The big party of the Kos website, held in Las Vegas right now. A New York Times article describes it like this:
Hundreds of liberal (they'd say progressive) Internet bloggers crawled out of their cybertunnels for face-time and political networking here at the first-ever YearlyKos convention.
Named after DailyKos.com, the widely read political Web log by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, the three-day convention that opened on Thursday is something of a milestone — an event that unites the irreverent and ever-morphing liberal blogophere with mainstream political figures who have begun to recognize the bloggers' potential clout.
Billed as "Uniting the Netroots," the convention at the Riviera Hotel promises top Democratic politicians as its headliners, like poli-Web pioneer Howard Dean, the head of the Democratic Party who was one of the first presidential candidates to mobilize supporters and fundraise online, Senator Harry Reid, minority leader in the Senate who not only reads and guest-blogs but has his own Web site (giveemhellharry.com), Nancy Pelosi, minority leader in the House, Gen. Wesley Clark, and so on.
The gathering resembles a mini-political convention, with seminars instructing participants on the potential power of the blogosphere as well as talks on the Supreme Court, on religion, on the environment, immigration and other issues of the day. No hidden agenda here; the speakers and panelists mocked their own screen-worn politics as those of Bush-bashing, rebel-rousing, noodgy operatives, some already well-known for trying to breathe a new political life online to what the blogocracy views as tired old Democratic ways. Most of the panels, too, emphasize activism, online and offline.
Nice writing. Kate Phillips, the author, got in all the MSM talking points: about bloggers being sorta like maggots, crawling out of the only existence they really have, an electronic one, about the irreverence of bloggers, about the left blogosphere as Bush-bashers. But that's ok. She's setting up the stage to demolish some of those myths, and even ends up telling us that she's the only one writing in pajamas. But that's inaccurate because I bet she never checked what went on in all the other hotel rooms. Bad fact checking...
I feel a tiny bit envious for not being at the party, but if I were there I'd be hiding behind doors and wanting to be at home with the snakes who don't want to talk to me. I'm shy.
It's an odd coincidence that this appeared at the same time as the Kos party:
First-term incumbent Michael G. Fitzpatrick is touting himself as "an independent voice for Pennsylvania,"...
...
Fitzpatrick recently introduced legislation to protect children from child predators on social networking sites such as Dailykos, Blogger and MySpace.
I've never spotted child predators working Blogger or The Daily Kos. Kos is a political website and politics is not of interest for children, on the whole. Do you think this is just ignorance on the part of Mr. Fitzpatrick or is this a heinous plot to make the blogs look like a paradise for pederasts?
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The Fitzpatrick link is from Nim on Eschaton threads. For ten bucks you can watch the Yearly Kos panels via Air America.