Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 1/28/07 through 2/11/07

This is probably going to be my last Liberal Coalition blogaround for awhile, as a group discussion on reorganization is currently taking place on the LC mailing list, but mostly because of my ComicMix responsibilities. My LC blogroll remains on my sidebar but no longer constitutes a separate section in my Bloglines reading, which is actually good as it means I'll be incorporating LC members into my existing sections there and their posts into my regular blogarounds when I get, er, around to 'em. Here we go:

• Some great comments on the Edwards campaign blogging saga from Bora, Kathy (who reproes the message she sent to the Edwards campaign to help ensure they did the right thing by their blogging hires), Michael and Mustang Bobby.

• Bora's looking for a few good recipes, and wondering how he gets through his blogging day sometimes.

• Bryant finds someone who thought Prince was too cutting-edge for the Superbowl halftime show.

• Echidne had as little problem switching to New Coke Blogger as I did, but I still can't see her headers when I read via Bloglines. John recommends it as well; labels are indeed a neat thing! Mustang Bobby also reports success (on the second try).

• Jeff doesn't agree with me that hate speech is a crime, or at least that it's being as vigorously and even-handedly prosecuted as it should be.



• As I mentioned last Sunday, Ken live-blogged the Superbowl and ads as well. Here's the first quarter, second quarter, third quarter and fourth quarter.

• Lilith points the finger at shameful greed by the Salvation Army.

• Maru passes along a positively hilarious "Dear Abby Normal" letter!

• Wow Mike, thanks so much for finding that link to the Muppet Show on which Peter Sellers appeared! That's going to be fun to watch.

• Norbizness founds his own religion, sort of, and has some nifty zoo photos.

• NTodd reports on a promising medical advance developed by the Defense Department, which created the need to fill in the first place.

Off to do catch up on some more ComicMix work (did you notice the new button on my sidebar?)!

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 1/21/07 through 1/27/07

Caught up on blog-skimming again, so let's take a look at some Liberal Coalition members' posts, plus a few others that caught my eye from this past week:

• Bora has a new hobby and wants us all to know about the Beagle Project. Sounds very cool! He's also happy that Parliament's not screwing about with Greenwich Time; as someone who's stood on the Greenwich meridian marker in Lewes, I quite concur.

• Bryant helps explain why leaving off the last syllable of "Democratic" is considered a deliberate and calculated insult ("calculated" in part because of how it allows Republicans to mock Democrats as grammatical nitpickers so they get to be insulted twice and can't fight back). Mustang Bobby relates this bitch-slap to his own situation, noting that "Common courtesy dictates that you address a person or an entity by the name they prefer, and if you persist in making the mistake, you come across as a boor." So what else is new with these radical reactionaries?

• Chris Brown takes us through Lefty's Musical Evolution.

• Echidne examines how some women claim other women vote and view politics, how some politicians view women as machines, and how to build a better mousetrap whilst at the same time worrying about orange snow in Siberia.

• Tena finally posts again at First Draft, relating a grim story about an immigration holding facility and some of its non-criminal residents.

• Congratulations on the new job, Guy!

• Please send some embarrassing stories to John so he'll feel better about his confession.

• Jude is also quite enamored of John Edwards, as if you couldn't tell by the photo on her blog.

• Kathy relates yet another reading comprehension problem among reactionary media types, as well as peeking at their myth-accusation machine. Can we doubt by now that some of these folks are being deliberately obtuse?) And NTodd examines some actual continuing mythmaking on the part of our current leaders.

• Ken passes along some welcome news about Billy Joel.

• Michael goes somewhat against the grain in his analysis of the Mooninites in Boston. I still don't get what makes Boston different from the other dozen or so cities that hosted this viral marketing campaign and didn't have a panic reaction.

• Steve G lets loose with some sarky commentary on what Biden said about Obama.

• Trish reports that NYC is getting ready to launch an official city condom. I hope it's not Snapple.

And here are some notables from non-LC members:

• As threatened, yesterday was Atrios' Blogroll Amnesty Day, wherein he wiped his entire blogroll then started re-adding only the blogs he now reads. This will undoubtedly bring down my blog ranking (I've already sunk from Large Mammal to Marauding Marsupial on the TTLB ecosystem chart), which would upset me greatly if such things mattered to me.

• Congratulations to Lindsay for being chosen as the newest group blogger at This Modern World! And congratulations to Oliver on the surprising improvement in his sight.

• Sarah Dyer passes along an interesting idea about moving the start of one's New Year's resolutions to Groundhog Day instead.

• I know what I'm doing in between Superbowl commercials - watching Ricky Gervais interviewing Larry David, Chris Guest and Garry Shandling for Channel 4, and reading Ken Plume's interview with Mike Nelson. Speaking of which, Sheila Lennon reports that Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett have formed a new MTS3K'ish clique called Film Crew Online to comment snarkily on DVDs.

• I was concerned when I heard about the "ruling by decree" thing going on in Venezuela, but Eli provides a lot of information about this that the mainstream media conveniently left out; apparently this power is valid under their constitution, which even the US assistant secretary for hemisphere affairs knows and acknowledges.

• CE Petro analyzes Texas governor Perry's decision to make Gardasil vaccinations against HPV mandatory for schoolgirls. Turns out it's a battle between two evils, with capitalism triumphing over religious fundamentalism. Apparently the pharmaceutical giant "Merck is bankrolling efforts to pass state laws across the country mandating Gardasil" because they stand to make billions from it. "What we have here," concludes Petro, "is a situation of greed vs saving women from a horrible disease. It is this huge price tag, that Merck has placed on Gardasil that is outrageous. This is what people should be screaming about." Jersey Cynic weighs in at Big Brass Blog with her concerns (she mentions Merck's ties to Perry), particularly about a vaccine whose long-term side effects are not yet known.

• The News Writer pens an open letter to Mary Cheney.

• Donna doesn't get why Democrats (and many liberal bloggers) keep demotivating an important voting bloc. Me neither.

• Christopher at After School Snack reports on an economist's proposal to rebase the penny.

• Once again, Ilyka has been on a roll this past week. Read the whole blog if you can, but particularly This is Me, Flecking You with Much Spittle (directed at a conservative blogger), Moment (about the willful ignorance of Ugly Americans) and The Rollback Stops Here (about, among other things, the power of words). She also has a good one up at Pandagon about cronyism.

• Over at the Huffington Post, my more famous namesake (even though I'm pretty sure Elayne Boosler is older than me) has at the "women president" questions with a very pointed world history lesson; Dave Johnson suggests more liberals use "because" and discuss why radical reactionary policies are bad for most people in this country; and Steve Young begins his campaign to recognize every August 8 as a Day of Satire in the blogosphere in honor of the late Molly Ivins.

• Melissa is sputtering over the extreme inability of a conservative blogger to understand the difference between making the world a better place by one's own definition and murdering people in the name of God, to the point where he actually equates the two.

• How many other people thought of Avedon when they saw this post on BoingBoing?

• Lastly, a personal remembrance of Molly Ivins from her friend SivaVaidhyanathan.

Well, Rob's awake now, so time to see about breakfast and posting to That Other Blog (still in its test stage but I need the practice)...

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 1/21/07 through 1/27/07

Still trying to shake off the effects of last night, but at least I put the insomnia to good use by getting through my unread Liberal Coalition posts, so it's time for my weekly LC-plus-others blogaround!

• Bora's basking in his well-deserved fame, shaking his head at newbies who purport to know more about blogging than people who've been doing it for years, and exploring the word of the day, quotidian.

• Echidne notes that any movement that defines women as objects (say, cars) doesn't have their best interests as human beings in mind; and joins the chorus Blogging for Choice, as does Trish. I was particularly pleased to see so many male LC members who will never experience pregnancy blogging for choice this year, like Jeff and Mustang Bobby and Norbizness and

• John passes along the exciting news about the possible discovery of the legendary Lupercale.

• Kathy reviews yesterday's anti-war demonstration in Washington, and mocks the reactionary blogosphere's resort to a loyalty pledge to avoid patriotic debate on disastrous foreign policy errors.

• Keith links to the ALA list of the to ten great graphic novels for teens. I can't believe Identity Crisis (aka "we need a rape as a plot contrivance") made the list, but I'm glad Pride of Baghdad and Castle Waiting and American Born Chinese did, as I found them all well worthwhile.

• Natalie gives us a heads-up on some changes occurring to AF&O and her Armchair Activist project.

• Norbizness scores an interview with the Cheney-bot and rejoices in the Superbowl history about to be made.

• Steve B has a wicked cool cat blogging photo.

• Steve G has moved his blog, and continues his variations on the theme of how the '60s anti-war movement failed, as well as how the American media continues to hide ugly war truths from the American people

• Trish sings the praises of Lindt chocolate. I prefer Galaxy but can't always be assured of finding it in this country...

• Lastly, upyernoz takes a look at the latest t-shirt flight flap.

Sorry I haven't had a chance to praise the following non-LC posts until now:

• Bloggers correct the record: Neil Gaiman debunks the supposed press release about the Grand Canyon that appeared in New Scientist (you know, the one that says staff aren't allowed to talk about the canyon's age), and Aidan Brooks talks about the current fad of microwaving kitchen sponges.

• Mary Beth looks at a Hillary For President ad campaign using non-whites as "listening props", and Texas Jaye at Blondsense doesn't much care for Ms. Magazine's suggestion that women give up their privacy in order to secure reproductive privacy rights.

• Gah, what is it with these supposedly liberal causes promoting themselves via sexism? You've doubtless seen some of the blogospheric reaction to PETA's latest nonsense featuring nekkid chicks, and Ann Bartow found a shirt engaged in, as she puts it, raising awareness of breast cancer research by putting a violent message on a headless female torso. Less liberal perhaps, but no less sexist, is this Microsoft ad and this Toyota one. Crikey, no wonder tons of people see nothing wrong with "sexpresso" shops.

• Cheryl Lynn is starting to open her selective sight not only to the racism in comics she's always spotted but to concerns about sexism as well.

• My favorite submission this year to Blog for Choice day was this one by Lisa Fortuner on how a comic book character (one whom I adore as well) changed her mind from being anti-choice to being pro-choice.

• Ken Jennings wonders about the content of the Fleischer Superman's character.

• Nicole Bell at Crooks & Liars takes exception to how a Yahoo News headline chooses to describe our current Speaker of the House.

• A couple gems courtesy of the Comedy Central Insider: A pointer on how to make the Alanis Morrissette song Ironic actually ironic; and Alex Foley asks, What's your Hugh Laurie Age?

• Lance Mannion utterly rejects the premise that national politics is like high school, even fake high schools like we see in movies and TV, and wonders when some boomers will start acting like grown-ups. This is another in a series of terrific essays about Beltway Media Insiders, and it's so good I was compelled to read it aloud to Robin. Lance also supplies a great parable about the reasons why some people don't like the radical reactionaries currently in power, which I fear is not literal enough for them to understand.

• The Rude Pundit is also being way too subtle for these people in his State of the Union analogy. And Steve M. presents the Cliff's Notes version of the State of the Union.

• PZ Myers cautions us to beware of any society that runs on the engine of despair. And Avedon cautions us that not everyone who happens to agree with us on one point is automatically on the side of the angels; didn't we already travel this road with John McCain?

• Say Wayne, did that remedy for the upper respiratory ailment work? It sounds like something I'd like to try.

• Lindsay has once again participated in the Idiotarod, and has loads of photos.

• And hoorah, another episode of The Adventures of Dr. Zero and the Pink Petulance! I live for Shakespeare's Sister Theater.

Ah good, Rob's up again (neither of us had a very restful night), time to make brunch...

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 1/14/07 through 1/20/07

I'm behind in my reading again, but it's a "good kind of behind" (wait, that didn't come out right) since so much of my weekend was spent with friends. At least five hours visiting Jan, not including travel between the Bronx and Brooklyn and dropping her off on the Upper West Side. Yes, for the first time in my life I drove in Manhattan traffic. Really only around Broadway and West End Avenues in the upper '90s/low 100s, but that was plenty for me! I like to think Leah would have been proud, but I've been feeling pretty white-knuckled since, so I need to relax my hands by doing a Liberal Coalition-plus-others blogaround, don't I?

• The folks at First Draft have moved, but LC member Tena does not appear to have posted since.

• Bora's book is out! Actually, The Open Laboratory is a compilation of science blogger posts from 2006 put together by Lulu.com, so it's a self-published kinda thingy, but it's probably a great resource if you want hard copies of some of the best science blogging around. Bora also cannot believe people are still defending Uri Geller. Ah, but some people want to believe...

• Charles2 shudders at the implications of the President firing attorneys without cause and appointing cronies indefinitely without them going through an approval process.

• Echidne lists five things she likes about her physical and emotional self.

• Jeff feigns outrage at hypocrisy over obscenity.

• John lists the concepts our current president doesn't seem to grasp, like sacrifice and science and history. Michael also notices the president's sheer bogosity.

• Keith, whose novel is almost wrapped up, is amazement at Scientologists' gullibility has no end; also, he points to a nice remembrance of Robert Anton Wilson, and passes along some more controversy about the Dubya presidential library.

• Ken would like to see Dr. King remembered a little more accurately, and Natalie presents some music appropriate to the day.

• Moi tries a new recipe for first aid, and finds it as cool as I do that Helen Mirren won two Golden Globes for portraying both Queens Elizabeth in the same year.

• Mustang Bobby celebrates the probability that we only have at most two more years of sheer madness, and the fact that his blog has passed 150,000 hits.

• Norbizness presents an ode to jerks and to a strange Texas winter.

• NTodd has a great kitten-to-cat photo pairing of Sam.

• Steve G examines internet-phobia and begs to differ with MaxSpeak.

• Yay, Trish is coming to I-CON! My last I-CON was with Leah some four or so years ago, but as Trish will be there this year I'm planning on making the trek again.

• And upyernoz wonders what to do when the G-word appears in your fortune-cookie fortune.

And I saved up a few more non-LC posts before I got behind again:

• Comedian Elayne Boosler, whose entire name differs from my birth name by a mere three letters, has started getting almost as much Google juice as me since posting on HuffPo, and her latest relates her own experience as a White House Press Correspondents' dinner entertainer. And Mark Evanier found a Washington Post article that seems to be backpedalling a lot on what Rich Little was or was not told.

• Over at Shakespeare's Sister, Melissa introduces us to the organization See Jane, which deals with character gender equity in media (alert to When Fangirls Attack!); and Paul the Spud brings the incredible news about how the Democrats are being criticized for bringing in their "100 Hour Agenda"-- ahead of schedule!

• Andrea deals beautifully and eloquently with her grief over her grandma.

• Happy birthday to Bernadette, Laura and Eric (Laura's was yesterday, and I think it so cool that the husband-and-wife birthdays are one day apart, mine and Robin's are a full four).

• Jenn has a very interesting review of The Atom #2. I'm not sure I agree with it, and I'd swear that the creators didn't intend any racial ignorance, but it's food for thought anyway.

• Gary examines the various romantic entanglements going on at The Office.

• And speaking of TV, last up is another gem from Quick Stop, the two-part Debra & Stephanie Show video blog featuring the writer and guest star of the Scrubs' musical episode.

Wow, that took way longer than I thought it would - I started it well before dinner and it's a bit past my bedtime now. Nighty night all!

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 1/7/07 through 1/13/07

A little belated but it's been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster these last few days. Although my heart's not really into it for which I do apologize, here's what caught my eye from Liberal Coalition members and others this past week:

• Condolences to Scott on the loss of Xena.

• Bora weighs in on the iPhone.

• Echidne doesn't watch enough sitcoms to recognize the "goofy male" stereotype.

• Apparently there was a big college football game last Monday, and Mike from Ken's blog and Mustang Bobby and the Scrutiny Hooligans all seem happy about it.

• Maru says the reviews are in!

• MB met Billy Joel at the Art Deco Festival Car Show, and appears to have acquired an actual live cat.

• Norbizness' coupon review brings me back to the days of visiting my parents' house and clipping their Sunday coupons.

• Steve G opines on Beckham in America.

And now for the non-LC posts:

• I was right to bookmark those posts from Reb, they were all good reads: one about how to write dynamic female characters, one about having to live down the Nerd Girl label, and one about women in sketch comedy.

• Also terrific post from Lauren on a type she calls Save The Day Guy™.

• Get well soon, Victoria!

• Condolences to Tony on the loss of Oscar, and Zuzu on the loss of Charlie. And congratulations to Kevin on the acquisition of his new yet-to-be-named tuxedo kitty.

• Lindsay and Teresa fill us in on male bankers who don't believe in the profitability of knitting.

• Yes Truffle, I remember Carole and Paula as well.

• Atrios has declared February 3 Blogroll Amnesty Day, and is preparing to delete his blogroll entirely and restart it from scratch.

• Congratulations to Bill and Jessica on their new positions.

Now to get some sleep before tomorrow's journey...

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 12/31/06 thru 1/6/07

My first Liberal Coalition-and-bonus-non-LC-posts blogaround of 2007! Let's get right to it, then:

• Andante catches us up at the turning of the year. Guy is sad and restless. Send mojo to both of them, won't you?

• Bryant notes the double-standard of reactionary pundits when discussing Democrats' financial status. Echidne finds that this seems to apply as well to radio hosts who advocate murder, but in a courteous manner of course. And Kenneth has way too much patience with a troll who insists on seeing liberal media bias where exactly the opposite can be empirically (not anecdotally) proven to exist.

• Charles2 saw a UFO!

• Horatio indulges in some grammar nitpicking.

• Keith reviews a book that sounds out-of-this-world fascinating, and Lilith unveils her 2007 reading list. Ah, I vaguely remember having the time to read them book thingies back when I was a young'un...

• Wow, you're right Moi, even I know those are some uuugly-ass shoes.

• Mustang Bobby takes a look at how well he did with his 2006 predictions. And Norbizness makes resolutions in a way only he could, whereas Steve B makes a new year's irresolution.

• And true New Yorker Steve G flips the bird to a CNN anchor who thinks a city-destroying hurricane in New York would be just dandy, less than a half-dozen years after the WTC attacks. Also good posts this week about sacrifice and how to treat soldiers.

Here's some more stuff I've found since yesterday, now that I've "finished the internet" again:

• Nominations are now open for the 2006 Koufax Awards given out annually to left-leaning political blogs. Here's the nominations boilerplate:

Best Blog
Best Blog -- Pro Division
Best Blog Community
Best Writing
Best Post
Best Series
Best Single Issue Blog
Best Group Blog
Most Humorous Blog
Most Humorous Post
Most Deserving of Wider Recognition
Best Consonent Level Blog
Best Expert Blog
Best New Blog
Best Human Equality Blog
Best Coverage of State or Local Issues
Best Commenter

Possible nominating categories for me might include Best Post (if you've enjoyed a particular essay of mine) or Best Series (for the Silly Sites) or Most Deserving of Wider Recognition, but the one for which I'd really like to be considered is a new category, Best Consonent Level Blog, which "seeks to recognize those moderate-sized blogs which have not yet, or perhaps are happy not to, reach the ranks of the 'A-listers'." And, considering the nature of this post, obviously I'd like to see the Liberal Coalition in the running for Best Blog Community.

• I've read two great food-for-thought posts today about rising above religion from Michael Bérubé and PZ Myers. Excerpts, first from Michael, about a conversation he had with a preacher-type a couple decades ago:

Right, here’s the way I look at it, I said. If you’re right about this and I’m wrong, then you and I agree that we have the obligation to treat others as we would have them treat us, but because I believe that we humans just made that up one day, I’m going to Hell for an eternity, and you’re pretty much in the clear. Whereas if I’m right about this and you’re wrong, my beliefs don’t visit any punishments on you. We live, we act as best we can, we die, end of story, except that we hope that maybe some of the good we do on earth will live after us for a little while. And that’s it.

Well, the Lawn Preacher said, I can’t say I’ve ever heard the argument for agnosticism put that way before.

Dang, that’s a shame, I said. Because lots of us agnostics have a coherent moral code. We just don’t feel the need to ascribe our moral code to a supernatural being. We don’t think that solves anything, honestly.

And from PZ, in response to an RJ Eskow challenge at HuffPo:

I think it's a fine idea to oppose the most malignant eruptions of religious thinking. However, I don't think it's enough to fight the nastiest symptoms while pretending the underlying disease is a beautiful thing. Sure, I'll join moderate Christians in arguing against the excess of fundamentalism, but that doesn't mean I have to retire from arguing against the inanity of faith; it's that lack of critical thought at the core of religious belief that allows fundamentalism to flourish.

It all reminds me a bit of how an atheist friend of mine recently explained his views, and I paraphrase: "There are people who do good, and people who are bad. Good people don't need incentive to do good things. Organized religion hasn't been proven to make bad people become good, but it's always served as a convenient excuse for otherwise good people to do bad things."

• Kevin Drum talks a bit more about the late Jasmine and about his hopes to become a 2-cat family again. Condolences also go out to DJW on the loss of Henry.

• He's rude, he's crude, he's a little bit lewd, but the Rude Pundit Lee Papa usually hits his mark, as he does with this review of the Bush-Merkel press gaggle on Friday.

• Kevin Hayden needs someone to take over the running of American Street come March, when he'll be stepping down due to financial and personal considerations.

• Christopher Tassava gives us goats in trees. The original blog post insists it's real and not PhotoShopped.

• Liza Sabater salutes School House Rock on its 34th anniversary.

Speaking of which, the American Dialect Society has just released its winners and runners-up in its 17th annual Words of the Year vote. Here's the PDF with all the finalists. Now back to tackling that comp box of unread DC comics!

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 12/24/06 thru 12/30/06

I've just finished writing my year-end post, which I'll put up later today, but first I wanted to get to the last Liberal Coalition-and-bonus-non-LC-posts blogaround of 2006:

• A couple unexpected but welcome blogarounds this past week from Kathy and Lilith.

• Echidne expresses extreme skepticism over a male-created BBC quiz about how men and women think differently, opines about an illustration from a supposed NRA graphic novel in the works (I don't believe it for a minute - for one, the PDF that BoingBoing ran clearly shows it has no sequential art whatsoever, it's merely some sort of illustrated booklet), and reminds us that study findings can often be interpreted in different ways by different people to further different ends.

• Guy's just testing us. Nothing to see here, move along...

• Kathy tells a nice Christmas story, Steve G offers his O. Henry twist, and Moi catches up with the actress who played Zuzu Bailey. And Mustang Bobby delves into the origins of Boxing Day.

• Scrutiny Hooligans thought this US map quiz was a lot harder than I did.

• Steve G chooses his winners and losers from 2006, as well as the top 10 national stories of the year.

• Lastly, upyernoz has some very good advice for pundits who are easily surprised.

And a few bonus non-LC links:

• Milestone notes: Avedon celebrates a birthday; Frank Paynter talks about his tenth blogiversary, sort of; Billmon's Whiskey Bar would appear to be gone again (and thus off my blogroll) although he's been known to un-retire before; Rachel Barenblat is recovering from a couple minor strokes and appears to be shaken but okay; and Susie has a brand-new job as press secretary for a Philly mayoral candidate which will cut way down on her blogging (since she currently posts about 15-20 times a day this means she will become human rather than superhuman) and Suburban Guerilla will take on some guest bloggers. (Naturally as soon as she made this announcement her hosting company shut down her blog for crashing their server, leading to all sorts of speculation; the blog's back now.) She's celebrating by planning one heck of a social life over the next couple days.

• Atrios, who desperately needs the hits, presents his taxonomy of annoying people on "our" side of the political blogosphere. I'd add a few other categories mainly having to do with not criticizing the motes in other people's eyes until we acknowledge the logs in our own, but in the spirit of the season I think I'll pass.

• David Niewert's put up part four of his Eliminationism in America series.

• Tom Hilton writes on bogeymen old and new.

• Ragnell tries to head arguments about fan entitlement versus feminism off at the pass. Yea Lisa, good luck with that! In my experience, once a fan decides that fictional characters are more important than real people, there's no reasoning with them, and they'll go pretty far out of their way to cite examples that prove the points they set out to make, even when those examples are more probably, as the original poster opined, bad writing or bad art rather than ingrained misogyny. I try never to ascribe to malice what is more easily attributable to incompetence or rushed deadlines or too many cooks or other logical real-life considerations.

• David at Barista tells us about Marie Tharp and her plate tectonics map.

• Lindsay is delighting in posting lots of holiday pictures, many involving chocolate-covered kimchi. Which better not be in the next dessert she brings to the NYC blogger BBQ...

That's it for me until my last post of 2006!

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 12/17/06 thru 12/2316/06

It feels good to be getting back to the desktop again! I didn't miss the mouse as much as I thought I would, as I can do the tracking pad with my left hand and it gave my right hand a nice rest, but Firefox's Performancing add-on icon doesn't show on the MacBook and it takes about three steps to open it to the edit window so I can type. Not being able to just toggle it back and forth (and to use a mouse to quickly copy and paste URLs) plays havoc with any link-rich posts I want to do, like my weekly Liberal Coalition blogaround:

• The big LC news this week is the return of Lilith Devlin and her blog A Rational Animal. Lilith was the first LC blogger I ever met, I think before there even was a coalition, and I'm delighted she's back blogging again! Now that her feed is working properly, and Mike's switched Left is Right to the new Blogger so his Atom feed is working as well, I can finally read all the LC members' posts via my Bloglines subs, hoorah!

• Bora has a great Silly Site for the season: Conspiracy Carols, a generator that lets you insert a subversive backwards message of your choice into Jingle Bells! Very cute. Also, congrats are due to him for having gone through his entire blogrolling alphabet.

• Echidne is perplexed at the hyperbole inherent in American English.

• Apparently Jeff also believes "the reason for Christmas has little to do with Jesus." As I implied yesterday, the reason for the season may have little to do with Jesus and much to do with the winter solstice, but it still seems pretty clear that the celebration of the Christian savior's birth is indeed the reason for Christ-mas itself, right down to the name.

• Kathy has a great illustration of the power of love to transcend the nonsensical boundaries put up by organized religion. She also sings the praises of Scott Ritter's prophetic abilities.

• The coiner of NODWISH, MercuryX23, wishes us a happy merry one, and has hung out a branch for Wishy the NODWISH Owl.

• Michael bemoans the latest hockey gimmick. Me, I'm still pouty that brightly-colored baseballs aren't in vogue.

• Mustang Bobby's itchy dilemma leads to one of the most groan-inducing pun headlines I've read all year. Also, he's taking a poll on everyone's favorite movie musical. I guess I'd have to say Wizard of Oz, as that's my favorite all-time movie, but for pure music and dance and romance elements I want to go with Brigadoon. That Cyd Charisse, she's the Cyd Charissest!

• Norbizness is reviewing the year month by month. He got as far as July by yesterday.

• NTodd notes an anniversary.

• Steve G details why the proposed Atlantic Yards is a crappy plan ,

And a couple bonus non-LC links:

• I've moved Ornicus firmly into my Dynamic Duos section now, as David Niewert's co-blogger Sara Robinson appears here to stay and I thank goodness for that, she has had some outstanding writing. Must-reads this past week include her paeon to real citizen journalism and her 2006 roundup. For his part, David skewers Apocalypto from the POV of someone who actually knows something about Mayan culture (even I remembered enough from grade school to know the "primitive people scared of eclipse" characterization was bullshit, as these folks were pretty big on astronomy).

• Teresa reviews how to wrap a package. Some great advice!

Time to go knock on my downstairs neighbor's door to give her her Christmas gift (this)...

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 12/10/06 thru 12/16/06

As promised, here are the Liberal Coalition category posts that caught my eye from this past week, plus a few bonus non-LC posts that didn't fit in my last entry:

• Bryant's had it with his blog for the time being, as Blogger screwed up his archives. On a positive note, Horatio found the method by which to get Haloscan to work with Blogger's new beta template.

• Charles2 reminds us of one of the ways in which government regulation of industries is a very good thing.

• Chris has been reviewing his 20 favorite albums of 2006, and has started the final 10. Naturally, I haven't heard of most of them.

• Echidne examines truthiness and its foundation. When a gut feeling affects journalism to such an extent that Time is no longer able to name a single person who has affected the planet the most in a given year (and hasn't been since 2001, according to folks like Jonathan Larsen and Russell Shaw), something serious is amiss and has contributed mightily to the dumbing down of America.

• Please contribute to the Buy Jeff a Strobe Light of Atheism Fund, won't you?

• John's okay after the North Pacific windstorm, thank goodness. (So's Laura, who took pictures of her slightly battered car and surroundings before she and Eric hightailed it out to his parents' house.) John also examines the big-picture scare stories of the day, geographic illiteracy, AOL news' reductionism, and the discovery of a baby plesiosaur fossil.

• Kathy says it ain't war if Congress hasn't explicitly declared it so, and Bush has no legal standing to keep using "we're at war" as an excuse. But we already knew that.

• I get the feeling Keith didn't care for Apocalypto.

• Maru points out that public servants, especially those intent on depriving their bosses (citizens) of privacy, can't argue "unprecedented intrusion" when the federal judiciary seeks to investigate their obsessive secrecy and possible illegal activities. That moral high ground ship sailed long ago, and promptly sank.

• Michael might be in favor of the idea of impeachment, but he's against the process thereof.

• Scott has some good theatre talk about Evil Dead - The Musical and the long-awaited musical adaptation of Young Frankenstein I hope Playbill is right about Cloris Leachman reprising her role! She'd be just about the age of Frau Blucher (*neeeeeigh*) now, wouldn't she? Also, Scott wishes us all a very Maury Christmas, which is just so wrong.

• Steve G gives some very good reasons for not supporting blog awards, but in a world where Time magazine named You - yes, You! - their Person of the Year, I find them no more meaningless than any other recognitions.

And now the bonus links:

• Glenn Greenwald has an example of the mainstream media reporting a story correctly for a change.

• Donna reviews the liberal blogosphere's reaction and non-reaction to the Rosie O'Donnell "ching chong" matter, and reminds fellow travelers once again that we don't get to define how others will react to dumb stuff we say and do that's liable to hurt them.

• Will Shetterly quotes Rabbie Bradley at length about holiday traditions. Lots of interesting food for thought there, at least for me.

Silly Site o' the Day coming right up!

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 12/3/06 thru 12/10/06

Yesterday was fun but exhausting, as we used the GPS to trek to Ikea (I knew the way but wanted to see if the GPS did) then to Mitsuwa (my first time driving there and I'd have been lost without the GPS, which guided me to a location I suddenly remembered vividly from 20+ years ago when I used to drive there to get INSIDE JOKE printed up!) and probably did way too much walking. At this rate my foot will never completely heal! Today we're taking it easy and preparing our holiday cards (yes, "holiday" - most of my relatives and a lot of my friends don't celebrate Christmas), and after a week of being away-from-keyboard in the evenings reading the sixth Harry Potter book (conclusion: while I was fascinated for most of it, the ending disappointed me about as much as that of Empire Strikes Back in that it featured no resolution, it just sort of faded out with a last-chapter funeral scene and was all set-up for the final book including laying out the plot coupons therefore, plus the other title character's identity seemed pretty obvious to me at least 15 chapters before it was revealed) I hope to do some major bloggy catch-up, starting with the Liberal Coalition category and the posts that caught my eye from this past week:

• Bryant thinks there's probably a good reason viewers aren't flocking to the cinemas to see The Nativity Story as opposed to, say, an enjoyable and entertaining movie.

• Chris directs a Lefty's Three Questions post to specific folks, including me. My three:

What still excites you (other than that talented inker you keep around) about the comic book world?

Oh, lots of stuff. I still read and enjoy a good many stories, both from the Big Two and from other publishers. I'm very pleased by how women's participation (as creators and readers) is being taken more and more as a given in the industry, rather than an aberration. I love how community-driven comics still remains, ComicSpace being the latest example. And I'm happy about the mainstreaming of comics discussion into other entertainment media.

What issue or issues should the Dems really drive home when they officially take control of Congress next month?

Haven't thought much about it, but I believe an emphasis on competence and actually getting things done, with measurable results, never hurts. And American citizens are probably ready for a good historical reminder about how many times Democrats have had to clean up Republican messes in recent years, and that no real forward movement can begin until the backwards slide of our country is halted. Mostly I think they need to stress how little interest in governance the Republican faction that's been in power these last six years actually has.

Obama, Hillary, Edwards, Villsack...anyone in that group appeals to you, or there someone else you hope throws their hat into the ring?

Oh, I have no interest in horse races, particularly two years before the track is even readied. I think the eventual front-runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008 may very well be someone we aren't even thinking of now.

I have a question for you though, Chris - in that last question, why are all the males you mention surnames, whereas Senator Clinton is referred to by her first name? It's not like we don't know that Bill Clinton is no longer eligible to run.

• As most in the blogosphere know, Echidne has really been giving it to Chris Hitchens, who apparently believes women aren't funny because they don't think he's funny. I think he's confusing humor with stupidity, which is typical of men. [/Hitchens] Echidne's posts on Hitchens can be found here and here. Also of interest is this post from Steve G, as well as posts by non-LC member Melissa at Shakespeare's Sister, here and here.

• Horatio has switched to Blogger's new beta, which may be why I can finally see his posts again on Bloglines. Considering the problems the beta is still having, I think I'm sticking with the older version for the moment.

• Jeff provides a nice historical note about when there actually was a war on Christmas in this country.

• Ken asks about blond superheroes, and in the comments seems to regret his initial conclusion rather quickly...

• Moi recommends the ID Theft Secrets blog.

• Mustang Bobby examines the Queen's English. I think Her Maj has modulated her speech considerably over the years; when she ascended to the throne it was said her voice could cut glass. And, um, not in a good way.

• Norbizness imagines the War in Iraq as a breakfast encounter at Denny's, and examines the new American naturalization exam here and here.

• Steve G pretty much covers the many loves of Rudy Guiliani.

• Lastly, Uptown Ruler at Scrutiny Hooligans announces, sadly, that there is as of yet no space sushi. (Yes, Mitsuwa does have the best supermarket sushi I've ever tasted...)

Now off to the "warm room" (our landlord provides somewhat sporadic heat so we have a space heater set up in the bedroom) to catch a kip (yes, another 5:30 AM wake-up meowing from Datsa) and update my comics order list so I can place my order for last week's and this coming week's books. No, as a matter of fact I haven't started sorting the read comics into boxes yet, why do you ask? *sigh* Never enough hours in the day...

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 11/26/06 thru 12/2/06

Caught up again, mostly due to the downstairs (basement) neighbors making a bit of noise in their living room two floors underneath our bedroom so I couldn't have an afternoon kip. Now that dinner's made and eaten, time to take a look at the Liberal Coalition posts that caught my eye from this past week:

• Bryant salutes some Democratic brains that will keep the President from making too many more disastrous political appointments during a shortened recess of only one week, and is disappointed that Aaron Sorkin is using such simplistic shorthand for liberals and conservatives with his main characters in Studio 60.

• Echidne has a very common-sensical suggestion for people who feel they can only express themselves via words that offend their fellow travelers - try harder to increase your vocabulary. (I mean, honestly, y'all call yourselves writers?)

• Guy bemoans the relatively few students thinking about the war, but I don't think Herbert's assessment is entirely correct - higher education may be the province of the well-off nowadays, but these kids also have a lot more free time than their adult counterparts and I believe much of that is spent on activism, the way it was with me. I'm far more guilty than they are of just wanting to get through the day.

• Keith shudders to think of what a SciFi-produced reimagining of Oz would be like. Me too; I'm far more enamoured of books and comics and movies that stick to Baum's original intent than of those which play with it, especially by (ugh) making Dorothy an adult or changing Oz from a fantasy land with dark undertones to a dark land with barely a fantastic element about it. I may skip this one and wait for Eric Gjovaag to review it.

• Sincere condolences go out to Maru on the loss of her beloved Jaffa. On a much lighter note, she posts a proposed catalog for the Bush presidential library.

• Moi suspects that findings of a possible link between artificial sugar and autism aren't very far from the mark.

• Pencils at the ready, Scott gives a pop quiz!

• Steve G's been blogging lots this past week about how to end the war in Iraq. Just some of his original-content posts are here, here, here and here.

• A very belated happy birthday to upyernoz!

And a few more non-LC posts that I liked:

• Chris Clarke briefly returns with an anecdote about Zeke and the egret.

• Pissed Off Patricia tells us a holiday tale about a beloved Snoopy or two.

• Mary at Pacific Views relates the awakening of her petroleum geologist dad to an inconvenient truth.

And August Pollak has had it with the Googlestupids.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 11/19/06 thru 11/25/06

Ah, all caught up, nothing like this feeling! Have to enjoy it whilst it lasts, I'm sure post-vacation posts will swamp me again by tomorrow. Here's my weekly Liberal Coalition blogaround...

• Update: Ken Quinnell has a new home for T. Rex's Guide to Life; please make a note of it.

• Bora alerts us all about the latest arguments between, as Ed Brayton puts it, "two very different groups involved in fighting against the ID public relations campaign to distort science education. The distinction between the two groups is that one is fighting to prevent ID creationism from weakening science education while the other is fighting, at least in their minds, to eliminate all religious belief of any kind, even those perspectives that have no quarrel with evolution specifically or science in general, from society." I suspect creationists didn't intend this outcome, but it couldn't have worked out better for them. Either their nonscientific ideas get accepted in schools in place of actual science, to the detriment of society in general, or they sit around and laugh as scientists pick each other apart over the necessity of attacking the fanatics' ideas and with how much zeal, and indeed whether science and religion are compatible at all or whether religion is beside the point of (and a different discipline altogether than) science. It's a version of what's happened in larger measure with the "War on Christmas" and other tropes of the radical religious reactionaries, and it needs to stop but I'll be damned - okay, darned - if I can figure out how. To me, the best response is probably not to play the game, which means in essence, despite the fact that I adore Pharyngula to death, I agree with Ed Brayton's initial post in that I think there's a difference between being an atheist and being actively against all religion, and logic would probably work better against radical reactionaries than passion because fanatics are always going to have a leg up in the passion category. And speaking of passion, Bora reminds us of the difference between liberals with actual issues and conservatives who care more about power than governing.

• Chris is preparing a disc collection of (and soliciting from readers) songs that go with each of the 27 amendments to the US Constitution. Wow, good luck with that one, Lefty!

• Jeff expounds upon why Dinesh D'Souza is wrong, wrong, wrong about religion-incited violence.

• John cries fowl at the yearly Forbes list of the world's richest fictional characters. You know how rich these fictional characters are? Exactly as rich as their writers need them to be, at any given time.

• Maru has discovered some great sign generators at redkid's site! Hey, that's my schtick! Okay, it's Gerard's schtick...

• Michael wonders when he became the family baker. I'm still not brave enough to bake.

• Mustang Bobby is pretty certain the Christian blogger spammers have the wrong guy.

• Scott passes along a cool game called Linerider. Robin would probably do well with it.

• Steve G does his holiday food shopping in manageable bits, like me. I do everything having to do with food prep, cooking and clean-up in manageable bits, it's the only way to go. Steve also makes a dire prediction for 2007.

Bonus non-LC posts:

• Pam Spaulding has moved Pam's House blend here; please update your bookmarks accordingly.

• Amanda and Jill on the "creative class." I definitely agree with Jill that, in our present society, wanting to live the creative life is a luxury reserved pretty much for the well-off and, as PJ Myers puts it, educated class. Robin's lucky enough to be able to make a living from freelance art, but he's also college-educated and has a college-educated wife who brings in half the household income (and we can't afford to live in most NYC-area bohemias) so that helps a lot.

• David Byrne has a long and fascinating diatribe concerning his thoughts on religion and geopolitics. Key paragraph:

To me, this is why the current (tiny) wave of atheism — the recent books by Dawkins, Dennett and Harris, for example — are also in denial. They deny that this propensity for people to believe is innate. Yes, they admit that religion offers many comforts and assurances, security and community — very attractive and seductive — but they stop short at admitting that we are genetically predisposed to believe, that it is in our very nature, a part of what it means to be human. Maybe an illogical part, but that all our innate evolved characteristics are not practical forever (context changes, the world changes) or even rational, from some points of view (does the peacock’s tail have to be THAT big? Isn’t all that just a wee bit of a wasteful allocation of resources?)

Good reading.

• And speaking of things religious, as we're in a heightened season of awareness and all that, Tom Hilton posts his Holiday Greetings Etiquette Guide at No More Mister Nice Blog. Pretty common-sense stuff that it's amazing needs to be spelled out in this day and age, but then I think that of most etiquette.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 11/12/06 thru 11/18/06

The cat's still meowing even after being fed. I'm just glad Robin has been able to get some sleep during these wee hours when I've been up, he has another killer day of work ahead of him with two deadlines looming. Me, I can just crash later, so I may as well do my weekly Liberal Coalition blogaround in the meantime, with a few non-LC posts of note added for good measure:

• Echidne suggests a drinking game based on dissing important women by referring to them by their first names in situations where, were these newsmakers men, they would be referred to by surname or title. I still find myself doing that way too much when making phone calls at work. Echidne also has more good news about chocolate (I love the bit about those tested having dropped out of another study because they couldn't give up the stuff) which could be very germane to my situation because I'd much rather ingest chocolate than the daily blood-thinning medication I'm told I'll have to take for the rest of my life.

• While another co-blogger from First Draft is actually the LC member, I liked Athenae's post about Battlestar Galactica enough to link to it. Money line: "What you are willing to do in war is not and never was about your enemies."

• John notices an engineering student who's unclear on the concept of gender bias.

• Moi finds an online dog who will obey your typed commands. This is a pretty clever idea, I wish I had the tech smarts to do something similar with my cat. (I can use my camera to make the movies, and upload them to YouTube, but I wouldn't be able to tie each trick to a corresponding user command.)

• Mustang Bobby has some good Florida-based blogging this week, including musings on Mel Martinez and Little Havana's reaction to the latest rumor mills about Castro.

• Norbizness has some wonderful family pictures of Thanksgivings past.

• For NTodd, it's a brand new year and he has the photos to prove it.

• Scott passes along the sad news that Lynn Johnston will end For Better or For Worse next year. She's had a great run on this comic strip! He also recommends a holiday toy that'll poke your eye out, kid.

• Steve Bates recommends a new widget called LibraryThing. Paging my ex!

• Steve Gilliard has started a food blog, hooray! He also has a good follow-up to Digby's "Clinton Rules" post that I mentioned on Friday, where he proposes that the liberal blogosphere guarantees the Republican smear machine won't be able to get away with the same tactics they used in the late '90s. I dunno, we're still only bloggers, I think our real-life influence is a lot more limited than many A-list bloggers believe it is.

• Trish found a quiz just for Marylanders.

• Lastly, upyernoz celebrates a peculiar anniversary, looks forward to Global Orgasm Day (I don't, I dread the cleanup), and discusses the proposed Dutch burqa ban. I guess he's not one of those bloggers who went on the junket to Amsterdam earlier this year; I'm not holding my breath for one of those bought-and-paid-for bloggers to raise this particular topic.

And a couple non-LC links before reading through the rest of the group blogs and/or catching some more Z's:

• David Rees gets his disgust on over a recurring Billy Crystal character brought out once again for last night's Comic Relief. Dang, I forgot that was even on. I'd never considered this "can you dig it? I knew that you could" guy "earnest minstrelsy," but then I'd never really thought about it. I'd be curious to see what Kai and Gary and Mary Beth and other supporters of my posts against blogging-blackface think of this essay.

• Scaramouche reproes a concession letter regarding the loss of a MN state senate race by a presumed evangelical Christian to someone she knew damn well is Hindu. My jaw dropped.

• It's almost an axiom to note that Digby does it again, isn't it? But he does, this time with an interesting analysis of how the meanness of teenage girl hierarchies may be playing out politically and an observation on how "the base" is getting more than David Kuo thinks they are, in the form of incompetent evangelicals being appointed to influential government posts.

• There is no question in my mind that Kathryn Cramer's dad is very cool indeed. And I can see what attracted her to science fiction so much!

• Kathy Flake points out that it's amazing what can be accomplished when men actually listen to women and girls instead of assuming what they're thinking. More about that, I'm sure, during my review of last Thursday evening's event.

And with that, as well as with the sun now rising everywhere but in our be-curtained bedroom, I'm going to attempt to go back to sleep.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 11/4/06 thru 11/11/06

I've now installed the Performancing add-on to my Firefox browser both at home and at work, making it a heck of a lot easier to compose most posts (complete with HTML coding) before opening my Blogger edit window, thus enabling me to save anything link-rich if Blogger suddenly gets a bit bloggered. Highly recommended. I won't do it with photo-rich stuff (which I can still write in Blogger and save it in Performancing before posting, as Blogger will have already uploaded the photos) and I've already tried but failed to post directly from Performancing without going through the Blogger edit window, but opening a new tab isn't really a big deal for it, it was losing posts that bothered me. Anyway, my weekly Liberal Coalition blogaround posts are a must for this method, as the Performancing window appears on the bottom half of my screen (with a "hide" option) and I can see Bloglines simultaneously on the top half, so it's pretty darn convenient. Let's take a look:

• A number of LC'ers celebrated blogiversaries this past week, including Andante, Echidne and Mustang Bobby. Election time seems to have precipitated a flurry of new blogs in the past few years.

• Guy from Rook's Rant has been having trouble posting. For my part, I didn't even know Guy was still blogging, as he's apparently a member of the Liberal Coalition (he's using the LC blog for his posting at present) but doesn't have my blog or many other LC blogs on his blogroll, which listing is one of the two "requirements" for being an LC member (the other being occasional blogarounds). Maybe once his server problems are fixed he can update said blogroll?

• Bora links to some exquisite paper cutouts and reviews a Ken Miller lecture.

• Bryant, for one, welcomes our Daily Show overlords. Y'all saw the Rolling Stone interview (edited version online), right?

• Chris has opened nominations for the Second Annual Brownies Award. If his comments section worked for me, I'd ask him if he could make the comic book-related ones a bit less "guy"-centric and a bit more gynocentric, as right now the wording seems to discourage any votes for female creators.

• Speaking of the uphill battle against sexism, Echidne notes the speed at which the Washington Post greeted the first female Speaker of the House by discussing her wardrobe.

• Tena at First Draft calls upon the Schadenfreude Fairy.

• Jeff gets a kick out of conspiracy theories.

• Moi passes along a gorgeous photo of the Orion nebula.

• A couple days ago I was looking for a good map of how the '06 Congressional election makes the country look now. NTodd found a nice one.

• Steve G celebrates the possible end of the "Southern strategy" road to power (okay, the essay's from today rather than this past week but I like it because it's all-original-content), takes Mayor Bloomberg to task, and reminds black conservatives of the shame they've brought on others. Oh, and he doesn't seem to like Greg Palast very much.

Just a couple non-LC links then I'm done here:

• Natasha has a terrific Natasha's terrific "happy post-election weekend" blog review of most of the stuff I've enjoyed these past few days.

• And Glenn Greenwald has a nice love letter to Russ Feingold. While I can't be bothered to care about an election that's two years away when we've just been through one - I mean, can't we give it a rest for, you know, at least a couple months? The money quote:

The Beltway pundit class and the premises which generate conventional Washington wisdom are corrupt to their core and always wrong. And this Feingold announcement illustrates a major reason why that it so. They operate from a set of completely unexamined, empty premises that reflect their own character and belief system, but nobody else's. They have no core convictions and no passion and think that those attributes are the marks of sober, responsible people.

We've seen this projection time and again from the people who've been in power these last half dozen years - they always accuse their opponents of being something that their own behavior embodies, because they believe everyone else out there thinks as warped and sleazily as they do (so naturally, if their actions are treasonous the Democrats must be the traitors, if they think fear-and-smear the Democrats are the ones politicizing 9-11, etc. etc.).

Now that I'm caught up on blogs again, it's once more time to tackle the comics box - a few indies, a few DC Universe books (I go through those alphabetically and I'm now up to "S") and the rest Vertigo and Wildstorm. Should be doable in a couple hours at most, then perhaps I'll crack open Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Yes, I've known who dies and who kills him for some time now, but when one decides one will wait for the UK children's paperback edition of each book, one can't help but come across spoilers from everyone else who reads the US hardcovers as soon as they're published...

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 10/29 thru 11/4/06

Rob's catching up on the sleep he missed when Datsa woke us up (yes, we're glad he's still active and in fact even alive at 14, but geez, it would be nice to sleep in one of these days) and I'm feeling much better today than yesterday. I've planned lunch and dinner (now if only I could locate my electric wok) and caught up with blog-reading at last, so it's time for the weekly Liberal Coalition blogaround plus a few extras:

• Speaking of beloved pets, Echidne is dealing with a chipper 14-year-old of her own, as she gets ready to celebrate her third blogiversary this coming Wednesday. As she puts it, "I hope that we can combine partying for the blog and for a saner world."

• Elsewhere in the pet parade, Moi's beloved Feak gets a haircut, and NTodd gives us insight into a typical night on the farm with his brood of five.

• Have you bookmarked Jude's new blog address yet? I'm hoping that this time she'll have a full rather than partial feed, since as a rule I'm much likelier to read and comment on full feeds, which are easier for a busy blog-reader.

• Bora/Coturnix has decided to expand his blogroll, the madman. He's going through things alphabetically, so hop on over there if you feel like making some suggestions.

• Jeff has a rather creepy monkey-see, monkey-do story.

• Kathy on Kathy - Harris actually prays that God will "bring the hearts and minds of our Jewish brothers and sisters into alignment" then her spokesidiot claims she meant Republicanism, not Christianity. Note to Harris - Florida's Jews aren't as stupid as you think they are, and they still haven't forgiven you for insisting they voted for Pat Buchanan in 2000.

• Speaking of Katherine Harris, Mustang Bobby live-blogs round two of the FL senate debate. He also remembers William Styron, and asks the open question "What was the first election you voted in?" Jimmy Carter, 1976, and mighty proud of it.

• Maru helps Bush use teh Google.

• Cheating a bit in that the post is from today rather than this past week, but Norbizness has a great point that Saddam Hussein's sentencing is for crimes committed when he was "our bastard." Regardless, hanging's too good for him. I have no desire to see our bastard martyred; let him rot in a hole until he's obscure and forgotten. That would also have the added bonus of distinguishing the good guys from the bad guys, for people who still believe good guys aren't supposed to kill. (You already knew that killing Saddam wouldn't magically resurrect those 148 people nor even bring closure to their families, right?)

• NTodd reviews the winner in the Iranian cartoon contest (and finds it, and others, more haunting than anti-Semitic), compares our current election season to the best of Python, and celebrates the Miami Metrozoo's acknowledgement that everybody poops.

• Steve G and Jen are busy cooking and eating. Jen gives her recipe for chicken soup, whilst Steve extols the virtues of sandwiches here and here. Steve also reminds us that Brooklyn Jews are no stupider than Floridian ones, particularly when it comes to idiots dressing like Hitler for Hallowe'en. Yes, he was a monster, but as Steve points out, "just because you can say something, doesn't mean it's the smartest thing to do so."

• Lastly, upyernoz notes that, when mature countries engage in diplomacy, those with immature leaders throw around baseless accusations to drum up more hostility.

And as promised, here's some recommended reading from non-LC bloggers:

• I think Barb's analysis of Bush as the eternal adolescent is one of the best pieces she's done all year, quite worthy of a Koufax nomination.

• Cathie from Canada has dramatic BBC photos of the Dutch horse rescue.

• Ilyka ponders at Feministe, "what has blogging really accomplished?" Isn't that really a case-by-case question? I mean, you might as well ask what writing or thinking accomplishes. For me, it's given me the discipline to keep writing every day, it's made me new friends, it's expanded my political and cultural thinking, it's made me more aware of the world around me... you know, little things like that. Of course, Ilyka seems to mean what has blogging accomplished for the wider world, which I guess would be that, worldwide, it highlights and draws attention to stories that most people wouldn't otherwise know about, and helps energize an engaged citizenry. Oh yeah, and that community-building thing, it does that too.

• Amanda highly recommends the Salon review of Ugly Betty by Rebecca Traister. Me too, it actually made me want to watch the show.

• Over at Mark Siegel's blog for First Second Books, FS author Gene Yang responds to Tony Long about prose being an inherently superior medium to comics. I love how he comes about this from an Asian POV, pointing out the pictorial nature of written Chinese characters. Yang quickly become a must-read writer/artist for me back when American-Born Chinese debuted online and I recommended its Monkey King segments to Alan Davis (and "introduced" the two via email), and I hope Gene starts a blog of his own soon.

• Speaking of comics and things Asian, both Colleen Doran and Heidi MacDonald wax rhapsodic over yaoi. Yowee!

• Here's CT-based Mike Gold on why Lieberman is a shanda for the goyim.

• I neglected to mention that Paul Henry has posted the last two parts of his War of the Words Ken Burns-style parody skewering right-wing pundits. Here are Part IV and Part V.

• Happy seventh - yes, 7th! - blogiversary to Backup Brain! Tom and Dori are celebrating by cruising around New Zealand and thereabouts.

Oh, and for the record, I have no desire to see Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat movie. Watching Cohen reminds me way too much of watching Andy Kaufman - I could appreciate what he was doing on an intellectual level, but it made me cringe to actually view it.