John McCain has two great wars, Vietnam and the second Iraq war. He is proud of having fought in the first, and proud of being a staunch supporter of the second.
Could we please remind him that the Vietnam war was started by the United States, against a sovereign nation--and we started it on the false pretext that we had been attacked. Lyndon Johnson claimed that two US Navy ships had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin; later his White House had to admit that this had been a lie.
And the second Iraq war was started by a war-mongering George W. Bush, lying to Congress, the American people, the United Nations, and the world about Saddam Hussein having nuclear weapons and having connections with Al Qaida. We know, now, that he and his administration lied.
Why should John McCain be so proud of having fought in a war of American aggression? And why should he still be championing a second war of American aggression? Both wars were illegal, immoral, and criminal. They were and are antithetical to the principles upon which this country was founded.
zaterdag 6 september 2008
vrijdag 22 augustus 2008
Politics
I am back in the United States, now, since the end of May. I was warned, when I gave up my residency in the Netherlands, that I would be unhappy: not just warned by friends--Dutch friends as well as ex-pat USers--but warned by a kindly commiserating government employee who officially took me off the roles of legal immigrants.
I am unhappy. Candidates for the presidency have spent half a billion dollars on a pair of primary campaigns, which could much better have been spent on food and housing for the poor and homeless in this country, or on improving our woefully inadequate primary and secondary schools, or providing health care for the uninsured--or maybe rebuilding New Orleans, where I live. Or try to live.
New Orleans is the country's murder capitol. A weekend with fewer than three murders is called a safe weekend. Our public officials are either on their way to prison or should be on their way. I hve been living in calm, quiet, safe, and civilised Amsterdam for seven years; it is a shock to be back here.
And the nation I have come back to? We have a seven year-old concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, where we torture prisoners--and nobody cares. Our nuclear weapons cow other nations into near silence, and neither our elected representatives nor our presidential candidates nor simple USers like you and me can manage to protest this violation of all civilised laws and conventions. We live in a land that has suspended the right to habeas corpus--but we don't care. We are ruled by a man who lies, takes us to war illegally and dishonestly in order to make more money for the rich, changes laws passed by Congress--and we say nothing. We are more concerned with the price of gasoline, John Edwards's adultery, Britney Spears, and the Olympics.
Surely nobody but Justice Scalia thinks adultery is a crime. (Scalia has also written, in a dissenting Supreme Court opinion, about laws against masturbation.) But then our Congress impeached Bill Clinton-an utterly irresponsible man, to be sure--for engaging in fellatio in the Oval Office, which is a serious crime compared to violating the Constitution, waging an illegal and immoral war, etc.
Europeans have been paying $7.00 a gallon for gas for years; they now pay $9.00 or even $10.00. But then they don't live in their cars, and for the most part they drive cars that get good mileage. Eat your wallets, USers in SUVS.
The Olympics have become--thanks to the US--a substitute for war. Of course, that's what football and various other American sports have long been. We fought the Soviet Union in the Olympics, and now we fight China. We used to count medals, weighing gold times three, silver times two, and bronze as one. But this year, in order to beat China, we have decided to count total number of medals. Never mind that China has won more than twice as many gold medals as the US has; our bronzes beat them. The Olympics should be abandoned if we can't reform them, to get rid of the nationalism.
We still have somewhere around 8,000 homeless people in New Orleans. (The US government statistic is a mere 782.) Just before Christmas we had a cold spell, with temperatures down below freezing at night. Poor people here don't own winter coats; homeless people don't have them or anything else to defend themselves from the cold.
I have long thought that, to keep their tax-free status, churches ought to be required to open their doors to the public for at least forty hours a week. When the cold spell hit New Orleans, I started calling churches, asking them toopen their doors to homeless people. I called seven big churches in Uptown New Orleans. None of them is open, ordinarily, more than ten hours a week. I telephoned six Roman Catholic churches and the Episcopal cathedral.
Roman Catholic churches all have a little red light burning in their sanctuaries, to indicate that Jesus is there, in the church: physically present, they believe. I wanted to suggest that he would be happy to receive the poor and homeless into his house. That's what the Christian gospels say he wanted.
At three of the Roman Catholoic churches I got recordings which told me to call back "during regular business hours." At a fourth the priest I was talking to hung up before I could even finish my request. The priest at the fifth told me to call "one of the charities who do things like this." At the sixth I was able to say what I needed to say to the priest. His answer was, he said, "sympathetic." But he couldn't open the church doors: "Those people would steal things." I asked him where in the Christian gospels Jesus ever told us to value things more than humans. He hung up.
At the Episcopal cathedral a young priest answered the phone. He listened to me, and agreed to my request. I told him I would start delivering homeless people to him by taxi. "Well, I can't open the doors on my own. I will have to ask the boss." I requested that he call me back after he had talked to his bishop. He didn't call.
That night, two people--one in her forties, one in his fifties--froze to death in New Orleans.
So . . . as you can see, I am happy to be back in my native land.
I am unhappy. Candidates for the presidency have spent half a billion dollars on a pair of primary campaigns, which could much better have been spent on food and housing for the poor and homeless in this country, or on improving our woefully inadequate primary and secondary schools, or providing health care for the uninsured--or maybe rebuilding New Orleans, where I live. Or try to live.
New Orleans is the country's murder capitol. A weekend with fewer than three murders is called a safe weekend. Our public officials are either on their way to prison or should be on their way. I hve been living in calm, quiet, safe, and civilised Amsterdam for seven years; it is a shock to be back here.
And the nation I have come back to? We have a seven year-old concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, where we torture prisoners--and nobody cares. Our nuclear weapons cow other nations into near silence, and neither our elected representatives nor our presidential candidates nor simple USers like you and me can manage to protest this violation of all civilised laws and conventions. We live in a land that has suspended the right to habeas corpus--but we don't care. We are ruled by a man who lies, takes us to war illegally and dishonestly in order to make more money for the rich, changes laws passed by Congress--and we say nothing. We are more concerned with the price of gasoline, John Edwards's adultery, Britney Spears, and the Olympics.
Surely nobody but Justice Scalia thinks adultery is a crime. (Scalia has also written, in a dissenting Supreme Court opinion, about laws against masturbation.) But then our Congress impeached Bill Clinton-an utterly irresponsible man, to be sure--for engaging in fellatio in the Oval Office, which is a serious crime compared to violating the Constitution, waging an illegal and immoral war, etc.
Europeans have been paying $7.00 a gallon for gas for years; they now pay $9.00 or even $10.00. But then they don't live in their cars, and for the most part they drive cars that get good mileage. Eat your wallets, USers in SUVS.
The Olympics have become--thanks to the US--a substitute for war. Of course, that's what football and various other American sports have long been. We fought the Soviet Union in the Olympics, and now we fight China. We used to count medals, weighing gold times three, silver times two, and bronze as one. But this year, in order to beat China, we have decided to count total number of medals. Never mind that China has won more than twice as many gold medals as the US has; our bronzes beat them. The Olympics should be abandoned if we can't reform them, to get rid of the nationalism.
We still have somewhere around 8,000 homeless people in New Orleans. (The US government statistic is a mere 782.) Just before Christmas we had a cold spell, with temperatures down below freezing at night. Poor people here don't own winter coats; homeless people don't have them or anything else to defend themselves from the cold.
I have long thought that, to keep their tax-free status, churches ought to be required to open their doors to the public for at least forty hours a week. When the cold spell hit New Orleans, I started calling churches, asking them toopen their doors to homeless people. I called seven big churches in Uptown New Orleans. None of them is open, ordinarily, more than ten hours a week. I telephoned six Roman Catholic churches and the Episcopal cathedral.
Roman Catholic churches all have a little red light burning in their sanctuaries, to indicate that Jesus is there, in the church: physically present, they believe. I wanted to suggest that he would be happy to receive the poor and homeless into his house. That's what the Christian gospels say he wanted.
At three of the Roman Catholoic churches I got recordings which told me to call back "during regular business hours." At a fourth the priest I was talking to hung up before I could even finish my request. The priest at the fifth told me to call "one of the charities who do things like this." At the sixth I was able to say what I needed to say to the priest. His answer was, he said, "sympathetic." But he couldn't open the church doors: "Those people would steal things." I asked him where in the Christian gospels Jesus ever told us to value things more than humans. He hung up.
At the Episcopal cathedral a young priest answered the phone. He listened to me, and agreed to my request. I told him I would start delivering homeless people to him by taxi. "Well, I can't open the doors on my own. I will have to ask the boss." I requested that he call me back after he had talked to his bishop. He didn't call.
That night, two people--one in her forties, one in his fifties--froze to death in New Orleans.
So . . . as you can see, I am happy to be back in my native land.
zondag 11 mei 2008
DEMOCRACY
How many countries in the world are currently involved in wars of one kind or another? Perhaps war is contagious, and the world is infected. But maybe not—or not with war, anyway.
Since the days of the ancient Greeks the Western world has been talking about and experimenting with democracy. In modern Western history, we have watched what should have been—or could have been, or claimed to be—democratic revolutions, short-circuited or perverted.
Since 1776 the United States has been the standard-bearer for democracy. And since 1776 the United States has been the standard-bearer for the new aristocracy of the capitalist, liberty-glorifying culture rich.
When I was in school—all through university—I was taught as all Americans were that democracy was the opposite of communism. Absurd. Democracy is the opposite of dictatorship or some other form of totalitarianism. Capitalism is the opposite of communism. Enlightened democracy would be communist—so socialist, if you prefer. Capitalism tends toward dictatorship, or the totalitarianism of the rich.
Perhaps the United States never did have any real ambitions toward democracy. Those states practiced genocide on Native Americans, and owned African slaves; Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams wrote letters expressing very un-democratic thoughts about the farmers on Virginia plantations.[i] It may be that the American Revolution was no more a revolution than England’s “Glorious Revolution” a century earlier; in both instances, the only thing that changed was the monarch.
Since World War II the United States has claimed the banner of the “free world,” meaning the capitalist world or the world-run-by-the-rich.
“Free” is a very important word, and “freedom” is very different from “liberty.” The immediate root of “liberty” is the Latin LIBER—which also gives us “libido” and “libation.” “Libido” has to do with desire; “libations” are outpourings, from the Greek.[ii] “Liberty” is a do-my-own-thing word; it has nothing to do with the idea of society.
“Free,” however, is a friendly word—literally, historically. “Friend” comes into English from the Germanic FREI, which means dear, or beloved. “Free,” remarkably enough, comes into English at about the same time—in perhaps the eighth century—from exactly the same root. The understanding in both “friend” and “free” is what we call love: the relation of self with what self holds dear. As “friend” becomes “free,” it makes the idea of freedom social. It says that you can’t be free by yourself.
In much of the world, the totalitarian world represented by the Soviet Union was the alternative to the version of democracy that the United States advertised. The corruption of Soviet communism also turned what was a people’s revolution—a democratic revolution—into a totalitarian state. So the United States “won,” even though what it peddled as democracy was corrupt.
But maybe something odd—and serious—has happened since then.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the developing world has erupted in people’s revolutions—almost all of which the United States and other capitalist states oppose. This cause for this eruption could be that third world leaders, particularly in Africa, understand communism, in spite of the perversion and corruption of the Soviet Union, and are trying to convert their world to a new communist experiment.
Alternatively, these people’s revolutions could be taking place because the people of many African and other third world countries have heard the propaganda about democracy from the United States—where “all men are created equal”—and believed it: believed that there was a place where there could be both “liberty and justice for all.”[iii]
These people may have learned from our propaganda the principle which was supposedly behind America’s democracy, but haven’t learned enough history to know that the United States betrayed the ideals of freedom in that democracy, even as they were supposedly enshrining them in their most sacred documents.
Maybe the third world nations will get their revolutions right.
[i] See Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, vol. 1.
[ii] The oldest root we have is the Sanskrit, which is the closest we can get to our Indo-European ancestors’ language ten thousand or more years ago. The Sanskrit is LUBH—which means to perplex, bewilder, confuse, desire greatly, lust for. We get our word “love” from LUBH, through German.
[iii] To have both liberty and justice is a society is to be free.
How many countries in the world are currently involved in wars of one kind or another? Perhaps war is contagious, and the world is infected. But maybe not—or not with war, anyway.
Since the days of the ancient Greeks the Western world has been talking about and experimenting with democracy. In modern Western history, we have watched what should have been—or could have been, or claimed to be—democratic revolutions, short-circuited or perverted.
Since 1776 the United States has been the standard-bearer for democracy. And since 1776 the United States has been the standard-bearer for the new aristocracy of the capitalist, liberty-glorifying culture rich.
When I was in school—all through university—I was taught as all Americans were that democracy was the opposite of communism. Absurd. Democracy is the opposite of dictatorship or some other form of totalitarianism. Capitalism is the opposite of communism. Enlightened democracy would be communist—so socialist, if you prefer. Capitalism tends toward dictatorship, or the totalitarianism of the rich.
Perhaps the United States never did have any real ambitions toward democracy. Those states practiced genocide on Native Americans, and owned African slaves; Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams wrote letters expressing very un-democratic thoughts about the farmers on Virginia plantations.[i] It may be that the American Revolution was no more a revolution than England’s “Glorious Revolution” a century earlier; in both instances, the only thing that changed was the monarch.
Since World War II the United States has claimed the banner of the “free world,” meaning the capitalist world or the world-run-by-the-rich.
“Free” is a very important word, and “freedom” is very different from “liberty.” The immediate root of “liberty” is the Latin LIBER—which also gives us “libido” and “libation.” “Libido” has to do with desire; “libations” are outpourings, from the Greek.[ii] “Liberty” is a do-my-own-thing word; it has nothing to do with the idea of society.
“Free,” however, is a friendly word—literally, historically. “Friend” comes into English from the Germanic FREI, which means dear, or beloved. “Free,” remarkably enough, comes into English at about the same time—in perhaps the eighth century—from exactly the same root. The understanding in both “friend” and “free” is what we call love: the relation of self with what self holds dear. As “friend” becomes “free,” it makes the idea of freedom social. It says that you can’t be free by yourself.
In much of the world, the totalitarian world represented by the Soviet Union was the alternative to the version of democracy that the United States advertised. The corruption of Soviet communism also turned what was a people’s revolution—a democratic revolution—into a totalitarian state. So the United States “won,” even though what it peddled as democracy was corrupt.
But maybe something odd—and serious—has happened since then.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the developing world has erupted in people’s revolutions—almost all of which the United States and other capitalist states oppose. This cause for this eruption could be that third world leaders, particularly in Africa, understand communism, in spite of the perversion and corruption of the Soviet Union, and are trying to convert their world to a new communist experiment.
Alternatively, these people’s revolutions could be taking place because the people of many African and other third world countries have heard the propaganda about democracy from the United States—where “all men are created equal”—and believed it: believed that there was a place where there could be both “liberty and justice for all.”[iii]
These people may have learned from our propaganda the principle which was supposedly behind America’s democracy, but haven’t learned enough history to know that the United States betrayed the ideals of freedom in that democracy, even as they were supposedly enshrining them in their most sacred documents.
Maybe the third world nations will get their revolutions right.
[i] See Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, vol. 1.
[ii] The oldest root we have is the Sanskrit, which is the closest we can get to our Indo-European ancestors’ language ten thousand or more years ago. The Sanskrit is LUBH—which means to perplex, bewilder, confuse, desire greatly, lust for. We get our word “love” from LUBH, through German.
[iii] To have both liberty and justice is a society is to be free.
vrijdag 9 mei 2008
POLITICS: HAD I THE EAR OF . . .
John McCain says that we should all be interested in the news that a Hamas advisor says he would like to see Obama elected president. I agree with Senator McCain: we all should be interested in this news. Like the Hamas advisor, I want to see Obama elected president--so I suppose I agree with both Senator McCain and the Hamas advisor.
What could this statement signify? Not what McCain is suggesting: that Obama's candidacy is endorsed by the enemy . Rather, it suggests that at least one leader of Hamas thinks that with Obama as president Hamas could safely enter a bonafide truce and into serious peace talks.
Wouldn't that be a good thing? Of course: "good" and "gather"and "together" all come from the same root, and all mean the same thing.
John McCain says that we should all be interested in the news that a Hamas advisor says he would like to see Obama elected president. I agree with Senator McCain: we all should be interested in this news. Like the Hamas advisor, I want to see Obama elected president--so I suppose I agree with both Senator McCain and the Hamas advisor.
What could this statement signify? Not what McCain is suggesting: that Obama's candidacy is endorsed by the enemy . Rather, it suggests that at least one leader of Hamas thinks that with Obama as president Hamas could safely enter a bonafide truce and into serious peace talks.
Wouldn't that be a good thing? Of course: "good" and "gather"and "together" all come from the same root, and all mean the same thing.
maandag 5 mei 2008
Here's a gem. It's a note that Ronald Reagan wrote in his diary about George W. Bush:
"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his n'er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida ;the one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless.This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job.Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire himas a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work."
From The Reagan Diaries, edited by Doug Brinkley and published by Harper-Collins. Entry for May 17, 1986.
"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his n'er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida ;the one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless.This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job.Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire himas a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work."
From The Reagan Diaries, edited by Doug Brinkley and published by Harper-Collins. Entry for May 17, 1986.
dinsdag 29 april 2008
NOAH’S INVOLVMENT IN DARWINIAN HISTORY
Noah’s involvment in Darwinian history had not been satisfactorily examined. He had to make choices that may have interfered radically with evolutionary history.
Noah’s job was to preserve all the species. Two of each sex. But the problem is not whether or not Noah could tell the difference between a male snail and a female of the species. Perhaps Noah could have recruited volunteers only as couples. Male and female couples only? Well, that would cut down on the homosexuals significantly.
The more serious problem is that Noah had to make choices of what qualified as a species. Were giraffes just long-necked cows? Were rats different from squirrels? How many kinds of dolphin would you accept?
And then the big, big problem. Do dolphins count? Did Noah take on dolphins? And whales? How many pairs of whales? And frogs and turtles, and water-snakes. All the amphibians.
And what about the fish? Did he have to take a pair of every fish? Every crustacean? Or did he let them swim alongside? But what about the oysters and mussels. Even if he took them on the ark, somebody would have had to help them get aboard. And those swimming fish: just a pair of each kind? But what if the big ones ate the little ones?
It’s time for us to get some answers to these questions. They are almost as important as the question of where the Bush daughters were hidden for seven years.
How many species did Noah have on board his Ark? That is to say, at what point in genetic evolution does he intervene? We know that he forgot the unicorns;[i] what other species did he miss?
According to Jewish history, Noah comes along rather too late to save the dinosaurs.[ii] But how far along?
If we knew the number of species Noah saved, and the rate at which species divide—the Darwinian Ramifacation Factor—then we could date the Ark.
If we discover that Noah came along after the introduction of races—black, white, red, brown, yellow—is known to have happened, then we know that the Noah myth is partial, just another one of the thousand flood myths belonging to various cultures.[iii] But we don’t know who saved what in the floods experienced by other cultures.[iv]
And what do we know of the creatures who preceded Noah, and didn’t survive, weren’t rescued?
In cultures which honor the Bible, Noah is a very important ancestor. He saved us all, in this world. Jesus is referred to by Christians as the “savior”—but Christian salvation is other-worldly, not in this world. Actually, of course, Jesus—like Socrates before him—taught the Western World how to save themselves in that world, not beyond. Jesus tried to teach us how to live together.
Modern cultures throughout the world, are devoted for the most part to the saving of self, whether in this world or in the next. That’s pure perversity, of course. The heroes of the self-savers are Odysseus, who proves incapable of civilization and Cain. And Jacob, who tried to steal his brother’s birthright. And the great American gangsters, Billy the Kid and Al Capone and John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carneige and Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould.
Where is Noah? Where is the celebration of him? He’s our savior! There’s nobody around—at least according to the Biblical myth—who didn’t come over on the Ark.
[i] See the Irish Rovers, “Silly Unicorns.”
[ii]Actually, dinosaurs weren’t invented until the nineteenth century. The word “dinosaur” means fearsome lizard.
[iii] See Sir James Frazier’s The Golden Bough for accounts of various flood myths, and Napoleon Chagnon, The Yanomamo.
[iv] In Yanomamo culture, in the Amazon valley, when the great flood came all the sjmart Yanomamos climbed trees, but the dumb Yanomamos were swept out to sea and lost. Any foreigners they met had to be dumb Yanomamos.
Noah’s involvment in Darwinian history had not been satisfactorily examined. He had to make choices that may have interfered radically with evolutionary history.
Noah’s job was to preserve all the species. Two of each sex. But the problem is not whether or not Noah could tell the difference between a male snail and a female of the species. Perhaps Noah could have recruited volunteers only as couples. Male and female couples only? Well, that would cut down on the homosexuals significantly.
The more serious problem is that Noah had to make choices of what qualified as a species. Were giraffes just long-necked cows? Were rats different from squirrels? How many kinds of dolphin would you accept?
And then the big, big problem. Do dolphins count? Did Noah take on dolphins? And whales? How many pairs of whales? And frogs and turtles, and water-snakes. All the amphibians.
And what about the fish? Did he have to take a pair of every fish? Every crustacean? Or did he let them swim alongside? But what about the oysters and mussels. Even if he took them on the ark, somebody would have had to help them get aboard. And those swimming fish: just a pair of each kind? But what if the big ones ate the little ones?
It’s time for us to get some answers to these questions. They are almost as important as the question of where the Bush daughters were hidden for seven years.
How many species did Noah have on board his Ark? That is to say, at what point in genetic evolution does he intervene? We know that he forgot the unicorns;[i] what other species did he miss?
According to Jewish history, Noah comes along rather too late to save the dinosaurs.[ii] But how far along?
If we knew the number of species Noah saved, and the rate at which species divide—the Darwinian Ramifacation Factor—then we could date the Ark.
If we discover that Noah came along after the introduction of races—black, white, red, brown, yellow—is known to have happened, then we know that the Noah myth is partial, just another one of the thousand flood myths belonging to various cultures.[iii] But we don’t know who saved what in the floods experienced by other cultures.[iv]
And what do we know of the creatures who preceded Noah, and didn’t survive, weren’t rescued?
In cultures which honor the Bible, Noah is a very important ancestor. He saved us all, in this world. Jesus is referred to by Christians as the “savior”—but Christian salvation is other-worldly, not in this world. Actually, of course, Jesus—like Socrates before him—taught the Western World how to save themselves in that world, not beyond. Jesus tried to teach us how to live together.
Modern cultures throughout the world, are devoted for the most part to the saving of self, whether in this world or in the next. That’s pure perversity, of course. The heroes of the self-savers are Odysseus, who proves incapable of civilization and Cain. And Jacob, who tried to steal his brother’s birthright. And the great American gangsters, Billy the Kid and Al Capone and John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carneige and Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould.
Where is Noah? Where is the celebration of him? He’s our savior! There’s nobody around—at least according to the Biblical myth—who didn’t come over on the Ark.
[i] See the Irish Rovers, “Silly Unicorns.”
[ii]Actually, dinosaurs weren’t invented until the nineteenth century. The word “dinosaur” means fearsome lizard.
[iii] See Sir James Frazier’s The Golden Bough for accounts of various flood myths, and Napoleon Chagnon, The Yanomamo.
[iv] In Yanomamo culture, in the Amazon valley, when the great flood came all the sjmart Yanomamos climbed trees, but the dumb Yanomamos were swept out to sea and lost. Any foreigners they met had to be dumb Yanomamos.
zaterdag 26 april 2008
"WORDS ALONE ARE CERTAIN GOOD"
As a young man, W. B. Yeats said that: "Words alone are certain good." He was wrong, of course. Take these words from one of our pundits:
"Who wins Pennsylvania is important for the Democrats because that will determine who is leading and who is behind in the run for the presidential nomination."
"It's better to win fair than not to win at all" is correct, though it says nothing of any significance. But the pundific comment on the Pennsylvania primary didn't say anything--and somehow was also wrong! (In no way could the Pennsylvania primary determine who was head and who was behind; it could bring Clinton closer to Obama")
As a young man, W. B. Yeats said that: "Words alone are certain good." He was wrong, of course. Take these words from one of our pundits:
"Who wins Pennsylvania is important for the Democrats because that will determine who is leading and who is behind in the run for the presidential nomination."
"It's better to win fair than not to win at all" is correct, though it says nothing of any significance. But the pundific comment on the Pennsylvania primary didn't say anything--and somehow was also wrong! (In no way could the Pennsylvania primary determine who was head and who was behind; it could bring Clinton closer to Obama")
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