Apparently stupid technology tricks aren't limited to editing Wikipedia

As a break from the subject on Peach Pundit of assigning blame to who may or may not have edited Karen Handel's Wikipedia account, let's dive into the topic of fundraising emails for a second.

In the race to get out the last fundraising emails before the June 30 reporting deadline, it seems one campaign for Georgia Governor felt their candidate's blast emails might get a better response if they looked more personal and what could look more personal than an email that seemed like it was came from the candidate's personal IPhone rather than some anonymous email server?

What's more, a few hours after Karen Handel's supporters were received an email reminding them of the June 30 deadline, supposedly sent from Handel's personal Iphone, supporters of Tennessee candidate for Governor, Bill Haslam, were receiving a strikingly similar email from Haslam's personal Blackberry.

Both emails start off the same way, "In case you missed it, I wanted to forward along the email I sent last week as a quick reminder..."

Handel's goes on to say, "that today is the day I need your help to keep pushing forward in my race for Governor."

Haslam's finishes a little different saying, "-today is the day that I need you to help me in our campaign to improve the great state of Tennessee."

The next line is once again very similar for both candidates. Handel's reads, "At midnight tomorrow, we face the first fundraising deadline of the campaign, and we are just short of the goals we set to show my opponents what they are really up against." while Haslam's reads, "At midnight tonight, we must report our first fundraising numbers of the campaign, and we are just short of the goals we set to keep our edge."

You can read the emails side by side here:



While it is not unusual for a fundraising mail piece to be stamped "personal and confidential" with the hope of recipient opening it, there is little reason to put under the typed email signature "iphone" or "blackberry" except to deceive the person who opens the email into thinking that the email was personally sent to them by the candidate rather than generated from the email bank of some marketing consultant.

The stamp on the envelope is to get someone to open a very expensive direct mail piece that includes cost for postage, mailhousing, the mailing list, the printing, etc.

Here, you have to have opened and read most of the email before you get to "iphone" or "blackberry."

On one hand, the Handel campaign wants us to believe that their candidate is so tech savvy that she sends her personal fundraising emails from her iphone while, with little to no proof, her campaign surrogates accuse Oxendine staffers of editing their candidate's Wikipedia profile.

While I won't say Handel's people could very well have invented the so called Wikipedia scandal to distract Oxendine's campaign during the last minute fundraising drive, I will say that there is only one campaign that has been a bit deceptive with their online activities, and as this hard evidence shows, it's not the Oxendine, Deal, Johnson, Scott or McBerry campaigns.

Georgia Off My Mind

Maybe it is because the heat index is over 100, maybe it’s because I have been huddled inside for most of the day trying to stay out of the aforementioned heat, or maybe it’s because this is too crazy not to pass up for a post, but recent news has made me wonder if there will ever be a similar push in our state as there is right now in Rhode Island. In case you didn't hear through the non-stop news about Michael Jackson and Cap and Trade, on Thursday the Rhode Island legislature voted 70-3 to allow the citizens of the state decided whether or not to officially change the state's name.

For those who don't know, the official name for the state is the "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." Our smallest state has the nation's longest state name. The decision on whether to drop the "and Providence Plantations" part is because of the word "plantation." According to some in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, that word conjures up images of slavery and needs to go.

Slavery was allowed for a number of years in Rhode Island and Rhode Island captains made fortunes in the Triangle Trade, but the word "plantation" did not necessarily mean a farm which used slave labor. In fact, the settlement called Providence Plantations was named by Roger Williams who was a crusader against both indentured servitude and slavery.

However, the bill's sponsor, Rep. Joseph Almeida, said, "It's high time for us to recognize that slavery happened on plantations in Rhode Island and decide that we don't want that chapter of our history to be a proud part of our name."

I bring this up here because with controversies over the state flag mostly settled here in Georgia, could the next move for some to be a push to change the state's name? It's hard not to say that our state's very name does not bring to mind the state's past history as a slave state or the role Georgia played in the Confederacy and the Civil War (a.k.a. the War of Northern Aggression). More than that, we are named after King George II, a supporter of slavery.

If Rhode Island can change its name because of the image the word "plantation" brings to mind, then why couldn't Georgia be next?

And if the name were to be changed, what would it be changed to?

This post has also been published on PeachPundit.com

Save the Environment; Cap and Trade Congress!

If you want to fight global warming (if there is such a thing), then my advice is Cap and Trade Congress.

Last night's narrow vote to send the Cap and Trade bill to the Senate got me thinking about the danger Congress is, not just to our economy, but to the environment.

The average human body produces about 190 watts of energy per hour while awake and moving around, as you would expect 435 members of Congress would be. By the way, by awake I mean physically, not mentally which would eliminate the majority of Congress who never are mentally awake. If you're someone like Barney Frank (above), then you may produce even more than that!

That means Congress, not counting the staffers, lobbyists and support staff, produce 82,650 watts of energy per hour or 82.65 kilowatts per hour! That is 282,013.506 BTUs per hour. That's like burning about 16 pounds of coal every hour, though coal probably produces a lot less pollution than Congress. Given an average 8 hour day, that is over 20,000 pounds of coal in a typical year for Congress.

Additionally, the average person produces about 900 grams of CO2 per day. Since Congressmen talk a lot more, let's say the probably produce, in theory, another 100 grams compared to the average person. That would be 435 kilograms, once again not counting the more than 5,000 staffers and other capital employees that take care of the just the House. That is almost 1/2 of a metric ton!

That is almost as much as driving an average sized car with 21 mpg fuel efficiency 800 MILES!

The House was in session 118 days in 2008, but being an election year, we should probably guess that this year the House will be in session closer to 164 days like they were in 2007. If that's the case, our House members will add 71.34 METRIC TONS of CO2 into the atmosphere!

That's like driving that same car 10,810 miles per month or 12,9720 per year. The "hot air" created by the House of Representatives would require the annual planting of 357 trees to offset.

That's almost one tree per day or more than two for each day the House is in session.

Add to the fact that most members of the House have to travel long distances from their home districts to Washington, D.C. San Francisco, CA, the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is 2,800 miles from DC. If she flies back home just once a month, she adds, by herself, 391 metric tons of CO2. If you figure that California has 53 members of Congress in the House, and if they make the round trip to DC and back only once a month, and they all travel about the same number of miles, then California alone, the most liberal and most "green" state, puts 20,700 metric tons of CO2 in the air a year!

You would have to drive 10,000 gas guzzling SUVs more than 26 miles per day every day of the year to equal the CO2 that just the California delegation produces. To offset the carbon, you would need to plant MORE THAN 1,000 TREES PER DAY!

None of these figures calculate the thousands of House employees, the energy needed to heat and cool the Congress and their offices, foreign "fact finding" missions, private cars with drivers, private planes, lights, computers, phone systems, cell phones, and everything else.

Rather than having Congress tell us how we are going to live to save the world from Global Warming through Cap and Trade, let's cap off Congress and trade the members. Not only will it help the environment, but it will save millions of Americans their sanity.