The Media Cracks Me Up

The MSM (mainstream media for those not accustomed to "blogspeak") has the reputation, I think rightly earned, of being liberal in large part. There are many examples of this bias, but I find this one most telling:

Fox's rise to prominence has been viewed with alarm by its detractors who see the network as the flagship of a resurgent right-wing media machine, backed on the radiowaves by ultra-conservative talk show hosts and in print by newspapers like the Murdoch-owned New York Post.

Now, not only does the article show it's bias by using terms like "right-wing media machine" and "ultra-conservative," it uses these terms in regards to the Fox News Channel! What is hilarious is the assumption that the dinosaur MSM makes up the center; a neutral, fact collecting group of organizations. Their bias to the left makes it inevitable that they'd see anything, anything, more centrist then they are as being part of a vast right wing conspiracy, to use a certain Senator's term.

The fact that Fox tilts center-right in it's reporting isn't what the problem is; the problem is that the rest of the MSM is tilted so far left, yet considers itself centered, that the slight leanings to the right of Fox are seen as evidence that Fox is somehow illegitimate, their news gathering assumed to be handouts from the Bush administration.

When a news organization can't even report on another news organization's strength without bias, there are serious problems that need fixing.

Wahoo, Dodgers!!!

The Padres just beat the Giants tonight so, even though the Dodgers lost also, the Dodgers have basically sewn up a playoff spot. They have a 3 game lead with 4 to play, so all the Dodgers need to do is win one more game and have the Giants lose a game, and they're in!

Finally, post season baseball for the Dodgers.....seems almost to good to be true.

What's that frequency again?

CBS News was, well...caught by surprise recently when some memos they had used on 60 Minutes II turned out to be fakes. Actually, it turns out CBS are the only ones that aren't sure the memos are faked; they have their crack two person blue ribbon panel investigating the "incident."

I think Mark Steyn came up with the best possible explanation for Dan Rather risking his career and reputation on a bunch of Microsoft Word documents; maybe Rather's noggin' took a slightly harder blow than we all thought when he was mugged back in the mid '80's. You remember, Rather told everyone he was mugged and the assailant kept asking "What's the frequency, Kenneth?!"

In this case, the frequency of attacks on President Bush by the mainstream media and their absolute willingness to believe the worst about the President has finally caught up with them.

In short UB....what the hell?!

As of this writing, UltimateBet has been having "server issues" for about 2 days. Apparently, "server issues" means "nothing works around here." Right now, I'm very happy I tried out Poker Stars, as that site is up and running full speed, so my poker fix is being tended to at least.

A different problem I had earlier in the day is something I'm pretty sure I'll have bad dreams about. I've got pocket 5's, I raise and get three callers. The flop brings out the other two 5's, so I've flopped quads. As I begin to make plans for all the money I'm about to collect, I realize that noone has made a bet or checked in awhile. I pay closer attention; ack, my wireless router has bummed out!!!

You see, my daughter was playing on the "good" computer (thanks Dad!), so I was playing on our old computer that I retrofitted with a wireless network adapter, so we could share the internet connection. And the doggone thing craps out when I flop quads!!!

Just for your future information, buy a Linksys wireless router, not D-Link. My dad has a Linksys and that thing has just run and run and run. I got a D-Link, and it crapped out on me holding quads!!!

My first live tourney

I entered the $100+$20 buy in tourney on Saturday September 11 of the Heavenly Hold Em Tournament at the Commerce Casino.

Let me first say that I love playing live. Having the cards in hand, messing with the chips, seeing the flop of actual cards....I love it all.

Except. When. People. Play. Stupid. And. Get. Lucky!

It's not that I have any problem with someone playing the way they want to and getting lucky against all odds...everyone plays their own style for their own reasons. What's different that I'm not quite able to handle yet is when someone plays so unbelievably badly and gets lucky online, I can curse, stand up, throw my hands up in the air, ask to noone in particular, "How in the hell can someone that plays that badly get so doggone lucky?!"

Let's just say that kind of reaction would be....not appreciated during a live game.

When my aces get cracked by his 4 5 offsuit, which he had to call a 3 bet before the flop to play, all I could think to do when he turned over his cards was to show my aces and say "I guess that makes these no good." The whole table saw what happened, and I did appreciate the sympathy, but 4 5 offsuit?! In second position?! After a 3 bet?!?! And you chased a straight to hit on the river?!

The only thing that made that worse was that bad/lucky player kept playing badly, except now he wasn't getting lucky, so I watched with some despair as all of what I considered "my" chips were badly played and given to all the other players at the table....not a single one came back to me. The only joy I got out of the situation was watching Mr. Bad/Lucky get bounced from the tourney before I did. He took about 40% of my stack on that lame play and couldn't even last longer than I did....and I didn't last very long, either.

Well, there's always next time. Besides my very unlucky day that day, I still had a great time. Heck, I got to play poker live.

Big tourneys last a long time

As mentioned in an earlier post, I've been trying Poker Stars for the past 3 months, mainly because their multi-table tourneys are huge.

I've hit the money in a couple of them, but my best finish was 3rd out of about 1,200 entrants. The only downside is that it was a lousy $1 buy in tourney, so I only ended up winning $160, but part of the reason for playing these huge tourneys is simply to get experience playing the big tourneys where serious money can be made. In the couple dozen big tourneys I've played, I've really learned to become patient, to play quality hands, and to always spot for what I like to call "free money," which is basically any situation in which you may not have the best hand, but everyone else is pretty weak also, so just by showing strength you take down a pot that you may not have won otherwise. The downside to this occurs when someone is showing weakness when they actually have a hand and were looking to trap someone; in this case, you. So long as you don't let ego get in the way and you're able to drop those hands that will probably not be able to win, you should be fine.