Mike Cohen

Hillary's Money Problems

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B12 Solipsism points out that Hillary’s money problems have gotten worse.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign has been putting off paying hundreds of bills for months — freeing up cash for critical media buys but also earning the campaign a reputation as something of a deadbeat in some small-business circles.

A pair of Ohio companies owed more than $25,000 by Clinton for staging events for her campaign are warning others in the tight-knit event production community — and anyone else who will listen — to get their cash upfront when doing business with her. Her campaign, say representatives of the two companies, has stopped returning phone calls and e-mails seeking payment of outstanding invoices. One even got no response from a certified letter.
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It’s not just the size of Clinton’s debts that’s noteworthy. It’s also that her unpaid bills extend beyond the realm of high-priced consultants who typically let bills slide as part of the cost of doing business with powerful clientele whose success is linked to their own.

Some of Clinton’s biggest debts are to pollster and chief strategist Mark Penn, who’s owed $2.5 million; direct mail company MSHC Partners, which is owed $807,000; phone-banking firm Spoken Hub, which is waiting for $771,000; and ad maker Mandy Grunwald, who’s owed $467,000.

Clinton also reported debts more than one month old to a slew of apolitical businesses and organizations, large and small, in the states through which this historically expensive Democratic primary campaign has raged.

[From Cash-strapped Clinton fails to pay bills – Kenneth P. Vogel – Politico.com]

How can we expect her to run the country if she can’t even manage her own campaign properly? Can’t she see that she’s only hurting the Democratic party and the country by staying in the race with little or no chance of nomination? Right now it’s about her hunger for power, not about wanting to do the right thing for the country.

HDR Photo of the day

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I took a few more pictures for HDR processing tonight. This time I used my new tripod, which is a lot more stable & solid than my old 48″ tripod (which I just sold), so I was able to position the shots more accurately.

HDR 3-30-08 1

You can see the rest of them at my HDR set at Flickr.

I also posted a screencast demonstrating how I produce HDR images at techblast.tv.

Revisiting Mii Transfer

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I haven’t had a chance to do much work on mii transfer for a long time, but now that DarwiinRemote 0.7 was released, I’m taking a look at the latest code to incorporate into Mii Transfer.

My goal in this version is to avoid modifying the WiiRemote framework, but rather to extend the classes in it through a Mii category. I see that the latest version of the framework incorporated my Mii reading code, but not the code for writing Miis.

I’m also working on a MiiView class, which will display the Mii, and of course be able to export it in various graphics formats supported by NSImage. The actual code is pretty simple but involves lots of grunt work, creating lots of graphic resources for every variation of each part, which I then composite into the image. Right now I’m still bogged down in creating those pieces.

HDR Photo of the day

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I’ve been doing more experimentation with HDR processing. I really like the glow effect I got in this one. Since Aperture 2.1 now supports editing plugins, it would be great if Photomatix made a tone mapping & merge to HDR plugin for Aperture, so I wouldn’t have to export to Photoshop as I do now.

03-28-2008-HDR-3

Will Rush Limbaugh Be Indicted for Voter Fraud?

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The Democrats, especially Obama’s camp, need to make sure this story stays in the news. Via Alternet:

As the board of election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where Cleveland is located, launches an investigation into illegal crossover voting in the state’s 2008 presidential primary, a big open question remains unanswered: Will county officials go after the ringleaders of apparently illegal electioneering where thousands of Republican voters swore — under penalty of law — allegiance to the Democratic Party in order to vote for Hillary Clinton?

In case you missed it, Rush Limbaugh, the nation’s top-rated talk radio host, was urging Republicans in Texas and Ohio to skip their party’s primary on March 4 and instead cast a vote for Hillary Clinton in order to prolong the fight between her and Barack Obama. And that Tuesday, as media in both states reported, thousands of Republicans did just what Limbaugh and others had suggested — they changed parties to vote for Clinton.

“I want Hillary to stay in this, Laura,” Limbaugh told Laura Ingraham on Feb. 29, near the start of his Hillary crusade. “This is too good a soap opera. We need Barack Obama bloodied up politically, and it’s obvious that the Republicans are not going to do it and don’t have the stomach for it, as you probably know.”

And on Wednesday, the day after the Ohio primary, Fox News asked Clinton if she owed Limbaugh a thank you. “Be careful what you wish for, Rush,” she replied. Later that day, Limbaugh played the Fox tape on his show and said, “How do you interpret this, folks? She could have said thank you. She could have said thank you! In fact, I was expecting in her victory speech last night to be thanked.

“I helped give Mrs. Clinton the biggest and happiest moment and night of the campaign season so far, maybe her life, and she tells me, “Be careful what you wish for, Rush”? Why, that sounds like a threat, does it not? I’ve got a Democrat presidential candidate threatening your host. Why, I am stunned! After all I did …”

While this all makes for great talk radio and sounds like fun, there is one catch: What Limbaugh encouraged Republican voters to do in Ohio was a fifth-degree felony in that state, punishable with a $2,500 fine and six to 12 months in jail. That is because in order to change party affiliation in Ohio, voters have to fill out a form swearing allegiance to that party’s principles “under penalty of election falsification.”

I think they need to go even further with this and disqualify the delegates Clinton won in those disputed races. If that happens, Obama would clearly have enough delegates to win the nomination right now.

Problem Pastor

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See if you can guess which religious leader made this outrageous statement:

America has become the kingdom of individualism, and its people are individualists. You must realize that America has become the kingdom of Satan.

Of course that’s the Bush family’s best buddy, Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

John Gorenfeld makes an interesting comparison between Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Rev. Moon.

Teflon or Krazy Glue?

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Taegan Goddard notes how some political missteps haunt their candidates forever, while others are soon forgotten. Howard Dean screeching on a stage in Iowa, instantly becomes the stuff of political history, but when George W. Bush admits that he was once arrested for driving under the influence, it’s mostly ignored by the media and quickly fades into obscurity. Some politicians, as they used to say of Ronald Reagan, seem coated in Teflon, while others seem covered in Krazy Glue, unable to shake the stickiness of what seem like minor embarrassments

Matt Bai in the New York Times Blog theorizes:

Whether or not a bad moment sticks to the candidate depends on how closely related it is to the core rationale of that candidate or his opponent. In other words, if your gaffe goes directly to the main argument you are trying to make about yourself with the electorate, or if it substantiates the most relevant thing that your rival would have us believe about you, then it has the potential to become a serious problem. If, on the other hand, you do something completely idiotic that is tangential to what voters most hope or fear about you, then you tend to get a pass.

I see this as yet another example of the media’s double standards concerning Democratic and Republican candidates. Rev. Wright’s statements are still seen out of context on the news every night and are burning up YouTube, yet very little is said about McCain’s connection with Rev. John Hagee, the outrageous statements by Pat Robertson over the years, and the Religious Right’s close relationship with cult leader Rev. Sun-myung Moon.