a substantial investment in equipment and software that IN NO WAY contributes to the company's bottom line.

I agree with your post, however this line is probably not true -- if the ISP does this at the behest of a politician (or any government TLA) then there is probably either a tax break or some other kind of financial boon for doing so, if not a penalty for not cooperating -- which means this almost certainly will hit their bottom line one way or another.

Also, the ISP cooperating here could give them a boost with that politician and perhaps their party when having future unrelated discussions -- for example, around net neutrality.

like women bullying men who go into nursing

Actually, I suspect the bigger concern is that men who go into nursing are ostracized by other men, rather than by women.

Obamacare passed without one Republican vote in the House or the Senate. When was that last called a Strictly Partisan Bill?

Um... every day?

Basically, HTML5 will let us retire a whole bunch of crufty old legacy hacks from the bad days (Javascript everywhere, Flash, Applets, etc)

You must be new to the world of programming -- old technology never dies! MWA HA HA HA!!!

Actually, for several demographics, viewing times and shows, they're doing better than CNN

That may be true, but I would argue that is entirely CNN's fault for making themselves into such a joke of a network the last several years, rather than a success of MSNBC.

It would be a pisser to have come this far only to have the mission fail because the probe can't get enough power to carry on operations.

Who said the mission would be a failure? They've landed on a comet and received lots of data from the lander already. Even if the mission is cut severely short, it sounds like a success to me.

"A car is just a big purse on wheels." -- Johanna Reynolds

Which is much less helpful in this conversation.

Basically the fear is that it becomes a propaganda machine.

Correct. Why change it from the fear machine that it already is?