"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 Identity Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Identity Politics. Show all posts
[From article]
During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the recent transgender bathroom mandate, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) found herself unable to rationally deal with a witness, a law school professor, who had submitted a 21-page written statement to be entered as testimony. As Jennifer Krabbany of the College Fix reports, what set off Lofgren’s meltdown was this:
We are teaching young people a terrible lesson. If I believe that I am a Russian princess, that doesn’t make me a Russian princess, even if my friends and acquaintances are willing to indulge my fantasy. Nor am I a Great Horned Owl just because—as I have been told—I happen to share some personality traits with those feathered creatures. I should add that very few actual transgender individuals are confused in this way. They understand perfectly that their sex and their gender do not align. Some choose surgery to make their bodies better align with their gender. Most choose not to.
Rather than deal with the logic of this statement, Lofgren retreated into the I-am-offended posture, and then when challenged, started calling names:
Ed Driscoll of Instapundit nails it on the final exchange in this sequence:
When the professor quipped: “Does that mean you think I am a Russian princess?” [Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-CA] could only respond “I have no idea.”
…Of course Lofgren knows the answer to San Diego law school professor Gail Heriot’s deliberately absurdist query, but it’s one that she dare not express under her ideology’s Stalinist culture of fear, lest she commit doubleplus ungood gender thoughtcrime.
May 28, 2016
Watch as Democrat unable to deal with professor’s challenge on ‘transgender’ bathroom rule loses it, starts calling names
By Thomas Lifson
[From article]
My first reaction when I saw the photos of the black female West Point graduates in their seemingly defiant, fists-raised black power poses was probably similar to that of a large segment of conservative America: "What the hell is going on here?" That was accompanied by an old Army vet's revulsion that the barracks, uniforms, and prestige of a hallowed American military institution were being used to showcase support by junior Army officers for what I consider racist black supremacist politics.
[. . .]
It was while reading comments to this piece that what was bothering me about the hundreds of responses I'd read here and elsewhere gelled in my mind. I'd expected the widespread angry reaction, but what I had not expected was the openly expressed racial bitterness and censure directed at a group of young women who without question had made a very thoughtless and truly dumb mistake.
[. . .]
Similar feelings to mine were expressed by many veteran commenters, both retired officers and enlisted, all of whom are well aware of the foolhardiness of any officer openly demonstrating such political racial solidarity.
But the main takeaway from this incident is that had this same event taken place ten years ago, it would have drawn similar media attention but most likely fewer critical comments by readers, and most assuredly the racial intensity and hostility expressed in those comments wouldn't have been even close to what they are today. Most certainly a large number of them, especially here at American Thinker, would have been blocked for being too racially insensitive – but now, after almost eight years of a black president, they're just part of the acceptable racial narrative. It's no secret that Eric Holder was speaking for his boss and setting out the racial position for the Obama administration when he described black felons as his people. Obama's recent black college commencement address where he lapsed into black vernacular demonstrates that it's still in place. Gullible voters put Obama in office and kept him there all this time based on the hope that he would end racial strife. They may as well have hoped for the Tooth Fairy to leave it under their pillows.
If Obama wants to know what his real legacy is, he should start reading web comments.
May 11, 2016
West Point responses: Obama's true legacy
By Russ Vaughn
Published on May 9, 2016
A controversial photo has arisen of 16 black women with their fists raised in Army Uniform at West Point Military Academy. West Point is a college environment unlike the majority of college campuses in the United States, in that any political affiliations, protests, are banned on campus. The Department of Defense (DoD) also states that a person is not allowed to make a political statement of any sort while in military uniform. This creates issues in which the women featured in this photograph are going to have to face.
The first issue is the moral outrage. A popular fitness blogger and Army Veteran, John Burk, wrote an op-ed style blog on his website decrying the photograph as against what the military is all about (unity) and being against DoD regulations.
The second point is obviously the rule violation. The photos were taken as part of a long-standing tradition at West Point, which is to don the old-school grey Uniforms to take graduation photos in front of the very historic Nininger Hall. Which means the class of women in the photo are going to graduate this year, 2016. The rule violation could place them in a situation where they are expelled from the school, unable to graduate just two weeks before they are scheduled.
It would be unfortunate if these women were not allowed to graduate, or if another possibly career-altering result would arise, but what are the alternatives? If allowed to go unfettered, this action could spur other actions, such as a group of white males displaying the Nazi/Aryan extended palm salute. Nobody would try to understand the dynamics of the photo, and rightfully so. However, it would be unfair for that photo to be punished severely while the photo of the black women raising the black power fist goes unchallenged.
Whatever the solution and/or response to the photo is, it must be something that the Army and the DoD in general is willing to live with for other similar cases. Not to say that the Nazi/Aryan salute is the exact same thing as the Black Power/Black Unity Fist... however... they are both political statements that are against regulations. They must be treated the same in the eyes of the authority that will rule on them. If not, what you're going to have is race-based discipline, which truly has no place in the United States Military.
https://youtu.be/3Lzm6A3DTWc
* * *
[From article]
Sixteen African-American senior cadets at West Point thought it a good idea to pump their fists in the air in a recent photo. In what many consider a violation of their oath of “Duty, Honor, Country,” they instead appear to align themselves with #BlackLivesMatter
[. . .]
It is clear that these woman lack leadership skills. The best solution is to award them the degree in engineering that they have earned and dismiss them from the military. It is questionable if they are fit to lead, despite the fact that taxpayers just spent $250,000 educating each of them.
What would have happened if the situation were reversed and sixteen “good old white Southern boys” were photographed holding the Confederate flag? They would have been expelled immediately and would be long gone.
Women in the military want fair treatment; well, give it to them.
Thomas Lifson adds:
These women will have careers in the Army because without them, the quotacrats would make life miserable for the top brass. Under President Obama, the United States military is driven by quotas and social engineering imperatives, not the defense of the nation. Sad, but that's the way it is. For now.
Saying "Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line." is disjointed, applying an ancient paradigm to new patterns of voting. Democrats abandoned white workers favoring skin color based voters. Identity politics works in mindless conformist Massachusetts. It will fail in the rest of the country. Dangerous pattern unmentioned among liberal censors is billionaire George Soros and Google Corp. reportedly funding disruption of the political process using hired thugs. Their effort to bring banana republic government by brute force to the United States will fail.
More misguided policies dividing people, by race, gender. Notice wealthy and powerful black persons were not prohibited. Why no religious restrictions? More than pure campaign contributions by approved interests, this rally prefers politically correct voters. The United States is becoming majority non white. Who will comfort the minority white population, especially in non white cities? If being the majority makes people feel comfortable what difference does the source of campaign contributions make? Self identification determines one's race, sexual preference and gender. Will people lie to get special benefits? Racial supremacists ignore persons with disabilities (not even mentioned in this report), who lack wealthy and powerful allies to enable their own unequal restrictions. Who will make them feel comfortable?
[From article] Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America's Postwar Political Order by James Pierson may be one of the best books ever written on American political history. It traces the evolution of both political parties from the aftermath of World War I to the present.
[. . .]
Out of the tumultuous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the Democratic Party institutionalized identity politics based on grievance along with anti-Americanism – that is, the United States was and still is responsible for all of the problems in the world both at home and abroad.
[. . .]
The IRS scandal of targeting conservative groups represents how they've taken another step in weaponizing the machinery of government for political purposes.
[From article]
This proliferation of in-your-face sexual identities is all posturing, just part of the dance between students desperate to find one last means of being transgressive and college bureaucrats eager to show their sensitivity and to justify their six-figure salaries. Students who should be studying European history and the roots of the novel—would that such subjects were still taught—are instead combing the farthest reaches of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic Manual for ways to distinguish themselves. By posing what they hope will be rejected demands on their administrations, they seek only to prove that they are living a life of oppression.
[. . .]
With so many marginalized groups on campus, one wonders who is left to do the discriminating and oppressing.
http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon0226hm.html
HEATHER MAC DONALD
Not Your Parents’ Open House
At Wesleyan University, if you’re oppressed, there’s a “safe space” for you.
26 February 2015
[From article]
From the beginning, Officer Darren Wilson’s shooting of Michael Brown wasn’t reported like news. It was reported like a cause.
The media are in a huff about the prosecutor being “biased” because
his father was a cop, who was shot and killed by an African-American.
[. . .]
The reason most grand jury investigations result in an indictment is
that most grand juries aren’t convened solely to patronize racial mobs.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was basically demanding an indictment of Wilson
before Big Mike’s body was cold. It was only because of racial politics
that this shooting wasn’t dismissed without a grand jury, at all.
[. . .]
TV hosts narrated the riot by saying it showed “the community” feels
it’s not being listened to. Only liberals look at blacks looting and
say, See what white Americans made them do?
That’s their proof of injustice — look at how blacks are reacting!
(While I don’t approve of the looting part, I do approve of the whole
throwing-bottles-at-CNN part.)
The looters aren’t the community!
[. . .]
White people don’t feel any obligation to defend some thug just because
he’s white. Only blacks are expected to lie on behalf of criminals of
their own race.
[From article]
“Here you have the mostly white police force in a mostly black community. But I'm perplexed about why most of the elected officials are white as well. Is there something about the way elections are done in Missouri or in the county? That's troublesome,” Washington, D.C.’s non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives, told host Jose Diaz Balart.
“Usually when you get a minority community or a community that becomes mostly minority, you get some diversity of representation,” Holmes Norton So you may have an elected leadership, as well as a police force, that does not feel that they are truly representative of the community and that's poison,” she added.
According to Holmes Norton, the black community needs to get involved and make sure they elect people who represent them.
“Hey, black community! You see what happens when you don't have your own elected officials out there, people who have had experiences similar to your own. I don't understand that. Again, there may be something about the way the elections are conducted in that county. But if I were in that community, the first thing I would be doing is organize voters to go to the polls in November.”
[From article]
The developed world has chosen civilizational suicide as a moral virtue. As Fabienne Calmes' fellow educator across the Atlantic would say, our growing diversity is a strength that we will continue to celebrate - even unto death.
[From article] According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 31 percent of blacks think that most blacks are racists, while 24 percent of blacks think that most whites are racist. [. . .] Even in legal cases involving terrible crimes — the O.J. Simpson murder trial or the charges of gang rape against Duke University students — many black “leaders” and their followers have not waited for facts about who was guilty and who was not, but have immediately taken sides based on who was black and who was white.
Eric Hoffer — 'Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.'
[From article] Recently, a group of liberal Asian-American state lawmakers in California -- a state that is over 60 percent non-white -- successfully blocked a proposed return to racial considerations in college admissions. Asian-American students are now disproportionately represented in the flagship University of California system at nearly three times their percentages in the state's general population. If race were reintroduced as a consideration for admission, Asian-Americans would have had their numbers radically reduced in the California system at the expense of other ethnic-minority students, regardless of their impressive ethnically blind grades and test scores. [. . .] Yet if verifiable hyphenation is to be our touchstone to career or academic identity, how do we certify minority status in an increasingly intermarried and multiracial society where there soon will be, as in California, no majority ethnic group? Are we to wear DNA badges to certify the exact percentages of our racial pedigrees -- to prevent another Elizabeth Warren or Ward Churchill from gaming the system?
[From article]
Members from Youth on Fire will share their personal experiences of homelessness and surviving on the streets as GLBTQ young adults. Carly Burton, deputy director of MassEquality and chairman of the Massachusetts Special Commission on Unaccompanied Homeless Youth’s Working Group on Services for LGBTQ Youth, will give an update on the statewide policy work around homeless youth issues.
Here is evidence of, and more misguided use of taxpayer funds appropriated for human services and to end homelessness. Identity politics makes only those members of the identity groups eligible for assistance. In this case it is lesbians and homosexuals, and others whose main identity is based on sexual preferences. Other special interest groups get attention, e.g., (liberal) women, black, Asian, Muslim, illegal aliens, and whatever other ethnic, gender, race based special interest groups are present at the time. So what about the evil, hate-filled unorganized group of heterosexual men? Are they all wealthy, healthy and powerful? White men have no identity organization, and are prevented from having one to appeal to when they are homeless or in need of government assistance? Is that why there are so many white homeless men?
http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x1275642728/Discussion-on-youth-homelessness-to-be-held-Nov-14-at-Cambridge-library
Discussion on youth homelessness to be held Nov. 14 at Cambridge library
Wicked Local Cambridge
Posted Nov 14, 2013 @ 09:28 AM
MA State Rep. Alice Wolf says the legislature should reflect the population it represents. What exactly does that mean? Should elections be determined by quotas for fulfilling the population reflection? Who will decide who gets elected where? Or does she mean that each district should reflect the populations of the district? She does not say. In a district with only white heterosexual men would Wolf allow a white heterosexual man to be elected?
Have women become a minority? Wolf says women are about fifty percent of the population. So what is the problem? Why won't women vote for women? Why won't women run for office? If they do not run should they be appointed to office by Rep. Wolf? And why do white people vote for black people? Why do men vote for women? These are disgusting abuses of identity politics. I mean if you are a self respecting man you
should vote for men, plain and simple. So what is going on here? How many men are traitors to their own interests?
The Cambridge City Legislature has three women for 33 percent of the legislature. But it also has two black men for 22 percent of the legislature. But black people are only about 12 percent of the population. They are over-represented. There are several homosexuals and they too are over-represented. It is unknown if there are still some closeted homosexuals on the City Council.
Now what about persons with disabilities, who make up about 15 percent of the population. How many of them are on the City Council or in the state legislature? Why do women vote for men? Should women who vote for men be fined or jailed as traitors? What about illegal aliens? Why are there no illegal aliens on the Council or the state legislature? And what about Muslims? How many Muslims are on the Council and in the
legislature?
Will Rep. Wolf be willing to chair a commission of appointing proper minority members to office without elections to save money and to ensure that they reflect the population? A new tax on sales of six-packs of beer and soda and single use illegal drugs would fund this essential commission.
[From article]
Wolf said she thinks the legislature should resemble the population
that it represents.
So it is OK for black Americans to vote for Obama because he is black; but it is racist for white Americans to vote for white candidates because they are white. It is OK for BET to focus solely on black entertainment, and black owned newspapers to focus solely on black news but it is racist for white newspapers and white TV and radio stations to focus on white news and entertainment etc. In this global society promoted at the universities whites are 16 percent of the world population, a minority. Nations dominated by persons of color
must pay reparations to whites in the US who have been denied equal access to media.
Leave it to women obsessed with identity politics to show their
misguided focus and priorities. (Margery Eagan, "Intelligence failure
falls on Petraeus," Boston Herald, November 13, 2012) Eagan ignores
her icon's scandal over the Benghazi debacle where an ambassador and
three other US citizens were murdered. The Obama administration tries
to cover it up. Margery Eagan conveniently forgets Petraeus was
scheduled to testify before Congress about Benghazi. The FBI admits it
had no case and no cause to investigate this affair. It was an abuse
of power that revealed in May 2012 the misguided social engagement of
Petraeus and his Harvard Kennedy School paramour. Eagan often misses
the mark about state politics so it is not unusual for her to miss the
implications of this media propaganda event and abuse of FBI power at
the US level. Here's more evidence of why US citizens are so ignorant
of affairs of state. This is junk journalism.
Just as it is perfectly acceptable for black voters to vote for candidates simply because they are black, it is acceptable for white voters to vote for candidates who are white. Will any black candidates ever get elected under this system?
[From article]
Black support of politicians who have done little or nothing for their
ordinary constituents is by no means unusual. Blacks are chief
executives of major cities, such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington,
Memphis, Atlanta, Baltimore, New Orleans, Oakland, Newark, Cleveland
and Cincinnati. In most of these cities, the chief of police, the
superintendent of schools and other high executives are black. But in
these cities, black people, like no other sector of our population,
suffer from the highest rates of homicides, assaults, robberies and
shootings. Black high-school dropout rates in these cities are the
highest in the nation. Even if a black youngster manages to graduate
from high school, his reading, writing and computational proficiency
is likely to be equivalent to that of a white seventh- or
eighth-grader. That's even with school budgets per student being among
the highest in the nation.
[This letter was published in the print edition of The Cambridge Chronicle on Thursday October 11, 2012, Page A10.] In his remarkable letter to the Cambridge MA community, the
superintendent of schools quotes a remarkable claim that "good
teaching comes from the identity of the teacher." Is he serious? Or is
he pandering to the liberal dogma in Cambridge that identity politics
rule? The same principle was argued in a recent front page story in
the Cambridge Chronicle urging more diversity claiming there were not
50 percent of women in the legislature. If women make up more than 50
percent of the population how is that a minority? Why don't they run
for office and vote only for women? If they do should men vote only
for men? Should White voters vote only for White candidates? No
thought goes into what words mean in this city. They are after all
just words as the Kennedy politicians used to tell me. There are more
persons with disabilities in both the Cambridge and the Massachusetts
population than there are either homosexuals or Black people. How many
persons with disabilities are employed, no less teaching under this
diversity-identity standard in the Cambridge schools? What is
remarkable about arguments that make no sense is that the writers make
them with a straight face acting more like politicians. How much
longer can these destructive policies be employed in this misguided
city and state? Here's my idea. Let the students teach themselves.
They reflect more closely the school population than any imposed
distribution by administrators.
[From article]
In his remarkable book, The Courage to Teach, Parker J. Palmer writes,
“Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes
from the identity and integrity of the teacher.” Good citizens of
Cambridge, today I ask you to join me in recognizing the extraordinary
human beings who populate the teaching profession in general, and more
specifically the women and men who educate your children, here in the
Cambridge Public Schools.
Guest commentary: An open letter to the Cambridge community
By Jeffrey M. Young
Cambridge Chronicle
GateHouse News Service
Posted Oct 04, 2012 @ 08:00 AM
[From article]
"They do that because they were born that way."
If you say that about homosexuals, you are tolerant and realistic. If you say it about blacks, you are racist (unless you're black yourself). If you say it about women, you may or may not be sexist, depending on who is manning (er, womanning) the feminist battle stations. If you say it about men, you just might be a writer for Esquire. But if you say it about conservatives, you're a scientist.
Here's one more misguided example of identity politics, as if it will resolve some problem. It only creates more problems re-enforcing the notion that only members of a group can rule objectively in a dispute. Minds are a terrible thing to waste. What if they lie?
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.
