Carnival of the Liberals #55

Welcome to the frozen mid-winter Carnival of the Liberals 55.

Okay, so it's not that bad. But what with some 850 thousand potential voters getting to dictate who's winning and who's out of the race to the other 174-plus million of us, it sort of feels like that, doesn't it? Frozen out... But if it's cold where you are, the outrage will warm you up. And if you're tired of the hoopla over the primaries, have no fear: this edition of the Carnival of the Liberals won't focus exclusively on them. In fact, only three of the winning posts even mentioned the American elections. Liberals have a lot on our minds these days.

With the shortened schedule (three carnivals in a row to make up for the end-of-year kerfuffle) I hadn't expected a lot of submissions. But there were over twenty - some older than usual, but with the short interval, that's to be expected.

This was the best of the old ones. One for the ages a:t Walking the Berkshires: "Catherine Roraback lived in a house at the bottom of our street, and at age 82 was our lawyer when we closed on our home. She was a country lawyer when we knew her, but the cases she took earlier in her career changed the country itself. Roraback was a radical civil rights lawyer who was unafraid of defending those with unpopular ideas, or taking on controversial issues."

From Abyss2hope comes a suggestion for Invoking Hoaxes To Ensure Justice: "If those who attack alleged rape victims credibility because "girls and women have deliberately made false rape reports" were to have their logic and their tactics used as a model for all reported crimes, let's see if they would happily accept what they are willing to dish out. For that reason it is important to note that most of those who rant the loudest about false rape reports and the need to keep them front and center in all rape investigations openly label themselves as conservatives. Now to the hoax which undermines conservatives' credibility as true crime victims."

From thinkbridge comes the warning So You Thought The Stazi of E. Germany Were Bad: Our Secret Police Will Have Your Genome: "Aren't you glad you're safe? Doesn't it just warm the heart to know that your earlobe could prevent you from being confused with some phone phreaker in Milwaukee? or some alleged terrorist in Rawalpindi? or a Dutch marijuana salesman? We can all now sigh a gigantic sigh of relief knowing that the entire planet can know exactly where we are, what we are doing, and most importantly, why."

At systems thinker.com Howard points out An Unreasonable Omission from An Unreasonable Man: "I just finished watching An Unreasonable Man, the documentary of the life of Ralph Nader. I loved it except for one glaring omission that has me deeply saddened, frustrated and angered, yet again, with Ralph Nader, the film itself, and many of the people who spoke in it."

And Tangled Up in Blue Guy wonders what we really go to war for in Liberty is a Quaint Concept: "Liberty is really sort of “old hat,” don’t you think? Sure it was fine as a concept way back in the late 18th century, but don’t you consider that the whole idea was just a propaganda tool to unify the colonies in order to raise the Continental Army and defeat the British? The idea that Americans value individual liberty above all else also worked to sell bonds for the World War efforts, to fund battleships in the War of 1812, to justify Yankee aggression and Southern rebellion at once, to knock over the dominoes in Southeast Asia before the communists could get them and even to step in and restore the Kuwaiti oasis in 1991?"

There's a good old-fashioned political rant at (where else?) Rants 'n Reviews called Top Ten Mitt Romney Lies: "Repugnican 2008 presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is turning out to be a perpetual liar. His latest fib, about "seeing" his father march with Dr Martin Luther King, is receiving a lot of attention in the blogosphere, but this is just one of many lies Romney has fabricated."

In this same vein, Barbara's Tchatzkahs hosts a guest who has a theory about contemporary politics: Everything I Need to Know About the Regressive Right I Learned In Junior High: "Regressive conservatives aren't really so hard to figure out. You just need to know the key. It's junior high. Remember those delightful years of comity and enlightenment, comradeship, maturity and social inclusiveness? Yeah, me neither."

Over at The force that through... is an account of Trip to Disney World and the thoughts it provoked: "But Disney today is I think in disconnect both from its roots and also from the natural world and very carefully manages the information the visitor receives about the the resort. Now some of this is because Disney is all about fantasy and part of what makes fantasy work is control of information. But several things strike me as odd about Disney World in Orlando."

And at Free Freedom there's an early - sadly prophetic - look at the blatant rigging of Kenyan presidential election and its possible consequences: "However, there is yet hope for freedom, and that hope lies in the violence that has sprung up across the country. Odinga cannot take his case to the courts, as ballot boxes will doubtless be ‘misplaced’. The only way forward here is through violence and protest. Kibaki could not predict the passion of the Kenyan people for their freedoms..." Read it for what might have been, and why it wasn't.

And we'll end with one of The Digital Cuttlefish's wonderful poems. When Cuttle submitted to me, the note said "It's odd--I don't consider it a liberal post, just a human one." I won't comment on that, but I will present to you O NOES!! TEH SANCTITY!!!11!: "As of midnight last night, New Hampshire's laws have changed, allowing "civil unions" between same-sex couples. ... Suffice it to say, the whole state has been rocked to the core by the knowledge that the sanctity of our marriages has been fundamentally shaken overnight, by allowing people to marry one another simply because they are in long-term loving relationships. The nerve..."

So that's the carnival. I hope you enjoyed it. The next edition will be Jan. 16th, at Blue Gal's place. Then Carnival of the Liberals will resume its normal,biweekly, schedule with CotL 57 on Jan. 30th at World Wide Webers. Submit your posts with this form. See you there!