First of all, this massive flash animation is cool. A bit heavy handed -- man does Dennis sound nutty from time to time; not what he says so much as how he says it -- but very cool nonetheless. And now on to matters of more substance.

There's been a lot of punditry in the past week that my man Howard Dean is peaking as a candidate. With three magazine covers and an efficient high-throughput/small packet fundraising engine, I look at it as "Dean cracking into the mainstream" rather than "Dean peaking." Let's think about it for a second.

It's still real early in the primary cycle. At this point in the 1992 process, Bill Clinton was still a hilbilly lawyer that no one thought stood a chance at anything. This time around the stakes are considerably higher, so it's natural to see things being stepped up. Still, Dean has a lot of room to grow in terms of national name recognition, and in any place where his brand equity is comperable to the other candidates he's in the top tier. He's officially arrived in the lead pack, true, but that's no reason to believe his forward momentum is slowing.

A significant portion of politically-inclined Americans remain interested but steadfastly undecided on their primary candidate of choice. For many Democrats -- those who's involvment generally comes to pulling a lever, if that -- Summer 2003 is far too soon to even begin seriously thinking about making a choice. While you can make a case that most party activists have picked a side, that doesn't mean anyone has peaked.

The exciting thing about Dean is that he's getting a lot of people more involved than they've ever been before. A quarter million signed up to get campaign email, 75,000 attending meetups nation world-wide. Dean talks about getting three or four million new participants in this process, and his campaign is serious about it. That doesn't just mean more voters -- though that's obviously the proof in the pudding. It means more people campaigning, more people having a stake in the process, more people awake and breathing. The internet provides a platform to organize this kind of distributed/decentralized campaigning, and while people would have scoffed at the notion six months ago, the theory is being put into practice with brilliant results.

And here's the kicker: the Dean campaign is just warming up. I know this because I have my hand in a number of pies which aren't quite ready to come out of the oven. Everything you've seen up until now is the work of a simple strategy, a good candidate, a powerful message, and a campaign that knows how to get out of the way. The real magic has yet to begin. There's a massive reservor of grassroots energy steadily growing larger, waiting to be unleashed. The humble beginnings you're starting to see now -- hand-written letters to Iowa and New Hampshire for instance -- are just a taste of what's to come. As meetup gatherings transition in pupose from solidarity to recruiting to action, prepare for a wave of people-powered Dean projects, open to anyone's participation. They'll range from from good-old door knocking to concerts to presence in parades, and they'll be organized without any direct coordination from campaign HQ. They will launch careers and change lives. They will reclaim the dignity of America.

We've got a beautiful scale-free organic network cooking here, and there's no sign that it's slowing down. Every new person who signs on adds exponential power to the system. The only reason people say it's peaking is that they've never seen anything like it. People have been declaring Dean as "peaking" for about two months now. They can't concieve that this new kind of organization, this new kind of spirit, has a chance of supplanting the old hypnosis of the boob tube which has been the hallmark of US Politics for the past 40 years. But it will.

Dean's campaign is offering something truly new: a place at the table for anyone who wants it. Rather than populist rabble-rousing or handing out didactic talking points or attempting to take on the role of strong father/protector, Dean appeals to the angels of our better nature to take a stand in our own lives, a stand for our country, for our future, to get involved as leaders on our own level. Dean's campaign represents an restoration of the American civic spirit; the sort of thing Nader talked about but could never deliver. It is about participation, bi-directional communication and in-person politics, about being a part of what's happening as it happens, because this is the only way it has a chance of happening. It's up to us.

Tune in, turn on, but don't drop out. We're turning this mofo around.

As you may or may not be aware, I've been deep into my Howard Dean thing for a while. I fear sometimes I've lost all perspective on his chances. Dean seems to have the momentum nationally (polls consistantly point upwards) and every time I catch him on the news, on the radio, whatever, he's sounding good. I can't help but love all the stuff that shows up online for him. For instance:

This snagged from the People-Powered Graphics page. There's also a brilliant automagic poster generator. It's all quite heartening, the participation. In other news, the campaign has been running a "Beat Cheny" counter fundraising drive today. It's all over the Official Blog. The story is that some time today Dick will chuckle his way to $250,000 for W's re-election run; selling $1,000 plates at a closed-door luncheon in Columbia, South Carolina to 250 lucky adherants. Over the weekend Dean's supporters have given close to $400,000. At this time there are more than 7,500 contributors, 30x as many as are filling W's coffers.

If I were Team Bush, that might cause me to break a sweat. The barbarians may be at the gate.

And here's your bittersweet bonus link of the day: the words of a member of the Iraqi governing council who has resigned.

Well, I did have something here about how people at the Dean campaign liked my site but couldn't link to it due to some of the content I have here; but the comment was potentially trouble-causing and a direct quote is out. It's all good. They're an official thing, and this phenomena ain't exactly new, though it does stir up that old idea of mine to have an "official" blog or website or something... but then I think about what I wrote before, about identity, and I think, fuck it.

Surprising to me that it was the pussy thing on the left, and not something in here. Maybe they didn't know about that part. There goes the neighborhood, but the truth always feels better.

However, I did get another good Kudo. My man "The Girth" is off romping in Canada, and he met someone in Montreal who's seen my site. My ego is just about ready to pop.

Yesterday in a bit of personally chilling news there was a SAM (Surface to Air Missile) attack on a C-130 cargo plane in Iraq. This is the type of bird my good buddy in the Air Force flies on. According to the news reports there was only one missile launched, which is a good thing. As my friend explained to me in the interview he gave, C-130s are quite versatile and maneuverable (in spite of an enormous wingspan) are very capable of defeating a single missile launch; they can change direction and speed rapidly and release a countermeasure (e.g. a flare to distract the missile), which is usually more than enough to save their skin.

The problem arises when there are two SAMs in play. Once the plane has used up all its forward energy banking and/or changing altitude, the turboprop engines take a while to get the velocity back. In the few minutes after taking evasive action, the crew is highly vulnerable to a second attack as they have little airspeed to maneuver with.

Though this was the second attack of this nature, I dearly hope that these are isolated incidents. For me, the stakes have beeen raised.