Good Monday morning. I have an admitted case of “blog burnout” that really erupted over the weekend. I’m not finding any topics that are floating my boat lately. I mean all I’m reading about is threats of nuclear holocaust from Iran, Palestinian suicide bombers (again), and gay Egg Rolls today at the White House. It is enough to make ya want to move to the Moon.
So let me open up the comments to y’all today for an Open Thread Monday.
Let me also inform you that The Party Crasher is back! Go show him some love.
Maybe by later in the week I’ll be back in the mood. By the way, there is now an Amber Alert out for Dan, Nick & John. Totally leaving me here alone. *sobbing*
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
UPDATE (from GPW): Thanks to my brother’s WiFi, I can sit here and check e-mail while I watch the youngest PatriotNephewWest squirming about. I’ve been visiting my family in Ohio this past week so have not had much time to blog. I hope to be back to regular blogging as soon as tomorrow.
Fine. I’ll start.
Bruce, you asked me earlier in the week via email for my thoughts on registering for commenting. I’m all for it, but I’d take it a step further:
Follow Kos’ lead. Make registration mandatory, then allow us to rate comments, thereby making overtly hostile commentators mute.
Admittedly, I can’t accurately describe Kos’ policy, as I was banned from that site not 15 minutes after I first registered.
Just to get the ball rollling….
Eric in Hollywood
Just as our 4 intrepid bloggers seem burned out or just busy at the moment, I’m burned out on commenting, or just busy.
Speaking only as 1 person… I’d find it nice to come here and only have to deal with 20% garbage from pathetic moonbats, instead of 50%-or-more as currently. As an Independent (a capitalist NON-conservative), I come here mainly for the chance to see the thoughts of (gay) conservatives.
How would a “rated” comment system work?
Would there be gradations where the garbage comments / commentors are just de-emphasized (nothing too drastic)? I skip over much of their text as it is, BUT more of us might skip them (responding to them less and making the whole discussion better) if everyone had to, say, do one extra click to view the text of low-rated commentors.
Would the 4 GP bloggers have dominant rating powers? I would favor that – rather than have the garbage-commentors form a gang to take over the ratings, say.
I rather disagree.
One, from a philosophical standpoint, truth is to be found everywhere, even on occasion in the raving of our board moonbats.
Two, the reason the Kossacks went to a “rating system”, as Eric nicely outlines above, is so they could at least have an “objective” reason for banning people. The point is not to make the comments more easy to read, but to provide smoke cover for the fact that they ban anyone who doesn’t toe their party line.
Three, we are not Kos, and we do not automatically ban anyone who doesn’t toe our party line. Moreover, I prefer GP and GPW having ultimate authority of the ban; anything else is taking feuding clans and buying them better rifles.
Four, I think it is incumbent upon those of us, the sane, to treat the moonbats who do pop up here as the bulk of the American people do; with a collective yawn, a “Thank you for your opinion”, and a loud bit of ignorance.
The last is extremely important; consider it anti-Phelps and Falwell training. Allowing ourselves to lose our temper with the stupid and those who we know are here solely to provoke us is fun and cathartic on many levels, and this blog is one of the few places it can be done. However, our battles go to those who can disagree without being disagreeable, can counter without being contradictory, and who can appear the picture of rationality and tolerance whilst their opponent goes into meltdown.
The reason the Left has gotten to the point that they have is because they, like children, are reduced to throwing tantrums to make people pay attention to them. We should exploit the fact that leftists consider namecalling, mud-flinging, and pure, unbridled hate to be acceptable and high forms of debate in their circles. That requires us to refuse to react as they wish.
Thus, I would challenge the other commentors here; if faced with irrationality, don’t bother to validate it. Sure, they’ll throw epithets like “coward” and the like, but they’re merely trying to drag you down to their level. The facts are on our side, and they know it.
Since this is an open thread, may I relay one of the great headlines of all time: Violent day started with slaying of two perverts
And may I relay some stuff about Saddam’s archives?
We continue to see more late-date documents about chemical weapons that both Saddam AND his field commanders believed he had.
Not that that answers all mysteries – it doesn’t – but it is, as they say, interesting.
The document translation is likely to be accurate, for reasons given here
“An Inconvenient Truth” is a cinematic version of the lecture that Gore has given for years warning of the dangers of global warming. – I saw this at an article linked from the Drudgereport.com. The ciritic, Richard Cohen, goes on to priase Al Gore as if he is some sort of savior. I have news for Dick – Gore is a wing nut! Dick doesn’t question a single idea presented in Al’s movie. Dick just soaks it up. But that’s the left for ya, always ready to embrace an end-of-the-world scenario.
#6 – It’s all about socialism. Gore’s (and Hollywood’s) solution to the “inconvenient truth” is conveniently to always expand the role of government – and also to punish those nasty SUV owners who, along with the rest of us, actually dare ENJOY their money (whatever that may be).
Interestingly, the Bush Administration has actually gone and done something about global warming – Far more than Clinton-Gore ever did -check out the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (that’s 2 links). BUT – Because the APPCDC was created by grownups and might actually WORK to cut emissions, without accomplishing world socialism, the enviro-doomsayers and leftists are naturally desperate to slam it.
Which brings me to this suggestion for Bruce/Dan/et al – Hey, how about a post on global warming? (what you think of it, what you think of what’s being done about it, etc.)
Now, some other topics… Via a Powerline article, here is an interesting news story about a professor accused of working for the Islamic Jihad, who became a cause celebre among liberals, except he really did work for the Islamic Jihad and has just admitted it to Florida courts.
One of our moonbats told me once that he dismisses Powerline as a partisan source. Well yeah… isn’t the whole blogosphere that way? LOL – Except that Powerline, unlike Kos or whatever, actually has good stuff on it – stuff based on, you know, REALITY and those pesky inconvenient FACTS that enabled Powerline to blow the Rather-Mapes document forgeries out of the water in 2004.
DEAR GAY PATRIOT:
Though burnout is to be expected from time to time, I have to say this to you. First, being gay and conservative/Republican is very lonely sometimes…before I had the web, I would sometimes cry, [crying is SO NOT ME] about how hard it was on me. I knew I was gay and expected to think in certain political terms, but I also knew that those liberal ideas were not correct. I knew they were not right in my soul of souls
THEN!!! I FOUND YOU AND OTHER BRAVE BLOGGERS LIKE YOU!!
What you have done is shown me that I am not alone, and in a way… saved me.
You just remember that the next time you think blogging isn’t important. Not that you have thought that, I just wanted you to know.