Those of you who've been following my LiveJournal for a while know that it's become increasingly political over time--as have I. While I enjoy the built-in community that LiveJournal provides, and have no intention of abandoning it anytime soon, it's about time I separated my personal and political sites, and migrated back to a content management system over which I have more control.

There are several reasons for this:

1. LiveJournal's customization is clunky. And that's being charitable. The old system was unintuitive and limited, but a certain amount of layout control existed. The new system is supposed to be far more powerful and less limiting--but it's so arcane as to be near-unusable for those who don't want to learn a new programming language. MovableType isn't perfect, but it's straightforward and HTML-based, and I had the whole site up and running in about an hour.


2. Non-LJ users are no longer shut out. If you don't have an LJ, you couldn't comment on my LJ without being anonymous. MT has a very simple registration that asks you once for your name, URL, and email address, and saves it thereafter in a cookie. I don't care if any of these are your real information; I'm not collecting email addresses--just don't troll anonymously.


3. Content and site availability is no longer dependent on LJ's stability and whims. Let's face it--even for paid users, of which I am one, LJ's responsiveness isn't the best. Furthermore, I have friends who've had accounts banned from LJ somewhat arbitrarily on the basis of offending someone who complained, and while that has yet to happen to me, I choose not to take the chance.

Why SDLE?

Let's face it--for most of us right now, our government is the worst it's been in living memory. Our elected officials are no longer doing the jobs for which we elected them. The Democratic party--as a whole--is lying down on the job while our Republican Congress and President erode the freedoms on which we depend, eliminate crucial safeguards on the envionment, and turn the Great Experiment known as America into one of the most hated and feared countries in the world.

We are being lied to every single day, and we are allowing it to happen. The watchmen are proving, in spades, that they must not only be watched, but made accountable.

That's why.