Day: September 7, 2007

Measuring the Prez Candidates’ Internet Share

Buck Banks

From the very fringes of the 2008 presidential campaign comes the SIPP Index, a weekly metric compiled by an Internet consulting firm that purports to measure each candidate’s share of the Web. It is taken to be an indicator of how well the candidates are reaching people across the Internet.

The Spartan Internet Political Performance (SIPP) Index is the first quantitative metric to measure the Internet-wide performance of each Presidential candidate for the 2008 election. The Index is comprised of over 650 quantitative factors measuring the level of support and how well each candidate is connecting with individuals across the Internet. The score for each candidate represents their overall Internet market share.

If the race heats up and the Internet becomes a bigger factor, the SIPP could become an interesting indicator.

Among the myriad polls and measuring schemes that clog the info stream the SIPP ranks among the most esoteric. Reflecting as it does both the polls and the punditry, right now the SIPP doesn’t add much to the overall conversation about the campaign:

Spartan Internet Consulting has released the Political Performance Index results for the week of August 30 – September 5, with Hillary Clinton strengthening her second position ranking with 11.71 percent. The most notable gainers included Chris Dodd up 0.28 percent, John McCain up 0.30 percent and Fred Thompson up 0.22 percent.

Currently maintaining the top three positions are Barack Obama, 20.65 percent, Hillary Clinton, 11.71 percent and Ron Paul with 11.36 percent. The largest decliner this week was Rudy Giuliani, down 0.60 percent.

Perhaps the most significant SIPP finding is the vast gap between Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Obama’s MySpace site rocks! Everyone says Ron Paul has a huge Internet following, and that’s pretty clear from his 11.36 percent ranking. His closest rival is Mitt Romney at 8.83 percent. The rest of the Republican field is in the 1-3 percent range, except for John McCain who has a respectable 5.63 share.

So what does it mean? Like most polls at this point of the campaign, probably not much. But if the race heats up and the Internet becomes a bigger factor in pushing opinion, the SIPP could become an interesting indicator.

Bush Bumbles Across the Free World — Confuses Australia with Austria, Pisses off South Korea, Nearly Falls Off Stage

Trish

Now we know why it’s best for Bush to stay home and clear brush. Not long after answering Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile’s question about progress in Iraq, “We’re kicking ass,” Bush went on to really offend.

Bush strode away from the lectern on a path that would have sent him over a steep drop. Howard and others redirected the president to center stage

“Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit,” Bush said to Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Oops. That would be APEC, the annual meeting of leaders from 21 Pacific Rim nations, not OPEC, the cartel of 12 major oil producers.

Bush quickly corrected himself. “APEC summit,” he said forcefully, joking that Howard had invited him to the OPEC summit next year (for the record, an impossibility, since neither Australia nor the U.S. are OPEC members).

…Talking about Howard’s visit to Iraq last year to thank his country’s soldiers serving there, Bush called them “Austrian troops.”

That one was fixed for him. Though tapes of the speech clearly show Bush saying “Austrian,” the official text released by the White House switched it to “Australian.”

Then, speech done, Bush confidently headed out the wrong way.

He strode away from the lectern on a path that would have sent him over a steep drop. Howard and others redirected the president to center stage, where there were steps leading down to the floor of the theater.

But wait, there’s more. Being addled in Australia was only a warm-up. If you really want to mess things up, piss off a country that is trying to help you fight one of the members of your axis of evil.

[…]

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant…. Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.

— Rollo May (1909-1994) Existential therapist, humanist

New Ads Blame GOP Senators for Continuing Bush’s War

Jon Ponder

The public, including most liberals, blame Congressional Democrat for not ending Bush’s war — despite the fact that majorities of Democrats in both the House and the Senate voted against the war several times earlier this year.

The Democrats’ efforts were quashed in the Senate, however, where a majority of Republican senators continued to rubberstamp the president’s desire for never-ending war in the Middle East.

Now Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI) have launched an ad campaign against key Bush-enablers, GOP Senators Mitch McConnell, Norm Coleman, Susan Collins and Pete Domenici, targeting them, according to an AAEI news release, for “their continued support of the President’s endless Iraq war policy, which leaves our troops in the crosshairs of another country’s religious civil war.”

Titled “Fatigues,” the ad shows children going through mock basic training. It will air in each of the four senators’ states by the Campaign to Defend America, which is part of AAEI.