Free Republic

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The craze for touch-screen gadgets, sparked by Apple Inc's popular iPhone, is raising worries that a whole generation of consumer electronics will be out of the reach of the blind. Motown icon Stevie Wonder and other advocates came to the world's biggest gadget fest, the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, to convince vendors to consider the needs of the blind. Wonder told a CES event that his wishlist included a car he could drive -- which he acknowledged was probably "a ways away" -- and a Sirius XM satellite radio he could...

The unlicensed pipe fitter known as Joe the Plumber is out with a book this month, just as the last seconds on his 15 minutes are slipping away. I have a question for Joe: Do you want me to fix your leaky toilet? I didn’t think so. (snip) With a résumé full of failure, he now thinks he can join the profession of Mark Twain, George Orwell and Joan Didion. Next up may be Sarah Palin, who is said to be worth nearly $7 million if she can place her thoughts between covers. Publishers: with all the grim news of...

OK. You've gone out and voted, like a good citizen. Tell us about it. How was turnout? Were there any problems at your polling place? Who do you think will win your local races?

Democrat Linda Stender is running the single sleaziest campaign ad I have ever seen. Thanks to the national Republican Party, it will probably work. The ad in question is a flier attacking her Republican opponent for Congress, Leonard Lance, for supporting Christie Whitman's pension bond scheme in 1997 when he served in the state Assembly. One problem: Lance opposed the scheme. Not only did he oppose it, but he opposed it so publicly and prominently that his fellow Republicans took revenge on him by removing him from a key committee chairmanship. Yet that doesn't stop Stender, a state assemblywoman from...

From NBC's Don Teague I’ve heard some things over the past few weeks that raise alarm bells in my head. Among the most concerning, coming from members of the media and pundits, is that racism is the only way Barack Obama can lose the presidential election. As a person who’s worked in “red states” for much of my career, I feel compelled to offer an alternative view. Specifically, I want to give you the perspective of my neighbor, Dan. Yes, you can call him “Dan the neighbor.” “Dan the neighbor” is not a racist. (snip) He’s also a conservative. He...

Star Trek legend William Shatner has launched an astonishing attack on former co-star George Takei, calling him "sick" and "psychotic". In an internet video clip the former Captain Kirk said nobody cared when Takei, who played Mr Sulu in the sci-fi series, finally came out as gay in 2005. Shatner launched the attack after Takei announced that Shatner would not be invited to his gay wedding last month. Takei has admitted harbouring ill-feelings towards his former co-star, who, he claims has a huge ego and hogged the limelight while on Star Trek. Shatner says in the video: "The whole thing...

Even New Jerseyans can't stand living in New Jersey, according to a new poll that said nearly half of adults residing in the Garden State want to pull up stakes. The Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll, released Wednesday, found 49 percent of those polled would rather live somewhere else. (snip) Poll participants cited high property taxes (28 percent), the cost of living (19 percent), state taxes (5 percent) and housing costs (6 percent) as the main reasons they want out. The poll also found that 51 percent of those who expressed a desire to leave planned to do so, with...

WASHINGTON Some of John McCain’s friends, from the good old days when he talked straight, feared that his Greek tragedy would be that he would be defeated by George Bush twice: once in 2000, because of W.’s no-conscience campaigning, and again in 2008, because of W.’s no-brains governing. (snip) He unleashed Sarah Palin to slime their opponent and suggested that the Democrat with the foreign-sounding name who came from the Harvard Yard boutique is not on the American side. Campaigning last weekend, Palin cast their Democratic rival as “someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s...

Airframe Chute's Failure Forces Real-Live Bail-Out... ANN has learned sume surprising details surrounding the recent loss of a non-conforming flying prototype of the Cessna SkyCatcher LSA during exclusive conversations with personnel from Cessna Aircraft and BRS Parachutes. Cessna's prototype Model 162 SkyCatcher light sport aircraft crashed thursday afternoon near Douglass, KS on what was described as a routine test flight, but a Cessna spokesperson now describes as an extensive evaluation of the aircraft's smpin matrix... this particular test being devoted to "Full-Power, cross-controlled spins." (snip) Cessna has been pretty open adn up-front with the matter, at least to the extend...

BARROW, ALASKA -- Federal scientists flying over the Arctic Ocean last month spotted something nearly unprecedented during their annual count of bowhead whales: nine polar bears in the open sea, miles from anywhere. One was swimming 60 miles off Barrow. A flight a week or so later found five bears plying their way through the swells. The findings wouldn't have been so alarming -- they are powerful swimmers -- except that their likely destination, the sea ice on which the predators depend for survival, had retreated 400 miles offshore.

It was not that long ago that black people in the Deep South could be beaten or killed for seeking the right to vote, talking back to the wrong white man or failing to give way on the sidewalk. People of color who violated these and other proscriptions could be designated “uppity niggers” and subjected to acts of violence and intimidation that were meant to dissuade others from following their examples. (snip) Forms of eloquence and assertiveness that were viewed as laudable among whites were seen as positively mutinous when practiced by people of color. As such, black men and...

TEMPE, Ariz. - Facing a threat that his homosexuality would be exposed by Christian conservatives at a city council meeting, Mayor Neil Giuliano did what he thought was nobody's business: He held a press conference and declared, ''I happen to be gay.'' The reaction of Arizona's senior senator, John McCain, was swift and angry. ''John was the first to tell the religious right, 'This doesn't make a damned bit of difference,''' Giuliano said, remembering how McCain went out of his way to call him a good mayor and a great friend. ''Politically in Arizona, McCain should have done just the...

“You can stand on my wagon, if you want.” I tend, when I’m not in big crowds, to forget that I’m short. In Republican crowds, I find, I feel particularly small. And dark. And unsmiling. And uncoiffed, unmade-up and inappropriately dressed. For the McCain/Palin rally in Fairfax, Va., on Wednesday, the organizers had asked people to wear red. I – unthinkingly – had dressed in blue, which was somewhat isolating. I was isolated, too, because, unable to find the press area in the crowd of about 15,000, I was out with the “real” people. Which meant that I could hear...

1982 John McCain goes to Washington. Things have changed in the last 26 years, But McCain hasn't. He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send an e-mail, still doesn't understand the economy, and favors $200 Billion in tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class. After one President who was out of touch, we just can't afford more of the same. (I'm Barack Obama, and I approved this message)

In state after state, rally after rally, Sarah Palin is generating record levels of enthusiasm among the Republican base. Crowds chant her name, congressional candidates cite her in their ads and there are numerous reports of a surge in grass roots volunteers for the McCain campaign. The acclaim for the vice-presidential nominee is all but deafening within the GOP, except in one small but influential corner: the party’s foreign policy establishment. Among that mandarin class, the response to Palin’s nomination has been underwhelming, marked by distinctly faint praise or flat out silence. (snip)

In addition to Barack Obama making history as the first African American to be nominated for president and Sarah Palin taking her shotgun to the glass ceiling, there was a third civil rights barrier broken at the political conventions this year. Trig Paxson Van Palin -- pronounced by his mother "beautiful" and "perfect" and applauded at center stage of the Republican convention -- smashed the chromosomal barrier. And it was all the more moving for the innocence and indifference of this 4-month-old civil rights leader. (snip) Yet the pro-choice radicalism held by Kennedy and many others -- the absolute elevation...

Small Change From Obama What Happened to the Obama of 2004? DENVER -- The Democrats had themselves a successful convention -- at the price of appearing quite conventional. The delegates left here happy and enthused, believing that the divisive nomination fight was finally behind them. But their star, Barack Obama, on the climactic night of the conclave, gave an acceptance speech that was no match for the keynote address he delivered at the 2004 convention in Boston. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, introducing his colleague again here, said that first one "changed politics in America." (snip) No one is likely...

Here is a stupid idea! Let's all post sexy pictures of Sabine Ehrenfeld and label them, over and over, as pictures of Sarah Palin! We've all seen this one about a thousand times today. Get it through your heads, people! This picture is of the Overstock.com spokesmodel, not the Governor of Alaska! And since Sabine Ehrenfeld's claim to fame is making veiled references to orgasms on TV, there are sure to be lots of good nekkid and semi-nekkid pictures to choose from, besides the "stern schoolmarm" look she is sporting here, so let's get posting! Since the best way to...

Did I mention two home-plate collisions, one of which knocked China’s catcher out of the tournament? NBC’s highlight reel very stupidly doesn’t show all five HBPs, but it’s painfully clear that the one that sent Matt LaPorta to the hospital with a concussion was intentional. HuffPo captured a brief clip from MSNBC showing another HBP from earlier in the game, too. Square in the back. International-incident-generating bench-clearing brawl? Narrowly avoided. Heart-ache. Click the image to watch.

The rise in carbon dioxide emissions is big news. It is prompting action to reverse global warming. But little or no attention is being paid to the long-term fall in oxygen concentrations and its knock-on effects. Compared to prehistoric times, the level of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere has declined by over a third and in polluted cities the decline may be more than 50%. (snip) In the 20th century, humanity has pumped increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning the carbon stored in coal, petroleum and natural gas. In the process, we've also been consuming oxygen...