Year: 2004

  • Arise and walk

    A new Democratic party has been summoned into existence

  • Hey look! I’m being bipartisan!

    Let’s form a progressive alliance with Bull Moose Republicans. I’m no fan of Scoop Jackson per se, but I’d like to see more moderate and principled Republicans, so I’m willing to talk.

  • Talk about your Manchurian candidate

    Wouldn’t it be strange if left-wing sleeper agents infiltrated the Republican party like the Russians posing as Americans in that Charles Bronson film and under the guise of a “new” form of conservatism, introduced a bizarre almost Trotskyist foreign policy and will to power that succeeded in duping America’s foremost right-wing party into self-destructing? It…

  • Do political blogs change minds?

    Zogby doesn’t think so (Edgewise: Simon World blogs Zogby’s Hong Kong talk): The impact of the Internet has been huge. In 1996 about 4% of voters got most of their political information from the net. In 2000 it was 31%. For 2004 it will be in excess of 50%. The second key impact has been…

  • Chilling effects

    A letter from a city councilmember running for mayor of LA to an anonymous blogger (4th Floor Blog) has convinced her to shut down her blog (via Martini Republic and LA Observed). Here’s part of the letter: I appreciate the opportunity to respond to your comments, no matter how misguided and totally out of focus…

  • The Kids Are Alright

    A lot of people have been wowed by the intensity of campaign communication this year. Fair enough. It has been intense. But not intense like the Green Day back-beat, or Hip-Hop’s “Vote or Die,” or the amped-up slackers of 2004. I think there may be an intensity of yet a higher order still in store.…

  • Frequently asked questions at EnjoyTheDraft.com

    Enjoy The Draft – Drunken FAQ: BUT BUSH SAYS HE WON’T INSTITUTE A DRAFT. WHY SHOULD WE THINK HE WILL? Because Bush says he won’t institute a draft. IS IT POSSIBLE HE JUST WON’T CALL IT A “DRAFT”? LIKE INSTEAD HE’LL GIVE IT SOME ORWELLIAN DOUBLESPEAK NAME? Beware the “No 18-to-25-Year-Old Left Behind Act.” SERIOUSLY?…

  • Simon World blogs Zogby’s Hong Kong talk

    John Zogby thinks the race is still Kerry’s to lose. Simon disagrees but finds many of Zogby’s insights compelling. Here are a few that struck me: Red vs. Blue This election is a repeat of 2000 in many ways, and Florida and Ohio are the key states this time. The “Armageddon Election”: the US has…

  • Camper Van Beethoven gear stolen in Montreal

    Spread the word. Let’s help them get their equipment back. (via MZ, who adds: “This stinks.”) >Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:07:59 -0700 (PDT) >From: “J. Segel” >Reply-To: jsegel@magneticmotorworks.com >Subject: [BA-NEWMUS:14634] stolen gear >To: “Bay Area New Music Discussion” > >hey i don’t know if anybody knows anybody up here in montreal, but: > >all…

  • Social commons headed for tragedy?

    Anil Dash (An unkind community) wonders if the tenor of (at least) the political blogosphere has reached a point of no return in terms of loss of civility and mob behavior (as when a popular political blogger “sics” his readers on someone espousing an unpopular viewpoint): I wonder if there’s any other steps we can…

  • What to include in your blog

    At Watermark, Sharon Brogan notices that some bloggers are pointedly eschewing politics i nthe runup to the election, and she asks her readers for guidance on whether they prefer a blog that focuses on some core areas of knowledge or one that ranges over a wide variety of topics, including political punditry. It’s a great…

  • Personal Democracy Forum relaunches

    Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry have relaunched Personal Democracy Forum. The site will run two or more feature articles a week, and shorter blog entries on blog time. There’s also a newswire pointing to interesting stories about the politics and technology, a list of the most influential political weblogs, and a dynamic, Technorati-driven list of…

  • Sharing links to political ads

    Larry Lessig, Aaron Swartz, and others have put together p2p-Politics as a way of enabling people to point each other to political ads online. From the site’s FAQ: Does this have anything to do with p2p filesharing? It is peer-to-peer, or people-to-people, but the files are not themselves shared. Only links to files are shared.…

  • Kerry, Bush Trade Charges

    “I”ll give you Nincompoop and In Denial, if you give me Flip-Flopper and Liberal.” “Flip-Flopper AND Liberal? You’ve got to be kidding!”

  • If Kerry had been president, Saddam would still be in power

    Then again, if Bush had been president, Osama would still be at large.

  • Jon Stewart shoots, living web scores

    Last week Jon Stewart put down Tucker Carlson on the latter’s CNN show. Today, Jeff Jarvis lays out how the publicity afterward exemplifies the living Web: Welcome to the future of TV! In old TV, a moment like this came and if you missed it, you missed it. Tough luck. In new TV, you don’t…

  • Drive time in Detroit and Phoenix

    Friday morning I got up at the crack of dawn to make a phone appearance on WJR AM in Detroit (news/talk at 760 on the AM dial). That was fun. Then this morning at 6:05 am I spoke with Jim Sharpe on KTAR in Phoenix, the number one news station in the Phoenix metropolitan area,…

  • Syndication vs. youth culture

    danah boyd, who’s made a practice of studying how younger people use social media (as contrasted with how we old fogeys tend to do so), noted recently (apophenia: a culture of feeds: syndication and youth culture) that the Web 2.0 “excitement” about RSS and syndicated feeds and suchlike may be missing the fact that it…

  • My beef with Greenspan

    In a discussion thread at Kos two days ago (Daily Kos :: Comments Kill the moderators) a fellow called johnmorris succinctly put the hammer down on Alan Greenspan’s disingenuous betrayal of our nation’s social compact with its frail and elderly: in 1983 Greenspan predicted disaster for Social Security unless we doubled the withholding tax and…

  • Jerome Armstrong profiled in VT

    Jessamyn “the librarian” West tipped me off to this article on Jerome in his local paper: The Blogger: One Vermonter’s Internet ax-grinding attracts national attention. (Jessamyn also gets a plug in the article’s sidebar.)

  • The net taking on TV

    Matthew Yglesias takes a look at the organizing effort from the left blogosphere to oppose the Sinclair TV network’s plans to air an anti-Kerry film on the eve of the election. These activities aren’t limited to one ideological camp. The right blogosphere drummed up the swift vets story and complained about it not getting covered…