While You Were Distracted...

So, while we were all unpleasantly distracted...

From CNET: FCC chips away at net neutrality rules

This under-the-radar issue IS going to affect all of us.   Net Neutrality, basically, treats ISPs (internet service providers like cable and satellite and phone companies) as utilities.  After all, those towers, lines, satellites and such are utilizing our public transportation systems and airspace to provide the signals we use, they get plenty of money from us to maintain that system, and they've already got a dependent market often with very few, if any, choices.  Now, they want to control the flow of particular information.  When you consider just a few huge corporations already control most of the media access, from radio to TV to movies to ISPs, this is a recipe for complete corporate control of information.  Who thinks that's a good idea?

From CommonDreams: Trump's FCC Blocks ISPs from Giving Low-Income Families Web Access

This one is another attack as above.  In the "Information Age," in a time of economic stagnation in the working class, helping the poor get broadband was a wonderful idea, and very inexpensive.  But hey, they don't consume much!  They're poor, after all.  So, fuck them, right?  I say fuck you, Trump's FCC.

From TheIntercept: Republican Lawmakers in Five States Propose Bills to Criminalize Peaceful Protest

This is just ridiculous.  From the article: "In North Dakota, for instance, Republicans introduced a bill last week that would allow motorists to run over and kill any protester obstructing a highway as long as a driver does so accidentally. ...Although the bill ostensibly requires drivers to have acted “negligently” or accidentally in killing a protestor, the bill’s co-sponsor, Republican state Rep. Keith Kempenich, has said that some accidents might occur if motorists “punched the accelerator rather than the brakes,” according to the Bismarck Tribune."  I wonder what would happen if a "Stand Your Ground" defense came up against the "Run Over a Protester by Accident" defense (aside from the bloody mess)?

From The Hill: Leaked ObamaCare bill would defund Planned Parenthood

Ah, good ol' Planned Parenthood, the bane of people who've never used Planned Parenthood or have any substantive reason to even have an opinion about it.  Well, about 1 in 5 women do, and most not for abortion, but for a wide variety of health and personal reasons.  It's a necessary thing, PP, and if we harm it, we're harming the country.  This is placing ideological zealotry ahead of the real world health needs of the people.  It's bad enough we're the only developed nation on the planet without universal healthcare, but here comes worse!

From the NYT: President Trump Takes Aim at the Environment
  

This one is heartbreaking.  The coal industry has been in decline for years, as new technology has made natural gas cheaper and cleaner (well, it was always cleaner, as the whole notion of "Clean Coal" is a myth).  But Trump promised all those poor Appalachian unemployed coal miners a return to the days of King Coal, and this will do nothing to address their situation, but rather just make it easier to ruin even more of their land and water.
  

From Stars and Stripes: Shulkin promises ‘major changes’ at Veterans Affairs

If anyone thinks privatization of the VA is a good idea, and let's not pretend this is not what this is about, here are some thoughts for you: These vets put up their LIVES for this country, US, and WE have to take care of them.  It is OUR responsibility.  If we want to make the VA better, well, just like everything else, WE have to spend the money and do the work to make it so.  ALL of that money should be going to THEIR care, NOT the profits of some corporation.

This goes on, from privatizing PBS and ending the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, because, as we all know, Americans are already so very cultured, to an infrastructure plan that has pretty much nothing to do with our nation's crumbling and outdated infrastructure and everything to do with profiteering your tax dollars.

Are we Making America Great yet?  Anyone even paying attention?  Or was it always just bullshit, disguising the real impetus for the Trump presidency, just plain ol' hatred of one another?

JMJ

Well, here we are.  The day after Trump's inauguration, huge, mass demonstrations, the day after he orders a make-shift ban on immigration from the tiredest, poorest, huddledest, wretchedest places on the planet, more huge, mass demonstrations.  Again, I can not thank our new President enough for what he has done for liberalism in just his first nine days.

A Brooklyn federal judge blocked part of the order.  GOP leaders are squirming.  The order does little to address it's ostensible aim, and seems to be nothing but a political distraction, and a very poorly planned one at that.  But while this goes on, along with the ongoing silly drama of The Wall, Net Neutrality is doomed, and we can expect rightwing assaults on our healthcare, education, pollution, and consumer protections with the aid of his cadre in the cabinet, and a drooling GOP Hill.

Though he may mobilize the Left for the future, the damage that's being done now will take a loooooong time to undo.  Let's hope his distractions are the GOP's undoing come the next couple of election cycles.  The good things Trump says he wants to do would only be doable then anyway.

JMJ