98 Percent

The corporations that hold these copyrights are media companies that also control most of the new media that comes out.  Estimates vary, but it's said that 98 percent of all culture is unavailable right now because of copyrights.  So the reason they hold the copyrights isn't because they want to get paid, it's because they don't want all the old stuff competing with the media stream that they control now.

-- Nina Paley (3 May 1968 -), American cartoonist, animator, and free culture activist, most famous for her film Sita Sings The Blues, "Frequently Asked Questions", sitasingstheblues.com (November 2010)


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Hard Work

I've stated time and time again that one of the major failures of Obamacare was that it was rammed through Congress by Democrats on a strict-party line basis without a single Republican vote.  We should not make the mistakes of the past that has led to Obamacare's collapse, including in my home state of Arizona where premiums are skyrocketing and health care providers are fleeing the marketplace.  We must now return to the correct way of legislating and send the bill back to committee, hold hearings, receive input from both sides of aisle, heed the recommendations of nation's governors, and produce a bill that finally delivers affordable health care for the American people.  We must do the hard work our citizens expect of us and deserve.

-- Statement from Senator John McCain (R-AZ) after he cast the "No" vote that defeated the "Skinny Repeal" of Obamacare, 28 July 2017

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