Sleepycatz

Fallible Data

I am way behind on a number of posts; but this little gem on the Senate committee for Commerce, Science, & Transportation website caught my eye today: Bipartisan Poll Shows the Majority of Americans Favor Video Choice Over Onerous Net Neutrality Regulations

The word ‘onerous’ really struck me — as I’ve never seen it applied to neutrality — I mean how many onerously neutral countries are there? Anyway after reviewing the press release, it turns out that — surprise — the “bipartisan poll’ was funded by Verizon. The use of a constructed poll to get the results you want is called Push Polling. Here’s how it worked in this instance.

First question:

As best as you can say, have you read, seen or
heard anything recently about a debate occurring in Congress over
the concept of net neutrality or not?
Total
          Yes 7
          No 91
          (Don't know/refused) 2

Second Question:

Which is Most Important to You?

Which of the following two items do you think is the most important to you:

1) Delivering the benefits of new TV and video choice so consumers will
see increased competition and lower prices for cable TV

OR

2) Enhancing Internet neutrality by barring high speed internet providers
from offering specialized services like faster speed and increased security
for a fee

Total
        Delivering TV and video choice 66
        Enhancing Internet neutrality 19
        (Both) 3
        (Neither) 8
        (Don't know/refused) 4

So - people who don’t understand what net neutrality is about would like more competition and would like to pay less. Gee, people who understand and are pushing for net neutrality want that too — it just so happens that net neutrality guarantees that will happen, while the lack of it pretty much guarantees that it won’t.

Telecom companies, as I have noted many times in the past, have not and will not increased services unless they are forced to by regulation or market forces. By allowing providers to pick and choose traffic to degrade or block allows them to establish a monopoly on services such as streaming multimedia, and online gaming. By forcing the Internet to remain neutral allows for new competition and services to flourish in an open market.

How such an erroneous and clearly fallacious poll wound up on a US Senate website is one of the questions that clearly needs to be asked. At some point, we simply need to demand that our elected representatives sport sponsorship logos, like Nascar, drivers, so we can know what corporation we are voting for. Even after this doctored poll was released, Sen. (tubes) Stevens doesn’t have the necessary votes to get H.R. 5252 past a filibuster.

New Diggs

I decided to upgrade to WP2.x — and in doing so had to change a bunch of plugins — and decided to reclaim one of my extra domains while I was at it. . . . the old url will now be redirected.

Thanks

Remember

Today, we remember pain and anguish of that Tuesday, five years ago today. We remember the terrified victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, and the incredible bravery of the Men and Women who risked their own safety to save a few.

It has been said, so many times, that this changed everything. It has, more then I could could have imagined at the time. Five years later, I find I have lost all trust in the press — an institution I grew up respecting and lauding. I have lost faith in my government, as an intuition of reasoned compromise and rational debate. I have found that cynicism has become truth in our country. We all have lost a great deal since the barbaric events of that sunny Tuesday. May God have mercy on us.

Mickey Bucks

A great deal (much of it quite enlightening) has been written about the upcoming ABC mini-series Path to 9/11. For those unaware, the mini-series is being billed as based on the 9/11 Commission report, but apparently contains numerous errors, and partisan accusations impugning Clinton administration officials. The contested scenes of the mini-series center around the myth that the Clinton administration had numerous opportunities to kill or arrest Osama Bin-Ladin, and that, overall, the administration was less interested in terrorism then the Bush administration. For those of us who have read the memories of former Bush officials, such as Richard Clark, and remember the priorities of the Bush administration prior to 9/11 - specifically its singular focus on the missile defense shield - knows this is bullshit.

Nonetheless, there has been much speculation as to why ABC and it’s parent company Disney would so heavily invest in and promote such a partisan product. Recently, Digby commented on Disney’s caving to right wing pressures from Focus on the Family and other conservative groups. He suggests that this is due to Disney’s desire to protect the The Chronicles of Narnia film franchise, and attract fundamentalist movie goers. Though Digby is correct in hos assertion that Disney needs the support of both conservative christian organizations, and the republican party, he (I believe is incorrect) about the reasons.

Walt Disney co. currently resides in 5th place among the big media company revenues — well behind Newscorp (Fox), CBS, and NBC. This means that Disney 1) cannot afford to loose revenues, and 2) needs to expands its market share. This takes us to our old friends at the FCC. Regardless of whether or not the Democrats regain the congress in the fall, the FCC board will continue to be dominated by highly partisan Republican members. With the recent major increase in indecency fines, ABC an ill afford any major judgements against them. Other networks have recently criticized the FCC for ignoring ABC’s violations while fining them. Aside from owning the ABC network, Disney owns and operates 71 radio stations and 10 television stations. The FCC recently announced that it will re-open the issue if expanding media ownership limitations. Something which could greatly benefit Disney’s need to expand. Finally, there is the little known or discussed issue of translator stations. Translators allow for radio station - usually non-profit - to expand geographic footprints without the local licensing burdens of opening or re-licensing a new station. In 1990 the FCC amended the FM translator service rules. One big change allowed non-commercial broadcasters to operate translator stations independent of any parent station.Translators are not required to provide locally produced programming, and are actually limited by law from doing so. Translator stations have become the primary mode of expansion for Christian broadcasters. ABC and other commercial radio owners have recently expressed interest in unbundling translators from parent stations - this would require the acquiescence of the religious broadcasters.

All of this suggests, what I have observed in the past, that the partisan forces which control the FCC will help to generate partisan content. ABC has much more to loose by annoying FCC commissioners then is does by alienating its viewers. If that is not a classic example of fascist intimidation, I don’t know what is.

The Irony

A few days ago an orthodox Jewish man was forced off an Air Canada flight for praying before take off. Yves Faguy, a passenger on the flight noted:

He wasn’t exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth . . . The attendant actually recognized out loud that he wasn’t a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation but they had to ask him to leave

Most of the news coverage seems to focus on the fact that the man was not Muslim, and therefore should have been left alone. I guess if he had been Muslim, it would have been Ok to get him off the plane, and there would have been no charges of violating his religious freedom, or some pathological hatred of his race or religion.

The paranoia of the people who seem to fly is becoming a bit scary. Just a few weeks ago passengers on a Monarch flight refused to allow the plane to take off until two Arabic speaking men were removed. At the time many right-wing commentators cheered for the passengers, and suggested that they had every right to determine who their fellow passengers should or shouldn’t be.

As I’ve written in the past, one of the great problems with practicing religious bigotry is that it’s hard to tell who you hate — no doubt this orthodox Jewish man was mistaken for a Muslim, or of an indeterminate religion, by the complaining passenger - better safe then sorry, after all.

Old Time Republicans

Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
It’s good enough for me

We will worship Aphrodite
You can see her in her nightie
Some folks say she’s kinda flighty
But she’s good enough for me.

(refrain)

We will all worship Apollo
We will all worship Apollo
When he drinks, his legs are hollow
But he’s good enough for me

(refrain)

etc. . . . — with remembrance of college drinking friends past. . . .

Kaye Grogan of Renew America has penned an essay so absurd in it’s presumptions that it deserves a special place on the toilet paper roll of right-wing political parchment.

Grogan’s argument is that the Republican party has abandoned Christians. She doesn’t cite any examples of this exodus, but instead riles about NAFTA and makes snide racist comments like: “. . . since churches don’t pay taxes it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to hear about church worshipers being bulldozed down with church buildings to make way for Pedro’s governmental subsidized Mexican Taco Bell.” She suggests that Christians need to form their own third party, because the Republicans have abandoned them and

since most of the Democrats consider Christians as right-wing co-conspirators and fanatics, it would be unwise and hopeless for them to try and woo the followers of Christ into their liberal camps. Most Christians won’t compromise and vote for who they view as the lesser of two evils just for the sake of voting — so don’t hold your breath Dems.

I particularly like how she defines Christians as right-wing evangelical fundamentalists - after all if you don’t believe in the same Jesus as Grogan, you’re not a Christian. If I were a Christian, I would be greatly offended by Grogan’s exclusive definition of my faith. On a side note, this is the same reasoning which has allowed Muslim extremists to bypass the Koran’s prohibition against killing other Muslims.

I wish Ms. Grogan well in forming her third party - and I really hope she succeeds. If she does, we may yet return to a genuinely enlightened political discourse in this country.

h/t: Sadly No

It Came From the Closet

For the past five years those who seek power and influence have used every imaginable specter to engender fear among their followers and the nation at large. At some point much of this ‘wolf crying’ becomes a parody of itself, and frequently it has become so hyperbolic that many of us just snicker to ourselves and walk away. Pam, at Pandagon, documents one such recent extraordinary warning. The pronouncement of peril comes from Americans for Truthiness:

Men are having perverted ’sex’ with other men all over America–in parks, public restrooms (at places like department stores) and highway rest stops–i.e., in your community “backyard.” There is a well-organized Internet networks that guides men on where to engage in their anonymous, sodomitic [sic] acts. Many of these men are not publicly “gay,” or do not identify as homosexual, so they put their unknowing [sic] wives or girlfriends in danger of contracting sexually-transmitted diseases.

We’ll tell you where these homosexual “public sex” spots are in your state, and what you can do about it.

Yes indeed, the greatest danger our country - nay our civilization - faces is the prospect of men having sex in a Walmart bathroom. Nonetheless, this type of statement is so outrageous and hyperbolic, that it almost borders on camp. If we simply replace the words ’sex’ with ‘plot’, and ‘gay/homosexual’ with ‘communist’ we have a nice piece of cold war propaganda. Take for instance the following paragraph from “Communists Should Not Teach in American Colleges” (1949):

The real issue between Communism and education is the effect of Communist Party membership upon the freedom of the teacher and upon the morale and professional standards of the profession of teaching. Many would have us believe that it is an issue of civil liberty. This, I believe, it is not. No man has a constitutional right to membership in any profession, and those who maintain that he has are taking a narrow, legalistic point of view which sees freedom only as a privilege and entirely disregards the duties and responsibilities that are correlative with rights and privileges. The lack of freedom permitted the Communist has a great deal more than a mere passing or academic bearing upon the duties of a teacher.

If we simply make the object of this paragraph homosexuals instead of communists, we have a contemporary conservative argument. One which has been used to force teachers out of public education.

Of course, when the statements, like AFT’s, are so blatant in their bigotry and fear mongering it is easy to walk away from them. However, like all propaganda, the need to re-define language and control any debate has become more sophisticated in these diatribes. Take for instance a recent Agape Press article about a North Carolina school district’s ban on Gay-Straight student organizations:

A Christian attorney says, contrary to the claims of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a North Carolina school board’s policy banning sex-based student clubs is clearly constitutional and within the boundaries of the law.

The Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education enacted the ban in response to the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club at South Rowan High School. The new policy is based on the school district’s existing abstinence-only sex education policy.

In order to insure that high school teenagers remain unaware of real gays and lesbians in their schools, the author has redefined GSA student organizations as ’sex clubs’; conjuring up the absurd notion that these clubs exist to provide a gathering for student engage in sexual activity and erotic banter. For UN-scrutinizing moderates this argument carries significant weight — who for instance would like their child to participate in a ’sex club’?

GSAs, and similar student led organizations, serve a vital purpose when formed and run by students. They help to educate students about their classmates and the issues facing gay and lesbian teenagers; but more then anything else they allow students to see one another as individuals and not as a demonized monolithic groups. This, most of all, is what drives the opposition to these types of groups.

The rates of suicide and depression among gay and lesbian teenagers are staggering. For those of us who can remember the awkwardness and anguish of our teenage years, it is difficult to imagine how much worse it would have been had we been taught to fear and hate our own identities.

The propaganda released daily by these groups may at times seem silly and even campy, but we should all remember that it is designed to have real world effects and consequences.