He would prefer universal single-payer! He introduced an amendment to that end! It did not even make it to a vote, though, because of parliamentary tactics, whee. But he decided, "this bill will help poor and working people, and no bill will hurt them," and so he is using his leverage to attempt to improve it, like a good socialist senator.

He is not throwing a tantrum (though he does get shouty sometimes!) and inventing a new reality in which this bill's failure means we'll totally get a better health care bill next year or something. I mean, what? The options are literally "pass this HANDOUT to the insurance industries (that they are still lobbying against!) that will insure millions of people and improve the social safety net for those in danger of losing their insurance" or "fuck off home to let people continue to die because we got super mad at Senator Fuckface from Connecticut." There is not a third "Alan Grayson and Keith Olbermann and Matt Taibbi are all elected to a new kind of Senate that only needs three votes to pass legislation and they declare us Canada for Christmas" option.

Look — we like Alan Grayson. We will defend him against those centrist "oh but Democrats have to play nice" assholes who say he goes too far when he says truthful things about Rush Limbaugh. Alan Grayson gives good quote and is a credit to the House of Representatives. He should continue to let his freak flag fly.

But jesus, christ, an Alan Grayson 2012 primary challenge against Obama? Obama, who is not just "Bush-lite" but Bush-same! (Remember when Bush attempted to negotiate an international climate deal, pass a jobs-focused economic stimulus, reform the nation's health care industry, and come up with a hopefully coherent plan to end the Afghanistan war in one year? And remember how his attempts at all those things were stymied by an uncooperative and undemocratic Senate, but he still managed to make real and tangible gains on each of them? Oh, no, you probably don't remember that because it was a joke we were making about how you have lost all sense of perspective.)

What happens when Alan Grayson is elected president, exactly? His sharp tongue embarrasses Ben Nelson into supporting a woman's right to choose? A well-timed quip convinces the Republican party to give up on a scorched-earth style of obstructionist opposition that will probably yield them electoral victories next year? He would pull the troops out. There's that! Maybe you would like some members of his cabinet a little more!

But what we actually need, if you like Alan Grayson, is more Alan Graysons in the House and in the Senate. (Well, what we need is the complete abolition of the Senate too, but let's start small and aim big, the way progressives did things in the days before a millionaire sportscaster was their spiritual leader.) The last couple guys broke the nation, basically, and Barack Obama's best quality might be that he has a very realistic idea of how to begin going about fixing some shit.

Dr. Healy, former president and CEO of the Red Cross sees the conservative values of both groups of teens who were studied as "traits worth noting" because they had what she sees as positive effects on the teenagers' sex lives:

The more sexually conservative teens, pledge or not, held more negative views toward condoms and birth control, though half or more used both regularly. Nevertheless, these more conservative teens had less risky sex (for example, more had had only one partner in the prior year). Perhaps most notably, they reported losing their virginity at, on average, 21 years of age. Among most youths today, sexual activity begins closer to age 17.

Waiting until age 21 to have sex may not be waiting until marriage, but it certainly does point to a grand public-health direction that would make teens healthier and parents happier.

First off, Dr. Healy gets the information about these teens losing their virginity at age 21 wrong: the study found that more than half of both groups had had sex for the first time by age 21. So basically, on average, most of these kids had had sex by the time they were 21, they were not losing their virginity at age 21.

Dr. Healy lists the conservative traits of the two teen groups as positives, including:

6. More negative feelings about having sex or using birth control

7. Strong sense of guilt about having sex, with a bit of worry about upsetting mom.

Let's see: sex guilt and negative feelings about safe sex, gee those all sound like healthy values that a licensed medical professional should be promoting!

Dr. Healy equates conservatism and religion with lowering the frequency of teen sex, therefore making it safer even if the teens are developing unhealthy attitudes and practices when sex is concerned. However, Dr. Healy doesn't note that a teen doesn't need to grow up in these types of environments in order to avoid teen pregnancy and a risky sex life; these are simply the traits of the families that were studied. In fact, blue states have the lowest rates of teen pregnancy and divorce, which shows that not only can liberals raise teens who don't get pregnant, but they can also (hopefully) teach them that sex and birth control isn't something to feel bad about.

7 Factors That Foster Teen Virginity, Pledge Or No Pledge [US News]

Earlier: No Sh-t: New Study Finds 'Virginity Pledges' Ineffective, Promoting Unsafe Sex
As Abstinence Pledges Falter, A New "Middle Class Morality" Emerges

• McCain and his staff have smartly given up trying to win an electoral mandate and are pursuing a "narrow-victory strategy." What that means is that they have no intention of doing anything other than personally attacking Obama for the next 18 days in order to freak people out that they can squeak out an Electoral College victory rather than a popular one. You know, like in 2000. [NY Times]
• Which is probably why Sarah Palin is flouncing around telling people that they prefer the "real America" which everyone who isn't voting for John McCain isn't a part of. [Huffington Post]
• If that wasn't clear enough for you, Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann called for an investigation into the un-American activities of all self-professed liberals. [Think Progress]

• And a Palin supporter beat up a reporter at a rally for having the audacity to report that there were protesters around outside. "Real" America FTW. [News & Record]
• The United State Supreme Court effectively stopped the Ohio GOP's efforts to throw 200,000 voters off the rolls before election day. [Huffington Post]
• Conservative talk show host Lee Rodgers thinks that "many of the women who are professed leaders of the feminist movement in this country, and they're a bunch of hags. They couldn't get laid in a men's prison, let's be honest about it." How long do we think it's been since Lee Rodgers got laid? I mean, without paying for it, obviously, that doesn't count. [Media Matters]
• Oh, and French President Nicky Sarkozy is suggesting that it may be time to renegotiate Bretton Woods. Sarah Palin said, "Ooh, I'd bet Todd would be a good logger" and all of France simultaneously smacked their foreheads and went to church to pray for an Obama win. [Washington Post]

First off, I participated in a study like this once in college (I sold my body for science pretty regularly; I was poor). The scientists wanted to see whether actual fear or just worry had an impact on sexual arousal, so they set me up with a sensor in my cooter and a randomly-rotating series of film clips that including porn, nature videos that did not show animals fucking, and a "scary" scene from the movie. That scene, unfortunately for them, was the dental-torture scene from Marathon Man. I say "unfortunately" because I am not scared of dentists and so I just busted out laughing and probably skewed their results. The same standard applies here: pictures can or can not be frightening to people, depending on their phobias or preconceived notions. One could just as easily say that conservatives are more prone to being afraid of bugs, or that liberal have more exposure to bugs since they're "outdoorsy" or something and thus aren't scared. Like, you want to get that enormous spider crawling on my face, I think I'd react with plenty of fear, but looking at it once removed it totally fine. I could also argue with the sample size and homogenous population of the study, but at least the author, John Alford, acknowledges that as a flaw.

Look, it's a brilliant study for an election year because it allows people to spin it anyway they want — and if the Newsweek article and the one in the National Geographic News are any indication, people have already started. Conservatives are scared of every little shadow! Liberals aren't scared enough! Politics has its roots in biology! The red state-blue state divide cannot be overcome! Like any survey, you can pull out the conclusions that you like best — and most people will.

Ummm, oh, and Alford thinks that Mark Penn is has "a sort of folk wisdom that exceeds the general knowledge, and even the academic knowledge." Okay, now, that's some scary shit right there.

Are You More Likely To Be Politically Left Or Right If You Scare Easily? [Scientific American]
Spiders, Maggots, Politics [Newsweek]
Conservatives Have Stronger Startle Reflexes? [National Geographic News]

You wrote that living in a Blue State reduces the odds of divorce. Democrats divorce at a lower rate than Republicans? I find that very difficult to believe.

Because, really? Let's count our long-marrieds who were actual contenders in the race this year: Democratic front-runners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Bill Richardson are all still on their first marriages. But on the Republican side, only Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, both famously very religious, have stuck by the first women to whom they promised "for better or for worse." Last-man-standing John McCain divorced his first wife for Cindy, Fred Thompson left his first wife and picked up a younger model and Rudy Giuliani is famously on his third wife.

Perhaps it hasn't occurred to L.H. that many politicians on the right come from the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do school of thinking. Abstinence-only education and encouraging people to marry and stay married is for the electorate — the minor party functionaries and the voters who want to believe that the 1950s was the best decade in American history — not the ruling class. Because if history is any indication, the leader will likely keep leaving their wives for younger women and boning the interns. It's always good to have someone to cushion the fall when you're knocked off that high horse!

Work & Family Mailbox [Wall Street Journal]