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Joe Trippi Interviewed
MikeCapone writes "Mother Jones and Alternet interviewed Joe Trippi,the guy behind the Howard Dean campaign ('the candidate lost but the campaign won'). He has a new book out, 'The Revolution will not be Televised' (click for excerpt), about how the Internet is radically changing the way politics is done. Choice quote from the interview: 'The open-source stuff was amazing. I mean, 650,000 brains are a lot smarter than the 50 [...] They spotted stuff that we didn't see, came up with ideas we wouldn't have thought of, and made the campaign a lot stronger. Just like how open-source works in running software -- it's the difference between Linux and Microsoft.'"
'the candidate lost but the campaign won'?
And not one of them thought, "Hey, Chief, down the volume on that scream..."
W = (-president)^1/2
650,000 brains are a lot smarter than the 50
ummm... Windows was made by using fifty brains?
when a policial canidate uses it.
... for Open Source.
Seeing how Dean got his ass KICKED and all that.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It means that "he fired up all the troops in the democrate party, before he was stabed in the back." (this is actualy a quote from Rush)
... it makes me just want to
r gg ggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
yyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Joe Trippi--heralded on the cover of The New Republic as the man who "reinvented campaigning"--was born in California and began his political career working on Edward M. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1980. His work in presidential politics continued with the campaigns of Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt and Howard Dean.
He's got quite a bit of experience as a campaign manager - maybe he just needs to be a little more selective in his employers...
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
I'm not sure Howard Dean is the best "horse" to hook the open source wagon to! We already have to overcome the linux is only for geeks issue. Do we want add on the screaming fanatic with no grasp on reality issue as well.
I understand that the Howard Dean scream was to motivate his people. It doesn't mean he's insane. yada yada yada. It doesn't matter what I think, I'm already on our side. What do the big companies decision makers think? In the USA they tend to be white, middle-aged, conservative (Republican).
All I'm saying, right or wrong, Howard Dean may not be a good influence on the Open Source acceptance in the mainstream.
Of course, Gil Scott Heron popularized the phrase 'the revolution will not be televised', in the album of the same name.
And here is the blog for the change for america guys Joe Trippi is hooked up with.
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ChipotleLovers.com
Chipotle food, locations, pics, links, polls and discussion!
Dean may have lost personally, but he showed the Democrats how to raise money using the internet. Because of Dean, the Democrats have raised almost as much as Republicans for the presidential race, a fact which was INCONCEIVABLE a year ago.
He convinced a bunch of fools to part with their money using the Internet just like the Spammers and he didn't even promise to get make their dick bigger! The Dean campaign was the great Internet swindle of 2003. Just like the Dot Com boom companies and their IPOs. Thus making Howard Dean the Democratic version of the Pets.com mascot.
Dean's Newbie-ism:
JT: When we started, Howard was sort of a technophobe; he'd barely just begun using e-mail. He didn't know what a blog was. He went from "What's a blog?" to coming into headquarters saying "I want to blog today." And by the end of the campaign, he was asking, "Why doesn't the White House have a blog? If I'm elected president, I'm going to have a blog."
Problems of scale:
JT: As we grew to 650,000 people, the site was still an amazing self-policing thing. The problem was, once you get to 650,000, how do you communicate with them personally the way I, as the campaign manager, or Dean, as the candidate, had been communicating with 432? I used to answer every email personally, and suddenly I was getting 10,000 emails a day. That's the thing I'd like to figure out for the future. It was the one big problem we had, because we'd built this thing on personal communication and connection.
Solution to problem of scale:
Obviously, they just need to run slashcode.
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ChipotleLovers.com
Chipotle food, locations, pics, links, polls and discussion!
I think that Mr. Trippi misses the gist of Gil Scott-Heron's lyrics to 'The Revolution will not be Televised'.
Have you Meta Moderated t
It's interesting to see Trippi himself say it so nakedly. Of course, I don't see him talking about the other big conflict of interest: the millions of dollars in advertising kickbacks he walked off with.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Expropriating an old catchphrase on the cover of his book, and then expropriating free software concepts inside it. Both, badly.
B
"I'm payin' taxes, but what am I buyin'?" -- James Brown
Just like how open-source works in running software -- it's the difference between Linux and Microsoft.'"
All these years I have been half expecting RMS to shout "YEEAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!" to conclude a Linux/GNULinux rant.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Last I checked, Linux has yet to win the OS wars.
What success did his campaign really have? Aside from charging up the angry Bush-haters, he made no headway with the mainstream. When the primaries came, he couldn't manage to win even one. Even John Edwards came up better than Dean, and now he's the Vice-Presidential candidate.
This open-source nonsense is just that. Outside of the liberal, techy crowd, Howard Dean and his movement is a distant and faded memory.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
Think of seeing an opera star on TV. In person in a crowded hall is one thing. With a televised close-up, suddenly the big stage acting becomes grotesque. That's what happened to Dean.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I don't what to read about left or right politics when I'm trying to read about technology.
You should demand your money back.
Having been a sysadmin during the campaign I can't help but question most of the words that come out of Joe Trippi's mouth. The sad truth is that if half of the people here, Trippi included, focussed more on the campaign than on their personal career, we might still be in a campaign now instead of the political action committee, Democracy for America.
The truth is hard to find in Trippi's book. Even in my personal case; I built blogforamerica.com and Matt Gross gets the credit because that's the way the political game works.
Joe can be right just as often as not, but before we go taking his words as gospel I suggest we look behind them a little more.
Well he took alot of spotlight from Kucinich and Nader - two guys with a lot more going for them than the media will appreciate.
I don't think he did much at all. He and Hillary will never be president.
By the way, stand up guy Dennis Kucinich threw shis support behind Kerry now. Looks like it's all over for the Repugnicans until 2012.
Jusy be sure to vote in Novemeber AND to vote for Congressmen.
Stuff that matters.
Actually, this is not a politically slanted article. The point is that Open Source principles (many eyes make all bugs shallow, etc) aren't just for software. This is as much about politics as the GNU manifesto is about C code.
/. readers and editors are left-ish. Read the FAQ entry on why it's US-centric; the same arguments apply.
Now for the potentially flaming part: open source principles may be more useable by the left than the right ("command and control" issues, as he says in the interview), but that hardly means this is a politically biased article. And yes, the majority of the
I would rather have 50 known productive workers than 650,000 unknown hobby-hackers...
I have just finished "The Success of Open Source" by Steven Weber. (I found out about it in a Slashdot book review.) He pretty much proves that open source methods can outcompete top-down management models. He also points out that just being open source doesn't guarantee success. Figuring out how to make open source work is quite tricky.
Having said the above, the internet will change political campaigns just as surely as the advent of television did. Of course, the nature of that change isn't clear to most of us yet.
If you received the campaign's email messages, you know that Joe Trippi is not a good campaign manager or writer. He was disgustingly terrible.
The Dean campaign was a mess. There was too little guidance to the people who wanted to help. People were pretending to be part of the campaign who were just pushing their own agenda. There were "Dean Campaign" groups who were gays looking for other gays. There were "Dean Campaign" cross-dressers, looking for other cross-dressers, I suppose.
Joe Trippi was fired, as he should have been.
Here's a sample Dean Campaign email message, sent on January 27, 2004. It's pointlessly rah-rah. It is mostly wasted verbiage -- things you probably already know if you are subscribing to the Dean Campaign email letters. There is no useful information. There is no information about what one person can do, other than contribute money. Note that he asks twice for money:
Dear Michael,
Contribute Now! New Hampshire is the only state in the country where a campaign can turn on a dime. Voters in New Hampshire don't like to follow trends -- they like to start their own.
And New Hampshire is beginning to turn around. It's been a rough week, but in the last several days voters have been coming out in droves to see Governor Dean on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. They are hearing his message -- not what the media wants them to hear -- and they are responding.
Even the reporters are starting to say what we already know -- we're making a comeback. But we need the resources today to take advantage of the momentum we're seeing on the ground. Please contribute any amount that you can afford -- New Hampshire is only 48 hours away, and we have seven more states to compete in just a week after that:
http://www.deanforamerica.com/contribute
I've worked on campaigns all my life and one thing I know is true: You cannot win without surviving the inevitable blows. We took a blow in Iowa. But we're still here and we're still fighting.
The fact remains that our campaign is the last best hope to change Washington and to remove the special interests and the power of big money from our government.
And the fact remains that Howard Dean is the best candidate to take on George W. Bush and defeat him, because he's spent a lifetime of doing what's right, not what was popular.
But he needs your support today. We are bringing out the comeback bat to show the country that we are not giving up:
http://www.deanforamerica.com/contribute
We are going forward -- and we will succeed -- because we must. Because there is no other candidate and no other campaign that will bring real change to Washington and return real power to the American people.
Thank you for everything you do.
Joe Trippi
Campaign Manager
Dean for America
How are those reruns of Sanford and Son, by the way?
don't you remember how the brave Howard Dean lead the lower classes to overthrow the upper class? Just like in the American Revolution!
Casual Games/Downloads
Last night's edition of "Nightly Business Report" was saying just the opposite, that the Internet's effect if pretty minimal overall and the biggest results come from good ol' rallys, picnics and door to door volunteers talking to everyday people in the street. Web sites could be rallying points for the jacked-in crowd, but the vast majority it's still just AOL/MSN, pop-ups and spam, with a few emailed photos from relatives and offspring at college. However, NBR was emphasizing personalized, point-casting the message toward individuals over the mass media network broadcasting as a winning strategy.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
All too true. Once the media got that video clip they just wore it out playing it over and over and over again. Dare I say they were politically motivated to do so? I think so.
The Democratic party was panicking that Dean would actually get the nomination, and needed to find a way to stop that. If Dean had been nominated, it would be a slam dunk victory for Bush this fall and the Democrats knew that. They needed a more stuffy, pro establishment candidate to get the votes of mainstream America. Dean may have had some good ideas, but his platform overall failed to connect with the average American. Dean was losing momentum even before the famous overplayed scream, and the scream was just the final nail in his coffin.
Sorry, the DMCA, software patents and similar legislation have demanded that nerds get political. It's not about left or right. It's about freedom. For too long nerds have relied on just doing the tech., while politicians have put obstacles in the way. In my opinion you are beginning to see the nerds fight back on the politician's own ground. Let the battle begin...
Here's a link to the book over at Amazon. It sounds like a good book. It's going on my wishlist.
I've become weary of such declarations. Ironic that the 2004 primary season paralleled the dot-com boom: In both cases the Internet created a tremendous amount of "buzz" and everyone said "The Internet has 'radically' changed the rules and the old model is obsolete" -- yet when all was said and done, "buzz" did not translate into stable business models nor votes, and the declaration of the total death of the old order and conventional wisdom turned out to be premature. (The scream was only part of it.)
The Internet brings incremental changes. "When it comes to technology, most people overestimate the impact in the short-term and underestimate it in the long-term." -- Arthur C. Clarke
Brent J. Nordquist N0BJN
(650,000 * Brains) * Dean = Elected Where Elected = 0
Ah, yes, that's oh so different from the usual political bumblethink.
it's the difference between Linux and Microsoft.
Not a bad analogy seeing as "Microsoft" got all the votes. :-P
This election can make a grown man weep. An ebola derived pox on you Party-liners for giving us yet another choice between shit and shat. *shrug* Dean was just another flavor of excrement.
--- Ban humanity.
I hate to say this, but "open source," will become the hot new buzzword (if it already hasn't). Think back to the glorious dot-com days, where we learned such great words as "synergies," "i-this," "e-that." Someone I know (with no coding experience) had a coding problem which was most likely JavaScript-related. The first thing out of his mouth, "Can open source help us fix this?" Kind of frustrating.
Anyway, as bad as a tech sector is, there are still plenty of people who want a piece of the action. A lot of people look at IT knowledge as a way to differentiate themselves from the crowd. Not from the crowd of other IT guys, but from the crowds of people in management, government, law, etc.
Anyway, it's great to see open source getting more attention, but prepare for some more growing pains. :)
And look, there's an option for "open-source" in the Web Bullshit Generator!
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
I saw that a couple days ago. It apparently went away. I also, about 75% of the time can not fully load a Slashdot page in Mozilla. More often than not I get the sidebars, banner at the top, and the green and white background with no text. Reloading the pages 3 or 4 times usually does the trick. This has been going on for months now. I think there is a serious screwup in the style sheets somewhere.
It's a political movie that the Venezuelan goverment did to blame the United States on the coup on 4/11/2002.
More info on http://www.chavezthefilm.com/
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
While I understand and even applaud his warm&fuzzy feeling about what might better be called participatory democracy, the campaign's openness to public input is merely an *analogue* to OSS.
Whether or not it was an "OSS campaign" (whatever that might mean) is determined by the software choices they made, and nothing more.
Furthermore, even it was truly a "grass-roots" participatory campaign in those senses, I'm skeptical that the campaign strategies and decisions and post-mortems were conducted in the same way that Debian or Mandrake or Slackware or X-window or kernel development are managed.
Let's not make OS into a label so general as to be meaningless.
I often see the same issues you've described (I use Firefox).
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
Like the Republicans don't do the same thing when their anointed ones are in political danger. Do the words "illegitimate black child," "John McCain," and "South Carolina" mean anything to you?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The Democratic party was panicking that Dean would actually get the nomination, and needed to find a way to stop that.
Yes, because after being throughly defeated in Iowa, Dean seem right on track to capturing the nomination. Are you suggesting that the Democrats controlled the media and were the cause of the sound clip being played over and over?
Finkployd
Your post was going great.Until..
Two years ago, in the New Jersey race for the senate, the democrat candidate got replace by someone who didn't even run in the primaries. If I were a democrat, I would be fuming. "HEY! THAT'S NOT THE GUY WE NOMINATED! WHAT THE *** ARE YOU DOING?" But that's not the way the democrat party works. It's a top-down structure. "You little people better fall in line or you're not getting anything from the soup kitchen." "We're only doing this in your best interests. Remember, you're too stupid to make these kinds of decisions so we make them for you."
I am an NJ Democrat. We dropped "The Torch" Toricelli because he was not going to be elected. Lautenberg was a former Senator who the whole state knew. He served as a great progressive Senator for New Jersey and continues to do so today. There were very, very, few, if any, NJ Dems fuming at the switch. We would rather have kept the seat, which we did, than run someone who was going to lose. Statutory considerations aside, it was the right thing to do for the party, and there was a lot of support from the party members for the move. Your characterization of the move as a top-down declaration is patently false.
And two years before, the senate candidate running against John Ashcroft, probably the most conservative candidate to run for office since the 1800's, mysteriously dies in a plane crash. Interestingly enough, several of Clinton's associates have died in plan crashes since he was elected.
No evidence for connections between any of these events. BTW, you assume Jean Carahan won on a sympathy vote? Or maybe it's just that the people of Missouri thought they had seen enough of Ashcoft as Governor and Senator, and figured out he was bad news. Or maybe the electorate simply changed. But no, let's use the most realistic and plausible theory: Clinton had Mel Carahan killed. Yeah.
But my point is, if you want to find corruption, look to the top of your party. Sandy Berger's recent behavior is only a small example of that.
Sandy Berger is a career policy maker. He is not a party leader in any capacity. Furthermore, while his actions regarding his notes on the so-called "Millenium memo" are certainly suspicious and deserve investigation, there is little indication that it is more than an honest mistake at this time. If you want conspiracy theories, why don't you look into the timing of the leak to the AP, as the investigation has been going on for several months. You can find out who leaked Valerie Palme's name to Bob Novak while you're at it. Thanks!
95% of them used Internet Explorer and Outlook, I'm sure...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
We already have to overcome the linux is only for geeks issue. Do we want add on the screaming fanatic with no grasp on reality issue as well.
Well, Microsoft have Steve Ballmer - perhaps the OS game requires you to be linked with a sweaty screaming guy?
(1) After the grandparent poster laid out that long list of examples of corruption and problems he saw with the Democratic party, that is the best you can do?
(2) Yes the Republican Party is also corrupt and has serious problems. I fail to see how that is an effective excuse for the Democratic party to act the same way.
Actually, you ought to be modded down for being an imbecile and a lunatic with the critical thinking skills of a gerbil. Step away from the X-Files...
And two years before, the senate candidate running against John Ashcroft, probably the most conservative candidate to run for office since the 1800's, mysteriously dies in a plane crash. Interestingly enough, several of Clinton's associates have died in plan crashes since he was elected.
And? I just did some rudimentary calculations. In the last year, almost 12% of the family members/friends I see at least once a year, and more than 20% of them that I see on a regular basis, died. Oh no! Quick! Conspiracy theory! I must be killing of my family!
Oh wait.. that's right. That works out to two people, both of which died of cancer, and the "conspiracies" invovling political figures always focus on people with a MUCH larger network than the one I used, and the QUANTITY of people who died rather than the relative percentages. It's funny how you can skew things to confuse stupid people if you pick your numbering scheme and sample pool carefully enough, isn't it gerbil-boy? Toss in a couple of make-believe stories about a stupid X-Ray (what, they shot him on the plane, jumped out, and crashed it? Why wouldn't they just crash the plane, dumbass? He wasn't gonna survive hitting the ground - no need to shoot him and leave extra evidence..) and some wild theories with absolutely no logical foundation, much less evidence, and you get people like you who post this sort of hulking mental shit as if it wasn't just the random ravings of a borderline hallucinatory goon with too much spare time.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
yes he had views on guns that I wish more Democrats paid attention to
Join Team Mozilla #38050 Folding@home
I have to say that I was about to post similar sentiments, except you said them so much better than I would. Like you, I am very much inspired by Bush, I also totally disagreed with just about everything that Dean stood for, but I really admired Dean's candor and honesty. Amongst my more liberal friends, I defintely felt that they really wanted Dean, but voted for Kerry because he seemed to be the best hope of defeating Bush.
It is very clear to me what both Bush and Dean stand for. I can love them or hate them, but I know exactly what I am getting with both of them. But with Kerry - well if he wins the election I just don't know what will happen. For example, what will Kerry do about Iraq? Will he quickly exit - will he stay until the job is finished - or will it be some other policy that is in between these? I just don't know.
Check this out0 4
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=714
-- To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else. Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
Both parties work in the the way you described. It's funny- I started going to the Dean meetups in the early fall of 2003, and the energy and excitement was enormous. It was a very casual environment, and people of all ages were there. The meetup started with a few announcements, but after that everyone was around seeing where they could help, and finding a place where they could do something. I ended up going to New Hampshire and canvassing for Dean. The entire experience was excellent, and I was able to use organizing skills I had to help others in the campaign do better.
But I went to a meetup recently that was held for a current, long time Democratic officeholder, and the atmosphere was completely different. The crowd was completely "young professional", and there were a few major local stars of the Democratic Party present. The meetup started with a speech by a party official. Then another person got up and made a speech. Then the mayor made a speech. Then yet another person made a speech. And then the meetup was over. It felt more like a networking event for young Democrat professionals rather than the campaign-focused Dean events.
That's what happens when you get close to the structure, it seems- and I think I'm more comfortable outside of it.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
How skewed is your view of corruption? The things you listed were infinitesimal compared to some of the actions of the Bush Administration. Have you not heard the recent admittance that the war in Iraq was launched based on an assumption that turned out to be false?! What about the contracts given to Halliburton, a crooked company whose ex-CEO is now our Vice President, in Iraq? You claim to be a strong, passionate Christian yet your political views contradict that. The US casualty toll in Iraq just reached 1000. That is 1000 of our young men and women who were sent overseas to a war that was based on nothing tangible. And what about the Iraqi civilian casualties? Don't get me started on that. I don't know what denomination of Christian you are, but I just can't believe that you can claim to follow a religion so strongly while supporting the murder of innocent people and the torture of prisoners of war. I find it amazing that people like you, self-righteous Christians, can claim to have a higher moral standard then other people. Read the Bible more often and you would realize that your morals are opposite that of what they should be in accordance with the beliefs you claim to have. "The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good. " That is from the Bible, but you knew that? Right?
Howard Dean was the only candidate that had real support from the people. I saw it around me - people were genuinely excited about the guy. Even though I thought he was looney, misguided, etc... his supporters didn't think so and could argue about him and why they liked him. It made for some really interesting and competitive debates that I enjoyed tremendously.
4 years ago you could pretty much say the same things about Alan Keyes. You could say a lot of things about him and his opinions, but the man was a hell of a lot less politician-like than the other candidates. Hell, Michael Moore endorsed him (though that was because he was the only one who would body surf in his Moore's portable mosh pit).
Lots of people have at least one issue that will make them not vote for a candidate who takes the wrong stance on it. The winning strategy in politics is to not let the public know that you have opinions. When someone asks a question that seems to require you to say what you feel about an issue, you want to either talk about something unrelated to the question or talk about how much the other party's position sucks.
...that the Dean campaign didn't pay nearly enough attention to what their supporters were saying.
Dean's TV ads were significantly worse than those made on an amateur level by supporters- and yet nothing was done.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
All I gotta say is that it takes seriously bad stars to be in the position of running against a dead man and losing.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
How in the hell could you actually think he's doing an awesome job? The economy is still in shambles, the national debt is at an all-time high, we go to war, and this administration is still pushing for tax cuts to the extreme upper class.
Any good will that the United States had immediately after 9/11 has been squandered thanks to arrogant and stubborn foreign policy.
Thanks to the appointment of a prude like John Ashcroft, our freedoms to make choices about what we can do and say are being eroded. The Patriot Act is an obscenity against the Bill of Rights.
I wonder - do you actually understand that you're helping support the good-ol'-boy club that Bush and Cheney belong to (which, by the way, you DON'T belong to)? If you don't know that they're using you to further their own gains (NOT the best interests of the country), then you really need to pay better attention to current events. And that means turning off Fox News, Rush, and O'Reilly and doing some reading of your own.
This administration has been a dismal and total failure on many fronts. You may not like Kerry, but regieme change must occur before this country goes completely down the crapper.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
lower class economically or low class (need a shower now!) as in Michael Moore and Whoopi?
Join Team Mozilla #38050 Folding@home
Huh? Carnahan was not conservative, and if Clinton was arranging plane crashes, don't you think he'd have taken out Ashcroft and not his competition? You just blew any credibility you had to talk about real facts right here bringing up this Clinton conspiracy crap yet again.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
i think open source ideas point us towards a different style of democracy. Right now, with a small number of "architects" in the legislatures of various countries, we're closer to the "Cathedral" model. They're making decisions that they like, and the rest of us have to live with them.
Instead, i think we'd get better (and fairer) decisions if vastly more people were involved in the decision-making process. I think we should have the ability to participate in decisions that affect our lives in proportion to how much we're affected by those decisions.
for one example of how this idea could work in practice, i recommend reading about the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil. They have a system called the "participatory budget" where thousands of people can take part in the decision making instead of just city council members. (after a really quick search, i found this article about it, but there's probably a better explanation around somewhere)
-- Doviende
"The value of a man resides in what he gives,
and not in what he is capable of receiving."
--Albert Einstein
Yes, I have long known that programming languages are not technological contstucts, so much as cultural constructs like any human language. Programming languages just have more precise grammar, are used by technological subcultures, and can be mechanically translated to machine language instructions.
Therefore a programming language derives its strength primarily from it's subculture/community, not from any technical difference. At least this is how it is today. In some ways it is a sad state of affairs.
All you have to do is keep looking up the ownership and control economic food chain with the various very large broadcast and print media, and you can see there is one (1) globalist corporate "party". They always make sure their guy, the puppet, gets in, and it doesn't matter if it's a D or R, the globalist transnational corporate party always "wins". And now that they have almost total remote control hacking ability over the vote, they don't have to sweat the explosion in third party and independent/alternative candidate interest, even with the internet, because they control the count, they control who gets "picked" to allegedly "run" in the biannual political melodrama. It's beyond ludicrous now. They have the ability to have any vote "count" being pushed as "true facts" and no one would know any better except the people doing the count, and they won't be telling obviously. And they are masters at keeping the population dumbed down, brainwashed and split into the phony left/right D & R paradigm. Remember, the broadcast and print media are also the primary users of sophisticated advertising, they know what works and what doesn't work to get people to do things using sound and images.that's their job, and they have been successful at it for generations.
I feel kinda sorry for the dean people,well meaning as they were they just didn't "get it". The PTB will "allow" the illusion of choice, and let various candidates run-for awhile, but they are never going to allow anyone who isn't a hand picked puppet of the globalist goons to actually "take office" anyplace very important in the federal government, especially in the executive branch, which anyone can see now is where the real power is. checks and alleged balances are long gone. No dictatorial government has ever "voted" itself back to any sort of true freedom or representative democracy or anything like that. Once it gets to the point that virtually everything in any random government xyz is corrupt and rigged, then there's only one way those governments ever "change". Anyone may look to history books to see how that works out.
Sucks, but that's the way it is.
Not to be too conspiratorial, but in my opinion Dean's campaign, which was successful up until Iowa, was executed by a terrified Democratic National Committee. They knew he had the charisma and the message to energize a new kind of Democrat that would radically skew primary voter demographics to the far left of center, and easily win the nomination.
The problem is that Far Left, and Far Right are pretty balanced in percentage and pretty much guaranteed to vote for their respective candidate. The middle of the electorate somehow lacks the brain power to make a decision until the day of the election, and it is the middle ground voters that both Republicans and Democrats have to convince for any hope of winning a national election.
The crux of the matter is that Democrats were too afraid that Dean would alienate this middle ground who would then flock to Bush for safety from the scary leftist man. It is, in my opinion, a symptom of the larger problem Democrats have which is A LACK OF BALLS, political gumption, willingness to take risks. It makes their politics bland and in most cases its hard to tell the Democrats apart from Republicans. The Democrats wanted a safe choice for candidate; and so they chose John Kerry, who for all the Republican ads proclaiming him as liberal as Ted Kennedy, has all the charisma of a chia pet and is only slightly more inspiring than the wooden Al Gore was in 2000.
In some ways, I suppose Kerry is the perfect candidate for the Democratic Party. In one body, he sums up the total lack of direction the DNC has at the moment. He just complains that things need to change without really putting forth any plans for doing so. And in the rare instance that he does, its a weak and watered down idea designed, once again, to avoid alienation of that key center of the electorate.
Its a shame that Dean had to be brought down in this election cycle. I really feel like he had the will and the ability to make a change in American politics. For once, there was a candidate who appeared to have a strong message and mostly non-compromising stand on issues. I think that if he had been allowed to run he might have brought some sorely needed new life into the Democratic Party, maybe even enough to offset whatever segments of the middle ground he might have alienated with his Progressive ideas.
Democrats could learn a thing or two from Republicans in the area of taking risks. In the 90's, Republicans figured out that there was a base of rabid Christian conservatives begging for recognition, and they effectively leveraged their fanatical conservatism to win both the House, the Senate, and later the Presidency (though the term winning in that case is subjective and open for interpretation). The Republicans took a risk of alienating the key center ground with a Far Right enhanced agenda with the hope that any losses would be offset by their new Christian Coalition friends, and their gamble paid off in spades. Democrats could learn a thing or two here.
While I understand that the issues on the left are generally more emotionally charged (gay rights, abortion, etc.) and carry a greater risk of alienation, there is a huge pool of apathetic potential voters out there with a Progressive mindset that would vote if they were stroked in the right way with some political attention to things other than social security (THEY WILL NEVER SEE IT). It's no wonder voter turnout has been declining for decades. People feel zero connection with politics anymore because it's only peripherally connected to any concerns they have, and they are cynical that politicians only care about votes (which is true). I also believe people have a greater understanding of how politics really work now, that is to say that your elected representatives do not represent YOU, they represent the goal of their party to stay in power. It's sad, and it weakens our republic. This is the other part of why Dean had to go--he wouldn't necessarily tow the party line.
Kerry may be a dull candidate
Having volunteered in Iowa for 10 months prior to caucus I watched the campaign rise and fall from the inside. Here's just a few points:
Bad data management. While you could easily see all the kids with their "coding skills", up-all-night work schedule, and Mountain Dew were writing and re-writing database structure to help target voters, someone with very good database experience was hard to find. As such, we were contacting some people numerous times and not contacting others at all.
Bad communication with supporters, would-be supporters and lay people. The campaign decided the best method to communicate with supporters was the blog. While it was nice for insider news, it was terrible at motivations, suggestions and direction. The television ads to get as many onto the idea of Dean as possible were TERRIBLE. I felt like I could have produced better ads. Also Dean wasn't exactly media-trained. He didn't realize the power of the media and didn't conduct himself the best while in interviews on TV.
The campaign peaked too early. Although this isn't something the campaign could really control at that point. For the media and the competition at some point the appeal of the guy on top is lost. Media over-scrutenizes and the competion attacks. (Let's see if this happens again in Kerry-Bush.)
Lot's of supporters, lack of direction. While this is related to my earlier point, it deserves a follow up. With an army of 650,000 the campaign may have been able to counter it's other problems. However they didn't know how to take all of the resources they had available to them and really make it work FOR the campaign.
What the Dean campaign showed was that the internet can be a political magnifying glass. It lets a fringe group (radical, anti-war Bush-hating liberal democrat zealots) seem much more influential and powerful than they really are.
This is catalized by the early primaries, which tend to attract the more zealous members of a political party, but as the time comes to select a candidate that can grab enough votes to get a majority of electors, the fringe group and their candidates vanish in a puff of reality.
This is what happened to Dean. He appealed to a radical fringe. The Internet made the fringe seem louder and more powerful than it was. Once Dean had to step into the real world, just how weak his support was became apparent.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Mod this up. McCain was the last Republican I supported. The machine knocking down McCain was some of the dirtiest tricks every in a campaign. Including saying that McCain gave up information to the communists when he was held hostage. Well he wasn't partying in Texas in the National Guard.
Voting for Kerry this time. 90% of the parent post was wack but the part about party leaders installing the candidates is true. Dean was crazy but John Edwards was a better candidate and had more popular support. Some how Kerry wins?? Bush is going to start another war with Iran if we don't vote his ass out. The Bush administration is already starting the chatter like they did on Iraq in early 2001.
Excuse me, how is Dean in touch with the lower class?
IT WAS A JOKE, IDIOT.
Casual Games/Downloads
Unfortunately, the machine knocking down McCain is funded by the democrat party. Those calls made in South Carolina were not funded by George W. Bush. There were funded by prominent democrats in the area.
As far as McCain's politics, he hardly has any support from the republicans in his home state, and he is far too liberal and wishy-washy for my tastes. Most of the people I see active in the republican party feel the same way. That's why he doesn't get support.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Doesn't it bother you at all that you are a totally brainwashed dupe repeating liberal talking points?
Unemployment is below 6%. Under Clinton, that was considered full employment. In the Bush world it's a shambles?
Extreme upper class? you mean a family of four making $40,000 or more per year? What do you do for a living, flip burgers at McDonalds? No, wait, that would be honest work. Let me guess; you're a college professor.
Prude like John Ashcroft? Patior Act an obscenity against the Bill of Rights? Does the inherent contradiction in your statement and the fact you made the statement and are not dead or in jail even make a dent in your brainwashing?
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
I'll tell you what inspires me about Bush.
He is a real leader. He makes tough decisions, and sometimes he has to take the unpopular choice because he believes it is the right one. I would rather have someone who follows his conscience than someone who tries to follow the winds of public opinion.
He has vision - a real plan to change America's future. His ambition of reforming the Middle East into a democratic one is so ambitious, such a huge gamble, and he took it and look at the results in just 2 short years. I would've nuked the entire subcontinent and started over, but he had the vision and the insight to turn it around.
His stance with North Korea is precisely correct. I am a Korean speaker, and I avidly follow Korean politics. He has a plan to withdraw the troops from South Korea but still defeat North Korea militarily. His plan is one of the only plans that will actually work, in my mind. I could write a book on the issues and the decisions and which ones I feel are the best but it would bore you to tears.
His core beliefs are in line with mine. You may feel that fundamental Christians are the devil. I do not. I have a personal relationship with my God, and he does too, if you look at his personal life. We are not ruled by religion, but it was the tool that woke us up.
If I were running McDonalds, and I had the chance to hire George W. Bush, I would do it in a heartbeat. He is a real leader. He inspires rather than degrades. He points the direction to go, and he is able to do things organizationally that you won't understand.
I believe that politics and religion are the same subject. How do we handle our enemies? Do we forgive them or do we blow them to smithereens? What do we do about crime? What kind of values should our leaders have? How do we solve the breakup of the family? Is it even a problem? These are all religious topics.
While the government cannot make laws favoring one institute of religion over another, we can vote in leaders of whatever religion we like.
I believe that a race between atheists and Christians is justified. That is the big question we face today. Are we a nation ruled by God, or are we ruled by Men? If by God, then we are all held accountable before Him. Our rights come from Him and not the governmnet. If by Men, then none of our rights are granted by God, but by Men, and can just as easily be revoked. If we decide to subject ourselves to God, freedom, intelligence, prosperity are the inevitable result. If we choose to subject ourselves to men, then we have only despair, captivity, and poverty to look forward to.
I believe George W. Bush has played all of you Bush-haters for a fool. He comes off as an idiot, but he is probably the greatest political genius since Ronald Reagan. You know, the Ronald Reagan that defeated the greatest enemy we ever knew? you know, the Ronald Reagan that started the decline of the democrat power structure and the rise of the conservative republican faction?
In every case where George W Bush has put blood in the water to attract the attack dogs, he has turned around to crush them. He sits there fishing for idiots to refute him, because he knows he is right all the time.
Right now, he has turned the democrat party from a party of intellectual socialists into a party of ranting lunatic extremist. For those of you who are deep into the party, look around at what has happened to your image. It has degraded so deeply that political scientists are talking about an era of republican-led government.
George W. Bush is going to go down as one of the top five presidents in our history. One hundred years in the future, the top five presidents will be:
1. George Washington
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Ronald Reagn
4. George W. Bush
5. Franklin D. Roosevelt
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Unfortunately, the machine knocking down McCain is funded by the democrat party. Those calls made in South Carolina were not funded by George W. Bush. There were funded by prominent democrats in the area.
Umm Democrats don't have enough money to do this kind of thing. McCain would be more of threat to them because he would eat into the middle base.
Bush was supposed to be in the middle but it was all phony to push a super conservative agenda while in office. More likely someone who would get money back in the form of a Hailburton contract was behind it.
Michael Badnarik Blog, he is the Libertarian Party presidential candidate. He uses b2evolution, a free GPLed blogging system.
The Badnarik campaign has also been reaching out to voters through Friendster.
I was heavily involved with the Dean campaign here in Brooklyn and New York. The "many eyes poring over the code" aspect of OSS was very helpful to the campaign, not just in terms of the great ideas that were generated, but in the sense of personal investment in the process that resulted. That is, you felt like you, Joe Q. Public, knowing nothing about politics and never having been involved before, could show up at a campaign event, express a good idea, and have it be taken up and acted upon immediately. Likewise, bad ideas weren't. But at least they too were listened to. It was like a massive peer-review system, and that is why those who worked on the campaign were so excited about something that most Americans couldn't be bothered to think about: the democratic process. Of course, that same unique political culture that sprang up around the Dean campaign was also reflected on the technical side by the fact that 99% of all the software run was Linux/OSS, but that's really incidental to the point.
So, why did the campaign fail? If this OS-like culture was so great, then why did it not capture the nomination? There are two main reasons.
First, although there were hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the country, individual state campaigns were run by the same old-school political consultants who run traditional campaigns for every other candidate out there. They too had never seen anything like the Dean volunteers, and had no idea what to do with them. Scores of people would pour through their doors every day, wanting to do something terrific for their country, only to be told to go lick envelopes.
Soon volunteers figured out that working at the official campaign headquarters was not the best place to apply their energy, and they left to start their own grassroots groups. Thus they continued to operate with great enthusiasm, but with no or little informed training.
The paid political consultants perhaps did this out of confusion about what this grassroots thing was, but there was probably also a cynical component. To wit, political consultants make their living by being the gatekeepers to political involvement where they are. It does not pay to train hordes of regular citizens how to work the levers of power, because political candidates will shortly realize that they don't need you to get elected. To put it in tech terms, the political consultants were like the closed source Microsofts of the world who don't want you to understand how the source code works, but pay them handsomely to make the magic work.
Most tragically, the political consultants, while remaining MS in their souls, took up the rhetoric of Linux in that they eschewed building the working relationships with elected officials and other operators in the local political milieu, saying "they don't need them, because they have these ravening hoardes of volunteers." Thus they had neither the trained, effective legions of volunteers, nor the strength of the traditional players to get the job done.
This disconnect between the closed source political consultants and the open source volunteers converged disastrously in Iowa. The Iowa caucuses are manipulated and won by skilled political operators. They could also have been won with properly trained volunteers. The Dean campaign had neither, and Kerry, who went the old skill route with the paid political operators, walked away with the prize. In the end, the thousands upon thousands of Dean volunteers who travelled to Iowa were like a Formula 1 engine, racing at a million rpm, yet not engaged to the drive train.
The second factor in Dean's loss was that the media did a hatchet job on him. They tried and tried for months to find something, anything to render him unfit for office. All they could come up with that he was 'too angry.' That didn't really hurt him, though, because millions of Americans are also angry at the direction this country is headed in. So then they took to digging up closets in Toronto to find an old video of De
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Assumptions that turned out to be false?
Go ahead and keep telling yourself that. There is an ace up Bush's sleeve that is going to blow you away. The assumptions were neither false nor unjustified.
Halliburton and Dick Cheney have absolutely no connection because once Dick Cheney was announced as VP candidate, he severed all ties, and sold all the stock at a loss. If Dick Cheney and Halliburton were really collaborating, why is Halliburton losing so much money?
1,000 lives of valiant soldiers who gave their lives defending the freedom of not only our counrty, but a country which we considered our top enemy. I am a Christian: "Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for his brother." I am shaking, overcome with emotion at the incredible sacrifice these heroes have made. I can barely hold the tears back thinking about them.
What Iraqi civilian casualties? I have heard of a few, but nothing like the wild reports I have seen some liberal bloggers and Saddam sympathizers report. I have heard from a man who escaped Saddam who lives in Seattle. His cousin or aunt or somebody close to him was killed by a soldier. But he said that he frankly forgives the soldier. He even was willing to be a civilian casualty if it meant the freedom of his country! He broke into tears, "Allah Akbar! America Akbar! You are saving my country, and what have we done for you? How can we ever repay you?"
What about the spontaneous celebration that happened when the handover completed and Paul Bremer left Iraq? Did you hear of that? There were terrorists who literally laid down their weapons and started shouting "USA! USA!" Did you hear about that? People were singing praises to Bush and the USA and the fact that he actually did what was promised! Did you hear about that?
I do not condone the torture of prisoners of war! Have you noticed that while Saddam's torturers were rewarded, our torturers are looking at stiff prison penalties? We punish our lawbreakers!
The republican message - the victory in Iraq - the good new - is not on the front pages. It isn't on CNN. It is heard in quiet. Bush's wisdom has conquered the weapons of Saddam and broken his power structure. Now even the Iraqis who fought us in Fallujah hail us as heroes. On sinner did destroy much good. Bill Clinton, his coverups, his scandals, and his outright criminal behavior was one of the reasons quoted by Osama Bin Laden for trying to destroy America! Go read his declarations of war, it is in plain sight, usually item number two or three right after usury or interest that we condone.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.
(I'm not the author of this piece, but I thought it was quite appropriate in this context)
The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must cover
Yhtill forever. (R. W. Chambers, the King in Yellow
1.4 millions new jobs in the last 9 months.
The Fed is worrying about inflation because our economy is growing so fast.
Not since the 80's under Reagan have we seen such fast-paced growth (the 90's were a bump compared to this recovery).
Unemployment at historic lows, so low that many economists say it is an unreliable measure.
John Ashcroft hasn't eroded any freedoms. When's the last time you got investigated by him? The Partriot Act extends the same powers we had to investigate mafia and drug activities but now to terrorist activities as well. Or are you against that? I'll tell you one thing, John Ashcroft didn't vote for the Patriot Act, but John Kerry did.
For that matter, George W. Bush didn't declare war, but John Kerry did. George W. Bush doesn't have the power to declare war, only congress does.
If this nation is going down the crapper, than I condone the crapper! It sure is a lot better than when we had the dot-bomb era - remember that? We are more secure, we have more prosperity, and we have a freer society that we did before. Just open your eyes and look around and stop listening to the democrat propaganda.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Excuse? Bipartisan effort to dsimantle the Soviet Union? The Democrats were shouting that we were losing the war, that we shouldn't try to upset them, and that we should just settle for containment. They've been arguing this ever since WWII.
Patton was right. We should've gone in an kicked the crap out of the USSR while we had them down. MacArthur was removed from commanding the Korean conflict because he had a plan to not just conquer the North Koreans, but the Chinese and USSR as well.
When Reagan said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" how many democrats cheered him on? How many denounced him as a lunatic that was going to get us all killed?
When Reagan built up the military to unprecedented heights, forcing the USSR to try and match step and thus bankrupt their economy, where we the democrats telling him, "Right on! Sure, we have a deficit, but we can win this war if we keep it up?"
Bi-partisan effort? Reagan dragged the democrats and liberal republicans every step of the way. They pleaded with him "Stop! You're going to get us all killed!" They certainly didn't help in the victory. Don't make me laugh.
Ronald Reagan took huge, calculated risks, and he was right. That's what a leader does, and that's why he is credited with the victory over USSR.
Don't try to rewrite history.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
There is a great article on the caucus in Iowa that basically decided the Democratic candidate with quotes from a lot of the people involved including Kerry, Dean, and Trippi.
Quick summary: Dean lost way before "the scream." His campaign was disorganized, dysfunctional, and too inexperienced.
In A.D. 2003 war was beginning.
Dean: What happen?
Trippi: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Trippi: We get support.
Dean: What!
Trippi: Main Dean turn ons?
Dean: It's you!!
Kerry: How are you gentlemen!!
Kerry: All your votes are belong to us.
Kerry: You are on the way to destruction.
Dean: What you say!!
Kerry: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Kerry: Ha ha ha ha...
Trippi: DEAN!!
Dean: Take off every 'blog'!!
Dean: You know what you doing. Move 'blog'.
Dean: For Open Source.
Required reading for internet skeptics
This site has a video of what the speech sounded like from the crowd.
"The scream" is all but inaudible. In case you can't hear it, "the scream" happens at about 1:14 into the video.
HTH
Frogs are primitive animals - so the occasional extra toe is not that unusual. But this is very unusual.
No, never attribute to malice (at least, democrat malice) what can far more easily be attributed to Karl Rove.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Remember, this is before Kerry's campaign really picked up. He was a nobody at that point. Although he won the Iowa primary, most of the country didn't care one way or the other about him. It seemed likely that Dean would win the Democrat nomination simply because nobody cared about the other candidates, then people would vote for Bush because they liked him more than Dean. I'm not saying that the Democratic party was the reason that the sound clip was played repeatedly; this happened because it was so damn amusing. The Democrats simply used this as an opportunity to start promoting Kerry more and to stop talking about Dean altogether.
Right. The media was out to sink him because he energized the Democratic party and generally shook things up and made things more interesting. That must be why he got cover stories in all the major news magazines, endless coverage on TV and in newspapers, and all the mainstream buzz one can handle.
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
Lots links/info more at this blog entry
Heavy handed but interesting piece here:
You know who else lost in Iowa and New Hampshire? Bill Clinton. Losing in Iowa doesn't mean you're going to lose the primary.
http://data.bls.gov/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?da ta_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=LNS14000000
No, I mean the extreme upper class (>$311k) that got almost twice the tax cut percentage wise (3.6% vs. 2%)that everybody else did. If you don't beleive it, go look it up on the IRS web site. Nice try at misdirection, though.http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=109876, 00.html#tax_rates_2003
You want to see brainwashed, look in the mirror. Better yet, EDUCATE YOURSELF by doing your own research and not listening to the talking heads that have an agenda. The fact are out there. Look them up. Not only will you learn something, you might even draw some conclusions that will surprise you.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
If I had mod points, you'd get all of them. The reason I put so much time and effort into the Edwards campaign this year was partly because I was still pissed off about McCain's loss in 2000. Talking to other volunteers, I wasn't the only one. When Edwards won SC, it felt like proof that sometimes hard work can beat gutter politics.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
Considering that population growth ALONE requires that 150,000 new jobs be created each month just to break even, that's not very impressive.
Didn't take many economics courses, did you? The Fed's worried about inflation because of the growing national debt. History repeats itself, look at the correlation between national debt and inflation during the Reagan years. Besides, if the Fed were worried that THIS economy is growing so fast, they must have been terrified during the dot-com boom of a few years ago. Oh, that's right, they weren't worried then, either.
Sorry, but I look at things beyond how they just affect me. John Kerry voted for the Patriot Act as a temporary means of handing a tough situation. John Ashcroft is trying to make the changes permanent.Are we rewriting history now? Dubya persuaded Congress (controlled by the Republicans, of course) to turn that authority over to him, and they did. I'll never forgive any of them for that mistake.
Apparantly you do. It's a shame you can't base your opinions on what's actually happening, rather than what you've been told is happening. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Turn off the TV and do your own research. It's not difficult.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
As a political professional, I have been referring to this as distributed campaigning. For the last few cycles, political types have been aware of the internet, but for the most part candidates and the parties did not seem to be able to move beyond sem-static webpages and god forbid, spam. Grassroots political activists on the other hand have been utilizing this tool much more effectively. There are of course the bloggers, but even more important are the numerous list-servs and other impowerment tools which sprung up, with MeetUp.org being the most famous tool.
For decades, voters and activists have felt increasingly marginalized. As the two parties have increased their stranglehold on political power, and as the powers-that-be at the top of those parties ruled with iron fists, grassroots activists have felt powerless. What Dean and his distributed campaign represented, was a return of power to the people. Your average Joe was empowered to hold a house party and spread the message. They became a partner and player in the campaign, their voice counted. Dean's campign was not just for the Presidency, but for outright control of the Democratic Party. The powers-that-be could not and would not countenance this loss of power. They did everything they could to stop the Dean Juggernaut. Of course, this was ably assisted by the Dean Scream and a media willing to play it to death. The Democratic Party was not afraid the Dean would lose the presidency, they were scared he would win. This would end their stranglehold on power. They would rather detroy the Party, than lose control.
Now that they are aware of the power of Distributed Campaigning, the powers-that-be will do everything they can to co-opt this strategy. However, I predict this will be to little avail. The internet makes it possible for underfinanced candidates to reach a large vetting audience. this audience in turn can raise awareness and more importantly, the almighty dollar. Large amounts of small donations, where before, a candidate was beholden to a few wealthy donors.
This new campaign paradigm gives the best hope in recent years of the voters shattering the shackles of two party oppression. It is possible splinter parties might easily arise in the next few cycles based on this model. For the Republicans, christian fundamentalists and fiscal conservatives may find in this decentralized world, that they are unble to maintain the "big tent." The same should be considered for Democrat liberals (greens) and centrists in the DLC. As these and other factions wrestle for control of their respective Party systems, they may find it viable for the first time to create a sustainable third party.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
This statement is preposterous, but I think I know what he means:
The best counterexample of Trippi's original statement is the chess match between Kasparov and "the world" in 1999.
The world was voting on their moves, and the majority of average players often won out over the best players, thus lowering the level of their play.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
Fine, read what the poster above linked to, a video of the event. The yell happens 1:14 into the video. You tell me.
That's believable. My whole problem with the Democratic party right now is that their only real issue seems to be "We are not the party of Bush". While whipping people into an angry frenzy sure gets them fired up and gets the nation's attention, it doesn't do much for voter turnout. Much better to get people excited for your candidate than angry at the other guy. Positive motivation vs negative and all that.
That is why all the other democratic candidates jumped on him. They seemed to trash Bush less than they trashed Dean.
As someone who lived there then, I can absolutely say that the people I know who voted for and against Ashcroft did so on this basis more than anything Carnahan (or his widow) had to offer.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Let me guess; you're a college professor.
What's with the anti-academic attitude so prevalant with conservatives? Didn't you guys used to love Milton Friedman?
The road to being a professor is hardly one paved with gold. Grad school takes at least 5 years, during which you are expected to TA, work with professors on their research and find time to do your own research toward your dissertation, while being given about $15000 to live on per year. After that you have to spend another few years at least as a post-doc, being paid perhaps $35000/year. By the time you're even actually a faculty member (easily not until you're in your early to mid 30s), you'll make between $40,000-$65000, and that's only for those who get full-time faculty positions at major research universities (certainly the minority among PhDs).
Professors aren't the fat-cats. I'm sure you can point out some very high-paid professors, because they certainly exist, but they're definitely not in the majority.
History repeats itself, look at the correlation between national debt and inflation during the Reagan years.
Jeez. It's pretty apparent that you didn't bother to actually look anything up before making this claim. Inflation went down from the double digit mess that Carter caused to a low of 1.86% in 1986 during the Reagan years.
Besides, if the Fed were worried that THIS economy is growing so fast, they must have been terrified during the dot-com boom of a few years ago. Oh, that's right, they weren't worried then, either.
Again, you were not paying attention. Between 1999 and 2000, the Fed raised short term rates a total of 1.75% to cool the unsustainable growth. You can read just how concerned they were during 1999 and 2000, with every statement expressing concern that financial conditions may no longer be consistent with containing inflation.
Sorry, but I look at things beyond how they just affect me.
How about the 99.9999% of us (who are not terrorists) who are also unaffected?
John Kerry voted for the Patriot Act as a temporary means of handing a tough situation. John Ashcroft is trying to make the changes permanent.
Maybe that is because this "tough situation" is not a temoprary one either?
It's a shame you can't base your opinions on what's actually happening, rather than what you've been told is happening. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Turn off the TV and do your own research. It's not difficult.
One could say the same about you, being that you seem to have a hard time grasping basic historical facts. If doing your own research is not difficult, why is it that you are blatantly wrong on obvious facts?
They were competing against him. What do you want, everyone to hold hands and sing camp songs?
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
Have you not heard the recent admittance that the war in Iraq was launched based on an assumption that turned out to be false?!
There have been no assumptions that turned out to be false. That is, unless you have some information that the rest of the world doesn't yet have.
What about the contracts given to Halliburton, a crooked company whose ex-CEO is now our Vice President, in Iraq?
And those contracts were given before Cheney was even in office.
The US casualty toll in Iraq just reached 1000. That is 1000 of our young men and women who were sent overseas to a war that was based on nothing tangible.
If protecting our country from obvious threats are not "tangible" to you, we should all be glad that you are not in charge of national security.
And what about the Iraqi civilian casualties?
What about them? Would we be more or less culpable if we sat back and watched Saddam kill them without doing anything?
Your biblical quote is very fitting. One sinner (whether it be Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or any other despot that we have declared war against) can destroy much good, and it is up to us to stop them.
You know what? You're right. I was more than sloppy (and wrong) with that post. I did my research on another reply in this subthread, then got lazy.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
I know every liberal wants to believe that 99% of the country is liberal, and it's rich white New York Republicans than control the otherside, but it's mind boggling. The sooner the left understands this, the sooner they can stop losing election after election (the country is swinging Right, even if Bush's recent screwups cost them the campaign).
The GOP is EXTREMELY grass-roots, but its grass roots are in rural Christian areas. It's popular in small towns, etc.
The Democratic party is no more grass-roots oriented... If it was, then the Candidate of the people (Dean, or even Edwards, who finished #2 in Iowa) would have one, instead the power brokers and the media conspired to put their good ole boy Kerry in.
Part of the GOP's political effectiveness is a simplified platform and support among the rank-and-file, hence Republicans stay on talking-points, which I guess is command-and-control. In the past 10 years, the left has gotten so used to losing that they now only look out for themselves and don't maintain a consistent message.
The LAST time the Democrats had a consistent message was Bill Clinton in 92 (which brought Democrats to power), "It's the economy stupid," and "Make the rich pay their fair share." It wasn't this soak the rich mentally that Kerry has that attacks upper-income producers, it was always "fair share" (whether you agree with what he considered fair).
In 1994 the GOP started "staying on message" with their "Contract With America" and pulled the country to the right.
There is a LOT of grass roots AND top-down behavior for both parties.
The Democrat's CURRENT grass roots activities REALLY hurts them, because the GOP puts "good Christian men & women" on the street, and the Democrats end up with young, starry eyed fanatically hippies... Who do you think appeals to your swing voter or those that don't always show up to elections?
The economy is still in shambles
I realize that you probably want to be in shambles, but unfortunatly (for you) it is not. Things are going quite nicely now, as witnessed by record setting GDP growth, strong employment growth, and record high wages for the past year and a half.
the national debt is at an all-time high
I have news for you. They national debt is always at an all-time high. It hasn't gone down in any year since the 1950's. You could make this complaint against any president in recent memory.
we go to war
I don't know if you remember or not, but we didn't "go" to war, we were forced into war by a group of fanatic Islamic terrorists who declared war on us in 1998.
and this administration is still pushing for tax cuts to the extreme upper class.
Thats funny, because I'm not the "extreme upper class", and my taxes (both state and federal) have significantly gone down since Bush took office.
Any good will that the United States had immediately after 9/11 has been squandered thanks to arrogant and stubborn foreign policy
Ok. You go and worry about international "good will". I'll vote for the guy who worries more about terrorists who want to blow us up, and dictators with terrorist connections ignoring international orders to disarm.
Thanks to the appointment of a prude like John Ashcroft, our freedoms to make choices about what we can do and say are being eroded. The Patriot Act is an obscenity against the Bill of Rights.
The Patriot Act didn't change a thing in the Bill of Rights. Exactly what freedoms have been eroded for you?
I wonder - do you actually understand that you're helping support the good-ol'-boy club that Bush and Cheney belong to (which, by the way, you DON'T belong to)? If you don't know that they're using you to further their own gains (NOT the best interests of the country), then you really need to pay better attention to current events. And that means turning off Fox News, Rush, and O'Reilly and doing some reading of your own.
Let me guess. Doing some "reading of your own" just happens to mean "reading something that I agree with".
This administration has been a dismal and total failure on many fronts.
I think you need to learn the difference between "failure" and "something that I do not politically agree with". Bush has accomplished much in his 3 1/2 years in office, including much needed tax reform, education reform, campaign finance reform, prescription drug reform, disarming a dictator who had been under international order to disarm for 13 years but refused, and leading the country to properity despite the worst terrorist attack in history and the worst private corporate accounting scandals in history.
You may not like Kerry, but regieme change must occur before this country goes completely down the crapper.
Reading your tripe has encouraged me to make yet another contribution to Bush/Cheney '04 to prevent anybody who agrees with your garbage from taking power.
I watched the speach that night (live) because I found Dean fascinating (despite being a conservative Republican). He was a moderate/conservate Democrat that opposed the Iraq war (a reasonable position that I disagree with), but was extremely entertaining.
The screaming noise was disturbing NOT because of the volume/noise (at least to me).
He lost an election badly that he was supposed to win. He came out and sounded delusional. It was SUPPOSED to be a concession speech, and when he came out, he rambled about how a year ago who would have thought that they would come in third (true, conventional wisdom is that the top 3 survive Iowa, top 2 survive New Hampshire, then off to the raises).
Had he began on a more somber note, admitted their disappointment, but that they would have kept fighting, I would agree with those that the out of control media was unfair.
However, he gave an EXTREMELY absurd "concession" speach that sounded like a high school pep rally, which scared the powers that be... Sure the media/Internet junkies went nuts with the scream, but the speach was EXTREMELY undignified and inappropriate for a nationally televised political speach.
This was a concession speach AFTER an ACTUAL election, not a rally-the-base before the vote.
Alex
(skipping the part about this guy's fondness for OSS, and how he and the whole Dean campaign tried to have its perceived "coolness" rub off on them -- anyone can see that)
There was a documentary about the attempted US-backed coup in Venezuela a couple years ago and that film has that exact title. The guy may not even know where the popularized TRWNBT line came from let alone appreciate the irony. It certainly isn't original. Admittedly, it may rub off some more of that perceived "coolness" on him.
BTW That film has been shown on tv stations all over the world (except the US I assume). Democracynow.org has it in its archives I think.
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Unemployment was never above 5.6% in his second term.
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That would be when the Republicans got control of Congress, right?
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No, I mean the extreme upper class (>$311k) that got almost twice the tax cut percentage wise (3.6% vs. 2%)that everybody else did.
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Well since they pay 10 TIMES the tax everyone else does, I have no problem with that. You just don't like rich people.
P.S. When was the last time a poor guy offered you a job?
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
So when you Bush supporters talk about unemployment being so low, please fill in the blanks and talk about the kinds of jobs that are being created (hint: they don't pay as well as the jobs that have been lost)
Wrong. If we were only gaining lower paying jobs, why have wages steadily gone up?
And is it not possible that some people have given up looking for work, and therefore contribute to the lowering of the unemployment rate?
Its possible, but that is not what is happening. Visit the BLS Website and you can see just how many people out there who want a job are no longer looking. A comparison between 1996 (same 5.6% unemployment) and now show a minimal difference.
Wait a minute, weren't you just claiming how high unemployment was during the Clinton administration? When you thought that, it was his fault. Now that you're shown that you were wrong, you give credit to Congress? Brutal.
Now you're just being deliberately obtuse.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
We do. And we love Thomas Sowell, and Walter Williams, and the handful of conservative college professors out there. Heck, I even like liberal professors if they can justify their viewpoint. However, these are the exception.
Most just go on brainless rants and regurgitate non-thinking asinine statements like America being the focus of evil in the world, or the 9/11 attacks being justified, or the current economy is in a shambles, or the ultra-wealthy (I never listen to the rest, because I know I'm talking to some ass of a Marxist when I hear that phrase).
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
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Wait a minute, weren't you just claiming how high unemployment was during the Clinton administration?
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No I wasn't (another liberal problem: they don't know how to read.)
I was stating that 5.6% unemployment under Bush is an economy in shambles. 5.6% unemployment under Clinton was considered a booming economy.
It's called a double-standard.
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Now you're just being deliberately obtuse.
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Not at all. You don't like the fact that "rich" people got more of their money back than you think they should have. That basically tells me you're a nosy busybody who wants to tell other people how much money they should have and what they should do with it.
You imply the tax cuts are unfair because people who pay ten times what everyone else does got twice back of THEIR OWN MONEY than everyone else did.
This means that you think the money shouldn't belong to them. This means you think you have the moral authority to dictate how much of their money should belong to them, and how much should belong to the state. This means you are a marxist and a tyrant because you favor the confiscation of personal wealth for the "greater good," greater good being defined as giving you some of their money.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Indeed, fundamental Christians are not the devil. Any normal person would be in favour of "nuking the entire subcontinent" For me, though, fundamentalism in any guise seems to create more problems than it solves.
That's what he did, and he got DECIMATED FOR IT.
If reality and your views are in conflict, what makes more sense to reconsider, your views or reality?
Alex
If you don't want to bother keeping up with the news, don't act all high and mighty when others who do decide to speak.
In the news today:
Former director of the CIA says reports on Iraq were "an honest mistake", some republican party members want his head on a pike.
Bipartesian committee says there were 10 instances where Al Queda could have been foiled in the months leading up to 9/11. Also says that there is no plausable connection between 9/11 and Iraq, though most of the hijackers did move through Iran. Bush makes vague threats about Iran.
And oddly enough, that threat you mentioned? The one that was so dangerous it fell in less than two weeks? The one which we STILL haven't found any proof of actually existing? Well, it's gone, but some of the terrorists who are there now are going to be beheading an american citizen every 72 hours.
It's been a long time.
Finger slipped onto touch pad, accidentally sent it too soon. Here's the rest, starting from the second last paragraph, which I changed somewhat.
And oddly enough, that threat you mentioned? The one that was so dangerous it fell in less than two weeks? The one which we STILL haven't found any proof of actually being even remotely close to the threat the president and the Republicans kept hollering about? Well, it's gone, but some of the terrorists who are there now are going to be beheading an american citizen every 72 hours.
In other words, shut the fuck up, you ignorant fool, and learn about current events before you try to lionize Bush based on information which is now YEARS out of date.
It's been a long time.
That is just so wrong.
:P
Go back to school before you call people tyrants for demanding that the rich pay their share of taxes. Your lack of logic makes me wonder if you're currently drunk or high on crack.
By your twisted ideals, anyone who supports taxes at all ever is a marxist.
By your twisted ideals, you must HATE the republicans, since they're spending so much you'll NEVER be able to realize that dream. You'll just be paying down debt(actually, since it's republicans, creating it...they're conservative?) forevermore.
(ie. You do realize you're a rather silly individual, right?)
It's been a long time.
Riiiight.
Let's see...
"I'll vote for the guy who worries more about terrorists who want to blow us up, and dictators with terrorist connections ignoring international orders to disarm."
Too bad there was nothing to disarm, and still isn't anything to disarm. In fact, this dictator who was supposedly going to be "disarmed" seemed pretty disarmed already, what with the being invaded in 2 weeks and all...
"...but we didn't "go" to war..."
Um...yeah you did. You went to war with Iraq. In fact, you invaded them. Remember? Killed a few innocent people, a whackload of bad guys and pretty soon a cool grand in US soldiers(900 and counting! Go us!)?
It's been a long time.
If you are the real Joe Trippi, I have a suggestion for you. I suggest that you don't try to help in any more campaigns. You simply showed no understanding of political campaigns or marketing or advertising copywriting.
You made yourself and your amazingly mundane and pedestrian ideas the focus of the campaign.
Trippi didn't control the money. He didn't have "X money to spend" on ads, because he didn't get to spend ANY money on ads. Not that I expect ACs on slashdot to know a damn thing, but Jesus Christ, this information is pretty easy to find online. It was debated to death at BFA and Trippi has talked about it in numerous interviews and wrote about it in his book.
As a 26+ year Vermont resident...
Much as I enjoyed the Dean candidacy, I do not feel that he would have made a good President.
Principally, he ran Vermont in a rather autocratic fashion. While I admire the fact that he left Vermont as one of three states in the black after the dot-bust, he did so by brow-beating the legislature into some sort of fiscal restraint. I fear running Vermont did not require that he develop the political machine skills necessary for running the Nation. I suspect he would have had a presidency similar to that of Carter, in many respects, for that reason.
Second, his campaign spending profile was all wrong, and it showed in how things unravelled after The Shout. These two things were independent, but coincidentally occurred about the same time.
That said, I'm not excited about Kerry.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It is you, my friend, who has not bothered keeping up with the news.
Bipartesian committee says there were 10 instances where Al Queda could have been foiled in the months leading up to 9/11
I don't think that is in dispute. Obviously we didn't do enough to prevent the 9/11 attacks because they happened. The 9/11 commission lays blame on our entire system, from intelligence to the legislature. This isn't a shot at any single politician (past or present).
Also says that there is no plausable connection between 9/11 and Iraq, though most of the hijackers did move through Iran. Bush makes vague threats about Iran.
President Bush has also said that there is no plausable connection between 9/11 and Iraq. It has been very clear from the beginning that 9/11 was the sole responsibility of Al Quada. However, the war against terrorism isn't just a war against the people who attacked us on 9/11. Its a war against all terrorism. If you want to argue that Iraq did not have any ties to terrorism, good luck. They were on the state department list of state sponsers of terrorism for well over 2 decades.
And oddly enough, that threat you mentioned? The one that was so dangerous it fell in less than two weeks? The one which we STILL haven't found any proof of actually being even remotely close to the threat the president and the Republicans kept hollering about?
And you want me to "keep up with the news"? The proof of the threat of WMD is not in question. For crying out loud, the world watched Saddam use WMD on multiple occasions. He was under international order to destroy WMD that we knew he had, and for 13 years he lied to us and was caught in every lie.
Don't believe me? Here is the interim report given by the Iraqi Survey Group (ISG) led by David Kay. This report is now nearly 10 months old, and the new ISG report (due in September) is said to contain even more details about what we have found since Baghdad fell. David Kay said:
We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.
Some highlights of things they have found:
A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was m
Too bad there was nothing to disarm, and still isn't anything to disarm.
There is no way to sugar-coat this. You are 100% wrong. There is nothing factual about your claim. Perhaps you came to this conclusion based on inaccurate information, but you can no longer claim ignorance for your inaptness of the subject. Please read the facts regarding WMD if you have any questions. Your welcome.
Um...yeah you did. You went to war with Iraq. In fact, you invaded them. Remember? Killed a few innocent people, a whackload of bad guys and pretty soon a cool grand in US soldiers(900 and counting! Go us!)?
Guess what? We never stopped our war with Iraq. According to the Safwan Accord signed by Iraq in 1991 to end the first Gulf War, Saddam was required to disclose his WMD programs and allow the UN to either destory the programs or view evidence that they were destroyed. This was a condition of the ceasefire to the first Gulf War. Well, Saddam never complied, so that means a ceasefire never took place. The conflict that started last year was a continuation of the war that started over a decade ago, and was only brought to pass because 9/11 shocked us into realizing that we couldn't leave serious business like that unfinished.
The only difference is this time we actually did finish the job, and we are safer because of it.
Well I'll be damned. Blame the press, because god knows I never got wind of any of this. Strange, since I read what is considered to be pretty damn right wing news.
Please accept my humble appology. Though we may still not agree on particulars, it would seem that my accusations were based on a source of information that is not to be trusted. Even as of a few days ago, the newspapers I've been reading are still acting as if there was faulty intel and nothing has been found.
It's been a long time.
Well I'll be. It's about time they found something.
;)
My bad. My sources never mentioned anything of the sort, and since they are fairly right wing, I had assumed they would have, and rubbed it in everyones face.
This is the reason I stopped arguing about Iraq in the first place -- nobody has all the information, it seems. Least of all myself! Sort of incredible to think that you can read page after page of news reports and miss something fairly important like that.
It's been a long time.
But my point is, if you want to find corruption, look to the top of your party. Sandy Berger's recent behavior is only a small example of that.
There is definately corruption in the Democratic party, but there is just as much as in the Republican party. The Republican party has been taken over by neo-conservatives, the dixiecrats who joined the Republicans in opposition to the civil rights movements. Older Republicans are getting disgusted with what has happened to the Grand Old Party.
I don't see how anyone who calls themselves a conservative can support George W Bush. He is practically flushing trillions down the towlet.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
Patton was right. We should've gone in an kicked the crap out of the USSR while we had them down. MacArthur was removed from commanding the Korean conflict because he had a plan to not just conquer the North Koreans, but the Chinese and USSR as well.
When I say that, I mean do not underestimate the difficulties involved in invading Russia. Napoleon tried it and if he hadn't he might have taken over the world. Even with higher technology you still need some sort of supply line. Sorry, but containing them and letting them collapse under their own economic weight was a better strategy.
It might have been a good thing to save the Chinese from the Cultural Revolution, but with the history of US foreigh politics, I just wouldn't trust our government to do the right thing. I imagine invading China would have some of the same issues as invading Russia, and a much bigger population to contend with. Confronted with an outside enemy, they probably would have united behind their communist overloards, as bad as they are/were.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
How does an interview with a failed left-wing nutcase of a presidential candidate relate in the slightest to technology in any way?
/. is populated by left-wing freakazoid Deaniacs who wet their pants every time Dean farted.
Wait, I forgot -