This Just In!

This is not directed at Joe or any single blogger here at TMV. It is intended to address the Blog site in general.

Yesterday McCain gave a rather significant speech on energy and balancing the national budget. Where is the coverage of this? In the last 60 artilces posted in TMV only about 5 of them were dealing with John McCain and of those they did not cover his ideas, campaign or beliefs. What they did was cast doubt on Can Egpytian Born McCain be president. The GOP is melting down. McCain shakes up his staff.

Think someone might actually post about this BEFORE the official Democratic Talking points are released in response. I noticed that Barak Obama has nothing up at his website yet so I guess that is why no one here has Opined on this speech. Perhaps someone here could have an idea of their own that is not influenced by official GOP or DNC talking points?

Thanks for the morning laugh Joe. Better'n coffee.
Off to work I go!

You do indeed imply that we don't care about McCain's economic policy by or there is some big plan to exclude posts that discuss McCain in anything but a critical light. Or that we are a hotbed of Obama political operatives.

Just to clue you in:

I'm driving some 500 miles a day or 600 on many days between three states between now and the end of August. For 24 hours this week I could not even get online because the hotel I stayed at in a small town in Montana had internet that would disconnect about every minute. In case you haven't noticed, my own posts are way down in number and some are on a timer.

Also, I guess you're new to blogs. Why don't you visit a lot of the blogs on our blogroll. Most weblogs are done by people who sign up and write on issues they pick. You will find a)blogs don't cover every issue b)blogs on all sides don't cover every single issue every campaign wants c)yesterday a LARGE number of blogs didn't touch on what was not just McCain's talk about his economic plan but Obama's as well and some news stories wrote about the battle over the economy. Both candidates talked about their economic plans. Even some of the fine blogs run by major news organizations don't pick up on every campaign story or cover them with varying degrees.

Your implication in your remark that because there is nothing detailing McCain's plans on his site because none of the 20 so people on TMV -- several of whom either like McCain or lean very strongly to them -- can't write anything not about McCain or can't write without being told what to think or don't want to write about McCain's makes your comment a less serious one and really one that shouldn't be answered. It's filled with an assumption that is flawed and it's evident from anyone who read it that it has its own highly visible political anchor. But still:

You've decided to suggest that all of us -- who have never even met each other physically (I have met Dr. E and that's it) -- somehow operate with a grand political plan and that we're all a bunch of Obama supporters.

FYI: we have several people who are Republicans or who were Republicans and are now independents writing on this site. Each writer reaches his/her opinions separately and is not instructed by me or any agenda as to what to write in general terms or in daily specifics. 'And a tip: when you imply writers (including them) of waiting to get talking points you won't win friends and influence people (who may agree with you).

Like other blogs, we're all signed up here and when we can post we do. If we can't, then we just can't. And we all choose our topics ourselves.There's no TMV daily agenda of assigned topics. On some days, you'll see two people write on the same topic and some see it differently on the same day.

Just for your information: I was planning an around the sphere today that will have links including a few on the economic battle between the two candidates. And I was planning an overview on the economic issue in the campaign -- one that quotes from many news articles. But I can't guarantee that I will get to those: I am traveling and time is limited and I have a backlog of several posts (and some are not serious political posts).

But just because you don't see something on TMV the way YOU want to see it WHEN you want to see it doesn't mean there is some big administrative conspiracy to ignore it or that it isn't up there because, gee, we just haven't gotten our marching orders from the RNC or the DNC on what to say yet and we can't reach any conclusions without getting those good, old Talking Points. How can we POSSIBLY function without those faxes from Howard Dean?

In a political campaign this kind of reaction is par for the course: each side wants to clamor to pressure a site to run what it wants. And in doing so, those who clamor will go on the attack with varying degrees of aggression, in effect questioning the integrity of the writers or a whole site.

TMV doesn't respond to people clamoring for us to run more on a campaign's press releases. And we most certainly will not do stories or posts because someone accuses us of in effect being overt or covert operatives for one campaign if we don't do what they suggest on what we write about. There are no quotas on stories we do or can't do.

I also don't think the state troopers would like to see me driving my Chevy van and doing posts when I'm driving 500 or 600 miles through Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana this summer.

We don't ORDER people on TMV to write on issues and news stories. Each writer picks his/her topic. There are and will be days when some topics are missed and either picked up later in posts, or mentioned with other things in posts. Or, in some cases, we could miss an issue due to the constantly changing nature of blogging, in which you often respond to the latest breaking story and in doing so could miss earlier stories.

And we do get interesting campaign emails from Obama, McCain and even from several Senators. These are in fact VERY useful in terms of general background and are welcome. This doesn't mean we use them or use their links just as we don't use every link a large number of bloggers send us.

FYI Obama also talked on the economy yesterday. His plan was also not covered on TMV yesterday. His followers have not sent me a single email or left a comment about not covering it.

Yesterday you derided me personally for not wanting to discuss issues.

Today I returned the favor.