Us. Vs. Them: Political Races and Talk Radio

It's getting nasty here in Ohio's Second Congressional District, what with former Marine and Iraq veteran Paul Hackett, (today's No. 10 top link) a Democrat, challenging former state representative Jean Schmidt, Republican, for the seat in a gerrymandered district that has long favored Republicans. But what's obvious is that bloggers are generating more buzz for Hackett than for Schmidt:



Lots of bloggers are chiming in on the election, including today's top-blog Daily Kos post about Schmidt's weekend denials that she does not know Thomas Noe, a Republican fund-raiser and rare coin dealer who's a central figure in Ohio's "Coingate" scandal about missing and questionable investments in Ohio's workers' comp funds. In today's No. 11-ranked news story, the GOP uses fightin' words, while the Swing State Project lauds Hackett for being equally straightforward.


Heated air waves
Elsehwere, Air America Radio has issued a statement to counter last week's hammerings by conservative bloggers about missing money linked to the liberal network's former investors. WizBang has a sort-of balanced perspective, which is hard to find in this tangled blog war.

Something to laugh about
The results are in, and bad writing has triumphed again. Today's No. 3 link trumpets the results of the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Awards contest for bad fiction, namely, the worst opening line of a bad novel, sponsored by San Jose State University. (Bulwer-Lytton wrote the novel that began, "It was a dark and stormy night...."). Ignored by MSM? Finest in new fiction? "Neither," deadpans Watcher Magazine in honoring winner (or loser, as the case may be) Dan McKay of Fargo, N.D.