It's Mary Shelley's Birthday

Today is Mary Shelley's birthday. Just in case y'all forgot. Yesterday was the third anniversary of the devastation of New Orleans at the hands of Katrina (aided and abetted by corrupt government). Today, people are evacuating New Orleans, preparing for Gustav, now said to be headed straight for Lafayette, Louisiana, where many members of Tom's family live...

Here's some interesting stuff to check out:

--Karina Meléndez has made a vid for Kelley Eskridge's "Strings" (the opening story of Dangerous Space). You can watch it here.

--Micole has gone to see The Dark Knight, and likens the experience to watching a movie by Leni Riefenstahl.

--The Mumpsimums offers a splendid miscellany of Words from a Few of America's Women, 1790-1920.

--Katha Pollitt, in Sarah Palin, Wrong Woman for the Job has a few things to say about the desperation evident in John McCain's choice. And she nails the abortion issue as the crux of the matter:

Palin is a rightwing-christian anti-choice extremist who opposes abortion for any reason whatsoever, except to save the life of the girl or woman. No exception even for rape, incest, or the health of the woman. No exception for a ten-year-old, a woman carrying a fetus with no chance of life, a woman on the edge of suicide-- let alone the woman who is not ready to be a parent, who is escaping domestic violence, who is already stretched to the limit as a single mother. She wants to force over one million women and girls a year to give birth against their will and judgment. She wants to use the magnificent freedom the women's movement has won for her at tremendous cost and struggle--the movement that won her the right to run those marathons and run Alaska -- to take away the freedom of every other woman in the country.

Her selection does not tell us McCain is a "maverick" who is just stringing the christian right along wink-wink . It tells us that he has thrown in his lot with James Dobson, the Family Research Council, the Catholic hierarchy and others for whom criminalizing abortion is the number-one issue. His record of votes against abortion and birth control -- 125 votes out of 130 in his congressional and Senate career-- apparently wasn't quite enough for them. By choosing Palin, he wins their enthusiastic support.

McCain is gambling that women will vote their gender, and not their interests.