alternative hippopotamus

I liked the way Sirota put this:

And indeed, in offering no support for a stimulus bill that includes quite a lot of tax cuts, the GOP really should be written out of negotiations, not just because they have no legislative power, but because their votes yesterday confirmed that they are legislative terrorists interested only in sabotaging the economy.

I know there’s ideological differences between the two parties. It’s impossible for me to believe, though, that the differences are so great that after a number of significant concessions- many of which piss me off- no Republicans in the House voted for the stimulus package. The approach appears to be a vindictive one- let’s screw up the country so badly that enough blame will dribble onto Obama. Either that or it’s a purely adolescent one- we get it all, or screw you guys, we’re going home.

Either way Eric Cartman sums up the persona of the House Republicans nicely.

Chuckette:

Many thanks to all of you who voted for us for Best Liberal Blog at the 2008 Weblog Awards. You still have time to vote if you haven’t yet today. Apologies to those blogs we recommended whose leads were squashed by the spiteful actions of The Blog That Must Not Be Named. They sort of ruined the fun for the rest of us.

As a rule of thumb, try to have a sense of humor about yourself, and if you can’t, at least try to pretend that you do. This was a case where Wonkette, after the thin skinned ones went on and on about how Wonkette cheated, endorsed the PUMA competitors in other categories. Chuckette was the one who lost awards for the other bloggers.

A word about Wonkette, by the way. Wonkette is the only A list blog that takes the time to link to local DC blogs, including this humble hippo. The writers and commenters are funny, if a tad snarky. I’m glad to see them win in the liberal blog category. The best men and women truly did win in this case.

LA Times. (As far as I can tell this is not a spoof article):

“I have the same feeling that I think many Americans have, that it’s really remarkable that — what we’re going to do here in a few days, is swear in the first African-American president of the United States. When I came to town in 1968, we’d had the Martin Luther King assassination, Bobby Kennedy assassination, riots in the cities, major, major disturbances, a lot of it racially-motivated around the country.

“And in fact, things have changed so dramatically, that we’re now about to swear in Barack Obama as president of the United States. That’s really a remarkable story and I think a record of tremendous success and progress for the United States.”

Apparently, momentarily taken aback by the vice president’s positive tone on his party losing the White House, Blitzer mumbles, “Pretty historic. Pretty exciting.”

And Cheney agrees! “It is,” he says.

Now, many of us are not sure whether Cheney will actually leave the VP mansion. Biden may show up in a week or so, and Cheney will say “Go f*** yourself,” and slam the door in his face. KCinDC also has a theory that Cheney has used the last few years to dig an elaborate system of tunnels under the VP mansion. Actually, that would explain why it’s pixelated out on google earth. Anyway, the idea goes, instead of leaving, Cheney will just relocate to his underground bunker.

I think Dick is just giving us heads up that he has no intention of leaving.

Politico enumerates the celebs in town for Jan 20:

Jessica Alba, Maroon 5, Samantha Ronson, Russell Simmons, T.I. LL Cool J, Oprah, rumored Chris Rock, Sting, Elvis Costello, rumored George Clooney, Il Divo, Rihanna, John Cusack, Tim Robbins, Brendan Fraser, Herbie Hancock, Lisa Marie Presley, Bradley Cooper, Susan Sarandon, Angela Bassett, and those Creative Coalition folks: Tim Daly and Tony Goldwyn, Anne Hathaway, Ron Howard, Spike Lee, Susan Sarandon, Kerry Washington, Dana Delany, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Walsh, Alan Cumming, Barry Levinson, Alfre Woodard, Josh Lucas, Matthew Modine, Richard Schiff, Connie Britton, Marcia Cross, Maura Tierney, Sue Kramer, Rachael Leigh Cook, Gloria Reuben, Wendie Malick, Adrian Grenier, Keshia Knight Pulliam, Phillip Bloch, Tom Cavanagh, Bradley Cooper, Hill Harper, Ashley Judd, Blair Underwood, Lynn Whitfield, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Giancarlo Esposito, Kim Raver, Lawrence O’Donnell, Jane Krakowski, Tamara Tunie, Tom Fontana, Patricia Arquette, Amy Brenneman, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Brad Silberling.

I don’t recognize most of those names. But, I’ve wanted to meet Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon for years. And seriously, Brendon Fraser, Herbie Hancock? Look, this is DC. We don’t get folks coming by this way all that often.

My plans are to go to the Netroots Nation party. Aside, from that we have a book signing with Mike Lux the Thursday after Inauguration. For me, that’s plenty.

Riverchucky currently ponders the question: Is the Confuence a Liberal Blog?.

The short answer is that the Confluence is a liberal blog in the same sense that Dostoevksy’s Notes From the Underground is a liberal blog. Here, I apologize to Fyodor, it’s just that there is no other work of literature that so clearly depicts someone living under the influence of spite. The Confluence is the story of a fanatical Clinton devote, and the back lash of hate she hoped to inspire. The Confluence is to liberalism what Genghis Khan was to Easter: if he thought about it at all, it was how to stop it.

The reason the question has come up is that some Einstein Jr., III, nominated the Confluence for a weblog award. As the proprietor of the site notes:

Is “The Confluence” exactly the same as the other blogs in their category? No. Hillary Clinton supporters spawned a movement in parts of the Democratic party to rebell against the system and the nominee. Also, it should be noted that there were conservative bloggers who supported Obama. For us to ignore some of those blogs just because other blogs or readers don’t like them wouldn’t be fair. We’ll leave it to voters to sort out the winner.

In previous editions of The Weblog Awards we’ve had complaints about the conservativeness or liberalness of various finalists, so this isn’t really that different. If they’re not your cup of tea there are 13 other finalists in that category - more than enough to choose from.

Some blogs are hard to categorize, The Confluence is one of them.

The Confluence is certainly not a feminist blog in any non-hallucinatory sense. It abhors powerful women when they support Obama, or in Rebecca Traister’s case, was unflattering towards the PUMAs. Take this quote from Riverchucky lightly stolen from Rumproast:

Traister just filled out the typical old, uneducated, working class sino-peruvian lesbian meme worksheet, filed it and called it a day.

Furthermore, the Confluence is not an activism blog, unless activism can somehow exist in a vacuum of inaction. The regular bloggers on the site have not been successful in any cause thus far. Their attempt to organize a conference here in DC was quite simply an embarassment. The advertising for it was highly deceptive. The results are documented here, again on Rumproast.

As far as blogs go I would classify the Confluence neither as liberal, feminist, or activist. At best I would call it a spite blog, if the weblog awards have a category for that.