Quote of the Day

"(And then he called me a crazy person with not that many followers. I have almost 1000 more than you, fucker.) HAHA #childishtweet #p2"

Angry Black Lady, fighting with John Aravosis of Americablog.

It is alway nice to get a lecture on maturity from a woman who brags about how many followers she has and calls another blogger "fucker." To top it off, ABL has a NSFW Twitter background of an ass.

ABL has waged Twitter wars with Glenn Greenwald, Empty Wheel, Nicole Sandler and a host of other A-list bloggers. The attack on Sandler was disgraceful. ABL's idea of discourse with anyone who disagrees with President Barack Obama's policies on indefinite detention or fiscal matters is to call them emoprogs.

ABL went on a tear on popular progressive bloggers, who pointed out that Obama's concessions to Republicans during the debt ceiling crisis was politically and fiscally wrong. Tas and I asked her on Twitter to explain what Obama's strategy was. We were asking a serious question. ABL explained she didn't have time to school us. ABL did have the time to get into a Tweet war with Empty Wheel. I pointed this out to her. No response. The best way to silence her is to actually have her explain her political viewpoints.

ABL can no more explain why she supports Obama's policies than Glenn Reynolds can explain why he backed President George W. Bush. ABL and Reynolds aren't people passionate about policy. They are partisan cheerleaders. To them politics is Red Sox v. Yankees.

As for ABL's Twitter followers: Charlie Sheen has more. People follow Sheen because they like watching a train wreak. I follow ABL for the same reason. I guess by ABL's logic, we should take the political ramblings of Sheen more seriously because he has more followers. If that is the case then Sheen's views on nuclear profileration should be treated as the gospel truth. Fortunately, Twitter followers doesn't automatically give credibility. That has to be earned. Picking fights would popular lefty bloggers is a good way for ABL to get attention. It won't earn credibility.

Side note: Aravosis angered transgender supporters. There are tweets going back and forth. I'm not sure how it started. I know from history that Aravosis tends to dig himself a deeper hole. Aravosis was defending Dan Savage. Avavosis went over-the-top by calling certain members of the trans community the "trans mafia." The comment gave ABL an opportunity to attack Aravosis. Aravosis has often been critical of Obama.

Tiller's Death Brings Out Worst In Bloggers

Megan McArdle writes a long and bizarre post defending the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller. Authorities have captured Scott Roeder. The suspect has a long history of militia involvement and voicing his desire to kill abortion providers. The fact McArdle would want to defend the actions of such a tainted individual makes me question her common sense.

Perhaps I find the certainty of the pro-choice side so disturbing because it feels a lot like the certainty of the warbloggers in the run up to the Iraq invasion. As some of Hilzoy's commenters point out, I was myself too caught up in it, which makes me cautious of getting caught up again. The pro-choicers seem to be acting as if people who shoot abortion doctors are some weird species of moral alien, whose actions can only be understood in Satantic terms, and who cannot and should not be negotiated with, because they only understand raw displays of power. Yet it seems to me that if I were in a society that believed fervently in the personhood of a fetus, I would very possibly agree, and view Tiller's murderer the way I'd view someone who, say, assassinated Mengele.

What we learned was McArdle's judgement was horribly wrong with Iraq and now with the Tiller murder. McArdle grew up in an Upper West Side of New York City. She was educated at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania and lives in the Washington, D.C. bubble. This is a woman that has not had a tough life. McArdle views Tiller's murder and the Iraq war as an intellectual debate.

I am aware that I have constructed my beliefs about personhood in the face of these things--like any good undergrad, I know the answer I need to reason to in order to ensure both social comfort and maximum personal freedom. I like to think that I am too rigorous a thinker to be seduced by such ephemera.

Coffeehouse debates with D.C. friends has little relevance with the real world. McArdle writes that she has pro-choice leanings. Her problem is the tone of the pro-choice movement makes them fail to understand why someone would want to murder a doctor at his choice. Excuse me, but I wonder if McArdle would feel that way if Tiller was gunned down a few feet from her.

If you interpret this murder as a political act, rather than that of a lone whacko, than this should be a troubling sign that the political system has failed. So why do so many people think that the obvious answer is simply to more firmly entrench laws that are rightly intolerable to someone who thinks that a late term fetus is a person?

McArdle's worldview is influenced by Ayn Rand and Libertarian economics. Find a feminist whom supports Rand theories? Name a good Libertarian economic idea? McArdle has a history of being and and ridiculed in the blogosphere. McArdle argues in the post her parents restrict her "autonomy by continuing to be alive." McArdle makes it clear she has no desire to murder her parents. I wonder why she even went there. It is rather morbid to write on a media blog how the death of McArdle's parents would financially benefit her. That is a sick line of thinking.

In Other News: John Aravosis is angry President Barack Obama backed down on the Homelan Security demestic terrorism report. Aravovis' logic is if Obama looked "to the future" Tiller's murder could now be used for political advantage. Aravosis' compassion is underwhelming.

Note that had Obama held firm in the face of the criticism last month, he'd be riding high right now and the GOP would be cowering in shame for having basically enabled this terrorist act. But Democrats rarely look to the future, nor do they see benefit in having a spine or doing what's right. And now a man is dead.

Remember what I wrote only a month ago about the religious right demanding the right to kill. Today, in church, they exercised that right. As they have in the past. As they will in the future.

In case you are wondering, Aravosis lives in Washington, D.C. It must be something in the Potomac River. This is America. We don't gun down people in church just because we disagree with them. The one trait McArdle and Aravosis share is neither of them give a damn about Tiller. The doctor is a prop for their political arguments and bad blog posts.

Doing An Aravosis

John Aravosis is not loved by the members of Pushing Rope. Tas has riped Aravosis here and here. Aravosis has written two posts accusing Sen. Richard Shelby of being a pedophilia. The posts were Aravosis's lame attempts to illustrate Shelby's accusion that President Barack Obama is not an American citizen are baseless.

I have avoided blogging about the Shelby remark. Voters have already decided the accusation is groundless. Shelby can make all the innuendos he wants about Obama's citizenship. It is not going to make him more popular than Obama. Aravosis stoods to the same level of smears Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin used against John Kerry's military service. The way to beat the Right is not by imitating it's most disreputable bloggers. Aravosis crossed the line of common sense and civil discourse. Sadly, it won't be the last time.

John Aravosis and the Strangely Missing Post

[Crossposted from Sugar Land is Dreaming]

An unintended subplot to my previous post on the economy detailed the actions of John Aravosis removing a post from his blog. That subplot has now expanded, and even though this is mainly an inter-blog pissing match that is of no real importance to the outside world, I think it still garners its own post.

Here's the story so far: On 1/24/08, Johnny A-List published an idiotic pro-rich/screw the poor rant against the stimulus package that was widely linked and criticized in the blogosphere, and it also amassed a thread of 500+ comments from angry AMERICAblog readers.

The first time Johnny published this post, it was at this URL. It has since been removed.

During the time period when the link to the post died, I'm unsure if Johnny had outright deleted the post or renamed it, but either way I searched AMERICAblog's archives and found out it existed at this new URL. It has since been removed from that URL, and from AMERICAblog's archives entirely as far as I can tell. For the post's brief existence on that new URL, though, Johnny had wiped out the previous 500+ angry comments* and started a new thread -- where the angry comments continued to pour in. Johnny handled these comments by either outright deleting them or editing the comments to add his replies.

Johnny has also removed other comments that question his actions in this matter. For example, I know for a fact that he deleted one of my comments in this thread where I questioned him on his actions.

Johnny has not made a note of any of these administrative actions on AMERICAblog.

You know, I'm pretty sure this breaks a bunch of unspoken ethics rules about blogging. Editing comments, deleting comments simply because they point out your bullshit, changing the URL of a post and then outright removing it when the flame war didn't die down... These are all despicable actions that a respectable blogger would never partake in. I can see instituting censorship if you have some crazy assholes coming to your site, but there's a huge difference between that and not handling the heat generated from one of your own posts. Performing unethical actions like this calls a bloggers honesty into question, and I won't believe that anything coming out of Johnny's mouth is honest until he comes clean about his actions regarding this strangely missing post.

* - Unfortunately for Johnny, the first comment thread still exists on Haloscan's server.