Tag: Benjamin Franklin

This Quote Is For You

 

Not finding  much to write about these last few daze, I decided to review my ongoing favorite quotes file for a little inspiration. Until something jangles my tryptophan laden neurons, here for your consideration are the last few entries in order they were filed.

Enjoy.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” — John Kenneth Galbraith

“It is easier to build strong children than repair broken men.” – Frederick Douglass

“Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.” –Helen Keller

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” –Edgar Allen Poe

“For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived, and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” –John F. Kennedy

“For those who understand, no explanation is necessary, and for those who don’t understand, no explanation is possible.” –Unknown

“Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.” – George Bernard Shaw

“I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.” –Ray Bradbury

“A truth that’s told with bad intent / Beats all the lies you can invent.” –George Orwell

Christopher Hitchins describing George Orwell’s attempt to wrestle something worthwhile from the miasma of human suffering as “…that tiny, irreducible core of the human personality that somehow manages to put up a resistance to deceit and coercion.”

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” – Thomas Jefferson.

And a message from Benjamin Franklin to our would be anti-tax secessionists who reject Obama’s re-election and his campaign for  “a fair shot” for everybody: “All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.”

Romney’s Parallel Universe Machine (Update)

For the man who has everything (except the presidency) , this handy device takes less energy than an Etch-a-Sketch to alter reality

The fallout from Mitt Romney‘s lies about President Obama shipping U.S. jobs to China continued yesterday as General Motors spokesman Greg Martin told The Detroit Free Press:

“We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days. No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.”

Huffpo describes  it thus:

Mitt Romney’s round of highly dubious television and radio ads suggesting that Chrysler and GM are shipping American jobs to China has managed to offend both car companies….

The day before, meanwhile, Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne penned a letter to the Detroit News insisting that there was no validity to the idea that the company was shipping Jeep production overseas. Instead, he noted, the company was looking to open new factories in China to meet increasing demand there.

Used to be that when a political campaign got caught with its pants down, it would mumble an apology or at least have the good sense to STFU.  Not this generation of Rethugs. Instead, they double down, drop their undies and moon  the world.:

The Romney campaign has showed no willingness to back off the suggestion that American Jeep workers may end up losing their jobs. In fact, the campaign has released a radio ad in Ohio to complement the one it has on television there that repeats the insinuation.

Which of course is entirely consistent with their adoption of the Big Lie strategy that Goebbels found so effective. What really makes it work though is constant repetition, made possible by Citizens United and the unlimited amounts money provided by plutocrat billionaires like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson who think so much of themselves that they’re intent in re-making the US in their own distorted image.

At the close of Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked:

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

  “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

What we are witnessing this election is no less than a battle for the very soul of the country.  We are right at that tipping point Franklin referred to.  Will we continue to be an admittedly flawed  representative government, where the democratic principle of one person, one vote prevails, and the belief that free speech is not measured in personal and corporate wealth?  Or will be become just another oligarchy run by greedy and power-hungry billionaires who have more in common with Ayn Rand than the Founders, who promised “to promote the general welfare” at home and maintain “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” abroad.

The prospect of four more years of The Black Man in The White House is enough to send the Rethugs over the edge, despite record corporate profits and huge increases in the personal wealth of the top 1%.

The Koch Brothers spent $25 million between 2005-2008 alone, fighting every attempt to regulate climate-changing green house gases, the byproduct of their energy extraction companies.  The results are super-storms like Sandy that just killed some 74 people (and counting), traumatized millions more, and wreaked $50 billion (and counting) in property damage.

And now they’re on the cusp of getting one of their own into, arguably, the most powerful office in the world.  A say-anything politician and his Darwinian running mate that want to privatize FEMA disaster relief by further cutting the social safety net to pay for it.  How’s that for Bizarro World logic?

Somehow I think that when these traitors to the planet are called to account for their crimes they will have so deluded themselves about their assumed natural superiority and moral rightness that they will find no contrition in their hearts, and thus no need for mercy from the real Powers That Be.

 But when mercy is exhausted, when the “memory” thereof testifies to its depletion, then does justice prevail and righteousness decree. For mercy is not to be thrust upon those who despise it; mercy is not a gift to be trampled under foot by the persistent rebels of time.

—The Urantia Book

I want to be around for that.  Meanwhile, a little justice and righteousness would be a good thing right now.

[Image found here.]

UPDATE: (11/1 @ 1:25 pm) Exxon and Shell just announced they made $16 billion in profits during the last quarter alone.

And here’s a reminder of what a dick Romney is on the issue of climate change.

 

The Reagan-Palin Hybrid

Updating the ancient Greek myth of the Chimera The New York Times weighs in on presidential wannabe Sarah Palin‘s commemoration of what would have been the 100th birthday of conservative icon, Ronald Reagan: SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Sarah Palin opened a weekend centennial celebration to Ronald Reagan by declaring that the United States was lurching toward a “road to ruin,” …