Upcoming Events and Links
I hate to admit it, but I’m having a really difficult time getting back into the swing of things. Until yesterday the traffic numbers were low enough that I could in good conscience hold off on posting. Yesterday the excuse was that since everyone was just coming back to the site, there was plenty of new material. Today, I have no excuse. I’m just easing myself back into gear. To make this as painless as possible, I’m going to publicize two upcoming events. I’ll probably be at both of them, so feel free to say hi to me if you also attend. After the events I’m going to post links to various sites you might want to visit and posts you might want to read.
Upcoming Events
- Sunday January 8
3:00-4:30 PM
Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund is having an “action meeting” in San Ramon featuring Mark Longabaugh, Political Director, and Rodger Schlickeisen, CEO, of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund. The topic will be the Pombo in Their Pocket campaign.
Location:
Alcosta Room
San Ramon Community Center
12501 Alcosta Blvd
San Ramon, CA 94583 - Friday January 13
Refreshments at 6:30, speaker at 8:00 PM
The Lamorinda Democratic Club is pleased to welcome Contra Costa Times columnist Lisa Vorderbrueggen to its January meeting on Friday, January 13th.
Ms. Vorderbrueggen writes about local and state politics as well as candidates and issues, including transportation, housing, the environment, and land-use.
Please note that we are holding this meeting the 2nd Friday in January instead of the 3rd Friday, our usual date. Also, we are meeting at a special location: The Orinda Masonic Lodge, 9 Altarinda Road, Orinda. Click to view map.
At the meeting, Ms. Vorderbrueggen will address questions, such as:- Will Pete McCloskey run in the primary against Pombo?
- What's the latest on the Democrats lining up someone to oppose Pombo?
- What's the status of 4th bore for the Caldecott Tunnel?
- What higher offices are our supervisors eyeing?
... just to name a few.
(Description from the Lamorinda Club website)
Links
- MoveOn is polling their members to see whether they should encourage any candidates to run against Pombo. They say:
We want to ensure that each congressional district has a strong candidate who will stand up for our values. This informal survey of MoveOn members in your congressional district asks whether we should encourage an existing candidate, urge a new candidate to enter the race, or take no action. This is not an endorsement—we'll decide later which candidates for Congress to endorse. The public rarely has an opportunity to affect who is on the ballot, but today you can send a message about which candidates you'd like a chance to vote for next November.
You can express your preference for as many candidates as you want (or for not recruiting any candidates), just by giving each candidate a score for how enthusiastic you are about them. Each member's response will only be counted once.
They list Jerry McNerney, Steve Filson, and Mike Machado. Check out the site, including what they say about the various candidates, and vote at this site. - Steve Filson posted another diary over at Daily Kos. He actually responded to one commenter this time, although I’ll let you judge whether you think his responses were effective. Still credit where credit is due. To compare Filson’s performance to that of another so-called Fighting Dems, check out this post at MyDD by NC-08 candidate Tim Dunn.
- My fellow blogger and sometime café companion Kid Oakland has reminded me that he wrote an interesting piece about Pombo before I started this blog. In fact, the discussion that ensued from his piece, We All Live in Richard Pombo’s District, prompted me to begin Say No to Pombo. Go check it out.
- Lastly, one of the things that kept me happy(ish) as the traffic dropped to 30 hits a day during the holiday, was my realization that the ActBlue page has already generated $2,500.01 worth of donations for this race. If you still have not given, I encourage you to get involved today.
Tags:
posted by Matt @ 3:33 PM
1 Comments:
Regarding Filson's latest diary entry at dKos, it appears to be even more clueless than the first in terms of attracting attention (regardless of the pedestrian content).
But before I get off on a rant, let me ask this. WHY DOESN'T FILSON CROSS-POST THIS STUFF ON HIS OWN BLOG?
Oh yeah, he doesn't have one. (A clueless Campaign 101 oversight usually reserved for Republicans these days).
OK, back to the dKos diary:
1) Filson needs to change his fricken' user name. "Fido Dem" means zip to the site's 75K users, especially if you're running for Congress.
2) Boooooring header ("My devotion the working American family") straight out of Campaigns-'R-Us saying *nothing* about anything of import to this blog's target audience (mostly male political junkies and... potential donors).
3) Filson NEVER mentions his NAME (although his last name is a tag). If this was intentional, well, that speaks --- volumes --- about his (in)ability to brand himself. When you've got almost-zero name recognition, the last thing you do is hide behind an obscure user name and NEVER mention your real name.
4) And, most importantly, where's any mention of dark lord Richard Pombo (besides the tag)? If you're going to entertain the lions on dKos, then make sure you've got some red meat, fer cryin' out loud.
Oh, the actual content? It helped my insomnia. I think I'm going to bed now.
So, rather than belabor the point even further, I'll just excerpt what you wrote last time, Matt. Same shit, different diary:
Regardless of the content of the post, there are a couple of things about how Filson posted the diary that virtually doomed it to obscurity. First, Filson posted using the user name Fido Dem, which does not obviously label him a congressional candidate. Second, Filson titled his diary “Steve Filson for Congress,” which leaves out the state (California), the district (CA-11), and the opponent (Richard Pombo). If he had created a user name like FilsonforCongress and titled the diary “Why I’m Taking on Richard Pombo (CA-11),” I’m sure more people would have read it. Lastly, Filson tagged the diary poorly (something I have since tried to correct). For example, instead of tagging the diary with CA-11, which is the usual way on Daily Kos to abbreviate the district, Filson tagged the diary “CA-06” presumably meaning California 2006 election. I suspect that this tag will result in a number of people coming to the diary expecting to see Filson announcing his entry into the contested primary between Lynn Woolsey and Joe Nation. Still, more than anything, Filson’s missteps suggest to me that Filson is incredibly unfamiliar with the cultural norms of Daily Kos, which makes sense give his recent User ID (73385).
As a fellow Democrat, I'd send Filson these suggestions for future posts but since his campaign doesn't believe in open-source politics (witness the lack of a blog), let's see how long it takes him to get a damn clue.
Fiat Lux
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