“On behalf of my colleagues, I want to thank John Lawrence for his 38 years of service to the House of Representatives,” said Pelosi. “Few staff members have ever had the impact that John has had on so many laws that have been enacted in his years in my office as speaker and as democratic leader, and with Chairman George Miller. I wish John and Deborah well and will always value their friendship.”

Elshami currently serves as communications director for Pelosi. In the past he has served as a deputy communications director for Senator Dick Durbin and deputy chief of staff and communications for congresswoman Jan Schakowsky. He was also once the deputy press secretary for Senator Barbara Boxer, after beginning his career in congress in the Senate mailroom.

“For the past six years, Nadeam has been a key communications strategist, spokesperson and senior advisor,” said Leader Pelosi. “I know my colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus will benefit from his leadership as he transitions to Chief of Staff.”

Drew Hammill, currently deputy communications director and press secretary for Pelosi, will be taking over Elshami’s role as communications director. In addition, Pelosi announced that Diane Dewhirst, a senior advisor to the Democratic leader, has been promoted to the role of deputy chief of staff.

White hasn’t made it a secret that she favors President Obama, and now Change.org is hosting an online petition to get her to introduce him at the Democratic National Convention. After Clint Eastwood’s speech at the RNC–which didn’t go over so well–the Dems are looking for someone unassuming yet whip-smart, funny yet kind, with a good reputation in the celebrity world. Betty White fits that bill perfectly.

The petition states:

Clint Eastwood, the Republican’s “mystery guest” at the RNC, gave a bad name to older Americans everywhere with his absurd and awkward-to-watch introduction of Governor Romney.

Take action today if you want to see a real [old] Hollywood icon get a political introduction right!

With almost 6,000 signatures, the site just needs about 1,500 more. And as some of you may remember, White was drafted to host “Saturday Night Live” in 2010 because of a petition very similar to this one. The power of the web.

Thus far, Priorities USA Action has raised $20.4 million, which is eclipsed by the Romney-friendly Restore Our Future, which has raked in over $81.5 million from Republican donators. Just last month, Priorities managed to snag $6.1 million in contributions, whereas Restore enjoyed $20 million in donations. Of course, Obama’s official campaign has raised more cash than Romney’s, so everything will probably balance out when all is said and done.

Freeman, of course, is of the belief that Obama has done a fantastic job during his four years as president. He added, “In return, he is the target of hundreds of millions of dollars from right-wing sources. I am proud to lend my voice – and support – to those who defend him.”

The “Dark Knight Rises” actor is sure to ruffle some Republican feathers with his contribution. As you can tell from the Twitter reactions embedded below, some are downright irritated by his actions. You can sample some of their responses to this story by venturing below.

Follow @BuzzFeedAndrew

Andrew Kaczynski
@BuzzFeedAndrew

Morgan Freeman gives one million dollars to Obama’s SuperPAC. They would have been happy if he just agreed to narrate the ads.

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
4 hours ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

Follow @erichmcelroy

Erich McElroy
@erichmcelroy

“Morgan Freeman donates $1 million to Obama super PAC. http://t.co/uP1AHnJm” Obama will win now. He’s got God of his side!

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
15 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

Follow @lina2477

lina
@lina2477

Morgan Freeman donates 1mil to Obama group..seriously! Where are those occupy people and why aren’t they complaining? Hmmm

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1 minute ago via Twitter for Android · powered by @socialditto

Follow @macebabe

maci oiler
@macebabe

if Morgan Freeman donated to a pro-Obama super PAC does that make him racist too?

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1 hour ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

Follow @gary662003

Gary
@gary662003

Morgan Freeman donated 1 million to pro Obama super PAC. One more celebrity I’ll not be watching on the tube.

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
1 hour ago via Twitter for Android · powered by @socialditto

The 2012 campaign has seen basically the same thing. Mostly due to the fantastic job the Democratic party did last time to build up their good social media karma, they are still riding high. As you can see from the infographic below, even with all of the Republican Presidential hopefuls put together, they don’t even make a dent into what is an enormous social media advantage for Obama.

Thanks to Overdrive Interactive for this great Infographic!

This kind of forward thinking has allowed the Obama reelection people to focus on promoting their ideals and beliefs, and not spending time to build a social media presence. This is where the ‘Life of Julia‘ slideshow comes in. In something that resembles a Google product release video, ‘Life of Julia’ follows a fictional woman who, throughout different stages of her life, is benefitting from the entitlements given to her by President Barack Obama.

“Julia starts her own web business. She qualifies for a Small Business Administration loan, giving her the money she needs to invest in her business. President Obama’s tax cuts for small businesses like Julia’s help her to get started. She’s able to hire employees, creating new jobs in her town and helping to grow the local economy.” This kind of political showcase is how and where the Democrats have a chance at getting Obama reelected. The Republicans will have a huge unknown factor unless they can do something to show that they know how to run a social media campaign that is effective.

Dani Gilbert entered the post back in 2006, after she was appointed as a Jewish outreach liaison for the Democratic party and a staffer for DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Gilbert apologized for her attempt at humor yesterday on Twitter:

She has removed the post from her public Facebook and DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse says she is valued member of the team:

“Danni has excelled in her role handling Jewish issues for the Chair in her Congressional office and was brought on here part time to do outreach to the Jewish Community.”

“Like many in the age of social media, she had things posted on her Facebook page that she now regrets and which she has apologized for. Her employment both in the Chair’s Congressional office and at the DNC is a testament to her knowledge and professionalism and nothing more – and no smear driven by the right wing noise machine is going to impact her status as a trusted member of this team.”

The Democratic party is not pleased when their associates provide material that can be distorted and exploited by people. The fiasco led some people to call Democrats the party of the KKK on Facebook.

Do you think that people should be judged for what they put on Facebook over six years ago? After all, she was just a kid at the time trying to have a little fun with her friends.

Shouldn’t we be happy that she promoted the love of money and availability of condoms? Isn’t that what capitalism is all about?

In 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office announced that previously estimated figures “could not be substantiated,” and the folks at Backgroundcheck.org have put together some figures:

Via: Background Check Resource

Some key figures – In 2008, pirated content accounted for 41% of all installed PC software, which translated to a loss of $51 billion. Movie piracy costs movie studios roughly $25 billion a year.

Interestingly, men and women are equally prone to piracy, and the study shows that Democrats tend to steal more digital music than Republicans, at 35% and 24% respectively. Likewise, it has been reported that voters are more concerned with online censorship than piracy regardless.

Due to the breakneck recycle speed of the political news cycle, trying to stay informed on what’s happening in the world of politics can be nauseating. You’re probably always going to be me missing something somewhere. However aggregating your own collection of news sources doesn’t have to be so stupefying since Google has made it a little easier for voters and otherwise interested parties to attempt to stay abreast of the latest news concerning topics, candidates, and election results. Google Politics & Elections, a new wing of the Google News service, collects articles covering breaking stories related to politics in the United States. With the service, readers can isolate topics to certain candidates (right now it’s a bunch of Republican primary candidates and the current POTUS, Barack Obama) as well as issues related to categories like the economy, social issues, and healthcare. From the post on Google’s official blog:

The site enables voters, journalists and campaigns to quickly sort through election info by popularity, race or issues. People can also check out the Trends Dashboard to take the web’s real-time political pulse by comparing candidates’ YouTube video views, search traffic and Google News mentions. Campaign staffers, advocates and everyday citizens can utilize our tools and features to reach, engage and inspire voters.

What might be most interesting for anyone who makes a hobby out of political speculation there is a function on the Politics & Elections homepage where you can track trends related to each specific candidate. For instance, given the latest surge of Rick Santorum out of the bowels of obscurity and into a legitimate third place (the fact that third place is now a consummation devoutly to be wished is kind of absurd, really), readers can actually see the rise in Google News Mentions of Santorum in the past week. It’s a fun tool as an observer, but given how tumultuous this primary cycle has been for all Republican candidates I wouldn’t recommend placing any bets on the reliability of any search trends as proof of sustainable electability.

The Google Politics & Elections also employs the Hangouts tools for journalists who are personally covering the election, perhaps as an effort to promote sodality and collaboration but I anticipate it will most likely be used as an online watering hole where everybody commiserates and decompresses. You can add the Politics & Elections tool to your Google+ account, as well, if you’re interested in participating or watching any of the activity in the Hangouts. Additionally, you can follow news stories as they develop by adding this group to your Circles. The news service will also cover international politics as well as the home-grown brews but given that we are officially in the election year, expect most of the news to be dominated by the election of the next POTUS.

Since today kicks off the election of the Republican primaries with the Iowa caucus, following these services might be a good idea if any of you are hoping to stay informed as the results start to come in about which candidate will claim victory in Iowa this evening.

The congressman has, for better or worse, regularly been identified as an agent of financial reform and was co-author of the Dodd-Frank Act, a bill that sought to provide greater consumer protection as well implement financial regulations in order to any prevent future economic turmoil.

In addition from Frank’s legacy to reform financial practices in the United States, he will also be remembered as one of the first and most visible gay figures to have been involved in congressional politics.

Across the Twitterscape, first reactions ranged from adulation and lament:

to irreverence and outright relief:

One amusing piece of trivia that’s been making the retweeting rounds on Twitter is the singular post from an account alleged to belong to Rep. Frank (the account is not verified, so its verity is debatable):

Should that first and final tweet ever be validated, our congressional model of Oscar Wilde has taken his final bow from the absurd theater of politics.

The government officially shut down last night at midnight after a week of hard-fought negotiations. Republicans and Democrats have been in disagreement for months about the budget – specifically how to close the $5 billion budget deficit.

According to the Washington Post, the state battle mirrored the budget battle on the national front – Republicans putting the emphasis on cutting spending on certain programs and Democrats attempting to raise the taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Minnesotans.

This isn’t the first government shutdown in recent memory. In 2005, the government shutdown under then Governor Tim Pawlenty. That one lasted 8 days and resulted in the temporary layoff of about 9,000 workers. Pawlenty is now a candidate for President.

During this government shutdown, only necessary government functions will remain up and running. This includes public safety like the police and fire departments, welfare programs, state facilities like prisons, and IT management of governmental systems.

Like I noted earlier, the state parks will be closed this weekend. This is estimated to cost the state $12 million in revenue for each week the government remains shutdown.

The state government was close to a deal, but Democratic Governor Mark Dayton could not approve the GOP’s cuts to the health and human services department. Earlier in the negotiations the Republicans proposed a budget that included some layoffs for state workers and teachers. It also included some non-budgetary items such as a vote ID bill and abortion restrictions. The Democrats refused that proposal.

So, with the two parties in a deadlock, the government is now shutdown. Twitter is reacting strongly to the news, with opinions coming from all sides of the political spectrum. Here are a series of tweets blaming the GOP for the shutdown –

Some on Twitter point to Democratic ideals as the cause of Minnesota’s budget problem –

Many have just decided to take a crack at the state of Minnesota –

Conveniently the same top 3 candidates in both parties are both considered the top 3 candidates, so I’m going to stick with the same in my new analysis (Democrats: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards.

Republicans: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John McCain). In my previous post I looked at a few points that haven’t changed, like age of domain and the choice of domain URL, so refer to that post for that analysis.

This analysis looks at basic SEO metrics and compares data from January 2008 to March 2007. A few new measurements are given following these, including PPC branding and a new metric called IndexRank. And for fun we’ll come up with the winners from both parties in terms of their effectiveness in SEO.

Backlinks

Backlinks, or inbound links, are how many sites link to your site.

These figures are from Yahoo.

Barack Obama leads in backlinks by about 150,000 backlinks. John Edwards started with having almost 6 times less than Hillary and beats her by 80,000 backlinks.

In the Republican field, John McCain started off with very few (comparatively) backlinks and still ends with 100,000 less than Mitt Romney. Romney leads Rudy by about 50,000 links.

Technorati Links

This is used as a measure of popularity in the blogosphere world. The more the better.

Obama again leads on Technorati links and John Edwards and Clinton keep their same position, with Hillary having the most percentage increase.
Mitt Romney started well ahead of both Rudy and John (2.5 X more and 5 X more respectively) and still leads in Technorati links. Rudy surpasses John McCain with a larger increase in links.

Alexa Rank

I know Alexa isn’t perfect, but it’s an interesting comparison. The lower the number, “the better”. The number represents the rank of the website out of the top websites on the Internet in terms of traffic. The most visited site on the Internet is ranked 1. A zero (0) means either an error or not enough traffic to rank.

All of the Democratic candidates have seen a drop in their Alexa Rank since March 2007, with John Edwards taking the worst drop. Barack Obama leads with the best rank.

All of the Republican candidates see a better Alexa ranking, although anything was better than Rudy’s rank in March 2007. Mitt Romney leads with the best rank.

Page Strength

All candidates made significant strides, as would be expected. PageStrength is not a measurement of how good the pages are, but of how well-known, cited, visited, and linked to a site is.

John Edwards has the highest PageStrength while Barack jumped the most, moving from third to second.
John McCain made the most stride but also started as the lowest in PageStrength. Both McCain and Romney end up with the same PageStrength, both beating out Hillary’s PageStrength.

Indexed Pages

Google and Yahoo both give a different number of pages in their index, so I’ll show both, Google/Yahoo.

These numbers are all over the place, it’s hard to say who reports more accurately (Google vs. Yahoo). However, there’s no doubt that Obama has created tons of content (probably a lot of user-generated content).

PPC Branding

I’m not going to recap the PPC from March 2007 because the keywords I looked at were only used by 2 of the candidates. This time I chose to look at the use of PPC for their own name, which I feel is a reflection of their PPC campaign. If you’re not running ads for your brand (your name) you’re probably not running much of a PPC campaign.

Barack Obama – Ads by Obama and Rudy
Hillary Clinton – Ad by Rudy
John Edwards – Ad by Rudy
Rudy Giuliani – Ad by Rudy
Mitt Romney – Ads by Rudy and Mike Huckabee
John McCain – Ads by McCain and Rudy

Rudy clearly comes out a winner, but keep in mind this is only a snapshot. If you follow these links at different times of day and different geographical locations you may see very different results. These are coming from the West Coast.

IndexRank – a measurement of content freshness

This metric is from 0-10 where 10 is the highest. The higher the number the better the content growth, freshness, and the more indexed the site is by Google.

Hillary Clinton – 8
Barack Obama – 8
John Edwards – 5
Mitt Romney – 9
John McCain – 8
Rudy Giuliani – 6

Mitt Romney wins out with a 9 above even the Democrats. Hillary and Obama are both at 8 and John Edwards lags way behind the whole group with a 5. Rudy lags behind the Republican candidates with a 6.

The Winners

Back in March 2007 there was no clear SEO winner in either party. After 10 months of campaigning, you can really see a lot of changes in all the candidates, some more than others.

In the Democratic party, Barack Obama clearly trumps both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in the growth of their site and the pursuit in SEO.

In the Republican party, its not as clear but Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani both have made great strides, but I think Mitt Romney’s advantage in traffic, IndexRank, and Technorati links gives him an edge over Giuliani.

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