Yeah, I say post Superbowl edition, but the fact is I don’t really care about the Superbowl, and judging by the general reaction I got no one else did this year either. Just thought I would bring it up.
Probably more significant is that we all survived that insane polar vortex last week. I had to work outside for a lot of that and I can tell you I did not have fun. At all. It was cold. Very cold. I got an Ice cream headache just from being outside in it.
But you didn’t come here to listen to me talk about nonsense, its time for Good news!
Oral arguments were presented Friday in the most prominent lawsuit challenging the federal government’s repeal of broadband access rules known as net neutrality.
The Federal Communications Commission approved the rules in 2015 to ensure internet users equal and open access to all websites and services. The commission, under new leadership, rolled the rules back in 2017.
The plaintiffs in the suit, led by the internet company Mozilla and supported by 22 state attorneys general, say the commission lacked a sound legal reason for scrapping the regulations. The government was expected to argue that the rules were repealed because of the burden they imposed on broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast.
The case, before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, could wind through the courts for years. If the commission loses, it might try to rewrite its order rolling back the rules to avoid further legal challenges.
Oh yeah, the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the case against Ajit Pai and his bullcrap Net Neutrality repeal has begun. Its time to take that stooge to the cleaners.
The 2016 elections — all of them — were painful. Democrats failed to take back the House and Senate and lost the presidency to a bigoted fraudster. I don’t intend to relitigate the whole thing here, but those losses, as well as key defeats in local and state races across the country, have caused real harm to legions of everyday Americans.
Some people blame the losses on Russia — and that’s ridiculous. Others make it out like the hacking and interference had no impact at all — and that’s ridiculous too. The Democrats lost for dozens of reasons, but the hacking and interference was damn sure one of them. It was a major distraction during the campaign. My fear was that it would also be such a distraction for the Democratic Party moving forward that the party would ignore all of the substantive changes it needed to address.
Don’t get me wrong, I think election interference is a huge deal. The safety and integrity of our elections is no small thing, but since the losses of 2016, Democrats have needed to find a way to walk and chew gum at the same time. There’s good news here: I see four things happening right now that makes me cautiously optimistic about the future of the Democratic Party.
Yeah, 2016 was painful for a lot of people, myself included. But here’s what you do after a loss, you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off, and you learn from it, and you come out swinging for round 2. We did that in 2018, and 2020 is gonna be the knockout punch.
Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, fiercely critical of President Donald Trump for the lack of progress on his proposed border wall, said she thinks Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks could be a “terrific” challenger in the 2020 Republican primary.
Coulter tossed out that possibility during an interview on the Yahoo! News podcast "Skullduggery TV: Scandals in the Trump Era." In conversation with hosts Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, she referred to Trump as "lazy and incompetent" and said his promise of a southern border wall was what got him elected.
"We put this lunatic in the White House for one reason," she said.
And meanwhile there’s Anne Coulter, who is trying to wrench the GOP apart from the inside. I figured she would have given up by now but she’s still at it.
So that’s it. A 30-minute meeting with Mick Mulvaney and the rest of the day is spent just dicking around. I’m so old I can remember a time when a slot on the president’s schedule was so valuable that people talked about it in hushed tones. Today it’s a joke. The only question is whether Trump’s schedule is so empty because he doesn’t want to meet anyone or because no one wants to meet him. Here’s more from Axios:
Hey, you know I would be mad, but the more time Trump spends on his ass watching TV the less time he has to mess things up worse while we wait for Mueller to nail him. So whatever, you do you Donny.
The last Democrat to win a presidential election, Barack Obama, ran in 2012 on a platform of raising taxes for top earners to nearly 40 per cent. Now a new crop of Democratic presidential hopefuls is signaling that they want to go even further.
YEAAAAAH. Go Democrats.
That’s all for this week. Be sure to check out the Good news roundup playlist on Spotify. And have a good Monday morning.