Tea-Parties and the Splitting of Votes

I like reading about politics. Sad, but true. To me, it's the equivlent of a boxing match where two sides are both fighting unfairly. So it's been interesting for me to see how the Tea-Pot parties (yes, I use plural - see below) are in this race.

The most interesting thing I find is that if the Tea-Parties are not careful they may cause the Republicans to loose more seats in the 2010 elections due to splitting of the conservative vote. If 35% vote democrat, and 23 republican, and 22 tea-parties then the democrat is going to proclaim victory.

I use the term tea-parties as I believe some groups have hijacked the name "Tea-Party" and are using it for their own means, vis-a-vis Fox News(ha!), and the recent supposed National convention they had (and interesting they'll have another for-profit one in Las Vegas later this year).

CNN Owes me $0.01 x 100

I check the news on a number of websites somewhat frequently. I visit a number of sites to try go get an overall view of what's really going on - including CNN.

Now, I decide to watch one of the videos on CNN for which they never bother posting the actual story text (even though it appears it is syndicated as other news sites are carrying identical copies of the same article - go figure). I click and am greeted with a video player page.

An ad pops up at the beginning - Oh Boy! - 15 seconds of babble. I wait.

I then am able to watch a portion of the video before it stalls completely. Then it recovers, plays, and then stalls again. I never had any stalls during playing of the commercial.

This routinely happens on CNN ... so far I'm guessing about a 100 times. I figure CNN probably makes a penny for a video ad (I'm guessing - don't know the actual value) so...

CNN - you owe me a $1.00 as reimbursement for your ill-gotten gains.