Oh, those horny liberal women

Miscellaneous, Religion, , , ,

Yup, it’s exactly what the headline says:

Here’s how we know. The NFSS posed this question to respondents:

Are you content with the amount of sex you are having?

Respondents could answer in one of three ways: (1) Yes; (2) No, I’d prefer more; or (3) No, I’d prefer less. Now, before you throw around claims of misogyny, take some comfort in knowing that I don’t think answer #3 is somehow inherently more correct than #2. Good grief. My job here is interpretation.

Here are the simple numbers: 16% of “very conservative” women say they’d prefer more, compared with 29% of conservative women, 31% of moderates, 47% of liberals, and 50% of “very liberal” women…

And, remarkably, it isn’t much affected by how much sex they’ve actually had recently. That is, while greater recent frequency of sex predicts less desire for more sex, it does nothing to diminish the link between political liberalism and wanting more sex. And women of all political stripes report statistically-comparable frequency of sex.

In regression models, the measure of political liberalism remains significantly associated with the odds of wanting more sex even after controlling for the frequency of actual intercourse over the past two weeks, their age, marital status, education level, whether they’ve masturbated recently, their anxiety level, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, depressive symptoms, and porn use. Many of these are significant predictors of wanting more sex. And still the political thing matters.

One theory? Sex = religion for liberals. No, really:

1. More liberal women are less likely to be religious. (In the NFSS and other datasets, she’s correct in this).

2. Given that, more liberal women are therefore more likely to have a difficult time attributing transcendent value to aspects of life such as their work, relationships, children, and daily tasks. Some scholars speak of this as “sanctifying daily life.” In other words, liberal women are less apt to conceive of mundane, material life as imbued with or reflecting the sacred.

3. Nevertheless, most people experience sexual expression as–in some significant way–transcendent, or higher-than-other-experiences.

4. More liberal women therefore want to have more sex because they feel the lack of sufficient transcendence in life. If sex is one of the few pathways to it, then it’s sensible to desire more of it.

Tucker Carlson gets the profile treatment

Media, Politics, ,
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE]

And it’s…ambivalent, to put it nicely:

The joke about mustaches and dirty words feels true because—let’s just say it—Tucker Carlson is not America’s sweetheart. The word “dick” is a frequent descriptor, often modified by “total.” That was the epithet Jon Stewart directed at him during their infamous Crossfire showdown, an encounter that hastened the demise of the program and, temporarily at least, deflated the world’s most ascendant pundit.

Search Twitter and you’ll find Carlson deemed a hack, a loser, and a bunch of other names that magazines like this one don’t publish.

He is “like that kid in the 2nd grade you just HATED,” one tweet says. The editor at large of Salon, Joan Walsh, recently asserted that Carlson is the “poster boy for spoiled rich kids everywhere.” Wonkette called him a “snide trustfunder.” The always understated Matt Taibbi once wrote in the Buffalo Beast that you “would be hard-pressed to find an American who would not leap to his feet to cheer the sight of Tucker Carlson getting his teeth kicked down an alley.” Those warm feelings extend to the Daily Caller, which Gawker—who knows a thing or two about the bottom-feeding corners of the Web—declared “the worst website on the Internet.”

And in case you need another reason to despise Tucker Carlson, there’s this: The man couldn’t be happier.

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The French think strategically…

Politics, , , , , , , , , , ,

…while the United States continues to think anachronistically:

France will vote in favor of the Palestinians’ request to heighten their profile at the United Nations, the French foreign minister told Parliament on Tuesday, embracing a move that Israel and the United States oppose.

The support of France, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, is the most significant boost to date for the Palestinians’ hopes to be granted nonmember observer status and thus greater international recognition. Russia and China, two other permanent members, have also thrown their support behind the Palestinian bid.

The French support appeared calculated to strengthen the position of the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah party governs the West Bank, after fighting with Israel in the Gaza Strip this month that left Hamas, the Islamic militant organization that oversees Gaza, ascendant.

For too many years, the American approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been incoherent. We want democratic elections, but then we decry the results and call the winners a terrorist organization. We want fewer terror attacks, but then support Israel in policies that only strengthen the hand of those same people we call terrorists. What do we want, exactly?

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The Republicans’ Susan Rice strategy

Politics, , , , , , , , ,
Courtesy of the New York Times.

On one level, John McCain’s attack-dog approach to the possible nomination of UN ambassador Susan Rice as Secretary of State falls in line with the ex-maverick’s curmudgeonly stance on everything these days. Ever since losing the 2008 presidential contest (in reality, even somewhat before the actual election itself), McCain has retreated from his previously commendable independent streak and become an archetype of the modern Republican Party: obstinate and incoherent all at once.

Today, after Rice called for an in-person meeting with Republican senators McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte, all three officials emerged from the closed-doors conversation speaking as if with one voice:

“We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got, and some that we didn’t get,” Senator John McCain of Arizona said to reporters. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said, “Bottom line: I’m more concerned than I was before” — a sentiment echoed by Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

Their statements – coming after Ms. Rice’s conciliatory remarks during a meeting designed to mend fences with her three critics and smooth the way for her nomination as secretary of state if President Obama decides on her as the successor to Hillary Rodham Clinton – attested to the bitterness of the feud between the White House and Republicans over Benghazi.

Mr. Graham and Ms. Ayotte said that knowing what they know now, they would place a hold on Ms. Rice’s nomination if Mr. Obama selected her.

“I wouldn’t vote for anybody being nominated out of the Benghazi debacle until I had answers about what happened that I don’t have today,” Mr. Graham said.

Of course, Rice has rather consistently stated that she had simply repeated what she’d heard from the intelligence community. There’s very little actual substance for such a major controversy (fanned, in large part, by conservative outlets such as FOX News, as I covered yesterday).

That said, one factor that has been consistently under-covered during this ongoing saga is the choice President Obama must make for Secretary of State. All indications are that Susan Rice and John Kerry are the frontrunners. In that Elizabeth Warren just reclaimed Massachusetts’ second U.S. Senate seat from Republican Scott Brown (who remains popular in the state despite his defeat), moving Kerry to the executive cabinet means that yet another senatorial election would have to take place in the state.

Democrats are nervous (even if they won’t admit it publicly) about their chances. Despite being overwhelmingly liberal, Massachusetts may not have completely forgiven Martha Coakley for her abysmal campaign in the special election against Brown in 2009-2010. And aside from her, the Democratic field is fairly weak in the state. Brown, meanwhile, continues to enjoy relatively broad popularity and would be a natural (and well-known) contender for the seat.

Therefore, it is possible that John McCain (along with Graham, Ayotte, et al) should be given some credit for strategy here. By coming down so hard on Susan Rice, he may be hoping to force Obama’s hand by making Kerry the de facto lone candidate for Secretary of State and, therefore, opening up a potential Senate gain for Republicans in Massachusetts. Thus, instead of simply succumbing to his baser instincts to criticize everything Democrats do, he may only be guilty of succumbing to his party’s electoral ambitions: a distinction hardly worthy of sainthood, to be sure, but certainly well in line with the behavior of virtually everyone else in Congress.

The truth about voter fraud

Politics, , , , , , ,

It’s being actively perpetrated by Republican Party officials, not criminally-minded voters. Of course, this isn’t exactly news. This past June, Mike Turzai, the Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania House, explicitly boasted that voter ID laws in that state would enable Mitt Romney to win the presidential vote there:

“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation — abortion facility regulations — in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done,” he said to applause at a Republican State Committee this weekend, according to PoliticsPa.com.

The comment contradicted the usual Republican line that voter ID laws are for guarding against voter fraud — which is extremely rare if not nonexistent in practice — and not to help elect Republicans.

Pennsylvania passed a new law in March through a GOP-led legislature requiring voters to show a driver’s license or government issued photo ID before voting.

Turzai’s statement was widely condemned by Democrats and activists, who continued to remind the public that voter fraud is extremely, extremely rare and that Republican harping on it was indicative instead of a desire to suppress certain votes — principally those cast by minorities and other Democratic-leaning constituencies.

Well, now we have even more evidence that Republican attempts to eliminate Democratic votes was not restricted to Pennsylvania, nor to one erstwhile and tone-deaf state representative. The Palm Beach Post reports:

A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.

Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law’s main purpose: GOP victory.

Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.

“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.

“They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue,” Greer said. “It’s all a marketing ploy.”

It must be noted straightaway that both Crist and Greer are hardly disinterested observers. The latter is, in fact, currently under indictment, “accused of stealing $200,000 from the [Republican] party through a phony campaign fundraising operation.” Crist, likewise, is rumored to be switching to the Democratic side of the aisle after already angering conservatives by realigning as an independent in 2010.

Nevertheless, the article’s extensive investigation is well-conducted and deserving of greater attention. Given the Republican Party’s obsession with the voter fraud phantom menace, it’s nice to see journalists actually digging a little deeper by talking to active participants in the discussions, instead of simply inferring Republican leaders’ intentions from badly-justified voter ID laws.

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Mini-robots playing “Fur Elise?” Yup, this must be 2012

Technology, , , , , , ,
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YigAzrFoN3E]

Wired has more:

Here’s how it works: A single “leader” bot knows the score and the positions other robots must be in to play the right notes at the right time. The leader sends this information to the robots closest to it, directing them to the appropriate positions on the virtual keyboard. Those robots, in turn, relay the information to the bots closest to them, mimicking the swarming behavior of insects.

The researchers hope to make the robots as efficient as possible by minimizing the distance traveled by each bot and using the fewest robots possible at any given time. This means the slower the tempo of the song, the fewer robots playing, and vice versa.