Putting The F Word Out Of The FCC

The Federal Communications Commission has always had a reputation for rather improbable rules. While there is no doubt that this has always been true, under the Bush Administration, one of the worst FCC commissioners ever happened to be Michael Powell, the son of then Secretary of State Colin Powell.

To have a Powell in charge at the FCC always struck me as a little too incestuous, when the Powell family has often sat on boards of communications companies like AOL/Time Warner. And Michael proved me right many times because never before has an FCC head worked so damned hard to:

a) block efforts for community based programming as with radio and TV
b) fine any company that allowed anyone to say or do anything unfavorable to the more extreme right wing (I wasn't happy to see Janet Jackson's nipple either but hey... bigger fish to fry, no? - and the hard turn on Howard Stern only after he started to go after Bush) and
c) "sell" the airwaves owned by the people to corporations.

So yes, after years of truly stupid, corporate-and-Bush friendly decisions, I was thrilled this week when the FCC decided that if Bush and Cheney can utter the "F words" as the big bold face of the hard right, then huge fines should not be handed out in other cases.

But we need the FCC to make other wise decisions. Now, we need to make sure the FCC doesn't help in handing off the Internet to corporations (aka Net Neutrality).

And We Need a War Czar Why?

"Czars" in American government are what a president appoints to create a lucrative new position for someone owed a political favor and what amounts to a way to pass the blame of a problem around to more people.

Interestingly enough, among those in the know, almost all said the perfect "war czar" for America, if one had to be apointed at all, is Colin Powell, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State for Bush. However, all these same people acknowledged that Bush couldn't and wouldn't call on Powell because, IF Powell accepted (and this was in doubt), it was likely Powell's first act would be to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq as immediately as possible.

So we get this general instead.

And what are we paying the folks at the Pentagon if we need a war czar, too?

People of Conscience: The First Major War Against Fascism

[Ed. note: I posted this elsewhere but I find this just too important to go unnoticed. Those who went from America to fight did so, in part, because they understood that something was happening that would begin World War II. Because of U.S. and much of Europe's refusal to get involved in what often became called "the good fight", World War II DID happen.]

If you get a chance, check out the Webcast from Democracy Now! for today (Monday, April 30) about the Spanish Civil War 70 years ago, the first major war against fascism, pitting the proletariat against the upper classes. More than 3,000 Americans of conscience - including 80 women - went to fight and those who survived (too few) returned to be branded as “bad” by the U.S. government.

If you know Picasso’s painting Guernica, this was iconic of that war (despite endless lies that Guernica was never massacred). It was this painting, which hangs in the United Nations, that the United States ordered “covered” the day then Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the U.N. Security Council to lie about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that never existed.