Daily Topics - Monday May 16th, 2011

"Anti-Fox" Free Speech TV wants a spot on Comcast - The Denver Post
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Truthout proudly presents weekly installments of Thom's bestselling book "Unequal Protection"
Hour One: Can we keep "Koch" out of our schools? Jamie Weinstein, The Daily Caller
Hour Two: Does absolute power corrupt absolutey?
Hour Three: Why do powerful men think they're above the law? Jeff Sharlet, "The Family" / Plus, why are conservatives ok with raising the debt ceiling at the expense of the poor? Laurence Kotlikoff, PJ Institute
Comments

Sex as the point of Power
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I think the great unspoken truth about what drives men (mostly) to acquire excessive wealth and power is access to unlimited sex and unlimited sexual submissives. For this purpose, a private island in Dubai serves very well. The "Family Man" image is misinterpreted even by us, the close observers. It was never meant to imply male loyalty. It is meant to indicate complete male control of the "breeder female", demonstrate her obedience, her guarantee of fidelity, thereby assuring the "purity" of "The Family Man's" stock.
Among barbarians, the powerful man is expected to exhibit an enhanced libido and extravagant sexual tastes as proof of his prowess as a leader of Men. This is the code of the rip-off that is "C Street". This is the unspoken code of the barbarians in excellent suits. It is also one of the driving forces of colonialism. Colonialism provides access to young "exotic" (from a Euro-centric perspective) girls (and boys).
What we call greed is very often, in actuality, a realted sin: lust. The failure of contemporary marriage, of contemporary economics, of contemporary society as a whole can, in part, be traced to the insufferably destructive urge to immerse oneself in the blind, ego-driven selfishness of lust.... which leads to the dead opposite of a healthy, respectful, creative sexual culture.



Just a reminder, Thom, as I've heard you say this MANY times. When I attended the University of California at Irvine 1971-1975, my tuition was $636 per year. When my brother graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 1965, the tuition was around $220 per year. When my mother graduated from UCLA in 1940, the fees (this was pre-tuition) were around $35 annually. I do believe that when my grandmother graduated from UC Berkeley in 1901, tuition was free. It's now over $11,000 per year. So when you say the UC was free - it was for my grandmother and her 10 siblings, all Cal Bears, but not for subsequent generations. The difference, however, between $636 35 years ago and more than $11,000 now with respect to the ability of a student to put him or herself through college is enormous, and those figures do not include living expenses! We graduated debt-free. That is a much steeper hill to climb for UC students today.
The point of state univerities and colleges was always that anyone who qualified would be admitted. Now the provisos must be added that the student may not get into the campus of choice, and may face onerous debt upon completion of hir or her undergraduate education.