January 5, 2008 archive

Its The Year of the Mouse

Al-Qaeda to the rescue for Bush’s legacy

By M K Bhadrakumar

The Cassandra-like foretelling by American opinion makers almost uniformly makes out that Pakistan may not survive. True, it is hard to be optimistic. Setting right these disjointed times is way past the capacity of the present US administration.

The only silver lining seems to be that in an year’s time another team will move into the White House and a clean break becomes possible. Even ardent specialists in the US security community admit as much. A commentator for Stratfor, a think-tank closely linked to the security establishment, says, “In this endgame, all that the Americans want is the status quo in Pakistan. It is all they can get. And given the way US luck is running, they might not even get that.”

Thanks to George Bush one of his legacies will be Al-Qeada’s continued existence and his inept pronouncements that they are Super Terrorists responsible for all things evil.

A joke from a few years ago: My how the world has changed! The best rapper is white, the best golfer is black and the Germans don’t want to go to war!

Lithium Cola’s essay, The Perlocutionary Force of Obama’s “Moment” Speech

don’t rec the pony…

and oh god, i know i’m late, i’m late… really late

sorry all. i’ve been packing, listening to music, and getting sentimental over the little objects that remind me of yesterday…

but it’s hustle and bustle now… and really, LC’s essay is fabulous.

mwaaaaaaaaaaaa to all of you… and remember, be excellent to each (as much as is heavenly possible)

A lot has been said of the record shattering numbers from last night’s caucuses – moreso on the Democratic side.  The numbers are staggering, no matter how you slice them.  

With that, there has been some talk about the demographics in terms of young voters, new voters and how they are more energized or motivated than in years past.  While we saw this as well in 2004, there is a further uptick now.  Of course, this is only based on one state’s caucuses, but there are stories from New Hampshire as well about the level of motivation by “younger folk”, and judging by the large number of Facebook “elections” (and votes), this may be something that has legs.

All that being said, I wanted to go through a few numbers, but also to explore what this means – less in terms of which candidate it works best for, but more along the lines of the Democratic Party and the potential for keeping these votes in the future as well as keeping them engaged enough in the political process that it adds to the movement that we here on the left have been trying to build for the past few years.

According to CIRCLE (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), the youth turnout rate rose to 13 percent from 4 percent in 2004 and 3 percent in 2000. About 65,000 Iowans under the age of 30 caucused.

That, in and of itself is a huge number.  Taking into account that the temperatures were frigid, at best, yesterday, and this is even more impressive.  More stats from Young Voter PAC are as follows:

After reading various posts on Obama’s “Moment Speech,” for example the thread to Adam B’s diary (with video), it seems to me that a number of people are misunderstanding the speech itself.

In this diary I’m going to offer some stuff from contemporary philosophy of language that I think is directly relevant to this discussion.  I’m gonna use some technical terms, but remembering those isn’t important.  If nothing else, we can at least have better arguments (over Obama’s speech and other speeches) if we keep some general distinctions in mind that were made by some folks in that field.

Part One: The Dispute Over Obama’s Speech

Part Two: Speech Act Theory, or What is Perlocutionary Force?

Part Three: Obama’s Speech Again