New Dog, Old Family Tricks
Over on DailyKos, mcjoan has a diary up entitled
Reid on "Numbers" which is itself mcjoan's transcript from a clip of Nevada Senator Harry Reid speaking about the 2500th soldier killed in Iraq courtesy of AMERICAblog/Politics TV.
George H.W. Bush and his wife have an elitist history that not many folks discuss these days. One of the most offensive terms I have ever heard in my life was when I learned that the former President on a regular basis refers to us common folks as "OFU" which stands for One Fodder Unit, his cute way of removing any individuality and humanity from us rabble. This is why Babs is constantly suffering from Foot In Mouth Disease and why their idiot son W is always so aloof around the OFU.
These people have to be reminded that the OFU do not like being considered fodder for their wars. This is not a reality TV show called Survivor: Iraq, there is no Rupert in Fallujah. No naked guys named Richard running around Baghdad. There are soldiers and specialists named Steve and Jeremy and Miguel.
There are kids back home this weekend crying for Father's Day instead of grilling out. Maybe Tony Snow would like to grill some steaks for a number of the survivors of the 2500 and have a chat with wives who have lost husbands, mothers who have lost sons and sisters that have lost brothers.
Next time you feel like you can't do anything about these people or don't think by volunteering you're not making a difference, remember they want you to stay as an OFU. Action is all these people understand. 1000 paper cuts will still bleed them to death. Volunteer to get your share of paper cuts from passing out flyers at the July 4th action!
New Logo Unveiled
It is with great excitement that I present to you our new Hoosier Roots Project logo! Check it out below and leave comments about what you think of the logo. This is going to adorn all of our official communications, flyers, banners and other publications.
MySpace and the Marketing of a Movement in the Digital Age
The last few years have seen
unprecedented growth in the numbers of Internet users with more than half of the country reporting regular use of the Internet at home and most of the country accessing the Internet from work or school. While there are a multitude of professional and scholastic uses of the Internet being reported, the number one area of Internet usage that has seen popular growth is in the area of
social usage of the Internet[PDF].
The Internet as a social engine has been developing for some time and the technologies through which we use the Internet are becoming ever more diverse. In addition to the normal computer-Internet connection method of usage, cell phones, PDAs, mp3 players and a slew of other devices have facilitated even more traffic on the Internet. Driving a substantial portion of that usage is accessing the social networking sites, the most significant player among them the site known as
MySpace.com.
MySpace is a
major phenomenon in the social usage of the Internet. This one site has boasted traffic figures on a monthly basis of millions of users, most of them young people from 14-24 who use the service to communicate between friends, to make new friends and acquaintances and to follow their favorite pop cultural icons, musicians, athletes and other celebrities who have established a marketing presence on MySpace.
Every new movie that is released by the
major Hollywood studios has a MySpace page associated with it. Every musician, comedian, author and soft drink company in America that markets themselves to young people establish a MySpace presence before they establish a full blown website. No serious marketing effort toward the under 30 crowd is without plans for a MySpace campaign and therefore, the Roots Project should not be without one either.
The idea behind any MySpace marketing effort is the drive to acquire "friends" for your MySpace page. Users login to their MySpace accounts and then visit the pages of other users to learn more about each others interests, read blog entries, listen to music shared on each others' pages and link to each others' pages via the Friend Space section of their pages where they can leave short comments.
Once a link is established between pages, both users' main image and page link are displayed in the Friends Space section of both users for all their other friends to see. It is very similar to what takes place in the blogosphere in comments sections, but it all takes place on individual pages for each MySpace user and allows for the posting of their images in the comments as well. This also facilitates the introduction of both friends' users to the other friends' users.
The Roots Project has established a presence on MySpace at the following URL:
http://www.myspace.com/rootsproject. Using this simple URL by including it in the signature line of every email you send, or by including it in signature lines of comments sections and message board forums will go a long way toward spreading the word of our MySpace presence. The more MySpace users that become aware of and link to our MySpace page, the better opportunity we will have to spread our name quickly among young Internet users who will become interested in what we are doing and help to support our efforts.
While there is a debate to be had about the semantics of quantity of RP members vs. quality, no matter where you come down in that debate an effort MUST be made to reach out to younger people if the Roots Project is going to succeed. No one is saying we should go find thousands of MySpace users to join our cause, or to dilute our message for the youth market. Young people have much more at stake these days in what goes on in Washington DC than in the recent past and every effort to reach out to them and inform them on issues is of paramount importance to our cause.
America Wakes Up
Noted journalist Greg Sargent in his new blog asserts
Voters Don't Just Oppose Bush; they Oppose His Whole Party. I couldn't agree more with his analysis, you can hear the anti GOP buzz getting louder in the streets. The culprit for this dissatisfaction with the GOP in a
recent Fox News poll seems to be gas prices at 29%, while Iraq is only an issue for 13%.
Voters are notoriously self interested and this poll seems to track that meme perfectly. Many people only care about issues that affect their own well being. I think we as activists need to keep this in mind as we try to interact with voters. We have to show people it is in their own self interest to reject the policies of the BushCo machine and accept policies that have a benefit not just for themselves, but for everybody.
I know this sounds to some like an argument for the advocation of the common good. I have to say there is a subtle difference however. The common good has long been associated with leftist/liberal ideology and has been attacked and smeared to the point where mentioning the common good will elicit a vitriolic response and harangues about socialism and so on and so forth.
There is a way to argue for the common good while making the idea seem like it is one of self interest as well. By advocating for policies that benefit all, direct connections to how these policies affect individuals will show them that by supporting these policies they are supporting their self interests and the interests of their neighbors. After all, the group is only as strong as the individuals within that group. We must begin to understand this better or we are doomed to repeat the failures of our past.
Roots Project Conference Call
We had a wonderful conversation this afternoon and I wanted to share the podcast I made of the Roots Project conference call. Click the play button below to listen.
Subscribe Free Add to my Page
It's Fun to Be on the Right Side of History
It's Fun to Be on the Right Side of History according to Matt Stoller at MyDD.com in a discussion of the Ned Lamont campaign's achievement of landing on the Democrat primary ballot with 33% of the state Democratic convention delegates voting to put him there. This is being celebrated as a victory in the Roots Project and netroots movement, showcasing the effect the netroots movement is having on the political scene.
Things are changing and there is a
buzz in the
air that
A Change Is Gonna Come. Now is the time to get together, organize and make the necessary moves to affect regime change in our nation's capitol. The Lamont victory has put us on their radar and a pushback is coming. It's time to meet them head on in the War of Ideas showing them once and for all that we love our country and will take on those who do damage to our home.
Nedrenaline Pumps A Victory!
Ned Lamont, the Democratic primary challenger to CT Sen. Joe Lieberman has managed to
land himself a spot on the official primary ballot in the CT Democrat primary in August. Lamont needed 15% of delegates to the state convention to place his name on the official ballot, and Lieberman's goon tactics and machine style politics were threatening to keep him off the slated ballot, forcing him to gather signatures in a field campaign to get on the August ballot.
Now the Lamont campaign can get down to the brass tacks of persuading Democrats in CT to vote for him on the ballot instead of having to gather signatures. This ought to have a serious effect on the Lieberman outfit, now that they must defend a challenger in the primary with serious support.
The anti-incumbent crusade in this country is gathering steam and is taking out the most egregious defenders of the status quo. Entrenched politicians like Lieberman who have failed to listen to the voters in their constituency are paying the price for their arrogance and this is the latest of what will hopefully be a string of voter induced retirements to come this fall.
Writings on the Wall
Wired News today brings us a story entitled
Pa. voter revolt may portend trouble that discusses the 11 Republicans that lost to their primary opponents in the just concluded Pennsylvania primaries. Included in the 11 were the state legislature's 2 highest ranking state senators, similar to what happened earlier this month in our own Indiana primary which saw Senate Pro Tem President Bob Garton, R-Columbus, lose his primary challenge to Greg Walker, a first time candidate for public office.
The voters are angry and they are finally venting years of frustrations in fierce anti-incumbent voting fervor. The political landscape is similar this year to that Watergate backlash election year of 1976 which swept Jimmy Carter to power.
We have the best chance ever to elect progressive minded candidates who wish to restore civil liberties, preserve our Constitution and begin to repair the damage that has been done to our system of governance by the GOP.
Action Alert: Please Swarm Senate Intellegence Comittee!!
[cross posted from FireDogLake.com]Once More to the Faxes and Phones…
By Christy Hardin Smith
Despite the fact that the major news networks have decided to go to coverage of an arriagnment hearing for an alleged rapist at Duke University -- about which the entire country is riveted why, exactly? -- the hearings on Hayden's potential confirmation as DCI continue. Don't know how many of you participated in the ACLU-sponsored call with Bruce Fein, but it was excellent.
I did a summary, and thought it might be helpful for everyone else:
http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/05/18/once-more-to-the-faxes-and-phones/I just got off a phone conference call that the
ACLU arranged with
Bruce Fein regarding the Hayden nomination for DCI and the implications that the hearings might have for the illegal domestic wiretapping without a warrant in which the NSA has been engaged.
One of the things that Bruce Fein said struck me, and I wanted to bring it to everyone's attention here: the Bush Administration is doing everything it can to prevent any of the illegally collected data and information from being used in any courtroom conte4xt, because they do not want to have to face the consequences of a constitutional challenge to their failure to obtain a lawful warrant. Think about that for a moment — Bruce Fein is no liberal, he is a very conservative Reagan Republican, having worked in the DoJ as Deputy Attorney General in the Reagan Administration.
And he is saying, out loud, that the Bush White House is avoiding constitutional scrutiny because they know — they KNOW — they will be shown to be what they are. Lawbreakers.
And Congress has been letting them get away with this, because they have put their perceived duty to their party and to partisanship and division ahead of their duty to the nation, to our principles and our Constitution.
This must stop. And that’s where all of our readers come in — if you can, today, please take the time to e-mail, FAX or call the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, first, and ask them to place partisanship aside and put the good of the country and our constitutional system of government first in how they evaluate General Hayden and the NSA wiretapping programs in which he was involved.
Here is
a great link to contact information for all of the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. You can phone toll free through the Capitol switchboard at 888-355-3588 and they will transfer you to the various Senate offices.
Reader Anne asks an excellent question, one that every member of the Intelligence Committee ought to be asking:
I’d like to ask: “given how any information about NSA programs has only come to our attention through the media, how can I be certain that we have now been fully briefed? Give me a reason why we should trust that we aren’t going to find out in six weeks or six months that there are other programs, or other aspects of the current program that someone just “forgot” to tell us, or decided we really didn’t need to know. How can we be certain, given the president’s predilection for authorizing that laws and procedures can be ignored, that we are only being briefed to the extent that the president has decided is appropriate?”
Amen to that. Let the sun shine in — but the only way that will happen is if we let the members of the Committee, and also our own Senators, know that we expect them to do their jobs — forcefully, appropriately, and completely. Senators ought not be satisfied with a Jesuit-like, complex answer to a straightforward question, where Gen. Hayden finishes by saying he can’t answer in open session. The American public deserves answers, not being put off with "trust me" platitudes. Frankly, I don’t trust them — I’d rather have some facts, and a whole hell of a lot more sunshine.
Please take a little time today to contact the Senators on the Intelligence Committee and also your own Senators and let them know how you feel and what you expect. After all, they work for us — it’s about damn time they earned their paychecks.
Also, if there are questions that you would like to see asked, put them in the comments. Let’s see if we can get some of them to folks on the Committee who would be willing to ask them — I’ll see what I can do to harness the brainpower on this website for good.
UPDATE: I missed another great Bruce Fein point from my notes: that the Hayden hearings have done nothing to dispel — and have, in fact made it more of a concern — that there is no line that Hayden wouldn’t cross if the President asked him to do so. Which makes the need for real, meaningful oversight all the more necessary. Very sobering, isn’t it, to think that our hope for oversight of the Administration’s overstepping might rest on the shoulders of Pat Roberts and Peter Hoekstra. (Oh, and Arlen Specter. How COULD I have forgotten Jack Cafferty’s last, great hope?)
My Left Wing :: Forever War and The New American Police State
Steven D of My Left Wing has a fantastic post that gives as concise an overview of what we are up against as I have ever seen:
My Left Wing :: Forever War and The New American Police State. This is a long post but is well worth reading in its entirety.
Welcome to the Hoosier Roots Project!
Welcome to the Hoosier Roots Project, I am the project manager for Indiana and primary statewide contact for the open source lobbying experiment known as the
Roots Project. The
Roots Project began as a collaborative effort between a coalition of bloggers that began with an alliance between
DailyKos,
FireDogLake and Glenn Greenwald's
Unclaimed Territory to provide a semi organized effort to support progressive candidates and causes, promote grassroots activism in the local communities and provide a community for progressives everywhere.
I will try to keep this blog updated with news of interest to Hoosier progressives, information about Roots Project action alerts and other information. If you would be interested, I intend to maintain an open door editorial policy unless that becomes a nightmare for some reason. If anyone would like posting privileges on this blog please email me at
finifinito@gmail.com and let me know. If there is any interest in the future, we could maybe setup a message board or something.
The Google Group will be the primary method of contact from the Hoosier Roots Project to our members, so be sure to visit our page at
http://groups.google.com/group/stateproject-indiana. I look forward to working with you all and I especially look forward to victory in the fall elections.
In Liberty,
Joh Padgett
Hoosier Roots Project
