Neither

"Neither holy, nor Roman, nor Empire."
--Voltaire

Compensation

"People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation."
--Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Danish philosopher

Foreign

"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
--James Madison (1751-1836),
Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President

Organizations

"The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity."
--Margaret J. Wheatley.

Opportunities II

"Opportunities never come to those who wait... they are captured by those who dare to attack"
--Paul J. Meyer.

Nothing V

"Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right."
--William E. Gladstone

Qualem

Qualem muleirculam! - What a bimbo!
(Latin-English Phrase)

Truth III

"Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it."
--Maimonides (1135-1204) Jewish philosopher

Live

"Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place. Show respect to all people, but grovel to none. When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home."
-- Tecumseh (1768-1813) Shawnee Chief

Cameras

"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face ... was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime ..." --George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair] (1903-1950) British author Source: his book, '1984'

Light

"What is to give light must endure burning." --Viktor E. Frankl

Folly II

"Those who realize their folly are not true fools."
--Chuang-Tzu (369-286BC) [Zhuangzi] Chinese Philosopher, Co-founder of Taoism

Rats

"Some informants spied on their neighbors because they actually believed the propaganda… Some denounced their enemies in order to settle personal grudges. Some were driven by their own fears to attempt to deflect attention away from themselves…Some were motivated by the sense of power turning in their neighbors gave them." --Kort E. Patterson Source: Port of Call, August/September 1999

Scapegoats

"The scapegoat has always had the mysterious power of unleashing man's ferocious pleasure in torturing, corrupting, and befouling."
--Francois Mauriac (1885-1970)
Source: Second Thoughts, 1961

Sense

"Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people"
--W.C. Fields

Free II

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."
--Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-1965) Source: Speech, 1952

Natural

Diet

"Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie."
--Jim Davis

Laws

"We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience."
--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the state of Virginia, 1782

Dependent

"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain."
--Napoleon Bonaparte(1769-1821) French emperor

Happiness VIII

"Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens."
--Andy Rooney

Cold

"The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: `I, the state, am the people.'... Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth."
--Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Source: from "Thus Spake Zarathustra"

Many

Evidence

"To ignore the evidence, and hope that it cannot be true,
is more an evidence of mental illness.''
--William Blase

Which

When the American people finally have *their* fill with *their* tyrannical government, which direction will the bullets and tear gas canisters be flying?
--TLC

A Legislature Of Idiots

State Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, said Thursday he's introducing legislation to impose criminal penalties on those who smuggle cell phones into prisons, a day after it was revealed that prison authorities had found a second phone in the possession of mass murder Charles Manson.

Full article, Sacramento Bee, February 3, 2011

__________________________________________

California's budget is in the toilet. People die every day because the social safety net has already been severely shredded, and that shredding continues. California can't pay its bills, the Legislature needs to eliminate tax loopholes that serve no useful COMPELLING purpose, needs to find programs/expenditures that serve no COMPELLING purpose, needs to clean up the California Criminal Code so that people are only incarcerated if there's a damn good reason, needs to reform the prisons so that they actually work toward *reform* of the incarcerated, needs to reform the prisons so that the crappy inmate medical care stops killing, on average, an inmate a week (and that's just the tip of the iceberg...).

So what does California State Senator Alex Padilla want to do? Jail people who smuggle cell phones into prisons.

Uh, isn't that something the prison administrators should be able to handle on their own? If their screening is so bad that cell phones can be smuggled in, what else is being smuggled in by the guards or otherwise?

Where do these idiots like Alex Padilla come from? Can't we do something to get rid of that pile of rocks from under which he and his ilk came?

TLC

Everyone II

"If everyone is happy with you, surely you have made a lot of compromises in your life."
--Author Unknown

Extinct

"I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours."
--John F. Kennedy

Disarmed

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
--Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria-Bonesana, Italian philosopher and politician (1738 - 1794),
On Crimes and Punishments (1764)
Quoted by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in his journal, Commonplace Book