Was asked to comment on net neutrality, so I'll go ahead and do that, I promise this won't turn into a twenty part series on the LOST treaty, but I'll offer some thoughts. 

I tend to be leery of net neutrality simply because I'm real squeamish when it comes to allowing government to dictate what private industry can and can't do in conducting their business.  The last thing I want is the government overseeing the intarwebz, especially the idjit brigade that runs the FCC.  Now, I don't have any issue with ISPs imposing net neutrality on themselves as internal company policy, I think that's commendable, and I'd be supportive of ISPs and services that did that.  Google and Verizon have sort of been laying out a compromise of sorts to try and address net neutrality...I think this is a good and healthy thing, if it's something they do internally as part of a trade agreement type deal, not as some screwball Congress/corporate lawmaking venture that turns into a giant bureaucratic clusterfuck that leaves us poorer and less free.

Beyond that, I'm just not seeing signs of ISPs squashing content they don't like on much of a regular basis, if anything, the content on the intarwebs continues to grow rapidly.  I also think that as soon as an ISP got too power-hungry or Nannyified, they'd see huge losses in customers, it'd be like a cable provider going, 'uh, hey, yeah, we're gonna take away 2/3rds of your channels because these are channels we don't like...cool?'  Not cool, you'd go find another cable provider or look at alternatives.  People are used to doing whatever the fuck they want on the intarwebs, and God help the poor bastard that says NO.  People were never used to having whatever they wanted available when they wanted with TV and radio, the regulations were largely there from the beginning.  It just won't go well for them to get heavy-handed with controlling content, there'd be an instant, vicious backlash.  FAIL gets one of two things on the intarwebs, copious amounts of hate or brutal mockery...ask AOL.

I really do like Reason TV's segment on net neutrality, I think it's worth a watch,

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 10:51 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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Folks on this blog and elsewhere disagreed pretty strongly about the Delaware Senate primary. Good folks. People who are my [pretend internet] friends. But there's a line. And Pat Buchanan has taken a giant crap on that line.

First, he (fairly) criticized Mike Castle's record while managing to turn a blind eye to any deficiencies of O'Donnell's that might have fueled the "hysteria and nastiness" from Rove, et al. (How terribly incomplete and unoriginal.)

Buchanan then launched into his own hysterical, nasty, and paranoid drivel about the Neocons lying us into Iraq. Behold, the inane tripe of Patrick J. Buchanan:

O’Donnell’s conservative convictions and Castle’s social liberalism mean nothing to them.
They are about power and all that goes with it.

And that raises a question too long put off.

What is the Republican establishment going to do, what are the neoconservatives going to do, if returned to power?

Are not these the same people who assisted George W. Bush in stampeding the nation into an unnecessary war that got 4,400 Americans killed to strip Saddam Hussein of weapons he did not have?

Are these not the same people who misled or deceived us about Iraq’s role in 9/11?

[***snip***]

Are not the National Review and Weekly Standard scribblers and their neocon comrades of the mainstream media not now drumming up another war for Americans to fight, against Iran?

Really, Pat? You're going to carry water for Ye Olde Media and George Soros, with this bullshit about lying us into war? Do you really think so little of Dubya and crew that they would send our men and women into certain death for no apparent reason?  Do you really think so little of Colin Powell, who to this day maintains that the evidence against Iraq, however tragically flawed, was compelling and not fabricated?

And that's really the problem with the whole "neocon" analysis. There's no real motivation for the Iraq war aside from weapons and terrorism ties.  And no, nobody said anything about 9/11 and Iraq.  (There were, however, well-documented ties to Al Qaeda -- just not 9/11 specifically, as countless news interviewers forced just about every administration official to say on the record.)

Patrick Buchanan is the author, most recently, of Churchill, Hitler, and ‘The Unnecessary War,’ now available in paperback.

Posted by: JoeCollins at 10:30 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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I'll start off by saying normally I'd have a preferred candidate, but I don't really have one, if I had to pick, I'd probably say O'Donnell for no other reason than to dislodge an incumbent, shake shit up for the sake of shaking shit up and to kick the GOP leadership in the balls again. 

Look, this is exactly what happens when there is no functional party leadership, and there is no functional party leadership, oh, there are people holding positions, making statements and shifting money around, but they aren't leaders.  Leaders lead, and you can't lead if the people you're attempting to lead have zero faith and trust in you. 

There's a strong case to be made that Castle should be the guy, especially given that, as our friend and moronblogger-in-arms tmi3rd noted a few weeks ago on Twitter, Delaware is so blue it looks like a Smurf splatter flick, the question I guess becomes, is he in that acceptable range of RINOism, or has he reached that Linc Chafee/Scozzafava You know what, not worth it stage of RINOism?  Beyond that, there's no doubt that O'Donnell is a bit flaky and off. 

The problem is that the GOP leadership led the charge for Castle, because only the GOP leadership could get excited about a squish like him.  Anything that the GOP leadership willingly supports is going to automatically be suspect amongst the grassroots and Tea Partiers, even if the blind pigs of the GOP leadership did in fact find a truffle.  Those amongst us in the blogosphere and commentariat who are grinding their teeth over this Castle/O'Donnell thing need to chill the fuck out.  We're getting angry at the wrong people.

In a way I'm reacting to the slapfight going on between the Powerline guys, Mark Levin, Patterico and Dan Riehl.  One quote from Paul Mirengoff seems to really be the center of the shitstorm,

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 01:21 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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