Your Favorite Political Weblogs?

worm eater would like to know: "As the mainstream media is coming under closer scrutiny from the 'blogosphere,' and is having to actually respond to these journalists in pajamas, I thought I'd ask Slashdot: what are your favorite political blogs? Lately I've been reading Talking Points Memo, a liberal weblog by Joshua Micah Marshall, and a blog by Andrew Sullivan, a conservative writer. Where do you go when you want to see the mainstream media dissected and poked at?"

Comments

Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

Drudge Report

Re:Drudge Report

[Seoulstriker]

Is the Drudge Report really a blog? I see it more as a "new media" agent who tries to report raw news which major news outlets refuse to report on. Most recently it was Rathergate, but a few years ago it was the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Re:Drudge Report

[casuist99]

Beware getting actual "news" from this site - it can point you in the right direction, but Drudge has an agenda (just like nearly ALL other online news sources). Use it as a starting point, but try to verify something with several sources that you consider reputable before accepting something that you read online or at Drudge's website.

Re:Drudge Report

[cuzality]

> Drudge Report

The original, the unbeatable.

Drudge put the Internet on the news map; all bloggers follow in his footsteps. And unrelentless in his watch over the old media, he's got the story the elites won't run. I like his lighter side, too -- he's always got the latest on celebrities from The Smoking Gun, etc.

Re:Drudge Report

[BladesP9]

Like what? The New York Times? C... BS? No thanks. Drudge more times than not is nothing more than a page of links that lead you directly to these news items. The things that he breaks himself are usually things that the "source that you consider reputable" won't cover.

As with anything, be critical of what you read, but Drudge has proven himself right more times than the elite media cares to admit.

Re:Drudge Report

[ackthpt]

Drudge Report

Yeah, but after it became common knowledge that Drudge was just a tool, fed dirt by Clinton's enemies, it lost it's gritty novelty and is now less interesting than the Weekly World News.

Re:Drudge Report

[carcosa30]

Unrelentless?

You mean he relents?

Or is this like "Disirregardless?"

Re:Drudge Report

[alw53]

It's not a question of agenda versus no agenda, when 90% of newpaper journalists vote Democrat. It's a question of being upfront about one's agenda versus hiding it.

In all other occupations, conflicts of interest are routinely divulged; for some reason in mainstream journalism, they are routinely hidden. Why is this?

Re:Drudge Report

[weez75]

To be "fair and balanced" I prefer Rogers Cadenhead's Drudge Retort.

Re:Drudge Report

[Twirlip of the Mists]

That comment was not unmeaningless.

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for catching that. 'Relentless' is what I meant, of course.

Re:Drudge Report

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Translation: "He says things which are true but that I do not like."

Re:Drudge Report

[ackthpt]

Translation: "He says things which are true but that I do not like."

Actually, no. I don't waste my time with his site anymore. I get my news from outside the US, like a mirror I find it's a very revealing reflection of how others view us as well as exploring news topics commonly overlooked on home ground because we tend to be too fascinated with scandal and innuendo to pay attention to what's really happening. Learn to spot high profile political issues as the sucker bait that they really are.

I'd rather read the Onion than Drudge.

Re:Drudge Report

[ackthpt]

Sure, 'cause why be informed when you can be an elitist asshole?

Mr. Vice President, how you talk!

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

Twirlip of the Mists is very abusive. Look at the her? other posts.

Re:Drudge Report

[cb8100]

I get my news from outside the US

But then you're getting your news from a bunch of people who have absolutely no idea what's actually going on in the country.

Re:Drudge Report

[lucabrasi999]

I get my news from outside the US, like a mirror I find it's a very revealing reflection of how others view us as well as exploring news topics commonly overlooked on home ground

Agreed. The BBC and The Economist. Of course, I can't wouldn't refer to myself as elitist by having the BBC as my primary news source. After all, the BBC tends to spend alot of time covering the Posh Spice marriage to Beckham.

I peronally avoid blogs as much as I possibly can. What makes the bloggers any better than the idiots that run network news? Better to hit a few major sites and then draw your own conclusions.

Re:Drudge Report

[lucabrasi999]

But then you're getting your news from a bunch of people who have absolutely no idea what's actually going on in the country.

Really? If you think that, then you must think that Fox News has no idea what is going on in the Middle East.

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really believe all that? If so, I truly feel sorry for you.

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a kook. Yes, I like to watch CNN to hear about Britney's newest marriage with a news scroller at the bottom saying "Affleck sues the Enquirer says 'I'm not gay' .... hundreds of kids killed in Russia .... ABBA to regroup and do a modern version of Fernando .... "

American news certainly is the best. Why, did you know that Rather's memos tell the truth but the memos were faked! No point in stressing the secretary said they're the truth, just that she didn't have the "th" key on her typewriter. The horrors!

Re:Drudge Report

[casuist99]

My point, then, is to be mindful of the weblog author's agenda. Selective reporting can be insidious and may lead readers to incorrect conclusions.

Re:Drudge Report

[jalefkowit]

Oh, you mean like that "bimbo eruption" he tried to pin on Kerry back in the primaries that turned out to be such a load of hooey he ended up apologizing to the woman he pointed the finger at?

Yeah, he's a real Beacon of Truth, all right.

Re:Drudge Report

[homer_ca]

"I'd rather read the Onion than Drudge"

You got a point there. Some of the most insightful political commentary I've ever seen has come from South Park, everything from fearmongering in news about child abduction, to illegal immigration, to Rob Reiner and the anti-smoking lobby- you name it. Matt and Trey are blatantly liberal about some things, but there's no way you can call them cheerleaders for the Democratic party. The strangest part is if you google for "South Park conservative", many conservatives even claim South Park as one of their own.

Mike Judge is another comic genius with King of the Hill (it's more political than Beavis & Butthead or Office Space). Texas really is a place where Ward Cleaver and the 50s are colliding with 21st century America, and KotH captures it perfectly.

Re:Drudge Report

[Colazar]

I get my news from outside the US

But then you're getting your news from a bunch of people who have absolutely no idea what's actually going on in the country.

No, that's not how it works.

The powerless have to learn how to understand the powerful, so that they can avoid getting stomped.

The powerful have no incentive to learn how the powerless think. (Or, not nearly as much.)

Therefore, as the US is "the only remaining superpower," reporters in other countries are likely to have a pretty good idea how things in the US work. But we in the US are much less likely to understand what's going on in, say, Botswana.

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

Uncensored with pro and con arguments by all sides: www.fuckfrance.com. Believe it or not, there is quite a strong French contingent on there, and quite a bit of humor. And lots of karma!

Re:Drudge Report

[jsebrech]

It's not a question of agenda versus no agenda, when 90% of newpaper journalists vote Democrat.

Where do you get this number? I tried to google its source, but couldn't find it. Though I did find a lot of claims that it was "well known".

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

ABBA to regroup and do a modern version of Fernando

ABBA is regrouping?

Re:Drudge Report

[snatchitup]

Drudge Retort would be good, if it wasn't for the fact that it was partisan. The only thing it ads to Drudge is Bush bashing. There's never any analysis of Flipper (Kerry).

Somebody who was even faster than Drudge, in that it could actually catch Drudge's mistakes would be pretty wild.

I don't know if you read DrudgeReport much, but when it comes to the Iraq War, drudgereport.com is the most un-biased web site. Neith pro, nor con. If he's for anything, he's for getting out the truth, the whole truth on Iraq, both the bad and the good. There's plenty of both.

Re:Drudge Report

[jackjumper]

And who cares how reporters vote? It's the editors and up who decide which stories get carried and how they are spun.

Re:Drudge Report

[Izago909]

I get my news from outside the US

But then you're getting your news from a bunch of people who have absolutely no idea what's actually going on in the country.

You mean like the average citizen? If half of the population was half way educated on politics and the common talking points, politics wouldn't be in the wretched state it's in right now. Can anyone say, with a straight face, that Kerry and Bush are the best this country has to offer? A person is smart, but people are stupid and easily led. The same qualities that make a successful politician are the same qualities that make a successful con artist, or successful actor, or successful sexual predator, or successful salesman. Do any of these descriptions remind you of local, state, or federal representatives past or present? They should. For all the bitching that goes on here, and around the country, we the people deserve what we get. We elect bad leaders into office; their bad decisions are represented by our bad decisions, and we deserve whatever hell they create.

For all the shit it's going to create, I will say that the American population is to blame for the terrorist attacks. We twice elected Clinton, who while not completely inept concerning terrorists, did make some bad calls. He decided to strike at training camps at the same time he had to sit in front of congress about Lewinsky. Whether or not his decision was based on that timing is still debated today, but nobody will say that hitting Al-Qaeda training camps was a bad decision. We weren't in the position to send in troops, so missiles and bombs were the only plausible action. The really bad decision was to give up when the press criticized him for trying to deflect attention away from the scandal. Again, the people were to blame for electing the man, and again for criticizing his decision to attack.

Then we elected Bush, (many will still debate the election itself) who completely ignored all terrorist threats before the attacks, like the now famous memo that he received on August 6, 2001 titled Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US. Here is a scan of the original document. Here we are more than 3 years since that memo was written and the WTC attack; Bin Laden is still free, we're stuck in Iraq with the situation getting worse every day, and a whole new generation of Islamic extremists has even more reasons to hate us. We the people, not the president, have ensured that the vicious circle of hate, fear, and violence continues for another generation.

We bring it all on ourselves as long as we value charisma over substance.

Re:Drudge Report

[rjamestaylor]

Yep. CBS definitely has an agenda -- Lockhart and others in the Kerry campaign have admitted coordinating with the CBS reporter behind Rather's Blather and "the Kinko MS Word Documentarian" source. Undeniable culpability on the part of CBS to fraudulently affect the outcome of an election. Disgraceful.

And there is word that some on Bush's team want to throw CBS off the debate moderation rotation -- if Kerry was smart he'd demand they go, too!

Re:Drudge Report

[TummyX]

But ofcourse CNN, BBC, ABC, etc do?

Maybe you shouldn't have only pointed the finger at FOX?

Re:Drudge Report

[jatencio]

I think you are right in your rationale, however, I think you are missing the next logical step. When the powerless "understand" the powerful they are more than willing to mimic the powerful so they in turn appear to be powerful. If that is indeed the case, how much more worthy is their coverage of the U.S.?

Everything the U.S. does in its policies are going to be wrong and criticized (maybe rightfully so) while these same less powerful nation states are using the same techniques our media is using to spin the truth to their advantage.

I think in either case one must weary of how they are being manipulated by both sides.

Jonathan

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

Pssst.... they're probably Libertarian.

Re:Drudge Report

[tonyphilip]

But he has been found wrong on more things that CBS. Although Drudge is insightful I find him more comical than serious. A sort of dry version of the Daily Show. Look hard enough and there are some facts there, but it is far behind the opinion that presents it.

Re:Drudge Report

[libcoder]

Next time someone complains about Slashdot having a liberal bias, remember this. A neo-con who is defending FOX against someone who was also defending (and doing a better job) it was modded as high as a real comment made by a liberal.

Re:Drudge Report

[lucabrasi999]

Maybe you shouldn't have only pointed the finger at FOX?

You missed my point. The poster was questioning why certain slashdotters were using non-US media sources as their primary source of information. The poster said that journalists from non-US countries could not understand the US. From which, one could insinuate that we would be better off only listening to US sources for news on the US.

Therefore, I pointed out that if we could only use US news media to understand US news, then how could we trust the US media to understand the middle east?

I did only use Fox as an example, but that was because I was playing on the OPs sig on being part of the "right-wing conspiracy". However, I wasn't picking on Fox. I was picking on the OPs idea that only reporters that are from the US could possibly write good and valid articles on the US.

In other words, you can't just limit your news sources to domestic (US) news sources. There are good journalists from other countries that do a great job of reporting on the news here in the United States. Just like the fact that there are good journalists here in the US that do a great job of reporting from other spots around the world.

Re:Drudge Report

[lucabrasi999]

Uh, are you calling me a neo-con? Because if you are, you are wrong.

Re:Drudge Report

[ptbarnett]

Where do you get this number? I tried to google its source, but couldn't find it. Though I did find a lot of claims that it was "well known".

There have been a number of different surveys that support his point, although not in the exact terms he stated:

http://www.mrc.org/biasbasics/welcome.asp#how

Keep in mind that the Media Research Center is a conservative organization, so they have their own axe to grind. But, this should give you enough references that you can find the data for yourself and decide if their spin is justified.

Re:Drudge Report

[TummyX]

Well I don't believe that most people outside of the US are in a good position to understand US politics. The coverage the rest of the world get of the presidential candiates (to take an example) is slim. All the world sees of Bush is his speeches on Iraq or from F/911. They rarely get to see him as a human being while he's compaigning or mingling. These are the people who think they should have a right to vote in the US elections.

The middle-east coverage is a bit different because the US military is actually *IN* the middle east at this very moment. The coverage is syndicated between various international networks. The same thing can't be said of coverage of internal US issues because they simply aren't as important as Iraq (war...).

Re:Drudge Report

[TummyX]

I think he was calling me one, not you.

Re:Drudge Report

[lucabrasi999]

I know he was calling you one. I just wasn't sure if he was referring to me.

Re:Drudge Report

[rw2]

Is the Drudge Report really a blog? I see it more as a "new media" agent who tries to report raw news which major news outlets refuse to report on

I think it's mostly a blog. He has broken a couple stories, but he mostly is reporting other peoples stories mixed in with a few rumors.

(My vote for favorite blog is in my sig)

Re:Drudge Report

[lucabrasi999]

Might I suggest you take a look at the Economist? That British mag actually supported the Iraq War and GWB's handling of it (not that it matters, but for the record, I am opposed to the war). And, they've been covering the election rather well. They cover the battleground states one at a time and discuss the regional, generational and economic voting trends in each of the battleground states.

They are also the only magazine I know of that covers every region of the world in detail. They first ran articles on Darfur back in January and really started covering it back in May.

As you can guess by the title of the magazine, they are Fiscal conservatives. They do occasionally jump to the other side of the fence on social issues.

Re:Drudge Report

[slash.dt]

I think you need to read some of the ouerseas media a bit more before generalising so much.

The overseas media has reporters in the US and some give quite intensive coverage.

Have a look at the BBC's coverage (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/americas/2004 /vote_usa_2004/default.stm) for example to see that there is a lot of depth of coverage.

You could do worst than relying on overseas media.

Re:Drudge Report

[aphor]

To be totally fair here, you call the President "Bush," while you call John Kerry "Flipper." This comes directly after suggesting the Drudge Retort is bad because it is partisan. Pardon me if I doubt you have much to say about "the whole truth."

To be totally nonpartisan, let me uncover my political bias. I don't like John Kerry. He has personally co-sponsored or supported most of the big-brother cryptography restricting, wiretap expansion, and surveillance database bills to come from the senate. I would say he has personally been involved in things like the Patriot Act since before Bush was done wiping the blow off his upper lip. For this I do not like him. However, because Kerry DOES flip-flop, I feel that he is accountable and responsive to the popular opinion when it is strong enough to be compelling. Flip-flop yes, but spineless no.

I don't really care for Bush, personally, either. I'm not really voting for the MAN. I'm voting for the machine behind the candidate. Which machine do you prefer? Or do you say "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" It's the agenda of the supporters behind the candidate that counts. This is not a high-school prom king and queen election. The more people know it, the better of we all are. Any reporting on the personal popularity factor is crap and irresponsible journalism.

Re:Drudge Report

[js7a]

How many big stories has Drudge actually scooped? One or two.

If you search Google Groups, his first three posts to Usenet (before he got a web site) will give you an idea of the kind of journalist he is.

Re:Drudge Report

[MustardSauce]

Congratulations, you have precisely captured the Drudge spirit. Cite a link claiming it says something, but actually the link says nothing of the sort. RTFA. There is no evidence in the article of coordinating and no evidence of undeniable culpability or fraud.

Re:Drudge Report

[TPoise]

Okay, it's quite OBVIOUS that we knew Bin Laden was going to strike the U.S. I didn't need to 'get that memo on that'. Any person with a half brain knows that terrorists want to strike the U.S. Now magically the president supposedly read this memo on August 6th and was then supposed to automagically know that a few airlines were going to be hijacked on September 11th at 8am on the east coast and hit the Pentagon, WTC, and another target.

Re:Drudge Report

[Moofie]

That presupposes that We the People get to make a meaningful choice of our leaders.

As long as we are choosing between a Republican and a Democrat for every single office, we do not get such a meaningful choice.

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that just that one incident, but it is the most detailed one. From day one, the administration was focused on Iraq. Remember what the news was focused on in the later half of the 90's? Saddam began to oppose the inspectors and eventually kicked them out. We knew of the cell that was learning to fly. Why was the President never told? It's not just Bush, it's also his whole, dysfunctional administration. Rumsfeld is barely allowed to make public addresses anymore. Only a few people ever make live or unedited appearances on regular occasion. Most shows they end up doing live turn out to be two people 'arguing' on agreeing points. They have gone to war, under the pretense of weapons of mass destruction, with a country that had nothing to do with the attacks; and found neither links to the attackers, nor weapons. While perfectly executed by the military, the long term invasion was poorly thought out by the politicians. Remember how quickly we pulled out of Somalia? Iraq is turning into broken regions of warlords, except they are going to fight us out before they fight each other for control. This war is being handled in a corporate manner, with the best PR and law departments ever. They hide the coffins on the way into the country for, what they say is, respect to the families; yet the families what them televised. When was the last conflict where coffins of fallen soldiers were not allowed to be photographed? Even is Gore had beaten Bush, we probably would have still been attacked. The point is that we either would have caught Bin-Laden by now, or would at least be putting in more than a half-assed effort. It would be because of the cabinet and staff, not because of the particular leader.

Re:Drudge Report

[E_elven]

Oh, yeah. Being in war with one middle-eastern country and getting all news through the government's filter really makes you a fucking expert in the cultures of the world.

You must be an American.

Re:Drudge Report

[d474]

"We twice elected Clinton...Then we elected Bush...

We bring it all on ourselves as long as we value charisma over substance."

I'll give you Clinton on the charisma, but Bush? To this day, I still have 0 (zip, zilch, nada) idea as to what people see in Bush. Only if you turn the volume down on the TV. Then little Bush looks kind of funny, like he's telling jokes. But in reality he's talking about killing people.

Yikes.
*MUTE*

If Bush could just loose the smirk when he talks about war, I would probably loose the urge to bitch-slap him.

Re:Drudge Report

[Izago909]

I'll give you Clinton on the charisma, but Bush? To this day, I still have 0 (zip, zilch, nada) idea as to what people see in Bush.

If you've ever taken a road trip through middle America (or live there like me), you will understand what people identify with. Take away the staff and suit, give him a pair of old truck, worn in blue jeans, and t-shirt, and you have the guy down the street. People love that simple, down-home boy quality.

Re:Drudge Report

[TummyX]

Oh, yeah. Being in war with one middle-eastern country and getting all news through the government's filter really makes you a fucking expert in the cultures of the world.

You must be an American.


Vietnamese living in New Zealand actually.

PS. LOL @ Government filter

Re:Drudge Report

[TummyX]

To be clear, I'm Vietnamese ethnically (I was born there) but I grew up in NZ and consider myself a New Zealander -- a pro-American New Zealander ;).

Re:Drudge Report

[PSandusky]

That's nice. People are deciding their preference of who leads the US based upon blue jeans and a t-shirt. Mm-hmm. Educated. Sure. Weighing the issues. Yup.

From where I live in southwestern PA, I can tell you that I sure don't love it, and I sure as hell don't "identify with" any such thing. "Simple" is one thing. Bush is no Samwise Gamgee. No, Bush is only a simpleton, and for the Presidency, there should be a lot more to winning and maintaining the office than cultivating a "down-home quality" with "worn in blue jeans." As it stands, he doesn't do a whole lot beyond that at all... certainly not anything to recommend him.

Re:Drudge Report

[MillionthMonkey]

Well I don't believe that most people outside of the US are in a good position to understand US politics. The coverage the rest of the world get of the presidential candiates (to take an example) is slim.

I would argue the exact opposite. People outside the U.S. are far more likely to understand the positions of the presidential candidates (to take an example) than are Americans who are only exposed to media from their own country. The BBC, for example, is one of the most credible sources for American politics. The Canadian papers are good too. In the U.S. the press went downhill after they ditched the Fairness Doctrine. Now the sole objective of news programming is to make money, and you make money by telling people what they want to hear- and by telling them what you want them to hear so that you can make even more money. You can have it all. You can elect whoever you damn well please with no consequences. No matter how arrogant or incompetent he is, the world will still respect you and your country will still be #1 because you don't have to live with your decisions. People love to hear spin marketed as truth, especially if it avoids challenging their beliefs.

All the world sees of Bush is his speeches on Iraq or from F/911. They rarely get to see him as a human being while he's compaigning or mingling.

And irrelevant crap like that should influence your vote because...?

What he says about Iraq (for example) is exactly the sort of thing any voter would rightfully need to hear. Anything else- like how he mingles as a human being, or hunts, or fishes- is noise. Although it's interesting how Americans have become heavily indoctrinated into thinking that they're electing a fishing buddy here. It's what they're told is important. Do a Google News search for "Kerry" and "wind surfing", and you'll see why a proven incompetent like George W. Bush is still even in the race. The entire press minus CBS is gunning for him, and CBS just handed him a free pass on his festering Guard issue.

These are the people who think they should have a right to vote in the US elections.

Americans would make a better electoral decision- and probably vote more in line with their own interests to boot- if each one of them were assigned a random foreigner to tell him how to vote. Americans simply don't know what is going on in their own country.

I spoke to someone just back from the U.K. today at work. According to him, everyone across the political spectrum- practically without exception- is livid about this election. They believe it will affect their lives in the U.K. almost as much as it will affect Americans. But none of them can cast a vote against Bush. And until the campaign started, they had blithely assumed over there that Bush would surely lose the election because of Iraq.

Re:Drudge Report

[TummyX]

Two questions. Did you see Bush's RNC speech? Did BBC broadcast the speech?

Re:Drudge Report

[vegasbright]

Drudge broke the lewinsky scandal, not "loch ness monster to wed yeti". Reputable news is true news. How do you define reputable?

Re:Drudge Report

[CaptainZapp]

But then you're getting your news from a bunch of people who have absolutely no idea what's actually going on in the country.

You think so? Don't you think it's possible that reputable, foreign newspapers might invest heavily into a global network of local correspondants (PDF, page 6) instead of just re-blabbering the press releases straight out of the white house with all critical thinking skills shut down?

Re:Drudge Report

[CaptainZapp]

Well I don't believe that most people outside of the US are in a good position to understand US politics. The coverage the rest of the world get of the presidential candiates (to take an example) is slim.

So you assume that since US newspapers have crap international sections (except maybe for the New York Times and compared to some other international quality papers like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Neue Zurcher Zeitung or El Pais its international section is less then stellar) all foreign papers must have incompetent dweebs writing about the US?

This is not only ignorant its also arrogant. Specifically when you are very obviously have no clue about what you're talking.

There is no need to thank me.

Re:Drudge Report

[TummyX]

How exactly does it make me arrogant?

Re:Drudge Report

[fenix down]

And interestingly, CBS was already off the debate ring. It's NBC, ABC, and Fox, has been for about 6 months now.

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

AP Press should be next up. Not overly reported in the US but a Judge ruled that all documents relating to Bushs Guard duty are to be handed over by the 24th.

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

> . They believe it will affect their lives in the U.K. almost as much as it will affect Americans.

This is so true. Bushes actions are hurting my pocketbook. If he makes it a second term I'll be selling anything related to the US and cut my losses.

Re:Drudge Report

[rjamestaylor]

There is no evidence in the article of coordinating and no evidence of undeniable culpability or fraud.

We must have read different articles. When CBS producer Mary Mapes calls the Kerry campaign to tell them a Mr. Burkett has documents to help the Kerry campaign CBS is not only favoring a political party but aiding and abetting -- then when the documents are forgeries and so easily identifiably so...that is fraud. What did you get from the article?

Re:Drudge Report

[rjamestaylor]

Really? I thought the first one, in Arizona, was going to be a CBS correspondent. All the better.

Re:Drudge Report

[joeyGibson]

Poliglut [poliglut.org]

Protagonists for the proletariate

Um... you might want to learn to spell "proletariat" if you're going to include it in your sig, comrade...

Re:Drudge Report

[weez75]

To bash something for being as partisan as yourself is quite a fantastic leap of judgment.

As a matter of fact I do read the DrudgeReport and it is not unbiased. Few organizations really are unbiased--bias is what reporting is mostly about today. In the case of the DrudgeReport it was fueled primarily by leaks from the conservative movement and as such has right-leaning tendencies. Nothing wrong with that at all--just isn't my taste.

My biases tend to make the DrudgeRETORT more entertaining and a better read. Your biases may push you toward the REPORT. So be it.

Now if you want to talk about partisan politics look no further than your own labels. It's this kind of mean-spirited debate that has fueled this most-concerning divide in our country. If you want to really discuss flip-flopping we can talk about our candidates. You say it's indecision while I say I'd rather have someone who can admit when he's wrong and made a mistake. I prefer someone who can listen to arguments and perhaps even change his opinion after a reasonable debate. I do not like a course of action that considers only one point of view and leaves no room for dissent. One candidate would have you think that there is only one answer to every question when we each know there often are many. You boil this quite complicated matter down to simple labels and name-calling. Is this what our national debate has been reduced to?

Re:Drudge Report

[anum]

Two questions. Did you see Bush's RNC speech? Did BBC broadcast the speech?

Two answers:
Yes and yes.
Qualified with the fact that it was the middle of the night here (UK for those not following the thread) and that I am American military and therefore have a reason to care.
Both conventions were also discused on "morning after" news shows for what it's worth.

Re:Drudge Report

[bored_geek]

For all the shit it's going to create, I will say that the American population is to blame for the terrorist attacks.

You can take it back farther than that. Reagan created the Mujaheddin in the early 1980's. Reagan in his anything-to-beat-the-Russins mindset sowed the seads of 9/11/2001 by helping create the infestructure Bin Ladin used to create Al Queada. We were stupid enough to elect Reagan twice therefore we are indeed to blame for 9/11.

This post should be scored -5 for being way off topic and another -5 for being flamebait!

Re:Drudge Report

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Bush as a guy down the street?

What an act.

He is through and through a spoiled brat; a rich kid from an old east coast family. He gets bailed out of every jam he creates by family friends. He has the smarmy arrogance of one who was born on third base thinking he hit a triple.

Re:Drudge Report

[jsebrech]

They lack documentation on how the samples in the various studies were chosen. That makes it impossible to verify how representative the studies are.

Re:Drudge Report

[allyourtv]

Well, according to Drudge, by now Hillary Clinton should be: a) The Democratic Presidential candidate, b) The Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate, or, c) Divorced. Just because Drudge posts a few things that turn our to be true doesn't mean he actually knows what he is talking about.

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

"I spoke to someone just back from the U.K. today at work. According to him, everyone across the political spectrum- practically without exception- is livid about this election. They believe it will affect their lives in the U.K. almost as much as it will affect Americans. But none of them can cast a vote against Bush"

Look it ain't America's fault if Tony Blair is kissing Bush's ass. The Brits say this election will affect them almost as much as it will affect americans? fine then tell em to vote Blair out of office. I'm sick and tired of hearing about other people bitch about how they can't vote for the President but he'll affect their lives just as much. You have your own governments, tell it to them. they suck up to America.

The entire fucking world is so deadset against U.S it's gonna be so fucking worth it, when the "american empire" does fall, to see the looks on the rest of the world's faces when they realize just how fucking important America was. and btw i'm not american. I'm British. Who like the rest of world, use to bitch and moan about americans. And Then i went to live there, and actually learnt something about it. The foreign Media are just as ignorant of U.S Affairs as others claim the U.S Media is ignorant of world affairs. but you know what mod me -1 flamebait. I'm just another right-wing pro U.S nutjob who doesn't know what they talking about.

Re:Drudge Report

[cb8100]

instead of just re-blabbering the press releases straight out of the white house with all critical thinking skills shut down

There's a difference between news (reporting the press release) and editorial (turning on critical thinking skills). There's a time and place for both, but most people fail to understand that.

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

this post is probably the lamest ever. what, is slashdot trying to move into political blogging?

come on, news for nerds, not news for dumb-ass political hacks.

Re:Drudge Report

[rw2]

Um... you might want to learn to spell "proletariat" if you're going to include it in your sig, comrade...

Um... You might want to get a new dictionary before you make comments about other peoples spelling. ;-)

Both are acceptable spellings according to Websters and OED.

Re:Drudge Report

[CaptainZapp]

There's a difference between news (reporting the press release) and editorial (turning on critical thinking skills). There's a time and place for both, but most people fail to understand that.

In my not very humble opinion you have that wrong. A quality newspaper will never just take a press release (from whomever) at face value. A good journalist will ask hard questions and never trust the spin masters, no matter from which direction they come.

When the war in iraq started this was the major shortcoming of basically the entire US mainstream press to just buy Mr. Fleischers bullshit and just report it 1:1 as fact.

Even the Grand Old Lady admiited to their to their shortcomings (registration may be required) in that respect, alas a tad late.

Re:Drudge Report

[d474]

(speaking of BUSH:) People love that simple, down-home boy quality.

Well in that case, why don't we elect Bo or Luke Duke?

Re:Drudge Report

[rjamestaylor]

Troll? I'm agreeing with the parent and extending the argument to include new facts that were reported.

If you don't agree, respond.

Re:Drudge Report

[Zeinfeld]

Well I don't believe that most people outside of the US are in a good position to understand US politics.

That is why the BBC and others have foreign correspondents to report back from the US.

During Rove's 'mission accomplished' farce on the US Liberty the US media duly reported back the images with the approved Rove spin. The BBC reporters correctly saw the pantomime as more likely to be the embarassing liability it has become rather than the masterstroke the US media reported it as. As I and others predicted at the time the only use made of the pictures of Bush-in-flight-suit has been in anti-Bush attack ads.

The coverage the rest of the world get of the presidential candiates (to take an example) is slim.

It is considerably more comprehensive than the coverage you get from the US media. I have yet to see anything from the US media to compare with the coverage of the policy issues by the UK Economist.

The US media spends its time on memogate and the Smearboat Liars for Bush, if you want to find out about the issues you have no choiuce but the non-US media.

All the world sees of Bush is his speeches on Iraq or from F/911. They rarely get to see him as a human being while he's compaigning or mingling.

Why on earth is this relevant coverage? The BBC does not spend very much time showing Tony Blair 'compaigning' or 'mingling'. They do cover campaign speeches by both the candidates. Orchestrated campaign fluff like Bush's loyalty pledge rallys where the secret service forbids the press from interviewing protesters are better ignored by the media altogether.

The middle-east coverage is a bit different because the US military is actually *IN* the middle east at this very moment. The coverage is syndicated between various international networks.

The middle east coverage by the US media is always careful to avoid criticism from constituencies such as CAMERA, a pro-Likud outfit that basically insists on biased reporting and organizes letter writing campaigns against any media outlet that criticizes Israel. You get a far less biased account from Israel's own press which is heavily censored by the military.

Re:Drudge Report

[ACPosterChild]

So, re-evaluating your stance on important issues after you recieve more information and grow as a person is a bad thing, eh?

Yep, I much prefer the swaggering red-neck attitude of "I'm right 'cause I know I am! (now lets go burn us some Kikes 'n Niggers!)".

Oh, no, wait. Sorry, I mean the "Fuck anybody who isn't rich enough to own their own hospital. Those 2-working-parent families with little or no healthcare should get off their lazy asses and get a real job, like CEO of a small-cap business at least, if they want good health insurace" attitude.

Oh, no, it's the "There's nothing wrong with deciding national policy behind closed doors, especially if your buddies you worked for in the past are there" viewpoint that I hate.

Well, I guess I can't make up my mind. But, luckily for me, I have an easy dicision this year.

And, a little more info I feel I must share: I don't care how many concentual hummers a President of my country gets. I DO care about how many Americans are dead because of a war waged against a no-threat country. I DO care about my healthcare benefits going down every year, with premiums and co-pays going way up. I DO care when the first budget surplus in years is squandered practically the first week of a new President's term, and any chance of that accidentally happening again is immediatley squashed. (FYI, if we payed off the national debt, the entire country would get an immediate ~20% permanent tax cut due to not having to pay the interest on the loan).

Re:Drudge Report

[ACPosterChild]

What an act.

Precicely. It's not what he IS, it's what he SAYS and can make people believe. What he's good at is repeating things 1000 times, while his media buddies do the same, until enough of America believes it, "because, well, everybody knows that!".

It's what's worked for him since his campaign for governor of Texas. The American people have no memory, and the opposition either can't or just doesn't repeat the truth enough for it to stick in most people's heads (probably because it's a lot easier to quip a one-liner about how you'll do something great than to explain how past claims were a bunch of BS that didn't work out even when he claims they did). Hell, it even works in real-time with Osama/terrorism and Saddam/Iraq. After 2-3 months of repetition, polls show that people only care about what he's currently saying, and not the fact that it doesn't match anything he said 4-6 months ago.

Re:Drudge Report

[Anonymous Coward]

To make one decision, and then act like it never exist, is wrong. Kerry hasn't said "You know what, I was wrong. I've thought about things, talked to some people, and realize I made a mistake." He simply takes both sides of the issue and acts as if they're not in conflict with each other.

Re:Drudge Report

[Rayonic]

I spoke to someone just back from the U.K. today at work. According to him, everyone across the political spectrum- practically without exception- is livid about this election. They believe it will affect their lives in the U.K. almost as much as it will affect Americans. But none of them can cast a vote against Bush.

Cry me a river, why don't you.

The very fact of the matter is that people outside the U.S. have little grasp of what America is like -- its politics or its people. All you see of our people is distorted through the lens of Hollywood, and all you see of our politics is distorted through the lens of biased news outlets (especially the spoiled government-funded ones.)

Your negative views of Bush mostly stem from the excessively negative portrayal he gets.

Re:Drudge Report

[MustardSauce]

You didn't say "favoring a political party" in your original post, you said coordinating. A single phone call is not coordinating.

Now you call it aiding and abetting a political party, a charge which is also unsupported by the article.

There is no evidence in the article that you refer to either that the documents are forgeries or that they are easily identifiable as such. In fact here is a quote from the article, "CBS hasn't been able to conclusively tell how he got them, or even whether they're fakes or not."

Re:Drudge Report

[Rayonic]

Wow, there are people in New Zealand who like America? Who'da thunk it? ;-)

Re:Drudge Report

[rjamestaylor]

I said:

• Undeniable culpability on the part of CBS to fraudulently affect the outcome of an election. Disgraceful.

The article says Mary Mapes, CBS Producer, calls Joe Lockhart, of the Kerry campaign, to tell him that Burkett has documents about Bush's Guard service and that he wants to help the campaign... I called this conversation and subsequent two-pronged attack on Bush (CBS's report and the Kerry campaign's "Favorite Son" ad) coordination. Further, the forgeries (no one claims they are authentic) are designed to impugn Bush's character and dissuade people from voting for him. The accusations are based on false documents. Coordination, fraud... all there.

But, I guess you believe Lockhart when he said that they didn't talk about the only thing of interest Burkett had to offer on the subject of Bush's guard service. *snicker*

The fact that Mapes called the Kerry campaign to help the campaign (even if just one single phone call) is all I need to know that CBS is trying to affect the outcome of a political campaign through coordinating with one campaign in a partisan fashion. For any American such coordination is fine, but not for a journalist. At least, not unless the rules are to be re-written; in which case I'd prefer advance notice.

Re:Drudge Report

[snatchitup]

Your post, and the three below are talking about my bias, not Drudge's. When you look at DrudgeRetort. It is not a retort. It is simply a Bush Bashing mechanism.

I never said I was un-biased... I'm extremely biased toward conservative viewpoint.

Obviously being un-biased is in the eye in of the beholder. If all the network news, MSNBC, and CNN are biased towards Liberalism, then somebody in the middle is going to seem Right wing in comparison.

Even C-Span is accused of being right wing. It's funny. The open framework of their show "Washington Journal" in my book is more Right Wing in comparison to ABCNBCMSNBCNNCBS. But, in an absolute manner, in is middle of the road un-biased.

Re:Drudge Report

[aphor]

Obviously being un-biased is in the eye in of the beholder. If all the network news, MSNBC, and CNN are biased towards Liberalism, then somebody in the middle is going to seem Right wing in comparison.

No, bias, and conversely un-bias, are not in the eye of the beholder. Bias means a slant at the expense of logic or truth. If you draw false inferences in your logic in order to support a prescribed conclusion, or if you omit, censor, or ignore facts that mitigate your position, then you are biased. Worse, you are a fool, hypothetically of course :). Even worse, you encourage others to be a fool, hypothetically, again :) I really don't mean "you" in particular, but rather anyone who is biased as I described.

It's funny that you use a realtivistic argument to cop out of your bias (which may or may not mean the same thing to me). Most of the hyperconservative ethics arguments I've heard from people in my circle are against "liberalism" because it has no dogma or absolutes and once you have no absolutes anything goes: because they use relativistic ethics! I'm so tired of these "liberal vs. conservative" arguments. They are too vague and nobody agrees on their meanings as labels. I wish people would just say what they really think (assuming they think).

Re:Drudge Report

[alw53]

Right, which is sort of my point. This information is hard to come by because it's not routinely divulged by the newsprint media.

Re:Drudge Report

[dubl-u]

Well I don't believe that most people outside of the US are in a good position to understand US politics.

Yeah, that's nearly as crazy an idea as some Frenchman writing an enduring classic about American democracy. There's plenty of good foreign-press coverage of the US. A prime example is The Economist.

Re:Drudge Report

[MillionthMonkey]

The very fact of the matter is that people outside the U.S. have little grasp of what America is like -- its politics or its people. All you see of our people is distorted through the lens of Hollywood, and all you see of our politics is distorted through the lens of biased news outlets (especially the spoiled government-funded ones.)

You don't know what I "see of your people", and you don't even know that I'm not an American who can't wait to cast his swing state vote against your beloved Chimperor this November.

Your negative views of Bush mostly stem from the excessively negative portrayal he gets.

Oh really? I thought I was basing my negative views of Bush on what I hear coming out of his mouth! But I guess you must know better, with all that unbiased media you have access to.

Re:Drudge Report

[ccmay]

In the U.S. the press went downhill after they ditched the Fairness Doctrine.

Would you mind explaining how the Fairness Doctrine (or lack thereof) affected newspapers or magazines?

According to him, everyone across the political spectrum- practically without exception- is livid about this election.

So? Tough shit.

In fact, I would submit that he who pisses off the Europeans most is automatically the best choice as President.

The French in particular can be guaranteed to be found on the wrong side of almost any question of importance, usually due to their own selfish financial interests, and projecting their own craven greed and bad faith onto the U.S. administration. Exhibit A, the Oil-for-Food program, the greatest swindle and humanitarian tragedy of our time.

Whether bien-pensant American tourists feel at ease in the coffee houses of the Left Bank is something that concerns me not in the least.

-ccm

Re:Drudge Report

[jsebrech]

Right, which is sort of my point. This information is hard to come by because it's not routinely divulged by the newsprint media.

It isn't the job of the media to divulge the sampleset, it's the job of whoever did the study. That they don't makes it impossible to verify if what they claim is accurate, and so it becomes just pointless rethoric that doesn't talk about facts.

In my experience there are just as many (if not more) liberal stories that don't get told by the american mainstream media. Personally, I think the bias is money, not politics. The primary goal of the media is profitability, and so they will do minimal work for maximal shock factor and audience draw. That's why you see stories like the CBS documents getting out with a lot of brouhaha and very little research to verify the story. It makes people tune in, and it costs little, so it is very profitable.

I see this in my own country too, where the smaller news budgets of the commercial stations often means they go for the easy story instead of the true story.

Re:Drudge Report

[joeyGibson]

I entered "proletariate" into m-w.com and got nothing. When I spelled it properly, the entry came up.

Re:Drudge Report

[Rayonic]

> like the now famous memo that he received on August 6, 2001 titled Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.

In his defense, the information in said memo hadn't been updated in years. I mean, remember when terrorists used to hijack planes and hold the passengers hostage? Yeah, that kind of stuff.

> Bin Laden is still free, we're stuck in Iraq with the situation getting worse every day

We do have troops in Afghanistan too. Bin Laden is still free because he fled to Pakistan.

Iraq is still going along. The new interim government is still popular, and people are still signing up to be policemen in droves. Some 80%+ of the people said they planned to vote in the upcoming elections slated for January. (And similar polls show that, while religious leaders are viewed favorably, they aren't likely to be elected into government.)

You may have disagreed with the decision to re-invade Iraq, but arguably it was inevitable since the end of the first Gulf War.

> a whole new generation of Islamic extremists has even more reasons to hate us.

So we should try to avoid angering Al-Qaeda?

Re:Drudge Report

[rw2]

Since apparently I must do *everything* for you here is a link. ;-)

(I don't have a link to the OED online except at my college, so you will have to trust that it's listed there also)

Re:Drudge Report

[Izago909]

> a whole new generation of Islamic extremists has even more reasons to hate us. So we should try to avoid angering Al-Qaeda?

Remember in Vietnam how many our actions would turn otherwise fiendly peopleinto the enemy? Our presence actually created more enemies. It's more or less the same here. All I know is that none of the promises of Iraq held true. As time went on, they changed their story a half dozen times, and the public (with its amazing short term memory) completely forgot that it all was based on false pretenses. THe state of the union, the addres to the UN, the daily press briefings, all of it. Next year at my high school reuntion, a few friends will not be present. I've lost 4 good friends to this war, 2 of them I've known since childhood. It seems to me that almost everyone directly affected by the attacks and everyone with family of friends in the services, are opposed to the war; yet everyone who fits into neither of the above descriptions thinks it was a great idea. I'm angry that a patchwork collection of corporate leaders now occupy the government. Every aspect of this war is being handled like a business venture, complete with record levels of PR spin. What would the public do if a corporation sold a product that did not function as advertised and killed over 1000 people? Are we living in the day when a corporation is held to higher standards than the government?

Re:Drudge Report

[snatchitup]

Bias in the media is done indirectly through selectively choosing stories. A left-leaning media outlet, typically just doesn't cover things that specifically make lefties look bad.

Right wing media does the same thing. In both cases, they can be truthful without leaving out information.

Re:Drudge Report

[aphor]

First you say that biased media editorially "...doesn't cover things..." that are counter-bias, and then you say "... they can be truthful without leaving out information." You can't have it both ways.

If you editorially choose to omit certain facts because it does not fit your agenda, then you are presenting a misleading picture of the world. Isuppose there is a necessary element of truth in every lie, but one would not, in good faith, call a lie truthful. A lie is a lie because it is misleading. You can lie by representing a fiction as fact, or by omission. When it is specifically your duty to present a complete and accurate factual account of a situation, a lie by omission is just as damning as an outright falsehood. This is the reason censorship is an important issue, and it is also an American cornerstone (the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America).

I'm going to pull patriotic rank on you, and say that two wrongs do not make a right. When the leftist media errs, it does not permit the right-wing media to err. It is your duty and mine to cry "foul" whenever (any member of) the media fails to live up to that duty!

Re:Drudge Report

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

Are you kidding? Shouldn't this be modded Funny?

Being a natural born US citizen, my negative views of Bush mostly stem from Bush's actions and policies as reported by the Federal Government, US mainstream media, US independent media, foreign mainstream media and foreign independent media.

I have a very keen grasp of America, it's people, it's culture and it's history. Bush is the antithesis of the American Revolution. This idiot - and after today's performance with Alawi I don't see how you can call him anything but - has done more damage to this country than most will realize for a long time.

It doesn't take a genius or a PhD in American History to see this, just a working factual knowledge of Western Civilization's history and dialectic reasoning. Anyone in Europe should be adequately capable of commenting on American politics, at least the same percentage as Americans qualified to comment.

The parent's comment about the irrelavence of Bush's personality is spot on. I've never had a beer with a US President, but I continuously have to deal with their policies and their positions on issues. The thrust of the parent's comment was actually regarding the Fairness Doctrine and is absolutely correct in that regard. The consolidation of power in media is alarming and a danger to the American Revolution.

Your negative view of foreigners mostly stem from the excessively negative portrayal they get in American media.

Re:Drudge Report

[MustardSauce]

You obvioiusly don't get it. You are making statements about and article which does not say what you say it says. There is nothing wrong with clearly noting that you have added your own evidence and world view in extending the articles conclusions, but to you cite the article as proof of your conclusions is fundamentally dishonest. This is Drudge's method as well.

Informed Comment

[cynicalmoose]

Is the best blog about Iraq around

Re:Informed Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you haven't seen warincontext.org

Re:Informed Comment

[nocomment]

sorry dear_raed was, until he went on hiatus.

Re:Informed Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Healing Iraq is the best web log on Iraq from an Iraqi perspective.

Re:Informed Comment

[snarfer]

Informed Comment is Juan Cole's weblog.

I like Seeing the Forest.

Re:Informed Comment

[Woko]

I find actual Iraqi people's opinions and comments on daily life illuminating, especially in regards to the never-ending war on terror.

• Healing Iraq
  
• Iraq at a Glance
  
• Iraq the Model
  
• Hammorabi
  
• Baghdad Burning
  
• Nabil's Blog
  

Re:Informed Comment

[d474]

Woko - these links are awesome! Thanks.

On top of the very interesting POVs on the main blog, I loved this photo of Iraqi kids at a LAN party playing COUNTER-STRIKE.

Even in war-torn Baghdad, gamers unite!! Very cool.

michaelmoore.com

[Anonymous Coward]

A touch of reality

Re:michaelmoore.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, that's all he has... not a grip, but just a "touch" of reality.

Re:michaelmoore.com

[ltwally]

Michael Moore claiming to be in touch with reality...

...and who said he doesn't have a sense of humour!

Re:michaelmoore.com

[Locky]

Let the conservative original and funny 'Moore is fat' comments flow!

They'd be even funnier if the aforementioned link contained Moore's opinion, rather, it is him linking to other news articles hosted by various news agencies.

Re:michaelmoore.com

[BladesP9]

Didn't the left use the same "Rush is fat" comments against Rush Limbaugh? Interesting how these same people that complain about it are the ones who likely used it the most when it was "vogue"

Re:michaelmoore.com

[Chemical Serenity]

I prefer "Rush is a fat, hypocritical junkie who is despoiling a CNN anchorwoman by snorting powered oxycontin off her navel before impotently flailing her with his limp manhood and blaming liberals for his inability to perform."

The devil is in the details. :D

Re:michaelmoore.com

[Izago909]

It's just as funny as Bush claiming that he is in touch with reality. The Gods too are fond of a good joke. These days, it's safe to consider anyone a liar who advertises themselves as being impartial.

Re:michaelmoore.com

[Anonymous Coward]

ahh typical anti bush reply: "oh yeah, well so is bush"

Re:michaelmoore.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Moore's fatness and slobbiness is his schitick. It is totally calculated and intentional. Criticising people for pointing it out is like criticising people for pointing out that Pam Anderson has big fake boobs.

Re:michaelmoore.com

[BushMuncher]

ltwally@softhome.net claiming to be touching himself...

...and who said he doesn't have a sense of humour!

Re:michaelmoore.com

[NickRuisi]

Umm... how about "Moore is a fat, untalented propogandist who is only out to make money and I expect the next film to be about the fake-moon theory and how Bush is behind the deception".

thhpt!

Re:michaelmoore.com

[Onan]

I seem to agree with Moore on more things than not. Certainly I disagree with largely the same set of things that he does.

But despite that, he's not a source of reality, or journalistic integrity, or informative presentation. Even if many of the things he's saying are true, the methods he uses to say them are pretty reliably dishonest.

Modulo the actual views being expressed, he's essentially Ann Coulter. They're both perfectly willing to resort to deceptive misrepresentation and shrill name-calling to support their opinions. And just as I would hope that even theocratic warmongers would be ashamed of Ann Coulter, so I'd suggest that Moore's a pretty poor paragon.

So even if you agree with his overall goals, there's not much point in directing people to him in particular. Direct people to sources which make those same points in an honest and rational manner, and you'll win more converts.

Spinsanity - sheds light on the insanity

[jhouserizer]

Spinsanity is a great site for articles that point out all of the spin from both parties.

They seem to do a pretty good job of showing the foolishness of both sides - which is refreshing, since IMHO both parties suck bad, and I therefore get very annoyed at sights that are focused on making one party or the other look bad, while ignoring their own parties major issues.

Re:Spinsanity - sheds light on the insanity

[torinth]

It only seems fitting to de-spin your endoresement of spinsanity. Don't get me wrong, it's a generally useful site, but often falls for the same analytic fallacies as sites like snopes.com. You can only rely on it for so much.

Re:Spinsanity - sheds light on the insanity

[rjstanford]

Out of curiosity, what issues do you have with Snopes, et al? I've found them to be pedestrian, but fairly reasonable in their findings for the most part...

Re:Spinsanity - sheds light on the insanity

[ackthpt]

Spinsanity is a great site for articles that point out all of the spin from both parties.

Like I need anyone to point that stuff out anymore. I'm often driving down the road, listening to some guy from some thinktank or shadowy advisory outfit spinning things beyond credibility, to which I'm shouting in the privacy of my pickup cab, "Spin! Spin! Spin that sucker! Spin!" It's often so bad I can't believe anyone actually buys those lines of BS, then I realize that they do and have. It can get a man down.

Re:Spinsanity - sheds light on the insanity

[dustinbarbour]

Is Spinsanity a drag to look at or what?! Blah...!

Yeah.. go ahead and 'troll' me. I admit it!

Re:Spinsanity - sheds light on the insanity

[wolssiloa]

i've been reading a blog from a certain third party and it sounds very interesting
http://www.livejournal.com/users/kim_jong_il__/

Re:Spinsanity - sheds light on the insanity

[Frankie70]

I agree - Spinsanity pretty much flames both sides.

I have also read their book

It's a rather dry book unlike the Al Franken book etc, but it's very informative.

This book conclusively proves that the Bush Administration has been the most "spinning" administration in the country's history. This book is written by the people who run this website.

Re:Spinsanity - sheds light on the insanity

[MindStalker]

Obviously they have an issue with analysing information instead of having paranoid delusional left wing feelings.

-snicker-

Re:Spinsanity - sheds light on the insanity

[On Lawn]

Actually there is something to that. Allow me to ask Obi Wan Kenobi about this...

Many of the truths that we hold to are true, from a certain point of view

Spinsanity is a good point of view, but often they suffer from their own spin. I've seen then get into quite the tangle with other journalism outlets and it is quickly evident that it is spin v spin. Not overtly partisan spin, cool intellectual spin but spin none the less.

These tussles showed me how often they can only put up competing opinions against others opinions. It is what you expect from analysis actually. A better site is FactCheck.org which doesn't try to compete with opinions and spin and sticks to facts.

Re:Spinsanity - sheds light on the insanity

[Chris Mattern]

> Many of the truths that we hold to are true, from a certain point of view

'Course, he said that when he was trying to weasel out of the the fact that he'd lied like a rug to Luke. (But what else could he say? "Sorry, Luke, didn't mean to make all that up, but Lucas can't do continuity to save his life...")

Chris Mattern

Re:Spinsanity - sheds light on the insanity

[On Lawn]

he said that when he was trying to weasel out of the the fact that he'd lied like a rug to Luke.

Not to nit-pick, oh minstrel of the dark-side, but what he said was true. And since it is a good explanation of how a emperial analysis and tight technical definitions can detract from larger observation and understanding.

Obi Wan explains what he means in the subsequent lines when he says, "he's more machine now than a man". Not only had his body died (his brain being supported by his suit) but his spirit/personality as well. The good natured Annakin was (in Old Ben's eyes) forever lost.

This theme is supported in his death scene where Annakin does away with the machinery, and his son gets to know him only in his death. A death held is statia until Luke redeemed him.

Spin? Yes. Understanding? I think so.

If you press me, I'll have to bring out Star Trek to back my point ;)

Re:Spinsanity - sheds light on the insanity

[drinkypoo]

If you press me, I'll have to bring out Star Trek to back my point ;)

And then you'll never have sex with anyone but yourself, ever again. Please, don't do this! It's not worth it! Oh the humanity! etc.

ummmm...

[rkrabath]

slashdot?

Re:ummmm...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

http://politics.slashdot.org/ has become my favorite site- at least until November when I start the blog for my new political party.

Re:ummmm...

[jbrw]

Starting blogs is fun! But then again, I would say that...

Re:ummmm...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Mine will be hosted local to me- and will also include a donations button in hopes of paying for my Sabatical in the summer of 2007 and 2008.

Groklaw

[Anonymous Coward]

When I want to see someone rip apart and dissect the media, I head over to groklaw. Then again, I'm addicted to SCO news.

Your Favorite Political Weblogs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a break...what's next around here? Reviews of plastic dinnerware?

Re:Your Favorite Political Weblogs?

[Baghdad Dweller]

http://www.ladybird.oxfordhost.co.uk/b2evolution/b logs/ This is the right adress

I like...

[Three Headed Man]

Heartless Libertarian. He's a gun owner who lays things out straight.

Re:I like...

[Principal Skinner]

The "Convince any Republican" link in the above sig is extremely NSFW and will take control of your browser. Turn off JavaScript or disable popups before clicking!

I think IHBT.

Re:I like...

[gaijin99]

Actually, all you have to do is use Mozilla, and uncheck the box that allows scripts to move or resize existing windows. I've got JavaScript turned on, and the link wasn't able to move my window.

Re:I like...

[Anonymous Coward]

you may think he lays things out straight, but he's f*cked in the head

My 'Favorites'

[OverlordQ]

Little Green Footballs
IMAO
RWN
and musn't forget
Drudge Report.

Re:My 'Favorites'

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who like the above might also like ...

Tech Central Station

The Corner on National Review Online

HughHewitt.com

Re:My 'Favorites'

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you like LGF, may I suggest...

Stormfront
The Ku Klux Klan
Or perhaps the American Nazi Party?

Seriously, those racist ass monkeys at LGF need to quit pretending their somehow decent human beings.

Re:My 'Favorites'

[Bora Horza Gobuchol]

I have a very real problem with Little Green Footballs (LGF) being listed as a "recommended favorite."

It should be noted that I don't mind partisan blogs - but LGF goes way over the line. Before 9/11, Charles Johnson (the blogger in question) was a road cycling PHP hacker with moderate political views, able to share the occassional joke about Bush and poke fun at both political parties.

Like many, 9/11 radicalized Charles Johnson - in his case, to hatred and fear of Muslims and a rabid defence of Israel and President Bush. The blog could now accurately described as a hate site. This is a place where:

• A typical comment in response to Bush's reversal that "the War On Terror" will never be won is: "He's right - it won't be won until every Muslim is dead."
• The site showcases photographs of "Palestinian Car Swarms" - bloody pictures of crowds surrounding the results of an Israeli missile attack, with taunting captions.
• Any Muslim involvement in a Western community, from education in schools to the establishment of a mosque, is seen as part of a broader plot to subjugate the West.

It is my feeling that Mr. Johnson deliberately incites his own community in several ways. First, comments in the blog are not threaded, and cannot be moderated - leaving the most extreme rascist comments on equal footing with every other. (It is important to note that the community rarely attempts to moderate extremist views through discussion or censure - and by failing to do so, condones it.)

Second, Mr. Johnson will occassionally wade in himself. The most telling occassion, for me, was when he deleted the post of a commentator who suggested that the mother of Rachel Corrie (a Western activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer while blockading the destruction of Palestinain homes) be sent eMails telling her that her daughter was now providing oral sex to Palestians in hell. The mother's eMail address was supplied.

Charles Johnson deleted the post - but then added that he was sure people could find Mrs. Corrie's eMail address by themselves, with a Google search.

Annenberg FactCheck

[linuxwrangler]

Don't know if it qualifies as a "blog" but I regularly check FactCheck: http://www.factcheck.org/

Re:Annenberg FactCheck

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, this looks good. Thanks.

Re:Annenberg FactCheck

[On Lawn]

Yeah I have to agree, Fact Check is pretty good.

MensNewsDaily.com collects pretty good commentary from a number of contributers on a number of issues that aren't forefront on the MSM. Their articles are short and poigniant. They have a forum you can discuss the articles in, so I would call that a blog.

Powerlineblog.com is pretty reasonable for commentary and was one of the big players in Rathergate. INDCJournal might be less reasonable but they have the quickest footwork in the business. They'll be the ones to call the sources, call experts, etc... Footwork that is a lost art in journalism. But their commentary is a bit off-balance and can often trip themselves up.

Little Green Footballs is often misunderstood, but I like them. They do their job very well. Even better though is Watch which is devoid of the sophmoric commentary.

But then there is an upper eschelon, which FactCheck belongs to, as does Belmont Club. When Belmont treats an issue, you've got gold.

But the absolute MOAB of the blogosphere is Bill Whittle. He posts seldomly, and when he does it is incredibly long. But there is no better writer on the Internet that I've found. As it says on his website: If Steven den Best is Spock, he is the Captain Kirk. Seriously there is no finer work on the internet than his "Strength" series, followed closely by "Empire".

For humor, Scrappleface and CoxandForkum are great. They not only give you the humor but they give you the stories that inspired it.

Re:Annenberg FactCheck

[Wah]

Little Green Footballs is often misunderstood, but I like them.

I don't see what's to misunderstand, LGF is a running argument for the extermination of the Muslim religion (and those that are stupid enough to believe in it), and the many, many, many, reasons for doing so.

They do their job very well.

No doubt about that.

Re:Annenberg FactCheck

[On Lawn]

LGF is a running argument for the extermination of the Muslim religion

Actually, this is what I mean. Probably the best explanation of LGF comes from Bill Whittle,

What does matter is what Little Green Footballs does on a daily basis. Charles Johnson does not sit down and write five essays a day on why he thinks Radical Islam is a deranged and poisonous and growing Death Cult. Charles simply links to newspaper articles, usually from Arab and Islamist sources like Arab News and Reuters, that show without question that Radical Islam is calling, daily and nightly, for the destruction of the West, the murder, enslavement or conversion of its citizens, and the establishment of a world-wide Caliphate where Shariah - Islamic Law - is the only law.

This is not his opinion. This is not the opinion of Western editorial writers. This is a filter (and of course it's a filter - that's why it is useful) that looks at Islamist thinking and behavior daily and shows what Islamists are saying and doing in their own words.

Bill also explains just how it relates to the Muslim religion and how it does not relate...

Have I slandered 1.5 billion people? I don't know. Have I? I speak of Radical Islam. I speak of people determined to kill and terrorize to impose their religion on the rest of the world. If you are a Muslim who is against these practices, you have my respect and admiration. And, as with all other religions in the United States, I will as passionately defend your right to practice your faith in harmony and goodwill as I attack those who may carry the Crescent far, far away from your peaceful and devout beliefs. But I will not pretend I do not see and hear what I see and hear every single day, just because you may not like to hear it. That is not something I or millions of my countrymen will submit to. Accept, or at the very least, understand that right now. I say this for both our sakes. More on this later.

The philosophy of Radical Islam is at war, not only with America and the West, but with everything that is not Radical Islam. So, do they hate us? Yes they do. Judging from their street demonstrations, and the rhetoric issuing from their madrassas, does anyone seriously doubt that if millions were given a button that would wipe us from the face of the earth, they would push it?

I don't see how any rational person could deny this is so.

They are working on that button, by the way.

I'm voting Robocratic

[Hadlock]

Check out the Robocratic's blog at Robocratic.com . Because Electric-Americans deserve to have a greater hand in deciding the future of this great nation.

Re:I'm voting Robocratic

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Diesel Sweeties reference

Blognarik!!

[vanadium4761]

Michael Badnarik, the subject of the recent Q&A session, has his own blog. Check it out: http://www.badnarik.org/blog/

DemocraticUnderground.com

[Cryofan]

username dumpster_baby.

THis is the blog for most of the Democratic party activists. Some very informed people there. Also, some real leftists, although most are just typical centrists.

Also, kuro5hin.org

Originaldissent.com is also OK.

Watching capitalism fail

[Anonymous Coward]

from the sidelines
http://oligopolywatch.com/

there can be only one, then it is the end.

Re:Watching capitalism fail

[ackthpt]

from the sidelines http://oligopolywatch.com/ there can be only one, then it is the end.

Ah, someone else sees the USA heading toward feudalism. Refreshing.

Fafblog!

[silvergoose]

Definitely the fafblog.

fafblog.blogspot.com

Anyone else know of it?

Re:Fafblog!

[Goronguer]

Mod parent up! The Fafblog is the best blog! It fulfils all your political blogging needs with its transcendent blogfulness! The posts of Fafnir, Giblets, and the Medium Lobster are full of delicious, cream-filled political insightfulness! BOW BEFORE GIBLETS! NOWWWWWW!

Seriously, check it out. I haven't found this particular flavor of sublime satirical commentary anywhere else.

Re:Fafblog!

[Ray Radlein]

I remember reading the on-the-scene blog coverage of the Democratic National Convention and thinking that it was an interesting, but not, shall we say, entirely successful experiment (talk about your public betas!). However, even if the entire four days of everyone's convention coverage had been nothing but "Dead baby" jokes and gossip about Big Brother 5, it would still have been worth it just because that's where I discovered Fafblog.

Fafblog: At last, those mutant animated rodent-like things from the Quiznos commercial finally get around to discussing the pressing issues of the day!

Fix the link, please

[chill]

Who is Andew Sullivan? Don't you people check links? Pretend it is "speak like a pirate day" and put that "r" back in there!

Re:Fix the link, please

[carlos_benj]

It's the liberal suppression of the conservative view. Pass the word....

Where do I go? ... HERE

[Anonymous Coward]

gregpalast.com

Not Exactly a Blog...But sort of?

[CatDogLordOfTheRoot]

I really like to read Neal Boortz's Web site. I like the way he comments on today's news with a few random thoughts tossed in. Plus his "Reading Assignments" show off some pretty funny links on the net.

sensible election

[Kenja]

Mine is sensibleerection.com

I mean sensibleelection.com

DailyKos

[sg3000]

I like DailyKos.

politics.slashdot.org is rapidly turning into one of my least favorites because I've noticed that the moderation system is running amuck! Never before have I seen such a split in moderations where a single comment can be rated "informative" and "troll" numerous times in the same story. And many moderators with a chip on their shoulder start using "offtopic" and "overrated" to try to protect their own karma during metamoderation. Here's an example of where it happened to me recently. And it's not just the political posts (though I suspect it happens there most often), but in a Star Wars story. I still can't believe this post got called a "troll"! I'm sure many others can come up with their own examples.

It seems that there may be too many people moderating these days, and little accountability, a single person doesn't have to have an agenda; you can have a group of likeminded people who want to squelch dissenting opinions pummel a relatively decent post down into the noise of hot grits posts.

DailyKos has a better system where moderations aren't anonymous, so you can see how people are moderating. Then again, if DailyKos had the same traffic as Slashdot, maybe its moderation system would get corrupted too.

Maybe the ultimate problem is that people don't respect others' views, or they prize too highly the views of people that they may agree with but use bad logic or specious reasoning. It's probably indicative of the growing polarization in our country. As people start migrating to sandboxes where only likeminded people congregate (which blogs, especially political ones, can lead to), they become less tolerant of opinions that challenge their own.

Re:DailyKos

[carlos_benj]

It's probably indicative of the growing polarization in our country.

Whaddaya mean, "polarization", you liberal twit! This country is full of unity and love and if you don't like it you can just get the heck outta Dodge and go to some terrorist haven like New Zealand or Omaha!

Oh, wait....

Re:DailyKos

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I completely agree. There seems to be a number of rather reactionary slashdotters who are perfectly happy to bury a perfectly good post as "Flamebait" or "Troll" because it doesn't fit their perspective.

And it happens from both directions - I've seen some perfectly rational discussion by some clearly right wing people get buried as Flamebait or Troll for no apparent reason. However, that said, I've noticed that the people who get the shortest end of the stick are Greens and Leftists, especially when they go poking holes in Republican and Libertarian balloons.

The political spectrum on slashdot runs the gamut, but it has several nodes that are crueler in their moderation than others when criticised, mostly being Libertarian Capitalists and Neocon Republicans. Sometimes a Green gets a feather up his butt about a post, and I'll see something oddly moderated.

What I have also noticed is that if someone posts "under their name", i.e., not as an Anonymous Coward, and it still has a positive number value but the condition is "Troll" or "Flamebait" it often indicates that the post is neither a Troll or Flamebait, but is simply the victim of some overzealous moderator with an ax to grind. And I don't see how metamoderation fixes that.

I'll probably get moderated by some thinskinned overzealous moderator as Flamebait or Troll, but I hope not. I think this is a very important discussion that needs to be had.

RS

Re:DailyKos

[Moridineas]

No offense, but your other post that you linked to WAS a troll post, and I'll even be glad to analyze why for you ;)

sentence #1 It is completely ridiculous to suggest that the press has spent more time investigating Bush than they did giving free press to the lying SBVT group.On the other hand, Bush has gotten a free pass for

a) Using political connections to get in to the National Guard, when he was far from the best candidate to get in
b) Not fulfilling his duty once he was in there
c) Lying about his service and claiming he flew with his unit for years

a) You assume some political connections were used? What were they? Who alleges this? Did Bush himself do anything? Do Bush's FATHER do anything? Who is to blame for this. Unsubstantiated FUD. Troll.

b) Not fulfilling his duty...who knows, I'll give you that one.

c) "Lying about his service and claiming he flew with his unit for years" Show me that he didn't fly? Probable troll.

Official National Guard records, including those released by the White House, contradict Bush's statements. Others in the National Guard corroborate the fact that Bush did not fulfill his duty. To this day, Bush has been incapable of naming a single person who saw him in Alabama when he was supposed to be training there. Bush claims he signed up for a unit up north (Connecticut, I think), but he never showed up to that at all.

Guess you haven't been watching the news recently when Staudt and others in the guard and of the guard went on TV. Troll.

The national media ignored Bush's stint with a champaign unit in the National Guard during Vietnam, with small exceptions, during the 2000 campaign. I know many Bush supporters would like to believe otherwise, but it's fact.

It hink the bigger point is "who cares at all?" and if anyone cares, is there any evidence to prove it? There is not, as the extremely poorly forged documents of this last month show, most recently. That's how fast the liberla media jumped on this story once they thought they had something they could run with--did no basic fact checking (re, Staudt) and couldn't even realize that the documents were CLEARLY forged on MS Word.

Then I did a search for "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" and "John Kerry" and "Vietnam" in the past six months. How many hits? 248!

I'll take this slow for you. How many times did Bush say that he should be president because of his experience in the guard? How many times did Bush campaign on ANYTHING he did in his youth? Never. Quite the contrary, Bush is a man reborn and he was not running on his record of 30 years ago. Kerry on the other hand "Reporting for duty!" (DNC) based his entire campaign on his Vietnam experience and rarely faield to mention Vietnam in his speeches. IT's only natural that he comes under attack for this stance.

Is Bush's Vietnam record (or lack of it) relevant to today? To some extent, no. The war was more than 30 years ago. But for a president who calls himself the "war president", who insists he was for the Vietnam war, who started an elective war under false pretenses and shifting reasons, and who is dangerously stretching our military resources, it is important to know what that person was doing when it was their time to serve.

He's a war president because the country went to war, not because he fought in some war 30 years ago. Were Eisenhower or Grant war presidents? No? Roosevelt? Who? Troll. False pretenses? THe pretenses were false only in that the CIA, British intelligence and others dropped the ball. Is there any evidence Bush himself knowingly lied? Troll. And you're absolutely right, it is important to know what did when they were called up to serve--thus the Swift Boat Vets. You can't say it's important and try to suppress them at the same time. Troll yet again.

Does anyone else find it distasteful when a draft dodger calls into question the medals of a war hero?

and that is why you were trolling (lies!) ;)

Re:DailyKos

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what it sounds like...
when trolls fight!

Re:DailyKos

[goon america]

Don't forget, the meta-moderation system won't kick in for a little bit.

Re:DailyKos

[peeping_Thomist]

The post you linked to was a troll. I think the problem politics.slashdot.org is running into is that it is difficult to talk politics without starting to troll.

Re:DailyKos

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw him.

Re:DailyKos

[sg3000]

> a) You assume some political connections were used? What
> were they? Who alleges this? Did Bush himself do anything? Do
> Bush's FATHER do anything? Who is to blame for this.
> Unsubstantiated FUD. Troll.

Ben Barnes, then Lt. Governor of Texas, admitted he got Bush into the National Guard:

> "I got a young man named George W. Bush into the Texas
> National Guard when I was lieutenant governor, and I'm not
> necessarily proud of that. But I did it.

Bush was son of a then senator and former ambassador. He served in what many called the "champagne" unit in the Texas National Guard. Bush admitted he had no experience to get him into the guard, and he scored in the bottom 25% on the pilots' test. Bush's records admit this.

> Guess you haven't been watching the news recently when
> Staudt and others in the guard and of the guard went on TV.

> That's how fast the liberla media jumped on this story once
> they thought they had something they could run with

The questionable documents have done a lot to muddy the waters, but the fact remains that the crux of the question of Bush's service was not dependent on a single document. I agree that CBS News should have fact-checked better. However, it would be nice if the Bush supporters as charged up in determining the authenticity of a now-shown fraudulent document that lead us to war.

But that doesn't absolve Bush from not finishing his duty, which has been corroborated in ways apart from the documents. For example, in Bush's records, Bush flew only 22 months of the 53 he owed. Salon has more details on the documents that Bush should have filed but did not when he decided to stop flying:

--Quote--

> Bush flew for the last time on April 16, 1972. Upon entering
> the Guard, Bush agreed to fly for 60 months. After his training
> was complete, he owed 53 months of flying.

> But he flew for only 22 of those 53 months.

> Upon being accepted for pilot training, Bush promised to
> serve with his parent (Texas) Guard unit for five years once he > completed his pilot training.

> But Bush served as a pilot with his parent unit for just two
> years.

> In May 1972 Bush left the Houston Guard base for Alabama.
> According to Air Force regulations, Bush was supposed to
> obtain prior authorization before leaving Texas to join a new
> Guard unit in Alabama.

> But Bush failed to get the authorization.

> In requesting a permanent transfer to a nonflying unit in
> Alabama in 1972, Bush was supposed to sign an
> acknowledgment that he received relocation counseling.

> But no such document exists.

> He was supposed to receive a certification of satisfactory
> participation from his unit.

> But Bush did not.

> On May 26, 1972, Lt. Col. Reese Bricken, commander of the
> 9921st Air Reserve Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base in
> Alabama, informed Bush that a transfer to his nonflying unit
> would be unsuitable for a fully trained pilot such as he was,
> and that Bush would not be able to fulfill any of his remaining
> two years of flight obligation.

> But Bush pressed on with his transfer request nonetheless.

> Bush's transfer request to the 9921st was eventually denied by
> the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, which meant he
> was still obligated to attend training sessions one weekend a
> month with his Texas unit in Houston.

> But Bush failed to attend weekend drills in May, June, July,
> August and September. He also failed to request permission
> to make up those days at the time.

> According to Air Force regulations,

Re:DailyKos

[Anonymous Coward]

a) You assume some political connections were used? What were they? Who alleges this? Did Bush himself do anything? Do Bush's FATHER do anything? Who is to blame for this. Unsubstantiated FUD. Troll. If YOU had been watching the news recently you would know the answer to this. You would also know the Bush family doesn't deny that connections were used, it specifically denies that George Bush the younger knew about them being invoked. Furthermore, if you had the begnnings of a clue you would realize that the line to get into a "safe" position and avoid getting your ass shot off in Vietnam 'round about the time Bush joined the Guard was enormous. And yet somehow (look up the dates if you want) George got immediately to the frint of the line.

You have to be wilfully ignorant or a drudgereport.com reading fool to believe that influence wasn't used to keep Georgie safe in the guard and out of harm's way. Personally, I don't have a problem with it and if I were a wealthy influence-bearing parent looking at the prospect of my flesh and blood getting send overseas to be killed for a stupid war I'd have done the same thing. I say props to the whole family.

You have to be an idiot to write that first paragraph of your "analysis." Sorry, but there's no two ways about it, son. Why do you right-wing types all have to be so stupid?

Re:DailyKos

[Moridineas]

Barnes a democrat says he got Bush into the guard, however, as I'm sure you know, his story has changed over the years. His daughter says that he is lying to promote his new book. He himself never claimed that a Bush family member asked him to do it. I see no wrongdoing here.

I'll trust your sources on the national guard stuff--don't have time ATM to fully research.

Bush has had a long-established pattern of not taking responsibility for his actions.

Yes, when he was young. However we see a marked change in Bush years ago. It takes a signifigant amount of willpower to stop drinking alcohol completely the way Bush did after being, by all accounts, a virtual alcoholic. I won't excuse any of Bush's youth--he did many bad things..but I'm happy with the Bush of today.

That's a scary thought. Anything a politician mentions is fair game for lies? As the New York Times concluded, "on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements."

I made no comment on the Swift Boat Vet's case. They were heavily attacked by the media in fact (possibly not Fox News). I simply said that Kerry made Vietnam an issue...if he had campaigned on his beliefs, on his senate career etc, the Swift Vets would have had no power. I blame Kerry for making this race ridiculously about 30 years ago.

Yes, pretenses he used are NOW shown to be false, but who cares? CIA reports, british intelligence, pentagon sources, etc believed Iraq was a threat and had WMD's.

Does anyone else find it distasteful when a draft dodger calls into question the medals of a war hero?

That makes you a troll, tried and true.

Re:DailyKos

[Moridineas]

You have to be wilfully ignorant or a drudgereport.com reading fool to believe that influence wasn't used to keep Georgie safe in the guard and out of harm's way. Personally, I don't have a problem with it and if I were a wealthy influence-bearing parent looking at the prospect of my flesh and blood getting send overseas to be killed for a stupid war I'd have done the same thing. I say props to the whole family.

You're missing the point. If nothing illegal was done, what's the problem? If the Bush name ALONE kept him out the war, what could or should he have done differently? I don't know.

Why do you right-wing types all have to be so stupid?

Because otherwise leftist elitists would have nobody left to gloat their intelligence over.

Re:DailyKos

[maxpublic]

It's painfully easy to fix the system. Just restrict the random moderation points so that moderators can only mod *up* with those points and not down. If you want to mod down, then for every point you spend a point is also deduced from *your own* karma.

This would blast the mod-trolls right out of the water since I'm willing to bet that 95% of them have no karma whatsoever, or if they did, they value it so highly they'd never spend it to mod someone else down. Only those who really felt strongly about something would burn karma to mod someone else down; the losers, freaks, and morons wouldn't have the points or the balls or both.

One little change and karma-bombing and vendetta modding would become a thing of the past. Only those of us who regularly get maxed-out karma would be able to mod folks down more than once in a blue moon, and somehow I doubt most of us high-karma types really give a shit to take the time or trouble to do so.

Max

Re:DailyKos

[Moridineas]

bwahahha, the irony..now it's happening to me! (50% overrated?! gasp)

Re:DailyKos

[Anonymous Coward]

So you like a pundit that said of Americans killed in Iraq, "I feel nothing for them, Screw em"?

Re:DailyKos

[Anonymous Coward]

"Heavily attacked?!?!"

What media were YOU watching? Jeez, even after the bulk of their claims were proven materially false (who you gonna believe, my smearing, partisan, 30-year-old trumped-up memories or the military's lyin' documentation?), the news media in general gave them a free pass.

I'm talking CNN, MSNBC, NYT etc etc etc. See here for an analysis of coverage: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3. Also see his archives for other examples.

Notably, Bob Somerby restricts his discussion to the media's performance and does not address actual political issues. He's not entirely non-partisan but he's pretty good at restricting his discussion to his disgust with the media in general.

Re:DailyKos

[TrentL]

I think DailyKos consistently has the most informed and intelligent contributors. Yeah, you get the occasional wackos, but welcome to the internet.

I've actually been looking for a conservative version of DKos, just to see how civil right-wingers discuss issues. The Free Republic is completely out of the question and is often host to frothing maniacs.

Re:DailyKos

[Anonymous Coward]

Ben Barnes' story has been entirely consistent over the years. And he NEVER claimed a Bush family member asked him to pull strings to get W into the Texas Air National Guard. He has consistently said that a friend of the Bush family asked him to.

I quote Josh Marshall in the following post on the matter:

"The Barnes story isn't a new one. And the relevant dates of it and the office Barnes was serving in at the time have never been questioned. It happened during the time Barnes was Speaker of the House in Texas. In the past, he went to great lengths to avoid discussing. But after being forced to discuss it in a civil suit deposition in 1999, he made a brief public announcement. See this clip from the Houston Chronicle from September 28th 1999 ...

Austin lobbyist Ben Barnes said Monday that as speaker of the Texas House more than 30 years ago, he recommended George W. Bush for a pilot's position in the Texas Air National Guard at the request of a Bush family friend.

But Barnes, in a statement issued by his lawyer, said he was not contacted by a member of the Bush family and had "no knowledge" that either the future governor or his father, former President Bush, who was then a congressman from Houston, knew of his intervention.

In fact, not only has Barnes been consistent and his account not been questioned, even Bush himself and his campaign have accepted Barnes account. All they have insisted on -- though it is quite improbable -- is that they did not know at the time about his actions and were not involved in any way in requesting it.

The president even went so far as to thank Barnes in a personal note for being clear that he had no direct, personal knowledge that the Bush family had contacted the intermediary who contacted him. Consider this clip from a September 27th, 1999 Associated Press story ...

Barnes testified for several hours Monday in a deposition in the case. Afterwards, his lawyer issued a written statement saying Barnes had been contacted by the now-deceased Sidney Adger, a Houston oilman and friend of the elder Bush.

''Mr. Barnes was contacted by Sid Adger and asked to recommend George W. Bush for a pilot position with the Air National Guard. Barnes called Gen. (James) Rose (Texas Air Guard commander) and did so,'' the statement said.

''Neither Congressman Bush nor any other member of the Bush family asked Barnes' help. Barnes has no knowledge that Governor Bush or President Bush knew of Barnes' recommendation,'' the statement said.

Barnes also said he met in September 1998 with Donald L. Evans, a longtime friend and chief fund-raiser for Governor Bush. Barnes told Evans about Adger's request, and ''Governor Bush wrote Barnes a note thanking him for his candor in acknowledging that Barnes received no call from any member of the Bush family.''

In an interview with The Associated Press, Evans said he met with Barnes on his own initiative, without informing the governor in advance. At the time, he was Bush's gubernatorial campaign chairman and was concerned only about that contest, Evans said.

There's a rich backstory to why the subject came up in that civil suit. But as you can see Barnes went to some lengths not to make trouble for Bush; and they were, well ... thankful on many levels."

Re:DailyKos

[Anonymous Coward]

This is "informed and intelligent"?

Re:DailyKos

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a Senator Bush?

I must have missed it.

BTW, his father was ambassador to China LATER you
ass monkey.

Stick with KOS, it fits you well.

Re:DailyKos

[sg3000]

> There was a Senator Bush?
>I must have missed it.
> BTW, his father was ambassador to China LATER you
> ass monkey.

Mr. Congeniality is correct. George H.W. Bush was a two-term representative (1966-1970), but he lost his senate run twice (in 1964 and in 1970). I regret the error. George W. Bush was the grandson of a senator, Prescott Bush.

Furthermore, George H. W. Bush was Ambassador to the United Nations, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Chief of the U. S. Liaison Office in the People's Republic of China, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The rest, I'm sure everyone knows.

Re:DailyKos

[TummyX]

Daily "screw them" Kos.

Re:DailyKos

[zangdesign]

In general, I think the politics idea should have been nixed from the start. While some of it is unavoidable, we are already polarized here from our various choices in tech, and adding politics to the mix will drive a further wedge between the various factions here.

Furthermore - it is impossible to filter it out. Either the filters don't work or the stories are miscategorized. I really wish the editors would re-think the idea to include political discussion on this forum. There are enough sources out there to fill several lifetimes worth of reading - I would have preferred this one to remain focused more tightly on technology.

Re:DailyKos

[killjoe]

"Yes, pretenses he used are NOW shown to be false, but who cares? CIA reports, british intelligence, pentagon sources, etc believed Iraq was a threat and had WMD's."

There were lots of people who did not believe that. Bush didn't hear them when they talked. These people included the actual inspectors on the ground BTW.

Even if the CIA and the british intelligence did believe it (I highly doubt that, they wanted to invade iraq and therefore made that shit up) there were better ways to deal with that then to kill tens of thousands of people and install a CIA agent as your puppet dictator.

Re:DailyKos

[firewood]

politics.slashdot.org is rapidly turning into one of my least favorites because I've noticed that the moderation system is running amuck! Never before have I seen such a split in moderations where a single comment can be rated "informative" and "troll" numerous times in the same story.

This is a given in a single moderation system. It should oscillate chaotically. Even the meta-moderation might do so. The solution (for the mostly single dimensional politics in the US) is a dual moderation system. Moderators first rate their own views on a liberal-conservative scale, and then moderate a post. Moderation points should then accumulate to two scales. Biased moderation will then clearly show up when the two scales are diametrically opposed, instead of having to wait to observe the natural oscillation cycle. Readers can filter on one scale, the other, or both, depending on which biases they want to read.

Re:DailyKos

[0x0d0a]

Yeah, you get the occasional wackos, but welcome to the internet.

"Wackos" or "kooks" are often those that just don't conform to the social norms. There are points on which I feel that society at large is in the wrong on -- if I came into an argument on those points, I'd be labeled a "wacko".

It's awfully frusterating when people refuse to hear out an argument because someone's a "wacko". Every revolutionary new idea would have warranted such a brand at one point.

Re:DailyKos

[0x0d0a]

Better -- a form of "evaluation network" in which a rating for each post is computed for each user based on how they have previously agreed with other users.

That way the system itself can cluster users around memes.

Re:DailyKos

[greenrd]

Slashdot has covered political issues for over five years now. It's become part and parcel of what Slashdot is about.

Re:DailyKos

[mre5565]

> politics.slashdot.org is rapidly turning
> into one of my least favorites because
> I've noticed that the moderation system
> is running amuck! [...] Here's an example
> of where it happened to me recently.

Gee, you use the term "lying SBVT" and you don't expect a negative rating. Remove "lying" from your example post, and the signal to noise ratio goes up quite a bit. slashdot moderation is working.

Re:DailyKos

[(trb001)]

Ben Barnes, then Lt. Governor of Texas, admitted he got Bush into the National Guard

A reply to your post got modded offtopic, so let me repost to correct you...Bush was accepted into the guard in 1968, Barnes served as Lt. Governor in 1969. Before 1969, he served in the Texas House of Representatives. His daughter now says that his coming out against Bush is sketchy at best. Given these two facts (the dates and his daughter), I'd say he's not credible, probably just a Bush hater like Burkett.

or example, in Bush's records, Bush flew only 22 months of the 53 he owed

Read the documents he signed. He was liable for the 5 years only if not released by a superior. When he went to Alabama, he was released from duty.

Anything a politician mentions is fair game for lies?

It shouldn't be, but if I served 4 months in-country, got 3 purple hearts and used 1 sick day for all three, then came home and protested the war, I wouldn't use that time as the primary platform of my campaign. Do you realize Kerry has talked about Vietname for longer than he was *in* Vietnam? Get through a speech without talking about it. Get through a speech without haraunging President Bush. Talk about yourself!

I didn't want to vote Bush this time, I disagree with a number of his positions. The anti-gay marriage amendment really pushed my buttons. However, not knowing Kerry's platform because he's talked about three things...how Bush fucked up Iraq, Vietnam and now, finally, his economic plan (which sucks)...I have little choice. Sometimes it's better to vote for the devil you know rather than the devil you don't. At this time, I think GW will make a better president than Kerry. The onus is on Kerry to change my mind about that.

--trb

Re:DailyKos

[zangdesign]

Only where the politics have had an effect on technology (Your Rights Online, etc.), but now it's actually denigrating into the same stuff that can be found elsewhere.

Actually, what really bothers me is the inability for /. to filter it out back down to what it was.

Re:DailyKos

[Moofie]

Why don't you filter it out? You know, use that two and a half pounds of pattern recognition meat you carry around in your skull? Is somebody MAKING you post in discussions you don't want to have?

Ian Lyon

[eamacnaghten]

Ian Lyon

Easily...

[enamore22]

The most thorough, informative, liberal blog around... DailyKos

correction

[ltwally]

The link to Andrew Sullivan's site isn't right. It should be www.andrewsullivan.com

Re:correction

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

now only if people would correct Andrew Sullivan.

Yes, I am liberal, but I was aiming for the cheap joke.

Anyplace...

[NoseBag]

...Conservative.

Try going to DrudgeReport and then clicking on any of the columnists - they usually do a good job of ripping the mainstream (i.e. Liberal) media.

But it doesn't matter - we're all gonna die anyway.

Re:Anyplace...

[Sean80]

I guess the biggest problem I'd have with the drudge report would be the fact that it has been linked so often to the Republican smear machine.

Don't get me wrong, I've recently seen the light and realized once again that -all- politicians suck after a brief fling with the belief that the Democrats were On My Side. But, Drudge just seems to be out for a slanderous story, and well, it doesn't even have to be true to generate some traffic now does it?

Of course, this website is not the only one, nor is it a factor of it being right-leaning (Michael Moore anybody?) but there you go.

Re:Anyplace...

[Anonymous Coward]

If any Drudge Report story has required the same sort of mea culpa that the Rathergate documents did, I have yet to hear about it. And CBS is supposed to be one of those "trustworthy," "mainstream" sources, aren't they?

Re:Anyplace...

[fbg111]

In Drudge's defence, he also hammered Trent Lott when Lott made his infamous statement that if Strom Thurmond were elected president way back when, "we wouldn't have all these problems today", eg, wouldn't have Civil Rights and equality under the law for all races. Of course, all of the main stream media hammered Lott for that, so Drudge didn't get the same attention he did for Lewinsky and Rathergate, but he's not so rightwing that he blanks out or eases up on stories that hurt conservative pols.

You telling me that...

[tspilman]

...everyone *doesn't* read dkos?

Re:You telling me that...

[pjt33]

That's right. Not a single person reads it. And if you claim you do I shall ensure that the previous statement stands by defining you not to be a person ;p

Tom Tommorow's

[Snagle]

http://www.thismodernworld.com/ good bloggage and good cartoons too

Wonkette

[ellem]

but I really like dick jokes... so maybe it's just me.

Re:Wonkette

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, isn't her thing more ass fucking jokes than dick jokes?

Re:Wonkette

[Anonymous Coward]

like cheney?

Favorite political blogs

[Six Nines]

When you've had enough of Drudge and MoveOn, and you're ready for dessert, it's time for http://wonkette.com/!

cursor.org

[MalB]

I'd recommend http://cursor.org for links and summaries dissecting mainstream media coverage; points to neo-con links as well, though I'm not claiming it strives to be "fair and balanced", rather, investigative.

a bit more mainstream

[joeb2001]

While not quite a blog, Howard Kurtz's Media Notes are certainly much more even-handed than most, and the way I start every day:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/column s/kurtzhoward/

Other great kinda blogs are:
http://wonkette.com/
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/TheNote/Th eNote.html
http://www.rogersimon.com/

shameless self promotion CINN.ca... Canadian News

[warren69]

shameless self promotion CINN.ca... Canadian News

Small, but actively maintained.

News Hounds

[b3d]

www.newshounds.us
Their motto is "We watch FOX so you don't have to." They monitor the political slant of FOX News. The people that run this blog are the media monitors from the movie "Outfoxed" by Robert Greenwald.

Re:News Hounds

[Twirlip of the Mists]

They monitor the political slant of FOX News.

Who monitors the political slant of CBS News?

Okay, I guess that's kind of a dumb question. Everybody is monitoring the political slant of CBS News now that they've been outed as a bunch of lying partisan fucks. But my point is, who was monitoring CBS News before they perpetrated their big lie?

Radical leftists, "activists" and other revolutionary types love to make stink about FOX News, but you don't see them being caught trying to influence the outcome of the election by passing off counterfeit documents, do you?

Makes you think.

Re:News Hounds

[Bombcar]

Rather Biased.com

They've been there even before Rathergate.

Re:News Hounds

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Yes, yes, your answer is technically correct but you missed my bigger point. :-)

Re:News Hounds

[goon america]

Radical leftists, "activists" and other revolutionary types love to make stink about FOX News, but you don't see them being caught trying to influence the outcome of the election by passing off counterfeit documents, do you?

Oh, don't you?

That photo was shown repeatedly on Fox News' Brit Hume, Hannity & Colmes, and John Gibson's shows. And no, they never retracted or apologized for it.

Re:News Hounds

[Anonymous Coward]

These people apparently monitor CBS

Honestly, the day FOX News admits they've been making mistakes all this time is the day people will stop calling them partisan and biased.

Re:News Hounds

[Sarcasmooo!]

Are you a moron? Making fun of FOX News is so mainstream it happens ON FOX at times.

Also, you need some perspective: a communist assassinating a fascist dictator is a radical leftist. Calling people radical for criticizing what has to be the most highly suspect of all the wildly inept "news" outlets we in America are cursed with, makes you look like a dipshit.

Re:News Hounds

[Anonymous Coward]

He won't respond to this. He never does.

Re:News Hounds

[Valar]

I suggest you watch Outfoxed. To call Fox's systematic bias 'slant' is an understatement. Daily memos are circulated, telling the network producers and writers which way to lean on issues. There is a four to one ratio between right leaning 'one on one' guests and left leaning ones. A few former producers have noted that Fox's 'approved' Democrats (for use as 'special guests' experts contains almost no 'big names' (i.e. most people, even those following politics would not recognize the names on the list), while all the recognizible, well known republicans are included. The list goes on.

Re:News Hounds

[lucabrasi999]

who was monitoring CBS News before they perpetrated their big lie?

Odd, here I am reading this, while, watching Bill O'Reilly at the same time. O'Reilly just made the comment that blames Rather for poor reporting, but he doesn't think Rather was trying to influence the election. O'Reilly chastises right-wing blogs for turning poor reporting into some sort of left-wing CBS conspiracy.

Radical leftists, "activists" and other revolutionary types love to make stink about FOX News, but you don't see them being caught trying to influence the outcome of the election by passing off counterfeit documents, do you?

Of course, one of the reasons that you don't see Fox News being caught in this kind of work is that they simply do not have the size of a news department of a CNN or any of the other networks. Fox does a great job of throwing a few reporters out there and running commentators 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It leaves the investigative reporting to CNN, CBS, ABC, and most other news organizations.

Why? Who knows? Of course, it probably costs CNN alot more money to keep a staff on-site in every major and minor national capital around the world, whereas Fox only has to pay for a few dozen support personnel to sit behind their desk at the company Headquarters.

The Bonus for Fox is that it doesn't have to run the risk of getting the story wrong. It lets the other news organizations dig up the story. Then, it just has the commentators put their own spin on the news, after someone else spends the money to break the story (read this site take a look at the last couple of paragraphs on how Fox uses controlled interviews with paid internal staffers). And, because all it is doing is making commentary, it gets the ratings because commentary is alot more interesting than watching "real news".

Re:News Hounds

[Anonymous Coward]

You do need to separate commentary from reporting. But we will assume that Fox has a bias to the right. What is wrong with that? CNN, NPR, CBS, NBC, ABC, NY Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, and pretty much any other TV or newspaper have a bias to the left. So, it's okay for someone to be biased as long as they agree with you. How much you value free speech depends on how willing you are to tolerate someone who does not agree with you. Apparently, you do not value free speech. I feel sorry for you in your closed little world.

Re:News Hounds

[glennrrr]

Stuart Buck says that Fox was always very clear in saying the photo with Fonda and Kerry together was fake. He put together a fairly definitive case about it http://stuartbuck.blogspot.com/2004/09/kerry-photo s.html
which indicates that The New Republic was pretty sloppy in reporting otherwise.

Re:News Hounds

[medcalf]

True. Not mentioned in your post: Fox always identified it as a fake, as well as showing an actual picture with both Kerry and Fonda in the same frame, but much further apart and obviously not at the rally together.

Re:News Hounds

[Sarcasmooo!]

You must also be a moron, to reply to a post that claims all our news Media in America is inept with a post claiming I'm playing favorites.

Re:News Hounds

[Anonymous Coward]

You say you are not playing favorites, but you only say that Fox is biased. That would imply that the others are credible by default. By the way, calling someone a moron because they don't agree with you is not a very mature debating technique. Anyhow, I believe you are supposed to call me a nazi in order to "win". I still feel sorry for you.

Re:News Hounds

[Sarcasmooo!]

Please quote me where I actually said FOX is biased, aside from right here: FOX is biased, watch Outfoxed, try to rationalize the leaked daily 'directives' as not being biased, I dare you.

Secondly: "the most highly suspect of all the wildly inept "news" outlets"

Sorry but it's hard to feel bad for calling you a moron. First you tried to defend an obviously inept AND biased news outlet by calling it's critics radical leftists, which is insane. And this is the 2nd time I've had to point out that my original post criticizes all news outlets.

Re:News Hounds

[Sarcasmooo!]

It's also the 2nd time you've tried to use your pity for me as a weapon. You come across as an extremely trollish person (or a person with an insane view of what radical means), and you can't even completely read my small responses, which makes it impossible to even HAVE an ongoing arguement, so yes I think you're acting like a moron.

Re:News Hounds

[(trb001)]

Put down the kool-aid.

The memos you mention were a selection of 33 memos in all, about 10 of which they showed you, from FoxNews' nearly decade on the air. Some of those 33 didn't corroborate the "Outfoxed" hypothesis and weren't used. Read all the memos and you'll see what i mean.

The 1 to 4 ratio you speak of was a number generated by FAIR...actually, ALL the numbers in Outfoxed were generated by FAIR. FAIR is anything but, they're a left-wing organization.

The personal testimonies were all given by either

1) former FoxNews employees (without listing why they left or were "asked to leave" FoxNews)
2) former Fox employees that didn't even WORK for FoxNews (at least 2 worked for Fox affiliates)
3) anonymous sources, which any journalist can tell you is a no-no when you're trying to do a serious news story.

Did you notice they concentrated, primarily, on the editorialists on FoxNews? Cavuto, O'Reilly, Hannity, Fox and Friends. These people aren't delivering the news, they're editorializing it. That's what they were hired to do. They showed 2 second clips of the anchors delivering news briefs, and then it was only to prove points such as "FoxNews uses a lot of 'Some people say...' type news reporting".

Which leads me to my next beef with "Outfoxed". "Some people say" is not acceptable in written journalism because you're supposed to always acknowledge your sources. It's not preferred on the air, but you have a limited window of time so people are much more accepting of it. Do a Google search for transcripts using those words...Rather, Jennings, Couric, Brokaw, etc, etc...they all have used it in interviews and reports. FoxNews is not the only guilty party here.

The unknown special guests you refer to is a red herring...most of the right wing representatives aren't well known unless you read a lot of news. I can identify about every other guest that O'Reilly brings on his show.

Combined with taking clips out of context, anonymous sources, no comparison to other networks, and concentrating on the editorialists of FoxNews, "Outfoxed" wasn't even close to possessing journalistic integrity. Their message came across horribly biased and their conclusions merely supported a flawed hypothesis.

--trb

Re:News Hounds

[Valar]

I have read all the memos that are publically availible, and while there were some memos that didn't support the hypothesis, they didn't lean the other way either. In other words, the memos seem to alternate between pretty neutral and far right. Which doesn't make them unbias overall, does it? In response to your other complaints: several of the FoxNews former employees did list why they were 'asked to leave.' In fact, one consultant told a very specific story about when he stopped appearing on the network. It is clear that after the appearance in question he hasn't appeared again-- this is well documented. 'Any journalist' would not tell you that anonymous sources are a no-no. Several important news stories have been broken based on anonymous information. Remember the watergate informer who told reporters that it went 'all the way to the top'?

One of the points addressed in Outfoxed is that editorialists _don't_ just editorialize on Foxnews, and news anchors don't just present the news. In fact, sometimes the same on air personality will be doing news one day, and editorial work the next _in the same time slot_. The change into the editorial portion of the show often doesn't come with any notice at all. One second you are watching news, the next you are watching an opinion section, without even a word of disclaimer. I didn't bring up 'some people say' because I agree with you on that particular issue-- I don't think that is particularly a no no under the current standards of journalism.

As far as not knowing the right wing representatives unless you read the news: that's not very compelling. Why? Because even well read people who have followed politics for a long time can't recognize most of the left wing guests. This issue has been brought up numerous times in various media watchdog groups and even within the management of Foxnews, but as of yet, there has been no appreciable shift. As far as the numbers of guests, I see no problem with FAIR's method of survey. Other groups have confirmed the results. The people classified as right or left classified themselves that way for the most part. Are the people behind Outfoxed biased? Yes. Is foxnews? Yes.

Buzzmachine.com by Jeff Jarvis

[valmont]

BuzzMachine covers many topics from journalism, to every day life, to politics. Jeff started blogging after living through 9/11 first-hand. His political views tend to really be near the center. What I like about his political blogging is that he strives to stay away from the simplistic polarized political rants, and "gotcha" politics that plague so many other blogs i've seen, as well as mainstream media. He recently started spurring very intelligent and useful debate about various specific 2004 election issues. Jeff welcomes disagreement and all forms of thought-provoking debate, which is precisely what he has been yearning for, for years. To me, Jeff Jarvis' blog embodies that the Internet should be all about: less about mudslinging, more about exchange of thoughts. If he ever was to run for President, he'd get my vote.

Re:Buzzmachine.com by Jeff Jarvis

[bigman8]

I read Buzzmachine daily. One of the most balanced blogs out there - Jeff doesn't simply deride opposition, nor does he focus on the mudslinging of campaigns, as witnessed by his Issues 2004 series.

Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Scareduck]

Some names I know from people who enjoy that kind of stuff, and/or things I read because of similar interests:

• Baseball Crank (baseball + conservative politics)
• Wonkette (more People mag, less politics)
• The Daily Kos (liberal, had a quick but unfortunately wrong analysis of the now-thoroughly-discredited Rather memos)
• Priorities and Frivolities (minimal baseball, principally politics from a centrist and semi-libertarian viewpoint)

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The Daily Kos (liberal, had a quick but unfortunately wrong analysis of the now-thoroughly-discredited Rather memos)

Never retracted it, either. Which is a damn shame and more than a little ironic, if you think about it. I mean, even CBS has retracted their story now, but Markos Zuniga can't be bothered to retract a full-throated defense of something that turned out to be a massive lie.

Whatever you do, don't go to Markos' site looking for things that are true.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Alaska Jack]

Just a sort of small correction:

You say Kos "had a quick but unfortunately wrong analysis of the now-thoroughly-discredited Rather memos."

This isn't quite accurate. "Fortune" implies some sort of luck was involved. But in actuallity, Kos mounted a furious and quite deliberate defense of something that he passionately believed should have been true. He was sure that anyone who believes anything different from what *he* believes must be a lying scumbag, and that attitude caused him to insist that his version of reality was true, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.

This contrasts with the behavior I saw on most conservative blogs. Even those who doubted the memos seemed to take pains to mention that there was still a dwindling chance they *could* be real. (Of course, they also noted that even if the memos *did* turn out to be real, Rather and CBS still came out of the whole thing looking terrible).

- Alaska Jack

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[revscat]

The memos were true. I have to admit to not having followed the latest on the veracity of the memos themselves, but it is my understanding that the validity of what they said was never disputed, whether they were "real" documents or not. In other words, Bush did, in fact, skip the medical check, etc.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

God, your ignorance is fucking blinding.

Do you have the foggiest idea of what these four memos alleged? First, the memos were trotted out as proof that Bush pulled strings to get his spot in the Guard, allegations that were floated and debunked in 1994, 1998 and 1999. These memos were supposed to be a smoking gun, proof--finally! --of the allegations. But the memos are fakes. So that story sinks without a trace for the fourth consecutive time.

The second thing the memos alleged was that then-Lieutenant Bush was given a direct order to take an annual flight physical, an allegation that's stupid on its face. That's not the sort of thing that's ordered. If you skip it, you lose flight status. Since Bush was moving to Alabama where he didn't have a spot on the flightline anyway, there was no need for him to keep his flight status. A flight physical is not a fun test. It's ...invasive, if you know what I mean. It's not the sort of thing a person would undertake just for the hell of it. Bush has never denied skipping his physical, nor has he ever denied transferring to Alabama, nor has he ever denied dropping out of flight status for his last 18 months in the Guard. These are all matters of public record.

These memos were purported to dredge up all sorts of deep, dark secrets. Problem is that they did no such thing because they are forgeries.

Got it now?

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[lucabrasi999]

God, your ignorance is fucking blinding.

Why are you such a troll?

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[revscat]

I started to reply to you, but then I realized that you're just another immoral conservative liar who takes every fact and uses as an exercise in rhetoric.

You know Bush went AWOL. In your heart, you know it. If you can make a complete sentence, you aren't so stupid as to really believe otherwise. It might make your guy look bad, but that doesn't make it untrue. Bush skipped out on duties that most of us would have been severely punished for. There IS an aristocracy in this nation, and Bush is a part of it, and has used it. You can spin it all you want so that you're candidate looks favorable, but it won't change the underlying facts.

Oh, and by the way: in early 1972: Nixon ordered physicals for every active duty military personel in an effort to stem drug abuse. That is why Bush was ordered to take the physical.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You know Bush went AWOL. In your heart, you know it.

LOL. Insight into the mind of an insane, frothing Bush-hater, boys and girls. You can't buy that kind of candor at any price.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[revscat]

Frothing? Who are you talking to, and what was frothing about that? And are you saying that Bush did NOT go AWOL? If so, how to you reconcile that with McClellan's own statements, the other, undisputed documents, and the statements of those who were around at the time?

Dismissing someone as a "Bush-hater" might be all it takes to dismiss arguments to your satisfaction, but it does nothing to address the central points.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[n8_f]

If they couldn't possibly be true, then why did the White House distribute them? Why did Scott McClellan say "We had every reason to believe that they were authentic at that time"? Shouldn't George Bush have been able to recall that he hadn't disobeyed a direct order?

If you skip it, you lose flight status.

An annual physical is not something you just "skip" because you don't feel you need to have flight status. The government spent over a million bucks training him, he doesn't just get to say he isn't interested any more.

Bush has never denied... dropping out of flight status for his last 18 months in the Guard.

Actually, that's not true. In his "autobiography," A Charge to Keep, he claims just that. "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years." The truth is he stopped after less than two years.

First, the memos were trotted out as proof that Bush pulled strings to get his spot in the Guard, allegations that were floated and debunked in 1994, 1998 and 1999.

Debunked? No. First, just look at the prima facie evidence: Bush got in in front of thousands of others after scoring a 25% on his aptitude test, the lowest grade accepted, and he was sworn in on the day he applied. That is far from standard operating procedure. So the question isn't if strings were pulled, but who pulled them. It is very possible that neither Bush had anything to do with it and it was a family friend working on his own initiative, so you can argue that Bush didn't pull any strings, but strings were pulled and he was the benefactor.

[N]or has he ever denied transferring to Alabama.

A transfer would imply that he showed up in Alabama, but the records show he was simply gone for five months. There are no credible witnesses that can recall him ever showing up in Alabama.

The Whitehouse has succeeded in making this a confusing issue by lying about it, repeatedly claiming to have released all of Bush's service records and then releasing more, and trying to turn it into a he-said/she-said issue despite the facts. This is a pretty good summary of what we know at this point.

Frankly, I would be more than happy to have the whole thing dropped if Bush would simply acknowledge what the record shows: he didn't faithfully fulfill his obligation to the National Guard. It is as simple as that.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Dismissing someone as a "Bush-hater" might be all it takes to dismiss arguments to your satisfaction, but it does nothing to address the central points.

LOL. That's right up there with "fake but accurate." "You're saying I'm a crazy person, but you're not addressing my point!"

Whatever, dude. Back to your padded room with the nice jacket with the sleeves that don't go anywhere.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

If they couldn't possibly be true, then why did the White House distribute them?

It's press corps policy. Anything that comes in for comment gets passed on to everybody in the press corps.

Why did Scott McClellan say "We had every reason to believe that they were authentic at that time"?

Um. 'Cause it's true? I don't see your point.

Shouldn't George Bush have been able to recall that he hadn't disobeyed a direct order?

You aren't understanding simple points here. 1. No such order was ever given. Therefore 2. it never could have been disobeyed. There exists absolutely no evidence that any such order was given; that was an invention of these memos. Expecting the president to publicly deny every crazy allegation that gets cooked up about him is just silly.

An annual physical is not something you just "skip" because you don't feel you need to have flight status.

Actually, yeah, it is. If you want to be cleared to fly, you have to take a physical. If you aren't going to be required to fly (as Bush wasn't) and you don't want to hang on to your status for some other reason, you just don't take the physical. Common practice.

The government spent over a million bucks training him, he doesn't just get to say he isn't interested any more.

He didn't. When Bush requested a transfer to Alabama, he was told that he would be welcome but that due to a surplus of pilots who had rotated back home, there would be no place on the flightline for him. More pilots than aircraft, you see. More pegs than holes. Ergo, he would not be flying in Alabama. Ergo, no need to maintain flight status.

In his "autobiography," A Charge to Keep, he claims just that. "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years." The truth is he stopped after less than two years.

1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, half of 1972. That's four and a half years, not two. If you want to argue about whether that constitutes "several" be my guest. You'll be arguing by yourself, however.

Bush got in in front of thousands of others

False. In 1968, there were open slots for pilots who wanted to fly the F-102. Bush simply got into one of many open slots.

So the question isn't if strings were pulled, but who pulled them.

Nope. Simply untrue. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that any strings at all were pulled, ever.

A transfer would imply that he showed up in Alabama, but the records show he was simply gone for five months.

Yet another untruth spread by you for purposes unknown. We have service and pay records indicating that not only did Bush show up for duty in Alabama, he fulfilled all of his requirements for service. In both 1972 and 1973, Bush earned 56 points, more than the required 50 points. You don't get points if you don't show up.

Of course, you will undoubtedly fall back on "somebody was covering for him," but that's just circular reasoning. Not that that will stop you from getting really strident and shrill about it.

There are no credible witnesses that can recall him ever showing up in Alabama.

There's no evidence that he wasn't there, though, and plenty of documentary evidence that puts him on the scene. Including, as you're well aware, records of a dental examination. You wouldn't suggest, would you, that his teeth were on base but that he was not?

This is a pretty good summary of what we know at this point.

No, it's not. That was written by Kevin Drum, a well-documented partisan and a skilled liar himself. You will learn nothing by reading only that which is written by people who have no compunction about covering up or ignoring relevant facts in order to make their case.

Frankly, I would be more than happy to have the whole thing dropped if Bush would simply acknowledge what the record shows: he didn't faithfully fulfill his obligation to the National Guard.

That is not what the record shows. The record shows, in fact, exactly the opposite. So why aren't you happy to drop the whole thing right now?

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[revscat]

LOL. That's right up there with "fake but accurate." "You're saying I'm a crazy person, but you're not addressing my point!"

That's exactly what you are doing. It doesn't matter who makes a claim, only if the claim is true or false. You are dutifully following conservaclone rule #1, though: "Attack the source."

BTW: It was fake but accurate, something that your failure to even address you implicitly concur with.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Ray Radlein]

The bit about DailyKos is true, aside from the implication that it was Kos himself who posted that, as well as the implication that Hunter, who did post it, was actually wrong.

He wasn't, because he never said that the documents were genuine; he simply pointed out that the people who were arguing that they were forgeries were, frankly, full of it. In the long run, they may have been right, but their arguments weren't -- their arguments involved a great number of claims about what was and wasn't possible with contemporary machines, and most of those claims were simply wrong.

It may not seem like a big deal in retrospect, but there's a reason why we tell our students to show their work on word problems.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

It doesn't matter who makes a claim, only if the claim is true or false.

Who makes the claim affects whether the claim should be believed or not.

You are dutifully following conservaclone rule #1, though: "Attack the source."

And you are dutifully following idiot crapweasel rule #1: "Spew filth and then accuse the other guys of attacking the source."

It was fake but accurate

Nursey will be along with your injection shortly, Mr. Crazy Man.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[nursedave]

You wouldn't suggest, would you, that his teeth were on base but that he was not?

Um... I almost hate to bring this up. I seem to remember from when I was a kid, my grandpa's teeth being in a margarine container on the bathroom sink ... and HE WAS IN BED AT THE TIME!!!

I think he's got us on the dental records thing, someone call Rather.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, you have over 3800 posts and you have a UID in the 600,000's? Do you have a job? Or are you paid to surf and post to /. all day long?/pP

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Nursey will be along with your injection shortly, Mr. Crazy Man.

That's pitiable coming from someone who presents in his posts, very transparently, as either a depressive or manic depressive.

In the world proffered by your posts, naysayers are "crazy," while you're bringing your encyclopedic knowledge to bear along with steadfastly sane and unflinchingly honest interpretations. That's the narrative every time, and whether or not it remains coherent under scrutiny, it's often beautifully spun, with the same bottom line: "I'm sane, and if you think I'm wrong, you're crazy."

Who are you trying to convince? It's usually God, parents, molesting uncle, or ex-wife, right? Take your own advice - get thee to psychiatry. It's not just for liberals anymore. Oh, and if they sent you here, we the abused are sending you back.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that have to do with anything?

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Steve B]

it is my understanding that the validity of what they said was never disputed, whether they were "real" documents or not

The fake picture of Hillary Clinton and the space alien printed with the Weekly World News story about their affair were never formally disputed, either. By the standard you are implicitly proposing, the story should therefore be considered true.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[n8_f]

You aren't understanding simple points here. 1. No such order was ever given. Therefore 2. it never could have been disobeyed. There exists absolutely no evidence that any such order was given; that was an invention of these memos. Expecting the president to publicly deny every crazy allegation that gets cooked up about him is just silly.

Exactly. You seem to have misunderstood what I meant and read it as an equivalent to "when did you stop beating your wife". I meant that if the order had never been given, and I don't believe any such order was (it would have been redundant; it was already a requirement of pilots), shouldn't Bush have been able to say "that never happened"? I don't expect the president to deny every crazy allegation that gets cooked up, but I also don't expect him to hand them out to everybody in the press core, either. My point was that they knew it wasn't true, but didn't mind helping to further muddy the waters (which is what I think). But that is just speculation. And perhaps based on a false assumption, if you can provide a source for your "press corps policy." That would be new to me.

Actually, yeah, it is. If you want to be cleared to fly, you have to take a physical. If you aren't going to be required to fly (as Bush wasn't) and you don't want to hang on to your status for some other reason, you just don't take the physical. Common practice.

Look, just because you say it over and over doesn't make it true. It was a mandatory requirement and if a pilot failed to take it, a commander had to conduct an investigation and either convene a Flying Evaluation Board or forward a detailed report up the chain of command. See this document, page 18. If you can actually site a source that is more credible, please do. Also, "common practice" isn't a defense. It may be common practice to cheat on your taxes, but you are still cheating on your taxes.

He didn't. When Bush requested a transfer to Alabama, he was told that he would be welcome but that due to a surplus of pilots who had rotated back home, there would be no place on the flightline for him. More pilots than aircraft, you see. More pegs than holes. Ergo, he would not be flying in Alabama. Ergo, no need to maintain flight status.

Here, read this. Bush first tried to transfer to a standby reserve unit, one that wasn't required to meet or train. He had signed up for ready reserve, so this was of course rejected in July (after he had already "transferred" himself to Alabama). He missed his physical in May. Also, although you present the most recent story, Bush has told many over the years.

In his "autobiography," he doesn't even mention the physical and instead says "I was almost finished with my commitment in the Air National Guard and was no longer flying because the F-102 jet I had trained in was being replaced by a different fighter."

Then, it was that he had missed his physical because he was going to get examined by his personal physician.

Now, it is because Alabama units weren't using the F-102.
As for the transfer itself, he didn't apply again until September.

Yet another untruth spread by you for purposes unknown. We have service and pay records indicating that not only did Bush show up for duty in Alabama, he fulfilled all of his requirements for service. In both 1972 and 1973, Bush earned 56 points, more than the required 50 points. You don't get points if you don't show up.

Whether or not he earned the required 48 points in a year has no bearing on whether or not he missed five months. The payroll records are for the last weekend in October. Look, the facts as released by the Whitehouse are that he missed five months, from the end of May to the end of October. The question is whether he ever showed up in Alabama as the payroll records show or not, because a bunch of ot

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[n8_f]

How do dental records from January 6th, 1973 help? I ignored them because they aren't relevant to my argument. See my full response above yours. He missed at least five months, that is a fact, pure and simple. He left for Alabama in May and didn't even receive permission to transfer until mid-September. And then he still didn't train until at least the end of October. That this is even debated shows just how much confusion surrounds this issue, mostly thanks to the Whitehouse's obfuscation (much like the Saddam/9-11 link).

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[rico23]

Ignorance, thy name is... you.

Bush got into the TANG despite a 500-person waiting list, the lowest possible score on the aptitude test and no relevant experience. Also, the person who interceded for him has come forward and admitted his role. The memos had NOTHING to do with him.

The Air Force and/or TANG have released documents stating that Bush was ordered to take a flight physical and that his flying priveleges were revoked when he refused. Those are documented, undisputed FACTS.

Are you trying to claim that military personnel can refuse orders because they're 'uncomfortable' or 'make no sense'?

No, Bush has never denied that he didn't take the physical. BUT he has never explained why he didn't, and he has never explained why he was not punished for it.

I would like Bush to explain to a National Guard pilot currently serving in Iraq, or in line to go to Iraq, why he can't simply quit the way he, Bush, did.

And he did quit, by the way. That is also a fact.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

shouldn't Bush have been able to say "that never happened"?

I don't recall his saying that he's not queen of the space weasels, either. Stop the motherfuckin' presses.

I don't expect the president to deny every crazy allegation that gets cooked up, but I also don't expect him to hand them out to everybody in the press core, either.

That's White House communications office policy.

And perhaps based on a false assumption, if you can provide a source for your "press corps policy."

Well, it's right here in this three-ring binder. Come on down here and I'll make you a photocopy.

It was a mandatory requirement and if a pilot failed to take it, a commander had to conduct an investigation and either convene a Flying Evaluation Board or forward a detailed report up the chain of command.

Not correct. Try again.

Whether or not he earned the required 48 points in a year

50

has no bearing on whether or not he missed five months.

Um. Yeah, it does. The only requirement was to earn 50 points during the year. If you miss a drill, you make it up. You can earn all 50 points in the last month if you want.

Look, the facts as released by the Whitehouse are that he missed five months, from the end of May to the end of October.

Where are you getting this "he missed five months" language? That language doesn't make sense in this context. Guard members are required to fulfill their obligations on a yearly basis, not on a monthly basis.

He said that about the end of June 1970 after he had finished his training.

He finished his training in the winter of 1968. Sigh.

Go read this Guardian article from 1999.

Al-Ghaurdian? Don't think so.

It talks about Ben Barnes providing sworn testimony before a court that he in fact pulled strings to get Bush into the Guard.

That's the same testimony that he recanted under oath. Why do you idiots keep bringing up the Ben Barnes story when that story is deader than a box of hammers?

So, that doesn't prove it is true and you are free to believe it isn't, but there is evidence that suggests it happened.

No, there is no evidence whatsoever. There is the testimony of a man with a publicly acknowledged grudge, testimony which he subsequently recanted.

You are talking about dental records from January 6th, 1973

September 17, 1972.

Given the accuracy in the rest of your post, can you provide some examples?

Given the foolishness of your post, can you go read for yourself? Try looking at something that's not five years out of date, and that's not published in DNC propaganda machines like the Times, and the Globe. Try getting your facts from objective sources instead of spewing Michael Moore's talking points.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[revscat]

The fake picture of Hillary Clinton and the space alien printed with the Weekly World News story about their affair were never formally disputed, either. By the standard you are implicitly proposing, the story should therefore be considered true.

No, not at all. All I am saying is that just because the documents were forgeries does not thereby make the assertions they make false. I could provide you with fake documents with Eintein's signature that said "2+3=5". Just because Einstein didn't actually sign it doesn't mean the arithmetic is bad.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Bush got into the TANG despite a 500-person waiting list, the lowest possible score on the aptitude test and no relevant experience.

Mikey, is that you?

The idea that there was a big master waiting list is wholly an invention of Michael Moore. It's simply not true. The truth is that there were lots of slots open for applicants who could qualify as pilots, who were willing to fly the F-102, and who would sign a six-year commitment.

Also, the person who interceded for him has come forward and admitted his role.

Ben Barnes, the well-documented liar with a grudge against the Bush family? Ben Barnes, who first said that he interceded for George W. Bush in 1968, when he was UN General Envoy to Geneva? Ben Barnes, who now says he interceded in 1969, a full year after Bush got into the Guard? Ben Barnes who has been making baseless allegations for political purposes since 1994? Ben Barnes, who testified under oath about his allegations in 1999 and subsequently recanted, narrowly missing a perjury charge? Ben Barnes who has been unable to produce a single piece of documentary evidence or corroborating testimony from anyone in a full decade?

Wow. Compelling.

The Air Force and/or TANG have released documents stating that Bush was ordered to take a flight physical and that his flying priveleges were revoked when he refused.

No. There is no evidence that any such order was given. If a pilot wanted to fly, he had to take an annual physical. If he didn't take his physical, his flight status was revoked. Pilots who weren't going to be flying regularly skipped their annual physicals because those physicals were very involved and very invasive and very uncomfortable. There has never been any documentation that an order was given until these memos popped up, and these memos are forgeries.

Are you trying to claim that military personnel can refuse orders because they're 'uncomfortable' or 'make no sense'?

I'm trying to explain to you --although God knows why --that no such order was ever given. The reason why the forged memos were so damning is because they finally provided documentary evidence that Bush refused an order. Except they didn't, because they were big ol' fakes. So we're back to square one: no evidence of an order.

BUT he has never explained why he didn't

Yes, he has, repeatedly. He has said, countless times during the past decade, that he opted out of his physical because he was not going to be flying during the 1972-1973 year. There were more pilots than planes in his unit at that time, and there wasn't a spot on the roster for him. No flying, no need to maintain flight status, no physical.

What he hasn't done is said that he skipped his physical to avoid failing a drug test, which is the only thing the Bush haters would be willing to accept.

I would like Bush to explain to a National Guard pilot currently serving in Iraq, or in line to go to Iraq, why he can't simply quit the way he, Bush, did.

Um. They can. All they have to do is request an early discharge. If they've met their requirements and their unit isn't deployed at the time of the request, the request will almost certainly be granted.

And he did quit, by the way. That is also a fact.

Yes, it is. Except it's not called "quitting." It's called "early discharge." And it's a standard part of the National Guard's way of doing business.

John Kerry got an early discharge, too, by the way. Wanna talk about how he quit? Or do you want to ramble on about how it's different somehow for reasons that you never fully address but that you insist are salient?

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[n8_f]

Provide some sources. Again, just because you say it is false, etc., etc., doesn't make it so. For example, googling on "Septermber 17" and dental records turn up nothing on any dental records from September 17th, 1972 for George W. Care to clarify that? I mean, what do I have to do to get you to give me some evidence? I'm willing to read whatever you can post.

Until then, I'll stop wasting my time. Hopefully someone else will find my earlier posts interesting.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Provide some sources.

No.

For example, googling on "Septermber 17" and dental records turn up nothing on any dental records from September 17th, 1972 for George W.

LOL. Must never have happened then. If some miserable putz can't find it with a half-assed Internet search, then it's obviously false. Nothing to see here, move along, back to your homes.

I mean, what do I have to do to get you to give me some evidence?

You can start by reading my articles.

Until then, I'll stop wasting my time.

Yes, please.

Hopefully someone else will find my earlier posts interesting.

Slim chance of that.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[rjthomas61]

Try looking at something ... that's not published in DNC propaganda machines like the Times, and the Globe. Try getting your facts from objective sources

Could you please recommend some objective sources?

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[n8_f]

Here's one:
Air Force Times
This story is now a little bit dated (it was written after doubts had been raised but before CBS acknowledged their documents were false), but that has no impact on its accuracy. There isn't anything in here that isn't in the other sources I cited and that hasn't been known since the White House released the batch of records records earlier this year, but it doesn't hurt to hear it one more time. Of course, Twirlip will shrilly denounce it as a DNC mouthpiece ("everybody knows the Air Force is the liberal branch of the military") and try to use his circular logic to refute it ("everything I say is true; I say it isn't true; therefore, it isn't true").


And yes, I know the Air Force doesn't produce the Air Force Times. It is the same company that does USA Today. Gannet is pretty conservative, though (in the status-quo preserving, media-conglomerate sense).

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Doc Ruby]

And how many of these "conservative" blogs noted that even though the memos might be simulated, their story was true, and Bush dodged the draft, according to the same typist whose story finally debunked the memos' authenticity?

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Alaska Jack]

Ohmigoodness. Talk about being determined to believe what you want to believe!

1. I have no idea how many blogs mentioned this or that. I don't monitor them and tabulate their opinions on any given issue.

2. "Their story was true." This seemed to be a common response on liberal blogs. Let me draw you an analogy to try to show you how dishonest this is.

I have in my hand an official government document identifying you, Doc Ruby, as a child molester. No, no, don't try to muddy the issue by pointing out the many things in this document that suggest it is a forgery. All that quibbling is just a transparent attempt to distract attention from the real issue: Can you, Doc Ruby, prove that you are not, in fact, a child molester?

Get my point? The memos were the evidence to back up what had been, to that point, unsubstantiated allegations. That's precisely why CBS made such a big deal over them. Without the memos, they had, well, unsubstantiated allegations.

2. Clinton dodged the draft. Bush joined the National Guard. There's a difference. Did he join the ANG to avoid being drafted? Possibly. But see the next item ...

3. The typist never said Bush dodged the draft. The controversy was about the circumstances under which Bush *left* the Guard, not those under which he *joined* it.

4. The typist was a typist, for God's sake. She would have been in no position to know any of that anyway.

5. Her story didn't "finally debunk the memos' authenticity," except perhaps as far as CBS was concerned. In the real world, many many document experts had already weighed in saying they were 99% certain the documents were forged. The typist's story didn't come as any big revelation. She simply noted that she didn't type the memos.

6. Your biggest mistake is stating "their story was true, and Bush dodged the draft." You are repeating something as fact which you have no way of knowing one way or another. A number of allegations have been made against Bush, none of which have been substantiated, and all of which have been denied or refuted by other parties. Are some of them possibly true? Sure. It's also possibly true that Dan Rather is the Queen of the Space Unicorns. But I'll wait until someone actually produces proof before I go around pronouncing it as fact.

- Alaska Jack

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Doc Ruby]

If you don't believe by now the many witnesses, like the typist who remembered Bush personally, and the Lt. Governor who cut him to the front of the National Guard line, to Bush doing something other than go to Vietnam, you're committed to believing the Bush myth. Especially if you equate Clinton's Rhodes Scholarship with Bush's endless exceptionalism. Both used a privilege to avoid being sent to Vietnam, but Clinton didn't lie to cover it up. And he didn't send hundreds of thousands of Americans to his own corporate war of choice, hiding behind an image of "War President", when his own ass has never been on the line, even when it was supposed to be.

Re:Not exactly "favorite", but...

[Alaska Jack]

For crying out loud, you're making my points for me.

The typist, who says Bush was "selected not elected" and that she doesn't like his politics, claims one very limited thing: that Bush's superior officer had troubles with Bush as a subordinate. Well, guess what: That directly contradicts *other* testimony from other squadron members, members of Killian's family (one of whom also served in the squadron) and, most importantly, Killian's written reviews of Bush's performance.

So could the secretary be right? Once again, sure. But it's a he-said-she-said scenario. So which of us is more inclined to believe a "myth"?: Me, who looks at the situation and says, "Hmmm, it's possible either way," or you, who says "Bush is guilty, dammit! Guilty guilty guilty!"

OK, now lets review a few facts.

1. The Lt. Governor is a long-time, hard core Democrat whose own daughter says he admitted to her that he made up the Bush story.

2. The guy who actually admitted Bush into the Guard, Staudt, says there was no huge waiting list of people who had both the desire and the qualifications to be fighter pilots in the Air Guard. He has said the numbers boiled down to about 10/year. In 1968, one of these 10 was a Yale graduate whose father was a decorated WWII fighter pilot.

3. Three of Bush's squadron mates have testified that Bush asked about signing up for the Palace Alert program, under which Guard members rotated to Vietnam. He was turned down based on the fact that others had more flying hours, and the F-102s he flew on were being phased out anyway.

(Interestingly, contrast that with Kerry's record: Applied for a student deferrment to study in Paris, was denied, signed up for Swift Boat duty at a time when serving on a swift boat was the safest "combat duty" in the Navy. [At the time, Swift Boats were limited to coastal patrol; it was only after Kerry signed up that their mission was changed to include river patrol.])

4. I can say all of this, and still acknowledge that Staudt may have considered Bush's father's status when W. applied for the TANG. I mean, here was a Yale graduate whose father was not only a decorated WWII combat pilot, but a well-connected political figure. Heck yeah, that fact was probably not lost on him (though Staudt denies this). The only problem with this scenario is that it doesn't provide much ammunition for hard-core Bush haters. I mean, even if it's true: So what?

5. Ahh, the ol' Chicken Hawk fallacy, once so beloved of right-wingers. Perhaps you could come right out and say it: Do you believe that only those who have seen combat are fit to be President? Or use military force once elected? How about Roosevelt? Clinton? Heck, there are so many problems with this idea, I'm not even going to bother.

So there you have it. One of us looks at the available data and takes an even-handed approach as to what is evidence vs. hearsay, classifying some things as facts, others as probable, and others as simply possible but unproven. The other looks at the same situation and pronounces that he knows for sure what happened, that Bush is evil and that all the facts must fit that thesis.

Good luck persuading people.

- Alaska Jack

Like Kryptonite to Stupid

[Pyrosophy]

You gotta love Oliver Willis and for that matter all of the Media Matters people.

A little too extreme at times, but overall a very down-to-earth and likable guy.

If you want to make them mad, you could say the people over at metafilter (currently down) make for a good political blog. (snicker)

Antiwar.com

[fungus]

I really love Antiwar.com and it has a blog.

This site is really my favorite political news source.

Re:Antiwar.com

[gcaseye6677]

Yea, because it's nice and balanced, unlike that "corporate" media. Right?

Sullivan

[zaxios]

Andrew Sullivan is a conservative journalist who often writes for TIME. His gay rights stance is also notable (he's a homosexual himself). Here is the correct link to his site.

Re:Sullivan

[Locky]

A gay conservative must be a masochist, I really cannot see any other explanation.

Re:Sullivan

[On Lawn]

Try being a pro-drugenforcement Libertarian sometime. Four years of that and I was outta there.

The Daily Show

[RubberChainsaw]

"Where do you go when you want to see the mainstream media dissected and poked at?"

The Daily Show with John Stewart. Its not a blog, its a comedy show on Comedy Central. But it seems to be one of the few places where politicians and the media have their stupid blunders pointed out. Plus its pretty entertaining.

Re:The Daily Show

[mithras the prophet]

In the entertainment realm, none is better than Fafblog.

It's a bizarre, irreverent blog featuring a cast of strange mythical characters with satirical commentary, from a decidedly liberal angle. Use the RSS feed so you don't have to look at the horrible colors.

Samples:

Courage: The World's Terrorist Supply Is Fading Fast
The Medium Lobster has been heartened to see even more good news coming out of Iraq. To some, seventy-three dead and a hundred wounded in a single day of bombings and guerilla attacks would stand as a sign of a worsening quagmire confronting an administration whose policies on Iraq and terror seem at best incoherent and at worst markedly destructive. But to the enlightened, increasing terror in Iraq means that the administration's Iraq policy is finally working - by beginning to use up the world's supply of terrorists.

wheeeeeee-ha!
Wow! Me an Giblets just busted outta Guantanamo Bay (where I tried to blog yesterday but couldnt - there is no wifi in Gitmo who knew!) by chewin through the gingerbread walls (the better to lure unsuspectin young terrorists inside! When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld saw we were leavin he chased after us in his dress an his big warty nose but we pushed im into a pot where he melted away) an jumpin into our Confederate Flag-decorated orange Chrysler where we took off! Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge took after us in his beat-up ol cop car but it could not jump the river at Old McKinney's Bridge an he an his deputy Gordon England crashed into the muddy riverbank. "I'll get those Fafblog boys, consarnit!" ol Ridge said while a couple a pigs made funny snortin noises.

is my toothpaste gay?

Today I was sittin in the bathroom about to brush my teeth like usual when James Dobson's Focus on the Family runs in all important-like an says "Stop! Crest toothpaste tacitly supports gay marriage!"

"It's true!" says Giblets. "Our toothpaste is gay!"

"Crest toothpaste have you been hidin this all along?" I says to the toothpaste. "Why didn't you tell us? We would still love you, we are your consumers."

Mod this freak down

[Anonymous Coward]

That sig. definately is worthy of being a troll. I'm certainly not going to click on your first link now.

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal

[Anonymous Coward]

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/

Aotearoa: South Pacific Politician's Blog

[worik]

All you USA centric folks here is my favorite weblog from my country. By a member of our parliament.
Diary of a Debacle
The government here is in the process of confiscating the seabed and foreshore from the indigenous people of Aotearoa (although a citizen I am not indigenous) and they are having a committee investigate it. The blog is a record of what is happening politically at the committee.

other viewpoints....

[Anonymous Coward]

fromthewilderness.com whatreallyhappened.com thememoryhole.com infowars.com globalresearch.ca

Take it from a professional...

[metrazol]

...which I am (Let's go Holden!)

If you're uninformed or just love long lists of candidates and political parties across the nation, as well as the best commentary around, read...

Politics1

...and if you're a liberal...which you are, RIGHT?
Check out...

DailyKos

Propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it hasn't hit you yet that his Fahrenheit 9/11 movie is textboot propganda. Go look at the definition of propaganda and look at Michael Moore quotes where he adamantly agrees that his films are purposely meant to change the minds of voters. He is a kook that wants to push his "man of the people" image off on the viewing audience. Everything he said has been debunked by independant think tanks and individuals.

Re:Propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Debunking

This is a good debunking of the "facts" in F911, even includes links to Moores rebuttle.

Re:Propaganda

[Izago909]

I guess it hasn't hit you yet that Bush's administration spouts textboot propganda. Go look at the definition of propaganda and look at Bush administration quotes where he adamantly agrees that his PR spin is purposely meant to change the minds of voters. He is a kook that wants to push his "man of the people" image off on the viewing audience. Everything he said has been debunked by independant think tanks and individuals.

That's funny, if you replace "Moore" with "Bush administation", your statement is just as true. I guess they have more in common than most people would like to admitt. I really wish I had the time to do a synthesis report and intersect each of their opinions. I bet when all is said and done, it would be the most accurate story around. After all, when you add 1 and -1 you get 0. I'll leave it to the reader to decide whom is the negative and whom is the positive.

Re:Propaganda

[brainstyle]

they have more in common than most people would like to admitt.

Dude... Michael Moore isn't running the country. That's a pretty big difference.

Re:Propaganda

[TummyX]

For all Moore fans

Re:Propaganda

[Doc Ruby]

Debunking that Kopel bunk.

Wait a minute, wait a minute...

[mi]

Aren't the alternatives to BIG MEDIA outlawed by the Bush Administration, with the Ministry of Truth being formed as we speak from the Faux News executives?

electoral vote predictor

[avitlanstroke]

electoral-vote.com

It's more than just the map, you know!

Re:electoral vote predictor

[jaredmauch]

I must cite this website as well. It's excellent, IMHO. (Well, except for today when the "votemaster" became a bit more partisan in his comments). It provides useful data for statistics geeks and non-statistics geeks alike. I was one of the weird people in middle school that actually cared how the election came out. In 1992, I remember using prodigy to download debate transcripts of Perot, Bush and Clinton.

How about

[Anne_Nonymous]

How about none of the above? I'm perfectly capable of despising most the candidates without some amateur pundit's assistance.

Re:How about

[lucabrasi999]

You must be a mind reader.

Two and a half more good ones

[GarbanzoBean]

Politics:
http://dailykos.com/
http://atrios.blogspot.com/

For science (not quite a blog)
http://www.aps.org/WN/

Jerry Pournelle

[chroma]

The mail section of Jerry Pournelle's website is great. He takes on many topics including computers, technology, and education, not just politics. Yes, it's Jerry Pournelle of Byte's Chaos Manor and SF authordom.

Web site:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/currentm ail.htm l

Re:Jerry Pournelle

[JabberWokky]

Seconded. Dr. Pournelle gathers information and does commentary and periodic essays on what is going on in the United States. His Republic versus Empire essays are very insightful and I've pointed many people to them. He is also an excellent example of the classic conservative as opposed to the neo-con religious right that now holds office.

--
Evan

i fuck goats

[Anonymous Coward]

in the ass

cursor.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Cursor is excellent and they have many links to other good sites.

Jesus' General Of Course!

[manyoso]

No self-respecting, heterosexual, republican male, should go without a visit every couple days to General JC Christian, patriot. The general provides a welcome tonic for all the inner frenchmen leaking out of the mainstream press.

Re:Jesus' General Of Course!

[weetjerm]

Hey, I used to read your blog all the time. That must have been two years ago now?

But now I can't remember what it was called... Can you help me out?

P.S. patroitboy kicks ass!

Noam Chomsky

[delirium of disorder]

http://blog.zmag.org/ttt/ Love Chomksy or hate him, you have to admit he incluences political thought in the US and the world and is therefor worth paying attention to.

Re:Noam Chomsky

[Anonymous Coward]

The only influence Chomsky holds on political thought is to make anti-semitism and Holocaust-denial acceptable---even fashionable---on the left.

Re:Noam Chomsky

[delirium of disorder]

Noam Chomsky is ethnically jewish and a traditional zionist (meaning he wants a peaceful socialist secular state in isreal/palistine). Chomsky believes the holocost did occur but has defended holocost deniers like Serge Thion because he holds free speech to be important and recognises that the Establishment is censoring those with unpopular view points.

Re:Noam Chomsky

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, he really hates those jews. Have you actually RTFBooks?

"let us think for you"

[ChipMonk]

Their motto is "We watch FOX so you don't have to."

The same kind of thinking that just got CBS into deep, deep doodoo.

Electrolite

[Allen Varney]

Electrolite is a blog by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, one of the leading book editors in the science fiction field. His blog is now almost all Democratic politics, occasionally as seen from an SF fan's perspective but always from a viewpoint of solid common sense.

Re:Electrolite

[Ray Radlein]

His wife and fellow SF editor, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, also has an excellent (and much more heavily-trafficked) blog, Making Light. Both are highly recommended.

agonist , art & letters

[Anonymous Coward]

For a leftist bent: agonist and
for a nutty kind of libertarian bent : Arts and Letters Daily.

http://j33liewanger.blogspot.com/

[evil_one666]

I go here. Some of this stuff makes you think!!

Not Quite

[ackthpt]

slashdot?

While Slashdot discussions can degrade to political bickering, there's nothing quite like a USENET group completely unrelated to politics to get buried in a 1,000+ article thread which has violated Godwin's Law dozens of times and is often massively cross posted.

powerline

[sPaKr]

PowerLine. Some fo the guys that help break the CBS memogate story. They have been called 'guys in the pajamas' course they are all lawyers, and have clerked, worked with and for some respected people. I think the journlaist fail to see that if they sucked they might have been journlest and not in the pajama crew, yet these guys are smart, did well, and have real day jobs. The question is what does that say for the state of journalism?

Re:powerline

[sPaKr]

http://www.powerlineblog.com/

My favorite political weblog?

[Ignorant Aardvark]

I'll have to go with "None".

Re:My favorite political weblog?

[Cragen]

I second the motion. I see no candidate nor pundit that has any sense of priority, decorum, or vision. All I see is concern for $$$ and/or expedient fanaticism over fringe concerns to the human species and the world we inhabit.

Sincerely, Cragen.

Fafblog.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bow down before the wonder that is fafblog

It's like nothing you've ever seen before, and it makes /. colors look sane.

i fuck sheep

[Anonymous Coward]

in the ass.

The Washington Note

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out a brainy new blog, http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/ . . . its author, Steve Clemons, offers a higher ratio of thinking to ranting than the average political blog, I think it's going to be one to watch.

None.

[Neil Blender]

If I want to see frothing at the mouth, I'll go to the pound and watch them put down rabid animals.

Not always political, but often good

[RealAlaskan]

Jerry Pournelle's blog is one of the oldest blogs on the web, and when it's politics season, he comments on that. Even when he's wrong, he's worth reading.

moderation system run amok?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here.

Andrew Tobias

[rjstanford]

He's a democrat - and he's the treasurer of the DNC - and he's gay. All told, some interesting stories.

Check it out at http://andrewtobias.com/

Lucianne.com

[artemis67]

http://www.lucianne.com/

Re:Lucianne.com

[VividU]

Home to racists, bigots and dim bulbs everywhere!

Try this Lucianne trick:

1) Wait for a thread about Mexico or the "borders"
2) Have fun as the moderators delete posts talking about "wetbacks" or "beaners"

Re:Lucianne.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, like there aren't idiots who post to Slashdot as well?

Just look, there's still letting you post here.

Re:Lucianne.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe...apparently you haven't tried being a WASP on slashdot....

blogs to read

[mycal]

http://www.instapundit.com/ - the king of all blogs
http://andrewsullivan.com/ - gone way down hill but still readable
http://www.allahpundit.com/ - good mix of political fun
http://claytoncramer.com/weblog/blogger.html - guns and fun
http://www.powerlineblog.com/ - more right slant fun.

http://www.iraqthemodel.com/ - differnt view inside Iraq
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/ - more good insight in iraq
http://www.iraq-iraqis.blogspot.com/ - and again

http://cbftw.blogspot.com/ - used to be one of the best blogs in Iraq until the man cracked down on him. But MUST READ THE ARCHIVES!

mycal

Kos, WaMo...

[js7a]

For those of us who believe that Kerry spins a lot less than the convicted drunk drivers' outright lies, I recommend:

The Daily Kos (Scoop software)

The Washington Monthly (Movable Type)

Chomsky's Turning the Tide (pay to play: ironic? no, he's just to busy to respond to anonymous comments)

The Washington Note (MT; by a good friend of Josh Marshall)

Ed Fitzgerald's Unfutz (MT maybe; has the best poll aggregations)

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

pay to play: ironic? no, he's just to busy to respond to anonymous comments

LOL. That's a fascinating way to spin the facts. The truth is that when Chomsky the America-Hating Idiot launched his site, he was immediately swamped by THOUSANDS of comments -- not anonymous ones, but rather signed ones --from people who weren't prepared to let him get away with his particular brand of mid-Atlantic bullshit.

His solution? Shut the comments down.

God forbid you challenge Chomsky's beliefs. Never, ever forget that he knows more than you.

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[js7a]

Which blog are you talking about? I got an email about Chomsky's blog a few days after it launched, and I never saw more than a few dozen comments.

Do you care to settle this at the Wayback Machine?

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[macmaniac]

I like a gentle mix of Daily Kos, AmericaBlog.org and some BuzzFlash (yes, I know BussFlash isn't a blog, quite).

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[On Lawn]

Kos suffered from a case of "Baghdad-Bobia", a rare condition where their shear willingness to believe blinds them to facts that are evident to everyone else. To the Kos, the CBS forged memos were real and still are. During the debate over typesetting, it was enough to show a typewriter with proportional spacing while everyone else was performing technical analysis on different spacing technologies.

The Washington Monthy seems alright though. Chomsky suffers from being Chomsky. And no one suffers from it more than him ;) His analysis never raises above the complexity of answering the question, "How are we going to pin this on the USA?" And if it doesn't answer that question he ignores it. Which, unfortunately, means he ignores much of what is going on in the world.

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[Anonymous Coward]

I never read Kos until the CBS forgery story broke. That crazy Kos and his fans cracked me up with their insistance that the forgeries were real. It was depressing that so many politically active Americans are so stupid.
Have you noticed that Google news categorized Kos as "satire"?

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[TheCaptain]

Chomsky suffers from being Chomsky. And no one suffers from it more than him ;)

That is about the best dead-on explaination of Chomsky I think I have ever read on Slashdot.

Thank you for that.

A agree about Kos as well, for the record. He's a crackpot, from this whole CBS document scandal, to the whole screw them episode he is so well known for. If a conservative did half of the crap Kos gets away with, I think most of the Slashdot audience would be showing up with torches and pitchforks.

Oh well...at least they mean well.

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[Chris Mattern]

Ah, Kos. The last hold-out to believe that you could type a perfect Word document on a Selectric.

Chris Mattern

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[Ray Radlein]

Nonsense. Kos himself hardly said anything at all about those memos; several of the more dedicated readers and participants of the site, such as Hunter, put in a tremendous amount of effort in looking at the documents and, mostly, at the arguments against the documents.
Hunter has never declared the documents to be genuine; all that he has done is collect and analyze, at great length, the "evidence" that was being presented for the documents being forgeries; and, not surprisingly, he was able to show what anyone who spent a lot of time typing in the 70s already knew: The arguments were full of crap.
Note, however, the considerable distance between "The evidence you presented to make the case that these documents are forgeries is false" and "The documents are not forgeries." It's the difference between "not proven" and "innocent."
And while there certainly were -- and still are -- many individual posters at Daily Kos who do insist that the memos are genuine, they aren't the ones posting the pages of carefully collected research, like Hunter or maha -- they're mainly content to sit around and accuse Kevin Drum of being a closet Republican for ever having dared to doubt the documents' authenticity.
But they're not Kos, any more than clueless "First post!"ers and SCO apologists are Cowboy Neal.

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[TGK]

Personally I think this entire thread is self defeating. Think about it.... "what's your favorite blog?"

I don't know about the rest of you, but I thumb through a huge number of blogs/news sites/etc looking for material that catches my interest. Then I do my own research (not as in depth as I'd like sometimes) and try to make my own contribution, be it emotional or analytical to the topic.

So my favorite blog is [The Nephandus Weblog (aka Mephistopheles' Journal)] which is... well... mine if you'll pardon the plug. I'm surprised more people aren't saying that. The macroscopic purpose of bloging is to get the individual's ideas out there, to circumvent the established publication process and to bring a voice to the masses.

Admittedly, the masses are sometimes dumb as rocks. Rather than complain about the blogs you don't like, start your own! I know my blog doesn't get the traffic that the big names get, but it does get some and I'd like to think that those that see it are in some way influenced by it.

On the flip side, this thread has been a wonderful resource for me, because now I have even more to thumb through. The average /.er has at least a more skeptical view of the world than most, to say nothing of technical ability etc. I'd like to read what more of you have to say outside the bounds of this community.

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[On Lawn]

such as Hunter, put in a tremendous amount of effort in looking at the documents and, mostly, at the arguments against the documents.

Indeed. Allow me to quote Hunter in the article you linked to...

As I have said before, this "Typewriter" series was founded on one simple premise. The right-wing are liars. They have been liars. They will continue to be liars. It is part and parcel of modern "movement" conservatism. And, indeed, they were lying in this case as well, and continue to do so, and will probably continue until the day the Rapture, space aliens, or tainted Big Macs finally come to take them away.

That "one simple premise", in my book, does not show very rigorous research. I remember Baghdad Bob complaining, when people were questioning him about reports of US Soldiers in Baghdad, how the US were liars. And that is why we should believe him over the pictures of tanks rolling down the Baghdad highway.

Well I looked further. Poor soul is (just as I said) still stuck on whether or not there was proportional spacing when everyone else is talking about typesetting technologies.

Well you decide. For all their sophmoric hijinks, here is an article linked to from LGF. Compare that to the Kos article which had the following as the only points of technical merit. You tell me if the Kos article shot down all of the points like it says it does...

Did proportional type exist back in the dark ages of 1972? Yes.

Did "Times New Roman" and similar fonts exist? Yes.

Did superscript "th" characters exist? Yes.

Could "centering" be accurately achieved on a typewriter? Sigh. Yes.

Could typists correctly determine where to wrap words so that they would not run over the margins of the page? (What, are you stupid?) Yes.

And so on, and so on, as each argument was shot down, and new ones arose to assert themselves. That's it. That was the crux of the argument. Then we went from typeface to signatures, to what slang terms were or were not common during the Vietnam era, etc. etc. And still, they were shot down.

It is a real travesty that this is what you call collecting and analyzing at great length. And this is someone you point to as an intellectual at Kos?

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[gad_zuki!]

Dont forget Atrios, kind of the sane version of Instapundit.

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[sheldon]

Baghdad-Bobia?

I don't mind if kos, free republic or little green footballs plays this game. If you want to believe Vince Foster was really killed by Clinton... who am I to care?

But what has always bothered me is a Whitehouse administration which plays this game. Taking forged intelligence handed to them by Iranian spies and using it as a justification to launch a war into Iraq. At some point you really have to ask... "Exactly who are these guys working for, anyway?"

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[On Lawn]

Taking forged intelligence handed to them by Iranian spies

What forged intelligence was this?

Exactly who are these guys working for, anyway?

Oh please. Not another "Bush is the most cunning, manipulative and intelligent *puppet* evar" routine. I guarantee you that whenever you see someone extoled for genious and mocked for subordinate cluelessness at the same time, you are beholding a very kludged together alternate theory to reality.

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[Anonymous Coward]

> God forbid you challenge Chomsky's beliefs.
> Never, ever forget that he knows more than you.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it Twirp? Except that he actually has decades under his belt and you have... well, crap: a few years of googling and posting in your underwear. Crap, that is, unless you compare your knowledge, eloquence, reasoning, and standards of intellecutal honesty to the average slashbot; but that is, of course, hardly useful.

Big fish, small pond, hypocritically attacking someone who uses similar methods (albeit in a different league). Fabulously hilarious. Oh yeah, and keep on truckin'.

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[Anonymous Coward]

> a rare condition where their shear willingness

It's sheer in that context, not shear.

"The man looked down at the sheer cliff."
"A farmer needs to shear his sheep."

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[sheldon]

What forged intelligence was this?

The evidence that Iraq had WMDs. It all came from the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi... essentially an Iranian Intelligence front organization.

Not another "Bush is the most cunning, manipulative and intelligent *puppet* evar" routine.

I never claimed he was cunning, manipulative or intelligent.

I claimed he was duped, and he won't admit it.

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[On Lawn]

The evidence that Iraq had WMDs. It all came from the Iraqi National Congress

They did have a hand in it, and I agree we took them too much for their word. I hope everyone has learned a lesson from this.

Two counter points though, considering Kay's report I'm of the opinion that Saddam himself was being lied to as to whether or not he had stockpiles. Though the INC was lying, the corroborative chatter from Iraq was too for much different reasons, Saddam *wanted to have* chemical weapons.

I claimed he was duped, and he won't admit it.

Actually Bush, Powell and others have spoken for the White House in saying where they were and weren't mislead. Bush admits there are and probably weren't stockpiles of WMD's. Powell admits that some of his information was not accurate.

However, that doesn't lead to an appology for the war, and it shouldn't. For instance the press seems to think that anything but a soccer field full of warheads with cartoonish skull and bones on them is "no WMD's found". You can watch the headlines of press conferances where WMD's are found and disclosed, and yet when they say "no stockpiles of WMD's" the press slaps the headline "No WMD's found".

But there have been WMD's found. Near 20 chemical warheads, hundreds of empty chemical warheads, and a number of contraban rockets. The potential to make WMD's was closely protected by Saddam, and according to every single scientist they talked to, Saddam was ready to begin production the second sanctions were lifted (which France, Germany, and Russia had already been lobbying for since 1998). And Saddam, according to Blix, still was non-compliant in verifying the destruction and accountability demanded in 1441.

There is simply no reason to appologize for the Iraq war. Ding-dong the Saddam is behind bars. Liberty is in labor pains in Iraq, but soon to be born. And, a number of countries have stood up to take notice that they will be held accountable.

Re:Kos, WaMo...

[sheldon]

LOL!

PT Barnum was right.

Correct AndrewSullivan URL

[Nyktos]

I believe the URL above should be: AndrewSullivan.com

All over!

[dodongo]

I go all over for my political blogging...

For crazy news from the Left, I like DailyKos; it's most blog-o-riffic.

For crazy news from the Right, even though it isn't really a blog, Drudge Report.

In dealing with legal / technical slants on political issues, it's hard to top Larry Lessig's blog.

I like To Be Determined, becuase it's my blog ;) But there's always witty political content there, both locally and globally, that interests me!

And finally, for a news for nerds and stuff that matters , it's hard to top Slashdot!

load o' whoey...

[Anonymous Coward]

blogs can be manipulated just like any form of media - when this becomes clear to the man on the street, blogs will die the death they deserve. FordBlog.com - MacDonald'sBlog.com - WhiteHouseblog.com....

Five I find insightful

[sphealey]

Daily Kos

Washington Monthly (by Kevin Drum)

Talking Points Memo (Josh Marshall)

Atrios

Matthew Yglesias

Digby's Blog

Re:Five I find insightful

[NearlyHeadless]

Atrios may link to interesting things, but "insightful" is one thing I wouldn't call him. He's like a Slashdot troll, trying to stir up a good rage. He rarely even uses complete sentences. Take a look at this post, titled "Stupid Journalists" where his comments on the subject of the margin of error in a political survey. His comment: "Uh, in a word, no". Even his slavish commenters wondered whether he agreed or disagreed with the letter he was linking to.

Contrast that to Kevin Drum's really informative post on the same topic a few days earlier.

Look at the other posts on that page. "Daryn *Hearts* Rush: Ewww". Insightful?

This guy looks familiar. Insightful?

Re:Five I find insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

Dump the hand-wringing moderate capitulator Drum from that list and it's not so bad (though Yglesias was another liberal chickenhawk with egg all over his face from supporting the Unelected Fraud's lies that got us into Iraq... but he's young still, so I'll give him a break).

Re:Five I find insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

Five I find insightful

Maybe one of them would be insightful enough to teach you how to count to six...sorry, I couldn't resist.

Re:Five I find insightful

[sphealey]

> Five I find insightful

>> Maybe one of them would be insightful enough to
>> teach you how to count to six...sorry, I couldn't
>> resist.

"I definately deserved that"

sPh

Re:Five I find insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh. Daily Kos? Atrios? Kevin Drum?

Though I have to say Josh Marshall is the worst of them all. At least the other don't have a habit of saying some big story is about to break, and then nothing happens.

Remember his big promise about 'even more shocking' photos during the Abu Ghraib scandal? Nothing. Or more recently, during Rathergate, he was saying that there were more shocking Bush guard memos to come.

My favorites

[TTop]

Oh, it's hard to narrow it down to a small list.

The previously mentioned Talking Points Memo is quite good.

Also see:

Washington Monthly (Kevin Drum, formerly of Calpundit)
Altercation (what liberal media?)
Daily Howler
Columbia Journalism Review de-spins the media.
Juan Cole (very insightful Iraq commentary from this professor of history)
White House Briefing (political round-up)

Re:My favorites

[Anonymous Coward]

Juan Cole insightful ?

You are confusing well delivered articulation with insightfulness..

Re:My favorites

[NearlyHeadless]

Altercation (what liberal media?)

There's another blog called Oh, That Liberal Media.

Here are some blogs I like that are often political, but not stupidly partisan, such as:

• The Volokh Conspiracy -- mostly libertarian law professors
• Marginal Revolution -- a couple of economists, one of whom also posts at The Volokh Conspiracy
• Daniel Drezner-- a political scientist
• Foreign Dispatches--a Nigerian-American programmer with many interesting perspectives.
• ParaPundit--some random bloke named Randall Parker, a computer programmer, I think.

In case you haven't heard, BlogLines is a great way to read blogs online.

Hugh!

[apoplectic]

I regulary visit www.hughhewitt.com. A great conservative radio show accompanies it. One thing I really appreciate about his show is that he occasionally interviews non-political types...often people from geeky/science realms.

Split Post Moderations & Ratio of Friends to F

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, the rightwingers/libertarians are real fond of modding down those with leftist viewpoints.

Is it just my imagination, but with my political awakening triggered by the Iraq war/9-11, etc, it seems to me that the RightWingers are vindictive, spiteful, hypocritical, liars. And I used to be one!

Here is an interesting project for a leftist/liberal with a good scriptwriting touch: write a script to spider through a bunch of Slashdot posters personal info pages, starting with one obviously Liberal/leftwing poster, and one obviously conservative/rightwing/libertarian poster. Record each of their friends, each of their foes, each of their fans, each of their freaks.

For example, I have about 17 freaks (people who hate me, denoted me as a foe), 21 fans (people who have denoted me as a friend), about 6 friends (people I like), and about 4 foes (People I do not like).

When I browse through the personal slashdot info pages of my fans, freaks, friends, etc., I notice something. My friends and fans are liberal--I can see that from their posts. And that is not surprising. I pick them that way, deliberately.

And my freaks and foes are conservative; I can see that from their posts. Again, not a surprise.

But here is something interesting: the liberal slashdot posters have fewer FOES than FRIENDS. And the conservative posters have more FOES than friends. And you know what, that is not surprising to me, judging from what I see as a principal characteristic of conservatism in America, in general--it is a meanspirited, hypocritical politics. Most importantly, it makes a DELIBERATE appeal to the worst in people. It asks you to mistrust your fellow citizens. And this is an advancement for man? No, it is not....I am just glad I was finally able to see through the media manipulation that led me to being a conservative in the first place.

As for the split moderation, YES, I have many such posts: modded both interesting/insightful AND Troll/flamebait. Very bad....But I do not see a lot of work being done on slashcode, so I doubt the problem will be solved.

i fuck cattle

[Anonymous Coward]

in the ass!

National Review

[lost sheep]

NRO (National Review Online) is a conservative weblog and normally considered one of the best of any political leaning

Middle Eastern Blogs

[Netbrian]

I've become a fan of two blogs about the Middle East recently, and especially now that I've got RSS feeds figured out.

http://www.juancole.com/ , or Informed Comment, is an excellent commentary on the Middle East in general from a professor well versed in Arabic and Islamic studies. He's very good at explaining the deeper culture issues behind different events.

http://www.livejournal.com/~collounsbury/ is another enjoyable web log on the Middle East from the point of view of a Risk Analyst. While the author is very abrasive and does not suffer fools at all, one eventually gets used to and enjoys the style and information available.

Both of these are professional blogs, more focused on giving their own perspective on issues than really examining how the media presents them.

Instapundit

[SubstormGuy]

Try Instapundit. Lots of links from there.

Would have to be..

[Proph3t]

RightOfWay Conservative and on a .tk domain name but dont doubt it, the man has got some great stuff.

Watchblog

[Jackboot]

http://www.watchblog.com/

Well besides my blog...

[Arctic Fox]

Drudge.. the original proto-bloger..
National Review's The Corner. http://nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp
Captains Quarters http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/
Instapundit http://instapundit.com/
Powerline http://www.powerlineblog.com/
Tim Blair http://timblair.spleenville.com/
BerkeleySquareBlog http://www.berkeleysquarejazz.com/blog/

Dailykos & Atrios for "opposition" research....

i fuck horses

[Anonymous Coward]

in the ass?

Some of my picks:

[Masker]

All are liberal, of course.

1. Ugga Bugga has good charts/info compression and researching.
   
2. Wonkette for shear entertainment value. She's great, and she has "scooped" the mainstream press, too.
   
3. Majority Report Radio has a blog that can be a good news source.
   
4. News Hounds, the anti-Fox. "We watch Fox so you don't have to."
   
5. Greg Palast has a very informative and well-researched blog.
   
6. Salon's War Room '04 is awesome, even if you have to watch a 30-second ad to read the whole thing. Not really a "blog" per-se, but sort of blog flavored...
   

I tend not to read conservative blogs because I like my blood-pressure where it is. And, really, I read enough conservative BS when I read the stories that are run in the normal "liberally biased" press. In their zeal to be "balanced", news outlets feel they need to print a bunch of lies & distortions from the right in order to balance anything not from the right.

Re:Some of my picks:

[russellh]

Try Juan Cole's Informed Comment. His September 11 post was brilliant.

Re:Some of my picks:

[recharged95]

Actually we are seeing a interesting playout by the media. With the CBS "thing". They are definitely holding their ground like FoxNews, I mean come on, Fox has take a lot out of context (and made it entertaining though!) as well as printed questionable things. The funny thing is mainstream media is investigating CBS like having a prostate examine--where's the mainstream media investigating Fox? Others? Zero... Why? it's all about corporations, competition, and viewership.

CBS has a much, much larger audience than Fox granted, but in competitive spirit, why go after the smaller Fox (no pund intended) when you can go after a big one like CBS. And so the commericalization of media is played out, where the competitors don't see a need to

• 1. define & investigate the story (i.e. someone did get preferential treatment) to get to the real truth regardless of lies and correct by saying what really happened.
• And 2. Identify by name the wrongful sources (i.e. someone flat out try to manipulate) that tried to create a conspiracy (dems AND repbs included) to discredit.

Instead we get a fight for corporate-news market share (ratings) as all the other channels fight to gain new viewers and the politicans are taking us for a major spin ride by abusing the system since there are no checks and balances of something like an mainstream, independent journalist or unbiased paper. On both sides I see no follow thorough!

In the end, are we really informed?

Otherwise, I put my vote in for Wonkette too. It does reflect attitude and reality of the politics in DC.

Re:Some of my picks:

[That's Unpossible!]

Actually we are seeing a interesting playout by the media. With the CBS "thing". They are definitely holding their ground like FoxNews, I mean come on, Fox has take a lot out of context (and made it entertaining though!) as well as printed questionable things. The funny thing is mainstream media is investigating CBS like having a prostate examine--where's the mainstream media investigating Fox? Others? Zero... Why? it's all about corporations, competition, and viewership.

First, please show me a Fox News story where they used faked documents from a biased, unreliable source after warnings from document specialists?

Second, the reason it's such a big deal that CBS has done this, even if Fox had done something remotely similar, is not due to the size of their audiences, but due to their broadcast license. Fox News is a cable channel. CBS is a BROADCAST (that's what the B stands for). In exchange for letting them use those radio waves to send out their advertisements, the government expects them to broadcast unbiased news.

Re:Some of my picks:

[(trb001)]

Okay, while I think "Outfoxed" was a piece of journalistic crap, I really hate NewsHounds. Nothing worse than taking a perfectly legitimate point and ruining it by consistently misquoting and misrepresenting people. They do this *constantly*, everyday. First off, they'll take something that Hannity or O'Reilly say and begin pummelling it. That would be fine, but misquoting them to make your point is just not acceptable.

I don't understand the whole hatred of Fox thing anyways, but the NewsHounds and "Outfoxed" just go way overboard.

--trb

Re:Some of my picks:

[(trb001)]

There was an entire "documentary", albeit a bad one, about FoxNews..."Outfoxed". Horrible, horrible journalism, but many people believed it. If you've seen it, I would be happy to cite many discrepancies in their "research".

--trb

Blogs begin and end with:

[AndyChrist]

Maddox.

Consider your political post fairly moderated

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering is what nearly 100% pure parroted DNC rubbish I am surpised you stayed above 0.

I don't see the point in wasting time refuting nearly every sentence of your message since your in "victim mode" already.

Victim mode is the first defense of those who have no defense in facts. Followed by any other available emotional fallback.

Point. Set. Match.

Bartcop

[inkswamp]

I can't believe nobody has mentioned the single most hilarious, passionate, insane and insightful liberal site around: Bartcop. This is the only site on the Web that makes me laugh, makes me mad, makes me stop to think, makes me want to get up and rip the living shit out of the people who screw it up for the rest of us--all at the same time. The site looks like a first-year HTML student project, but don't let that fool you. It's substance over style, baby. And while it's not technically a blog, it's presented in a very blog-like manner so IMO, that counts (and hey it was around before blogs were all the rage, so there!) Try it for a while, especially if you're fed up with Bush and his greedy cronies as well as spineless Democrats (or pink tutu Democrats as Bartcop identifies them.)

You'll wonder how you got along before.

And oh yeah... watch for Shirley. :^)

I may as well whore my own

[jb.hl.com]

Keyboard and Sickle is mine. Only very sparingly updated, mind.

Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are some

[Nova Express]

There was a time when Andrew Sullivan could have conceivably been labeled a conservative, but it's passed. Sullivan's analysis of the war on terror used to be interesting, but since he become a single interest voter over the issue of gay marriage, it's colored the rest of his thinking and writing. These days he's probably best described as an "angry moderate."

If you really want to read a high-quality conservative blog, here are two from National Review Online:

• The Corner, a braided-blog with constributions by many of NR's writers, run by Kathryn Jean Lopez, and
• The Kerry Spot, penned by Jim Geraghty, whichs follows Kerry and his campaign closely, as well as related subjects. (The Kerry Spot was one of the best sites to follow for updates on Rathergate.

Speaking of Rathergate, a seminal blogsphere watershed that Slashdot has not chosen to feature on its front page, here are some of the key blogs which helped break open the Rathergate story:

• http://www.powerlineblog.com/
• Instapundit
• Little Green Footballs
• http://www.allahpundit.com/
• Rather Biased, which perked back to life after the scandal broke.
• http://www.rathergate.com/, which sprang into being shortly after the scandal broke
• http://www.indcjournal.com/
• Finally, although I'm less of a regular reader, it was a poster on Free Republic who first broke the story.

Well, that should get you started. in truth, except for the NR blogs, I was only an occasional readers of the others before the Rathergate story broke, but now I'm much more of a regular reader, much to the detriment of my productivity...

Good Liberal blogs

[KaiserSoze]

In no particular order:

• Daily Kos
• Eschaton (Atrios)
• Political Animal
• Pandagon
• Hulaballoo (Digby)
• First Draft
• Joe Conason (kinda a blog, it's hosted by Salon.com)

As mentioned in the post itself, Talking Points Memo is also excellent. Sorry I don't have any conservative blogs listed; I don't have a fondness for lies and general evilness.

Re:Good Liberal blogs

[Arctic Fox]

> Sorry I don't have any conservative blogs listed; I don't have a fondness for lies and general evilness. There are none so blind as those that can't see. Take a look, and think. That's what it's all about ultimately.

Re:Good Liberal blogs

[Anonymous Coward]

Heheh..
You seem to one of these that believe their own propaganda.

histologion

[yatiohi]

take a look at histologion.blogspot.com

Re:histologion

[yatiohi]

http://histologion.blogspot.com/

it's easier if it's clickable ;)

i fuck giraffes

[Anonymous Coward]

in the ass;

It's All About Specificity

[amcox]

The key is to get blogs that have a niche. You have to know what kind of information you are trying to get from them.

The aforementioned TMP is great for foreign policy and includes a fair amount of original reporting.

Brad DeLong, a Cal economist, has an excellent blog focusing on econimic issues.

The Gadflyer is a collaborative effort looking mainly at the politcal landscape and campagin maneuvering.

And, finally, for a more literary dessert than Wonkette, try Travis LaFrance He's hillariously aloof and searingly witty.

An old classic

[HBI]

The Prince

Yesterday, today, and forever.

Instapundit hands down

[Syncdata]

Instapundit is hands down my go-to political weblog.

It offers a nice round-up of links from the blogosphere, along with the his own commentary.

It's run by Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, and social liberal, everything else conservative.

The beauty of blogs is that Bias is readily apparent, and seldom denied, unlike oh, say, some cats in the mainream media.

Re:Instapundit hands down

[mithras the prophet]

I (a liberal) read the Instapundit RSS feeds because as you note, it's a great roundup of what's going on out there.

But it also drives me nuts because (1) Half of the time he doesn't make any commentary of his own, just a "Heh" or "Interesting." Come on! I expect a little better from a professor. and (2) He's a little self-satisfied, as though he invented blogging or something. The way he talked about "Rathergate" you'd think he was the one who made it an issue, when it was entirely LGF and Powerline, plus Drudge's links.

Okay, done with rant :)

Re:Instapundit hands down

[Hollins]

(1) Half of the time he doesn't make any commentary of his own, just a "Heh" or "Interesting." Come on! I expect a little better from a professor.

This is part of why I like instapundit. His hunger for info closely matches my own, thus he scans dozens of blogs so I don't have to.

Re:Instapundit hands down

[SQL Error]

Glenn Reynolds is an editor, not a writer, for the most part. He picks the items he thinks are important or interesting, and posts them, with links for more details. What makes Instapundit worthwhile is not his commentary (such as it is) but the fact that he is very good at filtering out the significant news that the mainstream media has missed.

there is not single blog that is worth looking at

[cwinmonk]

it changes every hour who has the best scoop: blogsnow or bloglines do the work for you and see what's worth looking at.

Neal Boortz.... As he says, don't believe him ...

[Shivetya]

http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html

He always comes out and says it, do not believe a thing on his page or what he says unless you know it to be the truth.

Boortz is responsible for switching me to the Libertarian platform in most respects. I will even give him credit for my quitting smoking as he pointed out very correctly that it is for losers.

While I don't care for his show very much his written articles are hard hitting and even fairly accurate at times.

He leans right but that is a Libertarian trait. We have to be responsible for ourselves first and should not use the Government to exploit others for our own benefit.

He always posts a good selection of daily stories.

Swingstates.

[MoNickels]

I really like Swing State Project. Even-handed, even-toned, and factual.

The Fulcrum

[BlackHawk]

thefulcrum.blogspot.com

No, it's not my blog.

Blog for America

[puz]

Blog for America is the best! Go to google, type "america president 2004" and hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button.

Right Wing News

[Anonymous Coward]

Right Wing News

Insightful and often very funny.

UnderReported

[michaelmalak]

Shameless plug #537

The story summary said specifically "mainstream media dissected", so I just had to suggest my site. While I'm at it, I'll mention my direct "competitors" that I know of that also fit that description:

• unknownnews.net
• Take Back the Media
• projectcensored.org

i fuck moose

[Anonymous Coward]

in the ass~

a few intersting ones

[Anonymous Coward]

Voices Without Votes
The World Speaks

Both are concerned with soliciting the opinions of people outside the US on the topic of US policies.

RightOfWay

[Proph3t]

RightOfWay - A Consertavites Opinion By far the best :)

The short list....

[TardBoy]

I read TPM, DailyKos, Political Animal, and Atrios (atrios.blogspot.com)/ Eschaton. Anything else interesting anywhere, you'll find a link from one of these guys. I also read Jesus' General (patriotboy.blogspot.com) and Fafblog (fafblog.blogspot.com) for extreme laughs. I also read Salon and Slate, but any more than that, and I'd have no time left to look for pr0n :), so that's the whole list.

Good Blogs

[superyooser]

• Blogs of War
• AllahPundit
• IsraPundit
• Little Green Footballs

Favorite Weblogs

[_Potter_PLNU_]

Hugh Hewitt
Little Green Footballs

Hugh Hewitt's site has links to many of the conservative web blogs out there

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[Twirlip of the Mists]

http://www.indcjournal.com/

That's such a sad story. I know the kid who runs that site, William Ardolino. I've had the occasion to work with him a couple of times. He embodies everything that's bad about blogs. He accuses people and newspapers of lying-- most recently the Boston Globe -- and is just generally distasteful.

Which is a damn shame, because he used to be so reasoned and thoughtful. I guess he decided he could get more site traffic by being a dick.

Independents

[rechelon]

My favorite bloggers diverge sharply from the political left-right schism.

http://www.theagitator.com/

http://anarchogeek.com/

http://www.crookedtimber.org/

http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/

http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/index.html

and of course

http://williamgillis.blogspot.com/

The usual partisan ramblings, just don't provide any entertainment for me anymore.

Re:My favorites, more blogs like Juan Cole's blog

[sien]

Juan Cole's blog is great, as is his friend Laura Rozen's blog War and Piece . Laura Rozen was a journo in the Balkan's in the nineties and has really seen ethnic conflict. She's great on the Middle East and security issues.

Re:Split Post Mods & Ratio of Friends to Foes

[Cryofan]

To elaborate further my post above, if you were to write a script to spider through the friends/foes/freaks/fans of one liberal and one conservative, I would wager that if you assume that each friend of a liberal is a liberal, and that each foe and each freak of a liberal is a conservative (and vice versa for the conservative), then the ratio of friends to foes of any conservative would be lower than that some ratio for any liberal.

i fuck ducks

[Anonymous Coward]

in the ass^

how about www.defeatjohnjohn.com ?

[Mycroft_514]

Of course there is:
www.republican.com
www.usa.com
www.democrat ic.com (when I need a good laugh)
www.democraticunderground.com (when I need a belly laugh)
www.johnkerry.com - another funny site - they think Kerry is going to win!
www.ratherbiased.com

Real Clear Politics

[mtaco]

http://realclearpolitics.com/index.html

It's basically a link-blog, but its good to get the news.

Mine, of course!

[Phleg]

Beware, shameless blog whoring!

None.

[Freston Youseff]

I hate politics.

Where is Billmon?

[wrinkledshirt]

I found that billmon was one of the best for attempting to make the liberal point of view in a solid, well-researched, essay style on a regular basis. He's done an excellent job particularly in media-related politics. He's been AWOL for a while, though.

Perhaps he was too effective?

[knock on wood]

i fuck sheep

[Anonymous Coward]

in the ass`

Re:Blognarik!! - MOD PARENT UP!

[phaln]

Excellent link!

Arghh -- I forgot thememoryhole.org

[michaelmalak]

Also thememoryhole.org.

i fuck cats

[Anonymous Coward]

in the ass*

A friend of mine has one!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad he's a lazy guy who never updates it.
http://tanizaki.org/

There are Blogs Outside Slashdot?

[Greyfox]

Heathen! Renounce ye the blogs of the false prophets! Repent! Slashdot is the One True Blog!

This post of blatant brown nosing brought to you by...

belmont club

[mre5565]

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/

The prose from the moderator is beautifully crafted, informative, and without the sarcasm and cynicism that might turn off would be readers of other conservative blogs. The blog is heavily linked from the other conservative blogs.

And no, Andrew Sullivan is not a conservative blogger.

Re:belmont club

[Mysteray]

I agree, it's a fascinating read. More military than political analysis though. Watch out, there's no mercy for "the left" there.

debunked? you're on crack

[JimmytheGeek]

Gotta grant that not everything holds up.

His point in 9/11, that the Iraq War is a stupid move, is correct.

His point, that contrary to the image managers, that W is a lightweight, vaccilating incompetent, is spot-on. Damn! It was unpleasant watching him pretend to read "My Pet Goat" when he was waiting for Rove or Cheney to tell him what to do.

Anything besides nitpicking ?

wilwheaton.net

[nxtr]

...because I've always wanted to be on Star Trek.

Dave Johnson's Blog, SeeTheForest

[MichaelCrawford]

• seetheforest.blogspot.com

"A weblog for Liberals who are FED UP with Bush and the Right!" Highly recommended. Dave Johnson was one of the first game programmers for Atari, and founded my former employer Working Software, but now works on political issues for a labor union.

i fuck camels

[Anonymous Coward]

in the ass'

Two of the Best

[reiggin]

IMAO

Grouchy Old Cripple in Atlanta

The former makes me split my side most any day and twice on Sundays. Very bright for someone his age.

The latter is terribly underrated and deserves to be more widely known. He's like Neal Boortz with twice the brain power and ten times the wit.

World Socialist Web Site

[Marxist Reader]

I read the World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org/ daily and find it to be the most insightful commentary on the political undercurrents of society. Instead of looking at the surface of poltical events, it evinces a historical perspective that I can't find anywhere else. It explains the contradictions of the capitalist system and the nation-state, and how the incompatibily of the two leads to a crisis that will lead to either socialism (which is the political and economic control of society by the working class) or else to barbarism, war, massive unemployment, etc., as the ruling class can find no way out of it's contradictions.

Also, it is host to excellent culutral coverage (fanatastic film reviews!)

Not a blog but CampaignCollectables.com

[xobyte]

has "real" John Kerry Flip Flops :)
http://campaigncollectables.com/

mod me down, but they are funny!

Fleshbot!

[bware]

http://www.fleshbot.com/

Matt Brown Does the News

[El Panda Grande]

My Favorite is Matt Brown does the News at http://mattbrown.ebloggy.com/ it isnt updated as often as Id like, and the last two entries werent as good as the first bunch, but Brown appears to be a smart guy, and a lot of the stuff is well thought out, and a little funny. I was impressed

No reference to Andrew Sullivan...

[TheRealSlimShady]

...is complete without a link to SullyWatch. It keeps an eye on some of the more obvious inconsistencies in Mr Sullivan's writing - of which there are many.

instapundit

[b17bmbr]

www.instapundit.com. glenn reynolds' site.
justoneminute.typepad.com
www.mandelinople.com/blog (mine. sorry. cheap sahmeless plug)

Bartcop, Gillard

[monopole]

The king of redneck liberalism:
Bartcop.com

The best political/war reporting:
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/

The best economic/tech material:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movabl e_type/

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Krugman R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn! Aiiiiiii!!!:
http://shrillblog.blogspot.com/

Best War blog:
http://www.exile.ru/archive/by_column/war_n erd.htm l

The Church of Critical Thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not 100% political, but politics is a frequent topic, especially in the forums, where people disect the candidates from a critical thinking perspective.

http://www.churchofcriticalthinking.com

Political blogs

[joncook]

Try the following: Kos (dailykos.com) Echaton (atrios.blogspot.com) Washington Monthly (washingtonmonthly.com) Wonkette (wonkette.com) Belmont Club (belmontclub.blogspot.com)

Re:Political blogs

[Yeechang Lee]

I'm going to piggyback off brianerst's posting because so many of his thoughts echo my own.

Instapundit Glenn Reynold's blog. Another decent match for my own viewpoint. Glenn's more of a linker than a commentator, but he's one of the best about linking to all sides of the blogosphere.

Unquestionably, still the king of traffic generators three years after bursting into prominence. Whether you like him or not, you *have* to read him in order to keep up with what's going on.

The Corner National Review's blog. Conservative and largely Catholic.

To be honest, "Catholic" isn't the first term I'd use to describe The Corner although it wouldn't be surprising given National Review's Catholic heritage thanks to its founder. I like the Corner because it has hordes of contributors and they are by and large hilarious; tons of Star Trek, Simpsons, and other pop culture and meta jokes along with the cogent political mini-analyses. It's consistently funny in a light, juvenile way that no leftist blog I'm aware of is.

Andrew Sullivan. Classical liberal, Oakeshott conservative. [...] When his emotions are not ruling his thinking, though, he's very, very good.

Not a bad description. He's certainly always been a a one-issue voter; for some time it was the Iraq war, and now it's gay marriage. He makes me roll my eyes more than he used to, but I will always admire his brains and passion. And he's always had the best readers' letters column.

Mickey Kaus Slate's resident blogger, Mickey is a DLC "New" Democrat. He's one of the more honest of the bloggers (zings his own side often, recognizes good arguments on the other side) and a good source of insider media stuff.

Agreed. Kaus is definitely one of those people who loves to mock his own side more than anything else. And I'm with him on the value of welfare reform.

Josh Marshall Establishment Democrat. I found his stuff to be really good a few years back, but recently he's spending more time rooting for the team (DNC/Kerry) than being objective. Also, darkly hints at constant "breaking soon" scoops that either never appear or completely underwhelm.

If you hadn't written that last sentence I would've. He pulls this trick every month or two, and in the three years I've been reading him I'm not sure it's *ever* really panned out in a big way. However, definitely played a big role, along with a few other key blogs, in booting Lott from the Majority Leader post.

His latest attempt at "breaking soon" was, actually, what proved to be the CBS memos, although to his credit he was one of the few leftist blogs to realize early on their bogosity and said so, and accordingly took lumps from the loons who naturally thought he'd been bribed by Karl Rove or something.

Kevin Drum Another Establishment Democrat. Kevin tends to be more self-reflective than Josh, which stands him in good stead. Great place to capture the mood of the DNC political types.

Ditto. Another leftist blog that turned against the CBS memos early on. And, since of the Big 3 leftist blogs that did so he's the only one who permits comments, boy did the loons among his readership take it out on him. Take a look back at the last two weeks' worth of posts and accompanying comments on the topic; they are alternately hilarious and very, very scary.

The irony here is that Drum himself spent most of February 2004 talking endlessly about new evidence that alleged exposed President Bush's failure to live up to his TexANG responsibilities. And who was his primary source (including multiple interviews)? Bill Burkett! On the one hand, tghis gives his current denuncations of what Burkett did all the more strength, but he has yet to publicly consider that maybe he might've been spun by Burkett back in February too.

Ne

Mod-Blog

[Nomad7674]

Mod-Blog. Perhaps coincidentally, it is also the BLog that I post to. ;-)

Little Green Footballs

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel Little Green Footballs is one of the better conservative weblogs out there.

It's great for those who want an alternative to the many liberal blogs already posted here.

Re:Little Green Footballs

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, those damned liberal blogs like Drudge, Free Republic, Andrew Sullivan, Anne Coulter, etc etc were really getting me down. Thanks for the link.

Read books instead.

[Futurepower(R)]

You cannot learn enough about your government by reading weblogs. Read books instead. Here are reviews of 3 movies and 35 books about the present administration of the U.S. government: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

--
Bush: Spending money the U.S. doesn't have to make himself look good.

Wonkette rules!

[33nine3]

Snide, rude, critical of both parties, and fucking sexy as hell! Wonkette is the BOMB that W. thought he would find in Iraq, but didn't ('cause he was LYING through his teeth!)

Hey look!

[carlos_benj]

It's time for the computer lab at the local middle school....

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[Anonymous Coward]

Bunch of horse hooey, supporting gay marriage IS conservative, those who oppose gay marriage oppose strengthening the institution of marriage.

Orcinus

[Anonymous Coward]

Orcinus, our favorite anti-Fascist blog:

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/

God knows we need a healthy dose of anti-Fascism in America.

Re:Orcinus

[LochNess]

Also, I like Reason's Hit and Run, even though I don't always agree with the guy who does it:

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/

You're All Hippies!

[Skillzy]

Red meat eating, gun toting Americans like myself read stuff like Allah, IMAO, ASV, Wizbang, the Commissar, and OTB. They've gone a little overboard lately focusing on the Rathergate thing, but overall, they're a good mix of conservative blogs.

Yes, always verify your sources.

[Anonymous Coward]

I verify with CBS. That Dan Rather guy really sheds light on things.

Re:Yes, always verify your sources.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it a sad state of affairs when the post is about INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION, and most replies are from people too stupid to understand that concept? Rather may be as guilty as online bloggers. Is Drudge's agenda that closely followed that as soon as journalism, verification, and Drudge are mentioned in the same place, his vendetta against Dan Rather comes into play? Dude, where's MY country?

The Agonist

[wooki]

My favorite is definitely The Agonist, who live up to their tagline of "thoughtful, global, timely". Excellent source of worldwide news that the American media just don't cover...

OneMans Thoughts

[hankbrau]

http://htsblog.blogspot.com/ OneMan's Thoughts provides great coverage on Illinois politicis if I do say so my self

Blog from the Bush Hometown

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.jessicaswell.com/

It's funny and very conservative.

Libertarian blogs

[I'm Spartacus!]

To keep abreast of liberty, I read the following:

Mises Blog
Lew Rockwell's Blog

To find out what the enemies of liberty are up to, I also read:

Daily Kos
Atrios
InstaPundit
Andrew Sullivan

Re:Libertarian blogs

[Anonymous Pundit]

Don't forget:

Strike The Root Blog
KarenDeCoster.com Web Log

And as long as you're already surfing, check out the main sites too:

LewRockwell.com
Strike the Root

The most arrested President and VP in history.

[Futurepower(R)]

"...the convicted drunk drivers' outright lies..."

Bush and Cheney are the most arrested president and vice president in history. George W. Bush was arrested once for the crime of DUI and Dick Cheney twice:

George W. Bush DUI, 1st record of arrest

George W. Bush DUI, 2nd record of arrest

George W. Bush was arrested 2 other times in his life, also.

Dick Cheney DUI, record of 1st arrest

Dick Cheney DUI, record of 2nd arrest

DUI means "Driving Under the Influence" of alcohol. A DUI is a conviction for a very serious crime, a crime that endangers everyone on the road, a crime that often kills people. A DUI conviction means that the driver felt such a strong need to be drunk that he or she was willing to take a chance of murder.

According to his wife Laura Bush and George W. Bush himself, she threatened to leave him because of his drinking.

--
Bush: Spending money the U.S. doesn't have to make himself look good.

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[Quinn]

The DUI arrests happened a quarter century ago, and Bush is now alarmingly clean and sober, not even touching a drop of alcohol. He's certainly not proud of his past indiscretions, whereas Kerry continues to tout his career as an admitted war criminal as somehow making him worthy of office.

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is absolute standard right-wing spin. "Admitted war criminal"...honestly, what Kerry testified to was military tactics such as free-fire zones which he argued were in violation of the Geneva conventions.

Naturally, Republicans have this spun into "John Kerry, baby killer". Your cheap partisan hack is showing.

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[Alaska Jack]

In a nutshell, your post encapsulates why liberals have done such a poor job of turning people off from Bush.

Let me explain myself using a short sentence of one-syllable words: NO ONE CARES.

Bush has acknowledged many times that he wasn't a very good human being at an earlier stage of his life. By all accounts, he has changed: Even his political enemies in Texas acknowledge that he made a remarkable mid-life turnaround. He seems to sincerely believe that he was saved by turning to Jesus. Now, that might make you gag, and that's fine. But the point is, HE believes it, and there's simply no evidence of insincerity on this point.

The difference between him and Kerry is that Bush is not running based on who he was or what he did as a young man. On the other hand, Kerry is, and for good reason: That's all he really has to offer. Beyond his four-month service in Vietnam, he has a twenty-year record of relatively undistinguished service in the U.S. Senate, representing a small, liberal Northeast State. This is not a particularly harsh critique, but it neither is it a a recipe for electoral success, and he and his advisors know it.

Incidentally, I DO count Kerry's service in Vietnam as a small plus. It's just not enough to constitute the majority of his campaign platform.

To sum up:

Bush: No one cares about his actions as youth, because he a) has already acknowledged his failings, and b) is not basing his campaign on them anyway.

Kerry: People do care about his actions as a youth, because he a) is basing his campaign on them, and b) has not been forthcoming when parts of his record have been questioned.

- Alaska Jack

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[drinkypoo]

I'm not sure I agree that you're making a credible argument. Clinton appeared to be a pretty decent president but a bad man when it concerned keeping what his penis did a secret - for the most part no one wants to know about the exploits of anyone else's penis unless they're scripted and in a porno movie, and least of all Bill "Bubba" Clinton - while we just pat Bush on the back about drunk driving? He doesn't seem to be a good president but we're just okay with that? I think the moral here isn't that no one cares about Bush, it's that the Republicans are willing to use any point of contention to decry the value of a president, and the Democrats don't stoop quite as low. The war on drugs is prety much a fait accompli at this point so I frankly can't fault either side for that one - which is why I'm not bitching about making Bubba say he didn't inhale.

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[Quinn]

Partisan? I'm not a Republican, just a decent, honest citizen who believes John Kerry is an asshole. In any case, he admitted he took part in actions which were war crimes. He said it, not me.

Then again, he did throw away his medals, so, oh, wait, he made a gesture of throwing away medals, but they were some other guy's, right? He needed to keep his to use when he ran for president 30 years later.

John Kerry's an asshole. Democrats would serve themselves better to have picked a decent candidate, and leftists are laughably hypocritical for supporting him-- a man just as bad as Bush!

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[MustardSauce]

What are you talking about, admitted war criminal?
Kerry's testimony about the Winter Soldier investigation was not about acts that he performed.

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[provolt]

John Kerry: Howard Dean without the convictions or charisma.

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[provolt]

There is a significant difference between Clinton's bad behavior and Bush's bad behavior.

Bush's took place a long time ago and he has turned away from it.

Clinton's took place while in was in office. (Actually, while he was in the Oval Office.)

While I don't normally care about other people's sex lives, but it did effect Clinton's job performance. When he had his intern go down on him while he was on the phone it moved his actions out of the personal and into the professional realm.

Had Clinton's transgressions occurred years before being elected, it would matter to only a few partisans. The normal folks wouldn't care. The normal folks cared about Clinton because of the timing.

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[Alaska Jack]

A fair and even-handed post. But let me add a couple of thoughts.

1. "For the most part no one wants to know about the exploits of anyone else's penis unless they're scripted and in a porno movie"

Or they involve a man in a position of power taking advantage of a subordinate. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Lewinsky was some sort of naive ingenue. But it is precisely these sort of relationships that were of great concern to a large segment of the feminist establishment -- at least, until one involved a president they liked.

As a side note, if Clinton had dallied with ML and then just come clean about it, it would have been disgraceful, but he wouldn't have been impeached. It's an important point that seems to be glossed over a lot these days. Clinton wasn't impeached for having sex with an intern; he was impeached for perjury, obstruction of justice and tampering with witnesses. Of those things he was certainly guilty -- he survived the Senate vote not because he was innocent, but simply because Senate Democrats didn't feel it would be good for the party if one of their presidents were removed (and yes, tragically, I'm sure most Senate Republicans would have done the same thing if it had been their man).

2. No one is suggesting we "pat [Bush] on the back."

3. There is, of course, a major difference between these two patterns of behavior: Bush stopped, and pretty much reformed his whole life; Clinton never stopped. (Until, of course, he was caught, and even then he denied it and had his surrogates paint Lewinsky as a demented stalker. Just think: If Lewinsky had just washed that blue dress, this would still be the official story, and a lot of people would be energetically defending it and insisting that nutcase Lewinsky made the whole thing up.)

4. 'He doesn't seem to be a good president but we're just okay with that?"

To the contrary, you are welcome to think he is the worst president in history, and try to make that case to others. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. My point was simply that I believe it was and is a mistake to try to persuade others that Bush is a bad president simply by pointing to what he did or didn't do 30 years ago. It's not that people haven't listened; it's that they HAVE listened, digested the input, and decided it doesn't matter.

5. "the Republicans are willing to use any point of contention to decry the value of a president ..."

I don't follow you here. I'm not trying to be snotty -- I really don't understand what you mean.

6. We agree that the WoD is a pretty stupid use of our resources.

Cheers,

- Alaska Jack

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[elwinc]

I mostly agree. I don't care about Bush's actions in his youth; he's given up booze, and in my mind that's huge.

BUT. If Bush has lied in the present about his past; if he used his powers as governor of Texas to cover up embarrassing details of his TXANG service and "scrub" his record, Then I do care about it.

The misleading statements about TXANG aren't big lies Bush has told, but they're lies. And the coverup is a bigger deal. Both the coverup and the lies speak about Bush's character. Since Bush has made his character such an issue in the campaign, the lies and coverup matter.

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[disntrstd]

Does anybody actually think Bush and his administration have done a good job so far in office? That seems to be the most crucial point of this entire election. Are we willing to take the risk of having Kerry and his cabinet, or 4 more years of an administration that has created more problems than it has solved? Is Iraq safer than before right now? Most say no. Will Iraq be a true democracy without substantially more resources? Again, many analysts say no. Was the premise for the invasion of Iraq, the death of countless Iraqis and those 1000 soldiers, not to mention the families torn apart both there and here correct? No. Why were the so eager to go to war? Did they know Saddam was planning an attack and had WMD? How were they so sure? They seem so convinced that Iraq had the capabilities to cause mass destruction... You can't simply come up with something so extravagant without a damn good reason backed with solid evidence. I simply believe Bush's administration either flat out lied, or twisted information to meet their agenda. Seeing as how nobody has taken blame for this blunder, I am ever more convinced. They wanted to invade Iraq for reasons by which the majority of Americans would not have agreed to. They justified the war on lies and the American people seem all too forgiving because Saddam was a bad, bad man. The internal turmoil in Iraq in the years to come will make Saddam look like a picnic. I cannot honestly believe that Kerry would have made the same decisions as Bush had he been in his position. Yes, he gave Bush the power to exercise force, however, he was also under the impression that Iraq was posing an immediate threat to the US like we all were. ABB -- Anybody But Bush ...and anymore of these Republican douchebags. I really wish they would start airing the horrors of war close up and personal on prime time. Start showing the American people that war isn't a bunch of flashy fireworks and large thuds viewed from a safe distance. Why not show some collateral damage? Like the arms and legs of what used to be an Iraqi child dismembered by the blast of a "smart bomb". How can we honestly approve of war without bearing witness to the causulties? I am glad we have people like Michael Moore that keep the spin in balance. Wars are fought by the rich, and we are the casulties. Kerry might not be a common man, but he is certainly more common than Bush. He is one step in the right direction. Welp, that's my rant. Unorderly as it may be, I think the spirit of what I am saying is there.

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Had Clinton's transgressions occurred years before being elected, it would matter to only a few partisans. The normal folks wouldn't care. The normal folks cared about Clinton because of the timing.

Whitewater. Paula Jones.

Alleged transgressions that occurred before being elected. Special Prosecutor.

Re:The most arrested President and VP in history.

[Alaska Jack]

Well, there is a lot I could say about all that, but instead I'll simply fall back to my original point: If you think Bush is a crappy president based on things he's doing *now*, that's your perogative. I simply don't think people care about Bush's *past*, since he is not running based on it, and has already admitted he was not a very good guy.

- Alaska Jack

with clickable links

[Anonymous Coward]

In Slashdot, you can make links easily: <url:http://www.israpundit.com/>

http://www.instapundit.com/ - the king of all blogs
http://andrewsullivan.com/ - gone way down hill but still readable
http://www.allahpundit.com/- good mix of political fun
http://claytoncramer.com/weblog/blogger.html - guns and fun
http://www.powerlineblog.com/ - more right slant fun.

http://www.iraqthemodel.com/ - differnt view inside Iraq
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/ - more good insight in iraq
http://www.iraq-iraqis.blogspot.com/ - and again

http://cbftw.blogspot.com/ - used to be one of the best blogs in Iraq until the man cracked down on him. But MUST READ THE ARCHIVES!

COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

[jrduncans]

http://iraqnow.blogspot.com/ Good stuff from an very intelligent guy. A National Guardsman who has served in Iraq discussing both the war and media bias.

Re:COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

[jrduncans]

A clickable link: COUNTERCOLUMN

Cryptogon

[irishkev]

Can I nominate my own site? www.cryptogon.com

The Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, NSA, all branches of .mil, the Department of Justice and the National Security Council are regular readers.

I guess I'm doing something right... or wrong... er, I dunno.

www.vdare.com

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the better immigration sites around

Yes, but .. :-(

[xant]

I read his every day as well. Sadly he'll be leaving the game after the election..

http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives /w eek_2004_09_12.html#001752

The Agonist

[j]

Don't forget The Agonist.

Forget politics

[Dr. Sp0ng]

Political blogs are everywhere. How about good technical blogs?

My list

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeRepublic
HughHewitt
Instapundit
Jihadwatch
LittleGreenFootballs - new
Real Clear Politics
National Review Online
Kerry Spot @ NRO
Powerline Blog - new
Debkafiles Headline
Newsmax.com
Right Wing News
Drudge

I've been Wonk'd

[andy_geek]

Ana Marie Cox over at Wonkette has mastered the art of the political blog. Like all of the other Nick Denton nano-publishing subsidiaries, what makes Wonkette so great is that it treats its subject with a sort of bemused, drawl curiosity, much like a gaggle of upper-classmen watching freshmen arrive for their first day of high school. Cox's humor is so biting, so snarky that literally nobody is outside its pale, which is refreshing these days. However, unlike most bloggers who merely opine on the news, she's cultivated a true insider persona : people from all political quarters of the political scene treat her as one of them. And why not? She's smart, savvy, will turn on any one of them for a scoop and has expressed an interest in buggery: if that doesn't scream one of them, I don't know what does.

Besides, she broke the whole Washingtonienne scandal: that alone makes her aces in my book!

Re:I've been Wonk'd

[frost22]

Yep! Wonkette's definitely the place to go. Nothing beats a good joke about assfucking between consenting politicians :-)

Nah, seriously, I like the place. Though she focuses on Washington gossip, that is a cute perspective at Washington politics.

The Gadflyer

[Paulrothrock]

The Gadflyer

Pretty insightful Democratic commentary. I like it so much I signed up for their weekly email update.

As if the left is the bastion of truth. get real

[Anonymous Coward]

All the tripe you spout can equally be applied to the left as well. Seems to me that people who operate under emotion rather than FACTs are the ones whose blood pressure rises.

Anger : One of the first reactions of those without facts to back them up.

Name Calling : Second to the first. If you cannot refute the message call the messenger names.

Re:Chomsky

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you who remember the Chomsky language hierarchy from your compiler theory class, yeah he's the same guy.

Did you know he's also a rabid anti-semite, a Holocaust denier, and hugely anti-American? It's true, read some of the filth he puts out and ask yourself how anyone could let themselves go so far astray...

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[American AC in Paris]

There was a time when Andrew Sullivan could have conceivably been labeled a conservative, but it's passed.

I disagree. Sullivan does focus heavily on gay rights (goshIwonderwhy,) but he's still very much a 'classic' conservative. While gay rights may be his biggest cause, he continues to make a lot of noise over things like fiscal responsibility, smaller government, keeping government out of private spheres, and accountability. He's decidedly gone out of step with Bush's neoconservatism, but frankly, I'd say that Bush is the one who left conservatism--not Sullivan.

For example, his current front-page articles include:

• 18 posts about the Iraq war, from a variety of angles
• 4 posts about gay rights and marriage
• 4 posts castigating Dan Rather and the forged memos
• 2 posts regarding unbecoming political conduct in the GOP
• a smattering of random stuff

While it's fair to say that he's big on gay rights, it's disingenuous to dismiss him as single-minded and 'no longer conservative'. Andrew Sullivan is decidedly conservative, even if a lot of other conservatives out there would rather not count him among their numbers...

Blogs to improve political karma

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like the Daily Show with somewhat anonymous posters:
Fafblog!

and a little-known guy:
The Crossfader

Not about fish:
Bob's Tropical Fish

overspun

[walmass]

overspun

TPM hands down

[hwestiii]

I've been reading Talking Points Memo for a few months now, since I read about it in a Vanity Fair article last May or June, and I love it.

If someone could point out a few conservative blogs that viewed the issues with the level of balance and analysis that Josh Marshall does, I'd be way more willing to explore opposing points of view.

Personally, I find most conservative, and even a lot of liberal blogs, way too belicose. More light, less heat please.

For conservative takes, I'll go with the NYT's David Brooks or Andrew Sullivan. Even mainstream conservatives like William Safire or Charles Krauthammer seem awfully arch and doctrinaire to me.

I know the posting is about blogs and not columnists, but one of my faves is Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune. You can't pin him down as either traditionally liberal or conservative, but he frequently comes across with pieces that seem to wed strands of the two in very provocative ways.

Re:TPM hands down

[VividU]

TPM is the best, no question.

"If someone could point out a few conservative blogs that viewed the issues with the level of balance and analysis that Josh Marshall does..."

Do your self a favor and don't hold your breath. Andrew Sullivan comes close but he's hardly your run-of-the-mill right-winger.

Dick Cheney lost the Vietnam War !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

And now these guys are war fighting Conanan the Barbarians?

Cheney lost the Vietnam War. Saigon fell under his watch.

Kerry at least served honrably.

George and Dick just hid.

Note to moderators:

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll does not mean "I don't agree with this." That comment was neither trolling nor asking for trouble. It was the fairest representation of the truth that I think you can get. All it said was this: DON'T GET ALL YOUR NEWS FROM ONE PLACE, AND DON'T TAKE ANY ONE SOUCE AT IT'S WORD WITHOUT INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION.

Truthout

[myklgrant]

I don't know if it counts as a blog but
http://www.truthout.com//
is my choice for American political coverage (I'm Canadian).
This years election in the U.S. is proving to be SOOOOOO entertaining. Kind of like wrestling crossed with a soap opera, crossed with a reality show. It makes our little election (back in June) look like amateur hour.
Michael

Focussed blogs

[Mostly a lurker]

Most important subjects are too complex to be covered properly by general blogs. To really understand an issue, you need to read a range of blogs by people who are really concerned about the issue and have throroughly researched it. I do this when I really care about a particular subject.

To take an example, when I really wanted to understand what was happening in Iraq, I did not bother with mainstream media or general blogs. I specifically searched out blogs by ordinary Iraqis who had been present before and after the invasion. (My favorite, because it is very well written, is River Bend blog but I read many others.)

On subjects I regard as less important, I just accept that I am the victim of sound bites and do not delude myself that I really know the truth.

indymedia

[Anonymous Coward]

http://indymedia.org/

http://mediaemergency.org/

ahh, hello?

What Really Happened

[vi-rocks]

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ is a good place to see a lot of stories you might not run into anywhere else. While some of it may be a little crazy, it is an interesting place.

Re:What Really Happened

[laukev7]

You don't have to agree with everything Rivero says, but his arguments make sense, and it's interesting to look at stories the mainstream media aren't willing to cover. He has a very funny way to point out at obvious contradictions and coincidences, too. As crazy as some of his theories might seem to some people, one has to admit that the official version of the facts offered by the government are sometimes just as crazy, if not more, than the alternative theories.

Infoshop!

[cosmiccommunist]

fave political blog? how about http://www.infoshop.org

Political State Report

[Anonymous Coward]

is the best blog for the races in the states. Given that the House controls the budget, and the Senate the Supreme Court, this site should be a must-read on the real power currents in America.

Brian Flemming's Weblog

[StarWreck]

Brian Flemming used to have one of the better political weblogs but since he's started working on a movie the blog has been total crap for crap. http://www.slumdance.com/blogs/brian_flemming/ Brian Flemming's Weblog

Eric S. Raymond ...

[Etcetera]

... has his own blog. While not restricted only to polictics (few blogs are), he has a lot of insight into worldly things... I'm especially fond of this piece on the Mainstream Media's waning influence in swinging elections:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/#154

Other blogs worth checking out:

• http://www.polipundit.com/
• http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/
• http://www.powerlineblog.com/
• http://oxblog.blogspot.com/
• http://www.instapundit.com/
• and of course, http://drudgereport.com/

Powerline Blog

[Sasseen]

One of the blogs that I didn't see anyone comment about is the Power Line blog.

obligatory movie quote

[casuist99]

Bishop: "Give him head?"
Whistler: "Be a beacon?"

Best Poli-Blogs

[Devlin-du-GEnie]

Polling: Daily Kos Wonderful poll analysis, great community, lots of smart commenters

Economics: Brad DeLong He's a PhD economist and a former economic advisor to the Clinton administration

Social Policy: Body and Soul She blogs the uncomfortable places where others won't go.

Politics: Atrios The man reads everything. This site is especially good for U.S. politics.

Snark: Sisyphus Shrugged This woman has it. Her recent posts on Nader are vicious and painfully accurate.

Satire: Fafblog!!! The world's only source of Fafblog. Do not drink while reading. Your keyboard will thank you.

You're mistaken, Fox DID say the photo was fake

[Nova Express]

Perhaps it would be better if you actually knew what you were talking about before posting to Slashdot.

Meanwhile, numerous Fox figures referred to the second photo as fake. On Feb. 17, Mara Liasson referred to "doctored photographs of John Kerry and Jane Fonda." (She said nearly the same phrase on March 11). On Feb. 24, Alan Colmes spoke of "phonied up pictures of Fonda and Kerry together." On March 10, Carl Cameron referred to "doctored photos of Kerry with Jane Fonda on the Internet." Indeed, Brit Hume explicitly told Fox viewers that the first photo was "fake" in a Feb. 23 broadcast

Merely repeating a lie doesn't make it true. Fox has said several times the photo was false, as did National Review and several other conservative sources.

Re:You're mistaken, Fox DID say the photo was fake

[goon america]

Eh, I was wrong and misinformed. Though I was not aware that they had apologized for doing so, it still meets the criteria specified by the original poster -- perhaps analogous to this current CBS business.

how about non-extremist sites

[maxpublic]

As in, those that don't have an agenda and don't promote either the left or right wing? I can't stand most blogs because in the end they're just the blatherings of some ignorant fuckwit screaming about how great his group of fanatics are while harping on the evils of some other, opposing group of fanatics.

I'd like blogs that that spit on both the left and right, but as yet haven't been able to find one without a bias that also manages to get its facts straight on a semi-regular basis.

Max

Re:how about non-extremist sites

[TaxSlave]

I see little use in sites that try to be non-partisan. The person running the site cannot be truly non-partisan in nature, as they'll either hold a particular political view, or they'll have nothing to offer to the discussion at all. I prefer that bloggers strongly take a position and approach their work from that position, while letting me know what that position is. That way, I can get my balance through use of multiple sites.

One of the greatest disservices being done to the American public is major media news outlets attempting to put forth an image of unbiased reporting. On any given issue, the trained viewer can see bias in action in most stories. Just because Dan Rather seems middle of the road among the people he hangs out with when he's off work doesn't mean he's middle of the road among his viewers.

What I'd really like to find is a liberal blog that has as much attention to evidence over invective as many of the conservative blogs do. I don't want to read blogs of ANY side that just spew opinions with no data to back them up.

Newbies: The major conservative/libertarian blogs

[Alaska Jack]

1. Instapundit. Written by a Glenn Reynolds, a libertarian law professor at the University of Tennessee whose expertise is in second amendment issues, technology and communication. Perhaps the most influential and widely read blog.

2. The Corner. National Review's group weblog. Lots of contributors, who vary widely in tone (after you read it a while you come to recognize who the various authors are, and what points of view they hold). If you're not a conservative, you should check it out -- you won't agree with most of the stuff, but after a while you might learn that the folks on the "other side" aren't a bunch of moronic power-mad nazis: They actually have coherent reasons for believing what they believe, and can ably articulate those views. Understanding their arguments will help you sharpen your own.

3. The Volokh Conspiracy. A group weblog of libertarian and conservative law professors. The lead conspirator, Eugene Volokh, is a computer programmer-turned UCLA law professor; he is an expert in free speech issues, with some expertise in the second amendment as well. A lot of bloggers could learn from the civil tone of this blog -- i.e., no yelling, taunting or name-calling. Volokh believes writers should try to persuade others, not alienate them with overheated rhetoric.

Note that Volokh, like Reynolds, is a true libertarian: Conservatives are unlikely to agree with either of them on things like abortion and homosexuality.

4. Andrew Sullivan. An influential writer for Time, The New Republic and other print outlets. Perhaps the best-known openly gay conservative.

5. Kausfiles. A moderate-to-conservative Democrat, Mickey Kaus is utterly unsparing (and occasionally downright brutal) in his criticism of liberal excess, fellow democrats and the media. Doesn't write a lot, but is witty and sometimes offers extraordinary insights you won't get anywhere else.

6. Best of the Web. The Wall Street Journal's blog, written by James Taranto. A once-a-day read, it sums up a lot of current issues from a conservatives' point of view.

Yes, there are many many many many others. But if the conservative/libertarian blogosphere is like a tree, these are the trunk.

- Alaska Jack

whynottovoteforbush.blogspot.com

[Anonymous Coward]

http://whynottovoteforbush.blogspot.com/

Yeah, I'm pimping my own political blog, but the main purpose here is to spread the following memes:

Cheney predicted that invading Iraq would have produced the very situation we're in today:
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubs/so ref/chen ey.htm
"I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq."

George Bush Senior's explanation of why we didn't invade Iraq:
"Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome."
http://www.thememoryhole.org/mi l/bushsr-iraq.htm

More of the same from Papa Bush:
"Whose life would be on my hands as the commander-in-chief because I, unilaterally, went beyond the international law, went beyond the stated mission, and said we're going to show our macho?" he asked. "We're going into Baghdad. We're going to be an occupying power -- America in an Arab land -- with no allies at our side. It would have been disastrous."
"We don't gain the size of our victory by how many innocent kids running away -- even though they're bad guys -- that we can slaughter. ... We're American soldiers; we don't do business that way."
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1999/03/a19990 303bush .htm

General Brent Scowcroft's (Bush Senior's National Security Advisor) arguments against invading Iraq:
"Given Saddam's aggressive regional ambitions, as well as his ruthlessness and unpredictability, it may at some point be wise to remove him from power. Whether and when that point should come ought to depend on overall U.S. national security priorities. Our pre-eminent security priority--underscored repeatedly by the president--is the war on terrorism. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken."
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor ial/feature.ht ml?id=110002133

Indeed.

Re:whynottovoteforbush.blogspot.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and for all the valid reasons to vote for John Kerry, check out this site.

Re:whynottovoteforbush.blogspot.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Hilarious. But Bush's vacillations are far worse than Kerry's. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=69 4&e=3&u=/ap/flipping_and_flopping

Also, I'd like to see your response to Brent Scowcroft's analysis.

Talking Points Memo

[jimmyCarter]

Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo is a solid, intelligently written blog. Leans left, but they all lean one way or the other.

Your Favorite Political Weblogs?

[Baghdad Dweller]

http://www.ladybird.oxfordhost.co.uk/ Is an Iraqi Blog

Not a blog but...

[mollymoo]

When I want to see the mainstream media dissected I usually go to ... the mainstream media. I'm English.

The BBC, particularly such gems as Dateline London on BBC News 24 (foreign correspondents for foreign news organisations based in the UK give the foreigners view of UK events - fascinating), generally give the facts relevant to both sides. I also regularly read The Guardian and The Independent, both left-of-centre, but which also both regularly dissect the rest of the media. I force myself to read other papers from time to time and catch ABC World News Tonight (what a fucking joke that name is) on the BBC for a broader view of events, which I mentally correlate with the reports in my preferred media to set the parameters of my internal bias filters for myself.

I've noted most of the replies are US-centric. Is the mainstream media over there really so bad that you have to turn to some amateur venting their spleen on a blog to get the truth?

Are people really incapable of absorbing information from a range of sources and deciding for themselves where the bias lies and what the truth is? If they are then the education system and democracy itself are severely fucked up.

Re:Not a blog but...

[PSandusky]

Honestly? I'm afraid the answer is yes. And you're seeing some of the better brackets of the American population here.

An interesting study is to follow the editorial section of a small, local US paper to get an idea of how a lot of "average" Americans handle bias. There'll be quotes from major networks' news programs, a religious line from Aunt Mabel who died twenty years ago, and some dodgy statistics all wrapped up in neat bundles of bias that fit in the Letters to the Editor section. It's truly frightening to read some of what comes dribbling out of there, if only by showing that a number of people who are intelligent enough to form complex English sentences are incapable of performing the simplest analyses of what they see and hear in the media.

Religious references are extremely common (you should've seen the paper around here when the Atheists' societies held a rally for recognition), which isn't a problem (at least, as far as I'm concerned) until the references and conclusions are getting tossed around by someone who doesn't know much outside of Bible verses to quote. Note that this is, quite frankly, a frequent event.

Fucked up, indeed.

No UK?

[vigilology]

Disappointed to see no UK nominations.

Re:Split Post Moderations & Ratio of Friends t

[casuist99]

I'd mod you up, as I've noticed the same thing, except I decided to post in this forum in multiple places instead.

I think moderation would be a good thing to enable and disable on a per-article basis. Clearly politics.slashdot.org is a mess because the Right can't handle not controlling a media outlet (Ok, I'm joking, don't mod me down AGAIN!!)

A lot of my friends tend to be college students who are mostly liberal or left-leaning. Interestingly, the only college students I know who are more conservative and support Bush are self-described hicks and rednecks. I swear, my conservative friends ALL use those same adjectives to describe themselves. Now, I'm sure there are plenty of conservative college students out there, but the first-hand experience is sometimes englightening also.

As for no work on slashcode, I agree. I think there needs to be, though. Slashdot has more readers than the software was designed to conceptually deal with, hence moderation abuse. Why not an approval rating system of some sort (meta-mod with teeth) that can un-do a moderator's work, perhaps for a more select very very high karma group of slashdotters? True, real Karma would have to come back instead of this "Excellent" shit, but would that be so bad?

For the moment, can we just turn moderation off in Politics.Slashdot.Org? Or at least promise us that the category will disappear after the elections?

Re:Split Post Moderations & Ratio of Friends t

[Snocone]

Hmmmm, I'm pretty much as libertarian as they come, and my fans outnumber my freaks by better than 5 to 1. Now how exactly does that get explained by your theories? Shouldn't it be the other way around, if you're not just blowing smoke out your butt here?

'Course, I might just blow it by not being a judgemental type of fellow so I don't classify anyone else as either friends or foes, just deal with whatever posts I see on their individual merits, so there's an easy out for you if you'd like.

I've Stopped Reading

[reallocate]

I used to read several political blogs daily, but I've stopped. All of them are as predictable as Rush Limbaugh, regardless of their politics.

Too many blogs spend their time excoriating real journalists for occasionally falling prey to the sins they commit on a daily basis.

Precious little original news reporting happens in the blogosphere. Instead, there's a lot of unsourced and unsubstantiated opinion and commentary. You can call it journalism if you want to, but it ain't news and it ain't reporting.

In fact, anytime a real reporter starts publishing real news in blog format, the self-appointed judges of the blogdom usually berate the poor sod for prostituting their little gimmick. Tell us what you think, they chant, not what happened. The blogosphere is more interested in how people interpret reality than they are in reality itself.

I still read a few blogs written by people who know how to write and who have something interesting to say. I've given up on blogs written by people who imagine that banging on a keyboard is journalism.

Remember, if you have a hard time believing posts on Slashdot, why should you believe a blog?

Left To Chance

[Chuck Bucket]

Left to chance - apathy is no longer an option. Perhaps not updated as often as I'd like, but a great commentary/forums site nonetheless.

Oh, and everyone please vote, thanks.

CB

Er, no

[YIAAL]

Read this. Excerpt:

Nice history of RatherGate to date. And what's really nice is that it doesn't mention InstaPundit. Nor should it. I've written about this, but other blogs did all the heavy lifting. As I wrote earlier, the blogosphere has matured into a full-fledged system in which no node is of vital importance, which is a very good thing.

More here: "I took most of Thursday off, with only a passing reference to the forgery story. I stirred myself to blog a bit that evening, but by then the rest of the blogosphere -- especially the Power Line guys -- had done all the heavy lifting."

Heh.

www.The-Election.com

[World_Leader]

Plug! Plug! http://www.The-Election.com They can run, but they can't hide! although pre-web we did the 1992 Clinton/Bush election on-line by constantly updating a finger .plan file so people could get current tallies all evening/night, kept our Sun4/280 at a load of about 400.00 all night!

i fuck off

[Anonymous Coward]

and you should too

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[angle_slam]

The Boston Globe was lying. It's a fact and CBS admitted it today.

I wouldn't call them original

[Sleetan]

I don't think that the conservatives 'originated' the Fat comments.

It wasn't nice then, it isn't nice now. I bet there weren't any liberals complaining about it in '99 though.

Re:I wouldn't call them original

[TummyX]

Yep. And at least Rush has an excuse (he's a fat capitalist pig). What's Moore's excuse for spending his millions on cheese burgers and krispy creams?

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[angle_slam]

He may be conservative (especially with respect to government spending), but he has become reflexively anti-Bush (e.g., when CBS revealved the fake documents, Sullivan immediately said it was bad news for Bush, when any objective commentator would have realized that no one cares about Bush's TANG service), which is what causes people to see him as being not conservative.

http://aliberalmajority.blogspot.com/

[Anonymous Coward]

I read it daily

FreeRepublic

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeRepublic.com is a terrific site for stories and user comments... comments can be hit or miss, moreso depending on how right or left of center you are.

Its got its fair share of whackos..but the great part is that you can rebutt anything anyone says... kinda like this site.

Re:My favorites -- DailyHowler, TheNote & ...

[elwinc]

I keep up to date on talkingpointsmemo and andrewsullivan.com, but before I ever heard of them I was reading dailyhowler.com. And I still do. I've written more than a few letters to the editor based on dailyhowler.

One other page to check out is campaigndesk. . It isn't exactly a blog, but it's got excellent media criticism (and even occasional praise). It's put out by the Columbia School of Journalism.

Finally, and this one's in no way a blog, ABC News' TheNote summarizes and links a lot of political reporting every day. TheNote has much more praise than criticism, but during the political season it's part of my essential daily reading.

InstaPUNK

[fuctape]

InstaPUNK is excellently written, balls-to-the-wall commentary on the bigger social trends. You make not like it, no prisoners are taken.

The best blogs on the left:

[sensate_mass]

Atrios/Eschaton
Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo
Billmon's Whiskey Bar
Matthew Yglesias
Eric Alterman
Kevin Drum
Brad DeLong
Daily Kos
Digby
Mark Kleiman
Hesiod's Counterspin
Bob Somerby's incomparable Daily Howler

and the inimitable Bartcop
(and Fafblog)

Did you forget someone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for pointing out Boortz.

As a longtime Atlanta listener, I must apologize for actually having worked today. I was too busy to check /. and post a link to the Mouth of the South, the High Priest of the Painful Truth, the S.A.W.B ('Smartass white boy' as he was called by then-Mayor Andrew Young)... Neal Boortz.

I have to mention James Taranto, the esteemed pundi-blogger that uses the editorial 'we' in his always witty Best of the Web Today.

The site is here.

Via time travel?

[PapayaSF]

Ben Barnes, then Lt. Governor of Texas, admitted he got Bush into the National Guard

Ummm, except Bush joined the National Guard in May 1968, and Barnes wasn't Lt. Governor until 1969. Perhaps the fact that Barnes is a disgraced Democratic politician and major Kerry fundraiser has something to do with his confusion about dates?

preposterous universe

[idigjazz]

Preposterous universe: http://preposterousuniverse.blogspot.com/ Authored by the U of Chicago cosmologist Dr. Sean Carroll. It's not entirely politically... its also educational. Very well written... but maybe I'm biased because I'm a physics major.

My father is a blogger...

[Big Sean O]

During the summer my dad started sending letters to the editor. The only problem was they wouldn't publish more than one a month.

He got kinda bummed out about it because he had over a years worth of rants already. So he started to send them to other news papers, farther afield.

When I was home earlier in the month, I decided to set him up at Blogger. He's very happy.

My mom, she's a different story... My dad doesn't know how to type, so my mom is his secretary. Fortunately, I taught her to 'copy from the word processor and paste in the browser field' trick, so she's doing minimal extra typing.

Anyhow, my dad is retired, he's very smart and he doesn't stand for anyone's bullshit. Can you guess from the title who he's voting for? Hubris, thy name is Bush.

Something tells me...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that you insult everyone who disagrees with you.

Lawrence Lessig - lessig.org

[j1m 5n0w]

Lawrence Lessig has a blog.

Bush acts like recovered alcoholics usually act.

[Futurepower(R)]

"... Bush is now alarmingly clean and sober..."

In my opinion, Bush acts exactly like recovered alcoholics usually act: The psychological effects of alcoholism provide a framework for understanding the Bush administration.. See points 1 through 13.

My guess is that you don't recognize the symptoms because you are not an alcoholic and don't know any. I'm not an alcoholic, but I had a friend who is. He taught me a lot, and then I asked numerous other alcoholics.

There's a saying at AA meetings: "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic". But, of course, not always a problem drinker. A person's personality does not change just because he or she stopped drinking.

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[revscat]

To be lying they would have had to have known in advance the documents were forged. They did not. When they came to that realization they admitted as much, which means that they have standards and should be praised for having the courage to admit it. Instead, partisans like yourself seek to rub salt in the wounds in order to serve your own narrow agenda.

Further, what the documents said was true, even if the documents themsevles were not actually the originals.

michaelberube.com

[Anonymous Coward]

His blog is fun and very well written : http://www.michaelberube.com/

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[angle_slam]

Further, what the documents said was true, even if the documents themsevles were not actually the originals.

How do you know what the docs said are true? The only proof is in the form of fake documents.

Andrew Sullivan != Single Issue Advocate

[elwinc]

No, Sullivan is not single-issue at all. I'm an independent who frequently votes democratic, but I've been reading Andrew Sullivan for over a year. Sullivan supported Bush in 2000 knowing Bush was anti-gay at the time. Sullivan's biggest issue is the war in Iraq. He supports the war, and believes Bush mis-handled it. My impression is that Abu Ghraib was the event that solidified it for him. Until then Sullivan was saying he leaned against Bush, but could be won over by success in Iraq. After Abu Ghraib, or after the complete lack of anyone being held accountable for Abu Ghraib, Sullivan hardened against Bush.

It's a nice glib piece of spin to claim Sullivan is a single-issue gay-rights advocate, but it's simply false. Simply another piece of misleading spin. As Paul Simon wrote "Some people say a lie's a lie's a lie, but l say why, Why deny the obvious child? why deny the obvious child?"

Watch it online

[THX-1139]

You can download segments from the show here. Rob Cordry's fake investigative reporter segments are hilarious and dead on.

How about Michael Moore's unbiased blog?

[rjamestaylor]

Monday, September 20th, 2004
Put Away Your Hankies...a message from Michael Moore

9/20/04

Dear Friends,

Enough of the handwringing! Enough of the doomsaying! Do I have to come there and personally calm you down? Stop with all the defeatism, OK? Bush IS a goner -- IF we all just quit our whining and bellyaching and stop shaking like a bunch of nervous ninnies. Geez, this is embarrassing! The Republicans are laughing at us. Do you ever see them cry, "Oh, it's all over! We are finished! Bush can't win! Waaaaaa!"

Hell no. It's never over for them until the last ballot is shredded. They are never finished -- they just keeping moving forward like sharks that never sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking, lying. That's right. CBS is a tool of the RNC. *gufaw*

Re:How about Michael Moore's unbiased blog?

[rjamestaylor]

That was supposed to be:

• ...

• Hell no. It's never over for them until the last ballot is shredded. They are never finished -- they just keeping moving forward like sharks that never sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking, lying.

That's right. CBS is a tool of the RNC. *gufaw*

Re:How about Michael Moore's unbiased blog?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please moderate the flamebaiter, Michael Moore, instead.

Re:How about Michael Moore's unbiased blog?

[Curunir_wolf]

Except that it's not a blog. A blog has links for readers to post comments, send email, often has links to other emails and blogs, and is responsive to feedback.

Moore's site is just a list of rants. It's a marketing site.

Here's my daily schedule

[Thornkin]

RealClearPolitics - Polling data and best of the MSM commentary.
Instapundit - Smorgasboard of daily links interspersed with commentary.
Hugh Hewitt - Law professor, author, and radio talk show host.
Powerline - Commentary and links. Were very influential in the Rathergate controversy.

My favorite is The Daily Howler

[lucasorion]

http://dailyhowler.com/ I check it every day, great archive for the 2000 election too.

Favorite blog site

[kuriharu]

I like NRO - Jonah Goldberg kicks ass www.nationalreview.com

BadCommie

[Anonymous Coward]

BadCommie is the only source of political information I need. Well, that and trolltalk.

FARK.com

[Kenshin]

Honestly, Fark.com is my favourite.

TECHNICALLY it isn't a weblog, but the flamewars that get spurred in political threads can't be beat. Plenty of valid opinions, *and* ill-informed knee-jerk reactions.

One of 'our own'

[Code Dark]

I like the musing of one of the open source community's finest: Eric S. Raymond's Blog. Although I don't necessarily agree on all of his politics, he does give an interesting read...

The Dreyfuss Report

[__aahrlq8808]

The Dreyfuss report, courtesy of TomPaine.com >> http://www.tompaine.com/blogs/

Re:Bush acts like recovered alcoholics usually act

[Quinn]

You make a valid point. We'd better demand tests to see if Kerry is also an alcoholic... ...in addition to an admitted and self-celebrated war criminal.

http://www.ilovekarlrove.com/

[Zenmonkeycat]

http://www.ilovekarlrove.com/

For all you Rove Ho's, here's a lovely blog featuring a gorgeous pink web design... and lots of pictures of everyone's favorite Bush Political Advisor, Karl Rove, most in very close proximity to white and/or pink hearts. Say what you will about Karl Rove, his fans definitely have one thing: Taste!

The Poor Man

[andrewagill]

Personally, I'm a fan of The Poor Man, Sadly, No!, and uggabugga. I hate Atrios, but at least he keeps you abreast of what's going on. For election coverage, there's Andrew S. Tannenbaum's electoral-vote.com and the polling report I have a whole list of `em. I'm not gonna give you all the links, that's what Google's for: World O'Crap, Matthew Yglesias, the All Spin Zone, Hullabaloo, Daily Kos, This Modern World, War Liberal. Democratic Veteran, The Al Franken web site, The Majority Report, Media Matters for America, TBOGG, democratic underground, hoffmania, and a few others...

Specifically NRO

[artisteeternite]

For THE premier blog on the conservative side, go to "The Corner" (lost sheep linked to it above). This is the weblog that even the president's men read. Besides, what could be better than politics interspersed with poetry and dirty jokes? :-p

Riverbend

[laukev7]

Here's a site about Iraqi politics by a very well educated Iraqi girl: http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ She could be considered the Anne Frank of the Gulf War.

plug for bartcop

[IndependentVik]

Hey, somebody finally mentioned Altercation! I could do without the music reviews, but I enjoy the political commentary.

On the less intellectual side of the liberal blogs, I enjoy reading bartcop. His mindless anger can be fun for the disenfranchised liberal (the conservatives can bitch all they want, but we liberals really have fuck-all for political power these days), but he also has a good roundup of links from mainstream news sources.

Political blogs

[brianerst]

I try to read a wide variety of political blogs, hitting all the major political angles, as none of the parties quite fit my weird political views. I mean, how many atheistic, anti-abortion libertarian libertine hawks can their possibly be? ;)

Here's a sampling of the best I've found:

Vodkapundit. Stephen Green's blog. Probably the best match for my own political views. Hawkish libertarian and consumer of fine ethanol-based beverages.

Instapundit Glenn Reynold's blog. Another decent match for my own viewpoint. Glenn's more of a linker than a commentator, but he's one of the best about linking to all sides of the blogosphere. When he does extended bits (such as at his MSNBC site or his TCS columns), he's quite cogent. Has a lot of outside interests (electronic music, space policy, nano-tech, constitutional law) that dovetail into my own and make his site more interesting than the politics-only blogs. Frequently mentions Slashdot and links to relevant discussions.

Reason's Hit and Run Another libertarian blog, run by Reason magazine. Much more in tune to the Libertarian Party than the above.

Virginia Postrel YALB (Yet Another Libertarian Blog). Postrel is a former editor of Reason. More of a social commentator these days and has written some fascinating books recently. Seems to have become ever-so-slightly more hawkish since 9/11.

The Corner National Review's blog. Conservative and largely Catholic, it's best feature is Jonah Goldberg (the token non-Catholic), who has a pleasantly snarky, pop-cultural laden view of current events. Least pleasant on the blog in John Derbyshire, who is quite the math geek but is way out there on the borderline-racist right (quite pleasant in email, though).

Andrew Sullivan. Classical liberal, Oakeshott conservative. A very incisive and passionate writer, he has an infuriating habit of demonizing the opposition. Originally very pro-war (and spent much time fulminating against the "fifth columnist" element on the left), he's now got a new enemy (those opposed to gay marriage/gay rights), so all those who were the enemy last year (the Democrats/John Kerry) are friends, and all those who were friends last year (the Republicans/George Bush) are enemies who can now do no right. When his emotions are not ruling his thinking, though, he's very, very good.

Mickey Kaus Slate's resident blogger, Mickey is a DLC "New" Democrat. He's one of the more honest of the bloggers (zings his own side often, recognizes good arguments on the other side) and a good source of insider media stuff.

Josh Marshall Establishment Democrat. I found his stuff to be really good a few years back, but recently he's spending more time rooting for the team (DNC/Kerry) than being objective. Also, darkly hints at constant "breaking soon" scoops that either never appear or completely underwhelm. Very bright guy, though, and insightful when not attempting to spin too obviously.

Kevin Drum Another Establishment Democrat. Kevin tends to be more self-reflective than Josh, which stands him in good stead. Great place to capture the mood of the DNC political types.

New Republic They have a couple of blogs (&c. and Campaign Journal). &c. is by far the better of the two. Skews left, but a sort of rationalist left (understands that while America may suck at times, other places suck more).

Tapped This used to be a great blog back in the

screwed up link

[IndependentVik]

Oh, sonuva, I really messed up that link.

Re:Drudge Report - Is it really a blog? Where RSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. From a technical standpoint, I can get faster and better news from setting up a bunch of RSS feeds. Sure the Drudge Report has political gossip, but it's mainly another blog turned yahoo (i.e. news filtering). And no RSS feed and bad font, and bias related material printed at the top of the page (the rest of drudge midway down is ok, informative and somewhat unbiased). Then again, what's a blog? Is it a collection of links or personal thoughts/entries (i.e. a website) or self-written reports, op-eds, responses, etc...? That should be a question we should answer here: Are all these so called political blogs technically Blogs or forums or just websites or just yahoo-like news filters or just a bunch of links?

Hmmm, does the media not "get it" with technology (blogs) and its real purpose... AGAIN?

If he had an RSS feed, I can skip his usual first bias article and go to the real news (i.e. links to other news articles) instead of searching the rest of that website. Oops my RSS feed just updated, gotta go.

Ratios: Friends:Foes & Freaks:Fans

[Cryofan]

you wrote:

I'm pretty much as libertarian as they come, and my fans outnumber my freaks by better than 5 to 1. Now how exactly does that get explained by your theories?

That does not speak to my theory as stated above. My theory is that the American conservative movement is a decades long propaganda movement driven by well-funded think tanks and foundation ($2B of funds (google "tentacles of rage"). One aspect of this propaganda-driven conservative movement is the appeal to the more spiteful and meanspirited aspects of human nature. For some reason it is easier to push this spiteful, hateful, greedy, reactionary buttons of human nature, than it is to tap into the more thoughtful, rational, and trusting core fundamentals of Leftism/Liberalism. I know whereof I speak: when I was of age 28-38, I was a rightwinger, albeit of the Libertarian variety (the atheist flock to that end, and the believers flock to the GOP proper).

I propose that this spiteful aspect of American conservatism can be quantified by spidering the personal info links on slashdot.

You say you have more fans than freaks. That means that more slashdotters like your politics than dislike them. But that does not speak to my theory: my theory holds that rightwing slashdootters are more hateful than leftwing slashdotters. If you are more hateful, then you are more likely to classify another slashdotter as a FOE than as a FRIEND. Thus a rightwing slashdotter would have a HIGH Foe:Friend ration, and a Leftwing Slashdotter would have a LOW Foe:Friend ratio.

I would say that there are more rightwingers (i.e., conservatives/Republicans/Libertarians) on Slashdot than there are Liberals/Progressives/Democrats/Leftists. So, it is not surprising that you as a rightwinger would have a high Fan:Freak ratio.

Re:Ratios: Friends:Foes & Freaks:Fans

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not just a matter of politics, its also a matter of discourse. Judging from your posts, you are pretty far left. Moreover, you seem to believe that anyone that disagrees with you has been brainwashed by the man. I know of many people that are very liberal, but they do not offend me as much because they don't have a reflexive belief that "You do not agree with me; the only possible explaination is that you are brainwashed." Someone that is condiscending like that is much more likely to be marked as a "Foe", regardless of their place on the political spectrum.

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[revscat]

Because the woman who wrote the real documents stands by them, as does everyone else from that time. No one has contradicted the contents, not even the White House, and if you had watched the 60 Minutes in question you would have known this.

Capitalism Magazine

[Stormwatch]

Capitalism Magazine ... well, it is not really a blog. It is a site of politic/social/philosophic editorials, from an objectivist (Ayn Rand) point of view. I love this site!

I also like Polipundit , Instapundit , Cox & Forkum , and deliciously corrosive Ann Coulter .

For the portuguese-speaking: be sure to check Midia Sem Mascara and Diego Casagrande .

The dnc and cbs talked on the smear of bush joe

[Anonymous Coward]

straight from drudge breaking news

Joe Lockhart (Kerry Campaign Advisor sent by Clinton) admits calling Burkett 3 days before the CBS story broke

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/n at ion/president/2004-09-20-cbs-documents_x.htm?csp=2 4&RM_Exclude=Juno

Re:No, it's just the right is a bastion of lies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anger : One of the first reactions of O'Reilly, Hume, Limbaugh, etc. without facts to back them up.

Name Calling : Second to the first. If you cannot refute the liberal thinky-thoughts call the liberals names.

Slams on the government: old, present, forthcoming

[reanjr]

http://poliwatch.org/

Good site to hear well-thought out bitching about the government and the election. Includes a comprehensive aggregation of other political news as well.

I'd go here

[Apathist]

It's a new site, but the political rants (really more like discourses) suit the misanthrope lurking within:

Rants-r-us

Just World News

[PixelSlut]

http://www.justworldnews.org/ is a very interesting weblog by Helena Cobban. The blog seems to be primarily concerned with things of middle-eastern relation, but maybe that's just the way it's focused these days due to all the things going on there right now. Definitely a great website, and well worth keeping an eye on.

Dunno about blogs

[value_added]

... but some may find this kind of thing more informative, if not more entertaining.

http://www.harpers.org/HarpersIndex2004-08.html

Blogs I like

[sjanich]

http://instapundit.com/

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/weblog.php

http://realclearpolitics.com/

http://althouse.blogspot.com/

http://www.powerlineblog.com/

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/

http://www.intel-dump.com/

http://denbeste.nu/indexlofi.shtml

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevoluti on/

http://www.parapundit.com/

http://www.allahpundit.com/

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/

http://www.jihadwatch.org/

http://www.radicalmiddle.com/

Re:Chomsky

[js7a]

Did you know [Chomsky]'s also a rabid anti-semite, a Holocaust denier, and hugely anti-American?

Nonsense. He's a Jew, he has never to my knowlege denied the holocaust, and he has only constructive critisism for America.

Glad to see that BIASED MODERATORS still exist

[Mycroft_514]

A troll is not one that lists 7 items that are within the topic.

Re:Glad to see that BIASED MODERATORS still exist

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to worry - I got him in metamod.

Nobody's mentioned Democratic Underground?

[tinrobot]

As a bleeding heart liberal, I find Democratic Underground (DU) to be a great source of political news and insight. I found out about Kerry's choice of Edwards almost 12 hours early, among many other things.

http://www.democraticunderground.com

(of course, if your political philosophy veers to the right, the antithesis of DU is Free Republic)

buzzflash.com & bartcop.com

[msjacoby]

Buzzflash isn't a blog per se, but it is a presentation of selected news stories with brief commentary - which is what I consider blogging to be at its core. It is widely considered to be the most respectable progressive news filter.

BartCop is a more traditional-style blog with rantings of a particular individual - very funny and intelligent. What's the kicker? The blogger in question is a redneck okie from Tulsa, Oklahoma - and he's a hard-core liberal! Also includes "BartCop Radio" for subscribers.

Taste the lights, taste the action, taste the fame!

a good one, interesting unique perspective

[sjalex]

a good one is at angryarab. It's from a non-religious arab guy who teaches middle eastern studies in california. He seems to know his business.

FWIW I initially heard him on Flashpoints on Pacifica radio, that's produced out of KPFA in Berkeley and I hear it on KPFT 90.1 Houston, 89.5 Galveston

Billmon

[ttfkam]

The Whiskey Bar is absolutely wonderful. Well written. Great op-ed. Fact checking up the wazoo -- something sorely missing from most blogs. The guy definitely knows what true journalism is. Unfortunately, the site's been silent for the last month.

Check the archives though. It's worth it. It'll take weeks just to read through it all and each one is as good as the last.

CoxAndForkum

[TummyX]

Cox And Forkum are objectivist cartoonists who are usually right on the button with their witty clever illustrations and commentary.

CommunistsForKerry are a riot if you like good satire :)

Re:CoxAndForkum

[aggiefalcon01]

Both great sites. Though C&F isn't so much a blog anymore, is it? At least, it's not one you can post comments to. Love the cartoons, though, so C&F has been on my daily list for a few months now.

A couple more

[idlerich]

http://www.warblogging.com/: Excellent, thoughtful writing by George Paine.

http://www.juancole.com/: If you really want to understand the Iraq war and the Middle East.

http://www.atrios.blogspot.com/: Eschaton, for brief and very incisive commentary.

Operation American Freedom

[JohnnyX]

Operation American Freedom, Michael Badnarik's weblog.

Yours truly,
Mr. X

...let Badnarik debate...

Bill White

[neoclassical]

Bill White

some recent fafblog stories

[DanTheLewis]

Fafblog Special Interview: GOD AND SATAN

is my toothpaste gay?

Courage: The World's Terrorist Supply Is Fading Fast

Mushroom cloud, shmushroom cloud

dismal reportage

[Doc Ruby]

The Economist supported the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. They are a tool of the global oil finance system.

Re:dismal reportage

[lucabrasi999]

They are a tool of the global oil finance system.

Oh, please, put away the tin-foil hat for just a minute. They ran a cover story in full support of Gay Marriage just a few months ago. And, they support stem cell research.

And, who cares what the editorial content is? I don't agree with many of their editorials. What matters is the breadth of the news organization. I know of no other magazine that covers the entire world, including a significant amount of content devoted to developments in Africa, Souteasthern & Central Asia, like the Economist.

www.RatherBiased.com

[Solitonic]

"We watch FOX so you don't have to."

Another noteworthy site is http://www.RatherBiased.com. Their motto is "Watching CBS News so you don't have to". :-)

But seriously, I have been checking it out it daily since the whole MemoGate controversy erupted. The blog is on top of this story; the operator of the site appears to have a number of internal contacts within CBS News. It also has deep archives that go back years, detailing previous spats between Dan Rather and the Bushes.

Of particular interest to me was this interview with former CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg, whose recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal is also an informative read.

Re:Split Post Moderations & Ratio of Friends t

[Woko]

For example, I have about 17 freaks (people who hate me, denoted me as a foe)

I'd suggest that 'hate' is rather a strong word and a lot of people simply use the 'Foe' option to killfile people.

When your tired of one person making some inane comment, its easier to just Foe the guy, move on and have the persons comments filtered out in future.

If people really hated you, they'd be stalking you, using the system to highlight your posts and take every opportunity to insult you.

Which are the Most Popular Progressive Websites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which are the Most Popular Progressive Websites?

Alexa.com rates popularity of all websites on the internet - over 250 million of them. They use a combination of the number of 'users' and 'page views' over a 3-month period to calculate website popularity (Click here to see Alexa's Global Top 500).

Here's how the top 25 progressive websites rank:

(as of June 30, 2004)
Progressive Ranking Website (as of June 30, 2004)
Alexa Ranking
1 CommonDreams.org 5,014
2 Village Voice 5,362
3 AirAmericaRadio.com 5,697
4 DemocraticUnderground.com 6,181
5 MichaelMoore.com 7,002
6 Daily Kos 7,803
7 CounterPunch.org 9,147
8 TruthOut.org 10,343
9 The Nation 11,750
10 MoveOn.org 10,874
11 Fahrenheit 9/11 12,202
12 AlterNet.org 11,395
13 Amnesty International 13,663
14 Planet Out 13,621
15 BuzzFlash.com 13,149
16 ZNet/ZMagazine 14,735
17 Doonesbury 19,291
18 Washington Monthly 19,317
19 Center for American Progress 21,073
20 Human Rights Watch 21,418
21 DemocracyNow! 21,629
22 WorkingforChange.com 21,766
23 Greenpeace 24,538
24 TomPaine.com 25,159
25 MotherJones.com 26,558

Great blogs, and by slashdotters too

[Eshock]

While TPM is good, for my money, the best center-left blog is by Kevin Drum over at the Washington Monthly. (www.washingtonmonthly.com) He's also a programmer, which a lot of the slashdot crowd will enjoy. On the right side of the fence, nothing beats Russ Nelson's The Angry Economist (http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/) Weirdly enough, he's a programmer too. I guess I can relate to the style of analytical reasoning these guys use as CS people, applied to politics. I'm guessing other /.'ers will too.

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[angle_slam]

So if I watched a show based on fake documents, I would have known that what the fake documents said was true. Gotcha.

http://angrydem.blogspot.com

[Anonymous Coward]

http://angrydem.blogspot.com

idiocy

[Doc Ruby]

Chomsky's an "idiot"? He coined the E = mc2 of linguistics. Even if you disagree with him, he does know more than you.

Re:idiocy

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: proof positive that somebody can be a genius in one field and a shithead in all the others.

Re:idiocy

[Erik Hollensbe]

I agree with you so much.

Every time I complain about Chomsky some poor sap that got his job because of his degree brings up his linguistics credentials.

And you know, he is a very smart man. He's also, occasionally got some very keen insight, like every other activist and pundit.

No person's opinion is bullet-proof, otherwise, philosophy would have ended at the greeks and even the family in deliverance would know what the basic moral axioms are.

Chomsky, like every other person out there, is one with an opinion and some solutions which seek to resolve that opinion. It's stupid for us to ignore him, and it's stupid for us to blindly listen to what he says - regardless of any presumed intelligence.

Hitler originally was a starving artist and wanted to be a priest as a child. Tell that to the next trustafarian you meet at starbucks.

(I know, godwin's law, bite me)

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

He certainly knows more than you do about global politics and rhetoric. But, then again, he has several years on you in that arena alone. Don't feel bad, my shrill shill.

The Pig!

[jdpurdyvi]

Just have to plug a friend's blog. Well, four friends really. "La Communauté De Bourgeoise: In which four gentlemen of Wisconsin disperse across the 48 Contiguous States in the pursuit of a higher education, and report of their experience." The content is mainly two coherts, Ryan and Jeff, reporting from American University in DC and NYU. Both write for their universities and both have had stories picked up by the APWire service. http://bourgeoispig.blogspot.com/

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[revscat]

If you had many other sources, written, verbal, and circumstantial, tell you that, yes, absolutely. The documents aren't the only proof of these claims. Far from it, in fact. But consider: If I show you a document with Albert Einstein's signature on it that says "2+3=5", and it turns out that Einstein didn't actually sign that paper, that doesn't mean the arithmetic is bad.

Wait, are you one of those conservatives who leap at every excuse they can find that lets them NOT listen to things that challenge their beliefs? If so, there's really no point in bothering with you.

blogs to start with

[gryf]

I began with

http://www.powerlineblog.com and to this day, still start my blogging from there. I don't link to anyone else, because from there I go to:

www.shotinthdark.info, a telling, and entertaining blog with links to everyone pretty much.

www.Vodkapundit is very good, and very entertaining. Quite the libertarian, he is a single issue voter: the war, otherwise he disagrees with just about every politician

www.lileks.com/bleat/ is an entertaining blog. Often political, his is usually just an entertaining take on daily life.

http://www.powerlineblog.com however, is probably the most mature political blog I've seen. Others like throwing bombs, these people discount rumors, and play it safe with interesting and educated analysis. It should be noted, none of these people are friends of Kos or Talking Points memo, and all consider Sullivan a good writer, but hardly conservative. I liked Sullivan until he began slandering Bush and conservatives in general regarding same-sex issues ( with my libertarian take, I couldn't stomach his partisanship ).

OpinionJournal - Best Of The Web Today

[gtwreck]

I enjoy the style and humor applied to the daily news and commentary around the web and in the media at the Wall Street Journal's Best Of The Web put together by James Taranto and others.

At first I was a little surprised when reading this thread that it wasn't mentioned- then I thought of the typical reader around here and realized it's probably not frequented that often...

Anyways, it's a good round-up, funny, and it's new every weekday. And I figured that it deserved mention here.

e-thePeople.org

[Jim Madison]

Public discussion with diverse participants (e.g., partisans of both/many sides and many who don't relate to any party: www.e-thePeople.org (you can add the quorum box mentioned in my tag, it's the same thing.)

Or stated otherwise, a cross between slashdot and a blog.

Oh, and for foreign policy I like the DanDrezner.com

Mr. Obvious to the rescue

[aricusmaximus]

Sig at the end of your Star Wars post:
Does anyone else find it distasteful when a draft dodger calls into question the medals of a war hero? (Parent's sig).

What was that doing in the Star Wars posting?

Perhaps the people who modded you as troll were rightfully annoyed with you placing a political, inflammatory sig at the end of a message not in politics.slashdot.org?

Pudge!

[LinuxWhore]

I love Pudge. Does that count?

Re:Pudge!

[TaxSlave]

YAY PUDGE!

Public Address

[interpretthis.org]

Russell Brown often comments on America.

He is a New Zealander who goes for highly balanced commentary. I highly recommend Americans reading at least one blog that looks on from the outside. Check him out: Hardnews

None of you can even stand to look at what the rest of the world considers normal media anymore because it jars so much with your totally distorted world view.

buh bye

Atomic Airship

[airship]

I am greatly hurt that no one so far has mentioned my own highly informative and occasionally amusing (at least to me) politically liberal blog Atomic Airship

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[jdbo]

While the right-leaning blogosphere drew attention to the memos, the grounds on which they were declaring them to be suspect (similarity to MS Word output) were completely spurious.

In fact, it was investigation by the Washington Post that provided the authoritative evidence that the documents were forgeries, and NOT the blogosphere. Let me repeat that with more detail.

Investigation by the Washington Post, in which they determined that actual content of the suspect memos failed to match a writing/composition patterns consistent with the mass of memos coming from Killian's office, provided the authoritative evidence (i.e. not definitive proof, but good enough) that the documents were forgeries, and NOT the blogosphere.

The blogs provided cheerleading support, but their actual investigation focused on woefully uninformed discussions regarding technical typesetting. It was pretty apparent that most of the discussion was an echo chamber in which noone was actually consulting with document forensics experts, but rather with friends/of/friends.

Anyone putting forward that the blogosphere's brief obsession with kerning constituted a triumphant moment in the "battle of blogosphere vs. the traditional media" (which is a ridiculous concept in the first place, as there's clearly a symbiotic relationship there, not competitive) is blowing smoke up your ass as well as their own.

Pardon the tone of this comment, but this incident reminded me of nothing more than the odd occasion that the crazy homeless person screaming future predictions from the corner bus stop actually gets something right. It was a case of being right by getting lucky, and pumping it up as anything more undermines any future chance of building media blogging communities that will have the know-how to "get it right" again.

For the lowdown on Irish politics...

[fiannaFailMan]

Letter to Slugger O'Toole

Interesting Blogs

[wwi]

http://www.fecesflingingmonkey.com

He links to many other very interesting blogs. Sometimes macabre, because the real world has become that way, too.

http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/

Little Green Footballs offers a very clear picture of the current war situation. They use the enemy's own words to paint the picture, you don't need a commentator to tell you how much hate there is, or who the bad guys are, and who their intended targets are (yes, you...and me, all of us).

http://www.lileks.com/bleats/

James Lileks is always a good read. He shoots it onto the website (paper?) directly from his brain. He is of my generation and has been through many of the changes (political and social) that I have experienced.

http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/04/0604/060 70 4.html

His piece on Reagan, a must read.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/

Economics affects all our lives, whether you want to or not, you are part of the economic system. Best to read up on it and understand what is going on.

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number%20watch.htm

How numbers and statistics are distorted out of all proportion. Based in the UK, the lessons are the same everywhere. Very much up to date.

http://www.coxandforkum.com/

And maybe if you like your blogs just to be pictures (with a few words here and there), here they are.

http://victorhanson.com/index.html

Victor Davis Hansen is one of the most readable people today who has a strong understanding of the military (and world-political) situation we are in. Always thoughtful, always insightful. (good books too)

http://cellar.org/iotd.php

More pictures for those who don't want to read too much.

http://www.belmontclub.blogspot.com/

More on military matters. Well, we are in a war, ya know. Best to learn all you can about it.

http://www.americandigest.org/

Insightful, too.

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[killjoe]

Personally I don't see how any gay person could possibly be a republican in this day and age. What else in your life could be more important then having the right to marry the person you love and build a family.

Besides it's not like the republicans are for smaller govt or fiscal responsibility these days anyway.

I am asking this question seriously. If there is a gay republican out there. Why are you a republican? These people have called you sick and diseased. Are willing to amend the most scared document of our country to make sure you can never have the same right that they have. They also believe ardently that you are not worthy to defend your own country. They also believe that there should be a whole slew of jobs you should be qualified for including teaching. They believe people should be able to discriminate against you in housing too.

Why? It just doesn't make sense.

Hit & Run (Reason mag.)

[code_monkey_steve]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Reason magazine's blog Hit & Run.

Conceptual Guerilla

[AtariEric]

Conceptual Guerilla is my favorite site. Blogs, fora, the whole works.

MediaLens.org

[cpudney]

MediaLens.org - not so much a blog but excellent analysis of mainstream news media.

Re:MediaLens.org

[thecoach]

Medialens is great, but has a distinct UK emphasis. Also try Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, a.k.a. FAIR. Both great sites.

Nation of Riflemen & anti-idiotorian rotweille

[dfenstrate]

A lot of my favorites have been posted already, but here's a few more: Kim Du Toit

The motto: Turning america back into a riflemen, one person at a time. Blogs about guns, WoT, liberal failings, etc.

He also keeps a count of media stories of home invaders or other criminals lawfully and rightfully shot in self defense. Also known as "Dead Goblin Count", which is above 80 right now. Not sure when he started the count.

His readers sponsor two snipers headed to Iraq, and so far we've outfitted them with first class scopes for their rifles, rangefinders, and a few other toys that are significantly better than what Uncle Sam provided them.

Comments are allowed with registration.

Anti-Idiotorian Rottweiler

Typically home to many, many rants about liberals. Fun to read at times. Also loaded with fiskings of various news articles.

Comments also allowed.

Both Kim and Misha are immigrants, now citizens, who I'm proud to call my fellow countrymen.

LGF is a hate site

[Wah]

funny how they are such a stickler for CBS memos, but when it comes to innacurate stories about Muslims, it's go-time baby!

Evidence. Read down to comment #15, if you can stomach that much bigotry. It puts Charles Johnson's 'journalistic integrity' directly on display.

BTW, the memos have shown two thing about the 'sphere. It's good for establishing technical facts, and piss-poor for putting them in context.

Pretty much like other AI's.

Re:LGF is a hate site

[On Lawn]

Zombie, in that reference would be a better reference for journalistic integrity had he/she actually linked to the article they were referring to. As it is Zombie is playing the razor of probable reason to the story which is not a bad thing to do. But without evidence of his own he is only offering a competing opinion.

As far as Charles, the article clearly says what Charles says it does. What was the moral you were espousing again?

Re:LGF is a hate site

[Wah]

Keep reading down the thread (if you can stomach it). Three more people point out that the story, as posted, is wrong.

Why doesn't Charles fix it?

What was the moral you were espousing again?

Honesty. Plain, ole, honesty. Or maybe it's called 'journalistic integrity'. Chuck lost that mantle a couple years ago, though, so now the bar is lowered. And he still can't make it.

Hate makes you stupid, and, it would seem, deceitful.

But damn are they focused on those memos.

Re:LGF is a hate site

[TheCaptain]

Why doesn't Charles fix it?

Granted, it would be great if he did. (I am not going to directly defend something that isn't right, unlike Kos.) His readers already DID that however.

If CBS would like to do the equivalent and give the people who have differences with what they try to pass off as news some free air time to correct them, you'd have the equivalency you are trying to make.

Why don't you politely email Charles and ask him to say something about it...though by the impression your words are giving me, I don't think you have it in you to be polite with someone who's views are different from your own.

Re:LGF is a hate site

[On Lawn]

From the article...

The children said Majid whipped them mercilessly for not reading their lessons at the top of their voices after afternoon prayers Tuesday.

"But it did not reduce his anger and he cut off our ears with a pair of scissors," one of the students said.

The students attacked by Majid were taken to a local hospital for treatment. [emphasis mine]

I checked to see if that is how the Indo-Asian News Service is still reporting it, and they are.

Hate makes you stupid, and, it would seem, deceitful.

Indeed. You claimed it was intellectually dishonest how Charles reported it. How I don't know when the article clearly states what he says it does.

Zombie did make the clarification you say he/she did, but clearly you are making hay from this where Zombie isn't. To call it an outright lie is, well, hate born rhetoric that makes you stupid and, it would seem, deceitful :) From Zombie...

So, even though the crime was probably not as serious as the original article implies, it is still beyond comprehension that a teacher would even ponder doing this. Islamic psychosis at work.

Zombie recieved many kudos for providing clarification. And when someone drove the same point as you did Zombie put them in their place...

girlie, you're being irrational and ridiculous. You just pointed out that someone (me) DID have the same level of scepticism and DID fact check the story. And then in the next sentence you say that no one did any fact-checking.

*Yawn* I can see you're not even worth dealing with.

Re:LGF is a hate site

[Wah]

Why don't you politely email Charles and ask him to say something about it.

Give it a shot. See how quick you get banned for 'not seeing the problem'.

Really, give it a shot. Let me know how it goes. Three people posted it in the thread, yet...

If there is a discrepancy, this is where 'journalism' comes in, and you try and get as close to the truth as possible. That's not the goal for LGF. It's a hate site. Its purpose is to point out how unworthy of life (extremist) Muslims are. And those parenthesis have an inversely proportional relationship with the amount of anger each particular story generates. The more hate, the quicker they fade.

If CBS would like to do the equivalent...

CBS has admitted their error. However, like the man who missed the forest for the trees, the rest of the story is still quite solid.

Re:LGF is a hate site

[Wah]

my point exactly.

"But it did not reduce his anger and he cut off our ears with a pair of scissors," one of the students said.

So the crux of Charles' position is based on that single statement by a traunatized child? Pray tell, what percentage of Madrassas in the northern Bangladeshi district of Bogra use English as their primary tounge? So we are working off a tranlsation of a child's interpretation. Note, three other sources counter that child's claim.

Also, speaking of psychosis.

So, even though the crime was probably not as serious as the original article implies, it is still beyond comprehension that a teacher would even ponder doing this. Islamic psychosis at work.

This makes my point precisely. Regardless of what actually happened, it still points to the 'fact' that Islam is psychotic. Also, it's pretty obvious that Zombie feels this applies to the religion as a whole. LGF propagates this position on a daily basis.

Thank you for making my point.

From comment #358, who just read the main post and didn't follow the comments.

What floors me about this is the mechanics of it. Cut off one ear, you have a child screaming, blood flowing, the rest of the children terrified, possibly screaming. Hell, most adults I know would be vomiting.

Then this monster goes from seat to seat, child by child, and repeats the process over a dozen times?

---

And yet somehow the school administration [one other person, see articles. -wah] initially sheltered him?

These people have lost their souls.

And so the hate grows.

Re:LGF is a hate site

[On Lawn]

Triangulation as a last defense?

my point exactly.

Yes apparently so. What was that point again?

So the crux of Charles' position is based on that single statement by a traunatized child?

Apparently. And it is a good thing for Charles to show the intellectual honesty to reveal his source. Who for all the problems not withstanding
is an eye-witness to the account. Again, if what I said was "your point exactly" then you would agree that you are over-reaching.

This makes my point precisely. Regardless of what actually happened, it still points to the 'fact' that Islam is psychotic.

No, I wouldn't agree with you or Charles or Zombie on that. The actions of a disgruntled school teacher who was punished (albeit too lightly for my tastes) does not indict a expansionist political movement nor religion. Well, not on its own. It only points to the person committing the attrocity.

Also, it's pretty obvious that Zombie feels this applies to the religion as a whole.

So far this is something I've only seen you say. I've read Zombie's comments and they were rather reasonable in that regard, he differentiated between Islam and Muslim just as you expect him/her to do. Again, this is something you would already have accepted if what I said was your "point precisely". Not, "my point almost". Not, "My point for the most part". You said, "my point precisely".

So just what is that point --precisely?

Re:LGF is a hate site

[TheCaptain]

Give it a shot. See how quick you get banned for 'not seeing the problem'.

Really, give it a shot. Let me know how it goes. Three people posted it in the thread, yet...


No...I challenged you to try it. POLITELY I might add, which appears as though it would be the greater challenge of the two. It is my opinion, based on this conversation so far, that you wouldn't be capable of writing Charles an email without insulting him, his site, or his views, and asking that he try to keep the intellectual highground on this point. (You know...the teacher was only cutting the kids ears...not cutting them off. That's MUCH better.)

It's kind of amusing that you point to three posters who set the record straight. If Charles was banning people for 'not seeing the problem', don't you think he'd also be removing posts? Yet there they are...interesting that. Especially interesting if you read Kos's behavior in the link I provided earlier. You are projecting.

One very important point for you. Websites don't make people hate. The decision to hate or not to hate is up to the individual.

LGF does often carry some interesting information...LGS is the site that first convinced me beyond the shadow of a doubt that the CBS memo was a fake. Not by 'spreading hate'...by providing information. If that information makes you automatically prone to hate, maybe you'd better get some help.

Its purpose is to point out how unworthy of life (extremist) Muslims are.

Perhaps their lives would improve if they stopped giving the civilized world quite so much to point at in this regard.

Re:LGF is a hate site

[TheCaptain]

and for the record...not as solid as you think...

Re:LGF is a hate site

[Wah]

It is my opinion, based on this conversation so far, that you wouldn't be capable of writing Charles an email without insulting him, his site, or his views, and asking that he try to keep the intellectual highground on this point.

It is my opinion, based on experience, that it doesn't matter.

However, to illustrate my point, I have done as you asked.

Websites don't make people hate. The decision to hate or not to hate is up to the individual.

Correct, websites just provide information with which to rationalize that hatred. That's a very important point, write it down.

LGF does often carry some interesting information.

Yes, they do. Their discussion of Rachel Corrie includes particularly enlightening pieces of information.

Perhaps their lives would improve if they stopped giving the civilized world quite so much to point at in this regard.

Talk about a tangent. Perhaps their lives would improve if the illegal occupation of Palestine was ended.

Re:LGF is a hate site

[Wah]

nice, a /. comment containing an ad hominen, versus a fully researched 3-page essay. You be the judge.

Re:LGF is a hate site

[TheCaptain]

Ironically enough, you just responded to it with a strawman...since we are breaking out the debate rules. ;)

Do you think that the inclusion of an ad hominem attack rules out all chance that the post and several others in the thread refute alot of what the Salon author has to say?

I don't think the author is doing anything with an objective mindset. He's another partisan hack, IMHO...some of his "opinion" pieces are probably as offensive to me as you said you find LGF.

The thing that bothers me, is that his opinion also permeates the articles that are labeled as "news and politics" rather than "opinion"...it's not as overt, but he drives for the exact same points, just without the insults.

For that matter, there are quite a few ad hominems in them, if that does indeed qualify as a discrediting factor.

For what it's worth, I might write Charles about the article you pointed out myself yet. I do have an account there, though I am a lurker. He is awfully busy with the recent media coverage and other matters by the sound of it, but it's worth a shot. I certainly don't think it's likely going to ban me over it.

Re:LGF is a hate site

[Wah]

I might write Charles about the article you pointed out myself yet. I do have an account there, though I am a lurker.

Who is surpised by this and your inability to seperate Muslim, Islam and Fundamentalist Wahabbi Islamist Terorists?

Count me un.

I might write Charles about the article you pointed out myself yet.

You do that. It would make LGF seem one post less like a hate site.

strawman

The memos are a straw man. They have been burned to a crisp. Now Bush's holes in his record just sit there and stare at ya.

Re:Which are the Most Popular Progressive Websites

[Anonymous Coward]

"Progressive" has become a euphamism for "government handouts," which create stagnation and dependence. Nobody is empowered by government handouts. Just take a stroll through any subsidized housing project here in the U.S. and you will know this is the truth.

favorites

[Anonymous Coward]

left i on the news
avedon's sideshow

BSAlert

[humankind]

I recommend BSAlert.com - it covers politics and a lot of corporate society issues that seem to have gone horribly wrong.

where do I go... why rantburg

[watermodem]

Rantburg

Serious Topics in the UK ex FT.COM folks...

[watermodem]

Serious Topics

Re:Aotearoa: South Pacific Politician's Blog

[PSandusky]

Fascinating. Really. In the US, politicians are big on hushing up what happens in-committee. This blog is honest and thorough... and doesn't hide a lot of what some of the spinmeisters here would.

For my part, I'm particularly impressed that this kind of attention would focus on an environmental issue. American politics? Heh. Yeah. Mountains are being exploded and it doesn't make news or get attention outside of the county in which it happens. (And in some places, I doubt there's even that much coverage.)

Thank you.

Re:Split Post Moderations & Ratio of Friends t

[Moofie]

Hmm. Just the other day, somebody was complaining about the left wing bias of /. That tells me something must be going right.

Me? I'm pretty conservative/libertarian with a big ol' streak of good old fashioned social justice in me. I hate the Republicans and Democrats pretty well always, and I think the Libertarians have a few good ideas and a bunch of crazy ones. No other party I've investigated seems to have any more of a clue than that.

I've got two pages of fans, half a page of freaks. My friends and foes are about the same ratio.

So there goes your ridiculous and meaningless dichotomy. Maybe if you tried to relate to people as people, instead of rating them based on how much they agree with you, you might have a richer and fuller understanding of the other meat sacks you share this rock with.

But hey...don't let me get in the way of your hatin'. Feel free to go ahead and put me on your foe list. I won't lose any sleep.

I just tune my radio to NPR

[Ricdude]

and if that doesn't cut it, Radio Pacifica.

A plug for Bush Wars

[Zhe Mappel]

Two things I like about Bush Wars by Minnesota journalist Steve Perry:

1) He doesn't update very often. Most blogs suffer from blogarrhea. Bloggers, listen up: less is more. Chirping away with everyone else in the blogosphere not only leads to repetition and throwaway quality. It also helps shape a kind of consensus thought that is, well, a large part of what makes establishment media so dull. Think a little more, write a little less.

2) Need heterodoxy? Apply here. Perry is clever, witty, leftwing, and, even as the editor of the largest weekly paper in the land of Wellstone, unafraid to give hell to the Democrats.

(Note: no personal connection, just calling it as I see it.)

Bloggerheads in the UK

[chabu]

http://www.bloggerheads.com/ is a funny UK centric political blog.

Americans to blame for 9/11

[0x0d0a]

For all the shit it's going to create, I will say that the American population is to blame for the terrorist attacks.

You blame the election of *Clinton* and *Bush*? I mean, yeah, neither one is pretty far my vision of a driven, competent leader, but there are a lot of worse world leaders around. You can't lay all of 9/11 at their feet.

If you want to blame Americans for 9/11, there are an awful lot of much more plausible points to call on. The Arab countries have a long and rich tradition of being, frankly, fucked over by the the West. Watch Lawrence of Arabia for a view of the Arabs being exploited by the West during World War I (well, and a good movie). If you screw over a people for a long enough period of time, eventually they get a little irritable.

Re:Americans to blame for 9/11

[Anonymous Coward]

Your logic also means the Spanish deserved a few hundred deaths when the Arabs planted explosives on a commuter train.

Re:Americans to blame for 9/11

[ACPosterChild]

I think his point was that we, the American people, voted our leaders into office, so we are responsible for their actions. That if we don't like the way things are going under the Democrat/Republican choices we have, then we should find somebody else who's worth voting for. The fact that this is currently an impossible scenario is not discussed.

But, yeah, 9/11/2001 was caused by Reagan's administration more than anyone (i.e., not Clinton or Bush W); training, arming, and paying Osama and his followers to keep the Russians on their side of the border; then abandoning them when the Russians were no longer a threat.

I'll have to watch that movie :)

Funny things, words

[jandersen]

So, let me get this straight: Marshall is a liberal, and Sullivan is conservative? Unfortunately I couldn't connect to Sullivan's site, the address is wrong, but I suspect that it isn't a great loss.

What always surprises me is the extreme difference between Europe and America when it comes to the meaning of political words. When I read Marshall he struck me as a fairly decent, but clearly very conservative person, politically, and on the occasions that I have come in touch with Americans who are considered conservative, they have come across as extremely right wing, out there on the fringe with Joerg Haider in Austria and the BNP in UK.

It is little wonder that we in Europe feel more at home with the Chinese than with the Americans.

Libs, Reps, Dems

[0x0d0a]

But here is something interesting: the liberal slashdot posters have fewer FOES than FRIENDS. And the conservative posters have more FOES than friends. And you know what, that is not surprising to me, judging from what I see as a principal characteristic of conservatism in America, in general--it is a meanspirited, hypocritical politics.

This phenomenon can also be explained by the following hypothesis:

1) Members of a group tend to mod as friend those that are in their ideological group, and mod as foe those opposed to them.

2) There are more liberals than conservatives on Slashdot.

Frankly, I don't think that this is the case. I find that the most vocal group on Slashdot is the Libertarians.

Frankly, I agree with some of the Libertarian points.

Obviously, members of each party vary a bit, but it's possible to get an idea of where they stand.

Libertarians are politically conservative ("Don't touch my Consitituion", small government, noninterventionism, non-regulation") and socially liberal ("If two lesbians want to get married, fine by me").

Republicans are theoretically politically conservative but have become more politically liberal recently, and are socially conservative ("Don't touch my Constitution *unless* it's to keep gays from marrying, in which case I want it", small government *unless* it benefits the elderly or is in the name of military strength, pro-military force, and somewhat anti-regulation) and socially the most conservative of the major parties (religion in schools, big federal law enforcement, anti-drug, anti-abortion). The recent Iraq war has come to dominate the issues, and a lot of traditionally non-Republicans have been pulled into the fold because they are pro-war.

Democrats are politically liberal (big government, social programs, nonlinear taxes, pro anti-trust) and socially liberal (Just a titch less anti-drug than the Republicans, eliminating religion in schools, pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage).

Frankly, I like the Libertarians, except for two major points:

* Libertarians are in favor of restoring Indian land rights. This is silly.

* Libertarians absolutely refuse to recognize well-known economic factors like natural monopolies, and refuse to deal with them -- I've heard Libertarians insist that monopolies *only* derive from government intervention or some such nonsense. They are anti-regulation in the extreme. While I can see the argument for reduced regulation, the argument for no regulation is, in my mind, pretty silly.

Where I get all my news

[Anonymous Coward]

I get all my news from News For Students

It's nice to have access to all kinds of newspapers.

Revolutionary Concept: Who cares?

[0x0d0a]

I know you've all seen the following recently:

Bush tried to get out of Vietnam and...

Kerry won three Purple Hearts...

Kerry's service is in question...

Bush funded 527 groups. Kerry funded 527 groups.

Kerry had a French grandfather (seriously, what the heck?)

Kerry is a rich aristocrat...

Bush pretends to be a man of the people, but is also a rich aristocrat...


And I ask you, American Slashdotters -- do you care? Do you really care at all? Do any of these issues have anything to do with how solid of a president someone would be? I'd say it's even less relevant than whether a president has oral sex or not. I don't care.

Here's what I want to know. Bush and Kerry have been awfully quiet on these points. They're:

* I want to know how fast we can get out of Iraq/Afghanistan and get the UN in. I don't like being there, and I think it causes more long-term problems.

* I want to know what stances on public health and safety problems like auto accidents and smoking are. They kill a lot more people and cause far more damage than 9/11, but guess where our money goes?

* I want to know what stances on VoIP are. I want government regulation out.

* I want to know what stances on IP are. How is the patent system going to be fixed, especially with respect to software patents? Will the government open-source contracted code?

* I want to know what stances on research funding are. And not just stem cell research, that's an incredibly tiny area of research. How many dollars to the NSF, how many to DARPA, etc.

* I want to know how soon the candidates can get rid of Social Security.

If there's one thing I'm sick and tired of hearing about, it's candidate character issues. I'd love to have a guy that liked to screw Chihuahuas in the Oval Office while being fed grapes by midgets be my President -- *if* he can do a good job of dealing with our national problems.

Bush has taken to portraying himself as a strong father figure, a tough leader who we can look to to protect us. Kerry has spent time hashing on Bush and not actually offering solutions. I don't give a damn about Badnarik, because he just plain isn't going to win, and the same goes for Nader (sorry, that's the way it is -- ask for vote reform if you want anything to change).

Re:Revolutionary Concept: Who cares?

[Onan]

Or, as it was so eloquently put by the ever-brilliant get your war on...

Raoul?

[nursedave]

Anyone else feel an eerie flashback when Burkett mentions "Ramirez?" I keep hearing James Earl Ray blaming Raoul for killing King. What is it with these crackpots that they have to blame Hispanics for their shit?

I may as well whore my own (under this)

[ImaLamer]

blog.mintruth.com is my baby, but not updated in the last few days.

I've got a huge project to finish so that I can graduate from college so it'll be sparse for now. Basically, a liberal blog (imagine that).

I've read Keyboard and Sickle, and I'm almost sure I've linked to it... although I don't know when.

My favorite post is the one "Don't Copy That Floppy". Best part:

Titbits imparted from this rap are that you should buy a copy of some software for every PC you use (fat fucking chance) and that every time you so much as think of warezing anything you are in fact going over to the programmer's house, kicking him repeatedly in the face, fucking his wife, drinking his beer, draining his bank account, keying his car and then burning his house down all for one floppy disk.

Re:Bush acts like recovered alcoholics usually act

[ChannelX]

I don't recall Kerry saying he was a war criminal. Care to provide a link to a credible source?

as for me...

[BungoMan85]

Right Wing News Allah Is In The House Little Green Footballs Cavalier's Guardian WatchBlog Iraq The Model Instapundit Power Line Michelle Malkin Ace Of Spades HQ A Small Victory The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Israpundit Jihad Watch IMAO Moxie Niel Boortz Lonewacko Wizbang Dumb Celebs Fear And Loathing In Iraq Kim du Toit PABAAH Ann Coulter La Shawn Barber Mark Steyn David Limbaugh

where i go

[Krafty Koder]

smirking chimp
what really happened
bartcop
atrios

I'm a daily blog-hound, and blogger

[TaxSlave]

My favorite blog list has been expanding, lately. I regularly read InstaPundit and The Right Coast, among others. I've recently begun reading Powerline and Michelle Malkin. My favorite "political" blogs, though, are actually economics blogs. I can't let a day go by without checking Marginal Revolution and The Volokh Conspiracy, which are two of the most interesting blogs I've read since I started reading Slashdot.

In addition to all of that, I read a wide variety of news sites every day, listen to news radio and watch news in the morning. That's all so I can do a better job in the writing on my own blog, where I cover politics, amateur radio, life, and anything I think is cool. Check out Lockjaw's Lair and don't forget to buy the T-Shirt.

Re:I'm a daily blog-hound, and blogger

[frost22]

Malkin ? That sorry excuse for an Ann Coulter Wannabe right wing foaming at the mouth lunatic ?

You entertain strange tastes, man....

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[monsieur Penguin]

Thanks for getting this out - hope the gods of mod dont mod you down because they dont like the links ;)

I want to add a few fun ones to your list:

http://acepilots.com/mt/
http://www.redstate.org/
http://www.vodkapundit.com/

Has anyone looked at SayUncle?

[k'orwyn]

http://www.saysuncle.com/ This is a very insightful and interesting blog on the political process and world. He's a bit heavy on gun debate items, but he does look at other topics and seems to be fair minded and funny!

Why Bother??

[smoothwallsamuel]

Seriously. why bother with political blogs, In Canberra, Australia we have a federal election on october 9 and a state election on october 16, if you aren't politicsed out after watching the news and about 50 polictical ads each night, there is something very wrong with you. lol

***The Samuel Dictionary***
politicsed (pol-E-ticks-d):
1. having a heap of people talk to you about an upcoming election, including policticians "I will fix ..." "My opponent is bad because..." and journalists "Mr/Mrs xyz said visited... and said they will..." "The ... Opinion poll places..."
***The Samuel Dictionary***

see, you're tired of it already.

samuel

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[(trb001)]

You're missing something. One woman, an acknowledged Bush hater, says that what Killian "supposedly" wrote in what she even says aren't real documents is "how he felt". But his family and his other coworkers disagree, saying that he liked president Bush very much and thought he had a fine career. So there's one witness for your argument and a handful against.

--trb

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[(trb001)]

The WH didn't say *anything* about the documents; they didn't authenticate them, they didn't approve them, they just distributed them. That's what the WH press team does when they are handed something from a news source, they make sure everyone is on the same page. The press secretary has said all of this.

Frankly, I applaud the WH for not getting involved. This is all part of the 30 year old mud that Kerry has mired himself in.

--trb

Re:Neal Boortz.... As he says, don't believe him .

[ByteMangler_242]

As Neal says, you shall know the truth, and it will make you mad! :)

Another blog in a similar mindset:
http://instapundit.com/

Right-leaning blogs

http://rightwingnews.com/
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/
http://nicedoggie.net/

Humor - to balance out the bitterness of the last two

http://www.coxandforkum.com/ - Editorial cartoons
http://www.scrappleface.com/ - News satire

Re:Split Post Moderations & Ratio of Friends t

[LoveLiberty2004]

I'm not going to comment on the moderation system as I'm still a brand new newbie on /., but it's been my personal experience that conservative politics seem to play dirtier and hit lower. It's one of the reasons (IMO) that liberal candidates tend to get labelled as "weak", which is one of the many things Kerry has been labelled in this election. In trying to have a conversation with a conservative, I've been called a communist (because I don't like Bush), told I hate America (because I don't like Bush), told I'm a terrorist (because I don't like Bush), and on and on and on.

I am not saying that ALL conservatives do this. But an awful lot, in my experience, do. It's kind of a phenomenon that I'm trying to figure out. It all feeds right into the Bush camps message that if you disagree with them on ANY level you are not a "patriot."

Maybe some of it has to do with the fact that the republican platform is, in so many ways, trying to enforce ways of living on other people. Trying to squelch gays out of existence, shut up environmentalists (whom they hate also), determined to force everyone to adhere to their idea of morality, hating immigrants (tho most of us are immigrants to America), label anyone down on their luck as lazy... it's definitely much easier to HATE the homeless/destitute than it is to figure out any solutions for them... So maybe it comes from all of that. The party line is so often based on dislike of others. At least, that's what it seems like to me.

OK one *teensy* comment about moderation... I always thought of an online troll as someone who is trying to sell something, but apparently it can also mean "I don't like you, so shut up!" here. :)

Someone mod this one up

[thecoach]

Truthout is a great site, and is invaluable.

dailykos

[coli2]

www.dailykos.com

Favorite blog

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have to say my favorite blog is Vox Popoli.

Hmm...

[sheldon]

I guess what I always find interesting about Glenn Reynolds blog is that he spends most of his time building up strawman arguments that he can tear down.

It's funny, but it's rather disappointing to see from someone claiming to be a Law Professor. But then I guess maybe this is what trial lawyers do all the time, and he's just being himself.

I use opendemocracy.net

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a website containing a collection of political weblogs. And it's independent. And you can participate. http://www.opendemocracy.net/

Re:Bush acts like recovered alcoholics usually act

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, nice try there. You bushies whine that Kerry didn't serve like he said he did, but then you also whine that he's a war criminal? I guess bullshit comes out both ends of your lot.

So which is it? Are the Swift Boaters lying? Or is Kerry guilty of carrying out war crimes he was ordered to by higher ups (because as the republican response to Abu Ghirab proves, its all OK in that case, especially when the higher-ups are republicans and therefore set the standards for morality)

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[daltec]

You have evidently not read nearly enough of what the "blogosphere" (MAN I hate that word) had to say on the subject. Otherwise you would not refer to much of the analysis as "woefully uninformed." And to sum up the entire analysis as a "brief obsession with kerning" is just silly.

Likewise your notion that the best the bloggers could offer was "cheerleading" from "friends of friends." The credentials of just one analyst:

"I am one of the pioneers of electronic typesetting. I was doing work with computer typesetting technology in 1972 (it actually started in late 1969), and I personally created one of the earliest typesetting programs for what later became laser printers, but in 1970 when this work was first done, lasers were not part of the electronic printer technology (my way of expressing this is "I was working with laser printers before they had lasers", which is only a mild stretch of the truth). We published a paper about our work (graphics, printer hardware, printer software, and typesetting) in one of the important professional journals of the time (D.R. Reddy, W. Broadley, L.D. Erman, R. Johnsson, J. Newcomer, G. Robertson, and J. Wright, "XCRIBL: A Hardcopy Scan Line Graphics System for Document Generation," Information Processing Letters (1972, pp.246-251)). I have been involved in many aspects of computer typography, including computer music typesetting (1987-1990). I have personally created computer fonts, and helped create programs that created computer fonts. At one time in my life, I was a certified Adobe PostScript developer, and could make laser printers practically stand up and tap dance. I have written about Microsoft Windows font technology in a book I co-authored, and taught courses in it. I therefore assert that I am a qualified expert in computer typography."

Perhaps that does not compare with CBS' typewriter repairman (ha), but when this person says "the probability that any technology in existence in 1972 would be capable of producing a document that is nearly pixel-compatible with Microsoft's Times New Roman font and the formatting of Microsoft Word, and that such technology was in casual use at the Texas Air National Guard, is so vanishingly small as to be indistinguishable from zero," then he says it with quite a fair degree of credibility. Go read http://homepage.mac.com/cfj/newcomer/index.htm and tell me with a straight face that it can be summed up as a "woefully uninformed discussion."

Inconsistencies with Killian's writing style are one indication that the memos are fake, to be sure; but they are most certainly NOT the only ones! All of the discussion regarding proportional spacing, line spacing, superscripting, the almost exact matching of Word's default settings with the memos, and yes, even inconsistencies in the writing style, were all discussed on the blogs, in sometimes excruciating detail, several days before the WaPo horned in and tried to take the credit. To pass it all off as nothing more than getting lucky is itself "woefully uninformed."

Make that "Best left wing Poli-Blogs"

[tjic]

The author of the article above had the honesty to at least label his choices conservative/libertarian. If you prefer to limit your blog reading to left-wing sites, that's cool...but be honest and label it as such.

Kos is a community, Insta, Sully are blogs

[gad_zuki!]

>Kos suffered from a case of "Baghdad-Bobia

Kos is a community site, there is no consensus or "master leader" unlike the other blogs you listed in your other post like Instapundit. Hell, instapundit doesnt even allow comments, yet thedailykos gives weblog space to all its users and the really good entries get promoted to the front page.Kos, Atrios, etc don't just parrot the corporate media, but question it. I dont see the point of reading Instapundit if he's just playing the role of an MSNBC or Fox News anchor.

Even moderation is more interesting at kos as you can see who moderated what. No hidding behind your mod points. The kos community has also dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars into helping win elections. Its a community in every sense of the word, not just "one guy's opinion." That really sums up the whole conservative vs liberal fight in the US. The cons tend to be top-down and the libs tend to be grassroots/bottom up. No comments on Sully, Insta, Dick Cheney makes you sign a loyalty oath, etc.

As far as suffering through syndromes go, these conservative bloggers ignored all the good questions regarding WMD only to back-up the president while the liberal blogs were presenting evidence and good arguments on why Iraq would be WMD-less and a quagmire. Guess who was right?

Andrew Sullivan, Instapundit, and the other token conservatives/neocons don't even allow comments. That speaks VOLUMES on how they run their ship and what kind of information they are peddling.

>Chomsky suffers from being Chomsky

That's an easy attack, but if you want to understand media there's few better books than Manufacturing Consent. Or Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

This being politics.slashdot.org I fully expect many people with agendas to hide behind their mod points and rate me a troll or "over-rated" like they've done with my previous posts.

Re:Kos is a community, Insta, Sully are blogs

[On Lawn]

Kos is a community site, there is no consensus or "master leader" unlike the other blogs you listed in your other post like Instapundit.

I think you have the wrong post, I didn't link to Instapundit, or Andrew Sullivan. Instapundit is pretty good, Sullivan not so much. Hugh Hewitt is a better demagogue blog, in my opinion. But I don't really like demagogue blogs. Well except Bill Whittle's.

As for the community nature of Kos, you can't have it both ways. You can't say that Kos has a democratic selection for articles and doesn't operate on a majority concensus. While it is true that every community has people over a large spectrum of ideological thought, each site encourages and develops a particular culture and group-think.

See, Kos is another K5 in that they use the software K5 developed. Kos is a heavily partisan site, just ask Kos...

Daily Kos, one of the top progressive political sites on the web, is now a Scoop site.

It was previously on MT, but the partisan nature of the site attracted large numbers of trolls and flamers hijacking my message boards.

His decision to run Scoop was to help enforce a partisan group-think, not encourage dissent. And his site is continuing with a "Baghdad-Bobia" fever as yet another article came out today re-hashing the same memo appolegies.

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/27 96630

"Last week, Knox said she had no firsthand knowledge of Bush's time with the Texas Air National Guard, although she did recall a culture of special treatment for the sons of prominent people, such as Bush and others."

TROLL ALERT

[Anonymous Coward]

On Lawn is a known political troll, please mod down.

LGF mocks dead protesters

[gad_zuki!]

The same hate/racist site which calls this poor girl "Idiotarian of the Year." Because she went and protested for peace in Palestine only to get killed by an Israeli bulldozer. Because she had a conscience she deserves to be mocked by the 101st fighting keyboarders? From her memorial site:

In another e-mail, Rachel wrote, "This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don't think it's an extremist thing to do anymore. I really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my co-workers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not what they are asking for now. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me."

Lately conservatives have had problems with beating up on girls.

Re:LittleGreenFootballs

[Anonymous Coward]

Little green footballs is a hate site. Its not a site about national security. It tanishes moderate Islam with bigotry and demonizes Arabs as an amorphous blob of murderers.
Unusually for a political blog it is never positive. Always negative.

Blogs for Bush

[Anonymous Coward]

Blogs for Bush

Re:LittleGreenFootballs

[JRHelgeson]

Actually, it posts the pure, unvarnished truth that most people can't handle.

I challenge you, or anyone for that matter to dispute the facts of any article that is posted on the front page.

The truth scares a lot of people, and is scares nobody more than it does the hard-core lefties who label the truth as being 'hate speech' and true hate speech gets labeled as 'passionate dialog'.

If you can't handle the truth, that Islam is being hijacked by Militant Suicide Death Cults, then you're the one with the problem. Does that mean that ALL of Islam is bad? Of course not - but mainstream media refuses to address the truth, that terrorism is pure evil, and Islam has been hijacked by people who practice pure evil under the guise of religeon.

LGF simply puts out the pure, unvarnished truth. If you can't handle the truth, then you must be a leftie.

Hey moderators: Go ahead and mod me down if you can't handle the truth either.

nigga please

[Wah]

Actually, this is what I mean. Probably the best explanation of LGF comes from Bill Whittle,

Actually, the best explanation comes from LGF itself, and not the apologists who agree with them.

Here's one from a few days ago. What's the difference between 'cut' and 'chops off'?

Bigotry. Plain and simple. Read down to comment #15 to see this.

Here's how it works. You take a small segement of a population.

The philosophy of Radical Islam is at war, not only with America and the West, but with everything that is not Radical Islam. So, do they hate us? Yes they do.

Then apply it to everyone with one of the same qualities. Oh, also make sure to attack the intellect of anyone who disagrees.

I don't see how any rational person could deny this is so.

BTW, what 'no rational person' can deny is that *the second* a Muslim gets his hands on a bomb, THEY WANT TO USE IT TO KILL US ALL IMMEDIATELY.

THEY, the Muslims, ARE HEADED RIGHT FOR US! We have to get 'them' first.

They have been a big proponent of the meme that it doesn't matter which Muslims we kill, as long as we are killing some of them. This is the same "logic" that says the War in Iraq is somehow the War on Terrorism. It's the logic of Al Qeada. To believe this line of thinking, you have to think the Mahdi Militia was about to invade the U.S. proper. To believe this, you have to believe that 135 people have been kidnapped in Iraq because 'they hate our Freedom and values'.

It just does not make sense...unless you look at it through the eyes of fear and bigotry.

You quickly come to conclusion after reading LGF, as one must to not get banned, that 'they' believe there is only one final solution to the Muslim problem.

Faster...faster...

Re:nigga please

[On Lawn]

What's the difference between 'cut' and 'chops off'?

Bigotry. Plain and simple.

Don't think it is lost on me that someone who used the 'n' word in the title of their post is accusing people of being bigoted. Above you called #15 good journalistic practice, but I do see how.

And remember this folks, the counter to someone taking a quote out of context is always by putting it back into context. Observe...

Your selective quoting (which you can see in the post above) of Bill Whittle lead you to the conclusion,

BTW, what 'no rational person' can deny is that *the second* a Muslim gets his hands on a bomb, THEY WANT TO USE IT TO KILL US ALL IMMEDIATELY.

THEY, the Muslims, ARE HEADED RIGHT FOR US! We have to get 'them' first.

They have been a big proponent of the meme that it doesn't matter which Muslims we kill, as long as we are killing some of them.

But the error, of course, is that you are the one who extended the observations on a whole religion. It is you who paints with the overly broad brush. From the grandparent post we see context that leads toa different conclusion. One easily sees that Mr Whittle does not suffer from the same 'racism'...

Have I slandered 1.5 billion people? I don't know. Have I? I speak of Radical Islam. I speak of people determined to kill and terrorize to impose their religion on the rest of the world. If you are a Muslim who is against these practices, you have my respect and admiration. And, as with all other religions in the United States, I will as passionately defend your right to practice your faith in harmony and goodwill as I attack those who may carry the Crescent far, far away from your peaceful and devout beliefs.

So while Bill Whittle (and LGF) can distinguish radical Islam from the Muslim religion, you apparently cannot. While you complain of bad journalism and biased reporting, it is your post that selectively re-works anothers words into something they didn't say at all.

Re:nigga please

[Wah]

Don't think it is lost on me that someone who used the 'n' word in the title of their post is accusing people of being bigoted.

Nice catch. Unfortunately you would be sad to learn that I live in Harlem, and the phrase used above is a colloquial version of "you are full of shit." The main point being that the word has been able to enter popular culture because it's utterance is no longer directly followed by, or is an implied threat of, direct violence against the name-called. A linguistic pavlovian response that has been mediated by cultural progess.

So while Bill Whittle (and LGF) can distinguish radical Islam from the Muslim religion, you apparently cannot. While you complain of bad journalism and biased reporting, it is your post that selectively re-works anothers words into something they didn't say at all.

NO, you are simply wrong, or have never read a single thread on LGF. Additionally, you haven't explained why Charles can't update his post and apologize for being a bigot and assuming the worst.

But the error, of course, is that you are the one who extended the observations on a whole religion.

So, it's an error to think the whole religion is nuts? Great, glad we agree. Let's look at that thread, see if we can get a feel for the LGF mindset regarding that question.

Selected quotes from that thread (this gets long, as one would expect a preponderance of evidence to do)

Shall we look at the comments?

O.k. lets. My comments (and the subtext) next to each number, original comments below the numbers. Commentary in brackets.

#1 - All Muslims are the same. And they are lying to themselve and others.

ahhhhhhhhhh, the religion of peace.

#4 - dehumanzing - Got to take care of that first.

Those people. Are different. From you and me.

#5 - these people
I can't even come up with a comment on this story. How in the world are we going to drag these people forward 1400 years?

#7 - What's the final solution?

Allah strikes again!

And we thought we had a problem with Russian and Chinese communism...

#9 - those people, all alike. Every last one of 'em.

remember Allah is merciful, unfortunately his believers are not.

#10 - forced sterilization is fun!

now if he would only cut off their balls, we could have some birth control there

#14 - group think endorse

Heh, same thing I was thinking. Islam is such a "peaceful and loving" religion. Yea, right.

#15 - Huh? What's that, you mean Charles posted the wrong story? I'm sure he'll correct it. You know, for honesty's sake. How long will it take? This comment posted over 3 days ago. Faked memos, huh?

"DHAKA - A teacher in an Islamic school in the northern Bangladeshi district of Bogra was assaulted by angry relatives after he cut the ears of 17 students with scissors."

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/asia/story/0,43 86 ,273301,00.html

"The Islamic school was established just six months ago and had some 35 students, all aged between six and 10.

It had only two teachers - Mr Sardar and the school's principal, Mr Abdul Mannan."

[p.s. that's 'cut' not 'cut off' for those too blinded by hatred of sand niggers, sorry, to see. Oh, wait, there's more.]

#17 - What does Michael Moore have to do with this? He sharpened the scissors,

BLEH. Torturing children, and the man is still alive and being protected ["He is being treated in a local hospital under police custody."-wah].

Can we send Michael Moore to a madrassah so he can see firsthand how wonderful his buddies are?

#18 - in response to #5 - I wonder if nukes will work?

We're not. At least not until we destroy the bankroll / financiers of Wahabism / Sharia / Salafism, and wipe every Wahabist madrassa from the face of the Earth.

#20 - It's the liberals fault, duh!

Re:nigga please

[On Lawn]

Unfortunately you would be sad to learn that I live in Harlem, and the phrase used above is a colloquial version

You pin a lot on what you presume others don't know. Rest assured it means the same thing where I am from.

A linguistic pavlovian response that has been mediated by cultural progess.

I'm with Bill Cosby on this one, calling people 'nigga' is not progress.

you are simply wrong, or have never read a single thread on LGF.

Again, you hang a lot on what you presume I don't know. Do you really want to base your argument on me never having read a thread on LGF?

Selected quotes from that thread

Selected? Enough said ;)

You'd be amazing how sustaining hatred can be.

Ask the Palestinians.

Agreed.

Also, one learns in any forum to take comments with a grain of salt. Sure there are people out there that believe we should Nuke the muslim world. Marxist Hacker42 is one of them on /. for example. And they are genuine (I think) in their desire for a final solution. Wrong, but genuine. One can take them for what they are. Others are trolls seeking to seed damning quotes into the conversation. Either way eat with appropriate spices.

But what is interesting to me is that of those posts I could only see three references to the whole Muslim religion by name -- and two were from your commentary. Again you are putting words in other's mouths. Others sarcastically intoned their disgust that Islamists use religion as a figleaf for their attrocities by reverberating the claim that it is the 'religion of peace', which is a very valid complaint.

In conclusion you are still over-reaching and putting words in people's mouths to do it. This *is* the very problem CBS got into with their 60 Minutes story on the memos.

Re:nigga please

[Wah]

But what is interesting to me is that of those posts I could only see three references to the whole Muslim religion by name -- and two were from your commentary.

I see why you are confused. When someone on LGF talks about the 'death cult' they mean Islam.

"These people" is another way to blur the line and castigate a quarter of the world's population for the actions of a single teacher.
--
I'm with Bill Cosby on this one, calling people 'nigga' is not progress.

It's not better than calling someone 'nigger' and then stringing them up to a tree? I guess we have different conceptions of what progess is, in that case.

I have seen a few rants from various folks about the overuse of the word, and they make a number of good points. I've even read the book by the title, but the simple fact is that it is an improvement that the word is no longer routinely followed by acts of racial violence. Or, to be more precise and on-thread-topic, it is no longer routinely used for stereotyping an entire race as stupid, backwards, and violent. Instead, it has become a general equivalent of "Dude".

This does not assume there still isn't room for improvement, quite the contrary, but we had a really long way to go from where we used to be.

Re:nigga please

[On Lawn]

I see why you are confused. When someone on LGF talks about the 'death cult' they mean Islam.

You have a far ways to go to show sufficient grounding to call others confused ;)

It's not better than calling someone 'nigger' and then stringing them up to a tree? I guess we have different conceptions of what progess is, in that case.

Talk about your intellectual honesty. Don't think the bait and switch is lost on me. The progress being refered to was established by yourself as...

The main point being that the word has been able to enter popular culture because it's utterance is no longer directly followed by, or is an implied threat of, direct violence against the name-called. A linguistic pavlovian response that has been mediated by cultural progess.

As you didn't mention trees or string, it is positively disingenious for you to redefine what you mean by progress post-hoc. Don't think the attempt is lost on me though.

And the acceptance of the 'n' word is not progress in my book at all. As Bill Cosby has pointed out much better than I can.

"The more you invest in that child, the more you are not going to let some CD tell your child how to curse and how to say the word 'nigger.' This is an accepted word. You are so hip with 'nigger,' but you can't even spell it," an impassioned Cosby lamented

Whatever happened to 'Black is beautiful?' Well, it was replaced with 'nigger please,'" he said to laughter.

Re:nigga please

[Wah]

jeez.

As you didn't mention trees or string, it is positively disingenious for you to redefine what you mean by progress post-hoc.

You miss the part where I said "no longer directly followed by...direct violence to the name-called"?

Well, there it is again, in case you missed it the first time.

Cosby came from a generation where the word was used to divide and denigrate, 'kids today' have a different impression of its use, dude. You can blame hip-hop if you want, but that's the fact, jack.

Cosby was 27 before he was guaranteed by law not to be discriminated against for the color of his skin, so I'm sure he has a more deeply entrenched dislike for its use. He certainly came by it naturally.

Birth Name: William H. Cosby Jr.
Birthdate: July 12, 1937

You kinda sound like this fool.

So if "nigger" is not the derogatory term that it once was, then everyone should be able to use it. I should have been able to turn to the kids and say, "He's right. If you're going to be a nigger you should be a straight up nigger!" and they would laugh and I would smile and wave. But I can't. Had I done so there may have been bloodshed. Because had I done so I would now be in jail for shooting one or two people as they would almost certainly have turned on me with hate-filled eyes, animus in their hearts and malice in their souls.

No, actually they would have laughed at you trying to 'be black'. Without the power of law behind the racism, they are just names, and can never hurt you. Stick and stones, etc.

Re:nigga please

[On Lawn]

You miss the part where I said "no longer directly followed by...direct violence to the name-called"?

You know what I did, and to your credit. Had I seen it I would have rather pointed it out for its obvious over-embelishment of the negative connotations. Your rhetoric knows no limits, well if you consider historic context to be limits ;)

So you presume to lecture Bill Cosby on what 'nigger' means. And attempt to deflect alphapatriot that being laughed at because he isn't black as something other than racism.

So, what was your point again? Me thinks you've gotten lost chasing your own red-herrings ;)

Re:nigga please

[Wah]

Had I seen it I would have rather pointed it out for its obvious over-embelishment of the negative connotations.

Your rhetoric knows no limits, well if you consider historic context to be limits.

I'm sorry that you are unfamiliar with the history of the United States. What country are you from? Sometimes I just assume. Here's a primer on this particular subject. Does the term 'race riots' mean anything to you? Again, primer.

Things have progressed since then.

And attempt to deflect alphapatriot that being laughed at because he isn't black as something other than racism.

No, his assumption about the hate-filled eyes that would be coming to get him if he dared speak to the kids in the 'modern slang' was the racist part. Now it's middle-aged white men getting offended, despite the fact that, unlike Bill Cosby, they never lived in a country that found it cool to discriminate against them.

So, what was your point again?

Stick and stones (and institutionalized racism) can break your bones, names will never hurt you.

My point? Ah yes, my intentional use of a loaded term to point out your sloppy use of labels. (Muslim, Islam, Islamist, Wahabbi Terrorist, whatever, it's all the same to you. At least as far as I can tell, as you've yet to differentiate any terms or distinction.)

Don't think it is lost on me that someone who used the 'n' word in the title of their post is accusing people of being bigoted.

The act wasn't lost on you. The point of it was, but that's not surprising considering your, now documented, ability to completely miss what it is I'm writing.

Re:nigga please

[On Lawn]

I'm sorry that you are unfamiliar with the history of the United States. What country are you from? Sometimes I just assume.

Yes, there are a lot of assumptions in those sentances, aren't there.

Here's a primer on this particular subject.

Not suprisingly, there is nothing in there that supports your claim. Perhaps, instead of vague handwaving you could present succinctly the points you wish to make.

Things have progressed since then.

Yes they have. But I'm with Bill, calling each other the 'n' word is not what one would call progression.

No, his assumption about the hate-filled eyes that would be coming to get him if he dared speak to the kids in the 'modern slang' was the racist part.

Even if that were true, that doesn't excuse the racism you showed in lauging at him for not being a black man. Nor the racism you show in presuming that only black people have tasted discrimination. Quite honestly you are the most racist, hateful person I've encountered since KatherineD on Poliglut. And that is saying something! Much more racist than LGF.

Muslim, Islam, Islamist, Wahabbi Terrorist, whatever, it's all the same to you.

Another set of words to put in others mouths? One would have expected you to learn better by now. You know what, the inability to get out of fatuous ruts is not uncommon to you. But you seem to do it with more flair than most.

ability to completely miss what it is I'm writing.

If only, if only. Now, really. Aside from these red-herrings, what was your point again?

Re:nigga please

[Wah]

Well, this will be easy. C&P for ya.

BTW, calling me a racist is funny. What are you going to quote to back that up?

Not suprisingly, there is nothing in there that supports your claim.

Yea, you are right, nothing in those links shows a history of institutionalied racism in the U.S. Your powers of denial about this country's history will always trump my powers of googling. So I'll stop.

Aside from these red-herrings, what was your point again?

LGF is hate-spewing web site.

My point? Ah yes, my intentional use of a loaded term to point out your sloppy use of labels. (Muslim, Islam, Islamist, Wahabbi Terrorist, whatever, it's all the same to you. At least as far as I can tell, as you've yet again failed to differentiate any terms or distinction.)

But I'm with Bill, calling each other the 'n' word is not what one would call progression.

Great, you've got an opinion. Woohoo. Considering what the word used to entail, I can't help but call that progress, but you (and Mr. Cosby) are free to belive what you want.

Re:nigga please

[On Lawn]

BTW, calling me a racist is funny.

It is distasteful to me that you take such a serious topic in such a cavelier manner.

as you've yet again failed to differentiate any terms or distinction.

*Sigh* More blowhard accusations. Your ability to insult and accuse has been entertained enough for me to be solidly convinced of your impropriety.

Seeing that you've refrained from civilized discussion and are resorting to flailing about and gnashing your teeth, I pity that you invest so much in debates that you never intend to win. It seems that your point was abandoned long ago, and in your minds eye you throw hurtful accusations -- not in an effort to further the discussion, but as a means to exact for yourself some childish retribution.

I'll be around when you wish to get back to the point...

Re:nigga please

[Wah]

get back to the point...

As you've yet again failed to differentiate any terms or distinction.

Go for it.

Three terms.

Re:nigga please

[On Lawn]

As you've yet again failed to differentiate any terms or distinction.

Not only are you horrible at faux-naif, you aren't even origional. Noticing you hadn't made and differentiation, I pointed this out many posts ago. I think I've nailed down your business model...

1) Fill your posts with problematic logic and incoherent reasoning (glued together with vain accusations)
2) Grep responce that points out your errors for more accusations to throw
3) ???
4) Profit!

Re:nigga please

[On Lawn]

By the way, the problem with pretending not to see something (such as the distinction I made between muslim and islam) is always vulnerable to people who do see it ;)

Just some more free advice before you completely hang yourself on this vain attempt.

Re:nigga please

[Wah]

such as the distinction I made between muslim and islam

Again, your definition completely contradicts what is in the dictionary, and the generally understood meanings of the words, so I asked you to be more specific.

You can't be, and seem to blame me for this failure.

Three words, Define them.

Re:nigga please

[On Lawn]

Again, your definition completely contradicts what is in the dictionary

Not really, but that is beside the point.

You can't be, and seem to blame me for this failure.

You claimed it didn't exist, and in new found honesty has jogged your memory. Indeed, that seems to be a personal problem.

Re:nigga please

[Wah]

Not really, but that is beside the point.

I guess that explains why you keep asking me 'what is the point', and you keep missing it.

Three terms. Give me your defintions.

Re:nigga please

[On Lawn]

Oh my. I've not seen someone forget so much without a sevier blow to the head.

I guess that explains why you keep asking me 'what is the point', and you keep missing it.

I keep asking you what the point is becuase you keep diverting from it ;) Now really, you've gone from saying I have defined the terms to saying I haven't, to saying I have and then haven't again. Again you are projecting personal problems.

Three terms. Give me your defintions.

Oh, one to make demands now are we? Did you stomp your feet and pout when writing that? Did you put on your angry eyebrows?

If there were problems with the distinction *already* provided then I'm happy to clear them up, and already have. Your last disagreement over the distinction raised, if you recall, was a created from intentionally losing parts of what you were quoting. That was easily cleared up.

Did I miss any problem in particular? You'll have to enumerate them. And no, vague references to dictionaries does not an enumeration make ;) I'm not going to do your work for you. Your inability to make coherent points, and flagrantly fatuous accusations is already noted. I'm not going to save you from your own lack of cooth and comprehension skills.

Then when you show where you need clarification we can proceed. But this pretending that I haven't provided the distinction you are asking for is getting childish. Well if you don't mind being childish then I suppose there is no use in pointing that out. But there is hope that somewhere underneath the "ignorance at any cost" refutations and "any port in a storm" reckless accusations there might be some ingenuousness to appeal to. Maybe not, but we can hope.

Re:nigga please

[Wah]

*yawn*

Cox and Forkum!

[Alosja]

Cox and Forkum is brilliant! Good drawings and important political toughts... Can't say i agree with all their toughts, but some of them are really good. Cox and forkum! Read and get beatiful capitalistic toughts!

Very funny

[Anonymous Coward]

political and social commentary:

Pastabagel.com
Here's some funny stuff, more serious political sutff there too...

"Help! My Boyfriend Is a Metrosexual!"

coolgov.com

[ph00dz]

There are a ton of talking heads these days talking about politics... but very few talking about just what it is the government does, day to day.

I recently started a site called coolgov.com that looks at a different aspect of government activities every day. Where do the taxes go? The influence of government on life in America is profound... and it seems like there's almost an infinite number of good resources to talk about.

I should point out that we are strictly non-political... we're not activists or anything like that.

Re:As if the left is the bastion of truth. get rea

[Masker]

No, my blood pressure rises because people claim things as facts that are just outright lies. I don't see that very often with the sources that I choose to read, mainly because if I see outright lies, I tend not to read those sources anymore.

On the right, you've got such an echo chamber for the lies of the Bush administration:

1) Rush
2) O'Reilly
3) Hannity
4) Coulter

are 4 good examples. Facts don't matter to these guys, as facts are far less interesting than screaming & name-calling. (That is, calmly stated facts sell fewer books/get fewer viewers, than screaming lies and invective at people.) It is well documented that these guys lie like rugs, and I hardly need to enumerate things here; I'm not your damned search engine.

The other mainstream press (the mythical "liberal media": ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, etc.) have a problem with balancing the views between Dems & Reps; Kerry says something that has merit and requires thought, Bush calls him a "flip-flopper" (or says that it's a "new position") and misrepresents what Kerry just said. No one says: "Hey, Bush. That's not what he said, he said X while you said Y." Why not? Balanced coverage would be Mr. A says "X, and here's why", and Mr. B says "Well, not really X, and here's why". But that doesn't happen, as far as I can tell. Bush likes to get "clear" messages out there that are short, oversimplified and are completely unsupported by facts.

As to anger: I get angry because people don't think critically about what Bush says. People just take whatever he says on faith, and without thinking for themselves, or trying to find out what the other guy actually said. Rove is a genius: he's able to feed Bush memorable, simple one-liners that resonate with the Bush faithful. But, it's a shame that those people are so out of the loop, news wise, that they never even see what Kerry actually said in the full context. I'm hoping that the debates will help a little with this, but I'm not convinced that it will.

Name calling is a problem on both sides. It's an easy trap to fall into, and is very unproductive. But, why do you think that this is limited to the left? I see a lot of it on the right: Hannity, Rush, O'Reilly, Bush, Dick "Go fuck yerself" Cheney, etc. And, one thing that I haven't seen from the left are remarks like (emphasis added):

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States"

Who said that? Cheney did. Fear mongering for votes. That's someone I DO NOT want to make policy decisions for America. It's not "Bush/Cheney will make America safer, here's how", it's "Elect Kerry and terrorists will strike, and it will be devastating".

So, no, I don't think that emotional reactions are the problem. I think the problem is the unquestioning, unswerving, and unthinking acceptance of something that someone says. If you read the original sources as much as possible and question everything, you'll be doing yourself and your country a world of good. Just because someone gets emotional, that doesn't mean that you can just discount what they are saying. The statement should stand on their own merit, or fall if they aren't factual or accurate.

Wait - so they /are/ forgeries?

[fizbin]

I haven't really been following this story after the initial flurry, but are you saying CBS news has admitted that the documents are forgeries? Or has the White House said that they are?

And was there in fact more convincing evidence than the "I typed it on microsoft word and at a distance it looks the same" test? Because that's all I ever saw.

Has some early 1970s document-verification expert besides Dr. Philip Bouffard come forward to say "these are fake"? (Dr. Bouffard recanted after getting samples of early 1970s type from InterPol, so we'd need someone else)

Everyone seems convinced now that they were forgeries, so I'd like to know when that happened, and why.

My Point. Exactly

[Wah]

Yes apparently so. What was that point again?

LGF does what it can to paint Islam as a religion of violence and to stir up hatred for those that follow it.

Who for all the problems not withstanding
is an eye-witness to the account.

Yes, an eyewitness who is a child and who's translated account is refuted by a number of other sources.

The actions of a disgruntled school teacher who was punished (albeit too lightly for my tastes) does not indict a expansionist political movement nor religion. Well, not on its own. It only points to the person committing the attrocity.

Then pray tell, why is the title of the post, penned by Mr. Johnson, "Discipline, Islamic Style"?

So just what is that point --precisely?

That citing a questionable source, refuted by others, and deciding that source confirms that notion that Islam, as a whole, is a religon of violence, is a great example on how to run a hate site.

Your statement here reflects something of a strange disconnect on this topic.

I've read Zombie's comments and they were rather reasonable in that regard, he differentiated between Islam and Muslim just as you expect him/her to do.

As yes, the difference between Islam and Muslim is what exactly? In my understanding, one is a religion and the other is someone who follows it. Perhaps you can enlighten me a bit here.

Is it like the difference between Islamic Extremists and the other 99% of the Muslim population of the world, or did you just make a Freudian typo?

Re:My Point. Exactly

[On Lawn]

LGF does what it can to paint Islam as a religion of violence and to stir up hatred for those that follow it.

Which is different than painting the Muslim religion and stirring up hatred against it. But I digress as I think you are getting closer. The last hurdle is to answer if LGF doing that or are they just relaying what Islam is doing and that is the natural reaction it solicits. As Bill Whittle points out they aren't writing five page essays on the hate rhetoric of Islam and why it needs decisive action. He is simply relaying what the islamic clerics themselves are preaching and doing. That so many in the comments section react that way is, in my view, understandable. But I hardly blame the messenger.

Then pray tell, why is the title of the post, penned by Mr. Johnson, "Discipline, Islamic Style"?

Islamic law in practice is rather bloody in its prescribed punishments. That the teacher as a single datapoint doesn't indict a religion, the religion does that on its own. LGF runs a site open to comments, feel free to express your concern over his title. As far as I'm concerned I see where he is coming from. It is a bit over-reaching but not unwarranted.

That citing a questionable source, refuted by others

The severity of the punishment may be in question, but not the overbearance of the punishment. You continue to conflate the two issues as one grand inaccuracy in a spitefully driven ambition to make hay for a strawman. And I'll continue to point that out ;)

As yes, the difference between Islam and Muslim is what exactly?

Probably the best way I can explain it is this: Islam is to Muslim what Protestant is to Christianity. Well that just explains that Islam is a subset of Muslim, and how much depends on who you talk to. But the main difference is that Islamists believe in a political superiority that drives a nationalistic expansion of their law to the whole world. It is the mixture of the political ambitions with the Muslim religion that makes one an Islamist.

Re:My Point. Exactly

[Wah]

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Islamic

Islamic law in practice is rather bloody in its prescribed punishments.

Sharia law, when interpreted by backwoods nutjobs, is quite like that. 'Islamic' law, like that in Indonesia, isn't quite up to the barbarism you subscribe to all Muslims (note, see defintion of terms). To wit.

The Indonesian legal system is based on Roman-Dutch law, modified by custom and Islamic law. Sources of law are Islamic law, statutory legislation, presidential instructions, and official compilations of Islamic law.

Go here and see how their latest elections are turning out.

As far as I'm concerned I see where he is coming from. It is a bit over-reaching but not unwarranted.

That would explain your confusion.

Islam is to Muslim what Protestant is to Christianity. But the main difference is that Islamists believe in a political superiority that drives a nationalistic expansion of their law to the whole world. It is the mixture of the political ambitions with the Muslim religion that makes one an Islamist.

Dictionary. Look into it.

Islam - A monotheistic religion characterized by the acceptance of the doctrine of submission to God and to Muhammad as the chief and last prophet of God.

Muslim - A believer in or adherent of Islam.

Islamofascist Terrorists - 'Them'.

When you start to confuse the terms, as you have done consistently throughout this conversation, you are not helping, merely expanding the number of people that must be destroyed before peace can come again.

The fact that you think "Islam" is some sort of Muslim Protestant tells me that you are quite confused about who it is you are talking about. Considering this problem in endemic nowadays (at least in my country), I can understand the problem and will give you another chance to explain yourself.

Re:My Point. Exactly

[On Lawn]

The signal to noise ration has, unfortunately fell through the floor now. Any last words? Last meal? Cigarette? Okay, ready or not...

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Unfortunately we will be left guessing just how it is different :) Even more important we will be left guessing just what distinction you make between those that practice a peaceful religion espoused by Mohamed and those that use it to subject the world to it politically.

Sharia law, when interpreted by backwoods nutjobs, is quite like that.

Hmm, I wonder what you (who presumes to *not* be a backwoods nutjob) would interpret this example Shar'ia law...

"Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great." (Qur'an 4:34 English translation: MH Shakir)

isn't quite up to the barbarism you subscribe to all Muslims

You'd think your attempts to put words in others mouths would have been exposed enough for you to abandon this most dishonest tactic... Apparently some dogs never learn new tricks. Again it is you who is wants to "subscribe to all Muslims" some grand conflation. I'll keep pointing that out as often as you do that.

But again this invites the question of how you would draw the distinction...

Sources of law are Islamic law

The US law has Islamic sources also. For instance we have Sheriffs. But no one says that we in the US live under Islamic law.

Even more relevant to this discussion is that before the current elections Indonesia was still seen as a largely secular society. The influence of Sharia law is seen mainly in family law.

That would explain your confusion.

Now your just being cheeky :)

Dictionary. Look into it.

It never ceases to amaze just how much your argument hinges on presuming what I don't know. What part isn't ad-hominem or deliberate misquoting that is ;)

merely expanding the number of people that must be destroyed before peace can come again.

Must be destroyed? You are advocating destroying whole religions? Since as you seem inable to draw a difference between an Islamist and a Muslim, one can only conclude that is how you think. Yet the derision in your voice as you accuse LGF of the same thing would lead me to think otherwise. I'm not sure you've worked this issue out fully yet.

The fact that you think "Islam" is some sort of Muslim Protestant tells me

You know, taking words out of context is always easily countered by putting them back in context. Observe...

This is how you quoted me...

Islam is to Muslim what Protestant is to Christianity. But the main difference is that Islamists believe in a political superiority that drives a nationalistic expansion of their law to the whole world. It is the mixture of the political ambitions with the Muslim religion that makes one an Islamist.

Seems like a cohesive structure doesn't it. No clues to demark any editorial cutting or adding. However, here is the origional quote...

Probably the best way I can explain it is this: Islam is to Muslim what Protestant is to Christianity. Well that just explains that Islam is a subset of Muslim, and how much depends on who you talk to. But the main difference is that Islamists believe in a political superiority that drives a nationalistic expansion of their law to the whole world. It is the mixture of the political ambitions with the Muslim religion that makes one an

Re:My Point. Exactly

[Wah]

Do three things for me.

Define Islam.

Define Muslim.

Define Islamist.

Then try and be consistent in their use. You haven't been. Let's simplify.

Also, have a nice day.

Re:My Point. Exactly

[On Lawn]

Then try and be consistent in their use. You haven't been.

Howso?

Re:My Point. Exactly

[Wah]

Define what you think the words mean.

It's a simple thing really. You don't seem to agree with what a dictionary says, so we have to have a discussion before we can agree upon definitions of terms before this can go any further.

I've put forth what I think the words mean, now I'm asking you. The ball is in your court.

Three words. Go for it.

Re:My Point. Exactly

[On Lawn]

Define what you think the words mean.

It's a simple thing really.

Faux-naif is no reason to repeat myself ;)

But you get full marks for trying. The problem with you is that you put far too much faith in disenginuous rhetorical tactics.

Re:My Point. Exactly

[Wah]

O.k.

The problem with you is that you put far too much faith in disenginuous rhetorical tactics.

The problem with you, and LGF, is that you can't keep terms straight, and they are all synonyms.

Thanks for clearing that up. You have done any *amazing* job of being specific about who it is you are scared of.

Re:My Point. Exactly

[On Lawn]

is that you can't keep terms straight, and they are all synonyms.

Really? So I say; "I had dinner with a very cordial Muslim last night", just as well as, "I had dinner with a very cordial Islam last night?"

The answer, of course, is no. Then they are not synonyms.

Re:My Point. Exactly

[Wah]

look in the dictionary.

A Muslin is a person who practices the religion of Islam.

An Islamist, as they have been shortened to, generally follow the radicalized teachines of Wahabbi that gained prominence in Saudi Arabia in the late 60's (IIRC).

To say that all Muslims are Islamists, as you seem to believe, is so factually innaccurate that the mind boggles.

Now stop playing the fool and tell me, exactly, how it is that me and Webster are confused.

Re:My Point. Exactly

[On Lawn]

look in the dictionary.

Which dictionary did you pull your definitions from? They are rather sloppy and informal. I'm not sure they came from a reputable source.

A Muslin is a person who practices the religion of Islam.

You just said in the post above that they are synonyms. What were your words again, "you can't keep terms straight, and they are all synonyms." I hope you meant your post as a correction.

To say that all Muslims are Islamists, as you seem to believe

Your putting words in others mouths again. you were the one that thinks they are the same. Indeed you called them synonyms. What were your words again? Ah yes here they are, "you can't keep terms straight, and they are all synonyms."

Ah yes, that was to refute my laying a distinction I laid out previously that you have now fliped back to refusing to admit exists. This is the fourth time you've gone back and forth, acusing me of both. I wonder, do you have any doubt that it shows you as making reckless accusations when you have to alternate between two contradictory charges?

There is but one word that desribes your rhetoric, but it is somewhat of an inside joke at Poliglut. We call it 'KDubbian Rhetoric' named after probably the worst debater ever seen on the internet. Though you haven't quite yet achieved KDub's ability to post to articles that refute your own point, I dare say you are mighty feirce competition for her in that you are contradicting yourself without even blinking. Indeed, there has been no one else that even comes close in all my wanderings of the Internet. I suppose you can mark that with distinction, though it is not a flattering one.

;)

Re:My Point. Exactly

[Wah]

jeez. O.k. real slow.

What. Do. The. Following. Words. Mean. To. You. Question mark.

To me, and the rest of the English speaking world, they are defined as follows.

Muslim. Dictionary 1 Wikipedia Dictionary 2

Islam. Dictionary 1 Wikipedia Dictionary 2

Sorry, for being so vague.

My previious statment can be clarified thusly "you can't keep terms straight, and they are all synonyms (to you, as far as I can tell)." That help?

Or are you going to keep trolling (cue, 'Ha, you can't argue so you call me a troll.' (and you ignore, again, the request for you to define what you think these words mean))

O.k. now back to your clarifcication.

Probably the best way I can explain it is this: Islam is to Muslim what Protestant is to Christianity. Well that just explains that Islam is a subset of Muslim, and how much depends on who you talk to. But the main difference is that Islamists believe in a political superiority that drives a nationalistic expansion of their law to the whole world. It is the mixture of the political ambitions with the Muslim religion that makes one an Islamist.

So, what part of Islam or percentage of Muslims (Those that practice Islam) believe in nationalistic expansion? Is there another, more specific term for people that put such things into practice?

As you've pointed out, "Islam is to Muslim what Protestant is to Christianity." Except that makes no sense if you read the dictionary or Wikipedia. "Christianity is to Christian, as Islam is to Muslim" is the only thing that makes the barest sense. "Wahabbism it to Islam, as Protestant is to Christianity" would have made more sense. But again, that's just using a the wikipedia to define terms. "Many Sunni Muslims criticise Wahhabism for its lack of flexibility and general intolerance towards other religions and even towards other Muslim sects. A number of moderate Islamic groups have publicly condemned Wahhabism as being a distortion of historic Islam.

Many non-Muslim commentators refer to it as "Islamic fascism"."

So again, and I think we up to 5 requests now, what definitions do you use for these terms? How do you, personally, differentiate between those that want restore the Caliphate by force of arms and those that want to live in peace?

Re:My Point. Exactly

[On Lawn]

Muslim. Dictionary 1 Wikipedia Dictionary 2

Islam. Dictionary 1 Wikipedia Dictionary 2

Sorry, for being so vague.

That is vague, you should be sorry. Direct quotes would be helpful in illustrating your point (should you decide to stay on one long enough). As I mentioned before vague handwaving is just you asking me to do your work for you. Your a big person now, you can tell me what you want me to get out of those articles :)

My previious statment can be clarified thusly "you can't keep terms straight, and they are all synonyms (to you, as far as I can tell)." That help?

That isn't a clarification, that is simply switching sides again. Now you simply deny I've made a distinction again.

Just to illustrate your jump back to blindness I will show how your questions are answered in the quote you provided (which is complete this time, to your credit).

So, what part of Islam or percentage of Muslims believe in nationalistic expansion?

how much depends on who you talk to.

Is there another, more specific term for people that put such things into practice?

Probably the best way I can explain it

"Islam is to Muslim what Protestant is to Christianity." Except that makes no sense

Well that just explains that Islam is a subset of Muslim [This was provided when you brought this up previously, I'll add. When you rehashing refuted arguments it doesn't support them, it just makes you look ignorant.]

So again, and I think we up to 5 requests now

Five requests (probably more), each made after it was already answered ;) You can't erase an answer by reiterating the question.

No you aren't a troll. Trolls do this kind of thing for attention and fun. Being a KDub is different, it is more synonymous with fatuous. And unintentionally so. Probably most synonymous with Palooka.

Now, any more clarification needed? There is no difference between what the Dictionary, Wiki, and I say about the definitions of Islam and Muslim.

Re:My Point. Exactly

[Wah]

Now, any more clarification needed?

Nah, I think we are safe.

[Well that just explains that Islam is a subset of [those that follow Islam].

Crystal clear, you are.

how much depends on who you talk to.

As I'm talking to you, it kinda depends on you, now doesn't it. So now that we agree, your answer would be...?

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[jdbo]

> you would not refer to much of the analysis as "woefully
> uninformed." And to sum up the entire analysis as a
> "brief obsession with kerning"

Pardon my hyperbole, but the majority of the discussion re: digital typography was premised on poor processes - for example, the reference that you cite is exceptionally detailed, but makes the mistake of trying to prove the documents as forgeries (rather than suspect) entirely within his own narrow area of expertise (furthermore by using copies of the original documents, which is an inherently flawed approach).

Besides, while this account certainly manages to raise suspicions, it's not definitive in its specific points without at least corroboration by similar experts. The fact that it sounds good isn't enough without subjecting it to further expertise. This account fails to cite any corroboration.

Meanwhile the WaPo attacked the problem from multiple angles (vetted by multiple experts): content analysis, interviewing Killian's secretary at the time, and yes, typesetting issues. Ultimately, the former were found to be the most convincing and consistent arguments against the docs, certainly more so than the typesetting minutiae (which more often than not descended into experts in related but distinct fields sniping at each other from within narrow fortresses of expertise).

In short, while the blogs may have pointed out the smoke, it was the traditional media who actually found the fire. Maybe the blogs could have done it, but they were focused on the less important aspects of the issue.

Finally, the entire conflagration regarding the forged docs misses the point that noone (including the WH) has contested the events described within the docs; so even in the scenario that this story is an example of "blogs triumphing", this triumph accomplished little besides... distraction from the issues at hand.

Which is truly something for those with journalistic aspirations to be proud of, I'm certain.

Rathergate?

[Merk]

Look. Watergate was a hotel. There's nothing about the suffix -gate that denotes a scandal, nor did the Watergate scandal involve "Water".

I know you didn't invent the term, but by using it you're giving it credibility. Can't you just call it the "Forged memos scandal"? Or if you really want to implicate Dan Rather, the "Dan Rather memos scandal"?

Non-US Sources

[mcharlet]

May I suggest The Economist (www.economist.com)? It's a British publication that has quite possibly some of the most in-depth and incisive articles on American Politics and Economics. If you pick up a copy at the newstand today, the current issue's cover title is "No Way to Run a Democracy" and does an in depth look at some of the big political issues in this election. I'm personally a big fan of The Economist for my news... they have a bias, but are open about it and remind readers that they are prone to certain positions and how those positions influence their opinions.

Reason Magazine's Hit & Run

[Yet Another Smith]

Hit & Run over at Reason magazine is pretty interesting. It is fundamentally a libertarian blog of various Reason contributors. This blog has the distinction of having contributors supporting three different candidates, and almost the full spectrum of opinion on the Iraq war.

Also like Virginia Postrel's Dynamist blog.

I then try and read some of NRO's blogs and Daily Kos and Atrios just to make sure I keep up with what people are saying outside my own little echo chamber.

Re:Newbies: The major conservative/libertarian blo

[Jo_2521]

"2. The Corner [nationalreview.com]. National Review's group weblog. Lots of contributors, who vary widely in tone (after you read it a while you come to recognize who the various authors are, and what points of view they hold). If you're not a conservative, you should check it out -- you won't agree with most of the stuff, but after a while you might learn that the folks on the "other side" aren't a bunch of moronic power-mad nazis: They actually have coherent reasons for believing what they believe, and can ably articulate those views. Understanding their arguments will help you sharpen your own."

I skimped through the page, picking up this gem:

OR MAYBE IT IS AN INDIAN FIGHT [Jonah Goldberg]

Last word on this non-debate, from another military guy:

Jonah,

From a military point of view, the WoT is an indian fight. And this idiot is a keen example of why the left is incapable of winning it. There is no room for PC on the modern asymmetrical battlefield. Any talk about worrying what the islamicist will think is horse crap (cavalry term). This country is in very real danger and if we do not succeed in ensuring that the war is fought on ground we choose then the fanatics will bring the war to us. I'd rather look for WMDs in Iraq than find them the hard way in the US. These people are savages and we must steel ourselves as a nation if we hope to survive. The time for wishy-washy, touchy-feely hand wringing has long since passed. OPEN YOUR EYES PEOPLE. It's war."

This should convince me of the "other side" not being moronic how? This is fascism, pure and simple.
Just being interested and morally high-horsed at the moment :): is that the generally accepted level of political speech over in the US?

Instapundit.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed.

Re:Bush acts like recovered alcoholics usually act

[Moofie]

I'm pretty stupid, so you might need to use small words.

What was Kerry's war crime?

Re:Andrew Sullivan != Conservative, but here are s

[illumin8]

Shameless Plug:

Check out my own blog by clicking in my signature....

Thanks!

Re:Chomsky

[Moofie]

Constructive criticism? "DO EVERYTHING MY WAY, OR YOU ARE EVIL" is not constructive criticism.

Re:Newbies: The major conservative/libertarian blo

[Alaska Jack]

OK, I think this is an absolutely fair point. I mean, I don't think you're deluded or anything. But let's look at it a little more closely.

1. The quote isn't from a Corner author -- it's a submission. The submission is one of several Goldberg received and posted in response to an article he wrote.

2. I know it's tempting to say "Well, this is really Goldberg's view: He's just using the submission as cover." But there are a couple of problems with this. (A) You can easily check and see exactly what Goldberg does think: Just read his original article.* (B) Goldberg in particular has a history of posting a wide range of responses to his articles, not all of which he agrees with.

That is what seems to be the case here. After reading Goldberg's article, someone wrote in to say that the situation in Iraq was like fighting Indians (or Native Americans, if you prefer) in the 1800s. Someone else wrote in to say no, it isn't, etc. It doesn't mean Goldberg endorses either of these views, just that he finds them interesting.

3. Now, as to the quote itself: If I understand correctly, it probably offends you because you think by "these people" the writer meant all Iraqis, or all Arabs. But a closer reading suggests that "these people" refers to "the fanatics [who] will bring the war to us"; in other words, the insurgents and assorted thugs the U.S. and Iraqi forces are now fighting.

(I freely admit the e-mail is not a model of clarity, but remember, it was written by a "military guy," not a professional writer. I'm not a mind reader, but I think what I've written above is at least a reasonable interpretation of what he wrote.)

4. If this is the case, it certainly is a justifiable position -- i.e., that kidnapping civilians and cutting their heads off, and detonating car bombs in places where a lot of innocent Iraqi civilians are sure to be killed, are indeed "savage" acts.

5. SO, where does that leave us? If you didn't like the "tone" of that particular post, I'm inclined to agree with you. The Corner isn't as uniformly "high-level" in tone as the Volokh Conspiracy. But I maintain it's still fairly high in relation to the rest of the blogosphere.

6. Given all that, it still may not be your cup of tea; an opinion to which you are, of course, entirely entitled.

Cheers,

- Alaska Jack

* I highly recommend actually doing this. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Antiwar.com

[MagikSlinger]

Antiwar.com is by far and away the best one I've ever read. Written & run by a bunch of Libertarians, these guys have an excellent front page link to major stories of the day related to the Iraq war and other issues. They also provide links to commentary from both Liberals and Conservatives opposing the war (Pat Buchanan is opposed to Dubya & crew!?)

Re:Chomsky

[js7a]

"DO EVERYTHING MY WAY, OR YOU ARE EVIL" is also not Chomsky.

Look Chomsky thinks Sweden is on the right track, but he also has good things to say about the Netherlands, Germany, and to some extent France.

Is there a particular example you want to discuss, or are you like most Chomsky detractors, talking in absolute terms about inaccurate generalizations?

Re:Chomsky

[Moofie]

Discussing anything with people who hew to Chomsky's non-interventionist ideals is a good way to get called stupid and violent. No thanks.

Sweden's tax rates go into the three digits. You can have it.

Sweden (was Re:Chomsky)

[js7a]

Presenting one rich Swedish businessman's tax bill one year after a complicated tax code revision as the entire tax rate of Sweden is a good way to get called stupid.

Sweden has two tax brackets. If you live in Stockholm and make less than 10% above the median wage, your tax rate is 0%. For all income above 10% over the median, the rate is 57%. The cost of living is low, in terms of housing, food, education (free college), healthcare (universal coverage), automobiles, durable and nondurable goods. The life expectancy is 4 years longer than in the U.S. Unemployment and inflation are lower than in the U.S. Infant mortality is much lower than in the U.S. There is virtually no poverty compared to the U.S. (Most people have to pay the E.U. VAT regressive sales tax, though there is an exemption for people on what we would call food stamps.)

Productivity is high, too. Sweden has thriving large international conglomerate industry (e.g., Volvo, Saab, Ericsson, Ikea...), as well as thriving medium-sized businesses and many more small mom-and-pop outfits compared to the U.S. where WalMart has taken it's sweatshop-labor toll.)

I've been to Sweden, and Beijing, Okinawa, Berlin, Munich, Venice, Mexico and Canada, and I live in California. If I could speak Swedish I would move to Sweden in a minute.

Re:Sweden (was Re:Chomsky)

[Moofie]

Wanna go live in Sweden? Knock yourself out.

What do your sources tell you about the "can't be bothered to get a job because the public dole is good enough" factor?

What do you think is the logical extension of that?

Capitalism in the US is a bad idea. Socialism is worse.

Re:Sweden (was Re:Chomsky)

[js7a]

What do your sources tell you about the "can't be bothered to get a job because the public dole is good enough" factor?

Sweden's 2003 unemployment rate: 4.9%

US 2003 unemployment rate: 6%

The public dole might be good enough for artists who would otherwise starve, but nearly everyone wants something better, and with Sweden's state-sponsored professional and advanced, lifelong, vocational education, it's easy to live a very comfortable lifestyle even if unfortunate turns of events require multiple career changes.

The logical extension is that the U.S. is deficit-spending into a very serious crisis the moment the baby boomers start retiring and requiring Medicare. Alan Greenspan has been saying so in no uncertain terms in each of his Humphrey-Hawkins testimonies since 2002.

Re:Sweden (was Re:Chomsky)

[Moofie]

Oh come now. The US Bureau of Labor can't get their methodology right year to year. You're telling me that Sweden uses the same metric?

Craziness.

Again: You think their system is better, go to it. As broken as our SS/Medicare system is, it is better than socialism.

Where does Sweden get their medical technology?

Re:Sweden (was Re:Chomsky)

[js7a]

As broken as our SS/Medicare system is, it is better than socialism.

Why do you think that U.S. SS/Medicare is distinguishable from socialism? Does your cold-war era dictionary say that socalism is equivalent to communism is equivalent to 100% property taxation? Socialism is a progressive income tax, a progressive overall tax, and sucessful forms involve a low property and sales (regressive forms of) tax.

Where does Sweden get their medical technology?

You have heard of the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Re:Sweden (was Re:Chomsky)

[Moofie]

The fact that SS/Medicare doesn't cost the taxpayer as much as it does in Sweden makes it distinguishable from that system. Does it have socialist aspects? Sure. Is it a truly socialized medical system? I certainly think not.

And, of course, the Nobel Prize for Medicine only goes to Swedish people. Right.

I know that America's (extremely corrupt and unreasonably profiteering) corporations develop the lion's share of new techniques and treatments.

Are there problems that need addressing? Absolutely. Is a 57% tax bracket part of the solution? Not if you ask me.

Re:Sweden (was Re:Chomsky)

[js7a]

I know that America's (extremely corrupt and unreasonably profiteering) corporations develop the lion's share of new techniques and treatments.

Almost all of them are now incorporated in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, or the like, in order to pay virtually no U.S. tax.

From that perspective, Swedish companies paying Swedish taxes do more medical R&D than U.S. companies paying U.S. taxes. Kerry has promised to end that supertanker-sized loophole.

If you don't think we will need 57% tax bracket when the baby boomers retire, then you haven't been looking at the solvency projections on the OMB's own website.

Re:Sweden (was Re:Chomsky)

[Anonymous Coward]

Moofie, as a friend I suggest you take what little dignity you have with you, and find something else to talk about. You mean well, but let's face it-- you have nothing to say. Your only notions of socialism and progressive politics come from AM radio, and you wear those influences on your sleeve. Just... give up man. I hate to see you doing this to yourself.

Sadly not limited to Republicans

[Onan]

Unfortunately, an opposition to civil rights for gay Americans is widespread throughout both parties. I lost a huge amount of interest in this presidential election when I learned that every single Democratic primary candidate was opposed to legalized gay marriage. (Dean eventually signed the legalizing bill that the Vermont senate sent him, but only reluctantly and after protest.)

All of the distasteful stances on sexuality that you attribute to Republicans are only slightly less pervasive among Democrats. Which essentially means that I can't imagine strongly supporting any politician at the state or federal level.

Re:Sadly not limited to Republicans

[killjoe]

Bullshit.

Virtually no democratic candidate backs an amendment to the constitution. Although many don't favor gay marriage virtually all of them are for civil unions.

If you think there is no difference between republicans and democrats on this matter you are plain old ignorant.

If you are gay or know and care about gay people and still vote for a republican you are just stupid.

Sullivan is a Conservative.

[Onan]

That may be why, but it's a pretty silly reason. "Conservative" or "Republican" are hardly even meaningful descriptors, and they're certainly not representative of a completely homogenous hivemind that permits no dissent within the ranks. Someone can be quite reasonably called either of those while opposing Bush in particular, just as Zel Miller is still a Democrat despite his opposition to Kerry.

(In fact, Bush's stances on the majority of issues are at odds with the classic definition of "conservatism". His beliefs in wildly unchecked government spending, constant foreign adventurism, and invasive social policy mean that one almost has to oppose him to have any real claim to the conservative label.)

Re:Sullivan is a Conservative.

[angle_slam]

Actually, that was exactly my point. As another example, the Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, shares many views with Andrew Sullivan. But because Reynolds is reflexively pro-Bush (or anti-Kerry), he seems more conservative than the anti-Bush Sullivan, even though their views on most issues are similar.

NYTimes reports the obvious

[rjamestaylor]

NYTimes reports the obvious. This one coordinating phone call between Mapes, Burkett and Lockhart is the new center of this breech of journalistic integrity -- overshadowing the fraudulent documents themselves, as it betrays the motives behind the actions.

My original post was a reaction to the news that such a phone call existed. Seems like CBS and the NYTimes agree that it by itself is inexcusable.

Re:My favorites, more blogs like Juan Cole's blog

[mbrod]

Jaun's comments are great and he weaves in great historical perspective.

Only thing that worries me is that there isn't more commenting and reporting like his. The majority of reporting and analysis should be like that not the 1% we have to dig for in cyberspace.

Re:Newbies: The major conservative/libertarian blo

[Jo_2521]

1. I'm sorry. It was the page that opened as I clicked your link.

2. So I've read the article. I don't agree with his conclusions. He is downplaying the torture at Abu Ghraib (sorry, but those weren't just panties...), his arguments aren't very deep ("Bush was hardly alone in believing there were WMDs, and given the convictions of so many over such a long period, he erred on the right side.") and all in all his arguments are those I've read about one year ago on FR (albeit less polished ;).

The funniest point to me is him protecting Bush from the "leftist media". Funny because out of the US basically no-one would attest the CNN being left-wing and the blatant right-wing attitude of Fox News is almost unbearable if you're used to european media stations that at least TRY to be neutral with their news.

Funny, too, is his point about all these sick countries with their unthankful stance towards the US. I doubt that Mr. Goldberg has been to other countries after 9/11. At least in Germany the sympathy to the US was astonishing. It only began to weaken as Bush began his crusade against Iraq, showing that he would declare war regardless of arguments that spoke against in, trying to justify this illegal war with hillarity, er, WMDs.

3. Maybe. 1. I'm sorry. It was the page that opened as I clicked your link.

2. So I've read the article. I don't agree with his conclusions. He is downplaying the torture at Abu Ghraib (sorry, but those weren't just panties...), his arguments aren't very deep ("Bush was hardly alone in believing there were WMDs, and given the convictions of so many over such a long period, he erred on the right side.") and all in all his arguments are those I've read about one year ago on FR (albeit less polished ;).

The funniest point to me is him protecting Bush from the "leftist media". Funny because out of the US basically no-one would attest the CNN being left-wing and the blatant right-wing attitude of Fox News is almost unbearable if you're used to european media stations that at least TRY to be neutral with their news.

Funny, too, is his point about all these sick countries with their unthankful stance towards the US. I doubt that Mr. Goldberg has been to other countries after 9/11. At least in Germany the sympathy to the US was astonishing. It only began to weaken as Bush began his crusade against Iraq, showing that he would declare war regardless of arguments that spoke against in, trying to justify this illegal war with hillarity, er, WMDs.

3. Maybe. I still fail to see what Indians and Terrorists have in common. Anyway, after rereading the mail and after having read some FR which almost sounds exactly the same in expressing their brainless views I doubt that he only meant the terrorists.

5. Yes, that may be, I don't know much of this sphere :).

6. No, it's not my cup. I don't mind anyone being in favor of Bush as long as his arguments aren't full of holes. At least he has a higher level of writing than, seemingly (from what I read 7000 miles away from the US so may point of view may be severly blurred :), most other pro-bush writers.

I, too, would love to hear from you :)

Bye,
Jo

Nausea Manifesto

[StormBear]

Nausea Manifesto

Corpus Callosum

[shockbeton]

This is a very interesting blog: http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/ The articles fall into two main (color coded) categories: political (blue) and scientific (green). Currently there seem to be more science articles, but the political posts come in waves.

Noam Chomsky

[neves]

Noam Chomsky has his blog: Turning the tide.

$20K a year to subscribe to this site

[Blue Neon Head]

To the Kos, the CBS forged memos were real and still are.

Like many people that cite Kos, you're probably basing this on someone else's diary entry on the blog, not on Kos's own entries. For some reason, people just don't understand that anyone can keep a diary on his site. It's not an endorsement of the views.

I'd like you to point to a recent example of Kos insisting the documents were real. He barely spoke about them at all, even early on.

Re:$20K a year to subscribe to this site

[On Lawn]

Unfortunate he named his site after his handle. It makes discussing "the Kos" quite ambiguous at times.

Re:My favorites, more blogs like Juan Cole's blog

[Anonymous Coward]

Juan Cole is an otherwise intelligent professor blinded by his ideology.

another left-leaning blog

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? http://wtfwtf5.blogspot.com/

Orcinus

[LochNess]

Orcinus

Re:Chomsky

[Anonymous Coward]

Discussing anything with people who hew to Chomsky's non-interventionist ideals is a good way to get called stupid and violent. No thanks.
Well, I can't say whether you're violent or not. I hope you aren't.

TheMentor.org

[Anonymous Coward]

TheMentor.org

true lies

[Doc Ruby]

You are a fool and a liar. The typist who CBS produced who's definitively stated that she would have typed the memos, but didn't, not only proved that they copies CBS broadcast were simulated, but the information was true. That's right, Bush dodged the draft with his powerful father's help. The only question remaining is whether he finally went AWOL to do drugs, choosing to get high on chemicals instead of his plane in Texas, or for some other reason. Just like your boy with the silver spoon, you have a problem with the truth. What are *you* on?

Re:true lies

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The typist who CBS produced who's definitively stated that she would have typed the memos

That's not what she said, ya dumbass.

Bush dodged the draft with his powerful father's help.

Nobody, not even the freakiest of the freaks, is saying that. You don't even understand the rumor you're trying to spread.

Re:true lies

[Doc Ruby]

"I know that I didn't type them," says Knox. "However, the information in those is correct."

You keep tracking the rumors from your propaganda mill. The truth is that Bush Sr got Bush Jr into the National Guard ahead of a line of people who were sent to Vietnam instead. Their names on the Vietnam memorial forced the conscience of Ben Barnes to confess their draft dodging.

Why doesn't that matter to you? Why don't you care that your president dodged the draft? How blind can you be?

Re:true lies

[Twirlip of the Mists]

"I know that I didn't type them," says Knox. "However, the information in those is correct."

Hey, finally you stumble upon what she actually said. Now, ask yourself a couple of questions. Is is reasonable that a member of the office secretarial pool would know whether a direct order was given or not? Is is reasonable that a member of the secretarial pool would know that Killian was under pressure from a superior officer? The answers, of course, are no and no. So this statement by Marian Carr Knox --who loves to tell people how she thinks that Bush was "selected, not elected"--adds up to a hill of beans. She is, to put it bluntly, not remotely credible, and the complete absence of any kind of corroboration from anybody else is damning in the extreme.

How come you can't find anybody or any document to support those claims other than (1) a confirmed liar who recanted his own story then recanted his recantation when the next election rolled around, (2) an elderly former secretary who has a well-known personal grudge against the president, and (3) a set of memos which turn out to be clumsy and obvious forgeries? How come that's the very best you can do? Is this the part where you blame Bush? He somehow -- nobody knows how, mind you--destroyed all the records and coerced all the witnesses and covered up the story despite overwhelming, unprecedented hatred for him by his political enemies, right? He pulled the strings, covered it all up, right?

Ya dumbass.

The truth is that Bush Sr got Bush Jr into the National Guard ahead of a line of people who were sent to Vietnam instead.

Except that that's not the truth. Not only is it not true, it's not even anything that anybody is claiming. Ben Barnes made that claim in 1999, then promptly recanted, putting the blame for exercising influence not on George H. W. Bush but rather on a Bush family friend who was conveniently deceased. The story of who, exactly, is supposed to have exercised this influence has changed repeatedly over the years. The various members of the Bush family have repeatedly denied exercising influence, and the people involved have repeatedly and vocally denied ever being subject to any influence, and yet the story stays alive because ...well, duh. Bush = Hitler. Obviously.

Why doesn't that matter to you?

For the same reason that I don't care about that French guy who wrote that the Pentagon was struck by a cruise missile, or that Canadian guy who wrote that Israeli demolitions experts brought down the towers to destroy Enron records, or that other idiot who said that the Bush family has ties to the Saudi royal family. Because insane conspiracy theories don't interest me.

Why don't you care that your president dodged the draft?

How up-in-arms about this were you in 1992 or 1996? If the answer is anything less than "completely fucking rabid," you are a hypocrite and a fool. If that is your answer, then you're just a fool.

Re:true lies

[n8_f]

How up-in-arms about this were you in 1992 or 1996? If the answer is anything less than "completely fucking rabid," you are a hypocrite and a fool. If that is your answer, then you're just a fool.

No, Clinton didn't deny he dodged the draft and he also didn't support the Vietnam war. Bush does claim he would have gone to Vietnam and he did support the war. Bush is the hypocrite. If he came clean on his Guard service, you might have a case, but he hasn't. The White House continues to insist that he served faithfully and deserved an honorable discharge when he did not. That he got one is an example of why Colin Powell said:
"I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well placed and so many professional athletes (who were probably healthier than any of us) managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."

Re:true lies

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The White House continues to insist that he served faithfully and deserved an honorable discharge when he did not.

Translation: I hate Bush so much that I will continue to believe malicious lies about him no matter how many times those lies are debunked or how regularly I am revealed as a hypocrite and a bigot.

Re:true lies

[Doc Ruby]

You are a complete creature of the Republican lie machine: your defense from the most serious indictments is to project your guilt onto your accusers. You have tried to throw these charges at others, without any evidence, just because the charges sound bad. And you have no defense from the charges on you, backed up by ample evidence. You have no business using the word "reasonable" about anything. You are a dangerous maniac, spewing insanity. Hypocrite? Bigot? What the hell are you talking about? Is that you, Damien, or just some RNC experimental postbot?

Re:true lies

[Twirlip of the Mists]

See what I mean? Completely insane.

That's the wonderful thing about Bush-haters. They might sound reasonable at first, but if you give them enough time, they'll reveal themselves as the raving lunatics they really are.

The best way to defeat the Bush-haters is to get them all microphones.

Re:true lies

[Doc Ruby]

Is that all you've got? Repeating what I charged you with, after you justified the charges? When I charged you with exactly that? I guess you're in some kind of loop.

Re:true lies

[Twirlip of the Mists]

"Charged?" I don't think you're clear on the meaning of the expression.

Re:true lies

[Doc Ruby]

Want to play a game? Have fun chasing your own tail for a while.

Re:Newbies: The major conservative/libertarian blo

[Alaska Jack]

Hi, sorry took me so long to get around to this. Just been very busy, that's all.

1. No need to be sorry.

2. So I've read the article. I don't agree with his conclusions. He is downplaying the torture at Abu Ghraib (sorry, but those weren't just panties...), his arguments aren't very deep ("Bush was hardly alone in believing there were WMDs, and given the convictions of so many over such a long period, he erred on the right side.") and all in all his arguments are those I've read about one year ago on FR (albeit less polished ;).

You are, of course, entitled to your own conclusions. I agree that Goldberg, in this article, downplays Abu Ghraib. On this point you should know, however, that American conservatives were quite harsh in condemning the A.G. abuses. From the point of view of a pro-Iraq-war conservative, Abu Ghraib was a fiasco because, at the very least, it undermined what the U.S. was trying to accomplish in Iraq. You may not agree with their perspective, but you should know that conservatives were not, in general, defending the perpetrators. To the contrary, there were many calls for the harshest possible punishment for those involved.

Your second observation, that Goldberg's arguments ("Bush was hardly alone in believing there were WMDs, and given the convictions of so many over such a long period, he erred on the right side.") weren't very deep, is true. On the other hand, something doesn't have to be deep to be true, and it is hard to refute him here. Iraq at one time did indeed, by its own admission, have a large stockpile of WMDs, and despite many opportunities, never gave anyone any reason to think they had disposed of them. Remember, the disagreement before the war was not whether Saddam HAD WMDs; it was what to DO about them. Finally, even if Bush erred, many in the U.S. believe he did the right thing. With some justification, they say the fault was Saddam's, for not coming clean with inspectors and disastrously misjudging American resolve in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The funniest point to me is him protecting Bush from the "leftist media". Funny because out of the US basically no-one would attest the CNN being left-wing and the blatant right-wing attitude of Fox News is almost unbearable if you're used to european media stations that at least TRY to be neutral with their news.

Hmmm. Frankly, I have a tough time evaluating this. I've never been to Europe. I have heard Americans returning from Europe describe in amazed tones what they perceive as the consistent anti-Americanism of the European press. So I'm not sure what to think. I don't consider CNN left-wing, just center-mildly-leaning-left, like most of the press. I don't watch Fox, so I can't comment on that either.

Funny, too, is his point about all these sick countries with their unthankful stance towards the US. I doubt that Mr. Goldberg has been to other countries after 9/11. At least in Germany the sympathy to the US was astonishing. It only began to weaken as Bush began his crusade against Iraq, showing that he would declare war regardless of arguments that spoke against in, trying to justify this illegal war with hillarity, er, WMDs.

I read this passage several times while trying to figure out how to respond. I don't want to be uncivil, but this is something of a "hot button" for a lot of Americans. Basically, the aftermath of 9/11 gave us a taste of something Israel had been saying for a long time: "If you're attacked," so the argument goes, "Europeans will be great sympathizers. As long, that is, as you sit back and let yourselves get murdered, and don't try to fight back. If you actually do anything to try to stop your people from getting murdered, you will lose all sympathy, and in fact they will condemn you vociferously."

As an American, I can't tell you how moved we were when France and Germany, for example, said things like "We are all Americans" and so forth. Perhaps that is why we felt so betrayed in the time t

Favorite Political Blog

[Anonymous Coward]

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