The Dish

Compared to whom? Romney? Giuliani? I know of no candidate with less of a platform right now than Giuliani. Obama, in contrast, has made several policy speeches, and one philosophical homily which is far and away the smartest address yet in the campaign. Greg Sargent takes it away here.

Bellingham, Washington, 7 pm.

Here’s a great new online guide to where your taxpayers’ dollars end up. The vast majority goes to the elderly in pensions and healthcare. Some acerbic commentary can be found here. I’m just glad the web can expose the reality of government spending and redistribution.

That’s some fetish:

The five bags of undergarments discovered by police at Garth Flaherty’s Pullman, Wash., home weighed approximately 93 pounds and contained an estimated 1,500 pairs of women’s undergarments—bras and panties of all shapes, colors and sizes.

It was enough for Pullman police to arrest Flaherty, 24, and declare that they had finally found their suspect after a months-long panty-thief mystery that targeted the Washington State University college town.

Ouch:

"The party’s campaign strategists operate under contracts that would make Halliburton blush. While their GOP counterparts work for a flat fee on presidential campaigns, Democratic media consultants profit on commission, pocketing as much as ten percent of every dollar spent on TV ads."

Moe commentary on the Democrats’ racket here and here. The money-grubbing reminds me of HRC. With the same results.

A brutal, personal attack. But it’s depressing that Josh retreats to anti-Carter arguments and ad hominem slurs instead of addressing the fiasco that neoconservatives have helped engineer in Iraq. One waits for one leading neocon to examine some of the premises that led us into what is clearly a bloody and endless trap in Iraq. Instead, we will be treated to the usual attacks on Democrats, reflexive defense of Bush, or a plea for patience.

A conservative complains.

The Moderate Voice tries to keep hope alive. The acid test will be when we start withdrawing or redeploying later in the year. If we do, of course.

Here’s a fascinating foray into the history and evolution of girls’ pop-groups courtesy of the Smithsonian magazine.

A pioneering new study finds erotic literature and imagery far more widespread and affordable than had been previously imagined. Britain in the 1700s was bawdy, highly sexualized and sexist. Money quote:

The works range from books, down to single-sheet pamphlets. "The price and content of this material suggests it was available to merchants, traders, skilled and semi-skilled men and even labourers," Skipp went on. Its accessibility allowed sexual attitudes to percolate down the social strata.

Dr Simon Burrows of the University’s school of history, one of Skipp’s PhD supervisors, described the study as "pioneering work." He said: "Jenny has shown that erotic texts are about much more than sexual fantasy. They can give us genuine new insights into cultural attitudes, sexual norms and social customs."

And Skipp describes a literary quality to the writing which you might struggle to find in modern erotic fiction or top-shelf pornography. "It is very different to today’s erotica," she said. "It is more humorous, more literary and more engaged with the wider issues of the life and politics of the times." Its metaphors mirror the passions of the age: "At a time when military power was equated with virility, armed conquest is often used as a metaphor for sex – in phrases such as ‘unsheathing the weapon’, ‘storming the fort’ and ‘releasing the cannon’."