There's a fantastic post about the OFA Massachussetts meeting on Bottom up Change yesterday.

I recommend reading the entire post--its rich and thoughtful, and gives me some real hope for creating power out of the network of people who initially came together for the Obama campaign. Massachussetts supporters, without DNC staff, created a 400+ person organizing event last weekend.

There's a new group trying to organize protests in every city on April 11.

http://www.anewwayforward.org/demonstrations/

Often there's a tension between the politically smart thing to do and the civically productive thing to do, and its up to citizens to demand that politicians choose the latter over the former.

Right now, for at least a brief period, the two are aligned, in terms of what Organizing for America should do.

I think Organizing for America will fail in its mission to leverage Obama campaign supporters to rally powerfully behind President Obama's policies. And I think this is a very good thing.

Mike Huckabee's email to his list today called Franklin Raines the "Chief Economic Advisor" to Barack Obama. This is clearly false, and he should know better.

Ron Paul 2008 supporters and Howard Dean 2004 supporters played an important role in the failure of the bailout bill in Congress. Both campaigns ran highly decentralized campaigns, leaving in their wake organized persistent groups, groups that were not waiting for campaign instructions, but scheduled their own ongoing meetings. And both cultures were strongly opposed to the shift to massive executive power over the purse as imagined by the bailout proposal.

I gave a talk tonight discussing 10 years in the future, internet and politics, what it might produce. In researching the talk I found some current day political spores. Spore, for those who haven't followed, is a massive single player online game, sort of like facebook for rapidly evolving avatar-beast creatures, where you get to constantly update yourself, in the face of evolutionary challenges. (Spore-players, please correct me.)

No, I am still not tired of Huckwatching (during the primaries, I made Mike Huckabee's website my personal beat). I am increasingly convinced he's running for President in 2012 if Obama is in office. For those of you not on Huckabee's email list, he's been apoplectic about the proposed bailout.

I'm trying to find ways to describe what 700 billion means, and would like some help. 2,000 McDonalds Apple Pies for every American? Almost as much as the federal government takes in in income tax each year? 140 billion dollars more than has been spent on the Iraq war?

In the last few days I have gotten an email from an inordinate number of friends of mine.

The email they are forwarding purports to be from a woman from Wasilla who knew Palin. It includes lots of claims about her record as mayor and governor.

It is not obviously false, but as sent, I have no reason to believe it is true. In other words, it bears a distant resemblance to the demonstrably false Obama emails. Here are some thoughts about citizenship, empathy, and the forwarded "important info" email.