Blog Essentials

After blogging for a little over a year it seems to me that the one invaluable skill I've brought to the endeavor is an ability to tune out so much of the noise and static that stands in for meaningful political discourse and tease out some of the essential issues, facts and insights that, in my view, deserve attention.  I have only been able to do this, however, by relying on other blogs which provide consistently inspired, incisive, and informative content.  

Taking a tip from Meteor Blades over at Daily Kos, who created a list of worthwhile blogs (somehow Fair and Unbalanced didn't make the cut), I thought I would create my own top 20.  So, here is a non-exclusive list of the bloggers who inspired and informed me in 2011, and who have made Fair and Unbalanced a far more interesting blog than if I had to come up with all this stuff on my own:

Amy Davidson, Robert Reich, Greg Sargent, Steve Benen, Tom Engelhardt, Digby, Josh Marshall, Kevin Drum, Adam Serwer, the folks at Campaign for America's Future (including Robert Borosage, Isaiah Poole, RJ Eskow, Dave Johnson), Jodi Jacobson and others at RH Reality Check, David Dayen, Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Glenn Greenwald, Howie Klein, Meteor Blades, Joan McCarter, Laura Clawson and others at Daily Kos, and the writers at ThinkProgress, Talk Left, American Constitution Society and Other Words.