Only in San Francisco Eugene Park Slope Toronto:

“So it’s a boy, right?” a neighbour calls out as Kathy Witterick walks by, her four month old baby, Storm, strapped to her chest in a carrier…

The neighbours know Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, are raising a genderless baby. But they don’t pretend to understand it.

While there’s nothing ambiguous about Storm’s genitalia, they aren’t telling anyone whether their third child is a boy or a girl.

The only people who know are Storm’s brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2, a close family friend and the two midwives who helped deliver the baby in a birthing pool at their Toronto home on New Year’s Day.

Also in the dark: Storm’s grandparents.

Golly, where to begin?

Read more »

“President Obama is going to be visiting Joplin, Missouri, on Sunday, but you know what they’re talking about, like this right-wing slut, what’s her name? Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut. You see, she was, back in the day, praising President Reagan when he was drinking a beer overseas. But now that Obama’s doing it, they’re working him over.” [TPM]

We were only mildly amused by Newt’s Tiffany’s bill. Until now:

At the same time Tiffany & Co. was extending Callista (Bisek) Gingrich a virtual interest-free loan of tens of thousands of dollars, the diamond and silverware firm was spending big bucks to influence mining policy in Congress and in agencies over which the House Agriculture Committee — where she worked — had jurisdiction, official records show.

Filings by Tiffany’s lobbyist, Cassidy & Co., and other government records show that the firm’s spending on “mining law and mine permitting-related issues” in Congress, as well as the Forest Service, the Interior Department, and Interior’s Bureau of Land Management shot up sharply during the period when Callista Gingrich was chief clerk at the House Agriculture Committee.

Those interest-free Tiffany’s debts were up to a cool half-million. Newt says he had a “standard, no-interest account”, but so far nobody can find evidence that Tiffany’s offers no-interest accounts.

And Tiffany’s ain’t talking.

If you would like a Tiffany’s charge card, you’ll enjoy 21 percent interest on the balance. Which amounts to around fifty large on a quarter-million debt. Which, in turn, until we hear otherwise, means Callista got a nice 50K bribe while she was working for Congress.

Gingrich wife worked for committee heavily lobbied by Tiffany [SpyTalk, via Political Wire]

Scott Conroy of RealClearPolitics spends a breathless 2,952 words describing the new Sarah Palin documentary, due next month. Rather than bothering to summarize — we think a pizza guy shows up at the door, but we’re not sure — let’s just cut to the goods:

Rosie O’Donnell, Matt Damon, Bill Maher, David Letterman, and Howard Stern all have brief cameos before comedian Louis C.K. goes off on a particularly ugly anti-Palin riff.

“I hate her more than anybody,” C.K. says at the end of his tirade, the rest of which is unfit to print here.

Dude, that’s the best part, and you’re looking away in embarrassment? Or are you waiting for Szekely to file a copyright lawsuit before spilling the details?

Palin’s Secret Weapon: New Film to Premiere in June [RealClearPolitics]

[USA Today]

If we’re not in the fourth quarter, we’re in the third quarter of the chronological clock. It’s something you start to notice when you can’t remember where you put your keys can’t get it up discover that you’re older than candidates for Preznit and Vice Preznit, as we did in 2008:

This fall, we’re taking over the country. The torch has been passed to a new generation, and this time it’s personal. It’s the Barry & Sarah Show, hosted by Jon Stewart, fortysomethings all. Joe and John will have walk-on parts, but they’re both irrelevant to the story. It’s our world now, and you kids will just have to deal with it.

In other words, 2008 was the first post-Boomer election. Will 2012 be any different?

Read more »

Just a small bit of a galaxy: