What Barack Obama Actually Said

At a campaign stop in Roanoke, Virginia on 13 July 2012, what President Obama said during his sppech was:

"Somebody helped to create the unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business . . . you didn't build that [system] – somebody else made that happen . . . The point is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

What the Republican Party and the fascist media did was to intentially edit the video so that it seems as if Obama was denigrating business creation.

If the fascist Republicans had anything of value to offer the American voter, then they would not choose to lie and cheat and steal like they are doing in campaigns all across America in 2012.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

July 2012 News Factoids

BANKING & FINANCE

The top banks are 23 percent larger than they were before the G.O.P. Economic Meltdown crisis began.

52 percent of all the assets held by the entire banking industry have now become aggregated into the hands of just five companies (up from 17 percent four decades ago), and the top 10 institutions have swollen so large that they possess wealth that equates to roughly half of America’s annual G.D.P. (gross domestic product). == per Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in its annual report for 2011 released March 2012

By mid-July, JPMorgan said that the bad trade in U.K. has ballooned to a loss of $5.8 billion.

GLOBAL WARNINGS

Precipitation in New Mexico from January to June this year has been 54 percent of the longterm average, and 81 percent of the state is classified as being in 'severe drought'. == per the U.S. National Weather Service

Sea levels along the coast of Virginia have risen more than a foot {30+ cm} and are still rising. Average rise along the Altantic coast of America is 4.85 inches.

"For the entire country, the first six months of 2012 were the hottest ever recorded – an amazing 4.5°F above the XXth Century average." == per U.S. National Climatic Data Center

OTHER CONCERNS

Search engine usage statistics for May 2012: Google handled 66.7 percent of searches; Bing was second with 15.4 percent (vs. 14.1 percent a year ago); Yahoo was third with 13.4 percent (vs. 15.9 percent a year ago); Ask did 3 percent; AOL did 1.5 percent.

The lingering power outages from the July storms on the East Coast are largely due to deferred maintenance on the grid by the power companies – the money not spent on needed repairs makes the bottom line seem better – including rust-damaged 'steel wire' power lines still in place from the 1940s.

Is nothing sacred? The uniforms for the U.S. Olympic Team that were announced in July were made in China.

TIME Magazine combined information from several sources into a half-page graphic about 'Where The Jobs Will Be' over the next five years. Their top ten are: social networking sites (27% growth); street traffic info providers; green construction; social network gaming; relaxation drinks; medical device recycling; green building materials; retinal-imaging machines (17% growth); internet publishing & broadcasting; and secure data storage.

For some reason, this seems like a very cool piece of equipment: the off-road wheelchair from Action Trackchair in Minnesota.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Working Minds Essay #99: Mitt Romney Got Caught

Willard Mitt Romney is a liar and a pirate, and possibly a sociopath.

Mitt professes to practice the Mormon religion, and yet he does nothing but lie and lie and lie all day long, every day since announcing his candidacy for President in April 2011.

(And this is the best that the Republican Party has to offer the American voter?)

Aside from the old news of Romney's mistreatment of his dog and his children and his employees, there are two recent scandals concerning Mitt's integrity.

The first is his refusal to disclose his financial records as is the longtime practice for presidential candidates. Romney flat refuses to be honest with the American people and make his tax returns public (not even redacted versions).

He also refuses to name his 'bundlers', the folks working to bring in the millions of dollars financing his campaign. Keeping these workers hidden from view brings up all kinds of conjecture, such as violations of employee/campaign restrictions, federal and state.

So the New York Times and the Boston Globe newspapers went looking, and soon discovered several falsities, some by ommission and some by commission.

Mitt Romney is the sole owner of a questionable (tax-dodge) corporation in the off-shore tax haven of Bermuda. Bain Capital
's corporate identity is based in a mail-drop in the Cayman Islands off-shore tax haven.

Until recently, Romney kept millions in cash in a secret Swiss bank account.

Maybe the information is being kept hidden because it will reveal dastardly deeds beyond piracy and vulture capitalism. Who is to say there isn't illegal business dealings, such as money laundering. With no data, we will never know.

But the second and most damaging part of these scandals is the revelation that Mitt Romney was running Bain Capital a full TWO YEARS after the date he has given over and over for when he left the company. He has stated many times that he left Bain in 1999, especially when accused of acts of piracy against viable companies and shipping the jobs overseas and leaving the firms bankrupt. His position was that such things happened only after he left.

Well, golly. That turns out not to be true. Mitt Romney is listed on official documents filed with the S.E.C. (Securities & Exchange Commission) as the sole owner, sole proprietor, and president and CEO of Bain Capital thru February 2001.

Ooops.

And he was paid $100,000 each year as head of the company. Probably one reason that he dares not reveal his tax returns – and what else is there in this category? (Either he did perform work for the salary and lied about it, or he performed no work for that money, which is immoral and un-American if not illegal.)

Ooops.

So Romney and the spin-doctors of his campaign team try to say that it was a formality, they had to send in the forms, it still doesn't prove that he ran the company after 1999.

Yes, it does. But wait a minute, maybe what the Romney folks mean is that Mitt signed legal documents that lied about his role at Bain Capital. Could that be his out? It was just another lie – this one delivered on official documents required by the S.E.C. from each and every American corporation.

Ooops. Violation of federal law, probably including perjury.

And all Romney's protests the last few days are on tape, uploaded to the internet a hundred places.

So Mitt Romney is in rather a pickle here: Mitt Romney either lied back then, on federal documents, under penalty of perjury – OR – Mitt Romney has been and still is lying to America on the campaign trail about his past.

* *          * *          * *          * *Given that the faux-news media is owned by the fascists of the American Oligarchy, Mitt Romney may squeak by on this one. Perhaps another decades-long child molestation scandal will divert the American people. Or a lost little girl in Georgia will pre-empt more air-time than politics altogether. The American sheeple are easily diverted.

I expect that Barack Obama will win by a landslide because I am an idealist, and cannot concieve of an American voter population that is as brain-dead as the Republicans want and expect.

But what really worries me are the three probable negative options for the November 2012 election.

One: Romney will win, a disaster for democracy and for your grandchildren's future and for the future of life on this planet.

Two: Barack Obama wins the election, but the Republicans manage to steal it once again.

Three: Romney does not win at the Republican Convention on the first ballot. Bet you forgot about that. The convention then becomes a free-for-all, with possible candidates including Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachmann, Donald Trump, Darrell Issa – none of whom are qualified to hold public office, much less to occupy the White House.

Look again and try not to cringe: The above short list is the best that the Republican Party has to offer the American voter.

Having read all this, if you get a good night's sleep tonight you can consider yourself lucky (or maybe just another ignorant sheeple).

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

July 2012 Quotations

“How hard I find it to see what is right in front of my eyes!”
~~ Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951]

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."
~~ Bob Dylan

"The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]

"The things [that] we hate about ourselves aren't more real than the things [that] we like about ourselves."
~~ columnist Ellen Goodman

"You know [that] you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake."
~~ Bob Hope [1903-2003]

"Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops."
~~ Goethe [1749-1832]

"Sanity is a cozy lie."
~~ Susan Sontag [1933-2004]

"There is nothing that is always or never."
~~ Maxine in Santa Fe, New Mexico

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"I've never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know."
~~ Epicurus [341–270 B.C.E.]

"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]

"In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishment – there are consequences."
~~ R.G. Ingersoll [1833-99]

"Everything is funny as long as it's happening to someone else."
~~ Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

"Self-pity is our worst enemy, and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world."
~~ Helen Keller [1880-1968]

"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in a cage."
~~ Ray Bradbury [1920-2012]

"If pregnancy were a book, they would cut out the last two chapters."
~~ Nora Ephron [1941-2012]

"Creativity is intelligence having fun."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Time is the only critic without personal ambition."
~~ John Steinbeck [1902-68]

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."
~~ Mae West [1893-1980]

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."
~~ Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626]

"Keep your face always to the sunshine, and the shadows will fall behind you."
~~ Walt Whitman [1819-92]

"There is no such thing as bravery, only degrees of fear."
~~ John Wainwright [1921-95]

"you can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough for me."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]

"Parents are not interested in justice. They're interestded in peace and quiet."
~~ Bill Cosby

"There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient."
~~ novelist Marilynne Robinson

"The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control."
~~ Ogden Nash [1902-71]

"The only thing more destructive than a tornado is a family."
~~ Reynolds Price [1933-2011]

"To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is a reason."
~~ artist Ai Weiwei

"To be what we are, and to be what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

"If you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself."
~~ Carl Gustav Jung [1875-1961]

"We now operate in a world in which we can assume neither competence nor good faith from the authorities. The consequences of this simple, devastating realization define American life."
~~ Chris Hayes

"An historian is a prophet in reverse."
~~ Friedrich von Schlegel [1772-1829]

“Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.”
~~ Frank Capra [1897-1991]

"The luxury of doing good surpasses every personal enjoyment."
~~ John Gray

"People cannot remain good unless good is expected of them."
~~ Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956]

"So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indespensible; and no man is useless while he has a friend."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

"Everything changes, nothing is lost."
~~ Ovid [43 B.C.E. – 17 or 18 C.E.]

"There is a limit to what you can do in politics."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]

"All good books have one thing in common: They are truer than if they had really happened."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]

"You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one."
~~ Jerry Garcia [1942-95], of the Grateful Dead band

"Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
~~ Adam Smith [1723-90]

"When a man realizes his littleness, his greatness can appear."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]

"It is very strange that the years teach us patience – that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting."
~~ novelist Elizabeth Taylor of U.K.

"Every life viewed from the inside is a series of defeats."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not."
~~ John Irving

"Happy people do a great deal for their friends."
~~ Willa Cather [1873-1947]

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

'The Rich Are Unethical' graphic

graphic designed by Tony J. Shin {{ TonyJShin81 gmail.com }} who is interested in feedback

'iKill' graphic about Apple in China

graphic designed by Tony J. Shin {{ TonyJShin81 <at> gmail.com }} who is interested in feedback

Two Educations

"There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live. Surely these should never be confused in the mind of any man who has the slightest inkling of what culture is. For most of us it is essential that we should make a living . . . In the complications of modern life and with our increased accumulation of knowledge, it doubtless helps greatly to compress some years of experience into far fewer years by studying for a particular trade or profession in an institution; but that fact should not blind us to another – namely, that in so doing we are learning a trade or a profession, but are not getting a liberal education as human beings."
— James Truslow Adams [1878-1949], circa 1929

June 2012 Quotations II

"Information doesn't want to be free. Information wants to be valuable."
~~ Larry Wall

"Everybody knows more than anybody."
~~ Lorrie B. Potters

"There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]

"If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money."
~~ advice columnist Abigail Van Buren

"Pain plus time equals humor."
~~ Lenny Bruce [1925-66]

"To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self."
~~ Joan Didion

"An artist is an artist because he is not happy with the world, so he creates his own existence."
~~ Robin Gibb [1949-2012]

"Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place, then come down and shoot the survivors."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]

"All great change in America begins at the dinner table."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]

"Never advise anyone to go to war or to marry."
~~ Spanish proverb

"Forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them more."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"The reason American cities are prosperous is that there is no place to sit down."
~~ Albert J. Tally, in 1924

"Hate-on-the-highway is an institution occupying a high place in our modern civilization . . . The godawful glares that drivers exchange as they pass each other, the mutual hatred between motorist and pedestrian, these manifestations seem to constitute the ultimate in righteous wrath."
~~ H. Allen Smith [1907-76], in 1947

"The last freedom is choosing your attitude."
~~ Viktor Frankl [1905-97]

"The second law of thermodynamics, simply put, is as follows: left to themselves, things tend to go to hell in a handbasket."
~~ columnist Cecil Adams

"Fate takes its cut."
~~ Lord Buckley [1906-60]

"My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating."
~~ Ashley Brilliant

"Trust everyone, but cut the cards."
~~ Anonymous

"The head of my fan club lives under the Hollywood Freeway in a cardboard box."
~~ independent filmmaker John Carpenter

"I've never seen turkey being sold as imitation tofu."
~~ Lorrie B. Potters

"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."
~~ Clay Shirky

"When in doubt, doubt."
~~ John R. Henderson

"The main quality that sets humans apart from other animals is the human desire to set itself apart from other animals."
~~ Peter Berryman

"Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library."
~~ Barbara Tuchman

"Our whole American way of life is a great war of ideas, and librarians are the arms dealers selling weapons to both sides."
~~ James Quinn

"Life really does go on whether you're enjoying it or not."
~~ Kendall Morse

"Life is not fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all."
~~ William Goldman

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
~~ Stephen King

"When I am dead I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet but his books were read.'"
~~ Hilaire Belloc [1870-1953]

"What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?"
~~ Rex Stout [1886-1975]

"In numbers there is quantity."
~~ Richard Connolly

"Data is the plural of anecdote."
~~ U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan [1927-2003]

"No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."
~~ sci-fi author Terry Pratchett

"We have to believe in free will. We've got no choice."
~~ Isaac Bashevis Singer [1902-91]

"It is the nature of emergencies to be inconvenient."
~~ Terri Weiner

"Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket."
~~ Isaac Asimov [1920-92]

"Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?"
~~ Frank Scully

"When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]

"Nothing hurts like your own pain."
~~ Silent Era actress Anita Page [1910-2008]

"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. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower [1890-1969], on 16 April 1953

"The fist starves the hand."
~~ Noah benShea

"Beyond a certain amount, money costs too much."
~~ Michael Z. Lewin

"Why do writers write? Because it isn't there."
~~ Thomas Berger

"An editor's job is to take something great and make it good."
~~ Kinky Friedman

"Books are like your children. They take nine months to write; the manuscript weighs six pounds and . . . you send them out into the world and hope that some day they'll send back money."
~~ Edna Buchanan

"You are about to be told, again, that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what this country does to its valuable natural resources?"
~~ Utah Phillips [1935-2008], addressing a high school class

"A mushroom cloud has no silver lining."
~~ controversial saying

"There are more important things than money; the only trouble is they all cost money!"
~~ Louis A. Safian

"She used to be a schoolteacher, but she has no class now."
~~ Fred Allen [1894-1956]

"A man's home is his castle. {The house of an Englishman is to him as his castle.}"
~~ Sir Edward Coke [1552-1634]

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

News Factoids for April to June 2012

"High oil prices now pose a greater risk to the world economy than even Europe's sovereign debt crisis."
— per Fatih Birol, chief economist at Intl. Energy Agency - in late March 2012

The Economic Policy Institute gathered data from a range of market researchers and found that the profit on Apple's iPhone was $319 per unit, against the sale price of $630 and labor costs in China of $15 per unit. (That cost in China includes payroll, overhead, and profit for Foxconn.)

British Petroleum announced in April that 2011 corporate profits were $25.7 billion – while payments and cleanup in the devastated Gulf have not proceeded according to B.P.'s promises.

In the first year since the B.P. Megaspill Disaster, the crab crop dropped 42% in Louisiana, 37% in Alabama, and 33% in Mississippi; the oyster harvest fell 55% in Louisiana, 34% in Mississippi, and 3% in Alabama; and the shrimp catch declined 52% in Mississippi, 48% in Alabama, and 14% in Louisiana.

The Google Chrome browser reached a market share of 32.8 percent in May, while the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser's share dropped to 31.9 percent; Mozilla's Firefox browser is third with just more than 25% of the market. — per StatCounter

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., the publisher of authors from Mark Twain to J.R.R. Tolkien, sought bankruptcy protection in May to eliminate more than $3 billion in debt.

Investors withdrew $85 billion from U.S. stock mutual funds last year and have pulled more money out than they put in for five years in a row – significant given how many Americans automatically put money in through 401(k) accounts.
— A.P. Business

INVENTIONS OF THE MONTH
artificial soybeans
Tofu Helper™
powdered water (for emergencies)

documentary videos countering Mitt Romney's repeated lies
G.S.T. Steel of Kansas City, Missouri [6:07]
Broken Promises: Romney's Massachusetts Record [4:18]

"A Massachusetts solar company to which Mitt Romney personally delivered a $1.5 million loan when he was governor has gone belly up, leaving him vulnerable to the same 'picking winners and losers' charges that he’s been lobbing at President Obama over Solyndra ... In January 2003, just less than three weeks into his term as governor, Romney handed a check to Konarka executives during a news conference ... One of the other winners announced that day – Evergreen Solar – has already undercut Romney’s Solyndra attacks by filing last year for bankruptcy protection."

A new Gallup poll finds that 46 percent of Americans believe in creationism: that Jehovah created humans in their present form less than 10,000 years ago. [Thus, 46 percent of Americans are irrational idiots – Ed.]

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

June 2012 Quotations

"You can't tell a book by it's movie."
~~ Broadway producer Louis A. Safian

"Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul."
~~ Walt Whitman [1819-92]

“Out of the mysterious we discover the undiscovered.”
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"I just try to concentrate on concentrating."
~~ Martina Navratilova

"If you don't think too good, don't think too much."
~~ baseball legend Ted Williams [1918-2002]

"You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them."
~~ athlete Michael Jordan

"If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done."
~~ Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951]

"The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world."
~~ Leonard Cohen

"Don't be possessed by your possessions."
~~ photographer Lisl Steiner

"Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean."
~~ Goethe [1749-1832]

"A narcissist is someone better looking that you are."
~~ Gore Vidal

"One must learn to be silent just as one must learn to talk."
~~ novelist Victoria Wolff [1903-92]

"Most human beings are quite likable if you don't see too much of them."
~~ Irish writer Robert Wilson Lynd [1879-1949]

"Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times."
~~ Joan Baez

"The value of an industry is inversely proportional to the number of awards [that] it gives itself."
~~ blogger David Burge

"To be afraid is to act as if the truth were not true."
~~ Bayard Rustin [1912-87]

"Some defeats are only installments to victory."
~~ Jacob Riis [1849-1914]

"Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, adversity not without many comforts and hopes."
~~ Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626]

"Never think [that] you've seen the last of anything."
~~ Eudora Welty [1909-2001]

"It is very dangerous to get caught without something to read."
~~ Elizabeth Savage

"Nothing recedes like success."
~~ Walter Winchell 1897-1972]

"Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it."
~~ Irving Berlin [1888-1989]

"Joy is the simplest form of gratitude."
~~ theologian Karl Barth [1886-1968]

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

"The more [that] you learn, the less [that] you fear."
~~ British author Julian Barnes

"The most truthful part of a newspaper is the advertisements."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"I'm not trying to PREDICT the future. I'm just trying to PREVENT it."
~~ Ray Bradbury

"The believer is happy; the doubter is wise."
~~ Hungarian proverb

"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believ e, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world, since it is experience of life and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind."
~~ Giacomo Leopardi [1798-1837]

"To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

"There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]

"Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind."
~~ Nicolas Chamfort [1741-94]

"A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost pays to be one."
~~ Frank McKinney 'Kin' Hubbard [1868-1930]

"A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road."
~~ poet Alexander Smith [1830–67]

"Always behave like a duck: Keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath."
~~ Judge Jacob Braude of Illinois

"Money may not buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus."
~~ Françoise Sagan [1935-2004]

"Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but many of the things [that] they make it easier to do don't need to be done."
~~ TV curmudgeon Andy Rooney [1919-2011]

"Simple is the most sophisticated thing of all."
~~ cookbook author Ina Garten

"If you hear any sinister background music, run like hell."
~~ Carol Cail

"The biggest enemy is tap water."
~~ Robert S. Morrison, Vice Chairman of Pepsi-Co

"Little things come in small packages."
~~ Mrs. Emile Renan

"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right."
~~ Ani DiFranco

"All television is children's television."
~~ Richard P. Adler

"All things are never equal."
~~ Robert L. Wolke

"Surrounding yourself with dwarfs does not make you a giant."
~~ Yiddish proverb

"They can't break you if you don't have a spine."
~~ cartoonist Scott Adams

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

May 2012 Quotations

"The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable."
~~ attributed to James A. Garfield [1831-81]
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]
"The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off."
~~ Gloria Steinem

"If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet."
~~ rock legend Keith Richards

"It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach."
~~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]

"Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it."
~~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky [1821-81]

"Growing old is a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form."
~~ André Maurois [1885-1967]

"Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute and cannot unite -- but they all worship money."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"An idiot will try anything. That is how you know [that] he is an idiot."
~~ Michel Audiard [1920-85]

"All diseases run into one, old age."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"Every act of rebelling expresses a nostalgia for innocence."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]

"A study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything was last year."
~~ comedian Marty Allen

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life."
~~ Virginia Woolf [1882-1941]

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; n othing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."
~~ Calvin Coolidge [1872-1933]

"An idea doesn't have to be true, or even especially convincing, to be politically effective."
~~ Elizabeth Kolbert

"Give me any two pages of the Bible and I'll give you a picture."
~~ Cecil B. DeMille [1881-1959]

"Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows. This – the supremacy of reason – was, is and will be the primary concern of my work, and the essence of Objectivism."
('Brief Summary', The Objectivist Sept 1971)
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate."
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70]

"Ugliness is in a way superior to beauty because it lasts."
~~ Serge Gainsbourg [1928-91]

"If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice."
~~ playwright Tom Stoppard

"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."
~~ Carl Gustav Jung [1875-1961]

"Never say [that] you know a man until you have divided an inhereitence with him."
~~ poet Johann Kaspar Lavater [1741-1801]

"Civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention [that] it deserves."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain."
~~ Vivian Greene

"I don’t hate people. I just feel better when they are not around."
~~ Charles Bukowski [1920-94]

"If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."
~~ Bambi's friend Thumper

"Always make new mistakes."
~~ Esther Dyson

"To some extent what we saw in the 2007, 2008 crash was the result of the throwing off of Glass-Steagall."
~~ Richard Parsons, former Citigroup board chairman

"I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring."
~~ last words of physicist Richard P. Feynman [1918-88], as quoted in the biography "Genius"

"Better to do a good deed near at home than to go far away to burn incense."
~~ aviator Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty."
~~ Nathaniel Hawthorne [1804-64]

"When I was young, I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I'm old, I know it is."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"We experience moments absolutely free from worry. These brief respites are called panic."
~~ Cullen Hightower [1923-2008]

"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster."
~~ Jonathan Swift [1667–1745]

"If you have talent, you don't have to tell [people."
~~ baseball great 'Pee Wee' Reese [1918-99]

"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence [that] we have that people are still thinking."
~~ Jerry Seinfeld

"Tradition is tending the flame, it's not worshiping the ashes."
~~ composer Gustav Mahler [1860-1911]

"'Love thy neighbor' is a precept which could transform the world if it were universally practiced."
~~ Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune [1875-1955]

"The only difference between science and science fiction is timing."
~~ Ted Bell

"Remember, what happens in Las Vegas goes on Facebook."
~~ reporter Ungelbah Daniel-Davila

"We are stuck with an unemployment rate three points higher that the postwar average, and the percentage of working adult Americans is as low as it's been in almost thirty years."
~~ James Suroweicki, New Yorker Magazine
{"Be sure to thank a Republican." ~~ G.E. Nordell}

"Meetings are indespensible when you don't want to do anything."
~~ economist John Kenneth Galbraith [1908-2006]

"A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world."
~~ British author John le Carré

"If evolution really works, how come mothers have only two hands?"
~~ Milton Berle [1908-2002]

"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages [that] you've been."
~~ author Madeleine L'Engle [1918-2007]

"It is cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age."
~~ Margaret Mead [1901-78]

"Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes the edge off admiration."
~~ William Hazlitt [1778-1830]

"Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius."
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]

"Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act, and in that action are the seeds of new knowledge."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

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

April 2012 Quotations

"The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for."
~~ Dostoyevsky [1821-81]

"The middle class built America. It's time for America to rebuild the middle class."
~~ Rev. Al Sharpton

"The only lord I know, is the landlord."
~~ bookseller Lewis Micheaux [1885-1976]

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to concieve."
~~ Don Herold [1889-1966]

"God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand."
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]

"Never interrupt someone doing something [that] you said couldn't be done."
~~ aviator Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"If we do not speak up for our children, they may not be heard. And if we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much."
~~ Marian Wright Edeleman

"Vanity is a mortgage that must be deducted from the value of a man."
~~ Otto von Bismarck [1815-98]

"Silence is the unbearable repartee."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]

"There is no perception that is not full of memories."
~~ Henri Bergson [1859-1941]

"The most important four words in politics are 'up to a point'."
~~ conservative columnist George Will

"It is easier to change a man's religion than to change his diet."
~~ Margaret Mead [1901-78]

"The greatest and most important problems of life cannot be solved. They can only be outgrown."
~~ sci-fi novelist Frank Herbert [1920-86]

"You want me to do something? Tell me [that] I can't do it."
~~ Maya Angelou

“To be at once exceedingly wealthy and good is impossible.”
~~ Plato [428?-327? B.C.E.]

"The greatest thing in the world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-94]

"Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"All that we see or seem / Is but a dream, within a dream"
~~ Edgar Allan Poe [1809-49]

"Conceit may puff a man up, but can never prop him up."
~~ John Ruskin [1819-1900]

"To try to be better is to be better."
~~ actress Charlotte Cushman

"Exhilaration is that feeling [that] you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it."
~~ British actor Rex Harrison [1908-90]

"It is my rule never to lose my temper till it would be detrimental to keep it."
~~ Irish playwright Sean O'Casey [1880-1964]

"Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

"Beauty is a short-lived tyranny."
~~ Socrates [469-399 B.C.E.]

"Whoever has learned to be anxious the right way has learned the ultimate."
~~ Søren Kierkegaard [1813-55]

"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
~~ Wm. Jennings Bryan [1860-1925]

"Nothing is more responsible for 'the good old days' than a bad memory."
~~ Franklin P. Adams [1881-1960]

"The only reason [that] some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory."
~~ actor Paul Fix [1901-83]

"There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown helpless about them."
~~ Clare Boothe Luce [1903-87]

"Our reality is determined by our usefulness."
~~ playwright Edward Albee, in 1978

"Believe those who search for truth. Doubt those who claim to have found it."
~~ Nobel Laureate André Gide [1869-1951]

"At the moment of creativity, absolute inner peace is essential for the artist."
~~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky [1840-93]

"I feel sorry for future generations that won't have polar bears or coastal cities."
~~ TIME Magazine columnist Joel Klein

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
~~ Berthold Auerbach [1812-82]

"Speak truth to power!" ~~ slogan created by the American Friends Service Committee {Quakers} circa 1955

"If states are the laboratory for democracy, [then] Arizona is a meth lab."
~~ educator quoted by Native American activist Winona LaDuke (in 2012)

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, misdiagnosing it, and applying the wrong remedies."
~~ Groucho Marx [1890-1977]

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

"World history is nothing but an endless, dreary account of the rape of the weak by the strong ... (It is) a race with time, a scramble for profit, for power, for treasures."
~~ Herman Hesse [1877-1962], in "The Glass Bead Game", 1943

"When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. When in doubt, mumble."
~~ James H. Boren [1925-2010]

"Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in a man."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Every dream has a price."
~~ Louis L'Amour [1908-88], in "Sitka" 1957

"One kind of change occurs when you add something. If you take an entity and add something to it, it's changed. Another kind of change occurs when you take an entity and subtract something from it – so you've got two kinds of changes there. There's a third kind of change which is very strange – the only kind which I think has any real value – and that is when you take a thing and get it to be itself. You neither add to it nor subtract from it. This is almost a definition of consciousness for me."
~~ Werner Erhard (KQED radio interview, 1975)

"The single most exciting thing [that] you encounter in government is competence, because it is so rare."
~~ Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan [1927-2003]

"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"There is no country in which people live under more overpowering compulsions [than America]. You must wave, you must shout, you must go with the irresistible crowd: otherwise, you will feel like a traitor, a soulless outcast, a deserted ship high and dry upon the shore . . . In a country where all men are free, every man finds that what most matters has been settled for him beforehand."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

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

November is going to be fun!

The Republicans have a dilemma – vote for a Mormon or for a Muslim – and the Democrats have a choice – a constitutional scholar who happens to practice Christianity.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Apartheid In Arizona

The Arizona Legislature has passed a series of laws that essentially bring Apartheid Law to America. In fulfillment of the new laws, the Board of Education in Tucson, Arizona made a list of fifty books in its Xicano & Ethic Studies programs in January, and then over-reacted by sending jackbooted thugs to classrooms to rip the banned books from the hands of students and off the shelves of libraries and classrooms; the captured books, especially the top seven offenders, were boxed up and taken to an undisclosed location for 'storage'.

So I have begun coding links to the Seven Major Offenders on the Spirit of America Bookstore Ethnic Authors page { click here }; works 'Banned in Tucson' include a stageplay by Wm. Shakespeare and books by Rudolfo Anaya, N. Scott Momaday, Sherman Alexie, poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, Henry David Thoreau [1817-62], and others.

Aren't you glad to be living in 'modern' times?

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

News Factoids for February & March 2012

Barack Obama began his campaign for re-election with a video about his accomplishments in the first three years: "Five years ago, we started a movement for change ..." [4:32] on Youtube

Arizona's Republican-led Legislature has written H.C.R. 2065 to put a referendum on the ballot to lower the state's minumum wage from $7.65 per hour and pay teens and young adults as little as $4.65 per hour.

The value of the minimum wage has gone up 21 percent since 1990; the cost of living has increased 67 percent since 1990. ~~ Economic Policy Institute, July 2011

Here's exactly why the price of gasoline has gone up, per Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida: "Congress deregulated oil traders in December 2000."

For further detail, click on this blog's short report on the subject "Root Cause of High Gas prices" posted on February 25th

Toward the end of February, many polls were showing President Obama getting re-elected by as many as ten or fifteen points. Lots of new messes might show up during this election year, especially since the Republican fascists have no scruples whatsoever, but I am predicting (right here and for the record) that Barack Obama will get his second term in office by a landslide of 60-40.

"Television journalism's most pathological mutation, Fox News, propagandizes for the Republican right as faithfully, slickly, and humorlessly as Russian state television does for Vladimir Putin." ~~ Hendrick Herzberg

At the beginning of March, Bank of America pulled the ATM machines from local Valero gas stations, which leaves only one official Bank of America ATM in Los Lunas (12 miles away from me) to serve the 70,000 residents of Valencia County. The next closest Bank of America branch is 30 miles from me in Albuquerque's South Valley. (Good thing that I already began moving banking matters to the local U.S. Bank branch last year.)

The dainty 'Mormon fritillary' butterflies are dying off in Colorado's Rockies because earlier snowmelts are killing off the wild flowers that they feed on.
~~ per LiveScience

“The Republican Party is the 'special olympics' for politicians.” ~~ G.E. Nordell

I finally saw Oscar-nominated "The Tree of Life" at the local library. Terrence Malick is the greatest living director of cinema in America. The only guys who come close are Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, but their narrative styles are nothing like the absolute poetry of Malick's innovative masterpiece.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

WM Essay #98: "Jesus vs. Pseudo-Christians"

No problem here stipulating that there was an individual in history named Jesus, even that he was a carpenter in Nazareth. It is probable that he walked around Judea (where Israel is today) giving speeches, otherwise nobody in that illiterate society would have noticed him nor would versions of his speeches have been written down by the scribes.

The supernatural aspects of the Jesus story are not stipulated here, and anyway are not relevant, except that millions of people are stuck in the magical thinking provided to them by the purveyors of magical thinking.

There are probably not more than a handful of actual practicing Christians on the planet at this time. The word 'christian' is defined as someone who lives their life according to the principles of the New Testament character Jesus of Nazareth, who was given the title 'Christ' in that book. ('Christ' is the Greek word for 'anointed', meaning the same as the Hebrew word 'Messiah', which really means nothing more than 'leader'.)

Take care of the poor? The poor of today are not taken care of. The poor of today are exploited, with many governments allowing dangerous and inhumane environments, with token 'dollar-a-day' wages so they cannot be chastised for condoning abject slavery.

Heal the sick? Modern pseudo-christians prefer to dismantle Obamacare, which isn't that good a solution anyway, because the pseudo-christians prevented and continue to prevent all progress in healthcare, women's rights, safety in the workplace, food & drug safety, etc.

Pollute the environment? Jesus would not do that.

Maybe you should compare his Matthew 25:40 statement "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" with slavery in Africa and Asia, with Mitt Romney's "I don't care about poor people', with poison 'fracking' fluids injected into the ground, with the billions of tons of garbage killing the Pacific Ocean, with cutting the minimum wage in America.

What would Jesus do? Not that.

Pre-emptive war? Constant saber-rattling about North Korea and Iran and Pakistan and Israel? Jesus would not. Even though Jesus never called himself the Prince of Peace, the actions and statements on record were all about non-violence, so anyone acting as a warmonger cannot call themselves 'christian'.

The historical Jesus ran the moneychangers out of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, a rare tale that is included in all four Gospel accounts. Compare that to modern pseudo-christians who worship Wall Street – ticker reports on every news channel – and there is even a bronze bull on Wall Street as stand-in for the golden calf of the Israelites.

Three of the Gospels relate the quotation “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”. Millionaires and billionaires are disqualified, according to the words of Jesus himself.

It is also probable that the reason that magical Jesus has not returned is that the institutions operating in the name of christianity have worked very hard to create a physical and moral cesspool here on Planet Earth. Humanity at large does not qualify for that Kingdom that Jesus talked about.

The Beatitudes were not about making it tougher for people to make a living, that would be Economic Darwinism. The pseudo-christians on the right insist on 'survival of the fittest', which in practice is the time-worn practices of the barbarians – might makes right, the Oligarchy deserves to rule the planet by 'divine right', and anybody in opposition is beaten, killed, or banished.

Or would Jesus side with the Progressive Movement? "Everybody is better off when everybody is better off."

The record gives evidence that Jesus was about the rights of the people to assemble (the Romans and Pharisees felt threatened by his large crowds), the right of free speech, freedom of religion, collective survival (Loaves and Fishes, anyone?), and non-violence.

But the pseudo-christians will have none of that. Kill all the buffalo! Exterminate the homing pigeon and the whale and the tuna and the salmon! Set uniformed goon squads against peaceful Occupy Movement protesters! Foreclose on families who were sold usurious mortgages by banks – and by god protect the banks from any consequences or regulation! Steal elections across America. Buy politicians for further nefarious ends!

Lie and lie again and loot and cheat and steal are not principles of anyone in the New Testament. Even Judas Iscariot had a conscience – eventually.

The Declaration of Independence created a new model for existence, a new possible future for Mankind. What made the United States special was the attempt by a people to be better than previous societies, to declare their right to give it a try, King of England be damned! The historical Forefathers didn't get it all right – slaves were accorded three-fifths the worth of free men, women demanded the vote and it took 150 years to happen – but the design was intended to capture and maintain and expand on the 'unalienable rights' that were prevented by monarchies and despots and barbarian oligarchs.

Freedom is an idea, it is a promise. Freedom is never guaranteed, it must be protected and nurtured like a flame against the whirlwind. Freedom is something that an individual or a group or a society can only be for or against. There is no middle ground. And the funny thing about rights is that rights exist only when they exist for everyone. Martin Luther King nailed it: “Until all are free, none are free.”

The very sad thing about life in modern America is that half the population wants oppression, for themselves and for the world. They vote for fascism (under the false label Conservative or Republican), and they work very hard to destroy the teetering freedoms that provide the facade that the United States is a free country.

Registered as a Republican? Jesus would not approve.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

WM Essay #97: Reason-Based Social Security

The intended result of the implementation of Reason-Based Taxation in federal and state and local jurisdictions is that revenues match the fiscal budget, and that the national debt is being paid down.

Since the oligarchs own 65 percent of everything and the wealthy class owns 85 percent of everything, Congress needs only to revise the tax code so that each bracket pays for the services that they receive from government.

In Reason-Based Taxation, the oligarchs are levied for 65 percent of the Defense Department budget, and for 65 percent of the budgets for Commerce, Labor, Education, Interior, Transportation, Homeland Security, Justice, Health – in fact, their share of each and every bureau and service and department. The larger wealthy class pays for 85 percent of all the above.

The remaining 15 percent is spread among the weakened middle class, and the bottom 40 percent of the population pays only their social security and local taxes.

* *          * *          * *          * *
This latter thought is what triggered a new concept, which is the topic of this essay.

A sizable portion of the poor class and of the working poor class will not get much return from their social security program benefits, because their lifetime wages and the subsequent contributions to social security were so meager.

And people who live in the panic-ridden 'cash only' economy may never pay anything into social security, from having no regular jobs or being off-record, i.e. paid 'under the table'. These people cannot expect to retire in any sense of the word.

Here's the new idea: What if anybody could pay into their social security account at any time – without having to earn a paycheck. Poor people or rich people, no difference. Much better odds than the numbers racket or lotto games or casinos: the social security program has always guaranteed its payout.

Any dollars contributed directly by any citizen or legal resident to his/her social securiy account would be added to the social security database for that year precisely as if it were receipt of social security tax coming by way of an employer payroll system.

Reason is the only frontier left.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Getting Lazy?

Don't know if I am getting lazy, or if this is a function of getting old. But I decided to give up, or at least back off from, the world of fiction writing. I still will (and do) obey my longtime rule that "I do not argue with my Muse" – whatever shows up to my mind to be written gets written, and then simply filed away.

The year 2012 is critical in the political realm, so I plan more-direct activity there, such as being an official Delegate to last weekend's Democratic Party of New Mexico state pre-primary convention, all day last Saturday up in Albuquerque.

That leaves daily concern for my bookstore websites, the main philosophy website, and the satellite sites Meaning & Purpose and Reason-Based Taxation and The United Federation of Indentured Servants.

Further Rick Walker, P.I. detective novels will have to wait, mainly because I have no skills in marketing. Although non-fiction, the memoir "Hollywood Tales: An Entertainment" is also on hold.

A parallel category to fiction is my various screenplays which include:
"El Tigrón" {online synopsis} - script completed;
"Nostalgia" {online synopsis} - treatment available;
the "Little Hero" rock musical feature - script completed;
the "Sacre Merde!" comedy feature - treatment available.
. . . and lots more ideas that likely will never be put on film.

Thanks for listening. Life moves on. I better get back to work.

“Where there is oppression, Liberty must light the dark.”

“Battling ignorance and apathy and magical thinking is a full-time job.”

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

March 2012 Quotations

"The Republican Party is the 'special olympics' for politicians."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect."
~~ Lionel Trilling [1905-75]

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."
~~ Thornton Wilder [1897-1975]

"The tavern chair is the throne of human felicity."
~~ Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-84]

"The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person."
~~ Quentin Crisp [1908-99]

"Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it."
~~ Langston Hughes [1902-67]

"A smile is the shortest distance between two people."
~~ Victor Borge [1909-2000]

"The first 40 years of life give us the text; the next 30 supply the commentary."
~~ Arthur Schopenhauer [1788-1860]

"Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage."
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"We can never be sure that the opinion ]that] we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still."
~~ John Stuart Mill [1806-73]

"It's too bad [that] the people who really know how to run the country are so busy cutting hair and driving taxis."
~~ George Burns [1896-1996]

"A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults."
~~ lawyer Louis Nizer [1902-94]

"The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less."
~~ Eldridge Cleaver [1935-98]

"Ideology is just a pejorative word for principles in which you happen not to believe."
~~ Lexington column in "The Economist"

"Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures, and that is character."
~~ Horace Greeley [1811-72]

"We must learn to love life without ever trusting it."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]

"Woman was God's second mistake."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi."
~~ William Faulkner [1897-1962]

"The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned."
~~ bookseller Lewis Micheaux [1885-1976]
in "The Black Power Mixtape" docufilm [2011]

“I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state are absolute . . . To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes me want to throw up.”
~~ Rick Santorum
"Rick Santorum makes me want to throw up."
~~ Spokane, Washington blogger 'duroc'

"Many of life's failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
~~ Thomas Alva Edison [1847-1931]

"Chastity – the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions."
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]

"Alcohol may lead nowhere, but it sure is the scenic route."
~~ columnist Molly Ivins [1944-2007]

"If you survive long enough, you are revered, rather like an old building."
~~ Katharine Hepburn [1907-2003]

"They failed because they did not start with a dream."
~~ Nick Shakespeare

"Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money."
~~ Robert H. Jackson [1892-1954], U.S. Supreme Court Justice 1941-54

"What looks like tomorrow's problem is rarely the real problem when tomorrow rolls around."
~~ journalist James Fallows

"All our life is but a mass of habits."
~~ William James [1842-1910]

"Worry is like a rocking chair: It gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere."
~~ Erma Bombeck [1927-96]

"The difference between what we are doing and what we are capable of doing would solve most of the world's problems."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"There is a dilemma, to reconcile three time scales: in the short term, the economy; in the middle range, global well-being generally; and, in the long range, the environment."
~~ Matthieu Ricard

"Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise."
~~ Thomas Gray [1716-71]

"They only call it class war when we fight back."
~~ cover art of Z Magazine

"Readers should be led into temptation."
~~ Anthony Lane, New Yorker Magazine reviewer

"One sits and beats an old tin can lard pail / One beats and beats for that which one believes"
~~ poet Wallace Stevens [1879-1955]

"Reality is a dirty word for me. There's too much of it about."
~~ director Ken Russell [1927-2011]

"Learn from the masses, and then teach them."
~~ Chairman Mao Tse-tung [1893-1976]

"Take my country forward."
~~ Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

"Preparation, I have often said, is rightly two-thirds of any venture."
~~ aviator Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"Every time I make a picture the critics' estimate of American public taste goes down ten percent."
~~ Cecil B. DeMille [1881-1959]

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."
~~ Nathaniel Hawthorne [1804-64]

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

Recipe of The Day: Italian Pasta

STEP 1: Cook up some pasta, of your choice. For this dish I like small elbows, or sometimes flat egg noodles. Single serving is 4-5 ounces dry. Pour cooked pasta into collander to drain.

STEP 2: In that same saucepan, pour two 'blorts' of Caesar dressing (the brand that I use is Ken's Steak House). Bring fire up to medium high, to boil away ('reduce') the liquid. Also add one tablespoon of butter.

Chop a package of Buddig deli meat, such as ham or beef. Add to saucepan.

Chop one green onion; chop one Roma tomato. Optional: chop a few black olives. Add all to the saucepan. Add drained pasta to the saucepan.

STEP 3: Keep stirring over medium-high heat, until liquid is reduced. Add 1/4 cup parmesan or romano cheese to thicken further.

STEP 4: Serve on a dinner plate. Serve with a glass of red wine if you were a 'good kid' today.