In one of its job announcements, right after the acknowledgement that the college and high school petition websites are centrally run by Unity08, you may have noticed the mention of www.americanagenda08.com, a new website to be rolled out this month or next. As of right now, American Agenda is a blank website with some paid ads. What do they have in mind? We can’t know for sure, but Unity08 is learning fast: a whois search for the group reveals that the domain was grabbed through a proxy service, Domains by Proxy, Inc., that keeps the identity of the original registrar secret. They’d rather you not peek into their business.
At its “high school” website, Unity Petition, I notice that they have taken their public bulletin board and made it private. You have to “apply for membership” in order to gain access to the bulletin board now. Why would they ask you to do this? Perhaps it’s because there are (as I found out after applying and instantly gaining access despite the warnings that a moderator would have to look at my application personally) only three messages have ever been posted to the system. One of them is entitled “Testing,” and another is entitled “Testing 2.” Only one message, posted on November 7, is substantive. It’s posted by a visitor, and there are no replies. Well… I’ve made my own fourth post, asking what gives for such a big nationwide grassroots movement. Maybe someone will get back to me on this sometime next year.
I also noticed when peeking into the job listings posted by “Erika” on behalf of Unity08 that there was another job listing made by “Erika,” but not for Unity08. The job listing was for a company called Beaconfire which handles marketing and technology services for other organizations. There’s no listing of Beaconfire in the expenses of Unity08.com for the 2nd or 3rd quarter in the IRS disclosures. And yet if you search for the terms “beaconfire” and “unity08″ in google, you get sent to a page entitled “Beaconfire Creative Extranet: Unity 08′.” The page contains… a recruitment video featuring Sam Waterston. Is this yet another mystery 4th quarter expense? And where does the money for all this come from?
Oh, so many personalities. Oh, so many interlocking entities. Oh, so many mysteries.
It would be interesting to know if PACs have to disclose gifts in kind. For instance, if a very expensive, high profile law firm donates legal services, does Unity08 have to report the fair market value as a contribution? Or if someone donates money for a survey, or pays the rent on a space in the Watergate, or donates the services of its real, paid office staff?
You can see the puppets, Waterston, the websites, etc., but who is behind the curtain manipulating the strings? Judging by the content, I would say Unity08 is mostly the work of Republicans who are fed up with the Republican party being hijacked by the extreme religious element. Maybe also some Democrats who don’t like web-based Lamont-style political movements espoused by liberal pond scum such as yourselves (and I mean that affectionately), although their unwillingness to recognize flag desecration and homophobia as the burning political issues of our day gives Unity08 something in common with progressives. Some of the Unity08 forum content is even thoughtful, especially the posts on financial topics.
Since you guys are having so much fun googling Unity08, I’m surprised you haven’t taken the code for the banner from their MySpace site http://www.myspace.com/unity08 and used it for something Irregular.:-)