Googling Obama's Character
An Algorithm to Illuminate
By absentee Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Democrats | Google — Comments (34) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
"The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time."
- Sir Winston Churchill
One of the most important features of the Google search algorithm is how it uses links to rate content. In simplest terms, the more something is linked to for a particular type of content, the more weight the site carries in relation to that content. In other words, Google judges sites based on the company they keep. That's not a new concept to the world.
It's not a new concept in American politics, either. When it's your side being targeted for their relationships, you call it "guilt-by-association," when it's the other guy, you call it a question of character. In elections, all other considerations duly noted, such things matter. People remember the adage about judging a man by the company he keeps.
Like Google, voters examine link popularity. Much has been written and discussed about Obama's "links." Reverend Wright is the obvious example. Senator Clinton recently linked Senator Obama to Louis Farrakhan. George Stephanopoulos asked the Senator about his link with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. He's been linked with Electronic Intifada. He has many links to slum lord Tony Rezko. Obama has a lot of incoming links.
Yesterday, Erick posted about another link. This one is to Google and Obama advisor Larry Lessig. Larry thought it would be appropriate to show a video of a mostly nude, gay Jesus being hit by a bus to his crowd at Google. He also showed it previously at Linux World. As Erick rightly points out, there is a particularly nasty hypocrisy in Lessig and Google petitioning on net neutrality while using Google's undeniable power to determine what is and is not acceptable online to censor Malkin and promulgate gay Jesus.
Read on ...
The attitude on display by this Obama advisor is one we're all too familiar with. Michelle Obama can't contain it during her stump speeches. Senator Obama couldn't hold it back during a San Francisco fundraiser. As Erick points out, it's in abundance at Google. Rush mentioned it on his show today: a disdain for traditional American values. (audio below)
That's not the only link we can add, though. Political Machine notes that Michael Moore has endorsed Senator Obama. Naturally, you can't stop someone from endorsing you. The senator has suffered some unfortunate endorsements this campaign season. However, the Michael Moore endorsement bears examination.
You see, Moore made a point of addressing links in establishing his link to Barack.
I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name "Farrakhan" out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the "F" word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the "church bulletin" once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!
Why, it's just a silly little letter from a silly little Hamas guy, which Obama's silly little pastor posted in a silly little bulletin. Stop trying to scare white people!!
As is the wont of the left, he goes on to explain how comedian Stephen Colbert "brilliantly" explained the whole thing on Thursday. Liberals' obsession with being propagandized to is no better illustrated than by their insistence on getting their real news from their fake news, delivered by comedians. After all, wit is worth more than wisdom on that side of the aisle.
Moore blathers on some more about how America is being ruined, and how Bush (BUUUUSHHH!!!!!!) has done permanent, "irreversible" damage to the world, and then jumps back into the links again. "Finally," he misleadingly begins (several paragraphs follow), "I want to say a word about the basic decency I have seen in Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev. Wright up in his face as part of her mission to keep stoking the fears of White America. Every time she does this I shout at the TV, 'Say it, Obama! Say that when she and her husband were having marital difficulties regarding Monica Lewinsky, who did she and Bill bring to the White House for 'spiritual counseling?' THE REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT!'
This link doesn't count because Bill and Hillary are likewise linked. Interesting logic there. I wonder how that works with regard to Jack Abramoff and Obama hosting fundraisers at Abramoff's firm?
Michael Moore is exemplary of the links in Obama's life. Like Lessig, they are disdainful of "Jesusland". Like Wright, they have spare praise and vicious criticism for America and Americans. Like Michelle Obama, they have no pride in their country.
Google, and presumably Larry Lessig, think you can judge the content of a website's character based on the links. Googling the content of Senator Obama's character brings up some very telling links indeed. You can't judge a man exclusively by the company he keeps, but like Google, you better make sure it's an important part of your algorithm. Michael Moore doesn't want you to think about those links, and that ought to tell you something right there.
- absentee (Caleb Howe)
Also now available at Political Machine.
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Googling Obama's Character 34 Comments (0 topical, 34 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
...we need more homeland security to keep an eye on all of Barack's friends, mentors, and partners in crime.
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"We want great men who, when fortune frowns, will not be discouraged." - Colonel Henry Knox
You're not supposed to do it to draw negative conclusions about Obama. The only place connecting the dots can be discussed is that Bush was supposed to connect the dots despite the Clinton/Garelick walls and prevent 9/11, and Karl Rove is connected to anything negative even if it's put out by Hillary.
In the digital age. He has been far in the lead in preventing large concerns gaming the system to their interest and the general detriment When you have monopolies controlling distribution, and then also able to control creation of content it is a serious problem.
Lets take an example. Time warner is one of the largest cable companies in the country by extension this makes them one of the largest ISPs. They own CNN without net neutrality they could just start shutting down internet content from competing news websites. Lessig ably illustrates the problems with that kind of world
The problem with Lessig is he has a bad case of San Fran values. It doesn't detract from his intellect it does show that intellect without morality has to be watched very carefully
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
There are lots of ways to get broadband nowadays. Cable company. Phone company. Satellite.
If you want companies to invest in bandwidth, there has to be some benefit for them to do so. Otherwise, you can say bye-bye to any new infrastructure.
The phone company in general won't sell you DSL service without phone service (exceptions being court rulings forcing them to. Kind of proves the point doesn't it ?).
The cable company Generally forces you to buy your tv from them with the internet.
Satellite really isn't viable for most people due to high latency. (500 milliseconds added to any ping is kind of steep)
If they want to control whats carried on their pipe that would be fine with me, I would just insist they give up their right to be a monopoly. If comcast wants to offer cripple net that's fine as long as I can have a couple of other choices on the cable my city provided them the franchise for.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I've always though that since we grant a limited monopoly to the last mile providers by controlling access ways, zoning, permits, etc that we should make the pure local infrastructure an independent company. By law they would then sell access to those connections at distribution points to whoever wants it at the same price. Thus you would have all sorts of competition from a variety of players possible. This wouldn't be terribly different than the way we deal with the local electric grid right now, except that most utilities pad their profits a bit by overcharging competitors which is why I was advocating an independent company solution.
Between phone companies like Verizon's fiber (and their neglect of copper lines wherever they offer fiber) and the local cable monopoly your choices for future FAST content are going to be limited to no more than 2 if you are lucky and 0 if you are really rural.
Volunteer
When I started my Early AM Career on this blasted computer, searching for data on the OSI and George Soros, I Googled Soros vs ...... and the race was on. Links via the Google method of grabbing associations showed me more than I was able to comprehend. Connecting the dots IE: the Links, showed the relationships, the inner connectivity and eventually, after reading the data, the inner agreed upon philosophy, or ideas.
I can remember when the site discoverthenetworks.org was only a graphic. Now it has bios and new text data as well as the old mapping. So it is with Mr. Obama and company.
Mr. O has associated with these Left links for years. Only via the net and diligently searching, can one or a voter seek and find the drivers of his ideas. It is only an implied link, to say that Mr. O's association with Rev. Wright for some 20 years has influenced his psyche, but it is confirmation when his Linked associates also have the same Liberal Left psyche.
We all have a right, via the First Amendment, to think what we will, but that does not give Mr. O the right to foist his beliefs via the Oval Office on the rest of the electorate.
If we, as an electorate choose to accept Mr. O's and Mrs O's beliefs and give them access to the Bully Pulpit, we deserve the results.
end
So, if we keep playing six degrees of with BHO, maybe we can link him to Kaczynski, Rudolf, and McVeigh too! That would be righteous!
It obviously makes no difference who Obama surrounds himself with, what their values are, what he himself says in their company.
It's all just unfair linking. After all, Michael Moore (no link to Obama) says so!
absentee
Also now available at Political Machine.
"No matter how much lipstick you put on the taxation pig, it's still a pig... and it's currently snout-down in your wallet." - Michael Fisk
chooses to surround himself with....he is no different than everyone else in his life.
Freedom of Religion not Freedom from Religion
_________________
Thou art the Great Cat, the avenger of the Gods, and the judge of words...-Inscription on the Royal Tombs at Thebes
Unless you were actually looking to be tossed for mobying, which I suppose that we can accommodate, if we have to.
:holding up hand: I'm on one cup of coffee and the baby is starting to do his pre-cry. I don't have time to read explanations, excuses, or rationalizations, thanks.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
You got me: Lessig is a gay-Jesus-hating supporter of Marx who wants to eliminate all intellectual property and replace it with puppydog stew. And Google wants to supply the puppies for the stew. And also stream the death of gay Jesus to your home computer for free, natch, since Google is a Marxo-Lessigist multinational trading at more than $500/share.
(Real von: For the love of all that is holy, please give up the Lessig angle. I don't care if Rush is doing it: Rush is an old-media dinosaur; this is the net. You're supposed to be saavier about these sorts of things, and be able to understand Lessig's points -- which, although not mine, are pretty thought provoking.)
For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.
He has no business being associated with a presidential campaign. It speaks very badly of Obama's judgment that he included him. It would be as if Obama had picked Ezra Pound to be his cultural adviser. Yeah he is great artist but it is overshadowed by his political shortcomings*
*To put it exceptionally mildly.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
real absentee: the question is about real Obama, and real Lessig might be good at his job but he's part of the elitist, sneering, christians are stupid culture that google leadership and Obama supporters are primarily comprised of. His skill at his profession is inconsequential.
real Tom Cruise is a great actor. So? He's still a creepy loon.
absentee
Also now available at Political Machine.
Erick's original post had lots of interesting stuff, but by stuffing the net neutrality into it, it became an unsightly mess. Is Redstate arguing that net neutrality is a bad idea? Surely it doesn't think that Google's decisions to censor certain things are a question of network neutrality - net neutrality is a question of the network provider (I.E. the internet service provider) leaving their network open so it does not discriminate against certain sites. Thus Verizon shouldn't be able to cut off my access to Redstate while allowing me to visit DailyKos, or even throttle it so that Redstate crawls along while Kos flies.
What's even more odd is that opposing net neutrality means placing ideological sites of both stripes in danger of censorship by network providers with a monopoly power on the market. Do we really think that ISPs would be more likely to ban right-wing or left-wing sites? Some people feel that any regulation of monopoly powers
Now, by contrast, once the network is neutral towards individual sites, I'd argue that there's no natural monopoly of search engines. If Google chooses to display political bias, there are other search engines waiting with bated breach for your business, and with the network open, there's no barrier to taking advantage of them. It's not at all hypocritical for Google to petition for net neutrality any more than it would be for hypothetical RightWingGoogle to do so.
Note that I'm NOT saying that Lessig's statement does not reflect badly on Obama - he's a prominent and public supporter, and it speaks ill of Obama that he chooses to associate with people who would do such things. I'd further note that plenty of Obama's other supporters from the left wing of the academy have other similar gaffes to dredge up, and I'd fully encourage doing so.
I'll also note that Lessig, while brilliant and well-intentioned, is often blinded by lovely theories of intellectual property that neither stand up to functional or constitutional scrutiny. Creative Commons is a great movement, but many of his policy prescriptions are dubious to both sides of the aisle, not to mention common sense.
I'm also wondering why no-one has stepped forward with the law review note Obama wrote while on Harvard Law Review, but that's just me.
I find it ironic that the left wants us to dismiss the associations of BHO, yet for the last 7 years they have been obsessed with George Bush's associations with.............wait for it............ROVE/CHENEY/HALLIBURTON/blah/blah/blah
Of course associations matter. My mother taught me that when I was eleven and befriended a kid who had been in trouble. She told me "you will always be judged by those that you associate with". She was right. I think that most "average" Americans who live somewhere in between Cambridge and Berkeley understand this intuitively. For the sake of our country, I sure hope so.
"There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility." Teddy Roosevelt 1903
I was just talking to a friend of mine this morning about the election and while I have nothing against this post, I really enjoy you're written absentee (I'm refering to all the Obama post over the last several weeks), I am beginning to wonder where all of this Obama bashing is headed. I personally find enough about his policy positions to not want to hear a word he has to say, but it seems like we've teamed up with the Clinton's to personally destroy him. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like we are being hypocritical by attacking the politics of personal destruction of the Clintons by joining them in it. To me Rep's are coming across as if they're afraid to face Obama in the general.
Actually, he** yes.
" Got to love the Lord for making things like that."
Morally Compromised
have been pretty easy on BHO...they have done a great job letting this be a Dem on Dem battle.
Second, this is serious stuff. No second place. There has not been one issue broguht up about BHO that is not valid. I can understand how tough it might be to see someone attacked, always having to explain...but this is for the POTUS, not student council.
So, a conservative value?..call it what you want. The is one goal, to win this election. Half a$$ efforts won't do that.
" Got to love the Lord for making things like that."
Morally Compromised
When we are talking about the next President of the United States and the person who will command the best darn troops in the world...all means become justified...and if Barack cannot handle the heat than get him the hell out of the kitchen.
Freedom of Religion not Freedom from Religion
Republicans that don't have the stomach for the task ahead, please don't question on motive and values.
Get back to us after the job is done and we'll talk.
" Got to love the Lord for making things like that."
Morally Compromised
The good of our country should be the upmost moral tenet by which we engage in our politics. The politics of personal distruction is not good for our country and should be rejected as a means to an end. If that's all we got in the Republican arsenal then we're really hurting.
please identify instances John McCain, and/or the R party have gone immoral?
Respectfully, you can't just make broad statements like this and attribute them to someone, without reasoning. From Wright to Ayers to the comments about people in PA...all of this is legit in discussing the character of a man that wants to be POTUS.
" Got to love the Lord for making things like that."
Morally Compromised
Maybe I'm missing something here but I fail to understand how questioning the "friends", ""spiritual advisors", and other associations of a candidate for POTUS constitutes the "politics of personal destruction".
With respect to the good Rev. Wright, its not like BHO visited his church once or twice 10 years ago (i.e. John McCain and Bob Jones University). Obama was a 20 year member of this man's church. As an American, I must question what kind of impact 20 years of Wright's sermons had on the Obama family.
As for Ayers, I wouldn't sit in the same room with the man, let alone sit on a board with him, give speeches with him or call him a friend. And I really question the patriotism and judgement of someone who would.
How can any fair-minded American look at all of this circumstantial evidence of association with RADICAL left-wing individuals and not come away with the conclusion BHO is WAY out of American mainstream thinking.
Once is an anomoly, twice is a conincidence, but three times is a pattern.
I refuse to buy this "politics of personal destruction" garbage. These questions go directly to the heart of the man's judgement. His actions and his words are not congruent.
I wonder how many democrats are regretting their decision to vote for BHO in past primaries. If he is the democratic nominee, I wonder how many of them will vote for McCain.
"There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility." Teddy Roosevelt 1903
These questions go directly to the heart of the man's judgement.
BHO has said himself judgement is more important than experience for POTUS as a defense of his lack of the latter. He's running on his judgement which makes all of this fair game.
Truth be told, he's not any different than those he surrounds himself with; his unrepentant Weather Underground buddy, his not proud of her country wife and his watch out for the "white devils" pastor. He just realized early in his career that if he was going to be the man to get in on the inside to implement the Marxism he was going to have to do it in a polished manner with a smile, using phrases like "hope and change" in a way that dupes people into feeling rock concert good rather than phrases like "overthrowing capitalism and overthrowing the white supremest establishment".
It's evident by those he sound surrounds himself; his wife, his paster and his friend who's house he kicked his first campaign off from.
"Honor is self-esteem made visible in action." - Ayn Rand, West Point, 1974
...in Denver, with a wounded candidate at the end of it. At least, that's why we're doing this. It might not work, but you don't win if you don't bloody try.
And if you think you're disappointed... imagine how the progressives feel. The script was for us to be so hate-filled at the sight of a Clinton that we'd support any credible attempt to keep her from being the candidate. I'm morally certain that the VRWC's collective decision to instead keep the Maximum Fun going is part of what's driving the online Obama supporters' increasingly-elevated vitriol.
Best.
Primary.
EVAR.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
And I'll tell you why. I don't think it's that important compared to his actual positions (when you squeeze those out of him.) John McCain was attacked by the Washington Post for "having a temper." Big deal. I wouldn't care if John McCain yelled at babies for a hour a day if he performed his duty as POTUS well. Just like I don't care if Obama had never associated with anyone except saints and angels if he maintained his terrible economic policies with his disregard for the 2nd amendment and basic financial knowledge required to understand that we can't afford more social programs.
I'm not a Christian though, so that could be why I'm not as offended by the Lessig thing as much as you guys are.
I'm not naive though. I know that if you want to win an election you have to do this kind of stuff.
"If you analyze it, I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." - Ronald Regan
..to associate himself with is in no way reflective of that person's judgment, character, or ideology.
How can anyone consider this BHO guy as a potential CIC?
NO Way! NO Way!
This is why VETERANS and ACTIVE MILITARY are signing the Roll Call at:
http://Vets4McCain.com