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Oct 2011 21

by Blogbot

Let’s talks about sex, sexuality, and sexism this Sunday (Oct 23rd). SG Radio hosts Nicole Powers (SG’s Managing Editor) and recovering reality TV star Lacey Conner (Rock of Love and Charm School) will be joined in-studio by the always charming actor, musician and poet Michael Des Barres, gender writer and commentator Yashar Ali, and SG’s Red, White and Femme columnist Darrah de jour.

Tune in to the world’s leading naked radio show for two hours of totally awesome tunes and extreme conversation – and don’t let yo momma listen in!

Listen to SG Radio live Sunday night from 10 PM til Midnight on Indie1031.com

Got questions? Then dial our studio hotline digits this Sunday between 10 PM and midnight PST: 323-900-6012

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.

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Oct 2011 20

by Nicole Breanne

Guys, the Republican Debate in Las Vegas, Nevada happened Tuesday night…I’m writing about it now because I needed all of Wednesday to process what the fuck happened. Here are the highlights:

Michelle Bachmann, who is completely batshit crazy and was dressed like a sea captain for some reason, unleashed her “double wall” plan. She was very proud of the fact that she’s the only candidate to sign a plan with a double wall to protect our borders from illegal crossings. Michelle Bachmann is campaigning on the “double bag it” platform. It doesn’t work on condoms and it ain’t gonna work on illegal border jumping. Go back to your padded cell.

Ron Paul was there, and reminds me of that crazy uncle that is always invited to family gatherings though all anyone does is talk about how crazy he is and how they have no idea why they still allow him to come around. They just let him putter around in his boxer shorts and tattered robe talking to himself because he’s family. So he was there. Earlier in the day, he had talked to Wolf Blitzer about how he wants to get rid of five government cabinet positions and their associated agencies to cut $1 trillion from the budget including the Department of Energy and Department of Education –– cause who needs those? At the debate he brought up that time that Ronald Regan negotiated with terrorists and how no one held it against him. You guys remember that right? Regan negotiating with terrorists?

Next is Herman Cain, who scares me. His ideas are ludicrous and there’s a video of him singing “Imagine There’s No Pizza” set to the tune of the idealistic John Lennon classic. To top his crazy ass pizza off, he was quoted as saying: “Jesus was killed by a liberal court.” He also stated in a paper called The Perfect Conservative that “He (Jesus) helped the poor without one government program. He healed the sick without a government health care system. He fed the hungry without food stamps.” Continuing, Cain also noted that, “For three years He was unemployed, and never collected an unemployment check.” Maybe that’s because none of that existed, but I digress.

So at the debate everyone went apeshit over Cain’s 9-9-9 plan –– which sadly didn’t involve 9-inch pizzas with 9 toppings for $9.99. No Cain’s 9-9-9 plan involves 9% corporate business flat tax, 9% income flat tax and a 9% national sales tax. Everyone then jumped on how stupid this plan is. Rick Perry implied that it’s actually going to cost people more (which it will). Howard Cain explains it as “Mixing apples and oranges. State tax is an apple we are replacing apples with oranges. We are replacing current tax codes with oranges.” Well, thank Christ Herman, because I was worried about our vitamin C intake! Are Republican’s allergic to coherent explanations?

Moving on to Mitt Romney, he explained Romneycare, which is basically Obamacare. In fact lots of Republican’s were pissed at Mitt because his advisors told Obama how to put together Obamacare. So Mitt says, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Romney care works great. Massachusetts loves it,” but he would “never impose this on the nation”. Yeah man, don’t impose a working system on a nation that’s ranked below numerous so-called third world countries for healthcare. That’s madness!!!

But now we come to the big dogs, the main event: ROMNEY vs. PERRY. These dudes hate each other, and they don’t even try to hide it. Mitt Romney touched Rick Perry. Now that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but you do not touch your opponent during a debate. You do not place your hands on someone to get them to stop talking like they are a 5-year old upset about someone stealing their ball at recess. Romney then followed up this condescending gesture with this condescending quote: “You have a problem with letting people finish speaking. If you want to President you need to learn how to let both sides finish.” I’m sorry Mitt Romney, but your vast knowledge on how to be President comes from where? If you want to be President, maybe you should keep your pompous holier than thou attitude in check.

My favorite part of the debate was the moment Rick Perry brought up the fact that Mitt Romney employed illegals to work at his property as gardeners. Guys, I know it’s shocking, right? So Romney continues to mess with Texas, he does not give a fuck! He’s like, “Listen Tex!” OK, he didn’t exactly say that, but in my version of the debate he totally did. What he did say was that when he found out about the undocumented workers he confronted the company and told them, “Look, you can’t have any illegals working on our property. I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake.”

Wow, just wow. Drop the mic and walk off stage ‘cause it is over. Let me break down that quote that Republican Presidential candidate said on national TV at a debate:

  • Part 1: “You can’t have any illegals working on our property.”

    He doesn’t say, “You can’t hire illegals period.” He says you just can’t have them on his property…which brings us to part two:

  • Part 2: “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake.”

    In other words the exploitation of immigrants for two bucks an hour would be totally fine if I wasn’t being looked at under a microscope. Where does it end Romney? “Get these drugs outta my house I’m running for office for Pete’s sake!” “Get that Tijuana stripper and donkey out of my back room, I’m running for office for Pete’s sake!” Guys, it’s gonna be epic at Romney’s house after he’s done running for office.

This campaign has more bad acting, dialogue, and action than a Stallone movie franchise. I cannot wait for PERRY and ROMNEY in REPUBLICAN DEBATE IX!

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Oct 2011 20

by Damon Martin

Finding humor and easy to understand facts as an atheist isn’t always an easy thing to do.

Being an atheist myself, I’m always searching out new ways to help people understand science, as well as why I reject faith and religion as a whole. Sometimes it involves long conversations over several hours, other times it’s watching a film like Bill Maher’s Religulous.

More often than not however it’s the suggestion for that friend, co-worker or acquaintance to read a book that I’ve devoured in the hopes that they will find something interesting or intriguing to capture their attention within it. Normally, I tell them to read the Bible cover to cover and they are almost assured to become an atheist, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Two such books have been released recently. One will make you laugh, but also question things like faith and religion. The other is a fantastic exploration of science triumphing over myth that could be used as a text book for any middle school.

Penn Jillette, the talking half of the famous magician duo Penn and Teller, released a book in late summer titled God No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales in which he presents his version of the ten atheist commandments.

The book was actually inspired by noted conservative and Mormon Glenn Beck who suggested while interviewing Penn once that atheists should have their own commandments to live by, much like those in the Bible that Christians claim to follow on a daily basis.

Penn explores his commandments with a slew of personal stories and encounters, while going right for the jugular with subjects like atheists vs. agnostics (the chapter is entitled “Agnostics: No One Can Know For Sure But I Believe They’re Full of Shit”).

His stories are told in a way that will definitely keep you laughing, but much like his atheist brethren Ricky Gervais, when Penn gets serious and wants to make a point, his writing is crisp, striking and well thought out.

God No! is a great introduction for anybody wanting to learn more about morality in the atheist world, while also finding humor in everyday situations that many atheists will encounter or in Penn’s case have encountered.

While Penn’s book is more of a straight forward slap in the face with reality about being an atheist, famed biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins‘ new book The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True is a spellbinding narrative of the wondrous world of science and how it compares to the myths that seemingly capture our attention as youths.

The book is aimed at children ages 12 and up, and really could be a science manual for kids who are intrigued by science and how things work.

Dawkins along with illustrator Dave McKean weave a beautiful scientific picture of the world while explaining things like where a rainbow comes from, why there are so many different animals, and who the first man was. The questions and myths are laid out and Dawkins sets out to not only disprove them, but explain how science works to give answers that are just as mystifying and amazing.

Dawkins takes the myths and tales that we all learned as children and debunks them in a way that not only makes sense, but makes things fit together like a puzzle.

Throughout the book, Dawkins even admits there are some things he doesn’t know the answer to, but unlike myths and religion, he admits to it and doesn’t try to come up with a story to fill in the gaps in his knowledge.

The Magic of Reality is a book that can be taught to children, but many adults will find just as enthralling. There is also an iPad version of the book (which I purchased), which is a fantastic way to read the text and watch the illustrations come to life.

With either book, God No! by Penn Jillette or The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins, science and atheism are explored, examined and explained in some form or fashion. Both books are well-written, well thought out and a great addition to a library.

Even if you’re not an atheist, everyone can learn something from Dawkins and Penn.





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Oct 2011 15

by Blogbot

The #OWS Jedi returned to DTLA for the third weekend running, and the force was with @OccupyLA with an estimated turnout of 3 to 5K for today’s Global Revolution Day march through the city’s financial district.

Added benefits to this protesting business: Marching is pretty much the same as hiking, but with more signs + you can walk the dog.

Another four-legged protester. If corporations can claim citizenship, dogs can too! #JustSaying

Protesting is thirsty work though.

The LAPD continues to be lovely…#Shame the same can’t be said for the NYPD. In New York today they arrested a group of Citi Bank customers — for trying to close their accounts — for realz! Later, 74 protesters were arrested in Times Square. Meanwhile in Denver, riot police broke things up again, and in Chicago they’re trying to evict protesters.

In NYC police have also been detaining protesters for violating an obscure law dating back to 1845 which was intended to stop tenant farmers from covering their faces during a peasant uprising (well I guess #OWS really is one of those!). Meanwhile, in London, Julian Assange was asked to remove his mask by police there. Things are going to get really confusing come Halloween. #JustSaying

Fortunately, in LA, protesting is a family affair.

Lovely weather for it too!

Imagine what the world would be like if the rich and corporations paid their fair share.

To clarify: What part of shared sacrifice don’t you get?

Contrary to what the 1% owned mainstream media would have you believe, we are not rebels without a cause.

The 99 percent are fighting for <3, =ity, & abundance 4 all. I think you should join us!

Because this 99 percenter would like a future worth looking forward to.

Dear 1%, Are you getting it yet?

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Oct 2011 14

by Yashar Ali


[Ajilee in How To Fake An Orgasm]

It’s great to be a man in our society, the perks seem to be endless. Everything is built with the intention of accommodating our needs. It’s fantastic, really. We men are constantly validated.

And the bedroom is one place where we receive consistent validation. I’m talking about women faking orgasms and giving us the sense that we’re the greatest lovers that have ever lived.

What a terrific arrangement for men. We get all the sexual pleasure and the feeling that we have satisfied the woman we’re sleeping with, without actually having done so.

A woman faking an orgasm is now sort of, just part of the deal, isn’t it? You just do it; it’s almost like something that’s passed down from generation to generation, like makeup tips or a recipe. It’s a gift women give to men, because it’ll just keep him satisfied and calm.

I couldn’t disagree more.
I think it’s a major offense to women and their sexual selves. And it shouldn’t be casual water cooler conversation nor should it be reserved for women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan.

The fake orgasm should be examined as a systemic problem in our society.

A Temple University study, featured in the CBS News column, “Study: Most Women Fake Orgasms — But Why?” shows around 60 percent of women have faked an orgasm.

This all comes down to conditioning. From a very early age, women are taught to satisfy the fiery male ego. The fake orgasm is just another moment in which a woman sacrifices for a man without receiving anything in return and worse, it leaves them feeling sexually unfulfilled.

Today, when we see the female orgasm covered in the mainstream, it’s dealt with in a comedic way. We see Meg Ryan’s character in When Harry Met Sally screaming at the top of her lungs (in a diner) or we see an Herbal Essences commercial with a woman having a massive orgasm over fabulous shampoo. We find the sound of a woman faking an orgasm to be funny.

It’s not. It’s the sound of an unsatisfied woman working to satisfy the already exploding male ego.

We don’t talk publicly about the orgasm gap in the mainstream — but that doesn’t surprise me. Our male-dominated society would never want to expose the fact that women are faking orgasms en masse, and that men really aren’t satisfying women in droves.

However, the numbers reveal something more clarifying. According to the ABC News article, “Female Orgasm May Be Tied to ‘Rule of Thumb,’” 15 percent of surveyed women have NEVER had an orgasm (I wonder if its much higher in reality). And the same surveys show that 75 percent of women don’t reach orgasm during intercourse — that’s right, gentleman.

So why do women fake it?

Two major reasons stick out as I spoke with many women over the past two months: feeding the male ego and time.

“It just makes him happy, it feels more complete,” said one friend.

“But does it leaving YOU feeling complete?” I asked.

“No, it leaves me feeling like I am just a tool for his orgasm.”

That comment reminded me of what my friend D’Andra’s grandmother used to tell her, “Sex is for men, sex is for their benefit.”

Imagine growing up with that ideology…

Many women fake their orgasms as a means to end an un-pleasurable sexual process.

“I don’t have time. I can’t sit here while he plows away like a jack rabbit, it’s not fun for me when it’s like that.”

A woman writer I know mentioned that a man should never ask a woman if she fakes it.

I disagree. The male ego has been coddled for way too long. Enough is enough. We have to blow the cover off the secret world women are living; in this case, it’s a world where we get everything we want and they usually get nothing. And we teach women that it’s just the way things are and always have been.

This is how I see it: the fake orgasm is not compartmentalized from the rest of what women have to do. It sits at the core of a larger dismissal of a woman’s needs and desires, extrapolating across all parts of their lives, work, life, home. Women are not simply a tool for our sexual pleasure, they are ultimately a tool for making every part of our lives easier.

Many of the women I’ve talked with see faking an orgasm as a little gift, a favor for the man they’re with. That makes no sense to me. Faking an orgasm is not like making him a snack after he comes home from work or remembering what kind of beer he likes to drink.

It’s not that having an orgasm is critical during every sexual juncture; it’s that faking it takes women away from themselves. Faking it with any regularity generally leads to a path of a lifetime of sexual dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction in general.

But too many women treat sex as an activity left in the bedroom — they see it as an isolated activity. I disagree. Sex is important and if the man displays a lack of care in the bedroom, is he thoughtful in other areas of a woman’s life?

We condition men to maintain women, to keep them satisfied on a periodic basis. We don’t condition them to think about their day-to-day needs — the same basic needs women think about with regard to the men in their life.

Most women have yet to discover their true sexual power — not power over others— but the power they can feel within themselves. So when men maintain women by doing a little here and there in the bedroom, and women fake it, it just leads to a diminishing of female power.

What I find to be remarkable is the lengths to which this culture will go to ensure men are sexually satisfied. We spend billions of dollars to produce drugs, like Viagra and Cialis, for erectile dysfunction, providing seventy-year-old men with the possibility of a thirty-six hour erection. But discussion about the millions of women who don’t have orgasms or are sexually dissatisfied is shoved into the fringes.

Most of the women I spoke to saw porn, and the men who watch it regularly, as a root cause for this need to fake orgasms. For the record, I don’t fundamentally see a problem with porn. Rather, my issue is with the kind of porn that is defined as mainstream and is made specifically for men. An entire generation of porn watching men (thanks to the internet), now have this idea that women climax by instantly screaming at the top of their lungs as soon as they see a penis…give me a break.

My friend Nina Hartley, feminist, registered nurse, and porn icon, has a take on porn that may come as unexpected, given her vocation, “Well, if any person is watching porn to get an idea of how actual people have sex, then they need their heads examined. Porn is FANTASY, like a live-action cartoon, and shouldn’t be taken seriously as sex ed.”

But there seems to be a bigger issue here: how our society sees women and their needs.

“Women are so complicated,” one of my guy friends said, when I asked him about women’s sexual needs.

No, actually they’re not. While certain women may need more concentration, effort, or focus to reach orgasm, I don’t think that makes them complicated.

We persist in this illusion that women are sexually and emotional complicated so we don’t have to show them the care and affection they need. We can put it on them. It’s really easy to say, “Oh, she’s so complicated,” as if a woman is a labyrinth that only three men in the world can solve.

As a result, we can justify why we don’t or can’t give her what she needs, because it’s just too hard to figure her out.

There’s a pretty simple formula here: women want what we men want.

Don’t be a jerk. Ask her what she wants, and when she tells you, see it as a fantastic opportunity to please her. Don’t think it’s a personal assault on your manhood. Basically, do what she does for you.

For most men, sex is carnal; it’s about the raw pleasure. But for too many women, sex is often a cerebral process. One in which they have to think and plan when to fake an orgasm, when to make everything perfect for the man in their lives. They are pleasing our massive egos, instead of pleasing themselves.

I’m tired of the fake orgasm being treated by women’s magazines like the newest lipstick color or the season’s best handbag. We treat a woman faking an orgasm so casually. It is a BIG deal. It should no longer be seen as an act of convenience or consideration, but rather, an act of submission: submission to the male ego and submission to our screwed up rules about women and sexuality. We condition and encourage women to submit across the board, and in the case of sex, it is the most fundamental part of a woman’s identity, whether they know it or not. And by her sexual identity, I am not necessarily saying that it’s about sex with others, I am referring to her sexual self.

So how does this all boil down in terms of the role men have to play? I think in terms of our perception of sex, women see it as an experience and men are conditioned to see it as a performance. We see it as a one-man performance, one in which we are the star, the director, the producer — it’s how we condition men to exist in life with respect to the way in which they relate to women.

It’s like the Wizard of Oz. On the surface, you see a lot pomp and circumstance, but if you peek behind the curtain, there’s a scared little man who has not only been taught to focus on himself, but has also been taught that focusing and pleasing a woman, on her terms, is an act of submission and weakness.

I try to avoid being and sounding prescriptive in my writing, but in this case I am begging women to put the fake orgasm out of business. Men don’t need or deserve more validation — we get it every day, in many different ways.

It’s time for women to seek the sexual (and all other types of) pleasure that has been, for too long, absent or lost in their lives.

And it’s time for men to stop automatically assuming that they are fantastic in bed.

Frankly, it’s time for men to assume we aren’t that great in bed, until we are told otherwise…and not by a fake orgasm.

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Yashar Ali is a Los Angeles-based columnist, commentator, and political veteran whose writings about women, gender inequality, political heroism, and society are showcased on his website, The Current Conscience. Please follow him on Twitter and join him on Facebook.

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Oct 2011 13

by Nicole Breanne

Obama put forth his job bill, and on Tuesday night the Republicans killed it. Today they trotted out a freshman Senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul, to inform the nation that the Republicans have come up with a better plan, one that will bring 5 million jobs compared to Obama’s 1.9 million. But Paul won’t say how. In fact no one will say how. The plan hasn’t been turned in to Obama, and basically we’re all in the dark on this one.

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Oct 2011 13

by Floydian

Let’s make this clear, I have never been an Obama supporter. In my opinion a few years in Senate does not qualify someone to run America. However, one of the first decisions he made as a president was one that I fully supported. He made it clear that the federal government would not spend their time and money chasing down users of medicinal marijuana in states that have medicinal marijuana laws in effect.

Let’s face it, when you are terminally ill and knocking on death’s door, the last worry you need is whether or not you will have access to your medicine. I’ve personally spoken with medicinal users in Santa Cruz that had their medicine taken away during a DEA raid under the Bush administration and the effects on their lives were devastating. It took over two years of battling the government to get their marijuana back; but they won, and they got their medicine back from the DEA agents that had confiscated it in the first place. I would love to interview them again and let you know how they are doing now, but I can’t. Most of them are dead.

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