Election tropes

Only because of victory, the election now seems good to me. Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food. (metaphor) 

The Republican ticket had begun to sound like two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof. (simile)  

And especially to Bush, I say Take thy face hence. (synedoche)  

With Bush bombing Iraq and Afghanistan and the suits on Wall Street walking off with everyone's 401K's the results of the election were a no-brainer. (metonymy).  

Is Mr. Bush a Christian? Christians believe in the prophets, peace be upon them. Bush believes in profits and how to get a piece of them. HIs policies are sound, nothing but sound. (antanaclasis).

When Bush spoke to us he raised neither his voice nor our hopes. He should have fixed the problems, not the blame. Now we hold our breath and the door for his exit. (syllepsis).  

I've been Republicaned all I can stand this election year. The whole country has been punked by this administration. And thus, until the change of administration, the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. (anthimeria).

How did we win? The big man upstairs must have heard our prayers. This socialism attack on Obama was misplaced. Just as was once said to Dan Quayle, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy," we can say to Barack Obama, "Senator, you're no Eugene Debs." Would that he were. (periphrasis).

These last months of a Bush administration may be brutal.  He forgets:  Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people. (prosopesis)

There did not seem to be brains enough in the oval office, so to speak, to bait a fishhook with. After the market fell and unemployment climbed, people moved slowly. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of our own neighborhoods.  (hyperbole).

Bush has left the nation somewhat worse for wear.  During his administration, I saw Lady Liberty flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her physical appearance.  (litotes)

What could the Republicans have been thinking?  Have we not eyes? have we not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? (rhetorical question).

And so they brought us more wars. And our young people learned proud privileges as were learned by a young man of an earlier generation: "By Spring, if God was good, all the proud privileges of trench lice, mustard gas, spattered brains, punctured lungs, ripped guts, asphyxiation, mud and gangrene might be his." (irony)

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far. My days have crackled and gone up in smoke. (onomatopoeia)

O miserable abundance. O beggarly riches. (oxymoron)

They led the people by following the mob. They lied to tell their truth. (paradox)

Election schemes

Readers true, friends: (apposition). 

Finally the election is over--a fair field full of fury. (alliteration).

The Republicans now suffer, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us. (anadiplosis).

And now for some fairness in society:  I say, don't hold back. Strike as I would. Have struck those tyrants! Strike deep as my curse!  Strike! and but once (anaphora).

How the last eight years have seemed to me:  The helmsman steered; the ship moved on; yet never a breeze up blew. (anastrophe).

All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful. (antimetabole).

Response to paliniacs: Not that I loved Caesar less', but that I loved Rome more. (antithesis).

Now they seek That solitude which suits abstruser musings. (assonance).

We must... hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. (asyndeton, chiamus)

May we find all of this Republicanism ...Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour. (climax- the noun, not the verb).

Republicans leaving DC: What is Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba? (epanalepsis).

Where affections bear rule, there reason is subdued, honesty is subdued, good will is subdued, and all things else that withstand evil, for ever are subdued. (epistrophe).

To the rovians and paliniacs: Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end. (hyperbaton).

And the louder they talked of their honor, the faster we counted our spoons. (isocolon).

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative. (parallelism).

I’ve had to resist and to attack sometimes – that’s only one way of resisting – without counting the exact cost, according to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered into. (parenthesis)

By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming idiotic oneself. (polyptoton)

I spent several days and nights in early November with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting. (polysendeton).

American Death Penalty-Part 1

            Once upon a time, even before the United States was a country, we had a death penalty.  To some extent it existed in the northern colonies to punish religious heretics and witches and the like, but for the most part it was in the southern colonies to help enforce slavery.  Many things related to slavery were capital crimes including helping slaves escape and inciting slaves to run away.  Even to this day, the slave states are where we find most of the executions.

            The English Bill of Rights in 1691 had prohibited cruel and unusual punishment and then the Eighth Amendment was adopted in 1791 saying about the same thing.  This was not meant to end the death penalty though, but only torture before causing death.  Also, although states had their own prohibitions against cruel or unusual punishment, this part of the Eighth Amendment did not originally apply to the states.  The Supreme Court in In Re Kemmler  in 1889 rejected an argument that the 8^th Amendment applied to the New York when this state started electrocuting people to kill them.

            Finally, in the case of Robinson v. California in 1962 the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment was applied to the states, but this was not a death penalty case, but prohibited imprisoning Mr. Robinson just because he was a drug addict and had needle tracks in his arms.  But we get ahead of the story.

            The historical link between slavery and the death penalty held sway as the northern states moved into a period of reforming the death penalty before the civil war.  The southern states saw a need to discipline a captive workforce and had no similar reform movement.  The racist purpose for capital punishment was  openly discussed.    This situation became a national embarrassment when the racism in using the death penalty became an international incident when the Scottsboro Boys were sentenced to death.  When the seven young black men accused of rape were given the death penalty, essentially without lawyers and with little evidence, the nature of the American death penalty was given an international stage.  The Supreme Court in 1932 decided the case of Powell v. Alabama.  There were many glaring problems with the sentence, but the court found a way to correct the embarrassment of this one case without greatly impacting the system of using the threat of death to control an oppressed caste.  The Court did not say a capital defendant should always have a lawyer, but that in a capital case where the defendant is unable to employ counsel and is incapable of adequately making his own defense because of ignorance, feeble-mindedness, illiteracy or the like, he should get a lawyer.