2008 U.S. Presidential Elections Synopsis Part 1

Fourty-eight days to January 20, 2009, before the spectacular fanfare of the historic 44th United States Presidential Inauguration, when an African-American takes center-stage and recite the oath on first entering office specified in Article II, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect,  and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The theme for the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama is “A New Birth of Freedom,” which honors the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. People scrambling to get the hottest “non-existent” tickets in town. Yes, “non-existent” because they are not issued yet and there are scammers selling them for $1000+ already. So if you contemplate of buying them through the web, STOP IT NOW.  These tickets are FREE and you get them from any U.S. Congress and Senate Officials and usually they are only allotted with a couple of hundred tickets depending on their constituents. Some public officials have even started doing lottery to be fair. You cannot get these if you are not American constituent in that district that the particular elected official (or ask your American friends).

Washington D.C. is expecting about 1M visitors and a massive planning is taking place to keep the city in order. All this hysteria because people want to hear the man who used a Kennedy-King-Lincoln-esque platform and echoed throughout his campaign:

“I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.” Excerpt from A More Perfect Union

 

Electoral Vote tally

We sat with astonishment to the meteoric rise of this obscured Arab-cheered Messiah 46-year-old political virgin to become the first African-American to capture DNC nomination. (Thanks to the Iowa Caucus and Obama´s brilliant grassroots strategy through David Axelrod´s brainchild, he surprisingly rose above Clinton) Weeks later, he wins an overwhelming mandate of 365 Electoral votes versus the 173 that McCain  got.  World Leaders like Merkel, Sarcozy, Brown (pro-Americans to Obama´s advantage) reacted warmly and  with expectations,  tests and warnings. 

2008 U.S. Presidential Elections County by County Results

The 2008 U.S. Elections cracked a lot of ceilings. Both GOP and DNC parties made historical marks with their two women, Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY) and Gov. Sarah Palin (AL). The former proving to be a formidable candidate with 18M behind her and the latter, a female maverick that became GOP´s first female for top ticket. Then you have the massive money that got poured in through Obama´s internet fundraising, garnering aroung $650M in total which afforded him to release a 30 minute infomercial in all major networks. 

The RESULT: The longest, historic, exciting, most expensive U.S. Election ever!

Facebook RE-instated my Account with Warning Attached

 

Warning after an hour of posting around 20 messages to friends. A web 2.0 nightmare for a person with circa 2000 friends!

So it goes…after 58 hours and awesome sweet political Conservative and Liberal friends later, Facebook re-instated my original profile which I have had for years with the following email:

 

“Facebook has limits in place to prevent behavior that other users may find annoying or abusive…Unfortunately, we cannot provide you with the specific rates that have been deemed abusive. Your account was disabled because you exceeded Facebook’s limits on multiple occasions when sending links and making Wall posts, despite having been warned to slow down. Please be aware that if your account is disabled again, we will not be able to reactivate it. Once logged in, please slow down the rate at which you share links and post on group Walls.  We appreciate your cooperation going forward.”

First off, HOW exactly was I annoying and abusive? By having too much traffic and activity on my site because my FB friends are very much engaged in the posts that I put on my walls? Isn´t the idea of web 2.0 is SOCIAL NETWORKING? Why is being SOCIAL penalized? Is SOCIAL and INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY in social sites unacceptable? The ANSWER is NO. 

If I am annoying and abusive, what about those people that go to my site and attack me directly for my opinions out of nowhere? (They are not even in my list of friends!)

Some “hate mails” I have been receiving lately shows intolerance of other people´s views:

From Micah Weiss: ”Your Stand on politics is the worst ever !!! you dont even live here .. and you have those views about Obama … makes me sick to my stomach … im sorry .. not narrowminded !!”

From Todd Lytle- a Screenplay Writer in Hollywood: “shows your ignorance and honestly coming from a hard core conservative doesn’t surprise me you would have that kind of mentality. I shared your comment with a few of my friends who were and weren’t Jewish and they all said you were just being nasty trying to piss me off. I will not stoop to your pathetic level of insults based on a generalization. Instead I will just let people know who you really are…and give them the heads up on your ignorant nature. After all you cannot help it…DITTOHEAD!!”

From Alex Demyanenko, (who asked me to remove his Title and Employer, hmm) : “Your funnies (political cartoons you post) are offensive and further proof that GOOD finally won out over EVIL. Karma, baby! Rovian = Evil.”

From Trevor Capon: “I don’t know how I see your pictures but you are an idiot. You really think intelligence is the mark of a Republican? You who vote for Sarah Palin and you who’s hero is Joe the Plumber? John McCain finished at the bottom of his class and Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review. If you look at all of the polling college educated voters went 4 to 1 to Obama. Please try to back up your arguments with facts.”

I have allowed people to write me things like this (and decided to be above it because liberals have always resorted to personal attacks rather than substantiating their arguments). I also wanted to let everyone know that I am not the Conservative leaning chick who just deletes people because they think different than I do. I am NOT that judgmental. I got friends from all walks of life: Homeless, Filthy Rich, Educated with Ph D, Dropouts, Business owners, Social Welfare Milkers, Handicaps, Sports jock Olympians, Musicians, Tone-deafs, Conservatives, Liberals, Confused and Apathetic people. But I learn from all of them. I live in the same planet as they do and they ALL matter to me because each has their own way of viewing the world I do not see.

I understand that politics is personal but seriously, how come others are able to handle and accept other differing views while others resort to give insulting remarks. I have had worse emails than that too with people using profanities but I guess the slandering to other people´s pages calling me “idiot”, “offshore terrorist”, “moron”, or “stupid” are ok to write people instead of putting notes to facilitate debates. Do I get hurt? Not really. People are FREE to express their views, regardless of the degree to where it leans: Positive or negative. But I do take pride in the fact that I am touching them somehow and make them think or defend their ground, which is what I am after. Nothing is worse to me than people with no opinion, belief or purpose. You might as well be dead if you don´t want to grow. 

Facebook ought to pay me for such intellectual activity that I have started. The only people who appreciate are those are truly “educated” from life because they understand that we are all individuals with different backgrounds that shape our ideologies and values we live by. 

When I started with Facebook, I thought it was exciting to keep in touch with your college friends and stuff, but now that they allow all developers to create these annoying apps, I found it so cluttered. Excuse me that I do not want to clutter my page with those apps that I find useless. I want my FB platform to be purposeful and since I am a practicing political strategist ( I eat politics for breakfast and late night snacks), I want to do something on MY page, what I want to do: DEBATES. I want stimulating conversations with my friends and learn from all sides of the spectrum. I get that, but apparently Facebook is not the place for these types. All the more I am convinced that iCampaign.tv NEEDS be unleashed for people like me.

In a nutshell, iCampaign.tv will be a tool ( web , mobile and desktop ) to empower any campaign for all types of industries which will use Open Social platform. Stay tuned!

For those who do not agree with me, don´t worry. I will not delete you. Just show some respect in giving your opinions. But you are free to delete me. It is not my problem that you cannot handle people who think different than you. But you know, I don´t know if I want to be your friend anyway, because I find that being around all “Yes- People” are boring. Look at Obama with his choices now, at least I am grown up enough to find common ground with the guy. He is not after “Yes-People”.

Facebook says, “Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in your account being disabled.” How is posting content on your OWN group walls and notes be MISUSAGE? Who made these stupid rules? This is like curbing my voracious appetite for putting my own content in a box.

Puh-leeeze, don´t bother boxing me in because I am going to find a way to crawl out of it. I don´t like boxes, the air gets too stuffy inside.

Facebook Disabled my Account without Warning

Last Friday, I posted a note called The Gospel of Obama (I shall post it here too so you know what I am talking about) and like most notes that I post there, I got quite a lot of hits from my circa 2000 friends. I have recently used my Facebook account to facilitate intellectual debates about everything under the sun and welcomed all sorts of ideas from people. I am shock to find out the next day that the company disabled my account. I have been a FB account holder since 2004-2005-ish and this is the first time that I have experienced this. The only thing I could think of is the fact that there are people who do not agree with my views that petitioned I be removed. 

I understand that politics is personal, but I find it stupid that people cannot handle hearing other people´s opinions. Since when are we allowed to really pass judgment on people based on the fact they are different. Well, forgive me that I am not like you. I take pride in the fact that I do not think like most people. I like to form my own opinions.

Someone even called me “offshore terrorist” or “Arab lover” because I read Al Jazeera. I happen to like reading and watching news from all sources like ABC, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, The Economist, TIME, Fox, The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg to name a few. Why would that classify me as a terrorist just because I want to read all sources and learn from everyone. 

A VP of MTV wrote me on Facebook once that he detest my views and considered me stupid because I liked McCain-Palin or even the conservative platform.

I happen to be moderate independent with Conservative leanings like on fiscal policy, but I am moderate in social views. Why does it matter anyway? Why can a minority woman like me not have a political opinion in peace? I let people with differing views argue with me and I only moderate when profanity is used and do personal attacks that does not add to the discussion. 

Anyway, for a company who lobbyied and marketed to politicians in Washington D.C. to use their site, I find it very odd they would do such a thing.