By min | July 25, 2006, 1:57 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link

Anyone out there not depressed yet?

More James Wolcott, who used to be a snarky, kind of light and funny sort of blogger. I would go to his site when the other blogs were too depressing. You should go read the whole thing, but here are some a lot of snippets (some of which are actually quotes from other people, including TomPaine.com's Robert Dreyfus, Robert Fisk, and Larry Johnson, so make sure you check the post for attribution):

• Iraq is engaged in a full-fledged civil war. For those remaining defenders of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, who argue that the United States needs to stay put in order to prevent civil war, it's too late. It's here, in all of its brutality and ugliness.

• "What is unfolding in Iraq is a staggering tragedy. An entire nation is dying, right in front of us. And the worst part of it is: It may be too late to do anything to stop it."

• "The blame for this carnage must be laid squarely at the feet of George W. Bush. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was ordered against the advice of the CIA, the State Department and most U.S. military officers, and in defiance of the United Nations, America's allies, and the Arab world. The United States attacked and destroyed a nation that had never attacked the United States, which had no weapons of mass destruction and which had no connection to al-Qaida."

• As Dreyfuss observes, the death spiral will continue because the Bush administration is in self-hypnotic denial and, I would add, there is no peace movement or political opposition with any upward force. Compare Iraq with Vietnam, and the sense of resignation and futility is apparent. I will never forgive Joe Lieberman for undercutting John Murtha and muffling the urgency of Murtha's warnings about how rapidly Iraq was unraveling by issuing one of his classic mushmouthed pieties. He immediately gave the White House and the War Party bipartisan cover, helping ensure the policies that weren't working would continue not working as the death-toll tabulator rose and rose.

• But it is not enough to blame Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Blair, Lieberman, the neocons, the liberal hawks, and other useless idiots. By our actions in Iraq, and our complicity and collaboration with the Israeli assault on Lebanon, American citizens are culpable for letting 9/11 turn them/us into passive accomplices. "The complicity of the American public in these heinous crimes will damn America for all time in history," Paul Craig Roberts rages at Antiwar.

• "They look like us, the people of Beirut. They have light-coloured skin and speak beautiful English and French. They travel the world. Their women are gorgeous and their food exquisite. But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis - in some of their cruellest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside - tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say that they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties - 240 in all of Lebanon by last night - with Israel's 24 dead, as if the figures are the same.

• "But did the tens of thousands of poor who live here deserve this act of mass punishment? For a country that boasts of its pin-point accuracy - a doubtful notion in any case, but that's not the issue - what does this act of destruction tell us about Israel? Or about ourselves?"

• "We should not confuse Hezbollah with Al Qaeda. Unlike Al Qaeda, Hezbollah has a real and substantial international network. Unlike Al Qaeda, Hezbollah has a real and substantial international political and financial network. They have personnel and supporters scattered in countries around the world who have the training and resources to mount attacks. Hezbollah has no qualms about using terrorist attacks as part of a broader strategy to achieve its objectives. The last major Hezbollah attack against the United States was the June 1996 attack on the U.S. military apartment complex in Dharan, Saudi Arabia. Hezbollah also organized the attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992 and Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994. But they also have exercised restraint when they felt they could achieve their objectives through political means. The ten year hiatus in major mass casualty attacks could come to a shattering end in the coming months, and American citizens are likely to pay some of that price with their own blood."
  

By fnord12 | July 24, 2006, 5:07 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link

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Did he graduate from the Weston A. Price school of writing?

From James Wolcott:

Just as [Ahmad] Chalabi schmoozed, exaggerated, and lied in his role as neocon lobbyist and go-between to draw the U.S. into Iraq, where he could nobly serve as America's handpicked puppet, [Amir] Taheri has been brewing dark clouds of impending-doom-if-America-doesn't-act-now in op-ed after op-ed and bubbling springs of bullshit,* taking his case to the White House, where any knave is welcome if he furthers the War Party's agenda.

...

*"It was in 1989 that Taheri was first exposed as a journalistic felon," wrote Larry Cohler-Esses in The Nation. "The book he published the year before, Nest of Spies, examined the rule and fall of the Shah of Iran. Taheri received many respectful reviews, but in The New Republic Shaul Bakhash, a reigning doyen of Persian studies, checked Taheri's footnotes. Suddenly a book review became an investigative expose. Bakhash, a history professor at George Mason University and a former fellow at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, detailed case after case in which Taheri cited nonexistent sources, concocted nonexistent substance in cases where the sources existed and distorted the substance beyond recognition when it was present. Taheri 'repeatedly refers us to books where the information he cites simply does not exist,' Bakhash wrote. 'Often the documents cannot be found in the volumes to which he attributes them.... [He] repeatedly reads things into the documents that are simply not there.' In one case, noted Bakhash, Taheri cited an earlier article of his own--but offered content he himself never wrote in that article. Bakhash concluded that Nest of Spies was 'the sort of book that gives contemporary history a bad name.' In a response published two months later, Taheri failed to rebut Bakhash's charges."

By fnord12 | July 24, 2006, 4:54 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1)| Link

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The Silence of the Blogs(?)

I never heard of The Forward, but they're apparently finding some sort of irony in the fact that "liberal" bloggers aren't saying much about Israel's war. To support their point, they quote a bunch of centrist and center-left bloggers (like Kos and TPM) who've basically said that there's not much to say because our government is not directly involved so there's nothing we can do about it or because they don't want to attract a bunch of anti-semite "supporters". That's all fine and maybe they should be beaten up a little for not taking a stand, but why make it seem like it's a trend when you've got Billmon, Digby, Juan Cole, and James Wolcott, all prominent liberal bloggers, doing fairly detailed and ongoing analysis of what's happening there.

This is the best part, though:

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the The New Republic and a general critic of bloggers, rejected the "complexity" explanation.

"Why would you expect complexity from bloggers, left, right, or Martian?" Wieseltier wrote in an email to the Forward. "They are not in the complexity business on any issue. Maybe the problem is not complexity but complication - the way in which sympathy with Israel's campaign against Hezbollah, and therefore with the use of force, might complicate their lives in progressiveland, where they live."

Waaaaah!!! Why won't anyone read our magazine???

You know, why is the guy from The New Republic sending emails complaing about bloggers to The Forward anyway? How do you think that went down:

Hey, we're doing sort of a half-assed article on how liberal bloggers aren't talking about Israel as much as maybe we thought they would be. Care to comment?

Or do you think Mr. General Critic of Bloggers has been emailing his critique to everyone in his Contact List, and only The Forward took the bait and wrote the article?

By fnord12 | July 24, 2006, 4:11 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1)| Link

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Poppycock

Jesse Jackson:

Imagine going to the dentist with an aching tooth, and going through the pain of having it diagnosed and pulled -- only to discover the dentist pulled the wrong tooth. Not only have you suffered for nothing, you've still got to operate on the real problem.

Democrats seem about to put themselves through this agony. Pundits and politicians tell Democrats that they have a "values" problem -- that people of faith vote against them in large numbers because the Democratic party is seen as secular, or as anti-Christian, or as straying from mainstream values.

Poppycock. Democrats didn't lose Florida in 2000 and the 2000 election because of the lack of a high faith profile. Al Gore won the popular vote nationally and the popular vote of the majority who cast ballots in Florida on Election Day. He lost Florida because the fix was in, because the Voting Rights Act was not enforced -- and because Republicans turned the recount into an alley fight while Gore played by rules. Then a transparently partisan majority in the Supreme Court violated its own principles and shamed itself by ordering an end to a fair count, worried Bush might lose. This wasn't about faith; it was about will.

Similarly, Democrats didn't lose Ohio in 2004 and the 2004 election because of the lack of a high faith profile. They lost because the fix was in, and because once again, Republicans had a partisan zealot -- Ken Blackwell -- as secretary of state. Once again he abused the powers of his office in choosing voting machines and election schemes. Once again, a majority of people set out to vote for Bush's opponent.

Having identified the wrong tooth, Democrats are now hearing the wrong prescription. They're urged to embrace the symbols of faith, to go to church, to speak from the Gospel, to advertise their faith.

By fnord12 | July 19, 2006, 12:51 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1)| Link

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How a purely capitalist government works

Americans trying to flee the Israeli bombing of Lebannon have "been told they can't board a ship unless they've signed a contract agreeing to repay the U.S. government for the price of their evacuation."

By fnord12 | July 19, 2006, 12:36 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (4)| Link

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The Four Most Overpaid White House Staffers

Heh. From Thinkprogress:

Deborah Nirmala Misir	Ethics Advisor	$114,688
Erica M. Dornburg	Ethics Advisor	$100,547
Stuart Baker	Director for Lessons Learned	$106,641
Melissa M. Carson	Director of Fact Checking	$46,500

By fnord12 | July 18, 2006, 1:40 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link

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Feeling safe?

Thought i'd help promote a little fear-mongering from Billmon:

Al Qaeda leaders feel about Hezbollah and the emerging Shi'a crescent, they can't be too happy about seeing their status in the terrorist celebrity pantheon overshadowed by Hezbollah's starring role in the Lebanon extravaganza -- particularly at a time when Al Qaeda is already under considerable pressure to prove it still has political and operational relevance. But there's really only way to show the world who the real scourge of the Jews and Crusaders is: By executing a major terrorist attack, either in Israel (hard) America (less hard) or Britain (even less hard -- although something bigger than a couple of pipe bombs in the Tube would probably be necessary to make the point.)

The bottom line is that like any fading rock group, Al Qaeda badly needs a hit to avoid being permanently supplanted in the public eye by its Shi'a rival, which is setting the charts ablaze, so to speak. If the original band or its various spin offs have any ambitious projects on the drawing boards, now might be the opportune time to put them into production.

By fnord12 | July 18, 2006, 1:27 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link

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I thought you were going to ask me about the pig.

I will provide no context:

"Apart from the pig, Mr. President, what sort of insights have you been able to gain as regards East Germany?" a German reporter asked the American leader.

"I haven't seen the pig yet," said Bush, sidestepping the question about insights gained from his two-day visit to this rural seaside region that once rested behind the Iron Curtain in a Germany divided between East and West.

And when an American reporter asked Bush whether he is concerned about the Israeli bombing of the Beirut airport and about Iran's failure to respond to an offer for negotiations that the U.S. and European allies have made, Bush replied with more boar jokes before delving into the substance of the questions.

"I thought you were going to ask about the pig," said the president, promising a full report from the barbecue. "I'll tell you about the pig tomorrow."

By fnord12 | July 17, 2006, 12:13 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1)| Link

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Sick

If your response to the kidnapping a couple of your soldiers is to massively bomb civilian targets, resulting in the death of some 60 people so far, you are massively fucked up in the head.

Everything else, like the fact that the Lebanese government is new and very fragile right now and has absolutely no control over Hezbollah, is obvious. You want to pressure Lebanese government to get off their asses and shut down Hezbollah? Fine. You want to create a special forces strike force to sneak across the border and get your people back and kill some terrorists? No problem. You want to go to the UN and ask them to send in the smurfs to put the country under control? OK. You want to massively bomb another country in violation of international law, killing civilians? You're a psychopath.

Chomsky made an analogy when the US attacked Afghanistan. It was along the lines of, 'if someone comes into your house and murders your family, the correct response is not to firebomb the entire neighborhood the murderer is hiding in'. That analogy is even more apt here.

Update: Billmon is, of course, more eloquent than me.

By fnord12 | July 14, 2006, 9:22 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link

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Homeland Security - Keeping Bean Festivals Safe For You

So, good ol' Department of Homeland Security has been putting together a database (cause that's pretty much all they do - data mine) of all the national monuments and chemical plants and other places that are likely terrorist targets. This database is supposed to be used to assess how much funding each state gets.

Well, by now, you've all heard that security grants to NY and Washington were cut by 40%. And you've all heard the uproar this has caused. If I were the idiot who signed the paper designating the allocations, i would hide in fear and shame. Luckily, i'm not that idiot, so we carry on.

Here's the AP story Spored to Death sent me.

Much of the study by Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner appears to have been completed before the department announced in May it would cut security grants to New York and Washington by 40 percent this year.

But the report, which was released Tuesday, affirmed the fury of those two cities - the two targets of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks - which claimed the department did not accurately assess their risks.

Instead, the department's database of vulnerable critical infrastructure and key resources included the Old MacDonald's Petting Zoo near Huntsville, Ala., a bourbon festival, a bean festival and the Kangaroo Conservation Center in Dawsonville, Ga.

[emphasis mine]

Well, I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that the Kangaroo Conservation Center is a key resource and a very likely target. The terrorists, afterall, hate our freedom and what better way to strike at that freedom than to take away our ability to conserve kangaroos, the best-known symbol of the Wild West?

Spored was particularly concerned for when he read this article, he cried out, "Oh god! They's after our bourbon!".

We've seen what made the list. Now let's take a look at what didn't make the cut.

The report noted that Indiana has 8,591 assets listed in the database - more than any other state and 50 percent more than New York. New York had 5,687 listed. ... ...the Homeland Security assessment of New York this year failed to include Times Square, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, or the Statue of Liberty as a national icon or monument.

Uh hmm.......

A Homeland Security spokesman did not return a call or e-mail for comment Tuesday night.

Because they were smart and decided to stay home. They sure as hell weren't going to take the fall for this one.

The data "have been and are currently being utilized to support allocation decision making processes for the department," wrote Foresman, who oversees the database and the grant funds.

He added: "The process also continues to mature and improve."

Let's see. The towers (in NYC, mind you - it's not nearly as vulnerable as Indiana, but the terrorists are sneaky that way), got blown up in 2001. It's now 2006. That's 5 years. 5 years. And his best answer is the process "continues to mature and improve"? 5 years and they still can't figure out that just mebbe Times Square might be just a little bit more vulnerable than Sherry Lewis' petting zoo in Alabama?? I suppose on the other hand, i should be glad that they're so incompetant at data mining.....ugh.

Someone pass me the bourbon.

By min | July 13, 2006, 11:16 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (3)| Link

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Satire's Lost on Them

Wanyas was kind enough to provide this link to us from a blogger named Pete who read an Onion article and thought it was real.

When referring to the killing of her child she said:

"I am totally psyched for this abortion!"

...
"If my HMO wouldn't have bowed to their pressure not to cover oral contraceptives, I never would've gotten pregnant in the first place."

Sorry ma'am, if you hadn't had sex you wouldn't have gotten pregnant, it's not the HMO's fault for not supporting your promiscuity while not married.

He goes on like this for a bit. The best part, however, is reading the comments. They pretty much tear him apart for the next 800+ entries.

I'm pro life, but sweet Jesus you're an idiot. For your next post, how about a passionate speech on the need to immediately free Prince Albert from the can?

Lemme just say, I was at the post-abortion party and it fucking rocked....Fallopian tubes were just falling out for the hell of it.

Ladies and Gentlemen... we now have a new tide mark for the shallow end of the gene pool.

Sufficient Scruples awarded Pete the Stegosaurus of the Week award (Because You Have More Brains In Your Ass Than In Your Head).

Not satisfied with this, however, Pete posted an update. He still refers to the subject of the Onion article (Miss Weber) as if she was a real person. And justifies his initial assumption that the article was real because that's just how "pro-abortionists" talk.

Needless to say, a few people wanted to let me know that I was a dolt for thinking that her article was real. As a matter of fact, call me a dolt, because in the beginning I really did think it was real. Why? because I meet women like her in the field all the time. Anyway, I wrote the blog in a way that was meant to point out how psychotic the pro-abortion movement is.

He then goes on to recount an absurd conversation he supposedly had with a woman in the park after he put up some Genocidal Awareness Project posters (i think you've all seen these. The dead fetus pictures.) to prove how "psychotic" pro-choicers are. The conversation basically goes "do you think it's ok for a mother to strangle her child to death?" and the response was "maybe." Now, as pointed out in the comments (he received another 600+scathing comments about his intelligence for this post) the chick was more than likely messing with him, trying to get him to go away.

Then, the jerk quotes the HMO comment again so that he can say how wrong it is to have sex for the second time! If you make an embarassing mistake and everybody notices, just run with it. That way you'll still come out on top!

This comment might be my favorite so far:

Don't listen to these heathens Pete, you know in your heart of hearts that Caroline Weber is just as real as I am. Keep believing child. Jesus Christ

Pete finishes up with "Either way, I think I did a good job of turning the "satire" right back at them, don't you?" which shows that once again, he's got no clue what satire means.

And now, due to all the backlash he received from these 2 posts, Pete moved his entire site to a new location. Registration is required before comments can be left. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't enough.

I'm not sure packing up your blog and moving it to a new address is an effective way to escape the embarassment you've brought down upon yourself. You might want to look into witness relocation programs.

I like what you've done with blocking off comments on the latest post. You should probably do that on everything you ever write from now on. If your mistake wasn't going to follow you forever, the amusement of your attempts at damage control will.

Um, sweetie? We can still see you.

He even got a wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_Together_For_Life but it's being considered for deletion, so if you want to check it out, better do it quick.

By min | July 12, 2006, 10:47 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2)| Link

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Ignorance Keeps Me Safe

Just going to go ahead and steal this one from King of Zembla:

Dzakovic was in charge of the FAA's Red Team -- a small, elite squad who conducted mock undercover raids as terrorists and hijackers. It probed vulnerable areas inside airports. With surprising ease and frequency during routine tests, members of his team slipped bombs, guns and knives onto aircraft.

Several days after Sept. 11, 2001, the FAA grounded the Red Team, apparently because it didn't want to be embarrassed by the team's findings. Dzakovic disagreed with this cowardly attempt to bury the truth. And so he took the bold step of filing a whistle-blower disclosure in October 2001 with the Office of Special Counsel, an independent government agency. That document -- the first of its kind by an FAA Security Division employee -- set in motion a lengthy and costly investigation by the inspector general.

One finding of that inquiry, according to Dzakovic, was that FAA security operated in a way that created a "substantial and specific danger to public safety."

But instead of rewarding Dzakovic, the newly formed Transportation Security Administration, which had swallowed the FAA, punished him by reassigning him to an entry-level clerical position behind a desk. He spent months punching holes in paper and putting training binders together for new TSA employees. The counter-terrorism expertise of this valuable 14-year FAA veteran was stupidly wasted. He wanted to spend the rest of his career fighting bad guys, but his government bosses thought that wasn't such a good idea after he became a whistle-blower . . . .

...
"Many of the FAA bureaucrats that actively thwarted improvements in security prior to 9/11 have been promoted by FAA or the Transportation Security Administration. I have never in my life been around more gutless, inept and outright ignorant people than I have at TSA headquarters, most of whom are in management. You combine this atmosphere with absolutely no accountability and it is a very dangerous formula for a repeat of 9/11.

Link

By min | July 10, 2006, 1:54 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link

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Sheesh

Can you believe that asshole Kenneth Lay died of a heart attack? And why is it that rich people who are convicted of crimes get to go on vacation while they're awaiting sentencing? Sure, mebbe he's not a violent criminal who needs to be held in some maximum security facility, but c'mon. He gets to spend time at his vacation home in Aspen?? WTF is that? He should be sitting somewhere much less comfortable. Mebbe a Motel 6 or something, at least. Gawd.

Anybody seen Wag the Dog? Have we got any conspiracy theorists out there?

By min | July 6, 2006, 2:31 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link

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This Just Reinforces...

...my rule about no landlocked states and never south of Maryland.

There is a group of (for now, let's just call them) people calling themselves the Stop the ACLU Coalition who has started publishing the names, address, and phone numbers of ACLU plaintiffs on their website. As some of you may recall some months ago Michelle Malkin published the personal contact info of some college students which resulted in them getting death threats. This coalition is posting plaintiff info for the very same reason. Threats and intimidation techniques to frighten people enough to flee or to become silent. They say the ACLU and the people they represent are anti-American. I suppose if your idea of American is burning crosses on lawns, then i guess you're right. However, i was given to understand the term meant freedom of ideas and expression, separation of church and state, equal rights for all, not just the powerful. Granted, we need lots of work in some of these areas, but we're doing better than, say, Nazi Germany. And how these people can hide behind their bibles, claiming to be Christian while persecuting others and calling for blood is beyond me. Real Christians should be denouncing them for the imposters they are. Shame on you if you're not.

In their latest "triumph", the Stop the ACLU Coalition ran a Jewish family out of town. Where is this town, you ask? Perhaps in Arkansas? Or Kansas. Or Utah. Alas, no. It's in friggin Delaware! I'm going to have to revise my rule to be "no landlocked states and never south of Jersey".

A large Delaware school district promoted Christianity so aggressively that a Jewish family felt it necessary to move to Wilmington, two hours away, because they feared retaliation for filing a lawsuit. ...
The complaint recounts a raucous crowd that applauded the board's opening prayer and then, when sixth-grader Alexander Dobrich stood up to read a statement, yelled at him "take your yarmulke off!" His statement, read by Samantha, confided "I feel bad when kids in my class call me Jew boy."

...A former board member suggested that Mona Dobrich might "disappear" like Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the atheist whose Supreme Court case resulted in ending organized school prayer. She disappeared in 1995 and her dismembered body was found six years later.

The crowd booed an ACLU speaker and told her to "go back up north."

Um....i'm totally not geography girl or anything, but since when did Delaware consider itself south? I mean, as far as i'm concerned, the south can have them, but really. Go back up north?

The General wrote them a nice letter.

Please allow me to be the first to thank you and the staff of Stop The ACLU for all you did to make the Indian River Pogrom such a resounding success. It isn't easy to run a Jewish family out of town in these politically correct times. Usually, they just hunker down, hiding behind antiquated interpretations of the Constitution and the good will of those who wrongly believe that non-Christians are entitled to all of the benefits of citizenship.

He's got that and their reply posted. You really need to read both. I'm not sure what's worse. The fact that these racists were allowed to threaten a family or that they're so twisted in their brains that they couldn't figure out that the General was not on their side.

I reiterate my earlier statement. I'm never leaving my house again.

By min | July 6, 2006, 10:06 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link

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Internet Tubes

Senator Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, heading decisions made on, among other things, net neutrality, demonstrates his complete and utter lack of understanding anything at all.

There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

...

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

[emphasis mine]

If you're feeling guilty and need to punish yourself, you can read the rest of it here.

Often when i send an internet, it gets held up in the tubes. If only i could pay more money so that i could get access to bigger tubes that wouldn't get filled up so quickly.

Just to add a visual to this so that you realize how net neutrality would bog the system down, a photo of an actual internet (that i lifted from Kos):

By min | July 3, 2006, 10:46 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (5)| Link

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