What’s Interesting about the US Budget Battle
When the Republicans were swept into office in 2010, one of the things they promised to do was rein in spending and balance the budget. To balance a budget–yours, mine, the local Elks Association–you must either cut spending or raise income (or some combination of the two). For the federal budget, raising income is dead on arrival. The newly elected Republicans, even before they took office, pressured the president and the lame duck congress to continue the Bush era tax cuts, and we can be sure they will fight any measure that will close tax loopholes, end corporate subsidies, raise taxes, or otherwise directly increase federal revenue.
So, with a direct increase in revenue out of the question, the Republicans have to cut spending and hope the continuation of the Bush era tax cuts will stimulate enough growth in the economy to significantly increase revenue (this is known as Voodoo Economics and, despite its having failed when it was tried both in the Reagan and Bush II administrations, conservative Americans put their hope in it in the same way the conservative Russians once put their hope in Communism).
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Refudiate: Neologism or Malaprop?
“When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” — Humpty Dumpty to Alice in Through the Looking Glass.
A week or so ago, Sarah Palin (via her Twitter account) asked peaceful Muslims to refudiate the plans of the Muslim community in lower Manhattan who want to build a mosque and community center about two blocks from Ground Zero:
Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate
Within a few hours she changed the tweet to the more established, but still incorrect refute:
“Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real.”
Now, refute means to prove something (a statement or theory) to be incorrect or false: to disprove. So Mrs. Palin is asking “Peaceful New Yorkers” to disprove “the Ground Zero mosque plan…” That’s not quite what she meant. Read more
I Used to Write a Lot
Back in the day when the Internet was fun–back before USENET was a abandoned to the spammers pushing porn–there was a small group of (should we call them friends? I don’t know) who hung out on alt.fan.tom-servo. It was an interesting cast of characters with a wide variety of interests, but our chief interest seemed to be making each other laugh, usually at the expense of someone outside the group via cross-posting (this was known generally as trolling, although we practiced a specialized for of trolling called peeping).
AFT-S has a very few of the old irregulars posting there anymore. There have been maybe 5 threads started in 2010–compare that to dozens a day in the late ’90s early ’00s–the irregulars have gone on to other things. It’s sad, really. But sometimes I get nostalgic and I go back and read some of the threads from back in the day. Back when Babylon 5 was still new, when people cared who the better Captain was: Sisko, Janeway, Kirk, or Picard, or which would win in a fight: the Whitestar or the Valiant.
I was once awarded the Peeping Commendation Medal for a post I did on an animated TV show called God, the Devil and Bob. You don’t remember GtD&B? I’m not surprised. NBC ran exactly 3 episodes before it was cancelled because of complaints from Religious People who took Offense at the premise, the content, the execution, etc. I didn’t care much for GtD&B, but I could see where it was going. I was a retelling of Job (you know, the story in the Bible where God and the Devil test Job to see how strong his faith is), and I though it was ridiculous the Christians would be offended by a modern retelling of Job. So I decided to have a little fun. Read more
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I am reading
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels (Thursday Next Novels (Penguin Books))-
