"You're going to face a choice in November. This is a choice between the policies that got us into this mess in the first place and the policies that got us out of this mess – and what the other side is counting on is people not having a good memory."
~~ President Barack Obama, 8 July 2010
"The Republicans are fear-mongers, when in truth the only thing we really need to fear are the Republicans and their owners, the Oligarchs."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"The T.E.A. Party movement is not the solution to what ails America. It is an illustration of what ails America ... because of the movement's self-indulgent premise that none of our challenges and difficulties are our own fault."
~~ Michael Kinsley
"Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.”
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
“We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.“
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
“All fine prose is based on the verbs carrying the sentences.“
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]
“Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.”
~~ Sen. Paul Wellstone [1944-2002]
“If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you."
~~ movie auteur Billy Wilder [1906-2002]
"I wish we had been able to obstruct more."
~~ G.O.P. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, August 2010
"The education of our children ... is the most noble thing in the world to do."
~~ Aaron Stern
"They're always flying these flags at half mast. Why don't they just make the flag poles shorter?"
~~ New Mexico state employee in 2010
"Pleasure and action make the hours seem shorter."
~~ character Iago, as written by William Shakespeare [1564-1616]
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
~~ William Arthur Ward [1921–94]
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
~~ Maria Robinson
"Whenever I hear [the word] 'culture'... I remove the safety from my Browning!" {original: "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning!"}
~~ from the 1933 German play "Schlageter" written by Hanns Johst (and not uttered by either Hermann Göring or Julius Streicher}
"The policy elite ... are acting like the priests of some ancient cult, demanding that we engage in human sacrifices to appease the anger of invisible gods."
~~ Paul Krugman. in 2010
"The community should guard the rights of each individual member, and (in return for this protection) each individual should submit to the laws of the community, without which submission of all it is impossible that protection can be extended to any."
~~ William Blackstone [1809–81]
"Military policy is like cancer: Nobody knows where it comes from but it can't be ignored."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]
"Live your life as a singular, existential work of art, never to be repeated."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"DUM VIVIMUS, VIVAMUS" (While we live, let us live!"
~~ as quoted by Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]
"[New York is] fun city. If the pollution doesn't get you, the traffic will. If you live thru those two, you're fair game for the street hunters."
~~ Mickey Spillane [1918-2006], in "Survival ... Zero", 1970
"The United States never lost a soldier or a foot of ground in my Administration. We kept the peace. People asked how it happened. By god, it didn't just happen, I'll tell you that."
~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower [1890-1969]
"Disturbing the ecological balance is the worst mistake [that] any government can make."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88], in 1963
"There are no poor politicians."
~~ Mickey Spillane [1918-2006]
"Integrity has no need of rules."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]
"All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
“Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.”
~~ Victoria Holt
"I was no chief and never had been, but because I had been more deeply wronged than others, this honor was conferred upon me, and I resolved to prove worthy of the trust."
~~ Geronimo [1829-1909]
"What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken? Not one."
~~ Sitting Bull [circa 1831-1890]
"Re-examine all that you have been told. Dismiss that which insults your soul."
~~ Walt Whitman [1819-92]
"Painting taught me to make not beautiful images but necessary ones."
~~ French filmmaker Robert Bresson
"Our wisdom comes from our experience, and our experience comes from our foolishness."
~~ French writer Sacha Guitry
"The United States] gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens."
~~ President George Washington,
in a letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790
"Sometimes [writing] comes easily and perfectly. Sometimes it is like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"In three words I can sum up everything about life: It goes on."
~~ poet Robert Frost [1874-1963]
"The art of dining well is no slight art, nor the pleasure slight."
~~ Michel de Montaigne [1533-92]
]
"Be yourself, everyone else is taken."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"Progress has little to do with speed and much to do with direction."
~~ old saying
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
August-September 2010 News Factoids
The United States was once the world's leader in the percentage of young people with college degrees; the College Board now finds that the U.S. has fallen to 12th place among 36 developed nations.
~~ per New York Times
Hishi {seashell disk} necklaces are back in fashion, after 40 years. But the local kids that are wearing them never heard of the word 'hishi' before.
President Obama was in Albuquerque last week, meeting with Lt. Gov. Diane Denish (the next New Mexico governor!), after which she took him to Barelas Coffee House for posole.
ECONOMIC NEWS
"The 137,698 bankruptcy filings in July represent a 9 percent increase from a year earlier ... Last year, there were 1.4 million consumer bankruptcy filings in the U.S., a 32 percent increase from 2008."
~~ Bloomberg News
In response to a $28 million budget gap for 2010, the City of Colorado Springs in Colorado is turning off as many as one-third of its streetlights.
IMMIGRATION NEWS
Apprehensions of illegal immigrants are down more than 60% since 2005, to 550,000 per year; violent crime in U.S. border counties dropped more than 30% in the past two decades.
CLIMATE & ECOLOGY
In August 2010, "An island of ice 4.4 times the size of Manhattan is drifting across the Arctic Ocean after breaking off from a glacier in Greenland, potentially threatening shipping lanes and oil platforms."
"The planet just logged the warmest decade, the warmest year, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, may & June on record."
~~ National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, July 2010
"Nine nations recorded their all-time high temperature records in 2010."
~~ National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, July 2010
In 1964, the annual global [fishing] catch totalled around 50 million tons. In the late 1980s, the total world catch peaked at around 85 million tons. [And] for the past two decades, the global catch has been steadily declining.
~~ per New Yorker Magazine
2010 ties global heat record. The Hill: "The first eight months of 2010 tied for the warmest combined global land and ocean surface temperatures since records started in 1880."
~~ per the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
NATIONAL SECURITY
"As many as 854,000 people [in the U.S.] ... hold top secret security clearances. [And] fully a quarter million holders of top secret security clearances are employees not of the government but of private, profit-making businesses."
~~ Hendrick Hertzberg
'THANK A REPUBLICAN' DEPT.
One out of every seven mortgages in the United States was either delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010.
As of June, the number of Americans on food stamps had set a new all-time record for each of 19 consecutive months.
Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, which is almost four times as many as were receiving it in 2007.
Nationwide, bankruptcy filings rose 20 percent in the 12 month period ending June 30th.
More than 25 percent of all Americans now have a credit score below 599.
One out of every five children in the United States is now living in poverty.
CHANGES AT AMAZON
While spending most of the day coding new material on my websites, especially the five bookstore sites, I have lately noticed that Amazon now has long-out-of-production VHS tapes back in stock as *NEW* product, often for under $5. My only guess to account for this phenomenon is that it has to do with the economy: DVD & Blu-ray prices are too high, and-or the studios are able to make a buck without much overhead by reproducing VHS tapes; the other possibility is demand thru kiosk sales.
Copyright 2010 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
~~ per New York Times
Hishi {seashell disk} necklaces are back in fashion, after 40 years. But the local kids that are wearing them never heard of the word 'hishi' before.
President Obama was in Albuquerque last week, meeting with Lt. Gov. Diane Denish (the next New Mexico governor!), after which she took him to Barelas Coffee House for posole.
ECONOMIC NEWS
"The 137,698 bankruptcy filings in July represent a 9 percent increase from a year earlier ... Last year, there were 1.4 million consumer bankruptcy filings in the U.S., a 32 percent increase from 2008."
~~ Bloomberg News
In response to a $28 million budget gap for 2010, the City of Colorado Springs in Colorado is turning off as many as one-third of its streetlights.
IMMIGRATION NEWS
Apprehensions of illegal immigrants are down more than 60% since 2005, to 550,000 per year; violent crime in U.S. border counties dropped more than 30% in the past two decades.
CLIMATE & ECOLOGY
In August 2010, "An island of ice 4.4 times the size of Manhattan is drifting across the Arctic Ocean after breaking off from a glacier in Greenland, potentially threatening shipping lanes and oil platforms."
"The planet just logged the warmest decade, the warmest year, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, may & June on record."
~~ National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, July 2010
"Nine nations recorded their all-time high temperature records in 2010."
~~ National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, July 2010
In 1964, the annual global [fishing] catch totalled around 50 million tons. In the late 1980s, the total world catch peaked at around 85 million tons. [And] for the past two decades, the global catch has been steadily declining.
~~ per New Yorker Magazine
2010 ties global heat record. The Hill: "The first eight months of 2010 tied for the warmest combined global land and ocean surface temperatures since records started in 1880."
~~ per the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
NATIONAL SECURITY
"As many as 854,000 people [in the U.S.] ... hold top secret security clearances. [And] fully a quarter million holders of top secret security clearances are employees not of the government but of private, profit-making businesses."
~~ Hendrick Hertzberg
'THANK A REPUBLICAN' DEPT.
One out of every seven mortgages in the United States was either delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010.
As of June, the number of Americans on food stamps had set a new all-time record for each of 19 consecutive months.
Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, which is almost four times as many as were receiving it in 2007.
Nationwide, bankruptcy filings rose 20 percent in the 12 month period ending June 30th.
More than 25 percent of all Americans now have a credit score below 599.
One out of every five children in the United States is now living in poverty.
CHANGES AT AMAZON
While spending most of the day coding new material on my websites, especially the five bookstore sites, I have lately noticed that Amazon now has long-out-of-production VHS tapes back in stock as *NEW* product, often for under $5. My only guess to account for this phenomenon is that it has to do with the economy: DVD & Blu-ray prices are too high, and-or the studios are able to make a buck without much overhead by reproducing VHS tapes; the other possibility is demand thru kiosk sales.
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