Dean Esmay has a post about the whiningest "Country" group on the scene today.
I got to thinking and after I reset the smoke alarms I came up with what I think is an interesting twist...
follow me on this
Nike is being sued for allegedly abusing freedom of speech in a commercial context. When attempting to mitigate PR damage to the Nike brand name done by activists allegations about the companies labor practises in third-world factories, Nike's spokesmen may have bent the truth and could have been misleading.
A California court has decided that Nike stepped outside the boundries of personal speech and into the advertising arena.
In May, the court ruled that public statements by Nike, Inc. -- including press releases and letters to newspaper editors -- in response to public accusations leveled against its overseas labor practices, constituted "commercial speech." That designation strips Nike’s statements of their full First Amendment protections, and places them in the same category as the company’s explicit product advertisements for purposes of applying state laws barring false and misleading advertising.
...this is the interesting part...
So, accepting the court's interpretation of corporate speech to include that speech which has as an intent the protection or promotion of corporate interests, including the public's perception of the corporate entity ...
The Dixie Chicks (and all entertainers who are now lying their asses off about thier positions on any political issue) are no longer indulging in personal freedom of speech but are practicing commercial speech intended to avoid business damage caused by shooting their mouths off.
These folks have willingly converted most of their personal privacy to public promotion of their corporate interests. Their every move is touted by personal publicists to the world via newspapers and TV.
Every entertainer has incorporated themselves, for tax purposes, and the main assets of those corporations is the entertainer him/herself and the public's goodwill towards that person, so that makes any attempt to protect that goodwill an exercise in commercial speech.
...let's see how we can abuse this decision...
The Dixie Chicks say they support the troops but don't support the war... but can they support that statement as commercial speech, like a claim for a product, say, aluminum siding?
Hi, I'm Billy-Jim and my aluminum siding will keep your house protected from tornados and severe weather for over a thousand years!"No, I'm not truly embarrassed that, you know, President Bush is from my state, that's not really what I care about," she said. "I felt like there was a lack of compassion every time I saw Bush talking about this. I honestly felt a lack of compassion for people that are questioning this (war), for the people that are about to die for this on both sides."
False advertising? Let a jury decide.
Michael Morre proudly promotes his "documentary" Bowling for Columbine as a ... well... "A DOCUMENTARY"...
False Advertising? Let a jury decide.
I could go on and on...
I'm home from the salt mine, relaxing and getting ready to take my sweety out to dinner...
Where shall we go?
Somewhere that we can consume vast quantities of dead cow.
Doe's Eats... yeah... for a two and a half pound porterhouse... and some fried fresh shrimp... and red potatoes in butter and parsley... and a sweet ice tea about 15 inches tall...
All that and the whole damn place is a smoking section...
So, to PETA, Mayor Bloomberg and the rest of those party poopers...
Piss off.
More on the CNN story at the Washington Times by Jennifer Harper.
Mr Noyes makes a good point when he asks:
"If accurate reporting from Iraq was impossible, why was access to this dictatorship so important in the first place? And what truths about the thugs who run other totalitarian states — like North Korea, Cuba and Syria — are fearful and/or access-hungry reporters hiding from the American public?"
Can you say "Cuban Paradise"?
Indeed, why should anyone believe anything they broadcast?
Oh, I forgot... all mainstream media are part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracytm.
But there's more:
Fox News media analyst Eric Burns said he "commended" Mr. Jordan, if he had indeed protected innocent people from harm. "But why reveal all this now? Maybe CNN wants to cash in on the current pro-liberation sentiment," Mr. Burns said. "If he had knowledge he couldn't reveal, then I hope that it would at least be reflected in CNN's coverage."
We all know that his knowledge was NOT reflected in CNN's coverage, as they consistantly held the leftist, "hands off Iraq" and "Bush is a Cowboy" line.
Here's a clue for the editorial staff at CNN...
Like the French, you chose to align yourselves with an evil murderer for commercial gain. You aided and abetted his crimes so you could report on them, improving your ratings and raising your ad rates. Is it that tough to make a living in the 24 hour news business?
A jounalist who reports the truth, no matter the cost, is one of the lynch-pins of democracy, fullfilling the people's right to know the truth.
One who repeats the tyrants lies is just another aparatus of oppression.
You have besmirched a noble profession with your craven supplication to Saddam, by ignorantly (or knowing it to be false) comparing him to Bush, by reporting the Ba'athist Party line as if it were absolute truth.
Mr Jordan, I wish all the pain you enabled Saddam to inflict on others to settle into your soul for the rest of your days, I hope you never get a full nights rest again, may your nights be filled with the nightmare screams of the people who were killed while you were fullfilling your journalistic obligations.
Dictators all over the world know not to torture of murder the western media... they don't have to... all they have to do is mouth some marxist cant and you will all clamor to interview them... of course, you will have to sanitise what you actually report so as to "protect your sources"... and your jobs...
By the way, what do you guys know that you haven't told us about Cuba?
Hans has held forth on the inevitability of UN inspections being successful and how the evil US and British governments were hell bent on war all along,relates a story in the UK Guardian.
Let us examine this paragon of honesty's observations...
War against Iraq was a foregone conclusion months before the first shot was fired, the chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has claimed. In a scathing attack on Britain and the US, Mr Blix accused them of planning the war "well in advance" and of "fabricating" evidence against Iraq to justify their campaign.
"...planned well in advance..." Well, yeah, you dunderclumpen. Planning is usually a requisite of success, so the action was planned, and the planning was much better than any that you and your "Three Blind Inspectors" achieved. As for the "fabrication" of evidence is concerned, your attitude seems to be "If it didn't bite me on the ass, it didn't exist." It sucks to fail so completely and in public to boot, doesn't it? You and your team couldn't find your ass with both hands and a copy of Grey's Anatomy.
Letting rip after months of frustration, he told the Spanish daily El Pais: "There is evidence that this war was planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude to the [weapons] inspections." Mr Blix said Iraq was paying a "a very high price in terms of human lives and the destruction of a country" when the threat of banned weapons could have been contained by UN inspections.
Ah, the planning thing again... see above...
The only doubt I had about the "inspections" was how you kept from walking into walls with your head so far up your ass.
Oh, and how was it that you asswipes were going to contain the threat when you visited a site repeatedly that has been found to have poisonous levels of radiation but your instruments showed no readings? Would you please return to that site and inspect the underground grottos in your bare feet and a pair of boxer shorts?
Yeah, I didn't think so...
The 74-year Swedish diplomat made clear that he believes he was misled by President Bush. At a White House meeting last October Mr Bush backed the work of Unmovic, the UN inspection team.
If you mean that Bush backed the overt aim of the inspection team (finding weapons of mass destruction), you were correct, Bush repeatedly stated support for that mission... but if you mean your hidden agenda (keeping Saddam in power so your friends, the French, Germans and Russians, could continue to profit from illegal oil deals) well, your bad... you were the one who acted in bad faith...
But at the time Mr Blix knew "there were people within the Bush administration who were sceptical and who were working on engineering regime change". By the start of March the hawks in Washington and London were growing impatient.
Are we there yet?... Are we there yet?
No shit Sherlock... you and your UN buddies sit around, choking your chickens, while Saddam and his cronies torture and kill more people... the CIA sends you info on sites and you ignore it... you omit arms violations from the draft report used for the UN meeting and bury them in the final report... sceptical?... Yup, we figured out that you were full of shit and had no intention of providing an honest and through inspection... Americans are a famously tolerant folk but we get really Pissed impatient with liars who mean us harm.
He said he believed that finding weapons of mass destruction had been relegated as an aim and the main objective had become the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
Yo, Dumbass... as an engineer, I often run into problems that on first examinination appear to be one thing but upon further research it's discovered that the issue can only be resolved by addressing an underlying cause.
Treat the disease, not the symptom.
Bilxie, consider the disease treated, the tumor removed...
From the diagnostic manual....
Sociopathy / Psycopathy
This disorder is characterized by a long-standing pattern of a disregard for other people's rights, often crossing the line and violating those rights. This pattern of behavior has occurred since age 15 (although only adults 18 years or older can be diagnosed with this disorder) and consists by the presence of the majority of these symptoms:
- failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
- deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
- impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
- irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults
- reckless disregard for safety of self or others
- consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
- lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another
Criteria summarized from:
American Psychiatric Association.
(1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth
edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.
Sound familiar?
Michael Moore?
Scott Ritter?
The entire editorial staff of the NY Times and CNN?
Ted Turner?
Most of Hollyweird?
The vast majority of the political left?
Definition lifted from Dictionary.com
The first thing I read this morning (at 5:15am) was this article in the NY Times by Eason Jordan.
I wanted to smash his face.
Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.
...but you continued to pursue the same scum, giving them airtime...
For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters ...
...and all the while CNN was proclaiming to the world that America should'nt do anything about Iraq...
The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways.
...these assholes knew this kind of activity was occurring, torture, rape and murder, but made the journalistic decision to not report it so they could continue to cover the story...
I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed.
...and you chose to share this with the public after the USAF blew the bastards body to hell and back, holding this information back as the company you work for was relaying the same maniac's words to the world as if they were gospel...
While driving to work, I thought about what I had read, and it struck me... this asshat didn't realize that he had stifled the real story in order to continue to "report" on Saddam's terms... he deliberately suppressed the truth and presented what he knew to be lies as truth.
Sir, you are a coward, a sniveling propagandist for one of the worst butchers in modern history. I doubt you feel any shame but you should... you and your bosses knew the truth of the Iraqi situation and opposed the liberation of the Iraqi people.
Fuck you and Ted Turner too. May you both burn in hell
Over at USS Clueless Steven Den Beste has posted a fine poem to the Bitch of Bagdhad... I always enjoyed Dr Seusse but never so much as this...
I dug out some more of my travel photos, this time from my trip to Argentina in the spring 1999. I stopped off in my favorite town (NY,NY) on my way home and took some pictures there too.
If anyone can explain how Photoshop's automated web album generator orders the images I would really appreciate some advice... I've tried everything to get the images in some rational order but the app seems to grab them at random... so you will just have to guess which photos came from where because I'm too damn lazy to caption them all...
I also finally got around to creating a web page for the root of The Blinding White Light... it has links to the rest of this site....
Hey, I'm an engineer, not a programmer... It shows, doesn't it?...
I've been very busy at work, negotiating an expensive contract for system management tools... I can tell you, these vendors sure are proud of their product.
I work for a large company with a lot (no, I mean a LOT!) of computer systems to manage and all the vendors whose products I evaluated (all of them good products) looked at our organization and went nuts.
I'm serious. Crazy. Loco en la cabeza.
I made it clear that the usual pricing scheme of ($X * per object) was not going to fly and that I had a limited budget.
I don't think they understood the words coming out of my mouth.
So.... I get the quotes and they are beyond outrageous.
I guess they looked at the public information about the size of our company, did the mental math with their standard pricing and tasted the salt on the margaretas by the pool at their retirement condo in Cabo San Lucas. Each of them must have thought that this sale was going to be their El Dorado, and each protested when compared to another software company (who is currently running TV ads which accurately depict their own smiling cardboard salesman pushing product by saying "Good, I'll put you down for 500")
[rant]
A little advice for salesmen of all stripes but especially for software salesman selling to engineers...
Dammit, I know my job and I expect you to know yours... if you cannot explain the software, bring an engineer who can and stay the hell out of his way. Interupting a demo for a sales pitch wins no converts, it even pisses your engineer off.
Do NOT start any quote with some made-up, so-called list price that no one has ever paid and then give discounts from that inflated starting point. You will just piss me off by disrespecting my intelligence. Learn the real value of your product and price it accordingly. Your perceived value of your product doesn't mean shit to me, I'm looking at the money it will save or the security it will afford. I am not asking you to give the product away but I could care less if your CEO has to work till he's 50... I plan on working till I die.
And don't send me a 4 meg .pdf with spiffy graphics and all that sales bullshit, a spreadsheet with the numbers in it, properly calculated will do just fine. I'm just going to jump to the botton, then scroll back up to find the price so don't waste your time on fluff.
Know that I have read your company's financials and I know your cost of sales. I'm an engineer, not a retard. There are only so many places you can spend the bulk of "cost of sales" dollars:
1 - Commissions
2 - Discounts
3 - Advertising
I also look at what positions you are looking to fill. If the only job postings I see on your web site are for sales help I worry that you are a marketing company and not a technical company. It's the rare salesman who adds anything to a technical sale but tech support is a requirement that can make or break a deal.
I'll be waiting for you when you sober up and figure out what your product is really worth... till then, Im gonna be rolling my own management solution...