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

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

[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: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.

My favorite political weblog?

[Ignorant Aardvark]

I'll have to go with "None".

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.

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...

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

[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

[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.

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: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: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: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

[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.