"Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people. Let us dare to read, think, speak and write".
~~ John Adams [1735-1826]
"The future ain't what it used to be."
~~ Yogi Berra
"Wine is bottled poetry."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]
"A good traveller has no fixed plans."
~~ Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu [IVth Century B.C.E.]
"We live in the world as it is and dream of the world that might one day be and consider ourselves fortunate to have reduced, even modestly, the distance between the two."
~~ Peter Beinart
"Old, in America, is not a good thing to be."
~~ Katha Pollitt
"Even if you cannot fool all of the people all of the time, you can fool enough people long enough to do irreversible damage."
~~ Joseph Schumpeter [1883-1950]
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
~~ Marcel Proust [1871-1922]
"These days it is not 'the economy, stupid' but the stupid economy."
~~ motto of the Green Festival Project
"The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe."
~~ Gustave Flaubert [1821-80]
“Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the Earth are never alone or weary of life.”
~~ Rachel Carson ]1907-64]
"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right."
~~ Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
"When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing."
~~ Tennessee Williams [1911-83]
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]
"Liberty is not the means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end."
~~ Lord Acton [1834-1902]
"It is not for honor or glory or wealth that we fight, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life."
~~ Declaration of Arbroath by Scottish leaders, 1320 A.D.
"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize [that] they can bribe the people with their own money."
~~ Alexis de Tocqueville [1805-59]
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65] in 1838
"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"We, the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts; not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"Live Free or die; death is not the worst of evils."
~~ Gen. John Stark [1728-1822]
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
~~ Justice William O. Douglas [1898-1980]
"The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets."
~~ Lysander Spooner [1808-87]
"There is no such thing as an achieved liberty; like electricity, there can be no substantial storage and it must be generated as it is enjoyed, or the lights go out."
~~ Justice Robert H. Jackson [1892-1954] in 1953
"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"Baseball is 90 percent mental; the other half is physical."
~~ Yogi Berra
"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation."
~~ Woodrow Wilson [1856-1924]
"With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but with tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will be certainly be lost."
~~ William Lloyd Garrison [1805-79]
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
~~ James Madison [1751-1836] in 1822
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."
~~ Patrick Henry [1736-99]
"There is nothing more terrifying than ignorance in action."
~~ Goethe [1749-1832]
"Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance."
~~ Oprah Winfrey
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
WM Essay #91: "Meaning & Purpose"
Virtually nothing that most people do is from Free Choice. The Culture-Structure has pre-programmed you all since birth to be a mindless cog in the machinery of Consumerism. Your primary desires are Materialistic or Hedonistic, collapsed into a false merger with Survival.
Like over-populated lemmings, the societies of Planet Earth charge toward the precipice, never stopping to Reason, to Choose, to seek the guidance of one's Self – much less guidance from Silence. If you do attempt any such contemplation, you will be pushed aside or trampled by the mindless mob behind you.
The Universe is Existential; the Culture-Structure of Mankind is not. A plethora (love that word!) of False Meaning is crammed into every subservient individual, which is the supreme False Purpose of each and every local segment of the Culture-Structure. This False Purpose is to keep you running the proverbial treadmill, the Rat Race. And as Lily Tomlin has pointed out: "The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."
The first requirement of becoming a Free Individual is setting aside ALL of the (False) Meaning that was forced upon you by the Culture-Structure, of the Culture-Structure and for the Culture-Structure. All of it, each and every, one at a time, now and forever.
This is not to say that you should reject all such meaning, for that is merely knee-jerk resistance. Refusing to pay taxes, refusing to marry and-or propagate, refusing to participate in the marketplace or the election process – these are negative actions and such re-action merely gives the same power away as does blindly obeying the dictates of the Culture-Structure. You play the game by refusing to play the game: switching to 'not that' is not any different.
What has to take place is giving up Meaning itself. All Meaning. The existential act of choosing 'No Meaning' is the eye of the needle thru which you – all Mankind – must go. Not easy, but Life is not easy, nor standing as an Individual against the (False) Meaning machine that is the Culture-Structure.
Besides, how easy is your life now, going along with the Culture-Structure? You have no Self, no Choice, no Satisfaction in life, Life is empty of real Meaning while you agree to and settle for the False Meaning that the Culture-Structure is built on.
v v
A simple methodology for setting aside all False Meaning is to live from the context of Empowerment. When you stand on Empowerment, you cannot act from False Meaning, the two realms are mutually exclusive – just as the self-generated context of Love displaces Hatred, and just as the self-generated context of Purpose displaces Hope.
For some of you, this can be a memorable day, The Day when you threw off the shackles of False Meaning. For others, it will be an on-going struggle to discover another damn False Meaning and turn loose of it – by standing in Empowerment and maintaining each new opening, and then searching for another False Meaning, an on-going search.
What becomes available after the commitment to existential Self-hood [No Meaning] is that you can then begin to construct Freely-Chosen Meaning and Purpose. You will then call the shots in your Life as an Individual using Reason, which to the extent that you invoke it, will displace the silly and dis-empowering anti-Reason [False] Meaning provided by the Culture-Structure.
v v
The Universe provides no a priori inherent Meaning for Life. The quest for the Official Meaning of Life is a distraction, so that you and all Mankind have no access to Power.
All this False Meaning that you inherited was made up. If some Official Meaning actually existed, then why has the Culture-Structure not located it? Folks have been pretending to look for the Official Meaning of Life since Mankind first walked upright, so where the hell is it??
The good news and the bad news is that no such Official Meaning of Life exists. Bad news for the Oligarchy when this knowledge becomes widespread, because all the meaningless crap – the treadmill, the rat race – that drives ancient & modern societies becomes visibly meaning-LESS!
The good news is that Meaning, like Wealth, can only be created by the Individual. Meaning exists only because you say so: If you parrot some inherited False Meaning, then nothing is created. But notice the pressure from the Culture-Structure to lend credence to 'benefits' of you committing to their False Meanings: if you had no inherent Power, then why would they brainwash you to do their bidding?
ONLY an Individual can create Meaning, and it is as simple as speaking that Meaning into existence.
The other good news is that you surrendered your natural right to create Meaning by parroting all those empty False Meanings of the Culture-Structure – money, fame, 'fun', status, security – none of which have or will produce a satisfying Life. But if you once surrendered it, all you have to do to regain your Power is to say "No more!".
You all have no idea how to create Meaning. What is required to create Meaning is giving up all the inherited False Meaning and stand in existential Nothing, or 'No Meaning'. From there, the Individual Self can invent Created Meaning – Freely-Chosen Meaning and Purpose.
One way to clarify this process is to choose freely to create Empowerment. Standing in Empowerment, the Meaning that you create will not be False.
So even if what you create seems to appear the same as before, you will be in an entirely different ballgame. Take 'family', for example: the inherited False Meaning of 'family' has no Power, things don't work, grudges persist, the concept comes with a ton of baggage – mothers are such a way, fathers & sons & daughters are this way, relatives are like this or that. What the Culture-Structure provides as Family is a messy soap opera – surf across the cable channels and the news – or some pseudo-deal like "Father Knows Best" which is delivered in the context 'not real'.
But the Freely-Chosen Meaning of Family is fresh and clean when invented from No-Meaning. What you create from there has no baggage, you can create Family as it should be: Family as Love, as Communication, as Warmth, as Laughter, as Contribution – down the generations past & present.
The other good news is that once you invent yourself as a Free Individual, nobody can take it away from you. They can kill you for it, but they can never take it from you. In point of fact, the Culture-Structure is designed so that you all surrender Meaning & Power on-goingly: Stop giving it away, halt the surrender of the Self, and you will retain all the inherent Natural Power that you can possibly need. While you create and maintain Freely-Chosen Meaning and Purpose, nobody can take it away – no way, no how!
Your Self-hood cannot be taken away. The only reason that you lost it was because the Culture-Structure cheated you by offering their False Meaning in its place. All you had to do in return was to surrender your Power . . .
All that is necessary to recover your Power as an Individual is to Stand AS an Individual from this time forth. The Individual can then throw off the shackles of False Meaning by the mere existential Act of Will of saying so, and then inventing freely: creating bright and shiny new Meaning, which cannot be taken away.
v v
WHY BOTHER?
During the Summer this essay was created, I was party to a one-on-one conversation on this subject (in the context of homework from a Landmark Education seminar). And when the other person asked "Why bother?", my ad hoc response went over quite well. In writing it down later to append to this essay, it evolved into a poem. (I don't try to be a poet, but I never argue with my muse.)
the world takes no notice
as I strap on my rusty armor
(that chafes at every joint)
and clamber up to sit upon
the skittish steed
that is my Purpose
the windmill takes no notice
as I lower my wobbly lance
and jab my spurs against the flanks
of my tired and wheezing mount
and point myself hell-bent toward the looming giant
the world may take no notice
or if it sees, not care
but for a moment or two
my Purpose is my Self
and for a moment or two
my Life is such
that I feel the wind upon my face
v v
How you will know that you got this done, that you have chosen a Meaning that is sufficiently challenging, is that your new Freely-Chosen Meaning sings in your veins, and when you are In Action per your Stand In The Matter, you will experience the sharp thrill of the wind upon your face – and experience that you are empowered.
How you will know that your new Freely-Chosen Meaning will provide Power is that only YOU can get this job done, and that the outcome is not certain, that if you do not take this on, to completion, then it will not happen.
Save the whales? World peace? Other people are doing something about these matters, though much more needs to happen. But what about that book or invention that you've been thinking about for years, that you 'put on the back burner', what about that? Or what about doubling the reading scores at the school that your kids go to? Or what about organizing your neighborhood to replace the blight of poverty with the presence of Pride – those are big enough Meanings that you will have to generate Power, by empowering others.
Said another way, your new Freely-Chosen Meaning isn't big enough unless it requires you to give it away to others.
The bigger your commitment, and the more daunting it may seem at first, the more that will be required of you, the more empowerment your commitment will generate, and the less you need care about the rancid, not-working False Values of the Culture-Structure – standing in Empowerment, your choices will empower others, and the satisfaction in your accomplishment increases accordingly.
This Working Minds Philosophy of Empowerment thing is what I have taken on, and it won't get done unless I generate a far greater reach, get a huge conversation started, put billboards along the freeways here and there, get written up in Time Magazine or be interviewed by Oprah – like that.
The central Meaning and Purpose of the Working Minds Philosophy of Empowerment is the Fulfillment of Mankind's Potential; in order to do anything about that I must ongoingly get off my butt and fulfill MY potential, which automatically requires that I enroll legions of others in fulfilling THEIR potential. Tough job, but there is no better Life than living into a Future that requires your Self to push the proverbial envelope, to expand beyond your comfort zone, to risk possible failure, to Put Your Life On The Line for a Freely-Chosen Meaning and Purpose.
Once you generate and maintain momentum in such empowering activities – in each and every area of your Life – then there can be no turning back.
Your Life has Freely-Chosen Meaning!, and the Oligarchy has lost another mindless minion – you are free!
Once you are empowered – once you empower your Self – nobody can take it away.
Just step off the treadmill of the Culture-Structure and you will be free.
Copyright 2009 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
Like over-populated lemmings, the societies of Planet Earth charge toward the precipice, never stopping to Reason, to Choose, to seek the guidance of one's Self – much less guidance from Silence. If you do attempt any such contemplation, you will be pushed aside or trampled by the mindless mob behind you.
The Universe is Existential; the Culture-Structure of Mankind is not. A plethora (love that word!) of False Meaning is crammed into every subservient individual, which is the supreme False Purpose of each and every local segment of the Culture-Structure. This False Purpose is to keep you running the proverbial treadmill, the Rat Race. And as Lily Tomlin has pointed out: "The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."
The first requirement of becoming a Free Individual is setting aside ALL of the (False) Meaning that was forced upon you by the Culture-Structure, of the Culture-Structure and for the Culture-Structure. All of it, each and every, one at a time, now and forever.
This is not to say that you should reject all such meaning, for that is merely knee-jerk resistance. Refusing to pay taxes, refusing to marry and-or propagate, refusing to participate in the marketplace or the election process – these are negative actions and such re-action merely gives the same power away as does blindly obeying the dictates of the Culture-Structure. You play the game by refusing to play the game: switching to 'not that' is not any different.
What has to take place is giving up Meaning itself. All Meaning. The existential act of choosing 'No Meaning' is the eye of the needle thru which you – all Mankind – must go. Not easy, but Life is not easy, nor standing as an Individual against the (False) Meaning machine that is the Culture-Structure.
Besides, how easy is your life now, going along with the Culture-Structure? You have no Self, no Choice, no Satisfaction in life, Life is empty of real Meaning while you agree to and settle for the False Meaning that the Culture-Structure is built on.
A simple methodology for setting aside all False Meaning is to live from the context of Empowerment. When you stand on Empowerment, you cannot act from False Meaning, the two realms are mutually exclusive – just as the self-generated context of Love displaces Hatred, and just as the self-generated context of Purpose displaces Hope.
For some of you, this can be a memorable day, The Day when you threw off the shackles of False Meaning. For others, it will be an on-going struggle to discover another damn False Meaning and turn loose of it – by standing in Empowerment and maintaining each new opening, and then searching for another False Meaning, an on-going search.
What becomes available after the commitment to existential Self-hood [No Meaning] is that you can then begin to construct Freely-Chosen Meaning and Purpose. You will then call the shots in your Life as an Individual using Reason, which to the extent that you invoke it, will displace the silly and dis-empowering anti-Reason [False] Meaning provided by the Culture-Structure.
The Universe provides no a priori inherent Meaning for Life. The quest for the Official Meaning of Life is a distraction, so that you and all Mankind have no access to Power.
All this False Meaning that you inherited was made up. If some Official Meaning actually existed, then why has the Culture-Structure not located it? Folks have been pretending to look for the Official Meaning of Life since Mankind first walked upright, so where the hell is it??
The good news and the bad news is that no such Official Meaning of Life exists. Bad news for the Oligarchy when this knowledge becomes widespread, because all the meaningless crap – the treadmill, the rat race – that drives ancient & modern societies becomes visibly meaning-LESS!
The good news is that Meaning, like Wealth, can only be created by the Individual. Meaning exists only because you say so: If you parrot some inherited False Meaning, then nothing is created. But notice the pressure from the Culture-Structure to lend credence to 'benefits' of you committing to their False Meanings: if you had no inherent Power, then why would they brainwash you to do their bidding?
ONLY an Individual can create Meaning, and it is as simple as speaking that Meaning into existence.
The other good news is that you surrendered your natural right to create Meaning by parroting all those empty False Meanings of the Culture-Structure – money, fame, 'fun', status, security – none of which have or will produce a satisfying Life. But if you once surrendered it, all you have to do to regain your Power is to say "No more!".
You all have no idea how to create Meaning. What is required to create Meaning is giving up all the inherited False Meaning and stand in existential Nothing, or 'No Meaning'. From there, the Individual Self can invent Created Meaning – Freely-Chosen Meaning and Purpose.
One way to clarify this process is to choose freely to create Empowerment. Standing in Empowerment, the Meaning that you create will not be False.
So even if what you create seems to appear the same as before, you will be in an entirely different ballgame. Take 'family', for example: the inherited False Meaning of 'family' has no Power, things don't work, grudges persist, the concept comes with a ton of baggage – mothers are such a way, fathers & sons & daughters are this way, relatives are like this or that. What the Culture-Structure provides as Family is a messy soap opera – surf across the cable channels and the news – or some pseudo-deal like "Father Knows Best" which is delivered in the context 'not real'.
But the Freely-Chosen Meaning of Family is fresh and clean when invented from No-Meaning. What you create from there has no baggage, you can create Family as it should be: Family as Love, as Communication, as Warmth, as Laughter, as Contribution – down the generations past & present.
The other good news is that once you invent yourself as a Free Individual, nobody can take it away from you. They can kill you for it, but they can never take it from you. In point of fact, the Culture-Structure is designed so that you all surrender Meaning & Power on-goingly: Stop giving it away, halt the surrender of the Self, and you will retain all the inherent Natural Power that you can possibly need. While you create and maintain Freely-Chosen Meaning and Purpose, nobody can take it away – no way, no how!
Your Self-hood cannot be taken away. The only reason that you lost it was because the Culture-Structure cheated you by offering their False Meaning in its place. All you had to do in return was to surrender your Power . . .
All that is necessary to recover your Power as an Individual is to Stand AS an Individual from this time forth. The Individual can then throw off the shackles of False Meaning by the mere existential Act of Will of saying so, and then inventing freely: creating bright and shiny new Meaning, which cannot be taken away.
WHY BOTHER?
During the Summer this essay was created, I was party to a one-on-one conversation on this subject (in the context of homework from a Landmark Education seminar). And when the other person asked "Why bother?", my ad hoc response went over quite well. In writing it down later to append to this essay, it evolved into a poem. (I don't try to be a poet, but I never argue with my muse.)
the world takes no notice
as I strap on my rusty armor
(that chafes at every joint)
and clamber up to sit upon
the skittish steed
that is my Purpose
the windmill takes no notice
as I lower my wobbly lance
and jab my spurs against the flanks
of my tired and wheezing mount
and point myself hell-bent toward the looming giant
the world may take no notice
or if it sees, not care
but for a moment or two
my Purpose is my Self
and for a moment or two
my Life is such
that I feel the wind upon my face
How you will know that you got this done, that you have chosen a Meaning that is sufficiently challenging, is that your new Freely-Chosen Meaning sings in your veins, and when you are In Action per your Stand In The Matter, you will experience the sharp thrill of the wind upon your face – and experience that you are empowered.
How you will know that your new Freely-Chosen Meaning will provide Power is that only YOU can get this job done, and that the outcome is not certain, that if you do not take this on, to completion, then it will not happen.
Save the whales? World peace? Other people are doing something about these matters, though much more needs to happen. But what about that book or invention that you've been thinking about for years, that you 'put on the back burner', what about that? Or what about doubling the reading scores at the school that your kids go to? Or what about organizing your neighborhood to replace the blight of poverty with the presence of Pride – those are big enough Meanings that you will have to generate Power, by empowering others.
Said another way, your new Freely-Chosen Meaning isn't big enough unless it requires you to give it away to others.
The bigger your commitment, and the more daunting it may seem at first, the more that will be required of you, the more empowerment your commitment will generate, and the less you need care about the rancid, not-working False Values of the Culture-Structure – standing in Empowerment, your choices will empower others, and the satisfaction in your accomplishment increases accordingly.
This Working Minds Philosophy of Empowerment thing is what I have taken on, and it won't get done unless I generate a far greater reach, get a huge conversation started, put billboards along the freeways here and there, get written up in Time Magazine or be interviewed by Oprah – like that.
The central Meaning and Purpose of the Working Minds Philosophy of Empowerment is the Fulfillment of Mankind's Potential; in order to do anything about that I must ongoingly get off my butt and fulfill MY potential, which automatically requires that I enroll legions of others in fulfilling THEIR potential. Tough job, but there is no better Life than living into a Future that requires your Self to push the proverbial envelope, to expand beyond your comfort zone, to risk possible failure, to Put Your Life On The Line for a Freely-Chosen Meaning and Purpose.
Once you generate and maintain momentum in such empowering activities – in each and every area of your Life – then there can be no turning back.
Your Life has Freely-Chosen Meaning!, and the Oligarchy has lost another mindless minion – you are free!
Once you are empowered – once you empower your Self – nobody can take it away.
Just step off the treadmill of the Culture-Structure and you will be free.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
News Factoids for June 2009
"Only 21% of registered voters now identify themselves as Republicans"
~~ Washington Post / ABC News poll of April 2009
"Marijuana accounts for 47% of all U.S. drug arrests."
~~ Time Magazine
Japan’s economy contracted by a record 4 percent quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of this year, as domestic demand declined and an export deficit continued.
~~ Financial Times sub-headline, May /2009
The next American military quagmire will be in Turkey, most likely in the Kurdish region in the south, which abuts northern Iraq. Second choice: Africa.
Had my old Maytag washer repaired recently and the local appliance repair guy told me that his business has increased a lot lately, because people are getting household gadgets repaired rather than tossing them and replacing them with new units, which are often seen as being of lesser quality. {Hooray!}
TIP FOR OLD PEOPLE
A doctor at the V.A. hospital told me that vitamin D is now considered the best treatment for 'bone pain', which is the common vague soreness of feet and ankles in older people. Daily vitamins usually have 400 units or so of vitamin D, assuming that at least another 400 units will be gotten from actual food. The new theory is that after a certain age (50 or 60), the body needs 2000 units per day of vitamin D, which is readily available as capsules at your local drugstore. I was told that 'you cannot overdose on vitamin D'; for example, the theorists on this are treating patients who need to catch up with an injection of 50,000 units of vitamin D per week, for 6-8 weeks.
Americans spent 83% more time on social-networking websites in April 2009, as compared with the same time in the prior year.
~~ Time Magazine
Theaters are already showing trailers (previews) for the Robert Downey, Jr. version of "Sherlock Holmes" [due in December 2009], directed by Guy Ritchie. In researching that film for my Sherlock Holmes Film Festival Page, I discovered that there is a real listing on Internet Movie Database for an "Untitled Sherlock Holmes Project" designated 'in development' with Sacha Baron Cohen set to play Holmes and Will Ferrell set to play Watson – Hollywood, have you no shame?
Prohibition in the U.S. lasted 14 years. At the end (1933), arrests for drunk & disorderly were up 41% and the prison population was up 366%.
~~ Mother Jones Magazine, June 2009
"It is unsafe to swim or fish in nearly 40% of U.S. rivers and streams."
~~ Mother Jones Magazine, June 2009
The new motto around recycling is "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rethink"
U.S. building permits are at the lowest since 1960.
~~ A.P. Radio News
Home prices fell 19% in the first quarter of 2009.
~~ Schiller Index
DVD sales for April 2009 were down 11% over the same period in the prior year.
Forty percent of 2007 births in U.S. were out of wedlock.
122 million movie tockets are sold each month in the U.S.A.
~~ on-screen ad June 2009
"I don't think [corn-based ethanol] has proven itself of any value except to Archer Daniels Midland."
~~ Michael Pollan
Copyright 2009 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
~~ Washington Post / ABC News poll of April 2009
"Marijuana accounts for 47% of all U.S. drug arrests."
~~ Time Magazine
Japan’s economy contracted by a record 4 percent quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of this year, as domestic demand declined and an export deficit continued.
~~ Financial Times sub-headline, May /2009
The next American military quagmire will be in Turkey, most likely in the Kurdish region in the south, which abuts northern Iraq. Second choice: Africa.
Had my old Maytag washer repaired recently and the local appliance repair guy told me that his business has increased a lot lately, because people are getting household gadgets repaired rather than tossing them and replacing them with new units, which are often seen as being of lesser quality. {Hooray!}
TIP FOR OLD PEOPLE
A doctor at the V.A. hospital told me that vitamin D is now considered the best treatment for 'bone pain', which is the common vague soreness of feet and ankles in older people. Daily vitamins usually have 400 units or so of vitamin D, assuming that at least another 400 units will be gotten from actual food. The new theory is that after a certain age (50 or 60), the body needs 2000 units per day of vitamin D, which is readily available as capsules at your local drugstore. I was told that 'you cannot overdose on vitamin D'; for example, the theorists on this are treating patients who need to catch up with an injection of 50,000 units of vitamin D per week, for 6-8 weeks.
Americans spent 83% more time on social-networking websites in April 2009, as compared with the same time in the prior year.
~~ Time Magazine
Theaters are already showing trailers (previews) for the Robert Downey, Jr. version of "Sherlock Holmes" [due in December 2009], directed by Guy Ritchie. In researching that film for my Sherlock Holmes Film Festival Page, I discovered that there is a real listing on Internet Movie Database for an "Untitled Sherlock Holmes Project" designated 'in development' with Sacha Baron Cohen set to play Holmes and Will Ferrell set to play Watson – Hollywood, have you no shame?
Prohibition in the U.S. lasted 14 years. At the end (1933), arrests for drunk & disorderly were up 41% and the prison population was up 366%.
~~ Mother Jones Magazine, June 2009
"It is unsafe to swim or fish in nearly 40% of U.S. rivers and streams."
~~ Mother Jones Magazine, June 2009
The new motto around recycling is "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rethink"
U.S. building permits are at the lowest since 1960.
~~ A.P. Radio News
Home prices fell 19% in the first quarter of 2009.
~~ Schiller Index
DVD sales for April 2009 were down 11% over the same period in the prior year.
Forty percent of 2007 births in U.S. were out of wedlock.
122 million movie tockets are sold each month in the U.S.A.
~~ on-screen ad June 2009
"I don't think [corn-based ethanol] has proven itself of any value except to Archer Daniels Midland."
~~ Michael Pollan
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
June 2009 Quotations
"We must know what we are, before we can know and use what we inherently possess."
~~ C. Larson
"Every artist was first an amateur."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882]
"I like myself better when I'm writing regularly."
~~ Willie Nelson
“It isn't what they say about you, it's what they whisper.”
~~ Errol Flynn [1909-59]
"Courage is grace under pressure."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"Amateurs hope. Professionals work."
~~ Garson Kanin [1912-99]
"A firm grip on reality is not a critical component of happiness."
~~ David Hempy
"Count [the minutes] by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day and the race a life."
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]
"Reach high, think big, work hard, and have fun!"
~~ motto of Disney Channel's "Imagination Movers" children's TV program
"The future is already here, it is just unevenly distyributed."
~~ William Gibson
"A kiss without a moustache is like an egg without salt."
~~ old saying
"The trouble with the motion-picture art was (and is) that it is too much an industry; and the trouble with the motion picture industry is that it is too much an art. It is out of this basic contradiction that most of the ills of the form arise."
~~ Garson Kanin [1912-99]
"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."
~~ James Thurber [1894-1961]
"It's no fun being a century ahead of the times."
~~ L. Frank Baum [1856-1919]
"There is a constant struggle between the spirit of free inquiry and the spirit of fundamentalist dogma."
~~ Adam Gopnick
"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it."
~~ Walt Disney [1901-66]
"All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl."
~~ Jean-Luc Godard
"Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world."
~~ Jean-Luc Godard
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."
~~ Woody Allen
"If a person is to get the meaning of life he must learn to like the facts about himself – ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity – before he can learn the truth behind the facts. And the truth is never ugly."
~~ Eugene O'Neill [1888-1953]
"If my films make one more person miserable, I'll feel I have done my job."
~~ Woody Allen
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
“Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”
~~ Eugene O'Neill [1888-1953]
"Ain't no man can avoid being born average, but there ain't no man got to be common."
~~ Satchel Paige [1906-82]
"I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained."
~~ Walt Disney [1901-66]
~~ C. Larson
"Every artist was first an amateur."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882]
"I like myself better when I'm writing regularly."
~~ Willie Nelson
“It isn't what they say about you, it's what they whisper.”
~~ Errol Flynn [1909-59]
"Courage is grace under pressure."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"Amateurs hope. Professionals work."
~~ Garson Kanin [1912-99]
"A firm grip on reality is not a critical component of happiness."
~~ David Hempy
"Count [the minutes] by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day and the race a life."
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]
"Reach high, think big, work hard, and have fun!"
~~ motto of Disney Channel's "Imagination Movers" children's TV program
"The future is already here, it is just unevenly distyributed."
~~ William Gibson
"A kiss without a moustache is like an egg without salt."
~~ old saying
"The trouble with the motion-picture art was (and is) that it is too much an industry; and the trouble with the motion picture industry is that it is too much an art. It is out of this basic contradiction that most of the ills of the form arise."
~~ Garson Kanin [1912-99]
"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."
~~ James Thurber [1894-1961]
"It's no fun being a century ahead of the times."
~~ L. Frank Baum [1856-1919]
"There is a constant struggle between the spirit of free inquiry and the spirit of fundamentalist dogma."
~~ Adam Gopnick
"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it."
~~ Walt Disney [1901-66]
"All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl."
~~ Jean-Luc Godard
"Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world."
~~ Jean-Luc Godard
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."
~~ Woody Allen
"If a person is to get the meaning of life he must learn to like the facts about himself – ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity – before he can learn the truth behind the facts. And the truth is never ugly."
~~ Eugene O'Neill [1888-1953]
"If my films make one more person miserable, I'll feel I have done my job."
~~ Woody Allen
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
“Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”
~~ Eugene O'Neill [1888-1953]
"Ain't no man can avoid being born average, but there ain't no man got to be common."
~~ Satchel Paige [1906-82]
"I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained."
~~ Walt Disney [1901-66]
Monday, June 22, 2009
Essay #90: "The Festival of Stupid"
Stupid, as a commodity, is not in short supply.
Stupid is quite plentiful, much like the kudzu vine of the American South, as both are ever attempting to take over Civilization.
* * * * * * * *
While a significant portion of the U.S. population were infected by the sleep-inducing propaganda of the Culture-Structure, the sheeple let the Party of Stupidity run the country using obvious strategies of stealth, plunder, Mafia-style ethics, talk-show alarmists, and an insane disregard for the consequences that always arise from such actions.
(And the Tea-Bagger sheeple even mindlessly protested President Obama’s tax CUTS for the Middle Class!)
The Corporatists and Fascists and Oligarchs and Conservatives and Religionists and bigots and Federalists have continued to work in concert, with the full intention of producing a mess just like the one that we are in. The anti-Reason gangsters always move in the same direction – to benefit from the exploitation and degradation of We The People.
And the sheeple let them.
And it never works. The mess gets dire and the People rise up and re-establish Progressive programs, and clean up the mess from the new Festival of Stupid.
And the Master Class sits back and complains about taxes – taxes that had to be raised to pay down their recent fiscal crimes – and the Master Class bides their time. And when the economy and civil rights are restored, or at least repaired, then the Master Class invents some new imaginary monster to make afraid those infected with Stupid, and here we go again.
* * * * * * * *
To be truly free from something is to not need it. I cared that the First Amendment was torn to shreds by the Bush Administration, but those freedoms still were alive where I was anyway because I do not need a piece of paper behind glass in Washington, DC to give me those freedoms. I am free to exercise my rights at all times because living from those Unalienable Rights ensures their existence. I am free, the Constitution says so, and that is a matter that is worth risking one’s life for.
Reason gives Progress. Action creates opportunity. Persistence delivers results.
Meanwhile, Stupid just creates more Stupid: messes to clean up, lives ruined, a planet despoiled, mindless waste, perpetual violence, and pain for everyone involved.
* * * * * * * *
The very fact that a cleanup is required means that a crime or assault on Liberty, or a crime of simple greed or survival has been committed.
The evidence of that dis-empowering act is whatever needs to be cleaned up.
Copyright 2009 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
Stupid is quite plentiful, much like the kudzu vine of the American South, as both are ever attempting to take over Civilization.
George W. Bush is not as stupid as he appears. It isn’t so much that he IS stupid, but that he does stupid. The entire premise of the Bush 43 Administration was to wreck the economy, to really screw it up worse than Reagan-Bush did, so that the political takeover of America by the Robber Barons and the Fascists would be easier (for them).
But Dubya screwed that up! The economic crisis was scheduled to happen after the Democrats got control of the Executive and Legislative branches, so that the Oligarchs could then blame the Democrats – those terrifying Liberals – for the mess.
But Dubya screwed up the intentional screw-up, and the People woke up and Barack Obama won by a landslide in many precincts and states, and Dubya gets the blame by present and future historians for the Recession, Depression, Meltdown that is the current and future economic plight of America and the world.
While a significant portion of the U.S. population were infected by the sleep-inducing propaganda of the Culture-Structure, the sheeple let the Party of Stupidity run the country using obvious strategies of stealth, plunder, Mafia-style ethics, talk-show alarmists, and an insane disregard for the consequences that always arise from such actions.
(And the Tea-Bagger sheeple even mindlessly protested President Obama’s tax CUTS for the Middle Class!)
The Corporatists and Fascists and Oligarchs and Conservatives and Religionists and bigots and Federalists have continued to work in concert, with the full intention of producing a mess just like the one that we are in. The anti-Reason gangsters always move in the same direction – to benefit from the exploitation and degradation of We The People.
And the sheeple let them.
And it never works. The mess gets dire and the People rise up and re-establish Progressive programs, and clean up the mess from the new Festival of Stupid.
And the Master Class sits back and complains about taxes – taxes that had to be raised to pay down their recent fiscal crimes – and the Master Class bides their time. And when the economy and civil rights are restored, or at least repaired, then the Master Class invents some new imaginary monster to make afraid those infected with Stupid, and here we go again.
Freedom is the result of Reason. Locke and Hume and Tom Paine and Tom Jefferson and the American Revolution set in motion a Progressive ideology that will eventually prevail.
But it is tough work keeping Freedom alive. There are indeed those who oppose Freedom, who cannot tolerate rule by The People. They seek a return to feudalism, where in their view the Master Class (aristocracy) owns the peasants and is entitled to anything that it wants.
So Stupid exists in two places: the Master Class thrives on doing harm, and the sheeple suffer the consequences of their obliviousness.
To be truly free from something is to not need it. I cared that the First Amendment was torn to shreds by the Bush Administration, but those freedoms still were alive where I was anyway because I do not need a piece of paper behind glass in Washington, DC to give me those freedoms. I am free to exercise my rights at all times because living from those Unalienable Rights ensures their existence. I am free, the Constitution says so, and that is a matter that is worth risking one’s life for.
Reason gives Progress. Action creates opportunity. Persistence delivers results.
Meanwhile, Stupid just creates more Stupid: messes to clean up, lives ruined, a planet despoiled, mindless waste, perpetual violence, and pain for everyone involved.
Reason is the antidote for Stupid. The Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand [1905-82], the Existentialist philosophies of Albert Camus [1913-60] and Jean-Paul Sartre [1905-80], transformative education – all are based on Reason and lead to solutions that benefit Mankind as a whole.
We are all in this together. (Except for the Stupid, who are not IN anything, except failure.)
Reason has a person seek Progress; Stupidity can be defined as the lack of seeking or striving or thinking.
Reason is an act of Free Will; Stupid is based on a want or a wish, often for some fantasy, such as An End To Fear.
Reason seeks Progress; Stupid makes a mess. The act of cleaning something up is always a result of a cause that was sourced by Stupid.
- Federal cleanup sites are the result of Stupid behavior: atomic radiation, mining poisons, industrial pollution, the Texas-sized (literally) mega-pile of trash in the Pacific Ocean.
- Economic rescues (bailouts) are the result of Stupid behavior, and the bailouts themselves are Stupid behavior.
- The conflation of gambling and finance is the result of Stupid behavior: commodities futures, money market funds, indexes on indexes, convoluted ‘instruments’ – none truly exist (have equity) and are therefore sold only to suckers (stupid people with money).
- Economic failure or meltdown is the result of Stupid behavior: when hardworking regular folk find themselves homeless from tidal changes in The Market which they do not understand and had no hand in, and when their 401K or pension is now worthless after being touted as foolproof.
- Corporatism, which is based on the Stupid value of Growth For Growth’s Sake, which like pond scum will eventually suck all the oxygen out of the system.
- Ill health is the result of Stupid behavior: Reason-based healthcare prevents breakdown, as a boon to all, for a smoothly-running society and economy; single-payer healthcare makes prevention affordable. The economics of Stupid makes healthcare hard to get, with their proffered ‘solutions’ overpriced and with unwanted side-effects.
- Crime is Stupid, and not in any way Progressive. Crime is quite costly: lost equity, lost time, and waste of resources – the chase, the meting out of justice, the incarceration, the restoration of plundered goods, the parole system. Crime is an industry in America, and that fact is the result of Stupid behavior.
The very fact that a cleanup is required means that a crime or assault on Liberty, or a crime of simple greed or survival has been committed.
The evidence of that dis-empowering act is whatever needs to be cleaned up.
- Poisoned eco-systems
- Poisoned social systems, like healthcare and the military and police and justice systems, and the election system
- New Orleans
- The Rust Belt
- Chernobyl
- North Korea and Darfur and Somalia
- Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac and the rest of the $25 trillion Republican National Debt
- America’s labor unions
- America’s automobile industry
- America’s housing industry
- America’s healthcare industry
Politics is revitalized by Barack Obama’s campaign and his landslide victory. We the People did some cleaning up, got the election system working again, and President Obama has eight years to implement his planned repairs and improvements, his Vision For America.
What the Obama Administration will leave behind is a better world, even for the sheeple contaminated with Stupid. That Progressive agenda (hated by the pro-feudalism talk-show gasbag pundits) includes better healthcare for Americans, better education, more jobs and more union activity (better jobs), Reason-based taxation, and a reduction in death by warfare on the planet.
War is stupid. Feudalism is stupid. Hunger and starvation are stupid. Pollution is stupid. A frenzied life is stupid.
But the pathogen of Stupid bides its time and looks for chinks in the armor of the Progressive Life Force. No matter that Obama won in 2008, the Bad Guys are still loose and making their Stupid-based plans.
Stupid causes pain and death and suffering.
Empower whoever you can, wherever and whenever you can.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Essay #89: “The Evil of Dick Cheney”
The most evil person in America today is Dick Cheney. So that there is no mistake, I mean Richard Bruce Cheney, the former Vice President.
He is more evil than the idiot George Dubya Bush, cowardly slime-bucket Karl Rove, and p*ssant Alberto Gonzales combined.
(Limp Rushbaugh & Sean Vannity and their pack don’t count because they are the political equivalent of the old Chatty Cathy doll – push the button and hear pre-recorded clichés.)
* * * * * * * *
As preface to Dubya’s first speech as a former President, at a private event in Calgary (Alberta, Canada), he stated that he would not criticize President Obama, and that “President Obama deserves my silence.”
There is room for conjecture here.
President-elect Obama met privately several times with then-President Bush as part of the transition, and it looks like Obama offered Bush a ‘cease-fire’ treaty: that if Dubya kept his mouth shut and did not attack the Obama administration in the press, then the Obama administration would not attack Bush in the press.
You will notice that statements from the Obama administration might talk of mismanagement and failures of the ‘previous administration’, but Bush has not been blamed by name during these several months by any major figure of the White House or of the Cabinet. (Congress can say what they want; the accusations need to get stronger, such as with subpoenas to testify and with criminal indictments.)
* * * * * * * *
Whether any such offer was made to Cheney is more than conjecture. In any case, evil Dick Cheney has no intention of halting his assault on the U.S. Constitution, now that being out of office hampers his ability to give direct orders to frightened underlings. Dick Cheney has not gotten that the People voted his gang out of office, because the People have never mattered to Dick Cheney. That a former U.S. Vice President is pumping the airwaves to attack the new administration has never occurred before; most VPs have just faded away to write their memoirs.
But evil Dick Cheney has an agenda to fulfill, so what if the damage already done to the country will take years, even decades to correct, that damage is not enough for him. There are so many evil tenets of the Federalist Society and of P.N.A.C. {Project For The New American Century} that need to be implemented and re-implemented so that the fascist Oligarchy can reign over a feudal America. It is as if every progressive movement and law since the Magna Carta just has to be repealed, so that the Oligarchs can restore their tradition of taxing the poor, making wars for easy profit, and torturing anyone that gets in their way.
Dick Cheney is a traitor to the U.S. Constitution. There are many incidents where he did so, but the key one is the Valerie Plame affair. For those with lousy memories, the Scooter Libby defense team put into evidence a memo in Dick Cheney’s handwriting telling Libby that ‘The Pres’ approved the public disclosure of C.I.A. agent Plame’s covert identity. (Brilliant move: Libby’s prison sentence was commuted by Dubya.)
Even if the content of that memo was untrue, that still leaves Dick Cheney as the person who authorized the undoing of twenty years of C.I.A. intelligence work, an event which got several foreign agents killed and ruined America’s future chances of recruiting new ‘intell’ sources in foreign lands.
That single matter requires that Dick Cheney be called to testify under oath before Congress and put on trial in Federal court and sentenced to hard time in prison.
* * * * * * * *
But Dick Cheney's evil nature includes the fact that he has no shame. So he breaks precedent and tirelessly appears on the TV faux news shows and hate-talk radio programs upbraiding President Obama for making decisions that endanger America’s military security.
Oh, sure. The same guys who let the bin Laden family fly away on September 11, who let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora, who dismantled the Osama bin Laden unit of the C.I.A. (until an outcry made them rebuild it), the same guys who started an unnecessary war in Iraq and lost it (i.e. did NOT win it, after more time than it took to defeat Imperialist Japan and Nazi Germany) – these guys, in the person of Cheney, are going to give President Obama advice!
* * * * * * * *
Cheney is guilty of treason and murder, he is guilty of arrogance and self-importance, and then there is a whole list of personal failings. But what keeps him on the airwaves is that none of the so-called journalists that grovel at his feet will call him on his hypocrisy.
The first major action by George Dubya Bush when he took office was to begin illegal wiretaps of American citizens – that was in January of 2001. The first major action by Dick Cheney after he took office was to call meetings with the oil companies to plan the invasion of Iraq – that was in February of 2001.
One of Dick Cheney’s assignments as the new Vice President was as the head of the Counter-Terrorism Task Force. Though he found time to meet and conspire with oil company executives, he held no meeting of the C.T.T.F., ignored hundreds of written warnings about potential attacks by bin Laden and others, and finally called the first meeting of America’s Counter-Terrorism Task Force on 12 September 2001!
Whatta guy!
He is actually getting no pushback for blaming President Obama for the failures of the Bush gang in the specious War on Terror. That the evil Dick Cheney has any traction at all on TV news and radio talk just goes to show whose side the fascist-Federalist propaganda machinery is on.
Congress unfortunately failed its Constitutional responsibility to impeach the traitors of the Bush administration. Congress needs to investigate the long list of obvious crimes against the U.S. Constitution, and then to follow all the evidence as revealed and indict and prosecute any and all who conspired to subvert our precious Constitution.
And Dick Cheney belongs at the top of the list of suspects.
Copyright 2009 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
He is more evil than the idiot George Dubya Bush, cowardly slime-bucket Karl Rove, and p*ssant Alberto Gonzales combined.
(Limp Rushbaugh & Sean Vannity and their pack don’t count because they are the political equivalent of the old Chatty Cathy doll – push the button and hear pre-recorded clichés.)
As preface to Dubya’s first speech as a former President, at a private event in Calgary (Alberta, Canada), he stated that he would not criticize President Obama, and that “President Obama deserves my silence.”
There is room for conjecture here.
President-elect Obama met privately several times with then-President Bush as part of the transition, and it looks like Obama offered Bush a ‘cease-fire’ treaty: that if Dubya kept his mouth shut and did not attack the Obama administration in the press, then the Obama administration would not attack Bush in the press.
You will notice that statements from the Obama administration might talk of mismanagement and failures of the ‘previous administration’, but Bush has not been blamed by name during these several months by any major figure of the White House or of the Cabinet. (Congress can say what they want; the accusations need to get stronger, such as with subpoenas to testify and with criminal indictments.)
Whether any such offer was made to Cheney is more than conjecture. In any case, evil Dick Cheney has no intention of halting his assault on the U.S. Constitution, now that being out of office hampers his ability to give direct orders to frightened underlings. Dick Cheney has not gotten that the People voted his gang out of office, because the People have never mattered to Dick Cheney. That a former U.S. Vice President is pumping the airwaves to attack the new administration has never occurred before; most VPs have just faded away to write their memoirs.
But evil Dick Cheney has an agenda to fulfill, so what if the damage already done to the country will take years, even decades to correct, that damage is not enough for him. There are so many evil tenets of the Federalist Society and of P.N.A.C. {Project For The New American Century} that need to be implemented and re-implemented so that the fascist Oligarchy can reign over a feudal America. It is as if every progressive movement and law since the Magna Carta just has to be repealed, so that the Oligarchs can restore their tradition of taxing the poor, making wars for easy profit, and torturing anyone that gets in their way.
Dick Cheney is a traitor to the U.S. Constitution. There are many incidents where he did so, but the key one is the Valerie Plame affair. For those with lousy memories, the Scooter Libby defense team put into evidence a memo in Dick Cheney’s handwriting telling Libby that ‘The Pres’ approved the public disclosure of C.I.A. agent Plame’s covert identity. (Brilliant move: Libby’s prison sentence was commuted by Dubya.)
Even if the content of that memo was untrue, that still leaves Dick Cheney as the person who authorized the undoing of twenty years of C.I.A. intelligence work, an event which got several foreign agents killed and ruined America’s future chances of recruiting new ‘intell’ sources in foreign lands.
That single matter requires that Dick Cheney be called to testify under oath before Congress and put on trial in Federal court and sentenced to hard time in prison.
But Dick Cheney's evil nature includes the fact that he has no shame. So he breaks precedent and tirelessly appears on the TV faux news shows and hate-talk radio programs upbraiding President Obama for making decisions that endanger America’s military security.
Oh, sure. The same guys who let the bin Laden family fly away on September 11, who let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora, who dismantled the Osama bin Laden unit of the C.I.A. (until an outcry made them rebuild it), the same guys who started an unnecessary war in Iraq and lost it (i.e. did NOT win it, after more time than it took to defeat Imperialist Japan and Nazi Germany) – these guys, in the person of Cheney, are going to give President Obama advice!
Cheney is guilty of treason and murder, he is guilty of arrogance and self-importance, and then there is a whole list of personal failings. But what keeps him on the airwaves is that none of the so-called journalists that grovel at his feet will call him on his hypocrisy.
The first major action by George Dubya Bush when he took office was to begin illegal wiretaps of American citizens – that was in January of 2001. The first major action by Dick Cheney after he took office was to call meetings with the oil companies to plan the invasion of Iraq – that was in February of 2001.
One of Dick Cheney’s assignments as the new Vice President was as the head of the Counter-Terrorism Task Force. Though he found time to meet and conspire with oil company executives, he held no meeting of the C.T.T.F., ignored hundreds of written warnings about potential attacks by bin Laden and others, and finally called the first meeting of America’s Counter-Terrorism Task Force on 12 September 2001!
Whatta guy!
He is actually getting no pushback for blaming President Obama for the failures of the Bush gang in the specious War on Terror. That the evil Dick Cheney has any traction at all on TV news and radio talk just goes to show whose side the fascist-Federalist propaganda machinery is on.
Congress unfortunately failed its Constitutional responsibility to impeach the traitors of the Bush administration. Congress needs to investigate the long list of obvious crimes against the U.S. Constitution, and then to follow all the evidence as revealed and indict and prosecute any and all who conspired to subvert our precious Constitution.
And Dick Cheney belongs at the top of the list of suspects.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Essay #88: "The Party of No"
Recent writers of letters in the local newspaper avoid certain facts, because objective reality is their enemy.
1) Barack Obama won the election for President in November 2008. That an African-American won the popular vote is a major accomplishment (in this racist country), and the landslide in the electoral college is equally important. The People are now back in power.
2) The Japanese surrendered in 1945, but the permanent opposition to the People did not surrender in November. Those seeking to render the U.S. Constitution worthless continue to spew their propaganda, as regularly appears in local newspapers across the country, as well as on national hate-talk radio and on the faux TV news channels.
The Party of No – no facts, no rights, no healthcare, no accountability, no security, no jobs, no education, no solutions – is made up of the Republicans, fascists, racists, Federalists, Wall Street barons, members of P.N.A.C., all the unindicted traitors and criminals of the Bush Administration, the war profiteers, and just plain demagogues plotting together and separately to reverse the intent of the Constitution and to further destroy the Nation. Their evil job is not done.
3) The Republican National Debt today stands at 25 trillion dollars. If – and that is still a very big IF – Barack Obama and his team saves America and the world from suffering the decade-long Second Republican Depression that looms on our horizon, then he will have done a greater thing than F.D.R. did, because President Obama has only eight years to rescue the country. The matter is extremely urgent.
4) The economy of America and the world has not yet reached bottom. We have yet to go thru the turmoil that awaits from the Credit Card Crisis. If President Obama makes the right choices AND his plans get enacted in time, then the economy won't get too much worse. If what needs to be enacted is faulty or is blocked or watered down by the Party of No, then the Republican Great Depression of 1929 to 1938 will look like a picnic in the park in comparison.
5) A recent national poll by A.B.C. News found that only 21% of American voters will admit to being registered as Republicans. The Party of No has lost power because their lies are both the cause and the result of believing their own propaganda.
Barack Obama and his team are the only chance that America has to restore Constitutional law, to survive the Republican economic meltdown, and with a little luck maybe even prevent your grandchildren from living as slaves to the Oligarchy.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
May 2009 Quotations
"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork."
~~ Peter De Vries [1910-93]
"If you are unhappy before fame, you will probably be unhappy during fame."
~~ Haing S. Ngor [1940-96]
"Part of the loot went for gambling and part for women. The rest I spent foolishly."
~~ actor George Raft [1895-1980]
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
~~ John Kenneth Galbraith [1908-2006]
"A nation glued to the television screen ... can fill up every 'unforgiving minute' with enough trash and preoccupation to still forever the deeper voices of the soul."
~~ Adlai Stevenson [1900-65], in 1959
"My activism pays the rent on being alive and being here on the planet."
~~ Alice Walker, in 1989
"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader."
~~ poet Robert Frost [1874-63]
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]
"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
~~ William Faulkner [1897-1962]
"News is what someone, somewhere, doesn't want you to know. Everything else is advertising."
~~ Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe [1865-1922]
"We are all travellers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]
"Oh! what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive!"
~~ Sir Walter Scott [1771-1832]
"Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote."
~~ William E. Simon
"To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"All good things – trout as well as eternal salvation – come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy."
~~ Norman Maclean [1902-90]
"[Sociologist C. Wright] Mills is half forgotten -- perhaps because much of what he said is now taken for granted."
~~ Norman Birnbaum
"We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy."
~~ Cyril Connolly [1903-74]
"This is the worst economy since the Great Depression."
~~ Richard Stengel, Time Magazine
"The problem with 'going with the flow' is that the flow is always downhill."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"The world has been slow to realize that we are in the shadow of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern history."
~~ John Maynard Keynes [1883-1946], quoted by James K. Galbraith in written testimony to Congress, February 2009
"Great minds have purposes, others have wishes."
~~ Washington Irving [1783-1859]
"A useless life is an early death."
~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1842]
"There is a purpose to our lives that each day tugs at our sleeve as an annoying distraction."
~~ Robert Brault
"When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind."
~~ Seneca the Younger [4? B.C.E. - 65 A.D.]
"Is it weird in here, or is it just me?"
~~ comedian Steven Wright
"If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the price of a song?"
~~ Lou Reed
"Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valley of silliness."
~~ Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951]
"The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them."
~~ Frank A. Clark
"Higher education in America is designed to fashion plowshares into doorstops."
~~ G.E. Nordell
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Peter De Vries [1910-93]
"If you are unhappy before fame, you will probably be unhappy during fame."
~~ Haing S. Ngor [1940-96]
"Part of the loot went for gambling and part for women. The rest I spent foolishly."
~~ actor George Raft [1895-1980]
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
~~ John Kenneth Galbraith [1908-2006]
"A nation glued to the television screen ... can fill up every 'unforgiving minute' with enough trash and preoccupation to still forever the deeper voices of the soul."
~~ Adlai Stevenson [1900-65], in 1959
"My activism pays the rent on being alive and being here on the planet."
~~ Alice Walker, in 1989
"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader."
~~ poet Robert Frost [1874-63]
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]
"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
~~ William Faulkner [1897-1962]
"News is what someone, somewhere, doesn't want you to know. Everything else is advertising."
~~ Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe [1865-1922]
"We are all travellers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]
"Oh! what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive!"
~~ Sir Walter Scott [1771-1832]
"Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote."
~~ William E. Simon
"To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"All good things – trout as well as eternal salvation – come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy."
~~ Norman Maclean [1902-90]
"[Sociologist C. Wright] Mills is half forgotten -- perhaps because much of what he said is now taken for granted."
~~ Norman Birnbaum
"We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy."
~~ Cyril Connolly [1903-74]
"This is the worst economy since the Great Depression."
~~ Richard Stengel, Time Magazine
"The problem with 'going with the flow' is that the flow is always downhill."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"The world has been slow to realize that we are in the shadow of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern history."
~~ John Maynard Keynes [1883-1946], quoted by James K. Galbraith in written testimony to Congress, February 2009
"Great minds have purposes, others have wishes."
~~ Washington Irving [1783-1859]
"A useless life is an early death."
~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1842]
"There is a purpose to our lives that each day tugs at our sleeve as an annoying distraction."
~~ Robert Brault
"When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind."
~~ Seneca the Younger [4? B.C.E. - 65 A.D.]
"Is it weird in here, or is it just me?"
~~ comedian Steven Wright
"If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the price of a song?"
~~ Lou Reed
"Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valley of silliness."
~~ Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951]
"The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them."
~~ Frank A. Clark
"Higher education in America is designed to fashion plowshares into doorstops."
~~ G.E. Nordell
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Sunday, April 19, 2009
News Factoids for April 2009
ECOLOGY / GLOBAL WARMING
The Pacific Ocean garbage patch is growing ... It's now bigger than the state of Texas.
== AP news headline April 2009
"In 2006, the greenhouse gases produced by U.S. farm animals exceeded the emissions of the iron, steel and cement industries combined."
== Lisa Morgan, The Atlantic September 2008
LOST JOBS IN AMERICA
595,000 jobs lost in January 2009, worst in 35 years
== AP News headline February 2009
Jobless rate jumps to 8.1 percent in February, highest since late 1983; employers cut 651,000 jobs...
== AP News headline March 2009
3.6 million jobs lost since the beginning of the recession
The nation's unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since late 1983, as a wide range of employers eliminated a net total of 663,000 jobs.
== AP news 3 April 2009
{double that number for the real figure of 17% unemployemnt}
Americans lost 742,000 jobs in March 2009.
== Air America Radio newsletter
OTHER ECONOMIC CONCERNS
"17% fewer dot-com and other standard web addresses were registered in the fourth quarter of 2008 than in the same period in 2007."
== Time Magazine
Chinese exports dropped 17.5% in January 2009 compared to a year earlier
== Time Magazine
Household debt in the U.S. soared from 60% of income in 1982 to 130% in 2007.
== Time Magazine
THE OLIGARCHY
"Over the past twenty years, the elite 1 percent [of U.S. taxpayers] saw their share of the nation's income double, from 11.3& to 22.1%, but their tax burden shrank by about one third [from 33.1 percent to 22.8% percent]."
{ **emphasis added } == The Nation Magazine
"From 1973 to 1985, the [U.S.] financial sector never earned more than 16 prcent of domestic corporate profits ... [During the Bush Administration] it reached 41 percent."
== Simon Johnson, in The Atlantic
The Pacific Ocean garbage patch is growing ... It's now bigger than the state of Texas.
== AP news headline April 2009
"In 2006, the greenhouse gases produced by U.S. farm animals exceeded the emissions of the iron, steel and cement industries combined."
== Lisa Morgan, The Atlantic September 2008
LOST JOBS IN AMERICA
595,000 jobs lost in January 2009, worst in 35 years
== AP News headline February 2009
Jobless rate jumps to 8.1 percent in February, highest since late 1983; employers cut 651,000 jobs...
== AP News headline March 2009
3.6 million jobs lost since the beginning of the recession
The nation's unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since late 1983, as a wide range of employers eliminated a net total of 663,000 jobs.
== AP news 3 April 2009
{double that number for the real figure of 17% unemployemnt}
Americans lost 742,000 jobs in March 2009.
== Air America Radio newsletter
OTHER ECONOMIC CONCERNS
"17% fewer dot-com and other standard web addresses were registered in the fourth quarter of 2008 than in the same period in 2007."
== Time Magazine
Chinese exports dropped 17.5% in January 2009 compared to a year earlier
== Time Magazine
Household debt in the U.S. soared from 60% of income in 1982 to 130% in 2007.
== Time Magazine
THE OLIGARCHY
"Over the past twenty years, the elite 1 percent [of U.S. taxpayers] saw their share of the nation's income double, from 11.3& to 22.1%, but their tax burden shrank by about one third [from 33.1 percent to 22.8% percent]."
{ **emphasis added } == The Nation Magazine
"From 1973 to 1985, the [U.S.] financial sector never earned more than 16 prcent of domestic corporate profits ... [During the Bush Administration] it reached 41 percent."
== Simon Johnson, in The Atlantic
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Essay #87: "The 2012 Hoax"
This whole thing about The World Is Gonna End! on 12 December or 21 December of 2012 is just another manipulation to instill more fear into the population.
The purpose? A population that lives in fear – about anything, and especially when the fear is about everything – is to that extent paralyzed and diverted from addressing the very real dangers that continually threaten the existence of Mankind here on the Blue Planet.
War, pestilence, famine, death, cancer, droughts and floods, hurricanes, Chinese toys, exploding auto tires, vampires, unions and-or management, white supremacists, Muslim extremists, Christian extremists, atheist extremists, illegal aliens here to take your job, environmentalists here to take your job, Democrats who want to take your guns, rednecks who carry guns to the grocery store, wolves who eat your stock, deer who eat your crops, homeless people who just want something to eat, bankers who want to foreclose your home, a ‘healthcare’ industry that makes people sick – the list goes on and on.
* * * * * * * * Remember the Y2K phenomenon? At least that non-event got a few retired COBOL programmers put back to work updating software badly designed so as not to handle the four-digit year and-or the rollover to first digit of 2. Other than that, what actually happened? A peak in sales of bottled water, camping supplies, and Meals Ready To Eat. Lots and lots of fear that ended in a gigantic fizzle.
* * * * * * * * And let us not forget the decades-long Baby On Board fad. This spread to the U.S from Germany about the time that Reagan was running for President, and still flourishes in the U.K. It began during the same time period that the unthinking religionist sheeple masses were first organizing their political shenanigans, and the very unconscious meaning behind the whole deal was connected to the ‘Jesus Is Returning At The Millennium’ myth.
Using no logic whatsoever, if Jesus returns in 2000 or 2001, then he’d have to be twenty or so, so he’d have to be born anywhere from 1978 to maybe 1980, or if by 1982 then he’d be 18 years old, that could work. So any child of a Christian family could be very, very special, there’s no way to know, so for a couple years, let’s not kill babies and let’s all drive real carefully, because anyone could be the proud parent of a kid who survives being a teenager in America and is revealed by hosts of angels to be the Son of the Christian God-head. (Film at eleven!)
Logic? What if Jesus comes back as a girl? Or even better, someone born into the LGBT community? And the arrogance of us Americans: we are 6% of the overpopulated planet, any such godling is three times more likely to be Chinese.
Well, those yellow diamond-shaped signs that were stuck inside millions of car windows got old after a while, but the kitsch-dealers kept it going. ‘Pet on board’ and other variations, then ‘Driver carries no cash’ (as if robbers and car-jackers might obey the sign), which eventually evolved into ‘Baby carries no cash’, which was kind of the end of the silliness here in America.
We protected all those babies and then none of them grew up to be Jesus. Bummer!
* * * * * * * * This whole Mayan calendar 2012 myth is just more of the same, a waste of time designed to distract and divert the populace from Reality.
Forests will be cut down to report opinions for and against this Mayan myth from dozens of uninformed opinion-mongers who will promote their worthless books on the boob-tube and will draw millions of dollars out of the pockets of the ever-eager fools and idiots that live right in your neighborhood.
Nothing much can be done to prevent the meaningless frenzy, as the idiots are too many among us. It will all play out as the previous such phenomena did, including the people with nothing better to do who will buy tickets and take time off work and get happily drunk at End of The World parties around the globe – “Fox News On The Scene, Live!” – and when they wake up on December 15th they will still feel hangover-ish, and in the next week or so will receive the charges for their excesses on their credit card billing statements.
Copyright 2009 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
The purpose? A population that lives in fear – about anything, and especially when the fear is about everything – is to that extent paralyzed and diverted from addressing the very real dangers that continually threaten the existence of Mankind here on the Blue Planet.
War, pestilence, famine, death, cancer, droughts and floods, hurricanes, Chinese toys, exploding auto tires, vampires, unions and-or management, white supremacists, Muslim extremists, Christian extremists, atheist extremists, illegal aliens here to take your job, environmentalists here to take your job, Democrats who want to take your guns, rednecks who carry guns to the grocery store, wolves who eat your stock, deer who eat your crops, homeless people who just want something to eat, bankers who want to foreclose your home, a ‘healthcare’ industry that makes people sick – the list goes on and on.
And the big frenzy about Jesus Is Coming, soon swept aside by celebu-tart news stories. (My favorite from back then was the “Jesus is coming – and boy is He p*ssed!” bumper stickers.)
At one company where I worked in the 1990s, some of the Christians spent their weekends up in the mountains training for the End Times; what was most amazing to me was that one of my Jewish co-workers was training with them.
Nothing really happened, Jesus is still missing, it was all simply another fear-based ruckus in the media about nothing, as will be the increasing hooferaw about the 2012 farce.
Each of these media-driven programs of fear-mongering will often run for years. The Y2K thing was lengthened by the silly furor over when exactly the Millennium changed. The big Millennium parties were held in Las Vegas and Tokyo and elsewhere on 31 December 1999 (the False Millennium) and then the B Team held further parties on 31 December 2000 – because they could. (The facts are simple: the artificial First Millennium began 1 January in Year One, therefore the Second Millennium began on 1 January of the year 2001. Duh!)
Using no logic whatsoever, if Jesus returns in 2000 or 2001, then he’d have to be twenty or so, so he’d have to be born anywhere from 1978 to maybe 1980, or if by 1982 then he’d be 18 years old, that could work. So any child of a Christian family could be very, very special, there’s no way to know, so for a couple years, let’s not kill babies and let’s all drive real carefully, because anyone could be the proud parent of a kid who survives being a teenager in America and is revealed by hosts of angels to be the Son of the Christian God-head. (Film at eleven!)
Logic? What if Jesus comes back as a girl? Or even better, someone born into the LGBT community? And the arrogance of us Americans: we are 6% of the overpopulated planet, any such godling is three times more likely to be Chinese.
Well, those yellow diamond-shaped signs that were stuck inside millions of car windows got old after a while, but the kitsch-dealers kept it going. ‘Pet on board’ and other variations, then ‘Driver carries no cash’ (as if robbers and car-jackers might obey the sign), which eventually evolved into ‘Baby carries no cash’, which was kind of the end of the silliness here in America.
We protected all those babies and then none of them grew up to be Jesus. Bummer!
Forests will be cut down to report opinions for and against this Mayan myth from dozens of uninformed opinion-mongers who will promote their worthless books on the boob-tube and will draw millions of dollars out of the pockets of the ever-eager fools and idiots that live right in your neighborhood.
Nothing much can be done to prevent the meaningless frenzy, as the idiots are too many among us. It will all play out as the previous such phenomena did, including the people with nothing better to do who will buy tickets and take time off work and get happily drunk at End of The World parties around the globe – “Fox News On The Scene, Live!” – and when they wake up on December 15th they will still feel hangover-ish, and in the next week or so will receive the charges for their excesses on their credit card billing statements.
If you want to have a little fun with these dolts, then any time anyone brings up the subject of 2012 as The End of The World, offer them ten dollars for their automobile or $100 for their house, based on a written & notarized contract that becomes due on, oh, January First of 2013. If they won’t sign such a contract, then they are fools for promoting a mythical event that they don’t really believe in. And if anyone does sign such a contract with you, then they are truly major idiots who deserve to be thinned from the herd, and they truly deserve their comeuppance in 2013 when you show up with the paperwork to collect your new house or car.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
April 2009 Quotations
{{ NOTE: This is post #150 on this blog }}
"One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential for one man to make a film."
~~ Stanley Kubrick [1928-99]
"Gluttony is not a secret vice."
~~ Orson Welles [1915-85]
"Why is it that the study of religion attracts so many nitwits?"
~~ Morton Smith, professor at Columbia University
"I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay."
~~ Pres. Barack Obama, 23 February 2009
"Real hell is there in the office."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]
"Nothing in this life happens without a before and after."
~~ Doris R. Meredith
“We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. 'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever.”
~~ author Philip Pullman
"This life's hard, man, but it's harder if you're stupid."
~~ George V. Higgins
"People try to alter my grumpy, curmudgeonly ways by telling me that 'You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar'. But why would I want to attract flies at all?"
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, nbut not against art."
~~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn [1919-2008]
"I'm not overweight. I'm just nine inches too short."
~~ actress Shelley Winters [1920-2006]
"It's okay to be fat. So you're fat. Just be fat and shut up about it."
~~ Roseanne Barr
"We rarely repent of having eaten too little."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]
"Character is the basis of happiness, and happiness is the reward of character."
~~ George Santayana [1853-1962]
"Life, of course, is without meaning, and if you find something that gives it meaning, you're very fortunate."
~~ Paul Bowles [1910-99]
"We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."
~~ Jonathan Swift [1667-1745]
"Barack Obama was elected President because the governing philosophy of the last 30 years, arrant Reaganism, proved itself bankrupt."
~~ Joe Klein, Time Magazine columnist
"Stay alert: The Republicans and the fascists lost the election in 2008, but they did not surrender."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"The world is illusion, but an illusion which we must take seriously, because it is real as far as it goes, and [real] in those aspects of the reality which we are capable of comprehending. Our business is to wake up."
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]
"Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect."
~~ Thomas S. Monson
"You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself. The height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery, the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. And this law is: the expansion of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others."
~~ Leonardo Da Vinci [1452-1519]
"The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
~~ Blaise Pascal [1623-62] (in the "Pensées")
"Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction, those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded."
~~ Paul Bowles [1910-99]
"For a genius to be a genius, he must have a selfless slave between himself and the world."
~~ writer Dawn Powell [1896-1965]
"The logic of business is coersion, monopoly and the destruction of the weak, not 'choice' or 'service' or universal affluence."
~~ Thomas C. Frank
"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"Where there is no vision, the people will perish." ~~ Proverbs 29:18
"In Hollywood, they'll forgive you if you're two-faced, but not if you're two-chinned."
~~ actress Colleen Dewhurst [1924-91]
"Always forgive your enemies. Just don't forget their names."
~~ David O. Selznick [1902-65]
"A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car."
~~ Kenneth Tynan
"When a child abruptly quadruples her family's income, some changes may be expected."
~~ Shirley Temple
"When I was young, I was terribly concerned with what people thought of me. But now I'm more concerned with what I think of them."
~~ Bette Davis [1908-89]
"The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age."
~~ Lucille Ball [1911-89]
"A gossip is someone who talks to you about others, a bore is someone who talks to you about himself, and a brilliant conversationalist is someone who talks to you about yourself."
~~ actress Lisa Kirk [1925-90]
"I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book."
~~ Groucho Marx [1890-1977]
"Beautiful young people are random acts of nature, but beautiful old people are deliberate works of art."
~~ actress Butterfly McQueen [1911-95]
"To survive [in Hollywood] you need the ambition of a Latin American revolutionary, the ego of a grand opera tenor, and the physical stamina of a cow pony."
~~ actress Billie Burke [1884-1970]
"A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts."
~~ Colette [1873-1954]
"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. ... The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."
~~ Ken Kesey [1935-2001] (in 1994)
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
"One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential for one man to make a film."
~~ Stanley Kubrick [1928-99]
"Gluttony is not a secret vice."
~~ Orson Welles [1915-85]
"Why is it that the study of religion attracts so many nitwits?"
~~ Morton Smith, professor at Columbia University
"I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay."
~~ Pres. Barack Obama, 23 February 2009
"Real hell is there in the office."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]
"Nothing in this life happens without a before and after."
~~ Doris R. Meredith
“We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. 'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever.”
~~ author Philip Pullman
"This life's hard, man, but it's harder if you're stupid."
~~ George V. Higgins
"People try to alter my grumpy, curmudgeonly ways by telling me that 'You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar'. But why would I want to attract flies at all?"
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, nbut not against art."
~~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn [1919-2008]
"I'm not overweight. I'm just nine inches too short."
~~ actress Shelley Winters [1920-2006]
"It's okay to be fat. So you're fat. Just be fat and shut up about it."
~~ Roseanne Barr
"We rarely repent of having eaten too little."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]
"Character is the basis of happiness, and happiness is the reward of character."
~~ George Santayana [1853-1962]
"Life, of course, is without meaning, and if you find something that gives it meaning, you're very fortunate."
~~ Paul Bowles [1910-99]
"We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."
~~ Jonathan Swift [1667-1745]
"Barack Obama was elected President because the governing philosophy of the last 30 years, arrant Reaganism, proved itself bankrupt."
~~ Joe Klein, Time Magazine columnist
"Stay alert: The Republicans and the fascists lost the election in 2008, but they did not surrender."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"The world is illusion, but an illusion which we must take seriously, because it is real as far as it goes, and [real] in those aspects of the reality which we are capable of comprehending. Our business is to wake up."
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]
"Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect."
~~ Thomas S. Monson
"You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself. The height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery, the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. And this law is: the expansion of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others."
~~ Leonardo Da Vinci [1452-1519]
"The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
~~ Blaise Pascal [1623-62] (in the "Pensées")
"Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction, those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded."
~~ Paul Bowles [1910-99]
"For a genius to be a genius, he must have a selfless slave between himself and the world."
~~ writer Dawn Powell [1896-1965]
"The logic of business is coersion, monopoly and the destruction of the weak, not 'choice' or 'service' or universal affluence."
~~ Thomas C. Frank
"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"Where there is no vision, the people will perish." ~~ Proverbs 29:18
"In Hollywood, they'll forgive you if you're two-faced, but not if you're two-chinned."
~~ actress Colleen Dewhurst [1924-91]
"Always forgive your enemies. Just don't forget their names."
~~ David O. Selznick [1902-65]
"A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car."
~~ Kenneth Tynan
"When a child abruptly quadruples her family's income, some changes may be expected."
~~ Shirley Temple
"When I was young, I was terribly concerned with what people thought of me. But now I'm more concerned with what I think of them."
~~ Bette Davis [1908-89]
"The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age."
~~ Lucille Ball [1911-89]
"A gossip is someone who talks to you about others, a bore is someone who talks to you about himself, and a brilliant conversationalist is someone who talks to you about yourself."
~~ actress Lisa Kirk [1925-90]
"I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book."
~~ Groucho Marx [1890-1977]
"Beautiful young people are random acts of nature, but beautiful old people are deliberate works of art."
~~ actress Butterfly McQueen [1911-95]
"To survive [in Hollywood] you need the ambition of a Latin American revolutionary, the ego of a grand opera tenor, and the physical stamina of a cow pony."
~~ actress Billie Burke [1884-1970]
"A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts."
~~ Colette [1873-1954]
"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. ... The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."
~~ Ken Kesey [1935-2001] (in 1994)
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Essay #86: “Reason-Based Taxation (Redux)”
What was brilliant about the creation of the United States of America, beginning from the Declaration of Independence in 1776, was the boldly inventive statement that the individual always has the right to act in his/her best interest.
This is also the root of Objectivism.
But Man's inherent right to the good services of his/her government, along with other basic and unalienable rights, is prevented by the intentions of the extant Political System, in each & every country across the globe, in each & every hamlet, across each & every national border.
Present government institutions seldom get the job done, whatever their stated purpose: the most grievous misfeasance here in America has been in the schools and in the Legal Industry. An entire generation are now adults who on average cannot read or write effectively and cannot think their way out of a paper bag. The American Legal Industry's top leaders in December 2000 and again in December 2004 handed over the U.S. Presidency to a usurper who sold his term of office to the oil & timber monopolies, and to who knows what other special interests.
* * * * * * * *
One percent of the population now owns 60 percent of everything in America. Twenty years ago, they owned only 35 percent of everything in the country: in the years since Dr. Ravi Batra established that base-line, the One Percent – the Oligarchy that rules this country, also known as 'The People Who Count' – accrued 25% more of the totality of the assets in this country.
But they do not have enough: they want it all.
This One Percent, the Oligarchy, has spent millions of dollars to prevent any levy that might approach having them pay their fair share, the result being the Bush Tax Giveaway that was fast-tracked thru the U.S. Congress, and the Republican National Debt that today stands at twenty trillion dollars.
What is the Oligarchy's fair share? The calculation is quite simple and direct:
The U.S. Defense Department spends certain monies for doing their job. which includes protecting the 60% of all the land and property and assets owned by the Oligarchy, so therefore the Oligarchy should pay 60% of the Defense Department budget every year.
The Oligarchy would insist that they are good patriots, so they should be willing to pay a 60% share of the Interior Department budget every year.
The Oligarchy owns 60% of all business concerns, big and small, so they should pay 60% of the Commerce and Transportation and Energy and Agriculture Department budgets every year.
The Department of State probably goes overboard in fulfilling the wishes of the Oligarchy, but I say that the Oligarchy need only pay a 60% share of the State Department budget every year as well.
The Oligarchy, the One Percent, should be paying 60% of the entire federal budget every year. The same calculation applies to every U.S. federal department and bureau and section.
This principle applies also to each and every country, to each & every state or province or canton or arrondissement, to each & every local government entity, down to each & every school and water district.
* * * * * * * *
The Oligarchy that rules this and other countries owns sixty percent of everything, so they should pay 60% of the taxes required to supply the benefits that they derive from government in all its overlapping jurisdictions. Any other plan or assessment will concede to them the means to achieve their ultimate intention, which is to own one-hundred percent of everything – a return to feudalism. After the Oligarchy has achieved that intention, they have only your 'soul' – your Self – to take away from you and yours.
The Oligarchy has already taken away your vote, "without firing a shot", in the ChadGate fiasco of 2000: the U.S. Supreme Court anointed George Dubya as President of the U.S. of A. in complete disregard for due process or for the will of the people, based on the wrong-headed certainty that it was right to do so and in the clear knowledge that no one could stop them.
They ignored the U.S. Constitution in a 'dog and pony show' that was broadcast on national television and radio. Most Americans made no effort to watch or listen to this show, settling instead for the 'sound bite' camouflage served up by – you guessed it – the media conglomerates owned by the Oligarchy.
* * * * * * * *
Previous iterations of class are disappearing, and are being replaced by a structure of Economic Class. The Oligarchy has replaced the Aristocracy, while assuming the same attitude of Divine Right that triggered the French Revolution of 1789.
The lower economic classes, the 'proletariat', are defined as those who have no capital, nor means of production, and thus are required to sell their labor in order to survive. The Upper Middle economic class deals with the lower classes only while the latter are employed as servants.
The entire economy works – or does not work – on the backs of the middle and lower classes, whose primary role in the latter XXth Century evolved into that of the Consumer Class: Notice that virtually every middle class American household is in constant debt (even disregarding mortgage payments), which means that they are encouraged – maybe 'required' is a better term – to spend more than they earn, so that the Oligarchy can reap their Divine Right profits on goods that the Consumer Class does not need and cannot in truth afford. The Consumer Class has an envious lifestyle, but in actuality owns less and less: because the Oligarchy owns more and more.
This is not exactly news. The system of Economic Class ensures the giving away of power to the Oligarchy, in the form of debt, under the constant and compelling threat of job loss. If the middle class worker does not purchase 'the latest', then the economy will collapse and the Consumer will be out of work and thrown into survival among the lower economic classes. The Consumer Class has been taught to spend in order to earn.
This is in effect worse than the 'indentured servitude' that was common around the time of the U.S. Revolutionary War. A British or other freeman could get passage to America or an apprenticeship in a trade in exchange for an agreed-upon term, often three to five years. The difference between indenture and today's economy is that the Consumer Class owes the Oligarchy and there is no expiration date on the deal: The Consumer Class is required to stay in debt by the pressures of the consumer economy, of which the primary beneficiary is the Oligarchy. (Think not? Did your real net worth – exclusive of housing – increase by anywhere near 50% since 1985?)
The Oligarchy has done such a good job of fulfilling their devious intention that labor union membership in the U.S. has been down to 15% of the work-force for a long time. President George Dubya honored his idol, Ronnie Reagan, by ordering the Northwest Airlines mechanics union not to strike, just as Ronnie busted the air traffic controller walkout in August of 1981. And the media soon began reporting that George Dubya would prevent a strike at Delta Airlines.
The later years of Bush's ignoble reign saw the entire economy collapse, in the U.S.A. and around the world. (American consumers no longer have jobs or spare money to spend or save, and U.S. consumer spending accounts for 25% of the world economy.) Dubya's agenda included looting the U.S. Treasury, and he did such a thorough job of screwing up America's future that (in typical Dubya incompetence) he screwed up the screw-up. The subprime lending debacle caused the banking crisis that caused the disappearance of half the net value of the stock market indexes, in a matter of months after the election. And the almost-funny part is that Dubya was supposed to leave the mess for his successor, but he screwed up so badly that the collapse happened before the November 2008 election, and Barack Obama swept into the White House charged with cleaning up Dubya's mess.
* * * * * * * *
Until the structure of the Economic Classes is redesigned so that the middle class, the now 'Consumer Class', is able to acquire wealth as a result of their labors, then matters can only get worse. The only remedy is to increase the taxation levied on the Oligarchy so that they pay their share for the government services that they receive, all down the line.
The One-Percent, the Oligarchy has already acquired more than half of this country's total assets; the Wealthy Class (the top 20% of taxpayers) owns 85% of this country's total assets. The Wealthy Class have more than enough money to bribe Congress and local officials to do their bidding, but We The People showed the world in November 2008 that true Power lies with us. The Wealthy Class will fight 'tooth and nail' against Change, so Americans must remain steadfast and vigilant and never back down.
Like it or not, America and the world are now engaged in Economic Class War.
Copyright 2009 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
This is also the root of Objectivism.
But Man's inherent right to the good services of his/her government, along with other basic and unalienable rights, is prevented by the intentions of the extant Political System, in each & every country across the globe, in each & every hamlet, across each & every national border.
Present government institutions seldom get the job done, whatever their stated purpose: the most grievous misfeasance here in America has been in the schools and in the Legal Industry. An entire generation are now adults who on average cannot read or write effectively and cannot think their way out of a paper bag. The American Legal Industry's top leaders in December 2000 and again in December 2004 handed over the U.S. Presidency to a usurper who sold his term of office to the oil & timber monopolies, and to who knows what other special interests.
One percent of the population now owns 60 percent of everything in America. Twenty years ago, they owned only 35 percent of everything in the country: in the years since Dr. Ravi Batra established that base-line, the One Percent – the Oligarchy that rules this country, also known as 'The People Who Count' – accrued 25% more of the totality of the assets in this country.
But they do not have enough: they want it all.
This One Percent, the Oligarchy, has spent millions of dollars to prevent any levy that might approach having them pay their fair share, the result being the Bush Tax Giveaway that was fast-tracked thru the U.S. Congress, and the Republican National Debt that today stands at twenty trillion dollars.
What is the Oligarchy's fair share? The calculation is quite simple and direct:
The U.S. Defense Department spends certain monies for doing their job. which includes protecting the 60% of all the land and property and assets owned by the Oligarchy, so therefore the Oligarchy should pay 60% of the Defense Department budget every year.
The Oligarchy would insist that they are good patriots, so they should be willing to pay a 60% share of the Interior Department budget every year.
The Oligarchy owns 60% of all business concerns, big and small, so they should pay 60% of the Commerce and Transportation and Energy and Agriculture Department budgets every year.
The Department of State probably goes overboard in fulfilling the wishes of the Oligarchy, but I say that the Oligarchy need only pay a 60% share of the State Department budget every year as well.
The Oligarchy, the One Percent, should be paying 60% of the entire federal budget every year. The same calculation applies to every U.S. federal department and bureau and section.
This principle applies also to each and every country, to each & every state or province or canton or arrondissement, to each & every local government entity, down to each & every school and water district.
The Oligarchy that rules this and other countries owns sixty percent of everything, so they should pay 60% of the taxes required to supply the benefits that they derive from government in all its overlapping jurisdictions. Any other plan or assessment will concede to them the means to achieve their ultimate intention, which is to own one-hundred percent of everything – a return to feudalism. After the Oligarchy has achieved that intention, they have only your 'soul' – your Self – to take away from you and yours.
The Oligarchy has already taken away your vote, "without firing a shot", in the ChadGate fiasco of 2000: the U.S. Supreme Court anointed George Dubya as President of the U.S. of A. in complete disregard for due process or for the will of the people, based on the wrong-headed certainty that it was right to do so and in the clear knowledge that no one could stop them.
They ignored the U.S. Constitution in a 'dog and pony show' that was broadcast on national television and radio. Most Americans made no effort to watch or listen to this show, settling instead for the 'sound bite' camouflage served up by – you guessed it – the media conglomerates owned by the Oligarchy.
Previous iterations of class are disappearing, and are being replaced by a structure of Economic Class. The Oligarchy has replaced the Aristocracy, while assuming the same attitude of Divine Right that triggered the French Revolution of 1789.
The lower economic classes, the 'proletariat', are defined as those who have no capital, nor means of production, and thus are required to sell their labor in order to survive. The Upper Middle economic class deals with the lower classes only while the latter are employed as servants.
The entire economy works – or does not work – on the backs of the middle and lower classes, whose primary role in the latter XXth Century evolved into that of the Consumer Class: Notice that virtually every middle class American household is in constant debt (even disregarding mortgage payments), which means that they are encouraged – maybe 'required' is a better term – to spend more than they earn, so that the Oligarchy can reap their Divine Right profits on goods that the Consumer Class does not need and cannot in truth afford. The Consumer Class has an envious lifestyle, but in actuality owns less and less: because the Oligarchy owns more and more.
This is not exactly news. The system of Economic Class ensures the giving away of power to the Oligarchy, in the form of debt, under the constant and compelling threat of job loss. If the middle class worker does not purchase 'the latest', then the economy will collapse and the Consumer will be out of work and thrown into survival among the lower economic classes. The Consumer Class has been taught to spend in order to earn.
This is in effect worse than the 'indentured servitude' that was common around the time of the U.S. Revolutionary War. A British or other freeman could get passage to America or an apprenticeship in a trade in exchange for an agreed-upon term, often three to five years. The difference between indenture and today's economy is that the Consumer Class owes the Oligarchy and there is no expiration date on the deal: The Consumer Class is required to stay in debt by the pressures of the consumer economy, of which the primary beneficiary is the Oligarchy. (Think not? Did your real net worth – exclusive of housing – increase by anywhere near 50% since 1985?)
The Oligarchy has done such a good job of fulfilling their devious intention that labor union membership in the U.S. has been down to 15% of the work-force for a long time. President George Dubya honored his idol, Ronnie Reagan, by ordering the Northwest Airlines mechanics union not to strike, just as Ronnie busted the air traffic controller walkout in August of 1981. And the media soon began reporting that George Dubya would prevent a strike at Delta Airlines.
The later years of Bush's ignoble reign saw the entire economy collapse, in the U.S.A. and around the world. (American consumers no longer have jobs or spare money to spend or save, and U.S. consumer spending accounts for 25% of the world economy.) Dubya's agenda included looting the U.S. Treasury, and he did such a thorough job of screwing up America's future that (in typical Dubya incompetence) he screwed up the screw-up. The subprime lending debacle caused the banking crisis that caused the disappearance of half the net value of the stock market indexes, in a matter of months after the election. And the almost-funny part is that Dubya was supposed to leave the mess for his successor, but he screwed up so badly that the collapse happened before the November 2008 election, and Barack Obama swept into the White House charged with cleaning up Dubya's mess.
Until the structure of the Economic Classes is redesigned so that the middle class, the now 'Consumer Class', is able to acquire wealth as a result of their labors, then matters can only get worse. The only remedy is to increase the taxation levied on the Oligarchy so that they pay their share for the government services that they receive, all down the line.
The One-Percent, the Oligarchy has already acquired more than half of this country's total assets; the Wealthy Class (the top 20% of taxpayers) owns 85% of this country's total assets. The Wealthy Class have more than enough money to bribe Congress and local officials to do their bidding, but We The People showed the world in November 2008 that true Power lies with us. The Wealthy Class will fight 'tooth and nail' against Change, so Americans must remain steadfast and vigilant and never back down.
Like it or not, America and the world are now engaged in Economic Class War.
Monday, March 02, 2009
March 2009 News Factoids (catching up)
LAW & JUSTICE
Bush and Cheney and Rove et al did not get impeached, but there is NO statute of limitations on their major crimes, which include treason, murder, and willful violations of the Geneva Conventions.
U.S. ECONOMY
Retail sales fell 3% in October 2008, the biggest drop on record.
The U.S. lost 240,000 jobs in October, raising the unemployment rate to 6.5%, the highest in 14 years; the rate will probably peak in late 2009. ~~ AP Radio News, 7 November 2008
Employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years; the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent.
New unemployment claims rose in December 2008 to 26-year high as layoffs continue.
U.S. auto sales tumbled 18% in 2008.
Retail sales plunged far more than expected {2.7%} in December, a record sixth straight monthly decline as consumers were battered by a recession, a severe credit crisis and soaring job losses, none of which are likely to ease anytime soon.
~~ AP News headline, 14 January 2009
[The U.S.] economy shrinks at faster-than-expected 6.2 percent pace in fourth quarter, worst in 25 years.
~~ internet headline, 27 February 2009
WORLD ECONOMY
"Japan's economy shrank 3.3% in 2008, their worst performance in 35 years."
~~ Air America "The Wire" ezine
February 4th, 2009 headline: "Panasonic in Japan cutting 15,000 jobs and closing plants"
THE STOCK MARKET CASINO
Stocks tumble, losing 10 percent in 2-day rout.
~~ AP Radio News item, Thursday 6 November 2008
Both the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor's 500 indexes have lost about half their value since hitting record highs in October 2007.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 26.72 (-3.47%) to 743.33 on February 23, the lowest close since 11 April 1997.
On 2 March 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index tumbled below 7,000 for the first time since October 1997.
OTHER NEWS
The W.H.O. Report On Healthcare for 2008 states:
• • The U.S. is ranked 37th in quality.
• • The worldwide average cost per capita for people with healthcare is $2929; the U.S.A. is twice that at $6096.
• • U.S. life expectancy is lower than 13 major first world countries at 78.06 years.
The LionsGate movie studio deal with the City of Rio Rancho, New Mexico that was documented here in 2006 has officially expired.
Per various news sites, now when a celebu-tart does something dangerously wild and crazy, they are 'doing a Britney'.
Bush and Cheney and Rove et al did not get impeached, but there is NO statute of limitations on their major crimes, which include treason, murder, and willful violations of the Geneva Conventions.
U.S. ECONOMY
Retail sales fell 3% in October 2008, the biggest drop on record.
The U.S. lost 240,000 jobs in October, raising the unemployment rate to 6.5%, the highest in 14 years; the rate will probably peak in late 2009. ~~ AP Radio News, 7 November 2008
Employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years; the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent.
New unemployment claims rose in December 2008 to 26-year high as layoffs continue.
U.S. auto sales tumbled 18% in 2008.
Retail sales plunged far more than expected {2.7%} in December, a record sixth straight monthly decline as consumers were battered by a recession, a severe credit crisis and soaring job losses, none of which are likely to ease anytime soon.
~~ AP News headline, 14 January 2009
[The U.S.] economy shrinks at faster-than-expected 6.2 percent pace in fourth quarter, worst in 25 years.
~~ internet headline, 27 February 2009
WORLD ECONOMY
"Japan's economy shrank 3.3% in 2008, their worst performance in 35 years."
~~ Air America "The Wire" ezine
February 4th, 2009 headline: "Panasonic in Japan cutting 15,000 jobs and closing plants"
THE STOCK MARKET CASINO
Stocks tumble, losing 10 percent in 2-day rout.
~~ AP Radio News item, Thursday 6 November 2008
Both the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor's 500 indexes have lost about half their value since hitting record highs in October 2007.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 26.72 (-3.47%) to 743.33 on February 23, the lowest close since 11 April 1997.
On 2 March 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index tumbled below 7,000 for the first time since October 1997.
OTHER NEWS
The W.H.O. Report On Healthcare for 2008 states:
• • The U.S. is ranked 37th in quality.
• • The worldwide average cost per capita for people with healthcare is $2929; the U.S.A. is twice that at $6096.
• • U.S. life expectancy is lower than 13 major first world countries at 78.06 years.
The LionsGate movie studio deal with the City of Rio Rancho, New Mexico that was documented here in 2006 has officially expired.
Per various news sites, now when a celebu-tart does something dangerously wild and crazy, they are 'doing a Britney'.
Friday, February 13, 2009
February 2009 Quotations
"Under Bush, no violent acts against the U.S. have occurred since 9/11. But the cost has been a legal and spiritual 9/11 every day since."
~~ Abraham Sategh (Time Letters 12/2008)
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]
"The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable."
~~ Martin Buber [1878-1965]
"Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today."
~~ President-elect Barack Obama
"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."
~~ Ray Bradbury
"Whatever competence I may have comes from my having trained myself to be out there with what I am dealing with instead of being in here trying to deal with what is out there."
~~ Werner Erhard
"Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread."
~~ Pablo Neruda [1904-73]
"Waterboarding is torture."
~~ Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General-designate testifying before Congress 15 January 2009
"The average inflation-adjusted income of the bottom 90 percent of earners was lower in 2006 than it was back in 1973."
~~ David Cay Johnston
"The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether government works."
~~ President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address 20 January 2009
"Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little."
~~ Tom Stoppard
"When somebody farts out loud, an angel gets its wings."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"If we would learn what the human race is at bottom, we need only observe them during an election."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]
"There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment".
{"Il n'y a rien dans ce monde qui n'ait un moment decisif."}
~~ Cardinal de Retz [1613-79]
"Not often in the story of Mankind does a man arrive on Earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect."
~~ poet Carl Sandburg [1878-1967], describing Abraham Lincoln before Congress in 1959
"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence university education."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"Those who don't build must burn."
~~ Ray Bradbury (in "Fahrenheit 451", 1953)
"Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens."
~~ Epictetus [circa 55-135 C.E.], Stoic philosopher & crippled former slave
"The trouble with socialism is that it would take too many evenings."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"By far the greatest threat to private life is the obscene disproportion of private wealth."
~~ Garrett Keizer
"[When you] let the fear of poverty govern your life ... your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"We are the music makers and the dreamers of dreams."
~~ Roald Dahl [1916-90]
"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."
~~ Voltaire [1694-1778]
"Parody is a game; satire is a lesson."
~~ Vladimir Nabakov [1899-1977]
"You always do what you want to do. This is true with every act. You may say that you had to do something, or that you were forced to, but actually, whatever you do, you do by choice. Only you have the power to choose for yourself."
~~ W. Clement Stone [1902-2002]
"We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we are only six percent of the world's population, that we cannot impose our will on the other 94 percent of mankind, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every problem."
~~ John F. Kennedy (1961)
"Homeland security patriotism ... has turned the neo-cons' idea of loyalty into a loveless lock step and their democratic creed into Orwellian sloganeering."
~~ Jim Sleeper
"Hope is a fine sentiment, but it's not a plan."
~~ George Dunn
"What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar."
~~ Thomas R. Marshall [1854-1925]
"Exploration and the pursuit of knowledge have always paid dividends in the long run."
~~ astronaut John Glenn, testifying before Congress 26 February 1962
"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
~~ Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
~~ Samuel Johnson [1709-84]
"Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong."
~~ Peter T. McIntyre
"You become a writer by writing. It is a yoga."
~~ novelist R.K. Narayan [1906-2001]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Abraham Sategh (Time Letters 12/2008)
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]
"The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable."
~~ Martin Buber [1878-1965]
"Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today."
~~ President-elect Barack Obama
"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."
~~ Ray Bradbury
"Whatever competence I may have comes from my having trained myself to be out there with what I am dealing with instead of being in here trying to deal with what is out there."
~~ Werner Erhard
"Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread."
~~ Pablo Neruda [1904-73]
"Waterboarding is torture."
~~ Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General-designate testifying before Congress 15 January 2009
"The average inflation-adjusted income of the bottom 90 percent of earners was lower in 2006 than it was back in 1973."
~~ David Cay Johnston
"The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether government works."
~~ President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address 20 January 2009
"Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little."
~~ Tom Stoppard
"When somebody farts out loud, an angel gets its wings."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"If we would learn what the human race is at bottom, we need only observe them during an election."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]
"There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment".
{"Il n'y a rien dans ce monde qui n'ait un moment decisif."}
~~ Cardinal de Retz [1613-79]
"Not often in the story of Mankind does a man arrive on Earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect."
~~ poet Carl Sandburg [1878-1967], describing Abraham Lincoln before Congress in 1959
"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence university education."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"Those who don't build must burn."
~~ Ray Bradbury (in "Fahrenheit 451", 1953)
"Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens."
~~ Epictetus [circa 55-135 C.E.], Stoic philosopher & crippled former slave
"The trouble with socialism is that it would take too many evenings."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"By far the greatest threat to private life is the obscene disproportion of private wealth."
~~ Garrett Keizer
"[When you] let the fear of poverty govern your life ... your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"We are the music makers and the dreamers of dreams."
~~ Roald Dahl [1916-90]
"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."
~~ Voltaire [1694-1778]
"Parody is a game; satire is a lesson."
~~ Vladimir Nabakov [1899-1977]
"You always do what you want to do. This is true with every act. You may say that you had to do something, or that you were forced to, but actually, whatever you do, you do by choice. Only you have the power to choose for yourself."
~~ W. Clement Stone [1902-2002]
"We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we are only six percent of the world's population, that we cannot impose our will on the other 94 percent of mankind, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every problem."
~~ John F. Kennedy (1961)
"Homeland security patriotism ... has turned the neo-cons' idea of loyalty into a loveless lock step and their democratic creed into Orwellian sloganeering."
~~ Jim Sleeper
"Hope is a fine sentiment, but it's not a plan."
~~ George Dunn
"What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar."
~~ Thomas R. Marshall [1854-1925]
"Exploration and the pursuit of knowledge have always paid dividends in the long run."
~~ astronaut John Glenn, testifying before Congress 26 February 1962
"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
~~ Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
~~ Samuel Johnson [1709-84]
"Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong."
~~ Peter T. McIntyre
"You become a writer by writing. It is a yoga."
~~ novelist R.K. Narayan [1906-2001]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Friday, January 23, 2009
2008 Year-End Website Statistics
because of difficulties with the blogspot editor software
(and HTML tables) this data was moved to
an Annual Website Statistics Page
(and HTML tables) this data was moved to
an Annual Website Statistics Page
Monday, January 12, 2009
Essay #85: “Open Letter to the Attorneys General”
You are granted authority – and assigned the duty – by the U.S. Constitution to remove criminals from free Society.
This must include the traitors, blackmailers and killers that have done such great damage to America during their various terms in office within the eight-year debacle that has been the Bush administration.
George W. Bush has run up more debt than any other person in the history of Mankind. And with his guidance, the Bush administration has pissed on the environment, ransacked the Treasury, shat upon America’s good name, filled the gap between Church and State with the stench of sanctity, and stomped on the Bill of Rights.
Their many specific crimes include shredding official documents, disobeying Congressional subpoenas and federal law, decimation of the Commonwealth, violations of the Geneva Convention, war profiteering, illegal wiretapping of Americans and foreigners, egregious invasion of privacy, and torture of civilians and enemy combatants.
It is a Historic Damn Shame that the Bush Gang will not be impeached during these last few days of their tenure.
But here are two points of Law that should be remembered by the current and the next U.S. Attorney General, as well as by all the present and incoming Federal Attorneys across this Nation:
1} There is NO Statute of Limitations on treason or murder, nor on certain provisions of the Geneva Convention.
2} President Bush cannot pardon himself. This principle in law also prevents President Bush from pardoning anyone with whom he conspired to commit a crime. Though he may attempt to initiate such documents, they are null and void.
Thus Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Robert Novak, Scooter Libby, David Addington and others can and should be prosecuted for Treason. Thus Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Myers, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard B. Myers, Geoffrey Miller, Conda- leeza Rice, John Negroponte and too many others to mention can and must be prosecuted for their crimes against America and against Humanity.
* * * * * * * *
The American People elected Barack Obama to be our 44th President, voicing our demand for Change. That Change must include a return to Constitutional Law, which was buried under the lies and stealth practices and false ‘national security’ shield of the Patriot Acts, and behind the pretense of George Bush’s record thousand-plus signing statements.
The Law has been ignored and battered and twisted and corrupted for eight years.
The American People want an end to corruption, an end to unfettered bribery, an end to civil rights abuses, and an end to corporate-fascist license to profit by the raping and pillage of what once was the Best Country On The Planet.
These criminals need to be prosecuted for their crimes, and sentenced to the maximum punishment allowable, for the American People need this to be done, to restore the Soul of America
Copyright 2008 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
This must include the traitors, blackmailers and killers that have done such great damage to America during their various terms in office within the eight-year debacle that has been the Bush administration.
George W. Bush has run up more debt than any other person in the history of Mankind. And with his guidance, the Bush administration has pissed on the environment, ransacked the Treasury, shat upon America’s good name, filled the gap between Church and State with the stench of sanctity, and stomped on the Bill of Rights.
Their many specific crimes include shredding official documents, disobeying Congressional subpoenas and federal law, decimation of the Commonwealth, violations of the Geneva Convention, war profiteering, illegal wiretapping of Americans and foreigners, egregious invasion of privacy, and torture of civilians and enemy combatants.
It is a Historic Damn Shame that the Bush Gang will not be impeached during these last few days of their tenure.
But here are two points of Law that should be remembered by the current and the next U.S. Attorney General, as well as by all the present and incoming Federal Attorneys across this Nation:
1} There is NO Statute of Limitations on treason or murder, nor on certain provisions of the Geneva Convention.
2} President Bush cannot pardon himself. This principle in law also prevents President Bush from pardoning anyone with whom he conspired to commit a crime. Though he may attempt to initiate such documents, they are null and void.
Thus Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Robert Novak, Scooter Libby, David Addington and others can and should be prosecuted for Treason. Thus Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Myers, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard B. Myers, Geoffrey Miller, Conda- leeza Rice, John Negroponte and too many others to mention can and must be prosecuted for their crimes against America and against Humanity.
The American People elected Barack Obama to be our 44th President, voicing our demand for Change. That Change must include a return to Constitutional Law, which was buried under the lies and stealth practices and false ‘national security’ shield of the Patriot Acts, and behind the pretense of George Bush’s record thousand-plus signing statements.
The Law has been ignored and battered and twisted and corrupted for eight years.
The American People want an end to corruption, an end to unfettered bribery, an end to civil rights abuses, and an end to corporate-fascist license to profit by the raping and pillage of what once was the Best Country On The Planet.
These criminals need to be prosecuted for their crimes, and sentenced to the maximum punishment allowable, for the American People need this to be done, to restore the Soul of America
Monday, December 29, 2008
December Quotations
"Exaggerate the essential; leave the obvious vague."
~~ Vincent Van Gogh [1853-90]
"It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered."
~~ Aeschylus [c. 525 - c. 456 B.C.E.]
"Life is all about how you handle Plan B"
~~ gag t-shirt
"Even true things shouted from loudspeakers start to sound like lies."
~~ Leonardo Sciascia [1921-89]
"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-94]
"Idiots are everywhere. Many have degrees."
~~ Terry Black
"Dare to be indifferent"
~~ gag t-shirt
"Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost."
~~ Thomas Fuller [1608-61]
"One ceases to be a child when one realizes that telling one's troubles does not make it any better."
~~ Cesare Pavese [1908-50]
"Life is one long process of getting tired."
~~ Samuel Butler [1835-1902]
"There is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing."
~~ Anthony Powell [1905-2000]
“The most important thing in acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
~~ George Burns [1896-1996]
"I listen to Beethoven every week, and to Bach twice a week, but to Mozart every day."
~~ Igor Stravinsky [1882-1971]
"[The Jesuits] appear to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual emancipation."
~~ Thomas Macaulay [1800-1859]
"The primary reward for human toil is not what you get by it, but what you become by it."
~~ John Ruskin [1819-1900]
"Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"
~~ Virginia Woolf [1882-1941]
"The more serious the face, the more beautiful the smile."
~~ François-René de Chateaubriand [1768-1848]
"To die of love is overdoing it."
~~ French proverb
"A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough."
~~ quoted by Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"If you marry, you will regret it; if you don't marry, you will also regret it."
~~ Søren Kierkegaard [1813-55]
"Having a good wife and rich cabbage soup, seek not other things."
~~ Russian proverb
"Possibilities are like the wings of birds; they allow man to soar and to climb to the heavens. And facts are like the atmosphere against which those wings must beat, and without which the soaring bird will surely plummet back to earth."
~~ Ivan Petrovich Pavlov [1849-1936]
"McCarthyism has not disappeared from the American scene."
~~ André Schiffrin (2008)
"Only people destroy beauty."
~~ Michael Collins
"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."
~~ George W. Bush (C.N.N. interview 16 December 2008 AFTER the meltdown-recession-depression)
"All that you have is your story."
~~ voiceover narration of the movie "Australia" [2008]
"The wise man never has to lie."
~~ Jesuit maxim
“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.”
~~ Flannery O'Connor [1925-64]
"The pen is mightier than the sword."
~~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton [1803-73] (in stageplay "Richelieu", 1839)
"Endeleya mbele!"
~~ Kimani
"The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span the hours spent fishing."
~~ Old Saying
"The world is run by C students."
~~ basketball announcer Al McGuire [1928-2001]
"The color of truth is gray."
~~ André Gide [1869-1951]
"For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack."
~~ Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]
"Three things make up a nation: its land, its people, and its laws."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"Two things are wanted by a true man, danger and play – therefore, he seeks woman as the most dangerous play."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"It ain't bragging if you can back it up."
~~ baseball player Dizzy Dean [1910-74]
"An artist must learn ... that he or she works for the work itself, not for approval."
~~ Erica Jong
"Never take stupidity too much in earnest."
~~ a 'Chinese proverb' invented by Jacques Maritain [1882-1973]
"Lying about the future produces history."
~~ Umberto Eco
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account."
~~ Walter Lippmann [1889-1974]
"[Writing] is like driving a car at night. You never see farther than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
~~ E.L. Doctorow
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Vincent Van Gogh [1853-90]
"It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered."
~~ Aeschylus [c. 525 - c. 456 B.C.E.]
"Life is all about how you handle Plan B"
~~ gag t-shirt
"Even true things shouted from loudspeakers start to sound like lies."
~~ Leonardo Sciascia [1921-89]
"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-94]
"Idiots are everywhere. Many have degrees."
~~ Terry Black
"Dare to be indifferent"
~~ gag t-shirt
"Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost."
~~ Thomas Fuller [1608-61]
"One ceases to be a child when one realizes that telling one's troubles does not make it any better."
~~ Cesare Pavese [1908-50]
"Life is one long process of getting tired."
~~ Samuel Butler [1835-1902]
"There is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing."
~~ Anthony Powell [1905-2000]
“The most important thing in acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
~~ George Burns [1896-1996]
"I listen to Beethoven every week, and to Bach twice a week, but to Mozart every day."
~~ Igor Stravinsky [1882-1971]
"[The Jesuits] appear to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual emancipation."
~~ Thomas Macaulay [1800-1859]
"The primary reward for human toil is not what you get by it, but what you become by it."
~~ John Ruskin [1819-1900]
"Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"
~~ Virginia Woolf [1882-1941]
"The more serious the face, the more beautiful the smile."
~~ François-René de Chateaubriand [1768-1848]
"To die of love is overdoing it."
~~ French proverb
"A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough."
~~ quoted by Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"If you marry, you will regret it; if you don't marry, you will also regret it."
~~ Søren Kierkegaard [1813-55]
"Having a good wife and rich cabbage soup, seek not other things."
~~ Russian proverb
"Possibilities are like the wings of birds; they allow man to soar and to climb to the heavens. And facts are like the atmosphere against which those wings must beat, and without which the soaring bird will surely plummet back to earth."
~~ Ivan Petrovich Pavlov [1849-1936]
"McCarthyism has not disappeared from the American scene."
~~ André Schiffrin (2008)
"Only people destroy beauty."
~~ Michael Collins
"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."
~~ George W. Bush (C.N.N. interview 16 December 2008 AFTER the meltdown-recession-depression)
"All that you have is your story."
~~ voiceover narration of the movie "Australia" [2008]
"The wise man never has to lie."
~~ Jesuit maxim
“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.”
~~ Flannery O'Connor [1925-64]
"The pen is mightier than the sword."
~~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton [1803-73] (in stageplay "Richelieu", 1839)
"Endeleya mbele!"
~~ Kimani
"The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span the hours spent fishing."
~~ Old Saying
"The world is run by C students."
~~ basketball announcer Al McGuire [1928-2001]
"The color of truth is gray."
~~ André Gide [1869-1951]
"For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack."
~~ Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]
"Three things make up a nation: its land, its people, and its laws."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"Two things are wanted by a true man, danger and play – therefore, he seeks woman as the most dangerous play."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"It ain't bragging if you can back it up."
~~ baseball player Dizzy Dean [1910-74]
"An artist must learn ... that he or she works for the work itself, not for approval."
~~ Erica Jong
"Never take stupidity too much in earnest."
~~ a 'Chinese proverb' invented by Jacques Maritain [1882-1973]
"Lying about the future produces history."
~~ Umberto Eco
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account."
~~ Walter Lippmann [1889-1974]
"[Writing] is like driving a car at night. You never see farther than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
~~ E.L. Doctorow
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Saturday, November 08, 2008
November Quotations
"You can never do a kindness too soon, because you will never know how soon it will be too late."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"Our best hope for change is a fusion of those concerned about environmental sustainability, social justice, and political democracy into one progressive force."
~~ James Gustave Speth
"Home is the place where, when you go there / They have to take you in"
~~ poet Robert Frost [1874-1963]
"Intellectual virtues are civic virtues; intellectual vices leave the citizens vulnerable to superstition and demagoguery."
~~ George Scialabba
"The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism."
~~ Gore Vidal
"All men must escape at times from the deadly rhythm of their private thoughts."
~~ Raymond Chandler [1888-1959]
"One immediately recognises a man of judgment by the use he makes of the semicolon."
~~ Henry de Montherlant [1896-1972]
"There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting a living."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
"37 seconds well used is a lifetime!"
~~ Mr. Edward Magorium character, as written by Zach Helm
"Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.
~~ Edna Ferber [1885-1968]
"Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to
be relished."
~~ William Wordsworth [1750-1850]
"Writing a book is an adventure: It begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"Somewhere in the world there is an epigram for every dilemma."
~~ Hendrik Willem van Loon [1882-1944]
"I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have had."
~~ Marlene Dietrich [1901-92]
"My father showed me his library, which was very large, and told me to read whatever I wanted, but that if something bored me, I should immediately put it down."
~~ Jorge Luis Borges [1899-1986]
"Morality is all right, but what about dividends?"
~~ Kaiser Wilhelm II [1859-1941]
"Have nothing ... that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
~~ William Morris
'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;
A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.
~~ George Gordon, Lord Byron [1788-1824]
"Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse."
~~ Hannah Arendt [1906-75]
"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
"Trust your editor, and you'll sleep on straw."
~~ John Cheever [1912-82]
"There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money."
~~ Robert Graves [1895-1985]
"Sexual intercourse has never done a man good, and he is lucky if it has not harmed him."
~~ Epicurus [341–270 B.C.E.)
"Henry [Kissinger] does not lie because it is in his interest. He lies because it is in his nature."
~~ Helmut Sonnenfeldt
"A large income is the best recipe for happiness."
~~ Jane Austen [1775-1817]
"The knowledge that the aristocrats take for granted, we must pay for with our youth."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]
"Every gun that is made ... signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, and those who are cold and are not clothed."
~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower [1890-1969]
"That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great."
~~ Willa Cather [1873-1947]
"I am so tired of being told that I want mankind to go back to the condition of savages. As if modern city people weren't the crudest, rawest, most crassly savage monkeys that ever existed, when it comes to the relation of man and woman. All I see in our vaunted civilization is men and women smashing each other emotionally and physically to bits, and all I ask is that they should pause and consider."
~~ D.H. Lawrence [1885-1930]
"The sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"The domination of women by men has lasted for fifty thousand years. Why can't it last just fifty more?"
~~ grafitto in Berlin, Germany
"[Mankind is] a herd of beings that must be governed by fraud, effigy, and show."
~~ Edmund Burke [1729-97]
"Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise."
~~ Sigmund Freud [1856-1939]
"If it rained knowledge I'd hold out my hand, but I would not give myself the trouble to go in quest of it."
~~ Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-84]
"[Poetry] is not so fine a thing as philosophy – for the same reason that an eagle is not so fine a thing as a truth."
~~ John Keats [1795-1821]
"Indignation is the soul's defense against the wound of doubt."
~~ Allan Bloom
"The superior man is distressed by his want of ability."
~~ Confucius [551-479 B.C.E.]
"Why not make the reader re-read a sentence now and then? It won't hurt him."
~~ Vladimir Nabokov [1899-1977]
"To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness – though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
~~ Gustave Flaubert [1821-80]
"In the depths of my heart I can't help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless."
~~ Sigmund Freud [1856-1939]
"It is not true that suffering ennobles the character. Happiness does that sometimes; but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive."
~~ W. Somerset Maugham [1874-1965]
"You have to choose: live or tell stories."
~~ Jean-Paul Sartre [1905-80]
"Truisms are best."
~~ Noam Chomsky
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"Our best hope for change is a fusion of those concerned about environmental sustainability, social justice, and political democracy into one progressive force."
~~ James Gustave Speth
"Home is the place where, when you go there / They have to take you in"
~~ poet Robert Frost [1874-1963]
"Intellectual virtues are civic virtues; intellectual vices leave the citizens vulnerable to superstition and demagoguery."
~~ George Scialabba
"The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism."
~~ Gore Vidal
"All men must escape at times from the deadly rhythm of their private thoughts."
~~ Raymond Chandler [1888-1959]
"One immediately recognises a man of judgment by the use he makes of the semicolon."
~~ Henry de Montherlant [1896-1972]
"There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting a living."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
"37 seconds well used is a lifetime!"
~~ Mr. Edward Magorium character, as written by Zach Helm
"Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.
~~ Edna Ferber [1885-1968]
"Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to
be relished."
~~ William Wordsworth [1750-1850]
"Writing a book is an adventure: It begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"Somewhere in the world there is an epigram for every dilemma."
~~ Hendrik Willem van Loon [1882-1944]
"I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have had."
~~ Marlene Dietrich [1901-92]
"My father showed me his library, which was very large, and told me to read whatever I wanted, but that if something bored me, I should immediately put it down."
~~ Jorge Luis Borges [1899-1986]
"Morality is all right, but what about dividends?"
~~ Kaiser Wilhelm II [1859-1941]
"Have nothing ... that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
~~ William Morris
'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;
A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.
~~ George Gordon, Lord Byron [1788-1824]
"Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse."
~~ Hannah Arendt [1906-75]
"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
"Trust your editor, and you'll sleep on straw."
~~ John Cheever [1912-82]
"There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money."
~~ Robert Graves [1895-1985]
"Sexual intercourse has never done a man good, and he is lucky if it has not harmed him."
~~ Epicurus [341–270 B.C.E.)
"Henry [Kissinger] does not lie because it is in his interest. He lies because it is in his nature."
~~ Helmut Sonnenfeldt
"A large income is the best recipe for happiness."
~~ Jane Austen [1775-1817]
"The knowledge that the aristocrats take for granted, we must pay for with our youth."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]
"Every gun that is made ... signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, and those who are cold and are not clothed."
~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower [1890-1969]
"That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great."
~~ Willa Cather [1873-1947]
"I am so tired of being told that I want mankind to go back to the condition of savages. As if modern city people weren't the crudest, rawest, most crassly savage monkeys that ever existed, when it comes to the relation of man and woman. All I see in our vaunted civilization is men and women smashing each other emotionally and physically to bits, and all I ask is that they should pause and consider."
~~ D.H. Lawrence [1885-1930]
"The sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"The domination of women by men has lasted for fifty thousand years. Why can't it last just fifty more?"
~~ grafitto in Berlin, Germany
"[Mankind is] a herd of beings that must be governed by fraud, effigy, and show."
~~ Edmund Burke [1729-97]
"Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise."
~~ Sigmund Freud [1856-1939]
"If it rained knowledge I'd hold out my hand, but I would not give myself the trouble to go in quest of it."
~~ Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-84]
"[Poetry] is not so fine a thing as philosophy – for the same reason that an eagle is not so fine a thing as a truth."
~~ John Keats [1795-1821]
"Indignation is the soul's defense against the wound of doubt."
~~ Allan Bloom
"The superior man is distressed by his want of ability."
~~ Confucius [551-479 B.C.E.]
"Why not make the reader re-read a sentence now and then? It won't hurt him."
~~ Vladimir Nabokov [1899-1977]
"To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness – though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
~~ Gustave Flaubert [1821-80]
"In the depths of my heart I can't help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless."
~~ Sigmund Freud [1856-1939]
"It is not true that suffering ennobles the character. Happiness does that sometimes; but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive."
~~ W. Somerset Maugham [1874-1965]
"You have to choose: live or tell stories."
~~ Jean-Paul Sartre [1905-80]
"Truisms are best."
~~ Noam Chomsky
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
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