Thursday, May 08, 2008

VentureBeat's Matt Marshall @ Startup Camp San Francisco



Matt Marshall was formerly a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News and who started the company VentureBeat.com in 2006. We first met when I attended his party at the Amsterdam in San Francisco, and then ran into each other at Startup Camp San Francisco, where he took time to talk with me while we were in the chow line there.

As for Startup Camp itself, it was great for networking, but I didn't get out of it what I was looking for, which was focused, specific discussion of problems and issues that all startups face. For the most part, the discussion groups had general conversations and were too large in some cases to be effective on a personal level.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Myth of Invincibility: Obama, Hillary, and us

Combat soldiers are famous for and know about something called the "myth of invincibility". It is the completely mythological notion that disaster will strike all around you and harm others, but you will survive. Senator Obama certainly did not start out as inevitable in the race, even in his own estimation - but many thought Senator Clinton was.

The untold story is about us, the citizens of the United States. We have shown that we too believe in the Myth of Invincibility. We have stood by Obama through the early stages of Hillary's silly attacks when she investigated Obama's kindergarten essays. We have stood by Obama when the media proclaimed that his campaign was over, twice, once with the bitter comment, and then with the Wright issue.

We investigate the issues, we blog and comment, we campaign and phone bank, and we fund his campaign. Charles Kriete was a clergyman, and a chaplain in the army, and unlike any other clergy, he also taught strategy at the Army War College. He authored the first critical in-house analysis of military strategy in Vietnam. He was also the only clergyman in or out of uniform who was assigned to the Strategic Studies Institute, and awarded the Military Occupational Status (MOS) of Strategic Analyst. After 15 years in retirement, he has been selected to join the Distinguished Fellows Society of the War College - his words and thoughts form the core of this article.

read more | digg story

Clinton Lost Black Democratic Base - Can't Win Without It

In launching what many feel has been a loser strategy Senator Clinton too a number of actions that have served to virtually eliminate her Black support. For the first time in Democratic Party history since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, a presidential candidate close to the nomination can't count on Blacks for support.

Now -- according to CNN's American Morning -- her African American support is down to "single digits". That means over 90 percent of Blacks don't back her -- or more to the point support Senator Barack Obama. Thus, one can make the argument that Clinton would have a harder time wining a race against John McCain, because Blacks don't support her and may even jump over to the Republican Party to help Senartor John McCain.

Ouch.

New Dodge Challenger Like The Old Dodge Challenger.



Dodge came out with a new Challenger, which reminds me of the old Challenger of the 70s, but I guess that's the point.

Obama Wins North Carolina; Almost Indiana; Clinton Should Drop Out



After weeks of being bombed with constant Rev. Wright stories and attempts to define Obama as a "Black candidate" we have the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, where Clinton was supposed to win by 10 percent -- she didn't -- and was to come close to Obama in North Carolina by coming within single digits -- she didn't do that either.

Instead, Barack Obama won North Carolina by 14 points, and narrowly lost Indiana by less than 2 point, and vote counting is still not done.

Senator Obama is now about 200 delegates or less from being the Democratic Presidential Nominee and there's nothing Senator Clinton can do to halt his march. Nothing.

Clinton -- with a looming campaign debt -- is finished. MSNBC's Tim Russert gave the monologue that said it all, and it's here in this video:



We do now know who the Democratic Presidential nominee will be and it's Senator Barack Obama.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Native American Superdelegate Endorses Barack Obama

Kalyn Free...

is a superdelegate and at-large member of the Democratic National Committee. Free, who has endorsed Senator Barack Obama's bid for the nomination of the Democratic party today, is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and the founder and President of Indigenous Democratic Network's (INDN) List, an organization dedicated to training and recruiting Native American political candidates. Obama has shown considerable sensitivity to the issues of First/Native Americans, and appears to be the only candidate with a Tribal Leaders Steering Committee actively participating on the campaign.

read more | digg story

Mildred Loving, Who's Interracial Marriage Was Protected In Court, Passes On

Mildred Loving just wanted to marry her husband in 1967, but for reasons that are totally weird, they were blocked. Challenging Virginia's bigotted laws, they won, opening the door to the destruction of anti-interracial marriage laws that should never have been in place.

Mildred passed on to Heaven this week at 68.

Republican Senator Doing the Troops Wrong

Senator Webb, a VA Democrat, has been the guiding force behind this legislation, which has been dubbed the new G.I. bill. The measure is decidedly bipartisan. Mr. Webb’s principal co-sponsors include Republican Senators Chuck Hagel of NE and John Warner of VA, and Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of NJ. Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are on board, but you just might be surprised at who is not supporting the effort to pay for college for G.I.’s who have willingly put their lives on the line. Read Bob Herbert's piece in today's N.Y.Times and discover it's John McCain.

read more | digg story

Monday, May 05, 2008

May Day / Cinco de Mayo celebration in Minneapolis a hit

Perfect Weather as Minneapolis celebrates May Day and Cinco de Mayo

The annual parade to Powderhorn Park was a big hit this year, the weather was perfect, the floats and marchers were festive and lively, and several prominent Democrats walked the route including U.S. Senate candidate Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak who led a "Minnesota for Obama" contingent prior to the Heart of the Beast puppet theater's magical season-welcoming festival.

It seems Minnesota may be more culturally and ethnically open-minded than some folks on the coast give it credit for. They elected Keith Ellison to U.S. Congress, the first Muslim ever to be so honored, and even at the local level they've elected Satveer Chaudhary, and they surprised pollsters and pundits on Super Tuesday by showing overwhelming support for Barack Obama's candidacy - and lately their female U.S. Senator has announced she's in Obama's corner, too. Maybe they're not as loony as the country thought they might be after putting Jesse Ventura in the Governor's mansion? Well, they know how to do a community festival and a parade right.

Not 10, not 20, not even 50! 200 Economists Denounce Clinton/McCain Gas Tax Plan!

That Clinton or McCain would engage in this type of pure political pandering is not surprising. It’s exemplifies the old Washington gamesmanship that we need to change. This may not be the single most irresponsible policy idea of the year, but it must've been formulated by somebody thinking only about votes, not reality. Let's drive up demand and keep sending money to big oil and middle eastern zillionaires. Obama's honesty makes them both look like old-school politicians more beholden to corporate interests than worried about what's good for the U.S.A. Oh. Right.

read more | digg story

Hillary Clinton To "Stick It" To Black Voters With "Nuclear Option"

Well, it's not like she's got the Black vote, so Senator Hillary Clinton - in a desparate attempt to gain delegates over Senator Barack Obama, is going to use what she calls "a nuclear option" which would certainly detroy the Democratic Party. Clinton wants Florida and Michigan delegates to be counted. Which is fine -- but Clinton herself signed a contract not to count or campaign in those states because they broke the DNC rules.

Even Clinton said a few months ago, that Florida and Michigan don't count. But now here's this nuclear option -- it's all about Clinton and to hell with the party.

These are the scenarios to watch for according to the Huffington Post:

Using the Rules and Bylaws Committee to force the seating of two pro-Hillary delegations would provoke a massive outcry from Obama forces. Such a strategy would, additionally, face at least two other major hurdles, and could only be attempted, according to sources in the Clinton camp, under specific circumstances:

First, this coming Tuesday, Clinton would have to win Indiana and lose North Carolina by a very small margin - or better yet, win the Tar Heel state. She would also have to demonstrate continued strength in the contests before May 31.

Second, and equally important, her argument that she is a better general election candidate than Obama -- that he has major weaknesses which have only been recently revealed -- would have to rapidly gain traction, not only within the media, where she has experienced some success, but within the broad activist ranks of the Democratic Party.

Under that optimistic scenario, some Clinton operatives believe she could overcome several massive stumbling blocks:

-- Clinton loyalists on the Rules Committee would have to be persuaded to put their political futures on the line by defying major party constituencies, especially black leaders backing Barack Obama. Committee members are unlikely to take such a step unless they are convinced that Clinton has a strong chance of winning the nomination.

Former DNC and South Carolina Democratic Party chair Donald Fowler -- a Hillary loyalist -- would, for example, face an outpouring of anger from South Carolina Democrats if he were to go along with such a strategy.

-- A controversial decision to seat the two delegations, as currently constituted, would be appealed by the Obama campaign to the Democratic National Convention's Credentials Committee.

The full make-up of the Credentials Committee will not be determined until all the primaries are completed, but the pattern of Clinton and Obama victories so far clearly suggests that Obama delegates on that committee will outnumber Clinton delegates. Obama will not, however, have a majority, according to most estimates, and the balance of power will be held by delegates appointed by DNC chair Howard Dean.


Regardess, it's clear the DNC Chairman Howard Dean's in danger of losing control of the party. He'd better think of a "nuclear option" of his own.

Indiana's Incredible Shrinking Voter List - Email From Black Box Voting

I posted this as is. It's scary to know that Indiana does not have it's voting records intact. It's even scarier to learn that people don't seem to care. Why? Read below to learn the details of the problem, as to the lack of concern, your guess is as good as mine. This kind of voter records / recording problem hurt Senator Obama before in New Hampshire, with it's screwed up voting machines.

From: Black Box Voting [mailto:blackboxvoting@worldnet.att.net]
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2008 4:41 AM
To: lpease@gte.net
Subject: BBV report: Exclusive - Indiana's Incredible Shrinking Voter
List

In April 2008 when Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita announced the
release of "record high" voter registration rolls, with 4.3 million
voters set to vote in the Tuesday May 6 primary, he didn't mention that
a whopping 1,134,427 voter registrations have been cancelled.

Now, the voter rolls are supposed to be tidied up prior to each
election. Indiana's last general election was in Nov. 2006, and they
have had a slew of special and general elections since then. So how have
1.1 million voters -- 26 percent of the current statewide list --
escaped the voter registration cleanup squad? Who are these million
voters and where do they come from?

One quarter-million of them come from just two northwestern Indiana
counties: Lake and Porter. Lake County reports purging 137,164 voters
and neighboring Porter County cancelled out 124,958 voters.

Lake County, the home of Gary, Indiana, has spawned the Jackson Five and
a great old musical (The Music Man) and has been referred to as "the
second most liberal county in America." Lake County also has one of the
heaviest concentrations of African-American voters that you'll find
anywhere in the USA.

Nearby Porter County, the home of Valparaiso, is 95% white and went
solidly for Bush in the 2004 election. It's also got a lot of college
students.

For whatever reason, these two counties had ... what ... massive data
entry problems? Exceptionally messy records? Lots of dead people who
climbed back into their graves? I truly hope we aren't going to see a
lot of disappointed voters on Tuesday, when they perhaps learn that they
were among the lucky million people who got purged.

HERE'S WHERE THE HEAVIEST INDIANA PURGES ARE:

Lake 137,164 48% (Gary)
Porter 124,958 115% (Valparaiso)
Marion 68,120 10% (Indianapolis)
Monroe 66,009 85% (Bloomington)
Tippecanoe 53,456 58%
Madison 42,952 47% (Anderson)
Hamilton 42,325 26%

Here's a picture map with the numbers and percentages for the whole
state:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/cancelled-from-indiana-voter-rolls.png

The percentage represents the ratio of the number of purges to the
current voter list. Example: If a location currently has 100,000 voters
on its rolls, and purged 53,000 along the way, we assign a ratio of 53%
to the purge vs. current list.

It would be nice to have the original quantities, it would make for a
cleaner number, but this is not available on the Secretary of State's
Web site, so I haven't got a tidier statistic for you, wish I did. I
also wish the time period for these purges was clearly indicated, but it
is not indicated -- nor can it be derived -- from available information
at Indiana's official election Web site.

TOOLS YOU CAN USE

It's always interesting to look for impossible numbers on election
night, like the "more votes than voters" situation that sometimes crops
up. It speeds things up to have a place to plug the information in. Here
is a spreadsheet -- quick and not too fancy, I'm sure you can improve on
it. It has every Indiana county, along with their official registered
voter statistics for the 2008 primary, and some historical data from
1992 to the present, along with links for the source documents from the
secretary of state:

http://www.bbvdocs.org/IN/state/quickrank-INDIANAreg.xls
(Excel file, 71 KB)

Here are links that may be very good to provide additional statistical
information which you can plug in:

http://www.in.gov/sos/elections/elections/index.html

And here is a link to the source document containing the cancelled
registration information used for this article:

http://www.in.gov/sos/elections/pdfs/Statewide_Voter_Count_by_County5.1.
08.pdf

Here's a quick spreadsheet with the Indiana voting machines by county --
you can get that on the Sec. State's Web site too, but it's not in a
database format. You can cut and paste these into your analysis sheets
if you'd like to get comparisons of results by county.

AND NOW ABOUT THOSE VOTING MACHINES

Another press release on the Indiana Secretary of State's Web site deals
with the $360,000 penalty he's hitting Microvote with for failing to
follow the law. Oh yes, and the Microvote Infinity voting machine, which
will be very widely used in the Tuesday May 6 primary, has been
DECERTIFIED!

That's not going to stop anyone in Indiana from using it, however. The
decision was that anyone who already bought these things gets to use
them -- despite the fact that these machines have been embroiled in
lawsuits in at least three places, one in Pennsylvania for machines that
just didn't work, and two in Tennessee where candidates have asked to
redo elections due to bizarre anomalies -- like vote totals that
wandered away in the wee hours of the night.

Microvote's insurance company declined to cover the firm, according to
yet another lawsuit, because the insurance company alleged that
Microvote was selling defective products. The judge ruled against the
insurance company, saying the product wasn't defective, it just didn't
work.

I haven't plugged this in yet, but those of you who are comfortable with
spreadsheets can quickly add the voting machines by county to your voter
registration spreadsheet, using that voting machine spreadsheet I linked
above, to see how many votes all together will be subjected to
Microvote.

Ah, but we aren't done with Indiana voting machines yet. Indiana is also
fond of the ES&S paperless iVotronic touch-screens, the ones that lost
18,000 votes in Sarasota County Florida and were the subject of a
blistering report by Dan Rather. In Rather's report, he showed shocking
footage of the touch-screens being manufactured in a sweat shop in the
Philippines. Their quality control test was to shake the machine and if
it didn't rattle, it passed the test.

THINGS YOU CAN DO ABOUT INDIANA

1. Do some public records requests to either the state or the counties,
and ask for their VRG-5 form, which is the NVRA tracking form on which
the number of voters purged must be reported.

For tips on how to do the records requests, here's our tool kit, scroll
down to the section on public records:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.html

Post the documents and ask for any advice you need here, and report your
front-lines information for both Indiana and North Carolina here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/73.html

I'm pushing hard right now to get TOOL KIT 2008 done -- it's a
stripped-down model with emergency measures for the fall election.
Unless you tell me not to, I'll let you know as soon as it's ready for
download.

2. Another useful form you can request: The CEB-9 form, which is the
Indiana County Election Report that must be turned in after the
election. Here's one, take a look at the information it contains:

http://www.in.gov/sos/elections/pdfs/CEB-9.pdf

3. If you are a number-cruncher, grab the spreadsheets here and wail on
'em during Election night. You can get additional historical information
from this site:
http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/index.html
(Choose the drop-down menu "general by state" and select Indiana, then
choose the year you want. Confusion factor -- this site color-codes
Republican as blue and Democrat as Red. Has lots of good stuff).

TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE: People usually catch things like "more votes
than voters" weeks after the election. The dang Indiana information
doesn't break voter registrations out by party which makes crunching the
primary numbers a little harder. But you may still get the jump on some
red flags if you track this stuff as it's coming in on spreadsheets that
tell you what the stats are going in.

A WORD ABOUT THE TV PROJECTIONS

You'll notice that those projections often change -- sometimes
dramatically -- just an hour or so later. That's because we have learned
that they are paying elections officials (through their associations or
otherwise) to call and fax them the results off the voting machine poll
tape.

In fact, the National Election Pool (used to be Voter News Service) is
getting this stuff BEFORE the election officials and way before the
secretary of state.

The first number they quote is the adjusted exit poll number, and it
comes from asking people about who they voted for. The point here is,
when what you thought was "exit polls" suddenly changes, that is the
impact of those called-in poll tape results. Yep. That's the voting
machines talking, and when they say something different than the people
answering the exit pollers' questions, we should be looking at the
programming on the machine, not the exit pollers, for answers.

I expect to see early projections altered significantly as soon as those
poll tape numbers are called in to NEP.

So to recap, good things to do Tuesday:
1. Public records
2. Number crunching
3. Pray

Good luck to us, all,

Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting

Please help us protect 2008, muster up the "Dream Teams" for field work,
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