Wit and wisdom: Thomas Sowell:

“Politics is the art of finding clever reasons for doing dumb things.”

“We are among the biggest fools in history if we keep on paying people to make us hate each other. Whether it is called by pretty names like “multiculturalism,” “diversity” or “gender awareness,” that is what it all boils down to.”

“If you have trouble visualizing the billions and trillions of dollars that politicians talk about (and spend) in Washington, think of it this way: a billion seconds ago, John F. Kennedy was president of the United States, And a trillion seconds ago no one on this planet could read or write.”

“It always amazes me that there are people who go out of their way to be difficult–and who are then surprised and bitter when they are fired, divorced or dropped as friends.”

“Insulating people from reality produces unrealistic people. It doesn’t matter whether they are welfare recipients, spoiled rich kids, tenured professors in the ivy league, or federal judges with lifetime appointments.”

All are from his book “Barbarians inside the gates”

h/t SCSU

I found this post by Chris Bowers on MyDD in need of a good fisking.

The basic idea that Bowers presents is that the individualist, autocratic (he incorrectly calls it aristocratic) philosophy of the right wing blogosphere is now hurting them compared to the new community style lefty blogosphere.

The left-wing blogosphere is beginning to decidedly pull away from the right wing blogosphere in terms of traffic. This is largely a result of the open embrace of community blogging on the left and the stagnant, anti-meritorious nature of the right-wing blogosphere that pushes new, emerging voices to the margins.

First off, can I call an immediate shenanigan? I’m what most would consider a new voice in the blogosphere. I started blogging in February of 2004, I was the 70th-something addition to the MOB role, but I still get great traffic. I’ve been posted on CQ and SCSUscholars, Shot in the Dark and Fraters Libertas. I don’t think that I’m being suppressed by the right wing blogger aristocracy. I’ll even mention that one of my friends has been posted on Powerline more than once. The blogosphere has been pretty good to me and mine. I don’t consider myself at the margin, I’m further from the margin than I probably deserve.

Adding up the 200 blogs that are concerned with politics and either identify or have been identified with Democrats / liberals or Republicans / conservatives, I found 87 blogs that general fit into the “liberal” category and 113 blogs that fit into the conservative category. However, despite the greater number of conservative blogs, the liberal blogs totaled nearly ten million page views per week, while the conservative blogs managed just over six million.

I’m going to immediately note that Bowers is committing a huge fallacy. He is using the top blogs to extrapolate what is happening throughout the blogosphere. Talk about a huge jump in thinking, you need to get a representative sample before you start playing this game.

Thus, for the aforementioned reason this paragraph is BS:

So the liberal blogosphere is beginning to pull away from the conservative blogopshere in terms of audience size. At the same time, there appear to be more conservative blogs than liberal blogs. In fact, when it comes to total number, new Republican / conservative blogs might even be outpacing new Democratic / liberal blogs. What could be the cause of this?

Like I said, he’s using very unscientific methods to try to conclude things about audience size that he just has no business doing.

Continuing on he notes this table: (table might not come out looking right, so check the MyDD post for it)

Blog rank: 1-40 41-80 81-120 121-160 161-200
Lib 24 / 16 / 14 / 13 / 19
Con 16 / 24 / 26 / 27 / 21

This table shows that according to blogad ranks, the first 40 blogs based on traffic are mostly liberal, and after that the conservatives lead. (this is an important part of my criticism, I think that conservatives are leading every part of the blogosphere except the top 40, I’d like to get some real numbers on it, but I have some good reasons to think I’m right.)

Of the twenty-four liberal blogs in the top quintile, Dailykos, TPM Café, Smirking Chimp, Metafilter, BooMan Tribune, MyDD, and Dembloggers are full-fledged community sites where members cannot only comment, but they can also post diaries / articles / polls. By comparison, there are no community sites among the top twenty-four conservative blogs. None, zip, zero, nada.

So, as we see the reasoning of this fellar unfold, please note he sounds more and more like an idiot. Maybe the reason that this whole community blog thing is working for the leftys is that they are trying to get an audience they haven’t earned.

Overall, while both the right-wing and left-wing blogosphere have seen growth in traffic, the truly exceptional growth of many community sites on the liberal end of the blogosphere has made the difference that catapulted the liberal blogosphere from half the size of the right-wing blogosphere in July 2003 to more than 60% its size in June 2005.

Again, BS with no numbers.

Because of Scoop’s diary feature, it is possible to become at least a semi-famous blogger without having a blog of your own. An entire generation of popular liberal bloggers grew out of the Dailykos diaries and comments

Like I mentioned earlier, none of this is anything to be proud of. You now have a bunch of bloggers visiting and using the few top liberal websites instead of making their own sites. This removes from “the tail” plenty of taleneted bloggers on the left. This also is a way to cheat, it’s like a marketing ploy. Go to Phil’s Blog and get yourself some free traffic by doing no work. It reminds me of those stupid giveaways that car dealers use like “Cashback bonus” it’s all B.S.

The inability to operate within a community must be the primary reason behind the large number of conservative blogs in the second, third and fourth quintiles of the Blogads traffic rankings. In fact, of these 120 blogs, 77 of them are openly conservative / libertarian. There are swarms of new conservative voices looking to breakout in the right-wing blogosphere

And some of us are doing quite well, thank you. It is from this paragraph that I would hypothesize that conservatives rule the blogosphere in all the lower quintiles. The faux traffic for lefty bloggers at the top has lead to a strong conservative bottom. Conservatives are more willing to set out on their own, without any assist from a top blogger, to see what they’re schtick is worth. People don’t believe me when I talk about conservatism being “grassroots” but this is exactly it.

As we can learn from this Sifry post, having power over the “tail” of the blogosphere is much more important than ruling the top:

…the fact that the A-list exists does nothing to drown out the immensely larger set of conversations that are going on among smaller groups of people, like friends and niche topic bloggers. In fact, even though the amount of influence that a single blog may have is less than that of a single blog on the A-list, the aggregate influence of all of the long tail far outstrips even the mainstream media.

Thus, those who rule the tail rule the blogosphere. Hugh Hewitt in his book “Blog” credits the tail with moving national press towards the eason jordan/trent lott/vets for truth stories of the previous election cycle. It’s a parlor trick, a three card monty of blogging. Don’t be fooled and fear not, truth is on the conservative side.