So what gifts did you get in recompense for your vote? I got an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction. Oh, and the privilege of smirking at every “Romney/Ryan” bumper sticker I see for the next four years.

And of course let us not forget the classic:

6. We should punish the rapist, not the baby!

And what information do they offer on abortion?

But there’s a point at which it becomes bizarre: I’m thinking of the (tennis) US Open a few years ago during which NBC repeated during the afternoon the same match they’d broadcast live in the morning — because this match included Serena Williams, but none of the afternoon matches had an American player. The assumption, [...]

Ed Schulz reported last night that some Wisconsin voters who signed the recall petition have received “robocalls” falsely assuring them that since they’d signed the petition, they didn’t need to vote in the recall election.

Is it generally within the power of government to force particular businesses to sell a particular product? Like, could the state government of Utah pass a law saying that all bookstores must offer Mitt Romney’s latest book for sale, and that would be legally binding on some hypothetical independent feminist bookstore, or would that also be [...]

Mine is the “but-what-if-everybody” variant of slippery-slope: “If every single person on the planet, without a single exception, engaged in activity X to the exclusion of all others, it would have allegedly undesirable result Y. Therefore, even a single individual’s personal preference for activity X must be discouraged if not forbidden by law. This of [...]

(Oops, I hit Report Comment by mistake — mods, please ignore!) “Ignore them”? Isn’t that what victims of vicious bullying are always told: “Just ignore them and they’ll leave you alone”? What’s next, v? “Why don’t you just tease them back?” is popular in such situations. And there’s always the classic “They’re only teasing you because [...]

This episode is to be rebroadcast on Saturday the 9th, and then again on Tuesday the 12th on USA.

“For a long time I had been neuter, not a woman at all but One Of The Boys, because if you walk into a gathering of men, professionally or otherwise, you might as well be wearing a sandwich board that says: LOOK! I HAVE TITS! there is this giggling and this chuckling and this reddening [...]

Some time ago I followed a fascinating discussion of the “Smile!” phenomenon on Turtle’s old “Brats” forum: I wish I’d archived it. A number of posters compared the “Smile!” command — “Your expression displeases me. I order you to assume a more satisfactory facial expression.” — to the “cakewalk” on Southern plantations, where selected slaves [...]

A: That should read “… being overweight can cause health problems”, of course.

B: How’s that for a rant?