The Zong

Ok, think back to the most awkward and embarrassing thing you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Maybe it was something someone else did, maybe it was something you did. Just think about it for a minute. Did it build character?

Now, try your best to watch this bit from the Correspondents’ Dinner all the way through. It’s like the opposite of truthiness, but if you make it to the end, Karl Rove will rap for you. If I told you it was the worst thing you’d ever watch, you’d watch it, right?

Sir Rebholz points out that this part of scanners kind of simulates the experience of watching it:

Gavin Newsom and his stadium crew are coming correct this time, and what could have been a hastily put-together scramble for redemption looks on the face of it like a decent redevelopment plan for Hunters Point. The Mayor says it can be privately financed, which might actually get the attention of John York, who often trucks like an accountant with three mortgages.

The drawings themselves look kinda like something out of Reading Rainbow…

Cue Lavar Burton: “And the people flocked to Hunters point, eyes full of wonder, to the sound of crowds cheering and the fresh, pungent smell of the Bay, newly cleansed of its radioactive waste.”

The new map of how Hunter’s Point will look in Newsom’s mind includes parks, artist’s studios, and affordable housing, and reactions in the city have been somewhat positive, except for grumpy old Glenn Dickey.

The 49ers were born in San Francisco, but in the 61 years since, the fan base has moved away from The City. Precise figures aren’t available, but it’s believed less than 10 percent of season ticket-holders live in San Francisco. The great bulk of fans is on the Peninsula or in the South Bay.

Precise figures aren’t available, but I believe that nobody has read the Examiner or Glenn Dickey since George Moscone was still alive.

Anyhow, this plan is still kind of pie-in-the-sky until someone can come up with a firm estimate on the Superfun(d) cleanup of the shipyard out there, both time and money-wise.

“The big risk is that if there is a disagreement between the local government and the military about the actual cost of the cleanup, how much the city gets will depend on the strength of the congressional district where the base is located,” said Saul Bloom, executive director at Arc Ecology, a local nonprofit that helps communities plan for the closure and the cleanup of military bases. “The Navy will want to get out on the cheap, and the city wants to get the funding it needs to get the job done.”

Bloom acknowledged that the city is in a good position given that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, both Democrats, want the shipyard developed and have expressed a desire to keep the 49ers in San Francisco.

But the remaining cleanup cost will require major appropriations. The Navy estimates that over the next 10 years, it would need to spend $500 million, and it predicts that figure would go up by as much as $75 million if the city took over and tried to expedite the work.

I smell pork!

Anyhow, there are other concerns, not the least of which is a lack of freeway access, although that could truly go either way for me. Candlestick Park is close to a freeway, and all that does is move all the traffic to the freeway. I’m no trafficologist, but something tells me people will take public transportation to this new park if it is made readily available. Go to a game at Pac Bell Park and watch the trains come in. Better yet, get on a train. It’s like Japan on those things.

The good news for San Francisco is that the redevelopment may actually happen even if John York decides that he’d rather be closer to the Olive Garden in Santa Clara. It’s possible that Hunters Point will become a “nice” place to go hang out in this lifetime, with parks and waterfront promenades and ugly-ass condos.

My question is this: why did the government of San Franistan wait so goddamn long to make with the right plan? Did you really have to wait until York threatened to move the team to come up with this stuff? It reminds me of how I used to write papers in college; they were great as long as I waited until two hours before class to write them.

ESPN has finally proven that there is someone thinking up top. After stupefying the masses with incredible decisions such as deciding to carry the WNBA and the “Bonds on Bonds” fiasco, they’ve finally done something that made me openly applaud: they bitch-slapped Joe Theismann right on out of the Monday Night Football booth.

Anyone who has had to endure listening to Theismann during an otherwise interesting football game might also rejoice at the fact that he has merely been removed from MNF, but ESPN has really knocked him down a few pegs.

Williamson said ESPN hoped to retain Theismann by offering him another prominent football commentating job. Williamson would not specify what job, but Theismann later said by phone it was the Saturday night college football package with Brent Musburger. Kirk Herbstreit and Bob Davie worked with Musburger last season.

Brent Musburger, huh? Now that’s a broadcast team that just screams “youth” at the top of its lungs. Maybe they can get Pat Summerall to come on in and, uh, Summerall up. (Sorry)

So the quarterback controversy at ESPN comes to an end, as young upstart Ron Jaworski comes in to play swords with Tony Kornheiser. I can’t think of a better shark/man for the job. Jaws is more knowledgeable than and just as loud as Theismann, and he has a nicer demeanor. Plus, he probably won’t glare at Kornheiser when he’s talking about the latest episode of “Lost” during the fourth quarter.

Although Jaworski is probably better known as an ESPN studio analyst, it may be more noteworthy that he has been friends with Kornheiser for a long time and has appeared on “Pardon the Interruption” frequently. The two men clearly get along well.

Don’t you just love happy endings?

As you probably know, I really want Al Gore to run for president. Of the United States. I want him to run so bad, it actually kind of makes me angry. The reasons are all pretty obvious, from the fact that he was right about global warming and Iraq way before it was cool to his invention of the internet. He likes to say he’s part of a “different campaign,” but where on earth could he do a better job fighting climate change than as leader of the free world?

Well, Al marched confidently up the Hill today, Tipper in hand, and gave a mostly sympathetic audience of congressmen and women the business about climate change.

Mr. Gore, accompanied by his wife, Tipper, delivered the same blunt message to a joint meeting of two House subcommittees this morning and a Senate hearing this afternoon: Humans are artificially warming the world, the risks of inaction are great, and meaningful cuts in emissions linked to warming will only happen if the United States takes the lead.

In the House of Representatives, there was relatively little debate on the underlying science; the atmosphere was more that of a college lecture hall.

Not so in the Senate, where James Inhofe continues to think global warming is a hoax, and perhaps also thinks that cavemen used to get around by riding dinosaurs.

“It is my perspective that your global warming alarmist pronouncements are now and have always been filled with inaccuracies and misleading statements,” Mr. Inhofe said. He then estimated the cost of proposals to reduce emission of heat-trapping gases at $300 billion and said: “The poor pay for it and the science isn’t there. We just can’t do that to America,” Mr. Vice President. And we’re not going to.”

$300 billion to save the entire world? How much is the War in Iraq costing us?

Inhofe isn’t the only guy in the Senate who has prayed himself retarded. Check out this crazy bastard:

Later, Senator Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, raised the question of whether sunspots are the cause of global warming. He also argued that the carbon-controlling legislation favored by many Democrats would send his poor constituents’ heating bills up 80 percent.

I’ll ask it once again: Why do conservatives ever pretend to give two shits about the heating bills of the poor? I’d respect them a lot more if they just came out and said “The corporations that helped get me elected don’t want to spend the money on this shit, so go buy an air conditioner and leave me alone.”

It was really awesome when Barbara Boxer waved her gavel at Inhofe during the proceedings.

Inhofe asked Gore for his reaction, but then quickly cut him off saying Gore had taken up too much time. When Gore tried to go on, Inhofe repeatedly interrupted, adding, “I don’t want to be rude, but from now on, I’m going to ask you to respond…in writing.” Inhofe said Gore could respond verbally only if it was a “very brief response.”

Committee chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) finally intervened. “Would you agree to let the Vice President answer your questions?” Inhofe said Gore could respond when he was done talking, but Boxer wouldn’t have it: “No, that isn’t the rule. You’re not making the rules. You used to when you did this. Elections have consequences. So I make the rules.”

You go, Babs.

It must be frustrating for Gore to run up against these guys again and again, when he’s obviously trying to separate the subject from politics. I’d love to ask these conservatives why they think Al Gore has been doing this for so long. What reason does he have to lie about this? Is he part of some vast conspiracy to make things harder for the energy lobby? The thing is, they know he’s telling the truth, and that’s why they’re more scared of him than they are of minorities who vote.

I know he still says he has no “plans” to run, but if you saw him say this stuff today, you’d have to think it would appeal to people of both parties.

Waving his finger at some 40 House members, he said, “A day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they’ll ask one of two questions.”

Either, he said, “they will ask: what in God’s name were they doing?” or “they may look back and say: how did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy?”

From Engadget Magazine, an example of how cheesy illustrations should always be done:

Take note, all you hacks over at the Chronicle who did this illustration:

It turns out that Matier & Ross have a few dogs sniffing around the Niners’ Santa Clara plans, and it looks as if building professional sports stadiums still costs a lot of money, even if you build it in a dipshit burg like the S to the C.

One way or the other, the San Francisco 49ers will ask Santa Clara residents to pick up as much as $200 million in costs for the team’s planned new football stadium next to the Great America amusement park, according to sources close to the team.

Hey, that’s only about $2,000 per resident!  How much are season tickets?

Specifically, the Niners have their eye on two chunks of public land and tens of millions in cash reserves from the city’s self-run electric utility, Silicon Valley Power, the sources say.

The team decided to make a play for the utility’s cash after concluding that obtaining development rights from the city — and spinning off development profits to pay for the stadium’s construction — alone wasn’t going to provide enough money.

As it stands, the Santa Clara City Charter forbids any entity but Silicon Valley Power from using those cash reserves. So the Niners are contemplating asking the City Council to place a charter amendment on the ballot as early as November asking voters to OK the deal.

Sounds complicated, although not any more complicated than cleaning up Hunter’s Point. Still, while I thought that one of the reasons the 49ers gave for rejecting the San Francisco proposal was because it involved a parking structure and commercial spaces, one of the Santa Clara plans involves just that:

In addition to the utility money, sources say the Niners are still pursuing the idea of Santa Clara putting up two pieces of real estate — some 15 acres of Great America’s parking lot (for both the new stadium and a parking structure), and 11 acres across the street where they hope to work a deal for office or commercial development.

What the fuck?  Add this to a list of reasons that I suspect the Santa Clara deal is simply there because John York didn’t get enough fruit baskets from Gavin Newsom last Valentine’s Day.

In a couple of years, when we might be rinsing the blood off our country’s hands and swigging scotch to get the bad taste of the Bush presidency out of our mouths, a lot of people are gonna say “That stupid shithead didn’t do anything right while he was president!”

I probably won’t disagree, but I’ll point out that his presidency did give rise to this photograph:

I mean, this picture is always funny, and every newspaper covering the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed developments this week is running this picture along with their articles. They’ll probably run it again when they hang the ugly bastard, and he will forever be remembered as Al Qaeda’s grumpy little trooper.

You’d think that part of training to become a martyr should include sacrificing a little night time comfort so that if the infidels catch you, you don’t look like a hung-over Ron Jeremy for the photographers.

Wrongfully Terminated Federal Prosecutergate, as it has been called in some circles, is really gaining some steam. Chuck Schumer is saying that it’s probably curtains for Alberto “Seedy” Gonzales, but as is very common with White House scandals nowadays, Karl Rove seems to be the guy behind the guy. The White House email trail shows that, Plamegate or no Plamegate, Bush’s Brain is still all asshole, all the time.

The e-mail messages are the latest disclosure in the uproar over the dismissals in December of seven United States attorneys. Accusations that the removals were politically motivated and that the administration has misled lawmakers about the reasons for them have led to Congressional investigations, thrown the White House on the defensive and prompted calls for Mr. Gonzales’s resignation.

A Justice Department spokesman said Thursday that Mr. Gonzales did not remember the discussions cited in the e-mail. “The attorney general has no recollection of any plan or discussion to replace U.S. attorneys while he was still White House counsel,” said Tasia Scolinos, the department spokeswoman.

The “no recollection” routine has lately been pretty popular, and it’s enough to make me think the entire federal government hit its head on something. Why the fuck can’t anyone recollect anything, and if they can’t then what the hell are they doing running the country? If I worked for the President of the United States, you can bet I’d remember every fucking conversation I had every day. What, is working in the White House boring or something?

I know from experience not to expect anything to actually happen to Rove, but he sure is a smarmy son of a bitch these days.

In other news, the California Primary got moved up! Once again, I’ll ask the question, but I know nobody’s gonna answer me:

How does it make any sense at all to have the presidential primaries on different days in different states? Shouldn’t all the states vote on the same day? What’s the goddamn problem? I’m glad my vote in the primary might actually count this year, but no state should be worth less than any other state come election time, right?

Anyhow, Al Gore had better start doing some sit-ups, because he’s gotta get in the ring by September.

So, the United States Senate just passed a bill to implement the remaining reforms recommended by the 9/11 commission!

Yes, that 9/11. The one that happened on September the 11th, 2001.

We’re just a few days past the mark of 6 months until the 6-year anniversary of our country’s greatest tragedy, and I sit here and seethe when I think of all the times progressives and congressional Democrats have been accused of hating this country by conservatives and their associated moronic shitbirds. If we hate this country so much, then how come it took a Democratic majority to pass the recommendations of a commission that finished it’s report three fucking years ago?

There are still some real comedians in the Senate, Republicans all, who didn’t want this bill passed, and all 38 of them will make sure a presidential veto stands when it comes to that.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) criticized the legislation, saying it would weaken U.S. security overall by “pumping for big labor.” By allowing the workers to unionize, Democrats “would make the Department of Homeland Security more like the Department of Motor Vehicles,” he said.

Can we get a rimshot for Mitch? NICE!

Seriously folks, the DMV is a horrible place to spend an afternoon, especially if you own a couple of old VWs, but I’ll tell you what: the DMV is a much more efficient and intimidating governmental entity than the Department of Homeland Security. I’m pretty sure DMV has done just about as much to keep this country safe from hurricanes as DHS has, and you can be damn sure that if a terrorist tries to get a parking permit in San Francisco, he’s gonna have to go through the proper channels.

Also, is “Big Labor” like “Big Tobacco?” If it is, then Mitch McConnell should be all for it, considering the fact that he got $48,000 for his campaign from the Tobacco Lobby between 1991-1996. Maybe the Labor Lobby doesn’t get its props because it isn’t as good at giving people cancer, but I digress.

As it goes, the White House and all the patriots in the Senate who voted against the bill have their knickers in a twist over the fact that the bill would allow TSA employees to unionize. Lord knows we can’t possibly protect our liberty and protect the rights of workers at the same time. Fuck it, then. Let’s just leave things the way they were because unions are such a horrible blight on our democracy!

The thing is, even if you take this bullshit reason as justification for voting no on this bill, where’s the justification for not implementing these changes, union-free, when you had two houses of congress and the White House controlled by Republicans for 5 years after the attacks? Let me guess: it was Clinton’s fault.

My sources tell me that, out of the 800 or so of you that have visited The Zong this month, close to 790 of you were looking for pictures of Bridget Moynahan. For the rest of you, I’m taking part in a fundraising event benefitting the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society this June, and I figured I might use some of this increased traffic to write about something that actually matters for a change.

The event is a 100-mile lap around Lake Tahoe on a bike, and it promises to be a real great time for a real great cause. The thing is, It’s been a few years since my last century, and a lot of scotch and tamales have found their way into my life since then. I’m training for this event, and seeking donations to the cause. If you want, you can even sponsor one of my woeful body parts for the event, but even if you’re reading this and can only afford to give a little, your help will be greatly appreciated by me and by anyone who has been affected by blood cancers.

All proceeds from this event will go directly to patient services and research to develop treatment and curative therapies for Leukemia and Lymphoma. Sponsor a body part or give whatever you can, and let’s zong cancer right on outta here. Thanks in advance for your support!

P.S. - If you’re actually here looking for those photos, know that as soon as I reach my goal of $5,000, I promise to post as many pictures of Bridget as I can find. I’ll be writing her to see if she’ll donate some exclusive photos to the cause, if you know what I mean.