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Tag: president obama

  • President Obama And New Zealand PM John Key Discuss Kim Dotcom

    Kim Dotcom is currently fighting in New Zealand and US courts to have the charges against Megaupload and himself dropped. It’s not exactly getting much play in the mainstream news, but something new happens every week. It’s actually kind of surprising that President Obama hasn’t even addressed it since it’s his administration that’s leading the offensive against Dotcom. Well, as it turns out, Obama will talk about Dotcom, but only in private.

    Stuff reports that Obama and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key both attended the East Asia Summit in Cambodia this week to discuss various issues facing these nations. During the summit, Obama and Key met up in private to discuss Dotcom. It’s noted that Key was reluctant to even say that they discussed Dotcom, and refused to give any details on what the talk entailed.

    Dotcom wasn’t going to sit idly by as world leaders talked about him behind closed doors. He took to Twitter to ask Obama for some green cards:

    Back in July, Dotcom formally addressed Obama in a music video called “Mr. President.” As expected, Obama didn’t respond in any way to Dotcom’s first attempt at contact. It likely will remain this time as well unless Dotcom is able to successfully have the case against Megaupload dropped in the US courts.

    In other news, Dotcom just hit the top 50 in the leaderboards for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, but he still hates the game. He’s going back to Modern Warfare 3.

  • Third-Grader Is Really Pissed That Obama Won

    Earlier this week, we checked up on the “Bronco Bama” girl, a four-year-old that previously went viral by lamenting the seemingly endless cycle of political bickering leading up to the Presidential election. We noted that she seemed happy that President Obama was reelected to a second term – but she was probably just happy that it was all over. I mean, she’s four. She probably smiled at “Bronco Bama’s” victory because she thought his name was Bronco Bama. Wouldn’t you want someone named “Bronco” in the White House?

    Anyway, now for the complete opposite reaction. This third-grader is so apoplectic over the election results that he can’t seem to get out of bed.

    Am I the only one who thinks that a third grader (and especially a four-year-old) probably shouldn’t have this much of an emotional stake in a Presidential election? Sure, the mother handled it exceptionally well – but that deep-seated political fervor probably didn’t get in that kid’s head all by itself.

    [via BoingBoing]

  • Bronco Bama Girl Is Happy That President Obama Won

    Remember that cute little 4-year-old girl who became the country’s unofficial spokesperson for how sick we all were of the 2012 Presidential election? Sure you do – her mother uploaded a video of her crying over how tired she was of “Bronco Bama” and Mitt Romney, and we all let out a collective “I’m with you, girl.”

    Well, here’s the followup. Unlike some Americans, Abbie the “Bronco Bama” girl seems happy that the President was reelected.

    “Abbie is a most amazing little girl–brilliant, gorgeous and hilarious. I am so proud of her, and cannot believe how privileged I am to have her as my daughter. This has been a fun ride, and we are amazed at all that has happened. I am very pleased knowing that Barack Obama will continue to lead our beautiful country, and look forward to the incredible future ahead of us!” says her mother.

    Of course, she’s getting some hate on the YouTubes – which is to be expected. If you want to revisit the exact emotion the entire country was feeling a week before the election, check out the video that started it all:

  • Alabama & Mississippi Win the Most-Racist-on-Twitter Award Surrounding the Election

    Twitter, you can be so great and so disappointing at the same time. It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that social media is a haven for imbeciles. So much hateful garbage is spewed out in 140-character snippets that it’s easy to just gloss over it. It’s so common that it feels like it’s not even worth it to stop and shake your head.

    Bottom line: we know that people are still racist. This study wanted to know where people are the most racist.

    Geo-coded data analysts Floating Sheep looked at the prevalance of racist tweets post-election, as compared with all other tweets in specific areas. What they found was that Mississippi and Alabama had the highest LQ (location quotient) for racist tweets with scores of 7.4 and 8.1, respectively.

    By comparison, the highest quotient among the rest of the 48 states was 3.6. Among states that received a score, Arizona had the lowest with a 0.2.

    Here’s the map:

    racist tweet map

    And here’s the science behind the racist tweets map:

    [W]e collected all the geocoded tweets from the last week (beginning November 1) with racist terms that also reference the election in order to understand how these everyday acts of explicit racism are spatially distributed. Given the nature of these search terms, we’ve buried the details at the bottom of this post in a footnote [1].

    Given our interest in the geography of information we wanted to see how this type of hate speech overlaid on physical space. To do this we aggregated the 395 hate tweets to the state level and then normalized them by comparing them to the total number of geocoded tweets coming out of that state in the same time period [2]. We used a location quotient inspired measure (LQ) that indicates each state’s share of election hate speech tweet relative to its total number of tweets.[3] A score of 1.0 indicates that a state has relatively the same number of hate speech tweets as its total number of tweets. Scores above 1.0 indicate that hate speech is more prevalent than all tweets, suggesting that the state’s “twitterspace” contains more racists post-election tweets than the norm.

    So, the higher the quotient, the more racist the tweet stream from that state.

    Floating Sheep is careful to add the disclaimer that they are looking at tweets, not users – so a small group of users could be responsible for a higher volume of racist tweets.

    If you’re wondering about the types of tweets that might be included in this type of study, a quick twitter search of “Obama” + a racially charged term will net some whoppers. Black president or not, blatant racism is alive and well in the Twittersphere. Just ask these walking, talking stains:

    These tweets come from California and Texas, states that didn’t even register that high on the scale. Post-racist society, indeed.

  • President Obama Won the Twitter Vote and it Wasn’t Even Close

    Post-election demographic analysis is always interesting, or always dull and pointless depending on who you ask. I’m sure you’ve seen people breakdown which candidate won the Latino vote, the youth vote, the Catholic vote, the Union vote, and so on and so forth.

    But another interesting vote that deserves a look is the Twitter vote. Which candidate had more Twitter shoutouts proclaiming that they were voted for?

    Obama. Big time.

    MIT has a new tool called “ivoted,” and it serves one purpose – to track mentions of “I voted for …” on the social network.

    According to the final tally, Obama garnered 66% of the Twitter user vote (49,608) compared to Romney’s 34% (24,255). Here’s the final map which shows the heaviest Twitter support for Obama in Vermont, and the most neutral state to be Arkansas.

    Twitter election MIT map

    Of course, there are plenty of tweets that could contain the phrase “I voted for Obama” or “I voted for Romney” and actually be anti-said candidate. For instance, “Anyone who says ‘I voted for Romney’ is an idiot.” That person probably didn’t vote for Romney. Glancing at the tweets, there seems to be a little of this going on on both sides.

    There’s also the problem of tweets that mention both Obama and Romney. In response that that, the ivoted mods had this to say:

    “Basic keyword screening is not perfect. And in that regard, we took a relatively conservative approach by dropping all tweets containing BOTH candidates’ names. So our observation is that people tend to include the name of the candidate they voted for.”

    There’s also hope that the tool will be even more valuable in future elections:

    “We are working to improve the algorithms for more interesting features after election. This is our first time to build a realtime reporting system,” says the creators.

    [h/t BuzzFeed]

  • Obama’s “Four More Years” Tweet Is the Most Popular Tweet in History

    Good morning, America. Last night you reelected the President. And although there will be no change in the White House for the next four years, there has been a shakeup inside the ranks of Twitter’s most popular tweets.

    Ladies and gentlemen, meet your new most popular tweet ever:

    As of 9 am ET on Wednesday, this tweet has over 626,000 retweets and over 212,000 favorites. But it only needed a few minutes to become the most retweeted tweet in Twitter history. Shortly after posting the tweet, Twitter’s @gov team informed the President that he had officially claimed another prize:

    In all, Twitter reports 31 million election-related tweets yesterday and a peak tweets-per-minute total of 327,452 – right as the networks began to call the race for President Obama.

  • Check Out This Cool “Paths to the White House” Map

    Tomorrow’s the big day – Election 2012. Everyone thinks this is going to be a close one (although there’s plenty of debate regarding just how close), and we know that, like many years, the outcome will be decided by a handful of swing states. Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire – these are a few of the states that will likely shape the trajectory of the next four years. And with uncertainty comes possibilites.

    The political junkie and the casually-informed voter will both enjoy this interactive map from the New York Times. It outlines every single path to 270 electoral votes – all 512 of them. From the start, the Times gives President Obama 431 paths to victory, Romney 76, and 5 state-by-state outcomes that could cause an electoral college tie – the “nightmare scenario.”

    Users can give each state to the Democrats to the Republicans – starting with Florida and moving on to eight more states. With each pick, the odds change and you can see exactly what has to happen for each candidate to win.

    The most compelling visual from this map comes after the very first selection. If you give Florida to Obama, he has 255 ways to win from that point on. On the other hand, Romney would have only one. He would have to win Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire.

    Check it out here.

  • On Election Night, Gloat to Your Political Frenemies with These GIFs

    On election night, the chances are pretty high that your Facebook and Twitter streams will be inundated with policial posts. Some of your friends will rejoice, others will be apoplectic. Thus is the nature of bitter political contests. Many users will simply stay off social media in an effort to avoid the political bickering – but if you want to throw yourself into the fray, you’ll need a few GIFs as ammunition.

    If your candidate is victorious (and assuming we have a victor on election night), you may want to antagonize your friends by rubbing it in – just a little bit. If you have a little troll inside of you waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike, let me offer eight GIFS to link to when responding to a politically-charged status update or tweet.

    First, if President Obama is reelected:

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    And if Mitt Romney wins:

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  • Google Breaks Out the Political Scorecards in Time for Election Day

    Guys, it’s almost over. The 2012 Presidential race has made the final turn and has entered the homestretch. Like any good horse race, this is the most exciting time – especially if you’re living in one of the highly-contested swing states.

    Did I say exciting? I meant unbearable, excruciating, exhausting, and miserable. If you’re in Ohio, Virginia, Florida, or a handful of other states – chances are you’re up to your eyeballs in campaign ads. Now, thanks to Google, we can see just exactly how much each candidate is spending in these key swing states, as well as get some insight into how the candidates are being searched across the network.

    The Google Politics & Elections team has just published this infographic on spending, searches, and new results in eight key swing states. What we see is a big spending gap between President Obama and Mitt Romney, with the former taking a pretty big lead. We also so that in most areas, President Obama has garnered more search interest. Check it out:

    Swing State Spending and search interest from Google

    Google has also put out a scorecard of some Google-related stats including Google+ followers, YouTube views and subscribers, and search interest (nationwide):

  • Richard Branson and Barack Obama Are Your Most-Followed LinkedIn Thought Leaders

    Richard Branson and Barack Obama Are Your Most-Followed LinkedIn Thought Leaders

    The people of LinkedIn have spoken. After the first month of the social network allowing them to follow “thought leaders,” they have elected Sir Richard Branson as the most thought leadery of all. With 757,000+ followers, he is the the most-followed public figure on LinkedIn.

    President Obama comes in second with 389,000+ followers. Deepak Chopra, Mitt Romney, and Arianna Huffington round out the top five with 195,000, 156,000, and 128,000 followers, respectively.

    The reason we know this is that LinkedIn has added a few new sorting mechanisms for their thought leaders initiative. Starting today, you can find “influencer” by most recent content postings, alphabetically, and of course via the new “scoreboard” which tracks who has the most followers.

    LinkedIn first let users follow top influencers back at the beginning of October. After allow users to follow companies and groups for some time, LinkedIn finally decided that following important personalities would help users get more value from the service. At the onset, the “thought leaders” totalled 150, but LinkedIn is in the process of expanding that offering.

    Here are some stats at the one-month mark, courtesy the LinkedIn blog:

    “Earlier this month, we launched the ability to follow thought leaders on LinkedIn. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen more than 4 million follows of these influencers, whose ranks have expanded to include the likes of the co-founder of Reddit as well as the CEOs of Gallup, Box, and Zillow. Together, these thought leaders have created more than 850 original posts, including our most popular post Five top tips to starting a successful business by Sir Richard Branson.”

    So – Rihanna is the queen of Facebook, and Lady Gaga rules Twitter. We’ll go ahead and give LinkedIn to Richard Branson…for now.

  • Calculate How Much Obama & Romney Are Willing to Spend on Your Vote

    It’s no secret that both the Obama and Romney teams are doing all they can to get your vote on November 6th, and they have been for quite some time. Much of that effort is directed toward your online activities, as the campaigns want to know what you browse and how you click – as it helps them better target the ads you see across the interwebs.

    A recent report from a tracking software monitoring company suggests that these efforts are being ramped up considerably as we approach election day. They found 76 different tracking programs on President Obama’s campaign site, up from 53 in May. They also found 40 on Mitt Romney’s site, compared to 25 in May.

    This data mining is used is a way similar to online retailers, who compile information on online shoppers and show them relevant ads onsite and on other sites using tracking cookies. This makes sense, when you think about it. Picking a candidate for higher office is just one big shopping adventure, right?

    But just how much are you worth to the candidates? Online privacy company Abine has created a tool to calculate how much your vote is worth, in a tangible dollar amount.

    All you have to do is answer a few questions about your voting and online habits, and the tool takes from various sources to give you a number. For instance, my vote was worth $30.

    Vote worth calculator

    Here’s what Abine has to say:

    “The Obama and Romney campaigns have been tracking your online activity to determine how you will likely vote and how much they should spend to influence your vote (or maybe secure a campaign contribution). The 2012 Presidential Election Val-You calculator uses your answers to seven questions and data from the campaigns’ finance reports, the 2010 U.S. Census and Abine’s proprietary tracking data about online tracking to estimate your actual value to the campaigns based on the characteristics online tracking can unearth – your demographics, voting history, online activity, etc.”

    If you’re in Ohio, let’s say, with a history of voting both ways – I’m sure your designated ad spend will be through the roof. Consistent voters living in Alabama – I’m guessing you’re not that high on the campaigns’ ad blitz list.

  • Obama Worries About Malia Using Facebook, Cites Privacy Concerns

    The President of the United States and the First Lady both have their own Facebook and Twitter accounts – Foursquare, Pinterest, Google+, and Tumblr too. And though the accounts are (mostly) maintained by campaign aides, you occasionally get a real post or tweet from the POTUS and the FLOTUS.

    But for President Obama, the social media love stops with the parents. According to him, the other members of the first family are not quite ready to join the world of Facebook.

    In a recent interview with MTV’s Sway Calloway, Obama said that his oldest daughter Malia does not have her own Facebook page. Why? He wants to protect her privacy.

    Here’s what he had to say, courtesy Yahoo News:

    “I’d worry about Facebook right now. I know the folks at Facebook obviously they’ve revolutionized, you know, the social networks. But Malia, because she’s well known, I’m very keen on her protecting her privacy…She can make her own decisions obviously later as she gets older, but right now, even just for security reasons, she doesn’t have a Facebook page. Dates, that’s fine, ’cause she’s got Secret Service protection.”

    Malia is 14 years old. The youngest Obama child, Sasha, is 11. She technically wouldn’t be allowed to create a Facebook account until she turns 13 – although Facebook has struggled with enforcing that term or service since its inception.

    Earlier this year, we reported that Facebook was considering letting in pre-teens, with some sort of strict parental controls of course.

    It’s sometimes odd to think about the life of a first child. Of course, we all recognize that their daily routine – going to school, hanging out with friends, even taking a walk outside is going to be completely different than a regular person’s routine. It simply comes with the territory. But the fact that operating a Facebook account, something that 1 billion people do on a monthly basis, is simply out of the question, makes you think about what it means to be in the political spotlight.

  • Trump’s Obama Announcement Worth Millions

    Trump’s Obama Announcement Worth Millions

    Donald Trump told various media sources earlier this week that he would be making a major announcement today regarding President Obama, and since then, rumors have been flying as to what it would be. Did he have some dirt on Obama that no one had previously been able to dig up? Some election-altering bit of info that would change the way people approach the voter’s booth (as he claimed)?

    As it turns out, Trump just wants Obama to release his college and passport applications and records to fill out what we know about his past. If he does this, Trump says he’ll give $5 million to whatever charity Obama designates.

    “The check will be given within one hour after he releases all of the records so stated,” Trump said. “He’ll be doing a great service for the country if he does this. If he releases these records, it will end the questions and indeed the anger of many Americans. They’ll know something about their president.”

    Trump says he very much wants to write such a check…but the records have to be made public by Halloween if Obama wants to make a charity of his choice happy.

  • Trump’s Obama Announcement: It Could Change Your Vote

    Donald Trump swears he has some inside info on President Obama that will change the way everyone looks at him, and will probably even change the way people approach the voting booth in a couple of weeks.

    Trump chose to share the news of his news with gossip site TMZ after leaking hints about it on Twitter and on Fox & Friends, telling them he can’t officially talk about it until Wednesday.

    “It’s very big, and we’ll see what happens. I’ll be discussing it probably around noonish on Wednesday.”

    Trump said he wouldn’t comment on whether Obama would be unhappy with this surprise news, saying that is up to the president.

  • Horses and Bayonets Line Wins Twitter During Third Presidential Debate

    Last night’s third and final Presidential debate set out to focus on foreign policy, and despite a few detours into domestic policy, moderator Bob Schieffer managed to keep President Obama and Mitt Romney on that track.

    This morning, Twitter has once again unveiled their statistics from the debate (which they’ve done for every previous contests). According to a blog post, Twitter users sent out 6.5 million tweets regarding the debate during its 90-minute duration. That’s just shy of what we saw at last week’s town hall-style debate, which generated 7.2 million tweets. But neither of them compare in sheer tweet volume to what we saw during the first Presidential debate – over 10 million total tweets.

    All of the Presidential debates generated more buzz than the Vice Presidential debate, which saw 3.5 million tweets.

    Twitter also looks at which moments from the debate that generated instant buzz in the form of tweets per minute across the network. And last night, President Obama’s “horses and bayonets” line took the crown with 105,767 TPM.

    The next top moment of the night came when Bob Schieffer said “I think we all love teachers.” That saw 102,339 TPM. Finally, Romney’s comments on Obama’s “apology tour” came in third with 87,040 TPM.

    President Obama’s “horses and bayonets” comment came in response to a Romney assertion that we now how fewer ships in the U.S. Navy than we did nearly 100 years ago. Here’s the quote of the night, according to Twitter buzz:

    And as you would expect, a parody Twitter account popped up almost immediately. It currently sports over 34,000 followers.

    Twitter also says that the topic of conversation in the Twittersphere stuck to foreign policy, for the most part (54%). The economy placed second, with 20% of the conversation. Terrorism took 9% of the chatter and taxes 7%. Finally, Twitter users spent 4% of their debate tweets discussing energy and the environment.

    If you happened to miss last night’s debate, you can watch it in its entirety below:

  • Town Hall Debate Gets the Taiwanese Animation It Deserves

    Did you miss last night’s town hall Presidential debate? Not to worry, our favorite wacky animators over at Next Media Animation have you covered.

    NMA scored the debate for Obama, although he appears battered and bruised by the end of it.

    “The president also described Romney’s plan to cut taxes as “sketchy.” He said the math didn’t add up. But Romney hit back, noting national debt was $16 trillion, up from $10 billion when Obama took office,” they note.

    We’re sure you’re already tired of all the back and forth on who really won the debate. It’s nice to see the candidates simply slugging each other, even if it’s just their animated forms.

    Check out the video below for some Rocky-style training from Obama, a candy-eating Candy Crowley, and a surprise appearance from angel-Steve Jobs. Yes, Romney’s binders full of women make an appearance as well.

  • Second Presidential Debate Sees 7.2 Million Tweets

    Last night’s town hall debate saw the two Presidential candidates go at it for a little over an hour and a half on topics both foreign and domestic (mostly domestic). We’ve already told you how the Twittersphere reacted to one particular moment involving binders full of women, and now we have the official tweets statistics from Twitter themselves.

    According to the social media site, 7.2 million tweets concerning the debate were sent last night during its 90-minute duration. For comparison, last week’s Vice Presidential debate saw 3.5 million tweets and the first presidential debate saw over 10 million total tweets.

    Out of those tweets, most of them were about the economy (28%). 17% were about taxes and 16% were about foreign policy. At last week’s VP debate, foreign policy won the night with 26% of the total tweets.

    If you think Romney’s “binders” remark or one of various sparring matches between the candidates would have been the most-tweeted-about moment of the night, you’re wrong. Romney’s response to an audience member’s question on immigration actually won the night with 109,560 tweets per minute (TPM). Obama telling Romney that he’s “the last person to get tough on China” came in a close second with 108,619 TPM. Finally, Romney’s discussion on tax rates received 107,386 TPM.

    If you missed last night’s town hall debate, you can watch it in its entirety below:

  • Binders Full of Women: The Comment That Launched a Thousand Social Media Pages

    Last night’s second Presidential debate saw the two candidates clash over mostly domestic issues, with a few foreign issues sprinkled in. The town hall format meant that audience members got to ask the questions, and one particular response from Mitt Romney to a question on gender equality in the workplace led the social media world to go crazy creating pages and accounts.

    Here’s Romney’s statement, for context:

    An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.

    And I – and I went to my staff, and I said, “How come all the people for these jobs are – are all men.” They said: “Well, these are the people that have the qualifications.”

    And I said: “Well, gosh, can’t we find some – some women that are also qualified?”

    And – and so we – we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said: “Can you help us find folks,” and they brought us whole binders full of women.

    And with that, “Binders full of women” exploded across Facebook and Twitter. Social insight firm Topsy says that Twitter activity spiked to its highest point of the night during the discussion of discrimination in the workplace. Tweets containing the word “women” peaked at 24,170 per minute at that time.

    Many of them, I would expect, also containing the words “binder” and “full.”

    The odd phrase received plenty of Twitter backlash, most of it looking something like this:

    And within ten minutes of the utterance, Twitter accounts like @BindersofWomen and @mittsbinder were born. @RomneyBinders also now has over 33,000 followers.

    Facebook users also joined the party, creating dozens of “binders full of women”-related pages and groups. A quick search of “women binders” will show you this. Facebook’s Politics and Government team says that Romney’s “binders” comment shop up 213,900% at one point.

    Out of all those pages, one stands proud as the leader. Binders Full of Women has already amassed 243,000 followers and is growing by about 5,000 likes every half an hour or so. Within an hour of being created last night, the group had already garnered over 80,000 likes.

    (image)

    Binders Full Of Women10 hours ago

    Gov. Romney clearly misspoke. What he meant to say was that his platform wants to bind women to the 19th century. Powered by socialditto(image)  1,000+ likes ·  776 comments

    The page even had Facebook employees impressed with its rapid growth:

    There’s even a “Binders Full of Women” Tumblr that already has dozens of posts.

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    As you would expect, the Obama campaign team is jumping on the phrase as well:

    People say that the internet has made this campaign unlike any other campaign in history. Man, are they right.

  • President Obama Probably Doesn’t Approve This Message from Pauly Shore

    In the world of political endorsements, I’m not exactly sure where Pauly Shore ranks. Maybe somewhere between Lindsay Lohan and Kid Rock. I guess it really doesn’t matter how the President of the United States feels about it, because Pauly Shore has endorsed him with a new rap song posted to his YouTube channel.

    I mean, I guess he endorsed him. To be honest, I’m not sure what the message is here. Obama got Osama, I get that. But all the stuff with Kenya, Herman Cain, and Meet the Press? I don’t know. Is this supposed to be Pauly Shore’s perspective or Obama’s?

    With lines like “Meet the Press can press my meat,” who the hell knows. Anyway, it’s Friday, so here it is:

    [via UPROXX]

  • First Presidential Debate Undergoes a Bad Lip Reading

    If you missed the first Presidential debate, don’t worry – there are still two more to go. And even if there were no more televised contests it would be cool, because Bad Lip Reading has you covered.

    The folks at BLR have tackled the debate, putting their spin on the Denver showdown between President Obama and Mitt Romney. As a voter, would I suggest getting your information from a Bad Lip Reading episode? Probably not. But I can confirm that it’s a lot more interesting than what was televised last Wednesday.

    Check out Mitt Romney’s slightly Beavis-like giggle below:

    If you’re looking for more Bad Lip Reading goodies from the past few weeks, including some takes on Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan by themselves check here.

  • Sesame Street Wants Obama Campaign to Take Down Big Bird Ad

    Poor Big Bird. Nobody wants to be inserted into a campaign as rough as the one currently playing out for President of the United States, and I can imagine that the eight-foot tall bright yellow bird is no exception. Now, on his behalf, Sesame Street has taken lengths to make it abundantly clear that Big Bird (and any other character, for that matter) has no place in any sort of political ad.

    You probably know that story: Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has sparked controversy for recent remarks that he would cut funding to PBS.

    “I’m sorry, Jim, I’m gonna stop the subsidy to PBS. I like PBS, I love Big Bird — I actually like you too — but I am not going to keep spending money on things [we have] to borrow money from China to pay for,” said Romney in last week’s first presidential debate.

    Opponents have attacked Romney, pointing to the fact that PBS makes up a paltry portion of the national budget. For instance, famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted that “Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive.” Romney supporters maintain that the government is not the primary funder of PBS and therefore Big Bird is not at risk of going away and that the idea that you shouldn’t cut waste in government because it is a small percentage of the budget is ludicrous.

    The Obama campaign jumped on the remarks and the president has used them as a talking point on the stump. At a campaign stop in Iowa today Romney commented on the president’s odd focus on Big Bird as a campaign issue, “These are tough times, with real serious issues. So you have to scratch your head when the president spends the last week talking about Big Bird,”.

    Today, a new ad hit YouTube using Big Bird to hit Romney on his budget cut strategy.

    “Mitt Romney knows it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about, it’s Sesame Street. Mitt Romney: Taking on our enemies no matter where they nest,” says the ad on top of images of Big Bird. Check it out below:

    The ad has already gained a lot of viral play on social media, and Sesame Street isn’t pleased. Here’s what they had to say in a statement posted to Twitter:

    “Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down,” said Sesame Workshop in a statement on their site.

    Sesame Street had already commented on Big Bird’s injection into the campaign last week:

    This is not the first time in the past year or so that Sesame Street has found themselves the focal point in a political controversy. Last August, they were forced to release a statement on Bert and Ernie’s sexuality, after petitions surfaced wanting the two to have the first on-air gay puppet marriage. Sesame Street responded simply, saying that “they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.