President-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton walked down Pennsylvania Avenue this morning, in an impeccable black wool pantsuit, her buttery suede Manolo Blahniks tapping out a staccato rhythm as background music to history.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, especially chosen to administer the oath of office, in place of the traditional Chief Justice, did not produce a Testament, Old or New.

Instead, she pulled out a tattered copy of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and held it to the new Commander-in-Chief to swear her oath upon.

"I swear," Hillary intoned, echoing the words of forty-three preceding American Presidents and became the first woman President of the United States.   more »

There's no doubt about it,

the media and popular culture as

a whole has gotten upfront, in-your-face, sexier

It's not a trend. At least not anymore it isn't.

It's become an institution, an atmosphere.

Pop music and porn now feed off each other.

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Keywords: porn, culture, pop, sexism

"Procreation Is Salvation"

Not only do these otherwise variously well-made, funny and clever films discount abortion, they also represent pregnancy and childbirth as redemptive for the women despite their initial reservations; indeed, the new babies spread comfort and joy to all and sundry.

Procreation is salvation; parenthood is maturity; abortion is taboo. These have been familiar themes in Hollywood in the last two decades of privatization, the erosion of the welfare state, the evisceration of health care, and the accompanying ideology of the family.

Eve Kushner, author of Experiencing Abortion: A Weaving of Women's Words, argued this in a 2000 review of movies such as Parenthood, Opposite of Sex, Nine Months, and Look Who's Talking which “keep abortion out of plots and even out of dialogue, ensuring that movies end with a heartwarming birth.”   more »

The US has unleashed a ferocious bombing campaign on Iraq and Afghanistan, with devastating effects on the population. This surge in the “air war” is largely hidden behind talk of “recent successes” for the occupations.

According to figures released by the US military – known as “airpower summary of close air support missions” – in 2006 there were 229 US bombing missions. But last year this rose to 1,447 – more than a 500 percent increase.

The most frequently used munition in this campaign of air bombardment is the Guided Bomb Unit 12, a laser guided bomb with a 500 pound “general purpose warhead”. This warhead is capable of reducing houses to rubble.

In 2006 over 111,000 pounds of bombs were dropped on targets in Iraq. Extrapolating for 2007, it can be estimated that 500,000 pounds have been dropped.   more »

If you like cynicism in politics, you’ve got to love Barack Obama. There’s nothing naïve or fanciful about the way he says one thing to one audience and another thing to a different voter or funding group.

It’s all about cold calculation under the perverse, narrow-spectrum, and “winner-take-all” rules of the United States’ corporate-crafted elections system.

Obama: “Our Greatest Asset Is Capitalism"

In his remarkably power-friendly campaign book The Audacity of Hope (New York: 2006), Obama praised the industrialized world’s most unequal and wealth-top-heavy nation – the United States – for the glorious workings of its savagely regressive capitalist system.   more »