Tag: Democrat

Who Owns Your Name on Twitter?

Who Owns Your Name on Twitter?

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I don’t love the social networking sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace.  I do understand the importance of their presence though.  It is moderately important to VERY important (depending on your web presence and its importance to your income) for you to do the land grab and get your name, nickname, or company name out there.  Don’t let a cybersquatter get in your way!

If you want to follow me on Twitter, please do so: @soshaughnessey

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on the subject.  I don’t like to reproduce whole articles here (due to copyright issues) so here are the highlights.

Nowhere is this fact more evident than in the doling out of domain names. On the Web, domain names are available for sale on a first-come, first-serve basis. If someone else buys your name first, you can try to buy it from them. If you’ve trademarked a name, you can fight for the name in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ domain-name court system. This makes sense: money and the law are acceptable remedies in our capitalist democracy.

But social media domain names – such as Twitter.com/yourname – are a whole different ballgame. They can be doled out arbitrarily. Even if you get a name first on a social network, you are not allowed to sell it and it can be reclaimed by the social network at any time. Legal remedies for dealing with imposters or trademark issues range from murky to nonexistent.

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Still, there is some hope if you want to get your name – or reclaim it from someone else who has it. Here are some approaches:

Get There First. Since domain names are free on social media sites, it makes sense to grab yours quickly, even if you don’t plan to use it immediately.

Many sites dole out domain names on a first-come, first-serve basis. The most democratic is LinkedIn, which hands out “vanity URLs,” such as LinkedIn.com/in/JuliaAngwin, to the first person who asks for it. As long as the URL is really your name, you can keep it.

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Plead Your Case. If someone grabbed your name already, you can appeal to the site to get it back.

MySpace has an automated – and somewhat strange – process for booting imposters. You are required to send in a picture of yourself holding a piece of paper with the URL of the imposter profile written on it. This is called the “MySpace Salute.” If MySpace deems the offending profile to be an imposter, it will delete it.

To protest a Twitter name-squatter, you must send in a ‘tweet’ to Twitter containing the word ‘squatter’. If Twitter decides to reclaim the name, it often keeps the name dormant for several months before handing it over.

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Negotiate a Side Deal. Most sites do not allow users to sell names to each other, but that doesn’t mean that deals can’t be cut. After all, it’s easy to transfer control of a social media profile by handing over the username and password.

Consider the gymnastics CNN went through to gain control of the Twitter.com/CNNBrk account. A CNN fan set up the account three years ago to automatically tweet CNN’s Breaking News e-mail alerts. Eventually, CNN wanted control of the domain and its huge audience (it now has 1.5 million followers).

Twitter offered to reclaim it for CNN, says CNN spokeswoman Jennifer Martin, but CNN didn’t want to take an aggressive stance against a fan. Instead CNN chose to hire the owner as a ‘consultant’ to train CNN staffers how to use Twitter.

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Give Up. Even if you get the domain you want, somebody can still pretend to be you on a social media site.

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And after a stint in the rogue states of social media, maybe we should all be more appreciative of the democratic embrace of a simple Web domain name.

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Does a party even mean anything?

Does a party even mean anything?

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Senator Specter just announced that he is switching parties from Republican to Democrat?  Does this mean anything?  Should it mean anything?

If the Democrat Party is so similar in its intent and stature to the Republican party that a politician can easily switch then it is likely that there is no reason to have either party. What values does a party have if they are so obscure that you can join one and then the other without looking like a fool?

Sen. Specter says in his declaration “I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.”  This begs the question: doesn’t every politician do that? I have a deep feeling that they don’t but they should.

So now he is going to caucus as a Democrat.  Does that mean that he falls in line with the leadership of that party and be at the beck and call of their leadership?  As NixGuy points out, he wasn’t exactly doing this as a Republican and I hope that he is at least as rebellious to his new leadership as he was to his old leadership!  If not, then he is a wimp and he cannot make up his own mind – or worse he historically was a liar.

To be honest, all we ever want from our politicians is that they consider each issue fully and make a decision that is in the best interest of their immediate constituents and the nation as a whole.  It is unfortunate that most politicians don’t really get that and always have other masters that they want to serve besides the people that voted them into office.

With the current rebellion on taxes that is occurring around the country right now, being a Democrat may not be a safe haven for a politician right now!

Too politically correct

Too politically correct

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I have had enough with being politically correct!  I just don’t get it.  When 96 percent of African-Americans obviously chose to vote for a man because of his color, the rest of the world has the right to comment on his color.  I do not begrudge the man appealing to the minority group that he belongs to.  That is exactly what happens in a representative government.  It is why in some voting districts a person that was a Jew or a Catholic or woman cannot win.  Frankly, it is why in some districts a Republican or a Democrat can’t win.

Stories that Walgreens is putting the spike on “Chia Obama” get my gander up.  After all, a chia pet is almost always a gag gift.  Why can’t it be a gag gift about a particular person?

Of course, perhaps the two NYC chicken joints are going over some proverbial line by actually making it look like President Obama is the owner of or is sanctioning a fried chicken establishment.  Using a man’s name to imply the he is an owner when he isn’t is not really in good taste (sorry for the bad pun).

In general though, Clint Eastwood was right that our political correctness is taking all the fun out of society and we are spending too much time on trying not to offend others.  We need to relax a bit.  Laugh at ourselves and our nationalities.  I am of Irish descent and the comments that I receive around March 17 are all in good fun and I never take offense besides…

…St. Patrick’s day is when everyone wishes they were Irish!

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RANT! Mexico attacks!

RANT! Mexico attacks!

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A lot of noise was made about how George Walker Bush ruined our relations in the international community.  I have discounted this since international relations are always opportunistic and this is a perfect case in point. 

Mexico has been a close friend to the United States for decades.  The President of Mexico was always warmly greeted by GWB and I am sure that Barack Hussein Obama will greet him warmly as well.  But the confusing signals that BHO has sent on NAFTA combined with the foolish blocking of Mexican trucks (surely a concession to the politically powerful Teamsters) have triggered a needless and foolish international crisis and show the lack of multi-dimensional thinking that is required to run this country.

Now this foolish move is going to cost us billions in tariffs on goods that we ship to Mexico.  Hurting our economy by violating NAFTA in a down economy is not something we should be doing.  Offending our international friends is also something we shouldn’t be doing.

The good news is that international relationships are opportunistic, as i said above.  If we drop this stupid mistake and stop violating our treaties then Mexico will surely drop the trade war. Then we can all go back to being friends again – at least until our resume-lacking President screws up again.

DEMOCRATS IN POWER: STOP BEING THE LACKEYS OF THE UNIONS AND UNDERSTAND THAT WHAT IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS IS GOOD FOR AMERICA!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 3 of 5

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 3 of 5

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For the last two posts we have been exploring the claim that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever.  This post continues the job of grading W on the various issues that he faced in his two terms of office.  See the previous posts to get the background for where we are now.

We are wimps – A – Osama Bin Laden and Sadam Hussein counted on the fact that the US doesn’t like to stay in the fight when the going gets tough (Vietnam and Somalia are great examples).  He stood his ground and got destroyed politically to prove this wrong.  Much of the animosity most Americans feel about W stems from his unwillingness to allow the cut and run mentality to take over. But now our enemies don’t just assume that we will run home to mommy when the bullets start flying.

Libya – A – no question about it.  He got them to give up their nuclear program.

Africa – B – compared to other Presidents he actually should get an A since no other President has done as much for this continent as W.  AIDS help, malaria help, better trade, etc.  Unfortunately there was a lot more to do and the amount of suffering on this continent belittles the suffering on all other continents.  He has done the best here.

Economy – tough to grade as he did great for awhile and then it fell apart – in general he gets a C only because it could have gotten a lot worse a lot earlier.  The fact that the economy didn’t tube after 9/11 and Katrina is a testament to his skill.  Unfortunately, the things that he needed to do to fix the problems of the Clinton era were not possible (politically or pragmatically) due to 9/11 and Katrina.  I am not giving him a walk on this, I am just trying to be realistic about the outcomes of other actions.  If he would have tightened credit earlier on during the thralls of pain from 9/11 and Katrina then the economy would have gone south for sure.  I am not convinced that anyone could have prevented this current banking crisis without causing the crisis to occur several years ago.  I would have given him a higher grade if he would have been making speeches warning of the problem though so that some small changes could have been been in place before it went over the cliff.  He could have provided more intellectual leadership in talking about the problem without actually proposing a solution that would have caused the economy to tank – thin line to walk though.

Enron crisis – corporate governance –  B – this was not just about Enron but the several issues that surrounded Enron.  This was really a mess by Clinton that reared its ugly head during Bush’s term.  Clinton would get an F in corporate governance!  I originally gave W an A here except he did two things that were less than great

  1. he tried to hide that he knew Lay which was stupid. 
  2. He also allowed Sarbanes-Oxley to go too far and is driving companies to go private and offshore.  SOX is a perfect example of overshooting the mark to get on track, we can’t govern like a pendulum but need to drive to the right answer and not cause more problems as we overshoot the mark. 

Iraq solution – C – something had to be done here.  We had about 4 options (with variations on the themes) and all of them really sucked.  All options that Bush took were going to give a C or D (the only option that would give an A was that SH would have taken exile and W at least tried that option although it is questionable that he tried hard enough or with enough convincing).  He gets a C because he took one of the options that resulted in less global calamity and fewer casualties than any of the others. 

Iraq invasion – A – faster and more successful and with less casualties on our side or among civilians than anyone thought realistic.  Was at the easy end of the scale compared to what we were worried about.  One of the things that the talking heads of the Democratic party lied about during the campaign was that we weren’t welcomed as liberators when we were.  The people of Iraq did welcome us at first – do you remember the Saddam Hussein statue party?  The big concern at the time was that we were going to cut and run (which we didn’t).  If W was President during Vietnam and Korea the world would be a decidedly different place today (not necessarily better since Vietnam and Korea were actually hot proxies for the cold war).

More on this topic later!

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Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 1 of 5

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 1 of 5

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The web is filled with pronouncements that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever (or not).  I thought I would spend a few moments on the subject. This is a multi-part post so come back later to read more on this subject.  Better yet, subscribe to the feed and you can get it delivered to your email or feed reader.

First, lets look at what the historians say about W or at least how they grade other Presidents.  Wikipedia has a pretty good write up on the subject so let’s start there.  As with all of the recent Presidents there is a lack of the number of surveys and rankings. We can see from the couple that are there that the Wall Street Journal ranked him 18th out of 42 and Siena put him at 23.  That is squarely in the middle of the pack and nowhere near the worst.  The worst Presidents tend to Harding, Grant, Andrew Johnson, Nixon and Buchanan.  Depending on your political bent, you could throw Carter or Coolidge into this mix for the worst.  W doesn’t appear to be in this company.

If you look at History News Network though, we get a slightly different picture.  There, Mr. McElvane cites several people and informal surveys that put him as the worst or among the worst.  Mr. McElvane is not exactly impartial though as his various writings on the web show (a quick look at Huffington Post shows he strongly favors Democratic ideals and liberal policies).  We can probably discount him as just another of the liberal herd that are saying W is the worst.

Rasmussen Reports did a poll that pretty much splits on the subject of being worst.  41 said the worst and 50 didn’t.  Unfortunately the poll didn’t ask was he among the 5 worst or the 10 worst.  To be honest though most Americans probably couldn’t get within 10 of the number of Presidents that we have had so this poll (and any other poll) probably is not a good barometer.

The US News and World Report interviewed Jay Tolson and he ranked the 10 worst Presidents.  George W. Bush doesn’t appear on this list but perhaps that is because he was being nice to a sitting President.  It is interesting that the reader poll that is on the page lists George W. Bush as the worst by 72% of the voters (as of this writing).  This is far from scientific or lacking of political slant since Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan make the worst 5 vote receivers but there is little historic push to list those two gentlemen that low.  Even Mt. Rushmore President, Abraham Lincoln, received 8% of the vote in contrast to most lists that put him at or near the top of the group.  So obviously, polling data doesn’t really mean that much.

What we need to do is grade the President on his actions for the important issues of the 8 year tenure.  Read the next post to start to dig into that subject.

More on this topic later!

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