Red Kettle Drive Kicks Off, Let The Sniping Begin
Is it possible to sap the spirit of giving from Christmas? No, but some Easter Shore residents sure give it a go.
Yesterday the Salvation Army kicked off its annual “Red Kettle Drive” with a breakfast in Salisbury. These giving individuals, and many others, will spend countless hours during the Holiday season ringing a bell in the cold and collecting funds to help those less fortunate than themselves. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Not on the Lower Shore. Why? SbyNEWS publisher Joe Albero has the unmitigated gall to use Maryland and Delaware’s most popular blog to promote the Kettle Drive and encourage his readers to volunteer their time and money. Shame on you Joe!
Because Albero is none too popular with certain quarters of our community, some will actually encourage residents NOT to contribute. For those who live outside of the confines of our bizarre little “Peyton Place”, I’m quite serious.
Sphere: Related Content3rd Quarter Blog Rankings
The Delmarva blogosphere continues to grow. Back in August we published a few statistics about blogs based in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. We promised to start doing a quarterly report. Here it is.
For each state we’ve listed a cross-section of blogs with their Alexa ranking and growth (or decline) in page views over the last 90 days. We have also included info on several newspapers in each state. Note that this listing is not comprehensive, but serves simply to give an overview. If you are interested in seeing the Alexa statistics about a particular site that is not listed here, simply go to Alexa and enter the site’s URL under “Site Info”. You can even compare up to four sites.
Here are the 3rd Quarter, 2009 Delmarva Blog Rankings:
Sphere: Related ContentWhen You Can’t Argue … Ridicule
September 7, 2009 by Cato
Filed under Blogging, Healthcare, Media, Virginia, Virginia Politics
If you live on the Northern Neck AND you oppose ObamaCare, you’re just dumber than a sack of hair. At least that’s the view of certain members of Virginia’s lefty blogosphere. Why not? The Obamamaniacs can’t win the argument on merit, so let’s ridicule the good voters in Virginia’s First District.
It seems that Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) had a town hall meeting in Warsaw. It appears that most of the overflow crowd was opposed to ObamaCare. According to some probable “come here” on the Daily Kos (and repeated on Fred2Blue), these were just about the dumbest folk he’s ever come across:
Unbelievable. My first exposure to true lunacy.
People who live in glass houses …
Were there a few people there who were a little misinformed? Probably, but no more than you would find at your local Democrat committee meeting. Sure, I’m a little dismayed when people take everything that Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or even Mark Levin say and treat it as gospel. Unfortunately, that’s the way of world. As an example, when Democrats attempt to argue that the “public option” isn’t a form of socialized medicine they are either lying, deluded, or simply parroting (the vast majority) what they have been told. Yet, it would be rude for us to call them stupid.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Schizophrenic Salisbury Grinch
I don’t like kicking a guy when’s he down, but few people deserve it more than Jonathan Taylor, house blogger of Salisbury’s Barrie Comegys party. Still facing criminal charges after being slapped with a judicial order related to his harassment of local resident Donna Ennis, Taylor just can’t shut up and let things blow over.
Taylor is infamous for promising to stop some of his nastier behavior and then simply doubling down. C’mon, when you go after people’s kids (as he has done with the children of Salisbury councilwomen Debbie Campbell and Terry Cohen) we have moved from bad taste to pathology.
Since being slapped by a judge last week, Taylor has since promised that his site would be going “invitation only” (a means of libeling decent folk without them being able to see it) to reneging on that claim and promising that his comments would no longer be moderated and that anonymous comments would no longer be permitted.
Sphere: Related ContentVirginia’s Lefty Blogosphere Simply Can’t Learn From Its Mistakes
August 21, 2009 by Cato
Filed under Blogging, Virginia, Virginia Politics
Certain members of Virginia’s “Blue” blogosphere remind me of my youngest son. It’s bad enough not to learn from mistakes made a few years ago, but a week?
First, some (not all) blue bloggers went after GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell claiming that his campaign had displayed a Confederate battle flag in its booth during the Virginia Outdoor Sportsman Show. Not only was it untrue, the more responsible members of Virginia’s Democrat blogosphere denounced them for it.
It didn’t matter. The damage was done as the campaign of Democrat candidate Creigh Deeds lost what little focus it had dealing with this foolishness.
With their candidate trailing in the polls by double digits, the lefty blogosphere either can’t learn from its mistakes or is simply going for broke. There latest ridiculous attack – Bob McDonnell is championing eugenics!
According to Blue Virginia and Fred2Blue, McDonnell sponsored a bill in the 2002 legislative session requesting the Virginia Board of Education to include the American Citizen’s Handbook in the state’s curricula for primary school children. Based on a blurb from a review of the book, these two bastions of Virginia’s left-wing community claim that McDonnell is promoting eugenics. They even provide a “definition”, assumedly because their readership doesn’t know what the word means and evidently don’t own dictionaries.
Here is the FULL REVIEW so that you can see what the reviewer really thought of the book (it’s short):
Sphere: Related ContentSubscribe to Delmarva Dealings
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Simply look on the sidebar to your right for the section titled “ENews &Updates”. Enter your email address and click “GO”. After verifying your email address, you’ll start receiving daily emails listing the day’s posts with the intro to each.
Sphere: Related ContentUPDATED! – New Commenting System … And A Few Other Changes
NOTE: This Post Is STICKY! Newer posts will fall below it until sometime Monday. Scroll down to find newer content.
We’ve made a few changes! Some at the request of readers, others because we just felt like it. In either case, we hope you like them and look forward to your input.
A NEW COMMENTING SYSTEM
Sphere: Related ContentVirginia Dems Playing Race Card Early
August 12, 2009 by Cato
Filed under Blogging, Democrat Campaigns, Race, Virginia, Virginia Politics
When you’re behind in the polls far enough, I guess there is nothing that some won’t do. With the Democrat ticket behind by 8 – 14 points, certain members of Virginia’s blue blogosphere are willing to stoop pretty low.
Not Larry Sabato posted that the Bob McDonnell campaign was displaying a battle flag (a Confederate flag for you Yankees out there) in their booth at the Virginia Outdoor Sportsman Show last weekend. Then Joe Abbey, Creigh Deeds’ campaign manager, started spreading the same story on Twitter. There’s just one problem – It’s Not True!
As noted by both Bearing Drift AND the Washington Post, the manager of the show stated that the flag was on display in the booth NEXT TO McDonnell’s by a vendor who sold “Confederate T-Shirts”.
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A Few Statistics About the Delmarva Blogosphere
It’s hard to fathom, but our little patch of ground between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean is host to one of the most thriving portions of the blogosphere. It amazes friends and colleagues across the bay that Delmarva (and the Salisbury area in particular) is home to so many blogs.
Some blogs garner a relatively large readership, others not as many. Some are growing their audience, others are declining. While I obviously believe in the free market of ideas as well as the financial free market, I want to make clear that quantity does not necessarily equal quality. Of course, sometimes it seems to.
Below is a table showing just a few of the blogs in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia which I follow on a daily basis (with the exception of Salisbury Grinch). The Alexa rank is an objective indicator of audience size rank (averaged over a three month period by Alexa to avoid spikes in readership). The percent change in page views is (again) a three month average of change in daily page views (which is a good estimate of audience growth or decline). I prefer objective data like that put out by Alexa, Compete or Quantcast. However, I am consistently amused by certain bloggers, one in particular, who always brag of their “record days” and immense audience when none of the objective data backs it up (for someone who hates Joe Albero so much, Jonathan Taylor sure wants to be like him).
NOTE: In the Alexa rankings, a higher number indicates a smaller relative audience. This is why I included the ranks for Google, the Daily Kos, and Red State for comparison. It should also be noted that Alexa ranks ALL web sites, not only blogs.
| |
ALEXA | CHANGE IN |
| BLOG | RANK | PAGE VIEWS |
| 1 | ||
| Daily Kos | 4,199 | 25% |
| Red State | 25,032 | 93% |
| Daily Times | 79,966 | 42% |
| Bearing Drift | 202,305 | -6% |
| SbyNEWS | 317,379 | 52% |
| Delmarva Dealings | 633,291 | 72% |
| Delaware Liberal | 858,271 | 20% |
| SWAC Girl | 1,254,924 | 50% |
| Virginia Virtucon | 1,379,208 | -30% |
| Red Maryland | 1,382,433 | 5% |
| Salisbury Grinch | 1,682,490 | -50% |
| TwoSentz | 1,947,518 | 390% |
| MonoBlogue | 2,237,447 | -50% |
| Delaware Politics | 6,451,153 | -10% |
Del. Mike Smigiel Unveils New Blog Site
August 5, 2009 by Cato
Filed under Blogging, Maryland, Maryland Politics, Media
I love it when elected officials truly take to the blogosphere. I’m not talking about worthless self-promotion and pandering. I want to see candidates and officials talk about real issues and communicate with us in an open, meaningful way. This is what Del. Mike Smigiel (R-36) has been doing since entering the blogosphere.
Now Mike has chosen to move things up a notch. Moving away from a WordPress.com site, Smigiel has unveiled DelegateMike.com. If, like me, you prefer your blog reading via feed reader (Google Reader is a must for me), simply load up Mike’s RSS feed. Also, don’t miss Mike on Twitter.
For those of you who might be thinking that this is just some shameless pitch for a friend or client, think again. While it was a pleasure, I’ve only met Del. Smigiel one time. No, this is just an example of what I would love to see all conservative candidates and officials do. Why? Our message is what America, and even Maryland, is looking for. This is a great way to communicate that message.
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