Monday, July 15, 2013

Who Am I, Why Am I Here?

Like I have been saying in the comments, I'm a commenter who is trying to blog. I'm making this a place available for displaced Althouse commenters, like myself, to come and comment. In that spirit I'm going to link to blogs I used to read at Althouse, when those blogs posts things I'd Imagine we might want to read. Please feel free to make suggestions and make this place worth the effort.
IS POLITICO GOING THE WAY OF MSNBC? Conservative news site Daily Caller passes Politico in web traffic. 
My own politics, as many of you may already know, is staunchly conservative. Stemming from an intuited notion that we need to preserve the ways and means, sources and methods, continue to do the things that made us what Ronald Reagan called the shining city on a hill.

Maybe you want to discuss that. 

31 comments:

rhhardin said...

Laura Ingraham says Janet Napolitano is going back to the roller derby.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I just heard that. She was funny.

Matt Sablan said...

Politico used to be a well-balanced, decent site. Then, the election of 2008 happened. It just sort of nose-dived during that election cycle and never really recovered.

Matt Sablan said...

The one suggestion I'd make, and I am loathe to make suggestions on other people's blogs: If you can, turn off anonymous commenting. The anonymous comments that I've seen so far here [and in general, anywhere else where people don't need a unique username] are pretty bad, and often direct insults. Not only that, you can already have enough anonymity by just making a throw-away Google account.

It is also confusing when there are three different anonymous posters, and two of them are total jerks while one is contributing.

Other than that, no real suggestions.

edutcher said...

Lem, you're doing fine.

I agree with Matthew on the Anonymous, but do what you think is best.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Lem-

I'd second the suggestion on disabling Anonymous comments, and I'd also prefer the removal of nested replies. I'm often reading from my cell phone, and scrolling back and forth between the bottom of the thread and the various reply threads can be a real pain.

And again, thanks for setting up this place.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I've reached out to Pollo to help me.

sakredkow said...

I enjoyed the the reference to the Vice Admiral.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Where's Meade?

ken in tx said...

I have no suggestions. I don't care about anonymous. They are easy enough to ignore.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I've change the 'Who can comment' setting to registered users. Anonymous had it's last dance.

Meade said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Icepick said...

Huh, I just sent an email about how to do that. It also has instructions about ending embedded comments, but if you figured out the one you've probably figured out the other. So ignore the busy-body stuff.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

This is a detergent comment. I drafted an earlier comment and then decided I didn't want to publish it but everytime I refreshed the page it would pop back up as if I'd never erased it.

This should drive a wooden stake into its heart, hopefully.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Comment's gone!

Mitch H. said...

I've had comment moderation set on my personal blog for years now, mostly because there was little actual traffic, and 95% of the comments were spam. I'm wondering if I should just turn that off... not that I'm a consistent blogger in the best of times. Except when I was in a brief creative mood, my blogging generally degenerated into pallid sniping commentary on other blogs I would be following at the time.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

I do not have word verification and allow annoys, but I do find occasionally spam on old threads. It is not supposed to allow comments past five days, but occasionally they still pop up. And blogger does catch some spam on its own...I am not sure how.

But I am generally only getting a few dozen comments, not hundreds like you are getting. So you have different challenges.

Keep up the good work Lem. I really like what you are doing here.

rhhardin said...

I took who am I why am I here as a sign of a good sense of humor at the time.

That's what's need in a Vice President.

Perot unfortunately was certifiable.

Chennaul said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chennaul said...

Damn it 1983.

The Marine Barracks incident was in 1983.

Anonymous said...

Lem is getting the traffic from former Althouse commenters. He's getting them in the numbers he is because there is a general consensus I believe, that he is a good man, kind, a decent sort. I'm glad he is doing his thing here, as he's says, born out of necessity.

It's been an interesting several days since Lem opened his place. As someone said, some of the anonymous comments were constructive and some clearly destructive. I used to think Althouse was being paranoid when she on occasion said that there were forces out there that wanted to destroy her blog. Now I see she was right. What makes such people tick?

I'm looking forward to the evolution of Lem's place and I hope if Althouse opens comments again, this place remains. It feels safer than the Althouse salon, now that anonymous commenters can no longer comment.

Perhaps Meadehouse has learned in this process also. I hope so.

Roger J. said...

Lem--have enjoyed your blog and as others have noted its good to friends in the commentariat from TOP join in here. As for anonymous commenters? I never cared for them--if you can "man up" or "woman up" to your comments, please don't bother sharing them.

Again--thanks for the work you are doing.

rhhardin said...

Perot opened the way for Obama by making big ears acceptable.

Trooper York said...

You are doing a great job Lem.

Icepick said...

Perot opened the way for Obama by making big ears acceptable.

Perot will always be in Mickey Mouse's ear shadow.

ampersand said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
deborah said...

lol rh, I completely missed Lem's Stockwell reference.

Paddy O said...

Lem, there are very few people who would be as perfect for this role as you. You bring a balance, a strong interest but casual engagement, taking the topics seriously but not the whole forum, adding a sense of your own personality along the way but not getting caught up in it.

I look forward to not only the comments on Althouse posts, but also your own contributed musings. And maybe, just maybe, the occasional late night Stream of Lemness that showed up in the cafes.

Paddy O said...

Hey! Why's it 7:13 all of a sudden?! That's 3 hours from now. Yesterday, my comments posted in my own time zone, not the future. Now, I'm on East Coast time, a further hour behind my already delayed Althouse experience.

That's it! I'm storming off. huff, huff, huff.

deborah said...

Stockdale.

Synova said...

I sort of tried to blog but gave up.

Part of the reason is that the best way to promote responses is to post things that are stupid and opinionated or that encourage everyone to hate on someone. (ie., unfortunately most of what is on Big Hollywood pointing out something stupid no one would otherwise even hear of.)

This is probably why I couldn't be successful as a columnist either. Not as myself with my own reputation.

And no one is particularly interested in reading commentary where the only response that comes to mind is that it's obvious and boring.