New to my blog? You may want to think about subscribing to be notified of new posts. Thanks for visiting!
Thank God for that. After five months of primaries and seventeen months of campaigning, the Democratic nomination is finally decided after Obama passed the number of delegates needed to win. It's been in the bag for months now but Hillary wasn't about to give in (and still hasn't), so everyone has been forced to rehash and speculate about mindless details just to make news while tiptoeing around the elephant in the room - the fact that Obama has already had it won for months.
Hoo-frickin-ray. Now the presidential campaign begins proper. Obama is celebrating with a bit of a tease to John McCain by holding a rally in Minneapolis-St Paul, where the Republicans will have their convention in August.
George W. Bush, at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem, suggested that some Democrats were acting in the same way some Western leaders did when they appeased Hitler in the runup to World War II.
"As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
In what is widely being seen as an attack on Barack Obama's comments that he would sit down and hold talks with the leaders of Iran, North Korea and Cuba rather than simply refusing to speak to them, George Bush has entered the fray.
The remarks have provoked an immediate and angry response from Democrats and a wholehearted endorsement from John McCain.
Erstwhile Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who dropped out of the race in early February, has officially endorsed Barack Obama's presidential run.
Edwards also ran for president in 2004 but was beaten to the Democratic nomination by John Kerry, who later lost to George W. Bush. He has long been a strong advocate of social justice issues and involved in development of real policy. While he was in the race it put pressure on both Obama and Clinton to define their policies and positions in more detail; since Edwards dropped out both Obama and Clinton have borrowed from several key planks of his campaign pitch.
John Edwards was my guy. It was never likely that he would win, but he had the best policies and outlook in my opinion. His endorsement of Obama is critical and leaves open the possibility I spoke hopefully about in February - a joint Obama/Edwards ticket in November. Edwards as Vice President would go some way to dissolving concerns about Obama's elitism and lack of appeal among small town rural voters, a constituency among who Edwards, from North Carolina, is both popular and respected.
Two months later, after the seemingly unending media frenzy over Barack Obama's controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright, there has still been no media pressure put on John McCain to explain his links to fringe lunatic John Hagee and others giving their support to the McCain campaign.
Barack Obama has (finally) been all but crowned as Democratic presidential nominee in the wake of a great result in the North Carolina and Indiana primaries and is now starting to focus his attention on the battle against John McCain in the lead-up to the November general election.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer interviewed Barack Obama yesterday - watch it here. Blitzer says Obama seems at ease.
In 2001, the average Australian watched 163 minutes of TV per day. In 2006 the average was 144 minutes.
67% of Australians with internet access are using broadband (4.3 million subscribers)
The average Australian spends 22.1 minutes online per day, has 6.5 internet sessions per week and and views 41 pages per session.
35.4% of Australians use the internet more than 8 times a week.
The top 5 internet activities in order of popularity are email, internet banking, general browsing, paying bills and reading news.
TV viewers in the crucial age 18-39 bracket have fallen 17% from 2001-2006.
39% of Australians watch less than 2 hours of TV per day or none at all.
TV advertising profits fell 31.3% from 2005-2006.
Overall media advertising spend is increasing, driven largely by online spending which is up 61.5% per year. Radio advertising is also increasing slightly while TV advertising is falling.
There are 21.26 million mobile phone services active in Australia as of June 30, 2007, meaning for the first time there are more mobile phones than people in Australia.
Those of you with a casual interest in how the US presidential campaign is going may be interested in watching this excerpt from CNN's daily politics podcast. It gives a good, easy-to-understand overview of where everybody is at and how things are playing out so far.
