Motley Moose – Archive

The FCC voted on its net neutrality proposal today, and we’ve all come out the losers.

I will admit to having been distracted of late. Between Christmas, work, the excitement over the repeal of DADT, the new tax deal, and my personal life, I pretty much forgot that this was coming up. And frankly, it depresses me, so I won’t be offering much commentary.

From Raw Story,

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who has championed “Net Neutrality” in the past, said the FCC’s proposed rules would actually “destroy” the principle of “Net Neutrality.”

[. . .]

But the plan would also allow for a greater fractioning of the Internet and data rationing on mobile and wired networks, according to analysis of the policies. Major network stakeholders like Verizon and AT&T would be able to sell bandwidth in capped tiers, with overage charges for users who download too much information, and certain types of data traffic like peer-to-peer file transfers could be banned altogether.

Raw Story

I am not wholly certain that I remember how to write a diary at this point, but there’s been so much staggering wingnuttiness of late that I just couldn’t let all the lulz pass by without comment. I also figured I might as well remind you guys that, despite my frequent absences, I am still watching them (and YOU).

Let the lulz begin.

[Note: Editors/Admins: Please do not FP this, as it is immature and full of nawty language, and there are far worthier diaries currently gracing our front page.]

I can’t exactly claim to have my fingertips on the pulse of the nation. I don’t travel, and I live in one of the reddest states in the union, meaning that for the sake of my own sanity I try not to draw too many political conclusions from what people around here think. I don’t even have cable anymore because I can’t afford it, so I usually miss the news, too. All I really know is what I read, and I’ll admit that probably means that my knowledge is pretty limited these days. Still, certain themes have become pervasive enough on the national scene that even I would have trouble missing out on them. One trend it would be all but impossible to miss is the general dissatisfaction voters seem to feel with both Obama and Democrats in general, and in the wake of that, the growing number of pundits, reporters, columnists, and average Joe’s (the plumber?) prophesying doom for the Democratic Party this November. We already know that incumbents are at a disadvantage this fall, but if perception is reality, then many Democratic candidates may be kind of… well, flat out screwed.

So just for the fun of it, let’s have a look at some numbers, some facts, and how we got here.

The label “Republican woman” has always seemed, to me, to embody a certain amount of inherent self-loathing. The same goes in my mind, I suppose, for “African American Republican,” “Hispanic Republican,” “gay Republican,” and the list continues… Truly, the only people I believe have any real business being Republicans these days (and by that I mean, the only ones who should find conservatism to be in their own self-interest) are rich white dudes who don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes, or maybe even poor white bigots who have nowhere else to go because they would meet the sort of people they hate at every turn under the rather diverse “big tent” of the Democratic party. But nowadays the blatant self-loathing certain groups of Republicans are displaying is becoming increasingly pronounced. Two examples I’ve come across in the last week, which I just couldn’t help commenting on…

Good news for the LGBT community. Traditionally, many gays and lesbians who choose to have/adopt children have not had the option of taking long leaves from work to care for them. While the Family and Medical Leave Act — which allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually to care for loved ones or themselves, and has been applied to heterosexual adoptions — has been in place since 1993, these protections have not previously extended to gay and lesbian couples seeking to start families. Now the Obama administration is changing that, based on a new interpretation of the law.

Happy Friday.

What’s on your minds — and plates — this weekend?

Republicans have an uncanny knack for fostering and enabling one of the nastiest tendencies in all of human nature: Victim blaming. This they facilitate, while simultaneously denying all culpability for their own mistakes and transgressions. The level of hypocrisy they so frequently exhibit flies in the face of decency, and is on occasion nothing short of mind-boggling. Flagrant and galling though it may be, I sometimes wonder whether their outrageous displays of unctuousness are entirely conscious. It ofttimes seems that their misplaced holier-than-thou attitudes are born out of habit more than anything else. Perhaps if one goes so long believing in the absolute virtue of one’s actions, one eventually succumbs to near pathological delusions of infallibility. These sorts of egotism and egocentrism are indisputably hazardous, and they give rise to authoritative stances and ideologies that become unduly convinced of their own faultlessness.

It is in the GOP’s interests to eschew all guilt of misconduct, while also throwing blame onto every vulnerable target in sight. From blaming Katrina victims for their misfortune to lobbing accusations at the victims of predatory loans for the subprime mortage crisis to claiming that the Democratic leadership in Congress should take responsibility for the death threats hurled against them — and not to mention the numerous historical examples of Republican callousness and hypocrisy of which I am too young to have clear memories — the GOP has a lengthy pattern of placing the blame for tragic occurrences on those who have been wronged. Still, even my awareness of that convention does nothing to lessen my shock at some of their more appalling finger-pointing.

And this case is really beyond the pale.  

I think nowadays most informed people realize that privacy on the Internet is an illusion. There is no real secrecy in cyberspace, and if you live in the States — unless you are born of a jackal, raised by wolves, and currently residing in a hut somewhere in the woods of Arkansas and have never so much as seen a light bulb or a sharp stick — then records of your existence are somewhere online. Your information may not be easily accessible to the public, but with enough money, diligence, and tech savvy, someone out there can find you. You can only hope that you either aren’t worth the trouble, or that no one with the means and determination to find you intends you any harm. And to some extent, that was true even before we were all linked together on this vast series of tubes. But there’s no disputing that it’s a whole lot easier to find people than it once was.