First off, you needn't apologize to me for the link -- I'm glad I went there and read it, because this anger-thing doesn't often come up, for me, in reaction to things that are actually maybe important. Usually I'm angry about OfficeMax idiots or bad drivers. I was mad at the guy who wrote the thing about dean and all that, not at you. I think the guy that wrote that should: 1. indicate from the start that it's an article about raising money for a cause, not an informational article, and 2. put a place for comments on the thing so I can yell at him, instead of over here.

I agree with pretty much everything you've posted in your response here. I am angry at the idea that the internet might be hijacked. I'm freakin' pissed off at the thing VeriSign did (you can see my current SquubLog thing about that,) and I'd love to do what I can to make sure this big mess of a beautiful ugly interweb thing stays free and easy. But I've still got no idea what Dean would do to respond to this threat.

Disclaimer (maybe I've said it before): I don't know much about this guy, nor about any of the Democratic hopefuls. Possibly Dean IS the only candidate who won't let the internet be co-opted by the wolves. If this is true, and if it's true that Dean would, if elected, actually be able to do anything to stop bad things from happening on this front, then I'd be pretty excited about him. But nothing from the article in question gave me any understanding of what kind of plans Dean might have for this thing.

In fact "this thing" is a weirdly vague thing. That's a problem. The problem the internet's facing is vague. It's sort of in my head now like we're talking about the war on terror. It's the war on privitization of the internet; but who's it being fought against? How do we fight it? Dropping some money into a Presidential campaign doesn't give me any sort of feeling of, "oh, I helped!"

I'm obviously rambling. This whole thing has very definitely got my ears perked up, and so I'm going to read a lot about this guy, and some of the others, now. So that's one good thing. Primarily I want to know more about what can actually be done about this problem so i can spin my wheels in that direction.

My comment about my not thinking Dean could win based on what I saw of the debates, which may have prompted you to comment on the measure of a candidate being more about his methodology than soundbites, was only meant to indicate this: I don't think he can win. I'm not saying I don't think he can win because he SHOULDN'T, or because he doesn't have a lot of good ideas (which, like I've said, i don't really know about right now.) I'm saying I think the majority of this country's voters are apparently dim-wits who DO think the measure of a candidate can come from soundbites. Maybe these people can only digest that much info. MAYBE the problem is the maddening pessimists like me who don't vote, for frustrating reasons. I don't know; I'm just making an off-hand prediction that someone "like him" won't win the damned election, won't be able to get the party's nomination, let alone beat Dubya.