LAUNCH OF THE CARNADA

In thinking up the title for this rant, I simply wanted a word based on “canard” (French for “duck”), but with the epic failure of “Armada” incorporated.  As it happens, “carnada” is the Spanish word for “bait” or “chum”, which suits my purpose perfectly.  Thank you, language gods.

I recently flew, which I do rarely, and got reminded of something I’ll call Mudge’s Fourth Law:

“The loudest voice at the picnic is a child squealing about nothing, while we whisper that the tuna salad is rotten.”

It was demonstrated thus:

When the gate from which your flight is leaving changes, or the flight is rescheduled, or there’s something that you really ought to hear about boarding instructions, the way it is announced is very likely to be unintelligible.

New Blood

Back during the Arab Spring, I asked my readers to speculate about what it would take to get a large number of Americans to say:  “It’s time, it’s up to me.  This is more important than my favorite tv show or surfing for funny videos.”

Comments were sparse, but I mentioned then that people need to feel the oppression in their daily lives.  We’re now in the “American Autumn”, as it’s been called, and something has begun that’s far from a revolt, but there’s no end to it in sight right now.

(See my Recent News Links for articles about the movement in general.)

The idea of “Occupy…” is to say “We’re going to sit here, violating the law if we need to, but still sit here, until you respond.”  It  mimick’s Tahrir Square in that way, but doesn’t yet have the mass response that
would make law enforcement difficult and mess with the economy in a general strike kind of way.

Critics have complained that the demands are not articulated, and there are no “leaders” to represent them.  In a tactical way, that can be a good thing.  “Leaderless” means that there’s no head for the enemy to chop off.  Having no set demands means that you’re
turning the tables on the Man. 

Award Time

I’ve been given the Liebster Award by Olga.  This is one of those awards that are simply ways for bloggers to acknowledge and  recommend each other.  There was a time when I wanted to be careful about advertising my blog, afraid that I’d have to constantly police it for spammy comments, but I see that WordPress does a pretty good job of filtering out the spam.

So, seeing no harm in the Liebster, I thank Olga and go on with the requirements, as she quotes them:

The Liebster is designed to bring attention to blogs with fewer than 200 followers.

The rules:

•    Thank the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them (I did so above.)

•    Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

•    Post the award on your blog.

•    Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the Internet

A little note of caution about these “awards”:

The most common one seems to be the “Versatile Blogger” award, which asks recipients to turn around and recommend FIFTEEN other blogs.  This sounds really excessive to me, and naturally leads, chain letter-like, to the same “award” coming around to the same people again & again.  But for this moderate “Liebster”, I’ll take the excuse to just point out
some good stuff to you all.

Neither fish nor fowl, but edible

My congratulations to the organizers of the third annual Orange County Progressive summit.

I’m sure something was accomplished there, though one never knows for sure what.  I’ll go into that later.  Some of this will undoubtedly sound “negative” to some.  Please read the whole thing before passing judgment.

For material strongly related to this rant, you might want to click on “organizing” or “communication” in the “categories” list to the right, and scroll down to read my posts from a couple of years ago.  I’d like to avoid repeating myself.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve pulled WAAAY BACK from organizing much of anything in recent years.  That was so I could have the luxury of sitting on the sidelines and picking at what others are doing.  I spent enough time trying to do things myself, and hearing from the can’t-do-so-I’ll-bitch crowd, and thought they were having much more fun than I.  My turn now.
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So let’s start with the title, and what this Summit was supposed to be about.

The word “summit” implies that it’s a meeting at the highest level, like Reagan meeting Gorbachev, or the Council of Elrond.  A meeting of only the chief executives, or whatever, of each organization represented.  It clearly was not that, seeing the size of the crowd, which was somewhere in the 200+ range.  It was open to the public, and advertised to the public.  Each attendee was left to decide for him/herself whether s/he was someone who should be there.

Laboring

Having been more or less retired for a while, the no-labor Labor Day is nothing very special for me.

I did, though, observe a local custom this year:  the Orange Street Fair, always held from Friday night through Sunday afternoon of the Labor Day Weekend.  This happens at the “Orange Circle” mentioned in an earlier post.

For those outside the County, this is a pretty big deal here.  Some years, it’s been known to attract up to a million visitors from all over the region.  If anyone doubts that Orange County can still assemble some of the whitest crowds this side of the Baltic, come to the Street Fair.

“He’s doing THAT again?”

More language ranting.  This time I’ll start with something that’s not really “wrong” in any way, but sometimes boring can be worse than wrong.  Ask any sullen adolescent.  It makes the listener shut down, ending all communication and producing a vague irritation.

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“I don’t know many words, so I’ll use the same handful for everything.”

We all do this.  I’m the first to fess up.  It’s just laziness.  We don’t want to bother picking the right words, so we fall back on some old, comfortable, VERY well-worn ones.

If I’m sometimes accused of having a “negative” attitude, it might have something to do with how many badly, BADLY overused words of approval get thrown around.  In a way, they amount to damning with faint praise.

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“awesome”

There’s an old, apocryphal story about the filming of The Greatest Story Ever Told.  John Wayne had a cameo as a Roman soldier who, watching the crucifixion, said:  “Truly, this man was the son of God!”

CHICKENS AND EGGS

Once in a while, I get a message from some would-be Green that makes me want to recap
what I’ve ranted about before.  Just trying a different approach, another format here, to see if this comes across any better.

Recent message I received:

I attended a GPOC meeting quite a while ago and while it
seemed informative it didn’t seem to be a viable alternative
to being registered as a Democrat.

It’s quite possible to remain registered as a Dem and still participate in some things with the Greens, but I’m guessing that the writer didn’t really mean to say there was a contradiction between going to our meetings and one’s registration.

I treated the reasons for being registered with a party here:
http://kitchenmudge.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/partisan-rant-with-illustrations/
a couple of years ago.

Since then, one thing has changed, very much in favor of registering Green:  Since Prop 14 passed, there are no longer any actual primaries for most offices in California.  For everything except U.S. President and elected party officials, anyone can vote on any candidate in any election, regardless of party registration.  Prop 14 is a disaster in other ways, for “third” parties and all voters, but that’s another story.

If you’re really REALLY attached to the idea of voting for a Dem candidate in the presidential primary, there’s not much I can say, except:  I guarantee that your one vote out of tens of millions won’t be noticed.