Vote Here / Vote Aqui

Vote Here / Vote Aqui, originally uploaded by SilvaAzniv.

Help Majikthise maintain her slim lead over the Anchoress in the 2006 Weblog Awards.

Outrage Ann Althouse by supporting The Moderate Voice for Best Centrist Blog.

Comments

[aeroman]

I've been arguing some with Althouse commenters on her vote thread (I'm "admin" due to a preexisting blogger account issue). I've been trying to focus on the point that even if Althouse is a "centrist" personally, that doesn't do much to establish that her blog is itself "centrist."

[aeroman]

Plus, the Educational Blog battle between Berube and SpunkyHomeSchooler is very, very narrow. People should vote!

[norbizness]

Quick: name a 2005 Weblog Award winner.
Even quicker: name any Cable Ace Award winner.

[aeroman]

Jesus' General!

Give me a cookie!

[John Lucid]

Do a Brando and decline your fourth place award as a political statement. What political statement? Hell, I don't know. How about to protest the treatment of conservatives in film. They're always portrayed as smarter and less evil than they really are.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Can't I accept my fourth place award and dedicate it to Althouse? That's a political statement!

[Chris O.]

Go Lindsay go!

[John Lucid]

As long as you can make some reference to boobs in your acceptance speech then I think that's acceptable. Or maybe something like, "I met Clinton at the blogger party!...Bill, call me!"

[Rosie O'Donnell]

IN the interest of full disclosure, the voting system is easily hacked.
It is Flash based. Flash keeps cookies. To access your Flash cookies, go to adobe site below and click the weird little tab image second from right.
If you wanted to stuff the ballot box - and I’m not saying you should - just delete all websites, and remember to vote early and often.
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/
flashplayer/help/settings_manager06.html

(put the two lines back together in your browser url field)

[global yokel]

Jeezuz, I hate the idea of a 'centrist' or 'moderate' political posture for a blogger. It's sort of a commitment to mushy mediocrity, rather than principle. My take on a centrist is someone who is so neurotic about being marginalized to the right or to the left that they muddle about in the 'center' to minimize the risk.

I say take each issue on its own merits, and let the chips fall where they may, rather than staking out a pre-determined 'centrist' position.

[Chris O.]

Ah, now if we can just get ourselves to do that 2000 times...

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Thanks for the tip, but please, please don't hack anything. Seriously.

What we really need to know is how to detect our rivals cheating--and we know there must be a few.

I mean, a Weblog Award is nothing compared to glory of catching some Althouse supporter stuffing the ballot box. Heh.

[John Lucid]

Last year the guy who ran the Weblog Awards caught a Dilbert supporter stuffing the ballot box in an attempt to beat Jesus' General. He used some sort of script, I guess. The big tipoff that something was amiss was that the Dilbert Blog kept getting votes after the polls closed at midnight. No other candidates had that happen, and in no other categories either. Too bad, really. Of course I'm a General supporter, but I enjoy reading Dilbert sometimes. Hated to see his creator's name tarnished in any way by some overly enthusiastic geek.

Let's keep it clean, people. I'll keeping busing prostitutes, hobos, and crackheads to the internet terminals at the public library so we can beat the Anchoress and Althouse fair and square.

[Alon Levy]

It's sort of a commitment to mushy mediocrity, rather than principle.

Or possibly a commitment to evaluating each issue on its own merits rather than picking a party and going with its orthodoxy.

[astronautgo]

What we really need to know is how to detect our rivals cheating--and we know there must be a few.

That's easy enough. Watch for the guy stroking his moustache and saying, "Mu-hoo ha ha!" just before he presses a big red button marked OIL SLICK.

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

If you're looking for a lefty blog in a tight race, you might want a look at the Best New Blog race:

Hangs Right Politics 3166
Lesbian Dad 3024

Let's do what we can to help!

[aeroman]

Or possibly a commitment to evaluating each issue on its own merits rather than picking a party and going with its orthodoxy.

Or possibly a commitment to vain a-pox-on-all-your-houses self-congratulation, or possibly a childish fetishizing of the superficial trappings of independence, or possibly an internalization of media worship of so-called centrism, or possibly a wussy desire to try to agree with everyone, or possibly...

[aeroman]

Althouse has now had a road-to-Damascus moment, semi-condemned her own one-sided liberal-bashing ways, and is being very harsh to libertarians in her comments:

[T]hey are much more disturbing than I had previously thought. There is something incredibly obtuse about the libertarian view, something that misses the reality of human life and that is very wedded to a stark abstraction. In pure form, it is repellent.

What a hoot, as they say...

[Phoenix]

Yokel - seems to me someone who takes the time to think and who refuses a label is smart. And 'smart' is never 'pre-determined'.

Aeroman - Do some background study on the libertarians' god, H.L. Mencken. He was a first-class toady who covered it up by learning facile syntax to make him look like a wit instead of a twit. He knew nothing of politics much less anything of history beyond what he overheard in conversations fogged by cigar smoke. Althouse's description of libertarians is the best I've seen. There is a little bit of Mencken's background in all of them.

[Lawrence Krubner]

The chart on this page is quite interesting. It is not a power-curve to the same degree that traffic to weblogs are a power-curve. The person at the 70% percentile has about 25% of the votes of the person at the top, which is hardly how traffic to weblogs are structured. What would explain the difference? The first thought I had was that these 10 weblogs were selected from the top range of weblogs, and therefore wouldn't be representative of the whole. But a power-curve is suppose to be self-same, like a fractal, any portion of it is suppose to recreate the disparity that exists in it as a whole. Then again, this was not a random sample of some specific range, so I suppose that must explain the relative flatness of the curve.

[aeroman]

What the heck, Phoenix? How did anything I say lead you to conclude that I don't know who H.L. Mencken was? Is it just your default tone to talk down to people like that?

[Alon Levy]

Or possibly a commitment to vain a-pox-on-all-your-houses self-congratulation, or possibly a childish fetishizing of the superficial trappings of independence, or possibly an internalization of media worship of so-called centrism, or possibly a wussy desire to try to agree with everyone, or possibly...

Of course... being at the center isn't a priori good. Choosing your position based on what's at the center makes as much sense as choosing it based on what's furthest to the left or what's furthest to the right.

[aeroman]

Of course... being at the center isn't a priori good. Choosing your position based on what's at the center makes as much sense as choosing it based on what's furthest to the left or what's furthest to the right.

Very much true. I wonder, though, why people who have mixtures of right and left opinions get to be called "centrist." It's not like a far-left position on abortion and a far-right position on Iraq can be somehow averaged together. There has to be a better word than "centrist."

[TalkLeft]

Congrats, Lindsay for beating Anchoress. You did really well. I voted for you every day.

[Alon Levy]

For the most common combinations, there are - "libertarian"/"fiscally conservative and socially liberal," or "populist"/"fiscally liberal and socially conservative." People like Instapundit are generally called pro-war libertarians, with the understanding that like regular libertarians, they always consider the issues they take right-wing positions on the most important.