First, Comcast confounded me. Then, they said they were reading. Yesterday, they kind of apologized and explained.

We all know the forces of Comcast, the nation's largest television and second-largest Internet service provider, are strong. (Like, nearly $30.895 billion a year in revenue and 100,000 employees strong.)

And no one becomes that powerful without a bit of political support.

Below is a handy little spreadsheet detailing Comcast's contributions to U.S. Representatives and Senators for the past two years. You can use it to sort members of Congress alphabetically, by state, position, or year. Knock yourself out.

Here's a few quick facts first:

$2,025,784 in contributions from Comcast's political action committee to members on Congress in combined 2006 and 2008 cycles.

They lean slightly Democratic.

They were the 16th largest contributor in 2008.

Source: Center for Responsive Politics

Click here to see the whole document.

 

Thanks for doing your part for the economy, big guy!

vi-r-us.com

CNN just published a story detailing U.S. exports to Iran during the Bush administration. Bush is talking tough love with Iran these days but the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control makes it clear that the sanctions' purpose are to hurt the leaders of Iran, rather than its people.

So how has the good ol' U.S. of A. been helping out the Iranian people:

Top U.S. exports to Iran over Bush's years in office include corn, $68 million; chemical wood pulp, soda or sulphate, $64 million; soybeans, $43 million; medical equipment, $27 million; vitamins, $18 million; bull semen, $12.6 million; and vegetable seeds, $12 million.

Damn, that's a lot of bull semen. But, seriously, can't we do more to help the people of Iran? What do they really need?

America sent more cigarettes to Iran, at least $158 million worth under Bush, than any other products … The value of cigarettes sold to Iran was more than twice that of the No. 2 category on the export list, vaccines, serums and blood products, $73 million.

Then, of course, there's that pesky problem of weapons. But, let's be honest, I'm still giggling about bull semen.

Top Chef's Cascone and Huynh

Photo | Ryan Creed

- Former editorial intern/current badass marathoner and lovely lass Amanda McKenna just launched This Little Piggy Went to Market, a blog that concentrates on her shopping (and later, cooking) adventures in the Italian Market. Read to pick up lots of great recipes and tips on where to find the best stuff. We also hear there is some sort of cute foreign boy situation going down at Giordani's. Wha, no pics?!

- CP contributor Ryan Creed recently found himself at a private luncheon cooked up by none other than Top Chef's Hung Huynh (Season 3 winner) and Nikki Cascone (Season 4 contestant). Commentary and pictures are at Gaytriarchy, Ryan's blog. (Wait ... YOU'RE GAY?!) He points out that Nikki is "awesome," while Hung is "kind of a dick" (but true to his TV persona).

- Shola Olunloyo of Studiokitchen fields a doozy of a client request: A vegan celiac who loves beets and grapefruits. Here's what he came up with.

- Pork roll is finally on Facebook. We suspect that CP webmaster Marc Steel* has something to do with it, as pork roll's favorite bands are Phish and Umphrey's McGee. I always pegged pork roll as more of a Television fan.

- Finally, yesterday's Serious Eats Photo of the Day is a charmer for y'all lolcat freaks. Gratuity: ur doing it wrong.

* Actually, it was conceived by Craig "Rusty" D'Alessio. Yeah, brah! -Marc

Despite our quasi-feud with Baltimore over that whole Taking Poe Back thing, we've got no beef with the Baltimore City Paper, which we generally find to be quite enjoyable.

However, when former CP intern Ted Hesson e-mailed us this picture of his Google search results, we couldn't not rub it in:

In case you can't read it, the highlighted text is: "This site may harm your computer." Which, actually, is kinda bad-ass.

Cantina Dos Segundos, the new NoLibs Mexi from Cantina Los Caballitos/Royal Tavern/Khyber owners Dave Frank and Stephen Simons, opens this Friday. Hours of operation:

Monday-Friday 4pm until 2am
Saturday-Sunday 11am until 2am
Full menu served from 5pm until 1am

Menu after the jump.

Click For More »

The is the Hamburglar. He's a hamburger burglar.

You know what, you wanna call a couple of ID-stealing twerps "Bonnie and Clyde" even though they, like, never robbed a bank or killed a person? Fine. Everybody makes mistakes. But this time, Daily News, you have gone too far.

A HAMBURGLAR WHO has been stealing plumbing from area fast-food-restaurant toilets is just the latest twist in a metal-thefts crime epidemic that has left few properties immune.

With the price of metals commodities soaring — copper reached a record high of $4.06 a pound two weeks ago week — police see a direct correlation in the theft of metal objects.

Such thefts are nothing new — cops say they ebb and flow with the economy — but what's different now is that items once considered sacred or even unwanted, like fire hydrants and manhole covers, are now fair game.

"If you leave something alone you might think, 'Who would even want this?'" Darby Township Police Chief Robert Thompson said. "But they will rip it off your house."

The hamburglar has hit at least three restaurants in Delaware County, five in Montgomery County and two in Philadelphia, according to police who are working on the cases. READ IT ALL HERE.

Really? Do I have to explain this? The Hamburglar steals hamburgers. That's his deal.

This guy steals pipes. Call him The Piper. Or The Metal Head. Hmm...

Readers! This supervillian needs a nickname! Help!

• Congress is pushing for more control in declaring (or not declaring) war. • Peru was hit by a magnitude 6 earthquake. • Breaking news! The Vatican does not like lady-bishops! "Girls are stupid," said the imaginary pope in my head. • The Virginia State Lottery is being sued for selling tickets to prizes that have already been won. • Bruce Springsteen is releasing a charity digital live EP (so specific!). Entitled Magic Tour Highlights, the album will raise funds for the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund, established in memorial to the E Street Band's late organ, glockenspiel and accordion player.

Things We See happens when we take pictures of weird things with our cellphones. Not to be confused with Jeff Deeney’s “Today I Saw,” which has actual societal value.

Donde esta Comcast Tower?

Photo | Brian Howard

Last night at the Phillies game we sat behind this guy who had the Philly skyline tattooed on the back of his neck.

CP

So, last week, I blogged about my experience trying to get a consistent answer to a simple question out of Comcast: how much does cable television and Internet cost? After the first post, someone from the Digital Media Outreach department called back, promising that someone else would call back and explain the discrepancies.

That call came last Friday, in the form of Frank Eliason, a customer service manager who also works in digital outreach. I caught up with him today. Here's a brief Q and A:

CP: So, I called Comcast about three, four times last week, and got several different prices. What gives?

Actually, there's a multitude of offers available at any given time. ... The problem is that there's no organized fashion that has all the offers that are available. They're not all listed to one spot.

In the future, we will have a lesser number of offers. The other piece is developing a tool that will have them all out there. There are some offers in the Philly area, and some national. We'll have a much more streamlined approach and a much more common sense approach. ... It will likely be a database that you’ll be able to use on line, and will also be available to phone center reps and chat and e-mail reps.

CP: When will this happen?

I think something along lines of in the fall. Can’t say for certain.

CP: I've also noticed that sales reps don't tell customers they have a lesser option. For example, I was made to believe by at least one rep that a bunch of services were $119, when there's some cheaper alternatives. It also seems like some packages have the same services, but are worded much differently. Is this just what we can expect from people trying to sell us stuff?

When you look at some packages, there's wording that's used that could cause confusion, and that needs to be looked at.

As we move forward ... we’re just starting to look at Double Play. Not everyone uses land-line phones because of cell phones, not everyone needs our Internet access because there's DSL speeds that are good for them, or not everyone needs a TV, because, as I know for myself, I live on Internet. As the year goes on, you'll see that it becomes more consistent.

CP: You are, though, a big company that could have easily decided to dedicate time and resources to fixing this earlier. In the meantime, there are lots of people who were probably sold on a package they ultimately didn't need. Is this coming a bit too late?

I think some things could have been done better in the past. ... I'm a believer in earning the right to sell, and you do that by doing things right for the customer and getting them what they need, and in the course of the conversation, you talk to them about other things.

The red means Firefox is super serious

citypaper.net

If you were one of the 28 million people to download Firefox 3, you got to enjoy cool new features such as the ability to have the browser tell you when you are visiting a suspected malicious site.

Local blog Philebrity is being flagged by the new browser as being "reported as an attack site" and a graphic appears to all FF3 users (above) recommending they do not enter. The browser states:

"Of the 3 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 1 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 07/04/2008, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 07/03/2008."

Most likely, this is a case of a mistakenly placed link (the warning lists a link to gremit.com as the culprit). However the Firefox finger wagging makes the site a pain in the ass to browse, as every link that is clicked gives you a red warning. Guess you'll have to get that snark elsewhere until it's fixed.

[discovered via Twitter user dansinch]

Gunawan Wibisono, chef/owner of Old City's Zento (136 Chestnut St.), just confirmed that he's on the verge of closing a deal for a second location "around Ninth and South." The paperwork isn't finalized yet, so he couldn't share many details, but we'll have more later this week.

Or are you just happy to see me?

I don't even want to know what the forecast calls for...

FailBlog.com

All credit to Ken Ehrman

solved.

Natural selection, our ass: Survival is all about getting laid. And the other way around.

Philly Book Geek reminded us this morning that Faye Flam, longtime Inky sexy science/scientific sex columnist, will appear tonight at Robin's Book Store (6 p.m., free, 108 S. 13th St., 215-735-9600, robinsbookstore.com) to read from The Score: How the Quest for Sex has Shaped the Modern Man (she also read a couple of weeks ago at Penn, which we previewed here). With an insane index including entries for "origin of sex, fossil record of" and "duck-billed platypus, sex determination of," Flam's talk should be fun — and informative.

Avery, 224 pp., $24.95

From the jacket:

Beginning with a “boot camp” for wannabe pickup artists — where men pay thousands of dollars for three days of classroom seminars on how to get women into bed — Faye Flam’s quest for a deeper understanding of men takes her back through the evolutionary history of the human male.

Sweeping from the birth of the first male and female organisms to the sexual foibles of twenty-first-century humans, Flam shows how a small difference in the size of the first sperm and eggs set off a war between the sexes that we’re still fighting today. Since this primordial split, a consistent pattern of behavior has emerged: males use a stunning variety of strategies to make themselves attractive to females, and females put them through the wringer.

By placing the human male in the context of the natural world, Flam highlights some intriguing resemblances among males of all species, but also the unique challenges that men face when courting women — whether for a lifelong partnership or a one-night stand. Flam ultimately reveals that millions of years of evolution have left the love lives of humans suspended somewhere between monogamy and promiscuity, and that it is this eons-old tension between males and females that has created the modern man.

As James over at The Sports Complex implores you: Vote Burrell!