Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi.

Early life
He was involved in a boycott campaign against white merchants and was instrumental in eventually desegregating the University of Mississippi when that institution was finally forced to enroll James Meredith in 1962.
In the weeks leading up to his death, Evers found himself the target of a number of threats. His public investigations into the murder of Emmett Till and his vocal support of Clyde Kennard left him vulnerable to attack. On May 28, 1963, a molotov cocktail was thrown into the carport of his home, and five days before his death, he was nearly run down by a car after he emerged from the Jackson NAACP office. Civil rights demonstrations accelerated in Jackson during the first week of June 1963. A local television station granted Evers time for a short speech, his first in Mississippi, where he outlined the goals of the Jackson movement. Following the speech, threats on Evers' life increased.

Assassination
Evers' legacy has been kept alive in a variety of ways. In 1970, Medgar Evers College was established in Brooklyn, New York as part of the City University of New York. In 1983, a made-for-television movie, For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story starring Howard Rollins Jr. was aired, celebrating the life and career of Medgar Evers, and on June 28, 1992, he was immortalized in Jackson with a statue.
The 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi tells the story of the 1994 trial, in which a District Attorney's office prosecutor, Robert Delaughter, successfully retried the case, and won.
Evers' wife, Myrlie, became a noted activist in her own right later in life, eventually serving as chairwoman of the NAACP. Medgar's brother Charles returned to Jackson in July 1963 and served briefly in his slain brother's place. Charles Evers remained involved in Mississippi Civil Rights for years to come. He resides in Jackson.

Children

David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, T.R.M. Howard: Pragmatism over Strict Integrationist Ideology in the Mississippi Delta, 1942-1954 in Glenn Feldman, ed., Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South (2004 book), 68-95.
Jonathan Birnbaum and Clarence Taylor, eds. Civil Rights Since 1787: A Reader on the Black Struggle (New York University Press: 2000) ISBN 0-8147-8215-9 (pp. 355-59 (Myrlie Evers with William Peters reprint "Missisissippi Murders"), 522 (Fannie Lou Hamer comment).
Brown, Jennie. Medgar Evers. Los Angeles: Melrose Square Pub. Co., 1994.
John Dittmer, Local People: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (1994 book).
Evers, Myrlie B., and William Peters. For Us, the Living. 1st ed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967; Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996.
Jackson, James E. At the funeral of Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi: A Tribute in Tears and a Thrust for Freedom. New York: Publisher's New Press, 1963.
Massengill, Reed. Portrait of a Racist: The Man Who Killed Medgar Evers? New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.
Nossiter, Adam. Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1994; Da Capo Press, 2002.
Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (1995 book).
Salter, John R. Jackson, Mississippi: An American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism. Foreword by R. Edwin King, Jr. Hicksville, N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1979.
Remembering Medgar Evers—For a New Generation: A Commemoration. Developed by the Civil Rights Research and Documentation Project, Afro-American Studies Program, The University of Mississippi. Oxford, MS: distributed by Heritage Publications in cooperation with the Mississippi Network for Black History and Heritage, 1988.
Vollers, Maryanne. Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, The Trials of Byron de la Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995.

King Edgar or Eadgar I (c. 943 or 944 – July 8, 975) was the younger son of King Edmund I of England. He won the nickname, "the Peaceable", but in fact was a stronger king than his elder brother, Edwy, from whom he took the kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia in 958. Edgar was acclaimed king north of the Thames by a conclave of Mercian nobles in 958, but officially succeeded when Edwy died in October 959. Immediately Edgar recalled Dunstan (eventually canonised as St. Dunstan) from exile and made him successively Bishop of Worcester, then Bishop of London, and finally Archbishop of Canterbury. The allegation that Dunstan at first refused to crown Edgar because he disapproved of his way of life is a discreet reference in popular histories to Edgar's mistress Wulfthryth (later a nun at Wilton), who bore him a daughter Eadgyth in 961. Dunstan remained Edgar's advisor throughout his reign, nevertheless.
Edgar's reign was a peaceful one, and it is probably fair to say that it saw the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the English at its height. Although other previous kings have been recorded as the founders of 'England', it was Edgar who consolidated this. By the end of Edgar's reign there was little chance of it receding back into its constituent parts, as it had begun to do during the reign of Edwy.
The Monastic Reform Movement that restored the Benedictine Rule to England's undisciplined monastic communities saw its height during the time of Dunstan, Aethelwold and Oswald. However, the extent and importance of the movement is still debated amongst academics.
Edgar was crowned at Bath, but not until 973, in an imperial ceremony planned not as the initiation, but as the culmination of his reign (a move that must have taken a great deal of preliminary diplomacy). This service, devised by Dunstan himself and celebrated with a poem in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle forms the basis of the present-day British coronation ceremony. The symbolic coronation was an important step; other kings of Britain came and gave their allegiance to Edgar shortly afterwards at Chester. Six kings in Britain, including the kings of Scotland and of Strathclyde, pledged their faith that they would be the king's liege-men on sea and land. Later chroniclers made the kings into eight, all plying the oars of Edgar's state barge on the River Dee. Such embellishments may not be factual, but the main outlines of the "submission at Chester" appear true.
Edgar had several children. He died on July 8, 975 at Winchester, and was buried at Glastonbury Abbey. He left two sons, the eldest named Edward, the son of his first wife Ethelfleda (not to be confused with Ethelfleda, Lady of the Mercians), and Ethelred, the youngest, the child of his second wife Elfrida. He was succeeded by his oldest son, King Edward the Martyr.
From Edgar's death to the Norman Conquest there was not a single succession to the throne that was not contested. Although perhaps a simplification, Edgar's death did seem to be the beginning of the end for Anglo-Saxon England that resulted in three 11th century successful conquests, two Danish and one Norman.

Display advertising Interactive advertising Email marketing Web analytics Cost Per Action Revenue sharing Contextual advertising Search engine optimization Social media optimization Pay Per Click advertising Paid inclusion Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses (merchants/advertisers) in which an affiliate (publisher) is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts.
Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies and in-house affiliate managers, specialized 3rd party vendors and various types of affiliates/publishers who utilize a number of different methods to advertise the products and services of their merchant/advertiser partners.
Affiliate marketing overlaps with other internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates are using the same methods as most of the merchants themselves do. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, email marketing and to some degree display advertising.
Affiliate marketing - using one site to drive traffic to another - is the stepchild of online marketing. While search engines, e-mail and RSS capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing, despite lineage that goes back almost to the beginning of online retailing, carries a much lower profile. Yet affiliates continue to play a fundamental role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.

Compensation methods
80% of affiliate programs today use revenue share (Cost per sale) as compensation method. The remaining 19% use Cost Per Action.

Predominant compensation methods in affiliate marketing
The use of pay per click and pay per impression (CPM) in traditional affiliate marketing is far less than 1% today and negligible.
CPM requires from the publisher only to load the advertising on his website and show it to his visitors in order to get paid commission, while PPC requires one additional step in the conversion process to generate revenue for the publisher. Visitors must not only made aware of the ad, but also pursue them to click on it and visit the advertisers website.
CPC used to be more common in the early days of affiliate marketing, but diminished over time due to click fraud issues that are very similar to the click fraud issues modern search engines are facing today. Contextual advertising, such as Google AdSense are not considered in this statistic. It is not specified yet, if contextual advertising can be considered affiliate marketing or not.

Diminished compensation methods
Pay per click is predominant as compensation model for pay per click search engines and their contextual advertising platforms, while pay per impression is the predominant compensation model for display advertising. CPM is used as compensation method by Google for their AdSense/AdWords feature "Advertise on this website", but an exception in search engine marketing.
While search engines only recently started experimenting with compensation structures of traditional affiliate marketing, such as pay per action/CPA,

Compensation methods for other online marketing channels
In the case of CPM or CPC, the publisher does not care if the visitor is the type of audience that the advertiser tries to attract and is able to convert, because the publisher already earned his commission at this point. This leaves the greater, and, in case of CPM, the full risk and loss (if the visitor can not be converted) to the advertiser.
CPA and CPS require that referred visitors do more than visiting the advertisers website in order for the affiliate to get paid commission. The advertiser must convert that visitor first. It is in the best interest for the affiliate to send the best targeted traffic to the advertiser as possible to increase the chance of a conversion. The risk and loss is shared between the affiliate and the advertiser.
For this reason affiliate marketing is also called "performance marketing", in reference to how employees that work in sales are typically being compensated. Employees in sales are usually getting paid sales commission for every sale they close and sometimes a performance incentives for exceeding targeted baselines. Affiliates are not employed by the advertiser whose products or services they promote, but the compensation models applied to affiliate marketing are very similar to the ones used for people in the advertisers' internal sales department.
The phrase, "Affiliates are an extended sales force for your business", which is often used to explain affiliate marketing, is not 100% accurate. The main difference between the two is that affiliate marketers cannot, or not much influence a possible prospect in the conversion process, once the prospect was sent away to the advertisers website. The sales team of the advertiser on the other hand does have the control and influence, up to the point where the prospect signs the contract or completes the purchase.

CPM/CPC versus CPA/CPS (performance marketing)
Some advertisers offer multi-tier programs that distribute commission into a hierarchical referral network of sign-ups and sub-partners. In practical terms: publisher "A" signs up to the program with an advertiser and gets rewarded for the agreed activity conducted by a referred visitor. If publisher "A" attracts other publishers ("B", "C", etc.) to sign up for the same program using her sign-up code all future activities by the joining publishers "B" and "C" will result in additional, lower commission for publisher "A".
Snowballing, this system rewards a chain of hierarchical publishers who may or may not know of each others' existence, yet generate income for the higher level signup. This sort of structure has been successfully implemented by a company called Quixtar.com, a division of Alticor, the parent company of Amway. Quixtar has implemented a network marketing structure to implement its marketing program for major corporations such as Barnes & Noble, Office Depot, Sony Music and hundreds more.
This is not considered affiliate marketing. Two-tier programs exist in the minority of affiliate programs; most are simply one-tier. Programs beyond 2-tier are not considered affiliate programs, but rather multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing.
Even though Quixtar compensation plan is network marketing & wouldn't be considered 'affiliate marketing', the big company partners are considered and call themselves affiliates. Therefore, you may argue that the Quixtar company is the affiliate marketer for its partner corporation.

Multi tier programs (and affiliate marketing is not ...)

A brief history of affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception. The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the web, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business. According to one report, total sales generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the UK alone. The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005. Of course, this is constantly subject to change.

Historic development of affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing from the advertiser perspective
Merchants like affiliate marketing, because in most cases, it is a "pay for performance model", meaning the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are realized, excluding the initial setup and development of the program. Some businesses owe much of their growth and success to this marketing technique, one example being Amazon.com, especially small and midsize businesses. However, unlike display advertising, affiliate marketing is not easily scalable.

Affiliate marketing pros and cons
Some merchants run their own affiliate programs (In House) while others use third party services provided by intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates. (see outsourced program management) Merchants can choose from two different types of affiliate management solutions, standalone software or hosted services typically called affiliate networks.

Affiliate program implementation options

Main article: Affiliate manager Affiliate management and program management outsourcing
Affiliate sites are often categorized by merchants (advertisers) and affiliate networks. The main categories are:

Search affiliates that utilize Pay per click search engines to promote the advertisers offers (search arbitrage)
Comparison shopping sites and directories
Loyalty sites, typically characterized by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back or charitable donations
Coupon and rebate sites that focus on Sales promotions
Content and niche sites, including product review sites
Personal websites (these type of sites were the reason for the birth of affiliate marketing, but are today almost reduced to complete irrelevance compared to the other types of affiliate sites)
Blogs and RSS Feeds
Email list affiliates (owners of large opt-in email list)
Registration Path affiliates that include offers from other companies during a registration process on their own website.
Shopping directories that list merchants by categories without providing coupons, price comparison and other features based on information that frequently change and require ongoing updates.
CPA networks are top tier affiliates that expose offers from advertiser they are affiliated with to their own network of affiliates (not to confuse with 2nd tier) Types of publisher (affiliate) websites
Affiliate networks that have already a number of advertisers usually also have a large number of publishers already. This large pool of affiliates could be recruited or they might even apply to the program by themselves.
Relevant sites that attract the same audiences as the advertiser is trying to attract, but are not competing with the advertiser are potential affiliate partners as well. Even vendors or the existing customers could be recruited as affiliate, if it makes sense and is not violating any legal restrictions or regulations.

Finding affiliate partners (advertisers)
Affiliate programs directories are one way to find affiliate programs, another one are large affiliate networks that provide the platform for dozens or even hundreds of advertisers.

Finding affiliate programs (publishers)
In the early days of affiliate marketing, there was very little control over what affiliates were doing, which was abused by a large number of affiliates. Affiliates used false advertisements, forced clicks to get tracking cookies set on users' computers, and adware, which displays ads on computers. Many affiliate programs were poorly managed.

Past and current affiliate marketing issues
In its early days many internet users held negative opinions of affiliate marketing due to the tendency of affiliates to use spam to promote the programs in which they were enrolled. As affiliate marketing has matured many affiliate merchants have refined their terms and conditions to prohibit affiliates from spamming.

Email spam
There used to be much debate around the affiliate practice of spamdexing and many affiliates have converted from sending email spam to creating large volumes of autogenerated webpages, many-a-times, using product data-feeds provided by merchants. Each devoted to different niche keywords as a way of SEOing their sites with the search engines. This is sometimes referred to as spamming the search engine results. Spam is the biggest threat to organic search engines whose goal is to provide quality search results for keywords or phrases entered by their users. Google's algorithm update dubbed "BigDaddy" in February 2006 which was the final stage of Google's major update dubbed "Jagger" which started mid-summer 2005 specifically targeted this kind of spam with great success and enabled Google to remove a large amount of mostly computer generated duplicate content from its index.
Sites made up mostly of affiliate links are usually badly regarded as they do not offer quality content. In 2005 there were active changes made by Google whereby certain websites were labeled as "thin affiliates" and were either removed from the index, or taken from the first 2 pages of the results and moved deeper within the index. In order to avoid this categorization, webmasters who are affiliate marketers must create real value within their websites that distinguishes their work from the work of spammers or banner farms with nothing but links leading to the merchant sites.
Affiliate links work best in the context of the information contained within the website. For instance, if a website is about "How to publish a website", within the content an affiliate link leading to a merchant's ISP site would be appropriate. If a website is about sports, then an affiliate link leading to a sporting goods site might work well within the content of the articles and information about sports. The idea is to publish quality information within the site, and to link "in context" to related merchant's sites.

Search engine spam / spamdexing
Adware is still an issue today, but affiliate marketers have taken steps to fight it. AdWare is not the same as spyware although both often use the same methods and technologies. Merchants usually had no clue what adware was, what it did and how it was damaging their brand. Affiliate marketers became aware of the issue much more quickly, especially because they noticed that adware often overwrites their tracking cookie and results in a decline of commissions. Affiliates who do not use adware became enraged by adware, which they felt was stealing hard earned commission from them. Adware usually has no valuable purpose or provides any useful content to the often unaware user that has the adware running on his computer. Affiliates discussed the issues in various affiliate forums and started to get organized. It became obvious that the best way to cut off adware was by discouraging merchants from advertising via adware. Merchants that did not care or even supported adware were made public by affiliates, which damaged the merchants' reputations and also hurt the merchants' general affiliate marketing efforts. Many affiliates simply "canned" the merchant or switched to a competitor's affiliate program. Eventually, affiliate networks were also forced by merchants and affiliates to take a stand and ban certain adware publishers from their network.
Resulting from this were the Code of Conduct by Commission Junction/BeFree and Performics,

Adware
Affiliates were among the earliest adopters of pay-per-click advertising when the first PPC search engines like Goto.com (which became later Overture.com, acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) emerged during the end of the nineteen-nineties. Later in 2000 Google launched their PPC service AdWords which is responsible for the wide spread use and acceptance of PPC as an advertising channel. More and more merchants engaged in PPC advertising, either directly or via a search marketing agency and realized that this space was already well occupied by their affiliates. Although this fact alone did create channel conflicts and hot debate between advertisers and affiliates, was the biggest issue the bidding on advertisers names, brands and trademarks by some affiliates. A larger number of advertisers started to adjust their affiliate program terms to prohibit their affiliates from bidding on those type of keywords. Some advertisers however did and still do embrace this behavior of their affiliates and allow them, even encourage them, to bid an any term they like, including the advertisers trademarks.

Trademark bidding / PPC
Affiliate marketing is driven by entrepreneurs who are working at the forefront of internet marketing. Affiliates are the first to take advantage of new emerging trends and technologies where established advertisers do not dare to be active. Affiliates take risks and "trial and error" is probably the best way to describe how affiliate marketers are operating. This is also one of the reasons why most affiliates fail and give up before they "make it" and become "super affiliates" who generate $10,000 and more in commission (not sales) per month. This "frontier" life and the attitude that can be found in such type of communities is probably the main reason, why the affiliate marketing industry is not able to this day to self-regulate itself beyond individual contracts between advertiser and affiliate. The 10+ years history since the beginning of affiliate marketing is full of failed attempts of such a success was the halt of the "CJ LMI" ("Commission Junction Link Management Initiative") in June/July 2006, when a single network tried to impose on their publishers/affiliates the use of Javascript tracking code as a replacement for common HTML links.

Lack of self regulation

Lack of industry standards
There are no industry standards for training and certification in affiliate marketing.

Training and certification

Main article: Code of Conduct (affiliate marketing) Code of Conduct
Affiliate marketers usually avoid this topic as much as possible, but when it is being discussed, then are the debates explosive and heated to say the least. The discussion is about CPA networks (CPA = Cost per action) and their impact on "classic" affiliate marketing. Traditional affiliate marketing is resources intensive and requires a lot of maintenance. Most of this includes the management, monitoring and support of affiliates. Affiliate marketing is supposed to be about long-term and mutual beneficial partnerships between advertisers and affiliates. CPA networks on the other hand eliminate the need for the advertiser to build and maintain relationships to affiliates, because that task is performed by the CPA network for the advertiser. The advertiser simply puts an offer out, which is in almost every case a CPA based offer, and the CPA networks take care of the rest by mobilizing their affiliates to promote that offer. CPS or revenue share offers are rarely be found at CPA networks, which is the main compensation model of classic affiliate marketing.

CPA networks "threat"
Voices in the industry are getting louder

The name "affiliate marketing"
The rise of blogging, interactive online communities and other new technologies, web sites and services based on the concepts that are now called Web 2.0 have impacted the affiliate marketing world as well. The new media allowed merchants to get closer to their affiliates and improved communication between each other. New developments have made it harder for unscrupulous affiliates to make money. Emerging black sheep are detected and made known to the affiliate marketing community with much greater speed and efficiency.

Affiliate services

Broad: Internet marketing or online marketing / online advertising
Advertising methods: web banner, Ad filtering, ad serving,central ad server, pop-up ad, contextual advertising
E-Mail advertising: e-mail spam, E-mail marketing, spamming
Marketing tactics: Guerilla marketing, marketing strategy and guerrilla marketing warfare strategies, Evangelism marketing or Word of mouth marketing
Search engines: Search engine marketing (SEM), Search engine optimization (SEO), Pay per click Advertising (click fraud), Paid inclusion
Industry calculations: Click through rate (CTR), cost per action (CPA), effective cost per action (eCPA), cost per click (CPC), cost per impression (CPI), cost per mil (CPM), effective cost per mil (eCPM)
Compensation/Pricing: Compensation methods, Category:Compensation, Category:Pricing
Regulation: Code of Conduct (affiliate marketing)
Terminology: Industry specific abbreviations

A swing state (also, battleground state) in United States presidential politics is a state in which no candidate has overwhelming support, meaning that any of the major candidates have a reasonable chance of winning the state's electoral college votes. Such states are targets of both major political parties in presidential elections, since winning these states is the best opportunity for a party to gain votes. Non-swing states are sometimes called safe states, because one candidate has strong enough support that they can safely assume they will win the state's votes.

Origin of swing states
The actual procedures for deciding which states are swing states in any particular election varies across campaigns and across disciplines. Many political scientists use historical voting patterns: the more often a state has been won by candidates of one party in the past, the more likely it is to vote for that party in the future.

Determining swing states
The swing states of Connecticut, Indiana, New Jersey and New York were key to the outcome of the 1888 election.

Historical swing states
The following states are grouped by geographic regions: (in brackets are electoral votes at stake in the 2008 election, and their 2004 vote)

Swing States as of 2007

New Hampshire (4-D): Once very reliably Republican, New Hampshire became a swing state in the 1990s. Republicans still have somewhat of an edge in statewide elections, however the Democrats took control of the state legislature and both Congressional seats in 2006. The New Hampshire Republican Party tends to be more socially liberal than the national party, and as a result their behavior in national elections is harder to determine.
Pennsylvania (21-D): Pennsylvania is famously described by Democratic strategist James Carville as "Pittsburgh to the west, Philadelphia to the east, and Alabama in the middle." Northeast

Arkansas (6-R): Although a conservative state in the heart of the Bible Belt, the Democratic Party is a powerful force in Arkansas and Democrats tend to have a comfortable advantage in statewide races. Presently, the Governor, both U.S. Senators, and 3 out of 4 of the Arkansas' House members are Democrats, and Democrats control the state legislature by a large margin. The Arkansas Democratic Party tends to be more conservative than the national party, however, and as a result voters there tend to be open to Republican Presidential candidates. Though favorite son Bill Clinton won Arkansas easily both times he ran, Arkansas gave their electoral votes to George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 by a fairly large margin.
Virginia (13-R): No Democratic presidential candidate has won Virginia since Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory in 1964, and it was the only Southern state that went Republican in 1976. Virginia is no longer as reliably Republican as it once was, as evidenced by Democrat Tim Kaine's victory in 2005 for the Governor's Mansion and Jim Webb's narrow victory in the 2006 Senate race against incumbent Republican George Allen.
Florida (27-R): The outcome of the 2000 Presidential Election hung on a margin of roughly 500 votes in this state, and the fierce legal battles that ensued. Florida's electorate is balanced by heavily Democratic large cities like Miami and sparser, more Republican areas (the Florida Panhandle in this case). Republicans have been winning handily in statewide elections lately, however, the large Hispanic vote near Tampa and Orlando provide Democrats an edge, but the Cuban-American vote is crucial near Miami; their votes gave an edge to George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000. South

Minnesota (10-D): Minnesota's transformation into a swing state is an ironic one, given how fervently Democratic the North Star State once was - it was the only state in the country that did not vote for Ronald Reagan in 1984. A strong tradition of populism and labor unions made it difficult for Republicans to have any real success there until recently.
Wisconsin (10-D): Wisconsin has narrowly gone to Democratic candidates for the past several years, which is somewhat ironic considering that the Republican Party was founded there. The Republicans lost their advantage in Wisconsin in the late 19th century when perceived nativist sentiments - particularly the Bennett Law - alienated the state's large German-American population. Wisconsin has a strong progressive tradition, and elected the country's only current openly lesbian U.S. Congresswoman.
Iowa (7-R): Al Gore won Iowa in 2000 by a razor-thin margin, and George W. Bush did the same four years later. The state's highly influential primary makes Iowa the political holy grail of Republicans and Democrats alike.
Missouri (11-R): Missouri is geographically situated where the South, the Midwest, and the Great Plains meet, and is in many ways a microcosm of the entire country. Missouri has voted for the winner of nearly every Presidential election since 1904 (they got it wrong only once, in 1956), and voters there have proven themselves to be an effective gauge of the national mood.
Ohio (20-R): "I think 2008 is very likely to be a hotly contested race in Ohio," stated Eric Rademacher, director of the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll, for the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Michigan (17-D): Michigan has generally tended to lean Democratic. One of the country's biggest centers of manufacturing, labor unions inevitably come into play, and the economic hard times the state has fallen on recently will no doubt be a major issue for the Great Lakes State in 2008. Republican strength tends to be primarily in the western peninsula of the state. Midwest

Colorado (9-R): A reliable GOP stronghold, Colorado has started to steer towards the center, where moderate stances have come to prevail. With the victories of Ken Salazar to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Bill Ritter to the Governor's Mansion in 2006 along with an additional U.S. House seat pick-up that same year, Demcorats are finding themselves in a better position than before. Large Hispanic populations with strong penchanct for populist themes makes this a true battleground states; however Republicans have a 100,000 registration edge against the Democrats.
New Mexico (5-R): A classic swing state, personalities trump party affiliation in this Western state. New Mexico is truly politically divided, with registration amongst Democrats and Republicans nearly equal and the existence of a strong Independent voting bloc. The state went to Al Gore in 2000 by a mere 400 votes while George W. Bush carried it by a margin of 5000 votes in 2004.
Nevada (5-R): Usually considered a "fly-over" state due to its proximity to California with candidates looking for more exposure on the coast, the Silver State is once again looking like a strong swing state. Mormon populations make a decisive vote for the GOP while the presence of strong labor unions and Hispanic voters sway them towards the Democrats in areas like Las Vegas and Reno. A GOP bastion, the state has turned its tide for more populist themes.
Oregon (7-D): A Democratic-leaning state, the belief of anti-big government along with strong opposition to central government control, makes Oregon a GOP favorite; however, intense beliefs in civil liberties and liberal ideology on social issues force it to side with the Democrats. The state has gone to the Democrats from the 1988 election onward. West/Pacific
Overall, the candidates spend a significant amount of time in the Midwest, as most of the electoral votes, a grand total of 75 electoral votes are at stake. Most of them have been inclined to vote for the Democrats, but by a small margin, making them volatile to switch parties.
As for the "Big 3": Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio; all the candidates spend a huge chunk of their time there in order to offset any surprises that might erupt on election day. These states also provide a grand total of 68 electoral votes alone, therefore, making them a huge attraction.
Historically, no Republican candidate has won the White House without winning in Ohio; the winner of Ohio has been the winner of the general election since 1960.

Bernard Charles "Bernie" Ecclestone (born October 29, 1930 near Bungay, Suffolk, England) is the president and CEO of Formula One Management and Formula One Administration, and owns a stake in Alpha Prema, the parent company of the Formula One Group of companies. As such, he is generally considered the primary authority in Formula One racing. He is most commonly addressed in tabloid journalism as "F1 Supremo". His early involvement in the sport was as a competitor and then as a manager of drivers Stuart Lewis-Evans and Jochen Rindt. In 1972 he bought the Brabham team, which he ran for fifteen years. As a team owner he became a member of the Formula One Constructors Association. His control of the sport, which grew from his pioneering the sale of television rights in the late 1970s, is chiefly financial, but under the terms of the Concorde Agreement he and his companies also manage the administration, setup and logistics of each Formula One grand prix. Ecclestone attempted to compete in two grands prix during the 1958 season but failed to qualify for either of them.

Motorsports career
Ecclestone was born in St Peter South Elmham, a small hamlet three miles south of Bungay, Suffolk. Shortly thereafter his family moved to Bexleyheath, Kent, now a part of Greater London, and Ecclestone left school at the age of 16 to work at the local gasworks, and to pursue his hobby of motorcycles. Immediately after the end of World War II, Ecclestone went into business trading in spare parts for motorcycles, and formed the Compton & Ecclestone motorcycle dealership with Fred Compton. His first racing experience came with 500cc Formula 3 Series; he drove at a very few events, and gave up in 1951 after an accident at the Brands Hatch circuit when his car landed in the car park on the outside of the track.

Early life
After his accident, Ecclestone temporarily left racing to make a number of lucrative investments in real estate and loan financing and to manage the Weekend Car Auctions firm. He returned to racing in 1957 as manager of driver Stuart Lewis-Evans, and purchased the F1 Connaught team, whose drivers included Lewis-Evans, Roy Salvadori, Archie Scott Brown, and Ivor Bueb. Ecclestone even attempted, unsuccessfully, to qualify a car himself at Monaco in 1958.
He continued to manage Lewis-Evans when he moved to the Vanwall team; Salvadori moved on to manage the Cooper team. Lewis-Evans suffered severe burns when his engine exploded at the Moroccan Grand Prix and succumbed to his injuries six days later; Ecclestone was rather shaken up and once again retired from racing.
Soon enough, however, his friendship with Salvadori led to his becoming manager of driver Jochen Rindt and a partial owner of Rindt's Formula 2 team, Lotus (whose other driver was Graham Hill). Rindt, on his way to the 1970 World Championship, died in a crash at the Monza circuit, though he was awarded the championship posthumously.
In early 1972, Ecclestone purchased the Brabham team from Ron Tauranac and began his decades-long advocacy for team control of F1, forming the Formula One Constructors Association with Frank Williams, Colin Chapman, Teddy Mayer, Ken Tyrrell, and Max Mosley. Hereabouts arose the continuing question of television rights.

Team ownership
During the 1971 season, Ecclestone was approached by Ron Tauranac, owner of the Brabham team, who was looking for a suitable business partner. Ecclestone made him an offer of £100,000 for the whole team, which Tauranac eventually accepted. The Australian stayed on as designer and to run the factory.
Ecclestone and Tauranac were both dominant personalities and the Australian left Brabham early in the 1972 season. The team achieved little during 1972, as Ecclestone moulded the team to fit his vision of a Formula One team. He abandoned the highly successful customer car production business established by Jack Brabham and Tauranac - reasoning that to compete at the very front in Formula One you must concentrate all of your resources there. For the 1973 season, Ecclestone promoted Gordon Murray to chief designer. The young South African produced the triangular cross-section BT42, the first of a series of Ford powered cars with which the Brabham team would take several victories in 1974 and 1975.
Despite the increasing success of Murray's nimble Ford-powered cars, Ecclestone signed a deal with Alfa Romeo to use their powerful but heavy flat-12 engine from the 1976 season. Although this was financially beneficial, the new BT45s were unreliable and the Alfa engines rendered them significantly overweight. The 1976 and 1977 seasons saw Brabham fall towards the back of the field again, before winning two races again in the 1978 season when Ecclestone signed the Austrian double world champion Niki Lauda, intrigued by Murray's radical BT46 design.
The Brabham-Alfa era ended in 1979, the team's first season with the up-and-coming young Brazilian Nelson Piquet when Alfa Romeo started testing their own Formula One car during this season. This prompted Ecclestone to revert to Cosworth DFV engines - a move his designer described as "like having a holiday".
Brabham had tested car powered by a BMW turbo engine in the summer of 1981, and 1982's new BT50 was powered by BMW's turbocharged 4-cylinder M10. Brabham continued to run the Ford-powered BT49D in the early part of the season while reliability and driveability issues were sorted out by BMW and their technical partner, Bosch. Ecclestone and BMW came close to splitting before the turbo car duly took its first win at the 1982 Canadian Grand Prix but the partnership took the first turbo-powered world championship in 1983.
The team continued to be competitive until 1985. At the end of the year, Nelson Piquet who had formed a close and long lasting relationship with Ecclestone and the team, left after seven years. He was unhappy with the money that Ecclestone was willing to offer him and went to Williams where he would win his third championship. The following year, Murray, who since 1973 had designed cars that had scored 22 GP wins, left Brabham to join McLaren. Brabham continued under Ecclestone's leadership to the end of the 1987 season, in which the team scored only eight points. BMW withdrew from Formula One after the 1987 season. Ecclestone, meanwhile, was becoming increasing involved with his roles at FISA and the Formula One Constructors' Association (FOCA), in particular with negotiating the sport's television rights. Having bought the team from Ron Tauranac for approximately $120,000 at the end of 1971, Ecclestone eventually sold it for over $5 million to a Swiss businessman, Joachim Luhti.

Brabham

Main article: FISA-FOCA war FISA-FOCA war
Despite heart surgery and triple coronary bypass in 1999, Ecclestone has remained as energetic as always in promoting his own business interests. In the late 1990s he reduced his share in SLEC Holdings (owner of the various F1 managing firms) to 25%, though despite his minority share he retained complete control of the companies.
Also in 1999, Terry Lovell published a biography of Ecclestone, Bernie's Game: Inside the Formula One World of Bernie Ecclestone (ISBN 1-84358-086-1).
In April 2000 Ecclestone sold International Sportsworld Communicators to David Richards. ISC owns the commercial rights for the World Rally Championship.
Ecclestone came under fire in October 2004 when he and British Racing Drivers' Club president Jackie Stewart were unable to come to terms regarding the future British Grand Prix, causing the race to be dropped from the 2005 provisional season calendar. However, when the heads of the ten teams met and agreed on a series of cost-cuts later in the month, the race was again added to the calendar, and a contract on December 9 guaranteed its continuation for five years.
In mid-November 2004, the three banks who comprise Speed Investments, which owns a 75% share in SLEC, which in turn controls Formula One - Bayerische Landesbank, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Lehman Brothers - sued Ecclestone for more control over the sport, prompting speculation that Ecclestone might altogether lose the control he has maintained for more than thirty years. A two-day hearing began on November 23, but after the proceedings had ended the following day, Justice Andrew Park announced his intention to reserve ruling for several weeks. On December 6, 2004, Park read his verdict, stating that "In [his] judgment it is clear that Speed's contentions are correct and [he] should therefore make the declarations which it requests." [1] However, Ecclestone insisted that the verdict - seen almost universally as a legal blow to his control of Formula One - would mean "nothing at all" [2]. He stated his intention to appeal the decision.
The following day, at a meeting of team bosses at Heathrow Airport in London, Ecclestone offered the teams a total of £260,000,000 over three years in return for unanimous renewal of the Concorde Agreement, which expires in 2008 [3]. Weeks later, Gerhard Gibkowsky, a board member of Bayerische Landesbank and the chairman of SLEC, stated that the banks had no intention to remove Ecclestone from his position of control [4].
Ecclestone was a victim of theft in March of 2005: two wheels were stolen from his car while it was parked outside his London home. The car, a brand new Mercedes-Benz CLS55 AMG, was said to be the first of its kind in Britain.
On Friday, June 17, 2005, Ecclestone made American headlines with his reply to a question about Danica Patrick's fourth-place finish at the Indianapolis 500, during an interview with Indianapolis television station WRTV: "She did a good job, didn't she? Super. Didn't think she'd be able to make it like that. You know, I've got one of these wonderful ideas that women should be all dressed in white like all the other domestic appliances." [5] [6].
In the following two days, Ecclestone saw 14 of 20 cars refuse to race in the 2005 United States Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The seven teams who refused to participate, stating concern over the safety of their Michelin tyres, requested rule changes and/or a change to the track configuration. Despite a series of meetings between Ecclestone, Max Mosley, and the team principals, no compromise was reached by race time, and Ecclestone became an object of the public's frustration at the resultant six-car race. Despite his not having caused the problem, fans and journalists blamed him for failing to take control and enforce a solution, given the position of power in which he had placed himself.
On November 25 2005 CVC Capital Partners announced it was to purchase both the Ecclestone shares of the Formula One Group (25% of SLEC) and Bayerische Landesbank's 48% share (held through Speed Investments). This left Alpha Prema owning 71.65% of the Formula One group. Ecclestone used the proceeds of this sale to purchase a stake in this new company (the exact ratio of the CVC/Ecclestone shareholding is not yet known). On December 6 Alpha Prema acquired JP Morgan's share of SLEC to increase its ownership of Formula One to 86%, the remaining 14% is held by Lehman Brothers. On March 21 2006 the EU competition authorities approved the transaction subject to CVC selling Dorna, which controls the rights to MotoGP. CVC announced the completion of the transaction on March 28. [7] CVC acquired Lehman Brothers share at the end of March 2006.
On July 21 2007 Bernie Ecclestone announced in the media that he would be open to discuss the purchase of Arsenal Football Club. As a close friend to former Director of Arsenal David Dein, it is thought that the current board of the North London based football club would prefer to sell to a British party, this after American based investment company KSE headed by "Silent" Stan Kroenke are thought to be preparing a £650 million takeover bid for Arsenal Holdings PLC.

Labour Party controversy
The Sunday Times Rich List of 2003 ranked Ecclestone the 3rd richest person in the United Kingdom, with an estimated fortune of £2,400m. He fell to eighth place in 2004's Sunday Times Rich List, and by 2006 the rich list placed him 13th with an estimated net worth of £2,243m.
In early 2004 he sold one of his London residences (Kensington Palace Gardens), never having lived in it, to steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal for £57.1 million, making it the most expensive house ever sold.
Ecclestone is married to Slavica Ecclestone, née Slavica Radić, a 6'2" (1.88m) former Armani model who is 28 years his junior. The couple have two daughters, Tamara Ecclestone (born 1984) and Petra Ecclestone (born 1988), who are both fluent in Serbian/Croatian.

Complete Formula One World Championship Results

Jimmy Tarbuck OBE (born 6 February 1940, Liverpool, Lancashire, England) is an English comedian, MC and the father of actress and television presenter Liza Tarbuck, he attended the same school as Beatle John Lennon and newscaster Peter Sissons.
His first television show was It's Tarbuck! on ITV in 1964. He has also hosted numerous quiz shows including Winner Takes All, Full Swing and Tarby's Frame Game, he was the last original host of Sunday Night at the London Palladium from 1965.
His numberplate is COM 1C, as recently revealed by his daughter Liza on BBC Radio 2.
In the 1980s, he hosted similar Sunday night variety shows, Live From Her Majesty's, Live from the Piccadilly and finally Live from the Palladium, which were produced by London Weekend Television for ITV. Nicknamed Tarby, at the height of his celebrity he was a prominent supporter of Margaret Thatcher and her policies.
He was appearing on the fourth series of BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing in 2006, but he was forced to pull out on medical advice.

Music of the Philippines is a mixture of European, American and indigenous sounds. Much of the music of the Philippines have been influenced by the 377 year-long colonial legacies of Spain, Western rock and roll, hip-hop and pop music from the United States, the indigenous Austronesian population and Indo-Malayan Gamelan music.

Indigenous musical styles
Among the various groups of the island of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, a highly sophisticated musical repertoire called kulintang exists in which the main instruments used are bossed gongs not dissimilar to gongs used in Indonesia.
Generally, kulintang ensembles among the Maguindanao, Maranao, the Tausug and other lesser known groups, are composed of five pieces of instrumentation. Among the Maguindanao, this includes: the kulintang (strung stand, serving as the main melody instrument of the ensemble), the agung (the largest gongs of the ensemble providing much of the lower beats, either coming in a pair of two or just one alone), the gandingan (four large vertical gongs aligned front to back, used as a secondary melodic instrument), the dabakan (an hour-glass shaped drum covered in goat/lizard skin) and the babendil (a singular gong used as the timekeeper of the entire ensemble). The Maranao have similar instrumentation with the exception of the gandingan which they do not have an equivalent of.
Among the Maguindanao/Maranao, kulintang music serves as their means of entertainment and hospitality, being used in weddings, festivals, coronations, to entertain visiting dignitaries and to send off those heading and coming back from pilgrimages. Kulintang music is also used to accompany healing ceremonies and particularly among the Maguindanao, can serve as a form of communication. Because the Maguindanao can convert the music into their language and vice versa, the Maguindanao can sends messages long distances using their instruments. The gandingan usually is their instrument of choice to send messages, known among the Maguindanao as apad. Apad has been used to warn others of impeding danger or to send a message to a lover. In fact, people have been known to elope with the use of such songs.
Among the Tausug of the Sulu Archipelago, The Sindil (sung verbal jousts) is a musical lighthearted style that is sung by a duo of both sexes sung in front of an audience. Teasing, jokes, and innuendos flow into the verses, the better ones being applauded by the audience. The gabbang xylophone and biyula traditional violin are the instruments mainly used. Although Sindil is a particular genre of music, the verbal jousting musical type is also found in many other parts of the country, especially among the Visayan peoples, who are ethnically related to the Tausug. Sindil are normally used at weddings and other festive events.
Other musical traditions of this region are those of the serenade form Kapanirong and the outdoor "loud" music repertoire called Tagonggo.

Southern styles
Among the indigenous peoples of the Central Cordilleras of the northern island of Luzon, music is also played with gongs, but unlike those of southern repertoires, these gongs, called Gangsa, are unbossed and have their origins in mainland Asia. Music is usually played to accompany dance, and because of this is mostly percussion based. Gong ensembles are normally accompanied by drums. The music is polyphonic, and uses highly interlocking repeated patterns.

Northern styles
Other indigenous instruments include a bamboo zither, log drums, the Kudyapi two stringed boat lute and various flutes, including some nose flutes used by northern tribes.

Spanish influence
The Harana first gained popularity in the early part of the Spanish Period. It's influence comes from folk Music of Spain and the Mariachi sounds of Mexico. It is a traditional form of courtship music in which a man woos a woman by singing underneath her window at night. It is widely practiced in many parts of the Philippines with a set of protocols, a code of conduct, and a specific style of music. Harana itself uses mainly Hispanic protocols in music, although its origins lie in the old pre-colonial Philippine musical styles which still practiced around the country (See Also Kapanirong style of the Maguindanao of Mindanao). The main instrument used for Harana is the Guitar, played by the courter, although other string instruments such as the Ukulele and less frequently, the Violin and Trumpets are also used.

Harana
The Kundiman is a lyrical song made popular in the Philippines in the early 19th century, but having origins in older pre-colonial indigenous styles. Composed in the Western idiom, the song is characterized by a minor key at the beginning and shifts to a major key in the second half. Its lyrics depict a romantic love, usually portraying the forlorn pleadings of a lover willing to sacrifice everything on behalf of his beloved. In many others, it is a plaintive call of the rejected lover or the broken-hearted. In others, it is a story of unrequited love. Almost all traditional Filipino love songs in this genre are heavy with poetic emotion. One such Kundiman that tells about unrequited love is the Visayan song Matud Nila.
In the 1920s Kundiman became a much more mainstream musical style, with many popular performers including Diomedes Maturan and Ruben Tagalog.

Kundiman
Spain brought the rondalla to the Philippines in the 1800s. An ensemble of plectrum instruments, the early Philippine rondalla repertoire consisted primarily of Western European symphonic overtures and arias from operas. Its compatibility with native Philippine music allowed the rondalla to figure prominently in Filipino rural community life, providing accompaniment to folk dancing and singing as well as the featured ensemble.
The standard Philippine rondalla consists of the pear-shaped piccolo bandurria, bandurria, and la-ud, and the guitar-shaped octavina and mandola, guitarra, and bajo de unas (which has been supplanted by the double bass). Fashioned from common Philippine wood such as langka, narra, kamagong, and mahogany, the instruments are played with a plectrum of turtle shell. The fourteen strings of the rondalla instruments, except for the guitarra, are grouped into six tuning units – viz., F#, B, E, A, D, G. The doubling or tripling of strings produces better sound quality and volume.

Rondalla
The Philippine choral music scene has been developed and popularized by the Philippine Madrigal Singers. This choir is the country's premier chorale and has been an award-winning chorale through its existence. Also from the same homefront, i.e. the University of the Philippines, are the University of the Philippines Singing Ambassadors (or UPSA) and the University of the Philippines Concert Chorus (or UPCC), two of the most sought-after and multi-awarded groups in the country. Also, Kundirana, a high-school choral group from La Salle Green Hills, became popular as well.

Philippine choral music

Philippine Popular Music
The United States occupied the Islands in 1898 until 1935 and introduced American blues, folk, R&B and rock and roll became popular.
For many years, even after the Republic of Philippines became an independent nation, most popular Filipino musicians recorded "covers" of American hit songs. However, this American influence taught the Filipinos how to create and market their own performers, and led to the emergence of superstars such as Martin Nievera, Sharon Cuneta, Gary Valenciano, Lea Salonga and Regine Velasquez,

North American influences
Main article: Filipino rock
In the late 1950s, native performers wrote Tagalog lyrics for North American rock n'roll music, resulting in the beginnings of Filipino rock.
The most notable achievement in Filipino rock of the 1960s was the hit song "Killer Joe," which propelled the group "Rocky Fellers" to #16 on the American radio charts. However, despite the Fellers family (father and four sons) being of Manila origin, the song itself was written by US musicians Bert Russell (Bert Berns), Bob Elgin, and Phil Medley, so some critics contend that it wasn't truly Filipino rock.
In the early 1970s, Tagalog and English lyrics were both used, within the same song, in songs like "Ang Miss Universe Ng Buhay Ko," which helped innovate the Manila sound. The mixing of the two languages (known as "Taglish"), while common in casual speech in the Philippines, was seen as a bold move, but the success of Taglish in popular songs, including Sharon Cuneta's first hit, "Mr DJ," broke the barrier forevermore.
Soon, Filipino rock musicians added folk music and other influences, helping to lead to the 1978 breakthrough success of Freddie Aguilar. Aguilar's Anak, his debut recording, is the most commercially successful Filipino recording in history, and was popular throughout Asia and Europe, and has been translated into numerous language by singers worldwide. Asin also broke into the music scene at the same time and were very popular.
Rock music became the music of Filipino protesters in the 1980s, and Aguilar's "Bayan Ko" became especially popular as an anthem during the 1986 revolution. At the same time, a subculture rejected the rise of socially aware lyrics. In Manila, a Punk Rock scene developed, led by bands like Betrayed, The Jerks and Urban Bandits. The influence of New Wave was also felt during these years, spearheaded by The Dawn.
Later Filipino rock stars include Yano, Eraserheads, Parokya ni Edgar, Rivermaya, Cocojam, and Grace Nono, each of which adopts a variety of rock subgenres into their style.
Filipino rock has also developed to include some hard rock and heavy metal such as Wolfgang, Razorback, Greyhounds,Queso and the progressive band Fuseboxx.
The Neo-Traditional genre in Filipino music is gaining popularity, with artists such as Joey Ayala, Grace Nono and Bayang Barrios enjoying relative popularity within the Philippines for including the traditional musical traditions of the many ethnic minorities of the country.
Today, the Philippines is perhaps Asia's most vibrant music-obsessed country, with home spawned bands such as Aegis, Bamboo, Urbandub,Imago, Kitchie Nadal, Moonstar 88, MYMP,Hale and Sponge Cola, among others.
There has always been a blend of rock and easy-listening styles in OPM, so it is not unusual for a single artist or group to have a wide repertoire and an equally wide range of fans. A retired businessman may find himself seated next to a teen girl at an appearance of APO Hiking Society or the latest girl group from Makati, and outcheering her after a favorite song.

Filipino rock
Original Pilipino Music, now more commonly termed Original Pinoy Music, (frequently abbreviated to OPM) originally referred only to Filipino pop songs, especially those in the ballad form; such as songs popularized in the 1970s through the mid-1990s by major commercial Filipino pop artists like Ryan Cayabyab, Sharon Cuneta, Kuh Ledesma, Zsa Zsa Padilla, Martin Nievera, Gary Valenciano, Basil Valdez, Rey Valera, Regine Velasquez, Ogie Alcasid, Jaya, Lani Misalucha, Lea Salonga, Janno Gibbs and the APO Hiking Society. In the passage of time as well as the development of many diverse and alternative musical styles in the Philippines, however, the term OPM now refers to any type of Original Philippine Music created in the Philippines or composed by individuals of Philippine extraction, regardless of location at the time when composed. The lyrics, in fact, may be in any language (although most of it are written either in Tagalog, English or taglish).

Filipino Hip-Hop and R&B

Traditional Filipino Music
Philippine music