Near $800,000 University Grant To Study Pornography. Liberal Values In Action

No-I am not making this up-Heck I'd do it for a quarter of the price,or even free if I have the spare time. This is the best that liberal values in society can do with nearly $800,000

Researchers have been awarded almost $800,000 to study pornography and its wider place in society.

University of Auckland staff will look at the relationship between pornographic movies and people's real lives, examine views on it and how it reflects and affects society, Auckland Now reports.

The $790,000 project is one of 88 announced in $53.8 million worth of Marsden Fund Grants last month, when it was initially described as examining "public engagement towards a more inclusive and equitable society".

Marsden Fund Council chairman Professor Peter Hunter admitted the project's title had changed but said no attempt was made to disguise the study.

The original title was taken directly from the proposal and was chosen to avoid a prurient response, but all grants were publicly listed, he said.

He said the study was extremely important and the study of human sexuality had long been an important area for research.

Associate Professor of Psychology, Nicola Gavey, says that after years of researching the "cultural norms underpinning rape" and with an ongoing interest in sexual violence prevention society needs to think a lot more carefully about the issue of pornography.

Pornography's place within society needed to be understood, as did its affect on behaviour, she said.

Her research colleagues are Ginny Braun and Octavia Calder-Dawe, and Linda Tyler from the Centre for New Zealand Art Research and Discovery.

Ms Calder-Dawe will work with groups of young men and women "to explore the ethical dilemmas posed by exploitative and aggressive forms of pornography".

The group will also host an exhibition of artworks "that call into question the prejudicial gaze of mainstream pornography".

Kim McGregor, director of Rape Prevention Education, said it was "fabulous" academics would research such a complex topic.

She says given the known links between pornography and sexual violence the work is very important.

The Only Blog To Predict Gingrich's Rise "It's Gingrich,Or A Trump 3rd Party Run/Obama Win"

Back in early October, an eternity in politics where, as Harold Wilson said, a week is a lifetime, this blog predicted that, at the height of the Perry/Cain booms that both would falter and that Gingrich would shortly become the front runner.

At that point I felt that I would not support any candidate except Palin, but given that she is adamant she will not run I decided that I would vote for Gingrich and no other.


All the predictions and analysis are at the links indicated.To fully consider the tenor of what is presented here it is suggested this article is best considered by reviewing them.


It was further presented that a Palin/Gingrich alliance was forming with goodwill coming from both quarters. The explanation for Gingrich's poll surge, which so puzzled the Hot Air team at the time was explained to them and the future course of the GOP nominating campaign was clearly set out.


All has unfolded exactly as premised and will continue to do so. The fact that Gingrich is starting to come under attack from the right and left, and that conservative writers of note e.g. Prof. Jacobson and the insightful Josh Painter have subsequently followed my analysis, as has the  belatedly, and to their surprise, the mainstream media, supports the Gingrich scenario.


Palin will endorse Gingrich, and the momentum from that endorsement would ensure his nomination if the Beltway establishment comes to their senses. 


A Gingrich/Palin team would easily win in 2012, as this electoral college map indicates. Palin may choose not to run again, but a Gingrich victory would still be almost certain if he chooses McDonnell from Virginia-Virginia being the key state as Florida is a certainty.


Should the Beltway/country club establishment so work to bring about a Gingrich defeat they will not only  ensure Donald Trump's entry as a third party candidate, but they may very well ensure the breakup of the Republican Party. Margaret Carlson's attempted, but futile attempt to destroy Gingrich, is an example of what is coming


Trump has made it very clear that if the GOP "nominates a weak candidate" he will run. The message that Romney is perceived as the weak candidate is obvious, whereas he would not run against Gingrich, and especially Gingrich/Palin. 


If he makes a third party run (which he could win) the GOP will splinter into conservative/Beltway groups and it make take two or three elections before a conservative party wins the white house. In the meantime the Democrat's will have 8-12 years of executive power.


If not Gingrich then, with Romney as the nominee, for the GOP as with Louis XV “Après Mitt, le déluge” 


The only way to avoid the death of the Republican Party in that scenario would be for a Romney run to be blocked and a subsequent convention with no candidate having enough support for the nomination. At that point Palin could be drafted which would hold the party together. 

Carlson's Newt Attack Misses Point.Conservatives Don't Care About Past But His Future.

Like Godfather Part 3 I try to get out but "they keep pulling me back in". Even for a retired blogger there are some things said that are so inane, in the face of things so important, that even the dead might stir, or more properly roll over in their grave I suppose, that the most superannuated have to get back in harness-briefly I hope.


Margaret Carlson, who should know better, sigh....has a piece up at Bloomberg "Gingrich boom is just the latest bust" where she excoriates Gingrich for all manner of personal shortcomings, policy changes and basically not being Mitt Romney. To paraphrase "whose surge is the only one that matters which conservatives had better get ready for and used too."


In the real world Margaret, these are the facts. 


1.Romney can't get more than 30% support
2.Conservatives don't like him and won't support him
3. Yes, this time is different. Conservatives will, in numbers, sit on their hands next November rather than vote for Romney even if it means Obama (a lame duck from day one) is re-elected.


Now, in respect of all the faults and policy changes she charges Gingrich with, whilst expecting conservatives to revolt against Gingrich because of them, whilst learning to love flip flop Romney, she misses the point entirely.


It is, as with LBJ/JFK/Harding/Nixon/Obama/Bush/Clinton etc etc not what they did to get there, it is what they will do once they get there. All these presidents had massive flaws, personal failings (Harding was having it off in the White House cupboards as opposed to Clinton getting his in the Oval Office) and numerous factors which should have made them ineligible for office. But by hook and by crook (literally in some cases-see Rezco ) or the LBJ bio "Means Of Ascent") they became president.


When people voted for them in many cases there flaws were known but voters looked beyond them to what they believed the candidate would do once elected. So is the case with Gingrich. If Carlson and the Romneyites believe by listing Gingrich's flaws, the surge of support for Gingrich will dissipate they are foolish, ignorant and so biased they have lost touch with reality and Realpolitik.


Of course conservatives are well aware of all Carlson's muckraking points, but have judged Gingrich against the other candidates, especially Romney, and believe that he will best represents their interests as president.The past is not prologue Margaret, it is a drum roll and an indication of experience. Gingrich, warts and all, is the GOP's best choice from the conservative point of view to defeat Obama and to enact conservative policies. 


We don't give a stuff about what Newt did 15 years ago, it is whether he will do better than Romney in the campaign, and in office, to defeat President Obama to effect conservative concepts.

Breathes There A Man With Soul So Dead Who To Himself Has Not Said "This Is Good For A Smile"

Elizabeth Warren's Volunteer Coordinator Abandoned Daughter, Shacked Up With Leftist Journalist

Joanne Caucus, newly created Volunteer Coordinator for the Elizabeth Warren campaign for senator from Massachusetts (the Dem's challenger to to the Republican sitting senator Scott Brown) has a, to say the least, unusual past.


Caucus abandoned her husband, and her oddly named child Joanne Caucus junior, for no readily discerned serious reason except it being the height of radical feminism at the time. In the act of running away from the family home she, by pure chance, met a young university student who was on vacation riding his friends motorbike with a side-car.


The student took Joanne to his college and kept her in the dorm. Caucus evolved, in the atmosphere of 1970's student rebellion, into a radical feminist and Democrat. In due course,whilst working on a failed  congressional campaign for a radical Black activist, Caucus hooked up with, first, and confusedly, a Gay leftist lawyer who died of AIDS and then the doyen of left-wing journalist for a major DC newspaper.


Her abandoned daughter became, understandably, a radical leftist artist and moved to the hotbed of such New York City and eventually married, then divorced the very student who had picked up her mother when she left her family home. As could be expected, her divorce left her own daughter to be raised by a single parent.


Now, she Caucus, has left her journalist husband to move in with her granddaughter-a self-described "Deaniac" so she can be the Volunteer Coordinator for Elizabeth Warren. That such a classic exemplar of left-wing liberal values should undertake such a role is completely what one would expect. 


Why the voters would wish to elect a candidate whose team hires such a person would be difficult to understand in any state except Massachusetts which continued to elect Ted Kennedy after the Mary Jo incident.


The above is a synopsis of the Joanne Caucus story as it has unfolded though the Doonesbury strip since her first appearance. The full view of Joanne Caucus's early story and hook-up with the DC journalist can be found in the book "As the kid goes for broke." Joanne Caucus is not, as far as one can determine, a real person, but her life story as representative of Dem values is very real indeed. Her current activities can be traced in Doonesbury from this page.
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/archive/2011/11/14