SoonerBlue

Mostly politics, a few current events, a squirt of seltzer down yer pants .. a little blog for my rambles and rants.

2009/11/21

Oh my, you can't make this stuff up

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@ 07:31 AM (23 hours, 33 minutes ago)
 

Utah State Sen. Chris Buttars (R) has always voted against gay-rights, so it was sort of a surprise when he backed a bill that barred "landlords and employers from discriminating based on sexuality."

However, it was what he later said to the press that caused snorts and guffaws.

BUTTARS: "I meet with the gays here and there. They were in my house two weeks ago. I don’t mind gays. But I don’t want ‘em stuffing it down my throat all the time."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U1uFbqO260

OK, OK - I've had a good laugh at Buttars’ unique way of turning a phrase, and even though he’s an obvious bigot and homophobe, I give him points for at least supporting a measure that would bar employers and landlords from discriminating against people based on their sexual orientation.

It's a step in the right direction. Now, maybe when he finds that gays in his neighborhood or his workplace aren’t trying to "stuff" anything down his throat, he will relax a bit.

 

Bookstore crowd goes rogue, boos Sarah Palin

 

Wow -- since wingnuts, teabaggers and birthers have learned to protest about everything these days, they have no problem going after their heroine, Sarah Palin. In Noblesville, Indiana, several dozen of the 1000 lucky wristband holders got pissed when they didn't get their books signed. After all, they waited outside the bookstore for hours in the rain and cold.

When Palin tried to take the money and run, in 4-inch heels and Baby Trig on her hip, the crowd outside started booing, hissing and chanting "Quitter!" "She's a Quitter!"

Here's the video.

Read more here.

Too bad I don't do facebook - there seems to have been an awful lot of facebook bitching from devastated Palin fans.

But not to worry, Sarah will win them back after she blames the bookstore, her staff, the event organizers and the bus schedule.

Goodness knows, Fox News is doing everything they can to help her and promote her. They had to come out with another apology for using fake video footage - this time it was old Palin campaign footage, pretending it was film of the crowds who showed up to buy her book.

(Last time it was about the fake footage they used for a teabagger rally - splicing two events to make it look like the crowds were bigger.)

Don't get me wrong, I am rooting for Palin. I don't want to see her discredited because she does more harm than good to the GOP brand while she's out on the trail.

I want her to succeed, on the theory that she can never pull in more than a fraction of the GOP base - but one big enough to split the party and play hell with getting a rightie elected.

 

2009/11/20

Imagine surfing the Web with just the power of your thoughts

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@ 10:29 AM (1 day, 20 hours ago)
 
Yes, mad scientists are developing technology that can be implanted in our brains to operate computers, cell phones and television sets!

From Computerworld - "By the year 2020, you won't need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer, say Intel Corp. researchers. Instead, users will open documents and surf the Web using nothing more than their brain waves.

[A]lmost two years ago, scientists in the U.S. and Japan announced that a monkey's brain was used to control a humanoid robot. Miguel Nicolelis, a professor of neurobiology at Duke University and lead researcher on the project, said that researchers were hoping its work would help paralyzed people walk again. [..]"

I really do not mind all that much clicking on a mouse...but just think of how many ways this brain implant chip would be useful -- at work, at home, or outdoors -- especially when you need your hands to do something else.
 
And it would be cool to have the ability to keep all the brain-Web interactions confined to inside my head, with no need for external discs or files to store or process data.
 
What if I happened to read an inflammatory email? Would my mind mentally compose and send a nasty reply before I had the chance to reconsider? It seems a bit dangerous to me.
 
Say,  what about the controls...how would we turn the connection on or off?
 

House floor wingnuttery

You might remember seeing Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) grinning for the cameras as she stood behind Rep. Michele Bachmann during that anti-healthcare reform "press conference" on the Capitol steps the other day.

Well, yesterday, Rep. Foxx stood up on the House floor and tried to revise history by attacking what she calls "revisionist history" about which political party should get the credit for passing historic civil rights legislation in the 1960's. She wants people to believe it was Republicans who were the civil rights champions.

She said: "Just as we were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the '60s without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle," said Fox. "They love to engage in revisionist history."

Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) immediately challenged Foxx, strongly denying that the GOP passed the Civil Rights Act with almost no help from the Democrats...saying that it was passed by the Johnson administration over the objections of people like Jesse Helms from her own state. And that Rep. John Lewis, "a member of this House, was beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge to get that civil rights legislation passed. Tell John Lewis that he wasn't part of getting that legislation passed."

Maybe Foxx was talking about the 1860's, when Republicans passed Reconstruction and then Southern Democrats passed Jim Crow laws. Back then it wasn't a party thing...it was a conservative vs liberal thing. The conservatives in both parties opposed civil rights of any kind, and those leaning liberal in both parties had to fight tooth and nail to get these things passed.

Can you imagine liberals in the Republican party? It's much different today, our two parties have an ever widening difference between them...even though the Democrats still have their Blue Dog conservatives.

If we're talking about 1960's, overall, Senate Republicans voted 27-6 for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The voting record shows a distinct split between Northern and Southern politicians. When you take this into account, the facts show that "in both the North and the South, Democrats supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act at a higher rate than the Republicans."

Virginia Foxx is wrong. Yes, 1960's civil rights legislation was passed with strong bipartisan support...but, the credit for the civil rights victory has to go almost entirely to liberals and Democrats.

Don't forget that Richard Nixon began, and Ronald Reagan continued, the now-famous "Southern Strategy"...which led to an exodus of Southern Democrats to the Republican Party. THOSE were the kind of Democrats who voted against civil rights -- the racist, white-supremacist Dixiecrat Democrats -- NOT the ones who form the Democratic Party today.

The South has never forgiven Democrats for supporting the Civil Rights Movement and that's the dirty history of Republicans and racism.

Today's Democratic Party owes its soul far more to Northern liberals than to Southern Democrat Dixiecrats.

BTW - if Rep. Foxx really believes what she said, I'd like her to tell me what has the GOP done for civil rights lately? How's that minority vote working out for you? Also...would you vote for the Civil Rights Act today, Virginia?

2009/11/19

Every time Sarah Palin opens her mouth...

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@ 10:17 AM (2 days, 20 hours ago)

I see a Democrat winning somewhere. Since her book came out, she's been caught in so many lies and half-truths. No, not by Democrats, but by Sen. McCain's campaign staff. He first told them to keep low key, but the lies were so blatant that he relented and told them to defend themselves...but to just state the facts, and not get nasty.

He broke his silence yesterday:

"WASHINGTON, Nov 18 (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator John McCain on Wednesday strongly defended the top advisers from his 2008 presidential campaign in the face of sharp criticism from his vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin.[..]"

I am certainly not worried that Palin will ever win elective office. After her book tour storm dies down, I predict she will be on her way to a TV talk show, because running for political office is hard work, harder than beauty pageants. She seems to quit when the going gets rough.

And, after all, Limbaugh and Beck are getting millions for a just chatting a couple of hours a day, why shouldn't she?

But her celebrity can be dangerous in certain ways. Like she's the one who came up with the GOP talking point, "death panels" (probably with someone's help)...one of the more ridiculous lies which soon overtook the healthcare debate. Here's what she said when Barbara Walters asked her about it...

From abcnews.com: "Sarah Palin is acknowledging that "death panels" aren't part of Democrats' health care bills.

But, she says, she's been talking about them to make a point -- and she's comparing her use of the term to Ronald Reagan's cold war references to the "evil empire." [..] You're never going to find the evil empire on a map of the world,"

...Asked if Obama -- who has pushed back aggressively against the notion of "death panels" being part of the Democrats' bills, is a liar, Palin said no:

"He is not lying, in that those two words will not be found in any of those thousands of pages of different variations of the health care bill. No, ‘death panel' isn't there," Palin said.

"But he's incorrect, and he is disingenuous, if he is telling the American public that it doesn't come down to people -- committees, bureaucrats -- deciding who, ultimately, will receive government-run health care, if that's where we end up. With government-run health care, the only way to provide all the services to those who will need this health care is to ration it at some point. Who will do the rationing? It will be bureaucrats."

"They will be able to call the shots, based on somebody's subjective judgment of productivity, of somebody's life, who will receive the health care that needs to be rationed, and who will not. So, it was funny though, that the president said, ‘There's no such thing as death panels in there,' and some Congress members were saying there's no such thing. And yet then, steps were taken to take the ‘death panels' out."[..]"~~

Can you believe it?

It was Blumenauer's amendment for end-of-life counseling that she called a 'death panel'...and it WASN'T taken out, it PASSED with the rest of the House bill.

I repeat -- there NEVER were provisions for "bureaucrats" who "will be able to call the shots, based on somebody's subjective judgment of productivity, of somebody's life, who will receive the health care that needs to be rationed, and who will not."

These provisions NEVER existed...other than in her goofy mind. This woman is an embarrassment to all women who struggle to get taken seriously. Doesn't she realize that the rest of us read?

Shame on you Barbara Walters for not calling Palin on this...for letting her get away with her lies.

The REAL death panels are made up of insurance executives...the ones who routinely deny life-saving coverage...who pull the plug on "expensive" treatments for sick people. Who are then kicked off their policies because they get sick. Who then die.