News Factoids for Fourth Quarter 2016

An excellent article in The Washington Post shows how far the country is moving toward becoming an Oligarchy: just ten donors poured more than $1.1 billion into super PACs in the 2016 election alone.

Half of the guns in the U.S.A. are owned by 3 percent of the people, with an average of 17 guns each, while only 22% of the U.S. population own a gun.

Because of the G.O.P.'s defunding of health clinics and of sex education in the schools, syphilis rose 19% to 24,000 cases for the year, gonorrhea is up 13% to 400,000 cases, and clamydia is up 6% to 1.5 million cases.

U.S. coffee consumption pushed global demand to a new record high, and coffee drinkers 19-34 now account for 44% of U.S. coffee consumption.

Official New Mexico results: 804,043 voters cast ballots in November, or 62.4 percent of the 1,289,414 voters who were registered in time to vote in the general election.

Worldwide economic stagnation: Across 25 of the world’s advanced economies, about two-thirds of the population – more than half a billion people – earn the same as or less than their peers did a decade ago.
— per Wall Street Journal and a July 2016 study by the Mckinsey Global Institute

Arctic in crisis: A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (N.O.A.A.) shows that in 2016 the Arctic experienced the warmest land temperatures on record, the lowest snow cover on record, and the lowest fall sea-ice cover on record.
— TIME Magazine 12/2016

Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

G.O.P. Health Plan for 2017

The fascist Republican Party will control all three branches of the U.S. federal government in a few weeks. They have long been trying to destroy ObamaCare (the Affordable Care Act of March 2010), they have already seriously defunded sex education and public health services (syphilis is up 19% as a result), and the A.L.E.C. group funded by the Koch Brothers is passing state and local laws to criminalize abortion, i.e. eliminate a woman's choice in her own health care.

Well, that moves society back to the options of the 1950s. I grew up in the (then) white-bread town of Culver City, which is in West Los Angeles, California. The widely-known secret solution when some teenager got pregnant was to ask around for The Phone Number of someone in Tijuana, find the cash to pay for it, then cross the border to Mexico and hope that the girl survives the expedition. (Depending on the situation, the male might or might not be told, and then might or might not participate.)

So American society is regressing to 1950s-style health care.

The Republican Party health plan for 2017 is this:

Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

November 2016 Quotations (54)

"Donald Trump won, America lost."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]

"A man ought to study philosophy, up to the point of looking on generals and donkey-drivers in the same light."
~~ Cynic philosopher Crates of Thebes (365?-285? BCE), quoted by Greek historian Diogenes Laërtius [Third Century AD]

"The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

“Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.”
~~ Samuel Lover [1797-1868]

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
~~ Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]

"Worse than telling a lie is spending the rest of your life staying true to a lie."
~~ blogger Robert Brault

"Oy f*@#king vey!"
~~ New Yorker Magazine cartoonist David Sipress

"What if the purpose of business is creativity, not wealth extraction?"
~~ media entrepreneur John Battelle

"Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living."
~~ labor leader Mary Harris 'Mother' Jones [1837-1930]

"So the people have spoken, giving the finger to the Washington Consensus and electing an admitted sexual predator and proven prevaricator so lacking in impulse control that he spent the early morning hours of one day cyberbullying a beauty pageant contestant he had once humiliated in person. Strike up 'Hail to the Chief'."
~~ journalist Lou Dubose

"Silence can be either protest or consent, but most times it's fear."
~~ poet & novelist Paul Beatty

“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
~~ George Orwell [1903-50], in his 1949 novel "1984"

“Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.”
~~ L.M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery, OBE [1874-1942] of Canada, in "Anne of Green Gables" [1908]

“Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it’s up to you to know with which ear you’ll listen.”
~~ Ray Bradbury [1920-2012], in his 1953 novel "Fahrenheit 451"

“And know that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
~~ John Steinbeck [1902-68], in his 1952 novel "East of Eden"

“Forgiving isn’t something you do for someone else. It’s something you do for yourself. It’s saying, ‘You’re not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.’ It’s saying, ‘You don’t get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.’”
~~ novelist Jodi Picoult, in the 2013 novel "The Storyteller"

“If clouds are blocking the sun, there will always be a silver lining that reminds me to keep on trying.”
~~ Matthew Quick, in the 2008 novel "The Silver Linings Playbook"

“Adversity is like a strong wind. It . . . tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.”
~~ Arthur Golden, in the 1997 novel "Memoirs of A Geisha"

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
~~ Haruki Murakami

“Be good, be young, be true! Evil is nothing but vanity, let us have the pride of good, and above all let us never despair.”
~~ Alexander Dumas, fils [1824-95], in "The Lady of The Camellias" [1848]

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
~~ Frank Herbert [1920-86], in the novel "Dune" [1965]

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940], in the 1925 novel "The Great Gatsby"

“As long as you live, there’s always something waiting; and even if it’s bad, and you know it’s bad, what can you do? You can’t stop living.”
~~ Truman Capote [1924-84], in the 1966 novel "In Cold Blood"

“You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want. There’s still lots of good in the world.”
~~ S.E. Hinton, in the 1967 novel "The Outsiders"

“None of those other things makes a difference. Love is the strongest thing in the world, you know. Nothing can touch it. Nothing comes close. If we love each other we’re safe from it all. Love is the biggest thing there is.”
~~ David Guterson, in the 1994 novel "Snow Falling On Cedars"

“We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.”
~~ J.K. Rowling, in the 2000 novel "Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire"

“It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.”
~~ Roald Dahl [1916-90], in "The Witches" [1983]

“Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so [that] I will have enough, when the time comes.”
~~ Margaret Atwood, in the 1985 novel "The Handmaid’s Tale"

“The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.”
~~ British critic William Hazlitt [1778-1830]

"Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day."
~~ writer E.B. White [1899-1985]

"Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don't understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It's the kind of life [that] a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]

"Actually, the best gift [that] you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures . . ."
~~ Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98], in the novel "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland" [1865]

“Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in her 1922 novel "Jacob’s Room"

"Sometimes the only choices [that] you have are bad ones, but you still have to choose."
~~ 12th Doctor Who

"Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future - if mankind is to have a future."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul."
~~ cinema master Ingmar Bergman [1918-2007]

"When American voters say Congress is owned by big companies, this [so-called '21st Century Cures' Act] bill is exactly what they are talking about. Now, we face a choice. Will this Congress say that yes, we're bought and paid for, or will we stand up and work for the American people?"
~~ Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in a 'barnburner' floor speech on 28 November 2016

"I have done my work."
~~ last words of John Stuart Mill [1806-73]

"You're never too old to rock and roll if you're too young to die."
~~ Jethro Tull band (1976 song lyric)

"Great thinkers are there not for us to respect unquestioningly but rather to question respectfully."
~~ Thanh T. Nguyen

"We must have the courage to be intolerant of those who take advantage of democracy in order to destroy it."
~~ German academic & politician Carlo Schmid [1896-1979], in 1948

"In recent weeks, there's been an avalanche of evidence of our species' bottomless capacity for stupidity, savagery, and tribal hatred. An alarming number of our existing and would-be leaders have shown themselves to be clueless, corrupt, self-serving scoundrels and buffoons."
~~ William Falk, "The Week Magazine"

"There's one way to find out if a man is honest. Ask him. If he says 'yes', you know he is a crook."
~~ Groucho Marx [1890-1977]

"Liberty is not inherent in any form of government, it is in the heart of the free man."
~~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-78]

"Every tyrant from Mao to Perón rules in the name of the people; [this] claim does not lessen their suffering."
~~ Jill Lepore

"You're not just responsible for what you say. You are responsible for what people hear."
~~ retired U.S.A.F. General Michael Hayden

"There is only now."
~~ dancer George Balanchine [1904-83]

"Why is it that when we grab for heaven – socialist or capitalist or even religious – we so often produce hell."
~~ Margaret Atwood

"Reality is one of the possibilities [that] I cannot afford to ignore."
~~ Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen [1934-2016]

"We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying: I will pass thru this, everyone [that] I have ever admired has passed thru this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it."
~~ novelist Marilynne Robinson

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"Politeness is an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy."
~~ Arthur Schopenhauer [1788-1860]

"As long as human beings aspire, they will be capable of corrupting the object of their aspiration."
~~ Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor

"If any two people could ever really get inside each other's head, it would scare the pee out of both of them."
~~ mystery author John D. MacDonald [1916-86]

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

Breaking News: Swing States Recounts

On Wednesday November 23rd, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein announced that she will ask for recounts in the three very close swing states if We The People step up and provide the money to do so. (Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania had a difference between Trump & Clinton of less than 100,000 votes.) The first $2.5 million for a Wisconsin recount - Friday deadline - was raised from grassroots donors by the end of the day! The recount costs for Pennsylvania - Monday deadline - and Michigan - Wednesday deadline - total another $4.5 million. As-of Thursday afternoon, the Election Integrity funding webpage has already received $4.1 million!

Just say 'thank you'.
Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Post-Election Factoids

The American voter has spoken, and they should be ashamed!

The system produced a terrible result, as per election district gerrymandering by the Republican Party back in 2012.

Hillary Clinton won the nationwide popular vote 60,467,601 (47.7%) versus 60,072,561 for Donald Trump (47.4%) – 395,000 more than The Donald.

But Trump-Pence's all-money, no ground-game campaign achieved 306 electoral votes (270 needed to win) versus 232 electoral votes for Clinton-Kaine.

The Democrats needed 73,000 more votes in Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) and 28,000 more votes in Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) and 14,000 more votes in Michigan (16 electoral votes). You could say that the fascists won the election because that many Democratic or independent voters stayed home.

Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson pulled away votes, maybe half from the Democrats and half from the Republicans; in those three states, the Johnson-Weld ticket received 142,653 and 106,442 and 172,073 respectively, enough to alter the electoral result had they not been on the ballot. Johnson-Weld's national total was just over 4 million votes.

The larger picture is that there are 320 million people in the U.S. of A. Of those, there are 230 million eligible voters. Of those, 140 million actually vote in the presidential election cycle. That gives 90 million ungrateful Americans whose self worth is so absent that they threw away this democratic election and surrendered to the fascists.

Plenty of blame to go around. What we need to do now is prevent desecration of the U.S. Constitution by the three branches of the U.S. government now (or about to be) controlled by the fascist Republican Party and the oligarchs who own them.

The next four years could very well be worse – both long-term and short-term – than the eight years of George Dubya.

Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Working Minds Essay #110: Voter Suppression 2016

A recent oped by columnist Diane Dimond -- syndicated to small newspapers in New Mexico, New York, Ohio, and other states as well as to many news blogs -- chastises Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg for expressing her opinion; that attack is censorship. While such comments are rare from federal judges, Ginsberg is in full compliance with her First Amend-ment right to free speech.

The editorial policy of these news outlets will, of course, continue to absolve the fascist members of the U.S. Supreme Court from their many impeachable offenses. The secret Powell Memorandum of August 1971 spelled out how to take control of the federal government and that plan is just about fulfilled – except for the pesky matter of citizens still being able to vote. (The millions of dollars spent by the Republican Party on voter suppression is an effort to solve that problem.)

Counting the recently-deceased Justice Scalia, the Fascist Five on the Supreme Court are all members of the Federalist Society and all are signatories to P.N.A.C. (the Project for the New American Century) – each of which alliance is a violation of their oath of office. (It also happens that all five are/were Catholic, but that is not a crime.)

In addition, Justice Thomas worked for Monsanto Chemical for four years, and yet will not recuse himself, saying nothing in court and always voting for Monsanto. He is married to conservative lobbyist Virginia Lamp Thomas, and misses every opportunity to recuse himself whenever issues that she is working on come before the court. Justice Thomas also appears at Republican political fundraiser events.

Justice Scalia served on the Supreme Court for almost 30 years, doing all sorts of damage to civil rights issues. His son Eugene Scalia is a Washington, DC lawyer who has argued before the court; Scalia did not recuse himself on those occasions. Scalia has messed up the court's decision-making even in death, since the Republican Party violates their oath of office by refusing to hold hearings to replace Scalia.

Justice Roberts committed perjury at his confirmation hearings, over the issue of stare decicis (an important judicial term that means ‘bound by precedent’). More importantly, his execrable decision in Citizens United v. F.E.C. declared the United States to be a fascist country. Aside from the wrongness of that decision, he was able to support the decision only with ludicrous legal citations. Any law student knows that citing a dissent in a homework assignment can get you a failed grade; Roberts cited 25 such dissents in Citizens United v. F.E.C., which makes the decision worthless.

But then, here we are. The implementation of the Powell Memo plan has delivered a fascist Supreme Court and Congress, and there is nowhere to seek redress of grievances. The Republican-controlled Senate will not take even the first step toward impeachment of anyone on the Supreme Court (nor of folks like Mitch McConnell within Congress), so the only avenue left to the American citizen (short of violence) is to vote and vote and vote, until Citizens United is reversed.

The national election for President looks like a big win for Hillary Clinton, but congressional and state contests are less certain. Equally important is for every eligible voter to show up for every local election, from city council to school board to dogcatcher.

Your vote matters. If it did not, the Republican Party and its dark money PACs would not be spending millions of dollars to take it away from you.

If the Republican Party had anything of value to offer the American voter they would not have to lie and cheat and steal to win elections.

Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

October 2016 Quotations (57),featuring George Bernard Shaw

“If the Republican Party had anything of value to offer the American voter they would not have to lie and cheat and steal to win elections.”
~~ G.E. Nordell

“'Madame President'. Say it with us now. It's gonna happen. Get used to it."
~~ comment on Washington Post website by 'Gabarus' on October 2

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Selected Quotations of George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then as questions open to discussion, and finally as established truths."

"No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office."

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means."

"No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect."

"No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious."

"Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious."

"Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability."

"Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience."

"Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability."

"Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else."

"Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long."

"Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice."

"Manners are more important than laws and upon them, to a great deal, the law depends."

"Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open."

"Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power."

"Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive."

"Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time."

"Very few people can afford to be poor."

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"A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone – if it is to keep its edge."
~~ George R.R. Martin

"All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]

"Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock."
~~ futurist Alvin Toffler [1928-2016]

"Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955] (quoted by A.P. French in 'Einstein: A Centenary Volume')

"There are no good people. You really don't want to fool yourself. A lot of the people we admire and respect – they're no good either. Stop living your life like it was possible to be a good person. There are only heroes. Only ordinary people who are dancing to an opportunity beyond themselves. No good people. Only people like you and me."
~~ philosopher Werner Erhard, in 1988

"Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere."
~~ Mary Schmich, columnist for the Chicago Tribune

“Anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists."
~~ Nikola Tesla [1856-1943]

“Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.”
~~ author Laurie Halse Anderson, in "Speak" [1999]

"Wondering if you're happy is a great shortcut to being depressed."
~~ line from movie "20th Century Women" [2016]

“Sometimes the hardest thing in life is learning which bridge to cross and which to burn.”
~~ David Russell

"It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids."
~~ Tracy Chevalier

"An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have but that he – for some reason – thinks [that] it would be a good idea to give them."
~~ Andy Warhol [1928-87]

"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too."
~~ Voltaire [1694-1778]

"Even funnier than watching the monkeys at the zoo is observing these humans on the loose."
~~ Kodo Sawaki Roshi [1880-1965]

"Do not seek the truth; only cease to cherish opinions."
~~ poem Hsin Hsin Ming [VIIth Century China]

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist."
~~ Irish playwright & author Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"I am still learning."
~~ Michelangelo [1475-1564], at age 87

"Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people."
~~ Henry Kissinger

"If corporations are people, I demand to see Monsanto's birth certificate."
~~ Barbara Mathieson

"And the purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."
~~ historian Blanche Wiesen Cook

"[Albert Einstein] lived his life as though there was no distinction between art and science."
~~ Barry Munitz, then-president of the J. Paul Getty Trust (2004)

“The secret of winning football games is working more as a team, less as individuals. I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.”
~~ Knute Rockne [1888-1931], football coach at Notre Dame

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and the Bush-Rove-Cheney Machine is the no-bid contract supplier of fear."
~~ G.E. Nordell, in June 2006

"The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

“Don’t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.”
~~ Richard L. Evans [1906-71]

“If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.”
~~ trainer Joe McAuliffe

“Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.”
~~ Dennis P. Kimbro

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize [that] they were the big things.”
~~ blogger Robert Brault

"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us."
~~ activist Dorothy Day [1897-1980]

“Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.”
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

“I’d rather chase the sun than wait for it.”
~~ Australian author Marcus Zusak

“Do you think because you are virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale?”
~~ William Shakespeare [1564-1616], from stageplay "Twelfth Night" [circa 1600]

“What is my favorite quote? 'No.' – Rosa Parks'.“
~~ unnamed Cleveland, Ohio stage actor

"Our species is one, and each of the individuals who compose it are entitled to equal moral consideration."
~~ Michael Ignatieff of Canada

"Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads."
~~ British author H.G. Wells [1866-1946]

"That's still a pretty well kept secret, that hard work pays off. They don't tell it, they don't shout it, they kind of keep it a secret. But I can tell you, with me, it's absolutely proven."
~~ Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's, Inc

"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference do you want to make."
~~ Dame Jane Goodall

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

Working Minds Essay #109: Explaining Flat U.S. Job Growth

The Republicans continue to blame President Obama, but the entire G.O.P. Economic Meltdown took place in 2008, before Barack Obama became President in January 2009.

The U.S. economy got better immediately upon passage of the Democratic Party's Stimulus Package in early 2009, which the Republicans continue to work at cancelling.

As you can see on the chart here, job creation has been positive since Obama's first month in office, every single month.

The problem though is the Republican Congress and their promise to prevent any legislation proposed by Obama or the Democrats. So no jobs have been created by fixing our decrepit infrastructure, no stimulus for the alternative energy industry (both an economic and an energy solution), no pressure brought to bear on Wall Street or the megabanks to provide loans for small or medium businesses, while big business resists hiring new workers (in the U.S.).

The key fact left out of all the news for these seven years is that the U.S. economy needs 250,000 jobs each month to keep up with population growth. This is why the Obama Administration rightfully reports jobs created each month in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 – quite an accomplishment given the fierce opposition – and the jobless rate remains between 4 and 5 percent (and 15% for minorities and 25% for teens and 50% for Native Americans).

President Obama's hands are tied, Congress does absolutely nothing, Republicans sue the Supreme Court to reverse Obama's Executive Orders, and the economy remains dire for the Middle Class and the Working Poor.
Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
Side Note: This is posting #350 on this blog.

couldna' said it better

Trump brings up Bill's affairs . . . to mask his own.
Trump says Hillary is ill . . . to mask his own health problems.
Trump calls Hillary crooked . . . to mask his unspeakable business record.
Trump accuses the Clinton Foundation of fraud . . . to mask his own fraudulent foundation.
Trump calls Hillary a liar . . . are you kidding me?
Trump claims Hillary's temperament is a major problem . . . to mask his own sociopathic behavior.
Trump claims Hillary is a bigot . . . to hide his own blatant racism.
Trump claims Hillary is anti-women . . . are you kidding me?
Trump accuses Hillary of being pro-Russian . . . to mask the obvious love affair he has with Putin.
Trump says Hillary cannot handle foreign affairs . . . to mask his countless stupid remarks on NATO, nuclear weapons, Crimea, North Korea.
Trump gets tough on illegal immigration . . . to hide his wife’s status and the thousands of illegals he hires in his hotels and casinos.
Trump gets tough on trade . . . to hide his foreign manufacturing sources.

~~ comment on Washington Post website by 'pro science' 2 October 2016

News Factoids for Third Quarter 2016

The four biggest poultry companies - Tyson Foods, Pilgrim's, Perdue, and Sanderson Farms - control nearly 60% of the chicken market. (June 2016)

Four new elements have been added to the periodic table, finally completing the table's seventh row and rendering science textbooks around the world instantly out of date. The elements, discovered by scientists in Japan, Russia and America, are the first to be added to the table since 2011, when elements 114 and 116 were added. {Dec 2015)

Roughly two-thirds of Americans have smartphones, and nearly half own tablet computers.

New Mexico’s final ballot for November 2016 includes eight presidential candidates.

ECONOMICS DEPT.
The Wall Street Journal declared in July 2016 a state of 'worldwide economic stagnation', based on a new study by the Mckinsey Global Institute that said: "Across 25 of the world’s advanced economies, about two-thirds of the population – more than half a billion people – earn the same as or less than their peers did a decade ago".

SAVE A TREE DEPT.
CALL 1-888-567-8688 to permanently opt out of pre-screened credit and insurance offers by mail. They mail a paper form for the permanent 'opt out' option; if form not mailed back, your request defaults to the five-year option.

PLANNING AHEAD DEPT.
The domain name www.impeachTrump.com was registered in January 2011.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION DEPT.
Melania Knauss used a short-term travel visa to move to New York City in 1995, so she was an illegal immigrant when she began dating Donald Trump around 1999. Melania became a permanent resident of the United States in 2001, married Trump in 2005, and became a naturalized citizen in 2006.

GLOBAL WARMING DEPT.
Due to the drought here in New Mexico, 'the corn is as high as an elephant's knee'.

Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

September 2016 Quotations (54)

"To drive real progress, you have to change both hearts and laws. You need both understanding and action."
~~ Hillary Clinton

"The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]

"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985]

"We'll free every slave in every town and region. Can anybody get a bigger army than that?"
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76], line in the movie "Spartacus" [1960]

"I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it."
~~ Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98]

"Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts."
~~ Brian W. Aldiss [b. 1925]

“Coffee first. Schemes later.”
~~ Leanna Renee Hieber

"Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be properous. Though the land be good, you cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation."
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in "Orlando: A Biography" [1928]

"We are all stories in the end. Just make it a good one."
~~ "Doctor Who"

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."
~~ Herman Melville [1819-91]

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when it is quite clearly Ocean."
~~ author-visionary Arthur C. Clarke [1917-2008]

"In upside-down Republican justice land, no evidence of a crime is proof of a crime."
~~ The Pen at Peace Team activism website

"Trump [is] never wrong, never sorry, never responsible."
~~ journalist Karen Tumulty

CARTOON: [drawing of Hillary Clinton with oral thermometer in mouth] Pneumonia is curable. [drawing of Donald Trump] Stupidity is not.
~~ Clay Bennett, editorial cartoonist for Chattanooga Times Free Press

"You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit."
~~ Harry S. Truman [1884-1972]

"If you're more interested in what you're saying than the person listening to you, [then] you're the definition of a boring person."
~~ author David Foster Wallace [1962-2008]

"These are my values. And if you don't like them, I have others."
~~ Groucho Marx [1890-1977]

"It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory."
~~ Thomas Mann [1875-1955]

"You fail all of the time. But you're not a failure until you start blaming someone else."
~~ football coach Oail Andrew 'Bum' Phillips [1923-2013]

"If ever there does appear upon this planet a tightly knit minority of really superior people, it will be the end of all the rest of mankind and mankind knows it, not having come through a billion-odd years of evolutionary struggle for nothing."
~~ Philip Wylie [1902-71]

"Fear is wisdom in the face of danger. There's nothing to be ashamed of."
~~ Sherlock Holmes, in a 2016 BBC-TV movie

"Being honest may not get you many friends, but it will always get you the right ones."
~~ John Lennon [1940-80]

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
~~ French philosopher Voltaire [1694-1778]

"Working hard for something [that] we don't care about is called stress; working hard for something [that] we love is called passion."
~~ Simon Sinek

"Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"In life, as in football, you won't go far unless you know where the goalposts are."
~~ Arnold H. Glasow [1905-98]

"What it takes to be a hero is to be ordinary – petty, small, frightened, timid – without that you've got no chance of being a hero. What's required is real heroes. You ought to embrace all those deficiencies. That's what you need to be a hero."
~~ philosopher Werner Erhard, in January 1988

"Immigrants don’t steal jobs or wages. Billionaires do."
~~ radio & print journalist Richard 'R.J.' Eskow

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
~~ Marcus Tullius Cicero [106-43 B.C.E.]

"Friendship is mutual blackmail elevasted to the level of love."
~~ American poet Robin Morgan

"Forgiveness liberates the soul; it removes fear. That is why it is such a powerful weapon."
~~ Nelson Mandela [1918-2013]

"Give a man a reputation as an early riser, and he can sleep 'til noon."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy."
~~ historian Will Durant [1885-1981]

"Only by going too far can you go far enough."
~~ Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626]

"Insight doesn't happen on the click of the moment, like a lucky snapshot, but comes in its own time and more slowly and from nowhere but within."
~~ Eudora Welty [1909-2001]

"Life's disappointments are harder to take if you don't know any swear words."
~~ cartoonist Bill Watterson

"I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting [that] you really believe what you just said."
~~ Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. [1925-2008]

"Men and women are like right and left hands; it doesn't make sense not to use both."
~~ Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin [1880-1973]

"All of Man's misery comes from his incapacity to sit alone in an empty quiet room."
~~ Blaise Pascal [1623-62]

"When you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that makes it good or bad."
~~ jazz legend Miles Davis [1926-91]

"When the enemy is making a false movement, we must take good care not to interrupt him."
~~ Napoléon Bonaparte [1769-1821]

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around."
~~ Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman [1912-2006]

"Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer."
~~ beat poet Wm. S. Burroughs [1914-97]

"Too much of a good thing can be wonderful."
~~ entertainer Mae West [1893-1980]

"Work isn't to make money; you work to justify life."
~~ painter Marc Chagall [1887-1985]

"The best things in life are free. The second best things in life are very, very expensive."
~~ Coco Chanel [1883-1971]

"To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

"Cocaine is God's way of saying that you're making too much money."
~~ actor-comedian Robin Williams [1951-2014]

"Truth uttered before its time is always dangerous."
~~ Chinese philosopher Mencius (Mengzi) [372-289 BCE]

"If God wanted us to vote, He would have given us candidates."
~~ Jay Leno

“Even bad coffee is better than no coffee at all.”
~~ movie director David Lynch

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

August 2016 Quotations (52)

"Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]

"Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88], in "Puppet Masters" [1951]

"I was only saying to the Queen the other day how I hate name dropping."
~~ Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. [1909-2000]

"Anyone who votes for Donald Trump is dumber than he is."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it."
~~ philosopher Theodor W. Adorno [1903-69]

"The primary purpose of any of the fine arts is to arouse a purely emotional reaction in the beholder."
~~ Walt Disney [1901-66]

Albert Einstein was once asked how it felt to be the smartest man alive.
Einstein's reply was "I don't know, you'll have to ask Nikola Tesla."

"The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right."
~~ Judge Learned Hand [1872-1961]

"I cannot remember the books [that] I’ve read any more than the meals [that] I have eaten; even so, they have made me."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding; how little one can get along with, not how much."
~~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh [1906-2001]

"God doesn't think everything is funny."
~~ David Letterman

"Books are the plane and the train and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home."
~~ author Anna Quindlen

"I am a deeply superficial person."
~~ Andy Warhol [1928-87]

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]

"Ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow."
~~ George R.R. Martin

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."
~~ Frederick Douglass [1818-95]

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"There never yet have been, nor are there now, too many good books."
~~ Martin Luther [1483-1546]

"Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers."
~~ Harry S. Truman [1884-1972]

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."
~~ author Stephen King

"Life is like writing with a pen. You can cross out your past but you can't erase it."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985]

"The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]

"Sometimes I have believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
~~ character Alice as written by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98]

"Science fiction encourages us to explore . . . all the futures, good and bad, that the human mind can envision."
~~ Marion Zimmer Bradley [1930-99]

“Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.”
~~ Terry Pratchett [1948-2015]

“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]

"I would rather be able to appreciate things [that] I cannot have than to have things [that] I am not able to appreciate."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]

“Let us never cease from thinking: What is this ‘civilisation’ in which we find ourselves? What are these ceremonies and why should we take part in them? What are these professions and why should we make money out of them?”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in her anti-war essay “Three Guineas” (1938)

"Some people live more in twenty years than others do in eighty. It's not the time that matters but the person."
~~ "Doctor Who"

"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him."
~~ J.R.R. Tolkien [1892-1973]

"Health care must be recognized as a right, not a privilege. Every man, woman and child in our country should be able to access the health care they need regardless of their income. The only long-term solution to America's health care crisis is a single-payer national health care program."
~~ Sen. Bernie Sanders (8/2016)

"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world [that] they've been given than to explore the power [that] they have to change it."
~~ boxing great Muhammad Ali [1942-2016]

"It doesn't matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once, and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success."
~~ Mark Cuban

"Talent is a pursued interest. Anything that you're willing to practice, you can do."
~~ painter & TV host Bob Ross [1942-95]

"There are worse things than losing an election. The worst thing is to lose one's convictions and not tell the people the truth."
~~ American statesman Adlai E. Stevenson II [1900-65]

"Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength."
~~ Betty Friedan [1921-2006]

"Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining."
~~ novelist Anne Lamott

"It's not whether you win or lose, but whether you win."
~~ tagline on 'Trump The Board Game', 2004

"If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"One climbs a mountain, not to conquer it, but to be lifted away from the earth up to the sky."
~~ Russell Banks

"We must reject not only the stereotypes that others have of us, but also those that we have of ourselves."
~~ American politician Shirley Chisolm [1924-2005]

"So, if we lie to the government it's a felony. But if they lie to us it's politics."
~~ Bill Murray

"The political technology of the Industrial Age is no longer appropriate technology for the new civilization taking form around us. Our politics are obsolete."
~~ futurist Alvin Toffler [1928-2016]

"Everything [that] we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything [that] we see is a perspective, not the truth."
~~ Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.]

"Without libraries, what do we have? We have no past and no future."
~~ Ray Bradbury [1920-2012]

"No amount of belief makes something a fact."
~~ James Randi

"I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe [that] the best does."
~~ L.M. Montgomery [1874-1942], in "Anne of Green Gables" [1908]

"If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden."
~~ Frances Hodgson Burnett [1849-1924], in "The Secret Garden" [1911]

"Today you are you / That is truer than true / There is no one alive / Who is youer than you."
~~ Dr. Seuss, in "Happy Birthday To You!" [1959]

"Inside all of us is hope. Inside all of us is fear. Inside all of us is adventure. Inside all of us is . . . a Wild Thing."
~~ Maurice Sendak [1928-2012], in "Where The Wild Things Are" [1963]

"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning to sail my ship."
~~ Louisa May Alcott [1832-88], in "Little Women" [1868]

"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence."
~~ Thomas Henry Huxley [1825-95]

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

July 2016 Quotations (59)

"Above all, a nation cannot exist as a money-making mob: it cannot with impunity go on despising literature, despising science, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence."
~~ John Ruskin [1819-1900], in 1864

"Donald Trump is a unique threat to American democracy. He is unfit for the presidency and cannot be endorsed. A Trump presidency would be dangerous for the nation and the world.”
~~ Washington Post Editorial Board, 22 July 2016

"Bureaucracies and corporations do not 'understand', it is simply not in their repertoire. If their ads say that they do, they are lying."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation."
~~ Sir Walter Scott [1771-1832]

"Stick to it. Everything has an end, and you get to it if you only keep all on."
~~ character Peter, in "The Railway Children" [1906 novel]

"Science erases what was previously true."
~~ writer John McPhee, in 1967

"The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985]

"Equality isn’t just an ideal. It is a pragmatic economic advantage.”
~~ activist George Lakey

"Defiance, not obedience, is the American's answer to overbearing authority."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

“If I talked like Donald Trump, I’d get sent to the principal’s office immediately.”
~~ Alexis Fridman, a third-grader who co-founded a Kids Against Trump group

"These are not spontaneous chants [of 'Lock her up!'] at the Republican convention. They are led by hundreds of synchronized Trump Bronx cheerleader whips on the convention floor. This is a choreographed lynch mob."
~~ The Pen activism website

"Write about what you know and care deeply about. When one puts one's self on paper - that is what is called good writing."
~~ Joel Chandler Harris [1848-1908]

"What a hypocrite! If Trump wants to ‘fix’ trade he can start by making his products in the U.S., not low-wage countries abroad.”
~~ Sen. Bernie Sanders

"To succeed, you've got to love what you're doing. If you don't love it, get out of the way for someone who does."
~~ hockey great Gordie Howe [1928-2016]

"I had no particular desire to be a personality like my father, nor was I equipped to be one. I was determined to be my own man, although having the Fairbanks name did make it easier to get into an office to see someone."
~~ Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. [1909-2000]

"I always like to do the unexpected. Takes people by surprise."
~~ Doctor Who, in "Trial of The Time Lord"

"The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Disappointments continue to affect my confidence – but never my resolve."
~~ Orson Welles [1915-85], in 1985

"A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on."
~~ John F. Kennedy [1917-63]

"You can't run away from trouble. There ain't no place that far."
~~ character Uncle Remus as written by Joel Chandler Harris [1848-1908]

"I’m worried that I will be the last Republican president.”
~~ George W. Bush to former aides, as reported by Politico in July 2016

"What a man notices first about a woman is whether she notices him."
~~ Marlene Dietrich [1901-92]

"All rising to great place is by a winding stair."
~~ Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626]

"All philosophies that claim [that] the physical world around [you does] not exist except in your imagination are sheer nonsense."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]

"Truth is stranger than fiction."
~~ George Gordon, Lord Byron [1788-1824], in "Don Juan" (1819)

"The fundamental tragedy is not death, but the unlived life."
~~ film critic Ella Taylor

"The central goal of Western humanism is . . . the audacious control by Reason of Man's fate."
~~ C. Wright Mills [1916-62]

"Uninterpreted truth is as useless as buried gold."
~~ British writer Lytton Strachey [1880-1932]

"Chance is very, very methodical in its distribution of probabilities, and uses sheer coincidences only very sparingly."
~~ mystery author Ellis Peters [1913-95], in "Rainbow's End" [1978]

"Skepticism about what is unproven can easily turn into a prohibition upon thinking."
~~ German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno [1903-69]

"A great work of art . . . is prepared within the silence of the heart."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60], in "An Absurd Reasoning" (1942)

"There really is no why and there often is no warning. When death comes, it just comes. In the meantime, we should just celebrate our lives a little each day and relish every sunset [that] we can."
~~ Mark Cromer

"Experience is the worst teacher; it gives the test before presenting the lesson."
~~ baseball pitcher Vernon Law

"Art is meant to disturb, science reassures."
~~ cubist painter Georges Braque [1882-1963]

"Anyone is ready to be savage in some cause."
~~ William James [1842-1910]

"The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages."
~~ Horace Greeley [1811-72]

"Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes."
~~ U.K. poet Philip Larkin [1922-85]

"In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true."
~~ John C. Lilly [1915-2001]

"Never ever put peanut butter in your pocket to eat later."
~~ cartoonist Bil Keane [1922-2011]

"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food & clothes."
~~ Desiderius Erasmus [1466-1536]

"No one is perfect until you fall in love with them."
~~ TV curmudgeon Andy Rooney [1919-2011]

"A song that don't say somethin' ain't worth nothin'."
~~ folksinger-activist Woody Guthrie [1912-67]

"One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood."
~~ British author E.M. Forster [1879-1970], in Preface to "A Passage To India" [1924 novel]

"Desire and love are the same thing, save that by desire we always signify the absence of the object, by love, most commonly the presence of it."
~~ Thomas Hobbes [1588-1679]

"Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success."
~~ Napoleon Hill [1883-1970]

"The [San Francisco-Oakland] Bay area is one of the great experiments in ambulatory psychosis."
~~ Allan Cohen

"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. [1809-94]

"The waking have one common world / But the sleeping turn aside / Each into a world of his own."
~~ Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus [535?-475? BCE]

"Comment is free, but facts are sacred."
~~ C.P. Scott [1846-1932], editor & owner of U.K.'s Manchester Guardian

"Many people take no care of their money until they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time."
~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1832]

"Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."
~~ Ambrose Bierce [1842-1914]

"Only the weak are sent out on paths without perils."
~~ Nobel-laureate Hermann Hesse [1877-1962] , in "The Glass Bead Game" [1943 novel]

"[W]e are waves whose stillness is non-being. We are alive because of this, [thus] we have no rest."
~~ mystery author Dorothy Gilman [1923-2012]

"Anger that has no purpose, that isn't guided toward a positive end, is dangerous and counter-productive."
~~ singer-activist Harry Belafonte

"Dying is an art, like everything else."
~~ writer Sylvia Plath [1932-63]

"All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward."
~~ Southern writer Ellen Glasgow [1873-1945]

"It's the best job in [journalism], chasing crooks in Florida, because the well never runs dry."
~~ Carl Hiaasen

"If you are going to think, you might as well think BIG!"
~~ Donald J. Trump

"The reverse side also has a reverse side."
~~ Japanese proverb

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

Keep Cool With Popsicles

Global warming has arrived (be sure to thank a Republican) with the last three years breaking records as the hottest year ever. This trend is likely to continue.

I was looking for something different at the local Lowe's grocery store and decided to grab a bag of popsicles. Brilliant move. There are 18 two-stick popsicles in the bag, made of three fruit-juice flavors; the bag costs $3.29, which is 18¼ cents each.

Why I think this is worthy of posting on the blog is that I now have a super-cold popsicle instead of a glass of Kool-Aid or iced tea. Very refreshing, and it seems not to add calories like a meal – I am even losing a little bit of weight (although that could also be from the sweat pouring out of my pores!).

I have ordered a window air conditioner for the master bedroom from Home Depot which will arrive on Saturday. It is only going to get hotter, all around the planet – there is no reversing global warming. Maybe next year I will buy another A/C unit for the living room window.

Or as former talk radio host Randi Rhodes liked to say: "Fight global warming. Be cool!"

Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

THE GREATEST SPEECH EVER MADE (antidote to the fascist screed at the Republican Convention)

Charlie Chaplin's "The Greatest Speech Ever Made" excerpted from "The Great Dictator" [1940]
watch video [9/2013 upload; 4:38] on YouTube

— pass it on . . .

Voter Suppression In Virginia

When the Supreme Court in 2013 invalidated several sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Virginia and other Republican-controlled state legislatures quickly passed voter suppression laws, most of them requiring a government-issued photo ID to prove identity at the polling place. This would disqualify the 200,000 voters in Virginia who lack photo ID.

The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that 25 percent of African American citizens lack a government-issued photo ID, compared to just 8 percent of whites; low-income and elderly voters are also disproportionately affected.

In July 2016, the Virginia Legislature passed a law to study the matter, HJ69.

The Legal Aid Justice Center filed a suit on July 6 declaring the practice unconstitutional. Over 900,000 voters in Virginia (of a population of 8.3 million!) have suspended driver's licenses because of outstanding warrants, unpaid parking tickets, or otherwise owing money to the state. The premise is that the voter can pay their fine and the driver's license will be activated. (Well, maybe that will happen by the August voter registration deadline.)

So who are these people with outstanding warrants and traffic tickets? Poor people, the unemployed, minorities, students, and the elderly – all considered enemies of the Republican agenda because they tend to vote for Democrats.

You can/should call the Virginia Board of Elections and accuse them of fraud; their 24-hour phone number is 1-800-552-9745 + 5.

Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Bernie Sanders Endorses Hillary Clinton for President (excerpts)

Today, I [Bernie Sanders] endorsed Hillary Clinton to be our next president. I know that some of you will be disappointed with that decision. But I believe that, at this moment, our country, our values, and our common vision for a transformed America, are best served by the defeat of Donald Trump and the election of Hillary Clinton.

During the Democratic platform proceedings in St. Louis and Orlando, we were victorious in including amendments to make it a clear priority of the Democratic Party to fight for a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage, expand Social Security, abolish the death penalty, put a price on carbon, establish a path toward the legalization of marijuana, enact major criminal justice reforms, pass comprehensive immigration reform, end for-profit prisons and detention facilities, break up too-big-to-fail banks and create a 21st century Glass-Steagall Act, close loopholes that allow big companies to avoid taxes by stashing their cash in offshore tax havens, use that revenue to rebuild America, approve the most expansive agenda ever for protecting Native American rights, and so much more.

But none of these initiatives will happen if we do not elect a Democratic president in November. None! In fact, we will go backward. We must elect the Democratic nominee in November and progressive Democrats up and down the ballot so that we ensure that these policy commitments can advance.

HobbyLobby hypocrisy

The recent full-page paid ad from Hobby Lobby-Mardel Stores printed in the Albuquerque Journal, the Peoria Journal Star, the Valdosta Daily Times, and other newspapers on July Fourth is a bunch of hooey.

The corporation has a right to publicize their viewpoint (in print or otherwise) and they appear to be accountable only to their stockholders, while pretending to be accountable to some non-existent diety. The First Amendment guarantees free speech, but it also states that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion'. This Constitutional provision is often violated by religionists.

---

There are at least three major failures displayed by Hobby Lobby-Mardel's grandstanding paid ad:

»» The first failure has to do with the Judeo-Xian Ten Commandments, which include the instruction "Thou shalt not bear false witness", i.e. don't lie. Thus the dunderhead executives at Hobby Lobby-Mardel prove themselves to be hypocrites.

---

»» As to the second failure, there is no requirement to be fair and balanced in paid ads, so here are a few quotations that the Hobby Lobby-Mardel ad failed to include:

“I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.” — Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

“Church and state are, and must remain, separate.” — Ronald Reagan [1911-2004] {during a speech at Temple Hillel in Valley Stream, New York - 26 October 1984}

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof', thus building a wall of separation between church and state.” — Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826] {in the 'Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association', 1 January 1802}

“The Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” - Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11, which was unanimously ratified by the U.S. Senate on 7 June 1797 and signed by President John Adams.

---

»» Thirdly, Hobby Lobby-Mardel intentionally offends Native American, Jewish, Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, wiccan, Mormon, Seventh day Adventist, Jehovah's Witness, and non-religious readers.

---

Anyone not already boycotting Hobby Lobby-Mardel because of their ill-treatment of employees (especially female employees) now has ample reason to boycott Hobby Lobby-Mardel and never set foot in their stores because of their publicly displayed religious intolerance.

(The battle against ignorance and apathy and magical thinking is a full time job.)

Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

June 2016 Quotations (50)

"[Orlando] is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States, and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets."
~~ Hillary Clinton

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."
~~ 4th Doctor Who

"Behind every cloud . . . is another cloud."
~~ Judy Garland [1922-69]

"The capacity to be puzzled is indeed the premise of all creation, be it in art or science."
~~ Erich Fromm [1900-80]

"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads."
~~ data scientist Jeff Hammerbacher

"It's pretty clear [that] I'll never have greatness thrust upon me . . . but it's comforting to know [that] mediocrity remains within my reach."
~~ Ziggy cartoon panel drawn by Tom Wilson & Tom II

"The man that's out to do something has to keep in high gear all the time."
~~ Douglas Fairbanks [1883-1939]

"The logic of words should yield to the logic of realities."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]

"A good businessman never makes a contract unless he's sure [that] he can carry it thru, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]

"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"If you don't think, then you shouldn't talk."
~~ March Hare, as written by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98]

"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Only we, the public, can force our representatives to reverse their abdication of the war powers that the Constitution gives exclusively to the Congress."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg

“I'd rather take coffee than compliments just now.”
~~ Louisa May Alcott [1832-88]

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything."
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]

“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in the novel 'Night and Day' (1919)

"An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you."
~~ dancer Isadora Duncan [1877-1927]

“The truth is at the bottom of a bottomless well.”
~~ playwright Tennessee Williams [1911-83], in 'Suddenly Last Summer' (1959)

“Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others … Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.”
~~ Katherine Mansfield [1888-1923], in 'Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927), journal entry for 14 October 1922

"Conform, go crazy, or become an artist."
~~ Nancy Springer

"Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."
~~ composer Leonard Bernstein [1918-90]

"Remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free someone else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower someone else."
~~ author Toni Morrison

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous'. And God granted it."
~~ Voltaire [1694-1778]

"All pro athletes are bilingual. They know English and profanity."
~~ hockey great Gordie Howe [1928-2016]

"The man with the best job in the country is the Vice President. All he has to do is get up every morning and say 'How is the President?'."
~~ American humorist Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"All of life is a dispute over taste."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"A man who has made no enemies is probably not a very good man."
~~ Antonin Scalia [1936-2016]

"I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expenses, and my expense is equal to my wishes."
~~ historian Edward Gibbon [1737-94]

"Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands – and then eat just one of the pieces."
~~ children's author Judith Viorst

"The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a dull one."
~~ TV comic Sid Caesar [1922-2014]

"Propaganda is a truly terrible weapon in the hands of an expert."
~~ Adolf Hitler [1889-1945]

"The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: What good is it?."
~~ Aldo Leopold [1887-1948]

"Luck is not something [that] you can mention in the presence of self-made men."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985]

"It's the things [that] we forget about that tell us who we are."
~~ writer Don DeLillo

"All good writing is swimming underwater holding your breath."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]

"I wish [that] people would love everybody else the way [that] they love me. It would be a better world."
~~ Muhammad Ali [1942-2016]

"You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose."
~~ Mario Cuomo [1932-2015]

"Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way."
~~ Allan W. Watts [1915-73]

"The detective novel asks the central question of philosophy: Whodunit?"
~~ Umberto Eco [1932-2016]

"Capitalism has proven itself far superior to socialism in creating wealth and alleviating poverty, but it has a weakness: The amorality of its most successful practitioners."
~~ Jean-Pierre Lehmann

"Monitor your own narcisism."
~~ J. Reid Meloy

"Chase your dreams. But always know the road that leads you home."
~~ country music singer Kenny Chesney

"And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your having been here."
~~ author Neil Gaiman

"Artists do their best work when they're old or young. Middle age is the enemy of art."
~~ cinema auteur Orson Welles [1915-85]

"A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader, is a rereader."
~~ author Vladimir Nabokov [1899-1977]

"Prohibition is OVER!" ~~ slogan at Wise Pies Pizza

"Just because you're offended doesn't mean [that] you're right."
~~ comedian Ricky Gervais

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

News Factoids for Second Quarter 2016

According to the Washington Post, over 40 percent of the money raised by 'dark money' political groups by the end of February came from just fifty mega-donors and their relatives.

In April, Microsoft released a machine-learning chatbot named Tay, which took less that 24 hours to mirror prejudice and xenophobia and racism from online trolls who gleefully abused Tay's A.I. programming; Microsoft yanked Tay offline 'for adjustments'.

The Ku Klux Klan has between 5,000 and 8,000 members in at least 160 chapters in 41 states. — per Southern Poverty Law Center

More than 90% of Americans spend 15-18 hours per month on Facebook (i.e. two full work days). Americans spend more time on Facebook than on every other social network combined.


THE ECONOMY
Only four airline giants control 80% of domestic seats: American, Delta, Southwest, and United. The airline industry hauled off $33 BILLION in profits in 2015, nearly 90% over the prior year.

The national Sports Authority chain is closing all 460 stores. Locally, my brand-new town of Rio Communities has no large businesses, unless you count Dollar General and the three gas stations. Neighbor city Belen has many vacant lots and vacant stores on Main Street, it would be a ghost town if not for the railroad. Just north is supposedly-thriving Los Lunas, except the big Staples store closed in February with no sign of a new tenant, and the big Hastings Entertainment store put up banners in May that the store is closing - the employees are in shock. As I told them, 'welcome to the Republican economy'.

Wealthy individuals and corrupt politicians have stashed an estimated $76 TRILLION dollars in offshore tax havens, which is about 8% of the world's wealth. — per economist Gabriel Zucman
{That figure is just a bit larger than one year's nominal Gross Domestic Product for the entire world.)

Just five corporations earned 70% of the $300B in revenue generated by all internet companies over the past year. Amazon and Alphabet (Google) took in a combined 57%; the others are Facebook, eBay, and Q.V.C. owner Liberty Interactive. — per U.S.A. Today (Nov 2015)


PETROLEUM & FRACKING FACTOIDS
2014 statistics for consumption of crude oil in the U.S.A.: 47% for gasoline; 22% for fuel oil (diesel, heating, ships); 13% for liquified petroleum gases (chemicals); 8% for jet fuel; 4% for still gas; 2% for asphalt and road oil; 1% for naphtha (rubber, plastics); and 3% other (lubricants, solvents, kerosene, waxes).

Between 1882 and 2012, Oklahoma experienced 230 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or higher (level at which noticeable by humans); in first quarter 2016 alone, Oklahoma experienced 287 such earthquakes. — from U.S.G.S. report in April 2016


CLIMATE CHANGE DEPT.
May was the 13th straight month of record-breaking heat. The month's global average of 60.17°F was 1.57 degrees above the XXth Century average. — Popular Science Magazine

The prior coral-bleaching event in 1997-98 wiped out 16% of the world's coral reefs; the present coral-bleaching event is likely to be worse, based on the current record-setting El Nino.


SECOND AMENDMENT DEPT.
Every day 89 Americans die from gun-related violence. New Mexico, with some of the most lax gun safety laws in the country, has a gun death rate 40% higher than the national average.

Last year, mass shootings accounted for just two percent of American gun deaths. — New Yorker Magazine

244 people on the Terrorist Watch List applied to buy firearms in 2015; after a background check, 91% of them were approved.

Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

new Bernie Sanders TV ads (today)

A poll taken May 13-22 by the Public Policy Institute of California has Hillary Clinton at 46% and Bernie Sanders at 44%, which is a statistical tie.

30-second 'Bernie vs. Wall Street' TV ads released on Friday 27 May 2016
watch online at YouTube: English-language version [0:30] • Spanish-language version [0:30]

Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

May 2016 Quotations (60)

“The challenges facing our planet are not mainly technological or even financial, because as a world we are rich enough to increase our investments in skills, infrastructure, and technological know-how to meet our needs and to protect the planet. Our challenge is mostly a moral one, to redirect our efforts and vision to the common good.”
~~ Bernie Sanders speech on income inequality and the environment, at Vatican City on 15 April 2016

“What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life – to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.”
~~ George Eliot [1819-80]

"Life is a comedy, written by a sadistic comedy writer."
~~ Woody Allen, in his new movie "Café Society", 2016

"All our civilization is based on invention; before invention, men lived on fruits and nuts and pine cones and slept in caves."
~~ Reginald Fessenden [1866-1932]

"[Ted Cruz is] Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
~~ John Boehner, at Stanford University in April 2016

"There is a saying that life is uncertain, so you should eat dessert first. For the same reason, you should also take advantage of early voting."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Drink up; you're half the man my mother was."
~~ slogan for Rock & Reilly's Irish Pub

"I wanted to live in a world where a woman could choose her own role in life."
~~ Mabel Dodge Luhan [1879-1962]

"I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]

"I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]

"A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"If everybody minded their own business the world would go around a great deal faster than it does."
~~ Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98] in "Alice In Wonderland"

"Without the dreamers who write science fiction and other imaginary material we'd still be sitting in caves . . . if we weren't already extinct."
~~ William C. Samples

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Look, all administrations, all governments lie, all officials lie and nothing they say is to be believed. That's a pretty good rule."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg

“Actually, this seems to be the basic need of the human heart in nearly every great crisis – a good hot cup of coffee.”
~~ Alexander King [1899-1965]

"No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nurture and education."
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]

"Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in "A Room of One’s Own", 1929

"Indeed it is possible to stand with one foot on the inevitable 'banana peel' of life with both eyes peering into the Great Beyond, and still be happy, comfortable, and serene – if we will even so much as smile."
~~ Douglas Fairbanks [1883-1939]

"Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world."
~~ Malala Yousafzai

"We are the first generation to feel the effects of climate change, and the last generation that can do something about it."
~~ President Barack Obama

"People assume that Time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff."
~~ TV character "Doctor Who"

"It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct."
~~ Sigmund Freud [1856-1939]

"Creativity is just connecting things."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011], co-founder of Apple, Inc. [est. 1975]

"The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day. After all, a movement is only people moving."
~~ Gloria Steinem

"The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]

"When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something."
~~ Dmitri Shostakovich [1906-75]

"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
~~ biologist Thomas Huxley [1825-95]

"Every man or woman who is sane, every happy person, is in infinite debt to a woman."
~~ psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott [1896-1971]

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."
~~ British proverb, circa 1720

"Virtue would not go far without vanity to escort her."
~~ François Alexandre Frédéric, duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt [1747-1827]

"Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal."
~~ William Hazlitt [1778-1830]

"Without data you are another person with an opinion."
~~ management expert Dr. W. Edwards Deming [1900-93]

"Life's ultimate statistic is the same for all people. One out of one dies."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. [It's] like a muscle, you can build it up."
~~ Facebook, Inc. exec Sheryl Sandberg

"Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people."
~~ broadcast pioneer David Sarnoff [1891-1971]

"Elegance is not about being noticed, it's about being remembered."
~~ Giorgio Armani

"If it wasn't for procrastination, I'd never get around to not getting around to anything."
~~ Ziggy cartoon panel drawn by Tom Wilson & Tom II

"The business of corporate America is no longer business – it is finance."
~~ Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, 2016

"Love isn't something that you find. Love is something that finds you."
~~ Loretta Young [1913-2000]

"George Washington is my favorite president because he's the only one who didn't blame all his problems on the previous administration."
~~ syndicated comedian Argus Hamilton

"If I read a book and it makes my body so cold [that] no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry."
~~ poet Emily Dickinson [1830-86]

"We have to change truth a little to remember it."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

"It is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there."
~~ Don DeLillo

"The purpose of a business is to create a customer."
~~ Peter F. Drucker [1909-2005]

"Too much freedom seems to change into nothing but slavery."
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]

"Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil, and still more the man who is indifferent to everything."
~~ Swiss theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater [1741-1801]

"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust [that] I never shall."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]

"People fascinate me – they're amazing. Life fascinates me. And I'm no more fascinated by my own life than by anyone else's."
~~ rock legend Prince [1958-2016]

"The noblest art is that of making others happy."
~~ P.T. Barnum [1810-91]

"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"Son, they can't do what you do. Just go out there and do what you do."
~~ Charlie Daniels

"It is impossible to live at peace with those [that] we regard as damned."
~~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-78]

"Behind every fortune is a crime."
~~ French author Honoré de Balzac [1799-1850]

"The sins of Citizens United are many, but the first is that the [cited basic] facts are bonkers."
~~ Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island

"Congress does not regulate Wall Street. Wall Street regulates Congress."
~~ Sen. Bernie Sanders, during the first Democratic Party debate, October 2015

"History repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, the second as show business."
~~ Stuart Klawans, film critic at The Nation Magazine

"Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun."
~~ book critic George Scialabba

"We don't have a world government. Fortunately, we don't have that many world problems – most problems can be solved locally – but this one [climate change] is a world problem."
~~ Bill Gates

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