Pretty nearly every single time Mark Schmitt posts something either to The Decembrist or to his TPM Café table, I get the urge to post about it. Or, rather, to just post the link and encourage Gentle Readers to read it. I rarely have anything much to add. For instance, when Karl Rove took charge of the recovery from Hurricane Katrina, it was Mark Schmitt who pointed out that it was a setup, and that we were heading for “a situation in which Democrats vote against or seem to oppose some sort of Gulf Coast reconstruction package.” I think he’s right, and I think there isn’t much to add to that, but I think anybody interested in the balance of power in the Congress after the 2006 elections should read the post and be aware of it. Similarly, Mr. Schmitt posts a withering analysis of Sen. Bill Frist, the HCA, and our corporate and government culture in Pump and Dump Politics, but I haven’t anything to add to it.
I imagine that Gentle Readers pretty likely fall into three categories. First of all, there are those who just aren’t going to read lengthy, wordy analyses of legislative politics by anybody they don’t know, and who aren’t following those links anyway. Then there are the ones who have already added Mr. Schmitt’s blogs to the aggregator or bookmark collection, and don’t need the links. Last, I suppose, are the Gentle Readers who don’t generally read stuff like that but might if I link to it. I assume these would prefer that I don’t just link to every single entry Mr. Schmitt makes.
You know, let’s open this up, Gentle Readers... Who do you read? Who do you make sure not to miss, and who do you check now and then? Not the journals of old college buddies and that, I mean the blogs for political, social and artistic commentary and links to events of the day. Y’all have seen my collection. Who and what am I missing?
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
Well, I don’t know if you read these already or not, so this may be irrelevant.
I read Julia of Sisyphus Shrugged regularly:
http://www.livejournal.com/~jmhm
I read Rivka at Respectful of Otters occasionally (she’s fabulous, but doesn’t post often. But then, she’s got a baby younger than mine.):
http://respectfulofotters.blogspot.com/
I love her motto (is that the right word?): “I’m a psychologist working in HIV research and treatment in the inner city. Don’t talk to me about ‘compassionate conservatism.'”
And I also occasionally read Jeanne d’Arc at Body and Soul:
http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/
Huh. Just noticed that all three of those are women. That wasn’t intentional. I just knew that the other names I would have listed (mostly men) were sources you’re already reading.
Hope this helps.
I read dailykos. You have to sift the reliable reports from the unreliable reports there, but they cover a lot of ground.
I’ve recentley begun reading theoildrum.com, which is a site devoted to discussion of peak oil production. It’s a good place for energy news and analysis, though, as with kos, sifting is necessary.
Oh, and I don’t read David Neiwert of Orcinus nearly enough:
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/
Hm. I check Body and Soul fairly often, and I follow the odd links to Respectful of Otters. I’ve heard about Sysyphus Shrugged and David Neiwert, but haven’t checked them out. I’ll give them a try.
I gave up Kos after the election. The sifting seemed like too much work, with the wheat/chaff ratio not great. Also, it seems to me to be a site about the comment threads, which (as mentioned previously) make me uneasy. Have you checked out Kos’ sports sites, though? I read the McCovey Chronicles, and there is a Bucs Dugout, and The Good Phight, and so on. There’s still a lot of sifting to be done, but it can be worth it.
Thanks,
-V.
Having just come back to net access after three weeks away, I have to say that one of the best parts of the vacation was being forcibly cut off from my addiction to Knowing What’s Going On.
It’s taken me this far into the week just to catch up on my regular personal blogs and daily comic strips, but yesterday I caught a glimpse of the NYT home page on a user’s computer (I do desktop tech support), saw the little note about DeLay, and decided I needed to Know About That. I knew DailyKos would be an information overload, but I thought I could check in quick at Digby to get some commentary with background on that particular story. Turns out I’ve “missed” a lot while I was gone, and I think I was better off without it.
I wish I could stick to my otherwise-functional resolve to read only the personal blogs of people I’ve met in person (with the exception of this one and one other) when it comes to politics/news. The solution, clearly, is that Our Humble Host needs to post more — nay, continuously.
But I really do recommend Cat and Girl and Little Dee.
I had perused Cat and Girl now and then, but I hadn’t seen Little Dee—great!
I suppose I could have pontificated about The Hon. Mr. DeLay, which might have assuaged your need to know without having actually given you any of that awful information, but I’m still at the stage of hoping he’ll be reincarnated as a chandelier, a long way from coherence.
Thanks,
-V.
Well, and it’s not so much the DeLay thing that I would have rather skipped (as I recall, Digby didn’t have much of anything up on it), it was, oh, the corpses-for-porn site, it was peeling back the layers of human ugliness surrounding the Katrina disaster to reveal deeper, uglier layers underneath… I mean, all of this is true and important to understanding the world, so, er, um.
Kos did become unreadable after the election, but it’s settled down enough now that I find the sifting worth it. Or perhaps I would say that I find the chance that I will find something worth reading that I wouldn’t have thought to try to find out about is high enough to make it worth surveyiing the diaries on the surface of Kos a couple of times a day.
For example, there was a very interesting diary about the upcoming presidential elections in Bolivia, with a link to a great Bolivian politics blog, that was highly illuminating and that I never would have thought to try to track down. I suppose I would have eventually read about the story in _The Nation_, but not until the elections were a lot closer, or even after they were over.
I think that the efforts of the people of Latin America to throw off the neo-liberal economic serfdom to which they have been consigned by the World Bank and the IMF is going to be of major importance over the next ten years, so I like to at least keep track of how that’s going. Occasionally there’s even some heartening news, of which we have far too little up here in non-Latin America.
Speaking of things that might be missed, there is currently (11:55 am) a “recommended diary” by Stirling Newberry at dailykos that should be of interest to anybody concerned with practical applications of political rhetoric.
I’d recommend it, too.
Hmmmm. I assume you mean Words to Live By. This is of interest. I think Mr. Newberry is a clever analyst and a well-informed person (have I talked about him in this Tohu Bohu before?), but I don’t think he’s an artist with words. Of course, the key thing isn’t so much getting the words right as getting them in common use, but getting them right helps get them in use when you don’t have a K St project to keep everybody in line.
I need to muse on this a little. Perhaps I will write about it later.
Thanks,
-V.
Yes, that’s the one.
He’s certainly not an artist with words, but I think he does a good job of targeting words that need to be changed.
I would be quite interested to see how you would sift his list and address the issue of artistry in getting its changed adopted in common use.
So, out of curiosity, has you reading list changed any? Have you discovered any new and fascinating blogs that the rest of us ought to know about?
Stephen said at the time, and I didn’t mention it because the blog in question is currently not being updated for technical reasons, that I ought to have listed
http://mirabilis.ca/
It’s full of interesting miscellanea, mostly historical and archaeological. I hope it starts up again soon.
So anyway, there you are.