I’ll take anger over sleaze any day

I don’t quite understand this etiquette thing. So Maryscott O’Connor is angry about war and corruption and our incompetent administration, and that’s bad. Naughty leftist, she should be better mannered and respectful to our president, no matter how badly he screws up.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin sics her mouth-breathing minions on some college-aged peace activists, and they get swamped with death threats from right wingers. And she does it twice, even after learning what kind of sewage her pals are spewing.

Hmmm. Decisions, decisions. Angry denunciations of political actions vs. vicious but infantile threats. Unstinting demands that our leaders do right vs. outrageous extortion. Which side do I want to be on?

I’ll pick the door on the left, Bob. Without hesitation.

Hey, and could someone point David Finkel to a real story about bloggers?

You’ve got to hand it to TBogg for giving the Malkins the treatment they deserve.

He got the story backwards

Everyone is writing about this WaPo story about angry liberal bloggers that focused on a site I rather like, My Left Wing. Hilzoy writes about the media laziness behind the story, and Norwegianity punctures the myth that anger is a property of the Left

I’m baffled by it all. Shouldn’t we be angry about war and torture and tax breaks for the rich and incompetence and corruption? Isn’t anger and opposition the appropriate response?

It seems to me that the real news story is all of those angry right wing blogs that are screeching in support of war and torture and tax breaks for the rich and incompetence and corruption. I sure wish a journalist would sit down and make sense of that for me.

Carnival of the Liberals #10

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I received 45 submissions for this edition of The Carnival of the Liberals, and the carnival rules required me to select only a final ten. That was harsh; there were many excellent links sent in, and I struggled with the need to reject so many. Ultimately, I just had to let my own biases rule my decision, so if you sent in a submission and I didn’t use it, it’s nothing personal and it says nothing about a lack of quality in your work—it just means it didn’t fit my narrow criteria for what I wanted to read this time around. As you’ll see, I tend to promote godless secularism and grappling with real world issues in science, and so some fascinating and worthy articles on war and economics and labor just didn’t make the cut this time around.

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Hey, can’t a fellow even spend one day away from the computer?

Man, I step away from the ol’ blog for a day, and what do I get? A rash of the right-wing dingleberries. Come on, everyone, ignore them, they’re nuts.

I do notice a few things, though. My post was about the concern that we would use nuclear weapons against Iran in an unprovoked attack. Read the wingnut comments, and what do we see?

  • A great deal of pussyfooting around the issue. None are coming right out and saying that nuking Iran is justifiable. How about stating clearly that you agree that while Iran is a deplorable mess, you find the idea of using our nuclear arsenal against it indefensible? Maybe we all agree more than you think.
  • Attacks on Seymour Hersh’s credibility. OK, let’s assume he’s all wrong. Does that mean you think the idea of nuking Iran is insane and not something our government would do? Then please write to your congressman and tell them that you, a good Republican, want them to make sure that Crazy Liar Hersh’s predictions don’t come true.
  • Bizarre, idiotic arguments that we’re in favor of kissing Iranian butt. Enough said; that kind of stupidity doesn’t even need to be answered, as it is simply ridiculous and requires a gross misreading of everything every reasonable liberal, left-wing person has said.

As for those demands that the Left needs to provide constructive solutions…did you people even read the Hersh article? He talks about the diplomatic solutions right there, all the stuff that the sensible people are proposing. As turnabout is fair play, what I’d really like to see is the right-wing solution that does not involve large bombs and tens of thousands of dead civilians. If anyone has a dearth of solutions in this situation, it’s the knee-jerk warmongers.