Howard Dean is first, and jjem has laid out a tall order trying to keep this discussion all positive.

by letting this space fall into disrepair HQ's kicked away one of the greatest fund raising tools in the history of politics

Thanks Jessica for posting this. It is a great question and we want to hear thoughts and ideas from you.

BUT... 

Rather then expanding upon what you don't like at BFA, we would be very interested in getting feedback from you on what you would like to see at BFA. What would interest you? What is missing? Or what should be done differently.

We are not looking for just a rant on the stuff that sucks. I want to know what you would like to see done to fix what sucks. Or what new could be brought to BFA in the form of content or writers or whatever that would make BFA better. 

Change is coming for the DFA websites. Let's try and figure out what changes here at BFA are most needed... together. 

Thank you in advance for anyone who takes the time to offer their constructive thoughts.

Charles

simply getting a working blog would do wonders all by itself

posts that appear in order so a conversation can take place isn't too much to ask

and maybe a daily time slot to focus on a DFA local Chapter report?

Howard Dean said today...

"I am going to stand up for the rules, and I know I'm doing the right thing most of the time because I've got both Clinton people and Obama people mad at me," he said."

Here is a summary of his morning appearances today with videos.  

Howard Dean speaks out on CBS, ABC, and to the AP. Video links.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1948

Dropping by to post this link from Arthur Frommer's blog - he is touting new bus lines that go from city to city -- as an alternative to the nightmare of plane travel and the not cheap trains.

Mar 27, 2008
I just have to return to the news about the additional $1-a-ride (but usually $15) cut-rate bus lines
Just as Southwest Airlines, Skybus, Spirit Airlines, and other upstarts have revolutionized the pricing of air transportation in America (as Ryanair and easyJet did in Britain and Europe), we are now witnessing a similar upheaval in ground transportation within the U.S. Although I dealt with this subject yesterday, it's important enough to warrant further discussion today.

http://www.frommers.com/blog/2008/03/i-j...

A little bit of history about the bfa community would be nice. Sort of like Jessica's post.

Interviews with some of our members or groups done by the folkies at HQ and visa versa.

Special guest bloggers.

How about inviting back Zephyr Teachout or inviting in some of the DFA Training Academy's Trainers for a community conversation.

The DFA-List Candidates could post something about themselves or their campaigns. Or they might even be willing to drop in to give us some campaign up dates.

I'm sure Gov. Dean drops by HQ every now and then to say hello. Do you think he would willing to drop by the bfa?

Note: If at all possible, please don't invited them until some of the furniture gets repaired. You know, we're kind of a fixer upper type of crowd so please don't throw out the kitchen table just because it's lookin' a little weathered.

The blog has changed a little since then

For the worse...................................

Hillary DID win Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas.

Game not over....and now we go on to Pennsylvania, Indiana and Rhode Island....for a reason, because the race is so close.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hillary did NOT win Texas.  And going ON to Rhode Island isn't going to happen.  Perhaps both are examples of what's happening in Hill's camp: inability to see truth if one doesn't like it; and exhuastion to the level of lack of clarity. . . .  

exhaustion

How about at bat. Folks love a baseball.

Pennsylvania senator endorses Obama

Let's put the heat on Pres candidates!

http://www.counterpunch.org/

Now that either could win the big race, Obama and Clinton fudge and hedge about withdrawing troops immediately from Iraq. Barack "will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda." (BarackObama.com)

After Iraqi elections on December 15, Ms. Clinton said, "We have to tell this new government we are not going to be there forever, we are going to be withdrawing our young men and women and we expect you to start moving towards stability." But, she added, "immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a big mistake." (Votehillary.org)

Such statements make me and many millions around the world feel a sense of growing dread. Why can't an empire withdraw? Ike did from Korea in 1953 and I guess that's it.

Did Bush and Cheney have no idea what they were getting into? Do supposedly intelligent Senators like Clinton. Obama and McCain not grasp these fundamentals of contemporary Middle Eastern labyrinthine politics?

Cockburn reported that he drove to the site "whenever there was an American soldier was killed or wounded in Baghdad," and found "cheering crowds standing by the smoking remains of a Humvee or a dark blood stain on the road."

In US politics these themes fade into vague declarations of "ending the war" at some future point (Clinton and Obama) or staying the course forever (McCain). As each candidate strains to convince the public that he or she has the unique combination of qualities to lead the nation--none dare say empire -- they avoid the knottiest issue that will confront the next chief executive: extrication for the sickening quicksand into which Bush has placed the country.

12:30pm

12:27 PM EDT

5 years of BFA existence ?

It's been actually fun and the time has flown

(oh BTW, little Rhodie has already had their primary on March 4 -- Hillary got a whopping 13 pledged delegates and Barack a whopping 8 pledged delegates)

OT but an opportunity for opera lovers - a live stream from the Met tonight - Voigt and Heppner will sing Tristan & Isolde -- believe their only appearance together -- of course this is still the 'wrong' King Marke -- plan to spend some time -- I think it's about 5 hours long -- lol -- but some of the music is the very most romantic in the world - I read somewhere that Maestro Wagner was involved in a torrid affair when he wrote the opera.

Live on the Web! Voigt and Heppner Together in Tristan

March 27, 2008

Deborah Voigt and Ben Heppner, originally scheduled to star in all six performances of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde this season, are scheduled to sing together on Friday night. Illness has prevented them from taking the stage together until this final Tristan of the season, conducted by James Levine. To celebrate their very first full performance together—anywhere—of this epic opera, the Met will stream the performance live on its website.

Visit MetOpera.org at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 28, to hear Voigt and Heppner live from the Met in Tristan und Isolde.

http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/n...

Charles wrote "Change is coming for the DFA websites."

This has a familiar ring to it. 

Phil from last thread~ bet ya $10 the ditto head blond brings up Rev. Wright

You win!!

Susan Rowe wrote: Special guest bloggers.

**********************

What happened to that? Was that something organized by HQ or by one of us? As part of the Bloggers' Book Club? My memory seems to be fuzzy about it, but I remember it was fun how the guests would blog in the comments with us. HQ, you should bring that back.

Phil,

The chartering approval process for our progressive caucus within the CDP was diffcult because meant change. You may want to remind the Iowa party's leadership that there is a progressive caucus in congress. And if they have one, then why is it that you're not being allowed to have one too?

"Get lindab her training: she is the epitome of what BFA/DFA should be.

Get rid of the damned column with more wasted space on the sides than text in the middle (makes scrolling beyond tedious. . . . )(look at haloscan)

Put the time stamp/poster's name IN WITH THE TEXT, so you don't have to go back TWICE to respond intelligently.  Top or bottom doesn't matter so much as not having them in separate "compartments". . . . (look at haloscan)

Make names clicable to DFALink (AGAIN). . . .

Resurrect the destroyed archives (pictures, time stamps), and restore the easy access to them (NOT ten per page/per month. . . . ACK"

I second Puddle's emotion.

Loving Gore and supporting Hillary, after what the Clintons did to him . . . .

big, fat freakin' snowflakes falling all around.... how I wish I'd wake up one morning soon and spring would be here... 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Be here sooner than you want, Jo -- called Global Warming. . . .  

meant change s/b it meant change

Get lindab her training: she is the epitome of what BFA/DFA should be.

---

Here, Here!

Yes get lindab her durn training.

Here is the deal.........................

I am about to have a caucus in my 3rd Congressional District to elect delegates to our local convention and state convention.

What training have I had?? NONE

So I get to go find out by myself how to do a caucus. How special is that?

And please DO NOT patronize me and  pat me on the head and say YOU WILL DO FINE.

I will, I am a big girl. But I have asked for training. So what do you do? You have it in Northern Virginia year after year. NOVA , where they are experts at organizing. Me, not so much.

I am dancing as fast as I can.

The blog has changed a little since then

For the worse...................................

On the original blog I had to sign in with my name and email for EVERY POST (that required true devotion). It had no picture or linking functions.

Aside from the random posting, this blog is a cadillac compared to that one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dean...

...Dean's director of grassroots fundraising, Larry Biddle, came up with the idea of the popular fundraising "bat", an image of a cartoon baseball player and bat which appeared on the site every time the campaign launched a fundraising challenge. The bat encouraged Web site visitors to contribute money immediately through their credit cards. This would lead to the bat filling up like a thermometer with the red color indicating the total funds. The site often took suggestions from the netroots on their blog. One of these suggestions led to one of the campaigns biggest accomplishments — an image of Dean eating a turkey sandwich encouraged supporters to donate $250,000 in three days to match a big-donor dinner by Vice President Dick Cheney. The online contributions from that day matched what Cheney made from his fundraiser. ...

(PHOTO of Dean's baseball bat http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en...

How about we invite some ÅÅR hosts to post?  And invite both  pro-BO and pro-HC to converse.  Or the campaign mgrs?

A bat!

Mike Malloy would be a great choice!

DFA candidates.

And, of course, the blog fixes which have been stated above (or maybe below) :-) 

Hillary DID win Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas.

Hillary did NOT win Texas.

Spin aside, Hillary won the popular vote and Obama won the delegates.

Hillary got to brag; Obama got closer to the nomination. 

Let's do lunch!

I would like to see a strong Rapid Response effort. Often bloggers report here about all sorts of lies not questioned by TV hosts, personal smears, and other media misdeeds for ratings in the media, but how many write or call the offender? An alert action with phone or e-mail addresses would be great.

Also, it would be nice if DFAers reporting on local events would mention their State. and not just their county.

The witch is up to more dirty tricks!

Why Clinton floated the delegate switch idea

I like the idea of some sort of rapid response as Audrey said -- a lot of us here are active with our keyboards and good writers. If someone provided links to contacts on specific subjects, I'm sure we'd be happy to write about timely subjects dear to our hearts. And of course fix the sequencing problem and give us back our time stamp.

We've already invited the presidential candidates on several occasions. Unfortunately, one never did responded to any of our invitations.

Watch the videos: http://www.dfalink.com/videos.php

Jo wrote: "sea - then perhaps you can forgive Michelle Obama for whatever it is you have against her by letting go of your judgements of her."

Didn't Jesus say something about *judging* the actions and not the person?  First of all, there's nothing to forgive.  She's a lovely person and IMO makes foolish and sometimes militant remarks that may come back to bite her.  This does not make her a bad person. There's a fine line at times between *judging* a person's worth and critiquing their deeds and words.  I often have trouble walking that line;  to *forgive* her is to say that she did something *wrong.*  She didn't...  your criticism of Linda isn't *wrong* either.  It's just not very nice or sensitive (you're not *wrong* either) and she's perhaps suffering, having seen her favorites either knocked out of the race or not entering.

**************************** 

The comments were about those suggestions that were presented for our party's leadership to consider.

Understanding is also a virtue. 

Susan, with the comments being out of order, it's difficult to understand who's saying what to whom.  Nor am I sure who's not understanding....never mind.  Moving on..........

Perhaps we can all agree that it looks like BO might win the nomination...so can we please stop trashing HC and those who support her?  HC has many admirable qualities and even the pundits say that this is not an ugly race compared to those of the past.  A vote for BO is not necessarily a vote for him, but a vote against HC, who's been maligned in the press.  And please let's be honest.  The CM chooses for the voters and has for years.

This year they seem to be going for the male AA rousing orator who'll keep us in the ME for years,as opposed to the white woman who has Bill for baggage and who'll keep us in the ME for years.

It's one thing to hope, nebulous as that is.  It's quite another to EXPECT change.  We don't have a clue what a BO prez would do, but there are arrows pointing in directions.

Enuf of me blathering for now.  :-)

How about something on political art or political artists? That would be an interesting topic. We could have an art show and then auction off some of the pieces.

8.

Huron John
Fri, 03/28/08

Now that either could win the big race, Obama and Clinton fudge and hedge about withdrawing troops immediately from Iraq.

Barack "will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda." (BarackObama.com)

After Iraqi elections on December 15, Ms. Clinton said, "We have to tell this new government we are not going to be there forever, we are going to be withdrawing our young men and women and we expect you to start moving towards stability." But, she added, "immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a big mistake." (Votehillary.org)

Such statements make me and many millions around the world feel a sense of growing dread. Why can't an empire withdraw? Ike did from Korea in 1953 and I guess that's it.

Did Bush and Cheney have no idea what they were getting into?

Do supposedly intelligent Senators like Clinton. Obama and McCain not grasp these fundamentals of contemporary Middle Eastern labyrinthine politics?
---------------------

The fact that American economy is suffocating has been realized by “professionals� long before Bush-II come to power.

There were two ways out of it:
Option-A supported by majority of both Parties, (including silent support by Demos), which is PNAC
And option-B – something different which nobody really wanted to talk too much about (except may be Dean...lol).

Apparent truth has already been unraveled: the Iraq invasion was approved and accomplished on bipartisan basis. Very few legislators decided not to go along and the best they could do is to vote “no� to war authorization.
It was mutual, bipartisan agreement to let one (Reps) Party to lead in PNAC implementation exercise using Iraqi People as guinea pigs under the condition that another (Demos) Party will insure “stability� in case of Reps failure.
That’s very old and always winning method of American politics: “good-bad cops�.

Here is what we are about to witness: the next phase, the phase of “stability� implementation by means presented by Demos Party.
The rest we’ll see....

Political Art work by Emily Duff: http://politicalartwork.blogspot.com/

First, we need a blog that works and is not filled with posters flaming away.  I would think we have a bad rep at this point.

Yes, linda b needs training!

Audrey's idea of rapid response...perhaps little clickies at the side with names, addys, subject matter.

I've been trying to write "Verdict" all week, to no avail, even tho I have the correct addy. Perhaps a clicky list to Dobbs, Keithie, Matthews, Abrams etc.  And opinion clickies on topics of the day. 

It's time to push back against the elitist Corporatists in our own party who are issuing threats and send some money to Dr. Dean at the DNC.

"One puzzling aspect of the chairman's tenure is why the Net-roots boosters who injected rocket fuel into Dean's presidential campaign have been cool to the idea of pouring money into the national party's coffers. "I'm absolutely flummoxed by that," Fowler says. "A lot of them have abandoned him."

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1946

Edwards and Dodd both responded to DFA, John Edwards in person might have been the only one that I can recall, but I posted a video from Dodd directed to us.

Emily Duff s/b Emily Duffy

a note from Howard today, in part:

We've worn them down, but we can't be complacent -- we've seen what they will do to win. We can't let up -- every day that goes by where we don't answer John McCain's attacks means another opportunity missed, and it erases the work we've done so far.

Make a donation today and support our efforts to help elect Hillary or Barack. We're fighting John McCain so he doesn't get ahead.

http://www.democrats.org/NoFreeRides

We can't allow John McCain to crisscross the country, fooling the American people with his "more of the same" agenda.

Your donation today helps us take him head-on everywhere.

Thank you,

Howard Dean

Obama is doing great on the view

Just what he needs to do

Show the American people how much more pleasant our living rooms will be with The Obamas in it, instead of the Clintons or the McCains

30.

seashell :-)
Fri, 03/28/08

Forgiveness is about the for giving of yourself.

BFA has a lot going for it as witnessed by its staying power, I wouldn't change much other than to fix the problems so a guest blogger could comunicate. Training could be done more easily too. the video functions work well

thanks for the opportunity for input, BFA!  this, to me, is a fantastic network, with a world of potential and it should be utilized like one. 

I would like to see more guest bloggers - progressive thinkers and writers and folks at the local level sharing what works in their neighborhoods.  I would like to see BFA help us organize a rapid response network, as Audrey suggested - they organized a great one 'back in the day' (remember Liz?!!) and it would just be a matter of resurrecting their tools and outline - who knows, perhaps she's still doing the RRN.  we also used to have links to good resources like that, so I would ask you to consider adding that, as well.

when you're collaborating with another organization, tell us, get us involved!  link to them so we can learn about them them and really understand how progressive orgs can work together.  Danny has done a lot to rebuild my confidence in BFA, but the more you engage the blog, the more excitement and entusiasm and positive energy you create.

and please, bring back the 'bat' for fundraising - if we can GROW this network you might be amazed by the results...

Well, you know, it's a little strange that we've got a whole coterie of people who consider themselves elites, but they haven't any of them the common courtesies we used to expect from people who'd been well brought up.

The Clintons seem to think that rudeness is a perquisite of prominence and wealth.  That's a notion they need to be disabused of.  

There are probably too many examples of Hillary's rudeness to mention, but a few spring immediately to mind:

"I took her stuff and left"

"Shame on you, Barack Obama"

"I'll take his word for it"

cackling instead of answering a question 

First, we need a blog that works and is not filled with posters flaming away. 

Pot. Kettle. Black.

FRED from Ashland OR
Fri, 03/28/08
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The right and many in the country will not accept Michelle Obamas critique of the nation, although in essence she was speaking the truth..............blind love and nationalism for ones country should never supercede dissent especially when our history is less than angelic........

Will enought of the elecctorate accpet this and the Reverend Wrights criticisms?

Im afraid not........theyll play it safe and go with the flag waving, flag lapel pins and militaristic escapades of Mccain...............they dont learn very well here...........give it another 20 years maybe.

Obama is doing great on the view

Yes he did!!

The attitude of what's-his-name on the CBS interview of Howard Dean is beyond arrogant. Howard always keeps his cool, that's why he always wins.

Susan, it always starts with the self.

BTW, I did manage to copy all the attendees at the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative Forum.  Almost all the 20 powerful people who tried to intimidate Pelosi by threatening to withdraw their support are on it.

I have always disliked charity and dislike eleemosynary institutions even more.  Why exactly are non-governmental organizations supposed to be better than governmental organizations?

We need a word for democracy that incorporates the principle of popular participation.  How about

POPOCRACY?

POPULACRITY ?

Karen, it is me you are *judging* or just my posts?  Perhaps we could find some common ground...like beating McC.  Would that work for you?

Joan in Fl....

What CBS interview, who, and anything in particuar that was objectionable? We do have lurkers who might like to respond to these sorts of things. Some have trouble finding addresses or knowing who to respond to.

Howard's cause needs money.  Let's put up a bat TODAY.  My credit card is panting and drooling.

2:19 PM EDT

some people (including Hillary herself) said she "misspoke", other people said she "lied" -- whatever the case, Hillary has been Bosniazed :

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/03/2