DIY

• I don't know where I found it, but check out this trailer for Beautiful Losers, a new documentary about DIY culture in the 1980s. We need to be bringing this ethic and cultural sensibility into youth politics.
• On a related note, Danah Boyd is asking whether or not MySpace profile cut and pasting qualifies as remix culture.
• Moving from outsider nerd art to uber-political geek, the FEC is fining America Coming Together, the giant 527 GOTV operation funded by billionaires in the 2004 election. The now basically defunct group must pay $775,000 for improperly using soft money to support the election campaign of John Kerry. I wonder if any other 527s from 2004 are going to come under the gun of the FEC . . .
• In a throwback to the 2000 election, some may remember that Gore voters in Blue States were using the internet to trade votes with Nader voters in swing states. A court has ruled that such "vote swapping" sites are now legal.
• Blog for Democracy wants to know why no College Democrats or Young Democrats caucused together at the recent Nevada America Majority Partnership meeting in Las Vegas. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Nevada Young Dems are now looking for a new Executive Director . . . ?
• Meanwhile, California Progressive Majority notes that they are making big strides in incorporating CDA and YDA into party activities:
  

  Still, the California Democratic Party refuses to take the youth vote for granted, and is continually taking proactive steps to solidify support from young Californians.

  For instance, the CDP is currently establishing new partnerships with the California Young Democrats and College and High School Democratic clubs to build upon the successes of 2006 among young voters. In 2006, the CDP recruited over 2000 students from 160 high schools across California becoming Democratic Activists for the first time.

  And this year, the CDP raised its goal for youth representation in the California delegation for the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

• Conservative author and Campus provacateur D'nesh D'Souza got into a brouhaha at my Alma Mater during a debate with professor Alan Wolfe. Read about it here and then head over to Campus Progress to contribute to their Conservative Course Catalog Contest. The winner receives $250.

• Rock the Vote blog has an excellent post on how anyone can do DIY voter analysis using Census data and some cheap software. The instructions are meticulous and slightly intimidating, but the writer makes it sound like something you could figure out in an afternoon. I've got to give that a try . . .
• YouTube announced that you will soon be able to sort candidate videos by issue, making a nice little tool for compare/contrast purposes.
• Three interesting things to check out for those interested in how the evangelicals (and other young people of faith) are doing it these days: Youthroots - a social networking site for people of faith; BattleCry - the online home of a (crazy/scary) hipster evangelical movement; and with young evangelicals worrying about poverty and global warming, the WireTap Blog asks "Is God now progressive?"
• The New America Foundation documents how our generation's GI's are getting the shaft when they return home from duty:
  

  Although military recruiting literature trumpets educational benefits of up to $72,900, for most recruits the benefit tops out at $38,700. That works out to $1,075 a month for 36 months. It might sound like a lot to a teenager looking for help with college, but it’s only 75 percent of the average cost of attendance at a public four-year-college or university. To be eligible for those benefits, servicemen and women have to contribute $1,200 up front, out of their own pockets, during their first two years of service. Virtually all do so, but nearly one-in-three never collect any educational benefits, and they don’t get a refund. Most important, GI Bill benefits are counted as student financial resources when veterans apply for federal student financial aid, making many veterans ineligible for Pell Grants or subsidized student loans that could fill the gap. For recruits from low-income backgrounds, that’s a huge loss.

• Barack Obama is scheduled to be on the Daily Show on Wednesday the 22nd.
• Check out this podcast of Anya Kamenetz of Generation Debt.

Not a bad gig, if you can get it. Also posted to the [[Jobs and Training]] section of our growing DIY Wiki.

[[http://www.scholarships-ar-us.org/our-scholarships/political-blogging.htm|Scholarships Around the US]] - Political Blogging Scholarship This group offers a $2000 scholarship to college students who maintain a political blog. Applicants must be US citizens attending college full-time and maintaining a GPA of 3.0 or higher. Applicants are required to submit a 300 word essay answering any of the following questions:

• If you nominated a friend, what makes them and their blog so special?
• How can blogging improve democracy?
• Do bloggers enable and protect free speech?
• What are the best ideas you have helped spread?
• How do you intend to use blogging in the next election?

[[http://www.scholarships-ar-us.org/our-scholarships/political-blogging.htm|Apply Here]]