My Liberal Identity:

You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young." - Henry Ford

“Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.” - Barack Obama, 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address

I'll be busy during the day over the weekend, so I don't know how much posting I'll get to, but I'll have a lot to say about the training afterwards.

"The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Damn that Rook. Why is it that I can't get any guest bloggers who know how to spell? Oh well, I guess I'll do this damned thing.

1. In high school I was so shy and filled with stage fright that I always skipped school when it was time to give an oral report. Now I'm a college professor.

2. I'm half Canadian (my father). His ancestors came from England. On my mother's side, there are Irish Catholics. So, yes, I conquered myself.

3. I collect things -- comic books, baseball/football/basketball cards, role playing games, music, DVDs. I have a separate room to store them in that is about 80% covered in collage artwork.

4. Like Bill Clinton before me, I was a member of the Masonic youth group DeMolay. Not just a minor member, either, but a long-time officer, state officer, ritual champion and athletic champion, including a world softball championship in 1988.

5. The first (and only) time I ever went on a mountain, I threw up. Mt. Lemon in Tuscon.

6. In my spare time (which is none), I'm a huge fan of horror -- movies, books, etc. I write horror fiction, which is posted at our group blog The Practical Press.

7. I know, from memory, nearly every recorded word George Carlin has ever spoken. Well, not what he said in Prince of Tides or anything, just the comedy albums. Me and my younger brother actually used to record live comedy shows on cassette. No real pre-written material or anything and no real theme, we'd just talk about anything that came up or was in our room or whatever. The tapes don't still exist. I also did some of this kind of stuff with my friend fulchmeister on video. Don't know if that still exists, but every once and a while, I used to meet someone that would say I was that guy from the tape.

8. I'm not gay, but my boyfriend is.

Bush actually told the truth. He said he'd be a uniter and 74% of the American public is united against the president. When's the last time 74% of Americans thought the same thing about the president?

In addition to having the worst president ever (Bush) and just getting past the worst Congress ever, it's good to see that we now also have the worse Supreme Court ever. Yay, America!

I could have just left a comment-totally off topic of course-on one of your posts telling you about being tagged. But you were kind enough to leave me the keys, so I am creating a post instead. I figured that should get your attention.

So, for work, I'm having to learn Second Life. I've created an avatar (TRex Miles), finished all the tutorials and left Help Island. That's when I started exploring. Let's just say it's a strange place.

Here are the things I've done so far intentionally:

• Flown.
• Obtained three complete houses (with no land to put them on).
• Driven a wheelchair and a Segway.
• Driven a buggy into the ocean.

Here are the things I've done so far unintentionally:

• Run over and squised a rat.
• Slow danced with a man.
• Angered some Swedish dude because I only know English.

"Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness." — George Washington

• Web Site of the Week - The 100 Worst Cover Songs
• Person of the Week - Dick Lugar: Finally doing the right thing.
• Dork of the Week - Charlie Dean: A Republican do boy moves up to the Senate.
• What's Going On Award - Florida special elections
• New Movie of the Week - Hostel 2
• Old Movie of the Week - Valley Girl
• New Book of the Week - Lisey's Story, Stephen King
• Old Book of the Week - Get That Nigger Off the Field, Art Rust Jr.
• TV Show of the Week - "John From Cincinnati"
• Athletic Team of the Week - Oregon State baseball
• Athlete of the Week - Greg Maddux, San Diego Padres
• Musical Artist of the Week - Flavor Flav
• Song of the Week - "Get Up On the Dance Floor," Flavor Flav
• Old Song of the Week - "Waiting for that Day," George Michael
• Album of the Week - "Hip Hop is Dead," Nas
• Old Album of the Week - "Faith," George Michael

"It is not a coincidence that the two fields most commonly accused of being liberal - journalism and academia - are two fields whose central purpose is the pursuit of truth." - Kenneth Quinnell

What happened in the Florida legislative special elections? Why did Democrats fair very poorly? If you ask Jim Greer, the answer is obvious:

GOP chairman Jim Greer said the victory “in a district in which registered Democrats outnumber Republicans—clearly debunks Democrats’ recent claims that they are mobilizing support among Florida voters.”

The only thing obvious here is that Greer is a moron. A partisan moron. More evidence:

GOP chairman Jim Greer released this statement:

“Once again, voters in House District 24 elected a leader with staunch conservative values and solid community involvement, leading Kurt Kelly to victory. The Florida Democrat Party did not even field a candidate in this race, demonstrating that that they are out of touch with Florida voters and unable to connect with mainstream Floridians, who embrace the Republican principles of lower taxes, less government, and more freedom.”

I'm pretty sure I hate this guy. For Republicans and conservatives in general, here's a simple, but undeniable fact for you: A win in an election does NOT necessarily mean that the "people" agree with you more. In particular, if the Democratic Party doesn't run a candidate in a particular race and the Republican wins, that definitely does NOT mean the people agree with you more. The fact that less than 5000 people turned out to vote for Kelly makes it clear that the people didn't give a crap about Kelly or the "independent" candidate.

Anyway, what really happened? That's more complex than people like Greer seem capable of publicly understanding. It's actually quite clear, though. The Dems did worse for a number of reasons, and these things have a lot of overlap:

1. Lack of publicity about the election. The media provided very little coverage of the election. Many voters had no idea there was an election. Many more had no idea who the candidates were. Many more had no idea what the issues were. This is a failure of the media. When there was coverage, some of it was biased:

Seriously, accepting paid ads from a candidate on your election coverage page? That's is not only morally wrong and does a disservice to the readership, it should be illegal. It's fine that the newspaper in the largest county in the election, with the highest rate of turnout universally endorsed Republicans. It's fine that they ignored Democratic candidates in their coverage or left them off of their public discussion board. It's fine that they presented a totally biased web page devoted to coverage of the election. Oh wait. No it isn't. None of this is fine. The Chronicle should be ashamed of its coverage of the election. They didn't even pretend to be neutral. So much for the "liberal" media.

2. Demographics. The districts were gerrymandered in the favor of Republicans. In the SD3 race, the makeup of the district overwhelmingly supported the former sherrif of the largest population in the nonsensically drawn district. A well-known semi-incumbent also had immense impact on both turnout and voting. Special elections are odd things and they are hard to predict and hard to plan for.

3. Short-sightedness. People outside of the districts in question paid little attention to the races, gave little money to the race and, with a few exceptions, did little to help out. As long as people think of legislative elections as local elections, we're all in trouble. There is one legislature in Florida, it is statewide and its decisions affect all of us. That should be a motivating factor for people outside the district to get involved. Some did. Most didn't.

4. Money. How many people saw a TV ad for Suzan Franks or Sophia Diaz-Fonseca? How many people heard radio ads? How many people heard or saw ads for Dean or Schultz? We have to realize that we have to have a major media presence in every election or we can't win. To wit:

She said her opponent, Republican Charlie Dean, was funded by "special interest" money that was "very difficult to combat." Records show Dean raised $506,633 in contributions since the first of the year and $248,738 in-kind (for campaign staff, polling, etc). Franks raised $13,104 and $48,331 in-kind.

Seriously, this isn't a broad election year, what are Democrats saving their money for? And even more seriously, look at the in-kind help. In-kind donations are those that don't involve actual cash. They involve goods and services given to the candidate. Even if we couldn't raise money, we really didn't have anything of value to give to Franks or Diaz-Fonseca? Really? I believe there was a lot of money out there to be donated and I believe there was a lot of goods and services that could've helped. Why wasn't it given? What was it being saved for?

5. Lack of interest group support. Where were the endorsements? Where were the donations? Where was the help in GOTV efforts? Where was the help in campaign staff? Seriously. The firefighters managed to get a ton of people to Tallahassee to protest a horrible tax cut bill that is likely to cost them jobs. How much effect did the protest have? How much effect might it have had if those resources had instead went to fight Dean and Schultz, people who will support those tax cuts to their dying breath? This picture says it all:

If you can't tell, among the logos on the envelopes in that stack of checks given to Charlie Dean are the FEA and AFSCME. Why are the interest groups in Florida so non-active and kow-towed to the Republicans. Really? Are Dean and Schultz really going to be better on education and labor issues than Franks and Diaz-Fonseca? Really? In what world?

6. Lack of party support. Again, the numbers are quite stark:

Despite controlling the districts, the state party put a lot of muscle into the off-season, off-year election, giving Dean $40,000 cash and Schultz about $72,000 in contributions and campaign advertising.

I'm not sure what the numbers were for the Dems, but I guarantee they were a lot less than these numbers. Why? Didn't FDP just raise $500,000? Are they saving it all for 2008? Really? Isn't the effort this year part of the effort in 2008? I'd really like to hear from Geller, Gelber, Schale and Reid why more money and in-kind contributions weren't available for this election. Al Lawson put out a lot of effort and many of the DECs in the district were active. If I'm not mistaken, the Brevard County Young Democrats did more to win the SD3 race than did the Senate Minority Leader. If I'm wrong, show me, but I don't see the evidence. When the head of the Senate says a race is lost, it is, in effect lost. In order to win something like this, candidates need help from those in positions of power. Where was that help? I'm sure there are reasons, I just can't figure out what they were.

7. Candidate issues. I met Sophia Diaz-Fonseca and Suzan Franks. I like them both a lot. They are great women and they would've both been great legislators. I hope both continue the fight and run again. I think they both could learn from the mistakes they made in this election. As far as I can tell, Diaz-Fonseca never put up a web page. That is hard to fathom for me. Franks, at times, seemed to lack a sense of urgency. Her web site was broken in various places for more than a week and several days after the primary, people had no ability to make online donations through her site. This quote says a lot:

"I have no regrets," Franks told the Buzz. "We were all grassroots."

Speaking as a grassroots activist who has worked on several campaigns now, you can't be ALL grassroots. That doesn't work. You have to have a combination of major media, a competitive level of spending and grassroots activism to win. If you pick only one of the three, you can only win with the first. Trying to doin it with grassroots alone will NOT work. As much as we would all like to say that money doesn't matter in elections, it does. In all races, the candidate who spends more money wins more than 80% of the time and I guess that in special elections, that number is higher.

You can't blame the results today on any one element, it was clearly a combination of factors. So let's use this as a constructive learning moment. There are more of us. We're smarter than they are. We're right on the issues. So why is it that they win these elections? We have 17 months to figure it out.

We're doing it. We're crashing the gates in Florida. We've taken the advice we've read and the lessons we've learned and we're turning that into action. We're fighting to change things. And it's working. No, we aren't kingmakers and we don't have major influence...yet. But we are making things happen. We are breaking down doors. We are crashing the gates.

We're crashing the gate of the Florida Democratic Party. To be fair, this one was quite easy. We just asked them if we could be invited to the party (both literally and figuratively) and they said yes. It was that simple. The party held a Netroots Luncheon for us at their largest annual fundraiser. They gave us press access to meet Nancy Pelosi and to the fundraiser dinner, the most successful in FDP history. We're meeting with them today to plan our series of workshops at the state convention in October. We're forming an official Netroots Coalition that will be a voice inside the party for activists and bloggers. More and more of us are joining our local DECs and other Democratic Party clubs and caucuses. We are the future leadership of the party.

We're crashing the gates of the media in Florida. In the Senate District 3 Special Election Democratic Primary held last month, the Netroots provided more substantive coverage of the race than the entire written mainstream media for the district combined. And that covers parts of 13 counties. We're getting access to people and events that had historically been confined to a few select media outlets. And some in the press are upset about this, grumbling about being lumped in with "activists" or ignoring our very existence. Similar things are happening at the national level. The problem with this is that if the traditional media were doing their job, the blogosphere and wikis and the like wouldn't even exist. There are some good individual reporters and some high quality publications, but not enough. Some don't have the resources to cover everything they should. Others don't have the desire to cover everything they should. That doesn't mean that the people don't need that information anyway. So the people have decided to go get it ourselves.

We're crashing the gates of the electoral process in Florida. Alex Sink was the first active candidate we interviewed. She went on to become one of only two Democrats to win statewide office and now serves as the highest ranking Democrat in state government. Now she won because of her quality as a candidate and her well-run campaign, but we like to think we had a role in that. In the recent Florida special election primaries, both Democratic winners interviewed with us first. We can't count the number of candidates we've lined up for interviews for the 2008 election cycle. The Florida Progressive Coalition website has more information about Florida politics and politicians than any other site on the web. We are the place to go during election time. More and more, when someone wants to know who to vote for in an election, our website is the best place they can go to figure it out. And the Republican Party of Florida is scared of our potential. Their LG vandalized our website in a story now dubbed "Wiki-Gate." We also hear that they are scrambling to get some kind of web presence to try and keep up with us.

This isn't a solo deal, either. We have numerous groups and individuals working together to achieve something greater than ourselves -- Florida Progressive Coalition, Florida Netroots, Florida Kossacks, FLA Politics, people from DFA and FDP -- teamwork is the key. We're doing it. Are you?

"My observation is that women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership."

"Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Excellence is achieved by the mastery of fundamentals." — Vince Lombardi

The NRA's Eddie the Eagle

"I refuse to engage myself in a battle of wits with a man who is unarmed." — Mark Twain