Their Voice

Democracy demands that our election system be protected, and without vigorously enforced campaign finance laws, the people of this country lose their voice.  The U.S. Attorney's Office and the Department of Justice are committed to the prosecution of individuals who abuse the very system of which they seek to become a part.

-- U.S. Attorney George Holding, announcing a federal grand jury indictment against two-time presidential candidate John Edwards, for soliciting and covering up the secret spending of more than $925,000 to hide his mistress and their baby during the peak of his 2008 campaign for the White House, The Associated Press, 3 June 2011

Hierarchy

We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress.  If you're a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn't talk to you.  If you're a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.

-- Whitehouse Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, addressing the American Bankers Associations conference in Washington DC, 24 April 2018, New York Times via Salon.com

Ideas About Reality

With our concept-making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us.  The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently.  It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ.  Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper than is the level of concept.

-- Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, in Principia Discordia, Psycho-Metaphysics (1965)

Uncertainty

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

-- Carl von Clausewitz (1780 - 1831), Prussian general and influential military theorist, in A Reader in International Relations and Political Theory (1993), p. 150

Submarine For Fish

An aquarium is a submarine for fish.

-- Kevin Beckman (Chris Hemsworth), in Ghostbusters (2016)

It Has To Be Enough

I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God." Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life.  I'm not greedy.  I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough.  It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me.  It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more.  Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven.  I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

-- Penn Jillette (1955 -), American magician, in an essay titled "There Is No God (2005)" on NPR's This I Believe, 21 November 2005

Off The Hook

I'll give you a strange answer.  I hope not because I think impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook and have something happen indirectly that I believe they're duty bound to do directly.  People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values.

We'll fight about guns.  We'll fight about taxes.  We'll fight about all those other things down the road.  But you cannot have, as president of the United States, someone who does not reflect the values that I believe Republicans treasure and Democrats treasure and Independents treasure.  That is the core of this country.  That's our foundation.  And so impeachment, in a way, would short circuit that.

-- Former FBI Director James Comey, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, when asked whether President Trump should be impeached, 15 April 2018

RIP Barbara Bush

I am still old and still in love with the man I married 72 years ago.

-- Former First Lady Barbara Pierce Bush (8 June 1925 - 17 April 2018), in her final update in Smith Alumnae Quarterly, published March 2018.  On 6 January, the couple celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary, the longest presidential marriage in history

What You Get Out Of It

Life is like a sewer -- what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.  It's always seemed to me that this is precisely the sort of dynamic, positive thinking that we so desperately need today in these trying times of crisis and universal brouhaha.

-- Thomas Andrew Lehrer (9 April 1928 -), American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician, Introduction to "We Will All Go Together When We Go"

Part Animal, Part Angel

You just never know.  You drift along, year after year, presuming certain values to be fixed; like being able to drive on a public thoroughfare without somebody trying to murder you.  You came to depend on that sort of thing.  Then something occurs and all bets are off.  One shocking incident and all the years of logic and acceptance are displaced and, suddenly, the jungle is in front of you again.  Man, part animal, part angel.

--Richard Matheson (1926-2013), American author and screenwriter of horror and science fiction, "Duel" (1971), a short story, which he later adapted into a screenplay for Duel (1971), Steven Spielberg's first feature-length film

Robin Trower

Thank you! Good night!

-- Guitarist Robin Trower (9 March 1945 -), at the end of his show at the Virginia Theater in Champaign, IL, 11 April 2018

Juggling The Demands

Parenthood isn't just a women's issue; it's an economic issue and one that affects all parents -- men and women alike.  As tough as juggling the demands of motherhood and being a senator can be, I'm hardly alone or unique as a working parent.

-- Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), in a statement after becoming the first sitting US senator to give birth (to daughter Maile Pearl Bowlsbey), Washington Post, 9 April 2018

No Limits

There are no limits to my daily amounts though -- of weed or distance.

-- Roger Boyd, 37, of Bristol, UK, who cycled 19,000 miles around the world in the past 2 years, and who documents his travels on his blog at healthy-stoner.com, Bristol Post, 9 April 2018

Vice Basket

Bloomberg’s Vice Basket tracks average retail prices for:

* A pack of cigarettes, popular and premium
* A bottle of alcoholic beverages including beer, wine and spirits
* A gram of amphetamine-type stimulants, including methamphetamine and/or ecstasy
* A gram of cannabis, including marijuana hashish resin and/or cannabis oil
* A gram of cocaine, regardless of salts, paste or base forms
* A gram of opioids, including heroin and/or opium.

Data are sourced from the UN, World Health Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

This year the United States cost is $617.10, up $217.90 from a year ago. The US is ranked 38th in affordability, with the Vice Basket costing 53.9% of an average weekly wage.

The cheapest overall cost is in the Congo, at $18.30, though most affordable goes to Luxembourg at $206.20, just 10.0% of that nation's average weekly income.

-- Bloomberg, 3 April 2018

One Thing

The one thing that would be dishonorable for us is to bring all this attention to the assassination of Dr. King and not have a resurrection of the efforts and the unfinished business dealing with systemic racism, systemic poverty.

-- The Reverend Dr William Barber II, a North Carolina pastor whose sermons and outreach efforts have tended to align with the religious left, New York Times, 4 April 2018

Chief Reason

The chief reason for drinking is the desire to behave in a certain way, and to be able to blame it on alcohol.

-- Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook (1960)

Every Day In Every Way

If they continue to ignore us, to only pretend to listen, then we will take action where it counts.  We will take action every day in every way until they simply cannot ignore us any more.

-- Delaney Tarr, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, where a gunman killed 17 people last month, speaking to a crowd of thousands in Washington DC Saturday, when protests against gun violence took hold in cities across the country, New York Times, 25 March 2018

Perfectly Legitimate

CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in January that Pyongyang was within "a handful of months" of being able to deliver nuclear warheads to the U.S.  How long must America wait before it acts to eliminate that threat?

Pre-emption opponents argue that action is not justified because Pyongyang does not constitute an "imminent threat." They are wrong.  The threat is imminent, and the case against pre-emption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times.  Given the gaps in U.S. intelligence about North Korea, we should not wait until the very last minute.  That would risk striking after the North has deliverable nuclear weapons, a much more dangerous situation. ...

In 1837 Britain unleashed pre-emptive "fire and fury" against a wooden steamboat.  It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current "necessity" posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons by striking first.

-- Incoming National Security Advisor John Bolton, The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First, Wall Street Journal Opinion page, 28 February 2018

In My View

In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration.  When prime-time hosts -- who have never served our country in any capacity -- dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller -- all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of "deep-state" machinations -- I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove.  To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit.

-- Retired United States Army lieutenant colonel and Fox News contributor Ralph Peters, in an email to Fox colleagues explaining why he is leaving the network, BuzzFeed.com, 20 March 2018

Never Die Easy

Never die easy.  To me, there is no age.  Age is something other people put on you.  You put a person in an old folk's home, and this person's gonna die pretty quick because you tell them, "You're old now -- you're ready to go."

-- Dag Aabye, a 76-year-old ultramarathon runner and oldest competitor to complete the 125 Km "Death Race" ultramarathon, who lives entirely off the grid near Vernon, British Columbia, in the documentary "Never Die Easy", March 2018