Have you read this?

Selig and the other idiots who run Major League Baseball won’t be happy until they squeeze every last cent out of it, will they?

Where does this stop?  Will the newspapers have to pay to publish the boxscores?  Actually, maybe they do already, I don’t even know. 

Will Selig hire a police force to crackdown on people talking about baseball without paying a fee to mention Pujols by name?

Maybe this can all be avoided by using the Tecmo method of referring to players by position and team (”QB Raiders”).  Of course the team mascot would be owned, so how about “CF Minnesota” or 3B New York (Bronx).

Only Baseball works this hard year after year to alienate their fans and try to run the game into the ground. 

I really hope that the fact that Bush and his fellow Republicans chose to renew the Voting Right Act one year early isn’t lost on people. 

Why do it one year early?  Because it is an election year, and the Republicans desperately needs some good PR, especially with the “minority” voters.

But this got me thinking, why does this law need to be renewed?  Why isn’t this permanent?

Wikipedia somewhat answers this:
U.S. citizens commonly hear of a “right to vote,” yet there is no such federal right. However, the Voting Rights Act and three constitutional amendments that prevent discrimination in granting the franchise have established in United States Supreme Court jurisprudence that there is a “fundamental right” in the franchise, even though voting remains a state-granted privilege.^[9] U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., re-introduced House Joint Resolution 28 in March of 2005 to amend the U.S. Constitution and create a federal right to vote.^[10] The resolution had 58 co-sponsors as of April, 2005.^[11]

Although this confuses me because I thought the 15th Amendmant (The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude) covered that.  I suppose it only infers the right to vote, but doesn’t actually declare it.  You just have to love the Law.

I think we all could agree that it’s a good law, but still I can’t find any information on WHY it needs to be renewed.  Is that typical of many laws?  If someone smarter than me knows, please share!

I am confident in saying the following things:

• The following link is moderately un-safe for work.
• Far more work went into this than was strictly necessary.
• God bless the Internets.

The Vader Sessions

in case you’ve missed it, baseball tonight has fired “analyst” harold reynolds for unnamed reasons.

i catch BT occasionally, and always found harold to be the least obnoxious of the former players providing insight.  (this is not a difficult achievement, given his competition includes the likes of john kruk and jeff brantley.)  deadspin commenters have a myriad of theories as to why harold got fired, but i’m not concerned about that as much as i am about who will replace Reynolds on the BT panel.  My votes:

• Felix Fermin
• Rico Brogna
• Gregg Jefferies
• Tripp Cromer
• Ed Sprague

anyone else have guesses?

Several days without a post.  I wish I had a better excuse than work, but that’s all I got.  Oh, and that I spent the entire weekend moving dirt from a giant pile in front of my garage to specific spots around the edge of my house in an effort to do some landscaping.

Unfortunately, much like the itsy-bitsy spider, the massive downpour that came through the mid-metro yesterday washed out several of my piles of dirt.  So now I have a lovely mudslide on the south side of my house.  Serves me right for nearly getting heat stroke on Sunday and not finishing my work. 

The lesson here is: never try.

In other news, only on askaninja.com can you hear the phrase, “Like Emmanuel Lewis shot out of a cannon!”

Like most everyone else, I’m tired of weather people.  Yesterday morning the long term forcast was for temps around 90, then last night it was temps around 100, now it’s back to temps around 90.  ???  I need a job with that kind of margin for error. 

Once again, Austin is in the news.  Why does it seem that the only time Austin makes the news is when it is something that should appear on the crime blotter?  Or an idiot kid gets stuck inside a toy machine…and he’s addicted to meth.  I wonder if there are any bloggers who live in Austin…. sadly Yahoo says no.  That would have been entertaining.

To make Wade happy, quick go here before the headline changes.  If you didn’t make it in time, it’s the MLB page on espn, and it’s all about the Twins. 

That’s it for now.  I’ve spent my only half hour of free time at work with all of you today, and I hope you appreciate it. 

Appreciate it!!! </shaking fist at you>