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Ayn Rand Disowned by VP Candidate Paul Ryan

Sean Patterson — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 14:52:57 +0000

Now that Paul Ryan has been chosen as presidential candidate Mit Romney’s running mate, the incessant digging into Ryan’s past has commenced. As a part of that digging, the candidate’s beliefs and past speeches are now being vetted.

As relatively young as Ryan is for a vice presidential candidate, the idealistic beliefs he may have held in the past are still fresh enough that they could come into play during the election. This week, the question over whether Ryan is an adherent to the philosophy of Ayn Rand has resurfaced.

In an interview with the National Review in April of this year, Ryan disavowed any beliefs in Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy. From the interview:

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.

The Objectivist philosophy, at a basic level, promotes selfishness as a virtue and rejects altruism. It teaches that individuals should act in accordance with whatever is in their own rational self-intrest. Rand’s beliefs are widespread in Libertarian and some Republican political circles, and mesh well with the promotion of laissez-faire capitalism.

While Ryan’s current sentiments seem clear, it was only seven years ago that Ryan delivered a speech to the Atlas Society in which he praised Rand and credited the woman as his inspiration for entering politics. He even mentions that his staff and interns are required to read Rand’s most well-known novel, Atlas Shrugged. From the speech, which can be heard here:

“I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff. We start with Atlas Shrugged…”

” But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism…”

“It’s so important that we go back to our roots to look at Ayn Rand’s vision, her writings, to see what our girding, under-grounding principles are. I always go back to, you know, Francisco d’Anconia’s speech on money when I think about monetary policy. And then I go to the 64-page John Galt speech, you know, on the radio at the end, and go back to a lot of other things that she did, to try and make sure that I can check my premises so that I know that what I’m believing and doing and advancing are square with the key principles of individualism…”

Francisco d’Anconia and John Galt are characters in Atlas Shrugged.

It seems as though Ryan is rejecting Objectivism due to its atheistic bent. Ayn Rand described Objectivism as a purely rationalist philosophy, and was outspokenly scornful of religion. Considering the large base of Republican voters who are religious, it is no surprise that Ryan is distancing himself from what appear to have been the beliefs that motivated him to become involved in politics.

(via ABC News)

Mayoral Candidate Has Facebook Account Hacked

Danny Brown — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:57:17 +0000

Justin Michael is like many online users. He has a Twitter account and a Facebook account, as well as his own website.

He’s passionate about new technology and social media/networking and what it can do for you, personally and professionally.

Justin is also running for Mayor of Santa Barbara in the upcoming November 3 election. He’s using these social tools – Facebook especially – to help spread his political message, as well as his philanthropical one (Justin’s campaign message is “Humanitarian first, politician second”).

It seems a natural thing to do, when you see how much social media and online networks helped the Obama presidential campaign.

And it would be – if Justin wasn’t the victim of a cyber criminal who has stolen his identity on Facebook. Not just the fake account “fun” that Twitter suffers from – Justin’s legitimate Facebook account has been closed due to the actions of the cyber criminal.

Here are just some of the events so far:

Justin’s original Facebook profile cloned.
Account starts sending weird spam to friends and supporters.
Account starts to get flagged by cyber criminal so people believe real Justin is impostor.
Legitimate Facebook account deleted.
Spam attacks start on Justin’s Facebook political page.
Calls Facebook Palo Alto office and is advised to speak to cyber crimes division.
Files police report.

Justin’s tried talking to the person behind these attacks. The responses from the fake Justin Michael account show that the hacker isn’t too bothered about the legal ramifications. He’ll simply keep changing IP addresses each time the one he’s using is tracked.

The reasons behind the attacks aren’t clear. Justin suspects who the cyber criminal is. Maybe it’s politically charged? In one of the message exchanges on Facebook, Justin is advised that if he removes his Internet presence (MySpace, Twitter, Facebook) and reverts to traditional campaigning, his harasser will remove the fake accounts.

Whatever the reasoning, it’s another sad example of how vulnerable our identities are on social networks. It’s too easy to set up an account and impersonate a person or business. All that’s needed is a basic email account and some knowledge of the person or brand involved.

Sure, there are ways that you can protect yourself – brand monitoring, alerts and observant friends and colleagues being just some of the methods. But these will only alert you after the event. By then, the damage can be irreparable.

What about the social networks in question? Can they be more stringent in their account activation process? Possibly. But how do you know the initial account isn’t fake to begin with? And that you’re subsequently blocking the real person or brand from coming on to your network to try and limit damage control?

Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any immediate and easy answers. For social networks. For cyber crime. For people like Justin Michael. For you, for me.

Social networking is the ultimate connection platform. The question is, are people connecting with you or someone else?

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Compete: Meetup.com Helps Ron Paul Campaign

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:51:54 +0000

The rabid fan base of supporters for Paul’s Presidential nomination run have made use of the Internet, particularly Meetup, to aid the candidate.

The idea of the Internet being the great equalizer for grass roots efforts taking on established, powerful entities appeals to people with a broad range of interests. We have seen the non-stop buzz for Paul’s campaign as the latest evidence of this.

According to analytics firm Compete, Paul supporters have demonstrated how effective online tools can be in assisting in organizing events and fundraising.

Compete’s Matt Pace said the campaign’s use of Meetup.com offered a "case study" on turning online activism into offline action. Paul’s 82,000+ Meetup members held nearly 21,000 events to build support and raise funds for him.

Compete measures a metric they call Candidate FaceTime to determine how much time a candidate receives in front of people online. It looks at the total hours voters spend with a candidate on the Internet each month.

As might be expected, Paul tops the list, as people spent over 252,000 hours with him in November 2007. Another Republican candidate, Mike Huckabee, surged to second place after a viral video featuring him and Chuck Norris grabbed over 1.2 million views since its debut.

"Huckabee is the only candidate, other than Paul, whose supporters are making heavy use of Meetup.com to rally support," said Pace.

CNN’s Election 2008 poll shows Huckabee’s offline momentum matching his online fame. He ranked behind only Rudy Giuliani in CNN’s latest poll. Paul rated sixth among Republican nominees.

Digg Unearths Presidential Candidate Tracking

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:16:45 +0000

Users of Digg can keep an eye on how candidates (or presumably their campaigns) interact with stories appearing on the social media site.

It’s not impossible to be friends with Ron Paul and Barack Obama. For people on Digg, a new feature arrived to enable such disparate friendships to co-exist happily through primary season.

On the Digg the Candidates election site, many of the candidates have agreed to participate on the site. Hillary Clinton is currently a notable exception, especially considering her visits to Silicon Valley, including a trip to Google.

Digg’s Daniel Burka discussed the new page at Digg the Blog:

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Voters Look Online For Candidate Information

Mike Sachoff — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 22:18:33 +0000

An average of around 30 percent of U.S. adult Internet users say they will watch online video news to learn about the 2008 presidential candidates, according to a survey conducted by Synovate for ClipBlast.

"These findings unquestionably affirm the rise of the video Web in public life," said Gary Baker, CEO of ClipBlast!. "What’s more, we believe that online video is engaging new audiences and drawing new [and] otherwise disaffected or disinterested viewers."

An average of 21 percent of respondents said they would watch debates online, and an average of 7 percent said they would visit video bloggers for information.

Traditional media will benefit too. The Television Advertising Bureau projects that spot TV advertising spending will grow about 15 percent in 2008, largely because of ads for the elections and the Olympic Games.

Over 8 in 10 respondents to the ClipBlast study said they would get their information about the candidates from TV and radio. Newspapers and magazines were cited by 63 percent of likely voters.

In a separate study of U.S. adult Internet users by BurstMedia, 25 percent of respondents considered the Internet the best source for information on the candidate’s positions. Twenty-one percent cited TV, 17 percent said newspapers and 6 percent favored radio.

Presidential Candidate Thompson Draws Traffic

Mike Sachoff — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:20:35 +0000

Newly declared Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson had more visitors to his Web site than any of the other candidates according to Hitwise for the week ending September 8, 2007.

Presidential Candidate Thompson Draws Traffic

Fred08.com received 34 percent of U.S. visits among the entire presidential candidate Web sites for that week. Visitors to Fred Thompson’s site were primarily male (65 %) and older (40% being 55 or older). Of all traffic to his site, 10 percent of it came from Tennessee online users where he was Senator.

Other presidential candidates who sites did well were Democratic candidate Barack Obama who’s site received 13 percent of U.S. visits for last week, the second most visits for all candidates. Close behind Obama’s Web site was Republican candidate Ron Paul’s Web site which received 12 percent of visits.

The traffic from social networking sites including MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, increased 205 percent to all the candidate Web sites in August 2007 compared to January 2007. Ron Paul received the most traffic from social networks, followed by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

"The online focus of the last presidential election was all about blogs and their effectiveness in communicating with potential voters," said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise.

"In the 2008 Presidential election, the Internet’s role is changing from a one way communication channel to a two-way conversation enabled by social networking."

Mitt Romney – Jumpcut Candidate Remix

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:41:20 +0000

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has teamed with Yahoo on an ad-creation contest for his campaign.

Mitt Romney – Jumpcut Candidate Remix

Jumpcut, the video editing site Yahoo picked up last September, will host the Team Mitt contest. The promotion runs through September 17th.

“Governor Mitt Romney wants you to make his campaign

Hitwise To Scrutinize Election 2008

Mike Sachoff — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:13:34 +0000

If you are a serious political junkie, then life just got a little better, as Hitwise has launched a new Election 2008 Data Center that offers online usage data about the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

The new feature to the Hitwise Data Center measures which candidates are the most visited online and which candidates receive the highest volume of searches. The sample of Hitwise data is available to the public.

The top Republican candidate 2008 Web sites for the week ending August 4, 2007 were Ron Paul with a 44 percent share of the market, followed by Mitt Romney with 16 percent and Rudy Giuliani with 11 percent.

The most popular Democratic candidate 2008 Web sites for the same time period were Barack Obama with a 40 percent market share, trailing was Hilary Clinton at 24 percent and John Edwards with 18 percent.

The Hitwise Election 2008 data is based on online usage and search behavior of over 10 million U.S. Internet users who interact with more than 1 million Web sites across 160 industry categories. The data updates every Tuesday.

There are nine categories that the Hitwise Election 2008 Data Center cover including Top Presidential Candidate 2008 Web sites, the Top Democratic and Republican 2008 Web sites, the Top 10 Presidential Candidate Search Terms, Top 10 National Political Web sites, Top 10 National Political Search Terms, Fast Moving National Political Web sites, Candidate of the Month and Election 2008 Blog Articles.

"As the Internet continues to evolve as a major communications channel for candidates and a platform for the public to research issues, we are delighted to share insights on how American Internet users react to political campaigns and policies online as the election unfolds," said Tessa Court, chief marketing officer, Hitwise

Search Isn’t Finding Candidate Stands On Issues

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:18:04 +0000

Though it is estimated 42 percent of voters use the Internet to find information about Presidential candidates, those voters are not being served as well as they could be.

Search Isn’t Finding Candidate Stands On Issues

Only television has a broader reach with voters than the Internet, yet the people who would be President have been missing out on both paid and organic search. Voters, particularly the 18-34 demographic that uses the Internet more than newspapers, want more from their candidates.

Research by iCrossing presented in their ‘How America Searches: Election ’08′ report found that candidates have yet to find the best way to present their stand on issues online. People have turned to traditional news sites and social media sites far more often than to the sites run by candidate campaigns.

In particular, iCrossing found that issues matter to voters, but the candidates are not responding. Their research found nearly all candidates ranking poorly for issue-based search visibility, despite trends indicating a desire to find that information.

During May 2007, searchers sought information on a number of issues. The top five were the war in Iraq, gas prices, health care, global warming, and the war on terror. When people search for candidates, the most frequent reason involved finding their stances on issues.

That interest isn’t being rewarded, according to the report:

iCrossing found all key candidates ranking in natural search results for their own names, which is to be expected. The surprise is that very few of the candidates are visible in natural search for issue-based terms or other candidates’ names.

Issue-based content is really the key to a robust natural search engine optimization strategy for 2008 presidential candidates (based on the volume of searches for and interest in political issues), and right now the visibility for candidates on issue-based terms (all referenced in the appendix of this document) is minimal at best.

Out of 126 terms, iCrossing found only two major candidates visible in natural search (each for one term):

• Obama ranked on the 3rd page of MSN for Iraq • Clinton ranked on the 2nd page of MSN for DNC

It’s easy enough to find a candidate by name, as iCrossing noted, and from there get to a website soliciting contributions for those White House hopefuls. Searching for what they might do when they get there, and a lot of voters are searching first, has been less effective than it could be.

WordPress Blogging Pipeline & Projections

Andrew Wee — Wed, 09 May 2007 14:16:20 +0000

One of the WordPress development team, Ryan Born, noted in his post WordPress 2.2 Release Candidate 1 will not include a tagging feature, the next version could include a comprehensive taxonomy framework which could open up the field for interesting plugins.

The year has been an interesting one for WordPress bloggers with the release of about 5 major and incremental upgrades since the start of the year.

It’s interesting to see WordPress grow from more a GNU General Public License hobbist project, to a comprehensive solution that corporates are increasingly embracing.

The fact that new WordPress versions currently do or will eventually include native functions like:

Email functions like (phpMailer)

Tagging (which helps out the information sorting and relevance process in the age of info overload)

Widgets (to expand its functions from it’s base text/graphics-information Content Management System publishing origins)

XML-RPC APIs for otherwise static “Pages” as distinguished from the dynamic “Post” counterparts

Further ATOM feed and API support for increased content distribution syndication

These initiatives give WordPress a big step up from other more Web1.0 corporate-oriented blogging platforms.

And ultimately it’s about choice. If you choose to do a cotton candy blog featuring Youtube videos you can do it just as easily as disseminating information on service uptimes and kernel updates via a corporate blog.

Even if your favorite features like tags aren’t natively supported in WordPress now, you can easily add the functions by installing the appropriate plugin. The techset is figuring out the next big thing too.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed to see native support for audio and video content. We might see it sooner than we think.

Also check out:

WordPress 2.2 features

WordPress 2.2 milestones

WordPress Dev team’s Dougal WordPress 2.2 post

Lorelle on WordPress: WordPress 2.2 Delay

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