Anyone watching? Any liveblogging worth noting, or do we no longer do that now that twitter exists?
Archives for February 2015
Net Neutrality Passes
On a party line vote:
The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to regulate broadband Internet service as a public utility, a milestone in regulating high-speed Internet service into American homes.
The new rules, approved 3 to 2 along party lines, are intended to ensure that no content is blocked and that the Internet is not divided into pay-to-play fast lanes for Internet and media companies that can afford it and slow lanes for everyone else. Those prohibitions are hallmarks of the net neutrality concept.
Mobile data service for smartphones and tablets is being placed under the new rules. The order also includes provisions to protect consumer privacy and to ensure Internet service is available for people with disabilities and in remote areas.
Continue reading the main storyBut the new rules are an à la carte version of Title II, adopting some provisions and shunning others. The F.C.C. will not get involved in pricing decisions or the engineering decisions companies make in managing their networks.
Sounds like a win.
White Shaming? Seriously?
A new term is now being introduced and it continues to make it difficult to have a real conversation about race. It’s called “white shaming“:
“The phenomenon of white liberal guilt has long been understood and discussed — we are now moving to the next inevitable phase of the discussion: white shaming. The shamelessness with which white shaming is engaged in by many of these liberals telegraphs the extent to which they actually have absolutely no interest in fixing the problems that exist in modern American race relations.”
It is also ridiculous, as explained by Pia Glenn:
Nope. No reasonable, intelligent, “potentially receptive” liberal black people I know of are solely looking for white people to apologize for being white. That’s ridiculous, and, in fact, when it has happened, I say as much. I’m often met with a well-intentioned white person replying to something I’ve said or written by offering a humble “I’m sorry I’m white,” steeped in the tears of white guilt like so much Earl Grey. You and I can agree on the inappropriateness of such an apology, so why would any reasonable liberal desire that?
But hey folks, the #racewar is coming so we should all get ready, right?
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It’s Both Who He Is And What He Wants
I wasn’t aware that Max Boot was still in the game (and writing for Time Magazine no less) until Zandardad emailed me Boot’s article this morning asking for my opinion.
Guess what Max Boot wants?
Back in 2007–08, when al-Qaeda in Iraq, ISIS’s precursor, was pushed out of the Sunni-dominated northwest of Iraq, it was by Sunni tribal fighters working in conjunction with American troops. To inflict serious setbacks on ISIS today will require resurrecting that successful coalition rather than flatly refusing, as Obama has done, to put any “boots on the ground.”
It is in America’s interest to send as few troops as possible into harm’s way and to get our allies to do as much of the fighting as possible. But sending only 3,000 troops and essentially prohibiting them from leaving base, as Obama has done, is a recipe for ineffectiveness. If we’re going to have any impact on the fight against ISIS, we need to take off our self-imposed shackles.
It’s hard to know now what commitment may be necessary, which is why it’s vital not to pass an Authorization for the Use of Military Force that would prohibit “enduring offensive ground combat operations.” It is folly to tell ISIS in advance that it has nothing to fear from the best ground troops on the planet.
Credible estimates of how many troops we should send range from 10,000 to 25,000. Just as important as the troop numbers are the rules of engagement under which they operate. It is imperative that U.S. advisers and joint tactical air controllers be able to operate on the front lines with the local troops they support. This was the formula that made possible the rapid overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001.
“But Zandar,” you may ask, “isn’t Max Boot one of the leading voices that pushed for all-out ground war in Iraq while writing op-eds for the NY Times and helped paved the way for the decade plus and trillion plus we spent there? Why is he still writing articles for Time Magazine, and why is he advocating the same, open-ended Permawar strategy from 2002?”
Good questions. The answer of course is neocons can’t be discredited, just the wars they want the rest of us to fight. And it’s always the rest of us who pay the price. This time won’t be any different either, is my guess.
The Spirit Is Willing But The Orange Is Weak
Team WIN THE MORNING on Orange vs. Turtle and how it’s all Obama’s fault.
The Senate majority and minority leaders cut a deal that did not have Boehner’s blessing, sources say, and now the speaker is weighing whether to go down without a fight. House Republican leaders are strongly considering amending the Senate’s “clean” DHS funding bill and dumping it back on McConnell’s doorstep. That would complicate the fraught negotiations on the eve of a funding deadline for the domestic security agency and illustrate a new level of dissonance between the top two Republican leaders, according to multiple lawmakers and aides involved in the deliberations.
The discussions on whether to accept a Senate plan, which would fund DHS through September and allow President Barack Obama’s immigration policies to stand, are still in their early phases. And Boehner may ultimately back down if he runs out of time. But the fact that Boehner is initially distancing himself from the emerging bipartisan Senate deal underscores his conundrum — and the stiff challenge confronting the new Republican Congress in attempting to appease tea party conservatives and an uncompromising White House.
Please note that Republicans are “cutting a deal” but the White House is “uncompromising”. Even when GOP petulance blows up in their faces and puts the country in danger, the Village is forever wired in favor of the Republican party, and it always will be.
Making Boehner’s plight more challenging is the uncompromising position of Senate Democrats and the White House. Reid (D-Nev.) has said his caucus would not accept any changes to the Senate’s proposed standalone bill to fund DHS, which is expected to be approved by that chamber imminently.
Orange Julius is the real victim here of mean old Harry Reid and mean old Barack Obama.
Jesus wept. You’d never know that this whole idiotic mess was a direct result of Republicans willing to destroy the government over executive actions involving immigration enforcement that Reagan, Poppy Bush, and Dubya all took in the past, actions that WIN THE MORNING describes as “unilateral”. (They’re executive orders, guys. By definition they are unilateral.)
But it wouldn’t be complete without Tire Swinging:
Emerging from a tense closed-door Senate GOP lunch, Republican senators signaled they were ready to move on from a fight that has paralyzed the new GOP Congress in just its second month in power.
“There are some that object,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), “but I hope that we have convinced them that this is not a good idea — right now — to shut down the Department of Homeland Security.”
McCain, ever the voice of moderate reason.
The Spirit Is Willing But The Orange Is WeakPost + Comments (108)
Gump O’Reilly
Gawker speculates that Fox News is backing off its defense of Bill O’Reilly as more evidence comes to light that O’Reilly lied about being on the scene of so many world-shaking events. I’m not so sure; O’Reilly is their top cash cow, so they’ll keep him off the spit as long as possible.
But as Fox New’s experiment with Glenn Beck proved, it is possible for even a prodigious moneymaker to become so ridiculous that he threatens to blow the network’s “news organization” cover. That’s the real danger to Murdoch Inc. media properties — not that their credibility will be diminished with their audience of elderly rage-o-holics but that the corporate media hacks who do “straight” news will stop pretending Fox News is a legit colleague.
And if that happens, who knows? Maybe corporate media entities will stop treating anti-science lunacy and political nihilism as just another valid viewpoint that deserves a fair hearing.
Late Night Creeping Zombies Open Thread
Being a shouty conservative is good PR. Being a liberal is a structural disadvantage. pic.twitter.com/l5Z2GAcHIa
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) February 23, 2015
Stale leftovers, and yet: This is the kind of pervasive media bias we need to be hyper-aware about as the 2016 primaries ramp up. As Tom Scocca explains to Gawker, “Politico’s Dylan Byers Works for Fox News PR“:
Dylan Byers, the dumbest media reporter alive, has typed up some thoughts at The Politico about, as his headline puts it, “Why the Bill O’Reilly charges aren’t sticking.” Aren’t they? Or at least, isn’t their “sticking” or not “sticking” in some way related to the work of a media desk such as The Politico‘s?…
The reason why Brian Williams got into deep trouble for lying about his war experience while Bill O’Reilly hasn’t is that Williams and O’Reilly have different jobs, for different employers. Brian Williams was paid to sit in front of a TV camera and give viewers an ostensibly neutral, agreeable account of current events. When people began disagreeing with Brian Williams about his presentation of facts, loudly and in public, it hurt his ability to perform those duties for NBC.
Bill O’Reilly is paid to go on television for Fox News and say things that get the viewers upset, even if those things are false or nonsensical. So what if his experience in the Falklands war was bogus? So is his experience in the War on Christmas. The fact that people are calling him dishonest simply proves, from Fox’s point of view, that he’s doing his job.
Thus the network maintains a political campaign’s approach to controversy—where NBC wants to make trouble go away, Fox News wants to use trouble to promote itself. Instead of apologizing or investigating, the network counter-spins as hard as it can. You say Bill O’Reilly lied about being in a war zone; Fox says you’re lying about the meaning of “in” and “war” and “zone.”
And it works. Byers blames Mother Jones for coming after O’Reilly with a story that “could be argued away on semantics”—argued away, that is, if you are trying to argue semantics with someone as dull-witted as Dylan Byers…