Why I Oughta...

Early this morning, the folks at ProPublica Illinois released a widget that documents the fundraising and spending of the gubernatorial candidates in Illinois .  Well...it shows most of the candidates - the ones who are *in* the race with a shot at winning their respective primary.  I'm embedding their widget below.  ( Also...one cute thing to mention here:  the url of the story is at: their domain/nerds/story.  Nice touch, right?? ) Loading... There's obviously some interesting things going on here in the race ( like JB Pritzker's burn rate ?!?) that smarter and more tuned in political people can provide context on, but the reason I'm posting this is that it reminds me of the old days. The old days?  Yeah...like back in the mid-aughts when there were plenty of local bloggers - and specifically local political bloggers - that had their own little homesteads on the Web .  That's when I fell in love with the Web and met so many people ...

Those were the days.  I was going through some of my personal effects and came across this piece written by Tony Scott at the Kendall County Record (I think?!) that covers some of the shenanigans we were up to back in the early aughts.  I made some of the strongest connections of my career during these JoinCross.com blogging days as Chris Rhodes.  Pretty incredible to think back at how far the Boss let us go with the blog.   Today?  They're probably right to be a bit more careful with their political image.  And who's blogging today anyway?!? Here's post from the archives here on the blog from Dan Johnson-Weinberger that talks about the same thing Tony Scott says :  those were some heady days of GOP blogging. 

I just got back from lunch with Rick Klau who made his name with the Dean for America Campaign. I have to tell you...He's such a genuine nice guy. Very knowledgeable and respectful. He's clearly a partisan, and so am I, but he had some nice comments and suggestions for us and our blog. 1. Improve the blog format 2. Start a Diary over at Daily Kos 3. Read "interface" and others. Thanks, Rick. I want to hook back up with him in the future. He's so knowledgeable about the future of all this stuff.

Archpundit responds to my call for the environment to stop being a R v. D issue . Caution. This is not a Joincross like post where we talk about bands, or what we ate, or have pictures of Willaim Ligue Jr... Rather this is wonk talk. And *good* wonk talk at that.

We're got some stuff up on this guy's blog now, too. As described by One Man, he is a 'smart guy'. I've been reading his blog for a couple of weeks. He talks a lot about technology and how it evolves, helps, and hurts business/commerce. He was also very heavily involved in the Blog for America of Dr. Howard Dean. (Which we all know was very successful....) Check out his blog. He has some interesting things to say. Oh...I forgot to tell you. He lives right up Route 59 in Naperville. Which is nice. Rhodes....out.

I've been slobbering all over the Arch Pundit lately... Well, we here at the joincross blog have decided to put our money where our mouths have been. We decided to take the plunge and advertise with him. I may not always agree with everything he says, but it certainly is interesting. Now, for all of you consiracy theorists out there... we didnt do it to get 'positive coverage'. I actually find him a interesting read. Some of the stuff is good, the federal dem stuff bores me to death. He has a pretty wide readership and they appear to be quite regular. He doesn't get a ton of 'comments' but neither do we and we get a ton of hits when we send out the emails. He is usually pretty good at keeping up with the news of the day. They are going to have him blog over at the DCCC @ Stake Blog . What a great idea. They claim that the GOP doesn't 'get it', but guess what....over here at CFI, we're not your father's GOP. We do get it and want to t...