The New York Times has a look at the “new landscape of infidelity” that I found interesting and thought I’d pass along.

Women, in particular younger women, are catching up to men in their rate of adultery. Or, maybe they’re just more likely to admit it, the researchers say.

I’ve written here in the past that I thought that adultery was like a lot of crimes we find familiar from murder mysteries and television shows: it takes motive, means and opportunity. Women have always, I believe, had the same motive and means for infidelity that men have; however, being at home with the kids all day every day sort of reduces the opportunity. However, since 1986 and the advent of the internet, and particularly since we’ve obtained “instant messaging” and cellphone texting and Match.com (much less “Big Penis dot com”, right, Nina?), the opportunities for stay at home moms and other women to stray have increased. Thus, the rates of (reported) female adultery rises.

From the very last sentence of the report comes this tidbit that sort of tickled my fancy:

And married men and women also appear to have the most active sex lives, reporting sex with their spouse 58 times a year, a little more than once a week.

“We’ve looked at that as good news,” Dr. Robinson said.

One final note: Ladies, if you really want to get laid, wear red!

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The Anchorage Daily News endorses Obama.

It makes perfect sense. You can’t pull on $150,000 worth of new clothes and then go out without some lipstick and you certainly can’t go on television with your hair a mess. The McCain campaign’s highest paid staffer for the first two weeks of October was Gov. Palin’s makeup artist, an Emmy nominee who received more than $22,000.00; the fourth highest paid staffer was the Alaskan’s hair stylist at $12,000.00 (Cindy McCain helped by sending Sarah to her own salon). The New York Times story refrained from the snark I’ll indulge: Sarah’s just your average hockey mom.

Sarah will need them both today, I’m thinking, since this afternoon is her first under-oath deposition in the “Troopergate” matter, the Associated Press notes.

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You heard the story — it was all over the right-wing blogs. Some poor white girl, 20-year-old Ashley Todd of Texas, was mugged at an ATM, but when the mugger (a big black guy) saw her car with the McCain sticker, he beat her and carved a letter “B” in her face with a knife. Apparently it was a dyslexic mugger because the “B” was carved backward, but whatever — it proved that Obama’s supporters were violent and craaazy!

Ever the blowhards, Fox News piled on, and their Executive VP of “news” wrote this:

Part of the appeal of, and the unspoken tension behind, Senator Obama’s campaign is his transformational status as the first African-American to win a major party’s presidential nomination.

That does not mean that he has erased the mutual distrust between black and white Americans, and this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election.

If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

Rank idiocy, of course. Could you expect anything less from Fox? But there was a caveat:

If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.

I guess McCain’s quest is over.

Police sources tell KDKA that a campaign worker has now confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter “B” in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker […]

Investigators did say that they received photos from the ATM machine and “the photographs were verified as not being the victim making the transaction.”

This afternoon, a Pittsburgh police commander told KDKA Investigator Marty Griffin that Todd confessed to making up the story.

The commander added that Todd will face charges; but police have not commented on what those charges will be.

The story was instantly suspect, as the pictures of her supposed beating, her Twitter account, and her timelines all patently contradicted themselves. But the wingnutosphere, with the healthy assist from Fox News, piled on anyway, letting their ideological blinders get in the way of reality. As usual.

And now they look like idiots. As usual.

Per Daily Kos.

The conservative “wingnutosphere” has been rife with such balderdash this election, including stories about Obama not being an American and not releasing his birth certificate; that he’s a closet Muslim, an Indonesian citizen; that there’s something fishy about his years at Columbia University not yet disclosed; that William Ayers the “terrorist” is the ghost writer of Obama’s book; that Obama’s in league with a known pedopile; that Obama had gay sex and a nosefull of blow with a disabled criminal; and on and on and on. Here’s a hilarious roundup of rightwing conspiracy theories and such by a familiar name: Jon Swift.

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Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com has “The Number That Exlains It All”, a brief note of a single polled voter attitude that helps us understand why Obama’s winning.

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Some things are more important than blogging. More important than politics. One of those things is the World Series. The Rays evened up the series against the Phillies Thursday night. The only damn reason to play politics is so that we can keep watching baseball instead of cricket or rugby or some other bloody UK sport. But, John X provided me with a little video that’ll have to tide you over until later. It stars Oklahoma’s own Ron Howard.

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