Daniell Kirkdorffer of On the Road to 2008,, who created and implemented the innovative Pacific Northwest Topic Hotlist, has rather symbolically announced this morning he will stop blogging, although his archives will remain on-line.
The announcement bears a posting time of 12:01 AM this morning. It’s well worth your time to read the whole thing if you have a chance, as Kirkdorffer captures well the reasons regular folks decided they had to do something during the bleakest, darkest days of the Bush administration. I like this bit:
The road to 2008 that I embarked on took me places I did not envision. A single voice in a multitude of blogs meant that I was never likely to be a heavily read blogger at a national level, but my gradual evolution to writing about more local issues was far more about educating myself about them, than it was about finding a mass audience. Instead I soon developed a dialog with fellow local bloggers, and got to meet most of them in person at gatherings such as Drinking Liberally and other organized events. Today I count many of them as friends that I would never have met otherwise, and as I conclude my own blogging activities I have nothing but admiration for their ongoing efforts.
Unpaid, sometimes reviled, often dismissed, political bloggers spend an awful lot of time writing about issues, and rarely is there any payoff for the effort. We champion candidates or policies, some that win election or passage, but many that don’t, and sometimes we’re lucky if we simply help shape the debate, but I cannot imagine a world anymore without blogs, and the collective impact they’ve had on news coverage, information, and the pursuit of the truth in a matter. Left to their own devices the mainstream media would continue to let us down, and we’d have few places to turn to truly understand an issue. With the demise of daily print news, online resources will only continue to grow, and bloggers will be at the forefront of that change. It isn’t a perfect forum, but it is an invaluable one.
Indeed.
Here’s wishing Daniel the very best in everything he does. Well done, sir.
Meltdown
In a few minutes, our long national nightmare will come to an end. The legacy of Bush’s failed presidency is a divided nation in shambles. While the mass hysteria known as Republicanism may have largely run its course, there’s still mopping-up work to do — we still need to round up what’s left of these vermin and put them in quarantine camps.* Their whole sordid party just, well, just melted down. Good grief, what a stinking mess!
* Hey! Just kidding! I’m paraphrasing an Ann Coulter joke.
I hope Bush and Cheney are soaking in their massive sendoff. Rarely in history have two pariahs been shown the door with such great and universal enthusiasm!
Finally, the end is at hand. Bush will go to Crawford, Cheney will go straight to hell in the hand basket of his own fashioning, followed shortly by the aforementioned Bush and troll (we can only hope).
This day is the single most important day in our nations history in my nearly 52 years upon this rock.
Nothing comes close. Not the moon landing, Viet Nam, the destruction of the twin towers….nothing.
God bless Barack Obama and The United States of America.
I don’t see this so much an end as a beginning. There’s a long slog ahead to repair the damage that years–really decades–of slavish pursuit of some capitalist utopia has done to our nation and the entire world.
At least, now we have reason to hope that the man at the helm of the ship is going to steer us on a safer course, instead of aiming the bow straight towards the rocks and screaming “Full speed ahead!”
It’s done. Thank you, Great Mother Rabbit Spirit, for delivering us from the grasp of charlatans and shysters into a fresh new dawn of hope for our country and world.
@3 Yes, Bush is heading for Crawford and Laura to Dallas, and that’s interesting …
President Barack Obama
Some say that Laura has a pool boy in Dallas.
8 I don’t think I want any more details…
Thanks Jon for your kind words and this post. Our online paths crossed early on, and I’m glad that after your hiatus you returned – on several occasions.
No, this if just the beginning, but I need to turn my attention elsewhere for now and take care of matters I’ve neglected over the past four years. The world can turn without me for a while I’m sure.