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I have relied on blogs for a lot of my regular consumption of news and information for a while how. Especially political news. I am always finding new blogs and wanted to share a few of my new favs. And now as a regular twitterer I have an entirely new vehicle to feed my news and information addiction.
Interesting bloggers I read regularly:
Eaves.ca- My friend Dave writes a widely read blog about all things ‘open’, especially open government. His posts are always thoughtful and well-written. If you are interested in government 2.0 check it out.
Dailygumboot.ca - A blog I have recently started to read. It is an eclectic collection of posts about everything from North Korea to the recipe for an Akon concert.
Samara- A wonderful new organization concerned with public service and public leadership. Alison Loat is the Executive Director and she writes a great blog that highlights new and innovative public policy initiatives across Canada.
Public Eye Online- A blog dedicated to news about the BC Government. It is a tremendous resource for my job because it helps me keep tabs on key people and “insider” news.
Frances Bula- An excellent blog about urban issues, particularly the City of Vancouver. Frances Bula used to be the urban affairs columnits for the Vancouver Sun and is one of the few bloggers who focuses on Vancouver.
Twitterers I would recommend you follow:
@MarkKnoller- Tweets about happenings at the White House with the occasional photo taken from his iPhone (like the Obama’s boarding Marine 1). I particularly like that he expresses a complete thought using the 140 characters and doesn’t just write the first part of …. followed by a link.
@NBA/@si_golf - Both provide regular updates and links to the latest stories about their sports. @si_golf is great at providing updates about what is happening during a major tournament. Like last weekend’s PGA Championship. And @NBA retweets a lot of NBA stars which I always enjoy.
Government 2.0 crew – I am interested in how social media tools such as Twitter, social networking and wikis can be used in government. There is a group of people exploring that topic and doing some interesting things from inside the federal public service and the BC government. Follow @nickcharney, @TariqAlexander, @dbast, @dbhume to keep up with what’s going on.
@CanPlaceNames – Our friend Melissa Edwards does the maps found on the last page of each issue of Geist Magazine. She tweets about interesting places in Canada and the stories behind their names.
Just in time to capitalize on another wave of Obamamania comes Thanks, and Have Fun Running the Country: Kids’ Letter to President Obama courtesty of the kids from 826 Valencia. There are some gems in the heartfelt letters that these American children wrote to the President-Elect following his big win in November.
“I really hope you put America back together. No pressure though.”
— Sheenie Shannon Yip, age 13, Seattle
“Could you help my family to get housecleaning jobs? I hope you will be a great president. If I were president, I would help all nations, even Hawaii. President Obama, I think you could help the world.” — Chad Timsing, age 9, Los Angeles
If I were president, I would tell people to not talk too much. It wastes time. I’d also say to war: no more, no more, no more!
— Catherine Galvan, age 6, Chicago
Now that the various elections are over I’ve been thinking a bit about some of the things that I took away from the results and the various campaigns.
Be Authentic
Authenticity seems to have actually paid-off in this presidential election season. First, Mitt Romney, a moderate Republican decides to abandon is beliefs and tries to become the candidate of the most conservative wing of the GOP. He even said he wanted to build another Gitmo. I always felt he did this because he thought that the Bush-Rove strategy of 2004 was still going work. He didn’t realize that the country was sick of that. In the end he wasn’t able to sell his new found set of beliefs and got trounced by John McCain.
John McCain then decided to abandon his moderate views during election and in turns gets crushed by Barack Obama. McCain was always at his best when he wasn’t too scripted, treating the people he disagreed with with respect and having fireside chats with reporters. He decided to entirely change his persona during the election to help him get elected and in the end he would have likely been better off staying true to who he actually was.
I would imagine that there is considerable pressure when running for President to change your style, your look and your views to help you get elected. It often works too. This may be naive, but I hope that what we saw in this last election was a lesson that you are better off being yourself than trying to become something that you think citizens want.
Be Gracious in defeat
John McCain’s presidential campaign was a disaster. Not just for him, but for society in general. The borderline racism, the blatant lies about Barack Obama and his pick for Vice-President demonstrated the worst parts of American political campaigns. However, he ended his campaign on an incredibly gracious note. His concession speech was probably the best speech he gave over the entire campaign. In my mind it restored some of the reputation that he decided to throw away with his campaign.
Contrast that to the words that came from the NPA camp following their electoral disaster on November 15th. Allen De Genova has this to say about newly elected mayor Gregor Robertson:
“Gregor Roberson? Nice guy, looks good, speaks well. Has zero experience, zero knowledge to find his way around town,” De Genova said. “Thank God he has Raymond Louie and Geoff Meggs to run the show. But … we got another Sam Sullivan — a guy who is going to follow and not lead. But he looks good, and that’s what people wanted.”
Nice way to handle defeat. This is a guy who was not only a member of Gregor Robertson’s party, Vision Vancouver, but also ran for its mayoral nomination. After he lost to Gregor he endorsed Peter Ladner, the NPA’s candidate. Vancouver’s very own Joe Lieberman.
Any here is a quote from Peter Ladner’s concession speech:
“I think there was a lot of superficial appeal to Gregor Robertson,” he said.
In Gregor Roberston’s speech on election night he thanked Peter Ladner, Sam Sullivan and the NPA for their service.
Anyway, John McCain gave us a lesson in how to handle defeat in a graceful way where as De Genova and Ladner decided to reinforce people’s negative perception that politicians. I can tell you who I’d rather support in a future campaign.
One of the many things the Obama campaign showed was that print isn’t dead yet. I love this image of people queuing for copies of the NY Times on November 5 via Khoi’s blog.
And did you get your Obama fonts yet?
The end of the US Election has left a hole in my daily television watching and blog reading schedule. Following the Obama transition has been interesting but lacks the excitement of the campaign. Newsweek has done a great service and take us back through the entire campaign. If you’re interested in rewinding the past 18 months I highly recommend it.
My favourite headline of this week is “City goes to hell in Olympic-sized handbasket.” Without getting into the details, which are summarized well in the above link, something is rotten in the city of Vancouver.
What would I like to see happen? Hard to say since I don’t really know what we are dealing with, but this would be a good start.
I’ll lay my cards on the table and say that we are big Gregor Robertson supporters over here. I think he’s committed to solving homelessness and making city hall more accessible and transparent. A couple of weeks ago we hosted a small gathering to give our friends and colleagues a chance to hear from Gregor firsthand, which is impressive in itself that he took the time to meet and share his ideas with average voters like us.
Vancouver votes November 15.
What a treat. When I needed a break from Super Tuesday Coverage tonight I surfed my way to Bravo and Live at the Rehearsal Hall. Tonight’s guest? Stars. Politics and good music. Not that I ever need an excuse to watch television, but those are two good reasons.
I thought CNN had been upping its game. Showing the US Presidential candidates making full speeches and hosting entire town hall meetings instead of simply “expert” after “expert” telling you what they think the candidate is trying to say.
I was wrong, so very wrong.
Watching CNN’s political coverage is becoming a challenge. The arrogance with which they have been covering the primary season has been incredible. Calling themselves over and over “the best political team on television” was the first sign. They also have “The Best Political Podcast.” They seem to consider everyone else uninformed, lowly pundits while considering themselves the only educated, knowledgeable and insightful journalists on television. Any network that has Lou Dobbs moderating a panel discussion about how “the pundits and savants” got it so wrong in New Hampshire with this guy and a collection of randoms is operating in another world. And hearing Dobbs complain about the “mainstream media” as if CNN isn’t the captain of the mainstream media is hilarious and infuriating at the same time. Clearly Slate isn’t impressed either.
The saddest part is that CNN offers the most coverage of the Presidential race so I will likely have to endure more Lou Dobbs in the future.
Sources close to the Medsky household bring us this report from the ground in New Hampshire.
“Edwards started out strong but he seems to have lost momentum. It appears to be a toss up between Obama and Clinton. My guess would be with Hillary, based on NH’ers penchant to be different.”
Many thanks to our reporter in the field who will rename nameless for security reasons.
Tomorrow night will be one of the rare occassions when I let Andrew stop on CNN for longer than 30 seconds. As we watch the results roll in I’ll be wearing my Obama ’08 sticker, which, incidentally, came from New Hampshire.
