Happy Valentine's Day to all Diary of a Republican Hater Readers

       I was thinking with this romantic day of lovers-for those of you lucky enough to have someone in your life, I wish you the best of luck and have a great day!-that I probably should celebrate some sort of anniversary for us over here at Diary of a Republican Hater. Actually, I could have done this on a nice round date like after 6 months but that time came and went without me thinking of that.

       So we'll have our first reflective, retrospective look back today on what is about the first 8 months of Diary. This blog's etymology started with a post where I defended Anthony Weiner against the all the moral outrage directed at him. This proved a quixotic intervention on my part but totally worth it. What I did gain-not right away but later-was a turf war with some of Andrew Breitbart's flunkies. It gave me some funny posts, a successful petition on Change.org and a winning story on Chripstory.

     This first post was published in June, 2011. It would be my only post for the month. I had the idea of writing a blog, but when I started it on a spur of the moment, I forgot a large part of why I wanted a blog-so I could call it Abortion on Demand. I forgot about that and when pressed for what to call it came up with Diary of a Republican Hater. Later I remembered Abortion on Demand but by then it was too late-I wasn't sure if I could change it but even if I could by then the Diary name was becoming well known-last thing a brand new blog needs is to change it's name.

    At this same time I started to do two other things. I became a Twitter lover-turned out Twitter is much better than Facebook-and I started reading and posting over at Jane Hamsher's liberal blog, Firedoglake. I initially had seen her on CSPAN or something and at the time was impressed with her. Really that's what drew me to FDL initially. However, my time at FDL would be controversial. If you haven't read Inexpedient
Blog you should. I will always love him for linking my posts there under the heading of a list called "Delightfully Disreputable." This is right beneath the list for High Brow and across from a list called European Peonage.

     http://inexpedient.blogspot.com/

      Again I recommend you check Phil out, he's an interesting guy. Let us quote him:

      "I've been busy dealing with cancer for the last few years and wrote an eBook about the experience."

      "Lymphoma (DLBCL) is much easier it is to tolerate if you think of it as a mistress."

     "This breaks down as an analogy when you discover that you don't simply have one tumor.  But it's a pleasant thought anyway because it takes your mind off the more serious aspects of having a life threatening disease."

     "I thought of mine as my own little sadist living within my body.  She ate a fairly large piece of my C2 vertebra and I'm lucky I didn't have metastatic bits drifting up to the surface of my brain, via my spinal canal."  

     "Which, incidentally, is why I had four spinal infusions with anti-cancer drugs to accompany my six infusions of R-CHOP."

     "If this hadn't been caught in the nick of time, I would have had tumors in places where it's hard to get them out and this would probably be an abandoned blog site."

    "My odds were not wonderful, but I pulled through pretty well."

     "There are many different kinds of cancer (I know because I used to work at a tumor registry in Northern California in the '80s and early '90s) and my experience is my own, with my kind of cancer but if you know someone who is going though this (mine was Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma) you or they might find my little eBook helpful."
     "I have an Amazon version and a Nook version.  Take your pick."

     "And if you don't have a stand alone reader there are readers for pc, Mac and iPhone, iPad and for other devices as well."
     "Naturally the title of the eBook is "My Secret Lymphoma" after that cute little sadistic mistress (my wife thought that was very amusing) ."

                                                               Philip Hanratty

      I love it because I think Phil exactly captures me with that. I was certainly disreputable at FDL. I was the resident Obamabot. At FDL the wedge issue is Obama. If you support him, and don't denigrate him at every turn, and actually think he's been pretty good, you are a fake liberal, morally on the level of Hitler more or less. You will certainly be accused of being a DNC operative or DSCC or working literally at the White House.

   For my part all I could say was "If only that were so!" In fact I was unemployed! I am currently back in the labor force-things seem to be looking up but that's another conversation. These guys flattered me. Someone told me that I'm "too glib" which suggests to him I must be working for Team Obama. What can I say, I mean I answered that he flattered me. To tell the truth I wished I was working for Obama-or for anyone. And being a paid operative of the DNC sent out to disrupt the gravelly serious proceedings at Firedoglake would have been a heck of a fun assignment.

    But the Inexpedient Blogger has me pegged. I eventually banned from Firedoglake. No real surprise here. I lasted-over a month-which is longer than I would have imagined.  My first post was called "Firedoglake ought to be called RushLimbaughLake." It got almost 300 comments. I actually hadn't joined FDL with this explicit goal of playing the Obamabot wedge issue but after reading some of the posts and comments I don't know, I guess I felt there was this need for it.

     But I was also banned from Daily KOS after just one post. I pulled out all the stops. I used my Abortion on Demand tag line I forgot to use for this blog. I started that post with a flourish over at KOS:

    "Obamabots and Firebaggers! Firebaggers and Obamabots! Lend me your ears!" With such festive prose I still feel I deserved better.

     On the other hand I got banned at Democratic Underground for no good reason-or any reason. Nobody complained or said anything. I had written about 5 posts which seemed get decent reception. I didn't push the Obamabot-Firebagger line too much at all. I think in one post I might have got into it but someone else had brought it up and I was just responding.


      For the definitive history of these events please see

       http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/08/banned-from-big-liberal-blogsophere.html
      I did use the Abortion on Demand name again-I like it what can I tell you. I stil think it's great. The only reason this isn't called Abortion on Demand is I forgot about it and now the Diary of a Republican Hater line is pretty well known. Obviously I want to be real well known and wont get that by confusing people even more by changing my name. At thsi point I like Diary of a Republican Hater, especially after it got the Breitbart fans all coming after me.

      The point of the name is really a kind of protest of the phenomenon Krugman talks about-you know someone says the world is flat, someone else says that's ridiculous and the cowed media says "Opinions differ" just to show they're evenhanded and not liberal.

        If the Diary name is in protest to anyone particular it's the David Brooks vapid centrist position of see no evil, here no evil. What matters is that we are bipartisan and moderate. We should not support anything too strongly. My point is like "Hell yeah! I'm a liberal Democrat. I don't like conservative Republicans too much. I kind of feel about them like Yosemite Sam felt about varmints."

        In my early days we spent a lot of time playing around with the Firebaggers, et al. Then I got into the twitter war with Breitbart's flunkies-he was there but they did the heavy lifting. Lately my thing has been economics which you probably know if you have paid attention lately. By the way if you have paid attention lately, Bless You! Really you are the salt of the earth, You are gold as far as I'm concerned and I wish nothing but good fortune to shine down on you. Yes, I like those who like me...

       Lately I've kind of been hunting other game. I mostly haven't got into Jane Hamsher and her Obamabot baiting Firedoglake cubs. Not to say I wont return to it at sometime. Tell the truth though, I think my next post about the Firebaggers will be after Obama wins the second term just so I can rub it in that they can't touch him now. They can't threaten anything. They have no ability to say that's it, your toast Obama. Nope. He wont be toast. LOL. I will enjoy their frustration.

        Rather than baiting Jane or even Breitbart I've lately been baiting Scott Sumner and his Market Monetarists. In some ways I like economics more than politics-of course in reality they are deeply intertwined and related. In a sense the are two dimensions of the same thing like particles and waves in Quantum Physics.

        I do think that economics is in a sense more rigorous, less subjectivist. I think what my history in being banned form all over the liberal blogosphere amounts to is that I'm really too individualistic for any type of group think. I always say that if I ever got into politics-I would love to get into politics, put me on the ballot for anything and I will run-I'd go for some sort of Chief Executive role. I'd want to be a Governor or Mayor not a senator or rep-because congressmen and councilmen are just one of a large group. Also when you first get there you're the neophyte so your expected to shut up and take notes.


        Kind of like when I went to FDL, KOS, or DU-I frustrated expectations to say the least. So here, I'm kind of like the Mayor and it's a good time.

        I'll say this for Scott Sumner. He may be an economic reactionary-he resuscitates every reactionary economic argument known to man-his talent is new and interesting bottles to pour the same old wine-but unlike Jane. or Markos's KOS or even DU he hasn't banned me. I don't know that he would miss me if I'm gone but you have to give him that.

         It's been a great 8 months, give or take a couple weeks-I'd fall in love with you all over again! Happy Valentines!