Observe and Report

Bob Somerby:

… whatever a person may think of Van Jones, he simply wasn’t a major White House player. Glenn Beck ran a largely crackpot crusade against Jones, often disinforming millions of viewers in the process. Jones “went to prison and became a communist,” Beck would constantly say. (That clip comes from his August 4 show.) Cracker, please! That’s “apocalyptic” junk. And guess what? When millions of people get disinformed in such ways, that might qualify as news too!

The Post didn’t report that disinformation—the process by which millions of people were told that Obama had an important “czar” who “went to prison” and “became a communist.” But it didn’t occur to Alexander to ask why the Post was silent about that. We’d say there are two likely reasons:

First, Alexander has absorbed a Republican point of view about whose outlook dominates Washington.

Second, there is no countervailing Democratic point of view! There is no narrative which might have made Alexander think twice before he joined a famous old band. For decades now, conservatives have spread the idea that liberal notions dominate Washington.

The notion was silly by the mid-1990s, of course. But when have Democrats spoken?

Well, Bob, when so-called Democrats with daily access to microphones do speak, they all too often recite internalized GOP talking points. Let’s take just one set of recent examples centered around attempts to remake and refine the United States’ Afghan policy going forward. Here we have (the normally quite good) Mara Liasson, when asked if Bush administration policies have anything to do with Afghanistan as Obama found it:

[Obama] owns the war in Afghanistan

Indeed, Obama did start and then ignore said war in Afghanistan for the better part of a decade. Whatever domestic and military issues that remain to be solved there are totally his fault, and have nothing to do with anything that went before. And, just to let you in on the news of the future, success in Afghanistan (should it come): total NeoCon victory, and was all Bush the whole way, largely despite Obama, and certainly not because of any new policies. Failure, or simply staying mired in the present quagmire, well that was because Obama failed to execute W’s brilliant strategeries.

Now let’s take Juan Williams on the same subject:

[Afghanistan] becomes President Obama’s war in such a way that people would say he has gone back, he has become a war president, and how ironic for a man who ran against the war.

You see, Juan, the problem here is: Obama ran “against” the conduct of the war in Iraq. If anything, he was arguing from day one for a more aggressive, more involved stance in Afghanistan. And he’s repeatedly, repeatedly said that Iraq was a “distraction” from the hunt for al Qaeda and action against the Taliban remnants. You might recall, these are the two groups responsible for the attacks of 9/11. Too bad none of that material was in the GOP’s talking points memorandum for the day.

[T]he time has come–and in fact, it is long overdue–for them to begin forcefully making the case that being a member in good standing of the party’s Senate caucus means supporting cloture motions on key legislation even if a given senator intends to vote against it.

–Ed Kilgore, Closed Vote; The New Republic

Like Clockwork

Obama directs FCC to adopt “Net Neutrality” (and write any new or revised regulations accordingly). This policy is a 180 from the Bush administration position that can be boiled down to “whatever the big companies want, the big companies get,” and these changes would, without a doubt, foster the sorts of innovations and game-changing uses that people tend to use the word “internet time” as a synonym for (e.g. rapid advance over short time periods and the ubiquitous availability of seemingly all human knowledge to relatively simple front-end tools on computers, and nowadays, mobile devices of all shapes and forms).

Naturally, today’s GOP, ever a friend to the Established Interests is categorically agin it. Kay Bailey Hutchison says:

I am deeply concerned by the direction the FCC appears to be heading.

Indeed, just take a look at these troubling developments:

new network neutrality rules that would require carriers to deliver broadband in a nondiscriminatory manner and to disclose their network management policies. Genachowski also said the FCC would explore the question of whether to extend network neutrality rules to mobile carriers.

[…]

“This means they cannot block or degrade lawful traffic over their networks, or pick winners by favoring some content or applications over others in the connection to subscribers’ homes,” [FCC chairman Julius] Genachowski said in an address before the Brookings Institute Sept. 21. “Nor can they disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider. The Internet must continue to allow users to decide what content and applications succeed.”

How can innovation possibly succeed in an environment that encourages open competition and a level playing field? It’s unpossible. The only way forward: Hutchison feels the monopolistic providers of net access as of today “should be unencumbered by consumer protections and basic Internet freedoms.” Indeed they should.Who could possibly want any of those things. According to the GOP, freedom is overrated anyway.

Net neutrality: clearly another example of Obama’s rampant Socialist, command-and-control agenda. By forcing the internet to remain open and free, unchained by secret access rules or “preferred” website providers and tiered service, he’s pursuing the Socialist takeover of said internet by lots of small, innovative, ideas-based companies that leverage terrifying Socialistic Free-Market principles at the expense of the moneyed interests and the various, ossified, copper-wire owning players of today. Why, that’s categorically un-American! Jon Ensign, in a remarkable bit of double-speak, clearly agrees:

In this struggling economy, any industry that is able to thrive should be allowed to do so without meddlesome government interference that could stifle innovation,“ Ensign said in a statement. "We must avoid burdensome government regulations that micromanage private businesses or that limit the ability of companies to provide what their customers want. The Internet has flourished in large part because of a lack of government interference; I see no need to change that now.

Truly, truly remarkable. No other word for it. By writing regulation that permanently opens the internet to competition from all comers, and any size company, by guaranteeing this access for both consumers and businesses we are, in fact "micromanag[ing] private business” and “limit[ing] the ability of companies to provide what their customers want.” Because we know what customers want, now and forever. So long as customers want tiered internet access, and a Comcast-approved network, that is. And, since that’s all they’re offered in most markets through built-in, city-wide monopolies, that must be what they want. Right? Right?

Super Mario Brothers will be to the eighties what Second World War was to the forties, except good. Although it is only 1985, I can also safely say that this game will be more significant than any future wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined…. Mario is going to so popularize Japanese culture in the U.S. that The Vapors’ hit song “Turning Japanese” will cease to be about a sex act and will come to describe the literal surgical transformation of Americans into Japanese citizens.

The New Yorker on the, er, slightly overheated reception of The Beatles: Rock Band.

Femtocells

Glenn Fleishman reports for TidBITS on a new doodad from AT&T, the 3G Microcell, which offers to connect to your home network connection and then make a little bubble of 3G voice and data coverage right there to the house. You get better coverage (or, in some cases, you get coverage), and meanwhile:

Carriers love femtocells because they shift traffic (and the expense of moving calls and data) from their expensive-to-operate, capital-intensive cellular networks to cheap broadband – broadband that the customer has installed and paid for separately.

That’s all well and good, but why in the hell does it cost the consumer anything? Apparently the 3G MicroCell (this is what it looks like; it’s pretty clearly the nefarious output of the Drax Enterprise Corporation) will cost $150, but that “AT&T will provide a $100 rebate for customers who sign up for a calling plan,” and but users on calling plans will get unlimited calls (placed through it) for the low-low price of $10 a month. Apparently the other carriers have like devices and offer broadly similar plans. The question: Why? Putative MicroCell users can get unlimited calls through their requisite pre-existing home network (without any femtocell attached) for the low-low price of $0 (though, admittedly, not in glorious 3G MODE!). And remember, these folks are (likely) already paying AT&T to insufficiently cover their home…this is most likely why they might be interested in the MicroCell in the first place! So: pay me not to cover your home, pay me some more so that you can personally provide said coverage for your home, then pay me a bit more per month to use said coverage that you are providing to your own home. Furthermore, said paying users are providing a carrier with extra connectivity. If lots of people on their (presumably troublesome) block did so, you can imagine said carrier’s service in said troublesome area improving for everyone. And it costs them nothing. Probably less than nothing as, just like the article notes, you’re shifting traffic onto people’s own networks and off the carrier’s; plus they’re winning hearts and minds through the magic of improved service, and getting paid by the participating subset of end-users to do so. You’d think they would be giving these doodads away just for coming by the store. But, once again, we have run into a plain example of America’s mobile industry mission statement:

Never miss a chance to screw your customer.

If we can get these idiots to run our networks for us, charge them for the privilege, and (best of all) silently shift them onto the inevitable dumb pipes while we’re doing it, so much the better. Later, we’ll figure out a way to charge them for providing access to and across their own home network; but we’ll let them get good and used to the improved signal first…oh, and texting over a MicroCell will cost, uh, $30.

The idiocy of Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck wants to have a national day of prayer and fasting, and points to Thomas Jefferson as someone who was all for that sort of thing. Fortunately, Thomas Jefferson weighed in on just exactly this sort of issue:

First, on the issue of prescribing such observances:

I consider the government of the U S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the U.S. Certainly no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the general government. It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority.

That one actually seems crystal clear without recourse to old TJ, but, in this day and age, it pays to be thorough. But hows-about the more sly, more thoroughly “modern” version of said observances in which the President (or a similar authority) simply encourages folks to pray or fast or what-have-you:

But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting & prayer. That is, that I should indirectly assume to the U.S. an authority over religious exercises which the Constitution has directly precluded them from. It must be meant too that this recommendation is to carry some authority, and to be sanctioned by some penalty on those who disregard it; not indeed of fine and imprisonment, but of some degree of proscription perhaps in public opinion. And does the change in the nature of the penalty make the recommendation the less a law of conduct for those to whom it is directed? I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, & the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has deposited it.

Exactly right. Why, it’s almost as if this country was founded by deists who were looking to completely separate the respective functions of church and state. Just don’t tell Glenn Beck; such facts get in the way of his preferred narratives.

So, which recent or current President would Jefferson judge as more dangerous to the Republic? And exactly which part of Glenn Beck’s daily spew would Jefferson recognize as even American, much less the work of a self-proclaimed “Constitutional Scholar”?

People [should] have called for the resignation of Tom Delay back in the day because a hammer can’t be the Majority Leader. After all, hammers are inanimate objects and it’s an affront to American values to have a lifeless tool at such a high office.

–Ezra Klein commenter etdean1

Obama interviewed by GOP Talking Points

Obama: George, you — you can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase…. What if I say that right now your premiums are going to be going up by 5 or 8 or 10 percent next year and you say well, that’s not a tax increase; but, on the other hand, if I say that I don’t want to have to pay for you not carrying coverage even after I give you tax credits that make it affordable, then…
Stephanopoulos: I — I don’t think I’m making it up. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary: Tax — “a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.”
Obama: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.
Stephanopoulos: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.
Obama: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy. You know that.