Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Heartless Libertarian. He's a gun owner who lays things out straight.
I'm probably at the karma cap. Mod up a funny troll instead, it lightens the mood
from the sidelines
http://oligopolywatch.com/
there can be only one, then it is the end.
Definitely the fafblog.
fafblog.blogspot.com
Anyone else know of it?
gregpalast.com
Tom the Sigless
When you've had enough of Drudge and MoveOn, and you're ready for dessert, it's time for http://wonkette.com/!
Then you haven't seen warincontext.org
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.
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.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
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.
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.
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.
m ail.htm l
Web site:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/current
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
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.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
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 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.
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
To be "fair and balanced" I prefer Rogers Cadenhead's Drudge Retort.
Of course we torture people, we need the information --Gen. Pinochet
I really like Swing State Project. Even-handed, even-toned, and factual.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
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 ?
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!
http://esr.ibiblio.org/#154
Other blogs worth checking out:
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
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.
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.
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.
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.
Indeed. Allow me to quote Hunter in the article you linked to...
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...
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?
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:
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.
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
"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.
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.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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.
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