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Thank goodness he's not playing around sacbee.com -- Politics -- No staff cuts till after the election? : Gov. Gray Davis' administration says it is unlikely to approve plans for substantial reductions to the state payroll until the middle of next month. That makes it likely that the impact of the cuts -- in thousands of layoffs and in reduced state services -- won't become public until after the Oct. 7 recall election. Isn't that lovely. This is exactly what he did during his re-election, holding back bad news he knew was coming (knew because he was the cause, that is). Better is this bit: One goal, [Davis' finance director Steve] Peace said, is to minimize layoffs. He said he also wants to avoid giving workers layoff notices and disrupting their lives, only to reverse course later. "It's not efficient. It's not good business. ... It's a morale-breaker of huge proportions," he said. The state has already given about 12,000 workers 120-day noti...

Where were you... I was just waking up. My girlfriend was in the washroom, drying her hair, and she said, "The World Trade Center is on fire." I believe my exact response was, "Get the f*ck out of here." I was thinking about the fire, not the cause. I sat up in bed. The local (Sacramento, California) news station had nothing, so I clicked over to FoxNews. Voila, burning tower. The fire was waaaaay up there. That was going to be a bitch to handle, if it could be handled at all. Firefighters loathe and fear high-rise fires for the simple reason that their equipment can't get to it. A firefighter must strap on all their gear and walk up to a point where they can assault the fire, and not very effectively because they are relying on the building's fire-fighting capabilities (water stand pipes and the like). In effect, the building has to be able to handle the fire. And you could see that Tower One wasn't handling it at all. I can't remember who the news ...

So Tiring FOXNews.com - Politics - ACLU: Accuracy of California Recall in Danger : The ACLU has argued that delaying the election until March will ensure the state avoids the 'hanging,' 'dimpled' and 'pregnant' chads that dominated the Florida recount and left the presidency up in the air for 35 days. No, what left the presidency up in the air for 35 days was Gore denying reality (i.e., he lost the first count, the second count, the recount, and then the recount of the recount; in fact, he lost every count) and continually taking the matter to court. That is, he kept trying to steal the election. Oh, things get better: "This is not merely about a recall election," Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU-SC, said in a statement. "This is about having every vote counted. Voting machines are the infrastructure of our democracy. Right now, the integrity of our state’s democracy is riding on the performance of these outdated, obsolete and decertifie...

Best Joke I Heard All Day And the Sacramento Bee reports.... sacbee.com -- Recall -- Clinton to start campaign swing for Davis Sunday : "Democratic leaders all over this country oppose this recall because they know it is not a solution to California's problems," he [Peter Ragone, director of communications for the Davis campaign] said. "(Clinton's) voice is one of the most respected in the country when it comes to civic life and public affairs and the people of California recognize that." Oh, my aching sides! "Most respected...." Bwahahahahahaha!

Bored With the Rings All right, I am a heretic. I am about to commit blasphemy. I shall engage in an act which will have many questioning my sanity, or at least my taste. So be it. "LOTR: The Two Towers" sucks. All right, I understand that middle films in any trilogy have a hard road to hew. Fine. If that's the nature of the product, then the producers of that product know that going in and should act accordingly. In other words, they should make a product that is superior to the first, and maybe even the third. In contrast to that lofty ideal, "The Two Towers" is lacking. It is just more of the same from "The Fellowship of the Ring," no less and absolutely no more. No more plot, no more development, no more interesting. Ugh. It is a big, huge, string of "zzzzzzzz." This has really bugged me because people whose opinions I respect have raved about this film. They love it. I hate it. Where does this disconnect come from? When I saw it on The B...