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Monday, December 31, 2007

Year-End Quotations

"When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful."
~~ François Truffaut [1932-84]

"Also, there is no R in team."
~~ G.E.Nordell

"Great as the provocation has been in dealing with the foes who habitually resort to treachery, murder and torture against our men, nothing can justify ... the use of torture or inhumane conduct ... on the part of the American Army."
~~ Theodore Roosevelt, 1902

"There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and shame the devil."
~~ Walter Lippmann [1889-1974]

"The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn – and [to] change."
~~ Carl Rogers [1902-1987]

"The planet is in distress and all of the attention is on Paris Hilton. We have to ask ourselves 'What is going on here?'."
~~ Al Gore, Jr.

"George W. Bush isn't the President, he just plays one on television."
~~ G.E.Nordell

"The health of society depends upon the quality of the information [that] it receives."
~~ Walter Lippmann [1889-1974]

"Reality is not negotiable."
~~ G.E.Nordell

"Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror ... States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world."
~~ George W. Bush ("State of The Union", 29 January 2002)

"Religious beliefs, no matter the culture, seldom depend on logic and rationality and often bring out the worst in people."
~~ mystery author team Aimee & David Thurlo

"The emperor has no clue."
~~ radio talk show host Randi Rhodes

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it."
~~ Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]

"[Art] only exists as an exercise of individual taste and freedom."
~~ Jane Smiley

"John Edwards is the candidate that corporate America is most afraid of."
~~ radio talk show host Thom Hartmann

"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
~~ Burton Hills

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."
~~ George Washington [1732-1799]

"Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-1865]

"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water."
~~ W.H. Auden [1907-1973]

"Corrupt political thought creates and is furthered by sloppy language."
~~ Peter C. Baker

“Politics has always been a mud fight – better that citizens jump in the trough than lose interest.”
~~ James Ponlewozik, in Time Magazine

DUCUNT VOLENTUM FATA, NOLENTUM TRAHUNT: "Fate leads those who are willing; the unwilling it drags."
~~ Seneca the Younger [4 BCE-65 CE]

"The thing is to be madly, madly in love all the time."
~~ Ray Bradbury

"Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it."
~~ William Penn [1644-1718]

"I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way."
~~ Carl Sandburg [1878-1967]

"The only real hell is on earth, and usually undeserved."
~~ Dick Francis (in "To The Hilt")

"Behind every successful woman ... is a substantial amount of coffee."
~~ Stephanie Pero

"[The theater] should challenge us with questions. Not answers, but questions."
~~ Gordon Davidson

"Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse."
~~ Miguel de Cervantes [1547-1616]

"All truth passes thru three stages: first it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third it is accepted as self-evident."
~~ Schopenhauer [1788-1860]

"Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible."
~~ Marcel Proust [1871-1922]

"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894]

"Everything in this world is an opportunity for pain and failure."
~~ Jackie Hoffman

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
~~ Helen Keller [1880-1968]

"Duty is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never do less."
~~ Robert E. Lee [1807-1870]

"Nothing gives life more zest than running for your life."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-1988]

{many other such quotations are posted
on the Working Minds website}

Year-End News Factoids

China's environmental damage subtracts from their Gross Domestic Product an amount equal to China's over-hyped economic growth.
Mother Jones Magazine, Jan-Feb 2008

"Deforestation accounts for 18 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, a rate higher than the global transportation sector's [emissions], pegged at 14 percent."
— Jacques Leslie (Mother Jones Magazine, Jan-Feb 2008)

In April 2001, a gigantic dust storm formed in Mongolia that left 50,000 metric tons of yellow dust across the U.S.A., and dropped even more from Kamchatka to Japan to the Canary islands off the African coast.
—Mother Jones Magazine, Jan-Feb 2008

Particulates from Asia now make up half of California's annual average pollution limit.
— Mother Jones Magazine, Jan-Feb 2008

"China burns more coal than virtually all the world's developed nations combined."
— Mother Jones Magazine, Jan-Feb 2008

"Taxation above 19% shrinks government and taxation below 19% makes government grow."
— Jonathan Rauch (Atlantic Monthly, June 2006)

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Connect The Pakistani Dots

Benazir Bhutto stated on 6 November 2007 in an interview with David Frost on Al Jazeera English that Omar Saeed Sheikh is 'the man who killed Osama bin Laden'.

Pakistan's current dictator Musharraf released Bhutto & other political detainees just hours prior to the arrival of a U.S. diplomatic team headed by John Negroponte.

John Negroponte (fomenter of 'death squads' around the world) visited with civilian & military leaders in Islamabad, Pakistan on 16-18 November 2007.

Bhutto filed nomination papers on 24 November 2007 for the parliamentary election that is scheduled for January 2008.

Three 'unidentified gunmen' attacked Pakistan People's Party offices in Baluchistan Province, killing three workers.

Benazir Bhutto was killed in a hail of bullets on 27 December 2007 in Rawalpindi; the assassin then set off explosives that killed him and 21 others.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

December News Factoids

The U.S. National Debt increases at a million dollars a minute.
— AP Radio News

Permafrost in Mongolia has thinned to 3-6 feet during the past seven years and will be entirely melted in 20 years if global warming is not curbed.
— AP Radio News

"If you count the cost of healthcare as a tax, Americans are the highest-taxed country in the world."
— caller Brian on the Bill Press radio show

68% more homes are going into foreclosure than last year.
— AP Radio News

Single-family home construction is the lowest in 16 years.
— AP Radio News

"In the US, annual trash from gift wrap and shopping bags is four million tons."
— AP Radio News

The Palo Verde Nuclear Plant in Arizona has just been given a Category 4 safety rating, the last level before being shut down.
— KPHX Radio News 20 December 2007

The Lakota Nation indigenous people have unilaterally withdrawn from all 33 treaties with the U.S. government.
— AP Radio News

"There are 63 lobbyists for every Congressman."
— U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont (2006)

New Mexico has the fourth highest hunger rate in the U.S.

"95% of Fortune 500 companies pay less than 5% in taxes."
— David Sirota (2006)

"Estimated average credit-card debt per U.S. card-holding household is $9,312."
— Time Magazine

"The amount by which America's total spending exceeded their earnings was $41.6 billion."
— Harper's Index, April 2006

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

"Lions For Lambs" Movie Review

"Lions For Lambs" [M.G.M./U.A. Nov 2007]
Co-produced by Paula Wagner, Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tom Cruise & Robert Redford; directed by and starring Robert Redford; script by Matthew Michael Carnahan; also starring Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Peter Berg, Michael Peña, Derek Luke & Andrew Garfield

An interesting project, intended as a political statement rather than a box-office smash. The three intercut storylines begin with a college professor (Redford) confronting an exceptional student who is coasting thru college (and thru his life); two of his former students who enlisted in the U.S. Army are gung-ho members of a botched helicopter assault in the freezing mountains of Afghanistan; and a veteran TV journalist (Streep) is spoon-fed a news story about that same assault operation by an ex-Army U.S. Senator (Cruise).

The film has made little money, and the showing I went to had only four people in the audience; the old gentleman behind me stated when it was over that "I'm more worried now than when I came in here" – precisely the movie's purpose.

video/DVD not yet available

Monday, December 17, 2007

Choosing A President

Not Hillary. She is a bully, recently trying to bully Obama. We need her to bully the Senate instead. Also, she is the Democrat making the most mistakes during the campaigning.

Gore already has the perfect job, he loves what he is doing, and we need him to do it.

Edwards has been quietly endorsed by Pat Robertson: How's that for a broad coalition?

Kucinich is great, but not for President.

So my favorite team for the Democratic ticket is EDWARDS - KUCINICH.

But then Chris Dodd is setting up an Official Filibuster, and that just might alter matters greatly.

So a bumper sticker for EDWARDS - DODD sounds worthy too.

Two weeks till actual voting! Can't wait!

Friday, December 07, 2007

Take A Look At Net Jobs Added

The New York Times is reporting (based on government data) that "Employers Added 94,000 Jobs in November".

So, of course the Republican propaganda machine is bragging about this supposed marvelous accomplishment.

The best estimate I can find of the number of undocumented immigrants is around 50,000 crossing the border each month.

THEREFORE: The increase in jobs of 94,000 minus the illegal immigrants (and not counting legal immigrants) gives NET job openings of 44,000 for the month of November.

ADDED December 31st: Found out on Air America Radio that the U.S. of A. needs 150,000 jobs per month just to keep up with growth in the population (new workers plus immigration). So the falsity of the 'government report' about November is that the NET-NET of new jobs is thus 100,000 fewer jobs than needed – which keeps employment low and the work force scrambling for a living.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

December Quotations

"Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long."
~~ Ogden Nash [1902-71]

"Church is a place where gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive."
~~ Joseph Campbell [1904-87]

"Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
~~ Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty."
~~ Woodrow Wilson [1856-1924]
(inscribed on a plaque inside the base of the Statue of Liberty)

"If the only prayer you say in your life is 'thank you' that would suffice."
~~ Meister Eckhart [c. 1260-c. 1328]

"Democracy is not something [that] you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something [that] you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles."
~~ Abbie Hoffman [1936-89]

"Long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little."
~~ Helen Keller [1880-1968]

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away."
~~ Philip K. Dick [1941-82]

"A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election."
~~ Bill Vaughn

"Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage."
~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower [1890-1969]

"The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!"
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"I think, therefore I am annoyed."
~~ Darby Conley (draws the "Get Fuzzy" comic strip)

"Lobbying is the world's second-oldest profession."
~~ radio talk show host Bill Press

"The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended."
~~ Fredrick Bastiat [1801-50]

"Congress, after years of stalling, finally got around to clearing the way for informal discussions that might lead to possible formal talks that could potentially produce some kind of tentative agreements..."
~~ Dave Barry

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taken one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is."
~~ Chuck Reid

"Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory."
~~ Albert Schweitzer [1875-1965]

"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."
~~ American psychologist B.F. Skinner [1904-90]

"Nothing is worth doing unless it has the potential to f*** up your whole life."
~~ Richard Ford

"Murder is always a mistake – one should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900] (in "The Picture of Dorian Gray")

"A company is known by the people it keeps."
~~ Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"The United States seems destined to plague us with all manner of evil in the name of liberty."
~~ Simón Bolívar [1783-1830]

"Give the public something better and the public will buy."
~~ Walter P. Chrysler [1875-1940]

“Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.”
~~ William Shakespeare [1564-1616]

"In California, the subdivider, like the poor, is always with us."
~~ Earl Derr Biggers [1884-1933]

"Whatever you do, you'll regret it."
~~ Allan Mcleod Gray [1905-75]

{many other such quotations are posted
on the Working Minds website}