The Democratic System at its worst...

As many of you know, I now volunteer to Cary Silverman who is running to be full-time DC council member for Ward 2.  Yesterday, we had a chance to compete for the much coveted endorsement from the Ward 2 Democrats.  Going  into the voting meeting last yet, I felt that we had a good chance to win.  We had a good turn out from our supporters and they had brought friends with them.  However, as the night continued I began to think we weren't going to win but at least make a good showing. And that we did.   Cary lost the Ward 2 endorsement 105 - 67.  But in order to win the endorsement, our opponent "bused" people as well as provided Fried chicken for his "supporters".   As one of my co-workers put it:

I don't care if you give ALL your voters an incentive to come out and vote.  However, I do have a HUGE problem when you give selective incentives and it appears to cut across racial lines.  I am under the belief that voting should be its own reward.  The carrot should not be chicken dinners, but civic duty and pride.  It got fuzzy for me when the people with the dinners went in and voted for him.

Moreover, the process was completely screwed up.  People presenting themselves were not not even asked for IDs when they came in to vote.  So basically there was no way for people to check if the people voting the endorsement were indeed Ward 2 residents.   From talking to one person that was bused in by our opponent , she said she was a resident of "ward 1, Ward 2, Ward 3 and Ward 4... Whatever you want me to be."  Something like that should have easily caught. What's the point of calling it a ward 2 Endorsement, if people from around the bused in?

The most frustrating part of last night was the realization I can't vote while  people who don't care about this election and would gladly give their vote for a KFC dinner are allowed to participate in the election.

Despite all of this there is a silver lining to last night meeting.  We can win this election. Had we convinced 15 more people to show we would have blocked him from receiving this endorsement.  So despite our opponent's questionable tactics, we can still win on Sep 9th.

You read comments from other frustrated voters in the dcwire blog post.

The life Journey of our presidential Candidate on Google Maps

I saw this while reading a TechCrunch Article this morning, so I thought I'd share for with the rest of people not reading techcrunch. Also check out the Fundrace on Huffington Post.  Every time politics meets technology to make the process more transparent and easy for the people, I get giddy inside.

Technorati Tags: Obama,McCain,Election 2008,Google Maps,Mash-ups

Congratulations to my friend Wei

Wei and I've been friend going to back to my years in undergrad.  He was a big influence on me getting involved in web dev.  We started by writing our blogs in ASP and Access DB (remember when that was cool?).  Over the years, Wei and I have come up a multitude of ideas for websites and the services we would offer.  Some of the ideas  include sitter (pets and kids) search site (http://www.sittercity.com/)  and teacher document share (http://teachers.yahoo.com).  As we grew older, we spent nights coming up with these ideas and the proceeded to develop a multitude of excuses (lack of staff,funding, hardware expense, etc...) why we could not get them up and running.  Eventually, someone implemented our ideas close enough to what we had in mind and we would abandon our idea.

Recently, Wei had idea for  another website.  Instead of just talking about like we used to, he researched the idea more and when he decided it was feasible to implement it, he quit his job and started working on it.  That's how easyautosales.com came to be.  The site is a place where people can sell cars as well as buy new or used cars.  Based on his research, Wei decided his latest idea was good enough to compete with the likes of cars.com, carmax.com, vehix.com and even craigslist.  It's hard to know whether or not Wei and his team are going to be successful but since their launch 2.5 months ago they managed to  have a million cars listed, have over 100,000 pages indexed in Google, achieve over 100,000 visits to the page and as he put it "spend a crap load of money with Amazon Web Services".  If you're bored enough, you can follow the trials and tribulations of Wei and his team over at http://comefortheride.com/.  Of course if you're in the market for a car, you should include http://www.easyautosales.com as one the websites that you visit.

Congrats Wei, Way to go all out.

 

Technorati Tags: Cars,EasyAutoSales.com

My favorite Obama YouTube Vidoes

Over the last year and half, I've looked for various YouTube videos on Obama.  Of course some where in complete utter distaste and should prolly be take down, but the vast majority were inspirational and depict the American genius and  creativity.  Below are my favorite YouTube videos about Obama with a few honorable mentions.

Barack Obama/Bobby Kennedy - Hope

Work to Do Remix

Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Video

Barack Obama: Reflections of Bobby Kennedy

Barack Obama: We Shall Overcome

The Obama Dream

The "Obama Movement"

BARACK OBAMA YES WE CAN RAP SONG

 

Honorable Mention

Baby Got Barack

Sing for Obama Grassroots Music Video

Barack Obama: Poetic Politics

For Obama: "Si Se Puede Cambiar" by Andres Useche

 

What are your favorites?

All politics is local... so It's about time I get involved

Someone once said all politics is local.  I don't know who that person is (I suppose I could Google it) or why that they said that, but it turns out they must have been right because people have been repeating it ever since.   Since I enjoy politics and all politics are local, I figured it's about time to get involved in local politics. I have thus decided to join the campaign of Cary Silverman running for Ward 2 DC Council seat.  We are looking a unseat current 17 yr Council member Jack Evans.. what can I say? Go  big or go home. I'm not going to seat and tell you why my candidate is better Ward 2 residents than Mr. Evans, nor am I going to tell you that He will solve every issue facing Ward  2 and the rest of the city.  What I will tell you is that he is a person dedicated to the DC neighborhoods and it is reflected in the involvement the years.  His presence on the council will be a breath of fresh air and new ideas to what has become an old boys club serving developers instead of citizens (yes I'm talking about the DC council). One thing I've learned so far is that local politics isn't sexy but it matters. It matters because it affects our daily lives, from recycling to schools, from liquor licenses to gentrification and from sidewalk construction to zoning restrictions.   The campaign currently  has a small staff thus my role will vary greatly. Regardless, I look forward to meeting many of the residents of Ward 2 and making the case why it's time for change in Ward 2 Seat.  If you're in DC and would like to meeting Cary Silverman, please join us at a Happy Hour this Wed at Wednesday 6/4  at 1625 17th Street, NW from 5:30pm - 8 PM.  If you have any other questions about the Campaign feel free to e-mail henri at caryforcouncil dot org.

Technorati Tags: DC Politics,DC Council,Cary Silverman,Jack Evans,DC,Ward 2,Local Politics