tomgeer.com

The Obama campaign did an excellent job using the web as a tool to connect with people during the campaign. The campaign used their presence on the web to mobilize and organize supporters, offering personalized sites and tools and information to help supporters help Obama. For instance, while McCain’s website pushed empty messages like “Joe the Plumber” and “We’ll lower taxes for everybody”, Obama’s site offered widget that let you calculate your personal tax cut. You get the idea.

The transition team is continuing their great work in this area by launching Change.gov. The site gives you simple, to-the-point information about the Agenda, is already promoting “Open Government”, encourages people to share their ideas.

I think this is the first candidate/campaign who has REALLY started to understand the power of the web…and how important it is to generations X & Y.

Good stuff, and it just really helps reaffirm my believe that Obama really is in touch.

Did Palin not know what countries are in NAFTA?

Did she think that Africa was a country?

Did Fox News willingly hold back information about Palin and the infighting on the McCain-Palin campaign until after the election?

Interesting stuff:

It wasn’t that long ago (the 2000) election, where Ralph Nader was very relevant. He arguably shifted enough votes away from Al Gore to give W the victory.

I also remember attending a Pearl Jam concert in Chicago a few months before the election and having Eddie Vedder encourage the full arena to chant “Let Ralph debate, let Ralph debate” (a reference to the fact that he wasn’t allowed to participate in Presidential debates despite polling relatively high).

Yet while much of the country is celebrating, and enjoying a new feeling of hope and unity, this is how Ralph feels…

This is the CNN.com projection at the start of the day. Here’s to keeping it true, or turning it even more blue today!

This is an interesting commentary about tactics used by Elizabeth Dole (incumbent Senator from North Carolina) who is in danger of losing her seat to Kay Hagan.

I think most would agree that the deliberate deceit in the ad is pretty absurd. However, the part that gets me…how is religion even an issue? It is even less relevant to the issues in 2008 than it has been in past elections.

The majority of voters don’t (and/or can’t) stay very well informed about the details of political issues year-round. Most sort of reeducate themselves before election time…and therefore many have a difficult time seeing the forest for the trees. It’s unfortunate that scare tactics and misconception just continue to be used more and more to confuse voters and skew their judgement.

Here in Wisconsin, Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman is facing scrutiny for allegedly running an ad about his opponent that he knew was false. However, he’s only facing charges because this would violate the code of judicial conduct…not any campaign laws. As far as I know, Senator Dole doesn’t have to worry about any consequence for her tactic.

We NEED campaign reform…and perhaps the first front should be should be in the area of ethics instead of financing.

Good stuff from 60frames.

Yes, this article was written by RFK Jr. And yes, the GOP has some reciprocal allegations…but this is scary, scary shit.

Rolling Stone published “Block the Vote”. It is a must read.

I’m not here to claim every word is true. BUT…if you don’t believe that any of it is true, then PLEASE check out what J.B. Von Hollen tried to pull right here in Wisconsin right before this year’s election. All tactics aside, this was bullshit and there’s zero chance the suit would have been filed if McCain were ahead in the WI polls.

Regardless, facts and allegations from the article include:

• Policies to protect against “fraudulent” voters cleared 1/9 of Democrats from registered voter lists in New Mexico
• Voters cleared from the list have no choice but to cast provisional ballots, which can be thrown out by (partisan) election officials without explanation
• Hundreds of thousands of voters could be affected this November
• If this year’s election is as close the previous two, the result could be flipped because of the voters blocked
• At least 1.6 million votes were not counted in 2004
• One US attorney fired by the Bush Administration for not prosecuting voter fraud cases claims to have examined 100 cases over two years, but did not find one legitimate claim
• Recent university analysis showed that only 24 voters were proven guilty of fraud between 2002 and 2005, a period when hundreds of millions of votes were cast
• Due to absurd penalties on voter registration programs for administrative errors (imposed by the Bush Administration and Republican legislature of the early 2000s), the number of annual low-income voter registrations in Florida dropped to about 10,000 per year. That number was about 120,000 per year during the Clinton administration.
• States were encouraged to deny registration to voters whose information doesn’t perfectly match other government records, and some states obliged. Hyphenated name? Different abbreviation for “Drive” in your street address on some of your records…you guessed it, no registration for you.
• The above policy caused over 15,000 voters to be rejected in Florida in 2006 & 2007 (over 11,000 of which were Black or Hispanic). Estimates show that number could be 50,000 this year
• Prior to the 2000 election, Katherine Harris attempted to purge 57,000 voters (mostly African American) from the Florida registration lists because their names resembled those of persons convicted of a crime. The purge was thrown out, but it took two years.
• Two consecutive secretaries of state in Colorado managed to purge one in six voters from the registration lists during their tenure. The latter was rewarded with a federal job on the Election Assistance Commission buy President Bush.
• One of the most crucial demographics in elections is becoming “Americans who have been denied the right to vote.”

All partisan politics aside, its the 21st century. Seriously, it’s time for a new system that can help eliminate these problems.

Again, partially rushing this post out to get my navigation working completely…but this was effin’ cool!

Went to Chicago a couple of weeks ago to see Weezer (with Angels & Airwaves, and Tokyo Police Club). What made it super cool was the chance to meet Brian Bell (and briefly Scott Shriner) because Brian happens to be my lovely girlfriend’s cousin.

Need proof beeootches? Here’s Brian, Christin, and me…

And I’ll be saving this puppy…

Anyway, it was obviously a cool night for a music junkie like me…particularly one who’s been a fan of Weezer since the mid 90s. Great show too. They played a lot of the new stuff (Red Album), but it was largely a “greatest hits” type show featuring much of the Blue Album and old favorites like El Scorcho, Pink Triangle, Dope Nose, Hash Pipe, etc, etc, etc. Oh yeah, and a cool-ass cover of Sliver as well.

So, I admit I feel obligated to get a tech post out here to get my site navigation working properly, but…

Kudos to Relevance for releasing a tool that looks cool. Vasco is billed as a route explorer for rails, but is basically an out-of-the-box tool to manually test REST APIs in Rails apps.

I have to admit, I still wonder why REST was made such a mainstream direction for Rails…but I’m past that. I can already think of some situations where this will come in handy as it evolves.

First, proof that they tampered with elections to some extent in 2004. Next, information about Palin spending ridiculous money on herself and on her kids.

Yes, I’m a liberal…but it seems their in far worse shape than normal. I hope there is some serious self-examination after November 4th.