One of the big successes of the Republican Party has been to convert artificial outrage into the basis of their political platform. This is done in such a way that people who are hurt the most by what the Republican Party is doing are most happy to vote for them. The babies! Jesus! They like to call this “values”, but it really has about as much to do with actual values as the Easter Bunny with Jesus or GW Bush with competence, namely nothing. In any case, there’s an article in the Washington Post about a left-wing political blogger, which made me realize that the big success of those blogs is very similar to the success of, for example, Bill O’Reilly. You just need to replace the outrage about the babies with the outrage about GW Bush, say. It’s interesting to see the photo they picked for the article. Not only is it most unflattering to shoot somebody from below (even I would have a double chin if you did that), they also waited for a moment where the subject of the article almost looks unhinged. And note the glass of red wine on the table. I have no way to prove this, but it looks to me as if somebody was trying to send a pretty clear message there at the Washington Post.