Blog Bits – July 9, 2006

Blog Bits … bits of the Michigan blogosphere …

4th of July pictures are here!

Here are my highly anticipated pics from our 4th of july bash:

Ok, it may seem that nothing is there, but if you look closely you can clearly see that I have a crappy camera and no skill. Seriously, those were my attempts to take sweet fireworks pictures with my $99.00 Panasonic. But look at this nice picture:

I posted a link to dETROITfUNK’s Freedom Festival fireworks last week … if you didn’t see them, you should check them out. They’ve got some great pictures of other things too, so take the time to look around. The photoblog Michigan in Pictures led me to Buildings of Detroit which has a very nice flickr gallery of the fireworks.

I mentioned in the Weekly that Adolph Mongo was at it again … this time with a Hitler ad. Michigan Liberal has an interesting post on the Hitler ad and another post that links DeVos to a different Hitler ad. Cathleen also has a nice post here.

If you search the blogosphere you’ll find awholelotta blogging goin’ on … mostly from bloggers on the right, who are either complaining about the complaining by the left, or lamenting that the Hitler ad will be used against their darling DeVos. Poor babies.

I don’t see what the big deal is. The ad is ridiculous on its face, like the old USANext AARP ad. Besides, we invoke Hitler all the time … it’s a touch hypocritical to complain if the other guys do it. Now if they would have compared to Granholm to Bush/Cheney, that would’ve been offensive.

What’s intriguing about the Mongo-Hitler-DeVos ad is the way it attempts to sell the Republican Party to the African Americans. The GOP is supposed to be the party of “self reliance” … all you have to do is work hard, and suddenly (in 2 or 3 generations), you won’t be poor anymore. Isn’t that what they say? But this ad tells people that the Democratic Party makes African Americans dependent on a system. So is it now the position of the GOP that there are some problems that hard work alone cannot solve? What an interesting shift in ideology.

As Oliver Willis says, “Conservatism may be a hell of a con job, but they are good at selling it.” Of course, if they can sell it to enough black people, then they don’t have to suppress the black vote on election day.

I went looking for Flint blogs this week and couldn’t find any, but here’s a cool blog with a wicked cool post. Remember the frog? Loved it! One commenter said that the frog is on a trailer bed in some lot on Dort Highway. I’m going go looking for it sometime.

Keith also has posts on The Mall in Pontiac and The South Flint Plaza . I love the shots of the Kresge store. My grandparents had a bunch of old towels from Kresge. I told them if the big K on the tag stood for Kresge it was time to throw the towels away … but they were set in their ways.

Thanks Keith! Awesome blog!

Voice of Mordor came back after a few months off, and hit the ground running with a spot on frank and candor post about Dick DeVos. I hope he’s got some real time to blog now … he’s a good read.

Scrambling around the Michigan blogosphere, I ended up at Democracy For Michigan and found a nice article that was written a few weeks ago by Stephen Crockett. I couldn’t find a permalink to the article, so I’ve posted it here.

Stephen discusses the “No Ideas” myth, which I think is serving the GOP very well. In fact, ‘No Ideas’ makes this week’s ‘5’ article, which will be published on Wednesday.

Michigan Liberal has a post about a blogger meetup organized by Democratic Underground. Looks like Nancy Skinner will be there … hope I can make this one.

Mark Maynard and the bastardization of a beloved national symbol.

Speed Linking and Free association …

http://www.michiganblog.net/ … so …. many …. links… http://michigan.typepad.com/politicsmichigan/ … got kool-aid? http://www.commonmonkeyflower.net/blog/ … where am I? http://qualityg.blogspot.com/ … Please Shut Up

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