Anti-ICANN Cruzade continues: Senator Ted still desperately trying to defund US govt The transition of the internet's critical technical functions from the US government to non-profit organization ICANN, planned for next week, remains under threat thanks to an ongoing crusade by Senator Ted Cruz. In much the same way that Donald Trump has exploited weaknesses in the political system to become the Republican …
Who's looking to be President.
And looking to shut down the USG while he's at it.
US Reg readers. If all the debunking has been online you need to move to the print media. Start writing letters and emails to your favorite newspaper or magazine and tell them why his claims are BS.
BTW Isn't someone who carries out disruptive acts against the USG a terrorist (at least I'm fairly sure the USG thinks that way) ?
Yes, please ignore the fact that this 1 lone loudmouth represents the majority of Republican voters when he speaks. Please ignore that the party and its propaganda arms in the media and online have been built of enforced ignorance that is dragging down a once great country. But for gawd sake please do not blame this raging mob of stupid for one of their most prominent leaders because that would call into question the manifest failure of all Republicans and the ignorance they use to maintain a strangle hold on US policy.
"Yes, please ignore the fact that this 1 lone loudmouth represents the majority of Republican voters when he speaks."
Since you don't know how things work: He represents Texas. If he represented the majority of Republicans he'd be their presidential candidate, wouldn't he?
"they use to maintain a strangle hold on US policy."
Oh, please. I think the Democrats pretty well control that. You realize that is who in office now?
The problem is that the Republican Party has created the environment where a creature like Ted Cruz can achieve a position of power. Just like Trump (and like most of the Tea Partier reps in the House and Senate), he's not a freak occurrence - he's an inevitable result of the direction the party has been taking since before Reagan took office.
The near-constant attacks and dishonest set-pieces Newt Gingrich made his name with back in the 1970s were designed to damage the credibility of the Establishment politicians (who were mostly Democrats at the time, during their long control of both Houses); this long campaign eroded the Republican base's willingness to trust any politicians on either side of the aisle. The increasingly hostile partisanship that characterizes US politics (culminating in Birtherism, 'Obama the Muslim' and 'he's the Antichrist') allowed the republicans to constantly claim that the ends of keeping the Democrats out of power justified ANY means (which now apparently includes Trump encouraging Clinton's assassination). And outfits like Fox News encouraged the base to completely disconnect from reality and believe anything they wanted, building a giant echo chamber that allowed an increasingly white, male and elderly base to ignore how the country (and world) was changing around them, to the point that 40% of republicans no longer believe the weather forecast (no, not don't believe in anthropomorphic global warming, that's like 70%. 40% of them don't even believe the temperature data on the news anymore).
Things like Cruz can thrive in that sort of environment, as his supporters will line up behind 'outsiders' because they hate actual politicians. They'll agree with anything that seems to be 'taking it to the democrats' because they don't care what democrats actually say, they automatically take the opposite view point. And they'll ignore the fact that he's not talking about anything remotely close to the truth, because they no longer care what the truth is.
So yeah, don't blame the Republicans for this particular load of cobblers, because many of the responsible Republicans know it's near-suicidal to push a government shutdown 50 days from the election. Blame them instead for creating an environment in which someone who says these things can get close to power.
I'll give you an upvote for that. Cruz is a problem... he's been playing the "outsider" way too long now and he needs to learn the actual meaning of the words "compromise" and "statesmanship". As does another presidential candidate. To keep spouting off BS is not only counterproductive for the issue at hand, it also paints him in the light of always spouting off BS even when he's not. This is NOT one of the traits we need for those in elected office.
I'm believing that for the most part, the days of the thinker, the visionary, the politician who will sacrifice his own position for the good of the country are long gone. Partisan and personal politics (and attacks) have been the norm for some time now and will probably get worse instead of better. I and many others, fear for the Republic due to the current course of things.
So they're banking on Obama caving, rather than standing firm and leaving it to the republicans to refuse to approve a continuing resolution, and be seen as the culprit for shutting down the government AGAIN?
Last time it really hurt them in the 2014 elections, even though they'd forced the shutdown a full year before that. This time they'd be shutting it down five weeks before the election. Are they trying to hand the election to Hillary, along with a democratic majority in both houses? Because being responsible for shutting down the government right before the election, over something so arcane that few voters will understand or care about it, is exactly the way that would happen - probably the only possible way the democrats could take the House.
If the republicans are dumb enough to do this, the only explanation would be that they're worried Trump might win the election and they believe there's a good chance that would cause the end of the republican party.
The difference between this year and 2014 is that there will be 10-20% greater turnout this time around. Most folks skip the mid-term elections and slightly fewer folks skip the big-P elections. That said, I'd say it's about even money on who winds up controlling the Senate. The House isn't going to change much due to the simple fact that the large cities that drive Senate races and tend toward the blue team lose their power. Case in point, here in California the Senate race1 is down to the San Francisco blue and the Los Angeles blue due to the odd new primary system the state has chosen which essentially pits the two large metro areas against one another and dismisses everyone else. Of course a cynical person might think that depriving large cities of this kind of mob rule power was the whole point of not having Senators directly elected in the first place.
1 Spoiler Alert - Bet on San Fran as LA is a lost cause.
"If the republicans are dumb enough to do this, the only explanation would be that they're worried Trump might win the election and they believe there's a good chance that would cause the end of the republican party."
The Republicans probably aren't dumb enough to do this as a whole, but the party itself is now fragmented enough between the relatively sensible mainstream ones and the wild nutter fringe groups like the Tea Party caucus and the Freedom caucus that enoguh idiots might push it anyway. That is pretty much exactly what happened in 2013 - Cruz almost single-handedly brought the shutdown about despite all the more senior figures in the party (and most of the less senior ones, too) thinking it was a stupid idea, by appealing to these fringe nutters - and by putting the fear of God into the moderates, who figured they'd get primaried if they didn't go alone.
The 3 pinochios comes from a WaPost article that makes a false claim attributed to Cruz:
"Cruz goes too far in asserting that the ICANN transition will result in Russia or China being able to censor U.S. Internet content."
Cruz has not claimed that. Cruz has stated that countries that officially censor content and repress journalists and free speech advocates should not have a seat at the table or a vote. Cruz then goes on to make a "slippery slope" argument, which is regarded as a valid form of argument in American jurisprudence.
Backing by google and FB for ICANN's position means absolutely nothing to the American electorate. In fact, I'd say it means less than nothing, as the top tech companies are widely viewed as tax cheats who engage in mass spying on their users and frequently violate anti-trust laws. Cruz, whose legal experience includes anti-trust work for the government and who frequently fights against bulk data collection, knows exactly how to portray their support in a negative light.
"Are we letting distrust of the messenger blur the message?"
Not really, no. Since the message Cruz is bearing is absolute nonsense. If he were talking sense and we didn't believe him, you'd have a point, but he's actually just talking complete crap and grandstanding for the benefit of his base, who won't understand the details but will appreciate 'America yeah! Russia bad! Consuuurvative Valuuuuuuues!'.
AFAICS under the IANA contract ICANN does two main things.
It maintains the register of protocol numbers but the authority for that comes from the IETF and IRTF with the IAB as final arbiter ( https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2860 ). According to that RFC the agreement can be ended at not less than 6 months notice from either side.
It maintains the root DNS server.
The servers are mirrored by other servers.
It would appear feasible for the mirror operators to come together and decide that the governance of IANA is in such a parlous state as to justify their selecting one of their number to be the primary copy, at least until the situation is resolved, and for the rest of the mirrors to mirror that. In practical terms there would be no effect until either ICANN or the new primary made changes not tracked by the other. At that point it would be up to lower lever servers to choose which to follow and it wouldn't be a difficult choice - go with the mirror set. In effect it would be the internet de facto taking control of itself in order to route around breakage.
The US government can then continue to squabble amongst itself as long as it wants.
Well..
The US Government was AFAIK modeled on the 17th century system for running a town council.
It's never been seriously revised. IE a tacit concensus by a bunch of wealthy white men who might disagree on the details but all saw things basically the same way. Once one of them stops "playing the game" chaos can promptly ensue. And it has....
There is no age limit on Con-gresspeople or Senators,
Once they are the incumbent they are a b**ger to shift as long as they keep looking after the interests of their state/district. Accepting sacrifices due to changing national (or global) realities seems practically unheard of, hence the 2 (or is it 3) corporate bailouts of Ford and Chrysler.
Actual party line following seems to be virtually non existent. You get nominal Democrats to the right of Wacqui Jacqui Smith (Like the CA Democrat who loves the NSA) and quite relaxed Republicans.
IAN a Political Scientist. Indeed I'm not any kind of scientist.
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