insights from the digital future
Net Neutrality is a serious issue for those of us who love the Internet. Last night Jon Stewart did a wonderfully enjoyable piece on it. Watch below. For more on Net Neutrality and how it affects you, visit the Save the Internet Coalition.
Also, click here to listen to Sen. Barack Obama discuss the issue on his podcast.
A scathing, no-holds-barred reprobation of neoconservativism and the State Department’s so-called “transformational diplomacy” approach to proliferating democracy in the Middle East erupted from the pen of George Will this morning:
[Condoleezza Rice] seems to consider today’s turmoil preferable to the Middle East’s “false stability” of the past 60 years, during which U.S. policy “turned a blind eye to the absence of the democratic forces.”
It would be overreaching, according to Will for the U.S. to even consider becoming involved in a broader Mideast conflict — assuming that can be avoided — and the generally conservative columnist appears to be outraged at the likes of William Kristol and his scribes at the Neocon Weekly Standard:
One envies that publication’s powers of prophecy but wishes it had exercised them on the nation’s behalf before all of the surprises — all of them unpleasant — that Iraq has inflicted.
Steve Clemons of The Washington Note foreshadowed today’s George Will entry by documenting attacks on Bill Kristol’s Standard in recent days by both Will and Juan Williams, and acknowledges Will with a Conservative With a Conscience award in a post today.
Leave it to conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt to label Will a GOP “drop out” and call for Senate hearings on U.S. action against mouthy Iran.
The irrational disconnect doesn’t stop there, and in fact, WH Spokesman Tony Snow completely disgraced himself and the white house in an exchange with Helen Thomas this morning. After incorrectly claiming the U.S. didn’t “veto” a statement regarding “Gaza” at the Middle East at the U.N. or as Snow called it: “…the V.N. — the U.N., whatever it is,” he went ahead and belittled the reknown Bush-critic Thomas by adding, “Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view.”
Well, shame on me for not having had the 3-5 minutes to take out of my daily happenings to keep up on my once-favorite Rocketboom vlogcast. (And no, I never got any action out of my February cameo, since yr asking).
Alas, it seems I missed some serious drama late this week as host Amanda Congdon announced — or did she threaten — her departure.
Such big news this is, that as AP National Writer Jocelyn Noveck points out:
On the Web site technorati.com, which monitors tens of millions of blogs, “rocketboom” was the top search ? globally ? both Thursday and Friday. (Kenneth Lay, the Enron Corp. founder who died Wednesday, was second.)
Somebody please, say ’tain’t so!
UPDATE: while Amanda’s sob story is posted at her blog – apparently Andrew Baron, majority owner of Rocketboom, spilled his guts at CaseCamp in Toronto on Friday night. And it’s all here on YouTube. Anyway (and holy shit does HuffPo look weird)! Rachel Sklar says the new hostess is the possibly hotter but most probably less talented Joanna Colan. As the New York Times printed Friday, move over Star Jones Reynolds and Dan Rather!
This morning as I was listening to the presididn’t speak in my kinda town, I distinctly heard him express his intent to not only “denucularize” the Korean Peninsula, but he clearly reiterated — amid bad jokes about being old that absolutely none of the Chicago-centric media even chuckled at — that the priority is to end North Korea’s “nucularization.”
Its nothing new that the president has always used “nucular” in place of “nuclear,” and while he’s shown no desire to fix this slight impediment (I suspect it has something to do with a misunderstanding of the term “clear”– as in “clear and present danger”) I can’t figure out why the media fails to report his speeches correctly. Granted, the White House official release corrects his grammar for him, but while all these journos allow Bush to do basically whatever he wants… why ever would they keep him from mincing, or just flat-out mispronouncing words?
Do a Google News search and you’ll see what I’m saying.
In keeping up with the theme of bad grammar — I nearly vomited after attempting to read the AP article, “Push for Simpler Spelling Persists,” which begs such notable insight as “wuudn’t it maek mor sens to spel wurdz the wae thae sound?”
I hereby call for the denucularificazation of the presidency.
