This is partially a test post; the graphical design of this site isn’t finished yet, as my graphics guru is in West Virginia dodging the delightful hillbillies and hilljacks (Is there a difference? I don’t know..)

Ok, here’s a pet peeve that’s quickly turning into a seething hatred of mine: the gods-damned fixation on baseball and Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Like many liberals, ersatz liberals and various news junkies I caught his press conference announcing her nomination live, in my case on local liberal radio.  Obama starts going into her various achievements, and near the very top of the list was that she ‘saved baseball’ by issuing an injunction that put an end to the Major League Baseball strike back in ninteeen ninety-I-don’t-give-a-fuck.

I’m so goddamned tired of hearing about sports when we’re supposed to be discussing policy, dealing with real problems and the like.  Sotomayor didn’t ‘save baseball’; she issued an injunction in what amounts to a glorified contract dispute.  Even if she had ‘saved’ baseball, I fail to see how that is an issue of critical importance in a nominee for the SUPREME COURT OF THE GODDAMNED UNITED STATES.

It is a lifetime position on a sharply divided Court; our rights to things like religious freedom, or in my case, freedom from religion; safe and legal abortion (sometimes legal at least), equal protection under the law, voter enfranchisement, and so on, and on, and on, are all at stake, right now, today, and especially with this nomination.

But Obama talks about… baseball.  To be folksy?  Or is he, in fact, this dumb?

I wanted to vomit.  It gets better though; within a few minutes, he was bringing it up again, how since she lived near Yankee Stadium as a child, she was a LIFELONG FAN.

Ok, here, I will spell it out for you, President Hopey McChange and sundry Obamabots: no one in their right mind gives a flying fuck about the baseball preferences of a Supreme Court nominee, except, perhaps, and only perhaps, a major stakeholder in Major League Baseball (i.e., an owner or such).  Since Sotomayor’s ruling against many of those stakeholders is what ‘saved’ baseball, I doubt many of them care much for her, if they think about her at all, these years later.

On the other hand, perhaps the players will be pleased long enough to put down their syringes full of animal steroids and stimulants.  Who can say?

So now I just got an email from MoveOn entitled Ten Things About Sonia Sotomayor.   Have a sample:

7. In 1995, Judge Sotomayor “saved baseball” when she stopped the owners from illegally changing their bargaining agreement with the players, thereby ending the longest professional sports walk-out in history.

While I vaguely appreciate hearing for the very first time an opinion as to why I should give a damn about this injunction, beyond reflexive anti-corporatism,  if one of the top ten things to know about a Supreme Court Justice, Number 7 in fact, is that she ‘saved baseball’ then we have completely run out of worthwhile things to say and are doomed to drown in trivia, yea until the end of days.

Oh, and MoveOn?

Below is a list of 10 key things about Sonia Sotomayor that you might not know. Can you check it out and send it to 10 friends today? If each of us forwards the list, we can start to get the word out about Judge Sotomayor, and help to ensure that she gets a speedy and fair confirmation process.

Fuck you and your chain letter.  Kthnx.

– John J Sears