Free Republic

Heavyweight conservatives and banterweight conservatives are lining up on both sides the Comcast/Time Warner merger. The heavyweights, which include Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform, Wayne Crews at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Duane Parde at the National Taxpayers Union, have penned a letter to influential Senators including Mike Lee, Chuck Grassley and Ted Cruz, urging them to look past the politics and approve the merger between the two cable giants on traditional grounds—you know, the grounds under which the anti-trust laws were written and passed in the first place? “As advocates for a free market,” the heavyweights write,...

Comcast has been named the worst company in America. The largest US cable provider "won" Consumerist's annual poll on the very same day it tried to convince the FCC that a proposed Time Warner Cable acquisition is in everyone's best interest. It's the second time Comcast has been awarded the unwanted label by Consumerist voters. Video game publisher Electronic Arts earned the "worst company" designation in 2012 and 2013 but lost out early this year when it was knocked out of the running by Time Warner Cable. Comcast was pitted against Monsanto, the oft-criticized chemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation, in...

APRIL 7--When friends and family members gathered recently at the White House for a private celebration of Michelle Obama’s 50th birthday, one of the invited partygoers was a former paid FBI Mafia informant. That same man attended February’s state dinner in honor of French President Francois Hollande. He was seated with his girlfriend at a table adjacent to President Barack Obama, who is likely unaware that, according to federal agents, his guest once interacted with members of four of New York City’s five organized crime families. He even secretly taped some of those wiseguys using a briefcase that FBI technicians...

Amid assurances from some republicans, conservatives, and libertarians in Washington that the $45 billion Comcast - Time Warner merger is nothing to fear, The Washington Free Beacon's Michael Continetti reveals the deep ties Comcast CEO Brian Roberts as well as Time Warner has with the Democratic Party:

Democratic members of Congress and the Obama administration have extensive ties to Comcast and Time-Warner, the two cable giants currently awaiting approval from the Federal Communications Commission on a $45 billion merger. One that has gone mostly overlooked: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D., Nev.) chief of staff, David Krone, is Comcast’s former senior vice president for corporate affairs. Krone moved from Comcast to Reid’s office in 2011 under ethically questionable circumstances,

Comcast, which employs more than 100 lobbyists, spent almost $19 million last year on lobbying activities. Its president and CEO, Brian L. Roberts, is a golf buddy of President Obama’s, and a Democratic donor who has contributed thousands of dollars not only to the president’s campaigns, but also to the Democratic Party of Pennsylvania, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the DNC Services Corporation, and to Steny Hoyer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bob Casey. Roberts’ executive vice president, David Cohen, is a former aide to Democratic bigwig Ed Rendell. Cohen skirts lobbying regulations through loopholes, has raised more than $2 million for...

In response to Comcast’s (CMCSA) $45 billion buyout of Time Warner Cable (TWC), Dish Network (DISH) has reportedly sent feelers out to rival DirecTV (DTV) about a possible combination of the two satellite television companies. The potential tie-up would marry the two largest U.S. satellite TV operators, creating a juggernaut with about 34 million subscribers. According to Bloomberg News, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen recently approached DirecTV CEO Mike White about a merger. White is reluctant to go ahead with formal talks due to concerns about opposition from antitrust regulators, the news service said.

Yesterday... Comcast cable...my internet service provider...for the TIME BEING....had a Planned Outage,...in order to upgrade equipment that services this area. No Prior Notice was given to paying customers, During my call to :customer service" Yesterday...no mention was made of that fact that this WAS a planned outage. This Morning I experienced another Outage. Today's call to comcast customer service was Unbearably frustrating. The representative told me...that this was a planned outage...and an unplanned outage. AGAIN no announcement was made PRIOR to the outage. They do have an EMAIL SERVER dont they? Would it have taken a tremendous effort and great...

A top White House official who has been with President Barack Obama since he first became a senator nine years ago is resigning. Alyssa Mastromonaco is Obama’s deputy chief of staff for operations and often described as the most influential person inside the White House who isn't well known outside of it. …

s Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc. roll out a massive lobbying effort to win regulatory approval for the merger of the nation’s two largest cable companies, one key step for the companies will be garnering the support of prominent civil rights and minority groups. Comcast has already shown it can pull support from key minority groups — dozens sent letters of support to the Federal Communications Commission, which must approve the buyout, while it was considering Comcast’s last mega-deal — its 2011 purchase of NBC/Universal. As tax data analyzed as part of a collaboration between the Center for...

Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, will buy Time Warner Cable for $45.2 billion in stock, combining America's two biggest cable operators, The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday. Under the deal expected to be announced Thursday morning, Time Warner Cable shareholders will receive $158.82 per share in stock for their shares, roughly $23 a share above where Time Warner has been trading, people familiar with the situation told the newspaper. The deal is expected to end a takeover battle for Time Warner by Charter Communications, the nation's fourth biggest cable operator, and its biggest shareholder, Liberty Media, The Journal...

Earlier today, Comcast Cable announced that it agreed to acquire Time Warner Cable in a $45 billion mega-deal. What's in it for Comcast Cable shareholders? "This combination creates a company that delivers maximum value for our shareholders," said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. How are they going to do that? The company explains in one sentence that probably has every Comcast and Time Warner Cable employee nervous. "The transaction will generate approximately $1.5 billion in operating efficiencies and will be accretive to Comcast’s free cash flow per share while preserving balance sheet strength." "Operating efficiencies" usually means the closing and combining...

The two biggest US cable companies are joining forces in a $45bn (£27bn) deal, creating an entertainment giant with some 32 million TV subscribers. Comcast's merger with Time Warner Cable was confirmed at the start of trading on Thursday. Its offer, which is subject to regulatory approval, is about 17% higher than the company's closing share price on Wednesday. The takeover bid trumps an earlier $38bn (£23bn) offer from Charter Communications, which appeared to concede defeat by announcing: "We've always maintained our greatest opportunity to create value for shareholders is by executing our current business plan. "We'll continue to be...

Comcast will announce a deal to acquire Time Warner Cable in an all-stock deal worth more than $45 billion that will unite the biggest and second largest cable television operators in the country, according to people briefed on the matter. . The surprise merger — expected to be announced on Thursday — is likely to bring to an end a protracted takeover battle that a smaller cable rival, Charter Communications, has been waging for Time Warner Cable, and will be the second major deal for Comcast in recent years to radically reshape the American media landscape.

Are you a Comcast customer? Please change your password. On February 6, NullCrew FTS hacked into at least 34 of Comcast's servers and published a list of the company's mail servers and a link to the root file with the vulnerability it used to penetrate the system on Pastebin.

How did Jay Leno really feel in 2009, when NBC revealed its master plan to hand The Tonight Show over to Conan O’Brien? The comedian doesn’t mince words in an upcoming interview with 60 Minutes, telling Steve Kroft that the decision took him completely by surprise. “I was blindsided,” he says, according to CBS News.

Excerpted from "Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA" Imagine a world without the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and countless other tools used by the 1 percent to rule and fool. In a socialist society run by and for the working people it represents, the mega-monopolies like Walmart, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the corporations that run the tightly controlled “mainstream media” will be a thing of the past. It’s not news that the major US media are run by and for big business, or that the major media companies are themselves big businesses. Twenty years ago,...

What the net-neut obsessives refuse to recognize is that anticompetitive intent isn't worth worrying about if an anticompetitive result isn't possible. If AT&T were "double-dipping," or charging sender and recipient for the same data, as some allege, its rivals would quickly copy its innovation and compete away any excess revenues. If AT&T were to degrade websites that don't pay up, its rivals would pounce and steal AT&T's dissatisfied customers.

MSNBC weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry lined up a panel of alleged comedians to mock the Christmas picture Mitt Romney posted on Twitter. In a segment with the on-screen question "What's So Funny About 2013?" Harris-Perry announced: “This is the Romney family. And, of course, there on Governor Romney’s knee is his adopted grandson, who is an African-American, an adopted African-American child, Kieran Romney.” To which comedian and actress Pia Glenn sang the old Sesame Street ditty “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn’t the same … “And that little baby, front and...

MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry apologized Tuesday for openly mocking Mitt Romney's black adopted grandson, after Sarah Palin led the chorus of conservatives who criticized the cable news host. The Romney family Christmas card was among the items featured in the "2013: The year in political ridiculousness" segment on the cable news show Sunday.