Tag: politics

  • How to criticize Obama as a terrible negotiator

    If Obama’s opening position is too close to the expected split-the-difference middle, point out that he is caving and that the deal will be too far to the right. If Obama’s opening position is much further to the left (including, say, a public option or a permanent solution to the debt-ceiling b.s.), say that he…

  • Meg Whitman is a biter

    Tipped off by my old buddy and collaborator Levi Asher, I learned that Meg Whitman and her as-told-to coauthor do in fact favor recycling, at least when it comes to book titles: Since I own the domain called thepowerofmany.com, I’m thinking about redirecting it somewhere interesting at least through election day. Any suggestions? via (Twitter…

  • What was the Watergate scandal?

    Another in my new series of longwinded Aardvark answers made public, in this case answering a question about U.S. history from a 19 year-old in New York State: “What was the watergate scandal?” Here’s my answer. (How’d I do?*): Watergate is the name of a famous hotel in Washington, D.C. where a lot of political…

  • Too risky!

    Looks like Jay Smooth has decoded the McCain ad strategy: (via Vivirlatino via Jenternational)

  • Get Your War On says time for us to come together

    to kill all the bankers and steal their money:

  • A message to you, Rudy

    Since Rudy Giuliani is running for president of 9/11, WFMU is running a remix contest encouraging people to put together tracks using his incessant invocation of that day (when his command center proved to be so ill-placed): > Here’s over two minutes of wall to wall September Eleventh’s, courtesy of America’s mayor. Your mission: turn…

  • Set the terms of the debate

    TechPresident, a project of Personal Democracy Forum (which I used to write for), in cooperation with the New York Times and MSNBC, has launched a site called 10 Questions where anyone can suggest a question for the presidential candidates and anyone can vote the suggested questions up or down. It’s a kind of more open…

  • Strategery at the New School?

    So I’m standing outside of the Parsons , where we were putting on the IDEA 2007 conference this past week when two guys in suits with their arms literally around each other’s shoulders, laughing and schmoozing like the bunch of dyed-in-the-wool politicians I realize they are….

  • Oakland for Obama?

    Just got a call from an organizer named Barbara with the local Barack Obama for President campaign, telling me they are opening a new Northern California campaign office in downtown Oakland….

  • Shining a spotlight on money in politics

    I’ve written about MAPlight before but from time to time I feel the need to post an update about the amazing work it’s doing. (Disclosure: I am an advisor to this nonprofit, although my direct involvement is limited.) Since the last time I mentioned MAPlight it’s gone from just documenting donations to California politicians to…

  • Bloggers trying to have it both ways with the FEC?

    I read Chris Nolan because she makes me think and she teases out subtleties that ordinarily might escape me. In The Man Behind the Curtain she takes Kos to task for promoting a future in which bloggers have all the exemptions of journalists and all the freedoms of partisan hacks: The idea of getting money…

  • TPM Cafe launches

    Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo blog has spawned a group weblog experiment called TPM Café. Like other popular political community blogs such as Daily Kos, MyDD, and RedState.org, TPMCafe runs on Scoop. For more information about participating, see the site’s Frequently Asked Questions.

  • Did Hugh skew it?

    Over at Personal Democracy Forum, Micah Sifry reviews Hugh Hewitt’s book Blog (about the political blogosphere) and finds it useful but hopelessly biased toward the right. This shouldn’t be surprising, given Hewitt’s day job as a right-wing talk radio host, but it’s still somewhat disconcerting given the misleadingly neutral-sounding title of the book. It seems…

  • Thinking out loud

    In My Back Pages, billmon explains why he reopened the Whiskey Bar and what motivated his continued approach to blogging: So what are you supposed to do when high officials in your own government – in power, right now – brag publicly, if anonymously, about committing (or at least enabling) bestial war crimes? What do…

  • State of the Union chat

    Feel like snarking back at the president or celebrating the Iraqi franchise or critiquing the production values of the pageant? I’ll be here: Join in a State of the Union BackChannel Chat, Tonight | Personal Democracy Forum (reblogged from The Power of Many: How to sit in the peanut gallery for tonight’s State of the…

  • Annotating the Winer/Trippi podcast

    Over at Civilities, Jon Garfunkel has done provided us all a useful service by partly transcribing and commenting on the recent Dave Winer interview of Joe Trippi that deals with Zephyr Teachout’s take on the Dean campaign’s hiring of Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas as consultants (Dissecting the Most Important Podcast Interview to Date). Disclosure:…

  • Bloggers in the Oval Office

    Quoting The bloggers in the Oval Office… (BuzzMachine): Omar and Mohammed just told me about their visit to the Oval Office this week. They said President Bush assured them that we would finish the job this time. They told the President that they were grateful for their liberation and that the coalition did a great…

  • Posting to Drupal / CivicSpace sites with MarsEdit

    I had this problem recently trying to post to Personal Democracy Forum from MarsEdit (the Ranchero application I use with NetNewsWire, my feedreader). James Walker has the solution (using drupal’s blogapi with MarsEdit | walkah) – it involves selecting Movable Type instead of Drupal to get full category support.

  • Blogging the vote count / election fraud story

    in Freeing the facts, California Insider Dan Weintraub writes: This NY Times piece on the role of blogs in fanning, and then debunking, stories of fraud in the presidential vote carries at least a mildly handwringing tone, as if somehow this turn of events was unfortunate. I disagree.

  • Blogging the election

    As if I didn’t already have enough places to post blog entries, I’ve recently become a contributing editor at Personal Democracy Forum where the staff is furiously blogging the election all day, particularly looking for technology related angles. We’ll be watching the buzz, the pollwatchers, the chatter coming from social media centers, and any other…

  • Chilling effects

    A letter from a city councilmember running for mayor of LA to an anonymous blogger (4th Floor Blog) has convinced her to shut down her blog (via Martini Republic and LA Observed). Here’s part of the letter: I appreciate the opportunity to respond to your comments, no matter how misguided and totally out of focus…