I somehow missed this in my daily deluge of news yesterday morning, but someone pointed out the possibility that two of my favorite things, politics and Super Bowl ads, may be coming together in one of the coolest Mash-ups of all time.

As states line up to hold presidential primaries on the first Tuesday in February, the Feb. 3 Super Bowl could look super inviting and super expensive to presidential campaigns eager to deliver a knockout punch.

“That is a very ripe and timely target,” said Mark McKinnon, chief media strategist for President Bush in 2000 and 2004 and now an adviser to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign. “It would reach a huge audience at a very critical time. I think campaigns will look very closely at that.”

The downside, of course, is that the Presidential message machines will never risk being fun and creative with an ad like that. The ad would undoubtedly look more like Bear or Morning in America than When I Grow Up or the Budweiser Frogs. I’d love to see a candidate with the cojones to do a riff on the Budweiser ad. Imagine the three toads sitting and belching out “Mitt-Rom-Ney! Mitt-Rom-Ney!”

I know… I know… Never. Gonna. Happen.

A friend of mine sent me a link to the SuperProposal. It’s the effort of some guy to get a corporate sponsor for his proposal to his girlfriend during the Superbowl.

The Goal – To Propose to My Girlfriend on National TV During the 2007 Superbowl in Miami

The guy wanted to raise enough money to buy an ad, and was asking for contributions, but only hit the $100k mark (versus a $2.5 million ad). So now he is hoping a corporation will help him out and he’s going to donate the dough already raised to charity. So he gets credit for this grand romantic gesture, and also gets credit for this grand philanthropic gesture.

On behalf of men everywhere that a) now feel inadequate for their own minor league proposal b) feel guilty because the most generous thing we have done lately is pre-order girl scout cookies, and c) also have to face a wife who says “why can’t you be more romantic like that guy”, I hope and pray that someone kicks this guy really hard in the junk.

The Associated Press is reporting that Arkansas’ outgoing Governor, and potential POTUS candidate Mike Huckabee has decided to join the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity just in time to start his 2008 run.

Huckabee on Tuesday was tight-lipped about the fraternity membership and said he planned to answer questions after his initiation. Huckabee acknowledged joining a fraternity would be a new experience for him.

”I probably won’t move into the frat house, though,” Huckabee said.

I’m not sure that joining a frat as a 51 year old man is the best way to convince the country you are mature enough to lead the nation. Do we really want the President and Defense Secretary overseeing some bizarre Iraqi prisoner hazing ritual that involves making suspected terrorists try to drop the marshmallow squeezed between their ass cheeks into a martini glass?

Given the news today that Barack Obama is doing Monday Night Football and Huckabee is doing keg stands with the Tekes it is entirely possible this is some bizarro world run by beer company ad firms.

Denver has played three games in a row in the spotlight. With one Sunday Night Football appearance and a Thanksgiving game highlighting the choke artist Jake Plummer and another SNF game serving as a rollout for the rookie Jay Cutler, I can only hope this is part of a clever Denver ploy to lull the rest of their league into a false sense of security.

Going into week 10, Denver was rolling on a 7-2 record and in first place in the AFC West. Now they’re 7-5 and lagging behind KC. If they hope to make the playoffs, they really need to get their act together. A four game win streak would help, but I’m not terribly hopeful.

Cutler needs to get his head and his ass wired together quick and the team needs to stop turning over the ball. As for Plummer, he has proven time and again that he’s a world class choke artist. Let’s share his abilities with the rest of the galaxy – load him in a rocket and shoot his ass into space.

Now that I am back in my world and not dealing with the poor net connection at the CUNY center, let me share some thoughts on the net neutrality panel last evening. They really break down into two buckets – the panel itself, and the incredible rudeness of those participating as the audience.

As I mentioned earlier, the panel was comprised of Tim Karr from Free Press, Steve Effros (a long time cable expert), Chris Wolf from Hands Off The Internet and Susan Crawford from the Cardozo Law School. The panelists were effective in making their arguments, but many of their claims were specious at best. More on that in a moment.

What was more interesting to watch was the audience. While the vast majority of the audience was respectful and paid close attention to the debate, a few (generally well known bloggers on the left) were incredibly disrespectful. The live chat behind the panel was full of insults and rude comments. It was the worst parts of the internet – anonymous flames and rudeness – on display for all to watch. I was embarrassed to be part of the forum if it meant having my name associated with that behavior.

To the content, all I can say is there were some misstatements made by Chris and Steve, but on the whole, they made the better argument. They stuck to facts and the discussion rather than making outlandish claims about things that might happen, maybe, someday, possibly. That seemed to be Tim Karr’s specialty. When challenged to name (outside of the Canadian cases which are irrelevant due to a different legal structure, and the Madison River case) one instance of telcos blocking access to content, he stared at the audience and made not sound.

He chose instead to repeat the already discredited claim that net neutrality has been the law of the land. If 60% of broadband connections are provided by cable; and cable has never had to live by the law that applied to DSL lines; and that law was repealed (essentially) to provide a level playing field; and the cable companies have not, regardless of having no legal prohibition, done any of what the net neutrality proponents claim will happen; how can you make such an outlandish argument with a straight face?

Worse than Karr, however, was Susan Crawford. She has, on her blog, routinely raged against the FCC and giving them more power. She has routinely referred to them in the most vile ways and spoken out against their power to, for instance, enforce their puritanical belief systems about exposing a naked breast to the world.

In the case of Net Neutrality, however, she thinks they’re fine. She says they should have the power to enforce a policy of “no gatekeepers” thereby making the FCC the ultimate gatekeeper. The hypocrisy of this is not apparent to her, and you should have seen her reaction to Steve Effros pointing it out.

“That’s perverse!” she exclaimed. How dare he point out her inconsistencies while the rudest people in the room were calling him a liar and a shill (despite the fact he was not paid to attend).

Granted, Chris and Steve had some verbal gaffes. Steve’s comment that the Government wasn’t involved in the growth of the Internet overlooked the role the government had in seeding the Internet, but he’s right. The net grew for two reasons – the cable companies recognized a business model in selling high speed using low cost equipment (which telcos were reluctant to do because they made more $$ on T-1 Lines) and content providers found uses for the speed cable (and eventually the telcos) was providing.

The government planted the seed, but access providers and content providers grew the plant – not the government.

On the telco side, it’s unfortunate that their allies have to live in the world created by the comments of their bosses. The “free lunch” comment will live forever in infamy with “I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” But one comment that is often repeated, that is dead accurate is the reference to “my pipes”.

Like it or not, the Internet is not a public entity. It is not a company for which others provide service and it is not a public good. It is a nebulous arrangement of interconnections between private networks. If the net neutrality guys would like the government to compensate the private companies that have invested hundreds of billions to make it work, and declare those pipes a public good, that’s fine. The tab will be staggering.

That will do wonders for the deficit and guarantee great service. After all, the government does everything really well, right?

If, instead, you want a competitive environment, then you keep what you have. Existing competition has moved us this far, so why not let it continue? Some suggest the answer is because there are only two competitors – cable and telcos. That ignores the possibility that the DBS guys will ever develop the technology to compete. That ignores the possibility that governments will provide wi-fi as a public good, and it ignores the possibility that Google or someone else will provide wi-max to compete with the cable and telco guys?

It also assumes that two competitors is somehow inadequate for real competition. Honestly, I think a football field would get crowded with four teams. It would be amusing to watch for a minute, but I’d be opposed to Congress upending the NFL to include group contests because they felt two competitors in a game was insufficient. Basketball and baseball – ditto. Similarly, I don’t really like tennis with couples. I like the lone warriors doing battle.

Someone will make the argument that there are more than two football and basketball teams, and many individual tennis players. But those are different games, under different circumstances on different weeks. That’s just like business. Cable faces different competition on the programming side. They face competition from satellite and now telcos on video. They face competition for phone service from wireless, VoIP, and the telcos. They face competition for data services from telcos, cities increasingly providing wi-fi, PC by satellite (which admittedly is inferior currently, but that will change shortly), etc.

Competition works. But you have to let it. For Congress to act now, absent an actual threat, would be the height of folly.