Decius wrote:
] On the other hand, I'll bet that if enough bloggers contacted
] them they would agree to release the content in RSS. They
] would be stupid to turn down an opportunity to get their
] message out.

I'm sure they would.. Its just the lack of insight/research/clue present was note worthy enough to rant about.

] Furthermore, does Howard Dean have RSS?

Dean has "Blog for America". http://www.blogforamerica.com/ .. RSS2 full-feed, RSS1 excerpts. Its MovableType. Complete with a blogroll linking to all the expected places like Instapundit, MetaFilter, etc.. Its even got the link to its stats page, so you can see how many hits its getting.. http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=s16BlogForAmerica

So, er.. He executed a pretty good Internet strategy. That isn't enough to win my vote. I don't know enough about Dean. Infact, pretty much every time I hear something about Dean, its how "bloggy" he is or its his effective use of grass roots meetup type stuff.. I thought it was really good/odd when he popped up guest-blogging on Lessig's blog.. But that had more to do with excitement over the possibility of issues related to copyright terms and the public domain popping up on more people's radar and maybe becoming a "political issue".

] What I'm most interested in is how this stuff can be used in a
] non-partisan way. Obviously they are thinking of republicans
] putting a big ass Bush ticker on the side of their page. Maybe
] we could build a page with all the major tickers. If it was
] RSS we could reaggregate election press releases
] chronologically so you could follow the discourse blow by
] blow...

I'm sure that there is an RSS feed available of Bush's press releases. If Bush doesn't have one on his site, then somewhere has a relay of his PR releases somewhere. Yahoo, BBC, NewsIsFree, Syndic8, etc.. Just about everywhere is supporting RSS these days, and someone will have a relay of his releases.

You can do what you described with pretty much any current news reader yourself, if you have feeds for everything you want to survey. That would work fine for just following feeds all aggregated up.

] I guess there ought to be an elections topic on MemeStreams.

Yep. It might be a good idea to break it into two topics.. Elections under current events, and Elections under Politics and Law. There seems to be a lot of discussion about voting system hacking, issues pertaining to elections and elections systems in general.. And there is sure to be alot of talk about the upcoming presidential election. Those are two separate topics. Might be useful to divide them as such..

] Having said all that, I reamed Howard Dean two days ago. I
] ought to ream Bush too. On his web page there is a "quiz
] question" that asks how many American working families are
] benefitting from Bush's Jobs and Growth Act. Users are asked
] to choose one of four options from 12 Million to 34 Million.
]
] Seriously, waving around all the good work you've done for the
] economy is abysmally stupid. You sound like the Iraqi
] Information Minister. "There is no recession. There are no
] unemployed people in the city..." Everyone knows someone who
] is having trouble finding a job. No one is fooled. Saying I
] already fixed the problem is another way of saying "I don't
] need to do anything else about it."
]
] I'm not voting for that, either.

I have not spent much time thinking about the election.. Every time I do, I find myself just pacing back and forth repeating "were doomed" over and over, and feeling generally sad.. I don't like that.

I already know I don't like Bush, and if history repeats, I will not like any of the other candidates either by the time the election comes.. No one else is going to like them either. Bush is going to wind up getting reelected, I know it. The popular vote couldn't defeat him the first time anyway! :P doomed i tell you, doooooomed!

RE: George Bush News Feeds, Privacy, and Allegory