I generally try not to complain, but this time it sort of peripherally effects me, so I'm going to take a moment to toss out a post.

Yesterday, I linked to an AP story about a woman who was reportedly visited by a PI in the employ of the NM Republican Party. I clicked the little box for my post to appear in the Muckraker sidebar, where it went after the first recommendation and then I left it alone.

Apparently this morning, the main Muckraker column posted more information about the situation, including a lot more quotes than the AP initially reported and that's all well and good, there's nothing wrong with shining a brighter light on the subject because that's the reason, I originally submitted my post.

What "bothers" me is that the main Muckraker story cites reports of "minority voters in New Mexico" to TPMMuckraker as the impetus for their investigation and they credit a local freepaper for first reporting the story, while I cited a short wire service article which appeared several hours before the timestamp on the freepaper and my post had been in the Muckraker sidebar, since it went online.

Again, all well and good, a brighter light is definitely needed and my insinuation about "Swift Boat" funding was only based on a circumstantial tie, but this isn't the first time that I've seen something posted to the Cafe and then reported by one of the main TPM columns, hours or days later, without any attribution or acknowledgement going to the original poster. This time the main article includes a lot more information, but that's not always the case, especially when it's something as simple as a Cafe member linking to a straight-up video, then Josh or somebody linking to the same thing two or three days later because someone had reportedly tipped them via email.

I realize that there's a lot of "talking to ourslves" going on in the Cafe, plus quite a bit of repetition and some posters lack historiical context, but you'd think that the paid staffers could at least pretend to read our posts, especially when something appears in the "Most Recommended" list. Sure, they have a lot of irons in the fire and all that, so I can understand that not everyone can read every post, but I don't really think that it's good customer relations, when apparently everything we write is being ignored or when an unaltered video is posted to the main site, days after it first appeared in the Cafe

And, maybe my deal about the potential for voter suppression in New Mexico isn't the best example because the Muckraker column does include direct quotes and it puts it into context with the ACORN story, but something similar seems to happen several times a week and though there's better example from myself and others, I thought it was time to throw something into the air.

(End Rant)

The newest Rolling Stone has an article about voter suppression which focuses a lot on the situation in New Mexico and today, the AP is reporting that a 67 year old, Albuquerque woman (who is quite likely Hispanic) was (allegedly) visited by a private investigator claiming ties to the state Republican Party, who questioned her about her immigration status and whether she was a "legitimate voter".

I don't know if these two stories have anything to do with the recent reports that the NM Republican Party has raised twice as much money as their Democratic counterparts over the past three months, or that their largest donor ($115,000) has been a Texas woman with ties to the "Swift Boat" ads from 2004, but I thought I'd throw everything out there for all to see.

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BTW: Last week, I was going to make a joke about the woman accused of voting while drunk, but I couldn't find the perfect wording and the video wouldn't embed, so I'm just now tacking it onto this semi-related post about what appears to be a potentially threatening situation. After all, Al Gore carried NM by only 366 votes and George Bush beat John Kerry with the slightly wider margin of 5988.