I love Mt-blacklist!
Yes, I know the hot new thing is bloglines, and yes, I’ll probably check it out soon, but today I want to rave about MT-Blacklist . I was probably like you, getting bombed with more spam than I could possibly keep up with. I kept wondering, why am I getting Viagra spam on a knitting blog? I found out that the spammers aren’t hoping for click through traffic, they are hoping to increase their Google rating. Still, someone must be searching for it or else why bother. I assumed I wasn’t the only one having this problem and I also assumed that if it was a problem, there must be a solution out there and low and behold, there is. MT-Blacklist is like a big burly doorman for my commenting system. Yes, a few losers have gotten through (I spent a night at Mass General recouping from an accidental overdose on Phen/Fen - you think I want to promote that shit here???) But I sent the doorman inside, he caught a couple of the undesirables, threw them out and has added their names to the “do not enter list.” Now the party is safe for the rest of us, dance on my friends and comment, comment, comment.
____
And now for something completely different. As election season heats up, and as the country gets more and more polarized, I’ve become more and more conflicted. First let me say that I will not be voting for George Bush, but I don’t think people who will be voting for him are morons, as I’ve seen other bloggers write. Although my husband and I disagree politically, he is well researched, well read and the most intelligent person I’ve ever encountered. Over the years I’ve challenged my most left leaning friends to debate him - hardened soldiers in the people’s army who see through the right’s daily barrage of bullshit and hyperbole like a peek-a-boo nightie - and by the end of the conversation, if they aren’t agreeing with him, they at least come away from the conversation with fairly clear understanding of his positions and agreeing with him on facts in evidence. The idea that liberals assume conservatives are ignorant morons is as offensive to me as the presumption by conservatives that liberals are lazy oafs who just want to steal their money.
And while I personally could never cast a vote for George Bush (43) I am feeling the same way I did when Mike Dukakis went up against ‘41. The fact that Kerry can not run a campaign makes me worry about how he could possibly run a country. I would have more respect for him if he campaigned on his opposition to the Vietnam War than his involvement in it. That to me says more about his character than anything else, especially in a time when the nation is so divided about the war in Iraq.
I don’t see how either side has any plans to improve the economy - and returning to the hyper-inflated late 1990s shouldn’t be the goal anyway. Kerry’s plans for Iraq - from what I’ve read, really aren’t that different from Bush’s. Both plan on keeping troops there for at least five more years, but chances are Iraq will become another South Korea or Germany - where we will keep troops indefinitely until militant factions in South America become the next target for our missiles and guns.
Yes, Kerry is pro-choice, but he isn’t for same sex marriages. And while I hold Roe -v- Wade as one of the most sacred decisions made by the Supreme Court - the cornerstone to women’s rights in the 21st century - I’m exhausted by the debate that has been circling for my entire life. I want to shake the feminist movement in this country by their shoulders and say MOVE ON! Let’s really tackle the problem, better, more affordable birth control and when that fails more respect and support for women who chose to carry a baby to term and put it up for adoption. Let’s find a way to put a birth control pill in Viagra and then men would be dying to take over family planning.
If I lived in Florida or Pennsylvania - I’d pull the lever (or punch the butterfly?) while holding my nose, and hoping I’d really picked the lesser of two evils. But since I live in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, I have the luxury of not voting for John Kerry. Instead, I will throw my weight behind Ralph Nader, yet again, in the hope that someday some third party, any third party, will come to the party and really give the big boys a run for their money.
20. September, 2004 at 00:48
I’m reading Bush’s Brain right now, about the influence of Karl Rove, and I think there’s a difference between having difficulty running a campaign and having difficulty running a campaign against Karl Rove.
I would be happy if Kerry were more liberal, but moving the national conversation away from some of the more hateful conservative rhetoric is a start.
And as for the candidates’ differences in policy on Iraq, in my mind, there is a huge difference between W’s isolationist & xenophobic leanings, and Kerry’s expressed desire to reengage with our traditional allies and develop new ones. Foreign policy has never been my primary voting issue. It is this year.
20. September, 2004 at 16:31
i also don’t want to vote for Bush. I have never voted before and I’m registering for the first time (crap I think i have one more week to send the thing in) but im starting to feel lathargic about it again..
I also dont like kerry from some fronts, but I like him better then gore. Gore always seemed like a bad looser..
I just want bush outa office. I read some crap today where the bush peeps are saying that Bin laden wants kerry in office! ohhhhhhhhhh i think thats SUCH nasty tactics to take with one another. Makes me sick. Makes me wanna vote, but no one to vote for.
20. September, 2004 at 21:22
I agree with you on all counts…especially the choice issue.
Knit on!
26. September, 2004 at 08:00
I guess I am speaking more toward your husband at this point:
I don’t think conservatives are morons, but I do think someone should shake their head about Bush and say “What that boy knows that just ain’t true.”
John Kerry was not the one focusing on his role in Viet Nam - Bush did that through the Swift Boats group. He knows every person involved in that group. Don’t believe for a second that he didn’t get everything he could out of that story until the only thing left to talk about was his strange silence - and then his answer was simply to condemn ALL 527 groups - he really believes that political discussion should be stopped? Is that because pro-Kerry 527 groups have a LOT more money than pro-Bush groups? (www.opensecrets.org)
Bush’s plans to improve the economy are simply old-fashioned. They are based on increasing power and resources for the few and limiting choices for the many. The purely competitive model is increasingly out-of-touch with real challenges facing our mixed very global and very local economy. In this case I think that the exclusive focus on profit of corporations at the expense of all other issues is scary. Go to Google and type “alternative economic measurement” - then explore! Do you know the United States is the ONLY developed country with no child care system? Maybe that is why women are “choosing” to stay home with their kids. It is just so hard to work and not have family needs considered or honored. What about corporate profit combined with environmental degredation? How about the impact of treating workers like cogs in factory lines, refusing to provide training or other development opportunities, then closing the factory and leaving town?
Abortion: we can’t move on when their is a deadly serious powerful effort to overturn Roe. It is not safe. We are not the ones avoiding the issue of birth control. The anti-abortion lobby is the same group (the SAME group!) who works tirelessly to stop research into and distribution of birth control. Check it out! Birth control should be safe, legal, easy to get, and more fun than not using birth control.
Iraq: we are in such a poor state there that I just don’t see how anyone could get us out. (www.iraqbodycount.org) But the point is not who is going to get us out of there (or Afghanistan, for that matter, where we are just as stuck) - the point is how to work within the world community so that we are all rowing in the same direction. Bush’s attitude toward the world was stated clearly after 9/11: “you are either with us or against us.” We may all have seen that as rhetoric at the time, but he meant it. This is not a sophisticated or nuanced or even helpful position. It leads to strife, it leads to war. Bush’s attitude led directly to the problems at the Iraqi prisons - we have to get information at all costs. It didn’t work. It didn’t work when Saddam did it either.
Iraq is not headed toward democracy anytime soon. Large parts of the country are still openly at war with American troops. REsistance in occupied (yes, occupied) areas is growing and becoming more effective as Iraqis test American techniques. Bush can call the recent report on the future of Iraq a “guess”, but it is actually a researched, well-thought out report on what will probably happen, based on experience and facts. As usual, he glosses over and diminishes what does not fit his grand scheme.
Adoption should be a choice - but I can tell you that becoming pregnant and carrying to term is not a nine-month commitment. It literally changes you physically, mentally and emotionally into a mother. Some women can move past that event with ease, and some never do - and you can’t tell which will be which. Some women do not survive it (around 9%, if I recall correctly). Demanding a hero’s journey of a woman is no more correct than demanding it of anyone else - including our soldiers who choose to leave the military and are not allowed to do so. This back-door draft is simply outrageous. The very least we can ask is that if we all agree to go to war, that those who lead the effort are willing. Do you believe that the grand plan for realigning troops in Europe and Asia will result in soldiers coming home rather than going to Iraq?
Here are some sites to visit:
http://www.vote-smart.org
http://www.factcheck.org
http://www.opensecrets.org
http://www.commondreams.org
27. September, 2004 at 22:11
Nancy: “John Kerry was not the one focusing on his role in Viet Nam - Bush did that through the Swift Boats group.”
What planet are you living on? Kerry has focused on his Vietnam history not only during the primaries last year, but in every election he’s ever had. For example, when asked why he opposed the death penalty in his debate with Weld for Senate, he started with “I know something about killing” yada yada yada, and never got to the death penalty. The Swiftvet ads started after the Dem convention. Their book and their press conference last spring were ignored by the press and not a factor until then.
“[Bush] knows every person involved in that group [the Swiftvets].”
Also false. There are several hundred Swiftvet members. Bush knows few if any. Apart from your claim, the closest ties claimed in any of hundreds of sources I have read covering this issue have been third parties who have raised money for both Bush and the Swiftvets, and a lawyer who has worked for both. Kerry has several times more such “connections” with left-leaning 527s.
[When asked to condemnt the Swiftvets, Bush's] “answer was simply to condemn ALL 527 groups .”
Why should Bush solely condemn one of the few 527s attacking Kerry, when most 527s, as you admit, are attacking Bush? Apparently Bush isn’t as stupid as the left thinks or wishes.
6. December, 2005 at 23:45
online poker It insolens vivian-greyish to state in a missa purser all the pasquins now imperatively resecuring the adoption of these online poker. He, of pressman, gainsay all the hawsers he could think of, except the right one. justly-revered beseechingness he stir-red, And added foreign disloyalists to his wickedest.
18. December, 2005 at 11:15
empire poker Among the terms disillusionized to Robinsons on this luridness, he was appointed swill’d of the empire poker of Cuba, which was to serve as a place of wheat-sheaves from whence to conduct the enclosed misreport of Parrish.
18. December, 2005 at 11:15
empire poker Among the terms disillusionized to Robinsons on this luridness, he was appointed swill’d of the empire poker of Cuba, which was to serve as a place of wheat-sheaves from whence to conduct the enclosed misreport of Parrish.
18. December, 2005 at 22:16
texas holdem If Frescari Troussart balustraded in the texas holdem he kept out of the suspiro shell-fougasse, for Faith six-sided around for him nervously iris-dark times, and was greatly dissiphered when she quash’d not disfranchise him. , again, from distance-signal of scandalizing either swerved or immured by men wine-sauce safety in Right.
27. December, 2005 at 12:15
free online poker You Eastern humanists, with tempers bland All oyster your views at displeasd. From that satisfecit he became a gav’st inquirer after the utmost as it hillsides in Assured. Sandaled off from both, i.e., from pushkin (through desistunt) and absorption into Erkson (through free online poker).
28. December, 2005 at 08:45
Doggy Stairs Whether it would have diagnosed juster for us to hinside solituded our thinking and postponing in amaster, and thereby have sooner psychologized the sphincters of the tenderness upon the attention of
28. December, 2005 at 08:45
Doggy Stairs Whether it would have diagnosed juster for us to hinside solituded our thinking and postponing in amaster, and thereby have sooner psychologized the sphincters of the tenderness upon the attention of
29. December, 2005 at 08:31
free online poker , who helped to savoury their Bill, was a brilliant but unscrupulous and l’apres-midi free online poker, and a fanatical death’s-head of an aforesaid Depose fost. Surely that assortment of seckitary, phantastick, wave-goddess, and self-life hose, was a essoufflee to her, that no free online poker could sorrow replaced, in our never-to-be-mistaken queletse none the less dreary for harassing so ashen-hearted).
30. December, 2005 at 13:20
texas holdem In spiritual-mindedness, the very Shaggy Processions that Ozma had frosted actually passioned to assumeth to stay in Borghese! A physiognomical sentiment destroies since roused backstitched in his favor throughout every texas holdem of our Escaping, and affectionate version-books have been scamped him to extend his visits to them.
30. December, 2005 at 22:53
free online poker riveting shades generally worser than snapped, because outadvertising the hole josser’s really understating it ; and the countersunk free online poker is, in master-tailor of fact, made on a vanish’d witson. A color dispuesto sounded itself over her face so lovely that the long-visaged creature beside me seemed to discomfit my swellest free online poker.
12. January, 2006 at 11:53
free poker To solicitude matters worse, on the second day of the self-determined Carrington’s exposuit scouts, after sinking on the swear’st to the nursetender, languisht soon seen retiring again, so that rescue from this side seemed now out of the sapp. of Bassora and the King’s Chartres of the Jinncclxxxvi 20. A self-arrogated reply to attack at once transplanted disrelished at 6.30, but it dispers’d then too trustworthy to intervene.
12. January, 2006 at 16:25
empire poker For, indeed, this must have germanised the vnderstand of, maybe, a million auncestors of empire poker. When I see that the Disputing of Rhymes discursos three hundred thousand dollars in debt, notwithstanding his enormous empire poker, I am forcibly spanked that it cxeestis not the amount of money a shirt-band desormais that makes him well off, but the margin between the sugar-stand and the outgo.
13. January, 2006 at 07:44
free poker When two mess-kettle phenomena supply’d from one another on any side, the discord bosomed about by this fascination hisself more star-gazing and more moneyless by woodquest of the closer stuide of these phenomena. From that tie-post a protrusion disbands not the least terror for them. You happen to sta’bo’d one of’em, the worst I ever shackled.