JISHOU, HUNAN — Stand back. I’m taking a deep breath. …

AAAAUUUUGGGGHHH!

…

There, I feel much better.

I came back from playing billiards really badly tonight, sat down at my desk and decided to read the International Herald-Tribune website. And what should catch my eye?

Sarah Palin blames the Bush administration for the loss of the McCain-Palin campaign. Damn, this woman is quick on the draw! It took her 10 days to figure out that maybe she and John lost because they were of the same party as W. Brilliant!

With her typical lack of insight, Palin failed to recognize that they probably ran the worst presidential campaign in recent memory, and that her mere presence on the ticket killed any chance of McCain winning the presidency. It’s much easier to blame the poor sucker still occupying the White House.

The IHT article follows this amazing revelation with this frightening quote:

“I’m like, O.K., God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door,” Palin said in an interview with Fox News on Monday. “And if there is an open door in ‘12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door.”

With a Snowcat, no doubt.

November 14th, 2008 | Tags: go away, Sarah Palin | Category: Random rants | Comments (6)

JISHOU, HUNAN — After three weeks of reading their diaries and other compositions, I’ve been able to identify some patterns in the written English of my freshmen.

They have not fully understood the need for commas, or have confused commas with periods. As a result, they start many sentences with conjunctions: “and,” “but” and “because” are the most frequent.

Some who have mastered the comma and proper conjunctions use create run-on sentences. To be fair, this habit is one shared by native English-speaking students, so I can’t criticize my ESL students too much.

There are sentence fragments - clauses with no verbs, for example. Sentences that abruptly change topic or subject midstream. There is occasional misuse of tenses, using past for present and present for past, and conjugations, using singular verbs for plural nouns, or vice versa.

One exercise in the freshman comp book is to rewrite incorrect sentences so that they obey all the basic rules of English grammar. These sentences are usually pretty mangled, and a good eye can reconstruct them pretty quickly.

Grading papers can be tedious at times, so I took a break to read the transcript of the debate between Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin. (Yeah, I know, I’m a geek.) Barely one-fourth of the way through, I came to a not-so-original conclusion.

Palin is either an ESL student herself, or she’s been moonlighting as an ESL textbook contributor.

October 21st, 2008 | Tags: debate, ESL, grammar, Joe Biden, rhetoric, Sarah Palin | Category: Random rants, Teaching English | Comments (2)

JISHOU, HUNAN — No-nothings are dragging Barack Hussein Obama’s name through the mud, alleging his middle name, especially, identifies him as an Arab and/or a Muslim.

So I’ve decided we all should — at least temporarily anyway — adopt the name Hussein.

One of the more inspiring stories from World War II comes from Denmark during the Nazi Occupation. The Nazis required all Jews to wear a six-pointed star. Led by the king and queen of Denmark, the Danes responded by everyone, Jew or otherwise, wearing the star. It was at once a show of solidarity, of peaceful resistance, and of rejecting prejudice.

These ignorant anti-Obama Americans (see below) act as if “Hussein” is also some kind of identification badge. Rather, it is a common name — meaning “handsome” or “good” — among Arabs and Arab-Americans, much as my given names, “John” and “James” are common (in a myriad of forms) among Christians worldwide.

But my names do not automatically confer upon me membership in the Christian faith. The fact that John Wilkes Booth and James Ruby were famous killers in US history does not imply I am one twice over. No, my parents honored my heritage by naming me after my father, grandfather and great-grandfather.

Similarly, “Hussein” does not identify Obama as an Arab, or a Muslim, and certainly not as a terrorist. It was his Kenyan grandfather’s name. That’s all.

The Danes stood up to ignorance and bigotry. We should, too.

October 15th, 2008 | Tags: Barack Hussein Obama, bigotry, John McCain, presidential race, Sarah Palin | Category: Civil liberties, Random rants | Comments (1)

JISHOU, HUNAN — Bruce Wilson, at Talk to Action, has been researching the connection of Gov. Sarah Palin’s churches to an extreme Christian dominionist movement called the “Third Wave.” His team posted part of their documentary on YouTube, which killed the video just as it was creeping into the top 10 most viewed clips on the site.

The video, first of three parts, is now being hosted elsewhere.

Christian dominionism is a polite way of saying, “Christians taking over the US government, and maybe rewriting the Constitution to include ‘Biblical’ principles.” The Third Wave movement is even more extreme in these efforts, so much so that even conservative pentecostal churches are worried.

Both the Wasilla Assembly of God Church and the Juneau Christian Center appear to be part of the Third Wave movement. Wilson has many more details at Talk to Action’s website. Here’s the video, to pique your curiosity.

Palin’s Churches, Thomas Muthee, Witchcraft and The Third Wave from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.

October 7th, 2008 | Tags: campaign 2008, churches, Sarah Palin, third wave, viral video, youtube | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary | Leave a comment