"But are men, and the age-old power structures associated with 'maleness,' permanently in decline?"

"Or do men still retain significant control over the workplace, the family and society at large, including women?" A very lively debate on the proposition: "Be it resolved, men are obsolete…"

Pro: Hanna Rosin, Maureen Dowd. Con: Caitlin Moran, Camille Paglia.

Rosin and Dowd pretty much retreat from the strong version of the proposition, and Moran and Paglia kick ass. Rosin and Dowd end up winning because they "persuaded" more people, after beginning with only 16% on their side (and ending with 44%).

Very amusing, or enraging (if you're the type to get steamed over the obvious fact that it would be considered outrageous for a bunch of men to get all hyper and cheeky over a comparable topic about the value of women).

ADDED: You might need to subscribe to watch at that link, but you can listen (which is what I did) here. 

NYC mayor candidates asked at debate whether they support letting people drink beer on their stoops all say yes.

(Except that one guy who's a minister.) 

What else can they do? Well, there's this:

“I should be able to drink ’em in a park and at the beach, too,” Anthony Weiner added.

"New 'Crystal Ball' frontrunner for GOP nomination: Scott Walker?"

Allahpundit says "it’s the first time I’ve seen a major elections analyst name Walker as the man to beat."

I agree with the basic outline: There’ll be a centrist champion, a right-wing champion, and then a compromise candidate who can draw from both camps. Sabato thinks that’s Christie, Rand Paul, and Walker, respectively. I think it’s likelier to be Christie, Cruz, and Rubio, with Rand Paul an X factor fueled by libertarians, but oh well.

Walker is the compromise and somebody else is right wing? That sounds so weird here in Madison.

Sabato lists one of Walker’s potential key disadvantages as being too bland a la Tim Pawlenty. Really? The guy who broke the unions in Wisconsin and then humiliated big labor by winning his recall fight? He won’t have a blandness problem. 

Could you watch the video of Walker in the recall debate and rethink why he wins around here (and by here I mean Wisconsin, not Madison)? I'm not sure people around the country really get the Midwestern style. If you know Walker for standing up to the noisy protesters, you may picture him out there fighting, but in fact, he stayed calm and mostly out of sight and waited for the protests to die down, which they eventually did. The GOP had the votes in the legislature, so they simply took action.
From my live-blog of the debate:

Walker says if he could do it all over again, he'd have explained what he was doing, and most people would have agreed. He fixed it [the budget], then talked about it.

It's easy to do something when you have the votes, harder to persuade everyone to accept it. He didn't try, and he admits he should have done better. You can say he was good at putting up with the outcry, but what choice did he have? Be silent or explain. He chose silence. He reminds me of George W. Bush who declined to defend himself when harshly criticized and trusted that in the long run people would understand. I can appreciate that and even find it admirable, but it might not work in a campaign.

When Scott Walker does campaign, he explains himself in a style that can be rejected as too bland. It's the opposite of flashy. It's earnest and Boy Scout.



Some people like that though. I do. I don't want my politician to be a rock star. Ironically, Walker's opponents called him a "rock star" and created the idea that he's a "rock star":

CNN's Hillary Clinton documentary is making "life more difficult" for Candy Crowley, who's keen on maintaining the separation between journalism and partisan politics.

"You can say all you want, this is a commissioned documentary from people who are not in the employ of CNN. It’s not me. It’s not Wolf Blitzer. It’s not John King. It’s an outside documentary group. But we’re with CNN and so this is not a story where the nuances are well-received, particularly by Republicans."

She ought to know about nuances that Republicans don't receive well, like that nuanced occasion when she was supposed to be moderating a debate between 2 presidential candidates and the Democrat was getting cornered so she fought on his side.

Massachusetts Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez brags that he can go longer without peeing than Rand Paul.

This happened during a debate last night with his Democratic opponent Ed Markey, who had praised Senator Paul for filibustering.

Gomez responded that he could have gone longer than Paul, who spoke for nearly 13 hours without urinating.

“I’ve gone lots longer than that in my time on the SEAL team,” said Gomez.

Is politics a pissing contest?

A pissing contest, or pissing match, is a game in which participants compete to see who can urinate the highest, the farthest, or the most accurately.

That's a more exciting game than a how-long-can-you-go-without-pissing contest. "Pissing contest" is an old metaphor used "to characterise ego-driven battling in a pejorative or facetious manner that is often considered vulgar."

Dwight Eisenhower is reported to have said of Senator Joseph McCarthy that he wouldn't "get into a pissing contest with that skunk." Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, used the same phrase in 1958 when asked why he had not responded to a statement by the French foreign minister that the French government had not been consulted about a crisis in Lebanon....

Consider the potential metaphorical use of a how-long-can-you-go-without-pissing contest. I note that it may work better in 2013 than pissing contest, since the reference is to an activity that — something Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles probably didn't think about — gives women equal opportunity.

In case you have trouble picturing women in a non-metaphorical pissing contest, Wikipedia — at the second link, above — recounts some Irish folklore:

In the story Tochmarc Emire several women compete to see who can urinate deepest into a pile of snow. The winner is Derbforgaill, wife of Lugaid Riab nDerg, but the other women attack her out of jealousy and mutilate her by gouging out her eyes and cutting off her nose, ears, and hair, resulting in her death. Her husband Lugaid also dies, from grief, and Cúchulainn avenges the deaths by demolishing a house with the women inside, killing 150.

Wisconsin Supreme Court debate.

Here's the complete debate that took place last night between incumbent Justice Pat Roggensack and her challenger Marquette University law professor Ed Fallone. It's quite lively and fast-moving, with a good bit of attention to the much-publicized discord that took place 2 years ago. You may remember the story of one justice rushing at another and an accusation of choking. In that scenario, Roggensack was the one who broke up the melée.

Watch 2013 Wisconsin Supreme Court Debate on PBS. See more from Here and Now.

The election is April 2d. The term to be served is 10 years.