"Your future dream is a shopping scheme."

I first noticed this meme in Markos' defense of his now infamous smiting of the Obama campaign on Monday.  In it he states

At the end of the day, I'm pretty irrelevant in the whole affair. Obama is going to raise a ton of dough and win this thing whether I send him money or not.

and

what I decide to do with my money means next to nothing, no matter how much hyperventilating may happen on this site's comments and diaries about it all

Then, while catching up on yesterday's news, I caught this post from Matt Stoller where he says

I sort of take the Atrios view, which is that this is a sucky blog and what we say resonates in a small corner of the world, but not so much to the wide swath of voters.  So criticism of Obama isn't a big deal one way or the other

Why are prominent bloggers downplaying the power of the Blogosphere?

You may have seen this username before, posting the occasional link to what I hope was a funny political satire story. Now, we've launched a more full-fledged website, located at ReallySeriousNews.com

I want to just give you a few links and tell you a bit more about it as we try to make a real mark for progressive politics with our hard-hitting satire.

I’ve been feeling angry.

Really angry.

Cynical too.

Dare I say... bitter?

It’s hard not to.

It is by now an accepted fact of life that the Internet is having some sort of impact upon the political process...after all, if it wasn’t, would we even be here?

But we’ve all wondered exactly how much impact; and now the good folks at the Pew Research Center have taken the time and trouble to do some survey work that seeks to answer that very question

The logical approach would be to "walk through" the data (which is, frankly, good news for Obama) and see what they have to say about it...but let’s take a different approach today.

Let’s instead look at the data and ask ourselves: who aren’t we reaching, why, and what implications might those answers have going forward—and downticket?

Barack Obama’s recent rejection of public funding for his presidential campaign has elicited criticism from the Republicans, the media, and "good government" campaign finance reformers.

Many of the commentators on this matter have gone so far as to state that Obama’s decision is the "death" of public financing.  I do agree that public financing – and, perhaps, even much of campaign finance reform itself – is either dead or dying.  However, I do not think that Barack Obama is to blame for this situation.  Nor, for that matter, do I think it is necessarily a bad thing, because other ideas – ones more suited for the political realities of the 21st century – might be better than the current system.

Follow me below the fold to hear them.

I think that jokes about John McCain's age are funny. My band made a borderline-offensive music video where he has old-man tremors in his bathrobe. That said, I don't actually think that McCain's age makes him physically or mentally incapable of leading effectively, and any serious efforts to express that will probably backfire.

Seeing this similarly hilarious video of McCain's deputy e-campaign manager John SooHoo having to explain that McCain is "aware of the internet" made me rethink what the opening is when it comes to McCain's age:

This just in, from my CAD Google group, of all places.

Verizon has gotten permission from the New York Attorney General to block its subscribers from large portions of the Internet, in the name of "child-porn blocking". The Chinese-style access-controlled internet is fast on its way...

Well, I am fan of Dilbert Comic Strip..Lets see what Dilbert tells feels about it..Have fun..

Both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had unjustifiedly obscure but majorly important serious guests tonight. First, Jon Stewart interviewed Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News, who said of the "mainstream media" news coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan, "If I were to watch the news that you're hearing here in the United States, I'd just blow my brains out, because it would just drive me nuts." I've posted a full transcript on my personal blog.

Stephen Colbert had interviews with the lawyer for one of the Gitmo detainees, and with the author of The Future of the Internet, and How to Stop It. [amazon.com]

It recently came to my attention that FOX News host Brit Hume said something absurd (maybe thats not news?) on last night's broadcast. I have included the video below so that people can watch the segment and make their own judgments.

In a nutshell, he summarizes how Obama's new website Fight The Smears states that he has never been a Muslim and has always been a Christian. However, Brit says, Obama's half brother Malik Obama is "not so sure" that this is the case. His half brother apparently stated that:  "if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background."

While it is unclear exactly what context that was said in, or what was implied - Brit's statement of his half brother being "not so sure" about Obama's Christian faith seems distorted unless it can be backed up with a substantive quote (it was not during the Special Report broadcast).

Watch the clip and weigh in with thoughts / opinions below:

Here is a recap of last night's episode of The Daily Show, in case you missed it. The main story was on "Baracknophobia" which Jon defines as the irrational fear of hope - or in other words, the paranoid and constant internet rumors that swirl around the MSM and blogosphere. Theres a pretty good montage of clips showing the MSM complicit in giving air time to these wholly unfounded smears. They give special attention to Sean Hannity's comments.

For the interview Jon sits down with former attorney David Iglesias who was fired in the White House's politicization of justice scandal. Interesting note about David - he is also the guy who the Tom Cruise character was based on in the movie "A Few Good Men".

Lastly, for the moment of Zen the show airs a tribute to Tim Russert from a 2004 interview. Its touching and a bit sad..

Anyways, check out the clips and weigh in with thoughts / opinions below:

Personally, I'm not big on stories, diaries or comments implying the election is all but over. There's a long history of overconfident Democrats getting punked, an infinite palate of ways in which to blow it, and a political eternity in which to do so. Republicans have demonstrated how adept they are at driving down Democratic turnout and, in a multitude of creatively evil ways, preventing certain votes from ever seeing the light of day. At all times, we must be vigilant and fight as if we were 10 points down!  

Subject to these very real caveats, one can't help but note the enormous chasm between Republicans and Democrats in online savvy. There has been much analysis of the role of technology in the re-emergence of the left, but I posit that never before has there been such a huge and obvious difference between the electronic sophistication of two campaigns (in this case, representing the best of a field of smart Democrats and the worst among a gaggle of tired Republicans).  

I must confess that I've never trusted the Web. I've always seen it as a coward's tool. Where does it live? How do you hold it personally responsible? Can you put a distributed network of fiber-optic cable "on notice"? And is it male or female? In other words, can I challenge it to a fight?
-- Stephen Colbert

Senator Ted Stevens thinks the internet is a "series of tubes."  George W. Bush believes there are internets galore out there.  And John McCain...well, the Senator has admitted that he doesn't even know how to use a computer.

Politics in the digital era is tricky, not so much because of the wealth of information on the web, but because of the millions of ordinary Americans using that information on a daily basis.  Armed with new media tools, muckrackers today number in the millions.  No longer is a candidate able to present a poll-tested package to the press and have that persona spoon-fed to the American people.  No, today's voters have available to them a universe of information consisting of detailed voting records, primary sources, debunking sites, blogs, and more.  As John McCain recently said, "[w]hat you can find out now on the Internet -- it's remarkable."

What's remarkable is that now more than ever, Americans are turning to the internet to become familiar with the candidates and otherwise engage in the political process.  A just-released survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals these astonishing figures:

A record-breaking 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others.

What's fascinating about this survey is how the internet is being used in this, the first presidential campaign of the 21st century:

35% of Americans say they have watched online political videos a figure that nearly triples the reading the Pew Internet Project got in the 2004 race.

11% of Americans have contributed to the political conversation by forwarding or posting someone else's commentary about the race.

As most of us who have been on the receiving end of those right-wing rags known as "forwards" know, bullshit spreads far and wide on the internet.  You know the ones, the ones with a "letter" written by some stay-at-home mom in Oklahoma who was just compelled to write about how scandalous it is that her children can't say the Pledge of Allegiance in school because it contains the words "under God."  Or the ones chock-full of animated graphics of waving flags and fireworks noting some lie about terrorists endorsing Democrats, and demanding that we "take America back."  Or the ones about Barack Obama's secret pact with Muslim leaders to take over the White House and then make all of us wear head scarves and replace our guns with slingshots.  

The phenomenon of the right-wing forward has never ceased to amaze me.  It seems like no matter how outrageous the lie or how repulsive the smear, these emails are crafted in such a way as to make otherwise sane people--our right-wing family members or co-workers--momentarily insane--just long enough to click "forward" and pass on the filth to you, and every other name in their address book.

While Stephen Colbert may wonder aloud whether you can challenge the internet to a fight, it's clear that Barack Obama has indeed chosen to do so.  Obama has been on the receiving end of some of the most outlandish right-wing emails in recent memory.  His response has been swift, first by dedicating a portion of his website to debunking the smears, and most recently, by launching yet another site, fightthesmears.com.*  In other words, the Obama camp is fighting fire with fire--using the same medium that started the lies to fight the lies, targeting the same people.

John McCain doesn't have an email problem, and not just because the left has yet to master the art of the political forward.  As we've discussed repeatedly (here and here), John McCain has a YouTube problem.

For McCain, the dangers of the digital age lay not in a single lie spread wide by email, but in his own multiple lies and panders, presented in his own words, on video.  There are countless of mash-ups on YouTube and other video sites of McCain vs. McCain, offering up in delicious clips the devastating sound-bites of McCain taking one position (when it was political convenient to do so) and then taking another.

In light of the unique problems (and solutions) the internet presents to both candidates, the figures in the Pew survey are that much more relevant.  More Americans are looking to online video than email forwards this campaign season, a clear disadvantage to McCain.  And while Obama can fight email smears with debunking pages and emails, McCain does not have such a clean-cut response with respect to his YouTube problem.  He cannot disclaim his own words, or present a mash-up of his own (indeed, as we've noted before, the McCain camp has concertedly avoided pushing out video of the candidate).  The negative, then, remains unchallenged.      

This isn't 2000, and McCain isn't in Kansas anymore.  Gone is the ability to control voter perception through an elite group of press reporters who can be wooed and wowed with fancy buses and family barbecues. Empowered Americans are taking to the web to filter through the noise and obtain much-needed context.  And yeah, there's a lot of disinformation on the web as well.  But at the very least, the opportunity to critically evaluate every source and piece of information is there, as McCain would say, just "a Google" away.

In this digital era, the candidate who can most appreciate the interplay between technology and politics will have an upper hand, in both mobilizing voters, raising money, and fighting back against negative attacks.  At this juncture, clearly, Obama has the upper hand.  And as for McCain? Simply put, his "Straight Talk Express" isn't ready to ride the information superhighway.

*Update:  Apparently, the website, isbarackobamamuslim.com, which I originally listed as being created by the Obama campaign, is not a campaign project.  Still, that individual supporters are harnessing the power of the web to fight smears against their candidate is testament to how, as the survey cited above notes, Obama's supporters are more engaged online than the supporters of any other candidate.  

Why Barack will win...

Regarding kos' current story on O'RLY's latest book... I wonder if that's what my mother was trying to buy last night.

Funny anecdote below the fold.

Think Harder's diary makes the point that the Obama campaign's record-breaking sums of donation poses the danger of increasing the costs of future campaigns indefinitely.

But maybe we are at a tipping point. The ability to raise money is important, but perhaps the real strength of Obama's model is that it relies so much on the initiative of individuals at the grass-roots level.

More...

I'm not entirely sure why I'm surprised, but I am. On John McCain's website, they recommend that supporters go to a host of websites, then submit their comments in order to earn points. As you can see from the screenshot, Daily Kos is one of the "featured blogs" johnmccain.com recommends supporters go to to comment. On the right sidebar, visitors can see a selection of blogs categorized "Liberal", "Conservative", "Moderate", and "Other". "Liberal" is the default setting.

Classy.