About this time last year Democratic strategists were patting each other on the back and congratulating each other on masterminding the enduring rise of The Progressive Majority built on the backs of bloggers and digital media as a messaging and fundraising machine. Republicans were supposedly leaps and bounds behind at that time, but after a year’s worth of execution on the part of both parties, it now looks like the space could be anyone’s to own and we’re about to see it all play out in 2010′s midterm elections.

Today we’re joined by Patrick Ruffini, a leading conservative blogger, and a partner at Engage and The Next Right, a forum for rising young leaders. Ruffini recently wrote a piece detailing how Obama’s official website has started fishing for emails again. What happened to that fabled 13 million person list of emails? Is the sign-up rate going down? Does this reflect the general discontent of Obama’s supporters with the glacial pace of change?

Ruffini also helps us look at the state of politics online as we approach 2010. Is the GOP in better position now to take the new media battle to the Democrats? It’s certainly possible, with Ruffini claiming that the conservative site Hot Air is getting more hits than DailyKos. We also take a look at what the internet has done to the political discourse, and how it reinforces people’s political opinions rather than informing them, and the problem with what is basically a “forever war” between the two parties. (At least it keeps all the political commentators employed!)

Finally, we talk Obama’s pro-war peace speech at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in Oslo, which was criticized by both the Right and the Left. Isn’t this what we asked for as a president? A nuanced, intelligent, thoughtful person who is considerate of all the complexities of war and peace? Oh, yeah, he’s a socialist and a puppet for the insurance industry. That’s right. Ok, no one liked it then, so how does Obama inspire us again? Does he make the campaign about us again, empowering individuals to make the change they wanted like he did in 2008? Or was that all a façade?

Listen to the show here, subscribe to the iTunes podcast, or use the Blog Talk Radio player to the right.

Wilshire & Washington, the weekly Blog Talk Radio program that explores the intersection of politics, entertainment, and new media, features co-hosts Ted Johnson, Managing Editor of Variety; conservative blogger Teresa Valdez Klein (www.teresacentric.com), and liberal blogger Maegan Carberry (www.maegancarberry.com). The show airs every Wednesday at 7:30am PST on BlogTalkRadio.com.

It’s Tea-Bagging-Tea-Party-Glenn-Beck’s-Birthday-Day! Everyone’s going wild about getting tea-bagged today, with parties taking place in major cities all across the country to protest Obama raising taxes and bailing out Wall Street. But what’s interesting to us is how all this is being organized. Twitter, Facebook, and blogs have turned into a huge organizing tool for this group, with #teaparty trending to the top of Twitter’s search. So here’s the big question: how should new technologies, like Twitter and Facebook, be used in campaigns, and how should they be used in government?

Adriel Hampton, a news commentator, new media pundit, and investigator with the San Francisco DA Office, is running for Congress in California’s 10th Congressional District and he joins our hosts Ted Johnson and Maegan Carberry to talk twitter and populism, how the mainstream media has mostly ignored the tea parties, and how government shouldn’t waste this activist energy, no matter which party it belongs to. What’s with Obama stopping his twitter feed just because he’s not in office? Doesn’t that show how the administration isn’t being engaged technologically? Can the Republicans really take this populist “revolt” and somehow organize it for the next election? We also get a friendly call from Steve, a fellow BlogTalkRadio, wondering why the media isn’t taking the tea-bag parties seriously?

Listen to the show here, subscribe to the iTunes podcast, or use the Blog Talk Radio player to the right.

Wilshire & Washington, the weekly Blog Talk Radio program that explores the intersection of politics, entertainment, and new media, features co-hosts Ted Johnson, Managing Editor of Variety; conservative blogger Teresa Valdez Klein (www.teresacentric.com), and liberal blogger Maegan Carberry (www.maegancarberry.com). The show airs every Wednesday at 7:30am PST on BlogTalkRadio.com.

We have a new white house website, updated with a blog, and you can even subscribe to a feed. Oh, yeah, and there’s a new president there too, but back to technology. Really, can anything be official until the website changes over? But with Obama in charge, will the website be anything more than just PR? Can it help people organize and work together, like his campaign did?

But that Inauguration: it sure was something, eh? What happened with Justice Roberts? Did screwing up in front of millions of people maybe remind us all that Obama wasn’t born in a manger and to temper our expectations accordingly? I had my eye on some gold and myrrh, but I can wait. And with all this “hope” and “good feeling” in the air, is this really going to be the end of consumerism, when we put away our childish things? Uh, no. We’re going to go with, “No, Americans love pizza and hamburgers and plasma TVs.” And did people really have to give ol’ Bushie the metaphoric one-finger salute as he flew off into the sunset? I mean, he did come to work every single day – except for a few holidays, anyway…

Still, yesterday was a highly impressive feat. Two of our hosts, Ted and Maegan, were in Washington DC for the festivities and they offer their own personal perspectives from the ground, even though they’re recovering from late night “networking.” Teresa talks about volunteerism, and how people have already started to get involved in her part of the country, volunteering at local charities. Technology is also a big topic of the day, with twitter, CNN Live, and Facebook being huge winners in one of the internet’s biggest days ever.

Listen to the show here, subscribe to the iTunes podcast, or use the Blog Talk Radio player:

Wilshire & Washington, the weekly Blog Talk Radio program that explores the intersection of politics, entertainment, and new media, features co-hosts Ted Johnson, Managing Editor of Variety; conservative blogger Teresa Valdez Klein (www.teresacentric.com), and liberal blogger Maegan Carberry (www.maegancarberry.com). The show airs every Wednesday at 7:30am PST on BlogTalkRadio.com.

Molly Schoemann posted today on exactly why she left facebook. So much of it, yes, rings true. It can be graveyard of failed relationships, friendships, and acquaintances, so few of them that you actually care about. So many friends on your network, so many photos, so many comments, so many tiny pieces of information that are simply not relevant to your normal day.

But I think Molly’s point isn’t relevant to everyone. For people who don’t accept every invitation they receive, for people who don’t click “maybe” to events they’ll never attend, for people with the self-confidence to let their friend-list languish under one hundred people? These people can say no to all the nonsense and ignore all the blather. They can ignore the random comments, posted items, events, application invites, and drunk photos in favor of using the social networking tool for what it was designed for: keeping connected with people who matter.

Just recently, I started up a conversation with a good friend who is posted overseas in Kuwait. The email I had didn’t work anymore for him so I used Facebook to find him. Turns out he has wireless internet in his tent occasionally. Without Facebook, that wouldn’t have been possible. I probably would have had to wait until he returned to the states in nine months, after his current experiences had lost their vivid edge. With Facebook, I get to hear about it as it happens.

This is what I say to people who get frustrated by Facebook, with its thousands of useless applications, friends, and other random crap: simplify. Just ignore it. You can use the phone and email, despite the telemarketers and spammers, right? Facebook is a tool with an original use, and if you cut out all the extremities, you can still find that same useful tool.