According to "Alive In Baghdad", Biggest Problems Are Security, Water, and Electricity

For Senator John McCain to even claim that Iraq's safe is more than stretching the truth; it's distorting it. According to the blog for the video show Alive In Baghdad, conditions there are worse than unliveable. The blog reports:

"Now in Baghdad there are more problems then getting killed or kidnapped and one of those most important problems is the water and the electricity. The Iraqi people are tired of getting those promises from their government about fixing the electricity every month and official man comes on Al-Iraqiyah satellite channel and give a statement about fixing the power problem forever and everything is still the same, nothing has changed. ,"

On top of that, people who have nothing to do with politics are getting killed every day. For nothing. I can't understand why we're over there. It's not getting any better at all.

Cindy Sheehan Should Read "The Irony of Democracy"

I just got an email from a friend and about Cindy Sheehan -- the anti-war activist who's campaign was launched by the death of her son Casey in the Iraq War -- wrote a diary in the Daily Kos called "Good Riddance Attention Whore" and which outlines her displeasure with not just Republicans who are for the war, but Democrats who've also voted in such a way as to keep the effort going, and states that she's giving up her protest.

Cindy writes...

"I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."

Apparently Cindy never read "The Irony Of Democracy." This class book by Thomas Dye and L. Harmon Ziglar was introduced to me while I was a freshman at The University of Texas at Arlington. The basic premise of the Dye / Ziglar book is that America's ran by elitists and elite networks. These associations are formed in various ways mostly college-based, and solidify more for those who step into the poltical arena. These groupings are more powerful than parties, which explains how some Democrats could side with Republicans in voting for funding for The Iraq War.

"Elites are the few who have power, the masses are the many who do not" says Dye and Ziglar. And if you think about it, they're totally correct. We put a small set of people in office to make laws for us, so it should come as no surprise that that small gathering of people as its own outcome which at times runs counter to pure democracy.

What bothers me is that many people just don't get how our society is becoming even more divided in this way with the growth of the Internet. The Digital Divide is still a large problem, and it becomes more wide-spread with every new Web 2.0 application. There are many, including supposedly smart marketing people, who can't even define the term Web 2.0 I'm serious.

A recent survey (also reported in Marketing News) by Market Tools, reported that nearly 80% of marketers have no clue what Web 2.0 is.

I increasingly find that many supposedly well-educated Americans have no idea of the power of the Internet let alone how it can positively and negatively impact their lives and business objectives. Thus, they're rendered as much a part of the masses as anyone, and leave a growing set of aspects of society foreign to them, even as they don't know what they're missing. It's tragic. Plus, it's creating a whole class of Internet Elites -- the more things change, the more they remain the same.

So Cindy, and anyone in the American Marketing Association, read The Irony Of Democracy, before it's too late!

Women Still Face Stupid Ideas In The 21st Century

I visited Amanda Congdon's site and saw this photo where someone wrote "She A Woman" in response to a test question for a math quiz that asks why "Tracy" is wrong in the answer she gave.

This is a sure sign that America has a long way to go in that women are still viewed as second class citizens. I'll add that were it not for Barack Obama, I'd be a stanch Hillary Clinton supporter. I just think Barack's better, but I do think Hillary would be a great President as well.

Sony's OLED TV Technology -- Flat Screen TV Is Here!

In one of my favorite movies, "2001 A Space Odessey," a common device was something called a flat-screen television. Just as thick as a sheet of paper, it had a clear image where one could watch television from any angle, even with it sitting flat on a table.

Now, Sony's introducing the real, world's first flat-screen television. Called OLED, it's only 10 millimeters thick, basically wafer-thin. The clarity is without peer and the technology itself will revolutionize pop-culture. It's so thin and flexible that I can see jackets and coats with flat-screens as per of them.

See the video!

Video - Barack Obama Slams Romney And McCain For Lying About His Support Of The War On Terrorism

In this video, Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama -- addressing the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists at their annual convention in Chicago -- wasted no time in firing back against Republican Presidential Candidates Mit Romney and John McCain for their claim that Senator Obama's against the troops and the War on Terror because he voted against the Iraq spending bill, which passed earlier this week.

Here's the video:

Bengals Coach Marvin Lewis Is Right About Racial Profiling - Garry Edmondson Should Appologize To NFL And Chris Henry

Bengals Coach Marvin Lewis made this comment a few days ago:

"I think there's profiling, no question," Lewis said when Patrick asked him if he thought players were profiled. "We're (Cincinnati) a small place - our guys stand out, and they know that, and you've got to do things the right way. But when you are arrested for, or you are pulled over for, not putting on your turn signal, there's something wrong there. Many people make right turns without putting on their turn signals and it's unfortunate that we've had a guy that's pulled over for not putting on his turn signal."

The NFL stepped in and as a results, Coach Lewis was forced to take back his statements. But he's right. Cinncinati's police department does racially profile, and indeed was the target of a lawsuit and a fact-finding effort in 2001. In addition, if one does a search on Cinncinati and racial profiling, they find a littany of informatn connecting that city to the issue of racial profiling.

And now, we have this:

Kenton County Attorney Garry Edmondson on Thursday called Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry a "lowlife" and said he doesn't think he owes anybody an apology.

Edmondson on Monday had told reporters that Henry had failed a drug test, then later said results were "inconclusive."

His office has yet to issue any statement about the test results.

Henry's lawyer said Wednesday that test results show Henry is clean, and that he is owed an apology.

On Thursday, Edmondson said he's "shocked" anybody would be sympathetic toward Henry.

Comment on this story and Chris Henry

"This is a lowlife not worth the attention," said Edmondson, who made the comments in an interview with David Wells, The Enquirer's editorial page editor.

This is terrible. Garry Edmondson should be made to appologize to the NFL and to Henry for this statement. He's trying to convict Henry via the news media, which in itself should be illegal.

I Stopped Using Google AdWords; Google's Squeezing Money From Me

I've been in the Internet Online Media business for almost five years now, and one of the most rewarding discoveries for me was Google AdWords combined with Google AdSense. When I first used the two, AdSense clicks allowed me to pay for the AdWords ad campaigns I started. I've made as much as $400 in one day using AdSense when I first started in the program. But then I watched as my once rewarding returns dwindled.

This year, and for the first time, Google AdWords was more expensive than the revenue my company gained from Google AdSense. In fact, it was so wildly out of balance I cancelled Google AdWords.

I'm no longer a fan of the program. Google has changed this aspect of its business model, and it's for the worst, in my view.

Google's increased the price of keywords at the same time it's scaled back the payouts for AdSense publishers. The result is more money for Google, and less money for the small business operators that use Google AdSense. Meanwhile more people continue to sign up for the program because Google's the leading search engine. Everyone uses it, so business people believe they must be part of it.

I don't mind Google tweaking its program a little bit, but they've gone way too far in "allowing the market" to price keywords. I mean, who determines what the market is, anyway? Let's think about this. If Google takes about 50 percent of the traffic for search engines, and Google determines keyword prices, then it's Google that's the market, and that's not fair at all.

A better system would be a stock market for keywords. I mean a formal one; not the informal system that exists today. This keyword stock market would be separate from any search engine and set prices that are equally weighted based on all search engines, thus not allowing one company, Google, to "up" keyword prices to their advantage.

Right now, Google has the control of the market. In fact, it's not even right to call it a market, because that term implies fairness. There's nothing fair about this keyword pricing problem, and there's no real market behind prices, there's just Google. In other words, Google's has near-monopolistic control over keyword prices.

I know that's a major charge, but consider that Google controls by my estimate between 60 percent and 80 percent of the keyword market, based just on the number of results that reference Google when one is trying to determine what the "keyword market" is.

Even with Google, the entire affair is a trip to the wild West, with SEO firms, marketing agencies, and others posting articles about keywords only to get you to hire them as a consultant. There's no real clearing house at all. And other firms like Yahoo, with Yahoo Publisher, are so slow to respond to an application one submits, you wonder if anyone's minding the store. !

So there's really nothing out there...except Google, and I'm running away from AdWords, but I'll stick to AdSense. It's the only way to recover the money Google's taken from me.