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Overnight Open Thread. Be Afraid…be Very Afraid , but Mostly Afraid (genghis)

Also: In the Blogosphere, no one can hear you scream. Unless you use all caps with lots of exclamation points. And colorful fonts.

A couple of items that really need their own posts, or tacked onto other posts, and expanded upon. And probably will be.

1. “Democrats Sneak Net Neutrality Act into Stimulus Bill.” This is from an article at that right-wing bastion CNET.

”The House Democrats $825 billion legislation released on Thursday was supposedly intended to “stimulate” the economy. Backers claimed that speedy approval was vital because the nation is in “a crisis not seen since the Great Depression” and “the economy is shutting down.”

“That’s the rhetoric. But in reality, Democrats are using the 258-page legislation to sneak Net neutrality rules in through the back door.”

I've read some about it in the past, and may have even posted something on it, along with others. But I haven't heard anything about it in a long time. It kinda' slid off the radar screen for a while. A lot of people have labeled this the intertubes version of the "Fairness Doctrine" though somewhat more subtle and sinister. I honestly don't know. The CNET article includes links to the 258 page stimulus bill along with this:

"The catch is that the federal largesse comes with Net neutrality strings attached. The Commerce Department must ensure that the recipients "adhere to" the Federal Communications Commission's 2005 broadband policy statement (PDF)--which the FCC said at the time was advisory and "not enforceable," and has become the subject of a lawsuit before a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C."

According to critics, while language in the FCC policy statement is about limiting (or filtering) porn, the way it's written could easily be expanded to limit or regulate opinion and gives the FCC fairly broad powers to do so. And as we all know, the FCC board consists of political appointees and the balance shifts whenever a new administration takes over that's of a different political party than the previous one.

Hat tip to the mysterious “d.” (tried to send you a thank-you, but Gmail can suck a golf ball through a garden hose)

2. “SEC Raids Offices of Financier With Extremely Close Ties to the Democratic Party, Alleging Massive Fraud.” DrewM. Posted about this earlier here.

The AP story linked at Breitbart conveniently left out the political ties Mr. Stanford had, though some of the commenters picked it up. So I fixed the headline for ‘em. CBSNews ran stories on both the morning show and the Perky One’s evening broadcast (is it sexist to say broadcast? I certainly hope so.) that put Mr. Stanford’s relations with a non-elephant-mascot party front and center. AP’s written story focused on his deep ties to Texas (a land similar to Mordor), Baylor University (right-wing fascist university) and his sponsorship of golf tourneys (and we all know what kind of people play golf don’t we? Well, Tiger excepted and all)

So go watch the vid before CBS News gives it concrete shoes (I made a rhyme!) here.

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