In another triumph of openness for the Hopenchange™ administration, the secret negotations of the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting and Trade Agreement (ACTA) continue. And according to Wired, they’re not going well for the President. A note from the EU to the US was leaked and published to a European website, and it exposes two facts. First, Hollywood isn’t content to have gotten two expansions of copyright in the 1976 Copyright Act, which extended copyright about thirty years, and the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which extended it about another twenty years on top of that. It wants to gain, through treaty, even more tilting of the scales of copyright, and according to the EU, the Obama adminstration is negotiating purely with Hollywood’s interests in mind.
The Nuclear Hypocrisy of Dana Milbank
Today, Dana Milbank has an article up on the Washington Post’s Washington Sketch blog where he basically skewers a number of Senate Republicans for employing the filibuster against President Obama’s Lefty fringe judicial picks.
The story goes something like this; given the GOP’s attempt (the so-called “Nuclear Option”) to end the filibuster for Presidential nominations during the leadership of the hapless Frist, certain GOP Senators, like Alabama’s Jeff Sessions and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell are being hypocritical by voting against cloture on President Obama’s nomination of the Left-Wing extremist and disciple of result-oriented jurisprudence that is David Hamilton to 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Of course, this is using that special self-serving Leftard definition of hypocrisy that seeks to apply standards to others that they would never apply to themselves.
The Democrats’ continuing war on the Internet
The last time a Democrat was in the White House we got the Communications Decency Act (since thrown out by the Supreme Court) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (still a weight on the neck of American innovators). This time we’re not only seeing “Net Neutrality” being used as cover for sweeping proposed regulation of the Internet like never before seen in this country, but we’re also due to expand copyright further.
The best thing about the DMCA is that its long arm can’t extend offshore, so Americans have been able to bypass it when needed by working with non-Americans who retain their rights to such technically-critical activities as reverse engineering.
But now the Obama administration is looking to promote an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a trojan horse for a Global DMCA. Or worse actually, because the DMCA only requires ISPs to act on specific copyrightholder requests to shut down accused infringers. Says Cory Doctorow, the ACTA would require ISPs to be active nannies policing copyright, and would outright kill Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, and probably Twitter. Further, your complete access to the Internet could be shut down, without warning, just because you are accused of being a copyright infringer.
Elections have consequences. How’s teaching the Republicans a lesson working out, libertarians?
News Flash: Obama Sucks At His Job
Via Drudge, the Telegraph is reporting that Obama’s Poll numbers have dropped farther and faster than any President on record over the last 50 years. Apparently, people think he’s doing a lousy job.
The failed and failing Presidency of Barack Obama appears to know no bounds when it comes to showing a lack of leadership, a fundamental inability to understand the plight of the people it routinely insists it speaks for, and the problems it naively believes it has the skills, knowledge, and expertise to solve:
Jeffrey Jones of Gallup explained: “The dominant political focus for Obama in the third quarter was the push for health care reform, including his nationally televised address to Congress in early September.
“Obama hoped that Congress would vote on health care legislation before its August recess, but that goal was missed, and some members of Congress faced angry constituents at town hall meetings to discuss health care reform. Meanwhile, unemployment continued to climb near 10 per cent.”
Despite the Telegraph’s poor usage of ’spellcheck’, a passage in this piece is instructive (emphasis mine):
Campaigning for Mr Corzine in Hackensack on Wednesday night, Mr Obama delivered a plea that almost seemed as much for himself as the local candidate: “I’m here today to urge you to cast aside the cynics and the sceptics, and prove to all Americans that leaders who do what’s right and who do what’s hard will be rewarded and not rejected.”
Mr Corzine, a former Goldman Sachs executive and multi-millionaire, is currently running even in New Jersey, which is normally comfortably Democratic, while Mr Deeds is trailing badly in Virginia, a swing state that was key to Mr Obama’s 2008 victory.
Of course we’re skeptical. Corzine, a multi-millionaire (which most of us are NOT) who comes from the evil empire of Wall Street (which we are all supposed to hate), is in trouble and Obama appears willing to waste what little political capital he has left trying to save a man who represents all that he (Obama) has been telling us for two years is at the base of all that troubles America: greed and a shameless lust for power. Why shouldn’t we be skeptical of a mouthpiece hell bent on propping up the very same person we’re being told is at the root of all our collective evil?
To watch this President fail, one big event after another-from losing the Olympics, to dithering on war, to fighting for pitifully poor legislation, to pimping for Politicians only concerned with their poll numbers and getting re-elected at any cost, is to watch a desperate man who finds himself in over his head - at the expense of 300 plus million Americans.
Of COURSE his poll numbers are falling…he sucks at this game, and people are finally coming to terms with it - even his little stick buddies on the left.
Obama Lied, Soldiers Died
On February 17, 2009 (just about a month after swearing an oath to defend his Country against all enemies foreign and domestic) it was reported that Barack Obama was committing an additional 17,000 troops to the Afghanistan “conflict” in order “[t]o meet urgent security needs.”
On March 27, 2009 Barack Obama “announced a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that is the culmination of a careful 60-day, interagency strategic review,” suggesting that:
We are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and allies, and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan who have suffered the most at the hands of violent extremists. So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future…To achieve our goals, we need a stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy.”
Two days later, on March 29, 2009 it was reported that Barack Obama was committing “4,000 troops to Afghanistan along with hundreds of civilian specialists in an effort to confront what he considers “the central challenge facing [that] country.” Now the master of indecisiveness is promising “to announce new strategies for both countries Friday” (September 25, 2009).
To the detriment of us all, while Obama waffles and flips and flops (like the fish out of water we all knew he WOULD be in trying to fake it as a legitimate Commander in Chief) between all these strategies he can’t seem to make up his mind about, 317 MORE Soldiers have died fighting in defense of Operation Enduring Freedom which is more than 30% of the total lives lost during the entire 8 years of the conflict.
This is a record no man should ever be proud of. Barack Obama’s incompetence is directly and solely to blame for the flag-draped coffins of grief that have been delivered upon hundreds of American families and shame to the office he should never have been allowed to hold.
Democrats echo Truman and threaten to nationalize Internet
In 1952, during the Korean War, the United Steel Workers of America had gone out on strike. The union was demanding pay increases beyond what steel firms said they could afford to pay, unless they were to raise prices beyond what would be approved by the government’s Wage Stablization Board (set up for the war to attempt to keep costs in line despite inflationary government policies).
President Harry Truman, Democrat, unilaterally declared the steel firms to be at fault for the strikes, which were set to cripple Defense contractors’ ability to keep the war supplied. So, the President nationalized America’s steel manufacturing plants with the plan of dictating his own terms to the unions, appeasing them as part of his political base, while keeping afloat an early front of the Cold War.
The Supreme Court two months later shut the President down, denying the administration’s claim that he had broad implied or residual powers to do whatever he wanted as President of the United States. Had he relied on the Selective Service Act to take control, he might have gotten away with it, but he refused to use it because it had too many pesky controls to protect property rights. Had he relied on Taft-Hartley to stop the strikes, he might have gotten away with it, but he refused to use it because the unions were his allies.
So today, it is surely with the case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube co. vs Sawyer in mind that the Congress debates giving President Barack Obama, Democrat, sweeping authority over Internet Service Providers, including the authority to nationalize whatever Internet resources he declares to be important.
The F-22 - Why Does This Surprise You, General?
There’s a nice little piece over in today’s Wall Street Journal authored by General Merrill McPeak, expressing his dismay at the premature termination of the build-out of the originally-planned fleet of the F-22 Raptor - the kick-*ss air-superiority fighter pictured above.
The piece is rather good, so I’ll let you go read the whole thing via the link.
I’ll just note a couple of things here:
The future air combat capabilities we should build are based on the F-22, a stealthy, fast, maneuverable fighter that is unmatched by any known or projected combat aircraft.
….
It’s been more than half a century since any American soldier or Marine has been killed, or even wounded, by hostile aircraft….
That first item is simply a statement of fact, while the second is a truly-astonishing description of an unparalleled military achievement.
But there’s a kicker at the end of this piece, which we’ll note below the fold….
Amazon shuts down its North Carolina affiliates program.
Via Glenn Reynolds, it’s time for another round of Elections have Consequences!
Action: The North Carolinan legislature (run by Democrats) is about to provide legislation to the governor of North Carolina (Democrat) that allows North Carolina to collect sales tax from Internet transactions.
Reaction: Amazon has closed its Amazon Associates program to North Carolina residents.
To all North Carolinan bloggers and website owners out there - particularly the ones who helped to make sure that North Carolina kept its Democratic majority on the state level - my sincere sympathies; but I must note that this is what happens when you elect too many Democrats.
So stop doing that.
Moe Lane
PS: And before you think I’m being smug: I’m in a state (Maryland) dominated by the Democratic party myself. I’m pretty sure that they voted something like this down, but I trust them with fiscal policy about as far as I can throw them - and I can’t throw worth a darn.
So if you feel the need to buy something, well… here’s the site.
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
A graphic demonstration of the perils of a one-party state.
Elections have consequences.
A failed state.
While its electoral history allows it some pretense to claiming a democratic system of government, its current one-party regime has resulted in crumbling infrastructures and drastic budget shortfalls. Its supposedly high-minded ruling caste keeps getting embroiled in scandal after scandal, ranging from ordinary corruption to substance abuse; their highest figures are especially notorious about violating their own (loudly-proclaimed) religious principles when it suits them. When faced with an increasingly-popular and populist movement drawing on a glorious revolutionary past, the regime seems alternatively derisive and frightened - but cannot seem to find an answer past the standard nonsense that everything is all right, despite the evidence of one’s eyes. And ruling above all is an already deeply unpopular leader whose own lackeys privately worry about how he can win a legitimate election.
All in all, the Massachusetts Democratic Party has seen better days.
Let us compare two commercials: GM’s, and its parody.
This is the original:
…annnnnd (via Ace of Spades) this is the parody.
The parody’s better. Not to mention, considerably more honest.
Moe Lane
PS: I don’t know whether this site is Left-oriented or Right-oriented, but I’ll say this: whoever made it is not happy. And he or she is right to be not happy.
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Democrats set to remove meddlesome anti-corruption prosecutor.
(Via Instapundit) No, not Fitzgerald: Illinois is a little too prominent right now for that kind of shenanigans. North Carolina, on the other hand…
Democrats fix sights on GOP prosecutor
John Edwards admits federal investigators are asking him questions. Federal subpoenas were issued Friday related to Mike Easley.
As the separate federal probes into a former senator and the former governor are emerging, Democrats are taking steps to replace the Republican prosecutor who is spearheading the inquiries about the highest-profile North Carolina Democrats of the past decade.
All the nearly 100 top federal prosecutors across the country serve at the will of the president. Any replacement for U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding, a Bush appointee who has kept a priority on public corruption cases from Raleigh to the coast, will be subject to U.S. Senate confirmation.
The process gives a key role in the decision to U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat who was in the state Senate leadership for several years until she unseated Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole in November. Already, Hagan has formed a panel to screen candidates. It is led by Burley Mitchell, former chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court who now works at the Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice law firm.
They’re claiming that this screening process is ‘coincidental’ to the investigations, of course.
Of course.
No.
I don’t. And neither do the New Yorkers who were terrorized by Obama’s “Air Tours of New York” fundraiser. (h/t Ericka Andersen).
Alexandria, Virginia Can’t Handle The Truth
Northern Virginia is pretty much the classic example of an upscale suburban area that has gone much bluer in the past 4 years, and exactly the sort of place where it has been fashionable to be horrified by the detention without trial of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay…without giving a second thought to what you would do with those detainees if you closed the place. As long as George W. Bush was president, it was safe and easy to complain about Gitmo without facing those realities.
That was then; Bush is gone now, and with his successor actually entertaining the daft notion of bringing detainees stateside for trials in our criminal justice system, an idea long championed by Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia’s 8th District (which includes Arlington and Alexandria, “the heart of Northern Virginia”) suddenly the residents of Alexandria are awakening to the problem:
Elections have consequences: Megan McArdle edition.
Before we go any further, let me just note that my sympathies for the people in the video below is currently somewhere between “nil” and “whatever.” This is a blue-on-blue fight, as far as I’m concerned: Wall Street actually has a habit of going against its class interests by funding and supporting Democrats, and God knows that they had their hand in the current banking crisis, so I can root for injuries with a light heart and a clear conscience.
But Megan’s right: Maxine Waters is nuts.
