Damn, I Always Did Like That Jim Baron

Many thanks to the Pawtucket Time's Jim Baron for his kind words and solicitation on behalf of Anchor Rising yesterday in the second part of his "Politics as Usual" column, selfishly pasted below in its entirety. It means a lot not just considering the source (from the mind and pen of one of the state's region's outstanding reporters) but because, as a regular reader of his opinion column, I know that he disagrees with the positions put forth in about 80% of A.R.'s posts!

Scaled-back blogs

Information is a precious commodity and it is always a shame to see a quality provider of reliable information and commentary goes away. We’ve all seen daily newspapers disappear across the country and even the world.

Websites and blogs started springing up to fill the void, many of them excellent, many not so much.

Rhode Island has been fortunate to have several excellent blogs and bloggers but recently one of them gave us bad news.

The folks at Anchor Rising.com, a conservatively-oriented political site, announced this week that they are being forced to scale back their efforts so that the main contributors can concentrate on earning a living at their day jobs. They had been hoping to raise enough money to sustain a full-time staffer on a payroll, but as Justin Katz and Marc Comtois (who, along with Monique Chartier do the lion’s share of the posting) explained in separate posts, that didn’t happen.

That is truly a shame.

In navy-blue Rhode Island, it is important, if not imperative, to have a conservative voice speaking out, even if the message often falls on deaf ears.

As blogs go, Anchor Rising is an excellent one. The postings are consistently of a high intellectual level, well argued and supported with facts. You don’t have to agree with them, but you have to respect them as well-reasoned opinions. There is almost none of the name-calling, flaming and other vitriol that too often mar many sites, particularly political discussions) on the Internet. Some of the reply comments can get a bit rambunctious, but that is always going to happen when you deal with the public.

Anchor Rising goes on, but its posts will be fewer and further between, and that is unfortunate.

If you have an interest in keeping many sides of the political dialogue ongoing and vibrant (and you do, whether you recognize it or not) you might want to visit Anchor Rising on the web and check it out. There is a link there you can click on to donate money (nothing good comes free). If you are one of those rich conservatives people read about (sometimes on this page), you might want to consider underwriting a valuable voice in the political debate.