GEN WE

The Times They Are A-Changing.

Generation We, the political movement:

Millennials are the largest generation in American history. Born between 1978 and 2000, they are 95 million strong, compared to 78 million Baby Boomers. They are independent—politically, socially, and philosophically—and they are spearheading a period of sweeping change in America and around the world.

Why The Whole World Blogs

Hint, it has everything to do with America's 2008 presidential election.

Why Andrew Sullivan Blogs

A very interesting read.

Federal Inmate No. 18330-424

Take a former old media baron who is currently doing time for fraud.

Add a fresh new media news aggregator managed by a former old media editorista.

Toss back in an organ of the old media.

And what do you have?

Well, not a whole lot of "news".

But yet another good example that the world as we know it is shifting rapidly under our very feet.

Where Will Social Conservative & Independent Voters Start Finding More And More Common Ground?

On the issue of the environment.

Even though the indies are coming at the issue from here and the social conservatives are coming at the issue from here.

And any "real" player in this fight knows it.

When Plants Blog??!!???

Pink Tentacle has the call:

If houseplants could blog, what would they say? To find out, Kamakura-based IT company KAYAC Co., Ltd. has developed a sophisticated botanical interface system that lets plants post their thoughts online. A succulent Sweetheart Hoya (Hoya kerii) named “Midori-san” is now using the system to blog daily from its home at bowls Donburi Cafe in Kamakura.

The plant interface system, which is built around technology developed by Satoshi Kuribayashi at the Keio University Hiroya Tanaka Laboratory, uses surface potential sensors to read the weak bioelectric current flowing across the surface of the leaves. This natural current fluctuates in response to changes in the immediate environment, such as temperature, humidity, vibration, electromagnetic waves and nearby human activity. A specially developed algorithm translates this data into Japanese sentences, which are used as fodder for the plant’s daily blog posts.

Simply bizarre.

(Hat Tip: Sullivan)

Crowdsourcing & Why It Matters

Author Jeff Howe has a great blog on Crowdsourcing here.

And make sure that you check out the 3 minute YouTube here.

Saturday Morning Dreaming

LivingHomes.

Build green. And look great doing it.

Good stuff.

The American Hero Is Still Fresh

Brilliant.

Where has this man been for the last six months?

5 Lessons Britain's Cameronian Recovery Might Teach A New Generation Of GOP Strategists

As laid out in this very smart piece by Alex Massie.

David Brooks Understands What The GOP's 2010 Talking Points Will Be Before Most Republicans

And he lays it all out here.

With Over One Billion Dollars Spent On The 2008 Presidential Election...

does anyone else find it ironic that some of the freshest, most sincere and creative campaign messaging is coming from three young ladies who are not (officially) part of any campaign?



Meanwhile, the overpaid and underwhelming campaign industrial complex can do nothing except eat its heart out.

Full disclosure alert: b-fresh counts the Blogettes as good friends. There is no financial relationship.

"The Increasingly Impressive Senator Tom Coburn"

Peggy Noonan writing in today's Wall Street Journal:

Both campaigns, in the closing stretch, seem not fully worthy of the moment. We are in crisis—a once-in-a-century event, as we now say. And what we got from the candidates, in this week's presidential debate, was a bunch of gummy meanderings—smooth, rounded sentences so full of focus-grouped inanities that six minutes in viewers entered a kind of trance in which we almost immediately gave up on trying to wrest meaning from what was being said and instead focused on mere impressions. The look of things. The men on the plane, the pseudo-tough political operatives who surround both candidates, sometimes grouse, in private, that it's all symbols now, all mood, all about the visual.

But they have some real responsibility here. They send their candidates out to speak such thin gruel, such spat-out porridge, that we are struck dumb, and left daydreaming about the fact that Mr. Obama's suits are always slate gray and never seem to wrinkle, and Mr. McCain tonight seems like a rabbity forest creature darting amid the hedgerows.

As to what they will do about the crisis, Mr. Obama will raise taxes on the rich and help us weatherize our homes, while Mr. McCain favors "energy independence" and buying up mortgages. On the causes of the crisis they spoke of insufficient regulation, or high spending.

But these were not the great causes. Neither party has clean hands. Or rather, both parties have dirty hands. Here is the truth, spoken by the increasingly impressive Sen. Tom Coburn: "The root of the problem is political greed in Congress. Members . . . from both parties wanted short-term political credit for promoting homeownership even though they were putting our entire economy at risk by encouraging people to buy homes they couldn't afford. Then, instead of conducting thorough oversight and correcting obvious problems with unstable entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, members of Congress chose to . . . distract themselves with unprecedented amounts of pork-barrel spending." That is the truth.

The New Political Ground Game Gold Standard

Team Obama owns it.

Here is a long and fascinating look from the inside.

h/t Marc Ambinder

"The World As You've Never Seen It"

So claims Worldmapper, a collection of nearly 600 world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.

Very cool.

The New Face Of (High Tech) Giving

Using Google Earth to find fresh water wells in Africa, a cancer charity that uses text messaging to raise $5 microdonations and a start-up orchestra that uses YouTube to draw patrons?

That's fresh.

The Newspaper Of The Future?

Philip Meyer, who holds the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and spent 23 years working for Knight-Ridder as a reporter and Washington correspondent, believes he knows what the newspaper of the future looks like.

Hurtling Towards A Political Messaging Tipping Point

A television commercial from Nebraska candidate Scott Kleeb.

DEMOCRATIC for U.S. Senate.

When Every Man Or Woman Is His Or Her Own Printing Press...

...things like this are going to occur.

And reoccur and reoccur and reoccur.

Key fact from the story: 5.4% decline

Pure Noise

A clip of a "debate" last night between a Congressional VIP and a Mainstream Media VIP:



Does anyone believe that Washington isn't broken?

Still Dancing To Drudge's Tune Even After All These Years

The Freakshow slouches on.

Start with a WorldNetDaily "news" story (posted 9/30/08 at 8:35pm) that uses the following three sentences to imply that a universally well respected and experienced newswoman is in the tank for Obama:

Gwen Ifill of the Public Broadcasting Service program "Washington Week" is promoting "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," in which she argues the "black political structure" of the civil rights movement is giving way to men and women who have benefited from the struggles over racial equality.

And

During a vice-presidential candidate debate she moderated in 2004 – when Democrat John Edwards attacked Republican Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton – the vice president said, "I can respond, Gwen, but it's going to take more than 30 seconds."

"Well, that's all you've got," she told Cheney.

Weak doesn't even begin to describe where that hat is hung.

No matter.

Add Drudge Rocket Fuel a few hours after the WND story posts.

And presto, feeding frenzy!

All over an initial "news" story and narrative that would have ended up on the cutting room floor of an even halfway decent high school newspaper.

Glen Greenwald call your office.