Archive for the 'Seattle' Category

A landslide victory for Barack Obama?

 I would love to assume that Obama will win this election in a landslide - but I am uncertain enough of our political system to fear the worst. The MoveOn.org campaign has been pinging me daily to ask for volunteer support for Obama in Seattle and on the peninsula, and they are planning a massive get out the vote effort here. Click here to sign up - or read on for some compelling reasons to do so!

TOP 5 REASONS OBAMA SUPPORTERS SHOULDN’T REST EASY

1. The polls may be wrong. This is an unprecedented election. No one knows how racism may affect what voters tell pollsters—or what they do in the voting booth. And the polls are narrowing anyway. In the last few days, John McCain has gained ground in most national polls, as his campaign has gone even more negative.

2. Dirty tricks. Republicans are already illegally purging voters from the rolls in some states. They’re whipping up hysteria over ACORN to justify more challenges to new voters. Misleading flyers about the voting process have started appearing in black neighborhoods. And of course, many counties still use unsecure voting machines.

3. October surprise. In politics, 15 days is a long time. The next McCain smear could dominate the news for a week. There could be a crisis with Iran, or Bin Laden could release another tape, or worse.

4. Those who forget history… In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote after trailing by seven points in the final days of the race. In 1980, Reagan was eight points down in the polls in late October and came back to win. Races can shift—fast!

5. Landslide. Even with Barack Obama in the White House, passing universal health care and a new clean-energy policy is going to be hard. Insurance, drug and oil companies will fight us every step of the way. We need the kind of landslide that will give Barack a huge mandate.

If you agree that we shouldn’t rest easy, please sign up to volunteer at your local Obama office by clicking here.

Camping out with the Drupallers in Seattle

Drupal Camp 2007The Seattle Drupal Users Group met for a Drupal Camp yesterday. It was an all day affair, with Drupal developers hiding out in one room learning about such things as theming and jviews with Robin Barre and noobs like me in a larger room with Gregory Heller from CivicActions doing a so-called Barn Raising. Donald Lobo from CiviCRM also happened to be there and we took adantage of the opportunity to sign a contract and review the specs for the CiviCRM component of the Kabissa African Voices project. It feels good to be implementing CiviCRM at long last, after years of planning and false starts with other vendors, and I very much like the way we are doing it.

Back to the Drupal Camp: I found the Barn Raising to be very helpful - we basically learned all about Drupal, a leading open source content management system, by planning and implementing a Drupal site in a day. I was able to get alot of my questions answered which will help me a great deal in finalizing the migration of the Kabissa site from Joomla to Drupal (keep your eyes peeled on http://www.kabissa.org for a new site appearing shortly!). Roland Taglao from bryght.com came down from Vancouver. Roland took loads of photos which presumably he will upload to his DrupalCamp Seattle 2007 set on flickr and recorded video which is currently available, in rather raw form, at http://ustream.tv/roland. The Seattle DUG is a lively group, and I very much enjoyed and appreciated the open, friendly atmosphere. I hope to make sense of my notes here, but for the moment have just pasted them in below. Read on at your own risk!

Oh, and before you go: yes, I did go watch Candy Mountain on YouTube as strongly recommended by Gregory. :-) What is it, a morality story teaching about the perils of peer pressure?
Continue reading ‘Camping out with the Drupallers in Seattle’




 

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