Today, David Brooks has a column talking about the class war. It’s mostly an opinion piece on how the GOP is bleeding itself of traditional supports. The snippet that stuck out to me, however, was this one:

The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.

That’s a ratio that seems oddly outside the  norm for an industry that I never really considered leaned one way or the other politically. What makes technology liberal (aside from Al Gore inventing the Internet jokes)? I could come up with some random theories, but I’m probably not in a position to back any of them up. Just thought I’d share that interesting datapoint at the intersection of technology and politics. I’ll leave the analysis up to the pundits.

Over the past month or so, at LEAST once a week, we get a nice lady robot calling us to inform us that my union supports Al Franken.

Well, there are a few things wrong with these phone calls:

• autodialing robots are evil
• I’m not in a union
• My wife isn’t in a union
• after the 5th time, do they really think they are cementing votes? Methinks they may be pissing off votes more than not.

So, I hunt down Al’s campaign web site and call the number. Apparently he’s turned his daughter into a voice mail robot. So, I write an email. An email to not-so-subtley complain about these very annoying and misplaced campaign calls (even if they may not be sourced from his office).

Do I get a nice personal response? An apology? Well, no. Instead I immediately get added to the campaign’s email spam list.

I thought McCain was the only candidate running this season that was clueless about the internet?

Now the Pentagon has banned the troops from using sites like YouTube, MySpace, Photobucket, etc. due to “sapping too much bandwidth.”

YouTube’s co-founders on Thursday challenged the Pentagon’s assertion that soldiers overseas were sapping too much bandwidth by watching online videos, the military’s principal rationale for blocking popular Web sites from Defense Department computers.

“They said it might be a bandwidth issue, but they created the Internet, so I don’t know what the problem is,” Chief Executive Chad Hurley said with a hearty laugh during an interview with The Associated Press.

I can only imagine how appealing snail mail is for troops when they’re watching their children grow up in another country.

2004: The FCC ruled that VOIP services could not be regulated by the states.

2005: Minnesota appeals

2007: Federal appeals court upheld FCCs decision

More Info:
MercuryNews.com, Techdirt.

Read the full list of our elected finest’s web creations.

If you’re covering the local election in your blog (this one included), podcast, or tagged something out there in the interweb that does – tag it appropriately, and it’ll automatically get pulled in.

Behold – the power of folksonomy.

Word from Steve is, he’s very much interested in citizen-on-the-street media – so, go make something more useful than the local news.

(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
(ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
(iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
(iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users; and
(v) enables communication among users.’

Which means, this site, Amazon.com, LinkedIn, Ebay, TypePad, and essentially any website requiring a name/password to access. Definitely one of the darkest Congressional votes.

More from ZDNET, Rex Hammock, and TechCrunch, all of it aggregated at DOPAWatch.

Hey, who’s up for setting up a MySpace, Friendster, or similar account for our 410 favorite Congressmen? Seems to me, they could use some online friends.

Sadly, it seems that most politicians are about as tech-saavy as your average rock. So no matter how many emails you send, odds are that you’ll never hear back from them.

And that seems to be common knowlege in the lobbying world. Every time you hear about a bill that we should be complaining to our leaders about, you undoubtely also see that they strongly suggest that you write an actual letter, as that paper somehow has more sway. I suppose it’s more dramatic to whip out a box of mailed in letters and dump that on the senate floor to make some inane point than to mention the ‘hundreds of emails’ you get.

So, that has left us geeks frustrated. There are so many insane bills being brought to congress this session that we should be strongly voicing our concerns about, but our voices only seem to work via email and blogs. That isn’t going to sway a politician. What do do? Web 2.0 to the rescue! Shinyletter is a web site that let’s you write your letter online (like we all prefer) and mails an actual paper letter to whoever you want (which our leader seem to prefer). Brilliant!

Now, go visit/join IPac to learn more about the evils of current legislation going through and then WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN/WOMAN!

Republicans are upset that Sen. Dean Johnson lied. Fair enough.

Yet Senator Michelle Bachman has been lying for years with her ‘if we legalize gay marriage then we have to legalize beastiality and then the schools would have to teach my kids to be gay!’

Johnson gets caught in a lie, apologizes, and is crucified. Bachman lies, lies, lies and lies again. And she’s invited to be interviewed on TPT and NPR and runs for a US Senate seat.

*sigh*