I consider blogs real reality. They are the means for Joe 6pack or Jane Minivan to air their view and receive feedback from persons outside their circle.

In a face to face conversation feedback is invaluable. But, a face to face exchange does not provide sufficient time for each party to formulate a reflective response or retort and often results in one party wishing they could take their words back.

A Blog allows the blogger to say what is on their mind and each party can enjoy the benefit of time in providing a creditable response that is insightful but does not incite.

NRO. All the way.

Kevin M on November 25, 2007 at 1:28 AM

Especially when they released bogus exit poll data in the middle of the day showing Kerry was running away with the election despite the fact the data was obviously bogus (and they were shown that conclusively minutes after their post).

No they just have more money than us. Meaning they can remain elitist

William Amos on November 24, 2007 at 5:58 PM

You can be an elitist without having the money to do so. Elitism is an attitude and a state of mind.

liberrocky on November 25, 2007 at 12:45 AM

As people like Tammy Bruce and Bill O’Reilly have proven, there is no line. They work together.

Say what you want about HuffPo but Rusty Shackleford sends people to Gitmo.

- The Cat

MirCat on November 25, 2007 at 12:28 AM

My point exactly.

What accomplishments can the lefty blogs claim? The results of the 2006 election? Please, that was mostly a self inflicted wound.

Some successes the lefties might claim are really MSM victories.

It is difficult to draw the line (as Allah sort of alludes to earlier) where the MSM ends and the lefty blogs begin.

- The Cat

TheBigOldDog on November 25, 2007 at 12:11 AM

Good point

Bradky on November 25, 2007 at 12:08 AM

There’s plenty of that, just not in political or religious blogs. There are blogs on virtually every topic imaginable and most are formed to share ideas and help members work through problems, etc.

Not bloody likely.

liberrocky on November 25, 2007 at 12:03 AM

LOL. Probably not – If it took twenty years or more I probably wouldn’t be allowed on the internet without supervision anyway. Old age and forgetfullness don’t go well with internet debate!

I’d be more interested to know at what point in the future can the internet blogs/forums be used in a more two way exchange of ideas with a little more give and take.
Maybe that will be the next phase…

Bradky on November 24, 2007 at 11:52 PM

Not bloody likely.

But the question is: In which side’s chamber are the echoes louder?

liberrocky on November 24, 2007 at 11:45 PM

I’d be more interested to know at what point in the future can the internet blogs/forums be used in a more two way exchange of ideas with a little more give and take.
Maybe that will be the next phase…

We should not feel bad about our side of the blogosphere.
The right side has a long list of accomplishments: Rather, Fauxtogs, Beauchamp, Jesse Macbeth, Jason Blair, defeat of amnesty, etc

The left side’s greatest accomplishment lost to Joe Lieberman. They can’t even get their own party to defund the war, and that is their signature issue. One word comes to mind: impotent.

Further more.
Do we exist in an echo chamber? Of course we do.
But the question is: In which side’s chamber are the echoes louder?

SF Chronicle’s Sneaky Comment Deletion Trick – Update: ThinkProgress is Doing It Too

Have they been replaced?

There’s more of them than there are of us. Don’t kid yourself.

Allahpundit on November 24, 2007 at 5:56 PM

Online. A lot more of them online than us.

Doesn’t matter if they’re online or offline. The GOP has a bad case of Fiftysomething Whiteguy Syndrome. Those are not the people that get online to blog or participate in the increasingly important number of Web 2.0 activities. They use Windows XP/Office 2000 at their business and maybe have a Mac at home to check e-mail and their stocks on Yahoo Finance because they heard that’s what Rush uses.

That guy has no frickin’ idea what a blog or RSS feed is because that’s a childish waste of time and the last thing he wants to do when he gets home from his 2 hour commute (“Ah, some ‘me’ time to listen to Hannity on the ride home”) is get on the computer…

Meanwhile his wife is cheating on him with the plumber and the kids don’t care because they are constantly glued to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for their (temporary) Family Guy and Daily Show fix.

It’s not a big stretch for the kids to go from there to Kos. I know it’s a shocka for some of you, but there’s no big draw in GOP talk radio for the teen crowd.

Michael in MI on November 24, 2007 at 8:29 PM

Nothing to apologize for. Thought you would find it interesting that’s all.
Enjoyed the dialog on the subject – thanks.

And an example of where it doesn’t work so well…”

Good point. I actually discussed this with a friend of mine at work. I told him that what I noticed, based on my own first-hand experience in doing it myself, is that when people tend to develop a trust in a source on one subject (say military matters), they then give that trust to that source in all matters. Even if the source is not really an expert in anything other than the military matters. So it becomes dangerous for a source to speak on things on which s/he is not an expert and end up spreading false or incomplete info which his/her supporters believe without question. This happens among the blogosphere as well, when bloggers develop a common bond and trust the other bloggers judgement and just run with a story based on that trust.

Now, while this is not a good thing at all, it’s not much different than the group-think that exists in the mass media. Actually, moreso than groupthink, I believe the mass media collaborates on how they will report on certain stories and how they will not report on certain stories. I believe this is worse than what happens here in the blogosphere, because even when a story is put out that is false, the bloggers are always working to get to the bottom of the story, get all the facts and all the context and eventually will come out and admit when wrong. The mass media does not do that. Especially in the cases where they are deliberately lying and spreading propaganda and hoping they are not caught.

The example you gave though is an example of something I worry about from blogs, as there is among bloggers a desire to be the one who breaks a story as their used to be among the mass media. This can be a bad thing when all the facts are not checked.

>But the type of stories they can cover are limited by their resources. In other words they don’t necessarily have access to the big picture (or may not be allowed due to classifications be able to tell) in the region. This is not a criticism of the bloggers per se, simply a recognition of what limiting factors they work under.

True, but I think it really depends on the milblogger. The miblogs that I read do a good job of taking an isolated account and putting into the context of not only our mission in Iraq, but also our overall mission in the ‘war on terror’ and putting it into historical context and context of all our missions around the world and how each is affected. They also put our military mission in context with our humanitarian mission and explain things like COIN, etc. I read blogs such as Blackfive, Mudville Gazette, Dadmanly, CDR Salamander, Counterterrorism Blog (Bill Roggio) and Michael Yon, among many others, to get this kind of perspective. Most of the bloggers on those sites were very critical of the soldiers who came out with the NYT op-ed which was just a list of all our failures and then concluded that all was lost, we had to give up. The bloggers, while pointing out where the 7 NYT soldiers were correct, also analyzed the big picture and put the complaints into context. I get better honest, no-BS analysis from Blackfive and Mudville Gazette than I get anywhere else. Especially on the big picture. I get nothing but small picture and political analysis of military matters from the mass media. And the fact that within just 4 years the military blog community is placing embeds such as Matt Sanchez, Michael Yon, Bill Roggio, Michael Fumento and now the Blackfive embed program into execution shows how much we are progressing. Not to mention GRIM’s Blogger Roundtables where he sits down with top military commanders and gets interviews and asks questions that the mass media simply cannot, because they have no military knowledge.

“And on the about link to hotair you will find this

I stand corrected. I knew nothing of AllahPundit back then. Granted, I had a very limited amount of blogs that I was reading back then too. The only blogs that I knew which were covering the Rather scandal were FR, LGF and Power Line, so I read them daily to keep up. My apologies for overlooking AllahPundit’s contributions.