Apparently, the Dems were accused of being too wonky by having Mark Warner talk about bringing tech jobs to America, and the Republicans vowed not to repeat that mistake. Even former EBay CEO Meg Whitman, once such a strong advocate of network neutrality she sent an email to EBay users asking them to lobby Congress, remained silent about that series of tubes that Republicans find so gosh darned perplexing. No doubt this is in deference to Mr. McCain, who has boasted that he is a computer illiterate.
But this latest gaff, running a picture of Walter Reed Middle School on the green screen behind McCain instead of Walter Reed Hospital because they screwed up a Google images search, has certainly cemented not merely McCain, but the McCain campaign, as being in the ranks of the terminally clueless on matters technical. Mind you, it seems a piece with the general slovenly way they ran the convention. In a city run like a friggin’ police state, where “preemptive raids” are being used to lock up reporters and supposedly “keep us safer,” how the heck did protesters manage to infiltrate the candidates acceptance speech? More importantly, perhaps, how is it that the Dems could keep their own convention safer with less draconian security means?
Well, I shall leave the rather blatant messages on this as an exercise to the reader. While I hope to post about the Republican manipulation of the spineless wussies of the MSM later (what a sad state of affairs when the best running commentary and reporting on the convention has been the Indecision08 blog), I intend to focus here on the McCain Tech Policy or, more accurately, the utter absence of one.
As I observed when I first wrote about the McCain tech policy, it is unbelievable that the Republicans treat a multibillion dollar industry that has become one of our most critical pieces of infrastructure and major drivers of our economy as an afterthought to the business of cutting taxes and extending offshore drilling. All this lip service about “the jobs of tomorrow” and doesn’t mean squat if you still think “the interwebs” is all about downloading porn, stealing music, and soliciting minors in AOL chat rooms and this newfangled thing called “my space.”
And no, having Carly Fiorina and Meg Whittman or Michael Powell in your party does not mean squat about your commitment to this stuff unless you actually let them talk about this stuff in prime time. The Daily Show may have mocked Warner for getting into details only geeks could love, but the fact that the Democratic keynote speaker was all about how technology brought good jobs to rural Virginia and the Dems will bring those same good jobs to the small towns and inner cities tells us something about the parties priorities. And the fact that none of the Republican speakers, even the supposed tech experts, could take time away from mocking community organizers and helping the poor to mention anything vaguely tech-related tells us something as well.
Stay tuned . . . .
Harold:
> In a city run like a friggin’ police
> state, where “preemptive raids” are
> being used to lock up reporters and
> supposedly “keep us safer,” how the
> heck did protesters manage to
> infiltrate the candidates acceptance
> speech? More importantly, perhaps,
> how is it that the Dems could keep
> their own convention safer with less
> draconian security means?
I was inside the X and I can report security measures inside and out were grim — but you can’t directly blame the RNC for that; the Secret Service called all the shots both in St Paul and in Denver.
I wasn’t in Denver, but I’ve read bad things about conditions there. I suspect Denver residents were every bit as saddened about conditions in their city last week as I am today.
How did protesters get inside the X? Well, the S.S. has good technology for detecting metal and nitrogen-bearing explosives (as well as outside coffee and sandwiches), but they can’t –yet– read brain waves. They can’t tell if you intend to use your lungs and vocal cords to shout hosannas about the candidates or to scream at them.
What I’m wondering is how ejecting at least one of the protesters got covered by the party-controlled video feed — perhaps there were more moles inside the X than you think.