More than Two Times the Fun

A spring poll by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 17 percent of Americans learn about the campaign via the Internet on a typical day, more than double the number that did in the spring of 2004. NY Times

The study also found that about 57 million American adults, read blogs.

No wonder the traditional media hate us.

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Empowering Women Candidates

One of the best speeches I saw at Netroots Nation was Saturday night's keynote with Donna Edwards. She was amazing. Empowered and empowering. I had to give up the first 1/2 of the GNB dinner outing to attend, so I was happy that it was worth it. I did get to catch up with everyone for the Lounge Lizards later thank goodness.

Donna's speech is well worth a watch, when they get the complete version up on the Netroots Nation site. Donna talked a lot about the need to send more strong progressives to congress this fall. And I especially think we need more strong progressive women.

I have been a card carrying member and donor of Emily's List for years. It is simply the best way to support female candidates up and down the ticket. At the 2004 convention I went to an Emily's List luncheon and had the amazing privilege of seeing both Ann Richards and Barbara Boxer speak. It was great. Right now Emily's List is having a donor drive that includes tripling our donations. We have just over 100 days left and lots of work today. This drive ends on 7/31 so people who want to support strong female candidates should go on over to Emily's List and find out more.


And speaking of Card Carrying Liberals; a little "Youtube Who's Who done by Living Liberally.


You can sign up for your own Liberal Card here.

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Downtown Austin's “Monkey Bars”

(Photos by LowerManhattanite—Austin, July 2008)

Seen in Downtown Austin during Netroots Nation:

I have a habit—sometimes a bad one while dodging a fired-and-liquored-up college crowd on a Friday night—of looking up at signs and architecture of cities I visit. Just sort of noticing things. One thing I noticed was this odd pairing of nightspots—nearer to the corner, there stood Darwin's Pub—“The Sixth Street Evolution”, and a few doors away the chucklingly monikered “Chuggin' Monkey” as shown in the highlighted photo above.

I got a laugh out of the two places' proximity—nearly as big a laugh as I got at the Heath Ledger “Joker” lookalike in full costume colorfully voiding his alcohol-spoiled gut a few feet away from where I stood. The pubs weren't affiliated in any way, but...I just kept thinking to myself that in the interest of equal time, other views should have been represented.

Because you never know when some flat-earther will stumble down the street looking to drown his sorrows and seriously want to hasten that seventh day, to get that “rest”, dontchaknow?

So, with that, I busted out the Photoshop and added in that oh-so-necessary nightspot where getting plastered needn't be a chance thing—and there's no possibility of ever, ever...getting “Ape- Shit Drunk”.



I hear they serve a mean pretzel, too.

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Gilliard Grant Awarded to Michael Shaw at Netroots Nation

“The Gilly” artwork by Lower Manhattanite
GNB Exclusive

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AUSTIN - TODAY at 11:15 AM Eastern Time, Michael Shaw, clinical psychologist, blogger/writer, visual journalist, and curator of BAGnewsNotes, was awarded the first annual Gilliard Grant of Merit by Group News Blog.

The presentation was made immediately preceding the final keynote speech (Van Jones, with introduction by Mayor Gavin Newsom) at Netroots Nation in the Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas.

Presenting The Gilly were five members of GNBs' staff: Jesse Wendel, Publisher; Lower Manhattanite, Chief, National Affairs Desk; Hubris Sonic, Chief, Foreign Affairs Desk; The Littlest Gator, Staff Writer; and Sara Robinson, Managing Editor.

The Gilliard Grant, named after blogger Steve Gilliard (November 13, 1964 - June 2, 2007), including a monetary award, will be awarded annually.

Dr. Shaw was awarded the Gilliard Grant of Merit for Excellence in Journalism and News Blogging.

The Gilly artwork was created by Lower Manhattanite.

Contact:
Jesse Wendel
Dr. Shaw

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Gilliard Grant To Be Awarded at Netroots Nation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AUSTIN - TODAY at 11:00 AM Eastern Time (10:00 Central), Group News Blog will present the first annual Gilliard Grant immediately preceding the final keynote speech of Netroots Nation (Van Jones with introduction by Mayor Gavin Newsom) in Exhibit Hall 4, Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas.

The Gilliard Grant, named after blogger Steve Gilliard (November 13, 1964 - June 2, 2007), including a monetary award, will be given annually to the blogger or blog who strives for and achieves excellence in journalism and news blogging.

Contact:
Jesse Wendel

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Technical Problems

Jesse:

Massive technical problems. As in, I am gonna eat their ass.

Downstairs in the lobby on the wireless network from hell...

Beautiful hotel, but they has gots me upstairs (non-ADA) which is not only dumb, but PAIN. LM and/or Hubris have to help me up and down the stairs, carry my bags, and in general, wait on me.

Hmmmm. Strike what I said about “dumb.”

Hopefully LM and I get moved in the morning. I sure as shit can't go up and down these stairs another day. (Although maybe if they got me a mountain bike. Some of those suckers gear down so low a rider could climb telephone poles.)

Ooooh... and Maggie Jochild is here in the morning!!! Go Maggie!
.
So... No more writing from me tonight. Not till they fix their fucking technical problems. Or till I get to the convention center.

I'm also not even naming the hotel...YET. Not till after we, um, negotiATE an appropriate change in our room charge given I had to go down and up the god-awful stairs from my room which I'm paying for to their lobby which I'm not...

Austin rocks. This hotel's IT setup is rocky.

Lower Manhattanite:

“Whats a dazzling urbanite like you doing in a rustic setting like this?”--Gene Wilder's Waco Kid to Cleavon Little's Sheriff Bart

What am I doing here? Hanging with the rest of the GNB crew, commiseratin', “conversatin'”, and Netroots Nation-aytin', faithful readers. Be fooled not--this is not some cow-town, this beautiful Austin, Texas. From the moment I hopped off the plane, I knew I was in what one would call "cool" environs. It probably had a lot to do with the huge, bronze statue of the amazing Texas political giant Ms. Barbara Jordan, staring down thoughtfully, weighty book on lap and glasses at rest.

Nothin' like that at Kennedy or LaGuardia, kiddies.

Then, walking to the ground transportation area, I was captivated by a beautiful woman in a coral-colored dress--seeming to walk in slow motion in the sticky night air. She floated damn-near, dress catching just enough breeze to where she looked akin to something descending from a cloud---but then, it could also have been simple fatigue on my part--a tough flight after a doubly tough night full of more drama than Wagner's "Ring Cycle" on crack. Ye Gods!

But, the kid is here, along with Jesse, Hub, TLG, and Mme. Robinson. The nicest touches were entering the hotel room, and finding it festooned—not with corny-ass hotel art--oh, no! Instead? A beautiful, striking, vintage silkscreen poster of Bobby Womack and his Peace Band playing at Port Arthur, Texas from back in the “That's The Way I Feel About Cha” days. Then, descending the balcony steps, the ring and peal of live music from across the street at The Continental Club. Oh yes...I think this could be fun. Fun indeed. But now...on to sleep, perchance to dream...of a nice breakfast.

I doubt it will be bagels. :)

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Vote for Maggie to Attend Netroots

LOLCAT Weekly Roundup 10, courtesy of Maggie Jochild's Meta Watershed.

Hey everyone...

I just noticed (through my pain) the updated request to vote Maggie Jochild a scholarship to Netroots Nation.

Seems the available scholarships got upped from 9 to 20, and the qualifying deadline got bumped to midnight June 13.

MAGGIE HAS A REAL SHOT AT GETTING A SCHOLARSHIP.
We have enough GNB readers to help in a major way.

Please vote for Maggie Jochild, friend of GNB.

Meta Watershed

UPDATE: The number of Netroot Nation scholarships available has been increased from 9 to 20, and the deadline for applying/voting extended to June 13th. I've been deeply moved by the response so far -- more than I can express. But I'm hoping any of you who missed this the first time around will be motivated go here and voice your vote for my getting one of these precious windows to community contact and influence.

------------------------

My readers, I have applied for a scholarship to attend the upcoming Netroots Nation Conference (progressive bloggers from everywhere), which is going to be in Austin on July 17-20. The application is through Democracy for America, and will pay admission (several hundred dollars) and lodging (which I may not need if I can get transportation to and from the site).

The nine scholarships will be awarded to "The applicant with the highest amount of support voiced on their application page by members of the DFA community will earn a scholarship. All other scholarships will be chosen at the discretion of DFA senior staff." Thus, I need your support!

Please go here to read my profile and register your support for me as a candidate. Spread the word, every vote will count. Click on the nomination box at the bottom.

Thanks for your help. I'll make great use of attending, you can count on that.

All of Group News Blog's writers will be at Netroots Nation.

Please help Maggie attend:

Vote for Maggie Jochild for a Netroots scholarship.

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See You in Austin for the Netroots Nation Convention!

Nice Video from last year (I was there though I didn't make it any of these scenes-- I am complaining to my gator-agent now.) Who is going this year? The GNB team will be there in force, and we are looking forward to meeting, greeting, learning, speaking, and drinking liberally with all of you! NETROOTS NATION CONVENTION-- was YearlyKos, 7/17-7/20 in Austin Texas. Find out all about it here. We have to try to get over Stubbs while we are in town!

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Holiday Open Thread

Lots and Lots Going On

In no particular order, not necessarily related, or even important...

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan. (Includes video.)

Midnight tonight is the last time to get the "Early Bird" discount for Netroots Nation sign up. Come meet the GNB writers!

We're not posting much right now:

• Hubris Sonic is on vacation.
• Lower Manhattanite has something going on at home.
• I've got something going on at home.
• Sara's posting, but not a lot.
• Posting should pick up again after the New Year.

A tiger killed a teenager and mauled two more at the San Francisco Zoo.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Wednesday that employers could reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare.

Mischa Barton was arrested early Thursday morning (December 27) in West Hollywood, California, for DUI, drug possession, and driving without a license.

Giuliani ad "Freedom" links World War II, 9/11, Islamic terrorists.


It's an open thread folks. Have fun.

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Eat Our Dust.

Po' ol' Harold Ford...workin' his hands to the bone—for absolutely nothin'.

About a week ago, I found myself in the supermarket. Grabbed some pasta. Grabbed butter, and then...I picked up a carton of milk, and placed it into the basket. I looked at it and immediately thought about the poor, missing kids you often see on the sides of the container. You cluck your tongue, you shake your head sadly, and mutter a pity-filled “Oh, that poor child! What could have become of him?”, and then you go on with your day as best you can.

Imagine my surprise when the very next day, a certain “missing” kid—disappeared from the face of the earth it seemed—lost since last November actually—miraculously turned up! I'd found him! I'd found him! Crawling around in the dankest sewers of TV! Thank God for John Amato at Crooks and Liars and his flashlight which helped me find him!

The new chairman of the DLC said he doesn’t know who’s been right about the Iraq war. No, I’m not kidding. And he wonders why most of the presidential candidates stopped at YKos and left the DLC conference blowing in the wind. He was there (on FOX!—ed. note from LM )to talk about Obama’s foreign policy ideas and answered this way on Hannity and Colmes last night:

Colmes: Barack Obama had a great point when he said those who voted for the war in Iraq and then had to apologize for that vote should probably be the last people to criticize he—who was right about the war in Iraq all along.

Ford: I don’t know who’s been right about this war all along…

Colmes: Sure you do…

Ford: That’s open for dispute.

Colmes: You don’t know who’s been right about the war all along?

Ford: One thing is clear. What we’re doing now is not working.

Okay...I love Crooks and Liars, but I swear, I almost wanted to bop John over the head with his trusty media flashlight until the batteries exploded out, for his exposing me—us—to the reason why the pitiful, toadying, little gnome that is Harold Ford, was away for so long.

He wasn't missing. He was “away”” of his own volition evidently—hiding under a fucking rock with the rest of the pillbugs, and worms and all manner of many-legged creatures/pests you never see until you trip over said rock, and “ewwwwwww!”, there they are, exposed—all slimy and twitchy, and crawling around until you can get that rock back on top of 'em—hard, thank you very much—so you don't have to see them again.

Alas, not only didn't we get the rock back down—HARD!—quickly enough to re-acquaint ol' Harold with his natural habitat, but apparently, the annoying little bug wants to hang out in the light for awhile, and is scuttling for all he's worth to stay there. See, he'd been under that rock since November—after progressives, liberals, dirty fucking hippies—and yes, a few right-tacking opportunists rode the lefty wave in, and shifted the balance of power in Congress from those compassionate wingnuts who let Ford's and his DLC'ers suckle at its diseased teat—to people who rather openly detested said DLC'ers and their teat—and other appendage suckling.

So, as the election—while still far off—still nears, what with the uncommonly early ramp-up of interest, much focus has shifted to the Netroots, and the activist/activated wing of the Democratic party, which is driving the debate these days. So much so, that the ridicule we once drew—“Tin-foil ha-aaaats! Tin-foil ha-aaaats! What have you won?"—has now shifted to a scorched-earth campaign to destroy us entirely. Recall those thrilling days of three weeks ago, during O'Reilly's cartoonish, exploding-cigar-in-his-own-mouth of a campaign to “destroy” YearlyKos '07 and its namesake Markos. ?

I sure do. And so too, does Harold. You see, the shit backfired on O'Reilly and the right so badly that it ended up turning Kos into an even bigger celebrity—and honestly, much to Kos's chagrin, more of a power-broker, thanks to one unfortunate side-effect of YearlyKos '07.

Um, well...it's like this—you know the DLC? Well, they kinda like...had a convention scheduled for the week after YearlyKos, and uh... heh! The damndest thing—all the candidates who showed up at YearlyKos? Not a one of 'em showed as much as a stray kinky hair or millimeter of cleavage at the DLC's fine, little shindig, leaving the what—six attendees or so, to watch as Joe Lieberman and Harold Ford were the lone participants in that convention's three-legged race and roll-over-on-your-back-like-a-punk-ass-bitch competition at its all-day picnic.

Owee!

But with that, and the general ash-heaping of even the “need” for a DLC in today's anti-GOP climate, all manner of warning bells, sirens and batshit-screaming Connecticut losers down at capitulation central went off.

“Oh fuck—I mean fiddlesticks!—we're civil, remember? The Netroots is drawing all the heat! O'Reilly's after 'em, and it's only making them look tougher...stronger...more formidable! Ain't nobody thinking about our jackleg shit—er..stuff anymore! What do we do?”

“I've got it! let's send Harold out on a whirlwind tour to champion and defend our tepid...bull-defecation! Yeah, that'll work!”

And thus, we got the sad spectacle of Harold Ford, sitting there glassy-eyed and slack-jawed—wanly defending his atrophied wing of the party's stance on the war, as noted above. It was sad, watching him in the clip. Out there, ass hanging in the breeze, with no reasoning whatsoever to back him up. Just contrarian bullshit for the sake of contrarian bullshit. In that moment, Ford annoyingly became John Cleese in the infamous Monty Python "Argument Clinic” skit. Arguing his point(?) not out of any sense of conviction—but because it is his job, a job he desperately covets—to do so.


Yes Harold, you've become–or rather, matured into a whole new level of farce—in your attempt to make the DLC fucking matter again. I laughed at the Joe Klein article in Time about the horror of the DLC being deemed a ”pariah” by many in the Democratic party, and I'm sure you piddled your J. Press khakis when your boy Joe dared out that out there for public consumption, too. It's real...and true. And you're desperate. You know what's coming in '08, and you've gotta try to do something to make your crew at least appear to be players again when your patrons on the right are moved into super-minority status. So, you come out with this shit...on the one cable news net that you're most comfortable on—FOX, of course. Came out swingin' too...with soft, downy pillows. Mewling your lukewarm-dishwater natterings on the things that really matter.

And then, you upped the ante. You got booked on “Meet The Press” opposite Kos. Which must've galled you to no end, man. You guys are about a year apart age-wise, yet for all your so-called “youthfulness”, you came off as hip, and as tuned in to the political landscape as Grover-fucking-Cleveland had he been time-snatched by Bill and Ted.

You tried to play the gravitas card—which failed.

You played the “Hey! It was the DLC what won the '06's!”, which was almost “I'm Rick James, bitch!”, in terms of hilarity.

You stumbled badly with your “I'm a truly honest Dem” shit, when you wouldn't back off of going on FOX to criticize fellow Democrats.

And when you realized how bad you looked, how woefully out of step you were, you went to the Lieberpublican/Foxocrat playbook of snippy bitch talking points:

MOULITSAS: Will you stop going on FOXNews and attacking Harry Reid for abandoning the troops, betraying the troops? Because you just did that a couple of days ago…

FORD: Markos, in all fairness, your site has posted awful things about Jewish Americans…

MOULITSAS: That’s not true…

FORD: Your site has…now you have a site about…something about Cindy Sheehan, she uses it as a…she has a heavy presence there in talking about running against….

MOULITSAS: It’s called “democracy.” If you don’t like regular people, hundreds of thousands of people…you’re gonna have…

FORD: No, I love it…but you can’t be critical of us…

MOULITSAS: Of course…you’re not going to control hundreds of thousands of voices. Your organization has a dozen people, you CAN control that message. And you don’t need to attack Democrats.

You sad, silly, fucking boy. You even went back on FOX two days later (back to the minors-tsk-tsk!) where the even the bubble-headed Laura Ingraham schooled your ass on the idiocy of your middle-playing.

And it was then that it hit me—what the deal was with you, and how you're acting these days and why.

You Harold, are the poor, dumb fool who took over your boss's grand, old horse-shoeing business, thinking you had it made!—You da man, now, br'uh! Woo-hooo!— except...except...well...

Nobody really rides horses anymore, Harold.

You're mad about it. So...you throw your archaic, little horseshoes at the passing cars. You whip 'em at the anti-war left, at the Netroots, and at Kos—Kos, the peppy, ascendant yang to your tired-ass yin.

And still, they pass you by. Vrrroooooooom!

I get it. We get it. You fucked up and now, now?...Now you have to justify your existence. “Protect your phony-baloney job! Harrrumph!”

Somehow, you've gotta move all of those stupid-ass horseshoes you bought.

Well...I suppose there's one saving grace.

FOX "News” demographic is just the crowd you can unload 'em on. I hear it's a real popular game at the old folks homes. :)

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