non-smug dem politics sites

i bought this for $4 on amazon

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5169rbmeK4L._SL500_.jpg

it's nice to know & also lol that greenwald bolds and italicizes seemingly at random even in his books

Great, off-beat political blogs are my favorite time-waster.

The good folks at Balloon Juice aren't smug, but they're not wonky like Ezra Klein or Nate Silver. Entertaining, lots of links, good comments section (with occasional visits from a Ned R known round these parts).

Al Giordano (The Field, at The Narcosphere) is a community activist, a true socialist. He predicted the rise of Obama before just about anyone else. He's a big-picture guy, constantly returns to the need for left-wing politics to arise from the people. Very successful at tweaking Greenwald and FDL and other proponents of what he calls "poutrage". BooMan at Booman Tribune has a similar take from an American perspective.

Roy Edroso at alicublog is a peerless purveyor of mockery and nut-picking. He has a column at Village Voice but recently announced he's leaving. Writes like a dream. Might be too smug for you.

Andrew Sprung at Xpostfactoid is fairly new to me, Andrew Sullivan links to him from time to time. Gets few comments (low traffic?), but what I've read is very worthwhile. His post "The Making of a Great President" is the best morning-after-HCR summary I found, more intelligent analysis than gloating.

And of course, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a giant among men.

how exactly is TPM smug?

second the love for balloon juice and alicublog, pandagon and lawyersgunsandmoney are worth an occasional look.

(with occasional visits from a Ned R known round these parts)

Never heard of him. More seriously, thanks for the mention!

Thanks Plasmon!

ezra & grennwald are throwing down on twitter atm

ezraklein @ggreenwald I am honestly surprised to see you call "purposefully misleading" beyond the pale. You've read your blog, right?

ezraklein @ggreenwald "the painfully absurd propagandistic attempt by the administration and its most loyal cheerleaders" is still on your front page.
3 minutes ago via web in reply to ggreenwald

this is the gif i was looking for

http://i26.tinypic.com/2hxx734.jpg

what are squabbling about?

whether it's ok for ezra klein to call jane hamsher a liar, or something

glenn is bored, i think

he had been sending shots at ezra for the better part of the week -- this was kind of inevitable

great gif

yeah that one's gonna have to go into the rotation

does anyone read tom socca's blog at slate? he is killin it

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/scocca/default.aspx

todays:

That was a confusing not-quite-attack the world went through on Friday, wasn't it? Al Qaeda is trying to blow up UPS now? Or synagogues in Chicago? Ten years after they blew up the USS Cole, have we just not done anything about the Yemenis? Is this why there were so many cops on the subway?

And so for the reader trying to make sense of the latest round of Our War on Terror, or Terror's War on Us, the New York Times offered the following bit of incisive contextual analysis wrapping around Saturday's front page jump:

News of the terrorist plot came as Mr. Obama was barreling into the last four days of campaigning before midterm elections on Tuesday, and White House officials appeared determined to project the appearance of a commander in chief who was on top of the developments.

News of the terrorist plot came as the midterm elections were approaching. News of the terrorist plot also came as the Texas Rangers were trying to figure out how to rally from two games down in the World Series. It came as a cold front was driving down temperatures through the New York region, displacing unseasonably warm weather. Context!

The New York Times will not let a mere international bombing plot distract it from the all-important duty of speculating about how the news of the event positioned the political class with respect to political positioning. Officials appeared determined to project an appearance! OK, let's rewind that once more and play it back in slow motion, looking for a single verifiable, objectively existing fact:

officials appeared determined to project the appearance

Yes? No. This is the sound of a reporter (or an editor) flapping a finger up and down across his or her own lips and transcribing the blapping sound. As in its gloss on the Chilean mine rescue, the Times could not accept that the president of the country was somehow, if you will, as it were, simply busy running the country.

(Also, yes, some jets were scrambled, but the use of "commander in chief" here, apparently to mean "leader dealing with life-and-death matters," is a witlessly fascistophillic and grating cliche. The president is the president. The job includes commanding the armed forces. But a crisis does not transform the president from a civilian into a generalissimo. Cut it out.)

washingmonthly, digby, talkingpointsmemo, atrios - they all make my skin fucking crawl these days, just so full of self-congratulatory, put-downy bullshit.

check back on wednesday morning.

i have not beeing reading that blog but the post above sounds like it's the result of an algorithm designed to create articles i enjoy reading

GG on colbert tonight

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2011/02/in_which_i_advocate_for_union.html

lol what an idiot

http://lhote.blogspot.com/
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/

^

http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/

i've come back around to Kevin Drum a bit

i take freddie de boer back, dude is smart but gooooddd is he resentful

also basically done with ioz at this point

zunguzungu is great though

i am fully down with freddie de boer but he seems like a whiny bitch tbh

i know it's a common occurrence for people on the left to be called that but i am sorry it's true

yeah he is just butthurt about stuff 24/7, like greenwald but even worse

it's funny i have been reading him for a while and thought he was an older cranky professor until he recently revealed his age.

i want to put naked capitalism on this list but its really smug. and also really poorly written. the stuff by guest writers is the best.

all people who write from a finance background, no matter what the opinion, have this cold raging asshole fury thing going on. every single one.

today in freddie deboer: 1200 unbelievably butthurt words about some mediocre joke on tumblr

i liked his long post on the "resentment machine"--not to say it couldn't use some qualifications, but honestly im a fan in general of jeremiads.

oh my GOD would it be possible for Freddie de boer to write just one thing that isn't about himself

Revealingly,

yeah i like that dude's blog but he doesn't hide his self-obsession very well.

i havent read the TNI piece this is referring to but i dont like TNI so good job freddie

http://lhote.blogspot.com/2012/03/oh-boy.html

this is now the thread where i document my love-hate relationship w/ freddie de boer

Whatever the case, it shouldn't surprise you to know that for most college graduates, these flirtations are temporary. The rewards that the grinding lifestyle of American "success" offers are just too tempting. I wonder again: how many of those protesting now will be paid in full members of the system they protest, in five years? In ten? Only time will tell. But the odds are high that many of them will slump into that life. It might please you to think of the hippie-to-yuppie movement as some sort of unique failing of the Boomers, but it is a recurring cycle.

there is no economic principle that ensures that well-paying white collar jobs will always come back simply because we live in a country called 'america'. there are some pretty good reasons - technological productivity gains and a global labor force - why today is different from the 70s.

I mean I agree w/ the general idea 'let's have some perspective w/r/t the misery of college-educated folx vs. rest of country' - but looking at the wage gap between college-educated non-college educated ignores the fact that jobs like firefighter now go to people w/ a college education. that doesn't make college a better investment for your average american, it just makes economoic opportunities w/o a degree increasingly bleak.

that doesn't make college a better investment for your average american, it just makes economoic opportunities w/o a degree increasingly bleak.

otm

it's 'a good investment' in the same way that someone who is seriously ill and without health insurance should 'invest in going to a doctor'.

yeah im not really interested in the content of any of this stuff so much as i am in the social positioning of TNI and FDB in the academic liberal blogosphere

this is one of my favorite politics blogs -- its not really "dem" though b/c the dude is british

http://potlatch.typepad.com/

I'm sympathetic w/ the 'lol tni' pov he is just approaching this from the wrong angle

freddie is infuriating as always but this is a fantastic list of bloggas

http://lhote.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-list.html

I'm assuming he means Daniel Larison, right?