Politics

Back in 2005 I found myself looking through the Dean blog archives and noticed that they'd gone missing for a time (they're back now-- with some comments missing here and there-- I know because I have a 500MB copy of it.) In 2006, I poked around the early DailyKos/MyDD archives, and was frustrated with how difficult they were to navigate (compound by the fact that the early MyDD posts are onl

Four years ago, I picked the hometown favorite for the Democratic primaries, albeit very late in the game,  long after he was all but crowned as the presumptive nominee.

Communications law in the United States is a little peculiar at times. If I buy time on for an advertisement on television or radio to reach thousands of people over the public airwaves, I have to abide by one set of rules. If. If I use an auto-dialer to reach thousands of people in their homes over the telephone (“robocalls”), I abide by a different set of rules.

I caught wind before the weekend of Governor Deval Patrick's bid to freshen up his image by unveiling a new website.

Dan Kennedy asks why he didn't do it on Mass.gov?

I suppose it's simply easier for him to post the information there. And the discussion on Blue Mass Group basically confirms this. But let's look at the details:

Several months ago, I decided on a simple experiment: I'd stop reading most blogs I'd been reading, and just get news from my regular sources, and see if I'd be any less informed. I think I've stayed sharp. In this three-thousand exercise, I looked to see whether I missed anything in the U.S.

Since Ronald Reagan, U.S. Presidents have added "signing statements" onto laws to indicate how (or whether) they expect to enforce them. Two weeks ago in the Boston Globe, Charlie Savage reported on the 750 signing statements of the current President Bush, which have come at a pace several times that of his father and President Clinton. This story has caught on, but perhaps not as quckly as one might think, for a couple of reasons. First is that it has been just one of many troubles battering the current Administration. Second, and what interests me, is that the phenomenon has yet to win a pet name. The common name for the effective veto as described by Article I, Section 7 has been popularly known as the "pocket veto." This I'd like to call the "sock-it veto."

The New York Times begins the year by giving an update on such a modest proposal: Officials at U.N. Seek Fast Action on Rights Panel. Paraphrasing the article, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan explains thus: some countries participate “not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others” with the consequence being that “a credibility deficit has developed, which casts a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole.” The position of the United States, according to Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Kristen Silverberg, is “to improve the membership criteria so that countries like Zimbabwe and Sudan were not eligible.”

I have a confession to make, which may surprise close readers of this space. Earlier this year, I wanted to actually start a blog-- you know, write off the cuff like a blubbering fool about any topic that crossed somebody else's mind. I needed help, some of my curmudgeonly correspondents to help breathe life into a made-up person named Fabio Folio. Nobody wanted to help, and then I discovered that a Google search revealed that “Fab Folio” was the name of a real person in Italy, so I retired the character. I'd like to say that my second choice was “Valerie Flame,” but I can't find the piece of paper where I wrote that. I bring this up to expand on some points about fake blogs (flogs?).

I wasn't there then, but it's possible that the perception leads reality. Wherever one looks on the Internet, there is activism, though the physical evidence, and quantifiable acheivements, are harder to discern (Zinn did not admit to much web-surfing, let along blog-reading, other than reading his email).

This worries me now because of the desperate times the liberals are in. For three years the Republican Party controls the White House and both houses of Congress; this is the most conservative (in every aspect but fiscal) that the government has been in modern times. One solution, guided by the Air America radio network, is to compete with the likes of Rush and O'Reilly on the partisan airwaves. But to do that best, one might embrace generalizations, innuendo, and then finds themself down the path of falsehood.

• From the Roots -- for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSSC)-- help the Democrats capture 51 seats in the Senate
• John Kerry Volunteer Center -- one more month to raise money for Kerry for President.

"Ronald Reagan was neither a fox nor a hedgehog. He was as dumb as a stump. He could have had anyone in the world to dinner, any night of the week, but took most of his meals on a White House TV tray. He had no friends, only cronies...."

Since then, the GOP has blossomed into the party of no accountability. After all, accountability would be tantamount to admitting error, and admitting error would invite investigations, and that would just get in the way of the important things a government does, like wage war and cut taxes. As Dick Cheney said, in a Saturday night prepared release defending Rumsfeld: "People ought to get off his case and let him do his job." Move on, indeed. The talking points from Republican Senators today (outside of McCain and Warner) were on that message: let's not dwell on the past; let's focus on the present, and the future. I wouldn't be surprised if we have an incumbent President who campaigns on the same theme, to forget the past.

And now I just learned (thanks to Matt Gordon) that somebody had in fact raised more money online-- a lot more money: $75,000. He is the anonymous blogger Atrios, who pointed out on his blog afternoon that Kerry HQ had not included this contest entry until too late. This might also explain why the contest results were not readily publicized.

I've written on length about Social Network Fundraising, which is so called because it pulls people in to the network. The nature of this "pull" campaigning is that a relationship ties each person into another person closer to the campaign.