I swear, this started out just a collection of links, and then it snowballed into a political thing. And people say story selection cannot account for bias in a newscast. Ha. If you're turned off by political stuff in blogs, blame Greg. Well, and I suppose the jokes our national electoral process / fourth estate have become.

This is the greatest thing since yourethemannowdog.com.

This is a beautiful beautiful video archive of Jon Stewart's attempted smack-down on the fungus on American discourse that is Crossfire.

And, continuing the political vein, this is more bad news for anyone who's been following the Nathan Sproul "Get Out the Vote, unless you're a democrat" scandal. Good lord, the liberals may get a "-gate" to use against the opposition for once. The Clinton Administration was subjected to like Jiffy-Lube-gate when it was learned that the motorcade limos were past their 3000 miles between oil changes, and for some reason we've yet to get a "gate" to stick to the Bush administration. No WMD-Gate, no Left-stockpiles-of-weapons-unguarded-in-Iraq-gate, no Halliburton-Enron-Corporate-Glory-Hole-Gate, not even Horrible-torture-prison-gate. Nothin. And we had pictures of that one.

But then again, massive voter fraud can hardly compare with Dan Rather making a bone headed but ultimately accurate report without double checking his sources, so probably not.

This is just one of the craziest goddamn things I've ever seen, but its mildly entertaining to play, very creative, and most importantly, educational. I'm not comfortable with the way they changed He-Man's hair though.

This is one of my favorite political blogs, which not only informed me of the Stewart Crossfire thing, but has also had the most sane and eloquent commentary on the faux-Mary Cheney "scandal" of all the political stuff I read, and consistently has since the whole trumped up outrage became a story.

For any right leaning person reading this, my Sullivan fandom is I'm sure but a small buoy against thinking of me as crazy liberal ACLU hippie communist, and the rest of my political read list would certainly ruin even that. For a long time I've tried to keep my politics out of this blog, because there are enough wonks out there and enough flaming going on (even on frigging IMDB boards) that I see little point in jogging into that particular minefield. But what the hell, there's important shit happening here. I no longer care if someone reading this thinks I'm some communist leftie nutjob - I consider myself a moderate, but only by average. I have beliefs that are on the wild extremes of both sides. Probably more liberal ones that conservative ones, and even my conservative ones are practically considered moderate now, but I like to call it Common Sense instead of some variant of "centrism." (Ed. Note: This is not due to actual change in the parts of me that are "conservative," it is due to the gradual shift of the official Republican party platform from fiscal discipline and small government to extreme right fundamentalist God Shall Tell Us What To Do (ps he already said it's ok to hate the gays) reactionary craziness. On that note, it's bad when hardcore Reaganites go "Man, that guy has gone too far right even for me.")

For those interested in what I spend my increasingly frequent insomnia nights reading up on, here's a pretty quick rundown of the political stuff, which, for obvious reasons, has recently taken precedence over the entertainment infosites I also frequent.

Andrew Sullivan - I disagree with him a lot. We have different politics. But I'm never angry with him, because he explains himself with an eloquence and articulation that would make the Republican party dominate this country if they'd stop screaming long enough to adopt it.
Josh Marshall - In some ways seems to simply skim Dailykos and dig deeper, but that's not such a bad thing.
Tom Tomorrow - Also seems to crib Kos frequently, but cites it as such, and has the added bonus of drawing an insanely funny weekly comic strip.
Rawstory / Blue Lemur - Okay, basically the hyper-liberal Drudge report. I read this for the juicy stuff, and take a lot of it as simply hysteria until it gets a bit more fleshed out and distilled by less ravenous folks. Like Drudge, while they are highly speculative, that also results in them being way ahead of the curve on some stories.
Fox News - Part of my effort to combat cognitive bias. Also, as a media savvy and indeed college-educated student of media, it's hi-freaking-larious how some stuff gets framed on their site.
Cnn Political / Cartoons - While it still has the "scandal this," "attack ad that" stuff, it also digs a bit deeper to deliver some headlines you don't get from the rabid political blogs. For the cartoons, Bill Mitchell is freaking awesome.
The Daily Howler - Somerby is like Michael Moore to me in some ways, harming his own cause by frothing away at something where he has a legit point, but in making it overreaches and discredits the person and all work they've ever done. But, He's absolutely vicious to the "stewards of our national discourse" we call the media, and is ridiculously prepared with citations for each criticism, and we need more people like that.
Dailykos - Co-op liberal blogging at its best. Highly slanted, but not advertising itself otherwise. If you want to know what at least part of the news is going to be a day and a half from now, read.
Kevin Drum - Just started reading him, but has entered my routine browser check. Did a great quantitative writeup on debate #2.
Michael Moore - Look, I have my beefs with the guy, and have my praises for him. I think some of his tactics hurt his brutally effective arguments, but whatever, people all pretty much have their opinion of the guy. Nonetheless, his site is a fairly good news aggregate, including some things I never would have otherwise encountered, such as the letter from Dwight Eisenhower's son or the letter from Kurt Vonnegut about the Patriot Act.

So anyway, yeah. I read a lot again.

Lately it's been a lot of political stuff, but maybe soon I'll post my a-political reads.

[i'll sleep in november]