A bit of a breeze.

Pix ‘n’ linx on a night when it’s so windy I regret that I live under tall trees. Only on nights like this, but they happen often enough that I pass an uneasy night every few months. We are paying for yet another April-in-January morning — nearly 50 today. And now the warmth must be banished. In 35 mph gusts.

So let’s ask Flickr for “wind” in the Creative Commons area. This is nice:

Smeathes ridge storm over Liddington2

Thanks, Richard White. That’s a lovely country you have there. (England.)

Now, some linkage:

New York magazine, in what we all hope is hyperbole, promises us the slimiest campaign season ever. It probably isn’t hyperbole. Oh, I can’t wait.

If you want to feel better, though, here’s Gabrielle Giffords finishing the town meeting she started a little over a year ago, and didn’t finish. I love her bad-guys-don’t-get-to-win spirit. This is a great country.

Duff McKagan — yes, that one — on the SOPA affair:

The legislation’s meant to combat theft of creative works like movies and music from overseas web sites. But when I turned to the Twitter and Facebook, I saw an overwhelming dog pile of support against the bills. Excuse me, but where were you all when piracy started to decimate the music industry? Why didn’t you take a stand against that? Those free records felt good, huh?

The fury from the Internet class is that the broad language in the pieces of legislation will be bad for start-ups, might prevent the next YouTube, or give the government the ability to take down a whole site because of one link to copyrighted works. In short, they’re opposed to the legislation because they think it will be bad for the Internet business.

Bad for business. Anti-piracy legislation could be bad for the Internet business. It almost takes my breath away. Internet piracy has claimed half of the recorded music business, and made the prospect of making a living as a musician harder for artists of all rank and file. Why didn’t Google, or Facebook, or Wikipedia ever stand in solidarity with musicians, actors, and writers – most of whom have never known fame and fortune – as their works were stolen with no recourse on their sites?

You gotta admit, the guy has a point. Barn doors and horses and all that, but someone needs to say it.

And now it’s, what? Tuesday? Is that all? Seemed like a long Monday. Let’s hope it speeds by.

Posted at 9:01 am in Current events, Popculch |
 

41 responses to “A bit of a breeze.”

  1. brian stouder said on January 24, 2012 at 9:35 am

    the slimiest campaign season ever

    The one unbreakable vow that I make is that, come the climax of our presidential election, if it is President-elect McPherson-Gingerich, I shall never, ever sound like our cranky Obama-haters sounded, beginning the next morning after President Obama’s electoral victory, and intensifying ever since.

    I’ll stop with the McPherson-Gingerich (last syllable rhymes with “prick”) remarks, and I will sincerely want the President of the United States to succeed (unlike the flying monkeys of the rightwing airwaves).

    Honestly, I believe President Obama will be re-elected handily, and I will happily be able to forget about Newt the free-loving rolling stone-with-revolving-Tiffanies-credit lobbyist con-man histrionic historian.

    But until then, I reserve the right to marvel at that guy’s darting, beady rat-eyes. The main thing I watched in his last two debate performances were those fast-moving squinty glances he constantly shoots. Honestly, I think last night’s restrained audience took him off his pins, a little.

    He looked like a habituated lab rat who hit his marks and then didn’t get the cheese…a little confusion seemed to set in

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  2. Bob (not Greene) said on January 24, 2012 at 10:02 am

    I don’t think I’ll be as charitable, Brian. Not that I want the country to devolve into chaos and abject poverty for all but the richest members of the ruling oligarchy just to show everyone I told you so, but I truly believe Newt has a bit of dictator in him. I mean, I just laugh when people compare Obama to Lenin, using “Obamacare” as their big example. Shit, that was a law passed by the U.S. goddamn congress and the result of so much compromise that it’s Romney’s template for chrissakes. That’s how left wing that is.

    When Newt talks about presidents being able to disregard the Supreme Court, I take him at his word. The guy’s a malicious bastard and a sociopath to boot. And then there’s the people who bankroll his campaign and who have enough clout to help bankroll films vilifying Muslims and then getting them shown — as part of training — for New York City police officers.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/nyregion/in-police-training-a-dark-film-on-us-muslims.html?_r=1&hp

    Same guy that has given Newt’s super PAC $10 million bucks so far. You want scary? That’s scary.

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  3. MarkH said on January 24, 2012 at 10:45 am

    Brian will not be as charitible, either. Few here would be.

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  4. mark said on January 24, 2012 at 10:46 am

    I’m anxious for the end of the Obama presidency, but I’ll vote for him if Newt is the alternative. I agree with BobNG that Newt has a “bit of dictator in him.” I don’t think the guy is emotionally/mentally stable enough for the job. No similar concerns with Obama. The country will survive Obama’s mistakes; maybe not Newt’s.

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  5. Scout said on January 24, 2012 at 10:48 am

    Just think how many homeless, hungry people $10 million would feed. That kind election buying disgusts me. Especially in times like these.

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  6. LAMary said on January 24, 2012 at 11:23 am

    Newt’s had three religions and three wives. He was investigated for ethics violations, and while he had his mistress on the government payroll, he went after Clinton for getting a BJ from an intern. He thinks he’s brilliant. So brilliant that mere mortals can’t grasp his ideas. In fact he’s a slightly crazy guy with no moral compass and enough brains to know what to say to a certain constituency. He actually said, when asked what he accomplished in congress, that he protected congress from communism.

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  7. alex said on January 24, 2012 at 11:23 am

    Earlier today I saw an opinion piece that describes Gingrich’s latest comeback perfectly. His baggage should make him a non-starter with both teabaggers and evangelicals, but it doesn’t because he’s adroit at tapping into their rage and railing against their favorite bogeymen. When Romney tries to do the same thing he is simply not believable.

    I’m not terribly worried about a GOP victory either way. Gingrich is too polarizing to win a general election and Mitt is too uncharismatic. Either one will leave the Republican electorate hopelessly divided, praise be.

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  8. Joe Kobiela said on January 24, 2012 at 11:51 am

    Scout,
    Agreed 10 million would buy a lot, but then again how much would close to 1 billion that Obama has stashed in his campain fund buy?
    Just saying.
    Pilot Joe

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  9. coozledad said on January 24, 2012 at 12:32 pm

    I’ve learned you should never underestimate the spitefulness and resentment of a plurality of white males against the political classes who might make things marginally better for them. They like Gingrich right now, because he’s a bathypelagic pit of resentments and an enemy’s list of everyone who inadvertently unmasked his grubby mediocrity. He’s also got a will to destruction that triggers their latent homicidal impulses. If you want to fuck everything up so it will not be unfucked, he will fuck it the way you want it fucked.

    But ultimately the party will have no problem getting them lined up to say Yes sir! to Romney because if there’s one thing more characteristic of them than unrestrained, scattershot anger, it’s reflexive submission to brute authority in the person of a yappy fratboy.

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  10. Peter said on January 24, 2012 at 12:45 pm

    A friend mentioned to me yesterday that the strangest thing to him about the South Carolina primary was how many people voted for a Catholic and/or a Mormon. It goes to show, he said, that Republicans CAN put their religious and moral convictions aside as long as the candidate is truly crazy.

    Seriously, does Lyndon LaRouche even need to run for President this year? He’s going to look sane compared to some of these guys.

    Joe and Scout, I have to agree about the campaign funds, especially in times like these. Can you imagine what the newspapers and TV would be like if political expenditures were cut even 20%? They’d feel the pain in no time. And while I’d like to think that the people who contribute to political campaigns also contribute to other good causes, it still blows me away.

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  11. Scout said on January 24, 2012 at 12:48 pm

    You’re right Joe. My argument is that these obscene amounts of money should be removed from politics. I’m especially concerned about Citizens United and the lack of transparency. I do not have the actual breakdown, so I might be wrong, but I am under the impression that Obama’s fundraising is still mostly small donor rather than large sugar daddy.

    And one of the main reasons I marvel at the sheer audacity of the $10 mil that Adelson has showered on Gingrich (rhymes with prick) is that it funds the “food stamp president” line of attack, while totally ignoring the reason behind why so many people need the assist.

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  12. moe99 said on January 24, 2012 at 12:56 pm

    Support please,Joe, for your assertion that Obama has a billion stashed away. Last I knew, a billion was a thousand million. That’s quite a haul if true. Back in September, Obama’s war chest was 99milion.

    http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/campaign-finance

    I know, I know these facts have a pesky liberal bias.

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  13. Brandon said on January 24, 2012 at 1:01 pm

    Is anyone considering a vote for a third-party candidate? Why or why not?

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  14. Jeff Borden said on January 24, 2012 at 1:04 pm

    I was struck by how the lack of a rabid audience of drooling atavists who want their “whites only” drinking fountains back took so much wind out of Newticle’s sails. He was off his game without a crowd of yahoos to heckle the black guy or the newsman. And as Charles Pierce notes today, Willard the Windsock actually landed some great lines, particularly “influence peddler.” It’s been astonishing to watch Newtie try to paint himself as a rebel outsider with little or no ties to D.C. when he has spent the last 30 years swimming in the sewers there. Newtie lies with great energy.

    I’m sticking with my long-ago prediction that Mitt Romney gets the nod. I believe he will run an effective campaign –aided by the gazillions that Citizens United will shower on the race– and be a credible threat to a second Obama term. But as noted a day or two earlier, I am feeling a bit more confident. Willard is just a terrible, terrible campaigned and one of those people you dislike more as you get to know them. There’s a mighty wave of hatred for Obama to be exploited, yes, but there also is a lot of anger about income inequality and Willard fits the central casting part of the well-born patrician who views others as “the help.”

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  15. beb said on January 24, 2012 at 1:17 pm

    Duff MacKagen is a tool of the RIAA. I followed the Napster wars back then on Slashdot.org. There were some very revealing articles. The decline of the record companies didn’t start with the founding of Napster but with the decision of the Record Companies to cut back on the money invested in finding and promoting new bands. Few bands ever become big hits, leets say the ratio is 1:100. So the company needs to invest in 100 each year to get one new hit band. If they cut back their investment to only 50 bands a years, it would take two years on average for them to find their next big thing. They’re being penny wise but pound foolish.

    Studies of CD sales near colleges, where the assumption is that most of the file-sharing would take place, found that CD sales were not declining, but in some cases going up. People were buying the music they liked and found that the ability to sample new music without cost was exposing them to new artists. And they were buying those new artists.

    The RIAA has never explained how they get the numbers they claim represents their loses from on-line music. Which makes one suspect that their claims are false.

    And as more than one person pointed out durting those days, much of what was being downloaded was to people who wouldn’t have bought the album, ever. So there was no loses involved.

    And all this is true for the MPAA.

    Sure there’s on-line piracy, but there’s also shoplifting and stores have learned to live with those losses. It’s time for the record companies and studios to learn to live with a little piracy.

    Brandon: we have a winner-take-all election system. Such a system by its nature denigrates third parties.

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  16. Sue said on January 24, 2012 at 1:30 pm

    Brandon:
    Stephen Colbert, of course. Because the idea of someone who could give Chuck Todd the vapors over ‘making a mockery of the system’ is immensely appealing on many levels.
    Stephen might not be available though, because in a just world he’d accept the greater and more patriotic challenge and primary Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker:
    http://www.bluecheddar.net/?p=17759&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=stephen-colbert-wisconsin-wants-you-to-primary-scott-walker

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  17. caliban said on January 24, 2012 at 1:33 pm

    Alex@7 and Peter@10: And because those constituencies are remarkably elastic raging hypocrites, who above all else, simply can’t abide black people, particularly in positions of power, and piss on all of their so-called core values if the sherriff is a ni….

    It’s pretty hilarious to watch GOPer establishment fawn over Willard Antidog, after their gratuitous, mendacious mistreatment of Kerry in ’04 for wealth and personality traits for which the Windsock is a veritable poster boy, except Friend O’ Ben went to France to proselytyze instead of to Vietnam and Cambodia, cementing the considerable chickenhawk GOPer vote.

    Brandon: Last sizeable 3rd party vote was progressiver-than-thous for Darth Nader that undoubtedly created the opportunity for reactionary activist SC Justices to appoint W the monkey king and grease the tracks to economic Gehenna.

    Duff McKagan might be a tad more convincing on the subject of protecting intellectual property if he’d ever had a creative idea.

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  18. mark said on January 24, 2012 at 1:37 pm

    beb, your rationalizations for theft are pretty unconvincing imo.

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  19. Bitter Scribe said on January 24, 2012 at 1:59 pm

    I only had time to read the first three pages or so of the New York article, but it annoyed me with its breezy assumptions that Obama would indulge in slimy attacks: “Obama is in a box, and there is only one way out of the box: the low road.” Etc. It’s that kind of false equivalence that makes so much media coverage so valueless.

    Besides, I’m not sure this guy even has his facts right. He says the Obama campaign falsely accused McCain in 2008 of opposing stem-cell research, but IIRC, McCain flipped on the issue and came out against it after initially being for it.

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  20. caliban said on January 24, 2012 at 2:25 pm

    Scribe, on embryonic stem cell research: Whatever McCain may think personally about it, depending on what day it is and to whom he’s talking, the GOP platform and Ol’ Grumpyass’ running mate at the time insisted that embryonic stem cell research amounted to ending life, and was unacceptable public policy. It’s also quite true that in that whole harangue, McCain insisted consistently in using the term “stem cell research” generically, as if he and others had not made sharp distinctions between embryonic and adult stem cells. McCains pronouncements, by ignoring that dichotomy were equivocal, and neither he nor his campaign made any effort to be clearer. Politifact took McCains side at the time, in a classic maneuver to dive into the “equivalency” muck, mire and deliberate murk.

    The whole business was reminiscent of GOPers spewing about Muslims in Iraq without acknowledging the existence of Shia and Sunni sects. It’s distinctly unfair to describe the Obama ads as sleazy. In fact, it’s such a gross mischaracterization as to actually be sleazy.

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  21. Connie said on January 24, 2012 at 3:37 pm

    From Americablog: Who was Saul Alinksy, the guy Gingrich fears so much? http://www.americablog.com/2012/01/who-was-saul-alinksy-guy-gingrich-fears.html

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  22. Deborah said on January 24, 2012 at 4:19 pm

    Can somebody tell me what the millions raised for campaigns gets used for? I assume they buy a lot of air time on TV, ads, commercials, printed collateral, postage, strategies, marketing etc etc etc. Those companies are paying people to do these things, right? Like strategists, event planners, chefs, writers, designers, printers, announcers, actors, film and digital techs, etc etc etc. So in a sense isn’t that helping the economy? I realize the numbers are staggering, But if some creepy rich guy like Adelson wants to give up a chunk of change that ultimately gets into the pockets of working Americans for a candidate who’s not going to win anyway. Can that be all bad? Crazy but not ALL bad.

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  23. Sue said on January 24, 2012 at 4:26 pm

    Something to share, if you wouldn’t mind reading it:
    http://cops4labor.blogspot.com/2012/01/contract.html#more

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  24. brian stouder said on January 24, 2012 at 4:46 pm

    Connie – superb link!

    And Sue’s was sobering

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  25. caliban said on January 24, 2012 at 4:47 pm

    Ferocious cover for Warren Zevon’s 65th Bday.

    Interesting review of Nutria Gingrich’s latest Regnery Press opus, 10,000 copies of which Richard Mellon Scaife has undoubtedly already purchased.

    Deborah, what you say makes sense. I’ve been wondering myself what happens to all the money GoodHair collected. But for a disgusting example of the sort of havoc this kind of spending renders within society, read that blog at Sue’s link. Koch Bros. cash purchased the Wisconsin State House, and the evil bastards’ anti-union jihad ended up as a fatwah on families of police officers slain in the line of duty.

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  26. Jeff Borden said on January 24, 2012 at 4:52 pm

    Deborah,

    The most troubling aspect of Adelson underwriting a large chunk of Newticle’s campaign is that he’s an extreme, right-wing Zionist opposed to any two-state solution. The few millions he drops on Newticles would be well spent if he helped engineer the election of a man whose first act might very well be a preemptive attack on Iran, something which the right-wing extremists in Israel and their amen chorus in the American right want more than life itself.

    Most of the time, the big donors get their payback through appointed positions and/or changes to laws, regulations, etc. Adelson is fishing for much, much larger game.

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  27. deb said on January 24, 2012 at 5:08 pm

    What Mark said in response to beb. And beb, if you think record companies and studios are the only ones affected by piracy, you haven’t been paying attention. Newspapers have been absolutely clobbered by the notion that all information should be free (although some of this is the industry’s own fault for giving away the store from the get-go, then realizing belatedly that this wasn’t much of a business model). I would venture to guess, beb, that if you ran a business affected this way, having people steal what you produce because, hey, they just decided it ought to be free—you’d be on the other side of this argument. Blithely accepting theft as a part of the cost of doing business isn’t much of a business model, either. When did copyright law become evil? Please.

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  28. alex said on January 24, 2012 at 5:22 pm

    When did copyright law become evil? Please.

    I believe it was in the 1990s with this horrid case law precedent.

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  29. caliban said on January 24, 2012 at 5:43 pm

    Damn. The concept of Vanna White’s intellectual property may be funnier than Duff McKagan’s. When it’s ASCAP and record commpanies whining, I think about musical geniuses like Solomon Burke and Wilson Pickett being robbed blind by those very same bastards who see the shoe on the other foot now. What killed record company profiability was the mp3 download and the players, and the gelded spans of attention they promote, and boy, they really don’t sound very good. Of course considering the caliber of creativity and talent of so-called artists lately, albums would have been awfully lame anyway.

    If Duff has any sort of valid beef, it’s really with his old antagonist Bill “Axl” Bailey, who leaked that lousy Chinese Democracy drivel hundreds of times over almost two decades on the net. Now that just flat out diluted interest.

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  30. Sherri said on January 24, 2012 at 5:44 pm

    Copyright law became evil around the time Disney convinced Congress to make it last approximately forever and a day.

    There are many factors responsible for the dying of newspapers, but piracy just isn’t the major one (excessive debt and Craigslist would have to rank way higher.) Other industries have dealt with piracy as part of the business model – the software industry for example. They discovered that trying to solve it technically (with things like DRM) didn’t stop it, and trying to litigate it away didn’t stop it, and trying to legislate it away didn’t stop it. What they learned was, it was better that Windows was running on all those computers in China, even if many of those copies were pirated, than that something else was running, because eventually you might be able to sell something to them. Microsoft used to whine endlessly about piracy, and they don’t anymore – they just make it easy for software pirates to cheaply and easily become software customers.

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  31. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 24, 2012 at 6:19 pm

    The video link well down is good on Alinsky, with Studs Terkel. Gotta like the “Last guys don’t finish nice.”

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2012/jan/24/republican-presidential-nomination-2012-newt-gingrich

    BTW, about $275 million will be spent just during the Super Bowl itself for TV ads; I’ve never understood the economics of advertising, whether on-air, cable, or newspaper & magazine, let alone online, politics or cheap beer alike. But if those advertisers ever all suddenly realized it’s wasted expense . . . ah well. Apparently it isn’t, unless they’re all just doing it because it’s expected of them.

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  32. paddyo' said on January 24, 2012 at 8:08 pm

    Back, just for a moment, to the thread Brian started @ 1:

    Although I loathe Gingrich now and loathed GW Bush then when he was in the White House, my rather robust level of loathing could never begin to approach the foam-mouthed frothing, utter obstructionism, blind batshit windbaggery and pure rat-assedness of the (mostly) GOP Obama haters. Those people are the definition of ugly Americans, the epitome of bigotry, the dictionary entry for dark-hearted, mean-spirited, lying sacks of bovine excrement.

    Pardon my burst of incivility. I’m still snarly that a certain semi-rural Colorado congressman decided not to do his civil and civic duty tonight and attend the State of the Union address — a cretinous snub of the president even as another Coloradan, Democrat Sen. Mark Udall, continues to promote civility in the chamber by mixing up the red/blue seating arrangements and sitting with and among Repubs when Obama speaks.

    Oh well. At least the missing congressman, whom I’ll leave unnamed because he doesn’t deserve mention, can’t shout “YOU LIE!”, Joe-Wilson style.

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  33. Suzanne said on January 24, 2012 at 8:30 pm

    I don’t get the extreme hostility towards Obama either. He’s pretty moderate, not a terribly strong leader, seems like a decent guy, and I really like his wife. I did not like Bill Clinton much, but that is because I thought he was horribly sleazy and would sell his own mother to get ahead. Obama is classy and is the embodiment of the American dream; came from nothing, pulled himself up by his wits and intelligence and hard work, and made it. Non-scientific observation would have to conclude that the hatred is because of his race, the fact that he is the progeny of a mixed race marriage, and his name doesn’t sound ‘merican. Makes me hate that I am technically still a registered Repub.

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  34. beb said on January 24, 2012 at 8:59 pm

    Copyright law became evil with the 1978 revision to copyright law that extended coverage to life plus 50 years for authors and 75 (I think) for “works for hire.” But are unconscionably long. But worse copyrights were granted and extended without requiring the copyright holder to register with the library of congress. What to know if something is in the public domain? Good luck. There’s no registration any more that you could turn to. What to find out who holds the copyright on a particular item, again, good luck. Registration is not required for assigns, transfers, etc.

    Copyright law got even more evil with the Sonny Bono act (aka the Disiney act) which extended copyrights another twenty years. (Just in time to prevent “Steam Boat Willie” from going PD)

    But the bigger issue with SOPA and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) before it. There’s almost no provision for fair use, copyright holders can make claims of infringement which must be responded to immediately without hearing from the defendants. It turns the whole principle of innocent until proven guilty on its head. MPAA and RIAA claim that the losses through on-line piracy is so great that these draconian actions must be taken. But what is the proof of their claim? They will not revealed the methodology of their estimates. Efforts to finds the origins of these numbers tend to find that they are totally bogus. As mentioned in my previous post, efforts to find a correlation between Napster and declines in the music industry, could not find any. While other factors can account for the declines just as well. And if on-line piracy was taking that much of a toll on the movie industry it doesn’t show it.

    Sherri upstream makes some good points about how piracy has not killed the newspapers and how software companies benefit from piracy.

    When I brought in the idea of shoplifting I was trying to make a comparison. Shoplifting is wrong. It’s a crime that can lead to serious time in jail. Retail stores try to stop shoplifting all the time. But they can only hold it down. Eliminating it entirely will never happen because there will always be crooks. The chief difference between shoplifting and on-line piracy is that shop owners can’t just throw people in jail. They have to prosecute them in court. SOPA and DMCA make it too easy to copyright owners to (in effect) throw people in jail without having to prove that they actually did anything wrong.

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  35. Deborah said on January 24, 2012 at 9:38 pm

    In defense of what I said earlier about Adelson and his millions lavished on the Newt campaign: the operative part of my comment is that Newt isn’t going to win. We know this, so if Adelson wants to throw money into the hands of working Americans to try to get the lunatic elected, which will never happen, what’s the harm? It only serves to make Newt look more ridiculous to the majority. Sure the fringe minority will be energized, but so what, they can’t win. I get what Adelson is after, but he’s not going to get it by backing Newt.

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  36. Linda said on January 24, 2012 at 10:11 pm

    Suzanne @33:
    Race is certainly part of it, but part is the echo chamber effect–people only getting info from a tiny number of extremist sources–of people hyping each other’s hysteria with ever-higher levels of name-calling, until it reaches a level of crazy that appalls anyone not in the echo chamber.

    And part of it is desperation. The world a lot of people got used to–white Christians outnumbering everybody else and in charge–is fading away. The middle class is struggling to survive, and more and more people see that there is no secure place in the world for them. Once, being a white male, or married to a white male, got you some privilege, proximity to privilege or at least the illusion of privilege. Not anymore. A smart black guy who runs the country is like rubbing dirt in a lot of people’s faces, even though you can reasonably argue that the smart black guy really gives a damn about what happens to you. At least the white candidates look like you and appeal to your resentments. Even if their economic policies would hose you.

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  37. Deborah said on January 24, 2012 at 10:26 pm

    I just read every last word of Obama’s transcript of his state of the union address and I am impressed. Wow, this man will certainly be our president for another term. And Mark, why in the world would you not want this man to be reelected?

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  38. Bitter Scribe said on January 24, 2012 at 10:59 pm

    With regard to campaign cash, I don’t see anyone topping Sarah Palin for sheer sleaziness. She grabbed every dollar she could, knowing that she wouldn’t be running. I wonder if any of the people who contributed feel like suckers. Somehow I doubt that they’re self-aware enough.

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  39. alex said on January 24, 2012 at 11:13 pm

    Well, I can see why the GOP wanted Mitch Daniels. He comes across as pretty earnest when he’s lying through his teeth, which sets him apart from the smirking bomb throwers who are dooming the Republican ticket. At the very least he’d help the Republicans save some face.

    Obama came across well. I watched on ABC where they had Peggy Noonan in the peanut gallery, and of course in her capacity as a speech writer and right-wing shill she ragged on it. That’s supposed to give balance I suppose. Those poor right-wingers are finally learning what it feels like to be patronized. Maybe it will teach them some empathy for minorities.

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  40. Dexter said on January 24, 2012 at 11:41 pm

    alex…keep your eyes open and maybe you will see the next President running around Auburn. He visits at times and is fond of the old Town Tavern there. I don’t follow Daniels’ career but it seems I have heard a lot of criticism about the Toll Road sale.
    I was gonna watch the rebuttal but my labbie dog shit on the floor. Poor dog done got the shits. Thankfully I have a powerful carpet scrubber. But it ain’t no fun. Yuck X 10.

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  41. alex said on January 24, 2012 at 11:46 pm

    He could be bumping pussies with state rep Dennis Kruse, although I wouldn’t rule out taking it up the bunghole from the Allen County Sheriff who lives up that a-way.

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