techPresident - Barack Obama - Comments

Obama has anti-FISA dissent trapped........

Freedomfighter — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:47:51 -0400

Patrick, you bring up some serious points, but Obama has trapped the dissent on his site. Unless they break off and unite with some other group, they are still coming back to Obama for their dissent. Jarvis is absolutely right and echoes what I have said: candidates are not an effective way to push an issue, unless the candidate is the leader of the issue.

Obama also has the ability to "kill" the dissent after the election by wiping the site clean. As President, by doing so, he would have shut down the dissent. This is the only real benefit for having the network open to dissent. You find out who are your loyal followers and who is not. So, keep your eyes open to see where the anti-FISA advocates go.

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."
Sun-tzu
Chinese general & military strategist (~400 BC)

Local Politics

Justine Lam — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:58:08 -0400

Thanks for highlighting that article by Chuck Raasch. The next phase in politics and technology will be utilizing internet/mobile tools to bring back civic participation in our local communities wherever we live.

As former eCampaign Director for Ron Paul's presidential campaign, I learned how key it was for our supporters to be involved on the local level of politics and government. If we had a larger base of political support, we could have done better in primaries than we did otherwise. Our supporters would've understood the rules of the game in every state.

Local politics is the vision that our Republic was founded upon, local community control, individuals organizing to make decisions about their communities & their lives, not a strong centralized federal government in Washington, DC making our decisions.

Currently, I work at Politicker.com an online political news site which is dedicated to covering the very local to state level politics in all 50 states (we have 15 states thus far). Our journalists on-the-ground in each state cover the political news and our anonymous "Wally Edge" gives us insider coverage.

Hopefully, we can help to educate and inform a politically passionate citizenry to become more engaged with politics in their different localities -- which will then trickle up in the political system.

Justine Lam
Director of Online Marketing
http://www.politicker.com

Thanks Micah...

junothiall — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:31:27 -0400

I couldn't find it even with a search yesterday. I wait with baited breath to see if Sen. Obama does stand firm.

Not true about MoveOn backing down

Micah L. Sifry — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:07:26 -0400

See http://pol.moveon.org/immunity/080621obama.html. I must have put up a bad link in my original post. Looks to me like this campaign is still very much kicking.

MoveOn.org has deleted its page on taking Obama to task

junothiall — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:53:14 -0400

Interesting, eh?

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE?!

thegreathal — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 05:20:43 -0400

No, freedomfighter, you're teaching the Obamacans the wrong message here. I believe full well that if Obama didn't flee his original position on civil liberties, he would benefit in the polls, or at least not lose the election--though he will strand his supporters.

It's that Obama chose to lie about FISA anyway is the lesson on how politics works for Obamacans. While in many cases having an actual candidate that's directly inside government is infinitely useful to a group or movement, if you're going to blindly dedicate yourself to a candidate, make sure s/he halfway believes in your issue (or in Obama's case, any issue) before it's too late to withdraw your support. Their dedication becomes the selling out of their own beliefs, and while it's good that Obamacans are just now learning how to criticize, their end result will be electing a Bush Democrat with utter contempt for the Left to the White House.

Also, please fix the broken link and missing sentence in the second paragraph, please!

so the Obamanians are upset with Obama

Freedomfighter — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:04:32 -0400

Obama took positions on issues he can not deliver on. He will either abandon the positions and turn on his supporters who have no where to go, or he will be brought down by the voters. Looks like the Obamanians are beginning to understand how politics works. If you like an issue, stick with it and build a movement, not a candidate, for it.

Supporting on Facebook takes just a click

ari — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:16:07 -0400

while becoming part of my.barackobama requires registering for a new
site.

Chris Hughes wrote a post which includes the over one million
s supporters graphic they now have on the facebook page

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/chrishughesatthecampaign/g...

http://flickr.com/photos/ari/ photos

http://del.icio.us/tigerbeat interesting articles & sites

http://twitter.com/tigerbeat

Yes we can, yes they can

Micah L. Sifry — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:56:53 -0400

AndyCarvin and sull:
It's Twitter, so anyone can join in. If you want to post a question to the candidates' representatives, you can use the #pdfdebate tag. I'm sure Ana will be looking at what bubbles up. And if one of the third-party candidates wants to chime in with their answers, they can do that too by using the #pdfbeta tag. Who's stopping them? Not us. Just use common sense, folks, and don't spam the participants.
Micah

Why No 3rd Party?

sull — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:53:54 -0400

I am interested to know why this is not extended to Ralph Nader or other 3rd party candidates?

Great idea!

LeighAnn — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:44:57 -0400

I love this idea. I think answers should be limited to 140 characters with no links and no follow-ups. Ha!

Ditto the hope that it'll lead to a candidate twebate.

Looking forward to it ...

Managing Editor
James Hubbard's My Family Doctor
www.MyFamilyDoctorMag.com/blog
http://twitter.com/FamilyDoctorMag

true representation?

senatorgrant — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:30:43 -0400

love the idea. unclear as to whether liza mair will be actively working with mccain to craft answers together, or if mike nelson will be doing the same with obama.

- Eric Grant
- KnowledgeWorks Foundation
- http://www.futureofed.org

user interaction?

andycarvin — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:40:22 -0400

Will Ana Marie actively solicit questions from Twitter users? Can we pose questions by including the @pdfdebate hashtag? It certainly would be easy enough to follow proposed questions via hashtags.org, summize.com, etc. That certainly would make it a lot more interesting, not to mention authentic to the Twitter experience.

It should be interesting

ari — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:20:00 -0400

And hopefully it will lead to a twitter debate between the candidates (or at least inspire them to use twitter more often and better).

http://flickr.com/photos/ari/ photos

http://twitter.com/tigerbeat

The difference

DirtyData — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:03:26 -0400

With Facebook and it's users who have been around for a while, it is not surprising to see it reach 1 Million before my.BO.

What is also interesting is to see that two days ago 926.000 had taken the time to sign up for an account with my.BO instead of just staying with their facebook.

I do wonder if when the general becomes closer and closer to November if we are going to see group messages starting to come out and mass emails across the board from all of BO accounts (On a side note I wonder if this would qualify as the largest series of mass messages from a political candidate).

-DirtyData