What position do you give the man who has already served as Congressman, Ambassador to the United Nations, Secretary of Energy, and Governor? Apparently Secretary of Commerce.

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to be commerce secretary, adding a prominent Hispanic and one-time Democratic rival to his expanding Cabinet.

Obama planned to announce the nomination after Thanksgiving, according to a Democratic official familiar with the discussions. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the negotiations and did so on condition of anonymity.

I have been getting the same questions over and over in recent days: What exactly does the Secretary of Commerce do? The definition from Wikipedia -- that the department it runs is "concerned with business and industry" -- doesn't do much to clear up the question. Here's a better answer from the AP:

The department promotes American business in America and abroad. It also issues patents and trademarks and protects intellectual property.

According to their own website, the current secretary, Carlos Gutierrez, has about 38,000 workers and an almost $7 billion budget.

The Commerce Department also crafts telecommunication and technology policy.

I don't know too much about Richardson's stances and experience vis a vis the promotion of American business and technology, but considering the economic growth in New Mexico during his time as the state's Governor -- particularly the growth in the fields of tourism and entertainment -- as well as his background in working with the bureaucracy (in both the state level and the federal level), this comes off as a solid pick.

On This Week this morning, George Will tried to advance Village conservative orthodoxy from "the New Deal didn't work" to the idea that Obama's cabinet signals an abandonment of the progressive movement. While sure there is some skepticism of some of Obama's cabinet selections on the left, the fact is that, as Arianna Huffington made clear in response of George Will, this idea that governing as a "centrist" and governing as a progressive are mutually exclusive is actually rather antiquated.

This is so untrue. Just watch or listen to Obama's radio address yesterday. That was a very very profoundly different plan for this country than we've heard for a long time. I  mean these were massive public investments. This was not a small government small deficit plan. And so the idea that we're living in a center-right country is refuted by all the facts. The center has shifted. What used to be progressive positions on global warming, on Iraq, on corporate responsibility, on health care are now solidly mainstream. We are still a divided country but it is two-thirds one-third, it is no longer fifty-fifty.

As Markos said after Obama gave in on FISA: if only he had run to the center, then he would have been where we are.

Watch Obama's weekly address below:

At Talk Left I saw a reference to the Gender Analyzer, which uses artificial intelligence to "determine if a homepage is written by a man or a woman." You enter the address, and in an instant it scans the text, giving you a prediction. When I checked my blog home, Bleeding Heartland, I got this:

We think http://www.bleedingheartland.com is written by a man (79%).

How about the home page of frequent MyDD diarist canadian gal?

We think http://kickinitwithcg.blogspot.com/ is written by a man (88%).

The computer program hedged its bets with Iowa blogger Lynda Waddington's Essential Estrogen:

We guess http://www.essentialestrogen.com/ is written by a man (59%), however it's quite gender neutral.

I admit I assumed Digby was a man for years, but that was mainly because of the illustration of a man shouting on the front page of Hullaballoo. Without scanning images, the Gender Analyzer makes the same false assumption:

We think http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/ is written by a man (74%).

Hilzoy's place, Obsidian Wings, yields a similar result:

We think http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_ wings/ is written by a man (84%).

In fact, I've been unable to find any political blog by a woman that the analyzer can recognize as such:

We think http://iddybudjournal.blogspot.com/ is written by a man (81%).

 

We think http://www.feministing.com/ is written by a man (60%).

We have strong indicators that http://leftylane.blogspot.com/ is written by a man (91%).

BlogHer does register as being written by a woman, probably because of the posts about shopping, food and fashion.

Bleeding Heartland commenter ragbrai08 looked up the details and assumptions underlying the Gender Analyzer. You can find the pdf link to the paper "Effects of Age and Gender on Blogging" at the bottom of her comment.

The analyzer mostly ignores the content of blog posts, except for certain key words. Computer programming and gaming words, along with some words relating to politics and the economy, are tagged as "male." Female words include "shopping," "cute," "pink," "freaked," and "husband." The analyzer also looks at elements such as sentence structure ("male bloggers use more articles and prepositions") and the number of hyperlinks (male bloggers use more).

So, just about any blog with a bunch of hyperlinks and political words will be deemed a man's blog by the Gender Analyzer. I have to agree with ragbrai08's assessment:

The only thing this algorithm is telling you is that the political blogosphere is dominated by male authors.

It would be interesting for some researcher to study a large sample of political blogs only, to see if politically-oriented male and female bloggers write differently or use hyperlinks differently. I suspect that a content analysis of political blogs would reveal a lot of overlap but also significant differences in the subjects covered by men and women.

Please share any relevant thoughts and opinions in the comments.

Speaking of gender issues, if you missed this in Natasha Chart's linkfest yesterday, go read about life as a female reporter.

- Upper management has always kept hope alive that profits could expand infinitely, but longstanding opposition to centralized pensions and healthcare has brought down industry after industry.

- What to expect next year from government? Even if card check becomes the law, employees can still have secret ballots once a union has been formed. Meet the new head of the Office of Management and Budget, and apparently a fan of using national health care to save American industry.

- Sustainability is the key to the next economy.

- More gay people need the beatdown to earn equal rights, says Huckabee.

- Conservatives objectively pro-death.

- Saturday editorial cartoons and a profile in shame of six Senate Republicans who hate the jobless.

- The new justification for racism isn't inherent inferiority, but that some people's cultures are scary. Though the culture that worries me is the one that's strained international law to the point that piracy is back in a big way.

I got some interesting feedback from Obama supporters in the primary, earlier this year, over why they were supporting Obama over Clinton. My opinion, blogged much throughout the year, was that they were basically the same, as far as policy goes, and my only reason for choosing Clinton was because I was pretty sure she'd win, and Obama, not so much. Of course, when the markets melted down in September, and 90% of Americans said the nation was heading in the wrong direction by October, there was really very little that Obama could have done to lose the election, or for McCain to win the election.

Now, throughout the year, I was told that I didn't understand how Obama was different-- that he was really progressive and would change our foreign policy radically... and so on. It amazed me that, despite every indication from how Obama had voted and said about Iraq, Afghanistan and the mid-east, anti-war progressives believed differently. Well, reality is emerging:

My expecations of Obama are pretty much just what he is delivering. If Clinton had been the nominee, she would have chosen Obama as her VP, and we'd probably be seeing Biden as the SoS choice. Despite campaign projection from a lot of progressives that Obama was different in regards to foreign policy, these are centrist Democrats on such matters that are going to be in the White House. Anyone that didn't realize that was deceiving themselves:Well, Obama's foreign policy team is pretty status quo driven at the top, and it's tough to imagine that these progressives will be brought in at the mid-level, but if it happens it'd be good for the long-term. It'll be up to Senator John Kerry probably, as the Foreign Affairs chairman in the Senate, to push for deep governing changes.

All that said, I think the strongest progressive hope for Obama remains with more domestic concerns: universal healthcare, new energy priorities, fairer taxation, liberal judges. That's reason enough for Obama as President. But as far as foreign policy goes in the mid-east, expect more of the same in the short term, with the long term change still a possibility.

Update [2008-11-22 23:35:33 by Jerome Armstrong]: More of those hated Clintonites getting appointments:

"I think the new administration is off to a good start," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill. He's just glad to be getting Bush's numbers off his back.

Update [2008-11-23 0:51:13 by Jerome Armstrong]: Jane Hamsher has more thoughts on this, and her answer to it is spot on:

Another wildcard to consider in the MN Senate recount-- rejected absentee ballots:

So maybe 10,000 more? The Canvassing Board has to determine whether to review those ballots as well. I don't see how they can refuse.

Today's tally resulted in Coleman gaining 60 votes, while just 4% was added, going from 64% to 68% counted. At the same time, Coleman challenged 55 more votes today than Franken did, so that gain of 60 by Coleman is not surprising.

The total number of challenged ballots now stands at 1,982, but with the additional rejected absentee ballots included the topic:

If the Canvassing Board were to decide not to review the absentee ballots, it'd probably call into question the legitimacy of the recount process.

Bumped - Todd

In a new ad released today, Jim Martin responds to Saxby Chambliss' false, personal attacks on Martin's record protecting children.  The truth is that Jim Martin has always fought to protect children and families, because he knows what it's like to have a child come face-to-face with violent crime.  

"Becky"

Martin's daughter Becky was kidnapped when she was eight years old.  Fortunately she was let go, but Martin never forgot the way Becky trembled when she came face-to-face with her kidnapper in court. Over his 18-year tenure in the state legislature and during his service as Commissioner of Georgia's Department of Human Resources, Martin built a reputation as a leading advocate for children.

Kurt Weinsheimer of Spot Runner, Becki Donatelli and Rob Kubasko from the McCain campaign and Sam Graham-Felsen and Joe Rospars of the Obama campaign are speaking about the web and politics with Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin.

You should be able to watch the live stream of the panel HERE.

Rospars: Obama, Axelrod and Plouffe all got the importance of technology and mobilizing the grassroots. From day one, it was important that we had the website up on the day he announced his candidacy in Springfield. We put the website together in 10 days. [...]

Obama and Michelle kept saying "If we're going to be successful, it's going to have to be organic, bottom-up."

The beginning of the liveblog is below the fold...

--------------------------------

Rob Kubasko just said that early voting has rendered the old school "72 hours GOTV" machine that the Republican Party is known for completely obsolete. "This election was lost 3 weeks before election day. Now you need to put out your final argument a month out." True.

Rospars: The greatest use of Facebook we exploited were the applications. You can do all sorts of things. When people shared video or other content, when they clicked on an application, we could show them their friends in Iowa or their friends who could early vote starting today, and ask them to contact them.

Becki has been working in online politics since McCain's 2000 campaign, which Joe Trippi has said inspired him in 04.

Donatelli: In 2004, there were 2 lessons learned: Dean's meet-ups and Bush campaign's use of online tools to microtarget for the last 72 hour turnout machine. Our campaign probably took the wrong lesson from that. We spent way too much time speaking to the media. We should have used our technology to speak to supporters.

Ben: You've said you didn't invent technology so much as you perfected what was already out there. So what's next?

Rospars: We tried a lot of things. We were conservative about what we were willing to try. We had more than a million people registered for the first time online. There's a lot more to be done with that. Same with the online voter contact tools, to get people to knock on doors or make calls from home in a more systematic and efficient way. For example, 15% of all people who participated in the Iowa caucus looked up their caucus location on our website. Leading up the the general, when people looked up their precinct location, we also showed them contact info for 5 people who were in their same precinct to contact. If they're looking up where to vote, we're fairly sure they're going to vote. We needed to get them to take the next step.

Donatelli: I would like to see us do more 1 on 1 video, from the candidate directly to the people, as Sarkozy did.

Martin asked how you're going to reach the casual voter when TV is going to become more and more diminished as an influential medium.

Sam: Diverse video, which is what we tried to do.

Kubasko: Using mobile technology.