I'm going, but still looking to split a hotel room with someone.  Get at me at nkmankani -at- gmail.com if you are interested.

Being on the Lisa team, I obviously voted for Lisa.

I gotta admit, though, the Burns video is hilarious.

Nirmal

She is great.  I just threw her ten bucks yesterday.

Wow, I don't really know what to say.  If it weren't for your and Matt's writing, I would never have started blogging.  MyDD is still the first website I read every morning.

Causes is a really phenomenal concept for an app, and formalizes some key aspects of peer-to-peer political organizing.  Facebook is the perfect platform for leveraging networks of personal friends to do this kind of thing.  I love how the app shows how many people you have recruited and how much money you've raised -- it's sort of like the pyramid/direct-marketing system.

However, I don't think that Causes is quite "there" yet.  Here's what added functionality I'd love to see:

- Users should be able to build out their group's page a lot more extensively.  You know how in your individual Facebook profile, you can change your layout, add pictures, add a feed from your blog, etc.?  With apps, you can add video and other neat widgets to your profile.  Causes would be a much more flexible tool if it could do the same thing.

- Being able to invite only ten of your friends to the Cause at a time is a significant limitation.

- Causes should be a one-stop shop for political activism.  Ideally, the interface would help users easily sign petitions, send mail to their legislators, and send letters to the editor to their local newspapers, all right through Facebook.  If the app knows the user's zip code, it should pull up the right newspapers and legislators automatically.

- I presume that admins of Causes groups can message all the members of the group, right?

- Any user should be able to pull a list of all of the members of the group, not just see the most recent members.

I have no idea how much the Facebook development platform limits the implementation of some of this stuff, but it would make for a much more effective organizing tool.

-Nirmal

native-born immigrants

my bad, I meant native born workers, not native born immigrants.  it's late :-P

Hey dkmich :)

The immigration bill may raise government spending, but it will also strengthen our economy and increase government revenue.  Immigrants, both directly and indirectly, support the federal benefits that you mentioned.

They support these programs directly by paying taxes.  Indirectly, they support these programs by increasing demand for American goods and services, which creates jobs and revenue.  Companies founded by first-generation immigrants employ hundreds of thousands of native-born immigrants and pay corporate taxes in many states.  This issue isn't as clear cut as "they're using all of our benefits."

Additional costs estimated through 2011:

* 870 miles of border fence and vehicle barriers $3.3 billion
 * Detention facilities for 20,000 people $2.6 billion
 * Employment eligibility verification system $1.6 billion
 * 100 new helicopters and 250 powerboats $1.4 billion
 * 1,000 additional Border Patrol agents $800 million

Increased spending on border enforcement (particularly in terms of a fence) is probably not going to be an efficient allocation of funding, but it's part of the deal, I guess.  I'm not too thrilled about it either.

-Nirmal

No idea -- they just sent this out today.

They've called out Edwards the same way.

Believe it or not, some people evaluate these issues before they side with a candidate.

Although it looks pretty cool, it seems like using this with friends in early states could end up annoying them.

Facebook's open platform is really going to change the way that it's used.  Instead of just being able to do anything that the Facebook team envisions, now Facebook can do anything that the users envision.

Causes is good, but I'd really like to see something even more sophisticated than that for movement building.  I think that being able to write your own apps has a lot of community-building potential.  Previously most of the activism on Facebook has been "soft" (like, do you want to join this group to show support for a cause, click yes or no).  What's missing is a way to pull those people into engaging in activism right from Facebook itself.

We've already seen what organizers can do with an open platform like Drupal (CiviCRM).  I can't wait to see what folks like MoveOn come up with.

-Nirmal

Wanting to believe something doesn't make it right.  Her pre-Iraq rhetoric was very hawkish.

This is off-topic, but is Landstander a reference to the "Home Movies" tv show?

I'm suprised it took The Simpsons this long to snap.  They've always had problems with Fox, but I've never seen them overtly go after the network like this.

Ron Paul's support on Digg is a byproduct of an organized effort that violates Digg's terms of service.  It's too late to be pointing that out now, though.

It seems like a lot of Ron Paul's support comes from Digg -- I'd heard about him from there first.  That's how he's destroying every online poll, and how his supporters were able to flood Saul Anuzis of the Michigan GOP with all kinds of messages.  They might not be all that politically aware, but they are a very active and devoted group of users.

It does seem that truly decentralized work is happening on Ron Paul's behalf.  This Ron Paul graphic design community is a great example of that.

The fact that the GOP isn't bringing Ron Paul into the fold or capitalizing on this activity is advantageous for us.