Archive for June, 2006
Save the Internet
Save the Internet
Phone companies have stated their intention to give favored nation status to their own or allied businesses’ Web sites, thereby slowing or, even, blocking access to rival search engines, music dowload sites, social networking communities, online phone services, or other applications. Net Neutrality would prevent this discrimination. The most profitable online business ideas would rise as a result of user preference, and not by special selection of the companies that control the pipes.
The Next Hurrah: Ashes to Ashes
This beautiful poem accompanies a wonderful article about death…about religion. I highly recommend it.
The Next Hurrah: Ashes to Ashes
Ashes to AshesBy Meteor Blades
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there,
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight
On the ripened grain.
I am the gentle Autumn’s rain.
When you awaken in the morning hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there.
I did not die.
My Spirit is still alive…
– Hopi prayer
That Coulter Woman & Republicans
One of the finest articles written about that Coulter woman.
The Raw Story | Ann Coulter Republicans
The question, “Are you an Ann Coulter Republican?” should confront every Republican running for every office in the land, from President to dog catcher. Every Democratic candidate should accuse his or her opponent of being in favor of poisoning Supreme Court Justices and killing Congressmen. At every opportunity, every Republican should be made to answer: “Do you agree with Ann Coulter that the 9/11 widows are witches and harpies?” And George W. Bush, Tony Snow, Dick Cheney, Laura Bush and Barney (the only lapdog with a good excuse) should be confronted with these questions as well.
Republicans have been able to maintain a Kabuki symbiosis with all manner of cave-dwellers by speaking in an elaborate, dog whistle-like code. They hold racists, homophobes and rapture acolytes close enough to keep their votes without ever having to either publicly embrace or disavow such extreme viewpoints. That relationship with white-sheet America has been essential to their electoral strategy for decades.
Not that hard to follow
With a wink and a nod many Republicans and media types are positing that the Democrats:
- do not have their shit together because they are not in lockstep with each other
- are cowards and want to "cut and run"
- are not loyal to the troops because they question the "mission" – therefore they are treasonous
- they are elitist because they are coastal, educated and pay attention to politics – or – elite poor, uneducated and could care less as long as they get their welfare checks
My question is what have the Republicans done for for us lately? They are pretty good at trashing the opposition – while at the same time unwilling or unable (with a straight face) to explain the positives the Republicans have accomplished in this administrations tenure.
Well there was Hannity and Santorum, last week, spouting the "positive" accomplishment of finding very old and basically useless WMD as justification for this war. I should buy stock in a straw company – seems there is a rush to grasp at them.
Like Frank Sinatra, he got to do it his way
TLarry Beinhart: Give George Bush His War | The Huffington Post
Probably one of the most lucid blog posts asking serious questions about the war. Is it "our" war or is it "Bushe's" war?
Net Neutrality
OMG I can't believe my favorite presidential candidate, Joe Biden, is against Net Neutrality! He is so sensible usually. I am genuinely shocked he cannot see the telco's for what they are trying to do to the internest.
I really must go to bed now. Disapointing end to my day. Jeez Joe – please wake up!
Evangelical Hatred
The best comment I have seen on a blog today. Posted as a comment about this post regarding the 15 year old who makes anti-war video's.
The American Evangelical right wing should all be shipped to Iraq to be with their Taliban and Al-Quaeda brothers and sisters in religious hatred. They look alike, they sound alike, and they think alike.
net neutrality is being morphed into a weapon
The legislative opposition to establishing net neutrality is the story of a mantra gone horribly wrong. An idea crafted 10 years ago to protect the Internet, then a new medium, is being morphed into a weapon that would destroy the not-so-new medium a few years from now.
This “new Internet” would be one controlled not by individual freedom, but by the whim of the telephone and cable networks' owners.
It is ludicrous for the telephone companies and their congressional allies, principally Republicans, to fight against net neutrality on the basis of the fraudulent “don’t regulate the Internet” mantra. The industry has the gall to name one of their propaganda sites, www.dontregulate.org, part of the “Hands Off the Internet” family—brought to you by the telephone and cable industries . All of their other arguments hang from this one basic, misapplied concept.
The industry and their congressional allies argue that any number of horrible outcomes would flow from “net neutrality regulation.” You can pick your own fallacies from among the talking points: don’t regulate the Internet because it would create volumes of new regulations governing content, don’t regulate because it would be the first major government regulation of the Internet. Or, don’t regulate the Internet because big Internet companies, want access for free, and so consumers will get stuck with the bill in the form of higher prices.
None of them are true. Transmission over the Internet has been regulated for years, until 2005 to be exact, when the FCC took away the rules. The Internet grew up in the dial-up days under “common carrier” regulation, when telephone companies had no control over content on their networks. No one wants to regulate the Internet—the regulation is of the services of the telephone and cable companies.
Read the entire article here.
