Category: Edgewise

  • Her Body Her Self?

    I find the current congressional furor over a certain woman’s body (pretty much just body since her mind is gone)quite hysterical and tragic. The story is about everything but the woman herself. “A woman who at the age of 26 was apparently in the process of starving herself – that’s what an ‘eating disorder’ is,…

  • “Kill It before It Grows”

    A BBC World Service poll that surveyed 23,518 people in 23 countries finds… –“There is an extraordinary degree of consensus in favor of the UN becoming ‘significantly more powerful in world affairs.’ –“This prospect is seen as ‘mainly positive’ in every country (21 a majority, 2 a plurality) and by an average of 64 percent.…

  • How do you measure work ethic?

    In What’s so great about the work ethic?, Mark A. R. Kleiman wonders why the much longer hours we work in the US (as compared with Europe) should be interpreted as a good thing and a sign of a strong work ethic. Glad someone is questioning this.

  • Remember When Conservatives Believed in Free Markets?

    Once upon a time, Conservatives advocated a free market, with “consumer sovereignty,” for healthy Capitalist development. Consumers would have money to spend. Businesses that efficiently offered them things they wanted to buy would get a larger proportion of consumer spending. They would thus be rewarded for their efficiency and desirable selection of offerings. These businesses…

  • A Favorite Paradox

    With thanks to Bertrand Russell… “I thought your boat was larger than it is.” “No, my boat is not larger than it is.”

  • The Mainstreaming of Vice

    I’ve been puzzling for a couple of years now about the pornification of America. Take a step back and, at least to me, it’s really quite remarkable and a bit unnerving how casually pop culture 2005 assumes everyone’s comfortable with hardcore pornography. This is especially true in sitcom-land, where porn-related jokes are a dime a…

  • No Flawed Policies Here.

    “Admiral Church concluded that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan had been the result primarily of a breakdown of discipline, not flawed policies or misguided direction” NYT That old “Do your own thing” military! Got me thinking: Maybe they could have policies and direction that involved beakdowns of discipline, that discouraged them. I…

  • Kerry/Cantwell petition against drilling in Alaska

    Kerry is collecting names of citizens opposed to drilling in Alaska. I signed up. If you’re interested in joining this effort, spearheaded by Kerry and Senator Cantwell of Washington State, here’s the link.

  • California judge strikes down gay marriage ban

    A quickie (I’m at SXSW): California Insider – Court strikes down gay marriage ban: A San Francisco Superior Court judge has found the state’s ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. [Full story here in the Sacramento Bee].

  • The Pro-Life Party: Us, Goddammit!

    “Are you pro-life or pro-choice?” “Yes.” That’s not an original “joke,” but it’s one that bears repeating. This morning on Democracy Now, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez were interviewing a woman from NOW and a man from the Democratic Senatorial (?) Council about the latter group’s policy of encouraging pro-choice senatorial hopefuls to step aside…

  • A Mockingbird for our times

    Hush little baby don’t you cry, Daddy’s gonna buy you an alibi. If that alibi don’t work, Daddy’s gonna bribe the county clerk. If that county clerk don’t bribe, Daddy’s got Congress on his side. If that Congress still don’t budge, Daddy’s in tight with a Supreme Court Judge. – The Mammals, “The Bush Boys”

  • The made-for-TV war

    According to this report (Ex-Marine Says Public Version of Saddam Capture Fiction), the much-vaunted capture of Saddam in his spiderhole was fictitious. If true, it might be time to add your sense of what’s real to the list of collateral damage from the propaganda war.

  • That nuclear option: building a better House

    Xian beat me to it; I was going to post about the idea to stop electing Representatives from districts and have each state choose its electors as a bloc (thus, California would send 53 Democrats). Kleiman was talking about only amending California’s constitution, and thus producing a Democratic-controlled House. Such a change won’t happen, but…

  • California über Alles

    Mark A. R. Kleiman proposes a nuclear option for the Democrats: changing the state constitution to elect a congressional delegation on a winner-take-all basis, take over the Congress, and elect Speaker Pelosi. Sounds cool, but what happens if other states do it too?

  • Taking David Brooks to the woodshed

    A pointer from Politics from Left to Right led me to Kirsten Powers’ Progressive Pundette blog, where I greatly enjoyed her giving David Brooks what for (David Brooks — Ultimate White Boy). Sometimes I can’t tell if Brooks is a deluded tool or an insidious creep.

  • Why I read the Poor Man religiously

    It’s simple, really: Even his throwaway lines are 10 x teh funny of just about any other blog out there. For example, in Hugh Hewitt is the stupidest man alive, he locates the source of the Happy Talk Virus in “the right-wing Prozacosphere.”

  • Are they lining up Hizbollah for the Syria sequel?

    James Wolcott notices (Second Verse, Same as the First) that the Syrian-sponsored, Lebanon-based, Israel-hating Party of God terrorist group is being groomed for supervillain status in the next big middle east blockbuster coming soon to an election season near you. B said we should have a party of God in this country. We do, I…

  • you are what you et

    I had to wonder, hearing that George W. was going to dine with the president of France on his European “friendship tour,” whether he managed to spit his escargot into his napkin like a good patriot. This was because I had just read Deanna Swift’s Feb. 7 report on the recent departure of Walter Scheib…

  • Red-baiting the AARP

    So this astroturf Linkletterish front group claiming to represent the elderly, “USA Next,” is now trying to paint the AARP pink in order to cram Social Security reform deconstruction down our collective throats. Steve Soto at The Left Coaster thinks we shouldn’t let the GOP get away with it and has some ideas about how…

  • The Nation likes Dean

    Now He Has the Power, writes John Nichols. As has often been the case, conventional wisdom on Howard Dean is dead wrong: The Washington-insider line on Dean was that he would be anathema to Democrats from “red” states like Kansas, where Kerry won only a single county. The reality was the opposite: Some of Dean’s…

  • RIP Hunter S. Thompson

    desiunion has posted what he believes was HST’s last Rolling Stone article up on dailykos.