A while ago I was in a hotel room at a conference with a person who is particularly bright.  I flipped the channels past a news station that was discussing the opulence of Donald Trump's new home.  How amazing the marble, granite, and gilding was.  Ahhh.  My friend said, "Isn't amazing what rich people can do?"

I got the joke.  It is pathetic that our culture fixates on, believe it or not, just what can be purchased with money!  Evidently, there is a correlation between how much money you have and how amazing your shit is.  Research supports this.

The converse is also true.  Americans love to fixate on those absurd things that poor people do.  And the poorer people get in this country, the harder it is to peel yourself away from programs showing poor people sticking up banks and getting mauled by dogs.  They never cease to entertain us!  But, there is more and more of this trash, and it highlights a class issue.  We laugh at poverty.

"Political efficacy," defined roughly, is the feeling that a person can effect the system.  That their voice matters in the large scheme of things.  Political efficacy matters because if people don't feel that they have much, they become increasingly unlikely to participate, vote, attend meetings, volunteer, and so on.  This is what I think DailyKos is about.

DailyKos is important to Democratic political efficacy because it is a channel by which an otherwise untapped and once-disaffected LARGE group of citizens can gather to share information about races and effect those races.  If the reader follows the larger narrative of this website, it started with Kos blogging and slowly coalescing a group of people who care about progressive politics.  

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According to Teagan Goddard's Political Political World, The Straight Talk Express is looking to deposit spam and other crap in your mailboxes and on websites throughout the virtual world.  Specifically, we wants people to spread talking points all over the damned place:

"McCain Offers Prizes for Spam Comments
Sen. John McCain's campaign is urging supporters to spam blogs and forums with official talking points, according to the Washington Post. If you do a good job, you can even win prizes.

"That, in essence, is the McCain campaign's pitch to supporters to join its new online effort, one that combines the features of 'AstroTurf' campaigning with the sort of customer-loyalty programs offered by airlines, hotel chains, restaurants and the occasional daily newspaper."

"People who sign up for McCain's program receive reward points each time they place a favorable comment on one of the listed Web sites (subject to verification by McCain's webmasters). The points can be traded for prizes, such as books autographed by McCain, preferred seating at campaign events, even a ride with the candidate on his bus, known as the Straight Talk Express.""

More below the fold...

I used to love the regular posting of calls to action, calls to call, email and write so-and-so or such-and-such.  I just joined Free Republic as a mole, and enjoy writing thoughts that are counter to their conventional thought, though more extreme and nutty than they write.  It isn't received well by most, but is always buttressed by some loon.  Anyway, in my short time there I've seen numerous calls to write, call and complain.  It is my recollection that we used to do much more of that here, kind of a counter-push against the Freepers.  Instead, I'm asked to give money all of the time - and I give as much as I can afford, but I have time and want to act.  I don't have that much money.

What gives?

In this diary I argue that state party apparatus is broken.  Much like university presidents, the purpose of the parties, it seems, is to raise funds.  They no longer function to give people access to their public servants.

What I mean when I discuss "state party apparatus" could be extensive, but I choose to focus here on the ground machine.  These include the GOTV folks, volunteers as well as committee people and precinct captains.  I've lived in three states in seven years, and I am politically active, yet I HAVE NEVER MET MY PRECINCT CAPTAIN.  What has happened?

Illinois:  As a very young man I was a political dork working for the Republican party.  I volunteered time to my committeeman, who was about 80 years old and walking no precincts.  He only made it in to vote on election day.  He couldn't even function as a judge or a watcher.  I was appointed a precinct captain at 15 years of age (Lyons Township -precinct 312, if memory serves).  I assumed from that point forward that becoming a precinct captain must be easy.  Most people are too old or uninterested.

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Obama's got some great staff for his advertising people.  They are far better than McCain's, evidently.  Anyway, in the advertisement recently posted at YouTube, it is made quite clear just how central the youth vote is going to be in this election cycle.  If you ask me, it is ambitious as hell; he's going for 3 year olds!  Why wouldn't he?!  They are crazy about him.

Moreover, he's had composed an entirely new score to be used throughout the campaign.  This one beats the socks off of anything that Lee Greenwood could spew for the GOP.  It is titled, "Barack Obama for History!"  I think it is beautiful and uplifting!

More below the fold!

A theme in press coverage of Democrats that seems to get a lot of traction is the hypocrite meme.  With the "there the elites go again" tenor, the media loves to cover stories, pumped by the GOP, that Democrats aren't practicing what they are preaching.  We see this with stories about Barbara Streisand being mean to her staff, Tom Cruise blowing up cars on his sets (a favorite of Limbaugh's), Al Gores use of carbon, and John Edwards being a populist multi-millionaire.

More below the fold...

I've had an ongoing argument with very informed people at work (a university) about whether Obama or Clinton should get the nomination.  I want Obama to win, but I think Clinton SHOULD win.  There are two specific policy reasons for my preference for a Clinton-like president.  These reasons stem from my perception that (now that Edwards is out) Clinton is the most progressive of the two remaining candidates.  Let's look at three ideas below the fold.

I received an email from Kos this morning.  I don't know if it was targeted but it is part of what I perceive as the problem here at DKos.  I think Markos has become too distanced from the page, and that emails like this one should be themselves posts.  This should have been a post.  I feel, when I used to read these posts - like in the Hackett effort - that I am part of something.  Like I am part of a movement from my desk.  I love the feeling that this people powered army enable me to help push the dagger a little deeper, and that I'm doing so with the help of my community here.  

Email is below the fold:http://

When I first started coming to Kos, it functioned for me as a cerebral liberal Drudgereport.  I first started coming to the site in 2003, when people were starving for alternative outlets for progressive discussion, DKos was the place to be.  But what separated it from its alternatives?

Earlier today, a story was posted in the Midday Open Thread that I feel needs a little more treatment.  It is actually a call to action to those of you concerned about gender matters, race relations and homophobia.  Specifically, the story is about Stetson University, an ostensible non-sectarian "university" in Central Florida.  This is quiet university that markets itself as a quite, mature, "ivy of the south" liberal arts variety school.  It is in reality a university that is about 25 years behind in terms of race, gender, and gay matters.  I'm convinced that the attention of the DKos forces can cause these people to know that the world IS watching.  We need to support your own!

Call this a mea culpa.  Call it what you want.  After looking more closely at the Clinton communication tactics in NH, I've decided that I was wrong about Hillary and am now firmly back in the Edwards camp.  I believe Hillary exploited traditional understandings of gender roles in order to villainize Obama - she used the racism of others to win.  I think, however, that my argument differs from others I've read here.

There was a thread here dealing with Andrew Cuomos insensitivity.  While I think all discussion along these lines is important, picking at your belly-button hair when people are trying to shoot your head off seems like a waste of time.  Furthermore, focusing on this sort of thing too much just alienates us from the "average" voter who should be strongly aligned with us!

Today, after finishing The Terror Dream by Susan Faludi, I've decided that this race is about gender - more than most people know.  For this reason, I'm voting for the person best fit to wage that war - Hillary Clinton.  I live in New York, and so will be casting my ballot for her on 2/5.

Oh My!!!  Drudge has recently learned that some aspects of political rallys are, sit down for this, staged.  That's right.  Somehow, following 7 years of Bush authoritarianism, it never dawned on him that the tickets at Bush rallies given only to vetted Republicans and the countless rallies held at military bases had absolutely no effect on the authenticity of those events.  

It wasn't until Clinton planted questions at rallies that it either dawned on him OR he realized the ethical implications of this for public discourse.  If not for Clinton, we'd still be in the dark.

That Michael Savage is a piece of human excrement goes without saying.  As such, his baseless speculation that Sen. Schumer had a role in CJ Robert's seizure shouldn't even be considered.  Instead, what someone should do is force Republicans (and their mouthpieces (e.g., O'Reilly)) to defend each piece of public absurdity espoused by these radio wingnuts.  Imply that because they don't want public airwave balanced, that they are then responsible for the palaver that has displaced quality public discussion.