Dave, FWIW, we appreciate that you didn’t try to turn this into something it’s not. The quality of your work definitely deserved first place in this contest – we did what we could.

That being said, I came here to post that we should really set up our own “scholarship” for Dave, and I’m not surprised to see I’m not the only one with that idea…

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m ready to contribute to the First Annual USS Mariner Blogging Scholarship. I’ll just use the PayPal donate button up there in the corner if that seems best, but I was thinking you might get a better response with something like a Pledgie where people could see a goal and progress… just a thought.

(Let’s see, we’ve got 12,000+ votes on there, if 10% of those people were to donate $8.50 each, we would have our own $10,000 scholarship with a fair amount of beer money left over. Just saying.)

My thoughts exactly…I know Dave would never ask for this and take this on, but I’m more than ready to throw my $5 or so in. I’ll do it with the general paypal button – but I would love to see someone track this so we can do it right. No comments, no blog wars, just a progress bar and some extra dough for Dave’s college.

Dave and Derek, thank you. You guys do awesome work, and all you’ve ever asked in return is that we cast a vote, consider donating to a cancer fundraiser, and buy Derek’s book — and maybe throw in a few bucks for a beer.

I imagine Dave doesn’t want this to turn into some sort of fundraiser for him, but let me just say: I’d like to see how many of the people who voted for Mr. Mauro respect his work enough to pay him for it.

Kos posters are no different than the ranting righties they claim to despise, proving once again that idiocy knows no political allegiance.

David C. posts on his blog that he has been told he is a finalist for the scholarship and would appreciate votes from his readers. He gets off to a very comfortable lead thanks to his readers. These readers mention his scholarship chance on their own blogs. These include Geoff Baker of the Times and Rob Neyer of ESPN, who post brief comments about his opportunity on their respective blog pages–- Baker makes a point to encourage readers to look at all the nominated blogs, and vote for the one they think best. These are only posted once.

Nov 10th David M. posts on his blog that he has been told he is a finalist for the scholarship and would appreciate votes from his readers, and invites them to a facebook event. Regular readers of David M’s blog mention his scholarship chance on their own blogs. David M. puts up a dKos diary, and emails Kos about the scholarship, which results in an open thread mention, telling readers to go vote for ‘the only progressive’. He also puts up a second diary which asks the readers of Kos to ’smurf’ the vote for him. His numbers begin to spike upwards, moving him up to 2nd place in 2 days.

Nov. 15th David C. puts up a reminder, which includes the comment that the highly-read dKos has weighed in, and that they know how to get out the vote.

Nov. 15th a diarists puts up the fabled ‘he called us a mob’ diary, and David M. moves into 1st place overnight.

Things generally fly all to hell after that.

Dave puts up a post wishing the whole thing was over.

David M. continues to put up diaries and others on the site also donate diaries, urging readers to vote for ‘one of us’. By the final day of the vote, about 36 different diaries and mentions in the open threads are put up for David M., on a site that generally gets about a million hits per day.

Keith Olbermann and Nate Silver have horsehide and hickory in common with George Will and the President. It is our national pastime and pretending that M’s fans are all reactionary noodleheads is beyond the pale.

This is my first post. I have enjoyed this blog for quite some time and I happily donated a sawbuck to the cause. If you do not win it outright, I hope other folks are moved to help you with your college debt.