Brian Gongol
Analysts think the Obama campaign was a victory for the Internet -- but that's not quite right
Undoubtedly, the campaign made very strategic use of tools like Facebook and their campaign website, but the victory wasn't really one for those tools, per se. The victory was really one for branding. The Obama campaign branded itself early -- using the "O" logo since March 2007. And they stayed on that brand without a moment's deviation. People attached themselves to the brand first, then used Internet tools as ways to express their attachment to that brand message. MySpace and Facebook may have audacious plans, but people aren't buying Obama victory T-shirts because of social networking. When even our closest allies in Britain talk among themselves about how the candidate's postitions "are still evolving", the election victory wasn't a matter of policy choice, either. They created a successful brand, and it sold. We may be thirty years past the era of Howard Beale and "Network", but the result is still the same. The Onion makes fun of this fixation. This sort of enthusiasm doesn't happen because of a Twitter page. It happens because someone built a juggernaut of a brand and then used all of the tools available to hammer that brand home wherever they could.
Fiscal discipline to be a "medium-term goal" for the Obama administration
Unfortunately, the medium term includes the bankruptcy of Medicare and, if we're not careful, considerable inflation as a result of all the economic-stimulus packages that have been put into the system. These are problems of colossal consequence and they simply can't be overlooked just because they're politically inconvenient.
The best summary of over-extended government yet
"Liberty -- the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government -- is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark." That's from a case entitled United States of America, Plaintiff-appellee, v. $124,570 U.S. Currency, Defendant, decided in 1989 by a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Nebraska AWWA meeting makes the news
