Resources

General Statistical Info 

You can usually find what's needed by entering a good set of keywords in Google, although seem people seem to have more luck than others.  Some good sources to look through include:

NationMaster.com:  "a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations."

Statistical Abstracts of the United States:  fantastic distillation of statistics about the US.  One of my great pleasures is to thumb through the paper copy, looking for interesting tables.

Infoplease:  another great compilation of statistics.  They often have copies of US government tables, but Infoplease formats them in HTML which is easier to cut and paste into a spreadsheet (US government sites often used pdf format for statistics, which sometimes copies and pastes poorly).

Other General information 

Wikipedia: this is a perfect example of why results are more important than guesses.  When I heard that Wikipedia was going to be a massive online encyclapedia where ANYONE could add, edit, or delete information, I was sure that it would be an amusing catastrophe.  Man was I wrong!  Wikipedia has become my favorite encyclopedia - articles are kept up-to-date by experts, and the articles often point to excellent reference material.

New York Time archives: Overall, the Times is an incredible paper with incredible columnists.  There was a dark period from roughly 9/11 until mid 2005 where the Times coddled the frnge right, and only a few columnists dared speak the plain honest truth.  But the darkness has lifted, and "The Old Gray Lady" is back in fine form.  The Times has a service called TimesSelect, free to "dead tree" subscribers and $50 a year to others.  TimeSelect gives you online access to columnists, and 100 articles from the Times archive each month.  The archives date back to 1851 (!) but articles before 1981 have to be purchased through a service, for $1.20-$4 per article,  The full text of articles from 1981 on are available at no extra charge.

Polling Data

Polling Report: compilation of polls, by subject

Medical

PubMed is the National Institutes of Health's source for Medline, a ginormous database containing the abstract of virtually every medical journal article articlw since the 1970s.  Absolutely the best place for medical information - although you'll need a bit of statistical savvy to understand it all.

The OECD has excellent comparative data of health care among first-world countries:

•  The OECD Observer: Healthcare

There are a few good summaries of OECD data on the web, such as:

• http://www.pnrec.org/2001papers/DaigneaultLajoie.pdf

Liberal Links

Democratic Underground: Lots of articles, lots of comments.  DU's weekly "Top 10 Conservative Idiots" feature is an absolute riot.

Guilty Pleasures

NewsBusters: "the leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias."  O.K., I have some explaining to do here.  Perhaps because I originally hail from New York City, I love a good fight.  I've tried to pick fights on a few other conservative sites, but I get kicked off, sometimes in less than a minute (e.g., from freerepublic.com) .  NewsBusters puts up with me (handle: MassLiberal), and I occasionally even learn something.  The conservative posters run the gamut from semi-literate wingnuts to reasonably intelligent folks.

Toys

The Official Countdown Calendar (for Despondent Democrats and Other Thinking People).  This is a riot.  Count down the days until The Torture President is out of office (if he makes it through the full term, which I think unlikely).