“Liz Cheney has been on a tear lately, she questioned if Tom Brady is a real Patriot” was best quote of the speech.

by Carl Bloice

The editors at the Financial Times have taken to referring to it as “palace intrigue.” Which seems a little overblown to me, evoking images of damsels locked in drafty bell towers, eunuchs tiptoeing down dank halls in the middle of the night and courtiers slyly whispering into the monarch’s ear. I doubt anything like that is going on in the White House these days. But whatever is going on is getting lots of press.

“It is a ominous sign for any government when its leaders start to care more about internal political feuds than public policy,” the paper said editorially March 11. “Barack Obama’s White House has seemed to come down with a serious case of palace intrigue syndrome, as various groups seek to apportion blame for what is becoming to be known as ‘Obama’s wasted year’.”

Rejecting the notion that the year has really been wasted, the paper went on to note that the President’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has become the center of attention with some critics saying he caused the Administration to overreach in pressing its agenda. “Recently,” it noted, “Mr. Emanuel’s allies have pushed back” by suggesting that actually it was the President who overreached – against Emanuel’s more cautious advice.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote March 7, “Washington Post columnists are now dueling whether Rahm Emanuel is an underutilized genius whose political savvy the president has foolishly ignored — or a bull in the capital china shop who should be replaced before he brings Obama down.”

The friends of Rahm have certainly been busy as bees with obviously planted stories and opinion pieces in the country’s major newspapers. A lot of these pundits quote one another but curiously I found no mention of a column by Colbert King that appeared way back on February 27 in the Post. “President Obama can’t say he wasn’t warned,” King wrote in a column titled, “What President Obama should have realized about Rahm Emanuel.”

“Eighteen months ago, I warned then-presidential candidate Barack Obama that should he get elected, he should not allow his administration to fall into the clutches of Washington insiders,” King went on “The caution sign was raised based on years of observing this town’s political movers and shakers at work.” King says he warned Obama of a “danger in relying on these power brokers, be they Democrats or Republicans. They may join a new administration and set out to work for its success. But let the new president hit a rough patch — as all chief executives do — and some Washington insiders will go to ground in a heartbeat.

“That’s because the last thing Washington insiders want is association with anything resembling a bumbling failure. Their immediate concern is to salvage their reputations and maintain their A-list standing in this ever-so-status-conscious town.

“One way they cover themselves when things go off the rails is to begin lamenting to friends and — directly or through friends — to journalists about how the new and ‘naïve’ president is failing to heed their wise counsel.”

King went on to list some of the issues around which Emanuel allegedly urged caution and Obama ignored his advice, like promising to close Guantanamo or trying a 911 suspect in a civilian court. Supposedly, Emanuel “argued for a smaller, more politically popular health-care bill, but Obama disregarded that strategy” and it is implied that the President’s trip to China was not productive as it could have been because Emanuel was missing from his entourage, King wrote.

Actually, a second reading of these allegations suggests something else. I would venture to say that the people at the Financial Times got it wrong. When you come right down to it, these “internal political feuds” are really about “public policy.” King could have cautioned Obama, who got elected largely because he opposed the war in Iraq, that there might be problems giving so much power to Emanuel who supported the invasion and occupation. Observers were so enamored with the idea of Obama putting together a “team of rivals” that they failed to note that Emanuel’s views on the conflict in the Middle East are quite contrary to Obama’s Cairo speech about reaching out to the Islamic world.

Overlooked was the fact that the President, so broadly supported by people working to end the war in Iraq, was placing at his right hand someone who had worked quite hard to undercut peace sentiment inside the Democratic Party.

“Is Obama Screwing His Base with Rahm Emanuel Selection?” Stephen Zunes asked the day after the November election. The newly named chief of staff “is a member of the so-called New Democrat Coalition (NDC), of group of center-right pro-business Congressional Democrats affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Conference, which is dedicated to moving the Democratic Party away from its more liberal and progressive base,” he wrote in AlterNet. “Numbering only 58 members out of 236 Democrats in the current House of Representatives, the DC has worked closely with its Republican colleagues in pushing through and passing such legislation as those providing President Bush with ‘fast-track’ trade authority in order to bypass efforts by labor, environmentalists and other public interest groups to promote fairer trade policy.”

Zunes added, “Emanuel was the single most important official involved in pushing through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the bill ending Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and Clinton’s draconian crime bill, among other legislation.”

For anti-war activists in the Democratic Party, Emanuel is probably best known for his role after 2004 as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In primary races around the country he raised cash and secured endorsements for opponents of anti-war candidates.

The Obama administration is fast approaching a critical turning point. The issue of healthcare reform is going to be resolved – at least for this session of Congress – soon and the Oval Office will have turn its attention to other items on the legislative agenda such as immigration and labor law reform. Activists involved with such issues are quite aware that, in addition to the recalcitrant Republicans intent on nothing less than stymieing Obama, there are also conflicts within the Administration. How they are resolved are far more important than any pretentions or career expectations of individual staff members.

Last Sunday, the New York Times magazine carried a fairly sympathetic portrayal of Emanuel’s travails by the paper’s White House correspondent Peter Baker. The article portrayed him as a loyalist that dutifully carries out Obama’s policies and made the valid point that the President makes the decisions not his advisors. It also contained this paragraph:

“He has also been at odds with minority caucuses within the Democratic fold in the House. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus say he does not pay attention to their issues. Hispanic lawmakers blame him for a provision inserted into the Senate health care legislation that would bar illegal immigrants from buying policies on new insurance exchanges even with their own money, and they complain that he is not putting any energy behind liberalizing immigration laws. ‘There are strong feelings about Rahm Emanuel among members of the Hispanic caucus,’ Representative Nydia Valaquez of New York, the head of the caucus, told me. ‘People feel Rahm Emanuel has not been helpful in moving forward. He’s always about the numbers. He’s always about being the pragmatist. He’s always about winning’.”

“There is a palpable, grassroots anger that is going to go national if there is not a breakthrough soon,” Frank Sherry, the founder of America’s Voices, a group that advocates immigration reform, recently told Politics Daily. “If there’s not, I think the effort to pass legislation will become akin to a social movement to raise the moral stakes of 11 million people living in the country with no meaningful rights.”

“Other Latino leaders and immigration advocates say they understood that the president had to deal first with the economic crisis that confronted him when he came into office, and even that he chose to address health care reform as his next domestic priority,” said the paper, adding that in interviews “several said they believe that some Democrats are slow-walking reform to avoid dealing with the politically hot-button issue.”

“I think there’s a bit of this Rahm Emanuel kind of mentality, where they think that immigration reform is a liability for Democrats who would rather not take a tough vote,” Brent Wilkes, executive director of League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) told Politics Daily. “They think that as long as they think they can keep the immigrant community mollified, they can just put it off without delivering on that promise.”

“The message to Democrats is that they need to deliver in order to have a shot at maintaining support from the Latino community,” said Clarissa Martinez, director of immigration and national campaigns National Council of La Raza. “Addressing reform is essential for Republicans as well if they have any interest in repairing their relationship with the fastest growing portion of the American electorate.”

Coincidently, the author of one major piece of proposed immigration legislation before the House of Representatives warned last week that the current healthcare bill’s immigration provisions are enough to spur Hispanic members of Congress to vote against it. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) and chair of its Immigration Task Force, said the caucus still has concerns over the extent to which the healthcare bill excludes illegal immigrants as well as legal residents from receiving benefits in the healthcare plan.

“They are enough to say I can’t support this bill,” Gutierrez told MSNBC.

“The Illinois congressman, who was an early supporter of President Barack Obama’s run for the Oval Office, said that the immigration provisions were very unlike the president, and suggested someone in the White House had urged him to back more stringent provisions on immigration,” reported Michael O’Brien in The Hill. “’I think someone at the White House might have told him that’s a good way to leverage one thing or another,’ said Gutierrez, who declined to say who that person might be.”

I seriously doubt that tales of intrigue on Pennsylvania Avenue are going to go away any time soon. The important thing to keep in mind is that it’s as much about substance as it is about style, about content as well as form, about policies, not personalities.

Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union.

Republished with permission from the Black Commentator.

By Denis Campbell

Timing is everything. Cardiff Airport’s tone deaf and out of touch marketing reached yet another low yesterday with the arrival of the “Seats go on sale for faster routes to the States” e-mail. I read it and clicked the links as I had an upcoming US trip to plan.

Now, as background, some may recall a heated exchange back in January I had with the airport’s MD, Patrick Duffy. I eased back a bit on the throttle as it looked as though these articles were unsettling. Well, I’m ba-aack.

After booking passage to Atlanta in April (after shopping several websites), no surprise, I will again travel via Bristol as opposed to the 22-minute door-to-door ride to Cardiff Airport. Why? To fly from Cardiff would cost me £165 more and require one extra flight leg. Most would agree that amount is clearly better in my pocket. As you can see from the photo below the cheapest option from Cardiff on the dates I want to travel is £559. I paid £394.

My routing: Bristol-Paris-Atlanta/Atlanta-Amsterdam-Bristol vs. the “faster route to the States” Cardiff-Dublin-JFK-ATL/ATL-JFK-Dublin-Cardiff. That routing adds another flight leg (so that’s my driving time) and required the purchase of a second ticket on another airline to reach my final destination.

And yet every time I sit on an aircraft taxiing out to that ridiculous Bristol hillside uphill runway, after walking through their terminal building’s permanent construction zone having driven over a single carriage roadway through tiny villages to avoid city traffic, I think of the excellent runways at Cardiff and wonder how Bristol’s airfield ever became better positioned than Cardiff’s?

Bristol Airport is as difficult to reach as Cardiff but yet they doubled in size in a depressed airline market and serve a growing volume of passengers. How can this be? How do they market themselves so well while Cardiff seemingly does so poorly?

Bristol Airport will serve 8+ million passengers in 2010. Cardiff? 1.8 million if they are lucky enough to bring lots of travellers in for the Ryder Cup. Yes, Bristol is a slightly bigger city but why do they double in size with plans to serve 10 million+ passengers while Cardiff lost -5.5% passengers?

How can Bristol serve most major EU city hubs and attract daily service to New York yet In Cardiff, there is no real competition forcing KLM, the only real European airliner operating from the facility, to offer competitive prices and varied flight times (I also booked another flight with a routing Cardiff-AMS-LHR which cost £161 vs £101 roundtrip to and from Bristol). So the exodus of business travellers continues, estimated at 600,000 lost bookings annually and growing.

Where is the private sector outrage? Why must we all just settle and bleat along together riding up and down the M4? Wales has a 70% public sector economic base. The 2.5 million+ people who could fly from Wales need a break.

As I said two weeks ago on the BBC Wales political programme Dragon’s Eye: “Cardiff Airport is badly broken” and seems to be getting worse. While I don’t expect real answers from Mr. Duffy, how is this good news for the local business or leisure traveller if one is continually raped on price?

Try as I might to get excited about the new Aer Lingus Regional connection service, a 3-hour round-trip drive, £25 worth of petrol, £20 to park for a week off-airport and $5.50 toll cannot justify spending £165 extra pounds.

Mr. Duffy said in January he cannot force carriers to operate out of Cardiff so none of this is his fault. Well then whose fault is the loss of traffic under his watch? Our last exchanges brought several interesting comment responses from all but those actually responsible for fixing the airport.

And Steve Hodgetts, Director of Business Development and Commercial, Cardiff Airport wrote a comment reply to a letter on the Media Wales’ website this year:

It is also unfortunate that when we persuade airlines to offer routes such as Brussels and Aberdeen the Welsh public who clamour for them don’t use them – use them or lose them, has to be a warning… the support of the Assembly on inbound tourism and other areas needs to match the best we see in other regions in the UK and Europe if we are going to tip the scales back in Cardiff’s favour and deliver the scale of services we and others want.”

We “clamoured” for Aberdeen? What’s next daily service to John O’Groats? (Warning: here’s where I get David Cameron snarky…) How about Mr. Duffy and Mr. Hodgetts you market Wales to Paris and Frankfurt? Rome and Athens? Madrid and Vienna? Yes, I can fly daily to Anglesey. And why, in God’s name, would I want to? Use it or lose it? That’s the airport’s measured response? Wow.

And what happens in October when the world comes to Wales for the Ryder Cup? Oh, that’s right. They’ll fly into London or Bristol and drive to Newport!

Rev. Irene Monroe

Sometime in the late hours of Saturday night the call will come in. Philbert (not his real name) like many of his Christian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) buddies wait anxiously for the call in order to know the time and place of the van pickup, and where it’ll drop them off to a safe and secluded place for Sunday worship. Last week’s worship service was in Montego Bay, just 50 miles from Negril’s Grand Lido, one of the flagship resorts in Jamaica, where Philbert works the night shift at the bar. This week Philbert hopes for a closer worshipping space, perhaps a safe space in Gales Valley, just 40 miles from work.

Every Sunday Philbert and his friends have to worship in a different space. The risk is too high if it’s found out they’re queer.

“My experience as a gay man living in Jamaica is one which is marked by periodic incidences of abuse, both verbal and physical. I have lost count of the number of times I have been verbally abused, called ‘battyman,’ ‘chi-chi,’ ’sodomite,’ ‘dirty battybwoy,’” an unnamed gay man shares on the Jamaican Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-Flag) in 2003.

When Jamaica’s leading gay rights activist, Brian Williamson, was murdered in his home in June 2004, multiple knife wounds savagely mutilated his body. A Human Rights Watch researcher witnessed the crime, reporting a crowd gathered after the killing, rejoicing and saying, “Battyman [Jamaican slang for homosexual], he get killed!” Others celebrated Williamson’s murder, laughing and calling out, “Let’s get them one at a time,” “That’s what you get for sin,” and “Let’s kill all of them.” Some sang, “Boom bye bye,” a line from renowned Jamaican reggae artist Buju Banton’s then popular anti-gay song about killing and burning gay men. (Banton has a long history of advocating the killing of LGBTQ people in his lyrics yet he was nominated for a Grammy in 2009 for his album “Rasta Got Soul”).

In 2005 a gay man was harassed at the beach, and a mob pursued him. To avoid the homophobic wrath of the mob he ran into the sea and drowned.

In 2007 a pastor’s church was attacked by an angry mob on Easter Sunday because of the presence of people accused of being homosexuals were at a funeral service he performed earlier in the week.

And in November 2008, Rev. Richard Johnson, one of the leading Anglican priests on the island, was found nude and stabbed 25 times, in the rectory of St. Jude’s Anglican Church in Kingston, because he was thought to be gay.

Homophobia is so intense in Jamaica and goes unchallenged that people who speculate about who’s LGBTQ, can easily plot to kill them, and unabashedly announce their intent with impunity, because the police won’t protect Jamaica’s LGBTQ citizens from mob led murders and violence; they instead incite the country’s homophobic frenzy by either being present and inactive   during these assaults or by following and watching them all the time.

In 2010 nothing has changed. So when the van arrives on Sunday morning before the island has risen, Philbert and friends stealthy pack into it and off they go.

Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) provides most of the vans, helping these underground Christians find sacred space. Sunshine Cathedral (MCC), in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, has chartered a Sunshine Cathedral mission Church in Jamaica. The mission Church is active in several cities in Jamaica and has monthly island-wide meetings at changing locations.

Jamaican LGBTQ Christians welcomes MCC’s outreach ministry to them, but the church is viewed by many of the islanders as an abomination.

In a letter to the editor of the “Jamaica Observer” titled “Wilson’s homosexual theology ain’t right.” JM Fletcher of St. Andrew expressed his outrage:

“I note with interest an article written by an American lesbian preacher Nancy Wilson, who is bent on crusading and promoting her chosen lifestyle. My concern about homosexuals is that if allowed to run unchecked they move from their outward recruitment drive to deliberate thrust of their lifestyle on the rest of us. This can be seen in how they are moving into every segment of the community - even the church - to try to perpetuate their lifestyle.” Fletcher states.

“If Ms Wilson is an American, why is she so desperate to start a foundation for homosexuality in other countries? She cares nothing for the culture of other nations? She might ask us soon to allow a man to marry a pig! Because from a Christian perspective, what would be the difference? Both are an abomination to God, yet homosexuality happens and bestiality too - if one is made legal, so should the other, and the homosexual church can allow for a man to marry a dog - if he finds the companionship of a dog preferable to that of humans… For the pastors claiming to be Christians who are approving of such churches, I repeat, they are not of God.”

The Reverend Elder Nancy Wilson is unquestionably a woman of God, and was the first pastor of MCC, Boston in the 70’s. Rev. Wilson is now the Presiding Elder and Moderator of the Universal Fellowship of MCC, a global denomination with now 300 churches in 28 countries.  Founded by Troy Perry, an excommunicated gay Pentecostal minister, MCC is a radically inclusive church opened to all people, regardless of theological background, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, or ability, and is leading force in the development of queer theology. (In the 80’s MCC saved my life, welcoming me as a member of MCC, NYC).

In April 2008, Cambridge City Councilor Ken Reeves, the son of Jamaican immigrants, traveled to Kingston, Jamaica to join Wilson and Rev. Pat Bumgartner of MCC, NYC in a demonstration denouncing violence against LGBTQ citizens on the island. And in June of that year Reeves put together the panel, “Jamaica: Yes, Problems- A Visit to Homophobia,” held at Christ Episcopal Church in Harvard Square, to seek out solutions.

But in country with no federal hate crime bill, police enforcement and church to protect LGBTQ Jamaicans solutions can’t found.

So in the meantime, Philbert and his friends wait anxiously for the call on Saturday night to be told where their sacred space will be.   And when the van arrives on Sunday morning before the island has risen Philbert and friends stealthy pack into it and off they go.

Politico Senior Editor David Mark discusses President Obama’s visit to Ohio as he continues to push for health care reform on CBS News.

The Lunacy of Republican opposition in the Healthcare Debate writ large!

By Denis Campbell

As US healthcare reform passage draws near, my mailbox fills with incoherent Right Wing hate screed and rage. Meanwhile the Obama Administration and Democratic controlled US Congress seem unwilling to buck the echo chamber and do the right thing.

The public located outside the 24 sq. miles of fantasy surrounded by reality known as Washington DC, want fairly priced healthcare coverage for their families. The greatest medical technology in the world can only prevent people from dying of preventable and treatable diseases if they can afford insurance.

When someone has to choose between health coverage and paying their home mortgage, what kind of a moral choice is that? How can any nation that pays nearly 18% of its GDP for healthcare not have the best coverage in the world covering everyone?

Where is the moral outrage? Where is the real courage?
President Obama told a great story yesterday in Ohio. We shed a tear for Natoma Canfield. The problem is his actions and leadership have not matched the rhetoric. He has consistently back-pedalled away from telling Congress what he wants done and supported a bad bill created by and rewarding the corporate thieves who both created and thrive in the current system. How can an Anthem Blue Cross in CA morally justify raising premiums by 40% when they rake in $2.5 billion dollars in profit and pay executives $100s of millions of dollars?

His and Congress’ lack of courage to take on the monied special lobbying interests created 14-months of turmoil and confusion that now rightfully threatens the political future of all Congressional Democrats and Republicans because of inaction, gridlock, greed and a patent inability to set the record straight.

It’s time now to do something.

Equal Time’s Cruel Joke
It’s time for the Main Stream Media (MSM) to stop just accepting bald-faced lies and do some real reporting. I watched in horror Sunday as former national network anchor Tom Brokaw sat in as guest host of NBC’s Meet the Press. While there he allowed former Bush adviser Karl Rove to spend 10-minutes re-writing Bush era history without challenge.

The noble corporate news mien of ‘equal time’ is a cruel joke perpetrated on the viewing public. Equal time never meant “accept whatever bullshit comes out of someone’s mouth” without challenge! It was designed to allow all sides to be aired but the job of reporting requires the “journalist” to challenge them!

Now cable and network news simply adopt talking points. A Georgetown University Law School professor last week “leaked” a test false quote as an example for his media law class to see how far it could travel. He let leak that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement. It was on The Drudge Report website and then FOX News in less than 1 hour! There was no independent verification. Without verification and discipline, misinformation reaches Orwellian heights!

Where is the real debate and discussion?
I was scheduled to debate Republican wordsmith Frank Luntz (he of “it’s not called off-shore drilling, rather deep sea oil exploration” fame) on the BBC network during the upcoming UK Leadership debates. Now because it was not a cozy 1:1 studio chat and he would actually have to defend himself 12x during the three debates, he suddenly cannot be there? Of course not.

Why risk a real news discussion/debate when you can sit in the SKY or FOX studios and chat up a friendly host? FOX only has 1:1 discussions because one need only watch Larry King or a CNN broadcast to see how much of a food fight multiple live feeds become.

I’ll debate anyone on the right in-studio, anywhere face-to-face. That requires courage so I’m not holding my breath.

But when it comes to courage, this morning’s report on the website Media Matters shows how the Right has deliberately misled people about the very same budget reconciliation measures they used to pass the Bush Tax Cuts for the rich and other measures. It is a must-read to see how carefully crafted and craven the distortions really are.

#       #       #       #       #

It’s time for truth without SPIN. From “death panels” to “Hands-off my Medicare,” the right wing slow-down tactics are, thankfully, finally running out of steam. It is well past time for real reporting, discussion and a real series of bills to fix the broken system.

Social Security and Medicare both started as bad bills but improved over time. Let’s hope this will also be the case here.

What really worries? Financial institution reform’s got next! Groan.

By Denis Campbell

The UK House of Commons today takes up a measure to stop music and video piracy on the Web. Good luck with that one.

While an admirable pursuit, they are only 15-years too late and now only George Orwell could applaud this Big Brother, bone-headed attempt.

Closing down Internet sites and ISP access will makes the pirates cleverer. That won’t stop Labour from trying to teach this pig to sing (makes horrible noise and irritates the pig). Like turning on the kitchen light, the 2 or 3 cockroaches you see scurrying away, mean hundreds live in the floor boards.

Or, using the ocean off the coast of Somalia analogy, it is too vast to police so everyone but the pirates will suffer. Like attacking prostitution by arresting patrons, one wonders if this matter, just weeks before an election, is the best way to divert attention away from the sick economy?

While most cringe at the thought of popular websites like YouTube being shut down in the UK, £178 billion pounds of debt grows at a rate almost as ridiculous as the industry estimated 240,000 tracks downloaded per hour worldwide. Yet Gordon Brown’s Labour government is as determined as Hans Christian Anderson standing at the bursting dyke. Both are woefully bereft of fingers. In this room full of faeces, Mr. Brown thinks there’s a pony for him in here somewhere.

Are there not other areas like… ooohh say… banking reform more worthy of attack? Or does team Brown look at the 54% of under-20s not even bothering to register to vote and think “there’ll be no consequence here?”

While the recording and video industry may be Labour patrons, their history of exploitation and resistance to any change is what created the mess they now find themselves in. Talk about antitrust monopolies, there is nothing like a record contract. Those golden handcuffs create fortunes for young artists but even bigger ones for those that discover them. It is an industry that creates stars and everyone wants a record deal, but no one as much as the publishers. While the artist gets .10p on the dollar, the bosses split .50-.60p and it is this enormous pile of money that creates those chains that bind. And if you were lucky enough to hit it big with 2 or 3 top artists in your stable, you sit back and watch the money roll in.

There has always been zero incentive to change a thing. No matter what you produced it was a cash generating machine. So since the 1960s advent of audio tape presented the 1st great threat to their dominance one understands how sweet a deal recording companies actually had, how hard they fought to preserve it (and the status quo) and how their mantra, “we do not inn-o-vate!” has been sung like a Druid chant every morning, noon and night for nearly 50-years.

Every recording invention from audio tape to rewritable CDs and DVDs to download sites has been the subject of enormous copyright infringement litigation. Their lawyers were aligned like Roman armies and could beat up your 1-2 lawyers. The industry operated under one rule, sheer, brute force. It had but one objective, to drain you, the innovator, dry.

Their objective was to treat you like Guy Fawkes. You were financially hung, drawn and quartered and then also hung out in the courtyard of public opinion as well. The cases dragged on for years and the result was always the same. Their lawyers rung up huge fees, the early adapter of the technology got hit and put out of business (see Napster 1.0) and the executives patted themselves on the back for a job well done and headed off to the club.

What they did not count on was everyone else watching the case. They knew Napster was taking the hit so they got smarter and either created a solution that paid them (see iTunes) or located their download servers in a friendly country far from the reach of copyright laws.

Now the illegal download business so dwarfs the paid business (some estimates are by as much as 10 or 20:1) that even iTunes’ recent billionth download is a fraction of the total business hit pirates exact. While everyone wants to “monetise their web presence” no price beats free unless you can convince someone you have a better deal costing little or no money.

So Labour will try and fail. Angry British citizens will momentarily bloviate over a non–issue and May 6th approaches quickly. I’m beginning to feel a bit like the Americans watching George W. Bush’s last few weeks during the transition saying, “just… please… don’t break anything.”

We all know how well that worked out.

Man-tan Minority leader John Boehner throws down another gauntlet, not even a speed-bump.

You gotta like this guy! Passionate and he calls them as he sees them.