Blogroll non-cleanup: Why are they still there?

A number of my blogroll members have been there for years. Why, and why are they still there? (Recent additions are noted in my most recent blogroll cleanup piece.)

Ted Rall was one of the very few people decrying the Afghanistan War at the start. (Since then, I've seen more.) He also at least occasionally bats outside the duopoly box. And, like me, he saw through Obama even before Dear Leader was elected.

That said, he reads his press clippings too much. Some of them, he may even write. And, since he went way wrong on Malaysian Flight 370, I've ramped up my skepticism of him. (He claimed it landed in Kazakhstan, and was hinting at some conspiracy related to that.) That said, he's an acorn-finding hog who's only blind in one eye, to riff on an old saying.

Sadly (but not totally surprisingly), in an update, as of April 2019, Frederick Theodore Rall III (I've started calling him by his given name on Twitter) is now officially a member of #TheResistance. No, really. He called for Congressional Dems to impeach Trump on the discredited Russiagate nonsense while admitting it was discredited. This is of a piece with Ted's self-centeredness on his L.A. Times lawsuit and many other things.

Basically, I'm at the point where I keep him on my blogroll for laughs and as a reminder for something to regularly punk him about. Anybody who can still tout his real-time opposition to launching the Afghanistan War as well as Iraq, then be an establishmentarian hack in the next, sucks donkey dongs.

Down with Tyranny? At one time, I thought Howie was more insightful than turns out is truth. Sniffing the crack of Iron Stache Randy Bryce too much (never stopped), then of Beto O'Rourke (appears to have detoxed, but waited a while to admit he was addicted) and Madcow Maddow, plus Putin collusion nonsense, I realize he's just a left-neoliberal, at the left edge, if that, of the overrated Justice Democrats. But, he's good to keep precisely because of that.

As of April 2019, it continues to guzzle Russiagate Kool-Aid by the gallon, and also refuses to admit Dem presidential candidates have moved beyond. I still keep it around, mainly to see how delusionally addictive Putin.Did.It is.

Counterpunch is a stand-in for larger leftist media. (I may add an RSS feed, if available, for one or more of TruthOut, TruthDig or AlterNet. That said, those three often rerun stuff that is from Common Dreams, etc., and Counterpunch arguably bats further left.) OTOH, a month after claiming that China was a democratic nation, CP has now tried to pretend the mullahs never existed in Iran's revolution. Or giving Tulsi Gabbard half a pass or more on her relations with neocons on Israel and Modi in India without even mentioning "RSS." It may be getting dumped. It has been dumped before. Sometimes, it engages in reflexive anti-Americanism with the truth being the first casualty of that. And, that's why I dumped it before. Along with Alec Cockburn being a climate change denialist. And issues of whether Serbia committed genocide in Kosovo or not. Given past Serb history, I argued that Counterpunch, at a minimum, shouldn't have been facily dismissive of such claims.

I think half of Counterpunch's problem is weak editing. Not copy editing, but the big picture content editing. It's too willing to take too much from too many — although it still hasn't said it's taking my tongue-in-cheek humor about Cactus Ed Abbey. Result? An editorial "voice" with lack of unity.

Liberal Values Blog may have one foot a bit more still in the Democratic Party than I do, but Ron Chusid is generally near my territory.

Independent Political Report is pretty insightful about third-party issues. Tilts libertarian, but has at least basic stuff about Greens and tidbits about the Constitution Party and remaining fragments of the Reform Party.

Ballot Access News is often more detailed, and more eclectic, than IPR, but is in the same general territory.

Grits for Breakfast has great insights about the Texas prosecutorial and judicial world and occasionally looks national. I've disagreed with him on a few things, but, he's usually very solid.

Popehat knows his legal issues and he's funny. Wish he'd blog more. That said, I do see him as a "First Amendment weaponizer" at times; and no, that's not a compliment of a libertarian who thinks "money = speech" in politics.

ProPublica goes beyond AP or local newspapers, though it teams with them at times, on investigative journalism. Enough said.

Skeptophilia is a down-to-earth skepticism site that is in no way a part of Movement Skepticism or Skeptics™.

Retraction Watch keeps a good eye on science research.

Northier? Spent part of his growing up on the Big Rez, not too far from, and not too many years later than, where and when I did. He's also a secularist and a left-liberal if not leftist. Nuff sed.

Robert Fisk? If you want one voice of experience who honestly knows most of what the hell is happening in the Middle East, it's him. Anybody who doesn't know him, and claims to be progressive, left-liberal or beyond, gets the back of my hand.

Michael Hudson is a leftist economist. Think he overstates the historic background of debt jubilees at times. Think he's wrong on MMT. But, thought provoking even in these areas.

Existential Comics, while Corey focuses on existentialism, covers philosophy in general. With a helluva sense of humor, and often with leftist politics behind it.