After reading this, how is anyone not an artist?
Carlin’s career spanned more than 40 years, remarkable longevity for a stand-up artist…
Sure, Carlin had tightly scripted presentations, using pretty delicate word play, that were about as high as stand up comedy gets. But it’s still a guy on a stage telling jokes, a large portion of which are scatological or sexual in nature. If this is art, I tell you, the word is meaningless.
Apollo posted this at 7:50 PM EDT on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 as Politics and the English Language
No Comments »
I was mildly excited a few days ago when Obama delivered a speech saying that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” Like anyone who has even a slight amount of knowledge on the topic, I know that whether Jerusalem should be divided is one of the big issues in the near east. I liked that Obama was taking Israel’s side.
Silly me, I should have known Obama never means what he says. He now claims that he didn’t know “undivided” was an important word in the region. The Reuters story defends him against charges of naivete. I’m not sure why that’s the issue; “ignorance” is a much better word. Obama was just mouthing off about something he doesn’t know much about.
Apollo posted this at 10:34 AM EDT on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 as Politics and the English Language, Audacity of Hype
No Comments »
The McGovern-Dole Food for Education program is the rare farm bill that I think conservatives can legitimately like: it provides third world schools with lunches for poor children, so they have extra motivation to get educated. Congress plans to gut it, and the namesakes are puzzled:
How can the world’s hungriest schoolchildren be denied meals while the farm bill being debated in a House-Senate conference provides millions in subsidies for wealthy farmers? That’s what Congress proposes. In all fairness, it should not become law.
We are puzzled that Congress wants to increase overall farm bill spending by billions of dollars yet reduce by more than 90 percent the mandatory funding to feed hungry children. The program at issue saves lives and has a proven ability to break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness in poor countries.
We are not expressing disagreement because the program, supported by Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, bears our names. We believe, simply put, that a costly humanitarian mistake would be made. Funding for the program would go from $840 million over five years to $60 million this coming year. After that, there would be no guarantee of funding at all. The $840 million in funding represents less than 1 percent of the proposed total spending in the farm bill. At a time when increasingly high food prices are pushing millions of families around the globe deeper into poverty, we must step up, not reduce, our efforts to feed hungry schoolchildren.
Congress already subsidizes ethanol, which is raising food prices (corn that makes ethanol cannot be eaten and prevents edible crops from being planted in the first place, reducing the food supply, which makes food more expensive). One would think that, after taking counterproductive steps, politicians would attempt to control the damage.
Then again, the farmers vote; the third-world children do not; bet on the farmers.
Hubbard posted this at 3:12 PM EDT on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 as Politics and the English Language, Amer-I-Can!
No Comments »
Vice President Dick Cheney, 2008:
RADDATZ:Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
CHENEY: So?
President Abraham Lincoln, 1858:
In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.
The greatest failing of the Bush Administration isn’t its inability to communicate; it’s its abject refusal to even make an effort at it. I don’t want an administration whose policies are set by today’s polls, but I also don’t want one who treats us with such foolish — such unnecessary! — contempt.
As Jonah Goldberg argued last year, Cheney’s stoicism would be a lot more admirable if only it wasn’t so stupid.
Tom posted this at 9:12 PM EDT on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 as George Bush Sucks!, Politics and the English Language
10 Comments »
Before today I didn’t know anything about Daniel Gross. But this column (which says he’s a business columnist for Newsweek and writes Moneybox for Slate) is so ridiculous that I’m now confident that he’s a moron. In the same column he points out that lowball economic figures for this year predict between 1.7% and 2.7% growth, and then declares that we’re in a recession. Indeed, he goes so far as to say of Ben Bernake’s recent statement that the economic environement has become “distinctly less favorable”:
Distinctly less favorable? Subdued? It calls to mind Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s comment on Aug. 14, 1945, that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”
Is it just me, or has the media in general been chomping at the bit for a recession for the last year or so? Dorothy and I notice on the radio that economic news is cast in the worst possible light, even if it’s not that bad. Are we so spoiled on a steady-growth low-inflation economy that a 1.7% growth rate (which is similar to what western Europe has been experiencing for a while now) is considered a recession? Call me old school, but I think a recession should involve the economy actually receding.
Apollo posted this at 5:08 PM EST on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 as Politics and the English Language, It's Economics - Stupid!
No Comments »
ch
r: 
p: