Makes Up In Height

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

-- Robert Frost (1874 - 1963), American poet, winner of four Pulitzer Prizes, Title of poem (1942)

A Plot Afoot

There's a plot afoot all right, and I'll gladly name the forces propelling it -- hysteria, ignorance, malice, stupidity, hatred, and fear.  What a repugnant spectacle our country has become!  Falsehood, cruelty, and madness everywhere, and brute force in the wings waiting to finish us off.

-- Philip Roth (1933 - 2018), American novelist, Pulitzer Prize winner in 1998 for his novel American Pastoral, The Plot Against America (2004) Chapter 8, "Bad Days" p. 315

There's More

There's more to being a human being than having your own way.

-- John Updike (1932 - 2009), American novelist, poet, critic, and short-story writer, Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Clean

We are currently clean on OPSEC

-- Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (15 March 2025), in a chat on the commercial messaging app Signal about upcoming military strikes in Yemen that included the Secretary of State, White House Chief of Staff, National Security Adviser, Director of the CIA, Director of National Intelligence, other administration officials, and Editor in Chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg, as quoted in The Atlantic, "Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal" (26 March 2025)

Vast Conspiracy

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

-- John Hoyer Updike (1932 - 2009), American novelist, poet, critic, and short-story writer, "How to Love America and Leave it at the Same Time", Problems and Other Stories (1979)

What Is Right

Our presence here today is remarkable and improbable.  With all the punditry, all of the lobbying, all of the game-playing that passes for governing in Washington, it's been easy at times to doubt our ability to do such a big thing, such a complicated thing; to wonder if there are limits to what we, as a people, can still achieve.  It's easy to succumb to the sense of cynicism about what's possible in this country.

But today, we are affirming that essential truth -- a truth every generation is called to rediscover for itself -- that we are not a nation that scales back its aspirations.  We are not a nation that falls prey to doubt or mistrust.  We don't fall prey to fear.  We are not a nation that does what's easy.  That's not who we are.  That's not how we got here.

We are a nation that faces its challenges and accepts its responsibilities.  We are a nation that does what is hard.  What is necessary.  What is right.  Here, in this country, we shape our own destiny.  That is what we do.  That is who we are.  That is what makes us the United States of America. 

-- Remarks by President Barack Obama on the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 23 March 2010

RIP George Foreman

I want to keep fighting because it is the only thing that keeps me out of the hamburger joints. If I don't fight, I'll eat this planet.

-- George Foreman (10 January 1949 - 21 March 2025), American two-time World Heavyweight Boxing Champion; nicknamed Big George, he became a successful businessman and an ordained Christian minister who had his own church; referring to his long boxing career, as quoted by George Plimpton in The Guardian "Thriller turned griller" (4 October 2003)

All Powers

The accumulation of all powers, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

-- James Madison Jr. (1751 - 1836), American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817, Federalist No. 47 (30 January 1788)

Living Messages

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.

-- Neil Postman (1931 - 2003), American author, educator, media theorist, and cultural critic, The Disappearance of Childhood (1982) Introduction

Not An Appropriate Response

For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.  The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.

-- US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in a statement in response to President Donald Trump and his allies calling to impeach judges who have ruled against the administration (18 March 2025)

Covid Anniversary

It was on March 11, 2020, when I first described COVID-19 as a "pandemic".  While many media highlight that date as the pandemic's anniversary, the much more significant moment was six weeks earlier, on January 30, 2020, when I declared a public health emergency of international concern -- the highest level of alarm under international health law.  At the time, there were fewer than 100 reported cases outside China, and no reported deaths.

COVID showed the world where our individual and collective weaknesses lay, as organizations and countries alike.  But it also sparked great collaboration, investment and innovation.

We have the knowledge, tools, and experience to prevent the next pandemic.  What we need now is determination, cooperation, and the will to act before disaster strikes again.

History will judge us, not on whether we saw the next pandemic coming, but on how well we were prepared.  We know we cannot sustain a repeat of the losses inflicted by a crisis like COVID.  So I am confident my answer will turn to an unequivocal "yes" when we are asked in the future if we are primed for preventing or containing the next pandemic.  We have no other alternative -- our collective global security demands it.

-- Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization, "After COVID-19, is the world ready for the next pandemic?", on the 5th anniversary of the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic (11 March 2025)

What Comes After

What comes after is not always progress.

-- Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Manzoni (1785 - 1873), Italian novelist, poet, dramatist, and critic, "Del romanzo storico" (1850), in Andrea Tagliapietra (ed.) La storia e l'invenzione (Milano: Gallone, 1997) p. 64

An Unbridled View

Here, the Executive has unilaterally deemed that funds Congress appropriated for foreign aid will not be spent.  The Executive not only claims his constitutional authority to determine how to spend appropriated funds, but usurps Congress's exclusive authority to dictate whether the funds should be spent in the first place.  In advancing this position, Defendants offer an unbridled view of Executive power that the Supreme Court has consistently rejected -- a view that flouts multiple statutes whose constitutionality is not in question, as well as the standards of the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA").  Asserting this "vast and generally unreviewable" Executive power and diminution of Congressional power, Defendants do not cite any provision of Article I or Article II of the Constitution. ...

For the reasons above, the Court grants in part and denies in part Plaintiffs' motions for a preliminary injunction.  Consistent with this opinion, it is hereby ORDERED:

* The Restrained Defendants are enjoined from unlawfully impounding congressionally appropriated foreign aid funds and shall make available for obligation the full amount of funds that Congress appropriated for foreign assistance programs in the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024.

-- United States District Judge Amir H. Ali, in his Memorandum Opinion and Order in Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition et al, v US Department of State, et al (10 March 2025)

Important Communal Aims

Social equality and economic protection of the individual appeared to me always as the important communal aims of the state.  Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.

-- Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 - 18 April 1955), German theoretical physicist, in "My Credo", a speech to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin (Autumn 1932), as published in Einstein: A Life in Science (1994) by Michael White and John Gribbin, p. 262

A Different Story

As Donald Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20, he was flanked by some of the world's wealthiest people.  The billionaires present that day -- including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg -- had never been richer, flush with big gains from frothy stock markets.

Seven weeks later, it's a different story.  The start of Trump's second term has delivered a stunning reversal for many of those billionaires sitting behind Trump in the Capitol Rotunda, with five having lost a combined $209 billion in wealth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

-- Dylan Sloan writing for Bloomberg, "Billionaires at Trump's Swearing-In Have Since Lost $209 Billion" (10 March 2025), written before the Dow Jones and S&P 500 lost another 3% on Monday and Tuesday of this week

Keep Going

Next time we march we may have to keep going when we get to Montgomery.  We may have to on to Washington.

-- John Lewis (1940 - 2020), American politician and civil rights leader, U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020.  Told to New York Times (7 March 1965) by Lewis, chairman of the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee and organizer of the Selma to Montgomery march, after police stopped the demonstrators with violence

A Deliberate Decision

Never be insolent unless it is a deliberate decision, and only toward a man more powerful than yourself.

-- Émile Auguste Chartier (1868 - 1951), writing under the pseudonym Alain, notable French essayist, philosopher, and journalist, Giving Pleasure (1928)

Portals Of Discovery

A man of genius makes no mistakes.  His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

-- James Joyce (1882 - 1941), Irish novelist, short-story writer, and poet, Ulysses (1922) Ch. 9: Scylla and Charybdis

Decent People

Everybody continually tries to get away with as much as he can; and society is a marvelous machine which allows decent people to be cruel without realizing it.

-- Émile Auguste Chartier (1868 - 1951), writing under the pseudonym Alain, notable French essayist, philosopher, and journalist, Alain On Happiness (1928) Attitudes Toward Neighbors

Specialized Discipline

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a "dismal science".  But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

-- Murray Rothbard (1926 - 1995), American economist of the Austrian School, historian of both economic thought and American history, and political philosopher, The Death Wish of the Anarcho-Communists (1970)

New Bedfellows

Belarus                 Mali

Burkina Faso            Marshall Is.

Burundi                 Nicaragua

Central African Rep.    Niger

Equatorial Guinea       North Korea

Eritrea                 Palau

Haiti                   Russia

Hungary                 Sudan

Israel                  United States

-- Complete list of 18 countries that voted against a UN Resolution titled "Advancing a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine", which passed with 93 votes in favor, on the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine (24 February 2025)