[Promoted by DHinMI: Take a little time to read this diary (that started out on the "right side of the site") and ponder blueness' ruminations about clear-eyed commitment to principles, about being honest, but also about having a sense of proportion.]
Over here on the right side of the site things feed on frenzy, and so there have been several self-immolations of late occasioned by Barack Obama's serpentine pronouncements on FISA.
As we watch these Kossacks consume themselves in flames, we hear them roar that on FISA Obama has sounded a Retreat, on a Principle, one that is Not To Be Borne. Better, they snarl, to vote for Nader, or Barr, or no one at all, than to continue to fetch, roll over, play dead for such a man. Better to die like a lion, bay they, than to live like a dog.
Since that Saturday when Senator Clinton at last acknowledged defeat, this site has become increasingly aware that Obama is, uh, Not Perfect. It is going to be a long summer, and an even longer fall. And in that time, Obama will, many times, Disappoint.
If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.
Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.
George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946
Good Hump evening, y'all! I got paid today, and there's actually money left, so hubby & I had pizza and breadsticks delivered. There must have been some extra "kick" in the nacho cheese sauce because my diary prep went to nearly 1 and a half pages. So, happy reading and happy commenting!
Don't forget! If you want a Friends of Olbermann shirt, email Purple Priestess and include "K.O." or "FOO" or something along those lines in the subject. We need at least 6 interested people to order.
At least SOME of our representatives stood up for us, even if in a losing battle:
Of course, that and all our hard work wasn't enough. We will not forget those who failed us last Friday. Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi...I'm looking at you.
But, as ever, life goes on. Specifically, on to the Senate...and on to the turf of our presumptive nominee.
This poem goes out to all of the cameras I see in every grocery store and every building lobby. To those two luscious jugs that hang below the NYPD Security Boxes on every other street light on every major street.
the camera is my lover
it's clarity is my vision
it haunts my dreams
it holds me back
the camera needs me
my constant attention
it scorns my affection
but never looks away
but for all its sway
the camera doesn't know
my heart
my mind
the truth
This past Friday, during a meeting with a newspaper editorial board, I was asked about whether I was going to continue in the presidential race.
I made clear that I was - and that I thought the urgency to end the 2008 primary process was unprecedented. I pointed out, as I have before, that both my husband's primary campaign, and Sen. Robert Kennedy's, had continued into June.
Whoosh! Now, did you catch that superb example of Orwellian 1984 Doublespeak by Hillary above?
Kipling is the only English writer of our time who has added phrases to the language. The phrases and neologisms which we take over and use without remembering their origin do not always come from writers we admire.
One of Kipling's most famous poems offers lessons to Hillary Clinton on how she ought to conduct herself as this marathon, bruising fight for the 2008 Democratic nomination draws to a close. And the need for party unity becomes paramount to coalesce behind a once-in-a-generation candidate who is poised to succeed in the General Election in November.
The choice is obvious: either we succeed collectively or fail individually -- only to see a continuation of the most destructive domestic and foreign policies in the post-WW II era.
So says this gem of an article by Peter Hart at Fairness in Accuracy and Reporting (FAIR). The Press Corps’ Unshakeable Crush on McCain, whose title I borrowed for this diary, is the most comprehensive and well-researched piece I have found in exposing the media's unconditional swooning over John McCain, Maverick.
You knew it all the time, but you ain't gonna believe some of the stuff you're about to read below the fold.
Watch the evening news on television. I started casually stating this to my friends and family soon after Kerry was defeated and found the results extremely interesting, a remarkably consistent bland acceptance of the fact, perhaps a few small nods, followed by a long polite silence that always produced a change of subject. Been reading too much Chomsky—something like that—was always the inevitable silent response.
ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS Newshour, MSNBC and FOX are propaganda broadcasters for corporate America. This true statement also produces an inevitable polite silence to be followed yet again by a change in subject, for many reasons most Americans simply will not believe that Almighty America would produce such a sewer of childish lying and culpability, such a phenomena could only exist in fiction. Been reading too much Orwell, they silently intone, and move on.
The rubble of modern Iraq sits on the shards of the failed ancient civilizations that preceded it. Ruin heaped on ruin, contemporary folly laid atop the remains of the antique variety. A long and complex history, worth studying back to its origins. We should at least accurately recall recent history if only to gird ourselves against the revisionists, for they are already amongst us. Such cheerleaders of the invasion of Iraq as Christopher Hitchens and Thomas Friedman are redrafting the truth. With the occupation turned into a second Vietnam, the Friedmanites are applying Orwell’s "swindles and perversions" of political speech to justify their original folly.
In the Harper's May issue (not available online yet), Kevin Phillips has a vital piece discussing why the American economy is in worse shape than is acknowledged by bipartisan elites who have been participating not in some "grand conspiracy, just accumulating opportunisms."
I’ve said more than once that America’s most profound strategic casualty in the woebegone war on terror has been its information environment. The recent military operation in Iraq against Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s organization once again illustrates how we have entered a post-modern Orwellian (Rovewellian) age of dissonant dystopia.
I wrote this on a beach the other day in wordpad. The text is kinda odd for that reason. I debated whether to publish this it really is a rant. I've decided to though I'm curious what others will think. I'm not even going to correct the spelling errors.
I had just finished reading 1984 for the first time since high school. Back then I read it without it meaning much to me. I had to learn more before it would become meaningful. I put the book down and wrote this all at once in a fury.
Look at the Supreme Court. Due to the inevitability of age, 4 liberal-moderate Justices will be gone in the next 4 years. If you had the choice of having the new Justices appointed by McCain or Clinton, and if nothing else separated the two on policy, or any other matter, looking at their records and loyalties, which one would you want to make the selections?
UPDATE: How come no poster has even tried to address my question? Instead, we get the same bleeting you would expect from sheep.
Kevin Drum highlights this story about the problems with the strategy behind "The Surge™!"'s supposed success. The CLC's or whatever else you may call them are simply the latest extension of the "death squad option" so openly announced more than three years ago by the Pentagon. Back then, it meant supporting local militias that were supposedly friendly. Beginning last year, it meant throwing wads of cash at people, even if they have American blood on their hands, hoping they'll be nice for a while.
I read 1984 and I found it along with Animal farm to be really interesting. They describe the early years of the communist party from Orwell's perspective. In 1984 Orwell projects into the future of communism in an age of war that never ends and complete party control. I will summarize some of the novel aspects of 1984 below and leave animal farm for another day.
