TMPCafe

Josh Marshall's new mega-blog, TPMCafe launched today, and is shaping up to be one of the best left-leaning political blogs around. It's got a good mix of established bloggers (Ed Kilgore, Matthew Yglesias, Steve Clemons), political/legal theorists (Anne-Marie Slaughter), and a high-profile guest blogger—this week John Edwards. It looks like a more substantive, focused version of the Huffington Post (which I have largely managed to avoid so far).

Democratic successes thus far on social security and Bolton owe a lot to work behind the scenes by Josh Marshall and Steve Clemons, both on TPM Cafe now. I'm sure Marshall hopes it will be the locus of a new coherent Democratic consensus to take us into the 2006 elections. From what I’ve seen, it's got as good a shot as anything out there.

North to South

This past weekend, my girlfriend and I walked from the top of Manhattan to the bottom. From Inwood to Battery Park, 240 blocks, give or take a few. It took us 6 ½ hours, and we couldn’t walk for a couple days afterwards. But it was great to see parts of the city I’d never been to—sadly, in my nearly 4 years here, I’ve only been north of 125^th Street a handful of times.

I’ve posted some of the pictures I took below. Hopefully I’ll figures out how to post multiple pictures at once, but for now that is a feat beyond my capabilities. I didn’t take pictures of some of the more memorable sights, either because I was too slow or because it’s considered rude to snap pictures of random pedestrians like you’re on some sort of safari. There was the man in a business suit walking along spreading birdseed by the frontage road to the GW Bridge as a public service. There was the boxer around 160 ^th, jogging and jabbing down the street with his boxing gloves on. There were the turtles in Morningside Park—too far away to photo. And there were a million goofy-looking dogs—no surprise there.

It was certainly a day well spent, but I’m glad I won’t be doing it again anytime soon. My cousin wants to circumnavigate the island on foot. That would be truly intense ...

This Manhattan is much more hilly than the Manhattan I know. I like it.
 

Racoon-boy meditates and gazes out upon his domain in Inwood. 

Jersey across the Hudson from Washington Heights. Supposedly, Rockefeller bought the land all along the river on the Jersey side to preserve the view from the Cloisters. It's eerie seeing so much greenage.  

A waterfall in Manhattan! Who knew? Probably the people who live in Morningside Heights.  

Midtown skyline ... not so impressive from 11th Avenue and wherever we were--50th?  

Hmmm ... Anyone need some carpet? This roll is available in a tree near the Javits Center. I'm pretty sure it won't be missed. 

WTC globe in Battery Park. We made it! 

Bolton still in limbo

Bolton's confirmation is stalled again ... good news for anyone who values a responsible U.S. foreign policy. Except this could backfire on the Dems so close on the heels of the filibuster compromise, since they're now more vulnerable to charges of obstruction. Most people's eyes will glaze over if you point out that the deal only applies to judicial nominees.
Still, Frist continues to be ineffectual, Reid is kicking ass, and Bolton is still not confirmed. All in all, a good deal.

Tierney on women's preferences

Any post written by a man titled "What Women Want" is going to be suspect in my book. Bracing myself for a Maureen Dowd-style lesson on gender idiotics, I jumped in, but it wasn't quite as lame as I'd expected. Tierney makes this reasonable-sounding assertion: “You can argue that this difference [men seeking out competition more than women] is due to social influences, although I suspect it's largely innate, a byproduct of evolution and testosterone.” He may not have provided a shred of evidence for his position, and I may not agree with it, but at least he’s leaving the door open for a different view. That door shuts quickly with “Still, for all the executive talents that women have, for all the changes that are happening in the corporate world, there will always be some jobs that women, on average, will not want as badly as men do.” Well, except that if this apparent under-competitiveness of women is due to social influences, then it may not last as long (“always”) as Tierney expects. Nice try, but how many times do we have to hear about the “innate” inferiority of groups of people that have traditionally been subjugated?

Tierney casts it as a sensible lifestyle choice—women don’t go for the top spots because they have their priorities straight. I suppose he’d say the same if a woman ran for president. No sane person would go for that 80-hour a week, intensely stressful, life-shortening job, right? Sorry, Tierney, but your biases are showing.

My take on this guy is that he's aggressively staking out the political middle ground in a time of extreme polarization--admirable, but he's not nearly as adept at it as some (like David Brooks, in my view), and likely will end up getting shouted down by both sides.

Welcome to Daverly Place

Hello, my name is Dave and this is my blog. I am excited. Even if not a single living being reads this thing, I'm hoping it will be therapeutic for me and allow me to stop annoying my friends and family with unsolicited email rantings. So let the ranting begin!