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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: A Good Grudge Should Be Cherished

Open Thread: A Good Grudge Should Be Cherished

by Anne Laurie|  February 4, 20138:09 pm| 30 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.

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Okay, so we missed Blogroll Amnesty Day, again. But I’m taking this opportunity to mention that HTML Mencken, my favorite of all the Sadlynauts, is back in furious action at Sadly, No!:

Elliott Abrams — also known by his nom de criminel Mr. Kenilworth — has written an account of Israel’s bombing of Syria’s al Kibar nuclear reactor. At the time, Abrams was one of George W. Bush’s deputy NSAs and so his version of events is an insider’s. Since Abrams is a self-described “gladiator,” a patron of butchers in Central America, a smear merchant and liar, husband of a genocidally-minded homophobic fascist, brother-in-law to one of same sentiments, son-in-law of a certifiable madman, and author of a book which demands of his co-tribalists a more ethnic purity by denouncing Jewish-gentile intermarriage in the strident tone of an old Southern anti-miscegenation tract, his story of the strike on Syria, published in his family’s magazine Commentardy, is bound to betray a certain authorial slant. And he doesn’t disappoint.

First he provides some background. Mean Condi Rice had relatively soured relations with the Israelis. She, like the rest of the administration, was fine with Israel blowing the shit out of Lebanon for a while but she didn’t want it to go on indefinitely. Bad Condi! Then the story takes off….

“Holding a grudge” has always been considered un-American — between genocide against the previous occupants, the violent & frequently criminal pasts of the proto-American immigrants, and our Founding Fathers’ “compromises” on that messy, unpleasant slavery issue, isn’t it just more patriotic to pretend that history extends no further back than the last presidential election?

But in politics there are no lost causes, only abandoned ones… a bias that the Republicans have been manipulating, greatly to their advantage, since at least Nixon’s embrace of the ‘Southern strategy’. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, or at least to have their (our!) enemies repeat it upon us.

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Reader Interactions

30Comments

  1. 1.

    Schlemizel

    February 4, 2013 at 8:13 pm

    It would be nice if you would take blogroll amnesty day as an opportunity to clear the dead links out of your blog roll.

    I know a lot of folks claim they never use it I like using BJ as something of a home page (I use a couple other sites like that also). Since I spend a lot of time here I can easily click into those other sites I enjoy from the blog roll.

  2. 2.

    Anne Laurie

    February 4, 2013 at 8:19 pm

    @Schlemizel: Up with the Blogfather, you should take that. I don’t have the access, and Cole doesn’t answer my emails. (Heck, I doubt he reads them.)

    But, yeah, the untidiness irks me, too also.

  3. 3.

    Raven

    February 4, 2013 at 8:20 pm

    Get Pat Lang off of there!

  4. 4.

    Baud

    February 4, 2013 at 8:23 pm

    @Raven:

    Your perseverance is remarkable and admirable.

  5. 5.

    S. cerevisiae

    February 4, 2013 at 8:24 pm

    It’s great to see HTML back in action, I discovered Sadly, No back in the dark days of Dubya and it became my favorite hangout and a welcome shot of snark. Soon afterwards I discovered this place and the sharp people here as well and They both remain on my daily reads. I guess I’m a sucker for both fine art and toilet photoshops.

  6. 6.

    S. cerevisiae

    February 4, 2013 at 8:25 pm

    I really miss The Editors.

  7. 7.

    Raven

    February 4, 2013 at 8:28 pm

    @Baud: And no-fucking-body gives a rats ass.

  8. 8.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    February 4, 2013 at 8:30 pm

    Hey I don’t update often but when I e-mailed Cole about my new blog he changed the link the same day. I have no complaints. (What can I say it is winter, a blog about critters tends to go dead when everything is hibernating)

  9. 9.

    srv

    February 4, 2013 at 8:30 pm

    @Baud: Just another Obot who lurvs Lang when he’s all anti-Bush, but can’t live with the reality of the 2nd Ammendment, R2P Neoconism and vapid Foreign Policies.

    They all hate McCain and lurv Hagel over there too… but there’s never enough purity in the Obot boat.

    As for Elliot – it should be welded into any future DNC platform that keeping him out of any federal position is job #1.

  10. 10.

    Villago Delenda Est

    February 4, 2013 at 8:34 pm

    Home pages are so 90’s. However, bookmarks never go out of style.

    Chrome makes it easy, and I’ve only got a handful of “regular” bookmarks that I check on something approaching a daily basis. This is one of them, along with PBS, which while I don’t comment there anymore (I loathe Disqus), is still my nominal home page.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    February 4, 2013 at 8:35 pm

    @srv:

    I don’t read Lang so can’t comment.

  12. 12.

    shortstop

    February 4, 2013 at 8:36 pm

    Love HTML and happy to see his return. Cerberus, with his painfully labored and perennially ungraceful prose, is unreadable, and has cut my visits over there down to almost nothing.

  13. 13.

    eemom

    February 4, 2013 at 8:36 pm

    Isn’t there gonna be a new site rebuild thingie like tomorrow?

    So let’s start off with a nice fresh blank Blogroll. And new rules about who gets on it. Like the blogger has to be nominated by the first commenter in the morning and seconded by the last commenter in the evening and approved by a majority of all commenters in between. All proceedings to be conducted by secret e-mail to Cole.

  14. 14.

    RossinDetroit, Rational Subjectivist

    February 4, 2013 at 8:37 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    I use Google Reader, which is like training wheels for reading. But it’s simple and keeps my links up to date no matter where I am*.

    * Kokomo again, FSM help me.

  15. 15.

    Spaghetti Lee

    February 4, 2013 at 8:47 pm

    Aw sweet, I love HTMLM. Are they bringing Brad and Gavin back too?

    I don’t dislike Cerberus, but the pick-apart-every-last-line style can be…a bit overdone, at times.

  16. 16.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    February 4, 2013 at 8:48 pm

    Re: blogroll, Pandagon moved a long, long time ago.

  17. 17.

    Roger Moore

    February 4, 2013 at 8:50 pm

    @Xecky Gilchrist:

    Re: blogroll, Pandagon moved a long, long time ago.

    And Andrew Sullivan hasn’t been at the Atlantic for a while, either.

  18. 18.

    schrodinger's cat

    February 4, 2013 at 9:00 pm

    Speaking of amnesty. I am not sure whether this has been posted here before.
    An answer to the question

    I Don’t Have a Problem with Immigrants, I Just Have a Problem with Illegal Immigration

    Note: I think there have been some minor changes in this after Sept 11, 2001, in that the path for some potential immigrants has gotten even more convoluted. But gives a good idea of what legal immigration entails.

  19. 19.

    Raven

    February 4, 2013 at 9:28 pm

    @srv: Fuck you douche.

  20. 20.

    jeffreyw

    February 4, 2013 at 9:31 pm

    I note that the stealthed link to What’s4Dinner is again active on the blogroll. So… no complaints!

  21. 21.

    schrodinger's cat

    February 4, 2013 at 9:38 pm

    @jeffreyw: I read the Katie update, poor thing. I hope she comes back soon.

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    February 4, 2013 at 9:56 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Well, Cole likes you better than he likes me.

    (Of course, he probably likes dandelions better than me, and we know how John feels about dandelions!)

  23. 23.

    skippy

    February 4, 2013 at 10:46 pm

    thx for mentioning blogroll amnesty day, and i won’t even try to guilt you out for not linking to my blog even tho i was the original cofounder (along w/jon swift) 5 years ago, and have been the engine which runs the tradition each year, including a heads up to all the balloon juicers on an open thread last sunday.

    i am glad you mention it, and hopefully next year balloon juice will help us celebrate!

  24. 24.

    SiubhanDuinne

    February 4, 2013 at 10:48 pm

    @eemom:

    All proceedings to be conducted by secret e-mail to Cole.

    Oh, you are the sly one. I say that with great admiration.

  25. 25.

    FlipYrWhig

    February 5, 2013 at 12:53 am

    Ugh, never liked that HTML Mencken dude. Long-winded and super full of himself to an almost Dennis Miller-ish degree. Seb and Brad were the best. That used to be my joint.

    The blog that used to be amazing was World O’Crap. I don’t even remember to look over there anymore, alas… Oh man, and Norbizness… You see, back in my day it felt like the bloggers were just like us, instead of all corporate and shit, like now. :P

  26. 26.

    BethanyAnne

    February 5, 2013 at 12:56 am

    @SiubhanDuinne: Oh, I don’t know. All that counting. Perhaps simply the last one to email him about a site gets that site on the blogroll?

  27. 27.

    Batocchio

    February 5, 2013 at 4:02 am

    Thanks for spreading the word, Anne Laurie. (And thanks, skippy!)

  28. 28.

    HTML Mencken

    February 5, 2013 at 6:40 am

    Thank you much, Anne Laurie. You’re much missed in the threads at Sadly.

  29. 29.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    February 5, 2013 at 11:08 am

    Get Pat Lang off of there!

    @Raven: Seconded. He has taken a bad turn recently, starting with the Trayvon Martin murder.

    For the last five years he was what I’d term a “rational” conservative. I now have to drop the “rational” and replace it with “typical”. He’s starting to drink the tea and it’s getting ugly.

  30. 30.

    fuckwit

    February 5, 2013 at 3:23 pm

    Wasn’t this the same tool-bag who was indicted in the 80s for the Iran Contra scandal?

    Why the fuck is anyone in the media even listening to him in the first place?

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