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Writing in the Raw

NotPipeRotateYes, that’s correct, I’m one of those anal retentive writers who believe in spelling and capitalization and punctuation and grammar.  Links lend credibility and context.

Sometimes people mistake my style for stream of consciousness.  They would be surprised to learn that almost everything is outlined and constructed.  What I do is tell stories, like Garrison Keillor or Mark Twain or Dashiell Hammett.  Because most of them do in fact come from personal experience while they have a middle, they seldom have a firm beginning or end; though I am always trying to make a point.

In the beginning.  Where is that exactly?  First the Earth was formed, then the dinosaurs came and Jesus rode them like ponies.  Homer started his poems in medias res and at the beginning we are on the shores of Troy or Ithaca and have the great relief for the rest of the tedious tale that our hero makes it that far at least, so we have no serious concerns for his welfare.

Much of the rest may seem mere wandering flashbacks but because the reader has peeked ahead they are assured they will eventually get somewhere.

So every essay is also all about process as long as you learn from it.

Here I’ve been experimenting with form, trying to write shorter, and more political, and shorter AND more political.  An ideal Front Page piece will have 200 to 500 words and at least one graphic or blockquote for visual interest. That’s about 4 or five paragraphs.  Not much time to get to the point.

Bright And Shiny Objects

“Psychology 101 ain’t working. It’s just not working. I understand the issues, I clearly see the problems, and I’m going to use the NIE to continue to rally the international community for the sake of peace.”

And with that he gave an unconvincing little jump and stalked off.

I recognize that speech having given it many times myself.  It’s the Ghostbuster speech-

Venkman: Egon.  You said crossing the streams was bad.

Spengler: There’s definitely a very slim chance we’ll survive.

Venkman: I like this plan.  I’m excited to be a part of it.  Let’s do it.

See you on the other side Ray.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Well, what I really want to do is just promote Tia’s Essay- Chanukah: first memory, but unaccustomed as she is to fame and glory, I’m inclined to let someone else accept the responsibility.

Tonight at her other gig we chatted a bit about Mormonism which led me to look up some Twain (here too).

Now I have to laugh a little bit because I’m a very pink Buddhist and I think all of it is rather silly and the story of Christ in North America no wackier than what comes from the pen of L. Ron Hubbard.

Still, there is the question of should we let this moment pass without examining the faith at all, one about which most Americans know as much as they do about… well, Islam for instance?

It is very personal and right off the top of my head I can name about a dozen massacres and wars over the meaning of the Trinity (which was settled at the Council of Nicea) because it’s a fairly common heresy.  Having a separate line of prophecy post Jesus and the Apostles and entirely different scriptures that are ‘corrected’ versions of the old and new testaments puts you smack dab in Allah territory if you ask me, but I’m no expert.

There should be no religious test for office, that’s what the Constitution says, and I don’t hate and despise Romney for being anything but a racist Republican who doesn’t think Muslims are fit to serve in the highest offices of the land.

The Morning News

The Morning News is an Open Thread

1 Dollar slips, euro gains credibility as viable rival

By Peter Grier, The Christian Science Monitor

Tue Dec 4, 3:00 AM ET

Washington – For over half a century, the US dollar has been the preeminent form of legal tender in the world. Much of today’s global trade is priced in dollars, even if the item in question isn’t being sold or bought by a US firm. Most of the foreign exchange held by national central banks is dollars  not British pounds, Chinese renminbi, or Japanese yen.

But in recent months, the king of currencies has taken it on the chin. Since August the dollar has shrunk about 6 percent in value, measured against an assortment of its fellows. Perhaps more important, it may be losing cachet overseas: Tourists can no longer pay in dollars to enter the Taj Mahal and other Indian national landmarks, for instance.

Is the dollar set to lose its top status and the national financial advantages that entails? It has swooned and recovered before, most notably in the 1970s and late 1980s.

But there’s a difference this time. The dollar has a credible rival: the euro.

Glenn Greenwald: Elbaradi and the NIE

Why haven’t I been reading more Glenn Greenwald?

He hits another one out of the park today with his blistering dissection of Fred Hiatt’s September 5th WaPo editorial, Rogue Regulator, and the other neocon chicken hawk cheerleaders and conspirators like John Bolten who have been smearing Elbaradi for years so they can get their war on.

Our serious foreign policy geniuses strike again

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Tuesday December 4, 2007 03:59 EST

How far does the rot go?  To very core of our policy and media establishment-

Somehow, it was decided in our political establishment that being completely wrong about the worst strategic disaster in our country’s history — the invasion of Iraq — is not a cause for any diminished credibility at all (and having been right is no cause for enhanced credibility). Even after the invasion of Iraq, our Hiatt-modeled political establishment even proceeded to smear and target those such as Mohamed ElBardei who were clearly proven right, as though being right was a crime.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

I remember the best sliding day ever.

The Episcopal Church next to the library had three parking lots connected with driveways that sloped fairly steeply.

Conditions were perfect, ice storm following a light snow.  When you came to the piles at the bottom of the last lot it was easy enough to crunch through the crust and slow down.  You were headed up slope anyway weinie.

Had perfect equipment too.  Runner polished and waxed Flexible Flyers.  Belly skates.

It was just my sister and I on this particular occasion and after the obligatory high speed suicide runs that day’s particular pleasure was how many 360s you could throw before the end.

We were adventurous sliders on our block.  The regular run took you through 6 hedges in 5 back yards before it dumped you spark shedding and grinding out in the street.  Special favorites got to use the popular kids’ ‘Devils Drop’, but I was never that popular and I didn’t like it so much as you usually ended up with your head next to a tree.

Nadler on FISA

U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York’s 8th Congressional District published an interesting piece on FISA reformation today-

The RESTORE Act Does What is Needed to Protect America

Jerrold Nadler, Huffington Post

Posted December 3, 2007  07:17 PM (EST)

Weekend News Digest

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Putin party scores landslide win in Russian election

by Sebastian Smith, AFP

1 hour, 3 minutes ago

MOSCOW (AFP) – President Vladimir Putin’s party won a huge majority in Russian parliamentary elections Sunday tainted by fraud allegations, early results showed, paving the way for the Kremlin leader to retain power after leaving office.

The United Russia Party won 62.3 percent of the vote, according to official results with 12 percent of the ballots counted and with opposition complaints mounting.

United Russia and its allies, A Just Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party would enter the State Duma with a collective 86.3 percent of the vote, according to an exit poll by the All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion.

Transparency

You know, I’m actually a great believer in transparency.  On The Great Orange Satan I’m the one you turn to to explain how things really work and here I am not merely an Admin I am a-

Super Admin!

Super Duck

That story will be the punch line at the end.

On Civility (Reprint)

This document represents the standing policy on civility here at DocuDharma.

Everyone should read it.

I will be happy to answer any questions.

Originally Published 9/16/07

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Once upon a time we had a sun porch that was covered all in windows and each Holiday season Emily would tape up stencils and paint them in Tempra and leave the light on for a stained glass effect.

That same house had a balcony with a window that my sister and I would play “store” at.

In the near back yard was nothing much but grass, but in the near far back yard was a playset with a swing and a sandbox next to it.

The far, far back yard was forest until you came out above the Texaco Station.

We were three houses from the stoplight across the street from the school where mom worked, and a hundred yards from the A&P where we shopped.  A quarter mile from the butcher who sold prime beef and penny candy.

We went to church in the big church in Hartford with the bowling alley in the basement that the sixth grade Sunday school class studied in (yeah it was duck pin bowling and yeah I stuck out Sunday school long enough to find out they didn’t actually let them bowl).

There were lots of nooks and crannies including a Choir Loft at the top of the top most tower just past the Music Director’s Office and the parlors the Sewing Circles (what?  Bible Study?) used during the week.

Also a Hall/Auditorium where we had big church suppers and amateur theatricals.  Richard had great enthusiasm and delivery but couldn’t (and still can’t) remember his lines so he is hard to work with.

Glenn Greenwald: Write That Novel!

Remember this quote that I like from Stephen Colbert (the same one I link to- yay Frederick!)?

… let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know – fiction!

Glenn Greenwald likes it too-

Everything that is rancid and corrupt with modern journalism: The Nutshell

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Tuesday November 27, 2007 18:46 EST

In this twisted view, that is called “balance” — writing down what each side says. As in: “Hey – Bush officials say that there is WMD in Iraq and things are going great with the war (and a few people say otherwise). It’s not for us to decide. It’s not our fault if what we wrote down is a lie. We just wrote down exactly what they said.” At best, they write down what each side says and then go home. That’s what they’re for.

In reality, they don’t even usually fulfill this clerical role fairly or well. After all, Klein’s entire column presented only the lies from the Republicans about this bill as fact, and didn’t even mention that there was another side (just as Time, in a lengthy article by the now-promoted Tyrangiel, presented only the Bush view to its readers about Saddam’s scary stockpiles of WMD and didn’t bother to mention that there was another side).

So to Time, Klein’s so-called “reporting error” wasn’t that he falsely described the bill. No; describing the bill accurately isn’t the role of a journalist. Klein’s only “reporting error” was that he only wrote down what one side said (the Republicans). He “forgot” to write down what the Democrats said. Now that the Editors noted in passing that the Democrats disagree, everything is fixed. Their job is done. That’s what they just said about explicitly as it can be said. And they don’t even realize that saying this is a profound indictment on what they do. They think that’s what they’re supposed to do.

I can’t recall a recent incident that has shone as much bright light on the ugly, vapid, propagandistic practices of our national media. The more they speak, the more they reveal what they are.

But it’s not just that- it’s that they’re such bad stenographers-

Bad stenographers

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Wednesday November 28, 2007 06:41 EST

I worked for years with highly professional stenographers in hundreds of depositions and court proceedings. Their defining trait is that they have a fierce devotion to transcribing accurately everything that is said and doing nothing else. It’s not uncommon for lawyers, in the heat of some dispute, to attempt to recruit the stenographer into the controversy in order to say who is right.

Stenographers will never do that. They will emphasize that they are only there to write down what is said, not to resolve disputes or say what actually happened — exactly like Time Magazine and most of our press corps. If someone in a court proceeding voices even the most blatantly false accusations, stenographers will faithfully write it down and publish it without comment — exactly like Time Magazine and most of our press corps, at least when it comes to claims from the government and its GOP operatives.

But there’s a fundamental difference: stenographers are far better at their job, since they give equal weight to what all parties say. But Time and friends exist principally to trumpet government claims and minimize and belittle anything to the contrary, and they pretend to “balance” it all only when they’re caught mindlessly transcribing these one-sided claims and are forced to write down what the other side says, too. The bulk of our establishment journalists aren’t merely stenographers. They’re bad stenographers.

For that reason, when establishment journalists are called “stenographers,” the real insult is to professional stenographers, who are scrupulous about recording what everyone says with equal weight. But our media class gives enormous weight to government sources and, correspondingly, GOP operatives. If anyone doubts that, just look at our establishment media’s forced confessions of their most consequential stenographic errors over the years:

It’s really worth a look just for the linky goodness I’ll not attempt to dupicate here except for this one to Markos.

Yesterday, well-

Time tries again

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Wednesday November 28, 2007 17:54 EST

But by noting merely that the bill does not “explicitly” include what Klein (and his GOP source) claimed it did, and thereafter quickly noting that “Republicans believe it can be interpreted that way,” Time actually compounds Klein’s original error by now misleading its readers into believing that there is some genuine dispute over whether the House Democrats really did give the same rights to foreign Terrorists as they gave to American citizens. Time is thus encouraging its readers to believe that perhaps Klein was right — that the Democrats’ bill does exactly that which it explicitly says it does not do.

Finally, Time leaves uncorrected the multiple other errors in Klein’s piece, including his bizarre claim that there was some great bipartisan bill agreed to by the House Intelligence Committee which Nancy Pelosi “quashed.” Nobody has any idea what Klein is talking about, including Intelligence Committee member Rep. Rush Holt (who would obviously know), because no such thing ever happened.

And then there’s Klein’s claim, citing Chris Dodd, that “when the President takes the oath of office, he (or she) promises two things: to protect the Constitution and to protect the nation against enemies, foreign and domestic.” Klein warns Democrats that to win in 2008, they must “find the proper balance between those two.” But the oath of office which the President takes actually says nothing of the kind:

Each president recites the following oath, in accordance with Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Directly contrary to what Klein said, Presidents only swear to “defend the Constitution,” not to “to protect the nation against enemies, foreign and domestic.” So that was completely wrong, too; all those serious errors packed tightly into an 855-word column.

Don Imus, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh.

Hope you dig your new career in standup Joe.  What’s it like writing for People?

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