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Al Franken's Warning On Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader writes "Democratic Sen. Al Franken weighed in on Net Neutrality over the weekend at the Netroots Nation conference of liberal activists in Las Vegas, calling it 'the First Amendment issue of our time,' and warning against Republican plans for less regulation. More from a blog post on CBSNews.com: 'Speculating on what the Internet could morph into under the Republicans' preferred lack of regulation, Franken asked the audience of bloggers how long it would take before the Fox News website loads significantly more quickly than the Daily Kos website. "If you want to protect the free flow of information in this country, you have to help me fight this," he said.'"
"I'm going to die homeless and penniless. I'm still twenty-five pounds overweight. No one will ever love me. I could just kill myself. "
The "free market" theory is obviously worth as much as tits on a bull when it comes to ISPs.
That's funny, I feel the same way about anything Al Franken has to say about, well, anything.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
List of countries jews like Franken have been kicked out of (for good reasons)
Year Country
1. 250 Carthage
2. 415 Alexandria
3. 554 Diocèse of Clermont (France)
4. 561 Diocèse of Uzès (France)
5. 612 Visigoth Spain
6. 642 Visigoth Empire
7. 855 Italy
8. 876 Sens
9. 1012 Mainz
10. 1182 France
11. 1182 Germany
12. 1276 Upper Bavaria
13. 1290 England
14. 1306 France
15. 1322 France (again)
16. 1348 Switzerland
17. 1349 Hielbronn (Germany)
18. 1349 Saxony
19. 1349 Hungary
20. 1360 Hungary
21. 1370 Belgium
22. 1380 Slovakia
23. 1388 Strasbourg
24. 1394 Germany
25. 1394 France
26. 1420 Lyons
27. 1421 Austria
28. 1424 Fribourg
29. 1424 Zurich
30. 1424 Cologne
31. 1432 Savoy
32. 1438 Mainz
33. 1439 Augsburg
34. 1442 Netherlands
35. 1444 Netherlands
36. 1446 Bavaria
37. 1453 France
38. 1453 Breslau
39. 1454 Wurzburg
40. 1462 Mainz
41. 1483 Mainz
42. 1484 Warsaw
43. 1485 Vincenza (Italy)
44. 1492 Spain
45. 1492 Italy
46. 1495 Lithuania
47. 1496 Naples
48. 1496 Portugal
49. 1498 Nuremberg
50. 1498 Navarre
51. 1510 Brandenberg
52. 1510 Prussia
53. 1514 Strasbourg
54. 1515 Genoa
55. 1519 Regensburg
56. 1533 Naples
57. 1541 Naples
58. 1542 Prague & Bohemia
59. 1550 Genoa
60. 1551 Bavaria
61. 1555 Pesaro
62. 1557 Prague
63. 1559 Austria
64. 1561 Prague
65. 1567 Wurzburg
66. 1569 Papal States
67. 1571 Brandenburg
68. 1582 Netherlands
69. 1582 Hungary
70. 1593 Brandenburg, Austria
71. 1597 Cremona, Pavia & Lodi
It's the former, "Comcast controls everything b/c the government keeps its hands off."
Free market is never stated in terms for the consumer. It is always stated in terms for big business.
Ensuring that ISPs can't discriminate against the little guy (such as myself) is elitest?
What the fuck are you smoking?
My guess is oxycodone and hydrocodone.
Free Martian Whores!
Will someone please define "free market" for me?
"The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market."
--Gordon Gekko
I can't find the exact words, but I watched a documentary on poverty the other night, and one of the economists basically said this: "In a purely capitalist economy, the market solution to a famine is a lot of dead people. Demand for food then falls, the supply again reaches a price equilibrium, and then the problem is considered solved."
My first thought when I read this was, "What does he think caused the famine in the first place?" The most likely answer is government regulation and/or corruption.
But ignoring that, I would like to know what economic system he would propose that would solve the problem of a famine more efficiently than a free market. If you have a famine, that means that there isn't enough food for everyone. How are you going to determine who gets fed and who dies?
In a free market system, the people who are most efficient at providing goods and services that people want gets fed. When you have a famine, the goods and services that people most desire is food, therefore the people who can provide others with food are those who can get what they want. Therefore those who provide food have an incentive to produce even more food. This means that in a free market economy, any famine that develops will be as short as possible.
In any other economic system, someone other than those who actually produce food (usually the political class) get first dibs on what food is available, meaning that those who produce food are likely to work at less than optimum efficiency which results in the famine being extended beyond the minimum possible time span.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
...let's be honest here. Franken wants what all liberals do - they want to control everything you see and read. To them "net neutrality" means on-line and radio are to become all liberal all the time. Talk radio, the internet, and FOX are the only media outlets not controlled by liberals - and "net neutrality" is how they are going to fix that. If you want proof of this, ask Mr. Franken how he feels about net neutrality with respect to tcp/ip protocols. You will get either a blank look (he's not a bright man) or you will see a sudden and savage about-face to race to protect "intellectual property" loaded with assumptions about who should get such protection by looking at the list of contributors to his war chest.
Do remember that this is the very same political party whose president criticized SCOTUS - in public - for asserting that people, even people in corporations other than unions or political action groups, cannot be held silent by the government since the 1st amendment - whose first and only function IS to protect political discourse - forbids them to do so. Said President then promptly promising to "re-apply" the principle - censorship - once again. Hey, the 1st amendment is not that hard to figure out, they KNEW that law was unconstitutional the day they passed it, and they will know it still when they pass the replacement. Cynically they realize that all they need to do to end-run the Constitution is to pass a law abrogating part of it, and then defend it to the death, appeal, appeal, appeal, delay, delay, delay, lawyer, lawyer, lawyer and when SCOTUS finally smacks 'em down again, go ahead and pass the exact same bill over again with different wording, and let the process repeat. Who cares if it makes lawyers filthy, stinking rich? The Trial Lawyer's Association will insure that only truly liberal viewpoints will be permitted, and they get paid too. Sweet deal.
Do not believe liberals when they say "new neutrality". Please. It's just a code word for censorship. And we are too much like China all ready. We have already hit most of the marks to a dictator-driven social "democracy" - the end of privacy, the disarming of the public, the control over individual lives, regulation of speech and the media, selective reporting, the list goes on and on.
Now I expect this will be modded down troll, but I feel better having at least I've pointed out - again - that we are patching our political dike using handfuls of C4 (all of which we bought with Chinese credit...), so when it blows up I'll be in a cabin somewhere, sitting on a pile of MRE's, cleaning my guns, and watching "Tremors" episodes on my solar-powered DVD - with occasional breaks to look at all the surprised faces when it comes THEIR turn to be rounded up. And I swear to God, when they start rounding up all those liberal Jews who voted for Obama, I am going to laugh myself until I hiccup. Jews are supposed to be smart, but they never did figure out that the only Americans who support Israel are the Republicans.
Fraken as a senator - its surreal to the point of absurdity. He was never funny as a comedian but he's a laugh riot now...