215,675,903 Channels, And Nothing's On.

I spend too much time on the Internet now that we have DSL. Actually we both do. But I've noticed lately that I'm staying online a lot even when I'm not being entertained or learning anything. Like now, for instance.

Anyway, last night was a terribly slow night, and I finished all of my tasks very early in the evening, so I spent some time surfing the web.

First place to go was to blogspot to check the blogs I follow. Gian had an awesome day. That's good. Band of Thebes had a book review. It didn't look particularly interesting, though I admit I was judging the book by its cover. Mickey Hepner (mickeyhepner.blogspot.com) wrote about how the new health care law is becoming more popular as people are figuring out what it's really all about (though you would never know it from listening to all the politicians running for Mary Fallin's seat.)

Mr. Hepner also wrote a commentary about a piece in the New York Times by David Leonhardt about lessons we should be learning from the Great Depression. According to Mr. Leonhardt, the government started getting panicky about all the deficit spending they were doing, and stopped supporting the ailing public sector, and thereby extended the Depression by several years. Lawmakers today, are also worrying about the deficit spending going on right now, and are wanting to stop government spending while the economy is too weak to do without it. That could send us into a double-dip recession or into a depression. This article covers a subject Mickey has commented on a few times before.

Nothing else recent on blogspot, so over to Facebook, where an invitation to join, or like, or befriend, or whatever, Senator Tom Coburn, who wants to stop out-of-control government spending. Knowing Oklahoma, that's likely to get him re-elected.

I see my friend Anthony has responded to the comment on his status. The day before he lamented about the lack of Supreme Court nominees who knew what the Constitution was. My comment was a cut and paste from the New York Times quoting nominee Kagan about the importance of the Constitution. He responded with an oblique reference to the Harvard incident where Dean Kagan upheld a pre-existing campus policy that pitted the military against civil rights. Ultimately, civil rights lost. I don't know what that has to do with his original comment, but...okay.

Well, I'm wondering if Ms Kagan has another quote I can use concerning this, so I go to the New York Times website to see if there's a quotable quote. As it happens, Ms Kagan was grilled by Senator Jeff Sessions about this very topic that day, and she did indeed have something to say about it, but the best quote was interlaced with other stuff, and...when you use...too many ellipses...it kinda takes the air...out of your...point, so I skipped it.

Nothing else of interest on Facebook, so now I'm off to Politifact.org to see what kind of silliness is going on in the world. Naturally, they're covering the confirmation hearings and have muchos entries, but I've already read most of them. There's a whole page of stuff about the Harvard Law School incident (I say incident, but in fact the policy was adopted in 1979 that required non-discrimination among potential employers in order for them to recruit on campus. The military, of course, was not able to sign such an agreement, and was not allowed to recruit through the school's Office of Career Services; instead, they recruited through the Harvard Law School Veterans Association.) I reread the page to see if there was anything more to learn from it. There's room to quibble on both sides of the argument.
There's an item about her saying that recruitment actually went up in 2005, the same year that the non-discrimination policy was put back in effect (Congress had applied some financial pressure [there's a word for that--it's not extortion, it's...] and schools across the nation had relented under protest. Harvard Law School let the military recruiters back in to the Office of Career Services for a couple of years, though it didn't make any difference in their success.) Politifact rated her statement as "Half-True" for reasons that didn't seem to have anything to do with the statement. Five is up from three, no matter how you slice it. If you check it out, let me know if you agree with them and why.

I wondered if the Washington Post had anything new or different to say about this, but you have to sign up to get their stories, and I was on the computer at work, so no. Anyway, enough of that.

How much would a DVD of "Bullets over Broadway" cost on Amazon? Ooh. Even with shipping it's less than $10. Tempting.

And then I couldn't think of a single other thing I wanted to look at. So I summoned all of my strength and moved the cursor towards the little x in the top corner...