News Factoids for Fourth Quarter 2017

There are 670,000 pieces of space junk orbiting Earth.

87% of Alphabet's revenues come from Google's ad business.

Americans have acquired the highest-ever outstanding credit card debt, back up to $1.021 trillion, beating the previous record of $1.02 trillion of April 2008.
~~~ per U.S. Federal Reserve, in June 2017

The word 'scientist' was coined in 1834, and the word 'ecology' in 1866.


EXTRACTED from a long email (from sender unknown)
Societies had years to adapt to change driven by the steam engine, electricity, and the computer. Today, change is instant and ubiquitous. It arrives digitally across the globe all at once. The fourth industrial revolution is already here. . . Driverless cars and trucks rule the road, while robots 'man' the factories. Super-smartphones hail Uber helicopters or even planes to fly their owners across mushrooming urban areas. Machines use algorithms to teach themselves cognitive tasks that once required human intelligence, wiping out millions of managerial, as well as industrial, jobs . . . The result is a new bipolar world based on technology rather than nuclear arsenals. Today’s superpowers are tech giants: the United States and China.

Chocolate is a good substitute for cough medicine. Ran out of Walgreens liquid cough medicine during a rare and recent cold/sore throat episode; eating a tablespoon of chocolate chips (slowly) alternated with honey-eucalyptus cough drops did a real good job on my throat until I was able to get to the store. (Eating 6 to 8 vitamin C pills of 1000mg each per day, per Linus Pauling, broke the cold portion of the problem in just two days.)


TRUMPLAND

A delicatessen in Brooklyn is now offering the Trump Sandwich: made with white bread, lots of baloney, Russian dressing, and a small pickle!

The Telegraph (U.K.) reported that the average price for a weekend at a Trump hotel dropped 36 percent in the last year.

"In a 30-minute interview, President Trump made 24 false or misleading claims"
Donald Trump's recent 30-minute New York Times interview is rife with falsities, as annotated by this article in the Washington Post. (Many were previously fact-checked, but Trump pays no attention to the facts in any subject that he blathers about.) click here

Copyright 2017 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

December 2017 Quotations (61)

"From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known: our Constitution works. And during the WaterGate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one – absolutely no one – is above the law."
~~ Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski [1905-82]

"If you have integrity, nothing else matters. And if you don't have integrity, nothing else matters."
~~ Robert Mueller

"The cold never bothered me anyway."
~~ Queen Elsa of Arendelle character in the Disney movie "Frozen"

“A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.”
~~ Henry Ward Beecher [1813-87]

"You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."
~~ Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.]

"Stupidity [is] a fellow traveler of catastrophe."
~~ New Mexico blogger V.B. Price

"It is known that personal identity resides in memory, and the annulment of that faculty is known to result in idiocy."
~~ Jorge Luis Borges [1899-1986] , in "History of Eternity" [1936]

"American democracy is stone cold dead."
~~ Adrian Ward, on Facebook

"One martini is all right, two are too many, and three are not enough."
~~ James Thurber [1894-1961]

“To be of use to the world is the only way to be happy.”
~~ Hans Christian Andersen [1805-75]

"In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears."
~~ Edith Wharton [1862-1937]

"All you need for a movie is a gun and a cat."
~~ Jean-Luc Godard

"Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice."
~~ Dr. Wayne W. Dyer [1940-2015]

“Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941] from her 1928 novel, Orlando: A Biography

"Science fiction isn't just thinking about the world out there, it's about thinking how that world might be – a particularly important exercise for those who are oppressed, because if they're going to change the world [that] we live in, they – and all of us – have to be able to think about a world that works differently."
~~ Samuel R. 'Chip' Delany

"When my wife’s Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: ‘Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen’. I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word."
~~ author E.B. White [1899-1985]

"When confronted by small men doing big and stupid things, we need to resist with all the creativity and wit [that] we can muster, and if we can do so without losing the civility that makes life enjoyable, then so much the better."
~~ Bill McKibben, epilogue to new "Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance"

"Anybody who’s denying climate change is really in the dark."
~~ Debra Haaland, 2018 candidate for Congress in New Mexico

"What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?"
~~ novelist Mikhail Bulgakhov [1891-1940]

"Wonderment is the first passion of all. Those without any natural inclination to this passion are ordinarily very ignorant."
~~ French philosopher René Descartes [1596-1650]

"If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. If neither are on your side, pound on the table."
~~ poet Carl Sandburg [1878-1967]

"No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it."
~~ Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa [1888-1935]

"My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James for all the time [that] they stole from me."
~~ Richard Brautigan [1935-84]

"If you give money, spend yourself with it."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]

"Say yes, and you'll figure it out afterward."
~~ Tina Fey

"After I drink coffee I like to show my empty mug to the I.T. guy to tell him that I have successfully installed Java. He hates me."
~~ Mike Anderson

“If I was walking down the highway with a quarter in my pocket and a briefcase full of truth, I’d be so happy.”
~~ boxing great Muhammad Ali [1942-2016], Sports Illustrated, Feb. 19, 1968

“The one who comes to question himself cares for mankind.”
~~ Kenneth Patchen [1911-72]

"The Sweet Baby Jesus gave his life on the Cross so that Retailers Worldwide could end the fiscal year with strong 4th quarter earnings and consumers could start the New Year in Debt up to their eyeballs, thus guaranteeing perpetual Slavery for all of us and Prosperity for the top 1%."
~~ Ernesto Martinez, on Facebook

"The road to success is always under construction.”
~~ Lily Tomlin

“Some people dream of success, while other people get up every morning and make it happen.”
~~ Florida billionaire Wayne Huizenga

“I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.”
~~ Florence Nightingale [1820-1910]

“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.”
~~ tennis pro Arthur Ashe [1943-93]

“The secret of our success is that we never, never give up.”
~~ Cherokee Nation leader Wilma Mankiller [1945-2010]

“You don't have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.”
~~ Michael Dell

“For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.”
~~ Sir Walter Scott [1771-1832]

"Success is the progressive realization of a worthwile dream or goal"
~~ Earl Nightingale [1921-89]

"I never dreamed about success. I worked for it."
~~ cosmetics tycoon Estée Lauder [1908-2004]

"There is no elevator to success, you have to take the stairs"
~~ salesman & speaker Zig Ziglar [1926-2012]

“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. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
~~ boxing great Muhammad Ali [1942-2016]

"The best we can do in our life is to employ it in something more lasting than life itself."
~~ William James [1842-1910]

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful."
~~ Albert Schweitzer [1875-1965]

"Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it."
~~ Eckhart Tolle

"The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat."
~~ Richard 'Dick' Marcinko

"Everything [that] you own, you rent until you die."
~~ Tasso Lakas

"My own definition of success is when it's standing room only at your funeral."
~~ Richard Hayter

"I never fail. I either win or learn."
~~ Nelson Mandela [1918-2013]

“Speak less than you know; have more than you show.”
~~ William Shakespeare [1564-1616]

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”
~~ Joshua J. Marine

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful, than a life spent doing nothing."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"The responsibility of a creative life is both a curse and a blessing. It's the thing that gives you life and is killing you at the same time."
~~ actor Daniel Day-Lewis

"Sometimes you can only find heaven by slowly backing away from hell."
~~ actress & author Carrie Fisher [1956-2016]

"We have many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants."
~~ Gen. Omar Bradley [1893-1981]

"Some will not look on suffering because [to do so] creates responsibility."
~~ Bishop Fulton J. Sheen [1895-1979]

"Language is not just a creation of humanity. It is humanity."
~~ biologist E. (Edward) O. Wilson

"We construct borders, literally and figuratively, to fortify our sense of who we are."
~~ British historian Frances Stonor Saunders

"There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly terrible to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a free press."
~~ Samuel Adams [1722-1803]

"You think [that] your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, and then you read."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]

"There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when 'our side' commits it."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"The happy ending still beckons, and it is in great hope of grasping it that we go on."
~~ Annie Proulx

"A society is moving toward dangerous ground when loyalty to the truth is seen as disloyalty to some supposedly higher interest."
~~ novelist Marilynne Robinson

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

Funny Fake News: 'Alabama Joe' Stalin

The reason that officials in Virginia and Alabama were willing to tear down statues of 'heroes' of the Confederacy is so that they could replace them with statues of dictator Joseph Stalin and dictator-emperor Donald Trump.

"It is enough that the people know [that] there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
~~ Joseph Stalin [1878-1953]

Copyright 2017 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Don't Call The Republican Party Fascists?

your friends of the Republican Congress recently passed legislation ending Meals On Wheels and the CHIP Program for child healthcare – zero funding

when your friends the Republicans reduce YOUR Medicare/Medicaid -- it will be too late
when your friends the Republicans reduce YOUR Social Security -- it will be too late
when your friends the Republicans shut down the E.P.A. and your grandchildren get lead poisoning (as in Flint, Michigan) -- it will be too late
when your friends the Republicans shut down the F.D.A. and allow poisoned food & drugs in the stores -- it will be too late
when your friends the Republicans cancel funding for women’s health care (at Planned Parenthood), unwanted births will increase and people will die
when your friends the Republicans further cancel funding for sex education, the current S.T.D. epidemic will get worse
when your friends the Republicans further cancel funding for public education, your grandchildren’s generation will be unable to read or to earn a living

NOT calling them fascists doesn’t change a thing
Copyright 2017 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

National Rifle Association Film Festival

Two of these film titles are real, the rest are imaginary:

"A Fistful of Bitcoin"
"All The President's Storm Troopers"
"Once Upon A Time On The News"
"Winchester '73"
"How Green Was My Camo"
"Mr. Blandings Builds A Firing Range"
"Apocalypse Next Door"
"Springfield Rifle"
"The Stranger Wore A Concealed Handgun"
"Paintball Fight At The O.K. Corral"
and "Honey, I Shot The Kids"

Copyright 2017 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

November 2017 Quotations (52)

“There is no such thing as the future. Instead, there are before us a multitude of alternative futures, of possible futures, of plausible futures.”
~~ futurist Jim Dator

"Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with WaterGate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news."
~~ British author John le Carré

"You may not be able to control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them."
~~ Dr. Maya Angelou [1928-2014]

"Always remember your focus determines your reality."
~~ George Lucas

“It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit & keep moving forward.”
~~ character Rocky Balboa

"The slow-rising central horror of 'WaterGate' is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it."
~~ gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson [1937-2005]

"I believe that the only true religion consists of having a good heart."
~~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

"Always we must bear in mind that law has to be substituted for power, that care must be taken to serve the interests of law."
~~ Danish politician Fredrik Bajer [1837-1922]

"Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start."
~~ Nido Qubein

"Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in, can hope to escape."
~~ beat poet Wm. S. Burroughs [1914-97]

"World domination is within our grasp!
Okay, maybe not. But we've got a lot of locations."
~~ official slogan on website of mall food chain Wetzel's Pretzels [est. 1994]

"If I experience any frustration, its the frustration of being misunderstood. But that's what stardom is – a glamourous misunderstanding."
~~ singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, in 1979 interview

'found' t-shirt text: 'may not be combined with any other offer'

"The loser moron can’t comprehend the danger. Putin is praising the moron into giving up this country's strongest asset. Democracy."
~~ Lucia Failla Smith, on Facebook

"When the going gets tough, the tough relax.”
~~ Fast Company Magazine co-founder Alan Webber

"Having respect for animals makes us better humans."
~~ Jane Goodall

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."
~~ Tony Robbins

“Your only entitlement in life is the opportunity to make a declarative statement and live consistent with it. Don’t waste it.”
~~ Dusan Djukich

"Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate."
~~ Jon Bon Jovi

"Commitment is staying true to what you said you would do."
~~ motivational speaker Inky Johnson

"With one exception, [President Trump] doesn’t suffer fools lightly."
~~ Carol Pogash

"My work simply reflects the world, which seems to have been created by an absolute moron."
~~ French artist Vincent Sardon

“The sun shines upon good and bad alike.”
~~ Hans Christian Andersen [1805-75]

"The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it."
~~ Edith Wharton [1862-1937]

"If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets."
~~ Haruki Murakami

"No one can argue any longer about the rights of women. It's like arguing about earthquakes."
~~ playwright Lillian Hellman [1905-84]

"[Robert] Bresson is to French cinema what Mozart is to German music and Dostoyevsky is to Russian literature."
~~ Jean-Luc Godard

“Democracy will not come Today, this year / Nor ever Through compromise and fear.”
~~ Langston Hughes [1902-67]

"How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours."
~~ Dr. Wayne W. Dyer [1940-2015]

"Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985]

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941] — From "The Moment and Other Essays" (1947)

the goodbye makes the journey harder still
~~ Cat Stevens song lyric

"Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet."
~~ Thich Nhat Hanh

"A woman who is unfaithful deserves to be shot."
~~ Francisco 'Pancho' Villa [1878-1923] of Mexico

"Put your staff first, your customers second, and your shareholders third."
~~ Richard Branson

"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
~~ writer Sylvia Plath [1932-63]

"A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]

"Better to fight for something than live for nothing."
~~ Gen. George Smith Patton, Jr. [1885-1945]

"Get to a point in life where the only direction is forward, your only focus is progress, and the only outcome is victory."
~~ Meiyoko Taylor

"There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself."
~~ Miyamoto Musashi [1584?-1645]

"Despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains."
~~ sign at Farm Equipment Assn. of MN & SD

"The most dangerous person is one who listens, thinks, and observes."
~~ Bruce Lee [1940-73]

"The worst pain [that] a man can suffer is to have insight into much and power over nothing."
~~ Herodotus [484-425 BCE]

"We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity. Our movement is Christian."
~~ Adolph Hitler [1889-1945], on 27 October 1928

"The lack of understanding of something is not evidence for God. It is evidence of a lack of understanding."
~~ physicist Laurence M. Krauss

"There are no shortcuts. Everything is reps, reps, reps."
~~ movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger

"How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?"
~~ poet Robert Frost [1874-1963]

"Don't believe everything [that] you hear . . . Real eyes realize real lies."
~~ Tupac Shakur [1971-96]

"Complaining about a problem without proposing a solution is called whining."
~~ Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]

"Well done is better than well said."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]

"The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations."
~~ philosopher-economist Adam Smith [1723-90]

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few."
~~ Suzuki Shunryu Daiosho [1904-71]

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

if the Republican Party . . .

more/similar quotations at the Working Minds Philosophy of Empowerment website

October 2017 Quotations (57)

"Somehow, I don’t feel like I’m being made great again."
~~ Adam Stuart, on Facebook 10/2017

"As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind . . . every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder."
~~ astronaut-politician John Glenn [1921-2016]

"We all need reminding at times that the World Wide Web is only 27 years old."
~~ Simon Chan

"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned."
~~ physicist Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]

"AB HONESTO VIRUM BONUM NIHIL DETERRET:
Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honorable."
~~ Seneca the Younger [4? B.C.E. - 65 A.D.]

"There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: Those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid [that] you will succeed."
~~ Ray Goforth

"¡La lucha sigue! The fight continues!"
~~ Senator Catherine Cortez Masto [Dem-NV]

"Ertznay to ouyay"
~~ intertitle on 1938 Disney "Silly Symphony" cartoon short

"Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men."
~~ W.E.B. DuBois [1868-1963]

"We must face up to the unfaceuptoable."
~~ line on "The Simpsons" TV show

"The G.O.P. tax plan is ridiculous."
~~ Catherine Rampell, Washington Post columnist, 9/2017

"America is conservative in fundamental principles . . . but the principles conserved are liberal and some, indeed, are radical."
~~ economist Gunnar Myrdal [1898-1987]

"No Viet Cong ever called me 'n*gger'."
~~ boxing great Muhammad Ali [1942-2016]

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."
~~ John Robert Colombo, in “A Said Poem”, 1970

"History never repeats itself, but the kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910], in 1874 edition of “The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day”

"Incompetence is a powerful tool."
~~ Kai Wright

"No one's wealth should come at the price of another's hunger, nakedness, or homelessness. Once that line is crossed, property becomes theft, and the practitioners become thieves."
~~ John Raby of New Hampshire, letter to The Nation Magazine, August 2017

“Cinema is universal, beyond flags and borders and passports.”
~~ Mexican film director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu

"Remember that the most valuable antiques are dear old friends."
~~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

“Start building the future through a conversation for possibility.”
~~ philosopher Werner Erhard

“Real generosity is doing something nice for someone who will never find out.”
~~ writer & cartoonist Frank A. Clark [1911-91]

"There are seven days in a week. 'Someday' isn't one of them."
~~ popular Pinterest & t-shirt meme

“Holders of power, always and everywhere, are indifferent to the good or evil of those who have no power, except in so far as they are restrained by fear.”
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]

"There is a 1970 book by visionary R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983] with the title 'I Seem To Be A Verb", but I have recently decided that I seem to be a dangling participle."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Prejudice is an emotional commitment to ignorance."
~~ Nathan Rutstein [1921-2006]

“Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.”
~~ Carlos Castañeda [1925-98]

"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices."
~~ French philosopher Voltaire [1694-1778]

"It is an unwavering rule for those in power that, when it comes to heads, it is best to cut them off before they start thinking."
~~ novelist José Saramago [1922-2010]

"Silence is the ultimate weapon of power."
~~ Charles de Gaulle [1890-1970]

"If you say what's on your mind in the language that comes to you from your parents and your street and friends, you'll probably say something beautiful."
~~ Grace Paley [1922-2007]

"Living in the past is for cowards."
~~ football coach Mike Ditka

"To be nobody-but-yourself – in a world which is dong its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight."
~~ American poet E.E. Cummings [1894-1962]

"I don't like to be out of my comfort zone, which is about a half-inch wide."
~~ TV personality Larry David

“Unless we remember we cannot understand.”
~~ British author E.M. Forster [1879-1970]

“It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.”
~~ Anne Sexton [1928-74]

"Don't argue with an idiot, they will just bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910] and oft quoted by George Carlin [1937-2008]

“It is important that you get clear for yourself that your only access to impacting life is action. The world does not care what you intend, how committed you are, how you feel, or what you think, and certainly it has no interest in what you want and don’t want. Take a look at life as it is lived and see for yourself that the world only moves for you when you act."
~~ philosopher Werner Erhard

"Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible."
~~ Gen. Colin Powell

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."
~~ Robert F. Kennedy [1925-68]

"Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not."
~~ Oprah Winfrey

"Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results."
~~ Andrew Carnegie [1835-1919]

"History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn."
~~ Edmund Burke [1729-97]

"The recent meme 'Jews will not replace us (Nazis)' is easily countered. Replacing white supremicists with dog t*rds is an upgrade."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Trump’s incompetence will not save us from his malevolence."
~~ Greg Sargent, Washington Post columnist

"History is just one damned thing after another."
~~ falsely credited to historian Arnold J. Toynbee [1889-1975]
original saying is "Life is just one damned thing after another."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]

“The minute you begin to do what you really want to do, it’s really a different kind of life.”
~~ visionary R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]

"Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root cause of sin."
~~ Abraham Joshua Heschel [1907-72]

"The end of a picture is always an end of a life."
~~ director Sam Peckinpah [1925-84]

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends, they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers."
~~ Charles W. Eliot [1834-1926]

"That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility."
~~ Persian poet & mystic Rumi [1207-73]

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
~~ writer Dorothy Parker [1893-1967]

"There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
~~ physicist Marie Curie [1867-1934]

"Don't wonder at those who are good without god. Pity those who need god to be good."
~~ meme on atheist websites

"You can't just say [that] there is a god because the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children."
~~ Stephen Fry

"Forewarned, forarmed; to be prepared is half the victory."
~~ Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes [1547-1616]

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

Republicans to wreak havoc with civil liberties

Republican Party state legislators held a mock Constitutional convention over September 12-15 in Phoenix, Arizona; the practice topic was balancing the budget, but a real convention could add or delete any number of anti-worker, pro-fascist, anti-human rights, pro-discrimination changes to the U.S. Constitution.

Republicans control 32 of the country's state legislatures, two more would give them the leverage needed to call for such a convention, under Article V of the Constitution – and wreak havoc with American liberties.

Copyright 2017 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

News Factoids for Third Quarter 2017

Facebook hit 2 billion users in June 2017 – their traffic has doubled since they hit 1 billion users in October 2012.

This year’s Social Security report projects that in 2017 Social Security will run an annual surplus of roughly $58.6 billion, bringing the accumulated surplus to about $2.9 trillion by the end of the year.

Dust isn’t the only thing your Roomba is sucking up. It’s also gathering maps of your house.

"The Great Recession never fully ended."
– Ryan Cooper, in The Week Magazine, July 2017
http://www.theweek.com/articles/714423/great-recession-never-ended

The Republican Party of Nevada is so intolerant of democracy that in August 2017 they launched three recall campaigns against three female members of the Nevada state legislature. Their first target is Nevada Democratic Senator Joyce Woodhouse; the second is Democrat-leaning Independent Patricia Farley; the third is new Nevada Democratic Senator Nicole Cannizzaro. The recall petitions do not specify any cause, the citizen signers did so on the simplistic basis that Democrats are not fascist Republicans.

According to a study by nearly 500 scientists from over 60 countries, 2016 was the warmest year in 137 years of record keeping. It replaced 2015 as the warmest year on record.

Coffee consumption in China tripled from 2012 to 2016. Starbucks Coffee already has 600 stores in Shanghai plus they are opening over 500 stores per year around China.

Nine billion tons of plastic has been produced since the 1930s - 7 billion tons were thrown away: 9% is recycled, 12% incinerated, leaving 79% in landfills, litter, and floating in the oceans. Europe recycles 30% of plastics, China recycles 25%, the U.S.A only 9%.

Hollywood had the worst summer box office results in 25 years: revenue fell 16%, attendance hit a 25-year low – analysts blamed the many 'really bad' sequels.

Copyright 2017 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

FORGET PRAYER, WE NEED AN AIRLIFT

The island of Puerto Rico is, they say, obliterated by Hurricane Maria. Electrical power and other utilities will be unavailable in some areas for six months.

Lots of people have prayed that the people of Puerto Rico would be safe from each new hurricane. Doesn't help: the hurricane goes where it wants and survival is very much a matter of luck.

Most of the church buildings are gone, also. Can't light candles if there aren't any.

Politics in America has become a divisive and hostile affair, largely caused by the fascist Oligarchy and their manipulation of the Republican Party.

But back in 1948, Americans were proud of our success in World War II, and already clear that Russia was a threat to democracy. So when East Germany closed all access to Berlin, the Western allies organized an airlift, sending 278,228 flights to Berlin from June 1948 to September 1949. The cost of the airlift was shared between the U.S.A., U.K., and Germany and is estimated at $225M to $500M (which would be $2¼B to $5B in today's inflated economy).

It actually doesn't matter how much a modern airlift might cost, we have got to do something or we will know that who this country is is Trump's not-very-great America.

The population of Berlin in 1948 was 2.4 million; the Puerto Rico population pre-hurricane was roughly 3.5 million. The United States is moving too slow while real lives - American lives - are in the balance.

You know the drill: Call both Senators and your Congressperson.
Say anything, but include the phrase 'Puerto Rico Airlift'.
http://www.callmycongress.com/
http://www.callyourrep.co/

And also call your local television and newspaper companies to let them know that this solution should be covered by them. And pre-emptively, tell your backward Republican in-laws that it is their party's fault that action has not been taken in Congress.

American lives are in the balance.

Copyright 2017 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

September 2017 Quotations (56)

"An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress."
~~ Mark Zuckerberg

"The purpose of any company should be to make people's lives better. Otherwise, they shouldn't exist."
~~ Bill Ford, chair of Ford Motor Company

“When we get to the end of the story, you will know more than you do now . . . “
~~ Hans Christian Anderson [1805-75]

"Cinema begins with D.W. Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami."
~~ Jean-Luc Godard

"Success isn’t everything but it makes a man stand straight."
~~ playwright Lillian Hellman [1905-84]

“I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.”
~~ Edith Wharton [1862-1937]

“I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.”
~~ Langston Hughes [1902-67]

"Abundance is not something [that] we acquire. It is something [that] we tune into."
~~ Dr. Wayne W. Dyer [1940-2015]

"Life’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess it always will. But I love it just the same."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985]

"Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only into the future, but into that wonderful place called other, which is simply another universe, another planet, another species."
~~ Theodore Sturgeon [1918-85]

"We all change. When you think about it, we're all different people all through our lives, and that's good. You gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be."
~~ 11th Doctor Who

“I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun.”
~~ Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], from her diary (entry dated October 2, 1932)

"Leadersip is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that this impact lasts in your absence."
~~ Harvard Business School

"A dream doesn't become reality through magic. It takes sweat, determination, and hard work."
~~ Colin Powell

"I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health."
~~ Voltaire [1694-1778]

"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts [that] you are thinking."
~~ Eckhart Tolle

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."
~~ Hindu goddess Chandi

"The best education comes from action; the most memorable lesson is a mistake."
~~ Tim Fargo

"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional!"
~~ Haruki Murakami

"History has shown that democracies are healthy when the principles that bind people together are stronger than those that divide them."
~~ investor Ray Dalio

"People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision."
~~ John C. Maxwell

"The first step to becoming bold is to stop believing that boldness is meant for other, better leaders."
~~ Dan Pallotta

"Find something that makes you happy. And think about it a lot."
~~ Esther Hicks

"Fox News is a media colostomy bag that has begun to burst at the seams and should be emptied before it becomes a public health issue."
~~ actor Jim Carrey

"Success is never so interesting as struggle."
~~ Willa Cather [1873-1947]

"Mother Earth has been abused, the powers have been abused, this cannot go on forever. No theory can alter that simple fact. Mother Earth will retaliate, the whole environment will retaliate, and the abusers will be eliminated. Things come full circle, back to where they started. That's revolution."
~~ Native American activist Russell Means [1939-2012]

"Live the full life of the mind, exhilirated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]

"That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet."
~~ Jhumpa Lahiri

"One always tends to over-praise a long book because one has got through it."
~~ British author E.M. Forster [1879-1970]

"There was no answer except the usual answer [that] life gives to the most complicated and insoluble questions. This answer is: Carry on with your everyday affairs, that is to say, put it out of your mind."
~~ Count Leo Tolstoy [1828-1910]

"The answer is that there is no good answer. So as parents, as doctors, as judges, and as a society, we fumble through and make decisions that allow us to sleep at night – because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than law."
~~ Jodi Picoult

"The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, it's that there are so many answers."
~~ anthropologist Ruth Benedict [1887-1948]

"There is no answer, only a question."
~~ Derek Rydall

"Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power."
~~ actress Shirley MacLaine

"To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."
~~ Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]

"Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it."
~~ Dr. Maya Angelou [1928-2014]

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again there is no use reading it at all."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"Walking is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is one way of freedom."
~~ Elizabeth von Arnim [1866-1941]

"Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders."
~~ Thomas J. 'Tom' Peters III

"Without water we are nothing. Even an emperor, denied water, would swiftly turn to dust. Water is the real monarch and we are all its slaves."
~~ Salman Rushdie

"I don't know how to save the world. I don't have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth's inhabitants, none of us will survive – nor will we deserve to."
~~ Native American activist Leonard Peltier

"I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I ain't gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns."
~~ folksinger-activist Woody Guthrie [1912-67]

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'."
~~ Isaac Asimov [1920-92]

"If you don't see the book [that] you want on the shelf, write it."
~~ children's author Beverly Cleary

"All great changes are preceded by chaos."
~~ Deepak Chopra

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."
~~ physicist Stephen W. Hawking

"The further [that] a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"The first mistake of art is to assume that it is serious."
~~ music critic Lester Bangs [1948-82]

"If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day."
~~ Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen [1934-2016]

"Hold fast to your vision and do something every day to bring it into manifestation."
~~ Michael Bernard Beckwith

"All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography."
~~ Federico Fellini [1920-93]

"After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager'."
~~ beat poet Wm. S. Burroughs [1914-97]

"Money lost, something lost. Honor lost, much lost. Courage lost, everything lost – better [that] you were never born."
~~ {Johann Wolfgang von} Goethe [1749-1832]

"What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?"
~~ Anthony Trollope [1815-82]

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

Superstorm Solution

Harvey is just the first Superstorm this year. Hurricane Irma is already forming. We can expect many more, due to Republican Party failure to deal with what is now called the Global Climate Crisis.

Texas and the Gulf Coast are now waterlogged. There will be mosquitos. So the solution for preventing malaria epidemics in America from each storm is to reverse the ban on the pesticide D.D.T – temporarily, say for one year (and same after each record-breaking storm cycle.) Such a reversal should also be limited by geography, such as to the Gulf Coast or Florida or New York City.

Eco-activist Rachel Carson [1907-64] was right about the dangers of D.D.T. yet it remains the most effective preventive, and the current practice of NOT using D.D.T. in Africa is the cause of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Carson always said that carefully managed use of pesticides was an important option. Let's give it a try.

Copyright 2017 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

August 2017 Quotations (54)

"He who allows oppression, shares the crime."
~~ Erasmus Darwin [1731-1802], British physician, scientist, reformer & poet, and grandfather of Charles Darwin [1809-82]

"The Great Recession never fully ended."
~~ Ryan Cooper, in "The Week Magazine", July 2017

"If you're looking for rainbows look up to the sky / You'll never find rainbows if you're looking down."
~~ Charlie Chaplin [1889-1977], sung in the opening credits for"The circus" [1928] sound re-release in 1969

"If you are silent you are dead, / And if you speak you are dead, / So speak and die.”
~~ assassinated Algerian writer Tahar Djaout [1954-93]

"People change and forget to tell each other."
~~ playwright Lillian Hellman [1905-84]

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"Live out of your imagination, not your history."
~~ Stephen Covey [1932-2012]

"When fear is used to control us, love is how we rebel."
~~ book blurb

"Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves."
~~ William Arthur Ward [1921-94]

“Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair.”
~~ Edith Wharton [1862-1937]

"Wake up! The Class War has already begun."
~~ John R. Talbott, in 2004

"Life is a game. In order to have a game, something has to be more important than something else. If what already is, is more important than what isn’t, the game is over. So, life is a game in which what isn’t, is more important than what is. Let the good times roll."
~~ Werner Erhard

"Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is poverty. Ignorance is devastation. Ignorance is tragedy. And ignorance is illness. It all stems from ignorance."
~~ motivational speaker Jim Rohn [1930-2009]

"Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string."
~~ Pelé, retired soccer star

"If Trump must start a nuclear war, let us finish 'Game of Thrones' first."
~~ Vincent Lee, on LinkedIn

“To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.”
~~ Thomas Watson, Jr. [1914-93], longtime CEO of I.B.M.

"Being President doesn't change who you are, it reveals who you are."
~~ Michelle Obama

"America must always reject racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms. As we pray for Charlottesville, we are reminded of the fundamental truths recorded by that city's most prominent citizen in the Declaration of Independence: we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights."
~~ joint statement in August 2017 by former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise [that] they make as they go by."
~~ Douglas Adams [1952-2001]

"Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself."
~~ Thomas J. Watson, Sr. [1874-1956], founder of I.B.M.

"The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people."
~~ Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]

"There are no good Nazis."
~~ James Murdoch, executive at Fox & News Corp.

"Fear is like a disease. When it moves, it moves like wildfire. But what happens when, even in the face of that fear, you do what you've got to do? That's called courage. And just like fear, courage is contagious."
~~ Damon Davis

"We're leaving [Congress] to people who either were born with a silver spoon in their mouth . . . or couldn't get better jobs in the first place."
~~ Jerry Lewis [1926-2017]

"He's at that awkward age – too old to be cute and not dead yet."
~~ cartoonist Zanhart, in The New Yorker

"It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so [that] they can tell us what to do."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011]

“A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me."
~~ Vladimir Nabokov [1899-1977], in a 1964 ‘Playboy Magazine’ Interview

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.“
~~ Dorothy Day [1897-1980]

“We do not grow old. We become old by not growing.“
~~ Ida Fisher Davidoff [1903-2001], expert on aging

"A man loves a thing, that don't mean it's got to love him back. You love a thing, you got to be grateful."
~~ character Robert E. Lee Prewitt, in "From Here To Eternity" [1951 novel] by James Jones [1921-77]

“We live in exile from the best part of ourselves.“
~~ Paul Zweig [1935-84]

"Zen meditation is a trickily simple affair, for it consists only in watching everything that is happening, including your own thoughts & breathing, without comment . . . you find that there is no self other than everything that is going on, both inside & outside the skin. ... The trick, which cannot be forced, is to be in this state of consciousness all the time.“
~~ Allan W. Watts [1915-73], in a Playboy Magazine article "Sound of Rain"

"Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation, must the unclouded face of truth suffer harm."
~~ C.P. Scott [1846-1932], editor of the Manchester Guardian newspaper

"It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice."
~~ Eddie Cantor [1892-1964]

"Modern religion is the end trail of modern mythology."
~~ actor Bruce Willis

"Art is meant to disturb, science reassures."
~~ French artist George Braques [1882-1963]

"If you want to truly bear a burden, deal with reality. If you want to know true joy, succeed at dealing with reality."
~~ Sam Cottrell

"If there is no laughter inside you, there's nothing."
~~ Louis-Ferdinand Céline [1894-1961]

"The subconscious is not a grave; it is a cistern."
~~ author Rex Stout [1886-1975]

"Political correctness is merely the intellectual McCarthyism that's currently in season ... and a pernicious poison in the well of Reason."
~~ mystery author James D. Doss [1939-2012]

"Most business meetings are staged to supply people who would rather talk than work with people who would rather listen than work."
~~ columnist L.M. Boyd [1927-2007]

“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.“
~~ Sheryl Sandberg, COO at Facebook, Inc.

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see.“
~~ Chinese philosopher Confucius [551-479 B.C.E.]

“A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.“
~~ Blaise Pascal [1623-62]

“Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.“
~~ physicist & astronomer Galileo Galilei [1564-1642]

“Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out - it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.“
~~ writer Robert W. Service [1874-1958]

“The man who is denied the opportunity of making decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to make.“
~~ Cyril Northcote Parkinson [1909-93]

“Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.“
~~ Thomas Carlyle [1795-1881]

"The way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement."
~~ investor Charles Schwab

"The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you."
~~ John E. Southard [1915-93]

"Silent gratitude isn't very much to anyone."
~~ Gertrude Stein [1874-1946]

"Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity . . . it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."
~~ Melody Beattie

"The world has enough beautiful mountains and meadows, spectacular skies and serene lakes. It has enough lush forests, flowered fields, and sandy beaches. It has plenty of stars and the promise of a new sunrise and sunset every day. What the world needs more of is people to appreciate and enjoy it."
~~ Michael Josephson

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

Replacing Statues of Confederate Generals

Some of the conversation about tearing down statues of Confederate generals is about what to do with the pedestals.

Here’s an idea: Erect statues honoring America’s progressive heroes.

The choices are many:
eco-activist Edward Abbey [1927-89]
eco-activist Rachel Carson [1907–64]
labor leader César E. Chávez [1927-1993]
labor leader Eugene V. Debs [1855–1926]
labor leader Joe Hill [1879-1915]
Dolores Huerta
labor leader Mary Harris 'Mother' Jones [1837-1930]
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929–68]
politician Robert M. 'Fighting Bob' La Follette [1855-1925]
Justice Thurgood Marshall [1908–93]
eco-activist John Muir [1838-1914]
civil rights leader Rosa Parks [1913-2005]
muckraker journalist Ida M. Tarbell [1857-1944]
U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone [1944-2002]

Kindle Book Contest

Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing has announced a contest for English-language books newly-published on their website. The deadline is November 2017. The contest is open to authors residing in India, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States (excluding the territories of Quebec and Tasmania).

The main prize is 10 lakh rupees (that's one million in India); today the volatile Indian rupee is trading at 64 to the U.S. dollar, so the prize converts to roughly US$16,000. Secondarily, the winner will be considered for book publication in India.

Well, there is only one winner, out of thousands or millions of applicants, but the idea got me thinking. I already have two books available in Kindle format, so what might I create as a potential entry? What I came up with is a collection of my Working Minds Philosophy essays, which I could call "Working Minds: The First 100 Essays". I could convert the essays, make a cover, tweak this and that, many hours of work, but do-able by, say, October. If completed by deadline, I could enter the contest.

But is it worth it? That is where you, the reader, comes in. Will you buy such a book? (Probably priced at eight to ten dollars.)

I am posting this survey here on my blog, on my Facebook page, and on my LinkedIn page.

Click on this email link to vote 'yes' (you can add a comment).

I will report the results at the same three places.

G.E. Nordell
author • philosopher • revolutionary
Rio Communities, New Mexico USA

ADDED August 23: It has now been three weeks, and The People have spoken:
NOT ONE SINGLE REPLY - not from this blog, not from Facebook, not from LinkedIn.
THEREFORE: The matter is closed.

July 2017 Quotations (56)

"No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else."
~~ line from the P.T. Barnum [1810-91] musical film - coming in December 2017

"[Los Angeles] is a big garage."
~~ cinema auteur Jean-Luc Godard of France

“We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.”
~~ Nepalese poet Santosh Kalwar

"[Donald Trump's] sociopathic narcissim knows no bounds."
~~ Ruth Conniff, editor-in-chief at The Progressive Magazine [est. 1909]

“Courage is feeling fear, not getting rid of fear, and taking action in the face of fear.”
~~ Roy T. Bennett

"It is worth waking up in the morning to see what might happen."
~~ children's author Cynthia Rylant

"We must have ideals and try to live up to them, even if we never quite succeed. Life would be a sorry business without them. With them it's grand and great."
~~ L.M. {Lucy Maud} Montgomery [1874-1942]

"Our favorite book is always the book that speaks most directly to us at a particular stage in our lives. And our lives change. We have other favorites that give us what we most need at that particular time. But we never lose the old favorites. They’re always with us. We just sort of accumulate them."
~~ children's author Lloyd Alexander [1924-2007]

“Success is like anything worthwhile. It has a price. You have to pay the price to win and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible. Most important, you must pay the price to stay there.”
~~ Vince Lombardi [1913-70], coached the Green Bay Packers ()

"I was never concerned about second-hand smoke – far worse is second-hand stupidity. Same with trickle-down economics – never happened and never will. But now we have an epidemic of trickle-down ignorance."
~~ G.E. Nordell

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”
~~ Allan W. Watts [1915-73]

"The greed of the drug companies is boundless."
~~ Michael Phelan, deputy director at Social Security Works

“It's such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it.”
~~ Mitch Albom

"Sorry, the internet is not the future. The internet is the present, interwoven into every aspect of modern culture."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Vote, write, speak, work, march, sue, organize, fight, struggle – whatever it takes to secure the blessings of liberty."
~~ journalist & columnist Molly Ivins [1944-2007]

“Happiness is not by chance, but by choice.”
~~ motivational speaker Jim Rohn [1930-2009]

"The steady resistance to the unnecessary is the secret of success."
~~ guru Nisargadatta Maharaj [1897-1981] of India

"Learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you."
~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower [1890-1969]

"People do not decide their future, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures."
~~ F.M. Alexander [1869-1955]

"People are definitely a company's greatest asset. It doesn't make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps."
~~ Mary Kay Wagner Ash [1918-2001], founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics

"After you've done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over."
~~ railroad tycoon Alfred E. Perlman [1902-83]

"In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible."
~~ Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel [1907-72]

“If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.”
~~ Amy Tan

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right."
~~ author Isaac Asimov [1920-92]

"Chance favors the connected mind."
~~ author Steven Johnson

"He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight."
~~ Sun Tzu [544?-496? B.C.E.] & 'The Art of War'

"Be like a tree, let the dead leaves drop."
~~ Persian poet & mystic Rumi [1207-73]

"Instead of thinking outside of the box, get rid of the box."
~~ Deepak Chopra

"I love walking into a bookstore. It's like all my friends are sitting on shelves, waving their pages at me."
~~ Iranian-American author Tahereh Mafi

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader."
~~ John Quincy Adams [1767-1848]

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."
~~ John Steinbeck [1902-68]

"When love is deep, much can be accomplished."
~~ violinist Shinichi Suzuki [1898-1998]

"The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you."
~~ blues legend B.B. King [1925-2015]

"The answer to '1984' is 1776."
~~ radio host Alex Jones

"My truth – what I believe – is that there are no answers here and, if you are looking for answers, you'd better choose the question carefully."
~~ Spanish actor Javier Bardem

"When somebody asks, 'What's the answer to all of these questions?' that's absurd. There is no answer, there are answers, along the way."
~~ futurist Jacque Fresco [1916-2017]

"There is no answer if there is no question."
~~ Larry Dowell

"There is no question that love is not the answer to."
~~ motivational speaker Marshall Sylver

"There are no answers, only choices."
~~ science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem [1921-2006]

"The answer is [that] there is no answer."
~~ journalist Chuck Palahniuk

"The spiritual journey is over and over finding out that we were wrong."
~~ Adyashanti (nee Steven Gray)

"It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you realize [that] there is always a way to solve problems without violence."
~~ old Chinese proverb (maybe)

"If there's even a slight chance at getting something that will make you happy, RISK IT. Life's too short and happiness is too rare."
~~ a.r. lucas

"Honor is better than honors."
~~ Belgian proverb

"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."
~~ Dr. Maya Angelou [1928-2014]

"Home is the best place [to be] when life begins to wobble."
~~ Countess Elizabeth von Arnim [1866-1941]

"Do not tolerate brilliant jerks. The cost to teamwork is too high."
~~ Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix

"I have a scheme for stopping war. It's this – no nation is allowed to enter a war until they've paid for the last one!"
~~ American humorist Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or to hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome."
~~ philosopher-activist Noam Chomsky

"If you don't want your tax dollars to help the poor, then stop saying [that] you want a country based on Christian values, because you don't."
~~ Jimmy Carter

"Innovation is saying 'no' to a thousand things."
~~ Steven Jobs [1955-2011]

"Leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge."
~~ motivational speaker Simon Sinek

"Quiet people have the loudest minds."
~~ physicist Stephen W. Hawking

"Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it."
~~ George Carlin [1937-2008]

"The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental."
~~ futurist Robert Anton Wilson [1932-2007]

"My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted."
~~ Steven Wright

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

News Factoids for Second Quarter 2017

The U.S. Census Bureau reported another low birth rate in the United States for 2016, for the tenth straight year.

It takes 270 Electoral College votes to pick a president; states representing 165 Electoral College votes have already joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

RUMOR? or TRUE?: A proposed 'COVFEFE Act' in Congress would preserve Emperor Trump’s tweets as presidential records. (June 2017)

The creators of the "South Park" TV show say that they'll no longer satirize Donald Trump because he is no longer funny. (Feb 2017)

Netflix now has more subscribers than all the other cable TV providers combined: Netflix has 50.9 million, the others have 48.0 million.

Beginning with Columbine in 1999, more than 135,000 students attending at least 164 primary or secondary schools in the U.S.A. have experienced a shooting on campus.
~~ per story in the Washington Post

People of color purchased 45% of movie tickets in USA in 2015.

The Japanese word for stress is 'stress'.


NEED A JOB? DEPT.
There are 30 openings for machinists at Zimmer Biomet in Warsaw, Indiana.
~~ per story in the Washington Post

There were 13 billionaires on the list when Forbes Magazine debuted their Forbes 400 Richest Americans issue in 1982; today, all 400 are billionaires.

U.S. hiring slowed in March as employers added only 98,000 jobs (while 250,000 jobs per month are needed to keep up with population growth).


HEALTH NEWS DEPT.
Mumps infections in the U.S. spiked from 229 in 2012 to over four thousand in 2016.

Obesity rates have doubled since 1980 in 73 countries, with major blame attributed to exportation of the Western fast food diet.

Nearly half of Americans between 18 and 59 years of age have one of 40 types of H.P.V. (human papilloma virus), with 25% of men and 20% of women having a high-risk (for cancer) strain.
~~ per C.D.C. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)


SENATE STUPIDITY DEPT.
On June 22, the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate revealed their written-in-secret 'Trump Doesn't Care' health bill.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said:
"I’ll fight this mean, scary, reckless, shameful, heartless Senate G.O.P. health care bill every way I can."
Sen. Bernie Sanders said:
"Let us be clear and this is not trying to be overly dramatic: Thousands of people will die if the Republican health care bill becomes law."
Barack Obama said:
"Simply put, if there’s a chance [that] you might get sick, get old, or start a family – this bill will do you harm."

Copyright 2017 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

June 2017 Quotations (53)

"More than forty years after the nightmare of Watergate, our national tragedy is being repeated as farce."
~~ Peter Rothberg, publisher at The Nation Magazine

"Laughter really is carbonated holiness."
~~ Anne Lamott

"When all is said and done, we're really just walking each other home."
~~ Ram Dass

"Our task is no longer to make political films, but to make films politically."
~~ French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, in April 1970

"Let the wine of love flow through your veins."
~~ Persian poet & mystic Rumi [1207-73]

"Even as this administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future, I'm confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet [that] we've got."
~~ Barack Obama on 1 June 2017

"If there is a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
~~ author Toni Morrison

"[Anne of Green Gables is] the dearest, most lovable child in fiction since the immortal Alice."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

“Certain things in life simply have to be experienced -and never explained. Love is such a thing.”
~~ Brasilian author Paulo Coelho

“I don't care what you say to me. I care what you share with me.”
~~ Nepalese poet Santosh Kalwar

“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”
~~ author E.A. Bucchianeri lives in Portugal

“Instructions for living a life. / Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.”
~~ Mary Oliver

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
~~ Allan W. Watts [1915-73]

“Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.”
~~ Roy T. Bennett

“The trouble is if you don’t spend your life yourself, other people spend it for you.”
~~ British playwright Sir Peter Shaffer [1926-2016]

"If we don’t have a healthy land we won’t have a healthy people."
~~ Carleton Bowekaty, Tribal Councilman at Zuni Pueblo

“When your toil has been a pleasure, you have not earned money merely, but money, health, delight, and moral profit, all in one.”
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

“Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character.”
~~ T. Alan Armstrong, band teacher in Georgia USA

"I'm always sorry when pleasant things end. Something still pleasanter may come after, but you can never be sure."
~~ L.M. {Lucy Maud} Montgomery [1874-1942]

"Logic will get you from A to B, imagination will get you everywhere."
~~ recent popular quote, NOT by Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water."
~~ Nobel-laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore [1861-1941]

"I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free."
~~ painter Georgia O'Keeffe [1887-1986]

"When the sun shines, it shines for everyone."
~~ Jamaican musician Ziggy Marley

"The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog."
~~ Ambrose Bierce [1842-1914]

"Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday."
~~ Don Marquis [1878-1937]

"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard because if it isn't there, I never lost it to begin with."
~~ author L. Frank Baum [1856-1919]

"Our culture is about choosing an identity and sticking with it so [that] people can market [crap] to you. Anything that switches that around is completely the antithesis of what our culture implores us to do."
~~ entertainer RuPaul Charles

"Nostalgia ain't what it used to be."
~~ NOT said by Yogi Berra, but by Peter De Vries [1910-93], in his 1959 novel "The Tent of Wickedness"

“Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.”
~~ Hans Christian Anderson [1805-75]

“I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.”
~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007]

“Something will be offensive to someone in every book, so you've got to fight it.”
~~ Judy Blume

“In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.”
~~ Langston Hughes [1902-67]

"Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world."
~~ Dr. Wayne W. Dyer [1940-2015]

"Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom."
~~ writer E.B. White [1899-1985] in "The Trumpet of The Swan" [1970]

“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in her seminal 1929 essay “A Room of One’s Own”

"I am not a good man, and I'm not a bad man. I am not a hero. And I'm definitely not a president. And, no, I'm not an officer. Do you know what I am? I am an idiot with a box and a screwdriver."
~~ 12th Doctor Who

"The Pacific Northwest has its year-long 'Rain Festival' and Washington, DC continues celebrating its year-long 'Festival of Stupid'."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."
~~ Zen proverb

"I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I'll go to jail, so what? We've been in jail for 400 years."
~~ boxing great Muhammad Ali [1942-2016]

"In the old battle between the public interest and private greed . . . private greed is winning, personified by President Donald Trump."
~~ Ruth Conniff, editor-in-chief at The Progressive Magazine [est. 1909]

"Rick Perry puts the 'goober' back in gubernatorial."
~~ progressive activist Jim Hightower

"At times like these in which we live, it will not do to be overscrupulous."
~~ Alexander Hamilton [1757-1804], in 1800

"What if the fourth time's the charm and we've just been settling thus far?"
~~ "Frazz" syndicated comic strip [est. 2001] by Jef Mallett

"The good society is one in which virtue pays. "
~~ Abraham Maslow [1908-70]

"Leaks are illegal and hated by those in power (and their followers) precisely because political officials want to be able to lie to the public with impunity and without detection."
~~ journalist Glenn Greenwald

"Lying is the message. It's not just that Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly to assert power over truth itself."
~~ Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen

"Ni Pravda b Tass, ni Tass b Pravda (No truth in The News, no news in The Truth)"
~~ longtime Russian saying . . . the humor here is that Pravda (truth) is the Communist Party newspaper and Tass (news) is the official government news agency

"Hillary Clinton carried only 472 counties in America out of more than 3,000, but those 472 were predominately urban and accounted for nearly two-thirds of the country's economic output."
~~ political theorist Yascha Mounk

"Donald Trump and the Republicans are creating a tribe of 'Me and Mine' while no longer even recognizing a democratic society of 'Us and Ours'."
~~ John Kircher of Washington, DC (letter in May 2017 The Atlantic Magazine [est. 1857])

"The consequences of our not thinking are great . . . People who aren't thinking are capable of anything."
~~ George E. Minnich, CFO & multiple board member

"There is no partial commitment to justice. You are either in or you're out."
~~ 1968 Olympic athlete Dr. John Carlos

"The supreme issue [is] the encroachment of the powerful few on the rights of the many."
~~ Robert M. La Follette [1855-1925]

"The next few years are going to be hell."
~~ feminist Gloria Steinem, in November 2016

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

U.S. Fascists Attack Healthcare

On June 22nd, the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate revealed their written-in-secret 'Trump Doesn't Care' health bill.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said:
"I’ll fight this mean, scary, reckless, shameful, heartless Senate G.O.P. health care bill every way [that] I can."

Sen. Bernie Sanders said:
"Let us be clear and this is not trying to be overly dramatic: Thousands of people will die if the Republican health care bill becomes law."

Barack Obama said:
"Simply put, if there’s a chance [that] you might get sick, get old, or start a family – this bill will do you harm."

Working Minds Essay #113: No More July Fourth For Me

I am an American and I love the country that I was born in. But that country no longer exists.

All three branches of the U.S. federal government are now controlled by fascists. Congress is controlled by Republicans who sold out to the Koch Brothers and A.L.E.C., to Wall Street banks, to Southern (and Northern) racists and hatemongers, to Rupert Murdoch's Fox Channel and its fake news propaganda, to religious fanatics, and to climate change-denying polluters. The U.S. Supreme Court is controlled by fascists (5 to 4): all five are members of the Federalist Society and signatories of P.N.A.C. (the latter being a violation of their oath of office, if not both). Loose cannon billionaire sex offender Emperor Donald Trump violated his oath of office as President the moment that he spoke it and is still in violation of the Constitution's Emolument Clauses. His entire administration believes that lying alters reality. And there is now enough evidence of the crime of obstruction of justice to impeach Emperor Trump – whenever the U.S. Constitution gets revived.

The U.S. Constitution is a hollow shell; it was placed on life support (metaphorically) in January 2010 when Justice John Roberts issued the ludicrous Citizens United v. F.E.C. decision declaring the United States to be a fascist government. The U.S. Constitution was finally killed when Emperor Trump took over the White House and the Executive Branch with the help of (per evidence since revealed) dictator Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Fascism was defined by Benito Mussolini in 1926 as when "the corporations and the military take the government away from the people". He later said that he should have called it corporatism, because that is what it is. Everyone in Emperor Trump's cabinet is either a general officer in the military (active or retired) or a right wing billionaire. Other officials in the Trump White House include failed TV reporters, incompetent members of the Trump family, and lobbyists and politicians sworn to dismantle the very department or bureau that they now head.

* *          * *          * *          * *
I long ago gave up celebrating 'pagan holidays' – Hallowe'en is the obvious one, but so are New Years Day, Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. That leaves Memorial Day and Veterans Day and Labor Day, which no longer have cultural meaning and are basically excuses for three-day weekends. M.L.K. Day, Gay Pride Day, Mothers Day, and Fathers Day are irrelevant to my situation, so that left only Independence Day on July Fourth as a holiday that mattered to me.

A group of wealthy white males signed the Declaration of Independence on July Fourth in 1776, and their defiance of the British monarchy and business interests put each of them at great risk. The last phrase of that immortal document states that they "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor."

Today's United States government has no honor. None.

Emperor Trump decreed withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement so that our corporations can freely pollute and thus increase profits. Congress is slashing Head Start and Medicare and Medicaid and cutting $5B from public education and cutting further billions from the budgets of the E.P.A. and the I.R.S. and the C.D.C and the S.E.C., and from the Departments of Health & Human Services and Housing & Urban Development so that corporations can wreak havoc without regulation. The Department of the Interior will be selling federal land and mineral rights to the LOWEST-bidding polluter. And there will be no job creation programs through infra-structure repair or renewable energy or economic stimulous – better to keep the peasants living in fear.

Here is a clue for the clueless: Privatization is fascism. Every time. Period.

So there is really nothing to celebrate on July Fourth this year. We The People are displaced, no longer free and independent individuals basking in a world of choice and prosperity. We are peasants living under the control of the same divine right aristocracy that we broke with in 1776.

And at least half of the people in America (and in New Mexico and in my Valencia County) have been brainwashed into believing that that is a good thing.

Copyright 2017 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved