Energy

In case you missed it . . .

• A loophole in Ohio voting law that will allow for one-stop registration and voting this fall could be a huge boon to Obama (and young voters) in the state.
• Yesterday activists launched a campaign on Facebook against Evan Bayh as the potential VP pick called 100,000 Strong Against Evan Bayh. You would already know this if you were friends with Future Majority on Facebook.
• Huckabee youth group "Huck's Army" is now recruiting for McCain.
• Future Majority friend, activist, and videographer "noneck" Noel Hidalgo was deported from China this week for filming protests in Tiananmen Square. Noel and his crew might be following me around during the DNC convention producing video for FM. Let's hope it doesn't get quite so dicey in Denver.
• Jared Polis won his primary in Colorado and will go on to become the next Democratic congressman in his district. Not only that, he is the first openly gay candidate elected to congress and he may well be one of - if not the - youngest congressman in the country. I'm proud to have had Jared as a guest in our live blog series. Congrats to him and everyone who worked on the campaign.
• I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but in the next few days, Barack Obama will announce his VP nominee via text message. This was a great idea on their part. They probably received thousands of cell phone numbers that can now be used to get out the vote in November via text.
• The New York Times has more on that in Garret Graff's op-ed about text messaging in the Presidential campaign.
• Blender asked the candidates about their favorite songs. John McCain - what happened to Usher? I thought he was your favorite artist?
• The Washington Post has the skinny on the hottest parties at the DNC.
• In Nevada, a 22 year old is running against an incumbent state Senator who has held office since 14 years before his challenger was born.
• The Wall Street Journal finally picked up on James Fowler's study of the Colbert Bump.
• Generation Vote has a put together a Youth policy platform.
• The Post Chronicle has some thoughts about what Obama's youth supporters need to do post-election day.
• Tom Friedman actually wrote a decent piece about McCain's energy policy.
• It's Getting Hot in Here explains the whole "Gang of 10" energy compromise and why it's a win for Obama.
• David Burstein of 18 in '08 explains the significance of just one vote.
• Medill reports that this may be the geekiest of all conventions.
• Wow:

You've probably heard that the Republicans - as I type - are throwing a tantrum in the dark on the floors of Congress. What do they want? Congress to reconvene for a vote on energy legislation to bring down oil prices. This despite the fact that every serious person says there is nothing congress can do in teh short term to lower prices and Republicans obstructed energy legislation meant to address the problem earlier in the session.

Lacking cameras, or even lights, the GOP has been Tweeting their tempest in a teapot out to the conservative technorati and it's starting to get noticed.

Some progressive folks thought - why not have a little fun with this and flood the Twitter feed with nonsense and/or progressive messages.

Here's my suggestions on what Tweets to send to #dontgo:

• Link to Gore climate speeches.
• Link to Obama's energy policy.
• Link to Think Progress's coverage of the issue.
• Rick Roll them.

As part of my gig with MTV's Street Team, I cover politics in Nebraska.  No, we don't wear tan sport coats or wear white turtlenecks like the ever hilarious Comedy Central skit said we did last week.  But we do try and cover issues in our state.

In Nebraska, one of those things is ethanol and how its making America energy independent.  The US House approved $18 billion in new taxes on "big oil" last week and it is now in the Senate.  Oil is now over $100 a barrel when Bush said 3 years ago he didn't think it would get over $50 bucks.

Ethanol plants in Nebraska are not only producing renewable fuels, they are also renewing America. Come meet Andy and Cliff over at US BioEnergy and learn how corn is made into ethanol. We explore everything from when the corn comes in, to the corn being processed, to the corn that is turned into feed for livestock and how the plant manages other environmental concerns.

Late last week, I got an email from Project Phin, announcing that they would be featured on Jay Leno's Tonight Show in a segment with Matt Damon, who is a supporter. Now, you probably have the same question I did - what the hell is Project Phin? Totally normal reaction.

Turns out I already knew what it was - a flex fuel/CAFE standard campaign from the Center for American Progress Action Fund - but I'd forgotten because the campaign was so confusing and quite frankly bizarre. Ignoring the question of whether or not young people actually watch Jay Leno (or the follow-up question of whether an over 30 audience would find any appeal in the Project Phin campaign), I went back to the site to give it another look.

On second glance, the campaign is interesting. They've got a short mockumentary in 7 parts (2-5 minutes each) about some boob's (Phin Sawyer) quest to create his own Flex Fuel/CAFE standards campaign. The videos are attached to a letter-writing campaign directed at Congress, and there are also FaceBook and MySpace groups advertising the project on SocNets. Sitting through a 25 minute mockumentary (even a relatively good one) is a significant investment of time - and I had to force myself to sit through at least 4 of the videos before I started to warm up to the campaign - but by the time I finished, my skepticism was overcome and I found the campaign to be both amusing and also somewhat inspirational.

So how are they doing? Here's the numbers they are publicizing:

Now onto the Project Phin numbers: You watched the videos more than 200,000 times. Wow! And that doesn't include the people who saw the Damon clip on TV during the Tonight Show. You sent more than 20,000 messages to Congress and hundreds of letters to the editors of newspapers around the country. Nearly 1,500 of you have joined Phin's Facebook profile and group and his MySpace communities so far, and you viewed Phin's MySpace blog over 6,000 times.

It's not clear to me that 200,000 is a total for each video, or needs to be divided by 7, which would be a solid though less impressive 28,500 for each video. Since 20,000 letters were sent, I actually find this to be more likely. Regardless, the numbers are not at all shabby, and clearly the videos are hitting a nerve with some people.

The FaceBook and MySpace campaign, not so much. The number of friends on both communities is small (and composed of a lot of green organizations). The real question in measuring the effectiveness of the campaign on SocNets is "are people moving from MySpace/FaceBook to the letter writing tool?" I don't know that they are in any significant number. I also thought it was strange that there was no Project Phin Cause App or Change.org App. Global warming and energy issue groups do better on those Apps than most any other topic, and can help drive traffic to action items. That might have been a good strategy for Project Phin.

Maybe it's proof that I'm starting to age out of this target demographic that I didn't really get hooked by the campaign when I first heard about it (truth be told, I found their slogan - Flex my Fuel, Clean My Ride - to be a much better hook). But great job to the folks at CAP for trying to think outside the box and putting together what has obviously been a successful summer campaign to raise awareness and generate activism around a cleaner, more progressive energy policy.