State Political Blogs

Recent laughably biased stories in the New York Times about John McCain reminded me of Media Mythbusters.

We’re going to need it a lot this year. I think that’s a safe prediction.

The great thing about Media Mythbusters is that it easily enables citizen journalists across the country to sign up and start adding their content.

There is an approval process to ensure the reasonableness and integrity of the site’s contributors, but it is not burdensome.

Still at risk: the shocking ignorance of our young reminded me of the shocking ignorance of the typical lefty blogger. Sign up at Media Mythbusters to start the education process.

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Washington, is a free-market, limited government think tank. During each legislative session, they publish a Hey! Big Spender! index that is chock-ful of bloggy goodness. They keep careful track of the “total increased taxes and fees proposed by each individual legislator” as primary or co-sponsor, over the next ten years, if their sponsored legislation all passed.

It ain’t chicken feed. The biggest spender right now, Democrat senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, would like the good people of her state to pay $214,269,175,298 in additional taxes over the next ten years. You know, that is a lot of money. Billions. $214 of those billions.

Do the bloggers of the state of Washington use this information in their blog posts? I did a Technorati search for Jeanne Kohl-Welles and came up dry.

Why is this? Could it be that, as with so many blogs published by organizations with paid staffs, like the EFF’s Liberty Live blog, they don’t link out to the homegrown, native, volunteer bloggers in Washington? Like Sound Politics or the Mad Blogger or the Parkenfarker Group?

Blogs: Give them some link-love, and they’ll give you some coverage. It’s not that hard.

Former Ohio Governor Ken Blackwell and former U.S. Congressman Tom Delay announced a new organization this week, Coalition for a Conservative Majority.

Checking out their good-looking website reminded me that when the other new conservative action group, Freedom’s Watch came online a month or two ago, their website was baaaad. It has improved enormously since last I looked.

The Coalition for a Conservative Majority website looks good.

Most of the conservative and libertarian organizations are “legacy” organizations that haven’t figured out the internet or blogging. Let’s see if these new groups have a better understanding of online organizing.

A new website, LeftSurge is about helping local and state bloggers build the picture of where the Democracy Alliance (George Soros, Peter Lewis, Tim Gill, etc.) is putting its money at the state level.

GOP internet strategist Patrick Ruffini says what needs to be said:

Re-framing activism vs. punditry.

Blogs can have a mission and action steps for their readers. It has to be about more than just punditry.

Most of us think of Montana as a hardy frontier state where the wild buffalo roam, surely filled with many more conservative than liberal blogs.

Not so, but that might be changing, with the addition of Montana Pundit, The Scoop, The Hardliner, Missoulapolis, and Conservative Cowgirls to a stable that already included, among others, the Montana Misanthrope, The Hammond Report, Dave Budge, Electric City Weblog and Montana Headlines.

I wouldn’t pretend to be authoritative on this, but it seems like a larger number of Montana’s GOP/conservative bloggers are anonymous than in other states.

That might be because there’s a high incidence of rattlesnake-mean lefty bloggers in Montana.

One lefty blogger in Montana recently accused the Montana GOP/conservative blogs of:

…showing a much greater tendency to belittle and revile based on ideas that he finds personally demeaning, and not so much on the merit of the idea.

In two posts last month, the same lefty blogger used the following phrases to describe some members of the Montana rightroots:

“wingnut-o-sphere”

“the aging players of the Montana fantasy-based community”

“clever little weasel”

“pathetically weak logic, though sinister”

“the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts”

“the true enemy of anyone rational”

“We should flee these people as lepers were shunned in the middle ages. They’re more toxic, and vastly more barfy to be around.”

“completely freaking ugly”

“write like poorly schooled 5th graders”

Props to our conservative friends in Montana who probably put up with this kind of abuse regularly.

Update: Excellent example of blog reporting from The Scoop.