Words Still Matter

A humble request. Stop saying, “Entitlement reform.” Just stop it. Never, never, never repeat those two words again in tandem. Say instead, “Efforts to subvert the safety net.” Or “Cutting Social Security and Medicare Benefits.” Those have a plain meaning. Those words do not denote a “reform.” These words we use need to explain that this is, in fact, a regression, an atavism. Please use appropriate, accurate words to describe phenomena.

And stop talking also about “raising revenues” and “imposing new taxes.” Just stop that. Always say, “Ending the Bush era tax cuts.” And say, “Restoring tax rates to their previous levels.” And say, “Making billionaires and corporations pay their fair share.” These uber-rich people are flying their children to summer camps in Maine in private airplanes, and you’re just encouraging them to continue to take advantage of everyone when you use language that obscures the ugly facts that they don't pay the right amount of taxes. The ugly facts are that 90% of the wealth in the US is owned by 10% of the population. And that 10% won't be satisfied until their squeeze the last nickel out of the rest of us. These people, this 10%, these fat porkers need to be taxed. And hard. But their minions, the Congresspeople they hired to help them loot the rest of us, and the PR agents they hired to run the Traditional Media to make it seem benign, won't hear about that. No. They're stuck in their "new speak." They are working for their employers. Please do not use those oft repeated, bland, undesirable phrases, "raising revenue" and "imposing new taxes" any more. That just helps these porkers suck up even more that they do not deserve.

It’s bad enough that the Democrats are throwing the Left under a bus (again) and supporting and voting for the most regressive economic measures since 1929 (read: ever). The Democrats who vote for these measures are identical in all pertinent respects to the Republicans who sponsored them. It would help, before you and I start eating cat food and wondering why we can’t borrow any money or find a job or pay for medical care or dentistry and why gas is $5 a gallon, at the very least to rescue plain language from Republican cant and their misleading, capitalist smokescreen. How else can we make our pain understood?

I Want Jet Wings! I Want Jet Wings!

Jet Man over Dover

The story of Yves Rossy's flight across the English Channel is just so wonderful! And I can see that Jet Wings would be the perfect gift for my upcoming birthday. In fact, there should be a set in every garage. I don't particularly care for the way you start to fly, jumping out of an airplane at 8200 feet with the wings, but otherwise, what a completely wonderful, exciting invention. And what an incredible flight!

The New York Times reports:

Yves Rossy, a Swiss pilot and inventor who began his quest to be Buzz by building contraptions in his garage, flew across the English Channel today wearing eight-foot wings powered by four tiny jet engines.

Mr. Rossy, who’s known as FusionMan or Jet Man, jumped out of a plane at 8,200 feet above Calais, France, extended his wings and jetted across the channel at 125 miles per hour. He took 10 minutes to complete the 26-mile crossing, and parachuted to a landing on English soil not far from the famous white cliffs of Dover.

There's video of the flight if the still photographs aren't enough to inspire you.

The world needs more of this. And all of us who once dreamed of being Astronauts? We need this badly.