politics

A Surprise Farewell to Prime Minister Ardern

January 19, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

I was head down all day today burning through work work and comic guide work without loading a single website or social network, which allowed for the comparatively occurrence of E sharing breaking news with me (rather than the other way around).

“Have you seen the news?” she asked as we all sat around the table after finishing dinner. Her tone of voice was portentous.

My mind raced. We don’t follows news on sports or royals, nor are we all that mindful of celebrities and influences. E certainly wasn’t bringing me any fresh developments from the world of drag or the Marvel United Kickstarter.

I loaded the Washington Post homepage, fearing the worst – more gun violence in the states, or a bad political development. There was nothing apparent “above the fold.”

“No, what am I looking for?”

I saw it just as she said it. It was the next story that appeared as I started scrolling down the page:

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern resigns ahead of election

(For my American readers: the simplest explanation of a Prime Minister is that they work a lot like the Speaker of the House. The party or parties who control the government nominate one of their own who was elected as a regular representative to be the head of their party, which also makes them the head of government. The people have no control whatsoever – which, come to think of it, isn’t such a bad thing.)

I have mixed feelings on this news. [Read more…] about A Surprise Farewell to Prime Minister Ardern

Live-Blogging The 1st Presidential Debate

September 26, 2016 by krisis

campaign-2016_758_426_81_s_c1 I’m live-blogging the debate tonight in the same format I have in the past – assigning values as we go.

On main questions, candidates will split 7 points.

On specific rebuttals, candidates compete for their own total of 3 points in individual rebuttals.

On crosstalk, I will award up to 5 points to either candidate I see fit.

“Achieve Prosperity”

“Two economic realities” – record job growth and income growth, but income inequality is significant.

Clinton: Pivots into an opening speech, invokes her granddaughter’s birthday. “Invest in you – invest in your future. Jobs in infrastructure, advanced manufacturing,” technology. Also wants to raise minimum wage, guarantee equal pay for women, introduce profit sharing, supporting people struggling to balance family and work. “Difficult choices you face and stresses you’re under,” hits family leave, sick days, asks the wealthy to pay their share. Says, “Donald, it’s good to be with you.” “Who can shoulder the immense, awesome responsibilities of the presidency?”

Points: 4 of 7. The typical big plan you hear from a president, but it’s credible.

Trump: “Our jobs are fleeing the country. They are going to Mexico and to many other countries. Look at what China is doing to our country – [?] our product and devaluing their currency … they’re using our country as a piggy bank to rebuild China and many other countries.” Mexico building some of the best plants, some of the “the most sophisticated plants.” “As far as childcare and so many other things, I think Hillary and I agree on that … but we have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us, our companies leaving the United States and” firing everyone. I’ll be “reducing taxes tremendously … for small and big businesses.”

Points: 3 of 7. Trump gave a terrific recap, but he seems focused on an old style of economy that’s focused on industry that we might not even have anymore.

Clinton rebuttal: “I think trade is an important issue, we’re 5% of the world’s population and we have to trade with the other 95%.” Immediately chases his tax plan, “trickle down economics all over again.” Calls it “Trumped up trickle down,” almost gets a reaction from Trump. Hits hard, “the more you help wealthy people … the better off people will be.”

Points: 3 of 3. Could not have been better or more effective to rebut Trump.

Trump, on creating 25 million jobs and “brining back the industries that have left this country.”

Trump rebuttal: “My father gave me a very small loan in 1975 and I built it into a company that is worth billions and billions of dollars” and some of the biggest? best? assets all over the world. “We have to renegotiate our trade deals.”

Points: 1 of 3. He already seems a little rattled and imbalanced. He tries to say that Clinton should have been “doing this for years” in terms of fixing bad trade deals, but it’s not connected to any kind of answer. Also, he’s got to blow his nose (or bump some cocaine, not sure.) Holt needs to interrupt him to try to get him on track. He’s rambling crazily now. [Read more…] about Live-Blogging The 1st Presidential Debate

Clinton’s Cough and Trump’s Kryptonian Children

September 7, 2016 by krisis

Today the leading story on the political internet is that Hillary Clinton coughed yesterday, closed followed by Trump’s children being a cadre of evil Kryptonians escaped from the Phantom Zone.

Hold on, I am just going to fashion my framed Journalism diploma into a deadly throwing star that I can use as a weapon during the impending end times. I’ll be right back.

Let’s start with Hillary. It’s not that she coughed once. She coughed several times. It was a coughing fit, actually, enough so that she excused herself from the presence of reporters.

On one hand, it’s a lightweight story that humanizes a candidate. We’ve all had that moment of coughing, sneezing, or eye-itching in the middle of a meeting. Hey, it happens to Clinton, too! She’s not a robot. On the other hand, it’s part of a continuing narrative about Clinton’s declining health and unfitness for the presidency.

trump-millenial-outreach-outsider-01 None of that is the actual story. We’ll get back to that in a moment.

The big politic meme of the week has been a Trump outreach campaign targeted at millennials. In the outreach, three of Trump’s children pose stonefaced in a either a terrible photo or a terrible photoshop job above the caption “This is not a Republican vs Democrat election. This is about an insider versus an outsider.”

There is so much to unpack about that photo and caption, and why this outreach is warranted in the first place. However, do you know what people were mostly tweeting about? How much the junior Trumps resembled a host of cinematic villains – from Children of the Corn to Slytherins to the Kryptonians who escaped the Phantom Zone in Superman 2.

The reality is that Donald Trump is barely beating the collective third party candidates among likely voters of the millennial generation. An August Quinnipiac University poll had him at 24% to Clinton’s 48% in a four-way race against Johnson and Stein (here’s the raw poll results). Yes, that’s right, Clinton is beating him by a 100%.

I have not seen that fact tweeted or commented a single time on all the villainous memes. I also haven’t seen discussion of the fact that the youth vote is purely a turnout game, since this huge swath of voters rarely hits the 50% mark in participation. What other Get Out The Vote efforts is Trump’s campaign undertaking with this population? Should he even engage, given his low percentage of support? [Read more…] about Clinton’s Cough and Trump’s Kryptonian Children

Review: The Private Eye by Vaughan, Martin, & Vicente

June 23, 2016 by krisis

Lately, I trust journalists less than ever before. Or, maybe I trust them, but I don’t trust the stories they’re telling.

Last week during the gun control filibuster on the Senate floor I compiled the names and demographic information from all the participating Senators, and my friend Lauren created an interactive infographic with the information. I did not read a single media story that named all of the participants after the fact.

I know this is a theme in conservative American politics right now – the bias of the mass media. I’m not talking about bias. I’m talking about facts.

The past few weeks have been full of big new stories nationally (Orlando and gun control) and locally (sugary drink tax and the DNC), and the biggest of those stories have been missing so many facts. They’re all headlines and quick hits. Hot takes with no depth. No quoting from primary sources. Lots of people coming away with incomplete ideas and parroting them as reality.

Those same weeks have also been full of truth. I become deeply invested in last week’s filibuster from the floor of the Senate and did not consume a single pundit’s take on it. I watched it live and was my own pundit. Yesterday’s sit-in in the House circumvented pundits even further – it couldn’t even be broadcast by networks because the House was out of session and cameras were off, so representatives broadcast it directly to the public via Periscope, cutting all all possible middlemen.

Of course, the next day journalism swept in – but, as a first-hand witness to the events in question, I found the subsequent coverage lacking. Where were the names of the participants, the lengths of time they spoke, the information they shared? I put more information together about the filibuster with data visualization from my friend Lauren than I saw from any news site!

I don’t trust journalists or I don’t trust the stories they tell, but I can hardly blame them. After all, I have a journalism degree and I never set foot into that field. I went CorpComm because I wanted job security and a standard of living, and that was before online outlets were effectively subsidizing their print editions and running on pay-per-click ad units. But I still believe journalism should represent unfiltered truth with a neutral point of view, unless it professes itself as opinion. I had a lot to say about the filibuster, but none of it made its way into the data.

What if journalists didn’t have to worry about the funding and the hits, and could focus on terrific journalism? There are some outlets today that fit the bill, and I don’t think it’s coincidence they produce some of the most thorough reporting. I know it’s hard to picture state-run journalism, because so often it’s journalists who expose the flaws in the state, but that’s one version of what I’m talking about. Instead of asking journalists to make personal sacrifices to do what they love and write for maximum eyeballs, imagine a minimum number of reporters guaranteed on each beat, with job security, fair pay, and a retirement plan.

Do you think the journalism would get better or worse? Does it take sacrifice to want to dig as deep as journalists dig? Or, would the skill and commitment increase?

The Private Eye

The Private Eye collects the 10 chapters of a complete web comic story by Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente.

Tweet-sized Review: The Private Eye finds Vaughan & Martin a bit too clever for their own good; I liked the world better than the story

CK Says: Consider it.

The Private Eye is a much more interesting world than it is an interesting story – and, it’s a pretty decent story.

Private Eye is an Eisner and Harvey Award Winning comic story conceptualized by Brian K. Vaughan and created in collaboration with Marcos Martin and his wife, colorist Muntsa Vicente. It was initially released beginning in March 2013 as a web-only comic via Panel Syndicate, with its 10 chapters released across 24 months. Each chapter was available as a DRM-free as a pay-what-you-will download.

You can still purchase it that way, or you can opt for a gorgeous $50 hardcover version released in December that includes the complete Vaughan/Martin email chain conceptualizing the story and their method of release (complete with fretting over what to call the website and how to make a profit from it).

The story of Private Eye depicts an America where the press has taken over peacekeeping for the police thanks to a landmark omni-leak of every possible piece of data. The event, called “The Cloudburst,” exposed everyone’s online information to everyone else. It wasn’t the leaked account balances or private nudes that did everyone in, but the search histories. It turns out that was as close as you could come to knowing what was going on inside someone else’s head – their deepest fears and desires. A lot of those heads were pretty dark places. [Read more…] about Review: The Private Eye by Vaughan, Martin, & Vicente

Support Net Neutrality (Bob Brady, I am talking to YOU)

May 27, 2010 by krisis

Yesterday Philebrity posted an article about 74 Democrat Congressmen who have come out against Net Neutrality.

I struggled with how to define Net Neutrality for you, but then I discovered that I had blogged about it before. I love being my own source! That post (re)directed me to Save the Internet, who over the past four years has further condensed the definition to the following:

Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers may not discriminate between different kinds of content and applications online. It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies.

… With Net Neutrality, the network’s only job is to move data — not to choose which data to privilege with higher quality service.

Life without net neutrality?

What does that mean for you?

Imagine if your internet provider could meter and limit your internet usage for different things, just like a cell phone plan or your cable TV subscription. Any of these statements could become true..

“Like to shop online? Shopping sites are just $5 extra a month!”

“Get your news from Fox – Fox sites load 10x faster than CNN on our network!”

“Are you an online gamer? Game for free overnight, 1am-8am. Standard hourly rates apply to peak time gaming.”

“Do you need to upload music for your band? Sorry, you’ll need our Business Plan to upload MP3s.”

Basically, ISPs would gain the right to selectively charge, tax, or even restrict your internet usage based on their own internal policies for or against certain sites, activities, or services. Wikipedia can tell you more about the reality of this threat to our internet freedoms.

I appreciate that the internet has been created as a level playing field for information, whether you’re a newshound or a gamer, a liberal or a conservative. It is terrifying to me to think that my blogging or music could be stymied because I can’t find an affordable carrier for it.

Which brings us back to the 74 Democrats, including my representative, Bob Brady.

Understandably, they are looking at the internet from a business and regulation perspective. In Brady’s case, Comcast is one of his biggest constituents. The reps hear companies and lobbyists saying, “We’re providing a utility, so let us regulate it!”

The internet should not become that kind of utility. As soon as you make the internet equivalent to cable TV or electricity, you start pricing people out of the amazing era of democratized production we’re currently a part of.

Yes, maybe businesses need to meter bandwidth, but should they really have power over the sites we access and the services we use? Once that door is opened it can never again be closed.

That is why I called my representative, Bob Brady, to tell him I do support Net Neutrality, and I do not support his signing Rep. Gene Green’s (D – TX) letter to the FCC arguing against neutrality. I told him I would campaign actively against him if he continued his stance.

Mr. Brady, consider this a shot fired across your bow.

You can read the full Rep. Green letter at Balloon Juice. It’s a small step, but if left unchallenged it leaves the door open for further action or legislation against Net Neutrality.

Below I have reproduced the letter and its list of signatories. If you see your representative on the list, please give their office a ring and comment – Philly residents, you need to call either Bob Brady (215) 389-4627 or Chaka Fattah (215) 387-6404. If you’re not sure what to say, I’ve included a sample script from Save the Internet.