Wednesday, September 03, 2003

The John Edwards campaign weblog is about to launch. This link has been working intermittently for me. What I saw in a brief visit looks very promising. But of course content will be the key. 9:39:06 PM    comment []

John Branch: "9/11 has changed how we make our threat assessment." No wonder he made Law Review. I would quibble with this statement: "The threat Iraq posed to us was no different on September 10th, 2001 than it was on September 12, 2001. The perception of what constituted a threat is what changed." It's true in an empirical way, but there was also a qualitative shift on 9/11, a change in the sense of what was possible, of who might ally themselves with whom once battle lines were drawn. In that way, Iraq was more threatening, although not so threatening as, say, Condi "Mushroom Cloud" Rice would say. Mmm, Mushroom Cloud Rice. Served with spring roll and green tea. 2:14:51 PM    comment []

Dave Winer has published his Tips for Candidates re Weblogs, originally posted on the BloggerCon site, as a DaveNet article. 12:47:50 PM    comment []

It makes sense for the Baseball Boys to keep saying they’ll build their stadium no matter what – but why do they have to belittle everyone who questions the project? They are already struggling with a reputation for arrogance, no need to go out their way to live up to it. Here’s a clue for Action Greensboro. Recognize the opponents for who they are. Not everyone is Bill Burckley, who just hates your guts. Go to the Aycock people. Find the things in their plan you support. Support them. Agree to disagree on baseball. Go to the Fisher Park people. Let them know how Eugene Street will be protected from traffic on game nights, and what the situation with parking and light and noise will be. Don’t put down people who want to preserve the old Burlington building, or who believe that mixed-use development will do more for the Bellemeade area than baseball. You may not convince them, but you can treat them with respect. You will never convince the hard-cores, and your conversion rate in the other groups may be limited. But if you keep pissing on everyone who opposes this stadium for any reason, the damage to Greensboro will be felt long after the stadium is built. 12:40:27 PM    comment []

Richard Spires is leaving the Spires and Krantz radio show in Charlotte. Seems he was getting testy with the Dittoheads who dominate WBT’s afternoon drive time audience. This would not seem to bode well for the liberal talk radio plan – Spires isn’t a liberal, but as a libertarian he did question the conservative orthodoxy. Where does this leave Brad Krantz? He’s tough and funny enough to pilot the show on his own -- if he can avoid losing the audience. 12:19:18 PM    comment []

"In a place where plenty of people ask, 'What would Jesus do?' a surprising number of religious conservatives have concluded that redistributing wealth is high on His list.” The Least of These: Fair Taxes and the Moral Duty of Christians is a book by Susan Pace Hamill, a professor of tax law who studied recently at a conservative seminary. Now her ideas could become policy. Francis Wilkinson looks at an upcoming referendum with deeper implications than the California recall. I'm told (not by the writer, who I don't know) that Harper's and the NY Times mag passed on this story -- it was suggested to me by my source that it didn't suit their image of southern religious conservatives. I don't know if I buy that reasoning, but that's the rumor.  11:59:51 AM    comment []