In a taped interview, it's often good to repeat the important parts relentlessly.

If the main point of the interview is that astroturfing is bad, say it over and over and over again, in response to every question -- to the point where you start to find yourself annoying. That makes it much more likely that it will get through.

While this sort of thing can be partly attributed to sloppiness, it's a sloppiness that comes from hurrying; they have just a tiny amount of time to edit the interview for TV and there is a lot of other material grabbing at their attention. The clips aren't chosen so much for the significance of their content, they're chosen more on the basis of what looks and sounds good. Repetition means your point will make it. It's hard to make yourself do it, but it definitely works...

I don't know if I'd say everyone is "well-off" per se. Consider:

- 75% of Dem respondents have households of 2 or more. While part of that must represent single parents, it still suggests that the majority of respondents are married (or otherwise living with a partner).

- The $80K number was annual household income, not individual income.

- It seems pretty likely that a lot of those 75% are going to be dual-income households (or more than dual). Your guess is as good as mine for the exact distribution, but the 2004 census data suggests that at least half of married couples in the US are dual-income. And the higher the annual household income the more likely a family is to be dual-income -- which of course makes sense if you think about it!

Divide $80.2K by 2 and you have an individual salary of $40K, which is pretty much the middle of the middle class.

Does a dual-income family where each person earns $40K count as well-off? Beats me. But just don't walk away with the mistaken impression that the average reader of MyDD makes $80K a year individually.

I agree with pretty much everything you have to say here. I never liked the two of them being against each other and still hadn't decided which I was going to vote for. I probably wouldn't have decided until the day of the primary vote. At first I hoped that they were going to hash it out in a personal discussion and eliminate the need for a primary altogether. Then when that failed, I was hoping that maybe the primary would at least be a way to boost both Hackett's and Brown's visibility in ways beneficial to both. Neither of those happened.

The whole thing sucks for Paul, and I understand that. But I am really turned off by the "screw you guys, I'm going home" attitude. There's a lot that Hackett can still do -- if he's serious about fixing things.

Or do Marines just give up when things don't work out for them the first time through?

If he or someone in his org is reading this, I'd suggest he take a cue from Dean. Defeated and laughed at in the 2004 primary, Dean stuck to it and is now reshaping the entire party for the better with his decisions as DNC chair. I'm not suggesting Hackett run for the Ohio Dem party chair, but surely there's got to be a way to redirect his talent and appeal into something constructive.

This seems like a hotheaded move on Hackett's part. My impressions:

(a) Hackett was completely outclassed by Brown's organization, which is probably the best org to be found in Ohio.

(b) Hackett was simply less predictable. He may or may not have been a better candidate -- I certainly liked his fire, and would've had no qualms whatsoever voting for him. But I can understand that from the party's POV he was much more of a gamble. He was potentially vulnerable to all sorts of things: wrong moves, rookie mistakes, hidden skeletons in the closet that come out at just the wrong time. If you think both men have a roughly equal shot at unseating DeWine, then it makes more sense to go with Brown -- he is a known quantity. Any good soldier would tell you that it's far better to control all the variables you can.

(c) Hackett is clearly pissed off right now. He needs time to cool off. Pulling a Cartman screw-you-guys-I'm-going-home isn't exactly indicative of leadership. Politics unfortunately involves deals like that sometimes, and you just take stock, regroup, and make your move later. How he handles himself over the next few weeks will tell you a lot about his character.

It would've been great to see Hackett and Brown in the primary together. I think that was a mistake on the part of the OH party -- a primary battle would have seasoned him and given him additional experience in organizing and running. But maybe they were afraid of Brown (who was likely to win because he had the better org) getting friendly fire from Hackett.

Since the people interested in the political stuff and the tech/games industry don't necessarily overlap, I should point out that there's a small controversy brewing over fake posts on web boards by PR firms.

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/06/did _nvidia_hire_an_a.html
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/0 1/25
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/02/01

Some marketing firms hire people to maintain 50 or more identities and make regular posts in online forums to maintain the illusion. Then, on cue, they suddenly all line up to say how great product X is. A number of people have come forward talking about interviewing for that kind of job. (Hell, I was approached for a prototypical version of that. Someone asked me on IRC in 1994 if I wanted to get paid to chat people up - yes, on IRC - and slip in a positive comment about some product. Didn't take it, and was kind of creeped out.)

The trollish equivalent of that kind of thing is not a huge leap. Republican interns would probably do it for free, if only to prove that they can be just as slimy as the big guns.

I like it. :-) Almost as good as the one from one of Wonkette's flacks. (Does she ever post herself any more, btw? Jeez.)

The scary thing is that this has a non-zero probability of being the actual outcome. It sounds 100% like GWB's modus operandi.

GHWB wasn't a great president, but compared to Junior even he would be a breath of fresh air. Heck, even Nixon outpolls Bush these days. Perhaps our memories soften with age.

Election, with Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick. While not about an important election, it's about real politics and all kinds of dirty fighting. It manages to act out in an exaggerated high-school microcosm all the same stuff that you see happening on bigger political stages. Great movie on many levels.

Not just heating oil, but also natural gas and (because of the cost of NG) electricity are all going to be much more expensive. Whatever kind of heat your house has, you'll be paying more for it. And winter heating is an inescapable cost -- you can't give up on heating altogether like you can with cooling.

I suspect that a fair number of people with McMansions are going to realize that they bought way too much house for their needs when they have to pay for heating it this winter. With household budgets that are already squeezed by the price of gasoline, it's not going to be pretty.

I'm afraid we are definitely headed toward a sell-off situation. Like all bubbles, it will hang on for a few extra months beyond what you think will be humanly possible... and then pop badly.

Taking credit for it does not mean that you're going to say the charges are bullshit. Why does "partisan" mean "untrue"? Answer: it doesn't.

Say that the charges are true. Because they are.

"DeLay was a major player in the widespread corruption that is plaguing our government from top to bottom. And his impending downfall has been brought to you by the Democratic Party."

Screw defense on the "partisan politics" attack. How about some offense?

Here's how the Dem leadership should handle it: Take credit for it.

It doesn't matter one damn bit that it's not true. That it wasn't partisan at all. Trumpet it as a victory anyway. Say "Hell yeah! We got a prosecutor to indict the House Majority Leader. Score one for us!"

That's what a fighting Democrat sounds like.

It was poorly worded in the original post. Hackett alone is not making seven seats possible. Instead read it like "that makes seven"... or equivalently: "with the addition of Hackett, that now brings us to a total of seven".

Yeah... I think this is so badly skewed in Katrina-affected areas that it's not even funny.

AFAIK there's exactly zero hard statistical information about whom the people who were unreachable (mostly dems!) are blaming for the problems. In the areas around NOLA it may skew heavily anti-Bush and pro-Blanco for all anyone knows. Certainly the Presidential photo-op stories are making the gossip rounds and really can't have been received well.

Someone was saying that the $200M for one of those bridges is just a down payment, and over the lifetime of the project it'll be $1B.

The 'purpose', as explained somewhere on a DKos thread, was that one of the bridges connects to the Ketchikan airport ... but isn't really necessary because there's a ferry which runs every 15 minutes. And the other bridge could cut the commute to Anchorage by 40 minutes for a small number of people. Possible unstated purposes include timber and oil transportation, though I'm not positive about that.

I agree, it's completely absurd. And the damnedest thing is that Young is proud of it and won't back down.