500 posts!

So, this is the 501st post at thosethingswesay. Thanks, Jon!

I guess this blog has a small readership (I've never measured it) made up mostly of friends of mine and Jon's, with a few people who straggle in from TPMCafe and from our one mention on Slate awhile back. We're not a huge progressive blog like Talkingpointsmemo or Eschaton or Dailykos. That's okay. There are thousands of blogs like ours with small readerships. I think we serve a function as well -- we provide a little something different for the readers of the big blogs who might drop by here during a moment where they just want a little something else to read.

Anyway, I guess that's where we stand. I like to think that me and Jon have put up some thoughts that are interesting. I'm not sure, philosophically, what they all add up to and I haven't reviewed the archives (I'm sure I've written somethings I'd be embarassed to reread) and I know we're typo-ridden and sometimes grammatically incorrect. If I had to sum it up, I'd say we've been progressive but not mainstream, and with a hint of libertarianism and a hint of socialism that are always at odds with each other.

More than anything, me and Jon have been mostly aghast. This whole blog has been informed by the fact that we Americans are in the fourth year of a way that we didn't need to initiate. For my part, thinking back to Bush getting to the White House in 2000, I never imagined that things could get this bad. I guess I naively thought, "What's he going to do, commit us to a multiyear military engagement on dubious grounds?"

I'm sad to admit that, before it seemed like that would happen for sure, and even after 9-11, that I was probably prone to dismiss such a notion as unfairly partisan and perhaps paranoid. But, as we now know, paranaoia doesn't mean they're not out to get you.