Nancy Clark writes a sports column for the Des Moines Register. Bloggers could be forgiven for having never heard of her, but she certainly has heard about bloggers, if yesterday's column gives any indication. She gives vent to a hilarious rant about the credibility of the Exempt Media while denigrating bloggers ... and manages to unwittingly demonstrate why the blogosphere exists in the first place.
First, one has to understand how frustrating it must feel to write a sports column in Des Moines.
Hey, everyone likes the latest High School game reports! But Nan has high hopes, I guess, and an ego to match her girth:
I'll also get in a word at Iowa's media day with Drew Tate.
The bloggers won't.
Tuesday, I'll interview Mark Farley at Northern Iowa's media day.
The bloggers won't.
Just when the reader wants to scream, "Who??", Clark says, "This isn't an exercise in name-dropping." Well, no kidding.
Apparently what is roiling ole Nan's deep waters is the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism hit piece on bloggers and she's using it to prove she's ready for the bigs. Best part:
In the new "journalism of assertion," as the report calls it, information is offered with little time and little attempt to independently verify its voracity.
posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 10:13 AM -
Moonbats of North America!
Don't venture out into the Internet without a field guide like MOONBAT BLOG TAXONOMY! Some highlights:
WONKETTE
I’ve never understood the fascination with Wonkette AKA Anna Marie Cox. Maybe it’s the three names which make her sound mysterious. Maybe it’s the penis jokes which make her sound slutty. It can’t be her personal appearance. She looks like a pushing 40, pre-middle aged, dumpy, lumpy, policy maven. ... THE HUFFINGTON POST
There are so many loons, goons, and poltroons who write for Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post that you all you have to do to find someone totally disconnected from reality is close your eyes, point, and click. It’s hard to say whether the B-list celebrities or C-list journalists who write for the site are more irrelevant. And Arianna herself presides over these mountebanks like a Queen of Tarts...
DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND
I actually have a soft spot in my heart for the inmates at the Democratic Underground. Let’s face it; the internet just wouldn’t be the same without them. It’s become a matter of course for me that whenever I’ve got writer’s block, I visit the DU and, within 5 minutes, find something so outrageous, so far beyond the pale, that my dilemma regarding what to write about disappears in a flash.
Sixty years ago tomorrow "the Enola Gay," a shiny new B-29 with a bomb named Little Boy in its bay, lifted off the runway on tiny Tinian island and settled on a course for Hiroshima. History wrote finis to its most destructive war with the dawn of the nuclear age six hours later.
Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, sailors and Marines, along with millions of their wives, parents, sons and daughters back home, celebrated their great, good and unexpected fortune at having cheated death, the appointment in Samarra, lying in wait on the beaches of the Japanese home islands.
A second bomb for Nagasaki three days later sealed victory for civilization.
But before anyone could beat a sword into a plowshare the euphoria of triumph and the hymns of gratitude gave way to voices of doubt, shame and guilt. The Japanese warlords and the men and women who followed them to a national grave became the innocents, the victims of the war they imposed on the world. The Americans of Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Bataan Death March were rendered evil. This would be the message for the next half century from the faculty lounges, the churches of the empty pews and the preachers with nothing to say, the newsrooms of the elite media and the covens of the degenerate left, ever eager for an occasion to despise themselves.
It's their favorite sport.
"Most writers have looked to the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to find the answers for the use of those atomic weapons," Col. Paul Tibbets, who commanded Enola Gay, recalled 50 years later when the Smithsonian proposed to observe the anniversary with a malignantly goofy exhibit of manufactured history. "The real answers lay in thousands of graves, from Pearl Harbor around the world to Normandy, and back again." ... We were a different America then. No one apologized for a survival strategy of "whatever it takes." It's difficult to imagine Harry Truman bothering to argue with aides over what to name the war. Little Boy was the inevitable answer to the Axis challenge: "You want a war? We'll give you one." We can thank the man from Missouri for that.
It's a good thing he can't see the degenerate state of his old party.
Women who cross their legs provocatively, wear short skirts or massage a man's shoulders at work get fewer pay raises and promotions, according to Friday's USA Today.
Senator Jon "Goofy" Corzine and union hottie Carla Katz They don't make union bosses like they used to!
What would the Democrat party be without rich goofballs in bed with union bosses? Literally:
The New Jersey governor's race exploded into a firestorm yesterday, with the revelation that super-rich Sen. Jon Corzine gave $470,000 to a former flame who runs one of the biggest state-employee unions.
The value of the donation ballooned to as much as $615,600, because Corzine also paid the gift tax.
The Democrat stonewalled questions about whether he gave any other money to sultry Carla Katz, who represents 9,000 New Jersey state employees as head of Local 1034 of the Communications Workers of America. ... The senator denied there's any conflict of interest, saying that if he's elected governor, he wouldn't be the one directly negotiating with his ex-girlfriend.
Spokesman Tom Shea refused to say if Corzine still provides financial support to Katz , saying: "He's just chosen not to discuss a private relationship."
But Larry Noble of the Center for Responsive Politics said, "As a political matter . . . I think he has to answer whether there is an ongoing financial relationship. The voters are going to want to know."
New Jersey Republican Chairman Tom Wilson called it "déjà vu all over again" and evoked memories of the sleaze that led former Gov. Jim McGreevey to resign after putting a man with whom he'd had an affair into a sensitive job.
They do seem to have a problem that way.
Katz met Corzine in 1999 during his campaign for Senate. Their relationship went public in 2002, a year before his divorce became final.
The relationship ended in July 2004 and Corzine turned the loan into a gift on Dec. 9 — one week after he launched his campaign for governor.
Corzine reached out to the crafty, powerful then-Senator Robert Torricelli, the dark prince of New Jersey politics who was investigated for ethics violations and eventually forced out of public life. When the Senate ethics committee cited him for accepting pricey gifts (but not for more serious charges), he chose not to run for reelection. ... Corzine bristles at even the hint of a suggestion that there was anything untoward about his relationship with Torricelli. “I was a first-term freshman senator and he was the senior senator and he was very helpful in showing me how to get things done,” Corzine says...
It is one thing for Corzine to view Torricelli within a political context as “the oracle,” as one veteran pol put it, but people who know Corzine well believe that the relationship went much deeper. “There’s a whole group of us who believe that when Jon developed his relationship with Torricelli, he began to live some sort of lifestyle that resulted in the breakup of his marriage,” says someone close to Corzine and his ex-wife.
Corzine and Joanne, who’d met in kindergarten and were married for 33 years, split up early in 2002. She issued a blistering statement claiming that politics had “had a noxious effect” on their marriage. ... Corzine had a two-year affair with a woman named Carla Katz. What makes this relationship of public interest is that Katz, a cagey political operator, is president of the Communications Workers of America Local 1034, a union that represents nearly half of all New Jersey state employees.
A few people close to Corzine believe that Torricelli engineered the coupling. “Katz was told where to be and when to be there,” one of them told me. “I think Torricelli wanted to control Jon. In order to do that, he had to bring him down to his level. He had to bring him into his political world, and Carla Katz was a key part of that world.”
Woohoo! What would New Jersey politics be without "Da Torch"? As for Corzine, he's been playing out of his depth for years, but his money is always welcome, I'm sure.
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadians can put away those extra welcome mats -- it seems Americans unhappy about the result of last November's presidential election have decided to stay at home after all.
In the days after President Bush won a second term, the number of U.S. citizens visiting Canada's main immigration Web site shot up sixfold, prompting speculation that unhappy Democrats would flock north.
But official statistics show the number of Americans actually applying to live permanently in Canada fell in the six months after the election.
Too bad - I was hoping for a little thinning of the turkey herd.
Online poker rooms exploded onto the scene around the same time that poker became the red-hot hobby of people around the world. And now that the profit potential of the Internet has been established, more real businesses are popping up in this arena. One such company trying to combine the popularity of both the Internet and gambling is Party Gaming, listed on the London exchange. ... The company went public on June 27, at an initial price of 116 GBP ($204), giving it a market cap of $8.5 billion. Today it sits at 149 GBP, or $262. Is the business worth that much? At the current run rate of $500 million in profit on $888 million in revenue, you're looking at a company with earnings growing at about 26% and revenue growth of 46%. Slap a 26 P/E on that half-billion in profits and that's a $10 billion market cap. I'd say you're looking at a fairly priced company -- in an industry that's showing tremendous growth and popularity. More online poker sites are lining up for their IPOs.
There are two possible downsides here. One is that poker will turn out to be a fad. I'm becoming less convinced of that. If it does, we'll see it when entries into the major tournaments flatten out or decline.
And number 2?
The other concern is that it's illegal for online casinos to take bets from U.S. customers. In theory, if the company's founders set foot on U.S. soil, they can be arrested, fined, and/or imprisoned. However, its prospectus notes, "PartyGaming and its directors rely on the apparent unwillingness or inability of regulators generally to bring actions against businesses with no physical presence in the country concerned." Given that the company's directors are now worth billions each and the company is based in Gibraltar, I don't expect them to be returning to the U.S. anytime soon.
So how did such a company come about? Well, back in 1998 a Californian porn princess called Ruth Parasol (and yes, that really is her name) commissioned a 25 year old Indian computer boffin to write a piece of software. Ms. Parasol had recently sold her porn interests, founded, according to legend, on a couple of sex phone lines given to her by her father as a birthday present when still in her teens (you couldn’t make it up could you?).
She wanted to invest the proceeds, found that online gambling was the next big thing allegedly, and, via a friend, was introduced to a recent graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, young Mr Dikshit. He was ready, willing, and, most important of all, able, to create a computer programme for casino games such as roulette and poker. He then brought on board his chum from college, Vikrant Bhargava as marketing director, and the rest, as they say, is history, with the company’s PartyPoker website now enabling some 70,000 people to play the game at the same time.
The whole helter skelter ride so far has left the newly rich founders more than a little breathless.
You deserve some reward for having to put up with a name like Dikshit, but this seems a little extravagant. As for Ms. Parasol - words fail me.
A free pint of beer may be a far-fetched dream for pint lovers, but a group of Danish technology students have come up with the next best thing -- a free recipe for people to make their own brew.
Using the open sourcing philosophy, the students have published a recipe for beer on the Internet, available without charge and open to improvements.
Open sourcing is the concept whereby people from all over the world collaborate voluntarily to produce computer programs in a market normally dominated by big corporations.
It became popular in the 1990s, and the best known examples is the Linux operating system for personal computers, which mimics Microsoft's Windows.
The 15 students, who are studying at Information Technology University in Copenhagen, produced approximately 100 liters (26 gallons) of "Vores Oel (Our Beer), version 1.0," and then made the recipe available to everyone on the Internet without charge.
"The idea was to translate the concept of open source to an analog product," Taw Klitgaard, a 26-year old student, told The Associated Press.
As with open source software, other brewers are free to tinker with the students' recipe.
But anybody who wants to sell a batch should reveal their changes and credit the students for the idea.
The students said the choice to make beer was inspired by a quote from Richard Stallman, founder of the open-source GNU software project, who said: "'Free software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer'."
I hope I won't be accused of being an old fogey, but I'm having a hard time following this. There's no paucity of free beer recipes - they've been around for thousands of years. In fact, I'm a believer in the beer theory of civilization. And the beer itself isn't free, so what's the big deal?
The students concocted their beer in the university cafeteria in December as part of a workshop on intellectual property rights.
Now that I understand! A college education once again proves useful. Here's their web site.
John Bolton flew off to New York yesterday to take up his new job as the tough-guy ambassador nearly everybody agrees we need at the United Nations, and the geezers rocking on the front porch of the Senate Rest Home, waiting for the embalmer and stewing in the bitter juices of their own frustration, couldn't think of a single new thing to say. ... Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, searching for a Western Union office with a light in the window, is worried about sending "the wrong signal." Barack Obama of Illinois, looking up from the little pocket mirror he carries with him for these occasions, thinks John Bolton's "history of inflammatory statements about the U.N." will make it difficult to work with the other delegates who are, as we all know, red-hot for "necessary reforms." Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia is at the mercy of his fears, "fear that we have lost an important opportunity to help re-establish the United States' global role as a moral and responsible leader." Only a plutocrat adrift in a bad dream could imagine the United States as so immoral and irresponsible as to need reclamation help from representatives of tin-pot tyrants and deep-fried despots at the U.N. ... The new ambassador arrived at Turtle Bay only five hours after the president dispatched him, and he was greeted with carefully calibrated warmth. No American ambassador arrives at any appointment anywhere with a cloud hanging over his head; the representative of the president of the United States makes his own weather. ... In an editorial, the Associated Press called the appointment "brazen" and an "in-your-face gesture to Congress and the global community," but the only puzzlement at the U.N. is over why the president allowed a tiny minority of senators, resigned to a self-assigned and probably semi-permanent role as knockers and grumblers, to frustrate policy aims with procedural delaying tactics.
When you hear the phrase "global community," you know it's time to unsnap your holster.
A year ago, the liberal group America Coming Together was on the cutting edge of national politics, spending tens of millions of dollars on a massive voter-mobilization project in every presidential battleground state.
The dream was that ACT -- heavily funded by billionaire George Soros -- would play a decisive role in getting Democratic nominee John F. Kerry elected president and then remain in business as a permanent force in liberal politics.
Instead, the group this week began sending e-mails to most of the 28 people who make up the remaining ACT staff warning that their paychecks would stop at the end of August. All the state offices have been, or are soon to be, closed. ... Soros and his close associate -- Progressive Corp. Chairman Peter Lewis -- together put $38.5 million into ACT and the Media Fund. With this seed money, the two organizations collected $196.4 million, enough to set up voter mobilization programs in every presidential battleground state and to flood the airwaves with pro-Democratic commercials in the early spring of 2004 when Kerry's campaign was broke.
By all measures but one, ACT and the Media Fund were a great success, helping to turn out record numbers of new voters. But that one measure was the one that counted. After Bush's reelection and GOP gains in the House and Senate, Soros and Lewis pulled the plug on their support.
A new study on the Internet and American life from Pew Research has been getting a lot of publicity this last week. According to its surveys, the vast majority of teenagers prefer instant messaging to e-mail, especially for communicating with their peers. In fact, researchers say young folks regard e-mail as a "quaint way of communicating with older relatives." Wow. And we old folks thought e-mail was still the "killer app" of the Internet.
Where else can you hear from so many citizens of foreign lands - particularly Nigerians?
why do you think the people are so dumb because they have been being dumb down consistantly alst decade especially during bush time. i refuse and tell my children i refuse to allow them to be dumb down. they had better use their brain to follow me. i have high expectation,. i will not feed into the dumbing down of america. i tell my friends, exactly i expect more out of them, i especially tell my older nieces and nephews and their friends, i will not play their dumb down game
When Number 1 ain't happy, ain't nobody in SPECTRE happy!
George Soros dumped millions into one of SPECTRE's key US subsidiaries, "Americans Coming Together," and now it's pushing up daisies. No word on the minions who were in charge. I always liked the part where they intentionally hired convicted sex offenders as door-to-door canvassers.
Could it be true - the mother of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy was once put in charge of little Al Gore?
Conservative political maven Lucianne Goldberg revealed her Gore connection on Monday, telling Fox News Radio's Tony Snow that she was Al Gore's babysitter when he was 10 years old.
Nearly five months ago, I nominated John Bolton to be America's Ambassador to the United Nations. I chose John because of his vast experience in foreign policy, his integrity and his willingness to confront difficult problems head-on. I told the nation that John Bolton would provide clear American leadership for reform at the United Nations. I told them that he would insist upon results.
The United States Senate held thorough confirmation hearings, and a majority of United States senators agree that he is the right man for the job. Yet, because of partisan delaying tactics by a handful of senators, John was unfairly denied the up or down vote that he deserves.
As a result, America has now gone more than six months without a permanent ambassador to the United Nations. This post is too important to leave vacant any longer, especially during a war and a vital debate about U.N. reform. So today I've used my constitutional authority to appoint John Bolton to serve as America's ambassador to the United Nations.
The New York Sun takes on the Air America story today and advances it by leaps and bounds, talking with the president of the non-profit which had its money taken by Air America founder Evan Cohen. It turns out that Cohen didn't just get money for the netlet, but also managed to get plenty for his own pockets...
Now we have potential wire fraud, forgery, and fraud by deception, and probably a host of other potential charges against Mr. Cohen for his actions with Gloria Wise and Air America. Ms. Graves also tells the New York Sun that AA has agreed to pay back $800K over the next two years, not just the $480K originally noted by the Bronx News.
And they weren't exactly reaching for their wallets before the story broke.
White House press doyenne Helen Thomas is plenty peeved at her longtime friend Albert Eisele, editor of THE HILL newspaper in Washington, D.C.
In a column this week headlined "Reporter: Cheney's Not Presidential Material," Eisele quoted Thomas as saying "The day Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself. All we need is one more liar."
Thomas also said: "I think he'd like to run, but it would be a sad day for the country if he does," according to Eisele's column.
But Thomas said yesterday at the White House that her comments to Eisele were for his ears only. "I'll never talk to a reporter again!" Thomas was overheard saying. ... "Nobody has thinner skin than reporters," Eisele said with a laugh.
Maybe he can get a loan from a Boys and Girls Club!
SondraK reminds us of the impending grand kickoff for Al TV! If the dippy blog on their site is to be believed, the Current network will start broadcasting at "9 p.m. PST tomorrow." 9 PM? PST? No clue surplus there.
Update: It turns out that the kickoff was Sunday night! My only excuse is that the goofy two dimensional blog post listing they used to have on the front page of their site didn't show the post dates, said "tomorrow" and I didn't consult the real blog. I'm so upset!
Actually, I couldn't tune in with our satellite service anyhow, but Kevin Aylward could and has a review:
The fist thing you notice is the hosts, they're young, preachy, and entirely too excited about the significance of any of the America's Unfunniest Home Videos they're about to show you. The videottes have something in the lower left part of the screen which looks like a mini-TiVo timeline or camcorder timer. As near as I can tell the progress bar is there to let you know how long your misery will last before one of the slicky boy VJ's get all up in your grill from a bizarre camera angle again. When the hosts come back on telling you how wonderful the whiny video you just saw was they'll also remind you how cool they are for being on Current, and how cool you are for watching.
(Via Damian Penny) Publius Pundit has a summary of the Atlantic Monthly cover article, “In a Ruined Country: How Yasir Arafat Destroyed Palestine:”
An exceptional example of good journalism, the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly has a front cover article on Yasir Arafat, “In a Ruined Country: How Yasir Arafat Destroyed Palestine.” It is very detailed, and I think it would be especially enlightening to those who haven’t followed Arafat closely over the years, but even if you have it is worth reading. Written by David Samuels, it is based not simply on documentary records but on a series of interviews with old Arafat companions following his death. This is what makes it entertaining. You can’t read it online without a subscription, but the article is worth the cost of the entire magazine easily.
My favorite snip from the article:
The corruption of the Palestinian Authority under Arafat was breathtaking. Samuels cites a 1996 PA report which indicated of the year’s budget, 43% had been embezzled, 12.5% went to Arafat’s personal office (to be spent at his discretion), and 35% went to the myriad of security and intelligence services which Arafat maintained, leaving less than 10% for all other expenses like education or health.
I see a good source of United Nations bureaucrats.
Nanny is really worried about the media's obsession with beauty and good looks.
She agonises that ordinary looking mortals, such as you and I, are not given a fair "crack" in this media obsessed age.
Therefore Nanny has decided to intervene in that most image obsessed industry, the drinks industry. ... Lambrini is the first drinks company to come under attack from Nanny. Watchdogs rejected its latest campaign, because it depicted women flirting with a man who was deemed too attractive.
The poster featured three women "hooking" a slim, young man in a parody of a fairground game scene. Harmless fun to lead its summer campaign, Lambrini argued.
CAP said:
"We would advise that the man in the picture should be unattractive, overweight, middle-aged, balding etc...
We consider that the advert is in danger of implying that the drink may bring sexual/social success, because the man in question looks quite attractive and desirable to the girls. If the man was clearly unattractive, we think that this implication would be removed."
What a bunch of prats!
BBC story here. The thing that puzzles me is why it's just the guy in the ad who has to be changed. What about the women? Besides, Rosie O'Donnell could use a gig.
posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 11:18 AM -
A Sony Music promo exec unknowingly sparked Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's major payola investigation when he started hitting on a woman at a poolside bar at a Miami hotel last year.
The exec bragged about some of the excesses in his line of business, according to chatter in music industry circles.
The executive must have felt pretty good, as the attentive woman probably hung on his every word. He must have thought he was spinning a Gold Record.
But not so fast.
It turns out the woman who was the object of his affection worked in Spitzer's office.
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (Reuters) - The United States is closing temporarily its consulate in this lawless Mexican border city after rival drug gangs clashed with bazookas, hand grenades and heavy machine-gun fire.
"A violent battle involving unusually advanced weaponry took place between armed criminal factions last night in Nuevo Laredo," U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza said on Friday.
He said he was ordering the consulate in Nuevo Laredo closed for all of next week and would only reopen it if the security situation improved.
Garza called on Mexico to swiftly bring the situation under control.
Mexico reacted angrily to Garza's words, saying both countries shared a responsibility to fight drug crime.
"Repeated public statements by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico about the border situation in no way help bilateral efforts to end border crime," the Mexican Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Here’s the deal. The Kossacks and Lefties are claiming that the “Air America stole money from poor kids” story is fake. Leading the charge, Barbara O’Brien of Mahablog. At her own blog, at dKos, at the American Street, etc., her post has sprung up. ... She couldn’t find the Bronx News through Google? Either she didn’t try very hard, or she’s lying. If you’re looking for an article by “Michael Horowitz” of the “Bronx News,” and you don’t Google those four words and look at the sixth entry, I have to wonder just how hard you wanted to find it.
Barbara, you constantly call Bush a liar. YOU are a liar.
Or a pinhead. Or both. The Radio Equalizer has more here and a roundup here.
The President of one of the world's biggest advertising agencies has issued a damning state-of-the-nation assessment that describes France as being in steep decline and his countrymen as "narrowed and stunted".
Maurice Lévy, the head of the media giant Publicis, whose company owns Saatchi and Saatchi and has offices in 100 countries across six continents, said France had failed to get the 2012 Olympics because the world now saw it as a nation of perdants - "losers".
For good measure, he described the 35-hour week as "absurd" and the wails of complaint that followed Paris's loss of the Games to London as "pathetic".
His forthright critique was published in the opinion section on the front page of the respected daily newspaper Le Monde. ... Mr Lévy, 63, told The Sunday Telegraph that he stood by every word of his criticism and had received scores of messages of support.
"What I wrote was hard, but true. France is not in a crisis, it's worse than that. A crisis is usually sudden and short, while we are in an endemic situation," he said. "I've just had enough and wanted to say what I felt."
Don't be so shy, Maurice! Speak right up!
posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 12:05 AM -
"It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out."
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