Dear TODers,
Remember how many wanted to help Chipsticks but felt too technically challenged to become a full-fledged mini-tyrant? This new feature is for you!
One of the many things I love about our community is the sharing of links to articles, photos, tweets, interviews, reviews. So the Sunday Lynx (meet our mascot!) will be a weekend reading feast, prepared by anyone who has a moment to post a link and a one line intro to it. You don’t have to go out of your way — if you regularly follow a favorite blog, newspaper, magazine, TV show, that can be your beat.
Unless it bears repeating, we won’t include links already posted on the front page, but you are welcome to include links you’ve posted in the comments during the week. Just put a sticky on your desktop and keep a copy of the links you post, then add them here on Sunday. That way people who don’t get to read all the comments during the week get a chance to see the links they’ve missed. We’re looking for connections to writers and thinkers who are both our frequent friends and also outside our usual resources. In the past couple of months I’ve followed TOD links to an article by a conservative writer bemoaning President Obama’s success in implementing his agenda (how often do we get to read that!), Melissa Harris Perry’s beautiful letter to a rape victim, a mother’s letter to her sons about how a real man treats women, one of the great scathing critiques from Jim at Stonekettle Station, and another from PM Carpenter. Though of course schadenfreude is wrong, it’s of course irresistible, so I always follow links to the few remaining sane Republicans writing about how far off the rails the party is going.
Everyone can join in, but it would be great to know that a certain number of you are on the beat and will be posting links regularly. Let us know in the comments and claim a beat! You can write your own intro sentence or bring out a tempting quote from the article. That way people know if it’s something they want to pursue.
Here’s an example from this week, using one of Charlie Pierce’s many wondrous zingers:
It seems that Max Baucus, the pestilential trout-mask replica from Montana, will be hanging them up at the end of this term….http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/max-baucus-retiring-042313
We might even go for the Zinger of the Week, though Pierce would dominate that category.
If your link has an endless string of letters and numbers for a URL, you can shorten it here: http://tinyurl.com or https://bitly.com. You paste the endless one in the box (right in the center on tiny; upper right on bitly) and it gets shortened for you. Copy that, and paste here. If that’s more than you want to do, just paste the endless one!
The Obama Diary 
Mornin’!
Congrats JOB on #1! 🙂
Good Morning Jackie!
.¸¸.✻ღϠ₡ღ✻
(¯`✻´¯) Carol. ღ Congratulations, come on down ღ
`*.¸.*✻ღϠ₡ღ¸.✻´´¯`✻.¸¸.♥ •.¸¸. ƸӜƷ¸¸.✻ღ
Congrats jackie on First!
Morning J, morning everyone! Betsey should be along later to answer any questions about her idea, she left the post in drafts for me to publish for her. See ya all in a bit.
Thanks, Chips – Betsey has a great idea here!
BT, You need to size down the rhs icons (OFA, ContactCongress, Youtube, House Rules) etc.
Are they too big Amk? They look okay in my browser, but will reduce size if huuuuuuuuuuuge on yours!
I checked in ff and chrome. They all appear huuuge. Did you do any formatting ?
May be others can also comment on this.
Didn’t make any changes Amk, that’s weird. Just finishing off some work, will look in to it in a bit. If anyone else is having problems will you let me know? Thanks!
The links are the perfect size Chiparoo. I think the problem might be on Amk’s end because nothing has changed on my mind.
Thanks UT – I think we should start a fundraiser to buy Amk:
I’m on Chrome and they appear normal size on my computer and smartphone.
What are you talking about? Everything is the same for me, but I haven’t had my second cup of coffee. I’m just worried about screwing up when I go to tinyurl. 😀 and I missed the rise and shine, so I’m not shining yet. 😉
Late to this, but the icons appear the same (i.e., not huge) on my laptop/netbook (Chrome, old Windows OS).
What a clever idea! Thanks betseyc & of course a very big thank you to Chipsticks for sharing this space with us for us!!
This is not on politics [and we do have to get away from it once in awhile!] but on archaeology and ancient history for the world. I belong to a Yahoo group called Explorator:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Explorator/
Description
EXPLORATOR has over a decade of experience bringing you the best of the world of archaeology/ancient history every week. Various on-line news and magazine sources are scoured on a daily basis for news of the ancient world (broadly construed: practically anything relating to archaeology or history prior to WWI or so is fair game) and they are delivered to your mailbox free of charge every Sunday morning!
To subscribe to Explorator, send a blank email message to:
Explorator-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
I really enjoy getting this every week and I learn so much. Some of you might enjoy it, too.
Subscribed, and sent the link to a couple friends who will also be interested in this! Thanks!
Welcome. I found today’s issue most fascinating and that it was on my mind.
Thanks, overseas granny! I love things like this. And it doesn’t have to be political, as you say.
Subscribed!
What a great idea Betseyc! Some of us tech and comment challenged might be albe to add to this. The best ideas are here at TOD!
Congrats JOB on being first!!!!
Thanks for the congrats from you, mtmarilyn, and all the others! This idea will really help all of us who sometimes forget to save a link and later wish we had. I agree – some of the best ideas are here at TOD, and it’s how and why our TOD community just grows and grows.
Thanks, mtmarilyn!
Congrats Betseyc and welcome aboard the mini-tyrants spaceship. 🙂
Under the extreme control of (as if) and tethered to (as if) such a fine mothership! 🙂
Thanks, amk! Love the toons!
Betsey, that is a great idea. I would certainly read every entry – make a regular Sunday afternoon time for it. Just one request: some of us are just a little more technologically challenged than others. Could you put in a one-time printable lesson on how to post articles, tweets and videos? And maybe include some of the do’s and don’ts of copying material from the internet? It would be a great service for some people who haven’t quite made it to “virtual literacy”.
Second that emotion. We have different browsers, computers, iPads, etc. Thanks.
Thanks, hgerhard! Here’s how to post articles: at the top of your browser window you’ll find the URL. For this page it’s http://theobamadiary.com/2013/04/28/join-the-team-the-sunday-lynx/#comment-706974. Select the whole URL (on a Mac you click three times or drag your cursor over it; PC people will need to fill in if different.) Copy that (I think it’s command-c on all computers), then go to your comment and paste it there (command-v.) You can also use the copy and paste functions under the edit menus. You do the same with quotes from the article, or add your own intro.
For pasting tweets and videos, we need people proficient in those to fill us in. I’ll gather all the instructions together and have a techie section in the intro each week.
Great idea to have the instructions posted each week. If I feel brave, I’ll definitely need the instructions handy. Thanks again betsey for this addition to our wonderful TOD 🙂
Thanks,GGail. Be brave!
Top of the morning mateys. Lynx sounds like a novel idea. Now I gotta pick a beat I guess. 😀
Hello Matey. It’s National Hug a Mate Day, so (((((HUGS)))))
Absolutely, matey!
Congrats on your first TOD front-page post Betseyc! You’ve successfully been inducted into the highly selective club of TOD blog tyrants – as amk would say.
Thanks, hope fruit!
No, it can’t be, schadenfreude is wrong! 😦 😉 LL’s essay is good and so was smarty pants, but it will take me awhile to try out the new links. I’m hit and miss with tech. AMK is probably sleeping. That expensive bum.
I’m not sure what I’m reading Betseyc, but I’ll hang around and and see what happens. Thanks for helping out Chips. I don’t think we’ve met. Nice to meet you.
Thanks, CarolMaeWY!
Your very welcome. 😀
I love Jeff.
He is cool. However, sometimes I don’t like the way that others who are Pro-Obama and pragmatics talk about emoprogs (and that is very appropriate because there are some loud, annoying emos) tweet nasty, vile things about PBOs cabinet members/Dems they don’t like.
If you are going to respect our POTUS, FLOTUS, VPOTUS, and SLOTUS, then you should show the same kind of respect for those that work for him, support(ed) him, and gave him his first shine in 04 or 07. Maybe I don’t understand how social media, especially political Twitter works, but it JMHO and it’s a long story.
Apologies for the redundancy.
Q: Is google a boy or a girl ?
A: Obviously a girl, because it won’t let you finish your sentence before coming up with its own other ideas.
With that, I am outta here.
Gunnite folks.
Gunnite amk. Sleep tite. Don’t leg Peggy Noonan bite.
Good idea, especially for those lazy Sunday mornings/afternoons. It sounds like too many moving parts for me to do the techie parts, but I look forward to great reads. Who knows, after awhile, I may be able to get the hang of it and contribute. Be warned though, I dance to the beat of a different drummer much of the time, but a beat is a beat is a beat.
The Beat
If you can post a tune, you can post anything. And whatever drummer you’re dancing to sure works for us!
Cookemom, if you would describe how you posted the link to the music vid, I’ll have the instructions for that for next week.
oh now that was easy. so if the new stuff will be that easy no problem. all i did was
– go to utube
– find the video i want
– click on share to highlight the url
– left click ‘copy’ on the drop down menu
– come to the great TOD site
– left click ‘paste’ in the ‘post comment’ box
– woop there it is!!
Thanks, Cookemom!
Bopping back and forth between house duties, yard duties, and TOD reading:) Good Sunday morning to everyone…I must be thick as a brick, but I’m not sure that I understand this concept…I’m all for trying new things though, Betsy 🙂 Maybe I just need some more info…doesn’t sound that different from what we do now….I’m sure I missed a piece of the equation. I think I got lost somewhere in there with the “shortening a long URL” and sticky things. Never too old to learn, so I’m in if I can figure this concept out a little better!
I really need to do chores df, but I’ve been stuck in this chair all morning. I was confused too with the concept so I”ll just wait for the official launch party. Now off I go to get to at least a few of those chores. Enjoy the day all!
I know that feeling of being stuck in a chair:) I had big plans to cut mesquite branches that are hanging over my pool, causing a freaking mess with the pollen, but thought better of that when I actually looked at the branches…a little big for me to saw off while standing a step stool! WTH was I thinking?? I’ll just flit to the next thing that catches my attention…like cleaning the glass doors on the showers….laundry…grocery shopping….mindless necessities
“I had big plans to cut mesquite branches” that sounds like code for “Clearing brush.”
Desertflower, linker extraordinaire, you of all people have this down pat. The idea is to collect lots of links that are scattered among many comments and put them in one place for people who don’t have the time for every comment. And to add links that haven’t been put in the comments. The trick is to find a way to store the links that you collect during the week so that you can post them here on Sunday. Because my life is one post-it note after another, I gravitate to stickies, which are post-it notes on your desktop. But anything you use to collect info is great.
I’d like to know more about these sticky things:) You should SEE my favorites list! Holy shit, it’s a mess. My kids laugh at me and tell me what a doofus I am because they are just saved in a big, long line of favs…..I know which ones I have though, and basically where they are….love to hear more about how to create these stickies:) I wish to hell I had invented Post It’s 🙂 Or paperclips.Seriously.
I’m doing this on my phone today because the internet is down. I’ll get links to stickies for next week.
Thanks, love:)
“linker extraordinaire” Funny girl:)
OMG! This is SO COOL! Science is an awesome thing:) It didn’t do what I expected, so that makes this even better than I thought!
h/t to Steve Benen that had this posted at Maddowblog….I love this stuff…
Many of you don’t know about this, but your private emails and messages stored by your ISP were at recent risk of being HANDED OVER to the government and other companies, without you having any say. A propsed law called CISPA would allow the searching and sharing of your personal data with the government AND other companies. It also requires companies to turn over user records to officials under certain scenarios including “outside hacker threats.” Sounds eerily like Orwell’s “1984” to me. The bill as drafted sailed through the House, but under pressure from consumer and privacy groups and the threat of a presidential veto, CISPA stalled, for now, in the Senate. But it may seek to rise again, like some kind of zombie, as the Senate fashions its own version. I intend to lend my voice to help ensure it stays quite dead.
What drives me nuts is that those right wing brainwashed people who are screaming about President Obama being a dictator, President Obama being a “danger to their liberties”, don’t have A CLUE about what’s really going on. It’s the President who is fighting for their liberties to be preserved, it’s the President who is fighting to find the right balance between cyber security and people’s privacy.
So true. . .
The Republican Party is merely “a coalition of gangs,” David Stockman, the former congressman and Reagan-era budget director, tells Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview.
“The Republican Party is not really a party. It doesn’t stand for anything except re-electing itself,” Stockman, who directed the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, tells Newsmax. “The neocons are only oriented to an aggressive, imperialistic foreign policy of big defense establishment and suppression of our civil liberties. That’s bad.
“The tax cons want to just cut taxes — any time, any day — regardless of the fiscal situation,” Stockman adds. “That has gone to an absurd length. The social cons, social policy people — the right-to-life issue and gay marriage and all of that — that’s irrelevant to governing a democracy in a free society.
…
“The Republican Party is basically irrelevant to the economic crisis that faces the country.”
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022768176
Boy, df, I wish this irrelevant party would bite the dust soon before they destroy everything in their site, like a bunch of locusts. We’ve got to send them packing in 2014.
I agree:) I am beginning to think that the rest of America may be getting a clue about these charlatans/haters/crooks….saw it on the gun safety vote…unless people have been living under a rock, they would have a difficult time escaping the news about voting rights, women’s issues, immigrant rights, etc. America just isn’t wear the ruling GOP wishes it were….I think that this faux outreach that’s not working well, because everyone with a brain knows it’s NOT GENUINE…will come back and bite them for being the lying, self interested idiots they are….getting harder and harder for them to escape now because they have so many talkers that just keep spewing their hatred/fear and corporate talking points….I’m hoping that America’s eyes are opening and for some, coming to terms with a party that long ago left them in the dust and moved on to their 1% favs. No money for GOP? No support from them….people ‘get it”….I think the hard part for many is that they have a hard time believing that they’ve been played for fools this whole time. America is far more tolerant and accepting and forgiving than these RW assholes want to admit….the more nervous they get, the deeper they dig that hole. Works for me. Dig that hole deep, and jump in, for all I care. Maybe the moderate Republicans can come back then….THEN we can have the conversations that we need to have around here!
Sorry…not “wear”…where!
Hello TODers – just trying out Lesson 1 from Bestsey:
http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/
It worked – thank you, Betsey.
Smartypaints reference the following article in the blog post that Chips provided a link in the previous thread. Wanted to be sure all of you had the opportunity to read Jim Newell’s lovely take down of the Politico critters:
Under the header of “Incest”
Behind the Cringeworthy Curtain Politico’s piece about Mark Leibovich’s book is exactly what’s wrong with ‘this town’
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113050/politico-story-mark-leibovichs-town-why-we-need-his-book#
Thank you Betsyc!!
Will contribute whenever possible.
#FORWARD Together
^^^Smartypants^^^ not paints (perhaps SP also, paints) 🙂
That was an amazing read Bob, the utterly bizarre narcissism and self-obsession of Allen and the other Politico guy is extraordinary. These people are actually disturbed.
“These people are actually disturbed.”
Big time, Chips.
These folk need medical/psychiatric intervention, for real. But, since that is likely not to happen, what we need to do is ensure that an increasing majority of Americans recognize that, at best, #NEWSTAINERS like the ‘DC villagers’ should be viewed as a real time performance museum of psychopaths, not providers of the journalism critically important to a vibrant democracy.
#FORWARD (enlightening others, as we proceed)
Thanks, Bob! Great paragraph from the piece:
A “supremely confident and strangely self-conscious writer,” though, is what normal people simply call “a writer.” And this oddity, Leibovich, with his wacky voodoo traits of “thoughtfulness” and “introspection” and “basic manners,” has been in such a creepy fog state that he thinks it’s fair to have honest discussions with the people he’s writing about in his book? What is with this joker? The best explanation Allen and VandeHei have for why Leibovich would ply his trade with fairness and basic decency is that “assuages his guilt.” As in, he’s doing it for selfish reasons. Only this makes sense to Allen and VandeHei. Another day, another person trying to use someone—D.C. operating exactly as it should.
I don’t know why, but the intro to #8 cracked me up!
All you need to know about #nerdprom in 10 tweets:
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/all_you_need_to_know_about_nerdprom_in_10_tweets/
Anyone know what designer FLOTUS was wearing last night at the WCHD?
… Mrs. O chose a black beaded, draped chiffon goddess gown with high neckline in Chantilly lace by designer Monique Lhuillier. … http://mrs-o.com/
I can answer my own question, it was Monique Lhuillier gown.
Thanks JER.
Chat away!
http://theobamadiary.com/2013/04/28/chat-away-153/
Foxx gained national attention for bringing the Democratic National Convention to the Queen City in 2012, and his transportation portfolio includes a new streetcar that broke ground under his tenure. He announced recently that he was not running for reelection, fueling speculation he would be picked for the slot in Obama’s Cabinet.
His could be the first of several nominations announced this week. Chicago businesswoman and longtime Obama backer Penny Pritzker is still in line for Commerce Secretary, Reuters has reported, and the president is close to choosing White House deputy national security adviser Mike Froman to be the next U.S. Trade Representative.