From MSNBC: fascinating story by a man arrested in the Stonewall riots 40 years ago. Boy, look at those pictures of him from the '60s. What a cutie he was!

From NYTimes: Charles Blow on the new euphemism sweeping the nation:

...At the end of the day, aside from the dereliction of duty and malfeasance, this, for me, would be a private matter. That is if it were not for the appalling hypocrisy of yet another social conservative saying one thing while doing another.

There are Democratic sex scandals to be sure, but Democrats didn’t build a franchise on holier-than-thou moral rectitude. The Republicans did. They used sexual morality as a weapon and now it’s shooting them in the foot....

From Newsweek: Fareed Zakaria on Iran:

The situation in Iran is more complex. Democracy clearly works against this repressive regime. The forces of religion, however, are not so easily aligned against it. Many, possibly most, Iranians appear to be fed up with theocracy. But that does not mean they are fed up with religion. It does appear that the more openly devout Iranians—the poor, the rural—voted for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Found via Jezebel. Girl power, baby!

From the WaPo:

The poorer you are, the more things cost. More in money, time, hassle, exhaustion, menace. This is a fact of life that reality television and magazines don't often explain.

So we'll explain it here. Consider this a primer on the economics of poverty.

"The poor pay more for a gallon of milk; they pay more on a capital basis for inferior housing," says Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). "The poor and 100 million who are struggling for the middle class actually end up paying more for transportation, for housing, for health care, for mortgages. They get steered to subprime lending. . . . The poor pay more for things middle-class America takes for granted."

Poverty 101: We'll start with the basics.

Like food: You don't have a car to get to a supermarket, much less to Costco or Trader Joe's, where the middle class goes to save money. You don't have three hours to take the bus. So you buy groceries at the corner store, where a gallon of milk costs an extra dollar.

A loaf of bread there costs you $2.99 for white. For wheat, it's $3.79. The clerk behind the counter tells you the gallon of leaking milk in the bottom of the back cooler is $4.99. She holds up four fingers to clarify. The milk is beneath the shelf that holds beef bologna for $3.79. A pound of butter sells for $4.49. In the back of the store are fruits and vegetables. The green peppers are shriveled, the bananas are more brown than yellow, the oranges are picked over.

(At a Safeway on Bradley Boulevard in Bethesda, the wheat bread costs $1.19, and white bread is on sale for $1. A gallon of milk costs $3.49 -- $2.99 if you buy two gallons. A pound of butter is $2.49. Beef bologna is on sale, two packages for $5.)

Prices in urban corner stores are almost always higher, economists say. And sometimes, prices in supermarkets in poorer neighborhoods are higher. Many of these stores charge more because the cost of doing business in some neighborhoods is higher. "First, they are probably paying more on goods because they don't get the low wholesale price that bigger stores get," says Bradley R. Schiller, a professor emeritus at American University and the author of "The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination."...

From What the Duck:

From xkcd:

 

The Washington Post displays the best entries in its third annual Peeps Show contest!  Absolutely fantastic.

Oh Roger. I almost forgive you for those crappy reviews of my beloved horror movies. (Thanks to yendi for pointing this out.)

To: Bill O'Reilly
From: Roger Ebert

Dear Bill: Thanks for including the Chicago Sun-Times on your exclusive list of newspapers on your "Hall of Shame." To be in an O'Reilly Hall of Fame would be a cruel blow to any newspaper. It would place us in the favor of a man who turns red and starts screaming when anyone disagrees with him. My grade-school teacher, wise Sister Nathan, would have called in your parents and recommended counseling with Father Hogben.

Yes, the Sun-Times is liberal, having recently endorsed our first Democrat for President since LBJ. We were founded by Marshall Field one week before Pearl Harbor to provide a liberal voice in Chicago to counter the Tribune, which opposed an American war against Hitler. I'm sure you would have sided with the Trib at the time.

I understand you believe one of the Sun-Times misdemeanors was dropping your syndicated column. My editor informs me that "very few" readers complained about the disappearance of your column, adding, "many more complained about Nancy." I know I did. That was the famous Ernie Bushmiller comic strip in which Sluggo explained that "wow" was "mom" spelled upside-down....

So remember when Obama laid the smackdown on Ed Henry and his stoooooopid follow-up question at last night's news conference?


Look what my friend skywaterblue made in response to it!

( skywaterblue won the Internets, and a cookie )

From Washington Monthly:

STILL THINK 'VOLCANO MONITORING' IS FOOLISH?.... Of all the charges levied during the debate over the economic stimulus package, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) offered one of the most foolish. In a widely-panned national address, Jindal complained bitterly about "wasteful spending," and to prove his point, highlighted "$140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.'"

Even at the time, it was an unusually foolish thing to say. A month later, Jindal's complaints look even worse.

An erupting Mount Redoubt exploded again at 4:31 this morning -- its fifth and strongest discharge yet -- sending an ash cloud to new heights, the Alaska Volcano Observatory reported.

Ash has now been detected at 60,000 feet above sea level, the National Weather Service reported.

 

 

The AP added, "Ash from Alaska's volcanoes is like a rock fragment with jagged edges and has been used as an industrial abrasive. It can injure skin, eyes and breathing passages. The young, the elderly and people with respiratory problems are especially susceptible to ash-related health problems. Ash can also cause damage engines in planes, cars and other vehicles."

A USGS geologist confirmed to Zachary Roth that "a portion of the stimulus spending for volcano monitoring that Jindal lampooned has been slated to go to USGS monitoring Redoubt."

Chris Waythomas, a geologist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory, a branch of the USGS, said that part of the money from the stimulus that Jindal was referring to would have been used to "shore up" monitoring of Redoubt, by adding new monitoring technology like real-time GPS. Redoubt, he said, was "very high on our list" of volcanoes that needed increased scrutiny.

In fact, thanks to its close monitoring of Redoubt, the USGS has known for months that it was on the point of blowing. The volcano had emitted ash and steam last week, alerting scientists to the likely imminence of a full eruption. Their efforts also meant they knew enough to raise the alert level to orange, or "watch" on Saturday, a day before Redoubt erupted. That, for instance, meant that the FAA received advanced warning that flight disruptions could occur, and it gave local officials time to draw up precautionary plans to evacuate people if needed.

So in this case, government scientists appear to have had access to enough information to anticipate the eruption, but there's no guarantee that that'll always be the case. Waythomas said that, because of funding shortfalls, monitoring efforts for several other volcanoes lacked some of the technologies that could be of crucial help to geologists.

 

 

To hear Jindal tell it, the very idea of federal funding for "something called 'volcano monitoring'" is on its face silly.

If this is what Jindal, a governor of state ravaged by natural disasters, calls "wasteful," he really doesn't know what he's talking about.

Originally twittered by Wil Wheaton:

Consider this: Michael Steele is actually a performance artist, doing an Andy Kaufmanesque character. He will be remembered as a genius.

Please watch the whole thing. It's fantastic. Found via rahmbamarama.

Thanks to orbitaldiamonds for sharing this: The Amazing Power of the Gay:

Posted on: March 16, 2009 9:16 AM, by Ed Brayton

Another breathtaking example of the anti-gay right attributing astonishing powers to The Gay, this time from Maggie Gallagher at the National Review. Noting that out of wedlock births have begun to rise in the US after being flat for the last few years, she writes:

Is it mere coincidence that this resurgence in illegitimacy happened during the five years in which gay marriage has become (not thanks to me or my choice) the most prominent marriage issue in America -- and the one marriage idea endorsed by the tastemakers to the young in particular?

Dale Carpenter's response is spot on:

On this view, not only does gay marriage contribute to heterosexual irresponsibility, but even advocating gay marriage sets it off. This is a lot to lay on a few gay couples in Massachusetts and a stack of unread law review articles.

Someone who really wanted to play this correlation game would note that this new demographic trend took place at the same time that 29 states were so opposed to gay marriage that they amended their constitutions to forbid it. And a rational person would point out that this argument says far more about us straights than it does gays. Are we heterosexuals really so pathetic and shallow that we'll allow perhaps the biggest decisions of our entire lives be changed for the worse because some people think gays should be allowed to get married? How do people make such stupid arguments with a straight face?

Hubby forwarded me this excellent NY Times article about the current economy.

A PSYCHOTHERAPIST friend says that several of her patients are fretting about whether they have an obligation to help the nation spend its way out of the current downturn. Some of them are having a hard time making ends meet, she said, yet are reluctant to cut back for fear they would cause the economy to slide further.

The role of consumers has had considerable attention in the press because the economy desperately needs additional spending right now. But it is not — and should not be — the responsibility of middle-income families to provide that spending. If financially comfortable families want to support their favorite restaurants during hard times by eating out more often, who could object? But if others are inclined to pay down their bills or save a little more, concerns about the economy shouldn’t stop them.

Government is in a far better position to provide immediate economic stimulus. It is in fact the only player that can significantly alter the economy’s short-run trajectory. In a recession, as in ordinary times, a family’s first economic priority should be to spend its income prudently.

The “paradox of thrift,” a celebrated chestnut first described by John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s, has been the source of much confusion about how saving affects the health of the economy. Intuition suggests, correctly, that if any one family saves an extra $100 this year, its bank balance at year’s end will be higher by that amount. According to the paradox of thrift, however, if everyone tries to save more at once, total savings will actually fall....

 

 

Op-Ed Columnist - Heaven for the Godless? - NYTimes.com

In June, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life.

This threw evangelicals into a tizzy. After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” But the survey suggested that Americans just weren’t buying that.

The evangelicals complained that people must not have understood the question. The respondents couldn’t actually believe what they were saying, could they?

So in August, Pew asked the question again. (They released the results last week.) Sixty-five percent of respondents said — again — that other religions could lead to eternal life. But this time, to clear up any confusion, Pew asked them to specify which religions. The respondents essentially said all of them....

The whole thing is pretty great. But my favorite part is, when evangelicals didn't get the answer they wanted, they assumed that people were just too stupid to understand the question!

Amen, l'chaim, and asalaam alaikum, y'all.

Via Balloon Juice:

This is, quite honestly, the first semi-sane thing I have seen written at Red State in several years:

We Lost Because We Suck: There’s no conspiracy, really.
So, we have this great big circular firing squad going about whether to purge moderates, or socons, or fiscons, or libertarians, or Methodists, whatever. No, Virginia, there isn’t a smoke filled room somewhere where a bunch of Ivy League, Wall Street, K Street elitists conspired to deprive the Republican Party of a victory in the last two elections. We lost because nobody in their right mind would trust us to run a government. That we did as well as we did is a tribute to the fact that they don’t trust the Democrats much either.

***
In seven years we demonstrated to the American people that we really didn’t mean what we’d said for all those years; we weren’t against spending, we were against Democrat spending. We weren’t against big government, we just wanted it big in the places we like. The people caught us in the lie and held us responsible for it.

Hey, it's a start, and a pretty amazing one.