Howard Dean, The Unsung Hero, Says this is a New Era

Brandon/AP

As many of you maybe know, HS, Yogyogibear, Terri, Myself, Miki, and other readers and commenters here consider ourselves to be DEAN DEMOCRATS. We became activists because of Howard Dean and his people powered politics!

You can read Tokyo Terri's -Thank you post here.

Here are some words of wisdom from the good doctor from yesterday in the midst of the voting hours;

We have believed for some time that the road to the presidency goes through the West,” he said. “The Obama campaign has been pretty determined in Arizona, as it has been in other states. I just felt it would be a shame to waste our resources once we got within a couple percentage points.”

Earlier this fall, Dean conducted a voter registration bus tour that hit 22 states. Party insiders, who once criticized Dean’s 50-state strategy of building up state party operations in even the most Republican of states, now laud the strategy for boosting the party’s fortunes.

“I’m hoping this has changed the Democratic Party forever,” Dean said. “Of course, it doesn’t hurt that we had a great candidate in Obama, and a sitting president who helped us by not paying much attention to what the people of this country are doing.”

Dean’s said he was gratified that Obama had borrowed some of the techniques Dean employed in his presidential campaign, including a reliance on small donations and use of the Internet.

“I told David Axelrod ‘You took all the things in our campaign that worked out well and used them, and with anything that didn’t work out, you got rid of it,’” Dean said. Axelrod is Obama’s chief political advisor.

Dean was planning to be with the Obama campaign Tuesday night, watching election returns, and will return to Washington D.C. today.- By Sam Hemingway Burlington Free Press

(links added by me)

Thank You, Howard. You were right. And we will always be your Dean people.

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McCain's Story "Cross in the Dirt" Appears to be Bullshit

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn In Russian Gulag
John POW© McCain likes to tell this story about how one of his captors in the POW camp once drew a cross in the dirt in front of him in a show of Christian solidarity with his torture victim. A story he only started telling in 1999. It's a touching story, but I prefer the original version by Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.

John McCain, Maverick... and liar. Is there anything about this guy that is genuine? What is wrong with this guy. Is there something wrong with his story that he was a POW for 5 1/2 years that he has to embellish it? This guy doesn't seem to be able to distinguish reality from fantasy.

Check out rickrocket's diary at kos, where the story broke.

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FDL Caucus

Our first event to actually make it to today. Most of the early part of the day has been getting to meet, see and know people.

First big annoucement is that FDL will be doing diaries! New page called Oxdown Gazette on the site will be the Diary page.

Pachacutec is doing a review of the last FDL year.
Thanking the community. Recapping the work on FISA. Come a long way from Scooter Libby. Now the focus is going to be what is good policy, what is going on about policy and how can we be more proactive rather than re-active.

One goal, Bringing the outside interest to effect the Insiders in DC. And one way to do that is going to be through the new diaries.

Now open to Q&A

First question is how to decide what to post, even when you are angry, frustrated etc.?

Pach said at FDL they had a editorial policy. Do Not Endorse, Do Not Destroy. It was hard to do this during the primary. The Diaries however, they feel will be open game. Constant interactive loop of feedback. Not going to tolerate racism or sexism. Follow some basic guidelines.

2nd Question; was really a follow up. A member saying that the standard that the front pages have set influences the commentors. And that this will help the diaries too.

Some points, this is always a challenge, but that conflict is not bad. All of this is going to influence how this comes together. But if you are doing diaries and comments you can be sure fdl will be listening. The top of the fdl page will show the top posters on the Oxdown site.

3rd question; Where did the name come from? (Oxdown Gazette) And how are you going to get DC insiders to pay attention? Ari will be leading that effort and he has worked a lot in DC so the thought is that this will help bring DC eyeballs to the site.

OXDOWN LAKE; project started in Jan. It was technically challenging. The name comes from a test in England-- local reporters would have to take this test. And the test was always the same. The question on the test would always be about a mythical town of Oxdown, and the new reporters would have to cover a hypothetical event that would happen to the town of Oxodown. It was inspired by that.

FDL folks belives that Oxdown is going to be a great place to have discussions about policy issues going forward. Diaries will be recommended and will get kind of a rating as well.

Another question; From a local austin blogger. Feels like the interface of FDL has become a little schizofrenic... with all the multiple blogs. etc. Her question is are we going to dilute the community power/ feeling by adding in diaries on top of all the other new stuff that has come on?

Show of hands shows that a few people are concerned about this...

Pach said that they are feeling like they want to create communities not just community. Long term goal to find more ways to reach out to more and more people. So this is a risk but by doing this in good quality will bring a lot of people there.

Wants to open up more opportunities to more people.

They are looking at ways to experiment and use spaces on the pages to show what is going on across the rest of the linked blogs.

Another question; been slow lately, why?
Server migrations, DNS attacks, New issues. Working on it.

Other basic user questions and ideas being traded around.

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