Nikki Tinker, Call Your Attorney

Sometimes, they don't even try. They just throw it right past you and dare you to call them on it. They know you're too busy to pay close attention and they hope their point will be made without your being aware of it.

This article from a recent Commercial Appeal is nothing more than a campaign donation to Steve Cohen:

All you insomniacs and public policy wonks can take heart. U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., wrote to ask Comcast on Thursday to restore C-SPAN2 coverage of U.S. Senate debates and other programming when the Senate's not in session.

But the company has a better idea.

You can switch to its digital basic service and see it for the same price as the basic analog service from which C-SPAN2 was removed on May 22, said Sena Fitzmaurice, a government affairs spokesman for the company in Washington.

There might be a story in why Comcast (hack*spit*ptui*ptui) removed CSPAN2 from basic analog cable, or in what's the difference between "analog" and "digital" cable, but the hook is Steve Cohen.

I looked at the byline and sure enough -- Bart Sullivan! If that guy were any more biased for Democrats and against Republicans, he'd bleed blue. Sullivan's work since taking over the Washington "bureau" has been notable for its use to basically hammer Republicans.

Seriously, if I were Tinker I'd use this within the black community as proof of what many believe anyway, that Sullivan -- and through him, the CA -- is deeply in the pocket of Cohen.

Speaking of Comcast ... dear god but they suck. It's like Time-Warner level service taken down two notches. They've eliminated all the weather services. Channel 75 used to be nothing but current conditions and weather radar; and now News Channel 3 Anytime has removed their real-time weather info. They added a bunch of Arkansas stations to the basic service for some reason, but not West Tennessee ones. (Which is why CSPAN2 went away.) There are more "Signal Quality" warnings and drop-outs than every before. I thought you only got those with dish antennas and that was the selling point for cable television?

And there's my personal gripe: sound levels. Used to be that most channels were levelled off to roughly the same volume in the production studio before being sent to subscribers. That way you didn't get blasted by a different channel when you were switching around, say, very late at night.

Not any more. Not only is every channel at a different volume -- some very loud indeed -- but now whenever Comcast inserts one of their own ads within a channel, it's at a different volume as well -- sometimes very loud indeed.

It's annoying and amateurish.

JULY 30 UPDATE: Comcast's channel 20 (NC3A with real-time weather and radar) seems to have gone back to "normal" in the past day or so. So ... yay?