From an article about Clinton's visit to Japan, her first call as SecState:

>>Last week, she had warned North Korea against any "provocative action and unhelpful rhetoric" amid signs the Stalinist nation was preparing to test fire a missile capable of reaching the western United States.<<

(full article here: http://news.aol.com/article/clinton-warns-north-korea-during-tokyo/344690?cid=12)


Excuse me? "Stalinist nation"??

We rarely called communist or socialist countries that even at the height of the Cold War.
What an odd construction.
Semiotics at work. Not as overly condemning (to American readers) as saying "communist", but still clearly labeling the same. 

 I must pay closer attention to if/how our rhetoric regarding North Korea is shifting in the media.
Very interesting.

across my desk today: 


Dear World:

The United States of America, your quality supplier of ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage.

The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located, and the parts responsible for it were replaced Tuesday night, November 4. Early tests of the newly-installed equipment indicate that it is functioning correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional by mid-January.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage, and we look forward to resuming full service --- and hopefully even to improving it in years to come.

Thank you for your patience and understanding,

The USA


Louis Agre
International Union of
Operating Engineers, Local 542
1375 Virginia Dr., Ste. 100
Ft. Washington, PA 19034
(215) 542-7500
Mobile (215) 852 6548
FAX (215) 542 7557

***
Hm. Wonder if we can make refund claims as well?

From Der Spiegel online, the dominant German news magazine:

"World-wide jubilation over Obama's victory."


Heh.  "World-wide."
I like that.

I am doing my very best to stay out of politics, which is essential to my mental well-being while I am in the middle of a book crunch set in a galaxy far away. On the heels of an irritating conversation with a rabidly conservative relative, though, I can't help but share the following.

Whatever happened to the original old-school conservatism, which stood for thoughtful stewardship of the country? For rational use of resources (natural and fiscal) and mindful discussion of issues that naturally included crossing the aisle to come to consensus? It *did happen once upon a time, but that time is long foreby.

Instead we are awash today in a sea of people who fear. People who suck up media messages and 'pundit' opinions without doing any real research into facts themselves, and coming to their own, self-educated, fact-based conclusions. They regurgitate twisted science and bastardized sociology/political science as 'proof' of their fear-based, emotion-driven rationales. They worry that a liberal in office will raise taxes (OMG) - when - hey! newsflash for ya!: *any* President who takes office will sooner or later find it ESSENTIAL to raise taxes to deal with the multi-trillion dollar deficit we are now saddled with. They worry that we must maintain a strong military stance and related posturing on the international stage (ah, Cold War thinking at its best, translated to a new era) - without pausing to think that a) if democracies don't generally go to war against other democracies, and b) if wide-spread democracy really *would make the world a safer place, and c) it is not best imposed at gun-point but grown from within, then therefore d), meeting others at negotiation tables and in the economic marketplace is the best way to make that happen. In constrast to, say, relying on a continued string of international saber-rattling and the occasional pre-emptive war.

"The world has changed forever," they say, post 9/11. I disagree.

On 9/12 we were **in the very same world as the day before.**

The only thing that changed was our collective feeling of *security*. And when security is threatened, people who don't know how else to deal with the threat feel fear.

That's been driving this country and our government's psychology ever since, and I for one am heartily fed up with it. There ARE better ways. What they're doing with government of many lands (and their conflicting interests) in the EU is one example. And if we don't like that, let's invent our own. But for gods' sake, let's abandon the anchor-weight of fear-mongering in politics and fear-thinking in conservatism, masquerading in all its various propagandized guises.

It's killing this country, and pissing me off, and seriously threatening my (for now) a-political stance.

~W~

From betnoir via wcg, with profusive thanks to both, we bring you the rockin'est campaign sign in North America in betnoir's own neighborhood:





It took me a moment to parse that, but once I figured it out I've been laughing ever since. :)

Huzzah.