You picked up on many of the same effeminizing (if that's a word) phrases that I noticed in Dowd's column. I also asked But Does He Lactate?

Thank you for highlighting the absurdity of Maureen Dowd's vitriol directed at Hillary. It's high time someone called her on the ridiculous arguments and asked what the point was.

I think the direction Dowd's work has taken has got to be the result of an attempt by the NYTimes to build counterpoints to the attack chatter of the Fox/Limbaugh right wing machine that seemed so invincible 3-4 years ago. The Times probably decided that as liberals they had to be as nasty to Dems as they were to anyone else, so now they've created this monster. They have their very own font of name-calling and specious attacks. Hasn't made us safer or stronger.

very well-paid pundits using their position of power to tell the American people what masculinity is and that any politician worth her salt is going to have it, is going to be a male while having it, and that whatever details this masculinity is about, it's largely about expanding empire, starting wars, redirecting wealth upwards, and trampling on the People to create an autocratic regime.

You've hit the nail smartly on the head, Alex.

And now Ralph Nader has declared his candidacy. And I hate to say it, but I agreed with everything he said on "Meet the Press" this morning.

There's no two ways about it, the American system--media, campaign, lobbyists, political parties, courts, Congress and the presidency--is terribly broken.

Dowd is the worst of the worst. Absolutely worthless, column after column. How can we sweep all of these self-important windbags out of their undeserved positions of influence permanently?

Forgive me for living in a cave, Alex, and forgive me if this is a little bit off-thread, but do any of these candidates have a national energy policy? I don't mean a policy that shows up in the fine print on their website, I mean one that they are actually pushing to the voting populace.

Bush was candid enough, finally, to admit that America is addicted to oil --- but he hasn't done anything about it (Did anyone really expect him to?)

But, Alex, I hear that Brazil is oil-independent because they make bio-diesel out of sugar cane, and that Germany is now getting up to 30% of its energy needs out of solar and wind. The Germans did this not only with superior engineering, but also with superior public policies that guarantee that small private operations (such as a solar farm or even just the solar roof of a large factory) can sell their surplus electricity onto the power grid at a favorable rate. (Alex, France is next door to Germany, is France doing any of this also?)

Now, Germany is about the same size as Texas (a bit smaller, in fact), and it is at about the same longitude as Indiana --- imagine Hoosiers generating 30% of our power from wind and solar during the average Indiana winter! (Wind, of course, we have in spades, practically year-round, but Indiana hardly seems favorable for solar power in winter.) But the Germans are doing the equivalent.

If the Germans can do this without flattening the Barvarian Alps, then imagine what America could do if it got serious about harnessing its Southwestern Sunbelt. Since we are heavyweights in biotechnology, America could also declare a "Manhattan Project" to develop cost-effective bio-fuels out of plant cellulose via safe but highly productive genetically-engineered microbes.

But do we hear about such possibilities from our leaders? No! We are lucky if Obama, Clinton or McCain even bother to encourage their supporters to purchase and drive hybrid cars.

I won't harp quite at such length, but what percentage of the voters understand the basic differences between Clinton's health care plan and Obama's? I must admit I don't.

So, Alex, I agree that the current state of political punditry is rather sad. We discuss which candidate has the bigger set of gonads instead of discussing real issues, real possibilities. Obama promises "change" but the average Obamaniac would be hard-pressed to list five substantive things he has promised to "change" (if the nameplate on the desk in the Oval Office doesn't count).

Andrea~ Yes, that's gotta be it, it's all about how attacking Dems constantly is "fair and balanced" while saying anything about Republicans is "librul media bias." And one has to wonder if anyone just stops and realizes that people will actually listen to someone who presents reasoned arguments.

The Times has Krugman, though, so there's hope.

And, something I didn't mention here, but if Dowd really wanted to write about something important, something with sex, something with personality, and something that's related to politics, there was McCain's sex scandal this past week that her newspaper broke....

AJ~ I don't know much about energy policy, I'm afraid. It's an issue that I just don't follow. I've mainly paid attention to Iraq, other foreign policy, LGBT issues, and health care. And the meta of politics, I guess.

I won't harp quite at such length, but what percentage of the voters understand the basic differences between Clinton's health care plan and Obama's? I must admit I don't.

I've blogged a couple of times about the biggest difference. I do admit that my posts on health care don't get all that much attention around here, no matter how much I say it's an LGBT issue....

Alex, I clicked your link and read --- interesting to be sure, but unfortunate that the info is almost 90 days old --- also unfortunate that the average faggot and dyke, even the political variety, knows more about who-is-banging-who-in-Hollywood than they do about health care reform ... and cares more about that, too.

Since the GLBT politicized population tends to be left-leaning (no slight intended to the Log Cabin guys), we seem to be vaguely in favor of environmental concern and international human rights issues, but our attention span poops out when we get to health care, energy, immigration, the economy --- and these are all issues that the straight voters place into the Top Ten. So, sad to say it, but to some extent we "get the government that we deserve."

OTOH, being a good citizen can be a fulltime job, and most of us, like the straights, have FT jobs called "earning a living" ... so I don't know to what extent I must accept this as an observation instead of asserting it as a criticism.

CORRECTION: Re-reading Comment #5, I see that I posted:

Now, Germany is about the same size as Texas (a bit smaller, in fact), and it is at about the same longitude as Indiana ---

Obviously, I meant to say that "Germany is ... about the same latitude as Indiana" --- latitude being the angle north (or south) from the equator, and longitude being the angle east or west from Greenwich, England.

I apologize for the error.

Longitude? Longitude?

Oh, Allen. How can I ever take you seriously now?

*giggles*

Very interesting post and comment thread. Maureen es mas sexist.