|
Friday, October 31, 2003
Thanks to the "Nay" votes of the Louisiana, Arkansas, North Dakota, and Montana Democrats and the non-votes of two more from Nebraska and North Carolina, the Climate Stewardship Act failed. On the positive side, Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) voted "Yea", despite Michigan's usual reluctance to enact any form of pollution controls, as did reliably logical Maine Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire's Republican duo, and of course bill sponsor John McCain. Another year, a little more lobbying, and maybe we can get this turned around.
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 5:25 PM
|
Earlier this week, the Russian government arrested billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man and majority owner of oil giant YUKOS as part of a major action against the company. Some see this not so much as the criminal investigation Putin's government claims as the first stages of re-nationalizing Russia's major industries. As The New Republic reports, 26 percent of Russians claim they would "definitely" or "probably" vote Joseph Stalin for President were he on the ballot...
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 1:47 PM
|
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Man oh man... thank the lord for consumer-priced video editing software. President Bush's new and improved educational policy: "We must offer every child in America three nuclear missiles." OK, so maybe he didn't actually say those words in that order, but now we can hear what it would have sounded like if he did!
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/presaddress2.shtml
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 3:28 PM
|
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
The Return of the Dumb Right Wing Lawsuit: After witnessing the stunning success of Bill O'Reilly and FOX News' lawsuit against Al Franken, National Review writer Donald Luskin has decided to threaten blogger Atrios with a libel suit for calling him a stalker (referring to Luskin's fascination with criticizing NY Times writer Paul Krugman). Suffice it to say, this is not having the effect that Mr. Luskin hoped for.
By the way, Atrios is up in my links under Other Blogs now. Don't know why I didn't think to put him there before.
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 11:20 PM
|
Hey Shaq! Hey Kobe! Can you just shut the hell up and play basketball? If you don't know what you look like, read the L.A. Times.
Kind of reminds of me of the pre-season exploits of LeBron James.
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 7:41 PM
|
Monday, October 27, 2003
San Diego just threw two interceptions in the first 5 minutes. Nasty.
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 9:20 PM
|
By a vote of 60-34, the Senate just voted itself a pay raise. Yeah, that's some freakin' meritocracy for you. Actually, I'm rather surprised that we could dig up 34 Senators with the balls to admit they didn't deserve a raise. The group was quite nonpartisan, 19 Republicans and 15 Democrats, and ranged from my perennial favorites John McCain (R-AZ), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Russ Feingold (D-WI) to perennial targets of my wrath Zell Miller (D-GA) and Jim Bunning (R-KY). Good for them. But the rest can go to hell, and take their raises with them.
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 5:09 PM
|
Under U.S. Law, a bank can keep buying other banks until it controls 10% of the entire U.S. banking industry. And if it just happens to drive everyone else out of business after that and thereby ends up with 100% of the industry, well, them's the breaks. Anyway, I mention this only because Bank of America is buying FleetBoston (these are, of course, already both huge conglomerates), creating a new company in control of $933 Billion. Where's Teddy Roosevelt when you need him?
Interestingly, this comes around the same time The New Republic is running a piece about improving corporate responsibility under the auspices of the unexpectedly tough William Donaldson SEC. Maybe they figure it's ok for one company to own most of the galaxy, as long as we're careful about how much the board gets paid?
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 4:39 PM
|
|
