What is cooler than your new bicycle? Nothing. Every phrase on the site is an example of what a cool person is:
Barack Obama took off when he heard you weren't coming
Barack Obama picked you up at the airport
Barack Obama helped you move a sofa
Barack Obama remembered your birthday
The exact opposite of cool is mom jeans.
[hit refresh once you're there]
What is less cool than your mom's jeans? Nothing. Every phrase on the site is an example of what an uncool person is:
HILLARY BLOCKED YOUR CAR IN THE DRIVEWAY
HILLARY KEEPS INTERRUPTING THE MOVIE SAYING "WHAT DID HE SAY?"
HILLARY FOLDED THE MAP WRONG
HILLARY LEFT ONE SPOONFUL IN THE ICE CREAM CARTON
These sites are user generated content so they keep getting better and better and better the more people submit. hillaryismomjeans has something like 10,000 random phrases submitted so far so you have to at least see it once (and reload it a few times...).
TUESDAY OCTOBER 16, 2007 First baby boomer applied for Social Security benefits Monday
This is the start of an avalanche of applications from the 80 million post-World War II generation born from 1946 to 1964. This lady is the first of the baby boomers, born one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946. She will be eligible for benefits after she turns 62 on New Year's Day.
There is some buzz around the net about the Tonkin Gulf phantom attack. I hate to admit but I had never even heard of this before. Here is some basic summary of it from NPR.org:
On Sunday Aug. 2, 1964, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the American destroyer the USS Maddox in Southeast Asia's Gulf of Tonkin.
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara told President Lyndon B. Johnson that a covert strike against North Vietnam two days earlier likely provoked the attack upon the Maddox.
Left, an oil painting depicting the attack.
Right, the three attacking North Vietnamese torpedo boats, as seen from the Maddox.
The U.S. destroyer damaged two of the boats and sank the third. Retaliation by the Americans was limited to attacking those boats that day. The Maddox and another destroyer, the Turner Joy, were then deliberately positioned to draw a second attack.
Two days later, on Aug. 4, McNamara, left, reported to Johnson that an American destroyer in the region was under torpedo attack by the North Vietnamese. That brief conversation was the tipping point for the entire Vietnam War.
Johnson ordered American forces to openly attack the North, and he asked Congress to pass a resolution pre-approving any military actions the president would take.
Johnson on Aug. 4, 1964, announcing that the U.S. will retaliate against North Vietnam for two attacks on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Later, Johnson and others would learn the second attack, which propelled the president and Congress to enter the Vietnam War, never happened.
So if I get this right:
A United States covert strike against North Vietnam by an American Destroyer ship (the Maddox) provokes 3 North Vietnamese torpedo boats to attack back at the Maddox.
During their attack, the Maddox completely sinks one and damages the other two NV torpedo boats and never even gets hit.
Then the Maddox, as well as another American destroyer (the Turner Joy) are deliberately positioned to draw a second attack
The Defense Secretary (assuming that those two ships would be attacked) tells the President that they were under torpedo attack by the North Vietnamese.
Johnson orders American forces to attack North Vietnam
(and gets Congress to pre-approve further military actions)
America assumes that this is a retaliation so the Vietnam war begins - but it turns out that the second attack never even happened and the first attack was provoked...
But that is what justified the beginning of the Vietnam War?
A side by side comparison of Republican candidates and things they are against. Obviously made by a Ron Paul supporter, is it over simplified? I think it's well done
If a Big Mac costs $3.41 in the United States, how much are they in the rest of the world? The most inexpensive = China $1.45. Most expensive = Switzerland $5.20.
This was by far the the best debate this year. All candidates had an equal chance to answer each question - one minute each per question at the start; 30 seconds each towards the end. Much less moderator involvement. Nice job PBS
The transcript of tonight's PBS Democratic primary debates broken out by individual candidate:
Three interesting things of note:
-The general evasiveness was much higher than the last time they got together
-Hillary won the reviled DC Shuffle award a second time in a row
-They all got equal air time because Tavis did a great job
To the rest of the candidates without RSS: One would think that Internet literacy would be a pre-requisite for a Presidential campaign staffer to build your website - guess not - good luck convincing others of your ability to lead the country with the obvious knack you have for picking the right person for the job: Welcome to the Internet.
So I'm in the process of building a page for each of the candidates and thought it would be nice to have their latest official campaign blog post included. So after a bit of coding, I added a little box at the top of each candidate's page that links directly to their blog's most recent post - slick! I'm trying to be cool about it and link to every single candidate and I picked Rudy's candidate page here as a test to double check my mad programming skillz:
So I double check that the link to his latest blog post works. It says Weekly Wrap - Why Rudy and has a URL that looks like this: ( http://www.joinrudy2008.com/index.php?section=6&id=126 ). I click on it but then get completely redirected away to some huge sign up splash page that fills the screen (this one is shrunk way down):
What's this? That's not the article - How do I get out of this and to the article?
Oh I found it - There is only one way out without giving up an email address: so I click on ">> Skip to Main Site"
Then what happens - you guessed it, I did skip to the MAIN SITE ( http://www.joinrudy2008.com/index.php ) - THE MAIN SITE - not to the article I wanted ( http://www.joinrudy2008.com/index.php?section=6&id=126 ).
All kinds of stuff to click on his homepage, fiscal discipline - that looks interesting. Hey wait, why am I on Rudy's webpage again? What was that headline I clicked on again? Wasn't there something that I wanted to read about? - Oh well, I'm already here - might as well click on that polished picture of Rudy maybe - or hold it, look - a shiny red button what does that do I wonder?
Giuliani's website redirects their visitors to a splash page and then forces them from there to Giuliani's homepage. Not caring where the visitor was even going on the site, not caring what even brought the visitor there! This is how ecommerce webmasters increase their conversion numbers in the SHORT TERM because they don't give a shiat if the visitors ever return again - just force each web visitor onto the mailing list and then email blast them until they buy something or get so mad they opt-out. Yikes Rudy!
Not sure what I'm talking about? Go try it: See if you can read their recent article titled Mayor Curt Pringle: Why I Am Supporting Rudy Giuliani for President - Notice the URL for it: http://www.joinrudy2008.com/index.php?section=6&id=17 and watch where they take you in the location bar and see what I'm talking about - how many clicks and how long did it take you to read the article? - Did you EVER find it? I couldn't. That Pringle article is their most recent post on this feed: http://www.joinrudy2008.com/rss/thebuzz.xml which I guess is their blog? Not sure? If I can't figure it out I wonder who can?
This is exactly why I never link to any article from forbes.com - forbes is always 90% pop-ups, splash screens and ads - whatever their short article is about is not even worth the hassle - they've turned into a spam site. Learn from forbes mistakes Giuliani staff.
If it was just some sort of typo in the code I really doubt it; I think it was much more about greed than building a visitor base - a rookie mistake made a zillion times by web masters 5 years ago. I'll give them a bit to fix it but I think I'll have to remove the links to them eventually. If a hyper link does not go to where it is pointing to, then that is intentionally deceiving - SPAM. No one wants to be permanently redirected off to some junk sign up page and then to a start page like that - I don't care what website it is.
That said, still have to give team Rudy props for at least trying - Hunter, Brownback, Tommy Thompson and Gravel don't even have RSS Feeds ( Needed to automatically figure out what their latest blog post was )
UPDATE JUNE 23: Whoa - now it properly redirects you to the article after the email sign up spash page. Better; much much better - well done whoever fixed it - it would still be best without the redirect to the splash page but at least now it eventually goes to the article.
UPDATE JUNE 23: Not so fast hold short... it seems that only links to their /news/pr/ pages work - so the jury is still out on this one..
UPDATE JULY 12: I can no longer stand them doing that - I deleted Giuliani's website from the aggregated candidate feeds page and will no longer update the Giuliani page here with his new content. If they fix it I'll put them back in ASAP. I hated to do it and I went back and forth on it but decided there is no point in linking to an article that redirects somewhere else then somewhere else with no way to get to where you intended and just frustrates the visitor ... That being the case, what point is there linking to them? Why even bother?
WEDNESDAY JUNE 20, 2007 Earmark Transparency
Despite the new Democratic congressional leadership's promise of 'openness and transparency' in the budget process, a CNN survey of the House found it nearly impossible to get information on lawmakers' pet projects:
I have to admit this was clever; doing a parody of the Sopranos episode everyone is talking about. Clinton's announcing her new campaign song in this video (she picked You and I by Celine Dion).
If you don't watch the Sopranos you won't get this - but it's a replica of the final scene - with Hillary instead of Tony. Funny that the best song she could pick is written and sung by Canadians
Where does all this money come from so very early in the campaign?? I don't understand how the so called top three favorites of each party have all this 10++ million dollars campaign money to start with right off?
What makes them a top three favorite in the first place - the money? Who makes them the favorite? - The media? Why? Because they are going to be a big ad spender - or did someone in their party make the call?
Does more money = more sold political favors?
Not sure...
BTW this is old first quarter data but I wanted to get the first quarter snapshot of it in the archives here to compare changes / rankings quarter by quarter
