Political Blogs: The best from all over

werehippy

Since the recent election cycle, I've been making an effort to stay more informed, and the traditional news outlets aren't really cutting it for me any more. With that in mind, I've been looking for some political blogs to follow, ideally as many of the best, from all over the political spectra, as possible.

Ones I can recommend as interesting either in and of themselves, or as windows on a completely foreign world view:

Game Politics - Your source for anything and everything related to videogames and politics.

Free Republic and Little Green Footballs - Deep, DEEP right blogs/news outlets who came up during the midterm elections for their Declaration of Surrender in the War on Terror and some of the vilest anti-Muslim rhetoric I've seen respectively.

That's all I've got at this point (Hey, I didn't say I haven't been following politics). What's the general consensus as to the best blogs to get a good view at all the different schools of thought in modern politics, and why do you like (or hate) whatever you like (or hate)?

SpaceDrake

LGF is so silly... sometimes I can't even understand what they're trying to say.

Link.

lgf wrote:

In December 2002, Senator Patty Murray said to an audience of high school students:

“We’ve got to ask, why is this man (Osama bin Laden) so popular around the world?,” said Murray, who faces re-election in 2004. “Why are people so supportive of him in many countries ... that are riddled with poverty?

“He’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven’t done that.”

... yeah, that's about the size of it, he's been building grass-roots support so that he can maintain a steady stream of fanatics for his personal war...

In June 2005, Senator Dick Durbin compared the American military to Nazis, the Soviet KGB, and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge:

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others—that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."

Unfortunately, that really is true. What happened in Abu Ghraib is appaling and a violation of the spirit of everything this country stands for.

And Harry Reid ... well, you know Harry Reid. He’s the moderate in this bunch.

... buh? o_O

I just... don't get what kind of point he's trying to make. At all. That first one, especially, is factually accurate. Yes, we're helping (sort of) in Iraq and Afghanistan now and elsewhere to a degree, but Bin Laden has been financing schools, hospitals and the like with his money for years and years. His popularity should not be a surprise and if we're to undermine him, one of our goals needs to be exceeding his charity in some fashion. We must show the world that yes, America really doesn't want to just rape your country for oil and then shoot you in the head in a jail cell. Right now, that's how we are percieved.

Corlis

On the note of LGF and Free Republic, see Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.

Oowww, my brain...

moniker

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/

werehippy

SpaceDrake wrote:

LGF is so silly...

General idiocy.

I basically read Free Republic and LGF as entertainment, with the slight added benefit of it allowing me to occasionally dip into the fringe right mindset and see what has their panties currently twisted up.

SpaceDrake

Corlis wrote:

On the note of LGF and Free Republic, see Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.

Oowww, my brain...

What empire does that site even refer to?...

werehippy wrote:

SpaceDrake wrote:

LGF is so silly...

General idiocy.

I basically read Free Republic and LGF as entertainment, with the slight added benefit of it allowing me to occasionally dip into the fringe right mindset and see what has their panties currently twisted up.

The blatant racism is worthy of a lol as well, but then it makes you sad.

Elki

Pandagon.

Also, Lawyers, Guns and Money.

mcc

I read wonkette, slacktivist, the thismodernworld front page posts, panda's thumb, and scienceblogs. Oh, and Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke. I hate everything else.

Politics blogs are mostly terrible.

Target Practice

I don't read blogs.

Unless you count Metafilter.

Also, isn't LGF the home of those retards who were calling that Ellison guy who's now the first Muslim Senator a terrorist and stupid shit like that

mcc

Yes, that was them. LGF is basically just Stormfront wearing a tie.

entropykid

mcc wrote:

Yes, that was them. LGF is basically just Stormfront wearing a tie.

LOL. Sadly there are a lot of blogs, that make anyone who questions
anything the Bush administration has said or done in the last 5 years into a "terrorist".

As much as people yap on about the Arab world's virulent anti Jewish propaganda, the anti Arab/Muslim propaganda is just as strong...AND they are the ones with the heavy duty weapons.

FCD

I've always had a soft-spot for alicublog, myself. An enjoyable mocking of loony pundits and bloggers, mixed with interesting reviews of plays and literature. Good stuff.

Irond Will

mcc wrote:

Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke

I'd not seen this one before. I love it.

ReXX

Are there any decent British political blogs? I often take a look at some of the US ones but I'd rather read something with more relevance to me.

Gosling

I make the occasional pilgrimage to Daily Kos, and going up to election time I started checking Congressional Quarterly. Past that it's whatever Fark suggests.

(Also, I made a visit to Free Republic last night to see what they had to say about that guy who sent the fake anthrax to Olbermann and a couple other people. Apparently he got banned from FR about four or five times under several different names.)

Variable

Irond Will wrote:

mcc wrote:

Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke

I'd not seen this one before. I love it.

I've never heard of marmaduke but that is the funniest thing I've seen in a very long time.

Senjutsu

Daily Kos doesn't seem that bad, but I don't really read it much, I just scan for interesting links to news items. I'm not really a blog person.

The same goes for DU. Reading the forums will give you just as much brain-damage as reading the FreeRepublic forums, but the front page works pretty well as an aggregator for links to interesting news pieces.

God

The "Canada going Green?" thread a month back got me into checking www.garth.ca a lot. I enjoy his blog and the newsday section is a good source for links to other political happenings in Canada. Also, the drama of him being kicked out of the Conservative caucus makes me feel like a housewife eating bon bons... I love it.

Just yesterday I learned that he really won't be joining the Greens, but will stay on as in Independent. He seems to be positively giddy over his new involvement in Question Period and how that led to income splitting for seniors. I know it doesn't sound exciting, but I love it.

mcc

DailyKos actually technically grew out of a site that I used to be very active in (and which then bled to death as all the good users frittered away to dailykos, treehouses, or blogs, but I digress). So I was aware of DailyKos fairly early on. I wasn't quite sure about it, since I don't like to read sites with intentional partisan slants, but I made a serious attempt to read it.

There was this speech Bush gave that day, and I was very curious what the implications of the speech and what people's responses to it were.

They spent two full slashdot-sized threads talking about his makeup during the speech. Two.

I don't read DailyKos anymore

Jragghen

While quite focused on its topics (on VA) I found Raising Kaine to be a very useful, albeit biased, source of news for the VA Senate race.

moniker

mcc wrote:

DailyKos actually technically grew out of a site that I used to be very active in (and which then bled to death as all the good users frittered away to dailykos, treehouses, or blogs, but I digress). So I was aware of DailyKos fairly early on. I wasn't quite sure about it, since I don't like to read sites with intentional partisan slants, but I made a serious attempt to read it.

There was this speech Bush gave that day, and I was very curious what the implications of the speech and what people's responses to it were.

They spent two full slashdot-sized threads talking about his makeup during the speech. Two.

I don't read DailyKos anymore

You can imagine what happened during the debate with Kerry and the suit bunching thing. Every now and again it has a good article but the 300 parts shit to that 1 part useful just isn't worth the filter time.

setrajonas

I read quite a few left-wing political blogs:

The Daily Howler

Political Animal

Tapped

Talking Points Memo

The Huffington Post

There are a few more, but those are the ones I enjoy the most.

LondonBridge

I stay away from the blogs unless there is a really important news article there. Blogs tend indoctrinate you into their mindset if you read them for too long. Does Drudge count as a blog? Love that site!

Irond Will

LondonBridge wrote:

I stay away from the blogs unless there is a really important news article there. Blogs tend indoctrinate you into their mindset if you read them for too long. Does Drudge count as a blog? Love that site!

Then you love shit. Because Drudge is shit. And you like him.

Shinto

I scan DailyKos. I can't really say I read it or any other blog though.

Nissl

A few from the center right:

Andrew Sullivan
Instapundit

Sullivan is definitely a little bit confused about his admixture of homosexuality and catholicism, but he's a decent writer and basically a moderate libertarian.

Instapundit parrots the republican party line a bit more than I'd like, but is pretty moderate and does a good job selecting articles to link. I don't always agree but it makes me think.

Political rumors and news, no slant:

Political Wire

Can't say I can tolerate any other blogs consistently.

Elendil

http://limedforthetruth.com/

Hasn't been updated for a while though.

:P

Senjutsu

Elendil wrote:

http://limedforthetruth.com/

Hasn't been updated for a while though.

:P

Man, the writers for that place? Such wankers

MrBigmuscles

Politics1 and RealClearPolitics are both good clearinghouses of political polling, opinion pieces from around various online and print media, and general political news. Besides that, Wonkette.

geckahn

dailyKos, MyDD, and Talkingpointsmemo.com are the ones i read on a daily basis.