No comment necessary:

from www.thedailyshow.com posted with vodpod

Nerds of various shapes and sizes have a variety of choices when it comes to making gut-level choices about whom to vote for in the 2008 presidential election. For example, if your vote lies with the candidate whose website is both standards-compliant and performant, you’d have already checked out Yahoo’s coverage and cast your vote for Mike Gravel.

Until now, typography nerds have been left out in the cold. That’s why I was excited to see a few of my favorite blogs pander this increasingly crucial demographic. In this spirit, I share these links with you:

• Scott Dadich, Wired’s creative director, nearly climaxes over Obama’s logo on the Economist podcast
• The designers of Obama’s typeface (it’s called Gotham) review Hillary and McCain’s logos:
  
• A bonus feature on the DVD for Helvetica (yes, there is a documentary) documents the origins of Gotham:
  

This stuff excites me way more than I should freely admit.

This is for Phil.

YES WE CAN HAS

If you watched Hillary’s New Hampshire victory speech you probably noticed the demographic makeup of the crowd behind her. Apparently 95% of all of her support in the state was from 18-24 year olds, which makes me wonder how the exit polls got the demos so wrong.

Packing the crowd with young’ns was a big change from Iowa, when she spoke in front of Madeline Albright, Bill Clinton, Wesley Clark, and other bigwigs. But the crowd probably should have timed their applause to sync with the prestaged applause lines written into Hillary’s speech:

At 3:08 – “We are facing a moment of so many big challenges…” *applause*
At 3:54 – “Young people who can’t afford to go to college to pursue their dreams…” *wild applause*

To me, it sounds like the crowd is applauding the fact that college is unavailable to so many, or that the world is getting increasingly screwed up. It’s probably not a good idea to paint yourself as the candidate who succeeds (joyously!) when the system goes down the tubes.

Especially when the conventional wisdom is both that you are a super-ambitious candidate and that an economic recession will help your party.

Recently I signed up for a friendly bet as to who would win each primary in the first month of the season. An online version of the pool (with Iowa results!) is available here:

http://bettingpool.matthew-steele.com:8080/bettingpool/

Check it out.

Update: I just realized the table looks completely broken in Internet Explorer.  You should have been using another browser anyway, because seriously it’s 2008.

To me, the most frightening idea behind the Ron Paul candidacy is the number of conspiracy theorists and lunatics he’s attracted. I’ve blogged about this before.

Paul’s defenders (including Andrew Sullivan) that every candidate attracts some form of crazy, and that they shouldn’t be held responsible for the passions of those on the fringes. Since he’s running a grassroots Internet campaign, let the nutjobs congregate as they may, as they are irrelevant to the candidate at hand.

I’ve always found that argument suspect; as conspiracy theorists tend to congregate around someone for a reason. Tyler Cowen points out the conspiratorial nature of Paul’s policies here:

…I am discomforted by his overall anti-intellectual demeanor. He strikes me as the kind of person who has a natural attraction to conspiracy theories… I don’t doubt Paul’s sincerity, but I would like to know his theory of why most economists — even market-oriented ones — don’t agree with him on monetary policy. I suspect he thinks he knows some secret that others do not.

The (libertarian) GMU economics professor closes with this: “A good rule of thumb is not to get too excited about any candidate whose actual election would make the Dow lose thousands of points.”

I’m a little skeptical of the news that all the cool kids in town are becoming libertarians:

Card-carrying Libertarians are few and far between. Yet, seen as the guiding philosophy of a bloc of dissatisfied, independent-minded voters whose views align with Republicans on economics and Democrats on social issues, libertarianism is palpably gathering steam.

This seems like one of those “well, since Drew Carey and the South Park guys are libertarians, we’ve got to write a story about it” articles with no empirical evidence to back it up. Even a friggin’ Cato Institute-funded study found that less than 1 in 5 Americans adhere to libertarian principles.

I did like this quote:

Mr. Gillespie chuckles at the dark images that talk of libertarianism inevitably conjures up. “We’re the Sith Lords of American politics,” he says, referring to the “Star Wars” baddies. “We can show up in any group. We’re both terrifying and devilishly attractive.”

Guilty on the latter, I’m afraid.

You may have seen this video making the rounds (hat tip Mark):

All things considered, it’s pretty cool, though as political fan videos go, the bar’s been set pretty low. You’re successful if the video you produce doesn’t actively harm the prospects of your candidate. I’d need to check with pollsters, but I’m fairly sure Sam Brownback dropped out of the race solely because of this video:

A common criticism of Ron Paul is that his supporters are rabidly and fanatically conspiratorial:

Try to engage the Paulistas on any subject and within 5 minutes they are talking about international bankers, the Trilateral Commission and the CFR. And if you encourage them just a little they’ll be talking about the Jews and their control of the US government, and before you know it they’re off to the races. Freemasons, Illuminati, the guy on the grassy knoll…..its all there.

At least the lyrics in the Ron Paul rap avoid that… right?

They got aircraft carriers in position to strike Iran, moving nuclear-armed planes to launch Armageddon in the middle-east. And if Cheney, and the Pentagon generals and the bankers that control him don’t do it, the next president will.

Uh…

You gotta think beyond Iraq, but most of these candidates, including all of the major media darlings are globalist banker hand-puppet leaches off the major international crime syndicate, dealing the oil, dealing drugs, dealing the weapons, but you know what I’m saying Ron Paul is the real deal.

Not all of Ron Paul’s supporters are paranoid, but he sure does seem to bring them out of the woodwork.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go evade the black helicopters.