He's introduced the "Internet Freedom Act", which would block the FCC's rulemaking process. He says the rules would create "onerous federal regulation", and constitute a "government takeover" that would stifle innovation.

"Today I'm pleased to introduce the Internet Freedom Act of 2009 that will keep the Internet free from government control and regulation," McCain said. "It will allow for continued innovation that will in turn create more high-paying jobs for the millions of Americans who are out of work or seeking new employment. Keeping businesses free from oppressive regulations is the best stimulus for the current economy."

I'm trying to keep politics out of this, but apparently his view of "Internet Freedom" refers to big business freedom, not Joe public (or Joe the plummer). It's strange, because I always thought that thriving competition was the best way to boost jobs and protect us consumers. Apparently not.

Lest we forget: Mac or PC? "Neither, I am an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get." His words, not mine. Even if you don't agree with the FCC, is this really the right guy to oppose them? [Computerworld]

I'm not suggesting you have to use Twitter—or know what Twitter is—to make sound judgments as a leader of the free world. It's not about being pro-net neutrality, either. These things are trivial. It's the long view—can someone who doesn't know how to read a newspaper online by himself truly comprehend just how connected the world is? (How can someone who can't read newspapers online function at all when they cease to be printed on paper?)

How can the techno-illiterate appreciate that technology is both the cause and the cure for our bruised economy, from the globally connected financial crises at hand to America's potential economic revitalization through a charge into green energy systems that spur innovation, create jobs and help to shatter our dependence on oil? Temporarily cheaper gas is a not a means to economics growth—and we will run out in our lifetime. US entrepreneurship is driven by technology and innovation, and it's key to maintaining our superpower status. A green energy—i.e., technology—economy would reboot all of that.

Technology constantly redefines the way we wage war, but it also aims to assuage the global food crisis. It will heal sick people who couldn't be cured before better. Hell, it's what will make flights finally arrive on time. The person at the wheel should know how to use a GPS—and Google, online newspapers, maybe even a smartphone.

That's a small list, but there's a big point. No, I'm not naïve enough to think this will change anyone's mind—in fact I hope your decision is not made so lightly that it possibly could. But I wanted to be clear: The future of this country, on many fronts, is tightly tied up with technology and what we do with it. I don't think it will ever again be possible to vote for someone who doesn't understand that. So why do it now?

[Left Image: Giz Photoshop Contest; Center Image: Thirty30 Photography; Right Image: Gary He]

When you go to the polls next Tuesday, no matter who you vote for, you will be motivated by words, images and videos you picked up online. There are some voters who don't use the internet to gather information about candidates, but that number is dwindling, while the number of ways candidates can reach you online is growing. Sometimes 2004 is referred to as the first "internet" presidential election, but back then, social networking was in its infancy, YouTube was just a glimmer in some kids' eyes, and Live Xboxes were few and far between. This year, candidates used text messages, videogames, satellite broadcasting and a highly contagious amount of viral video to broadcast platforms, hear from constituents and raise cash. This year we got the first real look at how races will run in the net age, titans clashing bit for bit over your very soul.

You might automatically think that the more youth-friendly Obama whomped McCain on the internet, but it's not totally true. According to the Pew Research Center, Obama and his fellow Democrats did reach a wider audience over the internet—In April, 65% of likely Obama voters got election news online compared with 56% of McCain's supporters—but following the VP picks and conventions, as we near the general election, both numbers have presumably skyrocketed. Obama also raised more money online, with liberal democrats three times more likely to donate than their conservative republican counterparts. But the scrappier McCain campaign managed to do some tooth-and-nail fighting using Web 2.0 magic themselves. Here's how both contenders wriggled their way into the series of tubes:

BARACK OBAMA
When Barack Obama announced his intention to run for president in January 2007, he was a virtual unknown on the national stage. Barely six months later, with just two debates under his belt, he was a viral sensation. Perhaps above all else, he has Obama Girl to thank for this bump. The video for her song "I Got A Crush...On Obama" was an instant online hit, rebroadcast all over television, written about in newspapers, spawning several spinoffs and currently sits on YouTube with over 10 million views. Countless Obama-centric sites flourished, as his name became synonymous with traffic, but it was the campaign itself that made the biggest contribution to his grassroots online popularity, showing its tech chops and putting them to good use.

Since the beginning, Obama's campaign has relied on fundraising through online donations. Instead of courting bigwigs with deep pockets, the campaign reports that it has received an average contribution of $86 per donor from 3.1 million people—online. Using the internet for donations has proven successful in an age where even grandmas buy stuff online, but the Obama campaign has broken records for most money raised in a day and most in a month. Obama even raised enough to opt out of the public financing every presidential candidate—including McCain—has received since 1976.

Obama's people have spent this cash in the most technologically advanced ways they could think up:
• Buying space within Xbox games
• Renting entire satellite TV channels
• Building iPhone apps
• Sending (and receiving) text messages
• Reaching out to supporters on Facebook
• Streaming video of campaign events
• Broadcasting the candidate's whereabouts on a heavily followed Twitter feed

Though the campaign obviously also allocates plenty of dollars to the usual TV ads and mailers, it's even got a website that's garnered praise for its accessible design. Perhaps drunk on their success there, the Obama people even launched a second site, FightTheSmears.com, to respond to attacks levied the candidate's way, which has been used effectively to shut down false criticism from the opposition.

But Obama wasn't totally guilt-free when it came to smearing his opponent. While his use of technology has allowed him to compete in states that Democrats wouldn't think they could before, he has made missteps. The most blatantly techy thing thing the Obama campaign put out was an ad blasting McCain for lack of computer know-how. The ad fell flat on it's face and was even criticized by his running mate, Joe Biden.

On another tech front, Obama received flack for—until very recently—accepting donations without proof of citizenship. This has led to some of the shadier ones getting refunded.

JOHN MCCAIN
John McCain wasn't able to get his fundraising game to Obama's level, and did accept the public financing and the $84 million cap that goes along with it. But perhaps that thrift has inspired McCain's more tech-savvy people to use technology effectively—and efficiently.

The McCain campaign has used YouTube as its most effective advertising weapon. The site has acted as a video press-release machine, where McCain's people will post an ad that runs a few times in a cheap media market, but due to some inflammatory or interesting attribute, gets blasted on cable news channels all day, for free. This approach was especially effective in the summer when the race was tighter. Obama, strangely, never counter-attacked with a similar strategy.

McCain hired Matt Lira, a top Republican "eGuru", to run his blog, which receives a good amount of attention and is well updated. Besides the blog, the most notable thing to come out of his website was a pencil for students with a grammatical error. McCain's Twitter feed only went up in September, and has been updated a paltry 25 times—that's one tenth of Obama's tweets.

The McCain camp has also taken to using some old-school tech known as robocalling, the same thing that George Bush used to tank his candidacy in 2000. Today, though, people recording those robocalls have uploaded them to blogs and other sites, so that they robocall strategy has a tendency to backfire. turning into rhetorical fodder for left-leaning sites.

Unpaid Republican supporters have been the brightest spots in McCain's thrifty march to the White House. Andy Martin is the man responsible for the wildest email rumor ever, a thread suggesting that Barack Obama was a Muslim who concealed his religion. That lie, originated in 2004, found a life of its own this year, spreading across the farthest corners of the internet. Somehow, the reddest people in the reddest states all heard it. This inadvertent campaign tactic (strategy?) shows the power of e-mail, though it too is dangerous power: The ugliest moment of the 2008 race was when McCain had to directly confront a supporter and explain to her that Obama was not an Arab, but rather a "good family man."

Some go so far as to say McCain's vice presidential pick came directly from a suggestion by a young, influential right-wing blogger Adam Brickley, whose site's title, "Draft Sarah Palin for Vice President" is cheerfully out of date. (Cuz, like, she was drafted.) The blog now serves as an unofficial but "endorsed" McCain-Palin site and news service. On the flipside, it's also true that Palin was vetted more thoroughly by bloggers than by the campaign itself, thanks to stockpiles of information easily available over the internet.

Still, like Obama's tasteless attack ad said, McCain is an admitted technophobe, not accessing e-mail or any website besides the Drudge Report. Maybe if he—and his campaign—expanded their horizons, they could have figured out how to do even better playing the internet game. Of course, many of McCain's supporters are offline, and the election's not until Tuesday.

Waybright actually seems like a really stand-up guy on people being able to vote the way they want, and details some of the measures they're taking to make sure that happens. The machines have confirmation screens, and they'll have techs at the polling places, just in case problems do pop up. It looks like an easy enough fix too—the same machine, when properly calibrated, should work just fine. So just be sure to double check your vote on Tuesday, wherever and however you're voting. [Video the Vote]

Some officials blamed it on user error for not touching the screens properly—Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright said that 400 people voted early using Election Systems & Software's machines without any problems at all. Oh and:

"I hate the fact that stories like this are printed. It makes everybody get scared. That is not good for anybody. Where the fault is, I don't know and the voter doesn't know. There needs to be good communication between the voters and the poll workers."

After being contacted by the Secretary of State's office, though, they've agreed to re-calibrate the machines. Ones of the counties with touchscreen wonkiness, Putnam, will actually use an optical scan machine with a full-size paper ballot on election day—the touchscreens are just for early voting, so it hopefully won't be an issue.

The takeaway is that whoever you're voting for, wherever you're doing it, whatever you're using, double-check it to make sure it was properly recorded before you walk out of the booth. If it's not, call the poll person over, it's what they're there for. Of course, if you see voting machines doing anything particularly crazy, be sure to let us know about it. [Wired]

While Schmidt says the Goog is officially neutral, the WSJ notes that "Congress is considering measures that could have an adverse impact on Google's business" like "rules that would allow telecommunications companies to charge different prices for different levels of Internet service," i.e., net non-neutrality. Obama has said that he is pro net-neutrality, which would benefit Google. Perhaps not-so-surprisingly, Google employees have donated nearly half a million dollars to Obama's campaign, and a mere $20,600 to John McCain as of Aug. 31, according to the Journal (which would likely make them among Obama's top corporate donors, since Verizon employees' $155,000 for McCain placed among his top 20 corporate donors ever).

Tuesday is the first day Obama and Schmidt hit the trail together, but some speculate he's been doing some campaigning of his own with Obama for a while—to be Obama's first tech chief:

Asked at a speech this month whether he would consider entering the political arena, the 53-year-old Mr. Schmidt shouted, "H-, no!" But some tech and media executives speculate that he might desire a role in an Obama administration, possibly the chief technology officer post Sen. Obama has said he would create.

I have to say, there are few more qualified than Google's CEO, especially since Bill Gates dreams beyond tech now, and Steve Jobs is perfectly happy within his own little world at Apple. Who would be your dream tech chief be? [WSJ via Valleywag, Image: Real Dan Lyons]

Yes, the temporary towers currently in place are response to a Secret Service request, though notably Service spokesman Eric Zahren told the Post in the original story that "this was something that was being addressed before we were out there," and that they could have used existing cell coverage in the area. The critical point, though, is that before the Secret Service tower happened, as Green notes, "whatever its motivation, Verizon plainly went to considerable effort and expense to pursue building a permanent tower on the McCains’ ranch," per Cindy McCain's original efforts, and it was "long underway until just recently."

The 200-page environmental assessment alone was an ordeal, with Verizon hiring consultants, sub-contractors, archaeologists and contacting over a dozen Indian tribes, not to mention all of the appropriate government agencies. It's clear Verizon went through a lot of trouble here.

So whether or not the McCains wanted special treatment, it looks like they got it—even Verizon's map of the sparse area (above) clearly denotes "McCain's cabin," so they definitely knew who it was for. And if the permanent tower "made no business sense," as Verizon spokesman Jeff Nelson put it, why did they go through all of that trouble in the first place? Wouldn't they have known how desolate it was before pouring lots of money and time into a bunch of regulatory crap? I guess that's one of the perks of having power—you don't have to ask for favors, you just get them.

Update: AT&T's official story on their tower at the McCain ranch is that they're giving "temporary accommodations to AT&T customers involved in or covering the campaign of a presidential nominee," which seems more on the up and up than Verizon's story. [The Atlantic]

P.S. If you have evidence T-Mobile put a tower on top of Obama's house, let us know.

McCain is a senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which happens to oversee the FCC, which regulates the telecom industry—like AT&T and Verizon. Conflict of interest much? And it's not like McCain and Verizon are strangers to each other, anyway. Five of his campaign officials, including manager Rick Davis, have been soul-sucking lobbyists in Washington. A former staffer, Robert Fisher, is now Verizon's in-house lobbyist. Verizon chief Ivan G. Seidenberg, Fisher and other Verizon lobbyists have plowed over $1.3 million into McCain's campaign, and Verizon employees are one of its top 20 corporate donors over the course of McCain's career.

The AT&T situation is as bad, or worse: AT&T lobbyists have raised $2.3 million for McCain, and their employees are his no. 3 corporate donors of all time. His Senate chief of staff Mark Buse, and a whole bunch of others have been AT&T lobbyists.

There's even more in the Post's exclusive story, it's worth checking out if you wanna find out how to get Verizon and AT&T to build personal cell towers at your house if your reception sucks (fair warning, it helps to be a presidential nominee though). [Washington Post]

Update: Verizon has issued a statement about the Washington Post story:

The Washington Post story regarding Verizon providing a cell tower to the McCain Ranch is wrong. Verizon received a request from Mrs. McCain, but declined. Subsequent to that, the Secret Service made a legitimate request for a temporary tower for its work and Verizon complied as is required by our contract with the agency. The Secret Service request, made on May 28, specifically said it needed the service urgently and requested that Verizon “explore every possible means of providing an alternative cellular or data communications source in the referenced area and provide any short term implementation of any type as a solution in the interim.”

•Hulu is our most favoritest pick because it's easy to get to and you can watch Colbert or Tina Fey or Future President Petrelli when it gets dull

•Current's Hack the Debate is our second favorite, a fantastic mashup of the live debate broadcast overlaid with Twitter messages in real-time, so you can see how everyone else is reacting (or jeering, knowing the Twitter mob)

•C-SPAN has a live stream and their debate hub is super-comprehensive and Web 2.0tastic but it looks like you need the Windows Media Player plugin if you're using Firefox (you do for their other videos)

•CNN has a bunch of extra coverage like a debate preview (as if you don't already know what they're gonna say) though you might need their plugin, like you do for other videos of theirs

•MSNBC seems to have a pretty snazzy player with a nice feature set and big, beautiful widescreen video—getting around their site sucks though, so use our direct link to make your life easier

•Foxnews—I tried to find a feed on their site, I really did. Send it in and I'll add it if you feel that strongly about it

•CBS

Or you could skip the debate entirely and base your vote on these zany Photoshops of John McCain and Barack Obama (coming later this week). Sounds like a plan to me. [Election Coverage on Giz]

Clips should be between 30 seconds and three minutes. More importantly, some states have fairly strict laws about filming in or around polling places, so if you get too Michael Moore-y, you might get to document your first cavity search (though that would be more appropriate for RedTube). The Citizen Media Law Project has more details about how to stay out of jail while being a web 2.0 do-gooding oversharer. Or you could just be safe and stick to Twitter to tell everyone who you voted for. [AZ Star, AP, Image: Flickr/Refractionless]

[Obama] voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects, including, by the way, $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois.

I'm already tired of hearing these guys talk, but that caught my ear. A $3 million projector? What does that even look like? Gearlog did some digging and found out that the appropriation was requested by the planetarium to replace an awesome (but obsolete) 40-year old Zeiss Mark VI star projector with a newer model (pictured above).

Anyone with a planetarium in town will remember the Mark VI from school field trips: the 2.5 ton, 1350 watt giant (pictured below) can project a dynamic image of thousands of stars and constellations onto the ceiling of a massive dome for the viewing pleasure of a reclined audience. Its replacement would have been much more impressive, had it been granted: the Universarium Model IX, which is a $3.5 million astronomical projection unit capable of accurately representing a night sky in full color and motion. The proposal never got anywhere for a variety of reasons, but politics aside, that's not exactly your school's transparency projector. You can check out the spec sheet at Zeiss's official site. Model IX photo from Picassa user Lito [Gearlog, NYT]

If you're not near a TV or computer tonight Verizon's VCAST service will be streaming CBS's feed live. Of course, there are streams from CBS's regular site, CNN and C-SPAN, who has probably the best and most forward-thinking—for Web 2.0 fanatics anyway—online coverage around. Hulu's Election '08 hub also aggregates everything from speeches to punditry to funnies from The Daily Show, Colbert, Conan and more if you want to flip something more engaging during a particularly snoozy stretch of the debate. Or if your politics appetite is just insatiable, there's Obama's maybe gaming-changing iPhone app if you want to put your fingers in your ears whenever McCain speaks.

Where else are you guys planning to peep the debate? [paid content]

To make matters worse for McCain, Thompson points out that France, the scourge of Republicans and veterans alike, now has broadband that's four times as fast—and half the price!

Admittedly, there's a bit of fuzzy matching required to join McCain's vehement opposition to the 1996 Telecommuncations Act and his subsequent statutory castration of its powers with the slow increase of our cable modem's actual download speed. However, there's no disputing the fact that McCain has done nothing to grow broadband penetration. (Even that comedic allegation that he helped invent the BlackBerry doesn't do anything to support any kind of breaching of the digital divide.)

In fairness to anyone who thinks we're reporting this lopsidedly, we have previously shared reports about Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden's opposition to net-neutrality legislation, and his Hollywood-backed war against citizen-pirates. And the reason we haven't discussed Sarah Palin's stance is simple—she's a clean slate, baby. Not a word on any of this.

But as you might imagine, Thompson uses his main point—McCain's consistent and ongoing hampering of the kinds of technological innovation that are commonplace in other countries—as a good reason to repeat what we have also recorded on Giz, that Barack Obama's attention to these matters will not be so blas&#233, that in fact he has interesting ideas, not just that America needs a cabinet-level CTO or that there should be true neutrality on the internet, but that, for instance, rural-phone subsidies are used to provide rural broadband (which would basically includes free phone service anyway).

Thompson makes the point that Silicon Valley has gone O, saying that 555 employees of Google have donated to Obama, compared to 26 for McCain. He says the market freedom that McCain wants is "freedom for his country to fall further and further behind as AT&T and the other telecom leviathans sit back, ignoring your customer service calls and just watching the $90 monthly checks roll in." That's harsh, Nick, but it also sounds pretty damn accurate. [Washington Monthly]

The NYT points out that both candidates agree that global warming exists, though McCain would like to see carbon emissions drop by 60% while Obama aims for 80%. Similarly, both agree that genetics research is promising but frightening in its implications, assuring to fight workplace discrimination based upon one's genetic code and continue the genetic modification of crops.

The biggest difference I noted was McCain's interest in space. It's one of the few responses where McCain's opinion is lengthier and more policy specific than Obama's, assuring continued NASA funding and naming space exploration as a "top priority" while citing project goals like shortening space shuttle redesign turnaround. Obama feels it's more important to delegate the responsibility/policy, opting to reinstate a White House Space Council.

But there's lots of interesting stuff we haven't even mentioned here. [Science Debate 2008 and NYT]

First thought was Thrillary, then someone reminded me she was on a different side of the fence than me. Still, we might get the anti-Obama vote wrapped up that way. Young and dynamic, someone said, then I started panicking. Trouble is, I don't know anyone young and dynamic. I mean, 50 years ago, when I was young and dynamic, I knew young and dynamic people. But, sheesh, now? Hell, I couldn't tell you. I tried using Google, but typing "Dear Mr Google, please could you help me choose a veep, please?" didn't really work. So I thought I should turn to those young and dynamic readers of Gizmodo, perhaps they could help me find the Toto to my Dorothy.

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[Telegraph]