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

Annenberg FactCheck

[linuxwrangler]

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

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: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,

Tom Tommorow's

[Snagle]

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

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

[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.

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: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.