The Conscience Of A Liberal

[filkertom]

As of yesterday, the NY Times Select firewall, behind which they hid "premium" content, is down. (They're making better money from ad revenue.)

Just in time, Paul Krugman has begun a blog, The Conscience of a Liberal. This immediately goes on the required reading list with Glenn Greenwald, Think Progress, and Digby.

Any blogs you find particularly useful, compelling, or just entertaining? Anything's fine; just, if it's a political blog, mention which way the politics lean. (No recommendations, please, for Coulter, Malkin, Hannity, or Beck. If you find them useful, compelling, or entertaining, how the hell did you find my LJ?)

Comments

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I like Pandagon (http://pandagon.blogsome.com/), which is liberal feminist.

[timewalker.livejournal.com]

Pandagon rocks! As does Shakespeare's Sister (http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/).

[cheshyre]

My must read is Susie Madrak, Suburban Guerrilla -- she's got an amazing way of summing up the issues and extracting the most important bits.

Also, Think Progress and AmericaBlog

[cheshyre]

Oh, one more: Digby @ Hullabaloo

[moquif.livejournal.com]

My brother, David, and some of his friends have a libertarian blog http://lawlegislationandlunacy.blogspot.com/ I think sometimes he goes off the deep end in the way he favors business and seems out of touch with the real world. Lately it seems that I'm the only one who replies (and it's the most reliable way for him to talk with family).

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

I'm fond of No Quarter (http://noquarterusa.net/blog/), the blog/website of Larry Johnson. I've heard him a number of times on Stephanie Miller, Ed Schulz and Randi Rhodes. He's got national security cred up the wazoo and he's a relentless critic of our current (very failed IMO) strategy in Iraq etc.

[timemachineyeah.livejournal.com]

Shakespeare's Sister (http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/), a liberal blog that has focuses on feminism, fat acceptance, and basically all major issues. I also really like it because along with the serious blogging, there is also the Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime every day, and the Question of the Day that you can respond to in the comments, and the Virtual Pub on Fridays and Saturdays just for readers and posters to hang out in.

And it's not just one blogger, there's a whole community, and I think that's cool.

I also read Health at Every Size (http://www.healthateverysize.info/) as a constant reminder to myself that I AM OKAY. 170 lbs at 5' 9" is NOT A BAD THING, no matter what the magazines try to tell me. I'm living healthy and my body functions and I should love myself. I also read Shapely Prose (http://kateharding.net/) (which features Kate Harding, who often cross-posts to Shakespeare's Sister) for the same reason.

I also personally enjoy A "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks (http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/) just because it rubs me the right way.

[peachtales.livejournal.com]

Thanks for those! I want to go read them already :)

[gavroche42.livejournal.com]

Does this apply to the 'Premium' archives? When I search the archives, stuff between 1923-1981 still comes up as fee required. Is there a way to access those articles?

[technocracygirl.livejournal.com]

According to the NYTimes website, content until 1987 is free. After that, you still have to have a subscription or pay per piece.

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

Warning: you may fall in love with this woman just by reading her blog.

http://smartypants.diaryland.com/index.html

Excerpt:

I really wish that one of my older, tasteful, very genteel professional colleagues would stop using the phrase "shot [fill in possessive pronoun here] wad" in emails about budgets, the timing of certain press releases or published features, etc. I am fairly certain that this person would never talk about wads being shot if she knew the standard meaning of those terms, and it upsets me every time but there is no way to get her to stop without making the situation much, much worse.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I like Pharyngula, a blog by an atheist biology professor.

[nubianamy.livejournal.com]

Ooh! I'm checkin' that one out. =)

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

(No recommendations, please, for Coulter, Malkin, Hannity, or Beck. If you find them useful, compelling, or entertaining, how the hell did you find my LJ?)

Playing devil's advocate for a minute, perhaps someone could find those useful in a "know your enemies" way? For example, I know several reasonably sane people who are on the American Family Association mailing list in order to keep an eye on that organization and to champion causes the AFA opposes.

[tesral.livejournal.com]

It requries a strong stomach and a thick skin. Oh, and a good blood pressure control medication in boxcar loads.

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

I find the ones you mention useful since I can find out what they're saying and address it intelligently if I read it, regardless of how stupid or poorly thought out what I read is. The ones I _like_ are

http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com

http://jestersbasement.blogspot.com/

http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/ (Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog)

http://complianceandprivacy.com/blogs/Bruce-Schneier-index.html

[ddrussianinja.livejournal.com]

I find this blog incredibly useful. You pretty much do all of the surfing for geek news that I was going to waste my afternoon doing and then post about it. You save me hours every day.

[sdelmonte]

TV and comic book writer Mark Evanier's blog is a good mix of the trivial, the ephemeral, and the serious, and he often provides links to commentary on a number of issues. It leans to the left when it's about politics.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Arianna Huffington, a recovering conservative, has a site that is a compendium of not only her own blog but those of a number of other excellent liberal/progressive types, called The Huffington Post. Between that site, Crooks and Liars and the Democratic Underground (not to mention your page), I get pretty much all the intellectual ammunition I need when surfing the Web.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Almost forgot Firedoglake; thanks, redaxe, for reminding me. That's a must-bookmark blog for me, too.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

No one's mentioned Obsidian Wings (http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/) yet? It's a group blog, with both liberals and conservatives posting. The commentariat tends to be left-leaning, and the most frequent posters - hilzoy (who is divine) and publius (formerly of Legal Discourse) are left of center. I visit there several times a day.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Whoops. publius' old blog was Legal Fiction. I had him crossed up with another lawblogger.

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

So if I find one thing I agree with in any column written by those people what? 14 or so years of knowing each other goes down the drain. I read an article Coulter wrote about Doctors. While I don't agree wwith every word she says there is some truth in what she wrote.

As to how I found your blog, we're mutual freinds. And I thought friends could agree to disagree.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Indeed they can, Heather. Heck, I disagree with billroper and a few other people so deeply on politics that we mutually agreed to cease discussing them so that we could stay friends, because everything else was good.

My view on Coulter et al. is that, yes, fine, they do indeed build from grains of truth. However, they go off in directions I find so vile and hateful that I don't even want to deal with them. Coulter in particular has advocated the deaths of (for instance) the NY Times editorial board, a Supreme Court Justice, and most of Islam. She keeps saying offensive, inflammatory things, and then goes, "Whoa! Just a joke!" when called on it. Beck is just a bigoted moron with a mic, as far as I can tell. Hannity hates anything that dares to challenge BushCo -- anything at all. And Malkin, in a famous fit of self-loathing, not only advocates setting up internment camps, but also ragged on Teresa Heinz Kerry for publishing something political under a pen name -- exactly as Malkin does.

If it happens that you enjoy their columns, fine. That would be the purview of your LJ.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

My "must" daily blog routine is Digby, Orcinus (David Neiwert and Sara Robinson; oriented liberal and focused somewhat on the extreme right, including the Minutemen, KKK, Malkin, etc.), Making Light (Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden), and Firedoglake (liberal, you betcha).

I do read lots of others, but those are the ones I don't miss any day. (I'm considering adding Eric Alterman to the list.)

For nonpolitical blogs, there's Boing Boing, Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools (VERY highly recommended), Growabrain, Whatever (John Scalzi, currently on hiatus until he wrestles the snot out of Movable Type 4.0), and the occasional look at some highly specialized blogs (e.g., Blogway Baby (focused on Broadway and stage shows), Malls of America (all sorts of material about malls), Management by Baseball (an excellent discussion of business and similar management techniques, illustrated with baseball examples and metaphors), and Babes With Books (what it sounds like; contains NSFW material).

Hm. I'd been wondering why I haven't gotten anything done recently... :-)

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Bugger. Here are those last three links, properly:

Malls of America
Management by Baseball
Babes With Books (reminder, NSFW)

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

For entertainment and "goddamn I wish I could write like that" value, I'm a big fan of theferrett. He's not on my actual friends list for complicated reasons, but it's one of the links in my "check daily" folder of Firefox bookmarks.

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

Oh, I suppose I should warn: when he does write politically, he leans left. But really if you're worried about content, you should worry more about how often he writes on R-rated topics, and is definitely rated R for language. =)

Though the latter applies to my blog as well.

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite stops is

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One of my favorite stops is <a href="http://www.bobharris.com"</a>Bob Harris's blog</a> - he covers travel, gameshows and trivia, a little sports (almost everything I know about cricket, I learned from him), deadly-cute knee-high relatives of deer, and a healthy dose of left-wing politics.

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

Argh. I can do HTML, really I can. Trying again:

One of my favorite stops is Bob Harris's blog (http://www.bobharris.com) - he covers travel, gameshows and trivia, a little sports (almost everything I know about cricket, I learned from him), deadly-cute knee-high relatives of deer, and a healthy dose of left-wing politics.

[nagaina-ryuuoh.livejournal.com]

In addition to certain other blogs already mentioned here, I regularly read:

Feministe -- Lefty feminist issues/politics blog
http://feministe.powweb.com/blog/

Lawyers, Guns, and Money -- Lefty group blog on politics, law, business, and war
http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/

Slacktivist -- Lefty, completely sane evangelical Christian commentary on politics, social issues, and reviewing the Left Behind series one chapter at a time. God is obviously protecting his sanity.
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/

The Rude Pundit -- Extremely left, foulmouthed, hysterically funny commentary on everything, but mostly politics:
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

GamePolitics -- Blogging on the intersection of politics, video games, and civil liberties:
http://gamepolitics.com/

[maiac.livejournal.com]

Mercury Rising has a trio of bloggers. Tom, you may find the initials of one of the bloggers strangely familiar. :-)

The blog's founder, Phoenix Woman, also posts in Firedoglake.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

"I Drew This" is pretty cool
www.idrewthis.org

"BushFlash" scares even me
www.bushflash.com

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

One more: THE best blog in its field: John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy, is an awesome teacher and student of animation, and regularly posts extended lessons on what works and what doesn't, illustrated of course with still images and videos. Or interviews with folks both known and obscure in the field, all of whom have credentials out to HERE. I don't animate, but wow, is he interesting!

[timewalker.livejournal.com]

Wil Wheaton dot Net http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/

Entertaining

[tesral.livejournal.com]

I find Coulter very entertaining. In that train wreck in progress sort of entertaining. You know, stand there with your mouth hanging open "I can't believe this is happing but I can't look away" sort of entertaining. Frankly the woman should be ignored in mass. If anyone deserves to be sweep into the dustbin it's her. Come to think of it I cannot recall a single time that woman has opened her mouth that she said anything intellegent

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

No recommendations, please, for Coulter, Malkin, Hannity, or Beck. If you find them useful, compelling, or entertaining, how the hell did you find my LJ?

Useful? Nope. Compelling? Occasionally, in the same way that a really bad car accident draws *everyone's* attention. (Rubbernecking accounts for maybe half of the traffic delay associated with any given accident here in the FedroSplat.) Entertaining? Perhaps, given the wack sense of humor that a lot of us have, we are entertained by their gaffes... though one has to have a strong stomach to put up with the dreck to find the entertaining bits; it's generally not worth the effort. (And I'm saying this about their blogs when I don't identify as a liberal. Then again, to use a baseball analogy, if the "traditional" political continuum runs between left field and right field, you'll find me somewhere between the scoreboard and the Goodyear Blimp.)

I consider Making Light (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/) a good place to find food for thought and/or my skewed funny bone. The entries aren't always (or even necessarily often) political; those that are, tend leftish.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

>>(Rubbernecking accounts for maybe half of the traffic delay associated with any given accident here in the FedroSplat.) <<
That's all too true elsewhere too, including here in Atlanta. (Is "the FedroSplat" a new nickname for the DC area I hadn't heard while living there? If not, where is it?)