Ramblings of Noah Arney

Below is a leak of Hillary Clinton’s speech Tomorrow:

This has been, by all accounts, an historic race.  We have set a new bar for future primaries.  My opponent has been a strong contender, and has done more than any of us could have imagined.  Thank you for the oportunity to compete agants you.  However.  All good things must come to an end, and so must our rivalry.  It is time for the Democratic party to come together and heal old wounds.  It is time for the Democratic party to present a united front against the Republican war machine.   It is time for all right thinking people to stand up for their rights, and the rights of others.  It’s time for everyone to unite under the Democratic banner and take this to the White House its self.

John McCain has shown himself to be opposed to the core things that all right thinking people desire: health, a strong economy, and peace.  He has shown that a McCain White House would be identical to a Bush White House, and that’s not what we want in a president.

It is my belief, then, that both Sen. Obama and I must come together to fight against McCain’s vision of 8 more years of the same.  Therefore I would like to take this time to respectfuly and graciously ask for Sen. Obama to step out of the race.

These six months of primaries have shown one thing: nothing has changed.  In December I was believed to be the strongest candidate.  I am still the strongest candidate.  Nothing has changed.  You might see the numbers stacked against me, but know this: I am the only Democratic candidate who can win in November.  Primary results mean nothing.  What matters is experience, and I have that.

Thank you, and I look forward to having Sen. Obama as my Vice President.

Yes, the above was a joke.  I hope you enjoyed it.

I felt like being geeky today, so I thought I’d take a look at Sen. Clinton’s mistake.  Normally I wouldn’t care, but after all of the fuss over Sen. Obama’s comments about clinging to guns I figured she’s fair game for slips.  So, without further ado here is the comment:

“There was just an AP article posted that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

And of course the most important part:

“Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again”

If you want to jump down past the grammar discussion click here.

Now a comma is used for several things.  And I’d like to point you to this site from which I got my examples.  First is the listing use.  For example:

Noun:  He brought coffee, sandwiches, cheese and soda.
Verb:  She caught, cleaned, cooked and served the fish.
Adjective:  The weather today is cool, dry and windy.
Verb phrase:  I closed the door, started the car, pulled out of the driveway, and switched on the radio.
Clause:  Mayuki made the sushi, Yung-Hee cooked the meat, and Izabella chopped the vegetables

There is one thing that you must remember when using a list.  At the end, before the last item, you MUST use the word “and”.  Without that, it’s not a list.

The next use of the comma is for conjoining two clauses:

It was raining, so I took my umbrella.

To do this you need to use one of the coordinating conjunctions: and, but, or, so, and several more.

Most of the rest of this will have the examples taken from Wikipedia.

Commas can also be used for introductory phrases: Once upon a time, I didn’t know how to use commas

Parenthetical phrases are those bits that can be pulled out of a sentence without changing the meaning.  They fall into restrictive and non-restrictive clauses.  I’m not going to go into it much, but if you’re interested, I have a lovely worksheet I do with my students.  But, there are several forms of parenthetical phrases.  The following are the ones which interest us right now:

My father, a jaded and bitter man, ate the bagel (appositive)
My father, chewing with unbridled fury, ate the bagel (free modifier).
My father, in a fit of rage, ate the bagel (prepositional phrase).
My father, with no regard for his health, ate the bagel (adverbial phrase).
My father, despite his lack of teeth, ate the bagel (adverbial phrase). 

It is also used to separate dependant and independent clauses: “After I brushed the cat, I lint-rollered my clothes”.

And back to the politics.  The most important parts of this discussion on grammar are Parenthetical Phrases and Listing.

“Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again”

The only two possible types of comma that this could be are Parenthetical and Listing.  Lets look at listing.  As we know, a list is a number of points joined together by commas, and ending with the word “and” before the final.  Now we can assume that Clinton was attempting to give a list, meaning:

“Obama’s support among hard working Americans [of all colours], and white Americans [in particular] is weakening again.”

After listening to her comments though (which you can do here), I’m afraid that that’s not what she said.  She used the distinct pauses which indicate commas.  Also, she lacks the all important “and”. 

Before we continue, it is important to remember that her comments were full of “ums”.  Thus, I’ll rewrite what she said slightly.

She said “among working, hard-working”, but, from that, and from the “ums” which are included in it, she said “working” but then changed that to “hard-working”.  Her comment then is:

 ”Obama’s support among hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again”

Now, as we said, this is not, much as she might wish otherwise, a list.  It is a parenthetical phrase.  With the commas as they fall, she is saying:

“Obama’s support among hard-working Americans, is weakening again”

But, in order to assume this, we need to think that the introduction of the words “white Americans” does not change the sentence.  If it did change the sentence, the commas would not need to be there in that order.  Which means that “white Americans” is not adding to the sentence, but rather defining “hard-working Americans”.  Thus she has said:

“Obama’s support among hard-working Americans, [and they are] white Americans, is weakening again”

And that is where the problem happens.  She has verbally equated white with hard-working.  Which on the flip side implies that Obama’s largest ethnic group (black Americans) are not hard-working.

To be clear, when I started this I felt that people were simply taking their prior ingrained racism and applying it to the quote, seeing racism simply because it was a white person making a comment about white people.  However, after looking at the comma use, I feel that I must conclude that the comments made, though I’m sure it was a slip of the tongue, are in fact saying that hard-working Americans are white.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  But beyond that I can see the next tunnel.  Yes, though we’ve all waited way too long for the fight over the Democratic nomination to be over, that was just a warm-up.

Obama will likely be the next candidate, though it took longer than I expected.  Of course, it isn’t over yet, but unless there’s a major change in the next few weeks, this is over.

The nomination process, though, is just the appetizer.  Next up we get to see Obama vs. McCain.

Originally when McCain started running, I thought: “well, that’s the only candidate who doesn’t seem completely repulsive.  Too bad they’ll never nominate him.”  And then, they did.  Of course since then McCain seems to have changed his principles and gone on to kiss the shoes (and probably other locations) of none other than the Christian Right, in the form of John Hagge.  Yes, the same Hagge who is famous for saying:

 ”I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.”

Remember, that McCain in 2000 after being denounced by Robertson and Jerry Falwell McCain stood up and made the following remarks:

“They distort my pro-life positions and smear the reputations of my supporters.”

“Why? Because I don’t pander to them, because I don’t ascribe to their failed philosophy that money is our message.”

“Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right.”

(see the rest of the transcript here)

 And yet, here we are.  Mr. McCain, your actions remind me of Pat Robertson last November when I accused of selling out his principles.

Don’t get me started on McCain an his boot licking of our beloved president or the whole Karl Rove thing.

 Of course none of this will even matter until Clinton decides on what she is going to do.  Personally I think she’s just waiting for a high point so she can withdraw with dignity.  She may just stay in till the last primary, and then concede, but I don’t think we’re going to get any major attack adds or speeches from her for the next while.  I hope.

Political backtracking is amusing. 

 Hillary Clinton’s campaign has changed position on the upcoming primary so many times I have a hard time keeping up.

Back when she was going fairly strong, but had lost a few races to Obama, and foresaw loosing a few more, she declared that when she won in Texas and Ohio that her campaign would be shown to be great (yes I’m editorializing a bit, but not that much).  It wasn’t a huge stretch, she had double digit leads in both states.  She was a shoe-in in those states, and they both had a lot of delegates.  It gave her campaign time to breath before people said her campaign was dead (they still did, but that’s beside the point).

And then Obama started to climb in the polls in those states.  Her campaign started saying that those two states really weren’t that important.  Then they said that they only have to take one of the two in order to prove the strength of the campaign.

Now the newest word is that Obama would need to win all four primaries that day for it to dent Hillary’s campaign.

Lets think about this.  What they are saying is that if Obama wins only three of the four (even if he has both Texas and Ohio), that Hillary will declare victory.  So Obama needs to win 14 primaries in a row in order to equal one win by Hillary….  Somehow this doesn’t sound quite right.

Hillary has taken 11 states so far.  Barack has taken 24.  There are 15 states left.  Four of them are on Tuesday.  If Barack takes only three, and Hillary takes one, then we will have Hillary with 12, Barack with 27, and 11 left.  Does it seem strange to anyone else that Hillary would declare victory even with Barack having won over twice as many states as her?

Continuing in the same vein as this, I came across an interesting blog.  Take a look.  Personality cult is odd, and kinda scary.

Just an amusing observation from Rick Mercer about the US Elections made just before “Super Tuesday”.

Here we are, we think of ourselves as this progressive, diverse nation and yet there’s big bad backwards America and who’s running for the big job? A woman, a black man, a Libertarian, a Mormon with big hair, and some dude who was in a bamboo cage in Vietnam for five-and-a-half years. Meanwhile in Canada, we’re gearing up for yet another race between a pudgy white guy and a skinny white guy and some other white guy.

Well done Rick.

America is broken.  The people no longer trust the government to govern in their stead.  And it’s no wonder.  The far left has been left out in the cold for years, having almost none of their concerns addressed.  The far right feels rightly abused.  They saw a conservative President sitting with a majority in the House and Senate, and yet their major issue of abortion was never dealt with.  Instead they got “faith based” sex education which pushed people further from abstinence, while at the same time not giving students the knowledge of birth control that would lessen the need for abortions.

The government repetitively lied to the nation while the nation was at it’s most vulnerable; and then attacked all those who tried to speak the truth.

America needs to be healed.  They need someone who can restore faith, and give something to hope for.

This is where Obama comes in.  He has the ability to begin the healing process for the nation.  Every time I hear one of his speeches I get inspired.  I don’t even need to hear him, I can just read a transcript and I feel the power and charisma of a man who can do great things.

Here’s the problem.  Just because a man can do great things, doesn’t mean he does.  Rhetoric is a great thing.  Through it men and women can peacefully sort out their differences, through it one person can bring another to a new point of view without resorting to violence.  Through it we can begin to bring hope back to the United States.

But.  There has to be a but.  The ability to speak well and convincingly does not go hand in hand with strong moral fiber regardless of what the ancient Greeks thought.  There have been many great orators in the past century who used it to convince the people of their way, and took their nations down a dark road.

At times of national crises great orators come to the front.  Martin Luther King Jr. came to the front at a time of great change and turmoil in the states.  A country was trying to re-imagine its self, and his words helped it along.  England was lead through one of it’s darkest times, during World War II, by the strength of Winston Churchill.  And Germany was brought up out of humiliation and given it’s pride and dignity back by a speaker of tremendous charisma, who then led his country into it’s worst sins, which has forever branded that country as the home of the Nazis.

Obama has the power to heal and lead.  He has the power to change America for the better.  If he is elected he could do all these things.  If he is elected, he also has the power to destroy what little respect the country has left.  He has the power to plunge America into its darkest time.

I am not so naive as to imagine that because he is an inspirational speaker and a powerful rhetor that he will use his abilities for the good of the country.  But I look at the other candidates and see no potential for healing the deep gashes in the heart of America.  They tout their experience at the heart of Washington, and try to stop people from remembering that it was those at the heart of Washington who saw the wounds and ignored them.  Who told the country that they were fine, when they were falling apart.  Who lied, and helped to cover up other’s lies.

 Obama scares me.  But he is the only candidate who has the ability to start making things right.