This confirms my take on the role of weblogs in this year's Presidential race.
Just got in from a rare night out and had this email from a dear friend, John David Mardis in Kentucky upon my return. His son David is in Iowa as one of Howard Dean's "Perfect Storm". David forwarded this breathless account of the last couple of hours of his life to his dad:
"Dad, you'll never believe what just happened at a Dean rally here in Des Moines. Jeannine Graffalo and Joan Jett were entertaining on stage when a bunch of Bush supporters pushed into the area in front of the stage trying to upstage our rally by yelling pro-Bush stuff. All of a sudden there started to be a lot of pushing and shoving and it began to get real ugly real fast. I decided to get up onto the stage and tell Joan and her band that we needed to try to stop it and suggested we start singing the Star Spangled Banner . . .They handed me the microphone and I just started singing it and the crowd began pretty quickly to join in and then soon after the fighting stopped. Jett's lead guy and I were standing there with our arms around each other just singing at the top of our lungs. Just wanted to call and let you know in case you saw it on TV.
Sorry can't talk more now . .gotta go . .Bye . . love you . ."
My friend then added this:
". . .the boy turns 21 a month and a half before the Nov Election, so this will be his first vote for a President. Although I was not old enough to vote in the 1960 election, I remember being about as excited as David (is) about JFK . . some of my band buds and I were at somebody's house nearly every night watching it all on TV . . and was beside myself when several of us drove down to Bowling Green to see the man himself and hear him speak.
Don't reckon I've been as positive about politics since those days when the world was MY oyster . . .
. . .these days I'm just happy to find a fresh one and eat it before it starts stinking."
It doesn't appear that the Guilford County Tax Department knows what it is doing.
I just received tax bills for my properties that are supposed to reflect the first revaluation of real estate in seven years. Even though I read that, on average, property values rose 31% during the period and the new worth is based on actual sales and not conjecture, they might want to go back and look at a thing or two.
In 1999 I bought two houses on one lot in the Aycock Historic District that had an assessed tax value of only $58,000 for $110,000. I went to the Board of Adjustment and had the parcel subdivided so I could fix the houses up and resell the perpetual rental properties to owner-occupants. Over the next three years I invested a lot of work and money in the homes and was successful in selling them both without much quibbling with the buyers over their value in the market place
One house sold for $123,000 in 2002 and the other for $107,000 in 2003. Even though I am no longer the owner of either property, the tax department sent the Notice of Assessed Value for the parcels to me (which is another point of concern).
The total 2004 assessed valuation of the pair - $84,200.
I know it seems that I continually mirror fellow Greensborian Ed Cone on stuff, but he stays on top of all things blog so I don't have to... anyway... his site led me to BloggerStorm.
I truly believe that there is real history in the making going on in Iowa right now and the phenomenon is best summed up with this quote-of-the-day (thanks Dave Winer for that and this).
Even though the site is hosted by the Dean campaign, in the true spirit of individual freedom of expression that blogging is all about, the Bloggerstorm "aggregator" captures everything that RSS feeding bloggers "on the ground" in Iowa serve up - in real time - without "big media" filtration.
You can find out the economic impact of all of the media/volunteer activity from an Iowan, to the local buzz about who is leading who, and eveything in between.
With all of the information that is and will be available through weblogs during this Presidential campaign, even live-with-breaking-news TV and radio reporting will elicit an "oh yeah, I knew that... how come they left out the part about..." yawn from those of us who have RSS subscriptions.
I recently ended my fishing expedition with the Nigerian and Bukina Faso contacts. I was having fun but decided to move on. I finally just blew them off - however, after a little negotiation I did get the "banker" from West Africa to agree to give me 45% of the "TWENTY NINE MILLION NINE HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLARS" instead of a measly 40% before I did so.
Come to find out, people actually have lost a lot of money with the scam which is code named "419" by domestic and foreign law enforcement agencies - the numerals come from the relavent section of the Criminal Code of Nigeria according to one of the sites dedicated to the scam. Through 1996, the "419 Fraud" has added over $5 Billion to the Nigerian economy alone and is the fourth largest industry in that nation.
Over the past three days my blog has been "Googled" by net surfers typing in some of the phrases found within the solicitations I have posted. One gullible, but thankfully inquisitive, fellow out of The Netherlands actually emailed me:
David,
i received an email from Barriste Tijani Ahmed. When i searched on the internet with his name i came out on the website where your email converstaion with Barrister is showed.
I don't know what to think of it.
with regards, Pieter Rietbergen, The Netherlands
I emailed him back with the "419" link above. Geez, I guess people really do think that they could actually get 40% (45% if you are talented) of millions of dollars just for responding to an email. I am torn between feeling sorry for the scheme's victims and being amused at their gullibility.
