Why recommend posts? So they can be shared. But they still go away too fast. I don't feel much incentive to say something requiring much thought or research.

We went from recommended blogs staying up permanently, blocking progress, to having them drop away after 24 hrs., which I feel is way too short. Drive-by commenting achieves little. Why be just another blog?

Jim Sleeper had this to say: "Probably the greatest downside of posting, even on a blogsite like TPM, is that we lose the sense of an ongoing conversation that might actually build on its insights."

I can often remember the title of a post I liked, or at least an approximation of it, but am less likely to remember a random username like turtle1234. So search is out. One is reduced to wading through the archives.

Sleeper also said: "One can't expect anyone who comments on a current post to have checked the earlier ones, right here in TPM, on the same subject, in the past couple of weeks. But that's what makes blog comments a big cut below actual deliberation or even just conversation."

It used to be easy to know where a conversation stood. A small fix might be to have a list of users. A name would look familiar, and one could go to that user's blog. Another incentive would be the chance to end up on the front page of the Cafe. That would hold position, only being pushed down by new guest  contributor posts.

I've found some perceptive and stylish writing by readers here, in the old days, and several now. But the good writers are not being rewarded.

Now you don't. "Recent Reader Posts" covers maybe 6 hours. If I saw an interesting post before going to work it will be gone when I get home. Even selecting "All Reader Posts" gets you only the last few hours of offerings.

This is the result of mixing everything together without filters. It allows junk such as "Sub-Prime Auto Loans." (Twice.) We get "My first blog post" one-liners. Empty posts with nothing but a link.

There is value in compartmentalizing. It helps prevent ships from sinking when a small hole can be walled off. It helps protect one country's economy from another's problems. It allows defense against disease, in the form of cell membranes.

We could use some compartments here. What we have now is a free-for-all. If I were malicious I could salt the mine with endless copies, I bet. Let's get some kind of order here. This post will go up at the Cafe, Muckraker, and Election Central. Not justified, but legal. Just like many wealthy, I take advantage of the commons.

A close friend reports she was set to vote for Clinton in the MD primary. The first page was that choice, and she selected Hillary. Then she turned to the next page, and saw who the Clinton delegates were. Two familiar names jumped off the page, both members of the school board, that my friend knew, and despised.

Her careful parsing of health care plans and other policy statements evaporated in the heat of anger at these entrenched party functionaries. She went back and changed her vote, (perhaps fulfilling her own prophecy, since she had heard Obama's 2004 convention speech and predicted he would be President someday).

The slight differences between platforms are not going to sway people that get  any kind of strong feeling, one way or the other. And the platforms matter only as much as the Congress that gets them as starting positions. Who will deliver a larger majority, to the extent that candidates have those oft-mentioned coattails? Will Hillary induce a cautionary hedging, and induce people to vote for opposite-party reps and senators? I think so.

I think Obama is more likely to generate a wave of (the horror!) enthusiasm that will elect a useful majority.

Any suggestions where I can go to find conversation, and still be connected to the rest of the world? We're chatting over at Eric Stepp's blog, Lucidity---

<a>http://projectlucidity.com/forum/index.php<a>

But it's sort of free-standing and only getting a few refugees from here. I'm hoping to find the tracking, or at least "new" indications so I can see who's talking about what, quickly. I am sure I've forgotten some interesting threads trying to develop here, and where I might have commented. If someone replies, I don't know.

Like slips of paper inserted into the stones at the Wailing Wall. Unknown which accomplishes more.