... that it would have been better for all of humanity if Jim Carrey never escaped from the set of The Truman Show, reading a few paragraphs of his anti-vaccine moonbattery ought to do the trick.
Or just one phrase:
The anecdotal evidence of millions of parents ...
I don't care how many people the HuffPo lets blog. This is a huge black mark that they're letting this crackpot stuff stand on their site. That they're front-paging it is a disgrace.
[Added] Further thoughts in a newer post.
... but other than that, I agree with you, Eric Boehlert.
It's always hilarious, though, when the leading dims of the wingnutosphere drop out of their "LIEbrul media always lies!!1!" mode the instant some boneheaded piece of slop from the MSM seems too good to question.
That's a great story! Why confuse with it facts? is an entirely appropriate attitude when telling tales around the campfire, at a barbecue, or when bellied up to the bar. However, RedState and HotAir,* you're the ones who are always bragging about how you're going to be the ones who replace "old media," right? So, you know, never too soon to start trying to act like professionals, at least to the extent of checking a second source or something.
Don't make me come over there and check your kerning, now.
(h/t: Atrios)
* Update: HotAir has updated its post with what could be called a non-correction correction. My original criticism still stands, though -- this story was easy enough to check before running with it.
RedState's post is as of this moment unchanged.
Mozilla has released a patch that closes several security holes, including one rated "critical" and two rated "high." The update, to version 3.0.9, also includes some stability fixes. Details are in the release notes, if you want them.
If you don't have automatic updates or notifications enabled, do Help → Check for Updates. The whole process went off without a hitch for me, and took less than a minute.
Look, Congressional GOP, I get that you're in the minority, that you've got no new ideas, and that this (via John Cole) is just playing to your base …
House Republicans are calling on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down or be fired in the wake of a controversial department memo that has sparked indignant battle cries from conservatives and some veterans.
“Singling out political opponents for working against the ruling party is precisely the tactic of every tyrannical government from Red China to Venezuela," said Texas Rep. John Carter, a member of the party's elected leadership who has organized an hour of floor speeches Wednesday night to call for Napolitano's ouster. “The first step in the process is creating unfounded public suspicion of political opponents, followed by arresting and jailing any who continue speaking against the regime.”
... but seriously: Get. A. Grip.
Let's review a few facts.
To begin with, the "memo," or DHS report titled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, was ordered by the Bush Administration. Believe it or not, this was even revealed on Fox News.
Second, as noted by Think Progress, similar reports were ordered by the Bush Administration, and delivered, regarding potential threats from left-wing extremists; e.g., the April 2001 DOE Report, Left-Wing Extremism: The Current Threat (PDF) and the January 2009 DHS report, Leftwing Extremists Likely to Increase Use of Cyber Attacks over the Coming Decade (PDF).
Third, the report, in fact, does not "single out" political opponents. It merely describes the types to look for. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember a great hue and cry from the righthand side of the aisle when profiling airline travelers was all the rage. Or surveillance and infiltration was done on, say, animal-rights groups, supposed "eco-terrorists," and those who protested at the 2004 and 2008 Republican conventions.
As Secretary Napolitano said, on Fox News, no less:
"This was an assessment, not an accusation," Napolitano continued. "It was limited to extremists those who seek to commit violence within the United States. And all this was meant to do was to give law enforcement what we call 'situational awareness.'"
A couple of examples. The report does not say to watch all veterans. Here is what it says about veterans:
DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists—including lone wolves or small terrorist cells—to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.
And for all the hysteria about the supposed surveillance or oppression or whatever of special interest conservative groups, there is one (1) mention in the report of the words "single issue." In a footnote. To wit:
Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.
Have any of you Congressional blowhards actually read this report (PDF)? You should. It's only ten pages long. Including the cover.
And since you're politicians, remember this if you remember nothing else: your base is about one-quarter of the electorate, if that, and the more you go on catering to them, the smaller that group will become. Seen this headline lately?
The time for appealing to the worst part of people's natures is over. Fear of The Other and endless exhortations to don the victim cloak just won't get you back in the game. How bad has it gotten? Let's put it this way: if you've exhausted the patience of the planet's most determined centrist, you've really gone off the rails. Via Instaputz, here's what Mark Ambinder is saying about you, after he finishes apologizing for swiping his lede from a "liberal website," no less:
My Republican friends keep asking me when I'll take the GOP seriously again and why I've stopped writing about ticky-tak political gamesmanship and GOP consultant tricks. When they're a serious party with serious ideas, then we can talk.
He's too polite, so I'll tell it to you straight: Grow the fuck up.
[Added] Follow-up.
Thanks to Blue Texan, I just learned of another blog-ranking site: Wikio. Kind of fun, if you're into such things.
Since they have me ranked at number 12,002 at the moment, they are clearly superior to TruthLaidBear (49,288) and Technorati (301,999).
Never mind that they track far fewer blogs.
How dumb do you have to be to ask a dumb question? In support, apparently, of your efforts to deny global warming? What about not even understanding the answer? And then how about bragging on the Twitter that because the answer "puzzles" you, you must have "stumped" the Secretary of Energy, Nobel Laureate in Physics Steven Chu? And then posting a video clip, complete with bonus fancy introductory graphic, on your own YouTube channel to document the whole mess?
Ladies and gentleman, Representative Joe Barton (Robviously -- TXof course).
__________
Afterthought: One possible line of defense for Barton: plate tectonics would have no meaning to someone who thinks the Earth is only 6000 years old. I don't know that he's a Young Earth Creationist, but it's a thought.
Or maybe, just maybe, there were other thoughts swirling through Barton's mind between Barton's ears. According to the campaign finance watchdogs at OpenSecrets.org: Anadarko Petroleum, ExxonMobil, Energy Future Holdings Corp, Suez SA, Tenaska, Devon Energy, and American Electric Power were respectively 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 12th, and 13th on the list of his top contributors last year. Thus proving that the myth of global warming is a liberal conspiracy. Or something like that.
But back to the original point: were I one of his benefactors, I don't think that video clip would make me do anything but cringe. And the thought that Barton thinks it makes him look good …
Not since Michele Bachmann demanded of Tim Geithner "where in the Constitution" it says that Congress has the right to authorize funds (Article I, Sec. 8, if you're keeping score) have I imagined someone being asked a question that would come so close to making him collapse into hysterical laughter. To his credit, Chu kept it to a snicker.
[Added] More Barton at the bottom of this post.
In their scrambling to justify their torture policies, the Bushies and their flacks have resurrected an old chestnut. Never mind that it was long ago debunked; Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen (e.g.), Karl Rove (e.g., at about 1:00), and others (e.g.) are trying to spin torture as useful because doing it to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed supposedly prevented a 9/11-style attack on the Library Tower in Los Angeles.
Slate's Tim Noah does a good job of putting this one back into the trash where it belongs. It's worth reading the whole thing, but here's the ace of trumps:
These two statements make clear that however far the plot to attack the Library Tower ever got—an unnamed senior FBI official would later tell the Los Angeles Times that Bush's characterization of it as a "disrupted plot" was "ludicrous"—that plot was foiled in 2002. But Sheikh Mohammed wasn't captured until March 2003.
(h/t: uncle ebeneezer)
[Added] The WaPo's Dan Froomkin has a good post up on the more general spinning efforts, with a number of useful links debunking the claims that the Bushies have been making ever since their "we don't torture" talking point was revealed for the lie that it was. His conclusion:
There is something crazy about arguing over whether torture works or not. After all, it really doesn't matter, if you believe that torture is never justified. But since at least early last year, the main defense of the Bush apologists has been to argue that the ends justified the means. And you can't just leave their assertions unaddressed.
According to their mission statement, the Bradley Foundation is "committed to preserving and defending the tradition" that "has enabled the American nation and, in a larger sense, the entire Western world to flourish intellectually …"
Further: "Its programs support limited, competent government" and it recognizes that "responsible self-government depends on enlightened citizens and informed public opinion."
So I guess my question is, why did they just give Bill Kristol a quarter-million bucks?
If you read nothing else from the Senate Armed Services Committee's report on the Bush Administration's torture policies, read this:
The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority. This report is a product of the Committee's inquiry into how those unfortunate results came about.
Here are a few section headings you should be aware of, too:
Department of Justice Redefines Torture
Military Lawyers Raise Red Flags and Joint Staff Review Quashed
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld Approves Aggressive Techniques
DoD Working Group Ignores Military Lawyers and Relies on OLC [i.e., the Bush White House's Office of Legal Counsel --bjk]
Guantanamo Bay as a "Battle Lab" for New Interrogation Techniques
Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel's Analysis Is Presented As Controlling Authority
... you go, girl!
If you'd rather skip the tedium of Limbaugh lapdog Mike Pence's long-winded way of asking, "Didn't Obama just surrender to Hugo Chavez?", Secretary of State Clinton's response begins at about 1:40. Note especially what she says starting at about 4:00. That is what loyal opposition means, Republicans.
(h/t: TPM)
Here's a follow-up to my earlier post about David Barstow winning a Pulitzer Prize.
One of the most significant dogs that did not bark after Barstow published his reports on the cozy relationship between "retired" military analysts (read: Pentagon mouthpieces) and various TV news channels was this: none of the TV stations ever addressed the reports on air. Never. Not once. As I recall, after Barstow's stories ran, a TV exec or two gave hand-wavy statements to newspaper reporters, and Brian Williams posted some sort of defense of NBC on his blog. But none of the stations ever acknowledged the stories during their news programs, and none ever changed their policies regarding disclosure of the underlying connections and conflicts of interest held by guys like Gen. Barry McCaffrey.
Coming back to the present, both Glenn Greenwald and Media Matters observed yesterday that when the various TV news programs reported this year's Pulitzer winners, none of them saw fit to mention Barstow, let alone why he won the Prize for investigative journalism. Glennzilla gives a useful perspective (emph. orig.):
So transparently corrupt and journalistically disgraceful is their blackout of this story that even Howard Kurtz and Politico -- that's Howard Kurtz and Politico -- lambasted them for this concealment.
How significant a problem is this? Here's one measure, from Media Matters (emph. added):
Media Matters documented that between January 1, 2002, and May 13, 2008, the military analysts named in Barstow's article collectively appeared or were quoted as experts more than 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR in segments covering the Iraq war both before and after the invasion, as well as numerous other national security or government policy issues.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has just released a report titled "Inquiry Into The Treatment Of Detainees In U.S. Custody." You can download the full report from their website (PDF). Tim F. of Balloon Juice has helpfully provided the report's conclusions in plain text.
[Added: If you'd like an even quicker intro, see my post above.]
And if you haven't already seen it, you might also have a look at this NYT article which was until a few minutes ago the lead story on their site, which describes the cluelessness of the top Bush Administration officials while they were scheming how to make torture "legal."
__________
[Added] Via uncle ebeneezer, here is a McClatchy story that's worth reading, which touches on a key point found in the Senate report. Short version: Rumsfeld and Cheney directed that torture be used to justify what they wanted to do anyway: invade Iraq. Here's an excerpt:
The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.
[...]
A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.
"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.
"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."
It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.
"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.
"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."
Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.
See this earlier post for links to the Justice Department memos and related commentary.
How many fear-inducing elements can you count in this picture of Air Force One?
This is image 6 from TPM's slideshow "Summit of the Americas: Behind the Scenes." Click to enlarge. Some nice shots, although tediously slow going from one to the next.
... another Republican member of Congress apologizing to Rush Limbaugh.
This time, it's Kansas jellyfish Todd Tiahrt doing the ooze.
(h/t: Oliver Willis)
[Added] Also in the SSDD department, again via OW: Looks like Obama surrendered the country again.
There's bowing, and then there's bowing, isn't there?
Now that the right-wing noise machine seems fully on (new) message -- Handshake Hysteria: The Surrender of the United States to a SocialistFascistDictatorThugNoReallyThisTimeWeMeanIt -- this, from TBogg, sums up (the last) Most Important Thing Ever pretty well:
Crowd estimates seem to be all over the place and the further that we get away from Teabagapalooza the more they seem to grow until, eventually, conservatives will claim that more than "a bajillion times infinity patriots" showed up. But, giving them the benefit of the doubt and saying that 400,000 showed up to protest big government, taxes, bailouts, the New Obama Order, gravity, and words that sound like other words but aren't the same thing, I would be much more impressed if it didn't take them a combined 800 cities to generate slightly more than half the crowd that the immigration amnesty protests drew in LA alone.
If I were a Republican I would be more concerned with the Big Brown Wave and less with the Frothing White Teabaggers.
Here is one of the top Republicans in the country, House Minority Leader John (It's Not Pronounced Like You Think) Boehner, on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" yesterday:
BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical.
Did Villager Stephanopoulos challenge Boehner's claim that the EPA (or anyone else allowed to use pointy scissors) has ever said carbon dioxide is a carcinogen? You have to ask?
See what Boehner just did there? He gave the wingnuts another erroneous reason to buy into the GLOBAL WARMING IS A LIEBRUL CONSPIRACY meme. They're already at it in the Power Line forums:
Boehner slammed the EPA real good today for their silly claim that CO2 is a dangerous carginogen.
[...]
Do those Obama EPA moonbats even have a grasp of science? I guess we’re all going to get cancer if we stand next to each other. CO2 does not cause cancer, and someone at the EPA needs to get fired. Carbon dioxide is not dangerous! It comes right out of our mouths!!
Note how the possibility that Boehner might be a bonehead never occurred to this wingnut. It is instead taken as gospel that the "Obama EPA moonbats" said this.
Of course, I can't be sure this was calculated on Boehner's part. He might, after all, really be that stupid.
(h/t: Attaturk | pic. source)
Oh, wait. Yes it is. Cool pic.
The other guy is, apparently, Brian Lara. So now I am much more worldly thanks to my new cosmopolitan president: I now know the names of nearly two professional cricket players.
Last time I was in England, I picked up a paper and read a few paragraphs from the sports section. I loved how easily the words flowed in one eye and out the other, with absolutely zero comprehension on my part. Here is a bit of the Wikipedia entry for Brian Lara, almost as good:
He holds the record for the highest individual score in first-class cricket, with 501 not out for Warwickshire against Durham at Edgbaston in 1994, which is the only quintuple hundred in first-class cricket history.[3] He also holds the record for the highest individual score in a test innings after scoring 400 not out against England at Antigua in 2004.[4] Remarkably, he is the only batsman to have ever scored a hundred, a double century, a triple century, a quadruple century and a quintuple century in first class games over the course of a senior career.[5] [6] Lara also holds the test record of scoring most number of runs in a single over, when he scored 28 runs off an over by Robin Peterson of South Africa in 2003.[7]
Lara's match-winning performance of 153 not out against Australia in Bridgetown, Barbados in 1999 has been rated by Wisden as the second best batting performance in the history of Test cricket, next only to the 270 runs scored by Sir Donald Bradman in The Ashes test match of 1937.
"Scoring 400 not out?" "Off an over?"
Wonderful stuff.
Eye candy, that is. The Boston Globe's Big Picture blog has a new collection of shots taken by the Cassini spacecraft, still hanging out near Saturn. There are close-ups of the rings, and some of the moons, and the rings being perturbed by the moons, and all sorts of coolness. Here's one of my favorites, a view of Saturn obscured by the haze of Titan's upper atmosphere. (A moon with an atmosphere!)
Here is another, a shot of Titan through the rings, with Epimetheus in front.
Another coupla dozen where those came from, plus links to previous collections.
(h/t: The Awl)
When the newly elected Obama was assembling his Cabinet, Time reporter Karen Tumulty, writing for the magazine’s Swampland blog, offered “an out-of-the-box suggestion” for who should become health-and-human-services secretary—former Republican governor and candidate Mitt Romney, that aerosol can that couldn’t. As with so many who pride themselves on thinking outside the box, Tumulty would have been better off closing the cardboard flaps instead.
Runner-up, same source:
To delve into the editorial pages of The Washington Post is to crack open an even creakier sarcophagus, where the dead paw of consensus maintains a semblance of order, continuity, prudence.
Your James Wolcott has had it with the Villagers. If the what-passes-for-wisdom huffing from inside the Beltway has you screaming at your TV and computer monitor, too, go read "What’s Wrong with Washington?" Here's the accompanying artwork to get you started, swiped just because I liked it so much.
(h/t: DougJ/Balloon Juice)
Interesting thought from Sadly, No!, via John Cole.
And just in case you think all of my talk about the Right-Wing Noise Machine is an exaggeration or conspiracy thinking, it's worth taking a look at John Harwood's NYT piece that provoked the above. These things really are planned.
You've probably heard some of the stories coming out lately about the frequency with which some prisoners were tortured via waterboarding by the CIA. If you haven't already seen it, John Cole's "There Better Be a Helluva Lot of Ticks Left In That Bomb" has some numbers.
So what is the latest tune Rush Limbaugh is singing?
[I]f somebody can be water-tortured [sic] six times a day, then it isn't torture.
How I wish I still believed in Hell.
[Added] Peggy Noonan isn't much better. It's worth watching the clip just to realize what a lifetime in the bubble will do to you. Sam Donaldson comes off okay, though, for a Villager.
David Barstow has won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting on the cozy relationship between television networks and "retired" military analysts; i.e., Pentagon propagandists.
Previous notice taken by me of Barstow's work, and links to the relevant articles, may be found starting here and here.
Twin sent a link to this video clip by email, surrounded by the following words.
Subject: Breath of Fresh Air
I honestly still can't get over what an improvement this is:
We're so damn lucky. Who would have thought we'd come out of the Bush/Cheney years like this?
Damn straight.
Just remembered: Saw this a while back, when Uncle Ebeneezer pointed me to an Ezra Klein gripe about the overuse of the word disarray when describing a political party that is in ... well, you got a better word?
Discussion mostly centered on long-winded, overly thought-out, one-by-one rejections of Ezra's proposed alternatives (oh, you KNOW I was happy as the proverbial pig), but there was an interesting tangent, too. Anonymous asked:
What's the deal with Ovaltine? The mug is round. The jar is round. They should call it Roundtine.
I never thought about that before, but yeah!
Bloix replied ...
Ovaltine was developed in Switzerland, where it is known by its original name, Ovomaltine (from ovum, Latin for "egg", and malt, originally its main ingredients).
Ovomaltine was exported to England in 1909; it was a misspelling in the trademark registration process that led to the name being truncated to Ovaltine in English-speaking markets.
... which, as you might have guessed, he was passing along from Wikipedia.
I should have been able to puzzle out the answer, but I read ahead before thinking about it. Anyway, thank you, Internets!
From The Economist's Democracy in America blog:
And don't even get me started on the muldoon holding the "Cut taxes not defense" sign. She (?) doubtless thinks the Earth is 4000 years old and evolution is a conspiracy to turn our children gay. Why wouldn't she think fighter planes grow on trees and soldiers march for free?
Cut defense. Not taxes. Cf.
(h/t: Alex Chafee, during today's PSFR Live Chat)
[Added] Also via the PSFR Live Chat, here is a palate cleanser, from Emily Stoneking.
Kerry Knudsen, lichen curator of the University of California, Riverside Herbarium, discovered the species in 2007 while doing a survey for lichen diversity on Santa Rosa Island in California.
"I named it Caloplaca obamae to show my appreciation for the president's support of science and science education," he said. "I made the final collections of C. obamae during the suspenseful final weeks of President Obama's campaign for the United States presidency."
I give it until midday Monday until the howling begins in earnest …
Of course this species was found in California!! Hitler liked moss, and so did Stalin!!! President of the fungUS hahahahah! No one ever named anything after Bush Reagan!!1! This proves all scientists are liberals, and therefore, GLOBAL WARMING IS A HOAX.
(h/t: Discoblog)
My post yesterday about Steve Schmidt, along with one from the HuffPo's Mark Nickolas, did not sit well with Mr. Bispo.
Schmidt called yesterday for the Republican Party to support same-sex marriage. Mr. Bispo did not like Nickolas's or my dubiousness about Schmidt's motivations. Mr. Bispo argues on behalf of Schmidt's history of sincerity on this issue with a fair amount of supporting documentation, and says, regarding me:
It's shame that I need to defend Schmidt from a liberal.
He adds that Nickolas and I should have done research about Schmidt's stance on this issue before mouthing off.
Points taken.
I would say in response, first, that I stand firmly behind my original hedging:
Of course, Steve Schmidt is right out of the Karl Rove mold, so for him, it's just as likely he only cares about this in the context of it being a winning or losing issue.
Emphasis added.
As to the question of research, eh. In a world of infinite charity toward all, yes. But given Schmidt's record of employers, one of whom (George W. Bush) ran for president in coordination with a vicious anti-gay marriage message that meshed with a multi-state ballot initiative to ban it (coordinated by Karl Rove), not to mention Schmidt's well-documented repugnant style during the past campaign, I'm not going to feel overwrought that I failed to consider the possibility that he's got his head on straight right concerning this one issue. Still, though, maybe he does. Mr. Bispo makes a good case, at least.
So, Mr. Schmidt, if you're reading this and Mr. Bispo is right about you, I apologize if I seemed dismissive of your sincerity on this issue in my last post, and I wish you the best of luck in continuing to push for support of same-sex marriage and in dealing with the haters on your own side.
I should also be say that I (like Nickolas) wrote in response to reports that you were planning to speak, not in response to what you said. In light of that, I am happy to point readers to what appears to be the full text of your delivered remarks: Look for the heading, "Steve Schmidt speech April 17, 2009 to Log Cabin Republicans," partway down the page on Box Turtle Bulletin.
In the ultimate sign that making TWC back down is a good move politically, Chuck Schumer is now trying to take credit for the whole thing.
-- DougJ/Balloon Juice
It's funny because it's true. Shoutout to Congressman Eric Massa. And boo-hiss to Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, whom I usually like.
If you care about your Internets, you should definitely read the whole thing, and follow the links within to the fine posts over at Fighting29th.com.
__________
[Added] And here is a good article in the NYT, linked to from one of Fighting29th's posts, comparing Japanese and American broadband network upgrades. We are falling behind, people.
And don't let the glibertarians and the telcos' Astroturf stooges snow you about the "free market." In most places in the US, the local ISP situation is at best a duopoly; in many places, it is a monopoly. There is little or no choice for consumers. As the article makes clear, the telcos are already making bank by selling Internet access. Their bleating about upgrade costs to handle increased and faster traffic are largely the sort of stuff that comes out of the rear end of a bull.
The article mentions something else I have heard on the tech podcasts I listen to: another reason the cable companies in particular are dragging their feet on upgrading their networks, not to mention trying to cap how much their customers can download, is that a faster Internet means more people watching TV online, which means more people canceling their cable TV service. Not to go all SOCIALIST!!!1! on you, but when the company that controls the pipes is also in the business of selling content, especially when it's the only game in town, it's time to think long and hard about the wisdom of letting them do both.
It seems my irritation with Mike Allen as GOP mouthpiece was not unique.
Start with Tim F. at Balloon Juice. See also Andrew Sullivan and the mighty Glennzilla.
... since I was mesmerized and had to tear myself away, but here it is: BallDroppings.
More creations from Josh Nimoy are available. I dare not.
(h/t: uncle ebeneezer)
