Saturday, September 05, 2009

This Is a Great Idea!

I know I get sick to death of conservative family members, and some annoying strangers, spamming me with those e-mails some lying sack of shit has written and spread worldwide, full of outright lies and phony stories designed to stir up rage over things that never happened and fear over proposals no one ever made. I like to go to Factcheck.org or snopes.com, find the articlle on there that refutes it (and they are, invariably, completely untrue) and send it to everyone on the recipient list. Well now MediaMatters.org has compiled a handy resource for countering that bullshit. Their EMail Checker:
....will provide ready-made responses to counter conservative misinformation contained in the most common and most egregious chain and viral emails. This tool will allow you to swiftly respond to emails with fact-based replies.

Cut, paste, send. Pretty soon, I've found they stop sending the e-mails.

Friday, September 04, 2009

Things We All Knew Already

Men get stupider around pretty women:
Research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.

Researchers who carried out the study, published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, think the reason may be that men use up so much of their brain function or 'cognitive resources' trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks.

No shit, Einstein. How long did it take you to figure this out?

Psychologists at Radboud University in The Netherlands carried out the study after one of them was so struck on impressing an attractive woman he had never met before, that he could not remember his address when she asked him where he lived.

Nice moves there, Suave Guy.

Researchers said it was as if he was so keen to make an impression he 'temporarily absorbed most of his cognitive resources.'

Or, as it's also known, the little head took over for the big one.

Psychologist Dr George Fieldman, a member of the British Psychological Society, said the findings reflect the fact that men are programmed to think about ways to pass on their genes.

'When a man meets a pretty woman, he is what we call 'reproductively focused'.

Well, that may be what YOU call it....


Thursday, September 03, 2009

But Don't Ever Forget, It's the Liberals Who Are Filled With Hate

ThePilot.com : Obama's Planned Speech Controversial
President Obama will make a live address to the nation's schoolchildren at noon Tuesday -- the first of its kind in American history. The speech will be broadcast through the White House's Web site and on C-SPAN. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the president will "challenge students to work hard, set education goals, and take responsibility for their learning."

But many parents are concerned that Obama will take the opportunity to indoctrinate children with his legislative agenda, and some are threatening to pull their kids out of school that day.

Superintendent Susan Purser said Moore County is no exception, and that she and Board of Education members have been receiving e-mails and phone calls from concerned parents expressing their displeasure with the speech. Purser said the school system is not mandating participation but is instead making it a "site-based" decision.

I'm sure you'll be shocked to know that I was never a big fan of George Dubbya Bush. But you know what? If he'd given a speech to the nation's schoolchildren, I wouldn't have kept my kids home from school that day for fear he'd pollute their brains with his scary "legislative agenda". And I know damn well if anyone had even suggested doing such a thing, the wingnuts would be all up in arms about "Bush Derangement Syndrome" and shrieking about how "hateful liberals" couldn't even give the President a respectful hearing. But once again, IOKIYAR!

The Party of Love Heckles a Handicapped Woman In A Wheelchair

New Jersey Star-Ledger columnist Brian Donohue goes to a town-hall meeting on health care and finds it "far worse than anything [he'd] imagined." Donohue, a self-described centrist, says it best: "Anything those people are against, I should be for."
Can there be any room for a centrist at a health care reform town hall meeting

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

The Congresswoman From Crazytown Speaks Out Again

Bachmann: We should ‘make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers’ against health care reform.
“This [health care reform] cannot pass…What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass."

You first, hon.

PS: A couple of comments got inadvertently deleted. I had a brain fart and hit "reject" instead of "publish". Sorry. Feel free to resubmit if you like.

Update: Quote of the day, from a poster calling himself The Grand Panjandrum over at Balloon Juice:

I guess we could start a mailing campaign and send razor blades to Michelle Bachman congressional office.

Who's with me?

Monday, August 31, 2009

Your Inspirational Story for the Day

Karen Cauwood and Kenneth Porter--Britain's Unluckiest Bride and Groom:
  • The airline and hotel provider booked for their Greek honeymoon collapsed soon after the two booked.
  • The shop supplying the bridesmaids' dresses went into administration. A £154 deposit was lost.
  • The shop where Mrs Porter had ordered her wedding dress suffered a burglary.
  • The County Durham hotel booked for their wedding reception applied for bankruptcy - the Porters forfeited their £300 deposit.
  • Having got tickets to see Michael Jackson, the King of Pop died
  • Mrs Porter underwent a foot operation which left her unable to wear shoes up until three weeks before the wedding, leaving her afraid she'd marry in slippers.
  • Tickets for a replacement concert, to see Oasis, had to be cancelled after Mrs Porter's foot operation meant she couldn't walk.
  • The hand-held steamer bought by Mrs Porter to steam her wedding clothes blew up.
  • The Tuesday before the wedding, Karen went to pick up the men's trousers to go with the suits for the wedding, and they were all the wrong sizes

And yet, they were married anyway earlier this month.

Love conquers all.

This has been your moment of inspiration for the day.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Blogs for BC: Christine Zibas at "Reading and Reviewing" Likes BREAKING COVER!

Reading and Reviewing:
For those who love a good thriller and can handle an over-the-top level of descriptive violence, Breaking Cover is truly a diamond in the rough.

More at the link...

Two Sets of Rules

Latest Newspaper Column
By one measure, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is one of the luckiest guys in American politics.

I mean, think about it. He becomes the center of one of the more bizarre unfaithful-politician stories in recent memory, one in which he walks out on his job for a few days, leaving his long-suffering staff wondering where the heck he's gone and frantically spinning an ever-evolving series of tales about his taking time off to do some writing. Or hiking the Appalachian Trail. Or something.

Then, when they catch him flying back to the U.S. after a long canoodling session in Argentina with his South American "soulmate," he gives a tearful confession. The news media lick their chops and get ready for one of their most beloved rituals: the slow, painful stripping of the flesh from Sanford's political carcass.

Twenty-four hours later, Michael Jackson dies and knocks Sanford off the front pages.

Then the story starts heating up again. Sanford's wife moves out of the governor's mansion with the paparazzi watching. An investigation begins into whether or not he may have misused taxpayer money to make his long-distance rendezvous. The lieutenant governor of South Carolina calls on Sanford to resign.

Twenty-four hours after the call for resignation, Ted Kennedy dies and the media run off to cover that.

It's not like the lieutenant governor's demand really mattered, anyway. Because, as we all know, the rules are different for Republican politicians. Sanford, back when he was a congressman, was one of the ones demanding that Bill Clinton resign over his infidelities. "Very damaging stuff," he called the revelations of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. "This one's pretty cut and dried. I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally to resign."

But now, see how Sanford digs in his heels.

"I'm not going to be railroaded out of this office by political opponents or folks who were never fans of mine in the first place," he said. "Me hanging up the spurs 16 months out as much as I might like to do that on a personal basis, it is wrong." Unless, one supposes, you're governor of Alaska.

What's undeniable is that the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy have helped keep the spotlights off Meanderin' Mark.

That's only a coincidence, I'm sure. But what if the shoe were on the other foot? You can bet your Obama-Biden button that if two famous deaths had distracted the media from an embarrassing scandal involving Barack Obama, Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity would be giving every crackpot conspiracy theorist a "fair and balanced" chance to accuse Obama of complicity in their deaths.

And the rest of the media would troop right along behind them, because the accusations themselves are stories, and who needs to worry about whether they even make sense?

Wouldn't it be irresponsible to engage in such speculation? Well, to quote conservative writer Peggy Noonan in another case, "It would be irresponsible not to." Of course, she was writing about Bill Clinton and a loopy right-wing conspiracy theory that he was being blackmailed by Fidel Castro.

It's very bad, tasteless, and downright hateful to suggest such skulduggery on the part of Republicans. Any crackpot railing against a Democratic president, calling him a Nazi, a secret Muslim, or not really American, gets a hearing by the biggest names in our "liberal" media.

But if anyone on the farthest reaches of the left uses the "N" word (Nazi) about a Republican, that's an outrage that burns in the hearts of Republicans down through the years, a long-held and fondly nursed vendetta.

Because the rules are different.