An AP writer decided to make things vivid for us in his report of the latest "national security" job swaps. He writes that President Obama wanted "maximum continuity, installing road tested warriors steeped in his policies."
You're not allowed to remember that Candidate Obama labeled such Beltway old-timers as architects of the failed policies of the past. That he promised a massive overhaul of the Washington power structure.
You are forbidden to observe that his actual accomplishment is a rearrangement of butts in the ash tray. Because Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
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Showing posts with label Mothering the Tongue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mothering the Tongue. Show all posts
Mar 30, 2011
Mother Jones Weeps. Good.
An appreciative nod to The Associated Press this morning for this lede on the Wisconsin saga:
"Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans face a new hurdle in their campaign to curb public sector unions' power."
Reporter Todd Richmond and his editor rate compliments for the final five words. The construction recognizes that there is more to the debate than the shrieks of public titters frightened at the thought that their grip on your wallet may be slipping, ergo diminishing their "rights."
News guys from the outset wore out the phrase "strip unions of bargaining rights." as though they had never run across the concept of "at will" relationships between the person who writes the paycheck and the one who cashes it.
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The mass of U.S. labor law is daunting, but anyone interested might start with the Clayton Act. The union provision, stripped to its essentials, prohibited a trucking company from obtaining enough power to shut down American motor transport but ceded the right to do just that to, for instance, Jimmy Hoffa.
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"Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans face a new hurdle in their campaign to curb public sector unions' power."
Reporter Todd Richmond and his editor rate compliments for the final five words. The construction recognizes that there is more to the debate than the shrieks of public titters frightened at the thought that their grip on your wallet may be slipping, ergo diminishing their "rights."
News guys from the outset wore out the phrase "strip unions of bargaining rights." as though they had never run across the concept of "at will" relationships between the person who writes the paycheck and the one who cashes it.
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The mass of U.S. labor law is daunting, but anyone interested might start with the Clayton Act. The union provision, stripped to its essentials, prohibited a trucking company from obtaining enough power to shut down American motor transport but ceded the right to do just that to, for instance, Jimmy Hoffa.
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Feb 20, 2011
Dang, can't remember if it's the Year of the Turtle
While the Wisconsin teachers continue their collective tantrum, a bunch of Iowa "educators" is heading for a nice vacation conference in China. The news report glaringly neglects to say who's paying, but it's a safe enough bet that they're not dipping into their own pedagogical pockets.
Local radio permits one of the teachers to explain the purpose:
“Everybody participates in a group and comes up with different projects to do, trying to flatten our world so that we can show the kids that we’re all just people,” (says Lisa Schaa, of Stratford Elementary School).
This tends to explain the Huckabee win in our most recent presidential caucuses.
Local radio permits one of the teachers to explain the purpose:
“Everybody participates in a group and comes up with different projects to do, trying to flatten our world so that we can show the kids that we’re all just people,” (says Lisa Schaa, of Stratford Elementary School).
This tends to explain the Huckabee win in our most recent presidential caucuses.
Feb 19, 2011
Quick take on language
The word "liberal" seems to have to become anathema to liberals. I have seen it less and less for a couple of years or so, and it appears hardly at all in the Wisconsin reporting.
It's been replaced by "progressive" -- the statist left rebranding itself, screwing around with the language -- to hide motives in order maintain progress toward national bankruptcy.
It's been replaced by "progressive" -- the statist left rebranding itself, screwing around with the language -- to hide motives in order maintain progress toward national bankruptcy.
Feb 14, 2011
Fancy that: Merchant of Death to Advise Obama
A veteran Ruger executive is about to join the Obama team.
The Ruger news release:
Kim Pritula, Director of Export/ATF Compliance & Security, has been appointed to the President’s Export Council Subcommittee on Export Administration (PECSEA).
Sounds okay to me. She's been with Sturm Ruger some 30 years, helping the bosses navigate the Kafka novels which make up ATF and other Washington rules about who can sell what to whom. But maybe it would have been better if the Ruger flack had ended the release right there, because:
“Kim has a very unique talent and passion for export regulation and plays a critical role in the Sturm, Ruger organization,” said Ruger President and CEO Mike Fifer.
Well, I'm pleased for you, too, Kim. It is a personal achievement. However the quote your PR guy made for President Fifer begs a point some of us find important. Is it actually a good thing to hold "a passion for export regulation?" We libertarian scallywags tend to think of regulation as, at best, a sometimes necessary evil to be treated about like a spitting cobra sharing your howdah.
It would be picky these less-literate days to sigh over your "very" unique talent and passion. Better we should spend our effort finding another word to mean the only one in the world -- a new one that will serve until public relations guys and advertising copywriters start loading it up with modifiers until it, too, deteriorates to just another word for "somewhat unusual."
Anyway, it's nice to know someone from the firearms industry is functioning in high councils of government, so congratulations.
(My spies tell me the Tune-In is still the most pleasant bar on Capitol Hill.)
The Ruger news release:
Kim Pritula, Director of Export/ATF Compliance & Security, has been appointed to the President’s Export Council Subcommittee on Export Administration (PECSEA).
Sounds okay to me. She's been with Sturm Ruger some 30 years, helping the bosses navigate the Kafka novels which make up ATF and other Washington rules about who can sell what to whom. But maybe it would have been better if the Ruger flack had ended the release right there, because:
“Kim has a very unique talent and passion for export regulation and plays a critical role in the Sturm, Ruger organization,” said Ruger President and CEO Mike Fifer.
Well, I'm pleased for you, too, Kim. It is a personal achievement. However the quote your PR guy made for President Fifer begs a point some of us find important. Is it actually a good thing to hold "a passion for export regulation?" We libertarian scallywags tend to think of regulation as, at best, a sometimes necessary evil to be treated about like a spitting cobra sharing your howdah.
It would be picky these less-literate days to sigh over your "very" unique talent and passion. Better we should spend our effort finding another word to mean the only one in the world -- a new one that will serve until public relations guys and advertising copywriters start loading it up with modifiers until it, too, deteriorates to just another word for "somewhat unusual."
Anyway, it's nice to know someone from the firearms industry is functioning in high councils of government, so congratulations.
(My spies tell me the Tune-In is still the most pleasant bar on Capitol Hill.)
Weasel words
It usually pretty tough to find something I agree with in the opinion pages of the Boston Globe, but a piece on using language to defeat meaning pushes my like button.
As a matter of respecting widespread sensibilities, it is all well and good to console a tyke who has fallen on his "tail." And that pretty thing over there is not "tail;" it is a woman. Law Dog has, to our amused profit, spread "wedding tackle" far and wide in libertarian Blogville. There's no particular harm in referring to the dead as those who have "passed away."
"But telling citizens that torture is “abuse” and mercenaries are “contractors” — or in Orwell’s words, that burning and bombing villages is “pacification” — is a different sort of enterprise. These euphemisms — the top-down terminology invented and deployed to serve the interests of the coiners — are the ones that give “euphemism” a bad name."
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As a matter of respecting widespread sensibilities, it is all well and good to console a tyke who has fallen on his "tail." And that pretty thing over there is not "tail;" it is a woman. Law Dog has, to our amused profit, spread "wedding tackle" far and wide in libertarian Blogville. There's no particular harm in referring to the dead as those who have "passed away."
"But telling citizens that torture is “abuse” and mercenaries are “contractors” — or in Orwell’s words, that burning and bombing villages is “pacification” — is a different sort of enterprise. These euphemisms — the top-down terminology invented and deployed to serve the interests of the coiners — are the ones that give “euphemism” a bad name."
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Feb 10, 2011
So that's what I should call it
Police in Raleigh, N, Calinky, just hate whores. (If you don't believe me, Google.)
So word that some of the cops are renting horizontal girl time embarrassed the chief until he found just exactly the right words to characterize Officer Friendly's little lapses. He explained that
"...administrative violations may have occurred and that they stemmed from voluntary interactions between a small number of officers and non-departmental individuals,"
Reminds me I need to take New Dog to the vet to confirm that she's been immunized against voluntary interactions.
So word that some of the cops are renting horizontal girl time embarrassed the chief until he found just exactly the right words to characterize Officer Friendly's little lapses. He explained that
"...administrative violations may have occurred and that they stemmed from voluntary interactions between a small number of officers and non-departmental individuals,"
Reminds me I need to take New Dog to the vet to confirm that she's been immunized against voluntary interactions.
Jan 29, 2011
Hoplophobe hoot
This guy is news editor of the Grand View University newspaper in Des Moines. He is presumably unarmed, but terrifying. In a piece bemoaning the recent Iowa shall-issue law he writes:
So, Devlin, you don't agree officers should shoot when, for instance, they desire to inhibit a crack-rattled 250-pound thug coming at you fast with a Louisville Slugger?
Of, if a cop makes a mistake, that the unnecessarily dead should be comforted because the bullet in his brain was not fired by an untrained amateur?
I suppose it's possible to believe that I cherry-picked the item, looking for the worst possible paragraph. (We've all written some stinkers, haven't we?)
No, down a little further:
The exception to carry guns should rely solely in law enforcement and military because I have never heard of a purely positive outcome after one has been fired.
What's been fired? A lawman? A National Guard PFC? (See Wagner's advice to high school freshmen on making referents clear.) And, setting aside the tortured syntax, do you intend to spend your journalism career making universal pronouncements based on things you personally have or haven't heard?
Or what you hope, without actual thought?
I hope the clean background checks are enough to categorize people as sane enough not to incite a shootout with other gun carriers.
I see. You hope shootouts are limited to folks with guns shooting it out with folks who have no guns.
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Ladies and gentlemen, we all have bad days, and maybe Dev was suffering through one, manifested in marginal literacy and more than marginal incoherence throughout the piece.
On the other hand, we might be dealing with the error President Obama committed Tuesday night when he told congress and the world that every youngster "should have access to higher education."
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H/T to Between Two Rivers where, by the way, there is yeoman work in keeping track of local efforts to gut the shall-issue law.
Jan 3, 2011
From the Poop Deck
You want to learn about lewd? Make an appointment. I'll teach you lewd. Like a real sailor. Like the talk that got talked in the forward bos'n' locker on the USS Henderson.
Captain Honors of the Bird Farm Enterprise? Hell, Mate, when it comes to lewd he's a brown-shoe flyboy (crudity whose referent is a WAVE's most private regions). He's Ozzie Nelson playing to Oscar Wilde.
Now, maybe the New Navy isn't the place for scurvy-arsed shellbacks who can still whip out a long splice blindfolded on the fo'c's'le at Beaufort 10 while belting out a chorus of On The Good Ship Venus.
So maybe Captain Honors should have read to the crew from the Collected Wit and Wisdom of Joe Biden.
The main thing that really gripes my briny butt is the generality of the shave-arse media lubbers screaming for his keel-haul. Who the eff are they to be evaluating anything saltier than whether the Lohan wench ought to spend another week in rehab? Bunch of flotsam from Miss Porter's Country Day School, and they ought to shove a bung or something into their gaping polliwog chow holes.
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"First we set sail for the Canaries..."
Captain Honors of the Bird Farm Enterprise? Hell, Mate, when it comes to lewd he's a brown-shoe flyboy (crudity whose referent is a WAVE's most private regions). He's Ozzie Nelson playing to Oscar Wilde.
Now, maybe the New Navy isn't the place for scurvy-arsed shellbacks who can still whip out a long splice blindfolded on the fo'c's'le at Beaufort 10 while belting out a chorus of On The Good Ship Venus.
So maybe Captain Honors should have read to the crew from the Collected Wit and Wisdom of Joe Biden.
The main thing that really gripes my briny butt is the generality of the shave-arse media lubbers screaming for his keel-haul. Who the eff are they to be evaluating anything saltier than whether the Lohan wench ought to spend another week in rehab? Bunch of flotsam from Miss Porter's Country Day School, and they ought to shove a bung or something into their gaping polliwog chow holes.
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"First we set sail for the Canaries..."
Dec 28, 2010
Sarah Palin Really Can't Spell
She typed it refudiate.
She meant refeudiate, of course.
As in: "In 1941 we had to refeudiate with the Germans."
She meant refeudiate, of course.
As in: "In 1941 we had to refeudiate with the Germans."
Dec 16, 2010
Style note
I shall henceforth require my correspondents to use word frobnicate from time to time. As, for instance, threatening: "If those damned statists keep frobnicating the Constitution, I am going to kick their incrementalist arses."
I know. All geekish young readers are already aware of the term, but my South African pal Wouter has this morning bestowed the lovely gift of discovery on me. He had to frobnicate this and that to make a new computer battery work.
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On a related note, I am pleased to see reduced media usage of the horrible and unnecessary wordoid "bling." Thank you all for heeding its official prohibition by the authoritative TMR.
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I know. All geekish young readers are already aware of the term, but my South African pal Wouter has this morning bestowed the lovely gift of discovery on me. He had to frobnicate this and that to make a new computer battery work.
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On a related note, I am pleased to see reduced media usage of the horrible and unnecessary wordoid "bling." Thank you all for heeding its official prohibition by the authoritative TMR.
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Sep 15, 2010
Edwin Newman
Dead at 91, and we have lost a premier defender of the English language as a vehicle for the exchange of rational thought.
Or, as Wiki says, an old-school journalist with a "fierce belief that degrading the language was damaging the nation."
RIP.
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Or, as Wiki says, an old-school journalist with a "fierce belief that degrading the language was damaging the nation."
RIP.
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Kansas Concealed Carry, Concealed Meaning
It's probably wrong to come down too hard on the New Kansas. Jayhawks had pretty much solved the Sibelius problem even before shipping her off to be one of His Obamaness's unicorn herders. It has become shall-issue, and the new law seems reasonable enough.*
However, as I was digging through some administrative rules on concealed carry around the nation, I ran across this from the Kansas attorney general:
The Concealed Carry Unit (Unit) of the Attorney General’s Office (AG) is tasked with the administration, interpretation and to a quasi degree, enforcement of the KPFPA. (Kansas Personal and Family Protection Act.)
How does a cop or prosecutor enforce a law to a "quasi" degree? That kind of language from people with the power to toss me in jail makes me think of Kafka's prisoner.
But maybe the law clerk who wrote it was just having a bad day. Or maybe it was a warning to other law enforcement agencies that they would have to do the heavy lifting. Still, quasi makes me queasy.
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*At least reasonable enough so long as we are stuck with the notion that it is okay to require a permit to exercise Constitutional rights.
The Concealed Carry Unit (Unit) of the Attorney General’s Office (AG) is tasked with the administration, interpretation and to a quasi degree, enforcement of the KPFPA. (Kansas Personal and Family Protection Act.)
How does a cop or prosecutor enforce a law to a "quasi" degree? That kind of language from people with the power to toss me in jail makes me think of Kafka's prisoner.
But maybe the law clerk who wrote it was just having a bad day. Or maybe it was a warning to other law enforcement agencies that they would have to do the heavy lifting. Still, quasi makes me queasy.
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*At least reasonable enough so long as we are stuck with the notion that it is okay to require a permit to exercise Constitutional rights.
Sep 11, 2010
He Speaks
He can be forgiven the pompous tone. Today's commemoration justifies a measure of formality. But words represent ideas, and ideas have consequences.
"If there is a lesson to be drawn on this anniversary, it is this: We are one nation — one people — bound not only by grief, but by a set of common ideals," the president said Saturday ....
...eine volk, eine reich, eine fuhrer, Mr. President?*
"One nation" is all right, but, Sir, we are not "one people." We never intended ourselves to be a blob of metabolizing protein.
The United States is the idea of 320 million discrete, individual human beings, united by the beauty and the logic of personal sovereignty and voluntary cooperation. The result of that interaction among free men and women is the nationhood you speak of.
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*Objections to premature Godwinisms duly noted.
"If there is a lesson to be drawn on this anniversary, it is this: We are one nation — one people — bound not only by grief, but by a set of common ideals," the president said Saturday ....
...eine volk, eine reich, eine fuhrer, Mr. President?*
"One nation" is all right, but, Sir, we are not "one people." We never intended ourselves to be a blob of metabolizing protein.
The United States is the idea of 320 million discrete, individual human beings, united by the beauty and the logic of personal sovereignty and voluntary cooperation. The result of that interaction among free men and women is the nationhood you speak of.
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*Objections to premature Godwinisms duly noted.
Sep 9, 2010
Only in SUX
Sioux City folks announce this year's Kingdom of Riverssance.
It's a festival down by the river -- the Big Sioux or the Missouri, don't know or care which.
As a public service I report a suspicion that "Riverssance" is a Chamber of Commerce guy's brainstorm. "Hey, y'know, Riverssance, like we combine river and renaissance, y'know."
And everyone on the committee agrees it is a really fun name.
Blecchh. SUX
Aug 18, 2010
Quick Take on the Zombie Threat
I am not sure we do our libertarian selves a great favor in perpetuating and laboring the Zombie metaphor. If and when TSHTF, the enemy will be healthy and well-dressed hordes (three regiments per horde) of lively anti-Constitutionalists.
It was fun for a while, like knock-knock jokes.
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It was fun for a while, like knock-knock jokes.
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Aug 3, 2010
Second Warning
The AP is again reporting the annual compilation of auto thefts by model. The top of the list is the "blinged-out Cadillac Escalade SUV, a favorite of A-listers like Tiger Woods...".
I have previously, in this space, recorded my decision that bling is a silly and unnecessary word which should be avoided. I now note that I have already spoken sharply to the mainstream media about this, and my patience is not inexhaustible.
I have previously, in this space, recorded my decision that bling is a silly and unnecessary word which should be avoided. I now note that I have already spoken sharply to the mainstream media about this, and my patience is not inexhaustible.
Jul 6, 2010
Jun 21, 2010
It's always nice to start a day smiling at a well-turned phrase.
Today's grin, about when worlds collude, comes courtesy of Roberta, who, by the way, is a dependably dab hand at the art.
The post is about screwy flying things, and you science fiction fans will like it. Me? The Piper Cub, the DC3, and the F-86. No other aircraft is required in reality or in fantasy.
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Today's grin, about when worlds collude, comes courtesy of Roberta, who, by the way, is a dependably dab hand at the art.
The post is about screwy flying things, and you science fiction fans will like it. Me? The Piper Cub, the DC3, and the F-86. No other aircraft is required in reality or in fantasy.
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Jun 4, 2010
Please shut up about it, Mr. President
This news cycle His Obamaness is "furious." That might be worse than a couple-three days ago when he was "outraged."
Or might not; I am not in the White House Press Office loop on choosing modifiers to specify the exact status of the Presidential Nervous System.
We are within our rights to ask the President to close his gaping gulf of a mouth unless he has something reasonable to say about either capping the well or mitigating the effects of the spill. We do not need, Sir, blow by blow accounts of the state of your emotional innards.
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Or might not; I am not in the White House Press Office loop on choosing modifiers to specify the exact status of the Presidential Nervous System.
We are within our rights to ask the President to close his gaping gulf of a mouth unless he has something reasonable to say about either capping the well or mitigating the effects of the spill. We do not need, Sir, blow by blow accounts of the state of your emotional innards.
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