Last night I had the opportunity to spend some needed quiet time, during all the madness of the convention, with Ted Sorenson (watch for the video of my time with Ted to show up in my Flixwagon button).

If you don’t know who Ted Sorenson is, he was JFK’s speechwriter but he was also one of his closest friends who traveled with him to every 50 state when JFK was still 39 and when he was still deciding if he would run for president.

The legend around Ted is that he is the one that coined the famous phrase “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Ted is too humble and leads with a quiet center to ever take credit for that historic line.

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I made it to the Democratic Convention in Denver today from my hometown Hastings, Nebraska.  After getting settled in the hotel and figuring out where the convention hall was, I headed to our MTV Street Team briefing and to get our cool new phone that takes video live and posts right to this site.

Throughout the convention I am wearing a few hats—one is my Street Team hat where I will cover what is going in the youth voting community as well as cover my state’s delegation.  I also wear the hat of the DNC’s Youth Council Co-Chair —we have several offic...

Millions of us watched with awe this week at the grandeur of the Olympics’ opening ceremonies in China.  The beauty of the people.  The precision of the drums.  The surprise of young people popping out of boxes that seconds before were bobbing up and down as if they were operated by a computer.  And of course the traditional lighting of the Olympic flame.

Even as I watched all of the beauty of the ceremonies, in the back of my mind all I could think about was the atrocious human rights record of China.  Citizens can’t freely talk about politics online or offline.   There are government sanctioned places of worship.  Workers can be fired at will and overworked without compensation.  Environmental standards simply don’t exist. 

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It's rodeo season in Nebraska.  Jake is a young cowboy who travels rodeo to rodeo trying to make a living and seeking a little bit of glory along the way.  While politics is not the main topic of conversation for folks in the rodeo community, it definitely does come up, especially this year.  Come listen to Jake and see what issues he is voting on this November while catching a glimpse of what it’s like to live on the rodeo road.

Last week I attended Netroots Nation, an annual conference of progressive bloggers and organizations. Conventional wisdom says bloggers are crazy, evil doers and sit in the basement with their pajamas on never leaving the house and never talking to real people.

I didn’t meet one blogger with horns, not one that hates America or hates conservatives for that matter and they were all fully dressed (thank gawd).  All of the bloggers at the convention were a bunch of regular people who found their voice and activism online instead of offline like in the 60s. 

Now, that is not to say a bunch of bloggers don’t also do activism offline.  In fact, the bloggers had a whole event creating care packages for soldiers.  I asked a young candidate Jon Powers, who is also an Iraq Vet, what he thought about the care packages and about young voters:

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The other night I was watching MTV and a commercial came on with an old guy talking in front of a bunch of windmills.  It got my attention because here in Nebraska we are on the verge of multiplying our energy sources through wind.  I listened, loved the commercial and went online to read more about the “Pickens Plan.” 

I signed up for their email updates and within 10 minutes I didn’t just get an obligatory email of “thanks for signing up, we will be in touch.”  Nope, that is too old-fashioned for Mr. Pickens.  Instead I got a Facebook message from one of his folks telling me more about the plan.  Now, that is very new media from an old skool kind of guy.  But with gas prices now at over $4, I guess anything is possible when it comes to the issue of energy this year.

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My husband Scott Kleeb is running for the United States Senate. He has a committed staff of young people who work 12 hour days, 7 days a week. So we decided to take them up to the ranch to relax, Scott on the other hand has a different way of describing the weekend.

Come meet two of the Kleeb staffers John and John and listen to why Scott brought his team up to the Nebraska Sandhills.