While Burlington’s traditional print media outlets (the daily Burlington Free Press and the alternative weekly Seven Days) are strong and well-written, there are also good online sources of news and information. A huge number of people subscribe to their neighborhood’s Front Porch Forum and voice their opinions through that venue, for instance, and our city government does a fairly good job making information available. There’s local politics weblogs: BurlingtonPol.com, the Vermont Daily Briefing, and She’s Right to name a few. And we have CCTV, our local government-access television channel that also streams live on the web during big events.

It’s no surprise to me that the combination of a strong IT sector and easy access to lots of quality information and debate leads to a vibrant and involved community. This was demonstrated well yesterday on Vermont Town Meeting Day 2009, the day when towns across Vermont hold their town meetings and elections. Last weekend, Bradley Holt of Found Line put together a website to aggregate social media feeds related to this annual Vermont political process. tmdvt.net pulled in content from Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Del.icio.us, and weblogs via Technorati, collecting loads of real-time news and thoughts in one central location. Word of the site spread quickly, and the local news sources joined in, both contributing to the feeds and pulling them onto their own Town Meeting Day news pages.

But beyond the “official” news sources, local community members also took part, tagging their tweets and photos and blog posts appropriately so that they’d show up, and it was their contributions that really made the project take off. By harnessing and encouraging the enthusiasm of the people of Burlington and the rest of Vermont, tmdvt.net instantly became the go-to site for live election coverage. To describe this effect, I’d like to coin the term townsourcing: a localized form of the popular social-web concept of crowdsourcing. I look forward to seeing how it can and will be used more and more to encourage participation in local politics, media, and culture.

Thanks, Bradley, for putting together such a neat experiment, and thanks also to everyone who took part. May next year’s tmdvt be even better!

Among all adults, Senator Clinton is the clear front runner. Fully 45 percent would consider voting for her compared to 37 percent for Obama, 29 percent for Giuliani, 28 percent for Edwards, 26 percent for McCain and 26 percent for Al Gore.

So the sure-fire way for Democrats to win this election? Don’t say or do anything, at all, until next November. Obviously people like you a lot right now, just the way you are. Saying and doing stuff will only serve to potentially give people a reason to change their minds. You might accidentally misspeak and make people angry, or say something ambiguous that the Republicans can spin against you.

I should be working for the DNC.

I am not going to let oppressive, totalitarian, anti-Christian forces in this country diminish and denigrate the holiday and the celebration. I am not going to let it happen. I’m gonna use all the power that I have on radio and television to bring horror into the world of people who are trying to do that.

My question is: if a terrorist is someone who uses terror to achieve political goals, does this mean Bill O’reilly is a horrorist? Shouldn’t our government be working overtime to eliminate self-proclaimed domestic horrorists? Why haven’t we raised the horror alert level?

Bill’s horrible promise is part of his ongoing War on Decency. He is actively trying to make Christianity look like an oppressive, intolerant, hate-filled philosophy by claiming that Christians (85% of the country, he claims) think anyone who says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” is effectively anti-Jesus.

Earlier, Bill said this only applies to America:

They don’t have to say “Merry Christmas” in China, OK? They can say whatever they say in China, “Happy Winter.” All right? “We like pandas.” Say whatever you want.

I think we should let Bill know that we all want him to have a wonderful holiday season this year, no matter what he celebrates. That’s why I’ve created this simple, printable “We Like Pandas!” card that you can print out, fold, add a personal greeting to, and send to him. Click here to download the PDF (275 kb). Once it’s printed, simply trim along the dotted line, then fold the paper in half twice (top-to-bottom, then left-to-right) to make it into a card that will fit nicely into a standard #10 letter envelope. Write a friendly message inside, and send your card to the following address:

Bill O’Reilly
c/o Fox News Channel
1211 Avenue of the Americas, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10036

Let’s all wish Bill O’Reilly a happy holiday season! Leave a comment here if you send a card — let’s see how many of these he gets!

Wait, these statements I’m making are unfair and untrue? How do you know? Probably because I, y’know, gave you a link to Ben’s piece so you could read it for yourself. And yet, in Ben’s piece, he addresses a number of issues that, apparently, he thought up himself, since he provides no attribution.

George Bush did not cause the hurricane.

Who said he did? I read the blogs of a good number of people whose views are largely anti-Bush, and yet I haven’t seen a single person claim that Bush caused the hurricane. So where did he get this from? (I’m not even going to respond to the rest of the straw men in his piece.)

It’s not George Bush’s fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile.

Funny, I thought the job of the President encompassed exactly that sort of thing: decrease the number of citizens living in poverty, provide better health care, and provide better education. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like he’s doing very well.

George Bush is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been and this is shown in his appointments over and over.

Leaving aside the fact that Ben Stein apparently thinks he can read Bush’s mind and, uh, see his soul… least racist President ever? That’s quite a claim to make. Perhaps he has appointed more racially diverse staff members than other Presidents, but that only shows that he knows how to make politically expedient appointments. I’m not saying he is racist, just that we can’t possibly know.

George Bush is rushing every bit of help he can to New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama as soon as he can. He is not a magician. It takes time to organize huge convoys of food and now they are starting to arrive.

You mean the same time it takes to play guitar at a Naval base and share a cake with John McCain? It took 5 days for the first federal response to begin for a disaster that has already cost thousands of lives and will probably cost thousands more. For comparison, the entire Senate reconvened in the middle of a vacation, introduced and passed a bill, and Bush signed it into law, in only three days when one woman in a persistent vegetative state was possibly going to be disconnected from life support.

There is not the slightest evidence at all that the war in Iraq has diminished the response of the government to the emergency.

Clever of him to limit this statement to the response only. No, the response hasn’t been diminished. However, even Ben doesn’t try and deny that the preparation for the disaster was dreadfully underfunded due to the cost of the Iraq War.

Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed [New Orleans' recovery] process by one day.

The two things — criticizing the President and helping the entire affected area recover — are not mutually exclusive activities. The criticism that I and many others are levelling at Bush is meant to help prevent a similar terrible situation in the future, by helping people realize that Bush’s policies are leaving everything but the military underfunded and in less than capable hands. It’s perfectly possible to support the recovery effort while criticising the President, just as it’s possible to support the troops in Iraq while still thinking the Iraq War is wrong.

Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.

Yeah, if we had a government-run national health care system, we might be in a terrible situation just like France.

Why is it that the snipers who shot at emergency rescuers trying to save people in hospitals and shelters are never mentioned except in passing, and Mr. Bush, who is turning over heaven and earth to rescue the victims of the storm, is endlessly vilified?

Because the snipers are lunatics in control of a single rifle, while Bush is a lunatic in control of the richest, strongest country and government on the planet. If those snipers shoot, it could end a few lives. If Bush doesn’t respond to a national crisis for five days, it could end thousands of lives. Criticising the snipers will just make people upset, but won’t have any effect on those snipers. Criticising the President may help things change for the better, since politicians tend to respond to criticism if it’s loud enough.

What special abilities does the media have for deciding how much blame goes to the federal government as opposed to the city government of New Orleans for the aftereffects of Katrina?

The same ability you have, Ben.

If able-bodied people refuse to obey a mandatory evacuation order for a city, have they not assumed the risk that ill effects will happen to them?

It takes more than an able body to move out of the pathway of a hurricane. If you lived in the middle of New Orleans and had no car, and the buses and other public transportation wasn’t running, could you make it out, on foot, in time, possibly with small children in tow?

Where did the idea come from that salvation comes from hatred and criticism and mockery instead of love and co-operation?

Again, criticising the President’s past and present decisions about disaster management doesn’t detract from our ability to care about and assist the victims of this tragedy, and both of these things will, in the end, make America a better, stronger, safer place to live.

Anyway, hooray for the Indiana Court of Appeals for protecting the religion part of the First Amendment. Now hopefully these people can get back to peaceably practicing their chosen religion without an idiot judge meddling in their affairs.

Update (11:09 p.m.):

US HOUSE Ohio 2nd Dist
753 precincts of 753 reporting
        JEAN SCHMIDT 	57,974 	52%
	PAUL HACKETT 	54,401 	48%

This is utterly stupid. “I’m sorry I wrecked the furniture in a fit of anger, and I’m sorry I used a hammer to do it. If only we didn’t have hammers, everything would have been fine!” Martinez wants to blame the tools used for the actions of their users. According to his logic, guns should be illegal because they can be used to kill people — yet I’m sure he’s as big a supporter of the 2nd Amendment as any other Republican.

Martinez blames Democrats — specifically, Mary Landrieu, D-LA — for keeping “the f-word out of the resolution.” He thinks that the resolution as stated makes it sound like “a majority of senators were on the same moral plane” as the pro-lynching Senators who did the filibustering. How would his resolution have read? “We’re sorry about the lynchings — but it wasn’t our fault!” Helluva sincere apology there, Andrés.

He says that “[t]he filibuster is an anti-democratic instrument that upsets the delicate system of checks and balances already written into the Constitution.” Hang on, I thought that the filibuster was pretty much the last refuge of a beleaguered and largely powerless Senate minority when faced with the prospect of the majority running rampant over their rights and desires. It is the check and balance against pure majority rule in the Senate. If Martinez wants a complete and utter democracy, then why do we even have our representative republic in place? Shouldn’t all votes be put to the masses, and screw the non-whites, non-Christians, non-heterosexuals?

The filibuster is a tool. It’s a utility. It’s never going to be popular with the majority; that’s its whole point. It is the last roadblock, the final riot shield to keep the mob from running rampant over the unpopular guy. It absolutely must be kept in place if we are to keep a semblance of rationality in our Senate and fairness in our government. Removing it would be one more nail in the coffin of true democracy, and one more step down the road toward totalitarianism.

Around the time Syria was considering withdrawing, Bush stated his hope that Hezbollah would disarm and become a purely political party. “I would hope that Hezbollah would prove that they’re not [a terrorist organization], by laying down arms and not threatening peace,” he said. Well, George, Hezbollah certainly has embraced politics: it just swept the southern Lebanon election, winning all 23 seats that were up for grabs, and is expected to win more in the rest of Lebanon as well.

But how did it win? Not by “laying down arms.” Not at all. It won by running on an anti-American, pro-Syrian platform, specifically against Bush’s calls that it disarm. The people have spoken, Bush, and they want violence against America, they want to go against your will, they want terrorists in power.

Congratulations. Your plan to make the middle east safer is working like a charm.