Via Shakesville
The Right Wing Watch has discovered a case of advocacy group flip flop. Fidelis has gone from hating McCain to loving him.
"What a miraculous turn of events! Do you suppose the presence of Joseph Cella - a former Fidelis president, Fred Thompson-backer, and anti-Rudy activist – on McCain’s newly announced Virginia Family Issues Leaders committee had anything to do with that?"
You'll be glad to hear they're getting back up though - hopefully to support Obama in the general election - and Hillary for a leadership role in the senate.
Seeing as this seems very symbolic - the baby wasn't hurt either, just a little shaken.
But I did have to agree when he said, “You have done this our entire marriage! We’ll be walkin’ along one minute, there will be a commotion, I’ll look down and you’ll be on the ground.”.
At Protein Wisdom they sometimes admit the obvious the long way round.
Today Dan Collins tells us:
"What Stanley cannot do, try as he might, is to demonstrate that Hillary! is treated more unfairly than other high-profile politicians, such as the one presently in the White House. If Hillary!-hatred is driven by misogyny, then to what do we attribute BDS? Of course, his point is rhetorical rather than intellectual, so perhaps that’s expecting rather too much."
So I take it all that stuff about how "Bush Derangement Syndrome" involves treating W much harsher than anyone would ever treat a liberal has gone by the wayside.
Upside down cake is misnamed - at least in the northern hemisphere. All those globes and solar system models which show the northern hemisphere on top are wrong. You may think I mean that both sides are equally top or bottom, but no. The proof is that Australians good naturedly refer to themselves as living 'down under', and they would be more sensitive about this assumption if they didn't know the truth.
What we call an 'upside down cake' is in fact right side up, with a plate on top of it, a table on top of that, and the planet Earth balanced atop the stack.
This may seem a rather odd way of looking at things, but the aftermath of blogroll amnesty day has started me thinking strange thoughts. None of the very biggest liberal blogs linked to it - but Instapundit did. This started me googling - did Glenn Reynolds ever purge conservatives from his blogroll? I rediscovered something I might have noticed last year. Glenn links to Skippy. He does have liberals on his blogroll - and I can't find any references to his dropping old friends either.
I'm adding Instapundit back to my blogroll. I remember being annoyed the way he referred to Drudge as a legitimate news source - and constantly complained about the New York Times. Well, OK, I guess none of my favorite liberal blogs are perfect either - and I do read him.
I was pleased to discover I bookmarked this post from A Layman's Point of View - it lodged in my mind, but I never posted about it. I'm not convinced, but it provides a starting point to get inside the heads of those we wish to persuade:
Me: (reaching the truck with the next box, I put it in the truck and looked at him, breathing hard) You're a Democrat, right? "Progressive," liberal, support Bill Clinton, hated Reagan, right?
Student: Yes, that's right, how did you know?
Me: A Republican would have offered to carry a box!
The student left without asking any questions.
Lesson 2: Liberals don't practice what they preach, like REALLY helping others. They'll watch you carry the box, even tell you HOW to do it, but won't really lift a finger to help.
I've often wished that conservatives would stop a second to think. If they can't trust W. to nominate conservative justices, is it even possible he made so managerial mistakes presiding over the administration of the rebuilding of Iraq? Does anyone miss Rummy's brilliance - and if not, did they all get carried away defending him? If they think Bush is soft on illegal aliens because he wants to keep salaries low for big businesses - is it even possible this compassion for big businesses has influenced his tax policies?
So I will be the change I would like to see in the world. Let me stop and think a second.
Can it be that we are really less compassionate than conservatives? I've seen conflicting studies - do you count donations to a church if most of the money is spent on services attended by the donators, and the facilities and programs used by them? How about if some churches do a lot to help the poor?
At times like this I'm reminded that if we're not less caring, we are not necessarily much more so. When we look back at ancient Rome or the British empire, we don't see good guys and bad guys. From our present perspective all the politicians and parties had much more in common than they knew.
Does it matter? I think perhaps it does. Words transmit more than logical arguments. Emotions and who you are come in as well. The pacifism of Ghandi and MLK came through with their character - men who went to jail and risked much worse standing up for what they believed in. A rich kid who could count on someone else doing his fighting is something else. It is too easy being anti-war merely because we personally don't like fighting - when we enjoy comfortable lives because we are protected by policemen.
Does this make the war in Iraq a prudent idea, well executed? Of course not. But think of all the rage we hear on the left at times, spit at people who might possibly do horrible things when placed in imposible positions, but who do many heroic things as well.
At the very least, we must do what we would have our countrymen do. Let us understand why they hate us - yes, why so many on the right hate us so fervently, even many of those who are decent people otherwise. There is a parallel here, if we have eyes to see it. There were many who believed a few years ago that once we showed the sleeping giant had been woken, that we had the will as well as the ability to use our enormous military power, the world would treat us with much more respect. And there are many who believe if we are angry enough and loud enough, the things we consider obviously true will abruptly be clear to our opponents as well. Let's remove the beam from our own eye before we try to remove the lumberyard (yes lumberyard, I'm a liberal, I still think they're crazier than we are) from anyone elses.
I was away from my computer a few days, but better late than never. Meanwhile, Monkeyfister's blogswarm exceeded his fondest hopes.
I'm linking to the original post in the title - his success report is here!
From mail.com:
In the aftermath of stunningly deadly and destructive tornadoes, this hard-hit community now has other worries -- looters, power shortages and a large number of residents still unaccounted for.
"They're going to have the looters and then the metal scrappers giving them hell," said Jason Newsse, who came from Myrtle Beach, S.C., to help authorities with search and recovery efforts that included cadaver-detecting dogs.
Jeff G. doesn't actually endorse this e-mail he reprints, though his comment seems to accept the premises as a basis for his own commentary. So I can't quite accuse him of three logical fallacies in one paragraph, although his ending slur on America saddens me. Clieck through - the paragraph I quote has several links that will explain everything imbedded.
Ray Robison emails:
The media has decided that the Taliban is winning and they are running with the “resurgent Taliban” lie no matter how much NATO says the Taliban is not “resurgent”. They are burying US success to help the democrat nominee.
Are they? Or is such spin actually more helpful to the candidate seen as most likely to prosecute the war vigourously, John McCain.
(crossposted from comment discussion)
Something said by one American general is not a pronouncement by NATO as a whole - especially when he acknowledges the other people we have encouraged to send troops are not sharing his experience.
A post on the blog American Thinker is not some sort of absolute truth (insert Jeffian pronouncement on truth here) but an opinion.
Even if the above were not true, we should surely inquire if the media were aware that an American general had made this statement, if they were aware it was inarguable truth, and parallel questions for the American Thinker post before bashing them.
after awhile he gets to:
In the end, should such a movement succeed in taking power, attempts to pull out of Iraq will put both a strain (immediate) and a stain (long term) on an Obama presidency. And there won’t be much that the history books will be able to do to insulate him — aside from celebrating the fact that he was the first Black president.
Form over content.
This is our America.
We're hearing more about what the European troops aren't doing in Afghanistan - but this may be more important. From Empty Corner, via The Newshoggers blogroll amnesty day edition:
This closure is having an immediate effect in blocking supplies to NATO forces. The effects can become a whole lot worse. The shortage of bread will drive a lot of people to the Taliban.
Empty links to Dawn (a Pakistani online English language newspaper) with more information about the border closing and flour shortages.
Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom is having a nightmare.
That’s what gave us Jimmy Carter. And we’re still living with that nightmare — even if a certain giant river bunny who took a presidential oar to the skull may not be.
Dreams are funny things though. The flawed military action in Iran, the eagerness to get involved in mideast peace negotiations, the 'voluntary conservation measures'.
Jimmy Carter may be a symbol for a much more recent nightmare.
As part of the celebration of blogroll amnesty day, I need to link five or six blogs smaller than mine. That's tough, but I eventually decided just to minimize the windows the blogs were displayed in, making them smaller than mine. There may not be many blogs smaller than mine, but there are plenty of progressive blogs deserving more exposure.
Don't you love it when a little blog gets a story the mainstream media never even thought to look at? Meet Susan DuQuesnay Bankston of Kiss My Big Blue Butt. Since her county doesn't put local campaign finance reports online, she got the paper ones and had them scanned into the computer. She's posted the expense reports for county judge Bob Hebert online. Oh yes, remember when Tom DeLay moved to Virginia to give his state Republican election comittee a chance to choose someone else for the ballot? On January 11 she posted his voter registration card so you can see when he moved back - and think about the oath he took to a federal judge. It may be my browser but I can't seem to link to individual posts right now. It's also a lighthearted and fun personal blog.
Friday Lunch Club is another great blog. They focus on the middle east. GPC doesn't seem to live or work in the middle east, but his essays aren't based on the usual suspects - he'll introduce you to foreign media, Congressional Quarterly, and many other sources you haven't seen. He occasionally mentions private information as well - not necessarily secret, but something he heard from a source.
Here's a blog I discovered while writing this post for blogroll amnesty day. Why should you be interested in a blog about 'water issues' in the southeastern USA? I'm not sure how much of this is due to global warming, how much to rapid growth, and how much is just an unusual occurence, but we may be seeing a lot more of this in the future - all over the country. I never thought about the effect of a drought on a nuclear power plant before reading Watercrunch. Say hello to Watercrunch, which also has some exclusive pictures of an Obama rally.
Say hello to Wetmachine. He has ultra technical stuff about frequency auctions, progressive political commentary, and cyberpunk flavored fiction you can read the first chapters of for free - or buy as a complete book.
This Fucking War is a medium sized blog, but still an important one deserving more exposure. Madtom links to the 'other' war blogs that are not always linked with enthusiasm by the mainstream warbloggers. These are not only those opposed to Bush's policy or with reservations, but those of soldiers who don't follow poltiics but just write real stuff about what they go through which might give some a negative impression.
Distributorcapny is an enthusiastic participant in blogroll amnesty day. He's counting down the seconds until Bush leaves office. He has a lot of cool pictures and a few videos on his blog. He's calculated how much of Exxon's profit would be needed to bail out Merrill Lynch and Citibank - or to buy Guilliani the nomination. A fun place to visit.
Last but not least, I'd like everyone to drop by the comments section of The Dead Hand and Political Friends and tell them how wrong they are about everything. They're more fun to argue with than most small conservative blogs.
