I know that staffers often feel intense loyalty to their bosses, but can we please try to keep the hero worship to a minimum? Otherwise, you end up accidentally making the other side's argument.

According to this story, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a top McCain policy adviser, held up his Blackberry and told folks: “You're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.” Mind you, Reasearch In Motion is a Canadian company. When sold in the United States, it requires a contract with a wireless carrier. Each carrier controls which models it will permit on its system and what applications it will permit to run.

Or, in other words, the “miracle” is that we not only limit the development of technology in this country and force our hi-tech jobs to other countries, we actually allow a handful of wireless carriers to break the technology, limit it further, and jack up the price. This was probably not the miracle that Holtz-Eakin had in mind.

Still, the voter interested in tech policy and following up on the “McCain Miracle” for wireless would do well to visit the Blackberry Website. Notice how many models Blackberry makes? What applications it can run? Now select country U.S. and compare carrier by carrier. The carriers you can connect to at all each have a limited set of models and applications they permit you to use. Want one of the other Blackberries? Tough. Want to run an application the carrier doesn't like? Too damn bad. Want to bring your own device so you don't have to pay an early termination fee justified by an “equipment subsidy?” Dream on.

McCain was quick to dismiss this fulsome praise as a “boneheaded joke.” Still, it is worth noting that I am aware of no major leadership or initiatives by McCain on tech or media issue comparable with, for example, his efforts on campaign finance reform. This is not to say McCain has been devoid of accomplishments. He deserves credit for a strong stance in promoting low-power FM and for twice sponsoring the Community Broadband Act, designed to eliminate restrictions on the ability of local governments to provide broadband services. But by and large, as reflected in his tech policy, McCain's chief accomplishment for tech — and his plan going forward — is to not do anything and let the private sector work its magic.

If you are satisfied with the “King Log” approach to tech policy and don't mind that AT&T, Verizon, and other carriers get to call the shots over what Blackberry and other companies can do on wireless networks, then McCain is absolutely your man. If Holtz-Eakin was trying to make the point that McCain will let wireless carriers continue to “own the customer” and control how Blackberry and other devices evolve, and we peons should be content with whatever technological “miracles” the carriers graciously allow us, then he has a point. But if Holt-Eakin was trying to say that McCain got out there, showed real leadership in the face of political presure, and established lasting policies that even his political rivals now try to embrace as their own, sorry. I lived through it, and that ain't how it happened.

Stay tuned . . . .

If I told you after the Palin announcement that Republicans would attack Oprah, you'd have called me crazy. Oprah is beloved of the precise demographic Rs hope to win over by naming Palin. It would be suicide! Besides, what would be the grounds for the attack?

Then when I told you “because she is keeping her promise to keep politics off her show,” you would say I was doubly nuts. “Impossible! Everyone knows that when Oprah backed Obama she made it clear that she was not going to leverage her show for him. How on Earth are the Republicans going to turn that into an attack?”

Welcome to PalinPetition.com. You will find that after the initial blip on Sept. 5-6, it has slowly leaked into the mainstream media. I discovered it via the ever excellent Benton Foundation media headlines service, which linked to this trade press piece. I expect it will start to dominate the cable and broadcast news rounds via FOX and other conservative commentators soon. Timing will no doubt depend on focus group polling on whether Obama is gaining traction or if passion about Palin begins to wane. But from the current ferment in the vectors, I'm pegging it to be next week's distraction.

The fact is that the developing attack on Oprah is an excellent case study of how the Republicans manipulate both their base and the mainstream media. It also highlights what Obama and the Ds need to do to defend. It is not simply about going after smears or going negative sooner stronger or any of these things. It is to understand that the Republican stategists at this level do not wait for targets of opportunity, nor do they hitch their train to a single issue or person. It is a matter of understanding overall methods of operation and developng proactive counter-strategies rather than reactive counter strategies. Along the way, it also helps highlight the current problem with our mainstream media and illustraights how the Rs are taking advatange of the internet in non-obvious ways.

Full analysis below . . . . [Read More!]

Apparently, the Dems were accused of being too wonky by having Mark Warner talk about bringing tech jobs to America, and the Republicans vowed not to repeat that mistake. Even former EBay CEO Meg Whitman, once such a strong advocate of network neutrality she sent an email to EBay users asking them to lobby Congress, remained silent about that series of tubes that Republicans find so gosh darned perplexing. No doubt this is in deference to Mr. McCain, who has boasted that he is a computer illiterate.

But this latest gaff, running a picture of Walter Reed Middle School on the green screen behind McCain instead of Walter Reed Hospital because they screwed up a Google images search, has certainly cemented not merely McCain, but the McCain campaign, as being in the ranks of the terminally clueless on matters technical. Mind you, it seems a piece with the general slovenly way they ran the convention. In a city run like a friggin' police state, where “preemptive raids” are being used to lock up reporters and supposedly “keep us safer,” how the heck did protesters manage to infiltrate the candidates acceptance speech? More importantly, perhaps, how is it that the Dems could keep their own convention safer with less draconian security means?

Well, I shall leave the rather blatant messages on this as an exercise to the reader. While I hope to post about the Republican manipulation of the spineless wussies of the MSM later (what a sad state of affairs when the best running commentary and reporting on the convention has been the Indecision08 blog), I intend to focus here on the McCain Tech Policy or, more accurately, the utter absence of one.

As I observed when I first wrote about the McCain tech policy, it is unbelievable that the Republicans treat a multibillion dollar industry that has become one of our most critical pieces of infrastructure and major drivers of our economy as an afterthought to the business of cutting taxes and extending offshore drilling. All this lip service about “the jobs of tomorrow” and doesn't mean squat if you still think “the interwebs” is all about downloading porn, stealing music, and soliciting minors in AOL chat rooms and this newfangled thing called “my space.”

And no, having Carly Fiorina and Meg Whittman or Michael Powell in your party does not mean squat about your commitment to this stuff unless you actually let them talk about this stuff in prime time. The Daily Show may have mocked Warner for getting into details only geeks could love, but the fact that the Democratic keynote speaker was all about how technology brought good jobs to rural Virginia and the Dems will bring those same good jobs to the small towns and inner cities tells us something about the parties priorities. And the fact that none of the Republican speakers, even the supposed tech experts, could take time away from mocking community organizers and helping the poor to mention anything vaguely tech-related tells us something as well.

Stay tuned . . . .

Well, things were pretty depressed at the Republican convention over the last few days. But now we can begin a rollicking good time mocking the very idea that community organizing has value.

Of all the things that both Gulliani and Palin could have fixed on as a line of attack, the idea of community organizing as work for pussies is not what I would have expected, and Lord knows my expectations after Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are prety low. But what amazed me was how many folks on the floor of the RNC Convention actually laughed and whooped it up at the very mention of being a community organizer, before even getting to the supposed punchline about how it doesn't give you any “real” experience.

Hee hee hee. Those whacky Democrats! They think that if someone goes out into a local poverty striken neighborhood, inspires people to believe that participating in the political process can change things and make their lives better, gets wildly diverse and often fractious interest groups focusing on a common goal, against industry interests backed by an entrenched political power structure, all on a shoe-string budget is something that matters! Ha ha ha! What a ma-roon! What a joke! People matter? They can make a difference? And inspiring them and organizing them to believe that qualifies you for something other than a beating by the cops? What a joke!

Voters who think they want to have beer with these people better think again. They will be happy to pat you on the head and drink your beer — especially if they can stick you with the tab. But if you would like people who actually give a crap about your lives, you're coming to the wrong store.

As for community organizing, we actually have another name for it over here. We call it “voter registration.”

Laugh away chuckles. See you in Novemember when the rabble turn out to vote.

Stay tuned . . . .