The calendar turned, and everyone is getting sick. Must mean the seasonal change is really on.

This is the last post, from July of 2005, on a now-dormant blog called Dem Realists:

Thinking Things Over

One of the great things about being young, a student, someone hungry to understand how this world operates, and, of course, honest, is that I'm allowed to question myself, ask myself the difficult questions, and re-think how I consider the issue of our time. That issue is our present war. During my time at the Claremont Institute this summer, I've been exposed to an approach for America's approach to the world that does not jive with what I've written for public consumption in columns for two daily papers at Penn State, what I've written (or linked to) on this blog, and what I've argued over with whomever, everywhere else. I've come to really consider - and even agree with - this new (new, in that it's new to me) approach. Don't worry, though. I haven't become a lefty, I haven't become a blame-America-first type. I'm still a hawk. I still - and will always - believe in defending the United States. And I'm still - and will always - believe in the U.S. military as the gaurantor of our freedom.

However, I'm not going to get into what this new view on foreign policy right now because it is going on 2:30 in the morning (and I have to be up in five hours for work). So I'll get into that at a later time. But, tonight was one of those nights where I just may have come full circle. But then I think, maybe I haven't. I haven't read everything yet, I tell myself. I can't come to a new conclusion on things just yet. Maybe what I've thought all along was and is the way to go. I don't know. Now I'm just rambling. But what I do know is that I'm not done trying to figure everything out. And really, I don't think anyone has it totally figured out. And that's why I can change my mind - or at least be open to accept something new. That's not easy, especially when that's all I've written about and all I've believed.

So before I lose any more precious minutes of sleep, I'm going to leave it at that.

That's the sound of an awakening. The kids are all right, man.

The FCC has been a problem for a while:

FCC Chief Kevin Martin yesterday gave his support to AT&T and other telcos who want to be able to limit bandwidth to sites like Google, unless those sites pay extortion fees. Martin made it clear in a speech yesterday that he supports such a a "tiered" Internet.
...
By siding with telcos who want to be able to offer adequate bandwidth to sites that pay up, and to limit bandwidth to sites that don't, he'll help kill off new sites that can't afford to fork over the money.

That could help end Internet and network innovation, and we simply can't afford that.

This is really what it comes down to. Established players want to consolidate the internet. Sometimes -- as in the case of Billionaire Basketball Team Owner Marc Cuban -- by pedalling fantasy applications such as "home diagnostic tools for senior citizens." The reality is, we're highly unlikely to see those types of applications anytime soon in a consolodated marketplace.

The rapid pace of innovation online really comes from it being an open end-to-end system. Lock in a tiered structure that favors those who can pay, and watch the net turn into a mechanism for corporat content providers to pipe crap to your Xbox. The internet becomes TV with chat rooms.

That's one possible future. It's not as dark as the 1984 internet-as-panopticon possibility that's still out there, but it's not what I want to happen. The new kids on the block (google, yahoo, microsoft, et al) will fight this, but it's going to be a close call.

I tend to think the "inter" part of the internet might be another way out -- other nations or regions (or even municipalities) could get it right and outperform the fatbacks. Hopefully it won't come to that.

I agree with basically everything here, which reminds me of the old days of Kos. Anyway, Georgia10 is right fucking on:

It's not groveling that we critics want; we don't want conservatives to face years and years of personal humiliation over this. The admitted emotional satisfaction we can get from that is minor, more appropriate for the schoolyard than the national political stage.

What the right doesn't understand - and why they're screaming that we're meanies over this insistence on an unconditional mea culpa - is that we anticipate a repeat, with a more competent executive in charge, of a scenario that most people with a grounding in Middle Eastern history knew had no chance of success from the get-go. You could put the most efficient, brilliant leader in charge, but if the idea is simply bone-headed and undoable, all you've got is a longer time period before the unraveling becomes apparent, which in some ways presents a bigger danger. A competent executive that marshals a bad idea through its initial stages has a greater ability to hide the signs of an impending disaster. Just ask Enron employees who had their life savings tied up in company pension plans.

I also find it disingenuous that the right claims sole ownership of the "Saddam is a bad, bad man" banner. Please. Compared to the liberal left, they are decades late to that particular party. Progressives were screaming into the void about Hussein's human rights violations, his gassing of the Kurds, his terrorizing of political opponents long, long, long before it conveniently bubbled up into the consciousness of the neocon right. While Donald Rumsfeld was famously shaking hands with and arming Hussein, we were saying: Bad idea. Bad man. This is gonna come back and bite us in the ass.

For this, we were labeled too "sensitive," not reality-based enough to operate in the real world, where sometimes you have to arm a strongman to keep a worse scenario at bay.

Well, shove it. We were right. You were wrong. Period.

It's always been a supreme frustration of mine that for three years Republicans have been able to portrey criticism of Bush and the war as somehow a vestigial political reflex from the 60s. It's a frame that anti-war protest groups admittedly walked right into, but I think a clear majority of people opposed to the invasion were acting out of rationality and true patriotism. This in contrast to the chest-beating Nationalistic melodrama that the GOP spin machine -- with the aquiesence and sometime full-on participation of the Press -- whipped up in the wake of 9/11.

Facts matter. History matters. This war is the result of a bad idea, poorly planned, dishonestly presented, and then mismanaged in execution. It should prompt a complete and open review of our national security priorities, much as the acceptance of the lessons of Vietnam did. Really, 9/11 should have done this but it never happened; maybe we'll get a second chance here. The only way to do this in a democracy is to have a wide-open and fact-based debate.

I'm not holding my breath, but maybe if Dems take back some of congress and there are some real investigations, a critical mass of the Power Elite will come to their senses and turn away from the GOP's brand of irrational Nationalism. Maybe.

If not, there's always the State of Jefferson!