I bet you’re scratching your head right now trying to figure out why all this is happening to you. That Tina Fey is mocking you every week on SNL. Reporters continue their demands that you answer questions and dream of a day when they’ll be peppering you with questions at a press conference. McCain staffers are wringing their hands during your mock debates. I’d imagine it’s all pretty frustrating and painful, so I wanted to drop you a little note that might help you understand all this a little better.

The first thing I’d point to is your answer to Charlie Gibson during your first national press interview. When he asked you about deciding to join John McCain’s run for the presidency, you said you didn’t hesitate to answer yes. You said you didn’t even blink.

If that story is true, it immediately sent up red flags for many people around the United States. People surely asked themselves, “What if John McCain asked me to be his running mate? Seems like there’s a real chance of that now.” These people likely thought about their families, their home, their friends. They wondered if they could do it. Could I stand the scrutiny of my party, the public, the bloggers and a voracious press corp? Do I actually have the skills to do that job?

They realized it would be a really tough decision to make, because it IS a tough decision. If you’re actually “wired in a way” that made you say yes without blinking, people around the country–Republicans, Democrats and Independents–all began to wonder about you and the way you think.

Your speech went over really well with the Republican faithful. You really took it to Obama and that crowd just ate it up. And I loved how you nailed the intonation of “Thanks, but no thanks for that bridge to nowhere” line so well that you repeated it exactly the same way for the cheering throngs at least 20 times.

The problem is that the more you repeated that line, the more people wanted to look at the history of your earmarks for Alaska. Reporters and bloggers dug up documents showing you celebrating the millions you got for your city and your state. Now the “Thanks, but no thanks” still ringing in our ears started to sound hollow. You claim to be a big reformer up there in Alaska, but looking at how many of my tax dollars you Alaska folks get makes us start to wonder about you.

Do you really think people enjoy hearing about how people living in Alaska get nearly twice the amount of federal tax dollars per capita as those of us in California or New York? So you’re enjoying the benefits of that old, indicted crony Ted Stevens… but you’re against earmarks. Hmmm.

So now that you’re settling in each night with a briefing book the size of a microwave in order to get prepared for your debate with Biden, are you starting to understand how much you need to know and how issues are complicated?

Reading and curiosity about the world are things that help one understand what’s going on and enable one to come up with new ideas. Not having done a lot of reading and being incurious likely didn’t matter much when you ran for Mayor of Wasilla. Just spew a few talking points and have your staff whisper about whether John Stein was really a Christian and, bam, you’re Mayor. Things work a little differently for national office.

I could write on about your letting Troopergate get out of hand up there in Alaska, but I thought I’d leave you with one final thought. At the Republican convention, when you came out swinging as you read that speech they gave you, we all thought, “Wow. She’s tough. Oooh. That’s a zinger.” We thought you could take it. We hoped you had more to say.

But I’ve watched your interviews lately, and I’m afraid I’m not hearing anything from you that I wouldn’t hear from one of McCain’s surrogates on the morning news shows. Americans watch this and think there are two possibilities: you have no new ideas or your ideas are so out-there that McCain doesn’t want you saying them. Either way, people are worried.

I hope this helps you understand a little more about why we’re watching you so intently. Being Vice President is serious. We take the election seriously and you’ve got us concerned.

Good luck in the debate.

Sincerely,

Rotophonic

Just to give you a sense of how snarky Tubey really is, during the debate over the bridge, according to a Washington Post article, Tube threw a fit and whined,

I will put the Senate on notice — and I don’t kid people — if the Senate decides to discriminate against our state and take money only from our state, I will resign from this body.”

Alas, Senate members got a little misty-eyed at the idea of the Senate without the Tube and gave him his bridge, contributing even more to the greedy state of Alaska, which receives $1.89 in federal help for every tax dollar they sent to Washington.

[UPDATE] Now why did Tube hold up that bill? Wait, I think I better put this in the comedy section. Ted Stevens is concerned about the cost (which is $15 million over the next 4 years (PDF).

Stevens “wanted to make sure that this wasn’t going to be a huge cost to the taxpayer and that it achieves the goal which the bill is meant to achieve” – spokesperson for Tube Stevens

I’m sure Stevens could barely get the words out without laughing and choking on all the pork in his craw. The guy who got over $200 million to build a Golden Gate sized bridge over a little canal of a waterway to an island with 50 people on it is concerned about cost. Perhaps politicians lie so much because they actually think they can get away with stuff like this.

I ask myself whether consumers will stand for an Internet that suddenly imposes restrictions on their ability to freely explore the Internet or does not provide for the choices they want,” Deborah Platt Majoras, the FTC’s Republican chairman, told a luncheon audience.

Unfortunately, like Ted Stevens, Majoras believes that Telcos should be able to do whatever they want. She believes Net Neutrality provisions would regulate an industry that should be able to operate within a free market. Naively, she believes that Big Telecom will actually provide the choices we want.

We are not standing for it

When you have a regulated monopoly in charge of the wires entering my house, how exactly does a free market work? How exactly should I proceed if my cable company AND my phone company both deliver high-priced, poor quality products? Free market principles dictate that I should buy from a competitor. But wait, there are no competitors anymore. If I don’t buy their products at all, Big Telecom whines that they can’t improve service without subsidies from the government and that they should be able to hobble competitors products coming in over the lines I pay for. If I buy their crap products, then I’m a chump.

Big Telecom opposes a free market on the wires to your home

Big Telecom already makes tons of profit on their lines. They sell voicemail, phone service plus DSL on wires that were installed when Nixon was President (or before)…wires paid for under the protection of a regulated monopoly?…hmm, I think they’re doing alright. Big Telecom is after something else: they really believe they can be AOL or Google. If you’re finished laughing, pick yourself up off the floor and read on.

I’d like to tell a story called:

What if other industries follow the Big Telecom model?

Imagine an electric company whose sole job is to provide electrical service to my home. For the use of their wires and the power carried on them, I pay a monthly bill. Now my electric company suddenly decides that just owning wires and delivering power is too boring and not profitable enough. Brilliantly arrogant, they begin to resell washing machines, stoves, water heaters and air-conditioners, too. But despite all their efforts to pretend to be an appliance retailer, most people don’t trust the electric company to sell appliances (sorry gas stove lovers, we only have electric here) and prefer getting their large appliances from Sears or Best Buy.

The electric company, bitter about the power of the fickle consumer, decides on a killer strategy to bolster their dying appliance market. If I want to use appliances I get from Sears or Best Buy, they’re going to charge me a penalty on my monthly bill–not because my Sears appliances use more power or they’re not getting paid for the electricity I’ve used. But because the competition within the marketplace is hurting their strategy to sell appliances.

Now to bolster their case, electric companies around the United States band together, pay loads of money to the politicians to try and create laws that would enforce and legalize their right to charge me extra for my use competitors’ products. They call my efforts to codify in law my right to use the electrical wires I already pay for freely with whatever appliances I want, “government regulation”, “anti-competition” and suggest that the poor electric company is being trod on by Sears and Best Buy.

“Sears is getting a free ride. They sell products that use electricity, but they don’t pay a cent in electric bills. Right now, Kenmore is probably developing even more sophisticated refrigerators that use electricity and they expect us to upgrade wires to the home to provide more power?” The electric companies suggest that Sears and Best Buy, as providers of stuff that uses power, should have to pay some of the bills for the electricity, too.

How friggin’ stupid to the Telecoms think we are?

The Telcos and Cable Giants believe its their turn to be AOL, their turn to create a massive AOL-Effect, their turn to use their monopoly to build a virtual biodome around their customers and to shape the customers’ experiences. They hope that eventually customers won’t even realize that they’ve been surfing in a big Telco-maintained dome, not out in the real Internet. AOL made a lot of money this way for a while (until the Telcos sought help from politicians and the Supreme Court to prevent competitors from having access to their DSL and cable systems, virtually decimating every single ISP that didn’t have government sponsored wires, e.g. AOL, MSN, Netzero and Earthlink). Now that they’ve sought and received government intervention to prevent competition on municipally-sponsored wires, Big Telecom believes its their time.

Big Telecom has thrown the competitors off our wires and now they want the content providers off, too, unless those content providers want to pay again for bandwidth I already pay for. It’s as simple as that.

I’ve seen some of these blogs. They don’t know what they’re talking about.” – Sen. Ted Stevens via an aide’s transcript

Senator Stevens, just because you think we’re morons doesn’t mean that you would not have brought the measure before the Senate this week if you had been able to get your 60 cloture votes.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens is still lining up the 60 he needs to defeat a threatened filibuster of the bill over its absence of strong network neutrality provisions. Frist has made it clear that he won’t schedule a vote until he can be assured it won’t take up floor time only to be mooted by a filibuster.” – Broadcasting & Cable

Given that it has been suggested that Stevens is working craftily to avoid a filibuster of his bill, I won’t believe we have escaped any procedural trickery until the Senate recesses on Friday, but this is a positive development.

Any calls and emails to senators on the fence on this bill will still be productive in assuring that Stevens does not get the 60 votes he needs to force this bill through in the lame duck session before the August recess begins.

Stevens is shooting for a cloture vote on Thursday and has plans to keep everyone in a lame duck session to force a vote on net neutrality after Congress is supposed to be in recess. If you can’t win fair and square, you try the smarmy tactics…please hit the phones.” – FireDogLake

Email or call these swing voters on the committee with your concerns. Remember, be polite but insistent that these senators appear and vote against cloture to assure that Stevens’ bill does not pass:

Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas) – Email - Phone: (202) 224-4843

Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) – Email - Phone: (202) 224-6551

Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut) – Email - Phone: (202) 224-4041

[UPDATE 8-1-2006]

Here are Senator Ron Wyden’s June 28th (D-Oregon) remarks objecting to Stevens’ bill, made on the floor of the senate–for some background.
[via Daily KOS via Firedoglake]