I’m in self-referential mode, so I thought I’d point you towards a very interesting report on the progressive blogosphere from two of its most influential members, Chris Bowers of MyDD and Matt Stoller of Blogging of the President. The report is titled “Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere: A New Force in American Politics“, and it discusses the dramatic rise of the progressive blogosphere, the relative success of both progressive and conservative bloggers, and how elected officials can make much better use of this new medium.
If you don’t have time to read the full 24-page report, I strongly recommend the excellent summary posted by Lynn Allen over at Evergreen Politics. It’s a quick read, and well worth a few minutes of your time.
It is interesting to note that in overall national traffic, the progressive blogosphere has managed to quickly surpass the impressive lead conservatives had as recently as a year ago… 24 of the top 40 political blogs are now progressive. But on the local front, conservatives still hold an overwhelming advantage. Here in WA state, this is still true; while (un)Sound Politics has seen its traffic decline to less than a third of its January 2005 peak, it still holds the top spot by a decided margin over the number two blog covering state and local politics: HorsesAss.org.
Unlike (u)SP, HA continues to see its traffic rise, with August likely to establish a new monthly high. Because I had not published my Site Meter stats, HA was not included in the report’s rankings, but glancing at today’s stats, my 20,643 weekly page views would have ranked HA at #62 among the top 100 progressive blogs… making it one of the highest ranked regional progressive blogs in the nation. Not bad considering my ambitious one-year goal was to average 200 readers a day. (If you’re curious about my stats, click on the Site Meter icon. For a variety of reasons, I’ve decided to make them public.)
Of course, more work remains to be done. Both the NW Topic Hotlist and the Pacific NW Portal are turning out to be great tools for promoting and expanding the region’s progressive blogosphere, and I’m planning some exciting changes here at HA over the coming months in my ongoing efforts to claw my way to the top of the local molehill. Still, it’s not the raw traffic that matters, but what we do with it. Like it or not, blogs are here to stay, and we have to make damn sure that we continue to wield at least as much influence as the other guys.
That’s wrong. You’re wrong. You’re wrong because you’re wrong. You’re wrong because I say you’re wrong. You’re wrong because when I’m saying you’re wrong I’m saying you’re wrong because I’m saying you’re wrong. And you’re wrong. Did I say you were wrong? You ARE wrong.
Thanks, Rujax :)
What is is? Is is what it is? What isn’t is? These are among the many deep philosophical questions of a donk.
Does Rufus exist if no one can hear him? This is the unsolved mystery of philosophy.
How to Understand U.S. Foreign Policy
“With barely 4% of the world’s population, the US consumes 26% of the world’s energy … oil is the sine qua non of ‘industrial’ civilization — the one thing without which such civilization cannot exist. … When oil is gone, civilization will be stupendously different. … If the US economy is not to grind to a halt under these circumstances it must choose one of three alternate strategies: dramatically lower its living standards (something it is not willing to do); substantially increase the energy efficiency of its economy; or make up the shortfall by securing supplies from other countries.
“President Bush’s National Energy Policy published in March 2001 explicitly commits the US to the third choice: Grab the Oil. It is this choice that is now driving US military and national security policy. And, in fact, the past 60 years of US policy in the Middle East can only be understood as the effort to control access to the world’s largest supply of oil.
Witness, for example, the deep US embrace of Saudi Arabia since World War II. One quarter of all US weapons sales between 1950 and 2000 went to Saudi Arabia despite its horrifically repressive, literally medieval tribal nature. The CIA’s overthrow of Mohamed Mosadegh in Iran in 1953 after he nationalized his country’s oil is another example. So, too, was the US strategic embrace of Israel during the 1967 Six Day War. The US was deeply mired in Vietnam but needed a ‘cop on the beat’ to challenge Arab states—Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen—that were ‘going Soviet.’ …
“More recent examples of national strategy in bondage to … oil include US support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran/Iraq War; its support for Osama bin Laden in the Afghanistan War against the Soviet Union; and, of course, … invasion of Iraq oilfields …. And under a Grab the Oil strategy, militarization of US society will only deepen. The reason is that a very major portion of the world’s oil is, by accident of geology, in the hands of states hostile to the US.”
Oops, forgot the link http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0301-12.htm
“… the provocation occasioned by grabbing the oil, especially from nations ideologically hostile to the US, means that military attacks on the US and the recourse to military responses will only intensify until the US is embroiled in unending global conflict. This is the perverse genius of the Grab the Oil strategy: it comes with its own built-in escalation, its own justification for ever more militarization—without limit. It will blithely consume the entire US economy, the entire society, without being sated ….”
“But now comes the sobering part. In response to the 9/11 attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that the US was engaged in ‘a thirty to forty year war (!) against fundamentalist Islam.’ It is the fever of War, of course, that becomes the all-purpose justification for the rollback of civil liberties. Lincoln used the Civil War to justify the suspension of habeas corpus. Roosevelt used the cover of World War II to inter hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans. And now Bush is using the self-ratcheting ‘War on Terror’ to effect even more sweeping, perhaps permanent rescissions of civil liberties.
“Under the Patriot Act, a person can be arrested without probable cause, held indefinitely without being charged, tried without a lawyer or a jury, sentenced without the opportunity to appeal, and put to death—all without notification of … anybody. This is simply a Soviet Gulag and it has been rationalized by the hysterical over-hyping of the War on Terror.
“The fact that it is not yet widespread does not diminish the more important fact that it has been put in place precisely in anticipation of such procedures needing to be being carried out on a mass scale in the future.”
“Progressive”: Liberal Democrat for communist. Communists: Hillary, Roger Rabbit, Fidel, Dear Leader Jung, Maxine [Vice President!] Waters, Goldy, Roger Rabbit, Kerry, Biden, and Roger Rabbit
Democrats: NO refineries, the oil companies are EVIL, no drilling of Kalifornia, Florida, in the Gulf, ANWR, NO nukes, NO war for oil!, but………gasoline is 3 bucks a gallon, and it MUST be Bush’s fault! I swear 40% of Americans [Democrats] are as dumb as Roger Rabbit.
“The broader implications of the Patriot Acts go far beyond the abusive treatment of criminals or terrorists. Their portent can be glimpsed in the language used to justify them. When Attorney General John Ashcroft testified on behalf of the Act, he stated, ‘those who oppose us are providing aid and comfort to the enemy.’ These are carefully chosen words. ‘Aid and comfort to the enemy’ are the words used in the Constitution to define Treason, the most fateful of crimes against the state. In other words, protest against the government—the singular right without which America would not even exist—is now being defined as trying to overthrow the government.
“And by the internal logic of a global Oil Empire, this is entirely reasonable. The needs of the people of any one country must be subordinated to the larger agenda of Empire itself. This is what the Romans learned in 27 B.C. when Augustus proclaimed himself Emperor. It was the end of the Roman Republic and the disappearance of representative government on earth for almost 1,700 years, until the English Civil Wars in the 1600s. That is the reality we are confronting today—offering up our democracy in propitiation to an Empire for Oil. It will be a fateful, irreversible decision.”
And this, my friends, is why America needs Liberals With Guns. Unless liberals arm themselves — the America we have known will disappear.
And this, my Righty friends, is why the Rabbit joins you in opposing gun control.
@9
Thank you! Thank you! It’s damned well about time you stopped ignoring the Rabbit, you non-fucking/1 creep/pervert!
Footnotes:
1/ In a previous thread I noted that Jerkoff Creepy Hater probably is a virgin, because I can’t imagine anyone fucking that retard.
@10
Jerkoff, if you didn’t pull so hard on the member where your brain* is located, you might know something! Let’s see if you know ANYTHING about oil … pop quiz, has U.S. refining capacity A. increaased or B. declined in the last 5 years. Indicate your answer below.
* The term “brain” in this context is a wild exaggeration, and readers should understand that it is employed as a generalization applicable to the human species as a whole, without reference to deviations from the mean in individuals within the species.
@10
Hey dipshit, even if we drill every acre of U.S. soil and sucked every drop of oil out of the locations you mentioned it wouldn’t sustain our oil consumption for more than a few years.
” … the choice of a Grab the Oil strategy is … an ironclad guarantee of escalating global conflict, isolation of the US in the world, unremitting attacks on the US by those whose oil is being expropriated and whose societies are being dominated, the militarization of the US economy, the irreversible rescission of civil liberties, and the eventual extinguishment of American democracy itself. It is the conscious, self-inflicted consignment to political and economic death.”
It occurs to me that a wolverine caught in a trap will gnaw its leg off to save it’s life. Perhaps liberals need to do the same thing with the 50% of our population that supports the catastrophic policies of the Anti-Christ from Texas … just gnaw them off, put them on reservations like we did to the Indians a century ago, to get them out of circulation. Fortunately, the Bush administration is already putting the infrastructure — FEMA concentration camps and so on — in place for us.
It’s not surprising that Sucky Politics’ stats are going downhill (off by 2/3rds since January). There’s not much for the Wing-Dings to crow about these days. Their pipedream empire is imploding everywhere.
Let’s see what else is going on today besides the Anti-Christ’s efforts to start a world war that will last 50 years and the impending destruction of New Orleans … oh, here we go, the Boston Globe published an editorial explaining why Karl Rove should be hanged for treason (of course, we’ll give him a fair trialb before his hanging).
http://www.boston.com/news/glo.....oves_role/
After rebutting Supreme Court nominee John Robert’s facile apologia that “sometimes dogs do eat homework” by pointing out this “is no reason to ignore more logical explanations,” the Globe summarizes Rove’s 35-year political dirty tricks career, duly notes that “with Bush in Crawford for a prolonged vacation, the story has nearly disappeared” from MSM, and then says (here comes the punch line),
“Still, more is likely to come out after Labor Day. A special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, is expected to finish his two-year investigation this fall. His goal was to find the person who leaked Plame’s identity as an undercover CIA agent — a serious offense … [s]o attention will inevitably turn back again to Karl Rove ….”
For you trolls who tauntingly have asked what’s happened to the Rove story — that’s your answer. Hold on to your seat. The rope is already being wetted down and stretched for the hanging.
Now that I’m Dean Logan (according to Stefan) and Stefan is an election worker, I’m Stefan’s supervisor and therefore it is my duty to check up on him regularly.
On this momentous day — just hours before the most powerful Atlantic hurricane of all time inflicts a nuclear strike-like blow against America’s most important oil city — there is absolutely NOTHING going on at Sucky Politics. It appears Stefan took the biggest day of his pseudojournalist career off. The lazy oaf.
This camel turd will need some watching while on the KCRE payroll.
Bad news for ya Wabbit – yer wrong again. You and your types first predicted in 1973 that we would run out of oil by 1990. Not sure, but I think you were wrong. Your side also predicted a peak in oil production after which there would be a marked decline. Uh…That didn’t happen either. Wanna know why?????
This may sound magical and mystical… it’s called “The Invisible Hand”. It was discovered by a very smart man named Adam Smith a loooong time ago who wrote a book called “The Wealth Of Nations”. Moonbats should not read this book however, because it contains many grown-up words and concepts which are antithetical to your fucked up view of the world. Basically what it says is that rising prices caused by increasing demand or decreasing supply stimulates the entrepreneurial spirit in people (and those gawdawful corporations) to make investments in hope of seeking profits brought by those higher prices. As new products are brought on line, and new market equilibrium is found. It’s a fucking miracle. And it really works. In fact it ALWAYS works as long as kookball liberals keep their fucking hands off the levers. And everyone lives happily ever after… even cute little 6 pound bunnies.
Well, it’s Roger Rabbit’s nap time, so I’ll see you guys later.
9
Who IS “Dear Leader Jung”???????
The reason your traffic is increasing so much is because these right wing NUTJOBS are obsessed with you and your blog. I certainly don’t read Stefan’s blog or any other right wing NUTJOB trash. It is a funny thing about the NUTJOBs, they can’t get enough of liberal blogs! Maybe deep down they know we’re right?
For you folks who belive in the light rail check out how may people will us it.
http://www.seattlegasprices.co.....oll_id=249
Now don’t you think the money could be spent for something that works.
Rabbit @12: “Unless liberals arm themselves – the America we have known will disappear.”
That’s essentially what hard-core lefties like the Blank Panthers and Weather Underground said in the 1960s. Look where it got them. The simple fact of the matter is that you can’t beat ’em with violence; indeed, they WANT you to turn in this direction so they have an excuse to “crack down.” It’s a time-honored tradition of the authoritarian right.
klake @ 28
Now d’ya think that was a scientific poll?
@29
Sorry, Old Fart, but the genie is out of the bottle. Right wingers are armed to the teeth. It’s neither safe nor wise to let them be the only faction with guns. It’s not only high time for liberals to arm and learn to defend themselves, it’s getting late.
31…RR, You are right. Right wingers are “armed to the teeth”. That’s why commie libs like you need “gubment” to “redistribute the wealth”. Well, Atlas has Shrugged, and many successful hard working Republicans are not going quietly as 50% of their income is taken in indirect or direct federal, state, and local taxes as well as FICA. Piss on you, as I fight back!
Sybil @27,
Oh, the righties don’t make up nearly as much of my overall traffic as they do my comment threads. It’s really only a handful of very loud trolls. Don’t mind them… they’re good for sport.
Now d’ya think that was a scientific poll?
Comment by Dr. E— 8/28/05 @ 9:03 pm
I really doesn’t matter, you can’t get people out of their cars no matter how high the gas prices get. The Mayor of Redmond will never ride mass transit, but will require everyone else to ride that new light rail to nowhere. So Dr. E you better have your office across the street from your home, but your customers will be late for their appointments. Everytime we travel in this state the roads turn into a parking lot. I tell the other half to blame the goverment that’s been running the show for the last 30 years. I have never seen so many planning committees suck up so much money and porduce not one foot of new road. The money spent the last thirty years you could built a eight lane highway from Vancover to Bellingham and still have money left.
Goldy
Put some ads up and get yourself a few bucks for hosting all the “progressive” yuppies visiting your site. Even better, charge the “over quota” commenter a nickel per comment. If there were a way to get you a nickel for every comment poor old Roger posts, I would egg him on more often just to see you shift to a higher tax bracket.
Numbers aren’t everything. I visit your site daily. I visit (un)SP maybe once a week. I do that just to see what’s going on.
But the biggest difference is that I read your writings I don’t at (un)SP. I scan them till I see the first BS word and then I move on to the next site. This usually means I bead only the first sentence.
So I say having bigger numbers is only half the story, , , how much do people read while they’re there.
Keep on keeping on.
Mick
http://www.thebscorner.com
A damn proud liberal.
Yea I said it!!!
Dang, MOH…you’re tough!
Hey mick
Nice web site! You should get some info about Bremerton’s big dig on here next time Goldy and his cherleaders try to convince us WSDOT is “on time and woithin budget”.
24
You’re a nitwit! The “invisible hand” can’t put more oil in the ground! Here’s what’s wrong with your dumb theory:
1. This isn’t 1973, it’s 2005. Back then, world consumption was 57.2 million bpd; now its 82.5 bpd — and with China and India awakening from their 2,000-year economic slumbers, this represents the beginning not the end of the spike in consumption. Demand is expected to exceed 120 million bpd by mid-century.
2. Over half the world’s oil supply comes from a handful of supergiant oilfields, nearly all of which have been exploited for decades and are declining; no supergiant has been discovered for over 30 years, and most experts believe all the supergiant fields have been found.
3. Although analysts trying to predict oil supplies have been wrong in the past, it doesn’t follow they will continue to be wrong! They didn’t have supercomputers and computer models in the 1950s or 1960s, although even back then they accurately predicted U.S. production would decline after 1970 (and it continues to decline despite your “invisible hand” because there’s only so much oil in the ground!). Today, with decades more of experience, sophisticated computer modeling, satellite and sonar mapping of the entire planet, and much greater knowledge, it’s reasonable to believe that supply forecasts are far more accurate than in the past.
4. Apart from the fact that market economics can’t create more oil, market economics also cannot answer all of the distribution issues pertaining to what oil exists. The U.S., with 6% of the world’s population, consumes 28% of the world’s oil; that distribution of resources can be maintained only if we’re willing to fight an endless series of resource wars. In addition, there are fundamental fairness issues related to the question of using high prices to distribute within our society a commodity upon which society itself depends; it’s simply not good enough to say that those with the most money win, and those with less money lose — that will invite social upheaval and the potential overthrow of the market system and existing political institutions.
@35
Goldy, I have a better idea — how about charging Zip
a nickel for
every over-quota comment
I
post?
Jerkoff @ 32
How about if the rich stop using gubmint to redistribute wealth from us to themselves? Right now I’ll settle for that.
27, 33
Look at it this way, Sybil: As long as the trolls are busy posting on HA, they’re not on the streets committing sex crimes.
Roger @31,
I actually hate to agree with you on this one, but the far right is laughing at us. Nothing confirms their suspicions about how weak and impractical and stupid the left is than the fact that we have unilateraly disarmed ourselves while they plan for civil war… or at the very least, unchecked political vigilanteism. As an anonymous emailer wrote to me some months back: “You can have all your fancy words, but we own all the guns.”
I have never owned a gun, and would never want to keep one in my house, but I damn well know how to use one. (Taught by Quakers, oddly enough.) Just like we should have imagined airplanes flying into towers, we should imagine a time when the wacko, violent element of the far right might attempt to act on their eliminationist rhetoric.
I’m not saying that all liberals should arm themselves, just that it is a useful deterence for the militia types to understand that some liberals have.
46
and winning national elections.
“Alternative energy” doesn’t seem so KOOKY when you understand what’s really going on.
Wabbit – This is why I think liberalism is a psychosis. It’s a mental disease. The world is NOT going to end. Have faith in free markets. They always work. Proved reserves and production continue to increase as they always have. Trust me and Cheney and Halliburton and Schlumberger and XOM and all those greedy fucking bastard assholes who run Big Oil. We’ll keep you supplied.
And fercrissakes, burn your copy of Das Kapital. Stop reading it and chanting it. Now. Right fucking now. It has been thoroughly discredited.
A radio controlled toy car or airplane or helicopter with a load of PLASTIQUE can cancel the actions of a lot of gun-toting idiots. It’s going to take more than guns to suppress us. It’s going to take brains– which is in notable shortage on the Right.
48
Yes, I know we have sex offenders running the country. http://www.americaheldhostile.com/cheating.html
50
Please explain how the “invisible hand” makes more oil. I don’t grasp the chemistry of it.
3 deaths reported in New Orleans so far — elderly nursing home patients who died in the evacuation. New Orleans is now being drenched, and Katrina’s landfall is just a few hours away.
Redneck you’re projecting. It is YOU who is psychotic. It is YOU who is blind.
Do you work for an oil company? What do you know about oil reserves? Can you educate us on the oil reserves owned by Cheney, Halliburton, Schlumberger, XOM and any other greedy fucking bastards assholes you can name off the top of your head? How much of the world’s oil reserves do they control?
Can markets make a finite resource like crude oil appear out of thin air? Have faith you say. Just wish upon a star like Jiminy Cricket. That’s called wishful thinking.
I’ve never read Das Kapital, but I bet YOU have.
I’ve just read some shit about shale oil – experienced petroleum engineers say don’t go there. It’s the stickiest, messiest crap to refine. It’s not worth it.
And the tar sands in Canada? They need to heat reservoirs of water with natural gas to process the stuff. Some guy mentioned that Canada can produce natural gas at the current rate for maybe three more years. Three more years. Scared yet?
Where’s it going to come from Redneck? The deep water off West Africa? The deep water in the Gulf of Mexico? ANWR? Tell us. Educate us.
55
“Do you work for an oil company?”
No, he’s a commodities trader — one of those bloodsuckers who makes you pay more for everything you buy by skimming off the top.
Hey — Mark the Ruffian — if you believe in the free market so much why do you go running to the government to get lawyers off your back? hehe
I thought lawyers are leeches but commodities traders suck even more blood than we lawyers do …
The only thing Mark the Ruffian “produces” is higher consumer prices and greenhouse gasses from his smog-belching SUV.
Speaking of lawyers, here’s a lawyer joke: “99% of the lawyers make the rest look bad”
Well the bunny is gonna sign off for tonight. I work the graveyard shift, you know. (Bunnies are nocturnal) Time to go up the street from Green Lake Park and eat Stefan’s garden and shit on Stefan’s lawn! See you guys tomorrow. Please pray for the people of New Orleans tonight.
51
We are going to keep on winning elections. Luckily it doesnt take to much brain power to win against donks. It is quite easy-just tell the truth.
62
Tell the “truth”? Worked really great before Judge Bridges.
DOOFUS have you sent in your check to the WSGOP to pay Davis, Wright, Tremaine for their services?
34
“I really doesn’t matter, you can’t get people out of their cars no matter how high the gas prices get. “
It does matter, insofar as sampling is concerned.
re 62: bin Laden thinks he’s in possession of the truth. So did Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, pol Pot, Mao, Bush , Cheney, Freidman… The list of destructive maniacs who think they are or thought they were in possession of the TRUTH is an endless , bloody and psychopathic line. Now YOU have the truth!?!? God help us. Then again, prying guns from your cold, stiff hands doesn’t seem like such a bad thing after all!
65…Headless Lucy……..Milton Freidman……..”destructive maniac”??? God, I hope you aren’t employed around children.
MTR @ 50 Burn your copy of The Wealth of Nations. Stop reading it and chanting it. Now. Right fucking now. It has been thoroughly discredited.
@ 62 “We are going to keep on winning elections. Luckily it doesnt take to much brain power to win against donks. It is quite easy-just tell the truth. ”
IF the Repugs EVER tell the truth, they will be run out of the country and into the sea.
Hey Donna – How did the alphabet technique work on your “life partner”???
Goldy reads Milton Friedman.
And you LEFTIST PINHEADS need to come to grips with the fact that your hero, V.I. Lenin called Western Leftists who sided with Socialists in political debates “USEFUL IDIOTS”. Would you LEFTIST PINHEADS instead prefer I call you by the name Lenin himself labeled you with “USEFUL IDIOTS”???
I guess it’s 6 of one and half-a-dozen of the other huh??
“Progressives”: Useful Idiot Communists [aka Democrats]
65
After his gun is pried from his cold dead fingers, can I have it?
Cynical is back! I was sooooo worried about him! I wondered Mrs. Cynical had murdered him, cut him up like a chicken in the bathtub, and fed him to the sand sharks in Puget Sound.
That’s what I would do, if I had to be married to him.
Roger Rabbit: Marxist Waxine Waters Leftist “Progressive” [hehe]
AS much as I enjoy this blog…we”l at least sometimes…I must share something recent.
http://www.thebestpageintheuni.....i?u=banish
I know, I know…completly pointless, but fitting the topic.