Net neutrality under attack, again

Aren't you glad you didn't bother to vote in November?

OK, OK, the few people who'll read this undoubtedly did vote, assuming that they were eligible, but I'm still pissed at the turnout. And for good reason, wouldn't you agree?

That link to leave a comment at the FCC is here. (On my computer, NoScript identified a cross-scripting attempt when I used that - which is the whole point of the link - so I had to grant it permission.) Then just click on "Express" to leave your comment to the FCC.

Or you can used the more involved method, which is also clearly described in this video.

One commenter on this video clip recommended the message, ""Preserve net neutrality and Title II. I specifically support strong net neutrality backed by Title II oversight of ISPs."

That will work as well as anything, certainly. You don't need much, just a clear statement of what we internet users want, which is "net neutrality backed by Title II oversight of ISPs."

The oily crust of corruption

Will the Trump White House end up as the most corrupt in history? Check this out:

You’ve probably heard that the Kushner family was caught over the weekend literally selling visas to immigrate to the United States in exchange for funding a $150 million dollar New Jersey real estate project. [See this article.] The sale itself is actually legal. It’s part of a highly controversial and widely abused program which provides visas to foreign nationals in exchange for $500,000 investments in US projects which by certain standards are judged to create jobs in impoverished or economically distressed parts of the United States. It’s become a widely abused vehicle for real estate developers looking to fund luxury development projects.

Setting that controversy aside, what sets this apart of course is that Jared Kushner is the most senior advisor to the President of the United States, as well as being the President’s son-in-law. While nominally stepping aside from his family business, his family is in China openly trading on the Kushner family’s ties to President Trump to rake up money. As much and as quickly as possible. Kushner’s sister Nicole actually led the presentation. Reporters from the Times and the Post were on hand at the presentation in Beijing (where they were able to get in) and at a second in Shanghai (where they weren’t.)

Trump – as well as the Kushner family’s connection to him – was explicitly invoked as the “key decision maker” in getting the visas. A Times reporter posted this picture of the presentation to Twitter, which I’ve marked up to identify the people in the slide …



This is, needless to say, the most open and flagrant kind of monetizing of the Presidency – as bad as anyone could have imagined from the conjoined Trump/Kushner families. The fact that this ‘nationalist’, ‘crack down on illegal immigration’ White House is connected to cash for visas activities like this just adds a layer of oily crust to the corruption.

The article goes on to point out that reporters only happened upon this event (and weren't allowed into the Shanghai presentation at all). As it notes, "We see hints and shreds of evidence popping up – Ivanka Trump securing numerous trademarks for her company in China," but we are highly unlikely to have seen it all.

The Trump/Kushner families do seem to be cashing in on the Donald Trump presidency, don't they? But then, he is, himself. As he's been doing since the start of the campaign.

***
And speaking of corruption, here's an article about scientists being removed from the Environmental Protection Agency to make room for lobbyists industry representatives. I'm sure those industries will be very grateful to the Republican Party when it comes to campaign donations, don't you think? Even secret campaign donations? (And thanks to the Republicans on our Supreme Court, that's even legal these days.)

House Repubicans pass Trumpcare

The funny thing is that Republicans were lying when they were talking about 'Obamacare.' But everything they complained about - and more - is what they've done with 'Trumpcare.'

What hypocrites!

How the rest of the world sees us

Thanks to Jeff for the link!

The problem with monopolies

Read this. The headline is "Our Problem with Monopolies and Why Everything Sucks." I'm not going to excerpt any part of it here. But it's worth a read.

It's just a couple of anecdotes, nothing more than that. And it's funny, though it wasn't funny for them. But this is at least one of the problems with monopolies.

Remember, we witnessed this same stuff in the Soviet Union. Communism failed because of the inherent problem of monopolies, at least in part. Monopolies in a capitalist system aren't much better.

Of course, some things are inherently monopolistic. We call those things "utilities." They require effective government regulation and political consequences when they screw up too badly.

It doesn't matter much to me if monopolistic businesses want to join the ranks of utilities, with all of the regulation and restrictions that entails, or if they want to get out of the business of being monopolies (one way or another).

My argument is just that we should be actively seeking to eliminate monopolies which aren't considered to be utilities (and regulated that way).

Of course, the devil is in the details. Monopoly power is a problem even when one single company isn't the only option. The question should be more about the degree of market control, and we won't all agree about that.

Extremely large companies have many advantages, from economies of scale to political and economic power, so large companies tend to get larger. That's natural. And that's why we need an active effort to avoid monopolies.

I'm not claiming to have the solutions. It's not likely to be simple, and it's almost certainly not going to be just one solution. But it's something we need to work on. And it's one big reason why money is such a problem in our political system.

These companies have the money to get what they want - and prevent what they don't want - in our political system, especially after such destructive Supreme Court decisions as Citizens United. Well, that's the law of the land now. We're going to have to live with it while we seek to change it.

None of this is going to be easy, and it's all going to require compromises. But we've seen what being stupid, simplistic, and unyielding did to us in November, didn't we?

If we didn't learn from that, this is just going to get worse and worse as the Republican Party continues to dominate the American political landscape.

Surreal disarray and a confused mental state

(Mike Luckovich)

Do you think the crazy can't get worse? Take a look at yesterday:

President Donald Trump questioned why the Civil War — which erupted 150 years ago over slavery — needed to happen. He said he would be "honored" to meet with Kim Jong-Un, the violent North Korean dictator who is developing nuclear missiles and oppresses his people, under the "right circumstances."

The president floated, and backed away from, a tax on gasoline. Trump said he was "looking at" breaking up the big banks, sending the stock market sliding. He seemed to praise Philippines strongman President Rodrigo Duterte for his high approval ratings. He promised changes to the Republican health care bill, though he has seemed unsure what was in the legislation, even as his advisers whipped votes for it.

And Monday still had nine hours to go.

"It seems to be among the most bizarre recent 24 hours in American presidential history," said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. "It was all just surreal disarray and a confused mental state from the president." ...

"White supremacists, lost causers, states-rights activists could latch onto this,” said David Blight, a Civil War historian at Yale University. “I don’t know if Trump even knows he’s doing it. You can be too ignorant to know you’re ignorant.”

Fun, huh? And this presidency has barely begun!

Read the whole article. It's scary as hell. Trump seems to have completely lost his mind.

(Mike Luckovich)

Hasan Minhaj at the 2017 White House Correspondents' Dinner

That was a tough audience, but Hasan Minhaj was great, wasn't he?

I was wondering how this would go, since the president and his entire administration skipped it (for the first time since Ronald Reagan was recovering from being shot). So did many celebrities.

This was a tough gig. And I'd only seen Minhaj in brief sketches on The Daily Show. So I wasn't sure what to expect. But he killed it, don't you think? I was impressed.

Incidentally, Samantha Bee held a competing event last night, the Not the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Check it out.

The proof that God is evil

This is the summary of this playlist called "The Case for an Evil God."

Of course, to be technical, this is evidence, not proof, and it's only about the Biblical god. But personally, I think we're all lucky he doesn't exist.

The first 100 days of Donald Trump

Jebus, only 100 days? We are so screwed.

Luckily, this is a short video, because I really can't stand to think about it any longer than this.

Hypocrisy and the GOP

The first part of this (the first three and a half minutes) is what gets me. Could Republicans be any bigger hypocrites?

Ivanka & Jared

More than any other late-night comedian - and just think for a minute of the worrisome state of our country when I have to say this about a comedian - John Oliver takes the time for an in-depth look at the issues.

I know we'd all like to think that there's someone in the White House who's not batshit crazy, but hope isn't evidence.

How to get climate change wrong... again and again

This is exceptionally good, I'd say. But it's also a bit depressing, given how it won't accomplish anything at all. Crowder doesn't care if he's wrong, and none of his fellow deniers do, either, as far as I can tell.

Five misconceptions about undocumented immigrants

These are good points to keep in mind, don't you think?

The case against the resurrection

I meant to post this on Sunday - Easter- but I never got around to it. Oh, well. It's still worth your time, but I'll make this post especially short.

This is a playlist of video arguments against the resurrection of Jesus Christ - ten video clips from nine different people. They're all interesting, though I'd especially recommend the video with Bart Ehrman and the two from Richard Carrier.

Again, here is the link at YouTube. Enjoy!

Was the United Airlines victim actually a felon?

Rebecca Watson is one of my favorite people on YouTube. It's not about this particular incident. (Frankly, I never even saw previous videos about it, and I don't normally jump on outrage click-bait, anyway.)

But she always gives me a lot to think about. And her lessons are quite valuable.

"It's not so easy"

We'll be seeing more of this, I suspect:

President Donald Trump recounted an absolutely astounding detail about one of his conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping in comments published by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday afternoon.

Apparently, Trump came into his first meeting with the Chinese leader, in early April, convinced that China could simply eliminate the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear program. Xi then patiently explained Chinese-Korean history to Trump — who then promptly changed his mind.

“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” the president told the Journal. “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. ... But it’s not what you would think.”

Four quick observations about this:

1. Trump thought China could fix North Korea until the Chinese president politely informed him that North Korea is in fact complicated.
   
2. Trump seems to have required the leader of China to explain basic facts to him that he could have Googled, or at least asked one of the many US government North Korea experts about.
3. Trump came to a profound realization about one of the most dangerous conflicts on earth after a 10-minute conversation.
4. Trump is getting his information about East Asian affairs from the leader of America’s largest rival in the region.

This is the problem - one of the problems - with electing a president who makes George W. Bush look smart.

Incidentally, Trump also decided to abandon another of his campaign promises:

"On day one of a Trump administration, the US Treasury Department will designate China a currency manipulator," he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2015. In his Contract With the American Voter describing his plan for his first 100 days in office, he pledged: "I will direct the Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator."

Well, it ain’t happening. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Wednesday, President Trump said that he wasn’t in fact going to deem China a currency manipulator.

Yeah, like healthcare, "nobody knew" this stuff could be so complicated, huh?

Samantha Bee: Russian hacking

Samantha Bee is great, isn't she?

Of course, we've known about this Russian hacking for some time. But people don't like to think that they've been idiots. Often, even the victims of a scam don't like to admit that it happened.

So will this change anything? I doubt it.

Is the New Testament reliable?

Bart Ehrman gets pretty worked up here, but I understand it. Keep in mind that Ehrman does believe in a historical Jesus. That's not universal among scholars, although it's the majority position.

Who or what that Jesus was,... well, there's certainly no agreement about that, even among the people who think he actually existed.

And keep in mind that Ehrman was an evangelical Christian who became an expert in the New Testament for his faith. He lost that faith when he discovered too much about his own holy book, but he certainly didn't want to lose it. Just the reverse, in fact.

Finally, note that he talks about "scribal errors" in the Bible. But many of the most important of these weren't errors at all. They were deliberate changes.

For example: "Let the one who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her." That entire story was added later. It can hardly be an "error."

And the entire ending of the Gospel of Mark - the first gospel to be written - was added later, apparently because the original ending seemed appropriate only for fiction. (The women who supposedly witnessed the resurrection never told anyone about it, because they were afraid. The end.)

Ehrman gives other examples, including the justification for the whole idea of the Trinity. That's certainly not a minor issue, but it's clearly not an accidental "error," either. It was added to the original text deliberately, by some unknown person, for his own reasons.

Trump, O'Reilly, and Fox News

Fox News has long been the propaganda arm of the Republican Party (although we've never really known who was controlling whom). And although I'm glad to see advertisers abandoning O'Reilly, what took them so long?

Besides, you know that they won't be leaving Fox News. And you know that Fox will eventually replace O'Reilly with someone equally bad.

It's certainly no surprise that Trump and O'Reilly are in bed together. As I say, Fox News is the propaganda arm of the GOP, so what else would you expect?

Still, I'll laugh at all of them while I can still find something humorous about what's happening to my country.

April Fools

(Last Kiss)

But it's good to add a little cheer to the world, right? :)