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So Pindell and Mr. Snitch missed it, but all the admins and front pagers of this half-acre of blogworld real estate were in the same meatspace at the same time yesterday. I think that's a first!
The reason? We've got some exciting changes to BH on the horizon, and we needed to spend some time mapping them out all together.
The big gifts will be unwrapped at a later date, but here's one small difference: starting tomorrow, we are going to be rotating front page sentry duty. Just one change that will make this a more vibrant place on the one hand, and on the other help me from becoming Parker Posey at the BH Library:
Four years ago we turned the lights on here. Some stats as of this morning:
5,118 Registered Users
11,484 - Diaries
101,970 - Comments
1,190,255 - Site Visits
4,436,497 - Page Views
2 - Characters in our Twitter handle
0 - Paywalls
$0.00 - Cost to join
$0.00 - Subsidies from Eagle Publishing, Inc.
Adding: I got my start blogging in the height of Republican control of everything, when the excellence of George Bush and his great and glorious War in Iraq were not to be questioned. Unchecked radical right-wingerism sure has a way of getting folks' attention. It's going to be an interesting two years in Concord.
So we're going to be spending some time before the New Year looking under the BH's hood to design and implement ways - some small, some big - on making this place better than ever for the 2012 cycle.
We'd love to have your input as well. No suggestion is too small or too big or "out of the box," so long as it's respectful of the community here, and mindful of the fact that BH is more or less a volunteer effort.
Oh, and: thanks for coming and being a part of this community. I don't say that nearly enough.
I don't know how else to put it - the Carroll County Democrats rock. I am ready to move up there. Those are some tough, unapologetic people of principle they have in office and running for office I met at their annual Grover Cleveland dinner. And if you haven't been to the Wright Museum, you owe it to yourself to stop by the next time you are in Wolfeboro. It's a really interesting place.
Plus, I got to hear truly inspiring speeches by Mike Brunelle, Terie Norelli, Peggo Hodes, our own Susanthe and Carol Shea-Porter.
My own remarks at the event are below the fold, and I hope to get a couple more things from the event online soon I know you will enjoy.
While it's not quite the "verb" that Google has become, I have been asked "How do you Blue Hampshire"?
For the "Good of the Order" I have recorded a couple of short (less than 5 min each) "Screencasts" that cover the basics:
Creating a Blue Hampshire Acct and Password
Lurking and Commenting
Creating and Formatting a Diary
Hopefully these will be helpful to folks and we can continue to add more voices to our community. (I will try try to find a permanent home for these on the site as well)
To be serious for once, I am really looking forward to meeting all the totally awesome Carroll county Dems who have been flexing some serious electoral muscle in recent cycles. I am honored they invited me over. Plus, Grover and a WWII museum?
Best of all, Peggo Hodes will be singing, and Speaker Norelli will be, um, speaking.
Learn more here. And they even have their own ActBlue page for it if you want to sign up online.
Your influence as a user, on a healthy site, is a function of to what extent your activity supports those group-defined social goods. In other words, to quote Shirky, the user of social software is the group, not the individual. If you are consistently acting in a way that hurts the interests of the group, the group has to defend itself. If it doesn't, the group slowly becomes its own enemy.
I'm a little reluctant posting this, because part of it is about me, and it feels like self-aggrandizement.
That said, co-founder Mike Caulfield's post contains an anecdote very relevant to the news of the past couple of days, and, much more than that, is perhaps the single best expression of what we are about here.
From the latest strain of the one-note campaign, in part:
Blogger Acknowledges Kuster's Lobbying
"Lobbyists give money to both parties? This is shocking."
-- Dean Barker, Managing Editor of www.BlueHampshire.com, sarcastically defending Kuster's contributions to Republican state senate candidates. www.BlueHampshire.com has endorsed Kuster and has been actively promoting her candidacy.
Well, it wouldn't be the first press release about me, but it's the one that gave me the biggest chuckle.
In other news, I took a different way home than usual an hour ago and found four new Kuster signs on lawns. Still looking for my first Swett sign sighting.
(NB: SOTD = "Shrill of the Day," a new series I've started.)
Anyone want to start up a non right-wing statewide paper? Pindell:
The Union Leader remains the state's largest newspaper, but a 6 month look into their circulation shows Monday through Friday circulation at 49,357. The study was conducted by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the industry standard organization that compiles these numbers for advertisers.
...In 1990 the paper celebrated the fact they had a circulation of 100,000.
Also, while BH is obviously nowhere near the big boy nat'l blogs or the readership of a UL (even in decline), this week we passed four million page views.
First of all, a giant THANK YOU to all who contributed to CSP Week on Blue Hampshire. (You too, Paul!) Even though I did not time it intentionally with Rep. Shea-Porter's CODEL trip to Afghanistan, or her terrific fundraising numbers, I think it was a success for a number of reasons, and I look forward to doing another one or two further into the fall when more folks are online and engaged with the election, for both Carol and others.
I wanted to relay a more personal revelation I had as a result of this project that I think will be a useful guide for the future. It's so basic, and something I've seen (and lamented) played out on a bigger national stage with political strategy, yet I didn't notice it in my own little micro-corner of The Internets until this week.
Basically: over time I have found myself increasingly in the habit of chasing down and responding to every false hit job that the right tries to put onto our Carol. Don't get me wrong: I think it is still essential to respond immediately and forcefully to the bogus attacks on her.
What I lost sight of is that only doing that puts the right wing wurlitzer, and the state media organ that enables it, in the driver's seat, free to spend time coming up with the next bit of nonsense.
By instead spending a week on Carol Shea-Porter's many accomplishments over her short time in congress, I rediscovered how proud I am that she represents us. I marvelled how in a sausage making machine of over 400 disparate interests, she has time and again led on issues and put her stamp onto critically important legislation - no easy feat! And finally, I felt more strongly than ever how important it is to do what we can to keep someone working for "the rest of us" in that seat for as long as she wants it.
There's another reason besides personal fulfillment that made CSP Week a success, however. It drove the other side nuts. Instead of stirring the pot on the latest non-scandal or planning a new one, they were hyperventilating on this little project. I managed to get insulted on just about every major NH right-wing blog that's out there, for simply pointing out some of Carol Shea-Porter's many accomplishments. That, dear readers, is a true sign of the success of this thing.
So I encourage all of you to make every week CSP Week. If you hear about something Carol voted on in the House to make our lives better, write it up to your local paper. Blog about it. Facebook status it. Tweet it. After all, Carol Shea-Porter is working for you and you have every right to make that work known to the majority of Granite Staters who twice voted for her.
This is not going to be an easy November. Some people who have done everything right still stand to lose their jobs thanks to a few Ben Nelsons and Joe Liebermans in the Senate, along with a wall of nonsensical obstruction from the GOP and their political shop, i.e., FAUX News and hate radio. Let's do what we can to ensure that Carol is rewarded for her public service with the chance to do even more for the rest of us.
It's a pretty rare for me to see the name behind a post and know that I won't even have to look at the content to understand it should go on the front page straightaway.
That's what wtucker (who has changed his username to William Tucker) has done in the short amount of time he's been posting diaries here.
If you don't believe me, take a look. In addition to the precise, well-sourced writing on New Hampshire politics from a progressive viewpoint, Tuck (with colleague Judy Stadtman) has built a tremendous resource of voter data in a short amount of time. You can also see more of his work over at his new place, Miscellany Blue (which we've added to the blog roll as well).
So, with November right around the corner, we invited him to join our fantastic team of Contributing Writers. Luckily for us, he has accepted.
Nearly four years ago Blue Hampshire was born following a groundswell of political blogging that had sprung up in a successful effort to support Paul Hodes' election to New Hampshire's second congressional district.
Today, we believe the best person to continue the work in Congress begun by Representative Hodes is attorney and advocate Ann McLane Kuster.
As Laura Clawson pointed out on Daily Kos, Ann McLane Kuster "supports the public option, the Employee Free Choice Act, non-punitive immigration reform, and environmental regulation. Not only does she want to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, she wants to repeal DOMA, and she worked to help bring marriage equality to New Hampshire."
In addition, Kuster has been a vigorous advocate for health care access and affordability, especially and unwaveringly so for women's reproductive health. From Ann's website: "Ann believes a woman and her medical care provider should be making decisions about her health care, not the politicians in Washington. She is committed to ensuring that the anti-choice movement doesn't use abortion to derail health care reform, and also that they don't use health care reform to restrict a woman's right to choose."
Ann McLane Kuster headed the Women for Obama organization in the state during the primary and presidential campaign. An early supporter of the President, she also disagrees with some of his policies: "While I am pleased that the President has decided to set a timetable for drawing down our troops in Afghanistan, I do not agree with the decision to first send 30,000 additional troops. It is not clear that sending more combat troops is the best way to meet the real threat, as Al Qaeda disperses to Pakistan and other countries. This is particularly important as our military has been strained by six years of fighting in Iraq and eight years of fighting in Afghanistan."
We believe that, in addition to her strongly progressive views, Ann Kuster also has the clearest path to victory in the fall. Her campaign arc thus far has been exemplary, demonstrating vigor, discipline, and attentiveness. If Kuster runs her congressional office at all the way in which her campaign has been run so far, the citizens of New Hampshire's second district will indeed be fortunate.
Kuster has slowly but efficiently built up local grassroots support, viable fundraising, and national endorsements. Of the former, we were impressed at how she had reached out to voters across the district with a "30 House Parties in 30 Days" tour. Jennifer Daler, for example, decided on her support at a New Boston house party, where her warmth and ease with people were apparent. Jennifer asked Kuster whether she could persevere through a grueling general election, as she's so, well, nice. Ann handily convinced her she is tough enough to handle whatever Charlie Bass or Jennifer Horn can dish out.
Ann and her campaign have also openly engaged with the New Hampshire netroots, providing Blue Hampshire with a video introduction, for example. It is clear she can navigate both the traditional world of door knocking and handshakes as well as the emerging political communities of new media.
Finally, we believe Ann Kuster's background and beliefs represent a uniquely unifying bridge between the common sense Yankee Republican that once used to populate New Hampshire and today's progressive Granite State values. She can, and has already, brought together a wide coalition of supporters from the big tent of the Democratic party, while at the same time bringing over undeclared, and even Republican, voters who support middle class values and pragmatic solutions to our nation's problems.
We believe Ann McLane Kuster will be a clear and independent voice for New Hampshire citizens in Congress, and we are proud to endorse her.
Finally, on the basis of this endorsement, we have added Ann Kuster to our ActBlue Hampshire page. Please consider clicking the link and giving to the Kuster campaign today to ensure a victory for progressive values in the fall.
Note: This endorsement represents the full and unanimous support of Blue Hampshire's managing editors and contributing writers: Dean Barker, Laura Clawson, elwood, Jennifer Daler, Mike Hoefer, and susanthe. Furthermore, we strongly acknowledge what a step backwards it would mean to New Hampshire's second district to be represented again by a nominee from today's Republican party, and so we look forward to working for whoever is elected our Democratic nominee.
The Nation's Ari Melber has an article outlining a new study done by researchers at Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley. Titled A Tale of Two Blogospheres: Discursive Practices on the Left and Right, the study finds, among other things, that liberal blogs tend to use platforms that allow multiple authors to be featured, while conservative ones allow for one main writer and online newspaper style comments at the bottom, if that.
This morning I got to thinking about what doesn't happen and how difficult that is to deal with sometimes. What spurred it were the recent complaints by airlines about the no fly rules imposed over Europe in the wake of the volcanic ash. According to Lufthansa, the decision was made on the basis of a computer simulation out of London. Billions of dollars have been lost and countless travelers inconvenienced. But--there have also been no major crashes nor loss of life because of the volcanic ash, either. Was it because of the travel ban? Would everything have been okay anyway? Well, we don't exactly know and we'll never know.
Just a week before, however, there was speculation that the pilot of Polish President Kaczynski's plane attempted to land despite being told not to by air traffic controllers.
That's the thing about prevention. Because we prevented what would have happened, we can never be certain that crisis was indeed averted.
It's the same with public policy designed to prevent major catastrophes. Did TARP prevent the second coming of the Great Depression? We forget that when the stock market crashed in 1929, nothing was done to avert the fallout. There was no unemployment insurance, no Medicare, Medicaid, things we now take for granted. I believe if the economy were allowed to go into a 1929 like free fall, we'd have 1930s like conditions. But it wasn't allowed. So we don't know.
The same goes for climate change. Some people refuse to believe the human activity is causing it, but how can it not be? And even if it isn't, isn't it better to be environmentally responsible anyway?
Health insurance reform had to be put into place. Economists such as Uwe Reinhardt predict without reform, health care would be eating up 40% of a middle income family's budget within the next ten years. That is before taxes, food, clothing and shelter. Now that it is in place, this won't happen and some will say: "See, it didn't happen". Uh, yeah.
It's hard not to think of Cassandra, given the gift of prophecy, only to have Apollo curse her by making it so no one would believe her.
Forward thinking policy makers have to be bold. Preventing problems is always cheaper and easier than solving existing ones. But the hammer is that when problems are prevented, we go on our merry way, unconscious of what could have happened.
Because of the right wing conflation of communism and fascism (which aren't the same thing), it is increasingly difficult to call out behavior similar to that of folks wearing brown shirts in 1920s Germany. If everybody's Hitler, then nobody's Hitler. His name and image mean nothing in the US any longer, except maybe to the ever dwindling population who lived at the time of his rule.
We have a national figure, who some think should be president, claiming this nation was founded to be a "Christian nation" despite the fact that Jefferson and Adams, who didn't agree on much, both agreed that separation of church and state was vital to the fledgling democracy we now know as the United States of America. And this national figure, unaware and unashamed of her ignorance of elementary school history, is given prime space on news programs.
We have people at protests holding signs that say :"Get the government out of my Medicare". How on earth did they even sign up for it? Where do they think it comes from?
We have a state representative who accused a school district of showing children pornography in the classroom, which was an out and out lie. But because lying is not a crime per se, she still walks the halls of the State House and Legislative Office Building, supposedly representing her constituents. She still speaks and people still have to listen to her.
We have a person running for governor, a man, comparing paying taxes to being raped.
False phrases such as "death panels" are made up by folks paid handsomely to do so and spread by others. And people believe them.
I love language. I'm an avid reader and writer. I love language so much that I bothered to learn another one. It saddens me to see how words are cheapened to the point of losing meaning.
Although I read it ages ago, the whole point of Orwell's 1984 seems to rest on the misuse of language and how that misuse led to the end of human freedom. But one can't even go there anymore, because when everything kills freedom, nothing does.
What's Next for the Democrats?
By Laura Knoy on Monday, January 25, 2010.
A roundtable of New Hampshire Democrats joins us to discuss the state of their party. Many fear recent election wins for Republicans in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia spell trouble for Democrats and if the trend continues, it could mean more losses in the midterm elections. We'll get their take how the Democratic Party is faring and what, if anything, they think should change.
Guests
* Mary Jane Wallner, State House Majority Leader
* Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party
* Dean Barker, publisher of www.Bluehampshire.com
So... thought we would try a little experiment at pulling in the Twitter stream from members of the Blue Hampshire community.
If you use Twitter and generally tweet about News, Politics, NH, etc. and would like to be included on our "Hamster List" let me know what your twitter account name is an I will add you to the list (just reply below)
Karen, Susan, Dean let me know if you would like to be removed from the list (I had to grab a few accounts to trial)
The list is available here http://twitter.com/bh/hamsters it is "followable" like any other Twitter acct. and the stream is published via widget in the sidebar of the site.
Three years ago, when every member of our federal delegation was a Republican, but shortly after the great blue wave of '06, Mike Caulfield, Laura Clawson, and I opened the doors of Blue Hampshire.
Since then, we've been through one of the longest and most exciting First-in-the-Nation Primaries in history. We've been witness to the election of New Hampshire's first female US Senator, and our country's first African-American president. We saw New Hampshire adopt civil unions, and now full marriage equality.
Along the way we've had visits from presidential candidates, members of congress, state legislators, pundits, staffers, and politicos of all kinds. We've been profiled and quoted in national newspapers and magazines, made local and national TeeVee and radio appearances, and in a variety of state media venues.
That's all pretty neat. But what makes this place special isn't that at all. It's the readers who make Blue Hampshire a part of their day. The 2350 of you who have signed up for an account, and the near 3.3 million times you've leafed through our virtual pages. More specifically, the community of writers and activists who drive the reality-based discussion here ever forward to progressive goals.
In short, the best part about Blue Hampshire is that it's an open space for New Hampshire progressives to confirm that we are not alone, that our goals and dreams for a better Granite State and country are shared by other patriotic Granite Staters. I am often reminded that it wasn't that long ago that the country I love was run by the worst chief executive in the history of our Republic, and the state I love was dominated at all levels of public service by the party he belonged to and values he pushed.
But more to the point - I've got a birthday present for you!
Today we are proud to announce that Jennifer Daler is Blue Hampshire's newest Managing Editor!
This will allow Jennifer, already a fantastic writer and progressive with a real understanding of state house issues, to expand even further in the area of growing this community and making the functionality of this site as vibrant an experience as it can be for you.
As for me, I am looking to shift gears a bit. After three years of daily posts, on top of family life and the demands of my actual day job, this change will allow me to repurpose what little free time I have on writing, at which, among all the moving parts of running a community blog, I feel I'm strongest. As the person most often managing the store, being the most public "face" of Blue Hampshire has inevitably had some impact on how I express myself. Having Jennifer on board will let me be myself again, while at the same time opening up Blue Hampshire to new possibilities. There will probably not be much of a noticeable outward difference here for you, Dear Reader. But what it will mean is that Jennifer will be as involved in the behind the scenes day-to-day blog management as Laura and I are.
To that end, if you are a politician, a political campaign, an advocacy group, reporter, producer, a someone of something with somesuch to offer, please also include Jennifer in your emails to BH (psst- you can find her email addy just like ours in the left margin masthead).
And for Laura, the two Mikes, elwood, susanthe, and Jennifer, thank you for being such a wonderful and supportive team. The same goes to our core group of incredible hamsters - Kathy, JimC, Jim Splaine, DD, the Emperor, Doug, hannah, Jack, Ray, and many more big tent regulars I'm forgetting at the moment.
One last thing: in a felicitous bit of timing, the New Hampshire Young Democrats are having their "3rd Annual NHYD Kennedy Awards Celebration to be held at 6:00 PM on Friday, November 20, 2009 at The Shaskeen at 909 Elm Street in Manchester.":
We will present the C. Arthur Soucy NHYD Achievement Award jointly to Dean Barker, Mike Caufield and Laura Clawson. Together, they created www.BlueHampshire.com and in doing so created an open forum for progressive discourse that has helped energize Democrats in the Granite State.
What an honor - especially since I grew up apolitical, and started this journey with no tool other than an internet connection. Thanks, Young Dems! And I hope I'll be able to see some of you there in real time and space.
Tonight at 7 PM, I hope you'll join me in a live blog on www.BlueHampshire.com to discuss many things, including the most pressing issue facing our country: health care reform. Last week, the House of Representatives passed a historic health care bill. While I voted for this bill, I am fighting to have the Stupak amendment language removed.
We have a lot to talk about. I can't wait to hear your thoughts tonight.
Please notice the glossy new icons over there on the right. They are there to encourage you to connect with Blue Hampshire via our new Facebook () page, our old twitter account (which Caulfield set up WAY before twitter was coo), and good ol' reliable RSS.
Twitter is set up to repost headlines from the front page of BH so it can be a great way to stay in touch while on the road. I think it will also re-tweet anything that we post to the Facebook page.
Please sure to "become a fan" on Facebook so we can stay in touch and communicate should we experience technical difficulties here on the old fashioned blog (plus, once we have more than 100 fans we can get a better fb url!)
Facebook should be a good place to post your political photos/videos as well. I've got some from Bash#2 up there now and will try to get some of the other things hanging around my hard drive up there as well.
