Friday, October 27, 2006

Friday flotsam & jetsam

Some flotsam and jetsam washed ashore on the DWSUWF island this week. Thought I'd clean up the beach with this post.

Out of curiosity, I conducted a little blogging experiment. I took a selection of links and quotes from previous posts (all on the subject of investors reacting to and preparing for a divided government result in the midterms) added a Larry Kudlow video on the subject, repackaged it as a new article, then posted it in on Democrat (Daily Kos) , Republican (Red State) and Libertarian (Inactivist) blogs.

The Posts:
Daily Kos - "Investor Class giddy about Democratic Victory"
Inactivist -"Republican polls down & stock market up - Investors look forward to Divided Government"
RedState - "Republican polls down & stock market up - Investors look forward to Divided Government"
As it turns out, the posts are not all there. The post at Red State is missing, because it was deleted by RedState within 15 minutes of my publishing it on their site. Hey, it's their site, they can delete whatever they want - I understand, I moderate comments on this site too. But I was a little surprised at being "disappeared" so quickly. There is nothing inflamatory in that post and it is a 100% fact based report on a real phenomena. Apparently they just did not like the message, so they shot the messenger. Well, at least they still permit me to comment on other posts.

UPDATE:
Nevermind. Turns out, I am a "threadjacker" and my commenting privileges on RedState have now been suspended. Sigh. Maybe they'll like me better on November 8, when I expect to be still working for divided government by supporting a Republican President in 2008.

The reaction on Inactivist was a bit more subdued. Actually, it was closer to catatonic. No comments, and I am not sure it was even read. They like some of my other stuff though, and posted a link to "Third in Line" today.

Daily Kos is the biggest and most active of the three sites and the post got more of a reaction there, with 17 comments, some good, some bad, some ugly. This last comment prompted a reply that I am always amazed that I have to explain: "Once again I feel compelled to point out that divided government is the very best outcome possible for Democrats in 2006."

I have no grand conclusion about this little exercise. I just found it really interesting. So, I'll probably do it again.

In other topics, the 214th editon of the Carnival of the Vanities has been posted at Silfray Halka. "Third in Line" was included in the carnival and paired up with Hell's Handmaiden excellent post on the same subject "Spin the Foley". The 24th edition of the Carnival of the Liberals was posted at Perspectives of a Nomad. "Third in Line" made it a three-peat this week at the carnival. I also enjoyed Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub post called Intelligent Design – A Pig That Doesn’t Fly, although on the subject of ID, I prefer the metaphor of a dead horse needing yet another beating.

I'll be in the wine country this weekend, and also watching the team that most knowledgeable football fans suspect may be the greatest team in the history of the NFL beat the living snot out of the San Francisco 49ers - so I may or may not get another post out this weekend. We will be publishing a new edition of the Carnival of Divided Government at 11:59 PM PST Monday October 30. If you'd like to participate, please submit your on-topic post using this handy form.

Divided and Balanced.™ Now that is fair.

Just Vote Divided.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

About the "catatonic" response at Inactivist. I was not aware of your post there until I read this post here, and let me explain why I (and probably others) wouldn't have noticed it.

We are a new blog, only up and running since early July. The software isn't even all tweaked and worked out yet. While the vision is to have a thriving carnival of posts off the "frontpage" and at the "community blog" page where you posted, pushing that hasn't yet been a priority. (Among other thing, the site owner is on sabbatical working on a political campaign, and so little major can or will be done until he's back to oversee the blog and direct its growth.)

I don't check the community blog page often at all, and only noticed another post there earlier last week because I followed a link to the a "recent comment" appearing at the sidebar listing recent comments. The author of *that* post had emailed one of the Inactivist frontpagers to alert him to the post, and that author therefore knew about it in order to comment, and everyone saw notice of the comment. The upshot is a bunch of us then read that post and promoted it to the frontpage. But if the guy who wrote it had not emailed one of us, that post would almost certainly have fallen into a hole, just as yours did.

Long story short, it would not be appropriate to infer much about the reaction to your post other than that nobody noticed it because we are not yet used to the idea that folks might actually be exploiting the "community blog" option at Inactivist.

Anyway, the reaction to your post at Redstate surprised me not in the least. On occasion I've read over there, but never signed up for an account because I was too repulsed by too much of what is said there, and how grossly they distort the character and views of anyone who is not sufficiently loyal to Bush/Frist, especially on any matter pertaining to foreign policy or national security.

mw said...

Mona,
Thanks for the comment. I knew that Inactivist was relatively new, and that was -in part- why I posted there. I though it might be more likely to attract a lttle attention in a newer blog.

In any case, I enjoy the Inactivist perspective, and plan to continue to participate there.