Completely Unnecessary

John Edwards slept with that lady after all. Whatever, as far as I’m concerned, but it’ll probably end his career. His whole rep is based on being a man of the people, a guy who tells it like it is.

And he actively lied about the affair when asked earlier this year.

So that’s not going to go well. Plus, everyone loves Elizabeth Edwards and she has cancer and… yeah, just not good for him.

To his credit he did release this statement after his interview with Bob Woodward:

It is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry, as it is inadequate to say to the people who love me that I am sorry. In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.

Ouch.

What I love about this story, however, is the lack of quotes for the story the NYT wanted to write:

The revelations brought swift reaction from those who know Mr. Edwards.

“My thoughts and prayers are with the Edwards family today and that’s all I’ve got to say,” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said during an event for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in Nevada today.

Hell yeah, Hillz!

Wait, what?

Clinton’s ’swift reaction’ was more or less ‘no comment’. Zing!

Elizabeth Edwards asked the media to lay off:

“The toll on our family of news helicopters over our house and reporters in our driveway is yet unknown,” she wrote. “I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John’s conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time.”

Man, Elizabeth Edwards is going to be wildly popular - I’m sure she’s thrilled.

Seriously though, everyone hated Clinton. And then her philandering husband cheated on her, and everyone was all, ‘Awwww, Hil!’. Imagine the outpouring of goodwill to a woman everyone loves during her golden boy husband’s fall from grace.

Anyway, hopefully someone gives the NYT a juicer comment than Clinton. Hate to waste a good turn of phrase like, ‘brought swift reaction’. Good luck, guys.

Edwards Admits to Extramarital Affair [NYT Caucus Blog]

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What is this photo?

The burned out skin, the lack of top teeth, the creepy, creepy thing that’s going on with the eye?

What is that? It looks like she’s got a coin jammed in it.

Actually, turn your head to the side for a second and then look at it.

The forehead and eyebrow region seem sunken in. Is this some computer animation of what the ideal orgasmic woman would look like?

She/it looks more like a corpse than a woman achieving ecstasy.

Assuming that some guy made this image, I think I know why 65% of Australian women are ’sexually disfunctional.’

Which cracks me up, by the way.

Moving to the article, the caption underneath the leading photo - of a naked man and woman in a hot tub - reads:

Professor Marita McCabe says many sexual problems are ‘very likely to be about the relationship rather than the woman’

So we’re broken, but it’s only half our fault? Awesome.

Hilariously the captioning makes it seem like Professor Marita McCabe is the woman in the hot tub. She might be - it’s actually completely unclear.

The article ends as charmingly as it began:

Attempts to develop a so-called female Viagra have so far failed.

Creepy sunken forehead demon is only half of the joy of theage.comau right now. (Sorry, thumbnail’s all stretchy unless they’re centered; WP’s new photo thingie not so awesome actually.)

Including the Joy of Sex article, there are a total of five sex-related stories gracing the top of the site. Five out of thirteen stories in the main section; four out of the top six featured stories.

All I can say is if theage.com.au can’t get you in the mood, not even female Viagra could help your frigid, huge vagine.

(I should thank the Age - I’ve been wanting a reason to link that video forever.)

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Dust off your virginity, and prepare to be creeped out all. over. again.

Besides the ostentatious religious displays and reliance on abstinence-only dogma, I could never really pinpoint what it was about purity balls that gave me such a massive wiggins.

Luckily, the NYT provided a picture gallery this year: aaand, it’s number 8 that provides the wig factor.

Let’s just run through the litany of terrifying quotes, shall we?

But after dessert, the 63 men stood and read aloud a covenant “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.”
…
“It inspires me to be spiritual and moral in turn. If I’m holding them to such high standards, you can be sure I won’t be cheating on their mother.”
…
“Something I need from dad is affirmation, being told I’m beautiful,” said Jordyn Wilson, 19, another daughter of Randy and Lisa. “If we don’t get it from home, we will go out to the culture and get it from them.”

Not content with making millions off taxpayers, abstinence groups are branching out:

The Abstinence Clearinghouse, an advocacy group, says it sells hundreds of purity ball kits annually to interested groups all over the country and abroad.

Luckily, study after study shows that these fine young ladies will almost assuredly be having sex within a couple of years (except hopefully for the two 9-year-olds one father saw fit to bring).

Granted, they probably won’t use condoms - since they’ve been told they don’t work - but at least they’ll have good relationships with their dads. Might help with the shotgun wedding part!

Links:
Dancing the Night Away, With a Higher Purpose [NYT]
Picture Gallery [NYT]

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This is seriously the front page theage.com.au is running at the moment (too wide, hence the thumbnail):

Stories include: testimony at Charles Taylor’s trial, fleeing molesty schoolmarms and ‘Kristen’s’ musical popularity. Don’t miss the two stories at the bottom about the ‘naked kidnap ordeal’ and that lady who was on the toilet for two years.

Every other goddamn headline these days is some sensationalist, Herald-Sun sex story.
And this is why, Fairfax Media, I’ve pretty much stopped reading the online version of your newspaper.

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As if you needed one more reason not to sleep with teenagers. (For my part, I’m contractually obligated not to sleep with nearly 40 of them.)

Remember that stat that your doctor keeps telling you about how 80% of women get HPV by the time they’re 50?

You can add to that the fact that 25% of teenage girls now have an STI.

These numbers include unfortunately high rates of infection for African-American girls, at around 50%. Rates were obviously lower (because of basic math, not race) for whites and Latinas, but still hovering at an alarming 20%.

Unsurprisingly, HPV was the most common STI at 18%, followed by chlamydia at 4%. At least herpes wasn’t up there, as it sucks way worse than HPV or chlamydia.

Anyway, let this serve as a glowing testimonial to the joys of abstinence education, which is working amazingly to eradicate STIs, as these infection rates clearly display.

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I’m sick of the NYT/McCain scandal already.

Did he have improper lobbyist relationships? Did the NYT go to print with second-rate sources? And, most importantly, did Senator Straight Talk screw that lady that looks just like his second wife?

Because he was married before you know…

The NYT kneecap was sleazy enough. They might have had a good story with the lobbyist ties, but they messed it up by going for the sex angle with bad sourcing. Isn’t it enough that a senator who prides himself on being above Washington trash gets caught with his hands in the dumpster? Especially when he got bit it in the 90s for the same thing?

No.

So now, some lefty blogs - and I’m just picking on Crooks and Liars because it was a particularly bad example - are going to town on the sex angle. Here’s how John Amato opened up a Thursday post called ‘Cheaters Write Letters‘:

I find it interesting that McCain didn’t deny having a relationship with Iseman all that much, but that’s not the big story since he had cheated on his first wife anyway.

Mother of hell. Every liberal who ever criticized Republicans for railroading Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal had better take a long, hard look at how they want to cover this story. That quote above is just some tacky, tacky horribleness.

Not to mention that all liberals had to do was sit back and let the right wing hate on John McCain all the way to an Obama/Clinton White House. Rush and all the usual suspects fancy McCain in the White House only marginally more than they like either of the Democratic contenders.

I read somewhere that this story - since it really started in December - might have originated as a right-wing hit piece to keep McCain from becoming the nominee. Well, that didn’t work. But now, with the ‘liberal’ NYT attacking McCain - and in such a audacious fashion - they’re all coming to his aid.

Plus, McCain had happily hamstringed himself with the FEC, and now he’s got donations coming in because of this story.

At least the NYT should have proved, once and for all, its lack of liberal bias - because they just played right into the hands of the McCain campaign. And the lefty blogosphere is doing the same.

So what I have to say is: Just Stop.

No more sex stories. No more pictures/captioning like this. Because every time the left behaves like what we detest, Rush and Co will stir up their base with stories of how horrible we are.

And the terrible part is, we’ll deserve it.

Links:
For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk [NYT]
McCain Gathers Support and Donations in Aftermath of Article in The Times [NYT]
Cheaters Write Letters [Crooks and Liars]
McCain story proves incendiary among journalists, conservatives [LA Times]
Analysis: McCain Loses Leverage [AP]
McCain’s FEC Problem [TPM Muckraker]
Rep. Rick Renzi Indicted For Extortion, Wire Fraud, Money Laundering And Other Crimes [Think Progress]

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Missouri isn’t the best state in which to find yourself unhappily pregnant. But if some lawmakers get their way, many more women will find themselves in such dire straits.

The Kansas City Star reports:

Legislation presented to a House panel last week would classify emergency contraception as an abortion-inducing medication, contrary to the definition used by the Food and Drug Administration.

Leftie sites are sputtering with justified rage since, as many of them have pointed out for the millionth time, emergency contraception is not an abortifacient. It essentially works as a mega dose of birth control - either preventing ovulation, fertilization or a fertilized egg from implanting on the uterine wall.

The bill, should it pass, would also allow pharmacists to abstain (ha) from dispensing Plan B without fear of lawsuits or government regulation.

It seems like this bill won’t pass. Danger averted? Not really.

Here’s the problem: this is the more subtle ‘whittling away’ tactic that anti-choicers have been working on for some years. Knowing that they can’t get abortion outlawed, they’ll settle for 24-hour waiting periods and parental notification. For now. Once people are used to those ideas, they’ll push for more. [It's like what we're doing with civil unions, but terrible.]

But that’s abortion, right? Surely they wouldn’t come after your Ortho-Tri. Well, I wouldn’t be so sure. Getting rid of contraceptives is definitely on the agenda for some of these groups, and they’ll use the same tactics.

All they have to do is get Plan B classified as an abortion-inducing drug in one state. Once that happens, things will start to fall pretty quickly. Plan B is essentially what I said: a mega dose of the pill, minus the estrogen. If Plan B becomes classified as abortion-inducing, any pill containing levonorgestrel (the synthetic progesterone found in many pills, both monophasal and triphasal) will be easy prey.

It’s not a far step from allowing a pharmacist to deny you Plan B because it causes abortion to denying you the pill for the exact same reason.

And they know it.

This is a “First they came…” situation, and if it fails in Missouri, it will be tried elsewhere.

Feministing has info on how you can contact the Missouri Health Care Policy committee chair. He’s a doctor, so hopefully he won’t need a marvelous amount of convincing, but a few emails never hurt.

Links:
Missouri Bill Would Reclassify Morning-After Pill, Protect Pharmacies [Kansas City Star] - Love that headline by the way, poor pharmacies…
Analysis of HB1625 [NARAL]

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I don’t know if I’ve made this point before, but abstinence-only sex ed is stupid as hell. Apparently, it’s also making Americans infectious as hell:

• 1 million new cases of chlamydia
• Gonorrhea rates are jumping, especially the ’superbug’ variety
• Syphilis is also on the rise, including, for the first time in 15 years, congenital syphilis

Awesome. Maybe it all just got through the tiny holes God puts in the condoms so you get the AIDS.

US sets record in sexual disease cases [Yahoo News]

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Tired today. Been sleeping poorly. I thought hot yoga was affecting me negatively, until I talked to Haley this afternoon:

H: Ugg. God, I feel like shit - like I’m going to faint.

Me: Oh, that sucks. How come?

H: I haven’t been able to sleep the last couple nights.

Me: Oh me too! The last couple days. I’ve been waking up every few hours. Have you been having crazy dreams? Like fever dreams?

H: Yeah, really crazy dreams… [beat] um, have you been having sex dreams?

Why, yes I have. And so has everyone else I’ve asked since Haley and I had our (omg! gleeful!) oversharing moment. Boys, girls - everyone has been subconsciously getting it on.

Now, I’ve been having insane fever dreams about the Congo and (I think) a conversation with John Howard, too- but these are normal things floating around my subconscious. I generally don’t have too many sex dreams, and especially not in tandem with others.

Turns out, it’s a full moon the last couple of days. I know weird things happen around the full moon - John said all the crazies were out last night - but I really don’t think I’ve ever experienced a group manifestation like this before. Is this a just a collective Melbourne-emerging-from-winter thing? Anyone else finding themselves in flagrante delicto while they slumber?

And to my brain/gravity/moon/ocean currents I say: It’s been fun, but if I’m going to be this exhausted, I’d at least like breakfast in the morning.

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The Post reports that after years of downward trending, the rate of sexual activity amongst young people has reached a plateau. Since 2001, the number of teens having sex hasn’t changed much. What also happened that year?

The halt in the downward trend coincided with an increase in federal spending on programs focused exclusively on encouraging sexual abstinence until marriage, several experts noted.

So… it seems that abstinence-only ’sex ed’ not only ineffective at preventing more kids from having sex, but may have had a hand in arresting the already downward trend (there are some other factors like declining fear of AIDS that may also have played a role). Still, at best, abstinence-only ‘ed’ is doing little to stem the rush of teens to the bedroom. Clearly, this will send a message to abstinence-only ‘educators’ that their methods are not exactly working.

But abstinence proponents argue that, if anything, the data underscore the need for greater emphasis on encouraging youngsters to abstain from sex until marriage.

“We need to increase abstinence education and give more dollars to abstinence education. It is the healthiest program we have for young people,” said Leslee Unruh of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse.

Oh, there it is - ‘give more dollars’ - because millions upon millions aren’t enough (for instance, the $28 million additional funds approved by the House just last week (on top of the $176 million spent per year)).

I guess anything ‘works’ so long as the cow keeps giving up the milk. And isn’t that one of the core lessons of abstinence only ‘education’ - why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

I guess you could say, abstinence-only ‘educators’ are fucking America. And, given their views, they’re probably doing it without a condom.

Condoms have tiny holes that let the AIDS through, you know.

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