Midday Open Thread

• The Washington Post has a peep show. What's your favorite marshmallow diorama? The political-themed wide stance might be an obvious choice for this site, but I really liked "Peeplona: The Running of the Peeps" and "Peeps Atop a Skyscraper." - MissLaura
• David Neiwart at Orcinus writes:

  Folks like Limbaugh and Buchanan and Bridget Johnson like to complain that when blacks vote for liberals en masse, they're engaging in "identity politics". As always, they forget that "identity politics" in America was in fact created, and deeply institutionalized, by white people.

  And there's no small irony when the efforts of the historical victims of identity politics to break down those institutions is denounced as merely members of a racial identity group defending their own narrow interests. That's what we call the "projection strategy."

  As always, this means that Republicans are giving us a warning about their own upcoming strategy. So when they begin accusing Democrats of indulging racism, we can be quite certain that the forthcoming election season will be nothing less than a full-on onslaught of Republican racism -- excused, of course, by the claim that "they do it too."

  - Plutonium Page

• Richard Blair over at the All Spin Zone takes note that three years ago (!!) this week we were embroiled in arguing about Terri Schiavo, something that shouldn't have been any of our business, except the Republicans made it so.

  The Schiavo case has gone well beyond the realm of the sublime and absurd, and entered the venue of the ghoulish. But you know what? America is getting what the majority voted for, just like ANWR. Bitch, whine, and moan all you want, but there’s not a goddamn thing you or I can do about it. Progressives do not have the media reach. We do not have the high profile pitchmen (and women) who are willing to put everything on the line and pull out all the stops to wake up a nearly completely comatose America. - Meteor Blades

• From the BBC:

  Dozens die in attacks across Iraq A string of suicide attacks, shootings and rocket strikes have claimed dozens of lives on a day of violence in Iraq.

  In the bloodiest single incident, 13 Iraqi soldiers died when a suicide attacker drove a fuel tanker into an army base in Mosul in northern Iraq.

• Barney Frank will be filing a bill to legalize small amounts of marijuana - MissLaura
• For the numbers geeks: Chris Bowers games out several delegate math scenarios - Miss Laura
• At the Group News Blog, TerriInTokyo discusses Black Liberation Theology. - MissLaura
• The Nation corraled Bill McKibben, Anna Deveare Smith, Andy Stern, Frances Moore Lappé, Howard Zinn, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Erice Schlosser, and others to pen their views on a new New Deal for 2008. Writes McKibben:

  We usually talk about New Deal programs in terms of their effect on the mood of Americans--they restored hope, they gave people back their dignity and so on. Sometimes we talk about how they helped get the economy afloat again. But there was another result: the hundreds of thousands of actual projects that were built in those years. Hiking trails, city halls, bridges, park gazebos, public plazas, dams, and on and on. For my money, that's the kind of work that needs doing now, as we face a crisis even greater than the Depression: the quick unraveling of the planet's climate system in the face of our endless emissions of carbon dioxide. - Meteor Blades

• Brit Hume of Faux News waves off McCain's recent "Iran = al Qaeda" claims as senior moments. - Plutonium Page