Her staffers/volunteers have burned up so much money making scores of useless phone calls to my house, they'll need a good turnout just to defray those costs.

She still didn't get a dime from us, so the rest of you be sure to get down to the Hillary Dog and Pony Show.

The electeds pretty much have to show up, for internal political reasons, so no foul there.

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As for the ad network, I think it's a great idea and may be another small but positive mutation in progressive evolution.

If you can get exposure for your worthy lefty cause, what's not to like? Network, network, network.

AQ1 - I'm not interested in debating the meaning of "progressive". From our "About BlueOregon" page:

What do mean, "progressive"? Well, ideology is always in the eye of the beholder. Contributors to BlueOregon will likely disagree with each other a lot. That said, we generally believe in the power of people to organize themselves for the improvement of society, through government and other institutions.

I'm certain Hillary qualifies.

In general, I'm uninterested in navel-gazing and fist-fights between the folks on our side of the aisle. I much prefer doing battle with conservatives.

And besides, it's not the "Hillary Clinton Ad Network". It's the "Oregon Progressives Ad Network."

I'll just point out that her ad purchase means she's reaching out to progressive activists in our corner of the blogosphere. This is a good thing, right?

Well, leaving aside the issue of commerce (I'm right in reading this as business, yeah?), wherein purity tests have no place, I question the notion of a purity test in the first place. My own personal blog Low on the Hog gets neglible traffic and so I wouldn't waste anyone's time trying to convince them to advertise on it. But, if I did take ads and a progressive Republican wanted to advertise there, I'd say bring it on. In fact, I'd even take money from a conservative Republican (though I know we're getting far afield of the prog ad project's aims). The truth is, if I can't stand the pressure of a Karen Minnis ad on my own blog, I don't know that I'm worth a damn as a blogger. I'd personally LOVE to see Minnis advertise on Hog--it would give me far more opportunities to discuss her wretched public policy.

Thanks, Jeff.

Glad to see my standards are higher than yours. :)

OK, maybe not. Karen Minnis, if you're listening (oh wait, it's just you - Chuck Deister), then yeah, we'll take your ad. We'll also open up a thread to discuss the ad.

I have famously low standards. I regard it as an asset, but it's a controversial point.

By accident I clicked on one of "Blue Oregon's" advertisers at the top a couple of days ago...the Church of Scientology. How far can we s-t-r-e-t-c-h the word "progressive"?

By accident I clicked on one of "Blue Oregon's" advertisers at the top a couple of days ago...the Church of Scientology. How far can we s-t-r-e-t-c-h the word "progressive"?

Publishing these web sites isn't exactly cheap. Very few of these web sites, even when they are highly successful, break even on basic operating costs for hosting and bandwidth, much less recoup labor costs for the time that it takes to design the site, develop the backend technology, administer the site, etc.

As someone who has developed political content-driven web sites without profit, essentially for no real purpose other than to "help get the word out" (ProgressiveTrail.org, SenateDemocrats.net), I find it highly ungracious when readers who use the site at no cost, kick sand at content-provides like Kari simply because they don't like one of the advertisers. Kari deserves thanks for developing, hosting, and providing Blue Oregon as a free service, not criticism because you don't like one advertiser or another.

Besides, sites that use Google Adsense to push ads have very little control over who advertises. You can block the url's for advertisers on an ad hoc basis, but usually only after the ads have been posted at least once.

Frank -- it's important to differentiate between the Google Ads up top and the BlogAds at left.

The Google Ads are fully automated and are placed there by keyword match. As we've seen again and again, the ads are often "contextual" but "incorrect". We talk about George Bush a lot here, which is why you often see "Buy Love-Dubya T-Shirts!" Contextual, but wrong.

Now, if you see an advertiser that you especially don't like, click their ad everytime you see it. That moves a nickel from them to us.