Dan Bartlett on the problems with the GOP presidential field:

“Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.”

Translation:

None of the Republicans running have the strength and experience of being a two-term governor from a large, middle-American state. A lone-star state, if you will. None of these men has a name, a good name, a name you can trust. A name that sounds a lot like the name of another U.S. president. None of these guys is comfortable enough in his own skin that he’ll be able to sleep like a baby while American troops are in harm’s way and see into the deepest souls of the leaders of our country’s rivals. In short, the biggest problem with the current crop of Republicans is that none of them is George W. Bush.

So I guess we now have the Bushie fallback position should Hillary sweep to a 40-state victory next year. Awesome.

Following Buffalo’s loss to Dallas last night, ESPN’s Stuart Scott asked his fellow commentators, Steve Young and Emmitt Smith, that had they not known the outcome, with so little time remaining and with Romo’s multiple interceptions, what two words would’ve come to mind:

Steve Young: Dallas. Lose.

Emmitt Smith: Dallas. Lose. Big. Time.

Burbed shares with us a list of public employee salaries from the Bay Area. I’m a huge fan of public employees! A huge number of people near and dear to my heart work for the government in some capacity and I wish they were all paid more money! Really!

But $118K a year for a city bus driver?

Kill me now.

The only hope is that, like the Wolfgang Petersen World’s Finest, Batman vs. Superman, this too will be aborted before shooting commences.

At this point, why not just start with Vibe and Gypsy and Vixen? Or, hell, why not start post-Justice League, with Batman leaving in a huff and starting the Outsiders, which is a much more manageable group of heroes (who could, with the right handling, turn into their own franchise). I always thought Batman and the Outsiders would make for an interesting 115 minute movie.

Yeah, that’s right. He edits the best magazine in America and writes the best reported pieces in said magazine, just for kicks. Just to put idiot scribblers like you and me in our place. He has no mercy.

The Remnick profile of Garry Kasparov is brilliant. Just one choice tidbit:

When I asked Kasparov if he feared for his life, he nodded gravely and said, “I do. The only thing I can try to do is reduce my risk. I can’t avoid the risk altogether. They watch everything I do in Moscow, or when I travel to places like Murmansk or Voronezh or Vladimir. I don’t eat or drink at places I’m not familiar with. I avoid flying with Aeroflot”—the Russian national airline. “It doesn’t help in the end if they really decide to go after you. But, if they did, it would be really messy. And not just because of the bodyguards. There would be a huge risk for the Kremlin if anything happens to me, God forbid, because the blood would be on Putin’s hands. It’s not that they have an allergy to blood, but it creates a bad image, or makes it worse than it already is.”

Cue the Benny Hill music:

As Joystiq reports, here’s Sony talking about why they’ve decided to ditch backwards compatibility on the Playstation 3:

In separate interviews today both Sony UK boss Ray Maguire and Sony Europe spokesman Nick Sharples spoke about how the 40GB PS3 lacking backwards compatibility is fine. How is it fine? Maguire tells Eurogamer that by this Christmas the PS3 will have a whopping 65 games and so they feel “there’s sufficient choice in the marketplace and that we’re still better off using that money that we’d put into backwards compatibility in either investing in new games or using that money to help support bringing the price down.” Meanwhile, Sharples tells GameDaily, “We have made clear on many occasions that our priority is on developing innovative new features and services for PS3 and not on backwards compatibility.”

Here was Sony talking about the prime importance of backwards compatibility a years ago:

Sony’s own Phil Harrison clearly and distinctly said in a 2006 interview with GamePro, “Backwards compatibility, as you know from PlayStation One and PlayStation 2, is a core value of what we believe we should offer. And access to the library of content people have created, bought for themselves, and accumulated over the years is necessary to create a format. PlayStation is a format meaning that it transcends many devices — PSOne, PS2, and now PS3.”

This is a company that has no idea what it’s doing.

I know you’re curious. Go ahead and watch the first clip. It’s only 3 seconds long, but you’ll get a taste:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-kStKDJojQ&rel=1]
He’s pretty great. But I hope Savage doesn’t get pissed. Remember, “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Macho Man–Vengeance is mine!”

ATL has the word:

The Falcons are seeking to recoup $22 million already paid to Vick in signing bonuses. The Falcons claim that, since Vick knew at the time that he signed the contract and received the bonuses that he was running a dogfighting operation and should have known that that could cause him to not be able to play, he has forfeited the bonuses. The NFL Players Association says once bonuses are paid, there’s no forfeiture, period.

They seem to be almost right. Under the new CBA approved last year, forfeiture of signing bonuses are allowed for only one reason . . .