Month: January 2008

The usual distortions of what Obama actually said. Maybe someone will point out this endorsement that she features on her website. Money quote:

Her list of favorite presidents – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, George H.W. Bush and Reagan – demonstrates how she thinks. As expected, Bill Clinton was also included on the aforementioned list.

Then this:

Hillary and I will always remember President Ronald Reagan for the way he personified the indomitable optimism of the American people, and for keeping America at the forefront of the fight for freedom for people everywhere…

Whatever works. I have no idea who is going to prevail in Nevada and South Carolina. But the Clintons are acting as if they think they could lose.

Two moving posts about his dog here and here. My sympathies. Dusty just turned ten. Mercifully, she’s as ornery as ever – and ever-so-slightly more affectionate than she used to be. Mellowed by marriage, as I’ve been. I can’t imagine burying her. Losing a dog is a tough business – even for stone-hearted Tories like Derb.

Damian Lanigan:

We need to ask the ex-Governor a straight question: don’t you think, at the very least, that the issue of consent is a major difference between adult homosexual relations and sex with animals? Does he know how difficult it is, for instance, to get a rabbit to go for a drink with you, let alone to persuade it to come back to your place for coffee and a parsnip? Has he tried hooking up in a petting zoo?

The very least you’re going to need a lasso and gritty determination. Some people have even had to resort to Rohypnol. Llamas don’t go down easy, you know.  I’ve heard that human / avian wedding arrangements are particularly difficult: it doesn’t matter how many times you ask a budgie whether they’d like a civil or religious ceremony, they just repeat the question and keep pecking away at the old millet sock.

I’m sure I could think of other differences between human gay relationships and human / animal ones, but I have to go: my wife’s stuck up the neighbours’ tree again.

Hey, it’s Friday:

Fred Thompson was huffin’ and puffin’,
Like Reagan he said he’s a tough ‘un.
They said “Fred you are…”
“like a bright shiny star.”
But the old goat amounted to nuffin’.

Ron Paul is a Doctor from Texas
who sees how the government  vexes.
From the president’s lying
about FBI spying
to their “cover your asses” reflexes.

Chris Lehmann talks to Orlando Patterson among others about what this campaign has revealed about the Clintons and the race question:

"I’ve taken a lot of criticism from people saying I’ve not been sensitive enough." But the former president’s stray "kid" reference "is a synonym," Patterson says, "for being ‘uppity,’ it’s a way of saying ‘who is he?’ Throughout the history of America, there has been a history of young leaders, and for [Clinton] to say this in a context of promoting his wife in a very nepotistic way, it’s very disappointing. He’s charging a grown man of being uppity. There’s a race–well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s racist, but there’s a condescension there."

The way the Clintons are treating black leaders is very reminiscent to me of the way they have long treated gay people. When I’m asked by readers about the source of my emotional hostility to the Clintons, a lot of it does indeed go back to how they treated the civil rights issues of the 1990s. In some ways, I preferred the outright hostility of some on the religious right to the condescension and manipulation of the Clintons and their apparatchiks. I’ve never been able to get that bad taste out of my mouth. Which is why I am not in any way surprised by the racial issues they are now embroiled in. They treated the gays this way first.

This is cool:

Chris Mooney discusses the idea. But who’s the boss in most cases? Hard to tell. The good news is: our traffic and influence seem to be growing, hence the interest in monetizing all this:

Tellingly, both The Huffington Post and Daily Kos were slightly ahead of The Economist’s site–and considerably ahead of The New Yorker’s. Even more tellingly, on Technorati’s list of the hundred most-linked information sources, twenty-two were blogs.

Not a racist Colorado joke.

If unwanted pregnancies drop by a larger proportion than abortions, is that a good thing? Drum:

Better access to contraception, better education, and better access to the morning after pill seem to have made a difference over time. For anyone who’s pro-life but not anti-sex, that ought to be good news.

As someone who likes to think of himself as in favor of life and sex, I’d say it’s a good thing on both counts.