Category Archives: Political Commentary

Education, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

An Eggcorn?

16 Comments

Did Harry Reid commit one?

While I defer to no one in my disdain for our mentally challenged Majority Leader, this may be a little unfair. Unless he wrote it, how can one be sure that he said “…another thing coming,” rather than the (correct) “…another think coming”? I haven’t heard the audio, but how does the listener discern between the “k” sound at the end of “think” and the same consonant sound at the beginning of “coming”?

I discussed a similar problem previously, in speculating why aerospace engineers say “detail design” rather than (the more grammatically correct, in my opinion) “detailed design.” The “d” at the beginning of “design” masks the one at the end of detailed, and perhaps many just hear “detail design” and it has become an industry standard phrase (that I hate).

And yes, I was in fact previously unfamiliar with the concept of an eggcorn.

[Friday update]

Wow. I feel like I’m living in an alternate universe.

I have two commenters (one close to my age) who have never (or at least they think that they’ve never) heard the expression “…another think coming” and always heard (or said) “…another thing coming.” I am exactly the opposite. Until yesterday, I had never heard anyone say “…another thing coming,” whereas I’ve heard the expression from childhood with the word “think.” While it’s not grammatical (yes, “think” is a verb, not a noun), it’s colloquial, and it makes sense — “if you think that, you have another think coming.” Another “thing” coming makes no sense at all to me. “Another” implies that there was a first one, but what was the first “thing” being referred to? I’m pretty sure that it’s a confusion caused by the similar consonants that join the two words.

And while we’re on the subject, another one that I see on line all the time (and was very prevalent in Usenet) is “dribble” for drivel. Again, a case of mishearing the word.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The War Against The Working People

16 Comments

…by the self-proclaimed party of the working people:

The two to three trillion dollars in spending last year and this? It’s a huge grab at the wealth of working people. It has to be paid for, and there are only two ways to do it since government can’t actually create wealth. They have to raise taxes, which steals wealth from working people, or they have to print money, which steals wealth from working people.

No matter how it’s done, the so called stimulus package is the hugest money grab and wealth redistribution since the formation of the Soviet Socialist Union.

And yes, they know exactly what they are doing. It’s all about gaining, and maintaining and reinforcing, political power. We shall see if the Republic survives.

Administrative, General, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

On Not Being A Dove

3 Comments

A long but fascinating essay from the late John Updike. I found this passage quite interesting:

The protest, from my perspective, was in large part a snobbish dismissal of [the president] by the Eastern establishment; Cambridge professors and Manhattan lawyers and their guitar-strumming children thought they could run the country and the world better than this lugubrious bohunk from Texas. These privileged members of a privileged nation believed that their pleasant position could be maintained without anything visibly ugly happening in the world. They were full of aesthetic disdain for their own defenders, the business-suited hirelings drearily pondering geopolitics and its bloody necessities down in Washington. The protesters were spitting on the cops who were trying to keep their property—the USA and its many amenities—intact. A common report in this riotous era was of slum-dwellers throwing rocks and bottles at the firemen come to put out fires; the peace marchers, the upper-middle-class housewives pushing baby carriages along in candlelit processions, seemed to me to be behaving identically, without the excuse of being slum-dwellers.

Emphasis mine.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. They weren’t anti-war — they were just on the other side.

Political Commentary

A Hundred Million Here…

22 Comments

…a hundred million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real job losses.

Nancy Pelosi: “Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package, 500 million Americans lose their jobs.”

At that rate, we’ll all be out of work before the end of the month, with hundreds of millions of fantasy Americans to go.

Whenever the Speaker opens her mouth, I have this sense that she is saying only what she imagines will be politically effective to the dolts who continue to elect her and her fellow partisans, and that she is either unaware of, or completely indifferent to the fact that any relationship between what she says and objective reality is purely coincidental. In short, the woman is a hyperpolitical idiot.

[Via Mark Hemingway]

Political Commentary, Space

Just Words?

Keith Cowing notes that President Obama read to schoolkids about the moon landings.

It would be nice to think that this is a harbinger for his space policy, but I would note that he’s been in office for two weeks now, and despite all the rumors prior to the inauguration, NASA continues to operate on an acting administrator. Of course, it would actually be unusual for an administration to name a NASA administrator so early. This is because it’s hard to find a candidate who is both capable and willing to do the job. The other reason is that space isn’t important…

Humor, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Reefer Madness

9 Comments

Andrew Stuttaford:

I don’t blame Michael Phelps for apologizing. He has a living to earn, so he did what he had to do.

In the meantime, I merely note that this broken wreck of a man’s failure to win any more than a pathetic fourteen Olympic gold medals (so far) is a terrifying warning of the horrific damage that cannabis can do to someone’s health—and a powerful reminder of just how sensible the drug laws really are.

At any rate, now we know the real story of why he ate 10,000 calories a day…

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Change!

40 Comments

The Obama administration is going to continue rendition:

The European Parliament condemned renditions as “an illegal instrument used by the United States.” Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

See, it’s only evil when Chimpy McHitler does it.

[Tuesday morning update]

The case for the hypocrisy of the leftists’ defense of Obama is made:

Here’s a summary: the liberal defense is strained, dishonest, surprisingly nuanced, and contrary to true progressive politics because it elevates “party” over principle.

You don’t say.

As a commenter there notes, these people don’t give a goddamn about human rights (as evidenced by their blind eyes toward people like Fidel Castro). It’s all about partisan politics.

[Bumped]