphere reacts to this. This post, which pulls from (an translates) the Arabic Western Sahara blog, now has 29 comments – most of which are positive about the new station.

I found one of the comments (actually #29) particularly interesting:

Mohamed, mohamed and Agaila, you and your supporters were alone on the Internet since more than a decade to support separatism in Western Sahara. Now, that the Moroccans especially the sahraouis are aware of the impact of such a media, your sole aim is to discredit the arguments of unionist sahraouis on Internet by qualifying them as members of DST…

What I find so interesting is that this person is suggesting that one side in the sovereignty dispute dominated the online space for several years.

Natural Resources & Human Rights
Onward through the blogosphere, my Technorati search on Western Sahara brings me 612 posts. The relevant ones in English (that aren’t spam/advertising blogs) focus on resource disputes and human rights violations. There was an interesting post on politics and one of the plans put forth to resolve the dispute by Nick Brooks, a climate scientist who studies the Sahara desert. In fact his posts categorized under Western Sahara are all quite interesting and provide his personal experience grappling with the dispute. Most of these posts are written by people outside of Western Sahara, so with the exception of the last one, they don’t quite provide the internal perspective I was looking for.

Interestingly, the launch of the Global Voices Western Sahara blog garnered quite a bit of attention. I guess GV does play an important role in make voices heard.

The View from Western Sahara
Luckily, many of the comments on GV posted linked to their favorite Western Sahara blogs. Here’s what is out there:

• Unfortunately, I don’t speak Spanish, but Saha blogs aggregates over 20 Spanish-language blogs on Western Sahara. From what I can understand (thanks to French and Latin), there is a range of topics – from human rights to a poetry festival to something about the prime minister of Spain.
• Another Spanish-language blog by Aziza Brahim, a Sahrawi singer, shows some of the culture of the territory. Again, I can’t understand much, but I believe she just performed in Madrid.
• One Hump or Two? is a fantastic name and a blog about the Western Sahara by a fellow Washingtonian. Will Sommer comments on the latest news affecting Western Sahara, including a recent attack on a Sahwari human rights activist. Sommer has gotten a many comments from Sahrawis praising him for his coverage and providing additional details about some of his postings. Sommer’s perspective is that Morocco oppresses the territory through its occupation.
• Le Sahara Occidental Occupe also reports on “occupied” Western Sahara. The perspective is definitely Algerian (which is pro-SADR), thus the French coverage. There is strong reporting on political developments, and particularly disturbing images of torture.
• Sahara Occidental – Western Sahara aggregates news and provides links in English, Spanish, and French. It includes links to news reports from Morocco, but takes the SADC side.
• Free Western Sahara is written by an ex-patriot who has never seen her homeland. It’s an aggregation of video and images of Western Sahara, and conveys a strong sense of nostalgia. Posts are in both English and Spanish.

Many of these blogs are from the SADR perspective. That certainly backs up the comment from GV. But I wonder whether this is an artifact of searching for “Western Sahara.” Are there pro-Moroccan blogs that would turn up under different search terms?