In this new book, Kathleen Barry turns her attention as a sociologist to the plight of men trapped in a system which creates and maintains what she calls “core masculinity.” This concept of core masculinity can be summarized this way (and of course I expect that Kathleen will answer questions about it in our chat) that men are trained to take on the role of protector of women and to dominate them from this position.

A first-ever presidential Twitter town hall with President Barack Obama kept questions from Twitter users focused to jobs and the economy, avoiding the many questions on the wars, foreign policy and civil liberties issues that have primarily been created because of legislation and policies deemed necessary to prosecute a “war on terrorism.”

Hearing the word “compromise” at all in association to the debt limit talks is a bit of a revelation, so I suppose there should be some hope that something gets done after all. But take a look at this article from Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane. It posits that Republicans are considering a compromise on their demands for all spending cuts. The compromise is that they’ll allow a different kind of spending cut.

More Americans say that the cost of war has contributed a “great deal” to the deficit (60%), as opposed to those who say the same about domestic spending (24%) in a recent Pew poll.

When the votes were tallied on the night of November 2, 2008, I was at a bar in Moab, Utah – the one rabid Democratic stronghold in a rabidly Republican state – to enjoy the hysteria as Barack Obama was summoned to lead the country out of the disaster of eight years of George W. Bush. People shook hands, hooted, clinked glasses, got drunk, raised fists, wept. The good liberals had elected a visionary Democrat to the presidency, who, blessed with a Democratic majority in Congress, would fashion “hope” and “change” into a palpable policy. I was told that in parts of Brooklyn, my hometown, voters ran through the streets banging pots and pans. The feeling was of religious jubilee – the new dispensation was upon us, and 2009 would mark the emancipation from the old rottenness. Corruption and fraud and deceit and war and oligarchy would be washed from the body politic. It was the beginning of the restoration of the republic.

California’s budget crisis is actually much less than they’re spending on the war in Afghanistan. $26 billion for the budget vs $38 billion for war. And what do they get for it? It’s not better to live in California thanks to the war. It’s actually getting much, much worse.