From a gallery of men arrested in drag:
Jeremy McIntosh, 27, wore a floral blouse, a bra and other feminine flair when he repeatedly rammed his car into a Michigan lingirie boutique called Intimate Ideas, say police. McIntosh's alleged motivation for the act, which would result in a malicious destruction of property charge, was anger towards Intimate Ideas for refusing to hire him.
(Hat tip: BF)
Jack Shafer has some second thoughts about non-profit journalism:
To borrow a tidy phrase from the business world, donors to nonprofits seek not payouts from their investment but psychic income. They want to feel that their money has done good, or at least caused "evil" some pain. They want to help publish stories that will make Congress to sit up and take notice and pass legislation. The want the major media to chase their stories. They want to publish stories that will convince voters to vote the way they'd have them vote.
Clay Shirky differs.
The leader of the current GOP base reveals his instant sadness:
Background – and a useful piece of his previous posturing – here.
A reader writes:
Juan Cole apparently cribbed the figure of "a little over $6 billion annually" from Wikipedia, which cites an estimate of 2005 expenditures from the publication 'Military Balance.' Really, that's fantastic scholarship. The latest edition of the same publication provides an estimate of 2007 expenditures at $7.45b; it's doubtless risen since.
But the bigger problem is that this is obfuscation by misdirection. Per capita expenditures are a meaningless metric – the standard way to measure these things is by percentage of GDP, which places Iran at the middle of the pack, between India and the UK. In any case, Iran's real strength rests more directly on the sheer size of its forces, with more than half a million active duty personnel, and almost two million combat-capable reservists and militiamen. It also funds the Quds Force, and through it, groups like Hezbollah and Iraqi insurgents who can serve as proxies. And its pursuit of missile and nuclear technology is similarly intended to amplify its regional influence.
Apologists like Juan Cole do tremendous damage to the case against military strikes. He cites out-of-date statistics and misleading metrics; claims that Ahmadinejad merely "hope[s] that the [Israeli] regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did"; and downplays the importance of the enrichment site at Qom. Any reasonable reader would conclude that the case for diplomatic engagement necessarily rests upon tendentious claims, deliberate misreadings, and willful ignorance. Engagement actually requires precisely the opposite – a clear-eyed assessment of Iran's capabilities and intentions, of its strengths and weaknesses. It is grounded in realism, not denial. It's worth debunking myths and aiming for greater understanding, but part of that process is wrestling with uncomfortable truths and areas of genuine disagreement. Cole would rather ignore them. I hope that your readers won't take his essay as representative of the case for engagement. It's not only possible to acknowledge the problems with this regime while pursuing negotiations; it's necessary.
Just when you think the Weekly Standard's institutionalized contempt for gay people could not get any worse, along comes James Bowman's defense of barring openly gay men from military service:
Facing enemy bullets–is inextricably bound up with ideas of masculinity. We also know that most heterosexual males' ideas of masculinity are inextricably bound up with what we now call sexual orientation. In other words, "being a man" typically does mean for soldiers both being brave, stoic, etc.–and being heterosexual. Another way to put this is to say that honor, which is by the testimony of soldiers throughout the ages of the essence of military service, includes the honor of being known for heterosexuality, and that, for most heterosexual males, shame attends a reputation as much for homosexuality as for weakness or cowardice.
Beneath the elegant prose and the admission that gay soldiers are as good as straight ones – and as American as anyone else – is an old schoolyard epithet: no sissies allowed, and all fags are sissies. Or rather, if others believe without evidence that they are sissies, the burden of proof must lie on those being calumnied rather than those expressing fact-free generalizations. It is true that for much of human history – with many many exceptions in the ancient world – masculinity has been conflated with heterosexuality. But that's because the gay men have been rendered so invisible and so oppressed that the counter-evidence has never been fully revealed – except in small circumstances and with individuals on the battlefield. But now we do know better – and the next generation of civilized men and civilized intelligent warriors understand this. Giving individuals a chance to prove their mettle as openly gay, and giving straight soldiers a chance to demonstrate that they care more about their duty than prejudice, is so obviously the right thing to do only bigots resist it at this point.
And, in case Bowman thinks I am somehow denigrating sissies, let me point out to this bigot that he might want to avoid a fight with a sissy, because many of them could take his sorry ass to the cleaners, and because many more, over the centuries, have fought and died for their country and are more men than he, from his armchair, will ever be.
And, of course, part of the reason for forcing gay soldiers into the closet and holding persecution over their heads is precisely to conceal the plain truth that these stereotypes are false. I remind Bowman that the first soldier to lose a limb in the Iraq war was a gay man. That he risked all for his country, that he showed immense valor, should make him a hero to his country and to his commander-in-chief.
And what did they do to him? They fired him. Get angrier.
Blogs go where no journalist has gone before.
Jonah Lehrer passes along a new study (more details at his place):
I've written before about the powerful mental benefits of communing with nature – it leads to more self-control, increased working memory, lower levels of stress and better moods – but a new study by psychologists at the University of Rochester find that being exposed to wildlife also makes us more compassionate. Nature might be red in tooth and claw, but even a glimpse of greenery can make us behave in kinder, gentler ways.
We all know the human and civil cost of America's war on gay couples. From heart-breaking medical stories like this recent one, to tearing bi-national couples apart, to stripping the spouse of any death benefits for their partner and sometimes throwing them out of their formerly shared home, to the constant threat that your children could be taken from you … and on and on. But there is also the financial discrimination against us, and this morning's NYT really does a good job, for the first time in analyzing it. Money quote:
In our worst case, the couple’s lifetime cost of being gay was $467,562. But the number fell to $41,196 in the best case for a couple with significantly better health insurance, plus lower taxes and other costs.
These numbers will vary, depending on a couple’s income and circumstance.
Gay couples earning, say, $80,000, could have health insurance costs similar to our hypothetical higher-earning couple, but they might well owe more in income taxes than their heterosexual counterparts. For wealthy couples with a lot of assets, on the other hand, the cost of being gay could easily spiral into the millions.
The effect of these policies is to encourage gay people not to form stable, lasting relationships (relationships that have been shown to increase people's health, happiness and productiveness). It is to exact a communal price on anyone who actually does embrace the responsibility of marriage, in the face of government discrimination and constant abuse from the Christianist right.
I wish people could understand that this is not an abstract issue. It affects human beings now in ways no heterosexual would tolerate – or even imagining tolerating – if it were affecting them. Read the whole thing, especially if you're straight. Try for a moment to put your family and your spouse in the same boat. Now consider the charge that we are asking for "special rights."
And get angrier.
It's hard not to smile over this clip.
Ezra Klein doesn't think it is 1994 all over again:
Politics is generally viewed as a zero-sum game: When one party gains, the other loses. But Republicans have pursued a strategy turning politics into a negative-sum game: Both parties lose. They have effectively harmed the Democrats' agenda but done so at great cost to their own favorability numbers.
Charlie Cook looks at the districts in contention:
Have you been in the South lately? The level of anti-Obama, anti-Democratic and anti-Congress venom is extraordinary, and with 59 Democrat-held seats in the region, 22 in or potentially in competitive districts, this is a very serious situation for Democrats. I have had several Democratic members from the region say the atmosphere is as bad or worse than it was in 1994.
Cook apparently thinks there is a 33 to 55 percent chance that the Democrats will lose the house in 2010. Brendan Nyhan has further thoughts. So does Ed Kilgore:
It's possible, and perhaps even probable, that the GOP strategy for 2010 is to create a political environment so toxic and voter-alienating that Republicans can win a very low turnout election by whipping their base into a genuine frenzy. That's obviously not a very good scenario for the country, and it remains to be seen if it's even good for the GOP.
The Dish 