It’s Crunch Time. Have you voted today?

Hi guys, did you remember to vote today?  There’s only two days left.  Someone else isn’t going to do it for you.  We need every vote if we are going to win.  And Remember our friends too!  Here are our recommendations for this year’s 2008 Weblog Awards:

For Best Liberal Blog, vote for The Confluence here

For Best New Blog, vote for Uppity Woman here

For Best Small Blog, vote for Nice Deb here

For Best Hidden Gem, vote for Deadenders here

For Best Food Blog, vote for Cake Wrecks here

For Best Pet Blog, vote for F**k You, Penguin here

For Best Podcast, vote for This American Life or NPR’s Planet Money– here.

Thanks for your support!

Friday: “You MUST pay the rent!” “But I CAN’T pay the rent.”

Suburban Guerrilla has this visual depiction of the consequences of Simon LeGree’s wage policies over the past 4 decades.  As you can see, wages have been pretty much flat in terms of real dollars since the 70’s.

As Susie points out, it’s women, particularly single moms, who discover this first.  The moment you get divorced, your taxes immediately go up, (now that you’re a hip, swingin’ single with money to burn) just as your expenses nearly double.  Then it hits you: you really need two salaries to keep up the appearance of a middle class life style.  Then comes the endless debt cycle.  I made a decision to burn through some liquid assets in order to get back on my feet before I saddled myself with credit card debt and I still think this was the right decision.  I only charge hotels and flights on my credit cards and pay them off as soon as I can.  If I can’t afford it, I don’t buy it.  But it bothers me quite a bit that as the first college educated person in my family, working in a well paying, creative class job, I don’t live as well as my gray collar parents did on one salary when they were younger than me.  Instead of a single family dwelling and two cars, I have a modest second hand townhouse in the burbs, with second hand furniture and I drive a second hand car.

Susie speculates that the Republicans actually liked the fact that there were so many women entering the work force.  It allowed them to slow down the pace of wage increases on men in order to appear as if the wage gap was decreasing.  Would the Lilly Ledbetter Act help or hurt this situation?  Hard to tell but women really need the extra bucks.

The Wall Street Journal reports that other middle class families are starting to tighten their belts and this is bad news for the economy.  The Journal puts the blame where it belongs in Hard-hit families finally start saving, aggravating nation’s economic woes.  Damn those American families! No one is spending.  Well, jeez, something’s got to give.  I suggest giving everyone the raises they’ve been deserving all these years.  How long has it been since we have heard that we are the most productive nation in the world?  We certainly work hard enough.  American employers are the stingiest around when it comes to vacation time.  And they’ve given lousy raises for decades now.  Yes, some families don’t know how to manage money but if you are borrowing just to keep up the same lifestyle you lived as a child, then there’s something drastically wrong with the system.  It’s time the Simon LeGree’s start forking over the rent money.

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And here’s your daily reminder to vote at the 2008 Weblog Awards:

For Best Liberal Blog, vote for The Confluence here

For Best New Blog, vote for Uppity Woman here

For Best Small Blog, vote for Nice Deb here

For Best Hidden Gem, vote for Deadenders here

For Best Food Blog, vote for Cake Wrecks here

For Best Pet Blog, vote for F**k You, Penguin here

For Best Podcast, vote for This American Life or NPR’s Planet Money– here.

We’ve figured out how “the site who must not be named” has been cheating.  It’s not through a proxy server.  (Hint: unplugging your modem and waiting 7 minutes is an unnecessary waste of time if you want high speed cheating. )  It should be easy to demonstrate how it is done with a script of the procedure.  Our resident perl hacker is pulling it together.  Of course, we would only be doing this for documentation and informational purposes, not cheating, and we’ll send the information to the proper people when we’re finished gathering our information.  We hope the Weblog Award admins will keep a close eye on this problem.  Hey, if it were me, I’d disqualify “the site that must not be named”, but it’s not my decision.  Cheaters ruin the fun for everyone by gaming the system and harrassing the blogs we like.  It’s not a good way to be popular.

Wonktards Beware! ‹^› ‹(•¿•)› ‹^›

The big bad PUMAs are gonna get you!:

We are being MURDERED by Crooks & Liars some blog we have literally never heard of, called “Confluence,” right now. Please put a stop to this outrage.

As for our pathetic Blogstalkers:

I got yer rumproast right here!

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Don’t forget, Captain Spaulding says VOTE!

For Best Liberal Blog, vote for The Confluence here

For Best New Blog, vote for Uppity Woman here

For Best Small Blog, vote for Nice Deb here

For Best Hidden Gem, vote for Deadenders here

For Best Food Blog, vote for Cake Wrecks here

For Best Pet Blog, vote for F**k You, Penguin here

If you feel obligated to cast a vote in every category, Captain Spaulding says Ace of Spades is 2% less evil than the other nominees for “Best Conservative Blog” so you can vote for them here

When did mean and vicious become “funny?”

 

The picture above was posted on New Year’s Eve at a blog called Rumproast by the blog owner, “Kevin K.”  The picture is titled “icepick_new_year.”  It was taken from a video posted today at Wonkette by managing editor and part-owner Ken Layne.  At both blogs the picture/video were treated as “humor.”  The comment threads speak for themselves:

Ok, I wasn’t going to start drinking for another couple of hours.  First beer cracked upon setting my eyes upon that horror.

and

 It’s like her face is trying to get away from her body. That is so cool and gross.

Earlier today, a “Wonktard” (their expression) had this to say about Wonkette:

“. . . their rapid-fire satire and off-the-cuff riffing is without equal in the blogosphere and is some of the most hysterically funny political commentary I or my friends have ever read.”

Molly Ivins was the funniest liberal who ever lived, bar none.  Here’s what she said (emphasis mine):

There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity — like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule — that’s what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel — it’s vulgar.

Vulgar is right.

The woman in the picture and video is not an elected official.  She is not wealthy or powerful.  She never hurt anyone.  So why do Rumproast and Wonkette feel she deserves mockery and scorn? 

Because she is woman, a PUMA and a supporter of Hillary Clinton.

How can someone who claims to be a liberal or progressive have so much hate in their hearts for the weak and powerless?  How can they have so little empathy, pity, or shame?

By the way – Rumproast is a 2008 Weblog Award finalist for “Best Small Blog.  Wonkette is a 2008 Weblog Award finalist for “Best Liberal Blog.”

I hope their parents are proud.

Wonkette Gets Pwn’ed

“one very petulant clown”

 From Wonkette:

So we checked out our “competitor,” the Confluence blog, and, as many of you have already discovered… it’s a PUMA site! They have a post called, “An Interview with Harriet Christian, NY Senate Seat Contender.” Oh man. Welcome to our radar, Confluence!

I thought it was priceless when Blogstalkers was fooled by the Harriet Christian satire, but now an “A” lister got taken too, hook, line and sinker!

Can someone please explain what’s “liberal” about this?:

Is confluence codespeak for menstruation?

or this?:

the site was originally called an_army_of_stale_vaginas_fused_shut_over_40-50_inactive_and_bitter_years.com but the name was too long.

Strangely enough, Wonkette is currently leading in the Weblog Awards polling for “Best Liberal Blog,” with more votes than everyone else combined.  “Everyone else” includes “A” listers TPM, Crooks & Liars, Hullaballoo and Glenn Greenwald, as well as a lowly non-list blog called The Confluence.

Although The Confluence had an early lead, Wonkette began moving up steadily in the poll.  At approximately 11pm EST they were at 49%, then 50%, 51%, 52% and they are now over 53%!  In fact, as of about 4am EST, they are the only blog seeing any voting action. 

Wonkette supporters must be like tireless little ‘bots, casting their votes while most of the rest of the nation sleeps.  In the time (3am-4:30am EST) that it took The Confluence to gain 5 votes to go from 541 to 546, Wonkette gained 76 votes to go from 2306 to 2377, giving them 53.2% of the votes!  The Confluence at 12.2% is holding a steady lead over the rest of the field for second place, but we are all losing ground to Wonkette. 

I didn’t think there were that many Wonkette fans, but it’s a freep country.

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Don’t forget, Captain Spaulding says VOTE!

For Best Liberal Blog, vote for The Confluence here

For Best New Blog, vote for Uppity Woman here

For Best Small Blog, vote for Nice Deb here

For Best Hidden Gem, vote for Deadenders here

If you feel obligated to cast a vote in every category, Captain Spaulding says Ace of Spades is 2% less evil than the other nominees for “Best Conservative Blog” so you can vote for them here

Thursday: Is The Confluence a liberal blog?

Duh!  Have you read our Credo?

Yes, we are a liberal blog.

But, but, but, some of you voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Believe me, that was not an easy decision for some of us.  Some of us cried afterwards.  But we made it clear that we didn’t vote for them because we are closet Republicans.  In fact, we disagreed with just about everything they stood for, although, we think they were much more serious about dealing with the bailout bill as it was happening.

Ours were protest votes.  We were protesting the un-Democratic manner in which Barack Obama was selected as our party’s nominee.  You didn’t really think we would be stupid enough to reward that outrage of unfairness and cheating, did you?  How Republican would that have been?  It would mean that our primary season is meaningless.  It would mean that hooliganism and stacking the deck and cherry picking is OK.  It would reduce voting to a pointless exercise. We predict that that will come back to haunt the party in four years.

I think it is time for Obama Democrats to come to terms with this.  Actually, Democrats have a very Jewish attitude about doing something wrong.  Many of them will feel guilty for the next four years.  You Obamaphiles who are reading this have spent half a year rationalizing and denying the truth to yourselves.  You *know* that what went on in the primaries that cost Hillary the nomination was wrong.  You used every nasty Republican generated meme against Hillary even though you knew they were false.  You know in your hearts that it is wrong to discriminate against the gay community.  You know that the sexism that brought Hillary down was a sin against everything you believed.  But the bloodlust was singing in your ears and you were so determined to win at all costs that you allowed yourselves to get swept up in the moment.  You bought into the false narrative that Barack Obama was the savior that would sweep generations of segregation and narrow minded behavior into the dustbin of history.

Then he turned around and invited Rick Warren to his inauguration.

See, a real liberal would never do such a thing.

I’ve spend more than a decade running from the label “liberal”.  I’ve tried on “progressive” and “moderate” and “centrist”.  I prefer to say that I am a Rational Democrat.  And for most of us rationalists, that means we are liberals.  We believe in the equality of all people regardless of race, gender, religion, national origin or sexual orientation.  We believe in social justice, that even if you aren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth that you deserve the same opportunities as those who were.  We believe in justice for all, not just for the moneyed few.  We believe that people should be able to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps and that means giving them boots. We believe in fiscal responsibility.  We believe in deficit spending when it serves the purpose of building new infrastructure.  We believe in paying our taxes.  We believe in privacy.  We believe that a woman’s body is her own.  We believe in sustainability and a healthy planet.  We believe that we already have all the strength we need to rule the world but what we need is diplomacy so that we don’t ever have to use it.

In none of our beliefs is there a single issue mentality.  We do not advocate for one group over another or one cause over another.  We live by the preamble of the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Union. Common. General Welfare.  Blessings of Liberty.  Justice.  It doesn’t get any more liberal than that.

So, you Obamaphiles out there who are objecting to our inclusion as a nominee for Best Liberal Blog for the 2008 Weblog Awards have to ask yourselves, are you liberal?  The Blessings of Liberty mean suffrage and choice.  We, as liberals, would never prevent you from choosing to vote for any of the other blogs on the list just as we would never prevent, intimidate, harrass, mislead or threaten delegates at the 2008 Democratic Convention from voting for the candidate of their constituents’ choice.

That’s liberal and we are proud to count ourselves as liberals.