There have been many on the left who have been diligently trying to discredit the rapidly growing Tea Party Movement as nothing more than a few angry activists.

Well, I guess in terms of web traffic, these few angry activists are more energized than the ever-so-famous Barack Obama army.

What this link shows is the increase in traffic rank, as calculated by Alexa.com.

Of course, any computer geek will quickly rush in and discredit Alexa’s ranking system. However, if you look at some of the other metrics presented here, TaxDayTeaParty.com comes up strong in every category, bringing to question the real power of the post-election Obama machine.

For those of you who don’t follow this stuff regularly and may be confused, let me just walk you through the more important metrics.

While traffic rank is an interesting number to follow, most techies are more concerned with things like pageviews, as shown on the “pageview” tab here.

Now Alexa doesn’t provide you with the exact number pageviews, but instead displays the data as a percentage of overall online activity.

Even so, TaxDayTeaParty.com comes out strong again.

Using another metric, bounce rate, you can easily see how engaging a particular website is. Basically, bounce rate represents nothing more than a percentage of people who come to a certain page on a site and then leave without clicking to other internal links. This metric is important because if a site has content that isn’t relevant or interesting, they’ll leave.

Looking at the two sties, TaxDayTeaParty.com wins another round. Since this metric is based on a percentage of those who exit the site, it’s better to have a lower a number, which TaxDayTeaParty.com does, with a bounce rate of around 35% versus Obama’s 45%.

Yet they’re still trying to discredit this movement?

While I could easily stop there, I might as well finish this out by examining the “Time on Site” numbers.

This metric is self explanatory, it represents the average amount of time visitors spend browsing a particular website. If you’re a web developer, this is an important metric because the time spent on site will often reflect the quality of your sites content, structure, and interactivity.

So looking at the two sites, once again TaxDayTeaParty.com is the victor, with an average time on site of just under 3 minutes, versus Obama’s, which is right around 1 minute and 30 seconds.

While it’s easy to understand why TaxDayTeaParty.com is doing better than the Obama site at present, it’s important to note that in the weeks following the election, everyone was worried about what Obama was going to do with his “massive grassroots army.”

While he may still have a massive email list and a flashy website, in terms of measured attention, it looks like it’s become a model that can be (and is being) replicated by other organizations and movements successfully.

Just for kicks, here is how TaxDayTeaParty.com does against other sites:

TaxDayTeaParty.com vs. MoveOn.org

Winner: TaxDayTeaParty.com

TaxDayTeaParty.com vs. Democrats.org

Winner: TaxDayTeaParty.com

TaxDayTeaParty.com vs. DailyKos.com

Winner: DailyKos.com (for now)

Click here to view the embedded video.

From Politifact.com

Promise No. 234:Barack Obama Campaign Promise No. 234:

Allow five days of public comment before signing bills

To reduce bills rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them, Obama “will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.”

with corresponding video from CNN.com:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Was this just a slip up, or the first of many broken campaign promises?

To be honest, I don’t think there has ever been a politician who has kept all (or even most) of their campaign promises, so I wouldn’t expect anything different from President Obama.

It’s easy to be idealistic when you’re looking at the job of President as an outsider, but once you’re inside you realize the stark realities (both political and personal) that go along with the job. Even the most honest President is destine to be put in a position where they’ll have to change their positions simply due to the climate in Washington, often on multiple occasions.

This time, it looks like the objective (kidding) media executives at MSNBC have worked out a deal with Screenvision that will essentially grant the rights for MSNBC’s coverage to be aired in 27 theaters.

From THR.com:

President-elect Barack Obama is on his way to the big screen, thanks to a deal between MSNBC and Screenvision that will put the news channel’s inaugural coverage in 27 theaters around the country.

Free tickets are being handed out via MSNBC.com to see the inauguration and parade from 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m. ET at the 27 theaters run by 11 exhibitor partners in 21 markets. Midday Tuesday isn’t necessarily a big movie time, so it helps to fill the theater — and boost popcorn and soda sales — at a time when it’s not usually busy.

I think it’s quite clear that MSNBC will be the ‘Fox News’ of this administration.

While this is might rile some up, to be honest, I really don’t care. During the Bush years, we had Fox News as an outlet for our conservative-friendly news stories, and they didn’t tend to hide it.

I guess I’d rather see networks be open about their bias like MSNBC has been lately, then try and claim objectivity like they were doing before the primaries.

It was in this video that Manning provided all of us with one of the most memorable Obama accusations by  stating:

Obama is a mac daddy, Obama pimps black women and white women… you didn’t notice him till he brought out those big chested white women with their tight t-shirts and their short pants, that’s what a pimp does.

C’mon, you don’t get your campaign started with a big chested white woman, she must be a 54-D…. double D’s…. he put his name on two big 54-DD’s.

Obama… that’s the first place you saw it…. on two great big ole’ tits.

Anyway, Obama Girl (Amber Lee Ettinger) recently sat down with James Manning to discuss his claims:

Of all the things I’m going to miss from the 2008 campaigns, the top would have to be the great videos produced by Barely Political. Hopefully they’ll be able to keep producing new videos, even though political apathy is bound to set in after Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m not complaining, as I think that we got what we deserved. It’s time to rebuild and focus on ideas above platform and building from the bottom instead of the top.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I really hope reinvigorating the Black Panthers is what he meant:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Fight the power!

1. Exit polls have a much larger intrinsic margin for error than regular polls. This is because of what are known as cluster sampling techniques. Exit polls are not conducted at all precincts, but only at some fraction thereof. Although these precincts are selected at random and are supposed to be reflective of their states as a whole, this introduces another opportunity for error to occur (say, for instance, that a particular precinct has been canvassed especially heavily by one of the campaigns). This makes the margins for error somewhere between 50-90% higher than they would be for comparable telephone surveys.

2. Exit polls have consistently overstated the Democratic share of the vote. Many of you will recall this happening in 2004, when leaked exit polls suggested that John Kerry would have a much better day than he actually had. But this phenomenon was hardly unique to 2004. In 2000, for instance, exit polls had Al Gore winning states like Alabama and Georgia (!). If you go back and watch The War Room, you’ll find George Stephanopolous and James Carville gloating over exit polls showing Bill Clinton winning states like Indiana and Texas, which of course he did not win.

3. Exit polls were particularly bad in this year’s primaries. They overstated Barack Obama’s performance by an average of about 7 points.

4. Exit polls challenge the definition of a random sample. Although the exit polls have theoretically established procedures to collect a random sample — essentially, having the interviewer approach every nth person who leaves the polling place — in practice this is hard to execute at a busy polling place, particularly when the pollster may be standing many yards away from the polling place itself because of electioneering laws.

5. Democrats may be more likely to participate in exit polls. Related to items #1 and #4 above, Scott Rasmussen has found that Democrats supporters are more likely to agree to participate in exit polls, probably because they are more enthusiastic about this election.

6. Exit polls may have problems calibrating results from early voting. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, exit polls will attempt account for people who voted before election day in most (although not all) states by means of a random telephone sample of such voters. However, this requires the polling firms to guess at the ratio of early voters to regular ones, and sometimes they do not guess correctly. In Florida in 2000, for instance, there was a significant underestimation of the absentee vote, which that year was a substantially Republican vote, leading to an overestimation of Al Gore’s share of the vote, and contributing to the infamous miscall of the state.

7. Exit polls may also miss late voters. By “late” voters I mean persons who come to their polling place in the last couple of hours of the day, after the exit polls are out of the field. Although there is no clear consensus about which types of voters tend to vote later rather than earlier, this adds another way in which the sample may be nonrandom, particularly in precincts with long lines or extended voting hours.

8. “Leaked” exit poll results may not be the genuine article. Sometimes, sources like Matt Drudge and Jim Geraghty have gotten their hands on the actual exit polls collected by the network pools. At other times, they may be reporting data from “first-wave” exit polls, which contain extremely small sample sizes and are not calibrated for their demographics. And at other places on the Internet (though likely not from Gergahty and Drudge, who actually have reasonably good track records), you may see numbers that are completely fabricated.

9. A high-turnout election may make demographic weighting difficult. Just as regular, telephone polls are having difficulty this cycle estimating turnout demographics — will younger voters and minorities show up in greater numbers? — the same challenges await exit pollsters. Remember, an exit poll is not a definitive record of what happened at the polling place; it is at best a random sampling.

10. You’ll know the actual results soon enough anyway. Have patience, my friends, and consider yourselves lucky: in France, it is illegal to conduct a poll of any kind within 48 hours of the election. But exit polls are really more trouble than they’re worth, at least as a predictive tool. An independent panel created by CNN in the wake of the Florida disaster in 2000 recommended that the network completely ignore exit polls when calling particular states. I suggest that you do the same.

“… Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their career, by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing Demagogues, and ending Tyrants.”

- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #1

More than 220 years ago, a group of colonial leaders gathered in Philadelphia to construct a constitution for our young nation as it recently emerged out of a war of independence from Great Britain. Historians concur that these men exuded greatness. They were not only courageous to stand as rebels against an imperial government that gave them no representation in Parliament, but they were also men of great intellect. As Alexander Hamilton’s quote above reflects, these were men who were not only making history, but were well aware of history.

Our rising generation today is fortunate enough to stand on the shoulders of the many generations before us that built America. Of course, that “first generation” of founders was made up of such unique men, who were so intellectually equipped to put together perhaps the greatest document made by men, the U.S. Constitution. Our Constitution has endured the test of many tumultuous times. It now faces even graver threats from a government that is beginning to be ruled by men, not by laws, reversing the standard set by men like John Adams. Today, it has become commonplace for just five Supreme Court justices to overturn legislation and create new laws.

Perhaps the most unique element of the U.S. Constitution is the separation of powers. The branches of government were separated and each endowed with their own specific functions for particular reasons. If you need any proof, we urge you to consult The Federalist Papers, written by Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. These papers were created to make an argument to support the new federal constitution at a time when the young nation was only bounded by a very loose construction ordered by the weak Articles of Confederation. But these papers – all 85 of them – go further, and outline the expressed purpose of every article in the U.S. Constitution.

Since our founding, great Americans have risen in every generation, to serve in various offices and on many battlefields across the globe, to protect the vision that our founders had; the vision of what good government looks like; the vision that created the ideal free society. Our founders wanted us to pass on the office of the Presidency to men who best represented us as a people. As Hamilton put it in Federalist 69, “The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of the president will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” While Hamilton was referring to the importance of the electoral process, including the system of the Electoral College in electing such a man, we can see the esteem that our founders had for the highest office in the land and the kind of people they wished to see fill that office (their ideal was George Washington). They wanted men of principle, men who could be trusted, men who would be knowledgeable and appreciative of the history of our institutions, and men who had the proper qualifications.

After examining the facts that we have presented in this book, it is hard to believe that the founders would have wanted to see us hand over the sacred keys of the White House to an inexperienced, ambitious demagogue such as Barack Obama. He is a man that we, as a country, have not yet had the chance to get to know well enough. He would certainly be one of the youngest Presidents, but his youth is not the only reason he is inexperienced. He has not yet been fully tested to make the decisions that are required of a Commander-in-Chief. And, just as importantly, perhaps more so, he has not yet been fully vetted.

We have tried to do our part in this book, given the demands on our time and resources, to put together the facts available and let you, the reader, have the ability to ponder such facts. We found it very difficult to gather these facts, as there were few media outlets that have reported such findings. We realized that right-wing talk show hosts and left-wing academics and media would each have their own talking points either for or against Obama simply based on his Democrat party label. But, Obama has talked a lot about the need for our country to try to rise above the typical left and right, and we accepted his challenge to do so. What we have found is that he has not done this himself. He talks a good game, but he plays quite another one.

We presented you with elements from his voting record during his time as an Illinois State Senator and during his few short years in the U.S. Senate. If you think we have presented any falsehoods or made any misrepresentations, we challenge you to hold us accountable. However, we are confident in our research and our sources, and in our ability to make the case against Obama based on the stubborn facts.

Speaking of facts: while Obama quite often talks about his time in the Illinois State Senate and the need to have an open, transparent government, he has done quite a lot to try to hide his own political and private records. He hasn’t even reached the White House yet, and he is already trying to hide records. What will he do from the most powerful position in the free world?

Due to his short political career and his lack of experience, much of our book has relied on Obama’s own words, from his published books, speeches, and interviews. After all, it was Obama who proclaimed “Don’t tell me words don’t matter.” We could have certainly provided you with the words of those most closely associated with him, such as his controversial preacher Jeremiah Wright, or his outspoken wife and potential First Lady, Michelle Obama. But, we wanted to keep this focused on the junior Senator from Illinois. We do, however, believe, as our parents once preached to us, that you can learn much about a person by who they are associated with. The questionable friends that Obama has kept over the years should raise some serious alarms. They include controversial preachers like Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Phleger, domestic terrorists such as William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn of the Weather Underground, and shady businessmen like Tony Rezko and James Johnson.

We simply know too little about this man, and based on what we do know about him – his background, his questionable associations, and his far left voting record – we are not willing to entrust such a man with the sacred keys to the White House. The American Presidency comes with an awesome power and responsibility. As our founders intended, this office should only be given to someone who best represents us, someone we trust, and someone with high character. Obama’s voting record is far to the left and way outside of the mainstream. He has shown a complete disdain for average Americans living in small towns and a complete disrespect for human life at its most fragile periods of birth and childhood development. He would overturn 220 years of sacrifice for a Constitution made of laws, not of men.

Our generation cannot let such a man be President. If “change” is what we seek, then it must be change within a tradition, a tradition of ordered liberty. We have strayed so far from our founders’ intentions, that it is time that we stand up for change and ask that our individual liberties be granted once again. It is time for a new revolution indeed: a revolution that gets us back to the proper role of government.

At the high point of their grievances, our founders did not originally seek to be separated from England. They simply sought to confirm their rights as Englishmen. The revolution they started began as a return to the tradition of self-government, the proper role of government, and their proper places in that free society. They were seeking change, not for the sake of change, but for the sake of returning to the tradition of a people ruled by laws, not by men. For this purpose, we write this book, to prevent men of ambition from usurping more of our rights, our property, and our liberties from us. We hope you too, will join our cause. The keys to the White House are in your hands.

(cross-post from Whoistherealbarackobama.com)