Too many ladies and not enough Donald Trumps, Rush Limbaughs , and Larry Kings.

To be fair, Don, Rush, and Larry – and don’t forget Newt! – have done their best to empower as many women as they could.

It’s racist for black people to follow black leaders instead of white republicans to the ballot box.

Yes, the right wing authoritarians like rape. It serves a couple of useful purposes: punishes uppity women who do things they’re not entitled to do, such as leave the house without a male escort; and scares the non-uppity women into not even trying to leave the house alone. If the victim gets pregnant, that’s just a bonus because they doubly shame her for getting raped and wanting an abortion.

I agree with Bionic’s take on this. It’s disrespectful to the dead and the surviving family to try to erase or change the deceased’s identity. It reminds me of a silly thing we were taught in parochial school – if you see someone gravely injured, say by being hit by a bus, the first thing you are supposed to do is find some water and baptize* them, so they have a chance at heaven in case they die. If the person survives, the church considers them officially catholic, regardless of their own belief. It’s pretty stupid on the face of it, but wouldn’t you find it irritating to have someone insist that you’re not really an atheist, you’re a Mormon?

*in an emergency, it was ok for a layperson, even a grade-school student, to perform a baptism.

I skimmed that, maybe too quickly, because I didn’t find the part about what makes hair part of a resistant spirit. Is it that fly-away stuff that happens in the winter when the air is dry?

It’s the Spoiled-Child Model of Manhood – women are responsible for everything, men are only responsible for what they want to be responsible for, and only as long as they want. Women are responsible for access to sex but only for the man who wants her at the moment, so women must both be chaste and available. And women are responsible for contraception but aren’t supposed to plan ahead for sex (see above about chastity), so no pills or IUDs (and it can’t interfere with men’s pleasure or require men to plan ahead – no condoms either, thank you). When a woman gets pregnant, it’s her fault for being a slut and she should have the baby as punishment, and the man who impregnated her is an innocent victim of the gold-digging hussy who only got pregnant for the child support that the courts may grant her but not bother enforcing. So there.

Do you have a cite for that? Chickens aren’t mammals, and don’t have breasts in the mammalian functional sense. Or does the estrogen just increase muscle growth in the breasticular area?

Sure! Oh, wait, thought you said nookie.

Partly agree with johnnyred, but we don’t have the public option so we’ve got to make what we have work as well as we can make it work. I.e., fund the goddam contraception that 98% of people use. (And, incidentally, fund the sex education that the other 2% obviously need.) It speaks to America’s squeamish and juvenile attitude toward sex that insurance companies pay for having children but not avoiding having children, although it is obviously less expensive to avoid having them. Applying planning and foresight to procreation is somehow too icky to contemplate.

I think plenty of us have pointed out what idjits the McSudermen are, in many colorful ways. Penny-wise, pound foolish they are.

Things I don’t understand: She and her husband make a boatload of money, and they settled for half-ass measures and amateur workmanship to save a couple of bucks. Why not just hire a decent contractor to do the whole thing, or if they really wanted to do the work themselves, why didn’t they do some research first? Libraries and bookstores are loaded with how-to books; some reading and forethought could have led to much better results instead of the mash up they now have. And they could have learned things like not to stain the counters.

I respectfully disagree. I think Handel, et al., know that they hold the minority view, but want to force it on everyone.

I was in Catholic high school when New York legalized abortion, a bit ahead of Roe v. Wade. 100% of the girls I knew who had abortions said their case was different and their abortions were justifiable. I suspect that a similar percentage of conservatives getting abortions today say the same thing.

Ooh, I know this one! It’s the same reason that low-income people who don’t pay income tax, but do pay payroll taxes, “don’t pay any taxes.”

Yes, rather sophisticated English, and the use of “audacity” screams Rovian dog-whistle.

Darn! Forgot the entitlement externality tingles! That’s why I’m not the Atlantic’s economics and business editor.

Math problems for McArdle:

1. It costs x dollars to make bechamel with a pan, measuring cup and spoons, and a whisk.It costs x minus y dollars to make bechamel in the Thermomix. (a)what is the value of y? Include the cost of ingredients and energy in your calculation. (b) how many batches of bechamel do you have to make to break even on the $1500 you spent on the Thermomix?

2. It takes x minutes to make bechamel by the first method, and x minus y minutes to make it in the Thermomix. (a) What is the value of y? Include cleanup time in your calculation. (b) How many batches of bechamel do you have to make in the Thermomix to break even?

Ooh! A chance to blogwhore: http://dzikaroza.blogspot.com/

I made the same point, but less succinctly and with the use of statistics and a calculator, just to show that an English major (although not McMegan) can understand economics.

Her review of two books praising consumption allows her boot-licking skills to shine, which is, I suppose, why the WSJ gave her house room. She completely misunderstands (or pretends to) the issues of consumption and distribution of wealth. No, Meggie, a handful of people able to afford $1500 food processors is not the same boost to the economy as a lot of people being able to afford decent housing, food, and medical care.

She admits she is producing better food with the overpriced gadget, so I guess for her (and long-suffering Mr. McArdle) it’s worth it. A semester of cooking classes would probably be wasted on her, as was her English major and MBA.

When I looked at Lesley’s favorite pic of Baby Wembley, I immediately thought the same thing! Happy bday to the lad.