Hey! We broke 100,000 hits today!

Amazing! When I found myself on this little deserted island back in January, I thought I would have to buy a basketball if I ever wanted to talk to anyone again. But before I knew it, ronkseattle started dropping by, then litigatormom, gqmarinez, MABlue, Katiebird, Tucsonlynn, Shainzona and many, many others. Thanks for your patience, guys while I figured out what this blogging thing is all about. It’s been great.

Now, on to something else. As you probably know, campaigning is very expensive. Hillary probably has a ton of cash socked away for the general. But even Obama must be running low on primary funds since he spends money like water in the states where he loses primaries.

AAAANNYway, if you have a few Andrew Jackson’s sitting around not doing any useful work, why not send them Hillary’s way? Even as little as $10.00 can be very productive when combined with thousands of others. If you can give more, please do so. Every little bit helps. I’m sure she will appreciate it. And when we win PA, you’ll know you were part of making history.

Here’s where to contribute. Click this link…

here

Crowdsourcing the Docs

WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show is giving listeners an opportunity to go through Hillary’s schedule and analyse the data.  What the heck, why not?

Here is the link to the docs.  Have at it, guys: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Daily Schedules

Other Tasty Sites Like Ours

In the Tom Watson tradition, I’d like to point to some other Clinton or neutral bloggers who deserve recognition for keeping their heads when all around are losing theirs:

• First up is Anglachel, Progressive blogosphere 2.0’s newest Digbyesque blogger. She’s full of poli sci stuff and her posts are very analytical and informative. In today’s post, she tells us about the fun we can have with the electoral college map when we leave out MI and FL. Try it yourself in Fun With the Electoral College.
• NYCweboy has a delicious blog with a gay political twist. His Morning Morsels is full of interesting links and his Waiting, For the World To Change post is a sentiment that many of us share. Enough with the distraction. Let’s get on with actually practicing what we preach.

Five Years and Going Strong

Observing the 5th anniversary of Operation Desert Sandtrap, and by way of introduction to new readers, this flashback to an earlier blog of mine (The Cogent Provocateur): Operation Desert Snipe — one of progressive econoblogger Brad deLong’s Five Nominations for the Best Weblog Post Ever!

And in respect of the Bear Stearns meltdown, an appropriate snip from my earlier Camp Enron Report archives: Camp Enron Scoutcraft: Flatland meets String Theory

[UPDATE] And congratulations, riverdaughter (a.k.a. goldberry, back in the old orange wasteland) on The Confluence’s 100,000th hit. Blogward and upward!

To our more sensitive readers

In the last couple of days, since we have roughly *doubled* our hit rate, I have noticed a new phenomenon. It appears that our commentary has a nauseating effect on some of our more sensitive readers. They write that what we have said here makes them sick. It is occurring with increasing frequency to the point that we are now able to give it a name: Conflucian Emesis Syndrome or CES. Sufferers share similar characteristics. They self-report to be formerly unbiased, giving their support to neither Obama or Clinton. They are also plagued by a new symptom which I will name hallicinographia. That is, they are reading things that are not there. It is perfectly understandable, however, if they have just arrived here from a site indulging in over-the-top Obamaphilia-like debauchery. Such sites like DailyKos and TalkingPointsMemo stimulate the overexpression of neurotransmitters associated with hostility and irrationality. These neurotransmitters do not automatically refract to normal levels during the site hopping phase of an average surfing session. The result of elevated neurotransmitters is the ability to see hostility and irrationality in every post that they read subsequently. This effect may last for several hours and in some cases, days. In particular, hallucinographia prevents the reader from distiguinshing between snark and inflammatory purple prose.