Cue the wanking:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is open to having coffee with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whose new book about the 2008 presidential campaign is stirring controversy.

“I absolutely would look forward to having coffee,” Clinton said from Singapore Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Violet today reiterates the warning signs that led us to a day where House Democrats voted through a health insurance reform bill that effectively bans abortion, and reminds us what we need to do:

Word to the wise, girls: if a guy calls you a filthy cunt or a whiny bitch, if he says Hillary Clinton is a hag from hell, if he calls her supporters the dry pussy brigade, if he talks about punish-raping the rebels, this guy is not a feminist. Which means that he doesn’t really give a shit about women’s rights. Which means that his commitment to your reproductive freedom is about as firm as a tomato seed. Which means he will sell you out. In a god. damn. heartbeat....

Mayhill Fowler in HuffPo on "bitter ... cling to" (interestingly, she writes it was the cling to, not the bitter). A fine, interesting retrospective on winning, "losing," how the discourse gets shaped, and who gets credit (all senses). The bottom line:

If he did not figure out how to talk about small-town Americans [that is, working class Americans who live in small towns like those in PA that the banksters have de-industrialized] to more worldly coastal folk then even if he were President he would get no chance at "change."

Well, yes.

And Bareback Andy says something nice about She Who Must Not Be Named:

She can say things that are true, and which Obama can then walk back a little. I'm sure this is deliberate. And I have to say that her performance as secretary-of-state seems to me to be a real highlight of the administration.

Film at 11: Hillary Clinton is a team player and a loyal Democrat.

Times Online:

There's been a lot of material that's been beyond parody in the New Yorker lately, but I think this one takes a big slice of Marie Antoinette's cake. Appallingly, the editors have actually devised a department heading for this sort of story: "Team Obama"*

Last week, members of the steering committee for Generation Obama—a grassroots group that organizes young professionals—held an after-work meeting in a conference room at a marketing firm on Third Avenue. The theme was reaching out.

Good, good...

[Welcome, Crooks & Liars readers!]

Why is it that Barack Obama’s rhetoric sounds so strangely familiar?

Oh, I remember. There was this charming young fellow from Arkansas – what was the name of that town? Anyway, he had this awfully nice idea, about a “third way” alternative to right-left partisanship. I wonder what became of him and that darling wife of his....

Wait, yes, it’s all coming back to me. She's pursued that third-way agenda herself, in the Senate and in a run for the presidency.

And so has the man from Honolulu/Indonesia/The South Side. (If this path doesn’t lead to the White House, it certainly qualifies him for one of those “New Sanfrankota” ads.)

So, which of our frontrunners do I prefer? To use the essential word of Obama’s generation: whatever.