10/20/08- TWD's Agenda For the Day: The "Awesomeness" of the Awesome Jed Lewison; "The Read"

(Photo from JedReport.com)

Another integral part of the "rational online community" in America is a gentleman by the name of Jed Lewsion. Here's a quick bio from the Huffington Post about Jed:

Jed Lewison covers politics and edits video for The Huffington Post. He's based in Las Vegas, NV, and was previously communications director for U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell and director of online marketing for RealNetworks.

As you can see on "The Outstanding" site roll (on the right side of the page) that one of the links is "The JedReport," Lewison's site where he basically has all the major videos of the day, and in particular, the Presidential race for this year. This guy is unbelievable, and I'm trying to figure out how the hell he gets all these videos so fast?

In fact, here's more about him, and his site. Maybe that will help me with answer (or an interview with him) :

Although The Jed Report is relatively new, I've been active online for years. In 1994, I posted one of the first ever internet sites for a political campaign. (At the time, I was taking off a semester from my undergraduate studies at Yale to work as press secretary for Ron Sims, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Washington state. Needless to say, it was 1994 and we lost -- though in 2000, I achieved some revenge when Maria defeated the incumbent Senator Slade Gorton who had defeated us in 1994.)

In 1995, I posted a fan site for the Seattle Mariners -- a sort of proto-blog featuring game updates and commentary. And at RealNetworks, I led the company's internet marketing and sales operation, building a business from nothing to $15 million per quarter before joining Maria on her senatorial campaign in 2000.

Living in Vegas, having a company from the ground up transform into an eight figure profit, and just being a relatively nice, determined individual, Jed is certainly one of the bigger figures in the online revolution holding public officials and television personalities accountable for their past words and actions.

For example, here's how he helped in embarrassing CBS and Katie Couric this summer, where they tried to take out a McGaffe gaffe:

He certainly did bust them, didn't he?

So great is Jed, that Markos Moulitsas decided to officially add him to the site's front page, as mentioned on Friday when Jed help put together the video exposing the McShame campaign's "Joe the Plumber" BS:

It has certainly made life easier for most fledgling websites and bloggers when there is an individual like Jed Lewison doing the work that he loves doing so well.

The Read
1. The always outstanding efforts of DemFromCT's A.P.R.U and race tracker, along with kula2316's always assiduous "Morning Reactions." Include this one from "Morning Reactions."

Thomas DeFrank of the NY Daily News:

"It was one of those 'Voice of God' moments," a Republican political operative said, speculating that Powell might embolden other GOP moderates to come forward and back Obama.

His endorsement is devastating not just because he validated Obama with independent and undecided voters. He also made clear his belief - despite McCain's "I'm not President Bush" disclaimer at last week's debate - that a McCain presidency would be an unwelcome policy rerun of the discredited Bush-Cheney years.

2. A must read from A.P.R.U is rational thinking conservative Ross Douthat. No one can't say that this man is not smart, though he is a staunch believer in fiscal conservatism though. But he is a smart guy nevertheless. He defends himself against this attack from nut case writer Mark Steyn :

Just to clarify:

Sarah Palin's Alaska is not the conservative cocoon. Neither is Tim Pawlenty's Minnesota, or Mike Huckabee's Arkansas, or any other place out in flyover country where a populist conservative became a popular and successful governor.

The cocoon is the constellation of mutually-reinforcing conservative institutions - think tanks and advocacy groups, talk-radio shows and websites - that can create the same echo-chamber effect that the liberal media has long produced, and that at times makes it difficult for the Right to grapple with reality.

The cocoon is the place where it took an awfully, awfully long time for conservatives to admit that the post-2004 crisis in Iraq wasn't just a matter of an MSM that wouldn't report the good news. The cocoon is the place where conservatives persuaded themselves, in defiance of most of the evidence, that the reason the GOP lost Congress in 2006 was excessive spending, and especially excessive pork.

And today, the cocoon is the place where conservatives are busy convincing themselves that Sarah Palin's difficulties handling high-profile media appearances aren't terribly important, that her instincts are more important than her grasp of national policy, and that the best way to defeat Barack Obama is to start with the lines that Palin has used on the stump - Ayers, anti-Americanism and ACORN - and take them to eleven.

Enjoy your day, and we will premiere our state prediction series "50 in 15." All the states and the predictions of who is going to win in them, hopefully.

The Agenda's P.S. is in the comments section.

Sha-la from TWD!