Blogger Response #4

The blog from Sam Stein I am discussion in this post is “MSNBC-Clinton Feud Continues: Tucker Goes Off.” It was posted on February 25, and discusses the next round in the ongoing feud between MSNBC and Hillary Clinton and her campaign team. The blog can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/25/msnbcclinton-feud-contin_n_88417.html.

This is the first blog of Sam Stein’s that I have seen which contained a video, and the video was posted on YouTube, and embedded directly into the blog. This is the video in question:

This is an on-going battle between Clinton and MSNBC, and it got very personal a couple of times already. Chris Matthews made comments that Clinton only received her Senate seat of New York because the voters felt bad about her failing marriage. Also, a MSNBC analyst David Shuster was suspended for making a comment that Chelsea Clinton was being “pimped out” to recruit super delegates. Matthews also made comments on his show “Hardball” that the Clinton campaign teams were “knee-cappers” and they were “lousy” to delve into intimidation.

This blog also contained a quote from Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s Press Secretary. Wolfson was asked by Time Magazine whether or not the media in general was dealing with Barack Obama with kid gloves. "I think it is true," he said, "that every time the Obama campaign in this campaign has attacked Senator Clinton in the worst kind of personal ways, attacked her veracity, attacked her credibility, said that she would say or do anything to get elected, the press has largely applauded him."

The overall tone of the blog is to highlight the wrongdoings of MSNBC which Carlson did not mention in his tirade. The blog shows why the Clinton campaign has been “awful to the press” or maybe it is just that they are being awful to MSNBC. I think MSNBC should remember that you only get what you give, and try to be nicer to Clinton in the future. At very least they should try to treat each candidate equally: love them or hate them, treat them the same.

Blogger Response #3

This is a response to the Sam Stein blog “Bush’s Top Donors Signing On With McCain,” which was posted on February 26^th, 2008. The article sums up the news that John McCain is getting money from some of the people who have given money to President Bush in the past namely for the 2004 presidential election. The biggest group of donors that McCain and Bush now have in common call themselves “Texans for Public Justice” they are also given the nickname 2004 Bush Rangers. The blog had a link to where the members of this group are listed. I notice that there are a lot of Jr, Sr, II and III in the list of donors. To me this shows that these “rangers” come from old money: oil money. This is a group that symbolizes the Presidents rich, conservative base which he has drawn on for support for all of his business and political career.

Stein has also provides links to a project called “The Buying of a President.” The director of this project Bill Hogan said “"If you are really great at shaking the money tree, history tells us that you are going to get donations from a lot of people in the party. It is a question of migration from one campaign cycle to the next. Some donors might sit it out or support other candidates early on. But as the campaign goes on the donors will increasingly gravitate to the likely nominee." The blog also has a useful link to a site where McCain’s fund raising totals are divulged along with the names of citizens and lobbyists who have given to the hopeful presidential candidate.

There is a very important question to answer: why are Bush supporters given money to McCain? It is well known that McCain is not well received in the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party. Wayne Berman, the managing editor of Ogilvy Government Relations said this to Jonathan Salant of Bloomberg Financial News "bringing the people who give and raise money for other candidates is an element of unifying the party. What attracts them is the comeback story... A lot of these folks don't agree with him on every issue, but they're attracted by the way he came back.'' Even with his Lazarus story, McCain has only raised $48 million which is less then Rudy Giuliani received in his failed attempt to be the Republican nominee. The story ends with this fact: McCain and his team have a long way to go, but his team also has some familiar faces in terms of Bush’s money raising ability. McCain has hired Mercer Reynolds who was the national finance chairman for Bush in 2004. McCain not only has the same donors as the President he is hiring the same people for his campaign. With the state of Bush’s approval rating I don’t think that is advisable, but it could help McCain in getting the support of Bush’s ultra-conservative friends and business partners.

Stein’s blog can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/26/bushs-top-donors-signing_n_88502.html.

U-Mass Violence

AMHERST MA-

Violence has erupted in recent weeks at U-Mass Amherst, and binge drinking is to blame according to university officials.

Marianne Winters said “that there is an anticipation almost an expectation that violence is a possibility.” Many students have been expelled due to violent incidents, but the problems still remain.

Jeff Napolitian the president of the Graduate Student Senate said that the university "packs freshman who have no experience of living on their own into one area, and there are bound be to problems. "

Most of the incidents occur in the Southwest dorm area at U-Mass which has played host to violent riots over the past five years. Violence erupted after The Red Sox were defeated by the New York Yankees in the American League Divisional series in 2003. During this riot police cars were turned over and several U-Mass students were arrested.

The most damaging riots to the University took place after U-Mass lost to Appalachian State for the Division AA championship. During this incident windows of Berkshire Dining commons were smashed, along with windows of the lower level dorms near the South West quad.

University officials said that the rowdiest parties happen off-campus. A town-university coalition is proposing a measure that would give local law enforcement broader authority to break up disruptive parties and hold hosts responsible for serving alcohol to minors.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/02/21/attacks_rowdiness_rattling_many_at_umass_amherst/

Potomac Primary Results

Obama and McCain Conquer the Potomac:

The Potomac primaries resulted in two clean sweeps for the front runners of both political parties. Both Barack Obama and John McCain won primaries in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. According to both MSNBC and CNN for the first time Obama is the undisputed leader in the Democratic delegate count and McCain has all but assured his place as the republican candidate. It should now be a question of when, not if Mike Huckabee will drop out if he wants to have any future in the Republican Party or any spot in a McCain post if he wins the presidency in November. 

The first results of the night came in as soon as the polls closed in Virginia; MSNBC was the first to call Obama the winner of Virginia. In the end Obama gained fifty four delegates to Clinton's 32. Obama won with 64 percent of the vote as 618,933 votes compared to thirty five percent for Clinton with 344,940 votes with 99 percent of the counties reporting. As soon as the polls closed at 8 pm, MSNBC also called the primary of Washington DC for Obama as well. According to CNN, with 75 percent of the vote Obama picked up thirteen delegates in the nation’s capital. Clinton with 24 percent of the vote gained 11 candidates. To complete a three state sweep Obama won seventeen delegates with 60 percent of the vote with 305,154 votes with 99 percent of the vote reported. Clinton got 15 delegates with 187,540 votes which were good for thirty seven percent of the vote reported. According to the MSNBC totals (non-super delegates) Obama has 1,078 delegates with Clinton falling behind with 969. In the CNN delegate total it is 1,215 for Obama with Clinton’s 1,190 which includes the super delegates. 

All three of the Republican primaries were winner take all and they all went to McCain. McCain got 16 candidates in his victory in Washington DC, 60 candidates in Virginia and 13 candidates in Maryland. According to MSNBC this gives McCain a total of 812 delegates with Huckabee still at 231. This totals show with utter certainty that the republican race is over, and the question is when will Huckabee throw in the towel? Is he risking a future in the Republican Party by refused to give this primary up? Could he still be McCain’s vice president? Of course Huckabee said that he didn’t want to be the Vice President but how many Vice President candidates in the past flatly denied that they were interested? I think he will be one of those numbers and in the end it will be Obama with John Edwards taking on McCain with Huckabee.

Response Based on Henderson Tutortial

After reading John R. Henderson’s tutorial I have decided to look at a view websites and will attempt to show why they make be reliable or not. First, I have decided to write about a blog on The Huffington Post about Pedophilia and Star Trek. The absurdness of the topic should be a dead giveaway that this is going to be unreliable. I’m not just saying that because I’m a Star Trek fan and not a pedophile but the very topic is ridiculous.

This blog has two problems stemming from web browser links. Firstly, the LA Times article that this blog was based on had no mention of Star Trek whatsoever. The blogger calls the statistic to be mind boggling, but there is no statistic to be found at all. What is truly mind boggling is how a site with a good reputation like the Huffington Post would allow such a glaring mistake not to be corrected or the post completely deleted all together. With this fact, I am uncertain if the quotes that are in this blog are accurate or if they have been invented by somebody who wants to insult Star Trek. I know some people don’t like it, but this person seems to have a vendetta against Star Trek and its group of fans called Trekkers. This brings up another mistake by the blogger who incorrectly names Star Trek fans as “trekkies.” This glaring mistake shows, at least to me that she doesn’t know what she is talking about. Another web link mistake is a broken link which supposedly has an article that refutes her standpoint that Star Trek fans are more likely then not to be engaging in deviant sexual behavior with children. I would have really liked to have read that other blog, but I cannot. The link does not work, and it says ‘forbidden’ when I try to access it. This might be a problem that the other blogger needs to take care of but she could post the other bloggers opinion herself. Later in this essay I will describe what I found out when I searched this bloggers name into a search engine. Hopefully my web search will give me some insight on why Ladowsky thinks she is an expert on deviant behavior or “Star Trek.”

This particular post is the only blog that she ever did on the Huffington Post’s website. This is very odd, and could be a sign that her work was not up to scratch with the experts that makes the Huffington Post so respected. There could be other reasons for this being her own post, but it is intriguing and leads to questions on to why this was her only post on the website.

There are a few grammatical errors and some mistakes of television writing. Firstly, the blog does not have quotation marks on the names of the episodes of “Star Trek” that she brings up. Also, it would also be appropriate for her to put quotation marks over the words “Star Trek” itself. These oversights are important because people who are not familiar of the show will not know what she is talking about. Quotation marks are necessary to distinguish the episode of “Star Trek” with the other words in this blog. Grammatically there are a few commas that Microsoft word says that a semi-colon would work better in the sentence. Also, the blog contains a sentence fragment. These small mistakes might be easy to ignore, but added with everything else I think that they cannot.

There is one other technical aspect to why I would not trust this blog, and it is because of a lack of comments. This could be explained in a few different ways all of them not good for the blogs’ credibility. Firstly, there could simply been no readers to this blog or whoever read the blog did not care enough about the topic to post. Secondly, there could have been posts to this blog that were deleted because they were negatively blasting the blogs topic matter. Since the internet has a lot of “Star Trek” fans I am sure this article would anger everybody who read the article. Thirdly, the blogger might have been scared of the comments that she would get, and immediately closed the blog from accepting messages. These are the three, as Spock would call logical reasons why the blog does not have any posts. All three of these reasons are sufficient to question the validity of this bloggers claim.

The Huffington Post did have a very small biography on Ladowsky on their webpage. It says that she is a “doctoral candidate in clinical psychology and a Psychology intern at a Los Angeles Clinic.” It also says that she appeared as a relationship expert on a television show called Rendezvous. It also says that some of her articles have appeared in such papers as “The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Mirabella and In Style.” So, it appears her psychological and journalistic credentials are in order. The other mistakes in the blog are still there and I still believe the blog was a waste of time to write. The article offers no news, and in my opinion is not very interesting. Why would anybody want to read this, what does it offer? I think it offers nothing of value, and I certainly only read it in order to be fully able to insult it in this essay. The only fact that matters to me is that the LA Times article she based her entire blog on has no mention of “Star Trek.” This to me shows that she must have some vendetta on the show, maybe she wasn’t a fan growing up. Maybe she tried for a part on the show and was turned down. She invented the idea that the LA Times article mentioned Star Trek and only she knows why.

Google search brought up that Ladowsky co-wrote a book called “How to Dump a Guy” and that she wrote a biography on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. What I can note about the book is that it is not in print anymore, and amazon.com members are sell it for a minimum of fifty five cents. That is the price of a used copy and they sell a new copy for $1.98! Also, a Google search brought up a piece like this one: a piece that completely refutes what is said. That article can be found at this URL: http://www.conservativecat.com/mt/archives/2005/08/ellen_ladowski.html. The LA times article that Ladowsky used must have been somewhere at one point because the poster shows how Ladowsky misquoted it.

The Ladowsky quote is “The LA Times recently ran a story about the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit, which contained a mind-boggling statistic: of the more than 100 offenders the unit has arrested over the last four years, "all but one" has been "a hard-core Trekkie."

The real LA Times Quote: “We always say there are two types of pedophiles: Star Trek and Star Wars. But it's mostly Star Trek.”

Ladowsky uses the quote marks to make us believe that a person said what she wrote verbatim. The words “all but one” and “a hardcore trekkie” were in quotes. There is no such quote, and it was journalistically dishonest for Ladowsky to pretend that there was. This is just another reason to not believe the content of the blog, and another reason why Ladowsky should probably go to journalism school along with her training to be a psychologist.

When looking for information on “Star Trek”, I usually go to www.startrek.com. I trust that site because it is known as the official website of the television show and movie series. The site is maintained by CBS/Paramount who own “Star Trek.” I usually try to get most of my information from official sources. I usually do not trust information from websites when I see a tilde sign because I know that is a definitive sign that the website is someone’s personal website. I didn’t see that on the tutorial, but it is something that I already knew about web pages. You always need to know who runs a website and what their objective in running it is. The objective of the “Star Trek” website is to give information about the show to its readers and to keep them informed of developments of future film or television ventures. The objective of this is simple: the website exists to make sure people buy, or watch Star Trek episodes, movies and merchandise. At least they are honest about it, and the website is well run and maintained. I don’t know why Ladowsky wrote her blog, and that is one of the main reason I was uneasy about it. Along with misquotes and everything else the ultimate question was not answered: why would I want to read this? I wouldn’t want to read it, and I don’t know anybody else who would either.

-Ryan Damon

Saturday Primary/Caucuss Results Blog

At around 3 pm CNN announced the winner of the Kansas caucus was former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Dana Bash told the viewers that Huckabee will pick up thirty six delegates because of his victory. There are thirty nine delegates available in Kansas; three of them will be decided later as RNC delegates. Using the delegate count from MSNBC.com Huckabee has increased his delegate count for 231. This total is still lower than the 278 delegates that Romney had when he dropped out of the race this past Wednesday. Even with his sound defeat in Kansas John McCain now holds 723 delegates after picking up two of the super delegates. CNN analysts have formulated that even if Mike Huckabee wins every state left in the race by getting 50% of the vote John McCain will still be the nominee for the Republican Party. Romney saw that and dropped out of the race, but Huckabee said he will remain in the race until the winning number of delegates is achieved by any candidate.

By 8:40 pm, two democratic projections were made by both MSNBC and CNN. Washington State and Nebraska were both projected to be victories for Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Washington State has 78 normal pledged delegates with 18 super delegates for a total of 97. Nebraska has a total of 31 delegates with seven of those being super-delegates. At 10 pm MSNBC predicted that Barack Obama would win the state of Louisiana. This state has sixty six total delegates with ten super delegates. At 10:30 Obama spoke from Virginia where Democrats will vote on Tuesday. Obama is trying to rally around the big win he got today and to turn that into a big win in Virginia on Tuesday. CNN.com has projected that Obama will have gained seventy four delegates compared to Hillary Clinton’s thirty seven. Delegate counts on MSNBC (which do not include super delegates) are Obama with 935 delegates and Clinton with a total of 892. I left the super delegate count off because I do not feel that the super delegates will be allowed to decide who gets elected. This would leave a very sour taste in the mouths of people who voted in the democratic primaries. It would be similar to when in 2000 the Supreme Court appointed George W. Bush as President in the 5-4 decision of Gore vs. Bush. The people have to think that it was their vote that decided the primary I think the super delegates will decide to give support to the person with the delegate count lead, or who has gotten the most overall votes. This is necessary because people might not vote in the general election for the candidate if they feel that their vote was not considered in the electing of the candidate.

The last two races to be decided were the republican races in Louisiana and Washington. With a very slim margin of victory Mike Huckabee took the victory in the state of Louisiana, but CNN projects that it will not lead to any delegates because of the closeness of the results. It was also reported on Yahoo! News that Ron Paul will not be running as a member of the Green Party or as any other third party’s candidate. As of 1:30 in the morning the full results of the Washington caucus have not been fully processed. Currently, John McCain has a 2 percent lead over Mike Huckabee. This does not look good for Huckabee who has to win every primary and caucus by more than fifty percent to have a chance at being the Republican candidate. It looks like it will not be a matter of if, but when Mike Huckabee formally withdraws from the race.

On this Saturday night Feburary the ninth Barack Obama has increased his lead in the delegate count, and now has a lot of momentum for the Virginia primary on Tuesday. Also, McCain has all but assured himself the Republican nomination for President of the United States. It was an eventful night, and in terms of the Democratic race there will be more eventful nights to come.

-Ryan Damon

Blogger Response #2

The blog that I am writing about right now is another one of Sam Stein’s from the Huffington Post. It is entitled “Bolton as McCain’s Secretary of State?”

Sam Stein is saying that former UN ambassador John Bolton could be his secretary of state if McCain is elected President of the United States. According to this blog John McCain was behind the scenes in getting Bolton appointed to ambassador to the UN. Bolton said ‘He (McCain) though I was the type of ambassador that ought to represent in the United States in the United Nations.’ The blog earlier said that Bolton had anti-UN polities and statements against the organization that McCain thought Bolton would fit in perfectly. The appointment of Bolton was very controversial and was fought by then democratic minority in congress.

These comments by Bolton were apart of the Conservative Political Action Conference and were made on Friday. On Wednesday Mitt Romney used this conference to drop out of the republican race but Mike Huckabee used the conference to say that he was in the race for the foreseeable future. Bolton also supported McCain by bashing the two democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. It is an old rule in politics if you can’t get your numbers up you attempt to get your opponent’s numbers down. The rumors of Bolton being McCain’s choice for potential secretary of state were finally verbalized by Bolton’s introductory speaker who called Bolton a ‘warrior of light and our next Secretary of State.’

The blog can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/08/bolton-as-mccains-secret_n_85760.html.

-Ryan Damon

Blogger Response #1

I am writing this response to Sam Stein’s blog from the Huffingtonpost.com. It is entitled “Unhinged Coulter uses Hitler Analogy to Bash McCain.” The blog can be seen in its entirety at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/08/unhinged-coulter-uses-hit_n_85778.html.

This blog does not have much analysis on the part of Stein except for its title. It is clear that the words of Ann Coulter do not need much analysis to know that she is crazy. Nearly all of the blog are direct quotes from Coulter but it also has one from Rush Limbaugh.

It is very odd for Ann Coulter to bash a republican, but the way she has done is more shocking. Coulter says that her supposed support of Hilary Clinton is like Winston Churchill’s support of Stalin in their fight against Hitler and Nazi Germany. I am no fan of John McCain, but comparing him to Hitler? This proves to me what I have thought for years, Ann Coulter is not just a cold-hearted woman, and she is certifiably insane. Who in their right mind could say that Clinton is Stalin or McCain is Hitler. It would have been better for her to say that she is supporting Clinton because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. There was no need to bring in the horrors of Nazi Germany into the fold. If anybody in the world is not Hitler, it would be John McCain.

Coulter's rant continues as she insults McCain for his age. Coulter said that McCain had been a senator for about 100 years.” For the record John McCain has been a senator in Arizona for twenty one years. Coulter can’t even get her math correct twenty one years is no where near 100 years. McCain also served four years in the House of Representatives, but that is still not even close for Coulters insulting accusation.

I love how this blog uses Coulter’s own words against her, and how he doesn’t need much of his own words. My response is saying outright what Stein said by using only Coulter's controversial voice.

-Ryan Damon

Epic 2014 from 2/5/07

The EPIC 2014 video gave a very glim outlook to the future of journalism if Google was able to become a monopoly. The not-too-distant future does not favor the print media or even online versions of the print media. The video suggests that the New York Times is now only a newsletter for the old and the elite of the country. Google's media dominance starts with a 2008 takeover of Amazon.com. Google uses the amazon.com product suggestion program to make tailor made news for their subscribers. The new company is called Googlezon, and in two years time there is virtually no news organizations as we know them today. In the year 2111 The New York Times sues Googlezon for being a news monopoly but loses in a Supreme Court ruling obviously by that time Googlezon has bought the political favor of the people who appoint the Supreme Court. The court in the last years has usually ruled in favor of the political party of the President who appointed them. Microsoft tries to fight back against Googlezon and an epic news war occurs in the year 2010. By that time all of the duties of an editor are done by a computer and nearly all of the news coverage is done by freelance citizens. There is no ethics in journalism anymore, and without it we are lost.

The movie asks the question: Is there another way? Is there something better than a computer editor and news being selected for you because of the products that you view on Amazon? What if you were buying a joke gift, how can the computer know that? The computer cannot know that, the computer only knows what the programmers tell it to know. The programmers at this fictional Googlezon have too much power and too much control over the fourth estate and the citizens of 2014 America and the world are all the worse for it.

-Ryan Damon