Fundraising

Barack Obama is changing the way politics are done in this country in more ways than one. He now has Karl Rove "deHusseining" him, screeching at any Republican that will hear him, "just call him Senator Obama".

Un.

Be.

Lievable.

And just now I heard a slap across the cash-strapped faces of the Clinton and McCain campaigns, brought to you by The People.

As of this writing (the graphic will be changing as more donations come in), Obama has 1,004,293. When I first saw it (about 2 hours ago) the number was at 1,003,994. In 2 hours he got almost 1,000 more unique donors.

That, my friend, is the power of the people.

UPDATE!
OMG: By the time I previewed and finished readying this post, the donations went from 1,004,294 to 1,004,434. This is INSANE!

Hillary Clinton's campaign is going bankrupt.

The presidential hopeful had to loan to the campaign $5 million of her own money in order to keep the campaign afloat. It's been reported also that all senior staffers have foregone their salaries. That supposedly includes Mark Penn's $4.2 million in consulting fees.

Well, when word got out, donors to the Obama campaign have gone bat-shit insane and have moneybombed the campaign's coffers with almost 7 million dollars. This just since February 5th, so that's little under 72 hours.

If each campaign contribution were considered representative of voting patterns, Barack Obama is beating Hillary Clinton and all the Republican nominee candidates COMBINED by a landslide.

Of course, the Clintonistas are in denial. So much so that bloggers like Taylor Marsh are now repeating the stupidity of Mark Penn and calling Hillary Clinton the underdog of the campaign.

Hillary Clinton. Underdog.

Weren't Billary "inevitable" just a month ago, especially after New Hampshire? The cognitive dissonance over that one would make a weaker person's head explode.

This is the worst kind of news for the Clintons campaign.

John Kerry is known to hold the largest mailing lists of Democratic Party donors in the United States (at last rumors, it's supposed to be 4 million strong). If it has a return rate of even 3-5%, that's right there 150-200,000 active donors.

This endorsement if a major coup for the Senator from Illinois and in some mailing lists it is being described as a smackdown and repudiation of John Edwards.

Harsh.

Following is the text of the email with the links to the fundraising page in bold. It reads like a PBS fundraising event, LOL!

Pretty Bird Woman House, a refuge for abused women on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, has been a focus of some considerable blog effort of late (see, for example, here). This women's shelter had once been saved by the liberal blogsphere, but was then vandalized and was facing losing its lease. The liberal blogsphere stepped up to bat again. The goal was to buy the house outright for the person who ran the shelter and to provide a solid security system. It was estimated that the blogsphere would have to raise $70,000 to accomplish this. The timing was critical because Pretty Bird Woman house had received a Federal grant...which could only be accepted if the shelter still existed.

As of 12/30/07 I learned that the liberal blogsphere raised upwards of $80,000 to establish Pretty Bird Woman House as a lasting shelter for abused women. This was quite an accomplishment and Culture Kitchen played its own small role in it. To those who gave, or even just spread the word, THANK YOU! This was a true mitzveh accomplished thanks to hundreds of people from all over the country.

Of course, I never feel like our job is done. I am hoping that now that we have saved Pretty Bird Woman House and made it a lasting place of refuge, we can do the same for the Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center on the Yankton Sioux Reservation.

I am doing a bit of personal fundraising to cover the expenses for repairing my computer. In all I have to raise $600, but I do not expect people to give me more than $20 a pop. To those who have given me more, thank you so much. To those who have not, thank you as well.

I feel that this kind of helping each other out is useful and ghastly necessary; especially those in the long tail of blogging who have been burned by the evil 'blog hive' pixies who controlled the Advertising Liberally network at BlogAds during the first half of the year.

A lot of us got burned out of advertising revenue by bad decisions that all squarely on the shoulders of the people who did not serve us well. Now that Sean-Paul (of The Agonist fame) is doing a fantastic job at serving us all equitably, we are all seeing ads served on our blogs once again.

It means I've spent 6 months scrapping by on culturekitchen and The Daily Gotham; bootstrapping on blood, sweat and tears. It's the reason why I have had to resort to asking for donations.

I just wrote back to one friend how this reminds me of Steve Gilliard's fundraisers, which would have happened right about this time of year. I'd joke we kept recycling the same $25 bucks, sending it to each other whenever we'd put out a call for help.

Little by little I am getting more media traction and, quite frankly, I am down with that. I am going to post about a TV appearance I made on NY-ABC about two weeks ago but right now I am going to point to you to Farai Chideya's show on NPR, "News and Notes". I was on the show's Blogger Roundtable with Baratunde Thursoton in NYC and Avery Tooley in Washington DC shooting the breeze on the black elite's split between Obama and Hillary, on how Obama is redefining blackness and, more somberly, on the LaVena Johson case.

These 20 minutes are, by far, the funnest I have had in a loooong time. I used to be a voice over artist and, quite frankly, if I had to choose between being in front of a camera or microphone and typing, I would go for the talking --because its easier on the body. And as I said that, I still have my issues when it comes to on-camera work, but that's topic for a whole 'nother post.

Click To Play

Mayor Michael Bloomberg used his first public appearance since announcing switching from the Republican Party to being an independent, a press conference celebrating the alleged success of his 311 program, to showcase his policy creativity to the media.

Bloomberg’s aware that his leaving the Republican Party would confirm to the media, his current constituents and potential presidential voters, that he’s pursuing an independent Presidential candidacy, despite saying wink, wink, I’m not running, and knew the world be watching his first appearance after making public his official political independence. This is why Bloomberg is using a press conference honoring 311, a program that he is particularly but unjustifiably proud of, as the location of his personal Presidential Debutante Ball.

Bloomberg hoped touting 311 success would perpetuate the myth that he’s a non-partisan problem solver. But the emperor has no clothes. 311 is useless.

For non-New York readers, 311, which New Yorker City residents can dial like 411 directory assistance or 911 emergency services, is an information system designed to help people navigate the government maze. Sometimes it’s useful, mostly it’s not, often directing people to call the same agency whose action or lack of such inspired the 311 call to begin with. But the primary reason why 311 is a joke is that Bloomberg doesn’t let 311 operators have internet access. I first mentioned this in the blogosphere in a comment on Andrew Rasiej’s Huffington Post blog in 2005. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-rasiej/the-power-of-many_b_5892.htm...

Okay, those who hate the kind of insider analyses Michael and I sometimes engage in can just skip this diary. But really it is more than about how Democrats are setting themselves up for more victories. It is also about how Howard Dean really has changed the face of politics by creating a much bigger role for small donors, internet bloggers and regular schlubs who want to fight for their favorite issue. Some may see it as business as usual, but I see it as a shift in how politics is functioning. Not a fundamental shift, but still a significant one.

Well, the demise of the Democratic Party has been predicted for some time...and when Howard Dean became head of the DNC more people than ever predicted it would spell doom and destruction for the party of the Donkey.

Since then, we did unexpectedly well in 2005 elections (NYC aside). Then in 2006 we kicked ass. Now it is too early to say what 2008 will bring, but my gut feelings about our candidates vs. their candidates may be playing out in the most important arena there is: fundraising.

From Politico:

According to preliminary fundraising numbers released by the campaigns this week, the combined Democratic field raised about $80 million, compared with roughly $50 million collected by their GOP adversaries.

Barack Obama you're on notice. Just as Stephen Colbert does, if you pull this again, I swear, you will be dead to me.

I just had a "fundraising representative" from Integral Resources, Inc. call me for a donation.

First off, the woman on the phone hardly spoke English. Now, for a woman who speaks 4 languages fluently, I don't mind someone with a bit of an accent. I am all for a multilingual United States.

Yet, if this company is basically profiling me with a Spanish-speaking phone operator just based on my last name, they need to be called wankers as well.

I hate that. I hate it so much that I actually have NOT bought from companies that used Spanish-speaking telemarketers just out of principle. Racial or ethnic profiling by telemarketers is not a stroke of demographic genius --it is a bigoted act.

Yet, what jumped the shark was not the fact I could barely understand what this woman was saying. No. What killed me was the scripted pitch :

He's the candidate who need the most help ... you know, due to his background ... He needs $130,000 a day to run his campaign ... The top level is $2300 but today I am asking you only to donate $200.

Oh joy. A discount.

And this days after David Geffen hosted a $1.3 million fundraising party for Obama and showed how gaga he is over the junior Senator of Illinois by dissing the junior Senator of New York.

[Note: This is an abridged version of an earlier post.]

A little known fact : even though New York has had its fair share of Democratic governors, its state government has been in the clutches of the Republicans for 150 years. The only two times the state government was all blue were in 1932 and 1964. Teddy Roosevelt said once that 'the state Senate is constitutionally Republican'; it's not, but it's been reliably Republican since that party was founded in the 1850s.

It's probably the main reason so many groups have come together to support Craig Johnson.

Another little known detail about the Albany political machine : Incumbency has become the product of anti-democratic redistricting shenanigans.

It is outrageous that NYC, the single
largest demographic in the state, does not have proportional representation in Albany. This is because for years Republicans have been able to pass legislation that favors their districts.

Only in New York would you have majority white and Republican districts inflate their demographics by counting their prison population. This is what The New York Times has to say about the practice [Ending the Prison Windfall — New York Times editorial | Prisoners of the Census]: