Pusha-da button for Tbogg. There’s no question that Tbogg is a better blogger than Reynolds, Balloon Juice already won last year, and splitting the vote makes baby jeebus cry.
Open thread.
by Tim F| 42 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Pusha-da button for Tbogg. There’s no question that Tbogg is a better blogger than Reynolds, Balloon Juice already won last year, and splitting the vote makes baby jeebus cry.
Open thread.
Comments are closed.
Zifnab
Your links are full of fail! Fail I say!
… …
Oh wait, there it goes.
Comrade Kevin
What the hell is "cjane enjoy it"?
Josh Hueco
Making the Baby Jebus cry has more of an attractively dangerous, subversive thrill to it than annoying Glenn Reynolds, however.
TenguPhule
Annoying Glenn Reynolds makes Baby Jebus cry tears of sweet warm blood.
ricky
Since your pimping Rumproast led me to a delightful encounter with Ann Coulter at a Farmer’s Market, I will be led by my nose again. And I once saw a Ciudad Juarez artist turn a crying Baby Jebus velvet painting into a crying Elvis
velvet painting, so I want none of that guilt again.
gbear
Since this is an open thread:
There is reason to do the happy dance on this cold, snowy day in the Twin Cities. Katherine Kersten has written her last columm for the StarTribune! It was sanctimonious, as usual. Bye bye.
bootlegger
I’m certain this has been commented on before but I"m eating lunch at my desk and it’s an open thread so….
I ran across "Red Dawn" late Saturday night as I was flipping around the cable menu. It was just at the part where their parents are executed and everyone is crying and Patrick Swayze is screaming "let it turn! Let it turn into something else!". Of course we all know the scene and when I first saw it years and years ago I was moved by the call to avenge one’s family being killed by outsiders. But this time all that came to me was, "and THAT, is why you can’t fight terrorism with mass violence."
In fact, I watched for another thirty minutes or so as the Cubans and their Russian masters did to the poor mountain folk exactly what we and the Israelis are doing RIGHT FUCKING NOW to the Iraqi’s, Afghanis and Palestinians.
The irony of course is that our War Cheerleaders probably love this movie and watch each time with a Big Stiffy in hand. Yet, somehow, they fail to get the underlying theme that when you kill someone there is usually someone there to avenge the killing and that the avengers believe in their righteousness. How can anyone miss that?
You don’t even have to try and make it some kind of moral equivalency, let’s assume that the Russian/Cuban invasion of the US was immoral and the Wolverines therefore righteous Defenders of Liberty, while the US invasion of Iraq (or Israeli invasion of Gaza) is moral and the Terrorists are therefore unrighteous Evildoers. The message is still the same, the more you kill the other side, the more the other side wants to kill you. I don’t see how that can be any plainer than a Patrick Swayze movie.
Rant over, had to get that one off my chest.
cleek
you’re neglecting one important fact: only Americans will fight to the death. everyone else are cowards and will stand slackjawed shocked and awed when they witness
the power of our fully operational Death Starour awesome throbbing Will.we Americans are exceptional like that.
bootlegger
@cleek: I don’t know about Them, but my Throbbing Will is, in fact, exceptional– until it encounters a fully operational Death Star.
Funny stuff Cleek but you hit the nail on the head. American Exceptionalism knows no bounds these days.
TenguPhule
Yet somehow this is a point Palestinians completely fails to get as well.
"Revenge for our Dead!" is a rallying cry on both sides.
TenguPhule
-Every Conflict, Everywhere
bootlegger
@TenguPhule: No shit Sherlock and if the Palestinians were occupying Jerusalem the movie would be applied the other way. One thing about Hamas is that they actually seem to understand that Israel will retaliate, perhaps even count on it. They are under no illusion that force will make Israel concede to their demands while the Israelis and us seem to think we can whip some sense into those stoopid Arabs.
The shocking irony isn’t that people-avenge-the-dead, but that American fans of this movie don’t see that theme as universal. Glen Greenwald submitted to an interview by wingut Hugh Hewitt and hit this point relentlessly. As soon as Hewitt got Greenwald off the air Hewitt and his callers relentlessly mocked Greenwald’s assertion that violence produces more violence. All you need is Enough Violence and the other side will call it quits.
Punchy
Baby Jesus is just the infant of an illegal Mexy, right?
Zifnab
@bootlegger:
And it inevitably leads to the "final solution" that gets us such monumental brain farts as "Let’s nuke /country X/ and end this once and for all!" Or one of Malkin’s glorious defenses of concentration camps and genocide. The logic being that you CAN kill everyone that disagrees with you and that, furthermore, you SHOULD embark on wholesale civilian slaughters to get your way. Course, once you’re done killing the infidels abroad, the inquisition can come home and clean out all those fifth columnist anti-American underminers living among us.
Hewitt, Malkin, Reynolds, and the rest don’t want one side to call it quits. They want purity. You see it in everything they do – from their anti-immigrant xenophobia, to their "Country First" political slogans, to their scrubbing of message boards and banning of commentators with conflicting viewpoints. Enough Violence is just the only path they know of to get their purity now that their political capital and social influence has shriveled up to it’s 23% roots.
Cyrus
Since this is an open thread, and since Rick Warren was such a big issue here a few weeks ago, I’m surprised no one has mentioned this here yet. Gene Robinson, openly gay Episcopalian bishop in the bonds of holy civil union-hood, will be on the schedule too.
TenguPhule
Now to be fair, they and the PLO apparently thought exactly this when they launched the Second Infadia. Hamas simply changed goals in midstream to "We can use this to get rid of our rivals". And I would argue that attributing insanity solely to the Israelis in this matter is simplistic, odds are high there are people in positions of influence in Hamas that do believe they can whip some sense into Israel if they make life unbearable for them.
cleek
i dropped a link on the last thread. it went unremarked.
there’s nothing to be outraged over! who cares!
Ecks
Article #1 of the wingnut constitution (actually for RWA’s everywhere): "We are right and they are wrong."
Whenever there is a conflict on any other principle, return to Article #1 for overriding resolution.
Notorious P.A.T.
The Cuban colonel even says something like "I used to be those boys" at the end.
But then again, I’m sure by that point in the movie the average Redstater has achieved climax and lost interest.
Brick Oven Bill
John made reference to cjane and I have been checking her out. She is very good.
But you will never convince me that male and female brains evolved under the same pressures. Think of how dumb Harvard looks for firing Larry Summers. Culturalists. Then these same people mock evangelical Christians on creationism.
By the way, it looks like the Mormons are going to win. This is fine by me, Utah is nice. South Park was the first to pick up on this.
J. Michael Neal
Then, once again, it’s a good thing that no one here, aside from wilfred, has said this.
Nancy Harlan Sinatra
This Perf was made for Heh’n
And that’s just what he’ll do
One of these days this Perf
Is gonna Heh all over you
Notorious P.A.T.
Okay–who the heck is she? What does she write about? And why should I vote for her instead of Balloon Juice?
Sorry John C, but I’m not about to vote for a blog I’ve never read over this one.
Brick Oven Bill
I voted for John.
John Cole
@Notorious P.A.T.: I have no idea what the cjane blog is- I have been multiple times and can not figure out what exactly it is, so I doubt I have ever told anyone to vote for it.
And I have repeatedly stated to vote for TBOGG.
Notorious P.A.T.
@John Cole:
LOL. Glad we cleared that up.
pseudonymous in nc
That it’s turned into a runoff between a corporate-ish site for petrolheads (Calacanis brand) and a personal blog from a Mormon mommy is… well, interesting. Mommy blogs are stealthblogs in terms of their readership, though it’s worth noting that political blogs do sometimes convey the sense that they started it all, when Dooce (to name a blog that combines Mormon and mommy in different ways) has been around since 2001. There’s plenty of room for chacun à son goût.
Comrade Darkness
@cleek: "we Americans are exceptional like that."
I think it’s even more twisted than that. They seem to expect as a given that foreigners will rise above their basic humanness and accept some kind of greater and better American point of view. But, when things are reversed this is something utterly beyond red America: they wallow in exactly the behaviors they think the ‘enemy’ will rise above and attack any who so much as voice exactly what they expect of the Other. Which if followed to the obvious conclusion == "foreigners are better than us," which I quite think they don’t believe.
Can they not follow one conclusion to the next? Really, this boggles me.
TenguPhule
No. SATSQ.
It is an eternal Game of Calvinball.
cleek
i had a really big lunch. so, nope, no room left here.
Comrade Darkness
"It is an eternal Game of Calvinball."
Quite. Here in the Darkness household we have been resorting to explaining all right wing behavior by the arrested development theory. Expect and plan for the behavior of a five-year-old. Works frighteningly well.
bootlegger
@TenguPhule: I don’t think you have to attribute "insanity" here, quite the opposite. They are hoping they can wreak enough carnage that the rest of the Arab world rallies to their cause or, failing that, the world puts pressure on Israel for a 2-state solution. I simply meant that they don’t seem to believe that dozen or one hundred suicide bombers will get the Israelis to back down, which is actually a very rational and pragmatic assessment.
Were that we were so rational, as Zifnab correctly points out.
Notorious P.A.T.
Christ, she’s a Mormon? Well, that does explain all the votes she’s getting. If John C’s ancestors had had 12 kids each, Balloon Juice would be winning hands down.
You know, I think you are on to something. Children and Republicans are obssessed with ownership and accumulation of gods ("Mine! Mine!") and see violence as an acceptable conflict resolution ("She hit me first!"). Both will also believe any jackass lie you tell them.
TenguPhule
Everyone in the Middle East is Insane. It’s merely the level of insanity between individuals that’s in question.
TenguPhule
Were that we were indeed.
oh really
I have no problem voting for TBogg (he is, after all, a genuine lefty), it’s just that I suspect he’s got both Beckham and Fenway voting non-stop on multiple computers. Is that fair?
J. Michael Neal
Sure. However, barring the Arab parties from the Knesset election doesn’t seem like the most rational step to take.
Blue Raven
@cleek:
But it’s wah-fer thin!
slag
@John Cole: Cjane is made of Mormon, so it is naturally inscrutable to all of us on the outside.
Mentis Fugit
@Notorious P.A.T.:
At first I thought you’d mistyped "goods", but then I realised…
skippy
whomever you vote for in the major blog category (and it’s a tough choice), make sure you vote for skippy in the large blog category.
i am in second place, but behind the rightist blog jammie wearing fool. come on, don’t let the right win the coveted title of best large blog authority between 301 – 500!
pseudonymous in nc
If that’s the case, the computers will soon be a) pooped out of service; b) eaten, so I think it evens out.