New Search Engine

I read this weekend that Amazon now has its own Web search engine, since September 14.  Now, I may be the last person in the blogoshere to have discovered that.  But I checked it out at www.A9.com.

My first impression was pretty good.  But then, I order books and CDs from Amazon, so I already had an ID to sign in with.  The most distinctive thing about it is that it gives you a search history.  So if you search a lot for topics like "nekkid picture of hot babes," it might get kind of embarassing at times.

But it did produce a different mix of results that I get from Yahoo! or Google, even though I believe it uses Google search technology.  Anyway, I looked up Old Hickory's Weblog.  And I came across this reference, from a blog called Cry Freedom, in a post of 07/12/04, called This is a challange [sic] to any liberal readers i may have.

The author, who I guess goes by his e-mail name of Rpar01, apparently had the idea that Kerry supporters were more negative on Bush than they are positive about Kerry.  And he seems to find this a particularly revealing, even scandalous, thing.  He says:

Liberals think I should vote for Kerry because Bush sucks. so to test my theory I went to a journal written by a far left socialist called Old Hickory's web-log [sic] who is unashamed to say that he isn't voting for Kerry but against Bush. Take some time and read his journal, I tried to find some pro Kerry stuff, it just isn't there. from there i clicked on one of his sites that he lists as a favorite called Warblogging same deal, lots of Anti bush stuff and very little Pro Kerry stuff. I guess i should have expected that.

Now, George Paine at Warblogging is mainly writing about war-related issues, so he's not really focusing much on the campaign as such.

But I couldn't help but be intrigued by Rpar01's description of my own little corner of the blogosphere.  For instance, that the author of Old Hickory's Weblog is "unashamed to say that he isn't voting for Kerry but against Bush".  I was surprised to discover this aboutmyself.  So I looked with anticipation to see the link that revealed this.  But, shucks, it was just a link to the blog address.

I don't know if I've done an explicit endorsement of Kerry.  If not:  I support John Kerry for President.  So there.  But I don't recall ever saying anything to indicate I thought Kerry was the "lesser of two evils."  On the contrary, I think he'll be a good president.

I was also intrigued to see that this journal is "written by a far left socialist."  I should explain to my European friends who occasionally drop by the blog that in American political language, "socialist" just means "bad."  It doesn't have any other political content.  So "far left socialist" means "far left bad person." 

The things you learn on the Internet!

It's not clear what he means by "far left."  Given that respectable Republicans like the Swift Boat Liars for Bush think John Kerry is a Commie, presumably a very large part of the American electorate looks "far left" to hardcore Republicans these days.