The Web on the Candidates

• Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films are continuing to dig into Rudy Giuliani. After Giuliani (and Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson) skipped a debate on black issues in Baltimore due to “scheduling conflicts,” Brave New Films produced a video investigating his whereabouts. According to the video, Giuliani was in California, meeting with former governor Pete Wilson and Bo Derek, among others. In other words, he was raising money. It’s been viewed more than 40,000 times on YouTube.

• Another video is making the rounds as well, this one attacking Mitt Romney for his comments about investments in Iran. It pits Romney's recent statements calling for investors to pull out any investments in Iran against data from his own investments. Apparently, Romney has more than $250,000 invested in Iran himself. Is it me, or is Romney more susceptible to these illustrations of hypocrisy than other candidates?

• Remember those missing John Edwards promo videos we wrote about last week? They’ve shown up on YouTube. They were uploaded by YouTube user “MissingVideos,” who adds the comment, “Sometimes things go missing from the Internet. Usually they pop back up,” to his or her profile. The videos are promoting Edwards’ One America Committee, the PAC he ran in 2006 before he launched his campaign for president. There’s nothing racy or shocking about them, and it’s unclear why they disappeared, and what interest people may have in re-posting them.

• A Donkey and an Elephant Walk into a Bar. Nope, it’s a not a bad joke, it’s YASN. Yep, yet another social network, this one for liberals looking to connect, blow off steam, share political ideas, create fantasy ballots, and participate in meaningless polls. In theory, I guess this site serves some sort of niche, but in a glutted market with way too many social networking startups, why not just make a Facebook app?

The Candidates on the Web

• Ron Paul led an-end-of-quarter fundraising drive last week that, as we reported then, netted $300,000 in one day. Now, the campaign has received over $1 million in that drive and expects to beat it’s second-quarter number, about $2.4 million. As befits his “Internet candidate” status, Paul raised most of the money online, tracking it using an updating Howard Dean-bat—like thermometer graphic. Despite comparisons to the Dean campaign, however, Donklephant points out that Paul hasn’t come close to raising Dean-like money. “By this time in 2003 Dean had raised over $25 million. Paul isn’t going to come anywhere close to that and the money is bigger this time around.”

• Newt Gingrich has announced that he will not be running for president in 2008. The official line is that he can’t be the head of his America Solutions PAC and run at the same time, though word on the street is that he simply doesn’t have the money to compete. I’m disappointed; he would have been the first candidate to have made an official appearance in Second Life (and to have witnessed a digital streaker), and seems to have a better handle on the role of technology in politics than any candidate.

In Case You Missed It…

Check out the fourth episode of techPresidentTV and let us know what you think; we’re getting there.

A day after Chris Dodd sent supporters a stripped-down, informal-seeming email, Barack Obama did the same, though Obama’s included a link to embedded video. In the comments, “thegreathal” calls this “unacceptable… You don’t fire off an embedded video through your Blackberry in a 2-minute airport stop.”

Newt Gingrich held a event for his American Solutions PAC in Second Life, and Nancy Scola was there to report on the action.

A Correction

In Friday’s Digest we incorrectly attributed a quote about the MySpace/MTV dialogue to Feministing’s Jessica Valenti; it was written by that site’s Jen Moseley.