August 2008 Archives

Today is John McCain's 72nd birthday and the big news, rightly so, is his choice of Governor Palin as his running mate for the 2008 elections. (Serious Link | Not Serious Link) But I'm not ready to discuss that yet. I want to talk about something else.

Today is also the three year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast. As it approached, it wasn't entirely known how extensive the damage was going to be, though it was recognized as one of the biggest and baddest storms seen. The National Weather Service offered strong warnings well in advance of landfall and some government officials urged a complete evacuation of area.

We all know the rest, a botched Federal response, especially by FEMA, our leaders turning down offers of help from other nations, and Bush dithered. A lot of people saw the pictures of him playing guitar for senior citizens while New Orleans drowned.

But there was something else that Bush was doing while a category 5 storm made landfall. He was attending a birthday party for John McCain:

It doesn't matter how much distance I get from the events of Katrina, every time I remember that this was taken while people were dying, I recoil in disgust. I don't want to mince words here. It's an absolute travesty that my president and a self-appointed populist "Maverick" were celebrating anything.

But why bring this up now? Three years after the fact? Two reasons:

1. McCain's running for president now, and he continues to browbeat Obama on this notion of "judgement". He claims to have better ability to lead this nation because he has better judgement. That's not what I see at all. In fact, these pictures show a criminal lack of judgement. McCain wants me to trust that he can more capably lead a country when he can't figure out that having some birthday cake with Bush as a photo-op is a bad thing? While an entire city was being washed away McCain decided to party. How is this better judgement?


2. The other reason this is important now is the Republican National Convention is scheduled to start next week, and another potentially destructive hurricane veers towards the Gulf Coast. The Republicans are speaking of postponing the convention until after Gustav has run its course but they're not doing this out of concern for the lives of the people in the region, or because so many of the Republican staffers who would be at the convention are needed to help coordinate a response but because "images of Republicans partying in Minneapolis-St. Paul could be an embarrassing reminder of the Bush administration's delayed response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago."

   See, it would appear that this time, three years later, McCain has used his "judgement", but it would seem that it is more to protect his image. And while it shows he is at least capable of learning from his mistakes, that is cold comfort to the people who are still not able to return home so many years later.

A few days after his birthday party in Arizona with the president, McCain travelled to New Orleans and said:

"Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way it's been handled."

(source: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-gopstorm29-2008aug29,0,1057901.story)

In fact, the LA Times article I linked to earlier notes:

There is perhaps no issue over which McCain has been more critical of the Bush administration than its handling of the 2005 storm, which the Arizona Republican has called "disgraceful."

(source: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-gopstorm29-2008aug29,0,1057901.story)

The real question I have is this:

Is it just the response to Katrina that was "disgusting"? Is it possible that McCain was also thinking of himself standing on that tarmac laughing with President Bush at the collapsing icing while tragedy befell America? Is it possible that McCain realizes how grotesque it really was to publicly slap backs and eat cake while the levees burst? I can only hope so. But any remorse he may have felt after the fact does not assuage my anger or frustration at him as a person, and as a 'leader'.

You have probably heard about the gaffe McCain made about how many homes he has. He couldn't remember at first, and then a staffer said "four or five" when it turns out that the actual number is seven. It's kind of a silly incident over all, but it does go a long way towards poking holes in McCain's argument that he's a man of the people. Make no mistake about it, McCain's not a man of the people. His wife's rich, and McCain has lived a very comfortable life for a long time. Frankly I don't give a shit if someone's got fourteen houses if they're going to do a good job.

But what I find outrageous is how McCain's trying to deflect the whole houses gaffe by bringing up his POW experience. Is nothing sacred?

McCain states:

"I spent 5 1/2 years in a prison cell without -- I didn't have a house. I didn't have a kitchen table. I didn't have a table. I didn't have a chair," he said.

"I spent those 5 1/2 years ... not because I wanted to get a house when I got out."

Wow. Is this going to be his answer to everything?

"Senator McCain, how can you stand by your assertion that you're an independent man when you've agreed with the President 95% of the time?"
"I WAS A POW!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Senator McCain, how does a gas tax holiday really save us money when bridges around the country are crumbling? Doesn't it just delay those repairs?"
"I WAS A POW!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I can't wait to see how that works with foreign leaders during tough negotiations.

Well, if the POW gambit doesn't work, he can always fall back on calling them a c**t like he called his wife in front of a bunch of reporters.

Today my wife turned and asked me "How long until someone mentions that 'Obama - Biden' looks like 'Osama Bin Laden'? And how long until they try to use it against them? Probably not long"

Not long at all, I'm sure.

So Obama generated the biggest buzz for his vice-presidential choice than I've ever seen in history, and picked Biden. There's been a lot of differing opinions about the choice. Especially because of how big the buzz was. My reaction has also been varied, in fact, it's kind of followed the stages of grieving:

1. Denial


2. Anger


3. Bargaining


4. Depression


5. Acceptance

Denial
Biden? No! It can't be Biden. This is a joke. Obama's just playing with us. He did this before, joking with the press about his pick. This is just another example. Biden's going to walk out and say "Let me introduce you to the real pick!"

Anger
Then I'm starting to think "What the fuck? It really is Biden?" I mean, Biden? Doesn't he always put his foot in his mouth? Isn't he always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time? Didn't he say some really unkind things about Obama during the early primaries? Who the hell is this Biden guy?

Bargaining
Then I'm thinking "Alright, maybe this won't be so bad. Maybe he'll be better..." And I thought that until CNN started running some of his "greatest flubs".

Depression
So I got depressed and went to bed. Seriously. I went to bed and contemplating four more years of crap rule. And my depression lasted until Obama's speech at Springfield introducing him.

Acceptance
And so I moved onto acceptance. I still can't say I'm thrilled by the choice. I floated some funny ones with friends (Obama Phelps 08 - The Dreamy Team) and some serious ones (Wesley Clark, Chuck Hagel, Jim Webb) but I always dismissed Biden as too pedestrian. But I learned a lot about Biden in the last couple of days, and I admire him more now.

I do like that he commutes every day from Wilmington to DC on the train. I like that he's committed to spending time with his family. He is combative, which is what a vice president is supposed to be. He is a smart guy, and he is generally respected. So I guess I'm okay with it. I'm not enthused about Biden yet, but I'm not upset by it anymore either.

I am hoping that Biden does Obama, and the nation, proud. I hope that Biden really is here for his kids and mine, as he said, and that together, the two candidates work to better our way of life.

Otherwise, I'm liable to start grieving all over again.

CNN ran with a story today headlined "Online Student-Teacher Friendships Can Be Troublesome". The article discusses how some states and school boards are crafting policies to deal with student-teacher friendships on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. In most cases, as the article points out, the relationship is either benign or sometimes a positive thing. In some cases the students use the sites to ask questions about assignments, seek advice about school; as well as learn more about who their teacher is outside of the school. But there have been a few cases where teachers and students alike breach the bounds of acceptable behavior, and sometimes break the law with sexual relationships.

It is because of those rare cases that people want to restrict all teachers' behavior online.

Consider the following from the article:

...[S]tate legislator Jane Cunningham is sponsoring a bill in the Missouri House of Representatives that would ban elementary school teachers from having social-networking friendships with their students.

[Snipped]

In addition to the bill in the Missouri legislature, other school boards, teacher unions and parent-teacher associations across the country are drafting policies and issuing advisements about which online or text-messaging relationships are acceptable.

The Lamar County School Board in Missouri recently implemented a policy forbidding teachers and students from having any text-message conversations or social-networking friendships.

(source: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/08/12/studentsteachers.online/index.html)

This is an emotional issue, to be sure. I'm not immune to sadness or rage when I hear about children being hurt and killed by predators. But it never benefits us to legislate out of emotion. So, walk with me as we think about it rationally for a moment.

If the teachers are such a big threat to the students online then why are they allowed around them at all? There are parents and teachers out that seek to restrict a teacher's behavior online but they're okay with letting these same teachers be with them in person five days a week? That doesn't add up. Furthermore, for a lot of these sites, like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc, a good portion of the interaction happens in public. If a child and teacher are having some manner of contact online it's visible and searchable. Even private conversations between parties are stored on a server somewhere. It can be requested by the police and examined for evidence of wrong-doing. What a child and teacher do in person is not, so isn't this potentially safer?

This type of reaction comes from the "WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN???" argument. I have never bought that screechy argument. It is used so often by special interest groups and legislators to cram intrusive laws into the books. It is the exploitation of fear to achieve a political goal and I find it despicable. I don't think that all people are acting out of some ulterior motive, but they're exploiting fear to get what they want.

So I find this movement to restrict teachers' behavior online outright silly. I also find it a little sad. I understand that teachers are in a sense public figures, role models, and mentors, and therefore need to be more cautious about what they share and how, but does it hurt anyone if a student goes on Facebook and finds out that their math teacher is also a huge Iron Maiden fan? Or that their English teacher really loves to watch "Ninja Warrior"? I don't think it does. It humanizes the person grading their work, and builds a connection between them.

Thinking further out about this I find it amusing that culturally we bemoan the lack of social bonds between people, the empty homes that kids go to after school, and the separation people feel from each other, and yet want to reinforce the isolation for children by limiting the contact they can have with some of the most important people in their lives.

Clearly there needs to be some middle ground that can be reached between protecting children from legitimate predators and allowing our children to reach out and build the connections they should have with the people who matter. But banning contact outright between teachers and students is not the answer.

A story originally appeared in the Houston Chronicle and is now being discussed on the web about someone who created an account in the name of to be the ExxonMobil Corporation on Twitter and proceeded to interact with users.

When the Houston Chronicle contacted the company ExxonMobil to discuss the Twitter account, they were surprised to learn of its existence. According to their PR department, they didn't create the account, there is no one named Janet who is authorized to speak on behalf of the company, and they're not sure what to do with the account. Perhaps that's why some on the web think this is a case of someone on the outside attacking the company, but I don't think so.

Reviewing the posts from "Janet", they seem like they're positive towards ExxonMobil, and worked hard to defend the company from specious accusations. Consider:

indeed we date as far back as Standard Oil, with Rockefeller as the very founder! We did not have any association with the Nazis

(source: http://twitter.com/ExxonMobilCorp/statuses/878322300)

or

we are not an earth hating organization, and we're working on hard to improve how we drill for oil, these are difficult times. (source: http://twitter.com/ExxonMobilCorp/statuses/878310567)

I think the truth about the Twitter account is something Janet said herself not long before she stopped using Twitter:

I am an employee of ExxonMobil, who has decided to put forward her pride in her own company.

(source: http://twitter.com/ExxonMobilCorp/statuses/878323539)

Given the pro-Exxon nature of the posts, and her ernest endeavors to answer questions, rebuff accusations, and highlight the positives, I think she must be an employee at Exxon, and it seems she loves her company enough to take this initiative. The question of course now becomes: "What should Exxon do about this?" I say they should let her continue. Unchain her and let her continue being their rep on Twitter. There's some precedent for this.

There are a gaggle of companies on Twitter already but to highlight two of the more well-known examples:

• Comcast has a customer service rep, Frank, on Twitter who helps people with their problems: http://twitter.com/ComcastCares
• Online shoe retailer Zappos' CEO is on Twitter and regularly interacts with others: http://twitter.com/Zappos

(Full list of companies on Twitter can be found here: http://blog.fluentsimplicity.com/2008/04/07/connecting-with-customers-twitter/)

And this is great, yes? Absolutely! Social media, like Twitter is another outlet on the web. It's another place where companies establish their brand, connect with customers, and solve problems their customers are having. Furthermore, social media's not a fad that's going to fade away (though it will probably shrink in total number of users as time goes on and newer trends emerge). Given the newness of social media, it's an area that is not well-explored by companies, and so has the potential for abuse. Which brings us to "brandjacking", a portmanteau for "brand" and "hijacking".

When someone brandjacks they're assuming the name of someone or some company to either discredit or poke fun at them. And honestly sometimes the results are very funny. Other times, they're just plain libelous. For a long time there were doubts that the AndersonCooper account on Twitter was actually Anderson Cooper, especially given the sometimes raunchy things that were said about other CNN hosts, but it now appears to be a feed for his reporting, and the humor is gone. I miss it, personally. Brandjacking is a form of griefing or trolling, because it causes the people or company grief. I usually despise trolls, but, I admit to feeling torn about this form, maybe because it's done to be subversive.

Some might hold this up as just deliberate evil, but I find myself wondering if this happens because large companies no longer provide a simple way for customers to contact them. We hear a lot about the horrible customer service experience people have with companies like Wal-Mart, US Airways, DirecTV, Washington Mutual, Best Buy, etc. These retailers and service providers sometimes appear as monoliths to the customer, large inflexible bureaucracies whose only advantage is low prices. When someone has a problem local managers never seem empowered to help, and a person's only recourse is to call a number that goes to who knows where to speak to who knows who and usually results in nothing being resolved. The Consumerist is chock-full of stories from people fed up with having to call a company more than a few times to get what should be a simple problem solved. As these frustrations pile up, people start to look for creative and easy ways to vent, and I think griefing on social media sites is one way to do it. It becomes a form of protest on the web, and the social nature of these sites amplifies their protest beyond them screaming into a phone at a rep (which is never a good idea anyway) or telling their friends. As opposed to blogging, which a lot companies can dismiss as an acceptable level of noise, brandjacking becomes a very visible and loud form of protest that's hard to ignore. The company can't let the brandjacker continue, but shutting down the account just reinforces their image as uncaring.

Social media gives those companies a chance to put them in closer contact with their customers, and potential customers, and hear from them unfiltered. It is a more direct and amplified feed from the public, and in my mind, every company should want that. If you're not paying attention to your customers and what they want, you're not going to succeed. My message to companies is "Ignore social media to your own detriment".

In the case of the ExxonMobilCorp account on Twitter, I don't think that Exxon was brandjacked (in the traditional sense), and certainly I don't believe that Twitter users were mislead either. This was, instead the opposite of griefing. White-knighting? Someone at Exxon wanted very much to share "the good news" about her company and took the initiative to do so. I guess other companies, like the ones I mentioned above, can hope someone does the same for them, but if I were them, I wouldn't count on it.

I was interested in a story on CNN today about Madeleine McCann, the little girl that disappeared from Portugal in 2007. Specifically the article mentions police now believe that she was taken by a pedophile ring in Belgium and is somewhere in Northern Europe. But the report raises all sorts of questions, and I want to highlight them here.

First off the report says:

the officer writes that "intelligence suggests that a pedophile ring in Belgium made an order for a young girl three days before Madeleine McCann was taken.

"Somebody connected to this group saw Maddie, took a photograph of her and sent it to Belgium. The purchaser agreed the girl was suitable and Maddie was taken," the officer wrote.

I have to ask where they got this intelligence. It's extremely detailed. It suggests that they have someone inside this ring in Belgium. Certainly Interpol's not going to confirm if they do, but doesn't the release of this report indicate the same thing? Are they no longer inside the group? More importantly in my mind, if they knew this information, why couldn't they find her?

I really don't want to second guess the police on this, but it just seems like there's more information they're holding back, and I can't figure out what.

My hope is that they did not let her slip through their fingers for the higher cause of justice in the hope that they'll be able to catch more of the pedophile ring. That would be awful.

Alright, next piece.

On Tuesday, the documents revealed a previously undisclosed sighting of Madeleine in the Netherlands shortly after her disappearance.

The possible sighting of Madeleine in May 2007 stemmed from a report by a Dutch shopkeeper, who told authorities she encountered a little girl in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

She said the child identified herself as Maddie and said she was taken from her mother while on holiday.

"I start to ask where her mommy was," Anna Stam said. "She couldn't tell me that. I wanted to give her a balloon, but she didn't want that. She only wants her mommy, she said. And she said that these people took her from her mommy."

Is this woman telling the truth? Seriously? Does anyone else read this and think

WHAT THE FUCK?

If I were at the grocery store and a little child came up to me and said "I want my mommy, I don't know where I am. I don't know where she is. These people took me from my mommy." I would say "Come with me child, we're looking for the police." Maybe it's because I'm bigger and wouldn't shy away from a fight, but COME ON. Any time a child says that, shouldn't you be the slightest concerned?

I want to travel to Amsterdam and smack the woman around.

Sorry, I'll stop sounding like Nancy Grace now.

So now what for the McCanns? How to find this girl? How certain are they in this data? And to what end was the report released? I really do hope they find that poor child, and soon.

And not the kind that digs up their garden and eats their cruelty-free non-gmo organic heirloom tomatoes, but rather an NRA spy in their midsts. Two groups, CeaseFirePA and States United to Prevent Gun Violence are accusing Mary Lou McFate (nee Sapone) of working for the NRA, and are in the process of sweeping their offices for bugs. (Link) Their accusations are based on an article written in Mother Jones magazine that highlights her double identity and past actions infiltrating an animal-rights group on behalf of U.S. Surgical (now Covidien).

The Mother Jones article goes into much more detail. I suggest you read it for the details.

To me, the fascinating things about this story are:

1. She was so active in these groups for so long and held so many positions of authority. I've always wondered how someone can act for this long as a double agent without turning for the group they're spying on. I don't think I could do it. I'm too argumentative.
2. The groups she was affiliated with are trying to figure out whether or not she influenced legislative policy and aren't really sure if she did. By all accounts she was energetic in her efforts and worked hard to spread the message of gun control.
3. These groups are not secretive. Their actions, their initiatives, they're all public and available for everyone to read on the web. What was she after, if she even was a mole? Leverage on the people in leadership? It's not clear.
4. Because what they're doing does fall under the classification of "trade secrets" what she's done is apparently legal.

The NRA has refused to comment either way on this case. I actually think that that's the smartest thing for them to do. If they admit to it they look like big assholes (and the NRA doesn't usually need help in that department) but if they deny it, most people won't believe them anyway. Some people view their silence as an admission of guilt, including Mother Jones magazine, but it could just be that the NRA's lawyers have advised their media people to not comment until they're sure they won't face any liability. Who knows? Maybe the gun-control activists need someone on the inside of the NRA to tell them what's going on.

I hear there's this lady named Mary who's supposedly pretty crafty at this kind of stuff. They should hire her.

Other links:

• Pictures of May Lou Sapone/McFate