The Young Turks

I heard Jayar's comment, "just because you go to a church doesn't mean that you have to live and believe exactly what you pastor says"... and then I thought of the earlier terview about liberals vs. conservatives, and I have this idea... I'm not a regular church-going person, but the liberal churches I have been to (usually Unitarian) espose that you should question things, whereas a conservative church (I've been to a couple) says you must believe this or you're going to HELL!  Thus, I don't see that conservative church-goers would easily buy Obama disavowing what his pastor says... their mind would tell them that if they believe everything _their_ pastor says, then Obama must, too, and he's lying!

by pcone on 03/14/2008 08:18:55 PM EST

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I'm not feelin' the tranny thing AT ALL.  To me, that is a ridiculously attractive girl.

Anyone else with me on this?

by jarett on 03/15/2008 09:05:16 PM EST

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not in the members area. :(

 

help a brotha out.

by zba on 07/15/2008 08:56:47 PM EST

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Why does Cenk keep saying Vitter admitted to seeing prostitutes. He did no such thing.

 He surely was, but he continues to deny so.

by acroso on 03/13/2008 11:09:42 PM EST

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As far as I'm concerned, R.J. hit it out of the park again when he was talking about Hillary's behavior now compared to how she seemed on the Bosnia tape as well as the Clinton camp's behavior in general and the possible reasons for it.  It was informed and insightful.  Also, he's really funny.  I love him as a co-host and hope he comes back often. 

by katherine on 03/26/2008 12:39:49 PM EST

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My predictions...are.. heh idk why I think this.

 

Obama chooses Bloomburg.

McCain chooses Giuliani. 

by acroso on 03/27/2008 10:04:20 AM EST

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by rev24 on 04/17/2008 02:53:30 AM EST

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I was hearing Cenk cracking up about mount Titless and it just reminded me that Grand Teton in French mean "Big Nipple".... maybe you know this already, if not hope it makes Cenk giggle... 

by miraculix on 04/17/2008 06:12:24 AM EST

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Did she say that no one has suffered from the cyclone as much as her husband?

Or how she was speaking with her mother in law who said that the cyclone was to ugly a thing for her beautiful mind?

Just wanted to be the first to start the "Blame Bush for everything" process we liberals are so fond of.  Am I too late?

Run, Republicans, run as far to the right as you can. It's your only hope! Any combination of Cheney/Jindal/Palin/Steele/ Limbaugh/Cantor/Gingrich '12!

by richardshort2001 on 05/07/2008 11:28:17 PM EST

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where is the link? i sent the obama religion and why i'm voting republican links out. the mccain c*nt is the icing

 

 

 

by Ronin Democrat on 06/17/2008 09:29:12 PM EST

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Armenia Leads Beijing 2008 Olympic Medals Per Capita:
http://www.huliq.com/66327/ armenia-leads-beijing-2008- olympic-medals-capita

Armenian Sports (including a list of Olympic competetors and the medals they have won):
http://www.armeniapedia.org /index.php?title=Armenian_S ports

by aussiejassie on 08/13/2008 01:04:25 AM EST

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I keep hearing about how low the sales are for "bestsellers", and that is true, but there's more.  If you look at the actual list, next to the listing is a small dagger symbol (which occurs with all these right winger "bestseller" books).  Looking up what the symbol stands for, it means that the book is being bought in bulk, usually by the right wing thinktanks and organizations who either give them  out, or sell them at heavily discounted prices to their braindead followers who can't afford a full priced book.

But whenever you hear any of these crazy right winger books being on the NYT Bestseller list, the first thing to check is for the little symbols next to the listing, and then you know these don't reflect the true sales of these books at all.

by fourfour44 on 08/15/2008 07:44:19 PM EST

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pot-belly bras?

by desertpear on 08/26/2008 02:38:52 AM EST

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...  inevitably leads to Devastation.

 

How's that, Ben? 

by plooger on 09/18/2008 11:19:12 PM EST

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Come on Cenk, you've got to be kidding. Why the hell do you think Salmon Suit Guy was at the DNC?  He was scouting for young talent like (well, Ana is a little young for that kool kat), so to him Stephanie Miller would have been perfect.

by gatekeeper50 on 09/23/2008 10:29:48 AM EST

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These guys who caused the problem are the same ones who want everyone else to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, so why not expect the same of them? Impose a 0.25% transaction fee like every other country has, and let ones who caused the problem bail themselves out. Come on, grab them bootstraps!

by diguardi on 09/26/2008 12:08:20 AM EST

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Hey, I love you, but you turn some of us off with your childish, play-soldier terms of Captain, General and whatever that means regarding your paid subscribers.

Please stick to the political commentary and keep the trivia , the Entertainment Tonight aspects out of your show.  I just turn it off when that happens, for the same reason I rarely watch the networks anymore.  But thanks for you commentary on Katie Couric's interview.  Paulin made Katie look like Einstein!!!
Enough with the silliness though.

by alicecbrown on 09/27/2008 11:38:59 AM EST

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This is advice from an ex-husband.  You never admit you're screwing around, even when caught in the act.
The republicans take that one further, and just ignore or get their allies the MSM, to bury the stories.  So Vitter and others can keep on screwing around while they impeach Clinton, and throw Spitzer under the bus.
God, if I believed in one, would bury us for our lies if the Bible is any predictor of the future.

by alicecbrown on 09/27/2008 11:41:14 AM EST

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How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis-The loans to Mortgage for everyone policy got us here in the first place.



The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn't be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie ``continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. ``We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''
What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.
But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.

by robokop on 09/30/2008 10:45:35 PM EST

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The kimbo slice fight was not fixed.  It's common for people to get bonuses if they knock the guy out, and don't let the fight go to decision.  The way seth explained it just made it sound bad, because if you're thinking about boxing,"going to the ground" means ending the fight, when in mma "going to the ground" means taking the fight off your feet, and doing grappling/jiu jitsu.  The fight was not supposed to be "thrown" by kimbo, they put kimbo up against crappy guys because they thought they wouldn't need the fight thrown.  If you watch The ultimate fighter tv show, often the fighters will get $5000 bonuses for finishing the fight decisively and not letting the judges decide it, but neither one will get the bonus if it goes to decision.  The promoters want the fight to be entertaining, so they give the fighters incentive to keep the action going, and not get "too technical" to the point where it's a stalemate.

Kimbo slice is just garbage, he's a rookie, and was going up against someone who wasn't a veteran, but had slightly more experience than him.

Chris

by chrisandyasemin on 10/10/2008 07:00:16 PM EST

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i'm taking a minute to say that the discussion with katrina van den heuvel the other day was an example of the turks at its best- literate, informed, ideological and passionate all around. that, and funny, are why your fans love you all.

by tonyheins1 on 10/31/2008 03:12:30 PM EST

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interest from Ana on the subject.

When Cenk related his story about the massage techniques he has enjoyed, I was intrigued by Ana's reaction.  She must have lead a sheltered life before she poked her head out of the ground, but she seems to have grown in a well nurtured environment where subjects like that found in the book review below never would have entered her mind.  She probably doesn't know that woman for hundreds of years have gone to the doctor to achieve orgasm.  It wasn't until the vibrator was invented (perhaps as early as 1870) that woman found a reliable way to reach climax alone.  The amazement in Ana's voice makes it well worth saving that (112008) podcast.

http://www.lipmagazine.org/ articles/revikoch_95.htm
Androcentrism, the Technology of Orgasm, & How the More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
The second women's history month of the 21st century has arrived and almost gone, and great strides have been made, especially in the way science and technology have joined forces in the last century to produce vital tools for women's health. A majority of women would agree that the speculum, an instrument which allows a doctor to see a female patient's cervix, falls into the category of essential tools. But the vibrator? Most people are unfamiliar with the expressly medical context in which the vibrator was invented.
The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction, by Rachel F. Maines, has created quite a buzz in the history field by addressing this somewhat sordid history of a tool that many women today find indispensable. While the speculum isn't currently as controversial a topic as the vibrator, in Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum, Terri Kapsalis argues that its inventor stepped considerably outside the bounds of the Hippocratic oath in developing this tool, which today is regarded as critical to gynecological health.
In a third, older book, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English argue that women have been regarded, from a medical and social viewpoint, as being ill and in need of treatment, and that their behaviors, ranging from sexual desire to activism, have been consistently interpreted and addressed within this disease model. Maines and Kapsalis also use this disease paradigm as a centerpiece in their books. What is striking about these numerous "diseases" and their "treatments," recorded in meticulous detail by all four authors and particularly by Maines, is how they seem at once completely outrageous yet sadly mundane.
An animal inside an animal
--Plato on hysteria
Hysteria was thought to be a consequence of lack of sexual intercourse. For centuries hysteria was believed by many to lead to inflammation of the uterus, which necessitated the expulsion of fluids to prevent it from wandering away from its anatomical home and possibly suffocating the woman who housed it. Physicians ranging from Hippocrates to Freud believed they had to coax the wandering womb back to its proper place or size with "massage treatments." A description of such a treatment reads like a cross between a medical report and soft-core pornography. The Greek physician Galen (AD 129-c. 216) noted that:
Following the warmth of the remedies and arising from the touch of the genital organs required by the treatment, there followed twitchings...From that time on she was free of all the evil she felt.
Similar accounts of these treatments and their results, most of which are hilarious and unbelievable, are in evidence throughout the centuries.
These descriptions leave one wondering how these treatments were deemed acceptable and how the results of such treatments were, for thousands of years, seen as "hysterical paroxysms" rather than the orgasms they clearly were. More glaring are the questions of the "disease" itself and how it became medically and culturally endemic.
Maines posits that an androcentric model of heterosexual intercourse (penetration to the point of male orgasm) is so deeply entrenched in our society that female sexuality has been constructed historically to fit this model. When women's behavior did not fit this mode--that is, when a vast majority of women did not (and do not to this day) achieve sexual satisfaction to the point of orgasm from penetration alone--this behavior was viewed within a disease paradigm. This framework made it possible to see the treatments, and the orgasms they produced, as medical rather than sexual, especially because no penetration was involved (early vibrator models were not shaped in the phallus model of modern vibrators). Husbands who were brought up, along with their wives, not to acknowledge the existence of women's sexual pleasure, were not pressured to change their actions. Doctors reaped significant benefits from treating healthy patients, and many of these doctors became extraordinarily wealthy.
No man (who is but never so little versed in such matters) is ignorant, what grievous symptomes, the rising, Bearing down and Perversion, and Convulsion of the Wombe do excite...
--William Harvey, 1653
Known records of hysteria and its massage treatments date back as far as 2000 BC in Egypt. Most physicians through the centuries prescribed marriage for a single woman or to be "strongly encountered by her husband" for a married woman. Though there is a strange consistency in the imagined scenario of the wandering or suffocating uterus, the noted symptoms of hysteria vary enormously. A 16th-century description of hysterics' behavior includes "a vehement and unbridled desire of Carnal Imbracement, which desire disthrones the Rational Facul[ty] so far, that the Patient utters wanton and lascivious Speeches." The millennia of evidence documenting hysteria is the basis of one of Maines's criticisms of her colleagues: She claims that Ehrenreich, English, and historian Peter Gay place hysteria in an inappropriately unique 19th-century context by ignoring (or not exploring) the evidence on hysteria from preceding centuries.
By the 19th century a sister disease, neurasthenia, similar to hysteria in its vague symptoms, became widely diagnosed and even surpassed hysteria in the role of what psychiatrist Charles Lasègue called the "wastepaper basket of medicine where one throws otherwise unemployed symptoms." Symptoms cited in For Her Own Good include weeping, irritability, depression, mental and physical weariness, morbid fears, forgetfulness, palpitations of the heart, headaches, writing cramps, mental confusion, fear of impending insanity, and constant worry.
It is not surprising, then, that by the late-19th century, three-quarters of women were "out of health" and represented the single largest market for therapeutic services, allowing doctors like Silas Weir Mitchell, the rest-cure physician who has been identified as the antihero of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, to earn $60,000 a year in the 1870s--the equivalent today of more than $300,000.
If there was anything I hated, it was investigating the organs of the female pelvis.
--James Marion Sims, 1884
By his own estimation, "the second wealthiest of all American physicians," James Marion Sims, "the father of gynecology," is credited as the inventor of the speculum and was awarded countless titles, honors, and fame. Sims's invention was developed under rather ethically dubious circumstances, at least by today's standards, according to Kapsalis in Public Privates. Sims was an Alabama slave owner who experimented on slave women (some purchased expressly for this purpose) in his own backyard "hospital" during 1845-49.
While doggedly pursuing a cure for vesico-vaginal fistula, "small tears that form between the vagina and urinary tract or bladder which cause urine [and bowel] to leak uncontrollably," thus limiting or damaging reproductive capacity, he operated unsuccessfully and without anesthesia on dozens of slave women. Sims then made a discovery of vaginal suction while attempting to "relocate" the uterus of a white woman who'd fallen from her horse (given the still prevailing belief that the uterus could become easily lost).
Realizing he could invent an instrument that could be held in place by this vaginal suction, he determined that if he could actually see the fistulas he'd been trying to mend in slave women, he could repair them with some success. He fashioned the first speculum out of two spoons and from there performed countless operations on slave women, again without anesthesia, but this time with some success. Kapsalis points repeatedly to the economic motivation for "fistula repair"--to restore slave women to their full reproductive capacity, ensuring their owners a greater abundance of future slaves.
[It seems] as if the Almighty, in creating the female sex, had taken the uterus and built up a woman around it.
--Professor M.L. Holbrook in an 1870 address to a medical society

Many women diagnosed with hysteria or neurasthenia were treated with methods other than the not entirely unappealing "massage." Because the prevailing medical attitude at the time saw the female reproductive organs as the source of virtually any illness from headaches to tuberculosis, these organs were subjected to "treatments," including leeches applied to the uterus and cauterization of the uterus with a white-hot iron instrument. Surgical removal of the ovaries--ovariotomy--was also common; in 1906 a leading gynecological surgeon estimated that 150,000 women had received ovariotomies. The rationale? According to historian G.J. Barker-Benfield in For Her Own Good: "Among the indications were troublesomeness, eating like a ploughman, masturbation, attempted suicide, erotic tendencies, persecution mania, simple 'cussedness,' and dysmennorhea (painful menstrual periods)."
By the end of the 19th century, all stages of a women's biological life cycle--menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause, as well as mental health--were routinely treated within a disease framework. In For Her Own Good, Ehrenreich and English note that "[doctors] began to see the disease everywhere themselves until they were diagnosing every independent act by a woman, especially a women's rights action, as 'hysterical.'" The economic boon of treating and charging healthy patients, all four authors emphasize, eclipsed any criticism of methods that flew in the face of reason.
Vibration is life. It will chase away the years like magic. Every nerve, every fibre of your whole body will tingle with [the] force of your own awakened powers. All the keen relish, the pleasures of youth, will throb within you.
--Advertisement which appeared in the January 1913 issue of American Magazine

After a brief period of hydrotherapy (water-related or "douche") treatments for hysteria and neurasthenia, which proved too expensive and inconvenient for most physicians, Joseph Mortimer Granville invented the vibrator in the 1880s, initially for male skeletal muscle treatment. Granville was not alone in his championing of electrical and vibratory devices which were supposed to improve one's health. Over the next 40 years, the following devices gained legitimacy and popularity. The 1913 "Dr. Bell Electo Appliance" was an electric belt which "Dr. Bell" claimed would cure stomach, kidney, prostate, and bladder weakness as well as sexual debility.
There was the even less appealing 1918 "Prostate Gland Warmer and Recto Rotor," advertised as "the latest and most efficient invention for the quick relief of piles, constipation, and prostate trouble." Though inventor Granville was opposed to his vibrator's use on hysterical women, the appeal to doctors during this time period was too great, given the legions of patients needing treatment; the vibrator saved time and didn't demand manual skills or direct touch, which some doctors preferred to avoid. By 1900 a wide range of vibratory devices were available to doctors and later to women themselves, and by 1910 vibrator ads appeared innocuously in the Sears catalog alongside electric fans, mixers, and radiators--"aids that every woman appreciates." When vibrators began appearing in stag films of the '20s in obvious sexual contexts, they disappeared from doctors' offices and magazine advertisements.
The legacy of the vibrator's history is twofold. A gender-based double standard towards sexual pleasure continues to thrive in states like Alabama, Georgia, and Texas, where vibrators and "sex toys" were banned by the state legislatures, according to a March 29, 1999 New York Times article. The ACLU has filed complaints with these states, highlighting the double standard by emphasizing Alabama's permission to prescribe Viagra, given to cure impotence and often taken to enhance male sexual staying power. Sadly, a majority of women still seem to accept the notion that failure to achieve orgasm through traditional coitus alone is a defective flaw, even though it is estimated that their company includes two-thirds to three-quarters of women.
And what of the legacy of the speculum and the pelvic exam? In Public Privates Kapsalis points to an acceptance toward coercive reproductive control over women of color as one of the consequences. She presents a compelling comparison between Sims's work on fistula repair in slave women to ensure reproductive capacity and economic gain for owners and the (sometimes forced) testing and distribution of Norplant on Third-World women and women of color, in order to limit their reproduction.
Though Sims took ethically questionable liberties in developing his invention, the speculum nevertheless remains the most effective way of viewing the cervix and diagnosing cervical cancer; however, Kapsalis tends to blur her solid research with comparisons that aren't quite convincing. A theater performer and gynecological assistant, Kapsalis frequently theorizes about women's behavior during gynecological examinations. She is least persuasive when she veers into strained analogies like comparing the draped sheet over a patient's knees with a theater curtain, for instance, or discussing the parallels between a vagina and a stage.
The pelvic exam is, nonetheless, still mired in problems, with the patient expected to assume a passive role. Heidi Kruckenberg of Brandeis University cited "inadequate informed consent for surgical/invasive procedures" and "poor rapport (including unsympathetic response to patient)" as being among the top five communication issues between women and their gynecologists. Complaints were not limited to male gynecologists--apparently women, too, have failed to break out of the hardened mold of the female pathology model. Evidently, battery-powered satisfaction, "footies" on stirrups, and a month in spring devoted to women's history aren't quite enough to make the grade in the 21st century.

by gatekeeper50 on 11/22/2008 01:36:34 PM EST

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i joke but i've had eyes for tamron since she left her local chicago news gig for msnbc - what a godsend for us living outside of illinois!  if you didn't see mrs. hall fill in for olbermann on the 23rd, it's definitely worth watching.  here's a clip of tamron doing 'bushed.'  i'm a little confused by her words - 'and now here we are in the land of milk of of honey, michael milk honey'- but can i see reowwww!

by rev24 on 12/31/2008 01:26:13 PM EST

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baby --- Trip --- is Star Trek; Enterprise.  The chief engineer's name was Charles "Trip" Tucker III.

by gatekeeper50 on 12/31/2008 02:18:08 PM EST

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dissing Cenk, not "The New York Times" or "the New York Times Magazine." Cenk should be so lucky that it was the Times calling him out.

But I guess once that kind of diss-information is casually spit out on the Web, it will live forever. So, in the minds of at least some future Googlers, Cenk will have been dissed by the New York Times.

by Chowfun on 01/07/2009 04:21:07 PM EST

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I can't believe you have ANY simpathy for Teddy.  He doesn't feel sorry for the troubles he caused.    He feels sorry because he was caught!   Plain and simple.   If he wasn't caught he'd be in the same hypocritical position denouncing and doing everything he could to vote yes on 8.

 ...and he's gay, not bi.   I know plenty of gay men who with wives and children.       The vagina has evolved to be the best milker of penis.   Just because he was able to release into a woman doesn't make him bisexual. Besides, his wife says they have a normal sex life.   Don't assume that's YOUR normal.   What if normal for her is once a season.    You seriously think he's full of fidelity having sex once a season?  Come on... 

 He gets ZERO sympathy for me.  He's still a loathsome despicable guy, and although I don't believe in it, burning in hell for all eternity would be the only way we can get justice for him and his ilk. 

by dblosmith on 01/30/2009 07:30:17 AM EST

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by winter59 on 02/05/2009 06:16:08 PM EST

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If he did he would see that his re-election campaign for governor is a full year before the next Presidential election.

How exactly does he think volunteering his constituents to not get the money everyone else gets is a winning strategy?  Can he possibly win the Republican Party after having just been declared a loser?

It's becoming obvious what the R next to Republican politicians names stands for.  I'll let you figure it out.

Run, Republicans, run as far to the right as you can. It's your only hope! Any combination of Cheney/Jindal/Palin/Steele/ Limbaugh/Cantor/Gingrich '12!

by richardshort2001 on 02/21/2009 01:43:58 AM EST

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He is hero in my eyes. Plus, the country as a whole lost over 6 trillion in wealth due to reckless actions of wallstreet and the fed. Start the hanging with Greenspan, Paulson, Bernake, Bush, Cheney and Kudlow and I am all in. In fact we should take over all the major networks and perp march all these fuckers to the gallows on pay for view including most of the media executives and anchors.

I am not kidding. Hanging is too good for them. There needs to be some consequences for what went on.

by sisco66 on 02/21/2009 03:17:50 PM EST

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The post game show yesterday was fantastic.

by publius on 03/18/2009 01:40:17 PM EST

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"Hot for Words" is SO overrated. And I'm Russian, I know. She looks alright. Anna is much cuter.

by bricktop on 03/18/2009 01:44:35 PM EST

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also talk about Levi Johnson and Bristol Palin on Countdown.  I think Joel suggested that Sarah Palin handed Levi a wolf pellet and then went to warm up the helicopter.

by gatekeeper50 on 03/18/2009 05:50:07 PM EST

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Are you kidding me?

Ana is way hotter than Ms. Marina fake books Orlova.

The post-game show was great. 

 

by saeed19 on 03/18/2009 10:43:59 PM EST

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After yesterdays show, a serious talk about the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act would be interesting.

Love the show, keep up the great work.

by unbill on 05/14/2009 09:48:46 AM EST

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"You'll never guess what a former SERE instructor has to say about Right Wing talk that since we waterboard our soldiers, it makes it ok."

RWnut "wanna-be" fantasy trumped by "been there, done that" reality.

"Hell, you're one to be talking about sock puppets. You're a sock puppet yourself! by LBJdem (KenTX) on 06/12/2009 02:14:54 AM EST

by Robrob on 05/16/2009 01:44:53 PM EST

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adorn the pages of SuicideGirls.com
http://suicidegirls.com/gir ls/Shyla/videos/6657/

by gatekeeper50 on 05/24/2009 07:58:00 PM EST

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by tcourtney on 06/12/2009 03:25:00 PM EST

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This was just too funny. "Ken Leee" ahahaha!

by MiraiZ on 06/23/2009 01:30:27 AM EST

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song!!! There I said it. Cenk and Ana, you've lost me on this one. I predict big things for her.

by winter59 on 06/23/2009 01:36:51 AM EST

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