Friday Blogroll!!

It's everyone's favorite time of the week...it's the Friday Blogroll!! Welcome Dana Blankenhorn to the blogroll, by the way. Hello, Dana!

As a newbie, Dana gets the first link of the Friday Blogroll. His most recent is entitled "How Markos Moulitsas Took Over The Democratic Party". Once you are revived after passing out from reading that title, you can actually read a pretty interesting narrative. Certain posters at Good Nonsense have made certain posts (three posts down from this one, for starters) suggesting that having Kos as the face of a movement isn't necessarily a good thing, but Dana's post is still interesting. He's not falling all over Kos, and among other things, he hates The New Republic, which makes him okay in my book.

Kos' ambition is not to be Richard Viguerie, but to be Nick Denton. He envisions a series of sites on a variety of topics -- like sports -- each filled with happy users contributing their own takes, reading others' takes, taking polls, etc. etc. etc. -- and the ads from that traffic making him and his little family a comfortable living.

Instead he's created a monster. And here comes The New Republic to slay it. TNR, like the National Review, has never made money. It prints magazines to gain influence. It's subsidized by its owner and friends, always has been. Then along come these, these kids who prove that, with a little technical know-how, the right hardware and some discipline you can make a lot of money at this, not just for yourself but for all those people you support.

So TNR created a scandal. Out of whole cloth. They swift-boated Kos and Armstrong. And by extension, the whole "liberal blogosphere." They used a Clueless New York Times report (hidden behind the paid firewall), added their own charges, and threw it over the wall.

BooMan also takes on the TNR/Kos thing. I'm very conflicted here. I know that it's a really bad thing that one person has become the face of the blogosphere/grassroots movement because it's a lot easier to take down one face than 1,000 of them. But that doesn't mean it has to be a "left-leaning" magazine that does the deed. They've got some dirt on Kos and Jerome, and therefore they can totally erase the credibility of the blogosphere as a whole. I only wish folks on the right had a "friend" of their side that was this loyal. TNR sucks. They sucked when they backed the war, they sucked when they endorsed Joementum in '04, and they suck now.

(That said, both Kos and Jerome definitely seem to have a bit of snake oil salesman in them, and Kos has certainly done absolutely nothing to avoid becoming the "face" of the liberal blogosphere. You can't be bigger than the movement, guys. Of course, TNR is the face of the "Liberal Hawks who refuse to admit they were wrong in any way" camp, so at least Kos has logic on his side...most of the time, anyway...)

Demosthenes (h/t for the blogroll add, by the way) also tackles the issue.

At this point, is there really anything left of TNR but increasingly-feeble attempts to attack anti-war Democrats? Hell, considering the domestic policies of Howard Dean, was there ever a basis for the DLC's "he's an extremist" argument except their pants-soiling terror that Democrats and Republicans might actually disagree about the utility of Bush's adventure?

Sure, it's not as if TNR is right--the public hasn't exactly rallied around the Republicans over the war, and the Dems are freely attacking the war as vigorously as the "Kossacks" were two years ago--but what else do they have, really?

In other blogs...

First Draft has a fantastic post about New Orleans and the power of blogging. And while we're on the NOLA topic, I will say that, while Anderson Cooper has gotten way overexposed, and while his compassion seems borderline over-the-top at times, and (as proven on the Daily Show the other night) while he has a laugh that gets really annoying after hearing it 2-3 times in rapid succession, I do very much appreciate that he goes out of his way to keep New Orleans in the news and that he calls complete and total B.S. on the term, "Katrina fatigue." Under George Bush's watch, a US city actually disappeared. Disappeared. And it affected a helluva lot more people than terrorism or anything else in the news. It should still be the top story in the news.

Alicublog is travelling, but a post from Monday about the riveting "How important are fathers?" wingnut debate is more than worth reading.

AMERICAblog discusses the latest impressively-timed "We found the WMD's!" hoax. So do AL and Glenn at Unclaimed Territory. And Steve Soto (though Soto makes the assumption that a Democratic candidate will correctly portray a Republican as the crazy person that he is...honestly, I'll believe that when I see it).

Atrios asks, well, a very important question. Why do Republicans insist on staying in Iraq no matter what? Seriously, Bush said this week that there's no way that we're leaving while he's president. So there's no chance of us accomplishing what we're supposed to accomplish in that time? And if setting a date for withdrawl makes no sense, as we've been told many times, then how does setting a date range for definitive nonwithdrawl make any sense? And at what point does Bush just say, "Look, we're over there because I need help politically. But you and I both know you're going to vote Republican as long as troops are overseas, so let's just talk about something else"?

Avedon links to and discusses an absolutely, hideously moronic comment from Tony Snow comparing the Iraq occupation to the Battle of the Bulge and other moronic stuff.

Billmon points out precisely how Dubya has outdone LBJ: "You know, you gotta hand it to Lyndon Baines Bush. Even his predecessor only managed to lose one war at time."

Hopefully "LBB" won't catch on instead of "Bushnev", though. Berlin niebuhr's working awfully hard on that one.

Debate Link shows us that Sudan's dictator is blaming the Jews for the anti-genocide movement. And that's bad because...?

Digby discusses a fantastic Gene Lyons column taking on Karl Rove and adds a few great lines of his own:

One of the most infuriating things about the triumphal coverage of the Baghdad trip is the fact that the media didn't seem to think it was noteworthy that after all this time the president (or anybody else) still can't make a planned visit because he can't trust anyone and the situation on the ground is so dangerous. Why that's considered "good news" for him is anyone's guess.

Echidne discusses the latest Republican effort to block a minimum wage hike. The Butterfly and I have had many discussions on this. Her (correct) view is that raising minimum wage has the potential to raise insurance costs, along with price hikes for a lot of basic goods. She says they should take the money that would be spent on the wage hikes and plug them into health care and things like that. I can see that. But when they refuse to put the money into the health care system while deciding that they need to raise their own pay and help themselves with further "estate tax relief", well...gosh...you get the feeling that they really don't care about minimum wage earners.

Existentialist Cowboy (who, as far as I can tell, was the first to blogroll us) manages to take down the religious right, anti-global warming idiots, and Thomas Friedman in the same post. Trifecta!

TRex at Firedoglake (deepest condolences to Jane, by the way) gets fired up:

Listen to me, Democrats! Never defend. Never explain. Attack, attack, attack! When a right-winger accuses you of something, back up, reframe, ignore the charges, just ATTACK. How hard can this be? Ann Coulter doesn’t waste her time defending herself against our accusations. Neither does Rush Limbaugh. They launch their attacks and the terms of the debate are set from there, and once again, as liberals, we are bringing knives to a gun fight.

To whit:

A Republican says, "All you liberals are cut-and-run traitors! You don’t support the troops!"

Instead of frantically beginning to tap dance and show that you’re not a traitor and that you do support the troops, you fire back, "Why are you Republicans such cowards? Your leaders are all draft-dodgers who’ve never fired a shot at anything but a bunch of canned quails and old lawyers. You’re using the troops as human shields against the midterm elections! Do you like seeing our brave men and women in uniform slaughtered and killed? Or are you just too much of a coward to face the consequences of your failed policies in Iraq? Which is it? Do you just hate the soldiers or do you hate your constituents?"

Seems easy to me.

Fired Up! Missouri's Roy Temple points to a nice Tony Messenger column in the Springfield (MO) News-Leader, talking about how Governor Matt Blunt and his team can't stomach the fact that there's a liberal blogger out there actually reporting on the Blunt Administration's failures and corruption. Money line: "Welcome to the big-boy world."

Gadflyer points to Harold Meyerson taking on Joe Lieberman. Another always-worthy cause.

Great Society (light posting this week) quotes Bill Kristol and coins the term neo-neoconservatism. Chris Andersen (also light posting this week...sheesh, to these people have lives or something?) highlights the fun Joementum strategy of trying to win a Democratic primary by dissing every Democrat he can find.

Wolcott sums up the Bush Doctrine in 8 words, 2 links, and 2 ellipses. Impressive. (And yes, I had to look up what the plural for "ellipsis" was.

Lance Mannion, the latest to blogroll us, has a great "Lieberman and beyond" post, and I'd like to comment on it, but instead I must comment on the fact that he has a multi-post series on Cheers, and honestly...that's got to be the fastest way to the heart of the posters at Good Nonsense. Well done. And for the record, my theory is that Cheers was a better show with Shelley Long and a funnier show with Kirstie Alley.

And, fashion victim or no, Long just isn't as hot as Alley. And the legs claim is debatable. I need more evidence!

Lawyers, Guns and Money has a nice preview of the upcoming Supreme Court case, Alito v. Civil Rights.

Pandagon takes on an amazing quote (a Quote of the Day, in fact). Racism is dead in Texas! At least we've got that going for us...or not...

Attaturk does a lovely job of summarizing (with pics!) Geraldo's combat experience.

Susie links to a Palast post about Dan Rather. Seriously, though I don't know how involved Rather was (or wasn't) with the Dubya/national guard story, I can't blame Dan for being extremely bitter about his complete and total lack of support. Nobody in the media came to defend him, even though he's been in the business for about 184 years.

And finally, Upyernoz points us to the Hitler v. Coulter quiz. It's actually quite difficult. I only got 6 of 14. Then again, I guessed Coulter every time.