October 26, 2012

Woman auctions off virginity for $780,000

First, I'll mention, this story does have hoax written all over it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/catarina-migliorini-sells-virginity-780k_n_2010260.html

I have a hard time believing there are men in the world dumb enough. But apparently, female virginity is still of value in the world today. If this story is true, it could cause a gold rush of females into the virginity market. Seriously. And fraud will follow. Women selling their virginity twice or three times, or not being virgins to start.

But if there are people who are willing to part with three-quarters of a million dollars for single sex experience, you're never going to get rid of the sex industry. And there are at least some women, (and men) not in the sex industry at all, who will sell sex for that price.

The article mentions a male whose virginity went for only $3,000. Okay, that's much, much lower, but that's nothing to sneeze at. If I were still in high school, I would be tempted. I wish I had known there was a market . . .

September 29, 2012

Mass. Chemist Faked Drug Tests, Thousands Wrongly Convicted.

http://news.yahoo.com/mass-chemist-drug-test-flap-arrested-160136833.html



She also apparently lied under oath about having a degree.

I have to question a justice system where so many people could be convicted on the word of one person, whose integrity, credentials and procedures were apparently never checked over nine years.

September 21, 2012

Reversing Trend, Life Span Shrinks for Some Whites

Source: New York Times

For generations of Americans, it was a given that children would live longer than their parents. But there is now mounting evidence that this enduring trend has reversed itself for the country’s least-educated whites, an increasingly troubled group whose life expectancy has fallen by four years since 1990.

Researchers have long documented that the most educated Americans were making the biggest gains in life expectancy, but now they say mortality data show that life spans for some of the least educated Americans are actually contracting. Four studies in recent years identified modest declines, but a new one that looks separately at Americans lacking a high school diploma found disturbingly sharp drops in life expectancy for whites in this group. Experts not involved in the new research said its findings were persuasive.

The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance.

The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008, said S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the lead investigator on the study, published last month in Health Affairs. By 2008, life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/life-expectancy-for-less-educated-whites-in-us-is-shrinking.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120921&moc.semityn.www

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I'm thinking that being pushed into poverty has a lot to do with this. Either way, if there are such declines, it represents pain poor whites physically feel.

There are some political implications for this. My predictions, based on my inner cynical bastard:

1) Expect there to be a conversion at the polls away from small-government, pro-business ideology. Conservatism is going to shrink even faster than our demographic shift would indicate.

2) At the same time, expect the rise of right wing extremism. More White Supremacists and White Separatists who, you bet, will urgently cite this study. Their flight from the Republican Party is going to bleed it dry. At the same time, expect the wealthy to switch at least a lot of the funding from the Republicans to the radical right wingers.

3) Expect there to be a born-again love of social programs and government intervention. First thing, expect the Repubs to stop complaining about Obamacare over the next four years.

Whites are powerful enough that they'll sway trends in this country, once they're terrified for their futures, and these statistics indicate they should be feeling some terror.

September 19, 2012

Finally! Romney doesn't flip-flop.

It looks like he's sticking to what he was caught saying at that fund-raiser. Voters are now informed on exactly what he believes, what values he holds.

To the surprise of everyone outside of DU, his real values turn out to be despicable. Now, Romney has defined this election emphatically as a class-warfare battle, with an assault against the middle and lower classes. Everyone here knows those people at the dinner believed what Romney does because they made donations above the $50 thousand dollar meal. Let's face it, Romney thought he could speak freely because he was among like-minded colleagues and mostly he was right. It took months for this to come out.

As Ann Romney said in March (?), we've finally see the man beyond the zipper, the real Romney. The striking thing about his politically revealing "wardrobe malfunction" is how he presents himself to his only constituents. To hear him say it, he's valiantly going up against an almost insurmountable 47 percentage point lead, against the hordes of lazy, undeserving, titsucking, dependents: single mothers, welfare queens, social security recipients, war veterans, unemployed, malingering pseudo-disabled pirates and all the other Randian second-handers. As far as he's concerned, this fantasy throng is the only thing standing between the wealthy and another tax cut. Romney's Reliable One Percent will vote for him no matter what, and will now still vote for him even after this is out, unless they stay at home in despair.

The Republicans and Conservatives got the candidate they deserve. A banal, vacuous, thoughtless, arrogant, greedy, stupid, ruthless, self-satisfied brat. He's supposed to be a "moderate" Republican. I think, however, the other "moderate" or "compassionate" Republican presidents of our age could have been caught saying the same thing he did. That is the two Bushes. They were banal in the same way Romney is, raised wealthy and insulated from the middle and lower classes, taught to fear them, and instilled with their own unshakeable sense of entitlement, while being misinformed that they were working for everything they obtained.

Even the conservatives who rose from the lower classes have to imitate the decadent values brought about by the life of a wealthy family's son. They have to praise that ethos and show it with deeds to get investments, or if you're a politician to get donations from the wealthy.

It's very telling, and ironic, that after flip-flopping on everything else, his opinion on the 47 percent would be what he publicly sticks to. This says something, shows it's an issue very near his shrunken, atrophied heart. Romney must actually fear hellfire if he lied about this.

The press is declaring this to be the issue that has lost Romney the election. No, that was last week, (I guess the press can't remember) with his response to the riots and murders of our diplomats in Libya. This time, he has hurt the whole Republican Party. He's now an asset to the Democrats, and he could lose the Repubs both houses of Congress. I'm overjoyed. I haven't felt this way since 1980.

The question I want answered is, who leaked this to the press, and how did Romney screw them over so bad that they would throw this bomb? I suspect Romney is a shit behind the scenes, and there's a vendetta at work, but we may never know.

September 14, 2012

Government a huge doner to charities.

For people who think we should cut taxes and social program charities can handle the safety net, it's never pointed that the government is the major donor to charity.

Take for example, Catholic Charities, an how Bill O'Reilly ignorantly stumbles into supporting public funding for Planned Parenthood:

" target="_blank">http://mediamatters.org/mobile/blog/2012/09/12/oreillys-accidental-support-for-planned-parenth/189845

Here's the chart from that site (I don't know how to put photos up on the site, so it probably won't work):



If you look at the chart, Catholic Charities would look far different without government support. It would be much weaker. No, I don't think donations would replace 62% of the funding. What private citizen would step in and give $3 billion to Catholic Charities? If they did, it would be their private company. Yes, privatized charities.

It's odd that I've been hearing we should rely on charities for the social safety net for decades, and I've never heard anyone point this out. Charities would be able to do far less, not more, with lower taxes.

September 13, 2012

Mitt Romney's Smirking Suicide: Things Have Changed

Yes, it's great to have the Romney campaign go down in flames with two months to spare. I hope the time between now and election day will be spent in blame and acrimony that will bring down the Republican majority in Congress.

However, there's another development with this. Romney merely used a tactic that of the same type George W. Bush used: and people, even his own party, are disgusted with it. Exploiting a tragedy for political purposes?
Romney has a right to complain: Bush would have gotten away with this.

Things are changing in this country, and to the better.

August 17, 2012

Chinese government has a sex scandal.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/16/china-sex-scandal-photos_n_1792058.html

And with pictures available. Not at that link (except for one SFW photo).

I post this to show how a non-Christian, blatantly atheist government reacts to consensual sex between adults outside of legally approved marriage. Unfortunately, they treat it pretty much the way our Christian-influenced culture does.

Prudery isn't rooted in religion.

June 30, 2012

I hit the ACA SCOTUS reasoning right on the money.

. . . back in December, 2010

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1610#4793

I have to boast a little about it. Of course, I never thought Justice Roberts would see things my way.

If the Congress can tax, if it has all powers "Necessary and Proper," to a legislature, and if it what it passes, upon signing by the President, if laws passed under the Constitution are the supreme law of the land (the Constitution says all of this) then Congress can pass a mandate.

This is definitely the way the Founders saw it. One of the first things they did in 1789 was pass a law mandating that males above a certain age buy muskets. And if the mandate is unconstitutional, what about Selective Service, which actually mandates that somebody give their life for their country? If that's not closer to real slavery, I don't know what it is.

Mandates go back to the very origin of the country. There's no way conservatives on the SCOTUS can say it's Unconstitutional and call themselves Constructionists. They are, in fact, revisionist.

And if the SCOTUS had struck ACA down, it's hard to see how Single Payer could ever not be considered a mandate.

May 20, 2012

I believe porn isn't really a feminist issue.

It's an issue between people with a high sex drives versus people with low sex drives. This includes the debate about the sex industry in general.

Evidence? Not all feminists are anti-sex. Pro-sex are usually treated by others of the ideology with contempt. Also, many males are also vehemently opposed to porn. More and more women are watching porn, and the difference seeming to be a matter of the ease at which females can feel sympathetic pleasure from watching sex and the ability to reach orgasm. The sales of sex toys, I've heard, now outpaces the sales of iPhones, so it looks like porn is going to gain more female subscribers.

Opposition to porn cuts across genders and ideologies. There are plenty of non-feminist who are as anti-sex as the worst feminists. Though not a lot of Christians would say they're pro-porn or pro-sex industry, there are definitely those who don't consider it a social priority, or who indulge in the sin of it, and ask God's forgiveness, and don't judge others who look at porn. Among the Jews, the pros and antis are easily recognized.

This pattern seems to hold throughout history. No, porn didn't start in the '60s. I saw some of the stag movies from the 1920s, and though their cameras were more immobile, they were in other ways just as explicit as anything in the 1970s.It's a myth that the '60s were a "sexual revolution," at least outside the gay community. What actually happened during the '60s was that censorship broke down. Movies were showing it, and TV was talking about it. Apparently the debate about whether sex should be written or shown in the contemporary goes back to the printing press. The first thing printed was the Bible and the second thing printed was pornography. Even in lascivious Roman times, you had prudes like Pliny the Younger writing that if this lasciviousness didn't stop, Rome was going to fall. And Pliny was right. Just 400 years after he wrote that and after those prudish Christians took over, Rome fell.

And that's my evidence. What does this mean? It means this split has existed as long as there have been cultures. It's based in human biology and it's not going to be settled. The sex industry is going to go through cycles of relative tolerance to extreme crackdowns.

Another conclusion, the pros and antis are not going agree what they see with erotica. They can look at the same work. One sees an erotic picture. The other sees the look of distress in the woman's eye and imagines the gun pointing at her head off frame. The low-sex drive people are perfectly content with monogamy and do not understand visual stimulation any more than a color blind person understands the color red.

But it's even deeper than just not understanding. There's also a nausea effect. Sex acts a person can't enjoy tend to nauseate them. There's also suspicion. They can't ascribe to it a desire to reach orgasm in a creative, memorable way. So, they'll constantly come up with nefarious motives.

I wish they could be injected with testosterone with a couple months and find out what they think about porn and the sex industry afterward. But probably afterward, they'll repent, and be just as sex negative as ever.

My final conclusion, if these prudes didn't have feminism, they would find another ideology for which to attack the sex industry. I mean, the Bolsheviks attacked porn. They found found a way to bend their atheist, non-feminist ideology to do so. The Nazis also cracked down on porn and most of those Nazis came of age in lascivious, freewheeling Wiemar Germany.

April 14, 2012

AZ's abortion law & My wistful advice to fellow Pro-choicers

With governor Jan Brewer's signature, Arizona has adopted the oppressive anti-choice law I've ever seen. Here are the provisions, care of Dailykos:

• It sets the gestational age as beginning on the first day of a woman’s last period, rather than at fertilization. Which, in practice, means that a virgin can get pregnant and instead of barring abortions after 20 weeks as the law states, actually cuts the time to 18 weeks.

• Medication abortions (by pill), usually done at home or a clinic within the first nine weeks of pregnancy, must now be done by a medical provider who has hospital privileges within 30 miles of where the procedure takes place. The law also mandates outdated protocol that Nash says may cause confusion. The provision is an attempt to shut down medication abortions altogether. North Dakota and Oklahoma are in litigation over similar provisions in their laws.

• Sex education is not mandated in Arizona, but any such education must now prioritize birth and adoption.

• Health-care facilities must put up signs warning against abortion "coercion."

• The state health department must set up a website focusing on alternatives to abortion and displaying photos of fetuses.

• "Counseling" is required for women aiming seeking abortions because of fetal abnormalities. Such counseling must include perinatal hospice information.

• Previous requirements are reiterated for a notarized parental consent form for minors and a mandatory ultrasound screening 24 hours before having an abortion.

No, this isn't from The Onion. It's real, but it's still a joke, and jokes like this are being told in state laws all across the country now. I'm sure 300 years from now they'll be laughing at Arizona. Right now, however, if you're Pro-choice you should be gaping instead of laughing. This law, and others like it, are a horror show.

The Pro-choice, Pro-reproductive rights is in in full retreat now, and it better change strategies fast. What's so sad here is, the Pro-choicers have squandered a winning position (just as NORML did in the '70s) because from NARAL on down they were afraid, yes, afraid, to find their message and stick to it. I suspect they thought they couldn't win the argument on moral principles, or maybe they thought they couldn't put their message simply enough. The fact is, they can do both.

MY ADVICE TO FELLOW PRO-CHOICERS:

What I suggest first: stop accusing the other side of misogyny and/or chauvinism.

Yes, it is their real the motive. They show it repeatedly with their proposals and with their Freudian gaffs. However, accusing them of hating women is a losing strategy socially and politically.

Why? Misogyny appears to be mostly an unconscious motive. Therefore, by definition, Anti-choicers can neither acknowledge it as their main drive, nor change it without serious psychiatric treatment. Despite the fact that we can see why they're doing it, they don't and they can't. Moreover, since they don't, it means other people often can't either. Those people take the anti-choice message at face value, and if they see misogyny, they see it like a necessary evil or side issue and not the cause. Therefore, the Anti-Choicers arguments will have sway with the populace, as long as the message is simple enough and it follows principles of propaganda. "Life begins at conception," is as simple as it gets, even if it's total nonsense.

Stop deconstructing anti-choicer motives. This gains nothing except praise and agreement from other Pro-choicers, who already see the ulterior root. This amounts to discussion among friends that feels like activism but isn't.

Instead, we have to start meeting and beating Anti-choicer's propaganda with a simple counter-argument. Here it is: "A zygote is not a child, not a person. A fetus is not a child, not a person." Say that enough and point to this simple evidence: "You take a fetus out of the womb, it dies. You put a child in the womb, the child dies." You could follow it with things like: "If the fetus were a person, your duty would be to rescue it from the womb."

You could say other things to counter the religious argument. Such as, "God is not going to punish our nation for abortion." He hasn't done it to any other nation.

And keep it as basic and simple as their slogan: "Life begins at conception." As nonsensical as that statement is, its construction and circulation has followed the Goebels propaganda textbook. Besides its simplicity, they repeat it year after year. They make variants on it. Over time, unopposed, it has gained and rallied converts and believers.

You might cite scientific evidence when you actually debate, because the science is on the our side, too, but remember get back to the basic message and just repeat it. That's what's important.

Remember, you're not a therapist. You can't do anything against their unconscious motive, but you can disarm it by attacking the conscious rationalizations. Misogyny can't gain a political foothold without a conscious cover story like protecting "the sanctity of life." Stay on topic. Start trying to meet and beat Anti-choicers own arguments.

Remember, we have the moral high ground because the notion that zygotes and fetuses are people is a ridiculous fantasy. That has always been the weak point in the Anti-choicers' argument. Attack it there, and don't stop. It might not gain ground immediately, but over time, it will chip away at their power and turn back their victories.

The two sides have been talking by each other now for two generations. The Anti-choicers make moral arguments based on the factual error that a zygote or a fetus is a person. Instead of meeting that head-on, Pro-choicers have attacked the other side's ulterior motives. The Anti-choicers simply ignore or deny them, and go back to their moral arguments. Unopposed, those arguments have been winning. Their side has a message, our side has an ineffective attack. We've been losing with it for almost forty years.

That's my major suggestion. I also have a minor one: if I were a young woman, I would leave Arizona, Oklahoma and other states making these laws. Abandon Mississippi for goodness sake, which only has one abortion clinic that lawmakers are busy trying to put out of business. I suggest hetero- and bisexual women do this in protest. Definitely, don't have sex with men in states passing laws like Arizona's or Oklahoma's. That will at least keep the issue in the forefront.

All is not lost yet, but we've lost so much now. Fellow Pro-choicers: please get your act together. Start taking responsibility for a socio-political contest that, since 1973, has been yours to lose. Don't go NORML.