Vote for the Netroots awards

Have you? The link is right here. This blog, you'll see, is among the nominees.

The Onion tackles Halloween

With thanks to the Florida Progressive Coalition Blog:

Be a Bold Progressive. Take the pledge

I did it. I'm going to pass it around, too. The prospect of having a pretty good president come November but a Congress full of Liebermans and Hoyers is keeping me awake at night.

Along comes Matt Stoller on his blog, Open Left, with a timely idea to help me sleep better. And he has allies in the blogosphere.

The idea is to have lots of people sign a pledge to demand bold progressive policies from the next U.S. government. Here's the link to the pledge.

This is the link to the Open Left post on this project.

I'm going to pop this up on the Florida Progressive Coalition blog, too, if it's not up already, and maneuver it onto Facebook, as suggested on Open Left.

There's a little box at the bottom of the pledge-signing form that asks the signer to say what progressive means. My comment was that it would probably mean fighting Obama over Afghanistan. Which is fit to become another occupation.

Florida bloggers covering Denver convention

You already can see some of the Florida bloggers’ coverage of the Democratic National Convention. Go to the Florida Progressive Coalition Blog and there’s a video of how it was to drive toward Denver with Tropical Storm Fay on the outside of the car and a George Carlin tape rolling inside. Ba-dum!

And you can order text-message reports by texting quinnelk to 58888.

In six days we’ll know how this venture has worked out, but in the meantime, there’s a Florida flavor to what the NY Times reported Saturday as “The year of the political blogger has arrived.”

Florida has a half-dozen full members of the Convention Bloggers Team, plus three other members of the Florida Progressive Coalition who are attending and will pitch in wherever they can to provide blogging, photos, video, Internet radio, Twitter and other stuff I may be forgetting. I’m one of the latter group and am still in South Florida while most of the others are en route or begging for airplanes finally to take off after that pesky tropical storm disrupted flight plans. I plan to fly to Denver Tuesday and hit the last few days with all the energy possible.

The idea is to provide more coverage on the FPC blog of the Florida delegation than the public could see on Sunshine State media outlets of the mainstream variety.

And that is the very same reason (take away the Florida aspect) why hundreds of bloggers from around the country are in the media throng in Denver – to provide alternate, and possible better, coverage of a political event.

And win new readers.

In addition to the NY Times, DailyKos also worked on this angle Saturday with a front-page piece reporting on the NY Times article as well as making Kossak observations about the Times’ placement of the article in its Fashion & Style pages rather than in a more serious place. Click over to the Times link above and see the dazzling larger photo that illustrates the article.

Kos comments:

And as an aside, it's hard to imagine anything more hilarious than Phillip Anderson of The Albany Project--aka DailyKos's own lipris--posing with a brew, a dog, a Mac, and a baseball cap in his usual (how shall we say this?) casual apparel under a blazing Fashion & Style masthead.

Funny thing is, if the traditional media doesn't get its expense act together and learn how to cut costs and compete in the new media environment, the guy in the baseball cap--and all of us he represents--is going to have the last laugh.

That’s the main drift of the Kos piece: that mainstream media costs are stratospheric, and we skinny folks lugging laptops and $100 Flip video cameras will beat them into their gold-plated dust.

The Florida Progressive Coalition team probably will announce its modest budget when the dust settles. Suffice to say that much was raised with $25 donations.

As an example of what we’re doing, there’s the live-blogging on Blast Off the other day when Hillary Clinton was at FAU to cajole her supporters into backing Obama. Blogger Sinfonian admits that the “quality sucks” but he’s exactly right in saying that “the money shot is the last sentence.”

Which said:

“Anyone who supported me has much more in common with Senator Obama than with Senator McCain.”

Sinfonian’s report has several minutes of context – unlike the mainstreams who’d only report the sound bite – and the public has a chance to make up its own mind. Horray for comprehensive reporting. I am a camera. Let it roll for a while and people will take a few minutes and watch.

Anyone who'd like to support the blogging team is welcome to donate. One way is to go to https://www.paypal.com/ and donate through the Florida Progressive Coalition account (quinnelk@gmail.com),

You can write a check to Florida Progressive Coalition and send it to:
Kenneth Quinnell
3328 Whirlaway Trail
Tallahassee, FL 32309

The Obama campaign in Florida gets going

We have a poster, a bumper sticker, a T-shirt design, a coffee cup. And a work of political art. By David Schor. Its title is "The Fabric of America."













I bought a coffee mug and had a cuppa this morning from it. Delicious. Colorful. Beautiful. A better mug of coffee. And your Miami-Dade Democratic Party will benefit from sales!

If you look closely at the faces in the painting by David Schor, artist resident in Miami, you should see some of your political friends, Joe Garcia, John Hornbuckle ...

Go to Miami-Dade Democrats or to David Schor's website and decide yourself what to order to brighten your life and contribute.

That introduced the Art section of the Obama campaign.

Next is the Florida campaign director, Steve Schale. Click on this link for a long Internet radio interview with the new head of the Barack Obama campaign in Florida.

You may have to log in or open an account – worth doing! Florida Progressive Radio is one of the new things you should become familiar with in this campaign year.

Thanks to Kenneth Quinnell and Alison Berke Morano for doing this Internet radio interview with Steve Schale, who knows Florida well and is about to blanket the state with Obama staff and volunteers. If you want to know what’s up and how to help it get rolling, listen and learn.

One idea to put in the bank: If Obama wins Florida, he’s president.

The co-hosts of this show are:

• Kenny Quinnell leads the Florida Progressive Coalition, teaches political science in Tallahassee and does a zillion other things to move Democratic politics along in Florida.
• Alison Berke Morano is chair of the Democratic Executive Committee in Pasco County in the Tampa Bay area and was installed in the Florida Progressive Hall of Fame at the recent Jefferson-Jackson Day event held in South Florida.

UPDATE: The Miami Herald on Monday also has a long feature on Steve Schale, p. 1. This concluded the two-parter on the Florida heads of the two campaigns. On Sunday the McCain boss, Arlene DiBenigno, was featured. She's a protege of -- who else? -- Jeb Bush. This is another reason for me to want Obama to win Florida BigTime.