Ground fog again this early Friday on California’s north coast — and all is quiet and still, mainly due to no one (except me) having to work.
Today is some kind of holiday, I’m told.
Yeah, right — it’s Independence Day, the fourth of July. America’s 238th birthday, though, a shitload of morons believe it’s our 2014th happy day.
And although it’s forecast for sun and warmth out here, back on the US east coast, the holiday is dampened by Category 2 Hurricane Arthur, packing 100-mph winds and way-heavy rains, even causing the Boston Pops to re-schedule its big musical July 4th tribute for yesterday, but even then the weather nixed the 1812 Overture.
(Illustration found here).
And on this particular holiday, what about that grammatical error in the much-praised Declaration of Independence? Original backstabbed by a transcript — from the New York Times:
A scholar is now saying that the official transcript of the document produced by the National Archives and Records Administration contains a significant error — smack in the middle of the sentence beginning “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” no less.
The error, according to Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., concerns a period that appears right after the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the transcript, but almost certainly not, she maintains, on the badly faded parchment original.
That errant spot of ink, she believes, makes a difference, contributing to what she calls a “routine but serious misunderstanding” of the document.
The period creates the impression that the list of self-evident truths ends with the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she says.
But as intended by Thomas Jefferson, she argues, what comes next is just as important: the essential role of governments — “instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” — in securing those rights.
“The logic of the sentence moves from the value of individual rights to the importance of government as a tool for protecting those rights,” Ms. Allen said.
“You lose that connection when the period gets added.”
…
Heather Wolfe, curator of manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, agrees.
With the other periods, “you can tell, the quill was held down and more ink came out,” she said.
“That’s not happening after the word ‘happiness.’ ”
A lot of shit don’t happen after the word, “happiness” is thrown into the mix. And from somebody that’s been married twice, you can take to it to the bank.
Or how about the words, ‘happy’ and ‘bank’ together? Don’t work with ordinary, country folk.
And here on the birthday bash — an American Dream, more a financial fantasy: An analysis by USA TODAY shows that living the American dream would cost the average family of four about $130,000 a year. Only 16 million U.S. households — around 1 in 8 — earned that much in 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The late, great George Carlin took it as a nightmare:
The table has tilted folks.
The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice.
Nobody seems to care!
Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on.
Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you….they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you.
They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL.
And nobody seems to notice.
Nobody seems to care.
Thats what the owners count on.
The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick thats being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth.
It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Dozing at the wheel of fortune.