Language and Life

• La langue:
• Via languagehat:  French reform spelling.  Somewhat.
• ForgottenNY discovers the Clay Sanskrit Library.
• La vie:
• The Rude One:

  Let's be honest here about the presidency of either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. It doesn't matter which one is "pragmatic" or "progressive" or "progressive progressive" or "pragmatically progressive." It matters about as much as a flea fart in a tornado. Because, see, neither of them is getting shit past a Congress that has at least one house controlled by Republicans. Hillary Clinton ain't gonna wiggle her nose and cause the obstructionist fucknuts to all of a sudden "want to get things done." Bernie Sanders ain't gonna wave a magic staff and cause "revolution" to overtake the hearts of the very assholes who have done everything in their power to halt the moderate-left agenda of President Obama. The Republicans ain't gonna compromise with any Democrat in the White House. It ain't in their nature.

  Unfortunately, I can't vote for "just the good parts" and I won't be expending enthusiasm on this race until absolutely necessary; besides, I'd like to get Jill Stein into the mix.
  
• Lance Mannion remembers what this election is really about:

  The owner class. What they want, he told Rennie, was cheap domestic labor. Servants. To maintain a pool of workers desperate enough to bow and scrape and tug their forelocks for practically nothing the owners needed that there be little or no attractive alternatives. Whatever other work was out there had to pay worse and humiliate and degrade you more. So it was in the owners’ interests to keep wages down everywhere and in every industry and line of work and to make sure that what jobs there were, even at low pay and with sorry conditions, were few and far between. This would make sure the servants would be grateful to have their jobs and desperate to keep them.
  
  That’s one of the reasons the owners hate unions, said Old Man Rennie. Unions get workers good pay, safe working conditions, and respect. But it’s also why they hate government spending that alleviates poverty and creates jobs: it gives the servant class an alternative to being servants, because why would anyone plow a mule from sunrise to sunset for 50 cents a day if there was any better choice?

• Crumbling Empire on the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership):

  The so-called "economic recovery" has essentially been a jobless one; the jobs that have been "created" are lower in wages, and include part-time jobs and temporary positions. Pensions have gone the way of the Dodo bird. But with the TPP, the job losses would exceed the job losses from NAFTA. And Congress will be cutting 700 million out of Medicare to pay for job "re-training." Retraining? To work where? As what, burger flippers at McDonalds? Somehow I don't see Corporate America suddenly going on a domestic hiring binge! Especially when they can outsource their work to the third world, and not have to deal with those pesky safety and environmental standards.

• ETA: Lambert Strether of naked capitalism on the Democratic debate.

  I can’t break out my Magic Markers™ for the Sanders v. Clinton debate last Thursday because there’s not enough time in the world. So I want to look at three seemingly distinct topics: corruption, health care, and what the smart people who ride the Acela call “theories of change.” For each topic, I will compare and contrast Sanders and Clinton; and I’ll weave the three topics together at the end.

  I should have seen that earlier.