…Because the hiatus isn’t over yet. WBYR is going to be returning soon in a revised format. Until then WBYR is taking a little detour into the world of tech blogging. Enjoy.
There’s More Than One Way To Skin A Wikipedia
Oh, Semantic Search! Will you ever be remotely useful?
Powerset almost won me over when the search “Where did Charlemange die?” brought up a link to the page for the city of Aachen. However its result for my next search, “Where was the telephone invented?”, was “The House of Representatives”. Maybe this isn’t the kind of technology you should buy for $100 million and market as a competitor to Google. Powerset still has the same problems that semantic search has had going back to the Ask Jeeves days. The only questions that it answers with any reliability are Encarta-style trivia questions that no one is really interested in. It can isolate atomized bits of information like George Washington’s birthplace. That is great if you’re working on a second grade homework assignment, but not very useful the rest of the time. When you try to find information that isn’t reliably printed in the first paragraph of a wikipedia page the system breaks down. ”What is LeBron James’ 2009 salary?” Only brings up 7 results, and LeBron James’ wikipedia page isn’t even one of them!
I don’t know if that valuation is based on some secrete technology they are keeping under wraps or what. Because while they make a nice little skin for wikipedia, they haven’t worked out a useful product.
Okay. Enough of that. Back to regularly scheduled programming soon.
One of the few chances to see legitimate self-reflection from the candidates during the election is in their choice of running mate. This selecttion is a chance to see how the candidate views their chances in November and the personal weaknesses they feel they need to overcome. We will now look at three possible choices McCain might make for veep and what they each say about his mindset.
Tim Pawlenty: ”Just stay the course, Johnny”
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty would come to the campaign straight out of Vice President central casting. He is young, outgoing and almost impossibly bland. Pawlenty is popular in his home state but effectively unknown on the national stage. By choosing Pawlenty, McCain would be signaling confidence in his campaign and message. The Minnesotan wouldn’t offer any new direction, just a soothing smile.
Bobby Jindal: ”You don’t bring a knife to a hope-fight”
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal would bring a very different look to the GOP ticket. The selection of the Indian-American former exorcist would show McCain to be baffled and frustrated by Obama’s change message. Throwing the GOP’s Great Minority Hope on the ticket wouldn’t refine McCain’s message, it would just say that he wants it to sound more like someone else’s.
Mitt Romney: ”I might as well take this bastard down with me”
If McCain sees his prospects as truly bleak it is possible that he could choose former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as his running mate just to torpedo his rival’s career. After a primary campaign in which the two candidates bitterly feuded, much has been made of McCain’s reaching out to Romney. Some reporters have credulously passed along reports of a friendship developing between the two. Don’t believe it for a second. If McCain puts Romney on the ticket it’s only for the consolation that his loss will be Romney’s as well.
Gore, in his endorsement of Obama, praises McCain for his acknowledgment of climate change. He urges democrats to respect their electoral rival, and then implicitly accuses him of being part of a Republican pet killing conspiracy. So much for that…
WBYR’s take on the Patti Solis Doyle hire sets the tone for coverage through the day.
PPP the go-to pollsters for crazily inaccurate numbers have Obama up by 11 in Ohio, take that with a truckload of salt.
CW is starting to catch up to our election predictions. They’re even starting to get a bit more bullish on Obama. We’re staying where we are until the polling gets really persuasive, or some dynamics change.
Is John McCain still running for President? Or is he just hanging out at home watching golf and occasionally going out to make contradictory statements about oil?
After the sudden death of Tim Russert there has been fevered speculation about who will take over on Meet The Press. The two leading contenders seem to be Russert groomed process-wonk Chuck Todd and Allen Greenspan’s correspondent bride Andrea Mitchell.
Mitchell would likely make for the smoothest transition. Her standing in NBC and Washington as well as her years of experience in front of the camera make her the strongest candidate to continue Russert’s show. While Chuck Todd is inexperienced in traditional newscasting, with his work on NBC’s First Read blog has shown a strong sense of the future of political reporting may be the best choice to remake the show as his own.
WBYR would make a more daring choice and choose a different reporter who has been making a strong case for himself in the past months.
Jeff Van Gundy’s informative and entertaining color commentary during the NBA playoffs should earn him at least an interview with NBC. If he went at his guests with half the intensity that he visited on Alonzo Mouning’s knee than that show could be something special.
We are continuing our series on how the candidates subliminally signal their change agendas with a look at news coming out of the Obama campaign.
In ways that have not yet been appreciated Obama’s candidacy shares many similarities to George W. Bush’s run in 2000. Like Bush, Obama is running with an agenda of reforming the Beltway and has to answer questions of inexperience. Bush’s answer to those questions was his selection of Dick Cheney as running mate and the unprecedented powers that the vice president held in office.
Today, Barack Obama strongly signaled that his administration would not grant his running mate such broad power and influence. This break from the past was telegraphed when the campaign announced that they had hired former Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle as chief of staff to the yet to be selected vice presidential candidate.
By hiring the famously ineffective Solis Doyle, most notable for spending $500,000 on parking in a three month period, Obama is signaling to potential veeps that this will be his show. The running mate will be on the b-team rolling with a chief of staff on a short leash who will be preoccupied with making sure to get parking lot receipts in triplicate.
Unexpected and sad news today Tim Russert, innovator to be remembered for introducing reading long quotes to trip up his interviewees, died today at the age of 58. During his tenure as the host of Meet the Press the program was been the essential Sunday morning talk show. This was not because Russert “asked the tough questions” or had the most access, it was because he was the only host who really knew how to put together an enjoyable show about politics. I’ll miss him.
Last night my welldocumented feud with the Colbert Report was taken to the next level last night. When introducing another segment featuring the disputed McCain green screen Colbert called-out WBYR by reusing our material yet again. Check out the clip below, which is queued up to the incident.
At this point I can only be astounded by their gall.
P.S. Add Hulu to the very short list of Things that I Unsuccessfully Tried to Hate.
For some reason everypoliticalblog has decided to post this old commercial for the McD.L.T. McDonald’s attempt to meld sandwich making and environmental catastrophe.
Ron Paul is officially bowing out of the Republican race. We’d like to mark the end of his pugnacious campaign by adding him to the WBYR series of condiment profiles.
