As you've probably noticed it's that time of year with the best and worst lists of just about everything that can be categorized are filling the media because most of the staffs are on vacation and the space gap must not be allowed to stand empty. Even though I am not on vacation, I'm climbing on the bandwagon to offer a slice from my personal blog list. I hope you all will join me in linking to your favorite blogs, or at least to the ones you think, for whatever reason, are worth reading.
I read a lot. Always have. The Internet has made that worse in the sense that I could easily do nothing but read 24/7/365, or in years like the one coming up, 366. If I did, of course, in a few months I would look like Jabba the Hut and my neglected living space would require a hazmat team to clean. So I limit myself.
In the average week, I drop in at about 250 mostly political blogs. Thankfully, many of them don't post something new or that I want to read every week. But some of them I visit more than once a day because they are always coming up with something valuable. I don't hang around to lurk. No time for that. The list changes over time as my interest wanes, blogs go dark or fresh entries crowd out the old ones. But there are some bloggers I've been reading almost as long as I've known what a blog is.
I've picked 50 from the total to give you the flavor. These aren't necessarily endorsements. Indeed, although some of these blogs I would recommend highly, a few express views that I find atrocious. To me, they're worth reading because knowing the enemy is the smartest thing the very smart Sun Tzu ever said.
My list does not include newspapers or alternative sources like Alternet, Inside Climate News, The Advocate, National Review Online, El Pais, Monthly Review, The Nation, or aggregators like Treehugger and indianz.com, or advocacy groups like the Campaign for America's Future. They're for another list. So here's my blog list. What's on yours?
Get Energy Smart Now
Climate Ark
Environment Forum
Natural Resources Defense Council
DeSmogBlog
Climate Progress
David Roberts
California High Speed Rail Blog
Blue Marble
The Oil Drum
Greenpeace Blogs
Empire Burlesque
Juan Cole
The Cable
Foreign Policy In Focus
North American Congress on Latin America
El Blog de Carlos A. Navarro Selma (In Spanish)
Blog de Alberto Garzón Espinosa (In Spanish)
El Nuevo Pantano (Bilingual, English and Spanish)
RH Reality Check
Danger Room (Spencer Ackerman)
Pam's House Blend
emptywheel
digby
David Dayen
Threat Level (David Kravets, et al.)
Crooks and Liars
Atrios
Scott Horton
Down with Tyranny
Rachel Maddow Blog
Pharyngula
Tom Dispatch
Feministing
Kate Sheppard
Pandagon
Arms Control Wonk
Black Agenda Report
Native American Netroots
Obsidian Wings
The Economic Populist
New Economic Perspectives
The Big Picture
The Bonddad Blog
Conscience of a Liberal
Economix
naked capitalism
Brad DeLong
Michael Hudson
California Progress Report
Calitics
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2007:
In an excellent endorsement of Chris Dodd - one of the best I've seen this season, for any candidate - Blue Hampshire's Mike Caulfield takes us on a walking tour of Dodd's career highlights. One moment in particular jumped out at me. From the Detroit Free Press, November 29, 1987:
[Senator Dodd] is pushing hard for a proposal to guarantee up to 18 weeks of job leave for parents who give birth or adopt or whose children are seriously ill. He's currently working to defuse corporate opposition to that bill, led by the national Chamber of Commerce, and working on committee compromises that he hopes will permit its passage this Senate session.
When he first proposed the bill last year, critics labeled it a bill for yuppies, because it only guarantees leave without pay, which some might not be able to afford.
You can picture those "critics" all too well. Undoubtedly they were castigating Dodd for pandering to his base of brie-and-granola-eating East Coast yuppies, telling him he was hopelessly out-of-touch with the needs of real Americans. The Democrats were surely driving their party off a left cliff, and so on, and so forth.
So how did Chris Dodd respond? Did he let himself get cowed by Republican concern trolls? Did he give into demands by the mighty Chamber of Commerce? Did he pull his bill or tweak it into oblivion?
Hell, no.
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