TBT: The Brutal Truth

The Purge Of 9

Nine well known liberal blogs have been purged from my blogroll: Atrios, Crooks & Liars, Firedoglake, Digby, Ezra Klein, Jesus' General, MyDD, Steve Gilliard, and TPM.

The reason for their purge is all of these blogs have been running a Blog-Ad by the telcos in favor of abolishing Net Neutrality. In justifying the ad, C&L's John Amato simply says:

I think all my readers are smart enough to know what the truth is.

The truth is certainly not in the movie the ad itself promotes which you can see here for yourself without having to help generate Blog-Ad revenue to the above bloggers (which is something you might want to consider after you realize the dirty little secret behind it all). The movie and the ad, bankrolled by the phone companies, suggests that if Net Neutrality is abolished, the phone companies will built this awesome fibre-optic multi-lane super highway with initial speeds of 24Mbit and ultimately upgrading them to 100Mbit when all is said and done.

The problem, which I outlined previously, is that Americans are allready supposed to have this fiber-optic multi-lane super highway -- initially at 45Mbit speeds then going to 100Mbit -- because the phone companies were given over $200 Million dollars in tax-payers' money over the 1990s to built it and never did. Instead, they jockeyed for deregulation (which Clinton signed in 1996), took the money, gave it to their overpaid CEOs and other cronies, merged with other phone companies (thanks to Michael Powell being the head of the FCC), and pumped a pittance of it into tinkering with existing copper lines, thus allowing them to get away with filching even more money from Americans by offering inferior ISDN and DSL.

Now with Net Neutrality being debated, the phone companies hope to earn even more favorable legislation, promising once again to build that fibre-optic network we allready paid to them do so many times over. But the dirty little secret (which isn't so secret but just as dirty) is that via the Blog-Ad network, the above bloggers are getting paid by the phone companies for pushing those deceptive Ads. So the question isn't really about whether or not the bloggers audience know where the truth is -- it more of a question of how these bloggers have the gall to insult their readers by accepting revenue from robber baron phone companies via running that Blog-Ad.

After the past 6 years of the Bush Administration, the Republican culture of corruption, and the Democratic culture of complacency, I believe that the tax payers have been insulted enough and certainly don't need these above bloggers to pile even more insult by selling themselves out to the telephone companies by running that Blog-Ad. The insult stems from the very idea that if the telcos manage to become victorious in abolishing Net Neutrality, both these bloggers and the American tax payers lose big time. The only difference is the bloggers got paid by the telcos for losing only to turn around and bitch about losing ...

Does that sound like Democratic principals to you? It certainly doesn't to me. Sounds like they hocked their brains, their principals, and their politics for their wallets -- which is to be expected from Republicans and the rightwing blogosphere; not from the left. Hence the purge of these 9 bloggers from my blogroll.

ERRATA: With the news of Jane Hamsher's mother passing away, there's a lot about the above that I can't agree with anymore. In fact, much of what write here actually embarrasses me. Rather than scrub the post and pretend that I never wrote such horseshit, I'd rather leave it here -- ugly warts and all -- and explain in a later post why I feel embarrassed by it. That post will come in due time ...

posted by Sizemore at 6:16 PM

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