(no subject)

There's just nothing like a little misogyny from Neal Boortz to get the old heart pumping in the morning:

... Coulter is exactly right. Don't take her word for it, just read "Freedomnomics" by John Lott. Here we have a renowned economist going all the way back to the late 1980s to see what happens when women get the vote. His findings? In every single case, when women were given the right to vote the cost of government immediately began to rise as women, particularly single women, started voting for the candidates who would create more government spending programs designed to provide women with security. That magic word ... security.

Lott found that young single women overwhelmingly vote liberal. When they marry and start a family they start voting more conservatively. That would be because their sense of security is provided by their family, and they don't want government to interfere in their accumulation of wealth. Then, if that very same woman starts to feel that her marriage is threatened ... or if she becomes divorced ... she right back there voting for liberals again. Why? Security .. this time from the government instead of her husband.

Coulter is right. Deal with it ...

Now on one level I find it rather entertaining that Ann Coulter seems delighted at the prospect of losing her right to vote, but that's the only positive spin I can even try to put on this discussion. Much like the whole "to torture or not to torture" dialog I've gotta' say that I had really hoped that this subject, whether or not women should be allowed to vote, was off the table. But any day now I expect to hear some wingnut waxing hypothetical on the prospect of enslaving entire races of human beings again, how good it would be for the economy and how we'd really be doing said race a "favor". And after that it'll be a short hop, skip and a jump to cannibalism. Soylent Green, baby.

But I would just like to say, again, that trying to sum up an entire complex group of people under a simplistic overgeneralization that allows you to muse in a public forum about taking away their rights is about the lowest, most vile thing anyone can engage in. You want to know why I'm a liberal, Mr. Boortz? It has a helluva lot less to do with security than it does with wanting to be as far away from people like you politically as possible.

(no subject)

I've finally figured it out, Megan McArdle is is Jane Christie from Coupling.

Today's post from the Megster: We're* [vegetarians] not pacifists, you know. Indeed, some of us are quite feisty. I could have joined the military with a clean conscience in 2002--except for the part where I'm a 4F asthmatic with lousy eyesight who was medically unfit for the State Department. But that had nothing to do with my tofu-loving ways.

*Technically, I'm not a vegetarian: I eat humanely raised and killed meat.

Jane on the subject: I'm an emotional vegetarian. I know a lot of vegetarians and we tend to like the same films.

If McArdle were a thoroughly un-self-aware sitcom character I would probably like her a lot. As it is I weep for the Atlantic.