CFE: Why Pay For Propaganda?

THE BACKGROUND: Techdirt has an item about "Why The Newspaper Paywall Will Fail" and this prompted these bon mots:

With the Treason Media's (as I call them) obscene cheerleading for the Obama Regime manifesting itself in blind stenography of whatever Dear Leader says no matter how false; the fundamental incuriousity about Dear Leader's college years, associations with crooks (e.g. Tony Rezko, Rod Blagovich) and terrorists (e.g. William Ayers, Bernadine Dornan), illegal fundraising; hypocrisy and bias in coverage (e.g. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were instrumental in pushing our economy into the abyss while reaping sweetheart deals from cronies they supposedly regulate, but, hey, that Republican is having an affair!); and brokering access between Administration honchos and fat cats, that they expect the people to pay to be lied to while they shill for the powerful elites whom they fellow travel with is to laugh.

These latter day Walter Durantys proclaim themselves to be objective reporters of what happens at the circus when they're f***ing the elephants (and donkeys.) Ever notice how many "reporters" are married to government power players, like Andrea Mitchell and Alan Greenspan for two? When they are literally in bed with the other side, what hope do the serfs, er, people have of knowing WTF is actually happening? Fascism - REAL fascism, not the stuff the statist wingnuts were accusing Dubya of doing - is being imposed on America and the watchdogs are lapdogs because they endorse this upending of our culture in favor of something more Soviet in style.

It's ironic that as a commenter on a blog I'm expected to provide links to my citations while the Treason Media presents their product as the Truth to be accepted on faith, no proof required. They say something is so and it is so! How dare anyone question the High Priests of the Temple?!?

I forgot to mention this beatdown of the idea the government can fund their propagandists because I was tired, but you can check it out yourselves.

CFE: Stupid Party Is Stupid

THE BACKGROUND: Red State had an item slagging the national GOP for backing a liberal, whoops, "moderate" candidate (Charlie Crist) over a supposedly genuine conservative (Marco Rubio) and bemoaning how this is more selling out of the Party's conservative base. In response to a comment about how the Stupid Party has learned nothing from the past two electoral cycles, I exponded:

The "leaders" of the Stupid Party have totally swallowed the Treason Media's meme that the reason they've been losing is because they've become "too right wing" and the party has been "hijacked by religious fanatics." WRONG! The reason the Stupid Party loses is because they offer nothing to CONSERVATIVES to vote FOR!

I came to the realization that in the six Presidential elections I've voted in, I have never voted FOR the Republican candidate. It has always been an anti-Dem or third-party vote.

1988: Voted Bush 41 as Reagan's third term.

1992: Voted Perot because Bush had failed and I believed the codswallop Perot was peddling. (That I was so easily sold this charlatan gave me insight into the Obama herd's blind gullibility.)

1996: Voted Dole because he wasn't Clinton.

2000: Voted Dubya because he wasn't Gore.

2004: Voted Libertarian because Dubya had failed to be conservative and I knew he was unable to articulate why the GWOT was important. His pathetic "turn the other cheek" responses to the Dem smears proved my suspicions. We can blame the Treason Media for Obama's rise, but the country wouldn't be in the mood for an elegant Marxist dictator if they weren't totally fed up with the Stupid Party.

2008: Voted Palin, but she wasn't actually running, so it was McCain as a "not Obama" vote.

Liberals/socialists/Marxists/fascists/statists have the Democrats to speak for them, but who speaks for conservatives? The Stupid Party? When they cynically back career pols like Specter, Chaffee, Crist, etc. over and over, it leaves freedom-cherishing people like us screwed over and with little choice but to go along or stay home and when we stay home, evil people like Obama win.

I had hoped that 2008 would be a clarifying year in which we could get a read as to whether the people wanted to be free men or serfs, but with a pinkish "moderate" squish (whose only real goal was to deny other Republicans the nomination) on one side and a true deep red Marxist on the other side, the liberal won and the TM-promulgated meme that the SP needs to move left to be relevant was furthered.

Since we've already seen that running RINOs is a losing plan, how about running some true blue conservatives and seeing what happens?!? If they lose, then the meme-pushers will have a legitimate "told ya so" moment instead of the specious spin. Too bad the Stupid Party's "leadership" is guzzling Treason Media Kool-Aid and can't think anymore.

CFE: Arlen Specter's Liberal Sensitivity

THE BACKGROUND: Red State had an item about reconstituted Democrat Arlen "It's all about me me ME!" Specter's douchebaggery in response to Jack Kemp's death.

I guess that Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) really is happier in his new party:

Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat, said part of the reason he left the Republican Party last week was disillusionment with its healthcare priorities, and suggested that had the Republicans taken a more moderate track, Jack Kemp may have won his battle with cancer.

…because he’s certainly picked up from them the trick of using safely dead people to push a partisan talking point. Jack Kemp isn’t even buried yet; and he had nothing to do with the current political situation, you disgusting piece of partisan slime. I don’t expect truly civilized behavior from you anymore, but I did foolishly think that you could be trusted to show more delicacy than a hyena at the passing of a former friend.

I posted this comment to the thread:

I got my wake-up call about the mental pathologies that animate liberal jerks like Specter on Sept. 11, 2001. The WTC had just collapsed, killing untold thousands of people. Initial speculation was in the tens of thousands dead,

On a message board populated by many New Yorkers and even more unhinged liberal maniacs who took the defeat of Al Gore almost as badly as Reagan's defeat of Jimmy Carter - I'm not kidding; these people viewed Reagan as the beginning of the end of America - one guy, a Californian originally from NYC posted, "This is the result of the coup d'etat orchestrated by the Supreme Court last year to install Bush in office over the will of the people."

O...M...F...G...

Not 30 minutes before, our country had just withstood a massacre of civilians and the first place his diseased mind ran to was his soapbox to rail against the denial of his party's continued rule. Again, I'm not making this up! This jackass would then proceed to post personal information about me: my address, phone numbers, photos, etc. in order to strip my of anonymity and make an example of me to chill anyone else's ideas of speaking against the liberal mob.

The kicker was when he thought I was somehow compromising HIS privacy and rushed to the forum operator to have me banned, which happened without my being asked first what was going on. When I explained what he was seeing, I was reinstated at the cost of my low member number, post count and private messages. Whoops! Sorry about that. Bah.

This one a-hole was the Rosetta Stone for understanding just how craven and inhumane liberals are. Specter's insipid burbling is no surprise to anyone who understands the dark, empty hearts of liberals. Those bozos like David Frum and Jeb Bush who think the Stupid Party needs to cuddle up to the winning strategies of the fascist statists in order to win fail to understand the nature of the enemy and how accommodating them is no different from accommodating evil.

I wonder how many chumps who voted for Hopey McChangerson realize what vile monsters they unleashed upon the land? I have to think that perhaps the union workers who blindly followed their leadership off the cliff in the quadrennial yanking of the donkey lever only to have a self-anointed Emperor seize control of their companies and put them out of work may have a little buyer's remorse, but then again, who knows?

CFE: Barry's (First) 100 Days of Failure

THE BACKGROUND: A friend - a woman with a year-old baby boy that she loves to death - posted on her Facebook status:

Two wars, an economic implosion and a possible pandemic: President Obama is not God--he's Job.

Though I hesitate to bother even my most liberal friends with the inconvenient truths of their incorrectness with regards to politics, I felt a brief reply was warranted:

Too bad the rubes thought they were buying a Messiah instead of someone mortgaging away our future and way of life. Let the excuses begin! :\

Too which she replied:

And we would be in better shape with Palin? I say Pain because I think McCain would have had heart failure by now.

Oh no she dint! FLAME ON!!!

Well, let's see...if Palin was Prez, she probably wouldn't have:

* Nominated hordes of tax cheats, lobbyists and fat cats to her administration.
* Taken over two auto companies and six banks like an Empress to nationalize formerly private companies while paying off those who made the messes.
* Passed budgets that will triple the national debt in 10 years; debt that YOUR CHILD will labor in futility to pay off.... Read More
* Bowed to a Saudi king.
* Chummed around with every Latin American tyrant and sat silently while America was insulted.
* Groveled, apologized and blamed America to all who'd listen, cementing the impression that she was a punk who was weak.
* Insulted our best allies with cheap gifts and arrogance.
* Incapable of speaking w/o a prompter.
* Scared NYC to death for photos of her plane.
* Ensured poor kids couldn't go to her kids private school.
* Get the drift?

So, yeah, Palin would've been hella better! The bill for Barry's Marxism will come due and your son gets to pay it. :(

As much as the frightened and ignorant public who blindly swallowed the Myth of the One are to blame, Dubya and the Stupid Party are the main ones to blame for for the ascendancy of this charlatan. They squandered their power and betrayed their conservative principles in the vain hope being more liberal would make the media be nicer to them.

Bush exploded the budget and the GOP tried to be "Dem Lite" and drove people like me away. Bush was an inarticulate fool who couldn't explain what was happening and refused to defend against scurrilous lies and we all know a well-told lie will always beat a badly-told truth.

So, with the lame old McCain - whose only goal was to beat fellow GOPers for the nom - on one side and the glossy whitewashed package of Barack Obama - with all his hype and no serious reporting of his shady past and pals - on the other, voters who ponder their American Idol picks more seriously bought the empty box in "CHANGE!" paper. "How much worse could he be?" A: Lots.

Nightline tonight put together a really revolting hagiography of The One's first 100 days with such objective luminaries as Al Sharpton and Bill Maher fawning over how wonderful Barry's been and how we are finally about to join the Community of Nations thanks to this good shepherd. Ugh.

So blind. So foolish. We are so screwed.

CFE: Demigod Piracy Problems

THE BACKGROUND: Game publisher Stardock is a lonely advocate of not treating their customers like criminals and thus doesn't put DRM on their games. While this makes their stuff very easy to pirate, they counteract this by having updates and multiplayer limited to only registered legitimate customers.

Their new game "Demigod" was sold by Gamestop ahead of street date, an event which forced Stardock staff to rush in on Easter to get the server infrastructure up to accomodate players - gee, thanks, Gamestop! - and they immediately detected LOTS of pirated copies attempting to connect and play online, causing legit users to have a very poor experience.

Boss man Brad Wardell has been posting about the piracy problems and an update was featured on Voodoo Extreme which drew some scoffing replies, basically blowing off the explanations for load problems. I replied to these tools:

@Dangerdoggie & anonymousgamedev

Did Brad Wardell steal your girlfriends (yeah, right, like you have them!) or take the last slice of pizza right before you reached for it or what? Your attacks on this update indicate you're either illiterate or so agenda-driven that nothing matters, even if it's facts at issue. "AGD" - more like "anonymouspiratefan" IMO - is particularly dishonest and/or stupid because his scenario requires that no one actually read what Wardell wrote.

Just what the heck is this supposed to mean? - "If those users had bought the game instead of pirating it, they'd have been putting EVEN MORE stress on the servers, and they wouldn't have been able to fix the problem simply by rerouting the legitimate users to a different set of servers."

Now take a look at what Wardell wrote: The infrastructure was designed to handle up to 50,000 of these connections. But on day 0, there were around 140,000 concurrent users of which 18,000 are validated.

For your insane thesis to have the slightest credibility, you would have to assume that a game from a small developer and publisher would be such a blockbuster smash hit that it would attract the COMBINED peak concurrent user load of Counter-Strike, Football Manager 2009, Empire: Total War, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2 on its first day. Get that? Demigod would have to steal the whole of Valve's player base to start approaching the mobs who were pounding their servers. That is lunacy! The only dev and title who can draw the crowds you're imagining rhymes with "Wizard's Burled of Boredraft."

Competently run businesses have a good idea of what their best case numbers should be and allocate resources accordingly. This is why Blizzard is able to launch WoW expansions that sell MILLIONS in the first week and absorb the onslaught. Stardock had no reason to expect this sort of traffic because they had a sense of what sort of load they'd be getting and they had more than double the capacity on tap for their legitimate customers. The system only faltered because nearly three times as many users were hitting the servers because of the hordes of pirates gumming up the works.

18,000 paying customers had to suffer because 122,000 thieves - that's a 6.78:1 pirate/customer ratio - messed things up and you have the gall to suggest that it's Stardock's fault for not having the capacity?!? That you then accuse Wardell of lying about the problems is just more outrageous. Stardock employees had to rush into work on Easter because Gamestop broke street date and they had to crank out fixes for the piracy-related loads literally overnight and little Internet snots like you dare call them the liars and attention seekers?

Stardock has been transparent in their dealings with their products. The company trusts the public - for better or worse - to not steal their works and doesn't slather DRM on their products and you seriously think that they wouldn't come out and admit the game outsold their expectations? That's how I really know you're a sack of bovine excrement - what company wouldn't want to boldly proclaim that their product is so popular that it sold three times as much and everyone was trying to play it?

You've got some petty vendetta against Wardell, Stardock, GPG and reality and you've just been served. Buh-bye.

This concludes this Smackdown.

CFE: Television's Slow Suicide

THE BACKGROUND: Techdirt has a item about how Hulu keeps trying to prevent Boxee from working with their content because content producers are techno-phobic morons who can't understand that their very survival is being put in doubt because of their foolish actions. As I explain...

As television networks are bleeding out because audiences are shrinking and advertisers won't support scripted shows - why should they when "Surviving with the Idol American Stars" draws awesome numbers? - it amazes me that instead of embracing Boxee and Hulu and new means to connect digital content to TVs, they fight to the death to maintain business models created when there were only channels 2, 4, and 7 on the dial.

My girlfriend's family doesn't have DVRs and still tapes shows on VHS off standard-def DirecTV. (Ugh, I know. I'm working on it.) At 9pm Thursdays CSI, Supernatural, and 30 Rock are on. We watch Supernatural on OTA HD while she tapes CSI and then I download 30 Rock from BitTorrent, playing it back thru my Xbox 360. Clunky, no?

Now, why the hell aren't the networks making deals to stream Hulu (or whatver) directly to these game consoles like NetFlix does. Instead of making people muck about with a HTPC or things like Boxee, just pipe it into the Xbox or PS3 that's already hooked up to the TV. Duh!!! How hard is it to see the obviousness of that?!? It cuts down on "piracy"; allows advertisers to present their commercials in an unskippable format (Hulu's one 30-second ad per break is quite tolerable as opposed to four minutes of ED adverts); and gives viewers a good experience.

Whoops! It makes too much sense! My bad. Nevermind. As you were, people.

CFE: Regarding Difficult Videogames

THE BACKGROUND: The director of the upcoming game "Bayonetta" is quoted at Joystiq as hoping the game will be "sadistically hard". Comments as to the pros and cons of hard games ensued and my 1/50th of a dollar:

The original Ninja Gaiden was miserably hard; absolutely no fun at all; and the way it was structured where you'd have to fight a dozen minions to get to the mini-boss fights, only to die and have to rinse and repeat over and over made "playing" take more effort than my day job.

Early on, Ryu finds his family village pillaged. He (you) fights 12-20 enemies and then faces a mini-boss on horseback. Common sense would dictate that if the mounted warrior kills you, you should reset to the beginning of that area, but the a-holes at Team Ninja dictated that you re-battle the whole village before getting a crack at the boss. Not. Fun. It wasn't until they put out Ninja Gaiden Black with the "Ninja Dog" mode (read: "You suck. We'll take it easy on you.") that I was able to actually play the game I paid for. I struggled in spots, but it didn't feel like I was being laughed at by sadistic developers.

However, 1337 g4m3r kidz whined loud and often that Ninja Gaiden was too easy(!!) for their awesome skillz. They filled their diapers over Bioshock's Vita-Chambers because it removed the penalty for death. Yeah, gawd forbid players be able to finish the game. How many devs slave over the end levels of their games to have their work go unseen because players give up? I was so annoyed at their crying, I posted, "You want hardcore? Take a loaded pistol and put it on the desk in front of you and then play the game. When you die in the game, pick up the gun, put it to your head, and PULL THE #$%&ing TRIGGER!!! HARDCORE ENOUGH FOR YOU?!?!? ENOUGH RISK FOR YOU?!?!?" Sheesh...

If I were Bayonetta's publisher, I'd be on the phone telling Kamiya to STFU and not cripple my investment stroking his dom urges and pandering to tubby loser virgins who have nothing better to do than memorize 16-button combo sequences. Making games playable - and ENJOYABLE - for a majority of gamers isn't "dumbing down" or "selling out to casual gamers"; it's good business. Go ahead and put in a "PWNZ J00!!11!" mode for the hardcore llamas, er, 1337s, but give the rest of us a freaking break. kthxbai!

BTW, doesn't she look a little like Moose-Slayer?

CFE: Regarding U2's "No Bars on the Verizon"

THE BACKGROUND: In his Big Hollywood post, "U2 & Me", Matt Patterson discusses his mixed, but ultimately positive, reaction to "No Line on the Horizon", which I refer to by the title of this post. I posted this comment:

U2 was one of the few acts I would still schlep down to the Beast Buy to plunk down my Hamilton to blind (deaf?) buy their latest on the day it came out. When the album leaked a couple weeks early, I decided to try before I bought and I am so glad I didn't waste a farthing for this turgid bore of an album.

Background: I've been a fan of theirs since 1980 when a high school pal had a t-shirt for their "Boy" album. My band covered "I Will Follow" at our annual Big 80s show last year. I have all their albums except for "Poop" (as I call it), which was such half-baked mess due to their having to push it out the door in time for the already-planned tour. (I gave that to my girlfriend with whom our first real date was a Zoo TV concert in 1992.)

I thought "All That You Can't Leave Behind" was the sound of a band with nothing to prove casually rebounding from their self-inflicted irony overload and delivering a solid album. I call "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" a "Wonderbra album" because what was up front - the sublime "Vertigo" - was just a tease because what came after was a flat experience that sounded like the Edge scrolling thru his guitar effect presets of classic tones.

Where "No Bars on the Verizon" (heh) flops is that the laziness and distractedness of the lyrics are only compounded by the lackluster music. Larry is playing the same beats; the best lick in the title track is the one Edge nicked from "The Fly"; every song is a slow to mid-tempo dirge except "Get On Your Boots" which serves as a midpoint wake-up nudge more than an exciting and memorable song.

Most critics are just rubber-stamping 5-star/A+ reviews for this thing like they automatically award the latest loaves pinched by Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, or any act that bashed Dubya. Fans who can't cope with the idea that their beloved band could fail are happy-talking, too. But for those still able to see whether the monarch dressed for the day or not, "No Bars" is the sound of a band that should decide whether they want to save the world or save their musical reputations.

Behind the Stunning FX of Benjamin Button. (Updated & Bumped)

(Note: Originally posted 1/5/09 - bumped to add video)

While I haven't had a chance to toss up the mini-review of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" yet - Bottom Line: 8/10, see it - I didn't want to wait to share this fascinating tech-speak-heavy article about how the special effects were done that created the titular character. However, if you haven't seen the film yet, DO NOT READ THIS or look at the pictures because it will blow the surprise. See the movie, THEN read the article.

=============

UPDATE: The film quite rightly won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects and this talk from TED.com shows in a fast-moving 18 minutes some of how they did it. Enjoy.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (of Edits!)

Once again I marvel at the amount of spare time some people have.



See 'em all here!

White Wedding: The Literal Video Version!!

Been a while since I posted one of these. Enjoy!

White Wedding: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

"Obama Declares War on Investors, Entrepreneurs, Businesses, and More"

So says Larry Kudlow:

Let me be very clear on the economics of President Obama’s address to Congress and budget. He is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds. That is the meaning of his anti-growth tax-hike proposals, which make absolutely no sense at all — either for this recession or from the standpoint of expanding our economy’s long-run potential to grow.

Raising the marginal tax rate on successful earners, capital, dividends, and all the private funds is a function of Obama’s left-wing social vision, and a repudiation of his economic-recovery statements. Ditto for his sweeping government-planning-and-spending program, which will wind up raising federal outlays as a share of GDP to at least 30 percent, if not more, over the next ten years.

This is nearly double the government-spending low-point reached during the late 1990s by the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton administration. While not quite as high as spending levels in Western Europe, we regrettably will be gaining on this statist-planning approach.

Study after study over the past several decades has shown how countries that spend more produce less, while nations that tax less produce more. Obama is doing it wrong on both counts.

And as far as middle-class tax cuts are concerned, Obama’s cap-and-trade program will be a huge tax increase on all blue-collar workers, including unionized workers. Industrial production is plunging, and new carbon taxes will prevent production from ever recovering. While the country wants more fuel and power, cap-and-trade will deliver less.

Obama’s tax hikes will generate fewer revenues and lower economic growth. Yes, the economy will recover. But Obama’s rosy scenario of 4 percent recovery growth in the out years of his budget is not likely to occur. The combination of easy money from the Fed and below-potential economic growth is a prescription for stagflation. That’s one of the messages of the falling stock market.

Essentially, the Obama economic policies represent a major Democratic party relapse into Great Society social spending and taxing. It is a return to the LBJ/Nixon era, and a move away from the Reagan/Clinton period. House Republicans, fortunately, are 90 days sober, as they are putting up a valiant fight to stop the big-government onslaught and move the GOP back to first principles.

Noteworthy up here on Wall Street, a great many Obama supporters — especially hedge-fund types who voted for “change” — are becoming disillusioned with the performances of Obama and Treasury man Geithner. There is a growing sense of buyer’s remorse. Well then, do conservatives dare say: We told you so?

It's a start. After the election, I wrote about silly conservatives, like Bill Bennett and George Will, who seriously thought Obama would act as a moderating influence on the Dastardly Duo of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi> They thought that Obama was such a savvy pol that he'd refuse to rush to the left because he knew that it wouldn't work and it'd backfire on him. Nevermind that he was the most liberal Senator and steeped in socialist radicalism his whole life, he would triangulate like Clinton did.

Well, we see how all that worked out. Morons.

Obama is ruling like the fascist despot he is, but the real question is who is going to step up and admit that they were suckered by him? Will Oprah call The One onto the carpet for being a charlatan like that "Million Little Pieces" author she shilled onto the best-sellers chart or will she silently sit in approval as he turns America into Soviet Amerika? (I'm guessing "B".)