(no subject)

Why report news when creating it is so much more fulfilling?

I was watching my favorite Bubblegum Journalism channel - CNN - yesterday, when I saw a report indicating that Barack Obama’s strong lead has been diminishing while he has focused the past week on foreign affairs. The key data point put forth as evidence was Obama tanking in the polls in Minnesota. According to the story, his 17 point lead from June had shrunk to only 2 points.

I found this a curious development, even for a state that elected Jesse Ventura to its highest post, so I thought I’d look at the polling data. A good source for polling data is RealClearPolitics.com (RCP), a site that does a nice job of providing daily updates of all kinds of polls. They track national polling and also state-by-state polling of the presidential race. They show individual poll results, and then also provide the “RCP Average” of a selection of recent polls, to give what hopefully is an accurate ongoing snapshot. Turns out, CNN has been conveniently cherry-picking poll results.

...

Are we seeing a pattern here?

What about the critical state of Florida? CNN paints it red on the basis of an ARG poll dated 7/21 giving McCain a 2 point edge. The RCP Average for Florida reveals a tie. The most recent Rasmussen poll (7/22) shows Obama at +2. The most recent Quinnipiac (6/16) shows Obama at +4. To be fair, the RCP site is not yet showing the most recent ARG poll cited by CNN, and only shows ARG’s poll from June which had Obama at +5. The question this begs is: why does CNN have the most up to date polling only when it favors McCain? Why does CNN ignore more recent polling only when that polling favors Obama?

What about Indiana? This is another close race that needs an honest analysis. CNN paints Indiana red on the basis of a poll done in APRIL by the South Bend Tribune (a journalistic juggernaut?) giving McCain an 8 point lead. Yet the RCP Average for Indiana is Obama +0.5. The surveys used in that average include the poll cited by CNN, but also three other polls, all of which give Obama an edge, by +8, +1, and +1.

What about New Mexico? Here, CNN simply punts, stating “No Polling Information Available”. RCP gives eleven different polls conducted by two pollsters (SurveyUSA and Rasmussen). The most recent 5 polls, dating back to May, give Obama +6, +3, +8, +0 (tie), and +9, respectively. Why could The Most Trusted Name in News not find these polls as easily as I could?
All of these examples show CNN identifying states as red where the preponderance of polling suggests they should be blue (or neutral in the case of Florida). Are there counter-examples where CNN reported a state as blue when RCP data suggest it should really be red? No, there is not a single such example. Assuming CNN is not politically biased, this evidence suggests they are trying to help the underdog in order to keep the story as “hot” as possible. This is news creation, not news reporting. It is sensationalism, not journalism.

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Friday’s House Judiciary Hearing on Impeachment: A Victory and a Challenge

The dramatic hearing on presidential crimes and abuses of power held on Friday by the House Judiciary Committee was both a staged farce, and at the same time, a powerful demonstration of the power of a grassroots movement in defense of the Constitution. It was at once both testimony to the cowardice and self-inflicted impotence of Congress and of the Democratic Party that technically controls that body, and to the enormity of the damage that has been wrought to the nation’s democracy by two aspiring tyrants in the White House.

As Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the committee, made clear more than once during the six-hour session, this was “not an impeachment hearing, however much many in the audience might wish it to be.” He might well have added that he himself was not the fierce defender of the Constitution and of the authority of Congress that he once was before gaining control of the Judiciary Committee, however much his constituents, his wife, and Americans across the country might wish him to be.

At the same time, while the hearing was strictly limited to the most superficial airing of Bush administration crimes and misdemeanors, the fact that the session — technically an argument in defense of 36 articles of impeachment filed in the House over the past several months by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) — was nonetheless a major victory for the impeachment movement. It happened because earlier in the month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has sworn since taking control of the House in November 2006, that impeachment would be “off the table” during the 110th Congress, called a hasty meeting with Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Rep. Conyers, and Rep. Kucinich, and called for such a limited hearing.

It was no coincidence that shortly before Pelosi’s backdown, peace activist and Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan announced that her campaign had collected well over the 10,000 signatures necessary to qualify for listing on the ballot as an independent candidate for Congress against Pelosi in the Speaker’s home district in San Francisco. Sheehan has been an outspoken advocate of impeaching both Bush and Cheney. “Pelosi is trying to throw a bone to her constituents by allowing a hearing on impeachment,” said Sheehan, who came to Washington, DC to attend. “It’s just like her finally stating publicly that Bush’s presidency is a failure — something it has taken her two years to come to, but which we’ve been saying for years.”

So determined were Pelosi and Conyers to limit the scope and intensity of the hearing that they acceded to a call for Republicans on the Judiciary Committee to adhere to Thomas Jefferson’s Rules of the House, which prohibit any derogatory comments about the President, which was interpreted by Chairman Conyers as meaning no one, including witnesses or members of the committee, could suggest that Bush had lied or deceived anyone. Since a number of Rep. Kucinich’s proposed articles of impeachment specifically charge the president with lying to Congress and the American People, this made for some comic moments, with witness Bruce Fein, a former assistant attorney general under former President Ronald Reagan, to say he would reference his listing of crimes to the “resident” of the White House.

...

Conyers also acquiesced in a Republican effort to minimize public monitoring and involvement in the hearing, allowing the minority party to fill most of the available seats in the hearing room with office staffers who showed little interest in the proceedings. Only a few dozen of the hundreds of pro-impeachment activists who had come to the Rayburn Office Building at 7 am in order to get seats in the Judiciary Committee hearing room were allowed in, with the rest having to remain in the hall or go to two remote “overflow” rooms to watch the proceedings on a TV hookup. Conyers also went along with a call by Republican members of the committee to have some of those who did make it into the hearing ejected simply for wearing buttons on their shirts calling for impeachment (the Republican members referred to these as “signs”), though such small personal tokens are routinely allowed in congressional hearing rooms.

It was clear that this was to be a tightly controlled and strictly limited hearing.

It was also clear that it was intended to go nowhere.

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Link to Impeachment Hearing Videos on Youtube

Quite.

Britainm says thatthe USA cannot be trusted not to torture

In Britain, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons has just issued its Human Rights Annual Report (.pdf). It concluded that America's word can no longer be trusted when it comes to claims about torture, rendition and human rights abuses. From The Guardian yesterday:

Britain can no longer believe what Americans tell us about torture, an MPs' report to be published today claims. . . . In a damning criticism of US integrity, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said ministers should no longer take at face value statements from senior politicians, including George Bush, that America does not resort to torture in the light of the CIA admitting it used "waterboarding". The interrogation technique was unreservedly condemned by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said it amounted to torture.
A change in approach would have implications for extradition of prisoners to the US, especially in terror or security cases, as the UK has signed the UN convention which bars sending individuals to nations where they are at risk of being tortured. . . .
Today's committee report said there were "serious implications" of the striking inconsistencies between British ministers continuing to believe the Bush administration when it denies using torture. "The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future," said the committee. "We also recommend that the government should immediately carry out an exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques on the basis of such information as is publicly available or which can be supplied by the US."

The BBC noted that the report also concluded that the British Government must not trust the word of the U.S. Government in light of prior deceit with regard to rendition:

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So much for bringing the light of freedom and democracy to Arab nations everywhere...

So now Obama is apparently too slim to be President? UPDATED

First he was too elitist. Now he is apparently too slim. Seriously.

From The Wall Street Journal:

But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

The candidate has been criticized by opponents for appearing elitist or out of touch with average Americans. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted in July shows Sen. Obama still lags behind Republican John McCain among white men and suburban women who say they can't relate to his background or perceived values.

...

Sen. Obama drew cringes on a campaign stop in Adel, Iowa, in July 2007, when he asked a crowd of farmers: "Anybody gone into a Whole Foods lately and seen what they charge for arugula?"*** The upscale supermarket specializing in organic food doesn't have a single store in Iowa.

Lately, Sen. Obama is more careful. On a campaign stop in Lebanon, Mo., on Wednesday, Sen. Obama visited with voters at Bell's Diner and promptly announced "Well, I've had lunch today but I'm thinking maybe there is some pie."

He settled on fried chicken and told the crowd he's become a junk-food lover. "The healthy people, we'll give them the breasts," he told the waitress. "I'll eat the wings."

Struggles with weight-loss, on the other hand, can make a candidate seem more human. Some aides winced when footage of a sweat-drenched Mr. Clinton jogging into a McDonald's in Little Rock, Ark., aired ahead of the 1992 campaign. But the footage is widely believed to have helped the then-governor of Arkansas connect to voters in conservative-leaning states like Georgia and Tennessee, which eluded Democrats in 2000 and 2004. These states have a statistically higher number of overweight people than Democratic strongholds.

***From Media Matters :

In a section headlined "The Arugula Moment," the August 23 edition of Glenn Beck's daily email newsletter stated that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) "was in Iowa talking to some farmers and tried on some of his 'relating to farm people' material. 'Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?' the Senator said. 'I mean, they're charging a lot of money for this stuff.' " The newsletter linked to a recent Newsweek article describing the incident and went on to assert, "It would have been a total home run for the Senator if it weren't for the fact that there are no Whole Foods stores in Iowa and arugula is not even grown in the state."
In fact, arugula is grown by local farms in Iowa and is widely available in stores throughout the state, including Cleverly Farms in Mingo, Iowa, and Mariposa Farms in Grinnell, Iowa. Moreover, vendors at numerous farmers markets, including the Davenport Farmer's Market and the Ames Farmers' Market, sell arugula directly from farms to consumers. Several Iowa grocery stores also carry arugula; the website of Hy-Vee, a large grocery chain headquartered in, and with four stores in, West Des Moines, Iowa -- approximately 22 miles from Adel, Iowa, where Obama made his arugula remark -- offers tips on cleaning and serving arugula, as well as several recipes featuring it.

Right then. So according to this article, Americans are so goddamn dumb that they might vote for a slim guy for President of teh United States. Right.

EDIT: Except that, Hullabaloo does a little research and finds:

President George W. Bush rode with cycling superstar Lance Armstrong on Saturday, August 20, 2005.

The seven-time Tour de France champion joined the president for a two-hour, 17-mile trek through the canyons and river-crossings of Bush's 1,600-acre Crawford, Texas ranch. The two only rested for ten minutes during the ride.

George W. Bush, 59, took up mountain biking after a knee injury forced him to give up jogging a couple of years ago.

He's described by his doctors in his annual physical as being in "superior" condition for a man his age.

He participates in a six-day-a-week workout regimen and showed his heart rate monitor to reporters who rode with him. The monitor showed he burned 1,493 calories in the prior 17-mile ride that also lasted two hours.

AND

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gets up at 4:30 in the morning to exercise. She set up a mini gym in her apartment with a stationary bicycle and an elliptical machine.

PLUS

Earlier this year, an airplane wandered into restricted Washington, D.C., air space. Bush, we learned, was bicycling in Maryland. In 2001, a gunman fired shots at the White House. Bush was inside exercising. When planes struck the World Trade Center in 2001, Bush was reading to schoolchildren, but that morning he had gone for a long run with a reporter. Either this is a series of coincidences or Bush spends an enormous amount of time working out.

But Pres. Bush was a Real American with whom teh Average American could have a drink with. Its Okay If You Are A Republican, Writ Large.

Of race and sports

ESPN Poll exposes the reality of race in America

But back to polling…

ESPN Sportscenter and ESPN.com recently queried their audiences, ”Which is the better pair of current sports siblings?”

Two choices were offered: (See picture above)

A) Peyton and Eli Manning

B) Venus and Serena Williams

As of Saturday July 5, 62,293 votes had been tallied, 69% of which were for the Manning brothers. You should see where Mo’Kelly is going with this. Mo’Kelly won’t resort to cheap taunts of racism to support his points.

But…

Mo’Kelly will dare anyone to reasonably explain how the Manning brothers are anywhere NEAR the accomplishments of the Williams siblings, yet are considered “better” by more than a 2-1 ratio.

The following are the facts and are inarguable in nature.

Venus Williams –

16 Grand Slam titles (7 singles, 7 doubles, 2 mixed)

· 5 Wimbledon titles

· 7 runner up Grand Slam finishes

· 47 titles overall, (37 singles)

· 21 singles runner up finishes

· 482-115 for her entire career

Serena Williams

17 Grand Slam titles (7 singles, 8 doubles, 2 mixed)

· 2 Wimbledon titles

· 42 titles overall (31 singles)

· 382-81 for her entire career.

To put that in its proper tennis dominance perspective, imagine TWO Martina Navratilovas at the same kitchen table. The real question is if it weren’t for canceling each other out, might one or the other have ended up being the single greatest tennis player of all time?

Peyton Manning

1 Super Bowl win (1 total appearance overall)

Eli Manning

1 Super Bowl win (1 total appearance overall)

Mo’Kelly takes the ESPN poll MORE seriously than any CNN/Gallup poll in this instance, because the ESPN poll arguably more accurately reflects the HONESTY of Americans. More than 2/1 have greater "respect" for the accomplishments of the Manning brothers, even though they are nowhere close to the Williams exploits. No, Mo’Kelly won’t use the “R” word, but he will continue to cite statistical fact. Feel free to further “justify” it any way you want. Mo’Kelly will stick to the facts.

The fact of the matter is that the Mannings (although incredibly talented) haven't scratched the surface of the Williams greatness. Not to mention, prior to the Super Bowl (and even arguably afterwards) Eli Manning was considered a marginal QB at best. If all four athletes retire today...Only three make their respective Hall of Fames and guess who doesn't?

Remember, even Trent Dilfer has ONE Super Bowl ring as a quarterback. Try and name 'all' of the "marginal" tennis players who have won Wimbledon multiple times. Mo'Kelly will give you all week to field an answer.

Exactly.

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In which I am IN LOVE with Dylan Moran

Dylan Moran - Children are midget drunks! Via kittenhead

Dylan Moran on Arnold Schwarznegger (Like Totally)

Dylan Moran on Religion

Reasons why you must read the Orincus blog

You get first class journalism and the kind of analysis of current events that needs a Pulitzer Prize, at the least. This blog is a gem of the Netroots, and I am NOT exaggerating.


(Please note: While you are reading about all of this stuff? For those who watched that Monsanto documentary I had up some time ago? Keep in mind that free trade destroyed local economies by allowing cheap foods from the US to flood Latin American markets and thereby fuck the farmers over quite royally. )

Crossing teh Liine at Postville

It seems there was good reason to be concerned about the unusual handling of the cases of illegal immigrants caught up in last month's massive raids at Postville, Iowa -- where, as we noted at the time, immigrants not only were treated like cattle, the prosecutors engaged in questionable tactics as they processed these cases: deploying the unusual tactic of threatening the immigrants with felony identity-theft charges and sending them to prison when they either plead guilty or were quickly found guilty.
Last week there was a New York Times editorial directing us to an essay by Erik Camayd-Freixas, a Spanish-language court interpreter who was called in to help process detainees in the raid. It makes the devastating case that the Department of Homeland Security, in collusion with the Justice Department, is (in the words of one observer we heard from about this case) "basically gaming the Federal judiciary using existing law, rules and regulations to force the judiciary to act as a coerced agent of the executive to imprison undocumented workers, after which they are deported with a prison record."
As Camayd-Freixas makes clear, these workers were charged improperly with a crime of which they were innocent as the means of forcing them to plead guilty to a lesser charge, for which they then accepted five-month prison sentence.

As the NYT editorial says:

Under the old way of doing things, the workers, nearly all Guatemalans, would have been simply and swiftly deported. But in a twist of Dickensian cruelty, more than 260 were charged as serious criminals for using false Social Security numbers or residency papers, and most were sentenced to five months in prison.
What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.

You really need to read the entire piece by Camayd-Freixas.

...

Are here are snippets, or at least a hefty chunk, of that piece

Interprting After the Largest ICE raid in History: A Personal Account by Erik Camayd-Freixas, Ph.D.
Florida International University

To an impartial and informed layperson, the process resembled a lottery of justice: if the
Social Security number belonged to someone else, you were charged with identity theft and went
to jail; if by luck it was a vacant number, you would get only Social Security fraud and were
released for deportation. In this manner, out of 297 who were charged on time, 270 went to jail.
Bothered by the arbitrariness of that heavier charge, I went back to the ICE Search Warrant
Application (pp. 35-36), and what I found was astonishing. On February 20, 2008, ICE agents
received social security “no match” information for 737 employees, including 147 using
numbers confirmed by the SSA as invalid (never issued to a person) and 590 using valid SSNs,
“however the numbers did not match the name of the employee reported by Agriprocessors…”
“This analysis would not account for the possibility that a person may have falsely used the
identity of an actual person’s name and SSN.” “In my training and expertise, I know it is not
uncommon for aliens to purchase identity documents which include SSNs that match the name
assigned to the number.” Yet, ICE agents checked Accurint, the powerful identity database used
by law enforcement, and found that 983 employees that year had non-matching SSNs. Then they
conducted a search of the FTC Consumer Sentinel Network for reporting incidents of identity
theft. “The search revealed that a person who was assigned one of the social security numbers
used by an employee of Agriprocessors has reported his/her identity being stolen.” That is, out
of 983 only 1 number (0.1%) happened to coincide by chance with a reported identity theft. The
charge was clearly unfounded; and the raid, a fishing expedition. “On April 16, 2008, the US
filed criminal complaints against 697 employees, charging them with unlawfully using SSNs in
violation of Title 42 USC §408(a)(7)(B); aggravated identity theft in violation of 18 USC
§1028A(a)(1); and/or possession or use of false identity documents for purposes of employment
in violation of 18 USC §1546.”


Created by Congress in an Act of 1998, the new federal offense of identity theft, as
described by the DOJ (http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fraud/websites/idtheft.html), bears no
relation to the Postville cases. It specifically states: “knowingly uses a means of identification of
another person with the intent to commit any unlawful activity or felony” [18 USC §1028(a)].
The offense clearly refers to harmful, felonious acts, such as obtaining credit under another
person’s identity. Obtaining work, however, is not an “unlawful activity.” No way would a
grand jury find probable cause of identity theft here. But with the promise of faster deportation,
their ignorance of the legal system, and the limited opportunity to consult with counsel before
arraignment, all the workers, without exception, were led to waive their 5th Amendment right to
grand jury indictment on felony charges. Waiting for a grand jury meant months in jail on an
immigration detainer, without the possibility of bail. So the attorneys could not recommend it as
a defense strategy. Similarly, defendants have the right to a status hearing before a judge, to
determine probable cause, within ten days of arraignment, but their Plea Agreement offer from
the government was only good for… seven days. Passing it up, meant risking 2 years in jail. As a
result, the frivolous charge of identity theft was assured never to undergo the judicial test of
probable cause. Not only were defendants and judges bound to accept the Plea Agreement, there
was also absolutely no defense strategy available to counsel. Once the inflated charge was
handed down, all the pieces fell into place like a row of dominoes. Even the court was banking
on it when it agreed to participate, because if a good number of defendants asked for a grand jury
or trial, the system would be overwhelmed. In short, “fast-tracking” had worked like a dream.


It is no secret that the Postville ICE raid was a pilot operation, to be replicated elsewhere,
with kinks ironed out after lessons learned. Next time, “fast-tracking” will be even more
relentless. Never before has illegal immigration been criminalized in this fashion. It is no longer
enough to deport them: we first have to put them in chains. At first sight it may seem absurd to
take productive workers and keep them in jail at taxpayers’ expense. But the economics and
politics of the matter are quite different from such rational assumptions. A quick look at the ICE
Fiscal Year 2007 Annual Report (www.ice.gov) shows an agency that has grown to 16,500
employees and a $5 billion annual budget, since it was formed under Homeland Security in
March 2003, “as a law enforcement agency for the post-9/11 era, to integrate enforcement
authorities against criminal and terrorist activities, including the fights against human trafficking
and smuggling, violent transnational gangs and sexual predators who prey on children” (17). No
doubt, ICE fulfills an extremely important and noble duty. The question is why tarnish its stellar
reputation by targeting harmless illegal workers. The answer is economics and politics.

After 9/11 we had to create a massive force with readiness “to prevent, prepare for and respond to a
wide range of catastrophic incidents, including terrorist attacks, natural disasters, pandemics and
other such significant events that require large-scale government and law enforcement response”
(23). The problem is that disasters, criminality, and terrorism do not provide enough daily
business to maintain the readiness and muscle tone of this expensive force. For example, “In
FY07, ICE human trafficking investigations resulted in 164 arrests and 91 convictions” (17).
Terrorism related arrests were not any more substantial. The real numbers are in immigration:
“In FY07, ICE removed 276,912 illegal aliens” (4). ICE is under enormous pressure to turn out
statistical figures that might justify a fair utilization of its capabilities, resources, and ballooning
budget. For example, the Report boasts 102,777 cases “eliminated” from the fugitive alien
population in FY07, “quadrupling” the previous year’s number, only to admit a page later that
73,284 were “resolved” by simply “taking those cases off the books” after determining that they
“no longer met the definition of an ICE fugitive” (4-5).
De facto, the rationale is: we have the excess capability; we are already paying for it;
ergo, use it we must.


Furthermore, by virtue of its magnitude and methods, ICE’s New War is unabashedly the
aggressive deployment of its own brand of immigration reform, without congressional approval.
“In FY07, as the debate over comprehensive immigration reform moved to the forefront of the
national stage, ICE expanded upon the ongoing effort to re-invent immigration enforcement for
the 21st century” (3). In recent years, DHS has repeatedly been accused of overstepping its
authority. The reply is always the same: if we limit what DHS/ICE can do, we have to accept a
greater risk of terrorism. Thus, by painting the war on immigration as inseparable from the war
on terror, the same expediency would supposedly apply to both. Yet, only for ICE are these
agendas codependent: the war on immigration depends politically on the war on terror, which, as
we saw earlier, depends economically on the war on immigration. This type of no-exit circular
thinking is commonly known as a “doctrine.” In this case, it is an undemocratic doctrine of
expediency, at the core of a police agency, whose power hinges on its ability to capitalize on
public fear. Opportunistically raised by DHS, the sad specter of 9/11 has come back to haunt
illegal workers and their local communities across the USA.
A line was crossed at Postville.

GO READ THE REST.

Snort! No wonder the Mccain is losing Latinos to Obama

Anti-Immigrant Politics Push Latinos Away From the GOP

As with most Americans, Latinos view the Republican Party as being on the "wrong side" of key issues such as immigration, health care, the war, and the economy. In addition, the Republican Party's embrace of harsh anti-immigrant campaign tactics and policies has clearly undermined its ability to attract and retain Latino voters.

George W. Bush received approximately 40% support from Latinos in 2004. This number could become the high-water mark of Latino support for a Republican presidential candidate unless the GOP undergoes a major realignment on their immigration stance.

Since 2004, Republican opposition to immigration reform legislation and support of harsh, anti-immigrant policies has pushed Latinos into the Democratic fold.

* Partisan Gap Grows: 57% of Hispanic registered voters "now call themselves Democrats or say they lean to the Democratic Party, while 23 percent align with the Republican Party-a 34 percentage point gap in partisan affiliation among Latinos. In July, 2006, the same gap was just 21 percent. In 1999, it had been 33 percent." [Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanics and the 2008 Election: A Swing Vote?, 12/6/07]

* Nearly Half of Latino Voters Say Democrats Are More Supportive of Latinos than Republicans. By a 44% to 8% margin, Latinos say the Democratic Party has more concern for them than the GOP [Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanics and the 2008 Election: A Swing Vote?, 12/6/07]

* Nearly Half of Latino Voters Believe Democrats Do a Better Job Handling Illegal Immigration. By 41% to 14% margin, Latino voters say the Democrats are doing the better job of dealing with illegal immigration than the Republicans. Approximately 26% say neither Party is better, nor 12% say they don't know. [Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanics and the 2008 Election: A Swing Vote?, 12/6/07]

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Voter Cadging: How the Republicans stole '04 , tactics that they are likely to use to again.

Familiarize yourselves ladies and gents. It was successful. It will happen again.

NOW on PBS Part 1: How

NOW on PBS Part 2

Via:Suburban Guerilla

Link to high quality videos on PBS.com.


"The CFR Controls American Media"
"A Brief History Lesson"
"Voter Fraud is Easy"

Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality Part 1

Net Neutrality Part 2

Big Net Neutrality Win Courtesy the FCC by mcjoan

Fri Aug 01, 2008 at 03:20:12 PM PDT

For the first time ever, the FCC has handed down a pro-Net Neutrality ruling.

Federal regulators voted 3-2 on Friday to declare that Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent traffic last year was unlawful, marking the first time that any U.S. broadband provider has ever been found to violate Net neutrality rules.
The Federal Communications Commission handed Comcast a cease-and-desist order and required the company to disclose to subscribers in the future how it plans to manage traffic. Comcast had said that its measures to slow BitTorrent transfers, which it voluntarily ended in March, were necessary to prevent its network from being overrun.
"We need to protect consumers' access, said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican. "While Comcast has said it would stop the arbitrary blocking, consumers deserve to know that the commitment is backed up by legal enforcement."

Republican FCC chair Martin has been subject to a lot of backlash since he indicated a few weeks ago that he was likely to join the two Democratic members of the five-person board in ruling against Comcast. That includes a nasty warning from everyone's favorite orange-hued villain, John Boehner:

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- A day before the Federal Communications Commission is set to formally reprimand cable giant Comcast Corp. (CMCSA, CMCSK) for slowing certain Internet connections, the top House Republican says the action reflects "poor policy judgment" that will "hijack the evolution of the Internet."
In a letter sent Thursday to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, House Majority Leader [sic] John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the FCC is improperly inserting itself into a self- governing entity. "Congress has intentionally refrained from imposing the heavy hand of government, which is precisely why we have seen such rapid growth in the Internet," the letter said.

Right, just like Congress intentionally refrained from imposing the heavy hand of government in sanctioning illegal spying on Americans. Boehner and his fellow Republicans aren't acting from some deep civil libertarian let-the-Internet-run-free position. They're trying to protect their favorite constituency, the telcos and big ISPs.


The following articles were written last year...


How the internet works, and how the cable companies are trying to screw you

Case in point, Comcast's recent actions of cutting off “bandwidth hogs” and purportedly throttling BitTorrent traffic to its subscribers (Comcast denies it targets BitTorrent traffic). Comcast in its user agreement explicitly reserves the right to cut off users using “too much bandwidth” — although Comcast refuses to say how much bandwidth is “too much.” Comcast defends its actions (including the secrecy of the bandwidth limit) on the grounds that “bandwidth hogs” overload the system capacity and thus slow down everyone's use of the system.

As I discuss below, Comcast and the other broadband providers are speaking out of both sides of their mouths. They claim they have no liability for anything and should not be regulated because they are providing “best efforts” services and everyone knows it. But when they want to cut off users, tier traffic, or indulge in other behavior that sticks it to subscribers they haul out the “Quality of Service (QoS)” and “critical infrastructure” arguments. “What about voice?” They cry. “What about poor crippled Tiny Tim and his medical monitoring unit, cut off by some bandwidth hog downloading pirated child pornography and Al Qeda instructional videos (which, we will admit, makes a very interesting mash up when viewed via deep packet inspection)? You have to let us do whatever we want and charge whatever we want because people are relying on us for critical services.”

Of course, historically, companies that provided critical services were “public utilities.” At which point, the telcos and cable cos amazingly morph back into laissez faire “best efforts” providers and subscribers need to know there are no guarantees and that which we tell you three times may or may not be true.

...

Once upon a time and long ago, we had these things called public utilities. They provided all manner of nifty services, such as electricity, voice telephony, water and so forth. Because we absolutely relied on this infrastructure for our quality of life, the government either provided it directly or closely regulated it as a “public utility.” Indeed, they were so important they were “affected with the public interest.” In exchange for a healthy guaranteed rate of return (usually about 10%-15% profit), these public utility providers had to provide service equally to everyone, at reasonable prices derived in an open and transparent way under the watchful eye of the regulator. Most importantly, because our physical and/or economic well-being depended on the system working all the time and in predictable ways, public utilities needed to be reliable. They even had a special saying about this reliability: “five nines reliability.” That means 99.999% reliable.


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Comcast and the other cable cos have technical limitations, arising in part from the fact that they primarily built their networks to be one-way “push” cable networks, and only layered on broadband as an afterthought. The ability to provide broadband services was a happy addition to the upgrades to increase channel capacity (to meet the competitive threat of DBS). Area connections are centralized in cable head ends, and the overall architecture requires all users in a head end to share total network capacity. So if I am slurping in huge amounts of data, there just isn't as much room left for my neighbors to slurp down different data.

Why build a network like this?

Net Neutrality As Campaign Finance Reform

Publically traded companies exist for one purpose — to maximize shareholder value. According to free market boosters, that's what makes them so incredibly efficient and wonderful. As a result, they will maximize revenue wherever permitted. They are not about promoting free speech or democracy. While that may be fine when two appliance companies try to sell you different brands of toasters, it can cause all kinds of “unintended consequences” in the “marketplace of ideas.”

Given the drive to maximize revenue, it’s not surprising that recently deregulated cable broadband and DSL providers have started looking at how to make money from charging people who want to send streaming media, bulk email or other “bandwidth intensive content or services” to their subscribers.

So far, these companies have targeted big money companies (like Google) or big traffic customers (like “spammers”). But it’s only a matter of time before these companies notice how much money gets spent in political campaigns and decide to get a piece of that. After all, candidates need to reach people just as much as Google does, and will pay handily for the privilege.

Nor is it only candidates who will find their political speech dramatically restricted. Remember the flash animation by jibjab.com that mocked the presidential candidates in 2004, or all the folks like Moveon.org who put video clips or audio clips online for download? If it takes forever to download because they can't afford the “premium” delivery, people will use these resouces less or stop altogether. If people have to pay extra to receive an email with a streaming media attachment because Time Warner or Qwest decides to charge extra for receiving media files in order to “more efficiently manage bandwidth,” most subscribers won't want to pay. On the other hand, subscribers will receive (whether they want to or not) well funded expertly produced “messaging” downloads for free at super speeds that play with movie-like quality.

Perhaps most importantly, what happens to the ability of people to use the internet to research candidates and positions, or who want to forward useful or amusing political speech to others? According to this study by the PEW Center for American Life, people used the internet to talk to their friends about political issues, visit websites that provided greater details than avialable offline, and were more likely to participate in political discusions and check out alternate points of view. If it costs someone extra money or becomes frustratingly slow to use the internet for these purposes, they stop; and we as a society go back to getting all our political information through sound bites.

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But if such “high bandwidth” traffic slows to a crawl unless the speaker pays for “premium” delivery, the same thing will happen to the internet that happened to television and cable. Well funded candidates and special interests will pay to have slickly produced “content” and “issue ads” that download at super-speed in movie quality. Independent blogs and podcasts that can't afford the extra fee will be crowded out. Once again, the need for big money will “blind the eyes of the righteous and pervert the words of the wise” (Deut. 16:19) by driving candidates to court big donors at the expense of public policy and put fund-raising ahead of public service.

More

Today's lecture in my occassional “Economics of Market Power” series comes from the hot policy debate over whether we should let dsl (and cable) providers charge third parties for “premium” speeds to reach their customers. I call this behavior “Whitacre Tiering” (as distinguished from other sorts of tiering traffic or bandwidth) in honor of AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre, a chief proponent of the concept.

Last time, I explained why permitting Whitacre tiering would be a disaster for democracy. This time, I'll explain why Whitacre tiering produces really, really awful results from an economic perspective. It gives actors all the wrong incentives, adds new layers of uncertainty and inefficiency to the market generally, and discourages investment in bandwidth capacity at every stage of the network (thus aggravating the broadband incentives problem you may have read about recently, rather than solving it, as some defenders of Whitacre tiering maintain).


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“Customer Tiering”- is when an end user pays more money for more bandwidth. The key point is the customer decides on the size of the pipe, and all bits within the pipe get treated equally (or, possibly, in a manner designated by the customer/end-user).

“Whitacre Tiering” - is when the ISP demands money from a third party for premium access. The ISP makes the decision on how to prioritize packets without regard to the end-user/subscriber preference. Indeed, the end-user may not even be aware that Whitacre Tiering is taking place.

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Until the Brand X case back in June 2005, and subsequent deregulation of broadband by the FCC last September, we lived in a world that permitted customer tiering and provider provisioning. It did not permit Whitacre tiering. This produced a pretty good internet, over all. And, looking at the economic incentives, this makes sense.

Without Whitacre tiering, content and service providers keep scaling up the bandwidth of content and services until they hit the point that customers can't easily download them and network congestion becomes an issue. This congestion triggers two positive benefits from a public policy perspective. First, customers will pay more for bandwidth, because they need bigger pipes to get high-bandwidth services. So broadband ISPs have incentive to build bigger pipes and sell them at a higher price, because enough customers will pay more to make this profitable. The bigger pipes, in turn, spur higher-bandwidth intense uses, prompting a continuous cylce of upgrade. This cycle also improves things for the customers that pay for lower speeds, since today's “high-speed” 5 mbps pipe is tomrrow's “standard” speed and next week's “discount” speed.

At the same time, providers have an incentive to engage in provider provisioning. Any provider that can afford it invests in technology that pushes its content faster or improves reliability of its service. Depending on the technology, this does more than improve performance for the specific provisioning provider. It also improves performance for the broader “network of networks” overall. Traffic taken out of the regular backbone and routed in some other way, or that is cached closer to users, is traffic that doesn't clog the backbone for everyone else. The effect is rather like encouraging people to take public transportation. Fewer cars on the road mean a general reduction in traffic for everyone, not just the folks skipping the traffic jams by taking the bus or subway.

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First, Whitacre tiering removes the incentive to build a bigger pipe for the end-user customer. Worse, it creates an incentive not to build a bigger pipe. Why? Because the value of the “premium” service offered to third parties depends upon it being both scarce and necessary. No party will pay more to deliver its content than it has to. So the ISP has to make Whitacre tiering worthwhile. As a result, as services become congested, the ISP has every incentive to simply sit there and charge a higher price for “fast lane” service to the customer. In doing so, the ISP also saves money, because it does not need to invest in a general upgrade of its systems and wait for the gradual migration of customers to pay for its system upgrade. So not only does the ISP make more money by substituting Whitacre tiering in place of an option to customer tier, it avoides expenses.

Result: instead of an incentive to expand bandwidth availability to the customer, the ISP now has an incentive to supress bandwidth availability as an absolute matter (since it can charge both the customer and a third party for the equivalent of a bandwidth upgrade by using Whitacre tiering).

And yes, it gets worse

( Examples of censorship that are already happening )

So I saw this diary this morning, but it upset me so much that I had to ignore it for a while...

Held Suspect


I don't remember how old I was the first time it happened. I couldn't have been more than ten years old. We were in Philadelphia - my mother, my younger sister, and I - visiting my great grandfather on my mother's side of the family. For my sister and me, it was our first time traveling that far from home, and our first time in a city like Philadelphia. Everything amazed us, from the size of the buildings, downtown to the narrow little houses on my great great-grandfather's street, with no yards to speak of and no space between them; so different from our suburban home back in Augusta, GA.

Even going shopping was different. Instead of driving to the store, my mom pushed her grandfather's folding cart a few blocks to a store a few blocks away, and we followed her. The store was a wonder unto itself; on the outside a rowhouse like the one my great grandfather lived in, but on the inside there were long, narrow shelves holding food, toys, and other items we'd never seen before.

Our mother had told us time and time again not to touch anything whenever we went shopping, but we couldn't help it this time. We picked up toys and candy and other items, exclaiming to each other to "come look at this." Until it happened.

I heard the shopkeeper before I saw her.
"Put that back!" a female voice shouted. "What are you doing in here?! You better not take anything, 'cause I'm watching you." I looked up and into the anger-twisted face of a large, angry white woman.
We too much in shock and too frightened to say anything. I don't remember what else she said, but I'm pretty sure she called us thieves and threatened to call the police. I looked around for out mother, who hadn't realized that we were no longer behind her. I didn't see her for a moment, and then she appeared, no doubt drawn back to the front of the store by the commotion. She flashed us a look, and apologized to the shopkeeper (who was still giving us an angry look as we left the store with our purchases). It wasn't until we ere out of the store that our mother explained.
The shopkeeper thought that we were stealing from her store. We didn't understand until mom made it clear: the shopkeeper assumed because we were two black children we were going to steal from her store, and that's why she treated us like criminals.
It was a lesson I never forgot, and one that's been repeated throughout my life. I thought about that first time when I read this article from CNN's Black in America series, about how being black automatically means being suspect.

For Anthony Williams, being black in America means being a suspect.
The 39-year-old former Marine said he's never had any trouble with the law, other than a few traffic violations, and leads a middle-class life in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.
But the AT&T customer care representative said he still gets nervous when he hears that police are looking for a 6-foot-tall black man, "because I know I fit that description."
"I worry I will get pulled over and some police officer decides to shoot first and ask questions later," Williams wrote.
Police recently questioned him in his own driveway after getting complaints that a man was walking in neighbors' yards, Williams said. iReport.com: Tell us what you thought of "Black in America."
"You never know what to expect when you get pulled over by police, and that's how it is when you're black," he said.

I fit the description then, and I've fit the description since.