“Friday, the Stock Market suffered its third triple digit loss in a week. The good news is your Social Security funds aren’t in there YET.” — Amy Pohler, Weekend Update, SNL
Monthly Archives: April 2005
I will not be categorized
Your Linguistic Profile: |
| 60% General American English |
| 20% Yankee |
| 10% Dixie |
| 10% Upper Midwestern |
| 0% Midwestern |
15. “Y’all”…
Just rolls off your tongue [+5%]
Is not sometihng (sic) you say [-5%]
I have a quarrel with all surveys. I’ve never taken ONE that didn’t put me in a bind with its choices. I grew up in Northern Virginia (accent on Northern), a few miles from Washington, DC. My parents were from Kentucky and Tennessee. “Y’all” is something I *almost* never say; “you guys,” “you two,” are more common in my speech, but I do need a collective/plural you — as most languages provide.
In Virginia, we drove on Root 1, but I take a particular rOUTe to get somewhere.
A cellar is an unfinished basement. My house has a crawlspace.
I grew up accenting “impotent” differently if it was figurative or literal. I struggled to identify the difference in meaning implied by Ecomomic vs EHconomic. I wondered how BEfriend could be so different from BEhead (why isn’t it dehead?). That’s called an ideolect; I’m the only native speaker of mine. mjh
continuing ethics controversy is harming the GOP
ABC News: Conservative Lawmaker: DeLay Should Quit
One of Congress’ most conservative members on Friday became the second House Republican to urge Majority Leader Tom DeLay to step aside because of the ethics scrutiny he’s facing. …
[Rep. Tom Tancredo’s, R-Colo.,] comments come after Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays, a moderate Republican, urged DeLay to resign from his leadership position at the beginning of the week. Also, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said DeLay needs to answer questions about his ethics. …
Tancredo is known in the House for his tough stand on immigration and has 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union for votes and his position on issues.
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See the interactive exposé at Tom Delay’s House of Scandal
Heather Wilson
1 Contributions from ARMPAC: $36,959
2 Voting percentage with DeLay: 87%
3 Vote to weaken ethics rules:
H Res. 5, Roll Call #6, 1/4/05 – YES
4 Vote to table Democratic solution:
H. Res. 153, Roll Call #70, 3/15/05 – YES
Steve Pearce
1 Contributions from ARMPAC: $20,000
2 Voting percentage with DeLay: 95%
3 Vote to weaken ethics rules:
H Res. 5, Roll Call #6, 1/4/05 – YES
4 Vote to table Democratic solution:
H. Res. 153, Roll Call #70, 3/15/05 – YES
Right and Wrong at Once
“It’s not cheap to defend the constitution,” Mike McEntee said without a trace of irony.
Remember McEntee? It’s been years since he violated city law by running a blatantly partisan campaign as “the only real conservative” Republican in the race. He also got in trouble for violating federal law, which limits federal employees from engaging in PARTISAN campaigns. Note he broke two laws at once, while trying to capitalize on the Radical Right’s advances.
McEntee seems to be a right-winger who flaunts local and federal law and continues to battle in court long after it is over while covering his self-serving with lofty invocations of The Constitution (give that man a flag to wrap himself in). I’m surprised Bush hasn’t nominated him as a judge and DeLay hasn’t hired him as an aide. mjh
Employees as candidates
The rules on seeking political office are more complex. Employees can run for office only if the election is nonpartisan. But there are exceptions. If an employee lives in Washington, or one of its surrounding suburbs, or in one of 12 other communities in Alaska, Arizona, California, Georgia, Tennessee and Washington state where a large number of residents are federal employees, he can run for office in partisan campaigns, but only as an independent.
Even when an election is nonpartisan, the Hatch Act can trip up federal employees.
For instance, Mike McEntee, an air traffic controller for the Federal Aviation Administration ran for mayor of Albuquerque, N.M., in 2001. Candidates for local office in that city are listed on the ballot without party affiliation, so McEntee’s campaign was within the bounds of the Hatch Act. In fact, he had already served on the city council after being elected in a nonpartisan election.
But the race for mayor was competitive, and McEntee’s opponents began emphasizing their republican — not Republican Party — ideology. In response, McEntee identified himself as a republican in his campaign literature after local newspapers began referring to him as a conservative republican.
OSC charged McEntee with violating the Hatch Act. He ultimately served a four-month suspension and since has spent more than $100,000 on attorneys to appeal his suspension. His appeal is pending before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.
McEntee said that when he referred to himself as a conservative republican, he did not mean he was running as a member of the Republican Party. “In a partisan race, the parties choose the candidate to represent them. The party was not involved in selecting me to run,”? McEntee said. “I used the term republican as a way of describing my ideology.”
the shameful declaration of religious war by Bill Frist
Right-wing Christian groups and the Republican politicians they bankroll have done much since the last election to impose their particular religious views on all Americans. But nothing comes close to the shameful declaration of religious war by Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, over the selection of judges for federal courts.
Senator Frist is to appear on a telecast sponsored by the Family Research Council, which styles itself a religious organization but is really just another Washington lobbying concern. The message is that the Democrats who oppose a tiny handful of President Bush’s judicial nominations are conducting an assault “against people of faith.” By that, Senator Frist and his allies do not mean people of all faiths, only those of their faith.
It is one thing when private groups foment this kind of intolerance. It is another thing entirely when it’s done by the highest-ranking member of the United States Senate, who swore on the Bible to uphold a Constitution that forbids the imposition of religious views on Americans. Unfortunately, Senator Frist and his allies are willing to break down the rules to push through their agenda – in this case, by creating what the senator knows is a false connection between religion and the debate about judges.
Senator Frist and his backers want to take away the sole tool Democrats have for resisting the appointment of unqualified judges: the filibuster. This is not about a majority or even a significant number of Bush nominees; it’s about a handful with fringe views or shaky qualifications. But Senator Frist is determined to get judges on the federal bench who are loyal to the Republican fringe and, he hopes, would accept a theocratic test on decisions.
Senator Frist has an even bigger game in mind than the current nominees: the next appointments to the Supreme Court, which the Republican conservatives view as their best chance to outlaw abortion and impose their moral code on the country.
We fully understand that a powerful branch of the Republican Party believes that the last election was won on “moral values.” Even if that were true, that’s a far cry from voting for one religion to dominate the entire country. President Bush owes it to Americans to stand up and say so.
Duhbya
Now this I’m proud of. I’m in the top 20 for Google Search: worst president ever. Out of over 6,000,000 sites! I’ll bet visitors don’t even know about my related sites:
mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog
Dump Bushmjh
There must be freedom and there must be peace.
Radical Feminist Writer Andrea Dworkin Dies (washingtonpost.com) By Adam Bernstein, Washington Post Staff Writer
Ms. Dworkin spent her career exploring what she considered the subordination of women, which she saw everywhere from marriage to pornography to conservative politics.
Using terms such as “gynocide” to describe a cultural holocaust against women, she was adored by some who found in her writings and lectures a refreshing rebelliousness, and decried by others….
“I was good at holding the politicians’ feet to the fire, in private and in public, to excoriate them, to move their constituents, but from a basis of principle. That I can do. I have good practical instincts on where dominant structures are vulnerable. This requires a high tolerance for risk and conflict.”
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[m-pyre writes: Personally, Andrea Dworkin was not my icon.]
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Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | With pot and porn outstripping corn, America’s black economy is flying high
The annual number of hardcore video rentals in the US has risen from 79m in 1985 to 759m in 2001. Hardcore pornography in the shape of videos, the internet, live sex acts and cable television is now estimated to generate around $10bn, roughly the same amount as Hollywood’s US box office receipts.
Americans spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, regional theatres and orchestra performances combined. The industry has mushroomed since the 70s, when a federal study found that it was worth little more than $10m.
Now the US leads the world in pornography; about 211 new films are produced every week. Los Angeles area is the centre of the film boom and many of those in the trade are otherwise respectable citizens.
Nina Hartley, a porn star, told Schlosser: “You’d be surprised how many producers and manufacturers are Republicans.”
The majority of women in the films earn about $400 a scene. At the moment, there is a surplus of women in California hoping to enter the industry.
The internet has provided a fresh and profitable outlet. In 1997 about 22,000 porn websites existed; the number is now closer to 300,000 and growing.
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Reading Group Guide | THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving
“In this dirty-minded world,” Jenny thinks, “you are either somebody’s wife or somebody’s whore–or fast on your way to becoming one or the other. If you don’t fit either category, then everyone tries to make you think there is something wrong with you.” …
“Jenny Fields discovered that you got more respect from shocking other people than you got from trying to live your own life with a little privacy.” … “Between men and women, only death is shared equally.”
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Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
“It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak consciously as a woman. And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death. It ceases to be fertilised. Brilliant and effective, powerful and masterly, as it may appear for a day or two, it must wither at nightfall; it cannot grow in the minds of others. Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the act of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness. There must be freedom and there must be peace.”