skippy the bush kangaroo

that's right, this site has been blogging continuously at this space for 5 years today! we can hardly believe it ourselves! one would think we'd have something useful to do, but no, we've been disseminating news and snark for the past 5 complete turns of the calendar.

as is our tradition on this day, we present our very first blog post:



you'll notice a few things about skippy's first post. namely, it's in first person, a form which skippy soon abandoned upon hiring the editors to write for him. secondly, it's a little bit personal, it's a little be deconstructionistic, it's a little bit political, it's a little bit snarky, it's a little bit country, it's a little rock n' roll.

but mostly, it's a little bit boring. luckily for everyone, skippy got better at this.

we have literally thousands of people to thank for their support thru-out the years, so we'd better get started:

first and foremost, we couldn't have done this without the support and linkage of jeralyn merritt of talkleft and eric alterman of altercation. they were among the earliest in blogtopia and yes, we coined that phrase, to notice our work and highlight it to their readers. and they have continued with their support thru all 5 years of our ramblings (eric even kept us on his roll after his move from msnbc to media matters, which touched us deeply).

and speaking of support, we must take time to thank those big blogs who, unlike two who shall remain nameless kos and duncan, chose to keep us on their blogrolls this year.

an especially big thank you goes to john and mike and nicole of crooks&liars, who continually link to us. and we give a shout out to our good friend jane as well as christy and trex and parachutec of firedoglake, all of whom also see fit to link to our nutty ramblings on a regular basis. also of note: the immeasurable digby, as well as tbogg, and gavin and the gang at sadly, no!; bob harris and tom tomorrow, both of whom give us personal encouragement as well as linkage; the erudite kevin drum; our friend bill scher of liberal oasis; and our good buddy brad of bradblog, who keeps us informed as well as linked to what's going on in the world of voting integrity.

and of course, there are plenty of other folks who have given their support to us since the beginning and thru-out the years, and we would be remiss in not mentioning: avedon carol of the sideshow; booman and the gang bt, and msoc and her squad at my left wing; maru of wtf is it now? and madkane; the pandagon bunch, including pam of the houseblend and chris of creek running north; watertiger of dependable renegade; eli of left i on the news; our good friend carl of simply left behind, our good friend renee of the iba; our old pal julia of sisyphus shrugged; our newest pal jessica of feministing, and the incomparable jon swift; not to mention a couple of blue women, a girl and a gal.

the list goes on: taylor marsh; sailor of vidiot speak; lindsay beyerstein and maha; steve of the carpetbagger report, and steve of steveaudio; dave of seeing the forest; everyone at the american politics journal; man eegee and blogtopus and badtux the snarky penguin.

we can't forget athenae, scout and our old co-blogger holden at first draft; and also stranger and the gang at blah3, and leah and chidyke and shystee and the kids at correntewire; sean-paul and ian and the folks at the agonist; melissa and her team at shakesville; the mad biologist mike and pz meyers, who's just perturbed; rudepundit and the poorman institute; we must not forget those who don't agree with our political bent but see fit to link to us anyway: glenn reynolds and joe gandelman and steven green always give us space and linkage, and we are grateful; and, just because we love pirates and dykes, our cap'n, captain dyke!

we also need to thank matt stoller who let us participate in the liberal blog advertising network, as well as anna who is currently running said network; and, speaking of ads, here's a shout out to justin and the crew at blogads.

and, to give away one of our secrets, we'd be totally lost without the input and hard work of our co-bloggers, whom we thank profusely: mimus pauly, pudentilla, dbk (the blogger formerly known as gd frogsdong), carnacki, george and the one true tami.

and speaking of the blog itself, let's get meta and say we never meta nicer couple of designers than those two who put our site together: the lovely lauren bruce who designed our new template, and august j. pollack who drew the now-famous skippy logo.

but last, and so far from not least she is actually the most: our environmental editor and right hand blogger cookie jill, without whose support and help this site would have folded about 17 months ago. thank you, jill, for your contributions to keeping this blog alive.

we are leaving out so many, and to those we've missed, our apologies. you can get a sense of the folks who have supported us and to whom we owe immeasurable gratitude by simply perusing our blogroll to the right of these words.

but most of all, and we mean this every year we say it, we reserve our biggest and most heartfelt thank you to you, our audience, the readers of this humble space.

to be very, very honest, there has been more than one time in the past year that we have felt like chucking it all in and going on to do something actually productive with our lives; and then we'd get a comment, or an email, from one of our readers telling us how much the blog means to them. that is what keeps us going on a daily basis.

thank you so much for your patronage. we hope, in some small way, we are able to make your journey back to democracy a little more tolerable.

and remember

skippy needs two million hits!!

**and yes! talkleft coined that phrase!