"The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." - H. L. Mencken. "One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them." - Thomas Sowell. - Join search for truth learn to recognize it when you encounter it. See also enoughroomvideo.blogspot.com youtube.com/user/roybercaw [Editor: Roy Bercaw]
Showing posts with label Broken Promises. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Broken Promises. Show all posts
[From article]
It is interesting to note that while private cancer charities are being pursued by the FTC, so far the Clintons have not been investigated. Voters may wish to think about the different treatment Beltway Democrats receive from these Federal agencies. It may be useful to keep in mind that Federal agency employees support Democrats in elections and that JFK started Federal unions with an executive order #10988. Lawyers for the IRS gave money to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Inquiring minds may begin to see a connection here.
The Clintons are not alone in their practice of misrepresenting their intentions to spend money.
[. . .]
It is interesting to note that while private cancer charities are being pursued by the FTC, so far the Clintons have not been investigated. Voters may wish to think about the different treatment Beltway Democrats receive from these Federal agencies. It may be useful to keep in mind that Federal agency employees support Democrats in elections and that JFK started Federal unions with an executive order #10988. Lawyers for the IRS gave money to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Inquiring minds may begin to see a connection here.
The Clintons are not alone in their practice of misrepresenting their intentions to spend money.
[. . .]
Several years ago the then-governor, Democrat Pat Quinn, begged the voters of Illinois for an increase in the Illinois income tax. At the time it was at 3% and he said Illinois needed to increase its relatively low income tax in order to help, as you may have guessed, school children and those on Medicaid.
The Illinois Policy Institute found that Governor Quinn not only lied, but also misappropriated of funds. Today ninety percent of that 2% income tax increase goes to pay for public pensions in Illinois, including the pension of Governor Quinn, who is scheduled to receive 3 ½ million dollars in his luxurious retirement, paid for by Illinois taxpayers.
[. . .]
Illinois now has 8,000 retired government workers who earn more than $100,000 a year in their pension, and this number will increase to 20,000 retirees by 2020. Someone needs to pay for it. Including those who earn minimum wage. So the minimum wage earners who believed that Pat Quinn wanted to help them not only were hustled out of their vote but are being hustled, with every paycheck, out of 1.8% of their minimum wage pay and are being forced to contribute to the pensions of those getting $100,000 a year.
[. . .]
But it doesn’t matter. Democrats are only about making promises, not keeping them. The only thing they keep is the money.
Anyone who believes this sort of fraud is perpetrated by both political parties should name the former Republican president who runs a foundation that collects as much as the Clintons do. Or a Republican Governor who begs for a 2% state income tax hike and then keeps 90% of it for public pensions. This sort of outrageous behavior is only engaged in by states run by Democrats.
Posted April 18, 2015 7:41 PM ET; Last updated May 6, 2015 2:53 AM ET
[From article]
One and a half million Armenians were eradicated. If early 20th-century Turkey had the apparatuses and technology to execute en masse – such as 1940s Germany’s gas chambers – the entire Armenian population could well have been annihilated. The atrocities suffered by Armenian and other Christian minorities are too long to list. As occurs under the current caliphate – the Islamic State – the Muslims of the Ottoman caliphate abducted, raped, and slaughtered or sold countless Christian women and children on the Muslim slave markets. Armenian Christians were also sadistically tortured – as Christians are today under the Islamic State. [. . .] In her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora Mardiganian described being raped and thrown into a harem – akin to the experiences of today’s non-Muslims under Islamic State authority. Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were killed after being defiled, she managed to escape. She recalls seeing 16 Christian girls crucified in Malatia: “Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.” Because there is no dearth of evidence concerning the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, 44 U.S. states have recognized it. South Dakota, which recently joined the list, passed a resolution in February 2015 calling on “Congress and the president of the United States to formally and consistently recognize and reaffirm the historical truth that the atrocities committed against the Armenian, Greek, and other Christians living in their historical homelands in Anatolia constituted genocide and to work towards equitable, stable, and durable Armenian-Turkish relations.” Turkey, of course, continues to deny that its forbears ever committed any genocide. [. . .] Nor is the Islamic government of Turkey alone in denying the genocide. President Obama still refuses to acknowledge it – even though, when he was running for office in 2008, he professed his “firmly held conviction that the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence.” The facts are undeniable. ... [A]s President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide. ... America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend to be that president. [. . .] The Armenian National Committee of America responded by saying, “The president’s surrender represents a national disgrace. It is a betrayal of the truth, and it is a betrayal of trust.” The Armenian Assembly of America said, “His failure to use the term genocide represents a major blow for human rights advocates.” But the president’s actions are consistent in other ways. Put differently, it is no marvel that Obama denies the genocide of Armenian and other Christian minorities at the hands of Muslims from a century ago, when one considers that he denies the rampant Muslim persecution of Christians taking place today under – and often because of – his leadership.
April 24, 2015 Obama Breaks Promise on 100th Anniversary of Armenian Genocide By Raymond Ibrahim
* * *
Published on Apr 23, 2015
100 years ago, the first genocide of the 20th century began. On that date, the Islamic Turks commenced their campaign of deportation, murder and starvation against Christian Armenians. As we observe this solemn anniversary, we should remember the repeated failure of the world community to act against genocide, and contemplate what we can do to stop genocide from occurring on our watch.
* * *
[From article]
President Barack Obama will once again stop short of calling the 1915 massacre of Armenians a genocide, prompting anger and disappointment from those who have been pushing him to fulfill a campaign promise and use the politically fraught term on the 100th anniversary of the killings this week. Officials decided against it after opposition from some at the State Department and the Pentagon.
[. . .]
As a senator and presidential candidate, Obama did describe the killings of Armenians as “genocide” and said the US government had a responsibility to recognize them as such. As a candidate in January 2008, Obama pledged to recognize the genocide and at least one of his campaign surrogates — the current US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power — recorded a nearly five-minute video at the time imploring Armenian-Americans to vote for Obama precisely because he would keep his word on the issue.
Turkey recalled its ambassador to the Vatican and accused the Pope of spreading ‘hatred and animosity’ with ‘unfounded allegations’.
The Turks take objection to the word ‘genocide’ — first coined in the 1940s to describe what the Nazis did to the Jews, but also ever since applied to the 1915 massacre of the Armenians.
Not true, has always been the official response from Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey’s capital.
Hundreds of thousands died in that era, they admit, (though they dispute the numbers are anywhere near as high as claimed).
But this, they maintain, happened as a result of chaotic wartime conditions, civil strife, starvation and in response to Armenian violence, not because of a deliberate, officially organised and systematic plan to eliminate an entire people.
Genocide of the Christians: The blood-soaked depravity exceeded even today's atrocities by Islamic State - now, 100 years on Turkey faces global disgust at its refusal to admit butchering over a MILLION Armenians
In 1915 the rulers of the Ottoman empire turned their hatred on Armenians
The Young Turks persecution of the minority turned to unbridled savagery
Modern Turkey faces disgust over refusal to admit the historic genocide
WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES
By TONY RENNELL FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 17:56 EST, 17 April 2015 | UPDATED: 19:53 EST, 17 April 2015
* * *
Over one million of the two million Armenians living within the borders of the Ottoman Empire were murdered.
[From article]
The event is sponsored by Professor of History and Darakjian and Jafarian Chair in Armenian History Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, the Department of History, Tufts Armenian Club and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR).
[. . .]
McCabe explained that the theme of most of the past commemorations has been genocide in a general sense. This year, however, it will focus specifically on the Armenian Genocide and the voices of the people affected by it, she said.
Robert Rosenkranz with his wife Alexandra Munroe in 2005.
Photo: Patrick McMullan
[From article]
A married Manhattan multimillionaire thought he could buy his mistress’ silence for $32,500.
He was wrong.
Following a romp in the Pierre Hotel, Robert Rosenkranz, the 72-year-old CEO of the $10 billion Delphi Financial Group, slipped a check for that amount into a birthday card he handed to his illicit lover, Katherine Nelson, she claims in a lawsuit.
The notation on the check marked it as a “final payment” for a “binding agreement” — a nondisclosure agreement about their four-year affair — which she says she unknowingly signed three months earlier.
[. . .]
Katherine Nelson
Photo: Stefan Jeremiah
Rosenkranz handed her a seven-paragraph “contract” with the assurance that she didn’t need to read it or consult a lawyer, Nelson contends in a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.
The document promised Nelson $100,000 for her silence, she alleges.
But Rosenkranz forked over just $32,500 — and by August, Nelson was spilling the beans.
[From article]
The numbers aren't pretty. From 2009 through 2014, we count 112 promises that to date remain unfulfilled.
We should also note that many of these promises are duplicated from one year to another. For example, every year he has pledged to pass comprehensive immigration reform, overhaul corporate taxes, reduce regulations, and close Guantanamo Bay.
The full list is below. Montage above. Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments.
MONTAGE: 112 UNKEPT PROMISES FROM EARLIER OBAMA SOTU ADDRESSES
As President Obama prepares to make new promises tonight, here’s a look back at those not yet fulfilled
[From article] his claim as a candidate in 2007 that the events at Selma, Alabama, in 1965 stirred his parents to ignore the obvious obstacles to their multicultural romance and give birth to baby Barack. “They got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born,” said Obama to a largely black audience. “So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Alabama.” He didn’t, and he wasn’t. In reality, Obama’s father had long since abandoned the family by the time of the famous march. While protestors were confronting angry white state troopers in Alabama, the three-year-old Obama was collecting seashells with his white grandfather in Waikiki. [. . .] Although admitting he did not know all the facts, Obama had confidence enough in America’s “long history” of racial injustice to announce, “The Cambridge [Mass.] police acted stupidly.” Obama knew less about the arresting officer than he did about the incident itself. Sgt. James Crowley defied the racist stereotype. He was not only a model officer, but also an Obama supporter. A black police commissioner had personally selected him to teach recruits about the pitfalls of racial profiling. [. . .] Obama urged the Latinos in his Univision radio audience to think of Republicans as “our enemies” and “to punish” them by voting. On a similarly discordant note, he told a 2008 campaign crowd in Philadelphia, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” [. . .] Concluded Obama after some meaningless temporizing: “But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon -- If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” Obama would not have known that Zimmerman was a civil rights activist who openly supported him for president.
[From article]
Morsi, in an email, allegedly asked the student if he was a virgin, and he replied that he was. Their relationship escalated and got physical on June 5, 2013, when Morsi brought the teen into a closet in the school’s gym, exposed her breast to him, performed oral sex and had intercourse, according to court documents. Prosecutors said the teacher and student had sex more than 20 times in the school last year in various places, including the basement and gymnasium, prosecutors said. Morsi took their sexual escapades outside of the school to various deserted parking lots and sent him raunchy selfies of her breasts, prosecutors said.
[From article] A wealthy Long Island businessman and self-described “high-roller” gambler is suing a pair of ritzy Atlantic City casinos for begging him to spend his cash at their tables – and then sticking him with bills for pricey freebies they’d promised him when he proceeded to win more than $100,000, according to a Brooklyn federal lawsuit.
[From article]
How many Democrats made the promise? There's no comprehensive list of all of them, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's office has compiled a list of 27 Democratic senators who pledged that Americans could keep their coverage under Obamacare. The list includes the entire Democratic leadership in the Senate as well as Democrats facing tough re-election races in 2014, like Mary Landrieu, Mark Begich, and Kay Hagan. Here is that list, compiled by McConnell's office:
Harvard University is a great institution even though it may have lost its way from its founding as a training school for minsters. Their spokespersons have a standard response whenever someone wants Harvard to honor its obligations, its promises, it contracts. “Harvard’s buildings are intended to support its core mission of teaching, learning and research, and that involves maintaining living space for students and faculty, labs and research facilities, classrooms and library spaces, as well as space for administrative and support services,” a spokesperson from Harvard said in a prepared statement. No one can doubt that is true. Harvard's mission is as stated, focused on education and support for education. However in previous activities when Harvard was advancing its core mission of education and support thereof, they encountered some law or ordinance. In order to be allowed to ignore the laws and/or the ordinances, Harvard offered a concession, a trade. "We will give you this consideration if you let us violate that law or ordinance." In City government it is often called a variance. They can vary from the rules of the ordinance without penalty. Previously Harvard made many promises at hearings before various city boards and commissions. After a few years pass the people who attended those meetings are dead, moved or no longer attend the meetings. Harvard representatives also change. They seldom are aware of the past. If they know of it they do not include it in their discussions. As in this case they pretend that anything outside of their core mission is a burden and unjustified obligation imposed on them by uncaring selfish members of the dreaded "community" (the term Harvard has for those awful people who have no Harvard affiliation). When the earlier promise, consideration given in trade for a variance, becomes inconvenient, Harvard just changes the focus to make it appear as if they are the offended party, the victim of outsider avarice. This is an example.
Cambridge residents, councilors wary of Harvard’s plan for senior housing
By Erin Baldassari ebaldassari (at) wickedlocal.com
Cambridge Chronicle
Posted Feb 22, 2013 @ 11:49 AM
Niall Ferguson: Obama’s Gotta Go
Aug 19, 2012 1:00 AM EDT
Why does Paul Ryan scare the president so much? Because Obama has broken his promises, and it’s clear that the GOP ticket’s path to prosperity is our only hope.
Daily Beast
SHORT CHANGE: Ryan Leslie (above) and Armin Augstein at
Manhattan federal court yesterday. Augstein is suing for the promised
$1 million reward for the return of Leslie’s laptop.
So did he learn about morality and breach of contract at Harvard? Or was that a function of his superior intelligence?
Rapper ordered to pay the $1M reward he promised for recovery of stolen laptop Mogul can’t cheat laptop finder: jury New York Post By BRUCE GOLDING Last Updated: 9:09 AM, November 29, 2012 Posted: 1:48 AM, November 29, 2012
* * *
[From article]
“I have come to terms that I [am] never going to see my album again,”
said the Financial District resident, a onetime whiz kid who scored a
perfect 1600 on his SATs and entered Harvard at age 15.
Sour note: Musician ‘reneges’ on $1 million reward after laptop recovery
Musician ‘reneges’ after laptop recovery
New York Post
By REBECCA ROSENBERG and BRUCE GOLDING
Last Updated: 2:33 AM, November 28, 2012
Posted: 12:41 AM, November 28, 2012
A Stanford University journalist believes what a politician says. With a modicum of common sense one knows not to believe what any politician says. Obama's nonsense sounded as if he was on acid. Rising expectations with no delivery leads to revolution and cynicism. Obama brings on the worst of human nature. Harvard grads are notoriously lacking in common sense. Obama is typical Harvard and fits very well in the moral fog of DC.
Gibbs Passes On One Last Chance to Make Health Care Negotiations Transparent Jake Tapper ABC News December 27, 2009 2:29 PM
November 11, 2009
Denial is Not De Nile
Maybe it was that "The Cambridge police acted stupidly." comment that is eroding Obama's support; followed this week by his "Don't jump to conclusions before getting all the facts." Or "I promise to post all bills online for 72 hours before I sign them so that you [the voters] can read them." Or his recognition of the 57 United States? Do you think?
All Politics is Local Republican gubernatorial victories are not harbingers of a national movement By The Harvard Crimson Staff Published: Monday, November 09, 2009
Barack Obama's Top 10 unfulfilled pledges Less than nine months into his four-year term of office, President Barack Obama's record is already one of abandoned promises, sidelined issues and lack of action. Telegraph (UK) Analysis by Toby Harnden in Washington Published: 7:53PM BST 12 Oct 2009
You can send me an email at rb662 (at) columbia.edu
US Federal Debt July 2, 2016 $19,385,011,022,974.42.
The estimated population of the United States is 323,268,727 so each citizen's share of this debt is $59,965.62. The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $2.42 billion per day since September 30, 2012!
"Sarchasm:" the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn't get it. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)" Washington Post August 2, 1998, Style.
George Washington (1732-1799) "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent -- it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." "If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor." "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."
John Adams (1735-1826) Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Thomas Sowell (1930 -) "One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them."
Noam Chomsky (1928 -) “If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all” (Guardian (UK), Nov.23, 1992)
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) "Chance favors the prepared mind."
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) "If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." - "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) "To be nobody but yourself in a world that's doing its best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting."
Jodie Foster (1962 - ) "Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from."
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970 )"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." "The fundamental cause of trouble in the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Frank Leahy (1907-1973) "Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity."
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) "A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road."
James Michael Curley (1874-1958) “Never complain, never explain.”
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939 ) "The reason for so much bad science is not that talent is rare, not at all; what is rare is character."
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) “I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.” "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
Andre Gide: (1869-1951) "Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again." "Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) "And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
A woman responding to a threat from Cuban-backed terrorists in El Salvador, 1982 “You can kill me, you can kill my family, kill my neighbors, but you can’t kill us all.”
Aung San Suu Kyi (1945- ) "The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear."
Dorothy Thompson (1894-1961) "Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live." Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) "Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable."
Lady Marguerite Gardiner (1789-1849) "There are no persons capable of stooping so low as those who desire to rise in the world."
Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941)"Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty." "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”
Will Rogers: (1879-1938) "When people start taking the comedian seriously and the politician as a joke, everything changes." "This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer."
Adlai E. Stevenson Jr. (1900-1965) "My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular." [Under this definition, Cambridge Massacchusetts, and the state of Massachusetts are not free societies. ed.]
Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) "We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."
Maria Bartiromo (1967 -) "My [commencement 2011] speech at St. John's [University, New York] three themes: work hard, no shortcuts, love what you do, and always do the right thing."
Ayn Rand (1905-1982) "Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists ... it is real ... it is possible ... it's yours."
Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) "Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well."
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) "The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone."
Dr. Seuss (1904-1991, Theodor Seuss Geisel) "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda) "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Howie Carr (1952- Boston Herald Columnist, WRKO Radio Talk Show Host) "The [MA] courts are more corrupt than the legislature." (November 18, 2010, 6:15 PM on his radio show.)
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) "In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008) "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
Voltaire (François Marie Arouet, 1694-1778) "Common sense is not so common." "Doubt is not a pleasant mental state, but certainty is a ridiculous one." "Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world."
Martha Coakley (1953 - Democrat, MA Attorney General, 2010) "In Massachusetts, technically, it is not illegal to be illegal."
Deval Patrick (1956 - Democrat, MA Governor, 2010) "I am not a politician."
Michael Bloomberg (1942 - Democrat, Republican, Independent 3-Term Mayor of New York City and Billionaire) "Last time I checked, the pharmaceutical industry doesn't make a lot of money."
George W. Bush (1946 - ) "Intentions get overwhelmed by perceptions."
John Tudor "Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology."
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
Robert Heinlein (1907-1988) "There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) "There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character." "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." "No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes she were not." "For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." "It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull." "Democracy is the theory that people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." "Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage."
Michel de Montaigne: (1533-1592) "The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness."
Aldous Huxley: (1894-1963) "I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself."
T. S. Eliot: (1888-1965) Half the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important They don’t mean to do harm But the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle To think well of themselves."
Burt Prelutsky, (1940- Columnist) "Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with a Muslim building a nuclear bomb in Iran."
Nicholas Murray Butler (1862-1947) "An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less."
Henry Kissinger: (1923 - ) "In this world it is often dangerous to be an enemy of the United States, but to be a friend is fatal."
Socrates: (469BC-399BC) "He is the richest who is content with the least."
Leo Tolstoy: (1828-1910) "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly." "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." "Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold."
P.J. O'Rourke (A Parliament of Whores) "Imagine if all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a Brooks Brothers suit, would be stone-washed denim. Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on the shelves at the library. And - since women are a majority of the population- we'd all be married to Mel Gibson."
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) "Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
Orson Welles (as Harry Lime in The Third Man, 1949) "In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace -- and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
Tacitus: (c. 56 AD-c. 117) "The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates."
Ralph Waldo Emerson: (1803-1882) "Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing."
Doug Hoffman: (2009 Conservative Party Candidate for US Rep. NY 23rd District) "Congress fiddles while our economy burns. They lack common sense."
Rich Lowry: (On ObamaCare) "A shimmering mirage of wishful thinking and willful dishonesty."
President Obama (as he loses public support.) "We cannot wait any longer [. . .] There comes a time to remember the fierce urgency of right now."
Rush Limbaugh: (On first hour of his show broadcast October 23, 2009) Obama "is delusional." He's "seriously dangerous." He's "insane." Reacting to Obama's comments that the US Constitution is an obstacle to "redistribution of wealth." Obama also referred to "the so called founders."
Marek Edelman, leader of Warsaw Ghetto uprising. (1919?-2009) "Man is evil, by nature man is a beast. People have to be educated from childhood, from kindergarten, that there should be no hatred."
Adis Medunjanin (24 in January 2010, Queens, NY man accused of training with al Qaeda): "We love death more than you love life."
Edward Moore Kennedy (1932-2009): "Do we operate under a system of equal justice or one for the average citizen and one for the high and mighty?"
Robert Novak: (1931-2009) “Always love your country — but never trust your government!
Calvin Coolidge: (1872-1933) “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) in Dead Pool: "Opinions are like a**holes. Everybody's got one."
Lyndon Johnson: (1908-1973) “The difference between liberals and cannibals is that cannibals don’t eat their friends and family members.”
Margaret Thatcher: (1925 - 2013) "The problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of others people's money."
John Adams: (1735-1826) "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
Abraham Lincoln: (1809-1865) "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Thomas Jefferson: (1743-1826) "Merchants have no country." “In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
James Madison: (1751-1836) “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
Mark Twain: (1835-1910) "Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing often and for the same reason." "It's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you think you know for sure that just ain't so." "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." "Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions." "Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
Maggie Gallagher: (1960 - ) "Politicians can pass a bill saying a chicken is a duck and that doesn't make it true. Truth matters."
Humpty Dumpty (In Alice in Wonderland) "When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to. No more no less."
Groucho Marx: (Julius Henry, 1890-1977) "Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read."
United States Constitutionhttp://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html
FACTS ARE STUBBORN:
John Adams: Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
Aldous Huxley: Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Thomas Fuller: Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get them, get them right, or they will get you wrong.
Obama Lost the Debate on Health Care:Unable to counter widespread concerns of citizens about his health care plans, Obama supporters conduct intense vitriolic attacks on critics. Obama has no rational arguments, and hopes to discredit his critics by character assassination. They are not just racists now they are greedy racists and hate mongers. Maybe that will work. Ya think? Obama-Biden: Stupid is as stupid does. Biden: "We misread how bad the economy was."
Obama: [Correcting Biden]"We had incomplete information." So the US Congress voted for and the President signed a $787 billion stimulus bill without having read it, and with incomplete information? And they say others are stupid? Hello? Then Congress voted for a 1,000+ page "cap and trade" bill that none of them read.
Bloomberg: Daschle says, "Health care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them," while former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm says seniors have "a duty to die." If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that the President, Senators and Congressmen have their own special gold plated health care plan which is guaranteed the remainder of their lives and they are not subject to this new law if they pass it. Reverse the dangerous direction of the Obama administration and its allies.
Obama, The Un-Truman: David McCullough, in his biography of Harry Truman, "Truman" says on page 217, "Harry cared little more for other [than Huey Long] celebrated 'speechifiers' in the Senate. Admittedly fearful of making a speech himself, he seemed to resent particularly those who could and who made their reputations that way. They were the 'egotistical boys' whose specialty was talk." Obama admitted that he can make a speech but that he was incapable of doing anything in the Senate. Where did he gets his special powers during the campaign?
Obama's Mantra: He keeps repeating, "I won the election." He expects all Americans to support what HE wants. "I won," is how Obama implements the post-partisan unification of America. What a guy! See also Rich Lowry's "Sorry, O: 'I won' Won't Cover this," New York Post, February 6, 2009, page 27. http://www.nypost.com/seven/02062009/postopinion/opedcolumnists sorry__o__i_won_wont_cover_this_153839.htm
MIDDLESEX DA: We're too busy to address crimes less than murder. On Thursday June 25, 2009 Marian Ryan, who works for the Middlesex District Attorney in MA, returned my call from the previous day. She heads the unit for abuse of elders and abuse of persons with disabilities. She told me, "We've had four murders this month." That was to explain why she was unable to address 35 years of police abuses of a citizen with a disability now an elder. She said that a police officer making a threat did not rise to the level of a crime. She did not have time or resources to address abuses by the City Manager and the Police Commissioner of Cambridge, and the Harvard University campus police. It was no concern that using police to harass a person with a disability may be the reason for the four murders. MA Civil Rights statute and possession of illegal firearms are felonies, but not murder. Misallocation of resources is easily apparent. If the police focused on criminals instead of harassing elders with disabilities there might be less violent crime. But who was I to argue.
Cambridge Censorship: In October 2009 City Council Candidate Kathy Podgers complained to Attorney Bill August, long term president of the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association, that her posts to the neighborhood discussion lists were not appearing. Then Bob LaTremouille added his similar complaints. When I chimed in that my posts did n0t appear for many months Bill August accused me of libel. I said he ignored my complaints about censorship. For a lawyer he does not read very well. On one occasion in 2007 I sent a letter via Fedex from one part of Cambridge to another. I used Fedex because of frequent tampering with my mail by USPS employees. Mail was withheld by USPS employees, and some mail was intercepted and never got to where I sent it. The letter sent by Fedex never arrived either. Their tracking system ended before it was delivered. I wrote to the President of Fedex. He sent me a check for $25 to compensate me. What good is money if you can't send a letter from one part of a city to another? In June 2009 I sent a letter to a US Government agency complaining about a mobbed up police officer who was protecting criminals who harass me each day. Two days after I sent the letter the police detective appeared at a market as I shopped. He used a young woman as bait to try to have me arrested. In June 2009 someone opened a YouTube account solely to publish a comment attacking me personally. This is a frequent experience of an ongoing character assassination campaign by criminals and their police associates. A Harvard University attorney told me not to make complaints to their real estate offices but to the office of the General Counsel. The lawyer assigned was trying to deceive me. On June 6, 2009 I noticed a threat from a police officer as a comment under one of my videos posted on YouTube July 7, 2008. The video shows a Cambridge police patrol car parked in a bus stop. The officer was having dinner nearby not on an emergency call. Every day since I complained to the Attorney General about the threat Cambridge police or Harvard campus police follow me and try to provoke me. The Attorney General is married to a supervising Cambridge police officer. I learned on June 15, 2009 that the FBI was investigating me again. In May 2009, my comments on the Boston Herald web pages (a public accommodation) were removed allegedly due to violations of guidelines. When I complained one was restored. Interns referred me to a staff writer when three of my comments about the shooting death at a Harvard dorm were removed. Someone unknown to me posted a picture of a man from the city in my YouTube profile. That means that someone is tampering with my YouTube account. That is a felony under US law. On or about December 12, 2008 my name was removed from two neighborhood discussion lists--Riverside and Cambridgeport. My attempts to be put back on were ignored by the former President of the Riverside neighborhood, Larry Adkins. Cambridgeport moderators opened my new access in February 2009. In May 2009 I received messages from the list but was unable to post messages. Last year I was unable to receive or post messages to the Porter Square neighborhood discussion list. No notice there either. They began a new list this year and I now get messages. But I was the target of personal attacks on the Porter Square list, the Cambridgeport discussions and on the Cambridge Chronicle web pages. An FBI informant who maintains a web site about the City of Cambridge ridicules me and others who he believes have disabilities. My account with YouTube (more than 250 videos posted) was shut in August 2008 and my appeals of Fair Use Doctrine were ignored. On April 15, 2009 my YouTube account was re-opened. Emily Rooney, host of the PBS news show, Greater Boston threatened to have me banned from Boston. Cambridge City Councilor and Harvard lawyer, Brian Murphy, who resigned in February 2009 to take a six-figure job with the state used council rules to silence my expression. These are rules that the Council created but ignore at every meeting. An email account I used specially for discussion lists was shut down with no notice and no reason or warning given. My several emails inquiring why have been ignored. That account was re-opened on February 10, 2009. Google Video flagged and blocked four uploaded episodes of a cable access TV show I produced and hosted on CCTV. When I appealed their decision, they agreed to put it back up. But as of this date one remains blocked. In February 2009 a long term producer of documentaries at CCTV told me "There is no such thing as Free Speech." That was the second time someone in Cambridge said that to me.
