So I won't be in Austin for Netroots Nation, and I'm sure I'm not the only one -- I'm sure there are many of you out there who are thinking, I'd love to go, but because of the time / money / distance, it just wouldn't work out. However, I've found the next best thing -- I will be in Second Life for Netroots Nation!

Barack Obama knows a little something about voter registration -- his first successful wasn't when he ran for office -- it was a voter registration campaign. In 1992, when Bill Clinton was running for office, Barack Obama was in charge of a local chapter of Project Vote! in Chicago:

For a long time, I didn't get where Barack Obama was coming from with his rhetoric, at all; his talk of unity and bipartisanship made me very uneasy. After all that I had seen of the Republicans, it seemed very out-of-touch, tone-deaf, and unproductive. I was for someone like Feingold or Edwards or Dodd, someone who I knew would stand up to the Republicans and fight for the Constitution. And yet, not only am I planning on voting for Obama now, but I now think he had the better strategy all along. Read on...

Hear Gleen Greenwald speak and discuss his book A Tragic Legacy and join our weekly Thursday event in Second Life, tonight at 6pm Pacific / 9pm Eastern (roughly three hours after when this diary was posted)!  Also, next Thursday, Sam Seder will be joining us, to discuss progressive radio.  And afterwards, there will be much dancing and socializing with other Kossacks and progressives.

Mother Jones has published a fair bit about Daily Kos in the past, some of it positive, some of it negative.  But I was recently made aware of a bizarre, unsourced claim of theirs that Daily Kos is 98% white, in an article of theirs that doesn't appear to even have a byline.  It also contained lines like this:

some bloggers have become remarkably Boss Tweed-like [...] thus far all this digital-democracy stuff [...] skews heavily white and male

I emailed them a week ago about this, but they did not deign to respond.  I seriously doubt that they're right on this one, and thus I'd like to know why they're spreading misinformation about us that affects their perceptions and reporting.  Follow me below the fold to see why I think they're wrong:

I thought I wouldn't be able to make it to Yearly Kos.  And I'm sure there are many of you out there who are thinking, I'd love to go, but because of the time / money / distance, it just wouldn't work out.  I used to think that too, but now I've found the next best thing:

For a relatively small donation, a travel time of 0 minutes, and a decent computer system with broadband access, you too can join us at YKSL -- Yearly Kos Second Life -- and meet other Kossacks, see live panels at Yearly Kos, and even ask them questions!  Interested?  Read on and I'll tell you all about it:

As you may or may not know, there are some Trusted Users here who disagree with how I rate comments.  Well, that's ok, I disagree with some of them on a few things, too (see my previous diary, In Defense Of 'Trolls': The Responsibility Of TUs, for much more of this).

HOwever, now they've made it personal by going after me for it--read through the whole thread to get some context.  And--as I'm not currently a Trusted User--perhaps they've succeeded.  And if it happened to me, it could very well happen to you next.  So I'd like to see some clarification from the community as to how far we want to take these ridiculous double-standards towards comment ratings.  I'll just provide a few more short examples, and a poll.

I have recently seen quite a few libelous and vicious comments here directed at members of the community that I feel are unjustified. These self-same members have had entirely innocuous and inoffensive comments troll rated into oblivion as a result.  I'm not saying that anyone is entirely blameless here, just that I don't think that the current mob mentality some here seem to have towards moderating our comment sections is at all helpful to the site.  In fact, I'd argue that the resulting furor tends to drive people away, and not just the intended victims.

I have some first-hand experience here because I was recently on the receiving end of one of these troll-ratings, merely for asking for some justification of the claims made about one of the massively troll-rated users in question.  I got nothing definitive in response, although one user who participated in that fiasco was kind enough to explain his concerns to me in detail.

So I went over to Free Republic to see what they thought of the recent FDA Melamine crisis, and I found the predictable railing against China (but not so much against the FDA, and nothing against Bush).  However, I also found something else I wasn't expecting, and found interesting:

"Too little, too late. What if it had been babies dying?"

How do we know that babies aren’t dying?

I wonder where the protein additives for baby formula come from? Why is there a rise in autism? Just a thought.

What if?  If our food supply has been contaminated with melamine for some time, even if it hasn't been killing people, what has it been doing?  And is a link with autism plausible?  And are there other links?  Help research this with me...

After reading this diary about Google's nefarious historical revisionism, I immediately checked to see if my neighborhood was safe, and found... THIS! Do you see that mall? It isn't there anymore! It closed in 2002 and was demolished! Why is google still showing it? Do they have some sort of pro-mall bias?

But it doesn't stop there...

There has recently been a lot of discussion here about charity, helping people, and how we should go about doing it. I've had an idea kicking around in my head for a while that a formal, incorporated Kossack founded, community-based organization that could help all of us, and provide real assistance on a number of fronts might be the best way to go about doing this, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter, especially regarding your particular field of expertise. I will update as you suggest.

All you need to know about how well Iraq and Afghanistan are going, from The Washington Post:

The U.S. Air Force is asking the Pentagon's leadership for a staggering $50 billion in emergency funding for fiscal 2007 -- an amount equal to nearly half its annual budget, defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute said on Tuesday.
[...]
Another source familiar with the Air Force plans said the extra funds would help pay to transport growing numbers of U.S. soldiers being killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There has been some talk here about disgruntled black Maryland Democrats who feel that their party is ignoring them, and thus have endorsed Michael Steele, the black Republican candidate there. I'm writing this diary in part because of that, but it isn't really about that specifically, but rather the broader issue of the politics of African-American Democrats in the US, and their ideological leanings, and how that compares to the politics of Daily Kos and/or the Democratic Party. What I've found is that there definitely is a divide, and I think we should talk about it.

Today, there was a front page story in The Washington Post about new developments in and information about the FBI's investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters. Why is this front page news? It should be front page news just because these developments essentially contradict all of the earlier reporting on this story, including numerous front page stories from The Washington Post. Also, "The bureau has assigned fresh leadership to the case". Hmm...

Fox's newest Islamic journalists?

"My name is Steve, I am American, after I entered Islam I changed my name to Khaled," Fox News Correspondent, Steve Centanni said in the Video.

"My name is Olaf, I am from New Zealand. After I entered the Islam I changed my name became Yaqoub," said Fox News Cameraman, Olaf Wiig.

What's going on here... did they really convert? What was the reaction to this, and how does it compare to other such situations?

Much fuss has been made already lately by politicians and in the media about the forthcoming Survivor: Cook Islands TV show from CBS, which reportedly will initially divide the 20 contestants into four teams along racial lines. New York City Councilman John Liu painted it as "a battle of the races", and now people are coming out of the woodwork decrying this as a bad idea, to the point of making Nazi comparisons and the like.

Personally, I can't wait.

So here's a random question, a passing thought: this principle that armed militia groups should be disarmed, because they're a threat to the legitimate government of their own country--does that only apply to Lebanon, or is John Bolton and the US willing to commit to this as a general principle? That is to say, is there a good reason for this distinction, or should we repeal the Second Amendment, or are they just being hypocritical?

So here I am watching Hardball, and John Fund disputes a fact and urges his opponent to 'look it up'--the fact in question, whether or not we have kept our troop levels constant in Saudi Arabia after 9/11; according to John Fund, we have, and we still have "about 16,000" troops there. So what are the odds that John Fund pulled this number out of his ass, and was just grandstanding to make a point, and force his opponent to back down?

Well, let's follow John Fund's advice: let's look it up.