links for 2010-02-05

Jon Gosselin is hoping to use his children to bargain with TLC. He has agreed to let TLC film his children again — only if the network drops its lawsuit against him, RadarOnline.com reports. Last year, TLC had a breach of contract claim against him and won a preliminary injunction, prohibiting him from engaging in media appearances. But even if TLC lifts the ban, don't expect him to make a 'Jon & Kate Plus 8' comeback. "You can be sure that if the kids come back to TLC it will be only with Kate, not with Jon. And there's no guarantee that will happen either," a source said.

A judge ruled in December that Gosselin has been restricted from making money off his reality TV fame and is no longer receiving a TLC paycheck. His trial is scheduled to being in the Spring.
+++++++
Who cares?

Fred Davis — the man who introduced vermin, Paris Hilton, bad hair and now demonic mutton into our political discourse — is a bit taken aback by the reaction to his latest creation.

“More sheep in my day than I was expecting,” he said after sorting through messages from reporters across the country, all of them wanting to talk about the online video — an instant cult classic — he created for Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina. “You certainly never know what’s going to catch on.”
“When you’re in a state where it costs $5 million to run a 30-second ad statewide… you have to think differently. You have to think outside the box,” Davis said. “It’s tough to get the attention of people in California. This has caught the attention of people across the country.”

For the record, the role of the stealth sheep was placed by a nameless crew member. “Not a professional sheep impersonator,” Davis said, “or anything like that.”

Campbell, a law professor and former congressman who earned his Ph.D. under Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, has a strong Libertarian streak: he backs abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

In a recent telephone interview with ABC News, he called for instituting an "essentially revenue neutral" carbon tax which would be offset by cutting payroll taxes. Sharing the viewpoint of many other economists, Campbell believes a carbon tax would be a less intrusive way to combat global warming than the cap-and-trade legislation that Boxer has championed in the Senate.

"I thought that the danger to the United States economy from what she proposed was extreme," said Campbell, referring to Boxer.

While most Republicans and even some Democrats are weary of cap-and-trade legislation, Campbell is taking the unusual step during a campaign of offering an alternative which includes a new "essentially revenue neutral" tax.

Greetings from Demon Sheep Central, where US Senate candidate Tom Campbell says that the Demon Sheep gave him his best online fundraising day ever.

OK, so not that Campbell has ever been a fundraising dynamo. Plus, as Team Fiorina spokesperson Julie Soderlund points out to Demon Sheep Central: "His best day of fundraising could be $5 since he just got into the race 3 weeks ago!"
And, the Fiorina campaign reply:
Soderlund told Morrison that Team C-Fi is happy with the ad, which has gotten half a million views of the ad on YouTube. People are talking, that's for sure.

"Our goal was to make news," Soderlund said, maybe do something a litlte "little weird." They thought it was a little humorous, "Mr. Campbell obviously disagrees with that."
+++++++
I doubt it makes a difference one way or another.