Author: Matthew G. Saroff

F.C.C. Looking to Re-Regulate Cable

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The FCC has (finally) appeared to nitice that Cable is a natural monopoly, and had decided to enforce the so called 70/70 rule*, and it is proposing some new regulations:

  • Prevent significant new a mergers and acquisition by the large cable players.
  • Require A la carte channel sales.
  • That would make it easier for independent programmers, which are often small operations, to lease access to cable channels.
  • Set a cap on cable companies at 30% of the market.

It’s about bloody time.

*“The agency may adopt rules necessary to promote “diversity of information sources” once the commission concludes that cable television is available to at least 70 percent of American households, and at least 70 percent of those households actually subscribe to a cable service.”

More on the Weird Bum’s Rush on the Mukasey Vote

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You remember that the vote on Mukasey was rushed, about 1/2 hour’s notice before the start of debate.

Well, now we have a reason. It appears that Reid cut a deal with teh Republicans to allow for a military funding bill to proceed without money for Iraq and Afghanistan.

I guess that they think that this will provide cover while trying to get the troops out of Iraq. It’s won’t. With George W. Bush at 26%, worse than Nixon, the Bush dogs are still going to fold like wet broccoli when he makes vague noises about “not supporting the troops”.

They still don’t get it. Any opposition to Bush on any issue is both the right thing to do and a political win.

Water Wars

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It appears that Floridahas decided that it will not play nice with Georgia regarding water during the ongoing drought.

I’m not sure why, though with rain predicted in the next week, the point may be moot.

That being said, all this is like two kids throwing spitballs, compared to the inevitable water wars in the Western US, these are arid regions to begin with, they have experienced explosive population growth, and the source of much of the water, the Ogallala Aquifer, is largely primeval water, and recharges very slowly, so this will get very, very ugly.

Of course, global warming makes this all a crap shoot.

Weirdness on the Mukasey Vote

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The story here is odd. It appears that Senators received something less than an hour’s notice the the debate prior to the vote was going to start.

According to Senate sources, as the Dem Senate leadership remained in closed-door negotiations with their GOP counterparts over whether to hold the vote, Senators were getting mixed signals throughout the day as to whether the vote would happen by the end of yesterday. The actual notification that there would be a vote didn’t come from leadership until at least 6:30 or 7 PM last night — catching aides on the staffs of the presidential campaigns and on the staffs of other senators off guard.

“I had my coat on and was walking out the door when I first heard about the vote,” one staffer said.

The senators were notified that there would be five hours of debate, and that a vote would be happening at midnight, or possibly before, sources said.

Aides to one of the senators running for President said they were surprised at how adamant the leadership was that a vote would be coming so quickly — with or without them present. One aide to this senator said that his staff told leadership that they couldn’t get back for a vote until later in the night.

This is seriously odd.

Why the proverbial bum’s rush. With the goal of a vote by midnight, and 5 hours of debate, a 6:30 notification is almost no notice. What was Reid trying to do, and why was he trying to do it?

Barack Obama Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass

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He’s had a busy past day or so. Not only has he reinforced the Republican meme about killing social security by calling it a “crisis”, he is now in full pander with the mining interests when he says that he is opposing the repeal the 1872 Mining act.

We have had 200 years of bad laws, but the 1872 Mining act is among the worst. Under the 1872 law, a miner stakes a claim, and all they have to do is pay $5/acre, and it removes pretty much all environmental protections from land put to this applications.

Additionally, the law allows the land to be “patented” or transferred to private property for a small fee. This is a bad law. It has resulted in massive losses to the federal government, the pollution of 40% of the watersheds in the west, and continues to harm the delicate ecology of the west.

What’s more, with gold increasing in value, old mining sites will be doubtlessly be scavenged, doing more harm ecological harm.

For just how bad this law that Obama supports is, go here.

Quote of the Day, Anita Esterday

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Ms. Esterday is the waitress who was quoted in that whole “tipgate” story with Clinton.

Well, after being contacted by the gazillionth reporter today, she sais something very wise:

You people are really nuts,” she told a reporter during a phone interview. “There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip.

She is our wise woman of the day.

Virtual Suicide Bombing

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Clive Thompson plays Halo 3 online. Because he has a life, and does not spend 10-20 hours a day on line, his skills, and his power are limited.

However, he has found a way to even the scales:

.…

Whenever I find myself under attack by a wildly superior player, I stop trying to duck and avoid their fire. Instead, I turn around and run straight at them. I know that by doing so, I’m only making it easier for them to shoot me — and thus I’m marching straight into the jaws of death. Indeed, I can usually see my health meter rapidly shrinking to zero.

But at the last second, before I die, I’ll whip out a sticky plasma grenade — and throw it at them. Because I’ve run up so close, I almost always hit my opponent successfully. I’ll die — but he’ll die too, a few seconds later when the grenade goes off. (When you pull off the trick, the game pops up a little dialog box noting that you killed someone “from beyond the grave.”)

It was after pulling this maneuver a couple of dozen times that it suddenly hit me: I had, quite unconsciously, adopted the tactics of a suicide bomber — or a kamikaze pilot.

….

What is interesting here is that the dynamic is pretty much identical to those of an insurgency. While the stakes are clearly less, no one is actually dying, the power dynamics are the same, and so are the resulting tactics.

New Bankruptcy Law Hitting Banks in Mortgage Portfolio

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You may recall that the banks got a law passed a few years making it harder for people to discharge credit card debts.

Well now, this is one of the factors behind the explosion in defaults and foreclosures.

Washington Mutual, Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. spent $25 million in 2004 and 2005 lobbying for a legislative agenda that included changes in bankruptcy laws to protect credit card profits, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan Washington group that tracks political donations.

The banks are still paying for that decision. The surge in foreclosures has cut the value of securities backed by mortgages and led to more than $40 billion of writedowns for U.S. financial institutions. It also reached to the top echelons of the financial services industry.

Silly Laws, Or Why I Need to Look For a Pet Fish In Liverpool

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here:

  1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament (27 per cent)
  2. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside-down (7 per cent)
  3. In Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless except as a clerk in a tropical fish store (6 per cent)
  4. Mince pies cannot be eaten on Christmas Day (5 per cent)
  5. In Scotland, if someone knocks on your door and requires the use of your toilet, you must let them enter (4 per cent)
  6. In the UK, a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman’s helmet (4 per cent)
  7. The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the King, and the tail of the Queen (3.5 per cent)
  8. It is illegal not to tell the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing (3 per cent)
  9. It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour (3 per cent)
  10. In the city of York it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow (2 per cent)
  11. In Ohio, it is illegal to get a fish drunk (9 per cent)
  12. In Indonesia, the penalty for masturbation is decapitation (8 per cent)
  13. In Bahrain, a male doctor can only examine the genitals of a woman in the reflection of a mirror (7 per cent)
  14. In Switzerland, a man may not relieve himself standing up after 10pm (6 per cent)
  15. In Alabama, it is illegal to be blindfolded while driving a vehicle (6 per cent)
  16. In Florida, unmarried women who parachute on a Sunday could be jailed (6 per cent)
  17. In Vermont, women must obtain written permission from their husbands to wear false teeth (6 per cent)
  18. In Milan, it is a legal requirement to smile at all times, except at funerals or hospital visits (5 per cent)
  19. In Japan, there is no age of consent (5 per cent)
  20. In France, it is illegal to name a pig Napoleon (4 per cent)

Consider this an open thread.

Every time that I think that Bush and His Evil Minions&trade Can’t Do Any Worse…..

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They exceed the limits of my cynicism.

This time, it’s a Consumer Products Safety Commission that is refusing a larger budget and staff, and its head taking what are morally, if not necessarily legally, bribes from manufacturers and they are so disinterested in protecting the consumer, it’s as if they were dosing the kids with date rape drugs themselves.

They consistently exceed the limits of my cynicism.