Tara Sue Grubb, 26, is being hailed as the “first congressional candidate with a weblog.” She doesn’t offer a bio and doesn’t like linking, whether to other ideas or other community organizations or individuals. She doesn’t mention her opponent by name. And she writes things like “Prudent followership in a leader yields prudent leadership for the people.”

Well, we’ve got to start somewhere, I guess. I like the boldness of Dave Winer’s claim that “in five years every member of the US House will have a weblog and will be communicating directly with the electorate.” That may be true. But Dave doesn’t state the corollary: 98% of Congress will be new before every member blogs. These old dogs just won’t blog, or at least do it naturally enough to convince the public. Furthermore, the political infrastructure that manufactures Congressmen also will have to be junked/rewired.

Building new markets takes decades. (See prior post.) Unless armed with guillotines or AK40s, revolutions are the same.

(8/26/02: Dave has worked up a new site that includes a blogroll to Grubb’s opponent.)

Dave Winer writes: “Ten years isn’t enough time to create a new market.”

Cory Doctorow writes: “when I was a kid, I used to go downtown and peel off (expired) street-posters and save them in a scrap-book as a record of all the events and shows happening in my city.” A unique chronicle of a community’s stream of conscious vanishes with each trash can of ephemera.

Leaving Washington for Rhode Island, Anne Holland writes: “the heart of journalism in America is going virtual. Many of the editors and reporters I admire most now live in places like Wisconsin, Arkansas, and the backwoods of Connecticut. All you need is a headset, a sensible long distance phone plan, an ISP, and you are in journalism central my friend!”

OK, there should be a couple more betas live today. For any of you happening on this site by chance, I’ll say that Blogads = classified ads in blogs.

We think bloggers are the ultimate intellectual entrepreneurs. Blogger passion and dedication will inspire a new universe of commercial communication.

To read a lot more about what got us started, visit this blog posting.

Out touring the flood damage, Tamas photographed this sign taped beside a gate that led into a garden full of water.

It says: “just looking 500 HUF, taking a photo 1000 HUF, using vcr 1500 HUF, 10% discount for the elderly.” Prices exclude sales tax. $1 = 250 HUF.

Using Blogrolling, I just added a link to Hylton Jolliffe on my personal blog. I then went to Blogrolling’s “latest links” page, where Jolliffe was now The Latest Link. Amazing to see the synapses wire in real time. (Time-stamps would be nice addition.)

Two flaks hyperventilate about blogs. “It is not surprising to see a single hit on one key blog turn into mentions on several others.” Welcome to the viral vortex, folks. Your lives will never be the same. (Via Scripting News.)

Continuing to fulminate against blogs earning advertising or commission revenues, Dave Winer writes: “I can’t believe people still think that advertising and commissions on catalog sales have anything to do with this medium. That’s so ink-stained and so wrong.”

Rick Bruner writes: According to Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, “it takes three types of personalities to make phenomena go epidemic: ‘connectors,’ who know lots of people and love putting them together; ‘mavins,’ who know every last detail about their subjects of interest and love sharing information, and ‘salespeople,’ who have a knack for gaining people’s trust and pursuading behaviors. Could you possibly come up with a better definition of the blogger personality?”