Some Words

We take another step toward Russia, and I don’t mean diplomatically.

The sad thing is that there is always going to be 20+% of the population who are totally OK with things like this. The natural inclination of many is to say that things like martial law don’t matter to them, because they don’t intend to break any major rules. History has provided us with ample evidence that this is not the case, but people don’t realize that until they are being carried off.

Bush hasn’t used this new power yet, and he may never use it in his term of office. I certainly hope not. But even if he trusts himself with this power, (I certainly don’t.) he has no way of being sure that the next man or woman in the oval office will use it well. We change leaders fairly quickly here, and we set up a system where that helps prevent them from getting too comfortable with their power, but we should be more careful about what powers we pass on to the next guy.

Martial law is a state that negates freedoms that Americans consider important. This issue will sleep as long as a state of martial law isn’t invoked, but when it happens, America will have to ask itself if allowing one man to cut off basic freedoms that easily is anti-American. I just wish this had been considered by the public, who were largely in the dark, before the damn thing went to Bush for a signature.

While the U.S. does not officially recognize me as a dual citizen (my father is Canadian), last I checked Canada does. That’s given me a nice escape hatch to joke about over drinks with friends.

Now, if everyone on the left fled to Canada, that would obviously be a bad thing. It’s better that we use our votes here to have some, admittedly small, influence on the way things are going. Sure you can vote by absentee ballot, but we all know that’s cheating. Also, Canada is not easy to get into. That enormous border that all the weed gets smuggled over? You have to ask politely to get across. We’re American. We’d much rather just punch the guard in the face and run. But for those of you who are dead set on flight to Canada, Boing Boing has you covered.

It’s been a good month to me, in several ways. Billmon made it even better by posting this little bit on Abramoff.

Now, it strikes me that this is where anti-Semetic bull shit really shines. I’m Jewish. A few times in my life, that has actually lead to problems. My locker was defaced in junior high school with swastikas. The effect of this act was lessened by the fact that they had spelled Jew as ‘Gue.’ Seriously, only one letter from the actual word, and it’s in the wrong place. Come on now. To this day I say ‘Gue’ (pronounced “Goo-ay”) to mean, “You just tried, and failed, and now you look like an ass.”

Anyhow, the part of me that views anti-Semitism as a kind of carnival sideshow, really wants this to take off. Here’s the meme I’m looking for. Jack Abramoff was working for the Dems all along. He was just trying to weasle his way into the Republican party to bring them down from the inside. It was ordered by the International Jewish Banking conspiracy. I’m not talking about Dan Bern’s backup band here. I’m talking about the guys who never seem to give me my dividends. That may be due to the fact that they don’t exist, but a boy can dream.

Also, if they were real, they might not take to my halfsy heritage.

Anyhow, I think the single funniest thing that could happen here, (Because isn’t that what we’re all looking for? The laughter?) is for the Dems to start rehabilitating Abramoff’s image, call him a double agent. Why? Just to piss of the Republicans.

Mark found some odd wording in a New York Times article.

Over at Crooked Timber they’re exploring some delicate wording that people have been looking at from several different angles too.

And at Open University, Eric Rauchway looks at how writing effects perception of the writer

Well, if that isn’t a call for clear writing… I refuse to conclude my cliches. I think, and in this I am heavily biased right now, that teaching better editing skills would be a big help here. The first instinct in writing is often not the right one. In answering a multiple choice question, so I am told, it is, but not when writing.

When you are writing quickly, your first instincts (unless you do an awful lot of writing) are going to trend toward more conversational English. That’s not so good. This isn’t merely a formality issue. Writing relies on structure and punctuation a lot more than spoken word does. You can inflect things to create all kinds of nuanced meaning. When you don’t hear it, inferences can be made, and those inferences can tear your pretty sentence to shreds.

And just as I finish writing that last little bit I this post by Ezra Klein. So… Yeah, didn’t say it was an easy thing to come back against the Republican machine.

Over at Whiskey Bar, Billmon turned out an article on how the Dems today are like the Whigs of yesteryear.

The first is something I am going to call smugness. The video I got from The Poor Man Institute shows a Dem doing exactly what he should be doing. He looks brash, confident, and like it decision is simple. Does it matter that his point could be more nuanced? No, what is important is that he’s making it look like the Dems have already won. The Republican who is arguing against him just gets flustered and panics. That’s huge. A lot of people don’t really follow who’s winning in national politics, they just look for who is strutting around like they won. Now, if you don’t have anything to say, it can be tough to strut. But there are things to say. The Repbulcans have spent years running around saying they support the popular stuff, while the Dems only support the fringe stuff.

Second, Republicans are strapped into the Oil machine. If you’re a corporation that makes green products do you want to give to the people who are getting even more money from the oil companies? No. Green companies are growing, and as they begin to get large enough to give money to political campaigns, they’re almost certain to give them to Dems, who won’t be legislating to keep the oil companies in power. Sure, some will give to the Green Party, but if you’re a smart business owner, you give your money to the party that has the best chance of influencing policy and will listen to you.

The final point I was looking to make is one that I’m a little more dubious of. My generation may or may not skew toward the Dems. There are millions of people who grew up in the Clinton years and are currently in the stage where they aren’t a reliable vote. The first two or three presidential elections after getting the right to vote seem to pass by a lot of young people. As they age, people tend to vote more, and most of the people I know are for gay rights. This may be the skewed sample of people I know. Still, it’s harder to demonize someone you know, and that generation grew knowing more openly gay friends and media personalities.

Does all that turn the tide? Probably not on its own, but it helps.

Ann Coulter trying to rewrite history. They cut out the part where she says she “has some Canadian friends.”

I’m too busy breaking my fast to write much, but here’s a little something that they dug up over at The Poor Man Institute.

The party of Lincoln it is not. That just made me so happy.

Well… So that happned…

A cry has gone out and been ignored by the people in power. Josh also managed to squeeze a little fun out of my Canadian half.

It’s tempting to look at this as some sort of legistlative Sudetenland in the Czechoslovak Crisis of our constitution. Maybe they’re just trying to throw him a board until he’s out of office and we can stop publicly announcing that we plan to torture the shit out of people. Or maybe they just don’t want it to stay illegal, so that the country can avoid the embarrassment of trying our own president for war crimes.

It’s a pity I don’t believe either of those excuses. Even if I did they still wouldn’t be enough. Maybe if Laura Bush withheld sex from Bush until he stopped torturing people. I hear that’s been working recently.

I appears that my uncle has put out a new album. I’ll have to check that out. I’ll be honest, he’s not always to my taste. But I sing “Without My Woman” in the shower all the time. When his stuff does work for me, it’s really fun.

And also, college Republicans at the U of Mich are crazy. I must be reading the wrong blogs though, because I didn’t see any of them link this story to the Dick Cheney Hunting mishap. For shame.

iTunes 7 still can’t get the album art for “Come on Feel the Illinoise!” Come on iTunes, I can see it in the damn music store. Don’t punish me because my brother gave me the album as a gift. Not since transparency worked its way into Xorg have I worked this hard to get a pointless feature to work.

So, the Editors over at The Poor Man Institute discuss amazing madcap adventures in racial profiling.

The Editors lament that even as racial profiling it is stupid because Muslims who don’t want to blow up planes pray too. They have a point, but you see, the stewardess was actually very canny to have the praying Hasid leave the plane. You see, when we Jews pray it creates a tiny, almost imperceptible, amount of liquid. It is the only miracle we are capable of. This liquid is actually baby tears, which are the only things that can soften our coal black hearts. Baby tears, as it turns out, are also a key ingredient in bomb making. So by kicking the praying Jew off the plane the stewardess helps to prevent other passengers from making bombs.

Actually there are two other things that melt this Jew’s cold obsidian heart. The picture of Audry Hepburn on a bike from this Treehugger post, and the kittens of cuteoverload.com.

So David Brooks pumps out the crazy and gets smacked the fuck down. Balance is restored to the world. But does anyone but me remember the speech he made to a Young Republican group last year that was broadcast on C-Span? I mean, I feel really dorky admiting that I was watching C-Span for more than the two seconds it takes to get past it while channel surfing. But one day, I don’t remember why, I stopped there. David was there, playing the usual role of Republican apologist in chief. He was going into the usual stuff about the ‘burbs growing and feeding the Republican machine.

That’s when things got sureal for me. He stood on the podium and basically said that the Republicans had screwed a bunch of stuff up. Then he said something that amazed me, and I’m paraphrasing here, I would give anything for the actual text, it was the gold standard of ‘what are you thining.’ He said that Republicans had shown themselves to be bad at governing, but it was ok, because the demographics were set for them to continue getting elected. Now, I’m probably crazy, because I’ve been taking hippy drugs here at work all day, but if you say that you’re bad at governing, maybe the solution is not to govern? Play to your strenghts man! He said Dems were good at governing (ish, again, I’m paraphrasing here, he probably weaseled around on it more) but the Republicans were better at getting elected. There is an obvious solution here.

Republicans should be campaign managers and let the Dems to the governing. Hey, I didn’t say it. I just twisted a half remembered speech by David Brooks into saying it.