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Dear Readers… Vote Early, Vote Often!

Somehow our arch-nemesis, the PUMA blog “The Confluence,” was nominated by the 2008 Weblog Awards as one of the Best Liberal Blogs of 2008. Friends, we know better: Confluence isn’t liberal, it’s a “national enquirer” of anti-Obama conspiracy theories and wingnuttery. If Confluence wins, they’ll use the award to legitimize themselves as the “new left” on the internet. We can’t allow this to happen. Please go to the voting page and vote for “Wonkette,” the current favorite to beat Confluence. And, make sure to re-vote at least daily: the software allows one vote per day, but with IP-spoofing software, multiple devices, or multiple networks, you should be able to vote as much as you want. Oh, and yes, we do have an archnemesis.

Best Liberal Blog? Vote DOWN “The Confluence,” Starting Today

As we’ve reported before, the 2008 Weblog Awards made the mistake of nominating PUMA-blog “The Confluence” as one of the “best liberal blogs of 2008.” Critically, neither Confluence nor PUMA-dom are liberal – they’re Obama conspiracy theory agglomerates, nothing more – and we suspect Weblog Award administrator/conservative blogger Kevin Aylward knows as much, and is just trying to yank the liberal blogosphere’s chain. Well, it’s not funny. Confluence must not win the Best Liberal Blog Award.

How can we do this, you ask? It’s going to be tough, make no mistake: because there are fourteen nominees and only “fake” liberal blog, Confluence can win just by splitting the legitimate liberal vote between the remaining thirteen legitimate blogs. The best way to fight the vote-fracturing potential is for all of us here to settle on one blog to vote for: I recommend Crooks and Liars. So, first things first: when polls open tonight at midnight,

VOTE FOR “WONKETTE”
AT THE WEBLOG AWARDS SITE.

When the polls go live, we’ll have an embeddable voting tool here so you don’t need to go to their site, but in the meantime, be sure to get your vote in ASAP. Now, Confluence is likely to enlist the entire PUMA-sphere to take advantage of the vote fracturing effect, and propel them into first place. In a fair fight, they’d have a good shot at winning. We can’t give them a fair fight. Most web voting software forbids multiple votes but bases its decision on whether or not to forbid your second vote based on a combination of (1) your IP address and (2) cookies in your browser. So, if you’re tech-savvy, to maximize your ability to vote multiple times…

1. Install TOR, an onlyine anonymity tool, and use it to cycle IP addresses to vote.
2. If TOR doesn’t allow you to vote once per IP, clear out your cookies between votes.
3. If that doesn’t work, use your iPhones, mobile networks, any publicly accessible IP addresses, and multiple devices to try to vote for C&L as much as possible.

We can kick Confluence out. May God have mercy on our souls.

Was It Worth It?

Disaster averted?

Attempting to unseat Jimmy Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan, at the presidential debate, asked America a simple question: are you better off today than you were four years ago? The assumed answer – “no” – powered him to victory over the already unpopular incumbent.. Today, I’ll ask a variant of the same question. Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?

Though I declare the answer today from the safety of my own room, I suggest that the answer is again “no.” By all accounts, the Bush Presidency defined itself, more than anything else, by an obsession with preventing “the next attack.” Certainly we should be glad of their dedication and, with any luck, when President Bush steps down in January, he will have succeeded. But by the same accounts, the administration’s obsession bordered on the unhealthy. Officials at the highest levels of government began their day by reading reports of all reported threats on the homeland in the last 24 hours, creating (even in the minds of true believers) a counterproductive level of paranoia. Top-level obsession with intra-governmental secrecy hobbled key officials, robbed the administration of valuable opportunities for moderating discourse, and permeated trials of alleged terrorists, to the point that men have been detained for five years upon no showing of evidence. We surrendered our moral authority by torturing without need. And, of course, a war of security became a war of nation-building, because the government chose to shoot first and ask questions later. The list goes on.

Of course, our nation remains secure, but the question is whether this security is because of, or in spite of, the Bush administration’s policies. By all accounts, extreme policies like torture have added little. The administration’s only justification for torture – that torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed yielded up the name of dangerous nuclear terrorist Jose Padilla – fell apart when the charges against Padilla turned out to be overblown, and his case began a tortuous course through the criminal courts. It may be that we’ll never know how, or if, the Bush administration’s now-controversial policies saved our lives. But I’ll hazard a guess that we could’ve gotten to where we are today for less.