Reid’s plan, which is expected to come to the Senate floor for a vote today, would raise $24.5 billion over 10 years, of which $13.1 billion would be available for deficit reduction, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

So how does $13 billion help solve a $14.3 trillion problem? It helps fills some of the gaps by making the bill more palatable to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. As one wireless industry lobbyist put it, spectrum auctions are in large part seen as politically neutral territory because they’re not tax increases that Republicans would oppose, and they’re not spending cuts, which so irritate Democrats.

The Reid plan is a variation of one put forth by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Commerce Committee which oversees wireless spectrum issues. Rockefeller’s plan would have raised $6.5 billion. Both plans essentially call for setting aside a big block of wireless spectrum, known as the D Block, for public safety. It would give the FCC authority to auction off TV spectrum currently held by TV broadcasters, and pay for financial incentives to entice them to voluntarily give that spectrum up. Broadcasters are generally not inclined to give it up, however.

There’s also a spending component to the plan. The D Block spectrum set aside for public safety agencies would be used to create a national wireless broadband network that emergency officials could use during an emergency. This is an idea that’s been rolling around Washington since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Rockefeller’s plan calls for $12 billion to begin construction of the network, plus a few billion for research and development into additional uses for the network. Reid’s bill drops the R&D funding and cuts the construction funds to $7 billion. It’s not enough to build the network, but more of a down payment, meaning there’s a good chance that lawmakers will have to find some money to finish the job in a few years.

Reid’s bill would also direct the Federal Communications Commission auction of airwaves — currently held by government agencies like the U.S. Department of Defense — that aren’t being actively used. In addition, it would encourage TV broadcasters to voluntarily give up some of their unused spectrum for auction by offering them part of the proceeds.

What would all that spectrum be used for? The expectation is that wireless carriers like Verizon Wireless and AT&T would bid on it in order to expand their wireless broadband networks, and thus give smartphone users more bandwidth to slake their apparently insatiable digital thirst.

Just because spectrum auction revenue is neither a tax increase nor a spending cut doesn’t mean there’s no opposition. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and 2008 GOP presidential nominee, blasted the plan and called it a “cop-out” from the Senate floor. Meanwhile, Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, told Politico earlier this week that the debt bill is the wrong place to debate wireless spectrum.

It wouldn’t be the first time that wireless spectrum has figured in the budget-balancing and deficit-reduction process. Revenue generated from spectrum auctions helped then-President Bill Clinton balance the budget in 1993 and 1997, and President George W. Bush used them to help reduce the federal budget deficit in 2005.

(Image from Harry Reid’s campaign site.)

At a Senate hearing on mobile privacy issues, lawmakers grilled technology executives on their policies and how they share consumer information with other companies. The hearing comes amid recent revelations that Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones routinely collect information about the location of consumer cellphones. Apple has since limited the data it collects.

“I know you can shut off your location services but that doesn’t do the trick because we want to use them,” said Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), who recently introduced a privacy bill along with Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), which would establish consumer online privacy rights. “We still need a privacy standard. We still need basic rules of the road.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The bill, labeled the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011, would impose new rules on companies that gather personal data, including offering people access to data about them, or the ability to block the information from being distributed. Companies would have to seek permission before sharing sensitive religious, medical and financial data with outside entities.

The bipartisan proposal would create the nation’s first comprehensive privacy law and largely adopts recommendations made by the Obama Administration last year. Current laws cover only the use of certain types of personal data, such as financial and medical information.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, are backing a bill that would require companies to seek a person’s permission to share data about him with outsiders. It would also give people the right to see the data collected on them. The bill is expected to be introduced ahead of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing next Wednesday on online privacy.
The move comes amid widening scrutiny of the tracking industry. In the past year, The Wall Street Journal’s “What They Know” series has revealed that popular websites install thousands of tracking technologies on people’s computers without their knowledge, feeding an industry that gathers and sells information on their finances, political leanings and religious interests, among other things.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

At an event in Washington organized by IBM, The Hill reports, Rep. Rush Holt, who represents New Jersey’s 12th District and was himself a “Jeopardy” champion some 30 years ago, beat the machine in a special congressional round of the game. The score: Holt $8,600, Watson $6,200, after a full round. Also playing was Rep. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, who scored $1,000.

Holt, it turns out, is a pretty smart guy to start with. Before running for Congress–he’s now in his seventh term–he was a nuclear physicist. Wikipedia says Holt is one of only two members of Congress to have appeared on “Jeopardy,” the other being John McCain. Where “Jeopardy” is concerned, may we call Holt humanity’s last hope?

PREVIOUSLY:

• Jon Stewart Wants a Shot At IBM’s Watson, but What About SNL?
• Done With Silly Game Shows, IBM’s Watson Finds a Job
• All Humans Bow Before the Mighty Watson, Master of “Jeopardy”
• IBM “Jeopardy” Challenge Day 2: Very Different From Day One
• IBM “Jeopardy” Challenge Day One Ends in a Tie
• That Human Vs. Machine Practice Round of “Jeopardy” Didn’t End the Way You Heard It Did
• “Final Jeopardy” Question: Would You Buy an E-Book Without an Ending?
• This Supercomputer Defeated Human Champions of a TV Game Show in 2011
• I’ll Take Computer Company PR Stunts for $1,000,000

“I don’t think John McCain could run a major corporation. I don’t think Barack Obama could run a major corporation. I don’t think Joe Biden could, either. But it is not the same as being the president or vice president of the United States. It is a fallacy to suggest that the country is like a company. To run a business, you have to have a lifetime of experience in business, but that’s not what Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barack Obama or Joe Biden are doing.”

– Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina

Her dreams of heading up the World Bank dashed, former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina, the architect of one of the worst tech mergers in history, has turned her attention to the U.S. Senate.

After months of speculation, Fiorina officially announced her candidacy today. She’ll run as a Republican against Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.). Of course, to do that, she must first win the Republican primary. Fiorina broke the news in an op-ed in the Orange County Register.

“Admittedly, I have not always been engaged in the electoral process, and I should have been,” she wrote. “For many years I felt disconnected from the decisions made in Washington and, to be honest, really didn’t think my vote mattered because I didn’t have a direct line of sight from my vote to a result. I realize that thinking was wrong.”

Reflecting on her personal history, Fiorina continues: “As I grew throughout my career, beginning as a secretary and eventually becoming a CEO, I saw how government impacted business. I learned more as a member of advisory boards at the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA. I now understand, in a very real way, that the decisions made by the Senate impact every family and every business, of any size, in America. This is what motivates me to run for the U.S. Senate. And so today I am announcing my candidacy to serve the people of California as your next U.S. senator….Together we can turn things around.”

Together we can turn things around? Not if Fiorina’s performance at HP is any indication. Before she was forced out of the company by its board of directors, she was so at odds with the uniquely Californian “HP Way” that her corner office could have been powered solely by Bill Hewlett spinning in his grave.

UPDATE: Here’s another Fiorina op-ed from earlier this year in which she discusses executive pay. Unsurprisingly, she is against President Obama’s efforts to restore “common sense” to CEO compensation. And why wouldn’t she be? After all, she walked away from HP with a $21 million severance package.

UPDATE: For those of you just joining us over at CNet, the headline is a joke referring to HP’s ill-starred merger with Compaq.

Wednesday morning, Boomtown opened with the exclusive confirmation we’d all been waiting for: Microsoft’s Bing search engine had inked deals with Twitter and Facebook. The age of real-time is upon us. As if the world weren’t complicated enough, Microsoft (MSFT) opened its own Apple stor… er, Microsoft stores to challenge Apple’s (APPL) retail success. Kara went in like lion and out like Carl Icahn this week with a Friday profile of the mogul. Icahn, activist investor and owner of the world’s best name to precede “haz cheezburger,” quietly left Yahoo’s board this week waving a flag of defeat at CEO Carol Bartz.

Digital Daily took a hard look through the Windows this week. John covered the Microsoft’s release of the new leaner, meaner Windows 7. John’s conclusion: Microsoft’s lucky number could be seven, even if that’s just because it’s anything but Vista. Hopefully they programmed this one with 20 percent more customer goodwill. John reminded us this week that you never can tell what John McCain is going to do next, unless you follow the money. Maverick McCain introduced a bill to prohibit the Federal Communication Commission from implementing the Net neutrality rules it released in recent weeks. Digital Daily wasn’t too surprised to see Sen. McCain take the bold position, as it’s squarely in front of the same telecom industry that has been so generous to him in the past. To round things out, John covered a particularly interesting legal chess game/slap fight between Nokia and Apple. Nokia (NOK) may have sued Apple (AAPL) over cellphone patents, the analysts say, as a way to fend off possible suits in the other direction over Nokia’s multitouch assets.

MediaMemo makes sense of that crazy New York state of mind. That clarity was more valuable than ever this week when Demand Media got in our faces. Peter explained Demand’s model for flooding the net with cheap news stories designed to maximize clicks and add revenue. We’ll have to see how the “content by the numbers” game plays out. In the latest installment of the Condé Nast saga, Peter brought news of a new attempt to grab some of those new media dollars. GQ Magazine will offer its December issue in an iPhone version. This move comes during a round of downsizing all over the Condé empire. While Condé Nast’s strategy seems to be to get users to pay for something they couldn’t get before, it appears that Hulu plans to ask users to pay for something they can currently get for free. Hulu doesn’t know how it will happen yet, but the video service is looking for a way to begin monetizing its vast collection of movies and TV shows. If the company goes with “Hulu Plus” as a subscription option, maybe Peter will get a nod to the naming rights.

Walt spent his column inches this week on the evolution of the Mac. Midweek, Apple released refreshed versions of the iMac and MacBook, as well as the new Magic Mouse. All signs seemed positive with the new products, which feature updates like a larger screen option for the iMac and a rounder, more lovable case for the white plastic MacBook. When Walt went out to check the mail, Mossberg’s Mailbox was again full of Windows 7 questions. Walt discussed some of the new low-vision features in Windows 7, explained the admittedly complicated price points and told readers where to download the operating system.

Katie brought a sparkle to the week with a review of Goby, the self-proclaimed search engine of fun. While she was impressed by the concept, she spotted some gaping holes in search returns, like hundreds of missing events she knew to be on the calendar and others that had already come and gone. Goby might be a great idea, but Katie won’t be relying on it until things like accuracy and timeliness are better addressed.

Weekend Update can make two promises for what’s coming next. First: If it is happening in tech, you will find it at AllThingsDigital. Second: Weekend Update promises to keep the ghost puns to a minimum in the next edition.

Evidently, McCain views such rules, which would require Internet service providers to treat all Web traffic equally, as “onerous federal regulation” at best and, at worst, another one of those “government takeovers.”

“The [Obama] administration can’t resist imposing regulations on the Internet–particularly since Google Inc. and other Internet content providers were promised the imposition of such regulations as these companies seek to control what consumers see and don’t see on the Internet–despite the fact that these regulations will only serve to hurt consumers,” McCain wrote in an op ed in the Washington Times.

“The wireless industry exploded over the past 20 years, in part due to limited government regulation. Wireless carriers invested $100 billion in infrastructure and development over the past three years, which has led to faster networks, more competitors in the marketplace and lower prices in the United States compared to any other country….Regulation kills innovation. Let’s not kill the Internet.”

McCain, it should be noted, received some $894,379 in contributions from AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ), Comcast (CMCSA) and other telecom industry interests over his career–all of them opposed to the Net neutrality regulations the FCC hopes to implement.

Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

It’s been a real winning streak since then for D, due in large part to our great speakers–such as Microsoft (MSFT) icon Bill Gates and Apple (AAPL) legend Steve Jobs.

Both have been onstage many times over the years, including a historic interview the pair of tech titans did together in 2007 at D5.

Other amazing speakers have included: Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE), Barry Diller of InterActiveCorp (IACI), legendary director George Lucas, Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (AMZN), former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman, News Corp. (NWS) head Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft head Steve Ballmer, Walt Disney (DIS) honcho Bob Iger, Bobby Kotick of Activision Blizzard (ATVI), CBS (CBS) CEO Les Moonves, Democratic and Republican pols like former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John McCain, all the leadership of Google (GOOG) and many, many more.

We have had a lot of great moments onstage with all these tech and media players over the years, to be sure, with interviews ranging from the funny to the sublime to the truly disastrous.

But, like the digital industry and the innovation our conference focuses on, we also like to lean forward to try to figure out what the Next Big Thing is around the corner, whether it comes from Silicon Valley or not.

That’s why we’re kicking off our conference on May 26 with two of the founders of Twitter–Biz Stone and Evan Williams–who are riding high on tech’s latest hot thing, which might turn out to be either a rocket ship or a shooting star.

They’ll be followed up over the next two days by a plethora of interesting players, from the leaders of several major mobile companies to content execs hit hard by fast-moving digital forces to a new Internet leader like Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz, who is trying to turn around one of the Web’s great icons from its more recent lackluster path.

And, as we always do, we will be featuring a spate of demos too, trying to see if we can unearth that next next thing.

In the past, the D stage has seen the debut of start-up products like Sling Media’s Slingbox, Aliph’s Jawbone and Pure Digital’s Flip, all of which have gone onto glory. And also some, like Palm’s Foleo, which did not.

While not everyone can attend D, our crack staff is committed to bringing all the action from this year’s conference to readers of the All Things Digital site via up-to-the-minute blogs, photos, videos, tweets, digs and more. We’ll also, as soon as we can, post the videos of each of the onstage sessions, in their entirety.

Until it all kicks off, here is the list of speakers, below, in alphabetical order, who will be appearing at 2009′s D7 conference:

Irving Azoff | CEO of Ticketmaster Entertainment (TKTM)

Mitchell Baker | Chairman of Mozilla

Steve Ballmer | CEO of Microsoft

Carol Bartz | CEO of Yahoo

Mark Cuban | Chairman of HDNet and Owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theaters and Magnolia Pictures

Eve Ensler | Playwright and Founder of V-Day

Arianna Huffington | Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo | CEO of Nokia (NOK)

Mike Lazaridis | Co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIMM)

John Lilly | CEO of Mozilla

John Malone | Chairman of Liberty Media Corporation (LCAPA)

Roger McNamee | Partner, Elevation Partners

Jon Miller | Chief Digital Officer of News Corp.

Jon Rubinstein | Executive Chairman, Palm (PALM)

Randall Stephenson | CEO of AT&T (T)

Biz Stone | Co-founder of Twitter

Owen Van Natta | CEO of MySpace

Katharine Weymouth | Publisher of the Washington Post (WPO)

Evan Williams | Co-founder and CEO of Twitter

Jeff Zucker | CEO of NBC Universal (GE)

Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

It’s been a real winning streak since then for D, due in large part to our great speakers–such as Microsoft (MSFT) icon Bill Gates and Apple (AAPL) legend Steve Jobs.

Both have been onstage many times over the years, including a historic interview the pair of tech titans did together in 2007 at D5.

Other amazing speakers have included: Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE), Barry Diller of InterActiveCorp (IACI), legendary director George Lucas, Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (AMZN), former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman, News Corp. (NWS) head Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft head Steve Ballmer, Walt Disney (DIS) honcho Bob Iger, Bobby Kotick of Activision Blizzard (ATVI), CBS (CBS) CEO Les Moonves, Democratic and Republican pols like former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John McCain, all the leadership of Google (GOOG) and many, many more.

We have had a lot of great moments onstage with all these tech and media players over the years, to be sure, with interviews ranging from the funny to the sublime to the truly disastrous.

But, like the digital industry and the innovation our conference focuses on, we also like to lean forward to try to figure out what the Next Big Thing is around the corner, whether it comes from Silicon Valley or not.

That’s why we’re kicking off our conference on May 26 with two of the founders of Twitter–Biz Stone and Evan Williams–who are riding high on tech’s latest hot thing, which might turn out to be either a rocket ship or a shooting star.

They’ll be followed up over the next two days by a plethora of interesting players, from the leaders of several major mobile companies to content execs hit hard by fast-moving digital forces to a new Internet leader like Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz, who is trying to turn around one of the Web’s great icons from its more recent lackluster path.

And, as we always do, we will be featuring a spate of demos too, trying to see if we can unearth that next next thing.

In the past, the D stage has seen the debut of start-up products like Sling Media’s Slingbox, Aliph’s Jawbone and Pure Digital’s Flip, all of which have gone onto glory. And also some, like Palm’s Foleo, which did not.

While not everyone can attend D, our crack staff is committed to bringing all the action from this year’s conference to readers of the All Things Digital site via up-to-the-minute blogs, photos, videos, tweets, digs and more. We’ll also, as soon as we can, post the videos of each of the onstage sessions, in their entirety.

Until it all kicks off, here is the list of speakers, below, in alphabetical order, who will be appearing at 2009′s D7 conference:

Irving Azoff | CEO of Ticketmaster Entertainment (TKTM)

Mitchell Baker | Chairman of Mozilla

Steve Ballmer | CEO of Microsoft

Carol Bartz | CEO of Yahoo

Mark Cuban | Chairman of HDNet and Owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theaters and Magnolia Pictures

Eve Ensler | Playwright and Founder of V-Day

Arianna Huffington | Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo | CEO of Nokia (NOK)

Mike Lazaridis | Co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIMM)

John Lilly | CEO of Mozilla

John Malone | Chairman of Liberty Media Corporation (LCAPA)

Roger McNamee | Partner, Elevation Partners

Jon Miller | Chief Digital Officer of News Corp.

Jon Rubinstein | Executive Chairman, Palm (PALM)

Randall Stephenson | CEO of AT&T (T)

Biz Stone | Co-founder of Twitter

Owen Van Natta | CEO of MySpace

Katharine Weymouth | Publisher of the Washington Post (WPO)

Evan Williams | Co-founder and CEO of Twitter

Jeff Zucker | CEO of NBC Universal (GE)

A Twitter interview must have sounded great to all involved at first blush — Everyone’s talking bout this Twitter! We gotta get in on this! — but if they’d given it any thought, they’d would realize it’s pointless: Twitter is a great broadcast system, but a lousy tool for one-to-one communication.

So conducting an interview using Twitter is like eating soup with a fork. You can do it if you really want. but there’s no reason to do so.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the transcript, which you’re supposed to read from the bottom up. But if you read it from the top down, it’s just as valuable.

SenJohnMcCain@GStephanopoulos Thanks a lot george, let’s do it again soon. now i look forward to reading our followers comments and insults.2 minutes ago from web in reply to GStephanopoulos

GStephanopoulos@SenJohnMcCain Thanks for your time Senator.You’re a good sport I know I’m not getting anymore on Coulter and Ingraham Happy St Pat’s again4 minutes ago from web

SenJohnMcCain@GStephanopoulos like any family we agree on some things and disagree on others.5 minutes ago from web in reply to GStephanopoulos

SenJohnMcCain@GStephanopoulos I’m proud of my daughter and she has a right to her opinions.9 minutes ago from web in reply to GStephanopoulos

GStephanopoulos@SenJohnMcCain Lots of twitterers want to know: what do you think of Meghans’s feud with Coulter and Ingraham?10 minutes ago from web

SenJohnMcCain@GStephanopoulos too early to draw that conclusion.13 minutes ago from web in reply to GStephanopoulos

GStephanopoulos@SenJohMcCain Cheney said on CNN that Obama putting US at risk of new terror attack Agree?16 minutes ago from web

SenJohnMcCain@GStephanopoulos both. the challenges are different but both significant.17 minutes ago from web in reply to GStephanopoulos

GStephanopoulos@SenJohnMcCain What worries you more: Pakistan or Iran?18 minutes ago from web

SenJohnMcCain@GStephanopoulos I’m working with others on alternatives – cong paul ryan has some great ideas.19 minutes ago from web in reply to GStephanopoulos

GStephanopoulos@SenJohnMcCain Take point on 1st AIG bailout How about budget? Will you offer alternative?19 minutes ago from web

SenJohnMcCain@GStephanopoulos to follow up – first AIG bailout was pre-tarp.21 minutes ago from web in reply to GStephanopoulos

GStephanopoulos@SenJohnMcCain Obama says GOP can’t “just say no” on budget Will you offer a full alternative to Obama budget?22 minutes ago from web

SenJohnMcCaini voted for first tarp but that doesn’t mean i voted to bail out AIG.24 minutes ago from web

GStephanopoulos@SenJohnMcCain RIght, but didn’t you vote for first TARP, which went to AIG?26 minutes ago from web

SenJohnMcCain@GStephanopoulos i haven’t seen it but i would explore every option. i repeat, we wouldn’t have this problem if we hadn’t bailed them out35 minutes ago from web in reply to GStephanopoulos

GStephanopoulos@SenJohnMcCain ok, but today: should bonus contracts be broken? Dodd wants a targeted tax on bonuses OK with that?

SenJohnMcCain@GStephanopoulos i would have never bailed out AIG, the real scandal is billions to foreign banks.38 minutes ago from web in reply to GStephanopoulos

GStephanopoulos@SenJohnMcCain AIG: Would a President McCain break bonus contracts? Obama teams says that would cause more harm than good

SenJohnMcCain@GStephanopoulos Happy St. Patrick’s day – slow, sometimes pc somtimes bb41 minutes ago from web in reply to GStephanopoulos

SenJohnMcCainHappy St. Patricks day43 minutes ago from web

SenJohnMcCainboth, usually pc sometimes bb.43 minutes ago from web

SenJohnMcCainhi george im a little slowabout 1 hour ago from web

GStephanopoulos@SenJohnMcCain Happy St Patrick’s Day! First things first: How do u tweet — dictate or type? Blackberry or pc?about 1 hour ago from web

GStephanopoulosFinal call for McCain questions. Interview at noon. You can follow on abcnews.com Go to This Week pageabout 1 hour ago from web

[Image credit: soggydan]

Almost-First Daughter Meghan McCain (pictured here) gave the Republican Party the analog equivalent of an unhappy emoticon :( yesterday in a column in The Daily Beast, predicting the political party will lose power quicker than a faulty iPhone if it does not get more Web-savvy pronto.

BoomTown always liked GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s sassy spawn, who had a pretty good blog–deliciously called McCain Blogette.com: Musings on Politics From a Pop CultureGirl–during the campaign and was always coming out with some little nugget that I am sure made her PR handlers cringe.

Well, there she goes again!

In a post titled, “Why Republicans Don’t Get the Internet,” Meghan McCain noted flatly:

The Republican party isn’t exactly Internet savvy. That’s no secret…This has been a source of personal frustration for me for a very long time. Unless the GOP evolves as the party that can successfully utilize the Web, we’ll continue to lose influence.”

Thankfully, it gets worse!

Writes Meghan:

I know this aggravates the old school political operatives to no end, but it’s true. The Obama administration understands that my generation spends most of its day on a laptop or a BlackBerry, and that using the web is easy way to communicate their ideas to their constituents. Making a website, Facebook group, or YouTube video entertaining and enticing is where grassroots campaigning begins. President Obama currently has around five-and-a-half million supporters on Facebook; my father has around five-hundred thousand.”

Sorry, Dad!

But apparently not all that much, because she ended her piece with a zinger about the GOP’s new Web effort, the Rebuild the Party site, essentially declaring the party a wizened Luddite with no hopes of ever beating the BlackBerry-loving Obama.

…The website is about as provocative as a blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. At the time that I write this, the video on the homepage features various individuals, most of them I would guess between the ages of fifty and sixty, explaining why they consider themselves Republicans. Had I still been an independent, there is nothing about this website or video that would sway me as a twenty-four year old woman to join the GOP…Until the Republican party joins the twenty-first century and learns how to use the Internet, its members will keep getting older and the youth of America will just keep logging on to the other side.”

Meghan McCain is definitely right about the unusually sleepy video–which only pops when they focus on dead Republican former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt:

Here’s a video of former eBay CEO Meg Whitman talking to Matt Lauer on the “Today” show this morning about her nascent campaign to be governor of California as the Republican candidate.

Whitman, who was a favorite of failed Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, seems to have perfected the art of saying exactly nothing, even after Lauer asked her if she was nuts to run the “arguably ungovernable”–referencing a writer for the Sacramento Bee–California.

“Running a business is different from running a state,” said Lauer.

Whitman’s answer: Prioritization!

Another former eBay (EBAY) exec, who worked for Whitman, Steve Westly, is also being mentioned for the governor’s race to replace current Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, on the Democratic side.

I say we have an auction to determine which eBay exec gets the nod.

Until then, here’s the “Today” show video from the Meg2010Campaign site on YouTube:

The Washington Post reports that some three million donors made a total of 6.5 million online donations to the campaign. The average online donation was $80, and the average donor gave more than once.

“You looked at the money being raised online in the same way that you looked at the crowds who came to the rallies,” Joe Rospars, the director of Obama’s new media department, told the Post. “You were constantly surprised at the number of people who were coming out to see him, [and when it came to online donations] people exceeded our expectations as to what they were willing to do.”

Astonishing. Seems a comprehensive online presence–one that spans microblogs, social networks and video sites–really does have its benefits, when it comes to political campaigns…important ones, anyway.

But you don’t care about that. You’d like to know about the relationship between the former presidential candidate and his 42-year-old daughter from his first marriage, who works in rock and roll. OK. We can oblige. Neither EMI nor the McCain campaign spent much time talking about the link during the campaign, for what I imagine are sensible reasons. But it wasn’t a secret, either.

A quick Google search, for instance, will get you write-ups in the New Yorker (circa 2000) and the New York Times (2007):

New Yorker:

In recent weeks, while John McCain has been defending himself against accusations of ill temper, Sid, who is a senior publicity director at Capitol Records, has been overseeing the winter press campaign for the rock band Megadeth. ‘If I ever have to have Secret Service,’ she said the other day, they’d better be ready for a lot of late nights.’… ‘We’ve all experienced his “quick” temper,’ she continued. ‘He’ll snap at you, but it never lasts more than a minute. And he’s much better than he used to be. Now he softens it with humor. When I was a kid, it would be “Damn it, if I have to tell you to sweep that driveway one more time!”’… John McCain recently got a taste of his daughter’s professional life when she escorted him to the MTV Video Music Awards…. The Senator returned for an interview at the music network the other day. He avoided the boxers-or-briefs issue, but he did say he would consider inviting Nine Inch Nails to his inaugural.”

NYT:

His relationship with Sidney…is perhaps the most politically interesting. Sidney, a registered Democrat until recently, has worked in the music business for years, and was the child who challenged Mr. McCain’s authority the most. She continues to debate him on a wide variety of issues.

‘Sidney is a character,’ [former McCain staffer Grants Woods] said. ‘I think she stretched him a lot. When I was hanging around John, his favorite movie was “Gigi.” Sidney has been very involved in the entertainment industry and taken him to the award shows even though her interests have been quite divergent from his. He is very close to her as well.’

By many accounts, Mr. McCain’s daughters were the most resistant to his authority. ‘I was the boundary pusher,’ Sidney said. ‘In high school I was very rebellious. I needed to look at all sides. At least he would hear me out.’”

Here’s the promotion email from EMI, which doesn’t happen to mention Sid’s father:

Sid McCain has been appointed as Vice President, Label Services, North America, EMI Music, part of EMI’s Music Services unit. In this role, Sid will report to Dominic Pandiscia, GM, Label Services. She will draw upon her significant music industry experience and relationships to work with the labels within Caroline and a growing roster of EMI’s distributed independent labels. She will also drive our effort to offer EMI’s unique one-stop global capabilities for distribution, marketing, promotion and digital resources to new independent label partners and artists who want to reach a worldwide marketplace.

Most recently, Sid was a marketing consultant at EMI Music Canada, where she oversaw campaigns for EMI’s distributed labels in that territory, which included Curb, Labworks SideOne Dummy, Stereo Dynamite and Century Media. She also liaised with EMI’s territories on behalf of EMI Music Canada artists including Pride Tiger, Skye Sweetnam, Alpha Galates and Jesse Cook.

Prior to EMI, Sid held a number of senior posts at V2 Records, including as General Manager of V2 Records in Canada from 2003-2007 and as Head of Media for V2 Records in America from 1999-2003. While there, she worked closely with artists including The White Stripes, Raconteurs, Moby, Stereophonics, Ray Davies and Paul Weller. She also worked in media positions at EMI’s Capitol Records, Arista and Columbia Records.”

Election 2008
Whether or not those voting machines malfunctioned or miscounted votes, Barack Obama was set to become the 44th President of the United States, much to the chagrin of comedians like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who–since the beginning of the McCain/Palin partnership–were handed once-in-a-lifetime material. Between the brilliant “Saturday Night” Live parody sketches of (and by) both Palin and McCain, and Obama’s victory speech, the other big winner (by a mile) was Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. All 500 video versions of the speech generated nearly seven million views. It doesn’t beat the nearly-naked Britney Spears, with over nine million views, but one can dream.

Yahoo
This week, Yahoo (YHOO) was kind of like a high school senior with a prom night dilemma: Since Microsoft (MSFT) backed out of acquisition negotiations earlier this year, Steve Ballmer insists there’s no deal, but there’s a lot of back-and-forth that makes BoomTown wonder. Google backed out of the much-discussed search ad partnership with the company after the DOJ made it clear that it was not going to happen without a fight. The also-much-discussed merger with Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL has not fared much better. According to BoomTown, where you’ll find the straight dope on all of the rumors, all of this (for starters) has turned CEO Jerry Yang into the Internet’s human pinata.
You know what they say: “Play hard-to-get and you won’t get got.”

Econalypse
Rupert Murdoch admits business is worse than he previously thought. Disney (DIS) admits that ad spending has been declining for more than a year. Does that make it official? Either way, reality sinks in further among the non-start-up set–Time Inc. is laying off hundreds and reorganizing the rest. Viacom (VIA) may or may not have layoffs. Among the start-up set, as witnessed at the recent Web 2.0 conference this past week, companies are in survival mode, getting lean for the downturn. Well, not everybody. MySpace’s over-arching theme, judging from this BoomTown video of the giant’s Web 2.0 party, is “Masque of the Red Death.” Party on, Garth–and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Both President- Elect Barack Obama and the man he beat in an historic election, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, gave the kinds of speeches at the end of last night that make one proud to be part of a country where stark differences still can mean grace can prevail when it's all over.

But don't take my word for it--the Internet makes it possible to consider them again and again.

Thus, here is a video of McCain's concession speech (try hard to ignore the inane booing at the start by some very sore losers in the crowd at the Biltmore Hotel in Arizona, which McCain quickly tamped down), as well as Obama's appropriately calm victory speech in Chicago below it.

They serve as perfect bookends to each other and is an amazing example of how to fight hard without killing each other, which is--in this fractious world--still a modern miracle.

Or as Obama quoted our greatest president (in my estimation, at least), Abraham Lincoln: "We are not enemies, but friends, though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."

Here that is, in living color:

McCain:

Obama:

On Election Day itself, that statement is more apt than ever. Sites like fivethirtyeight.com and politicalwire.com will provide the virtually up-to-the-minute numbers on every race. It’s a level of immediacy that was hard to imagine before now–but it’s also hard to imagine we ever had it any other way.

Here’s a quick index of AllThingsD’s digital-eye view of the fracas:

• An overview of the tech policies of both candidates.
• Election in your pocket: Walt Mossberg discovered Election ’08, a data-packed app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that uses an algorithmic calculation of who’s winning in each state based on multiple available polls.

Some would argue that this race could be decided by viral video campaigns, rather than strictly political ones. Here is the evidence:

• “Saturday Night Live” was the heavy hitter here, and it was kind of a toss-up whether John McCain and Sarah Palin’s respective appearances trumped the outright parodies of each one.
• Then there was Hollywood’s ironic plea not to vote.
• And Google’s plea (with help from The Donald) to employers for a “Vote Hour.”
• No one came close to Sarah Silverman in terms of outright exhortation, though.

Last but not least, in what might be considered either a digital or a paper story, depending on where you live and vote, ongoing questions about the reliability of digital voting machines persist. Let’s hope this one’s over on Election Day.

In advance of tomorrow’s elections, here’s a pair of videos of the two presidential candidates, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, talking about tech.

While Obama has many more supporters in the tech and Internet sectors in terms of numbers, including Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt, McCain’s include Cisco (CSCO) CEO John Chambers, former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman and former Hewlett-Packard (HP) head Carly Fiorina.

And while tech is not exactly issue No. 1 with either of them, here is McCain talking about it in the entire interview he did at the fifth D: All Things Digital conference in 2007 (he also discusses Iraq and other topics in the interview) and a new, much shorter three-minute video just posted by Obama on tech policy:

As BoomTown has noted, one of the best things to come out of this election has been the very funny and very topical humor that has been on "Saturday Night Live" in this political cycle.

Headlined by Tina Fey's perfect impression of Republican VP candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the offerings from the comedy television show has been biting without stooping to the rank meanness from so many other places by both sides.

Last night, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain--who has been on SNL before (his "John McCain Sings Barbra Streisand" skit was really a gem from that appearance)--was in two skits on the show and did a great job in both.

The first was a really clever opening sketch in which he and Fey as Palin appeared on the QVC cable shopping network, sheepishly explaining that they could not afford to buy time on the major networks as Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama did last week.

Money quote from McCain: "I'm a true maverick, a Republican without money."

Along with a set of "John McCain Pork Knives" and "McCain Fine Gold" (with Cindy McCain as the comely demoer), Fey (as Palin) goes rogue and starts selling "Palin in 2012" T-shirts.

In a second appearance on "Weekend Update," McCain did another nice turn, running through a series of new strategies to win, such as "The Sad Grandpa" and the "The Reverse Maverick."

Here are the videos:

Opening QVC Sketch

Weekend Update

That was fast.

The recent resurgence of "Saturday Night Live," spurred by Republican VP candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin and her comic doppelgänger, Tina Fey, may already be over.

How do I know? Well, there's the gut check--I watched most of Saturday's show, which didn't feature Palin or Fey, and it was a snoozer (the absence of new mom Amy Poehler probably didn't help either).

But we can also gauge the reaction of Internet users, thanks to the good folks at TubeMogul, a small start-up that specializes in tracking Web video views.

While SNL's sketches this season have become watercooler hits in both legal form (NBC.com, Hulu) and not-so legal form (YouTube), this weekend's show isn't making an impact, at least so far: TubeMogul says YouTube users are only trying to post SNL clips at the rate of about one per hour, since the show aired Saturday night.

That's down from an average of about six per hour for the other shows SNL has aired this season.

Could it be that NBC--owned by GE (GE)--is just doing an extra-zealous job of keeping illegal copies of its clips off of a video site owned by Google (GOOG)? Mmmmmmaybe.

But probably not: Last Thursday's SNL special, which featured not only Tina Fey, but also show veteran Will Ferrell as President George W. Bush, was a huge YouTube hit, generating 9.5 videos per hour and 1.85 million views in 24 hours.

Meanwhile NBC.com's own data confirm that this weekend's show fell flat: The site says the two political clips posted below have generated a mere 460,000 views since Saturday.

Compare that to Thursday's showstopper, currently at 1.5 million and counting.

I'd bet the remainder of our 401(k) that SNL's staff and cast are going to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama next month.

But the bean counters behind the show are obviously rooting for the ticket of Sen. John McCain and Palin.

The Bernstein analysts note that according to a December 2007 survey conducted by the Center for Disease Control, about 16 percent of Americans now have only wireless phones, and no landlines. That group tends to skew young: The CDC found that a third of the population 18-29 years old have only wireless devices. The analysts note as well that “there is compelling evidence that younger voters”–those most likely to have only wireless phones–strongly favor Obama. They note a USA Today/MTV/Gallup poll that found 18-29 year old voters support Obama over Republican John McCain by 61 percent to 32 percent.

A Pew Research Center study on the topic of wireless bias, they add, found that the cellphone-only population preferred Obama over McCain by 55-36 percent.

Read the rest of this post

Once again, it is likely to be more popular online than on television, as it has been for all of the sketches, a striking trend for the long-running comedy show.

Famous-for-being-famous celebrity Paris Hilton continues her comic run for “fake” President of the United States, with a new online video for the Funny or Die comedy site.

She is pictured here in a photo from a current spread in Harper’s Bazaar, part of her ongoing “Paris for President” campaign.

In that article, Hilton said of her foreign policy platform: “I will carry out a foreign policy platform that will transform America’s role in the world to that of a proactive, not reactive, superpower that will use diplomacy and incentives to head off trouble in unstable regions before they unravel out of control. I will also be wearing platform shoes when I meet with foreign dignitaries to accentuate my well-toned calves.”

Somehow, given the current mess we are in, this blather actually makes some sense.

Hilton did her first online spoof video in August after Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain used her image in an ad attacking Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.

In it, she referred to McCain as the “white-haired dude” and laid out–literally, Hilton is seen in the video lounging by the pool in a bikini–her policies.

In the latest, Hilton consults the most famous of fake Presidents, actor Martin Sheen, who played President Jed Bartlett for many seasons on the NBC hit “The West Wing.”

In the video, the pair kibitz over how to be the best fake President, which has been getting too close to the real thing these days.

The video includes a cameo by real Martin Sheen son, Charlie Sheen.

Here is the video (and, below it, is her first one for Funny or Die):