Category: news

Molly Ivins was a smart and sassy Texan and an inspiration to outraged progressives across the nation. Her voice will be missed,

When she declared of a congressman, “If his I.Q. slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day,” many readers were appalled, and several advertisers boycotted the paper. In her defense, her editors rented billboards that read: “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?”
– Molly Ivins Is Dead at 62; Writer Skewered Politicians – New York Times

Cross-posted from NetcentricCampaigns.org.

After blogging about who I thought should be Time's "person of the Year," I was a little disappointed with their announcement that "you" (in other words: everyone) was the winner.  It felt like a cop-out.  But the fact is, it's also true.

Time says:

It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

It's nice to see that the mainstream media is beginning to accept that not only have they been forced to release their strangle-hold on information, but that this transformation may be a good thing.  This is exactly what network-centric advocacy is all about.  The Internet has been a vital key in creating the infrastructure to allow groups of people to effectively collaborate around their own individual priorities.

The Time article is actually quite good, and they also highlight 15 people who typify "you."  One of the examples is Lane Hudson, who I had the pleasure of meeting at RootsCampDC a few weeks ago.  Lane's StopSexualPredators blog single handedly forced the Mark Foley isue into the blogosphere and then the media and then, finally, to Capitol Hill.  Not only did Rep. Foley resign his seat, exposing the repugnant behavior of the Republican chair of the House Congressional Missing and Exploited Children Caucus was a major blow to the right's "family values" image and gave the Democrats much-needed momentum in their campaign to take back Congress.

Lane was fired from his job at the Human Rights Campaign when his role was revealed, and he's got a new blog called News for the Left.  Let's show the power of the network to reward leadership like his and give him a hand. 

Vote now for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year 2006. The results so far:

33% Hugo Chavez
22% Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
12% Nancy Pelosi
10% The YouTube Guys
8% George W. Bush
8% Al Gore
5% Condoleezza Rice
2% Kim Jong Il

I voted for Pelosi thinking Chavez didn’t have a chance, but I was way wrong!

The first time you run a protest campaign, you might get admired for attempting to shape the debate and standing on your principles. But if you don’t make a dent, and then use that nothing you gained to run again, people start to see that you are running for yourself more than anything else.

Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2004, said Monday he is planning another bid because his party isn’t pushing hard enough to end the
Iraq war.
– Ohio Rep. Kucinich to run for president – Yahoo! News

What a waste of time. It seems even more pointless than Nader’s half-assed “campaign” in 2004. Even progressive Democrats will be ignoring Kucinich this time.

Got this from a friend by e-mail and just had to share:

I Googled this to verify it, and it’s a real quote from April 2005.

I’ve been really enjoying subscribing to the RSS feed of this NC-based cartoon Town Called Dobson. November 20th’s Will Karl Rove Kill Again? was especially good: