My Comments on the News

Now playing on C-SPAN 2:

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“Senate Republicans are forcing the clerk to read the entire” much-ballyhooed climate change bill. The part in quotes is actually being displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Absolutely disgraceful. Not just because I’m morally opposed to the filibuster, but because there is no reason whatsoever not to save the planet. When the s*** hits the fan, it’s going to be in everyone’s interests, conflicts with anything else be damned. From what I’ve found out about it from watching C-SPAN 2, I don’t think it goes far enough.

Of course, if there’s one thing you’re not here for, it’s a political blog, but as I couldn’t find any mention of this anywhere else in my admittedly pathetically lame search…

UPDATE: “Republicans are protesting what they say is the slow pace of work on judicial nominations.” By slowing down the work of the Senate even further? By risking the future of the entire planet? Personally, I’m a bit disturbed at the fact the Supreme Court has essentially become filled with partisans from both parties. Shouldn’t the Supreme Court be impartial and objective, not bipartisan and only objective in its divided subjectivity? How can we make sure it’s the best judges, not the best partisans, who get selected to our federal courts?

UPDATE 2: Full AP story with quotes from legislators. The most distressing part: If a cloture motion fails we’ll have to wait another year for the American people to turn out the Republicans not swept up in the revolt of 2006… another year of more ravaging of the planet that’s already quite possibly ravaged beyond repair.

Because you need the COMPLETE ESPN EXPERIENCE!

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I have no words for this.

ESPN Consumer Products, in conjunction with tvCompass, a provider of digital media solutions, announced the release of ESPN The Ultimate Remote, an internet-connected Wi-Fi device that combines advanced home theater control and one-touch real-time access to sports, standings, team information and news.

They’re making an ESPN remote now. Pretty soon you could wake up from an ESPN bed, eat ESPN cereal, brush your teeth with an ESPN toothbrush and ESPN toothpaste, take a shower in your ESPN bathtub, get into your ESPN car, drive to work, do work on your ESPN computer, eat an ESPN lunch, go home, watch ESPN on your ESPN TV, have an ESPN dinner, and go back to the ESPN bed.

Are people really this desperate to never be far from a big glowing ESPN logo?

"Earth Hour" figures to be a complete fiasco

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First, there’s the fact that I only just heard about it… and it’s tonight (link courtesy Awful Announcing). That’s especially bad when you consider this is the second year they’re doing this.

Then there’s the fact that it runs right up against the NCAAs in pretty much all the United States, prompting AA to ask, “could they…have picked a worse time of the year to decide to do this?” Um, no… I’m pretty sure Super Bowl Sunday would have been far worse. Still, does the WWF have anyone who lives in the United States? Who would have at least an idea of when the games are on?

The guv hires prostitutes? Big deal.

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Let’s say you’re on a business trip, and you get lonely so you decide to hire a prostitute. But you like the girls you know back home, so you decide to place a call to your pimp back home, offering to pay for the whore’s transport to wherever you are in addition to your usual fee. Does it bend the law? Maybe. Does it mean you’re not fit for your job, even if you’re, say, a project manager and expected to lead? Probably not. Does it make you a horribly immoral person? Well, not that much more immoral than hiring a prostitute in the first place, which if you believe some people, is not much different from marijuana. Should you be run out of your job and disgraced for life regardless of how good a job you did before? If you used company funds, maybe; but if you paid with your own money it’s not even the company’s business.

But if you’re the governor of New York? Apparently it’s a different story.

I’ve been reading about the Elliot Spitzer scandal and beyond the hypocrital irony, I’m seeing a distinct disconnect. I’m not seeing how “patronized a prostitution ring” exactly equates to “is a corrupt politician” or, considering just how popular it really is, “is a reprehensible person”. If he used campaign or state funds to pay for his “night of fun”, or if he lied under oath about it or actively tried to obstruct the investigation instead of semi-fessing up, I could see the scandal, but if it’s about doing something that any red-blooded American of the same gender would do (well, most)?

Doesn’t this only show that Spitzer is (gasp!) actually human and not a perfect little saint? Do we actually expect our politicians to be the latter? Considering how many corrupt, truly reprehensible politicians there are out there, shouldn’t we be focusing on more important things for us to get upset about our politicians? JFK was anything but a saint, after all.

Really, aren’t there more important things for the media to talk about? I would think the damage the Bush administration has done over the past seven years is far more important than a governor’s sexual escapades. Bill Clinton, after all, had sex outside marriage while in an executive office, and I would say it didn’t affect his ability to be president too negatively, would you?

Apparently he rolled a save of 1. (If you get it, and you’ve already heard this, you’re probably groaning.)

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Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, died on Tuesday. If, like me, you weren’t around in the 80s when D&D was one of the biggest fads on the planet, you’ve probably never heard of him, and if you’re neither a fan nor one of those “D&D=Satanism” freaks, you probably think it only matters to antisocial geeks. You’d be wrong.

Freehostia’s security certificate is back to normal. Since today’s strip is up really late, tomorrow’s will be up around noon PT, Saturday’s will be up as early in the morning as possible, and Sunday’s will be back to being up at 11 PM PT.