Howard Dean, Webmaster

From the Howard Dean blog today:

Howard Dean, Webmaster
Adam Nagourney looks back at Howard Dean's Monday numbers and gets the complete picture in the Sunday New York Times' Week In Review :

"Political strategists have become increasingly fascinated with the Internet as a potential new force in political organizing and fund-raising.
But no one seemed to understand how effective the Web could be until Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and presidential candidate,
reported last week that he had raised $7.5 million in the second quarter of this year — with $4.1 million coming from his Web site.
Dr. Dean blew past his competitors, drawing checks and clicks from almost 59,000 people, which he suggested was a record.

It's not just money. Using the Web to get out the vote — replacing telephone banks and doorbell ringing — suddenly seems very real.
Dean supporters organized meetings nationally last week through Meetup.com, drawing 55,000 people in 250 communities.
Is it any surprise that Joe Trippi, Dr. Dean's campaign manager, would be proposing that the Web would transform politics as
much as television did after the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates?"

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My own comments as posted on the Howard Dean blog:

"Here is the key to it all...this is how Dr. Dean will, as we look back, have come strolling refreshingly on in and surprised them all:

Using Adam Nagourney's astute comment:

"....no one seemed to understand how effective the Web could be until Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and presidential candidate, reported last week that he had raised $7.5 million in the second quarter of this year — with $4.1 million coming from his Web site."

Many in Big Media just don't "get it" yet.
They're a tough crowd. Very slow to come around to reality sometimes.
They are beginning to understand..and voices like Nagourney's are powerful in getting those in journalism who are far too often wobbly and reliant upon "old-school" to come around to the truth of what is happening out here.


I love these music ideas, by the way.
Especially the Billy Bragg.

I've always loved this Peter, Paul, and Mary song..and in this day and age of Patriot Acts, Total Information Awareness, and sunshine patriots, it reminds me of the hope that still lives in our hearts...the hope that Dr. Dean symbolizes, for me:

HOME ON THE RANGE /
DON'T EVER TAKE AWAY MY FREEDOM

Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam
And the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

Three horses grazing out my window, brown, black and white they stand
Rolling pastures they can wander, free and easy is their land

Don't ever take away my freedom, don't ever take it away
We must cherish and keep that one part of our lives
And the rest we're gonna find one of these days...
One of these days

I always thought that I'd see in my own lifetime
An end to poverty, injustice and war
But now I've learned that that job will take a long, long time
So there's one thing that must endure

Don't ever take away my freedom, don't ever take it away
We must cherish and keep that one part of our lives
And the rest we're gonna find one of these days...
One of these days

When I am old and thinking over the whole life that I've led
If there's one final wish left to me
I will pray that the children, who are yet to be born,
I will pray that they will always live free

Don't ever take away my freedom, don't ever take it away
We must cherish and keep that one part of our lives
And the rest we're gonna find one of these days...
One of these days

There is a time for the singing and the sunshine
There is a time for the thunder and the rain
There is a time for the changing of the seasons my friend
But there is one thing we must never change

Don't ever take away my freedom, don't ever take it away
We must cherish and keep that one part of our lives
And the rest we're gonna find one of these days...
One of these days

Traditional / Peter Yarrow

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Irrelevant Journalism-Part 8941

Heard on the Chris Matthews show today:

Howard Fineman of Newsweek reading a letter from a friend he claims is high-ranking in the US Military.
He states that he had received the letter three weeks ago:

"Have I got news for you!
The reporters have fled and the real stories have just begun...Iraq is a mess."

Why did the embedded reporters disappear?
(The ones supported by so many of our tax dollars)?
Was it because the Bush administration claimed "victory"?
What made it a victory, really? Was it that gigantic statue that was pulled down and stomped upon?


Saddam-Did we really get him? Click here for answer.

Was that the end?

Hardly.

Ask the American families of over 60 men who have died since then.

Where are the embedded reporters now that the real stories have just begun?

They're back in their Bushworld where the big news today is wag-the-dog Liberia.

Carefully crafted Attention Deficit journalism.

The mess in Afghanistan has been all but forgotten (as we once again negotiate with terrorists in the Taliban out of the media-scope).

Will Iraq soon be relegated to the back-burner?

They're already trying..while troops are still dying.

It's Worse Than It Seems

From the blogs:
Is the draft coming soon?

It's Worse Than It Seems
By Steve Gilliard / http://www.DailyKos.com

"...Viceroy Jerry has asked for 50,000 troops to maintain his rule. There's one small problem with that. There aren't 50K to give. The US military is nearly at the end of it's deployable strength and needs to withdraw the 3ID as soon as possible...."

"....didn't we disregard our allies sane, rational, and logical suggestions about how to deal with Iraq? Now, we expect Japanese and Korean troops, forget French and German to help us out?"

"The request for troops is a political minefield and one which places the Army at it's limits. The war was supposed to be over, 50,000 men getting their Iraqi visas puts that to the lie once and for all. It would awaken opposition to the war and not solve the problem..."

"The Shia will determine what happens in Iraq regardless of our desires and will. The Army is stretched to the limits with no clear source of more troops. And there are no simple answers to any of this. Bring it on? We have brought it on, more than we can handle without grim choices..."

TEMPERAMENT WARS

TEMPERAMENT WARS
By James Traub
New York Times Sunday Magazine, July 6, 2003

"Why are the Democrats so much more willing than the Republicans to make political sacrifices in the name of procedural fairness or of good government? Maybe Democrats are just nicer, but a more philosophical view is that liberals are committed to, are in fact bedeviled by, ideals about process that do not much preoccupy conservatives, at least contemporary ones. Liberals put their faith in such content-neutral principles as free speech, due process, participatory democracy. Is that too lofty?"


Bitter charging is all the GOP knows.


"The G.O.P. is making such inroads among younger voters for the same reason that Fox News is making inroads among younger viewers.
We live in a culture that values brazen certainty and loud conviction, no matter how wrongheaded.
Pity the Democrats, stuck with the wrong set of virtues..."

George W Bush- Lies With Lips fully in Gear-Delusions of Granduer Also Spinning Madly

Army Times Editorial Shows the Truth -What the Average Military Man and Woman Are Thinking of George W. Bush's Empty Rhetoric

George W Bush lies with his lips fully in gear---his God-stimulated delusions of granduer apparently alive and intact--
how else could he make so many vacant promises and statements devoid of actuality?

The rhetoric is far more empty than the stuffed "man-area" of AWOL Flop Gun Bush's flight suit on the day he lied on and on about
victory in Iraq-- the combat being over--the mission "accomplished". Does he take active servicepeople and Vets for fools?

Veterans and active servicepeople can tell when a leader is trying to rip away at the social programs that benefit them.

They can see a phony leader feeding them pretty lines-- and they can see when the pretty lines have no substance
to transform 'pretty' to active reality.


A man's own life is important to him. So is his country and his beloved family.
The soldier thinks not about God's bestowal of grandeur upon his leader when following orders of that trusted leader.
The soldier concerns himself not with any glory his leader hopes to attain, but simply hopes for the grace of his God in the face of death.

If you think you aren't happy about the thought of perpetual war (allegedly inspired by God) at the drop of your leader's
war-mongering 'bring-em-on' hat, think about the men and women with their very lives on the line....and the families who love them.