Friday, November 30, 2012

Situation

"Strange is our situation here on earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends."
--Albert Einstein

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Purpose VI

"The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive - a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society - a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself.... The purpose of man's life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question."
--Ayn Rand, /Atlas Shrugged/, 1957

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Bold

"Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare."
--Voltaire

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Report

"A drug is that substance which, when injected into a rat, will produce a scientific report."
--Author Unknown

Monday, November 26, 2012

Den

"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves."
--Andrew Jackson
(1767-1845) 7th US President
Source: in 1836, Jackson forced the closing of the Second Bank of the U.S. by revoking its charter

Vast

"Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading."
--G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History (1942)

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Artist II

"The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews."

--William Faulkner

Friday, November 23, 2012

Inconvenient

"Changing your diet isn't nearly as inconvenient as enduring a heart bypass operation, suffering from a stroke or facing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer!"
--PETA

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Anything III

"John Kennedy wasn't a virtuous man; he just looked toward virtue and they shot his head off. America became an 'anything goes' country with his death."
--Mort Sahl

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Honorable II

"Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us. Animals are so easily overlooked, their interests so easily brushed aside. Whenever we humans enter their world, from our farms to the local animal shelter to the African savanna, we enter as lords of the earth bearing strange powers of terror and mercy alike."
--Matthew Scully, Dominion

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Kindred

"What do you see when you look at an animal? A kindred spirit, a creature much like you; but possibly, the very next moment, a beast, a stranger, just an animal. Animals are like those pictures that we see as one thing and then another; the duck that suddenly becomes a rabbit; the wine glass that's also an old woman in profile. Now the pig is a fellow creature, like Wilbur in Charlotte's Web. Now he's pork."
--Jean Kazez, Animalkind

Monday, November 19, 2012

Equal II

"Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal."
--Charles Darwin, Metaphysics, Materialism, and the Evolution of Mind

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Foundation

"The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom."
--Robert A. Heinlein
(1907-1988) American writer
Source: Beyond This Horizon, 1942.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Guarantee

"We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like, but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power."

--Alan Greenspan (1926- )
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (1987-2006)
Source: appearing before the Senate Banking Committee on February 15, 2005, in response to Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island on the topic of funding Social Security.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Feared

"The doctor is often more to be feared than the disease."
--French Proverb

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Monument II

"Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people anyway. For years I've regarded his existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosones that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless; I couldn't imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machine."
--Hunter S. Thompson


"Richard Nixon looks like a flaming liberal today, compared to a golem like George Bush. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally need him?"
--Hunter S. Thompson

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Fatalism

"History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads. People get the history they deserve."
--Charles de Gaulle

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Community

"I believe that the community is already in process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where non-conformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence, where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose."
--Judge Learned Hand (1872-1961),
Judge, U. S. Court of Appeals
Source: Speech, New York University, 24 October 1952

Monday, November 12, 2012

Marvel

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."
--William H. Borah

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Cleaver

"The wicked are always surprised to find that the good can be clever."
--Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715-1747) French soldier, moralist

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Impunity

"The executive branch of this government never has, nor will suffer, while I preside, any improper conduct of its officers to escape with impunity."

--George Washington (1732-1799)
Founding Father, 1st US President, 'Father of the Country'
Source: letter to Gouverneur Morris, 1795

Friday, November 09, 2012

Freed II

"Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed."
--Étienne de la Boétie
(1530-1563) French judge, writer, political philosopher

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Straight

"Many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of Nazism, and sincerely hate all manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny."

--Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992),
Nobel Laureate of Economic Sciences 1974
Source: The Road to Serfdom (1944)

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Gang

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."
--H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

"Stealing" The Presidency, 2012 Version

The hysteria over the Repugs "stealing" the Presidential (s)election is hitting fever pitch.

The real concern should be with theft of lower offices, and here in California Ballot Initiatives.  There's substantial reason to believe that California's Proposition 8, defining marriage as only between man and woman, supposedly "passed" in 2008, was actually defeated.  Bradblog is one of the few outlets to cover that

In Obama's total surveillance society, does anyone really think something so massive could go on without numerous Federal law enforcement agencies knowing about it?

Just as in 2000, when Bill Clinton turned a blind eye and Al Gore kept silent and gave us 8 years of Dubya Bu$h, if it happens, it will be with the consent of the "defeated".

C'mon, tho, this "contest" is like a "fight" between Simon Bar Sinister and Riff Raff...

TLC

Compete

"We cannot, as a free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false promises, counterfeit mobs and crises."
--John F. Kennedy, University Of Washington, November 16, 1961

Monday, November 05, 2012

Presidential (S)election 2012


The (s)election that seems to have captured the most attention is, as usual, the Presidential “contest”.

Never ever forget that the forces who overthrew the US government on November 22, 1963, have never been removed from power. Have never been prosecuted, except for the quixotic and honorable efforts of Jim Garrison.

That the whole thing is rigged and predetermined seems hardly to need any explanation. The glaringly obvious has long been in plain sight, not just the commissions but even more so, the omissions.

Obummer allowed a foreign power, BP, to attack the United States Of America. He did this by doing absolutely nothing when BP announced well in advance its intent to dump huge amounts of toxins in the Gulf in order to make their disaster look better to the naked eye. Mittens? Not a peep. Of course, Obummer did nothing after-the-fact; Mittens has no interest in going after BP, either. Both are delighted to blow up Pakistani children with Predator Drones, however.

Obummer supposedly killed a guy that had been dead for nearly ten years. Even if you somehow inexplicably believe that OBL, who was on death's doorstep in the Fall of 2001 due to the deteriorating condition of his kidneys, miraculously lived for another nine years, why has Mittens not uttered a word about the insanity of (bear with me as we work through the OBL myth) of killing the supposed “Mastermind Of 9/11” rather than taking him alive and doing whatever to learn all his secrets and future plans.

Obummer goes on and on about Bu$hCo bankrolling wars on a credit card. Yet not a word from Mittens about how Obummer has done the exact same thing.

NDAA? Obummer claiming the power to murder American citizens simply by putting them on an enemies list and giving the Kill Order? More silence from Mittens.

Amazingly, around half of those voting will pick Obummer. The symbol of the Obummer Regime should be a TSA thug with his hand down a child's pants. That's what those voting for Obummer are actually voting for. Mittens has no problem with child molesting, either. To vote for either is to vote for evil, to affirmatively choose someone who will accelerate the economic and social destruction of America.

So why vote if the fight is fixed? To show Resistance. To show that you have an IQ exceeding your age. To demonstrate that you're on to their game, and you're not gonna play it no more. To, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, take a stand against the forces of darkness.

There are several ways to do this, the key is to DO SOMETHING. Some are going to write in Ron Paul. Others like Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein,  Johnson lost me long ago when he bought into the Kony 2012 story, the pretext for further invading Africa and stealing even more of their natural resources, among other signs that the Libertarian Party has been infiltrated. Rocky Anderson, tho unfortunately not on California's ballot, can still be written in.  Rocky has an interesting page comparing his positions and Johnson's.  Which is for me a mixed bag leaving me to look elsewhere, for someone truly independent. I rather like Roseanne Barr and Cindy Sheehan, more for Cindy than Roseann.   Perhaps the strongest thing going for Roseann and Cindy is that they have been almost completely ignored by the corporate and supposedly “alternative” media. Even CSpan, whose only mentionof Roseanne is that she tried for and didn't get the Green Party (Think: Soros) Nomination.  

And you can write in, if he's not on your ballot, Vermin Supreme.   

TLC






Taste

"A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any reason, is a government with a taste of blood and a thirst for power and must either be smartly rebuked, or blindly obeyed in deadly fear."
--John Salter

Sunday, November 04, 2012

Information

"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
--James Madison (letter to W.T. Barry, 4 August 1822)
Reference: Letters and other Writings of James Madison, vol. 3 (276)

Saturday, November 03, 2012

Leadership II

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies. ... Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."
--Barack Hussein Obama
(1961-) 44th President of the United States
Source: 20 March 2006, prior to voting against a debt ceiling increase in the Senate

Friday, November 02, 2012

Lifetime

"In the lifetime of one person, we went from figuring out where we came from to figuring out how to get rid of ourselves."
--Jack Horner
Source: on the eighty years between Darwin's On the Origin of Species and the nuclear bomb, in Time, 26 April 1993

Thursday, November 01, 2012

Obligations III

"It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations."
--Alexander Solzhenitsyn