i'm mostly staying away from the campaigns

[piranha]

because politics, especially US politics, irritates and depresses me like nothing else.

but people who do research, they make me feel good. and here's one person, "grassroots mom", whose article entitled I Refuse to Buy into the Obama Hype (now a supporter) brims with actual information rather than, well, empty rhetoric about who does and does not have "experience". it's long, but IMO worth reading.

worth reading, but probably nobody who reads here normally needs telling that to accept anyone else's conclusions without doing one's own research is iffy. if you're looking for other people who do their research well, i think hilzoy over at obsidian wings is very even-handed.

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Politics aside, the Library of Congress's rapidly growing on-line collections are among the best research tools on the Internet. Period. They're giving all of us - inside the US and out - free access to documents (and images, and media, and databases) that, not too long ago, would have required a trip to Washington, D.C. and a whole lot of time to examine. Now it's there for the searching - the tip of an archival iceberg, but growing every day.

I don't know how they managed to get the appropriations to digitize their holdings, and I suspect that at least some in Congress would freak right out if they know what all we were giving away, free, to the world (because the TURRISTS! Might LEARN SOMETHING!) but I'm immensely grateful that they have.

And yes, I've used it exactly the same way Grassroots Mom does, to do my own research about candidates. I wish more people would.

[prairierabbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links. I would add that Obama was a very effective legislator in Illinois before he went to DC, as well.