May 2018 Quotations (59)

"To Roseanne: Racism is not a known side effect of our drug (Ambien)."
~~ manufacturer Sanofi-Aventis USA

"Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. [1841-1935]

"One should either be sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers."
~~ Eugene O'Neill [1888-1953]

"Laughter is America's most important export."
~~ Walt Disney [1901-66]

"I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government."
~~ Woody Allen

"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]

"One word / Frees us of all the weight and pain of life: / That word is love."
~~ Ancient Greek playwright Sophocles [496-406 B.C.E]

"Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself."
~~ Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.]

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Beer, it's the best damn drink in the world."
~~ actor Jack Nicholson

“After all is said and done, a helluva lot more is said than done!”
~~ corollary to Murphy's Law, source unknown

"I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value."
~~ Hermann Hesse [1877-1962]

"On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use."
~~ Epictetus [55?–135? C.E.]

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke."
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]

“If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so.”
~~ Lev Grossman

“That's the thing about lessons, you always learn them when you don't expect them or want them.”
~~ Irish novelist Cecelia Ahern

"Comey will not be prosecuted."
~~ The Pen at Peace Team activism website, April 2018

"Time to hold Trump to the same standard we’re holding Bill Cosby."
~~ Kanisha J. Jackson, on Twitter

"Now I lay me down to sleep . . . for all the fun stuff . . . thanks a heap!"
~~ bedtime prayer by Dennis the Menace in a syndicated daily cartoon panel

“Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.”
~~ Dolores Huerta

“Your fear is 100% dependent on you for its survival.”
~~ Steve Maraboli

“Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
~~ Persian poet & mystic Rumi [1207-73]

"Peace of mind comes from not wanting to change others."
~~ Dr. Gerald Jampolsky

"Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation."
~~ Coretta Scott King [1927-2006]

“What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?”
~~ playwright Edward Albee [1928-2016]

“If you want to be a doormat you have to lay yourself down first.”
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"I reject the false choice that you can either have a strong economy or a strong environment. We can do both."
~~ U.S. Senator Kamala Harris [Dem-CA]

"By your early forties, the best part about going to bed is imagining the coffee [that] you’re going to drink in the morning."
~~ composer Jason Hayes

"Trump isn’t the cause of what’s happened to America. He’s the consequence – the product of years of stagnant wages and big money’s corruption of our democracy."
~~ economist Robert B. Reich

"Remember: Life is short. Dream big or go home."
~~ motto of Lost Hiker Brewing Company in Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico

"There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard."
~~ Arundhati Roy

“I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.”
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]

“If the government is covering up knowledge of aliens, they are doing a better job of it than they do at anything else.”
~~ Stephen W. Hawking [1942-2018]

"Divorce the story of your limitation and marry your unlimited capacity."
~~ Tana Ray

“To make profound changes in your life, you need either inspiration or desperation.”
~~ Anthony 'Tony' Robbins

"The only thing new in the world is the history [that] you don't know."
~~ Harry S. Truman [1884-1972]

"From fake news to Stormygate, [this country's] spinning out of control like a clown car without a designated driver."
~~ comedian Lewis Black, in an email for the American Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.)

“Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”
~~ Leon Trotsky [1879-1940]

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]

"If it's Tuesday, it's Election Day."
~~ new motto (2018) of the U.S. Democratic Party [est. 1848]

“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

“Life is a sh*t blizzard.”
~~ Florida author Carl Hiaasen

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
~~ President Dwight D. 'Ike' Eisenhower [1890-1969]

“Every moment is the paradox of now or never.”
~~ writer Simon Van Booy

"It is time to revive anti-trust [enforcement]."
~~ economist Robert B. Reich

"Things don’t always go your way just because you’re awesome."
~~ cartoonist Lincoln Peirce

“Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.”
~~ journalist Martha Gellhorn [1908-98]

"'Just be yourself' is the worst advice [that] you can give some people."
~~ syndicated comedian Argus Hamilton

"Sociology is the outhouse in the grove of academe."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"Truth is relative. They [Robert Mueller's team] may have a different version of the truth than we do."
~~ lawyer & politician Rudolph 'Rudy' Giuliani

"Smart people learn from everything and everyone. Average people [learn] from their experiences. Stupid people already have all the answers."
~~ Socrates [469-399 B.C.E.]

"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."
~~ Thomas Sowell

"On Mother's Day I can think of no mother more deserving than a mother who had to give one back."
~~ Erma Bombeck [1927-96]

"Consider that all accomplishment is constituted by a series of resolved breakdowns."
~~ philosopher Werner Erhard

"The law must be clear that anti-discrimination laws exist to protect people, not beliefs."
~~ Terry Sanderson

"Don't just teach your children to read . . . Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything."
~~ George Carlin [1937-2008]

"We have a single mission: to protect and hand [off] the planet to the next generation."
~~ François Hollande, President of France

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

Donald Trump Has A Strategy

Emperor Trump is using motor-mouth lawyer Rudy Giuliani to contaminate the New York and D.C. juror pools in advance of any indictments. The lawyers can battle on this issue for years. Whether he wins or he loses, he wins: moving trial to another jurisdiction is a simple delay, and if the jury pool is declared not contaminated, then he will have a nicely-contaminated juror pool. Then the lawyers can fight a different artificial legal battle.

Copyright 2018 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

my letter published in today's Albuquerque Journal newspaper

wind & solar power is good for New Mexico

The Rio Grande Foundation claims to be non-partisan, but they are not: a good portion of their funding is from the State Policy Network, which is partly funded by the Koch Brothers and other polluters.

The Rio Grande Foundation's recent letter/op-ed in the Journal (May 12th) is filled with propaganda that is intended to prevent progress in renewable energy in New Mexico.

One point that is easily rebutted is Rio Grande Foundation's claim that the production tax credit of $24 per megawatt is 'an enormous sum'. The 1992 federal law that pertains here mandates a 1.5 cent tax credit per kilowatt. Such production tax credits are payable for ten fiscal years, while typical solar panels are warranted for 25 years.

The tax credit has been increased for inflation; the current 2.4 cent per kilowatt production tax credit is still much lower than the charge on my P.N.M. bill of 8.3 cents per kilowatt. This incentive has P.N.M. building hundreds of acres of solar and wind farms around New Mexico.

Production of electricity by solar and wind and other renewables is a very good deal for New Mexico. Just not so good for the Rio Grande Foundation and the fossil-fuel companies who fund them.

G.E. NORDELL
Rio Communities, New Mexico

Copyright 2018 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

A Margot Kidder Story

None of the stories today about the death of actress Margot Kidder mention the Western TV series that she starred in back in 1971-72 with James Garner. It was called "Nichols" and ran for 24 episodes and was about the dying of the Old West. They painted the dirt streets of the Western Town backlot sets to look like asphalt, put up some telephone poles, brought in old cars and a motorcycle for Garner, and called it 1914.

I was then a computer programmer at Warner Brothers in Burbank and one of the privileges was walking around the backlot during lunch hour and other times. We got to watch grips and actors working there or on the sound stages, a real education in film making.

Margot came off as a bit wild. Actor David Carradine was filming a different TV series at Warners, the one where the old Oriental called him 'Grasshopper'. He drove around in a baby blue 1950s Packard convertible. He and Margot became pals; I think the thing that they most had in common was that they both loved running around barefoot. You'd see them from time to time playing among the various backlot sets, acting like children. (It was the Seventies, so 'weed' may have been involved. Who knows?)

One day, they came back to Margot's dressing room - just as I was passing by - and discovered that she had locked herself out. What followed was a crackup. Both were in costume; Margot - wearing the big skirts of a Western barmaid - was helped thru the window of her dressing room by Carradine, with whooping and laughter. The event was like a Laurel & Hardy or Buster Keaton skit, or maybe something with Carol Burnett.

Memories are wispy things, as are the lives of individuals. The news stories today mentioned "Superman" and the many tragic events in Margot's life. But what I remember is that she was a great laugher.
Copyright 2018 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved