Questions. Questions That Need Answers.....

I haven't been blogging of late, as I'm working on a screenplay about how the world would look should the Modern American Right actually get their way with everything they claim to desire.

Picture Blade Runner meets Casablanca meets Beyond The Valley of the Dolls.....

I've already got a title:

ATLAS UNBOUND

That should get some attention with some of the Libertarian sychopants in America.

But to the questions:

- Why does the Right hate education?

- Why does the Right hate the ability for people to organize?

- Why does the Right have contempt for minorities?

- Why does the Right have contempt for women?

- Why does the Right have the ability to control the "media message" while claiming there is a "media bias"?

- Why is the Right against "Net Neutrality" and "The Fairness Doctrine" when these are two things they should - based on their continued machinations - be supporters of?

.......and there are more.

What are yours?

Some Brief Thoughts For Thursday Afternoon

- Scott Brown continues to disappoint the Tea Baggers that heralded his coming as the opening salvo of a grand revolution. Too bad for him that his stance on DADT is that it should be repealed.

- I'm almost certain that conservatives know the difference between "rationing" and opting not to offer a specific drug for a specific form of late term cancer because, to put it bluntly, simply does not work.

- Conservatives love to pretend to "follow" the teaching of Jesus. To that end, it's no surprise that someone like Bill O'Reilly would invoke Christ in a poorly constructed piece designed to further the narrative that poor people are poor simply because they want to be.

- Perhaps it's just me, but I am of the belief that elected representatives are - in part - sent to Washington to ensure that proper funding is directed to legit projects in their states/districts. Certainly, there is the chance of abuse - and it has occurred before - but if you're going to be "anti-earmark", you might want to be sure that your name isn't attached to any.

- The new "open internet" proposal - a watered down version of the initial Net Neutrality proposal - is naturally being met with a stern warning from Senate GOP members. I'm still of the opinion that the original language remain and that people that don't understand the very basic concept of Net Neutrality should sit this one out, as they are simply making themselves look even dumber than normal.

Some Thoughts For Your Afternoon

- Apparently it's not good form to teach kids to eat healthy anymore. Michelle Malkin takes after Michelle Obama like she's built up a police force that is going to prevent parents from feeding their own children what they think is good for them. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that some conservatives are intentionally getting fatter to show their hatred of Mrs. Obama. Rush Limbaugh has already got a good start on this.

- It seems that some people in Alaska are starting to wake up to the fact that Sarah Palin is a complete and utter disaster. Some within the conservative realm are claiming that the release of her next book will boost her ratings, I have to question that. After all, people thought that here Fox"News" special would be a ratings phenomenon, but it turned into something wholly unspectacular. I'm fairly certain that her "nature program" isn't going to be a shining star on her record either.

- For conservatives to continually claim that there is no violent rhetoric directed at liberal/progressive, this little stunt doesn't really help their cause.

- You can generally tell when a conservative is completely out of rational ways to discuss any given topic when they result to homophobic/sexist blatherings. I can recall when Newsweek ran a cover picture of Sarah Palin and conservatives went completely bat-shit insane, calling it a blatant, sexist, attack. Personally, I didn't find it sexist at all, as Palin posed for and signed off on the picture herself. But there certainly are different rules for anyone outside the conservative sphere, isn't there.

- Much in the same way that Glenn Beck is completely misrepresenting what Net Neutrality is, Megyn Kelly is doing here part to misinform people by actually censoring the realities of what the FCC is trying to do. What happened to "fair and balanced"?

- Seems that Arizona has a serious problem not only with Hispanics, but takes issue with students even learning about them. I'm sure the term "racial animus" will be striken from any English text within the next few months as well. The one question I have is this - does this just do away with only learning about hispanics or anyone that isn't white and from America?

Corporations Over Consumers

Looks like the courts once again proved they care more about the "feelings" of the corporations over the "rights" of the consumer.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday dealt a sharp blow to the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission to set the rules of the road for the Internet, ruling that the agency lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks.

The decision, by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, specifically concerned the efforts of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, to slow down customers’ access to a service called BitTorrent, which is used to exchange large video files, most often pirated copies of movies.

After Comcast’s blocking was exposed, the F.C.C. told Comcast to stop discriminating against BitTorrent traffic and in 2008 issued broader rules for the industry regarding “net neutrality,” the principle that all Internet content should be treated equally by network providers. Comcast challenged the F.C.C.’s authority to issue such rules and argued that its throttling of BitTorrent was necessary to ensure that a few customers didn’t unfairly hog the capacity of the network, slowing down Internet access for all of its customers.

There's a lot of disinformation out there regarding Net Neutrality. Could this have actually influenced the courts decision?

But Ed Morrissey's take on this issue is not only short sighted by completely backwards.

The DC circuit Court of Appeals gave the Obama administration a big dash of cold water on the limits of its authority to impose rules on communications networks today. In essence, the court recognized Comcast’s property rights to determine its own terms of service for Internet use, and the implications could affect Barack Obama’s plans to mandate broadband expansion as well

What about the "property rights" of companies that are delivered on broadband service? With this ruling, Comcast could charged Netflix more to carry their content because Comcast wants to push their own "on-demand" service. They could, considering they have near monopolistic control over various areas of the US, price NetFlix out of the market or simply block them all together. Such undo influence into the market is not only unethical, but is likely to be illegal.

The bottom line is not that companies like Comcast don't deserve to make a profit, it's that since all content usage is based on customer preference once broadband service has been paid for, corporations like Comcast feel that they can literally censor content based on personal preference. This could even be seen through the prism of political alliances. If a company uses Comcast or Verizon to stream their content and that company is known to have contributed to a political party that Verizon or Comcast doesn't agree with, they would be censored. It would interesting to see how this sort of issue would play out in court, as corporations are now considered "people".

With the average American having only two choices of broadband service, the idea of "competition and choice" is something that won't even be realistically plausible. Once broadband providers realize that the FCC cannot punish them for censoring content or charging elevated prices for higher speeds of delivery, what's to stop both choices from removing your ability to choose?

Conservatives have no clue what Net Neutrality is about.

Fear Of The Internet

You know who's a bigger threat to Net Neutrality and open internet in general than conservatives like Glenn Beck? How about former Director Of National Intelligence Michael McConnell.

McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering. He’s the nice-seeming guy who’s willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those who are not in the know.

When he was head of the country’s national intelligence, he scared President Bush with visions of e-doom, prompting the president to sign a comprehensive secret order that unleashed tens of billions of dollars into the military’s black budget so they could start making firewalls and building malware into military equipment.

And now McConnell is back in civilian life as a vice president at the secretive defense contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton. He’s out in front of Congress and the media, peddling the same Cybaremaggedon! gloom.

We need to develop an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options — and we must be able to do this in milliseconds. More specifically, we need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessment — who did it, from where, why and what was the result — more manageable. The technologies are already available from public and private sources and can be further developed if we have the will to build them into our systems and to work with our allies and trading partners so they will do the same.

Now that is a classic example of how a government agency can reach out and touch you - literally. If McConnell has his way, this blog, your emails, that odd paper your sister is writing for her college forensics class and using Google to research; that would all be traceable and some reactionary hack would be filing away every click of not only your keyboard and mouse, but everyone's.

But McConnell isn't the only threat to the internet.

Just last week the National Telecommunications and Information Administration — the portion of the Commerce Department that has long overseen the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — said it was time for it to revoke its hands-off-the-internet policy.

Following years of the NSA illegally spying on Americans’ e-mails and phone calls as part of a secret anti-terrorism project, Congress voted to legalize the program in July 2008. That vote allowed the NSA to legally turn America’s portion of the internet into a giant listening device for the nation’s intelligence services. The new law also gave legal immunity to the telecoms like AT&T that helped the government illegally spy on American’s e-mails and internet use. Then-Senator Barack Obama voted for this legislation, despite earlier campaign promises to oppose it.

And while this all starts to sound like a Glenn Beck theory gone awry, I'm not looking for the proposed legislation for "emergency seizure of the internet" to make it to Obama's desk, much less have him even sign it. After all, Obama supports Net Neutrality, and signing a bill that would essentially do what McConnell is asking for would be political suicide.

During a Monday speech on innovation, President Obama issued his support for net neutrality rules proposed by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski.

"I'm pleased that he's taking that step," the president said during an appearance in Troy, New York. "That's an important role that we can play, laying the ground rules to spur innovation. That's the role of government -- to provide investment that spurs innovation and also to set up common-sense ground rules to ensure that there's a level playing field for all comers who seek to contribute their innovations."

On Monday, Genachowski proposed adding two principles to the commission's Internet Policy Principles that would prohibit ISPs from discriminating based on content or applications and would require them to be more transparent about their activities. Interest groups praised the move, but the wireless industry was concerned that the proposal also extended to them. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, also promptly introduced a bill that would cut the FCC's regulatory funding.

Obama was in Troy to unveil his "innovation agenda." The president pushed for more research and development investment, as well as alternative energy sources, health IT, and the manufacture of advanced vehicles.

Fearmongering works well amongst the conservative set, as we saw it's effectiveness with the Bush administration. That same mentality lead to the Tea Baggers and the uptick in insanity over at Fox"News".

Take technology that not many people fully understand and couple that with these people that are claiming that America is now a communist, socialist, nazi-infested wasteland and you've got a recipe for disaster.

iPolitics And The Party Of Crazy Obstructionists

A widely recognized and very minimalist commercial style, but with a new twist.



As per my previous post, this is a very simple, concise, and utterly accurate discription of the modern GOP/conservative movement.

But within the "party of no" there are so many nuanced voices that one begins to lose track of the where the obstructionist ends and the outright crazy begins.



Science Progress explains what Net Neutrality is really all about.

At the most basic level, net neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet; all content on the Internet is equally accessible, and once a person pays for access to the Internet, they alone get to choose how they use it. This means that providers should not be allowed to block access to certain sites or applications, or charge different customers different amounts for services.

You almost want to feel sorry for not only Beck's fansbase, but people that actually fall for these sort of insane conspiracy theories. After all, anyone that uses places like Fox"News", World Net Daily, Hot Air, The Weekly Standard ( et al conservative controlled forms of media ) as their primary news source without even attempting to do any sort of fact-checking has more problems than one can enurmerate at this point.

The Wired Metric

Wired Magazine offers their own perspective on Barack Obama' first 100 days.

They break it down into the following catagories: Copyright, Cyber Security, Science, Net Neutrality, Transparency, and Privacy. And he doesn't get glowing remarks.

Obama scored high marks in some, but in others he may have to go to summer school.

It's a very interesting read from a perspective not covered by the 24hr cable channels or the bulk of blogs.