See Michael Barone in the Detroit News, Netroots put winning ahead of principle,

     …Among…optimists are almost all of the Washington press corps and a large proportion of the 53 percent of voters who cast their ballots for Barack Obama last November, as well as some nontrivial proportion of the 46 percent who voted for John McCain.
     Foremost among their number are the netroots — the young enthusiasts who flock to the Daily Kos blog and are ready to take direction from MoveOn.org. As my Washington Examiner colleague Byron York reported on Tuesday, the netroots, once almost totally preoccupied with the war in Iraq and suffused with hatred of George W. Bush, have now moved on.
     They show little interest in Iraq, now that Obama is seeking (though carefully refraining from using the word) victory there, and little more interest in Afghanistan, where Obama has sent more troops and installed a new commander to pursue a new and, the president hopes, more successful strategy.
     Instead, the netroots say their chief goal is “comprehensive health care reform.” No. 2 is “working to elect progressive candidates” in 2010.
     To me this looks less like conviction politics and more like team ball. I can’t help doubting that these activists have given long and deep thought to “government option” health insurance or negotiating, as the Obama White House has, nonaggression pacts with pharmaceutical lobbyists and the like.
     They sound much more like a crowd at a stadium, eager for a touchdown and not caring much whether it’s accomplished by a quarterback sneak or a runback of a punt. …
     But the netroots seem to have cared more about Iraq than they do about health care. It’s plain that the netroots and those millions on the Obama campaign’s e-mail lists have not been motivated enough about health care legislation to show up at town hall meetings in any significant numbers — unless they’re transported by union or Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now buses. They may be optimists — their team has put a lot of points on the scoreboard in recent electoral contests — but they seem puzzled by how hard it suddenly seems to move the ball.
     In contrast, those who are opposed are motivated to show up and express their anger, and in far greater numbers than the hapless Republican Party or the various health insurance companies could ever muster. Many denounce Republicans as well as Democrats — they’re not playing team ball. Rather, they seem focused on the ways that public policy will affect their lives and those dear to them. They seem to be pessimists, but pessimists who are determined to resist what looks like a nightmare.
     So the fight is between those who care about the specifics of health care policy and those who care more than anything else — as many Americans on all political sides do — about the image and aura of the man who is inevitably the symbol, here and abroad, of the kind of nation we are.
     Robert Novak in his half-century of Washington reporting found that the fondest hopes of optimists usually turned out to be unrealistic and that the astringent analysis of pessimists often turned out to be accurate. And, as we are seeing on health care today, though optimists can prevail in a campaign, the pessimists can still affect policy.

     See Salon, Mike Madden’s Twitter won’t bring down Ahmadinejad: The real action in Iran is in the streets. Social media is documenting the revolution — not leading it,

     …But before you — or the media — get too carried away with all the Iranian cyber-activism, take a step back. Yes, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social media sites are helping the world outside Iran learn about what’s happened there since last Friday’s apparently phony elections, especially since the regime has barred foreign journalists from doing their job. And the eruption of solidarity in the U.S. and around the world is clearly important symbolically. Still, so far there isn’t much evidence that the Internet is driving events in Tehran — the protesters don’t seem to be using it to plan, and the government’s hackers don’t seem to be doing as much of the malicious tracking as people here think they are. The revolution, to borrow the Gil Scott-Heron-inspired phrase that’s been thrown around a lot in the last week, may not actually be Twittered, after all. …
     Though U.S. media outlets can’t get enough of the idea that Twitter — already a press darling — is the greatest thing to hit the democracy movement since Gandhi, reality is a little more complicated. Authorities in Iran probably realize that the Tweets and Facebook updates aren’t the main threat to the status quo right now — instead, it’s what’s happening in the real, not virtual world. Iranians who are Twittering the protests are mostly doing to help spread the word to people outside Iran, not inside the country (as Business Week and Slate have noted). “The main message with respect to social media and Twitter is not so much that it’s having an impact on the political situation in Iran,” Fassihian said. “What those tools are really having an impact on is how the outside world is viewing what’s happening in the country.” Relatively old-fashioned text messages, using cell phone networks that also appear to be straining during the crisis, is helping to spread the word much better than any newer tools. So the idea — which even the State Department seems to believe — that Twitter is essential for organizing the rallies and marches in Tehran is a little much. “That would be really stupid,” Morozov said. “If you want to plan a revolution, you never do it in public — the authorities show up and arrest everyone. It’s just beyond me that somebody would start posting locations on secret meetings on Twitter.” …
     …The crackdown by Iranian authorities on traditional journalism means Twitter and Facebook updates — at least the ones by people who are actually there — are providing a real service; the more widely the message is spread, the more the world can be outraged by the government’s oppressive reaction to the protests. Still, the Internet isn’t causing a revolution — it’s documenting it. That’s plenty to be proud of, without needing to exaggerate things in the name of solidarity. So keep the Tweets coming. Just don’t forget that the real action — and the real risk — isn’t happening anywhere near a computer.

     Excuse MEEE? People are more important than COMPUTERS?? –Tha noive!!

     See the Daily Mail, Putin’s poster girl: Pin-up politician who hates the West… but loves Thatcher,

     At only 24 she is already tipped to become a minister, and perhaps achieve her goal of ruling Russia. Happy to exploit her glamorous looks, Maria Sergeyeva has emerged seemingly from nowhere to become a leading propagandist for her hero, Vladimir Putin, her country’s ‘Iron Man’ Prime Minister. …
     She is a leading light of the Young Guards, a youthful and growing band of zealots dedicated to resisting any efforts to stop Putin’s inexorable Russian revolution. …
     …the Young Guards….have become more influential by harnessing the power of the internet to spread their message.
     They recently raised their profile by highlighting the ‘immigration crisis’ and helping police to identify illegal immigrants. With more than 100,000 members, many see membership as essential to their career development.
     Although Sergeyeva claims that she holds no official position in the Young Guards, she is suddenly ubiquitous in Russian society - writing newspaper articles, attending political rallies (which, unlike so many others, don’t get banned) and pontificating via the internet. One recent speech that was made available online had 140,000 hits, crashing the political website hosting it.
     Her nationalist rhetoric is blunt, if not outright incendiary. At a time when racist attacks in her country are at unprecedented levels, she recently told immigrants to leave.
     ‘They grab our work,’ she said. ‘Immigrants should work in places where Russians don’t want to, or they should go back home.’ …
     According to her internet postings, one of her current assignments is to promote training sessions for loyalist bloggers-under the acronym KGB. Kursy Gosudarstvennykh Bloggerov stands for Courses For State Bloggers, and its purpose appears to be to teach loyal cyber-warriors how to hack into opposition blogs and find the addresses and telephone numbers of those behind them - all apparently sponsored by the Russian taxpayer.
     In return, the loyal bloggers are given a membership card, Putin’s book on ideology, a CD of Medvedev’s video blog and their own badges and uniforms. …
     Sergeyeva, the great-granddaughter of a Stalinist NKVD secret service officer who died in the siege of Leningrad, has come a long way since being expelled ‘for laziness’ from an elite Moscow academy. …

     This sounds like a bad parody, but truth is stranger than fic… Is there a word “blogrom”? Like pogrom with a blog? Well, there is now.