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Whenever your humble correspondent dips a strawberry into the chocolate fountain at the Golden Corral, one thought always comes to mind: Mark Warner bribery. Why? Because back in 2006 when Warner was governor of Virginia he attempted to influence the Daily Kos convention in Las Vegas, then known as the YearlyKos, into favoring his possible bid for the presidency with a lavish party at the Stratosphere. As we shall see, the Kossacks absolutely loved the idea that they were being bribed as they feasted on the sushi, drank down alcoholic concoctions, and dipped into the chocolate fountain. Therefore it is...

DETROIT — Sen. Elizabeth Warren wowed a friendly crowd of influential liberal activists Friday in Detroit, pledging to fight against Republicans and the “sleazy lobbyists” she says have rigged the rules in Washington and harmed the middle class. Warren took the stage in a crowded ballroom to calls of “Run, Liz, run” by activists waving “Elizabeth Warren for President” signs and did little to disappoint. Speaking before the nation’s largest gathering of liberal activists, she railed against giant corporations, secret trade deals and Republicans she said were too cozy with big business. Conservatives, she charged, are “guided by an internal...

Organizers of Netroots Nation, America’s largest annual gathering of progressive activists, took the wraps off of a major and welcome surprise this afternoon with the announcement that Vice President Joe Biden would be coming to Detroit to speak to the convention during a special Thursday afternoon general session. It will also be Biden’s first appearance at Netroots Nation. He was invited to participate in the Presidential Leadership Forum held in Netroots Nation’s second year, in Chicago (back then, the convention was known as YearlyKos), but declined to attend due to his desire to participate in another event. The other contenders...

The feud between left-wing bloggers and the centrist-leaning Democratic Leadership Council is getting hotter at a time when activists on both sides say party unity is critical to winning back the White House next year. The groups held dueling conferences this month, and the Yearly Kos Convention clearly came out on top. It drew 1,500 liberal activists — including 500 bloggers — and a half-dozen Democratic presidential candidates, led by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The New York Democrat has been embraced by the DLC as one of its own. The DLC drew 350 elected officials to its conference but was...

The National Jewish Democratic Council is again trying to downplay, deny, and whitewash the vicious anti-Semitic hate speech that is coming from the Democratic Left. We are surprised that the NJDC would again bring itself to our attention in this manner, noting its own publication of anti-Semitic and anti-Christian hate propaganda. Nonetheless, we are always delighted to accommodate them, and we will take this opportunity to remind them that we asked them for their position on Al Sharpton, MoveOn.org, and Jeremiah Wright. Surfin’ the Net By Steve Sheffey, NJDC Activist (http://njdc.typepad.com/njdcs_blog/2007/08/guest-commentar.html) Whether it is because they have too much time...

The only "Simpsons" series character whose name was changed for the movie was Austrian-born action star Rainer Wolfcastle, who goes by the name of President Schwarzenegger. This is satire, I think. There are nine Republican contenders for president and many more in the party looking for a rock-star candidate. Is it Rudy Giuliani, a.k.a. the Mayor of Terror Town? Mitt Romney, who bears a spooky resemblance to CBS CEO Leslie Moonves? Tom Tancredo or Tommy Thompson, both of whose names would restore alliteration to the White House for the first time since the Reagan era? I woke up early Sunday...

"Impeach or else!" That was the headline that one liberal Web site ran over a recent interview with the antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, who has been demanding that President Bush and Vice President Cheney be chucked out of office. But the Bush administration isn't her only target. Sheehan is so frustrated with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- who declared impeachment "off the table" even before the Democrats took control of Congress -- that she is threatening to run against her. The speaker may think impeachment is off the table, but the I-word is being tossed about pretty freely in some...

His name is David Aguina and he’s an Army reservist. His UCMJ claims against Soltz seem thin to me — Article 88 prohibits “contemptuous words” directed at the president, not criticism, and Article 91 seems to apply only to lower-ranking soldiers and only when on duty — but it’s hard not to be moved by his story about his experience with Iraqis. Meanwhile, via LGF, one of the yKos panelists parries right-wing criticism of the incident with some clever stammering about chickenhawks. Unmentioned in his post: Glenn Greenwald, Atrios, Max Blumenthal, Ken Layne, and the countless millions of other...

The first Daily Kos diary on the subject of the Soltz Shoutdown has disappeared from their site. Gone missing, along with more than 50 comments. Here’s where it used to be: Daily Kos: What happened to this soldier?!?!? Another diary post has now turned up to discuss this incident, from another Kos Kid whose cognitive dissonance reached critical mass, and this time I grabbed a screenshot. You know, just in case there’s another glitch in their software.

It took them a couple of days to get the spin together, but we now have an official position on the incident at the ‘Military and Progressives’ panel at YearlyKos, from an employee of VoteVets, whose founder shouted down and threatened that soldier. With obligatory “chickenhawk” slurs—the logically empty argument they never seem to get tired of. The conservative bloggers who’ve tried to make Jon look bad over this—like Michelle Malkin, Matt Drudge, and others—have no concept of this. Just like they have no concept of war in general. None of them has ever served the country in any meaningful...

In one of the better “Calvin and Hobbes” cartoon strips penned by Bill Watterson, Calvin wonders where people go when they die, to which his companion replies “Pittsburgh”. After a pause, Calvin asks if that’s for being good or for being bad. Having been born in Pittsburgh, that joke works on a number of levels for me, and particularly now as the infamous YearlyKos event looms. The annual convention of liberal political bloggers, called “netroots” by supporters and “nutroots” by critics, is in Chicago and not Pittsburgh – at the very least begging superficial comparison to another convention there in...

CHICAGO - Plunging headlong into the Internet era, Democratic presidential candidates on Saturday fought for the support of powerful and polarizing liberal bloggers by promising universal health care, aggressive government spending and dramatic change from the Bush era. "Who will be about change? Who is the candidate for change? And how do we bring about change?" asked former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, suggesting his rivals are creatures of the status quo. Seven of the eight leading candidates attended the second Yearly Kos convention, participating in a candidate forum and conducting individual sessions designed to be more freewheeling. The convention...

Leading Democratic Politicians Address YearlyKos Convention (AP) CHICAGO -- Hundreds of political bloggers are meeting in Chicago to begin a four-day convention filled with panels, presentations and lectures by some of the nation's leading Democratic politicians. The YearlyKos Convention is in its second year and was started as a way for left-leaning members of the blogosphere to "proactively influence their government." As bloggers' influence in politics and campaigns increases, the convention has become an important destination for dozens of local, state and national liberal politicians. The conference will be capped off Saturday evening when six Democratic presidential candidates, including U.S....

Dan Drezner, commenting on the fact that the current crop of Democratic presidential candidates are passing up the centrist DLC's summer meeting in favor of speaking at YearlyKos, says: The fact that YearlyKos matters more than the DLC seems like pretty damning and uncomplicated evidence to me of where the party has traveled over the last four years. Actually, I think it is a little more complicated than the simple "left vs. centrist" spin that most people have put on this. In substantive terms, after all, the three main Democratic candidates this year are only slightly to the left of...

THERE were people walking around in hats fashioned out of tin foil in Las Vegas over the weekend, the fruits of a workshop on the media at an inaugural annual convention of liberal internet bloggers.“It’s to stop THEM from frying our brains,” said Lisa Schiff, who writes a regular blog — or web log — under the name of “Crkrjx”. She explained that the tin foil helmets were an “elaborate joke on the much-despised mainstream media”. She said: “Everyone thinks that because we are on the Left we must be conspiracy theorists, even though we have some pretty good ideas....

Forum 2006 YearlyKos Convention YearlyKos Convention Las Vegas, Nevada (United States) ID: 192913 - 06/09/2006 - 1:15 - ns The 2006 YearlyKos Convention "YearlyKos: Uniting the Netroots;" brings together progressive bloggers; netroots members and leading elected officials. 11AM-12:15 PM ET Progressive Players - leaders of the new progressive movement, including: Tom Matzzie of MoveOn; Arshad Hassan of Democracy for America; Gloria Trotten of Progressive Majority; and Nathan Newman of Progress States Network. 12:30PM - 1:45 PM CIA Leak Investigation: Amb. Joe Wilson; Dan Froomkin of the WashingtonPost.com; Murray Waas of the National Journal; Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst and counterterrorism...

June 08, 2006, 5:14 p.m. You Wanna Be a Pundit?A liberal think tank offers a training course. By Byron York Las Vegas—The YearlyKos convention, beginning here today at the Riviera Hotel, hadn’t been open for more than a minute or two before there was a dispute about one of the blogosphere’s most passionate causes: freedom of information. Normally, bloggers both left and right believe the more freedom—and the more information—the better. But not today. The problem arose at a workshop entitled “Center for American Progress Pundit Project Training.” Conducted by the Washington-based liberal think tank, the session was intended...

This is an update to my thread the other night about Cindy Sheehan. A group called Yearly Kos was auctioning off Cindy Sheehan to do a speaking engagement. Last time I checked, the bids were up to $1,275.00. There is also a thread about this auction on the eBay sellers central discussion forum called "AHHHHHH! Uh, well, at least shipping is free. Is this for real?" It can be found at http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000218333 This thread is still running in that forum, even after several days. Several of the posters there noted that the Cindy Sheehan auction violated ebay's policys, and apparently...