Carnival of the Liberals

Edition #92 is now out at Obama Action Comics!. As OAC host Jason notes, this may well be the first webcomics edition of CotL. In addition to excellent blog posts from excellent bloggers such as Mad Kane, Greta Christina, and the Digital Cuttlefish, Jason has also inexplicable included my own nominee, "A message to all the people I've robbed at gunpoint".

Go over and check 'em all out.

Carnival of the Liberals

Like the ticking of a very slow clock, the latest edition of the Carnival of the Liberals has made its fortnightly appearance. Edition #91 can be found at Lou FDC's Crowded Head, Cozy Bed. Along with the usual liberal goodness by the likes of Doctor Biobrain, Mad Kane, and GrrlScientist, #91 includes my very own "Inside the Time Vault", so go ahead and check it out.

Carnival of the Liberals

The latest edition of Carnival of the Liberals, #90, is now available at the Quiche Moraine blog. Host Mike Haubrich has decided that ten links just aren't enough to do justice to the left blogosphere (and how right he is!) so he's got (checking) nineteen, including one of his own. It's all good stuff, so go over and check it out.

Carnival of the Liberals #89

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends! It's the 89th edition of the Carnival of the Liberals, the fortnightly best of the left blogosphere, coming to you live and direct from the streets of Newport, Rhode Island here at the Johnny Pez blog.

I'd like to thank everyone who participated . . . my inbox may never be the same. Two weeks is too short a time to spend among such excellent and admirable bloggers. I know less than half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than . . . hold on a moment.

Sorry. Wrong speech. Just a second . . . ah, here we go. Ahem.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one blogger to assume among the powers of the blogosphere the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and the Flying Spaghetti Monster entitle him, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind require that he should declare the causes which impel him to host a blog carnival.

I hold these truths to be self-evident: that all blogs are created equal, that they are endowed by their creators with certain unalienable Attributes, that among these are Relevance, Wit, and the pursuit of Page Views. That to display these attributes, Blog Carnivals are instituted within the Blogosphere, deriving their just powers from the consent of the participants.

To prove this, let Blog Posts be submitted to a candid world.

Speaking of Submitted to a Candid World, do you remember back in 2005 a few months after Bush's second inauguration when Bernie Sanders defended Vermont's right to secede from the United States? No? Well, maybe that's because he wasn't crazy. But Ron Paul is, as Ames reveals in "Are You Smarter than a Sitting Congressman? Ron Paul Edition".

Next comes Melanie Pinkert of the BroadSnark blog, who dares to ask the forbidden question: what's so bad about collective action? She gives the question a good solid, erm, questioning in her post "Individual Effort vs. Collective Action".

Jill at The Barefoot Badger gives a quick history of how General Motors eliminated electric trolleys (and incidentally crippled America's public transportation system) in order to clear the way for their cars in "The Murder of Public Transportation in the United States".

Doctor Biobrain at American Nihilist welcomes MSNBC host and torture enthusiast Joe Scarborough to the ranks of the nihilists following Morning Joe's call for a comparison between torture and nuclear fireballs in "Media Hero of the Day: Joe Scarborough".

Martin at the UK blog The Lay Scientist brings word of an epic battle between a fundie group called Christian Voice and Britain's Advertising Standards Authority in "Christian Voice, the HPV Vaccine and Freedom of Speech". Apparently it's considered unacceptable in the UK to lie in advertisements, proof (as if more proof were needed) that Old Europe is sunk in tyranny. Although I'm disappointed that Martin didn't title his post "Help! I'm being repressed!" I'm including it here anyway.

GrrlScientist is Living the Scientific Life, and brings to our attention "HR669: The Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act". Although HR669 seems like a much-needed and environmentally friendly bill, GrrlScientist fears the bill is both grossly misguided and poorly thought out, and explains why.

More scientific goodness comes from Eric Michael Johnson of The Primate Diaries. Johnson points out in "Male Chauvinist Chimps or the Meat Market of Public Opinion?" that establishment media outlets were too eager to make sexist jokes to pay attention to the actual findings of a study examining meat sharing by chimpanzee hunting parties.

Greta Christina of Greta Christina's Blog responds to the teabaggers' incessant, eternal whining about taxes by writing "In Praise of Taxes" and sounding about a hundred times more sensible and mature than any teabagger has managed to do. So put that in your teabag and smoke it!

Paul Sunstone of Café Philos blogs about fellow blogger Bill of Earthling Blues. Bill has very cleverly taken some Mormon propaganda directed against gays and inverted it to produce some gay propaganda directed against Mormons in "Helping Those With Mormon Interests".

Finally, "Mad Madeleine" Kane of Mad Kane's Political Madness takes a hard, gut-wrenching look at what may well be the most important political story of our time: America's new First Puppy. Learn about the searing details (plus limerick) in "Dogged Journalism".

And that concludes Carnival of the Liberals #89. If you've enjoyed reading these posts half as much as I've enjoyed presenting them, then I've enjoyed them twice as much as you. And hey, as long as you're here, why not look around the Johnny Pez blog and see what there is to see? In addition to my own insightful political commentary, there's my daring vision of an alternate world with no Hitler, my conservative version of Superman, a couple of really old public domain science fiction stories that you'll find nowhere else on the internet, and the usual odds and ends you'll find on any blog.

And if you're saying to yourself, "Why, I could do a better job of running a blog carnival than that doofus," then I encourage you to try. In fact, I dare you! I double-dog dare you! Go ahead and tell Leo Lincourt that you want to host the Carnival of the Liberals, just to show that Johnny Pez joker how it's done! In fact, there's an open spot coming up on May 20. Go ahead and volunteer for that one, just to rub my nose in it! That'll show me!

The next edition of Carnival of the Liberals will be hosted at the Quiche Moraine blog on May 6, 2009. Hope to see you there!

Carnival of the Liberals: a reminder

Just a quick note to remind everyone that this blog will be hosting iteration 89 of the Carnival of the Liberals on April 22. If you're a liberal blogger and you've got a fairly recent blog post you're particularly proud of, go ahead and submit it at this handy form or email a link to cotl DASH submissions AT carnivaloftheliberals DOT com. Submission deadline for issue #89 is 6PM Eastern Time, Tuesday, April 21. Submission guidelines are located here. If I like it enough, it'll be among the ten posts listed in issue #89.

And if you miss the submission deadline, don't worry. There's always the upcoming issue #90, which will be hosted on May 6 at the Quiche Moraine blog.

Citizens! Your attention please!

As I've noted before, a blog carnival is much like a real-life carnival: a series of blog posts parading by on floats accompanied by scantily-clad people throwing beads and trinkets to drunken onlookers. Except for the drunken onlookers. And the beads and trinkets. And the scantily-clad people. And the floats.

But there is a parade of blog posts, which is what you'll be seeing here at the Johnny Pez blog on April 22 when we host Carnival of the Liberals #89. As Blue Gal notes here, the way it works is that liberal bloggers submit posts from the past couple weeks for consideration and the host picks ten and links 'em. If you're a liberal blogger and you've got a recent post you're particularly proud of, you can submit it for consideration at this handy form or send the link via e-mail to cotl DASH submissions AT carnivaloftheliberals DOT com before 6PM Eastern Time, Tuesday, April 21. Submission guidelines can be found here.

And if you're really, really enthused by the whole Carnival of the Liberals thing, you can host it your own self. FSM knows if I can do it, anyone can. The great thing about hosting is that if you've got a tiny little blog like, well, mine, that nobody's ever heard of, it's a chance to let the wider world of the left blogosphere know about it. All you have to do is look here under Future Hosts, find a couple of dates that haven't been claimed yet, jump over here to the Volunteer Form, and fill it out. Two weeks before your chosen date, you'll begin receiving blog links on your electronic mail thingie. The emailed links include html code that you can cut 'n paste into a blog post and modify as you like, and then comes the day you pick your favorite ten links and post 'em. It's that frakkin' simple! So go ahead and volunteer, dammit! Operators are standing by!

If you'd like to see what a Carnival of the Liberals post looks like, check out #88 at Liberal England, #87 at Blue Gal, and #86 at The Greenbelt. Call now!

Carnival of the Liberals #87

The carnival continues at the Blue Gal blog. Drop in and have a look at the liberal bloggy goodness. Sadly, my own Take me to your leader post didn't make the cut, but them's the breaks. Per Fran at Blue Gal, issue #88 of the Carnival is due out on April 8 at the Liberal England blog.

Carnival of the Liberals

A Carnival is basically a celebration centered around a parade, traditionally associated with the arrival of Lent. The blogospheric version is the Blog Carnival, basically a parade of blog posts on a particular topic and/or theme. From the left blogosphere comes the Carnival of the Liberals, a bi-weekly parade of ten liberal blog posts, each time hosted at a different liberal blog.

The upcoming Carnival of the Liberals, for Wednesday, March 25, is being hosted by Blue Gal. I've submitted my recent Take me to your leader post for consideration, so we'll see whether it makes the cut.

If you've got a recent liberal blog post you're particularly pleased with, go ahead and submit it (submission guidelines are here), and maybe you can find yourself on parade at the Carnival of the Liberals, throwing beads and trinkets to the onlookers.