The Merciless Networks

I love watching TV shows when they're good so I'm all for new shows being presented to us in the hopes of finding the "next best thing," but today I read a comment that put the whole thing in perspective.

This woman was watching this new show, Heist, and just found out it got cancelled:

Re: NBC shelving Heist, Elizabeth writes: "You've got to be kidding me! Is it just me, or are all the good new shows being canceled? It's getting to be not worth it to give new ones a try."

I couldn't agree with her more. I mean, why bother start watching a new show when chances are it won't make it past a few episodes or, in the luckiest of cases, one season?

When we watch a TV show, we get emotionally invested with the characters' lives and storylines. When a show is cancelled it can be very disappointing, even heartbreaking. So why bother investing so much of ourselves in a show that maybe won't make it?

Sadly, oftentimes a show strikes a chord only with relatively few viewers, and a fan-fave is born. The audience might be small in number, but its interest in the show is huge (cases in point, Arrested Development, Once and Again, Family Guy). Nonetheless, the show doesn't survive the harsh reality of TVLand and gets cancelled, leaving all those fans from sad to devastated (I remember how much it hurt when they canceled Once and Again, a great show).

Point is, the networks might do themselves a disservice by canning shows too fast to make room for new ones, because not all shows are Desperate Housewives. Some actually need a little bit of time to grow into full-fledged, high rated series, but they are not given that chance.

I have actually adopted a double standard: if a show is on a premium channel (like HBO or Showtime) I will usually give it a try, because their shows are either very good, and hence last, or are shown for at least one or two seasons anyway (satisfying even a small but rabid audience). If a show is on a network, I gauge the cast, the premise, and the first reviews by the 'experts,' and if it looks like it won't make the cut for the network in the long run, it doesn't make the cut for me in the shortrun, and I don't even check it out.

And that can backfire, since I didn't watch the first episode of Desperate Housewives. I only started watching it after the reviews started coming in and sounded great. Now I love the show, but I wasn't first in line to check it out, like the networks surely expect us to do.

So, I ask again. Is it worth it to check out all the new shows that come out every fall (and spring) when the chances of them surviving are slim at best?

Hardly.

"This Administration is the most politically and substantively inept that the nation has had in over a quarter of a century"

I read this post on AMERICAblog and I have to repost this quote by the über-Republican George Conway:

I'm disgruntled, too, and I'm going to get it all of my chest this morning: I've never voted for a Democrat in a general election in my life, and I don't expect to anytime soon, but it's been impossible for me over the past couple of years to get enthused about the Republican party.

I voted for President Bush twice, and contributed to his campaign twice, but held my nose when I did it the second time. I don't consider myself a Republican any longer. Thanks to this Administration and the Republicans in Congress, the Republican Party today is the party of pork-barrel spending, Congressional corruption -- and, I know folks on this web site don't want to hear it, but deep down they know it's true -- foreign and military policy incompetence.

Frankly, speaking of incompetence, I think this Administration is the most politically and substantively inept that the nation has had in over a quarter of a century. The good news about it, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's almost over.

Well said, Mr. Conway!! Isn't it nice to see how even the hard core Republicans are now turning their backs on Georgie?

And to think that the Republicans groomed this simpleton of an asshole to crown their retaking of power after years of Democratic dominance in Congress only to see him destroy all their efforts in just a few years for his puerile pursuit of avenging his daddy's name and topple Saddam Hussein.

Imagine how much Saddam must be enjoying George's falling popularity and influence.

Berlusconi: OUT!!

Yes, finally, one of the most arrogant, reviled and corrupted politicians to ever reach the highest levels of power in Italy has lost his grip on power when today Romano Prodi announced his victory in the just-held parliamentary elections.

The win for Prodi was razor thin, but a win nonetheless. And this means that a second close ally of Bush in his oil/vengeance-war in Iraq was ousted (after Aznar lost to Zapatero in Spain), leaving only Blair in his post among the Western European countries steadfastly supporting Bush's illegal war (and he probably won't be able to finish his term -- or run for another one).

Berlusconi is calling for a recount and will probably invoke anything he can to hold on to his seat, but his days are counted. And I'm sure he's mostly afraid he won't be able to escape his legal troubles like he did in the past, by passing new laws that retroactively covered his rotten ass.

Anyway, Prodi's coalition won the lower chamber, which determines the Prime Minister with 49,805% versus Berlusconi's 49,739% of the vote. The difference is tiny indeed: 25,224 votes; Prodi got 19,001,684 votes, Berlusconi 18,976,460. Talk of a nail biter.

As for how the seats went (there are complex seat assignments following a new electoral law), Prodi's coalition got 158 in the Senate (plus 1 independent that sides with them, so really 159), while Berlusconi's coalition has 156.

In the lower chamber, Prodi has 341 vs. 277 seats. A wide enough margin to ensure his victory, whatever Berlusconi says (and he's apparently saying a lot... I wonder what Bush would say about his behavior; I mean, what if Gore or Kerry behaved the same way!!)

In the end, however, Italy is deeply, deeply divided in half, just like the US in the past two elections and Germany a couple months ago. It's going to be hard to govern, no matter who's in charge. And it never is easy in Italy, given all the parties (that is, heads) that want a piece of the cake.

But today is a day for celebration. Berlusconi is OUT!!

HIV secrecy debacle

If you're HIV positive and don't tell you partner(s), should you be considered negligent and reckless, and maybe go to jail?

From Yahoo! News:

A gay man has become the first in the United Kingdom to be convicted of recklessly transmitting HIV.

The unnamed 47-year-old was convicted this week after a court in West London found him guilty of knowing he was HIV-positive, but not telling his 37-year-old partner.

After being quizzed by his partner, he apparently refused to admit he was HIV-positive and continued to have unprotected sex with the other man.

According to press reports, the partner only learned about his partner's HIV status through a friend. By then, he was also infected with the virus.

My first instinct is to agree with the court's finding, because even if today's drug cocktails allow you to live longer and better than in the first years of the AIDS epidemic, HIV/AIDS is still among the worst diseases you could catch, and if you're HIV positive and have sex without telling, you should at least try to have the safest sex you can.

Having unprotected sex while knowing you're HIV positive is indeed reckless.

But then I read this:

However, HIV activists have long fought against the conviction of gay people, arguing that the convictions will stop people from getting tested and will criminalize HIV.

Which does bear some truth and got me thinking, What about any other kind of sexually transmitted disease (STD), like syphilis? What about herpes? Or hepatitis? Is HIV/AIDS being wrongly singled out or should anybody who knowingly hides his or her illness(es) during their sexual encounters be held to the same standard?

Discuss.

American Family Association takes another hit

And this time it's from none other than Wal-Mart!! I got this information through a blog, Gay News Bits, and this is the link to the story itself:

Retail giant Wal-Mart proceeded to sell DVD copies of Brokeback Mountain this week, despite protests from a religious group opposing the award-winning cowboy romance.
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The group accused the discount retailer of abandoning its "family-friendly" reputation by selling DVDs of the film, a groundbreaking story about two male ranch hands and their longtime, secretive love affair.

In a statement on its website, the anti-gay group urged "concerned Christians" to visit their local Wal-Mart locations and share their displeasure "over the chain's decision to promote and carry the pro-homosexual movie."
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"The only thing we take into consideration when we decide to sell something is whether we think there's demand among our customers," Lavielle told Reuters. "We're a retailer. We want to sell things our customers will buy."

I applaud Wal-Mart's decision, which makes sense business wise (after all the DVD is sold in countless other places and Wal-Mart would only hurt itself by not carrying it). The AFA launches boycotts like my son launches temper tantrums, which, come to think of it, are probably one and the same!!

Wal-Mart still has a long way to go to right all its mistakes and wrong decision, but I believe a good decision should be acknowledged, and this time Wal-Mart made the right one.

Good for them. They probably noticed the AFA's boycotts fail all the time and lead to nothing more than good publicity for our causes anyway, so might as well ignore them right from the start.

The Missing Link

Big news for all scientists, especially paleontologists, from The New York Times:

Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought missing link in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land.
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The skeletons have the fins, scales and other attributes of a giant fish, four to nine feet long. But on closer examination, the scientists found telling anatomical traits of a transitional creature, a fish that is still a fish but has changes that anticipate the emergence of land animals - and is thus a predecessor of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs, mammals and eventually humans.

In the fishes' forward fins, the scientists found evidence of limbs in the making. There are the beginnings of digits, proto-wrists, elbows and shoulders. The fish also had a flat skull resembling a crocodile's, a neck, ribs and other parts that were similar to four-legged land animals known as tetrapods.

Other scientists said that in addition to confirming elements of a major transition in evolution, the fossils were a powerful rebuttal to religious creationists, who have long argued that the absence of such transitional creatures are a serious weakness in Darwin's theory.
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But Tiktaalik is so clearly an intermediate "link between fishes and land vertebrates," they said, that it "might in time become as much an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx," which bridged the gap between reptiles (probably dinosaurs) and today's birds.
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Dr. Shubin's team played down the fossil's significance in the raging debate over Darwinian theory, which is opposed mainly by some conservative Christians in this country, but other scientists were not so reticent. They said this should undercut the argument that there is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind.

So there you go, more evidence of life evolving on the planet from one species to the next. Furthermore, how can the Earth be only 6,000 years old and yet host organisms deep inside its rocks that are 375 million years old?!

Let's see how the Dumb Intelligent Design proponents wiggle themselves out of this one.

Here's a graph explaining the evolution in more detail:

ITMFA

That acronym stands for:

IMPEACH THE MOTHERFUCKER ALREADY

and we all know who we're referring to...

Anyhow, David Sirota set up that website (they even have some cool merchandise) and this is his blog, Sirotablog. I like him, and this was a good idea. Bush deserves to be impeached, and not a day goes by that we get at least one more reason to add to the list of impeachable offenses.

Impeachment. A big step. I read this article on The San Francisco Bay Guardian a while ago, and I'm posting about it because it's still very much relevant. A few worthy quotes:

Richard Nixon escaped a likely impeachment only by resigning after a long investigation into abuses of power that are remarkably similar to those facing President Bush: illegal wiretaps, war crimes and deceptions, crimes in retaliation against perceived enemies, obstruction of justice, and other actions flowing from extraconstitutional claims of executive authority.
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All three agree the Clinton impeachment was a gross misuse of the process, which they see as something the founders intended to be used only in extreme cases.
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"The impeachment provision is for truly egregious wrongdoing, and we shouldn't repeat the unconstitutional impeachment of President Clinton," Sunstein said.

"I think impeachment is the nuclear option and should be talked about only rarely," Bloch said. "It's a weapon for when you have to get someone out of office because he's dangerous."
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Clinton was impeached when all the legal experts say he shouldn't have been. So Bush could clearly be held to account for crimes that are more serious than lying about an extramarital blow job. What is being alleged against the Bush administration are misdeeds that have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, the torture of people in US custody, blatant and unapologetic violations of the Fourth Amendment, and the shredding of American credibility around the world – all of which are ongoing, claiming new victims everyday.

That's why the advocates of impeachment say we can't afford to wait two years for another election. Besides, they say, stopping the imperial ambitions of a president is precisely why the founders created the tool of impeachment.

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land," warned James Madison, "it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
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But the list of constitutionally troubling offenses by both Bush and Cheney started right away: Cheney's defiance of congressional inquiries into his secret Energy Task Force meetings, the appointment industry insiders to regulatory agencies, the refusal to release public documents like Ronald Reagan's presidential papers, the ignoring of warnings about the coming 9/11 attacks and then obstructing investigations into it, the use of the attacks to create an imperial presidency that defied congressional oversight and spied on Americans.

How right was James Madison: "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." And Bush clearly took advantage of the 9/11 attacks on US soil to settle his family's personal score with Saddam Hussein, and to then expand his office's powers beyond what they've ever been, or intended to be.

And in so doing, he violated the US Constitution, for which he should be impeached.

President Bush: Bad for America

Yesterday, it was revealed that it was indeed President Bush who gave the go ahead to Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, Libby, to divulge national security information regarding a CIA operative working undercover, Valerie Plame, in order to discredit her husband, Ambassador Wilson, who was vocally critical of Bush's intent to attack Iraq.

A shocking revelation that isn't so shocking after all. The only shocking thing is that Bush was stupid enough to give the go ahead himself, thereby forgoing the often used "plausible deniability" excuse.

Here's a great quote by Howard Dean, from the Washington Post:

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said, "The fact that the president was willing to reveal classified information for political gain and put the interests of his political party ahead of America's security shows that he can no longer be trusted to keep America safe."

RUSSELL FEINGOLD FOR PRESIDENT

A Democrat has finally had the courage to come out in favor of same-sex marriage, a position the whole Democratic party should take in order to both do the right thing and show they do stand for something:

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), a prospective 2008 presidential candidate, said yesterday that he thinks bans on same-sex marriages have no place in the nation's laws.
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Feingold called the amendment "a mean-spirited attempt" to single out gay men and lesbians for discrimination and said he would vote against it. But he went further, announcing that he favors legalizing same-sex marriages.
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The Wisconsin senator said he is prepared to work with supporters of same-sex marriage to ensure that it is legal in the future.

"Further steps would be appropriate," he said, noting that his first priorities are to defeat the proposed Wisconsin amendment as well as a federal constitutional amendment that is expected to come to a vote in the Senate later this spring.

Well, at this point, after proposing to censure Bush for his illegal wiretapping program and now coming out in support of gay marriage, Feingold's name sure is standing out among the possible candidates for the presidency of either party.

At this juncture, he'd get my vote. No question.