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Democrats Appoint RIAA Shill For Convention
An anonymous reader sends us to Boing Boing for a report that "the Director of Communications for the RIAA, Jenni Engebretsen, has been appointed Deputy CEO for Public Affairs for the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Denver." The DNC site has the official press release. Cory Doctorow notes that the RIAA is the most hated "corporation" in America, having beaten out Halliburton and Wal-Mart for the honor, and writes for the DNC's attention, "This represents a potential shear with the left-wing blogosphere."
That when I vote Republican, they'll sue my neighbor and her kids?
... at the mention of the term "blogosphere".
Birds of a feather...
They used the words "shill", "left-wing" and "blogosphere". Then they mentioend the RIAA. That's as close as you can come to a Godwin violation without mentioning Historical German leaders.
Can you say, "I'M DUMB AS A STUMP" (Yes; in all caps)
I'm a political party needing the general population to vote for me, but I'm going to have the most hated company by the general population represent my party by letting them running the show.
Lets just tattoo a giant "L" on their forehead...
Unsurprising; both parties are in the pockets of corporate interests, anyway. I hope there is a backlash over this.
I do not think that word means what the author of that blurb thinks it means.
They didn't hire a shill. They just hired someone who used to work for the RIAA. Big deal. The Pope used to work for Hitler too, but it's not relevant work experience.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
to vote libertarian.
you know the Lib party is pretty sound once you get past the "smoke pot" platform. and honestly I firmly believe that because they push that platform so hard is why nobody even thinks of jumping ship from republican or democrat to Libertarian.
I personally like their ideals and goals, and for the most part they do make sense in every aspect if you sit and listen to them.
too bad 90% of americans are baying sheep that are to cowardly to vote for a 3rd party.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Just ask Howard Dean how much influence the "left-wing blogosphere" wields in terms of getting their darling elected.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
It might interest you to know that there are more than 70 political parties in the United States.
My blog
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
Way to stick it to the man.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
As the democrats are clearly in bed with the RIAA they're not getting my vote any more.
First off: a person who does communications for group 1 is probably going to do a reasonable job of doing communications for group 2. If you're hiring based on merit, how much does it matter if the person is one of satan's catchers?
Secondly: the RIAA is everyone in power's best friend. Republicans love the big companies, Democrats love the film and rock stars, and both parties just absolutely adore lobbyists. They're like groupies only they give money.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Democrats!=liberal. The sooner everybody realizes this, the sooner we can actually have a liberal party in the US.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
money talks.
"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!'"
- Bill Hicks
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Wait, so you're advocating the libertarian party... and you don't even believe people have the right to use whatever recreational drugs they want?
It just seems like if you're going to be pro-personal freedom, the War on Drugs would be the first thing you'd want to get rid of, not the last.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
It might interest you to know that there are more than 70 political parties in the United States.
And exactly two of them have a chance in hell of actually being elected.
Voting against the worst-possible-outcome (i.e. a Republican being elected) isn't ideal, but it's the reality of American electoral politics for a lot of people.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
It might interest you to know that there are more than 70 political parties in the United States.
And until our voting system is completely overhauled, only two of them are electable. That's the reality of it. If you don't like it (and I don't), press your congresscritter for reform of our voting laws. Even then, why do they want to change the system that keeps them in power?
I'd say, "Let's have a Slashdot poll," but I'm afraid I'd wake up in 2009 to find Cowboy Neal laughing his ass off from behind the podium ...
How many butterflies would I have to stomp on to keep that from happening?
So only 2 parties are electable and neither will fix the problem. I submit to you that you must vote for an unelectable party in order to get things changed.
And yet, you control but a single, insignificant vote. What have you got to lose? We can't even count accurately enough for a single vote to be significant should a large election come down to it.
Also, do not believe that we, the voters are their constituents in the sense that they are beholden to our interests. This is not the case. They are beholden to those who can pressure them by providing or withholding money, usually (but not always) through lobbyists. If you are not represented in such a way to your government representatives, then you are not in any practical sense one of their constituents. Your vote was the single act in which you are able to influence the process. In principle, you can write to them once they are in office and attempt to sway them, but unless you are onboard with the money-providing players, or unless you are part of a massive broad-based campaign, you will be ignored and will receive a canned response.
I claim that the above is neither an opinion nor ideology, but an expression of practical facts. Please refute that claim.
Wake up. The Democratic party want to regulate the hell out of everything just like the RIAA. Learn from history or repeat it. Time for a real 3rd party. No lawyers or career politicians allowed.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
bnetween the two parties. unless it's the Iraq war (which many democrats voted for by the way), name one substantial difference between the two parties. they both favor unlimited immigration, destructive trade policies, won't push to expand more oil drilling and nuclear power, don't give a crap about the social security/medicare atom bombs, and in general are so beholden to large monied interests. the republicans screwed up the war on terror, the democrats won't even fight it. other than that, they are more concerned with consolidating political power.
as for the media, et al., all those hollywood big wigs (like David Geffen), who love the RIAA. they are all HUGE democratic donors. connection? I guess not.
vote libertarian!!
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Guess what? They won't ever have a chance of winning if nobody votes for them.
Thanks for being part of the problem.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Yes, but the poster's point was that a pro-drug stance shouldn't be the first thing to tout while on the stump. There are many more "pro-personal freedom" stances that are far more palatable to liberals and conservatives alike than "free the weed, dude".
Method of processing duck feet
The sad thing is that the Democrats, instead of actually listening to all the voters they've disenfranchised, seem to treat "What are you going to do, vote Republican?" as a policy platform.
I hope this doesn't turn me into a target for the army of Nader-Haters out there, but I voted for Nader in 2000 and I would do it again. (FWIW, I was registered in Washington state at the time, and given the (absurd) Electoral College system, my vote did not actually play into the final outcome of that election.) When Democrats tried to convince me I should vote with them, nobody ever tried to make the "we support those issues also" or "actual progress requires more compromise" arguments. All I ever heard was, in essence, "Yeah, but the Republicans are worse." That just seems pathetic.
I'm just sayin'.
Jenni Engebretsen has proposed that DNC shall now stand for DO NOT COPY... She also will be instituting a new convention which will be named the Democratic Reform Meeting (DRM) which will be held monthly at a Regional Information Assembly Area (RIAA). She will also be engaging in a heavy handed campaign to support Military Personnel Aid and Assistance (MPAA).
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
Wasn't it Clinton who signed the DMCA into law? And remember those awful things he tried to do to crypto? Key escrow and whatnot?
The democrats are just as much panderers to corporate interests and net stupidity as the republicans are. No more, no less. Both parties are drifting, and it's not right or left, it's just downhill.
Free speech is neither a right-wing nor a left-wing value. It's simply a value.
A while back, I complained to my Senator, Diane Feinstein about how the Broadcast flag would cut into time-shifting and other fair use rights, and that it was basically corporate welfare to preserve a flagging industry in the face of a changing environment. Here's the response I got:
Diane Feinstein is what I call a DINO - Democrat in Name Only. She's pro-drug war, pro big media, anti-consumer rights, and is a socially conservative fiscal liberal. Her and Joe Lieberman give progressives a bad name.
Causation can cause correlation
I am not against voting Libertarian.... but when people going to stop and think who they are voting for? Vote independently of party and look at the person.
Small political parties are only devoid of corruption because they have no power yet. The conservatives swept into power in 1994 with the promise of reform -- look what happened. I guarantee the same corruption and shit will happen once the democrats are in power because this cycle is endless. Both sides are the same and we are on a giant merry-go-round with the same shit every time.
I think one of the best politicians recently was Jesse Ventura, and he ran as an Independent. Kept his word on many things and stepped out after 2 terms. Not a career politician by any means.
Contrast this with the average career politician willing to say anything publicly to get elected while toeing the party line while in office. Beholden to so many interests, its no wonder most suck.
If people ever started electing people without even looking at party affiliation, there would be no need for political parties. And a lot better job would get done. I would rather be for election reform if that meant that voting booths could just have the name of the person on the ticket, without party listed (do they list their every stance on issues in the booth too, I don't think so - this is a product of the 2 party system helping each other out - like they rig every other part of the electoral process). Then maybe people would be forced to look at who they are voting for rather than check it off all one party or another. Maybe then we'd getter better choices than between a douche and a turd.
When are you people going to wake up? We aren't republican or democrats, we are Americans. Instead, we split ourselves along an arbitrary party line that single handedly fucks up EVERYTHING.
It is my strong belief that we need to abolish the two-party system as it stands. maybe if we stopped putting letters after people's names, the masses would listen to what they have to actually say, rather than what "side" they say they are on.
Fuck that. Fuck all of you who vote republican OR democrat.
What you have done to our country disgusts me.
Living With a Nerd
Still, it was a web poll and the bulk of my other points are still valid
The BULK? What bulk? Here are your points from your original post:
* The contest was between exactly two companies - Hallibutron and the RIAA. Those were your choices if you participated in this survey. The RIAA won by 3.8%. Wal-mart or none of the above were not choices.
* The 'survey' was done by The Consumerist. Sounds impressive, eh? Like The Economist magazine, perhaps? No, not really. It's basically some shitty blog. Hint: their web page currently has ads for 'Replica Rolex Watches Rolex, Cartier, Gucci, Brietling Only $189!!'
* So, this poll was a web poll. Hardly what we'd expect from a true 'Most hated company in America' type deal.
* See it for yourself here [consumerist.com].
So out of these four bullets, one simply states that this was a web poll, ok true, but not exactly insightful. The last point is not a point at all, just a link to your source. The first point you already admitted was wrong, leaving only your second point as anything that could fall under your term of "bulk" and I would hardly call a single valid point bulk by any stretch.
In addition the consumerist website is not some tiny fly-by-night blog, it's been around for a while and they are the slashdot of constomer service issues and are part of Gawker Media which handles other such blogs as Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Kotaku, and Lifehacker just to name a few. While these may be niche blogs in that they have a sharp focus, they are by no means somebody's part time basement run website. In March 2007 the Consumerist received over 5 million visitors, and they have consistently had over 500,000 visitors per month for the past 12 months, and over 1 million visitors/month for the last 6.
As for the SINGLE advertisement you chose to judge the quality of the page, (ignoring other advertisers such as the prominent T-Mobile ad) the replica watch company is not selling counterfit goods, it sells replicas, clearly marked in both their URL and product page, so it is not an ad from a scammer. Also considering the nature of the consumerist blog, I would certainly think that they vet companies before accepting ads from them.
So in short, you overreacted and shot down a completely legitmate site which ran a survey over a period of weeks that reached a very large audience. Is it a scientific poll? No, but it's also not some two-bit blogger ranting about poll results culled from a handful of readers. Kudos on you for posting a semi-retraction but your "bulk" of remaining points is essential naught.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
...keep voting that way, you'll keep "electing" one wing or the other of the cooperating criminal cartel that has hijacked government and runs it as a crony jobs program for multimillionaires and billionaires and transnational non patriotic corporations.
I've been hearing the same shit for 40 years now -"don't waste your vote-don't vote for an independent or third party!"-it was wrong then and is still wrong, but the brainwashed parrots keep convincing themselves and other people to do the same thing over and over and over and over and over again, somehow magically expecting a different result "this time". IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN.
Anyone "you" has one vote, wasting it on the lesser of two evils will ALWAYS result in evil getting elected.
I can't say that the results are quite what I hoped.
Me, I once ordered a pineapple and ham pizza and ended up raped by wild boars and left bleeding on a Pacific island to die.
I dunno, I guess yours was worse.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You right now are embodying one of the most destructive impulses of hardcore Democrates: Demonizing the opposition.
Look -- I'm fairly typical Democrat material. I'm not associated with any organized religion. I'm in favor of gay marriage. I'm maybe even starting to think about conceding that universal healthcare might be a good idea. That said, any time someone simply shuts down and goes into an "us vs. them" mentality, it means they aren't seriously thinking about their opposition's viewpoint and perspective, other than coloring it in overbroad lines.
And that's bad.
Sure, it's not like the Rove & co. didn't do most of the escalation lately -- but the response to venom and hatred isn't to shut down your brain, because that stops you from thinking about why Average Joe Republican is in fact voting Republican. And ya know what? Chances are, Joe is unhappy about a lot of the same things you are -- but when you go on the attack (or only speak from your perspective without taking Joe's worldview into account), you lose the opportunity to make that sale. You're even turning me off right now, and I'm probably pretty typical of your target audiance.
It should be pretty obvious by now that I'd like to see Obama as President. I grew up right-wing Christian conservative and still have a working model of that mindset handy even though it's not something I espouse -- and Obama speaks to the old me as powerfully as the new one. The last thing we need now is more division, and Obama stands for a return to saner, less polarized politics more effectively than anyone else I know of.
As for my support for Ron Paul, the man has principals and he follows them. I don't like his personal social positions -- but he keeps those out of his voting record, and the principals which do reflect themselves in his voting record are such as to enact an effective policy of "first, do no harm". That's the kind of person I want holding the power of veto, no matter what banner he rides under.