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Common Dreams reports
Last Week Tonight host John Oliver on [May 7] issued another powerful rallying cry to save net neutrality protections, and, repeating the outcome of his 2014 plea, his viewers flooded the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) site, causing it to temporarily crash.
[...] Oliver said it's worth noting that [FCC Chairman Ajit] Pai is "a former lawyer for Verizon", a company which "won a lawsuit which meant that if the FCC wanted strong, enforceable protection, its only real option was to reclassify the ISPs, and yet he cheerily insists under questioning that there is just not evidence that cable companies were engaging in rampant wrongdoing".
"Title II is the most solid legal foundation we have right now for a strong, enforceable net neutrality protections", Oliver said, and urged "we, the people, [to] take this matter into our own hands".
To that end, Last Week Tonight bought the domain name gofccyourself.com, which redirects users to the official FCC page[1] where open internet advocates can leave a comment and call for these protections to remain in place. (Oliver notes that it simplifies the commenting process the FCC "has made more difficult since three years ago".)
"Everyone needs to get involved. Comment now, and then maybe comment again when the FCC makes its proposal official. Even call you representative and your senators", Oliver urged.
So successful was the start of his campaign, according to Motherboard, that there was such a high volume of traffic flooding the Federal Communications Commission that the site temporarily went down. As of this writing, it is up and running again.
[1] The fcc.gov page is almost entirely behind scripts.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:27PM (8 children)
No, but I do think a lot about how well a mediocre comedian like Jon Stewart would have done as the democratic candidate compared to the one we actually got.
I don't buy into the "Save us TV funnyman" mentality much, but the left's strongest selling point right now(due, in part, to decades of policy dilution in compromise-seeking with utter lunatics) is mocking the actual falsehoods that underlie almost every major republican position now.
A sincere leftist revival stealing the underclass base could hypothetically work, I guess. Maybe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:35PM
Al Franken has done a pretty damn good job as a senator.
Whether or not Stewart was "mediocre," that guy knew his shit, definitely more than Franken did before he was elected to the senate.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:49PM
I don't buy into the "Save us TV funnyman" mentality much
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:50PM (4 children)
the democratic candidate
That's one thing.
leftist
That's something entirely different.
Here's your chance to identify the candidate whom you noticed talking about the collective ownership of the means of production by the workers.
Hint: Both The Blues and The Reds (who should be colored Confederate gray) are in sync with Crony Capitalism, seek to expand The Police State, and are very much into Imperialism.
None of those are Leftist positions.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @07:34PM (1 child)
Ok, so maybe not leftist, but I think you agree that they are at least lefter, right?
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Tuesday May 09 2017, @07:50PM
No, LEFT.
:)
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday May 09 2017, @07:55PM (1 child)
I'm very much aware of the difference. I didn't delineate it in my post. Sorry.
My attitudes towards hard-left ideologies like Anarcho-whatever and commu-whatever are uncertain: they've sold me on the problems existing, they haven't sold me on their solutions.
But a revival of such attitudes in the left-leaning part of the US could hypothetically win a lot of the people who feel ignored right now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:37PM
No. Clearly you are not.
hard-left ideologies like Anarcho-whatever
You just demonstrated that you are clueless.
Anarcho-whatever isn't on the Left-Right axis.
That's 90 degrees opposite. [politicalcompass.org]
You couldn't possibly be more badly informed about politics.
"Thinking" in 1 dimension isn't thinking at all.
"Left" means "Capitalism is a failed system and I reject it".
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday May 09 2017, @07:25PM
I thought that Stephen Colbert would be a good candidate. If you need to convince a conservative demographic, you can just pull up old clips of the Colbert Report and cut before the crowd laughs.