Sleep And Water

The Senate has yet to vote as a full body, but today is the day that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell died.

DADT has been hard for me to watch. Many people criticized the Obama administration for being slow to act, but after the State of the Union, where he called for repeal, and the Defense Secretary and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff come out the next week supporting repeal, it was clear to me that he’d spent that time building consensus inside the military to repeal it. That consensus has been absolutely necessary, both for elected officials to cover their ass, but also on its face – actual assurance from the military that its leadership will faithfully implement the changes and bring its rank and file on board. Most importantly, that consensus transformed the narrative around DADT from hot-button to inevitable.

Then, many people criticized the Obama administration for saying they wanted to wait until the military’s one year review was complete before repealing the law, and that it would never get done if that happened. While waiting that year might have made it electorally harder, I honestly think that it is well within the military’s right to do that review, and gives a necessary period for all levels of the military to come around and get ready for a peaceful transition. Most importantly, the Pentagon made it clear that the review was meant to figure out how to do it, not whether to do it. That was the correct framing, and it should be taken seriously.

So the major “compromise” that the amendments passed in the Senate committee and the House today have, which is that the repeal takes effect contingent upon the completion of the review and the signoff of Obama and the Defense Secretary and the Joint Chiefs, is no compromise at all – it’s exactly what should happen. Congress should declare that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is done, and the military should have some capacity to control how this is accomplished.

That has always seemed like the right balance to me. Though I absolutely understand the gay rights community’s impatience with movement on DADT, and have felt it myself at various points, I just don’t see how this could have been done any more smoothly. DADT will be repealed in the Senate, the momentum is far too great – even Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska is on board with this. I hope people remember Obama’s work on DADT with great pride, and as a decisive, unwavering achievement of a campaign promise, because I firmly believe that is what it is.

Yes, it is definitely time to get back into the world of output. I don’t know why I shut down the way I do sometimes. I felt really inspired on my way back from Mississippi, which is the mood in which I wrote my last post on the iPad, but that faded away pretty soon. Rather than an essay, here’s a few things that have been keeping me busy these last few months.

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I’ve been going through training as a 2010 Fellow with the New Leaders Council, which is a “progressive leadership” organization. I’m pretty sure I’m not a leader of men, but it has been fun. NLC brings in some pretty amazing trainers to impart their experience and wisdom on campaign organization, national security policy, fundraising, and the like.

It’s a very different scene than what I’m used to. As you can guess, it’s the sort of thing that could be very awesome, or very douchey, based entirely on the people within. I was happy to find that the people are super cool, genuine, and smart, and I’m honored to be making the friends I am there. My class’ll be throwing a fundraiser with Van Jones on Wednesday to raise money to give another class the same opportunity next year that we had.

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Something else: somehow, Ohnomymoney got the attention of the NY Times, and my site and I will be making an appearance in the Sunday Magazine’s May issue about money. I went through a photo shoot in my apartment on Friday for the piece, so I feel reasonably confident that I’ll make the final cut (I’m one of 3 subjects). This is certainly the biggest media exposure I’ve ever had, for one of the most small-time projects I’ve ever done (it gets about 2 hits a day). So I’m worried that I’m going to come off as pretentious – a vulnerability of mine, which any reader of my blog is already aware of (see?).

I’m more just excited though, and it only makes me feel more strongly that every kid in the world needs to be given the skills to build a website on a whim at any time. If something that I cooked up in a week with rudimentary logic, minimal display, and chintzy graphs can get attention, imagine what kind of an Internet we’d have if the people building it weren’t so heavily slanted towards white male yuppies (which also seemed to exclusively comprise the audience of the Hot Chip show I attended Saturday).

Anyway, you can see just how rudimentary it is if you want, as I took this as motivation to rewrite the code for Ohnomymoney entirely, and open sourced it. That was all under-the-hood work, though. I’d like to expand the site before the end of May to have better graphs, with annotations and user comments and the like, but…we’ll see.

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I spent a ton of time over the winter adding information about bills to my Congress app for Android, which took a lot of work and was hugely satisfying to accomplish. This also resulted in the creation of a community service for the same data, friendly to mobile devices. It was enough work that I burnt out a bit and took a complete break in April, but I’m ready to start pushing again, to get full bill text and voting records out there.

I’ll also be fortunate to have help on it this summer, through Google’s awesome Summer of Code program, where students are paid to work on open source community projects. Google announced the final list of accepted students today. Evelina Vrabie, who is getting her bachelor’s in Computer Science in Romania, will be helping me make the app all kinds of awesome this summer. She submitted a great proposal, and now I’m doubly motivated to make a great app.

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Also, I played a lot of Final Fantasy XIII.

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So I’ve kept busy, but I still need to write more. I want to redesign this blog from scratch like I do every couple years, and I want another blog so I can put down my thoughts on politics – I even registered captiveslog.com for that one. I guess we’ll see how my ever-fickle output pans out this summer.

Talking Points Memo reports about an incident between Tea Party protestors and civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis:

Standing next to Lewis, emerging from a Democratic caucus meeting with President Obama, Carson said people in the crowd yelled, “kill the bill and then the N-word” several times, while he and Lewis were exiting the Cannon House office building.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, also black, was spat on, and also called the N-word.

And let’s not forget how Barney Frank was treated:

Not long before, Rep. Barney Frank got an uglier version of the treatment. Just after Frank rounded a corner to leave the building, an older protestor yelled “Barney, you faggot.” The surrounding crowd of protestors then erupted in laughter.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has an excellent response to the matter – emotional, devastating, but ultimately civil. Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Ohio, on the other hand, gave an unfortunate response on the House floor, that used the word “tea baggers”, a name I have always tried to avoid and will still avoid.

Calling them names like “tea baggers” only brings us down to their level. And as we can see from today, the Tea Party’s level is not a place that we should want to be. Today’s display was the first step towards their marginalization. Let’s take the next big step to dissipating and destroying them tomorrow, by passing this health care bill.

As our Brian Beutler reports, a few moments ago in the Longworth office building, a group swarmed a very calm looking Henry Waxman, as he got on the elevator, with shouts of “Kill the bill!” “You liar! You crook!”

Not long before, Rep. Barney Frank got an uglier version of the treatment. Just after Frank rounded a corner to leave the building, an older protestor yelled “Barney, you faggot.” The surrounding crowd of protestors then erupted in laughter.

Menacing.

Writing a monster post on health care reform and the state of things would take a lot of time, and you’re better off tracking it at awesome places that specialize in it.

But a look at yesterday and today’s activity, and believe me I have been keeping tabs on this to an unhealthy degree, shows a clear picture of momentum.

House members are being summoned for a session at 1:00pm on Sunday, with a vote expected sometime after 2pm. Gather round C-SPAN for some history.

David Cameron says life is about more than money, we should use behavioral economics to drive better energy efficiency, and that transparent government leads to empowered citizens and greater well-being – and he has the Kennedy quotes to back it up. In the US, we’d call that Barack Obama, but in the UK he’s the leader of their Conservative Party.

Maybe you think it’s tacky of TED to let a politician speak there, or maybe you just don’t like conservative thought, or both, but it’s hard to deny David Cameron’s personal charisma and the attraction of his ideas. I understand better now why the Conservative Party has the momentum it does now in Britain, and why Gordon Brown in comparison seems so pathetic.

I’m sure people can find me all sorts of links to information about David Cameron that shows the other side of his conservative views, in all of their ugliness. I’m not looking forward to Conservative rule in Britain, broadly speaking. But I’d like to see the philosophy of Cameron’s talk embraced by the platform of every political party, and I’m proud that it echoes some of Obama’s core political views so strongly.

I feel for those who can no longer stomach the health care reform bill wending its way through the Senate right now. You’ve got Obama standing on the sidelines as the public option dies, abortion being horse traded around, Nelson transparently raking in huge kickbacks for his state in return for his vote, and of course, you’ve got Lieberman punching progressives square in the face. It hurts, I’m angry, and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know what I would do if I were Obama, or if I were Reid, or if I were Russ Feingold.

But I know this bill’s still gotta pass. It’s easy for a lot of us to feel like it’s not worth doing if the bill doesn’t have a public option, if it means more money for insurance companies, if it doesn’t represent “real reform” or whatever. But I don’t think any of the lefty bloggers chanting to kill the bill are heads of families of four that make $29,000 a year and can’t afford health insurance. If this bill dies, it will be a lot longer than the 15 years that it took Democrats to recover after Clinton messed it up. And during all that time, the insurance companies will be just as rapacious as ever. Public option or no, this bill will help.

Nate Silver and I appear to be soulmates on the issue, and he’ll do a much more educated job of defending it than me. It’s telling to me that the left only turned on this bill after Joe Lieberman stuck his head in. When the public option was removed, at the behest of a few moderates, there was, amazingly enough, only a minimal firestorm. When Reid met with his Gang of 10 and came out with the government-negotiated plan through GPO plus the Medicare expansion, somehow the left seemed to swallow the acid and take it.

It’s once Lieberman said no to the Medicare expansion that everyone exploded. And honestly, I think it’s because it really seemed as if Lieberman just wanted to piss off liberals. Fuck, even I think that’s a major part of it, and I seem to be willing to grant good faith to just about anybody. So while Lieberman has lost that faith with me, and I also feel the immense anger and humiliation that comes with having one douchebag of a man (and to be fair, a few other moderate senators who were probably letting Joe be their proxy) stand in the way of a public option, I am not going to let that distort my perception of this legislation.

It still has the gov’t-negotiated plan administered through the Office of Personnel Management. It still blocks insurance companies from basing premiums on preexisting conditions or gender, and from removing coverage when you get sick. It still has the individual mandate on insurance, which (along with generous subsidies for the poor) will lower premiums for everyone and get more people covered. It will do good.

So, that’s how I feel. I’m settled in now to watch it pass, and apparently so are Democrats. I’m happy to see that the Democratic party is able to come together over something of this magnitude, and I’m really quite enjoying watching the Republican Party go completely apoplectic over it. The mindless fury of tea partiers and Republicans like Coburn and DeMint, more than anything, is a sign to me that we are still doing just fine.

I’m going to find a way to repay Diane Savino for this speech.

New York State Senate Votes Down Gay Marriage Bill

Stories like this about all the awful things surrounding the Administration’s attempt to close Gitmo always leave me feeling vague and unsettled. I really don’t have any good way of handling an issue this complex. Though I am certain Guantanamo must be closed, and that keeping it open is much more damaging to our national security than keeping it closed—it can’t be fully closed without dealing with a number of suspects which the government knows are dangerous, but for whom they don’t have conclusive evidence.

I see a lot of progressives simply insisting that all of our detainees be treated like everyone else and let a judge/jury decide their innocence or guilt. I respect entirely the commitment to justice over vengeance that that viewpoint represents, but it’s clear to me that doing so could backfire tremendously and set back progressive goals in regards to treating terrorism suspects with the appropriate legal nuance.

If we can make it through Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial in NYC and have him convicted, it sends a great message to other countries, to our judicial branch, and to KSM himself. Convicting someone as a criminal for murder, instead of an enemy warrior for war crimes, is far more demeaning, for all the same reasons that it’s more difficult. I support this trial, and I commend Atty. General Holder for his bravery in making it happen. But if we send all the prisoners through the civil system, there is a significant chance that dangerous people will be released because of inconclusive evidence.

This doesn’t mean they’re innocent; our justice system is to built to set a guilty man free rather than see an innocent man jailed, which is the right attitude, but you’ve seen OJ’s book, right? If that happens to a dedicated jihadist for whom we just cannot prove their guilt conclusively, and there are murders committed as a result, our civilian judicial system’s credibility for handling dangerous suspects will be seriously weakened. It will be a political windfall for neoconservative hawks. We’ll throw all terrorism-related detainees at military commissions forevermore, whether Guantanamo exists or not, conclusive evidence or not, groups like the ACLU will be marginalized, and then we’ll really have something to feel disgusted about.

The root problem here is that for many of these 200some people, our best evidence has been obtained through torture, thanks to the Bush administration. This has hampered our ability to prosecute, has done our nation a tremendous disservice, and now there is no easy solution – no matter what simple perspective many conservatives or progressives might hold on the issue. But with the announcement of KSM‘s NYC trial, the resignation of Greg Craig, and their messenger’s stated commitment today to close it, I remain confident that the Administration is doing its best to find a way out, and will, eventually, get the job done.

From the first paper on this page. Note that Massachusetts is the only state whose 45–64 age bracket supports same sex marriage by a majority, and they’re the state who would have the most chance to have experienced any alleged breakdown of their social fabric.

I wasn’t actually aware until this morning that there was a Proposition 1 impending in Maine, the counterpart to California’s Proposition 9. Like California, there is a strong No coalition that is out there raising money and awareness. And like California, the Yes campaign has hired Frank Schubert to direct it. But this time, the polls and the money seem to be on No’s side, and Nate Silver believes it the underdog.

An old colleague of mine at ImprovBoston, Steve Kleinedler, lost his husband earlier this year, and has written a small piece that motivated me, and I hope motivates you, to give a few dollars to a good cause. I’m sure the No cause would also welcome your feet on the ground in the days leading up to November 3rd in helping get people out to vote.

Hell, I’ll just reprint Steve’s essay in its entirety.

Earlier this spring, I wrote this essay, which discussed my interactions with people when dealing with all aspects of the death of my husband Peter. He and I had been together for almost 15 years.

This Friday, October 16, would have been our fifth wedding anniversary. On that day, I will go up north to scatter his ashes in the wilderness that he loved; I will get to hold him one final time, something I have not been able to do for the past six-and-a-half months.

In the ongoing struggle for marriage equality, which is being put to the test this November in Maine, it’s important to reflect on how the sky never fell in Massachusetts in 2004. Of course, we knew it wouldn’t; what’s important is that other people now see that as well. All of the scenarios that the fearmongers threw up proved to be exactly what they were—smokescreens, and hateful ones at that. Lesbians and gays were granted marriage equality, and the social order in Massachusetts did not collapse.

Winning the election in Maine in November is crucial for our momentum. A win for marriage equality, while of course obviously very important to the citizens of Maine, will reverberate across the country.

I have been fortunate to meet Massachusetts state legislators, lawyers, and advocates who were instrumental in bringing marriage equality to the Bay State. I have also met some of their Maine counterparts. It is so crucial that as we approach Election Day, that they be given the financial resources necessary for us to win in November.

In Peter’s death, I learned just how crucial marriage rights are. I am very fortunate to live in Massachusetts. Together, we can achieve equality across the country, state by state. Please consider making a donation to No on 1. If you’ve already done so, please consider forwarding this essay to your friends. How many of your well-wishing heterosexual counterparts expressed disappointment last November after the California decision? Remind them they have a real chance to help make a real difference in Maine.

Many people seem to be under the impression that most people are idiots. They aren’t. This is getting to me lately, because I’m observing some people on the left throw the term “idiot” around like confetti, and others on the left are growing incredibly condescending about how the country is responding to health care reform.

Let’s start out with the reason that tons of people my age came of age feeling distrustful and wary of our fellow citizens: George W. Bush. How could we possibly elect this guy, much less re-elect him?

There was at least one perfectly valid reason to vote for Bush in 2000 – he appeared to be a very genuine guy, and I think history has borne out that he is (though I can’t say the same for nearly anyone he hired). Preferring politicians who seem to be themselves, and are not simply pandering, is a smart trait for a populace to have. The problem is when we place too-heavy reliance on it, above all other factors, and that’s a fair criticism; simply mass-labeling Americans as idiots is not.

And re-electing him in 2004? Americans were scared of being attacked by terrorists again. This is not a stupid fear. We had been attacked only 3 years prior, and lots of people died. I recently had a nightmare that I was at Ground Zero during the attack. It was terrifying. If John Kerry failed to convince America that he would be strong on terrorism, and that he was being himself and not “flip flopping”, that’s Kerry’s fault. The “Republican attack machine” is good (as was Obama’s attack machine at equating McCain with Bush), but like any political messaging, it’s only good at exploiting concerns people already have.

To vote for Kerry, you had to realize that the one huge comforting thing about Bush’s platform was outweighed by all the less comforting good things about Kerry’s, no matter how good they all are for America when added together. The fact that some slim, slim majority of our population didn’t put aside their fears and do that calculation is not enough to convince me that we live in a country of mouth-breathing sloths. It means we have some work to do on balancing our hearts and minds – and I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of work to do on that front myself.

So it seems more than a little dishonest to me that the left is perfectly fine calling out these disruptive town halls for what they are (orchestrated political assaults, organized by extremists and special interests), and insisting that it is not representative of the American people in general, while somehow getting more pissed off at the American people in general!

Conservatives and health industry forces are exploiting a latent concern that American citizens have about heavy government interference in their lives. This is a smart concern for a population to have, and it’s why Total Information Awareness got unpopular and was canned even when Bush had an 80–90% approval rate, in early 2002. We’re only going to get health care reform through that is both liberal and popular if we can address that concern in an emotionally compelling way, instead of getting angry at people who respond to other emotionally compelling words like “socialism”, “fascism”, and “death panel”.

This is our responsibility. The more of us who write off our population, the more we abrogate this responsibility, and the more likely we are to stay the same.

This past Thursday, Data.gov finally launched. This is the ambitious effort of our new CIO, Vivek Kundra, to start collecting all government agency data in one place, and to provide it in as many machine-friendly formats as possible. This launch has been anticipated for a long time, and is a huge piece of the new administration’s commitment to an open, participatory government.

If you’re not a techie, it may be hard to understand why this is so important, but if you’ve ever subscribed to an RSS feed, you can think of Data.gov as a one-stop shop for RSS feeds for maps, surveys, and reports from all around the government. In fact, many can be imported directly into Google Maps. Data.gov launched with only 47 feeds, which has subject it to some criticism, especially as people point out the more inane ones, such as the locations of the world’s copper smelters. It will grow, though.

In fact, Sunlight hopes to prove its potential by launching a second contest in tandem, Apps for America 2, this time centered around Data.gov. Build an application (web, iPhone, Facebook, whatever) that makes use of one of the data feeds on Data.gov, and submit it for judging by the panel, and the community at large. Once again, there are cash prizes, with 1st place receiving $10,000. We’re sponsored by Google and O’Reilly, and the winners will get airfare and a hotel in Washington DC so they can attend the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase, demo their app, and receive their awards.

And wouldn’t you know, we received our first submission within less than 24 hours of announcing the contest! FBI Fugitive Concentration uses the FBI‘s Most Wanted Widget to pull in photos that create an interactive card game of Concentration. At first, this seemed like a purely whimsical choice, until I realized that after trying to briefly memorize everyone’s faces, I was now far better equipped to recognize serious threats to American lives if I saw them out on the street.

Even cooler, FBI Fugitive Concentration was written by my friend Bertrand Fan, a coworker of mine at Blue State Digital in the fall. His quick response and creative work is now getting some nice press mentions.

I am confident that Data.gov is going to become a Big Deal For America, and that this will be another successful contest for Sunlight. I’d say just wait and see, but I’d rather you spend the time writing an app and proving me right!

Sean Tevis (remember him?) is at it again with another fundraising drive – but this one off-cycle. He’s raising money to buy custom T-shirts and wear them to meetings with Kansas state politicians, where he’ll promote open government, using the words of their constituents. Awesome. There’s another long xkcd style comic in it for you (complete with hovertext) if you check it out.

And of course, he’s running in 2010. So be ready for that, and be ready for him to win.

Rep. John Culberson of Texas is a true small-gov’t, let-Texans-run-Texas, conservative. He’s also a social media badass, was one of the first, possibly the first, federal legislators on Twitter. Certainly the first one I knew about, and I followed him on Twitter for a long time.

Today a couple of Supreme Court justices (Thomas and Breyer) were testifying before a House committee that Rep. Culberson is on, to ask for more money for the Court’s website. Culberson started pushing the Court, as many have, to let cameras into proceedings, and to stream arguments as they happen. When the justices resisted, as they always have, he actually busted out his camera and started streaming the hearing live, using Qik. See it here:

This LegalTimes analysis describes what happened afterwards, as the other members of the panel joined Culberson’s call for light to be shed inside the hallowed Court. (The guy who speaks to the camera at one point is saying that John “can let your constituents see what a liberal looks like.”)

Now that is how “web 2.0” is supposed to be used. People like to hate on social media sites and their tendency to be used for the inane, but if you’re going to go down that road then you’d better start hating on letters and the telephone. Qik and Twitter are tools for empowerment, and Culberson understands that.

In fact, one of the few cases, maybe the only one, in the last couple years where I’ve preferred a Republican proposal over a Democratic one, is when the House was altering its rules surrounding social media, to let legislators use Twitter and Qik. The Republican proposal was much less restrictive, and was basically: let John Culberson use Qik how John Culberson wants to use Qik. And in the Democratic-controlled House, where the minority is routinely trod upon, the Republicans won.

So this is my salute to John Culberson, one of my favorite Congresspeople. When I first visited DC in July to discuss tech and transparency with House and Senate offices, his was the only Republican office I made an appointment with. And thanks to Dan Schuman for pointing this out to me on the Sunlight blog.

Last week, the Obama administration released four memos from the Bush administration that described their views on permissible interrogation methods. They’re from the Department of Justice, addressed to the CIA. One is from 2002, and three are from 2005. The decision as to whether to release the memos, and how much of them to release, came down to Obama himself, and entailed a fight in the Administration. Attorney General Eric Holder advocated releasing as much of the memos as possible, and CIA head Leon Panetta pushed hard not to. Apparently, these may have been released last month, except that 4 different ex-CIA heads all pushed for them not to come out.

But Obama sided with Holder, and so now they’re out. They are detailed, intense, and don’t redact much. They read like a person wrote them. Here are the PDFs, as downloaded from CNN (I recommend the 2002 memo for the juiciest details):
August 1, 2002
May 10, 2005
May 10, 2005
May 30, 2005

Now every country, and every terrorist organization, can see exactly what the Bush administration was willing to do in the interrogation rooms, what they were bluffing about, and can infer exactly what the Obama administration won’t do. To many of our enemies, this will reduce their enthusiasm and malice. But of course, some of them will be emboldened, and some interrogations will be less effective as a result.

I think Obama made the right call, and I recognize the price he had to pay to make it happen. Any CIA operative who followed the guidelines that the CIA asked for, and the Dept of Justice blessed, won’t be prosecuted. In fact, Holder has pledged the Justice Department to defend any CIA employee in any lawsuits brought against them as a result of the release of the memos. Everything will get washed under the bridge.

It’s a tough pill for me, many liberals, and certainly human rights organizations, to swallow. But it’s difficult to disagree with Obama and Holder that CIA agents individually need to have the confidence that if they do their jobs inside the guidelines they’re given, they won’t be personally destroyed as a result. I’m not interested in defending the CIA and every one of their programs (I don’t think that’s possible), but many agents are simply individuals committed to protecting our country, a job that would be impossible if they couldn’t trust their own bosses or legal analyses.

I’m also willing to frame the situation as analogous to Ford’s pardon of Nixon - difficult to accept, but in the country’s better interests. (EDIT: The Nixon analogy is a bad one. I’m in favor of prosecuting the senior officials who crafted the Bush torture policy. I’m against prosecuting the rank-and-file who implemented it.) The biggest win here is that we now know, undeniably, without any need for political spin or media interpretation, exactly what we’re responsible for, and one of the many reasons why Bush destroyed our reputation in important places around the world.

With that knowledge, we have levels of protection against this happening again. Leon Panetta argued that the precedent of disclosure it would set could be extremely dangerous to the CIA; and it will. The CIA now knows, lawsuits against its employees or not, that it can be held accountable to the public in important ways.

I’m not anti-interrogation. But I believe that this can be part of a broader shift of the US’ priorities, to form reactions and policy decisions that promote less fervent opposition abroad, and reduce the potency of threats. This is going to force the government, and the CIA, to look at the bigger picture of what we’re doing, and not just to trust that we can clean up whatever mess we make with the nastiest and most legally dubious of tools.

And that’s exactly what Obama said at a recent trip to the CIA:

What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy; even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when it’s expedient to do so. That’s what makes us different.

So, yes, you’ve got a harder job. And so do I. And that’s okay, because that’s why we can take such extraordinary pride in being Americans. And over the long term, that is why I believe we will defeat our enemies, because we’re on the better side of history.

Today I’m at Government 2.0 Camp. It’s an “unconference”, with a big board of talks, decided this morning, to select from. I’m becoming an old pro at these things.

I spent some time at a talk about the intelligence community and their new A-Space project. To be honest, the whole thing was over my head. It’s another universe in there. And there was still red tape associated with contributing to A-Space and developing applications that run on its platform. But, it was clear to me, and a number of people in the room piped up to say the same thing, that there genuinely is a sea change happening inside government culture as far as participatory software goes.

Completely different note: I’m definitely getting very sick of people talking about Twitter. It’s just something to be enjoyed, not discussed and dissected to an endless degree. It’s like if I knew how to do magic tricks, and was awesome at it, and I knew it, so all I did was talk about magic tricks. You overexpose people to it and get them sick of it and suddenly it’s not so magic. I’m not sure if that metaphor makes any sense. Neither does everyone talking about Twitter. That’s the true metaphor. Metaphor complete.

Now that the NY State Senate is finally back in Democratic hands, giving Democrats control of both houses of the state legislature, they’ve hired a new CIO, by the name of Andrew Hoppin. Apparently he’s reaching out to hire all manner of coders, designers, activists, what have you, to help revamp the NY State Senate. Check this out, taken from Noel’s blog:

The New York State Senate is back in Democratic hands for the first time in 43 years, and there is an immense amount of new technology-driven government transparency & efficiency work underway. I’ve taken on a newly created position as CIO, and we’re hiring asap in Manhattan, Albany, and around the State.

We’re looking for coders, database gurus, online organizers, and web designers in particular, and even a few more policy people to work with Central Staff, as well as for individual Senators who want to make online organizing a priority. Drop me a line for specifics!

Andrew Hoppin (andrew.hoppin_a_gmail.com)

How cool is that, right? The federal government is undergoing its own huge transition to transparency, but state governments are collectively just as important. New York could soon lead the way on how state governments interact with their citizens.

And you could work for them! You heard the man, drop him a line! Do what he says!

“I finally agreed to limit the number of people who could e-mail me. It’s a very exclusive list. How exclusive? Everyone look at the person sitting on your left. Now look at the person sitting on your right. None of you have my e-mail address.”

Barack Obama, remarks to the Alfalfa Club

Never has so much awesomeness been communicated in one small CNN article.

In an overlooked YouTube video posted on Friday, a spokesman for Barack Obama said the president-elect is committed to ending the policy that bars openly gay men and women from serving in the U.S. armed forces.

In a response to a question on the Web site Change.gov asking whether Obama would get rid of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said: “You don’t hear politicians give a one-word answer much. But it’s ‘Yes.’”

There are three major victories available for consumption:

• Openly gay people will be able to serve in the military. Public support for this issue has actually shifted dramatically in the last 15 years, with a clear majority of just about every group, including conservatives, in favor of letting openly gay people serve.

• Bold policy statements are being made because of discussions on Change.gov, and through YouTube. The imminent White House communications secretary is paying attention to comments on a blog that the transition team created. Think you’d have been getting this from McCain, or even Hillary?

• Gibbs is saying things on YouTube before he’s talking to anybody from CNN. CNN is reporting the story secondhand. The first outlet Gibbs said this to was YouTube, a public forum, in response to comments on a public forum. A complete bypass of the conventional mass media, in favor of direct channels of communication over the Internet. Just beautiful.

Written at RootsCamp, on Saturday afternoon:

There was a session here yesterday held by an unofficial emissary of the Obama transition team, to explain their goals and to field questions. A lot of people asked a lot of questions, and generally speaking, the transition team seems sincere. They are committed to a historic level of transparency. We were given answers in as much detail as possible, and every response he gave spoke of a group of people itching to finally do things right.

I asked about the CTO position that Obama pledged to create—what the status was of it, whether it was a Cabinet-level position, and whether it would be a policy-oriented position and department (instead of just making internal tech decisions, as CTOs sometimes do), and what its relationship would be with the FCC. The transition emissary said “Barack said in the campaign he was going to do it, so I expect we’re going to do it.” He went on to say that they were actively looking at people for it, that it would be part of the administration’s commitment to transparency and would very much be a policy position, but the rest of it was contingent on what person they found.

So it is happening, but it seems they never took the time during the campaign to figure out exactly what it would mean, and are figuring it out now. Obviously it’s not as high priority as State, Labor, Health, Energy, Defense, etc., but it’s gonna happen. What they’re definitely not doing is hoping people will forget about it.

I’m real excited about a high level department director, Cabinet or not, with a tech background and representing the Obama administration’s strong support for keeping the Internet a level playing field. Note to any transition official reading my blog: let me work for the CTO!

Right now, I’m in the Trinity Chapel hearing someone from the No on Prop 8 campaign in CA lead a discussion on what went wrong. Many of these talks are discussions, as opposed to somebody with slides. The guy is just up there with a mic, talking about what happened, and getting a lot of awesome contributions from people in the audience, who often have excellent experience and insight from their own work during the campaign cycle.

Some notes and consensus:

• The No messaging was scattered and unmemorable—there were at least 4 different messages, while the Yes campaign had 2 really good ones (gays will teach your kids to be gay, your church will lose tax exempt status when they have to refuse to marry gays). Two false arguments, fucking false, but very effective.

• The campaign never coordinated or engaged local organizations, like labor unions, community outreach, etc. It was central, kept close to the vest, and so failed to reach a lot of places, especially minority communities.

• The statistics do not support the idea that African Americans ruined the proposition. If African Americans had voted at the same ratio as whites, for example, that would have shifted 86,000 votes, whereas No lost by over 400,000. Not to mention, that African Americans under 30 voted No, like every other single demographic under 30.

• The three major factors that influence people’s vote on gay marriage are age, education, and the number of LGBT people that they know. Obvious, but it’s facts like these that reveal that progress on gay marriage and LGBT rights is simply a matter of time.

I’m at RootsCamp in Washington, DC, at Trinity College, and it is packed. It’s crazy that a conference with several hundreds of people, the best hot breakfast buffet I’ve ever had at a conference, and a huge selection of talks, could only cost $10. I’m sold on the BarCamp style of conferences. I’ll try to keep this updated with the most interesting things, but I’ll be updating my Twitter feed much more actively.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois is now under federal custody on some serious charges of corruption, including selling Obama’s Senate seat. He’s been recorded saying some pretty incredible things. Events like this boggle my mind. I know everyone is cynical about politicians, but the actual mechanics of a corrupt mind baffle me. Especially when it belongs to someone working in public service for over a decade, as Gov. Blagojevich has.

At least with Eliot Spitzer, it seemed like he had a genuine interest in serving the public, and making NY State a better place—he just also had sexual vices and a flirtation with self-destruction that ran alongside it. He was unstable, not evil. If these charges hold water, Gov. Blagojevich will further taint politics as the business of the corrupt. Events like this make it more difficult for people to recognize, or care, when genuine public servants do come along and ask for your vote.

I just don’t understand the ethics and decision mechanics that lead to this. It’d be folly to call myself incorruptible, but if I can be bought, it’s not with money. I honestly don’t understand the draw—money doesn’t travel with you into death. The only coin I care about is legacy, and Gov. Blagojevich is about to earn himself the worst kind.

Two Fridays from now, I’ll be leaving to go to RootsCamp in Washington DC. To quote the description, “RootsCampDC is for anyone who played a role in the 2008 elections and/or working in progressive politics. RootsCampDC 2008 will bring together the best and brightest organizers that were engaged in 2008 campaigns.”

It’s still kind of surreal for me to realize this, but I actually qualify for that. I worked on a campaign, I….“played a role”. That’s awesome. And I’m pretty sure they won’t care if you didn’t participate in the elections, but have a sincere interest in the subject matter. I imagine it’s going to be half “look at what we did, and here’s how!”, and half shameless networking. I intend to participate in both of those activities vigorously.

One of the nice parts about these ”-Camp” events is that you can decide whether or not to give a talk with extremely little notice. MobileBarCamp let you post your talk on the board the day of, whenever you wanted. I don’t know if RootsCamp will be quite so fun and fancy free, but I’m thinking about giving a talk, on…something. I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Also, the registration fee is only $10, so that + Megabus tickets both ways + lodging with a friend = $39 total for the entire affair. That’s a price structure I can believe in. I’m pumped for RootsCamp.

I went to Change.gov this morning, and finished my application to the Obama-Biden Transition Team, to be considered for presidential appointments. Obviously I’m a big long shot, but I was specific in my request (to work under the new CTO, whenever that’s set up), and why I wanted a position (to advise on software and format choices, and to push transparency).

It doesn’t take that long, and the whole thing is designed to be accessible—even if you know you’d be way underqualified like me, it doesn’t hurt to try. Go apply!

A couple of good articles about the Obama campaign’s use of the Internet, during the campaign and after it. The last one isn’t really an “article”, but it does mention Blue State Digital’s name, and that’s nice.

And did I mention this beast of an article from Newsweek on the campaign, from teams inside all the major campaigns? It’s completely fascinating, and the reading of all 7 parts lasts a long time.

An excellent selection of quotes from the Internet’s biggest Ayn Rand dating site.

I have been successfully disturbed at processed foods and “natural flavors” after reading this excerpt from Fast Food Nation.

The Internet disagrees with you.

So, we have a new President. Have you subscribed to his blog yet?

It’s easy to see and feel the election’s effect on America, from dance parties in the streets to foreign journalists begging their own nations to create democracies as sound as America. But it’s had a more particular effect on me.

The Obama campaign has had a direct, positive impact on my life. It thoroughly invigorated my desire to work in politics, so much so that I felt compelled to work every day towards getting there, somehow, until all of a sudden I was. I’ve always had a certain spirit for politics; that’s why I went out to Minnesota in 2006 for GOTV. But I wouldn’t have taken the job that I did, or made the risky choice to go freelance to stay active in e-politics work, without that inspiration.

I was an Obama supporter since way before most people even knew who he was (less than a year ago), and I can remember talking with my skeptical father on the phone, while walking through Union Square, in the fall of ‘07. Though I agreed with my dad that he would likely lose to Hillary, I supported him anyway, and I said that even if he lost, by putting up a good showing, he’d set an important precedent.

So ever since the night that Obama stormed the Iowa caucuses and destroyed the cloud of inevitability surrounding Hillary, I have been hooked. I searched Google News for “obama” every day for five months. Once the summer hit, and things got boring for a long time, I still checked Gallup every day, and began reading FiveThirtyEight every day. By the time October rolled around, I was checking FiveThirtyEight at least a dozen times a day, in spite of the fact that I subscribed to its RSS feed.

The most profound effect Obama’s rise and eventual victory has had on me is that I no longer see politics as a rigid machine. Besides a more solid general faith that voting matters, and that the people decide, I see the American people as less controllable, less sheeplike, and far more trustworthy, than ever before. In general, I try to steer clear of some of the worst epithets I’ve heard liberals cast at the American masses, but I’ve still done my share of populace-bashing.

I do believe I will lay off the American people’s case for a while.

Congratulations to America first, and as well to Barack Obama.

This is what a Democratic landslide looks like, county by county.

The dominant color there looks red, but I’d be interested in a version of this map where the brightness of the color was made in proportion to population density. That would look a lot more like a shining light.

UPDATE: Matt helpfully pointed me to a sweet election map results site with cooler pictures like this one:

And, I’m home. I spent all last night partying, and got up early to spend all today traveling. I rode my victory train back to Brooklyn, and am now victory tired and ready to collapse into victory sleep. I have so many things to say about the election, the campaign, and what everything means. But right now, I just have to sleep. For now, please enjoy:

The best thing you can do today, besides vote, is to volunteer!

BarackObama.com is jacked up with ways to find you the right place to volunteer. Make some time today to find your local office and join the teams going out to knock on doors and bring people to the polls. It’s the meat and bread of winning elections.

And again:

Courtesy of 538, and only 3 days until the election:

Now this is the sort of thing I can really get behind. CNN does little microinterviews with decided voters, and asks them to say something nice and sincere about the candidate they aren’t voting for. The key thing is that CNN observes that the people they ask seem in a more pleasant mood afterwards. It’s anecdotal, but it makes gut sense, right?

Bob Greene: If you can’t (or can) say anything nice

Even at the height of the primaries, I made sure to keep my good opinion of Hillary Clinton intact, even if it got overshadowed again and again by her terrible campaign. After the fighting was over, I had no problem giving a bit to her campaign debt, doing my part to heal the rift between two great Democrats. There’s no hard feelings. Giving that bit to her debt made me feel a lot better, too, like things really weren’t so bad, we’re all a family and we’ll send Obama to the White House.

I’ve had a harder time doing that with John McCain, especially in the post-convention era where the campaign he’s in charge of has said one disgusting thing after the other. But, if you look at interviews with random voters in news stories, the people are often just parroting talking points (“socialist”, “politics of fear”, etc.). People get super polarized, and forget their heads. What CNN‘s questions do is shock your emotional center into thinking a little bit more rationally.

Clearly, both candidates have their positive sides, or they wouldn’t each command the support of at least 40% of the country. We’d be a lot better off if everyone kept themselves as thoughtful and levelheaded as the respondees in the above story were helped to become.

A quick look at the latest Gallup poll shows that Obama is continuing his post-debate upward swing, from 6 to 7 to 8 and now to 10. The race did tighten after that 11-point wildness I posted a couple weeks ago, but it is opening right up again as we go into the last two weeks of the campaign.

The problem is, this is a poll of all registered voters. if you look at “likely voters” under either of two scenarios, Obama’s lead narrows. If you weight the results among voters who say they intend to vote, Obama only has a 7 point lead.

But more harrowing is that if you weight the results by what demographics have actually voted in past elections, Obama’s 10-point lead is really only 3 points. Just 3. And elections tighten – Obama won’t win this election with a 10-point margin in the popular vote. And we still don’t know what kind of tightening or widening effect, if any, Obama’s race will have on Election Day.

This election is dependent on new voters, and that means the young. It means people like me, who despite caring about politics has never yet voted, these people have to actually vote. That’s the only way Obama can be assured of victory, and can win with a clear mandate to govern. This rests on the lazy, flaky young vote, who for once needs to come through.

I really like that Gen. Powell feels comfortable talking at length about things and doesn’t restrict himself to talking points. Hey, every other politician: this is why he has such immense favorability ratings! You can try it any time you want!

This article by Frank Schaeffer speaks what I know to be the truth. Yes, it is hyperbolic, and anybody who has already decided that Obama supporters are a cult will leave that article only more convinced. But if you’re willing to believe that there’s a nugget of truth behind the devotion that Barack Obama inspires, you can find some of it articulated there.

Obama Will Be One of The Greatest (and Most Loved) American Presidents

I don’t usually talk about Barack Obama with such glowing, extreme admiration, because I know it’s not the sort of thing that really wins over people already made nervous about him as a politician, and I try to be sensitive to that. But if I didn’t feel that level of intense personal respect, I wouldn’t be doing the work I’m doing right now.

So how do I know that Obama is authentic, when we have been subject to a long litany of public figures that have let us down?

Read the rest...

A shoutout to my friend Walid Khoury for going out to Nevada to do some canvassing in Washoe County—the results of his work are a big deal. Nevada is going to be huge this year, and now Walid has a stake in it.

Going out to Minnesota in 2006 for Sen. Amy Klobuchar was one of the best things I ever did. It left me with a lasting investment in American politics, and I know I wouldn’t have the job I have now without it. If anybody is thinking of doing any GOTV work or canvassing work, but is on the fence, or doesn’t know what it really entails, or doesn’t know how to sign up to do it, talk to me and I’m sure I can help you out.

Here’s a great article in Technology Review on Obama’s senior economic adviser, Austin Goolsbee. Yes, the same Goolsbee who embarassed Obama on NAFTA back in the primaries. Turns out he’s an awesome guy—I guess he’d have to be to survive a mistake like that with his title intact. So why would Technology Review do an interview with an economist?

The article paints Goolsbee as a “21st century economist”, and discusses his theories that drive Obama’s economic policies. It’s awesome to see how he got his reputation—while others predicted the Internet would make it easier for companies to price highly and make massive profits, he predicted it would be a “great equalizer” and drive prices and profits way down. He turned out to be far more right than the rest, and on that his reputation began.

A couple of my favorite quotes, all emphasis his:

“Economic research hasn’t pointed at globalization as the main culprit…if Americans stopped buying cheap toys from China, the manufacturing jobs would return to nations like Mexico, not the U.S. ... Trade has helped the economy grow. Simultaneously, a sizable number of Americans haven’t shared in that bounty, and if we don’t pay attention to their concerns, all the political favor for open markets will dry up.”

“I could easily see some emerging combination of medical science, biotechnology, and computing as the foundation of much of our economic growth going forward.”

Also, he has a blog on Obama’s website, using the software I work on each day.

I am liking what I am seeing!

My bet on tonight’s debate is that McCain is going to make some desperate moves. He’s highly experienced at doing them at this point, and the polls and the electoral map have never looked worse for him. This is not going to be a repeat of the first debate, where both candidates kept their cards close to their vest.

9 pm EST sharp!

Sean Tevis’ blog went for months without being updated, but his latest is awesome. I especially like the guy holding up the ”This is Sean Tevis!” sign with the arrow. Also notable is that the people holding up his signs are all Republicans.

Also, he recently had an interview with HDNet World Report, where he got to explain his hugely successful Internet fundraising machine. Especially cool is his voicemail from Kathleen Sebelius, governor of Kansas. Check it:

“I just do not trust the American people,” said Eleanor Shavell, 58, a computer programmer, who, along with several others, joked she would move to Canada if Mr Obama loses. “I cannot believe that 80 per cent of this country thinks we’re headed in the wrong direction yet 50 per cent are supporting McCain and Palin. I guess it’s like at school, there’s always got to be a bottom 50 per cent.”

—Obama supporters ready for fight, Financial Times

I am hugely disappointed with the left’s response to John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Liberals are not seeing clearly. It should have been obvious that Sarah Palin was the perfect choice for McCain. She’s got what independents want (a sense of authenticity), and she’s got what conservatives want (conservative viewpoints). Also, her gender is exciting. But on the day she was introduced, liberals across the board, including just about all of my friends, wrote her off forcefully and immediately. The next week, liberal blogs went nuts with wild theories about her family, the sort of disgusting, desperate moves you only employ against a genuine threat.

The McCain campaign was quick to accuse the media and bloggers of sexism, and they were right. Some people said Palin shouldn’t accept a VP slot with a Downs’ Syndrome baby to raise—I even had friends say this to me. The left must accept that there was sexism in the media towards Hillary, there is now towards Palin, and that it’s coming from us. And so now, liberals get to look like both elitists and apes. Is it any wonder that independents deserted us in droves?

Let’s face it—we’re now running against a ticket that appeals greatly to both independents and conservatives. A lot of this is because Palin is a powerful choice, but a lot is because the left is acting like a bunch of lunatics. If we keep this up, we are not going to win the election—and if we squeak it out, we will not carry the clear mandate to govern that everyone expected us to.

We must stop acting as if independents think like liberals. I have had more than one friend tell me that “Sarah Palin’s views are too far right to appeal to independents.” How does this make any sense? If socially conservative viewpoints were a dealbreaker for independents, they’d be Democrats. Independents vote for authenticity, something they didn’t get from stilted old Gore, or hesitating old Kerry. Reagan, Clinton, and smug Mr. W all radiate confidence and personality, even if it’s a personality you hate. It has so very little to do with their views. Independents just want their candidate to be themselves, and they wonder if that is truly so hard.

Barack Obama has to ignore the jeers of the right, stop using tricky turns of phrase, and to just start being himself. And we, the speakers of the left, need to realize that we have the GOP totally owned on issues this year, and so to stick with them. Ignore each and every thing that comes out of the National Enquirer—garbage about Palin’s son doing Oxy helps no one, and any Democrat who endorses stories like that one hurts the credibility of all of us.

Most importantly, we need to take John McCain seriously, and acknowledge him not just as the war hero he is, but as the good and honest man that he is. He’s an amazing candidate, and I commend the Republican party for having the guts to nominate him. I rooted for him in the Republican primaries in 2000, and I rooted for him again in 2008. If this weren’t such a terrible year for the Republicans, and he wasn’t facing Barack Obama’s juggernaut machine, he would win this election hands down. It’s too bad for him that he picked this year to run, and gave us a chance to beat him, but that’s just what we’ll do. But only if we can keep our heads high, be honest, and stay true to our principles.

Here are the five URLs I visit on a daily basis for political news:

Gallup Daily – Gallup is a long standing pollster which does a daily national tracker of presidential preferences. Many other analyses and polls appear on the site, which I check out, but this links specifically to the presidential polls. Each day’s polls represent an average of the 3 prior days, and each day they poll at least 1000 people. It has a lot of cred with me for its strong stability, and clear correlation with the national mood.

Rasmussen Reports – This is another pollster who does a respected national tracking poll. Where Gallup emphasizes graphs, charts, and breaking down the numbers, Rasmussen just writes a lot, and works in the results of other related polls into their discussion. They also delineate between results including “leaners” and not. Definitely valuable.

FiveThirtyEight – I’ve discussed these guys before. If you’re either a numbers junkie or a political commentary junkie, you’ll have a ball. It took me a while to figure out that some of their charts are only comprehensible if you understand that the data comes from 10,000 Election Day simulations. The two guys who run it are both huge Obama supporters, and recently, I think that’s gotten in the way of their judgment, and encouraged them to predict the things that they want to be true. I still find it extremely valuable, and their numbers are unrivaled.

CNN Politics – A standby for the mainstream media points, with a clear but mild liberal bias. You gotta check it out if you want to know what the media’s thinking.

Drudge Report – My friend John got me hooked on this. It’s half-news, half-gossip, with a strong conservative bias. But it is extremely current, and big news often breaks there first. Matt Drudge has a great flair for the dramatic, and his word/image choice is often memorable.

Honorable Mention

CNN Breaking News on Twitter – This isn’t run by CNN, just some guy, but it only updates when something truly significant happens. During the primaries, this was exclusively electoral news, and now includes more world events, but it only updates once or twice a day, if that.

That’s it, really. During the primaries, I used to just search Google News for obama, but when the summer hit and things slowed down, I needed to branch out. I still do that, just not as religiously. I definitely find that the things I read significantly impact my personal opinions and talking points, but in recent months I think I’ve finally started to break free from the media narrative and come to my own conclusions. But that could just be what they want me to think. Also go Obama ‘08.

It’s official – the Republicans did a great job with their convention. McCain is rocking some great poll numbers, Palin’s got great favorability ratings, and Obama is getting all huffy and making stupid mistakes. I know that this is a convention bounce that will fade at least partially, and I’m all for treating liberals and conservatives in an intellectually evenhanded manner. But right now, seeing this just pisses me off.

This election is not just about the candidate, it’s about the populace. This is the start of a rough period for liberals like me, who have been watching with surprise and pride as their nation finally showed a clear preference for a fellow liberal. Maybe, we thought, people are finally recognizing the fact that social and foreign policy conservatives are consistently on the wrong side of history. Maybe all it took was someone a little less insipid than John Kerry, and a little less dull than Al Gore. Maybe underneath all the fear and suspicion, America is willing to give the government just enough benefit of the doubt to trust them with the money to administer mercy to the lower class.

So with Democrats holding a 57%-43% edge in party registration, McCain having any appreciable kind of lead is complete garbage. Could independents distrust the Democratic party so much? Was the prosperity under Bill Clinton too much for you guys?

Barack, your campaign needs to get just a little less risk averse, even when you’re ahead in the polls. McCain’s VP pick rocked yours, his ads are more creative and get more attention, and it makes you seem plenty complacent. I wish our country didn’t require it, but you don’t just have to have good ideas and a history of helping people empower themselves – you also have to be the ringmaster of a circus, in a tent full of drunk and hooting fans.

This presidential election is an epic. The Democrats dominated the news for the last 6 days, from Obama’s VP pick right through the convention. Michelle Obama impressed, Hillary Clinton impressed, Bill Clinton impressed, and finally Barack, who had the highest expectations riding on him, mega-impressed with a mega-speech. The Democratic party is feeling united, and Barack might just have convinced some people. Despite the media’s attempts to squeeze as much angst as they can out of the once-fractured Democratic party, the convention successfully navigated rough waters and presented a united front, while honoring Hillary with every bit that she deserves. She’s ready to move on, so is Bill, and so should we all. The Democrats did a terrific job, Hillary and Barack especially, and Sen. Obama is receiving a well deserved boost in support.

But now, the Democrats have problems.

Sarah Palin is an excellent pick, I don’t care what media outlets or party mouthpieces say. Take a look at her background and you’ll quickly see that she has excellent maverick credentials herself. This will make it more difficult for the Democrats to frame the Republican ticket as four more years of Bush. And of course, it pulls at the heartstrings of women, and thus saps some of the feeling that Obama’s ticket is the one that history has chosen. Yes, it undercuts McCain’s argument that Obama is inexperienced. But did you hear her speak Friday morning? She’s good, and way, way better at it than McCain is. She’s also a strong social conservative and creationist that will reassure the reluctant Republicans out there who find McCain worrisome. It was a great move, and I’m terrified.

I am also deeply troubled about the “Bush-McCain” strategy that the Democrats have feverishly embraced. This will not work. I and my liberal brethren might notice that McCain’s policies have shifted rightward over the last several years, but to the only people who matter, independents, the maverick image fades more slowly. More to the point, McCain does not feel like Bush. It’s as much about attitude as policy. The “voted with George Bush 90% of the time” statistic, putting aside the fact that Bush doesn’t vote and has an entirely different set of considerations when endorsing a bill, is missing the point. It’s not going to come down to policy. The new definition of “Republican” is the callous, smug, backward-thinking persona of George W. Bush, and McCain’s history and personality are far too different for some easy, shallow label like “McBush” to stick. It’s like saying that Joe Lieberman would be another four years of Dennis Kucinich.

Political “message” is about finding the right words to capture something people already feel, strengthening people’s reservations by articulating them. The only people who genuinely feel McCain is the same as Bush are those who see Republicans as all the same, and again – they’re not independents, and so they don’t matter. And now that Sarah Palin is on the ticket, it feels even less like the party of old white men. Those with lingering reservations about Barack Obama, for either good or bad reasons, will now have an easier time dealing with their conscience and pulling the Republican lever on Election Day. The Republican party could not be in better shape for what was supposed to be the year of their doom.

In spite of all that, I believe Barack Obama will win. But if you were at all thinking that he’s got it all wrapped up, that his campaign doesn’t need your phones and feet on Election Day, then for the sake of your own sanity on November 5th, reconsider.

All right, enough delay! In just a little over a week, I’ll be heading up to Boston with my essentials, and spending the next 2 and 1/2 months there working for the Obama campaign’s website, at a company called Blue State Digital. They’re the primary builders and caretakers for the Obama campaign site, and I’ll be joining in the work. This decision comes at a cost – chiefly, I’m apart from my loved ones, and I’ll pay double rent – but that hasn’t stopped me from being ridiculously excited. This is exactly what I want to do, and I will be doing it. It’s a temporary role, but not a temporary decision; one way or another, I intend on continuing to work in government and the public interest. Caution has been thrown to the winds.

The process that got me here began about 6 weeks ago.

Read the rest…

There’s a dangerous disconnect between people and their elected representatives, here in America. Congress does not seem to be made of people, just politicians. A politician’s behavior can be predicted simply by looking at what will keep him or her elected. They take from so many different sources that it’s hard not to throw your hands in the air and just assume their vote is being bought by some special interest or another for any given bill.

Compounding the problem is that most of the time, there is no reason to assume your Senator or Representative is a human being.

Read the rest…

I like your style, Rep. John Culberson.

All right, this guy is doing it right. A young guy, running for state representative in Kansas, raising the money to do it on the Internet, asking for lots of small donations. He’s only asking for $9, but I just threw him $20 I don’t have, for being so awesome. I particularly like his views on government transparency. Good luck, dude.

Sean Tevis For State Representative

I haven’t seemed to muster the energy to write about my experiences at the Personal Democracy Forum last week. This is odd, because I took copious notes during the entire event, tried to lock as much as I could in my memory, and do the very best job I could of meeting people despite not knowing a single solitary person at the conference and not working in any way remotely connected to politics! I owed it to the friends and family who helped pay my way there to make the absolute most of my time at it.

Maybe my lack of posting on it is burnout—from the conference, and all the rest of the stuff I’m doing now as a result of it. Rest assured, I am trying to make sure the conference was concretely worthwhile, and am actively pursuing, every day, a number of ideas and motivations that have arisen recently. I’ll be making a trip to DC later this month to continue my pursuit, and in the meantime I’m paying way more attention to places like OpenCongress and other projects spawned off of the Sunlight Foundation. OpenCongress seems by far to be the most successful project they’ve funded, as searching for any bill number puts them on the first page of Google results, and some of their pages have a simply absurd number of comments. I’m really impressed by the design, scope, and simplicity of the site.

Also, I added ridiculous charts to ohnomymoney, so, you know, go review my financial history since May if you want. See if I care.

So there’s a small flap going on about John McCain’s computer savvy. It actually began at the conference I was just at. I thought I’d do my own quick test of the candidates’ abilities.

Though neither are passing, right now Barack Obama’s XHTML validation is doing much better than John McCain’s.

Neither of them have feeds on their main sites, and no autodiscoverable ones on their blogs. Their blogs do each have RSS feeds you can find on your own though. Barack Obama’s blog has a single RSS feed, which validates just fine, with a few recommendations. John McCain’s blog has several RSS feeds, no overarching one, but the first one fails to validate.

John McCain’s site is written in ASP.NET, and Barack Obama’s is in PHP. You be the judge on which you think better or more modern, but my vote says open-source PHP is superior to the closed-source ASP.NET.

That’s all the evidence I need. John McCain’s website is worse, therefore John McCain knows nothing about horses and the American spirit.

Wow, good on the Huffington Post for somehow tracking this. It’s a bit of an underestimate, and friends have reported that their donations don’t appear on it. Still really cool.

So FiveThirtyEight.com is pretty badass. We’ll all be dead tired of hearing of poll after projection after prediction, but FiveThirtyEight is the only place you need listen to. The guy (Nate Silver) who runs it got some notice after being the only source to accurately predict the North Carolina & Indiana Democratic primary results (everyone else all predicted Hillary would do a lot better). Nate also has an admitted pro-Obama bias, but his math is so detailed, intense, and transparent that I don’t see it bleeding into the numbers. His blog post analyses, optimistic for the Democratic party, are very pleasant to the ears.

I found it pretty shocking to see the party registration numbers for the United states. 72 million Democrats, 55 million Republicans. So how come Republicans have won 7 of the last 10 presidential elections? How do they even compete?

There are tons of reasons. They do better at turnout operations on Election Day. They have the old, who vote reliably, and Democrats have a bunch of young flakes. Then there’s that twice as many Americans identify as conservative than do as liberal. The word ‘liberal’ is a bad word in American politics, and Obama has to spend time foolishly trying to bat the term away from him, even though he is the very definition of the word, and it’s exactly what most of his base likes about him!

One stark reality, that really troubles me, is that males lean Republican, and especially white males, and especially white evangelical males. But even just males alone lean Republican. Practically every other demographic that matters votes Democratic. Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asian Americans. Women. So much diversity in America, and just the one racio-gendric contingency that demands strong conservative ideals be taken seriously. It’s easy to understand why the Republican party takes the unforgiving stance on a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants that they do.

If Barack Obama wins this election, it will be a bell tolling that the biggest ingredient in the melting pot has finally melted. And if not, then maybe the oven needs another goddamn 20 years of simmering, and my idealism had better still be around when it’s done.

On this historic night, I can finally break my carefully guarded neutrality, and announce that I support Barack Obama for the president of the United States.

Drudge Report is the site to watch today. It’s all coming to an end.

Watch superdelegate endorsements stream in on the campaign’s blog (more current than the front page).

Today is a big day. I remember when the 2 weeks between Wisconsin and Ohio/Texas day seemed to never end. The days ground on, and March 4th never seemed any closer. I was spending an hour a day on Google News searching for ‘obama’. After that reaffirmed the race as an artifically constructed tie that I would have to endure for another 6 weeks, I made myself calm down, and since then have spent maybe only 20 minutes a day scraping for news.

Still, that’s 20 minutes every day, and though the time has moved a lot faster I can still remember how much has happened. It’s easy to have begun this process intrigued, even excited, and now be at a point of apathy and cynicism. The candidates start to blur together after so long without news. Sure, Obama set himself apart with A More Perfect Union, but that was ages ago, and it had already been ages when he did it. Now things feel more blurry. Even the Obama campaign has done and is now doing some negative campaigning.

But I’m still excited. It’s our country’s future, and very little can diminish my investment in any race deciding it. I’ll be proud to watch Hillary Clinton be sworn in on Inauguration Day, and happy to have ‘taken back’ the country. To see Obama be inaugurated would give me not only that, but an overwhelming sense of awe, at our own people that are capable of such self-renewal after a period of long social degradation and repeated barrages of fear-mongering. That sensation would be utterly new to me, and the allure of its purity keeps me energized to support Barack Obama, and fight this until the knockout punch is delivered, so we can all relax and move on to the next stage of our nation’s healing.

That knockout punch probably won’t happen today, but if Obama keeps it close (close like Texas, not like Ohio) then I expect to seal the deal with North Carolina and Indiana in two weeks’ time. If that’s the case, my sense of time will surely dilate all over again, and I will live in slow turmoil.

Latest in national polls from Gallup Daily
Latest in PA polls, summarized at a USA Today blog
Politweets, a live aggregation of twitters about candidates