Let's Be Clear

First of all, let's be clear, transgender personnel are serving right now and there's no review ongoing that would affect the ability of those currently serving to continue serving.

-- Marine Corps General Joe Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the National Press Club, 19 June 2017

All The Nice Things

I have every intention of returning here and giving many of you cause to regret all the nice things you said about me.

-- Senator John McCain (R-AZ) joking on his return to the Senate floor after being diagnosed with brain cancer, 25 July 2017

I Did Not Collude

It has been my practice not to appear in the media or leak information in my own defense.  I have tried to focus on the important work at hand and serve this President and this country to the best of my abilities.  I hope that through my answers to questions, written statements and documents I have now been able to demonstrate the entirety of my limited contacts with Russian representatives during the campaign and transition.  I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government.  I had no improper contacts.  I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector.  I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing of my SF-86 form, above and beyond what is required.  Hopefully, this puts these matters to rest.

-- White House Advisor Jared Kushner, in a prepared statement prior to testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, 24 July 2017

Unifying Strategy

It's a unifying strategy to be outraged at the other guy.  The hard part is when you get in and have to deliver.

-- Adam Brandon, president of conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks, on Republicans' difficulty in passing a health-care bill, New York Times, 9 July 2017

Self Restraint

Self restraint, which is a choice, is all that separates armistice and war.

-- General Vincent K. Brooks, commander of US troops in South Korea, in a warning to North Korea after their ICBM test 2 days earlier, New York Times, 6 July 2017

Sympathize With The Zombies

To me, the zombies have always just been zombies.  They've always been a cigar.  When I first made Night of the Living Dead, it got analyzed and overanalyzed way out of proportion.  The zombies were written about as if they represented Nixon’s Silent Majority or whatever.  But I never thought about it that way.  My stories are about humans and how they react, or fail to react, or react stupidly.  I’m pointing the finger at us, not at the zombies.  I try to respect and sympathize with the zombies as much as possible.

-- George Romero (4 February 1940 - 16 July 2017), American-Canadian filmmaker, writer, and editor, best known for Night Of The Living Dead (1968), Vanity Fair, "Who Says Zombies Eat Brains?" 27 May 2010

Treating Words As Crimes

I hope that I will be the last victim in China's long record of treating words as crimes. Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth.  To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.

-- Liu Xiaobo (28 December 1955 - 13 July 2017), Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who called for political reforms and the end of communist single-party rule, NPR "Liu Xiaobo: 'No Enemies, No Hatred', Only Courage", 16 February 2012

Net Neutrality

I am a big advocate of what is known as net neutrality.  This means that providers are compelled to transmit content without political or commercial pre-selection.

-- Thomas de Maiziere (1954-), German politician and current Federal Minister of the Interior (2009-2011, 2013-), in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine, 20 December 2010

Transparency

* Entertainment promoter Rob Goldstone, in an email to Donald Trump Jr, 3 June 2016, 10:36, pursuing a meeting with Trump Jr and Trump campaign officials on behalf of "a Russian government lawyer":

The Crown prosecutor of Russia ... offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.  This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but its part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.


* Donald Trump Jr's reply, 17 minutes later:

[I]f it’s what you say I love it. ...  Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?

Pirate State

If the state’s existence is no longer to be preserved in such a way that great individuals can live within it, what will then arise is the terrifying state filled with misery, the pirate state in which the strongest individuals take the place of the best.  ...  The task of the state is to make it generally possible for one to live well and beautifully therein.  Its task is to furnish the basis of a culture.  In short, a nobler humanity is the goal of the state.  Its goal lies outside of itself.  The state is a means.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher, from "Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Friedrich Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870s" edited and translated by Daniel Breazeale

Unbelievable Struggle

I want to thank you all for your perseverance through this unbelievable struggle.

-- Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-22), following a vote to override Governor Rauner's veto, giving the state a budget after 736 days without, 6 July 2017

A Good Position

I feel I was in a good position to win, and to lose that and even having to leave the Tour, a race I've built my whole career around, is really sad.

-- British cyclist Mark Cavendish, after crashing out of the 2017 Tour de France in a sprint to the Stage 4 finish, 4 July 2017

A Fair Inheritance

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.  We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors.  They purchased them for us with toil, and danger, and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence.  It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.  Of the latter, we are in most danger at present.

-- Samuel Adams, written as "Candidus" (14 October 1771), later published in The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (1865) by William R. Vincent Wells, p. 425.

All The Odds

All the odds are on the [candidate] who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre -- the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men.  As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.  We move toward a lofty ideal.  On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

-- H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956), journalist, satirist, and social critic, Baltimore Sun (26 July 1920)

Hi Agency

Hi agency this is project is being successful I want to know your I missed ought to be back thank you so much.

-- Machine generated transcription of a voicemail message I received today, 29 June 2017

Bombshell

We're given three bras and a bottle of Bombshell, their No. 1 selling perfume.

-- Mirella Casares, describing the benefits provided by her employer, Victoria's Secret. Ms. Casares, who earns $10 an hour, struggles with an ever-changing schedule and an absence of employer-provided health care, New York Times, 1 June 2017

3540 Meters

A sniper with Canada’s elite special forces in Iraq has shattered the world record for the longest confirmed kill shot in military history at a staggering distance of 3,540 metres.

The Canadian Armed Forces confirmed Thursday that a member of Joint Task Force 2 made the record-breaking shot, killing an Islamic State insurgent during an operation in Iraq within the last month.

-- The Globe And Mail, 21 June 2017

The Property Of History

We are forced to fall back upon fatalism in history to explain irrational events (that is those of which we cannot comprehend the reason).  The more we try to explain those events in history rationally, the more irrational and incomprehensible they seem to us.  Every man lives for himself, making use of his free-will for attainment of his own objects, and feels in his whole being that he can do or not do any action.  But as soon as he does anything, that act, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irrevocable and is the property of history, in which it has a significance, predestined and not subject to free choice.

-- Leo Tolstoy, War And Peace, p 555

It Is The Heat

Phoenix just provided another reason to hate flying: the heat.  With temperatures there expected to hit 119 degrees Fahrenheit, airlines canceled more than 40 flights today. ...  The heat poses a particular problem for the Bombardier CRJ airliners, which have a maximum operating temperature of 118 degrees. 

-- Rhett Allain, Wired Magazine, "Why Phoenix's Airplanes Can't Take Off in Extreme Heat", 20 June 2017

The Government's Benevolence

A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all.  The First Amendment does not entrust that power to the government’s benevolence.

-- Justice Anthony Kennedy in a concurring opinion in Matal v. Tam, 19 June 2017

RIP Helmut Kohl

I am not the one trying to speed things up.  We are being driven.

-- German chancellor Helmut Kohl (3 April 1930 - 16 June 2017), shortly after the 1989 fall of the Berlin wall, when accused of pushing unification plans too fast; quoted in "The Dream of European Unity", Awake! magazine, (22 December 1991)

Star Pupil

Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

-- Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965), British politician and statesman, in debate in the House of Commons, 4 November 1952

662 Million Vacation Days

Americans are terrible at taking all of their allotted vacation days.  That was true again in 2016, with 54% of employees ending the year with unused time off, collectively sacrificing 662 million vacation days, according to a study the U.S. Travel Association's Project Time Off released Tuesday.

-- Claire Zillman, "Americans Are Still Terrible at Taking Vacations", Fortune, 23 May 2017

Painful To Both

The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.

-- Anne Sullivan Macy, in The Story Of My Life, by Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller (1903)

ACL Reconstruction And Meniscectomy

I earlier mentioned here that on 20 January I hurt my knee, tearing the ACL and medial meniscus of my right knee.  Tomorrow, bright and early, a surgeon will try to make that all better.  I think I'm ready.

A Bit Too Late

By the time I left office on January 20th, I had unresolved questions, in my mind, as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting U.S. persons, involved in the campaign or not, to work on their behalf, again, either in a witting or unwitting fashion.  Frequently, individuals who go along a treasonous path do not even realize they're along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.

-- Former CIA Director John Brennan, in testimony before the House Intelligence Panel, 23 May 2017

Broken

broken.
from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don't have words.

-- Ariana Grande @ArianaGrande on Twitter, 9:51 PM 22 May 2017, referring to the terrorist bombing of her Manchester, England concert earlier in the day

Unbelievable Scale

If this goes to a military solution, it's going to be tragic on an unbelievable scale.

-- U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, on efforts to avoid military conflict with North Korea, 19 May 2017

A Season Of Milestones

Congratulations to my #3 daughter Heather and her new husband Beaux.  They were married on Wednesday by the groom's father, on his farm in rural Louisiana.  Heather has found a good match in Beaux, and likewise Beaux in Heather.  The happy couple are now off celebrating, and I'm back in Illinois.

This makes 4 of my 5 daughters who are now married.  The 5th is just 18, and will graduate from high school this Sunday.

It's a season of milestones.

COSCO Development

SAVANNAH, Ga. | The largest cargo ship ever to visit ports on the U.S. East Coast is so long the Statue of Liberty and Washington Monument could fit end-to-end along its deck and still leave room for Big Ben.

At 1,200 feet (366 meters) bow-to-stern, the COSCO Development is longer than the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford.  It can carry 13,000 cargo containers measuring 20 feet (6 meters) long apiece.  That's 30 percent more capacity than the last record-breaking ship that sailed into Savannah last summer.

The big ship, flagged out of Hong Kong and owned by China-based COSCO Shipping Lines, is also the largest to pass through the Panama Canal following a major expansion last year.

-- Athens Banner-Herald, 11 May 2017

I Think

I think not what I like, I think what I should.

-- Vincent Goudreault, in a discussion about intellectual rigor, 7 May 2017

Bike Totaled

Just got rammed on purpose by an impatient driver who followed me onto the pavement!  Thankfully I'm okay -- Bike totaled.  Driver kept going!

-- Cyclist Chris Froome, 2013, 2015, and 2016 Tour de France winner, Olympic medalist London 2012 and Rio 2016, on Twitter, 8 May 2017


https://twitter.com/chrisfroome/status/861860980430696448

Compromise

[E]very time this lie was repeated and the misrepresentations were getting more and more specific, as -- as they were coming out.  Every time that happened, it increased the compromise and to state the obvious, you don't want your national security advisor compromised with the Russians.

-- Former acting attorney general Sally Yates, in answer to a question from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, 8 May 2017

Mildly Nauseous

I've lived my entire career by the tradition that if you can possibly avoid it, you avoid any action in the run-up to an election that might have an impact. ...  It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election.

-- FBI Director James B. Comey, testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on FBI oversight, in response to a question from Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), 3 May 2017

Keep This In Mind

My dear Children, I rejoice to see you before me today, happy youth of a sunny and fortunate land.  Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labour in every country of the world.  All this is put in your hands as your inheritance, in order that you may receive it, honour it, add to it, and one day dutifully hand it on to your children.  Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things we create in common.  If you always keep this in mind you will find a meaning in life and work and acquire the right attitude towards other nations and ages.

-- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), theoretical physicist, The World as I See It (1949)

I Don't Stand By Anything

I don't stand by anything.  I just -- you can take it the way you want.  I think our side's been proven very strongly.  And everybody's talking about it.  And frankly it should be discussed.  I think that is a very big surveillance of our citizens.  I think it's a very big topic.  And it's a topic that should be number one.  And we should find out what the hell is going on.

-- President Donald Trump, when asked by John Dickerson whether he stands by his assertion that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, 30 April 2017

He Had Me At Bacon

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.

-- Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), third president of the United States (1801–1809), Letter to Alexander Donald (7 February 1788)

Selling Miracles

We are selling miracles.  I don't care how old you get, how much technology advances, people will always be enamored with other people flying and doing daring things.

-- Johnathan Lee Iverson, the last ringmaster of the 146-year-old Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which will have its final show on May 21, New York Times, 10 April 2017

Most Terrible Thing

The weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th.  I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children.  Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital or the new [Kyoto or Tokyo].

He [Stimson] and I are in accord.  The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement [known as the Potsdam Proclamation] asking the Japs to surrender and save lives.  I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance.  It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb.  It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.

-- President Harry Truman, writing in his diary, 25 July 1945

Happy Birthday, Dad!

My father passed away in 2013 at the age of 95 years and 10 months.  He was born 24 April 1917, and had he lived, he would have been 100 years old today. 

Happy birthday, Dad!

All Must Die

It has sometimes happened to me that when everything's all right, and every one's cheerful, it suddenly strikes one that one's sick of it all, and all must die.

-- Count Nikolay Ilyich Rostov, in Leo Tolstoy's novel War And Peace, Part 7, Section X, pg 477

Wings Off Of Flies

Who wrote this statute?  Someone who takes pleasure in pulling wings off of flies?

-- Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., on a case before the Supreme Court about where Civil Service and discrimination claims may be filed, New York Times, 17 April 2017

Not So Easy

After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it's not so easy.  I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over North Korea] ... but it's not what you would think.

-- President Donald Trump, on China's Xi explaining to him the history of the relationship between China and the Korean peninsula and whether China could easily help on North Korea, as Trump had previously asserted, Wall Street Journal, 12 April 2017

A Reality Of Consumer Life

Our protection against the worst corporate abuses is our smartphone videos.  That is a reality of consumer life right now.  It's kind of crazy.

-- Emily Bazelon, on Slate's Political Gabfest podcast, discussing the forcible re-accommodating of a passenger on a United Airlines flight, 13 April 2017

Setting Man Free

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.  The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe.  Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

-- Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982), Russian-born American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter, The Soul of an Individualist, For the New Intellectual, p 84

BrickerBot

A new malware strain called BrickerBot is bricking Internet of Things (IoT) devices around the world by corrupting their storage capability and reconfiguring kernel parameters.

The end result is a bricked IoT device that will stop working within seconds of getting infected.  Experts call these attack PDoS (Permanent Denial of Service), but they are also known as "phlashing."

All in all, BrickerBot isn't like anything we've seen before in the landscape of IoT malware.  Most IoT malware strains try to hoard devices in massive botnets that are then used as proxies to relay malicious traffic or to launch DDoS attacks. 

BrickerBot could ... be the work of an Internet vigilante that wants to destroy insecure IoT devices.

-- Catalin Cimpanu, in an article at BleepingComputer.com, 6 April 2017

Nuclear Option

The power you give a politician you love today, to do something you want, is a power that will be used tomorrow by a politician you loathe, to do things you’ll hate.

-- Jim Babka (1968-), American writer and activist, in reference to the end of the 60-vote filibuster rule in the Senate for SCOTUS nominees, 6 April 2017

Not Spending Money On That

As to climate change, I think the president was fairly straightforward: We're not spending money on that anymore.

-- Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, New York Times, 17 March 2017

All Points

As long as one does not call his own position into question but regards it as absolute, while interpreting his opponents' ideas as a mere function of the social positions they occupy, the decisive step forward has not yet been taken ... the general form of the total conception of ideology is being used by the analyst when he has the courage to subject not just the adversary's point of view but all points of view, including his own, to the ideological analysis.

-- Karl Mannheim (1893 - 1947), Hungarian-born social philosopher and sociologist, Ideology and Utopia (1929), as translated by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (1936)

Two Ways

There are two ways of confronting the country's problems.  One is through a management style based on adventurism, instability, play-acting, exaggerations, wrongdoing, being secretive, self-importance, superficiality and ignoring the law.  The second way is based on realism, respect, openness, collective wisdom and avoiding extremism.

-- Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh (1942-), Iranian reformist politician, painter and architect, reformist candidate for the 2009 presidential election and eventual opposition leader, currently under house arrest, as quoted in "Ahmadinejad lashes out at Iran's ex-presidents", CNN (4 June 2009)