New Site Operational

June 14, 2009 at 12:41 am (Information)

This site is officially defunct.

Go to the new home of The Crowbar.

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Going For the Big Time, Soon

May 19, 2009 at 1:19 pm (Information) ()

Hello my wonderful readers, my posts have been scant lately because I’m working on setting up an independent blog.

My experiment here at WordPress.com has proven to be successful enough to prompt me to take a chance on my own site. The new site should be ready to go in a few days weeks.

I’ll keep you posted.

Out.

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Top 20 Most Influential Conservative Blogs

May 6, 2009 at 4:21 pm (Information) ()

At long last I have assembled a list of top conservative blogs. It’s based on Technorati, Alexa, and Wikio rankings plus my well-honed intuition. It is subject to change if I happen to discover another blog and/or the rankings change.

  1. Michelle Malkin – About
  2. The Corner – National Review
  3. Hot Air – About
  4. NewsBusters – Media Research Center | About
  5. American Thinker – About
  6. Power Line – John H. Hinderaker
  7. Red State – Erick Erickson | About
  8. The Volokh Conspiracy – Eugene Volokh
  9. Instapundit – Glenn Reynolds
  10. Gateway Pundit – Unknown Identity
  11. Marginal Revolution – Tyler Cowen | Alex Tabarrok
  12. Big Hollywood – About
  13. Ace of Spades HQ – About
  14. Reason Magazine/Hit & Run – About
  15. Weekly Standard/The Blog – Michael Goldfarb
  16. Jihad Watch – Robert Spencer
  17. Atlas Shrugs – Pamela Geller
  18. The Jawa Report – Rusty Shackleford
  19. Stop The ACLU – About
  20. Right Wing News – About

Ten Worthy Mentions

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Universal Health Care in UK: Autism Takes 18 – 24 Months to Diagnose

May 5, 2009 at 10:30 am (Information) (, , , )

For all you Universal Heath Care lovers out there, here’s a dose of the medicine you want to force everyone to take; from a UK’s DailyMail:

Despite the fact that around half a million children and adults in the UK are affected, treatment for the condition is woefully underfunded, according to the National Autistic Society (NAS).

‘The services and support available to people with autism and their carers are often hugely inadequate,’ says Caroline Hattersley of the charity.

The family wanted an official diagnosis, but were astonished to find [an Autism diagnosis] could take between 18 and 24 months because health services are so overstretched.

Crikey, 18 to 24 months? And, this is not just ANY family, this is the family of wealthy singer/actor Keith Duffy (Boyzone), his daughter, Mia, has Autism:

For Lisa and Keith Duffy, it was a heartbreakingly long wait before they heard their daughter Mia speak for the first time… Mia has autism, a developmental disorder which affects her ability to relate to people and situations.

Ahh, but that’s not all, here we have another example of just how crappy socialized medicine is in the UK, Parents Forced To Wait A Year For Autism Diagnosis:

Health boards have been branded “compassionless” for forcing hundreds of parents to wait a YEAR to find out if their children have autism.

Experts say the earlier children are treated, the better they will respond.

But NHS Dumfries and Galloway have Scotland’s longest waiting time of 15 months for 61 children who have been referred for assessment.

In Ayrshire & Arran, youngsters face waiting up to 14 months, while 100 kids are caught up in a year-long backlog in NHS Lanarkshire.

Greater Glasgow is next on the list, with a waiting time of 10 months for more than 80 children.

Bill Welsh, president of the Autism Treatment Trust, said: “Early diagnosis is absolutely vital. Taking a year to make a diagnosis is crassly inefficient and compassionless.

“The worry aside, the child may be inhibited from gaining communication skills they should learn at an early age.”

Evelyn and Iain Lindsay face waiting until next year to discover if their son Ben suffers from autism.

They have been told that three-year-old Ben is 87th on the list.

Evelyn said: “We are being left in limbo.”

This is the promise of Universal Heath Care, coming soon to America, to be left in limbo while faceless bureaucrats decide everyone’s fate.

But, hey, at least everyone will be covered, right?

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Liberal Blog Readership Declining While Conservative Blog Readership Increasing

March 27, 2009 at 1:11 am (Information) ()

An old but fascinating post by Simon Owens at Bloggasm. Owens compiled some interesting facts from 2007 and noted the trend that top liberal blog readership is declining while top conservative blog readership is increasing.

I wonder what the stats for 2008 were? I suspect the trend continues even now.

UPDATE: Patterico has recent evidence that this trend has indeed continued.

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Top 20 Most Influential Liberal Blogs

March 23, 2009 at 11:15 pm (Information) ()

The following list is based on Technorati rank, Alexa.com rank, and educated guesses on my part. The list is in descending order of influence. Enjoy!

3/27/2009 UPDATE: Missed Krugman’s blog and Americablog. They have been added. WashingtonNote and Oliver Willis dropped off the 10 worthy mentions list.

Top 20 Liberal Blog/Op Websites

  1. Huffington Post | wiki | about
    Founded: May 9, 2005
    Founder(s): Arinna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer
    Editor: Roy Sekoff
    Note: Originally competed with Drudgereport.com but that didn’t work out so well so it morphed into a left slanted news/opinion site.
    -
  2. Democratic Underground | wiki | about
    Founded: January 20, 2001
    Founder(s): Democratic Underground, LLC
    Editor: David Allen
    Note: DU and the internet are very mum on who actually founded it, it is known for the extreme vitriol of some members. There is also scant info on David Allen. Odd that for such a popular site there is surprisingly little public info available. I’d like to know more about Mr. David “Mysterious” Allen.
    -
  3. Daily Kos | wiki | about
    Founded: May 26, 2002
    Founder(s): Markos Moulitsas Zuniga
    Editor: Susan Gardner
    Note: Major conflict erupted on the site between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barry Obama during the the 2008 US election primaries.
    -
  4. The Daily Dish | Andrew Sullivan | wiki | about
    Founded: September 2001
    Founder(s): Andrew Sullivan
    Editor: Andrew Sullivan
    Note: Sullivan says he is libertarian conservative, but he endorsed Obama in the 2008 election and Forbes ranked him the 19th most influential liberal.
    -
  5. Talking Points Memo (TPM) | wiki | about
    Founded: November 12, 2000
    Founder(s): Josh Marshall
    Editor: Josh Marshall
    Note: The site was a big pusher of the manufactured scandal of the firing of nine US Attorneys who were inappropriately protecting Democratic interests. TPM won a Polk award for it’s efforts.
    -
  6. Think Progress | wiki | about
    Founded: February 28, 2005
    Founder(s): Center for American Progress (CAP)
    Editor: Faiz Shakir
    Note: Thinkprogress.org is the friendly face for the hard left CAP think tank.
    -
  7. The Conscience of a Liberal | Paul Krugman | about
    Founded: September 17, 2005
    Founder(s): Paul Krugman
    Editor: Paul Krugman
    Note: Krugman is also one of the most influential liberal economists. Krugman favors Keynesian economics, using the shaky school of thought to justify bad policy: direct economic intervention through governmental deficit spending.
    -
  8. Crooks and Liars | wiki
    Founded: August 2004
    Founder(s): John Amato
    Editor: John Amato
    Note: One of the first political Vlog sites.
    -
  9. Wonkette | wiki
    Founded: January 2004
    Founder(s): Nick Denton, Ana Marie Cox, Choire Sicha, Alex Pareene, David Lat, Ken Layne, John Clark Jr, Jim Newell, Megan Carpentier, Sara K. Smith, John Fruhlinger
    Editor: Ken Layne | also
    Note: Wonkette is significantly more vitriolic than most of the popular left wing blogs. For example they “jokingly” wished for Chief Justice John Robert’s death when he was hospitalized in July 2007.
    -
  10. Glenn Greenwald | wiki
    Founded: October 2005
    Founder(s): Glen Greenwald
    Editor: Glen Greenwald
    Note: Glenn took a hard left turn in 2005, which he blames on the Bush administration, Karl Rove and the Valerie Plame affair.
    -
  11. Washington Monthly | Steve Benen | wiki
    Founded: January 25, 1999 (thecarpetbaggerreport.com)
    Founder(s): Steve Benen
    Editor: Steve Benen
    Note: Washington Monthly is a political mag founded in 1969, but, as of August 24, 2008, The WM website/blog is the new home for lefty blogger Steve Benen, formerly of thecarpetbaggerreport.com.
    -
  12. Kevin Drum | Mother Jones | wiki | MoJo wiki
    Founded: January 24, 2003
    Founder(s): Kevin Drum
    Editor: Kevin Drum
    Note: Like John Kerry, Drum was for the Iraq war before he was against it. He was previously at Washington Monthly. Before that Drum blogged at is own site, Calpundit.
    -
  13. Pharyngula | wiki | about
    Founded: June 19, 2002
    Founder(s): Paul Zachery “PZ” Myers
    Editor: PZ Myers
    Note: Myers was expelled from the screening of the Movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. An active atheist, Myers blog has the tagline, “evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal.”
    -
  14. Matthew Yglesias | wiki
    Founded: January 10, 2002
    Founder(s): Matthew Yglesias
    Editor: Matthew Yglesias
    Note: yglesias.blogspot.com was the original home of Yglesias’ blog. The Harvard grad was editor of the Harvard Independent prior to venturing into the blogsphere.
    -
  15. Firedoglake | wiki | about
    Founded: December 2004
    Founder(s): Jane Hamsher
    Editor: Jane Hamsher
    Note: Hamsher co-produced Natural Born Killers and has worked closely with Glenn Greenwald.
    -
  16. AMERICABlog | wiki
    Founded: April 2004
    Founder(s): John Aravosis
    Editor: John Aravosis
    Note: Americablog outed gay conservative Jeff Gannon (James Guckert’s pseudonym) in 2005 and disrespectfully published Gen. Wesley Clark’s cell phone records in 2006. Aravosis is also a gay rights advocate.
    -
  17. Feministing | wiki | about
    Founded: April 2004
    Founder(s): Jessica Valenti
    Editor: Jessica Valenti
    Note: Feministing was started while Third-wave feminist Valenti was working for NOW to give a voice to the younger feminists who were being shut out by the older ones.
    -
  18. Truthdig | wiki | about
    Founded: November 29, 2005
    Founder(s): Robert Scheer, Zuade Kaufman
    Editor: Robert Scheer
    Note: Barbra Streisand and 299 other people protested Scheer’s firing from the LA Times in November 2005 right before he and Kaufman started Truthdig.
    -
  19. Informed Comment | wiki
    Founded: April 21, 2002
    Founder(s): Juan Cole
    Editor: Juan Cole
    Note: Cole was denied a teaching appointment to Yale in 2006 because of his controversial viewpoints on his blog.
    -
  20. Digby’s Hullabaloo
    Founded: January 2003
    Founder(s): Digby (pseudonym)
    Editor: Digby (pseudonym)
    Note: Her real name still unknown, “Digby” of Santa Monica, CA showed up in person in June 2007 to accept an award on behalf of the progressive blogsphere at the Take Back America Conference in DC.

10 Worthy Mentions

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