I stop by Ed Cone's blog every now and then to see what's happening in Greensboro. In response to a comment I made today about the Vermin, Ed asked why I "stoop" to name-calling. My wife often asks me the same question, so I decided they both deserve an answer:

Why I'm a mean old name-caller.

Name-calling hasn't always been my style - I used to be profoundly reasonable. But then the neocon cabal came into power. It started with the Hunting of the President (Clinton) and culminated in the Swiftboating of John Kerry. And got even worse from there.

And all the while, the reasonable people on the left steered clear of hitting back hard. They zipped their lips and tried to make logical arguments that would persuade the muddled middle to think things through. It didn't work. The muddled middle slid farther and farther to the right, while a natural tendency toward political correctness emasculated the left. Without the neocon "killer instinct," the left languished, the right flourished. And the mainstream media ignored the intellectual progressives.

A quick note on behalf of Congressman Brad Miller, who has temporarily lost his BlueNC password. Brad has a recommended diary on Daily Kos that'll do your heart good.

Thank you for all you did this year to help me and Democrats all over the country. The netroots were engaged and gave campaigns real energy. On election day we had hundreds of people standing for hours at polling places in a cold, driving rain. We had dozens more calling to get out the vote. We raised almost $1.8 million, much of it in small increments from thousands of people. Oh yeah, and I got 64 percent of the vote in a purple district against an opponent who probably spent $2 million.

We weren't exactly starting from scratch. I'd been elected to Congress twice before, and to the state legislature four times. But we grew our campaign dramatically this year. A big part of that was because of the support from the netroots. And other candidates, Larry Kissell for instance, did build impressive campaigns from scratch largely because of netroots support.

The "netroots support" he's talking about there is you, my friends.

:)

This just popped into my mailbox:

I'm sure it's not your normal habit to watch television on Saturday night, but tonight you may want to make an exception. WRAL will air Brad's debate with Vern at 7:30 tonight.

The debate was taped on Friday morning. Among the highlights, Vern takes on the Episcopal Church and is challenged to explain some of his wild distortions of Brad's votes. By all accounts, it's worth the time to watch him squirm.

In addition, Brad participated in two other debates this week, WXII (Winston-Salem) and WTVD (Durham). The distinction between the candidates couldn't be more clear. It's painfully obvious that Brad knows the issues and takes a thoughtful approach to analyzing challenging policy questions. On the other side Vern has established a handful of prepared quips that he somehow works in for almost every question.

There's a hot "debate" over at Ed Cone's Place today about why Brad Miller didn't see fit to meet the Vermin on the 101.1 morning show today. You know 101.1. It's the "only station that covers the entire 13th Congressional District" according to some person from the station named Brad or Bruce or whatever.

Apparently, one of the show's hosts is all upset because the good Congressman had better things to do than get ambushed by shock jocks this morning. Can you imagine?

Check it out.