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So true

Thursday, June 27, 2019

Even if it’s the USS Biden, we have to get on it.

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Democrats need to take back the English language

Monday, June 24, 2019

A lot of disparate events over the last few days proving yet again that the Republicans have managed to hijack the English language. When they use a word it means exactly what they say it means, and when we use one, it no longer means what it means, unless we have Republican permission. Not only that, but in many cases, we accept this language perversion and propagate it ourselves.

I’ve noted many times before that the term “pro-life” is hardly the equivalent of the reality of the Republican position on abortion, or anything else. Yet not only do we let them use the term without pushback, many on the left use it themselves.

Even the term “white nationalist” also (wait for it)…whitewashes the reality. Americans, by and large, don’t consider the term “nationalist” to be pejorative. They do understand the shorter word “racist”, which fits the bill exactly.

Recently Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made what should have been an uncontroversial characterization of the concentration camps in which we are incarcerating innocent children, to wit, that they are concentration camps. The right will have none of it, and few in the Democratic Party have come to her defense, much less join her in using a term that precisely describes what we are doing to these children.

It was a recent tweet by Matt Yglesias that got me thinking about this once again, as he pointed out how inappropriate it was for the press and Oregon public officials to refer to the armed thugs intimidating the Oregon legislature as a “militia”, their own self selected term for their criminal gang. Would either of those institutions extend the same privilege to an armed group of blacks demanding reparations? Once again, however, many on the left utilize the term without caveat, much less without using a more appropriate term, like “armed fascists”.

We need to take back the language. Part of the way you do that is by using a term over and over, just like the opposition. We generally have no need to use a term to mean anything we want it to mean. Generally speaking, we’re fine with the dictionary definitions. But repetition is all. Instead of running away from AOC, every Democrat in Congress should use the term “concentration camps” to refer to our concentration camps.

There are some signs of hope, though they come from unexpected quarters. A popular community knitting website, of all things, has banned statements that support Trump because “[s]upport of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy.” That’s clear thinking, and it’s about time the media, purportedly sane public officials, and elected Democrats followed their lead.

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Yet another open letter to the New London Day

Monday, June 17, 2019

Today’s headline reads: Iran to Blame in Ship Attacks. This is an assertion of fact. It is not borne out by the actual text of the Washington Post authored piece to which it is affixed. Since the Day is a newspaper, surely its editors are collectively aware of the fact that many people simply skim the headlines, or the first few paragraphs of an article. You do your readers and the nation a gross disservice by stating as fact something that is very much in doubt.

Many of us remember our history. We Remember the Maine!, which blew up of its own accord, an event which served as the pretext for war when American warmongers accused Spain of the deed. We remember Colin Powell lying to the United Nations about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, and the other lies the Bush Adminstration spread as a pretext for starting that needless war, including the assertion that Saddam somehow had something to do with the September 11th terrorist attack. We even remember recent history, though we know that’s against the rules of the punditocracy, and we are aware that the present administration is so mendacious it makes the Bush Administration seem like a model of probity. It is with that latter fact in mind that you might consider how to word a headline that accepts as fact the assertion of an administration which has now earned the right to have its every statement considered false until proven otherwise.

I have yet to see a coherent explanation of why this attack on third party shipping served Iran’s national interest. Why would Iran give a president it loathes, who is himself desperate to improve his dismal polling, a pretext for a war it would likely lose? Might it not be a good idea to consider other suspects, who might very much want to see their puppet re-elected and/or in a war with Iran? Just speculating, of course.

But I digress somewhat. Shame again on the Day for giving credence to the genius and his minions.

UPDATE: Check this out. If they had the goods on Iran they wouldn’t need to copy the Russians.

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Now more than ever, follow Orwell’s rules

Friday, June 14, 2019

George Orwell posited six rules for good writing:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Today’s paper brought rules ii and iii to mind when I read this about Sarah Huckabee’s departure:

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, is leaving the Trump administration after a turbulent tenure marked by attacks on the media, dissemination of false information, and the near-disappearance of the daily press briefing. (Emphasis added)

And this:

While Sanders proved a more effective and composed carrier of Trump’s message than Spicer, she maintained the administration’s publicly antagonistic approach to reporters and regularly ran afoul of the facts. (Emphasis added again)

There is a three letter word that means the same thing as “dissemination of false information” and “ran afoul of the facts”. It begins with the letter “l” and ends with the letter “e”, with another vowel in between. (Okay, I just broke the rules too).

It would behoove the press to use that word more often. Keep in mind, 1984 was intended to be a description of a dystopia, not a utopia.

Just to be clear, I don’t believe rule vi is relevant here.

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A challenge for the Democrats

Thursday, June 13, 2019

It appears that polling is looking very bad for the genius. He loses against everyone. 

So, this brings us to the perennial question:

How can the Democrats blow it and drive the final nail into the coffin of the American Republic?

There are a number of approaches they can take.

They can nominate a candidate who will inspire zero enthusiasm among young voters, thereby suppressing turnout in that demographic.

They can nominate a candidate who has a history of taking anti-abortion positions and who has advocated denying contraceptive coverage for women while Obamacare was being fashioned.

They can nominate a candidate who is delusional and believes the Republicans will have a come to Jesus moment if they lose an election. You know, like they had in 2008 and 2012.

They can nominate a candidate whose platform consists of “centrist” nostrums designed to perpetuate the status quo of gross inequality and worker powerlessness. You know, the kind of guy who makes a billionaire like Howard Schultz secure in the knowledge that the plutocrats have nothing to fear and he has no need to revive his quixotic candidacy. Maybe even the kind of guy that might give the Koch Brothers additional incentive to invest in perverting the Democratic Party.

They can nominate a candidate who is prone to saying stupid things, knowing that the press can’t stop itself from obsessing about a Democratic gaffe while looking the other way when the genius allows that he’d probably commit more crimes if it would help him win an election.

They can nominate a candidate who, even if he wins, will give the Republicans all the ammunition they need to sweep in 2022 and return to absolute, and likely permanent, power in 2024.

Can they find such a candidate? It’s a tall order, but I think they can do it. In fact, I think the troops are lining up behind him and the press is busy anointing him. Can that candidate win anyway? Maybe. I’d vote for him, but then, I’d vote for Tim Ryan or Seth Moulton if my choice were between one of them and the genius. It’s not the people that vote who will decide the next election. It’s the people who stay home.

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Another in an endless series of modest proposals

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

It appears that William Barr is about to be held in contempt of Congress, but, this being an era in which our judiciary is now overflowing with rightwing ideologues, it is highly likely that it will take years for court battles to enforce the citation to play out, by which time he will either be out of office, or we will have comfortably settled into a dictatorship with the trappings of a Republic, much like Rome in the days of Caesar. (See my most recent post).

It occurs to me that there is a way to get some form of immediate sanction imposed on Barr. Though it is unlikely to have much legal efficacy, i.e., it will not result in his being fined or jailed, it nonetheless would have some propaganda value.

I don’t know what state issued Barr’s law license, but assuming it’s one in which the legal profession still believes in the rule of law, his license to practice law could be revoked. It seems to this now retired lawyer that a refusal to honor a lawfully issued subpoena would be sufficient grounds for disbarment. The federal courts would, or should, have no say in the matter, though I wouldn’t put it past the current federal judiciary to come up with a “just this time and this will never apply to Democrats” ruling to try to block the disbarment.

Still, something to think about. Of course if he’s licensed in someplace like Alabama the bar would probably rather give him an award.

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Hail Donald!

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

This is something that has occurred to me on numerous occasions. It occurred to me again as I read about the toddler in chief making an idiot of himself in England.

It now appears more likely than not that future historians (history is written by the winners, after all) will give the genius credit for delivering the final blows that brought down the American republic and replaced it with a dictatorship or autocracy. He may well be our Julius Caesar. Certainly there were Romans (Sulla comes to mind) that helped pave the way, just as there were Republicans here, but it was Julius who delivered the final blow.

Ah, but what a falling off is there. We should truly be ashamed that a man as mediocre as the genius will take us down. Before he became a dictator, Julius was a successful general. Contrast that with the genius, who was a failed businessman. Julius was an accomplished writer, who wrote, all by himself, what is considered at least a minor classic. The genius has never even reada book. Julius was at least a man of substance. Our guy is a snake oil selling buffoon, and we are still letting him destroy our Republic.

One other thing. When Julius met his well deserved end, it was at the hands of the Senators of Rome, who were making a last ditch attempt to stave off the inevitable. The majority of our Senators have enabled our child emperor at every turn.

No doubt historians of the future, like Fox “journalists” of today, will find a way to make him out to be a great man, but they’ve got their work cut out for him. Shame on us for choosing such an idiot to bring about our downfall.

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Mueller Time

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

This morning I got an email from my wife, who was at work, telling me about the upcoming Mueller appearance, and suggesting I watch it. My first reaction was negative, as I told her I was afraid he was going to cop out, by which I meant that he would simply repeat what we already knew and that he would be circumspect, etc. 

In the end, I did watch, and my basic reaction was that he didn’t say anything we didn’t already know. I wrote to my wife and told her it was a “dud”.

An hour or two later I pulled up my RSS reader, and lo and behold, I found that my point of view was not widely shared. Josh Marshal gave it a rather tepid reception, but apparently the mainstream media felt differently. Even the folks at Fox, according to the folks at Crooks & Liars, interpreted his comments as a implicit call for Trump’s impeachment. Somehow, the mere repetition of what we could already read in the report was a game changer. For instance, it is now news that he would have absolved Trump of any criminal liability if the evidence supported such a move, but it didn’t. That is more or less a direct quote from the report.

The Prince of Denmark once said, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. Mueller’s statement could have been dismissed in much the way Josh and I dismissed it, but apparently there are folks that thinkit makes a difference if you say something in front of a camera that you’ve already set down in black and white. They happen to be the people that matter, the talking heads that appear on our television screens and the people who write newspaper headlines. Maybe Mueller was smart enough to see that was the case. In any event, it appears that his little speech will push the country further toward supporting the idea of impeachment, thereby putting more pressure on Pelosi to commence impeachment proceedings. I believe that Pelosi is perfectly happy to be pressured. I personally don’t care if they ever actually impeach, but I do think they should be investigating relentlessly. Using the impeachment process makes it all the harder for the genius’s judicial enablers to prevent that investigation. Even Kavanaugh would have a hard time (not saying he won’t anyway) coming up with a reason why the constitutional power to impeach does not carry with it the constitutional right to gather evidence.

We’ll have to see what the future brings, but maybe Mueller’s humdrum little speech might have started something.

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Who could have guessed that Biden would be uninspiring?

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Let me start by saying that I would vote for anyone with a D after his or her name in the 2020 presidential race. I desperately want us to win. In future posts, I may not so preface, but it should always be assumed.

That being said, I tremble in fear at the thought of a Joe Biden presidency. Here, Atrios points out that Biden’s inability to attract crowds is a problem, either with the candidate himself or with his campaign staff.

His staff may be partly to blame, but I think it’s Biden. Perhaps there are people in this country who are actually enthusiastic about the prospects of a Biden presidency, but they are few and far between. He is up in the polls partly due to name recognition, and partly because people who don’t really think too deeply think he’s the guy to beat Trump. And the latter is partly because he’s been anointed by the same people who anointed Hillary, and they figure that when all is said and done, he’s what they’ll be getting. Can anyone even articulate what Biden would do as president, or what he would like to do, other than not be Trump? All the other candidates are not Trump too, but they also have (except for the Seth Moulton and Tim Ryan DINOs) policy objectives that they articulate. We need for people to come out and vote, and they will not be inspired to do so by Joe Biden.

As a candidate, he will be his own worst enemy At least Hillary grasped most of the realities of the political landscape in which she was operating. That is, she understood that Republicans would take no prisoners and give no quarter. Biden is delusional. It is inevitable that, if nominated, he will make a fool of himself time and again, and the press will do to him what it does to all Democratic candidates: concentrate fire on him while giving Trump a “Trump being Trump” pass (Remember Al Gore, the alleged liar, and John Kerry, the alleged flip-flopper, and Hillary’s emails?). They’ll do it to whoever gets the Democratic nomination, but they’ll have so much more to fire at with Biden. Or maybe I should say “fire with”, since he’ll be giving them the ammunition. If anyone with a reasonable shot at the nomination can depress Democratic leaning turnout, it’s Joe Biden.

I still believe, or want to believe, that he’ll fade, but the truth is that given the gigantic field out there, if he keeps his numbers in the high teens, and the good candidates split the informed vote, we could end up sleep walking toward a replay of that awful night in November, 2016. 

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We could use this here

Saturday, May 25, 2019

The British Labour Party suffers from some of the same defects as its American cousin, the Democrats. There is a cadre of right wing alleged Labourites holding it back, and it is easily intimidated by right wing bullshit. But they’re not all like that. I saw this video on Crooks & Liars and I felt I had to pass it on. We could use some of this on this side of the puddle.

My only criticism is that he doesn’t know how to pronounce “shit”.

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