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I’ve seen a couple articles today where the Republicans are trying to politicize the concept of network neutrality, comparing it in one case to “a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet“.

Well, it’s not that. And I could spend several paragraphs excoriating Republicans for yet-another weak attempt to convince uninformed voters that Obama’s going to [fill-in-the-blank], but I won’t. Instead, I will simply present you with What Net Neutrality Is, and What Net Neutrality Isn’t. Continue reading…

After his Ayn Rand-worshiping, bankster-babying, free-love-for-free-markets ass spent the entire 1990′s shooing the government out of regulating the financial services and banking industries to the greatest extent possible, it appears that Alan Greenspan has had a change of heart, and is now advocating the breakup of so-called “too-large-to-fail” banks.

Gee, Al, ya think?

I mean, after all, we gave ‘em everything they wanted in the 90′s, and they just treated us like a shotgun bride, getting drunk on their own excess and holding the gun of economic meltdown against our heads until we ponied up their bail. What does the banking industry say to a body politic with two black eyes? Nothin’ it ain’t already told it twice.

Apparently Iowa Dems have been playing coy, implying that they had a strong contender to run against the 28-year Senate veteran Chuck Grassley.

Grassley’s poll numbers, once borderline-Olympian, have been brought closer to earth by his hyper-partisan and deceptive participation in the health-care debate, as mentioned here previously.

It seems the mystery contender is none other than the spouse of former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, Christie Vilsack, setting up a Democratic primary prior to the 2010 election, as Bob Krause is also running, among other potential candidates. There is also persistent speculation that Grassley will face a primary challenge on his own side of the aisle as well, fueled by far-right conservatives who feel Grassley has drifted too far to the left. (Which just goes to show the state of the Republican Party at present; Grassley is pretty far from truly being “liberal”.

I’ll be keenly interested to see if Chuck can triangulate his way out of this one; I’d especially like to see him get pinned down on his attempts to follow Sarah Palin’s lead on distorting the health-care debate with talks of “death panels”. After all, in all my life, I’ve never seen an issue get so deeply poisoned by dishonest rhetoric as the health-care debate has, and I’d very much like to see all such politicians punished unequivocally for doing so.

On the Rush Limbaugh program the other day, casino mogul Steve Wynn unburdened himself of the claim that with $800-$900 billion of tax savings, (somehow supposed to all come from the state of Michigan, not sure how that works) private industry could create “four or five million jobs”.

Notwithstanding the problems with where that money would actually come from, there’s just a little problem here with the math: At the low end, dividing $800 billion by four million jobs means that Wynn is claiming that the magical wonders of private industry would be creating $200,000-per-year jobs. At the high end, dividing $900 billion by five million, it’d still mean $180,000-per-year jobs.

Does anyone seriously think that “Mr. Market” would be so magnanimous? Does anybody believe that, coming from the mouth of a guy whose entire raison d’etre is the liberation of money from consumers’ wallets in as efficient a manner as he can devise? Continue reading…

The Taliban runs Joomla!, as does the John Birch Society.

Say what you will about the respective ideologies and whatnot, but it’s interesting to see such organizations running Joomla.