Scientists have now levitated mice using magnetic fields, and DNA secrets of Potato Blight have been decoded.

Also, if you haven’t checked out the newest Hubble photos, you really need to do so. High resolution versions can be found at the official Hubble web site.

One of the biggest complaints about health care reform coming from Republicans is that illegal immigrants might have access to government programs and “we’ll” have to pay for it. Well, that’s how they make the case, but after talking to some Republicans about it, that isn’t really the case at all. It has nothing to go with illegal immigrants signing up for some imagined government public option that may or may not ever exist. They don’t want illegal immigrants to have access to health care period.

I present a conversation I had this week with a Republican in my life.

“Illegals are going to sign up for the public option.”

“Every bill I have read is very specific about not allowing that to happen.”

“They’ll still do it.”

“I know you have signed up for government programs. Have you already forgotten about all the paperwork and all the forms of ID you needed to prove you were eligible?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t easy.”

“And you think an illegal immigrant would be able to get through the system without being found out?”

“OK, so maybe they won’t get the government insurance, but they’ll still be showing up in the emergency rooms and getting seen.”

That’s very typical of every conversation I have had on the subject with the Republicans I know, and the conversation always ends with some variation of “but they’ll still be showing up in emergency rooms and being seen.” Well, yes they will, and there really isn’t any way to stop that … unless we want to start checking ID at emergency rooms and tossing anyone out who can’t prove they are an American. Is that the sort of world they really want to live in? A place where people in need are tossed to the curb to remain sick and/or die?

I certainly don’t want to live in a world like that. We used to live in a world like that. It wasn’t that long ago that “patient dumping” was perfectly legal. If a person entered an emergency room and couldn’t prove they could pay for treatment (by having insurance or a working credit card), they’d be told to shuffle along to some other hospital. People suffered. People died. Laws were made to stop that from happening, and I don’t want us to go back to needing papers to prove we deserve treatment when we are in a moment of dire need. In my eyes, it is a moral imperative that people who are injured or direly ill be treated no matter who they are or where they come from … and whether or not they have insurance or can pay for treatment.

But a lot of die-hard Republicans seem to have no problem with the concept of turning people away at emergency rooms because they might not be American citizens. The overlap between the people I know who are Republicans and feel this way and the people I know who are self-proclaimed Christians is 100%. I find this odd, because it seems somewhat un-Christian to refuse to heal someone for any reason or to put the worth of one person’s life higher than another for any reason. I don’t recall Jesus checking insurance cards or ID’s before performing his miracles … or saying we should only love people who are just like us, for that matter.

NOTE: Interesting bit from the Wikipedia article linked above:

According to a 2007 analysis by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, uninsured adult low-income non-citizens were the least likely to use emergency rooms, with only about one in ten reporting a visit in the past year. Adult non-citizens most often rely on clinics and health centers, many of which are funded by charities as well as hospitals seeking to unburden their emergency rooms.

Illegal immigrants being in our country is an immigration problem, not a health care problem.

One Last Thing: Americans need health care, not health insurance. I am old enough to remember a time when many, if not most, people didn’t have health insurance. It used to not be the norm. It didn’t mean we didn’t go to the doctor when we needed or wanted to go. We did, and it was affordable enough that most people could access decent health care. Then having health insurance became the norm, and the cost of health care went up. Now if someone doesn’t have health insurance, they might as well forget trying to see doctors or get treatments, and even people with health insurance often can’t afford health care. I don’t see many other people noticing the connection between insurance becoming the norm and the rising cost of health care, but in my lifetime, I have certainly noticed it.

In an extraordinary breach of congressional decorum, a Republican lawmaker shouted “You lie” at President Barack Obama during his speech to Congress Wednesday.

Republican Representative Joe Wilson ((His web site is currently down. Apparently, it got slammed from South Carolina called the President to apologize, but he didn’t get to speak to Obama. I can’t imagine why. I’d let him stew in his own juices a while too.

I’m all for freedom of speech and speaking my mind, but even I know there are situations during which being respectful is more important than having my say. A joint session of Congress during a speech by the President? Probably not the best time to call the President a liar out loud in a shouty tone.

Note: There does seem to be confusion on whether he said “”You lie! or “It’s a lie!” Doesn’t really matter as the end result is the same. He loudly called the President a liar during a joint session of Congress and on national TV in a very, very quiet room. Sucks to be him.

And stop with the Tweeting while someone is standing in front of you speaking. What is with the juveniles in Congress that they can’t sit still and pay attention –or at least pretend to pay attention– for longer than five minutes at a time?!

So if the United States has elected a socialist president, the socialists must be pretty excited, right? Claiming just a single U.S. Senator (Vermonter Bernie Sanders) and exactly zero members of the House of Representatives as their own, putting a socialist in the White House would represent the greatest achievement of any socialist alive today.

But there’s just one problem. The socialists won’t claim Obama as their own. They won’t even call him a socialist.

One of the big problems in public political “debate” is that too many people toss out the words “socialism” and “socialist” without knowing what those words mean. If they did, they would know Obama is no socialist. He’s a centrist. Left-leaning, perhaps, but a centrist all the same.

The outrage over the President’s speech tomorrow is, as I expected, continuing. The problem? Well, the speech he was going to give was socialist brainwashing propaganda. You know, he wrote a new one. Yes, the speech he’s going to give NOW is a great speech they say. Perfectly worthy and good for any President to give to students. It’s that OTHER speech that was EVIL. This isn’t the speech he was originally going to give, even though all along the White House has said the speech was going to be about staying in school, getting and education, goal setting, and setting priorities.

Last week, Jim Greer had some things to say about the President’s speech to school kids. I posted about it. It was crazy talk. He’s on one of the news channels right this minute, and here’s what he has to say about it now:

“My kids will be watching the speech, as I hope all kids will. I don’t advocate children not watching this President’s speech with THIS text. Now who knows what last week’s speech might have looked like.”
–Jim Greer, Chairman Florida GOP

See what I mean? Oh sure, this speech is FINE. It was last week’s speech that was going to convert the children into little walking socialist robots!

Then, of course, there are the evil socialist brainwashing techniques contained in the suggested after-speech activities. I’ve been wanting to post about them since the poo-flinging started, but as a former educator, it’s not possible for me to come to any conclusions on a suggested lesson plan or activity until I have examined the information it is based upon. Now that I have, I want to backtrack to the one suggestion that caused the most outrage and was unfortunately rewritten by the White House.

“Teachers can extend learning by having students write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.”

That suggestion doesn’t live in a void. It was to be directly related to what the President, in his speech, was asking students to help him with. And what are those things he is asking students to help him with? Staying in school, working hard, excelling at what they desire to do with their lives, inventing new technologies, curing diseases, creating a better society and civilization. In light of the text of the speech, there was nothing at all wrong with the above suggestion. In fact, all Americans –particularly those with children– should ask themselves what they can do to help the President get kids to study hard and excel.

And yes … holding people accountable for such things as saying they will do their homework on time or study harder for tests and so on is important. It’s easy for kids (and adults) to say things. Following through is usually somewhat more difficult and annoying.

One of the other lesson plan suggestions that has been causing some grief among the insane and ignorant is this one:

“Why is it important that we listen to the president and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of Congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?”

I didn’t even have to see the text of the speech to answer this one, and my answer applies to anyone living within the borders of this country. It’s important to listen to what all our elected officials have to say, whether or not we personally agree with what they are saying, because they have power over our lives. I couldn’t stand President Bush and disagreed with him on almost every single thing he ever said or did, and yet for 8 years, I watched or read every public word that came out of his mouth, as I do all the elected officials who are representing me and making decisions about the society I live in.

If I didn’t listen to them, I wouldn’t know what they were thinking of doing, and I wouldn’t be able to make my voice heard either in agreement or disagreement. Sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears and screaming “La la la! Can’t hear you!” may play well into the concept of ignorance being bliss, but it won’t be blissful if they pass some legislation that totally screws up your life. Thus, listening to them is important.

And one other suggestion after-speech discussion questions causing some uproar is yet again another that requires looking at the base material before making any grand assumptions:

“Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?”

Well, having now read the speech, what IS he asking students, teachers, principals, parents and the American people to do? Work hard, study, help kids get a great education and stick with it, excel, invent, create, advance our civilization and make our country even better than it has been. A student’s job is to study and work hard at school and to become productive citizens, and quite frankly our educational system, our parents, and the kids themselves have been failing in this regard. They all need to stop failing, and everyone –even the students– need to work harder on this “job” of creating a better educated society.

All the same, a few days ago, that suggested post-speech lesson and the others sent chills down Peggy Venable’s spine, because she hadn’t seen the text upon which the suggestion was based, and naturally assumed it was going to be some socialist brainwashing mantra. I doubt she will retract her blathering. In fact, I full expect her to jump on the “well THIS speech is fine, but who knows what last week’s speech would have looked like” bandwagon.

And that’s what I mean by “some kinds of crazy have no cure.” It’s conspiracy-thinking mindset. It’s a boogieman around every corner. If something is proved beyond a doubt not to be the boogieman they expected it to be, they change their complaint to something tangentially related but new and equally ignorant and foolish … never offering any proof of their own that what they believe is at all the truth. No, the burden of proof in their world is always laid at the feet of the person they disagree with, not at their own. Guilty until proven innocent.

Believing the President is (or was) going to spread socialist propaganda to school kids during a 15 minute speech continues to be just as stupid as Orly Taitz finding yet one more Kenyan birth certificate for Obama and filing yet one more lawsuit (which she is doing, and the first hearing is tomorrow). But it won’t stop the conspiracy theorists who see a socialist around every corner no matter what the White House does or says. They are simply going to continue to see the boogieman everywhere. It truly is a kind of crazy with no cure … except perhaps a better education for the next generation, provided their parents allow them to get one.

Having now read the full text of Obama’s speech for school kids, I feel sorry for any kid who doesn’t get to hear or see it … and as I suspected, all the crying and hand-wringing about socialist brainwashing I’ve been seeing on the TV is, in fact, delusional. Not that I ever thought it wasn’t delusional, insane, and stupid. Yes … stupid.

Of course, this doesn’t mean there won’t still be hand-wringing and crying on TV about the President of the United States trying to brainwash children with his socialist agenda, parents refusing to allow their children to see or read the speech, or bloggers around the country twisting this speech into something it isn’t. These things will still be going on, because some kinds of crazy have no cure.

Behind the cut, the full text saved for posterity.
Continue Reading »

Glenn Beck needs to take some more art history classes, if he wants to pretend to know what he’s talking about.

I do not have time to go completely into a rant about how very little Glenn Beck knows about art and art history, but I can’t let this one pass:

One of the works of art Mr. Beck has been ranting about as a one of the many “horrible” symbols of socialism/communism/whatever at the Rockefeller Center is a mural which hasn’t existed since 1934. It’s true. The Diego Rivera mural called “Man at the Crossroads” was destroyed before being completed, because Rockefeller didn’t like that it included a small portrait of Lenin. It was actually huge news at the time. So, Glenn Beck is throwing a fit about people being exposed to socialist/communist/whatever “propaganda” every day on their way to and from work … in the form of art that hasn’t existed for over 75 years.

Furthermore, Diego Rivera did remake the mural in Mexico City, and the photo Beck is using in his diatribe is the Mexico City version which contains an image of Rockefeller sitting in a nightclub (a dig by Rivera at Rockefeller) and not the original, of which very few photos exist.

Additionally, I’d like Mr. Beck to know that the mural, which no longer exists at the Rockefeller Center, was not painted by anyone from Russia. He seemed to be under the impression a Russian had painted it. Those of you reading this may have noticed the name of the artist was Diego Rivera. He was from Mexico.

While it might help to have taken art history classes to realize all this bullshit as clearly as quickly as I did –I’ve studied a lot of art history, this information is so easy to find on the internet with even the most minimal of searching skills, there is no reason at all for Mr. Beck to make such outstanding mistakes. I started with “Rockefeller Center” and “mural” and found exactly what I needed to verify the mural hasn’t existed since 1934, and that it was Rockefeller himself who had it destroyed (that wily socialist/communist - so sneaky to destroy the socialist/communist art he commissioned).

It’s bad enough Mr. Beck is doing his best to scare people and freak them about about the socialists around every corner, but he could at least try to base his insane “Rockefeller Center Socialist Propaganda” rant on artwork that is actually existing at the Rockefeller Center or has done so more recently than 75 years ago. Not that this will make his ranting any less insane, but at least I might have to search the internet a little harder to prove his bullshit is bullshit. This time, I didn’t actually have search at all, art history being one of my fields of interest^†, and Diego Rivera being someone I studied a good bit.

By the way, Mr. Beck, your argument about Rockefeller (and the Center itself) being socialist –insane as that argument may be, in light of the fact Rockefeller was no socialist– is completely shattered by the fact that Rockefeller himself was outraged about the portrait of Lenin in the mural, isn’t it? I mean, if the mural even still existed at the Rockefeller Center, which it doesn’t, because Rockefeller had it destroyed in 1934.

Anyway, I needed to get that off my chest. Back to sipping apple cider and waiting for fall to get here.

Edited at 11:51 pm to add links and correct some sloppy grammar.

1. † In fact, the only reason I bothered looking it up was I found myself needing a link that explained what happened to include in an email to Keith Olbermann. He’s been ragging on Beck about this art stuff, but Mr. Olbermann didn’t point out that the mural was no longer in existence. Does no one fact check themselves or their opponents anymore? [↩]

I ran across this video yesterday, and it’s a nice example of just how too many Americans are wallowing in kindergarten behavior and worse.

Brian Donohue, with Ledger Live out of New Jersey is an interesting fellow too. I might have watch for anything else interesting he does a web cast about.

I have way too many tabs open in my browser, and I am never going to get to rant about them all, so it must be time for a link dump!

A whole lot of people in Austin have been griping about the new water restrictions, and one of their big talking points –aside from the fact that a brown lawn is lowering their property values– is “When they stop watering the golf courses, I’ll abide by the law myself!” Elsewhere in the world, that argument might make sense, but here in Austin almost all the golf courses water with reclaimed gray water and therefore are allowed to water when they like. Those that don’t use gray water have to abide by the rules, and the difference is actually obvious. I already knew this, which is why you don’t hear me griping about the golf courses watering whenever they please, but apparently very few people who love to have green lawns (and likely golf, seeing as they are aware golf courses are watering all the time) don’t seem to be aware of the truth of the situation. Interesting to note that no one has commented on that particular news story. Maybe they have been shamed into silence.

Did you know that 60% of the people on this planet are lactose intolerant and can’t digest milk? I certainly can. I’d die without my dairy products.

Thank you all, and welcome to the White House, and thank you for coming. I want to congratulate all of you from John A. Holmes High School in Edenton, North Carolina, on your great achievements this year and on your upcoming graduation. And a special greeting to Rob Boyce, the principal of this fine school.

As you know, my remarks are being broadcast live over radio and television to high school students throughout the country. While I was in Tokyo at the economic summit, I found myself thinking about all of you, and I decided that when I got back it’d be good to report to you — share some thoughts that I’ve been having about the future.

Even Ronald Reagan sent an evil “indoctrinating” broadcast into America’s schools! Yes, it was apparently such a non-event it took me this long to find anything about it online.

A fire chief in a tiny Arkansas town gets shot in a courtroom over a speeding ticket. I can’t write storylines this good.

That thinned out the tabs a little. Maybe I’ll get to more of them after I run to the grocery store for weekend supplies.

“Yes, sir, I did. He came at me, calling me an idiot. And when … he got within my range, I threw a punch,” Rice said during an interview with Fox News.

“Then I threw a second punch, and my fist ended up in his mouth,” Rice said. “He bit my pinky finger off.”
–NBC Chicago

Let me relay some ancient and seemingly forgotten wisdom:

Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but words will never hurt me.

Too many people have either never heard this before or have forgotten that it is true.

Words can sting. Words can make you angry or sad. Words can make you feel and think all sorts of things. Words can make you want to do things, which you can choose to do or not. Words can “hurt” you in those ways, but they don’t truly do you any harm. What does it matter if some person you don’t know and will probably never see again yells at you, gets in your face, and calls you an idiot? What does it really matter even if it’s someone you do know? It’s not causing any damage or harm to your person. It can’t even hurt your feelings unless you let it. It certainly doesn’t warrant hitting someone.

The first thought I had when I first heard someone’s pinky had been bitten off by an Obama supporter at a health care reform event was “What was the person who got his finger bitten off doing to make someone bite their finger off?” Then I wondered how someone’s pinky ended up close enough to someone’s mouth to get bitten off in the first place. Ever try to grab someone’s hand and move it around when they don’t want you to? Not easy. Anyway, there’s two sides to every story, you know. All I was hearing was “this poor old man had his finger bitten off by an ObamaCare supporter!” That’s a pretty violent act, and it isn’t really all that easy to get someone’s pinky in your mouth to bite it off. In order for me to bite someone’s pinky off, they’d have to be doing something fairly egregious and violent to me, and their finger would have to somehow end up in or near my mouth. At that point, by my thinking, the pinky is fair game. For all I know, the person is planning on making punch three or four … or worse.

Then the news showed the clip of Mr. Rice making the statement I quoted above. I had to rewind it and look it up on the internet to be sure I had heard correctly. Apparently, he threw a sucker punch at someone as soon as they got “into range” and then on the second punch, his fist ended up in the other guy’s mouth. There may be more to the story –I’m sure we’ll hear all about it– but using William Rice’s own words explaining how he became detached from his pinky, I’m going to have say I won’t be shedding any tears for him.

Of course, I don’t run the justice system, so no doubt the currently unknown finger-biter will end up in jail, and Mr. Rice will continue to be shown as the victim for losing a bit of a finger while he was punching someone in the face for yelling at him and calling him an idiot.

What an idiot.

After turning on my computer today, I went back to doing what I was doing when I turned it off last night –reading the Republican Party of Texas party platform– and then I opened up my news reader and found myself confronted, yet again, with Republican politicians saying bat crap crazy stuff. There will, no doubt about it, be posts on these things at a later time. Right now, I have this to say:

A long time ago in an America far, far away, parents used to take their kids out of school to watch the President of the United States give a speech. Well, parents that gave a damn did, anyway. I, and many of my childhood friends, got to stay home from school to see and hear presidential speeches and other important political or historical events … even when my (our) parents didn’t necessarily agree with what was being said or what was happening.

Now parents are going to keep their kids home from school so they won’t hear the President of the United States telling them to stay in school and get an education and to give back to the society they live in, because OMG!!! SOCIALIST-COMMUNIST-TERRORIST-FASCISM-HITLER-LENNON-MAO!!! The President of the United States wants to talk to our children!!! RUN AWAY!!!”

Amazing how much things have changed in the last 45 years, isn’t it?

1991: President George H. W. Bush speaks to the school children of America about the value of getting an education and staying in school, and it was mostly seen as good.

2009: President Obama plans to speak to the school children of America about the value of getting an education and staying in school, and it’s …

“As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology. The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power.

“While I support educating our children to respect both the office of the American President and the value of community service, I do not support using our children as tools to spread liberal propaganda. The address scheduled for September 8, 2009, does not allow for healthy debate on the President’s agenda, but rather obligates the youngest children in our public school system to agree with our President’s initiatives or be ostracized by their teachers and classmates.

“Public schools can’t teach children to speak out in support of the sanctity of human life or traditional marriage. President Obama and the Democrats wouldn’t dream of allowing prayer in school. Christmas Parties are now Holiday Parties. But, the Democrats have no problem going against the majority of American people and usurping the rights of parents by sending Pied Piper Obama into the American classroom.

The Democrats have clearly lost the battle to maintain control of the message this summer, so now that school is back in session, President Obama has turned to American’s children to spread his liberal lies, indoctrinating American’s youngest children before they have a chance to decide for themselves.”

–Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer, 9/1/09

The introduction to this screed on their web site is priceless:

Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer today released the following statement condemning President Obama’s use of taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s children to his socialist agenda.

First off, drop it with the “socialism” already. If the Republicans truly believe Obama is a socialist, they need to get out into the world a little more and meet some actual socialists. Obama is not a socialist.

Secondly, it usually takes a little more than a single 15-20 speech near lunchtime to indoctrinate anyone, let alone 8th graders who will likely not be paying any more attention than necessary to get through any discussion the teacher has planned afterward … if they pay that much attention to it.

Finally, Obama is the duly elected President of the United States. He won the election, and I’d have to guess that many parents of school-aged children voted for him. It’s not like a small, armed band of Democrats stormed the White House and took the office by force during a coup d’état. He won the majority of votes, so in the end, it doesn’t matter if he was a socialist, he gets to talk to war veterans, school children, and anyone he really wants to talk to. It’s not like anyone is being forced to watch or listen to anything he says, not even at the schools.

Sadly, there are a lot of ignorant parents out there outraged that the President of the United States would dare to speak to their child in a short speech during school hours, so they are keeping their kids home from school that day.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to a nice collection of outrage about Obama’s planned speech.

Is there anyone in the Republican Party anymore who isn’t insane?

The crazy search for ever more foods which can be deep fried and served up at the Texas State Fair has finally, I think, gone as far as it possibly can.

Fried butter is among eight dishes contending for Monday’s fifth annual Big Tex Choice Awards, which showcases the top new foods at this year’s fair.

Deep … fried … butter.

An indepth review of the latest in deep fried artery cloggers at the Texas State Fair can be found here. Warning: it will make you hungry.

“I knew about the waterboarding, not specifically in any one particular case, but as a general policy that we had approved,” said Mr. Cheney, who noted that neither a gun nor a drill had actually been used on detainees. “The fact of the matter is the Justice Department reviewed all those allegations several years ago.”

“The judgment was made then that there wasn’t anything that was improper or illegal,” said Mr. Cheney, who was speaking in an interview on Fox News Sunday.
–Cheney Offers Sharp Defense of C.I.A. Interrogation Tactics, NYT

By the way, Mr. Cheney, waterboarding is torture.