BBB: Gathering links… and whatever else. ::Updates Whupdates. And Whines. 23 June 2006
Posted by marisacat in Big Box Blogs, DC Politics, Democrats.trackback
Three from James Joyner (I have really appreciated his takes) at Outside the Beltway:
Aristocratic Left Wing Blogosphere Imploding?
From this morning, Yglesias at TAPPED. :: have a laugh, TNR's "soft fascism" piece that Matt linked to has been removed. But the entry at TAPPED Is still good. Can we get a shout-out against deleting stuff once it is up?
A round up piece on Armstrong in Ohio (Sherrod – Hackett issues, from a ground level view) at Buckeye State Blog.
… and let me add, because that whole thing blew like a wild grease fire. I had no "dog" in that mess. I believe in bloody knuckle primaries, if need be. My own opinion (just mine) was that Hackett was wound too tight – and Sherrod may be too weak to manage state-wide. I also think that Reid and Schumer gamed the deal way too hard, playing with Hackett while (just my opinion) they got some agreement or shift in something out of Sherrod. Only a guess.
Better to make them fight it out, you may get a better contender from one of them, as outcome. But! god knows, bossism is not dead.
Another big BUT: I am not there, on the ground. I did follow Hackett closely from early days of his run against Schmidt. And not just on the blogs, where I sensed a manufactured entity (I am not speaking of Ohio blogs, I mean the "incestuous amplification" BBB, got a whiff going about Hackett that I did not care for, there is where I sensed packaging, did not require brilliance on my part!).
I followed it in the press in Ohio – and i looked at where his money was coming from (early days of the senate primary)… It seemed it/Hackett was going to be flash that the Dems would latch on to. Wish they could stop flailing.
And I wrote this, Hot and Heavy in the Shrinking Tent, Operatic Ohio as a round up (off-site).
From Glen Greenwald"s blog:
Gatecrashing
By Barbara O'Brien — This Thursday night Markos Moulitsas (along with Wynton Marsalis and Anna Burger) is being honored with a Justice Award from the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy in New York City. Read more from Jane Hamsher, here.
I realize there’s some ambivalence about Kos among leftie bloggers and blog readers. See, for example, Nick Bourbaki’s posts at Wampum, here and here. And there was snarking at Kos recently in a comment thread here at Unclaimed Territory, in a post discussing Ned Lamont’s challenge of Joe Lieberman’s Senate seat. Several commenters complained that Kos is more interested in electing Democrats than electing the best progressive candidates, who might be from a third party.
…and "Deeper Throat" (desperate times call for deeper throats!) posted a comment in a previous thread [Tsk, tsk: silly willy nilly :: Big Whupdate.] indicating that Armstrong was 39 at the time the SEC file, 2003.
Comment:
And Jerome's case, if it could be aired out, is a non-story (he was a poor grad student at the time so he settled because he had no money). [that was Kos quote]
UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Touting Defendant 30. Armstrong, age 39, resides in Seaside, Oregon. Since early 2000, his only source of income has been from stock market investing.
And this from the close of Bowers/MyDD Thursday evening post — remember he believes that the Left is the reason for all losses the party endures… <stop laughing>:
We are all in this new movement together folks. I may be only 32, but I waited my whole life for a real progressive movement to come along in this country. Now we have it, and we are making some real waves. We will win and lose together. I have your backs because you have mine, and because I've seen energy in the netroots that I know will lead to the changes in America we all desire. We can do this. We just hve to stay together.
Last, just a link, but a classic. Of a sort.
Will update, whupdate, whatever, thru the day.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Think this qualifies as a WHUPDATE, Warner has never been an interest other than as part of the political landscape, so I don't frequent his campaign blog, Forward Together. But…
Whirlwind Day at YearlyKos
By Adam Conner
Posted on Sat Jun 10, 2006 at 11:25:25 PM EST
As Governor Warner told Ariana Huffington today:
No one would think twice if this were a party for donors or elected local officials. Well, it's time we took the netroots seriously. This is a community that needs to be taken seriously, and represents the democratization of the public square of America.
For those of you who couldn't see the speech today politicsTV has posted highlights from the Governor's speech.
Chris Cillizza from The Washington Post had this to say:
Warner's biggest applause line came when he said the country needs an administration that "unites our friends and divides our enemy, not the reverse." He followed that up with a call for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign, which, not surprisingly, brought a loud cheer from the heavily progressive, "netroots" crowd.
Warner was introduced by Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the Daily Kos blog, who credited the governor's decision to speak at the convention as one of the keys to its success.
"He put his credibility on the line to commit to doing this event,"
Moulitsas said of Warner. "He sent a message to the party that we are a force to be reckoned with."
and in comments I find this:
A correction is needed.
Governor Warner just departed the hotel after a whirlwind day here at YearlyKos that included his keynote speech at lunch
Governor Warner's speech was not labeled a "keynote speech" on any of the YearlyKos online or printed official schedules. For his official blog to call it such is inaccurate, and has left Markos Moulitisas and the YearlyKos volunteer organizers open to charges that the event, the organizers themselves, and Kos have endorsed already Warner as a presidential candidate. . Please correct your statement to reflect the facts. Thank you.
[It was posted by "Sharoney" on June 22.]
Well! We surely don't want anyone upset. "Keynote"? Would that be a "gaffe"??… -MCat.
hmmm I really have not hunted for Kos-aligned "damage control", opinion stuff because imo it is predictable: BORRRING. I have read some of it and assume people can find that, easily.
I'm better served by the James Joyner takes – and they, the bellicose Koserei, are out there in force, trying to beat back even moderate takes from such as Yglesias and Joyner, even Drezner who called this flabby greasy contretemps 'just more business as usual' was accused of all sorts of misdeeds, gotta laugh…
But I ran into this one. Over to others… 
MORE:
Michael Sherer in Salon updates his pieces, a take on the TownHouse email list.
But of course, and this will surprise no one, there was more than one. List, that is. That, TownHouse, I suspect was the "big one" with the broadest membership. And obviously, someone, several someones got sick of the hubris on the hoof from some members. They got sick of something.
Well this is a WhupWhupdate.
In kindness, stashing it at the bottom of a several hours old post. I had completely forgotten that Jerome Armstrong was/is an astrologer. Way way back there was occasional commentary at MyDD that reflected taht.
Redstate picks up on it. And they provide many many links. Whoops.
Well!! WHUPDATE!!!,
Greenwald claims that the Gilliard email, portions in the Zengerle The Plank posts is a fake. Would that be a claim of fraud?
Last I checked the Greenwald thread, Gilliard had not weighed in. But ''others'', one of whom is Greenwald, on the TownHouse list state that the purported Gilliard e-mail was not part of the discussion. They admit that the Greenwald and Mike Stark extracts are real.
Issue is taken with the number of sources that Zengerle has claimed.
Gaze at the stars, I am sure this will sort out. Someone will be found out.
This comment to the Greenwald thread is of interest, I think:
- KevinHayden said…
- While there was a backchannel dialogue – beyond the Townhouse opt-in list – it was begun by a source that felt targeted by the new rules for the network, a network that Kos and MyDD had created.As I recall, Markos didn't take part in the ensuing discussion. And I certainly don't recall anything like the email from Steve Gilliard that you've debunked. Most on the email list didn't publicly take sides at all in the debate. A few did consider it a 'power play', but I recall several who considered it laughable as well that anyone should be intimidated because of the big dawgs involved.I agreed with your points that as Kos and Jerome (and others) are now viewed as a force in national politics, they should anticipate more negative attacks. And certainly, I'd anticipate that there are legitimate points to critique about them, or about any of us. We are human, we err, and we're taking part in a process that spawns a lot of bias and oversight.There's one nice difference I'd note about the words and actions of many progressive liberal bloggers, however, relative to media pundits and entrenched political operatives. Bloggers often get factchecked by their own readers, they regularly offer frontpage corrections and they are far more likely to issue apologies when they've screwed up badly.The MSM tends to 'stay the course' with their mistakes or deliberate distortions, and most Beltway political operatives don't have the integrity to admit error at all.I wonder which path Zengerle will take…
- 8:10 PM
This is another comment to the Greenwald thread. i say anonymous should come into the light…;)
come on, glenn, you yourself are an example of the faux "advertise liberally" circle of links.
Kos is a REPUBLICAN that cannot be a bigshot on his pet issues in that party, so he has created a little echo chamber at his site.
A few other blogs constantly link back and forth between themsleves, even though they mostly have no expertise or special insight about what they blog in.
Case in point – FDL. They rose to the top of the circle on links based on 24/7 speculation (virtually all wrong) about fitzmas.
In fact, most of what you cite as "progesssive" blogs will not allow discussions of vote fraud, the holes in the official 911 story, or the economic issues that are decimating working class families.
There is nothing "liberal" about these sites at all — yet you are one of their main beneficiaries.
And now you are just throwing more of the same crap — glenn, you have lost a lot of integrity in my book.
At least I know that americanblog and kos were really republicans that "split" because of a small number of pet issues.
You are not actually a liberal either.
Here is a clip from an update that Greenwald posted. I don't see anything at Gilliard's as of a while ago.
- I then checked my in-box (which retains all e-mail received) and there was no such e-mail from Gilliard (I would have received it if, as Zengerle claimed, Gilliard sent it to the Townhouse list). I then sent e-mails asking whether anyone else had received such an e-mail, and multiple individuals (who are on the Townhouse list) confirmed that they also never received any such e-mail. Gilliard then confirmed by e-mail that he did not send such an e-mail.
<have a cricket… have a few>
AWWWW. The WHINE Update. My take, boys are tired and cranky. Give that cranky blogger a pacifier. Or a Town House.
here is a snip of the whine, if you have ever read the "discipline the children" posts that Kos shits out from time to time, you will hear the resonance: They need a big big vaca from each other. Or a long long gaze at the stars.
Meta
Because everyone loves these posts, picking up where Garance leaves off it's time to acknowledge a few things. First, lots of bloggers and blog readers have something against the nebulous club of "A-List bloggers." I'm not sure who is exactly in that club, but I imagine it's fair to assume it includes Markos and myself among others.
There are a variety of reasons people seem to like to get their hate on at us, especially Markos, and I'll try to spell them out as I understand them without bothering to argue with them.
1) A-list bloggers have shitty blogs that no one should read but people just read them because they've been around for so long.
Maybe they all need some meta-morphosis.
I am reminded of Vince Foster, one aspect of his desperate stress was to be attacked on the Front Pges of the WSJ. A publication that his entire life had raised him to <cough> revere. Leaving aside any mental instability on his part that led to the suicide, he joined the Big Leagues when he moved to DC iwth the Clinton win.
Boy Bloggers (and the women assists) yelled, they screamed, they fought, they bitched to be the abrasive insider-outsiders.
Did they think there would be no BLOW BACK?
Deal with it.
Comments
Sorry comments are closed for this entry
Based on these
recent summer productions
I’d hazard a guess
that we’ll be seeing no
Opera seria performed this season.
What a hoot. Beats Beach Reading – as I keep saying…
Wonder what is under the BlogPAC hood?
Brigham, Bob, San Francisco, CA – $4,000 – 1/18/2005 – Consulting
Brigham, Bob – $4,000 – 2/11/2005 – Consulting
Brigham, Bob – $4,000 – 3/9/2005 – Consulting
Brigham, Bob – $600 – 4/29/2005 – Consulting
Kurlind, Miles, Santa Rosa, CA – $500 – 1/21/2005 – Consulting
Meyer, Dave, Washington, DC – $1,500 – 3/11/2005 – Consulting
Stoller, Matt, Washington, DC – $2,000 – 1/15/2005 – ?
I guess TAP’s reply to TRN is expected since it is was founded by former Depart of Labor and neo-liberal Robert Reich.
This is all getting veddy, veddy META, as evidenced by the following passage from Ezra Klein:
I would argue that the most regrettable element of the whole thing is that the fatality count in Iraq for US service personnel now stands at 2,515, and NOBODY on the BigBoxBlogs is discussing that. Used to be meat and drink on more than one that I used to post on. God forbid we should suggest the whole thing is a goddam failure that should never have happened and should be liquidated as fast as possible.
After all, if we do suggest that, maybe the Democrats won’t win huge Congressional majorities in November! And if they don’t anyway, it will mean we didn’t fail MORE to discuss how much of a misbegotten disaster the Iraq war was to begin with.
Anyway, why aren’t we all outraged that a man who posted on the Internet for 3 years under his real first name was denied his pseudonomity (little contradiction in terms there, don’t you think?) even though what he posted were mostly vulgar, drunken insults the Internet is a beter place without? I guess we’ve no sense of proportion . . .
Well now now. Mcjoan, she of a Democratic consultant dynasty (I jest) out of Idaho (or wherever) offered the latest scheisse from Begala yesterday, on Iraq. FP. Bless those women assists. Where would Kos be.
Mired in Mud they are. AnD NOT ANTI WAR. Call ti Kerry’s War and all would change.
BTW
whoops cut myself off…
BTW, Lamont looks as tho he has indigestion when he has to get up a comment against the war. And he finds peace demonstrations too “in your face”. when asked why he missed some prominent ones in spring one of his consultants, Aldon Hynes or someone like that, gave that answer.
UNRAVELMENT.
EGO MANIA
Yeeessshhh!!!!
And so did Cinderella contemplate the shrivelling of her coach into a pumpkin.
As to the rest, Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper are nodding approval in whatever corner of hell they occupy, the former especially. It was she, iirc, who was married to some quack, alcoholic doctor who was given a charity position as in-house physician at one of the big studios so that LP would write items about its favored stars and their movies. The studio’s employees wore tags stating that in case of emergency, they were most certainly not to be taken to guess which doctor?
Anyway, I bet you’re all as excited as I am about the soon-to-be-released “My Left Wing, The Movie!!!” starring everyone’s favorite foul-mouthed drama queen. Oh, excuse me, ever since the WaPo article everyone but her realized was a hatchet job, she’s washed her mouth out with soap and forgotten her native Anglo-Saxon tongue. And like Armando in his Crossed Messages incarnation, once the obscenities are gone, one is forced to confront the prose of a mediocre mind trying to think profound thoughts, and realize the reason they expressed themselves in such vulgar terms was they knew they had so little of interest to say that this was the only way they could get noticed.
Re Townhouse (what’s the revolutionary symbolism in that name, I wonder?) … I’ve done backchannel dialogue before on some VERY touchy subjects… to coordinate our public utterances, steer conversation toward and away certain things (nothing to do with current blogging, but years ago on another subject). I know it’s a good tool. It seems to me that Kos’ problem is that he just did not vet his extended group very well. (Even Armstrong, I’ll bet.)
Oh I have no problem wtih the idea of e-mail lists. None at all.
But someone leaked. And I posted the hayden comment from Greenwald that seems to indicate some stress or dissension on the list.
I have no problem wtih back channel. Perfectly normal way of doing business.
Til you look shady.
Hi marisacat, I followed a link from madman. Nice place you’ve got here
I don’t have a problem with email lists either, or strategizing and so on. However, I find the thunderous silence about this list now, except for those already known to be on it (from the reports) to be a tad… odd. Am not sure that’s a good way to start looking unshady.
Weird story, all around.
Hi Nanette…
Well one thing the boys need, since they lecture so much, is some lessons in crisis management. And a much more deft handle (than they have ever shown) on handling the media.
What they are is sort of brute bumblers… and there are great vacuums in the party, so space was made for the brash – and loud on a small stage – new voices.
The real story is what is being lost behind the scenes … none of this bodes well. You can be pretty slimy in the operative class, but you operate out of view.
I am thinking for instance of the PIs, private investigators who specialise in poltiical work. Pretttty slimy bunch. But who has ever heard of them, much less had their rather juvenile publishing pushed publicly….
Boys wanted to be above the fold. Well, they got it.
I see we have a “push back” building. off to check links… Gilliard post is a scream, in its way. The email phrase he refutes, but not totally. Lotta talk of journalistic ethics, his.
Gilliard
LOL.
[...] Greenwald (previous MCat post has a couple comments from his piece extracted), Gilliard lui-meme and — I hear Hunter has a piece up over at BlogSon, Daily Kos. Found it, it is meta meta meta. Everything and a navel to contemplate TOO! [...]