Ace of Spades HQ

January 07, 2013

NBC Executives: Hey, We May Be In Last Place, But At Least We're Not a "Shoot 'Em Up" Network
— Ace

Whining about top-of-the-ratings CBS and its various crime dramas.

Meanwhile....

Within an hour after both executives spoke, NBC showed reporters at a news conference highlights of its show "Revolution" that included a swordfight, a standoff between two men with guns, a bloodied man, a building blown up with a flying body and a gunfight.
Later clips of the upcoming series "Deception" featured several shots of a bloodied, dead body.
NBC also is developing a drama, "Hannibal," based on one of fiction's most indelible serial killers, Hannibal Lecter. An airtime for the show hasn't been scheduled, but it could come this spring or summer.

NBC has got some nerve. For years, it positioned itself as the Liberal Network, pushing a lot of shows that annoyed heartland viewers; now it brags that at least they're not showing violence.

Well, some. Because it needs ratings, and it can't just keep pumping out shows that only thin slices of the population watch.

NBC may in fact be angling for a little government/lobbing group assistance -- highly rated shows which were deemed "too violent" have gotten cancelled for that reason, when the public has been roused into another senseless moral panic.

(Wild Wild West "too violent"? Because of some fistfights? How far we've come, or how far we've regressed, depending on your point of view.)

Maybe they're hoping to stir some controversy for CBS, and get some pressure so that CBS will "tone down" some of its shows and thereby weaken them.

Update [JohnE.]: Related - No One Is Watching NBC Sports Network.

Posted by: Ace at 01:23 PM | Comments (214)
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Texas Slashes Spending and Somehow Their Revenues From Taxation Go Up
— Ace

As we keep saying: We have a problem spending too much money, not collecting too little of our citizens' hard-won dollars in taxes.

Texas slashed spending and is collecting even more in taxes.

I don't know if this is a record for Texas, but it could be. 2011's take was about $72 billion so I it's either at a record level or near-record.

Lawmakers don't have to spend all the money Combs says is available - and chances are they probably won't. Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst have promised to limit any increase in state spending to a sum of population growth plus inflation, or 9.85 percent.
Texas' economy is humming again after lawmakers in 2011 wrote a cut-to-the-bone budget as the nation lurched out of the Great Recession.

Imagine that.

Let's everyone ignore the fact that economies grow when public spending is kept to a minimum (but still historically generous level) and let's just keep agitating to spend trillions and trillions on bullshit and mint some gimmick $1 trillion coins.

Posted by: Ace at 12:51 PM | Comments (251)
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Coming Soon: The 27-Inch Table-top Tablet
— Ace

I only post this for one reason: the role-playing game possibilities.

I mean, that's the important thing.

Yes, for only $1700, you can have a tablet that projects the image of high-definition terrain that you can move your lead miniatures around over. And you can swap out one map for another in two seconds.

Of course 27 inches is too small for a big battlefield. That's wouldn't be a but a dungeon room or three.

But soon they'll do a 50 inch one, and then, we'll be all set.

For now, they're planning air-hockey games (with little shunts to block the virtual puck with) and some kind of tactical shooting game. I guess boardgames like Monopoly and Risk can be easily ported over, though I don't now if I see the big advantage.

Posted by: Ace at 12:38 PM | Comments (82)
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Naomi Wolf, Authorette of My Vagina: A Novel of Obsession, Calls "Zero Dark Thirty" Director a Nazi Shill
— Ace

Sad.

I was thinking recently about the pressure felt by single-issue advocacy groups to make all sorts of splashily provocative claims, or indulge in childish attention-getting, in order both to elevate their profile and to keep donations from the most strident believers in the cause -- a.k.a. those who donate -- flowing. Some groups, like PeTA, seem to find this pressure irresistible. Others seize on any junk science or dumb study to get their agenda out to the public.

I don't have any thoughts about it: I was just thinking about it.

But it does strike me as sad when people, like Queen Mother Vaigszh over here, must do this sort of thing as individuals. At least if you're working for someone you're getting a check, you have a degree of separation between yourself and what you do, as anyone doing a job does.

But poor Naomi Wolf has to push her brand, whatever that might be worth at this aged stage of the game, by herself and for herself, supposedly writing her own words and expressing her own real beliefs, by popping off with cheap, asinine provocations like this:

In a time of darkness in America, you are being feted by Hollywood, and hailed by major media. But to me, the path your career has now taken reminds of no one so much as that other female film pioneer who became, eventually, an apologist for evil: Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl's 1935 Triumph of the Will, which glorified Nazi military power, was a massive hit in Germany. Riefenstahl was the first female film director to be hailed worldwide....Like Riefenstahl, you are a great artist. But now you will be remembered forever as torture's handmaiden.

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (477)
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Governor Cuomo Takes No Action to Permit Fracking, Despite Study Finding the Process is Safe
— Ace

As Just One Minute says, he's waiting for someone to put together a study claiming the process isn't safe, so he can appease his strident left-wing supporters.

Science.

Posted by: Ace at 10:06 AM | Comments (343)
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Legally Owned Gun Saves Family
— Ace

A very aggressive home invader, who seemed to be going out of his way to find a woman and her children inside her house, got shot five times.

He actually lived -- so the gun avoided a tragedy and didn't even kill the criminal.

These stories only get a little local coverage, because the media doesn't want there to be any narrative on guns competing with their own.

The media likes easy questions and fast government-centered solutions -- and questions are easier when there is absolutely no competing case. If the media can convince the public that there is absolutely no upside to lawful gun ownership, it makes it that much easier to impose a prohibition.

Posted by: Ace at 09:17 AM | Comments (320)
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3.3 Million Workers Are Essentially Now Permanently Unemployed
— Ace

They've given up even looking, as they haven't looked for work in the past year.

And they're officially excluded from the main unemployment stats, as "unemployed" is defined as seeking employment. Which they're too discouraged to do. They've given up.

Ignoring the hopeless might make it seem like the long-term unemployment problem in the United States is slowly improving.
[T]he growing number of hopelessly unemployed is worrisome. Studies widely show the longer a person is unemployed, the weaker his or her chances are of getting a job.
At some point, long-term unemployment can lead workers to become permanently detached from the labor force. That's not good for the economy.
"We know we have this huge pool of missing workers," Shierholz said. "And we are not yet in a labor market that draws people in."

One sentence I cut from that is the claim that unemployment figures have fallen "sharply" since 2009. Sharply?

2012 offered the public two competing visions: One of growth fueled by the private sector, the other an economy in which the government simply hired more government workers, and extended or increased benefits for the unemployed. Unfortunately, the chose the latter.

The only optimistic thought I have is that capitalism is a philosophy for the risk-taking and for the courageous, and it could be that in times of incredible economic stress, people's courage just deserts them. We saw this with FDR, too.

Posted by: Ace at 08:54 AM | Comments (132)
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The New York Times discovers to their horror that Social Security is in dire shape
— Monty

The late-to-the-DOOM-party New York Times discovers what I've been ranting about for several years now: Social Security is in far worse shape than the government admits.

Funny how the NYT only realizes this after they helped get their boyfriend Obama re-elected.

Even a Democrat propaganda sheet like the New York Times cannot ignore the obvious any longer. I just hope all those hopium-addicted Democrat voters remember to thank His Majesty the King when the crash comes.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 08:12 AM | Comments (228)
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Chuck Hagel As Secretary Of Defense
— DrewM

We're going to have a hot mess of a confirmation fight over Obama's pick of Chuck Hagel to head DoD. Right now the battle lines are being drawn over some hot button political issues like how much Hagel loves or hates Israel, gays and the Iraq surge.

Honestly, I find those mostly irrelevant to Hagel's consideration. Should Hagel's views on these matters form part of people's decision on him? Of course but there are much larger issues that should be explored and considered as well.

The Secretary of Defense is in every sense a huge job with two main parts...management and strategic.

Does Hagel have the experience and skill set to run not just the world's premiere military force but also one of its largest bureaucracies? There are about 2.25 million men and women in uniform (including reserves/Guard) and another 800,000 or so civilian employees who work for the Department of Defense. Managing that many people across the globe on a budget of $664 billion is as much of the job as sitting in the White House Situation room watching live video of SEAL raids.

Hagel has held some small and mid-level type executive positions (Deputy Administrator of the VA back in 1981) but nothing that seems likely to prepare him for the challenges a Secretary of Defense has to cope with.

At a time when the military is going to have to do as much, if not more, with less a strong manager is going to be key in the years ahead. There's simply no reason to believe that Hagel can do that.

Sure he can have a top-notch Deputy handle the nuts and bolts of that for him (though there is already one there who was floated as a potential choice, so he's unlikely to stay) but ultimately the man with the big office has to drive the organization.

If Hagel doesn't wow with his administrative skills, then surely his strategic vision is world class. I don't see any evidence of that.

Here's Hagel in 2009 writing about the nature of the post-Cold War/War on Terror world

We can no longer hold ourselves to narrow "single issue" engagement when dealing with nations such as China, Russia, India, Brazil, Turkey or South Korea. The United States needs all these countries and many more if we are to engage the most dangerous challenges -- not one at a time but all together. Our relationships with these nations have matured since World War II, as these nations have matured. Does anyone believe we will get to a responsible resolution on Iran without Russia? There's a reason we are part of a Group of 20 rather than a G-8. Even the world's largest economies cannot handle today's problems alone.
Global collaboration does not mean retreating from our standards, values or sovereignty. Development of seamless networks of intelligence gathering and sharing, and strengthening alliances, diplomatic cooperation, trade and development can make the biggest long-term difference and have the most lasting impact on building a more stable and secure world. There really are people and organizations committed to destroying America, and we need an agile, flexible and strong military to face these threats. How, when and where we use force are as important as the decision to use it. Relying on the use of force as a centerpiece of our global strategy, as we have in recent years, is economically, strategically and politically unsustainable and will result in unnecessary tragedy -- especially for the men and women, and their families, who serve our country.

I don't know if deep down Hagel believes this stuff or if it's just think-tank pablum. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 07:31 AM | Comments (251)
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Monday Morning News Dump
— Pixy Misa