My Thoughts Exactly

The FCC holds a hearing on Net Neutrality, and YOU! ARE! THERE!

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So yesterday morning over coffee I was doing what most people do over their first daily cup o’ joe, which is bring up technorati and see if anybody’s talking about me. That process took me to Joho’s page, from which I learned that the FCC was to be holding an hearing on why Comcast sucks, I mean Net Neutrality broadband network management practices only hours thence. Now although to my surprise & delight, Wetmachine, thanks to the work of my fellow wetmechanics Harold Feld and Greg Rose has become quite the FCC policy site with a side-order of net neutrality, I had never been to an FCC hearing. A quick check of the boat and bus schedules showed that I could probably make it to Hahvahd in time for most of the festivities. I decided to go. So, after securing the blessings of Dear Wife and throwing a few things in a bag, off I set to lose my FCC-hearing virginity.

Below the fold, some totally subjective impressions of the day, told in that winsome wetmachine way that you’ve come to treasure, or if you haven’t yet, which you soon will. More sober-styled reports have surely appeared by now, and I’ll dig up some links & post them at the end for those of you who like a little conventional reportage to ballast what you get from me.

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John McCain & Vicki Iseman: So FCC policy *is* sexy? Who knew!

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Thanks to an innuendo-laden story by the New York Times last Thursday, everybody who follows USian politics at all knows that Vicki Iseman is a quasi-hot telecom/media lobbyist who for a while eight years ago had a pretty close friendship with Senator John McCain, and that he threw some of his political weight around on behalf of some of her clients. (I tried to find a flattering photo of Ms. Iseman to grace this here blog entry, but all I could find were an elongated pic of her in an evening gown, too big for my purposes, and a horribly unflattering portrait from her company’s website. Oh well, by now you’ve either seen those photos or this story likely ain’t for you anyway.)

What few suspect, however, that this whole story was a cleverly planted plot designed to boost the google rank of Wetmachine into the stratosphere!

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EcoEquity, Greenhouse Develpment Rights, Bali Conference, Our Planet

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Tom Athanasiou and his good colleagues at EcoEquity attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“The Bali Conference”) & got a chance to share the ideas behind their framework for Development Rights in a Carbon-Constrained World. ( I earlier promised that I was going to give an in depth analysis of their argument, but I’ve changed my mind. They summarize it and present it better than I can, so what’s the point?)

Tom has a few follow-up articles about the Bali Conference and what comes next. In Grist, Environmental News and Commentary, Tom has a kind of Bali Conference trip report. In Foreign Policy in Focus, Tom has a short but important essay, “Towards a Defensible Climate Realism”.

These articles somewhat wonkish in nature, but hey, difficult problems require a little bit of thought, and what policy problem is more difficult or important than climate change? Besides, if you’re reading Wetmachine you probably have a fair amount of wonk in you, or at least geek, which is close enough. For some real insight into what really needs to be done about climate change at the policy level, rather than at the switch-to-energy-efficient-lightbulbs-and-hope-for-the-best level, you need to get acquainted with EcoEquity.

Check ’em out. Better still, subscribe to the EcoEquity newsletter, then you’ll be as in-the-know as I am!

Footnote to Howl

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In an earlier couple of posts, I copped to a certain amount of schadenfreude over the howling in distress of Boston sports talk radio hosts and rabid Patriots fans about the compound insult to their manly self-images from (a) the loss in the SuperDuper Bowl(tm), and (b) dread Prirate Roberts Senator Spectre Specter’s meddling in the spygate affair. As I said before, I’m a Pats fan myself, but all the apotheoses of Brady, Bellichick and Kraft over the last few months and years were really getting on my nerves. Now, today, it gets better: Robert Kraft and the Patriots are being sued for a hunnert million buckaroos by some dude on the Rams who claims his rightful place on a SuperDuperBowl team was stolen from him by the nefarious cheating Patriots. I wonder how Saint Kraft will come out of this one?

Anyway, mostly I wanted to pass along a link to this essay by Yahoo columnist MJD, entitled “Why I’m OK with Arlen Specter’s involvement in Spygate.” It’s funny and it’s good. I agree with him.

P.S. Yes, you literary types correctly detected an allusion to Allen Ginsberg! Footnote to Howl is a sublime poem. But be sure to read it after reading Howl itself. That’s the way the footnote achieves its full poetic power.

Attack of the Killer Beets!

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No, I’m not talking about the Beets, the great rock band from the Nickelodeon show Doug. (Couldn’t find a decent video of the classic “I need more allowance” from the show, but here’s a still, with music.)

I’m talking about genetically engineered sugar beets with Monsanto’s “Round Up” pesticide built right into them. Now, I’m not going to start a whole thing about genetically engineered food being awful, etc. ( I’ll leave that bioluddite verus brave-new-world stuff for my next novel!)(You think I’m kidding!!).

But I do think Monsanto is just horribly bad and awful, as are all the congresspeople who are in its pocket.

Here’s a petition to stop their latest assault on our food supply & environment. Not to mention, bodies. Sign it if you feel like it.

“Comedy stylings of a libertarian blowhard”

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James Wolcott, whose work I would link to more frequently if it did not so show me up as a pale Wolcott wannabe, has a little thing up on his blog about Penn Jillette, the blowhard aforementioned. As usual, he’s spot on, only this time, with one sour note. He says that Penn Jillette

with his long, lank locks resembles an angry mutation of Jeff Bridges’ Dude in The Big Lebowski

Now, that is just totally unfair to the Dude, and I’ll leave it at that, for to make a bigger deal out of it would be supremely un-Dude-like. What Wolcott meant to say, I’m sure he would have realized if he had just waited a minute before posting, is that Jillette looks just like Eugene Levy’s Mitch Cohen from A Mighty Wind.

After the fold: take a look and see if I’m lying.

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Thought for the day

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WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

This reminder brought to you from Wetmachine.com on behalf of the 67 senators in the United States Senate who yesterday voted to protect us by eviscerating the constitutional principles upon which our country was founded. Thank goodness that they had the vision to see that Nine Eleven changed everything, and may you do likewise.

The endorsement Barack's been waiting for!

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Today in the Senate, where we were disgraced as a nation, Obama voted with the good guys. Clinton was absent. The bad guys, who included 17 Democrats, won.

In recognition whereof, John of Wetmachine hereby endorses Barack Obama for president. Hillary, don’t bother calling. This decision is final.

For the gory details on the eclipse of the concept of the rule of law and the full embrace of the public-private, all seeing panopticon of the transnational corporate-military-industrial-infotainment-prison class by our disgusting rulers, see the vote tally here.

Read it and weep.