That joke must be relying on Newtonian physics, because it was loaded into a catapult and just WHOOSHED over your head.

Based on the number of people who use weapons based on Newtonian physics to kill, Newton may be the biggest mass murderer of all time.

Part of the problem with Net Neutrality is that a bunch of groups use the name to mean different things. You, in presumably good faith, saw "Net Neutrality" and meant "Title II reclassification." I, also in good faith, meant it in the sense of "regulated settlement free peering," which is the condition that the FCC imposed on Comcast, but for the moment, few other companies. (Comcast wants that regulation extended to its competitors as well.)

Way out on the wacko scale, you have people trying to impose the now-discredited "Fairness Doctrine" on the Internet, and calling THAT Net Neutrality. There are people out there saying that every X times you type Fox News into your browser, it should bring you to NPR instead. To some people, that's net neutrality.

Isn't the tax ID used for most individuals their Social Security numbers? Putting that on comments (which obviously need to be made public) is an invitation to identity theft.

It also doesn't solve the claimed problem. Groups putting out form letters would just include a field for SSN. Then you'd have a bunch of near identical comments with different social security numbers.

It also doesn't show that it's a real problem. The Constitution says that citizens are allowed to petition the government for a redress of grievances, right? What is a petition except a letter asking for the government to do something with a bunch of citizens signing it, ALL OF WHOM USE THE SAME WORDING? Why is the fact that they all use the same wording a disqualifier in the first place?

Comcast is pro-NN because Net Neutrality was imposed on them as a condition of their merger with NBC. They want their competitors to be hamstrung by the same NN rules that they are.

I can't square this quote

with this one

(emphasis mine). Can you explain the difference?

I devoted an entire post to Al Sharpton supporting the idea that white people won't look out for black people with quotes straight from Sharpton's mouth. You're just asserting that... what, exactly? Are you claiming that Rush Limbaugh is telling Republicans that they SHOULD do things to screw Republicans? That they should be? Some kind of inverse or converse? You didn't bother to make an argument here, and are just relying on people to connect RUSH LIMBAUGH = BAD like he's Emmanuel Goldstein or something. Idiot. If you want to claim someone says racist things, you should really give an example.

I also can't square

with

Your entire argument, every time, boils down to "I didn't say the things I said, and so you're wrong and I'm right. Here's an ad homonym for your two minutes hate." Enjoy looking like a moron for the rest of your time on the internet.

Again, we're talking about a Democrat who said something racist. REPUBLICANS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS STORY, but every time it's news that a Democrat says something racist, we have to have a conversation about how Republicans are "statistically more likely to be racist." (You're lying about that by the way.) Why is that?

There's no Shapiro interpretation in my post, just his recounting of facts. If you'd like to argue against the facts that Shapiro brings to the table (i.e. claim Shapiro is misquoting Sharpton) that would be fine. Since you're not, this is a dopey ad homonym attack that does nothing except distract from the point. I'd appreciate it if you could address my point.

My point is that in practice, the Democratic Party earns a lot of influence by convincing minorities that "Republicans are all old, rich, white men" and "You can't trust old, rich, white men to look out for your interests." Both statements are false, and the second one is racist. One of the biggest pushers of the second idea in the Democratic Party is Al Sharpton. No one in the Republican Party owes as much to pushing racist views as Al Sharpton does. It's ridiculous that the person that the Democratic Party sends someone to for absolution for making a racist comment is Al Sharpton. People who are as racist as Al Sharpton are thought of as crazy nuts by Republicans. People who are as racist as Al Sharpton are seen by Democrats as "talk show host material."

You're lying about the contents of the Furugson study. Since I'm not a subscriber to Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, I can't look up the actual study. I'm fairly certain the reason you didn't link to a news story about it is because EVEN A CURSORY GLANCE AT GOOGLE will tell you that the study says THE OPPOSITE of what you're pretending it does.

This is why I linked to Breitbart, by the way. You can see where I got my information from AND SEE THAT I'M NOT LYING ABOUT IT.

Furguson and Hassan study's notices an effect that is that if you show people who "watch the news" "pro-American things" they react "more aggressively." (I can't find good definitions for how they defined any of the terms in quotes.) However, the additional aggression is unrelated to the person's ideology. Liberals and conservatives are BOTH more aggressive, as long as they "watch the news." Furguson and Hassin's actual conclusion is that people are invested in the "rightness" of their views, and that "watching the news" is an expression of their investment (because conservatives are watching Fox, and liberals are watching CNN/MSNBC). The aggression they're talking about isn't racism, and it isn't only true of conservatives.

The Hodson study also appears not to say what you claim, saying that low intelligence among children is linked to racism among adults. "Political conservatism" (as defined in the UK, where the study takes places) partially mediates (or explains) this effect. Critics say their model oversimplifies the effect, and that simplistic views of the world (extreme liberalism OR conservatism) are both likely linked to bigotry and low intelligence.

This article is about Furguson (although Hodson is mentioned) and this one goes in depth on Hodson.

The American Football League and the National Football League's merger combined the AFL's innovative rule and strategy changes with the marketing, history, and business relationships of the NFL. At the time of the merger, pro football was a mere sideshow in popularity to the college game. (Super Bowl III, the last game played before the merger was announced, was played in the afternoon on New Year's Day in 1969. They couldn't play in prime time because NBC didn't want to put the game on against the college football bowl game that night.)

Today, the NFL runs the most popular sport in the United States, and everyone involved makes a boatload of money.

Do you get the broadcast networks out of Atlanta? Because CNN headquarters is in Atlanta, and it would be incredibly ironic if Fox was OTA there and CNN was not.

It's ridiculous that we have to have a conversation premised on "ZOMG Republicans are racist" every time there's a news story about Democrats saying something racist, but I guess we're in to this. The Sony executive (herself a fairly prominent Democrat) we're talking about is going to see prominent Democrat Al Sharpton, leader of the National Action Network, host of an MSNBC opinion show, and adviser to President Obama on issues of Race, to get absolution for her racist comments. Here's a bunch of things Al Sharpton has said or done in the past. [1]

In 1987, Sharpton served as the attorney for Tawana Brawley, an African American teenager who accused local prosecutor Steven Pagones (who is white) of rape. She claimed she had been kidnapped, raped, and then had racial slurs written on her body in excrement. An inquiry exonerated Pagones the following year. A security guard for Brawley's legal team would later testify that Sharpton and the team knew Brawley was lying all along, and Sharpton lost a defamation lawsuit to Pagones. (Pagones, it should be noted, was a public official, which makes the standard for defamation incredibly high.)

In 1991, Sharpton eulogized at the funeral of an African American child who had been accidentally hit by a car driven by a Jewish man. There, he said that “diamond merchants” had “blood of innocent babies” on their hands. He also said, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” The Crown Heights riots led to the death of Yankel Rosenbaum, an Orthodox Jewish student.

In 1995, Freddy’s Fashion Mart raised rent on a black-owned music store. That was because Freddy’s Fashion Mart had its own rent raised by a black landlord in Harlem. But that didn’t stop Sharpton from blaming Freddy’s Fashion Mart, accusing them of racism. “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business,” Sharpton incited. Protesters yelled, “Burn down the Jew store.” One of the protesters then shot four employees of Freddy’s and set the store on fire.

After a stripper accused three Duke lacrosse players of raping her in 2005, Sharpton turned up as her representative. He said, “I think that when you look at the racial atmosphere, when you look at the fact that there again were the allegations of racial statements, when you look at a lot of people feeling that they have been treated differently, where this girl has basically had a character charged in the media, there is a lot of racism that’s in the air..." There was certainly racism involved in the case. The prosecutor who charged the lacrosse players was found to have prosecuted them maliciously because he thought that prosecuting the rich white students would help him get re-elected in the largely poor, black city. He was found guilty of official misconduct, disbarred and sentenced to jail time.

In 2008, after ten men raped and sodomized a woman in front of her 12-year-old son, and forced the son to have sex with his own mother, four of those men were indicted. They were black. So Sharpton decided that racism was at work. “You cannot have one set of rules for acts that are wrong and horrific in Boca and another set in Dunbar Village,” Sharpton said, referring to the supposed discrepancy between justice in black areas and white areas. “You must have equal protection under the law.” All four defendants were found guilty.

After black teenager Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by Hispanic neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, Sharpton accused Zimmerman of racism – as well as the police force of Sanford, Florida. “We are tired of going to jail for nothing and others going home for something. Zimmerman should have been arrested that night you cannot defend yourself against a pack of Skittles and iced tea. Don’t talk to us like we’re stupid! Don’t talk to us like we’re ignorant!” Sharpton yelled. He then added, “Trayvon could have been any one of our sons,” a line later infamously parroted by President Obama. Of course, the evidence would show that Martin was attacking Zimmerman and had already caused Zimmerman potentially serious injuries.

This is the guy prominent Democrats go to for absolution for racist remarks? There isn't a prominent Republican who's HALF as racist as Sharpton (because the media would DESTROY a Republican who got into Rev. Al territory), and I'm not even sure he's the worst one in the Democratic party. (Joe Biden's up there, too, and there's, what, three Democrats more prominent than him?) A lot of Democratic strategy these days is "You can't trust white men to have your best interests at heart." (This is where the War on Women bullshit comes from too. It's also why the President is acting unconstitutionally on immigration.) If saying "You can't trust white people to not screw you over" isn't racism, I don't know what is.

[1] - Thanks to Ben Shapiro at Breitbart.com, whose list of "crazy shit Sharpton has said" I have cribbed from liberally. You can find his original piece here.

9/11 times 20,000?

But that's...

That's...

16363.63

Do you see how someone could misinterpret this quote as "Fox News viewers are dumb" and "I hate Fox News viewers?"

You don't think the Democrats saying that the Republican Party is a party of old white men is a political strategy?

I wasn't aware that Fox News was available OTA anywhere. OTA channels transmitting above a certain power level get to have what's called "must carry" status, which means, in a nutshell, that cable and satellite providers "must carry" them on basic cable. That's a little different than Fox "pressuring the cable companies to put Fox on cable and CNN and MSNBC on upgrade packages."

Also, I'm in the New York area. Fox News's studio shows are broadcast FROM here, but they're not OTA here.What market are they OTA in?

It looks like you missed at least three words in this sentence. But that's the problem with calling people dumb over the Internet, isn't it?

Anyway, in this chain we're addressing the lie that Fox lies about being the most watched cable news network and that they juice the number through underhanded pressure on the cable companies. (I'm pointing out that Fox's claim, that they are the most watched cable news network, is both true and measured in a meaningful way.

None of that has anything to do with your irrational and ill-informed hatred for Fox's audience.