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Citizen's media is the answer!

Okay, so Sarah Palin agreed to an interview with Charlie Gibson at ABC News, but we all know (right?) that it's going to be softball questions that can be answered with glib one-liners. Not going to get answers to the questions real citizens (i.e. taxpayers, voters) have.

But it turns out if you happen to run into Sarah Palin in a restaurant, she'll answer questions, and say things that her handlers almost certainly don't want her to say.

AmericaBlog: "I don't think this question will be answered until after Senator Stevens' trial in September and perhaps never. After all, Ted Stevens is still running for the Senate this year and a Republican vote, corrupt or not, is still a Republican vote."

One of the tough questions for the Republican Governor is whether she will support Republican Senator Ted Stevens for re-election. There's really no good answer for her. 1. If she doesn't support him, a Democrat wins and the balance in the Senate tips by another vote. Not good for her party. 2. If she does support Stevens, she'll be supporting a Washington insider who is indicted for corruption. There goes her claim to be a maverick coming to Washington to clean house.

Well our heroic citizen blogger not only asked the question, but also got a really interesting answer.

The funny thing here is if she really is going to Washington to do the people's work, how does she escape answering the people's questions? Heh.

So when you see her, don't be shy, step up and ask her about Ted Stevens.

New technology: TV on the passenger seat

Click here for a more detailed view.

When I pulled off the road in Grand Junction, CO to watch the McCain press conference introducing his VP pic, all I did was find an EVDO connection (worked the first time) and fired up the SlingPlayer, which connected to my TV at home, in Berkeley, and tuned to MSNBC, and it all just worked.

The only thing I'd like to see improved is that the EVDO modem be built into the computer, the thing dangling off the side is pretty ugly, don't ya think?

My hopes for BearHugCamp 1.0

Remember the BearHugCamp idea? Well... it seems like it's happening! Next Friday, Sept 12, in San Francisco. Steve Gillmor is the master of ceremonies, agent provacateur and visionary. Me, I bring a few used analogies and metaphors and experience with various gadgets and utilities that build on Twitter and FriendFeed and Identi.ca, et al.

Where? I think it'll be at CNET's offices in SF on 2nd St. I'll leave the logistics up to Steve. I've blocked out the whole day.

Who? Well, that's where it gets interesting. Here's my take on it. If you've been spending a lot of your free time puzzling over where this stuff is going, and how various systems should or shouldn't plug together, and where your data should be stored -- and if your thinking could benefit from other people's confusion (and certainty) on this topic, then come. However, it will be webcast (thanks to Leo Laporte and probably others) so if you're mainly interested in listening you don't have to reroute your life to get your body to SF on Friday.

Why? Well I'm coming to listen and fight for the coral reef. I want to build stuff on top of a great worldwide distributed notification system. It's got to be reliable, and permanently and irrevocably open, meaning no one can say who can build apps for it, as for example Apple controls who makes iPhone apps. That means that Twitter can't be my host because they don't pass the "irrevocably" test -- as they have been revoking functionality, and dealing the good stuff to very small numbers of people. I'm sure they think what they're doing is right, and I'm not here to argue right and wrong, but I want what I want, and that's why I'm coming.

Pretty sure the cost to participate will be $0. But I'm willing to pay some money to be there, even if everyone else doesn't. Maybe others want to make that offer as well?

I'm not organizing it myself because I reserve the right to be a vendor or join up with a vendor, and I don't want anyone to say at a future date that this was a vendor-sponsored event. And Steve doesn't make any promises either, but he's more neutral than me, so he's the host and benevolent dictator (a role that befits him), and I support him, and I hope you do too.

Why do they give Republicans air time?

Simple question...

If they won't sit down for an interview, to answer questions, maybe the TV networks should stop covering their speeches and campaign rallies?

The Republicans want to talk direct, so let them do it, without the help of the corporate media.

Has hell frozen over too??

Consensus is developing, I know because I'm endorsing the point of view of someone whose political philosophy is almost exactly opposite mine.

Frum: "I am not denying that Sarah Palin may have great skills. She may well. I am insisting that neither you, nor I, nor John McCain has any valid reason to believe that she does. This is not an argument about the attributes she lacks. It's an argument about the information we lack. I am pleading with my fellow conservatives: Please demand more and better knowledge before you commit yourselves to a political leader. That's all."

Amen. I know I'm not going to support her, unless it turns out that our beliefs about her positions are totally wrong. There's one reason to believe that they may be wrong.

LA Times: "I'm pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues," she said during a debate in Juneau.

Geez, this makes her seem almost like a human being, not the Stepford monster she appeared to be when she spoke at the RNC last Wednesday.

The conservatives may want to check this out cause if I like something about Palin, you can be pretty sure they don't.

Jay Rosen nails it

Jay is one of those guys, like George Lakoff and Steve Gillmor, who figure things out before anyone else does. When I'm stuck looking at individual trees, Jay often shows me the forest.

Here it is Saturday after the Republican Convention and I'm just starting to figure out what mischief the Republicans are up to, but Jay had a hypothesis on Wednesday, and blogged it, and it's much more complete than what I have today.

Jay Rosen: "John McCain's convention gambit calls for culture war around the Sarah Palin pick."

He must have been a Republican in a former life.

Read the whole piece, and then come back here, please.

Oh it's devious. And cowardly, in contradiction to the hype about McCain the war hero, which leads me to believe that the best way to prosecute this is to firmly pin the coward label on McCain until he puts Palin on the same level as all the other candidates that passed through the electoral process in the 2008 election.

We need to see her in action, if she's going to be a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the Presidency. If not, we should know upfront that we're thinking about elected a gutless coward as President and a man who does anything but put America First.

Frum's annoying wrong idiotic argument

David Frum, a Republican, thinks the McCain campaign shouldn't put Palin in a box and hide her from the press. Good, he's right about that, and his piece is a must-read. But like most Republicans his disdain for "elites" is itself the height of elite arrogance. Only Kings and Queens, royalty, are entitled to that kind of arrogance, and we overthrew our King in the Revolution, 232 years ago. We don't believe in that in the United States. That's how far off course we've gotten, we've put up with this nonsense long enough.

To paraphrase Obama, Frum doesn't Get It. The reason you discuss your ideas publicly is that your ideas will get better. He assumes, like royalty, that Republicans always know what's right, but he didn't learn anything from the last eight years and this is why the Republicans have to sit on the sidelines and mull it over until they figure it out. You don't have all the answers. Some days (like today) I don't think you have any.

Frum, it isn't about winning a debate -- it's about doing what's right and smart and competitive, for America. Remember your slogan -- Country First. It's a great idea. Now practice it.

PS: He's right, Quayle is smart. I found out by surprise. I was listening to an interview on NPR, and had no idea who it was but the guy was smart. Imagine my shock when I found out it was Dan Quayle. Same thing happened with Hillary Clinton.

PPS: What struck me about Palin was her cowardice. Before letting us know anything about her intelligence or knowledge, or the quality of her ideas, she was sarcastically trashing a man we've gotten to know and respect over the last X months, a man who had to keep his cool as the press went after his church, community and family, and kept his grace even humor at every step. Palin, in contrast, not only hasn't been even slightly vetted, has absolutely no basis for her arrogance, no foundation. Giuliani, sheez, we know him. He's an asshole, always has been, we don't expect much from him, and we're rarely surprised. But he's not running to be a 72-year-old heartbeat from the presidency. She needs to slow down and sober up, she's asking for a big job. It's serious. If she were a man I'd say she was a dickhead. And since she's running for the second most serious job in the country, let's stick with that, until further notice.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

What are they hiding?

Okay, we know that Sarah Palin can read speeches written by Karl Rove's speech writers. But if she's really ready to be Commander in Chief, why won't her handlers let her answer questions? Is she a made-to-order candidate, kind of a Stepford Vice-President? What are the Republicans hiding? Maybe they're still debugging her program? Can she think for herself? Does she have her own new maverick-like ideas? Why did she lie about selling the plane on eBay? Did she really run the PAC for indicted-for-corruption Senator Ted Stevens? If so, is she really a reformer? And why did she hire a Washington lobbyist to get her earmarks for the Alaska city she was mayor of? She loves moose but she also likes pork! Sure she's a great mom, but what kind of leader is she and would she take us anywhere we want to go?