Daily Kos dominates the firmament as the Battlestar Galactica of Net-roots activism, an electronic-beehive amalgam of fund-raising machine, bulletin board, crisis center, poll-data aggregator, diary showcase, and collective mood ring that proved its mettle with the Democratic victories in 2006, due in no small part to the Great Orange Satan's ability to pinpoint winnable races, mobilize donation support, and stoke morale. Republican supporters have tried to duplicate Daily Kos's prowess and bustle with copycat sites such as RedState but remain outgunned. Easily herded, conservatives prefer to take their cues from on high, heeding the droppings of a Limbaugh or Sean Hannity rather than showing group initiative. In the absence of communiqués from headquarters, they revert to a larval stage of dormancy and let their grudges accrue. At Daily Kos, a tempo of urgency prevails. Its thermostat is set to the heat of the moment; its readers and posters believe in taking action and leaping into the breach, even if it means postponing a trip to the kitchen or retrieving wash from the dryer. Like any blog site but grossly magnified due to the mass scale of its audience and influence, Daily Kos is a schizophrenic enterprise: a community with a shared history (initial enthusiasm over Howard Dean, shock and grief over George Bush's re-election in 2004, jubilation over the 2006 midterm elections) that is populated by individuals who, because they spend so much time hunched over a computer taking politics personally and living intensely inside their heads, are on constant hyper-aware alert--sensitive to slights, prone to excitations, and susceptible to a hair-trigger impulse to dramatize their thoughts and feelings with words loaded into a rocket launcher.

so of course we must pinpoint Booman Tribune in the stellar affirmum! here's mine: Booman Tribune dominates the firmament as the Lighthouse Of The Universe of Net-roots activism.

CANOPUS (Alpha Carina in Argo Navis)

Allusions to Canopus in every age indicate that everywhere it was an important star, especially in the Desert where it was known as the "Ship Of The Desert". There it was a great favorite, giving rise to many of the proverbs of the Arabs, their stories and superstitions and supposed to impart the much prized color to their precious stones, and immunity from disease. It is a major navigational star and known as the "Lighthouse Of The Universe" and in a general way it served as a southern pole-star; a guiding star. It is used by NASA as a marker for setting space-flight coordinates. Spacecraft carry devices called 'Canopus star trackers'. Posidonius of Alexandria, about the middle of the 3rd century before Christ, utilized Canopus in his attempt to measure a degree on the earth's surface.

Came across this after reading BooMan's What's a Realignment Look Like?, describing when, why and how the Negro Vote swung to the Democratic Party. As an African-American I deeply appreciate BooMan's focus on race and racism and what can be gained and lost during this realigning election.