To commemorate my obsession, I began (but haven’t finished) redoing the sidebar. The quote replacing Twain’s just seems right in my state of delirium. I think Faulkner would agree.

I began compiling as a fascinated reader. I was especially aided by Brian Linse’s great resource, The Lefty Directory, which contains about 400 quality blogs. As I started blogging 22 months ago, I got in the habit of surfing through other people’s sidebars. I collected too many and had to find a way to make sense of it all, because I kept missing out on some of my favorite bloggers while surfing around.

I decided location was the best way to group ‘em because I share the belief in the value of state coverage, as noted here, passed on by Charles, through Eric, from ArchPundit.

Kos was the first I know of to pursue this route, with Political State Report. The second state effort I knew of was a venture I helped launch last year, known as Open Source Politics. At roughly the same time, Swing State Project was launching. In January, this blog began on similar premises, though with the fast end to the primaries, and the explosion of corruptions the Bushies started getting caught at, our focus got dispersed.

But I kept on gathering. Great writers, average writers, funny-as-hell writers. Tracking to their locations meant I enjoyed the scouring of archives. And on three separate months, I poured every spare second into it. Am I done? Well, not quite. Like counting stars, it can never be ‘done’. But I’m done with it for a bit.

There are others now, like this righty written one which is really quite enjoyable. They love to parse Zogby, apparently unaware of how accurate he’s been most of the time. (He beat the bigs in 2000).

Of these five efforts to do all the states, 3 of the 4 progressive ones are currently among the top 42 best-trafficked Sitemetered progressives online. And the righty one’s traffic would be within this range, too. That kinda suggests there’s a demand.

With the linkpage I’ve set-up, all of them could easily recruit bloggers from between 40-49 states to meet that demand. In fact, our Mary Ratcliff says there’s even a Wyoming native posting at daily Kos, so all 50 states could be covered by native bloggers. Not only would that prove useful for covering Congressional races in 2004, but a great team after the election could start covering legislation in their state capitals and provide a better legislative record than any mainstream media’s ever done.

I also value the power of networking. By connecting with folks near you, arranged offline political activities can occur. What if every one of these progressive bloggers took a week off, registered voters, and canvassed neighborhoods to advance the progressive agenda? That can swing elections at the state and Congressional level, and maybe even get Kerry elected.

FAQs:

Q: I’m not on your list. I thought we were friends.

A: I’ve driven myself bleary-eyed doing this; oversights will occur, Mom. Sorry.

Q: How can I get added to the list?

A: There’s email links on the page. Use them, send me an URL and a location. I’ll try to do one update near Oct 1. After that, I encourage others to take over the page, create a better version, maybe upgrade it so folks can automatically list themselves. I’ll do one update as a courtesy, then I’m done.

Q: Dude, you listed me in the wrong state.

A: Again, email the correction before the update occurs.

Q: Did anyone help?

A: Beyond the inspiration of Brian Linse’s work , Charles Kuffner of Off the Kuff had an old post listing dozens of Texas blogs. South Knox Bubba helped greatly with the Tennessee section

And Earl Dunovant of Prometheus6 provided numerous suggestions for the sample I presented to provide a range of the Black American perspective. (Diverse is the only way to describe his provisions. For those unaware neocons, all Black people don’t blog alike. :: smirk :: ). Earl’s also got a new group effort launching that’s called The Niggerati Network. You better bookmark that.

My thanks to each of these gents.

And of course, I was aided by all 846 progressive bloggers in the States-Writes list, plus a couple hundred others in other sections of this page. Without the cumulative talents of this explosion of talent that grows daily, I might have had, you know, a life these last few weeks.

Q: Quit blathering; when will it be online?

A: Wait, I also re-reviewed hundreds of blogs in the past weeks, culling out any that hadn’t posted after July 1. So you should find almost all are active. I also gathered at least a couple of newspaper sites for all 50 states. I did way more in the media centers of NY, CA and DC. And in all the swing states, I harvested newslinks for almost every city of 50,000 or more, thinking this could benefit a certain Presidential candidate. I even found a site that aids readers in getting past news registration screens pretty quick.

After all that, I also started organizing by areas of expertise. And found other ways to organize that ought to aid any progressive citizen, candidate and veteran or newbie blogger. And, and…. oh never mind.

Q: Did you order the state lists by quality?

A: That’s impossible. Sure, a few of the first ones in some states are way up there. But shifting took place to accomodate line spacing. And some states have great ones right at the end. The only place I made a concentrated effort for quality was in the non-state groupings.

A state’s quality assessment can’t be done in such a directory when 14 states and DC have so many bloggers: California (108), TX (79), NY (78), IL (47), MA (43), WA (40), OR (38), MN (32), FL (26), TN (24), DC (23), PA/OH (22 ea), CO (21) and NC (20) account for 623 of the 846 I counted in the state lists. With others in the topic lists, since I didn’t cross-list all of ‘em, I easily exceeded 1,000 blogs. And I bet I still have 200 more in my bookmarks that remain unlisted, with thousands out there I’ve never seen.

Now the onus is on others who want to be included to get the info to me, because I’m simply and completely EXHAUSTED.

And yeah, for the hundreds of hours invested, I did try to find a way to capitalize a part of it. But most of it is yours to surf for your own bliss.

I doubt