Shakesville

Stand-Up Guy

There's been a lot of talk of various schisms of one kind or another lately, one of which has manifested itself in concern among members of the Big Brass Alliance that some of the bigger bloggers haven't come on board with us, which was disheartening for many people. I received an email tonight that I wanted to share (with permission), because it's just the opposite of divisive...and because it's just fucking classy:

You were right and I was wrong about the memos. Maybe they will break through, and at any rate, they should. Sometimes the coldly political side of me takes over, and, sadly, it doesn't always result in the best judgment. In any case -- you're doing wonderful work and the right thing, I shouldn't have dismissed the issue.
-- Ezra Klein

Ezra's referring to this. And he never had to say a word about it again, but he did. And I think that's pretty cool.

Marked Men and Women

Or, Welcome to the Weimar Republic, Part Zwei.

The leader of a conservative Christian lobby group appears to suggest that gays should be required to wear warning labels, although he denies that was his intention.

"We put warning labels on cigarette packs because we know that smoking takes one to two years off the average life span, yet we 'celebrate' a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease and takes at least 20 years off the average life span according to the 2005 issue of the revered scientific journal Psychological Reports," Rev. Bill Banuchi, executive director of the New York Christian Coalition told the Mid Hudson News.

The journal regularly publishes articles described by many mainstream psychologists as misleading and faulty. The homosexuality morbidity study was conducted by the conservative anti-gay Family Research Institute.

Okay, so he's using bullshit science and making statements about sexuality (“a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease”) as if they are true solely of homosexuals. Last I checked, anyone getting fucked can get infected with and transmit every STD available for the catching. (Unless there’s some secret gay syphilis that makes you more fashionable before it rots your brain that I don’t know about.) So, three paragraphs in, and we know that the good reverend is a homobigot, fan of crackpot junk science, and disingenuous knob. But is he also a human tape recorder programmed to spit out the anti-gay dogma of the Right?

He called on people to "pray for those who are deceived by the lies of popular culture, who are caught up in a destructive lifestyle, and for the children who are being zealously evangelized by radical homosexuals."

Check.

The issue of labels is particularly sensitive to gays. In Nazi Germany they were forced to wear the pink triangle to differentiate them from other internees at concentration camps.

But that’s not really what he meant. He just meant that there should be a better warning system for kids thinking about going all light in the loafers, that’s all. It’s sort of like, sure—you can get a shitty tent or an ugly jacket if you smoke lots of Marlboros and save up the “miles” from every pack, but you might also get lung cancer. All Rev. Bill is saying is that maybe dying young or getting gay herpes (as opposed to the regular kind you might get losing your virginity in the back seat of a Chevy Celebrity the way the heteros are supposed to) isn’t worth that toaster you’ll get for signing the Gay Pledge—and you ought to know that before you give the nice man in pink Spandex biker shorts your John Hancock on the dotted line.

Pay attention, kids. Rev. Bill’s just looking out for you.

(Hat tip Ms. Julien.)

Rantilicious

Hi, gang. I've posted a little rant about the recent pie-throwing stupidity over in Spudville. I'd appreciate it if you'd check it out, and feel free to leave comments here or there.

I apologize for the delay; I've been away from the computer for several days. I'm off work this week, so my blogging might be sparse, but I'll still be around.

I didn't cross-post this entry, as I don't want anyone to accuse Shakespeare's Sister of influencing me to write this post, or asking me to post it on her blog. This is 100% mine (I'm sure you can tell by the poor writing quality), and it will reside in Spudville for people that wish to read it. All twelve of you.

Thanks for not being afraid to point out sexism, even when it comes from our "own side." Eliminate the ninnies and the twits. Duty now for the future, spuds!

Guh

I just spent an hour on the phone with my arsinating internet provider, trying to figure out what was wrong, rebooting, unplugging, blah blah blah, and finally scheduling a service call, only to have Mr. Shakes come home, jiggle a wire, and have it come back on.

I hate him. We'll never make it to four years.

I Love German Food

Check out this juxtaposition in a story about Blair’s trip to meet with other European leaders:

Putin, who often miscues publicly by using exotic language, reacted sharply when a reporter linked human rights abuses and corruption in Africa with the situation in Russia.

"We know that in some African countries there was a practice of eating political opponents. We not have such a tradition or culture and I think a comparison between Africa and Russia is not quite fair," he said.

Blair was to dine with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder later on Monday in Berlin.

Really? Who’s on the menu?

Note to the author: perhaps “meet” would have been better than “dine” in this particular instance.

Who Wishes They Were Funny? Update…

Pinko Feminist Hellcat does! And she takes on Mr. Balloon’s newest load of crap (this time directed at Amanda) to prove it.

So does BlondeSense Liz! And Shamanic! And Kathy Flake!

Meanwhile, in a spectacular piece of intellectual dishonesty, Gilliard’s taking me on, too, if you’re interested in reading yet another version of the argument against Shakespeare’s Straw Sister—you know, the one who’s masking her agenda of wanting Kos to take down the ad, which I have never said. If my point was about wanting Kos to take down the ad, I would have said, “Kos ought to take down the ad.” I don’t mince words. Maybe if the people who like to set me up as Generic Straw Feminist #12 to make their asinine little arguments actually read my blog regularly, they’d know that. Because regular Shakers sure as shit know that I roll balls-out, baby.

DSM Breaking News from After Downing Street

Via AfterDowningStreet (not blockquoted due to length):

Later today RawStory.com will be posting an article that they have been researching for several days. Six new secret British documents have been leaked and made widely available on the internet, including via the links below. These were retyped from the originals to protect the source, but RawStory.com has verified the authenticity and will be reporting on that research, on the significance of the documents, and on the timeline of the events illuminated by this information, known to the British media but new on this side of the pond.

Last week we were made aware of additional leaked documents regarding the Iraq war. While some of these documents were posted online at various Web sites, we wanted to be certain on the chain of custody. The documents in question are transcribed from the originals and then copied. We wanted to be sure that what we would be posting and distributing to the coalition members was authenticated fully. As we are an advocacy group, we asked Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story to take the information and investigate it. We agreed that the coalition would act responsibly in this matter and wait on the facts to drive the advocacy, not the advocacy to push the facts.

The Raw Story article is scheduled to run later today at which point we would have released the documents along with the article. This morning, several prominent Web sites posted the documents, thereby creating some confusion. Raw Story also posted the documents in order to help keep the focus on the context that is forthcoming. We ask that you act responsibly in distributing the documents. When the Raw Story article goes out today, the documents that are now posted will have context. The documents on Raw Story and here at ADS are the ones that the chain of custody was established for. We cannot speak to other documents circulating on the Web. Please be ready to distribute the article and documents when we post the article later today. We apologize for the confusion.

• "Iraq Options Paper," UK Overseas and Defense Secretariat, March 8, 2002

The greater investment of Western forces, the greater our control over Iraq's future, but the greater the cost and the longer we would need to stay. The only certain means to remove Saddam and his elite is to invade and impose a new government, but this could involve nation building over many years. Even a representative government could seek to acquire WMD and build-up its conventional forces, so long as Iran and Israel retain their WMD and conventional armouries and there was no acceptable solution to the Palestinian grievances.

SIGNIFICANCE: UK government anticipated "nation building over many years," in contradiction to public case by Bush administration. British also believed Iraq might acquire WMD without Saddam Hussein in power.

We have looked at three options for regime change...

OPTION 3: A GROUND CAMPAIGN

The aim would be to launch a full-scale ground offensive... A pro-Western regime would be installed... The optimal times to start action are early spring.

SIGNIFICANCE: Timing of invasion already set in March 2002. Aim is not an Iraq which can democratically choose its policies, but a "pro-Western regime."

Most Iraqis see the INC/INA as Western stooges.

SIGNIFICANCE: The head of the INC (Iraqi National Congress) was Ahmed Chalabi; Chalabi is now acting Oil Minister of Iraq. The head of the INA (Iraqi National Accord) was Ayad Allawi; Allawi was Prime Minister of the Iraqi Interim government from June 1, 2004-April 7, 2005.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/ods020308.pdf

• "Iraq: Legal Background," UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, March 8, 2002

The US... maintain that the assessment of breach [of UN resolutions] is for individual member States. We are not aware of any other State which supports this view.

SIGNIFICANCE: Bush administration's interpretation of international law, which eventually invoked for the invasion, was so bizarre it was not shared by any other nation on earth (including UK).

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/fcolegal020308.pdf

• Memo from David Manning (Foreign Policy Advisor to Blair) to Blair on Manning's Dinner with Condoleezza Rice, March 14, 2002

I said you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion... Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed.... Bush has yet to find the answers to the big questions:... what happens on the morning after?

SIGNIFICANCE: Aim was always regime change. Bush had no plan for future of Iraq.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/manning020314.pdf

• Memo from Christopher Meyer (UK Ambassador to US) to David Manning on Meyer's lunch with Wolfowitz, March 18, 2002

"On Iraq I opened by sticking very closely to the script that you used with Condi Rice last week. We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option. It would be a tough sell for us domestically, and probably tougher elsewhere in Europe. The US could go it alone if it wanted to. But if it wanted to act with partners, there had to be a strategy for building support for military action against Saddam. I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN SCRs and the critical importance of the MEPP as an integral part of the anti-Saddam strategy. If all this could be accomplished skillfully, we were fairly confident that a number of countries would come on board."

SIGNIFICANCE: UN process was a sham for Blair's sake; aim was not disarmament but regime change, which had already been decided on.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/meyer020318.pdf

• Memo from Peter Ricketts (Political Director, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office) to Jack Straw (UK Foreign Secretary), March 22, 2002

For Iraq, "regime change" does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam. Much better, as you have suggested, to make the objective ending the threat to the international community from Iraqi WMD...

SIGNIFICANCE: Aim was regime change, but that wouldn't sell; WMD issue was useful for PR reasons.

US scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al [Q]aida is so far frankly unconvincing.

SIGNIFICANCE: Even UK government at the highest levels believed the Bush administration claims of an Iraq-Al Qaida links were false.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/ricketts020322.pdf

• Memo from Jack Straw to Blair, March 25, 2002

We have also to answer the big question—what will this action achieve?... [no US assessment] has satisfactorily answered how that regime change is to be secured, and how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be better.

SIGNIFICANCE: UK government at its highest levels did not believe the US had any plan to be certain a new Iraqi government would be an improvement on Saddam and would not develop WMD.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/straw020325.pdf

America's Most Wanted, Part 2

The Fixer at Alternate Brain, in an introduction to a long excerpt from an investigative piece done by der Spiegel on the bin Laden clan (which I highly recommend; at the very least, read Fix’s excerpt), notes:

Since we seem to have forgotten about Good Ol' Osama, killer of 3000 friends and neighbors of mine, I figure it's time to see what others have been doing to track him. I mean, it's not like (p)resident Dicknose gives a shit anymore.

No kidding. Which reminds me...

I decided to check back in on the FBI to see if they had updated their Most Wanted information on old Osama, since, as of February of this year, it still hadn’t been updated to include 9/11.

Well, the entire FBI site seems to have been redone, and the list of their Top 10 Most Wanted Terrorists note still has Osama in the top spot…but still no mention of 9/11 on his rap sheet:

Bin Laden is believed to be in Afghanistan. He is left-handed and walks with a cane.

Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world.

What is up with that? Can some clever Shaker who knows more about this kind of thing than I do explain why 9/11 would be so glaringly absent from that list?

Some Guys Really Know How to Give a Girl the Giggles

Recently, I told you that Democrats Can’t Win Because of Me, at least according to one blogger—me and the rest of the girls who are collectively known as "the crowd who dares not shave their legs.” Well, it turns out, Mr. Balloon’s post was filed under “Humor,” so cleverly disguised as completely misogynist and not remotely funny that Mr. Shakes noted, “I’m a guy, and now even knowing it’s supposed to be funny, I can’t figure out how.” Luckily, Mr. Balloon cleared everything up for me, in a post titled “This Is Too Funny,” also filed under “Humor” (to which I will not link because this is the entire post):

In the grand tradition of reactionary and humorless feminism, Shakespeare's Sister didn't recognize that this post titled "Why Democrats Can't Win" was supposed to be a joke and a light-hearted jab at all the parties involved:

Democrats Can't Win Because of Me, Or so I'm told. Me and the rest of "the crowd who dares not shave their legs."

Just a thought, but perhaps a bigger part of the reason Democrats can’t win elections is because they, and a certain contingent of Dem bloggers, continue to show contempt for women.

Especially the ones who suggest they ought to stop.

Yeah- because the chief electoral woe of the Democratic party is their outright failure to woo the feminist vote and their continuing inability to stop left-wing bloggers from showing contempt for women.

I filed this and re-filed the previous post under humor, since it was not clear, yet I fully expect this and the previous thread to be inundated with earnest admonitions about my callous disregard for the plight of women.

Is that a fucking knee-slapper or what?! Woo, I haven’t laughed so hard in ages! The funniest part is how he made absolutely no reference, not even an ellipses to indicate he’d edited me, to the statistics I included in my post which actually suggested that single women could have been key to securing Gore’s win! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! OMG—stop, Mr. Balloon! You’re gonna make me pee me pants!

Gosh, I wish I were that funny, but when I joined the Feminists, I had to turn in my sense of humor along with my razor.

------------

You know who else wishes they were that funny? Amanda, Lauren, Elise, Roxanne, Rana, Catherine, and Tami. (If you wish you were funny, leave your link in comments and I’ll add you to the list.)

And don’t feel left out, boys! You can wish you were funny, too, just like: The Heretik, The Fixer, Scott, and Charlie.

O, Flower of Scotland…

Beautiful Scotland, home of my dear Mr. Shakes, not to mention my own clan from three generations back, is legalizing gay adoptions.

Scotland is set to allow same-sex couples to adopt children, according to a review of adoption legislation to be announced today.

Following similar changes in English and Welsh law, Scotland may grant adoption rights to lesbian and gay couples within a few months.

[…]

Deputy Education Minister Euan Robson will unveil the changes, which will also reduce delays in the adoption process.

Very exciting news. Way to go, Scotland! In fact, good on ya, the whole of Britain, for caring about families of all stripes. All I can say is that I hope we join you someday.

Maximum Maxine

AfterDowningStreet reports:

Congress Member and House Judiciary Committee Member Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) shook up the Rainbow Push Coalition's 34th Annual Convention in Chicago today, winning huge standing ovations for a speech denouncing President Bush for lying about the war. Waters announced that she and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus plan to inform the House Democratic Leadership that they will introduce amendments on the issue of the war EVERY DAY from now on.
Waters told the crowd that Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean had received attention for criticizing the Republican Party in recent days, but that "he did not say enough."

"Bush is a liar," Waters said, according to an observer who phoned AfterDowningStreet.org. "He lied about weapons of mass destruction and he lied about the war."

Waters called Vice President Dick Cheney "a thief," and said that he was stealing for Halliburton.

And Waters said that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice will "go anywhere and say anything they tell her to say, and have the audacity to do it with a smile."

...after which the applause grew too loud for our observer to hear the Congresswoman's remarks.

Call Congresswoman Waters (202-225-2201) and thank her for telling it like it is. (If you're a California resident, you can use the guestbook form on her website.)

DSM on CNN

The Dems are getting antsy. Crooks and Liars has the video.

Letterman's Top 10 List

Care of Misty at Expostulation (who has been a hero in helping me out with the Alliance News thread at BBA - thank you, Misty!):

“Top Ten Ways Bush Can Regain His Popularity”

10. Dip into Social Security fund to give every American free HBO

9. Use diplomacy to bring peace to Brad, Jen and Angelina

8. Try fixing Iraq, creating some jobs, reducing the deficit and maybe capturing Osama

7. Figure out a way for the Yankees to win a game

6. Replace his”Country Simpleton” persona with more lovable “Hillbilly Idiot” Image

5. Use Weekly Radio Address to give Americans a Van Halen two-fer

4. Get Saddam to switch to boxers

3. Ditch the Librarian and make Eva Longoria First Lady

2. Resign.

1. Jump on Oprah’s couch while professing his love for Katie Holmes

Three Years

Today is Mr. Shakes’ and my third anniversary, which proves, if nothing else, that’s sometimes crazy ideas are good ones, too.

We met online in March of 2001—a completely random and chance meeting, all because he had posted an Oscar Wilde quote that I liked on an online profile. We met in person for the first time in August of that year, when I traveled to Britain on a long-planned holiday to see other friends there. What was meant to be meeting up for a drink turned into ten days together traveling all over Britain, including the most disastrous camping trip of all time, sleeping outdoors at a bus stop, seeing Margaret Cho at the Edinburgh Festival, laying in the grass at St. James park, listening to a pipe and drum band under the Scots Monument, feeding the birds crumbs of our cheese sandwiches at Dog Falls in Glen Affric, and lots of time looking at each other wondering what the hell was going on, exactly.

When I flew to Scotland to live there for awhile, to get to know his friends and family before we returned to America to get married in June of 2002, we had spent a total of five weeks in each other’s company. Countless hours on the phone and computer, but only five weeks—and vacation weeks at that, with no jobs or bills or daily stressors—together, face to face, getting to know each other’s quirks and idiosyncrasies. Five weeks on our best behavior.

Now here we are, three years later. The number of disagreements we’ve had I can count on one hand, though I couldn’t tell you what any of them were about. We still can’t get to bed on time, because it’s always more fun to lay awake in the dark, talking endlessly about anything and everything, having the same conversations over and over, and never tiring of them. We drive each other insane, and we make each other laugh.

For the past year and a half, we’ve worked together, too, in side-by-side offices at the same company. Tomorrow, Mr. Shakes starts a new job, and I’m going to miss him desperately. Nothing makes a workday easier to get through than knowing a good snog is a few feet away.

Sometimes we talk about how utterly insane it was to take the risk we did. It could have been an absolute disaster, which never really occurred to us at the time. But, like I said, sometimes crazy ideas are good ones, too.

My favorite photo of Mr. Shakes, the posterboy for Scottish genetics.
Taken the week we met, and he’s already giving me the “I’m-pretending-to-be-annoyed-and-trying-not-to-grin” look I’ve come to know so well.

Billmon with Some Good Advice

Blogging at This Modern World, Billmon offers this sage advice:

So in addition to flooding the corporate media with calls and letters demanding that they get on the ball, complaints also should be directed to the offices of Sen. Pat Roberts, R-KA, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- (202) 224-4774; 109 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington DC 20510 -- and Vice Chair Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D(alleged)-WV -- (202) 224-6472; 531 Hart Senate Office Building.

Or how about the chair of the House Intelligence Committee: Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-MI: (202) 225-4401; 2234 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington DC 20515. Or ranking member Rep. Jane Harmon, D(alleged)-CA: (202) 225 8220; 2400 Rayburn House Office Building.

Of course, if the intelligence panels are actually part of the cover up, then asking them to investigate further is pretty pointless. But a closer look at their role in the scandal might at least give the story a fresh news hook, and some possible strings for reporters to follow.

Sounds good to me.

(Hat tip Green Knight.)

Excellent St. Petersburg Times Editorial

Wake up, mainstream media. This is how your job is supposed to be done:

Bush may not realize it, but Amnesty International may have done him a big favor. The controversy the human rights group ignited over the treatment of Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has deflected the attention of journalists and war critics from an even more disturbing story - how all the president's talk about going to war as a last resort was just a ruse.

Seven months before the "shock and awe" bombing began in Baghdad, the Bush administration was bending intelligence to suit its purpose, which was to go to war come hell or high water.

Who says so? The head of British foreign intelligence, that's who.

It's all in the Downing Street memo, which was leaked to the Sunday Times of London just before last month's British elections. It created an uproar in Britain but has barely registered in the United States, mainly because the press was more interested in whether U.S. interrogators were desecrating the Koran at Guantanamo.

[…]

At a joint White House news conference last week, both Bush and Blair denied that intelligence had been "fixed" to justify military action.

"There's nothing farther from the truth," Bush said.

"No," Blair added, "the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all."

Some will ask: What's the point of bringing up the Downing Street memo now, two years after the invasion and at a time when terrorist suicide bombers are making life hell not only for U.S. troops but the Iraqi people? The point is this: President Bush didn't level with the American people before going to war. And he still hasn't.

Double hot damn.

Go read the rest. It feels really good to read something like that, and think about how people sleepily picking up their Sunday papers will read it—and maybe for the first time, start to care about the Downing Street Memo, start to share the burden of outrage with us, and maybe begin to want some answers as much as we do.

Hot Damn

The first day I’ve actually engaged in a social life in weeks and what do I miss? The leaking of a new British memo confirming that it was “necessary to create the conditions” for the legality of the Iraq War. The London Times reports (emphasis mine):

The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.

[…]

The document said the only way the allies could justify military action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.

“It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject,” the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be “most unlikely” to obtain the legal justification they needed.

The suggestions that the allies use the UN to justify war contradicts claims by Blair and Bush, repeated during their Washington summit last week, that they turned to the UN in order to avoid having to go to war. The attack on Iraq finally began in March 2003.

[…]

There has been a growing storm of protest in America, created by last month’s publication of the minutes in The Sunday Times. A host of citizens, including many internet bloggers, have demanded to know why the Downing Street memo (often shortened to “the DSM” on websites) has been largely ignored by the US mainstream media.

(Including the 427 members of the Big Brass Alliance.)

Who, I wonder, is our friendly British Deep Throat? Whoever it is, I’m fucking glad they care more about holding our president accountable for his actions more than most of the members of our own government.

More information on this as it becomes available.

In other news, the AP has done a fine piece on the Downing Street Memo, and the Washington Post has gotten in on the action, too.

HOT DAMN!

Democrats Can't Win Because of Me

Or so I'm told. Me and the rest of "the crowd who dares not shave their legs."

During the last election, the "Sex and the City" vote was all the rage, with both Dems and the GOP trying their best to woo single women. (Remember W is for Women?) During the run-up to the election, BusinessWeek Online noted:

They're America's 46 million unmarried women -- a group that ranges from never-marrieds just out of college to single mothers, middle-aged divorcées, and widows. Despite their differences, these women have two things in common: deep economic insecurity and a tendency to turn out for Democrats when they vote -- by a 30-percentage-point margin in some polls.

The prospect of shaping Sideline Singles into a voting bloc has liberal activist groups in a lather. After all, says Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, if unmarried women had voted in the same proportions as their wedded sisters in 2000, some 6 million more voters would have gone to the polls -- and most would have punched the chad for Al Gore…

"One of the reasons we keep hearing for not voting is 'politicians don't listen to people like me,"' says NOW President Kim Gandy. "But if we get enough of this demographic to vote, politicians will have to listen. It's about achieving critical mass."

Just a thought, but perhaps a bigger part of the reason Democrats can’t win elections is because they, and a certain contingent of Dem bloggers, continue to show contempt for women.

Especially the ones who suggest they ought to stop.

Good Readin'

Go check out Nancy Goldstein's latest column at PageOneQ, Funder on the Right, in which she corrects the record on for what the John M. Olin Foundation (the very powerful right-wing grantmaker soon closing its doors) has stood, and challenges the left to create its own funding/media powerhouse.

(And if anyone takes her up on her challenge, I challenge them to hire me!)

San Francisco Chronicle Editorial on DSM

Most excellent:

There should be no statute of limitations -- or shortness of public attention span -- on an issue that cuts to the core of this government's integrity and credibility. Congress must fully investigate the actions in Washington that led the highest officials in Great Britain to be convinced that the Bush administration was hell-bent on war and working to concoct a rationalization for it.

Read the rest.

(Hat tip Poverty Barn.)