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DaveNet: Is CBS Lying? Washington Post: "Sen John F. Kerry, who has made a fight against corporate special interests a centerpiece of his front-running campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, has raised more money from paid lobbyists than any other senator over the past 15 years, federal records show." Chris Allen shares his concerns about Orkut.
Kaye Trammel: Protecting Your Secret Blog. Let's say for the sake of argument, the Kerry campaign wants to buy insurance through weblogs that the CNN, ABC, Fox, CBS conglomerate can't do unto them what they did to Dean. What would they do?
Wired: "It appears their efforts to save Hubble, along with political pressure, may be paying off." BBC: Second rover safe on Mars surface. Susan Kitchens is blogging it. NY Times: "CBS says it has a policy against running issue advertisements during the Super Bowl."
ABC's Diane Sawyer, along with execs from CNN, CBS and Fox, says that the tape that halted the Democratic nomination process during the crucial week between Iowa and New Hampshire, was overplayed, and presented an inaccurate view of the event. Interesting that they admit this now, long after the damage has been done. John Palfrey asked if this is the first New York Times weblog? MoveOn.Org: "At 8:10PM and 8:35PM EST, switch over to CNN to watch 'Child's Pay' on a channel which doesn't censor its ads." Taegan Goddard cites a NY Times article which contains a blockbuster that we missed. Did Joe Trippi get a commission on every ad run by Dean For America? Third Superpower has an interesting sequence of quotes leading up to this revelation.
Scott Rosenberg: "Many dot-coms flamed out -- but the Internet is still reshaping the world." David Appel: "I no longer believe anything the pundits have to say. They wrote off Kerry a month ago, they highlighted Dean before his time. They clearly have no idea what they're talking about." Seth Finkelstein: Howard Dean, Joe Trippi and Bubble Valuation. Tristan Louis: Blowing Bubbles. Gigaom: "TiVo is finally getting its digital hub act together." Dan Gillmor: "Neel is as inside-the-beltway as you can get." David Isenberg: Dean Campaign Hires a Bellhead. Andrew Grumet: Nutty RSS/Tivo hack. Cooooool! Marc Nozell on how a reporter found him via GeoUrl. Michael Feldman summarizes the discussion last night. Even more important than knowing who the Deaniacs are/were, imho, is how can we grow the tent so it fits more people than those who support Dean. Clay Shirky: Is Social Software Bad for the Dean Campaign? David Weinberger: Block that meme! and Dean and WebVan. Jim Moore has pictures from Joe Trippi's farewell party at Dean For America. Jim joined us last night for a lively discussion of the Web and presidential campaigns. BBC: "Warner Bros and Columbia film studios have reportedly sued an actor and a man arrested for allegedly distributing movie preview tapes over the internet." NY Times: "The head of the board that investigated the Columbia space shuttle disaster has agreed to examine NASA's decision to cancel missions to extend the life of the Hubble telescope."
NHPrimary.Com: Closing up shop. Notes from the Berkman Thursday meeting, with webcast and IRC. Rogers Cadenhead notes a bandwidth concern with the Trillian IM client.
Four years ago: "Not only do you have to create the parachute while you're in free-fall, you also have to invent the damned thing!" Command Post: “He’s pathologically optimistic.”
When PubSub came out I signed up, using the service to do a vanity feed. It alerts me through RSS when it finds something with my name in it. The system isn't perfect, it repeats some items for days and days. Occasionally they dig up a gem from the past, like this post from Oliver Wrede in November, quoting Scripting, explaining why presidential candidate blogs of 2004 were destined to disappoint. "When people say they want the candidates to blog, they're not stating their wishes accurately. What they really want is to know the candidate as well as they know their favorite bloggers. If one writes publicly without editing every day for a few years, people get an idea of how your mind works. This builds trust, the kind of trust a candidate just can't build in a couple of months of stump speeches."
Jim Moore: "The Dean campaign is no longer a momentum play. Momentum investors are going to go toward Kerry, or stay with the ultimate momentum stock, George W Bush."
Mihai Parparita has a bridge between NNTP and RSS. Tim Bray has a picture from the conference room at Technorati. News.Com: "Google's experimental social networking site Orkut.com resurfaced Wednesday after being offline for nearly three days." BBC: "BBC chairman Gavyn Davies is to resign in the wake of Lord Hutton's criticisms of the corporation's reporting." Taegan Goddard has the latest February 3 polls. Real Clear Politics on how the pollsters scored in NH. Pete Prodoehl analyzed the feeds in the Top 100 on SYO. User interface guru Don Norman is on The Connection today talking about why cell phones are so annoying. Wow, Howard Rheingold is on now.
The snow that's been going up and down the east coast has started in Boston, around 9AM. They're forecasting an inch or two. Walter Shapiro: "Dean still controls the tempo of the Democratic contest, even though the odds are dwindling on his becoming the eventual victor." Scoble: "I already have enough people who hate me right now."
DaveNet: Is Dean the Internet's Candidate? Kerry wins, Dean second. Command Post has tons of data. Political Wire: "Preliminary exit polls in New Hampshire show Kerry and Dean in a closer than expected battle for first place." Library Stuff on Utne's RSS support. Bryan Bell: "I am constantly looking over my shoulder at Win-IE just to make sure the my sensible decisions are not being overturned by that freaking-lunatic of a browser."
Brent Simmons: "Is Dean angry?" BBC have the Oscar nominees. Lord of the Rings, Lost in Translation, Mystic River. Zellweger, Keaton, Penn, Depp and Law. Political Wire: "John Kerry has a 13 point lead over Howard Dean in the last Zogby tracking poll in New Hampshire. Just yesterday, Zogby had Dean only three points behind." Union-Leader: "New Hampshire will probably not have the final word on who becomes the Democratic nominee." Four years ago: "Welcome to Davos!"
Bruce Jackson: Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice. Jenny Levine reviews My.Yahoo's beta RSS support. Mike Walsh: "There's nothing like losing your political virginity at the tender age of 52." BBC: "Nasa scientists say hundreds of computer files that have accumulated on the Mars rover Spirit may be the cause of problems that have crippled it."
Andrew Grumet's Find That Feed has a new user interface. He's reading all the feeds in all the subscription lists. Big snow a comin down the road. Reuters: "A federal judge in Los Angeles has struck down as too vague part of the Patriot Act." AP: "US District Judge Audrey Collins said the ban on providing expert advice or assistance is impermissibly vague, in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments.'" O'Reilly is doing a Digital Democracy Teach-in in San Diego on Feb 9. Reuters: "Kerry led Dean 31 percent to 28 percent in the new poll." Last night's DaveNet, the first in a long time, is getting rave reviews. Dwight Shih's standalone comment and trackback server for Radio. Billmon, an anonymous blogger, blogs the blogging session at Davos. It's great that Mike Walsh is updating his blog again. Every day a bunch of interesting things to think about. Maybe I'll apply for that Vermont job. I'm doing okay with the cold. Do they have a good health plan? Vermont is beautiful and public radio a good place to be. Monday schedules: Dean, Edwards, Kerry, Clark, Lieberman. A possible Beantowner tour of the candidates. Edwards at Noon in Portsmouth, South Church, 292 State Street. Dean at 2:30 in Durham, 83 Main St (Granite State Room, Memorial Union, Univ of NH). Kerry at 5:30 in Derry Pinkerton Academy on 5 Pinkerton St in Derry, NH. Jessica Baumgart reports from Edwards and Clark in NH yesterday. Scoble: "Howard Dean and Joe Trippi weren't running a weblog, they were using the weblog as a new form of PR." Actually it's probably unfair to blame Trippi or Dean, they acted more web-like in Dean's public statements on TV than their weblog did. Scoble's post highlights how unusual and ahead-of-the-curve Microsoft is for supporting a blogger like Scoble, than it is a condemnation of DFA. It's just too early to expect a presidential candidate to run a real weblog. But of all the candidates, if Dean survives, at some point the principles that Scoble outlines will probably be implemented there. I tried tuning into Chris Lydon's radio show last night, but it wasn't on the local radio station they said it would be on. Tried the webcast but it kept going in and out. I hope they post an MP3 so we can all have a listen. Apparently there was a good back and forth between Atrios and Andrew Sullivan.
DaveNet: Alice's Restaurant. Arlo Guthrie: "This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song Alice's Restaurant." There's a special public list that receives DaveNets via email. Susan Kitchens is blogging the Opportunity NASA press conference. Pictures from the Top 100 have become pretty interesting.
"thinkusaalignright"Another comment. The Democratic field this year is incredible. They're all good candidates. If you forget the labels the Republicans, the Clintons and the press have pinned on Dean, he'd be a good leader, a good commander in chief. We probably would get a good health care system, finally. His wife Judy would be a fantastic First Lady. I like the fact that she's more comfortable in sneakers and jeans than in fancy ball gowns. But Kerry is good, so is Edwards, and Clark, even Sharpton and Kucinich are interesting. Lieberman, well, he's more of a Republican, imho. Anyway, it seems a shame to waste a nomination on Dubya. Andrew Grumet: "I spent a few hours this weekend writing code to parse the feeds in Find That Feed." Dan Gillmor: Wikipedia Shows Power of Cooperation. Ed Cone: Lessons from Iowa. Don Park: "I am not yet convinced that there exists a workable revenue model behind Orkut but then I have similar opinions about Rovers in Mars."
BBC: "Opportunity, the second of two Nasa rovers, has successfully landed on the Martian surface where it will search for signs of water on the planet." Philip Miseldine: "Establishing a standard is difficult enough in such a decentralised and egotistic web, without trying to reinvent the wheel and pass through the same obstacle course RSS did to be widely accepted and implemented." Ryan Overbey gets it. "This race has a long way to go, but it will be disastrous if we let CNN and Fox News control the message and shape what this election will look like. This year's primaries are our elections- not theirs."
The Village Voice gets it. "Howard Dean's now-infamous concession speech after the Iowa caucuses might have gotten him dubbed as a loony in the mainstream press, but on the Internet it’s making him a rock star." So does the Democratic Underground. "It isn't Howard Dean who is acting strange - it's everyone else." Tracy Adams hiked a volcano in Guatemala!
I told Chris he should interview Patti Smith about weblogs. "Outside of society, that's where I want to be." Maybe Cyndi Lauper? Carol Moseley Braun at Dean HQ in Manchester. There's a germ of a great idea in Jim's post above. At every Dean rally he should recite the names of the states. Then roll up his sleeves. Then jump around. Then scream yeaaaggghhh! This article by Dick Morris really frosts my flakes. "The concerted efforts of the Clintons and the national media have consigned the Vermont governor to history." Hey isn't Clinton history? What about Dick Morris? What's so great about Dick Morris? Political Wire: New Hampshire Race May Be Tightening.
AP: "Best Western will offer free high-speed Internet in all 2300 of its hotels in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean." Everyone's talking about how poorly Wesley Clark handled the question about Michael Moore's assertion that President Bush was a deserter, but, mes amis, how about the bigger question. Was he? AP: "A spam-free world by 2006?" Philadelphia Inquirer: "Republican researchers have a raft of information to use against Kerry."
Howard Beale: "All human beings are becoming humanoids. All over the world, not just in America. We're just getting there faster since we're the most advanced country."
Jim Moore from inside Dean HQ in Burlington. NY Times: The Tyranny of Copyright? This is the page to watch for tracking poll results from NH. "thinkUsaalignright"Remember during the Thanksgiving holiday when President Bush went to Iraq and there was nothing about it on the Bush weblog. Every day that went by without any update to the blog was noted here with some satisfaction that it's one thing to put up a website and call it a weblog, and it's a whole other thing to run it like a weblog. I've been watching the weblog at Dean For America, and there's hardly been a mention of the trouble the candidate is in, the sliding poll numbers, the doubts voters in New Hampshire and elsewhere have about Howard Dean. He was great with Diane Sawyer last night. What I've seen of his campaign appearances have been very good. But the weblog is falling down. They have the most interesting story in the world unveiling around them, and have almost nothing about it. Just the usual house organ stuff. They're frozen in the headlights. Now is the time, if not for Dean, for the Internet, to really use the weblog to tell the story of the voters of New Hampshire. Okay, the television networks won't carry your story, but word of mouth can. Do something hugely innovative, tell the truth. There were moments when the Dean campaign could do that, on the Internet. It's why so many fell in love with the campaign. Paddy Chayevsky: "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster, and TV, and my steel belted radials and I won't say anything." New downloadable Sims objects from Don Hopkins including carpets that look like the surface of Mars and Captain Kangaroo.
Quick review of My.Yahoo with RSS support from a smug Canadian. News.Com: Microsoft seeks XML-related patents. Andrew Grumet: "Bravo, Chuck!" AP: "Europe's Mars orbiter has confirmed the presence of water in the form of ice on the Red Planet's surface for the first time." Lauren Gelman: "The Dean campaign still maintains a centralized, filtered, top-down approach to electioneering." Dean For America's new RSS feed for press releases. News.Com: "Google tip-toed into the hot market of online social networks with the quiet launch of Orkut.com on Thursday." Jeremy Zawodny has notes on the introduction of My.Yahoo's RSS support. The famous Dean rant This morning I watched the Diane Sawyer interview with Howard and Judy Dean, and was very touched. I told the Berkman Thursday group last night that I was pretty sure that Dean would turn the corner and emerge out of New Hampshire as a viable candidate, and after watching the interview and last night's debate, I'm even more sure. Last night I also told what I know about The Scream, and why it was so shocking and where it came from. After seeing the Sawyer interview I feel I must tell the story in public. First a disclaimer. No one in the Dean campaign asked me to tell it, nor does anyone in the Dean campaign know I'm going to. I don't work for them and I don't support any of the candidates for President at this time. Anyone who wants to point to this piece should use this link. I wasn't counting, but they must have shown the famous Dean rant twenty times during the Sawyer interview. I saw it live and was disgusted by it, and then saw it twenty more times, so that's a total of approximately 41 times. Once was enough for me. The other (approx) 40 times it was just sensationalism, and over time my opinion of it shifted. During the interview I wanted one of them, Judy or Howard to ask her a pointed question -- what is the big deal Diane? Of course that would be anger, and was probably exactly what the producers at ABC-News hoped would happen. I was at Dean headquarters on the night of the Iowa caucuses, and I watched the Dean rant on TV in the office, with the other Web programmers. A few minutes before the speech they had a staff meeting in the conference room. Everyone was there except me and another guest. Not being a staffer, I didn't belong in the staff meeting. Several times during the meeting a loud crazy-sounding scream came from the room, everyone was doing it, and it was really frightening. The stuff of nightmares. This was before Howard Dean's rant. I asked Jim Moore what that was about, he said it's an Indian war yell or something like that, they used to do it in United Farm Workers rallies, and they adopted it at Dean For America. A few minutes later Dean let out the famous scream, it was the same scream I heard in the conference room. They're probably not saying this publicly because it wouldn't seem contrite to do it, and they probably know they'd get roasted for saying the scream and ranting you heard was part of the motivational culture at DFA. Some have compared the Dean speech to a similar rant by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that made the rounds of the Net. So Dean gets a bit whacky, but after seeing it so many times, the shock value is fading. Taken at face value it wasn't anger, it was a steam-letting, and an attempt to rally the troops, and totally understandable. The press, as usual, is making a big deal of catching a candidate being a human being. But that's what he is. He's not an actor, he's not a commercial, he's not a deodorant, he's not a product, and I'm glad we have a chance to have this discussion. I'm not a Dean supporter (yet, but I'm getting there) and they didn't ask me to say this, but please, it's time for the press to let us have an election, or maybe it's time for us to have an election without them. Timothy Noah at Slate seems to agree. "If only Dean had taken a swing at Nurse Ratched before they wheeled him into the operating room." Amen! Note: I had a phone talk this evening with Jim Moore about the piece above. He says the yelling I heard in the conference room at Dean HQ wasn't an Indian thing, although I remember him saying that, he says he didn't say it. I take him at face-value, and perhaps I embellished it in my memory at some point. Stranger things have happened.
AP: Dean Delivers Top 10 List on Letterman. Ways, I, Howard Dean, can turn things around. Henry Jenkins: "At SaveDisney, Roy Disney describes what he sees as the fatal flaws in Michael Eisner’s leadership of the company." Napster CEO and Silicon Valley VC Hank Barry is our special guest tonight at Berkman Center. 7PM. Will be webcast. Notes from tonight's meeting. The Nation: "Was a decision to censor MoveOn's SuperBowl ad guided by the network's lobbying agenda?" Taegan Goddard: Understanding Tracking Polls. Tonight's Presidential debate is at 8PM Eastern. Fox News Channel and ABC will carry parts of the debate. WMUR in Manchester will televise it in its entirety. At 9PM Eastern, Howard and Judith Dean will be interviewed by Diane Sawyer on ABC's Primetime. Dean will also appear on Late Night with David Letterman on CBS. Dean supporters have a point when they say that the press is treating the candidate unfairly. I watched CNN this afternoon, hoping to see some new coverage of the NH race, they played the concession speech over and over, with little snippets of Dean hugging women and then holding up some kind of doll. I wanted to hear what he had to say. They didn't want me to hear it. Second problem. There's some kind of scandal brewing in Washington. But where's the coverage? It was buried as a minor item on CNN's report. Same with NPR. Again, the concession speech is repeated over and over. New stuff, like the Mars program in trouble, gets virtually no coverage. iTunes Music Store RSS Generator. Google bombing on the front page of the NY Times. Dylan Greene: 10 reasons why RSS is not ready for prime time. Political Wire: Has Mr Positive Turned Nasty? Andrew Grumet: Most Unique Subscribers. Steven Den Beste: "That's Macintosh Heaven." Furl is a "browsing tool that lets you save and organize thousands of useful web pages in a personal 'web page filing cabinet.'" Marc Nozell has Perl code to connect with Share Your OPML. New Baltimore Sun feeds. NY Times: "Some people make no attempt to save a page, counting on being able to find it again with a search engine." Zawodny: "It seems to me that both PubSub and Feedster provide feeds of searches run against many RSS feeds."
Political Wire: "Kerry takes big lead in New Hampshire." PoliticsNH: "Gephardt voters weren’t the only ones drawn to Edwards today." Christian Science Monitor: New sites fact check politicians, journalists. Command Post: "Did John Edwards use junk science to make over $152 million in groundless lawsuits?" Scott Rosenberg: "No one is saying 'outlaw regimes are no threat.' What a lot of us are saying is, the Bush regime is doing a poor job of handling the real threats." Steve Gillmor: RSS for President. Phil Ringnalda's ode to a crapflooder. Reading comments on my session at RSS Winterfest, I wasn't clear on one thing -- ultimately we'll need help from the browser to make the act of subscribing simple. That doesn't mean the future of RSS is in the browser. DefenseTech: "NASA researchers are using flight-safety records -- including reports of sick passengers, bad weather and sleepy pilots -- to build an anti-terror database." Dartmouth Online: "The 2004 Democratic presidential hopefuls will spar in a televised debate at Dartmouth Jan 25." The most pathetic moment last night was not in Bush's speech, although it was close, the prize goes to Nancy Pelosi, who misquoted JFK's Ask not what your country can do for you... (Postscript: Mea culpa. JFK had two Ask Not quotes in his inaugural speech, one was the quote that Pelosi cited. Thanks to all who sent corrections.) It seems the Google API is down. The search command here isn't working. Traced it back to an internal error on Google's server. I sent a bug report. Apparently others are having the same problem. Three years ago: "Software is about communication and sharing and working together. At least if you use computers, you'd better hope so." Listening to reporter commentary today it seems Dean must have no chance of winning New Hampshire. Then multiple-primary day, Feb 3: Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina. Okay, suppose for the sake of argument that Dean loses most of the these contests. Here's the problem. Dean has tens of millions of dollars. What then? A new party? Joshua Whelan on Vermont. Cole C Campbell: "Just about everything you heard and read about the Iowa caucuses in November and December was wrong. Particularly those endless pieces about the importance of strong grass-roots organizations. The press would have done better if all the reporters had taken a long vacation." News.Com: "Bush calls for the renewal of the USA Patriot Act."
Best moment of the State of the Union -- Bush says the Patriot Act is about to expire. Applause. Indeed. It's good that Bush is making a campaign issue of the Patriot Act. If that's what we debate, it will be a useful election. If we debate whether gays and lesbians have the right to legally ratify their relationships, and get the same benefits that accrue to heterosexual couples, that would be a wasted election. It's obvious that they deserve the right and a constitutional amendment preventing it would never pass. The country, even the most conservative states, understand that part of the population is homosexual, and they are valued law-abiding members of society, who pay taxes, vote, teach, etc. Most tortured soundbyte: "Dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related programs." An admonition to Web writers -- read more carefully before you write. I've seen several inaccurate accounts of stories I've written on Scripting News. I don't think Grand Hotel was a tale of money buying happiness. In fact it's many tales with many lessons, but that particular thread said the opposite -- the character played by Lionel Barrymore didn't find happiness until he got beyond money. I've also seen people say I was booted from Dean HQ last night. I was not. They were very gracious and friendly. I had to get back to Boston for a conference tomorrow, and my usual Thursday meeting at Berkman. We're already talking about next steps with DFA. I think the snipes are coming from people with an axe to grind. I'm still not working for a candidate, or as Steve Gillmor says my candidate is RSS. But I like very much working with the DFA people, and we're still in each others' loop. And please remember, winning Iowa isn't the same as winning the nomination. Clinton lost Iowa in 1992, for example. New Hampshire doesn't always choose the eventual winner, either. PubSub.com "reads over 100,000 weblogs in real time, and generates new feeds containing information specific to particular issues." BBC: "Bush is due to make his State of the Union address shortly, in which he is expected to set out his case for re-election in November." Greenspun: "A thoughtful voter could easily write off Howard Dean as a non-entity after spending 30 minutes at his Web site." Josh Marshall: "We’re at the Holiday Inn in downtown Manchester." Arrived in Boston 3:10PM. Clear and cold all the way. Blowing snow. Stopped in Montpelier to look around. Sweet lookin town. If you see this guy in your rear-view mirror, get out of his way. The programmers room at Dean For America.
In hindsight, Clark made a mistake by staying out of Iowa. The Kerry-Edwards win disproves the rule that you need an organization in Iowa to win. Now Clark has to struggle to get back in. There's a gem in this Register article about Google's plans. "Getting rid of the page rank spammers should be their priority, not expanding into a commodity marketplace where they will have no real niche." Lots of links this morning on Channel Dean. In RSS. In HTML. NY Times: "Endorsements from Mr Harkin, Iowa's most popular Democrat; former Vice President Al Gore; two of the nation's largest unions; and 35 members of Congress seemed to complicate Dr. Dean's message more than help spread it." Last night's impasse Ed Cone: "A visitor to this blog joked last night that maybe Channel Dean had been cancelled. But the fact is that other campaigns would be wise to put a similar news aggregation service into use as soon as possible." The hardest part isn't the technology, not by a mile. It was a tough night at Dean HQ. We hit an impasse when Howard Dean, on CNN, said "We came in third." He said it very clearly and unambiguously, so I opened the editorial page and typed in the quote and clicked Submit. I thought the candidate had said something very weblike. At this moment no one had said it. Not Larry King, not Wolfe Blitzer, they had qualified the statement, where Dean acknowledged it. My post caused quite a stir in the Web bullpen and the post came down. At that point we all stopped posting. So Ed's commenter got it right. The show was cancelled last night. But in the morning light, the chance to open up the political process to the rare honesty of the Dean candidate, something the Dean workers had trouble accepting, was too good to pass up. When I post on the Dean Channel I know I accept some compromises on my editorial freedom. That's why having Scripting News is so important. It's a bootstrap and there are always glitches in bootstraps. So last night Channel Dean went off the air briefly. This morning it's back. The Internet constituency An editorial comment, as if I weren't writing this from Burlington. The Internet still wants a candidate. The Internet isn't just a way to raise money, we've already seen that it can put people where the voters are. But it's not enough to have enthusiastic supporters, they must know what they're supporting, and then must have choice. We're not all anti-war. We're not all pro-life. We're young and old, students and teachers, anywhere in the world, seven by 24. There is an Internet constituency. But we're probably not the most effective way to get Iowa voters to turn out for you. Getting Gore's support signalled that Dean would compromise any values he might have to win. Gore supported the CDA and his wife Tipper who appeared on behalf of Dean was on the wrong side of free speech in the music industry in the 80s. I used to think people don't remember, and maybe they don't, but their spotty history must be reflected in their body language. I voted for Gore last time, but only because the other choice was worse. Seeking and accepting Gore's support was a huge negative for me. I want choice this time, and I want candidates that respect my mind. Dean still has the opportunity, but there's no time to waste. Oh what a night Last night's result, two victories from the rear of the field, is why when anyone says someone has it wrapped up, I mutter "famous last words." Time is so compressed in the political process. Add to that the role that technology and hype played in this, and you get a cross between politics and Silicon Valley, Netscape up, fate conspires, Netscape down, then..? Then what? I saw the events last night as an outsider who is inside. That puts me in a very rare place. I saw things that I would like to write about, but don't think it would be fair to write about. Maybe it's enough to say, for now, that the people in the Dean campaign are people. They've been on a roller coaster ride that swiftly and unexpectedly has come back to earth after soaring to unthinkable heights. More than he probably should have, Dean was talking to the people in the campaign in his roll-up-the-sleeves state-recital pep speech last night. A few minutes before in a staff meeting (I couldn't attend), there was such yelling and cheering, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. If this is Netscape, they aren't blinking and Microsoft hasn't attacked yet (that comes tonight). There is bewilderment, and while they are very young, they are tired, having run a long race and still challenged to work even harder. We all did some fantastic work last night. Together a picture of a diverse event shaped up on the Web, in a thoughtful and interesting way. Excellent work. And we'll get to do it again next week. We should be able to sharpen our skills and develop some new technology in the meantime. If you have ideas how we could do better, push them on the stack on last night's comment thread. Where do I go today? I don't know. I may stay here, but I'll probably hop over to New Hampshire to see some of the campaign events there, and then head back to Boston this evening, and do the RSS Winterfest kickoff at 8:30AM tomorrow at Berkman Center. I know they said I would do it from Dean HQ, but it doesn't look likely.
Taegan Goddard: What Happened to Dean? Joshua Marshall: "Stunning." How do you feel about the results from Iowa? Matthew Yglesias: "Gephardt's Out! And thank God." Doc Searls: "The Dean folks have to be disappointed." Command Post is kicking butt covering Iowa. Political Wire notes that the Manchester Union-Leader is endorsing Lieberman. BBC: Kerry claims victory in Iowa vote. Edwards blog post on second place finish in Iowa. There's nothing about the Kerry victory on his blog. Zephyr Teachout has a post on Dean. Jim Moore has a picture of the Web developer room at Dean For America in Burlington where I'm working tonight. Howard Dean on CNN: "We finished third." According to CNN, Gephardt will drop out of the race, finishing fourth in Iowa. CNN reports Kerry with 37 percent, Edwards with 33 percent, Dean 18 percent at 9:07PM Eastern. At 8:48PM Eastern I'm in Dean HQ in Burlington, VT. We're all watching the C-SPAN broadcast of one of the caucuses. When a delegate switches to Dean -- cheers. We're watching the grid on the Des Moines Register website. It cross-tabs by county and candidate. It's all zeros now. Today's Scripting News comes to you from Dean Headquarters in Burlington, VT. I'll be here tonight for the Iowa caucuses. Earlier today we announced Channel Dean here on Scripting News. In a bit there will be a post on the Dean blog. Comments are welcome. Do you have video of Judy Dean speaking yesterday? Send me email if you do. The Iowa caucuses open at 6:30 Central, 7:30 Eastern. Steve Gillmor: "Channel Dean is a blueprint for effective advocacy that should (and likely will be) cloned by all the other campaigns." Mike Wendland: "I am daily amazed at the Dean campaign's creative and passionate use of the Net." A list of feeds we're subscribed to on the private group aggregator for Dean staff. Just getting started. If you have suggestions of other feeds we should be watching, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Not that this is going to make any difference to anyone, but if I were a New Hampshire voter I'd vote for Dean to send a message to the television networks that they can't control my vote. What did Dean do? And what are we putting up with in our President? You think the Dean whoop sounds awkward? Listen to any speech by the President. You think he gets angry? And you think Bush doesn't? I'm sorry but I don't like being lied to, and the WOMD thing was a lie, right? Does anyone say it wasn't? (Except the Bush people, of course.) Now I'm just one voter, who unfortunately lives in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire, but if I can figure this out, why can't Wolf, Jeff, Judy, Aaron or Ted? It's time to start voting against the media tail wagging the electoral dog. I don't think it matters if you're liberal or conservative. You have a vested interest in making up your own mind, and not being programmed by the networks. 
I'm heading back to Boston, taking some Chris Lydon 
