Best Liveblog Ever!

I'm not ashamed to admit that Wonkette's liveblog of the Oscar ceremony last night works on levels I couldn't even have imagined.

Without Party? I Have My Doubts

In my quest to find blogs I disagree with who will still talk to me, I've been spending a little time over at Without Party. That one is run by two people named Richard And Alix who claim to be lifelong Democrats who were so disillusioned by Hillary Clinton's failure to win the Democratic presidential nomination that they are bitter and voting for McCain.

Look! I told you there were real PUMAs in this country! Except I'm pretty sure they aren't.

Maybe it's my own bias showing through, because I was never that thrilled with the idea of another Clinton running things. I liked the first one, but enough already. Had Hillary won she would have had advantages that Barack did not; chiefly a fierce and unquenchable lust for revenge against Republicans. I thought at the time that once the campaign took a predictable turn toward dirty she could out-dirty them. It didn't occur to me that throttling back might be more effective.

Still, as I say, Clinton wasn't my top choice. She was a big supporter of the Iraq war and cooperated a little too easily with the farthest far-right Republicans, like Joe Lieberman. (Rimshot). So when I say I'd have voted for her, it would be under the exact distaste that a lot of Republicans are planning to vote for McCain with. In the primaries, in fact, most Republican pundits were almost salivating over the idea of Candidate Clinton. She was a Democrat that even Ann Coulter could support.

And that is what is coloring my judgement of Richard and Alix. (By the way Alix, thanks for correcting my misspelling of "Reagan" the other day.) Here's Richard, laying the historical groundwork for his transformation from Democrat to... well, what the hell is he now? Interesting.

I admit it, I loved the Clinton years. I was not of age to have been able to vote for President Clinton either term, but I was excited to cast my first vote for Gore in 2000. I hated Bush even then and I truly thought he would never win. The events that followed in Florida those few months were almost enough for me to lose faith in the system. Gore was robbed of the White House, and we all know it. 

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Then came Kerry in 2004. Although I didn't really "like" him, we were finally going to get revenge for Gore and toss Bush out of office and stop this terrible war. Needless to say, my Kerry vote was more of an anti-Bush vote, but I remained a faithful Democrat. Once again, I was shocked that Bush had won a second term and was wondering if we were ever going to win another election.
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Finally came my girl, Hillary. I have thought she was awesome from day 1. Maybe she reminds me a little of my mother and I love that fighting spirit. I felt like we had finally found a winner and a candidate who was really going to take on the GOP and get the Democrats back in the White House. I did grow very emotionally attached to Hillary's run for office. She marched every year for gay rights and stood up for us (as best as any politician can) and she spoke for the silent. I freely admit I was crushed when Obama got the nomination. It's wasn't about Obama for me, it was that it wasn't Hillary.

It just doesn't seem plausible to me that you support McCain Nader in response to losing Hillary. Not only support Nader, who killed Al Gore's chances in 2000 - also trash Pelosi and Reid, argue that the press has a pro-Obama bias, and most tellingly, mock Rachel Maddow. If you're gay (Alix) and liberal you could still disagree with Rachel Maddow; but you probably wouldn't ever refer to her as "Rachel MADCOW." That's a huge leap to make, from Democrat to Ann Coulter. And of course, if they love Hillary Clinton so much, why not take the advice that she offered at the convention and support Obama?

So the whole biography unravels as you read the posts. Still, people are more complicated than their narratives suggest, and I can't say that I know what Richard and Alix think any more than I can say that they're real people in the first place, and not a library picture slapped onto a blog by Karl Rove's nephews. I just don't know. That's what makes them such a good read.

I Feel Left Out

This little blog barely matters. You know how I can tell? I don't get THIS kind of hate mail.

It's a fact of life on the internet that when you are mentioned (and linked to) unfavorably by certain high traffic right-wing bloggers, you promptly start receiving some of the most remarkable hate mail you've ever seen. It begins immediately, peaks overnight, and continues usually for about 72 hours or so. Then everyone forgets about it or gets bored and only a few wackos send you the odd death threat for another week or two. (That cycle of mass hatred is not exclusive to pissing off the far-right—obsessive fans of certain celebrities act in much the same fashion!—but Malkin-readers are the form's purest expression.) For your edification, we've run some numbers on keywords used in the hate mail sent to us after we reprinted some of Sarah Palin's emails, an act of malicious terrorism that got us called all sorts of names by Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilley, and presumably many more.

Without quoting the mail itself, let me quote a paragraph from Kathleen Parker, a conservative columnist who expressed an opinion that maaaaaaaaaybe Sarah Palin might consider stepping down after a few disasterous interviews.

The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve. Readers have every right to reject my opinion. But when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different than one's own, then we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk.

And she's on THEIR SIDE!

Gawker's opinion is this: Liberals get a great deal of justified ribbing for their constant outrage over every little thing, and political blog commenters from both sides are guilty of disgusting rhetoric, but in our experience it's the Malkinites and Little Green Footballers and their Brethren who hands-down win the violent, stupid, and hateful hat trick. Which has been my observation too.

My Best Blog Metric

Just a quick observation - I use FEEDBURNER to syndicate this blog, and they provide me with handy statistics. It's because of them that I know what the number one post is, as the result of google searches. I'll make it a multiple choice for you.

1. Turtles All The Way Down (6/19/07)
2. Geopolitics as Barfight (12/6/06)
3. Oh No, Ann Coulter Again (3/5/07)
4. Adwords - Does It Make Adsense? (5/16/07)
5. SECOND LIFE Is Much Cheaper Than Heroin (7/7/6)
6. Nazi Porn Vs. Terrorist Gangs (5/7/07)

Yes, of course it's #6. But thanks for playing!