Top O’ The Drudge.

All youse gotta do is bailout the Dinosaur Media and ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom.  We goes from watchdogs ta lapdogs:

“The whole idea of the First Amendment and separating media and giving them freedom of control from the government is sacrosanct,” said Digby Solomon, publisher of Tribune Co’s Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia.

Former Miami Herald Editor Tom Fiedler said that a democracy has an obligation to help preserve a free press.

“I truly believe that no democracy can remain healthy without an equally healthy press,” said Fiedler, now dean of Boston University’s College of Communication. “Thus it is in democracy’s interest to support the press in the same sense that the human being doesn’t hesitate to take medicine when his or her health is threatened.”

Did Terri Schiavo teach these  jackasses nothing?  If you can’t survive on your own, it’s wrong for us to keep you on life support.  We’d be doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.  Or was it the right thing for the wrong reasons?

If the self-important Press is the fevered patient in Mr. Fiedler’s analogy then it seems the only prescription is more euthanasia (especially in lieu of the Miami Herald’s positions on the subject).  Admitting you have a problem is the first step though.

Democracy does not have an obligation to preserve a free press when the democratization of the press by the Web has already provided a homeopathic cure.  Now be a good  bunch of self-righteous ideologues little boy and take your medicine.

I’ve been completely happy with my Zune until about 2 am this morning. That was roughly around the time that every first generation 30GB Zune in the world froze up with no foreseeable fix in sight outside of a hard reset.   Z2K9 – here we come!

An unidentified software bug has affected 30GB first generation versions of the Microsoft Zune digital media player.

The company appears baffled by the cause but on its website said it is aware of the problem and is working to correct it.

The problem is apparently a worldwide one with customers reporting their devices freeze when booted.

Let’s not confuse “appears baffled” with “pantshittingly retarded”.

Quote one expert:

“I’ve never heard of a consumer electronic device fail en masse like this,” said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, a Seattle-based research firm that focuses on the software giant.

Rosoff estimated that as many as one million people may have been affected by the glitch, which disabled the original 30 gigabyte Zune players.

Never again, MicroStank.  This the Corvair of the Digital Age and unsafe at any speed.

Due to your complete inability to produce a media player untainted by the foul stench of your software failures, I will never buy one of these again and will likely choose a Mac or a Linux OS in the future for all future desktops or laptops.

Congratulations on another successful PR campaign, doucherags.  Z2K9, indeed.

Not one just to bitch and moan, I’m all about solutions:

A)  You can bite the bullet and trade these out for new models of the same size.

B)  Sub out the repair to local outlets like Best Buy.

C) Overnight the tiny screwdriver kit to remove the case to everyone responding on your website with directions for the hard reset.  Not even my eyeglass screwdriver is small enough to fit these screws.

D)  Eat the peanuts out of my crap.

The choice is yours.

Cranky gloats in the comments.  What can I say?  We didn’t listen!

Blank Zune templates after the jump.  Just do a “Save As” and  Photoshop your own idea of what a real frozen Zune screen should look like and I’ll post them (send to -b-dot-mcmurphy-at-yah00000!-dot-com).

Micro Soft On Quality Update: Allegedly this time freeing feature of the Zune will work itself out at the stroke of midnight.  In other words, “don’t just do something – sit there!”*

Yay.  Just in time for everybody to go home.

Another wonderful bit of tech advice from the people who never met a problem that powering down your system and restarting couldn’t fix.

(more…)

This is beautiful on so many levels. Our service people are the best.

Many thanks to the Jawas.

The fun police never take a holiday – even in Palinland.

The locals don’t have much in the way of Christmas spirit, so they went to the little totalitarians at City Hall and had the massive snowman beheaded permanently.

Who’da thunk Alaska would go all nanny-statey on us? What a shame.

h/t Tanya B.

I’ve been AWOL lately, yes, I know. Hey, real life interrupts, and, let’s face it, it’s much more rewarding in many ways. Thankfully, I have excellent cohorts who do the heavy lifting for me, so thanks to BMac and Cranky. I am thankful at Christmas (and year-round) for you twisted freaks.

I would like to take a moment to wish all of you a merry Christmas and acknowledge the true reason for the season – the birth of Christ. For that, I am thankful beyond words.

This post from LaShawn Barber serves as a reminder that we need to be grateful for every day we’re given and do our best to focus on the gift that is another day and not the negatives of our daily irritations. God bless.

And the Media goes crazy. Really, what’s left to say?

From Newsbusters:

Of course, Slublog at Ace’s finds a time when athletic presidents were seen as a little creepy. Crazy, huh?

Obama-love rating – Four Tingles

Will suffers, so do you.

One second you’re entertaining an audience of thousands, the next you’re becoming a sliced cucumber courtesy of a human Salad Shooter.

This is why you go to Cirque du Soleil:

ILLUSIONIST David Copperfield’s assistant has been accidentally sucked into the vortex of an oversized fan before a horrified audience.

A technician named Brandon was accidentally pulled into the vortex of the fan on stage of Copperfield’s An Intimate Evening of Grand Illusion at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

Now that’s what I call “intimate”.

Since The Corner’s been around, the good writing at National Review has been limper than the Levitrarian commercials during Rush Limbaugh’s radio show claim to cure.   I feel I must point this particular Goldblatt piece out though as he straps the yet again cinematically canonized Fascist Greasemonkey of the Left, one Che Guevara (lacrimosa courtesy Steven Sontag), to the back of his motorcycle and after dragging it around Latin America for a few miles, writes a diary about it in human blood.  That’s hardcore.

Come for the motorcycle riding cockroaches,  stay for the entomological death match for the ages:

The shortest film about Che’s revolutionary life has already been made. In it, a couple of scruffy, paramilitary-looking, motorcycle-riding cartoon cockroaches decide to “take over” a kitchen, running amok until a giant muscle-bound can of Raid appears and “kills them dead.”

Guevara, in reality, belongs to that species of human vermin who attach themselves to a charismatic villain — in Che’s case, Fidel Castro; in Heinrich Himmler’s case, Adolf Hitler; in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s case, Osama bin Laden — and enact their murderous agendas until the countervailing forces of history end their pathetic existences. Granted, Che is more photogenic than either the thin-lipped Poindexter Himmler or the hairy-backed Super Mario Brother Sheikh. It’s hard to imagine either of them ever moving a gross of tee shirts the way Che does. But the fact that Che continues to sell is a testament to the historical ignorance of every consumer of his visage.

It’s nice to see Mark Steyn’s presence finally giving the kids something to shoot for.

Move over, all you other fragrances, it’s time for the only stench that is approved by this here blawg. It’s Flame, the new meat-scented body spray. Grab a piece and slide off.

When your woman says she wants a piece of meat, go the extra mile.

Quantities are Limited!!!

Listen to these stunning testimonials!

	Five years ago, I couldn’t even spell “douche”, now I am one!
	Are you kidding me? With Douche Cap millions in earmarks would just gravitate to my forehead!
	Three words: Hot Jewish interns.

What are you waiting for? Call now. Operators are standing by!!

No arrogance here.

The bomb is ticking.   It may already be too late.  If I’m reading the AP’s “science writer”, Jack Bauer a.k.a Seth Borenstein, correctly then the end is Nigh and if we make it ’til 2010 then it is because the Christ, Obamessiah has halted space and time to defend the chastity of our planet’s oily, partyholes from the forcible rape of human existence:

When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can’t avoid.

Since Clinton’s inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton’s second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it.

…

“We’re out of time,” Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. “Things are going extinct.”

…

Gore called the situation “the equivalent of a five-alarm fire that has to be addressed immediately.”

…

Scientists fear that what’s happening with Arctic ice melt will be amplified so that ominous sea level rise will occur sooner than they expected. They predict Arctic waters could be ice-free in summers, perhaps by 2013, decades earlier than they thought only a few years ago.

Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government’s machinations. Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it’s thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.

So when it’s hot outside it’s a sign of global warming and when it’s cold outside that actually means that it’s warming even faster than when it’s hot outside.

How do we know when global warming has been halted?  When it’s hot outside all the time?  That’s the only logic there.

From the people bitching about color-coded terror alerts for 7 years, the environmental fearmongering scale only has one setting – Fire Engine shit your pants, we’re all going to die Red.

Thanks Associated Press “science writer” Seth Borenstein.  I’m pretty sure that column counts as the co-pay for a rhetorical hysterectomy administered by an amateur veternarian.

It can’t be any more painful than being preached to from Spotted Al, the Benny Hinn of Environmental Science.

In fact, it’s summed up nicely by this ad sent to me by a co-worker.

click to embiggen

The blessed UAW thugs will not be denied. Especially when their candidate’s dictatorship starts in January. I won’t give up hope, though.

God I hate this guy:

In a surprising rebuke (ed. – “surprising”?  To who?)  to the warriors who fought for him through tough times, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sunday sided with President-elect Barack Obama and scolded the Republican National Committee for fanning the Illinois corruption scandal.

…

“I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary. You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody — right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economy stimulus package, reforms that are necessary.

My friends, we should be focusing on taking money away from the American people to bailout the UAW than focusing on the cess pit that my boss was incubated in since his political conception.  But there’s a reason why Stephopottamus invites you on his show despite your obvious appeal to the CBS demographic.

After failing your country, your supporters, and yourself shouldn’t you take a little more time off to wonder why nobody voted for you?  Perhaps you should read the complaint against Blago or consider the Mohammad al-Dura fashion that Rahm Emanuel has been deploying to hide behind his children – away from the prying questions of reporters not named Joe Conason.

In short, get lost and stay there until you learn something.  Which will be never.

Legendary hothead Paul Anka got put on ice er, got ice put on him this weekend after he called the police on his much younger and hotter wife for walking around in public without her leash on:

Paul Anka’s wife was arrested after the Ottawa-born singer was cut in the head by a piece of ice during a recent domestic dispute, but prosecutors say they won’t pursue the case.

Anka was struck during an argument with his wife, Anna Anka, after an ice bucket fell to the floor on Nov. 28, according to the gossip website tmz.com. Anka went to the hospital, where he received stitches.

That last line makes no sense.  Was he on the floor?  Ah:

Our sources say during the brouhaha, an ice bucket hit the ground and Anna picked up a piece of ice and threw a fast ball, hitting Paul in the noggin.

Either way, that ice bucket sliced like a hammer and that guy’s gonna need a new shirt.  If she’d topped off her bucket wielding rampage with “that’s just the way it is” or “don’t make a maniac out of me” she would have been freed on grounds of poetic justice.

The obligatory Noisetank audio which you can’t really appreciate this lighthearted domestic violence episode without the full context.

And for the uninitiated, the complete Anka discography.

I think he wanted to say his “good name” back but who are we kidding here?  In response to him being bandied about the Blagojevichian imbroglio, he un-Jacksonianly makes his case without rhyming:

U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. said Friday that he was fighting to get “my name back” after he was identified as “Senate Candidate 5″ in a criminal complaint against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

…

“While I would be honored to serve the people of this state, it is clear to me that I am no capacity to serve them if there is a cloud over my head that seems to suggest that I am involved in some unscrupulous scheme to be a United States senator or anything else,” Jackson told CNN’s Don Lemon.

It’s almost as if the idea of being born the son of the country’s most pre-eminent race huckster never occurred to him.  The cloud that forever hangs over his head gave him his name.

A man who has made a killing off of unscrupulously scheming shakedowns of corporations with threats of racial protests if they don’t make donations to his relatives or “non-profits”, was forever a minister without a church (or theology degree), who lied about holding Martin Luther King in his arms when he was shot, who plays towel boy to every murderous dictator in the third world, who famously referred to New York as “hymietown“, who tried to lynch the Duke Lacrosse team when falsely accused of rape (and never apologized), and gave little Je$$e Jr. a step-sister when he screwed the office secretary for Rainbow/PUSH and then tried to buy her silence with funds from the organization before he got caught.

This is just what we know about.

So some say he’s naive but let’s be honest here – the person you need to take “your name” back from is the person who had it first and cursed you with it.

What, too soon?

Give it up for Corker. Perhaps he learned his lesson from his last bailout mistake. Then again, it could simply be a case of temporary sanity.

The Senate GOP needs to get used to using these tactics over the next two years at least. Will they have the stones? It’s a shame they had to use it with their party’s own big-government liberal Republican President.

More from John Hawkins.

Debbie Schlussel’s source is throwing a lump of coal through St. Patrick’s window :

The source says that the FBI was suddenly ordered by the U.S. Attorney’s Office–and I believe that order came from the top, ie., U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and Justice Department officials in Washington–to hold off on doing anything until after the election, so as not to hurt Obama’s White House bid. Here’s what my inside source says.

He knows when you’ve been bribing.

He knows that you’re a fake.

The tapes are with the FBI

and we know you’re on the take.

Kiss my ass, Microsoft.

That is all.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his perpetually pottymouth princess went about their bribery and expletive-laced business today as the State of Illinois applauded his strong union work ethic despite naysayers demanding he take paid double-time OT (with comp time) off.

Gov. Blagojevich:  “I didn’t f^@*#!*% quit when Je$$e Junior only offered me $500,000 and I ain’t gonna quit now on the 16 percent of the people that still believes in me,” an incredulous and difficult to pronounce Blagojevich explained. “Aint’ that right, Patty?”

Patricia Blagojevich:  “$^@#*&#@!”

Gov. Blagojevich:  “That’s my girl.   So go ahead and tape my conversations.  Cause I dont’ give a f^@#.   These  f^@*#!*% distractions from the tired old m@%^#*f^@*#!*% politics of the past are not what’s important to the undocumented f^@*#!*%  busting their tails at one of our many troubled screen door factories.  All they want to f^@*#!*% know is that they ain’t got no problems and that I’m on the m@%^#*f^@*#!*% !

“Now if you’ll excuse me, me and the little lady gots some f^@*#!% hard g*dd@*##d works to do for da peoples of Illinois.”

Mrs. Blagojevich: “Now get off my m@%^#*f^@*#!*% stoop you inky-pawed sh!tferrbrained….*slam!*

When reached for comment President-elect Obama blasphemed his own omnipotence by testifying that Gov. Blagojevich was never like this during the many years they rubbed scented oils on each other and smoked Newports highjacked off a mid-town truck in the cholera infested hottub of Chicago politics.

No pervs, it isn’t what you think. I have a domain name that some China-based sino-douche is using to spam people to his “Canadian Pharmacy”.

I have sent rude emails and even tried to contact an internet attorney. All were ignored. Now I would like to pay him back in kind.

Are there any geeks* out there who know some guerrilla war tactics?

ps To my fan(s), During daylight hours, I’ve been doing contract work with an employer who would frown upon any blogging activities. Hence the light posting.

pps. I just finished reading Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals. If you have a long train ride into some metropolitan center that went ga-ga for Obama, I HIGHLY recommend it. Perhaps a Cranky book review is in order.

* More geeky than me.

President Junior and his Congressional brothers-in-arms are trying to ram-rod the auto-industry bailout (you knew it was coming) down your throat. Again they’re taking a dump in your mouth and telling you it’s a chocolate sundae.

A handful of GOP Senators are showing some stones, though. Richard Shelby calls it a “bridge loan to nowhere”. Sweet.

The Feds have worked hard to make sure the Big 3 can’t compete. From absurd CAFE and environmental standards to sucking up to the unions, which have produced a bunch of overpriced and entitlement class factory workers who make $60/hour for taking out the damn trash.

The “Big 3″ need to demonstrate that they can compete – something they haven’t done for decades. There is a damn good reason the Toyotas, Nissans and VWs of the world are opening plants in the South – quality non-union labor at market prices in right-to-work states works every stinking time.

Instead of laying back and taking it while Washington rapes you with another bailout, let your Senators know that you don’t appreciate them or the way they continue to piss away your kids’ financial future. It’s time for the small-government Conservatives in the GOP to stand up and be counted.

UPDATE: Unlike McShame’s Gang of 14, we now have a Gang of 5 conservatives ready to fight. Coburn, Vitter, DeMint, Ensign, Shelby. If these are your Senators, call them and thank them.

Whatever the case, all I know is that this episode is a distraction from what matters to the people.  To Vicente Rangle who lost his job at the screen door factory, we will not be swayed by the Obama Unfriendly Media playing the old “guilt by association” game.

Rod who?  Even though I actively campaigned to get him elected in 2002,  I ain’t even talked to that cracker in like a week.

“The time for the delay is over, the time for denial is over,” he said.

The day of reckoning for the Chicago corruptocrat is coming to an e-…oh, wait.  He’s talking about so-called “Climate Change”.

For the smartest guy in the history of the world ever, he sure has crappy judgment in his closest allies.

Naturally, the Obamatons are furiously pounding away for their virtuous saviour.  He’s Incorruptible.  He wouldn’t “pay to play”.    Yeah.  You also don’t try to shakedown a shakedown-artist.

The important question right now is – “Who is Advisor B”:

107.  On November 12, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH talked with Advsor B.  ROD BLAGOJEVICH discussed with Advisor B his idea for a 501(c)(4) organization.  Advisor B stated that he likes the idea, but liked the Change to Win option better because, according to Advisor B, from the President-elect’s perspective, there woud be fewer “fingerprints” on the President-elect’s involvement with Change to Win because Change to Win already has an existing stream of revenue and, therefore, “you won’t have stories in four years that they bought you off.”

…

“The advisor says he likes the Change To Win idea better, and notes that it is more likely to happen because it is one step removed from the President-elect.”

That’s change you can deceive in.  That’s The Chicago Way.  You bring a knife – they bring a gun.  You bring a bag full of money – they bring a 501(c)(4) tax exempt organization to launder it.

WATERGATE IN THE WINDY CITY CONTINUES UNABATED.  The Whole Complaint:

Advisor B said that he liked the idea of the three-way deal. ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that he is interested in making $250,000 to $300,000 and being on some organization boards. Advisor B said they should leverage the President-elect’s desire to have Senate Candidate 1 appointed to the Senate seat in order to get a head position with Change to Win and a salary. Advisor B agreed that the three-way deal would be a better plan than ROD BLAGOJEVICH appointing Senate Candidate 2 to the Senate seat and getting more done as Governor.

Trading jobs and money in exchange for selecting your candidate?  Hrm, sounds like Pay-to-Play to me! 

That’s not the Advisor B I knew.

So Obama is proving to be a centrist, at least initally. I’m pleasantly surprised, but I guess liberals are too saavy to be caught off guard.

Yesterday, the progressives were eating loaves and fishes on the mountainside. Today, they’re Pharisees. Even the press is backing off a bit.

What do you mean “we”? You can almost feel for this journalist. Yesterday genuflecting and today affecting the blase.