McCain Rediscovers His Passion for Screwing Us with Bad Telecom Policy
The last time John McCain tried so hard to screw Americans with bad telecom policy, his close lobbyist escort on a telecom donor’s plane was offering to share a blankie with him.
But that bad telecom McCain is back in action, introducing a bill that would invite telecoms to have their way with the public toobz.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) introduced a bill in the Senate on Thursday that would effectively allow Internet service providers to slow down or block Internet content or applications of their choosing.
[snip]
McCain’s bill, the Internet Freedom Act, would block the Federal Communications Commission from making Net neutrality the law of the land.
Maybe McCain’s just the kind of guy who, once bought, stays bought. Or maybe he has returned to his pre-presidential campaign ways, badmouthing the influence peddlers of Washington DC while playing ball with those same influence peddlers.
But one thing’s for sure. McCain is fucking over the taxpayers who own the public airwaves with a virtually indefensible policy.
That photo is photoshopped, right? I think I recognize that McCain pose with his arms supposedly around George Bush. Or which is the original, and which was photoshopped?
Now that I’m back in AZ, I guess I better give McCain a piece of my mind.
Bob in AZ
McCain is convinced that Network neutrality rules includes a provision that will limit his Sunday TV show appearances to once a month. Can’t have that now…
Yes. Watertiger photoshopped it back in the day.
Back in the day?? That was like a year ago….
Or maybe Cindy has been spending a lot of time in La Jolla lately and the Gluehorse needs some Ise for his old bones.
Sweet pic. Mcain loves Tattle Tels too
Shorter McCain: Get Off My LAN !!!
That McCain Integrity: Once Bought, He Stays Bought
Much like Cheney, Bush and the entire Republican Party, McCain simply refuses to accept the reality that HE IS A TOOTHLESS TIGER and irrelevant to getting legislation PASSED and that HIS opinions are MEANINGLESS. All Republicans can accomplish is trying to OBSTRUCT their betters, which is why they become more unpopular and more impotent by the day.
I’m sure that Elder Statesman McMaverick will be ruthlessly grilled on this very question
by our finest journalists during his multiple appearances on the Sunday talk shows.
As pissed as I am at Obama, imagine if this idiot were prez.
That’s the thought that gets me through the night.
I think he’s trying to get even with all the DFHs who voted for ‘that one’. Or his bosses are.
When your party is down to 20 percent of the voters, it’s probably a sign that you should stop digging your hole deeper. When your party’s approval rating is down to 20 percent, it’s a sign that you’re going in the wrong direction, and people are seeing you as the party of ‘who the f*ck are these guys?’
OT – they’re already picking replacements for Greg Craig.
Apparently
JackBob Bauer, what with being an expert intorturethe intersection of law and politics.http://whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/10/23/bob-bauer-lawyer-to-obama-and-democratic-party-eyed-as-new-white-house-counsel/
I actually like Bob Bauer. Was in a conference call with him back when the MI GOP was trying to SLAPP suit quiet reporting on their foreclosure-related caging.
That said, if they’re ousting him to put off closing Gitmo I won’t be happy.
But…but it’s CALLED The Internet Freedom Act. Doesn’t that mean it’s all about freedom and shit?
Shit, yes. Freedom, not so much.
How could you forget “No Child Left Behind,” “Blue Skies,” “Patriot Act,” “Homeland Security Act,” “Medicare Prescription Drug and Improvement,” and on and on. Tsk. Tsk.
The Rs do seem to have direct access to the Orwellian Naming Machine.
Actually, it’s full and complete name is the Internet FREEDOM TO LOOT, PILLAGE, SELL SWAPS AND DERIVATIVES ON ‘FIBER OPTIC FUTURES’ Act.
McCain just shortened it so it would be easier to Twitter, maybe?
I think in Orwell’s “1984” it was called “Newspeak”. I could be wrong about that though – been a while since I read it. But the Ministry of Peace was the War department and I believe the Ministry of Love was the Secret police.
Coincidentally, the Canadian regulator, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) came out with its net-neutrality framenwork this week:
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-657.htm
NOT a “worthwhile Canadian initiative”. It is a diappointing decision on many fronts. Essentially, the Commission has endorsed a complaint-driven regulation policy on “traffic management” issues. There are some good policy goals – disclosure requirements of traffic management policies, so that in theory consumers can choose providers that promote Net Neutrality. There is also an acknowledgement that throttling can violate the law in certain circumstances, although it may be only for “time sensitive” services like real time audio-video. The Commission has essentially OKd tiering of ISP service, like bit caps. The problem here is that if you sign up for a large bandwidth plan, you are essentially putting yourself on a list of bit-torrent abusing pirates that will be sought by content providers when Canada’s copyright reforms are finally completed.
Rather than regulating throttling, the CRTC has essentially OKd practices of ISPs if they are disclosed, as long as there are not any complaints from users. I think that the telecoms may be very happy to fight individual complaints of frustrated users and ISP resellers rather than proactively create practices that can withstand public scrutiny. As Ben Franklin said in a different context, we have (some) Net Neutrality in Canada, but only if consumers can keep it. I am not optimistic.
Craig bailed out by Amherst?
“The western Massachusetts university town of Amherst is mulling a resolution urging the Congress to release cleared Guantanamo Bay detainees into the United States and calling for the town to welcome those detainees into the community. . . .
“The United States has a long history of being a place of refuge and asylum for persecuted people. There’s nothing new about this,” said Gerry Weiss, one of the two selectmen supporting the resolution. “This is the tradition of the United States.” . . .
In briefing material supplied to the selectmen, the group said the resolution “asks our local community to look beyond the stereotype that all the men at Guantanamo are ‘terrorists,’ and instead to look at each man as a human being who deserves human rights and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.”
The WSJ called us wackos…
That’s an honor I’ll take…
From McCain’s Press Release:
What alarms me is that this issue is rearing its ugly head while so much bullshit needs to be cleaned up related to health care legislation and also to financial reform.
Plus, with this Orwellian title for his proposal, McCain shows that he either doesn’t know jack about telecomm, or else he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about being a corrupt, outdated courtier of the telecomm interests.
IMVHO, those of us who care about NN are going to get f*cking rolled if we amuse ourselves being smarmy about McCain on this one.
After all, the telecomms were surely counting on Toobz Stevens to outlaw NN once and for all in June 2006 and although it is not a popular view around some parts of Lefty Blogistan, I credit Harry Reid with using obscure Senate rules and procedures to delay and sideline the telecomm interests. Had Harry not played that one well, we’d be in a far more dreadful place than we are today.
Why do I make such an outlandish claim?
Let me open my much-thumbed copy of Nomi Prins’ “Other People’s Money” (2004): [p. 250] “After committing the world’s largest fraud**, WorldCom made the biggest getaway. Being the government’s top telecommunications partner helped; government contracts provided a significant source of revenue to WorldCom (though not enough to keep its poor and corrupt business model from bankruptcy). In 2001, WorldCom reported that $1.7 billion, or 8% of its revenue, came from state and federal government contracts. Indeed, without an entrenched position providing Internet and other data systems to Washington, D.C., WorldCom would have received more severe penalties from regulators. Because the government used the company, they weren’t particularly vigorous in prosecuting it. The government didn’t even find replacement companies after the fraud broke, something that continues to astonish me.
The WorldCom Government Markets Division is located in Vienna, Virginia,… and [at least as of 2004 was] manged my well-connected senior vice president Jerry Edgerton. Prior to joining WorldCom, Edgerton directed the federal operations group at Tymnet/McDonnell Douglas Network Systems Company. The division’s operation was shrouded in secrecy, according to other WorldCom workers. Insiders say that Ebbers mostly left it alone… It suffered no job cuts when WorldCom was scaling back its workforce.
It seemed like many in Washington departments enjoyed some kind of relationship with WorldCom, but the [DoD] tops the list. DoD contracts with WorldCom include^^ a $400 million, nine-year agreement with the Defense Information System Agency (DISA) adn a separate ten-year, $4 billion contract with the same agency to provide the federal government with circuits to carry information between the Asia-Pacific rim, South America, the Middle East, and the Carribean….”
Okay, there’s tons more in Prins’ book, or probably at any number of blogs, but that’s a long comment for this thread — although, I hope it is an informative comment.
I’d expect the telecomms to put the squeeze on all the GOPers, all of the Blue Dogs, and many other Dems in terms of ‘national security’. That may not happen in the public statements, but they’ll put the squeeze on staff and electeds over meals and in offices, I strongly suspect.
At the time the WorldCom, Enron, and related corruption was constipating US politics, the decrepit Toobz Stevens was sitting as Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. On Thursday, 22 October 2009, a joint statement by Sen. ‘Jay Rock(Solid)’ and Rep. Henry Waxman (of the House corollary) put up a joint statement on FCC Open Internet Rulemaking.
You’ll all be happy to know that
telecomm lobbyists whispering in the ears of staff and relatives ofKay Bailey Hutchinson is keeping an eye on things for the GOP votes.Energy and telecomm together run like two flows of a huge, strange river. Both technologies require ‘rights of way’ (for pipelines, for phone lines and cable) and both trace back to land use laws in their early, primordial phases. They originated in ‘common carrier’ rules applied to coaches in English Common Law.
So IMVHO the ‘netroots’ and some software interests have our work cut out for us trying to explain how Net Neutrality is fiscally, technologically, politically, educationally, socially, and economically the sane route forward.
I hope that I am wrong, but I fear that health care could end up looking like a toddler’s play leading up to what could be a brutally tough fight to implement sane Net Neutrality rules.
Here’s hoping that some shows invite Nomi Prins to help explain why the old telecomm financial models are absolutely ruinous — what McCain is advocating would make distance learning or K-20 online education programs (to say nothing of marketing cars, clothes, and music) economically impossible by 2016.
McCain doesn’t seem to get that he’s advocating for yet another WorldCom or Enron model. Kinda like “Telecomm: The Mavericky Palin Version”, eh?
John McCain makes my brain hurt.
Eeeeeeeeeeshhhhhhh!
** at least, up to 2002; this title is a bit dated.
^^ Reminder, this book was published in 2004
Um, that is not an either/or proposition rOTL; it is most certainly “and”. I will repeat this for the uninitiated, the only thing John McCain cares about is John McCain. That has always been the case, it will always be the case. He is one of the most craven narcissists to ever walk the face of the earth.
I love it when you cut to the chase, bmaz ;-)))
I wuz jus tryin’ ta be polite, doncha know.
Can you believe we’ve just been through an era where:
— Charles ‘Death Panels! Death Panels!!’ Grassley of the Tighty Whitey Scolding Brigade,
— Toobz ‘We Must Drill! Drill!! Drill!!!!!!!! In ANWR [and I have another vacation home in need of refurbishing]’ Stevens,
— James “I Am A Fine, Upright Son of The Family”
— John “I Am NOT A Narcissist, I am a Flyboy Cowboy Hero” McCain were running the Senate.
Oh, and I didn’t even include Frist, Shelby, Lott, Phil (and Wendy-Enron-Board-Member-Spouse) Gramm….
Okay, I can’t stand it.
Petro, please move over and lemme at that likker cabinet. I got more GOPer Senators in my brain right now than you do, so I have the much more urgent claim, m’dear…
Uff…
Are you Norweigan?
Uffta.
Not. Norwegian.
You are apparently unfamiliar with “Norwegian Jokes”?
I have friends (last names end with -sen, or -strom, or -son, or -dal) who have coffee table books about their heritages. Their ancestors came to Pacific NW for timber, fish, and land. Tough old buggers, for sure.
‘Norwegian jokes’ are kind of like ‘Norwegian wood’, I’m told.
Nada.
That’s the joke.
Or so they claim, deadpan.
I never get it.
Evidently, I’m too stupid to ‘get it.’
They always seem to find that entertaining.
Then I go, “uffta”.
Until they offer me some lefsa.
Then I gag.
God, they love the lefsa.
Gimme poutine anytime!
Anything made of potato will do! I loved lefsa as a kid. Usually with cinnamon sugar. There are some pretty funny Norwegian folks on NPR…
At least they’re not offering you lutefisk.
Yet.
If McCain knows anything about the internet, I’ll eat my hat. An unformed man if I have ever seen one. He also appears to have thinking problems.
Well, as Xeni pointed out on Rachel’s show last night, the telecoms have spent the last two years making sure Johnny Rotten stays bought.
McCain says net neutrality is a “government takeover” of the internet. I guess he doesn’t realize the internet was created by the government.
The reality is that giving up net neutrality will finish the corporate corruption of the internet.
Where does everyone go when a thread dies? Are you having secret meeting at the local Starbucks?
Pssst … down here … behind the Sofa, near the Likker cabinet.
Are the kids with you?
Nope … they went to party downtown.
darn it, you’re all alone. Get away from that likker cabinet.
Twain, there’s a new post at FDL. (And I would suggest you don’t play with Petrocelli…)
Word to the wise, Loo Hoo … *g*
I’m sitting all alone, pounding out the next motivational Bestseller.
Well, when are you going to finish up so we can buy it?
The first one is complete … looking for an Agent and working on the 2nd & 3rd manuscripts.
Keep your hands off the Red Mountain. That’s mine.
I just spent a bit of bandwidth on this very topic, but I will say we had a very recent sample of how this Repugnant view of the Internet Freedom Act (Repugs are great at ironic titling, right? Remember the Crusade for Peace and Freedom Forever Brigade was the nomenclature for the Iraqui invasion) works out on the cold hard ground.
Until they were caught at it and embarrassed in the current debate, AT&T was blocking Skype from their wireless connections. That means you couldn’t use that implement to video conference on your iPhone. The phoney company did that because they had something else they wanted to sell you. There’s your Internet Freedom!
Every Repugnant in a suit recalls fondly the thrilling days of yesteryear, when Rockefeller could stamp out any potential rival to Standard Oil by buying up all the railroads and blocking enemy lines and trains. It was called, I do believe, the Forever Fatuous Oil Freedom For All initiative.
Wow, that’s especially interesting for my household; the spouse does a lot of education-related stuff and local school districts have deep budget cuts, and our state higher ed was cut $700 million this biennium.
Conferences have attendees still — paying out of their own pockets in order to keep up with (technical, legal, research-related) changes and exchange info.
If it weren’t for Skype bringing the costs of communicating down, some of those folks and their educational work would be sliding backward rapidly. As is, they’re still sliding backward but at least it slows the momentum.
Conferences/Inservice are mandated. Not sure if it’s NCLB or State of CA, but funding is tied to this. It does make sense, except that nobody can afford to hire real experts so they trade “experts” between the local districts or use “experts” who peddle textbooks.
Spouse not a textbook shill, trust me!
But to do their jobs, people have to pick up the latest, greatest… and with their district budgets cut, they’re finding creative ways to conference. Not good for the hotel industry, which has always counted on these biannual, annual, and quarterly confabs as a basic, barely-paying (but still at least filling the rooms up) revenue stream.
This year, the local district hired about 10 new hires. Usually, they hire around 100. And usually, a bunch of people retire – not this year! (No one can afford to retire this year.)
Yeah, the teachers are now required to spend their own money to remain current on the latest-greatest so they can keep their jobs. (From which they cannot afford to retire.)
Silver lining alert, Loo Hoo!
John McCain could never cut it as a teacher or professor — he doesn’t have a good enough sense of humor, and he takes himself waaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy too seriously ;-))
I believe you when you say your hubby wouldn’t be anyone’s shill, rOTL! Are you enjoying your retirement??
I just retired from teaching in June and still can’t stop pinching myself!
♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫
Retire?
Me?!!
Dream on…!
Nope.
Not retired.
I just come hang out here b/c EW is a genius and the commenters are all brilliant and sometimes damn funny.
Except for bmaz, of course.
;-))
Damn cougars. I was gonna give ya a pass because you were beating up on McCain – and that is always good – but now yer in trouble!!
So if I beat up on McCain a bit more, will I get outta the doghouse…?
Misread. I see you’re talking about the professionals.
OT–
The train is now complete. The straight talk express is now the corrupt corporate cash caboose.
Be sure to see Teddy’s seminal on this.
McCain Rediscovers His Passion for Screwing
Uswith Bad Telecom PolicyThere, fixed.
Here’s my question. McCain is a Republican correct? The Democrats are the majority party correct? So, why should we be concerned about some fucking Republican introducing ANY legislation? They can introduce all the stupid legislation they want. It can go NO where unless the majority party allows it correct?
Big Fucking Deal.
Ah.
Last comment before bmaz knocks my arse outta here for blogwhoring…
Here’s the problem:
1. He’s clueless.
2. He’s a total narcissist.
3. He’s the man who claimed Sarah Palin was ‘qualified to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency’.
4. Bmaz had the goods on the sonuffabitch going back decades.
But here’s the problem — despite the fact that he’s effing clueless, despite the fact that he’s in the minority, despite the fact that he’s basically covering the sleazy interests of the neocons and Free Marketeers — simply by his presence, by his length of time in D.C., he is able to spread lies.
Imagine the old West, when there were despicable people who handed out blankets known to have been exposed to fevers or diseases — then they handed out those blankets to native populations who had no immunities to those deadly bacteria and viruses. What happened?
Mass exposure to bad diseases, in the guise of a ‘comforting blanket’ of soft wool, proved deadly.
Well, think of McCain as a kind of political blanket-bringer.
How many in the US population have the information that they need to be ‘immunized’ from the kinds of lies that McCain is deliberately, daily spewing out?
This is like a socially toxic activity, what McCain is engaging in.
This man is DELIBERATELY allowing his name and so-called reputation to be used to pass the information equivalent of ‘bacteria’ and ‘viruses’: brazen lies, outright deceptions, confusions that confound.
THAT’S why he’s a narcissistic creep.
No one of integrity would act that way.
Yet look at the cynicism of what he’s doing — he’s as bad as those old-time creeps who gave Indians deadly blankets so that they could steal their land.
He’s behaving like a liar, a thief, a swindler, and he needs to be exposed as such.
Brilliant!
McCain wants to be idolized by the Rethugs, for resurrecting the party brand and he will sell his soul once more to this end.
I understand your points and I agree with them. The only thing is McCain is a little peckerhead and I am all for him having his fun. Now it is time for the Senate Majority Leader to smack him up side of his head and tell him to go to the corner an STFU.
Reid will never do this cuz it’d make his BFFAE HoJo, pout.
I know but it is something to dream about. I think back to the days of LBJ and real leaders in Congress and wonder what it would be like to see that again. Well I guess when the Dems have 85 senators Harry will be able to get something done.
I do waver between being collassally peeved at Reid (speaking as an onlooker from the farthest realms of the Peanut Gallery), and then marveling at having to deal with GWBush and Cheney.
If nothing else, Reid appears to know how to keep his cards close to the vest and keep his voice verrrrrryyyyy carrrrrefully modulated. Those would have been essential strategies in dealing with the appalling Bush and diabolical Cheney.
I don’t see a lot of ‘spark’, but I suspect that there are plenty of things we do not know. (Okay, that comment outta send bmaz right through the roof. Heh. Gooooooo Cougs!!)
Cougs are getting their ass kicked by Cal 28-3 at half.
Reid ain’t gonna do it because it would require actually making a decision.
He’d have real problems if he walked into an outhouse with two holes.
As in all political decisions, Reid would choose the one on the right.
Smack him upside his peckerhead!!! I like!
My wife and I were talking today as we were in the car listening to a rerun of Thom Hartman on Sirius Left and I was remarking how this country has been overrun by teh stoopids. I don’t know if there is anything we can do remove teh stoopid from these people. We will need some sort of hospital they can be sent to in order to have some sort of stoopid removal operation and we haven’t invented it yet.
That is some sort of research that we could have been working on during the past 8 years except the stoopids were running the country and wouldn’t have allowed this important research.
The reason most pioneers moved out west is because they were a failure back east. That might apply in McCain’s case, plus the availability of a gullible but rich heiress.
Bob in AZ
Ouch, what a meanie!
Some of them moved because they heard how beeeautiful it was out West.
I swear, my East Coast grandmother was afraid her daughter would be attacked by bears out here. This was the grandmother who arrived on a lovely airplane with an animal stole draped stylishly around her neck and lovely long white gloves on.
By the time she left, I think she rather admired some of the adventurous West Coasters she’d met.
I am ignoring bmaz’s SunDevilish insult @67.
We Cougars do not always expect our team to ‘win’ in traditional terms measured by a scoreboard. If the players get a good education and get to be part of a team and travel a bit, those are ‘wins’ that don’t show on a scoreboard. Plus, the games are a great excuse to eat junk food… also a ‘win’ of sorts.
Thus, the Coug Philosophy Of True Wins In Football.
An odd mix of the Stoic and the Epicurean.
Oh brother; have heard it all now. Don’t worry, the Devils suck too.
When I was at Northwestern during their then-NCAA-recordsetting run of consecutive losses, the student section had a number of cheers suitable for use when we were down by five or six touchdowns against teams like Michigan and Ohio State. One of the favorites was “That’s all right, that’s OK — You’re gonna work for us someday!”
I understand the “alternative” definition of “win” to which you refer.
Out here in the Pac-10 losing is losing and it just sucks. And we won’t be working for any of those slowpoke 3 yard and cloud of dust folks in the Big-10 either.
McCain gets more money from the telcos than any other politician. Tell him to give it back: http://act.ly/pw
Marci, this is why someone should make a law that prevents old men from making laws.
So, what did you have against Teddy Kennedy?
Bob in AZ
He was too nice to McCain?
Good point, dammit.
OK, maybe just the dumb ones.
McCain is fucking over the taxpayers.
…and repeat:
The Republican Party is fucking over the taxpayers.
That’s it in a nutshell. I could say that Blue Dogs & ConservaDems are in the same class as Republicanism, but that might seem to excuse the Beltway intramural protection racket, extended to include others from time to time who may be far more progressive (and much beloved, like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. What’s up with that?)
Would it be too extreme to erect a guillotine on the D.C. Mall as a subtle reminder of who pays them, who elects them and who they serve?
Let THEM eat cake!
Hey! The old fart is pissed He didn’t win and went back to the Senate with a deep burn inside him. If You watch His eyes You can see it. So what better way to let it out than to cause as much trouble as He can.
If You think How bad He being our President could have been, think if He died in office Sara Palin would be our president.
He might have suspended His presidency to fix the healthcare or some other problem.
If She got in can You picture Her getting all mavericky over us even wanting Healthcare. Maybe instead of Bo the Dog we would have mooses running around the white house so she would feel at home. We might have to pay to have snow trucked in so they could ride snowmobiles around the yard.
I suppose they could keep up their fishing skills in the Potomac.
Yea it could have been alot worse. We were spared for a couple more years.
By 2012 we’ll all be so fed up with the Dems, we’ll end up with Palin Huckleberry, Romney or some other loony tune so enjoy while You can, for to morrow You may die.