Many of the responses to the Oprah clip were more mean spirited in humor, showing it's often easier to reduce masturbation (and the women discussing it) to a dirty joke rather than to value it as a component of female vitality, a vitality which for many women is hard fought.

Northrup and Winfrey were performing a function that's long overdue: educating women on the benefits of feeling sexually alive, and calling attention to masturbation's role, biochemically and emotionally, to that end.

This has been available to women in book form, but not during daytime TV, where one can always find an abundance of idiocy and violence.

Doctors paying attention to the quality of women's sex lives is a fairly new dynamic. Why use humor to tear down two women imparting sexual health information to an audience of adult women?   more »

Why is it OK to talk about Hillary - but not gender? Recent newsflash: Hillary cries, has feelings, bakes cookies, has cleavage, gets cheated on by her husband.

She worries about children and healthcare, is organised, negotiates, wears trouser suits, has a post-menopausal butt, cares about her mother and her daughter.

She is tough, hardened, smart, principled, married well, has socialised intimately with Hollywood stars, leaders of the "free world", the not-so-free world, and their wives.

Apparently, it is not OK to talk about Obama's masculine strut after winning Iowa, or why Huckabee's wife interrupted his Iowa victory speech - clearly conduct unbecoming of a first lady - or why Romney appears to spend more time on his hair than Edwards.

Or why it is ok for the entire Republican line-up to "hate Hillary" while using their beautiful, younger, second/third, more Biblically submissive or publicly quiet wives as a scenic backdrop.   more »

Despite running for the candidacy of the Democratic party,

Barack Obama is the great hope of conservatives.

The following article is a fawning tribute to Obama as a "sensible conservative." It's important to realize that Obama is considerably to the right of Hillary Clinton. Backing Obama is tantamount to making the Democrats even more like the Republicans.

"Right speech, wrong party." That was the conclusion of a number of conservative commentators after Barack Obama’s celebrated performance at the Democratic national convention in 2004.   more »

Nick Parsons, head of strategy for NAB Capital said: "There was no real trigger for what was a Black Monday. Overnight there was the very large sound of pennies dropping followed by a general market capitulation.

"What the markets have woken up to is that, yes, there will be a recession in the US and, no, the rest of the world won't be immune to that slowdown."

Graham Turner of GFC Economics said the gloomy mood in the markets might have been the delayed reaction to news last week of financial troubles for the US companies that insured the bonds linked to subprime mortgages, the value of which has plummeted as a result of falling real estate prices and rising home repossessions.

"The stock market has finally cracked and it has cracked because of all the underlying problems. People are worried about consumer spending going down, and with the stock market going down as well the two factors will start to feed off each other," said Turner.   more »

The reason that Clinton and Obama allowed themselves the luxury of turning the evening into a "this time it's personal" face-off was that they no longer feared losing votes to the underfunded Edwards, already badly weakened by third-place finishes in New Hampshire and Nevada.

For those who crave the blood sport aspects of politics, it was a night to remember. Clinton demonstrated that she has the ability to pile one attack on top of another without pausing for breath.

Finally, like a soda jerk adding the cherry atop an ice cream sundae, Clinton referred to the time when Obama was "practicing law and representing your contributor [Antoin] Rezko in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago."

Rezko -- who is certain to become a familiar figure in Republican attack ads if Obama is the Democratic nominee -- raised more than $150,000 for Obama's political campaigns (some of the money was later donated to charity) and aided the Obamas in a 2005 real-estate transaction.   more »