Written by: Patrick Galvin The President of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez has suggested that instead of using Viagra, men simply eat pork. She claims that pork has the same effects on a man’s virility.
Story from AP (Courtesy of Yahoo! News):
“I’ve just been told something I didn’t know; that eating pork improves your sex life … I’d say it’s a lot nicer to eat a bit of grilled pork than take Viagra,” President Cristina Fernandez said to leaders of the pig farming industry.
She said she recently ate pork and “things went very well that weekend, so it could well be true.”
Argentines are the world’s biggest per capita consumers of beef, but the government has sought to promote pork as an alternative in recent years due to rising steak prices and as a way to diversify the meat industry.
“Trying it doesn’t cost anything, so let’s give it a go,” Fernandez said in the televised speech.
Don't Get Too Excited, Ladies...
Cristina Fernandez is not the first politician to butter up a particular group when vying for their support, as its long been a tradition for candidates and incumbents alike to wax poetic about the value of unions, while conveniently enough at a union-endorsed manufacturing site, or the value of farming while conveniently sitting on a tractor in front of hundreds of adoring farmers, and so on, but I’ve gotta hand it to Mrs. Fernandez. She really took this tradition to a new level.
Out of curiosity I Googled “Is Pork Good for your Sex Life” expecting there to be at least one claim from a renowned scientist, “sexpert,” or therapist. Apparently the only and first person to have made this claim is Mrs. Hernandez, as all of the first page’s results were related to her comments. The second page was more of the same, except one Men’s Health article said pork rinds were good for your sex life because they are low in fat and will make you look leaner. Well that’s a start.
I hope to God Argentina holds their ground on this claim. And I’m praying that they hire testers to prove their theory by continually eating pork and having sex. If so, I’m quitting my job and booking the first flight possible to Argentina.
Written by: Patrick Galvin 
Corporate Vengance: There's an App For That!
Having witnessed their Voice application blocked on Apple’s iPhone applications store, Google has circumvented Apple’s resistance by updating Voice, allowing users to access it via web browser.
Story from AP (Courtesy of Yahoo! News):
Apple has refused to allow the Voice program to be distributed through the iPhone’s applications store since last summer on grounds that it would duplicate or alter important iPhone features. To get around that roadblock, Google is trying to entice iPhone users to rely on a mobile Web browser to access Voice….
The jousting over the Voice application underscores the rising tensions between Google and Apple, the two most valuable companies in Silicon Valley.
Apple’s rebuff of Google’s Voice application triggered a Federal Communications Commission inquiry into whether Apple and AT&T Inc., the iPhone’s exclusive U.S. service provider, were trying to stifle potential competition.
Take that! Google is just doing what they always do, breaking rules and finding new and usually cheaper ways of doing things, breaking down the barriers between providers and consumers, enabling consumers to call the shots instead of the providers. Lesson: don’t fuck with Google. Or they will fiiiind yoooou… (or in this case just make a web-browser-able application to use on your phone).
Written by: Patrick Galvin 
Charles E. Phillips, the co-president of software company Oracle and one of President Obama’s economic advisors, was outed for having an affair with YaVaughnie Wilkins, but not via traditional methods. Wilkins decided to out the relationship by purchasing advertising billboard space in New York, San Francisco and Atlanta and plastering them with the words, “You are my soulmate forever!” accompanied with pictures of Phillips and Wilkins smiling together.
A URL on the billboards led curious visitors to a Web site containing personal photo albums featuring the couple at public and private events with friends and family. It also contained love notes from Charles E. Phillips to YaVaughnie Wilkins.
Phillips, 50, the co-president of Oracle Corp., admitted the affair with Wilkins, 42, in a statement released by his spokeswoman Friday….
Phillips, who has served on President Obama’s economic recovery advisory board since February, joined Oracle in 2003. Prior to that, he worked as a tech industry analyst at Morgan Stanley and served as a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Often talked of as a potential successor to Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison, Phillips is one of the software company’s most senior and highly paid excecutives. On top of an $800,000 salary for 2009, he took home stock options and other compensation valued by Oracle at more than $18 million.
This story was far less notable for its content than it was for the comments it generated on CNN’s website regarding philandering men. Some of the notables:
1) He LIED. To at LEAST one person (his wife and the mother of his child). If he is willing to deceive someone he “loves” so readily, what does that bode for his reliability in all other areas of his life?
2) Phillips is an opportunist and weasel. He admitted that he had an 8 1/2 year “serious” affair with Wilkins after she put it OUT. He was a former Marine Captain. Would he have been a traitor to our country if circumstances been of benefit to him as he did with his wife?
3) This isnt about politics! This is about a woman who is sick and tired being lied to for the past 8 years. I think its awesome what she did to him. He should be so lucky it was just a few billboards professing her love him instead of her pulling a Glenn Close and boiling his kids bunny!! Im on her side!!! Way to go sister!
Look, ladies. I agree with you on some counts. Cheating is WRONG, and there may be biological differences between men and women, but reneging on your commitments is inexcusable on both sides. That being said, It’s troubling to see some of the over-zealous responses to infidelities lately. On the work-related side, if you were to absolve every unfaithful man of their responsibilities to their corporation or government, the entire society would crumble. I’m not kidding. The absolute BEST-CASE statistics place about 25 out of 100 odds a man will cheat on his wife. The most recent statistics are hovering more around 60-70%. Telling half to 2/3 of the world’s executives, directors, politicians, generals, surgeons, engineers, etc. to lose their occupational function would be the mortgage crisis times 1,000. There are many, many examples of men who were flawed in their personal lives but extremely beneficial to society in their public ones. Martin Luther King, Jr and John McCain are just two examples. So long as its not murder, rape or theft, leave people’s personal squabbles to their personal domain.
On the other side, it’s disturbing how people have in some instances applauded violence and career-sabotage toward men due to infidelity. Let’s recap. In the last six months, Tiger Woods was ostensibly struck with a golf club while fleeing from his wife, yet no one has really held Elin’s feet to the fire for this. Chris Henry, a wide receiver for the Bengals was jettisoned off a FUCKING MOVING CAR and was FATALLY INJURED. His fiancee was not charged, and has faced no real media scrutiny since. Steve McNair was GUNNED DOWN in a murder-suicide. People were more empathetic to him, but a large focus was still on his philandering as opposed to the actual murder. And now Phillips has had his romantic life broadcast for all to see, which is by far the most pedestrian of the four offenses.
If a cheating woman was killed by her husband, the press would’ve practically tripped over their cameras rushing to report the story. Anyone who had posited that “the woman got what she deserved,” would immediately be outcast as a misogynist, a woman-hater, a replica from the sexually oppressive past. But when the tables are reversed, women are openly saying “he got what he deserved,” or “I would’ve done the same thing,” with no repercussions. Again, cheating is wrong but murder is more wrong. Men are frustrating, and I must admit we have a greater tendency to stray than women. That does not mean that violence toward men should be overlooked or trivialized.
As for the billboard? It lies somewhere in between. If people are telling the truth, they should be able to say it. However, what is going to happen the day a female executive is outed on a billboard with the following words, “I fucked (Mrs. Executive), take that (Executive’s Husband)” while you’re driving through a metropolitan area? Wouldn’t that come across as flat out mean? What if it were accompanied with a picture of the two together, kissing or engaged in some non-pornographic way that would clearly illustrate a sexual relationship? Would women be expected to take this lying down the same way Phillips is being expected to? I don’t think so.
Phillips’ actions were inexcusable, no doubt. But people are tacitly approving vigilante punishments far outside the scope of his transgressions. The most reasonable comments I saw were along the lines of “If he wants additional women, fine. But don’t get married then. Just stay single.” This seemed to make sense. In the area of politicians and top executives however, a family-friendly image goes a long way. Bush’s 2004 re-election came partially due to “family values,” a theme that is very alive and well in this country. How would it look if a top executive or politician was unmarried, even into his mid-40′s? Can you name even one notable politician who is single? Can you name one CEO who is single? You can probably name some who are divorced. And you can certainly name some who have “transgressed.” But anyone who has proactively said, “I choose to abstain from marriage?” Of course not. A man who shuns marriage would be a man who shuns family values, at least in the public’s eyes. So people like Phillips find themselves in odd quagmires. Public trust is gained far more easily when married than when single.
Again, I am not condoning cheating. Phillip’s actions are still inexcusable. But analyzing someone’s incentive structure, there is a HUGE incentive to “appear” married and stable and a champion of family values in our country, even if deep down you have sexual desires that expand beyond the comfort level of your marriage. If people truly want their leaders to proactively communicate their sexual desires to their partners and the public, then they are going to have to re-evaluate how they judge their leaders based on their marriages, or lack thereof.
Written by: Patrick Galvin 
Run Innocent Moo-Cows. Run For Your Lives.
In one of the more odd recession-related stories of the year, a farmer-turned-maniac murdered 51 cows in his Copake, NY farm before killing himself.
Story from AP (Courtesy of Yahoo! News):
COPAKE, N.Y. – State police in New York say an upstate dairy farmer shot and killed 51 of his milk cows in his barn before turning the rifle on himself.
Local farmers buried the cows outside the barn Friday. They would not discuss Pierson or what had happened, but one of the men said these are hard times to be a farmer.
I feel like a bad person because I laughed when I saw this. Like these aren’t hard times to be any other occupation? I just can’t imagine cows being the real target of someone’s frustrations. Where they not producing enough milk? Did the farmer simply think they’d become more profitable as hamburgers, only to realize that his cows weren’t good enough for Grade A certification? What the hell! THEY’RE COWS. I mean, I’m glad it’s not people, but Jesus.
Written by: Patrick Galvin 
Cindy McCain has followed in her daughter’s footsteps by openly supporting gay marriage rights, despite the obvious position of her husband John McCain.
Story from AP (Courtesy of Yahoo! News):
McCain’s daughter Meghan distanced herself from her father’s stance last summer when she posed for an ad for NOH8, a gay rights campaign seeking to defeat Prop 8. Now his wife Cindy is joining in the effort and is also appearing in an ad for NOH8……
Cindy McCain isn’t the first political spouse to do this, however. During the 2007 Democratic Primary, Elizabeth Edwards stated that she’s “completely comfortable with gay marriage” even though her husband, John, then a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, was steadfastly against it. Michelle Obama has hinted at her support, saying in a speech that connected the gay rights struggle to civil rights: “The world as it is should be one that rejects discrimination of all kinds.”
Even Laura Bush pushed back against her husband’s aggressive advocacy of a federal gay marriage ban. In an interview with Fox News in 2006, the former first lady said, “I don’t think it should be used as a campaign tool, obviously. It requires a lot of sensitivity to just talk about the issue – a lot of sensitivity.”
Weird. It seems the wives of male politicians are more likely to support gay marriage rights than the politicians themselves, which is about in line with the national trend. According to a 2008 Newsweek study, women were about 44% likely to support gay marriage, with men hovering at 34%, a solid 10% difference. Maybe men are more afraid of seeming gay if supportive of gay rights? No, that can’t be it.
Written by: Patrick Galvin 
A Fitting Response...
The Healthcare plan is dead. But not because of newly-elected Massachusetts senator Scott Brown. The plan Democrats had in mind, the plan voters like myself enthusiastically supported, was already dead and has been for over a month. The whole losing-an-election-on-our-home-turf debacle? That was just icing on the cake. Democrats have no one to blame for the Healthcare plan’s failure but themselves.
I’ll say this: a bill will eventually pass, and it will accomplish a couple things. It will ensure people cannot be denied coverage based on pre-existing health conditions. It will set up a government exchange to help make healthcare more affordable, which should honestly reduce the number of uninsured people, especially coupled with a mandate that they must have insurance in the first place. However, these issues were not the crux of the debate. Private insurance providers and both parties in Washington supported these measures. It was the public option that was at the core of this bill. In the initial draft of the Obama-Biden healthcare plan, the public option was the ultimate device for enforcing lower costs and the ancillary private reforms. Generic drugs are a good example. Obama-Biden wanted generics to be used ubiquitously to lower healthcare costs. Having a public government-run option would enforce that. If a private insurer still used the expensive medication without good reason, people would gravitate toward a cheaper, generics-infused option from the government. Drops in profits would become motivation to change current policy for private healthcare providers, and generics would become ubiquitously used. Without a competing government-run option, now what? How would the government tell insurers to use generics? Would they simply provide the same lip service they did to the banks during the bailout? We’ve seen how well that worked in getting banks to lend more money to small businesses. Namely they haven’t. There needs to be incentive to drive change, and this public option was as good an incentive as you were going to find, if only it were sold properly.
Ultimately, lack of marketing-consistency is what caused this bill to deteriorate. The 100% medicare expansion free for the state of Nebraska, the caving on abortion-related policy, etc. were all allowed to happen because Democrats never kept a stalwart position on the public option. Obama initially championed it, so did Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Howard Dean and others. Then Blue Dogs publicly debated how cost-effective it would be, stating they would not support a bill with the public option, directly contradicting claims made by Obama and others that it would save money in the long term. The Congressional Budget Office studies later validated these claims, further embarrassing the President. He was also resisted in his claims that the public option would not lead to a single-payer plan, when Barney Frank called the option a great “gateway” to a single payer plan (I would’ve called this the Democrats’ gaffe of the year, were it not for Senator Reid’s “negro” comments). Sensing confusion and loss of the plan’s political momentum, Obama decided to concede on the public option in the hopes of retaining the private reforms. So he stated the option was not 100% essential, and could be dropped to preserve the other private reforms, only to have Nancy Pelosi heroically claim that there “will be a public option,” in the final plan. Even when Pelosi and others hopped on board, finally sacrificing the public option, factions within the party resisted melodramatically, and again publicly, stating they wouldn’t support a bill without the public option. They never once truly aligned, and this constant contradiction fed into Republicans’ hands.
The Republican party held a firm position the entire time, which was that the government-run public option, and the healthcare reform bill in its entirety should be opposed. Consistency can cover for so many other sins in a political race. It is absolutely crucial to winning long-term debates. The steady, constant “Hope and Change” mantra that bolstered Obama’s campaign helped overcome slip-ups such as the “guns and religion” comments, as well as public attacks on his character and capability ranging from “terrorist” to “elitist” to “inexperienced” all the while. On the opposite end of the spectrum, just look at Bush vs. Kerry from 2004. Kerry’s “flip-flop” reputation was political cyanide. Uncertainty is to politicians what alcohol is to Mel Gibson. When the Democratic party proposed the public option, they needed to stick to it. Any internal fusion should have been kept INTERNAL. This was again, done beautifully by Obama’s campaign team in the Presidential elections. But Obama picked his campaign team. You don’t get to pick Congressmen and Senators, who are far more intractable and truculent than campaign advisors.
This confusion and miasma of mixed messages made even liberals too confused to truly support anything, option or no option. Republicans representing moderate states felt zero pressure from their voters to support this bill as a result. Meanwhile, they had been unanimously and consistently recruiting people to oppose the bill, with success. As time wore on, even Republicans who initially wanted to support the healthcare bill, such as Olympia Snowe (R-ME) were forced to decline. Now with only 60 votes to work with, Democrats fell victim to leeching. Realizing that they were the “C” variable in the median voter theorem, the one who pits A against B such that they are now in a position of power, people such as Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) used their vote as fodder for Medicare provisions for Nebraska and specialized abortion legislation. Other moderate Democrats began interjecting their own provisions for farm-friendlier states so they could bring bacon back home to their voters and brag about it. By the time it was done, healthcare supporters felt more like whores than like politicians, if there’s any difference. But to be fair, this was unusual even for them. They’d just bought off more people than Frank Lucas.
At least something was being passed though. It was precariously built on buyouts and failed promises, but at least some of the private reforms would still be enacted. Until January 18th, 2010 happened. Until Scott Brown won that Senate seat in Massachusetts, replacing the late Ted Kennedy and killing the Democrats’ filibuster-proof 60-40 majority, thus inevitably rendering the Democrats’ healthcare-bill even more impotent in effectiveness, as they’d have to further scale back their ambitions in order to obtain a passable bill. The Democrats’ fumbling while selling the public option, and then the Healthcare plan entirely, has now lead to an inconsistency in their brand, a brand they’d so magnificently built in the wake of Obama’s Presidential election. And that brand-inconsistency is coming back to haunt them, as clearly evidenced in the Massachusetts loss, in a state that is supposed to be the Democrats’ home turf.
I voted for Barack Obama last year, and in doing so I implicitly voted for his Democratic allies, the 60-40 majority of Senators and Congressmen that would bolster his domestic and international power. I supported healthcare reform from the beginning, and with a Senate, Congress and President all in agreement, sailing would be smooth for people like me. But I was painfully reminded why Democrats can be so unbearable at times, why South Park has made a killing lampooning their leaders and celebrity supporters for over a decade. Democrats try to portray this higher sense of dignity and intelligence, this help-the-poor, hope-for-all optimism. They claim to be on the leading edge of social equality and fiscal opportunity. And at many times they are. But for all their high-fiving over their similar ideals, for all of their collectively progressive-minded chutzpah, they seem to have had a damned time cooperating on one stinking goal, especially when that goal was at the absolute domestic forefront of social equality and fiscal opportunity.
Republicans of late have usually had bad ideas. From the Patriot Act to Iraq to the 5% capital-gains-tax, they’ve set the bar about as low as it could go. But give them credit. At least they executed their bad ideas.
Written by: Mike 
It seems like only yesterday when middle aged white people were up in arms about a new show on MTV – Jackass. Featuring the now infamous Johnny Knoxville (not to be confused with Bears Rookie WR Johnny Knox), and his pals Steve-O, Wee Man, and Bam Margera.
After 3 seasons Jackass was canceled (not without a few movies being released however). Shortly thereafter Bam was given his own TV series on the network; Viva La Bam, which chronicled the presumably fictional life of his family and friends. Many felt his antics towards his overweight father, and befuddled mother were funny, which is why the show lasted from 2003-2005.
Tired of his act, and looking for new life interests, he become engaged to a young lass and married her in 2008. Then, in a typical move for most gentlemen who get married, starred in a in a pornographic movie produced by Gina Lynn. Yes, you read that right – Bam Margera was in a porno. I asked my pastor at the local church if it was acceptable for me to Google Gina Lynn for this story, but was told my young feeble mind would only be corrupted with sinful images. I’ll have to assume she has a physique men find desirable and want to fornicate with.
Of all the potential outcomes after Viva La Bam, porno was probably not high on the list. Passed out in a ditch from OD’ing? Probably the most likely. Suffering major head trauma which left him as a vegetable the rest of his life? Based on his reckless disregard for his body, I’d have said that’s a definite possibility. But porn – not exactly what most of us had in mind.
This officially marks the end of Bam’s career (not that it was much to begin with). He now can start the healing process, and make more television that appeals to 13 year old punks. God speed Bam.
