http://www.americanthinker.com.....obama.html

You may like this article on Hillary’s and Obama’s links to Alinsky: http://www.americanthinker.com.....s_rul.html

Obama is a Modern Liberal/Socialist. He really doesn’t outwardly exhibit the Modern Liberal traits, but you can see it in some of his speeches and positions. He may be able to talk “common sense”, but it is to get elected. He has surrounded himself with Socialists, not libertarians as somehow the tech crowd thinks.

Since Obama has such little experience, no matter how smart he is, he will have to rely on people he doesn’t know (more Socialists) to run the big arms of government. At least when a governor comes in to office, there is some sort of network of people who have managed things to draw from. McCain has been around longer so maybe he has a deeper bench. Obama doesn’t have a bench.

Back to Alinsky, the “counter-culture” belief system and the anti-Democratic tactics that are terrible. Just think about it: we have rules and systems to change things, yet these people trample over whatever is in their way and screw us all up. I have utter and abject contempt for these people. “Community Activist” somehow sounds like a benign life, but the Modern Liberal, counter-culturist (see, they even admit it!) should be stopped.

Obama should not be President. Hillary should not be President. I’m not a super McCain fan, but I know that we need to put down the Socialist influences. Everywhere these ideas are tried, they fail. People want to escape the results of when Obama’s and Hillary’s ideas are put into practice. I’m always amazed at how the default position of so many people is more Socialist than Conservative. It’s really a testament of how the Modern Liberals have infested the schools. As I suggested, watch that Evan Sayet video; it explains all sorts of things about these people.

Obama’s strength was Reagan’s strength: he can talk to the people, and really get to the gist of how many people feel about where the country is, and where it should be going. He can get crossover votes, like Reagan did, and this blunts the ability of a Republican senate or congress to pass legislation. He’s aware that he’s not a “details” guy, and will surround himself with policy experts.

That said, the man is smart. His strategy of going for small states, poor folks, and the libertarian tech vote meshes well with netroots campaigning and his overall themes. (This worked for Bill Clinton too.) There’s “audacity” in this strategy, because, while it plays to the Democrat strengths (sustained campaigning, popular outreach), most Democrats at the national level fear it and prefer the safer “big media, big states” strategy and rely for their allied grassroots folks to take care of the little people.

Obama, being a community organizer, probably saw the unrealized potential of combining netroots tech with real social needs, to create new voters. The method is basic: the organizer finds the local leaders, and nurtures local leadership. The local leaders become organizers for their own community. The community becomes a political voting bloc that causes local voter turnout to explode, causing fear in the incumbent politicians.

Of course, this strategy could have failed terribly. In fact, it’s so expensive to implement that it probably would have failed, but the planets were aligned, just right, for things to work.

Community organizing was invented in the 30s and 40s, refined in the 50s, created “the 60s”, and in the 70s and 80s, was adopted by the Christian Right to build its political base. It was used to turn the Republican party into a creationist, Christian party. Most notably, though, it was *not* used by Bill Clinton, who ignored the Left organizing world. (That’s why the went for Nader — they were frozen out. During this time frame, 3rd parties did much better among people of color than ever before.) Obama brought the organizing back into the game — and it was easier because of the increasing division between rich and poor in the country, and also because a lot of web software now embodies some aspects of community organizing.

Economically, consumer-grade high-tech likes Obama because the new media, like the old media, is a low-cost product that primarily sells to regular working folks. Anything that helps people maintain or increase wages, and have discretionary income, ultimately helps the new media. In the past, tech voted Republican because a lot of tech was purchased by the military, and Republicans increased the military budget. New media doesn’t sell to the military, and it’s not large enough (yet) to give donations like the DJIA companies do, (Microsoft, ATT, and IBM go Republican, just to note) so, two reasons to vote GOP don’t exist for them.

New media companies don’t worry about taxes, because new companies tend to have slim profits, and no dividends. So, everything is an expense, including what’s paid back to the venture capitalists. Some hotshots are getting rich, but overall, the companies aren’t yet rich. Additionally, there’s not a lot of legislation affecting new media, so they don’t have a large lobbying budget the way telecoms and defense tech companies have.

One other thing… the unions have been silent about Net Neutrality. The most significant union would be the Communication Workers of America, which represents some people who help maintain the ‘net, and which probably has a lobbyist conversant in telecom laws, has been silent about it. They are probably siding with ATT, which is the only large telecom company that’s got a union. ATT opposes Net Neutrality.

Today’s Modern Liberals (the people who have taken over much of politics in Western Europe and the whole of the Democratic Party in the US) do not resemble of Liberals of the past.

Watch that video “How Modern Liberals Think” (all of it) to learn about them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaE98w1KZ-c Thanks!

And if I hear again that all Hawaiians with an immigrant parent should be considered foreign policy experts, I’ll puke (damn, it happened already).

I also fail to see where he is bringing the people together! Did he start a march on Washington to prevent the Iraq war? I don’t recall ever hearing his voice, when others screamed from the mountain tops of what a mistake this war with Iraq would be.

Is this what American’s see as progress? Another stooge looking for title? We need a leader not a wannabe!

TechCrunch, your agenda is showing. I cancelled my Wired subscription for just this reason. Keep it up and you’ll lose me too.

It’s all good for Marc Andreessen since he’s already liquid and Ning would just be home run #3.

BRAVO!! GREAT POST!!

“You disappoint me, as does Al (104), who is clueless to the fact that the internet was birthed and raised by the liberals he sneers at.”

I think it might be better said that it was raised by libertarians. And of course, it was funded by that evil organizatiion called the military (DARPA) which as everyone knows is a bastion of liberalism ;).

Having said all that, will Obama make a decent prez? Who knows. Some of our most “experienced” presidents have also been our worst. If you are going to venture into the political arena, please bring the same critical thinking you’ve displayed in the tech world to the table instead of producing meaningless, breathless hype.

RE: 105. John Smith, who wrote:

“Wow Town Crier. That’s sad. I could be wrong but you pretty much just said that the reason that Obama should be voted president is because he’s black… ”

You said it, Mr. Smith, you are pretty much wrong. My main point is… Obama navigated his way to the final three… without the name recognition of being the spouse of a former president, or from being a war hero.

For a no name rookie senator, with no national ‘playoff experience’, to make it to the final three… while carrying “extra (black) baggage”… well that’s the person who not only gets my vote, but who, IMO, is demonstratably better qualified, to navigate our American ship of State through domestic and foriegn waters… where effective communications, in this (global) information age, is perhaps the most critical factor for success.

The “all men are created equal” lanquage in the Constitution provides voters the historical framework to ’seize the day’… in the form of an electoral opportunity, and “live up to the promise of America”.

Like George Bush, right? Someone who had never been outside of North America prior to his coronation? Someone whose daddy brought him his grades, his college degree, his National Guard stint to evade going to Vietnam, a baseball team and a political career? Someone who will most likely go down in history as the the worst president we have ever had?

Almost ANYONE will be better than what we have had over the last 8 years!

But please, do keep in touch. Send a postcard now and then

1. Just because someone reads a tech blog doesn’t mean they are intelligent or capable of reasoned thinking,

2. Republicans are afraid. They know that they don’t stand a very good chance with McCain, a 72 year old, flip-flopping geezer who wants to spend another 100 years in Iraq. Someone who wants to spend trillions more dollars that we don’t have and doesn’t seem to care about thousands more soldiers and civilians losing their lives or body parts.

3. We are getting an early look at the ‘Pub FUD attack plan against whomever the Dem candidate turns out to be. Since Techcrunch endorsed Obama, that is their focus here. If the endorsement had been for Clinton, the same people would be attacking her.

4. Will Bushco, the neocons and the evangelicals get desperate enough to try to help McCain by playing the terrorist fear card again? Will enough of the American voters fall for this again? Would Bushco go as far as creating an “incident” to try to create more fear, say 6 weeks or so prior to the election?

5. Here we go again, sigh….

http://blogs.barrons.com/techt.....he-valley/

Here’s a list of Who’s Who among Valley donors to the 2008 race for the White House …

Barack Obama:

Bill Davidow, partner and co-founder, Mohr Davidow

Elevation Partners founder Roger McNamee

Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell

Ram Shriram, billionaire investor at Sherpalo Ventures

Adobe co-founder John Warnock

Steve Jurvetson, venture capitalist at Draper Fisher Jurvetson

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley

Steve Westly, former eBay exec

Michael Moritz, partner, Sequoia Capital

Mitchell Kertzman, venture capitalist with Hummer Winblad, former CEO of Sybase

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/200.....lenews_wsj

Is Obama Good for Business?

http://www.businessweek.com/bw.....645487.htm

Some of the smartest folks in Silicon Valley are supporting Obama…

http://valleywag.com/tag/ram-shriram/

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All I did was call you an arrogant ass and you deleted the comment (between comments 67 and 68)!! It was a joke fella. Maybe it’s my sense of humour, not a lot of people get it… maybe 1 in 100

Go ahead… delete this one too… you’re the daddy… I’m resigned to it.

As an anonymous internet troll, I expected more from you. You disappoint me, as does Al (104), who is clueless to the fact that the internet was birthed and raised by the liberals he sneers at.

The entire legislative branch should be run like JURY DUTY. You serve your country, vote your conscience, and you’re done. If we, as people, have the power to sit on a jury and convict a man or woman and set them up to be PUT TO DEATH, why can’t we be relied upon to decide what this country does for Health Care, or poverty, or the environment, or taxes?

I reality: republicans are spending more money than democrats.

@29

This is the result of 8 years republicans and president bush:

> Interest Rates at ALL TIME HIGHS
> Inflation at ALL TIME HIGHS
> TAXES at ALL TIME HIGHS
> Unemployment near ALL TIME HIGHS
> GAS at ALL TIME HIGHS (indexed for inflation is still higher than today)