Category: Politics

White House Flickr Feed

Obama with football This is really cool: I found out via Doc Mara’s Twitter feed that the White House, which has really changed the rules on how candidates and now presidents use all kinds of different sorts of internet media, has a Flickr feed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/ If I signed up for an RSS feed, I could get all the Obama et al picts I could possibly see, I suspect. Anyway, besides being fun to browse, it is probably something I need to include in 328 as part of the comic unit.

Caganers: figurines of defecating world leaders in Catalan nativity scenes

Pooping Obama
Oh, the things you stumble across on the Internets:

“Caganers: figurines of defecating world leaders in Catalan nativity scenes” is a photo essay of sorts on the Telegraph web site. And I swear I am not making this up:

The ‘caganer’ (literally ‘defecator’) is a feature of Catalan nativity scenes. The figure is usually tucked away in a corner of the model, far away from the manger itself, for children to find. The caganer represents fertility and equality.

Apparently, the caganer used to be depicted as a peasant, but they have come to be more commonly represented as politicians and famous people. So click on the above link to see a figurine of your favorite pooping world leader.

Obama/Biden=Mac; a NYTimes dream; the YouTube “actually good” video contest

I came across three things right in a row that I want to post this morning, but I don’t have time to write/talk about any of them. Luckily, they mostly speak for themselves.

First off, yet another reason to like Obama/Biden: they are apparently both Mac users. See this piece, and the boing boing entry on it.

Second, via Mark Maynard and an Facebook entry, there is this spot-on dream/wishful thinking of a July 4, 2009 New York Times. Yes, I want all of these things too. But let’s be careful and not have too many unrealistic expectations for the President-elect. Bush left a hell of a mess to clean up.

And finally, the Onion announces a (fake?) YouTube contest where users will win $100,000 if they make a video that is “actually good:”

YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A ‘Good’ Video

I gotta show this one to my 328 students who are trying to make videos right now, good or otherwise.

Sarah Palin Punkd

This is just freakin’ unbelievable: apparently, Sarah Palin took a crank phone call from some radio DJs in Montreal who pretended to be the president of France. Here’s a quote from the article “Palin Punk’d by Prank Call:”

ABC News David Wright, Alyssa Litoff, and Bret Hovell report: Foreign relations never were her strong suit, so perhaps it’s understandable that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin actually appeared to believe that French President Nicholas Sarkozy would call her out of the blue to talk about “unting” and “Joe le plumber.”

Perhaps her first hint that it was actually a crank call should have been “Sarkozy’s” admission that “from my ‘ouse, I can see Belgium.”

Just remember, would-be McCain supporters: the woman who would be a heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the free world would also probably take your call about your refrigerator running or Prince Albert in a can. God help us all on Tuesday.

BTW, here’s a YouTube video with the audio of the phone call:

Of course I’m going to vote; if I don’t…

Three or four people have now sent me this:

I’m not sure if I am getting this because people are afraid I won’t vote, they know I would appreciate both the humor and the technology, if I am the easy butt of jokes, or some combination of all of the above. But don’t worry; I’ll do my part on Tuesday.

McCain to supporters who don’t “look right:” “Get out of my yard, you meddling kids!!!”

I’ve seen this elsewhere in the blogosphere and on Facebook, but I post it here because it took place in my hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa: “Pre-emptive ejection: Audience members removed at McCain rally in Cedar Falls.” Basically, McCain held a rally in Cedar Falls on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa, and before the event began, UNI security kicked out four or five people who apparently didn’t “look right” and/or who McCain staffers thought might be protesters.

By not “look right,” I believe the McCain people were thinking “under 30.” Because why would there be anyone younger than that hanging around a college campus?

There is a bit more at Talking Points Memo, including a link to some (kind of bad quality) video about the students asked to leave:

First off, I don’t really understand why McCain was in Iowa (every election map I’ve seen that has it solid blue and has had it that way for a while now), and I don’t understand why anyone would want to vote for someone to be president who thinks it is perfectly acceptable in this country to simply kick people out because they didn’t “look right.”

But beyond the McCain issues, why in the heck would the University of Northern Iowa rent a public facility to the campaign and then say they can let in/kick out whoever they want? Shouldn’t there be some kind of conditions tied to this, something along the lines of “you can limit the number of people, but you can’t kick people out because they look funny.” I mean, it would have been flat-out illegal to kick out people because they were women or Mexican-American or something like that; why isn’t this against the law too? Why would the UNI police actually follow through on that?