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Wednesday, December 23, 2009

GOLD STAR AWARDS, December 2009

I've been off all this week, so I haven't been blogging or on MMFA. It's funny because I thought, "I have a week off, I can blog almost every day!" Ha-ha. Well... it's hasn't worked out quite like that. I've been so busy, I'm starting to wonder how I manage to get anything done when I'm working! ANYWAY... We're travelling for the holidays, so this will be my last post of the year. I figured we can go out with some GOLD (and other) STAR awards. This group is the first one to include some non "GOLD" stars in it, corresponding to the veterans committee's inductees, and I highly recommend these for a good laugh!

So here you go, corresponding to the Baseball Hall of Fame election of 1939:


The George Sisler GOLD STAR #10: Newshounds

I love their motto: We watch Fox, so you don't have to. Well THANK THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER FOR THAT! Because if I can't find time to blog, I'm sure not going to waste any of what's left watching FOX! They're kind of like an MMFA that doesn't take themselves so seriously, and focuses primarily on Fox. They're not above taking the occasional cheap shot, but they really do skewer all of Rupert's little minions really well. (And for any "C-Students" in the room: Hounds hunt Foxes. Get it? LOL) My only complaint is that you can't seem to leave any comments on any of their items. (If you CAN, my complaint is that it is not immediately obvious how to do this! LOL)



The Willie Keeler GOLD STAR #11: Newscorpse

"The demise of the media is upon us and these pages will serve to both document and eulogize the passing of the late, great 4th estate." (from their homepage) Newscorpse is similar to Newshounds in their tone, but do not focus as narrowly on just Fox. They're also a lot like MMFA in that they are driven as much by a general desire for journalistic integrity as they are any political agenda, possibly more so.



The Eddie Collins GOLD STAR #12: Wikipedia

No intro needed here, I'm sure. True academics may not like it, and I can't say I blame them, but what blogger could survive without it?! An encyclopedia written by the masses may not sound like such a good idea to some, but the staff and moderators do a fantastic job trying to keep the information accurate, marking statements that should be sourced, or marking articles that need to be checked for neutrality, etc... that it has become the foremost collection of information about everything under the sun, anywhere on the net. (It's strengths lie in everything that Conservapedia criticises them for - neutrality, objectivity, etc... I mean... who needs that 'liberal nonsense'?! Oh, they'll get theirs!)



Lou Gehrig GOLD STAR #13: FactCheck.org

If posting a list of 10 liberal that I hate doesn't convince anyone of my objectivity, THIS should. Fact Check has quickly become one of the most respected, and most cited "bullshit detectors" by bloggers and partisans sitting on both sides of the ailse, and even some that are standing out in the hallway. I won't go so far as to say that I've never disagreed with some of their judgement calls - it's inevitable in politics that different people will interpret things differently - but I've never felt they were conservatively biased when calling out Democrats and I've never heard them accused of liberal bias when they've called out Republicans. It is they're objectivity and integrity that has made them such a popular and valuable resource. If the MEDIA had learned that lesson, perhaps we wouldn't need Newscorpse!



The Charley "Old Hoss" Radbourne SILVER STAR #1: FAILBlog

Arguably the funniest collection of blogs on the 'Net. Their main blog (Failblog) contain the most extensive collection of Accidents, Catastrophes, Honest Mistakes, Poor Judgement and Unintentional Hilarity to be fond anywhere. From the main page, there are links to Graphjam, a collection of MS Excel, "Chart Wizard" graphics representing life, popular culture and the occasional politics. Hit "Nostalgia" for Once Upon a Win to be taken back to your childhood toys, games, books and more... regardless of when your childhood was. (Well...mostly for those who were born after 1965. Screw the baby boomers!) There's Engrish Funny, looking at all the unintentionally hilarious ways the English language has been butchered around the world. (Not politically correct in the least, but still frickin' hilarious!) LOLcats and LOLdogs are funny pet pic's with captions. And there's a lot of funny Look-Alikes - though I swear they sometimes get those backwards! Anyway, if you have checked it out yet, DO SO! You'll be instantly hooked.



The "Cap" Anson SILVER STAR #2: Some Grey Bloke

OMG. Bar none the most consistently funny channel on all of YouTube. The link up there is for his channel, here is his latest video. This guy is a RIOT. There more vids of his check out, the funnier they get. They're animated, and are presented as a Vlog being done by a divorced, Internet-addicted, British bloke named Graham, who is at once both a freakin' genius and totally clueless. This is a MUST SEE. This guy does a fantastic job with these. Check them out!



The Buck Ewing SILVER STAR #3: Sore Thumbs

This is one of the web-comics that I regularly read. It's gotten a bit off track lately, kind of in the middle of a series re-boot, but prior that that re-boot was a pretty solid mix of sexy satire and politics. I recommend starting it from the beginning though, to get a sense of the characters. The main character, Cecania is beautiful, liberal and constantly at odds with her bother, Fairbanks, who starts out as an hysterical one-dimension conservative parody, and develops into a deep, richly textured conservative parody. As I said, it's gotten less political of late, but it's still well worth reading. (Hey: It's FREE! Whatdoyawant?!) I'm curious to see where they're going with the re-boot. Hopefully it ends up somewhere near's where it left off, but either way, it's still a riot. (BTW - that first issues came out in March of 2004, so when Cecania's Coulter-witch of a mother says "Our Beloved President" she means BUSH. LOL)

So there we are, and I'm out for the year! I hope everybody has a Merry Christmas and a Safe and Happy Holiday Season and New Year!

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For reference, previous inductees include:
Ty Cobb's GOLD STAR #1: Media Matters for America
Babe Ruth's GOLD STAR #2: The Skeptic's Dictionary
Honus Wagner's GOLD STAR #3: Snopes
Walter Johnson GOLD STAR #4: Armchair Subversive
Christy Mathewson GOLD STAR #5: Humanism by Joe
Cy Young's GOLD STAR #6: The American Prospect
Nap Lajoie's GOLD STAR #7: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
Tris Speaker's GOLD STAR #8: Rational Wiki
Pete Alexander's GOLD STAR #9: Republican Offenders

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for the gold star!

    FYI, you certainly CAN post a comment. We've got a new commenting program and we're not so thrilled with it so we hope to migrate to a new one again next week. But in the meanwhile, you just need to log in first, either to a Yahoo or Google account or set up a new one with JS-Kit, our comments software.

    If there are any problems, send an email via the contact link on the site and I'll troubleshoot for you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I disagree with your assessment of factchecking sources - I'm pretty convinced that they lean right with some of their items. I think that Factcheck.org is better than Politifact.com. Politifact has some serious issues with the way they classify items, and the criteria definitely hurts liberals who make unintended errors and favors conservatives who make purposefully dishonest or deceptive comments.

    I agree about Wikipedia needing more props! I noticed on their site this week, the founder asking for donations to keep it ad-free - seems like a good place to contribute.

    Happy Holidays to you and your family.

    ReplyDelete
  3. NHEllen,

    Thank you for clearing that up! I'll look forward to signing up!

    DDolly,

    You are correct about the Rightward leanings of both Politifact and FactCheck. (And yeah, PF's worse in that regard.) I still like both however, as neither leans right the way that say, FOX NEWS does: they'll still call it out when a Republican lies, and they don't go out of their way to twist a Democrat's words to CREATE a lie. So the fact that they lean Conservative on the more grey-area stuff actually makes them a MORE useful source for a liberal to quote from - the Conservtive can't just dismiss them as "just another liberal source." If they say the Pub lied or the Dem told the truth...? Hey: That's coming from a Right-leaning source!

    And if I want to find out what the Right is lying about from a LIBERAL source: that's what MMFA is for! LOL

    Thank you both for your comments,
    ~NGEddie

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  4. I have had conservative acquaintances tell me that FactCheck leans left! I laughed, then disagreed wholeheartedly with them. And yeah, I still think they're good sources to use, and overall they provide a good product!

    ReplyDelete