AmericaBlog says Bush was wired during his last press conference--and has the link to the video so you can decide for yourselves.

Say hello to CrimProf blog by criminal law professors Jack Chin and Mark Godsey who do a remarkably good job.

Skippy is back from Belize and blogging away, celebrating his 700,000th visitor.

Beautiful Horizons, the best blog on Latin American affairs, turns two years old, Happy blogiversary!

The Drug War Rant is going on vacation and leaves a list of some of the best bloggers around on the drug war, including Libby at Last One Speaks, Loretta at the U.S. Marijuana Party and Scott at Grits for Breakfast.

Jeanne D'Arc of Body and Soul has a Christmas story.

Avedon Carol of Sideshow has the latest on the election returns. Was it a stolen election?

Markos of Daily Kos criticizes John Kerry and points out the opportunities in being in the minority for the next four years.

Nominations close today for the 3rd annual Koufax blogging excellence awards. If you haven't submitted the names of your favorite blogs in at least some of the 12 categories, you have till 5:00 pm today.

There is tough competition this year in the "best single issues" category with all the great blogs being nominated. It's probably too much to ask to win three years in a row, but TalkLeft would like to be nominated. So if you have a few moments, and you think we qualify, head on over and drop our name. And put a few bucks in the Wampum till for the the hard work that Dwight and Mary Beth do every year on these awards.

Here is the list of 2002 and 2003 winners.

Update: Kevin Hayden has started the Perranoski Prizes.

As the Denver Post used to proclaim on its masthead every morning, "'Tis a privilege to live in Colorado." 300 days of sunshine a year. Here are some views from my new abode, taken today --southwest and west. The larger ones give you a much better picture.

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It's time for nominations in the third annual 2004 Koufax blogging awards. Go on over and nominate your favorite blogs. TalkLeft is the proud winner of the award for "best single issues blog" in both 2002 and 2003.

I hope you will nominate us again.

Update: If you don't have your own blog yet, the Washington Post gives you some pointers.

Since the advertising has dropped on blogs following the election, I'm back to paying for all costs associated with TalkLeft myself. I don't plan on breaking for the holidays (even though I'll be completing my move into my new home, another expense.)

As regular readers and commenters know, this site takes hours of my day and evening to maintain. What began as a fanciful hobby is now a news and opinion site read daily by more than 10,000 people. Between 300 and 500 comments are left on the site daily, almost all of which I read personally. Many of you readers return several times throughout the day, evening and weekends, looking for fresh material. So far, I haven't disappointed.

Without the ad revenue, I have to ask for reader contributions. There really is no other way to keep the site going at the current level. So, if you are a frequent reader, or if you just appreciate TalkLeft and want to see it continue and thrive, please make a donation. All amounts are welcome and appreciated.

• PayPal
  

• Amazon (Anonymous)
  

Thanks, and I do send out individual thank you emails to all but anonymous donors.

Say hello to Relevanta, another blog wire to add to your daily rounds along with Memeorandum and the Daou Report.

Ad and technology expert Michael Dissan at Personal Democracy has some good ideas for Blogads and for advertisers wanting to benefit from ad placements on blogs. With the politics no longer driving the ad trade, there's plenty of room. Idea number one:

1. Branch out.

If you visited a blog in October, you couldn’t have missed TBS’s ads promoting reruns of “Sex and the City.” And rumor has it that TBS is planning another large Blogad campaign around their new reality show “Gilligan.” In addition to TBS, Blogads were also purchased by Sharp Electronics and a handful of other non-political advertisers. Blogads should proactively market themselves to online ad agencies as a way to reach influential and engaged consumers. Just don’t let the non-political advertisers buy up all the ad space!

We were pleased to see we made the article under idea number 4:

4. Label blogs based on their ideological slant and physical geographic location

Here’s how you go after incremental dollars. Help those purchasing ads on one blog know about other blogs that also match its particular ideological or geographical slant. When someone checks out, take a cue from Amazon.com’s playbook: “People who purchased ads on DailyKos also purchased ads on TalkLeft. Click here to add TalkLeft to your basket.” While local campaigns are prone to buy placements on well-known blogs, they might consider others if they can easily discern their ideological or geographical slants.

Henry and the Blogads team were the revolutionaries this year in creating a mutually beneficial relationship between the political community and activists. That same vision, with helpful ideas like these from the media and ad gurus, can apply with equal force to other industries, particularly media (television, radio, music) and publishing. How about the travel and arts industry? Banking, stock market, food industries? We'd love to host them all.

[link via Jerome at My DD.]

The word blog has officially arrived:

A four-letter term that came to symbolize the difference between old and new media during this year's presidential campaign tops U.S. dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster's list of the 10 words of the year. Merriam-Webster Inc. said on Tuesday that blog, defined as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks," was one of the most looked-up words on its Internet sites this year.

Blog will be a new entry in the 2005 version of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. The complete list of words of the year is available here.

Last Thanksgiving, I had a cast on my wrist and reduced my blogging for the weekend. Little did I know then it would get progressively worse until March when I finally had sugery on it. Jay Allen, who is the creator of MT-Blacklist that despams our comments, once had the same thing, called DeQuervain's Tensonsynovitis and began a thread at his blog about it that is still in use today. It was a great place to go and find others with the same problems. Some were musicians, some were engineers, everyone needed their wrists to work.

Thankgiving, 2002, we gave thanks to other bloggers who had helped put us on the blogging map. What's great about re-reading it is the realization that all of them are still blogging.

Holiday blogging will be light here, as the TL kid is going to be in town and I'm getting ready to move houses for the first time in 13 years. It doesn't mean non-existent, just light. TChris is away for the holidays, as are lots of bloggers. But having blogged through the past two Thanksgiving holidays, I know that many will be blogging throughout. If you are one of them, or if you know of some, please put them in the comments here, so everyone else will know too.

Don't feed the trolls (post a menu when you see them, that will alert everyone to skip the comments and go onto another thread) and give a read to those on our blogroll. They are there because we think they're special, not because they asked for a link.

If you're interested in Colorado news, 5280 will be live through the holidays, and I'll be contributing. Today I wrote about the new "drug courier profile" being used to catch "doctor-shoppers" in the mountains. Yesterday it was about the new law giving you a free credit report, and how credit card companies are gouging consumers to the gills, while raking in $2.5 billion a month in profits (yes, you read that right.)

One day early, Happy Thanksgiving to all, and a special thanks to TalkLeft readers, commenters and contributers....you are what makes the site a success and keeps it strong.

[Comments now closed on this thread.]

Time to update your bookmarks....Avedon Carol of Sideshow has moved the blog to its new home. Here's the new link.

Libertartian Robert Prather is back blogging, this time as part of the group blog Signifying Nothing.

Say hello to Grits for Breakfast, concentrating on the evils of the drug war.

Norwegianity has the JFK blogpost of the day. 41 years ago today.

Eric Alterman:

So the next time some one asks you if you’re glad that we’ve removed Saddam Hussein from power, you might want to ask them if they’re glad that, after we’ve spent 200 billion dollars and killed tens of thousands of people, 400,000 Iraqi children are now suffering from acute malnutrition. That and oh yeah, the world hates us and the pool of Al Qaeda recruits has been vastly increased. And oh yeah, I’m betting on a draft.

Skippy is in an apologetic mood. Very classy. Very Skippy.

Mad Kane has an ode to Alberto Gonzales.

Avedon Carol's Sideshow is offline, we're getting a message when clicking there that she's exceeded her bandwidth and been removed. When she comes back on, if she has a tip jar, send her a few bucks so it doesn't happen again.

Roger Ailes has news on former Tom Delay staffer, Tom Scanlon, and how he is now the subject of a Texas grand jury investigation.