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How the GOP (and the Tea Party) Helped Kill SOPA
Hugh Pickens writes "Strengthening intellectual property enforcement has been a bipartisan issue for the past 25 years, but Stewart Baker writes in the Hollywood Reporter that when the fight went from the committees to the floor and Wikipedia went down, the Democratic and Republican parties reacted very differently to SOPA. 'Despite widespread opposition to SOPA from bloggers on the left, Democrats in Congress (and the administration) were reluctant to oppose the bill outright,' writes Baker. 'The MPAA was not shy about reminding them that Hollywood has been a reliable source of funding for Democratic candidates, and that it would not tolerate defections.' That very public message from the MPAA also reached another audience — Tea Party conservatives. Most of them had never given a second thought to intellectual property enforcement, but many had drawn support from conservative bloggers and they began to ask why they should risk the ire of their internet supporters to rescue an industry that was happily advertising how much it hated them." (Read on, below.)
Pickens continues: "Pretty soon, far more Republicans than Democrats had bailed on SOPA, the Republican presidential candidates had all come out for what they called 'Internet freedom,' and now for Republicans, opposition to new intellectual property enforcement is starting to look like a political winner. 'It pleases conservative bloggers, appeals to young swing voters, stokes the culture wars and drives a wedge between two Democratic constituencies, Hollywood and Silicon Valley,' concludes Baker, adding that unfortunately for Hollywood, as its customers migrate to the Internet, it is losing not just their money but their hearts and minds as well."
And yet capitalism -- let us not forget that Big Brother presides over an integrated, global capitalist system -- must be democratic, because it cannot be anything else. Capitalism could only grow hand-in-hand with democratic society. To deploy itself fully over the face of the whole planet, capitalism must even now permanently assure everyone of a choice, the outcome of which it has determined in advance. One must be able to choose between two indistinguishable politicians or two indistinguishable political ideologies because one chooses between two indistinguishable commodities. If there is no appearance of political democracy, there can be no sustainable capitalist system. This has been proven to be true by the permanent atrophy of the merchants in oriental despotism, by the ultimate defeat of Hitlerian and Mussolinian fascism, and by how poorly bureaucratic capitalism was managed by Stalinism.
Of course you're correct, but this is all the right-wing (and Tea Party) spin on the issues. The main article is written by a former official under Bush II who conveniently ignores the fact that the Republican party opposes EVERYTHING supported by any Democrats. The Democrats wanted to extend the payroll tax cut, while the Republicans opposed it until they finally gave in on a two month extension. They're also trying to kill any additional regulation of Wall Street, because these bills are usually being proposed by Democrats. And the "individual mandate" of the Obama health care plan? That was supported by Nixon, the Heritage Foundation, and even Romney way before Obama proposed it.
This is just typical rewriting of history.
I know how you feel, but I don't think that the Republicans are any better. I don't make enough money to feel restricted by the Democrats, but the Republicans :
A - Want a presence in my bedroom, and I absolutely can't stand that.
B - Favor my employer's rights over my rights, and if I look what has been happening to workers' pay vs executive pay and profits over the past decade, I don't think they need additional favoring.
I don't like what the Democrats are doing either, but I feel more personally threatened by the Republicans.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
At least the Republicans will allow one the tools to defend oneself or to forcefully change things --- ``Fast and Furious'' and ``Operation Gunrunner'' are a travesty of justice, and it's criminal that the State Department is blocking the return of surplus WWII-era M1 Rifles and Carbines from Korea (which would then be administered by the Civilian Marksmanship Program and sold participants in its programs)
I generally abhor people who are one issue voters.
But, the Internet is the most powerful platform for free and open communication the world has ever seen.
My opinion now is that ANY politician from ANY party who supports crippling the Internet is not just undesirable, but is in fact my enemy.
I will be a single issue voter when the future of the Internet is on the line.
I vote for every libertarian on the ballot no matter the views or qualifications. Due to the fact, they are not going to get elected anyway, but if another candidate sees that they lost because of a libertarian it 'may' get them to rethink their position and move slightly away from the totalitarian principals that the two current dominant parties have.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Actually Pearl Harbor can be laid square at the feet of FDR who ignored the will of the people to start a war, sound familiar? I would urge everyone to read Herbert Hoover's biography, its free and online in several places, where he lays out how FDR went out of his way to insult the Japanese at every turn and give them NO way out that would allow them to save face because he had a raging hard on for starting a war the people had made VERY clear they DID NOT WANT. he also sold out all of Eastern Europe to Stalin who he gushed all over thus condemning millions to a life of fear if they got to live at all. FDR even said in his own words he was gonna "tighten the noose" around the neck of Japan until they had no choice but to fight back and when they sent envoys to try to negotiate before Pearl harbor he would go out of his way to insult them like ignoring their requests for an audience for weeks.
So it had nothing to do with interventionalist and everything to do with a warmonger that wouldn't be happy until he got his war. Now whether you supported WWII or not is irrelevant, if FDR thought we should fight he should have laid out the reasons to the American people and let them decide, instead he simply ignored how they repeatedly said they did not want their sons dying in Europe and the Pacific and kept bitchslapping both Germany and Japan until they got tired of it. Hoover also lays out how many were telling FDR including him that getting involved at that time in any capacity was not only foolish but gave Stalin all the cards because if the USA would have stayed out Stalin and Hitler would have wiped each other out and Japan was buried in a quagmire in China that was keeping the factions all turned on each other and keeping the communists from gaining an upper hand. Read the book, its quite enlightening.
As for TFA my hope is that a republican congress and Nobama as POTUS will equal such gridlock that frankly nothing gets done, sadly that appears to be our best outcome at this point. Mittens couldn't be elected dogcatcher and Nobama has made it clear the only hope and change you are getting is he hopes you don't notice the only change from the previous administration is the name on the letterhead. He has made it clear he doesn't care what the people think, don't give a shit about the poor, loves war as much if not more than Dubya, definitely craves power worse than Dubya, and has declared that thanks to war powers which he says congress can't restrict he can pretty much have anyone labeled an enemy combatant and dealt with without trial, a move even Dubya wouldn't have had the balls to try.
So frankly our best hope is complete gridlock. BOTH parties kiss the ring of the corporate masters, BOTH parties are in love with more police state tactics, but both parties hate each other enough that neither can stand the other getting anything done so having congress in the Rep hands while the POTUS is a Dem seems to be the surest way to have complete gridlock. sad that that is the best we can hope for huh? But the MSM has been declaring Mittens the winner for months now and i have no doubt they will get their way and Mittens big fat shill mouth ensures he doesn't have a prayer.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.