Category Archives: Internet

Dumb, Duplicitous Techno Geeks On #Facebook

Etiquette, Intelligence, Internet, Technology

Techno geeks can be such dumb f-cks (a good honest word when used sparingly). This is especially so when they know nothing but technology. And it is all the more so when they routinely underestimate those of us who manipulate technology to our own ends quite adequately, but do not worship it.

Every idiot knows that one can remain a Facebook Friend with a former pal, just to keep up appearances (otherwise known as duplicity), while barring them from one’s Timeline and from other forums. Don’t you love cretins who think this fatuity is uncommon knowledge?

Most of this writer’s interactions on Facebook are for the purpose of furthering the work done and are with people interested in this work. But mistakes have been committed in cultivating shallow, two-faced friends (who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, to quote Oscar Wilde).

Enough said.

Cartelizing The Internet

Internet, Regulation, Technology

The regulators have declared net neutrality to be “a triumph of ‘free expression and democratic principles.’” This is a contradiction in terms. A “tiny group of unaccountable bureaucrats operating with the support of the executive lame duck” and in cahoots with a cartelized industry: This is despotic, not democratic.

Jeff Tuckers unpacks the dynamics of net neutrality and regulation, in general, as one whereby “… an elite group of insiders manipulat[ates] the regulations for their own benefits, a left-wing intelligentsia … is naive enough to believe platitudes about fairness, and a right wing … is mostly ignorant and for sale to the highest bidder.”

… Here’s what’s really going on. The incumbent rulers of the world’s most exciting technology have decided to lock down the prevailing market conditions to protect themselves against rising upstarts in a fast-changing market. To impose a new rule against throttling content or using the market price system to allocate bandwidth resources protects against innovations that would disrupt the status quo.

What’s being sold as economic fairness and a wonderful favor to consumers is actually a sop to industrial giants who are seeking untrammeled access to your wallet and an end to competitive threats to market power. One person I know compared the move to the creation of the Federal Reserve itself: the creation of an industrial cartel in the name of improving the macroeconomic environment. That’s a good comparison.

Let’s back up and grasp the position of the large content providers. Here we see the obvious special interests at work. Netflix, Amazon, and the rest don’t want ISPs to charge either them or their consumers for their high-bandwidth content. They would rather the ISPs themselves absorb the higher costs of such provision. It’s very clear how getting the government to make price discrimination illegal is in their interest. It means no threats to their business model.

By analogy, let’s imagine that …

MUST READ.

Levin Harpoons GOP Jellyfish

Conservatism, Democrats, Internet, Republicans

“Barack Obama: not a particularly smart man; Harry Reed a particularly stupid man. Yet they’re running circles around the cowardly Republicans. You don’t have to be that bright to run circles around Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, who’ve surrendered the power of the purse [conferred by the Constitution and the electorate; it gave the GOP majorities in both chambers], and are now propagandizing against themselves.” That’s Mark Levin today paraphrased, as he nails “the party of oligarchs; of the Bush dynasty; of millionaire and billionaire crony capitalists.”

Yes, where are the “winner” Republicans, promising to defeat “Obamanet”: Obama’s plan to “end of the Internet as we know it”?

While he’s a legal positivist, a militarist, and loves Lincoln for every unpardonable crime Honest Abe ever committed—Mark Levin offers thoughtful commentary on a good many issues. Unlike the rest on radio, he’s smart and hard working (i.e., he does not expose his listeners to the bimbo brigade or to non-stop crap from callers. Rather, he crafts his own commentary). Today he nailed the flaccid Republicans:

Other of Levin’s political bons mots today: “John McCain is one of the dumbest men in the US Senate, as dumb as a rock. Ditto Lindsey Graham, his illegitimate son.”

No argument there.

UPDATED: Grubby Gruber To Enter ‘Smithsonian Museum of Dumbassery’ (CNN Reports?)

Economy, Ethics, Government, Healthcare, Intelligence, Internet

Jonathan Gruber’s “off-the-cuff” trail of stupidity belongs, as Big Bang’s delicious Leslie Winkle would say, in “the Smithsonian Museum of Dumbassery.” Here the Gruber collection is, as uncovered and tracked, not by major media, but by citizen journalist Rich Weinstein:

* Nancy Pelosi is a Liar Too. Tell me something I don’t already know.

* “Gruber suggesting that states that did not create health insurance exchanges risked giving up the ACA’s subsidies.”

* “Clip from Gruber’s year-old appearance at a University of Pennsylvania health care conference.”

* “Gruber … ‘I have no comment.’”

* Gruby “at a January 2012 symposium.”

* “Scholar”? Gruby on “Ronan Farrow Daily”: ““I was speaking off the cuff and I spoke inappropriately, and I regret making those comments.” Aha.

* Gruber second “stupid” tape, uncovered by Megyn Kelly’s team:

In this next clip from also last year, Mr. Gruber explains how Democrats played with the language of the Obamacare law so that it achieved their goals, by again, fooling the stupid public.”
She then played a short 5-second clip of Gruber, saying the following, that a part of the Obamacare passed because “the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.”
Gruber was talking about the so-called “Cadillac tax” in Obamacare, which increased the tax on high-end insurance packages. The fact that Obamacare would raise taxes was seen as politically toxic. But then-Senator John Kerry came up with the idea of taxing the companies providing the Cadillac plans, rather than taxing Americans directly.

(Via Daily Caller.)

Stupid III clip: “It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter”

… In an effort to add a cost-control measure to Obamacare, former Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who Gruber called a “hero,” successfully pushed through a 40 percent excise tax on insurance companies for plans that cost more than $10,200 for individuals and $27,000 for families.

“A WONDERFUL shopping experience, economists will tell you.” (Read: I am telling you, fools!)

Gruber is a technocrat, not a scholar; a corrupt central planner extraordinaire, high on his own vapor. He has no right to talk economics. Leave it to the Austrians, freak.

UPDATE (11/14): CNN’s Jake Tapper may have let slip a word or two about Grubby, earlier this week. Today, November 14th, 2014, finally fuller coverage on CNN. What a disgrace.