Oh my god, I wonder if the speech Bush is giving right now is going to be a prelude to the invasion of another “imminent threat” to the U.S.? Who appointed us as the world’s nuclear policeman anyway? Isn’t that a bit hypocritical when we ourselves have nukes?
I’m happy about the way the Democratic primaries are going. Kerry is looking stronger every day and it looks as though he might pose a considerable challenge to Bush in November. We can’t get rid of Bush fast enough to suit me.
Well, Howard Dean made a fool of himself Monday night… a really scary fool. He just confirmed the decision I’d made a few days before… that I didn’t want a loose cannon as my president. I began thinking seriously about Kerry after seeing a late-night CSPAN broadcast of him at a rally. He didn’t seem at all the haughty patrician that I’d imagined him to be, and I was quite taken with him.
Edwards, too, is looking very good to me now, though perhaps a bit green compared to Kerry. I get the feeling Edwards would be eaten alive in Washington by the old guard. Most of all, I just want the candidate with the best chance of beating Bush. Talk about loose cannons! He’s the really scary one!
Verbification. Coining a verb from a noun. It makes any English purist shudder. I’d like to strangle those who originated or help perpetuate these:
Summit: To reach the top of a mountain, to reach the summit.
Medal or podium: To earn a medal in a competition, which often means you get to stand on a podium to receive it.
And at 6 a.m., I can’t remember the others.
Oh yes, the noun embed: A reporter traveling with U.S. troops in Iraq. Could anything be worse than this ghastly term coined by the media? Sounds like an impacted tooth, or a bullet that needs to be dug out, or something. Yuck!
Hero: Another peeve of mine, especially since 9/11, is the extreme overuse of the word hero. I wince when I hear it. The word hardly has any meaning left; these days it seems almost everyone is a hero. Are people heroes for simply doing their jobs, jobs they chose to do? Is Jessica Lynch a hero because her captors happened not to kill her? Are all our soldiers in Iraq heroes because they happened to have been stationed there instead of somewhere else?
Declaring everyone a hero diminishes the meaning of the accolade for those who truly deserve it for doing something extraordinary, something far beyond simply following orders or being lucky enough to survive an unfortunate situation. Be an Audie Murphy, or the passerby who pulls a child from a burning building, or the airline passenger who attacks a terrorist hijacker in order to save intended victims on the ground. Do something selfless, something beyond the call, something you didn’t have to do and few would do. Then I’ll call you a hero.
And speaking of 9/11, if I hear the adjective horrific one more time, I’ll scream.
If they are allowed to stay in the United States, under any condition, isn’t the citizenship of every legal U.S. citizen devalued by that much?
By definition, illegal aliens are… illegal. Why should they receive a single right or benefit of citizenship? Countless aliens have earned legal citizenship and the rights and benefits that entails. Those who can’t or won’t should either get out or be deported.