I'm not sure if this is coordinated or not (e.g. whether Bob Greenwald is going to do some kind of Colbert-related film or something), but it's remix fun, and I like that Eli is putting himself out there:

Great weekend coming up. Tommy, Chelsea and Greg are down for a visit from PDX, and Laurel's pug pup Frankie (video coming) is boarding with us/Hanna&Sarah for a bit, and I'm shacking up with The Peach to boot. Fun around the campfire, in the house. We're gonna hit up the Crabbies tonight too.

Also:

http://www.ihumpedyourhummer.com

Tesla Motors

This is real smart: starting at the top-end of the value chain. I think these people's biggest problem will be mechanical support. Like, one of my biggest concerns is who can I take this thing to if it breaks down?

Refused to turn over protest footage of Anarchists vandalizing a police car. Prosecutors make a tenuous connection to damage done to property that's partially funded with federal dollars as a means of getting around California law which protects journalists against a compulsion to turn over unpublished material.

This is kinda bullshit and kinda scary for a number of reasons.

• Vandalizing a police car is stupid. It's an egocentric act with null social impact, and it represents the worst-of-the-worst kind of black-bloc type activity. Stop it, kids. Your energy is being wasted.
• However, the prosecutor's contention that any act against local police is a federal crime which superceeds state law is creepy and tenuous. I hope the ACLU's appeal on this matter wins out.
• Finally, the worst is that jerk-ass federal prosecutors and DAs have this ridiculous hard-on for so-called Anarchists and are implementing police-state type actions and procedures in the hopes of locking some of them up. Almost as stupid as vandalizing a police car. You're supposed to be the grown-ups. Fucking act like it.

This is a conflict that doesn't need to escalate. Most importantly, the precident of these gestapo tactics -- that's not hyperbole: giving the State the power to force journalists to turn over their materials severely undermines the freedom of the press -- is very dangerous.

This should be good...

The Tressler has launched not one but two new websites: The Common Sense Rag and Tressler Designs.

He now runs three of his own Drupal sites, which is, uh, three more than I have. Better get cracking.

Glenn Greenwald:

Ultimately, it seems we are painting ourselves into a corner. We continue to block a cease-fire and attach ourselves to the Israeli military effort on every level. But, as even neoconservatives like Lowry are acknowledging, it seems increasingly clear that the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah is not going to produce anything resembling a victory. Neither the U.S. nor Israel can afford to simply have this war peter out without having a credible claim to victory. So what are the realistic options other than escalation?

If there is a significant escalation against Syria or Iran, it must be resisted by the populace here at home. This means politically savvy resistance, because this won't bring about a wholesale collapse of the government, and conducting some proto-revolutionary crap will only alienate people. What needs to happen is for the popular consensus to be foursquare against more war, and for representatives who supports it to loose their jobs come November.

This will cause people to pay attention.

Here's another hint. Politically savvy anti-war activism doesn't revolve around "defending the people of Palestine and Lebanon". While that's a laudable humanitarian cause, protecting the people of Israel is equally worthy, and conspicuous by its absence. This is not the right message. If you don't want this to be Our War too, we need to make the case in terms of costs and benefits to us, to Americans, and the hard sad fact is that the civilians caught in the middle of all this don't figure into that equation other than in a "making more enemies/bolstering terrorist recruiting" sense.

Sitting here in a semi-torpid state, very low energy, only the underlying buzz of caffeine and pre-apocalyptic stress to fight the fatigue. I haven't even been doing anything very important , just getting up early and riding buses, going through the kind of necessary (but not really) meetings that I used to not have the patience for...

Luckily I was idling in RitRo, the official coffee shop of web 2.0, and so there were beautiful people around. And then my old colleague Molly Moon Neitzel came in randomly, so we caught up and I went with her back to the MFA headquarters and hung out, and then went out with a group to a little Progressive mixer under the emerging "Do More Than Vote" (DMTV) banner. Lots of old faces and interesting new projects. Nice evening.

...and now back in the mission, finishing this afternoon's saved-lunch guacamole from the nice little packed mexican join in SoMa's South Park. Listening to a little C-Lo and Modest Mouse and looking outward on the month.

Back in the day my friend Zack had a great idea to make something called PPipes, which aggregates all the progressive spam out there that none of us read. You have power-users come on and tag/sort/rate/sift it all, and you have regular account-holders say what they want to see in their main page, which they can get an RSS feed for as well. Then you win, because everyone comes to you for what's going on, and organizations stop wasting so much time and energy trying to grow their email list with meaningless petitions and instead do more real work to get shit done.

You might even set up crackpipes, which monitors all the email lists from the dark side.

Anyway, it's a grand idea, and I think we're going to do it.

Sitting here in a semi-torpid state, very low energy, only the underlying buzz of caffeine and pre-apocalyptic stress to fight the fatigue. I haven't even been doing anything very important , just getting up early and riding buses, going through the kind of necessary (but not really) meetings that I used to not have the patience for...

Luckily I was idling in RitRo, the official coffee shop of web 2.0, and so there were beautiful people around. And then my old colleague Molly Moon Neitzel came in randomly, so we caught up and I went with her back to the MFA headquarters and hung out, and then went out with a group to a little Progressive mixer under the emerging "Do More Than Vote" (DMTV) banner. Lots of old faces and interesting new projects. Nice evening.

...and now back in the mission, finishing this afternoon's saved-lunch guacamole from the nice little packed mexican join in SoMa's South Park. Listening to a little C-Lo and Modest Mouse and looking outward on the month.

Back in the day my friend Zack had a great idea to make something called PPipes, which aggregates all the progressive spam out there that none of us read. You have power-users come on and tag/sort/rate/sift it all, and you have regular account-holders say what they want to see in their main page, which they can get an RSS feed for as well. Then you win, because everyone comes to you for what's going on, and organizations stop wasting so much time and energy trying to grow their email list with meaningless petitions and instead do more real work to get shit done.

You might even set up crackpipes, which monitors all the email lists from the dark side.

Anyway, it's a grand idea, and I think we're going to do it.

Sitting here in a semi-torpid state, very low energy, only the underlying buzz of caffeine and pre-apocalyptic stress to fight the fatigue. I haven't even been doing anything very important , just getting up early and riding buses, going through the kind of necessary (but not really) meetings that I used to not have the patience for...

Luckily I was idling in RitRo, the official coffee shop of web 2.0, and so there were beautiful people around. And then my old colleague Molly Moon Neitzel came in randomly, so we caught up and I went with her back to the MFA headquarters and hung out, and then went out with a group to a little Progressive mixer under the emerging "Do More Than Vote" (DMTV) banner. Lots of old faces and interesting new projects. Nice evening.

...and now back in the mission, finishing this afternoon's saved-lunch guacamole from the nice little packed mexican join in SoMa's South Park. Listening to a little C-Lo and Modest Mouse and looking outward on the month.

Back in the day my friend Zack had a great idea to make something called PPipes, which aggregates all the progressive spam out there that none of us read. You have power-users come on and tag/sort/rate/sift it all, and you have regular account-holders say what they want to see in their main page, which they can get an RSS feed for as well. Then you win, because everyone comes to you for what's going on, and organizations stop wasting so much time and energy trying to grow their email list with meaningless petitions and instead do more real work to get shit done.

You might even set up crackpipes, which monitors all the email lists from the dark side.

Anyway, it's a grand idea, and I think we're going to do it.