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Thursday, October 25, 2012

October 2012 News Factoids

A national aggregate poll by www.RealClearPolitics.com in mid-September gives Obama 49% and Romney 45.4%

By one count of the first presidential debate on October 3rd, Mitt Romney misled the nation 27 times in 38 minutes of airtime! The Romney campaign said a few weeks ago that "We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers." They weren’t kidding.

The Democrats' 'Romney Tax Plan' website is hilarious!

"The 112th Congress is set to enter the Congressional record books as the least productive body in a generation, passing a mere 173 public laws as of [August 2012]. That was well below the 906 enacted from January 1947 through December 1948 by the body [that] President Harry S. Truman referred to as the 'Do-Nothing' Congress, and far fewer than even a single session of many prior Congresses."

Australia's Great Barrier Reef has lost HALF of its coral over the last thirty years, while coral reefs worldwide have declined by 20 percent. (The greater Australian problem has to do with agricultural runoff.)

Movie due in 2014 “Lego: The Piece Of Resistance” has the funniest plot description in a long time: A regular everyday little Lego figure is mistaken as a MasterBuilder and suddenly becomes part of a group on a quest to stop an evil tyrant from gluing everything together.
Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Monday, October 22, 2012

Legacy of Mary Pickford Defiled

The barbarian-controlled board at the Mary Pickford Foundation recently cut funding for the very-accomplished work done over many years by the non-profit Mary Pickford Institute for Film Education (M.P.I.F.E.A.) of West Los Angeles, California. The Foundation then demanded surrender of all of M.P.I.F.E.A.'s assets, including the domain name MaryPickford.com. M.P.I.F.E.A. attempted to negotiate a less-damaging deal, but the Foundation chose to act in bad faith and rescinded their demands. The Foundation's latest act is legal terrorism: they filed suit against curator Hugh Neely in Federal court for $100,000 in damages and triple punitive damages (plus all legal fees).

The Foundation did not seek the MaryPickford.com domain thru the simple internet (I.C.A.N.N.) procedures because they would lose. They did not sue M.P.I.F.E.A. because if they won, they would bear the costs when they take over M.P.I.F.E.A.'s assets (and liabilities). The Foundation chose instead to sue an unprotected individual, an employee of M.P.I.F.E.A., its curator Hugh Neely, expecting that he will concede to their attack because he has no resources for a defense. The terrorism derives from the $50,000 cost to Neely to mount any defense.

But Hugh Neely is standing on principle and trying to muster a defense against the board of the Mary Pickford Foundation.

I say that the Foundation board are terrorists and fascists and barbarians and that Hugh Neely deserves the support of all who resist the looters who infest American business.

Hugh Neely Defense Fund [est. 9/2012]
Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Sunday, October 07, 2012

October 2012 Quotations

"We should have an extra debate where Romney soundbites debate themselves."
~~ tweet from mantisdragon91 quoted in TIME Magazine

"Please think responsibly."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1859-1915]

"The cemeteries are full of irreplaceable people."
~~ New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg

"Bravery never goes out of fashion."
~~ William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-63]

"It's better to be quotable than to be honest."
~~ British playwright Sir Tom Stoppard

"The past is always tense, the future perfect."
~~ Zadie Smith

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."
~~ Maimonides [1135-1204]

"One revolution is like one cocktail, it gets you organized for the next."
~~ Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it."
~~ Maya Angelou

"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."
~~ John D. Rockefeller [1839-1937]

"If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, [then] you don't understand it yourself."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"You will always find those who think [that] they know your duty better than you know it."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"Each of us owes a death to the world."
~~ Denne Bart Petitclerc [1929-2006]

"A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]

"When I was really young I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a screenwriter. I wrote stories."
~~ John Sayles

"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

“This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.”
~~ Rutherford B. Hayes [1822-93], in his diary, March 1888

"One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork."
~~ Edward Abbey [1927-89]

"It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies and the wrong sort take mean advantage of them."
~~ P.G. Wodehouse [1881-1975]

"Scratching is one of Nature's sweetest gratifications."
~~ Montaigne [1533-92]

"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more."
~~ Oprah Winfrey

"No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]

"Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president."
~~ Johnny Carson [1925-2005]

"Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings."
~~ George Will

"Thought itself is probably a superstition."
~~ Don Herold [1889-1966]

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]

"By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."
~~ Socrates [469-399 B.C.E.]

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished – unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
~~ Voltaire [1694-1778]

"One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged."
~~ Heinrich Heine [1797-1856]

"Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, but only saps today of its strength."
~~ A.J. Cronin [1896-1981]

"God created woman to tame man."
~~ Voltaire [1694-1778]

"One good father can do more than 100 schoolmasters."
~~ ancient Persian saying

"Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief."
~~ Marcus Tullius Cicero [106 B.C.E. – 43 B.C.E.]

"Battery life has to improve."
~~ Catherine Clinch

"Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]

"No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country ... we did not, in fact, come to the United States at all. The United States came to us.”
~~ Xicano playwright Luis Valdez

"Laws are spider webs thru which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught."
~~ Honoré de Balzac [1799-1850]

"There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception."
~~ James Thurber [1894-1961]

"A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works."
~~ columnist Bill Vaughan [1915-77]

"A man by himself is in bad company."
~~ Eric Hoffer [1902-83]

"Before you write good words you have to get rid of a million bad words."
~~ Madeline Miller

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping [that] it will eat him last."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"The truth shall make you free.”
~~ spoken by Jesus of Nazareth, John 8:32

"Too much apology doubles the offense."
~~ poet James Richardson

"A gentleman is someone who can play the accordian, but doesn't."
~~ Tom Waits

"At a certain age, it's better to look up than down."
~~ Penny Marshall

"In the case of good books, the point is not how many you can get thru, but rather how many can get thru to you."
~~ Mortimer J. Adler [1902-2001]

"Despair is a black leather jacket that everyone looks good in. Hope is a frilly pink dress that exposes the knees."
~~ writer Rebecca Solnit

"You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be."
~~ poet Johann Kaspar Lavater [1741-1801]

"The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will and the other from a strong won't."
~~ Henry Ward Beecher [1813-87]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}