It’s funny how Hillary Clinton brings up the job application analogy

Senator Clinton is the guest of Keith Olbermann on Countdown tonight. She continues to make the race more divisive than she needs to, however this interview (obviously, given the show) didn’t spend time focusing on Barack Obama as unelectable. She did connect Senator McCain to our new 100 Year War and this tanking economy. He’s not going to be worse than George Bush, but he’ll be taking over when the country is already down and could deliver the knockout blow to the average American family.

Sen. Clinton pointed out a matter of her resume, saying consider this in her job application. If she’s ever lived in the real world, when you lie and inflate your resume, you lose the job. The media shattered her bold-faced lie about Bosnia with a 2-minute video clip, where Chelsea stands by her side as an 8-year-old reads her a poem. I don’t care about jokes of sniper fire, it was a lie, and the fact that you want to consider this a job application means you did something that would disqualify anyone else from any job.

Newsweek: Adios, Sound Bites & Fat Cats – Obama is Changing Politics

The ecosystem of political media has changed, with sound bites losing their authority. Consumers of news are less easily manipulated by the 24/7 barrage of bites and images (Hillary Clinton doing whisky shots, Obama bowling), which are dissected endlessly on cable. Voters search for their own context.

read more | digg story

This week, Newsweek political columnist Jonathan Alter says nothing people on Digg and other social news communities, as well as many passive users of YouTube didn’t know for a long time. It’s just really nice to see it from Newsweek, something read by many outside of these communities. The volume of Senator Barack Obama‘s online contributions is staggering ($40m in March), and at a low average donation (around $100).

The column discusses how Obama and company intentionally rid his speech on race in Philadelphia, known as ‘A More Perfect Union‘ on YouTube, of sound bytes and short snippets of specific response. Obama planned to paint a bigger picture, about how this country must look beyond petty attacks and sharp wit toward others. Alter noticed that the place where people can get this information, since it is impossible to find on cable news, is the internet. Instead of speaking to the media, Obama spoke directly to the people.

Alter ends with a rather pessimistic view of just how he views the ability of Washington to actually change and serve the people, rather than special interests. Some political action groups and special interest groups have produced positive results in the past, but the nature of modern technology has quickly made the collection in such a manner effective or necessary for the people. The internet allows people to endorse a candidate. I always thought a candidate should issue a campaign fundraiser where they ask anyone and everyone, everywhere to send one dollar and nothing more. Just one dollar to the campaign. Not so much to fund it directly, but to show just how many people will also take some time out of their day to show support this November. One dollar : one vote.

The important fact isn’t that my idea hasn’t been used, it is that things like this can actually happen today. The modern teenager has communicated with people in more countries than their parents. Over 1.3 million individuals have donated to the Obama campaign. We can’t allow that to be the only change that occurs, more voices must be heard in the White House. Every voice must be weighed when important decisions are being made. Everyone won’t get their way, but no one will be ignored.

Criminals wear ski masks

If you notice in any of the video of waterboarding taking place, you will see the soldiers are wearing ski masks, like the henchmen for a criminal outfit. Sure, the mob boss doesn’t wear a ski mask, but his enforcers do…that’s all I can think when I see this clear torture taking place. Get the information, just get more creative…torture and democracy don’t belong together.

Every American should know what their government is up to when it comes to torturing human beings. The beacon of democracy and freedom is tarnished when we violate our own basic principles and surrender habeas corpus and our civil liberties slowly erode. This is a unique time in American history and I don’t know if people realize this, we’re teetering on a brink. The Bush administration has bombarded us with scandal and corruption to the point where we become apathetic. We don’t realize subtle hypocrisies anymore, like Veterans Affairs hospitals not permitting any registration of veterans to vote nor helping them get to a place to register to vote. These are injured veterans, not people waiting for the wrong bus.