Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community

Essentially, Lieberman heard that Dean and Weiner and a lot of the blogosphere were happy about a Medicare Buy-In proposal, which was something he himself has supported, and that was enough for him to spike the idea.

Booman's referring to reports put out by The New York Times and which Steven Bennen discussed at WEINER SCARED LIEBERMAN AWAY?

I cannot repeat enough how going forward, this "Joe Lieberman" moment has to be remembered for eons to come. Because it doesn't matter if you extricate Joe Lieberman from the senate, or as I suspect will happen, it will not matter a bit the day he walks away on his own accord by "retiring" from politics. You will always have another asshole who will point to a bill or a cause and say, "if that's what those radicals want, am voting against it".
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This is not at all a comprehensive list, just the people that immediately pop into my head when I think of Puerto Rican and Nuyorican bloggers. Please leave names of others who you feel should be in this list and I'll add them

• Maegan Ortiz, Vivir Latino
• Louis Pagan, LatinoPundit
• Armando Llorens (Big Tent Democrat) at TalkLeft
• Gerry Vazquez at American Taino
• George Torres (Urban Jibaro) at SofritoForYourSoul
• Noel Hidalgo, No Neck
• Jack Aponte, Angry Brown Butch

So tell me peeps, who's missing?

UPDATE: Here's who!

• Bianca Laureano, Latino Sexuality

Glenn Greenwald has an interesting post about the Maureen Dowd plagiarism drama in, The myth of the parasitical bloggers:

I raise this only to illustrate how one-sided and even misleading is the complaint that bloggers are "parasites" on the work of "real journalists." Often, the parasitical feeding happens in the opposite direction, though while bloggers routinely credit (and link to) the source of the material on which they're commenting, there is an unwritten code among many establishment journalists that while they credit each other's work, they're free to claim as their own whatever they find online without any need for credit or attribution (see here for a typical example of how many of these news organizations operate in this regard).

It's difficult to quantify, but a large percentage of political reporters, editors, television news producers, and on-air pundits read political blogs or other online venues now. Many do so precisely because blogs are a prime source for their story ideas. Contrary to the myth perpetrated by establishment media outlets, there is substantial original reporting, original analysis and the like that takes place on blogs. That's precisely why so many journalists, editors and segment producers read them.

I had exactly the same experience of finding a journalist from a "reputable news outlet" take once again one of my posts and write out a whole article and never give me attribution. This has happened countless times during my almost 8 years of blogging, but this last one really annoyed the hell out of me. Take a look at my post, It's the end of the world as we know it, and compare it to, Civil War Raging in Right-Wing Blogosphere, an article that appeared on the Washington Independent exactly 7 days after. You can't tell me the author didn't happen to read my post when a lot of the sources he cites are almost all the ones I quote on my post.

As Glenn says, this is not illegal. I have to say though that is exasperating as hell to find yet again another idiot who won't link back to my work for whatever reason. Even if it is somewhat soothing to find out that even guys like Glenn Greenwald and Josh Marshall have assholes doing the same to them. Because the point of this drama is not so much that we bloggers are a source of original reporting. That's a given. What is little discussed is the reason why we have journalists stealing our content: It's not for what we write that they steal our content. They steal our ideas and even our content exactly because our social capital is so much higher than the social capital of journalists.

In other words, we are truly trusted sources. Journalists? Not so much.
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I've been trying to decide what I've wanted to add to the Maureen Dowd pile-on. On twitter I've already made my feelings felt about the journo: I think she is an embarrassment to women political commentators (although Anika declared I should have ended the sentence at "women").

So what better than to unearth my own 2-year old story about Maureen Dowd from "The best DNC moment" :: culturekitchen:

So, during the general session there was a discussion lull involving financial reports. I stepped out to get a soda --an endeavor that at the horrid Washington Hilton took an eternity to complete.

When I come back to my seat, I see a woman sitting on my chair --notwithstanding the fact I had left my laptop, purse, camera, podcasting gear and basically everything that no self-respecting blogdiva would blog without.

My first thought was "bitch, get off my seat". Being the marginally professional diva that I am, I calmly requested the woman's attention and said to her : "Excuse me, you're in my seat."

Now, you have to understand something : This woman happened to be sitting in the credentialed bloggers section. This was where a big chunk of the top bloggers were covering the action. We were even making fun of Ezra loosing his coolness credentials because he was working that day and had to sit in the press section.

So when I come back to my seat, eventhough I found this woman marginally familiar, she was not anybody I recognized --and honey, I pride myself in knowing everybody that is anybody in the blogosphere.

So Ms. Thing looks at me a bit askew. I apologized for the inconvenience but once again requested she leave. "Take your time", I said. And she did. The woman moved at the speed of molasses and took what seemed like an eternity to move. When she finally did, I thanked her and proceeded to get back to my blogging. She on the other hand did not leave until she left a "Hmmph" and a little hiss trailing behind her.

I was amused because, being the blogdiva, I can respect a little attitude here and there.

Then I get an email with the subject line Best DNC moment : The look of shock and confusion on [her face was priceless - it was pretty clear she's not used to being told that she has to move so someone else can sit down.

"She" was Maureen Dowd.

If this is not an allegory of what bloggers have to put up with when dealing with the jealousy, sabotage or outright plagiarism of journalists backed by a big brand, I don't know what else would be.

Oh yeah, her plagiarizing of one of the most respected blogger (and independent journalists) on the planet.
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Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch wrote an "intervention" post for Robert Scoble about his addiction to FriendFeed (and by extension Twitter).

What has he gained? On Twitter Robert has nearly 45,000 followers and has written over 16,000 messages. On Friendfeed Robert has nearly 23,000 subscribers.

So lots of people follow Robert on those services, but they aren’t visiting his site and the content he writes is on someone else’s server. Plus all that content is just really forgettable, compared to a good thought piece that people refer back to over time. There is no direct way to monetize any of that content, which is something that a full time blogger with a family really needs to think about.

Meanwhile, all this attention from Robert has certainly helped the valuations of Friendfeed and Twitter. How much of that value does Robert receive? Zilch.

So Robert has spent 2,555 hours spent reading tens out thousands of mostly inane Twitter and Friendfeed messages, and has written a few thousand messages of his own. Meanwhile, we as a community lost the regularly entertaining and thoughtful posts of a great writer.

Robert dutifully responded over at Scobleizer :
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I have to admit that I don't go to a lot of technology conferences. It's not that I am not interested, on the contrary, I'd love to be able to attend each and every one of them. The problem is that I am in the situation that many other bloggers (especially women and people of color) are trapped in : We don't make enough money out of blogging to be able to afford a conference budget.

It's not just the airfare and hotel and the conference fee. As a working mother who is self-employed and has 2 children, traveling to conferences is not only absolutely prohibitive if I do so out of pocket. It's the emotionally draining logistics of who's going to take care of my children while am away. Unfortunately, in a city like New York not having family available or a nanny on payroll is a HUGE child-care liability.

So the few conferences I get to go am either paid to go because I am on a panel or I get to go to them because they're local enough (meaning a train ride away).

Outside of RootsCamp NYC (which happened 2 years ago) and this year's PodCamp NYC, there's not much for free or affordable the techie and geeky at heart here in NYC. Well, at least not much new to me because if I were to include some of the stuff happening at Eyebeam, well, yeah, that's geeky enough.

Which is why going to PDF is such a joy.
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