So, the House barely passed a less than comprehensive (but better than nothing, which is about all we can expect these days) energy bill yesterday. Roll Call Vote here, if you want to check up on your Congress critter. Basically, it went this way: 82% of the House Democrats voted for it, 94% of the Republicans voted against it. Three of our “representatives” were apparently too busy mourning Michael Jackson to bother voting (or maybe there were “taking a hike”). As for addressing climate change, this all means basically nothing since, as we all learned on School House Rock, the Senate now needs to pass their own version of this bill – the American Clean Energy Leadership Act, which was marked up in and reported out of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources by a vote of 15-8 on June 17th. Environmentalists and scientists are not impressed. But, even to get this thing through, counting Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders as Democrats (which, in my opinion, is a slur against Bernie Sanders), then any Senate bill would require roughly 102% of Democrats to vote for cloture. Since, even on a good day, the best you can count on is maybe 83% of Democrats, we need to get at least 27% of Republicans, which will be done by further weakening an already crappy bill. Get ready for more nuke plants, “clean” coal facilities, corn subsidies, oil drilling in ANWR, logging in National Parks, and helicopter wolf hunting. Or perhaps I’m just being pessimistic?

For you legal types out there, do we have some sort of a legal right to know the results of Michael Jackson’s autopsy? I mean, I suppose if there was a “crime” involved, it’d be a matter public record, but absent that, is it legally any of our business? Does “the public” have some sort of inherent right to satisfy its prurient curiosity? ‘Cuz, I really don’t think it’s any of our fucking business. Can’t we just give Mike’s (and David’s) families a little peace and respect?

And now they’re saying that all the attention being focused on MJ’s death is good news for the Mullahs in Iran, because the world has taken its collective eye off the Iranian government crackdown (as artnorton demonstrated with his network “news” rundown last night).

What a stupid species we humans are. And people actually believe that some Supreme Being created the entire universe just for us? Man, it just doesn’t seem like we were worth the trouble.

Speaking of trouble, more happy homeowner projects this weekend to attend to. All I lack is the energy to get them done. I think I’ll make a motion that we continue the debate on our kitchen renovation. I’ve got the dogs on my side, as long as I promise to take them to the park. Granny probably has the cats (little catnip whores). So, it’s 3-3, and she needs 5 votes to invoke cloture.

Then again, she hits pretty hard.