One Million Strong

Welcome to One Million Strong

by: psericks

Thu Oct 18, 2007 at 19:54:28 PM CDT

The Obama campaign is unique in the amount of energy and innovation that it has spawned on the web: people like Farouk Olu Aregbe and Tamer Abouzeid who changed the way people think about the Facebook; Meredith Segal, who in 2006 founded the Facebook group that was to become the official student wing of Obama's campaign; citizen ad creators like lovingj; independent bloggers like sage

reader of Think on These Things; assorted Kossacks and MyDD diarists; and, yes, Phillip de Vellis and Joe Anthony.

But until now, all of these independent efforts have lacked a central meeting place. There hasn't been a central blogroll or a place to recognize those efforts.

Sponsored by and affiliated with the Facebook group One Million Strong for Barack, One Million Strong was founded with three main goals in mind:

1. To serve as a gathering place for Obama supporters in the blogosphere.

2. To bridge the gap between the blogosphere and the energy for Obama on the Facebook.

3. To provide a forum for discussion of progressive policy, politics, and activism.

Mapping the Obama Blogosphere

While there have been some previous efforts to set up blogrolls, we'd like to develop the most thorough and engaging --- the most useful --- blogroll of active Obama supporter blogs on the web. I will also be doing regular round-ups of news and commentary on Obama's campaign around the blogosphere.

More than that, I hope to review and profile various bloggers and online grassroots efforts.

We have hired a Salesforce expert to help us to manage our interaction with current and future interested parties. We figured if businesses flock to this cloud based platform to increase their users productivity, improve data quality, and automate manual processes, while also being able to adapt quickly to a company's or organization's changing requirements, why not us. Our expert is also able to customize Salesforce crm apps to our specific needs as well as offer well-developed, integrated cloud-computing applications. Any customization is easy to scale and maintain on the Force.com platform using Salesforce as the engine. So as we grow our Salesforce org will scale and adapt appropriately. We feel we are in good hands as far as the IT aspect is concerned.

If there are active blogs that we've missed, please feel free to add a comment in this thread or to send us an email at admin@onemillionstrong.us.

Feel free, of course, to cross post your blog entries here in the diaries. Let others know what you're working on. Make yourself at home.

Help Us Be Helpful

Lastly, this is meant to be a community resource. That means that if you have any suggestions about additional features, about our mission or about the direction of this blog, please feel free to leave your comments. We want to know how we can be more helpful.

Second, however, that also means that there is a communal responsibility to keep the discussion threads clean and respectful, to be just and responsible in our criticism of other candidates. Excessive bashing of Obama or the Democratic Party will not be tolerated.

Anyway, welcome to One Million Strong! Let me know if you have any questions.

Open Thread

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President Elect Barack Obama

by: jlarson

Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 22:39:27 PM CST

The party is Grant Park folks, Chicago's front yard!!

By late morning Tuesday, Chicago was willingly taken captive by the plans for an enormous election party in the city’s front yard, Grant Park, where Senator Barack Obama, will spend election night. According to city officials, by the time of Mr. Obama’s victory speech an estimated 240,000 people have gathered in the park and its surrounding streets.

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Election Day Open Thread

by: jlarson

Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 09:22:03 AM CST

Voting was smooth in my area of Arlington Heights (IL) but it has been so for the last 12 years at least. Today, no more than a 30 minute wait (but others have seen as long as 1 hr, 20 min. at our location). I really hope Dan Seals can ride Obama's coattails into office. We'll post another open thread tonight for results, but meanwhile, how is it going for you today?

Here is what the Obama's have been doing this morning. I wonder why they look so happy? Or maybe one of them said something humorous just before the snap.



What web resources are you looking at tonight to watch the results? I'm using greenpaper's poll close times along with this great graphic from the Swing State Project based on Green Papers data. Other than that I'm following Nate's projections and Al's projections and DemConWatch. I think all of these websites have been among the best through this election.

Not having cable TV, I might have PBS on if Brooks and Shields don't hog too much of the time.

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Studs Terkel Will be Missed

by: jlarson

Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 04:49:26 AM CDT

At age 96, Studs Terkel died on Friday. He became a national treasure and an icon of Chicago by chronicling the lives and struggles of regular folks. He was a distinctly skilled interviewer. He was a listener. Many remember his WFMT radio show after which he signed off with his Woody Guthrie inspired line, "Take it easy, but take it."



I last saw him in person at a Chicago anti-invasion protest in October 2002. He was sharp and feisty as he commented on Bush's distinct lack of wisdom about invading Iraq. He spoke about how when George Bush prayed to God, God responded, "George, you're a dull boy!". He praised the people there for using their minds and not following the hysteria.

At the same rally people heard a speech from a Chicago politician with a lot of B's and A's in his name.

We will miss Stud's commentary on the election if that politician wins on Tuesday.

Studs spoke at more than one of these rallies and similar content to what I heard is available here:

I think this is my favorite Studes Terkel story, from an interview last year:

"I'm known around the block as a writer and broadcaster," Terkel tells me, "but also as that old guy who talks to himself. I never learnt to drive. Why should I have? The bus was there. So one day I'm on the corner alone, waiting for the 146. I'm talking to myself, finding the audience very appreciative. Then other people arrive; I talk to them too. This one couple ignore me completely. He's wearing Gucci shoes and carrying The Wall Street Journal. She's a looker. Neiman Marcus clothes. Vanity Fair under her arm. So I told them, 'Tomorrow is Labor Day: the holiday to ' honour the unions.' The guy gives me the kind of look Noël Coward might have given a bug on his sleeve. 'We despise unions.' I fix him with my glittering eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and I ask, 'How many hours do you work a day?' He tells me eight. 'How come you don't work 18 hours a day, like your great-grandparents?' He can't answer that. 'Because four men got hanged for you.' I explain that I'm referring to the Haymarket Affair, the union dispute here in Chicago in May 1886. The bus is late. I have him pinned against the mailbox. Then I say, 'How many days a week do you work?' He says five." Terkel laughs, and takes a sip of water. "I say: 'Five – oh, really? How come you don't work six and a half ?' He isn't sure. 'Because of the Memorial Day Massacre. These battles were fought, all for you.' I tell him about that massacre of workers, in Chicago, in 1937. He's never heard of these things before. She drops her Vanity Fair. I pick it up, being gallant. I am giving it to them now: the past. Because, like James Baldwin said, without the past, there is no present. The bus arrives. They leap in. I never see them again. But I'll bet... they live in an upscale condominium that faces the bus stop. I'll bet she looks down every morning, from the 20th floor, and he says: 'Is that old nut still down there?' And can you blame them?" Studs Terkel: The World's Greatest Interviewer (The Independent)

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Inevitability

by: worldtrippers

Wed Oct 01, 2008 at 22:47:06 PM CDT

by jlarson)

I feel great. Things are looking great for the first time in a long time. The polls have never looked better (up in Florida?!). The voter registration numbers are off the hook. Sarah Palin looks destined for disaster in tomorrow's debate. With every upward tick in a tracking poll, with every superb performance by Barack in a Presidential debate, my confidence in the inevitability of 2008 grows.

But what really is inevitable? This is inevitable.

Yep.

Sure, the polls may look good right now, it might seem like we are winning the message war, but that only adds to my apprehension. Can any Democrat feel confident. Remember the first debate in 2004, the most one-sided debate in American history? Nukeular anyone? The stumbles by McCain and Palin might seem almost comedic, day by day piling on top of each other. But there are still five weeks until election day, and that's a damn long time. Too long for anything to really be inevitable.

Well, except maybe for this.

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McCain, Deregulation and the Economy: The Bottom Line

by: monitor

Sun Sep 21, 2008 at 13:41:38 PM CDT

by psericks

I just watched all the Sunday morning talk shows and one overriding theme emerged. Nearly everyone, Democrat or Republican, that got up and talked about our current economic crisis largely blamed the lack of oversight and regulation. Let me repeat that.

The emerging consensus is that a lack of meaningful oversight and regulation over the financial services and mortgage industries is now causing us to socialize both industries and put at risk at least $1 trillion of taxpayer money to bail it out.

In light of this, the choice for President in this coming election has now become absolutely and unarguably clear. McCain has spent his nearly three decades in Washington being aided and abetted by Phil Gramm and his cronies in push through every possible measure to keep the financial and mortgage industries from being subject to meaningful oversight and regulation.

This is how the New York Times describes John McCain's economic regulation pedigree:

[McCain's] record … suggest[s] that he has never departed in any major way from his party’s embrace of deregulation... [H]e has consistently characterized himself as fundamentally a deregulator [yet] he has no history prior to the presidential campaign of advocating steps to tighten standards on investment firms. McCain has always been in his party’s mainstream on the [economic] issue. In early 1995 … McCain promoted a moratorium on federal regulations of all kinds. 'I’m always for less regulation,' he told The Wall Street Journal last March…. 'I am fundamentally a deregulator.'

The bottom line: John McCain's loving embrace of the fundamental Republican dogma of "deregulation, deregulation, deregulation" has caused the worst financial crisis in American history since the Great Depression.

John McCain, Phil Gramm and their Republican cohorts got us into this mess. It would be, at this point in history, absolutely and profoundly wrong for the American people to reward John McCain's failure by electing him to lead the world's biggest economy.

Period.

There is no more room for debate. None.

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Election Results - Open Thread

by: jlarson

Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 17:17:12 PM CST

What web resources are you looking at tonight to watch the results? I'm using greenpaper's poll close times along with this great graphic from the Swing State Project based on Green Papers data. Other than that I'm following Nate's projections and Al's projections and DemConWatch. I think all of these websites have been among the best through the primaries and general election.

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I Voted

by: Vermonter

Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 10:09:29 AM CST

Proudest vote of my life...

OneMillionStrong.us