BEST COUNTRIES TO BE A WOMAN Measures of well-being include life expectancy, education, purchasing power and standard of living. Not surprisingly, the top 10 countries are among the world’s wealthiest. Iceland Norway Australia Canada Ireland Sweden Switzerland Japan Netherlands France SOURCE: UNDP Gender-related development index It’s clear that Canada’s much better for women than the United States because . . . uh . . . well, culturally they’re so different.

In this campaign cycle, people have become increasingly aware of the odd and varied ways in which the Democrats and Republicans award delegates to the candidates seeking their respective party nominations.   The other day, RCP’s Jay Cost posted an analysis of the systemic biases in the method by which the Democrats award delegates to states: In my opinion, the Democrats’ nominating system stinks. It doesn’t stink as much as the

The willful ignorance of Libby Spencer on “Hispanics and electability” caused me to take a look at the question of whether (or how) the GOP nomination of John McCain affects the Hispanic vote.  After all, the Hispanic vote has been a factor in the Democratic race, though the media was generally slow to pick up on it.  Moreover, an October 2007 Pew poll notes that while they may make up only

The New York Times, having whiffed on its “maybe McCain had an affair” story, and having whiffed again on its “maybe McCain isn’t a natural born US citizen” story, goes for the trifecta: Maybe McCain has cancer! In 1999, during Mr. McCain’s first race for president, he gave the public an extraordinary look at his medical history — 1,500 pages of medical and psychiatric records that were amassed as part of

The mandorla (Italian for almond) represents both the intersection of two circles and the irruption of the sacred into the profane.Of course, chocolate is ecumenical:

to answer the phone at 3 a.m. as opposed to Changey Doofus or Temperamental Bitch, validating pundits who insisted Hillary had mad a McCain ad. Before Hillary Clinton was declared the winner in Texas, most American voters had read, seen, or heard about her 3:00 a.m. telephone commercial. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 43% had seen at least part of the commercial which was played incessantly on

Yesterday evening I wasn’t able to hang out here very much, and while I was away we had some comments by Dr. Ric to the effect that I don’t seem to care very much about anti-Catholic bigotry, considering what a homophobe I am, and that the only reason we make mock of Greenwald here is that we are jealous much. Let me take up the last bit first: Dancing with the

Now I’ve heard everything: I am a moron and incredibly inept [with] women but I do actually understand them (it’s a gift; and a curse)    AoS: Vagina Friendly Blog? Ace among the “nonline”: in like Flynn Nagin?

By now, many of you may have already seen the ABC News report: In a new interview with National Journal magazine, an intelligence adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign broke with his candidate’s position opposing retroactive legal protection for telecommunications companies being sued for cooperating with a dubious U.S. government domestic surveillance program. *** “I do believe strongly that (telecoms) should be granted that immunity,” former CIA official John Brennan

One of the recurring themes in my guest posts (and comments) is that bloggers and commenters should always keep in mind that they are like “high information” voters and that others simply do not pay as much attention as we do to politics and policy.  This is not elitism speaking.  Rather, it is a recognition that other people have other pressing priorities in their lives. Accordingly, I recommend Josh Marshall’s piece