Author: ppadmin

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. — Albert Einstein

In his 2 May 2011 televised statement on the killing of Osama bin Laden, President Barack Obama made a chilling assertion of divine right and national exemption from the rule of law: “Tonight we are once again reminded that Americans can do whatever we set our minds to … we can do these things not because of our wealth and power, but because of who we are, one nation under God indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” — Ken Sehested

''An infectious greed seemed to grip much of our business community,'' the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, told the Senate Banking Committee yesterday (16 July 2002). The way he sees it, the incentives created by poorly designed stock options ''overcame the good judgment of too many corporate managers." ''It is not,'' he added, ''that humans have become any more greedy than in generations past. It is that the avenues to express greed had grown so enormously.'' Stock options meant that executives could get rich if they faked profits, and fake them they did. — Floyd Norris

We don’t come here (to worship) to get stuff done. We come here to get stuff done to us. — Ken Sehested

Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor each morning the devil says, "Oh crap, she's up!" — author unknown

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. — James Madison, referred to as the “father” of the US Constitution

Thomas Jefferson, third president of the US, was a severe critic of what he called "the selfish spirit of commerce [that] knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.” In the early years of the 19th century, as banks and corporations began to flex their political muscles, he announced that: “I hope we shall crush . . . in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Physically unable to accept an invitation to speak in Washington on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson instead sent remarks to be read, including the following: “The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.” — John Nichols

On a 2011 trip up Alaska’s “inland passage,” I picked up one of those free, ad-filled tour guides for the region. There were brief profiles of several towns in that coastal region formally known as the Alexander Archipeligo. For the town of Sitka, the book noted the remnants of Russian influence, including Orthodox churches. The book summarizes the town's history as "a unique blend of Tlingit (a native Alaskan nation) culture, Russian imperialism and, ultimately, American expansionism." It's those dirty Ruskies who want empire. Us? We just expand. — Ken Sehested

In San Francisco, a billboard for an e-trading firm proclaimed, “Make love not war,” and then—down at the bottom—“Screw it, just make money." — Barbara Ehrenreich

On Aug. 28, 1963, Rabbi Joachin Prinz came to the microphone to address the March on Washington crowd just before Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. “Bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem,” Prinz said. “The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.” — David Wilkinson