Tag Archive for 'Bush administration'

Sex & Relationships: December news round up

birth-control

photo by blmurch

Romantic comedies are not your best date night movie option!

Romantic comedies set up unrealistic expectations in relationships.  Researchers at Hariot Watt University found their study subjects, after watching such films,  to be more apt to believe in soul mates, magical consistent sex with one’s partner and that in a good relationship one’s partner should be able to predict your needs, even if you don’t explicitly state them.

Kimberly Johnson, who also worked on the study, said: ‘Films do capture the excitement of new relationships but they also wrongly suggest that trust and committed love exist from the moment people meet, whereas these are qualities that normally take years to develop.’

You can help out with their next study on relationships, personality and media consumption, you can take part in a survey here.

A while back I read about a study that found couples were more likely to hook up after watching a horror film than other genres included in the study.  (A study I, of course, can’t locate right now).  Horror films get the adrenalin pumping and the blood flowing with the disadvantage of making your call into questions various aspects of your current relationship.

Looking good, feeling better.

Market researchers for Astral moisturizer in the UK surveyed more than 1000 women between the ages of 45-60 about their sex appeal and satisfaction.

The age at which a women feels most sexy is 34, according to a new study, that also found those in their twenties and thirties have the most sex – 10.4 times a month on average

This figure is double the amount middle-aged women have, which works out at just 4.5 times a month, but the research suggests the older women take more pleasure from it.

More than half – 56 per cent – said they enjoyed sex more than they did when they were younger.

Seems reasonable.  Women feel sexiest when they’re getting the most nookie.  Their partner(s) make them feel more desirable, yielding more sexual encounters.   Like everything else in life, practice makes closer to  perfect.  Older women have spent years figuring out what feels good to their bodies, so one would hope a good partner who understands one’s need would make for better sex.

Birth control pill available without a prescription in London

Here’s a solution to the Bush administration’s planned HHS regulations allowing medical professionals and staff to deny procedures and sales of medications that violate their own moral code.

A very progressive Department of Health in the UK is running a trial, which includes selling the birth control pill without a prescription to women 16 or older at 2 London pharmacies. The study aims to see if greater and easier accessibility to the birth control pill could lower teen pregnancy rates in the country.

The UK is actually serious about cutting back on unwanted pregnancy, unlike the US.  Here, pro-birth advocates are hard at work to cut government funding to Planned Parenthood chapters nationwide.   Why? Abortions make up 3% of the service offered at Planned Parenthood. Nevermind that abortion is legal and 38% their patients are there for contraceptives to prevent an unwanted pregancy (page 6 of Planned Parenthood Annual Report)

Abortion doesn’t cause depression

A John Hopkins University review of more than 21 studies looking at post-abortion mental health found no linkage between abortion and depression, but instead found “post abortion syndrome” to be a convenient political gimmick for the pro-birth movement.

‘Based on the best available evidence, emotional harm should not be a factor in abortion policy. If the goal is to help women, program and policy decisions should not distort science to advance political agendas,’ added Vignetta Charles, a researcher and doctoral student at Johns Hopkins who worked on the study.

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Looking back at Katrina: Trouble the Water

A new Katrina documentary hit theaters on August 22nd.

Be sure to queue it in your Netflix account; I looks like troubling and damning coverage of the city the Bush administration would rather forget.

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Good enough to serve, but not to vote

photo by pingnews

This year, Armed Forces Voters Week runs August 31st to September 7th.  The Department of Veteran Affairs is doing everything in its power to keep convalescing vets from registering to vote, and has denied permission to the 19 states that requested the opportunity to host voter registration drives at VA hospitals in their states.

The official word from the Department of Veteran Affairs:

This policy is the result of careful deliberation and consideration for the needs and rights of our patients, concerns about disrupting facility operations, and the need to ensure VA is not involved in partisan political activities. . .

That decision might seem fair, if not for that fact that registration drives are regularly held at hospitals around the country.  Promedica Health in Ohio offers encourages voter registration on its website, as does the New Jersey Hospital Assocation.

The Texas Hospital Association encourages registration drives to reach out to employees, which means patients are exposed to the get-out-and-vote message.  On their site, the THA offers a Time Line for Voter Registration. Among their recommendations:

If appropriate, send a news release about the voter registration drive to local media outlets. . . .

Display tent cards promoting the voter registration drive in the cafeteria and on patient trays. (see sample)

E-mail reminder to staff, if possible. . .

Place get-out-the-vote posters throughout the hospital (in elevators, lobby areas, cafeteria, employee break rooms, etc.)

Seems as though these outreach methods, could reach non-staff members, what with posters hung about the building, easily forwarded e-mails sent to staffers, tent cards delivered to each patient’s room with meals. . . not to mention registration events taking place in the lobby of the hospital.

Voter registration is a non-partisan undertaking.  These health facilities recognize their ability to remind their employees and the public to register and take advantage of their right to vote.

Why is it somehow different at VA hospitals? Perhaps our Republican administration is merely watching McCain’s back?

Last week, the Center for Responsive Politics released a study of military donors to political campaigns this year.

Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely anti-war Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain’s haul.

Troops in the field sent Obama $60,642, while McCain received $10,665 and Paul took in $45,512.   When looking at military personnel overall, Obama is still ahead with $335,536 in donations, while $280,513 went to McCain.

The Center for Responsive Politics reminds us that:

In 2000, Republican George W. Bush outraised Democrat Al Gore among military personnel almost 2 to 1. In 2004, with the Iraq war underway, John Kerry closed the gap with President Bush, but Bush still raised $1.50 from the military for every $1 his Democratic opponent collected.

Seems like encouraging wounded vets to register to vote isn’t going to favor the GOP.

But I’m a cynic, it’s not like the Bush administration has used its office to act in favor of conservatives before, right?

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Interesting posts for you to check out

White House trying to define contraceptives as abortion. Hilary Clinton condemns the move ; sign her petition

Measuring the effectiveness of the anti-choice/pro-life agenda

McSexist: McCain’s War on Women

More than 60% of skin care products are absorbed by the skin. Do you know what’s in yours?

$144 is not taking inflation into consideration

image by jaumedurgell

Over the weekend, Think Progress reminded readers that in 1998 Osama Bin Laden felt that oil should be sold for $144 a gallon, 13 times what people were paying for it then ($11).  Such pricing would be a victory for the Muslim people. Islamic extremists can thank our illegal war in Iraq for hitting that benchmark.

My response is two-fold.

One, no one seems to be taking inflation into account.  $144 in 1998 equates to $186.10 today. I don’t doubt we’ll soon see oil selling at that price point and higher, given gluttonous consumption of petroleum and the exponential growth in Indian and Chinese use of oil, but we’re not there yet.  Let’s revisit pricing right before the election.

Also, just weeks after 9/11, Bush gave an address meant to put terrorist-supporting nations on notice.

Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. .  . From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

So if Bin laden is happy with this turn of events, put in play by our brainiac leadership’s decision to attack Iraq, do we officially qualify as a hostile regime?  What’s the penalty for violating your own mandate, President Bush?

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In a bizarre twist, cloak and dagger trumps blatent behavior

Several posts ago I plugged the online petition demanding impeachment hearings for Cheney. More than 171,000 individuals have signed up, to date.

A random stranger stumbling across the entry commented that we should just prep for impeachment hearings for the next administration as well.

It’s tragic that it’s standard operating procedure for presidential administrations to violate international law and moral codes. A friend has half-joked that every President throughout history could be brought up on charges for violating core tenets of international law, thus it is no surprise that we do not participate in international courts.

Even more tragic is that as an American people we choose to accept this sort of behavior as the norm. We are all complicit in this violation of the law. Imagine our reputation if we followed the letter of the law in order to get things done, rather than just bully other nations into submission.

The real danger here is that the Bush administration violates our quiet and undiscussed acceptance of such behavior by flaunting it for American and overseas counterparts. No more cloak and dagger actions for them. This sort of confidence in acting outside international law sets a dangerous precedent that must be tempered with legal action to keep the balance of power in the US government. The judicial and legislative branches of the US government are responsible for taking the executive branch to task in order to ensure the freedoms and rights of the American people. While for the most part gross injustices have been focused on the international community, it’s just a matter of time before the powers that be up the ante on domestic issues.

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