Taking from the Sick among the Poor and Elderly to Justify His Tax Breaks for the Rich

That's really all I have to say about this. Go. Read.

Edwards Is Out of the Race

NYT:

John Edwards, the progressive Democratic candidate who made his populist, anti-poverty message a centerpiece of his campaign, has decided to drop out of the presidential primary race, and is to give a speech this afternoon at the same place where he began his campaign — in New Orleans.

This is too bad. I like Edwards, and I think he was our best hope for correcting the damage done by the Bush administration.

Quotes

• "I know how to eat grits. I speak the language. We even know how to talk about eating fried squirrel and stuff like that."
• "Where has everybody been?"
• "It’s kind of like that one time I read Vanity Fair and they had an article about a woman with breast cancer. I thought to myself, damn, I really need to get some of that into my spring collection!"
• “If you don’t work at Wal-Mart, the only job you can get around here is in fast food.”

Heckuva Job: Diplomacy Edition

As a general rule, I find Maureen Dowd's columns utterly annoying, but today's is pretty solid:

Arab TV offered an uncomfortable juxtaposition: Al Arabiya running the wretched saga of Gaza children suffering from a lack of food and medicine during the Israeli blockade, blending into the wretched excess scenes of W. being festooned with rapper-level bling from royal hosts flush with gazillions from gouging us on oil.

Violence has escalated in the West Bank. There's still no clear way out of Iraq nor any sign of political reconciliation. Meanwhile, the president has been jet-setting throughout the Middle East, where he's been showered with gold necklaces and fur robes.

Synergy

If you're free tomorrow night, Housing Works Used Books Cafe (an excellent nonprofit bookstore where I regularly volunteer) is hosting an event tomorrow night at 7 for two books published by my employer.

The Feminists

If you haven't seen it already, io9 has discovered a copy of The Feminists, an alarmist 1971 pulp novel about how the womyn are coming. Funny stuff.

Via Feministe and Bookslut

"She Didn't Win It on the Merits"

Chris Matthews is such a hack that I don't know why MSNBC continues to employ him. Be that as it may, they do.

Remember when Jon Stewart told Matthews just how sad his book Life's a Campaign was? Matthews came across in his usual way, self-satisfied and stupid. Today, he claimed Hillary Clinton owes her political career—both her time in the senate and her presidential bid—to Bill's "messing around."

Now, given his characteristic cynicism and how his book is about thinking like a politician, who as he likes to tell us aren't very honest, you might conclude that he's not really a pig, that he just plays one on TV. Personally, I'm pretty sure he's every bit the asshole he seems.