Today Alisa and I attended the local Democratic caucus. The state Democratic convention this year is going to be in Amherst and is going to be focused on training people to improve their political effectiveness in several tracks: candidates, campaigns, and grassroots. I was excited about learning how the party works and was pleased to be selected as a delegate. Alisa decided to run as an alternate and was selected -- this year there aren't any key issues to be decided so there probably won't be any difference between a delegate and an alternate anyway. In fact, anyone can sign up and attend the training sessions, if they're willing to pay the fee. Not everyone is happy about the format. One fellow said that it was undemocratic to have the delegates not have the power to make any decisions. I'm new enough at this that I'm willing to wait and watch and see how it works before I complain too loudly.
One person at the convention has a friend who was attended the Dean speech in Iowa and said that the media has distorted the affair completely. He said that with a huge crowd of young folks already at a fever pitch, Dean was just giving the crowd what they wanted. The snippets the media has pulled out have been taken out of context. Moreover, she said that because he was calling out some things in Spanish, for example saying, "Si, se puede!!" some reporters claimed he was spouting gibberish, evidently not understanding he was speaking Spanish. If the media's response has the same affect on others as it had on me (I gave more money to Dean), it won't be all bad.
Updating the Dean Scream remixes, is a new site 
Dean Goes Nuts (by a Dean supporter) that collects links to a whole bunch of remixes. His favorite is this one, which is excellent. I listened to a few others, but didn't find any I liked better than the one I linked to a couple of days ago.
After the caucus, Alisa and I went out to dinner at the Outback. The Atkins craze isn't hurting their business any -- we arrived around 5 and it was already packed. When we arrived, they were predicting a 20-30 minute wait, but by the time I'd gotten a drink at the bar, people were talking about a 1.5 hour wait and by the time we left, it was up to 2 hours. That seems like a long time to wait for dinner, to me. I got what I usually: the Melbourne -- a giant porterhouse steak with a salad and vegetables. Wonderful!