Stop free-feeding (i.e. leaving out a bottomless bowl of kibble) and get them on a meal schedule like you would with dogs.

Within a week, ten days tops, your cats will be eminently herdable. Also less prone to diabetes.

Sorry, but that simile drives me up a wall.

But they did. I clearly remember sitting through a series of speeches by candidates at the “progressive superstars lunch.” I believe one was John Laesch, who is running against Dennis Hastert, but off the top of my head I can’t remember who the others were. But they were given the stage in the big room and they talked to the entire assembled convention. That looks like “access” to me.

[Update: OK, I had some coffee and realized you are talking about presidential candidates. Wes Clark, who might run, was there and gave a party also, and he spoke at a Friday morning panel that I attended, but then he had to leave. Later that day he had to be in another state. There aren't that many declared candidates right now. Joe Biden -- would have been booed. It's just as well he didn't show up. Don't even talk about Hillary. Russ Feingold would have been a rock star there, but he may have chosen not to go for his own reasons. The Senate was in session, after all. Al Gore would have been a mega rock star, and I'm sorry he wasn't there, but I can't imagine he wasn't there because he was turned away. Anyone else you can think of?]

[Update update: Kerry ... he's not saying he's running, of course ... I suspect some of these guys believe that association with Kos would hurt them more than help them. And they may be right.]

And I haven’t heard complaints from any Democratic candidate who they were denied “access.” Have you? If you have, please educate me.

When bloggers start becoming part of the celebrity/cocktail circuit we are clearly heading down the wrong path. Only a matter of time before our best and brightest get co-opted like Chris Matthews and Joe Klein.

“Celebrity cocktail circuit”? Oh, please … if that party constituted entree to the “celebrity cocktail circuit,” whatever that is, I’m Popeye the Sailor.

I grew up in a very small town in the Ozarks and had little experience with a lot of normal social activities until I was well into adulthood, which means I’ve gone through my whole life feeling a bit like a hayseed everywhere I go. But even I wasn’t all that ga-ga over the Warner party. I might have been 40 years ago when I was fresh out of the hills, but not now, especially now that I live in the greater New York City area.

Believe me, the Warner party was a plebian affair by New York City standards. As I’ve said, I’ve been to swankier office Christmas parties.

In short, I suspect the reason you are so uncomfortable with it has to do with your own background and social experiences.

Sure, everyone was having a great time being wined and dined in the luxury hotel, but no one knew what Warner stood for. Something utterly wrong with that.

Warner spoke to the convention about what he stood for. I remember watching some film about him, too.

Please Maha, have an open mind. I encourage you to peruse Warner’s financial disclosures. Sadly something like one in four of his $5,000 donors are hard-core Republicans. You down with that?

Warner’s candidacy leaves me cold on several levels, but the issue of who is backing him has nothing whatsoever to do with throwing a party for Kos conventioners.

And finally, I had no problem with Warner throwing a party. I just expected barbecue and blue jeans. The Stratosphere was way over the top, and in a cycle where Congressinal candidates are struggling for $$$, a $100,000+ for a stupid party was a ridiculous expenditure of money. We could have had fun for $25/head. At least where I’m from.

“At least where I’m from” tells the tale, I believe. If you’ve lived in different parts of the country you come to realize that people have different standards about what’s “over the top” and what isn’t.

For example, I remember when I was in my 20s I went to a wedding reception where there was an orchestra, and dancing, and booze, and a buffet featuring lots of shrimp. I was astonished; back home, a wedding reception was nonalcoholic fruit punch and cake in the church basement. If someone had thrown a big whoop-dee-doo wedding reception like that back where I came from it would have been a scandal. But in many parts of the country it is standard. Expected, even.

Although I’m not exactly a party animal, in the several years I’ve lived in or near cities, once in a great while I have gone to social events that required wearing formal evening dress and which were held in luxury venues that made the Stratosphere look like, well, the church basement in comparison. And with better buffets, too. Maybe that’s why I didn’t find the Warner party remarkable.

Warner is a rich guy, and by a rich guy’s standards that party was the equivalent of cooking hamburgers in the back yard. Trust me on this.

Please, Maha, if you want to respond, do so substantively and spare me the ad hominem crap. It is about money in politics. It is not about me.

I’m sorry, but it’s YOUR objections that lack substance. Your discomfort with the Warner party is something that comes out of your own background and experiences. I doubt very much that many other people were bothered by it.

The problem is YOU, in other words.

This isn’t about me at all. If I had my druthers I wouldn’t have been quoted by name. (unfortunately one of the reporters knew me from Iowa ‘04 and the GOP convention, so I couldn’t rely on an alias…)

When bloggers start becoming part of the celebrity/cocktail circuit we are clearly heading down the wrong path. Only a matter of time before our best and brightest get co-opted like Chris Matthews and Joe Klein.

Sure, everyone was having a great time being wined and dined in the luxury hotel, but no one knew what Warner stood for. Something utterly wrong with that.

Please Maha, have an open mind. I encourage you to peruse Warner’s financial disclosures. Sadly something like one in four of his $5,000 donors are hard-core Republicans. You down with that?

And finally, I had no problem with Warner throwing a party. I just expected barbecue and blue jeans. The Stratosphere was way over the top, and in a cycle where Congressinal candidates are struggling for $$$, a $100,000+ for a stupid party was a ridiculous expenditure of money. We could have had fun for $25/head. At least where I’m from.

P.S in theory, Warner’s PAC is supposed to be about helping candidates, not schmoozing bloggers. right?

Please, Maha, if you want to respond, do so substantively and spare me the ad hominem crap. It is about money in politics. It is not about me.

My sole point was that there are clear reasons for the media to treat Kos as they are treating him, without any need for a conspiracy. I agree that much of what Kos does — raising money, getting people revved up — has real value to candidates. Frankly, I won’t lose too much sleep if he grabs the wheel (though I doubt he’ll get that far) and steers the party off a cliff (which of course he may not, even given the chance), but he’s far more likely to end up as another guy who controls political money and attaches the customary strings to it. I anticipate that he’ll keep the Mercedes.

I can’t see what’s so bad about the “concerned Republicans”, though. Agree with ‘em or not, it seems to me that an attempt at persuasion, however ineffective, is better than the obscene and abusive outbursts that usually pass for communication across the partisan divide these days.

Maha, I’m sorry I pinned that sign on Citizen’s back. It was unkind.

David Brooks is an asshole who thinks he is being “cool” by talking about bloggers.

Mark Warner – let’s hope that guy doesn’t get elected.

Karl Rove makes me absolutely crazy. He is a college dropout who is a political hatchet man with lots of bags of dirty tricks.

Now, I think that Kos provides value above and beyond his candidate picks… i think he’s done a good job of helping to get the left side of the ‘net started on organizing, which is a good thing. But, I also think it is absolutely vital that some of the netroots candidates start getting ELECTED. If it becomes common political wisdom that netroots makes a lot of noise but doesn’t help with elections at all, that will be the end of whatever political influence netroots has.

As for anything else giggly might have to say, well, difficult to say based on what he’s written so far, but he appears to be one of those “concerned republicans” … you know, conservatives that are worried, just worried SICK, that we democrats might be making ourselves irrelevant by opposing the war in Iraq (or whatever), and is advising us, in all honesty and sincerity and in a spirit of brotherhood, that it would really be better for US if we went ahead and frogged every time the republicans say jump.

If that’s not the case, I apologise to him, but that’s the way it looks.

-me

Whomever has integrity would condemn Rove, not hold him up for admiration. Karl Rove is one very depraved soul.

Alright with me if you twit this Rove wannabe. Seems to me he stalked in here to denigrate folks who differ from Rove because we recognize that ‘how we do things’ is as important as the ‘ends we work to achieve’.

Bobo writes and says nothing that does not in some way advance the RNC/BushCo agenda.

And not check for veracity of a charge? IOKIYAR, what else?