Nice to meet you and welcome to the Lake! Hope to hear from you often.

Come on up to the current thread where most of us are, ok?

I can remember going to political events years ago and staying at people’s houses, for instance. There was a lot of organizing about where to put people and how to feed them.

If the concern is that yearly kos be a “legitimate” convention, choosing Vegas wasn’t a bad idea because nearly everyone can get a good deal there. Choosing Chicago is a terrible idea — it may be centrally located, but it is expensive as hell. Why not Minneapolis, or Madison Wisconsin, or even Cleveland, St. Louis, etc., etc. Everywhere you go there are excellent hotel, convention complexes right near major airports, and many of them are much less expensive than the bigger cities, even today.

I guess it depends upon who they REALLY want at the show.

Unfortunately, I have not read much if anything having to do with the panel of Progressives and the Military. As such, I am the “preacher” for the Cactus Juice Commentaries, and an expert on one-sided conversations. At our web site of the Chicano Veterans Organization, you will find our punditry directed to a large number of military vets and on all matters reflecting the “arts and sciences” of human interaction, from foreign policy to fiscal discipline.

Of course, this post is not a marketing “plug” but an acknowledgment for recognizing the quality of FDL, Digby, and Tapped. Thus, my salute to the FDL for a difficult job done well.

Respectfully Submitted.

Jaango

And, yes, that he failed to distinguish between “anyone who had once posted something on the internet somewhere” and an actual blogger.

In terms of attendees, though, the audience is going to be shaped in large part by:

1. Disposable income (so, attendees skew wealthier)

2. The ability to take time off from work (so, attendees skew older as retirees have more free time). Having YK during the summer made it possible for more students to attend, though I’d guess that, of those that did, it skewed somewhat to students in the Chicago area or those that could drive/take public transportation in from further out and crash with friend)

3. For those who have the time/interest/disposable income, it’s still going to be a question of where that $$ goes. Maybe you’re the mother of 2 and you’d have loved to go to YK. But, if you had to justify the costs to your family, I think the “family trip versus Mom goes solo to a political conference” (or even “family trip to Disney World versus entire family goes to Chicago”) some of the time it’s going to come down on “family vacation.”

I attended a Take Back America conference (in 2003, I think it was) and then YK last year.

YK last year drew larger numbers overall, I think, and did much better in drawing a wider age range, and slightly better in drawing a wider demographic mix, than did TBA in 2003. Which is comparing apples to oranges, but, there you are.

Another myth which needs to be put to rest is that the blogoshere is primarily made up of “kids.” I have no idea how the age demographics can be tracked on those who write for and follow blogs, but my instinct is that many/most of us are well into “middle age” (whatever that is these days–but it is older than it used to be).

That’s good. I’m older than the hills, and in some photos taken recently at a relative’s wedding, I looked even older. But here I am bright as day … or … oh, well, here I am anyway.
And I’m not middle aged either, just old!

They’ve (and you’ve and others have) helped create a new progressive movement with fantastic grassroots momentum and well-informed, connected, critical, educated voices. I’m not ready to be manipulated by others into having a melt down into OLD, angry (sometimes useful but limited) beliefs and behaviors that were part of a long ongoing-struggle – a movement’s necessary growth and developmental process but which we do not need to resort to again out of fear and manipulation.

This is a new stage of a social justice, particpatory democracy movement — these guys have helped jumpstart and infuse it with some great tools, energy, analysis, talent, brains, and compassionate hearts too.

Unless those guys are the same old knuckledraggers of old (and frankly I simply don’t see a lot of evidence of that), Let’s work together instead of letting the rightwing agenda of any person, group, special interest including MSM fragment us. Can some of them stand to be more enlightened? Sure, but they are not the enemy. We must unite, not allow ourselves to be divided.

Anyhow, I am interested in trying to gain exposure for a site called Plural Politics that I, a Muslim-American, and a few other individuals of various ethnicities and economic backgrounds, are trying to launch.

This is the about page (which is still being debated and tweaked).

I will be honest and say that many of the people who are coming into our (very new and very small) blog feel very burned and on the outside. This doesn’t necessarily include me due to my affiliation with Huff-Po, but many readers of all various races and, I have noticed, religious identities. It seems that Street Prophets is just not enough.

One of the technological things I’ll be integrating is a new way of *sharing* traffic with the long tail of bloggers. That should be up this week. I am sorry, but this is something that none of the big boys and girls do. When I write at Huff-Po, I don’t either. The cycle has to be broken at some point.

Sparkles the Iguana @ 106

Someone has probably already mentioned this – but “Hispanic” does not exclude white. Hispanic simply means people who originated in the Iberian Peninsula and either stayed there or migrated to other parts of the world. Hispanics today include whites, blacks, mestizos, mulattoes, etc.

Are words like mulattoes acceptable? The question is serious, and I believe the answer is ‘no.’

They are still acceptable in Latin America, so I would say that are still acceptable.