Dogged Blog

Agenda

5:15 AM, wake up, get dressed, walk dogs.
5:45 AM, make tea and scrambled eggs
6:00 AM, talk to friend back east who is doing Voter Protection for the Obama Campaign. Says they've already had twice as many voters as they normally get in an entire day at her precinct.
6:45 AM, talk to girlfriend who is on her way to drop off ballots
7:00 AM, start phone banking to Virginia to GOTV for Obama
7:25 AM, feed dogs, then eat some bacon and more tea, go back to phonebanking
8:50 AM, hear from lawyer friend that things finally slowed down at her precinct. She's helped five people vote
9:00 AM, did about four minutes of work stretched out over an hour and a half while also compulsively checking DailyKos, FiveThirtyEight.com, AMERICAblog, Wonkette, and Andrew Sullivan. (Note that I'm no longer checking TPM.)
11:00 AM, watched last night's Colbert Report and realized that hearing Stephen Colbert say "Nation...." is my favorite thing ever. Watched his intro (meh) and then skipped and watched his interview with Andrew Sullivan, which was interesting but not too funny. I hope his show with Jon Stewart tonight will rock. I think it will.
11:12 AM, came here to show you what distracted, insane, disorganized, unfocused nerves, excitement, and anxiety look like prior to going down to do my shift of GOTV for No on Prop 8.

What are you doing today?

I voted.... for hope, and against hate

Talking Points Memo defends taking "Yes on 8" ads

Google ads started running "Yes on 8" banners on Talking Points Memo today. No matter how many times I hit "refresh," it delivered not just one but two of them. It was an especially ugly and deceptive couple of ads, too, although that's kind of like saying some parts of hell are hotter than others.

So I stopped going there, all day long.

I checked again this evening, thinking maybe they'd have tweaked their Google ads settings, the way other progressive sites I visit have done during this bitter campaign, and when I saw "no on 8" and Netflix ads instead of the hate mongering ones, I figured it was over.

Wrong. Because tonight they've posted a statement that they decided not to block the ads, out of loyalty to some bullshit higher principle about their site guidelines, which apparently are more important than civil rights:

We follow this policy because it is essential to preserving the editorial integrity of our product, which is news and information. Precisely because we are in the news and opinion business, advertising tied to ideas, issues or advocacy presents us with a particular challenge. If we reject ads that we disagree with, every ad we accept becomes, to one degree or another, a de facto endorsement. In other words, if we run ads only from candidates or causes we support, then the ad relationship also becomes an endorsement relationship. Even worse, a paid endorsement. That threatens the integrity of what we do -- which is to report the facts we find and explain the opinions we have.

I've heard that kind of rationale before, and it's crap. This isn't about politics, and this isn't a "cause." This is a civil rights issue, period. There aren't two sides to this any more than there are two sides to racism or anti-Semitism.

I don't mind that the site takes McCain ads, even though I couldn't oppose him more. Most of the political sites I visit take his ads, and frankly, it amuses me to think of them wasting their money on such infertile ground. This, however, is completely different.

This is giving voice and a platform to an organized effort to strip me and all other lesbian and gay Californians of our civil rights.

On a personal level, seeing those ads is brutalizing to me. I feel gutted. If you can even imagine what it's like to know that tomorrow millions of stangers who have never so much as laid eyes on me will be voting on my equality to them, maybe you'd realize this is not the equivalent of taking a McCain ad.

TPM of course can do what they want. As can I, which is not to go back unless and until they reconsider this decision. There's really only so much I can stand.

Condolences to Sen. Durbin

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois was one of the champions of food safety reform during the 2007 pet food recall. He gave press conferences, held congressional hearings, wrote legislation, and held FDA's feet to the fire.



Today we at Pet Connection would like to extend our condolences to Sen. Durbin and his family on the loss of his daughter, Christine A. Durbin, 40, to complications from a congenital heart defect:

She had been hospitalized for several weeks, Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker said.



Sen. Durbin was with his wife, Loretta Durbin, and family in the Washington, D.C., area on Saturday.



"Most of the family was at her bedside when she passed away," Shoemaker said.



Christine Durbin worked for 16 years for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the emerging markets division. She lived with her husband and son in a suburb of Washington.



She "fought a heroic lifelong battle with heart disease," Shoemaker said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the entire Durbin family."



He said Sen. Durbin would not be making a further public statement.

The story is here.