Instahoglets - The "Blogroll Purge" Edition

The Newshog blogroll purge has gone very well so far. Regulars will recall that last week I cut every A - lister who didn't link to Newshog from the blogroll and instead added a bunch of smaller blogs who did link to Newshog.

The rationale is this: why should I help drive their traffic, ad revenues and sense of self importance if they don't give a flying f**k about my tiny blog?

So many thanks to the A-Listers who do give a flying f**k and who understand that, having found a little bit of bloggy power and fame, the Spiderman problem applies to them: the superb Sean Paul at The Agonist, the team at Crooks and Liars who set the standard for A-Listers who give a f**k, Glenn Greenwald (who has been very kind to me this last week)and the folks from Whatreallyhappened (who aren't a blog but have been wonderful anyway).

Thanks too go out to the excellent Moderate Voice, Shakes, Skippy and Avedon's Sideshow, all of whom deserve to be A -list blogs.

(And a raspberry to Atrios, who hat-tipped TPM for the story on General Pace's denial when TPM had hat-tipped Newshog in their post!)

The upshot of the "purge was that Newshog's blogroll actually got longer...and I'm very happy with the additions, good blogs all. Today, I want to showcase what some of them are up to.

A blast from the idiot past: Anything They Say recalls Wolfowitz saying they wouldn't need much of a force to keep the peace in Iraq. Particularly apposite given reports today. Libby at The Impolitic has the goods on the rose-colored powerpoint presentation that said 5,000 troops would be enough.

Smintheus is one of the best writers over at Dkos, but I think I prefer reading his work on his own blog. He gives "a suckers guide to unclassified reports" as he expertly dissects the recent NIE on Iraq and decides it is more rhetorical than candid.

Glenn, as always, writes the way many of us wish we could - The media is continuously violating its own anonymity policies re: Iran.

Litbrit, blogging over at Michael Hussey's excellent Pushing Rope, is eloquent on why religion should have no place in politics but right now you have to be a Christian to be president. Ron at MEJ adds to the discussion as he objects to the idea that only the "religious" can determine morality and refers to Jefferson's Bible for guidance.

Demosthenes takes AEI talking-head Chris Horner's antipathy to global warming as his example and gives a little friendly tutoring on both talking points and how to shut them down.

James Benjamin and his Left End of the Dial blog have a new home. James is always great and I strongly advise you to visit and blogroll his new site.

Sean Paul has a great team at The Agonist. I'm particularly fond of Ian Welsh's writings - knowledgeable and punchy. Here he is examining why US health care costs twice as much as most other countries, while leaving 47 million people uninsured: Some Costs For Doing Medical Care the "For Profit" Way.

Avedon on when to say you're sorry. YES when you voted for invading Iraq, but NO when you're the victim of bigot on a faux-moral crusade...and YES when you're the media who made Edwards, Amanda, and Shakes the story, instead of Bill Donahue's disgusting bigotry.

State of The Day lets you play "Where in the world is Moqtada al-Sadr?".

Check them out. In fact, check out all the folks on the blogroll. They are Newshog-guaranteed to give a flying f**k about you.

Update More blogroll bulemia as Libby Spencer at the Impolitic joins in the purging:

These big bloggers seem to forget that the reason they got so big was through the support of us little inconsequential sites who blogrolled them and consistently linked to them while they built their traffic. Now that they're being wooed by the establishment because of that traffic, they're becoming too big for their britches. Maybe we need to remind them that what we gave, we can take away.

...it's time to put Atrios' blogroll vanity amnesty scheme into motion. Any A-lister that thinks they're too good to bother with the hoi polloi are off my roll and I encourage you, my cherished readers to do the same, starting with Atrios (Eschaton), Kos and MyDD.

These guys are saying blogroll links mean nothing and in terms of traffic generation that's true enough. But they do matter in other ranking systems and one might think that if all of sudden these "elites" starting showing up in Technorati searches with 200 links from their fellow elites instead of 2000+ from us little inconsequential blogs who are "never going to get anywhere," they might change their mind on their importance.

...I don't see how we gain anything by creating an intercine elite whose loyalty rests more with the establishment tnan their with their fellow bloggers. I mean wasn't the whole purpose in the beginning to become watchdogs of the establishment, not to join its ranks.

That, at least to me, looks like a highly compelling argument.

Next, griftdrift steps up.

The sad fact is as much spew as there is about new media being the great equalizer castes are being formed and to a degree there are the cool kids and there are the kids standing against the wall. So what to do? What to do? Pretty simple. Stop trying to sniff ass of the big kids.

Drifting Through The Grift definitely gets a place on the Newshog blogroll.