Buy Your Own TV Ads, Blogs and Truth and Kossacks Gone Wild

A new company that can put the world of political advertising in your hands, and on the cheap too! Plus blogs and other forms of political advertising.

• Buy your own political ad on cable TV for as little as the costs of a McDonald's combo lunch. SaysMe.TV lets you choose the ad, the market and the buy. Plus the site lets you post your own 25-second spot for others to use. So far the markets are limited, no Nevada for now, but they do plan to expand.
• Blogs and the truth. RGJ Sports takes a look and interviews local blogger Ryan Jerz.
• Speaking of blogs, watch as the Kossacks kill the messenger over Edwards alleged philandering.
• What would they do to the guy who did this?
• Or the Ohio firm that accidentally made those Barack Obama and Larry Craig buttons?

How Rich Is Harvey Whittemore?

Someone in Amsterdam wanted to know.

Answer?

Very.

Punks for Nader, Hillary's Cheapness and Why Farm Subsidies Stink

Those stories and why CDs aren't such a good thing in prison.

• Hillary Clinton's cheapness. If only she was this frugal with the U.S. budget.
• Everything you wanted to know about farm subsidies and why they just don't work in this Freakonomics Q&A with agricultural economist Daniel Sumner.
• When the Ralph Nader campaign asked for independent bands to send in music for use in their ads, do you think Ralph had this in mind?
• And, speaking of music, how's this for niche marketing.

50 Years Of Presidential Campaign TV Commericals

If you're the kind of person who thinks presidential campaign commercials are nastier now than every before, we kindly invite you to peruse The Living Room Candidate and their collection of spots from 1954-2004.

Feast your eyes on "Laughter (Spiro Agnew for VP?)," LBJ's infamous "Daisy" or, for the less partisan, Reagan's classic "Bear" spot.

The site also includes web ads and TV spots from outside groups in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Presidential Cola, The AT&T Convention and Nader's Vegas Office

With Coke featured on the flipside of the infamous AT&T Democratic welcome bag and The Pepsi Center holding the actual convention, it's only fitting another cola enters the political arena. That and Ralph Nader's Nevada plans.

• Even cola drinkers prefer Obama. Jones Soda launched Campaign Cola 2008 with bottles emblazoned with Obama, McCain, Hillary and Ron Paul. Obama currently leads with 7,266 bottles sold. McCain is third with just 2,106. But, in true democratic fashion, Jones will allow anyone to run for president and have their own custom bottle of pure cane sugar cola for just $29.99 (+ shipping) per 12-pack.
• Glenn Greenwald laments corporate sponsors of conventions and notes the AT&T welcome bag that will greet Democrats in Denver. Ralph Nader jumps on the bandwagon.
• And speaking of Nader, fresh off being ballot qualified in Nevada the campaign is opening their first office in Las Vegas this Saturday, July 26, at 2385 N. Decatur Blvd. from 5:30 to 6:30 pm.

Edwards Midnight Hotel Rendezvous Caught By National Enquirer

When the National Enquirer reported that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards allegedly had an affair and "love child" with Reille Hunter, there were the usual vehement denials and the story really never gained too much traction in the more traditional media. After all, it was just the National Enquirer.

But the funny thing about the Enquirer is that when they are on to something they truly believe is real they are a tenacious bunch.

That apparently paid off early Tuesday morning when, at 2:40 am, Enquirer reporters caught Edwards leaving the Beverly Hilton where Hunter was staying.

"After we confronted him about seeing Rielle, Edwards looked like a deer caught in headlights," said the reporter.

Edwards apparently ran and hid in the restroom before being escorted out.

I guess we can safely assume Barack Obama can scratch at least one name off his Veep list.

Pickering Plays "Right" Card

Remember when nonpartisan candidates were kind of subtle about their political affiliations?

We received this mailer from Nevada Supreme Court candidate Kris Pickering this week and do you think it is safe to say she isn't one of those namby-pamby lefty judge wannabes?

If getting pounded over the head with the word "Right" (in bright red to boot) a half dozen times didn't give you a clue, then "A judicial conservative who won't legislate from the bench" kind of seals the deal. "Pick Pickering," though, does have a ring to it.

Pickering is also up on TV with two spots, with the Reno ad featuring her local ties.

Joining Pickering in the race for the open B Seat is fellow Republican Don Chairez and Democrats Nancy Allf and Deborah Schumacher. Allf has been up on Reno TV for a couple weeks, while Schumacher has sent at least one mailer.

Of the four, only Schumacher is currently a judge.

Have Blog Ping Sites Died Out?

Granted this is a technical question and not a political one, so feel free to skip on by. (And by technical, we mean as coming from a guy who a) uses Blogger and b) had to ask a fellow blogger if the point-and-shoot camera we just bought was a piece of crap or a technological steal.)

We know that whenever we post something, Blogger and Feedburner automatically ping a few sites letting them know new stuff is up. And we know that despite all the sites out there Google organic search still sends us most of our traffic (71.4% this year according to Google Analytics). But despite all this, we always felt compelled for some reason to use a ping service. Maybe because we didn't know any better or, perhaps, it was the unwarranted fear of losing a lone reader from some aggregator site nobody has really ever heard of. So we used them, whether it actually helped or not.

But those days appear to be done as our two favorites have seemingly bit the dust. Ping-O-Matic just gives us a "408 Time Out" error for the past month or so and Pingoat has been under "System Maintenance" for about three weeks.

So are "ping" sites a thing of the past?

All "Maled Out" and Dave Cook Robo Calls

You know the primary season is fast approaching when your phone starts ringing off the hook.

Tonight was interesting in that we were about to be officially polled, as opposed to being push polled, on Reno city races. Eager to hear the questions, we were shot down when told, after giving our age, that they were "all 'maled out' for the day."

Of course, the vast majority of calls voters will receive are of the automated robo variety. This afternoon we heard from Dave Cook. Now if you haven't heard of Dave Cook, and we're betting the ranch you haven't, he's running for the State Board of Education, District Nine. But the really big news is if a candidate for this office is going to be robo calling, imagine how busy your phone is going to be for the next couple months.

(Side note: Although we just took a jab at Cook. This move probably moves him to the top in voter recognition for the office at this point in the race. In the interest of fairness, the other candidates are Roy J. Casey and Richard Kale. And, in kind of a disappointment, none of the candidates have a campaign website at this time.)

Correction: When listing the other candidates we mistakenly mentioned Richard Kale instead of Barbara J. Myers as the third candidate (Kale withdrew from the race). This is significant, since Myers only happens to be the incumbent.

Even more significant is the campaign history between Cook and Myers. In 2000, Myers took Cook's seat by the slimmest of margins (25,908 to 25,438). Four years later they went at it again, with Cook beating Myers in the three-candidate primary race before losing by 10 points in the general.

Also, Cook does have a website. DaveCook.info.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Politician Bloggers

Everyone, well at least the blogging world, seems to want politicians to get with the digital program and start a blog of their own. In most cases, the pleas are ignored. But occasionally they are heard, though the results are, unfortunately, usually just a repeat of focus-group-tested talking points or, worse, some intern posting those same talking points. It's rarely insightful.

That's not to say there aren't a few good ones to go with the multitude of bad. Or the unorthodox kind that can backfire.

Here are three politicians and their attempts at blogging.

The Good - Nevada state senator Bob Beers has always been known to not pull punches and he carries that over to his blog. Whether noting conversations with Dina Titus or attacking NSHE chancellor Jim Rogers, Beers seems to always get straight to the point and avoids the non-specific waffling that tends to plague politician blogs. A person might not always agree with his politics, but they'll know exactly where he stands. Plus, he posts regularly and links to others.

The Bad - Nevada congressional candidate Jill Derby just launched her first attempt at blogging and it tends to represent what is wrong with the process. As MrJerz.org notes in detail, taking the plunge on Daily Kos probably isn't the smartest move but doing so with a blank "issues" page is even worse (especially at this stage of the race). Throw in Derby's tepid reasons for running again and boilerplate attacks (e.g., her opponent votes the party line!) and her post reads more like a beg for the netroots to pressure the DCCC to spend money on her rather than an actual attempt to communicate with her district's constituents. It's still early though.

The Ugly - Whether this one is classified as "ugly" or "funny" might depend on your feelings for "Staten Island girl," "dumb blond" and "Guido" jokes. But in keeping with the classic Sergio Leone movie theme we'll assign Belmar, NJ mayor Ken Pringle the Tuco role.

As mayor of a summer rental party town, Pringle took to blogging to let renters know the rules of common courtesy. In doing so, he utilized humor which had three results. One, it drew an audience, two, it drew complaints. The third? It drew a series of apologies and the demise of the blog.

Henderson and Spring Valley Make Money Magazine's Best Places To Live List

Although we would think the average person would be hard-pressed to describe Henderson and Spring Valley as "small cities," Money deems them so and added the pair of Nevada cities to their 2008 America's Best Places To Live (the top 100 places with a population between 50,000 and 300,000).

Henderson (#84)
Positive: "Sin City has its appeals, but Nevada residents looking for a home that's more virtue than vice find that Henderson is a godsend."
Negative: "One drawback: Because Henderson is in the Mojave Desert, summer temperatures can top 115 degrees."

Spring Valley (#95)
Positive: "Just two miles west of the Las Vegas Strip, Spring Valley has a diverse population and plenty of recreational opportunities."
Negative: "Summer temperatures can be brutal."

A bevy of stats for the Nevada cities that didn't make the list can be found here.

Obama Still Leads In Latest Presidential Polls

ABC and CBS News both released their latest presidential polls today. And with almost 40 pages of data for political junkies to drool over, we'll cut right to the chase -- Barack Obama still leads John McCain. But both have some problems.

ABC News/Washington Post Poll (.pdf) -- Obama 49% McCain 46% among likely voters.

CBS News/New York Times Poll (.pdf) -- Obama 45% McCain 39% among registered voters.

Netroots, Ninnies, Predator Stars and GigaPan

A dose of literature, entertainment, politics and a camera technology that even a Yankee-hater (errr...baseball that is) can enjoy.

• "Netroots" the word is official. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has spoken. "Nutroots," meanwhile, must wait until 2010.
• And, wasting no time, the New York Post's Kirsten Powers calls the newly minted word a bunch of ninnies.
• Perhaps because he is Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Gov can get away with saying "flip-flopping is getting a bad rap, because I think it is great."
• And speaking of Predator stars, Jesse Ventura can throw the Minnesota Senate race into chaos if he files today (7/15/08). Early pundit predictions are Al Franken suffers, late-night comedians benefit.
• And, simply because it looks so cool, a look at Yankee Stadium with GigaPan zoom technology.

Update: Ventura won't be running, saying "It was a difficult decision but it came down to almost this -- surfing versus the Senate and I found surfing to be much more honorable than the Senate. The ocean doesn't lie to you. The waves don't lie to you. My government does lie to me today."

McCain's "Summer of Love" Ad Hits Spot

For a campaign that has been somewhat floundering in the dog days of summer, I think John McCain may have hit a home run with his "Summer of Love" TV spot that is running in Nevada and other battleground states.

Highlighting his time as a POW and pointing out that uplifting words alone don't make a difference I think are winners for the McCain camp. It manages to score as both a biographical and (albeit mild) attack ad. Even the Right is happy.

Granted, not everyone is enamored with the spot. Many are pointing out that trying to link Barack Obama to the hippie era is ludicrous given his actual age at the time, and they would be right, but I don't think that's what that portion of the ad is trying to do. I think it is more in the vein of while others were having fun (which can be read as "liberals' in general), McCain was picking maggots out of his rice and getting tortured. And, in this light, the ad could also be looked as more of a stab at the Bush, Clinton and Quayles of the political world who ducked military duty in Vietnam.

Another strength, I thought, was the voiceover. In a world where it seems just three guys and a gal do all the political ads, this voice seemed like it was straight out of a malt liquor or Ram-tough pickup spot. Turns out, it's one of my favorite actors, Powers Boothe.

As an aside, was there ever a cooler villain than Boothe's Cash Bailey in Walter Hill's Extreme Prejudice (which also featured the Rip Torn line "the only thing worse than a politician is a child molester")?

So Much For Timing The Harris Poll

With all the money that will be spent on politics this election year, it got me thinking of just where will it all go. And while TV broadcasters are obviously at the top of the list, another benefactor should be polling companies.

So when I noticed that Harris Interactive (HPOL), home of the famous Harris Poll, had hit a 52-week low of $1.59 on 7/8/08, but bounced back briskly before the end of the session, it piqued my interest. Being inherently cheap, I put in a limit order at $1.59 a share and waited to see if either another dip would occur or the rebound was officially on.

I received my answer on 7/11/08 when Scottrade emailed me that my order was completed. Surprisingly, the buy was at $1.57 a share, which means one of two things occurred. Either I was very lucky and caught an unexpected trading lull coupled with a pricing dip, or the share price was tumbling rapidly anyway. A quick check proved the latter. Harris had dropped to $1.41 during the day before rallying to $1.52 at the close.

So, within an hour of buying, I was down 10.2%. Thank goodness for Oxygen Biotherapeutics at $0.10.

DCCC Reserves $916K In TV Time For Titus

Dina Titus might have almost $1 million in televised help in her quest to unseat incumbent Nevada congressman Jon Porter.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted Porter, along with eight other Republican incumbents, in a recent media buy. With a huge cash advantage over their GOP counterparts, the DCCC has reserved $22.5 million of TV time in Republican-held districts. $916,000 is tentatively slated for fighting Porter.

This follows news of Titus having raised almost $600,000 in the first two months of her campaign. She still trails Porter by roughly a half million in cash on hand, but that would quickly disappear if the DCCC follows through with the actual ad buy.

Are Political Blogs Fading?

This story has been sitting around for about a month in our pile of things we wanted to mention but never got around to. It's interesting, especially given our most recent stat snapshot.

Outside the Beltway's James Joyner makes the case that in the greater scheme of things in the wide world of blogs, political ones don't really pique the interest of that many actual readers. Joyner notes there are fewer political blogs in the Technorati Top 100 than four years ago (though he does note the possibility of Technorati being gamed) and traffic seems to be losing ground to the tech and gossip crowd.

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds agreed and noted that his most popular posts are the "tech- and lifestyle-related."

Curious, we decided to check our StatCounter log this evening (7/9/08) to see if our trenchant political observations and interviews were the driving force in our visitors.

It wasn't. And not even close to boot.

Here are our 20 most recent visitors to Dullard Mush and why they arrived:

• 10- People all across the country, and Beijing(!), want former KOLO-8 Reno anchor Kara Tsuboi. What started as a simple mention in a goof post has turned into a cottage industry for us with four different Tsuboi-specific posts racking up hit after hit. Here's the whole Tsuboi story if you are interested, and we know you probably are.
• 3 - Pictures of Miss Nevada. No, silly, not the recent one, it's the one who had those MySpace nudie photos and got canned. A complete throwaway post that still drives traffic 18 months later.
• 2 - Famous SoCal personal injury lawyer Larry H. Parker ("got me $2.1 million"). We posted on his running a commercial looking for Tahoe Fire victims and we somehow ended up number two on Google.
• 1 - An Australian looking for the Find Chuck Norris Google Search gag. It was big for a couple months this year.
• 1 - Someone from Kazakhstan looking for the Bunny Ranch. Our story was mainly on Ron Paul but it's safe to say that's not what searchers are looking for, though there is footage of the always-effervescent Air Force Amy.
• 1- Referral from political site Zeke
• 1- Referral from PolitickrNV
• 1- A Google search for "mush spheres supported"(?) Don't know what they were looking for but our June 2008 archive somehow is first-page Google for those words.

So when all is said and done a whopping two out of 20, or a measly 10%, actually came to Dullard Mush for the politics. The big winner? Hot anchors and nude women.

Is There Anything Online That Isn't Gamed?

It's a given that virtually all online political polls are worthless because of the ease in gaming them (Exhibits A and B). But now Yelp, a site that rates local businesses (here's the Reno version), is ousting members for allegedly trading positive reviews amongst themselves.

Needless to say, those caught are angry and (sigh) talking lawsuit.

Pajamas Media Veepstakes: Pick the Sidekick

Think you know who John McCain and Barack Obama will tap as their VP pick?

Then enter Pajamas Media's Veepstakes. Go with one of the 14 Dem and 18 GOP choices (Carly Fiorina!) or enter your own candidate. Prizes include an Asus Eee PC mini notebook, an Amazon Kindle and 25 PJM t-shirts.

Beers Rips Neff; Cobb Dems

Is there a more "tell-it-like-it-is" Nevada politician than Bob Beers? Or more web savvy for that matter?

In his most recent blog post, Beers takes aim again at LVRJ columnist Erin Neff's latest and provides a point-by-point analysis.

And, perhaps a sign that not all Republicans are being left in the digital dust by Democrats, northern Nevada's Ty Cobb has been emailing supporters with news of the recent special session. And, like Beers, pulls no punches.