More Random Snippets (Save Our Å, Ä and Ö! Edition)

by hilzoy

(1) Remember the "largest tax increase in history" -- the one the Democrats were going to pass by, um, not changing tax laws written and passed by Republicans? Our President had this to say in his radio address:

"Democrats in the House and the Senate also recently passed their annual budget resolutions. Their budgets would raise your taxes and raise government spending in Washington. (...)

Overall, the Democrats would raise taxes by a total of nearly $400 billion over the next five years. To put this in perspective, this would be the largest tax increase in our Nation's history, even larger than the tax increase the Democrats passed the last time they controlled Congress.

Let me explain what it will mean for your annual tax bill if the Democrats get their way.

If you have children, the Democrats would raise your taxes by $500 for each child. If you're a family of four making $60,000 a year, the Democrats would raise your taxes by more than $1,800. If you're a single mother with two children working to make ends meet, the Democrats would raise your taxes by more than $1,000. If you are a small business owner working to meet a payroll, the Democrats would raise your taxes by almost $4,000.

And more than five million low-income Americans who currently pay no income taxes because of our tax relief would once again have to pay. Whether you have a family, work for a living, own a business, or are simply struggling to get by on a low income, the Democrats want to raise your taxes."

Curiously, he failed to mention the fact that the Republicans have repeatedly "passed" this very same "tax increase" every time they passed budgets that did not extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Funny how that happens.

(2) It has been a bad week for Republican Presidential candidates. John McCain seems to have considered becoming a Democrat back in 2000. (I can't imagine that that will play well with the base.) Rudy Giuliani now recalls being briefed on the fact that Bernard Kerik had ties to a company suspected of being connected to the mafia. That didn't prevent Giuliani from making Kerik his police commissioner, or from recommending that Kerik be appointed Secretary of Homeland Security. Meanwhile, Kerik, who pled guilty to accepting $165,000 in renovations to his apartment from that same company, may now be facing new charges:

"Federal prosecutors have told Bernard B. Kerik, whose nomination as homeland security secretary in 2004 ended in scandal, that he is likely to be charged with several felonies, including tax evasion and conspiracy to commit wiretapping."

Meanwhile, New York firefighters and their families are speaking out about Giuliani's conduct on and before 9/11, saying things like: "When he runs on 9/11, I want the American people to know he was part of the problem", "My son was murdered because of your incompetence!", and "We want America to know what this guy meant to New York City firefighters. (...) In our experiences with this man, he disrespected us in the most horrific way."

I remain absolutely amazed that Rudy Giuliani is being seriously considered as a Presidential candidate. Likewise Mitt Romney, although in Romney's case the problem isn't evidence of spectacularly bad judgment but his last-minute conversion on so many issues of importance to the Republican base. And Fred Thompson? What's up with that? That would be like nominating the word "avuncular" to govern the country.

It's not as though there aren't good conservatives in the race. While I haven't really done enough research to know for sure, I suspect that if I were a conservative Republican, I'd be happily supporting Mike Huckabee; or at least I would have been until today, when Tommy Thompson confirmed that he'll be a candidate.

(3) Another Republican talking point: Nancy Pelosi is going to Syria. Lots of people are outraged. Even the White House spokesperson, Dana Perino:

"Well, as you know, we do not encourage -- in fact, we discourage members of Congress to make such visits to Syria. This is a country that is a state sponsor of terror, one that is trying to disrupt the Siniora government in Lebanon, and one that is allowing foreign fighters to flow into Iraq from its borders. And so we don't think it's productive to go to Syria and try to -- well, I don't know what she's trying to accomplish."

As ThinkProgress points out, and Bloomberg confirms, not only will Pelosi's group include a Republican, there is a separate group of Republican members of Congress in Syria right now. Curiously, according to Bloomberg, "Perino wasn't available to comment about that trip."

(4) Honestly, this is not an April Fool's joke:

"Michael Jackson is in discussions about creating a 50-foot robotic replica of himself to roam the Las Vegas desert, according to reports."

Personally, I think one of him is enough. It would be interesting to see how realistic they make it, though. Would its nose periodically fall off because of excessive plastic surgery?

(5) This isn't an April Fool's joke either, though I wish it were: was an April Fool's joke, which I fell for:

"A parliamentary working group has proposed scrapping Sweden's 'complex letters' Å, Ä and Ö, citing globalization and technological competitiveness as the main factors.

The Swedish government will now launch an inquiry into the matter, with a full recommendation anticipated in the autumn."

Apparently, it would be cheaper to use only the normal 26 letters, replacing Å, Ä and Ö with (respectively) AA, AE, and OE.

I think that would be horrible. I love those letters. I also love the fact that Swedish is, on the whole, economical with its letters; you don't have all sorts of extraneous letters cluttering things up. It's a spare and elegant language, at least as far as spelling goes. This would completely change that. I don't like it.

Here's one completely unexpected reason to oppose the change:

"Båstad council was also quick to reject the move.

"We already have enough trouble with English-speakers who think the name of our town is amusing. If the Å becomes a regular A it will just make things worse," said Social Democrat councillor Pär Öberg.

"We might as well go the whole hog and include an R.""

(Note: the 'å' in Båstad is pronounced sort of like this: imagine the sounds 'oh' (as in 'oh no, Mr. Bill!' and 'aw' (as in 'awful'.) In both cases, these sounds end with a sort of 'w' sound. Cut that off both of them, leaving a pure vowel sound that seems, to American ears, to stop halfway through. Now make a sound halfway between the two. That's å.

Båstad is not bastad at all. I can see how they'd be annoyed.)

Open thread.

Comments

[KCinDC]

Saw this via Atrios:

A Baptist minister, Mr. Huckabee expressed impatience with the political choices so far of some religious conservatives. In the March Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, Mr. Giuliani led among Republicans with 38%; even among evangelical voters, the twice-divorced former New York City mayor, a supporter of abortion rights, received 37% to 2% for Mr. Huckabee.

"If Republicans in this election vote in such a way as to say a candidate’s personal life and personal conduct in office doesn’t matter," he declared, "then a lot of Christian evangelical leaders owe Bill Clinton a public apology."

If the Swedes were going to go all-ASCII, they should have done it years ago. It makes no sense to do it now, just as things are finally starting to work with various character sets more complicated than the plain Latin 1 they need. Also, the proposed new spelling is "Baastad", not "Bastad", I believe.

[Katherine]

Another strike against Obama.

It's defensible for Congress to fold on this and pass the bill Bush wants, but to state in advance that they will do so, because to do otherwise would show they don't care about the troops is another thing entirely.

I lean more and more towards Edwards these days.

[hilzoy]

Katherine: I heard him say something similar on Late Edition, while I was eating lunch; and there he was quite careful to say that the COngress would not vote to cut off funding for the troops, but not to say that that meant that they would not keep voting for supplementals with timelines.

[Platosearwax]

The Swedes will never get rid of those letters. Funnily enough, right now sitting here in Norway typing this, my keyboard has those three letters on it, though they come out in Norwegian: Æ Ø Å. I lost the replacement keys to turn my Swedish keyboard into Norwegian.

Med vennlig hilsen.

[KCinDC]

Hilzoy cruelly misled us by assuring us #5 was not an April Fool's joke. How can we ever trust her again?

[Joshua]

I really wish Edwards hadn't been so soft on Bill Donohue and so warm towards AIPAC. Otherwise, I'd be completely behind him.

I'll still take Obama over Clinton 10 times out of 10, though. God, why is that woman even a serious candidate? The only person more symbolic of everything wrong with the Democrats for the past six years is Joe Lieberman. (Scary thought: Hillary wins the primary and picks Lieberman as a running mate. *shudder* If anything could force me to vote against a Democrat in 2008, that's it.)

Interesting point about Pelosi being accompanied by Republican Congressmen. When I first heard about her trip, my reaction was, "So frickin' what?" I consider it a good thing to talk to influential regional powers who are cheesed off at us.

There's literally no downside to it. Worst case scenario, nothing changes. Best case scenario, an influential regional player decides to play ball and help us defuse a number of volatile situations. They're much better placed to coerce or finagle radical groups into de-escalation than we are.

The fact that Republicans are also in the delegation just destroys the criticism even further. Bah.

[hilzoy]

Katherine: here's the transcript from Late Edition. Relevant part:

"BLITZER: Because some ardent opponents of the war, like Dennis Kucinich, for example, who is a Democratic presidential candidate...

OBAMA: Right.

BLITZER: ... he takes a principled stand. He's not going to vote to fund troops going off to this war, because he believes that would help bring the troops home.

OBAMA: Right.

You know, the problem is, is that you have got an obstinate administration that has shown itself unwilling to change in the face of circumstances on the ground.

And, in that situation, what you don't want to do is to play chicken with the president, and create a situation in which, potentially, you don't have body armor, you don't have reinforced humvees, you don't have night-vision goggles.

Now, there is a ratcheting-up of pressure on the president. And I am very pleased about the vote that took place yesterday, where a majority of the Senate for the first time said we need to have a timetable.

BLITZER: But he says he is going to veto that right now.

OBAMA: I understand.

BLITZER: And there is a game of chicken going on right now.

OBAMA: I understand that he says he is going to veto it. There is no doubt he will veto it. But what you are starting to see, I think, is a bipartisan movement in the direction of having a clear endgame.

And I am very pleased that the bill that I presented back in January calling for a phased withdrawal starting on May 1 of this year, with the aim of getting all combat troops out by March 31 of next year, that many of the elements in that bill ended up being part of this package that was voted on yesterday.

BLITZER: If the president does veto it, as he vows he will, what do you do next?

OBAMA: Well, I think we continue to put these votes up to the Senate. We put more pressure on many Republican colleagues of mine, who I think recognize that the Bush approach has not worked, but are still unwilling to put pressure on their president.

BLITZER: Because he says the money starts drying up in mid- April...

OBAMA: Right.

BLITZER: ... for the troops to head over to Iraq.

OBAMA: Right. I think that we continue to put a series of votes up and try to convince our colleagues on the Republican side that the only way that we are going to change circumstances in Iraq is if you see a different political dynamic; that there are, at this point, no military solutions to the problems in Iraq; that what we have to do is get the Shia, the Sunni, the Kurd to come together and say to themselves "We, in fact, are willing to start making some compromises around oil revenues, around the arming of militias and so on."

In the absence of that, we can send 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, we're not going to see a significant change."

If Obama said that he would respond to a veto by stripping the timeline, then I'm with you. (Not sure I'm up for Edwards yet, but this would certainly be a serious problem for me.) But if that's just the reporter characterizing hat he said, then I'd expect some sort of statement fairly soon. Because the CNN quotes, though plainly on the same theme, and with a lot of the same language, don't include anything about stripping timelines from the bill.

[OCSteve]

And Fred Thompson? What's up with that? That would be like nominating the word "avuncular" to govern the country.

Have to give me some specifics on why you don’t like him. I kind of like him instinctively, but I admit that I have not done any real research yet. Tell me why he is (would be) a bad candidate… Frankly I have a couple of uncles who could do a better job of running the country, I suspect many people do ;)

[hilzoy]

OCSteve: it's not that I don't like Thompson; just that when people started talking about him, I thought: hmm, I don't know much about him; what did he do as a Senator? And I couldn't find much of anything in the way of accomplishments, though earlier, when he was a lobbyist for the S&L industry, he helped push through deregulation of S&Ls, thereby (apparently) helping to lay the groundwork for the S&L crisis.

Lots of uncles would do a decent job of being President, much better than the word 'avuncular' would ;)

[Anarch]

A Baptist minister, Mr. Huckabee...

Shouldn't that be

Å Båptist minister, Mr. Huckåbee...

'cause would be cool :)

[OCSteve]

Hilzoy: I had to look that up. Then I did smile thinking about one particular uncle being in charge. Dairy would take a hit because beer would be mandated for breakfast :)

On Thompson – I really don’t know much about him. I suppose that is a statement on this sad state of affairs because I do know more about the others – which makes them unpalatable to say the least. Call it desperation I guess…

[hilzoy]

OCSteve: I haven't followed him recently, but Tommy Thompson had a reputation as a good and innovative governor of Wisconsin. (Anarch should chime in here, though.) And I'm not saying this because he's secretly liberal; I'm trying to figure out who I would like if I were conservative.

Likewise, I might go for Huckabee.

All this is only slightly informed -- since I am not, in fact, conservative, I haven't felt a deep need to figure out which Republican i might support if I were. But I would absolutely pay attention to the various New Yorkers around the blogs (e.g., Matt Yglesias), who are saying: think hard before you support Giuliani. And Romney: feh. I have a lot more respect for genuine, principled conservatives than for people who tack hard to the right when they're about to announce for office.

I think McCain might have sold his soul, which is a pity, since I used to like him.

[Carleton Wu]

Now make a sound halfway between the two. That's å.

Ok, I tried this, and YMMV, but the sound Im making sounds *exactly* like an old Mainer saying 'bastard', including the dropped 'r'.

[cw]

Interesting point about Pelosi being accompanied by Republican Congressmen.

From what I've read, Hobson is the only Republican on the trip. As it turns out, he's my representative, fairly senior, and is as true-blue Republican as they come, quite conservative, and fundamentally honest from all that I can tell.

The local paper had some more details. I'd link but you'd have to register. Here's some excerpts.

Hobson, the lone Republican on the trip, was irritated by the White House criticism, according to Perkins, who noted that the White House did not criticize a Republican-led visit to Syria also scheduled for this week.

"If administration officials felt that strongly about the planned visit to Syria, they could have denied the (Department of Defense) plane and State Department assistance that have been provided for this trip," [spokesperson Sara] Perkins said.

Perkins also said White House discussion of this trip created "some serious security issues" for the group.

The group was in Israel when this tempest started, Pelosi giving a speech to the Israeli Knesset. They are also to meet with Abu Mazen, the Palestinian president.

[Ginger Yellow]

"Apparently, it would be cheaper to use only the normal 26 letters, replacing Å, Ä and Ö with (respectively) AA, AE, and OE."

I'm sure you know this, Hilzoy, but "normal" isn't an appropriate word here. They're only "normal" for English speakers, who don't "normally" write in Swedish.

[Hartmut]

My experience with English writers is that they tend to simply write 'a' for 'ä', 'u' for 'ü' and 'o' for 'ö', i.e. not even bothering to write 'ae','ue','oe' instead. Jawohl, mein Fuhrer!

In Latin there is quite a difference between maternal uncle (avunculus) and paternal uncle (patruus). The first one is considered the child spoiler type, the latter the strictest disciplinarian in the whole family. Don't know what happens, if one person is both due to having both brothers and sisters with children.

[Lurker]

In fact, the story about Sweden giving up Å, Ä and Ö was an April Fools' joke, as you can see by following the link in the blog entry.

However, in Swedish, the use of Å is somewhat unnecessary. The Å was introduced in the 16th century, as the pronounciation of a large part of words with an "O" was changed towards what had until then been marked by "U" (Now pronounced as in "boot".) The sound markend with a U changed into a vowel between U and Y (Y as in Yprés.) Those words where the old form of O was retained were written with Å. A similar change took place in English, when you changed from Middle to Early Modern English. Basically, you could write Swedish without an Å, if you would change the vowel notation.

What is perhaps even more important is to see that Å, Ä and Ö are separate letters in Swedish (as well as in Finnish). Their alphabetical order is after Z. In Finnish, the ordering is further complicated by the fact that W is not considered a separate letter. Thus, the list "Aalto, Ollila, Waltari, Virtanen, Väisälä, Åkerman, Öljymäki" is in alphabetical order.

[hilzoy]

Lurker -- thanks for pointing out that it was an April Fool's joke. I totally fell for it -- aided by the fact that they maliciously dated the story a few days earlier. I've updated accordingly.

I'm glad. I really like those letters, and I like the Swedish language's economy of spelling.

Ginger Yellow: point taken, and you're absolutely right.

[cleek]

in other Sweden news... Sweden v Fred Phelps.

[Larv]

Anybody who hasn't read this, from the Onion, should immediately do so.