WTF! Why Kevin, why???

Anyhoo, good luck with your move, some of us will come visit.

Mother Jones?!?!?

Aren't they more looney left than the Nation?

Do you want your loyal conservatives trolls to follow you over there to really freakout their readership?

If not, do we least have permission to see the cats on Fridays?

All kidding aside, congratuations and good luck on your new gig.

Best of luck on the move!

I hope I can train my fingers to the new url; right now it's great, all I have to do is type w-a-s and Safari fills in the rest and there is Drum. Don't let them nest your blog like Ezra Klein's at Prospect: I don't read him as much because it takes a few seconds longer to get to. I hope it doesn't require registration either because I try to avoid things that require registration.

But again: best of luck!

Now just wait one goddamn minute!!! No explanation as to WHY you're picking up your cotton pickin' keyboard and leavin'??? What the H*ll???

Wow. That's great.

Congratulations. But does this mean we have to update our bookmarks?

If I already read Carpetbagger Report and Obsidian Wings, will I need to read Political Animal ever again?

Can we possibly live without Kevin's overstuffed cats? I don't think so.

jim: isn't it obvious? George Soros told him he had to move. Jeez..

Good luck, Kevin... will see you (and Inkblot and Domino) at the new site, as well as reading Steve & Hilzoy here.

But I must say...Mother Jones? Great magazine but not exactly the ideological home I would have expected for you. But nothin' wrong with shaking up expectations, eh?

More importantly: where is Amy Sullivan staying, so that I know where not to be?

Kevin -

I hope you, at some point, elaborate why you decided to make the jump. Tempermentally, the Washington Monthly seems a much more suitable home for you.

Holey moley!

Two blogs are better than one indeed. I will stay here AND check out your new place, so win win!

I think that Steve Benen deserves a wider audience than the Washington Monthly and Mother Jones combined. Although this is a step in the right direction.

/not Steve Benen

Big step up for Mother Jones. A magazine that has always struggled with its identity. Last time I picked it up, it read like the Utne Reader. Light reading for hippies in trees.

I will read Drum wherever he goes.

Woah, Mother Jones? They're still around? I haven't seen that magazine since the sixties, when it was a DIY manual for hippie farmers, sold at the local co-op's magazine stand next to the Whole Earth Catalog. I'll look for your new column somewhere between the article on how to thresh and spin flax and the article on heating your homestead on composted pig manure.

Kevin,

Best wishes and good luck with your new job. Opportunity knocks, you answer.

I won't be following you, however. I used to subscribe to Mother Jones, back in the days when I used to read Rolling Stone. 'nuff said. Anyway, good luck!

Congrats--seems like just yesterday I followed you to Washington Monthly from that little California blog you had. 4 years? I've been reading this shit for too long.

not exactly the ideological home I would have expected for you.

You said it. Who wouldn't pay to eavesdrop on Corn's and Drum's conversation by the water cooler at the DC all hands?

Best wishes and good luck to you, Kevin.

Congratulations! I followed you here from Calpundit so I think I know the drill... ;-)

Mother Jones is definitely to the left of the Washington Monthly, but it's to the right of The Nation.

Exciting! I concur with the others who note the oddity of the ideological line-up, but perhaps the Bush years have made you more ideological and shrill ;) They certainly did so to me.

I'll definitely look forward to seeing you at the new digs.

Light reading for hippies in trees.

You got something against hippies in trees? We need paper, too!

Sure, Kevin, I'll follow you over to Mother Jones. But I'll have to abandon WaMo. Life is just too short to waste my time reading Steve's well thought but ridiculously wordy posts.

Best of luck, Calpundit! I'll still be reading you!

[bookmarked]

Congratulations and good luck, Kevin!

I followed you here, so I'll follow you there. Frankly, yours is the only blog I've read regularly. I've always appreciated your views and insight.

Mother Jones? Isn't that a hotbed of Vegetable Rights activists?

why, ah 'member wen we calld it The CalPundit...

YOU! Git offa mah LAWN!...you liddle punks!! Git!!

okay, where was I

Inkblot and Domino demanded that Friday catblogging be part of the deal? The way i hear it, Mother Jones primarily wanted Inkblot and Domino; Kevin was a throw in to get the deal done!

Good luck Kevin. You will be missed in this slot.

Sounds like a good move for you. Good luck at the new digs!

Then it appears that I will stop visiting this site and start visiting that one.

A strict reading of the MoJo commenting rules leads one to believe that people who leave comments in the Cat Blogging thread to the effect that "cat blogging is boring" will be banned.

The bad news is, we can't call each other morons over there. But I think fucking profanity is still allowed, as long as we stay on topic and don't refer to each other as "you dumb shit."

Indy-ink, Pro-stink, even with Enviro-link; It's CalPundit Zone, to me-eeh.

Gulp. I though Kevin Drum "Was" Washington Monthly.

If I already read Carpetbagger Report and Obsidian Wings, will I need to read Political Animal ever again?

Probably only if you're interested in the comment threads. The energetic and talented Benen apparently has discovered 36-hour days, but I can't imagine he'll be able to do more than cross-post his CR stuff here, given all his other gigs. And Hilzoy has already said it'll be mostly cross-posting.

Which leads one to wonder about the long-term prospects of this blog...and WM's plans for same.

Very exciting! Mother Jones's blog really needs more solid content--you'll be a great addition there. Of course, on the other hand, now WM is going to be thinnner.

Thank you Mr. Drum and the Washington Monthly for the Political Animal blog.

When the post about some other blogger joining FDL was made recently, and Mr. Drum described FDL as a borg, I felt the countdown to Mr. Drum leaving WM had begun. It will be Washington Monthy's loss, although most should know Mr. Drum has been writing for Mother Jones for a while.

Sure, I go where Kevin goes...it's reading Mr. Drum that I care about....

I will note however that the transition of Phil Carter from Intel Dump to WPO...probably hasn't gone well, at least from my perspective. Though hopefully it is great for Phil and his future.

Change is interesting and what I really look forward to is if there is any change in Kevin's writing, stylistically or in content. There wasn't much of a change from Calpundit to Washington Monthly...so it will be interesting to see what happens now.

Best of luck to you, Kevin, Sir.

Traveller

Kevin, good luck at your new spot. That's a coup on Mother Jones' part. And congratulations to Hilzoy and Benen, both amazing bloggers.

I hope you, Washington Monthly and Mother Jones can find a way to incorporate your archives there. (It's a minor inconvenience having the archives in two places. A bigger issue is I find after a blogger leaves a home their archives tend to disappear / stop working after a time. E.g. I think Greg Sargent's archives at TAP disappeared after a time.)

Just so you know, Steve won't be posting at the Carpetbagger after Thursday. He's picking up and moving here full time. So if you want to read his stuff, this will be the only place to do it!

I don't care what Sadly, No says, you're my fave blogger and if I gotta hang with hippies to read you, so be it.

Four years, it's been? Wow...

did they offer you a boat load of $$$ to go?

WM does seem like a better fit & seeing that Matt Welch is back in his old H&R haunts (admittedly MoJo isn't LATimes) perhaps we'll see you back here at WaMo again.

charlie don't surf wrote: "Woah, Mother Jones? They're still around? I haven't seen that magazine since the sixties, when it was a DIY manual for hippie farmers, sold at the local co-op's magazine stand next to the Whole Earth Catalog."

I think you are confusing Mother Jones magazine with Mother Earth News.

Both are excellent magazines and still going strong. Mother Jones has always been about muckraking and political reporting, and Mother Earth News has always been about do-it-yourself homesteading technologies, somewhat in the spirit of the original Whole Earth Catalog.

I stopped reading Mother Jones when they denounced Paul Wellstone foe selling-out. Have they changed?

Just so you know, Steve won't be posting at the Carpetbagger after Thursday. He's picking up and moving here full time. So if you want to read his stuff, this will be the only place to do it!

Aha, that changes things. Thanks for the 'fo.

Bookmarked! But why Kevin why?

I'm a little surprised that Jane "Steinbrenner" Hamsher hasn't signed you to the Yanke-- er, FireDogLake. Right on, congrats, and thank the mgmt for getting a couple bad-asses to take over.

See ya at Mutha's.

Sniff. Truth be told, this is the first blog I ever stumbled upon, back when it was calpundit, in the run up to the Iraq war.

The upside? A lot of the stupid crap I've spewed on this site will stop showing up so prominently in Google searches. Hooray Drum!

well, I newsgatored you

Bookmarked it. Will follow.

Joe Buck: Mother Jones is definitely to the left of the Washington Monthly, but it's to the right of The Nation.

I don't think that Mother Jones is to the right of The Nation, so much as it has a different style.

I don't read The Nation much anymore, as it's become (or at least I've become more sensitive to it's) smugly dogmatic knee-jerk "liberalism". By contrast, I read MoJo more and more. It has more of an in-your-face investigative style. It seems like the sort of place where debate is preferred to supporting the current "liberal" dogma.

Besides, how can you dislike a magazine that's named for an old-time radical like Mary Harris Jones.

Congrat's! See you at the new place.

OK, you guys got a new reader coming from The Carpetbagger Report.
I hope you guys got better trolls here, but from Steve's announcement post, I'm a bit concerned.
Be prepared.

Geez Kev, who do you think you are? Yglesias.

Another dazed refugee from The Carpetbagger Report reporting for duty (snappy salute).

Y'all be good to the Carpetbagger now, y'hear?

Thanks for CalPundit & Political Animal.

We shall see what transpires (no registration I hope) over at the Ole Mutha...

"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world`s problem." - Mohandas Gandhi

Congratulations to you, Benen and Hilzoy!

Kev!

We must follow you across cyberspace! It is a time of moving on. Just after I started cleaning out my dead bookmarks, too. Maybe a time to start subscribing to paper magazines again. That's Mother Jones, right?

Hippies in trees?

Only if they're barefoot and learning to play the flute.

Some people have no respect for tradition.

enozinho: A lot of the stupid crap I've spewed on this site will stop showing up so prominently in Google searches.

I heard that your comments will be archived at shithead.com.

Good luck, Kevin! I'll look forward to seeing you in the new place, and hilzoy and Steve (I'm a big fan of both) here!

congrats...and thanks for your work on this blog!

Best of luck and the best of wishes, Kevin. Despite its radio station being "all the way to the LEFT of your FM dial" (if it had a radio station), MoJo does some very solid investigative reporting (aka muckraking) and has a good cadre of bloggers.

Uh, perhaps cadre isn't the best word to use in this context. I presume the FBI will be updating and moving their files on you as well?

I can proudly say I've been reading your blog and enjoying your cats since before your days at the Washington Monthly. So I'll happily update my bookmarks. All the best of luck, and try to talk some sense into those anarchists at Mother Jones.

Woah. It's been four years? Time flies. I remember the transition from CalPundit.

I like Mojo and read it regularly, but I would guess that I am further left than most of the regulars around here. I will definitely follow, although your wishy-washiness drives me nuts at times.

Best wishes in your new position, Kevin!

TCD

Just make sure you keep up the catblogging

Kevin wrote of Mother Jones magazine: "... Yes, it's leftier than the Monthly, but ..."

Why the "but" ? Sounds like you are already preemptively apologizing for MJ's "leftierness".

Could be those "sensible liberal" instincts at work?

You ought to be proudly proclaiming "Yes, it's leftier than the Monthly, and ..."

I don't mean to be rude to the hosts of this blog, but frankly Mother Jones has a track record of publishing quite a lot of groundbreaking, hard-hitting investigative journalism that is head-and-shoulders above anything I've ever seen Washington Monthly even attempt to do.

You are fortunate to be joining one of the best journalistic organizations in America today.

Ah summer time, the days are long, the bees are buzzing, and the entire flipping liberal blogosphere is playing musical chairs.

Seriously, congratulations and thanks for all the good reading Kevin.

Changes like this can be an opportunity everyone involved to branch out a little and experiment.

MoJo has been doing some excellent investigative reporting, but I haven't been a regular until now.

I'm glad we still have visitation rights for the felines.

- Tentakles

I will follow you to Mother Jones. Already bookmarked.

And I'll continue to visit here.

Best of luck to all of you. Seems like a win win to me.

Bravo Kevin! Get that dang MoJo into shape! Will look forward to reading you on the new site.

For whoever said they hadn't read Mother Jones since the sixties... umm... it was founded in 1977.

LEAVE THE STUPID WASHINGTON MONTHLY MODERATORS BEHIND!

Moderation should be done with a light touch, not random, arbitary, and ill-documented whim.

Definitely a step up for you, Kevin. See you there.
AND all that SA said, too.

Monika Bauerlein, MoJo editor here. Thanks all for the kind words. (And yes, those of you who haven't seen MoJo lately, come visit and let us know what you think!) We have been fans of Kevin's for a *very* long time and are beyond excited to have him join us.

I probably won't follow you over to MoJo, but best of luck.

Just make sure you keep up the catblogging

Since he's starting on a Friday, obviously the first post at the new place will feature the cats.

Yes...?

Best wishes Kevin and I found your posts and comments stimulating and mostly agreeable, but:
aren't you too "centrist" for Ma Jones?
PS: Please still put up cat pics here on Fridays or now and then, OK?

"tyrannogenius"

Congratulations and good luck, Kevin. You are the best in the business. It's no wonder MoJo wanted you. See you in your new digs.

Congratulations, Kevin! Already bookmarked + looking forward to leaving obnoxious McSame ads at WaMo behind.

I won't be following you, however. - DBL

Bonus!!

Kevin, despite your being a liberal and almost always wrong, I came to take a liking to you nonetheless. Good luck and have fun at that far-far left outfit "Mother Jones", but I can't imagine why a somewhat reasonable soul like yourself could consider being in their company. Don't let them turn you into a *total* Marxist. Really, it would be bad enough to have Barack Obama as President of these still wonderful but fast fading United States of America.

Ah, SecularAnimist, you are probably right, I must have mistaken Mother Jones for the Mother Earth News. But it has been decades so my inaccurate memory is probably understandable. Forgive me for casting any aspersions on the DFH at Mother Jones.

Good luck, congratulations and thanks for many great reads Kevin (I hope and expect the same at Mojo :).

It's also great to see WM continue the tradition of cultivating great talent with Steve Benen and Hilzoy.

Bummer! Hopefully, we can all interact in a similar fashion at Mother Jones.

I started reading this blog because of the political perspective and was a bit put off by the forays into other areas. But I've gradually come to appreciate this forum, which discusses a range of subjects and ideas, while retaining a liberal political focus.

I hope the new blog will be a lot like Political Animal, if not identical.

Good luck, Kevin

"And before anyone asks: yes, there will be catblogging at the new site. Inkblot and Domino demanded that it be part of the contract."

Yeah and I also demanded a fresh pillow filled with catnip each day of the week. Where is today's Kevin?

Wow - Mother Jones is taking on a whole new life, having snagged David Corn as chief of their Washington bureau and now getting KD as their chief online ruminator. I hadn't paid attention to them in years - they seemed utterly moribund, but I guess I've got to bookmark that puppy.

Good luck at MoJo, Kevin!

there will be catblogging at the new site.

That's all I needed to hear. ;)

Hope Domino and Inkblot (and Jasmine) will stay in the archives here, too.

I'm hoping some money changes hands when the blogosphere gets disrupted by, say, Yglesias moving from Atlantic and Kevin heading off to Mother Jones.

Presumably we're not witnessing some liberal version of fractional ideological realignments that made Trotskyism the best soap opera on the Left over several decades.

"Mother Jones? They're still around? I haven't seen that magazine since the sixties, when it was a DIY manual for hippie farmers, sold at the local co-op's magazine stand next to the Whole Earth Catalog."

Uh, Mother Jones didn't make it's appearance in print until 1976.

Prediction:

Mother Jones is a smokescreen.

Obama's VP?

Kevin Drum.

MJ print circulation: 233,000
WM print circulation: 20,000

David Corn, after his move from The nation to MJ, claims that MJ will have a larger Washington bureau than Time magazine.

More background here. It all has to do with the falling real estate prices.

Congrats and best wishes on the move. And thanks for the link. I've already got it entered in Google Reader.

Have a wonderful time there.

I stopped reading Mother Jones when they denounced Paul Wellstone foe selling-out. Have they changed?

I think that was just one article, contributed by Steve Perry, the editor of the local Twin Cities alternative weekly. Perry was a lefty who had a personal beef with Wellstone over aesthetics - his issues and methods weren't "edgy" enough for Perry's tastes.

I'm still hoping Kevin will move on up to Z Net. Chomsky can't be expected to hold the top slot there forever.

Damn, Kevin, my blogroll is badly in need of attention as it is.

Good luck. See ya at MoJo.

Congrats, Kevin. Looking forward to having my IP address blocked by MOther Jones as well. Do they give you a discount on the grow lights I always see advertised there?

Lurked at Calpundit, lurked here, looking forward to lurking at your new place. Mother Jones is a great magazine.

Darn, Kevin, I remember you as a lowly Calpundit blogger and now you've hit the big big time! However, I'm sure you'll continue to be the thoughtful political-cat blogger that you are, and I have updated my bookmarks accordingly!

Yay.... we can haz kittehs!! Congrats on the move, Kevin - throw a housewarming party when you get your page in order!

I'm not quite seeing the fit. MoJo of late has reconfigured and been analytical, coherent and on point backed by sound research and argument. KD tends often to wonder why what is going on around him is going on.

Oh, well. Hopefully he won't damage MoJo and might learn to engage his brain more critically before firing up the keyboard.

Good luck anyway!

Can't say I'm sorry to see Kevin Drum leave, since he and his helpers had a habit of deleting perfectly acceptable comments from me and apparently from others as well.

Hopefully Benen will prefer healthy debate to the Stalinist approach.

Does this mean that you, Kevin will be moving to the Bay area, or will you still be part of the So Cal scene? In other words, can we toss you a going away party at the Farmers' Market?

Over the past several years, I have routinely sent people to the washington monthly site if for no other reason than it maintains intellectual honesty. It has also pioneered the public discussion of quite a few important matters, for example the understanding that Democratic presidents are better for the economy. It also aired the issues around peak oil at a time when the subject was all but being ignored in the mainstream.

I'll stick with Benen. I always liked Washington Monthly more whenever he subbed for Kevin Drum. Best of luck to Kevin...please deposit Amy Sullivan in the dumpster on your way out.

Congrats Kevin! I hope that this is/was a positive, amicable and exciting transition for you. I'm jealous.

You're much loved.

Calpundit->Washington Monthly->Mother Jones->??->??->...->Global Dominion.

Here's to a Drummier tomorrow! I'll see you MoJo.

hey congrats, kevin!

Thanks for all the posts here. You've done a great job. I'll continue to read here, but I'm looking forward to seeing you at your new home.

Congrats to you, Steve, and Hilzoy.

Kevin, congratulations. I am really, really happy for you. And congratulations to Steve and hilzoy who are as indispensable in blogtopia as you are, Kevin.

You are one of the first bloggers I read after getting hooked on blogs, and you truly are one of the best.

And don't apologize for Mojo's "leftiness"! That's a selling point, not a drawback!

I'm looking forward to reading your first post at your new blogging home, and all the ones thereaftr.

Thereafter, even.

Best of luck.

In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.-- Napoleon

Sorry to hear that, Kevin. The commenter/ruffians over there are going to be even more indoctrinated. When you occasionally make a slightly-less-leftwing point ("Today, Bush went from 10.0 to 9.9 on Scale Of Evil") you will get trashed even harder by the brainless set. Sounds less fun if you ask me. Hope they're paying you better. Hah!

MJ replaces WaMo in my bookmarks. Life is too short to waste time reading idiot nutballs like Benen.

Congrats to you, Kevin! I look forward to reading you there.

Yes, best of luck, as well.

Congrats on the move, Kevin, and I'm glad someone at Mother Jones also likes cats. (I presume the first catblogging photos will show Inkblot and Domino perusing the latest MJ.)

Interesting trivia note: An elementary school in Prince George's County, Md. is named for Mother Jones; it's located on Adelphi Road about a mile west of the University of Maryland, very close to National Archives II.

Congrats, Kevin and thanks for maintaining Catblogging Fridays.

So if Kevin changes bookmarks, then I am changing my screen name and starting fresh.

This pimple on the ass of progess is closed.

Does Calpundit know how many homes he has?

Godspeed, Kevin! Here's hoping you soon feel at home at the good ole Mrs. Jones magazine, and raise hell° there!
:-)

P.S.: Damn, I miss that proud statement in their headline: "A tradition of rasing hell". Just what Mother Jones would have loved. The new one, "smart, fearless journalism" is lame lame lame. Pls tell the editors!

You can run, Kevin, but you can't hide.
MotherJones is now on my bookmark bar.
Good luck. See you there

I didn't renew my Washington Monthly mag sub because I was spending too much time reading you. Now I'll leave the WaMo blog to follow you to Mother Jones.

Does WaMo have any business sense?

Apparently not.

See you at MoJo

Wiley