Top blogging of 2019

It was an interesting year this year. No heavy thread of refuting conspiracy theories, unlike my top blogging of 2018. And, several of the top posts, including two baseball-themed ones, came from the last few months of the year.

One post was a repeat from a previous year, and one was a "throwaway" from a decade ago.

Let's start with that.

The most read blog post here in 2019 was "Could an Iranian bomb LOWER tensions?" As a generally erratic President Donald Trump listens to his neocons and tightens the screws ever more on the Islamic Republic, and as our Saudi allies and other Gulf Arab states descend into further butchery in Yemen, and as Trump panders to Zionists ever more while also encouraging antisemitism more (to those who know the history of Zionism, and know early Zionists themselves did that, that should be no shock) it seems that a lot of people wonder if a Tehran with a nuke or two, as much as proliferation is a no-no, might be better than the current situation.

No. 2, speaking of Zionism and antisemitism? That was me defending Ilhan Omar from charges of antisemitism — even as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, no less, shoved her halfway under the bus. (As I also noted there, it wasn't the first time — nor was it the last — for AOC's reality to fall several steps short of her rhetoric.)

No. 3? On to actual racism. And other things of the past at Augusta National Country Club. I called The Masters "A tradition of bullshit unlike any other."

No. 4? After making the Top 10 of 2017, but missing the cut last year, my ever growing biography of Twitter guru in the mind of himself, when alive, and his cultists still today, "Who Is Alan Smithee, aka Actual Flatticus?" (answer: misogynist, possibly racist, abusive Florida lawyer Chris Chopin) is back in the Top 10 this year.

No. 5? Yeah, everybody else doing political blogging wrote about it too. But! My "What's next for Trump after the Mueller Report?" was written from a position that clearly rejected twosiderism. That became more and more of a theme here the second half of 2019, with allegedly outside the box journos, but actually stenos to a certain form of twosiderism, like Aaron Maté, Matt Taibbi, Max Blumenthal, Mark Ames, Ben Norton, Yasha Levine et al repeatedly engaged in.

No. 6? For the first time in years, Texas news cracked an annual Top 10 list. The tragic fall shooting in Greenville, an arrest of someone eventually cleared de facto if not de jure, the omerta that leaves the case still unsolved, and cultural issues surrounding that all drew my attention.

No. 7? Texas news a second time, and in my backyard. I called out the Dallas Observer (which hasn't responded for months, and is one of several things that has led me to look at it with a more jaundiced eye than before) for doing a hit job on a planned wind farm. The site is on the Fort Worth half of the Metromess so why was the Observer writing? The reporter clearly understands nothing about the oil and gas world, and gas motives behind some opposition, to boot. (A follow-up post is coming shortly.)

No. 8? The first of two baseball posts. This was about who the Veterans Committee should and should not vote into the Hall of Fame. Veterans got it wrong, IMO, on not admitting Lou Whitaker and Thurman Munson. They got it OK on Ted Simmons, though Munson should have gone in first. And they definitely got it right on not selecting Dale Murphy.

Skipping a bit, No. 10 was paired. Comparing his career to Dave Parker, Juan Gonzales, Roger Maris and others, I explained in more detail why Murphy is not a HOFer.

No. 9? Connected to Jeffrey Epstein. I looked at some of the various Epstein-related sleaze that is connected to John Brockman, creator of The Edge Foundation and, until this year, its annual "the big question."