Digby noted that purple was the favored color of suffragettes, which seems like a more plausible reason for Pelosi to wear it than a symbolic mingling of blue & red. Or maybe she just likes purple. I would have caled it more of a raisin color, personally, but I'm nitpicky about color.

Another Digby-- btw, I tell anyone & everyone that if they can only read one lefty blog, read Hullabaloo-- point from earlier is that promising openness and honesty isn't the same as promising bipartisanship, and while no one [sane] thinks that Pelosi & Co. will engage in outright abuse of GOPers, it would be sheer insanity to meet the nutbags halfway (or even a quarter of the way) in the name of bipartisanship. Lousy ideas are lousy ideas and certainly don't deserve validation just because everyone seems to expect Dems to be extra-nice and concilatory.

bottom line

uncut ones look gross

Hon, they all look pretty silly, albeit rather endearing if one happens to be fond of the person to whom they're attached. Same goes for female genitalia. They're meant to be functional, not aesthetically pleasing. Get over it... besides, foreskins actually feel better to a lot of us, which should be more to the point.

Coincidentally, Slate has a related article by Michael Lewis on their front page today. Lewis' is about his wife (Tabitha Sorenson!) giving birth in Berkeley. I was a crazy UC Berkeley undergrad 14 years ago who became a father at an Oakland hospital. I enjoyed both Pollack's and Lewis' articles.

A pair of weak-minded, self-absorbed men who revel in their ignorance and their conforming to stereotypes (Lewis as the ineffectual, grossed-out dad in the delivery room; Pollack as the henpecked, nominally-Jewish husband & son) don't produce much that's enjoyable from my POV, but to each their own. They both got paid for the articles, and almost certainly more than either was worth, so I guess that's the most important thing.

We want moderate competence, and a return to the 90s economy.

You're not gonna get either, really, Hillary or no-- Bill was amazingly lucky with the tech sector taking off on his watch, and it's going to take a helluva lot more than mere 'moderate competence' to undo the damage that has been done at every level of the federal government for the better part of a decade (by the time this nightmare ends). Gore might be the best long-term prospect for the economy, because he'd push for more innovation in tech and energy, but even then it would only be a matter of planting seeds to be harvested years later. What needs to happen on the next president's watch is going to be difficult and unsettling, but if we-- or you so-called moderates, I guess-- want nothing more than to just crawl back into a cocoon of comforting equivalencies and basic middle-management positioning masquerading as leadership, the rot within will continue to grow.

I swear, the mushy middle's sometimes harder to take than the wingnuts, because at least the wingnuts seem to believe in their untruths and devote some energy to being misinformed... the middle just acts resentful when forced to think about politics at all, and prefers dealing in vague emotional impressions to actually analyzing the realities of politics and policy. Joe Lieberman won by aggressively targeting 'low-information' voters, and Hillary will do best by following his example, because it's all about making disengaged people feel a certain way instead of bothering with the much smaller segment of voters who actually think.

and while I consider the ND law contemptible, I also have to admit that it's at least more honest than the usual anti-choice sentimentality about 'the baybeez.' They do not care about the actual fate of infants, children, pregnant women, or unmarried mothers. As much as it sucks, I tend to be a bit encouraged by the antis' attempts at consistency-- in this case, when they noticed that minors are generally emancipated for reproductive healthcare decisions (which can, and should, be applicable to abortion), they decided to remove that loophole. The thing is, though, that this is exactly the sort of overreach that alienates the 'moderates,' and they need the squishy types even more than we pro-choicers do; plus, it eventually leads to the revelation (and logical conclusion) that they only care about clamping down on unsanctioned sex, which also alienates people who try to live in the real world.

For the record, I prefer not to take a Naderesque things-must-get-worse-to-get-better approach to anything that affects people's lives... however, I do see the political advantage in forcing the crazies to tip their hand. And to be honest, their nuttiness seems to be the only real catalyst for rational discussion of sexual issues; people like me can go on all day about the precise reasons that autonomy & privacy are better than backwards sentimentality & bullying, but it's almost impossible to gain any traction until the ugly side of anti-choice 'logic' is revealed.

... is to use whatever terminology the pregnant woman chooses to: if she thinks it's a baby from the moment the pee test changes, I go along with that (albeit with some reservations, what with miscarriages & all); if she thinks it's an alien implant taking over her body that must be removed ASAP, that's okay with me as well. I have to assume that someone seeking prenatal care probably expects to have a baby fairly soon, and therefore has in practical terms defined the fetus as a baby. If it's early and she's ambivalent-- and assuming my counsel is wanted-- my only response is that she needs to resolve the issue sooner rather than later.

It's related to my preferring to call people by the names they wish to use, unless those names are deceptive and/or misleading.