Wednesday, March 08, 2023



Baby boomers warm to casual sex after ‘following the social norm’

Interesting that Australia is by far the most accepting country when it comes to casual sex. I am actually (just) a PRE-baby boomer but I have had sex with many women over the years. I stopped counting when I got to 50. So I guess I am simply a good Australian. But I DID come of age in the free-wheeling '60s

A one-night stand, fling, tryst or even a dalliance – whatever the name – casual sex is often seen as the preserve of the young.

Yet nearly a third of baby boomers now approve of no-strings-attached sex, according to a new academic study.

Data from The Policy Institute at King’s College London show that UK attitudes on casual sex has changed not just over time but also between the generations, with researchers concluding that, when it comes to casual intimacy, “the social norm has changed and the boomers have just followed that.”

The researchers collated data from an international survey conducted across the past four decades and found that in 2009, just eight per cent of baby boomers (who are born between 1946 and 1964) found casual sex was “justifiable”. But by 2022, this had jumped to 30 per cent.

However, younger cohorts such as Gen Z, which captures anyone born between 1997 and 2012, and millennials, who are born between 1981 and 1996, are still far more likely to hold this view at 67 per cent and 55 per cent respectively.

The researchers also found that in 1999, overall, one in 10 Britons thought having casual sex was justifiable.

However, more than four times as many (42 per cent) held this view in 2022, with a considerable rise from as recently as 2018 (27 per cent).

This shift means the UK is now the fourth most accepting country when it comes to casual sex, ahead of France (26 per cent) and Norway (33 per cent) – and not far off Australia (48 per cent), which tops the list.

‘Moral concerns’ now ‘simple facts’

Professor Bobby Duffy, director of The Policy Institute, said: “It’s easy to lose sight of just how much more liberal the UK has become over a relatively short period of time, and how liberal we are relative to many other nations.

“What were once pressing moral concerns – things like homosexuality, divorce and casual sex – have become simple facts of life for much of the public, and we now rank as one of the most accepting countries internationally.

“This mostly isn’t just driven by younger generations replacing older generations. All generations have changed their views significantly, although the oldest pre-war cohort now often stand out as quite different, and on some issues, like casual sex, there is a clear generational hierarchy, with the youngest much more accepting.”

The researchers also surveyed attitudes around other subjects and found that increased support for euthanasia and divorce marks the UK as one of the most socially liberal countries overall.

Attitudes towards assisted dying in Britain have changed gradually since data was first collected in 1981, but there was a clear acceleration in acceptance between 2009 and 2022, when the proportion of the British public who found it justifiable rose by around 20 per cent.

This attitude shift comes alongside a rise in the number of British members of Dignitas. The assisted dying association reported that there had been an 80 per cent rise in British members in the past decade, from 821 in 2012, to 1,528 by the end of 2022.

The UK had the second highest proportion of people who believed euthanasia was justifiable, just below France, at 19 per cent. Other European countries ranked much lower on this issue, with Italy at nine per cent, and Greece at two per cent.

The UK also ranked highly for acceptance towards divorce, as 68 per cent of Britons said it is “justifiable”.

However, Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said while it is “encouraging to see the British public becoming more libertarian over time among all age groups … I suspect that if it was extended to ask about free speech and lifestyle issues such as smoking and obesity we would find that tolerance is on the wane.”

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Southern Poverty Law Center Complains About ‘Heavy-Handed’ Arrest of Its Lawyer for Domestic Terrorism in Molotov Cocktail Attack on Atlanta Police

image from https://www.nysun.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwp.nysun.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2023%2F03%2Fmugshot.jpg&w=1200&q=75

The pretty boy himself

A prominent Alabama non-profit at the forefront of efforts to name-and-shame what it calls right-wing extremists in America, the Southern Poverty Law Center, finds itself under the microscope after one of its staff attorneys was arrested and charged with domestic terrorism during an Atlanta protest Sunday night.

Thomas Jurgens was among 34 people arrested — 23 of whom were subsequently charged — after black-clad protesters hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at police officers and equipment at a police training facility under construction outside Atlanta that protesters have come to call “Cop City.” Like Mr. Jurgens, most of those charged were from outside Georgia, including two foreign nationals from Canada and France.

Atlanta’s police chief, Darin Schierbaum, called the incident a coordinated attack. “This was a very violent attack, very violent attack,” he said. “This wasn’t about a public safety training center. This was about anarchy.” Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, said Monday that the people involved “chose destruction and vandalism over legitimate protest, yet again demonstrating the radical intent behind their actions.”

Police offered no further details on what exactly Mr. Jurgens is accused of doing during the protest, but his employer said he was at the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center as a legal observer under the auspices of the National Lawyers Guild. The non-profit called his arrest an example of “heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters.”

“This is part of a months-long escalation of policing tactics against protesters and observers who oppose the destruction of the Weelaunee Forest to build a police training facility,” the center said. “The SPLC has and will continue to urge de-escalation of violence and police use of force against Black, Brown and Indigenous communities — working in partnership with these communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance the human rights of all people.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971 and based at Montgomery, Alabama, began as a civil rights organization focused on mounting legal campaigns and compiling dossiers on the Ku Klux Klan across the United States. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the group expanded its tracking efforts beyond white supremacist groups to what it called “right-wing extremism” in the country.

In the years since that transition, the center has come under increasing criticism from conservatives in America who say it demonizes legitimate right-of-center political debate in the interest of furthering its liberal agenda and growing its donor base. It has labeled such groups as the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the American Family Association as “SPLC designated hate groups.”

Most recently, the center came under fire after an FBI field office report was leaked that warned of a growing domestic threat from “violent extremists in radical traditionalist Catholic ideology.” These radical Catholics, the FBI report stated, frequently embrace “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.” The FBI, which later recanted the report, cited publications from the Southern Poverty Law Center as evidence of the threat.

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Business Tycoon Criticizes Democrat-Run States: 'They Are Punishing People Who Are Successful'

Investor and Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary is ready to take on any Democrat in a debate claiming that the party is ruining the country: "sorry, don't shoot the messenger. Just telling you the way it is."

During an interview with CNN, O'Leary said he no longer puts his money into Democrat-led states because they are "uninvestable" and "punishing people if they're successful."

"I don't put companies here in New York anymore, or in Massachusetts, or in New Jersey, or in California. Those states are uninvestable. The policy here is insane; the taxes are too high," O'Leary explained, adding, "the regulatory environment is punitive. I had a project in Upstate New York behind the grid in Niagara Falls for electricity — a global data center we were building. Eventually, it got so bad with the politicians in the local region and the state policy we moved it to Norway and all the jobs."

O'Leary recalled a recent debate with socialist-leaning Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), telling her that her state is handing out hefty consequences to successful people by overtaxing them.

"I say, 'look, senator, we've got to move the companies out of your state because you are not investable anymore. You are punishing people if they are successful, you overtax them, you hit them with a super tax. New Jersey, what a mess! New York, uninvestable," he told the Democratic Senator.

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Republicans eye ‘disinformation’ group that said NY Post too ‘risky’ for ads

Congressional Republicans are probing federal funding of a UK-based organization that falsely declared The Post and other major news outlets “risky” possible spreaders of false information.

House and Senate sources say that investigators are trying to get to the bottom of how the London-based Global Disinformation Index secured federal funds before creating a December blacklist of 10 outlets, including The Post, that boast conservative or libertarian-leaning opinion sections.

“Congress can bar the use of funds for efforts to combat disinformation through censorship or suspension of accounts. It can also bar the funding of groups that create these types of blacklists,” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.

Three sources told The Post that’s exactly what legislators are looking into. One congressional aide said, “that could be something that results from the investigation — [but we] need to get all the facts first.”

Two other sources said legislators are studying how to achieve that remedy — noting that the GDI reportedly secured $100,000 from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center and $545,000 from the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy.

Both entities have said they don’t plan to provide additional funding to the group, but the past spending has raised alarms on Capitol Hill.

The GDI calls itself “the world’s first rating of the media sites based on the risk of the outlet carrying disinformation” and issued its blacklist aimed at advertisers without providing any evidence that The Post actually spread disinformation.

“No program or office like this should be receiving any federal funding; I can tell you that much,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), who serves on the House Judiciary Committee’s select subcommittee on the “weaponization” of government.

“My office is currently looking at all possible avenues to defund these rogue agencies violating Americans’ rights and working to investigate them,” Bishop said.

“US taxpayer dollars should never be funneled to left-wing disinformation groups that are trying to blacklist American news outlets like The New York Post,” said House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.). “Freedom of speech and the press are core American values and must be protected against radical progressives seeking to censor opinions and facts that don’t fit their political narrative.”

Comer, who demanded more information on the funding from Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a Feb. 23 letter, added, “The House Oversight and Accountability Committee is pressing the Biden Administration for answers about this attack on the First Amendment.”

“It is extremely concerning that the US government is allegedly funding the Global Disinformation Index, which is being used to target conservative media outlets,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). “We’ve seen recently how the US government has tried to use the tech sector to control the narrative on many issues. Outlets such as the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed are among the biggest pushers of disinformation, yet are ranked as very trustworthy by the index.

“No taxpayer funds should ever be used to censor or suppress speech,” she added.

At least one prominent ad firm, Microsoft-owned Xandr, said it “stopped using GDI’s services” in response to an investigative reporting series by the Washington Examiner, but it remains unclear how widely the rubric has been adopted by either third parties that place ads or individual companies.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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