Here We Go Again

Yesterday, I dropped a post at Once Upon a TPM only to find a few of you are also over here. So, in an embarrassment of riches, it may be that Saturdays will present a festival of cross posting. Doing so on this site will be particularly easy since my own site, The Public Servant, is also hosted by Google.

Otherwise, obligations to the people who pay my salary require that I just throw the same stuff here as I have elsewhere, with slight edits. This one starts, thusly:

My name is Barth, and I am addicted to posting at TPM Cafe. You are supposed to say, “hi, Barth.”

This, too, looks like a nice place, a new home and the neighbors look familiar.

I have not kept up with the whole TPM Cafe controversy. One day, it felt as if I was no longer able to post there. This morning, I was. I have read scattered expressions of frustration, but I am not one hundred per cent certain I understand all of the issues or what’s going on.

Whatever is going on there, I will continue to post there if I am allowed to since it has been proven repeatedly that TPM attracts an interesting crowd who, more than at any other site I know, appear to think through issues and not just spout either the party line or the provocative screaming that seems to be the core of other places where I also post such as, of course, Daily Kos.

During the election campaign in 2008, I got so frustrated with the nonsense at Kos that I threatened to never post there again, but that didn’t last. Still, the place I go for thought and interesting feedback, is TPM.

But this lovely place has many of the people I have come to depend upon and so here I am, too. If it’s allowed I will cross post from TPM Cafe on the one day a week that I am usually able to do this.

Maybe I will find a way to do new things here, too. I don’t know. For now, I can promise only this: I will try to limit my mention of or quotations from Regina Spektor to a reasonable level. I suspect that every other post at minimum will reflect my view that the greatest president we have ever had was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the most inspirational, at least in my lifetime, was John F. Kennedy. The current president is the next best I have seen in a sorry lifetime, which commenced less than a year before President Truman’s term (the one he won by election) was over.

Today, though, at a new home, it seems sort of dopey to post here, what I already posted at TPM this week, though any comments about that post that you would want to drop here would be just lovely.

Instead, unable to really write two essays in one day, I will take advantage of the various toys at my disposal writing on Google space, and direct you, as reason has long dictated, and as happens every time I cannot post something new, to Rachel Maddow. She is must watching. Really. For your sanity, if nothing else.

Addicted as I am to a Certain Baseball Team, Rachel actually connects with me on my morning commute, thanks to the podcast and my trusty antique Basic Ipod. So, today's installment of What Did I Miss If I Missed Rachel is from Thursday night, or, for me, Friday morning. (I have not celebrated both supposed days of Rosh Hashanah, so you can unraise those eyebrows. I intend to next year, though, for reasons partially explained here.)

SO there I was, driving to work on Friday, when this popped up. It explains why the Hate the Muslim campaign cannot be sloughed off as the ravings of a couple of lunatics and what, actually, all of this says about the state of our politics today:

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