tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5194776.post117003837107444065..comments2023-11-05T23:25:31.498+11:00Comments on Wot Is It Good 4: what makes me dangerousUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5194776.post-43198878137533364692007-10-30T03:00:00.000+11:002007-10-30T03:00:00.000+11:00ENOUGH HYPERBOLE ALREADY!A populace that hearing H...ENOUGH HYPERBOLE ALREADY!<BR/><BR/>A populace that hearing Homer<BR/>Thinks of a bloke cartoonish,<BR/>Instead of Greece, but by misnomer<BR/>May be called not buffoonish:<BR/><BR/>Those people as refuse to heed<BR/>The lessons of the past,<BR/>Improperly pursuing greed,<BR/>Tread through a minefield vast.<BR/><BR/>A people ought not be averse<BR/>So to well-tempered thought,<BR/>Or, heedless its philosophers<BR/>May foolishly get caught,<BR/><BR/>Trapped in some situation far<BR/>Beyond what it imagined,<BR/>Believing, for example, war<BR/>Could be a simple pageant--<BR/><BR/>All history but controverts<BR/>That so simplistic notion:<BR/>It is the truth, I know it hurts,<BR/>But spare me the emotion!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5194776.post-1170184140974152882007-01-31T06:09:00.000+11:002007-01-31T06:09:00.000+11:00Amen and then some to Steve Andresen. Talk about h...Amen and then some to Steve Andresen. Talk about hitting a nail on the head!!!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5194776.post-1170155255781803072007-01-30T22:07:00.000+11:002007-01-30T22:07:00.000+11:00D'Souza is indeed out of his mind - he has been ap...D'Souza is indeed out of his mind - he has been appropriately fisked by everyone - but he gets oped space in the wapo.<BR/><BR/>i'm with D'Souza - blame Teh Gay. it's EASY.lukeryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13280906371216516750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5194776.post-1170146642210558302007-01-30T19:44:00.000+11:002007-01-30T19:44:00.000+11:00The corporate media, with message points from the ...<I>The corporate media, with message points from the RNC and Karl Rove, have made the characters of Bush and Cheney off limits, as if they were born with some sort of eternal dispensation that keeps their motives from being questioned.<BR/><BR/>This, of course, keeps them from being accountable for their endless broken promises, lies and abysmal performances.</I> <A HREF="http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorials/119" REL="nofollow">(1)</A><BR/><BR/>D'Souza merely extends this one small step by suggesting that those who question Bush should be considered Bin Laden supporters. D'Souza is an authoritarian which means he probably believes that anyone who questions his authority figures should be considered an enemy.Trackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18387081215729592952noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5194776.post-1170144999365178212007-01-30T19:16:00.000+11:002007-01-30T19:16:00.000+11:00D'Souza said,"...In my book, published this month,...D'Souza said,<BR/><BR/>"...In my book, published this month, I argue that the American left bears a measure of responsibility for the volcano of anger from the Muslim world that produced the 9/11 attacks. President Jimmy Carter's withdrawal of support for the shah of Iran, for example, helped Ayatollah Khomeini's regime come to power in Iran, thus giving radical Islamists control of a major state; and President Bill Clinton's failure to respond to Islamic attacks confirmed bin Laden's perceptions of U.S. weakness and emboldened him to strike on 9/11. I also argue that the policies that U.S. "progressives" promote around the world -- including abortion rights, contraception for teenagers and gay rights -- are viewed as an assault on traditional values by many cultures, and have contributed to the blowback of Islamic rage..."<BR/><BR/>My first reaction is to challenge each and every one of these charges.<BR/><BR/>I am not persuaded that 9-11 was a crime committed by Muslims, or at least planned, organized, and carried out by Muslims. I am deeply skeptical of the official story. <BR/><BR/>I think one big reason to be skeptical of the official story is that the bombings were not treated as crimes. There was no concern to look at the murders as a crime with suspects, with evidence to be gathered, with a trial to be prepared for, and so forth. The idea that this 9-11 event was an act of war committed against us by Afghanistan, or the government of Afghanistan, or Iraq,, etc, seemed then and is now innappropriate.<BR/><BR/>D'Souza is such a liar. He forgets that the CIA overthrew the government of Iran in order to make the Shah the ruler there. The fact that Carter withdrew support from the Shah, if he did, was a result of how the people of Iran rejected the Shah's rule. Well, there might be people in Iran who might have wanted the Shah to remain in power. There might be people in Iraq who still want Saddam Hussein in power. Hell, there might still be people in the United States who support the Confederacy. So what. That D'Souza complains that we aren't still supporting a dictator in someone else's country shows how much of a putz he is. <BR/><BR/>The idea that Iran then came to have a government and a culture that rejected the United States is understandable given the fact we meddled so outragously in their affairs. Seems we had it coming.<BR/><BR/>The claim that Clinton wasn't vicious enough to prove our strength suggests the inhumanity of this line of criticism. I fault Clinton, as well as most all the other Presidents of my lifetime, with being too much wedded to the use of force and intimidation to get our way. Now, when we don't have the cash to buy off all the governments who trouble us, people like D'Souza start complaining. <BR/><BR/>Does D'Souza believe that we should protect ouselves by smashing people in the mouth first, last, and always?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5194776.post-1170121161134914852007-01-30T12:39:00.000+11:002007-01-30T12:39:00.000+11:00Update, Waas corrects, and gives me a shoutout! i...Update, Waas <A HREF="http://whateveralready.blogspot.com/2007/01/another-defection-from-washington-post.html" REL="nofollow">corrects</A>, and gives me a shoutout! i'm famous!lukeryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13280906371216516750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5194776.post-1170097577593985192007-01-30T06:06:00.000+11:002007-01-30T06:06:00.000+11:00Heh . . . . . . and it clearly, thanks to Anon, se...Heh . . . <BR/>. . . and it clearly, thanks to Anon, serves the extremely useful purpose of distracting us from the madness of King george. ;-)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5194776.post-1170069671275284812007-01-29T22:21:00.000+11:002007-01-29T22:21:00.000+11:00kathy - lovely to see you. it's weird to see a jou...kathy - lovely to see you. it's weird to see a journo use such a term (i'm sure that i've made many similar mistakes - so i'm cautious of criticizing)<BR/><BR/>anon - thanks for that. i never take a 'language police' position - and i was only highlighting this one because it's a particular bugbear of a dear friend (and for his benefit, and amusement) - some of my dear journalist friends make similar types of mistakes, and i feel embarassed for them when they do, and i'm sure that i also make similar mistakes all the time. still - i'm not sure i'd ever defend 'irregardless'lukeryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13280906371216516750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5194776.post-1170060516764683062007-01-29T19:48:00.000+11:002007-01-29T19:48:00.000+11:00Irregardless, "irregardless" is a word. Inflamm...Irregardless, "irregardless" is a word.<BR/><BR/> <B>Inflammable means the same as flammable, 'liable to catch fire', 'easily ignited'. Because it is often taken to mean the opposite, it is best to avoid using it at all; in official use flammable and non-flammable are the preferred terms.</B><BR/><BR/>Yeah, but did they declare "inflammable" as a non-word?<BR/>As noted below, "irregardless" intensifies the sentiment of "regardless".<BR/>Whereas, I don't know that "inflammable" denotes a lower flash point than "flammable".<BR/>So the language police can stuff it:<BR/><BR/>http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-irr1.htm<BR/><BR/>Irregardless:<BR/><BR/>[Q] From Randall E Larson in Tucson: “I have more than once seen the corruption irregardless used in some standard writings and with a straight face. Has it become acceptable?”<BR/><BR/>[A] The word is thoroughly and consistently condemned in all American references I can find. But it’s also surprisingly common. It’s formed from regardless by adding the negative prefix ir-; as regardless is already negative, the word is considered a logical absurdity.<BR/><BR/>It’s been around a while: the Oxford English Dictionary quotes a citation from Indiana that appeared in Harold Wentworth’s American Dialect Dictionary of 1912. And it turns up even in the better newspapers from time to time: as here from the New York Times of 8 February 1993: “Irregardless of the benefit to children from what he calls his ‘crusade to rescue American education,’ his own political miscalculations and sometimes deliberate artlessness have greatly contributed to his present difficulties”.<BR/><BR/>But, as I say, it’s still generally regarded by people with an informed opinion on the matter as unacceptable. The Third Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary states firmly that “the label ‘nonstandard’ does not begin to do justice to the status of this word” and “it has no legitimate antecedents in either standard or nonstandard varieties of English”. Some writers even try to turn it into a non-word, virtually denying its existence, which is pretty hard to do in the face of the evidence. The level of abuse hurled at the poor thing is astonishingly high, almost as great as that once directed at hopefully. It seems to have become something of a linguistic shibboleth.<BR/><BR/>That’s strange because, as Professor Laurence Horn of Yale University points out, the duplication of negative affixes is actually quite common in English. Few users query words such as debone and unravel because they are so familiar. In earlier times there were even more such words, many recorded from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: unboundless, undauntless, uneffectless, unfathomless and many others.<BR/><BR/>Grammarians of the eighteenth century and after — who had a greater sense of logic than feel for the language — did much to stamp them out. They argued that, in language as in mathematics, two negatives make a positive: putting two negatives together cancels them out. This has been the basis for condemnation of statements like “I never said nothing to nobody”, which aren’t standard British or American English. But in many other languages — and in some local or dialectal forms of English both today and in earlier times — multiple negatives are intensifiers, adding emphasis.<BR/><BR/>Irregardless has a fine flow about it, with a stronger negative feel than regardless that some people obviously find attractive. Indeed, the stress pattern of the word probably influenced the addition of the prefix, as the stress in regardless is on gar, which makes it sound insufficiently negative, despite the -less suffix.<BR/><BR/>So the precedents are all on the side of irregardless and — despite the opinions of the experts — I suspect that the word will become even more popular in the US in the future. For the moment, though, it is best avoided in formal writing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5194776.post-1170040944384098052007-01-29T14:22:00.000+11:002007-01-29T14:22:00.000+11:00(makes my head explode too....)(makes my head explode too....)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com