Romney's anaphor abuse

An anaphor is a linguistic expression that takes its meaning from some element in an utterance. For example, the word she in the old Roger Miller song lyric my uncle used to love me but she died is an anaphor that refers back (inappropriately, but never mind that) to my uncle. So far, so good.

In a speech back on July 16 President Obama said (my emphasis):

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. 

Note the anaphor that, the last word in this bit of text, refers obviously to roads and bridges.  Keep that in mind as you peruse the pathologically dishonest way that presidential candidate Willard "Mitt" Romney represented what President Obama said (again, my emphasis):

Romney: He [President Obama] said this: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

Suddenly, that no longer refers to roads and bridges, but to the business you thought you had built all on your own but that the President is suddenly saying you didn't.

What I want to say to Romney is "fine, then stop driving on our socialist roads and bridges." Because only a psychopathological level of hyper-individualism could lead somebody to imagine that they are totally and singularly responsible for whatever they create, and that they get no help, no support whatever, from the rest of us.

Interview with George Carlin

George Carlin (1937-2008) discusses his life and career in this absorbing interview:

Bill Moyers on Woody Guthrie

Yesterday was Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday, and Bill Moyers has a nice video essay:

I feel not so alone

Way back in March 2010 I wrote a post about Liberty University in which I suggested that Liberty's accreditation should be yanked because they teach creation "science."  On a recent episode of "Real Time" Bill Maher echoed my sentiment, but in a funnier way. The stimulus was Presidential candidate Willard "Mitt" Romney's delivering of the commencement speech at Liberty:

A step in the wrong direction

On Friday (June 22) we got this email from the university president:

Yesterday, the Florida Board of Governors approved at [sic] 13 percent tuition increase for UNF. We appreciate the work of the Board of Governors and are satisfied with its decision. As a sign of respect to the BOG and the Governor, we are not appealing the decision. This tuition increase will allow us to continue to provide a quality education to our students. 

The university had asked for a 15% increase, but that was turned down; 13% was the compromise.

This is a step in the wrong direction.  College student debt in the United States is already higher than credit card debt.  The right direction would be to make all education, kindergarten through university, free, i.e. tax-supported.  We could easily afford to do this, and add universal health care, if we didn't have to police the entire planet and at the same time coddle our millionaires.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Our inability to get these kinds of things done is a function, or rather dysfunction, of our hyper-independence training.  For those who missed it, independence training is a cultural value that stresses individualism at the expense of the social good.  It has multiple ramifications throughout our culture, from the rejection of co-sleeping with infants and the emphasis on early weaning (to the point where images of women breastfeeding are seen as "dirty") through the Lone Ranger Syndrome in popular culture, all the way to our ambivalence toward the United Nations and our too-frequent willingness to "go it alone" in international adventures of dubious legality.

A quiet anniversary

On this date in 1967, the US Supreme Court (not always as determinedly useless as they have been recently) struck down the State of Virginia's anti-"miscegenation" law, rendering such laws unconstitutional.  The case was Loving v. Virginia.  Wikipedia has a fairly good description here, and there's another article, with photos, here.

Join the Union, or hate America!

This is an important graphic. It reveals the positive effect that union membership has on our society (unless you believe that the increasingly obscene gap between the wealthy and the rest of us is a good thing).