as we may blog

In and of itself, a new stylesheet is nothing noteworthy. BUT I can take this opportunity to get up on my CSS designer soapbox and urge everyone with a Windows PC to download and use Mozilla Firefox as your default web browser (it’s free).

Because our readers are predominantly high-powered businessmen with little time for details, I’ve provided a quick fact sheet listing Firefox’s major benefits:

• Built-in pop-up blocker.
• Tabbed browsing.
• Won’t allow sites to install spyware on your computer with ActiveX controls like Internet Explorer does.

There are a million other reasons Firefox is preferable to Internet Explorer that are probably of little interest to most people. It’s the best browser out there, hands down.

Now with that out of the way, we can get back to the Hawk and DJ bashing.

Cubs at White Sox, Friday through Sunday

I look forward to these three games less than any others all year. It’s not because I fear the Cubs will get swept by the White Sox, or that I have any particular distaste for interleague play. No, these three games at The Cell mean Cubs fans everywhere are subjected to the insufferable Ken "Hawk" Harrelson and Darrin "D. J." Jackson calling the games on TV. Count your blessings if "He gawn" and "You can put it on the board… YES!" don’t make your ears instinctively bleed.

For those of us who DO watch baseball AND are not deaf OR have hearing aids, these are trying days. The pain of any Cubs loss in the three game series on the south side is magnified 100-fold as Cubs fans realize they’ve just 1) watched their favorite team lose and 2) spent three hours listening to Hawk and D. J.’s expert "analysis." At the end of the series I’ll be practically begging for Chip Caray’s overzealous call of "THERE’S A DRIVE" on every routine fly ball. And Steve Stone, well, I pine for him always.

Prior, Zambrano, and Maddux get the chance to deliver us from evil this weekend.

Hawk usually wears a bib so the butter doesn’t stain his shirt.

Apparently a 10-9 comeback victory over their biggest rivals isn’t enough to subdue clubhouse difficulties for a night. This entire article is entertaining:

Reliever Steve Kline threw a tantrum in the Cardinals’ bullpen when he warmed up but didn’t get the call in the sixth inning Wednesday night and made an obscene gesture toward manager Tony La Russa.

La Russa was unaware of Kline’s sixth-inning display until queried after the Cards’ 10-9 victory over the Cubs at Busch Stadium.

"He did that?" La Russa asked.

Told that a television feed confirmed it, the manager cut off a news conference, saying, "Give me two minutes and I’ll be standing on top of his chest kicking the (bleep) [shit] out of him."

Kline apparently gave LaRussa the one-finger salute. This reporter finds it hard to believe such a classy individual could display such a sophomoric gesture from the bleachers. Kids everywhere no doubt saw Kline’s outburst and queried their parents in utter disbelief, "This is the player who wished a career-ending injury on Mark Prior?" Parents all over the St. Louis metro area squirmed, then flipped the station to a more family-friendly sprint car challenge on the Speed Network.

Updating a story that Blogbot broke last week, the State Department today quietly released the revised "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report (now with 100% more truth!) which shows that "significant attacks" reached a 21-year high in 2003.

Whoops! Cue that sad trumpet.

Colin Powell responds to a bit of backsass from a skeptical press corps Tuesday. Not pictured: the back of his hand.

From the new Washington Post/ABC News poll that all the cool kids are talking about:

The president is viewed as a stronger leader than Kerry and as the candidate who can be most trusted in a crisis. He is also seen as best able to "make the country safer and more secure" and the one who "takes a position and sticks with it."

But by 52 percent to 39 percent, Kerry is seen as more honest and trustworthy — a troubling finding for Bush, whose truthfulness before the war in Iraq has been called into question.

John Kerry’s flip-flopped yet again, demonstrating that he’ll even go so far as to appear honest and trustworthy to get a cheap vote or two. What happened to the dishonest and untrustworthy Kerry of a few months ago? This man’s win-at-all-costs attitude will doom this nation yet.

And just another day at the office for the Bush administration: Paul Krugman calls John Ashcroft the worst Attorney General ever, top commanders in Iraq (including the head of US Central Command) will be questioned about their roles in the torture at Abu Ghraib, and the release of Bill Clinton’s memoirs reminds the nation of happier, impeachier times.

As Krugman notes in his op-ed piece, the truth about these men is so far out there, so unbelievably extreme that it’s hard to talk about any of it without sounding shrill.