Phobos is Mars’s moon. Ergo not a planet.

And the 1st Congress initially met in New York City, not Philadelphia,. although it did meet in Philly later. GW was sworn in in NYC as well….

Oh.

Oh no.

Oh he did NOT just question this Virginia-raised liberal’s knowledge of colonial history. Bitch, I don’t want to smack you in front of yo mama, but I will.

Say, Mr. Small-Government States-First Republican, how’s 1784 feeling, HMMMMMM?!

If he was properly Welsh, he’d spell it “Huw”.

He’s fatter than Al Gore. Therefore, he can do nothing but lie.

Or be stupid. Sometimes the distinction is hard to make.

Is there ANY wingnut who doesn’t project?

OMG ERRORS ERRORS ERRORS IN THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA(TM)!!!!!1 Bet your bottom dollar they’ve got a screw-up of their own in that same fucking column.

Republicans aren’t required to be more knowledgeable than liberals on any subject, especially subjects over which flags can be placed, in order to sneeringly deride their liberal counterparts’ knowledge. They are only required to be more enthusiastic.

It is the same logic that says a Republican who has assiduously avoided military service for decades can question the patriotism of a war protestor, often and especially if that war protestor him/her self has actual combat experience, and not suffer an immediate and painful death of self-inflicted shame and humiliation for his or her massive hypocrisy.

And in fact the same Republican idiocy that allows him to spout racist views because “I have some black friends, too.”

It’s all of a piece, folks. What matters is how ideologically pure you are, not whether your opinion is worth two shits in a hollow tin.

georgia’s in florida, dumbass

I don’t get it.

I suppose if you wanted to be charitable, you could interpret his statement as meaning that presidential campaigning was quite different in Washington’s day. He didn’t “run” in the sense that we think of running for office today because the franchise was so much smaller then. It really isn’t until the 1830s that candidates for federal office – especially for President – did anything like the mass campaigning that we see now.

If you wanted to be charitable, that is.

On the other hand, Daffy can speak with good authority on pizza subs.

Republicans aren’t required to be more knowledgeable than liberals on any subject, especially subjects over which flags can be placed, in order to sneeringly deride their liberal counterparts’ knowledge. They are only required to be more enthusiastic.

Mr./Ms. SHToad nails it. Actually the Republicans’ political “success” over the last thirty years weirdly parallels the post-Medieval theological debate between salvation through deeds versus salvation through faith. With the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Gingrich/Rove generation representing the Protestant Heresy: that true civic Virtue does not involve striving to lead a virtuous life, but merely professing a whole-hearted belief in one’s particular Civic Theology, aka “Party”. Which devolves, of course, to a contest over which Party can most flagrantly embrace the public icons of Virtue (flags, lapel pins, unitary executive worship) and most loudly voice the sacred tenets. The joint rise, and impending fall, of the Norquist Republicans and the Megachurch American Xtians can therefore be noted as a feature, not a bug.

With the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Gingrich/Rove generation representing the Protestant Heresy: that true civic Virtue does not involve striving to lead a virtuous life, but merely professing a whole-hearted belief in one’s particular Civic Theology, aka “Party”.

I’m not a religious person, so I had a hard time understanding how this would work when I read about it. I had an even hard time understanding who would take people like this seriously. But I can see how compelling this belief system is: just act like you’re king of the fucking world, and then tell everyone you are. No need to actually live a moral life; just take everything you want like you deserve it. Then you’re one of the god-blessed Elect! Right?

In defense of the Protestant heresy, I always thought the point was that humanity can never on their own do anything good enough for God, but if we worship God, He will let us into the Club anyway. After that, we are suppose to be good anyway now that we have the free time, but most people forget the second step.

Wait so the whole of your refutation here is that electors sent ballots to the capital as opposed to actually going to the capital to vote? That’s some pretty piddling shit.

SHT you typed “be more enthusiastic,” when you clearly meant “project more spittle.”

Otherwise I agree 100%.

Which is why I continue to hope we can get these guys to think gravity is a islahomoabortionist fairy tale meant to stop them from leaping from tall buildings and soaring away to heaven.

Dafydd Ab Hugh (né David Friedman)

What the fupp is that, anyway? How does someone who changes his name to something that sounds like it came out of “Ivanhoe” have the right to criticize anyone about anything?

To say nothing of how absolutely, jaw-droppingly, breathtakingly stupid someone has to be to insist the media is liberal, after that ABC debate. . . and US news outlets swallowing whole Pentagon-paid military “experts” and refusing to apologize for it. . . and CNN refusing to report John McCain’s real net worth. . . and that’s just the past week.

Shouldn’t that be Daffy Huge Abdominal?

Wait so the whole of your refutation here is that electors sent ballots to the capital as opposed to actually going to the capital to vote? That’s some pretty piddling shit.

Not if you consider the fact that Daffy is ragging on teh “liberals” for not knowing colonial American history. It’s called hypocrisy.

Daffy: the futurist’s Jonah Goldberg

The truly awesome thing about Dafydd’s piece is it’s framed as an assault on Patterico for not automatically presuming this means liberals tried to reinstate monarchy in 1792.
Liberal impurity is contagious.

I don’t know too much about Washington, but I do know that he grew hemp. Lots of it.

George Washington was a righteous dude.

Not only was GW a righteous dude, he was 12 stories tall and made of radiation.

Not only was GW a righteous dude, he was 12 stories tall and made of radiation.

Thread-winner. Hands down.

I cannot tell a lie: I had some killer herbs. Me and Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Jefferson, and Mason, we used to get totally wasted and talk about this thing we called the Constitution.

Dafydd ab Hugh (‘ab Hugh’ is evidently supposed to be ‘son of Hugh’, because his father was Hugh Friedman – I think) changed his name because he wanted to express his solidarity with the plucky peoples of little England against the horrifying specter of Eurabia, and also distance himself from his perfidious Christ-killing ancestors.

Or at least that’s how I understand it. Maybe it’s one or the other (most American wingnuts’ concept of non-national European cultures involves the honest and close to unshakable belief that they live in the 19th-century Romantics’ vesion of the Middle Ages; most American wingnuts are ruthless philosemites who both get angry at the idea of addressing Jews as human beings and even angrier at the idea of Judaism as an independent religious or cultural tradition); maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s just a pure and innocent case of an overgrown fat boy with a name he hated changing its spelling to impress the big kids, but I wouldn’t bank on it.

The entire meme about liberals being ignorant about ancient history is particularly ridiculous in the light of the continuous barrage of bullshit about the constitution being a suicide pact. Their entire line of argument is that that was then and this is now, and the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights and the rule of law are all quaint, antiquated distractions from keeping our mighty soldiers safe. Their entire reasoning for the last eight years has been essentially comparing the core principles of America to the antiquated semi-legendary laws still on the books about hitching horses and shooting Scotsmen. What on Earth good would it serve them to hang on to the ancient credo that not knowing and acting on those old laws makes you a frivolous Communist?

That three-foot long looks tasty good. I’ll take mine with a dash of verbiage, a helping of nouns, extra cheese and right wing talking points!

One last bit of incidental snark: the constitution is a suicide pact. By writing and abiding by one, a country explicitly acknowledges that violating whatever principles it enshrines is a fate worse than oblivion; just like a company charter written for non-profit purposes (public utilities, for instance) is obliged to plunge into insolvency before it fails its objectives, so too would it be irrelevant if there really were an imminent threat to the lives of all Americans and the continued existence of America as a country – that document, until abrogated by universal concord, states that we are not apes questing only after blind fecundity but human beings with standards beyond the simple biotic imperatives of mammal life.

The constitution is in fact a pact to sacrifice ourselves if it should be necessary. It’s understandable why the right has such a difficult time with this; the most horrifying thing they can imagine is the burdens they demand be laden onto the backs of their neighbors come around to them.

Is it possible to achieve damnation through faith alone, or are works also required?
-Stephen Leacock

As I recall, Washington intended to step down after his first term but reluctantly stood for office again at the urging of, inter alii, Adams. But then again, I’m a dirty fucking liberal no-nothing.

so with no campaign and no competition

I believe it’s been already noted here that no one campaigned for office until the mid 19th century – it was considered uncouth, at least.

Mary McNamara has such a skullful of liberal mush that it’s not really her fault when she gets so confused about basic American history

So, umm, what’s yer excuse, bub?

George Washington was in a cult, and the cult was into aliens, man. Didja ever look at a dollar bill, man? There’s some spooky shit goin’ on there. And it’s green too. Behind every good man there is a woman, and that woman was Martha Washington, man, and everyday George would come home, she would have a big fat bowl waiting for him, man, when he come in the door, man, she was a hip, hip, hip lady, man.

I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that I’ve been watching and enjoying “John Adams” along with, apparently, a whole bunch of wingnuts. I wonder what their take is on Abigail Adams, who’s portrayed as a fairly outspoken feminist who also hates slavery.

Damn, there I go giving them ideas again.

To say nothing of how absolutely, jaw-droppingly, breathtakingly stupid someone has to be to insist the media is liberal, after that ABC debate. . . and US news outlets swallowing whole Pentagon-paid military “experts” and refusing to apologize for it. . . and CNN refusing to report John McCain’s real net worth. . . and that’s just the past week.

That’s not “conservative.” That’s “fucking lazy and corrupt.”

Let’s keep our terms straight.

That’s not “conservative.” That’s “fucking lazy and corrupt.”

And the difference is?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/20/pope.visit/index.html

There are always two Sith lords at any one time, right?

Until one day Benji started some shit about “equality” and then Sammy Adams after a huge toke came up with the idea of making the World’s Biggest Pot of Tea.
After that it was a huuge blur.
Hey. You got some Cheetos?

Lovin’ me some radioactive GDub, yo.

Maybe it’s just a pure and innocent case of an overgrown fat boy with a name he hated changing its spelling to impress the big kids, but I wouldn’t bank on it.

Me neither. That kid would NEVER choose a name that looked so similar to “Daffy Duck”.

…the constitution is a suicide pact. By writing and abiding by one, a country explicitly acknowledges that violating whatever principles it enshrines is a fate worse than oblivion; just like a company charter written for non-profit purposes (public utilities, for instance) is obliged to plunge into insolvency before it fails its objectives, so too would it be irrelevant if there really were an imminent threat to the lives of all Americans and the continued existence of America as a country – that document, until abrogated by universal concord, states that we are not apes questing only after blind fecundity but human beings with standards beyond the simple biotic imperatives of mammal life.

The constitution is in fact a pact to sacrifice ourselves if it should be necessary. It’s understandable why the right has such a difficult time with this; the most horrifying thing they can imagine is the burdens they demand be laden onto the backs of their neighbors come around to them.

Goddam.

That’s beautiful.

Thank you for that…

mikey

– that document, until abrogated by universal concord, states that we are not apes questing only after blind fecundity but human beings with standards beyond the simple biotic imperatives of mammal life.

Hey! Is sounds to me like *some* LIE-brul has gotten his hands on the super-dope that the Defense Department grows specifically for those of us in the heartland who have pledged allegience to our jet pilot hero of the battle of Iraq, George Willard Bush! A little inner circle secret: that “codpiece” in Mr. President’s flight suit? His personal hyper-weed, carried in a stash made out of Joe Lieberman’s scrotum (hand-beaded by his “wife”, Condi Rice).

I am the only gay in the village.

Mmmkay. I just heard (fromthe ktichen, so I didn’t watch) a CNN pundit show where they all reached the conclusion that because Barack Obama didn’t realize how absolutely low Stephanoplous and Gibson could go during the debate, he isn’t electable.

I want to slit my wrists.

Didja ever look at a dollar bill, man? There’s some spooky shit goin’ on there.

That eye on the dollar…it keeps looking at me. At me, man. That shit puts me through some changes.

I believe it’s been already noted here that no one campaigned for office until the mid 19th century – it was considered uncouth, at least.

Railways made a difference, too. The concept of the autonomous agent or representative acting at a distance, beyond timely counsel and instruction — think Jefferson in Paris — was very much the order of the day before then.

(’ab Hugh’ is evidently supposed to be ’son of Hugh’, because his father was Hugh Friedman – I think)

Except that yn Gymraeg that’s ‘ap Hugh’. Oh dear. Perhaps ‘ffyc Hugh’ might be a better choice.

ahem: is ‘ffyc’ at least pronounced like ‘fuck’, or is Welsh going to disappoint me again?

Also: you’re absolutely right; that’s one of those things that immediately starts ringing bells after you hear it, and it’d be funny if he did manage to fuck up his own ostensible patronymic. But how variable is it? I seem to recall ‘map’ being used in the same place, and maybe possibly it could be something like the English a/an or Spanish y/e distinction (‘ap h’ would be vaguely repetitive under a lot of orthographies, like ‘a history’ in RP)? I’m willing to give him the benefit of the nerdroid doubt (largely because I don’t speak a word of Welsh or even know how the Hell you manage to read it with all of the ridiculous spelling, like a Briton version of Czech), but it’s probably unfair to.

How proper is ‘Dafydd’? Does it get used in modern Welsh? (There are a lot of affected non-English orthographies of various names which have been displaced by the ‘normal’ spelling – the best example I can think of, which might well be wrong, is the Gaelization of Shawn; ‘Sean’ seems to have been almost purely affective from the late 18th century to the mid-20th, and well into my own lifetime among the American diaspora)

I don’t much like my own name, but it’d be preposterous to change it around to match a language I identify with on an ethnic level without even speaking a word of it. On the plus side, it’s impolite to mock people whose parents saddled them with that stupidity; Dafydd has that shit coming to him.

he wanted to express his solidarity with the plucky peoples of little England

Then he’s even stupider than we all thought, because the name he chose is (sort of) Welsh — you know, the people who got squeezed over to the left of the island by those same plucky people of little England. Although Wales can have its revenge these days only on the rugby pitch, “not mixing up the concepts ‘Welsh’ and ‘English'” remains a sound policy choice, esp. in a pub full of Welshmen with their drink on.

(Oddly, Daf would be… well, not right, but slightly less wrong at least, if he could speak Irish, in which tongue Wales is an Bhreatain Bheag, “Little Britain”.)

alec, re: gaelicisation of Shawn: I’m pretty certain the process runs the other way, actually. Shawn, Shane, Shaun etc. are all phonetic anglicisations of the Irish name Seán (and note that thing that looks like an acute accent but isn’t — without it the word would be pronounced differently and mean “old”). But Seán isn’t the “real” Irish form of John. It is indeed a gaelicisation, not of Shawn but of the French name Jean. For a long time now it has been more popular than the authentically Irish form of John, which is Eoin. Seán also seems to be the form that made it onto the boat — there are still a fair few Eoins in Ireland, but the only version I have ever encountered among Irish-Americans (besides, of course, the perfectly normal anglophone John) is the French-derived one.

In light of that picture, the obvious exlanation of the name change is that the guy wanted to celebrate his heritage, but just can’t spell. Not Wales, but whales . . .

“…the electors were chosen by the states and sent to the capitol (Philadelphia, in Washington’s case) to cast their votes.” Capitol? That’s a building, not a city, you fucking dolt.

Liberals don’t know history, but historians are liberally biased.

Mrs. Tilton: Yeah, I was scratching my head at what Sean/Shawn ultimately referred to; another one of those tongue-tip things. Is Seán over Eoin (most Americans with that name wouldn’t know to use an accent and would be as likely to put the wrong one on it – or maybe on e or even n (by analogy to the Spanish, I guess)) a product of the Normans or the later influence of France in non-English Britain? My understanding is that the Norman equivalent of ‘Jean’ would sound almost identical to Shawn/Seán, where ‘shaw’ or ‘shah’ (no clue how to pull that off in Gaelic) would be closer to the modern metropolitan pronunciation. Or does Gaelic drop final consonants?

Also, ‘little England’ was lazy but necessary; ‘little Britain’ would be repetitive. (And haven’t the Welsh always been suspiciously cooperative with the English anyway? In Britain everyone’s an Uncle Tom.)

alec: being of Welsh stock (actually we prefer Cymraeg) I can tell you that the Welsh were cooperative with the English in the same way the Native Americans were cooperative with the White Man – yes, they survived but lost their land and much of their culture and language in the bargain. But please, don’t take my word for it – look up Edward I (aka Longshanks) for an illustrative history lesson.

In the Celtic languages, John is Eoin (Irish), Yowann (Cornish), Sion (Welsh), Ewan (Scots Gaelic). I don’t know what the Manx is but it would be simlar to the Irish/Scots since it is from the Goidelic branch of the Celtic family.

cg: I’m Irish, you don’t have to tell me that – the wages of collaboration with Whitey are generally the same, it’s just that pointless recriminations are really all the survivors have left to do. I’d guess the intra-Briton squabbling has some kind of analogue with the American Indians as well – after all, the Pequot collaborated early and thoroughly, the Iroquois initially resisted but were in the tank with the US by 1860, the Cherokee sided with the Confederacy out of some kind of tactically unsound self-determination strategy (and, uh, you know, to keep their slaves) and are these days every honky’s favorite mysterious ancestor, and God only knows whose collaboration is going to be noteworthy next. (I guess the Alaskan Natives forming (for-profit!) corporations under Nixon might count?)

The Welsh (or Cymruese, I suppose) are simply the first in a long string of similar stories. The aristocrats get too close to England, the populace suffers, and eventually the aristocrats get uppity enough to get crushed and everyone starts caring. (I’m not familiar with the history of Wales per se, but I do know that’s how it went with both Ireland and Scotland – and given that it’s not the crofters writing the history but their landlords, it does make a sort of sense that it takes the landlords coming close to winding up on pikes for history to be shaken by it.) Then the oppressed start participating in the oppression; Wales didn’t have the population density necessary to support this, but Scotland certainly did – which is why the Scots-Irish are so called, and why so many Scottish and Irish soldiers, colonizers, merchants, and adventurers participated in the next such subsumption and betrayal – India. (Generally, the Indian principalities joined the British Empire as a strategic choice – the princes were not idiots but simply misassessed the long-term threat of British domination.)

The eXile’s Dolan once wrote that part of the British experience consists in a long chain of abuse; generations of upper-middle-class who patricians send their boys joyfully to the same schools they were sent to to be beaten and buggered in the same way, and those boys grow up first into the same imperial bagmen their fathers were as young toughs and then into upper-middle-class patricians who send their boys joyfully to the same schools they were sent to to be beaten and buggered in the same way, and so on and so forth until invading China to prop up drug dealers seems like a reasonable idea. It’s surreal, but it’s at least consistent. And you got to be in on the ground floor – let it never be said that London never did anything for you. ‘To’ is like ‘for’, isn’t it?

alec: point taken – there is never an all-or-nothing explanation for these things. The Welsh nobility were pretty well duped and did collaborate but if you look at the chain of castles Edward built around Wales they didn’t really have much of a chance did they? They were well and truly fucked early on and they knew it, though there were always pockets of resistance. Actually, I wonder if Daffy wasn’t naming himself after Llewllen’s brother Daffyd in some weird homage to his rebellious spirit? Nah, he’s just a chump. Fake Welshman indeed!

It’s ironic, I now live in Scotland and learning about the sellout that was the 1707 Act of Union has been a real eye-opener…

Daffyd ab Llanddewi Brefi, yes I think you’re his inspiration.

alec,

I’m really not sure, but I suspect Seán already began displacing Eoin in Norman times. I know FA about Norman French, but it was a different dialect than (what eventually became) standard modern French, so it’s entirely possible the Normans didn’t drop terminal consonants or nasalise Ms and Ns.

Irish doesn’t, as a rule, drop final consonants. At least, it doesn’t in the way that French does this. You will sometimes see a seemingly unpronounceable cluster of consonants at the end of a syllable or word that is, mercifully, not pronounced — but in these cases the cluster serves as a marker for preceding vowel length, not as a consonant as such. (E.g.: aghaidh (face), pronounced roughly “eye”; conradh (contract or league), pron. “conra”). But my Irish isn’t good enough to know whether some of the regional dialects might not feature consonant droppage.

Some dialects of Hiberno-English do drop some final consonants, though: Oi’m tinkin abou da, “I’m thinking about that”. No idea how this got started.