Internal Monologue

The power the residents of these states wield in selecting presidents is utterly ridiculous and completely unfair. What's more insulting is that they don't even take this responsibility seriously : Not only that, despite all the attention, Iowans know barely more about the candidates than citizens of other states, and don't discuss politics any more than anyone else (unless something has changed since this research was conducted in 2000). Yet around 200,000 of them, possessed of no greater wisdom or insight than the rest of us, will determine who presides over this nation of 300 million for the next four years. The problem isn't that Iowans aren't like the rest of the country ( 95 percent white , for one). The problem is that despite the extraordinary privilege of having the next president grovel before them, they're just as indifferent and apathetic as any other group of Americans. (HT: Atrios )

With as little fanfare as possible, Bush vetoed an enormously popular expansion of the SCHIP program that helps kids get health insurance. This is pretty disgusting. The fact that there are children in this very wealthy country who don't have health coverage is a travesty. Hundreds of billions for an immoral, fruitless occupation, but none for taking care of our own kids. If I were a Republican party trying to commit political suicide, this is the sort of thing I would do. There's enough votes in the Senate to override the veto. Apparently we need 19 more in the House to override. Some Democrats who voted against the expansion because it didn't go far enough would be expected to switch their vote to help override a veto. So only a few more Republicans need to switch to override Bush. I bet a lot of Republicans are pissed at Bush for making them the "no health care for kids" party.

OK, that just sounds colossally dumb on the face of it. Are the Italian police controlled by some cabal of sexy female cop costume fetishists? To make it worse, the high heels the female police were supposed to wear didn't even fit well . (HT: Feministing ) Here's a theory: maybe it was getting too easy to catch criminals, now that many of them are wearing those ridiculously baggy pants. So the Italian police thought they had to give their cops a corresponding disadvantage to maintain a proper balance of power and prevent overcrowding of jails. The male police could slow themselves down by wearing baggy pants, too, but the female police felt that baggy pants would be too revealing or unflattering, and opted to hobble themselves with high heels instead. But has the ridiculously baggy, low-slung pants thing infected Italy as well? I would hope Italian criminals would have the fashion sense to avoid such hideousness.

This is frickin' hilarious. Jon Stewart interviews Chris Matthews about his book, Life's a Campaign . Money quote: "I'm not trashing your book, I'm trashing your philosophy of life."

People often mistakenly use quotation marks for emphasis. This ends up having the opposite effect: it dissociates the words from the author, attributing them to some third party. Thus, it calls into question their veracity. This error annoys the crap out of me. It annoys the crap out of one Bethany as well, who has created an entire blog devoted to ridiculing this (HT: Sullivan .)

This is a pretty good response to Rush Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" comment . (HT: Mad Latinist via email) He concludes with a picture of Brian Chevalier, who was killed on March 14: This is Chevy in Baghdad. Brian Chevalier was going to reenlist but decided against it before he was killed on March 14 during our first mission in Baqubah. His phony life was celebrated in a phony memorial where everyone who knew him cried phony tears. A phony American flag draped over his phony coffin when his body came home. It was presented to his phony mother and phony daughter. I would be in awe if I ever met a real life soldier, and not a phony one like Bill, Matt or Brian Chevalier. Thank you, Rush Limbaugh, for telling me the difference. I hope your ass is ok.

Sullivan's been posting about the rumors that if Republicans nominate Giuliani (cross dresser, gay friendly, pro-gun control, pro-choice (all good), adulterer (not so good)), the Christianists will bolt and form their own party . I'm pretty skeptical that this will happen. I think it's more likely that the Christianists will threaten to do this, then Giuliani will meet with their leaders and negotiate various back room deals (some of which will be kept and some of which will be broken). He'll have some kind of "Jesus experience" and some prominent religious conservative will tell his followers that Giuliani isn't perfect but that he's a man of God. Then Giuliani will humble himself on some Christian talk radio show and--OH LOOK! AN IRANIAN! DEMOCRATS ARE TRAITORS ! 9/11!! 9/11!!! 9/11!!!!!!! --and the Christianist foot soldiers will dutifully fall in line. Of course, I'd love to see the the Christianists get their own party. I think this would be