Not sure if this has been noted or not, but I was surprised that even though I had pledged to donate on the date of the Moneybomb, I was not reminded by email of my pledge on Aug. 8. Had I not remembered on my own, I could easily have missed it.

Maybe others were notified and the problem was solely with my address. If not, then I would suggest that a bit more organization would have helped improve the final tally.

Actually some of Tina's argument has merit.

Well, that's one way of looking at it. The other way to look at it is an attack by the polarities (liberal/libertarian) on the centrists. But what we're going to need for the immediate future is a Washington dedicated to cleaning up the messes of the Bush Administration, not a Congress focused on punishing those who reside on the already-existing common ground. And maybe that mess should stay in the lap of a Republican president, not be inevitably attached to a naive, inexperienced Democratic one.

But Obama is anything but naive or inexperience. He just hasn't been in DC long. That's a good thing.

True, the fish rots from the head down but she has no more of a grasp on The Real Problem than most Americans and a majority of the people elected to do something about it. Or if they do, they don't want to mess with it.

Congratulations. I would be hard pressed to write something that better defends the status quo, or business as usual than you have, if I tried. And, I would be hard pressed to come up with a better plan to ensure no accountability whatsoever would be obtained, than following the prescription you suggest.

It's interesting that you've defined center considerably to the right of where most polls put the majority of the American people on the issues. No point in providing those links here; they've been offered time and again. If you were impervious to those results the first 13 times, it's doubtful you'd be swayed by the 14th. Common ground, as you seem to want to define it, is also inconsistent with the results of the 2006 election. Not unlike your Republican counterparts, you've taken to repeating your assertions over, and over, as if through sheer repetition you can make them true. Well, Tina, as my sainted mother is prone to repeat, You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. Some people, like me, are tired of folks, like you, trying to fool them one more time.

The only people who seem inclined to define the turf they're standing on as commonly shared are the very people crossing the aisle to support the Bush/NeoCon agenda. And, even Conservatives who aren't neo-cons are unhappy with that. You think the Congressional Democrats elected in 2006, and those who will be elected in 2008, were/will be elected exclusively by voters registered as Democrats? Either you dream, or you're delusional.

I have to admit, I'm taken with the particular wording of this sentence.

Whenever somebody starts to talk about "real accountability" in politics, they've already accused 99% of us of being impure.

That's quite a bit of ownership. So, Tina, which Congressional seat do you keep warm?

The kitty may grow to something near to $200,000,...

-- Holly McLachlan

That and some of the other possibilities you posted as to why it has not yet been as much as we might have hoped for and expected plays out in my online banking statement. The money I donated yesterday didn't show up until a little while ago on my bank account. So it's quite possible that some of the tally has not been accounted for yet.

I am wondering how much freedom $153,968 can buy. What are the annual "advertising" budgets for telecoms, big oil, big pharma, media corps, etc. etc? With all of these greenbacks-of-freedom flying around, I am expecting big things. I am sure the Shock and Awe of the Money Bomb will bring them to their knees eventually.

I have been watching the Olympics and I learned that ExxonMobil is going to solve the worlds environmental problems with the help of various world governments. They were pretty vague in their ad but it seemed they were sure about one thing -- nothing will get done without them.

200K (if we can get there) doesn't go very far at all towards creating and executing strategies for combating/correcting governmental corruption.

It is a start, but I have to admit that I'd hoped for more, given the breadth of the alliance, and the folks involved. -- casual_observer

The money raised in this effort will be used in tandem with the telecom immunity funds, so the total to be worked with is now ~$500,000, However, like you I'd expected more to be raised in the moneybomb effort. I can guess at 2 reasons why the take was so low yesterday:

1) Many libertarian/Paulistas could not bring themselves to risk giving money to a fund-raising effort run through ActBlue. They simply assumed that the funds would be at risk of being siphoned off in directions they disagreed with. More importantly though,

2) The website clearly didn't handled the influx of donors effectively. There were at least 3 comment posts yesterday from dedicated supporters indicating that the site was slow, dropped their connection, or appeared to fail to register their donation in a timely manner. Desultory donors who might have been willing to drop a $20 bead on this effort were driven away by this sort of inadequacy.

The kitty may grow to something near to $200,000, especially since pledging a weekly amount was an option, but it is not clear to me that the site was intended to remain open and available past the August 8th deadline. If people don't know it remains available, they aren't going to add to it. Glenn, digby and other bloggers may want to emphasize that it is going to remain open for donations when they write their post-mortems on this event.