I don’t understand this common whine among the MSM and politicians about sparing “the congressman”, “senator”, “reporters” or “editors”, etc. from the commentary of the bloggers? From Joe Klein to Joe Lieberman we hear this wail.
Give me patience!
Why should we hold back our honestly held beliefs and opinions. If they think bloggers and those who comment on the blogs are rude, one-sided, even profane, what about what they put out there? At least all the bloggers I read source their material, liberally. These pusillanimous poofs just shoot from the hip, the truth be dammed.
They lie, insult our intelligence and just plain get things wrong because they can’t be bothered to look up the facts. They may not use profanity as easily as some of us do, but those are the rules of their game and we aren’t playing their game any longer. It’s corrupt and rigged in their favor.

We, the people, are the ones living and dying in the mess they created, or supported, or couldn’t be bothered to report. Even when we tell them in no uncertain terms with our votes to clean it up, change course, restore the Constitution and the rule of law, they ignore us.

We have every reason to react passionately to the horrors, indignities and madness we’ve been subjected to over the last 6 years. We aren’t going gently into that good night. We have to kick them hard just to get their damn attention. I think we have it.

Thanks for the response. I think the point I really want to drive home is why I called you “disingenuous”. It’s a kind of sophistry to say that the Lobby is not an “Israeli Lobby” and that it’s not pro-Israel. Of course its extremist views aren’t representative of all Israelis, but on the issue of Iraq it unquestionably represented the great majority of Israelis, just as it did in last year’s Lebanon atrocities when it stifled any hope of a cease-fire. Of course, to some degree it is a lobby for generalized American militarism, but you ignore the obvious fact that it is an unquestionable asset to the Israeli state — whether under a Labor or L*k*d or national unity government — to have such influence in the U.S. Congress and Pentagon. You may think they’re not “pro-Israeli”, but you’re in the same minority as peace activists in Israel. It’s also disingenuous to ignore the Israeli ties that neoconservatives have (think Feith, Perle, Wurmser, Abrams, particularly), choosing only to see them as creatures of American militarism or, I guess, mere minions of Cheney and Rumsfeld: you underestimate their bureaucratic infiltration of the Pentagon, for example, or the outright purges they’ve executed in taking over press organs like the National Review, or the WSJ and Washington Post editorial pages, or, worse, the WMD reporting in the NYT.

You’re definitely being truthful and helpful, but you are overthinking a little. Don’t respond to charges of anti-Semitism until they’re actually leveled at you. You may be surprised to find they don’t come — American Jews, particularly ones who are our political allies, are not that thin-skinned and certainly don’t shy from a debate. If charges of anti-Semitism were made against people here during the Lamont campaign, that simply demonstrates how cynically the accusation is made these days. It should also demonstrate how that incantation has lost its magic power.

Your view of “anti-Semitism” as some permanent affliction that is either more or less dormant at any given time is irrational. Things change. Jews were not the establishment sixty years ago. They’re part of it now, and, more importantly, they’ve participated in our culture so long and so influentially that real anti-Semitism — the kind of deeds, not thoughts — is going the way of anti-Catholicism (just as prevalent, by the way, among evangelical Protestants, by the way). And the idea that anti-Arab bigotry is a species of “anti-Semitism” is simply a semantic contortion; accurate or not, it means in common parlance anti-Jewish. By the way, what I found so offensive about all this manufactured hysteria about “The Passion” was that pretty much everyone who expressed their patently phoney fears about the movie (which I didn’t see) in the press were pro-war Jews (Krauthammer, Wieseltier, Ruth Himmelfarb, Anne Applebaum, others). And somehow Mel Gibson’s “drunken anti-Semitic tirade”, which occurred during the pulverization of Lebanon, was the bigger news.

I bet we agree on something: some Democrat has to take it to these fuckers at A*P*C, especially when they boo ours. Call it a Sistah Souljah moment.

~~~ModNote: Edited for content to clear filters.~~~

If I thought that was really true, I’d be shouting “And damn well about time!”

Do we imagine for one single instant that the right rose to power by being polite and understanding and passively accepting whatever its oh so pragmatic, oh so sensible, oh so “serious” “representatives” came up with?

We have been betrayed. Up with the truth!

But let’s do everything in our power not to get fatally fatalistic.

amen to that.

I think we must be setting off filters in 5 different ways or something.

yes, many apologies to the mods.

(((((mods)))))