Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Well done, ms_xeno. I tried to collect my thoughts on this long enough to post, but you and Dennis Perrin said it better than I could reasonably expect to.

It's a damn shame to see two intelligent and interesting young women fall into Big Brother John Edwards' spell (seriously, he's like everyone's jovial but insincere older brother or maybe that "cool" uncle who ends up making a pass at you). The contrite apologies and Johnny boy's stern admonishment both made me wonder where Amanda's fortitude went. I'm assuming it's some combination of pwoggy brain rot (it affects them all) and the simple fact that she probably couldn't afford to lose this job now.

"There's nothing like being handmaiden to a handsome, slick-haired hawk who has clearly given much deep thought to the efficacy of dropping bombs on helpless foreginers. You can feel something real for a guy like that."

Beautiful. Just...beautiful. Brava, Ms, X!

When did Dorothy Parker start blogging here? Lovely stuff, Ms. X.

Hey, thanks, Brother Cranks. I have a hot date at the Red Cross looming, but I'll try to stop by and talk later.

Oh, and MJS, my apologies for the broken link on that first article. It's a cogent Media Matter piece about the smear mechanics and just how very, very practiced they are at bullying the bully boys like Edwards. Tricky Dick himself would be proud. It's here.

i've polled us all
and
we paine brothers concur

congratulations sizzzzzzzzz

even sour royal sez

"solid baby solid"

-----------------------

we needed this
---a post of a different color ----

surely unlike any
the father of uz all
has tacked up on the board here till now

there better be more inside ya like this
sizzzter
or the paines izz acomin northwest by west
to git ya typin up trouble

as to dennis instead of running for prez why doesn't he try rallying
the best of his house prog-cauc
cell mates
to bolt the party and bust the majority

acts of sacrifice come but uncommonly to pols but

this could make some history

a another limpy nerdy run for prez only makes him look more and more
like some ugly ex tv child star
signing
nostalgia autographs at a folding table
set up by a fountain in the local mall

My long winded take on the issue.

http://notanamerican.com/blog1/2007/02/mark_warner_and_john_edwards_t.html

Dennis gets plenty of female attention in real life.

http://www.pbase.com/srogouski/image/73675653

The best irony of all here is the fact that Marcotte was one of the ringleaders in the uproar that "Kos" had to face over his "Pie Fight" ads (ads she was running herself).

It's considered very bad form in the liberal blogosphere to threaten someone else's ad revenue. "Kos" seems to be a better man she she was since he's stuck up for her through this whole mess.

Then again, he just chopped off most of his blog roll and lowered the ad rates of most of his followers and they're seriously up in arms about that.

That's the real problem with professional blogging. They're all very vulnerable in terms of their ability to pay their rent. There's a reason you see very little debate about "Peace not Apartheid" on "liberal" blogs. Their owners don't want what happened to Marcotte to happen to them when they get that coveted phone call from someone's presidential campaign.

It's not suprise that the "liberal" bloggers actually writing about "Peace not Apartheid" tend to be tenured professors like Eric Alterman (no prize himself), people with sources of income outside the Democratic party and who might just get that call anyway since they've got status outside of being on Kos's blogroll.

gomer's bright brother also
joined up with jack kemp....yup ...to spit ball
putin's russia back aways
as part of his requirements for completion
of the famous players school of foreign affairs
special cram course diploma :

the only wall street certified
12 steps to statesmanship program

his wonderful coming out party
was of course
giving that impressive
circle dance in full war paint
over at fort zion
alluded to by madame x

Stanley:

"Kos" seems to be a better man she she was since he's stuck up for her through this whole mess.

Bear in mind that Marcotte never denied she ran the ad because she needed the money. What angered her and the other feminists was Kos' and his cronies' tone in defending his right to run whatever ads they wanted. They were viciously insulting to the woman posters, Kos regulars, who complained about the ad. This had a familiar smell to some older feminists who'd dealt with so-called "feminist friendly" men before, and for some younger women it was a very revealing moment.

There was a hilarious return volley from Pandagon in which Marcotte (or one of her cohorts) made a fake blog ad showing a "sexy" man's barely-concealed crotch so the men who complained about feminists "being too uptight" could get a taste of their own medicine.

Those were the kind of things that attracted me to the space, but it was the perrennial shunning of political alternatives and the way Marcotte pretty much let it be open season on Greens and Indies in any and all of the rah-rah-Democrat threads that ultimately drove me away.

Owen, I absolutely agree with you about poor ol' Dennis. Just because he has to cling to his delusions doesn't compell the rest of us to humor him. :/

Those were the kind of things that attracted me to the space, but it was the perrennial shunning of political alternatives and the way Marcotte pretty much let it be open season on Greens and Indies in any and all of the rah-rah-Democrat threads that ultimately drove me away.

Because in the end you have to pay your rent and your ISP bills.

It's not easy to avoid working with the Democrats when the alternatives on the left can't support you and seem so downright incompetant and screwy sometimes.

It makes someone like Dennis Kuninich very attractive to support. He does have one foot inside the tent.

The problem is when people start kidding themselves. The rationalizations and the convoluted explanations about Edwards speech on Iran just start to venture into the arena of cognitive dissonence after awhile.

notice this typical proggled demthink
from my personal column creature idol

bobby the K

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/10/deconstructing_nader/

first state the facts correctly :

"Nader watched for two decades as his and the public's handiwork was undone, with many Democrats serving as corporate enablers along with the Republicans. This frustration, in the end, led him to run for president.."

now the turn

"...I wish he hadn't."

but there was another way ...

" Or, if he had to run, Nader could have run in the Democratic primaries..."

the trap is sprung he's caged in the big tents side show where he can safely
"...energize the progressive base
inspire independents and forced (the ) Al Gore(of the moment)
to speak with a more populist voice"

voila

neutered nader

ie
he and dennis can get yoked to the same plow

oxen for social progress

and rip the shit out of
the stoney patch
at the margin of the electoral landscape

Stanley, somebody on Marisacat's blog grumbled that Pandagon started to seem like "sexual astroturf" or "feminist astroturf" to them after awhile. I think what they were referring to was the sheer quantity of posts that were bascially repetitive in nature. Oh, look, another Right-wing preacher who hates queers ! Oh, look, another stupid utterance by Malkin, and so on.

Which begs the question: How little content and how few hits does a site have to either settle for or purposely cultivate in order to avoid the need for a heavy stream of ad revenue and essentially signing over a crucial amount of editorial control to the Party aparatus ?

I have a low-traffic LJ. mr_xeno bought me a slight upgrade as a gift so I could put up extra pictures (I'm an artist). But that doesn't stop me from telling him that I think Kos is a stupid waste of his time, likewise the Democrats. :p

I really don't want to get obsessed with quantity, get a huge stable of staff, post something long (if not all that innovative or substantive) every day, scour for a giant audience, etc. It just seems like an open invite for somebody else to come in, drop a few dollars, and suddenly be your equal or better when it comes to decreeing what you can post.

The worst of it is that, yes, it leads to massive outbreaks of cognitive dissonance, not to mention sheer laziness. Marcotte's entire criticism of Friedman's campaign, so far as I could tell, was NO ! SAVE THE DEMOCRAT ! Instead of actually looking at his campaign and dissecting what was both right and wrong with it, she settled for calling him a racist. As if her own fucking party wasn't crawling with specimens just as bad in that regard, and worse in myriad other ways. It's hard to sell your party as a bastion of thoughtful people who think critically when there are distinctly limited spheres in which you yourself are or able to do that kind of thinking.

It drives me crazy.

Yeah, Paine. The Democrats whine at Nader for not getting into the harness like a good boy, then when Kucinich does get in the harness they snigger that he's funny-looking and eats weird food and what they really want is Dean the white-haired, iron-jawed partiarch.

It's a pathetic game they play.

I get the sense that a lot of "pwogs" were geeks in college. They're outsiders, fairly left in terms of how they think, but they've come out with this burning resentment in two directions.

They hate the establishment (the press and the DC beltway crowd) that won't have them.

But they also hate (and really really hate) "trustfund leftists", probably the type who seemed a little too snotty and aloof back when they were 19 or 20.

That's just my pet theory (speaking as a geek).

And while they hate the DC beltway crowd and the ruling class press, they're very easily swept off their feet when one of the popular kids pays them any attention.

The supposed geek-vs.-cool divide is a tough one for me to endorse, Stanley. Even though I see your point. I have a geeky background, and some minor assets that are keeping me going though I'm barely employed right now. But I'm sure that my fears are very similar to those who remain in the Big Tent: Fear of impoverishment, fear of lost civil/reproductive rights, fear of global war and environmental disaster and so on.

I'm fatter and grayer than a lot of the "netroots" crowd, but also too young to remember "Nam and not prone to get misty-eyed every time a new Dylan box collection comes out. So I'm generally hesitant to assume that a generational divide explains the disconnect here.

unlike owen i never agree with madame x
she writes too good .....

so its not surprising i see your point here diff then her

its really a projection by the pwoog-nerdians

of course father smiff
is my guide in these waters
he's not exactly native to um
but he been paddlin thru um more then me
so
you'll have to get an official stop me
call on this from him

being as i'm mostly a wine bar
and beautiful people type and all

I always thought the Kosniks were a young crowd, from reading their stuff online, but when I visited their Chautauqua last year, I was quite surprised to find that Kos-erei spans the generations. I will say that very few of them looked like they'd been cool kids in high school, though. The exception was the firedoglake girls, who looked like Tri-Delts -- very scary.

"the firedoglake girls, who looked like Tri-Delts -- very scary."

scary....
as in revenge of the scary
snotty ex co eds ??? ...

send in el teo Royale...

"one lady-fox
exclusion and put down riot......

one mud ball ranger "

Somebody just posted on Marisacat's blog that Marcotte has stepped down. Johnny E. has his cake and eats it, too. Everyone else gets breadcrusts, or artillery, to knaw on. God bless America. :/