Firefox -- what the heck happened?

Once upon a time, an organization called Mozilla came up with a browser designed to challenge Microsoft's putrid Internet Explorer.

And, so, Firefox was born. Life was good. The Firefox browser was small, fast and considerably more secure than Explorer. Early compatibility problems were ironed out and enthusiastic users developed skins to change the look of the browser and add-ons that made Firefox the most customizable browser on the planet.

I've been a Firefox fan for years, in fact. After messing around with Firefox 3 for the past few months, however, I can't help but wonder what the heck happened?

My light, fast browser has been replaced by a resource-hogging monster that is slow and has definite problems with security. I feel like I'm back in the old Internet Explorer days again and that's no good at all. I believed that Firefox 3 just needed to be updated a few times and things would be great again. That doesn't happen -- if anything, updates have made this browser more problematic than the original Firefox 3 that wasn't compatible with a lot of skins and add-ons from previous versions and took forever to load and run.

What on earth got into the folks at Mozilla? How has success encouraged them to develop something that is almost Microsoft-like in its bloat and the annoyance it causes? Will future editions of Firefox actually be worse? Will another company show up and develop a browser that will be everything Firefox used to be -- light, fast and a magnet for community support?

It would appear we're entering a period in which Firefox's failures have strengthened competitors and have caused at least one new browser to be developed. Apple's Safari has gained some fans as of late and let's not forget that a lot of longtime Opera fans are claiming their browser is just the thing for people who feel let down by Firefox (Opera's good stuff -- I've been messing around with it on my PC and it works very well on my Nintendo Wii, too).

Opera and Safari aren't exactly new, of course. One browser that is very new and works amazingly well is Google Chrome. It seems that Google, as part of the company's overall strategy to rule the world, went and put together a very capable browser that's built on the Safari core. Could it be that Google saw a bunch of irate Firefox fans and decided to cater to it?

If someone would have told me two years ago that I'd grow to hate Firefox almost as much as Internet Explorer, I would have said they were nuts. Sadly, that's exactly what's happened. Mozilla has messed around and has revealed a weakness that competitors appear to be exploiting as we speak.

George Stephanopoulos is a fat head and a hack

As anyone who has been paying attention ought to know by now, President Barack Obama went and addressed Congress on Tuesday. He was talking about the economy and how to fix it by throwing money at it.

I'm not going to talk about that as his address has been dissected all over the place. Besides, I've griped about his economic fixes enough and don't feel like doing it again.

No, I'm going to talk about George "Mouthpiece" Stephanopoulos. I was watching a recap of Obama's speech on ABC's Nightline and noticed, as usual, that Mouthpiece was called on to give an analysis of it all.

Has Mouthpiece ever said "I think Obama got it wrong" or "maybe this guy is totally off base" or "what the hell is he talking about?" Has Stephanopoulos ever been seriously critical of Obama at all?

I don't mind him being an obviously biased jerk as he's always been an obviously biased jerk. However, the man hold himself out to be an "independent journalist" and has found a lot of people in the media willing to back him up on that.

Why is it, then, that partisans on Fox News are accused of political whoring and cheerleading, whereas Mouthpiece is assigned a certain level of credibility for doing essentially the same thing?