Posts Tagged congress

Focus: Internet Blackout. Stop PIPA. Stop SOPA.

Posted by mistergroonk in Intertube Madness, USA on January 18, 2012

That is how webcomic entrepreneur The Oatmeal is participating in the Internet Blackout.

Have you been under a rock? The Internet, a huge chunk of it, is going dark today in effort to fight SOPA and PIPA. We, in contrast, are stepping out from our recent silence to tell you about the darkness. Our ways are strange and not to be questioned.

Popvox is a site recently brought to our attention that “bridges the gap between the input the public wants to provide and the information Members of Congress want and need to receive.” If we’re reading that right, Popvox is the medium for the Internet to get its voice heard in Congress.

Here are direct links to the SOPA and PIPA entries:

Reddit.com is another site that is planning to participate. Click the respective links to see what Redditors are saying(when the blackout is over) about SOPA and PIPA.

Below we have provided a screenshot list of sites that have already gone dark(as of this writing.):

Deadline.com

As many as 7,000 websites are participating today in protests of some form or another against the U.S. House Of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act and the U.S. Senate’s companion Protect IP Act. Some are going dark. Others are calling attention to the issue in less dramatic ways. Among the more prominent are Wikipedia, Google, Reddit, WordPress, TwitPic, Cheezburger, BoingBoing, several gaming companies including Minecraft, and Mozilla, source of the Firefox web browser. Wikipedia, BoingBoing and Minecraft have gone dark. Others, like Google, are displaying home page illustrations or visual statements about censorship and urging visitors to contact their elected representatives.

The Oatmeal

Google: https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

BoingBoing.net

Wikipedia

Updated for posterity:
Reddit.com

Warrenellis.com

Alexis Ohanian

“Why is it that when Republicans and Democrats need to solve the budget and the deficit, there’s deadlock, but when Hollywood lobbyists pay them $94 million dollars to write legislation, people from both sides of the aisle line up to co-sponsor it?”
–Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian on CNBC.

Wil Wheaton
Young Master Wheaton of the Internet Hordes wrote a lovely essay on why SOPA and PIPA damage the internet.

, , , , , , , ,

No Comments

Keeping Fear Alive: Stephen Colbert 2006 Presidential Dinner vs Stephen Colbert 2010 Congressional Hearing

Posted by mistergroonk in USA, Versus on October 29, 2010

Jon Stewart and Stephen T. Colbert’s The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear is barely a day away. Here we sit. Sad and disturbed about not being able to go.

It’s a fact that we can’t walk amongst our fellow sanity restorers in Washington D.C. tomorrow. But we sure as hell can Keep Fear Alive by bringing up old shit.

Let’s stir a pot of old beans, yes?

Stephen Colbert then: 2006 Speech at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner

Colbert was a young pup. Still a babe in the eyes of the half-hour cable TV show satire gods. Also, still very much in the shadow of The Daily Show. That’s when Stephen T. Colbert stood up at a White House dinner, in front of then president George W. Bush and did not hold back one inch.

Stephen Colbert now: 2010 Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Security Opening Statement

In the month of September 2010, Colbert was called before Congress to “describe his experience participating in the United Farm Workers’ “Take Our Jobs” program, in which he spent a day working alongside migrant workers in upstate New York.”

Stephen Colbert gives his opening statement during a hearing of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Security (from C-SPAN 9/24/10 coverage).

Both Colberts spoke from the humerus and the heart. Both are dangerously fearless.

There is no physical difference between them. Except that the latter has an extra 4 years of comedy seasoning.

Aftermath
He was asked to leave the hearing. A few congressmen thought he was wasting taxpayer money. We immediately consider the amount of time Congress has burned on whether a few guys juiced playing a game of baseball. Others(Jon Stewart) have noticed this in a handy montage:

After all is said(zod knows no one could shut up about it for weeks) and done, we’ll just call this hooha over Colbert “ruining Congress” a wash.
Read the rest of this entry »

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

No Comments