Category: take action

politics, social justice and ways you can make a difference in the world around you.

Campaigning on convictions

From the Mike Huckabee campaign:

My candidacy is, and always has been, about convictions – and the issues and core values that are critical to our country’s future, such protecting traditional marriage, the sanctity of life, individual empowerment and a revamping of our federal tax code to encourage productivity. It’s about lifting Americans up, from hope to higher ground, with a positive vision for America’s future that is grounded in a belief in our nation’s basic goodness, and defined by a ‘can—do’ spirit that knows how to gets things done. My goal is to offer Republican voters, a voice and a choice in this election.

The last four out of five U.S. Presidents have been governors, and there is a reason for this: the challenges facing our nation require steady, experienced, executive management. As governor of Arkansas for 10 ½ years, I delivered on my promises to cut taxes 94 times, reduce welfare by half, reform health care for children and our education system, and transform our transportation infrastructure. My record of results, achieved with a Democrat legislature, gives a meaningful viability to my candidacy.

There are millions of Republicans from across this country who have yet to be heard from. Clearly we were disappointed by the results in Wisconsin, but I look forward to campaigning hard in Texas and Ohio this week – and taking my case before the good people of those states.

Social networking and the church

I’ve written about social networking (i.e. MySpace, Facebook, etc) here before. I’ve also written about the idea of churches getting behind these networks and putting them to use for marketing, announcements, building community, etc. etc.

I haven’t heard a lot of feedback other than on the techie side of things. I read recently about Mars Hill’s social networking strategy over at digital.leadnet.org.

Here’s an overview:

  • Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Facebook profile has 4000 friends
  • Less than 20% of these friends are from the Seattle area
  • He has apps to read in his blog, link to his books from Amazon, play videos from their Ask Anything sermon series, and read in Mars Hill RSS feeds
  • He gets 20 messages and wall posts a day
  • Mark Driscoll’s Myspace profile has 400 friends

In addition to this, Dustin told digital.leadnet about an internal project they’re working on – “Our IT department is currently developing our own social network, the City, that will be used for almost all communication within the church.” More info on their soon-to-launch social network here.

This is very cool in my book (of course Mars Hill apparently has a full IT team and their own blog). They’re building the site on Ruby on Rails. Not real familiar with that software or “programing language” but it looks cool. I’m looking at doing something with Elgg.org for now. But I’m seeing more folks using Ruby on Rails. Might be worth looking into.

So the techies are interested in all this and implementing it – but for me part of the thrill of implementing a social network for encounter or other churches is the challenge aspect of it. I wonder how enthused average users or church members would be in using it.

So I put together a quick survey over on the encounter blog. I’ve plugged it via our Twitter feed, our Facebook group, a MySpace bulletin and of course here. I’d encourage you to take a second and fill out the form, regardless of if you’re an active part of encounter or not. And I’d love for you to push the survey on your own blogs as well. The more input the better.

And yes – you can remain anonymous in filling out the form.

The Shock Doctrine

Thomas shared this video via Facebook:

DIRECTED BY JONÁS CUARÓN. Alfonso Cuarón, director of “Children of Men”, and Naomi Klein, author of “No Logo”, present a short film from Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” http://www.shockdoctrine.com

Quote of the day

“Do you ever ask yourself why people try to come to this country? Do you think people deliberately and cheerfully leave their families behind and come to live in a situation of fear all the time, that they’re going to be deported again? No; they leave because they’re desperate. They’re trying to save their families.”

— Thomas Gumbleton, retired auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit and author of “The Peace Pulpit,” an online version of his homilies published by National Catholic Reporter
via DMN

Quote(s) of the day

(America has the right) “to unilateral use of military power” to ensure “unihabitated access to key makets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.”
– Bill Clinton speaking to the United Nations – Sept. 27, 1993

“We have a choice, either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or to change the way they live, and we choose the latter.”
– Donald Rumsfield

(both as quoted in Everything Must Change)