Blogs I used to read

Blogs are now so established that we have been able to watch blog authors change over time.

There are a few major blogs I used to read, but no longer.

Leaving the left

People going the other way

Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan was probably the original political blogger I discovered after 9/11 in 2001. I read him all the time in 2001-03. He used to be on my list of Writers on politics that I like.

But then he turned against the war. Gradually almost everything he believed switched to the opposite. He became exactly the kind of guy he would have attacked in 2001-03. Now I never read him.

Andrew Sullivan
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Andrew Sullivan I read all the time in 2001-03. But then he turned against the war.
It seems Bush's anti-gay marriage policy drove him mad. I had some sympathy for Sullivan. I had problems with Bush too. But Gay Marriage is simply not as important an issue as the War on Islamist Terror. Sullivan just can't swallow his pride and accept this.
He abandoned Bush because of this issue, and spent years trying to justify it. In 2004 he became obsessed with the Abu Ghraib scandal, and endlessly wrote as if it was important, and as if the WMD intelligence scandal was important, and so on. In the 2004 election, he supported Kerry, and wrote as if the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth were Republican dirty tricks, rather than what it was - 200 people who hated Kerry for 30 years and this was their moment. He has switched sides and is now trying desperately to pretend that the Democrats are strong on defence. The old Andrew Sullivan - the one who realised we are in a war to the death with people who want to exterminate homosexuals and lots of other groups - is gone, sadly.
In the Middle East, a New World by Karl Zinsmeister, April/May 2005 issue. On loyalty, and staying the course:
- "From the very beginning, of course, the Bush administration's left-wing enemies in the U.S. and Europe were hysterically opposed to the push for Middle Eastern democracy. A significant number of right-wing pundits also proved themselves to be sunshine patriots ... bailing out of the hard, dirty work of war and cultural transformation as soon as the predictable resistance arose. But that's politics. In Washington, if you're looking for a brave and steadfast ally, you need to buy a dog. Fortunately our warriors battling away in Najaf and Samarra and Anbar province didn't surrender to the Beltway gloom that defeated most of our media and political elites."
Survey of Andrew Sullivan's readers, Feb 2008. Despite him claiming to be a "conservative", only affluent left wingers read him now. "2.5 percent of you describe yourselves as very conservative; 9.6 percent as conservative; 33.3 percent as moderate; 38.1 percent as liberal; and 16.5 percent as very liberal." "Only 22 percent of you earn $50K or less. Another fifth earn between $50K and $75K. Well over half have household income of over $100K a year."
Not all gays abandoned Bush:
- 23 percent of gays voted for Bush in 2004.
- GayPatriot (or via here, formerly here). "Representing the million gay and lesbian Americans supporting President Bush"

Andrew Sullivan in the Obama era

First Andrew Sullivan supported Kerry for President in 2004. Then he became a fanatic supporter of Obama for President in 2008.

Andrew Sullivan v. Christopher Hitchens, Apr 2008:
- Sullivan is demolished by Hitchens, as he (Sullivan) struggles to defend the dodgy, evasive Obama and his mentor Rev. Wright.
- I haven't read Sullivan in years, but I am still shocked. How far he has fallen. He has become Simon Jenkins or Geoffrey Wheatcroft, a hopeless confused muddle, all because he is driven by another agenda.
- Ironically, Hitchens ended up endorsing Obama.
Obama returns the compliment to his fanatic supporter:
- Obama reads Andrew Sullivan, report Jan 2010.
Shocking post on Israel and Iran, 1 Dec 2010.
- I haven't paid attention to Andrew Sullivan for years, so I am always shocked when someone points out what he is saying these days.
- He writes as if Israel's nuclear supremacy is something sleazy, rather than something that every sane person must hope lasts: "Apparently, a lobby for a foreign government is useless if it cannot instantly get the US to launch World War III to maintain said foreign government's regional nuclear monopoly for a few more years." When did Sullivan become just another anti-Israel freak?
- In response to the encouraging news from Wikileaks that the Arab dictators want to stop Iran, he points out that the Arab street are Israel-hating maniacs who think Iran is great. Instead of just stating the facts - that for once the dictators make more sense than the people - he attacks the "neo-cons" for siding with the dictators not the people. He doesn't seem to care about Iran getting nuclear weapons. He only cares about attacking "neo-cons".
- He describes the Arab rulers as "corrupt, gutless, torturing autocrats". Fair enough. But oddly he does not then describe the Arab street as "blind, ignorant, conspiracy-theory driven, anti-semitic, west-hating Islamist lovers". He does not criticise the Arab street at all.
Andrew Sullivan, 19 Oct 2009, is impressed that the Taliban gave a captive bottled water. Rather ignoring the times when the Taliban have repeatedly raped and beheaded their captives. Not to mention them gassing girls' schools, and disembowelling girls' teachers. What an idiot he has become.
Andrew Sullivan, Jan 2011, does not seem to know that JFK was killed by a communist.
Andrew Sullivan, Mar 2011, thinks that the accidental killing of civilians in a war zone in Afghanistan "makes one reassess the justness of this long, long war". Did he not know what war was when he was promoting it in 2001-03?
Sullivan turns against Israel
- Sullivan calls Israel an apartheid state, April 2014. The takeover of his brain by the left is complete. "The Israeli public has no interest or belief in compromise ... I used to believe that Israel was desperate for peace and that the main sticking point was Palestinian intransigence. You could plausibly have held that view a decade and a half ago, but surely not any more."

That's not the question that comes to my mind, when I see Andrew Sullivan and Newsweek gushing about Obama in Jan 2012.

Andrew Sullivan, the "conservative" who votes Democrat

The "conservative" who votes Democrat:
- Sullivan supported Kerry (Democrat) for President in 2004.
- Sullivan supported Obama (Democrat) for President in 2008.
- Sullivan supported Obama (Democrat) for President in 2012.
- And yet he still claims to be a "conservative". If only there were more conservatives like him, the Democrats would never be out of office!
The Economist, the "centrist" magazine that always support the Democrats:
- The "conservative" Andrew Sullivan who somehow always votes Democrat is like the "centrist" or "centre-right" magazine, The Economist, which somehow always supports the Democrats.
- The Economist supported Kerry (Democrat) for President in 2004.
- The Economist supported Obama (Democrat) for President in 2008.
- The Economist supported Obama (Democrat) for President in 2012.
- The Economist might have been centre-right once, but it seems centre-left now.
The Economist is also developing a centre-left line on Israel:
- The Economist's extraordinarily misleading 12 words on why Hamas hates Israel, CiF Watch, 16 Sept 2013. They point out a very dodgy sentence in The Economist: "Hamas, meanwhile, reviles Israel for its assaults on Gaza and its leaders." This is not, of course, why Hamas reviles Israel.
- CiF Watch, 3 Mar 2014, on The Economist's dodgy reporting about Israel.
- Economist's Nicolas Pelham Deceives About Christians, CAMERA, May 13, 2014. They reply to an article by The Economist's Middle East correspondent Nicolas Pelham claiming Christians are not much better treated in Israel than in the PA and Gaza.

The Economist, like Andrew Sullivan, are centre-left people posing as centre-right:
This cartoon ran in an Economist article on Iran in Jan 2014.
It got attention for its creepy anti-Israel motif.
But the most shocking thing is the naive left-wing belief that Rouhani is different to the rest of the Iranian regime. "Rouhani is a moderate", and the real bad guys are "holding him back". Yeah, right.

Andrew Sullivan backs Ron Paul

Sullivan's true love is Obama and the Democrats, but if there has to be a Republican candidate, he would like it to be .. Ron Paul!

Andrew Sullivan, 19 Dec 2011, says that Ron Paul (who wants America to withdraw from global leadership and then see what happens) would be a good Republican candidate in the 2012 election.
Ron Paul is the kind of creepy amoral libertarian that says (Jan 2012) that the killing of an Iranian nuclear weapons scientist is "an act of terrorism and we should empathize with them" [with Iran].

Former sane person Andrew Sullivan backed Ron Paul for 2012.

The Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev also backed Ron Paul for 2012.

Andrew Sullivan and Charles Johnson

Two converts to the left, who went mad at different times, and so said some awful things about each other.
LGF and the Daily Dish: a short history

Charles Johnson on Andrew Sullivan, 5 Apr 2008: "Not a shred of the post-9/11 Sullivan remains; all that's left is a rhetoric-spewing empty shill for "progressive" causes."
Today, that's how a lot of people feel about Charles Johnson.
Hi Diary of Daedalus readers!

Sullivan and LGF, Sept 2009.
I didn't leave them. They left me.