Introductory note: I'm still sort of new at dKos, so I don't know the drill on how to ask people to "recommend" a diary. I'm hoping this one gets recommended -- not because I've got some didactic point to make, but because it mentions a blog that really deserves support from folks here.
There's a whole genre of "milblogs" out there, purporting to be of, by and about the soldiers deployed overseas. The vast majority of these blogs are stalking horses from the Republican Party -- to the degree that I genuinely wonder if some of them aren't being written by the Pentagon itself, or various rightwingnut partisan groups.
I found something different, an exception to the rule. This is an appeal for people to support it.
I am something of a connoisseur of the milblogs. Call me a glutton for punishment, or a contrarian, or whatever. But I've been tossed off of more of those things than I can count for not being a wingnut. There is
Mudville Gazette, which claims to be open and reasonable but isn't either of them. There is
Blackfive, which is more overtly Republican and is quicker to ban. There is
Froggy Ruminations, the Milblogosphere's answer to Free Republic.com. And there is
365 And A Wakeup, which shows that somewhere, somehow a wingnut exists who is one hell of a good writer.
But there are damned few liberal milblogs. I don't really put the liberal and excellent Operation Truth in the milblog category because, even though it has its roots in the milblogs, it's really more of a political site. Although, maybe I should include Op Truth, given that so many of the Republican milblogs are clearly partisan operations with even less connection to daily field reality than Op Truth.
In any case, Godless Kinser is a definitely a milblog and definitely liberal. It is maintained by an atheist soldier now deployed to Iraq. It's sparse, but what he's got is good stuff and very much in sync with dKos. If nothing else, the material on some of his links had me spitting coffee on my keyboard, such T-Shirt Hell.
There's also a link to a blog maintained by his wife, which I really like. If you read through the postings on both blogs one thing you're going to see is that these people aren't exactly in the "limousine" liberal class. I think they're the real deal.
A few things to point out:
- Godless Kinser deserves a lot more hits, and postings, than it gets.
- He needs help with the geek stuff. His site crashes my Firefox, so I have to use IE (yuck). When you start writing a comment, the comment window opens up all the way onto the right side of the screen. It's very distracting. Maybe someone here could help the guy out. Remember, he's deployed in the field. He doesn't have all day for the computer, and I don't know what his skill level is.
- The guy needs donations to buy more computer stuff. I'm going to give him money and/or gear, and I hope other people will consider doing so.
Give it a shot, see what you think. I'M A TROOP, SUPPORT ME, DAMN IT!!!" he writes. Indeed. I say we dance with our own. Give him some help folks.