Ramming Thru Single-Payer. I am among those people who are very unhappy with President Obama's healthcare plan, not because it is too ambitious but because it is too timid, a point Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio made in interpreting the loss of several points in public confidence as shown in recent polls. But it is not just the President who is too timid. So is Congress, both houses. So are Liberals, who still shy away from the word "Liberal" in favor of euphemisms like "progressive", even tho Liberals were swept into office to undo the malicious, monstrous damage done to this Republic — and the planet — by the Radical Right.
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So I was ticked off when I listened to an interview on last nite's episode of an MSNBC public-affairs opinion show, and sent Senator Brown this message via feedback form today.

Why is it that in the interview you did with Howard Dean last nite on MSNBC's COUNTDOWN, the words "single payer" never came up? Why are we creating a half-assed, bastardized compromise measure that will not fix the problems but will not cover everyone and will continue to let health costs rise 3X as fast as inflation and closer to 4X real-wage growth? Why is it that every other industrialized country on Earth can have a single-payer system but we can't? Why would we reinvent the wheel that Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and others invented decades ago and which works fine? Why would we put forward a 16-sided polygonal 'wheel' and pretend that it is BETTER than a round one? We don't even have to go abroad to find examples of success with universal coverage, but have Medicare and SCHIP right here at home!
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Further, why would Democrats think for even one second about destroying SCHIP to try to accommodate Republicans who are the enemy not just of poor and middle-class Americans but indeed of the entire world? More generally, how on Earth can the Senate continue this nonsense about 60% votes for ANYTHING, when 52% of the vote in California was enuf to take away the right of homosexuals to marry, a fundamental human right?
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Don't accommodate Republicans. CRUSH them. Ram thru SINGLE-PAYER. And END THE FILIBUSTER forever. It is an antidemocratic, lunatic provision that NO OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH has to endure as a regular matter or even threat, and we shouldn't have to either. Cloture should be by simple majority. If you can pass legislation for 300 million people by a simple majority, why can't you govern 100 people by a simple majority?

Senator Brown said that people who favor a 'progressive' reform should write to and call their members of Congress. But what will Congress and the President do if the people want single-payer but Republicans won't stand for it? Who has more power: the people, or Republicans?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,328 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:07 PM

 
Barack Pussyboy. The Obama Administration pretends to be pressuring Israel to stop building settlements in the so-called "Occupied Territories" — tho of course all of "Israel" is occupied territory. The Israeli government isn't paying the slitest attention to Obama, because they know he's just playing the game, making nice noises to pacify the Arab world and domestic opinion, but will NEVER do anything to stop Israel from doing anything it wants, be it building settlements or attacking Iran, not even so timid a move as REDUCING U.S. financial and military aid, much less ENDING it. Even when the Federal Government's deficit is enormous, Obama won't save U.S. taxpayers the $3 BILLION we ship off to Israel each and every year without end. That is not just politically but also fiscally unwise. And that continuing extreme largesse to Zionism shows the reality: Obama, as much as any other Radical Zionist in the U.S. Government, is actively SUBSIDIZING Israeli misbehavior, HELPING expand the settlements. Yes, U.S. tax dollars, budgeted by Barack Obama's team, build the very settlements that Obama pretends to deplore!
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There's plenty to deplore in the behavior of Israel, and not just with regard to settlements.

The creation of Israel was a mistake. Mistakes should be corrected, not compounded. And the only way to correct the mistake of creating Israel is to UNCREATE it, to dissolve it into United Palestine, a multireligious and multiethnic single country where no one lords it over anyone else but everyone is treated fairly. That is the only way to bring peace in that region: to DISSOLVE Israel, just as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany were dissolved. That's what sensible people mean when they talk of "wiping Israel off the map". Check today's maps. I defy you to find the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany on that map — or French West Africa, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, or Gran Colombia. All those entities have vanished from the map, without genocide. For Zionists to say that the only way Israel can be wiped off the map is by genocide is a willful, deliberate LIE, carefully crafted to appeal to the fears of the most simpleminded people in the American public, a group known far and wide for its ignorance of the world. There are indeed large numbers of Americans who cannot find even the United States on a world map. People who couldn't locate Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza on a world map in less than 20 minutes, yet who 'believe' the U.S. has a sacred duty to defend Israel, are heeded when it comes to U.S. policy in the Middle East! Ignoramuses should not set policy in anything.
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Why do so many people in the U.S. feel that it is our God-given duty to defend Israel, no matter the cost in dollars or American lives? The media, schools, and churches of the United States have for 60 years tirelessly told the American people that Israel is a noble experiment that we simply (good word, that: "simply") have to support to the hilt, even if that should mean World War III! After all, what is the destruction of the United States, filled with "blasphemers" and "goyim", as against the safety of "God's Chosen People"? It is as nothing. 290 million Christians are nothing to God. 5 million Jews are everything.
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If you do not see it as the obligation of the United States to lay down its life on the altar of Zionism, tell Obama to stop playing pattycake with Zionism and end all U.S. complicity in the crimes of Israel, lest when unrestrained Israel launches an attack upon Iran, we are blamed, and are drawn into the probable escalation of that initial attack into an Iranian counterattack, and a further Israeli attack, with nuclear weapons, and a counterattack with nuclear weapons by Russia and/or Communist China. Current U.S. policy is to race into that madness, even if — no: even THO — that would produce a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. on the one side and Russia and China on the other.
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Israeli politicians may feel not only that God is on their side, but also that God will protect them from any consequences if they attack Iran. They are also convincing themselves that Iran is getting ready to produce nuclear weapons, and will succeed in doing so within something like five years, at which time it will be too late for Israel to attack. So Israel's warhawks are planning measures before then.
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Obama must distance the United States from Israel's impending attack, and tell the world that we did not preapprove it, we did not assist it, we will not back it with any action whatsoever, and any adverse consequence that befalls Israel due to such an attack is Israel's sole responsibility, because the United States will not so much as lift one little finger to save Israel from its own madness and criminality. If Obama does not make plain that any Iran attack is Israel's doing, not ours, but lets the world continue to believe that the United States will stop at nothing, including World War III, to "protect" Israel — but how would causing the great cities of the United States to be incinerated, save Israel, which will already have been incinerated by the time the U.S. launches its first missile at Russia or China? — the history of the United States may end by 2014.
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The Mayan calendar apparently ends on December 21st, 2012 — tho some Maya scholars say that that is just one cycle of a self-renewing calendar that will in 2012 begin anew. Other people, however, say that's not true, and there are other prophecies of worldwide cataclysm in 2012, from other cultures. Who knows? There may even be Jewish Doomsdayers in the Israeli military and political leadership who believe that God will destroy Israel's enemies, thru their actions — on December 21st, 2012. Will that be the day that a national tombstone will be engraved?

R.I.P.
United States of America
1776-2012

(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,328 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:43 PM

 
Why Not Single-Payer? I watched the Obama press conference tonite and was struck by what a bad job the press did in its questioning after the President's opening statement. Not one person asked so much as one question with the phrase "single-payer" in it. Why not? Why haven't the members of the so-called "Fourth Estate" — or, in American parlance, Fourth Branch — asked what the people want to know:

"Why are we playing stupid games reinventing the wheel? Why do we pursue a 12- or 15-sided polygon when we know about perfectly round wheels? Why are we working on a bastardized, half-assed, cowardly plan that is neither public nor private, neither for-profit nor public-service, but which tries to be everything to everyone? Why is it that every other industrialized country in the world can have a single-payer system — elegant in its simplicity, equitable in its comprehensiveness — but we can't? Isn't it obvious that our healthcare system costs so much ONLY because it has to make a profit for the rich who own essentially all medical companies?"

Why can't we ever do things right the first time? Why do we have to do something almost right but seriously wrong at first instance, then wait a few years until people accept that the worst they feared did not and would not ever happen, then try to enact what we should have enacted to begin with? How many Americans will DIE from the absolutely inexcusable defects of our current system, before an equitable healthcare system emerges in (as regards healthcare) this contemptibly backward country?
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The inexcusable, monstrous injustices of our current healthcare system are never punished. Every keen observer of human nature knows that if you do not punish bad behavior, you do not dissuade future such behavior. Not a single evil healthcare-insurance functionary or executive is ever punished with even a single day's jailtime, much less years in prison, flogging, amputation, or death, as they so richly deserve. Who is going to learn any useful lesson when no punishment is ever inflicted? The lesson our current pussyboy reactions produce teach one thing plainly: you can abuse anyone, economically, and never be punished with any meaningful severity. So why NOT f*k the helpless?
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When I was young, the United States was a wonderful country. We weren't perfect — we had segregation in the South, violent antihomosexual bigotry, and a wide range of social inequities of many sorts. But we also KNEW we weren't perfect, but still felt we could FIX all the problems, correct ALL the social wrongs, and become the lite unto the world that we were meant to be. Never for an instant did we think that the very idea that we were to be a lite unto the world, an alabaster city on a hill, was ridiculous arrogance. We always understood that we were 200 feet from the summit of a very high hill, but were inexorably on our way up, not to be stopped.
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All of that has ended. The Radical Right says we have fallen, as regards our aspirations, due to moral relativism and multiculturalism that says we dare not look down our noses at other countries, no matter how antidemocratic they may be, because we're not perfect. The (non-Radical) 'Right' says we don't have to be perfect, only devoted to being very good. Perfection is not within human reach.
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Quite so: perfection is not within human reach. But must everything the United States actually 'achieves' end up being a terrible disappointment? I am very tired of being embarrassed at how backward we are as against other major countries, and even Canada (not a major country, but a member in very good standing of the industrialized world). Why isn't every single person, of every political persuasion, embarrassed to the point of a chill of humiliation running up their spine or a flood of blood rushing to their face, causing beet-red blushing, by our political inability to do what Canada — a nothing little country — and Britain, our new best friend, can do easily, without so much as the tiniest trace of sweat or economic distress? (Britain replaced Canada as our best friend in 2003, when Canada sensibly did not sign on to an inexcusably wicked attack upon Iraq, a country that never attacked us. Canada and American Liberals were right about Iraq; Bush and American Radical Rightwingers were wrong. But no one has apologized to Canada for the Bushies' bumping it from the status of Best Friend to, instead, Generic Foreign Country, just one of 193 countries on the planet.)
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It is humiliating to have to admit that nothing little Canada has a healthcare system ten times as good as ours. Appalling, disgusting, but undeniable. Canadians — poorer than we are — were able to institute a universal healthcare system that puts us to shame and makes us look like the most cold-hearted, STUPID bunch of losers on the planet. The 'people' who want to keep us from having the kind of single-payer, WONDERFUL healthcare system Canada has (as has Britain, and France, and Germany, and Japan ...) are mostly from the South, that appallingly benited albatross around our national neck. And the typical Southerner desperately needs universal, free healthcare!
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Millions of Americans are needlessly crippled, tens or even hundreds of thousands are DEAD, because of the healthcare "system" — ha! it is to laff! — in place in the United States today. A hundred years from now, kids in grade school will be ashamed that we allowed poor and middle-class people to DIE because the for-profit insurance companies that dominate the landscape today didn't want to spend the money to keep them alive. Future kids will be HUMILIATED to the point of tears to have to admit that MILLIONS of Americans die or walk with crutches or are confined to wheelchairs for life only because they cannot get the brilliant healthcare that Americans largely INVENTED. Future children will be able to go on with their lives only by disowning us, by saying, "I had nothing to do with that, and wouldn't have had anything to do with that. It happened long before I was born."
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How about us? How do WE face our GUILT in the death or permanent crippling of millions?
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Let's do an experiment. Do you have PostIts in your house, those wonderful little stick-it notepapers of varying sizes that 3M took years to develop? If so, take ONE on which the following words will fit, and write: "We let people die because they don't have money for healthcare or even health insurance." Put that PostIt on the mirror you shave in or apply makeup in. Read it every day, and ask if that is something you can accept morally.
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If it is not, REBEL. Do whatever it takes to END that evil, that unspeakably vile crime against humanity. If it means you demonstrate in the streets four times a month, even spending your own cash to buy a spot on a bus to Washington, DO IT. If it means you write your member of Congress and both Senators, DO IT. And, at end, if nothing else works, ask yourself if assassination is the only way to effect the changes we absolutely need, and if you are the person to save us from the people who are perfectly happy to have the poor and middle class die from things the rich survive.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,327 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:59 AM

 
Punishing the Makers of the Movie 'Orphan'. If I believed in hell, I might observe that "There's a special place in hell for people who attack adoption". The current horror flick Orphan is of such extreme evil that it must be punished. It's not harmless fiction, as many stupid, stupid people said in an Internet poll on whether it harms adoption. The article within which that poll appeared observed the very real fear that the odious horror flick Jaws engendered, and it is assuredly true that some people will be made fearful of adoption by this odious movie, and children who might have been adopted will instead languish in foster care or group homes for additional years, if not to adulthood, because of it.
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Intellect does not control emotion, but emotion may affect, even overpower, intellect. Yes, a person may know, intellectually, that a horror movie is just fiction, but the body and mind both react to horrible images and situations in horror films as tho they are real. That's the point, after all, isn't it? — to frighten people, and induce actual panic reactions. That is, manifestly, sado-masochistic behavior, a sexual perversion, and should be understood as a severe psychological disorder that people should be warned against.
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As far as the physical body and primitive mind within each of us is concerned, there is no such thing as fiction. Everything the senses perceive is real, and must be accepted as real from the very first instant, in case defensive measures have to be taken in a hurry. Delay means death. That is the nature of the creature that resides within the sophisticated human mind. That is why we flinch when an object is thrown at us in a 3D movie. And that is why horror movies can give people nitemares for weeks, even years afterward: because the mind perceives them as real, as real threats to one's own life or limb.
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Malicious fiction is not harmless. Malicious images can do real harm, not fictitious harm.
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There is no "Erase" button on the human memory, and once something gets into your head, it may stay there your entire life. That is why some elderly veterans of WWII wake up in a sweat more than 40 years after they saw their buddy blown to bits on the beach at Normandy. It's only images and sounds in their brains. It's not really happening, now. But it seems real. It seems to be happening all over again. A recurring nitemare or memory of an actual event is, in replay, only, for all practical purposes, fiction; and the images of fiction that invade our minds become the exact equivalent of memories of real events.
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The subhuman scum who inflict these horrifying images, sounds, and events upon others do so from their own extreme evil. They are not entertaining us. They are attacking us. They HATE us because they hate themselves. They have every reason to hate themselves, but no right to hate us. We never did anything to them, so must not allow them to get away with attacking us.
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The very least that should be done to every single person in any significant way responsible for the criminal film Orphan — the writers, producers, director(s), actors without whom that hideous offense to society could not have been made — is that they be banned from all media for the rest of their evil lives. A less charitable, more 'primitive' society would be justified in banishing them from society completely, even in the simplest way: killing them. Tell them, as they are being led up the steps to the gallows, or strapped into an electric chair, or into a gurney for lethal injection, that it's just fiction, a 3D movie. It seems real? "All well-done fiction seems real. You of all people should know that! If it weren't taken as real, it wouldn't work. Now, come along." Is it real? Or is it Memorex? Relax. It's only a nitemare.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,327 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:37 PM

 
Democracy for Sale. New York City has disgraced itself in undoing a term-limits law enacted by the people in one referendum and confirmed in a second referendum. The City Council, knowing full well that the people favor term limits and have twice voted for them, unilaterally overruled the people! Think about that: the Mayor and Council of NYC have decided that they are not the servants but the masters of the people, and have the right to undo the will of the electorate expressed in direct elections TWICE. How can that possibly be permitted? What has happened to this country?
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A judge(tte) ruled that the Council could vote for their own re-election and that was not a conflict of interest! Now councilmembers as well as the Mayor can have three four-year terms in office. And in four years the City Council can make it four terms, and four years after that, five terms, or simply abolish term limits altogether — term limits the voters TWICE enacted in direct referendum. And no one, not the State Legislature in Albany, not the Federal civil-rights authorities, not the courts of the State of New York, has lifted a finger to stop this destruction of democracy in New York City. How could this happen? How can it possibly be legal to overrule the electorate and undo a referendum by legislative fiat?
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It happened because New Yorkers are the biggest bunch of sheep and wusses in the Nation, with not so much as 1/12th the guts of people in any other city. New Yorkers put up with more sh*t than the people in the next thirty cities put together. That may be largely due to the enormous proportion of New Yorkers who were born elsewhere, and are only legally citizens. They do not have the value system of Americans but of the various hellholes they fled. They brought ugly bits of the ugly cultures they came from, among the worst of which bits is toleration for dictatorship.
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Now, Michael Bloomberg, a BILLIONAIRE, has been spending tens of millions of dollars on ads for re-election, for months already on an election that will not happen till November, and even tho it would seem that not a single ad for anyone else has aired. I live in Newark, NJ, which receives NY television stations, and Bloomberg ads are all over the tube, at all hours of the day and nite, but I have yet to see even one ad for anyone else. That is corruption, bare-faced, bare-knuckled plutocracy using an enormous personal fortune to BUY election to an illegitimate third term for an evil little dictator, one of those mini-men who overcompensate by seeking power by any means. I haven't even seen so much as one nonpartisan ad urging New Yorkers to strike back at the people who overturned their vote in two referendums by voting against all of them, starting with Bloomberg in November.
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Why isn't anyone stopping him? There is apparently something about the office of Mayor of New York that drives people crazy. The last mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, who was forced out by the term-limits law because he wasn't so brazen as to demand the City Council abolish it, wanted to stay on after his legal term expired, with the excuse that the then-recent 9/11 attacks had created an unprecedented emergency, and New York needed Giuliani's experienced leadership to recover from the disaster. Michael Bloomberg would have none of it, but forced Giuliani out of office promptly on time. What a HYPOCRITE! Now the bastard Bloomberg insists that a situation not one fortieth as difficult for New York as the post-9/11 era, a simple recession, requires the extraordinary measure of overruling TWO referendums so NY can 'benefit' from his 'experienced leadership'!
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If The System won't protect us from dictatorship by billionaires, there may be only three things that can stop the total destruction of New York's democratic civilization: (1) resounding defeat for Bloomberg at the polls, which seems most unlikely when a billionaire has drowned out all other voices in a constant barrage of propaganda in all media; (2) massive, unceasing demonstrations in the street, demanding not just that Bloomberg remove his name from the ballot but that he actually resign now, and demanding as well that every councilmember who voted to overrule the people also resign, now; (3) violence. One bullet thru the head of each would-be tyrant can speak hugely louder than the hundreds of thousands of ballots in TWO referendums that demanded term limits.
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The City Council vote that voided the people's term-limits initiative was 29 to 22. Surely there are 30 bullets in New York City, one for each councilmember and one for Bloomberg. Of course, there's no reason to stop with one bullet per tyrant. Lead is recyclable. We have guns today that can squeeze off dozens of rounds in a single minute, which would be more certain of killing the tyrants than a single shot. Naturally, there will be some wussy commentators who say that violence even against tyrants is never justified, and will even pretend that some fundamental legal principle is at stake, such as conspiring to overthrow the government. No, assassinating people who have hijacked the government is not overthrowing the government but restoring it. The mayoralty will remain, the Council will remain. There will just be new people in those political offices, people so chastened by what happened to their predecessors that they will at once both restore term limits and write new City Charter provisions barring any future Council from voiding the will of the people as expressed in a direct referendum.
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Thomas Jefferson, who adhered to the two-term limit for President even tho it was only a tradition established by George Washington, not a law nor constitutional provision, famously said:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Naturally, neither Michael Bloomberg nor any of the councilmembers who voted to overrule the people believe that any New Yorker has the guts to kill them, especially if s/he must risk their own life in the attempt. But we do have hundreds of thousands of young people in uniform risking their lives in distant countries for what they have been told is the defense of liberty. How bizarre it is that while they stand on the front lines, thousands of miles from home, the enemies of liberty are destroying democracy thousands of miles to their rear, right here at home. These soldiers will come home to find that while they were away, everything they were told they were fiting for had vanished. Might they then take up arms again to win it back? We needn't wait for the betrayed to come back. We can fite at home against the impending death of democracy, as one way to show appreciation for what our young people are risking in Afghanistan. Do them the favor of not making their sacrifice pointless.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,327 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:04 PM

 
Show SICKO Every Day. A colleague here in Newark alerted me to a broadcast tonite of Michael Moore's landmark documentary Sicko on cable tonite. He forwarded an email from MichaelMoore.com that says in part:

"Sicko" airs on The Movie Channel tonight at 8:00 PM. It's also scheduled to air on The Movie Channel on July 27th at 4:05 PM and on TMC Xtra on August 2nd at 10:45 PM and August 5th at 2:15 AM and 7:30 AM. ...

There are people around the country who are holding "Sicko" viewing parties this weekend in their homes. ...

We are in a critical time regarding which direction the health care debate is going to go. Make your voice heard. And be armed with the facts. Watch "Sicko" again!

I replied to my Newark-activist ally:

SICKO should be shown every few days on BROADCAST TV until Congress enacts and the President signs legislation creating a single-payer system. The people who need single-payer the most can't afford cable. And the showings should be everywhere until Congress understands that the people want single-payer and until even the Radical Right gets so disgusted with claims that altho all the rest of the industrialized world can have universal healthcare with a single-payer system, somehow we can't.
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Sicko showings should be bracketed, beginning and end, by PSA's that say, at the start, "This film shows that Canada, France, Britain, and other industrialized countries all have universal healthcare paid for by progressive income taxation that doesn't crush the little guy, and implicitly asks, 'If they can do it, why can't we?' " At the end, the PSA should say, "How is it that every other industrial country can provide equitable, universal healthcare without being financially ruined, but we can't? Are all those other countries smarter than we are? Better than we are? Wiser, more decent? Richer? Well, they can't be richer, can they? Jingoist Rightwingers keep telling us, pridefully, that we're the richest country in the history of the world. So why can't we afford universal healthcare with a single-payer system that countries much poorer than we are, manage to pay for easily? Don't accept excuses. If Canada can do it, we can do it. If Britain, France, and Japan can do it, so can we. Don't let the Radical Right tell us we can't do this. Of course we can. And don't pay any attention to protestations from John McCain, a man who was born in a Government hospital and has had Government healthcare every single day, his entire life! If McCain could have Government healthcare from birth to this very day, and hasn't died from neglect, surely he should not resent other people having the same Government healthcare that has kept him alive and well, into his late 60s. Those Republican members of Congress who don't want YOU to have Government healthcare ALL have Government healthcare themselves. Every last one of them. What do you call it when people decry Government healthcare out of one side of their mouth but ask for Government doctors to take care of them out of the other side? Oh, yes: hypocrisy! The United States should have the best and most equitable healthcare system on this planet, and can, but only if the People DEMAND it. Write your Member of Congress and BOTH your Senators. Write the President. (You can find their contact information at our site, www._____.org.) Say "Yes we can" have universal healthcare under a single-payer system. It's embarrassing to say that Canada can do something but we can't. Oh, yes we can!"

(I ordinarily place here the current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties". But that site is down right now. I don't know why.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:19 PM

 
"An Historic" Idiocy. Twice in this evening's ABC World News broadcast, the odious phrase "an historic" was uttered. Charlie Gibson actually dared to say "an istoric", dropping the H-sound to justify the idiotic affectation of "an" before an H. No, Mr. Gibson, the H in "historic" is not silent — you stupid, stupid bastard. Do you say "the istory books"? If not, why would you say "istoric"? Because you're a pretentious, ignorant fool, that's why. You heard other people saying "an historic" so thought that was correct. But the rule is that "an" is used ONLY before a vowel sound. Sound. Not written letter.
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That noxious affectation finds no justification in the history of English nor in the smooth flow of sounds. I also m now hearing "a" before vowels on television! Sometimes you can graciously forgive such use as accidental: the speaker started to say one word, that started with a consonantal sound, but at the last instant, after having already said "a", substituted a different word, that starts with a vowel, and chose not to backtrack to fix the indefinite article, lest that draw attention to the mistake. But I have heard "a" before vowels in what seemed well-considered statements. I have even heard President Obama say it at least once. Listeners who cannot believe the President of the United States would make such an inexcusable mistake dismiss such an utterance as a mere change of mind. Is it?
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Here's a usage note from the American Heritage Dictionary online:

Word History: The forms of the indefinite article are good examples of what can happen to a word when it becomes habitually pronounced without stress. An is in fact a weakened form of one; both an and one come from Old English an "one." In early Middle English, besides representing the cardinal numeral "one," an developed the special function of indefinite article, and in this role the word was ordinarily pronounced with very little or no stress. Sound changes that affected unstressed syllables elsewhere in the language affected it also. First, the vowel was shortened and eventually reduced to a schwa [symbol]. Second, the n was lost before consonants. This loss of n affected some other words as well; it explains why English has both my and mine, thy and thine. Originally these were doublets just like a and an, with mine and thine occurring only before vowels, as in Ben Jonson's famous line "Drink to me only with thine eyes." By the time of Modern English, though, my and thy had replaced mine and thine when used before nouns (that is, when not used predicatively, as in This book is mine), just as some varieties of Modern English use a even before vowels (a apple).

Some warrant for the affectation "an historical" might be seen in the usage note at "a":

... Such adjectives as historic, historical, heroic, and habitual, which begin with an unstressed syllable and often with a silent or weakly pronounced h, are commonly preceded by an, especially in British English. But the use of a rather than an is widespread in both speech and writing: a historical novel; a habitual criminal. Hotel and unique are occasionally preceded by an, but this use is increasingly old-fashioned. Although in some dialects an has yielded to a in all cases, edited writing reflects usage as described above.

The key phrases above, however, that void any attempt to justify an absurd and irrational use by educated Americans of "an" before a sounded-H are: "British English" and "old-fashioned".
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American news anchors and reporters should not be affecting old-fashioned British speech. It INSULTS modern Americans to tell them, in effect, that British English is better than American — when it is not remotely as good. As an example of the inferiority of British English, R-dropping dialects have hundreds more homonyms than American.
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The United States has always been more literate and educated than Britain, in that universal education was fundamental to American democracy but not to British monarchy. The discrepancy in educational levels continues to this day, and American, not British, is the prestige version of what we still charitably call the "English" language but which is actually a world language, 70% of whose native speakers live in the United States. "English" is the most important language in the history of the world, and hundreds of millions of people, in many countries on all continents, are trying to master it at any given time. People listening to American English as spoken by major broadcasters should be able to rely on the correctness of the usage and pronunciation they hear. They should not have to find usage notes in dictionaries to try to grasp why some speech exemplars refuse to abide by a simple, elegantly logical rule: use an before a vowel sound.
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If Charlie Gibson doesn't say "an history", he should be slapped down when he says "an historical". Anyone in an American news organization who says "an historical" should be suspended without pay for a month for each such ignorant and irritating utterance.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,322 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:55 PM

 
Impeach Panetta — or Defund the CIA. Leon Panetta insists that "it is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress", even as he supposedly admitted to Congress in a June 24th hearing that the CIA did indeed mislead Congress under the Bush Administration. How, pray, are we to interpret this? It depends, apparently, on what "is" is. What "is" the present policy of the CIA? What WAS the policy of the CIA during the Bush Administration? It is not a quibble.
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The Central Intelligence Agency can be a cancerous growth and a threat to our democracy if it is not answerable to Congress, as we have seen. If the CIA cannot be controlled under Panetta, impeach Panetta. If Congress cannot impeach Panetta, let them cut the CIA's budget to $0.00 — zero dollars and zero cents — until and unless the CIA admits very publicly that it has NOT always briefed Congress adequately or truthfully, and pledges to tell Congress in the future everything it is entitled to know — which is anything at all that Congress wants to know, because Congress represents the people, and the people, at least thru their elected representatives, have an ABSOLUTE RIGHT to know what is being done in their name. We are the ones who are bombed at home and targeted for death abroad when misdeeds of agencies like the CIA antagonize billions of people around the globe. We are the ones who volunteer for the military — or do not — and risk death, in national service, at the hands of enemies that rogues like the CIA and the Zionist lobby make for the United States.
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How many lies or instances of withholding information or misleading Congress by half-truth or implication — or any other type of deception; we really do not need to specify each and every type of deception we can think of, because that only invites CIA to look for something not on the list — constitutes a "policy or practice"? How many constitute only an 'isolated incident', 'momentary failure', 'mistake', 'misjudgment', or, again, anything of that nature, without need of a laundry list that might leave something out?
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"Zero tolerance" is a phrase that represents what has come to be misused absolutism in, for instance, enforcement of arbitrary and capricious codes of behavior regarding "sexual harassment" in schools. But when it comes to Executive Branch agencies lying to Congress, "zero tolerance" is not extremist at all, but the very least we can accept.
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President Obama has threatened to veto an appropriations bill if Democratic amendments that require the CIA to report to such members as Congress itself, in due exercise of its own discretion, demands be briefed. Fine. Congress controls funding. If Obama wants to control the information that Congress — the people — receive from the CIA, then Congress can completely and absolutely defund the CIA. It doesn't have to abolish the agency. It need merely put the CIA's $0 funding into an omnibus spending bill that Obama can either sign or veto. And Congress doesn't have to fund ANYTHING. Obama is not king nor emperor nor Pope. He cannot demand anything from Congress, because Congress's legitimacy does not derive from him but from the people directly, without any presidential intermediation.
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(Congress should certainly defund all CIA publications, such as the World Factbook, that Americans cannot understand because ONLY foreign measures are used — areas are given only in square kilometers, for instance, and there's not one native-born American in a thousand who knows how large a square kilometer is, compared to a square mile.)
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In any contest between President and Congress, Congress must win, because Congress has ALL the money, and the President can do NOTHING without the people's money, voted by Congress. All Congress has to do is stand firm. What does it have to lose? As an institution, Congress is enormously unpopular, for having NOT done the people's will in opposing the misbehavior of President Bush. How much more unpopular could it get for opposing the misbehavior of President Obama?
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The Obama Administration has sold us out over and over again, not delivering the change that candidate Obama ran on. If he won't do what the people want done, let Congress do it, and present him with, for instance, a single-payer healthcare system as a fait-accompli he can either sign on to or veto and thus destroy his reputation as reformer. Obama could become a lame duck in his first full year in office, and a Congress that he seems willing to go out of his way to offend can rise up on its hind legs and slap him down hard. At end, somebody has to stand up for the people. If Obama won't, then Congress must.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,322 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:30 PM

 
Canada: Anachronism in the Age of Obama? This is "Canada Day", formerly "Dominion Day", which commemorates the day in 1867 when the British Empire fraudulently created "the Dominion of Canada" into a supposedly "independent" country, even tho it was no such thing. Britain did that to keep the recently re-United States from invading to claim Canada as compensation for Britain's malicious assistance to the Confederacy in the Civil War, which had then only recently concluded in a massive Union victory. Britain in effect put the house in Canada's name to keep Britain's moral creditors from seizing "British North America" as damages for Britain's misdeeds.
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In actuality, Canada was not in the slitest independent in 1867, and did not achieve anything remotely like actual independence until 1931, when the Statute of Westminster was passed. Even then, Canadians could not amend their own constitution! — the "British North America Act" — until 1982, when the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau finally "repatriated" (but actually only "patriated") the BNA as a Canadian constitution. From 1867 to 1982, 115 years, Canada was an imitation country, not real. And it served the interests only of the British Empire, of which it was an integral, unwavering part, not of the people who happened to live in the Great White North.
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Canada teaches a hugely false national myth, in which it was the faithful son and the United States the unfaithful son. The U.S. left "the Empire" — which was in its day a magical phrase, imbued with all kinds of majesty and hubris — by 1781, whereas Canada remained "loyal", and scores of thousands of "United Empire Loyalists" were moved (repatriated) out from the abusive hands of the ungrateful scum of the 13 southern colonies to the faithful, pure north, where they provided the impetus for the rebirth of the British Empire, which went on to become even greater than it had been theretofore.
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Unfortunately for this UEL Canadian myth, the British Empire did not love the "Loyalists", nor accord them the welcome into the very bosom of the Empire that they wanted, by admitting their representatives into the Parliament at London that was to govern the whole of the Empire, including the home islands. Rather, the imperialist scum of the London Parliament refused Canadians representation in Parliament fully as much, and as militantly, as they had refused Americans representation in Parliament. Eventually, even the pussyboys of Canada said "Enuf is enuf. Let us in, or we are going out". Parliament said "We are certainly not letting you in to share governance of the Empire, including us in the home islands." So Canadians too did what Americans had, generations earlier, felt compelled to do, and LEFT the Empire. Some observers say that the British actually had to PUSH them out, because they were 'afraid' that if the British Empire didn't 'protect' them, they would be 'forced' into the United States (by their own desires, since the U.S. never so much as officially (or unofficially) SUGGESTED to post-Westminster Canada that it join the Union). Unlike Americans, however, Canadians insisted on ignoring their own "betrayal" of the magical "Empire", and pretended that they never left, but are faithful sons of Empire to this day, with "The Queen" on their money and in their heart. What a bunch of bullshit.
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Once Canada left the Empire in reality, any rational person would accept that it ceased to have any legitimate and intellectually defensible reason for continuing a national existence separate and apart from the United States. To put that a bit more simply, the instant Canada ceased to be part of the British Empire, THAT instant did it cease to have any reason for being. Canada was created by Britain to preserve British interests, period. It was not to protect French Canadians from pressures to assimilate, nor to advance any other purpose. Britain drew the border that we even now live with, purely and simply to preserve British territory from encroachment by Americans. That is all.
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Any rational person would have understood that instantly. But Canadian nationalists were not then, and are not now, rational. Nor honest.
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At first, they maintained the "pretence" of Britishness. They spelled differently from Americans, writing STUPID things like "centre" and "labour". They pretended that Victoria, BC was 'more British than Britain', and Canada preserved the best features of traditional British culture — even tho all Canadians speak almost exactly as do Americans, and not remotely as Britons do. I have been to all ten Canadian provinces, so would warn Canadian-nationalist liars not to try to 'snow' me.
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Then, as it became clear to all the world that Canadians aren't the slitest British — they don't drive on the left side of the road, for instance, like Indians and Pakistanis; they don't say a "broad"-A in words like "past" and "glance", as West Indians and Africans in other former British colonies do; they don't drop R's but pronounce every single one except for the occasional frenchified pronunciation like ma.kób for "macabre", which even some ridiculous and pretentious Americans do — they had to cast about desperately for something that was meaningfully different from the U.S. Merely different wasn't good enuf. To justify maintaining a separation from the U.S., they had to assert that something Canadian was superior to American. They found that, or thought they had found it, in being more liberal than Americans. They insisted that Canada is purer and nobler than the United States, as for instance in providing "free" healthcare for every citizen. Never mind that when Tommy Douglas in Saskatchewan first proposed a province-wide public healthcare system (called "Medicare"; where have I heard that before?), he was condemned, in Canada (not just by his political opponents within Saskatchewan), as, for all practical purposes, a "Red" trying to impose "Socialized medicine" upon unwilling Canadians. Sound familiar? That was CANADIAN rhetoric from, among others, striking doctors in 1962.
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For Canadian nationalists casting about desperately for some defensible justification for not joining the United States, the U.S. has been represented as being subject to the will, even whims, of the Radical Right. Canadians could not consent to sully themselves in the impurity and contemptibly fascistic attitudes of the worst portions of American political opinion. Never mind that it is Canadian refusal to vote in U.S. elections that led to the triumph of the Radical Right, a triumph that Canadian votes would have prevented, absolutely and incontestibly. Had Canadians voted in 2000, Al Gore, not George W. Bush, would have become President. Had Al Gore become President, there is no way in HELL the U.S. would have invaded Iraq, tortured prisoners, or done any of the other things that Canadian nationalists use to justify NOT joining the U.S. But Canadians don't want to think about how THEY, thru contemptible aloofness from the political process of the country that means more to the future of Canadians even than their own government, produced George Bush, the Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, waterboarding, or any of that. And they sure as hell don't want YOU to think about it — about their GUILT in co-conspiring, thru electoral inaction, in the crimes of the Bush Administration, an Administration that could never have taken office had Canadians joined the Union long ago and Canadian states voted for President. Even ONE major Canadian state in 2000 would have prevented the rise of Dumbya to the Presidency. "Don't think about that. It's not our fault." Yes, actually, it is.
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Politics is about the possible, not the perfect. Canadians pretended that anything less than perfection is impermissible and indefensible. They held themselves aloof from the fray, and permitted the triumph of the Republican Radical Right. And THEN they leapt to point an accusing finger at the result THEY PRODUCED, to say that the United States is intrinsically and irredeemably evil, and they were right not to taint themselves with a Bush presidency — even tho no such Presidency could have occurred had Canadians voted in the U.S. election of 2000. How very convenient: you get to cause the problem but disown its effects.
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That is the behavior of the infants who take their ball and go home when they so much as think they won't get their way. Boycott elections and then complain about the results. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Well, it does if you're an idiot. "We might lose, so let's not compete." Terrific. Hand victory to the enemies of everything you stand for. Brilliant!
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Canadian nationalists are inveterate liars, to themselves as much as to others. They pretend to be more tolerant than the United States. Oh? How many black Prime Ministers has Canada had? How many "aboriginals"? Has there EVER been a nonwhite Canadian prime minister or Governor General? How about Provincial Premiers? How many nonwhite Provincial Premiers has Canada had?
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The Canadian myth is that Canada indulges minority communities, affords them autonomy, and accords them far more respect than does the United States, governmentally or culturally. They have rushed to embrace the moronic and dishonest notion of a nearly-mystical multiplicity in the Canadian identity, the cultural "mosaic". Each piece in that mosaic maintains its separate, intrinsic differentness, and whatever overall impression Canada may make upon outsiders, any sense of uniformity is illusionary, even delusional. No, each piece of the 'mosaic' that is Canadian national identity is autonomous, different, pure and unsullied by adjoining — over a bit of grout — not interacting with other pieces. What a load of crap.
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Canada has the same kinds of ethnic musical and cultural festivals that many parts of the United States have, except that in most places the Canadian festival is a sham, a make-believe vibrant culture that is dragged out once a year for a parade or street fair, then returned to its mason jar. The Ukrainian festival in some Prairie province is less real than the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City. Few people in Canada still speak Ukrainian in the home or on the street. Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans in NY, NJ, and other parts of the U.S. mainland still speak PR-accented Spanish in the home and with the neighbors. But somehow the United States is assimilationist, hell-bent on destroying all other cultures by eradicating them, as first choice, or subsuming them if exterminating them cannot be done. No.
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The reality, which many Quebecois and Acadien immigrants to the U.S. have understood over the ages, is that yes, the United States is a pressure cooker in which people of every group are indeed expected to learn English and talk to each other in that common language. BUT, if they do that, we don't care what language they speak in the home or among themselves.
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English Canada is fully as assimilationist to English as is the United States. And, a point sometimes lost on outsiders, Quebec is fully as assimilationist to French as the U.S., Ontario, or "British" Columbia are to English.
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The only real "mosaic" in Canada, then, comprises pieces of two types: English and French. Every major piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is Canada is either red (British) or blue (French), in some shade or other. To the extent there is any "mosaic" at all, it is composed of different bits of British red and French blue, with just the tiniest odd admixture of Chinese yellow, "First Nations" red, or "Inuit" brown. English Canada is as relentlessly assimilationist as the most narrow-minded small town of the American Midwest or South.
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So what is left to the claims of Canadian nationalists that Canada is so distinct as to be incapable of integrating amiably and happily into the Great American Union? Nothing.
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What about Canadian-nationalist pretensions that Canada is a voice of civilization and benign action in a tumultuous world community — that the world "needs" Canada's voice of moderation and tolerance? As an independent country, Canada can only run its mouth. As part of the United States, Canadians could actually produce a wiser, more generous worldview on the part of the only country in this region that counts for anything in world affairs: the United States.
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The world's need of Canada's independent voice is as much bullshit as anything else Canadian nationalists drag out to try to justify the unjustifiable separation of Canada from the United States. Ontario or Quebec Liberals are not one whit more Liberal than New York, New Jersey, or California Liberals. And American Liberals FITE for what they believe, in the hurly-burly of American politics, where triumph is not foreordained but has to be won by diligent, intelligent, tireless effort. When votes are close, American Liberals are wheeled in on hospital gurneys to cast their vote in Congress, so deeply do they care about principle.
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Where do we stand now, in "The Age of Obama"? What Canadian politician is more principled than Barack Obama? What Canadian liberal group is more consistently Liberal than the Democrats swept in on a wave of anti-Bush fury on the part of the electorate? How can Canadian nationalists now distinguish themselves ideologically from the ruling Democratic coalition, especially now that Al Franken is to give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate? How, now (yes, I know: brown cow), can Canadian Liberals rationalize away their refusal to join the Union, a Union that is in every single way — linguistically, culturally, ideologically — congenial to the great preponderance of Canadians?
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The major political struggle in the United States now is between the people who want a single-payer universal-healthcare system and those who oppose it. In that contest, Canadian votes in Congress would prove absolutely and overwhelmingly decisive. Canadian nationalists want the U.S. to fail to enact a single-payer system, so they can continue to pretend not just that Canada is somehow strikingly unique (tho it is actually almost entirely identical to the United States in every regard) but also that Canada is, morally, massively superior to the United States. At end, doesn't that amount to wishing that Americans will continue to let people without (adequate) health insurance DIE from things that a single-payer plan could cure? Isn't that, then, exactly equivalent to wanting Americans to DIE so Canadians can feel themselves superior?
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Canadian nationalism is an absolute evil, given that Canada as part of the United States would prove massively TRANSFORMATIVE. Canadian votes in Congress every two years and for President every four would MASSIVELY ALTER the nature of the United States as an influence in the world. To understand that that is indubitably true but insist nonetheless that Canada should maintain its independence from the United States is EVIL. Ergo, Canadian nationalism is evil. I will not be lectured by Canadians about anything — until and unless they fite the good fite, in Congress and for President, and help Liberals win a permanent and unchallengeable majority for policies of generosity and enlitenment by the United States everywhere on Earth.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,321 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:54 PM