If all you've heard about DailyKos is what a bunch of radical far-leftwingers they are, you owe it to yourself to sample it on your Kindle. DailyKos is mostly populated by progressives of all stripes, from left to right. Thanks to its site-wide ranking system, where every member can vote for or against diaries (individual entries) they think add something to the conversation, the cream of the crop tends to float to the top. It is this cream that is downloaded throughout the day to your Kindle, replete with links to significant sites and original material for further exploration.
For a one-stop shop of what's really going on on the left AND the right, you can't do better than to start with DailyKos. The most up-to-date information often hits here hours or days before you find it mentioned anywhere else, and it's interesting to see what the cable news shows do (and do not) pick up on.
"Kossacks," as the members call themselves -- an ironic fun-poking at uninformed people who believe it when they are told these people are communists -- are an independent, spirited bunch with wide-ranging interests, talents, and employments. Hardly "just a bunch of kids," many are professional people (even some famous ones), and most of the diarists who rise to prominence behave professionally no matter what their age. Sincere and honest glimmers of personality shine through, however, which gives the writing a spirit, depth, and humanity that you'll never find in homogenized, regurgitated talking-points fare.
Sure, you're going to get politics here (and in-depth analyses you just won't find elsewhere), but you also will find an incredible array of diaries covering everything from issues of national and international import to touching personal stories. For example, I started my day out today reading "In Honor of My Departed Friend: A Brief Tale of Love and Loss," Redstateresident's loving and beautiful tribute to his dog Mobley who just passed away. (Having old dogs myself, Mobley's story really touched my heart.) Diverse people write about what they are passionate about, and so you get a wide array of well-researched, well-written information. Some are super-serious, some are laugh-out-loud funny. Kind of like Keith Olbermann...who occasionally pops into the mix.
I LEARN about new things almost every day on DailyKos. Think of the Kindle subscription as a portal into a much larger world. You will have to turn on the wireless to pursue links to online material, whether it's non-Kos sites or links to the "High Impact Diaries" and choice comments compiled by each day's "Rescue Rangers" (who monitor the universe so you don't have to). However, most of the day's best material is downloaded to your Kindle for off-line consumption, so you'll be able to read "Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up" (a pointed, sometimes hilarious summation of what the media biggies have written that day) in the lead-lined hospital waiting room. If you want to follow links to the original articles, just turn on the wireless.
The only thing I DO NOT LIKE about my DailyKos subscription is that, for some reason, the type is very much smaller than all the other sites I go to. I have to set my Kindle type up on four or five to be able to read it, and then bump it back down if I follow a link to another web site. I think they must have the type size hard-coded so a user's settings can't override it. If somebody with the power to change it reads this, please fix it. Old eyes can't deal with tiny, tiny type.
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