New Music Posted: Star Spangled Banner

I recorded the Star Spangled Banner last night over at my friend Angelo’s house after a band practice. I think it sounds pretty good.

What do you guys think? Should I send it in to the Mariners front office and see if I can sing it at a Mariners game. It’s been a lifelong dream.

Clinton, McCain, Take Pandering To A New Level

Hillary Clinton and John McCain wants to suspend the 18 cent per gallon federal gasoline tax. Not eliminate it. They just want to suspend it over the summer, while voters are making up their minds about the candidates.

As increasing gas prices freak out Americans (even though it is cheaper in America than any non-OPEC country), Republican nominee John McCain and Democratic spoiler Hillary Clinton have decided to show that they “feel our pain.” Although this tax suspension will only save the average driver about 20-30 dollars this summer, it will cost the federal government billions of dollars in revenue. Which would be fine, it we didn’t have a nine trillion dollar debt, and a quarter trillion dollar deficit.

Obama, to his credit, is standing strong. Reducing, eliminating, or suspending the gas tax goes against every single thing that the three candidate have said about reducing dependence on foreign oil, investing in new energies, and reducing gasoline consumption. The question is whether or not the voters in IN and NC have the intelligence to realize that this is pure political pandering which would set a dangerous precedent about how we are going to deal with oil and energy over the next few decades.

Open Letter To Senator Clinton

Dear Hillary Clinton,
You blew your opportunity to be President in 2008. You honestly should have waited until 2012 or 2016, after becoming a more established politician in your own right. But you still were highly intelligent, qualified, and driven, and if you had planned properly for a competitive race, used the web to a stronger advantage, and ran a tight, disciplined campaign with internal unity rather than in-fighting, you would likely have beaten Obama, who, while brilliant and inspiring, did not perform as well as you did in many of the early debates.

But you didn’t, and you lost. Deal with it and move on.

Sincerely, Reality.

Hillary Won The Battle on Tuesday, But Lost The War in February

Hillary Clinton’s fear ads, a one-hour three-way attack on Obama on the ABC, alleged “gaffe’s”, “shady” Obama supporters, and Clinton’s superhuman campaign schedule delivered Senator Clinton the Pennsylvania democratic primary this Tuesday.

This was a great victory for Senator Clinton, a pivotal moment in her political career, and one which will likely deliver her to the White House…

… is what I would be saying if this primary had been held about two months and half ago.

Unfortunately for Sen. Clinton, all this victory did was further delay her forcible removal from this contest. She is currently trailing in polls in both Indiana and North Carolina, states in which she needs to win over 70% of the vote in order to be on track to catch Obama in pledged delegates if she can maintain that margin in all remaining states.

Let me make this clear. There is, absolutely, positively, ZERO chance that Senator Clinton will win the Democratic party nomination without a majority of pledged delegates. Period. The popular vote argument has more holes than a golf course. Aside from the fact that it has no actual or official relevance, not all states (WA and IA, for example) have even given their popular vote totals, no one will agree on count the totals in TX (which had a caucus and primary), and what the F*$K would be done about MI, where Obama’s name was not on the ballot.

All Mrs. Clinton is doing right now is airing Mr. McCain’s ads in advance. Which may not be a bad thing: given the attention span of the average American and cable news outlet, Mr. McCain may not have much left to say about Mr. Obama, now that the kitchen sink, refrigerator, microwave, oven, and all other kitchen appliances have been thrown at him. It will kind of like the final scene in 8 mile, where Eminem’s character is still standing proud after so much slander, insulting, and suffering, that his opponent is left speechless and concedes.

Yes, Mrs. Clinton is wasting millions of dollars. Yes her campaign is massively in debt, hostile, desperate, and plagued with in-fighting. Yes Bill Clinton out of his cage and ruining his legacy. But Obama continues to fundraise at unprecedented levels, and is increasing his lead over Mrs. Clinton both at the national level and in the remaining states. He reduced a 20-point lead in what is demographically Mrs. Clinton’s best state down to a 9 point lead. He leads now in both Indiana and North Carolina, with near three times the amount of money available to spend. Barring something unforeseen (ala Eliot Spitzer or Larry Craig), he will officially become Democratic party’s nominee on May 7th, the day after those states vote and Teresa’s birthday, a day I am calling Super-Duper-Flooper Tuesday.

Or I’m wrong and Mrs. Clinton will destroy the most inspirational and exciting political figure in four decades, devastate the Democratic party, validate politics by fear and manipulation over hope and honesty, and take our country back to the extremely polarized days of the 90’s, where she was unable to even bring her health care plan to the Senate floor, except that now will be in the middle of two wars, a recession, and an energy crisis. But I’m not wrong. Probably.

Your Revolution: Voter Registration Straight from Facebook

The revolution is officially here. This evening, I got a Facebook message from Brett Horvath — a political genius I worked with on Deb Eddy’s campaign for the state legislature. Brett and his friends have built a super-sweet application that allows you to register to vote right from Facebook and then see which of your friends aren’t registered and sign them up.

The application is called Your Revolution, and you can find out more about it here. Here’s a bit about the group behind it:

Your Revolution is an independent, non-partisan group of students across five states. We’re a people-powered movement that brings students together for a common goal; making it as easy as possible to participate in democracy. We run entirely on donations, and we could really use your support. If students across the country could register to vote instantly, and invite their unregistered friends using social networks, that’s a game changer. Not for one party over another, but to enable the student movement in way that hasn’t happened in a long time.

Eloquent as Ever, Obama Stands Against Politics of Mass Distraction and Personal Destruction

From the speech:

The status quo in Washington will fight. They will fight harder than ever to divide us and distract us with ads and attacks from now until November. But don’t ever forget that you have the power to change this country.
…
You can make this election about how we plan to leave all our children a planet that’s safer and a world that still sees America the same way my father saw it from across the ocean: as a beacon of all that is good, and all that is possible for all of mankind.

Now is our turn to follow in the footsteps of all those generations who sacrificed and struggled and faced down the greatest odds to perfect our improbable union. If we’re willing to do what they did, if we’re willing to shed our cynicism and our doubts and our fears, if we’re willing to believe in what’s possible again, then I believe we won’t just win this primary election. We won’t just win here in Indiana. We won’t just win this election in November. We will change this country. We will change the world.

What Pennsylvania Means: A Dose of Realism for Obama and For America

When I checked my mobile this morning, I found a number of worried SMS messages from friends who support Obama and are concerned about what Senator Clinton’s victory last night means for his campaign.

I’m worried, too — but not for Senator Obama. He’s going to be just fine. Even the pundits admit that the race for pledged delegates is over and Obama has won:

I’m not worried for Senator Obama, I’m worried for America.
Read more

Hillary Clinton is Dancing on My Last Nerve

I could spend a bunch of time rehashing the statistics from Pennsylvania tonight, but I won’t. If you really want to hear people discuss voter demographics, turnout, and exit polls, you can find pundits far more interested in hearing their own voices than I.

What I want to talk about is how utterly fed up I am with Hillary Clinton. She’s walking around spinning this thing like it’s a massive victory for her, and the media is aiding and abetting these shenanigans because a long drawn-out Democratic primary is good for ratings.

The fact is that Barack Obama started out in Pennsylvania — a state where Clinton was expected to win handily — nearly 30 percentage points down in the polls and clawed his way up to within 10 points. He withstood every attack and was judicious in throwing his own punches.

The fact is that Senator Clinton is dealing with a nearly insurmountable delegate lead by Senator Obama. In order to win the nomination, the Superdelegates would have to overturn the votes of millions of people who have been reinvigorated to join in the process by Mr. Obama’s fresh perspective and nuanced approach to politics.

Senator Clinton is tap dancing around, talking about Superdelegates and completely ignoring the fact that she is hurting America by threatening to split the Democratic party — a party she says she believes in — right down the middle.

It’s unfortunate that Barack Obama couldn’t pull out a victory tonight. I would have given anything to send Senator Clinton to the showers, but I guess I’ll just have to wait two more weeks. May 6th is my birthday and I can think of no better present than the voters of Indiana and North Carolina giving little miss “inevitable” her walking papers.

So, if you do want to give me a birthday present, and you agree with me. Consider sending the money you would have spent buying me shoes to Mr. Obama’s campaign instead.

My Career Move: Why I’m Going to T-Mobile

I’m very excited to announce that I’ll soon be making a career transition. I’ve accepted a role as a Product Planner with the product development team at T-Mobile, USA.

I’m grateful to Steve Broback and the amazing team at The Parnassus Group. I’ve had unparalleled opportunities to develop as a Web geek at Parnassus over the past two and a half years. I think the world of Parnassus as an organization, and I can’t wait to see what they do with their Sentimine technology in the coming year. I’m going to miss the people there just as much as they say they’ll miss me.

But there come times in every career when it becomes apparent that you need to try something new–and maybe even a little bit scary–in order to grow as a professional.

So why T-Mobile?

When I began thinking about my next opportunity, many people advised me to go into business for myself as a social media consultant. Many agencies have tried to hire me. But–at least for the time being–I’ve had my fill of telling other organizations how to leverage the social Web. I want to actually do it.

T-Mobile is uniquely positioned–both because of our brand and our participation in the Open Handset Alliance–to play a major role in what Mike Arrington has long called, “the future of social networking.”

In my new role with the product development team, I’ll be a part of that future. I’ll look at market requirements and the results of our R&D efforts, and synthesize them with my social media knowledge. I get to mix bleeding edge ideas with market realities to create the products of tomorrow. Needless to say, I’m psyched!

Most importantly, T-Mobile is an organization that invests in, challenges, and rewards great people. The human beings I’ve encountered at T-Mobile are some of the best and the brightest in their fields. Many of them have spent nearly all their professional lives with the organization. I look forward to engaging with those people while facing new challenges and growing new skills.

What does this mean for my Web presence?

As many of you know, the mobile industry is one of the most competitive spaces in technology. I’ll be working on some top-secret stuff. There are some things that I just won’t be able to talk about. Getting fired for blogging is not on my list of things to do before I die–so you’ll have to forgive me if I can’t discuss certain aspects of my professional life.

That said, I’ll still be offering up my thoughts on technology, politics, and other exciting topics on a regular basis. I’ll just be doing it here at TeresaCentric instead of at Parnassus’ blogs. I know that the Web Community Forum and Blog Business Summit blogs will be in great hands with the team at Parnassus.

What’s next?

My last day at Parnassus will be April 29, 2008. After that, I’ll take some time off to travel, read, and get ready for my next big career adventure. I’ll do tons of yoga and rock climbing, visit family and friends, and celebrate my 25th birthday by performing with my good friend, online reporter Mónica Guzmán at the Seattle PI’s “Battle of the Bands.” I might even sleep in once or twice. Then, I’ll start my new job on May 12.

I want to take the time to thank everyone I have come to know these past few years. You are too numerous to mention here by name, but chances are that if we’re connected on one social network or another, I’m thinking of you when I say that I’m honored to know you and be a part of your community. I can’t wait to see what you all do next.

Wish me luck, or rather as my favorite math teacher in high school used to say, “wish me skills!”

Obama V. Clinton SMACKDOWN

Rather than have Pennsylvania decide who the Democratic nominee is, why don’t we just let these two candidates fight it out in the wrestling ring.

Super Tuesday III (Or Is It 4?)

It has been six mind-numbing weeks of flaps, gaffes, and nonsensical accusations, all with the term “gate” after them (”bitter”-gate, “sniper”-gate, Ayers-gate, Wright-gate, “label-pin”-gate). This was of course capped but the most ridiculous “debate” I’ve ever seen or heard of. The democratic primary in fact ended in February when Obama won the Potomac Primary by 50 points. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is, at best, broke, and at worst, deeply in debt. Barack Obama is flush with cash, and also is winning by virtually every possible measurement.

Despite this fact, Hillary Clinton will not drop out if she wins tonight, even if the win is by a few points, and she gains only a single delegate. Even if she wanted to take this opportunity to drop out (which she does not), there is an extreme media bias for Hillary Clinton to stay in the race. While I do agree with Hillary Clinton’s assertion that the media loves Obama, what they love more than anything or the ratings they are getting as a result of this heated and protracted primary.

My prediction, is that, unfortunately, she will win. But only by two to four points. This will set Teresa up for a wonderful birthday present on May 6, when Obama wins Indiana by 15 points, and North Carolina by 20 points, forcing Hillary Clinton to drop out, and ending this ridiculous primary.

MySpace Hates Snurl

I sent a MySpace message to my friend Jill last week. Jill’s a yoga person and I thought she’d enjoy the post I wrote about Jill Bolte Taylor and how her stroke allowed her to get to that elusive state of mind that yogis strive for.

Since MySpace messaging sometimes does funky things with long URLs, I decided to shorten the URL at Snurl.com. It seems that Jill was able to click through and view my blog post, because she responded to tell me that it was cool. I read her response, and then decided to click through to my own blog.

That’s when I saw this:

Since my blog post is clearly not spam, a phishing scam, or a virus, it can only be deduced that MySpace hates and disables ALL snurl links in messages. That is ridiculously lame.

Clinton Campaign Disarray Casts Doubt on What Her “Experience” Really Means

Factions. Infighting. Pathological loyalty. It sounds like the Bush administration — but it’s not. Those descriptors apply equally to another political institution that has recently come under heavy fire: the Clinton campaign.

In a scathing National Review article published today, Michelle Cottle writes of the internecine fighting amid Clinton’s various advisers from different periods of her and her husband’s career:

Rife with big egos and competing centers of influence–veterans of Hillary’s First Lady days, relative newbies from her Senate office, Bill’s ‘92 people, Bill’s ‘96 people–Team Hillary has never been a comfortably cohesive group.

Particularly problematic, longtime Clinton communications adviser Mark Penn is clearly what some of my colleagues like to call a “toxic tomato” — an office presence that sews discontent and plays teammates off one another for his own benefit. He seems far more concerned with his own petty turf wars than with the ultimate success of his team and his candidate.

Why would anyone keep such a player around? It seems that the Clintons are incapable of ridding themselves of Penn because, “[he] is a known and trusted quantity to a candidate for whom loyalty is a primary concern.”

If there’s one lesson we’ve learned from the catastrophic failures of the Bush administration, it’s that loyalty at the expense of competency creates utter chaos. Bush’s greatest failure as an executive was relying on advisers from his father’s administration to the exclusion of even his own limited critical thinking skills. A key example is Bush’s most toxic display of pathological loyalty: his repeated refusals to accept disgraced then-Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld’s resignation.

Perhaps it’s time to admit that political dynasties are not good for America — especially when they masquerade as “experience.” If the Clinton campaign is so rife with mixed loyalties, decade-long resentments and agendas that have nothing to do with doing right by the American people, what will would the a Clinton administration be like?

Somalia - The Other Iraq

For all the attention the US’s occupation into Iraq has received, very little has been given to the US orchestrated occupation of Somalia by Ethopia. Worried that Somalia might become the next Al-Qaeda haven after the Islamic Courts Union, Ethopian troops ousted the ICU and installed a new government. Ethopia had planned a quick withdrawl, but ICU insurgents have forced them to remain in order to keep the government in power.

Fighting has been raging in Somalia’s capital, Mogudishu, and Somalia is becoming an increasingly unstable country. I really wish that a question had been asked to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the debate on Wednesday about this 3rd front in the War on Terror. I think that it deserves slightly more attention than how much one of Barack’s buddies loves America.

The Pentagon’s Web of Lies, the Military Industrial Complex, and the Drive for Endless War

I was absolutely appalled to read the results of The New York Times’ investigative report into the Pentagon’s use of a group of retired military officers — most of whom have ties to military contractors with a vested interest in retaining close connections with the Defense Department — as part of a propaganda machine whose intent was to keep up public support for the war in Iraq.

The Times has discovered that these officers — whom the Pentagon referred to as “message force multipliers” — were appearing regularly on all the major television news networks as supposedly objective military analysts, even while they repeated administration talking points as if they were their own opinions.

As if this weren’t outrage enough in and of itself, the transcript of a private meeting between then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and these so-called analysts reads more like a meeting of a team of public relations professionals on behalf of a client than a briefing of military analysts by the Pentagon. It reveals a desire on the part of the whole group to encourage the American public to accept an endless war. As one of the retired military officers said during the meeting:

Mr. Secretary, one of the things that’s stuck with the American people is the long war. I don’t think you realize how effective that was…when you said “long war,” you changed the psyche of the American people to expect that this is going to be a generational event…if you could just play on that theme a little more…so something like Iraq becomes a milepost or a signpost along the continuum of the long war. If you paint it that way, then people won’t look for terminal events.

Keep in mind that this so-called “analyst” was, at that very time, posing as an objective military expert on one of our national media channels.

What we have here is the collusion of military contractors and the Defense Department to dupe the American people into war without end. This represents what Dwight Eisenhower meant to warn against when he said in his farewell address to the American people:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Unless we want to witness — in our lifetimes — the complete disintegration of the American moral compass, we must stand up and deplore this outrageous abuse of the public trust. When you combine it with illegal wiretapping, torture, and the willful mismanagement of the war in Iraq, you have a recipe for a special prosecutor and a full investigation.

I wonder which one of the current presidential candidates might have the strength of character to make that happen.

Obama Brushes Off ABC Debate

Classy and funny.

If you don’t get it, here’s the reference, and here’s the remix.

Clinton Links Obama to 70’s Radical: Nasty Political Tactics of the Boomer Generation

Until last fall, I was undecided on a presidential candidate. I wasn’t sure about upstart Illinois Senator Barack Obama — who I now support. I thought it was possible he was all hype.

Then I read an article in The Atlantic by Andrew Sullivan entitled “Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters.” Sullivan has long been an intellectual hero of mine. His book The Conservative Soul precipitated my own change in identification from knee-jerk liberal to thoughtful independent. About halfway through, I was convinced.

One of the article’s more compelling arguments was about Obama’s age relative to the other candidates and the perspective that came with it:

How do we account for the bitter, brutal tone of American politics? The answer lies mainly with the biggest and most influential generation in America: the Baby Boomers. The divide is still—amazingly—between those who fought in Vietnam and those who didn’t, and between those who fought and dissented and those who fought but never dissented at all. By defining the contours of the Boomer generation, it lasted decades. And with time came a strange intensity.

…

A generational divide also separates Clinton and Obama with respect to domestic politics. Clinton grew up saturated in the conflict that still defines American politics. As a liberal, she has spent years in a defensive crouch against triumphant post-Reagan conservatism.

…

Obama, simply by virtue of when he was born, is free of this defensiveness. Strictly speaking, he is at the tail end of the Boomer generation. But he is not of it.

The residual nastiness of the 1960’s Sullivan mentioned reared its ugly head on Wednesday night during the candidate’s widely criticized debate on ABC. During a round of questioning about Obama’s patriotism, moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his relationship with 70’s radical William Ayres. Ayres was a member of the Weather Underground, an anti-war group that bombed the Pentagon in the spring of 1972. Obama was eight at the time.

Now, Clinton’s campaign is circulating an essay detailing how the GOP could exploit Obama’s admittedly friendly but avowedly “flimsy” relationship with Ayres. The Clintons are attempting to drag him in the ugliness of their generational conflict. She already knows that she cannot win on the strength of her ideas, so she must now focus on tearing Senator Obama to shreds.

As the an Economist campaign blogger recently wrote, “This is no longer a campaign based on ideas. It is a campaign focused on tearing down Mr Obama. We all know that’s her only shot at the nomination.”

It’s incredibly sad that she is so desperate for power that she’ll actively work to to destroy her party’s most promising rising star in the hopes of securing the nomination.

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