Though I haven't journaled on it much lately, I've been heavily in news-junkie mode for awhile, and getting a bit worse, sucking in volumes of politik and news sources to try to get a handle on WT* is going on the the world. It's getting a bit scary. Time to cut back. (Is there a methadone for news?)

Part of this is simply the recognition, of course, that I do not in fact have a substantial private army capable of doing my bidding on the scale I wish... yet...

The other part is, I'm just banging my head against the limits of the sources I can get hold of for all of the major news stories these days, let alone crank down hard enough to slice through the gobs and gobs of spin slathered over every news story. I've even stopped reading the Daily Howler, not because it's not vastly important, but because it hurts me when it exposes journalism as the apalling farce it's become. Clearly, at this point, to sort through any remotely political story, I would have to do so much fact-checking on those b******s that it would be tantamount to re-reporting it myself all over again. And, well, I already have 1.5 jobs, thank you very much. So in the absence of anything I can do besides vote a well-informed conscience, and occasionally do some consciousness-raising among people who'll listen to my point of view, it's time to crank back and stick to a select few good sources.

Orbat.com and Strategypage are still daily reading, but I'm going to try dropping all those mid-day checks of AP and Reuters, local paper breaking news stories, fresh headlines from papers elsewhere on the globe, and the potpourri of journaled analyses in random blogs. Journals of friends and a few helpful sources (see above and below) will make the cut, but lots of other things won't. I want to stop twitching, you see.

Speaking of twitchy, I can't imagine quite what it must be like to be a rabid leftist these days. However, Mudville Gazette has reminded us, suitably enough, of Orwell in this must-read post entitled, "The New Goldstein and Your Two Minutes Hate". I always thought the convulsive reaction reminded me of something...

Well, guess I'll go now and wait for the rats.

In the meantime, one can always get back 'on the right side of history' by reading The Politburo Diktat, "Exposing Imperialist Lackeys, Capitalist Reactionaries, and Zionist Running Dogs"...

Pax vobis.