PunxForDean Going Big
Morning News Roundup. The Los Angeles City Beat has a great article on your grassroots organizing in Southern California, with a special focus on PunxforDean, in today's must-read:
To understand the Howard Dean phenomenon, you have to break out of the usual paradigm of candidates running for office and look beyond to people like Kimmy Cash. Cash is a 28-year-old punk from Ontario, California, who first heard about Howard Dean at an anti-war rally back in February. After meeting him in late September – by crashing the VIP section of a Dean event at Union Station – she decided he was the coolest politician she had ever come across, and determined right there she was going to help him become the next president of the United States. Her mission: To politicize America’s two million or so punks, most of whom are young, disaffected, and would never normally dream of voting for anyone. The way she figured it, if America’s punks got their act together... they would be numerous enough to tip the entire balance of national politics.The night she got home from Union Station, she set up an unofficial website called punxfordean.org. Soon, she was spending her weekend nights roving the punk venues of the Inland Empire... to distribute flyers and spread the word. And the message caught on. Spectacularly.
Three months on, she has a staggering 13,000 volunteers in all 50 states, Howard Dean tattoos on both her forearms, and is busy planning a nationwide series of concerts to get both bands and punk fans committed to the cause....
Mike Meurer, a veteran volunteer on many political campaigns who runs his own telecommunications and marketing company, remembers his amazement when a volunteer coordinator from campaign headquarters in Vermont came out for a couple of months, and told members of the L.A. For Dean chapter to stop asking him for campaign strategy. “You don’t understand,” the coordinator, Aaron Holmes, told them: “You are the campaign.” “It was the most stunning statement I’ve ever heard uttered by any campaign,” says Meurer. “But that is the mentality.”
The AP files a brief summary of a "wide-ranging" interview the Governor gave yesterday:
Howard Dean on Friday assailed the Bush administration for failing to set up a livestock tracking system he said could have averted the current mad cow scare and said he supports federal aid to help the American beef industry weather the storm....Dean also said he wants Osama bin Laden to get the death penalty....
"As a president, I would have to defend the process of the rule of law. But as an American, I want to make sure he gets the death penalty he deserves," Dean told the AP in a phone interview.
Theodore C. Sorensen makes an appearance in the letters section of the Washington Post. Though he's supporting another candidate, Mr. Sorensen writes:
I cannot support any candidate for the Democratic nomination who proves to be behind the latest smear against Howard Dean....National security judgment will be an issue in the presidential campaign... But moral judgment is always an issue in the presidency, and that quality is clearly lacking in any Democratic candidate who secretly supports attacks that can only divide the Democratic Party and strengthen George W. Bush.
Let the commercial show the sponsor's face, instead of that of Osama bin Laden, an indirect beneficiary of this despicable assault.
The New York Times runs a story on Governor Dean's gubernatorial papers and finds that many in Vermont view the issue, raised as a red herring by rival campaigns, as much ado about nothing, while in the Los Angeles Times Mark Barabak notes that your commitment to Dean is what makes the attacks and fishing expeditions backfire:
For weeks, frustrated opponents have attacked the Democratic front-runner on everything from his skimpy defense and foreign policy credentials to the secrecy he slapped on his gubernatorial records. Nothing has stuck.Stumbles... have not only failed to slow his momentum but redoubled the commitment of Dean supporters.
"It's about all of us saying [expletive] to all the pundits," said Michael Cannon, 49, a New Jersey state worker who attended a rally in Trenton with a Dean sweat shirt, T-shirt and button on the back of his cap.
And Eleanor Clift for MSNBC picks your campaign as one of the political winners of 2003:
Dean... has revolutionized politics by bringing ordinary people back into the process through the Internet....Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, makes the winner's circle. He took the lessons he learned as a consultant for startups in the Internet world and applied them to politics. If the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan said, then Trippi deserves much of the credit for the success of the Dean movement....
The real truth (which both the Governor and Trippi will tell you) is that you built this campaign, through your hard work and contributions. And in 2004, when your continued commitment carries Howard Dean to the White House, the real winners will be the American people, and the prize will be the restoration of a government of the people, by the people and for the people. [Blog for America]
3:50:12 PM 
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Film. Thanks to my dearly loved Uncle Clemens I'm in the posession of a complete set of editions of the German Film magazine, volumes ranging from 1965 to 1969. I'm thinking about setting up a website with a few covers and some chosen articles - especially the Warhol and Godard interviews - is anybody interested? The drawback is, of course, that it's all in German. Any suggestions? And no, I'm certainly not going to translate it! Oh, is there still a copyright on a magazine that doesn't exist anymore? [
Raumpatrouille. 
