Wednesday, June 03, 2026
NEW MEXICO GOVERNOR ELECTION RESULTS
Friday, May 22, 2026
Monday, May 04, 2026
Sunday, April 05, 2026
April 2026 Quotations (54)
"The only unsolicited advice I feel comfortable giving another person is: 'Don’t give unsolicited advice'."
~~ Billy Baker, Boston Globe reporter
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50],
in his epic novel "1984"
"Food is medicine when eaten with respect."
~~ monk Shen Yu
"I should be a postage stamp, because that's the only way I'll ever get licked."
~~ boxing great Muhammad Ali [1942-2016]
"Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering."
~~ Donald E. Westlake [1933-2008]
"Fascism is what happens when the owning class resorts to law & terror to stop democratic progress because real equality would cost them wealth and power."
~~ podcaster Andre Henry
"If a white woman got shot in the face, what safety do we as Black people have?"
~~ Somali-born U.S. citizen Safiya Khalid
"Trumpian law enforcement is creating a country [that] none of us are safe in."
~~ "The Mercury Messenger" newsletter
written by V.B. Price of New Mexico
"The Declaration of Independence is our mission statement, the Constitution is our user's guide."
~~ historian and author Jon Meacham
"You know what they say, life imitates whichever TV show is going viral right now."
~~ Molly Liebergall, reporter on Morning Brew news site
"I will always be a Midwesterner at heart. In addition to the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the two great commandments, I try to live by certain simple principles:
There are worse things than being wrong. Being a jerk, for one.
Nobody is born smart.
Listen too hard and you’ll always hear something bad about yourself.
The way to get something done is to do it.
The big thieves hang the little ones.
It’s a stupid goose who goes to the fox’s church.
Don’t cut the branch you’re standing on.
And my favorite: If you didn’t want to go to Chicago, why’d you get on the train?
That one sums it up pretty well."
~~ Garrison Keillor's daily Substack column in February 2026
"Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place."
~~ Martha Graham [1894-1991]
"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another
the sense of what it is to be a human being."
~~ British playwright Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"I think the theater is as essential to civilization as safe, pure water."
~~ Vanessa Redgrave [b. 1937]
"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players . . ."
~~ Wm. Shakespeare [1564-1616]
"If you want to help the American theater, don’t be an actress, be an audience."
~~ Tallulah Bankhead [1902-68]
"The covers of this book are too far apart."
~~ Ambrose Bierce [1842-1914]
"The only thing more powerful than hate is love."
~~ Bad Bunny {Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio} at end of his halftime show at Super Bowl LX in February 2026
"It is a good idea sometimes to think of the importance and dignity of our everyday duties. It keeps them from being so tiresome."
~~ Laura Ingalls Wilder [1867-1957]
Five Timeless Quotes by J.R.R. Tolkien [1892-1973]
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”
“There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”
"Home is whatever you can rebel against."
~~ British author Pico Iyer
Oscar Wilde [1854-1900] said that "The Importance of Being Earnest" expressed his philosophy that "We should treat all the trivial things of life very seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality."
"Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading."
~~ crime novelist Ruth Barbara Rendell [1930-2015]
"The tyrant dies and his rule is over. The martyr dies and his rule begins."
~~ Danish existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard [1813-55]
"The top 10% of richest Americans own 87% of stocks. The top 1% alone own roughly half of all stocks. It's worth pointing out once again that the stock market is not the economy."
~~ economist Robert B. Reich
"Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world."
~~ actor Mandy Patinkin [b. 1952]
"The wise musician plays what he can master."
~~ Duke Ellington [1899-1974]
"It is quite untrue that British people don't appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes."
~~ Sir Thomas Beecham [1879-1961]
"The only thing better than singing is more singing."
~~ American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald [1917-96]
"There is a strange sort of reasoning in Hollywood that musicals are less worthy of Academy consideration than dramas. It's a form of snobbism, the same sort that perpetuates the idea that drama is more deserving of Awards than comedy."
~~ entertainer Gene Kelly [1912-96]
"Theater demands truth, and music amplifies it."
~~ Leonard Bernstein [1918-90]
"We cry at musicals not because they’re sad, but because they’re true."
~~ source unknown
"The bassoon is an ill wind that no one blows good."
~~ Wayne L. Reynolds
"Don't listen to anyone who doesn't know how to dream."
~~ Liza Minnelli
on the back of a black t-shirt: 't-shirt redacted'
"Life is a lot like jazz . . . it's best when you improvise."
~~ George Gershwin [1898-37]
"[Donald] Trump has elevated diplomatic incompetence to an art."
~~ Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine
"The highest of wisdom is continual cheerfulness: such a state, like the region above the moon, is always clear and serene."
~~ essayist (Michel Eyquem de) Montaigne [1533-92]
"A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn’t telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome."
~~ John Steinbeck [1902-68]
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
~~ author Douglas Adams [1952-2001]
"Life is the best teacher of all. Most of the time, life does not talk to you. It just sort of pushes you around. Each push is life saying 'Wake up. There's something I want you to learn'."
~~ Robert T. Kiyosaki
"There is no issue of states rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights."
~~ President Lyndon Johnson [1908-73], in 1965
"Poetry causes you to think and to remember what you didn't know you knew."
~~ Robert Frost [1874-1963]
"Politics is what we do . . . what we hope for and what we dare to imagine."
~~ U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone [1944-2002] of Minnesota
t-shirt: it costs a lot to look this good
"A woman’s a woman until the day she dies, but a man’s only a man as long as he can."
~~ legendary African-American comedian Jackie 'Moms' Mabley [1897-1975]
"The sharpest weapon is a kind and gentle spirit."
~~ Anne Frank [1929-45]
"It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent."
~~ Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh [1853-90]
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
~~ Gen. Dwight D. 'Ike' Eisenhower [1890-1969]
"Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®"
~~ weblog salutation of humorist & radio personality Garrison Keillor
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Sunday, January 18, 2026
CLINTONS REJECT FASCIST WITCHHUNT
THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE
Until the committee subpoenaes five Republican officials or former officials named in the Epstein Files, swears them in, and interrogates them, the move against the Clintons will obviously qualify as a political witchhunt. Your move, fascists.
Wednesday, January 07, 2026
January 2026 Quotations (50)
on the second anniversary of the attack by Hamas on Israel:
"There are no adults in Middle East politics."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"A Trump-led deployment of federalized National Guard and active-duty troops to quell a fabricated insurrection inside American cities, should only be understood as war on the American people."
~~ former Undersecretary of the Navy Janin Davidson
"When we say these guys are advocating for fascist ideas, it’s because they literally are."
"Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." ~~ political scientist Wallace Stanley Sayre [1905-1972]
"Academic politics is much more vicious than real politics. We think it's because the stakes are so small." ~~ political scientist Richard Neustadt [1919-2003]
see also Sayre's Law: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake."
~~ former Obama adviser Tommy Vietor
"Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right you claim for yourself."
~~ Robert Green Ingersoll [1833-99]
"The president has lost his mind !!"
~~ TV news host Lawrence O'Donnell, late 10/1/2025
"When the heart is at peace, for and against are forgotten."
~~ Chuang Tzu / Chuang Chou / Zhuangzi [IVth Century B.C.E.]
"The American Revolution represents one of the most important events in the history of the planet, and its ideals continue to symbolize hope and freedom for humankind."
~~ Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic Magazine’s editor in chief
"You can either look old or you can look weird. You can’t look young. You already did that, and that part’s over."
~~ comedian Dustin Anderson
"Comparison is the thief of joy."
~~ Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]
"You can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire."
~~ song lyric by Peter Gabriel
"If you’re not scared, you’re not paying attention."
~~ Ezra Levin, cofounder and co–executive director of Indivisible
"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."
~~ primatologist Dame Jane Goodall [1934-2025]
"Violence is always wrong (except in direct self defense), but too much is being spoken/- written/broadcast about fascist agitator Charlie Kirk - his body was flown home from Utah in Air Force Two, f'godsakes ! I say not a hero and GOOD RIDDANCE to the traitor bastid – instead fly flags at half-mast for all the schoolchildren assassinated by domestic terrorists, one day per murdered child or teacher . . ."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell, 10-2025
"Rebellion is born when rulers forget [that] they are meant to serve."
~~ Chinese philosopher Confucius / Kong Qiu [551-479 BCE]
"If you think Trumpism will simply end in three years, you are naive."
~~ David Brooks, writes for The Atlantic Magazine
"It is okay to love people: real love is free."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"Hope is not a survival strategy - it never was."
~~ historian Tad Stoermer
"In nine months, Donald Trump and his cronies have enacted nearly half of the 'Project 2025' agenda."
~~ Dr. Mary L. Trump, 10/24/2025
"Donald Trump has openly solicited and received sums of money that look a great deal like bribes."
~~ David A. Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine
"The human race is a pretty good place."
~~ folk music legend Woody Guthrie [1912-67]
"My prayer is like a sword. And my sword is like a prayer."
~~ Ivan Ilyin [1883-1954], in 1927
"Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
"If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas."
~~ character Sheldon Cooper on "The Big Bang Theory" TV series [2007-2019]
"God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. [Donald Trump] makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart."
~~ Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England, Feb 2019
"Consumer culture is currently a series of dramatic swan dives into a sort of giddy meaninglessness that functions as tacit admission that we’ve all more or less lost the plot."
~~ Jia Tolentino, staff writer at The New Yorker Magazine
"The truth is, dreams are how we figure out where we want to go, and life is how we get there."
~~ Kermit the Frog, May 2025 commencement address at University of Maryland
"The damage caused by pseudo-President Elon Musk and his teenage hackers crew should be given the name The Dork Ages."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"Bear in mind, this is just a dream; but again, it could be reality."
~~ musician Swamp Dogg
"if i listen to the boss then i'm just a bloody fool"
~~ song lyric by Peggy Seeger
"Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]
"One person with convictions is worth ninety-nine with merely interests."
~~ John Stuart Mill [1806-73]
"Giving up is unforgivable."
~~ President Joe Biden, on 7 November 2024
"What's the matter with you?"
~~ Arnold Schwarzenegger to Donald Trump, on 15 August 2025
t-shirt text: "authenticated !"
"My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water."
~~ French filmmaker Robert Bresson [1901-99]
"A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant, and a bastard."
~~ Billy Wilder [1906-2002]
"All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl."
~~ Charlie Chaplin [1889-1977]
"Being an artist means not having to avert one’s eyes."
~~ cinema master Akira Kurosawa [1910-98]
"one moment your life is a stone in you, / and the next a star . . ."
~~ Rainer Maria Rilke [1875-1926]
"There is no man smaller than a coward at a hero's funeral."
~~ Irish proverb
"The Constitution is not a document for the government to restrain the people: it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government."
~~ Patrick Henry [1736-99]
"A man learns in only two ways; one by reading, the other by association with smarter people."
~~ Will Rogers [1879-1935]
Jack Warner’s advice to Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein , who visited the studio in 1931: "Doctor, you have your theory of relativity and I have mine: Never hire a relative."
"I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy."
~~ singer Joni Mitchell
"Excessive corporate profits are ALWAYS the result of underpaid workers and overpriced products."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"Journalism is only the first rough draft of history."
~~ Alan Barth [1906-1979]
"Power, the most insidious of the passions, is also the most cunning."
~~ Elizabeth Hardwick
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Saturday, January 03, 2026
2026 Predictions - January
Department of War-Mongering Secretary Hegseth will announce a mandatory military draft, including all MAGAt boys & girls under age 30.
Young MAGAts will purchase and wear T-shirts that read "I won't go! / I have bone spurs."
Mandatory conscription will begin on Uncle Donald's birthday in June.
Thursday, January 01, 2026
News Factoids for Fourth Quarter 2025
Nuclear power's share of the world’s electricity supply plummeted from 17% in 1996 to 9% in 2024; by 2040, nuclear power will supply 12% of global electricity compared to the current 9%. Despite renewed enthusiasm in the US, the vast majority of new capacity is coming online in other countries. The U.K. plans to increase its nuclear capacity to meet 25% of its electricity needs by 2050, up from 15% currently. And Russia is working on 19 nuclear power plants beyond its borders in places like Turkey, Iran, and Bangladesh, making it the biggest exporter of nuclear capacity. Goldman Sachs projects that the world will have 500 functioning nuclear reactors in 2030, up from the current 440.
There are more than 9,900 craft breweries across the U.S. now, compared to just 4,800 ten years ago.
In October 2025, silver surpassed $50 a troy ounce, its highest price in decades, as investors sought protection from economic uncertainty.
China is the world’s biggest manufacturer, accounting for roughly 30% of global production and about a quarter of its overall economy.
Concentrations of planet-warming CO2 in the atmosphere have been rising fast in recent years, but 2024 recorded the biggest jump to date. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations now stand at 423.9 parts per million, and scientists are now worried it isn’t just fossil fuel emissions driving the change.
Amazon is currently the second-largest employer in the U.S.
There have been 1,618 cases of measles in 42 U.S. states this year through Oct. 21, and nearly half of those (803) are in Texas alone.
"Frankenstein" [1818] sold 40,000 copies annually in English alone — which is not to count the millions of copies already in print.
And just like that, the U.S. Mint stopped issuing new pennies on November 12, ending a 232-year run.
The American cattle herd is now the smallest it’s been since 1951.
The world had 2,919 billionaires on April 4, according to Swiss bank U.B.S. — the largest number since the bank started collecting suchdata in 1995.
Despite a spurt of job growth in September 2025, unemployment hit a four-year high of 4.4% that month, according to government data.
The economy: The US economy added 64,000 jobs in November after losing 105,000 in October, per federal jobs numbers delayed by the government shutdown. Unemployment rose to 4.6 percent, its highest point in more than four years.
In 2023, 93 of the 100 most-watched programs on American television were professional football games.
Thursday, December 25, 2025
Trump PEZ® dispenser
Friday, December 19, 2025
NEWSPEOPLE: confront the Orange Bastid!
Whenever you have direct access to Dictator Donald Trump, ask him - nay, demand! - that he recite the 26 letters of the English alphabet out loud.
The result will be either Pass or Fail - refusal to try is a Fail.
Monday, December 15, 2025
name for New Mexico food truck
but I am still happly creative:
somebody in New Mexico should name their food truck the Very Large Barbecue
they can put several miniature radio telescopes on the roof
and pretend that was their source of electric power ...
I also suggest naming its product after NM geography features:
Bernallillo Brisket
Rio Grande Ribs
Pecos Pulled Pork
Jemez Hamburgers - extra hot
Hatch Hamburger - green chile
Cibola Chicken
Española Sausage
like that ...
Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Monday, October 06, 2025
October 2025 Quotations (48)
~~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]
found text for t-shirt: limited offer. get tickets now.
"I woke up still not dead again today"
~~ song lyric by musician Willie Nelson [b. 1933]
"Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]
"The sky is an infinite movie to me. I never get tired of looking at what's happening up there."
~~ musician K.D. Lang
found text for t-shirt: keep out of reach of children
"You cannot get educated by this self-propagating system in which people study to pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything. You learn something by doing it yourself, by asking questions, by thinking, and by experimenting."
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]
"Speaking of the narcissistic man-child . . ."
~~ Teresa Hanafin, Boston Globe staff writer
"I don't care how good your good ol' days was for you, they're not good enough for me."
~~ folk music legend Woody Guthrie [1912-67]
"The good old days / are being made / right now"
~~ lyric from radio ads for Blue Bell Ice Cream [est. 1907] of Brenham, Washington County, Texas
"Love is easy; getting laid is the tough one."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"The Only Free Cheese Is In The Trap."
~~ saying in Ukraine
"Donald Trump’s worst enemy is the truth."
~~ internet meme 7/2025
"If you slow things down, you notice things you hadn’t seen before."
~~ Robert Wilson [1941-2025], co-writer of the visionary five-hour opera “Einstein On The Beach”
"People seek faith, and faith, by its nature, demands the embrace of what reason resists."
~~ Adam Gopnik
"Trump is engaged in a broad assault on truth, but truth has ways of fighting back."
~~ David A. Graham, staff writer, The Atlantic Daily newsletter
"the highway goes on forever . . ."
~~ country song lyric
"Policy changes, but facts endure."
~~ motto of The Associated Press [est. 1846]
"[The city of Chicago is] like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real."
~~ Nelson Algren [1909-81]
"Heck, everyone knows that it's not entertainment unless you can sit in the dark and eat."
~~ "Calvin & Hobbes" daily cartoon [1985-95] for 6/30/??
"Civilization exists by geological consent - subject to change without notice."
~~ Will Durant [1885-1981]
"Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important."
~~ poet Thomas Stearns 'T.S.' Eliot [1888-1965]
"In this time, in this world, we are inundated with images of endless pleasures ... entertainment is our highest calling."
~~ off-gridder Tara Couture, in "I Work For A Big Life - Not Big Dollars"
"It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people."
~~ folk music legend Woody Guthrie [1912-67]
"Public toilets are like lawyers - everyone hates them until they need one."
~~ Dave Lozo, writer at Morning Brew News
"People who avoid failure also avoid success."
~~ Robert T. Kiyosaki
"In every child there is an artist. The problem is knowing how to stay an artist while growing up."
~~ artist Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]
"I'm no doctor, but your results are in: You just tested positive for bullsh*t."
~~ late night TV host Stephen Colbert
"We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen."
~~ English writer D.H. Lawrence [1885-1930], in "Lady Chatterley's Lover" [1928]
"Trump wants a populace unaware of the [Afro-American] freedom struggle — because it is a guide for defeating his fascist plans."
~~ Jesse Hagopian, writer at Truthout [est. 2001]
"I can't believe what you say because I see what you do."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]
"If you see what is right and fail to act on it, you lack courage."
~~ Chinese philosopher Confucius / Kong Qiu [551-479 BCE]
"The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen."
~~ Tommy Smothers [1937-2023], of The Smothers Brothers comedy team
"Satire is the weapon of the powerless against the powerfu."
~~ journalist & columnist Molly Ivins [1944-2007]
"It’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
~~ standup comedian George Carlin [1937-2008]
"Power without accountability is the ideal breeding ground for jokes."
~~ John Cleese, member of "Monty Python"
"Hatred doesn’t heal. Rage doesn’t rescue. Blame doesn’t make it better."
~~ Cheryl Hunter
"We need to stop trusting the experts."
~~ wacko fascist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. [b. 1954]
"Any one who uses more than two chords is just showing off."
~~ folk music legend Woody Guthrie [1912-67]
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
~~ Arundhati Roy
"No one man can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices."
~~ Edward R. Murrow [1908-65]
"I know and I do not approve but I am not resigned."
~~ poet Edna St. Vincent Millay [1892-1950]
"Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice."
~~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer [1906-45]
"When you have the intuition that there is something which is there, but out of the reach of your physical world, art and religion are the only means to get to it."
~~ movie director Guillermo del Toro
"You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."
~~ primatologist Dame Jane Goodall [1934-2025]
"The brain is wider than the sky."
~~ poet poet Emily Dickinson [1830-86]
"We are here and it is now. Beyond that, all human knowledge is moonshine."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
"The America I love, a beacon of hope and liberty, is in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration."
~~ Bruce Springsteen
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Friday, September 26, 2025
News Factoids for Third Quarter 2025
Roughly 1 in 10 adults in America has a net worth of at least $1 million. In total, the US boasts ~24 million individual millionaires, the most of any country and nearly four times as many as second-place China. That’s also 15 times more millionaires than the US had 30 years ago.
The alcohol drinking level hit an 86-year low among US adults in August. According to a new Gallup poll, only 54 percent of adults reported that they drink alcohol, an eight percentage point decrease from 2023.
In Nazi Germany, an estimated 400,000 people were sterilized under the Hitler regime in the name of 'racial hygiene'.
Reading for pleasure among Americans has declined by 40% over the past two decades, according to researchers at University College, London and the University of Florida:
In 2004, 28% of Americans said they read for fun.
In 2023, only 16% said they read because they wanted to and not only because they were assigned Great Expectations for an English Lit project.
Firearms killed more children in the U.S.A. than any other cause - more than cancer, more than car crashes - for three years in a row.
4,063 drive-in movie theaters were operating in the US in 1958. Today, there are only about 283.
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
dog killer Kristi Noem screws up yet again
SEVERAL PROBLEMS: what about nighttime and winter ? and ladders & ropes & gloves?
BUT THE MAIN STUPIDITY HERE is that the wall is being painted black on the American side, which faces north -- DUH !!
the imaginary terrorists climb over from Mexico, on the South side where the direct sunlight happens . . .
Monday, July 21, 2025
July 2025 Quotations (54)
"World history is nothing but an endless, dreary account of the rape of the weak by the strong . . . (It is) a race with time, a scramble for profit, for power, for treasures.."
~~ Nobel-laureate Hermann Hesse [1877-1962] - in the 1943 novel "The Glass Bead Game"
"I may be married, but I'm not a fanatic about it."
~~ entertainer Dean Martin [1917-95]
"The corporation has subverted law and honesty between individuals. It can and will, if unrestrained, subvert the basic ideal of American government, the happiness and welfare of unborn generations of American people."
~~ writer Robert R. Reed - in 1909
"Some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for. And democracy is worth dying for, because it is the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
"I love [trump] as much as a straight man can love another man."
~~ gazillionaire Elon Musk - in March 2025
"The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy."
~~ Elon Musk - on the mega-popular Joe Rogan podcast
'Laissez les bons temps rouler' - 'Let the good times roll'
~~ the official holiday greeting for Mardi Gras
"Whenever you love anything a lot, you’re booked for grief."
~~ singer Lucy Dacus
"You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here."
~~ Max Ehrmann [1872-1945]
"Television is a 21-inch parking lot for used comedians."
~~ actor George Sanders [1906-72] - circa 1956
"The reason all of this is happening is that in his second term, Trump is free of any adult supervision."
~~ Tom Nichols, staff writer The Atlantic Magazine
"Poetry should surprise by a fine excess."
~~ British poet John Keats [1795-1821]
"All lives are uncertain, but actors know it."
~~ actress Meryl Streep
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
"Speak to them quietly, and they will hear you."
~~ ancient Greek philosopher Atticus [2nd Century C.E.]
"When you're dealing with a man like Trump, reason is useless and appeasement is a guarantee of more abuse."
~~ opposition lawmaker Shinji Aguma of Japan’s House of Representatives
"We shouldn’t have to wait until May 2028 to end this tyranny."
~~ Whitney Curry Wimbish - in the AM Quickie newsletter
"This happens today: if the investments in the banks fall slightly… a tragedy… what can be done? But if people die of hunger, if they have nothing eat, if they have poor health, it does not matter! This is our crisis today!"
~~ Pope Francis [1936-2025]
"A poor life this if, full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare."
~~ Welsh poet W.H. Davies [1871-1940]
"Poetry is that / conversation we could not / otherwise have."
~~ American poet Cid Corman [1924-2004]
"[I call it] 'a hundred days of ineptitude'have."
~~ David Remnick, editor at The New Yorker Magazine
"The damage caused by pseudo-President Elon Musk and his teenage hackers crew should be given the name The Dork Ages."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"Don't give up hope. There's always a chance that Trump will show up in the obituaries tomorrow."
~~ Bel Air Viv, on Facebook
"If Hitler had married Satan they would have had Donald Trump."
~~ Nikki Giovanni [1943-2024]
"Marjorie Taylor Greene is self-inflicted damage."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"These are the times that try men's souls."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]– - in the pamphlet series "The American Crisis", December 1776
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"Donald Trump isn't a President. He's a motivational speaker for racists."
~~ John Pavlovitz, 2018
"The subjecting of men to punishment for things which, when they were done, were breaches of no law, and the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny."
~~ Alexander Hamilton [1757-1804] - in "Federalist Paper #84", 1788
"We need a popular uprising and a general strike."
~~ TV producer-director Marshall Herskovitz in 2025
"Trump's ineptitude is matched only by his corruption."
~~ Sen. Brian Schatz [Dem-HI]
"People go to see what they already know is there. The only thing to record, the only possible source of surprise, is their own reaction."
~~ Daniel Boorstin [1914-2004] - in "The Image: A Guide To Pseudo-events In America" [1962]
"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all Mankind."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809] in 1776
"I realized that the true tyranny was not kings, or emperors - it was poverty."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]
"He who commands the sea has command of everything."
~~ ancient Athenian general Themistocles [524?-459? B.C.E.]
"Stay up and sleep late"
~~ New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde (song lyrics on her 2025 single)
"The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion.” ~~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809] - in "Common Sense" [1776]
"Nothing's a better cure for writer's block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton."
~~ writer Don Roff
"Half the lies they tell about me aren’t true."
~~ baseball great Yogi Berra [1925-2015]
"Menopause starts at the altar."
~~ comedian Jonathan Winters [1925-2013]
"We don’t rise to the level of our hopes. We fall to the level of our preparation."
~~ Ancient Greek lyric poet Archilochus [680?-645? B.C.E,]
"A great leader's courage to fulfill his visions comes from passion, not position."
~~ John C. Maxwell
"The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."
~~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
"If a tree falls in the forest, and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
~~ philosopher Bishop George Berkeley [1685-1753]
"If a man speaks in the forest, and no woman is present, is he still wrong?"
~~ t-shirt quoted by L.A. Times columnist Al Martinez [1929-2015]
"It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]
"A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."
~~ Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776]
"In America, you can get any law you want passed, as long as you promise [that] it will lower taxes."
~~ musician Frank Zappa [1940-93]
"The wicked become even worse when they are tolerated."
~~ Count Leo Tolstoy [1828-1910] of Russia
"Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant."
~~ writer Joan Didion [1934-2021] - in "The Year of Magical Thinking" [2005]
"Women are a lot like bacon, because they smell amazing, they taste fantastic, and they will kill you slowly."
~~ J. Chris Newberg, in 2011
"Anyone who cannot form a community with others, or who does not need to because he is self-sufficient, is no part of a city-state; he is either a beast or a god."
~~ Ancient Greek Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
"If 'Star Wars' has taught us anything, it is that space is full of Nazis."
~~ Alexandra Petri, staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Saturday, July 05, 2025
News Factoids for First & Second Quarter 2025
The world’s 500 richest people gained $1.5 trillion in wealth last year, per Bloomberg. Collectively, their net worth reached $10 trillion for the first time.
7,300 US retail stores closed last year, up 57% from 2023, according to Coresight Research.
More than 80 school shootings took place in 2024, surpassing 2023 for the most school shootings in a single year since CNN began tracking such incidents in 2008.
Amid a minefield of glitchy A.I. search and social media littered with misinformation, Wikipedia has become one of the most trusted places on the internet. It’s now the seventh most popular website worldwide.
May 2024 The US economy has seen 38 consecutive months of job growth through February (the fifth-longest period of employment expansion on record), and the nation’s unemployment rate has been below 4% for 25 straight months — the longest stretch in more than 50 years.
85.9 million eligible voters skipped the 2024 general election, far surpassing the 76.8 million ballots cast for Donald Trump or the 74.3 million for Kamala Harris.
trump 32.4% / dem 31.4% / not voting 36.2%
the national debt is 121% of the US GDP, up from 104% in 2019
feb 2025 A second wave of influenza is hitting doctors' offices and urgent care clinics nationwide, according to the latest national flu data. An estimated 13,000 people, including 57 children, have died from influenza so far this season.
Nearly 447,000 US kids under 3 were unhoused at last count. Trump’s Big Ugly Budget Bill threatens to make that number skyrocket.
July 1st 147,000 jobs were added in June 2025, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1%. But this job growth is only within a few industries. The real problem here is skewed reporting: the U.S. needs 250k new jobs each month to keep even with population growth, so that means that the country LOST 80,000 jobs in June.
Sunday, February 09, 2025
February 2025 Quotations (53)
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that you think are important to you."
~~ Carl Jung [1875-1961]
"Every time I'm in the woods I feel like I'm in church."
~~ American folk singer Pete Seeger [1919-2014]
funny t-shirt: available for limited time only
"Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics."
~~ Charles Péguy [1873-1914] of France
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure."
~~ Herman Melville [1819-91] Page
"I get over a hundred letters a day from all over the world, from children and parents, and it's a wonder
[that] I ever have time to write books, let alone speak!"
~~ British children's author Enid Blyton [1897-1968]
"Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of summit of grappling with what one really has to say."
~~ visionary Jaron Lanier
"If you want to assert a truth, first make sure [that] it's not just an opinion that you desparately want to be true."
~~ astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson
"Nobody who says 'I told you so' has ever been, or ever will be, a hero."
~~ Ursula K. Le Guin [1929-2018]
"Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes
with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor."
~~ mathematician & philosopher Norbert Wiener [1894-1964]
"Human nature is above all things lazy."
~~ Harriet Beecher Stowe [1811-96]
"A Universal Good should reflect the reality of the individual benefits that are collected under its name, not the other way around."
~~ Paul K. Feyerabend [1924-94]
"I think being funny is not anyone's first choice."
~~ cinema master Woody Allen
"Writing is like traveling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying."
~~ writer & activist (James Mercer) Langston Hughes [1901-67]
"Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"There is no more thrilling experience for a man than to be able to state that he has learned something that no other person in the world has known before him." (as quoted by Kenneth Franklin)
~~ engineer Vannevar Bush [1890-1974]
"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of."
~~ Chinese philosopher Confucius / Kong Qiu [551-479 BCE]
"Funny/not funny: Fascist MAGAts getting so triggered by objective facts. Any objective fact."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"I’ve increasingly come to feel that one’s curiosity is a kind of sacred thing, not to be trifled with. It’s almost like a magic power that helps you find your way to what’s most worth thinking about."
~~ theoretical physicist Latham Boyle
"The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”
~~ David Foster Wallace [1962-2008] - from his 2005 Kenyon College in Ohio commencement speech “This Is Water"
"Dust doesn't get any thicker after eight years."
~~ Quentin Crisp [1908-99]
"Jimmy Carter honors the Nobel Peace Prize as surely as it honors him."
~~ journalist Hendrik Hertzberg
"Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed."
~~ Miranda July, in "No One Belongs Here More Than You"
"Life is not an annuity, but a mandate, and the mandate is that there is no end to what one human being owes to another, can mean to another."
~~ Abraham Joshua Heschel [1907-72]
"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels."
~~ model Kate Moss
"[Humans are] smart enough to invent A.I., dumb enough to need it, and so stupid we can't figure out if we did the right thing."
~~ Jerry Seinfeld, on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" in 2024
"Cats are like baptists - you know [that] they raise hell, you just can't catch'em at it."
~~ entertainr Jim Stafford
"The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government."
~~ inscription above the entrance to the New York State Supreme Court building
"When all is said and done, more is said than done."
~~ Lou Holtz
found text for t-shirt: CONTROL / UNIT {even better: on the back of a dark blue poplin jacket - for Hallowe'en only, of course}
"The press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."
~~ reporter Salena Zito
"It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and a usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin."
~~ inaugural address by President James Monroe [1758-1831] on 4 March 1817
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…"
~~ inaugural address by President Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
~~ inaugural address by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]
"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
~~ inaugural address by President John F. Kennedy [1917-63]
"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
~~ inaugural address by President Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
~~ inaugural address by President Bill Clinton
"It is only because of their stupidity that they can be so sure of themselves."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]
"The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87], in "The Fire Next Time" [1963]
"Scumbag dictator Adolph Trump is now effectively in charge of the U.S. government - it's all downhill from here."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"In the final analysis, all issues are economic issues."
~~ Chris Kruger
"I'm writing a book. I have the page numbers done, now I just have to fill in the rest."
~~ comedian Steven Wright
"I have an inner child but I don't think it's mine."
~~ senior comedian Andy Huggins [b. ]
"Our public schools are not Sunday schools."
~~ The American Civil Liberties Union [est. 1920]
"We live in newsy times. Things seem to get crazier from day to day, and the headlines, like magnets, can attract and repel with equal force."
~~ Joshua Rothman, in The New Yorker Magazine
"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."
~~ early-XXth Century Peruvian strongman Óscar R. Benavides [1876-1945]
"Trump is American gangsterism crystallized, honest about itself, unashamed, and bold."
~~ Cornel West
"Societal privilege is not a right, except under aristocracy - which was ended in the U.S.A. in 1776. However, our democratic republic was declared to be a fascist state in January 2010 and became a full fascist dictatorship in January 2025."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"Photography is truth. But cinema is truth 24 times per second."
~~ French director Jean-Luc Godard [1930-2022]
"Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power."
~~ American philosopher & psychologist William James [1842-1910]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Monday, January 13, 2025
WHAT EXACTLY IS FASCISM ?
WARNING • WARNING • WARNING (objective facts for the uninformed)
-- educate yourself
Ideology of Fascism Page at Working Minds Philosophy website
fascist 'think tank' Heritage Foundation's Project 2025
“[Donald Trump] is a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country . . . A fascist to the core.”
~~~ former Army General Mark Milley (appointed by Trump as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff)
. . . and for all the brainwashed MAGAts out there:
maybe you should try using facts, dear - it will make your life much easier