Joe The Reporter
Via Atrios, I take back everything I ever said about Joe the Plumber's Excellent Israeli Adventure. More, please!
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Pandagon
Pandas last stand
It's true that pandas are lumbering fake bears that are going extinct because they suffer from sexual ignorance on the level that abstinence-only pushers could only dream of. But all this is more reason that pandas deserve your vote over religious figures and bitches. After all, when this is all said and done, bitches and religious figures will live on, assured that there is no danger of extinction for their people, but pandas will not have such comfort. So vote for pandas. Because you're a liberal, and so you root for the downtrodden and the underdogs, and pandas are all that plus way cuter than most underdogs.
Soapblox -- and the larger issue of long-term survival of online progressive content
NOTE: I was interviewed about the Soapblox hack a couple of days ago by Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker for the January 19th Talk of the Town column, It hits newsstands Monday. You can read it here.
In the days since the hacking of the blogging platform Soapblox's server on which Pam's House Blend, OpenLeft and many state blogs reside (my reporting here), there have been a lot of discussions around the blogosphere about the fate of the content management software and its hosting service (Soapblox provided both).
One development has been the launch of a "Save Soapblox" fundraising campaign on Friday by Chris Bowers of OpenLeft (administered through BlogPAC). BlogPAC was alreadly deeply involved with Soapblox, paying the service fees for most of the state blogs on the platform each year, so that existing relationship was in place. Donating to "the cause," as defined in the DKos diary, is to deal with the short-term issue of migrating the data and making it secure.
--Recharge ten servers--Perform a full security audit of the SoapBlox server/unix infrastructure to prevent hackers from gaining access
--Ensure all backup processes are working and functional to guarantee that if hacking happens, data is preserved
--Perform a security audit on the SoapBlox code itself so that hackers cannot exploit the SoapBlox code itself.
--Migrate to new, secure servers
The good news is that, in addition to restoring full service for Soapblox, Paul has already found a system administrator who lives in his area and is able to help. All of the work listed above is currently underway. Here is what it will cost:
--Recharging ten servers at $100 apiece: $1,000
--Purchasing new, secure severs, and migrating the data: $8,000
--One month of full-time work at $50 / hour in order to complete all of the tasks listed above: $8,400
A big caveat here -- nothing about the above is a long-term solution for a to-date closed-source, run-on-a-shoestring by one person effort, and they know it. Evolving a business based on the programming savvy (and the health and well-being) of Soapblox owner Paul Preston is not a business plan, particularly in crisis management mode, and without transparency.
The question needs to be asked -- what is in the best long-term interest of supporting the progressive blogosphere? More below the fold, and it's about more than just one content management system and hosting service.
Complicating the matter is that right now, there is not a turnkey alternative available to bloggers on the Soapblox platform that will provide the same functionality as the open-source, Scoop-based Daily Kos. If it did, we'd all already be there. Drupal, for instance, is open source and can provide the same feature set, but it involves programming expertise, time or money to develop and maintain the back end, something most bloggers on Soapblox don't have. Same thing with Scoop.
As I said above the fold, the fact of the matter is that most of the blogs affected by the SB takedown don't have the technical skills or time to easily migrate their content to another platform -- they want to be free to produce the content that resulted in the progressive online political revolution. Paul Preston and Soapblox provided this on a shoestring and herculean personal commitment. Now that a good chunk of the progressive blogosphere is on the platform and politically institutionalized, the sad story of last week is that its existence is tethered by a thread to weak technical and support infrastructure -- an easy point of failure.
Interestingly, a MyDD diary by Drupal consultant Shai Sachs (and thus a competitor with Soapblox), "SoapBlox meltdown and Drupal," makes some observations that are relevant to consider in terms of a long-term future of stability, even if there's a vested interest in Drupal:
Soapblox is a reasonably good technological platform, but I think the key to its success, until this week, was its low barrier to entry. For a low monthly fee and with very little technological expertise, a blogger could launch a full-featured blog that was felt, to readers, a lot like DailyKos. In contrast, Drupal and multi-user Wordpress would require an awful lot of tinkering and monkey-wrenching in order to simulate the Dailykos experience.With Soapblox hanging by a thread, it's important to develop a new and stronger alternative to the old system. There's very little question, in my mind, that the best foundation for this kind of hosted blogging system will be Drupal, for a wide variety of reasons. First, Drupal's out-of-the-box features include user-specific diaries, moderated comments, and the capability to front-page a diary - those are all key features of Soapblox. What Drupal lacks is the ease-of-use of Soapblox, but as OnSugar demonstrated late last year, it's entirely possible to run a hosted, easy-to-use blogging platform on Drupal. Second, Drupal is one of the most popular content management systems in the world, which means it has an enormous user, developer, and support community; there is no single point of failure in the Drupal community, meaning that a near-meltdown like Soapblox's is nearly unthinkable. Finally, there is already a considerable degree of cooperation between the Drupal and progressive communities. Many local Dean organizing groups, and later DFA chapters, developed websites based in Drupal, thanks largely to the release of a Drupal distribution called Deanspace, (which later changed its name to Civic Space Labs). Today, there are a variety of progressive Drupal development firms, including Development Seed, Chapter Three, Prometheus Labor, ZivTech, and my own company, Lightbulb First Consulting, LLC. Drupal is a community which is strongly based in a number of open source values, including meritocracy, transparency and accountability - the same values that drive the progressive blogosphere.
...Primarily, I think it is the responsibility of the progressive Drupal community (which I count myself a part of), to answer this call-to-arms. We must develop a stronger, better alternative to the Soapblox platform, and we must properly productize and market that solution in order to make it palatable to progressive bloggers. These are busy days for me, and it's not entirely clear that I'll have time to develop such a product on my own, or to organize a larger effort. But I think we need to get the ball rolling very soon, because the days when it made sense to run the progressive blogosphere on a shoestring are long gone.
And that last comment is quite apt because you get what you pay for. Poor Paul Preston had to deal with deadbeat customers who wouldn't even pony up their cheep $15/month. That doesn't exactly inspire one to believe in a sustainable operation.
Conversely, if Soapblox blogs migrated to a platform that required each blogger to foot the bill for redesign, programming and adequate hosting, would readers pony up and pay an annual subscription fee (like a magazine) to support the costs of keeping those blogs running? I don't know, but I do know that it would be tough for a good number of small state blogs to pull in the funds to afford an adequate transition and hosting in perpetuity to ensure the content's survival. That's the wake up call for all corners of lefty blogtopia.
While I admire the effort by BlogPAC to raise funds for the short term issues (clearly the Blend benefits from addressing the acute problem), that's not evidence of a sustainable business plan -- and we've yet to see what that will look like. BlogPAC is now in the precarious position by default of being responsible for the security and existence of the Soapblox blogs by asking people to endorse and support Soapblox's (uncharted) future. Even as an affected blog (and the person who first publicly alerted Soapblox customers about the hack), I haven't been privy to any specific discussions about long-term plans, so your guess is as good as mine on what's going on in back-channel discussions.
There's been plenty of speculation about what will be done about the matter at PHB. It's odd that I've seen reports that I've 1) decided to stay, 2) decided to leave, 3) remain undecided. Clearly people see what they want to see; I did have a thread asking readers their opinion about where the Blend should go from here, but I've not stated what I plan to do.
And the kind of public mulling I'm doing here (since I believe in transparency about the PHB community to you, the readers) is going on between Soapbloxers bloggers in private -- I've been in contact with some of them. Most 1) want to see Soapblox survive and thrive; and 2) are making their own contingency plans to abandon ship if the ship's leaks aren't repaired and there's not a sustainable plan forthcoming. I can't blame them - they'd be serving their readers poorly if they didn't. It's not a trust issue (but given some of the comments on the initial Kos thread about the panic, that sentiment was out there) or a lack of commitment to progressive solidarity, it's a simple survival instinct based on prudent business decision-making.
There's no point slagging Soapblox, the bloggers on the platform or anyone else -- we're at this point and need viable options for those who want to provide an online political base for progressive thought in a community based format that enables talented voices to stay in the game without huge overhead or fear that their contributions to the political discourse are at risk of being lost forever. Unlike a book, where there are many copies in libraries as a "backup", blog content is not guaranteed to survive 100% intact as it was the day it was first published. Look at Archive.org's Wayback Machine for the Blend. Not comprehensive by any stretch of the imagination.
An example -- the first iteration of the Blend was on Blogger, with my files not hosted at Google (the current owner of Blogger), but on my ISP's server. So if I kick off, my ISP bills will stop being paid, and eventually access will terminate, leaving some cached material in "The Google" cache, but some original content will be gone forever unless it's preserved offline to be ported elsewhere by someone I name in my will. At least I have backups of my entire Blogger archive; those who host their content on Blogger's servers, I have no idea what access they have to download their content wholesale. Not exactly permanent.
Now I'm on Soapblox, a closed system, and I've obtained the db, but it's the same thing. Anywhere the content is hosted, its existence and access to it in the future completely intact depends on a bill being paid in perpetuity by someone. That's food for thought.
Many readers take these things for granted - the content is you read today is available for nothing but a click of a mouse. Today. Tomorrow is another story.
The Peter's 'Ten Reasons to Support Americans For Truth in 2009'
President-elect Barack Obama’s support for radical, pro-homosexual federal “hate crimes” legislation. Will homosexuals rise to the top of the politically correct hierarchy of victims in the United States? Will pastors who teach correctly from the Bible that homosexual behavior is sinful be brought up as “accomplices” if someone who attends their church attacks a homosexual? All crimes involve hate at some level and all Americans — including homosexuals — deserve equal protection under the law without regard to special criteria.
- Obama’s support for the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), which would use federal power to force businesses to support homosexuality and subsidize homosexual employees’ relationships regardless of their faith- or morality-based opposition to homosexual conduct. Why should homosexuality-based “rights” (mandates) take precedence over Americans’ historic religious and First Amendment liberties?
- Obama’s call to allow open homosexuality in the military — during wartime no less — and Obama’s promise to use the bully pulpit to advocate other pro-homosexual agenda goals such as homosexual adoption of children. Will our Commander-in-Chief become the Gay-Propagandist-in-Chief? And what sort of homosexuality-affirming “Christianity” is Obama going to espouse (as he does in his book, Audacity of Hope)?
- Obama’s pledge to work for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996 and which protects states from being forced to recognize out-of-state “gay marriages.” Mr. Obama: please forget this radical promise and defend marriage as president if you truly believe that it should remain between a man and a woman!
The rest are below the fold.
After reading a list like this, do you think the fundie wallets will open wide and give so that The Peter can attend IML and Folsom in 2009?
5. Obama’s support for a federal “civil unions” bill – essentially “gay marriage” by another name. Honoring homosexual unions and rewarding them with government benefits only undermines genuine marriage in society.
6. Obama’s promise to sign the radical “Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which would eviscerate pro-life reform laws across the country that have helped save thousands of innocent unborn children’s lives.
7. The real possibility that the California Supreme Court will invalidate Proposition 8 – passed by the people of that state Nov. 4. Do citizens’ votes count and do they have a right to stop liberal judges from imposing a radical redefinition of marriage by fiat?
8. Homosexual activists’ intolerance and anti-democratic behavior as exhibited following their loss on Prop 8 in California. If homosexual militants behave like this now – declaring their counterfeit “marriages” a “constitutional right” and demonizing religious opponents as “hate-filled bigots” analogous to the KKK — imagine the potential for abuse should they gain federal power through passage of federal hate crimes and employment legislation (ENDA).
9. The ongoing, aggressive lobbying by the Gender Confusion Movement. Having learned well from their “gay’” allies, “transgender” activists seek to turn “gender nonconformity” into a legal civil right. This would include the supposed “right” of a very young boy to come to school in a dress if he thinks he should be a girl. (Now there’s an agenda item sure to be popular with most parents of school-age children….) Memo to the Transgender Lobby: women do NOT want biologically-born men (wearing dresses and high heels) with male genitalia in their public restrooms—period.10. The socially leftist media’s and Hollywood’s increasingly bold and arrogant promotion of all things “gay.” When it gets so bad that Newsweek magazine runs a cover story positing (out of nowhere) that the Bible supports homosexuality-based “marriage,” the media has lost all perspective on this issue. They are taking their cues directly from the homosexual lobby — which means increasingly they will be demonizing people of faith as “haters.” And then they wonder why newspaper and magazine sales are down. AFTAH will continue to speak out against the media’s and Hollywood’s secular bigotry.
There are many more reasons to support AFTAH but all involve our unshakable commitment to you to defend the truth against the homosexual activist agenda — boldly and without apology. The main question on this issue should not be: “What’s wrong with gay marriage?” or “How does my ‘gay marriage’ affect you?” but rather: “Why are all relationships built around unnatural, changeable, immoral and often unhealthy homosexual behavior somehow deserving of taxpayer-subsidized government recognition? Or perhaps: “Why is it wise for our government to elevate and reward natural marriage and the mom-and-dad-with-children family over destructive, unmarried and unnatural relationships?”
Is it so wrong to offer a safe alternative?
I've been saying this for years, and I'm glad that it's finally catching on as part of the argument for why the federal government should make a huge investment in making American cities more walkable---they reduce drunk driving. Drinking is right up there with butt sex in topics that policy-oriented people don't like to talk about, because talking about makes people think that maybe you do it, and god forbid people think that, because then you won't be considered a serious person anymore. I don't think the taboo that's grown up around it is such a good thing, though, because it does create these situations where people hypocritically avoid talking about realistic ways to push for more responsible drinking, and teetotaler groups like MADD dominate the conversation. And since their solutions are all punishment oriented, I think there's a limit to how much good they can do. Stiff fines for drunk driving work up until a point, but if you don't offer people a realistic alternative, you're still going to have a whole lot of people playing the odds that they won't get caught, and thus a whole lot of drunk drivers who are risking accidents.
The bunching knickers of MassResistance's Brian Camenker
The incredibly shrinking profile of the laughable anti-gay outfit MassResistance has poor Brian Camenker railing to himself his readers about the non-existent destruction of the Bay State by the homos. In his latest rant, he is charging the state government with bowing to the incredible power of the homosexual movement during a budget crisis.
Sandra Lee: Domestic Failorist
Here's Sandra Lee, Person Who Puts Extra Canned Frosting On Store-Bought Cupcakes, making a Kwanzaa cake:
Because nothing says black pride like a nut-bedazzled half-globe of shit cake covered in lumpy poo-brown frosting with ugly taper candles stuck on top. Here's a photo walkthrough of whatever the fuck this thing is as done by two racially enlightened white women.
I don't really hate Sandra Lee for the ethic of Semi-Homemade. I hate her for the trappings of the show, which have little to do with the putative goal of the show (making simple, quick meals that require less prep time, with a lot of the work already done for you), and a lot more to do with a particularly grating sort of middle-class MacGyverism. A show generally involves a few "semi-homemade" recipes, many of which are not only more expensive than a from-scratch version but which, because of the too-clever-by-half machinations of the show, take more time than just making it from scratch. But then you also get a special-made cocktail and a "tablescape", which takes the art of making simple, easy food and buries the subsequent shame and guilt from not slaving away for hours on the meal in a meticulously arranged theme that blocks everyone from seeing everyone else's face.
I cook the most when I have the least money - in general, prepackaged, "complete" food is a pricier luxury than fresh food, and I take joy in the process of it. I don't have a family, however, and the additional cost of the prepackaged food is probably gladly accepted in exchange for the additional time it affords the person cooking. However, what Sandra Lee does is take that idea, and then stretch it out so that it saves you no time, costs more money, and then puts the pressure of being an interior designer on top of making something that looks like you did...well, the exact same amount of work that you actually did, but with canned shit and taper candles on top.