I know you've got an overflowing plate at the moment (congrats by the way on the transition committee appointment; nice to see your mom, ray, wally fall and bob bussey on there as well), but I wanted to bring something of some interest to your attention.
So I think I posted somewhere on your blog about DailyKos and other nat'l liberal blogs coming out in support of Karen Carter against Dollar Bill Jefferson in La-02. (DailyKos, MyDD, and a blog called the Swing State Project compose the ranking triumvirate of lefty political blogs; during the election they raised over 500K for grassroots candidates overlooked by the DNCC.) Last weekend, Matt Stoller of MyDD called on 100 people to donate $100 a piece, and when they received 11K plus dollars they decided to hire a man named Tim Tagaris, who covered the Ned Lamont race for MyDD, and send him to NOLA for the next thee weeks to follow the La-02 runoff.
www.mydd.com/story/2006/11/15/154230/71
In the comments of MyDD's announcement, they put forth an open invitation for people to contribute blog names of New Orleans activists (I signed up to MyDD to plug the Roy election victory and your blog, btw). It's an interesting list, and here's the motherload:
thinknola.com/wiki/New_Orleans_bloggers
Anyway, Oyster over at YourRightHandThief (a nicely written progressive NOLA blog) in his most recent entry titled "MyDD: Moral Ghostbusters" (I couldn't find a permalink), has some interesting opinions about Stoller/MyDD's portrayal of Landrieu as a "moral ghost" and MyDD's decision to send Tagaris to NOLA. In the first comment blogger Adrastos (.blog-city) calls Tagaris a "carpetblogger."
righthandthief.blogspot.com
Tagaris actually left a comment of his own on the thread, and it's really conciliatory and he immediately won the support of Oyster's readers (no small feat in the blogosphere). He seems extremely motivated, and in spite of his benefactor and previous jobs he is not directly attached to the Carter campaign. Here's his first segment, which has okay comments as well, the highlight (lowlight?) being a picture of a Katrinacorpse.
www.mydd.com/story/2006/11/16/195119/10
I'm sorry to give you so much to look at all at once, since you have more than you can handle with one city already, but this is all going to be irrelevant after December 9.
I thought you'd be interested because this actually represents the national blogging community refocusing on New Orleans, and an example of how bloggers are not simply a bunch of computer potatoes. There are real projects that bridge the gap between the virtual and the visceral. It is also informing my opinion of Landrieu (Oyster at YRHT defends her pretty well, and he has the same reservations that we do, i.e. Holy Joe, and with the upcoming coastal oil revenue sharing proposal she and Blanco are going to be in the spotlight a bit more over the next two months). It's also interesting that Tagaris seems to completely understand the importance of engaging a community through it's bloggers, especially considering that his medium is professional internet journalism as well.
Yours,
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