A New Hope

The Chairman and CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, announced that he is going on the campaign trail for Barack Obama. This is a huge endorsement but I can't say that I didn't see it coming.

One of the first places that I recognized Barack Obama as a man of vision and leadership was when he was interviewed by Eric Schmidt at Google almost a year ago.



Back then I recognized that Obama could synthesize complex issues and present a nuanced response to questions. I and was impressed with his technology policy and I was impressed that he understood the transformative power of the internet as it could relate to open and transparent government and that he would appoint the countries first CTO. I was definitely leaning towards Hillary and McCain back then but Obama represented a candidate who had a vision of the future that I haven't seen since Al Gore. Like Gore, Obama had an appreciation and recognition for the innovation economy represented by Silicon Valley to solve many of the worlds pressing problems.



The other day I was listening Eric Schmidt speaking at the Commonwealth Club podcast on my way into work. In the midst of the financial crisis Eric was discussing that other crisis - climate - and used the Commonwealth club to launch the Google sponsored energy plan. This plan which sets a goal of significantly reducing fossil fuel use by 2030. You may ask what does energy policy have to do with Google? Lots and lots of data centers represent the infrastructure that Google needs to run their business. Data centers require a lot of electricity to run so the cost of electricity is an expense that they would love to have some control. I also believe that Google's has a higher sense of social responsibility than other Silicon Valley firms so they are trying to minimize their environmental impact.

The clean energy economy will be good for America in many ways. In fact, it represents the next "killer app" of economic opportunity. I can't remember where I read it (probably The Economist) but I remember reading that the market for energy is significantly larger than the IT market. This is probably why a lot of VCs in the Valley are interested in kick starting the clean energy economy as the new, new thing.

In recent weeks I recognized the synergy between Google and Obama's energy plans and then I learned that Eric has been advising Obama on energy and technology policy. I'm very hopeful that about the future and the promise of America when we have visionary leaders like Eric Schmidt and Barack Obama. Lets hope that the future is in their hands.

Trolling for Wingnuts

I get my news from a wide variety of sources and listen to all points of view. Every now and then I like to check the point of view of Fox News (a.k.a. Faux News). You may ask what the hell am I doing reading Fox News? I'm a "left coast liberal elitist" who will probably never visit a red state any time soon so I read and watch Fox News Channel to understand how the the knuckle dragging mouth breathers from the flyover states are thinking about the election. Fox News Channel is the number one source of where Americans get their news so their influence and misinformation on their viewers is probably one of the key factors why Obama only has a narrow lead over McCain and the fact that America is trending away from a Democracy to an Idocracy.

It's no secret that Fox News is a shrill for the Republican party but I had no idea that the level of bias extends to the comments section for foxnews.com. Fox News is not exactly "Fair and Balanced(tm)" but in the past I have tried to post a comment to dispel some hatred and misinformation I was reading in the comments board. I have never seen one of my posts appear before. Perhaps it's because I articulate information in a calm and reasonable fashion. For example, I've tried to post the following comment:

Name: New Voter I used to be a foreigner but now I'm a US citizen voting for my first Presidential election. I'm proud to cast my first vote for Obama because he is a man of first class intellect, reason and temperament and will do a great job at bridging together this divisive nation and repair our relations with the rest of the global community. In recent years there has been a really low opinion about the United State in the rest of the world. Until we get out deficit and debt under control we as a nation are at the mercy of the global community to finance our wars and bailouts. If we can't unite to solve basic problems and choose to propagate the divisive do-nothing, ideological wasteland of American political thought then foreign investment and markets for US goods will evaporate and that giant sucking sound will be the implosion of the dollar. The only good thing in this scenario is it will solve the illegal immigrant problem since they will probably go back home - along with other talented foreigners who do drive the innovation economy of the United States. I'm a proud supporter of Obama and have contributed generously to his campaign. For the sake of the future of this country it's important that he becomes the next President.

When I posted the above comment, it seemed to take about 15-20 seconds to process and then the page reloaded and then comment was not added. I thought it may be server overload but I tried it again under and different name and email address and got the same results.

Just for laughs, I decided to re-frame the comment to dish out all the "Red Meat" that Fox News partisan Republicans want to hear:

Name: RedMeat I don't like Obama because he is too smart and he uses reason and logic to frame his arguments. He talks all fancy pants like a liberal elitist. Besides, he was associating with terrorists a long time ago after they became teachers. We need McCain to be a President because we need a leader who will be aggressive, impulsive and take unilateral action against Iran, North Korea and Russia. We need to drive out the foreigners and foreign investment from our country. We don't need their money or expertise. America is the greatest country in the world and we don't need foreign scientists, mathematicians, academics or any leading thinkers to keep maintaining our technological lead. Go McCain/Palin '08!!!!!!

I was really surprised that this comment took a fraction of a second to process and was immediately presented on the page! The php script probably has a collection of key phrases that it process against the comment and kick it out if doesn't reflect a certain point of view. Perhaps it detected that my original comment didn't mention anything negative about Obama and nothing positive about McCain.

The funny thing is that a liberal sympathizer on this group named "toby" picked up on my elitst comment and took it at face value. He didn't see the irony in my post and didn't see that I was indeed slamming McCain. I was curious as why he seemed to be the lone dissenting sheep thrown into a pack of hungry wolves. But this is Fox News and they like to have a liberal punching bag in the mix. A lone sheep among the wolves. A lone Coolmes in a sea of Hannitys.

Fox News Channel wraps the flag around themselves more than any other channel and are the loudest at exclaiming that they and their viewers are the most patriotic and represent "Real Americans". This country was founded upon free speech and dissenting voices. Silencing dissenting points of view is no only unethical but unpatriotic. Sheltering the viewers and readers from alternative points of view reinforces the echo chamber and stunts political discourse. They have been living in a media bubble for a long time. I think the viewers of Fox News are in for a very rude awakening on Nov 5th.