Blog Florida Blue Logo Contest Winner

We have a winner in the Blog Florida Blue Logo Contest. And here it is:




Many thanks to Storm Bear for submitting the winning logo.

So, what are we going to do with this fantastic logo? Well, we have a lot of work to do to Blog Florida Blue , so let's talk about it below the fold...


First, I would once again like to thank all the very talented Kossacks out there who submitted designs for the Blog Florida Blue Logo. As one who can't draw a straight line with a ruler, I am in awe of all the creative talent in this community.

As I stated in the Blog Florida Blue diary back in May:

I'd like to invite all Florida bloggers to adopt this brand name (and now this logo) whenever they are blogging on the effort to elect Democrats and build the Democratic Party in Florida. Blog Florida Blue can be a powerful branding device linking otherwise disparate efforts from Key West to Pensacola.

There are a lot of interesting things going on in the Florida blogosphere and the Florida Netroots these days. In June, we had the Bloggers Luncheon at the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) Jefferson Jackson Weekend. There are too many things going on at the Florida Progressive Coalition to mention in a single diary. One item of particular interest is Florida Progressive Radio. This is done through Blog Talk Radio. Their second show had FDP Internet Director Phillip Perry as their special guest. I particularly liked FPC guru Ken Quinell's Crashing the Gates in Florida Diary.

In the end though, the point of all this activity is to get more Democrats elected to public office. Since this is a Presidential election cycle, there is a huge amount of interest being paid to that particular process, and rightly so. However, if we are really going to be successful in Blogging Florida Blue, we are going to have to think longer term and more strategically. Sites like Build Florida's DEC's can help us do that, because we definitely need help building our party infrastructure. We just had a special election for an open Florida State Senate seat (SD-3). This election did not go the way we wanted for any number of reasons. There are a lot of good diaries that gave tactical reasons why we were not successful. In Reflections on SD-3 , I take a more strategic look at the loss.

We also need to pay a lot more attention to "building our bench" here in Florida. Local elected officials are like stocking your farm team with up and coming talent. Most of the best candidates for higher office have had prior public service experience, mostly as elected public officials on the local level. Congresswoman Kathy Castor was a Hillsborough County commissioner first. State Representative Rick Kriseman was a St. Petersburg City Council Member before getting elected to the Legislature. And if you think losing an election is the end of a political career, think again. The best political move our Governor Charlie Crist ever made was taking on a losing effort against US Senator Bob Graham.

We have a lot of work left to do to Blog Florida Blue. But we have a great launching pad coming up in October at the Florida Democratic Party Convention in Orlando. We are going to have the Bloggers Conference as an official part of the agenda. And we are looking for a special guest speaker to keynote the Bloggers Conference. We have already started putting out feelers to get a certain guy named Markos from DailyKos to give the keynote address. So I just want to end this little missive with a shout out:

Attend our effing Convention Kos!

Every Journey Starts Somewhere



The Blog Florida Blue Logo Contest was a rousing success. Thank you all for participating. There will be more about the results of the contest later. But that is not the subject of today's diary.

Today we are going to talk about the work ahead. However, we are going to do that by taking a look at where we are starting from. It's pretty hard to get to where you want to go if you don't know where you are starting from.

So, with that in mind, follow me down the rabbit hole....


Recently, Media Matters and Campaign for America's Future completed a new joint report called, "The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth." meowmissy has a diary up on DKos that has a lot of the information from this report. In describing the report, Justin Cole, Online Outreach Coordinator for Media Matters for America, had this to say:

It's a substantial report that will help drive home the point that America – regardless of how the media portrays it – is a progressive nation that
is getting more progressive, including in Florida.

Now to those of us living here that may sound like a startling statement. However, Mr. Cole has supplied us with Florida specific polling to support this seemingly outlandish claim. Consider just these three elements of this polling:

• “Providing health insurance for people who do not already have it—should the federal government spend more on it, the same as now, less, or no money at all?”
  Percent answering “More”: 71%
  
• "Providing financial assistance to public elementary and secondary schools—should the federal government spend more on it, the same as now, less, or no money at all?”
  Percent answering “more”: 71%
  
• “The federal government banning all abortions—do you favor or oppose the federal government doing this?”
  Percent opposed: 67%

Do these results surprise you? Are these the results that you would expect in a state where:

• Only 2 of 7 statewide elected posts are held by Democrats
  
• The Congressional Delegation is 16 Republicans and 9 Democrats
  
• 42 out of 120 House seats are held by Democrats
  
• 14 of 40 Senate seats are held by Democrats

So we seem to have a pretty progressive electorate given the polling results noted above. That ought to put some wind in our sails as we go into the 2008 election cycle. This is particularly true looking back at the notable successes we had in 2006. This gives rise to the question: What do we do with this information?

Here are my suggestions:

• We try to run as many good candidates as we can against as many vulnerable Republican seats as we can find.

Good candidates are preferably people with prior elected experience, or absent that, a compelling personal story. They also should be able to raise substantial funds and / or a major grassroots effort on their own. Vulnerable Republican seats are open seats, seats held by freshmen, or seats where the incumbent has an approval rating below 50%.

• We make sure that these good candidates talk about their progressive values.

Remember that polling data? 71% of the electorate is for doing more to provide health care to those in need. That's compassion and a sense of community. We should be talking about that.

71% of the electorate is for doing more for public education. Quality public education is the great equalizer in this country. That's fairness. We should be talking about that.

67% are against the government banning all abortions. That's freedom. We should be talking about that.

The numbers tell us the public is on our side. We should be sure they know that we are on their side.

That is where we should start our journey in our quest to Blog Florida Blue.

VOTE NOW FOR THE BLOG FLORIDA BLUE LOGO

The Blog Florida Blue Logo Contest is up on DailyKos now. Please vote for your favorite. Any and all comments are also welcome.


SPECIAL NOTE: THERE ARE MORE IMAGES THAN THERE ARE SPOTS ON THE POLL. TO VOTE FOR AN IMAGE NOT IN THE POLL, REC THE COMMENT FOR THAT IMAGE.

Amnesty and Obstruction of Justice

There is some good news to come out of the Scooter Libby sentence commutation. We may have finally gotten the criminal act we need to impeach George W Bush!



There is some bad news too. To find the historical basis for the bad news, you'll have to follow me below the fold.

First, I just want to say that there are way too many juicy frames out there to use in connection with the Libby sentence commutation. My particular favorite is to refer to the commutation of Libby's sentence as amnesty. This then plays into all sorts of other possibilities. For example, all those R candidates who trashed the immigration bill as amnesty could be in for a very hard time. That is if it turns out they were in favor of amnesty for Libby. Can't you just see it now:

Fred Thompson (or fill in the name of you not favorite R candidate here) was against amnesty before he was for it.

There is going to be way too much fun to be had with that.

The far more serious frame though is the obstruction of justice frame. This frame could just be our smoking gun for impeachment. Here's how this goes. Scooter Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice for lying in the Plamegate investigation. Technically by continuing to refuse to tell the truth, he is participating in an ongoing obstruction of justice. By commuting Libby's sentence, presumably as a quid pro quo for Libby's continued refusal to tell the truth, Bush has actively participated in the obstruction of justice. In other words, a cover up. Remember, it was not the break in at the Watergate complex that did Richard Nixon in, it was the cover up.

Here is a further clarification on the obstruction of justice frame. It is in fact totally within the power of the President to use the clemency powers granted by the constitution as the President shall see fit to do. However, if that power is used in furtherance of a crime (the obstruction of justice), that becomes an abuse of power.

The first Article of Impeachment against Nixon reads in part:

in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice

So that's the good news.

Now here is the bad news. The Watergate break in occurred June 17, 1972. Nixon resigned August 8, 1974. That is a span of 782 days. Between today, July 6, 2007 and January 20, 2009, there are only 564 days. Is that enough time to conduct an impeacment inquiry in the House and a trial in the Senate? Because, I do not think that George W. Bush will pull a Nixon and resign. And remember, Nixon resigned upon the vote out of the House Judiciary Committee adoptoing articles of impeachment. He did not even go through an impeachment debate in the full House, much less a trial in the Senate.

Now, there is a bright side to this. It was on July 13, 1973 that the existance of Nixon's White House taping system was made public. This led to the discovery of the "smoking gun" tape that gave the answer to the famous question, "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" The span between that date and Nixon's resignation was only 391 days. So, by tht measure, there may be enough time.

Now for the really strange part. The number of days between the day Bill Clinton was deposed in the Paula Jones case (January 17, 1998), and the day he was acquitted in the Senate (February 12, 1999), was 391 days.

Maybe that means something.

Resolve . . . that this nation

231

years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal

That is what we are celebrating today. Is it strange that on this Independence Day that the title and lead quote for this diary should come from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address? . After all, this is the day of celebration for that other document, The Declaration of Independence.

Follow me below the fold and we'll see why this is not strange at all.

Where did Lincoln get the inspiration for the phrase "conceived in liberty"? Well, from none other than here:

they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

"And dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal"? Here again:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal

So, why is all this really relevant today? Because of these phrases:

testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. ... we here highly resolve . . . that this nation, . . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth.

For we are constantly engaged in a struggle to ensure

that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth.

This is no more true on any other day than today. Are all men still created equal? Not when amnesty for Scooter Libby shows that some are more equal than others. It is no more true on any other day than today, when our leaders abandon Habeus Corpus and assert their right to illegal wiretapping of American citizens.

We are , each of us here engaged in a great struggle

testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated . . . can long endure

so I ask each of you here to join me to

highly resolve . . . that this nation, . . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth.

Last Call - Logos for Blog Florida Blue

Okay, this is it! last call for logo submissions for the Blog Florida Blue logo. You can check out some of the designs submitted already here. Others can be found at the Florida NetRoots Yahoo Group site under files.

If you are at all interested in submitting a design for the Blog Florida Blue Logo, please do it soon. I would like to hold an online vote maybe next week.

Blogger Influence

Tho a Canadian study I believe this analysis in First Monday has much of interest to us.

Election bloggers: Methods for determining political influence
by Greg Elmer, Peter Malachy Ryan, Zach Devereaux, Ganaele Langlois, Joanna Redden, and Fenwick McKelvey

Political conventions, once the highlight on the tele–visual calendar, are slowly giving way to less visible, digital forms of democracy, and now more recently, online forms of communication and organizing. Conventions are expensive and time–consuming. In many jurisdictions, the grandiose party convention has begun to mirror general elections, with electronic voting for individual party members slowly replacing the spectacle of hung–over delegates dancing and chanting on the floor of convention centres. As we see in this paper, even the very notion of closed door, centralized politics and “back room” party operatives working in political capitals, is being challenged by digital networks. This paper discusses the impact of a digital back room politics, and how one might evaluate the influence of its political actors — bloggers.