I love FDL and other progressive blogs as much as the next liberal, but can we please quit with all the gratuitous praise and self-congratulatory pretensions?

We are the infantry in a war of ideas, and making Jane, Kos, CHS, Atrios, or anyone a cult of personality diverts attention away from the substance of the issues while opening up the authors behind the words to ad hominem attacks.
Kudos to those bloggers who are in the fight for getting the truth out and making our country better, but lets keep focused on topic so that we force real debate on the issues instead of the personalities.

All that said, thanks Jane. Byron York and the NRO don’t have a leg to stand on. If these rightwingers really read the Bible they would know that the truth can set you free.

And thanks for helping me to accept the reason why HuffPo links to news about Paris Hilton or Tom Cruise (it brings in people who otherwise might not read the substantive stuff on Arianna’s site).
Now maybe you can explain to me why Danielle Crittenden writes for HuffPo, and then I won’t have any hangups with Arianna’s site.

Terrific tonic for the troops from Jane Hamsher – cometh the hour…cometh the women. Your obviously with the rooters or your with the terrorist’s.

FDL is the indispensable go-to site because of the passion, the crisp writing, the dogged digging, and lots and lots of smarts and sass.

I love it when Jane swears like a sailor, just so those punk wingnuts, thieves and cowards make no mistake about having been whupped like the family mule.

These are not times for phony politeness. There are scads of heinous criminals who must be dragged to the dock, vermin incalculably more foul than the wharf rats that scurry through the shadows down here by the river of ancient kings.

For a person like Jane to have turned herself into one of the fiercest investigative editors going in America today is also a tribute to this medium, but it’s mostly a tribute to her impressive intellect, wicked wit and determined drive.

Of course, none of the above is meant to diminish my great respect for our indefatigable redd-headed legal eagle and friend to all fine feathered friends, whose own writing style has now matured into the category of the sublime. (kudos, too, to all their pals who have seen it righteous and proper to guest-blog here.)

I love you guys, and wouldn’t know what to do without ya. I do admit that I lurk from afar without generally adding my own noise to the mix – although I consider it to be reading and learning, rather than lurking – but your site is the first thing I look at when I log on. ’tis a far, far better pick-me-up than coffee (for me anyway, since I’m into the green-tea jag over here in Asia).

Keep up all your fine and tireless work, and yes, as much on the Plame-leak story and its many strands as you can possibly follow. It’s been said that Murray Waas owns the story, but you are surely co-owners. And you throw open a big window onto so much that has gone wrong in America, and by implication, the world.

From a grateful and admiring old-media journalist, ensconced on distant shores.

People want real news about real stories that really matter. That’s why blogs are winning. The corporate owned media refuse to cover news and given their choices in the political leadership that they back, and the way they operate their “businesses” it’s no wonder. Most people also seem to want politics to be about real things that matter to them too, which is why its a surprise to every one but Chris Matthews that 76% of the country would like to elect Congress people this November that will get us out of Iraq this year.

The corporate media is in the “lash out” phase against bloggers. Expect all kinds of personal attacks, malicious slander, reflexive insults as the media attempts to throw stones and chomskyize the millions of readers that are abadoning them. Bad news for the coporate media, the more they alienate their own consumer base the more they cost themselves money, the more they set the stage for their own demise. You’d think ABC would learn something from the abject failures of the RIAA and the MPAA, but no. Or maybe that the RIAA or the MPAA would have learned some lessons from the nascent software industry of the eighties, but sadly no.

Rove having noticed the trend in coporate angst toward blogs, is trying to piggy back on it to make it his current sales product. It’s a stupid product, much as getting republicans to support the war this past week was a stupid product, but its the one Rover thinks he can sell. Poor Rover so old and tired. Note to Karl Rove: Take a vacation from politics old boy before your failures catch up with you, your desperation is making you stupid.

The corporate lash out against blogs only shows how incompetent and unworthy those organization really are. As people consume less of the corporate news product their ad revenue goes down and they lose money. Eventually this bleeding will force them to either start reporting real news or get out of the news business entirely.

Of course there’s the 3rd option, which Norquist’s people are working hard to get going, and thats to legislate the internet out of existence, ala the Verizon written legislation that just sailed through the house.

When Bill Moyer is not able to work for a corporate news service, even PBS the supposed public one, it tells you all you need to know about the meaning of the word “journalist”. If there was any integrity at all in the news business broadcasters on every network in every media would have stopped work until Moyer’s position was restored. Further people like Coulter, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Heraldo, would not be permitted to represent themselves as anything other than professional entertainers. When the media frames entertainer Jay Leno as the filter for what’s appropriate on TV, we can tell that we have lost all sense of proportion. When journalism meant something, would we have turned to Jack Paar to unmask McCarthy?- No! We at least appeared to have a Ed Murrow for that.

Comedians now do a more accurate job of TV news reporting than the “news media” does. Blogging sites are picking up what used to be the newspaper audience. The responsiveness of bloggers to commenters and the cooperation that ensues adds a dimensions print media can never match.

NRO, The Weekly Standard, and their ilk are the dinosaurs and in this new environment that’s based on an actual free marketplace of idea, and they can’t compete. The internet version of these propaganda rags ala pajamas media are sinking like stones, showing the world that the whole their model of persuasion is completely inneffective without the total control of a captive audience.

The more they howl, the more room they give you to take their market.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariana_Huffington

I had not heard about David Huffington’s sexuality. He was a libertarian loon of a Congressman, to the point of refusing to do constituent service like getting someone’s Social Security check out of limboland. (This is a major function of your local Congressman.)

You’ve touched on a sore point to Bu$hCo: capitalism isn’t corporatism.

They can not compete in a free market, which is why they constantly try to rig the system to their advantage.