Best Lefty Blogs

Wampum is now taking nominations for the “Koufax Awards,” a set of awards for various outstanding achievements in the field of excellence by lefty blogs. In most of the categories, the competition is likely to be fierce (but friendly).

• Best Blog: Likely to be a close race between Atrios, Marshall, CalPundit, and Kos.
• Best Writing: Looks like Dave Neiwert will start with a slight edge, but Jeane DÂ’Arc and Digby are right on his tail.
• Best Post: This one is tough, I’ll have to ponder it for a while. A number of people have nominated Orcinus’ The Political and the Personal for Best Post, which truly is a great post and shows why Dave belongs in the “Best Writing” category.
• Best Series: You guessed it, Dave Neiwert’s is again a top contender; this time for his Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism series. Deltoid’s merciless dismantling of the fraudulent John Lott is another popular nominee (and Dave can’t win everything, can he?) Charles Kuffner’s coverage of the Texas Redistricting Boondoggle was also impressive. Finally, there’s Slacktivist’s ongoing heroic effort to read, analyzye, and blog the disturbing bestseller, Left Behind–so you don’t have to.
• Best Single Issue Blog: I’m assuming that “politics” doesn’t count as a single issue, because all the nominees are political blogs. But if by single issue they mean, for example, “Law” then Mark Kleiman is a good candidate, as is last year’s winner Jeralyn Merritt. Hmm, I wonder if two economists blogging about politics and economics counts as a single issue blog?
• Best Group Blog: This is the only category where there’s little doubt over the outcome. Crooked Timber wins by a mile.
• Most Humorous Blog: I don’t really read blogs that are just humor, all the time. But TBogg and Roger Ailes consistently crack me up. So does Jesse.
• Most Humorous Post. Those with very short memories have an easy decision, Atrios’ Preznit Giv Me Turkee. But if you think back to October when Luskin had his lawyer send a threatening letter to Atrios, the decision becomes much more difficult. The Poor Man’s parody of that letter (“…tricksyness in the first degree, and we hates you”) is a hilarious classic.
• Best Design: Ampersand won last year. Blah3 seems to be giving Barry some competition this time around.
• Best New Blog: I don’t remember whether they qualify (the first post must be on or after 7/1/03), but 18 Minute Gap and Suburban Guerilla are strong contenders. Ruy Teixeira may prove even stronger. Ruy T. would also be strong in a most difficult to spell category.
• Best Special Effects: Uggabugga looks like this year’s strongest contender–it’s the go-to blog for great graphs and figures. (Speaking of which, if you haven’t ever taken a look at the Four Views of the Red/Blue states maps to your left, give it a click.)

The nominations are open throughout December and the voting starts in January.

AB

P.S. Where’s the “most charts and graphs” category?

P.P.S. Every time I hit “Publish” I remember one more great blog or post that I forgot to mention. You can corrrect my omissions in comments here or at Wampum.