It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 
A confidential source from Howard Dean's campaign gives us the following tidbits:

1. The Dean campaign's latest grassroots effort to get ordinary Americans to write letters to residents of Iowa is expected to give Dean a big boost in that state. How do they know this? A similar letter-writing effort at their August Meetups, targeting New Hampshire residents, resulted in a quick and sustained surge of positive sentiment for Howard Dean in the state.

2. John Kerry supporters, frustrated that their own candidate is not asking them to get involved in this way, are going over to the Dean website, getting names and addresses of Iowa residents there, and then writing letters in support of Kerry.

3. The Dean campaign is leaning heavily toward opting out of matching campaign funds. If Dean takes matching funds for contributions from the U.S. Government, he gets a quick infusion of cash to spend during the Democratic primaries, but must limit his overall spending to a certain amount until the fall of 2004. Opting in of matching funds is a smart move for a campaign that is worried about competition for the Democratic nomination. Opting out of matching funds is a smart move for a campaign that feels it can raise a lot of money on its own, and is more focused on beating Bush than surviving the primary season. The Dean campaign's current inclination to opt out of matching funds indicates that their collective eyes are on the fight against George W. Bush.

Posted by Theodiclus Lock at 10:38 PM. # (permalink)  




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