Unsurprisingly, the Republican House majority passed a budget bill that includes no funding to implement the provisions of the Affordable Care Act. So, unable to prevent passage of the bill, unable to overturn the bill legislatively or at the ballot box, the GOP has now decided to drive the country over a financial cliff in a fit of sore-losership unequaled since Mike Tyson took a bite out of Evander Holyfield's ear. Because the bill has about as much chance of making it through the Senate and receiving President Obama's signature as. . .well, as Mike Tyson had of beating Evander Holyfield. And if the spending bill is not approved, then the federal government will shut down for the first time since 1996--and the GOP firebrands are perfectly OK with that.
Now, are you ready for the best part? See, while shutting down the government will inconvenience a lot of people--families wanting to visit national parks, Medicare providers who may not be paid in a timely manner, low-level members of the federal bureaucracy who will find themselves furloughed--the essential business of the nation will continue. The United States will, for example, still have an army. (Don't get any funny ideas, Canada!) This is because, even if the federal government comes to a general standstill, agencies charged with upholding "the safety of human life or the protection of property" would still be allowed--required--to function.
And--get ready for it--President Obama could unilaterally declare the provisions of the Affordable Care Act vital to protect human life! In other words, by shutting down the government over a refusal to fund Obamacare, the House Republicans may actually expedite Obamacare's implementation!
Whatever you may think of President Obama, you have to envy him the utter stupidity of his adversaries.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Friday, September 20, 2013
Deep, Incisive Musical Criticism: A Brief Post
Don't get me wrong, I love the Beatles as much as the next guy. Unless the next guy is my dermatologist--that man has NO taste. Still, they did write some truly moronic lyrics: "Number nine--Number Nine--Number Nine"? "The movement you need is on your shoulder"? "All you need is love"?!? But I've decided that the absolute worst lyric Messrs. McCartney and Lennon ever came up with has got to be, "Fun is the one thing that money can't buy" ("She's Leaving Home"). Does that make any sense to anyone? About the ONLY thing that money can consistently buy IS "fun." Well, fun and sandwiches. Which are also fun, so I stand by my original comment.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Seriously, Why Am I Even Surprised?
So John Boehner has finally (finally?) caved to the Tea Party lunatic fringe. As the country heads for a federal government shutdown and another ludicrous showdown over its borrowing limit, the Speaker of the House has decided to cast his lot with the most extreme members of his party. Rather than try to work with Democrats and the less insane members of the GOP to craft a political solution to these impending train wrecks, Boehner has decided to accept a Tea-Party strategy of vowing to pass needed financial legislation if and only if the budget includes no funding to implement the Affordable Care Act (i.e., Obamacare).
Not content with holding meaningless votes to repeal the ACA, Congressional Republicans have now decided to hold the economic fate of the nation hostage, rather than fund a piece of legislation (passed, we should remember, by a majority of duly elected representatives) that they don't like. We could, perhaps, excuse this band of rabble-rousers, who, let's face it, represent the back end of the IQ Bell Curve (their caucus includes that diplomatic dream-team of Michele "Spells Her Name with One 'L' 'Cause the First Lady Spells Hers with Two" Bachmann, Louie "Don't Cast Aspersions on my Asparagus" Gohmert, and Steve "La Raza" King). But what's Boehner's excuse?
Whatever you may think of John Boehner, you know that he knows this is a terrible idea: Even if he believes in the cause--which I'm not at all sure he does--he knows that, politically, this is a disaster: The Senate won't back any bill that calls for defunding the ACA, and even if it did, Obama wouldn't sign it. I guess he's assuming that, somehow, when the government gets shut down, the public will blame the Democrats, but he should ask Newt "Moonbase Alpha" Gingrich how well that strategy tends to work.
But what could Boehner do, you ask? Well, how about show some leadership? How about he goes up to these Tea Party "rebels" and says something like, "Look, you may think you're standing on principle, but you're also going to destroy the country and probably take the Republican Party with it. So here's the deal: You can say whatever you want, but when it comes time to do the business of the country, you toe the line. And if you insist on this kamikaze shit, I will make it my mission in life to see that you end up just like those kamikaze pilots: You will be stripped of all committee assignments. You will get no support from the Republican Congressional Committee when you run for re-election; and your district can forget about receiving anything in the way of federal spending as long as you are its representative."
Maybe that would work. Then again, these are people who just slashed billions of dollars from the food stamps program--a program, incidentally, that puts a huge amount of money in the pockets of Tea Party constituents. So appeals to reason--or even threats--would likely fall on deaf ears.
Not content with holding meaningless votes to repeal the ACA, Congressional Republicans have now decided to hold the economic fate of the nation hostage, rather than fund a piece of legislation (passed, we should remember, by a majority of duly elected representatives) that they don't like. We could, perhaps, excuse this band of rabble-rousers, who, let's face it, represent the back end of the IQ Bell Curve (their caucus includes that diplomatic dream-team of Michele "Spells Her Name with One 'L' 'Cause the First Lady Spells Hers with Two" Bachmann, Louie "Don't Cast Aspersions on my Asparagus" Gohmert, and Steve "La Raza" King). But what's Boehner's excuse?
Whatever you may think of John Boehner, you know that he knows this is a terrible idea: Even if he believes in the cause--which I'm not at all sure he does--he knows that, politically, this is a disaster: The Senate won't back any bill that calls for defunding the ACA, and even if it did, Obama wouldn't sign it. I guess he's assuming that, somehow, when the government gets shut down, the public will blame the Democrats, but he should ask Newt "Moonbase Alpha" Gingrich how well that strategy tends to work.
But what could Boehner do, you ask? Well, how about show some leadership? How about he goes up to these Tea Party "rebels" and says something like, "Look, you may think you're standing on principle, but you're also going to destroy the country and probably take the Republican Party with it. So here's the deal: You can say whatever you want, but when it comes time to do the business of the country, you toe the line. And if you insist on this kamikaze shit, I will make it my mission in life to see that you end up just like those kamikaze pilots: You will be stripped of all committee assignments. You will get no support from the Republican Congressional Committee when you run for re-election; and your district can forget about receiving anything in the way of federal spending as long as you are its representative."
Maybe that would work. Then again, these are people who just slashed billions of dollars from the food stamps program--a program, incidentally, that puts a huge amount of money in the pockets of Tea Party constituents. So appeals to reason--or even threats--would likely fall on deaf ears.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Advice for New Teachers: Try Sentence Disentangling
A number of writing teachers swear by sentence-combining as a technique for teaching students how to construct sentences. The principle is simple enough: Give students a set of simple sentences, and have them put the clauses together in a more sophisticated form. You can use sentences from anywhere. Here's a set of independent clauses from a selection in an anthology I have lying around:
In June of 1968, I was drafted.
A month earlier, I had graduated from Macalester College.
I was drafted to fight a war.
I hated this war.
Put those together as Tim O'Brien did in the essay "On the Rainy River," and you'll end up with this:
"In June of 1968, a month after graduating from Macalester College, I was drafted to fight a war I hated."
It's actually kind of fun, if you're the type of person who enjoys this sort of thing (a nerd.), But I'm not sure it gets at the heart of what troubles beginning-level writers. Most of my students, for example, suffer less from a tendency to write overly simplistic sentences than from what we may consider the opposite tendency--the tendency to write things like this:
"The points that he described in his essay were very practical, especially the points about childhood stereotyping that how we try to make sense of the world, and what we should do to prevent ourselves from stereotyping."
Kind of makes you long for those boring clauses transcribed above, no?
I suspect that what causes this sort of verbal tragedy is a kind of insecurity: Inexperienced writers fear that if they don't, with all deliberate speed, get down on paper every thought that flashes through their minds, then they will lose the thought forever. In the sentence above, things are going more or less OK up until "childhood stereotyping" (which is actually an incorrect phrase, as the essay being discussed is speaking about stereotyping learned during childhood--but let that go). At that point, though, I suspect the writer had flashes of ideas about other points to make, and proceeded to throw them down without regard for sense or syntax.
It's OK. As I explain to my students when I introduce them to these Word Monsters, every writer, whether novice or expert, does it from time to time--composes these sprawling, incoherent sentences. The difference between good writers and bad is that when good writers spawn Word Monsters, they never see the light of day: They are snuffed out shortly after their creation, transformed into--if not high poetry, at least understandable prose.
What these sentences call for is not combining, then, but disentangling. Take the sentence above (please!).
"The points that he described in his essay were very practical, especially the points about childhood stereotyping that how we try to make sense of the world, and what we should do to prevent ourselves from stereotyping."
I tell students that, if they find they've written a long sentence--or a sentence that feels long--to try to take it apart in order to see what they've actually got. One way to start working with a sentence like the above Word Monster is to try pulling out all the verbs and trying to match them with their subjects. This yields:
He described
The points were
We try
We should do
And right away, students can see a problem: After all, if we assume that a sentence's subjects should tell us a little something about the topic of a sentence--and we do--then this sentence has some lousy subjects. From there, we could think about what the sentence is actually about: stereotyping (or, to be precise, an essay about stereotyping).
The author made points about stereotyping.
The points were practical.
"We try to make sense of the world [by stereotyping]" might become "Stereotypes help us make sense of the world."
"What we should do to prevent stereotyping" could become simplified to "We should prevent stereotyping."
Ultimately, once we untangle the sentence--and clarify what the writer meant--we might end up with a few sentences--combining the individual sentence parts, yes, but only after we have pulled the original sentence apart:
"The author made several practical points about stereotyping. He explained that we stereotype because of childhood experiences and in order to make sense of the world. He also suggests ways we could prevent stereotyping."
Ready for The New Yorker? Probably not. But an improvement over the original? You betcha.
In June of 1968, I was drafted.
A month earlier, I had graduated from Macalester College.
I was drafted to fight a war.
I hated this war.
Put those together as Tim O'Brien did in the essay "On the Rainy River," and you'll end up with this:
"In June of 1968, a month after graduating from Macalester College, I was drafted to fight a war I hated."
It's actually kind of fun, if you're the type of person who enjoys this sort of thing (a nerd.), But I'm not sure it gets at the heart of what troubles beginning-level writers. Most of my students, for example, suffer less from a tendency to write overly simplistic sentences than from what we may consider the opposite tendency--the tendency to write things like this:
"The points that he described in his essay were very practical, especially the points about childhood stereotyping that how we try to make sense of the world, and what we should do to prevent ourselves from stereotyping."
Kind of makes you long for those boring clauses transcribed above, no?
I suspect that what causes this sort of verbal tragedy is a kind of insecurity: Inexperienced writers fear that if they don't, with all deliberate speed, get down on paper every thought that flashes through their minds, then they will lose the thought forever. In the sentence above, things are going more or less OK up until "childhood stereotyping" (which is actually an incorrect phrase, as the essay being discussed is speaking about stereotyping learned during childhood--but let that go). At that point, though, I suspect the writer had flashes of ideas about other points to make, and proceeded to throw them down without regard for sense or syntax.
It's OK. As I explain to my students when I introduce them to these Word Monsters, every writer, whether novice or expert, does it from time to time--composes these sprawling, incoherent sentences. The difference between good writers and bad is that when good writers spawn Word Monsters, they never see the light of day: They are snuffed out shortly after their creation, transformed into--if not high poetry, at least understandable prose.
What these sentences call for is not combining, then, but disentangling. Take the sentence above (please!).
"The points that he described in his essay were very practical, especially the points about childhood stereotyping that how we try to make sense of the world, and what we should do to prevent ourselves from stereotyping."
I tell students that, if they find they've written a long sentence--or a sentence that feels long--to try to take it apart in order to see what they've actually got. One way to start working with a sentence like the above Word Monster is to try pulling out all the verbs and trying to match them with their subjects. This yields:
He described
The points were
We try
We should do
And right away, students can see a problem: After all, if we assume that a sentence's subjects should tell us a little something about the topic of a sentence--and we do--then this sentence has some lousy subjects. From there, we could think about what the sentence is actually about: stereotyping (or, to be precise, an essay about stereotyping).
The author made points about stereotyping.
The points were practical.
"We try to make sense of the world [by stereotyping]" might become "Stereotypes help us make sense of the world."
"What we should do to prevent stereotyping" could become simplified to "We should prevent stereotyping."
Ultimately, once we untangle the sentence--and clarify what the writer meant--we might end up with a few sentences--combining the individual sentence parts, yes, but only after we have pulled the original sentence apart:
"The author made several practical points about stereotyping. He explained that we stereotype because of childhood experiences and in order to make sense of the world. He also suggests ways we could prevent stereotyping."
Ready for The New Yorker? Probably not. But an improvement over the original? You betcha.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Correction
Yesterday's post referred to an ancient myth of the Tlingit people, according to which a mighty clam will foretell the End Times. "Tlingit" was a typo. I meant "Hassidim." That is all.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Fun with Typos
From a student paper:
"It was the clam before the storm."
Or I THOUGHT it was a typo, until I read about Tlingit myths that tell of Shorooknangalangalang (also known as "Timmy"), the Great Clam of the South, who, according to legend, heralds the End Times. It is said that, when Timmy opens his. . . let's say, "mouth," and speaks the nine forbidden words (apples, Thursday, wigwam, eleven, pellagra, pellagra [yes, twice], screwdriver, Beyoncé, and flan), then the heavens will open, the 7-Elevens will close, and all will be as it was at the beginning. . . of last week, so, y'know no biggie. (He IS just a clam, after all.)
"It was the clam before the storm."
Or I THOUGHT it was a typo, until I read about Tlingit myths that tell of Shorooknangalangalang (also known as "Timmy"), the Great Clam of the South, who, according to legend, heralds the End Times. It is said that, when Timmy opens his. . . let's say, "mouth," and speaks the nine forbidden words (apples, Thursday, wigwam, eleven, pellagra, pellagra [yes, twice], screwdriver, Beyoncé, and flan), then the heavens will open, the 7-Elevens will close, and all will be as it was at the beginning. . . of last week, so, y'know no biggie. (He IS just a clam, after all.)
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Just Another Day at Solipsist Central: NFL Edition
WOS: Who's playing?
SOL: Indianapolis and Miami.
WOS: Who are we rooting for? Miami?
SOL: Well, Miami is kind of a Jets rival, so I guess I'm rooting for Indianapolis.
WOS: I think I'd prefer Miami.
SOL: But, ACOS lives in Florida and is a Dolphins fan!
WOS: So? You don't like ACOS?
SOL: Of course, I like ACOS! I just want him to be miserable!
WOS: That doesn't make sense.
SOL: You know! Don't you always want your cousins to be miserable?
WOS: No.
SOL: You don't?
WOS: Of course not!
SOL: You're such a girl!
WOS: Men are stupid.
SOL: What's your point?
SOL: Indianapolis and Miami.
WOS: Who are we rooting for? Miami?
SOL: Well, Miami is kind of a Jets rival, so I guess I'm rooting for Indianapolis.
WOS: I think I'd prefer Miami.
SOL: But, ACOS lives in Florida and is a Dolphins fan!
WOS: So? You don't like ACOS?
SOL: Of course, I like ACOS! I just want him to be miserable!
WOS: That doesn't make sense.
SOL: You know! Don't you always want your cousins to be miserable?
WOS: No.
SOL: You don't?
WOS: Of course not!
SOL: You're such a girl!
WOS: Men are stupid.
SOL: What's your point?
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