Today there seems to be some sort of joke on Breitbart.com, which would be a nice change -- after all, we like politics, and we like jokes, so this should be a real treat! So anyway, the joke goes like this: "once, I knew a leftist that was SO DUMB — (how dumb was he?) –- well he was SO DUMB that he thought he could build a business using LEFTIST principles which would never work because of the unregulated nature of the world wide web which currently makes it attractive to private investment in a way that net neutrality will not which is why there are no leftists in the private internet business! And also, Marxism!" Get it? Get it?? That’s ok, neither does your Wonkette, on account of the fact that it might not actually be a “joke” in the way that one would normally conceive of a “joke.” And also because Seton Motley, the author of thisjoke articleessay? doesn’t seem to understand how the Internet came about or how it works, not to mention what the Internet has to do with his lede, which concerns Obama poking his head into executive boardrooms across the country and screaming “YOU DIDN’T BUILD THAT!”
Via Breitbart.com :
Leftists think they know exactly how every little facet of the giant, endlessly faceted private economy works, which is remarkable, considering their enormous disdain for it.
Note: hey! This is kind of like how conservatives think they know exactly how every little facet of the giant, endlessly faceted public sector works, which is remarkable,” considering their enormous disdain for it. Anyway, moving on!
…Let’s look at but one business sector, the World Wide Web – currently under government assault from a myriad directions – and envision what a Leftist Internet would look like. The Web has been wisely, virtually (no pun intended) tax and regulation-free since its private inception. As a result, it has rapidly become a free speech, free market Xanadu...
Uh...well. The thing is, Seton, the internet Is not a product of private industry but rather came from a a government project. TCP/IP, for example, was developed on a government contract. Ethernet was developed at a public university and funded by ARPA , which also was a government project. And as the Internet was privatized in 1995 , we’ve had a “private Internet” for quite some time now. But getting back to Leftists and how they ruin everything:
So Leftists ask: “How do we make it as difficult as possible for continued private Internet investment? So it will dry up and leave government as the nation’s sole Internet provider?”
And their answer is “Network Neutrality.” Robert McChesney, one of the founding fathers of the Media Marxist movement, explains it thus:
At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control….
A government-provided Internet will look like the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), only slower, and with bandwidth rationing – where Leftists will be connected, and we Neanderthals will not.
The real reason Leftists don’t go into the private Internet business is that they don’t want there to be a private Internet.
It will probably not surprise you to learn that Robert McChesney didn't say EXACTLY that he wanted only Leftists to get the Internet. But it was kind of close, sort of! Well, a little bit. Or actually the opposite. What he said was that "all like Internet content must be treated alike and move at the same speed over the network...All of the intelligence and control is held by producers and users, not the networks that connect them." And also, what is a "private internet business" because we do not know! And if we did know, maybe more and more of us leftists would be getting one of them!
Republican ?
An infinite supply of power ... but highly polluting. No surprise that the Republicans are willing to drill it.