Want to see a dead blog?

Blogs may fade away. Blogs may go the cardiac-arrest way: sudden. This was one of the leading blogs in South Florida, and it went suddenly in a fight over anonymous blogging. I’ve got to wonder what this country is coming to if anonymous blogging is a big problem, but there you are. And I blog with my full real name, with hardly a thought about it.

Bye bye to Stuck on the Palmetto. Take a look at the valedictory post, titled “The Off Ramp,” click on the snowy vista and hear a little Western guitar embellish the mood. A passed-away blog.

Wednesday’s Miami Herald stunned me with the news back in the Metro section, p. 3B. The link.

“Online fight ends blog” was the headline. Reason given:

“Its author worried he’d be outed by a fellow blogger who knows his full name and job.”

The two who posted on Stuck on the Palmetto were Rick and Alex, no last names, and otherwise not much identified. As it happened, I had met Alex a few times as I was getting into blogging for the Miami-Dade Democratic Party early this year, so I called him and commiserated a little and confirmed that the Herald’s view was correct, at least as to Rick: Its author feared he’d be outed. Alex was not so worried and was more public, but he remained anonymous, too, since it would look odd if one of the two authors had a name and the other went unnamed.

Now let’s go to the side that may have been willing to out the Stuck bloggers. The Miami Herald says it’s a journalist from the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, Bob Norman, who writes a blog called The Daily Pulp for that weekly paper.

There are some posts there to explain: a bare paragraph in yesterday’s roundup (no link found to the individual item, so scroll down to the headline "Palmetto Shutdown"), and a longer post last Wednesday Dec. 12. Seems to suspect that Rick was a cop and that one could wonder how he did his job and had time to blog prolifically. Here’s that link.

Bloggers must worry what will happen when “people” get after them. As someone told me today, a blogger who works for a newspaper has a company for defense, while independent bloggers, like Rick and Alex, could get sued and have to pony up a lot for defense. Could be enough to make a blogger feel the pressure and take cover.

I would usually read Stuck on the Palmetto a few times a week, but unfortunately I missed the final battle entirely and am left wondering what is in the detail of the posts.

Note: For those not familiar with Miami’s geography, the blog’s title is a reference to the Palmetto Expressway, a beltway that veers straight west from I-95 north of Miami and then after a few miles turns south and eventually provides connection to the Turnpike and on to US 1 and Key West. Being stuck on it is a regular feature of a commuter’s day. Time to think and fume.

Door’s still open for Draft Joe Garcia – Raul Martinez, too

For those not on the email list of the Miami-Dade County Democratic Party, here’s what Joe Garcia said in response to the rush of interest in drafting him for Congress: “While I am still far from making a decision, I do want to say that your kindness and support are very humbling and much appreciated!”

Regarding the on-line mention of his name having appeared in the Cuban regime newspaper Granma, he said, “Let me be clear that this paper is the communist propaganda newspaper and it makes assertions about the community and Congresspeople that are slanderous. And, although I may completely disagree with the Republican congressional delegation, these assertions by Granma are patently false.”

Granma had written an article about U.S. news reports on the South Florida congressional races and used its normal “Mafia” terminology in referring to the South Florida Republicans in Congress, This caused a little eruption of injured pride among some Cuban Americans. Garcia -- of Cuban background himself -- called one who protested, and issued his statement to make sure his distance from Havana was clear.

Garcia’s email concluded with mention of the new web site draftgarcia.com, so I think it’s safe to say he’s not against running against Mario Diaz-Balart in District 25. In an interview Friday with Nicole Sandler on WINZ AM940, he said it was a matter of convincing his wife and young daughter that it was right for the family.

Expect a decision by the second half of January, he said.

Uh, Joe, isn’t that when we’ll be in the thick of the runup to the Jan. 29 Florida presidential primary? Well, at least people will be thinking about politics.

Meanwhile, it’s heartening to hear enthusiasm for the Garcia candidacy. Nicole Sandler said on WINZ, “How awesome it would be to have Joe Garcia in the House of Representatives.”

On Stuck on the Palmetto, blogger Rick said he liked the way Joe debates the hardliners on the radio and provided a link to one of the best examples. I’ll repeat it here, along with Rick’s advice to let the link download, and then advance the slider to about 19:00. It runs for about a half-hour until the host, Henry Gomez, is so thoroughly defeated that he mutes Joe Garcia.

Rick concluded: “Joe has said he would run if he was asked. Let’s ask. Let’s start tossing out relics of the past and start looking forward.”

Meanwhile, there’s a growing web site to draft Raul Martinez, former mayor of Hialeah, to run for Congressional District 21, the seat held by Lincoln Diaz-Balart. You can hear Joe Garcia encouraging Martinez to run, in that clip on WINZ. Again, a decision likely in January.

Garcia said he knows of a handful of possible candidates to run against Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in Congressional District 18, and he’s encouraging them to consider it strongly.

What’s needed is a super majority in Congress to end the war and deal with health care – all the reverses needed after two terms of George W. Bush – and we should not shrink from thinking landslide Democratic victory in this supposed Republican stronghold.

Sweet dreams, everyone – five Democrats in the U.S. House from Miami-Dade.

We’re not the only ones thinking about it. From farther afield, hope springs from the Swing State Project, with a post that went up on Friday noting the moves to draft Garcia and Martinez. Read through the long string of comments to see how other races in Florida would be affected, and how progressives around the country will be encouraged to help us sweep the Republicans out in South Florida.

In case you forget how to get the links to draft Garcia and Martinez, they are on the main page of this blog, in the Links section down in the right-hand column. Don't just sit there -- go to the sites and sign up!

Really good Republican corruption reminder

There is a link in the second graf of this post on Stuck on the Palmetto to a clever reminder of Republican scandals you may have forgotten. This is Washington we're talking about, where the scandals are big, and Slate has rounded up about two dozen of them. This is how loyal Bushies make a living.

But the link above is specifically to today's Miami Herald, and more specifically to Ana Menendez' column with its jaundiced view of the Republican attack on Raul Martinez. We went through a lot of this yesterday. Ms. Menendez appropriately puts this in the category of the pot calling the kettle black.