Gays, sexism, bad news, and dumb bloggers

Fact-challenged Allen -- Media Matters eviscerates Charlotte Allen's sexist diatribe point by point with facts. Are facts out of fashion at WashPo's Outlook?

Gay Governor -- Is Florida Gov. Charlie Crist gay? Well, hello! M'yeah. Howie Klein at DownWithTyranny! said he's in the closet but at least he "isn't an anti-gay homophobe like so many Republicans in the closet."

Dumb numbers -- Ed Gilgore points to an estimate by Markos Moulitsas of "of how superdelegates would, roughly, break if they vote according to the primary or caucus winner of the state to which they are assigned." And Ed asks, "But is that the right measurement of the 'popular will'?" First problem: Caucuses don't reflect the will of the people since they disenfranchise those who can't vote by appointment or who are intimidated by group dynamics. Or as Larry Johnson noted, "By its very structure it is an undemocratic process." Second problem: The race is far from over. Third problem: It's Kos. His talk about "civil war" if Hillary convinces superdelegates to break her way is, well. . .look who's divisive now.

Back up! He's gonna blow! John McCain had a meltdown over a report of discussions in 2004 about being John Kerry's veep but St. John losing his temper is SOP. No wonder he finds it "harder and harder trying to do the Lord's work in the city of Satan" when he's prone to one of the seven deadly sins: wrath. See also Jamison Foser's, The media's hero, for the press' love affair with McCain.

Death in Baghdad: "The death toll early Friday morning had mounted to 55, with 131 wounded, but the deaths were expected to mount during the night." More from Juan Cole.

The end of racism, sexism? Really? Check The Black, the Female and the Invisible by Samhita Mukhopadhyay, blogger of Feministing. A nugget: "What is depressing is when women espouse anti-feminist, anti-woman tendencies and confirm the sexism at the root of people's fear in the potential for a woman to become president. There is nothing post-feminist about that, that is old-fashioned sexism." Samhita got an idiotic comment to her thoughtful piece: "...she'll find out that racism and sexism have indeed vanished." Bwahahaha!

Out damn spot! In Justice, a new book by former U.S. attorney David Iglesias could help end Rep. Heather Wilson's political career. We can only hope.

Blog Boyz gone wild! -- A must read via Lambert, eRiposte summarized a development that has caused me to doubt most of what I read in the Blogosphere. Simply put: "There used to be a time when sites like Daily Kos were the ones debunking this kind of garbage against Democrats - so it is nothing short of disappointing to see Markos himself becoming a proponent of unsubstantiated garbage and badly reducing the credibility of Daily Kos to that of sites like Free Republic." Furthermore, "The media that went breathless trying to paint the Clintons as racist earlier in this primary is....um, racist? Well, well. Why read Free Republic and NRO and TNR or watch MSNBC or Fox News...we can get all the 'news' that is 'fit to print blog' in these great 'progressive' blogs (like Daily Kos, AmericaBlog and others) now! On the other hand, it is a sad day when FactCheck.org actually debunks the unsubstantiated crap on allegedly 'progressive" blogs.' " Head over to The Left Coaster for a bookmark-worthy post. Props to eRiposte.

Recession alert: Paul Krugman writes that "payrolls [are] down 22,000 in January, 63,000 in February. Hard to see things improving any time soon, thanks to dramatically worsening conditions in the credit markets." When did the recession begin? December 2007 or January 2008. Heckuva job, Bush.

Read it and weep: Saturday's WashPo on the "frazzled lending markets" and "unexpected job losses" just goes to show that the economy is--glub, glub, glub!--in the drink. And this isn't good: ". . .a particularly worrisome sign, temporary help services cut 27,600 jobs. Often, companies cut temporary workers before shedding permanent jobs, making that category a leading indicator for what is to come." Have a stiff drink before clicking the link. And say a prayer if you're so inclined.