Too Progressive

Godaddy’s website is about as functional as Sarah Palin among a group of intellectuals.

I am on my way out the door to NYC but just wanted to drop a quick note mentioning that today is my two year “blogaversary” and to wish everyone a Happy Halloween!!

I recently (and finally!) upgraded to Wordpress 2.6 and I will be doing some more work on the back end of things over the course of the next couple of weeks in order to ensure everything runs smoothly running up to the elections.  Therefore, posting will be light (but probably not as light as last month!!) during the final dog days while I make the upgrades.

I’d also like to take a moment to “reveal” (although it will come as no surprise) my endorsements for the 2008 presidential campaign and Virginia elections (which are pretty much the same as Raising Kaine).

To all of those paranoid Republican bloggers whining and moaning because of some snub they have fabricated in their minds by Obama upon the wounded American troops in Germany, please shut the hell up.

Since I moved from Blogger to WordPress and launched my new domain. I’m still trying to get the feel of things here at WordPress but I must say it is by far Blogger’s superior! Not only that but the layout is much cleaner (both what visitors see and what I see on the back end) and the the list of features offered by WordPress vastly outnumbers that of those offered on Blogger.

Like I said though, I’m still trying to get the feel of things and just wanted to offer an opportunity for visitors to post some constructive criticism and/or suggestions you may have. Also, you may have noticed that my blogroll is not as large as it used to be, but I’m going to be updating it shortly. I’d especially like to add those of you who stop by often or who have been generous enough to link here from your own blogs. That having been said, if I’ve missed you, or you want to suggest a blog to be added please feel free to leave it in the comments!

Earlier today Barack Obama posted a blog on The Huffinton Post regarding his faith, church and controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.

The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.

Let me repeat what I’ve said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.

Read the entire blog post here.

7:40pm UPDATE:  Obama will also be appearing on Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann tonight at 8pm on MSNBC.

Over the past few days I’ve posted quite a few times regarding Dominion Virginia power and their plan to launch energy conservation programs as an assault on the intelligence of Virginians, their plan to build yet another power plant in Buckingham county and of course, their plan to build a dirty coal power plant in Wise county despite enormous public opposition to the plant. I usually keep a pretty close eye on visitor information through sitemeter as far as the persons location, how they found me, etc. etc. and lately I’ve noticed quite a few hits coming from visitors accessing my site from Dominion Virginia Power internet servers, meaning Dominion is reading the blogs and they know Virginians all across the state are not happy with recent decisions of the company.

So I’m curious to know why Dominion has failed to even acknowledge the public outrage against them and also whether other bloggers covering Dominion Virginia Power have noticed anything similar with their traffic. Are you all also seeing several dozen hits coming from Dominion internet servers??

I know most people that use Wordpress say it’s infinitely better than Blogger, except for the fact that Wordpress isn’t very customizable (at least as far as Java apps and html go) unless you self host and use Wordpress.org. The lack of html customization options is the ONLY reason keeping me away from Wordpress for so long, but a friend recently offered to host my blog and set me up on Wordpress.org - so I am happy to announce that I will finally be moving to Wordpress in the next couple of months once I build the site out and get settled in over there. I’ll keep updating as to my progress and when the switch will occur. Until then, I’ll continue posting here on a regular basis.

Checkout my comment on Jim Gilmore’s new blog before it gets moderated (aka before it gets deleted for expressing a dissenting point of view). (click image to enlarge)

Here’s a list of many Virginia blogs, and how they stack up on Google. A ranking of 0 meaning the blog is irrelevant, and ten being most important. No blogs in Virginia that I could find fell on either of those two categories. The highest scoring blog was Craig’s Musings with a six, and the lowest score was a three, which was held by a couple of blogs. Here is the complete list, in no particular order:

Raising Kaine - 5
Not Larry Sabato - 4
Too Conservative - 5
BVBL - 5
Waldo Jaquith - 5
7 West - 5
Anonymous Is A Woman - 4
Bacon’s Rebellion - 5
Bearing Drift - 4
Policy Soup - 4
The Shad Plank - 4
VB Dems - 3
Democratic Central - 4
Virginia Lawyer Weekly - 4
750 Volts - 5
Vivian J. Paige - 4
Bored Young Professionals - 4
Brian Patton - 5
Daily Whackjob - 4
Ditzocrats - 4
Donkey With A Trunk - 4
Elephant Ears - 4
GOTV - 5
Mason Conservative - 4
Renaissance Ruminations - 5
Republitarian - 4
Spank That Donkey - 4
The Ward View - 4
West Of Shockoe - 4
Albo Must Go - 4
Assembly Access - 5
Bryan J Scrafford - 4
Craig’s Musings - 6
Equality Loudon - 5
From On High - 4
I’m Not Emeril - 4
Mosquito Blog - 5
Skeptical Observor - 4
Slant Blog - 4
Spark It Up!!! - 4
Swac Girl - 4
Two Conservatives - 4
VA Cost Cutting
VA Young Democrats - 5
VA Federalist - 3
Howling Latina - 5
J’s Notes - 5
Rick Howell Speaks - 4
Rick Sincere Thoughts - 4
Richmond Democrat - 5
Blacknell.net - 4
Sisyphus - 5
Tokatakiya - 4
Democracy UpsideDown - 4
Blue Weeds - 4

Blogs which had no rank (meaning Google had not yet indexed them) were not included in the list, nor were newspaper blogs.

Howling Latina tagged me, so here’s eight facts about me:

Remember this from yesterday? Well look who’s covering it today!!

Anyone who knows me knows the Wonkette makes me swoon, and I’m an avid reader. My life is complete.

So my Friday night (similar to every single day of this week has) will consists of me sitting at home pouring over hundreds (thousands?) of Craigslist/apartment ads, probably concluding with me gauging my eyes out with a dull fork (seriously, this is the biggest pain). So since I’ll just be sitting here, I’ve decided to go ahead and update my blogroll as well, removing blogs which don’t seem to have been updated in awhile, and adding new ones, whatever.

What this means, for you: Any additions (expulsions?, ha ha) that I’ve missed, just leave me a comment — I’ll be here all night, unfortunately.

After about two months over at CapitolTalk.com, followed by a one month hiatus from the blogosphere all together, I’ve decided to stick with focusing on Virginia, and therefore decided to continue blogging here at The Liberal Progressive. My posts may be a bit more sporadic than they were when I was writing here October - January, at least for the near future, because I am preparing to move to Arlington, Virginia in the coming months to finish school, and quite frankly because I love the DC area.

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me!! More later…

After giving it some thought, instead of trying to maintain two blogs, I have decided to devote my full attention to my new blog - Capitol Talk - The bully pulpit for Progressive America! While that site is a community blog with a focus on American politics as a whole, my entries will continue to have a focus on Virginia for the most part, just as they did while I was blogging here at Liberal Progressive.

If you will, please update your blog rolls accordingly, and maybe even stop on by and join in!

The new address is http://www.capitoltalk.com or simply click here!

I can now be reached via email at TerryCarter[at]capitoltalk[dot]com !!

This site will be left up for archiving purposes.

I’m sure (hopefully) some of you have noticed my lack of activity over the past few days as far as posting goes, but as I mentioned briefly the other night I have been working on a new blogging “project” that I’m very excited about (and given my LACK of knowledge as far as registering and launching a domain and all that goes, it took me a little longer than it would probably have taken most). I “launched” a new “community blog” this morning called CapitolTalk.com. The new blog will be a NATIONAL “Progressive voice” that hopefully many of you will be interested in reading, and participating in. In fact, many of you (especially those in Virginia), will also find the site VERY easy to use, since it is hosted by SoapBlox, the same “community blog host” that Raising Kaine uses!

Anyway, while the new site is still looking a little rough, since I haven’t quite gotten all the kinks worked out, I hope that you all will still join in and contribute!! I WILL continue to blog here at The Liberal Progressive too, but I’ll be trying to focus my attention a little more on Virginia politics, than I have in the past.

I hope that you all enjoy the new look of The Liberal Progressive! I may make a few minor tweaks over the next few days, but for the most part, I’m finished. Please let me know what you think, or if you have any suggestions!!

Looks like the narrow mind, and all around stupidity of a group of Virginia GOP “bloggers” has gotten them in trouble again. Via The Richmond Democrat, seems members of the media agree with the rest of the sane bloggers (on both sides of the aisle, mind you) in thinking that the “Swaction” (as it’s been dubbed), is nothing more than a bunch of NUTS pretending to be bloggers! Dennis Neal, the CONSERVATIVE Opinions Editor of The News Leader, wrote an article publicly calling out the “Swaction” for being a cancer to the Virginia blogosphere:

One of the things that has really disturbed me about the local right-wing bloggers (the habituals, anyway), (and this SHOULD NOT be seen as applying to some of the posters at this blog), is their unabashed embrace of templates. THESE BLOGS ALL LOOK THE SAME. Every last one of them has the same graphic: “IT’S THE JIHAD STUPID (blood drop) DEMOCRATS JUST DON’T GET IT” and many of them are just repeating the same message.

The great thing about blogging has always been its individuality and non-adherence to outside direction — even though I publish under the aegis of The News Leader, I don’t clear my blog posts through the executive editor, publisher or anybody else. What I am seeing locally from the SWAC-GOP-ers is not individuality; it’s hive-think. And that’s pretty sad. Boring, too.

My, my, that’s sure to cause the PRETEND bloggers of “Swacland” to create 15 ADDITIONAL aliases in an effort to back themselves up.

The best comment yet came in the comments section of The Richmond Democrat’s entry, when Jaime posted:

“So, we aren’t crazy for thinking that the “contributors” to the “Swaction” are a. one person, pretending to be 5, and/or b. a bunch if insanely hateful people who call each other on the phone and meet to discuss being the definition of an uneducated echo chamber.“

As many of you know, I’ve had no problem calling out my favorite pretend bloggers of THE “Swaction” either. “SwacGirl” in particular when she actually accused a kid’s movie of being political propaganda! For more on the ignorance of the Swac, also see: her feverish moderation of comments posted to her blog to avoid having to respond to anyone she disagrees with via her comments section.

Now, c’mon, a group of bloggers asshats that are SO obnoxious, that not only are they kicked off of one of the most trafficked aggregators used by Virginia bloggers, but SO ridiculous, and such an utter embarrassment to the Virginia blogosphere, that they end up getting publicly “owned” by local media.

Oh, and for the record, by my count, SwacGirl has posted a total of FIVE SEPARATE ENTRIES “responding” to the article (which JUST got published YESTERDAY), all referring to The News Leader as “The MisLeader.” Hm, how clever of her, let’s just hope with all that “blogging,” she’s finally figured out how to spell correctly and/or got her hands on a dictionary.

Oh look, yet another attack on my blog from the “Rightosphere,” but this time, instead of simply leaving comments attacking me using juvenile insults, one Republican blogger actually dedicated an entire post to the sole purpose of attacking myself, and Lowell Feld of Raising Kaine. Taking offense to a headline I used in Thursday night’s Daily RunDown post, Virginia Virtucon wrote the following:

Courtesy of the Liberal Progressive –

And they wonder why others like Jon Henke, Shaun Kenney and Conaway Haskins get hired for substantive posts and they don’t. Go figure!!!

Well, that’s odd because I am not using this blog to get “hired,” therefore (obviously) I’ve never wondered why Jon Henke, Shaun Kenney and Conaway Haskins get “hired” and I don’t. In addition, if (Virginia) Republicans are so easily offended, why did they defend, and then ultimately vote for, George ‘Macaca Felix’ Allen after his usage of a racial slur to a Webb campaign member?

Anyway, to address his “concern” about the headline I used, (and this is the fourth time I’ve addressed basically the same issue in the past three days, mind you), while I appreciate all of my readers (no matter which side of the political aisle), and especially appreciate the comments and feedback, I point Virginia Virtucon (and any other reader who may not have noticed), to the very top of the right hand column of the blog, where you’ll find a welcome message/blog description that contains my contact info and the following:

National political discussion, debate, satire, and news! “Capitol Intensive Blogging” from the left - with a focus on Virginia!

FURTHERMORE, I’m particularly “guilty” of using sarcasm/satire for the headlines seen in my “Daily RunDown” posts each evening (which is what Virginia Virtucon took issue with). I’ve also had NO PROBLEM calling out Democrats when I feel that they are acting ridiculous (also see: Charlie Rangel’s draft proposal, and batshit crazy Cynthia McKinney).

One of my favorite blogs, ‘Monstrosity’ aka ‘The Ditzy Democrats’ has returned to the blogosphere after about a two month hiatus! The new blog will be known as Ditzy Dems, Part Deux!

Hat tip to Daily Whackjob!