Bush may have have been responsible responsible for ISIS rise in iraq, but Obama created the Libyan mess where ISIS trains
Obama didn't create the Libyan mess, Libyans did. The United Nations voted to intervene and NATO forces enforced a no-fly zone to prevent Libyan fighter jets from dropping bombs on Libyan civilians.
As long as the political environment is this partisan and this entrenched, it will not change. In first past the post voting, voting for a candidate who likely won't win is effectively the same as voting for your least preferred candidate who does have a chance to win. Given there are actually differences between the parties that do impact the lives of many people, you will have trouble convincing people to consistently vote for a party that seems guaranteed to lose.
Ending gerrymandering would at least ensure that candidates need to appeal to a majority of the electorate rather than just a majority of the people likely to vote in the primary.
No, it was literally GWB's policies that helped to create ISIS. The invasion of Iraq set the stage for the rise of ISIS and the Bush policies on torture allowed their future leader to be imprisoned by American troops, tortured and then released. That experience pushed him towards a path to religious fanaticism and mass murder. So if you want to blame an American president for ISIS, the facts say Bush would get the blame.
The internet is a private network. Just because people want to use it to watch TV doesn't change that fact. The entire NN movement is about seizing private property so someone else who didn't pay for it can benefit. It would be better to leave the network free, and just pay the deadbeats who can't afford their TV the gap price.
Who didn't pay for it? I pay an ISP to carry my data to and from the internet. If I go over a limit, they even charge me more for the additional data. So I pay them to route my information to the internet and the information I requested back to me. Everything else is misdirection because I already paid them for the service they are providing.
Comcast and Verizon, however, want to get paid more than once to do that job. Wouldn't we all like that? Wouldn't you like to get two or three pay checks for the work you're doing without having to do anything extra? But we don't get to do that and neither should they. And if we let them do it, we will all end up paying for it, because that extra cost is going to get passed on to you in the form of higher prices and reduced competition.
There's an old saying, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". It's wise advice. It's cheaper and easier to do the right thing now, then to attempt to fix all of the obvious problems piecemeal when they inevitably do happen.
Wow, so unaware of the irony. Corporations cannot make you do anything. Governments can and do, thus restricting freedom.
No, no, no. That's just wrong. Corporations can, in fact, force you do to anything but they are not legally allowed to do so. And it's the government that makes the rules that say they aren't allowed to force you to do things, unless you sign a contract and unless you are given compensation for the things you are then required to do. Without the government the corporation would be making it's own rules about what it's allowed to do, and if you think a democratic government which has to actually run elections is oppressive, you should get the chance to live under corporate rule where the corporation only has a duty to a majority of it's share holders. I doubt you'd prefer it.
Government regulations can protect your freedoms or they take them away. This should be self-evident. Laws against murder, for example, create more freedom than they remove. Government regulation is always a trade off between freedoms.
It's important to always look at the rules and try and figure whether the trade off is a good one. In this case, I think it is. Net Neutrality is trading away Comcast's freedom to monitor, intercept, modify, or destroy your communications, for your freedom to communicate on the internet without interference from your service provider. The government is taking away a freedom from the corporations to make a similar freedom available to the people.
Regulation, any regulation, just hampers competition.
I'm afraid not. The most obvious example that this claim is false is every regulation that curbs anti-competitive practices. Those regulations increase competition by disallowing behaviour that undermines competition.
But hey, give the current administration credit. At least they're seeking public comment on rulemakings rather than simply issuing "guidance" that more or less acts like a rule without going through the rulemaking process.
Um, it's pretty clear they weren't seeking public comment, but merely going through the motions to make it look like they are. And they pretty much had to do that, because they couldn't issue "guidance" that contradicts the classification system, and really I think the whole point is to make sure that customers do not have standing to sue Comcast and Verizon when they start violating the network neutrality rules.
Those mounting legal issues won't accomplish much except for hot air and waste of time. Because the Supreme Court in 2005 has already ruled that ISPs cannot be regulated by Title 2 under the current law because the law is fundamentally flawed and outdated because it cannot properly classify modern ISPs.
That's actually the opposite of the actual Supreme Court decision in 2005. The Supreme Court wrote that the agency is the arbiter of what is and is not Title II and barring a compelling argument that the rules were unambiguous and not being followed (which the court ruled they were ambiguous), the courts should not force any regulatory agency to re-assign their classifications.
Nice work. Everything you've written on this topic is completely wrong because you don't even understand the basics of your own position.
Right... The ones screaming that the internet is going to end. The end is nigh.
I wrote nothing of the sort, and anyone who follows this thread can easily verify that, so why are you telling transparent lies about what I've written?
Misrepresenting open comments of the FCC.
Oops. I didn't do that either.
Misunderstanding the law.
According to you, amateur lawyer, right? Did you ever stop think about whether people who are actually qualified to interpret the law agree with your interpretation? Unlikely. You're the pot calling the kettle black.
Screeching every slur they can think of is.
Oh child. You are so very wrong, because I can think of so many, many more slurs. I've only used the ones that are appropriate to your specific behaviour.
Yet, the one quoting jurisprudence and law is the one peddling FUD.
Nope, you haven't quoted anything or explained anything. All you've done is link to things and complain when you were challenged to explain why the things you linked are in any way relevant. The martyr act would be more impressive if it wasn't so obviously a cover for your lack of intelligence and intellectual laziness.
Oh no! A I can't break the group think and mass hysteria that people have worked themselves into.
Nothing screams arrogant, ignorant ass hole like the words "group think". Ever stop to consider that you might not be the font of all wisdom? Ever stopped to think that maybe if the group and the experts disagree with you, maybe it's because you're wrong? Humility and hard work will get you a lot further than arrogance and condescension.
What fear have I presented? What Uncertainty? What doubt?
What argument have you presented? None. Your FUD is a nebulous implication that the current net neutrality rules are somehow illegal? Frankly, I gave you on trying to understand what you think you know when you claimed that a link to a wikipedia article was all the evidence you needed to convince people of a position you couldn't even be bothered to write down.
All I have done is try to understand the situation through jurisprudence and law without throwing out petty insults that are so common that you initiated.
People who "are trying to understand" don't act the way you have. You aren't trying to understand, you are trying to prove that you are smarter than everyone else. Unfortunately for you, you aren't even smarter than the average poster here. And from my view, you are the one who decided to start with the petty insults, but I'm sure your petty insults all well reasoned and justified.
You are a hypocritical piece of shit. Fuck off to your bandwagon where you can feel smug circle jerking the others that think exactly like you.
See, there's your true colours showing. You don't care about the issues or the law, all you care about is proving to yourself that you're a special snowflake filled with wisdom that the ignorant masses just won't accept.
Can't have that. The voters are helpless little angels and can only do what the TV tells them. Because, you know, like, democracy is hard, and the glittery money dazzles. I mean, they all want laws passed, but they never offer up anybody who will make an honest effort of it. Apparently, it's supposed to happen automagically, even as they reelect the same old crooks into office.
It would help if 94% of the congressional districts weren't rigged to favour one of the candidates. Gerrymandering is a cancer on American democracy.
We brought the Republicans in with a wave election and a mandate to repeal regulations, which is exactly what's happening. There should be dancing in the streets. Shady!!!!
Trump has no mandate because he lost the popular vote, because around a third of Americans approve of the job he is doing, and because 75%-80% of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.
If you agree with Lincoln that the American government should be "of the people, by the people, for the people" then you must reject the actions of Ajit Pai and Trump.
Sure, call me a partisan shill because I think there is a proper way to regulate things and when anything that goes back and forth like this between the government and the courts it is the job of Congress to fix.
I call you a partisan shill because you peddle self-serving justifications and lies. As far as I'm concerned you're the one peddling FUD and from what I see, no one with a half brain is buying it.
Obviously you are a troll. court disagreement and a indecisive government is justification enough.
And obviously you are a vapid moron. You dance around the issue, but you seem unable to actually articulate a single justification. You provide references to court cases, but no explanation of why the court case is material. You link to a history of regulation but can't say why it matters.
As far as I understand it, the current net neutrality regulation is based on the case law established by court cases, the courts ruled this was one way it could be regulated, so they regulated it through the FCC by assigning the Title 2 common carrier classification. Logically and legally this seems like a solid move because ISPs are actually the exact same job as phone companies by transporting your data from one location to another, not to mention some of the ISP companies are actually phone companies and using their existing infrastructure to deliver internet access.
All I have seen from you is vague hand waving and proclamations with nothing to back up your claims.
As far as I'm concerned you're an empty-headed partisan shill.
Right... Changing one decision that was made a few years ago in a discussion and legal matter that has been on going for decades is now akin to being a toady in industry. Sounds absurd when you put this into context.
It's not the changing of a decision that's the problem. It's changing a decision without justification, lying about why you're making the changing, making the change it when the original policy has support from almost 90% of the electorate, lying about the consequences of the change, all while taking money from the people who will benefit from the change that's the problem. Everyone knows Verizon owns Ajit Pai and that he's acting the best interest of his owners and not the public and that's why he's an industry toady.
Maybe you can answer the question without being an "industry toady"; Is an ISP a telecommunications service provider or a information service provider?
ISPS ARE LOCALLY REGULATED BY GOVERNMENTS THE BIG 4 ARE NOT. THUS LOCAL GOVERNMENTS GET MORE CONTROL OF THE INTERNET BACK FROM THE BIG 4.
People are giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you are not a moron. Nobody actually wants local government to have "more control of the internet". It's the internet, local governments are not supposed to matter. I don't want my local government deciding that I should be using Bing and requiring my local ISP to block access to Google. That's before we even start looking at how easy it would be for the cable companies to buy local elections and make sure that nobody on the local level dares say a word against them.
Nobody wants to be forced to use some two-bit local search engine, shopping, social media, or streaming site because of local politics. What we want is the internet, unrestricted and free to use as we please. It's a service we already have and that we are paying for. Nobody wants your tin pot dictators to take it away. So whether you're a politician or a CEO, what I want is for you to keep your god damn dirty hands off my Internet access. Understand?
If this was in person I could actually reply to you guys and we could move the debate forward. Instead I get the thundering herd of misunderstanding problem.
You really shouldn't complain when people think you're smarter than you are. You position is so obtusely stupid, they all think you're bad at communication rather than a blithering idiot.
Lastly, the fact that you hate Google, Amazon, Facebook and Netflix is not enough reason to screw up the Internet for everyone. Grow up, child.
If any of those local governments try to enforce anything against the cable companies, they will suddenly find their opposition is very well financed in the next election. If they even manage to get anything done, it will be repealed very quickly by their replacements.
Netflix wanted connections upgraded because they wanted to send a lot more traffic than Comcast sent. That's not peering anymore.
Netflix was not in any peering agreement with Comcast. Netflix's internet provider was. If Comcast was not happy with the data flow they should have negotiated the peering agreement with their peer. Instead, they extorted money from Netflix, who remember, is only a customer of the the company that Comcast was peering with to pay for regular infrastructure upgrades.
Netflix could have done something similar, and still could today, but apparently they've decided manipulating public opinion is easier than adding a new service, or partnering with a company such as Backblaze which offers a service that accepts a lot of data.
Netflix does. They actually have co-located servers with Comcast to make sure that Comcast doesn't pull a stunt like that again.
Are you just spouting bullshit about things you actually know nothing about?
Technically speaking the White House is not supposed to have any direct control over the FCC. They appoint the members and the chair, but they are not allowed to dictate policy.
Slashdot Mirror
Bush may have have been responsible responsible for ISIS rise in iraq, but Obama created the Libyan mess where ISIS trains
Obama didn't create the Libyan mess, Libyans did. The United Nations voted to intervene and NATO forces enforced a no-fly zone to prevent Libyan fighter jets from dropping bombs on Libyan civilians.
and Obama provided weapons to ISIS
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-airdrops-50-tonnes-of-weapons-to-new-syrian-rebel-coalition-a6692126.html
Those guys aren't ISIS, they're one of the many groups fighting ISIS. Did you even bother to read the link you cited?
It's not an excuse, it's an observation.
As long as the political environment is this partisan and this entrenched, it will not change. In first past the post voting, voting for a candidate who likely won't win is effectively the same as voting for your least preferred candidate who does have a chance to win. Given there are actually differences between the parties that do impact the lives of many people, you will have trouble convincing people to consistently vote for a party that seems guaranteed to lose.
Ending gerrymandering would at least ensure that candidates need to appeal to a majority of the electorate rather than just a majority of the people likely to vote in the primary.
No, it was literally GWB's policies that helped to create ISIS. The invasion of Iraq set the stage for the rise of ISIS and the Bush policies on torture allowed their future leader to be imprisoned by American troops, tortured and then released. That experience pushed him towards a path to religious fanaticism and mass murder. So if you want to blame an American president for ISIS, the facts say Bush would get the blame.
The internet is a private network. Just because people want to use it to watch TV doesn't change that fact. The entire NN movement is about seizing private property so someone else who didn't pay for it can benefit. It would be better to leave the network free, and just pay the deadbeats who can't afford their TV the gap price.
Who didn't pay for it? I pay an ISP to carry my data to and from the internet. If I go over a limit, they even charge me more for the additional data. So I pay them to route my information to the internet and the information I requested back to me. Everything else is misdirection because I already paid them for the service they are providing.
Comcast and Verizon, however, want to get paid more than once to do that job. Wouldn't we all like that? Wouldn't you like to get two or three pay checks for the work you're doing without having to do anything extra? But we don't get to do that and neither should they. And if we let them do it, we will all end up paying for it, because that extra cost is going to get passed on to you in the form of higher prices and reduced competition.
There's an old saying, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". It's wise advice. It's cheaper and easier to do the right thing now, then to attempt to fix all of the obvious problems piecemeal when they inevitably do happen.
Wow, so unaware of the irony. Corporations cannot make you do anything. Governments can and do, thus restricting freedom.
No, no, no. That's just wrong. Corporations can, in fact, force you do to anything but they are not legally allowed to do so. And it's the government that makes the rules that say they aren't allowed to force you to do things, unless you sign a contract and unless you are given compensation for the things you are then required to do. Without the government the corporation would be making it's own rules about what it's allowed to do, and if you think a democratic government which has to actually run elections is oppressive, you should get the chance to live under corporate rule where the corporation only has a duty to a majority of it's share holders. I doubt you'd prefer it.
Government regulations can protect your freedoms or they take them away. This should be self-evident. Laws against murder, for example, create more freedom than they remove. Government regulation is always a trade off between freedoms.
It's important to always look at the rules and try and figure whether the trade off is a good one. In this case, I think it is. Net Neutrality is trading away Comcast's freedom to monitor, intercept, modify, or destroy your communications, for your freedom to communicate on the internet without interference from your service provider. The government is taking away a freedom from the corporations to make a similar freedom available to the people.
Regulation, any regulation, just hampers competition.
I'm afraid not. The most obvious example that this claim is false is every regulation that curbs anti-competitive practices. Those regulations increase competition by disallowing behaviour that undermines competition.
But hey, give the current administration credit. At least they're seeking public comment on rulemakings rather than simply issuing "guidance" that more or less acts like a rule without going through the rulemaking process.
Um, it's pretty clear they weren't seeking public comment, but merely going through the motions to make it look like they are. And they pretty much had to do that, because they couldn't issue "guidance" that contradicts the classification system, and really I think the whole point is to make sure that customers do not have standing to sue Comcast and Verizon when they start violating the network neutrality rules.
Those mounting legal issues won't accomplish much except for hot air and waste of time. Because the Supreme Court in 2005 has already ruled that ISPs cannot be regulated by Title 2 under the current law because the law is fundamentally flawed and outdated because it cannot properly classify modern ISPs.
That's actually the opposite of the actual Supreme Court decision in 2005. The Supreme Court wrote that the agency is the arbiter of what is and is not Title II and barring a compelling argument that the rules were unambiguous and not being followed (which the court ruled they were ambiguous), the courts should not force any regulatory agency to re-assign their classifications.
Nice work. Everything you've written on this topic is completely wrong because you don't even understand the basics of your own position.
Right... The ones screaming that the internet is going to end. The end is nigh.
I wrote nothing of the sort, and anyone who follows this thread can easily verify that, so why are you telling transparent lies about what I've written?
Misrepresenting open comments of the FCC.
Oops. I didn't do that either.
Misunderstanding the law.
According to you, amateur lawyer, right? Did you ever stop think about whether people who are actually qualified to interpret the law agree with your interpretation? Unlikely. You're the pot calling the kettle black.
Screeching every slur they can think of is.
Oh child. You are so very wrong, because I can think of so many, many more slurs. I've only used the ones that are appropriate to your specific behaviour.
Yet, the one quoting jurisprudence and law is the one peddling FUD.
Nope, you haven't quoted anything or explained anything. All you've done is link to things and complain when you were challenged to explain why the things you linked are in any way relevant. The martyr act would be more impressive if it wasn't so obviously a cover for your lack of intelligence and intellectual laziness.
Oh no! A I can't break the group think and mass hysteria that people have worked themselves into.
Nothing screams arrogant, ignorant ass hole like the words "group think". Ever stop to consider that you might not be the font of all wisdom? Ever stopped to think that maybe if the group and the experts disagree with you, maybe it's because you're wrong? Humility and hard work will get you a lot further than arrogance and condescension.
What fear have I presented? What Uncertainty? What doubt?
What argument have you presented? None. Your FUD is a nebulous implication that the current net neutrality rules are somehow illegal? Frankly, I gave you on trying to understand what you think you know when you claimed that a link to a wikipedia article was all the evidence you needed to convince people of a position you couldn't even be bothered to write down.
All I have done is try to understand the situation through jurisprudence and law without throwing out petty insults that are so common that you initiated.
People who "are trying to understand" don't act the way you have. You aren't trying to understand, you are trying to prove that you are smarter than everyone else. Unfortunately for you, you aren't even smarter than the average poster here. And from my view, you are the one who decided to start with the petty insults, but I'm sure your petty insults all well reasoned and justified.
You are a hypocritical piece of shit. Fuck off to your bandwagon where you can feel smug circle jerking the others that think exactly like you.
See, there's your true colours showing. You don't care about the issues or the law, all you care about is proving to yourself that you're a special snowflake filled with wisdom that the ignorant masses just won't accept.
Yeah, she's doing pretty well. What a disaster it would have been if Trump had won...
Can't have that. The voters are helpless little angels and can only do what the TV tells them. Because, you know, like, democracy is hard, and the glittery money dazzles. I mean, they all want laws passed, but they never offer up anybody who will make an honest effort of it. Apparently, it's supposed to happen automagically, even as they reelect the same old crooks into office.
It would help if 94% of the congressional districts weren't rigged to favour one of the candidates. Gerrymandering is a cancer on American democracy.
We brought the Republicans in with a wave election and a mandate to repeal regulations, which is exactly what's happening. There should be dancing in the streets. Shady!!!!
Trump has no mandate because he lost the popular vote, because around a third of Americans approve of the job he is doing, and because 75%-80% of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.
If you agree with Lincoln that the American government should be "of the people, by the people, for the people" then you must reject the actions of Ajit Pai and Trump.
Sure, call me a partisan shill because I think there is a proper way to regulate things and when anything that goes back and forth like this between the government and the courts it is the job of Congress to fix.
I call you a partisan shill because you peddle self-serving justifications and lies. As far as I'm concerned you're the one peddling FUD and from what I see, no one with a half brain is buying it.
Obviously you are a troll. court disagreement and a indecisive government is justification enough.
And obviously you are a vapid moron. You dance around the issue, but you seem unable to actually articulate a single justification. You provide references to court cases, but no explanation of why the court case is material. You link to a history of regulation but can't say why it matters.
As far as I understand it, the current net neutrality regulation is based on the case law established by court cases, the courts ruled this was one way it could be regulated, so they regulated it through the FCC by assigning the Title 2 common carrier classification. Logically and legally this seems like a solid move because ISPs are actually the exact same job as phone companies by transporting your data from one location to another, not to mention some of the ISP companies are actually phone companies and using their existing infrastructure to deliver internet access.
All I have seen from you is vague hand waving and proclamations with nothing to back up your claims.
As far as I'm concerned you're an empty-headed partisan shill.
I thought it was clear, you still haven't provided any justification for the decision.
Nothing in that document provides any justification whatsoever. Is your only goal to waste people's time with pointless side tracking?
There is plenty of justification
No there isn't. Partisan political hacks aside, there is literally no justification for this.
Right... Changing one decision that was made a few years ago in a discussion and legal matter that has been on going for decades is now akin to being a toady in industry. Sounds absurd when you put this into context.
It's not the changing of a decision that's the problem. It's changing a decision without justification, lying about why you're making the changing, making the change it when the original policy has support from almost 90% of the electorate, lying about the consequences of the change, all while taking money from the people who will benefit from the change that's the problem. Everyone knows Verizon owns Ajit Pai and that he's acting the best interest of his owners and not the public and that's why he's an industry toady.
Maybe you can answer the question without being an "industry toady"; Is an ISP a telecommunications service provider or a information service provider?
An ISP is both.
ISPS ARE LOCALLY REGULATED BY GOVERNMENTS THE BIG 4 ARE NOT. THUS LOCAL GOVERNMENTS GET MORE CONTROL OF THE INTERNET BACK FROM THE BIG 4.
People are giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you are not a moron. Nobody actually wants local government to have "more control of the internet". It's the internet, local governments are not supposed to matter. I don't want my local government deciding that I should be using Bing and requiring my local ISP to block access to Google. That's before we even start looking at how easy it would be for the cable companies to buy local elections and make sure that nobody on the local level dares say a word against them.
Nobody wants to be forced to use some two-bit local search engine, shopping, social media, or streaming site because of local politics. What we want is the internet, unrestricted and free to use as we please. It's a service we already have and that we are paying for. Nobody wants your tin pot dictators to take it away. So whether you're a politician or a CEO, what I want is for you to keep your god damn dirty hands off my Internet access. Understand?
If this was in person I could actually reply to you guys and we could move the debate forward. Instead I get the thundering herd of misunderstanding problem.
You really shouldn't complain when people think you're smarter than you are. You position is so obtusely stupid, they all think you're bad at communication rather than a blithering idiot.
Lastly, the fact that you hate Google, Amazon, Facebook and Netflix is not enough reason to screw up the Internet for everyone. Grow up, child.
If any of those local governments try to enforce anything against the cable companies, they will suddenly find their opposition is very well financed in the next election. If they even manage to get anything done, it will be repealed very quickly by their replacements.
Netflix wanted connections upgraded because they wanted to send a lot more traffic than Comcast sent. That's not peering anymore.
Netflix was not in any peering agreement with Comcast. Netflix's internet provider was. If Comcast was not happy with the data flow they should have negotiated the peering agreement with their peer. Instead, they extorted money from Netflix, who remember, is only a customer of the the company that Comcast was peering with to pay for regular infrastructure upgrades.
Netflix could have done something similar, and still could today, but apparently they've decided manipulating public opinion is easier than adding a new service, or partnering with a company such as Backblaze which offers a service that accepts a lot of data.
Netflix does. They actually have co-located servers with Comcast to make sure that Comcast doesn't pull a stunt like that again.
Are you just spouting bullshit about things you actually know nothing about?
Did you you just use China as an example for a free and open Internet?
You should be ashamed of yourself and go sit in the corner until you figure out what you did wrong.
Technically speaking the White House is not supposed to have any direct control over the FCC. They appoint the members and the chair, but they are not allowed to dictate policy.
Actually, I did think that was going to be a disaster at the time, however, Tom Wheeler proved that he wasn't the industry toady that Ajit Pai is.
Obama didn't nominate him. Mitch McConnel did, Obama appointed him because the other Republican candidates all looked worse.