I took my 7 year old daughter to a costume store with the expectation that she could check out some cool, crazy costumes and masks. Instead, most of the racks were filled with this sexy stuff. In fact, much of the stock on display seemed to be for sexing up adult women.

In the kids section, the designated costumes for girls were all princesses. There were something like 9 different princess outfits.

At first my daughter was disappointed because she didn't want to be a princess (she didn't know what she wanted to be). She wandered over to the adult costume section where many of the women's costumes involved short short skirts and leather. She wanted to pick out a few of these, which I of course refused. After milling around looking for material to make our own costume, she revisited the princess costumes and decided she wanted to be one after all.

For future halloweens, we won't be going to anymore costume stores. I hadn't realized how sexuality specific the Halloween business has become.

Well, I'm all busted up about these military types who are going to hold their noses for five seconds to vote for Democrats, and then run back into the Republican party for the next 10 election cycles.

If that's as far as they are willing to go to support the Democrats, then they are as deluded about the prospects for successful American democracy as Wolfowitz was about the prospects for Iraqi democracy...

Quote:

"Apparently the continuous flow of oil is more important than whether or not the Iraqis continue to slaughter each other. Cole could be an adviser to the Bush regime."

I'm very outraged against this war, but I'm going to step away from that for a minute to be a "realist" and remind that nations have always gone to war to secure critical resources: water, farm and grazing land, access to rivers and transportation, etc.

Oil is a critical enough resource underlying the American society and economy that it makes sense that we would be willing to fight for it (as it also would make sense for us to invest massively in alternative energy development).

In Iraq, however, war to get to the resource was not necessary. Saddam Hussein was happy selling us as much oil as we wanted to buy before the war. By choosing war, access to the oil fields has been undermined by the chaos.

Whether you stand on the no-blood-for-oil moral highground or somewhere farther down, no national good was served by committing so much blood and treasure to the destruction of this war. Worse yet, continuing the war serves little else than Bush's ego now.

Regarding partition: Agreed, the Iraqis need to work that out for themselves. We need to be humble about what we can't control.

For the better part of six years now we have had one-party rule. It’s leaders have pushed a radical agenda—I would even call it anti-American in its effort to diminish or totally negate longstanding rights (habeas corpus et al.) and obligations (international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions, the Nonproliferation treaty, Kyoto, etc.).

Democrats like Joe Lieberman have played a role in it. Every time the Democrats have attempted to mount an opposition to the administration, Lieberman has undermined the effort, or attempted to. Now that the Democrats may regain some power, their mandate will go unfulfilled if quislings like Lieberman aren’t defeated in their own races, or at least marginalized after the election.

Rahm Emmanuel is up all over the media today denouncing progressives and dismissing their support.

What exactly, are the ideas and proposals that Rahm is furiously triangulating away from? Seems to me that Rahm is participating in "fire for effect" ad hominen attacks on liberals that would do a Fox news commentator proud. Figures--first thing the DLC dems do is carpet bomb the liberals with marginalizing and alienating spin. Slit the throats of your supporters. It sucks to be you, Rahm.

And how about some credit where credit is due to Howard Dean and the 50 state strategy? Dean should be all over the news today, present in the praise of other dems if not in person. The sliencing of Dean support in the MSM is deafening...

since he is still suseptible to being subpoenaed even though he is out of office.

Great to be reading Andrew Leonard's political reporting again. Wish you'd put him back into general assignment/politics. "How the world works" is a pigeonhole I don't go into very often. Maybe you could turn HTWW into an international political beat. I'd start reading HTWW and Andrew could go on junkets.

Thank you for being an accurate journalist and telling the spinfree truth. Dean get's credit because his efforts made the real difference.

The NYTs and WaPo will NEVER get a subscription from me for the lack of integrity and political whoring demonstrated by their reporters and editors.

Feingold was my hope for '08. I'm sorry, but Obama just doesn't have the experience yet to convince me he has what it takes to either run or govern successfully. Ditto Edwards, though I like his ideas. I'm interested in Clark, maybe.

I don't know—if it winds up being Hillary or one of the other Republican-lite candidates who will further dilute Democratic identity with self-flagelation and capitulation, then I think something Richard Viguerie said applies—sometimes it's a good thing for your side to lose an election.

Maybe I'll put my energy into congressional primaries for grassroots candidates.