Women, Sex and S&M: Mainstream Media Totally Wrong About Female Desire -- Again

The real place women are getting spanked is in state legislatures across the country.

April 16, 2012

Spanking is en vogue. Or at least it’s popular to write about women who like to bend over. Jumping on the S&M bandwagon, writer Katie Roiphe’s cloying Newsweek cover story links wage-earning women with masochistic desire.

 

Roiphe reports that women comprise “almost 60 percent of college students…they are close to surpassing men as breadwinners, with four in 10 working women now outearning their husbands [and] women are less dependent or subjugated than before.” Yet, according to Roiphe, the recent spate of SM-tinged releases such as Fifty Shades of Grey, HBO’s Girls, and David Cronenberg’s psychoanalytic bio-fiction A Dangerous Method are evidence of a connection between women’s increasing clout and a concomitant drive to get spanked. At a time when women are gaining cultural and economic power, why are they seeking to be sexually dominated? Roiphe wonders.   READ MORE

 

6 Scary Extreme Energy Sources Being Tapped to Fuel the Post Peak Oil Economy

Think of this as taking fracking to the next level so that we can continue to speed along on our highway to hell -- peak oil, and the earth, be damned.

April 15, 2012

In a few short years the term “fracking” went from obscurity, mostly mistaken for an obscenity, to a household word, now often associated with flammable tap water. The technology is not new, but the market conditions that make such reckless forays deep into the earth’s crust profitable, are new. Welcome to the post peak oil energy economy. What’s online to follow fracking is even scarier.

The problem is we’re addicted to oil, and like most addicts, we can’t take that first step and admit our addiction. For over a century, we mostly glided, enjoying the high that cheap oil gave our economy and consumptive lifestyles, while not facing many consequences—at least none that we could yet recognize. But, like the meth-head whose body was rotting from the inside out, our addiction was poisoning our atmosphere, our oceans and in places, our land and fresh water. Now we’re seeing the results of that five generation-long binge. We’re also coming into a period that energy economists call “peak oil.”

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What If the Greedy Rich Paid Their Share? 8 Things to Know About Wealth and Poverty in the US

We're far from poor -- we just have a wildly lopsided distribution of wealth that makes us seem poor.

April 17, 2012

America is loaded. We are not a struggling nation ready to go under. We are not facing an enormous debt crisis despite what the politicians and pundits proclaim. We are not the next Greece.

Rather, we have an enormous concentration-of-wealth problem -- one that must be solved for the good of our commonwealth. We are a very rich nation but it doesn’t seem that way because our wealth is so concentrated in the hands of a few. This is America’s disaster.

But wait. Doesn’t the wealth belong to the super-rich? Didn’t they earn it fair and square? Isn’t that the way it’s always been?

Not by a long shot. The amount of wealth that flows to the super-rich is determined by our public policies. It’s all about how we choose to share our nation’s productivity.

Productivity and the Wealth of Nations  READ MORE

American Nuns Busted for Being a Crazy Bunch of Radical Feminists

The Vatican has decided to crack down on
American nuns. (photo: Jezebel)

By Cassie Murdoch, Jezebel

20 April 12

ffering further proof that the world is becoming an increasingly weird place, the Catholic Church has decided to crack down on American nuns who, as anyone who has been around a nun recently knows, are a bunch of freewheeling party sisters. Wait, what? Yes, the Vatican has just taken disciplinary action against a group of American nuns who they say are proponents of "certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith." Oh no?

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an umbrella group representing most of America's 55,000 nuns, is in trouble with the Vatican because they've apparently have not been vocal enough in their opposition to gay marriage, abortion, and women's ordination. So now it's not enough to just be opposed to things the church is against? You also have to stand up and yell about it? That's some bullshit right there. As far as those radical feminist ideas they've been spreading, that evil has supposedly been taking place at conferences sponsored by the LCWR.

This directive came as the result of a two-year-long investigation - excellent use of resources, boys - and appears to be part of what is seen as the church veering into more conservative territory. You might not think nuns would be the obvious target of any investigations, considering it's the priests who've been causing most of the actual problems the church has faced recently, but of course organized religion never lets a little thing like logic get in the way.   READ MORE

Warning Graphic Photo: Possible New Evidence Shows George Zimmerman's Bloodied Head

The damning old wound

 By MATT GUTMAN and SENI TIENABESO | Good Morning America – Fri, Apr 20, 2012 1:01 AM EDT


A new photograph obtained exclusively by ABC News showing the bloodied back of George Zimmerman's head, which was taken three minutes after he shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, gives possible credence to his claim that Martin had bashed his head against the concrete as he fought for his life.

Click here to view the image. Warning: graphic content.

The revelation comes as his attorney and prosecutors prepare for Zimmerman's bail hearing today, which could result in his being released from jail. Zimmerman, 28, is being held on charges of second-degree murder for the Feb. 26 shooting of Martin, which could carry a life sentence if he is convicted.

The exclusive image shows blood trickling down the back of George Zimmerman's head from two small cuts. It also shows a possible contusion forming on the crown of his head. The original police report that night notes that the back of Zimmerman's head was wet, and that he was bleeding from the nose and head.

Zimmerman told police that night that he shot and killed the teenager in self-defense after Martin punched him and pounced on him. Zimmerman told police that Martin then bashed his head into the concrete sidewalk during the altercation that took place in the tidy middle-class development of the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Fla.

Zimmerman was treated at the scene by paramedics, then cuffed and driven in a police cruiser to the Sanford police station. He was questioned for hours and later released. In police surveillance video obtained last month by ABC News Zimmerman's wounds are not apparent, and there were no bandages on his head.     READ MORE

Five Reasons Why the Very Rich Have NOT Earned Their Money

(cartoon: Joel Pett/USA Today)

By Paul Buchheit, Common Dreams

21 April 12

he wealthiest Americans believe they've earned their money through hard work and innovation, and that they're the most productive members of society. For the most part they're wrong. As the facts below will show, they're not nearly as productive as middle-class workers. Yet they've taken almost all the new income over the past 30 years. 

Any one of these five reasons should reinforce the belief that the rich should be paying a LOT more in taxes.

1. They've Taken All the Middle Class Wage Increases

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The Unlearned Lessons of the BP Gulf Disaster

Fire boats battle a fire at the off shore oil rig Deepwater
Horizon April 21, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast
of Louisiana. (photo: US Coast Guard via Getty Images)

By Robert Weissman, Common Dreams

21 April 12

he BP disaster reminded the American people about some essential truths relating to corporate behavior, the need for regulatory controls over corporations, the need for effective sanctions.Eleven people died when BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, causing the worst oil spill in US history.

The BP disaster taught us many things: Giant corporations cannot be trusted to behave responsibly, and have the ability to inflict massive damage on people and the environment. We need strong regulatory controls to curb corporate wrongdoing. We need tough penalties to punish corporate wrongdoers. There is no way to do deepwater oil drilling safely. And it is vital that citizens harmed by corporate wrongdoers maintain the right to sue to recover their losses.

Unfortunately, Congress and the Obama administration have refused to learn the lessons from the BP disaster:   READ MORE