Most Fabulous

I am the most fabulous whiner.  I do whine because I want to win.  And I'm not happy if I'm not winning.  And I am a whiner.  And I'm a whiner and I keep whining and whining until I win.  And I'm going to win for the country and I'm going to make our country great again.

-- Donald Trump, in a CNN "New Day" interview with Chris Cuomo, as quoted by Colin Campbell in "Donald Trump: 'I am the most fabulous whiner'", Business Insider, 11 August 2015

Attractive

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

-- Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662), French mathematician, logician, physicist and theologian, De l'Art de persuader ["On the Art of Persuasion"] (1658)

Great Potential Cost

Moral bankruptcy: the state a person reaches when he trades away or violates too many of his core moral values and commitments.  He may also lose important relationships either as a cause or consequence of his loss of moral commitments.  Someone who is morally bankrupt may or may not recognize that he has reached this state. 

Some people may never recognize they have reached the point of moral bankruptcy.  Denial, the first cousin of rationalization, functions to maintain a person's perception of reality.  Denial helps a person to maintain a fiction in the cold light of fact.  Denial is a perversely remarkable creative ability that carries a great potential cost. 

-- Peg O'Connor, Ph.D., professor of philosophy and gender, women, and sexuality studies at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN, Declaring Moral Bankruptcy, Psychology Today, 31 October 2014

Boulder Pushers

We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.  They have known for thousands of years that to lock a sick person into solitary confinement makes him worse.  They have known for thousands of years that a poor man who is frightened of his landlord and of the police is a slave.  They have known it.  We know it.  But do the great enlightened mass of the British people know it?  No.  It is our task, Ella, yours and mine, to tell them.  Because the great men are too great to be bothered.  They are already discovering how to colonise Venus and to irrigate the moon.  That is what is important for our time.  You and I are the boulder-pushers.  All our lives, you and I, we'll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain.  The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind.

-- Doris Lessing (1919 - 2013), British writer, born Doris May Tayler.  In October 2007 Lessing became the eleventh woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in its 106-year history, and its oldest recipient ever.  Paul Tanner, in "Free Women: 1", The Golden Notebook (1962)

A Way To Cede Power

I don't know what the calculation is that goes on in the mind of the leaders about what to take to the floor, but we don't vote on a lot of legislation.  If the Senate refuses to tackle the major issues, then the president will and he'll just issue executive orders.  Just saying "No" doesn't enhance our power.  It's a way to cede power.

-- Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), as quoted by David Brooks in How Biden Could Steer a Divided Government, New York Times, 12 November 2020

A Promised Land

What I can say for certain is that I'm not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America -- not just for the sake of future generations of Americans but for all of humankind.  I'm convinced that the pandemic we're currently living through is both a manifestation of and a mere interruption in the relentless march toward an interconnected world, one in which peoples and cultures can't help but collide.  In that world -- of global supply chains, instantaneous capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorist networks, climate change, mass migration, and ever-increasing complexity -- we will learn to live together, cooperate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish.  And so the world watches America -- the only great power in history made up of people from every corner of the planet, comprising every race and faith and cultural practice -- to see if our experiment in democracy can work.  To see if we can do what no other nation has ever done.  To see if we can actually live up to the meaning of our creed.

-- Barack Obama, in his new memoir A Promised Land, as excerpted in The Atlantic, November 2020

Not Our Job

I think it's hard for you to argue that Congress intended the entire act to fall if the mandate were struck down when the same Congress that lowered the penalty to zero did not even try to repeal the rest of the act.

I think, frankly, that they wanted the court to do that.  But that's not our job.

-- Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, addressing Texas Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins, in California v Texas, which seeks an end to the Affordable Care Act, NPR, 10 November 2020

Take Morality Seriously

Aristotle wrote that good habits formed at youth make all the difference.  And moral education must affirm the central importance of moral example.  It has been said that there is nothing more influential, more determinant, in a child's life than the moral power of quiet example.  For children to take morality seriously they must be in the presence of adults who take morality seriously.  And with their own eyes they must see adults take morality seriously.

-- William Bennett in "Book of Virtues" (1993) pg 11, as quoted by John Dickerson on Twitter, 8 November 2020

Prayers For His Success

I just talked to the President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.  I extended my warm congratulations and thanked him for the patriotic message he delivered last night.  I also called Kamala Harris to congratulate her on her historic election to the vice presidency.  Though we have political differences, I know Joe Biden to be a good man, who has won his opportunity to lead and unify our country.  The President-elect reiterated that while he ran as a Democrat, he will govern for all Americans.  I offered him the same thing I offered Presidents Trump and Obama: my prayers for his success, and my pledge to help in any way I can.

I want to congratulate President Trump and his supporters on a hard-fought campaign. He earned the votes of more than 70 million Americans - an extraordinary political achievement.  They have spoken, and their voices will continue to be heard through elected Republicans at every level of government.  

The challenges that face our country will demand the best of President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris - and the best of us all.   We must come together for the sake of our families and neighbors, and for our nation and its future. There is no problem that will not yield to the gathered will of a free people. 

-- Statement by President George W. Bush, congratulating President-elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris, 8 November 2020

Illusion Of A Horse Race

The fact that ballots are counted sequentially lends the process of vote counting important transparency.  But it can also lead us to apply inappropriate mental frames.  For instance, we may resort to horse-race language that suggests that Biden is pulling ahead at the last second, but in fact these votes were all cast on or before Election Day.  The illusion of a dramatic horse race is simply a product of the order in which we count votes.

-- Dan Hopkins, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, on the FiveThirtyEight 2020 Election Live Blog, 6 November 2020 at 10:16 AM

The Vote Is Sacred

In America, the vote is sacred.  It's how people of this nation express their will.  And, it is the will of the voters, no one, not anything else, that chooses the president of the United States of America.  So, each ballot must be counted, and that's what we're going to see going through now, and that's how it should be.

Democracy is sometimes messy.  It sometimes requires a little patience as well.  But that patience has been rewarded now for more than 240 years with a system of governance that's been the envy of the world. 

So, I ask everyone to stay calm, all people to stay calm.  The process is working.  The count is being completed, and we'll know very soon.  So, thank you all, for your patience. We have to count the votes.

-- Remarks by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in Wilmington, DE, 5 November 2020

Count Von Count

Greetings it is I the Count!  They call me the Count because I love to count things!!  HA HA HA!!!

-- Count von Count, on Sesame Street

Rock The Vote!

Rock the vote, people!

Consent Of Governors And Governed

Metaphysicians and politicians may dispute forever, but they will never find any other moral principle or foundation of rule or obedience, than the consent of governors and governed.

-- John Adams (1735 - 1826), American lawyer, author, statesman, and diplomat, second President of the United States (1797-1801), and first Vice President (1789-1797), Novanglus essays (1774-1775), No. 7

I Can't Hear It

If someone says, "Democracy is a sham, those people don't speak for me... the system's rigged," you say, "Vote."  Someone says, "I was making a statement by not voting," and then you say, "Well I can't hear it." 

-- Jesse Williams, American actor, director, producer, and activist, in an election PSA posted by super PAC Save the Day on YouTube, 27 September 2016

Every Vote Counts

The first lesson is this: take it from me -- every vote counts.  In our Democracy, every vote has power.  And never forget: that power is yours.  Don't let anyone take it away or talk you into throwing it away.  And let's make sure that this time every vote is counted.

-- Former Vice President Al Gore, at the Democratic National Convention, 27 July 2004

We Are Not Enemies

We are not enemies, but friends.  We must not be enemies.  Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.  The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

-- Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), 16th President of the United States, First Inaugural Address (4 March 1861)

Really Disloyal?

Who are those who are really disloyal?  -- Those who inflame racial hatreds, who sow religious and class dissensions.  Those who subvert the Constitution by violating the freedom of the ballot box.  Those who make a mockery of majority rule by the use of the filibuster.  Those who impair democracy by denying equal educational facilities.  Those who frustrate justice by lynch law or by making a farce of jury trials.  Those who deny freedom of speech and of the press and of assembly.  Those who press for special favors against the interest of the commonwealth.  Those who regard public office as a source of private gain.  Those who would exalt the military over the civil.  Those who for selfish and private purposes stir up national antagonisms and expose the world to the ruin of war.

-- Henry Steele Commager (1902 - 1998), American historian and teacher, Who is Loyal to America? (1947)

Burnt Norton

Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,

Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind

Cannot bear very much reality.

Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

-- Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 - 1965), American-born English poet, dramatist, and literary critic, The Four Quartets, Burnt Norton (I), Collected Poems 1909–1935 (1936)

Doubling The Value

If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day.  By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting.  In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

-- David Foster Wallace (1962 - 2008), American novelist, essayist, and short story writer, "Up, Simba" (2000)