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Friday, June 09, 2006So the House passed a bill that leaves open the possibility that the telcos will rearrange the net to give good delivery for those who pay them and, well, do their best with the rest of the world. Notes Joe Trippi.com (quoting the Nation) how it came about:Bowing to an intense lobbying campaign that spent tens of millions of dollars – and held out the promise of hefty campaign contributions for those members who did the bidding of interested firms – the House voted 321 to 101 for the disingenuously-named Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE). That bill, which does not include meaningful network-neutrality protections creates an opening that powerful telephone and cable companies hope to exploit by expanding their reach while doing away with requirements that they maintain a level playing field for access to Internet sites.This shows us a couple things: 1) The folks in government are more than happy to help their friends in big business grab ahold of anything where individual citizens who don't make contributions in the thousands are getting a voice or a foothold. 2) Big business, with its eyes ever on profit, realizes that owning the government is a better way to secure a revenue stream than fussing with appealing to consumers. If there were a way to set it up, we'd do well for the next Congress to be evenly divided between the Libertarians and the Socialists. Maybe the gridlock plus Bush not having to worry about hurting irresponsible Republicans feelings with a veto would at least slow down the theft of our dollars and the encroachment of business upon the direction of a government ostensibly of the people. This wouldn't be happening if the Republicans controlled Congress! Or the Presidency! Or the Courts! Oh, wait... 
posted by gbarto at 11:17 AM Thursday, June 08, 2006First, the good stuff. Zarqawi's passing is a real positive in the War on Terror because it points to one of two scenarios:1) Our intelligence is getting good enough we can pull off this sort of thing. or 2) Our opposition is fracturing enough that it's easier to get or buy information. The choices, as I see it, are that either we are figuring this out or the other side is cracking up. Either way, for the man the world saw as Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq to be extinguished cannot be spun other than as evidence that the West isn't doing as poorly as news reports would have us believe. Now, the bad stuff. I see Republican Jerry Lewis's stepdaughter has made some good money from folks who made 11.7 million off his earmarks. Now we know why the GOP defended Democrat William Jefferson as a fellow legislator instead of throwing him to the wolves. The question isn't whether the Lewis case involves the blatant illegalities present in the Jefferson case. The question is why a party that regained Congressional power as reformers allowed itself to be put in this position. I started this year reluctantly supporting the GOP - but only over the War on Terror. I suppose I shall continue supporting the GOP over the War on Terror. But as my fiscal conservatism and social libertarianism duke it out, it's increasingly hard not to root against both of them. If the Democrats were smart enough to realize the existence of people like me, they'd be remaking themselves into a tough on terror party. There are votes out there that are up for grabs. In the meantime, my new ideal candidate: social liberal, fiscal conservative, firm on the war on terror... and a childless widow or widower! Or is it too much to expect that we the people only get to choose which people's friends and family will live well at our expense?
posted by gbarto at 5:27 PM Wednesday, June 07, 2006Random...Over at Wittgenstein's Bastard, I've got a post about Jeff Goldstein, intentionalism and the issue of who controls meaning. In my own humble opinion, while intentionalism is one of the saner approaches to appreciating a text or evaluating an utterance, it is problematic in the "meant well"-"my feelings were hurt" exchanges between the plain-spoken professors and the wounded politically correct. The difficulty is that it perpetuates the power-struggle over meaning and too often at the good guy's expense. I think it better to turn the postmodern thinking around and decenter the subject when the PC-crowd tries to impose meaning with the mealy-mouthed "can't we all get along and who's to say what he meant?" blather they offer in defense of Islamists and others. In other words, rather than arguing about what was meant, argue that there's no mutually shared meaning possible at all. Play the game, claim you never meant to hurt anyone and that it's obvious that the lack of shared experience precludes you from competently understanding the impact of your signifiers on an unappreciated other, blah, blah, blah. Call it ju-jitsu Orientalism - my words are unfit for your exotic consumption so leave me alone. If you want to read a longer, more jumbled, but more wholesome sounding version, check out the post at Wittgenstein's Bastard. Speaking of Orientalism, when two "others," eg the Iranians and Azerbaijanis, are at loggerheads, how should the Occident approach the matter? Maybe we're not fit to judge either of them, qua the Orientalists, but I personally think the Azerbanis are more other than the Iranians, so we should root for them. But if I stuck to this, it would have the cynical effect of making me always root for the Middle Eastern subgroup least likely to exercise its will over others and, ultimately, the West. Way to keep 'em down, and in the name of tolerance, eh? If you're more enthusiastic about these things than me, before you become a freedom fighter you can learn both Azerbaijani and Turkmen at byki.com, starting with the free programs. They don't have Farsi, but I'm too generous to assume that this means that transparent.com has chosen sides. In any case, good program for these and all their other languages. Random enough?
posted by gbarto at 6:43 PM |
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