Undercover at DEFCON

Bad idea, Ms. Unethical Reporter Lady. 

It takes a crook to catch a crook.  In this case the “criminals” and “hackers” at DEFCON caught you.  Adage proved.  BTW, Youtube is slower than molasses today, so be patient.

Posted by JimK at 02:59 PM on August 05, 2007
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Categories: Technobabble (Technology),  The Fourth Estate
Tags: DEFCON NBC fourth estate journalism ethics hacking

Journalists give campaign cash

Oh, that liberal media.

Posted by JimK at 02:38 PM on June 21, 2007
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Categories: News,  Politics,  The Fourth Estate
Tags: media politics bias

Harry Reid calls ILLEGAL immigrants “undocumented Americans.”

Via Hot Air, I snagged this video just in case Reid pulls it and somehow Hot Air explodes due to space invaders or something. More people should see and distribute this kind of material, it shows just how ridiculous the Democratic leadership in Congress is over issues that don't affect them, but will affect all of us.



What the hell? ILLEGAL immigrants are in no way "undocumented workers." That little word game was bad enough. Does this pompous ass really think he can shift the wordage and start calling them "Americans" this quickly? We haven't even accepted the first lie as the new label, why would we accept something this preposterous? You know it was intentional, he was reading off a script.

Look for other Democrats to either run screaming in the other direction from this, or to begin to embrace the phrasing themselves. If you hear it two or three times in the next few weeks, you'll know it's a new talking point.

What it is, in reality, is complete horse shit. Hey, secondary question - Where are the American reporters challenging Reid on this pile of festering crap he calls a label? If Bush says "nuke-you-lurr" it runs on all the wires and in every newspaper. Reid tries to slip one past us, further cementing some weird ideal that anyone who opposes ILLEGAL immigration is a nationalistic racist, and nary a peep from anyone but bloggers.

Oh, that liberal media.

Posted by JimK at 03:31 PM on June 09, 2007
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Categories: News,  Politics,  Crime and Criminals,  The Federal Government,  The Fourth Estate
Tags: politics, illegal immigration, crime, harry reid, media bias, congress

That’s not news

I may not be the biggest Powerline fan anymore, but I have to admit, John got this one 100% correct. In reference to the Appeal for Courage being presented to Congress yesterday and no one reporting it, John wrote:

This is almost like a laboratory experiment, isn’t it? A handful of veterans (including three out of something like 7,000 retired generals) oppose the war: News. Thousands of active duty personnel urge Congress to support the war effort: Not news. That pretty well sums up the journalistic standard that has been applied to the conflict in Iraq.

Oh, that liberal media

Posted by JimK at 03:18 PM on May 10, 2007
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Categories: News,  Politics,  The Middle East,  The Fourth Estate,  War,  U.S. Military
Tags: media politics military war iraq

Score another one for the Fourth Estate

So let me get this all straight.  ABC’s Brian Ross says he has a list of clients from a DC madam, and they include people “at the Pentagon, lobbyists, others at the White House, prominent lawyers — a long, long list.” But he only wants to report on the names from 2002 to the present.  Hmm.  That date seems significant for some reason.  The news outlets and some lefty bloggers/commenters go ape over the idea of Republicans ordering whores.

Then, it turns out that there are no White House officials, nor anyone else newsworthy, just a lot of boring, mid-level bureaucrats and lobbyists no one will care about.  That actually translates to “No one Bush hired.”

Now we find out that ABC isn’t even going to try to see if anyone in the former Clinton administration was a client.  Hmm.  That seems odd for a news agency.  Why wouldn’t the fact - if it were the case - that any members of Clinton’s administration were clients?  That’s...well, that;s just partisan bias is what it is.  Any potential scandal hurts the argument that we were better off with Bill, and it hurts Hillary’s chances of being elected should she triumph in the primaries.

Oh, that liberal media.

Posted by JimK at 07:12 PM on May 05, 2007
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Categories: News,  Politics,  The Fourth Estate
Tags: media politics

GOP Debate

Did I see that right?  At the GOP debate tonight, did Chris Matthews ask them “Would it would be good for America for Bill Clinton to be back in the White House?”

That’s what we’re asking potential candidates for the 2008 elections?

Really?

There were approximately 936 candidates at this debate.  They had a limited amount of television time.  With all the things in all the universe that could be useful for the American people to see answered, is romanticizing about Bill Clinton’s terms as President - which is actually poorly disguised campaigning for Hillary -really the best use of that time?

I’d love to chalk this one up to “liberal media” but that is only part of the reason this is stupid (Before you try to argue with me about it being, even partially, a liberal media thing, this is Chris frigging Matthews, they don’t get mush more liberal in mainstream media).  The main reason this is stupid is because the media is made of idiots and morons who are insanely out of touch with what we, the people are interested in.

Posted by JimK at 11:56 PM on May 03, 2007
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Categories: News,  Politics,  The Fourth Estate
Tags: republicans msnbc media Chris Matthews

Sony not quite as stupid as previously thought

I should have known that a story in The Daily Mail wouldn’t be accurate.  While stupid, it turns out that Sony did not actually slaughter a goat at the God of War II launch party.  They did have a dead goat at the party, which they got from a butcher.  It was already dead.  And there were no entrails offered to the crowd...it was a bowl of meat soup, and the crowd was about 20 journalists.  Between the image of the dead goat, the strongly-worded invitation and the fact that The Daily Mail couldn’t tell the truth about the status of a traffic light, it looks like this story was blown all the hell out of proportion.

I believed it without a second thought, which was stupid...I didn’t realize the source was so...shall we say..."iffy." That having been said, all my other criticisms about Sony are still valid. ;)

You can read the entire explanation from Sony’s European entertainment director here.

Posted by JimK at 10:37 PM on April 30, 2007
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Categories: Technobabble (Technology),  The Fourth Estate,  Gaming
Tags: Sony Playstation God Of War animal cruelty gaming games

A tale of two hucksters

Let me see if I can clarify this.  Je$$e Jack$son and Al $harpton both want Don Imus - a washed-up no-talent shock jock - fired over the term “nappy headed hos.” These same two self-appointed “black leaders” don’t have a god-damned thing to say about Crystal Gail Magnum, the lying whore who tried to destroy three young men by accusing them of rape - which we now know to be a completely and totally false accusation - and why?

Because Crystal Gail Magnum is black, and therefore Al and Jesse can’t get on TV or make any money off telling the world that they were wrong and she’s a whore and a liar who had the DNA of five different men - none of whom were Duke lacrosse players - in or on her body that night.

Let me rephrase one part of that.  Jesse ”Hymietown” Jackson and Al ”Tawana Brawley” Sharpton are calling for Imus’ head and at the same time not speaking out at all about the egregious violation of the law, the civil right of the (white) Duke lacrosse players and the enormous cost of the investigation all predicated on the lies told by a (black) stripper who was covered in and filled with strange men’s semen, none of them any of the defendants.

I don’t know how black people can stand those two clowns.  Every time I see them it seems like they’re setting race relations back 50 years.  To top it all off, I don’t know what’s worse: that these two are continually inserting themselves into situations where they don’t belong, that black people go along with it or that the media keeps paying attention to them when they pose and preen for the cameras.

Posted by JimK at 07:54 PM on April 11, 2007
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Categories: News,  Crime and Criminals,  The Fourth Estate,  The Stupidity Of Man
Tags: Don Imus Al Sharpton Jesse Jackson Crystal+Gail+Magnum Duke lacrosse

Last year’s wishes are this year’s apologies

As I was listening to Fall Out Boy’s “I’m Like A Lawyer With The Way I’m Always Trying To Get You Off,” two lines jumped out and sparked a runaway thought.  The lines were the title of this post, “Last year’s wishes are this year’s apologies,” and “We’re the new face of failure.”

The song is in no way about politics, but it occurred to me: both of those things are so very true.  Why?  Because George W. Bush and his entire hand-picked team, from the Cabinet to the White House Staff, are living life like it’s 1974.

They are playing 70’s public relations games in an instant-on, internet-connected, citizen-journalism, you’d-better-have-a-good-answer-before-the-question-is-even-asked world.  It’s like they don’t even understand how fast information travels in today’s world.

Not every decision Bush and Co. has made has been awful.  The problem is, not a one of them knows how to market anything they do.  Furthermore, when someone starts creating a narrative in the press that is 180 degrees opposite of the truth, - or worse, is designed to do damage to the Bush Administration with no thought to the damage it does to the country as a whole - Bush and Co. have zero skill at fighting back, at getting in front of a story, or of even explaining in basic terms just what they hell it is they’re doing at any given moment.

This is the least media-savvy administration that I can remember in my 36 years on earth...and what’s the ultimate result of this complete and utter inability to sell Americans even on the good ideas?

We are the new face of failure.  Ask around - perception is everything, and we are being perceived as a nation of failures.  Our government fails us at ever turn.  Each party fails itself and the nation on a daily basis.  Our president fails us, Congress and the military upon which he so heavily relies.  They all fail us on issues of immigration, budgets, civil liberties...I could go on and on.

But what is worse is that regardless of what is going on in Iraq at any given moment, we are perceived to already have lost.  I don’t believe it, but then I don’t limit my reading to only those who are beating that drum.  If I were the average American reading my local paper and watching the news at 11...what else could I believe?  If I am from another country, my God, the once and powerful United States is being beaten by goat herders and dung farmers with homemade bombs and a few AKs!  How could I believe anything else?

Every good domestic agenda idea Bush has had stalls and dies because he’s the worst pitchman to ever hold office.  he allows the media and his opponents to define the idea, then allows them to destroy it, and never steps up to explain, defend or counter the opposition.  Every domestic emergency since 9/11 has been laid at the feet of an administration that in truth, cannot possibly be held accountable for all of it; instead of doing something to explain himself, Bush leaves it to frigging bloggers to uncover and try to disseminate the truth.  It’s absolutely ridiculous that the White House is so unbelievably incompetent in this area.

I believe in giving this administration credit when due, defending it from false allegations and most of all, being accurate and honest in my criticisms.  This is but one area in which I feel we can all agree - Bush and everyone he has personally chosen are miserable failures at communicating.  They’re no Clinton, who could and did charm the pants right the hell off a nation.  They’re damn sure no Reagan, who inspired our sworn enemy to change it’s ways.

How I miss the days when, even if you didn’t love the guy, you could at least say that your President was a hell of a speaker and you had to respect the way he put his ideas out there for everyone to talk about.

Today?  Perception is everything, and Bush has failed to make his case when necessary.  “We’re the new face of failure.  Prettier and younger but no better off.”

Posted by JimK at 06:46 PM on April 10, 2007
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Categories: News,  Politics,  The Fourth Estate,  Things To Ponder
Tags: Bush Administration White House politics media

Patrick Goldstein (and me) on 300

DON’T tell the critics, but “300” is a new kind of action movie, a clever synthesis of the stylized epic storytelling practiced by Peter Jackson in “Lord of the Rings” and the stop ‘n’ start fast-motion cutting of the Wachowski brothers’ “Matrix” series. Let’s call it Hyper Cinema. “300’s” entire visual environment — its billowy wheat fields, its stormy gray skies, even blood that miraculously evaporates before it hits the ground — is a fabricated universe, created by 1,300 effects shots generated in a computer after the actors have gone home.

It’s a gamer’s view of the world that film critics don’t relate to because they seem to have forgotten the kick they got from reading comics as kids. When I went to see “300” last week, the theater was full of scruffy guys who looked like they spent a lot more hours playing Final Fantasy X11 or God of War II than working out at the gym.

Exactly.  Insult to my people and our lack of physical conditioning aside - and it’s the truth, but still, shut up - Patrick Goldstein has this nailed.  Not everyone who likes this movie is a gamer, but the die-hards - the fans that are telling everyone they know to go see this film - poke those people and more often than not you’ll find a gamer.  Gamers are unique in one respect - we’re used to the world being presented to us as hyper-stylized and animated.  Realism in gaming are drawings that move and look a lot like reality but more...more colorful, more stylized, more...game-like.  We grew up living with each successive generation of gaming equipment able to draw us further and further into a created world.

A world we often prefer to the one in which we live.

300, to a gamer, is the ultimate expression of the visual art we love.  It’s both a comic book and a “next-gen” game.  Plus it has heroes and villains and sword-fights and cool capes.  And a couple of bare boobs.  You’d have to lock the doors to the theater and station rabid wolves outside to keep gamers away from this movie.

Where the fanboys saw an easily identifiable theme — “me and my buddies are gonna band together and kick some butt” — critics spied pandering trash. The Boston Globe’s Wesley Morris called “300” “action porn.” The New York Times’ A.O. Scott said “ ‘300’ is about as violent as ‘ Apocalypto’ and twice as stupid.” And the Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter, dripping with disdain, exclaimed, “Go tell the Spartans that their sacrifice was not in vain; their long day’s fight under the cooling shade of a million falling arrows safeguarded the West and guaranteed, all these years later, the right of idiots to make rotten movies about them.”

Those idiots grossed $129.2 million in just 10 days.

That’s the kind of idiocy with which we should all be cursed.

Ultimately, the critical hatred of 300 stems from two places: a need to politicize everything, and a need to coddle and sympathize with your enemy.  I’ll explain.

300 simply refuses to be politicized.  It’s at the same time too simple - oppressor versus oppressed - and too complex - the real history of the event doesn’t lend itself to simple allegorical mappings like Americans as one side and anyone else as the Persians - to be twisted to suit some current-day political agenda.  They’re twisting themselves into knots to try to paint each character in the film as some or another modern figure.  It’s simply not there.

The second place from which this hatred stems is this need that some people have to coddle and “understand” people that want to kill them.  It’s never OK that someone is - at least at that moment - a bad person and that the other side is not in the wrong for resisting them.  In this case, it’s simple: Xerxes, trying to get revenge for his father and grandfather, decided to burn Athens to the ground.  To do so required that he travel through the pass at Thermopylae and through Sparta.  Xerxes never traveled with his army through anywhere without conquering it.  Leonidas did not want to be conquered.  Period.  Simple yet complicated, no?

300 refused to show the Persians in any other light than the one by which the Greeks saw them.  There was no half-handed attempt to humanize the enemy.  In fact it was quite the opposite; 300 shows us what the Spartans felt through visual representation.  The Persians look like monsters and marauders because they were coming in a massive wave to try to slaughter the Spartans, and emotionally, that’s how the Spartans saw them.

No apologies.  No attempt to understand the enemy.  Just a simplified telling of Herodotus’ already-simplified mythical retelling of those fateful three days.  A lot of people cannot accept that, it flies in the face of how they believe the world should work.

300 is a big middle finger to critics everywhere who can’t just eat a little popcorn and watch a movie about good guys and bad guys.

Posted by JimK at 12:50 AM on March 21, 2007
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Categories: Entertainment,  News,  Politics,  The Fourth Estate
Tags: 300 media movie critics movies