Clipmarks | Kauaiguy's Comments

Men defy stereotypes in defining masculinity

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:55:09 GMT

clipped by: zizzy
clipper's remarks:

There was no significant difference in rankings of masculinity and quality of life characteristics between men who experienced erectile dysfunction and those who did not.

Clip Source: newsinfo.iu.edu

Contrary to stereotypes about sexual performance and masculinity, men interviewed in a large international study reported that being seen as honorable, self-reliant and respected was more important to their idea of masculinity than being seen as attractive, sexually active or successful with women

The study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine included interviews with more than 27,000 randomly selected men from eight countries (Germany, U.S., U.K., Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Italy and France), with about 16 percent of the men reporting erectile problems. Regardless of age or nationality, the men more frequently ranked good health, harmonious family life and good relationships with their wife or partner as more important to their quality of life than material, self-fulfilling or purely sexual concerns.

These results suggest we should pay attention and ask rather than presume we know

RNC Police arrests and beatings of those with RNC press passes..!

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:59:49 GMT

clipped by: TJColatrella

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

[Video]

Tags: republicans, minnesota, st. paul, democracy now, associated press, police abuse, 1st amendment, constitution, free speech, free press

Tradition or Atrocity?

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:12:26 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: Isn't it time more people stepped up to condemn this practice? Should modern day knowledge not replace outdated tribal rituals? I have no idea how common place this practice is but I think most would find it injurious to the child.

Clip Source: atheism.about.com

Saudi Arabia: Eight-Year-Old Girl Wants Divorce

A girl as young as eight shouldn't even be married, never mind trying to get a divorce — and from a man who is fifty years older! It's only because traditionalist Islam continues to sanction the barbaric practice of marrying off prepubescent girls is this even an issue and that's only because Muslims believe that their prophet, Muhammad, married a girl of about the same age.

This practice would probably be easier to stamp out if only it were permitted for Muslims to say "Not everything Muhammad did was right, and just because Muhammad did it doesn't mean we should today." That, however, is difficult in a religion that considers even visual depictions of Muhammad to be blasphemous, never mind criticism. It's good that most Muslims around the world reject marrying little girls, but it's only in spite of Islamic traditions.

Tags: islam, child bride, saudi arabia

Jesus was a Community Organizer, Pilate was a Governor

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:27:32 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks:

Thank you to my friend Daniel, who has done community organizing from Harlem to LA to Boston. Thank you to Biko Baker of League of Young Voters, who I once interviewed and was immediately impressed by. Thank you to Saul Alinsky, largely considered the father of community organizing (pictured above). Thank you to all of you I don't know, who every day, make the choice to listen to ordinary people's stories and help them link these stories into a template for honest-to-goodness social change.

And, yes, thank you to Barack Obama, for making the choice to be a community organizer so many years ago and for continuing to be proud and loud about the importance of the role of the community organizer for our nation's well-being.

Clip Source: www.feministing.com

Thank You Thursdays: Community Organizers

Thank you to all the community organizers, past and present, who have recognized the ways in which the personal is the political, hearing--in the individual stories of ordinary people--a common thread of struggle deserving of action and resolution. Thank you to those who jump started whole movements (feminism, civil rights, labor) with their audacity and daily, hourly, minute-by-minute courage to knock on doors, sit down with friends and strangers alike, educate, and most of all, listen. Thank you to the community organizers who have targeted environmental racism--making sure that folks aren't poisoned in their own neighborhoods just because they don't have the resources to fight back. Thank you to the community organizers who have targeted civil rights, educational failures, classism, racism, sexism, ableism etc. etc.

Tags: republicans hate poor powerless people

Cheney Colleague Admits Bribery in Halliburton Oil Deals

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:32:26 GMT

clipped by: papananook

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

US Vice President Dick Cheney speaks at a news conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008. A former colleague of the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has pleaded guilty to funnelling millions of dollars in bribes to win lucrative contracts in Nigeria for Halliburton, during the period in the Nineties when Mr Cheney ran the giant oil and gas services company. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Albert Stanley, who was appointed by Mr Cheney as chief executive of Halliburton's subsidiary KBR, admitted using a north London lawyer to channel payments to Nigerian officials as part of a bribery scheme that landed some $6bn of work in the country over a decade.

"There is no suggestion that Mr Cheney knew at the time of the acquisition, or subsequently, that bribery was involved in the Nigerian contracts."

Of course not. Who would ever suggest that cheney ever did anything wrong.

Ecuador Constitution Would Grant Inalienable Rights To Nature

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:43:43 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: A wonderful thing, this....Good for Ecuador and we could take example.

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

Ecuador's proposed constitution includes an article that grants nature the right to "exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution" and will grant legal standing to any person to defend those rights in court.

A sea lion pup on Santiago Island, one of Ecuador's famed Galapagos Islands. (MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN/STAFF/FILE)

Voters will get to decide on Sept. 28 whether to adopt the new constitution, which would allow the president to run for reelection, to dissolve Congress, and to exert great control over the country's central bank. According to Reuters, 56 percent of Ecuadorans approve of the proposed document.

The blog Green Change quotes the five articles that acknowledge rights said to be possessed by nature, or "Pachamama," a goddess revered by indigenous Andean peoples whose name roughly translates into "Mother Earth."

rights to nature may represent a larger shift in how humans view their place

Republicans Launch Sexist Attack on Sarah Palin

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:11:54 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: This is the definition of "not getting it'.

Clip Source: www.thestar.com

Shortly after the news conference, the McCain campaign unveiled a new button in the Xcel Center, touting Palin as "The Hottest VP."

Tags: republicans, mccain, palin, sexism

Eat Me, Joe Biden

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:48:36 GMT

clipped by: Kauaiguy
clipper's remarks: As a life long independent, I think Obama could have done better.

Clip Source: www.rollingstone.com

Put a mythical six chimpanzees to work on a mythical six typewriters and one of them might eventually type out Hamlet, but I feel fairly confident that a billion years could pass before any healthy primate would make it even halfway through the unlikely sentence Donald Rumsfeld impeded the Iraq war effort. Yet there was Joe Biden, saying it on live television last week.

Tags: politics

The Mafia, the CIA and Bush Sr.

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:17:03 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: When you consider that Reagan was probably out of it from Day One of his term and that Bill Clinton is a close associate of George Bush Sr., the Bush crime syndicate has been influencing when not outright running the executive branch continuously since 1980, which, perhaps not so coincidentally, marks the earliest days of the credit bubble the economy is now having serious trouble digesting.

Clip Source: www.brasschecktv.com

[Video]

Roots of the Savings & Loan Scandal

[Video]

Regular Brasscheck TV viewers know that throughout its second term, the Bush administration actively interfered with states that attempted to enforce their own state lending laws.

Bush & Co. used the Office of the Controller of the Currency to sue states like New York to stop them from going after predatory lenders.

Bush Jr. is not the first Bush to get "hands on" involved in shaping the lending industry to his will.

Many know that one of this brothers, Neil, was part of a spectacular Savings & Loan failure in the 1980s.

What far fewer people are aware of is how deeply the CIA, organized crime and, George Bush Sr. were involved in the Savings & Loan disaster which caused US taxpayers and estimated trillion dollars plus.

The Bush family and its associates in organized crime and the CIA have figured out how to run this scam on a multi-hundred billion dollar level using the entire US banking system as its playground.

Swedish study finds genetic link to men's relationship woes

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:25:29 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Developed while we were on Mars.

Clip Source: www.theage.com.au

Swedish researchers said today they have found a link between a specific gene and the way men bond to their partners, which can explain why some men are more prone to problems in their love life.

"There are, of course, many reasons why a person might have relationship problems, but this is the first time that a specific gene variant has been associated with how men bond to their partners," Hasse Walum, a postgraduate student at the Karolinska Institute, said in a statement.

- Commitment 'genetic'
- May explain disastrous relationships
- 40% have gene variant

The researchers found that men who carry one or two copies of a variant of the gene often behave differently in relationships than men who lack the gene variant.

Four of 10 men in Sweden carry the gene variant, called allele 334, Walum told AFP.

The study surveyed 550 twins and their partners or spouses in Sweden.

Men defy stereotypes in defining masculinity

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:55:09 GMT

clipped by: zizzy
clipper's remarks:

There was no significant difference in rankings of masculinity and quality of life characteristics between men who experienced erectile dysfunction and those who did not.

Clip Source: newsinfo.iu.edu

These results suggest we should pay attention and ask rather than presume we know

Laurie Anderson: Zero and One from Home of the Brave

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 08:50:00 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: www.webdelsol.com

[Video]

This Is What A Police State Looks Like

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 04:52:08 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: Dissent is patriotic.

Clip Source: www.lewrockwell.com

In Denver, we're so afraid of unarmed civilians, we send 2 cops for each protestor.

Clip Source: www.denverpost.com

Police in riot gear surround protesters on 15th Street near Civic Center park in downtown Denver on Monday night. This is not America. This is what a police state looks like. You re worried about Beijing? This is repression, one activist shouted. (Jason Halley, Special to The Denver Post)

From Homeless to Hero: US Olympian Lolo Jones

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:37:56 GMT

clipped by: dulios

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Hurdler Lolo Jones clears obstacles on and off the track

BEIJING -- The coach knew there was something wrong. He could tell sometimes by the way Lori "Lolo" Jones dressed. Or by how she no longer had the bike she rode to practice. Or by how she didn't want to be dropped off right in front of her house when he gave her a ride home.

In a sense, Jones was homeless the first 18 years of her life in Des Moines, bouncing from apartment to apartment, school to school, because her single mother had five kids and no money for the rent. They lived a while in the basement of a church, an arrangement Jones made an effort to hide.

Her family moved so often, Jones said, that she went to a different school every year until she reached high school. Her father was in and out of jail. Her sister moved to live with a grandmother in Texas.

"I wanted to get out of poverty," she said.

At 26, Lolo Jones has done that and so much more.

Tags: olympics, poverty, homelessness, sports

Joe Biden: The Fight Against Domestic Violence

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 07:36:11 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: Biden authored the 1994 Violence Against Women Act.

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

The Fight Against Domestic Violence

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

The single, most important legislative accomplishment in my 32-year-old career in the Senate is passing the Violence Against Women Act. After years of work, countless hours of hearings, pages of expert testimony and Senate floor debate, my Act passed in 1994. The law was renewed in 2000 and most recently expanded in 2005 when I worked to include new measures to treat children who witness violence, to increase housing opportunities and to create dedicated resources for rape crisis centers.

the Violence Against Women Act also created a special $15 million program for colleges and universities to create campus-wide victim services and security programs. The Act has transformed the way police, prosecutors, judges and advocates tackle domestic violence in their communities, and infused more than $4 billion dollars to state systems to fight violence against women.

Tags: obama, biden, women, domestic violence