George Rebane
Dr Haynes is the formerly strident voice of Preventable Global Warming and little known owner of NC Voices, a generally useful concentrator of regional news sites, media outlets, and blogs. She has run this site for some years and recently did a redesign of it. On it we conservative bloggers have always been consigned to the rightmost, off-page column that is labeled ‘Climate Contrarians’ – I think we were formerly called ‘Denialists’ or some such thing. In any event, that column of recent conservative blog posts always reserves significant real estate at the top for castigating the skepticism of the bloggers below.
Before the redesign she listed in FIFO order the posts that appeared on our blogs with new ones pushing down the long stack of about 25 entries until they dropped off the end. Fair enough.
Well it now appears that RR may have been a bit too popular with its click-thrus from NC Voices. So applying the ever popular Progressive Proscription Principle to communications they disagree with, she has started limiting RR posts to the most recent five. The complete list is then made up of the most recent and less frequent commentaries by a couple of fellow bloggers (currently Todd Juvinall and Russ Steele) whose featured posts go back to early January, while the oldest RR post is less than a week old.
I just became aware of this a couple of weeks ago when I noticed that RR posts are bunched at the top of the list and appear nowhere in its long tail. Over the years Ruminations has become one of the more popular socio-political commentary blog in the region whose content is the constant topic of interest and target of vitriol from the leftwing blogs. Now I don’t think that Dr Haynes is an avid reader of RR, but other leading leftwing lights are. So a reasonable conclusion is that someone has got to Dr Haynes and advised her to do her part in curtailing traffic to this site. Ever a diligent soldier in the fight against freer markets and climate skeptics, it appears that the good lady has complied.
As for me, I remain grateful that she deigns to include RR at all, no matter how minimally – after all it is her site and the First Amendment still holds (at least for progressives).
[update] True to her progressive impulses, this post was not granted visibility on NC Voices.
[20feb16 update] After all these years I may have overstepped my welcome. NC Voices no longer recognizes RR, even were it consigned in limited form to the Contrarian column. Oh, to have sunk so far so quickly. Does this mean that these scribblings have finally been acknowledged as a burr under the progressives' blanket? I cannot imagine that they would grant that. Oh well.
[23feb16 update] Alas, methinks NC Voices is off the air. I do hope that this does not indicate a health issue with Dr Haynes and that the interruption will be a short one. I and all of us online addicts in the county wish the good lady nothing but the best.
[4mar16 update] NC Voices is back on the air. Welcome back Dr Anna. All is well.
rebanesruminations.com 
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