SINCE I’M BROKE and the economy has been tanking I’ve been perusing a lot of economics blogs. One of my new favorites is Queer Cents, a blog that talks money management with a focus on and around the queer community. Pros: posts on topics such as how to buy dresses when you look like a man, ways to avoid medical bankruptcy, and how to write letters to fix your credit report. Cons: many of the writers assume you have money to throw around in the first place. Still, great advice and worthy of the blogroll.
FOR OTHER COOL economics blogs, see Feminist Finance and her posts on things such as saving your money on stuff like diamond engagement rings and how parents approach girls and boys on saving or spending their allowances.
ANOTHER ROLL-WORTHY BLOG that I’ve been salivating over is Post-Bourgie, a group blog that deals with politics and pop culture through the lens of, well, this: “suddenly [we were] smack dab in the middle class, surrounded by scores of self-congratulating Negroes who patted each other on the back because they were about something and self-congratulating white folks who patted themselves on the back because they had black friends. But damn it if we didn’t love the sushi!” Contributor Jamelle guest blogged at Feministe over the summer and in addition to keeping up his own blog, is writing good stuff about, say, black perspectives on gay marriage. Other excellent posts that I’ve been saving that I’ll never find time to write about include this one on why the ladies love Don Draper (of Mad Men) and why marriage is a flimsy cure for family poverty.
NEWS ON ABORTION: Lynn rounded up a huge list of news and blog posts on abortion and the law.
IT’S KIND OF tacky to link to a post on celebrities without makeup, but I think BitchPhD makes a good argument in favor of, in that, “it really is a lovely collection of candid pictures of women of all ages, women whose faces you know, looking like–well, looking like women you know. Many of them are beautiful, a couple are average-looking, most are above average (after all, these *are* women whose livings depend in part on their looks). It’s a nice reality check nonetheless: these are women whose *jobs* are to present images of extra-human beauty, and what we usually see when we see them is: them working. When they’re not working (at their job of looking amazing) they look like . . . real people.” And like she says, don’t read the captions or the comments unless you feel like trashing your computer and swearing off the internet.
I WANT TO make my conservative and/or racist family members watch this video, but I’m afraid the mention of the AFL-CIO will scare them off even more — even though it brought me to tears. Mostly I want to know how blue-collar, working folks’ unions became a scary feature of The Left.
JOHN COLE FOUND a picture of Todd Palin, first dude of Alaska, holding a sign at a McCain rally stating, “Charles Manson was a community organizer.” Also, it might be good for the McCain-Palin campaign if they could spell their national attack ads correctly. [UPDATE: The Todd Palin pic is disputed in the comments below.]
WHAT DO WOMEN want from the next president? Carmen of Racialicious breaks it down.
TERRENCE WRITES on how bullying affects children and how we should deal with bullying as parents and as activists.
THERE IS A serious cell phone bias in political polling which may not be accounting for the youth and/or technically savvy vote. Some are talking about the Bradley effect this election cycle, but with people dropping land lines like hotcakes I wonder if we won’t be talking about the cell phone effect in 2012.
DEAR WHITE VOTERS, this is what McCain thinks of you.
ORLY? Freakonomics author says that mixed-race children are “better-looking.” What exactly is the determinant for attractiveness? And what of the fact that very few of us meet/fail the one-drop rule? Ruling: study is annoying as hell, and the determinant for “annoying as hell” is “because I said so.”