I am preparing for a business trip, so blogging will be light today. But first, a couple of links.

The rant from inside the bubble

Overnight I received an email sending me to MyDD, where Chris Bowers gets all high and mighty.

There was also a lot of good writing on Roberts on some progressive blogs, and I have tried to link to much of it here. Unfortunately, there were also a lot of blogs, including a lot of very highly trafficked progressive blogs, that paid little or no attention to the hearings. To them, I can simply say this: you suck. On the first Supreme Court nomination in the era of the blogs, you completely dropped the ball on the two most important roles blogger help play on a regular basis: helping to shape the national discourse any politics, and agitating the Democratic base into action.

I love this. Mister Johnny Come Lately now gets all high and mighty. He crows about having written "around 150 updates on the hearings over the past four days" as if that were some kind of accomplishment. I suppose blogging 150 posts about anything over 4 days would be and accomplishment. That's a lot of typing!

But here's a news flash, Chris: Roberts was nominated six weeks ago. We have been blogging about him all this time. Where the fuck were you all that time? If there was a period of time to frame the "national discourse" and agitate "the Democratic base into action," it was during the five weeks before the hearings started.

Dailykos, where Armando has done some very good work on Roberts, almost single-handedly drove national Katrina coverage. We could have made a real dent into Roberts as well.

Now this is rich. Nobody else wrote about Katrina? Hello! McFly! (Is this guy really this dense?)

However, many still felt it wasn't worth their time to discuss, and thus the Republican Noise Machine went pretty much unchallenged on this one. Given that, it is hardly surprising that while Republicans have fallen into line behind Roberts, Democrats remain more divided and undecided than they have been on any issue since the run-up to, and early days of, the war in Iraq. What a joy it is to revisit those dark days where we failed to offer an alternative to conservatism, especially when, like in Iraq, this was one of our best opportunities to show America what progressivism really stands for. This might have been even better than Iraq, because it was a chance to lay out the general progressive philosophy before the nation, rather than just our opinion on a single issue or a set of issues. I just can't believe people decided to take a pass on an opportunity like that.

This I agree with. We've been saying this for six weeks. I'm glad Chris finally got on the cluetrain here, if only 5 weeks late.

Why pick on Chris? Because he's a self-appointed leader who helped organize a hastily called nationwide Democratic blog strategy conference call" where all the conferencing, after Ted Kennedy's brief remarks and a little politocratic speechifying, involved Chris and Armando talking to each other about their take on what's important. We weren't there to conference, we were there to get marching orders, apparently.

And now Chris isn't happy how we marched.

Here's a suggestion, Chris: Listen. Read. You know, there are people out there who are pretty smart, and don't necessarily buy into your echo chamber. If you really want a progressive groundswell, you have to include progressives in the planning and debate.

I'm almost done with Chris -- I'll move on to the better half of this post in a moment -- except to share his idea for doing better next time:

At the very least, I should have done more to try and organize a progressive judicial hearings blog ring as a counter to Confirm Them. Such a ring would be far better suited to deal with important events like these than eiehter myself or a series of disorganized bloggers could ever hope to be.

Now maybe I'm just way too hooked in to the Modern Era, but really! Go back to 1994 and use blogrings? Oh my! Did Joe Trippi sign off on that idea, or did you go off script there?

The rant from outside the bubble

Now, sometimes in your online travels you come across a really brilliant rant. Today I offer you pith from right next door: This rant from bayprairie, which picks up on what I wrote last night about Armando's eager endorsement of Gene Taylor, who's part of that oxymoronic group Democrats for Life (I got the links from her in an email, actually), and offers up some fascinating statistics:

Gene Taylor is a Democrats for Life All Star.

Outside of the Republican Party, there's no one worse than Gene.

Gene Taylor voted against the Davis amendment and DENIED a navy wife with a dead baby in her tummy an abortion at government expense. How's that for rewarding american servicepeople?

Gene Taylor supports federal TRAP laws. He shows us his position with his vote. This bill, written and promoted by the most vile republican woman imaginable (more on this later when post updates) is aided and abetted by Mr Taylor.

She follows with an extensive list of his anti-choice and other idiotically GOP-friendly votes, which really is a horror show. We're not just talking votes against reproductive rights, but votes on flag desecration, habeus corpus, civil rights, college admissions, death penalty, medical marijuana, school prayer. In other words, if Gene Taylor were nominated for the Supreme Court, everyone on the left would be howling.

Howling.

bayprairie then says:

Armando supports Gene Taylor. Gene Taylor does not support your reproductive rights nor your progressive agenda. Ask yourself, does Armando really support women's issues? or does he just like to FEEL GOOD WHEN HE GOES TO BED after telling himself lies about how progressive he is?

Armando mouths about supporting women's issues one day, and then he turns around and recommends and empowers a woman's enslaver the next. He must choose one or the other, he cannot support women's reproductive rights AND the pol Gene Taylor.

I AM ATTACKING DailyKos as lacking commitment to women's issues. I say they do nothing but MOVE THE LIPS! Armando is no progressive. He's nothing but a flunky, a party hack.

And make no mistake about this, if you're a woman, Daily Kos does not give a shit about you. So you better just STFU and vote the way the great armando© says.

Or come over to our side and lets talk about how democrats used to be progressive, but no longer are. They're just republican light.

We're going to find a way to do something about it.

Oh and Armando? Ted Kennedy is holding for your call ::::not::::

Read the whole red box.

How that for a kick off into the weekend? Now I need to start packing.

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