The Scholarship Vote
Dave · November 20, 2008 at 10:03 am · Filed Under Mariners
I’m thrilled that this thing finally ends tonight, so we just don’t have to talk about it anymore after tomorrow.
Anyway, I’m down by about 800 votes. Voting closes at midnight PST, so to win, I’d have to close that gap in 14 hours, or about 60 votes every hour from here on out. So, if there’s a few thousand of you out there that haven’t voted yet, now would be the time.
Win or lose, I still have a baseball team I can have hope in, though. I can’t imagine being any happier about how things have gone since Zduriencik got hired.
Well I have already voted from work and home, but hopefully Kieth Law’s endorsement on his ESPN chat (right now) can get more people voting for you!
I’m in my college computer lab hoping i could vote from each but appears that trick doesn’t work. I’m just right down the interstate from you at UNC Charlotte. I’ve been able to get 3 votes in for you.
I have posted a link on my blog, which reaches about 50 people. Whether or not they vote, I really hope they do. Thank you Dave!
Would emptying history and temp internet files help, as well as cookies?
I believe it’s based on IP.
I had everyone I work with vote, and put a link on my facebook. I wish I knew more people to help out.
Voted four times so far. Good luck!
Right now, it’s open season on multiple votes. I have mixed feelings on whether it’s “cheating” or not to do it, but at the moment you can go back and forth between USSM and the voting site and vote repeatedly if you want.
I don’t think that’s the case– if your IP has already voted, it will sometimes allow you to vote but not count that vote
Well, it worked for me too… unless someone else happened to vote at the exact same time I voted for the second time, because the count went up by one.
Wow, I was just checking some more of the other blogs, and I think I know why Justin Varner is in last place. His blog is THE worst blog I’ve ever seen; he makes Tucker Max and Maddox look like Rhodes Scholars in comparison. Yuck.
I too believe it is open season. MOBILIZE! Everyone vote, and often! Unlimited Voting!
That’s pretty awesome. If ESPN can’t make it happen, I don’t know who can.
Oh, it’s pretty clearly counting my vote. Doesn’t work when I refresh, but if I go back and forth between USSM and the voting site, using the link to the Voting Site rather than the “back” button each time, I can vote all I want. Which says a lot about this whole process. Not that I don’t think Dave’s deserving… just that internet voting has some rather exploitable flaws.
My votes have counted. I’ve been tweeting about this… hopefully that will turn into votes as well.
/Back to lurking.
I know an Orioles forum that has a ton of viewers, and are real baseball fans. They have 200 viewers on their forum right now.
I’ll try and spread the word.
Ah, it’s not letting me vote again. Still down by 700.
I’ve voted from home and the office. Good luck, Dave!
I’ve never been able to vote past the first time from home. I’ve tried on different computers in different p[aces and also tried to have my wife vote from her computer both at home and in the office and it always just shows the vote totals. No option to vote.
Time for a Brett Favre comeback! Go Dave Go!
Gap is only 700 now.
I don’t think anyone can vote right now.
Dave, as a Kossack as well as a member of this community, I’d like to apologize for the douchebags over there dragging your name through the mud. It gives the rest of us a bad name and a bad taste in our mouths. I’ve only voted once for you, but if I can find another IP today I’ll give you more.
CCW: But is the vote count incrementing is the question, not whether or not the buttons show up.
It appears that if I click on the link to voting above, I can vote. Then I click on my rss feed to USSM, and do it again and again and again.
But David Maouro seems to getting votes as fast or faster than Dave.
Yea – it’s amazing how many votes one can get when you create a pretend war and rally a bunch of idealogues by claiming that the other side is persecuting them.
Keep trying, though — I have no idea if it’s working for you or not.
After the Bedard trade last year I would frequent an Orioles forum that is very active. 200 viewers on their forum right now.
They said they would gladly vote. They feel bad for Mariner fan, lol, after the trade last season, and just the year in general.
Hopefully it makes a difference.
Yeah, Kos has another link up on the front page again, making this the 900th link on a site with a kazillion readers.
30min ago the lead was 700. It’s almost 900 now.
Wow.
At 1:50PM Mountain time, Mauro has 12,698. At 2:09PM Mountain time, he currently has 13,060.
It goes up by 20 or so every time I refresh. I don’t care how rabid your readers are, those numbers are impossible.
couldn’t be happier about everything JZ has done to date huh? what about this utter nonsense we hear from him today about possibly using Morrow in the PEN, AGAIN. He was on Mitch in the morning and was talking about that – Mitch was so astounded he basically asked the questions 3 times in a row.
For being heralded for being such a smart guy – I can’t even believe he would entertain the idea. Must mean he thinks about keeping the same rotation we had last year due to the salaries of them all? thus allowing him to put Morrow in the bullpen.
5min ago it was a 900 count lead. It’s now 1100.
Something isn’t right.
220 more votes since my last posting (4 minutes ago!)
and there was also a diary posted today as well. I think that makes 36 diaries & threads since the first request from Mauro.
Mauro’s goes up 30 times each time I refresh..bastard.
The front page post at Kos now casts this as a Kos-versus-right wing blog battle, which apparently has earned Mauro like a kajillion votes he hadn’t already received on the basis of merit and then by being pimped mercilessly on the site.
Wheee!
1,000 votes in 14 minutes. Is there a contact number or email for the people running this poll? This is outrageous.
Wait, aren’t you a delegate Derek? Or am I making that up.
Sorry guys…they’ve figured out a way to work the system. No way they HONESTLY get 1,200 votes in a matter of 20 minutes.
DC is now back by almost 2,000 votes. Mauro is getting nearly 20 votes per SECOND.
um. ok.
do we blame Keith Law’s “pinko commie” crack?
Seriously, Kos gets like 1m visitors a day or something outrageous. Their top post right now has two links to this, including the “the right wing blogs are pushing against him!” line, which is… wow.
Realistically, if there’s been any right-wing blog support for Dave, it’s gotten him maybe a few hundred votes, while the rallying cry at Kos got Mauro probably… three thousand?
oooh! Dave’s a freeper-fav!
and it is a personal shout-out by Kos on the front page.
the “inflammatory” link Kos has up is a re-direct from a blog in the mid-west
90% of Mauro’s votes have come from Kos, who have called this a “vote for one of us” war from the start.
0.0001% of my votes have come from those blogs. And, for the record, I’ve never read either one of them and had absolutely nothing to do with either of the posts that they link to.
Apparently, progressive blogger is a synonym for paranoid, divisive war monger.
IF IT ISN’T ONE OF US, KILL IT
I really wouldn’t put it past these guys to have someone post on those Conservative sites just so they have fodder.
Wow, I can honestly say that it looks like David Cameron is being Swift Boated.
how can he even write something like this with a straight face?
“The Free Republic and other conservative blogs have turned that college scholarship contest into an ideological proxy battle. Okay, if they want to try to sabotage Burnt Orange Report writer David Mauro’s chances for the award, then that just gives us further incentive to help one of our own win the scholarship.”
Interesting. Apparently the Republicans aren’t the only ones who know how to steal an election. ;D
my. Mauro isn’t helping either.
Well Dave, we gave it a good go. What do we always say? Nice guys finish… well… second, in this case. It’ll be nice to get back to baseball.
I’m sorry, Dave. I really tried. I enjoy your writing and would have loved to help get you that scholarship, but it’s obvious that Mauro must REALLY need that money if he’s willing to stoop to these tactics. Looks like he learned a lot from those Texas Republicans…you’ve been “redistricted”.
I guess when it comes down to it, you win by making the other guy the thing your readers most hate…even if it isn’t true.
If nothing else comes from this, I’m hoping Collegescholarships.com learns from this. Why submit when the only reward is your name being dragged through the mud?
This is a ridiculous way to award $10,000, anyway. If Dave caught that ball, he’d probably just throw it back…
Well, here’s to hoping Dave gets a book deal or something.
I notice that you can go in and vote repeatedly right now. Did something happen to their IP filter?
seems a bit odd – I personally think he found a way to hack into the system – you might wanna send an email to have them look into it. Not sure how that guy is getting basically 100 votes or so a minute. His site basically sends you to the voting page each time – wonder if he found a way to re-direct the IP’s so people on his page can keep voting for him and him only time and time again – I tried a random person with a low number, voted for them 2 times but it didn’t register. I vote for Mauro a few times in a row and each time his count goes up by 15 votes and this is just in the matter of 10 seconds or so.
Either way – you’re getting robbed dude.
Again, I’m not sure if it’s counting those votes or not… it may be letting people vote w/o tallying them.
I emerged from DK lurkdom about a week ago to refute the notion that Dave was a “creep.” The comments were bad enough then — I’d hate to see them now that they’re on the brink of what will undoubtedly be trumpeted as a major victory for the “netroots.”
(insert puking icon)
I’m sure the DK’ers are good people on the inside.
What a fucking disgrace. Fabricated political competition and authentic hate speech have robbed a good man of ten thousand dollars.
I fully encourage everyone to write the people at Collegescholarships.com and let them know just how reprehensible this online voting has become.
info@collegescholarships.org
It might not do any good, but I find it hard to believe that people who work so hard to raise money for college students won’t be shocked that it has lead to such tactics.
They don’t care. It’s good for their traffic.
What do they care? They got their publicity.
I was a finalist for a pet photo contest a few years ago for your King County Journal…the finalists were put into an online vote to determine the winner. I got hosed the same way…my only competition was resetting their IP all day and voting over and over and over. I contacted the paper and they agreed with me that the voting was susceptible to cheating and decided to split the award between all the finalists.
I also encourage everyone to write the site and ask them to find an alternative to awarding the full scholarship to Mauro, since this was such a farce. I commented in the first post here about this contest that IP-based voting is a joke; looks like I was right. Maybe they won’t do anything because yes, they did get their traffic, but they should be smart enough to know that not all publicity is good publicity.
And, voting tactics aside, if they had stopped voting after 72 hours, Dave wins. Same thing at multiple other instances in the past week. But since the vote is ending when Mauro is ahead, he is more deserving of the $10,000?
I can’t imagine coming up with this system, and thinking it’s the best way to award the equivalent of a third of the average American income.
The best revenge is living well, I guess.
Started out the day just about 700 votes back. In the last few hours it’s gone to just under 4,400 votes back.
No, the best revenge is when half the readers of DK turn into far-right born-agains when they get out of their early 20′s.
Yeah, reading thorough those comments on DK was pretty depressing. Talk about missing the point of your own movement. Kudos to those of you standing up for Dave on there.
I don’t know about anyone else but I’m ready to contribute to the First Annual USS Mariner Blogging Scholarship. I’ll just use the PayPal donate button up there in the corner if that seems best, but I was thinking you might get a better response with something like a Pledgie where people could see a goal and progress… just a thought.
(Let’s see, we’ve got 12,000+ votes on there, if 10% of those people were to donate $8.50 each, we would have our own $10,000 scholarship with a fair amount of beer money left over. Just saying.)
I am a DKos addict and even I’m really grossed out by the vote-whoring going on. No disrespect to Mauro but I don’t read his blog. I voted for Dave.
Sorry, Dave.
What is funniest about this is that Dave has gotten no support from right-wing blogs (I read them), and the actions of the Kossaks fits perfectly into the hate-mongering pattern pointed out by conservative blogs. Liberal fascism at its finest!
And if this gets deleted for being off-topic or political, I understand
I’m in, put the button up. I will work just as hard to turn votes into scholarship donations.
The Stranger is trying to help you out, but I think it might be backfiring.
[ot]
I was thinking the exact same thing. I wonder if someone could set up a PayPal account that we could all throw $5 at. Dave is most definitely deserving of the help, and I’m sure he could really use it.
I would totally contribute to the USSM Blogging Scholarship.
Well, there is a PayPal button for donations right there about halfway down the left side of the page.
My only thought was if there was a specific goal (say, $10,000) and we could see the progress towards that goal, it might be more motivating. Like I said, Pledgie lets you do something like this (it still uses PayPal for the actual donating). I’d be happy to set one up real quick, but I think it would be better if Dave or Derek or one of the more “trusted regulars” set it up. I’ve been here a long time but mostly in a lurking capacity.
Oh I wish I could just strangle who ever who wrote this…
I have just contributed my $5.00. Let’s make this happen, people.
It’s too bad an EXCELLENT progressive blogger wasn’t up for the scholarship. I’ve read some of Mauro’s stuff and it is OK at best. That’s the sad part of this whole thing, if this were about who the better blogger is, DC would win hands down.
well, there is Kyle de Beausset, author of Citizen Orange and dKos contributor, who got completely overlooked by the denizens because he did not email Kos to ask for his support and put up diary after diary promoting himself.
Would have been nice if USSM could have been included under the “progressive” umbrella. It’s too bad the Seattle Mariners are so regressive-to-the-mean.
So, let’s do this Pledgie deal. I’d like to see the progress as well. Now, who do we trust enough to do it?
>>
<<
msb has been around forever. Trustworthy for sure.
Totally disgusting electioneering by David Mauro. Totally disgusting response by a bunch of RoboKosVoters..
I have DailyKos on my political news “favorites” list, but this is like Sarah Palin using her Alaska gubernatorial office suite for a TV interview about her future national office aspirations. Shame on DailyKos.
oh, like that would ever happen.
Wow. Mauro really turned on the afterburners. I’m sorry, Dave. I voted for you three more times today, for a total of five. I wish I could singlehandledly put you over the top.
All right, I’ll set up a pledgie if everyone trusts me with it. I’ll create a new email address specifically for the cause. If anyone has a problem with this, then let me know now.
EDIT: Maybe Dave could just supply an email he would like the funds sent to. That’d save some trouble.
I generally admire the dkos community for everything they’ve done to build the progressive movement, but it sucks to watch someone who is clearly not a “them” get sucked into their us vs them shitstorm. I mean, for gods sake, the slightest hint of politics gets you OT’d around here- where in the hell do they get off pitching this as right vs left.
Sorry you got caught in the middle of this, Dave.
ps will definitely contribute to scholarship fund
msb, I’m sure you picked up on the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm in my original post about Sarah Palin, didn’t you…? Yes?
————————-
I just noticed something kinda weird about that CollegeScholarships.org page where we can vote for one of the 20 Blogging Scholarship candidates.
Down a bit farther on the page, there’s this — notice the dates:
It strikes me as being a bit unfair that a blogger like David Mauro is eligible for THIS Blogging Scholarship, when he would have also been eligible for the scholarship being offered earlier this year by this same organization.
DAVID MAURO SHOULD BE DISQUALIFIED!
Maybe just set it up to go to the same “derek@ussmariner.com” PayPal account that the donate button on the page goes to? Unless there is something else they prefer. Then you just need to bug Derek to put the little Pledgie graph on the page somewhere so we can see it.
BTW, I see that previous years’ runners-up won $1000. Since it’s obvious that Dave C. is a runner-up at this point (IF MAURO ISN’T DISQUALIFIED
), that helps the bottom line if the Pledgie gets off the ground…
I sent an email to the guys asking some questions concerning the Pledgie campaign. Hopefully I’ll get a reply soon.
Let me know if you have any Pledgie related questions, I’m no “expert” but I’ve used it a couple times for stuff so I might be able to help.
Sure will. I took a look at the site and signed up already. It looks pretty straightforward. Just waiting on the info from Dave and Derek.
Kossacks are nice folk for the most part. They just hate the Free Republic. I bet when a pledgie is set up plenty of them will toss 5 bux in just to keep the Freepers from laughing about this whole thng.
Actually, the idea to enlist right wing blogs did come from USSM or LL. Once those comments (and subsequent posts at places like Red State) were picked up by the DK community, it escalated the whole affair.
David Cameron may be a good blogger, but he made a mistake in calling out Daily Kos on the front page of USSM last week and he got a lot more attention than he bargained for. He should have stuck to selling himself on his own merits rather than whining about a “daily kos mob” that didn’t exist. It was only a few people writing diaries to support David Mauro and they had significant ground to make up. Once Cameron started publicly whining about DK — all hell broke loose. Add the comments from some in this community that you should enlist freeper sites to help Cameron — and you have a full-on pissing match on your hands over an online poll that was designed to get as many eyeballs as possible. The real winner of this contest? Collegescholarships.com who had a huge bump in traffic.
People on both sides have acted poorly. There are some that were over-the-top at DK. But, it takes two to tango. And some of the behavior here and other enlisted sites, like LL, has been really vitriolic and fueled the fire in people who would have otherwise been oblivious to the whole contest.
Having said all of that — I’m kicking in for the scholarship fund and I wish David Cameron and everyone here well. I will now return to my normal state of not caring about anything baseball because the Royals suck so badly.
Take care.
This type of fear-mongering bullshit is not representative of the type of progressive ideas to which I often subscribe. How embarrassing.
I had never paid much attention to Kos because I always feared that it was the type of free-flowing, self-glorifying place that attracts the worst kind of ideologues. Looks like I was right.
(Not to knock all Kos readers/writers. I know there are good ones.)
YEAH! How DARE USSM take on the MIGHTY Kos!?
I will tell you this, it’s more likely the people over at those Red State blogs got the idea to piss off Mauro FROM DK based SOLEY on what a big deal was being made.
From day one, Mauro and DK made this not about the ISSUES but about negative campaigning.
I’ll take this as evidence that a lot of folks on the left have, once again, lost their sense of humor and irony.
Jeezus…I went through this during the 60s…you’da thunk we woulda learned better by now….
SpikeKC, your posts on this have been well-thought-out, but the difference has always been this.
Dave C.’s votes have come primarily from people who have read and been affected by his work. The promotion, the multiple voting, the over-the-top vitriol likewise have been from those who follow and been affected by his work.
Dave M.’s votes seem to have come primarily (certainly not exclusively, but primarily) from people who want him to win because he is “one of their own” and because they like his topic of blogging better. Same thing with the promotion, the multiple voting, the over-the-top vitriol.
Maybe it’s a small difference, and in any event it’s the fault of the people who set up this asinine method of awarding a scholarship that could make a real difference in somebody’s life. I blame them far more than Daily Kos. This poll has virtually no correlation with the quality of the blogger.
But the real shame here, and the most infuriating thing, is that Dave Cameron does fantastic work. He’s not any of the things Daily Kos says he is. I’ve looked at his work, and Mauro is pretty good; but Cameron is fantastic. If this was really about their quality within their respective spheres, Cameron would win hands down.
Everything about the DailyKos attitude with this has been wrong – that this should be an “us against them” competition, that baseball blogging is pointless, that Cameron is some kind of troglodyte, and that relentless self-promotion should be rewarded.
Based on my political beliefs, I’m a person who should really love DailyKos, but after reading those threads I feel like I need to take a shower to get clean. And not just because the way they smeared Dave C. to get “their guy” to win – but because it’s a level of groupthink that really disturbs me.
And as for the idea that Dave C. shouldn’t have called a spade a spade – that DailyKos is a massive mob that is voting for their guy despite most not having read his work – well, that’s crap. He shouldn’t tell the truth? What about that was incorrect?
Wrong, Seattle-Kurt. The political part was introduced by those supporting Dave:
http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2008/11/7/656375/take-5-seconds-and-help-da
Near as I can tell, that was the beginning of it. Sure, there were people who wanted to support a progressive political blogger over a sports blogger — and that is there right to do so.
You don’t have to admit it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Cameron’s fatal mistake was whining about Daily Kos and how everyone was so unfair. It is also too bad that everyone at DK is being lumped together. I saw a lot of positive comments about Cameron at DK and many people who did support him. Can’t say I saw any of that here.
SpikeKC, I didn’t say the idea wasn’t posted here…but honestly, don’t you think those LARGE Red State blogs were more likely to get that ID to do what they POSTED they wanted to do “PISS OFF DK” from the amount of coverage it was getting at DK, rather than reading it on USSM or LL.
Also, you posting it doesn’t make it anymore true. Truth is, NEITHER of us know where they got the idea or who’s idea it was that spurred them into action.
As far as you using the term “whining” in regards to DK, using the term in your own manner to somehow justify ANYTHING that’s happened is juvenile at best. There was no FATAL mistake here, no one died. It’s a scholarship. Thank you for your contribution and please take YOUR “whining” elsewhere.
The idea wasn’t posted here.
Also, disputing that Mauro got his votes from Kos is entirely unsupported by the reality of what happened, and Dave’s whining as you call it was an entirely accurate description — people voting because of political affiliation.
I second SpikeKC on that. There’s been a lot of whining on both sides (including whining by Dave himself). This is a stupid voting system that measures absolutely nothing important. Maybe it has value as a social experiment. But, really, isn’t it obvious that when you combine (a) a $10,000 prize, with (b) internet voting, and (c) internet blogging and commenting, you’re going to get a mess. Any broad negative generalization about any group of people in this context is silly on its face. (P.S., anyone who voted more than once should probably refrain from complaining about the “other” side getting votes unfairly).
Dave said this:
Characterize it as whining, or whatever you want, but it’s a ridiculous attack.
I saw a lot of positive comments about Cameron at DK and many people who did support him. Can’t say I saw any of that here.
DK has tons and tons of readers. Of course you’re going to find people there who have read and enjoyed Dave’s work. On the other hand, you’re not going to find many — if any — people here who have read Mauro’s work. I’m only speaking for myself here, but I’m pretty familiar with a lot of liberal bloggers, and I had never heard of Mauro before this whole thing started.
The lack of supportive comments for Mauro over here has nothing to do with any sort of character flaw you’re trying to find, and everything to do with the simple fact that no one knows who he is. I don’t mean that to insult him at all, but it’s true. You can’t hold it against us that we don’t blindly support someone whose work we’ve never seen. Progressive blogging is a pretty dense market, and Mauro’s stuff doesn’t appear to stand out. Cameron’s does. Hence the broader appeal you’re seeing for Cameron.
Cameron’s mistake was giving them a pretext to justify their mentality. Does anyone want to seriously argue that Kos and others wouldn’t be posting front page topics about “vote for one of our own”, if only Cameron and some random LL commenters hadn’t said what they did?
Hi Dave,
I just gave $10 through Paypal as my way of replacing the scholarship money with direct funds from those who have greatly benefited from your writing.
I think if you guys were able to make it easy for others to give directly to you as our way of making up for the scholarship many would do so. It would be fun for all of us to see you get over 10K and you are definetly worth it!
I like the previous idea of having a countdown to $10K.
Thanks!
Henri
I went to the Burnt Orange blog and couldn’t even find an entry written by David Mauro. There’s no mention of him in the Who We Are section either. Tried to give it a shot and couldn’t figure it out.
Yep and McCain’s negative ad campaign was done because Obama wouldn’t approve townhall meetings.
There’s always an excuse for bad behavior, but it doesn’t excuse it.
Where did I dispute the votes came from Daily Kos? David Mauro also blogs on Daily Kos. Why wouldn’t he solicit help from that community? All David Mauro did was campaign. He tapped a bigger network. When you realized he was catching up (after a huge lead out of the gate,) suddenly self-promotion (which is what the contest intended) and community promotion was unfair.
I really didn’t come to be antagonistic and I truly wish you all well. Congratulations to CollegeScholarships.org for supplying all the elements for a traffic battle and a grudge match.
I’m moving on. (Really….I mean it this time.)
The people at CollegeScholarships intended this to be a “who can do the best self-promotion” contest? Really? It isn’t a scholarship for excellence in blogging? News to me.
That is NOT all he did. You don’t have to admit it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
This is not an excuse.
there was–
yes
Me? What?
It was not, because you’re cutting the rest of the context: this is about claiming that people are attacking, that there’s an us/them divide, that Dave’s been placing his name everywhere, and generally fanning the fires of blog war.
I really have to agree that the use of IP Filtering to control the voting is absurd. Someone with the knowledge to use proxies and macros could easily sway voting so tremendously in the final stages.
Like picking up 7,500 votes in a day?
What it most disturbing about this whole “us vs. them” mentality on Kos is how many genuine baseball fans there are on all sides of the political spectrum. Additionally, if you use any of the links on Dailykos, it automatically lets you vote again and again and again.
Keith Olbermann and Nate Silver have horsehide and hickory in common with George Will and the President. It is our national pastime and pretending that M’s fans are all reactionary noodleheads is beyond the pale.
This is my first post. I have enjoyed this blog for quite some time and I happily donated a sawbuck to the cause. If you do not win it outright, I hope other folks are moved to help you with your college debt.
is this about right?
David C. posts on his blog that he has been told he is a finalist for the scholarship and would appreciate votes from his readers. He gets off to a very comfortable lead thanks to his readers. These readers mention his scholarship chance on their own blogs. These include Geoff Baker of the Times and Rob Neyer of ESPN, who post brief comments about his opportunity on their respective blog pages–- Baker makes a point to encourage readers to look at all the nominated blogs, and vote for the one they think best. These are only posted once.
Nov 10th David M. posts on his blog that he has been told he is a finalist for the scholarship and would appreciate votes from his readers, and invites them to a facebook event. Regular readers of David M’s blog mention his scholarship chance on their own blogs. David M. puts up a dKos diary, and emails Kos about the scholarship, which results in an open thread mention, telling readers to go vote for ‘the only progressive’. He also puts up a second diary which asks the readers of Kos to ’smurf’ the vote for him. His numbers begin to spike upwards, moving him up to 2nd place in 2 days.
Nov. 15th David C. puts up a reminder, which includes the comment that the highly-read dKos has weighed in, and that they know how to get out the vote.
Nov. 15th a diarists puts up the fabled ‘he called us a mob’ diary, and David M. moves into 1st place overnight.
Things generally fly all to hell after that.
Dave puts up a post wishing the whole thing was over.
David M. continues to put up diaries and others on the site also donate diaries, urging readers to vote for ‘one of us’. By the final day of the vote, about 36 different diaries and mentions in the open threads are put up for David M., on a site that generally gets about a million hits per day.
I can’t find any actual rules to this on the contest web site. Who knows? It might backfire.
As a longtime USSM and DailyKos reader I have to say I’ve very dissapointed by the actions over at DailyKos. I really think both Kos and Mauro owe Dave an apology. I’ve taken a lot of inspiration for my Colorado Rapids blog (View From the Couch) from what USSM has done. Soccer doesn’t have nearly as many stats as baseball (Though Beane is going to try to create Moneyball for the Earthquakes like he did for the A’s) but I’ve tried to take an analytical approach to the Rapids like Dave and company have done for the M’s and if I had been thinking about it I should have put a link to to urge people to vote to repay Dave for some of that. I’m just sorry Kos had to make this a political fight.
Personally, I’m just ready for this to go away.
I’ll happily donate to Dave’s scholarship fund. Everything I did at sonicscentral was inspired by what this blog is … when we were kicking ideas around for a site a USS Mariner for Sonics fans was always what I wanted … this has always been one of the finest blogs on the net for any topic.
Kos posters are no different than the ranting righties they claim to despise, proving once again that idiocy knows no political allegiance.
I try to donate to USSM once or twice a year, even if it’s just a few bucks, so what better time than right now?
Dave and Derek, thank you. You guys do awesome work, and all you’ve ever asked in return is that we cast a vote, consider donating to a cancer fundraiser, and buy Derek’s book — and maybe throw in a few bucks for a beer.
I imagine Dave doesn’t want this to turn into some sort of fundraiser for him, but let me just say: I’d like to see how many of the people who voted for Mr. Mauro respect his work enough to pay him for it.
Yeah, time to move on, people.
Dave, FWIW, we appreciate that you didn’t try to turn this into something it’s not. The quality of your work definitely deserved first place in this contest – we did what we could.
That being said, I came here to post that we should really set up our own “scholarship” for Dave, and I’m not surprised to see I’m not the only one with that idea…
My thoughts exactly…I know Dave would never ask for this and take this on, but I’m more than ready to throw my $5 or so in. I’ll do it with the general paypal button – but I would love to see someone track this so we can do it right. No comments, no blog wars, just a progress bar and some extra dough for Dave’s college.
Delete this comment. Thanks.