Are we going down the tubes, or can we use the tubes to save us from ourselves? When I'm not distracted by the latest news, that's what I'm trying to think about these days. Here are some unfinished thoughts on the topic...

Five people I have spoken to in the last two days, including a House member who sits on the SSA appropriations committee, who are all intimately involved with trying to persuade the Social Security Administration to delay it's "routine maintenance" have all gotten different explanations. From the "this is just our regular time for doing maintenance and it isn't partisan", to "it's the only three day weekend in the fall when our folks are available to do it", to the most draconian, "if we don't do it the entire system will crash". But don't take it from me, feel free to email the Congressional liaison at SSA, kenneth.a.mannella AT ssa DOT gov and ask him yourself!

By Nancy Scola and Allison Fine

We know. It sounds ridiculous at first. But it might not be as crazy as you think. For far too long, the job of election protection has fallen largely to lawyers schooled in election law. But there's an opportunity before us right now and through Election Day for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of citizens to identify and rectify voting problems in real time. Enter Twitter.

Can a loosely-organized Facebook group best the biggest name progressive blogs when it comes to fundraising? That's the question that longtime online organizer Jon Pincus is asking; Ever since Obama selected Joe Biden as his running mate, we're heard a lot about the role that the Catholic vote will play in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan. But when it comes to who Catholics might cast a ballot for, Church officials and advocates aren't letting the campaigns dictate to them -- or be the only ones using social media to persuade voters; The Obama campaign has kept its powder dry on the so-called Keating Five scandal -- until now; and a good deal more.

I have an update on my post from this morning about the Social Security Administration. According to the legislative director in Senator Feinstein's office, the Senator sent a letter to the SSA on September 23rd asking for the postponement until after the election of the SSA's maintenance effort that will shut down it's database for three days. Yesterday, the Senator received a letter back from the SSA refusing to change its maintenance schedule.

Medill Reports's Jason M. Breslow has a roundup of how Twitter is being used for politics these days. We're seeing folks use it to debate, to share ideas, to organize (though, as Jason mentions, we're not seeing either Barack Obama and John McCain use it to good effect). Witnessing the evolution of how people are pulling and shaping Twitter to fit their own political purposes is downright fascinating; What's most remarkable about the new Obama iPhone app is that it's actually the fruit of a relationship between the Obama campaign and a team of ten or so volunteers; The Christian Science Monitor's Ben Arnoldy asks the million-dollar question: can people-powered outreach really win presidential elections?; and quite a bit more.

Enormous efforts have been made by campaigns and public interest groups to register people to vote on November 4th. According to the Election Assistance Commission more than 2 million poll workers will be working at over 200,000 polling places this election. Unfortunately, what these new voters don’t know is that just registering to vote may not ensure that they are able to vote on Election Day or that their vote will be counted.

Now's a good time to ask, what the heck happened with the defeat of the bailout bill on Capitol Hill on Monday?; Debate? What debate? Oh, there's a debate tonight. The Internet has bubbled up some ways to play along with Palin vs. Biden; Wow. The Obama campaign has released a gorgeous new iPhone app; Congress has okayed a bill that requires the government to regularly and accurately assess who in the U.S. has broadband access and who doesn't. If we may humbly advance an opinion: excellent!; and a good deal more. Honest.

Monday afternoon, I happened to turn the TV on just as the House of Representatives was voting on the $700 billion Bush-Paulson-Pelosi bailout bill. Watching the split-screen coverage of traders on the floor of the U.S. Stock Exchange as they stared, transfixed, waiting to see if the public, through its representatives in Washington, was going to save their skins, was exhilarating. And then, when the bill went down to defeat, and the market went back to plunging, I was thrilled.

Here's why: I'm tired of living in a de facto plutocracy. I also believe we are on the verge of a revolution in participation in government, powered by new technology that is making it possible for many more of us to connect together and have a meaningful voice in the process. The bailout bill, and the process by which it is being jammed through Congress, is an affront to those democratic values. We can do better. And the vote Monday showed, in nascent form, how the same forces that are eating away at the underpinnings of "broadcast politics," the capital-intensive way of electing a President whose demise we've been chronicling here at techPresident, are also starting to unsettle "business as usual" on Capitol Hill.

The LA Times has the back story on Anne Kilkenny. Anne Kil-who? Oh, you know, the Alaskan who wrote an email critiquing her fellow Wasillan Sarah Palin that landed in your inbox at least one thousand times just after the Palin pick was announced; Media Matters senior fellow Eric Boehlert is slamming right-leaning bloggers for their quixotic campaign to tie an anti-Palin YouTube clip to the Obama campaign, despite, well, the total lack of evidence; The Obama campaign has taken heat for supposedly giving short shrift to progressive bloggers. Now, one of their own has tried to reach out; and much more.