Blogs: Let me know who you are

Comment on this post and let me know if your URL isn't up.

Class Monday April 7th: Work on your blogs

I'm not sure I'll make it today b/c I have a meeting w/ President Andrews. What I'd like for you to do is work on your blogs and make sure I have the URL to these by Wed. I'd like for someone today to volunteer to be an administrator of this blog and to add those URL's that are already available in class. 5 points on the next exam for whomever emails me first who's willing to do that. (Provided you think you have the web savvy to pull that off.)

SNOW DAY: Wed. Feb. 27th

No class today due to inclement weather. Be safe this week.

Class 2/20: In Computer Lab UPDATED (twice)

Sorry guys, I'm sick. I'd like for you to go to the computer lab and work on getting your heads around what a blog is.

I'll be near my computer so I can take email questions. I haven't worked up the complete assignment on how you'll be graded on this assignment yet and it won't end until the end of the semester. So all you really need to do is start becoming familiar with them and maybe even start an account with blogger.com (it's free).

I'd like for you to pick a social welfare topic, particularly those of you who're in the social work program. If you have a federal issue that's important to you outside of those, then let me know. I'm not opposed to co-blogs, as I mentioned Monday.

You can put as much personal info or as little personal info on these that you want. You don't have to give your full names or anything.

Some blogs to begin looking at:

http://www.dailykos.com/ The leading liberal/Democratic blog in America. Kos talks mostly about politics, occasionally about policy. (The two are different.)

http://www.powerlineblog.com/ a little mor staid and buttoned down (it's a Republican/conservative blog, after all) and not as much traffic. It's not a community the way Kos is.

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/ Another Repub blog, same comments as Powerline. Not a powerhoue community like Kos.

http://pageonekentucky.com/ Leading KY Democratic blog... although he's quite independent.

http://www.conservativeedge.com/ Ky Repub. blog. Take note of all the blog activity on the right... although Conservative edge hasn't updated their site lately, the aggregator is continuously updated and you can get a sense of what drives conservatives in KY and how they write blog entries.



Rather than go to new posts and take a chance on confusing you, I'm going to add to this one.

Some other blogs:

http://www.nccpr.org/reports/blog.htm From the National Coalition for Child Protection. I don't like the length of their posts (they're way too long) but this is a good issues blog.

http://www.dchunger.org/blog/ A DC Hunger/food stamp blog.

http://www.prochoice.org/blog/ a Pro choice abortion blog.

http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Medicaid.html?t=1&s=0&o=0 I think ZD net is a blog about many issues and this is the compilation of their medicaid posts.

Anatomy of a post: Once you get started you'll want to start posting. The best way to do that is to write your posts on Word or other word processor and then paste. You might lose some of your formatting if you copy from a web site (you'll probably lose your spacing between paragraphs).. FYI.

To create a hyper link you'll just paste the link onto word, then hit enter taking you down a paragraph. Go back to the link and right click on it. If the link is active (it'll probably be in blue letters once it is) you'll have the option to edit hyperlink. Once you get here you'll see the following box: Text to Display. This can change without changing the link. You can make this read whatever you want.

Let me give an example. Let's say you read the following in a linked article. "Hillary Clinton said medicaid is going broke and must be shored up." You'll write something like this: Here's what Hillary Clinton said- "medicaid is going broke..."

You might select the word said and insert the link there, deleting the word said. You can then modify the link to appear as the word "said." I hope that makes sense. Play around w/ it and you'll get it.

Hear LBJ Talk to MLK, Jr

The NY Times has a story with related audio on a conversation between LBJ, the President at the time, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the famed civil rights leader. The conversation was taped as a part of an oval office recording system that Johnson had established. MLK, preumably, was unaware he being taped. The conversation centers on the voting rights amendment to the U.S. constitution that was eventually passed.

The link to the story w/ related audio is: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27tapes.html

Playing Major League Politics Causes Congress to Make Minor League Errors

Commentary later: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2008-02-12-mcnamee-clemens_N.htm

Charlie Cook on the State of the Presidential Elections

Nice piece by Charlie Cook, a straight shooter w/ zero bias:

Up For The Count

By Charlie Cook, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2008

One of the fascinating byproducts of this remarkable presidential campaign is that so many people, not just political junkies, are watching with rapt attention.

My 18-year-old, fairly apolitical son was recently grilling me about the race, and I found myself saying that there had not been such a weird and turbulent presidential campaign in my lifetime.

In fact, I told him I doubted I would ever see one like it again.

One candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., saw his campaign decimated last summer, but he rose from the political dead, a feat nobody anticipated eight months ago. Apparently politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

When former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., could not fill the vacuum in the GOP contest, it allowed McCain to come back to life.

While many conservatives watch in an apoplectic state, McCain is now conducting a mopping-up exercise in his roller-coaster, nine-year quest for the Republican nomination. All McCain needs to do is get past former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the chronically underfinanced challenger who has held on with grit and strong communication skills.

Even in this bizarre year, it's hard to imagine how McCain could possibly lose the nomination.

In dealing with McCain's success, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham, among others, have passed the denial stage and are currently coping with stage two: anger. We can expect bargaining, depression and finally acceptance to follow.

But in the end, there is nothing so divisive going on within the Republican Party that an official Democratic presidential nominee won't cure.

Polls showing McCain running roughly even with Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., with no other Republican remotely close, will ultimately bring all but the most hard-headed conservatives around.

On the Democratic side, while many expected a very competitive contest, who could have expected this?

With Obama's sweep this past weekend, he has effectively pulled even with Clinton in the delegate battle and he is building a formidable advantage in money. If Obama's fundraising remains at this level for long, that alone could change the delicate balance in this evenly matched contest.

Obama was expected to win the bulk of the delegates in the Nebraska and Washington state caucuses as well as the Louisiana primary, although his victory in the Maine caucus was considered to be less of a cinch. He is also expected to prevail in today's Chesapeake primaries in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

This should give Obama a respectable advantage over Clinton in terms of delegates. But Clinton is expected to be strong in Ohio and Texas on March 4, which should swing the delegate advantage back to her, albeit narrowly.

Given Obama's fundraising, wins this past weekend and likely strength today, he is very likely to end up the Democratic nominee if he can diminish or even thwart Clinton in Ohio and Texas.

With more than half of the pledged delegates to the Democratic convention already picked, and given the vagaries of the proportional representation system Democrats use, it's hard to build up a significant delegate lead. But once a lead is built, it is very difficult to overcome.

Colby College political scientist and delegate selection expert Anthony Corrado calls Wisconsin's Feb. 19 primary "the gateway to Texas and Ohio." Indeed, Wisconsin will likely play a decent-size role, as it bridges today's primaries and the March 4 Buckeye and Lone Star state primaries.

If Obama's winning streak continues through Wisconsin, it's entirely plausible that his momentum going into Ohio and Texas will prevent Clinton from having a sorely needed victory week. Should that happen, it would be quite hard for Clinton to get back in the race.

One school of thought is that if Clinton wins the number of delegates she's expected to in Ohio and Texas, she probably can win the nomination without having to depend on the disputed Florida and Michigan primaries. However, if Obama prevails, Clinton probably won't have the clout to force the issue on Florida and Michigan. In that case, those primary wins will become moot, and Obama will win the nomination.

A different view is that, considering Florida and Michigan are the third- and fifth-largest delegations to the Democratic convention, this issue must be resolved, no matter what the race looks like.

Another question is whether superdelegates are truly free agents or whether they have some moral or ethical obligation to follow the vote of their respective states. Inevitably, they'll have to make their own choices, and we shall see which way the superdelegates turn.

This race is so close that small things loom large. It's one amazing contest.

-- Charlie Cook is a NationalJournal.com contributing editor, weekly columnist for National Journal magazine and the founder and publisher of the Cook Political Report.