It’s been a really bad week for the media, with at least three different significant mistakes having to be corrected. It really undermines their position as the Fourth Estate. Brian Ross was suspended from ABC News for a *massive* error on the Trump investigation. Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal misreported a subpoena of Deutche Bank. CNN misreported on Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks. CORRECTION of ABC News Special Report: Flynn prepared to testify that President-elect Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians *during the transition* — initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria, confidant now says. https://t.co/ewrkVZTu2K pic.twitter.com/URLiHf3uSm

Saw this tweet today: https://twitter.com/ezlusztig/status/938470343487844352 I like Al Franken, I’ve always liked Al Franken, I have a lot of respect for the work he did to transition from a comedian to a knowledgeable elected official (no small feat), and I think it’s a shame he has to resign. But this is a political no-brainer. Franken resigning is the Democratic side fighting. Fighting to at least bring back some shred of integrity to the current American government. They won’t have a moral leg, foot, or tiny pinky toe to stand on if they don’t clean house of anything and everything that even remotely hints of corruption right now. They simply cannot use integrity (“we are the Not-As-Bad-As-Trump Party”) as a voting issue in 2018, 2020, or ever, if they don’t deal with this quickly.

Grumpy post incoming. Unwind it all. The entire Trump Presidency is a criminal enterprise that’s compromised by Russia. Everything Trump did gets thrown out. Gorsuch needs to be removed from the Supreme Court & America gets a new and fair election. On paper ballots. No fruit of a poison tree. — Gerry Duggan (@GerryDuggan) December 1, 2017 Lulz. Oh look, somebody else on Twitter who would fail a basic civics class, and people retweeting it as if it’s wisdom.

Millennials are yelling about Nazis again this weekend, but I’m going to be brutally honest here: They’ve cried wolf so often and so loud about this that I just don’t care anymore. I’m not even going to investigate what they’re talking about. Something about a New York Times article I think? If fascists ever really do organize again, they’ll have such an easy road to power in the U.S. thanks to the left.

Hmmmm. Who do we believe? The publication that's been doing good journalism for almost 100 years or the man who invented the term "fake news" as a way to deflect his own horribleness? 🤔🤔🤔 — pranas t. naujokaitis (@pranas) November 25, 2017 I imagine that more-then-100-year-old journalists would have a fair amount of dementia by now. Zing! No, you idiot, it’s not the same people all 100 years! Oh, then you’ve made my point for me.

The panic has died down a bit because of Thanksgiving Day, but just for the record, here is the actual proposal the FCC will be considering on December 14th. Proposal To “Restore Internet Freedom” I added the quotes to indicate where the authors decided to change the title of the document from what it actually is (Proposal To Change Boring FCC Regulations) into something that would make Republicans who don’t understand computers feel good.

These are the kinds of tweets flying around that drive my crazy: Dear right-wingers, If #NetNeutrality was reversed, George Soros (😧) could buy a controlling interest in AT&T, Verizon, & Time Warner Cable and COMPLETELY BLOCK access to Fox News, Breitbart, etc. for 99% of the country. Let that sink in. This isn’t a partisan issue. — William LeGate (ig: @legate) (@williamlegate) November 21, 2017 I agree it shouldn’t be a partisan issue, because net neutrality is a technical concept, but since nobody understands computers, least of all politicians, both sides have defined it as a partisan issue, and here we are with dumb tweets like this.

Well, I guess I’ll be writing about this for a second day in a row. So just for the record, I prefer Net Neutrality. But I’m a realist and a pragmatist. The Utopian dream of The Internet as a level playing field for all of humanity to come together will collapse as more and more businesses and governments get involved. Frankly, it already collapsed a good ten years or more ago. Mobile smart devices weren’t made to make people’s lives better and bring them together, they were made to trap consumers on a platform they can’t escape. They are antithetical to openness. The very existence of cell phones is the death of the Utopian Internet, because it was the opportunity businesses needed to get people off of “open” PCs and on to more controlled environments.

Net Neutrality is the hot topic of the day (so far-give it a few minutes, it will probably change). The FCC is planning to introduce a plan before Thanksgiving that completely repeals #NetNeutrality. Here's what you need to know. https://t.co/dEHkO49vIw #SaveNetNeutrality — ACLU (@ACLU) November 21, 2017 JUST IN: FCC will vote to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules https://t.co/xSTAtvfZwZ pic.twitter.com/WLryAUwCt7 — The Hill (@thehill) November 21, 2017 Activists are telling us that we must act fast to save net neutrality. We are not told this specifically, but it’s strongly implied that our way of life and our immortal souls are in imminent danger! Call your congressman! Call the FCC! Call anyone, just do it now!

New joke for mythical stand-up comedy routine: I am starting to wonder if men should have a lawyer present whenever they are in the presence of women. Perhaps following behind getting signed waivers, like how filmmakers have to get people to sign waivers to appear in documentaries and such. “Did this interaction with this male make you uncomfortable in any way? Yes/no. Okay, please sign and date here. Here’s a copy for you, and here’s our copy. We’ll file it in the federal database of male/female interactions by the end of the day.”