Government shutdown would hit Pentagon civilians - again

By David Alexander

WASHINGTON | Fri Sep 27, 2013 6:35pm EDT

(Reuters) - The U.S. Defense Department will put half its 800,000 civilian employees on unpaid leave next week and halt military activity not critical to national security if Congress fails to resolve a looming funding crisis, Pentagon officials said on Friday.

The U.S. military's 1.4 million uniformed personnel would continue fighting the Afghanistan war, patrolling the Mediterranean off Syria and conducting other operations considered necessary for security, but they wouldn't get paid until Congress resolves the spending dilemma, officials said.

It would be the second time in two months that many Defense Department civilian workers have been placed on unpaid leave due to ongoing budget fights between congressional Republicans and President Barack Obama's Democratic administration.

Funding for many U.S. government operations runs out next week with the start of the new fiscal year on October 1, and unless Congress reaches a deal to pay for its activities, much of the government will be forced to shut down. Only certain activities permitted under law are allowed to continue, officials said.

"During a lapse, DoD (the Defense Department) cannot pay military personnel and civilian personnel, even if they have been directed to work," Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale told reporters.

"We would be required to do some other bad things to our people," he added, saying the Pentagon couldn't immediately pay death benefits to the families of troops who die on active duty and would have to close commissaries where many military families shop.

More than 600,000 civilian defense employees were placed on unpaid leave for six days in early August due to across-the-board budget cuts that went into effect in March, nearly halfway through the fiscal year.

"A lapse of appropriations causes civilian furloughs. It is one more blow to the morale of our civilian work force, and that morale is already low," Hale said. "Even if a lapse never occurs, the planning itself is disruptive. People are worrying right now about whether their paychecks are going to be delayed rather than focusing on the mission."

Hale's comments came as the department, the U.S. government's largest agency, released an eight page contingency plan to prepare its employees for a potential shutdown.

Officials said military personnel, who are paid twice a month, would receive their October 1 paychecks but might see their October 15 paychecks delayed if a government shutdown takes place and no funding deal has been reached by October 7.

Civilian employees are paid every two weeks and received a paycheck on Friday. If the government shuts down and they are placed on unpaid leave, they would be entitled to pay for the remaining four days of September at their next pay period, unless it is delayed because of the shutdown, officials said.

Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in a memo accompanying the plan that U.S. forces would continue to fight in the Afghanistan war and conduct other operations "necessary for the safety of human life and protection of property" because those activities are exempted from a lapse in appropriations.

"All other activities would need to be shut down in an orderly and deliberate fashion," Carter said.

Guidance issued by the department said contractors working under fully funded agreements awarded before appropriations ran out would continue working, but new or extended contracts could not be executed.

"No funds will be available to pay such new contracts or place additional increments of funding on contracts until Congress appropriates additional funds," the contingency plan said.

THE ROAD TO A SHUTDOWN IS PAVED WITH BOEHNER'S GOOD INTENTIONS.

September 17, 2010

THE ROAD TO A SHUTDOWN IS PAVED WITH BOEHNER'S GOOD INTENTIONS.... The headline on this Politico piece certainly seemed encouraging: "Boehner: GOP won't shut down gov't." Given the Republican interest in shutting down the government next year, it was an encouraging sign.
But the headline was misleading. Boehner didn't say the GOP wouldn't shut down the government; he said the GOP doesn't intend to shut down the government. There's a big difference.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) rejected the idea that Republicans will shut down the government if they come to a legislative impasse with President Barack Obama, even as some conservative activists have predicted and even pushed a shutdown next year.
"Our goal is to have a smaller, less costly, and more accountable government here in Washington DC. Our goal is not to shut down the government," he said.

The wording here matters. Boehner is effectively saying that, if Americans hand the House majority to a radicalized Republican Party, he and his caucus will pursue a far-right agenda. Their "goal" isn't to shut down the government; their "goal" is to get everything they want. If President Obama stands in their way, a shutdown is the likely result, but that doesn't mean it's their "goal" going into 2011.
Indeed, Boehner went on to tell reporters, "I am committed to doing everything that I can do and our team can do to prevent Obamacare from being implemented. When I say everything, I mean everything."
This isn't exactly subtle. Boehner is so intent on destroying the law -- returning to discrimination for Americans with pre-existing conditions, boosting the deficit, restoring rescissions, depriving tens of millions of uninsured Americans of access to quality care -- that he'll do whatever it takes. "Everything," in this context, means shutting down the government.
"Boehner: GOP won't shut down gov't"? I think the truth is much closer to the opposite.

US intelligence chiefs urge Congress to preserve surveillance programs

Officials refuse to say in Senate testimony whether cell site data had ever been used to pinpoint an individual's location

BETA

• Paul Lewis and Dan Roberts in Washington
• theguardian.com, Thursday 26 September 2013 18.08 EDT
• Jump to comments (254)

Senator Dianne Feinstein speaks with director of national intelligence James Clapper, NSA director general Keith Alexander and deputy attorney general James Cole. Photograph: James Reed/Reuters

US intelligence chiefs used an appearance before Congress on Thursday to urge lawmakers not to allow public anger over the extent of government surveillance to result in changes to the law that would impede them from preventing terrorist attacks.

General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, conceded that disclosures by the whistleblower Edward Snowden "will change how we operate". But he urged senators, who are weighing a raft of reforms, to preserve the foundational attributes of a program that allows officials to collect the phone data of millions of American citizens.

In testy exchanges at the Senate intelligence committee, Alexander and the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, refused to say on the record where the NSA had ever sought to trawl cell site data, which pinpoints the location of individuals via their phones.

They were challenged by Democratic senator Ron Wyden who, as a member of the committee, has for years been privy to classified briefings that he cannot discuss in public. "You talk about the damage that has been done by disclosures, but any government official who thought this would never be disclosed was ignoring history. The truth always manages to come out," he said.

"The NSA leadership built an intelligence data collection system that repeatedly deceived the American people. Time and time again the American people were told one thing in a public forum, while intelligence agencies did something else in private."

Wyden and his fellow Democrat Mark Udall used the public hearing to press the intelligence chiefs on aspects of the top-secret surveillance infrastructure.

Asked by Udall whether it was the NSA's aim to collect the records of all Americans, Alexander replied: "I believe it is in the nation's best interest to put all the phone records into a lockbox – yes."

He would not be drawn on any past attempts or plans to store cell site data for security reasons. The NSA director evaded repeated questions from Wyden over whether the NSA had either collection of cell site phone data, or planned to do so. Alexander eventually replied: "What I don't want to do senator is put out in an unclassified form anything that is classified."

Alexander and Clapper also strongly criticised the media for over its publication of Snowden's disclosures, which they suggested had been misleading. Neither of the intelligence chiefs, nor any of the senators who criticised media reporting, indicated which news organisations or particular reports were misleading, or in what way.

Alexander said that while recent disclosures were likely to impact public perceptions of the NSA and "change how we operate", any diminution of the intelligence community's capabilities risked terrorist attacks on US territory.

He told the committee that over one seven-day period this month, 972 people had been killed in terrorist attacks in Kenya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. "We need these programs to ensure we don't have those same statistics here," he said.

Alexander said that violations of the rules governing surveillance powers were not common and "with very rare exceptions, are unintentional". Clapper also admitted to violations, saying "on occasion, we've made mistakes, some quite significant", but stressed those were inadvertent and the result of human or technical errors.

In a joint written submission with James Cole, the deputy attorney general, who also gave evidence to the committee, they said they were "open to a number of ideas that have been proposed in various forms" relating to the routine trawl of millions phone records of Americans under section 215 of the Patriot Act.

The trio said they would consider statutory restrictions on their ability to query the data they gather and disclosing publicly how often they use the system. However, there was no suggestion in the written submission that they would contemplate any infringement on the bulk collection and storage of the phone records, a proposal contained in bills being put forward in the House of Representatives and Senate.

"To be clear, we believe the manner in which the bulk telephony metadata collection program has been carried out is lawful, and existing oversight mechanisms protect both privacy and security," they stated.

The trio said they were also open to discussing legislation under which the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court would at its discretion solicit the views of some kind of independent figure in cases that raise broader civil liberties issues. 

This falls short of the draft legislation calling for the appointment of a "constitutional advocate", which Wyden, Udall and other senators are pushing for in a bipartisan bill unveiled on Wednesday night.

At the start of the hearing, the Democratic chair of the committee, Diane Feinstein, outlined a separate bill she is introducing with Republican vice-chairman Saxby Chambliss.

Their proposed legislation broadly echoes the small tweaks the intelligence establishment says it will consider, but does not go further. Feinstein said their bill would change but preserve the program of collecting and storing phone records of Americans under section 215 of the Patriot Act.

She echoed criticisms of the media reporting of Snowden disclosures, said she was confident NSA surveillance programs were "lawful, effective and they are conducted under careful oversight". She asserted that the program by which intelligence officials secretly collect millions of phone metadata, and can be used to provide a detailed breakdown of an individual's movements life, was not a form of covert monitoring. "Much of the press has called this as surveillance program," she said. "It is not."

Chambliss said that "while we are here in large part because of the Snowden leaks", they had caused huge damage to the US and its interests and "would ultimately claim lives", something he said Snowden should be held to account for.

Feinstein and Chambliss are the two members of Congress who arguably have the biggest mandate to hold the intelligence establishment to account. 

Their bill would not limit the collection of phone records, but rather introduce some restrictions on when intelligence officials are permitted to search the data, and requirements of the intelligence agencies to disclose how often they use the program.

It would also partly widen the powers of the NSA, allowing laws that authorise foreign spying to be continued for a period of time after targets enter US territory.  

Mid-hearing on Thursday, Feinstein read out excerpts from an email she said she had received on her BlackBerry from the Obama administration, pertaining to the wording that might be used to describe a special advocate lawyer in the Fisa court.

Other senators on the committee criticised media reporting and argued the essence of the surveillance apparatus should be left in place. Republican senator Dan Coats said journalists were throwing "raw meat out there", suggesting the reporting was misleading the public. He cautioned against overreacting "for fear of the public saying, 'Oh, that headline makes me nervous.'" 

Democrat Jay Rockefeller said that public misunderstandings risked dismantling a system of surveillance that has taken a decade to construct in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. "You don't build a Roman fort and then build another one next door because you've made a mistake," he said.

Clapper responded that the agencies were finding ways to "counter the popular narrative".

Italian government near collapse after budget talks fail

By Francesca Piscioneri and Giuseppe Fonte

ROME | Fri Sep 27, 2013 5:42pm EDT

(Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta failed to secure backing for a vital package of fiscal measures on Friday as divisions with center-right partners in his fragile coalition took the government to the brink of collapse.

Letta flew back from a visit to New York with coalition unity already in tatters after a threat by center-right lawmakers to walk out over Silvio Berlusconi's battle against a conviction for tax fraud.

After two days of mounting tension and with financial markets on edge, he met ministers late on Friday in a last-ditch bid to avert a rise in sales tax and secure approval for additional budget measures needed to bring Italy's deficit within European Union limits.

However, with the meeting still in progress, officials made clear that no deal could be reached.

"The conditions aren't in place at the moment," said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Letta is now expected to go before parliament next week to seek support to continue in office.

Failure to agree on some 3 billion euros of budget measures, demanded by both Letta's center-left Democratic Party (PD) and Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL), underlined the breakdown between the two traditional rivals which were forced together by last February's deadlocked election.

Economy Minister Fabrizio Saccomanni, who has staked his credibility on meeting the EU budget limits and faced constant sniping from the PDL over recent months, was furious at the breakdown, officials said.

PDL lawmakers said proposals to avert the one percentage point rise in sales tax, scheduled to take effect in October, would have been funded by an increase in fuel taxes which would have punished consumers.

With the sales tax hike, passed by the previous government led by Mario Monti, due to kick in on Tuesday, prospects for a deal appear remote.

"We can't accept the blame for this," PDL secretary Angelino Alfano, who is also deputy prime minister, told the cabinet, according to one official. "We can't stay in the government if taxes are going up and there are no cuts to spending," he said.

MEETING WITH PRESIDENT

Letta's left-right coalition has flirted with collapse ever since Italy's top court convicted former premier Berlusconi of tax fraud last month and sentenced him to four years in prison, commuted to a year of house arrest or community service.

On Wednesday, PDL lawmakers said they would resign en masse if a Senate committee meeting on October 4 votes to begin proceedings to expel their leader from parliament.

On returning to Italy on Friday after courting foreign investors in New York, Letta met President Giorgio Napolitano who, if the government fell, would have to either call new elections or try to oversee the creation of a new coalition.

A spokesman for the president's office said the head of state, who has repeatedly said he does not want a return to the polls, had given Letta his full support to seek the backing of cabinet and parliament.

If Letta, who has a commanding majority in the lower house, can secure the backing of a few dozen Senators among PDL rebels or opposition parties including the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, he could form a new coalition.

The political convulsions in the euro zone's third largest economy have increasingly worried investors, although with the European Central Bank guaranteeing stability in the markets, there has been none of the panic seen during previous crises.

At an auction of 10-year bonds on Friday, Italy's borrowing costs rose to their highest level in three months, while the premium investors demand to hold Italian debt rather than AAA-rated German paper widened to 267 basis points from under 250 at the start of the week.

(Additional reporting by Francesca Landini, Catherine Hornby, Antonella Cinelli, Roberto Landucci and Gavin Jones; writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

The GOP asks why Obama will negotiate with Putin and not with them.

The GOP asks why Obama will negotiate with Putin and not with them. Here’s why.

By Ezra Klein, Published: September 27 at 4:56 pmE-mail the writer

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President Obama's news conference was meant to drive home his position that he won't negotiate with Republicans over the debt ceiling.

But Republicans want those negotiations. And they think they've found a winning message to get them: How can Obama be willing to negotiate with Vladimir Putin but not with John Boehner? They've even got a Web video:

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner, made a similar point on Twitter, contrasting Obama's announcement that he was negotiating with President Rouhani of Iran with his emphatic refusal to negotiate over the debt ceiling:

Let's run the analogy out.

Imagine that Putin stepped forward tomorrow morning and announced that Russia had developed a computer virus that would shut down the market for U.S. Treasuries and that he would release that virus unless Obama agreed to a list of Russian demands.

No one would say Russia was asking for negotiations with Obama. They would say Russia was holding the U.S. economy hostage and demanding that Obama pay a ransom. No Republican -- and no Democrat -- would advice Obama to take that meeting. The sole question would be prevention and, if necessary, reprisal.

This is the core disagreement between the White House and the Republican Party. The Republican Party thinks it's offering the White House something it wants — the continued creditworthiness of the United States of America — in return for things the GOP wants, like a one-year delay on Obamacare.

But the White House doesn't see an increase in the debt limit as something that the Republicans are giving them. As Obama put it in his news conference: "Paying America's bills is not a concession to me. That's not doing me a favor."

If the Republicans just wanted negotiations, the Obama administration would be happy to oblige them. The White House, after all, has repeatedly said they're willing to negotiate with the Republicans over the deficit, over jobs, over sequestration, and much else. Republicans haven't been interested in those kinds of negotiations for some time. Indeed, after the fiscal cliff, Speaker John Boehner told Republicans that he was finished negotiating directly with Obama.

The reason Republicans aren't interested in those negotiations is they don't want to give anything up to get the things they want. That's why they like negotiating over the debt ceiling: Since they also don't want the the U.S. to lose its creditworthiness and fall back into financial crisis, raising the debt ceiling is not actually giving anything up. It's releasing a hostage they never wanted to shoot.

The GOP argues the fact that they don't want to vote to raise the debt ceiling makes it a concession to the White House. The White House disagrees. But that -- and not negotiations in general -- is the core issue. If Putin came to Obama with anything akin to the GOP's position on the debt ceiling, it would be perceived not as an opening for negotiations, but as a prelude to war.

FRIDAY, SEP 27, 2013 01:00 PM EDT

CNN rewrites ethics rules to accommodate swindler Newt Gingrich

CNN's conflict of interest rules suddenly get a lot looser for one "Crossfire" co-host

BY ALEX PAREENE

TOPICS: NEWT GINGRICH, CNN, CROSSFIRE, MEDIA CRITICISM, CABLE NEWS, POLITICS NEWS

Newt Gingrich and a friend (Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

Congratulations, CNN, you managed to hire Newt Gingrich, one of America’s most beloved historian-grifters. Now he’s your problem. The new “Crossfire” has only just begun, and CNN is already trying to explain how and why Gingrich is exempted from the cable news channel’s ethics policies.

When CNN relaunched their storied professional arguing program this year, they decided the show would be hosted, half of the time, by former Obama campaign (and administration) communications professional Stephanie Cutter, and former Republican presidential candidate and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Unlike most past Crossfire hosts, Cutter and Gingrich aren’t professional journalists or commentators. Their work experience is in politics itself, not political media. They are explicit partisans, in other words. That makes for bad TV, obviously, but it also makes for bad public relations, when the professional pols continue to act like professional pols, because that is what they are. In Stephanie Cutter’s case, that means assisting the White House in its attempt to convince the press and the public that Larry Summers is a great man who would be a great Fed Chair. In Gingrich’s case it means grifting everyone all the time.

After leaving Congress in disgrace, Gingrich spent years slowly and carefully repairing his image — he became Newt Gingrich, Ideas Man — and cashing in on that image as much as possible. Few were better at recognizing and taking advantage of the fact that the conservative movement is a self-perpetuating fundraising machine. Gingrich Inc. pulled in $100 million doing almost nothing of concrete value for anyone but Newt. Speeches, consulting, publishing, filmmaking, and fundraising-for-the-sake of fundraising made Gingrich a rich man.

Gingrich’s 2012 race was pretty obviously intended, at least initially, to boost his profile and hence his earning ability, but he seems to have gotten a bit full of himself and taken it too far, ending up deep in debt and forced to shutter some of his lucrative businesses. He’s climbing back out of that hole and reestablishing Newt Inc., and CNN is apparently willing to rewrite its own ethics guidelines in order to help him get back to doing what he does best, which is extracting money from suckers.

Gingrich’s current con is the American Legacy Political Action Committee, which Gingrich founded in 2010. Gingrich is still signing his name to their fundraising pitches. Here’s the (very simple) con: The PAC raises a bunch of money and gives it to a shady communications shop called InfoCision. InfoCision is a telemarketing firm that raises money for conservative nonprofits and then keeps most of the money. (Do you see how this whole conservative ecosystem works?) Gingrich’s relationship with InfoCision goes back to his time as Speaker. For this election cycle, through July, American Legacy PAC has raised $1.4 million and given $1.25 million to InfoCision, according to David Corn and Andy Kroll.

That’s the scheme. Here’s the conflict of interest: This Gingrich-founded PAC has also given money to some politicians, including Rand Paul. Gingrich has hosted Paul on Crossfire, without disclosing that his PAC donated to him. That is a violation of CNN’s ethics policy. So CNN is just sort of changing their policy, according to this statement from CNN Executive Vice President of News Standards and Practices Rick Davis:

We are clarifying the policy and making it clear Newt Gingrich is not in violation. The policy: If a Crossfire co-host has made a financial contribution to a politician who appears on the program or is the focus of the program, disclosure is not required during the show since the co-host’s political support is obvious by his or her point of view expressed on the program.

This “clarification” is, as MediaMatters notes, “at odds” with what Davis said less than a month ago:

In an interview with Media Matters earlier this month, Davis said that if Gingrich, who serves as honorary co-chair for the American Legacy PAC, “is helping fund a candidate and that candidate’s on the show, or being discussed on the show, of course he’ll disclose that. Disclosure is important when it’s relevant.”

Here’s the question for CNN: Is having Newt Gingrich as a television host so valuable to your network that it’s worth rewriting ethics rules and tacitly sanctioning his shady fundraising practices? Does be bring that much “value” to your “brand”? He’s famous, sure, and sometimes compelling television, but so are lots of other conservatives, and some of those conservatives might not be actively swindling people right this very second.

Considering Gingrich’s longtime willingness to go on TV for free — one of the few things he’ll do for free, it seems — why ruin your big cable news corporation’s credibility by making him an employee?

Brain scans of porn addicts: what's wrong with this picture?

Scan images show that watching online 'adult' sites can alter our grey matter, which may lead to a change in sexual tastes

Candy necklace bra

• 
• • Norman Doidge
  • The Guardian, Thursday 26 September 2013 13.29 EDT
  • Jump to comments (437)

A doctor looks at a heroin addict's brain scans. New research shows men who say they are addicted to porn … develop changes in the same area – the reward centre – that changes in drug addicts.' Photograph: Don McPhee for the Guardian

The Cambridge University neuropsychiatrist Dr Valerie Voon has recently shown that men who describe themselves as addicted to porn (and who lost relationships because of it) develop changes in the same brain area – the reward centre – that changes in drug addicts. The study, not yet published, is featured next week in the Channel 4 TV show Porn on the Brain. Neurosceptics may argue that pictures of the brain lighting up in addicts tell us nothing new – we already know they are addicted. But they do help: knowing the reward centre is changed explains some porn paradoxes.

In the mid-1990s I, and other psychiatrists, began to notice the following. An adult male, in a happy relationship, being seen for some non-romantic issue, might describe getting curious about porn on the burgeoning internet. Most sites bored him, but he soon noticed several that fascinated him to the point he was craving them. The more he used the porn, the more he wanted to.

Yet, though he craved it, he didn't like it (porn paradox 1). The cravings were so intense, he might feel them while thinking about his computer (paradox 2). The patient would also report that, far from getting more turned on by the idea of sex with his partner, he was less attracted to her (paradox 3). Through porn he acquired new sexual tastes.

We often talk about addicts as though they simply have "quantitative problems". They "use too much", and should "cut back". But porn addictions also have a qualitative component: they change sexual taste. Here's how.

Until recently, scientists believed our brains were fixed, their circuits formed and finalised in childhood, or "hardwired". Now we know the brain is "neuroplastic", and not only can it change, but that it works by changing its structure in response to repeated mental experience.

One key driver of plastic change is the reward centre, which normally fires as we accomplish a goal. A brain chemical, dopamine, is released, giving us the thrill that goes with accomplishment. It also consolidates the connections between neurons in the brain that helped us accomplish that goal. As well, dopamine is secreted at moments of sexual excitement and novelty. Porn scenes, filled with novel sexual "partners", fire the reward centre. The images get reinforced, altering the user's sexual tastes.

Many abused substances directly trigger dopamine secretion – without us having to work to accomplish a goal. This can damage the dopamine reward system. In porn, we get "sex" without the work of courtship. Now, scans show that porn can alter the reward centre too.

Once the reward centre is altered, a person will compulsively seek out the activity or place that triggered the dopamine discharge. (Like addicts who get excited passing the alley where they first tried cocaine, the patients got excited thinking about their computers.) They crave despite negative consequences. (This is why those patients could crave porn without liking it.) Worse, over time, a damaged dopamine system makes one more "tolerant" to the activity and needing more stimulation, to get the rush and quiet the craving. "Tolerance" drives a search for ramped-up stimulation, and this can drive the change in sexual tastes towards the extreme.

The most obvious change in porn is how sex is so laced with aggression and sadomasochism. As tolerance to sexual excitement develops, it no longer satisfies; only by releasing a second drive, the aggressive drive, can the addict be excited. And so – for people psychologically predisposed – there are scenes of angry sex, men ejaculating insultingly on women's faces, angry anal penetration, etc. Porn sites are also filled with the complexes Freud described: "Milf" ("mothers I'd like to fuck") sites show us the Oedipus complex is alive; spanking sites sexualise a childhood trauma; and many other oral and anal fixations. All these features indicate that porn's dirty little secret is that what distinguishes "adult sites" is how "infantile," they are, in terms of how much power they derive from our infantile complexes and forms of sexuality and aggression. Porn doesn't "cause" these complexes, but it can strengthen them, by wiring them into the reward system. The porn triggers a "neo-sexuality" – an interplay between the pornographer's fantasies, and the viewer's.

Of all our instincts, sexuality is perhaps the most plastic, appearing to have broken free of its primary evolutionary aim, reproduction, even though a certain naive biological narrative depicts our sexual tastes as hardwired and unchanging, and insists we are all always drawn to the same, biologically fit, symmetrical features and attributes which indicate "this person will produce fit offspring". But clearly we are not all attracted to the same type, or person.

Sexual tastes change from era to era: the sexual goddesses painted by Rubens are corpulent by modern standards. Sexual tastes also change from individual to individual: different people have different romantic "types". Types tend to be caricatures: the free spirit, the artistic type, the bad boy, the strong silent type, the devoted woman, and so on. We learn that types are related to plasticity, when we discover the individual's history. The woman attracted to "the unavailable man", often lost her father in childhood; the man attracted to the "ice queen" had a distant critical mother. There is little hardwired about the specifics of these attractions. But the ultimate sign that sexual desire need not be hardwired into reproduction is the fetishist, more attracted to a shoe than its wearer.

Sexual tastes change over the course of our individual lives; not all love is love at first sight, based on looks; we may not notice someone as especially attractive, until we fall in love with them and feel such pleasure in their presence, that we soon "awaken" to their charms. And successfully monogamous couples, who love and feel attraction to each other over decades, slowly change their sexual tastes, as their partners age and look different. Sometimes change comes quickly, but no changes are as rapid or radical as those occurring in teenagers, who go from having limited, to all consuming attractions.

Teenagers' brains are especially plastic. Now, 24/7 access to internet porn is laying the foundation of their sexual tastes. In Beeban Kidron's InRealLife, a gripping film about the effects of the internet on teenagers, a 15-year-old boy of extraordinary honesty and courage articulates what is going on in the lives of millions of teen boys. He shows her the porn images that excite him and his friends, and describes how they have moulded their "real life" sexual activity. He says: "You'd try out a girl and get a perfect image of what you've watched on the internet … you'd want her to be exactly like the one you saw on the internet … I'm highly thankful to whoever made these websites, and that they're free, but in other senses it's ruined the whole sense of love. It hurts me because I find now it's so hard for me to actually find a connection to a girl."

The sexual tastes and the romantic longings of these boys have become dissociated from each other. Meanwhile, the girls have "downloaded" on to them the expectation that they play roles written by pornographers. Once, porn was used by teens to explore, prepare and relieve sexual tension, in anticipation of a real sexual relationship. Today, it supplants it.

In her book, Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion, Izabella St James, who was one of Hugh Hefner's former "official girlfriends", described sex with Hef. Hef, in his late 70s, would have sex twice a week, sometimes with four or more of his girlfriends at once, St James among them. He had novelty, variety, multiplicity and women willing to do what he pleased. At the end of the happy orgy, wrote St James, came "the grand finale: he masturbated while watching porn".

Here, the man who could actually live out the ultimate porn fantasy, with real porn stars, instead turned from their real flesh and touch, to the image on the screen. Now, I ask you, "what is wrong with this picture?".

• This article was corrected on 27 September. The Channel 4 programme Porn on the Brain was incorrectly called Porn and the Teenage Brain

Senate tosses shutdown hot potato back to House

By Tom Cohen, CNN

updated 1:51 PM EDT, Fri September 27, 2013

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Senate rejects Obamacare filibuster, restores funding for health care program
• Senate approval of revised spending bill sends it back to the House
• House Speaker John Boehner faces a showdown with tea party conservatives
• Partial shutdown of government sent for Tuesday, unless spending plan approved

Washington (CNN) -- It's a congressional version of hot potato that will determine if a government shutdown begins as soon as Tuesday.

The Democratic-led Senate moved quickly Friday to pass its preferred short-term spending plan to keep the government funded beyond the end of the current fiscal year on Monday, tossing it back to the Republican-led House.

This sets up a weekend showdown between Republican House Speaker John Boehner and tea party conservatives in his GOP caucus, which demands that any spending measure must eliminate all money for Obamacare.

The Senate began Friday by voting to overcome a filibuster led by GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas against the spending plan, clearing the way for another vote in which Democrats restored funding for Obamacare in the plan.

It then approved the revised spending measure -- called a continuing resolution -- through mid-November, 54 to 44.

Cruz waged a 21-hour floor speech this week against Obamacare, but more moderate Republicans rejected his tactics in voting with Democrats to move ahead on the measure.

Boehner indicated Thursday the House could revise the Senate's version and send that back, a move that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned would result in at least the start of a government shutdown next week because of the time it would take the Senate to reconsider the measure.

Cruz, who became the face of the tea party push to defund Obamacare, said Friday he expected his GOP colleagues in the House to continue the fight by revising the spending plan, which would mean "this issue is coming back to the Senate."

House GOP split

Republican leaders in both chambers don't want a shutdown now over the spending issue, for political and negotiating reasons.

They fear the optics of Republicans being blamed for a shutdown, and also want to exert as much leverage as possible for the GOP's agenda at the upcoming deadline to raise the federal debt limit.

However, Boehner needs backing from the 40 or so tea party conservatives in the House in order to have a spending plan pass with full support from his Republican caucus.

Their opposition to the Senate version that had included funding for Obamacare would mean the measure could only pass the House with support from all Democrats and some Republicans, which would further weaken Boehner's already shaky leadership of his caucus.

The brinksmanship highlights the division within the Republican Party over how best to attack President Barack Obama's signature legislation that was passed by Democrats in 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court. last year.

Tea party conservatives want to halt Obamacare now, just as full implementation of its individual health care exchanges begins in the new fiscal year starting Tuesday.

In the Senate, veteran Republican conservatives such as John Cornyn of Texas oppose the tea party strategy of linking the Obamacare funding to a possible government shutdown.

"There are some people across America that are so upset with Obamacare -- and I understand their frustration -- that they say we ought to shut down the federal government," Cornyn said, adding that the Congressional Research Service had determined the health care reforms would be funded even if there was government shutdown "because there are alternate sources of revenue that could be used to keep it going.

"So I say to my friends who say we ought to shut down the government to get rid of Obamacare that it won't work," he said.

Democrats slam GOP tactics

Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa called on House Republicans to "be responsible and forget about kid's games like picking up their marbles and going home or throwing a temper tantrum or shutting down the government because you can't get your way."

On Thursday, Boehner had to delay their plan to introduce a bill to raise the nation's debt limit after conservatives complained the proposed package failed to include enough budget cuts and significant changes to entitlement programs.

The Obama administration says the debt ceiling must be increased by October 17 to ensure the government can pay all its bills.

Boehner signals GOP focus now on debt ceiling

Boehner and his top lieutenants initially hoped to move ahead with their proposal to permit Washington to borrow more money to pay its bills as soon as Friday.

The initial proposal by House GOP leaders, which would raise the debt ceiling for a year, included a lengthy list of GOP priorities including a one year delay of Obamacare, provisions to roll back regulations on businesses, tax reforms, and approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

However, conservatives wanted more.

"It definitely has a lot of goodies in it, things that arguably would grow the economy and would arguably would generate more revenue," GOP Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama told reporters, adding he was undecided on whether to support it. "Washington has a spending problem and this debt ceiling bill does not address the problem."

Another Republican, Rep. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, told CNN that she was also undecided but wanted to see deeper budget cuts on the measure.

"I came here to cut spending and to reduce the size of the federal government, so when those opportunities arise I want to take advantage of them," Lummis said.

When asked Thursday about the scope of cuts, Boehner told reporters that "in this bill, we have spending cuts and we have issues that will help spur more economic growth. We think the balance is correct."

Some House Republicans questioned the strategy of proceeding to the debt ceiling fight before Congress resolved the question on spending and the possible shutdown. They argued the GOP still had some leverage to force a change to Obamacare on that measure.

Obama: No negotations on debt ceiling

Meanwhile, Obama made clear that he rejected any political bartering on the debt ceiling.

"I will not negotiate on anything when it comes to the full faith and credit of the United States of America," he said Thursday in a speech on Obamacare in Maryland.

A proposal like the Republican debt ceiling measure amounts to trying to "blackmail a president into giving them some concessions on issues that have nothing to do with the budget," he said.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters a one-year delay in implementing Obamacare's individual mandate for people to obtain health insurance would undermine a key provision of the program that prohibits the denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

"The fact is you have to make the system work," Carney said, adding people with pre-existing conditions won't be denied insurance under Obamacare "because of the expansion of the number of people who will be covered and participate in these marketplaces provided by the Affordable Care Act through the individual mandate."

CNN Chief National Correspondent John King said Thursday that focusing on the debt ceiling was where House Republicans "wanted to wage this fight all along."

"They didn't want to get bogged down in the government shutdown fight, but a conservative revolt within the House Republican ranks forced them to get there," King said.

Analysts warn of severe economic impact from any doubt cast over whether the United States would fail to meet its debt obligations. A similar bout of congressional brinksmanship over the debt ceiling in 2011 led to the first-ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating.

Obama cited that potential harm to a still sluggish recovery on Thursday, saying the world looked to America for economic leadership and stability.

"You don't mess with that," he said to cheers in Maryland.

However, King said the president previously negotiated on the need to increase how much the federal government can borrow to meet its obligations, such as in the 2011 showdown that led to deep spending cuts sought by Republicans.

"The Republicans think that is safer ground politically. The question is, can they actually get anything from the president?" King said.

Noting Obama has previously accused Republicans of having an unreasonable "my way or the highway" stance, he said the GOP can now accuse the president of doing the same thing by refusing to negotiate on the debt ceiling.