The Talent in the Room -- Pt 3

Here are more appraisals of the links:

"Bartcop Entertainment" is a site run by a woman whose industry and dedication leaves me awestruck. Her name is Martha. I met her while competing against her in NTN trivia -- she was nearly impossible to beat. I doubt that she's missed updating her page one single day in the past two and a half years, with lots of new info each time. Her site is that unusual thing, a subsite to another but in no way larger page. Her politics are in the same worthy place as Bartcop's, but she doesn't drink as much Chinaco tequila or play as much poker or inexplicably stay on Tiger Woods' case, as Bart does, and so she far outclasses him. If you want to know all the good stuff that's on the tube every day, this is the place to go, and that's just for starters.

I've been reading "Buzzflash" and "Common Dreams," especially the latter, for a long time with a great deal of appreciation. (You've divined by now, if only by my choice of links, that I'm that most unforgivable of humans -- a bonafide liberal progressive bleeding heart partisan Democrat all the way.) I figure that "Buzzflash" must have a crew, rather than just one person as in Martha's case, to be able to gather up so much political news from so many quarters.

"Common Dreams" is calmer than "Buzzflash," consisting as it does entirely of fleshed-out thought pieces by a wide array of writers. However, sometimes it is less progressive than might be expected. For instance, when Nader declared this time, "Common Dreams" ran a number of articles praising his move. Nader is progressive when he's fighting for the consumer but when he runs for President, his doing so -- at least so far --turns him, willy-nilly, into a key member of the pre-Fascist team.

"inanis et vacua" is the work of a maverick in more ways than one, named James. He seems to be a complete loner, not networked into anything. He usually writes one new post per day, and each is always highly interesting if sometimes a little hard to follow, because he operates on a quite elevated highwire, in language and in thought. I have no idea how much traffic his weblog gets, but his posts rarely draw comments, a fact that I expect bothers him hardly at all. Maybe intimidation on his part plays a part! He doesn't leave much room for you to stick your finger into a hole and pull. However, his posts aren't impenetrable, and they're invariably rewarding.

"Raed in the Middle" is the male counterpart of Riverbend, both of them being young Iraqis who are giving us firsthand reports from Iraq and not at all liking what they see. Raed isn't as eloquent or controlled as Riverbend, but he's just as worthwhile to read. And from his site you can link to other weblogs that are being maintained by members of his family, also stuck in the midst of all that bedlam.

"The Angry Arab" lives up to his name, but he seems to jet here and there, and so his posts often consist just of numerous snippets connected to links. That's too bad because he's very interesting, with wry, understated humor, when he has time to stretch out in his writing. His account several months ago of his interview with, if I remember correctly, the leader of Qatar, is a classic.