TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

CAMPAIGN CONTINUES
Obama calls on his Internet campaign army to march again (Bradenton Herald) His four-page questionnaire also asks respondents to name their top-priority issues out of 27 listed. The options included environment and global warming, civil rights and voting rights, war in Iraq, jobs and trade, or divisive politics and partisanship.

NOTE:

• "Obama's building a political machine," said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, a center-left Washington research group. "These people have just opened up a new world for politics," added Hess, the author of "What Do We Do Now?: A Workbook for the President-Elect." Pre-Internet presidents, he said, lacked the ability to communicate in real time with masses of their volunteers. In addition, the social networks such as MySpace and Facebook that link Obama's army together didn't exist.

Gee, you gotta wonder how the pre-internet American revolutionaries of 1776 ever beat the British, or how pre-MySpace Abraham Lincoln was able to unite a divided country attempting to deal with its first critical constitutional--and moral--crisis! Thomas Paine would be rolling in his grave if he had one..... -NH


POSTMODERN ECONOMY
Kristol: Admit we don't know what will fix fiscal dilemma (William Kristol, The Saratogian) I've worked in government. It's hard to do much thinking there at all, let alone thinking anew. But Obama and his team will have to think anew, and those on the outside who wish to help will have to think anew too, if we're to have a chance of rising to this daunting occasion.

ELECTION REFORM
Nick Coleman: Elections with less acrimony? That's the true beauty of IRV (Minneapolis Star Tribune) NOTE: We might wish that Mr. Coleman was talking about the value of Instant Runoff Voting being one of more democracy. It's PARTISANSHIP we could do with less of. -NH

THE BLOGOSPHERE
Judging Obama By The Company He Keeps (National Journal/Blogometer) HINT: It's the left bloggers who are upset by Obama's inclusion of Clinton administation advisors, and it's the right-roots who are worried about a new center-left country...