Politics

Howard Dean will be at the Town Hall tomorrow afternoon.

WHAT: Town Hall Meeting hosted by Governor Howard Dean

WHEN: Saturday, January 31, 2004
3-4 p.m.
Doors will open at 2:15 p.m.
Guests are encouraged to show up early as seating is limited.

WHERE: Town Hall 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca Street) Seattle, WA 98101

Sometimes I really like living just across the street from Town Hall (and I do mean across the street — I’d bet that the picture on their website was taken from the roof of my building).

(via the LiveJournal Seattle community)

iTunes: “Tangram” by Groove Solution from the album Twisted Secrets Vol. 2 (1995, 6:20).

By now everyone has heard (or at least heard of) the ‘Dean Scream’ — Dean’s post-Iowa speech to his assembled fans which culminated in a soundbite played over and over (more than 700 times on television, apparently), not to mention being heavily sampled across the ‘net.

What wasn’t as heavily reported, though, was the atmosphere of the room itself — packed to the gills with rowdy Dean fans that were yelling and cheering as Dean promised them that he wasn’t finished, and that he’d continue to campaign and attempt to gain the Democratic nomination.

In an unusual media “mea culpa,” however, Diane Sawyer followed up on her interview with Howard and Judy Dean (which is excellent by the way, and worth watching — unfortunately, it’s gone to a pay-to-play link now) by taking a look at not just the footage that was broadcast all over the world with a direct-from-the-microphone audio feed, but at footage taken from within the crowd itself. Because this vantage point captures the energy and noise level of the room, all of a sudden Dean’s yell doesn’t seem nearly as ridiculous.

After my interview with Dean and his wife in which I played the tape again — in fact played it to them — I noticed that on that tape he’s holding a hand-held microphone. One designed to filter out the background noise. It isolates your voice, just like it does to Charlie Gibson and me when we have big crowds in the morning. The crowds are deafening to us standing there. But the viewer at home hears only our voice.

So, we collected some other tapes from Dean’s speech including one from a documentary filmmaker, tapes that do carry the sound of the crowd, not just the microphone he held on stage.

[…]

Dean’s boisterous countdown of the upcoming primaries as we all heard it on TV was isolated, when in fact he was shouting over the roaring crowd.

And what about the scream as we all heard it? In the room, the so-called scream couldn’t really be heard at all. Again, he was yelling along with the crowd.

The article includes a link to a video clip of Diane’s segment looking back at the scream, which has both the originally aired clip and a clip from within the audience. It’s quite a difference.

I’m afraid it may be too little too late — Dean’s already taken a tumble in the polls, though I’m not about to write him off yet (politics has seen far stranger things than a possible Dean resurrection) — but still, kudos to Diane for coming back to this instead of just letting it lie as-is.

(via Mark Sundeen)

iTunes: “I See You (Extended)” by X Marks the Pedwalk from the album New Dark Noise: The Darkwave Dance Floor Killer No Filler (2002, 5:11).

From Daily Kos’ look at the results of yesterday’s New Hampshire primaries (I’ve updated and expanded it with the final reported numbers):

The best story of the night? The one that should unite us all? From the Republican primary results:

Bush 53,749
Kerry 1,420
Dean 974
Clark 851
Edwards 808
Lieberman 511
Kucinich 28
Braun 15
Gephardt 14
Sharpton 11

That’s 4632 registered Republicans who wrote in a Democrat in their ballot.

That’s got to scare the shit out of Rove.

Meanwhile, Kerry again took the top spot, with Dean in second this time. Still a lot more primaries and possible jostling to come, though.

TrueMajority.org has a nicely effective flash animation posted using Oreo cookies to demonstrate how easy it really could be to fund social needs and keep our military budget at a resonable level.

This is one of the most effective pieces of political advocacy I’ve ever seen. Ben Cohen, the Ben of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, narrates a short Flash movie for TrueMajority.org, in which he explains — using Oreo cookies — the way that the federal budget is currently apportioned, and how little rearrangement would be necessary to renew all of America’s social programs. The examples are vivid and charming, and the logic is compelling.

(via BoingBoing)

Lane and Tina have both posted their impressions of the caucus session for their corner of Iowa, on Eat Your Vegetables and Kickass Sociology, respectively. Some interesting comments, especially as I’m planning on hitting the local precinct caucus for my area of Seattle in early February. Apparently it was all a lot more chaotic and a lot less inspiring than either of them had hoped for.

From Lane:

Overall, i’m not a fan of the caucus system. First problem is that it is so open to corruption and influence. Note the count totals. There were 533 people eligible to vote but the first round had just 519 votes cast. The second round, mysteriously had 535 votes. Likely just bad counting, but it’s also two more people than were eligible to vote and i saw at least 10 people head home after the first round.

[…]

I’m glad we got to experience it. After hearing so much about the Iowa caucuses, it was great to be part of one, registering people, observing, and shaking my head at this weird brand of Iowa democracy – a democracy of those who are the most organized and aggressive.

And from Tina:

The opportunity for corruption in this process is enormous. Nobody could hear what was going on, the campaign leaders are striking deals with each other, but no one knows what the deals are. The campaign leaders are in charge of counting their own constituents. The rest of the people are sitting or standing around like sheep while all of this goes on around them. If they move, perhaps to talk with someone over from another campaign, they might not get counted. It was nowhere near the robust, townhall meeting exchange of views that I was hoping for. And it took forever – over 4 hours (not counting the platform stuff that makes up the 2nd half of the caucus). I was exhausted by the end of it.

In sum, Iowa Caucus = Political Circus. I didn’t witness any advantage over a ballot-based primary, and saw lots of disadvantages. How disappointing.

Hopefully things here in Washington will be a little more organized and less exasperating than what they went through. Never having done the caucus thing before (Alaska either doesn’t have caucuses, or I wasn’t interested enough to know about them when I lived there), it’ll be an entirely new thing for me. I’ll see what I think of it all come Feb. 7th.

iTunes: “MTV Grind Vol. 1 (full mix)” by Various Artists from the album MTV Grind Vol. 1 (full mix) (1997, 55:19).

There’s a lot of good food for thought in the comment thread for this Daily Kos post-Iowa look at the Dem contenders. Some good discussion on whether Dean has suffered as bad of a blow as it may seem, and if so, then who might be the best person to pick up the nomination.

Most people that aren’t solidly entrenched in Dean‘s camp seem to be leaning towards either Kerry or Edwards — not terribly surprising, as they got the top two spots in the Iowa caucuses — with a few leaning towards Clark.

For myself — well, at least for the moment, Dean is still my favorite of the bunch. Kerry has never particularly impressed me (he comes off as too much of a “traditional politician”, Clark I think would make a great VP or cabinet member (his military background strikes me as better fitting to a supporting role), and Edwards I just don’t know much about.

Any supporters of Kerry, Edwards, or Clark want to present a case why I should look more seriously at their campaign? I’m curious.

[Update:]{.underline}

Essentially the same question is being asked on Daily Kos — and apparently generating a good amount of answers. Worth looking into.

iTunes: “Bostich” by Yello from the album Essential (1980, 4:36).

I was only able to watch the first few minutes of the State of the Union tonight before customers came in and I had to actually work for my paycheck (such a sorry state of affairs, really). I did, however, get one laugh out of what I saw.

I’m used to the apparently mandatory applause after every sentence (though whether they’re applauding what was said, or the fact that he managed to get through one more sentence without stumbling, I’m not sure about). I was quite pleasantly surprised tonight when after mentioning that the Patriot Act expires in the near future, the Democratic portion of Congress interrupted Bush’s speech at that point to start applauding.

Not only do I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment, but seeing Bush’s annoyance as he turned toward the applauding people and shook his head (“No, no, that’s not where you’re supposed to clap! You missed your cue!”) was priceless.

I’ll get to go over the transcript of the speech and hopefully catch an archived webcast after I get home tonight. Until then, though, I’ll just carry that moment around in my head for the rest of the evening.