Recommend me a level-headed, cool-minded political blog

Excellent!!

Cool!

(This is really coming together!)

One general note -- the idea started with nimh's interest in a level-headed, cool-minded political blog. Any blog has offshoots of course but I do like the idea of keeping things at least somewhat focused. (As in, politics -- not necessarily just American politics, but politics.)

OK, so how do we start?

1.) Decide on a domain name.

2.) Tell Craven.

3.) He does his magic and tells us what to do next.

It's probably changeable so I'd be OK with going with something temporary as we continue to debate possible names...

PONGO!

taken.

pongopundits.com is available though!

* the naked mind *

http://www.register.com/titan/domain/searchresults.rcmx available.

that's thenakedmind.net btw.

pongotheferalmonkeyboy.com is, however, available.

that is my vote, so far.

soz, many things are political. however, if it's only or mostly to be related to politicians or the top of the game, dunno if it's for me (they bore me to tears). i will observe first to see what you guys have in mind. however if it's to be more of a broader observation of societies as res publicas...the political animals that they are with all their bowel movements, diseases and achievements, i'm in.

I'm with Dag about politics per se vs covering history, culture etc in the "observationalism" too...

I mean, I know that I started the thread about seeking a political blog, specifically - even very particularly one about the elections and US (party) politics. That's a good reminder, Soz. And when it comes to finding additional reading material I'm still very much looking for tips on such blogs. But when it comes to writing a blog, whoa, that's like a very different question. I mean, that wasnt something I was even envisaging when I started this thread. And I dunno, when I think of writing on a blog myself, just focusing on politics in terms of the stuff you'd find on the Politics pages of the NYT wouldnt really do it for me. That wouldnt be worth it for me, kinda?

I mean, I could still do the polling stuff etc, of course... but when I think of European stuff to write about, I'm sooner thinking about, to just randomly pick possible posts, the impact of East-West migration after the enlargement of the EU. Or the discrimination of Roma, their exclusion from education, but also how Roma culture plays a role in that. Or the background of the Georgia/Abkhazia/South-Ossetia conflict. Ethnic identity. Or how Budapest has totally changed, even just in the last few years, under the influence of real estate speculation, the lack of regulation when it comes to the wholesale demolition of streets, and how there's organised civic protest in some neighbourhoods but not in others, and why.

Well, actually, I would probably write nothing of the sort about such Broad, Weighty Subject Matter. It would probably be far more off-hand observations - like, so, this Hungarian friend worked for the EU in Brussels and now she's back here working for the Hungarian government, and the difference in office culture, working style is just amazing ... But, you know, still about stuff spanning all of that, kinda.

Anyway, thats just how I'm imagining it, from the top of my head, when I think of myself blogging ... Though I'm absolutely proof positive that I'm totally idealising what I'd actually write about...

Ah, tha's a pity.. thenakedmind.com would have been great

concourtians.com is free .. like a mix of meeting on the concourse and contortions ... might be too obscure tho.

yeah... the .com turned out to be a porn site. welll, porn and politics do have a few things in common, no ?

Oh I totally forgot to cheer at Old Europe's and JoefromChicago's willingness to join!!

Heeeeey!

observationalism.com is free!

I like...

Me too!

Robert's gonna go ahead with that one.

We can figure out content next -- probably fine if everyone pretty much does their own thing. I'd plan on doing mostly politics just 'cause if I don't have a focus I tend to freeze up -- should I write about that? Or that? Maybe that??? I get overwhelmed by the possibilities and nothing actually gets written.

Plus that's something I've been interested in doing for a while (as you can tell from my politics blog thread).

I'm sure I'll go on tangents tho.

How about able2knowitalls.

Is this a blog just for the cool kids? Or can others play too?

Cycloptichorn

I don't know!

I was originally thinking level-headed, cool-minded political blog... came up with some examples of people I thought could provide that if we made our own.

It seems to have morphed a bit from that though. I think maybe keep it to the people who have already come up/ agreed for now, and go from there...