Regularly I like to force myself to read conservative and libertarian blogs, partly for my own amusement and partly to ensure that I don’t become to complacent and uncritical of my own views.  It can be a rattling experience sometimes if you’re more accustomed to reading blogs by those with whom you mostly agree–all the more reason for doing it.

Reading the comments on such blogs, however, can be an experience that pretty much destroys one’s faith in humanity (not that I have much myself).  The anonimity of the forum, of course, allows people to reveal their true selves in a way they wouldn’t if they were standing on the other side of the figurative water cooler.  I imagine these guys to be sniveling losers who spend their days in their mothers’ basements commenting on political blogs and masturbating to pornographic anime, though most probably are living lives we consider to be “normal.”

Take, for example, the popular libertarian blog “Vox Popoli.” Ignore, if you can, the blogger’s November 3rd prediction that McCain will win the election and jump right down to the first of 292 comments.

If Obama loses, I think we’ll see some race riots. If he wins, I think we’ll see some race riots. The difference is, if he wins, the blacks will burn their own stuff. If he loses, the blacks will burn whitey’s stuff.

Yeah!  That’s what blacks always do, right?!  SO TRUE!!!  But another commenter objects…

Wow, you fail at racism. Everyone knows that blacks will generally burn their own stuff irregardless of a win/loss. See: L.A. Riots, Katrina, numerous NBA championships, continent of Africa, etc… ;)

Why can’t those blacks be a peace-loving race like us whites?  I mean, did you see them burning their own stuff when Katrina hit?  It was amazing they could keep the fires going with all that water everywhere.

There are also many perfectly reasonable comments that I might not agree with, but so many of these people are just living in their own sad little world.

I barely even hate him anymore.

Obama will be the 44th president of the USA.

Reggie Jackson’s jersey number was 44.

Prediction:  President Obama will throw out the first pitch at the new Yankee Stadium.  Reggie Jackson will present him with a #44 Yankee jersey with “Obama” on the back (even though the Yanks don’t put names on their jerseys).

NYC Street Vendor:  Get your Obama tee shirt!  We got Obama tee shirts!

Wife snickers at the commercialization of Obama.

NYC Street Vendor (looking at wife):  We got your McCain tee shirt, too!

NYC Street Vendor’s cohorts laugh.

Wife enraged for 45 minutes.

The End.

The “Impeach Barack Hussein Obama” Facebook group is competing with the “Impeach Barack Obama” group.  Who cares if he hasn’t taken the oath of office yet?

So which group will you join?

We can all be grateful that the election is not hanging on the result in Missouri.  No rush, guys!

• Joe the Plumber (please?)
• hockey mom
• hope
• change
• maverick
• The Bradley/Wilder Effect
• Bridge to Nowhere
• lipstick on a pig
• Red States
• Blue States
• Zogby
• Reverend Wright
• Bill Ayers
• Sarah Palin

Something tells me I won’t be so lucky.

Any other suggestions?

Vote in the poll at my DailyKos diary.

Update: My most glaring omission from the original  list above:  “my friends.”

David Sedaris on undecided voters…

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?” To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

Conservative, but it gets the job done.

Update: For what it’s worth, Karl Rove predicts the same exact red-blue map as I have.  I feel yucky.

I had to stop about a third of the way through.  As much as I’ve enjoyed it, it’s just too painful to relive.

Gaffe, of course, meaning “saying what he really thinks.”  The Democratic Congressmen was in a Boca Raton synagogue theoretically campaigning for Obama.  When the topic of conversation turned to why Obama stayed at Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church, Nadler explained that it was basically a matter of political convenience.

“Think of the history here,” says the six-term New York congressman. “You have a guy who’s half-white, half-black. He goes to an Ivy League school, comes to Chicago … to start a political career. Doesn’t know anybody.

“Gets involved with community organizing — why? Because that’s how your form a base. OK. Joins the largest church in the neighborhood. About 8,000 members. … Why did he join the church? … Because that’s how you get to know people.

“Now maybe it takes a couple years,” Nadler says, suggesting that soon Obama starts to think of Wright, “‘Jesus, the guy’s a nut, the guy’s a lunatic.’ But you don’t walk out of a church with 8,000 members in your district.”

I can’t argue with the theory of why Obama joined and didn’t leave the church.  Unfortunately in this country, politics and religion are terribly intertwined, as I’ve complained about.

But I think Nadler is wrong to describe Obama’s work as a community organizer as a mere steppingstone toward political office.  He became a community organizer shortly after graduating from Columbia, did that for several years, went to law school and then finally went back to Chicago.  It wasn’t until this return to the city that there’s any evidence of Obama’s political ambitions.  It’s certainly possible that the young Obama had it on his mind, but you don’t become a community organizer in a city you’ve never lived in with the expectation that it will launch a political career.

So Nadler’s New York cynicism is only half-correct in this case.

…that Barack Obama wants to take all your money and give it to black people?  John McCain’s message told me so.

And I think I also read it in an email someone sent me.