January 23, 2008

Fun around the net

• The California Democratic Party is hiring a couple of bloggers to work on online outreach. The liberal blogosphere gives itself virtual high fives over at Calitics.

• Sen. Jim Battin is more than a little sick of newspaper stories about what kind of car he drives. Even worse are questions of his "carbon footprint."

So the GOP senator from the Inland Empire is fighting back, buying up carbon credits so he's carbon neutral - mainly to laugh in the face of critics.

He bought carbon credits to offset his 2005 Lincoln Aviator for a full year.

"And it only cost me $45......what a deal," he writes on the FlashReport.

Now, I have absolutely no idea who LiveNeutral is, or what they are going to do with my $45 to make me carbon neutral, but I found them on the internet and they gave me an official looking certificate with the CO2 offset lot number of CFI 99982-100907-14 - so they must be legit.

And, they tell me, my $45 is 100% tax deductible. Cool.

In fact, I'm so sure that this carbon credit offset organization is so completely above board I challenge the Contra Costa Times and every other media outlet in the country to look into them and the rest of the carbon off-setters to guarantee they aren't ripping me and my fellow enviros off. In fact, I double dare them! I even triple dare them to prove me wrong.

Battin concludes, "Now that I'm carbon neutral, I'm eagerly waiting for the editorial praising me and my environmental activism - I can hardly wait."

• Carla Marinucci of the Chronicle reports on the interesting choice of time and location for the next state GOP convention.

It's in San Francisco. And in a hotel smack dab in the middle of the city's giant Chinese New Year's parade.

She writes:

But let's just say that with the estimated 600,000 firecrackers that are set off during the Saturday night festivities -- and that's just the count for the legal ones -- it's not exactly a time conducive to serious matters like presidential politics, political discussions. Or those keynote speeches which are scheduled right around dinner at the same time.

And this should be fun: there will be all those folks running around in rat costumes.

Outside the Hyatt, we mean.

Gung Hey Fat Choy, folks.

Posted by Shane Goldmacher on January 23, 2008 9:22 AM