Greenwald's not honest, at least not exceptionally. When he talks about something outside of his area of expertise he basically picks a position which gels his intuitions, acts really sure of himself, and on the times where he gets called out for overreaching or getting something wrong, writes half a dozen boldface updates rather than admit fallibility or just shut up and retcon the whole incident. He's got a large, vocally supportive following and a paid gig from doing this. I think the tribal-social aspect of trying to fit in and reinforce the group identities and narratives applies to him as much as it would to a climber like Klein. It's maybe a smaller group, and appealing to libertarians as a fellow-traveler outsider, but it's still very much there.
I don't disagree with any of this really, and yes I admit he does play to my biases in some respects, but I think in regards to some...others...he at least has an ideological mission and even if that leads him astray it makes him more "honest" than an Ezra Klein.
No real disagreement with your next two points so I'll cut them.
So what blogs like that have I been reading? Fuckin' none of them! The last time I was not-depressed enough to want to dive into something, I was reading Arms Control Wonk and Total WonKerr about Iran's (lack of) nukes. I got Trita Parsi's books on US-Iran relations this year, but those cost money and are written in the dry prose that comes with academic standards of honesty and hedging. Basically I'm pretty much done with the idea of the all-purpose public intellectual.
You could check out Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns, and Money. He's certainly more leftist than Dem, but it's hard for me to read long posts of inside-baseball about the tatters of the radical labor movement and not see it as navel-gazing at a certain point. Wish Max Sawicky was still blogging. He woulda been right in this wheelhouse and was a good Takoma Park boy too.
This last part is mostly what I was looking for (but former as well). I mean I can scope out everything from MY point of view, but you guys are somewhat reversed from me and I want to know where DO you go to get stuff. And I fumbled trying to say I don't want Klein, Krugman, Kos, some other K, etc. (I used strong words but I stand by it and I really don't think they're writing for anything, as mentioned I think Krugman is writing a political column but trying to play on his long lost economic trade.)
Because I can hit up most of the general sources that get posted here, GAF, etc. in terms of "left" politics but I was wondering if you had anything that wasn't mainstreamed anymore.
I probably just worded my original request wrongly. For example I like Reason, but a lot of the writers there aren't great, it's just the overall coverage and now someone like Balko is at HuffPo, etc. so I follow them there. Volokh is a good site but I follow links off there.
When I was saying I "honestly don't know" about stuff regarding the "left" I feel like I don't. But everyone I know outside of here sends me to all the same sites (DU, Kos, TPM, etc.). And I get all the arguments I read here and elsewhere, but I wonder if I'm missing better works rather than the summaries. (Since we in the libertarian camp have the same thing.)
I guess mentioning Balko makes me think of a better way to put it.
Reason and Balko's coverage are some of the few places out there you can really get coverage of SWAT/police being dicks and it's not all "BUT THEY WUZ DRUG CRIMNALS" and I guess I was wondering if there's some kind of "left" version of this kind of reporting. On anything, even if it's the capitalists.
I don't really give a shit about Obama/Romney. The least I was looking for is some kind of "left" version of Reason or something.
I probably should have spent more time on my original post.
EDIT: I don't mind reading real hardcore leftism and crap, full out communism. I'm a goddamn voluntaryist after all. It's just the "left" sites are all kind of disgusting MUST LOVE DEMOCRATS type.
Maybe I'm deluded by being in the libertarian family where it's a constant WE MUST SUPPORT GOP vs. NO NO SPLIT OFF debate.