More wonderful (or outrageous) quotations, anecdotes, and aphorisms
🇺🇸 "Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country." —Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834)
🇺🇸 "If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth." —Ronald Reagan, 1964
Video: "The Great Train Robbery." —Silent Motion Picture, 12 minutes, Thomas A. Edison, 1903, Library of Congress
"Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded." —Repeated by Yogi Berra
"Just because you believe in something does not mean that it is true." —Albert Einstein
"Cultivate friends you disagree with, as well as those with whom you agree, because together you'll locate the soft spot in your own thinking, and find common ground to build on." —Professor Robert P. George
"My history teacher was so old, he taught from memory." —Henny Youngman
"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." —Edmund Burke
"A nation that forgets its past has no future." —Attributed to Winston Churchill
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." —George Santyana, 'The Life of Reason or the Phases of Human Progress', 1905
"If we open a quarrel between the past and the present we shall find that we have lost the future." —Winston Churchill, 'Finest Hour' speech, June 18, 1940
"We have but one sample of history." —Economist Paul Samuelson
"The future isn’t what it used to be." —Laura Riding and Robert Graves
"Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician, coined the term aphorism. He wrote a book called Aphorisms, which was full of short statements expressing medical truths." —Aphorisms
"A good aphorism is the wisdom of a whole book in a single sentence." —Theodor Fontane, 1819-1898
"An aphorism is the last link in a long chain of thought." —Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1830-1916
"The only constant in life is change." —Heraclitus
"When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people." —Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter." —Anonymous
"Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old." —Frank Lloyd Wright
"If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got." —Albert Einstein
"Smile oft. Speak gently. Be kind." —Edgar Cayce
"He who pays the piper calls the tune." —Aphorism
"Know which side your bread is buttered on." —Aphorism
"Don't judge a book by its cover." —Idiom
"All things come to those who wait [but he who hesitates is lost]." —Lady Mary Montgomerie Currie aka Violet Fane
"A penny saved is a penny earned." —Aphorism
"You can't fight city hall." —Aphorism
"The race isn't always to the swift, nor the fight to the strong, but that's the way to bet." —Hugh E. Keough
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating." —William Camden, 'Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine', 1605
"The more things change, the more they stay the same." —Alphonse Karr, 1849
"Possession is nine-tenths of the law." —Aphorism
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery mediocrity can pay to genius." —'The Spectator' edited by Joseph Addison. 1714
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it." —Aphorism
"Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." —Thomas Edison
"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step." —Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, 1777
"Eat to live; don't live to eat." —Moliere
"East or west, home is best." —'The Literary Gazette' of London, 1848
"Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom." —George Iles
"Children should be seen and not heard." —15th century English proverb
"A mind is a terrible thing to waste." —Arthur Fletcher, Former Head of United Negro College Fund
"All that glisters/glitters/glistens is not gold." —William Shakespeare
"You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you get what you need." —The Rolling Stones
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." —J.R.R. Tolkien, Gandalf, 'The Lord of the Rings'
"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his." —Oscar Wilde. 'The Importance of Being Earnest'
"A thousand words can’t make the mark a single deed will leave." —Henrik Ibsen, 'Brand'
"Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." —Aphorism
"Better safe than sorry." —Aphorism
"A rolling stone gathers no moss." —Aphorism
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." —Lao Tzu
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." —Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"I’d rather die on my feet, than live on my knees." —Emiliano Zapata
"Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind." —Bernard Baruch
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." —Lord Acton
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." —Kurt Vonnegut, 'Mother Night', 1961
"Your children need your presence more than your presents." —Jesse Jackson
"Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise." —Alice Walker
"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." —H.L. Mencken
"The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club." —Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden, 'Fight Club'
"Fashions have done more harm than revolutions. " —Victor Hugo
"The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around. " —Thomas A. Edison
"No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar. " —Abraham Lincoln
"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough." —Meister Eckhart
"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others. " —Marcus Tullius Cicero
"The way to know life is to love many things. " —Vincent Van Gogh
"We are always the same age inside. " —Gertrude Stein
"God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well. " —Voltaire
"When God closes a door, he opens a window." —Biblical
'Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence': "Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." —Calvin Coolidge
"There are no secrets that time does not reveal. " —Jean Racine
"The past cannot be cured. " —Elizabeth I
"Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. " —Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
"Time and tide wait for no man. " —Geoffrey Chaucer
"If you have one true friend you have more than your share. " —Thomas Fuller
"Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief. " —Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. " —George Washington
"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. " —Mark Twain
"Friends are the siblings God never gave us. " —Mencius
"My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me. " —Henry Ford
"One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives. " —Euripides
"True friends stab you in the front. " —Oscar Wilde
"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. " —Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met. " —William Butler Yeats
"There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship. " —Thomas Aquinas
"A loving heart is the truest wisdom. " —Charles Dickens
"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. " —Aristotle
"'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. " —Alfred Lord Tennyson
"Beware the barrenness of a busy life. " —Socrates
"Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale. " —Hans Christian Andersen
"Into each life some rain must fall. " —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. " —Friedrich Nietzsche
"We do not remember days, we remember moments. " —Cesare Pavese
"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. " —Marie Curie
"Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone. " —Ella Wheeler
"It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice." —One of Sir John Templeton's 'Laws of Life'
"Please do not bite the newcomers." —Wikipedia, instructions to their editors
" ... the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die." —U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, Democratic National Convention, Madison Square Garden, New York City, August 12, 1980
"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." —Maya Angelou
Artificial Intelligence: "It thinks, therefore it is." —Paraphrasing René Descartes [And what are the correct pronouns?]
Really??? How sure are you that there is no such emergent property (and how exactly can (some) brains think)?:
"Computers cannot think." —Nobel Prize Committee, 2024
["On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog (computer)."]
"Stay hydrated; Don't sweat the small stuff." —jebmke
"Do transcontinental railroad enthusiasts have a one track mind?" —Anonymous
"The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know it when you find it." —Steve Jobs
'It's about discovering what gets you jumping out of bed each day, eager to make a difference': "Find something you would die for, and live for it." —Tom Bilyeu's father
"Write if you get work." —Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding
"Never criticize someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes. That way, you're a mile away and you've got their shoes." —Colin Corneau
"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." —John Archibald Wheeler
"Happy Birthday Mr. President." —Sung by Marilyn Monroe to President John F. Kennedy
"When you're good to others, you're best to yourself." —Benjamin Franklin
"I wish the past would invite me back to rectify a thing or two." —'All creatures, great and small'
"Puppies are not Xmas presents – they are 15-year commitments." —Written on the back window of a car (photo)
"Eat drink and be married for tomorrow we diet." —Humorously misquoting the bible
"If you wish to converse with me, define your terms." —Attributed to Voltaire
"Humor makes all things tolerable." —Henry Ward Beecher
"When in doubt, throw it out." —Idiom
"Life is not a dress rehearsal." —Pastor Lawrence T. Holman
"Depth and maturity ... they are two of the most important things you could be in life and they are never mentioned." —Dennis Prager
"Be careful what you wish for. Your wish may be granted." —Aesop's Fables
"The easily embarrassed person does not learn." —Talmud
"Pride goeth before a fall." —Proverb
"The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." —William Faulkner
"Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late." —Benjamin Franklin
"The simplest questions are the hardest to answer." —Northrop Frye
"Life is a tale told by an idiot – full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." —'Macbeth'
"To err is human, to forgive divine." —Alexander Pope, 'An Essay on Criticism'
"To be great is to be misunderstood." —Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Self Reliance'
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." —Aphorism
"All is fair in love and war." —John Lyly, 1579
"A jack of all trades is master of none." —Charles Lucas, 'Pharmacomastix', 1785
"An apple a day keeps the doctor away." —Old saying from Pembrokeshire, Wales, c. 1860's
"Better safe than sorry." —Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, Feburary 1859
"Better the devil you know than the devil you don't." —R. Taverner, 'Proverbs or Adages out of Erasmus', 1539
"You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." —A San Francisco radio host
"It is better to be feared than loved." —Paraphrase of Niccolo Machiavelli, 'The Prince'
"Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." —'The Godfather II'
"Que sera sera. Whatever will be will be." —'The Man Who Knew Too Much'
"You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear." —See, B.E. Gent, 'A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew', 1699
" An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." —Benjamin Franklin
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder." —Anonymous poem, 1602
"You need to take a bull by the horns, and a man by his word." —Idiom
"There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation." —W. C. Fields
"You made your bed, now lie in it." —15th century French proverb
"You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy." —Idiom
"You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea." —Medgar Evers
"If you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas." —Attributed to Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack
"He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day." —Oliver Goldsmith
"Give him enough rope and he'll hang himself." —Charlotte Bronte
"Give him an inch and he'll take a mile." —Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes." —Battle of Bunker Hill
"All for one and one for all, united we stand divided we fall." —Alexandre Dumas, 'The Three Musketeers'
"The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." —Attributed to Confucius
"If the shoe fits, wear it." —Idiom
"Don’t count your chickens before they hatch." —Attributed to Thomas Howell, 1570
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink." —Proverb
"Every cloud has a silver lining." —'The Dublin Magazine', 1840
TRIGGER WARNING: Financial
"If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it." —Anonymous
"The food at this restaurant is awful ... and such small portions!" —Woody Allen
"Be so good they can't ignore you." —Steve Martin
"Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted." —Anonymous
"I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed." —George Carlin
"Just sold my homing pigeon on eBay for the 22nd time." —We are getting older
Investing: "They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it." —Joseph Addison
"Own everything and hold it forever." —Jack Bogle
"My retirement plan is to keep working." —Standard joke
"If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die." —Warren Buffett
"99% of investors should dollar cost average into index funds and call it a day." —Brian Feroldi
"Buy-and-hold, long-term, all-market-index strategies, implemented at rock-bottom cost, are the surest of all routes to the accumulation of wealth." —John C. Bogle
"Because of the stock market's upward tendency, lump sum investing beats dollar cost averaging 68% of the time, but dollar cost averaging beats cash about the same percentage of the time." —After Megan Finlay and Josef Zorn, Vanguard
"Investing involves risk, including risk of loss." —Disclaimer
"Don't count your chickens until they hatch." —Old saying
Don't lock in your loss: "If you can't ignore a crash, then you cannot manage your investments." —WillRetire
'If': "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs ... " [MORE] —Rudyard Kipling
"There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!" —'Men in Black'
"I’m the biggest worrier when times are good, and oddly calm during crises." —Annette Louisan
"An important key to investing is to remember that stocks are not lottery tickets." —Peter Lynch, manager (1977–1990) of Fidelity Magellan, 'the number one growth fund at the time, which compounded at 29% on his watch'
"Once bitten, twice shy." —Rachel Hunter, in 'Lady Maclairn, the victim of villany', 1806
"Don’t throw good money after bad." —Idiom
"Money will not make you happy. And happy will not make you money." —Groucho Marx
"Learn every day, but especially from the experiences of others. It’s cheaper!” —Jack Bogle
Buy low, sell high: "Buy from the fearful and sell to the greedy.“ —Jason Katz, UBS, Managing Director and Senior Portfolio Manager
"Retirement is best when you have a lot to live on, and a lot to live for." —AlwaysLearningMore
"Never invest in a business you cannot understand." —Warren Buffett
"The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient." —Warren Buffet
"The market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent." —John Maynard Keynes
"Learned from financial advisor:
1) Stock picking is a fools errand ('You have as much chance against the Wall Street traders as you would suiting up to play in an NFL game.')
2) Stay the course ('The hardest time to resist a trend is when it is at its very end.')
3) Earnings matter in the long run ('In the short term, the markets are a voting machine. In the long term, they are a weighing machine.')
4) Importance of being insulated from the market in retirement (A bond ladder covering residual living expenses for 7-10 years called a 'circuit breaker' or 'my moat'.)
5) Futility of picking market segments (i.e., the 'quilt chart')." —CuriousGeorgeTx
"You never know what you can do till you try." —William Cobbett
"The man who has missed the pleasure of a job well done has missed one of the great pleasures of life." —Attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes by Bill Bennett
"Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?" —Edgar Bergen
"No man is free who must work for a living." —Illya Kuryakin
"Free association, No charge!" —John Gаrrideb
"How not to have to dry the dishes. ... " [More] —Shel Silverstein
"Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist." —George Carlin
"I’ve been rich. I’ve been poor. Rich is better." —Mrs. George S. Kaufman
"Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they shall never sit in." —Paraphrasing Hyacinthe Loyson, Paris, France, 1866
"If your outgoes exceed your in goes, your upkeep will be your downfall." —Paraphrasing Paul Harvey
"The hardest time to resist a trend is when it is at its very end." —Anonymous
"The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play." —Arnold J. Toynbee
"Find something in life that you love doing. If you make a lot of money, that's a bonus, and if you don't, you still won't hate going to work." —Jeff Foxworthy
"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat & drink beer all day." —George Carlin
"People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point." —George Carlin
TRIGGER WARNING: Meteorite trauma
Unlucky star! "Ann Elizabeth Hodges was struck by a meteorite [Click for photo of this unique injury] while inside her home in Sylacauga, Alabama in late 1954." —Russell Goldman, ABC News
Lucky star! "Sleeping woman avoids death by inches after meteorite crashes through roof of her home and lands right beside her on pillow" —Adam Manno, 'Daily Mail', October 10, 2021
Another meteorite: "Meteorite smashes through roof of New Jersey home, still warm to the touch ... found on the now-dented floor." —Sarah Do Couto, MSN, May 12, 2023
[The Great Comet, November 12, 1577, Prague (Engraving by Jiri Daschitzky, Right).]
"Real knowledge comes only from experience." —MikeG62
"Good judgement comes from experience and experience, ... well that comes from poor judgement. " —Anonymous
"It's not an optical illusion. It just looks like one." —Anon.
• "Too soon old, too late smart."
• "So many books, so little time."
• "My favorite thing to make for dinner is reservations."
• "Too much of a good thing is wonderful."
• "The hurrier I go the behinder I get."
—Needlepoint pillow homilies
"Things are more like they are now than they've ever been before." —Classified advertisement from Gordon Creamer Realtor, 'Amarillo [Texas] Daily News', October 21, 1948
"I miss the days when I used to be nostalgic." —Michael Benveniste
How sad: "[Disney owned] National Geographic [Magazine] lays off its last remaining staff writers. ... [and] the magazine has curtailed photo contracts that enabled photographers to spend months in the field producing the publication's iconic images." —Paul Farhi, June 28, 2023 ["Two funny fake rumors: Russian spy caught by being seen throwing National Geographic magazines into the trash, which an American would never do; and that continental drift and resulting earthquakes are caused by the ever increasing weight of National Geographic magazines piling up in homes along the west coast."]
Grateful to President Eisenhower for wonderful American highways: "Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything." —Charles Kuralt
Try to tell an American he can't, and he will: "Man uses Barbie fishing rod to make record catch." —Los Angeles Times
"That reminds me about the guy who breaks a wrist and asks his doctor: 'Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after this heals?' The doctor replies 'Absolutely, no problem!' The man laughs, and points out that that's great, because he never could play the piano before!" —Ken Rockwell
"Homework! Oh, Homework! I hate you! You stink! ... " [More] —Jack Prelutsky
"Do the best you can, and we'll love you just the same." —Mommy
"Believe in your dreams." —Taylor Swift
"I'd rather surprise people than pretend I'm better than I am." —Jeff K.
"It's good to go on vacation and it's good to come home." —Grandma R
"Mistakes are proof you were trying." —Pillow
"Don't let fear stop you from doing the thing you love." —Sing 1
"If you believe it, you can achieve it." —My perfect Landing
"Believe you can and you're halfway there." —Theodore Roosevelt
"The grass is always greener over the septic tank." —Erma Bombeck
"If it's not fun, you're not doing it right." —Bob Basso
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." —Walt Disney
["Impossible doesn't mean difficult or improbable, impossible is defined as violating the laws of physics, so things that are actually impossible can't ever happen."]
Click on red hilarious video links ...
▶ Baseball: "'Who's on first, What's on second, and I Don't Know's on third.' Why - Left fielder. Because - Center field. Tomorrow - Pitcher. Today - Catcher. I don't give a darn - Short stop. ... " —Abbott and Costello
▶ The Komodo Dragon Expert: "The Komodo dragon is the world's largest living lizard. It's a ferocious carnivore. It's found on the steep-sloped island of Komodo in the lesser Sunda Chain of the Indonesian Archipelago and the nearby islands of Rinja, Padar, and Flores. ... Where do they come from? ... " —Bob and Ray
▶ Dead Parrot: "I wish to register a complaint. ... Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue ... What's wrong with it? ... I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it! ... " —Monty Python's Flying Circus
▶ "'Went With The Wind.' ... " —Carol Burnett
▶ 'Inflationary Language': " ... We have hidden numbers in the words like 'wonderful,' 'before,' 'create,' 'tenderly.' All these numbers can be inflated and meet the economy, you know, by rising to the occasion. I suggest we add one to each of these numbers to be prepared. For example 'wonderful; would be 'two-derful.' Before would be Be-five. Create, cre-nine. Tenderly should be eleven-derly. A Leiutenant would be a Leiut-eleven-ant. A sentence like, 'I ate a tenderloin with my fork' would be 'I nine an elevenderloin with my five-k.' And so on and so fifth. ... " [Complete transcript] —Victor Borge
▶ Olympia Restaurant: "Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger! No Coke, Pepsi! Chips!" —'Live from New York, It's Saturday Night!, 1978'
"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun." —Katharine Hepburn
"Dance as though no one is watching you; love as though you have never been hurt before, sing as though no one can hear you, live as though heaven is on earth." —Alfred Souza
"If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain." —Emily Dickinson
"To the world you might be one person, but to one person you might be the world." —Bill Wilson
"Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves." —Albert Einstein
🖖 "Live Long and Prosper. [Vulcan language phrase 'dif-tor heh smusma.']" —Star Trek Science Officer Mr. Spock
[The (lesser known) response is "Peace and long life."]
"There are 10 kinds of people, those who read binary and those who don't." —Unknown
"There's no place like 127.0.0.1 !!!" —robpoe
The smart, lazy kind: "Many years ago and far away, an employer wanted to compare VAX vs IBM run times. They developed some code to do a bunch of math and then printed out how long it took. IBM took 30 seconds; VAX took 0.001 seconds. They were astounded. Turns out, the compiler figured out that if you aren't going to use the result, it would optimize away the calculation." —TomatoTomahto
"If you want a much higher level computer programming language, try APL, by Kenneth E. Iverson, winner of the Turing Award in 1979." —Try using APL here (live software online) [Yes, it's worth the time to learn APL's powerful notation!]
"This computer screams." ——>Wow!
MacBook Pro 16": "Best speakers on a laptop. ... my favorite speakers on any laptop ... best-in-class speakers ... six-speaker sound system." —Tom's Hardware, 2023
["Amazing music stereo – best I've ever heard! Having an orchestra on your lap – can hear the distinct location of each note. Hate that the wildly overpriced soldered-in-place memory and (limited lifetime) internal SSD can't be upgraded, replaced, or swapped out. So backup procedures better be perfect, as all your data disappears completely forever whenever a motherboard repair becomes necessary, because it's no longer possible when a machine fails to swap the internal drive into a spare laptop to be back up and running in minutes. Boo!!! What were they thinking?? ... And why doesn't APFS verify data and correct errors automatically to prevent bit rot, like the ZFS that we were promised? Upset that Apple decided deliberately to have the file system not protect user data when they had the opportunity." —Cathy Fleming]
In other computer news ... The world has gone completely mad: "Had to download the iPhone app, make a Bluetooth connection, and install the revised firmware update to allow my wife to operate her new TOOTHBRUSH! (I kid you not!)" —Oral-B iO Series 7 Electric Toothbrush, $198.49 [Bet that her toothbrush has more computing power than the IBM 7074 that I used in college.]
"De gustibus non est disputandum ('There is no accounting for taste.')" —Unknown
"Middle age is when you can finally afford the things that a young man could truly enjoy." —Dave Kadolph
"People want the latest model even when the latest model is 65 years old." —Michael C. Johnston
"Ask the man who owns one." —Advertising slogan of Michigan car company, Packard (d. 1958)
"If you had all the money you spent on cameras, you'd spend it on cameras." —Jnny
"In terms of addiction, there is nothing more powerful than men's toys." —Sammy Davis Jr.
[No sexism intended: It's wrong to rewrite quotations of what others said or wrote (and possibly anachronistic), but please mentally substitute "person/people" or the like, whenever you read "man/men" meaning human/humans.]
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." —MrHollywood
It Might Not Even Matter How Much Something Costs: "The most expensive asset we own is one we don't use." —Albert Erickson
"Shop your closet first." —E-mail subject line
"One person's trash is another's treasure." —Idiom
"There is a very fine line between 'hobby' and 'mental illness.' :'!':" —Greg Lamont
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." —Ferris Bueller
"Time is the ultimate currency." —Borqa45
"Time passes quickly when you're having fun and when you're older.” —Unknown
"Live now; always make now the most precious time. Now will never come again." —Captain Jean-Luc Picard
"At some point you are trading time you will never get back for money you will never spend.“ | “How do you want to spend the best remaining year of your life?" —Wannaretireearly
"Everything that exists in your life, does so because of two things: something you did or something you didn't do." —Albert Einstein
'Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart': "I wasted my life. I'm not kidding. I should have done something that simply earned money effectively, and then pursued my interests as hobbies on the side." —Michael C. Johnston
"So you're saying it's wrong to park on the driveway and drive on the parkway?" —marter
"Letting cooler heads prevail." —Idiom
"Doppelgangers don't just look alike, they act alike and share DNA." —Matt Growcoot, September 1, 2022
Online shopping: "They don't send you what you ordered, they send you what they have [in stock]." —Donna
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." —Abraham Lincoln
"I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me." —Joshua Graham
"I need someone who sees the fire in my eyes and wants to play with it." —Anonymous
"A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master." —George Washington
"Tact is the art of building a fire under people without making their blood boil." —Franklin P. Jones
"You can observe a lot by just watching." —Yogi Berra
"I never said half the things I said." —Yogi Berra
"You can pick your nose, but you can't pick your family." —NCIS S3:E14
"A dyslexic man walks into a bra." —from an acquaintance in Los Angeles
"A dyslexic who is extremely nervous should eat calm chowder." —Anonymous
"The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man who has no secrets to keep." —Edgar Watson Howe
"I'd hate for your ego to write a check your body can't cash." —Movie: 'Top Gun'
"[Caroline seeking confidential information ...] Marisa: Can you keep a secret?
Caroline: Yes of course.
[Marisa declining to leak the secret ...] Marisa: Good. So can I." —Movie: 'Maid in Manhattan'
Know the Emergency Hand Signal asking for help: "Raised hand with palm forward and tuck thumb into palm, then curl four fingers around thumb." —signalforhelp.net
● Improved Health Savings Accounts with variable deductible resulting in an accelerating decline in health insurance premiums: "The fundamental idea is that the amount of the deductible of a linked health insurance policy varies and is equal to the current health savings account balance, with changing monthly insurance premiums automatically paid from the account. This self-insurance approach with linked major medical backup maximizes cost consciousness while providing 100% coverage. ... As account balances become larger, self-insurance increases, cost consciousness increases, health insurance premiums dramatically decrease, investment earnings cover the costs of medical care, and monthly contributions can decrease. ... " [MORE] —Solution to Health Care Reform
"Laissez Faire, laissez passer." —Francois Quesnay, French Physiocrat
"Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." —John Locke
Freedom from Great Britain: "That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." —Resolution submitted by delegate Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, adopted by the Continental Congress, July 2, 1776
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government ··· " —Preamble to the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 [Attributed to Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine]
■ " ... We are a unique country in many ways and we are the only country – the only country in the world – not based, organized based on geography or ethnicity or religion or race or anything else, but based on an idea. The only country in the world based on an idea that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all women and men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Sounds corny but it's the truth of who we are. We've never lived up to it but we've never walked away from it. And the rest of the world looks to us because ... we lead not only by the example of our power but by the power of our example ... We are the essential nation ... the organizing principal around which the rest of the world is moving ... We are in the mist of a fight between democracies and oligarchs ... we are at an inflection point ... The question is who will prevail – are democracies going to prevail ... or autocracies going to prevail. That's what's at stake ... " —President Joe Biden, Rzeszow, Poland, March 25, 2022
"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated." —Thomas Paine, 'The Crisis'
"Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: 'We the People.' 'We the People' tell the government what to do; it doesn't tell us. 'We the People' are the driver; the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which 'We the People' tell the government what it is allowed to do. 'We the People' are free."
—President Ronald Reagan's Farewell Address to the Nation, January 11, 1989, Washington D.C.
Gadsden flag, 1775 – Most popular symbol of the American revolution:
"DONT TREAD ON ME" —Christopher Gadsden, a South Carolina delegate to the Continental Congress and brigadier general in the Continental Army
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God." —George Washington
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." —John Adams, 2nd U.S. President
Enough is enough: "250th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party!" —December 16, 1773 tax revolt·
🇺🇸 " ... O! say does that star-spangled Banner yet wave, | O'er the Land of the free and the home of the brave? ... " —'The Star-Spangled Banner' the national anthem of the United States, lyrics by Francis Scott Key on September 14, 1814
🇺🇸 " ... God bless America, land that I love | Stand beside her and guide her | Through the night with the light from above ... " — Song lyrics by Irving Berlin, 1918, revised 1938
🇺🇸 "And I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free. And I won't forget the men who died. Who gave that right to me. ... " —Lee Greenwood’s song 'God Bless the USA'
['Endowed by their Creator': "A wonderfully patriotic song, but a 50% tax rate is only half-free, and it's inconsistent with America's founding principles as expressed in the Declaration of Independence to imply that deceased soldiers 'gave' us our unalienable rights that they may have died defending." —Barbara Williams]
"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." —Benjamin Franklin
"The main difference between liberty and freedom is that liberty is the state of being free from oppressive restrictions or control imposed by authority on one's way of life, behaviour, or political views, while freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants." —Hasa
Life, Liberty, and Property: "Every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his." —John Locke
"Property rights and personal rights are the same thing." —President Calvin Coolidge
"Government has no other end, but the preservation of property." —John Locke
"Now what liberty can there be where property is taken without consent?" —Samuel Adams, Founding Father and leader of the Boston Tea Party
Volition: "Property consists of one's life and all of its non-procreative derivatives. Freedom is the societal condition that exists when every individual has full (100%) control over his own property." —Andrew J. Galambos
"Independence now and forever!" —Daniel Webster
"Give me liberty or give me death." —Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775
"Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." —President George Washington
Forced equality of outcome: "Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free." —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty." —Louis D. Brandeis
"Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself." —John Locke, 'Second Treatise of Government'
Separation of powers: "When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner." —Montesquieu
["In reaction to tyranny under monarchy, the U.S. Constitution brilliantly creates, as an agreement among the states, a new form of government ('we don't need a king') with limited enumerated powers and having separation of powers into eight parts, with a bicameral legislature, executive [elected by The Electoral College], and judiciary providing checks and balances among both federal and state levels, and to prevent a 'tyranny of the majority'." —Barbara Martin]
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be the pronounced the very definition of tyranny." —James Madison
Gratitude changes everything: "Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude." —Ralph Waldo Emerson
" ... The slings and arrows of outragious fortune ... " —William Shakespeare, ‘Hamlet’ soliloquy
Happiness: "Three things provide long-lasting satisfaction, as quantitatively measured by academic psychologists: autonomy, meaningful contact with others, and the development and exercise of competence." —William J. Bernstein, M.D., Ph.D.
[i.e., seek happiness in autonomy, connectedness, and competence ('internal rewards') in preference to the transient satisfaction of fame, fortune, and power ('external rewards').]
["So, this explains why socialism is so miserable because it usurps individual autonomy (both personal and financial), subsitutes government force for voluntary meaningful contacts with others, and largely regulates competence out of existence (because central planning eliminates the necessary knowledge of individual preferences, decisions, and skills that a market economy provides when people constantly interact while voting with their dollars)." —Fred Michaels]
"Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product." —Eleanor Roosevelt
'Act happy!': "Happiness is a moral obligation. ... (or at least to act as happy as possible). ... Happineſs is a virtue, not just an emotion. ... The purſuit of happineſs is morally equivalent to the pursuit of goodness, kindness, and integrity. ... Gratitude is the mother of goodness and happiness. ... Your feelings are secondary to your behavior. ... There is almost no correlation between disposition and suffering. ... 'Happy wife, happy life.' ... 'Happy spouse, happy house.'" —Dennis Prager
Four Habits of the Happiest People: "1. Practice self-kindness; 2. Learn to be grateful; 3. Forgive others; and, 4. Slow things down (exercise patience)." —Marcel Schwantes, 'INC.'
"You can't be good, and you can't be happy if you're not grateful." —Dennis Prager
"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." —Attributed to Abraham Lincoln
Joy — The power of enthusiasm: "If nothing is horrific, life is terrific." —Dennis Prager, 'Happiness'
"Fake it till you make it." —Wisdom from 12 step program
"All happy people are grateful. Ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that being unhappy leads people to complain, but it's truer to say that complaining leads to people becoming unhappy." —Dennis Prager
Optimism or pessimism: "I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage." —John Stuart Mill, 1828
"Resentments are like drinking poison and hoping someone else dies." —Dennis Prager, quoting from 12 step program wisdom
"Don't wait for miracles, your whole life is a miracle." —Albert Einstein
"My best advice to young people is to travel while you can and make joyful memories that will last you a lifetime! (... and take a few terrific photos of where you've been, including your loved ones in the pictures, to help you remember.)" —Dad
"Remember to make memories with your loved ones – have stories to tell, not stuff to show." —Tammy Ely
"Most experiences are better imagined." —'Random Poster'
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ... " —Charles Dickens' novel, 'A Tale of Two Cities,' opening paragraph
"'The time has come,' the walrus said, 'to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings' " —Lewis Carroll – The Walrus and The Carpenter in "Through the Looking-Glass"
"Photography is my one recreation and I think it should be done well." —Charles Lutwidge Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll
[For a beautiful book of Central Pacific Railroad stereographs, see 'Waiting for the Cars.']
'What's Your Photography Joy Point?': "I see five basic joy points in pursuing photography. By 'joy point' I mean the aspect that gives you the most satisfaction with being a hobbyist or professional involved in photography.
Buying/Collecting; Learning; Photographing; Post Processing; Presenting/Viewing." [MORE]
—Thom Hogan
"Pictures are not incidental frills to a text; they are essences of our distinctive way of knowing." —Stephen J. Gould
"The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words." —Elliott Erwitt
Always bring a camera: "Never say you’re going back—SHOOT IT NOW!" —Jay Maisel
The Leica Look: "A statistically unusually high number of the most famous images of the 20th century were taken with Leica M cameras." —Irakly Shanidze
'Time for my old Leica [M] joke':
Q: "How do the locals count to ten in the city of Wetzlar?"
A: "3, 2, 1, 4, 5, 4.2, 6, 7, 8, 8.2, 9, 240, 10." —Søren Engelbrecht
Photographic categories: "Advertising, Architecture, Close up/Macro, Concert, Event, Family/Friends, Fashion, Fine Art, Food, Glamour, Healthcare/Medical, Interiors, Landscape, Model, Myself/Self Portrait, Nature, Night, People, Party, Pets, Portrait, Press/Journalism, Sports, Still Life, Street/Urban, Studio, Travel, Underwater, Wedding, Wildlife" —Nikon
Keep shooting – your best photos are ahead: "The hallmark of a great photographer is one who never stops learning and experimenting. Re-ignite that creative spark with a new-to-you lens, challenge yourself with film photography, or read up on the latest tips and tricks on our blog. But whatever you do, just keep shooting." —KEH
"Owning more than one lens assures you that you will always have the wrong lens on the camera for any given picture." —Ted Orland, 'Photographic Truths'
"Never sell a good lens!" —Michael C. Johnston
'Lensoholic?': "Once you have more than about five lenses you are a collector." —Tom Caldwell
"I put my camera on in the morning and take it off in the evening, like my shirt." —David Vestal
"The best lenses on Earth are those closest to clear windows into the imagination ... " —Robert/MrHollywood
"The best lens is the one you have with you." —@LensFever
"You can't catch a fish without having your line in the water, and you won't take good pictures without your camera in your hand. Photography is comforting that way. Spend the time, and you’ll get results." —Key Thoughts and The Zen of Fishing
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but more than one photog has noticed perfectly corrected lenses producing perfectly boring photos." —Steve Huff
Q. "Where I live is relatively boring, so I'm not finding things to take photos of. What should I do?"
A. "Welcome to existentialism. You should be asking Kierkegaard, not me." —Thom Hogan, September 4, 2023
"I prefer and own Leica, Zeiss and Voigtlander lenses." —airfrogusmc
"Summilux f/1.4; Summicron f/2; Elmarit f/2.8; Telyt f/3.4 or f/4" —Leica lens terminology
'The most boring strategy': "Use my existing gear until it needs to be replaced." —JasonTheBirder
Overachiever: "Kathleen Mary Lindsay, who you've probably never heard of unless you enjoy The Guinness Book of World Records, wrote 904 books under 11 pseudonyms ['including Mary Faulkner, Margaret Cameron, Mary Richmond, Molly Waring, Betty Manvers, Elizabeth Fenton, Nigel Mackenzie and Hugh Desmond']." —Michael C. Johnston
"Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov ... owned six IBM Selectric electric typewriters, for redundancy ... . He wrote or edited more than 500 books in his lifetime, not to mention an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards." —Mike Johnston
"I would not join any club that would have someone like me for a member." —Julius 'Groucho' Marx
"Don't be so humble — you're not that great!" —Groucho Marx
“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.“ —Sir Winston Churchill
“If you were my husband, I'd poison your tea.” —Lady Nancy Astor
“If I were your husband, I'd drink it.” —Sir Winston Churchill
“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.“ —Billy Wilder
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I’m afraid this wasn’t it.“ —Groucho Marx
“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?“ —Mark Twain
“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new place; bring a friend, if you have one.“ —George Bernard Shaw
“Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second ... if there is one.“ —Sir Winston Churchill
(Stuart Varney’s classic putdowns)
"Everything I write is a personal opinion. Even when I quote facts, they are the facts I personally choose to accept." —Mario Giannini
"When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?" —John Maynard Keynes
"Nourish your enthusiasm." —Ansel Adams
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." —Allen Saunders, famously quoted by John Lennon
"We plan. G-d laughs." —an old Yiddish proverb
"You control the plan, not the outcome." —DireStraits
"A person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused." —Shirley Maclaine
TRIGGER WARNING: Science, Theology, Cosmology
"The more I study science, the more I believe in God." —Albert Einstein E = mc2
"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature." —Frank Lloyd Wright
Is this what makes the creation of the universe possible?: "Negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero." —Stephen Hawking, 'The Theory of Everything' [So actually, "Much Ado About Nothing." —William Shakespeare]
The universe ends by evaporating excruciatingly slowly???: "Black holes evaporate — now physicists think everything else does, too. Particle by particle, all matter may eventually disappear ... " —Adam Mann, 'Scientific American', June 22, 2023
'Religiousness ... wonder and stand rapt in awe': "Behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly." —Albert Einstein, 'Mosaic'
'Why Does the Universe Exist?': " ... the universe is fundamentally computational. ... just a representation of the (entangled and computationally irreducible) inevitable consequences of following all possible formal rules. ... the existence of the universe is ultimately a consequence of the fact that all possible formal systems exist as a matter of abstract necessity. ... " [More] —Stephen Wolfram, 2021
"The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe." —Misattributed to Albert Einstein
"Coincidence is God‘s way of remaining anonymous." —Misattributed to Albert Einstein
Q. "Does a hard drive weigh more when it’s full?"
A. "[Yes, compared with an unformatted magnetic hard drive, with e=c2m by] approximately 10-14 g for a 1TB hard drive." —David Zaslavsky
Serendipity?: "I took the road less traveled and that has made all the difference." —Robert Frost
"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." —Brian Littrell
"For fast acting relief, try slowing down." —Lily Tomlin
"The wise make proverbs, and fools repeat them." —Isaac D'Israeli
"Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons, wise men never try." —Rodgers & Hammerstein, 'South Pacific' (Lyrics to 'Some Enchanted Evening')
"At the time you were born, you were briefly the youngest person in the entire world." —BuzzFeed
["So you start with a world's record, and it goes downhill from there?"]
Eligible for Social Security at age 65?: "Barbara Millicent Roberts (b. March 9, 1959) is a doll." —Ruth Handler/Mattel
"I was born with nothing and I have most of it left." —Anonymous
Sillygism: "Stale crackers are better than nothing; Nothing is better than a meal at a fancy 5-star restaurant; Therefore, stale crackers are better than a meal at a fancy 5-star restaurant." —Bill Brassfield
Extremely Common Mistakes:
WRONG: "You have a large amount of friends." [Correction: Large NUMBER, not large AMOUNT.]
WRONG – illogical: "You're better at it than anyone I know." [Correction: Anyone ELSE.]
WRONG: "graduating high school" [Correction: graduating FROM high school.]
'DON'T BE A LOOSER': "'Loose' is the opposite of 'tight' and 'lose' is the opposite of 'win'."
—Pet peeves
"The best things in life are free." —Frank Sinatra
"'Tada hodo kowai mono wa nai' ('Nothing is more risky than something that is free.')" —Japanese saying
"Don't make the waffle batter until you have plugged in the waffle iron." —Donna
"Don't ever leave the kitchen while any burners on the stove are on." —Fire Department
"When making the Thanksgiving turkey, remember to turn on the same oven that the turkey is in." —Don't ask
"A new study suggests that consuming chocolate may increase your chances of grabbing the prestigious [Nobel] prize." —Cum hoc ergo propter hoc
TRIGGER WARNING: Dinosaurs
Dinosaur predecessors to birds:
Pterodactyl [The elongated finger makes this pterosaur's wing.]
Archaeopteryx [The arm and hand makes this pterosaur's wing.]
"There are 10,000 living species [of birds, but] only about 4,000 mammals, so [it is] still the age of dinosaurs." —Jacques Gauthier, Nova
??: "Mammoths went extinct 1,000 years after the Egyptians finished building the Great Pyramid." —BuzzFeed
Gooneybird: "While albatrosses may go years before returning to their island (usually to mate), they do touch and land on the water's surface out at sea." —Reuters Fact Check
Biomass: "Despite being vast, the oceans are home to just 1% of life – but the majority [78%] of animals [and only 0.2% of plants]. ... the viruses that live in the sea: while each one of them is tiny, if we placed all the viruses end-to-end they would stretch for 10 million light years. That is around 100 times the distance across our own galaxy." —Our World in Data
TRIGGER WARNING: Incomprehensibly large numbers
"20,000,000,000,000,000 [twenty quadrillion; 2 x 1016] ants are crawling around Earth, researchers find, weighing more in total than all [wild] birds and mammals combined." —Sophie Lewis, September 20, 2022
'Biden‘s big number': "Over a billion three hundred million trillion three hundred million dollars." —Joe Biden, Las Vegas, December 8, 2023 [ ... and lets not even mention the national debt!]
"A googol [10100] is a 1 with 100 zeros, and a googolplex [10^(10^(100))] is a 1 with a googol zeros [more than the number of fundamental particles in the visible universe]." —PrepScholar
"We have no paupers ... The great mass of our [United States] population is of laborers; our rich, who can live without labor, either manual or professional, being few, and of moderate wealth. Most of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own lands, have families, and from the demand for their labor are enabled to exact from the rich and the competent such prices as enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families. ... Can any condition of society be more desirable than this?" —Thomas Jefferson, 1814
"A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity." —George Bernard Shaw
'A billion daily just in the U.S.': "The world now contains more photographs than bricks." —John Szarkowski, Curator of Photography, Museum of Modern Art, 1976
"Every two minutes, we take more pictures than all of humanity did in the 19th century." —BuzzFeed, October 11, 2023
"Photographers fade faster than photographs." —Ted Orland, 'Photographic Truths'
How many places have you ever lived?: "I didn't deliberately collect pictures of all the places I lived as I moved through life ... I wish I'd been more careful and conscientious about documenting my own life and the people in it." —Michael C. Johnston
"I've been called worse things by better people." —Pierre Trudeau
"I get no respect. The way my luck is running, if I was a politician I would be honest." —Rodney Dangerfield
"When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them." —Rodney Dangerfield
"When I was a kid, I walked to school uphill both ways." —Idiom
"The advice I would give to someone is to not take anyone's advice." —Eddie Murphy
"There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people." —Adam Smith, 'Wealth of Nations,' 1776
"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." —Oscar Wilde, 'Lady Windermere's Fan' (1892) Act III
TRIGGER WARNING: Political
"The government does not add value to the economy. It removes value from the economy by imposing taxes on one citizen and providing cash to another." —Mark Levin
'Power's Playbook': "Cause the problem for which you are the solution." [More] —Max Borders
"It's the economy, stupid." —James Carville, strategist in Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign
'Perfecting the world': "I want the world to be better because I was here." —Will Smith
"He suggested that when you look at people who are good at what they do, they have an extraordinary sense of concentration while they're doing it." —David Hurn
"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time." —Leo Tolstoy
"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind." —Aristotle
"Who says nothing is impossible? I've been doing nothing for years." —Henny Youngman
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." —Bertrand Russell
Having a crummy day?: "Your entire experience of the world and your life is completely governed by your thoughts. So if you change your thoughts, everything else gets magically better ... come up with better thoughts that are actually believable. ... It's not worth ruining your day and getting your blood pressure up ... [but] easier said than done." —Wisdom
"Lost time is never found again." —Benjamin Franklin
"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." —C. Northcote Parkinson
"Even a stopped clock is right twice a day." —The Spectator, 1711
"Everytime I ask what time it is, I get a different answer." —Henny Youngman
"A prevalent Israeli joke is that it took the Hebrews no less than 40 years of wandering in the desert to find the only place in the Middle East without oil." —Yitzhak Shamir
"A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost." —Unknown
"When it comes to work, there are many who will stop at nothing." —Henny Youngman
"I wish my brother would learn a trade, so I would know what kind of work he's out of." —Henny Youngman
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep." —Robert Frost
"I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth." —Publius Ovidius Naso (The Roman poet 'Ovid', b. March 20, 43 BCE), 'Metamorphoses'
"While the moments do summersaults into eternity | Cling to their coattails and beg them to stay" —Townes Van Zandt
"If I cannot drink Bourbon and smoke cigars in Heaven then I shall not go." —Mark Twain
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants." —Sir Isaac Newton in a letter to Robert Hooke, February 15, 1676
"Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science." —James Clerk Maxwell
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." —Albert Einstein
"Don't believe everything you think." —Unknown
'Your memory profoundly influences what you see': "Reality and imagination are completely intermixed in our brain which means that the separation between our inner world and the outside world is not as clear as we might like to think. If our imagination is vivid enough, we will think it is real and we use our imagination to create our perception of reality ... " —Nadine Dijkstra
["Our brain is creating the emergent property of consciousness by running in neural wetware, a constantly updating memory plus sensory driven predictive simulation of our environment including ourselves. [i.e., the 'story' of reality is constructed]" —John Gаrrideb]
"What is written here is false." —Eubulides, 4th century BCE, Liar (pseudomenos) paradox
"What if there were no hypothetical questions?" —George Carlin
"I saw a lot of white men almost fight today.
I do not think this is good." —Hin-mah-too-yah-la-kekt (Thunder Rolling Down the Mountains), also known as Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perce Indian tribe, after impassively watching a football game between the Universities of Washington and Nebraska in Seattle in 1903
"When I feel like exercising I just lie down until the feeling goes away." —Robert Maynard Hutchins, who pulled the University of Chicago out of the Big Ten Conference and eliminated the school’s football program
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." —S.G. Tallentyre, The Friends of Voltaire
"Truth is treason in an empire of lies." —Ron Paul
Dental Advice: "When you get your first dental crown, make sure to pick the color carefully, as to how white you want your teeth to be (likely whiter than your unbleached teeth), as many thousands of dollars later, all of your teeth are eventually going to be matched to the color of that first crown." —Tooth Fairy
Did you know!: "By replacing your potato chips with grapefruit as a snack you can lose up to 90% of what little joy you still have left in your life." —Anonymous
Billion dollar idea: "A smoke detector that shuts off when you yell, ‘I'm just cooking!’" —Anonymous
"When you're in a hole, stop digging." —Denis Healey
"The instructions tell you what to do." —At the front of the Scholastic Aptitude Test examination booklet
"A projected 857 percent [sic] reduction in energy used for U.S. residential lighting by 2040." —National Geographic innumerate environmental department of the impossible
"Never make forecasts, especially about the future." —Samuel Goldwyn
"The hell with the past — I'd like to put the future behind us." —New Yorker cartoon
🐕 "Military dogs always hold a higher rank than their handlers." —Eric Milzarski, February 12, 2018
"Edward Steichen owned a three legged dog, which he named Tripod." —Ted Orland
"If you want a better lens, get a tripod." —My mentor in college
"I think it is really a variable-weight tripod: the farther you carry it, the heavier it gets." —Stephen S. Mack
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." —Winston Churchill, November, 1942
"There is nothing that does so much harm as good intentions." —Milton Friedman
"Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." —Gloria Vanderbilt
"Vivian: The stores are not nice to people – I don't like it.
Edward: Stores are never nice to people. They're nice to credit cards." —'Pretty Woman' [movie]
"Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of." —William A. Arnett
"Film isn't dead. It just smells funny." —Lars Vinberg
"He's got a photographic mind. Too bad it never developed." —Leopold Fechtner
"May you live as long as you want and never want as long as you live." —Irish Blessing
"Invest we must." —Jack Bogle, Founder of Vanguard Investments
"Stocks for the Long Run." —Jeremy Siegel, the Russell E. Palmer Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
They mocked our 1998 'Dow 36,000' book and prediction (that has proven to have been correct): "We said 'if you're in for the long-haul buy equities and it will work out OK.' And then people just went nuts! The reason is ... they're pushing a socialist agenda that is defeated if everybody participates in equity markets." —Kevin Hassett, Former Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers, September 10, 2021
Bear Market Musings: "Contrary to what most people believe, low prices create the expectation of higher future returns. Thus ... higher bond yields and lower stock prices make the return outlook ... more attractive than it was ... " —George Sista, October, 2022
"One of the funny things about the stock market, every time one is buying another is selling, and both think they are astute." —William Feather
"The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up every morning and say, I can do whatever I want today. If there is a common denominator in happiness, a universal fuel of joy, it's that people want to control their lives. The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, is priceless. It is the highest dividend money pays." —Morgan Housel, 'The Psychology of Money'
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." —Parable
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. ... " —Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Self-Reliance'
"The secret of getting ahead is getting started." —Mark Twain
"The road to success is always under construction." —Lily Tomlin
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. ... " —'Ode to a Mouse,' a famous poem from the 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns ("The poem is about a farmer who inadvertently plows over the carefully constructed nest of a field mouse, destroying its home.")
"If you can have any superpower, luck is the one you want." —Elon Musk, at his first SpaceX astronaut lauch
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." —Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"If you want your children to succeed, let them fail early and often." —Head of psychiatry at a children's hospital
Fuel for healthy souls: "We all need certain inputs if we're to be deeply healthy ... for children this is even more important ... Truth, goodness, beauty, wholeness and internal harmony, aliveness rather than mechanization, uniqueness not uniformity, completeness, simplicity, richness, playfulness, self-sufficiency, meaningfulness, human interaction." —Paul Rosenberg
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." —paraphrasing Clare Boothe Luce, and falsely attributed to Leonardo da Vinci
"From today, painting is dead." —Paul Delacroix, c. 1839, on seeing his first daguerreotype
"I suddenly understood that photography can fix eternity in a moment." —Henri Cartier-Bresson
"Momma don't take my Kodachrome away!" —Paul Simon
"There are more ways to screw up a large format [8" x 10" film camera] image than the average cell phone photographer can possibly conceive." —CopCarSS
"I once asked Ansel Adams what kind of camera he used, and he replied, 'the biggest one I can carry!' Which was his standard answer." —Michael C. Johnston
How to Choose a 4" x 5" film Camera: " ... And if you find you're not using it, then set it up in the corner of the living room as a conversation piece! Like a racehorse put out to pasture. They're pretty things, and exotic to normal citizens. Instead of actually using it, you can explain to your friends how to use it, and let them get under the dark cloth and look at the image on the ground glass. It's all good." —Michael C. Johnston
Wishing you: "Good light and good negs." —Photographer Brett Weston (1911–1993), used to sign his letters
"We have a mixed marriage. She has a Leica, and I a Nikon." —Compromise
"Not only is Reno, Nevada, west of Los Angeles, but so are six state capitols." —BuzzFeed
[ ... and Machu Picchu in Peru is east of Miami, Florida.]
Mulholland Drive, Bel Air, Los Angeles, California – Panorama of the San Fernando Valley, c. 1975
"There is no there there." —Gertrude Stein
"Buying a Nikon doesn't make you a photographer. It makes you a Nikon owner!" —M. David Farrell, Jr.
Camera brand agnosticism: "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter." —David Hume Kennerly, Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist and former White House photographer for President Gerald R. Ford, in the early '80s, when Michael C. Johnston asked him what camera he used
"A camera is a tool, not a jewel." —Anonymous
"Buy the best camera you can afford and will carry. Buy only the lenses you will carry and use most of the time. Use this kit as long as possible." —Thom Hogan after Michael C. Johnston
"Modern cameras are recording the randomness of photons quite well, and randomness of photons is by far the primary source of noise in an image when you look closely. ... What's limiting image sensors today is essentially quantum efficiency. ... collect light over the same area (sensor size) and output the result to the same area (print size) and the differences between two cameras (almost completely) disappear." —Thom Hogan, January 24, 2022
"For those who already have an interchangeable lens camera system: don't switch brands. Seriously." —Thom Hogan
"Last Camera Syndrome refers to a user who is satisfied with their current camera and not likely to buy another body. Unless their current camera breaks, they aren't in the buying market any more." —Thom Hogan
"Alternately, wait for The Perfect Camera to be announced. That way, you have the cost savings of never buying anything." —justmeMN
"This summer I decided to be honest with myself and recognise that I was simply no longer using my DSLR and lenses. ... they never left the hotel room; I used the iPhone instead. So during the summer I sold all my photo equipment ... " —Tom Burke
"Better to be a nerd than one of the herd." —Michael C. Johnston
"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough." —Robert Capa, photojournalist
... "but [Capa] also died [from] being too close [to] a landmine. So please be careful." —Pascal Méheut
Oculus Dei "Eye of God": "If a camera has a soul, you will find it in the lens." —PaulC
"Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." —Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
"Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography." —George Eastman
"My first thought is always of light." —Galen Rowell
"Only Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun." —Rudyard Kipling
"I'm waiting for the day when my children ask 'What did you do in the analog-digital war, Daddy?'" —Colin B
"There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant." —Emerson
"A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it." —Albert Einstein
"The best way to solve any problem is to remove its cause." —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"It's not really a problem if you have the money to fix it." —vg55’s beloved father in law
"Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are." —Niccolò Machiavelli, 'The Prince'
"Act in haste, repent at leisure." —Proverb
"In-laws and outlaws." —FreddieFIRE
"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." —United States Postal Service creed
"Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me." —Proverb
"In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him." —Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray." —Sam Redwine
"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." —Weinberg's Second Law
"I don't want to buy any more things that I have to learn." —Ilene Wexler
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
"Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it." —Salvador Dalí
Design heuristics: "An error message indicates a flawed design. Improve and simplify the design so that the error cannot ever occur. Every possible action should yield a meaningful result. Complexity provides a combinatoric nightmare of opportunities for coding errors to be hidden in obscurity. With sufficient simplification, every possible action and all of the limited number of software pathways will get used often enough that all the possible bugs will get quickly revealed, and can be eliminated. The designer must take responsibility because users commonly blame themselves for what is actually bad design, and so fail to report problems." —DrDr
"Complexity is easy. Simplicity is hard." —Edmund Kean
"Simple almost always beats complex." —Morgan Housel
"There are two methods in software design. One is to make the program so simple, there are obviously no errors. The other is to make it so complicated, there are no obvious errors." —Tony Hoare
Q. "When did the Internet become available to the public?"
A. "April 30, 1993." —Varney & Co. Trivia
"The Sound of dial-up Internet." [Click] —YouTube
World wide web inventor, "Sir Tim Berners-Lee['s] ... parents ... met while building the Ferranti Mk 1, the world's first commercially available computer ... " —Iain Thomson
"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey." —John Ruskin
"News is what hardly ever happens. If it happened often, it wouldn't be news." —Anonymous
[Exception: Murder and mayhem on the nightly local 6 & 11 o'clock TV news.]
National defense: "F-16 fighter pilot recalls [her] suicide mission on 9/11 to stop hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 from crashing into the terrorists' target, the White House or Congress [by means of an intentional midair collision between her unarmed fighter jet and the Boeing 757-222 with 44 passengers and crew]." —Amazing heroism of U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Heather 'Lucky' Penney [ ... and she didn't know whether or not her father was the pilot of UA93 that day!]
"We can do Good, Quick and Cheap work. You can have any two but not all three." —Anonymous
"The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society. ... There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. ··· " —President John F. Kennedy, April 27, 1961
"A good photograph is one that makes the viewer so aware of the subject that they are unaware of the print." —Kodak
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." —Agent K
"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." —Henri Cartier-Bresson
"LIGHTS ALL ASKEW IN THE HEAVENS. Men of Science More or Less Agog Over Results of Eclipse Observations. EINSTEIN THEORY TRIUMPHS." —'The New York Times', Monday, November 10, 1919, headline about Sir Arthur Eddington's experimental confirmation of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity
Einstein's theory of General Relativity
General relativity equation: "Matter tells space-time how to curve (math on the left) and space-time tells matter how to move (physics on the right)." —Robbert Dukgraaf, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921, F. Schmutzer
"I don't teach my students, I provide the circumstances in which they can learn." —Albert Einstein
Advertisement for tutoring by Albert Einstein
Maxwell's Equations
(Laws of Electromagnetism)
"From a long view of the history of mankind – seen from, say ten thousand years from now – there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as [James Clerk] Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade." —Nobel laureate, Richard Feynman, 'Lectures on Physics', 1963
"The precise formulation of the time-space laws of those [electro-magnetic] fields was the work of [James Clerk] Maxwell. Imagine his feelings when the differential equations he had formulated proved to him that electromagnetic fields spread in the form of polarized waves and with the speed of light! To few men in the world has such an experience been vouchsafed ... it took physicists some decades to grasp the full significance of Maxwell's discovery, so bold was the leap that his genius forced upon the conceptions of his fellow-workers." —Albert Einstein, 1954
"I stand not on the shoulders of Newton, but on the shoulders of James Clerk Maxwell." —Albert Einstein
[Also, your digital camera uses the same three color filter method of color photography invented by James Clerk Maxwell.]
" ... The only desire which I can have is ... to serve my own generation by the will of God, and then fall asleep." —James Clerk Maxwell, in his final days, confiding in a friend and colleague from Cambridge
"All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question, 'What are light quanta?' Nowadays every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken." —Albert Einstein, 1954
"It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is." —Richard Feynman, 'The Feynman Lectures on Physics', Lecture 4, 1964
"Anyone who claims to understand quantum theory is either lying or crazy." —Attributed to Richard Feynman
"Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?" —Oliver Heaviside
The fine-structure constant, α: "There is a most profound and beautiful question associated with the observed coupling constant, e – the amplitude for a real electron to emit or absorb a real photon. 
It is a simple number that has been experimentally determined to be close to 0.08542455. (My physicist friends won't recognize this number, because they like to remember it as the inverse of its square: about 137.03597 with an uncertainty of about 2 in the last decimal place. [But a 'constant' that significantly decreases at higher energy.] It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.) Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to pi or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It's one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by humans. You might say the 'hand of God' wrote that number, and 'we don't know how He pushed His pencil.' We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don't know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out – without putting it in secretly!" —Richard P. Feynman, 'QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter', 1985
[Coupling Constants:
Strong, αs = 1; Electromagnetic, α = 1/137; Weak, αw = 10-6; Gravity, αg = 10-39.]
"How long is a nanosecond?" [More] —Commodore Grace Hopper
Here's some information that will surely come in handy: "The metal ... experiences alpha decay at such a minute rate that its half-life is more than a billion times the estimated age of the universe." —Bismuth is radioactive!
'How Far Do We Travel in Our Lives?': "Your total absolute lifetime motion through the universe is about 1.5 trillion km through space and about 750 trillion km through time." —Paraphrasing Paul M. Sutter, PhD.
"People who can't explain the difference between distance, velocity, and acceleration don't understand the world." —Calculus [Or the difference between the price level, and the inflation rates.]
'Physics ... is for girls?': "Contrary to modern stereotypes, the laws of the natural world used to be considered a fundamental part of young women's education." —Joanna Behrman
Recommended math: "Anyone wanting to be able to have facility in handling any technical subject, whether it be physics or any of the other sciences, engineering, or economics, etc., should try to become sufficiently knowledgeable in math through multiple college level courses, at least to the level of the following courses:
Derivatives of multivariable functions (Kahn Academy) and
Multivariable Calculus (MIT).
These are only examples of courses at this elevated (and difficult) level, but since there are a multitude of courses now available online without charge, anyone with an internet connection with sufficient aptitude and motivation has the opportunity to become highly educated, regardless of their wealth. —Sarah Wilson
["Proficiency with Fourier analysis, convolution, differential equations, matrices, statistics, etc. is incredibly helpful in so many different technical fields."]
Anticipating an educational future with the benefit of AI tutoring: "Average students who were individually tutored [by a human tutor] performed two standard deviations better than they would have in a classroom. That's enough to raise a person’s test scores from the 50th percentile to the 98th." —Klinton Bicknell, et. al., February 5, 2023
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." —Albert Einstein
Q. "What is the difference between a scientist and engineer?"
A. "A scientist has to convince others that he is right, an engineer has to be right." —Len
"When I was a student, I was no Einstein." —Attributed to Albert Einstein
Ten Plagues of Egypt:
" 1. Turning water to blood
2. Frogs
3. Lice or gnats
4. Wild animals or flies
5. Pestilence of livestock
6. Boils
7. Thunderstorm of hail and fire
8. Locusts
9. Three days of darkness
10. Death of the firstborn son"
—Book of Exodus
Ten Commandments:
" 1. I am the LORD thy GOD, who have brought thee out of the land of Mizrayim [Egypt], out of the house of bondage.
2. Thou shalt have no other gods beside me. Thou shalt not make for thyself any carved idol, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy GOD am a jealous GOD, punishing the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of those that hate me; but showing mercy to thousands of generations of those that love me, and keep my commandments.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy GOD in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that takes his name in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD thy GOD: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day: therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
5. Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long in the land which the LORD thy GOD gives thee.
6. Thou shalt not murder.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s."
—Jerusalem Bible, Koren Publishers, Jerusalem
"The five ascending levels of intellect are: smart, intelligent, brilliant, genius, simple." —Albert Einstein
"Well, I'm sick and tired of smart guys." —Angry Joe Biden, Luzerne, County, PA, October 24, 2020
"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. ... Someone once said that Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, and dance the minuet." —President John F. Kennedy at a dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere
"Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad." —Henry Kissinger
"The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. " —James Madison
"Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians." —Chester Bowles
"Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny." —Edmund Burke
"Strict law is often great injustice." —Cicero
"Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made." —John Godfrey Saxe, 1869
'Why health policy problems rarely get solved': "All government regulations face a persistent problem. By their very nature they are trying to keep people from acting in their own self-interest. Either they try to keep people from doing what they want to do, or force them to do something they don’t want to do. In a complex system populated by people who are highly entrepreneurial, it won’t be long before you get unanticipated private sector activity that partially undermines the original goal of the regulation. As time passes there will predictably be even more undermining. If the regulation never changes, eventually the private sector may innovate around it completely ... " —John C. Goodman
'Have no plans to change': "I just like to challenge consensus, question my own convictions and stress test my philosophies ... that is what helps me grow ..." —BizarroJerry
"Study Finds ... The Biden adminstration's regulatory burdens have cost almost $10,000 for each American household." —Casey B. Mulligan
Q. "What's the most terrifying word in nuclear physics?
A. "Oops."
Manhattan Project's first atomic bomb 'Trinity Test' at Los Alamos, New Mexico, 5:29 a.m. MWT on July 16, 1945:
"Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds." —Immediate reaction of lead scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting god Vishnu from Hindu scripture
And who thought that building nuclear reactors without a containment vessel was a good idea?: "The Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded because rules to keep the reactor safe were ignored. Why? Because under communism, the Soviet Union had regulations for everything. But, when everything is endlessly regulated, in order for people to function, they must ignore regulations, but don't know which regulations not to ignore." —Vladimir Agapov
"Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind." —General Douglas MacArthur
Cultural differences: "There can't be a speed limit on the Autobahn because Germans would obey the speed limit, unlike Americans." —Anonymous
"Enforcing bad laws poorly is better than enforcing bad laws uniformly." —Alex Nowrasteh
"All of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states, the states created the federal government." —President Ronald Reagan, first inaugural address
'Who Wants to Control Others?': "From plastic straws to the thermostat in your own home, some people want to control every aspect of your life. America was founded to combat this dark side of human nature that seeks power over others, including what you're allowed to say, do, and even think. But liberty is a value, not an instinct. If we don’t continue to uphold our American ideal of freedom, we may end up losing it." —Dennis Prager, Video
'Devastating decision' for overreaching authoritarians: "A clear statement is necessary for a court to conclude that Congress intended to delegate authority 'of this breadth to regulate a fundamental sector of the economy.' ...
the Government must point to 'clear congressional authorization' to regulate ... " —Supreme Court of the United States, West Virginia et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et al., No. 20–1530, June 30, 2022
["This is about maintaining the separation of powers, not climate change ... And we're not done. My office will continue to fight ... when those in Washington try to go too far in asserting broad powers without the people's support." —West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R)]
"People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous." —Edmund Burke
"It's as though someone, whose tastes you don't share, has come into your home and re-arranged all the furniture." —Review of Microsoft Word 6 menus compared to Word 5.1
Sony A6600 camera menus: "As far as the menus are concerned, if you don't think they're a Gothic horror it means you haven't delved into them far enough. Keep on menu-diving. It's like being lost in an endless and terrifying cave." —Michael C. Johnston
"It is a poor workman who blames his tools." —Proverb
"Maybe one day I'll take a decent picture. In the meantime, I'll blame the equipment." —Joo
"If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere." —Henry Kissinger
"I feel, therefore I photograph." —grahamp
TRIGGER WARNING: Economics, Taxation
Stolen property: "If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its rightful owner in the same year." —IRS Publication 17, §8, Page 76
["The Federal Government could prosecute each professional serial shoplifter, etc., that is ruining their community, but whom local Soros prosecutors refuse to charge, with such an Al Capone tax evasion case." —Frank Wilson]
"My friend told me her and her husband take half of their kids' [Halloween] candy every year.
She said it's never too early to teach them about taxes." —Marisa Varallo
"A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right." —Peter Roberts
"The trick is to stop thinking of it as your money." —IRS auditor
✓ "I want to end the income tax – and replace it with ... nothing." —Sharon Harris
[Repeal the 16th amendment.]
"To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race." —President Calvin Coolidge
"If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates." —Thomas Sowell
'Drain the swamp': "Fire the civil servants, sell the buildings, starve them of funds, honor the 10th amendment. Transfer power of healthcare, family policy, education, everything not in the constitution to the states respectively or to the people, as the constitution requires. Close down the unconstitutional federal departments, agencies, and bureaucracies with their armies of interferers and armfuls of regulations. Yes, close it all down, everything except Defense, State, Treasury, and Justice. Abolish the federal income tax, abolish all federal taxes, replace them with an annual levy from each state on the basis of population. Do you think that sounds over-the-top? No! What's extreme is what we've got now, the insane centralization ... " —Steve Hilton, August 21, 2022
Following the Supreme Court’s guidance, we’ll reverse a decadeslong executive power grab: "Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but 'rules and regulations' promulgated by unelected bureaucrats — tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections." —Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, 'The DOGE Plan to Reform Government' WSJ, November 20, 2024
"We have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." —Thomas Jefferson, 1824
Why Are People Poor? – The pathologies of the Western underclass: "Why does poverty still exist when the world is richer than ever? ... it's not because of exploitation or 'racism.' ... bad values and a lack of agency is locking people into a self-destructive 'Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass.'" —Charlie Kirk
Perverse incentives: "One in four low-wage workers face marginal net tax rates above 70 percent, effectively locking them into poverty. Over half face remaining lifetime marginal net tax rates above 45 percent." ... "Since 1967, average inflation-adjusted transfer payments to low-income households—the bottom 20%—have grown from $9,677 to $45,389. During that same period, the percentage of prime working-age adults in the bottom 20% of income earners who actually worked collapsed from 68% to 36%." ... "among the four million able-bodied adults without dependents on food stamps, three in four don’t work at all. Fewer than 3% work full-time." ... "Higher-income couples marry and lower-income couples don’t." —Charity Without the Welfare State, June 1, 2023
"Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man." —Walter E. Williams
"Capitalism is the best system known to man to lift all of us up from poverty ... That is what American exceptionalism is founded on." —Vivek Ramaswamy, c. September 27, 2023
'A Moral Case for Capitalism ... No other economic system rests on voluntary exchange – Every other system requires coercion': "What is the only economic system that values freedom, lifts people out of poverty, disdains distinctions of race and creed, and draws us into productive networks of mutual dependency? Hint: it’s not a system of ever-increasing government control." —Daniel Hannan, March 4, 2024
Pay it forward: "Money saved, that you will never get around to spending during your lifetime, is the most valuable surplus investment capital that will, over time, enable the free market and innovation to eliminate poverty and continuously elevate the standard of living." —John Gаrrideb
Incentive prizes: "Innovation — No buck$, no Buck Rogers." —Abundance
"The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea." —Peter H. Diamandis
Millennia before investing in total market index funds could create global economic growth that is rapidly eliminating world poverty: "You must set aside a tithe of your crops—one-tenth of all the crops you harvest each year. ... tithes of grain, new wine, olive oil, and the firstborn males of your flocks and herds. ... Bring this tithe to the designated place of worship ... Then you and your household shall ... eat it there ... At the end of every third year, bring the entire tithe of that year’s harvest and store it in the nearest town. Give it [one-tenth on the third and sixth years of the seven year cycle (10% x 2/7 = 2.86%)] to the Levites, who will receive no allotment of land among you, as well as to the foreigners living among you, the orphans, and the widows in your towns, so they can eat and be satisfied. ... At the end of every seventh year you must cancel the debts of everyone who owes you money. ... There should be no poor among you ... Release ... Hebrew Slaves ... in the seventh year ... " —Deuteronomy 14:22
Q. "When you see around the globe the maldistribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries, when you see so few haves and so many have-nots, when you see the greed and the concentration of power – did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea to run on?" —Talk-show host, Phil Donahue
A. "Is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy; it's only the other fellow who's greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilizations have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about – the only cases in recorded history – are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade." —Nobel laureate, Milton Friedman, Video, 1979
"I have never understood why it is 'greed' to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money." —Thomas Sowell, 'Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays'
'Class Envy': "Rather than aspiring to be rich, young Americans are taught to view the wealthy as selfish oppressors. Entrepreneurs who paved the way for the economic prosperity we enjoy today are vilified as 'robber barons.' The stories told of these people is often taught in a one-sided manner without any consideration for their contributions to improving the lives of everyday Americans." —Connor Boyack
"The government has never shown much aptitude for real business. The Congress will not permit it to be conducted by a competent executive, but constantly intervenes. The most free ... method ever devised for the equitable distribution of property is to permit the people to care for themselves by conducting their own business. [The people] have more wisdom than any government." —President Calvin Coolidge
"Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong, but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists." —Anonymous, as quoted by Thomas Friedman
"Only in America, the land of opportunity, could being without a job and broke be a great opportunity. In 1978, my partners and I built four hardware stores, and this small business grew and is known as The Home Depot. We could only have done this in America because of America’s system of free enterprise and pro-jobs growth government policies. The state of America today, especially record inflation, government over-regulation, and the problems of the last three years, would prevent my partners and I from succeeding as we have." —Bernie Marcus, billionaire founder of Home Depot, September 11, 2023, at age 94
■ "We don't dispute that the free market is the greatest producer of wealth in history — it has lifted billions of people out of poverty. We believe in property rights, rule of law, so forth." —President Barack Obama
'That's capitalism' ... 'Adam Smith's Solution to Poverty ... that only economic growth would improve living standards': "People living in absolute poverty, which is defined as earning less than two dollars a day, was 42.7% of the world's population in 1980. By the year 2000 that had fallen to 27.8%, and today [2023] it is less than 9%. ... Adam Smith ['The Founder of Free Market Capitalism'] argued that only an expansion of free markets and free trade could lead to increased prosperity." —Larry Kudlow, June 16, 2023
Maimonides' highest of eight levels of Charity: "The greatest level, above which there is no greater ... [includes] entering into a partnership with him, or finding employment for him, in order to strengthen his hand until he need no longer be dependent upon others ... " —Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204)
If Charity is the Goal, Hoard the Wealth: "If their true desire is to help their fellow man, they should hoard every penny of their significant wealth. ... to monetize their wealth in order to support charities is ... to oversee the conversion of production goods to consumption goods. ... the removal of limited capital from the productive parts of the economy will ultimately reduce our standard of living ... When individuals save, they're by definition providing capital to entrepreneurs, and the capital formation that results from saving naturally stimulates job creation. Considered in this light, savers and investors are conferring the ultimate benefit on others by virtue of their financial means supporting individuals eager to work. ... wealth creation. So when the rich maintain their money and investments, their increased net worth redounds to wages and job opportunities. ... Considering innovation, most everything that we enjoy today results from individuals saving, as opposed to giving away their money. ... " —John Tamny, 'Forbes', June 17, 2010
["Such ongoing saving and investment, conferring the ultimate benefit on others, is precisely the highest ... level of Maimonides' ladder of charity: ... whatever ... it takes to enable the disadvantaged to become self-reliant." —Chris Mitchell]
Perfecting the world: "Almost nobody understands the concept that by over-saving (accumulating and investing more savings than you will spend during your lifetime) you are paying it forward — accelerating the advance of civilization by the elimination of poverty and causing the rising standard of living to happen faster. The over-saving pays for more rapid innovation and production, while compounding infrastructure and wealth. This is how the free market creates abundance." —Elizabeth Anderson
"If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" —Unknown
Economic Growth eliminates poverty, Charity doesn’t, Government spending doesn’t.
Amazing free market progress: "Absolute poverty is defined as living on less than $1.25/day. Over the last 30 years, the share of the global population living in absolute poverty has declined from 53% to under 17%." —Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., February, 2012, June 27, 2016 ["What greater act of charity could there possibly be than free market economic progress lifting 2.5 billion people out of absolute poverty in only 30 years?" —Mark Harris]
[The Great Enrichment: Professor Deirdre McCloskey explains that the explosion of material wealth (by thirty times, 3,000%, uniquely since about 1800) is due to discovery (innovation) under conditions of liberty (equality of permission), property rights, respect for entrepreneurship, mobility, and creativity, while minimizing coercion/regulation by aristocracy, and peace.]
"Extreme poverty (~$2/day) plummeted from 42% in 1980 to <10% today." —Alex Epstein, May 4, 2023
["Capitalism has done more to spark human productivity than any other economic system, yet it’s constantly under attack by the economically illiterate." —Libertas Institute]
"Child mortality in developing countries [has] halved in the last 20 years — a monumental achievement! But only 39% of people are aware ... " —Peter Diamandis, M.D., October 17, 2024
Increasing standard of living > Click for graphic data!
Americans living paycheck to paycheck:
"44% of those making over $100k; 78% of those making under $50k." —Lendingclub
"61% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck." —Jessica Dickler, 'CNBC', August 12, 2023
"In 2023, Americans spent an estimated $12.2 billion on Halloween. This included $3.6 billion on candy, $4.1 billion on costumes, and $3.9 billion on decorations." —Perplexity.AI
"Total value of unspent gift cards in the US: $23 billion." —Bankrate, July 2023
'What’s Wrong with the US Welfare State?': "The bottom fifth of households in 2017 had an average (after tax and after entitlement spending) income of $33,653 per person. Almost all of this 'income' is in the form of noncash welfare benefits. If all those benefits were converted into cash, a family of four in the bottom fifth of the (earned) income distribution would have $134,652 a year to spend, after taxes! The bottom fifth also had more per capita 'income' than the next fifth and the middle fifth. ... if we took all of the money we are currently spending on anti-poverty programs and gave it in cash to poor families, there would be no problem of poverty in this country." —John Goodman, March 7, 2024
■ Guaranteed basic income: "There is no reason why, in a society that has reached the general level of wealth ours has attained, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all – some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work." —Friedrich Hayek, April, 1945
Conjecture: "If you permanently eliminated every welfare benefit and welfare program of every kind, and substituted each of the several states paying every American the amount of the poverty limit, thereby with certainty eliminating all poverty, while taxing back any amount of that poverty payment from each individual's income in excess of the poverty limit, wouldn't you find that you had instantly entirely eliminated all poverty with extremely low overhead costs, no need to qualify for payments, with greatly reduced perverse incentives, and with a total cost to completely and permanently eliminate all poverty considerably lower than what is currently wasted fighting poverty? Since poverty has been rapidly declining due to rising incomes, the cost of a subsidy to eliminate residual poverty should also rapidly decline. This approach avoids distorting prices, and the information they convey, so that the poor would retain their full ability to vote with their purchases to direct the economy according to their preferences. Is a welfare reform style work or education requirement needed to make this function properly? Wouldn't it also feel dramatically more secure for everyone to have eliminated the fear of poverty by making poverty impossible, and having empowered everyone to undertake risks to improve their lot in life, knowing that falling into destitution was no longer possible? [This could be administered like Social Security, with direct deposit, and using a guardian to receive payment for individuals, such as minors and spendthrifts, not able to manage their own finances. It might help individuals who have difficulty managing money, to have the funds made available by using a debit card with a calculated spending limit that continuously increases (minute by minute) over each poverty payment period, so that there is never a weekly or monthly lump sum payment that can be impulsively wasted.]" —John Gаrrideb
"Basic income project shows signs of success." —Timothy Pratt, August 13, 2023
"There's lots of ways to be, as a person. And some people express their deep appreciation in different ways. But one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there. ... " —Steve Jobs, 2007
'By its nature, great wealth mostly benefits others.'
"If you owned all of Burger King, how many hamburgers would you eat?
If you owned an entire railroad or airline, how many seats would you occupy? All the time?
If you owned all of Apple, how many Macintosh computers would you want,
and how many iPhones would you use, and how many Apple watches would you wear?
If you owned all of Toyota, how many cars would you drive?
If you owned all of Uber, how many rides would you take?
If you owned all of Verizon, how many phone numbers would you want?
If you owned all of Comcast, how many televisions would you watch?
If you owned all of Hilton Hotels, how many hotel rooms would you occupy? For how many days?
If you owned a million acres of land, and built on that land and farmed, how many rooms could you live in,
and how much of your wheat and corn would you like to have delivered to your front door?
If you owned all of Exxon, how much gasoline would you put in your car?
If you owned great wealth, consisting of (which is now very easy to do)
owning and/or funding, in part, most of the companies in the world, would that change your answers?
Get the picture???" —Mary Edwards
● Understanding wealth: [Which contradicts the myth of the Robber Barron.]
💰💰💰"Adam Smith wrote in 1776 that the extremely wealthy 'only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only ... the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they [inevitably] divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are [thus] led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life [as] ... had the earth been divided into equal portions.' – or as Neil Simon put it, 'Money brings some happiness. But after a certain point, it just brings more money.'● Teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime [i.e. the gift of self sufficiency]:
So, disliking the ultra-rich for their wealth shows profound ignorance about both money and history, because all the money in excess of whatever limited amount they can quickly spend for their personal use, however ostentatious (but often not), has to be put somewhere – and as a result, rich people are essentially forced by the nature of wealth to either permanently give their wealth away to others (charity/gifts/spending), or (if they wish to remain rich) to temporarily give their wealth away as loans to others who need it most (as debt such as bonds, loans, mortgages, etc.), or (as equity investments such as company stock, or mutual funds) to put their wealth in the hands of others who can benefit because they know how to use the capital most productively – so, whatever their intentions, the 'rich' have little choice but to give away their 'excess' wealth (temporarily or permanently) and thus must use their wealth principally to the benefit of others. ... So it is extremely foolish to resent that 'rich people' typically have just some pieces of paper (such as stock certificates, bonds, or deeds), or increasingly commonly only have account data on computers (mostly not 'excess' wealth held as tangible things in their possession), while in reality their 'wealth' is actually almost entirely in the hands of and benefiting everyone else, you included (such as companies, factories, and stores creating, manufacturing, and making available to you all the things you want to buy to sustain an ever improving standard of living, and the employment and profits to pay for it all) ... And 'you can't take it with you!'" Thus, a parable of choices,▶ Abundance: By saving and investing, providing the capital for compound economic growth, perpetually improving the world's standard of living, energy abundance, health, and longevity, according to the preferences that people vote for with their purchases, perfecting the future world, making everyone ever wealthier through innovation under conditions of freedom, with capital investments and advancing and disseminating knowledge that makes food abundant, the environment cleaner, life safer and more comfortable, and workers more productive so their real wages rise, while lifting the masses out of poverty, misery, and starvation, with luxuries undreamt of by royalty of earlier generations, such as indoor plumbing, machine power enabled by fossil fuel and electricity, factory and farm automation, leisure time, extended childhood, retirement, entertainment, plastic, steel, aluminum, float glass, transistors, integrated circuits, lasers, television, computers, cellphones, wrist radios, digital imaging and video, internet, artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, vaccines, surgery with anesthesia, dentistry, automobiles, airplane flights, microwave ovens, heating, air conditioning, lighting, etc., an amazing accumulation of knowledge, technology, and steadily rising standard of living for which we should all be grateful.● Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day:▶ By charity which is mostly once and done, so the money, however well spent, is all gone, without lasting benefit. Or,● Waste a fish and you get a rotting pile of garbage:▶ By a century of coercive taxing and misguided spending, with central planning and regulation, that not only enslaves, but mostly squanders individuals' money, efforts, knowledge, and time while ignoring their preferences, stifling freedom, growth, and innovation, destroying wealth, making everyone worse off than what could have been, but also debasing the currency and borrowing from future generations to further compound the reduction of standard of living over time. —Mark Harris
More Personal Finance quotations: [YMMV]
"Thrift is a wonderful virtue, especially in an ancestor." —Mark Twain
'Efficient-market hypothesis': "This theory suggests that stock prices reflect all available information, similar to how point spreads in sports betting incorporate all known data about teams. Therefore, picking a 'better' company or team doesn't guarantee success because the market [prices] or betting odds already account for this information. This analogy highlights the challenge of consistently outperforming the market or winning bets based on perceived advantages." —Perplexity.AI
["So avoid speculating, except in those incredibly rare instances where your expertise tells you, for sure, that what 'everyone knows' is incorrect." —Mark Harris]
Intentionally spending down retirement savings, with the goal of dying broke is largely a myth: "Retirees prefer to keep their assets untouched. Very few want to tap into their savings to finance their spending in retirement, especially those with high levels of assets who are very content to leave all or a significant amount of savings unspent." —Blackrock
["This supports the understanding that excess savings mostly benefits others, is commonplace, and is a form of paying it forward." —Mark Harris]
"If there's a will, prosperity can't be far behind." —W. C. Fields
"Successful investing involves doing just a few things right, and avoiding serious mistakes." —John Bogle
"Just buy the whole market and wait fifty years." —Jack Bogle
" ... instead listen to financial morons in the break room ... [NOT!]" —Flashes1
"Stupidity well packaged can sound like wisdom." —Burton G. Malkiel, Professor Emeritus of Economics, Princeton University, 'A Random Walk Down Wall Street'
"Doing well with money has little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave." —Morgan Housel
"The best financial advice there is in nine words: Make money, spend less, invest simply, and wait longer." —Brian Feroldi
'Always be buying': "I wished I had started investing when I was young." —AAII
The best defense against financial risk is to over-save: "Keep working and saving until you have over twice what you need to retire." —Paul Merriman
"The closer you come to holding the entire market portfolio, the higher the expected return for the risk you take." —Nobel Laureate, William Sharpe
"The beauty of owning the market is that you eliminate individual stock risk, you eliminate market sector risk, and you eliminate manager risk. – In my view, owning the market and holding it forever is the ultimate strategy for winners." —Jack Bogle
"It's in the interest of many financial services companies to make you think that investing is difficult - it's really quite simple." — Former Vanguard CEO Jack Brennan
Stay the course: "The cardinal investment sin: Selling your winners too soon." —John Lim
"Don't sign anything you don't understand." —Mr. Rumples
"You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away, know when to run. You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table. There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done." —Lyrics from the song 'The Gambler' by Don Schlitz
"Staying the course means going against your own emotions at times. Staying the course means thinking and acting for the long term even when it doesn’t feel right in the short-term. Staying the course means preparing not predicting. Staying the course means doing nothing when that's what your plan calls for." —Ben Carlson
"Do nothing is almost always the right move." —Brian Feroldi
'Stupid slogans' while freaking out as markets fluctuate: "You don't lose money until you sell. Losses are temporary unless you sell. You lock in losses when you sell. Why stop playing when you're losing the game? The IRS doesn't let me realize a loss unless I sell." —'Stay the course'
The Luckiest Generation: "Baby boomers are by far one of the wealthiest generations the world has ever seen. ... total returns ... since 1983: Stocks +7,930%; Bonds +1,060%; Housing +515% ... annual returns of 11.4%, 6.2% and 4.6%, respectively. ... arguably the greatest 40-something-year period in the history of financial markets ... The long-term return for U.S. stocks over the past 100 years or so was 9.7% per year." —Ben Carlson, August 25, 2023
"The older I get, the more I realize that investing success is more about psychology than anything else, and that a 'suboptimal' allocation that lets you sleep at night is better than an 'optimal' one that wakes you up at 3 AM in a cold sweat." —Bill Bernstein
"Investing is simple [keep buying and hold forever low cost capitalization weighted passive index mutual funds], but it's not easy [inability to 'stay the course']." —Warren Buffett
"Yes, investing is simple. But it is not easy, for it requires discipline, patience, steadfastness, and that most uncommon of all gifts, common sense." —Jack Bogle
Tracking the market: "Companies keep changing ... and how great is it that index funds automatically track the changes! What Index Funds accomplish for you with minimal cost, thought, and effort is astounding."
—Watch this animation ('Top 10 S&P 500 companies, 1980-2020')
[Additional animations: Top 10 Largest Companies by Market Cap (1979-2021); Top 10 Countries by GDP (1896-2022).]
[Don't expect that a company's exponential growth will go on forever]: "Trees don't grow to the sky." —Proverb
"In 1896, the original companies of the DOW were: American Cotton Oil, American Sugar, American Tobacco, Chicago Gas, Distilling & Cattle Feeding, General Electric, Laclede Gas, National Lead, North American, Tennessee Coal and Iron, U.S. Leather, and U.S. Rubber." —Mr. Rumples
'Financial Order of Operations ... where the next dollar should go ... to grow your money':
"1. Deductibles Covered; 2. Employer Match; 3. High-Interest Debt; 4. Emergency Reserves; 5. Roth & HSA; 6. Max-Out Retirement; 7. Hyper-Accumulation; 8. Prepaid Future Expenses; 9. Low-Interest Debt." —moneyguy.com
[Also see 'Prioritizing Investments.']
"Retirement plans (traditional or Roth) both get (the equivalent of) tax-free growth." —Bogleheads
The best way "to get what you want, is to deserve it ... You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end ... " —Charlie Munger
"We have seen much more money made and kept by 'ordinary people' who were temperamentally well suited for the investment process than by those who lacked this quality." —Ben Graham
"Know what you own, and know why you own it." —Peter Lynch
"We assume that markets are efficient, that prices are right." —Eugene Fama
"When real estate in Amsterdam crashed in the late 1700's [▼80%] it did not recover for over a century." —nisiprius
Verify all wire transfer instructions, and don't believe any e-mails or incoming phone calls you receive:
"A third of all 2020 real estate transactions included some sort of wire fraud attempt ... " —Aly J. Yale, July 2, 2021
"Risk mitigation doesn't always work the way you expect." —Portfolio Charts, Tyler9000 ["The results of including small cap value, long term bonds, and gold in an investment portfolio can be counterintuitive!"]
"By far, the best hedge against inflation is a house with a big [low fixed rate] mortgage." —Small Savanna
Why Bonds?: "That's why I've said for a long time that equities were the place to be. I mean, there's been no comparison. To me, it's just been absurd to see pension funds and those people, in the early teens of this century, saying, 'We ought to have 30 or 40% in bonds.' There's no comparison. A bond that pays you 2% is selling at 50 times earnings, and the earnings can't go up. And the government has told you, 'We'd like to take that 2% away from you by decreasing the value of money.' I mean, that's absurd to own something like that. You may have to own it for legal reasons or something of the sort, but to make that as a voluntary choice in the last ten years, against owning assets, has struck me as absolutely foolish." —Warren Buffett, 2018 video at 30:00
Bonds + taxes + rising inflation, rising interest rates, or negative interest rates: "Government bonds are certificates of guaranteed confiscation." —Dr. Franz Pick
"Eventually, one runs out of greater fools." —Burton Malkiel
"The purpose of investing is not to simply optimize returns and make yourself rich. The purpose is not to die poor. " —William Bernstein
"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful — that's what matters to me." —Steve Jobs
"My father said he would get a hearse with a luggage rack. Taking it all with him." —Chardo
"Few understand that by dying rich, your investments can continue compounding to pay it forward by increasing future abundance and standard of living." —John Gаrrideb
"A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money." —W. C. Fields
"Ninety-nine percent of personal finance can be summarized in nine words: Work a lot, spend a little, invest the difference." —Morgan Housel
"The two greatest enemies of the equity fund investor are expenses and emotions." —John C. Bogle
"Time is your friend; impulse is your enemy." —John C. Bogle
"Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist." —Morgan Housel
"Pick a bushel, save a peck!" —'Grandpa'
'A huge factor in creating long term wealth': "Don't try to keep up with Joneses." —alwayshedge
"Dividends are not free money. They are more like a forced sale." —adave
"Minimize expenses and emotions, maximize diversification and discipline." —Allan Roth
"Hard sell = hard no!" —RunMarkRun
"The drag on performance caused by the advisor AUM fees ['Assets Under Management'] and high cost investments is the most expensive thing you will buy in your lifetime." —Cyath
Excessive Fees – Stopping the silent killer of investment returns: "I don’t think most people appreciate that
fees of 'as little as 1% a year' amount to giving away more than a quarter of your wealth over 30 years."
—John Ameriks, October 28, 2011
Retirement savings disaster – Costly advisor fee of 1% AUM (‘Assets Under Management’) + costly 1% expense ratio funds = 2% expenses: "If a reasonable annual withdrawal rate is 4%/year, likely 1/2 is going to the advisor." ... "Most people lack the interest/confidence/competence to go it alone and allow their friendly neighborhood advisor to take them to the cleaners." —HomeStretch, et al ["A fool and his money are good for business."]
" ... through this world I've wandered | I've seen lots of funny men | Some will rob you with a six-gun | And some with a fountain pen." —Woody Guthrie song 'Pretty Boy Floyd'
Numerous insights from Professor Itzhak Ben-David:
• Appallingly, hedge fund investors lose about 65% of profits to supposed “2/20” management fees.
• Performance chasing (stupidly buying what went up in price, and selling what went down) is a losers’ game that explains why most investors do much worse than what they invest in. (Just the opposite of 'buy low, sell high.')
• Momentum was mostly due to investor performance chasing based on Morningstar star ratings until 2002, when momentum disappeared because Morningstar changed from all fund star ratings to star ratings within each of the 9 style boxes.
• The 80% confidence interval for prediction of the following year’s stock market performance is +/–20% (almost 3 times wider than what people expect).
"It is a fact that 90% of all people who play the commodities game get burned. I submit that you have now read all you ever need to read about commodities." —Andrew Tobias, c. 1978
Set It and Forget It: "Automation is the key to a successful savings and investing plan." —Rick Ferri
"Approximately 99% of the time, the single most important thing investors should do is absolutely nothing." —Jason Zweig
"The time to buy is when there's blood in the streets." —Attributed to Baron Rothschild, 1871
Investor sentiment: "Markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria." —Sir John Templeton
"Far more money has been lost by investors in preparing for corrections, or anticipating corrections, than has been lost in the corrections themselves." —Peter Lynch
'Handy-dandy maxims to provide confirmation bias of whatever you've already decided to do:' —nisiprius
● The market is down and you want to buy?:
"Buy low, sell high.";
"Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.";
"Buy when there's blood in the street."
● The market is down and you want to sell?:
"Cut your losses and let your profits run.";
"Don't try to catch a falling knife.";
"Don't fight the dominant trend of the market.";
"Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful."
● The market is up and you want to sell?:
"Buy low, sell high.";
"Nobody ever went broke taking a profit.";
"Bulls make money and bears make money but pigs get slaughtered."
● The market is up and you want to buy?:
"The trend is your friend.";
"Cut your losses and let your profits run.";
"You're playing with house money, now."
[ ... "There are a variety of slogans people choose from to justify whatever action they are taking based on gut feeling. ... None of them are valid general rules.”]
"Reaching for yield is really stupid, but it’s very human." —Warren Buffett, CNBC interview, 2020
"More money has been lost reaching for yield than at the point of a gun." —Raymond DeVoe, Jr., 1995
"The safe assumption for an investor is that over the next hundred years, the currency is going to zero." —Charlie Munger
"Minimize your maximum regret." —My old MBA teacher
"Retirement planning is not about maximizing the chance of dying rich, but minimizing the chance of living broke." —adage
"I don't view it as saving. I think of it as 'buying' freedom and independence. Honestly, I can't think of many things I want to buy more." —Trebor
"The best investing advice is to live below your means." —J.Brennen
Obvious stuff that people commonly get wrong: "Never buy something as an investment that you cannot sell in the future for more money. (Or an investment where you can't immediately get back all of your money.)" —Ralph Fischer
["A depreciating asset may be fun to have, but is likely not actually a good investment. (When the prices of things you own are going up, make sure that you know if you are getting richer (after taxes), or actually are getting poorer while being fooled by inflation.) Some examples of investments to avoid where you start out by automatically losing money on day one: Diamonds, load funds (with sales charges), 'permanent' insurance (with hidden sales charges), annuities (especially with surrender charges or withdrawal restrictions), etc." —Ralph Fischer]
Start saving from your first paycheck!: "Saving part of every paycheck is your most important habit. ... For young investors, savings rate is more important than all the other investing advice ... " —Rick Van Ness
["The first decade of saving is as important as the entire rest of your career, because compounding needs 40-50 years to make you quite wealthy. Reinvest interest, dividend, and capital gain distributions. Contribute the maximum allowed amounts to tax advantaged retirement accounts. Make sure to take full advantage of any employer match offered in a retirement plan at work, as it would be really foolish to turn down free money!" —Mary Thomas]
"The US household saving rate has dropped significantly: from 17.0% in the 1950s to just 4.1% in the last decade. Foreign investment has been replacing US saving. In the 2000's, foreigners invested more than $2 in the US for every dollar invested by Americans. In the last decade, they invested roughly $2 for every $3 invested by Americans." —John C. Goodman, September 8, 2023
"A $5 million retirement nest egg puts you in the top 0.1% of households. [While 49% have saved $0 for retirement.]" —Veronica Dagher and Anne Tergesen, 'Wall Street Journal', August 11, 2023
"The median savings in a 401(k) plan for people aged 55 to 64 is currently just $15,000." —National Institute on Retirement Security, a nonprofit
"Two-thirds of Americans don’t contribute any money to a 401(k) or other retirement account." —Census Bureau researchers
"[Capitalization-weighted] portfolios, under the assumptions of an efficient market, give investors the 'best' trade-off between risk and return. This means that for any given risk level, these capitalization-weighted portfolios give the highest returns; and for any given return, these portfolios give the lowest risk. This property is called mean-variance efficiency." —Jeremy Siegel, 'Stocks for the Long Run'
"I should have computed the historical co-variances of the asset classes and drawn an efficient frontier. Instead, I visualized my grief if the stock market went way up and I wasn’t in it–or if it went way down and I was completely in it. My intention was to minimize my future regret. So I split my contributions 50/50 between bonds and equities." —Harry Markowitz
"There are an infinite number of strategies worse than this one: Commit, over a period of a few years, half of your assets to a stock index fund and half to a bond index fund. Ignore interim fluctuations in their net asset values. Hold your positions for as long as you live, subject only to infrequent and marginal adjustments as your circumstances change. When there are multiple solutions to a problem, choose the simplest one." —John C. Bogle
"In life there are no solutions, just tradeoffs." —Thomas Sowell
" ... in the very long term, long bonds are more risky than stocks due to their exposure to future inflation." —William Bernstein
Bond interest rates: "Investors are usually rewarded when the duration premium is greater than 20 basis points [0.20%] per year of maturity." —The Larry Swedroe rule of thumb
'Skimming interest off of cash and money market funds': "Schwab skims $10 billion a year out of the pockets of its customers just from cash." —billaster
"In any given year a person is more likely to divorce than to change their primary bank." —alex_686
"The best way to eliminate income tax is to eliminate income." —popoki
"There are fixed income investments where one does get decent returns but doesn't accept the interest rate risk of [typically recommended] total bond funds with a rolling 6-7 year duration. They would be Series I Savings Bonds, 1, 2, 3 year U.S. government bonds [held to maturity], the federal employees' Thrift Savings Plan's G fund, stable value funds, Certificates of Deposits (CD's), Multi-Year Guaranteed Annuities (MYGA's), or Money Market Funds." —Parkinglotracer
Long Treasuries down almost 50%. Time to bottom fish?: " ... recent 60-year period (1962 through 2021) reported by the Fed, 10-year Treasuries have had a yield greater than 6% in 19 years (32% of the time); so, for this period, a yield above 6% is only a 68th percentile occurrence, not a 90th percentile occurrence. Based on this recent 60-year period, a 90th percentile occurrence would correspond to a yield on the 10-year Treasury [bond] of above 10%, as occurred in the 6 years from 1980-1985. A similar situation applies to the 30-year Treasury. In the 45-year period (1977 through 2021) reported by the Fed, 30-year Treasuries have had a yield greater than 6% in 21 years (47% of the time); so, for this period, a yield above 6% is only a 53th percentile occurrence. Based on this recent 45-year period, a 90th percentile occurrence would correspond to a yield on the 30-year Treasury of above 11%, as occurred in the 5 years from 1980-1984." —Trurl Klapaucius, October 28, 2022,
Debt limit – U.S. Government has previously defaulted – Treasury securities are not risk-free: "On 26 April 1979, the US Treasury defaulted on $41 million of maturing Treasury bills. They were paid 20 days late on Thursday 17 May 1979 after the Government found some money. Then again on 3 May 1979, Treasury defaulted on another $40 million. These were also paid 14 days late. Then again on 10 May 1979, Treasury defaulted on yet another $40 million of maturing T-bills. These were also paid on 17 May. Treasury refused investors' demands to reimburse the ... lost interest on the late days ... " —Ashley Owen, October 4, 2013
Bank of America: "Merrill Lynch to pay $415 million for misusing customer cash and putting customer securities at risk." —U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, June 23, 2016 ["But why does the fine go to the government, not to the victims?" —Patricia Harrison]
"The rich aren't like you and me. They have many more ways to lose money." —Bill Bernstein
"If you can't pay for it in cash you don't need it." —Anonymous
"The rich man buys once, the poor man buys twice." —Anonymous
"Buy the best. ... If you buy the best you only have to buy it once." —Michael C. Johnston's investment banker grandfather
["But, unfortunately, this sage advice may not apply if the technology is rapidly improving."]
"I'm a strong believer in buying quality in the first place. If you can't afford quality, don't buy until you can afford it." —Thom Hogan
"It costs more to be poor." ... "The reality of having no money is that it costs more." —Michael C. Johnston
"The trouble with being poor, is that it takes up all your time." —Willem de Kooning
For security, freeze your credit report, and use credit cards to make payments, but don't have debit cards. —Frank Abagnale, 'Catch Me If You Can' Talk at Google
['Also use unique strong passwords and turn on second factor authentication on all your financial accounts.']
Retirement expenses: "Many of us do not include money being saved for retirement as an expense. But retirement savings contributions and taxes can be a big factor between salary while working and income needed in retirement." —Katietsu
"If you're saving 15% of income [while working], that's a 15% raise [when retired]. Not too shabby." —sureshoe
" ... expense that ... goes away is commuting expense and dress clothes for work." —JazzTime
"Once you are no longer drawing wages, payroll taxes (FICA, Medicare) of 7.65% go away. That's quite a savings!" —Church Lady
Being elderly: "Every time you blink it's time for breakfast again." —Youngblood
"Time goes by faster [in retirement] than when working." —nagaf
"I've got a confession to make: I'm getting really sloooooow. I used to be fast. ... I'm doing the best I can. I'm just plain slowing down. It takes me longer to think of words now ... Feels like time is speeding up, but it's not. I'm just slowing down." —Michael C. Johnston
"You can't help the poor by being one of them." —Unknown
"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help little men by tearing down big men. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence." —Rev. William J. H. Boetcker, 'The Ten Cannots'
Q. “How did you go bankrupt?"
A. "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” —Cocoa Beach Bum
"The reason Silicon Valley Bank imploded is that they had a great automatic wire interface and $42 Billion got wired out on the day before seizure, the biggest bank run in history." —bople
China's empty cities — China Evergrande Bank property developer default/collapse, debt crisis, most indebted company in the world, $305 billion: "World's biggest asset bubble, housing in China, 30% of Chinese GDP, and represents over 70% of household wealth in China. That's the property housing market. ... One of the biggest companies in the world, number 125 on the Fortune 500, on the brink of collapse." —Jonathan D.T. Ward, September 24, 2021
'The enormity of the Chinese debt': "The Chinese measurement reached ... 50 times what [the debt] was in 2007. ... The Chinese century is over. Facing upside-down demographic and economic trends, China is heading off the cliff. ... Every age-related trend in China is going in the wrong direction. ... fertility rates in Beijing and Shanghai have fallen to an astonishing 0.7, the lowest in the world. ... now, imagine that vast nation with barely one-third of the population it has today ... at the end of the century ... " —Joe Tauke, July 30, 2023
"[Artificial intelligence and graphics chipmaker] Nvidia’s now worth as much as the entire Chinese stock market." —MarketWatch, February 9, 2024
■ "In a few days, China — the world's most powerful authoritarian state — will begin hosting the Winter Olympics, and, like Germany in 1936, it will attempt to use the spectacle to score a propaganda victory for its system of strict controls. ... [Deng Xiaoping] invited foreigners to invest in China, and this led to four decades of miraculous growth that continued even after [Chinese President Xi Jinping] came to power in 2013. ... Xi has done his best to dismantle Deng's achievements. He brought the private companies established under Deng under the control of the [Communist Party of China] and undermined the dynamism that used to characterise them. Rather than letting private enterprise blossom, Xi introduced his own 'China Dream,' which can be summed up in two words: total control. That has had disastrous consequences. In contrast to Deng, Xi is a true believer in Communism. ... It is to be hoped that Xi may be replaced by someone less repressive at home and more peaceful abroad. ... " [More] —George Soros, January 31, 2022
'I can't get my money out': "Billionaire [veteran emerging markets] investor Mark Mobius says China is restricting flows of capital out of the country." —Carla Mozée, March 3, 2023
China’s new 'company law': "There is no such thing as a private company in China. I caution all Americans conducting business in China – the Chinese Communist Party will settle for nothing less than complete control at your expense. ‘Worker representatives’ are a blatant attempt by the CCP to embed Party officials in U.S. companies." —Rep. John Moolenaar, Chairman. House Select Committee on the CCP
Kissinger sees war over Taiwan: "On the current trajectory of relations, I think some military conflict is probable." —Henry Kissinger, interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, June 15, 2023
Taiwan: "We do not support independence." —Joe Biden, January 13, 2024
'China's economy is in trouble': " ... following the lifting of Covid lockdowns, growth is stalling. Consumer prices are falling, a real estate crisis is deepening and exports are in a slump. Unemployment among youth has gotten so bad the government has stopped publishing the data." —Laura He, CNN, August 23, 2023
"The Soviet Union ... collapsed. China is in trouble because now they're trying to replace the market." —Steve Forbes, August 30, 2023
"Consistently avoiding ruin is the most underrated financial skill." —Brian Feroldi
Collapse of Civilization: "A human lifetime is approximately 80 years and the average civilization lasts something like about 500 years (big error bars on that obviously), so the chance of some significant collapse of the civilization one lives in during one's lifetime is something like 1/6 (this is a HUGE risk ... )." —DonIce
The Magnificent Seven: "The $13.1 trillion value of Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Nvidia (NVDA), Meta Platforms (META) and Tesla (TSLA) are so big, ... put together ... they are worth as much as all the stocks in Japan, France and the U.K. ... combined." —Steve Goldstein, Morningstar/Dow Jones, February 13, 2024
"'It's different this time' are the most expensive words in the English language." ... "When people say things are different, 20 percent of the time they are right." —Sir John Templeton
"You make most of your money [by continuing to invest] in a bear market, you just don't realize it at the time." —Shelby Davis
"You shouldn't buy [a total market] index fund because you think it's a hot performer. Buy it because you're going to hold it forever." —John Bogle
"Act as if every broker, insurance salesman, mutual fund salesman and financial advisor you encounter is a hardened criminal." —William J. Bernstein
Paradox: "Once one is educated enough to figure out if one has a good advisor ... one no longer needs an advisor." —dbr x
Brokerage account, etc.: "Update your profile to indicate 'self-directed account, no solicitations.'" —bonesly
"We turn your money and our experience into our money and your experience." —Investment 'advisors'
["They are salesmen. Steer clear." —windaar]
Anti-mutual fund Sales Pitch to ignore: "Investors with portfolios of $500,000 or more may have outgrown [sic] a [mutual] fund-heavy approach. ... You May Need A New Approach ... Perhaps it's time to graduate to a better strategy." —
Fisher Investments, '6 Pitfalls Of Funds'
"On balance, the financial system subtracts value from our society." —Jack Bogle
"You can't cheat an honest man!" ... "Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump!" ... "It's morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money." 😀 —W. C. Fields
"Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There's nothing like having a midget for a butler." —W. C. Fields
"If you're happy with every part of your portfolio you're not diversified enough." —ekid
"Diversification means always having to say you're sorry." —Brian Portnoy
"The ultimate beauty of index funds is that they get you utterly out of the business of guessing what will happen next. They enable you to say seven magic words: ‘I don't know, and I don't care.’ ... With an index fund, you're on permanent auto-pilot: you will always get what the market is willing to give, no more and no less." —Jason Zweig
"The winning strategy is to build a globally diversified portfolio of passively managed funds that reflects your ability, willingness and need to take risk, and then having the discipline to stay the course." —Larry Swedroe
"Your money is like a bar of soap – the more you handle it, the less you'll have." —Eugene Fama
"Investors who can watch their portfolio drop without reacting are destined to build incredible amounts of wealth." —Brian Feroldi
'Managing the world's largest mutual fund': "Why passive is anything but, when running ... [1.3] trillion-dollar behemoth ... Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index Fund. ... Gerry O'Reilly, the fund's principal portfolio manager ... reveals the active management required ... to match the CRSP U.S. Total Market Index. [Multiple daily company changes require a 10% annual portfolio turnover.]" —Consuelo Mack, Wealthtrack podcast, July 21, 2023
"[Most investors would] be better off in an index fund." —Peter Lynch, famous stock picker, 'Barron's', p. 15, April 2, 1990
" ... the best way to own common stocks is through an index fund ... " —Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., 1996, Shareholder Letter, 1997
"Most of the mutual fund investments I have are index funds, approximately 75%." —Charles R. Schwab, 2000, 'Guide to Financial Independence', p. 90, by the founder of the pioneering discount brokerage firm that bears his name
"An index fund ... is 'self-cleansing.' The failures fall away and the winners can grow endlessly." —J.L. Collins
"Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard's.)." —Investment instructions in Warren Buffett's will (written at age 83 years with a net worth of $66 billion)
"When you buy high and sell low, it is very hard to make money, even if you do it with great enthusiasm." —David Swenson
"Never confuse the likely with the certain or the unlikely with the impossible." —Larry Swedroe
"It is always better to err on the side of safety." —Harry Browne
"The Permanent Portfolio is a simple 4-slice portfolio created by [Libertarian Party presidential candidate in both 1996 and 2000 and] investment advisor Harry Browne in the 1980's and presented in his book Fail-Safe Investing in 2001. It looks like this: 25% Total US Stock Market – for economic expansion; 25% Long-Term Bonds – for deflation; 25% Cash – for economic recession; and, 25% Gold – for inflation." —Harry Browne
"Murphy's law holds true. Whatever can happen, will happen. Give it enough time, the US stocks will crash. Every great empire rises and falls. Every single one in the history of mankind. We just don't live long enough to witness it in person." —H-Town
"If you want to lower the volatility of your investment portfolio, don't look at it so often." —Rick Ferri
Volatility≠Risk: "Stock prices will always be far more volatile than cash-equivalent holdings. Over the long term, however, currency-denominated instruments are riskier investments - far riskier investments - than widely-diversified stock portfolios that are bought over time and that are owned in a manner invoking only token fees and commissions. That lesson has not customarily been taught in business schools, where volatility is almost universally used as a proxy for risk. Though this pedagogic assumption makes for easy teaching, it is dead wrong: Volatility is far from synonymous with risk. Popular formulas that equate the two terms lead students, investors and CEOs astray." —Berkshire Hathaway 2014 Annual Report
"In investing, logic is turned on its head; bad companies are 'good' companies, buying low and selling high is not a workable strategy, selling when you double your money is a stupid move, economic growth isn't related to stock growth save tangentially, time does not diversify risk, diversification across stocks provides a greater than the sum of parts benefit, stocks are safer (less damaging vis-a-vi inflation) than savings after a while and so on, there's a million examples. There is hardly anything intuitive about this, it's the opposite of common sense." —nisiprius
"Living below your means is the ultimate financial strategy." —Jack Brennan
"The great industrialist Andrew Carnegie long ago observed that 'The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.' Carnegie was wrong. The man who dies rich dies a hero for his delayed consumption driving innovation and job creation on the way to even greater wealth. To save and invest is to expand capital, while selling assets in order to consume wealth is to destroy limited capital." —John Tamny, 'Forbes', June 17, 2010
The concept that ongoing investment does vastly more to rapidly eliminate poverty and create abundance than does charity has been overlooked in typical religious traditions that mostly were established long before the rise of modern free market economies and the resulting dramatic reduction in extreme poverty:
"Having, first, gained all you can, and, secondly saved all you can, then give all you can." —John Wesley
[In the last quarter century 1.1 billion people, about one-seventh of the world’s population, have been lifted out of extreme poverty. —Lant Pritchett, 'Poverty Reduction and Economic Growth', Oxford University, February 2, 2020]
["As an example of problematic charity, woke corporations took $82.9 billion of shareholder's money without permission, removed this vast sum from the productive economy, that (contrary to the values of many shareholders) they donated to the 'Black Lives Matter' organization, for which they got 574 riots, burning cities and attacking American businesses that hurt blacks, BLM scapegoating of Israel for Hamas' terrorist massacre that killed more than 1,400 innocents, and a scandal of BLM embezzlement of donated funds." —Bill Moore]
"We need to deliver economic growth in this country, unlock American energy, drill, frack, burn coal, embrace nuclear energy, stabilize the US dollar itself, and rescind a majority of those unconstitutional regulations that are hampering our economy." —Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican Presidential Debate, September 27, 2023
'Joint Letter to Biden on American Energy Innovation': "As governors, we are extremely concerned with the impacts [of] your energy policies ... The inefficient and often unworkable mandates your administration continues to push ... your most recent rules and regulations in the energy space are part of a larger unchecked rulemaking effort that is projected to cost American taxpayers $1.37 trillion." —Republican Governors Association, June 3, 2024
"... don't speak too soon; For the wheel's still in spin; And there's no tellin' who; That it's namin'; For the loser now; Will be later to win; For the times they are a-changin'" —Bob Dylan
"I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam." —Popeye
"TEOTWAWKI" —The end of the world as we know it.
"TANSTAAFL" —There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.
(From 'Economics in Eight Words', by Walter Morrow, 'El Paso Herald-Post', 1938)
"POSSLQ" —United States Census Bureau speak
"Only invest what you can afford to lose – as in, if the investment goes to zero." —Anonymous
"[Investors need to understand about risk] the importance of being balanced across asset classes and diversified within them. ... 'You're not really diversified unless you own something you're uncomfortable with.'" —Peter L. Bernstein
The internet is replete with humorous errors [especially homophonic gaffes] and ad homonym attacks:
"Stock investor wrote that he was '100% inequity', when he meant '100% in equity'."
"Homonyms are a reel waist of thyme." —Homonym Jokes
["Japanese has far more frequent homonyms than English, so much of phonetic typewriting with a word processor in Japanese is choosing which homonym is intended."]
Recently approved diabetes/anti-obesity drugs: "Semaglutide [Wegovy, Ozempic] could cut the obesity prevalence in the United States by about 46% and prevent more than 1.5 million cardiovascular disease events over 10 years when given to eligible patients with overweight or obesity." —Andrew Rhoades, August 30, 2023
'Be Thankful for High Drug Prices – If Americans weren’t overcharged, we wouldn’t have innovative treatments': "America’s gross domestic product per capita is 65% higher than Britain’s, 57% higher than Germany’s and 87% higher than France’s." —David R. Henderson and Charles L. Hooper, February 4, 2024
Pet peeves: "That Macintosh application menus no longer include all of the commands; ambiguous medical abbreviations [Does MI mean myocardial infarction or mitral insufficiency?, Does MS mean mitral stenosis or multiple sclerosis?]; 'new' genus names for bacteria [Pasturella —> Yersinia], altered radiation dose units [with four different redundant Absorbed Dose units for energy per unit mass, really?], and renamed lab tests [SGOT/AST, SGPT/ALT]; having not one, but TWO ridiculous error prone names for every drug; and revising the controls on new cameras, made so complicated that a thousand+ page manual is needed." —'Don't move the cheese'
"It takes about six months of learning and daily use for a professional to be able to use any camera in real-world competition conditions." —Go Tokura-san, Canon General Manager
["What ever happened to just aperture, shutter speed, ASA/ISO, focal length, and focus?"]
'SAA': "Struggled for the longest time, trying unsuccessfully to guess what the medical intern could possibly mean when he wrote the medical diagnosis using his made up abbreviation, 'SAA'." —Answer
"Every man should make up his mind that if he expects to succeed, he must give an honest return for the other man’s dollar." —Edward H. Harriman
"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose." —Bill Gates
"Success is defined as the ability to move from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." —Winston Churchill
"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get!" —Dale Carnegie
"Knowing and not doing is equivalent to not knowing at all." —Anonymous
"In financial markets things always take longer to happen than you would expect, but once they happen, events unfold faster than you expect." —Rudi Dornbusch
Pricing: "What everyone knows is not worth knowing." —Anonymous
["What everyone knows that is true is already priced in, so is of no help. But, if you are sure that 'what everyone knows' is wrong, and you are prepared to be very patient, only then might you have the ability to purchase at an amazing bargain price. For example, everyone 'knew' that Apple (at $0.40/share! adjusted for stock splits) had no technological advantage over competitors, and that the leading biotechnology companies (down 90%) would never be able to create new drugs."]
"I don't know anyone who can time the market, and I don't know anyone who knows anyone that can time the market." —John Bogle
"We don't know how to beat the market on a risk-adjusted basis, and we don't know anyone that does know either." —Larry Swedroe
"One way to deal with uncertainty is to accumulate more capital than the anticipated need might call for." —Phineas J. Whoopee
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." —Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929
"Those with enterprise haven't the money, and those with money haven't the enterprise, to buy stocks when they are cheap." —Benjamin Graham, 'Forbes', 1932
"If real yields were positive, I would be all over TIPS like polka dots on a bikini." —nedsaid
"Cryptocurrency has 'no intrinsic value' and investors could 'lose all your money.'" —Andrew Bailey, Bank Of England
"It's much more profitable to sell investing advice than to follow it." —Malcolm Forbes
"If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stocks, not selling advice." —Norman R. Augustine
"Investing in stocks is short-term risky. Not investing in stocks is long-term risky." —Brian Feroldi
"Sell down to your sleeping point." —John Pierpont Morgan, Sr.
"The key [in retirement] is matching your spending to your income. You will be fine as long as your cash flow from interest, dividends, pensions, Social Security, and other income is higher than your spending. Then you have nothing to fear from [a] bear market." —Rick Ferri
'Two fund portfolio': "Deep down, I remain absolutely confident that the vast majority of American families will be well served by owning their equity holding in an all-U.S. stock-market index portfolio and holding their bonds in an all-U.S. bond-market index portfolio." —Jack Bogle
'Two fund portfolio': "My advice could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard's.) I believe the trust's long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors – whether pension funds, institutions or individuals – who employ high-fee managers." —Warren Buffet's estate plan
"The Three-Fund Portfolio will help you to develop a sound asset allocation strategy, make smart investment selections, and guide the implementation of your plan." – "The beauty of owning the market is that you eliminate individual stock risk, you eliminate market sector risk, and you eliminate manager risk." – "The odds of outpacing an all-market index fund are, well, terrible." —Jack Bogle's Words of Wisdom
"Simplicity is the master key to financial success." —Jack Bogle
The Boglehead Philosophy: "1. Develop a workable plan; 2. Invest early and often; 3. Never bear too much or too little risk; 4. Diversify; 5. Never try to time the market; 6. Use index funds when possible; 7. Keep costs low; 8. Minimize taxes; 9. Invest with simplicity; 10. Stay the course." —Taylor Larimore
"Keep your investment strategy simple and steer clear of complicated vehicles that are designed to benefit the people selling them." —Eric McWhinnie
"If you can't understand an investment product in five minutes, walk away." —William McNabb, Vanguard CEO
"If you spend more than fifteen minutes a year worrying about the market, you've wasted twelve minutes." —Peter Lynch
"Making fewer decisions usually leads to better results than making more decisions." —'The Finance Buff'
"Perhaps the most amazing insight I got out of this review of the investment habits of Nobel laureates is the simplicity of their investing strategies." —Paul Farrell
"After doing it all, I now feel I've come around in a complete circle, ending up with this: The more I learn, the less I really need to know." —Paul Crafter
"The more complex an investment is, the less likely it is to be profitable. At best they are costly. At worst they are a cesspool of swindlers." —J.L. Collins
"The problem with so much personal financial advice is that it's unnecessarily complicated, often with the goal of selling you something you don't need." —Jean Chatzky
"To invest successfully, you need not understand beta, efficient markets, modern portfolio theory, option pricing or emerging markets. You may, in fact, be better off knowing nothing of these." —Warren Buffet
"The master key to wealth can be summed up in just one word: Simplicity." —Michael LeBoeuf, Ph.D.
[See the bogleheads.org Three-fund portfolio and Lazy portfolios.]
"All of us would be better investors if we just made fewer decisions." —Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Laureate
"A fool and his money are some party." —Paraphrase of an old proverb
"To the extent that a fool knows his foolishness, he may be deemed wise. A fool who considers himself wise is indeed a fool." —Buddha
"If we want a world in which all 8 billion of us have the opportunity to flourish — to live long, healthy, prosperous, fulfilling lives — we need to use more, not less, fossil fuel going forward." —Alex Epstein, August 31, 2022
'No science' backs ending fossil fuels: "There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what's going to achieve 1.5°C. ... Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves. ... Show me the solutions. Stop the pointing of fingers. Stop it. ... The world will continue to need energy sources ... [A spokesperson for Cop28 said: 'The IEA and IPCC 1.5°C scenarios clearly state that fossil fuels will have to play a role in the future energy system, albeit a smaller one. The Cop president was quoting the science, and leading climate experts.']" —United Arab Emirates Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and COP28 President, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, November 21, 2023
"Make memories! – Stop and smell the roses!" —Anonymous
"People sometimes fail to live because they are always preparing to live." —Alan Watts
"Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false naming of real events." —Adrienne Rich
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." —Douglas Adams
Procrastination: "The best way to get something done is to begin." —Unknown
"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." —William Morris
"The most important thing you should know about me is that I am not an expert." —Anon.
"No one spends someone else's money as wisely as he spends his own." —Dick Armey
"Biden says 'Amazon here we come' as he sides with the union movement. ... Biden's comments on Amazon are more than just empty rhetoric ... meaning that when Biden tells Amazon to watch out, 'it can carry weight.'" —Colin Lodewick, April 7, 2022
TRIGGER WARNING: ☭ Communism, Socialism, Leftism
"Fight evil." —Julie R. Hartman
■ "Communism is a failed system, a universally failed system, and I don't see Socialism as a very useful substitute ... " —President Joe Biden, The White House, July 15, 2021
'Communism is pure undiluted evil': "Every time it has been enacted by a state, it resulted in vast torture, deprivation of elementary human rights. and mass murder. Why doesn't anybody going to almost any American college know this? Because the left is still protecting communism." —Dennis Prager
"Hell is other people." —Jean-Paul Sartre
"Why do people commit evil acts, and why do so many support and submit to some of the worst people the world has ever known? Historically, the villains have mastered the art of manipulation — manipulating public opinion, spreading fear, or even promising an impossible utopia — to gain control. This is often achieved through cultivating a climate of groupthink, where dissent is drowned, and people are afraid to speak out or, worse, don't even realize they should." —Connor Boyack
☭ "We can't expect the American people to jump from capitalism to communism but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of socialism until one day they will awaken to find they have communism." —Nikita Khrushchev, quoted by Ronald Reagan, 1961"
"We must prove ... whether this nation, conceived as it is with its freedom of choice, its breadth of opportunity, its range of alternatives, can compete with the single-minded advance of the Communist system. Can a nation organized and governed such as ours endure? That is the real question." —John F. Kennedy, Democratic National Convention Nomination Acceptance Address, 'The New Frontier', July 15, 1960, Los Angeles
'Not top down, but inside out, and up yours!'
'Bidenomics is a disaster': "Mr. Biden doesn't believe in free enterprise." —Larry Kudlow, July 20, 2021
"We are very proud of Bidenomics ... Bidenomics is working." —Kamala Harris, Washington, August 4, 2023
AOC contradicts 'Bidenomics': "Our whole economy is in a special kind of crisis." —Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), September 25, 2023
"The White House claims borrowing $16 trillion over the next decade is fiscally responsible. If you can’t even get close to balancing the budget when unemployment is low, tax revenues are near record highs, and the economy is booming, when can you do it?" —Eric Boehm, ‘Reason’, March 12, 2024
"It is almost laughable to say that this has been a successful [Biden] presidency. We are borrowing almost $4 billion a day!. And they are considering this a success.” —Stephen Moore, January 15, 2024
'Bidenomics, January 2021 to November 2023': "Real disposable income ▼7.5%; home ownership affordability ▼37.3%; credit card debt ▲36.2% monthly savings ▼81.4%. Federal government has added over $9 trillion in debt, a record rate of spending causing inflationary pressures that eat away at the fruit of our labor and threaten our economic stability. US credit rating downgraded." —Heritage Foundation, November 25, 2023
'The Trump Economic Miracle': "Under Trump, the poverty rate reached record lows and incomes hit new highs for blacks and Hispanics. Under Biden, the official poverty rate has risen for minorities and their incomes have shrunk." —Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, July 4, 2024
Corporate tax revenues surge post-Trump tax cuts: "Fiscal year 2017 revenue: $297 billion; Fiscal year 2024 projected revenue: $569 billion, a 92% increase." —Bureau of Economic Analysis
America has succeeded in allowing large numbers of people to become wealthy: "Over a million multi-millionaires trust Schwab." —TV Advertisement, November 28, 2024
"On March 4, 2021, [Vice President] Kamala [Harris] cast the TIE-BREAKING vote on the $1.9 Trillion 'American Rescue Plan'. Democrat economists warned her it would cause inflation. And it did." ... “It caused 20+% inflation. It created a cost-of-living crisis. It crushed hardworking Americans." ... "Kamala [Harris] broke our economy." —Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), October 1, 2024
Democrats 'are shaking in their boots': Republicans " ... have a record to run on ... It’s not promises of the future. It’s the fact that we brought more money to black colleges than any other president. It’s the fact that we cut taxes for a single parent by 70%. It’s good news. We have a record to run on ... " —Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) responds to far-left MSNBC guest's attacks, June 7, 2024
Average monthly payment on new home: "December 2020 $1,746; today $3,322." —'US mortgage payments soar under Biden', CBRE (Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis), December 28, 2023
Thirty–year fixed mortgage rate: "Biden takes office 2.73%; today, 6.67%." —'US mortgage rates soar under Biden', Freddie Mac, December 28, 2023
Explaining socialism: "It's turned away from, 'I would love to have a car like Larry's' to 'I want Larry's car.'" —Dana Perino, quoting her husband
☭ "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." —Karl Marx, 1875
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." —Margaret Thatcher
"Exactly. Eventually, they run out of other people's money and then they come for you." —Elon Musk, Tweet, October 25, 2021 [World's richest person, personally owning ~$300 billion in Tesla stock as Telsa hits $1 trillion in market capitalization (not including his holdings of private company SpaceX stock, so he could become the first trillionaire).]
"Remember that socialism is theft ... enemies of free enterprise." —Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives
"With all due respect to Margaret Thatcher, the final act in socialism isn't running out of other people's money, but bloodshed in the streets." —Charles Payne
Marxists: "Rest in Power #FidelCastro." —'Black Lives Matter' organization, Twitter, November 20, 2016
■ "The Cuban [economic] model doesn't even work for us anymore." —Fidel Castro, Sept. 2010
"We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. —A cynical commentary on communism by 'the workers'
'Progressively Worse': " ... socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that is has been disastrous." —Thomas Sowell
☭ "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at." —Bill Ayers (communist domestic terrorist in whose living room Barack Obama began his political campaign)
["I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." —Bill Ayers to 'The New York Times', 2001]
Save America from Washington Elites: "If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialists." —Friedrich August von Hayek, Nobel Prize in Economics
"Everyone knows that Scandinavian countries are not socialist. ... All of these countries, with no exception, became rich after they made free market reforms in the late 19th century and early 20th century. ... Sweden, for instance, had the 5th highest per capita income in the world until the 1950's, without a welfare state, though it was never a socialist country, but after the 1950's it created a welfare state, and it had dramatic effects on the quality of life of people, so per capita income fell ... to 14th position, income inequality increased, and the work ethic was seriously damaged, and in the early 1990’s Sweden went bankrupt because government was so big, and they had to reform the state. So it is completely absurd to suggest that these were socialist countries." —Axel Kaiser, Director, Friedrich Hayek Chair, Adolfo Ibáñez University, Santiago, Chile
Obama to Russia: "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility." —President Obama, on hot microphone in Seoul, South Korea, March 26, 2012
"I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir [Putin], and I stand with you." —Russian President Medvedev
"There's plenty of money in this world. There's plenty of money in this country. It's just in the wrong hands." —New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio
"Be careful what you wish for, you may receive it." —Anonymous
"It is easy to despise what you cannot get." —Aesop
■ Warning to Obama that Socialism Does Not Work: "In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated." —Vladamir Putin, 2009 [... and Russia did not celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.]
"Vote early and often." —William Hale Thompson, Chicago Mayor from 1915-1923, also attributed to gangster Al Capone, and Mayor Richard J. Daley
'The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse': "You cannot post 'Thou shalt not steal,' 'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' and 'Thou shalt not lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment." —George Carlin
"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." —George Orwell
Journalism: "The first rough draft of history." —Alan Barth, 1943
"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." —Alexis de Tocqueville
"64% of Americans cannot pass a multiple-choice U.S. citizenship test. 60% of Americans do not know who America fought in WWII. 1 in 4 Americans do not know that freedom of speech is guaranteed by the 1st Amendment." —PragerU, 2024
"I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty." —William F. Buckley, Jr.
"Oxford University is older than the Aztec empire." —BuzzFeed
'One Ringy Dingy. Two Ringy Dingy ... ': "If you know that 'Wolley Segap' spells Yellow Pages backwards, you're getting old. You also remember copper land lines, telephone booths, pay phones, rotary dial telephones, long distance, and person-to-person calls." —"Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?"
"Preserving debt affordability at levels consistent with [U.S. Treasury bond] AAA ratings will invariably require adjustments of a magnitude that, in some cases, will test social cohesion." —Moody's Investors Services, Inc., 3/16/2010
"Amdahl's Law implies that higher IQ only improves the parts of the problem which are dependent on IQ in the first place." —shess
Ring, ring: "Congratulations on winning the sweepstakes." —Boo: My landline telephone answering machine mostly talks to criminals [Not a joke, just the actual daily experience, what happened today, on December 1, 2021.]
"What is it that you need?" —How to get a phone caller to get to the point [Otherwise, "Please place me on your do not call list."]
Yes?: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." —Betteridge's law of headlines?
"Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things." —Issac Newton
"It's hard to accept the truth when the lies were exactly what you wanted to hear." —arcticpineapplecorp.
"Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road." —Isak Dinesen, 'Out of Africa'
Syphilis: "It's as common as sin." —Davy Morgan, M.D., our old medical school professor of pathology, who was gassed in World War I
"Sick as hell anemia; Fireballs in the uticus; Screaming holy Jesus; Very close veins; Prostrate exam." —Heard in the ER
"What you do will not matter, but it is very important that you do it." —Attributed to Gandi
"You never know when you'll see or experience something for the last time." —Sean
"As long as there's one person on earth who remembers you, it isn't over." —From Oscar Hammerstein's libretto of the musical 'Carousel'
"When an elder dies, a library is lost." —African proverb
"To be, or not to be, that is the question ... " —William Shakespeare, ‘Hamlet’ soliloquy
"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." —John Donne
"The news of my death is greatly exaggerated." —W. C. Fields
"All I want to do is have some fun until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard." —Sheryl Crow
"If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter." —Thomas Jefferson
"I don't have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They're upstairs in my socks." —Groucho Marx
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." —Mark Twain
"Dance with who brung ya." —Old American rural country saying
"The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable." —U.S. President James A. Garfield
"May you live in interesting times." —Sir Austen Chamberlain quoting a non-existent 'Chinese' curse
"Big things happen fast." —Vesta Mason Clement
"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan." —Von Clausewitz
"Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none." —Benjamin Franklin
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." —Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, the Arthashastra, c. 4th century BC
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." —Napoleon Bonaparte
"I never hold a grudge. As soon as I get even with the son-of-a bitch, I forget it." —W. C. Fields
"I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business." —Edmund Burke
" ... trash talk ... Washington floats on a river of aspersion." —David Brooks
"A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.' " —International Pun Contest: "The ability to make and understand puns is considered to be the highest level of language development."
"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but the highest form of intelligence." —Oscar Wilde
Q. "Where do pencils go on vacation?
A. "Pennsylvania." —Advertisement
After theoretical scientist, Dr. Mental, divorced her husband, Perry, what was she called?
"Don't anthropomorphize digital cameras. They don't like it." —Carlos Echenique
"Re-verify our range to target ... one ping only." —'Hunt for Red October'
"Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end." —Stephen Hawking [also attributed to Woody Allen]
Failure to observe extraterrestrials: "But where is everybody?" —Fermi paradox
"The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is ... 42." —Douglas Adams, 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', 1979
"The present is the only point where time touches eternity." —C.S. Lewis
"Forever is composed of nows." —Emily Dickinson
"Time makes more converts than reason." —Thomas Paine, 'Common Sense'
"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.” —Albert Einstein
"There was a young lady called Bright; Who could travel much faster than light [sic]. She set out one day; In a relative way; And returned on the previous night." —Arthur Buller, Punch, Dec. 19, 1923
Spacetime: "If you're stationary, time passes at the speed of light; slower if you are in motion." —Einstein's Special Relativity, 1905
["Objects in spacetime all move at constant speed c in spacetime." When you go into motion, you are simply rotating the 4D velocity vector of constant length, c, away from the time axis. But rotating a full 90 degrees away from the time axis is impossible, because reaching the speed of light spatially with time stopped would take infinite energy, as mass increases with speed.]
Q. "What moves faster than the speed of light?"
A. "Nothing (except Cosmic Inflation of the Universe during the Big Bang)." —Amazing!
["The Universe grew by a factor of 1016 in less than 10-30 seconds." (Like the graviational collapse forming a colossally supermassive black hole but with time reversed.) But that was space expanding, not something moving through space. ... A difference between the universe and a black hole reversed in time is that the universe is an expansion of space-time, whereas a black hole is a contraction in space-time.]
Remarkable photograph: The physicists who discovered quantum mechanics.
Solvay Conference, Brussels, Belgium, 1927
[Identify all the Nobel Prize winners!]
At a cosmology conference, at the Vatican: "He [The Pope] told us that it was fine to study the universe after the Big Bang, but that we should not inquire into the Big Bang itself, because that was the moment of creation and the work of God." —Stephen Hawking
"You don't take a photograph – you ask to quietly borrow it." —Debbi, Texas
Priorities in upgrading photographic quality: First improve the photographer's skills, camera/lens support (tripod, etc.), lens, and camera body last. —Thom Hogan
"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." — Albert Einstein
"In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind." —Louis Pasteur
"When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad I'm better." —Mae West
"The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live." —George Carlin
"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a moiré." —Jeff
"A man's soul can be judged by the way he treats his dog." —Charles Doran
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man." —Mark Twain
First world problem: "A staggering $490 million [about a half billion dollars] is spent annually in the U.S. on Halloween costumes for pets." —Julie Hartman
"My goal in life is to be as good of a person as my dog already thinks I am." —Paul Dunn
"Where the Amish go on holiday." —Dina Litovsky, photographer (BBC Video)
"[The telephone] has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. This device is inherently of no value to us." —William Orton, President of Western Union, 1876
"That's as crazy as Dick Tracy's two-way wrist-radio. It'll never work." :-)
"Using radio wave interference to give each cellphone its own cell, so everyone gets full bandwidth performance." —Steve Perlman's Artemis pCell technology
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." —Marshal Ferdinand, 1911 (later, Commander of French Military Forces in World War I)
Time to close the Patent Office?: "Everything that can be invented has been invented." —Joke from an 1899 edition of 'Punch' magazine, mistakenly attributed to Charles Holland Duell, Commissioner of the United States Patent Office, at the time
[What Patent Commissioner Duell actually said was: "In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold."]
"There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home." —Ken Olsen, Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation ('DEC'), 1977
Antimissile defense: "With lasers, if you can see it, you can kill it." —Robert Afzal, Lockheed Martin
"Americans saving $758 million per day by working from home ... according to research from freelancing platform Upwork [$90 billion since the onset of COVID-19]." —CNN Newswire, December 1, 2020
Covid haircut: "Here is a ruler, cut off two inches." —Spouse
"I am always learning." —Michelangelo
"Don't go for the geniuses. They never want to sleep." —First lady, Abigail Bartlett, M.D., played by Stockard Channing on "The West Wing"
"Social Conservatives hate big government; they want it just small enough so it can fit into our bedrooms ... " —paraphrasing Josh Lyman on "The West Wing"
"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government." —Thomas Jefferson
'Why big government leads to big problems – too big to fix?': "For the past fifty years, the government has dramatically increased spending on education, healthcare, and welfare programs. But have these billions of dollars really made Americans smarter, healthier, and more prosperous?" —Joshua Rauh, Professor of Finance, Stanford University, and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
"A genuine leader is not a seeker of consensus, but a builder of consensus." —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
" ... we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the people." —President Donald J. Trump, Inaugural Speech, January 20, 2017
"No good deed goes unpunished." —Walter Map, 12th century
"Invest in the innovators of the NASDAQ 100 and become an agent of innovation." —Invesco QQQ (Exchange Traded Fund Advertisement) [In contrast, see: 'Biden's profound misunderstanding of innovation.']
["Bernie Madoff was an American fraudster and financier who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history, worth about $64.8 billion. He was formerly chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange." —James J. O'Brien]
"I am just a poor boy / Though my story's seldom told / I have squandered my resistance / For a pocketful of mumbles / Such are promises / All lies and jest / Still, a man hears what he wants to hear And disregards the rest." —Paul Simon
"Don't put all your eggs in one basket." —Idiom
"Stop undercutting America's innovators." —AEP
GIGO: "Garbage in, garbage out." —Idiom
Proposed IBM System/360 Computer Instructions:
BH — Branch and Hang—Apocryphal opcode mnemonics, c. 1969-70, posted on a wall near a computer at JPL.
IIB — Ignore Inquiry and Branch
TDB — Transfer and Drop Bits
DO — Divide and Overflow
SRZ — Subtract and Reset to Zero
PI — Punch Invalid
SSJ — Select Stacker and Jam
FSRA — Forms Skip and Run Away
RASC — Read and Shred Card
SRSD — Seek Record and Scar Disc
BST — Backspace and Stretch Tape
RIRG — Read Inter-Record Gap
UER — Update and Erase Record
EM — Emulate 407
SPSW — Scramble Program Status Word
EIOC — Execute Invalid Op Code
EROS — Erase Read-Only Storage
PBC — Print and Break Chain
CM — Circulate Memory
MLR — Move and Lose Record
CRN — Convert to Roman Numerals
DMPK — Destroy Memory Protect Key
DC — Divide and Conquer
EPI — Execute Programmer Immediate
LCC — Load and Clear Core
HCF — Halt and Catch Fire
Courtesy of A.T. Young, Astronomy Department, San Diego State University.
"The only constant in life is change." —Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus
'The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do." —Steve Jobs – 1955-2011 R.I.P.
"If you’re going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can’t be erased." —Maya Angelou
"When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life. Have fun. Save a little money. ... That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that people can use. Once you learn that you'll never be the same again." —Steve Jobs
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" —Robert Browning
'Abundance is our future': "Optimists get rich while pessimists get left behind." —Peter H. Diamandis, M.D.
"I'd rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right." —Elon Musk
"Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow." —Seth Godin
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." —Michelangelo
"The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty." —Winston Churchill
"I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity." —John D. Rockefeller
"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't — you're right." —Henry Ford
"I could have been a contender." —Marlon Brando, 'On the Waterfront'
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change." —Leon C. Megginson
"The most dangerous phrase in our language is We've always done it this way." —Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, Ph.D., U.S. Navy
"If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will." —Steve Jobs
"Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive." —Intel Corporation former CEO, Andy Grove
"The biggest risk is not taking any risk ... In a world that's changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks." —Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg
"The only way you survive is by continuously transforming into something else. It’s the idea of continuous transformation that makes you an innovation company." —IBM Corp. Former CEO, Ginni Rometty
"If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you're going to double your inventiveness." —Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos
"The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday's logic." —Peter Drucker
"Companies fail because they continue to do what made them successful in the past." —Clayton M. Christensen
♦ We are probably discarding 99% of the great and useful new ideas: "The patent process, legal profession, and venture capital companies are an insurmountable nightmare for most people and their ideas. It should be much easier to record new ideas and inventions, to not get them stolen, and to start up a technology or other company or venture, or to get existing companies to adopt the new concept. It should not be necessary for the innovator to also have the time, financial resources, wish to discard their current occupation, people skills, social skills, business skills, organizational skills, legal skills, and skills at obtaining patents and fund raising. Most innovators are not suitable to become company founders or leaders, the people around them may not be supportive, or they may, given their current circumstances, just not think it worth the effort, yet their valuable innovations should be preserved and not be discarded, and lost to civilization. We should have trustworthy venture-capital companies that take good ideas and create the teams, organizations, and leaders to bring innovations to market, or introduce the innovation to existing enterprises and facilitate its development and adoption, to everyone's benefit. That the innovator can explain their breakthrough and what is needed for the next step should be all that is necessary for a new technology to bloom. It needs to be much easier than it is now, for innovators to benefit the world and get rewarded." —Judy Davis
"Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine." —Attributed to Alan Turing [Turing machine; Electronic stored program computing machine; Turing test for artificial intelligence; Cracking encryption of German Enigma machine to win WW II.]
Insanely Great – Macintosh 40th birthday: "Steve Jobs introduced the Macintosh computer on January 24, 1984. The most humane computer ever created, it was designed with strict adherence to the original Human Interface Guidelines that today’s Apple under Tim Cook all too commonly disrespects and ignores. The Computer History Museum is celebrating the Mac’s 40th birthday ... with some of the brilliant team members who created this computer revolution, inspired and led by the late Jef Raskin and Steve Jobs, whom we sorely miss." —MacInTouch, January 24, 2024
"[Steve] Jobs was a genius. What he did, particularly when he came back to Apple ... his ability to pick people, his taste in people, even for skill sets that he didn't have himself ... it's truly phenomenal. And there's no chance in hell it happens without him. ... So that period between when he goes back to Apple and when he sadly dies quite young, no one else can do what he did there. I couldn't have done that. I don't know anyone who could have." —Bill Gates
In 2009, "Steve Jobs, the inventive and often strong-willed co-founder of Apple, warned ... [President] Obama that the United States needed to become more business-friendly if it did not want to lose its edge. He talked about how much easier it was to build a factory in China than in the U.S., where there were too many regulations and needless costs. And he complained about the U.S. education system, saying unions protected bad teachers and kept principals from hiring good ones."
"When I resigned [from my faculty appointment at the University of California, San Diego] I got into a hot air balloon in the middle of Revelle Plaza and flew over the Chancellor's residence playing my sopranino recorder so that he would hear the sound. He came out and I yelled down that I was resigning and floated off. I was an art professor at the time and it seemed arty to leave that way." —Jef Raskin, who went on to join Apple Computer, Inc. as its 31st employee, later fathering the Apple Macintosh computer, and at Information Appliance, Inc., the Canon CAT
Apple Macintosh: "What I proposed was a computer that would be easy to use, mix text and graphics, and sell for about $1,000. Steve Jobs said that it was a crazy idea, that it would never sell, and we didn't want anything like it. He tried to shoot the project down." —Jef Raskin
"There's no doubt that Jef [Raskin (1943-2005)] was the creator of the Macintosh project at Apple, and that his articulate vision of an exceptionally easy to use, low cost, high volume appliance computer got the ball rolling, and remained near the heart of the project long after Jef left the company. He also deserves ample credit for putting together the extraordinary initial team that created the computer, recruiting former student Bill Atkinson to Apple and then hiring amazing individuals like Burrell Smith, Bud Tribble, Joanna Hoffman and Brian Howard for the Macintosh team." —Andy Herzfeld
[Apple recognized Jef Raskin as father of the Macintosh by gifting him the millionth Macintosh manufactured with an attached engraved brass plaque.]
"While Mr. [Steve] Jobs' stated positions on management techniques are all quite noble and worthy, in practice he is a dreadful manager. It is an unfortunate case of mouthing the right ideas but not believing in or executing them when it comes time to do something. ... Jobs regularly misses appointments. He does not give credit where due. Jobs also has favorites, who can do no wrong — and others who can do no right. He interrupts and doesn't listen. He doesn't keep promises. He is a prime example of a manager who takes the credit for his optimistic schedules and then blames the workers when deadlines are not met." ... "Steve Jobs would have made an excellent King of France." —Father of the Macintosh, Jef Raskin
Apple's current approach to its customers: "There's a fundamental disconnect between making products that are supposed to be friendly and easy to use while simultaneously forcing customers to dig deeply through hidden and confusing settings and details and changes to figure out what in the world is happening to them." —Ric Ford, 2015
"If I had not studied music, there would be no Macintosh computers today." —Jef Raskin
[Jef's mountaintop home, (past the vinyards and the peacocks on the road) overlooking Silicon Valley, (with ripe chestnuts on his trees), had a fabulous auditorium music room (but sleeping on the floor there in a down sleeping bag with the heat off at 45°F indoors pitch black at night was fairly miserable), and a model airplane landing strip, marked with an 'X' indicating that it was closed, to prevent airplane pilots from mistakenly attempting an emergency landing on the miniature runway. His beautiful but inexpensive formerly owned Rolls Royce (which cost him only $17,000) did impress the venture capitalists, and it was great fun being picked up at the San Jose airport by Jef driving his Rolls!]
"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music." —Albert Einstein
Recommended first exposure to classical music (necessary to listen at least 3 times):
Handel's Messiah (Hallelujah Chorus);
Bethoven's 5th Symphony; and,
Vivaldi's Four Seasons. —Dennis Prager
[Also: Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concertos; Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture; Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite; and, Jerusalem.]
Designed by morons: "Apple has been working up to this level of malpractice for years now, making ill-conceived workflow-destroying changes ... This is scary incompetence taken to putrid new Apple Core Rot levels. ... worrisome decline of OS X quality and integrity. ... The risks in upgrading OS X have become unacceptable due to software testing incompetence, half-assed design practices, arbitrary changes that leave users hung out to dry, and overall juvenile judgment at Apple ... which has infected both OS X and iOS and is metastasizing. Your goose is Cooked if you trust Apple as a professional: it is part of the logical progression from the first warning shot with Apple’s Final Cut fiasco some years back." —Lloyd Chambers, 2015
"Apple hardware usually rocks, the software is usually rocks." —Lloyd Chambers, 2020
False alarm: "The iPhone 14's new Crash Detection feature, which is supposed to alert authorities when it detects you've been in a car accident, has an unexpected side effect: it dials 911 on rollercoasters [also while skiing and during enthusiastic dancing]." —Probably the longest lasting non-stop 'crash' ever [hint for a fix]
"Sony cameras are mostly just hard to hold, because they aren't really designed for human hands in the first place." —Sauseschritt
Law Of Unintended Consequences: "The price of features is trouble." —Anonymous
"The cussedness of inanimate objects." —Idiom
"It Doesn't Suck." —Registered trademark of Bare Bones Software, Inc.
Lets negotiate: "Have your people call my people." —Idiom
"Since each recent major release of OS X further degrades the user interface and offers little new functionality of value to me, I have been induced to delay upgrading a stable version until there is a pressing reason." —Dan Y
Apple Software Quality: "There is a loyal Apple OS user base that sees Apple as a tool maker, not a fashion house. Quality control and an intuitive interface would be a good start." —a MacInTouch reader, 2015
"I've never let schooling interfere with my education." —Grant Allen
"You may be a redneck if ... you have spent more on your pickup truck than on your education." —Jeff Foxworthy
"Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles." —Frank Lloyd Wright
Obama budget with nearly $1.5 trillion in deficit spending fails to get a single Democratic vote ... again: "President Obama's $3.6 trillion [2013] budget ... was unanimously defeated, 414-0." —United States House of Representatives, March 28, 2012 [Similarly unanimously defeated 97-0 in the Democrat-controlled Senate in May 2011.]
"When the heavy hand of government replaces the invisible hand of the market, economic freedom is the inevitable victim." —Mitt Romney
FEMA response to Hurricane Sandy:
"Those who know the least always seem to know it the loudest." —Andy Capp
"If you argue with an idiot, there are two idiots." —Robert Kiyosaki
"We live in a society where if you don't have a job, you are left to die." —Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)
"Never underestimate the stupidity of the general public." —Scott Adams
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." —George Carlin
"Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed." —Albert Einstein
"One thing that humbles me deeply is to see that human genius has its limits while human stupidity does not." —Alexandre Dumas
"One cannot enlighten the unconscious." —TimeRunner
TRIGGER WARNING: Apocalyptic Environmentalism
'The IPCC's perversion of science': "The IPCC's Synthesis Report severely distorts science to advance a corrupt political agenda. ... a common-sense reading reveals that it's total garbage. ... a blatantly biased view of exaggerated negative impacts, with no mention of positives like global greening thanks to CO2 fertilization of the atmosphere or decreasing cold-related deaths. ... Instead of accounting for our climate mastery ability, the IPCC ... ignores our ability to neutralize negative climate impacts, despite the fact that we've driven climate disaster deaths down by 98% over the last century! ... All experts in the field should unequivocally condemn this dangerous piece of garbage and the process that produced it. ... the IPCC severely distorts the present state of climate danger." —Alex Epstein, May 4, 2023
"The long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible." —United Nations IPCC 2007 and 2018 reports
Global warming decreases temperature caused mortality: "In a study of 13 countries, more temperature-attributable deaths were caused by cold
(7.29%) than by heat (0.42%), with extreme cold and hot temperatures being responsible for 0.86% of total mortality." ... "Although heat-related deaths constituted about 1% of global deaths (about 0.5 million deaths annually, increasing from 0.91% to 1.04% in the 2016–2019 period), cold-related deaths affected about nine times as many people." —Sam Gutterman
"The 1800's were a very cold time (Little Ice Age) and the 1°C warming since then has coincided with the greatest improvement in human life in history – in large part due to fossil fuels. ... When people talk about 1.5°C of warming as catastrophic, it's even more absurd than it sounds because it's not 1.5°C warming starting now, it's 1.5°C total since the 1800's. Which means 0.5°C warmer than now – in a world where far more people die of cold than of heat." —Alex Epstein "Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant." —James Madison
An apocalyptic cult: " "When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything." —Attributed to G.K. Chesterton
'Weather zealots': "Did you know that the word 'gullible' has been removed from the dictionary?" —April Fools If you believe that: "There is a bridge that I'd like to sell you." —George C. Parker "I would rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it." —Will Rogers
"You'll never meet a scam artist you don't like!" —Caution
"Stopping payment on a check does not prevent you from being charged twice!" —'Holder in due course'
"It's 'woe' is me, not 'whoa' is me." —Cheez-It Guy
Survey of 10,000 age 16 to 25: [Our kids are being totally misled; no wonder they are depressed.] "75% think the future is frightening [WRONG!]; 56% think that humanity is coming to an end [WRONG!]; 39% hesitant to have children because the future is so bleak. [WRONG!]" —Marian Tupy
"Having children is saving the world." —Elon Musk, September 25, 2023
"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they've been fooled." —@Joreth crediting Mark Twain
Didn't happen: "If current trends are unchanged,’ temperatures would rise 2° to 4° in the first decade of the 2000's." —Attributed to James Hansen, NASA, Climate Scientist
" ... the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels ... " —HRH Prince Charles, July 10, 2019 [Oops! Too late! We're all going to die! (NOT)]
" ... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." —Biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970
"[By 1995] somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct." —Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970
Brrr: "[The world will be] eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." —Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore College, April 19, 1970
"We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." —Biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970
"Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction." —The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970
"By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half ... " —Life magazine, January 1970
"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make." —Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970
" ... air pollution ... is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." —Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970 [Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.]
"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation." —Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970
'Earth Day co-founder killed, composted girlfriend': "Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the 'composted' body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk. ... After his arrest, Einhorn jumped bail and spent decades evading authorities ... He was convicted of murdering [his ex-girlfriend, Helen 'Holly'] Maddux and is currently serving a life sentence." —NBC News, April 21, 2011
"By the year 2000...the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine." —Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970
"A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years." —Greta Thunberg, Twitter, June, 21 2018
"We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years." —Paul Ehrlich, The New York Times, 1969
"Air polution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century." —The Boston Globe, 1970
"Deep concern with the future of the world ... fall within the rank of proesses wich produced the last ice age." —Brown Univerity Geological Sciences Department letter to the White House, 1972
"Spy satellites show new ice age is coming fast." —The Guardian, 1974
"Snow is starting to disappear from our lives ... Children just aren’t going to know what snow is." —Dr. David Viner, University of East Anglia, The Independent, 2000
"University of California physicist John Holdren has said, it is possible that carbon dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020." —Paul Ehrlich, 1986
"Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000." —United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), 1989
"... most of the beaches on the East Coast of the United States ... gone in 25 years." —'New York Times', Sepatember 18, 1995
"The Department of Interior warned that climate change could lead one day to the Statue of Liberty being 'underwater' due to sea level rise and storm surges." —Washington Examiner, October 6, 2016
"Britain will be Siberian in less than 20 years." —The Guardian, 2004
A World without Fossil Fuels: "Climate activist Greta Thunberg deleted a tweet from 2018 warning that humanity would be wiped out 'unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.' Here we are, five years later, and the world didn't end. If the 'experts' were wrong about climate change, what else are they wrong about, and why are we still listening to them?" —Dennis Prager
"I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself." —Oscar Wilde
"The energy industry is the industry that powers every other industry." —Alex Epstein, June 21, 2022
'California': "Bordering always on the Pacific and sometimes on the ridiculous." —George Carlin
'California is a suicide, not a murder': "1) Policies [such as energy 'net zero'] that create scarcity and high prices are by design, and only benefit crony capitalists, 2) public education at all grade levels in California is failing, and 3) punishing crime deters crime ... if criminal penalties were enhanced instead of being scrapped as per the progressive agenda, crime would be deterred." —Edward Ring "August 25, 2022 California announces gasoline car ban; August 31, 2022 California tells citizens not to charge their electric vehicles." —Energy Talking Points
"New poll shows nearly two-thirds of Californians thinking about leaving the state. ... Issues leading to dissatisfaction included economic uncertainty, expensive housing and living costs, public safety, political polarization, and the state's education system ... " —Travis Gillmore, June 23, 2023
'The West Intends Energy Suicide: Will It Succeed?': "The University of California has made the decision to remove all companies that own fossil fuel reserves from the UC Retirement Savings Program (RSP) fund offering. On June 30, 2022, we will sell existing holdings from RSP core funds and will no longer invest in fossil fuel companies. UC Investments defines these holdings as publicly traded companies that own any amount of fossil fuel reserves in thermal coal (not metallurgical coal), oil and gas. UC Investments believes that the fossil fuel industry faces considerable long term financial risk ... " —University of California Retirement Savings Program, 2022
"Let's be clear about what happened: "If you really wanted to destroy the U.S., then ... It would be hard to imagine any planned agenda to destroy America that would have been as injurious as what we already suffered ... " [More] —Victor Davis Hanson, December 1, 2022
'Utopian energy dreams are doing great economic and security damage': "Soaring oil and natural gas prices. Electricity grids on the brink of failure. Energy shortages ... worse to come. ... costly consequences of misguided climate regulation, subsidies and mandates ... the West's utopian dream to punish fossil fuels and sprint to a world driven solely by renewable energy. ... manifest debacle ... short of a technological breakthrough, the world will need an ample supply of carbon fuel for decades to remain prosperous and free. ... climate monomania is endangering living standards ... Historian Arnold Toynbee argued that civilizations die from suicide, not murder. The West's climate self-destruction may prove him right." —Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, July 17, 2022
We are safer from the climate than ever: "For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes (extreme temperature, drought, flood, storms, wildfires) declined 98% – from an average of 247 per year during the 1920's to 2.5 per year during the 2010's. ... The planet is becoming more liveable, not less. ... Any credible prediction of climate catastrophe must ... acknowledge that we are currently safer from climate than humans have ever been [and] the failed history of climate catastrophe predictions." —Alex Epstein
[The reality of the past was disgusting, like the streets of San Francisco now, but indoors too.] The good old days, boy were they terrible: "Louis XIV’s (maybe the richest man on earth at the time) magnificent palace of Versailles, built in 1631, had no proper waste facilities. People relieved themselves where they stood in hallways, curtains, and in the gardens. Once contemporary observer noted, 'Versailles was the receptacle of all of humanity's horrors – the passageways, corridors, and courtyards are filled with urine, and fecal matter.'" —Marian Tupy
Abundance – The Future is Better Than You Think: "Over the last 50 years, the percent of our disposable income spent on food has dropped by more than 50 percent, from 14% to less than 6%." —Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., June 27, 2016
"After all is said and done, a lot more has been said than done." —Aesop
TRIGGER WARNING: Disease, Illness
STAY ALIVE = GET VACCINATED! [Find COVID-19 Vaccines and
Tests near you]
[The industrial revolution which vastly improved living conditions, nutrition, health, safety, longevity, wealth, etc., occured when fossil fuel powered machines could be substituted for human and animal muscle power.]
The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change." —Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) NY, January 21, 2019
"[Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor] the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born." —Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970
Also see, Fixing California: The Electric Age; The Transportation Revolution; Affordable Market Housing; Forest Management; Prosperity Economy.
1. Biden destroyed America's oil/gas industry and made us dependent on OPEC again.
2. Biden begged OPEC to produce more oil.
3. OPEC is doing the opposite—cutting output by 2 million barrels a day.
Total failure. OPEC is laughing at him." —Rep. Steve Scalise (R), October 5, 2022
"Getting Covid is about 50,000 times more dangerous than getting the vaccine." —Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H., Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
[Exclusion of therapeutics: "Biden Administration actively preventing monoclonal antibody treatments. —Florida Surgeon General, Joseph A. Ladapo, M.D., Ph.D.
[However the Omicron variant produces breakthrough infections, with the vaccines continuing to limit serious illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths.]
"1 in 306 Americans has died of Covid (1,100,000+ dead) and 7+ million worldwide."
—Pandemic, after three years [More Covid-19 deaths in 2021 than in 2020.]
["3 1/2 years after the start of the Covid epidemic, if Americans keep dying at the current rate (1,100/week) , there will be more than an additional half-million deaths from Covid-19 over the next decade." —June, 2023]
["More than 6 million children have tested positive for Covid since the beginning of the pandemic." —NBC News, October 14, 2021; But zero deaths? "Since January 2020, fewer than 450 children between the ages of 5 and 18 have died of COVID-19, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The American Academy of Pediatrics says that, in the 45 states with data current as of October 18, childhood COVID-19 cases resulted in deaths in between 0% and .03% of infected children." —Emily Zanotti, Daily Wire, October 20, 2021]
[CDC reports a continuing U.S. Covid-19 death toll of over 1,100 deaths/week in May, 2023.]
"There is no vaccine against stupidity." —Albert Einstein [But ignoring natural immunity following infection also makes no sense.]
[Dying from a, now treatable {PAXLOVID; monoclonal antibodies} and almost fully preventable disease is incredibly dumb. Period. No exceptions.]
• Note, however, that the original Covid-19 vaccines are less effective against the later Omicron variants, especially regarding preventing transmission;
9/2022 Second generation mRNA vaccine boosters that include Omicron antigen are being introduced, but are as yet untested.
'Looking at a winter of severe illness and death': " ... the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated." —Joe Biden, July 22, 2021
[By way of perspective, Tobacco kills more people than Covid-19. (The correct takeaway is to save your own life by getting vaccinated, social distancing, and N95 masking and also stop smoking!)]
Vaccine 'refuseniks': "If you're not vaccinated right now, you're not nearly as smart as I thought you were. ... We have a pandemic because the unvaccinated are sowing enormous confusion." —Joe Biden, July 27, 2021
Breakthrough infections: "This is not an epidemic of the unvaccinated. I'm very disappointed when I hear those statements. Clearly many many people that are getting infected today have been what CDC calls 'fully vaccinated' and some of them have been boosted." —Robert R. Redfield Jr., M.D., Former CDC Director, January 8, 2022
"Death rates are up 40 percent over what they were pre-pandemic [among OneAmerica's group life insurance policy holders, working aged people between the ages of 18 and 64]" —Scott Davison, CEO of insurance company OneAmerica, January 7, 2022
Covid Testing Shortfall: "We can't just give out tests willy-nilly. We're going to have to strategically provide [at home Covid tests] to the elderly and those with comorbid conditions so if they get sick they can test immediately and get on those oral drugs from Merck or Pfizer, or potentially get a monoclonal antibody. That's what we need to do, and there's just a lack of leadership and complete confusion. I'm very disappointed. ... We're in a bad situation. We need to use the tests to keep people out of the hospital and keep them from dying. Not just put them on the internet first come first serve." —Admiral Brett Giroir, Former White House Covid Task Force Member and Testing Czar
False/Utter Nonsense: "We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators." —U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, January 7, 2022 [The correct number is about 3,500, mostly mild cases, almost none on ventilators, including many children hospitalized for other conditions testing positive.]
Biden Mocks Americans' Freedom: "I have the freedom to kill you with my Covid, I mean come on, freedom." —Joe Biden, October 22, 2021
"We have won many battles but unvaccinated America is choosing to let COVID win the war. " —Thanh Neville, M.D., M.S.H.S., ICU Physician at UCLA [But distinguish dying with Covid-19 vs. dying from Covid-19?]
"I should have gotten the damn vaccine" —Michael Freedy, text message to his family from unvaccinated father of 5 children, just before his untimely death from Covid-19 at age 39
Covid-19 Mutation Variants: "By failing to contain the virus through vaccination, wearing masks and avoiding crowds, people are allowing the coronavirus to morph into increasingly dangerous forms." —William A. Haseltine, PhD., former Harvard Medical School Professor
"Biden administration turned down public health expert plan in late October that called for manufacturing and sending over 700 million rapid COVID-19 tests to Americans ... " —Azmi Haroun, 'Business Insider', December 24, 2021
5 day quarantine & return to work masked without testing: "The CDC just United the country ... into not trusting them. Congratulations on getting Americans to agree on something. #CDCsays [trending on twitter, December 29, 2021] #COVID19" —LWArtwork
Covid deaths among fully vaccinated Americans: "Between Oct. 11 and Oct. 18 [2021], the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's cumulative count for breakthrough deaths jumped by 51% from 7,178 to 10,857." —CDC [Thereafter CDC ceased reporting breakthrough deaths, and removed this data from their website.]
"number needed to vaccinate to avoid one COVID-19 death in participants aged younger than 65 years exceeds 100,000; number needed to vaccinate to prevent medically attended symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections ... ranging from 40 to 105" —Caitlyn Stulpin, September 7, 2023
COVID-19 lockdowns caused more deaths instead of reducing them: "Following the implementation of [Covid-19 lockdown] policies, excess mortality increases." —Virat Agrawal, Jonathan H. Cantor, Neeraj Sood, and Christopher M. Whaley, 'The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic and Policy Responses on Excess Mortality', Working Paper 28930, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2021
Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality: " ... Lockdowns have had little to no public health effects ... Lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument." —Jonas Herby, et. al., Johns Hopkins University
"Maintaining relative humidity in the 40%-60% range in indoor spaces could help slow the spread of the coronavirus." —Healthy Buildings program at Harvard
"Increased cases of myocarditis and pericarditis were reported in the United States after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination." —CDC
"The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with higher numbers of prior vaccine doses in our study, was unexpected." —Cleveland Clinic
'How far New York City is from coming back full-time': "Only 8% of office workers are in their jobs five days a week in New York City at this moment. ... almost deserted 10 days before Christmas." —Stuart Varney, December 15, 2021
"4 million Americans sidelined from jobs [2.5% of workforce job loss] due to Long Covid [aka Chronic Fatigue Syndrome]." —The Census Bureau, The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and The Lancet, August 1, 2022
My get up and go, got up and went: "People living with long COVID can experience wide-ranging and debilitating symptoms. They can have trouble working, sleeping, taking care of their families and doing even basic physical activity, among other issues ... Our goal ... is to figure out why and how some people experience these long-lasting symptoms, and to identify treatments that could help." —Dr. Lawrence A. Tabak, NIH Acting director
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: "United States, 2021–2022 ... 1.3% of adults [3.3 million Americans] had myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) ... characterized by activity-limiting fatigue, worsening of symptoms after activity ... ['Symptoms are extreme exhaustion after physical exercise and mental effort, unrefreshing sleep, trouble with memory, weight changes, extreme emotional stress, headaches and muscle pain']" —CDC, December 2023
["The latest data from the CDC revealed that an estimated 6.9% of adults and 1.3% of children in the United States have experienced long COVID, a condition in which COVID-19-related symptoms linger beyond 3 weeks, after the acute phase of the infection has passed."]
"SARS-CoV-2 disrupts mitochondria – suggests a cause for long Covid." —Elizabeth Cooney, August 8, 2023
"The pandemic is over. ... no one's wearing masks." [sic] —Joe Biden, 'CBS 60 Minutes', September 18, 2022 [But "White House won’t relinquish emergency powers."]
■ "None of the predominantly mucosal respiratory viruses [such as SARS-CoV-2, influenza A, and RSV] have ever been effectively controlled by vaccines. ... Durably protective vaccines against non-systemic mucosal respiratory viruses with high mortality rates have thus far eluded vaccine development efforts." —David M. Morens, Jeffery K. Taubenberger, and Anthony S. Fauci, January 11, 2023
"Save your own life by getting screened for colon cancer and breast cancer." —Barbara Taylor
"Experts warn against offers for costly full-body scans ... a terrible idea. ... scans may harm patients since they would be undergoing unnecessary testing. ... Most of the stuff that they identify is clinically unimportant, but will still result in extensive follow-up testing, interventions, biopsies, procedures, and operations to manage things that never would have harmed the patient in the first place." —Matthew Davenport, M.D., Professor of Radiology and Urology at the University of Michigan and American College of Radiology Vice Chair for its Quality and Safety Commission, August 11, 2023
"Experts agree ... I suggest we listen to Nobel Laureates ... :" —Taylor Larimore
"Asked what he’ll do with his share of the prize money, Diamond said he’ll probably put it in a total market index fund." —Douglas Diamond
"Whether you decide to tilt toward value depends on whether you are willing to bear the associated risk ... The market portfolio is always efficient ... For most people, the market portfolio is the most sensible decision." —Eugene Fama
"Investors shouldn't delude themselves about beating the market. They're just not going to do it. It's just not going to happen." —Daniel Kahneman
"A foolish attempt to beat the market and get rich quickly will make one's broker rich and oneself much less so." —Harry Markowitz
"Most people might just as well buy a share of the whole market, which pools all the information, than delude themselves into thinking they know something the market doesn't." —Merton Miller
"The most efficient way to diversify a stock portfolio is with a low-fee index fund. Statistically, a broadly based stock index fund will outperform most actively managed equity portfolios." —Paul Samuelson
"You may think your opinion is superior, but it pays to be humble, investing in the market rather than trying to beat it." —William Sharpe
"A portfolio approximating the market may be the most important portfolio." —Robert Shiller
"Diversification is a safety factor that is essential because we should be humble enough to admit we can be wrong." —Sir John Templeton (1912-2008)
Words of Wisdom: "'Deep down, I remain absolutely confident that the vast majority of American families would be well served by owning their equity holding in a Standard & Poor's 500 Index fund (or a total stock market index fund)." —Jack Bogle
"People who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was." —Joseph Heller
"Reward work, not wealth." —Joe Biden, November 3, 2020
["So, instead of saving and investing, take a pile of rocks and a sledge hammer, and get to work to be rewarded. (This idiocy is an especially damaging version of the long discredited 'labor theory of value' which is the central error in Marxist theory, because value is actually instead peoples' subjective opinions of what things are worth to them. ['Value is in the eye of the beholder!']) Central planning must always fail for lack of required information, precisely because it neglects indivdual choices which express those subjective valuations. Note that phrasing this as 'not ... reward ... wealth' is dishonest, because what Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are actually advocating is confiscating your wealth." —Christopher Anderson]
"No one cares how hard you worked." —Ctein
America is still the land of opportunity: "There is alot of income mobility ... Nearly 70% of Americans will spend at least some time in the top quintile, the highest group of income earners." —James Freeman, Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Assistant Editor
'Chasing away entrepreneurial capital': "There are 'go-to' states and there's 'no-go' states. And 'no-go' states right now are New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, [and] California. You cannot invest in those places. They are no longer investable." —Kevin O'Leary, February 24, 2023
The zero-interest-rate policy of the Fed: " ... a disguised tax ... It takes income from savers and hands it as a subsidy to borrowers. It also facilitates and funds the fiscal deficit policies of central government. Such a well disguised tax is a boon for governments. The cruelest tax of all is this 100 percent tax on interest income." —Sarel Oberholster, November 26, 2009
"Biden has declared war on American small business." —Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), House minority leader, 'NY Post', September 28, 2021
"Don't mention the war." —'Fawlty Towers'
"Sixty percent of the people in the top one percent are successful small business owners." —Steve Moore, May 16, 2022
Looks like it was designed by Beijing and Moscow: "Wall Street didn't build this country, the middle class built the country, and unions built the middle class. ... but it's time for corporate America and the wealthiest 1% of Americans to just begin to pay their fair share, just their fair share .... We're going to reward work, not just wealth. ... It's time to remember that 'we the people' are the government [sic]." —President Joseph Biden, April 28, 2021
Real wages falling in America: "DOWN ▼2.7% under Biden ['Real weekly earnings fall for 26th straight month']; UP ▲7.3% under Trump." —Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 9, 2023
False: "Anybody making less than $400,000 a year will not pay a single penny in taxes. [sic]" —Joe Biden, May 3, 2021
Percent of Americans who will pay more in taxes under the $3.5 trillion[sic: actually $5.1 trillion] Democrat's ['class warfare'] budget 'reconciliation' bill: "37% of Americans making less than $100,000, 35% making between $100,000 and $200,000, and 59% making between $200,000 and $500,000" —Joint Committee on Taxation, September 22, 2021
"You know sometimes the big spenders in Congress talk as if all that money they spend just kind of magically appears on their doorstep, a gift from the Internal Revenue Service. They talk as if spending were all giving a no taking. Well, there is no magic money machine." —President Ronald Reagan, April 24, 1985
Actually a $6 trillion increase in the national debt: "As a matter of fact, my first two years in office I've lowered the deficit by a record $1.7 trillion. Lowered the deficit — the debt.[sic]" —President Biden, remarks at the North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU) Legislative Conference, April 25, 2023
Biden's misleading deficit claim earns him a 'Washington Post' Bottomless Pinocchio: "President Biden's claims that his policies have resulted in a $1.7 trillion reduction in the deficit are misleading at best. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)" —Glenn Kessler, The Fact Checker, 'Washington Post,' April 28, 2023
"United States Federal Deficit (Trump vs. Biden/Harris):
2017 -$665,450,000
2018 -$779,074,000
2019 -$983,588,000
versus [omitting the Covid shutdown years]
2022 -$1,375,920,000
2023 -$1,693,725,000" —U.S. Office of Management and Budget
'Misdirection': "You want to bring down inflation? Let's make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.[sic]" —Joe Biden, May 13, 2022
'Think the rich don't pay their fair share? Think again': "Despite the well-worn political rhetoric about fair share, the tax burden on the wealthy continues to climb ... In 2020, the top 1% of taxpayers earned 22% of all adjusted gross income; their 42.3% share of the income taxes is nearly twice their share of the nation's income. The opposite is true for the bottom 90%. They earned more than half, 50.5%, of the nation's income but paid 26.3% of the taxes — roughly half of their share of the nation's income." —Scott Hodge, CNN Opinion, April 21, 2023
"There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes." —Thomas Paine
Pick a law you want to repeal: "The 16th Amendment. The income tax is immoral and should not exist. Ultimately, government should operate based off of a user fee model where people pay for the services they need, want, or use." —Connor Boyack
"The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead. Raising corp taxes[sic] is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection." —Jeff Bezos, May 13, 2022,
■ "In fact, the administration tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy and only Manchin saved them from themselves. Inflation is a regressive tax that most hurts the least affluent. Misdirection doesn't help the country." —Jeff Bezos, Tweet, Amazon.com founder, owner of 'The Washington Post', and world's second richest person, May 15, 2022
"You're living in a country that is borrowing $63,000 a second." —Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), member of the House Ways and Means Committee, August 7, 2023
Only Government Creates Inflation: "Inflation is made in Washington because only Washington can create money. ... What produces it is too much government spending and too much government creation of money and nothing else." —Milton Friedman
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion." —Ludwig von Mises
"Look, a squirrel! This is the White House's statement about my recent tweets. They understandably want to muddy the topic. They know inflation hurts the neediest the most. But unions aren't causing inflation [sic] and neither are wealthy people. Remember the Administration tried their best to add another $3.5 TRILLION to federal spending. They failed, but if they had succeeded, inflation would be even higher than it is today, and inflation today is at a 40 year high." —Jeff Bezos, May 16, 2022
Pick a law you want to repeal: "The Federal Reserve Act of 1913—the sinister creation of a central bank (the 'Creature from Jekyll Island') in the USA that created a money printing machine so politicians can grow the government, finance wars, and inflate the debt away by creating more money again and again. The Fed causes inflation, which is basically stealing value from your hard-earned money so that politicians can use the newly made money. It weakens society by creating economic instability and enticing families to spend their money now (while it still has value) instead of saving it for the future. Ultimately we should have a free market for money, where there is competition of currencies and the interest rate isn't decided by some secret committee of bankers, but by the market itself—the aggregate transactions of millions of people. For me, the Fed is a root of evil that we need to strike at." —Connor Boyack
"The average rent in New York City is now over $5,000 a month. Rents are rising at the highest rate since the 1980's. ... Home buyers press pause: 7 out of 10 people who were planning to buy a house this year are reconsidering or putting their plans on hold." —Stuart Varney, July 14, 2022
"The rent is too damn high." —Jimmy McMillan, III
Another whopper from the Pinocchio-in-Chief: "I give you my word as a Biden: If you make under $400,000 a year, I'll never raise your taxes one cent. [sic] But, I'm going to make those at the top start to pay their fair share in taxes. It's only fair. [sic]" —Joe Biden, Tweet, September 26, 2021
"YAWN (yet another wearisome narrative)." —Thom Hogan
☭ "Loot the looters." —Vladimir I. Lenin, 'Pravda', No. 18, February 6, 1918, p. 3
"Ephesians ... seized the jewelry of the rich women of Ephesus and used it to retire government debts." —Aristotle
Income Taxes: "The rich [already] pay twice their fair share." —Larry Kudlow, September 27, 2021
"The top 1% of income earners — those who earned more than $540,000 — earned 21% of all U.S. income while paying 40% of all federal income taxes. The top 10% earned 48% of the income and paid 71% of federal income taxes." —Heritage Foundation, March 3, 2021
"Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?" —Thomas Sowell
Federal Income Taxes: "Too High 50% ... Too Low 4%." —Gallup Poll, sample of 961 Adults, April, 2021
[While Democrats propose massive tax increases!]
How do you feel about the amount you pay in taxes?: "Satisfied 27%; Dissatisfied 68%." —Gallup Poll, January 2–22, 2024
Taxes in New York City: "Just saying, 65,000 out of 8 million [less than 1%] pay half [51% of income taxes] so it's not like we don't 'tax the rich.' ... Let's not lie, the rich pay alot of taxes." —Bill Maher, September 17, 2021
Taxes in New Jersey: "If tax rate is your issue... either a family or a business... we're probably not your state." —New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D), October, 2021
Illegal immigration crisis: "Every day, 10,000 illegal immigrants flood into our country, costing taxpayers a staggering $451 BILLION each year." —Heritage Foundation, December 11, 2023
Foreign born vs native born employment (August 2023 – August 2024):
"Born outside U.S.: Employment ▲1.27 million; Born in U.S.: Employment ▼1.2 million." —Bureau of Labor Statistics
"The average rent in New York City is $5,588 ... the city will have to spend more than $12 billion to manage the migrant crisis. Where's that money coming from? [$383 daily per family, $9.8 million per day]" —Stuart Varney, August 10, 2023
The opposite of the truth [BS doesn't stand for 'Border Security']: " ... the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends." —Joe Biden, February 6, 2023
"I’m not gonna vote for a [border] wall under any circumstances." —Kamala Harris, CNN, Des Moines, Iowa, January 28, 2019
"But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?" —Walter E. Williams, 'All It Takes Is Guts: A Minority View'
'87,000 IRS agents': "Why would they do that? ... Because you're not going to be able to contend with the audit. So they're going to crush a lot of people by doing that. ... And I think of all the things that have come out of Washington that have been outrageous, this has got to be pretty close to the top ... And I think it was basically just a middle finger to the American public that this is what they think of you. ... Fortunately, that's one of the reasons we [Florida] don't have an income tax, because if you don't have an income tax, you don't empower revenue agents ... " —Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, August 18, 2022
"Corporations don't pay taxes, they collect them." —Rep. Kevin Brady (R), Texas
■ "Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget – just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. ... In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now." —President John F. Kennedy, address to the Economic Club of New York, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York City, December 14, 1962
"Bobby Kennedy ["RFK"] totally supported his brother JFK's tax cuts ... He wanted to keep the tax cuts ... [Robert F. Kennedy] also ran against the Great Society welfare state, because he said they were going to be too dependent on the government ... " —Larry Kudlow, July 14, 2023
■ Fairness: "Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people can't. But I don’t believe that the federal government should take action to try to make these opportunities exactly equal, particularly when there is a moral factor involved." —President Jimmy Carter, July 13, 1977
"Federal, State, and Local government spending is now 44% of GDP. (Federal spending about 24% of GDP this year.)" —Larry Kudlow, January 25, 2023
✓ 'Fair share'? — You've got to be kidding!: "Progressive income taxes (the second plank of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' 1848 Communist Manifesto) are doubly unfair, and were unconstitutional until the 16th amendment was unwisely passed in 1913 (by mistake) after a dishonest campaign claiming that only the extremely wealthy would be taxed (sound familiar?). By way of comparison, Mcdonald's 'taxes' fairly for hamburgers because the food purchases are voluntary (not theft like government taxes) and the price is equal. The price of a hamburger is the same for everyone, rich or poor, man or woman, and regardless of race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, etc., so people are treated equally. That's fair. Rich people are not overcharged for a hamburger, but they can pay double if they want to buy two hamburgers. Income taxes are more than unfair because, you are forced to buy what you do not want, much of your money is wasted, and the involuntary price is unequal, i.e., discriminatory. Simple 'flat tax' unfairness (proportionally unfair, like property taxes) would overcharge a rich person with ten times as much money 'only' ten times as much for the same hamburger. Progressive income taxes (what we have now) are doubly unfair (disproportionally) because they force a rich person with ten times as much money to pay much more than ten times as much for the same hamburger. What could be more unfair than to be wildly overcharged for what you don't want to buy (and which you may oppose as wrong, harmful, wasteful, destructive, or immoral)? And the overcharge will be stolen from you at gunpoint by government agents if you refuse to pay, and you will be locked up. It actually gets worse, because in America, approximately half of the population pays infinitely more income tax than the other half that pays zero income tax! And just when you thought it couldn't get even worse, you discover that not only does inflation tax away the value of your dollars (by more than 99% as the gold in a $20 gold piece came to cost more than $2,000!), but to add insult to injury, you are forced to pay income tax on the fake supposed 'income' from investments and savings that is not real but is only due to inflation." —Erica Marshall
'Armed IRS agents wanted': "Major Duties ... Carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary." —jobs.irs.gov, August, 2022
"Teach your kids about taxes by eating 30% of their ice cream." —Anonymous
'Sense And Nonsense About Taxes': "The United States has the most progressive tax system in the world. We tax the rich proportionally more than any other country." —John Goodman, October 7, 2024
"No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong." —Walter E. Williams
"You cannot tax your way into prosperity. You can try, but you can’t do it. It’s been tried for hundreds of years and it has failed." —Larry Kudlow
"Inflation is the tax collector for the liberal world order." —Rep. Thomas Massie
🇺🇸 Happy Anniversary: "250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party·" —December 16, 1773
"When I say cut taxes, I don't mean fiddle with the [internal revenue] code. I mean abolish the income tax and the IRS, and replace them with nothing." —Ron Paul
'The Billionaire and the Socialist': "Let's change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else. [Elon Musk was named Time magazine's 'Person of the Year', 2021]" —Senator Elizabeth Warren, December 13, 2021
'Pocahontas': 
"Stop projecting! (Elizabeth Warren is a fraud – Her lies about being Native American disqualify her from presidency, Senate) ... You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend’s angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason ... Please don't call the manager on me, Senator Karen." —Elon Musk
'Most innovative entrepreneur of his generation': "And if you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any [other] American in history [$11 billion] this year ... Don’t spend it all at once ... oh wait you did already." —Elon Musk, also 'Financial Times' Person of the Year, 2021, also richest person on earth
[Paypal, Tesla, OpenAI, SpaceX, Neuralink, Twitter/X]
"Strange as it may seem, the Sixteenth Amendment (which gave the American people the affliction of confiscatory income taxes) was never supposed to have passed. It was introduced by the Republicans as part of a political scheme to trick the Democrats, but it backfired. The Founding Fathers had rejected income taxes ... " —W. Cleon Skousen
'President Biden is sleepwalking our country into a totalitarian nightmare': "He plans to create a centralized digital dollar [CBDC], which would give him [unparalleled surveillance and individualized] unprecedented control over the American people. If we don’t stop him, the federal government could soon track where, when, and how you spend your dollars." —Heritage Foundation, June 13, 2024
BIG BROTHER — Let the IRS surveil your bank account:
"It would ask just for two pieces of information from the banks of these folks. The amounts that come into their bank accounts and what amounts go out of their bank accounts. ... I'm not out to punish anyone, I am a capitalist.[sic] ... All I'm asking is you pay your fair share.[sic*]" —Joe Biden, September 16, 2021
*["In 2018 the top 10% of income earners paid 71% of all federal income tax. The top 1% paid 40%." —Varney & Co., September 17, 2021]
'COME BACK WITH A WARRANT.' 4th amendment doormat
Courtesy of Amazon.com
"The Pretense of Knowledge." —Friedrich Hayek
'The Left’s metamorphosis into a bastardized, racialized Marxism': "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." —Barack Obama, University of Missouri at Columbia, Missouri, October 30, 2008
Finally making sense out of what is happening to America: "Sixty years ago, two Ivy League professors laid out a plan for permanent left-wing rule in America: Flood the country with migrants, bankrupt the government with debt and welfare programs, and spark crisis after crisis until the system collapses. Gee, sound familiar?" —The Charlie Kirk Show: The 'Cloward-Piven Strategy' To Destroy America, March 15, 2024
A disruptive revolutionary strategy intended to force the elimination of poverty has been adopted by radical Democrat leftists to 'fundamentally transform America' by Marxist revolution: "The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American [Columbia University faculty] sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. It is the strategy of forcing political change to societal collapse through orchestrated crises. The ‘Cloward-Piven Strategy’ seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism [aka communist revolution (but with American Marxism substituting race for class, also emanating from Columbia University)] by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, amassing massive unpayable national debt, and other methods such as unfettered immigration, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse." —Wikipedia
"We are going to have to change our conversation; we're going to have to change our traditions, our history; we're going to have to move into a different place as a nation." —Michelle Obama, May 14, 2008
" ... for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country ... " —Michelle Obama, January 12, 2015
" ... we have an incredible opportunity to not just dig out of this [coronavirus] crisis, but to fundamentally transform the country." —Joe Biden, May 4, 2022
'Law School Dean Tells MSNBC It’s Time To Scrap Constitution': "Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California at Berkeley’s law school, called for a new constitution ... " —Harold Hutchison, August 30, 2024
"Here in the United States we are alarmed by the new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence, and not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free and we will stay free. ... Tonight we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country." —President Donald J. Trump, State of the Union Address, February 5, 2019
"I was Barack Obama's campaign cochair on his second term and today I don't recognize this Democratic Party, and so I'm looking forward to an intense fight." —Gloria J. Romero, former California State Senator and the Democratic majority leader of the California State Senate (2005-2008), July 11, 2022
"It is a great advantage to a President, and a source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man. When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions." —President Calvin Coolidge, explaining why he chose not to run for another term as President in 1928
'Stakeholder Capitalism' = Fascism: "The goal of the Great Reset is 'capitalism with Chinese characteristics'—a two-tiered economy, with profitable monopolies and the state on top and socialism for the majority below." —Michael Rectenwald, December, 2021
"Trump will save democracy and America. Mark my words. Kamala Harris would be a disaster." —Elon Musk, August 26, 2024
"The idea of the American dream was something that previous generations could count on. Not as much anymore." —Kamala Harris, 'NBC News Now', October 22, 2024
2024: "The Biden-Harris economy is so bad that seniors have to take two jobs!" →
"We need a real president, not a puppet." —Elon Musk, October 23, 2024
"The appointment of [Kamala Harris‘s father as a Stanford University Professor of Economics] was the culmination of the six-month 'round-the-world' search for the most qualified Marxist professor available." —'Economic Policy Journal', August 12, 2020
'KAMUNISM' by 'Comrade' 'Commie-la Harris':
"Yeah, I am radical. I do believe we need to get radical." —Kamala Harris in her own words ...
['So far left, the most left-wing former Senator, so way beyond the Overton window and undemocratic, that she didn't get even a single primary vote for President in 2020 or 2024, picked a Manchurian candidate running mate, and is being mocked by commentators for her socialist policies.' 'Wealth destruction plans': "Sponsored the $93 trillion Green New Deal bill, raising the corporate tax rate to 28% or more to make the U.S. economy and manufacturing uncompetitive with foreign countries (compared with OECD average at 23%, EEU 21%, and Asia including China 19%); raising the capital gains tax rate to 44.6% making capital investment uneconomic; confiscating wealth with an unworkable 25% wealth tax on unrealized capital gains; a 4% transaction tax on corporate stock buybacks; increasing the estate tax; a massive $5 trillion tax increase by not renewing the expiring Trump era tax cuts; crippling the economy and create shortages with Price Controls, Wage Controls, federal rent controls, and endless regulations and mandates; disrupting energy production; massive inflation causing deficit spending with V.P. Harris personally responsible for the inflation by casting the tie breaking massive spending Senate votes [American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 ($1.9 trillion) and Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 ($1 trillion)]; raising prices via subsidies on electric vehicles, green energy, home purchases, and college tuition; diverting expenditures away from Americans to pay for free education, free medical care, and free housing for illegal immigrants with an open border; eliminating private health insurance with socialized medicine." —John Lee]
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." —Maya Angelou
'Con-mala' Harris flip-flopped Eleven times:
"● Plastic straw ban; ● Border wall; ● Border is secure; ● EV mandate; ● Fracking ban; ● Taxes on tips; ● Government run healthcare; ● Defund police; ● Cash bail; ● Abolish I.C.E.; ● Mandatory gun buyback. " —Axios, Fox News, The hill, New York Post, c. September, 2024
After being in office for almost 4 years: "We just need to move past the failed policies that we have proven don't work." —Kamala Harris, Pittsburgh, PA, September 25, 2024
Q. "Would you have done something differently than Biden during the past four years?" —Co-hosts of ‘The View’
A. "There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have impact." —Vice President Kamala Harris, October 6, 2024
" ... Kamala Harris is a fearless fighter for the people, and she is offering a New Way Forward – a future where our freedoms are protected and everyone has the opportunity to get ahead. As President, she will work to bring down costs, restore reproductive freedom, cut taxes for more than 100 million Americans, help small businesses thrive, make housing more affordable, and so much more ... " —'PA Dems' electioneering text message, October 20, 2024
Democrats are ‘bought and paid for by big tech companies’: "I'll be honest with you – I am a Democrat. But they have f*cked us over the last 40 years and for once ... we’re standing up as a union – probably the only one right now – saying what the f*ck have you done for us? ... " —Teamsters President Sean O'Brien, October 8, 2024
'Kamaflauge': "Kamala Harris gave her convention speech last night. ... All her left-wing positions went unmentioned ... " —Dennis Prager
"25 Lies Kamala Harris Told In Her Debate Against Trump." —Shawn Fleetwood, September 11, 2024
"21 False Claims & Hoaxes by Kamala Harris that ABC’s Debate Moderators Did Not Fact Check." —Alana Mastrangelo, September 10, 2024
"We cannot allow Comrade Kamala Harris and the Communist left to do to America what they did to California." —Donald J. Trump, September 13, 2024
'PRICE GAUGING [sic]' – 'Kamala’s Plan to Make Inflation Worse' and Leave Store Shelves Empty: "Price Controls and Rampant Spending." —Grover Norquist, August 18, 2024
Harris casts the tie-breaking vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act that resulted in 9% inflation and a 20%+ affordability crisis: "The yays are 50, the nays are 50. The Senate being equally divided, the Vice President [myself] votes in the affirmative, and the Bill as amended is passed." —Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate floor, August 7, 2022
"IRS Agents' Union Endorses Kamala Harris ... [for President because she] cast the deciding vote to break ... [the] 'Inflation Reduction Act' ... Senate deadlock ... [that] boosts the IRS budget by $80 billion, enabling the agency to hire an additional 87,000 employees ... " —Craig Bannister, September 19, 2024
"The idea that more police equals more safety ... That’s just wrong.“ ... “We have to have this conversation about redirecting resources." —Kamala Harris
Q. "In the area of reparations for descendants of Africans enslaved — if you’re elected president, would you sign that bill if it came across your desk?" —Al Sharpton
A. “When I am elected president, I will sign that bill." —Kamala Harris, 2020
Communist theft of intellectual property – Nationalization – 'Is this even legal' – Government confiscation of American pharmaceutical companies' drug patents: "I will snatch their patent, so that we [the American government] will take over. Yes we can do that! The question is: 'Do you have the will to do it'!? I have the will to do it." —Kamala Harris, on Confiscating Patents, C-SPAN, November 22, 2019
["Pure evil! – Life or death for millions. Where will the next breakthrough life saving drugs come from after the radical Marxist Democrats destroy the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries? Why would anyone in their right mind invest billions of dollars year after year to invent the next new drugs, if their successes will be stolen?" —Susan Thompson]
Incredible ignorance of self proclaimed 'radical' Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris' views, a month before voting begins:
"SURVEY OF 1,200 REGISTERED DEMOCRATS AND INDEPENDENT BIDEN VOTERS
Harris would consider allowing death row inmates to vote: 14% Aware, 86% UnAware,
Harris supported the elimination of private health insurance: 19% Aware, 81% UnAware,
Harris promoted a fund to bail out violent protesters during 2020 riots: 22% Aware, 78% UnAware,
Harris supported abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement: 23% Aware, 77% UnAware,
Harris was named the most liberal U.S. Senator in 2019: 25% Aware, 75% UnAware,
Harris said it should not be considered a crime to enter the U.S. illegally: 26% Aware, 74% UnAware,
Harris co-sponsored the Green New Deal: 27% Aware, 73% UnAware,
Harris never visited a conflict zone on the border as Border Czar: 28% Aware, 72% UnAware,
Harris supported cutting funding for the police: 29% Aware, 71% UnAware,
Harris supported reparations payments to atone for slavery in the U.S.: 29% Aware, 71% UnAware."
—McLaughlin MRC Poll, August 14, 2024
Rising Crime Rate: "The survey found that violent crime was up 37% from 2020 to 2023, rape is up 42%, robbery is up 63%, and stranger violence is up 61%." —Citing the Justice Department's 'National Crime Victimization Survey,' September 12, 2024
"No self-respecting man buys Tim Walz’s schmalzy Midwest Dad schtick. Mr Stolen Valor is as phony as his boss and even weirder. (Who gets married on the anniversary of a massacre? The Manchurian candidate.)" —Miranda Devine, September 27, 2024
"While we struggle to afford food and fuel, the elite gathered at Davos/[World Economic Forum] to discuss how we should be allowed to live our lives. Their totalitarian dream of a so-called 'Great Reset' where people own nothing and are tracked/monitored with every step, must be condemned by us all." —Tulsi Gabbard, May 31, 2022
"Doomsaying politicians and journalists want you to believe that inequality, poverty, racism, and human misery are on the rise — and that the only path to a better future is to allow bureaucrats and elites in Washington to make top-down decisions about our lives, families, and businesses.
On the contrary, there's never been a better time to be alive. The world is a much healthier, happier, and more prosperous place today than in any other time in history — all thanks to the global spread of free markets, limited government, human freedom, property rights, and the rule of law. Liberty and free enterprise –not government– created the wonders of the modern world that so many people take for granted. ... " —Peter Goettier
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." —Henry David Thoreau
'Declining American Values' ... 1998 → 2023: "Religion 62% → 39%; Patriotism 70% → 38%; Community Involvement 47% → 27%; Having Children 59% → 30%; Money 31% → 43%."
—Wall Street Journal / NORC Poll, March 1-13, 2023
"We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth." —Abraham Lincoln
American Values inscribed on every U.S. coin: "Liberty, In God We Trust, and E Pluribus Unum ['from many one']. We must restore these values ... the 'American Trinity' ... if America is to remain the last best hope of Earth." —Dennis Prager
"Multiculturalism: A Bad Idea ... the opposite of E Pluribus Unum [the desired result should be one diverse people with shared values, not unassimilated violent gangs]." —Konstantin Kisin, September 30, 2024
"Between the omnipotent state and the naked individual looms the first line of resistance against totalitarianism: the economically and politically independent family, protecting the space within which free and independent individuals may receive the necessary years of nurture." —Michael Novak
'Law and Manners' Speech: "Civilization and the pleasantness of everyday life depend on unwritten rules. Early in the 20th century, an English mathematician and government official, Lord Moulton, described complying with these rules as 'obedience to the unenforceable' – the area of personal choice that falls between illegal acts and complete freedom." —Michael Munger
Fascism – The Road We are Traveling: "A highly influential movement among the world's elite to 'reset' the global economy using banks, government programs, and environmental, social, and governance metrics ... would put substantially more economic and social power in the hands of large corporations, international institutions, banks, and government officials ... " —Glenn Beck, 'The Great Reset: Joe Biden and the Rise of Twenty-First-Century Fascism'
What Is the Great Reset?: "Leftist authoritarianism is the political ideology and modus operandi of what I call Big Digital, which is on the leading edge of a nascent world system. Big Digital is the communications, ideological, and technological arm of an emerging corporate-socialist totalitarianism. The Great Reset is the name that has since been given to the project of establishing this world system." —Michael Rectenwald
Biden's plan for an entitlement society – For the first time in history, more than half of all Americans would be on the federal dole: " ... 57% of all married-couple children would receive federal entitlement benefits, and more than 80% of single-parent households would be on the entitlement rolls." —John F. Cogan and Daniel L. Heil, Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2021
'Do they not allow him in the actual White House?': "Biden ridiculed for using fake White House ... bizarre virtual set for televised meetings ... constructed across from the White House in the South Court Auditorium ... and not an actual room like East Room, Cabinet, Oval, Roosevelt, Sit Room, etc." —Kyle Morris
TRIGGER WARNING: Profanity
■ "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f*** things up."
—Former President Barack Obama, c. November 30, 2020
"Something's going down in college football stadiums across the country. ... They are chanting 'F*** Joe Biden'. They can't stop it. It’s like the most popular cheer on Saturday. ... This thing is starting to take off." —Jesse Watters, September 18, 2021 ['#LetsGoBrandon']
■ "Lets go Brandon. I agree." —Joe Biden, December 24, 2021
Outrageous and obscene, but explicitly consensual: " ... And when you're a star they let you do ... anything. ... G*** them by the p****. ... " —Donald Trump, who was elected president after these private remarks were publicized by his opponents
"The Seven Words you can never say on television." —George Carlin
"Invertebrate president [Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden]." —Rep. Mike Garcia (R) California
■ What are we doing?: "This is the United States of America, Dammit! What are we doing?" —Joe Biden, Scranton PA, October 20, 2021
Iowa Poll: "62% of Iowans disapprove of the job Joe Biden is doing as President." —Stephen Gruber-Miller, Des Moines Register, September 21, 2021
'Just Perfect!': "Our country could not be more better served than with this most experienced capable hands than President Biden.[sic]" —House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, December 14, 2021
Colossally bad: "Where one party barely in control in the United States Congress is using that to force-feed something on the American people that they very clearly don't want, that very clearly is going to hurt them in the long term, and that really challenges the fabric of our democracy and our constitution. ... They're selectively challenging and suspending Americans' liberties and freedoms, as Democrats and Democrats alone see fit and as serves their purpose. ... This [$5.1 trillion spending] bill is just the latest iteration ... I hope that the American people are starting to pay attention about just how dishonest the Democratic leadership in the White House, in the Senate, and in the House have been to the American people, and why all Americans should understand. In light of, again, what we have seen in the last eight months, and how things have unraveled and how this country is going to places that none of us ever imagined and most of us still believe are un-American and they don't represent the very best of our values." —John Ratcliffe, former Director of U.S. National Intelligence, September 12, 2021
"This notion that you can send checks out to everybody and things will be fine is just not true. Some people have this absurd view that the economy is like some magic horn of plenty; It just makes stuff. Goods and services? They just come from this magic horn of plenty. So, if somebody has more stuff than somebody else it is just because they took more from this magic horn of plenty. Let me break it to the fools out there: If you don't make stuff, there is no stuff. We've become detached from reality. You can't just legislate money and solve these things. If you don't make the stuff, there is no stuff ... Obviously." —Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, cofounder of PayPal, founder and CEO of SpaceX, and cofounder of Neuralink, 2020
Only Government Creates Inflation: 
"Inflation [See graph (right) of the annual inflation rate of Trump 1.4%(red) vs. Biden 9%(blue)] is made in Washington because only Washington can create money, and any other attribution to other groups of inflation is wrong. Consumers don't produce it. Producers don’t produce it. The trade unions don't produce it. Foreign sheiks don't produce it. Oil imports don't produce it. What produces it is too much government spending and too much government creation of money and nothing else." —Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman (fully explaining inflation in 33 seconds)
$5.1 trillion 'reconciliation' budget bill: " ... Disastrous dangerous policies. We are not going to help them pass this debacle. This is a blueprint to bankrupt our country. We will not stand for it." —Rep. Kat Cammack, (R) Florida, September 23, 2021
U.S. Consumer Price Index recalculated using pre-1983 model: "CPI April 2022 peak, 18% [Not the 9% peak of the post-1988 CPI model that now omits borrowing costs like home mortgages and car loans]; CPI November 2023, 7%." —Larry Summers, Bureau of Economic Analysis, NBER
U.S. credit card fees and interest payments: "2020, $106 billion; 2023, $157 billion." —FDIC
"How bad do conditions have to get in this country before Democrat voters wake up and realize that their policies and the governance of the Democrat leaders is literally destroying this country? I mean, you've got 40-year high inflation, record gas prices, skyrocketing crime, open border of flooded deadly drugs. I just call [it] the list of horribles. It doesn't get much worse than that. And yet Democrats just kind of shrugged it all off." —Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), November 9, 2022
"Has anyone noticed that China's taking over of ports worldwide, and flooding the United States with Fentanyl is the mirror image of the 19th century opium wars?" —Li Ming
["By the end of 2022, Chinese firms had acquired ownership and/or operational stakes in 95 ports in 53 countries, spanning every continent except Antarctica."]
The 'malaise' is back:
Building a Worser America: "The policies are all wrong. I can't remember any President whose first year has gone as badly as Biden and I've never seen a President less likely or less able to change course. As the [NY] Times says, 'Democrats shouldn't panic, they should go into shock': ['The rise of inflation, supply chain shortages, a surge in illegal border crossings, the persistence of Covid, mayhem in Afghanistan and the uproar over critical race theory — all of these developments, individually and collectively, have taken their toll on President Biden and Democratic candidates ... ']." —Stewart Varney, November 18, 2021
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." —Romans 1:22 KJV
'Biden's Errors Worsen Inflation': "He needs to ditch his woke advisers and make growth the overriding priority. Three factors combined during the past two years to create the perfect economic storm. Covid-19 scrambled the U.S. economy's supply lines. The Federal Reserve kept its foot on the accelerator way too long. And the Biden administration did pretty much everything wrong, injecting $1.9 trillion into a supply-constrained economy, sending out stay-at-home checks, letting tenants live rent-free, squeezing oil and gas production, launching an avalanche of growth-killing regulations, lining up behind unions, and pushing yet another deficit-financed budget." —Senator Mitt Romney, 'The Wall Street Journal', April 19, 2022/
"Joe Biden is denying reality when he says prices are going down. ["Prices continue to go down." —Joe Biden] The fact is, prices are up nearly 20% under Biden. Three years ago, Biden unleashed an inflation nightmare on us. Now, families need relief at the grocery store, the gas pump, and the kitchen table. But Joe Biden's ineffective policies are only making our financial hardship worse. Biden's economic record: Weakness. Failure. Dishonesty." —Securing American Greatness, Inc., July 3, 2024
"Things are out of control. ... I wish President Biden would just forget about ‘build back better’, and put things back the way he found them." —Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana), December 12, 2023
'Impact of regulatory rules on households': ['Regulators Gone Wild': "Biden through 2022, and comparable periods."]
"Change in COST per U.S. household: Obama ▲$4,353; Trump ▼$2,636; Biden ▲$5,019."
—Casey Mulligan, University of Chicago Economist, August 15, 2023
Biden's war on American energy (January 2021 → September 2023):
"Barrel of Brent oil, $54.77 → $92.09; Gallon of gasoline, $2.39 → $3.85."
—AAA, Energy Information Administration
Inflation surges under Biden (January 2021 → August 2023):
🔥 "Overall CPI ▲17%; Gasoline ▲62%; Groceries ▲20%; Electricity ▲26%." —Bureau of Labor Statistics
Mortgage rates surge under Biden: "Trump 2.65%; Biden 7.75%." —FOX Business, September 22, 2023
New CNN Poll: "66% Disapprove of Biden on economy; 34% Approve." —CNN, May 4, 2022
"Americans saw 'most severe' pay cut in 25 years under Biden. ... the median decline in real wages is a little more than 8.5%." —Thomas Barrabi and Ariel Zilber, October 6, 2022
Laughably, idiotically, dangerously, wrong, wrong, wrong: "Government spending is reducing the national debt.[sic] It is not inflationary.[sic]" —House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Philadelphia, March 11, 2022
'America’s $35 trillion national debt will be a ‘big burden on the backs of our children’ unless the private sector is given room to grow': "We need growth or risk passing on a huge, unaffordable burden to coming generations." —Blackrock CEO Larry Fink ["A huge national debt is sustainable only if it remains small in comparison to a growing national wealth." —Richard Garcia]
■ 'Putin price hike' inflation dissembling: " ... For a few days he [Joe Biden] was saying ... everything is Putin's price hikes, inflation is Putin's fault. People don't believe that either. They know that they had inflation before this ... You can't blame everything in the economy on Putin." —David Axelrod, former senior Obama advisor, 'Tacks on Tap' Podcast, March 12, 2022
■ "The President needs to stop blaming others and do his job." —Joe Biden, April 20, 2020
"Biden, White House claims U.S. has 'zero inflation' [sic] despite annual rate remaining 8.5%." —Steven Nelson, August 10, 2022
With the consent of the governed?:
"Country on the wrong track?
Total 85% wrong track;
Republicans 92% wrong track;
Democrats 78% wrong track."
—AP-NORC Poll, June 23-27, 2022 [Under the Democrat Biden-Harris adminstration]
"#BareshelvesBiden trending as Americans vent about empty stores amid supply chain crisis." —Jeff Mordock, 'The Washington Times', January 10, 2022 [#BareshelvesBiden hashtag now being censored on Twitter (no search results).]
"Biden's woke economics are completely wrong." —Larry Kudlow, May 4, 2022
Federal Reserve: "There is no understanding of economics going on at the Fed." —Arthur Laffer, May 4, 2022
Inflation/Recession: "The Fed is way behind the curve and there's not going to be a soft landing." —Larry Kudlow, May 4, 2022
'Blue States, You're the Problem:' " ... many blue states are actually doing worse than red states. It is in the [Democrat run] blue states where affordable housing is often hardest to find, there are some of the most acute disparities in education funding and economic inequality is increasing most quickly. ... Blue states is where the housing crisis is located. Blue states are where the disparities in education funding are the most dramatic. Blue states are the places where thousands of homeless people are living on the streets. Blue states are the places where economic inequality is increasing most quickly in this country. ... Affluent liberals tend to be really good at showing up to the marches and talking about how they love equality. They are really good at showing signs on their lawns that 'all are welcome here'. But by their actions what they're actually saying is, 'yes we believe in those ideals, just not in my backyard'." —'The New York Times', Opinion video, November 9, 2021
"What I have made clear to the President [Biden] and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs, when we can't even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity. ... need to means test any new social programs ... America is a great nation but great nations throughout history have been weakened by careless spending and bad policies. ... " —Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), September 29, 2021
"Medicare Advantage plans have financial incentives to discover patient problems early and solve them. Since the Medicare Advantage premiums are fixed, the plan makes money by catching problems early, getting patients the care they need, and keeping patients away from the emergency room and out of the hospital. Unique in our health care system are Medicare Advantage plans that specialize in such chronic conditions as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc. These Medicare Advantage plans actually seek to enroll patients that other plans would like to avoid. ... Numerous studies have found that Medicare Advantage plans are providing higher quality care at a lower cost, when enrollees with comparable characteristics are compared." —John Goodman, February 27, 2024
"Social Security is unsustainable because it is not meeting the first order condition of a Ponzi scheme, namely expanding the pool of suckers." —Walter E. Williams, 'American Contempt for Liberty'
'Socialism' – '$3.5' trillion [actually $5.1 trillion]: "I like the President [Biden] personally, but he was never a moderate and this administration is in no way moderate. Bernie Sanders may have lost the nomination but he won the war over what is the program of the Democrats is going to be. This is socialism for America. It needs to be stopped. No Republicans will support it. Hopefully there will be one or two brave Democrats that will stop this from happening." —Minority Leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, [R-KY], July 15, 2021
'Biden makes false claims in fiery economy remarks': —Maria Bartiromo
"Republicans like to portray me as some kind of big spender. I have spent a lot of money ... Ladies and gentlemen, this year, by the end of the fiscal year, we will have cut the federal deficit by another $1.6 trillion.[sic] In one year. One year. So when they come to you and talk about big spenders, let them know, almost $2 trillion in deficit reduction.[sic] I don't want to hear any more of these lies [sic], about reckless spending. We're changing peoples lives. ... " —Joe Biden, AFL-CIO, Philadelphia, June 15, 2022
"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." —Thomas Jefferson
"Economic growth ... by taking the regulatory state out of the picture, unlocking American energy, putting people back to work ... bringing tax rates down ... shut down the federal government, much of it –that's a good thing– 75% headcount reduction in federal bureaucrats, close government agencies that should not exist, rescind unconstitutional federal regulations that fail the Supreme Court's test in West Virginia v. EPA ... a real shutdown of the administrative state, that fourth branch, that unconstitutional branch that our founding fathers are rolling over in the grave ... our founding fathers will be once again resting in peace, as they deserve, with three branches of government, not four ... " —Vivek Ramaswamy, October 2, 2023
" ... a legislative body elected by the people must not delegate the power of lawmaking to any other entity, for that power was delegated to the legislature by the people." —John Locke, 'Second Treatise on Government'
"Bidenism has to go." —Larry Kudlow
"I would just can this whole [multi-trillion dollar social and climate spending] bill. Don't pass it. That's my recommendation. ... It might be better if the bill does not pass because you've spent so much money, you know, it's like the federal budget deficit is insane." —Elon Musk, Wall Street Journal's CEO Council, December 6, 2021
And "God knows what else! ... " —Joe Biden, August 8, 2022
'Big Government Socialism' = 'Policies to Wreck America'
Democrat 5.1 Trillion dollar 'reconciliation' federal budget bill, attacking free market capitalism:
"SAVE AMERICA! – KILL THE BILL! ... KILL ALL THE BILLS!"
—Larry Kudlow, September 16 - November 19, 2021 ['#LetsGoBrandon']
Big government socialism versus free enterprise capitalism: "It's all about [the Democrats' reckless tax and spending spree] collectivizing America, undermining a free enterprise system. It's really bad." —Senator Pat Toomey, (R-PA), September 28, 2021
President Biden spending laws breakdown: "American Rescue Plan: $1.9 Trillion; Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan: $1.2 Trillion; Chips Act: $280 Billion; Inflation Reduction ['Green New Deal'] Act" $739 Billion; Omnibus Spending Bill: $1.7 Trillion; Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024: $1.2 Trillion; Total: $7 Trillion." —White House, April 2024
"It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." —William F. Buckley, 'National Review' mission statement, 1955
🇺🇸 "We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world." —President Franklin D. Roosevelt, State of the Union, Washington DC, January 6, 1941, >
🇺🇸 " ... We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs protection." —Ronald Reagan
"When people get scared (by an actual threat or a fake one) they demand the government save them. The state is all too willing to step in and (at least pretend to) save us. But in the process, it takes our freedom. In hopes of safety, we surrender our rights. We grow the government bigger to stop the threat (which is often of the government's own making). It's a pattern throughout history." —Connor Boyack
"You cannot comply your way out of tyranny." —From a T-shirt
"How to sell freedom without starting a fight." —Jim Babka
'State socialism': "Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals." —Woodrow Wilson
Democratic Socialism: "Our movement continues and it's getting stronger every day. Many of the ideas we fought for, that just a few years ago were considered 'radical' are now mainstream." —Bernie Sanders speaking at the Biden Democrat presidential nominating convention, August 17, 2020
["As mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Bernie Sanders took his wife, Jane, to the Soviet Union for their honeymoon."]
America's Cultural Revolution: "How the radical left conquered everything." —Christopher F. Rufo
"Xi Jinping aims to rein in Chinese capitalism, hew to Mao's socialist vision." —Lingling Wei, Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2021
'China Returns to Mao': "In the decades following the death of Mao Zedong, China enjoyed relative economic freedom and unprecedented growth. But under Xi Jinping, Mao-like government control has made a comeback, weakening China’s economy. ... socialism is once again failing China. ... Socialism never fails to fail." —Helen Raleigh
Biden's first year of mistakes: "Inflation at 40-year high; Ongoing supply chain crisis; Illegal immigrants flooding the southern border; Drug crisis fueled by open border policies; Murder rate reaches highest level in 25 years; Covid cases soar; Botched Afghanistan withdrawal; Push to change filibuster, failed 'voting rights'[sic] bills." —Maria Bartiromo, January 21, 2022
"Illegitimi non carborundum" —Don't let the bastards grind you down
Is America headed down the wrong path?: "Wrong direction 61%; Right direction 29.9%"
—Real Clear Politics polling data average, August 26, 2021 - September 7, 2021
"71% say US heading in the wrong direction. ... 48% of Democrats, 93% of Republicans and 70% of independents ... say the country is heading in the wrong direction ... "
—NBC News Survey, October 23-26, 2021 ('New York Post', October 31, 2021)
'President Joe Biden's approval rating continued to decline':
"Is America on the Right Track? — YES 18%; NO 79%"
—Monmouth University Poll, May 5-9, 2022
'Is the US heading in the right direction?':
"Wrong track 74%; Right direction 20%." —NBC News Survey, June 16-20, 2023
How do Americans feel about the country's direction?:
"Concerned/Scared 86%; Excited/Optimistic 14%."
—CNN/SSRS Poll, May 12-13, 2022
Is Biden too old to effectively serve another term?: "Democrats 69% YES, 30% NO; Republicans 89% YES; Independents 74% YES; Overall 77% YES, 22% NO." —Associated Press - NORC Poll, 1,165 adults, August 10-14, 2023
Our French Revolution: "We are in a Jacobin Revolution of the sort that in 1793-94 nearly destroyed France. And things are getting scary. The Democratic Party vanished sometime in 2020. It was absorbed by hard-left ideologues. They were bent on radically altering, or hijacking, existing institutions to force radical, equality-of-result agendas that otherwise do not earn majority support. ... " [More] —Victor Davis Hanson, April 6, 2023
"If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem; you voted them in; you have no right to complain." —George Carlin
'Trump is winning on the issues': " ... He's winning on high gas and grocery prices ... high interest rates on mortgages and credit cards. He's winning because Americans are sick of the socialist Green New Deal. They don't want to give up gasoline-powered cars, gas stoves, hot water heaters, dishwashers and wood-burning pizzas ... from day one back in 2015, he warned about illegal immigration, job losses and falling real wages. Trump is winning because his tax cuts generated huge income gains for typical families and lower-income folks. Trump is winning because he took out Soleimani and bankrupted Iran, befriended Israel and changed Middle Eastern politics with the Abraham Accords. ... he rang the warning bell on China and followed through with tough trade policies. ... he he wants parents to run the schools and cops to run the streets. ... In fact, Hispanic voters have basically the same negative view on this as White voters. Meanwhile, African American voters had Trump's record-low unemployment rate and Trump's upward mobility opportunities and they liked it. ... " —Larry Kudlow, November 7, 2023
Implosion of the Biden Presidency?: "Disarray ... Chaos ... Escalating extremism and intolerance on the progressive left ... Slumping poll numbers ... 
The angry left's assault on civility ... Criminalize parents who challenge them ... Presidency is a metastasizing shambles ... A real world case study in the perils of progressive impossiblism ... Open borders ... Fiscal incontinence ... Naïve strategic idealism ... Mask wielding, mandate waving, dissent canceling authoritarian collectivism ... Reign of error ... Everything he touches becomes a cascading waterfall of destruction ... Approval ratings plumbing new depths ... Negative ratings on just about every major issue ... Picturesque incompetence ... Escalating incompetence." —Gerry Baker, 'Wall Street Journal at Large,' October 8, 2021
☭ "The worst the better." —Vladimir Lenin, before the 1917 Russian communist revolution
🇺🇸 'One little factoid': "[In the year] 1800, 90% of the global population lived in dire poverty – less than two dollars a day (by today's dollars, not dollars then) – today, it is less than 10%. That's because of capitalism. That's all you need to know about capitalism." —Steve Forbes, May 4, 2023
☭ 'Colorado Teachers' Union Makes Anti-Capitalist Activism an Official Goal' – 'State teachers' union ... Marxist platform': "The CEA believes that capitalism requires exploitation of children, public schools, land, labor, and/or resources and, therefore, the only way to fully address systemic racism (the school to prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy (gender and LGBTQ disparities), education inequality, and income inequality is to dismantle capitalism and replace it with a new, equitable economic system. [sic]" —Colorado Education Association passes 'Economic Equity' Resolution #3, submitted by Bryan Lindstrom, by formal vote at the 97th Annual Delegate Assembly of the state's largest teachers' union, April, 2023
"There is no systemic racism in America in 2024." —Leo Terrell, Civil Rights Attorney, June 2, 2024
Joe Biden is making Americans poorer [aka the 'Incredible/Great Transition']: "Americans are getting poorer by the day, and they can thank President Biden. ... Americans are worried about inflation and don't think the Biden administration can fix it without plunging our economy into recession. With the president still hawking even more government spending, higher business taxes and increased regulations – all of which will drive prices higher – why would they? Almost from the start, Americans knew that Biden's policies were wrong for the country." —Liz Peek, May 3, 2022
"He's got some 'splaining to do." —Ricky Ricardo
"I wish I hadn't called it [The Inflation Reduction Act]. It has less to do with reducing inflation..." —Joe Biden, Park City, Utah, August 10, 2023
What is the first thing you would do to help bring down the cost to make things more affordable?: "Drill, baby, drill. We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other nation and these stupid fools ended it. We created the greatest economy in history. A big part of that economy was I got you the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country, bigger than the Reagan cuts, bigger than any. And also ... as you know, we got the biggest regulation and regulatory cuts. This place was rocking." —Donald J. Trump, CNN interview, May 10, 2023
59% of likely voters agree: "Democrats inherited an economy that was primed for an historic comeback, and promptly ran it straight into the ground." —Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, late July, 2022
Biden stock market after worst inflation in 40 years, [-1.5%] GDP economy contraction: "Dow down 8 weeks; Longest [stock price] losing streak in 90 years." —Maria Bartiromo, May 20, 2020
Voters believe the [Biden] economy is bad: "69% (was 63% April)." —CBS News Poll, May 18-20, 2022
'Grim expectations': "Jamie Dimon CEO of America's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, says 'economic hurricane' on the way 'brace yourself' and Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, says 'I have a super bad feeling about the economy' wants to cut staff 10%, hiring freezes." —Maria Bartiromo, June 5, 2022
President Biden's lack of approval among young voters: "21% approval; 58% disapproval, Voters age 18–34." —Quinnipiac University Poll, April 7–11, 2022 ["Placeholder President Joe Biden: Young people are far more likely to be heard chanting, 'Let’s go Brandon,' than are their grandparents." —Charlie Kirk, April 19, 2022]
"One of the reasons I am running is because of my age and my experience. With it comes wisdom. We need someone to take office this time around who on day one can stand on the world stage, command the respect of world leaders from Putin to our allies and know exactly what has to be done to get this country back on track." —Joe Biden, CNN, October 15, 2019
Afghanistan debacle/surrender: "I make no apologies for what I did." —Joe Biden, January 20, 2022
"Putin knows that if I am President of the United States, his days of tyranny and trying to intimidate ... are over [sic]. I'm going to stand up to him. He is a bully ... When I'm President, things are going to change." —Joe Biden, CNN, October 23, 2019
Weak and incompetent is extremely dangerous and can lead to war: "My guess is he [Putin] will move in [invade Ukraine], he has to do something ... It's one thing if it's a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do ... " —Joe Biden, January 19, 2022
Incoherent policy: "The President believes that sanctions are intended to deter." —Jake Sullivan, White House Spokesman, February 11, 2022
"The purpose of the sanctions is to try to deter Russia from going to war." —Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CNN 'State of the Union', February 20, 2022
"We want them to have a deterrent effect, clearly, and he [Putin] hasn't invaded [Ukraine] yet." —Pentagon press secretary John Kirby, February 21, 2022
"The purpose of the sanctions has always been and continues to be deterrence." —Vice President Kamala Harris, Munich, Germany, February 20, 2022
"You keep talking about that. Sanctions never deter. [sic]" —Joe Biden, NATO, Brussels, Belgium, March 24, 2022
Putin cannot remain in power [but never mind]: "A dictator, bent on rebuilding an empire, will never erase the people's love for liberty ... Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness. ... For God's sake, this man [Russian President Vladimir Putin] cannot remain in power ... [a] murderous dictator [and a] war criminal ... " —Joe Biden, Warsaw, Poland, March 26, 2022
"The president [Biden] should avoid public speaking ... At least when the topic is important." —James Freeman, Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2022
'Damaging intelligence leaks, bragging':
"The United States has provided intelligence about Russian units that has allowed Ukrainians to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war, according to Senior American officials." —'The New York Times', May 4, 2022
"NBC News reports U.S. intelligence shared with Ukraine help lead to Ukraine sinking of Russian cruiser Moskva, one of the most embarrassing setbacks Russia has faced since the start of the war." —NBC News, May 5, 2022
["Biden is furious about the leaks saying US intelligence helped Ukraine kill Russian generals and sink its warship." —Sophia Ankel, May 10, 2022]
"Carl von Clausewitz noted long ago that a key to success is to pursue a retreating enemy. When an enemy is in retreat, it is possible to inflict the greatest damage on his forces, disorganized and disheartened." —Walter Russell Mead, 'Wall Street Journal;, March 18, 2022
The ship's sinking, all right: "Well, to call President Biden and his administration incompetent is accurate, just too kind. These are their policies. They want to drive up the price of fossil fuel. They want to drive up the price of energy so apparently we use less of it. Again, energy price affects the price of every good and commodity. So again, this is exactly what they want. They want open borders, they want deficit spending, they want to increase debt, they wanted to make Americans more dependent on government, they want increasing energy prices, they want inflation. This is what they want. This is what is so disappointing in the last election. I tried to warn Americans, don't elect people that want to fundamentally transform America. I've said this repeatedly, do you like, much less even love something that you want to fundamentally transform? So no, they have put America on a disastrous path. We need to stand up for our country and yell 'STOP.' And we need to sweep Democrats from power in the November, 2022 election so that we can stop this madness." —Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), October 17, 2021
"Biden is a damp [sock] puppet in human form. ... Biden is treating the American public like fools. ... If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to tyranny." —Elon Musk, Twitter, January 27, 2020
"For reasons unknown, @potus is unable to say the word 'Tesla' ... do the right thing and acknowledge @Tesla for its hard work in making EVs a possibility for Americans." —Elon Musk, Twitter, January 30, 2020
" ... doing one team's bidding before an election, shutting down dissenting voices on a pivotal election, that is the very definition of election interference. ... Twitter was acting like an arm of the Democratic National Committee ... " —Elon Musk, c. December 8, 2022
Spying on Twitter users: "The degree to which various government agencies effectively had full access to to everything that was going on at Twitter, blew my mind. I was not aware of that. [Would that include peoples' direct messages?] Yes." —Elon Musk, April 17, 2023
TRIGGER WARNING: Race
The usual litany: "Afghanistan catastrophe, open border disasters, record inflation, parents domestic terrorists, record crime, and now constitutionally divisive ethnic and racial standard for open Supreme Court seat, which wouldn't even pass muster on a college campus." —Larry Kudlow, January 27, 2020
Supreme Court nomination campaign pledge: "I'll appoint the first Black woman to the Court. It's required that they have representation now — it's long overdue." —Joe Biden, March 2020 Democratic presidential debate, Washington, DC
Biden's Supreme Court pick should: "Consider all possible nominees: 76%; Consider only black women: 23%; ... nonwhite Americans (28%) wish for Biden to consider only Black women for the vacancy ... a majority of Democrats (54%) also prefer that Biden consider all possible nominees." —ABC News/IPSOS poll, January 28, 2022
"A very interesting time in our Country, but do not worry, we will be great again—and we will all do it together ... America will never fail, and we will never allow it to go in the wrong direction. Too many generations of greatness are counting on us. Enjoy your Thanksgiving knowing that a wonderful future lies ahead!" —Donald J. Trump, November 25, 2021
Unnecessarily high prices at the gasoline pump: "Perhaps the greatest limiter of the supply of oil has been anti-oil politicians' constant threats to severely restrict or even ban oil production going forward. E.g., 
when Joe Biden promises 'I will end fossil fuel' and then becomes President, oil investors run for the hills. Is it any wonder that, threatened with punishment, investment in oil and gas has declined dramatically? Between 2011 and 2021, oil and gas exploration investments declined by 50%. Less investment = less supply = higher prices. Anti-oil politicians' restrictions on infrastructure, especially pipelines, have reduced the supply of oil by making it difficult or impossible to transport US oil to international markets. If not for these restrictions we'd be producing more oil, with lower prices for everyone." —Alex Epstein
'Biden has thrown a wet blanket over the entire oil and gas industry': "On his very first day in office, Joe Biden canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline, ended ANWR [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] drilling in Alaska and instituted a phony metric called the 'social cost of carbon,' which pretends to capture upstream production costs and downstream consumer uses, measured over centuries. Think about it! It cannot be done. This whole jihad against fossil fuels throws a wet blanket over the entire oil and gas industry ... not only the best in the world, the most affordable in the world and actually the cleanest in the world. U.S. carbon emissions have been falling for years. Then came the Biden regulatory octopus with tentacles reaching everywhere to stop fossil fuels. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has essentially banned new pipelines. The Interior Department has stopped drilling on federal land. The Energy Department has frozen [Liquified Natural Gas] LNG export projects. The [Environmental Protection Agency] EPA has reinstituted burdensome standards for the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. [National Environmental Policy Act] NEPA [expedited] permitting reform has been thrown out the window. ... Even though the oil companies have leases, the regulatory octopus including FERC, Energy Department, Interior Department, EPA, SEC, and Federal Reserve won't provide the permits, or the pipelines, or the financing for those projects. It's a classic bait and switch. ... " —Larry Kudlow, March 31, 2022
New oil and gas leases issued as of fiscal year 2023: "Biden/Harris administration: 671; Trump administration: 4,975. [almost 7 1/2 times as many]" —Department of the Interior
"This year marks first since 1958 that U.S. held no oil and gas lease sales." —Kevin Killough September 25, 2024
"A new report from the Department of the Interior shows the Biden Administration has leased fewer acres of land for oil and gas drilling on federal lands and waters since former President Harry Truman in the 1940s. The Department of the Interior has given out leases for 126,228 acres through August 20, 2022, according to analysis from the Wall Street Journal. The last president to lease out less than 4.4 million acres at this point in the first term of his presidency was Richard Nixon in 1969-1970." —Daniel Baldwin, September 15, 2022
"America should have been pumping more oil and gas ... America needs to play a real leadership role. America is the swing producer, not Saudi Arabia." —Jamie Dimon, CEO JPMorgan, October 12, 2022
Displaying complete ignorance that prices are set by supply and demand: "Look, those excess profits are going back to the shareholders and their executives instead of going to lower prices to at pump and give relief to the American people." —Joe Biden, October 28, 2022
["Why would anybody be so stupid as to invest their savings to drill for oil or have an oil company if owners didn't receive the profits?" —Charles Garcia]
"The pro-human CO2 policy is to reduce CO2 emissions long-term through liberating innovation, not punishing America." —Alex Epstein
Citing government energy policies: "There hasn't been a refinery built in this country since the 1970's. I personally don't believe there will be a new petroleum refinery ever built in this country again." —Michael Wirth, Chairman and CEO of the Chevron Corporation
"Fifteen states respond to 'woke capitalism', threaten to cut off banks that refuse to service coal, oil industries." —Brittany Bernstein, 'National Review', November 22, 2021
Loony: "There has never been a better time to be short. ... Short people don't just save resources, but as resources become scarce or because of the earth's growing population and global warming, they may also be best suited for a long term survival." —Mara Altman, 'The New York Times', January 1, 2023
Transitioning to cleaner fuels: "I understand that publicly admitting that oil and gas will play an essential and significant role during the transition and beyond will be hard for some. But admitting this reality will be far easier than dealing with energy insecurity, rampant inflation and social unrest as prices become intolerably high." —Amin Nasser, CEO, Saudi Aramco, December 6, 2021
"Every area of the world that has tried using significant amounts of unreliable solar and wind has had major cost and/or reliability problems. In the US, we have had big electricity price increases and huge reliability problems even at 12% solar and wind." —Alex Epstein
"In the very long-term ... solar will be >99% of all power generation." —Elon Musk
"Every 88 minutes, 470 exajoules of solar energy hit our planet — as much as humanity consumes in a year. Another way to say this is that every five days, Earth receives the equivalent of all proven oil, coal, and natural gas reserves on Earth. ... The theoretical upper limit of perovskite's efficiency is roughly 66%, compared to silicon's 32%." —Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., October 4, 2024
'New York’s Near Zombie Apocalypse': "The city came close to an electric grid shutdown last winter. ... according to an alarming recent report by energy regulators ... Con Edison 'could have faced an unprecedented loss of its entire [electrical power grid] system that, in this worst case scenario, would have taken months to restore, even with mutual assistance' while customers 'would have been unable to heat their apartments and houses while the outside temperature was in the single digits, for months', the report says. ... [also] 'natural gas production experienced its greatest decline since 2021’s Winter Storm ... Wellhead freeze-offs ... equipment freezing and weather-related poor road conditions that prevented necessary maintenance were the top causes.' ... " —'Wall Street Journal' Editorial Board, December 1, 2023
"Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country. ... It's a nation that's really only dependent upon oil and gas for their economy." — U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), March 15, 2014
'Green' = Against all actually available forms of energy: "It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy ... " —Amory Lovins, the leader of the modern 'green energy' movement, c. 1970's
President's Standard of Living Reduction Plan: "The President is committed to [banning] plastic and polystyrene food and beverage containers, bottles, straws, cups, cutlery and disposable plastic bags." —Biden White House, July 2024
'The Energy Freedom Platform': "The root of our global energy crisis is Green Energy Fascism—the idea that government should have total control over the energy industry (fascism) used for the 'green' goal of rapidly eliminating fossil fuels and nuclear." —Alex Epstein, August 10, 2022
'Stop letting environmental groups funded by Russia dictate America's energy policy': "It is an open secret that Russians have funded anti-fracking and anti-natural gas propaganda in America for decades. ... Many people don't know that for years, Russia has funded the anti-fracking propaganda that many environmental groups have picked up. ... NRDC, Sierra Club, and Climate Action Network were all found to have received millions of dollars of funding in grants from a shady San Francisco-based company called 'Sea Change' that a money trail linked back to the Russians." —Samantha Dravis, March 1, 2022
'Russian Green propaganda': "Russian attempts to influence U.S. domestic energy markets ... ['Russia funneled Green groups millions of dollars to oppose fracking & cripple American energy.']" —United States House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, March 1, 2018
Russia's support for far-left climate groups: "The radical green groups are in bed with Russia. Russians financed the greeny disinformation campaign against fossil fuel. ... Russia is financing green groups in order to stop fracking in the United States, which would help Russia." —Larry Kudlow, March 18, 2022
'Have the environmentalists been infiltrated by Russia?': "Oh, absolutely. ... Intelligence indicates that Russia has been running a covert influence operation in order to sabotage U.S. energy markets, shape our energy policy, and influence Americans' opinion in favor of green energy and against fossil fuels and fracking. And that is with the intention of weakening our economy and promoting dependence on Russia. ... First they run a disinformation campaign through social media. This is done through the same agency called the 'Internet Research Agency' which is the one that was involved with intervening with 2016 elections and every other election that the Russians traditionally target. And the second way, Russia covertly funds environmental organizations. It is very difficult to track the flow of money because the Russians' intelligence tradecraft is very stealthy. And a lot of the environmentalists are completely unwitting who they are being funded because it is done through multiple money laundering operations, through tax havens, and it's extremely extremely difficult to point. ... The Russians believe that they have been successful and they have been studying our society for more than 10 years. They know what our hot buttons are and have figured out that there is a movement that promotes green energy and their message would resonate in ultimately the bill that is being sponsored by the Democrats in 2020 is playing to Putin's hand. The Democrats have been entrapped by Putin's covert influence operations." —Rebekah Koffler, former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, April 12, 2022
"The same people who hyped Russiagate ignored warnings by the head of NATO & Hillary Clinton that Russia was financing activists to block nat gas production." —Dr. Michael Shellenberger, March 6, 2022
"The West's green energy delusions empowered Putin. While we banned plastic straws ... because of a 9-year-old Canadian child's science homework ... Russia drilled and doubled nuclear energy production. ... Europe produces 3.6 million barrels of oil a day but uses 15 million barrels of oil a day. ... Europe produces 230 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year but uses 560 billion cubic meters. ... Europe uses 950 million tons of coal a year but produces half that. ... by early 2021 ... nearly 47 percent ... of the natural gas consumed by the European Union came from Russia." —Michael Shellenberger, March 3, 2022
Climate change corporate regulatory disclosure framework dissent: "We are not the Securities and Environment Commission – At least not yet." —Securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester M. Peirce, March 21, 2022
Energy Sources 1800-2020. Courtesy Alex Epstein.
"Solar and wind can't come close to replacing fossil fuels. They only provide electricity (20% of energy use) – and they don't even do that well. Because solar and wind are unreliable, they don't replace reliable power plants – they add to the cost of reliable power plants." —Alex Epstein
["Washington Post 'journalist' tries to smear Alex Epstein [in an attempt to discredit his new Fossil Future book. But instead it's a cancel culture fail!]" —Jon Hersey, March 30, 2022]
Why everything they said about solar was wrong: "Solar panels will create 50 times more waste & cost 4 times more than predicted ... [and] both key raw materials and the panels themselves are being made by forced labor in Xinjiang province in China." —Michael Shellenberger, June 21, 2021
■ House Democrats blast Biden's Energy Agenda in Letter to Pelosi and Schumer: "[The] language in the House budget reconciliation package specifically targeting the U.S. oil, natural gas, and refining industries ... have the potential to cost thousands of jobs, stifle economic recovery, increase energy costs for all Americans, strengthen our adversaries, and ultimately impede the transition to a lower carbon future." —Seven Texas House Democrats, September 13, 2021
"Energy is the industry that powers every other industry. The lower cost and more reliable energy is, the lower cost and more reliable everything is. The higher cost and less reliable energy is, the higher cost and less reliable everything is. ... Build Back Better[sic] would not create prosperity via magic 'green jobs' but rather cause mass 'green joblessness'—because 'green jobs' are: 1) unproductive, 2) largely in China, and 3) the cause of job losses in other industries via high energy prices. ... it will destroy far more well-paying US jobs than it creates." —Alex Epstein
"All new for 2023! The Mercedes AA Class. No charging stations." —Batteries not included
"Why is Europe so vulnerable to Russia and what can we learn from it? Europe has extreme dependence on Russian natural gas because Europe has foolishly restricted fossil fuel and nuclear energy production on the false promise that unreliable solar and wind could replace it." —Alex Epstein
"On December 2, 1942, underneath the University of Chicago's Stagg Field football stadium, Chicago Pile 1 (CP-1) was activated, becoming the world's first nuclear reactor. Today, 78 years later, 440 reactors generate over 10 percent of the world's electricity, with another 50 now under construction." —'Generation IV, the future of nuclear power', by David Szondy, April 15, 2022
Pebble bed modular reactors: "Energy Northwest ... and X-Energy Reactor Company (“X-energy”), a leading developer of advanced small modular nuclear (pebble bed fission) reactors and fuel have a joint development agreement for up to 12 Xe-100 advanced small modular reactors in central Washington [State] capable of generating up to a total of 960 megawatts of carbon-free electricity. Energy Northwest expects to bring the first Xe-100 module online by 2030. ... The Xe-100 can operate for 60 years without stopping to refuel. There will 200,000 fuel pebbles constantly being fed through the system." —Brian Wang. August 19, 2023
■ "Hopefully, it is now extremely obvious that Europe should restart dormant nuclear power stations and increase power output of existing ones. This is critical to national and international security." ... "Nuclear is vastly better for global warming than burning hydrocarbons for energy." —Elon Musk, March 6, 2022, (Russia invades Ukraine, day 11)
[There are "120 mothballed nuclear power plants in Europe" —Stuart Varney]
Pebble bed modular nuclear reactor safety: "World's first 'meltdown-proof' nuclear reactor aces safety test." —David Szondy, July 24, 2024
■ Pro-nuclear: "Cheap [nuclear] power in unlimited quantities is one of the chief factors in allowing a large rapidly growing population to preserve wild lands, open space and lands of high scenic value." —William E. Siri, Sierra Club President, 1966
Anti-nuclear (fear mongering): "Our campaign stressing the hazards of nuclear power, will supply a rationale for increasing regulation ... and add to the cost of the industry ... " —Michael, McCluskey, Sierra Club Executive Director, 1974
"Closure of [an existing nuclear reactor] ... will result in dramatic increases in ... greenhouse gas emissions [and] ... carbon dioxide mitigation costs range 'from under $20 per ton to keep existing nuclear running longer, to over $800 per ton for rooftop solar.' —
Robert Bryce, April 29, 2021
[Reiner Kuhr explains that adding subsidized wind and solar forces nuclear reactors to provide power only intermittently which is sufficiently uneconomic (for example, allowing subsidized renewable sources to bid negative power prices) to force closure of nuclear reactors which results in significant increase in carbon emission because CO2 emitting gas fired backup electricity generation must be used instead, and with much higher prices for electricity.]
Approve then disapprove: "There is no way for the U.S. to achieve significant cuts in carbon dioxide emissions without nuclear energy and lots of it. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission continues to act like it doesn't want the nuclear sector to succeed. ... by rescinding ... licenses, the agency showed ... that it poses an uncontrollable risk for investors looking to put money into nuclear energy." —Robert Bryce, February 28, 2022
"Since the [1974] advent of the [United States] Nuclear Regulatory Commission [almost a half century ago] not one new [nuclear reactor electricity generating] plant has been approved from conception to completion." —Alex Epstein, September 14, 2022
"We have allowed ourselves to depend on geostrategic adversaries such as Russia to provide our vital nuclear fuel supply. In fact Russia provides 20% of all of our nuclear enriched fuel services in the United States today." —Edward McGinnis, former Acting Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy, March 7, 2022
["FBI uncovered Russian [Clinton] bribery plot before Obama administration approved controversial nuclear deal with Moscow."]
■ "Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil & gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures." —Elon Musk, March 4, 2022, (Russia invades Ukraine, day 9)
Innovative Clean Energy Production – Burning Iron Fuel: "The plentiful metal could be a carbon-free fuel and store energy long term ... Iron powder is an ideal alternative to carbon fuels ... It has an energy density ... better than gasoline. Burning iron powder produces heat that can be used directly or converted into electricity by a steam turbine, leaving behind iron oxide, or rust. This can later be reduced—that is, the oxygen can be stripped away—back into iron powder [for example, by using renewable green hydrogen gas]." —Prachi Patel, 'IEEE Spectrum', June 22, 2023
Toyota’s Ammonia Engine: "A recent development could potentially turn the tables on the Electric Vehicle revolution — an ammonia-powered engine for passenger vehicles." —The Pareto Investor, October 14, 2023
Supply Chain Woes: "Try to lower expectations." —The Washington Post, October 19, 2021
Botched Biden Afghanistan withdrawal will lead to 'inevitable' future terror attacks against America: " ... a matter of when not if ... The terrorists now have a safe haven in Afghanistan after Biden's botched withdrawal. As we continue to neglect our border security here at home, the reality in Afghanistan jeopardizes our own homeland security. Can we really trust the Biden administration to keep us safe?" —Rep. Carlos Gimenezz, September 9, 2021
" ... I think [Joe Biden] has been wrong on nearly every foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." —Dr. Robert Gates, Former U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2014, reaffired 2019
The Big Guy: "I'm a Capitalist [sic], but guess what, I'm also listed for 36 years the poorest man in the Congress, but I make big money now l'm in [sic] President." —Joe Biden, October 15, 2021
Deflecting blame for inflation caused by excessive money creation and government spending: "In the last few decades, in too many industries, a handful of giant companies dominate the market, in meat processing, railroads, shipping. Too often they use their power to squeeze out smaller competitors, stifle new entrepreneurs, and raise the prices.[sic]" ... "Capitalism without competition isn't capitalism, its exploitation." —Joe Biden, January, 2022
["If this monopoly pricing were true, would a progressive corporate income tax result in more smaller companies that would compete? Alcoa Aluminum was found guilty of being a monopoly becaused they did too good a job and kept lowering aluminum prices too fast for competitors to emerge! Similarly, the original meaning of 'Robber Baron' was a complaint about lowering prices too fast for the competition to keep up." —Mary Brown]
"I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something." —Jackie Mason
Bloomberg Inflation Solution – 'let them eat cake lentils': " ... if you earn less than $300K ... here's how to deal ... public transportation ... sell your car ... When it comes to food ... tasty meat substitutes include ... lentils and beans ... stay away from buying in bulk ... rethink those costly pet medical needs. It may sound harsh, but researchers actually don't recommend pet chemotherapy ... " —New School Economics Professor Teresa Ghilarducci, Bloomberg.com op-ed, March 20, 2022
Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet: "Each day, I recommend a minimum of three servings of beans (legumes), one serving of berries, three servings of other fruits, one serving of cruciferous vegetables, two servings of greens, two servings of other veggies, one serving of flaxseeds, one serving of nuts and seeds, one serving of herbs and spices, three servings of whole grains, five servings of beverages, and one serving of exercise (90 minutes at moderate intensity or 40 minutes of vigorous activity)." —Michael Greger, M.D.
You can't make this stuff up!: "U.S. in Talks to Pay Hundreds of Millions to Families Separated at Border: Government is considering payments of $450,000 per person ... " —Michelle Hackman, Aruna Viswanatha and Sadie Gurman, 'Wall Street Journal', October 28, 2021; "Garbage ... Not true." —Biden; "True." —ACLU
["Under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, all those jailed in the U.S., convicted or not, having families, to be eligible along with their traumatized separated family members ... Thousands to seek arrest to get their $450,000." —David Moore]
"It just goes to show you. It's always something. If it's not one thing, it's another." —Roseanne Roseannadanna
"The reason I say that I think Biden has a chance to be the most progressive president since FDR is that is exactly what Joe Biden said to me." —Socialist Bernie Sanders
"Legal plunder has two roots: One of them is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy." —Frederic Bastiat
"It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody's permission or to obey anybody's orders." —F.A. Hayek
"The duty of a true patriot is to protect his country from its government·" —Thomas Paine
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty·" —Thomas Jefferson
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." —Albert Einstein, Letter to Jost Winteler, 1901
Critical thinking: "Teaching your children to question authority is one of the greatest gifts you can ever give them." —Connor Boyack
"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." —Thomas Jefferson
Seven Articles of the Constitution: "I. Legislative Branch; II. Executive Branch; III. Judicial Branch;
IV. States' Relations; V. Amendment Process; VI. National Supremacy; VII. Ratification." —U.S. Constitution
'Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States'
"Totally Reject Lawlessness, Ignoring the original intent of the Constitution, Violation of the Bill of Rights, Rule by Executive Fiat, a Police State, Authoritarianism, Totalitarianism, an unelected Deep State, Judicial Activism, Unconstitutional Mandates, Undermining separation of powers, Exceeding enumerated powers, Incompetence, Lying, Racism, Censorship, Indoctrination, Wokeism, Cancel Culture, Intimidation, Election Tampering, Big Tech Fascism, Modern Socialism through the Regulatory State, and American Marxism." —Anne Williams
"In the 1960's, the radicals of the West took that idea of cultural revolution from China and they appropriated it and retrofitted it to fit the conditions and the politics of the West." —Christopher Rufo
🇺🇸 "We're blessed with the opportunity to stand for something—for liberty and freedom and fairness. And these are things worth fighting for, worth devoting our lives to·" —Ronald Reagan
"The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both." —Milton Friedman
"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." —Thomas Jefferson
"Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth." —Albert Einstein
"All of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states, the states created the federal government." —President Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, 1981
"Biden is a threat to democracy. He’s an absolute threat to democracy. He’s very dangerous. For a couple of reasons: For one, he’s grossly incompetent, which is the number one reason. But he’s also actually, in his own way, it’s not him, it’s all the people that surround him. You’ve got some very bad people surrounding him at that desk. You’ve got people running the Department of Justice surrounding him. They’re young, they’re smart, and they’re communists and they’re Marxists, fascists and they’re running this country. They’re running it right into the ground." —Donald Trump, September 18, 2024
Kamal Harris’ tie-breaking Senate votes (33, the most in history): "Kamala is quite literally a communist. She wants not merely equal opportunity, but equal outcomes." —Elon Musk, August 7, 2024
"In graduate school, my chosen field of study was Communism. I assumed that left–wing totalitarianism of the sort seen in Russia, China, and North Korea couldn’t happen here. These countries didn’t have the American Constitution, let alone a 200–year history of passionate commitment to liberty. We did. I believed the values embodied in that document, and in that history—above all, freedom of speech and freedom of religion—would endure. Sadly, it turns out that I was overconfident. Left–wing totalitarianism is on its way to America. Our freedoms are in real peril. There is no hyperbole here. The proof? Every pillar of American culture is under Soviet–style attack." —Dennis Prager, PragerU
"You save democracy at the ballot box, not in court." —Stuart Varney, March 5, 2024
"President Biden has done something that no other president in history has done, which is to order media, particularly the social media –Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google – to censor his political opponents. ... And they had to make up a new term called ‘malinformation’, which is information that is accurate, but nonetheless inconvenient to – politically inconvenient. ... If you have a president who can censor his political opponents, he has a license for any kind of atrocity. That is a genuine threat to our democracy." —Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (D), April 2, 2024
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." —George Orwell
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing [AFFH] tyranny: "Joe Biden and Democrats are Set to Abolish the Suburbs." —National Review, June 30, 2020 and
explained
repeatedly
[+Creepy e-mail censorship: Two e-mails containing only links to these National Review magazine articles were bounced (not delivered) as "Message not allowed ... 550 High probability of spam" but when Atlantic was substituted for National Review, an otherwise identical e-mail was delivered.]
We object to Censorship
★ Democrat primary campaign contributions to Republican candidates who will be easier to defeat in the general election = Election Tampering: "Groups linked to Democrats appear to be trying to use pricey television ads and mailers to boost the profiles of ... conservative ... candidates ... running in important Republican primaries this year. The effort seems to be aimed at giving Democrats a leg up in the general election. It's not the first time Democrats have deployed such tactics ... and in the past they've been successful." —Sandra Fish and Jesse Paul, June 8, 2022
Frighteningly Orwellian: "Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages." —Politico
C2PA Specifications – a Devious Way to Automate Suppression of Viewpoints?: "Consider that signed content can provide a 100% automated way to delete/suppress content that any organization or government or computer routing network doesn’t like. Or only allow content emanating from an approved organization. ... this looks like a powerful hammer for control of visual media." —Lloyd Chambers
★ Blocking Communications = Election Tampering: "As election day approached, Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T shut down the Trump campaign's ability to send text messages. And then Google ... prevented the Trump campaign from raising money over Gmail. There is no precedent for that. The Trump reelection campaign lost millions in donations. That was the whole point of it. So the most powerful companies on planet earth ... tried to stop Donald Trump, the sitting President, in his tracks. Is that fair? ... Democracy... ?" —Tucker Carlson, December 14, 2021
"If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." —George Washington
"Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are in capable of knowing their rights, and where learning is confined to a few people, liberty can be neither equal, nor universal." —Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence
Insidious compelled speech: "California's mandatory 'implicit bias' training for medical professionals violates the First Amendment." [More] —Pacific Legal Foundation
"Make Orwell fiction again." —Slogan seen on a hat
Conviction! — The Trump Verdict — What It Means for America: "In 250 years of American history, this has never happened. Donald Trump, the former president and leading candidate for the upcoming election, has been prosecuted and found guilty on 34 felony charges. Regardless of your opinion on Trump, this is reminiscent of banana republics where dictators silence their opponents. Now, it has come to America. What does this mean for our republic and the future of democracy?" [More] —Dennis Prager, June 6, 2024
Political prosecutions: "Show me the man, I'll find you the crime." —Attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs, U.S.S.R.
★ 'Fabricated Crime' + Attempt to 'Jail Political Opponent' with a 'Corrupt' Bogus 'Show Trial' + 'Guilty' Verdict = Election Interference 'Lawfare' = Un-American 'Weaponization of Justice' = 'Banana Republic':
"The ‘Sentencing’ for not having done anything wrong will be, conveniently for the Fascists, 4 days before the Republican National Convention. A Radical Left Soros backed D.A., who ran on a platform of 'I will get Trump,' reporting to an 'Acting' Local Judge, appointed by the Democrats, who is HIGHLY CONFLICTED, will make a decision which will determine the future of our Nation? The United States Supreme Court MUST DECIDE!" ... "Nobody even knew what the crime was until the Judge gave his Unconstitutional Instructions ... A total Hoax! A case like this has NEVER been brought before. A Country in peril. Election Interference!!!" ... "MY CIVIL RIGHTS HAVE BEEN TOTALLY VIOLATED WITH THIS HIGHLY POLITICAL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL, AND ELECTION INTERFERING WITCH HUNT. OUR FAILING NATION IS BEING LAUGHED AT ALL OVER THE WORLD!" —Donald J. Trump, Truth Social, June 2024
What if we [the left] are the ones who are actually on the wrong side of history?: "What if we are the bad guys here?" —David Brooks. 'New York Times', August 2, 2023 [Title of the 'remarkably frank' newspaper article was quickly censored and replaced online.]
'Weaponization of the Federal Government': "Chilling revelations on the rise of feds' Orwellian speech police. ... [" ... the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history ... blatantly ignored the First Amendment rights to free speech."] injunction from a federal judge barring contact between Team Biden and social-media companies, cited evidence of a 'massive effort' by the White House and federal agencies to 'suppress speech based on its content.' ... collude with Big Tech companies to impose a mass public-private surveillance and censorship regime on the American people. ... This amounts to a conspiracy to violate the First Amendment, resulting in rampant election interference, the stifling of crucial debates ... " —Benjamin Weingarten, July 4, 2023
"Emails subpoenaed by [Judiciary Committee] reveal that the Biden White House pressured Amazon to censor books that expressed views the White House did not approve of." —Rep. Jim Jordan, February 6, 2024
★ Misrepresenting to voters what policies you will follow if elected = Election Tampering: "I beat the socialist, that's how I got ... the nomination. Do I look like a socialist? Look at my career, my whole career. I am not a socialist[sic]." —Joe Biden, September 21, 2020
"If you look at Joe Biden's goals and Bernie Sanders' goals, they're not that different ... " —Former President Barack Obama, 'The New Yorker', August 31, 2020
"What amazes me is you look at the President [Joe Biden], Vice-President [Kamala Harris], you look at the Speaker of the House [Nancy Pelosi], and you look at the Democrat Leader in the Senate [Chuck Schumer]. Between the four, they don't have one hour of private sector experience." —Mark Levin, October 17, 2021
"In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are." —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
"I think overall we can likely push Vice-President Biden in a more progressive direction across policy issues." —Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, September 16, 2020
" ... I'm going to be good to go down as one of the most progressive presidents in American history." —Joe Biden, Presidential Candidate, October, 2020
"We [Biden and Harris] are simpatico on our philosophy of government and simpatico on how we want to attack ... approach these issues ... and like I told Barack [Obama], if I reach something where there's a fundamental disagreement we have based on a moral principle, I'll develop some disease and say I have to resign." —Joe Biden, at joint press conference with Kamala Harris, December 5, 2020
Huh?: "President [Kamala] Harris." —According to Joe Biden, December 29, 2020, March 18, 2021, December 17, 2021
"I've seen more of Dr. Fauci than I have my wife, we kid each other ... Look, who's president? Fauci! But all kidding aside, I sincerely mean it." — Joe Biden, December 2, 2021
"The world has become too absurd to be satirized." —Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1911
" ... the middle class has been buried the last four years." —Vice President, Joe Biden, 2012, after almost four years in office
■ "How many times is Biden gonna say something stupid?" —Barack Obama, August 19, 2019
"We ended cancer as we know it [sic]." —Joe Biden, July 25, 2023
"In America anyone can become President. That's the problem." —George Carlin
Biden gets confused ... can't remember: "'My mind is going blank now.'" —Matthew Miller, September 2, 2021
Sadly confused, Biden thinks he is V.P. Harris: "By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first black woman, to serve with a black president." —Joe Biden, radio interview, ‘The Source with Andrea Lawful-Sanders,’ WURD Radio, July 4, 2024
"Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn’t know what to do about it if I did." —George Carlin
'Press Corps Blasts "Continued Efforts To Limit Access To The President" By The White House': " ... belief by many reporters that the administration seeks to limit access to the president [Biden] by anyone ... who might ask a question the administration doesn't want to answer. ... continued efforts to limit access to the president cannot be defended." —White House Press Corps, June 30, 2022 Protest Letter
Cause for concern: "One big problem is that Mr. Biden often doesn't seem to know what he's talking about." —Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, October 22, 2021
How Blue/Democrat can you get?:
"I’m gonna be the President of everyone, whether you live in a Red State or a Green State." —Joe Biden, Leesburg, Virginia, February 8, 2024
"But here’s the deal, there’s a lot of young women who are being raped by their – by their in-laws, by their – by their spouses, brothers and sisters, by – just – it’s just – it’s just ridiculous ... And they can do nothing about it. And they tried to arrest them when they cross state lines." —Joe Biden, Presidential Debate, June 27, 2024
Cognitive decline, diminished faculties, President unfit to stand trial for decades of espionage, stealing top secret documents, and keeping them unsecured, including while Senator and Vice President: " ... a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man, with a poor memory." [sic - What is 'well meaning' about decades of espionage?] —Robert Hur, Special Counsel confidential report on Joe Biden‘s espionage and mental fitness, U.S. Department of Justice, February 8, 2024
Obama says he wants a third term through a 'front man': " ... if I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front man or front woman and they have an earpiece in and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff and then I could sort of deliver the lines and somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony, I would be fine with that." —Barack Obama, 'The late show with Stephen Colbert', November 30, 2020, YouTube
"Obama Third Term – Interview with Stephen Colbert (Biden Earpiece?)"
"Biden is just a front man. Obama, April 21[, 2022]: social media censors 'don't go far enough,' so the government needs to step in to do the job. Six days later, Homeland Security rolls out the 'Ministry of Truth' (aka Disinformation Governance Board)." —Tulsi Gabbard, May 1, 2022
'Obama The Puppetmaster': "[Barack Obama is] the master puppeteer behind Joe Biden." —Monica Crowley, Former U.S. Assistant Treasury Secretary
"The true threat to democracy is the left telling us that we can't question our government." —Kari Lake, Arizona gubinatorial candidate (R), c. November 5, 2022
'Could It Happen Here? It Is Happening Here': "My field of study in graduate school was communism. As a fellow at the Russian Institute of Columbia's School of International Affairs ... one of seven students in the entire university to major in what was known at the time as 'Communist Affairs.' ... In my wildest dreams, I never imagined what I was studying would ever apply to the United States of America, the freest country in world history. ... This is what happens in dictatorships. ... All these years later, I see that I was wrong. Communism — or if you will, left-wing fascism and totalitarianism — is coming ... " [More] —Dennis Prager, April 4, 2023
"It's hard to tell what Biden's doing ... The real president is whoever controls the teleprompter ... " [More] —Elon Musk, May 16, 2022
Biden 'News Conference': "I'll take your questions, and as usual, folks, they gave me a list of the people I'm going to call on." —Joe ‘I’m going to get in trouble with my staff’ Biden, June 16, 2021
'Bizarre confession': "But, I'm not supposed to be having this press conference." —Joe Biden, December 21, 2021
"Staffer dressed as Easter Bunny stops Biden from answering reporter's question." —Steven Nelson, April 18, 2022
'AN ADMINISTRATION DEFINED BY CRISIS' — April border apprehensions:
"2020: 17,106; 2021: 178,795; 2022: 234,088" —CBP, FY Southwest Land Border Encounters
"The border is secure. [sic]" —Kamala Harris, September 11, 2022
■ "No great country can say that it is secure without being able to control its borders." —Senator Joe Biden, C-SPAN, August 8, 2007
"The simple truth is that we've lost control of our own borders and no nation can do that and survive." —President Ronald Reagan, June 14, 1984
Border crisis – FBI terrorism warning: "Imminent danger ... We write to express our concern about a ... Threat that may be one of the most pernicious ever to menace the U.S. ... an invasion of the homeland ... Alarming and perilous ... " —Former FBI executives, letter to Congress, January 17, 2024
'FBI quietly updates 2022 crime rates': "Original violent crime rate DOWN 2.1%; Revised violent crime rate UP 4.5%." —FBI, October 16, 2024
President Biden approval rating among hispanic voters: "26% Approval; 60% Disapproval." —Quinnipiac University Poll, May 12-16, 2022
"Let me tell you something, folks, people are driving across that border with tons, tons—hear me, tons—of everything from byproducts from methamphetamine to cocaine to heroin, and it's all coming up through corrupt Mexico." —Senator Joe Biden, 2006
"Biden’s strategy is very simple: 1. Get as many illegals in the country as possible; 2. Legalize them to create a permanent majority – a one-party state. That is why they are encouraging so much illegal immigration. Simple, yet effective." —Elon Musk, February 2, 2024
★ U.S. Government sponsored illegal immigration = Election Tampering: "An unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop. Folks like me who are Caucasian of European descent for the first time in 2017 will be an absolute minority in the United States of America. Absolute minority. Fewer than 50% of the people in America, from then and on will be white European stock. That's not a bad thing. That's a source of our strength." — Vice President Joe Biden, C-SPAN, February, 2015
"A coalition of 26 state attorneys general is calling on the new U.S. Speaker of the House to pass a Florida-sponsored bill that would grant states the authority to enforce federal immigration law when the federal government refuses to do so." —The Center Square Staff, November 13, 2023
"Donald Trump's 'Remain in Mexico' policy is dangerous, inhumane, and goes against everything we stand for as a nation of immigrants[sic]. My administration will end it." —Joe Biden, Tweet, March 11, 2020
'Does anyone still believe a word she says?': "We have a secure border ... " —'Border Czar' V.P. Kamala Harris, 'Meet the Press', September 11, 2022
Drug deaths 2021 – 1 in 3,000 Americans died: "The border is just completely open. The worst thing about the border in my opinion right now is 1 out of every 3,000 people that were alive one year ago in the United States died of a drug overdose. And a lot of those are kids that took one pill, had fentanyl made in China." —Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), February 1, 2022 ["Provisional data show more than 107,000 deaths, two thirds from synthetic opioids like fentanyl."]
"Chinese fentanyl is payback for [the] Opium Wars." —downvoteforwhy
"We are literally going to change the course of this country for generations to come." —Joe Biden, Presidential Candidate, October, 2020
"You'll shoot your eye out." —Santa Claus
Torn from a page in a George Orwell novel: "When this nightmare is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would erase Trump's lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe." —Robert Reich, October 17, 2020
Killing the goose that laid the golden egg: "I promise you this, as a first order of business, Joe Biden and I are about to work to get rid of that tax cut." —Kamala Harris, Vice-Presidential candidate, McAllen Texas, October 30, 2020
"Obama calls Kamala Harris 'the best looking attorney general.'" —Rachel Weiner, 'The Washington Post', April 4, 2013
The impact of Trump's tax cuts: "2019 Real Wealth increased 28.4% among bottom income earners, but only 8.9% among the top 1%." —U.S. Department of Labor ["IRS data proves Trump tax cuts benefited middle, working-class Americans most: The fact is, Republicans' 2017 tax reform law did exactly what was promised: It lowered taxes for all income groups, provided the greatest benefits for middle-income households, and spurred economic growth that helped reduce poverty and improve prosperity." —Justin Haskins, 'MSN', December 4, 2021]
"A rising tide lifts all the boats." —President John F. Kennedy, quoting the New England Council (Chamber of Commerce)
♦ Need for equity tax free exchanges: "IRC §1031 and §1035 exchanges allow continued investments without imposing capital gains taxes in insurance and real estate, so it makes no sense that there isn’t a similar provision that at least would allow diversification by exchanging an individual stock for a stock index fund. Who does it help to increase investors’ uncompensated concentrated risk by using tax law to prevent diversification?" —Mary Jenkins
Promoting American prosperity: "Make Trump's tax cuts permanent. Abolish the death tax. Keep the step-up in basis for the capital gains rule." —Senator Thomas H. Tuberville's Vision for America, (R) Alabama, September 1, 2021
Making America Prosper: "Arthur Laffer, Larry Kudlow, Steve Forbes, Kevin Hassett, and Steve Moore." —Supply-Side Economists ["Supply side tax cuts have been dramatically successful all four times they were tried, under Presidents Harding, Kennedy, Reagan, and Trump." —Charles Garcia]
'The business of America is business.' [But what he actually said was:] "After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world." —President Calvin Coolidge, January 17, 1925
"Liberty, freedom, capitalism, our constitution, limited government, low taxes, less bureaucracy, school choice, law and order, free market solutions for healthcare, secure borders, energy independence, constitutionalists on the bench, free and fair trade, and peace through strength." —Sean Hannity, November 3, 2021
■ "The last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession, because that would just suck up, take more demand out of the economy, and put businesses in a further hole." —Barack Obama, August 5, 2009
"We're flirting with fire. ... It's something you've got, 'I want it, and if I don't get it, it's not fair.' ... Ultimately, you can't have the anarchy of 'what's yours is mine, because it's not fair.' It's not going to float with America." —Scott Shellady
■ "We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country." —Senator Barack Obama, 2005
"We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." —Thomas Jefferson, 1820
"Free speech means the right to shout 'theater' in a crowded fire." —Abbie Hoffman
"No official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." —Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle, quoting the U.S. Supreme Court on compelled speech
"It's a lot easier to post a photo than it is to write 1,000 words ... " —Matt Parvin
Famous last words: "Well, having already too many lenses in this [focal length] range I doubt that I will buy another one." —Thomas Bernardy
"Don't cry over spilled milk." —Why not? Just had to spend $3,061.28 for a replacement Macbook Pro after 7 year old spilled a glass of milk onto the old laptop computer, killing it.
(Lesson learned: No more computers allowed at the dinner table. Also, backup your computer!)
"The closest thing to eternal life is a government program." —Ronald Reagan
"69.420% of statistics are false." —Elon Musk, Twitter, April 9, 2022
"Reducing the max allowed tweets/day to a number below what a speed typist on meth could do was helpful." —Elon Musk, November 24, 2022
"The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention." —Thich Nhat Hanh
"You have a dollar. I have a dollar. We swap. Now you have my dollar. We are no better off. – You have an idea. I have an idea. We swap. Now you have two ideas. And I have two ideas. – That's the difference. ... " —'System' Magazine
"No need for a wallet in your funeral pants." —jabberwockOG
Two-hundred year Testamentary Charitable Trust of Benjamin Franklin (Investment Compounding from 1790 to 1990): "If this plan is executed, and succeeds as projected without interruption for one hundred years ... of most general utility to the inhabitants ... whatever may make living in the town more convenient to its people, and render it more agreeable ... The remaining ... I would have continued to be let out on interest ... for another hundred years, as I hope it will have been found that the institution has had a good effect on the conduct of youth, and been of service to many worthy characters and useful citizens. At the end of this second term, if no unfortunate accident has prevented the operation, the sum will be four millions and sixty one thousand pounds sterling ... " —Last Will and Testament of Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
["After corresponding with a French mathematician named Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour, Franklin was intrigued by the concept of compound interest. The mathematician challenged Ben to leave small amounts of money–which would collect interest over time–to later be spent on utopian charity projects. Franklin agreed, and he bequeathed £1,000 (one thousand British Pounds) each to his native city of Boston, Massachusetts and his adopted city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania." £2,000 (=US$4,400) became $7,000,000. No wonder Benjamin Franklin's picture is on the United States' one hundred dollar bill!"]
How much money is enough?: "Just a little bit more." —John D. Rockefeller
"At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, 'Yes, but I have something he will never have — ENOUGH.'"
"'Climate emergency' declaration = endless dictatorship."
'Climate emergency': "Biden believes the green new deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face." —Biden website, September 30, 2020
More Pinocchios: "No, I don't support the green new deal." —Joe Biden, first presidential debate, September 30, 2020
"I wrote the bill on the environment. Why would I not be for it?" —(Whispering) Joe Biden, June 24, 2021
"California court rules bees are now fish." —Rich Calder, June 4, 2022
'Totally fake green energy transition': "From 2004 to 2022 ... worldwide spending on wind and solar power totaled some $4.1 trillion. [while] global hydrocarbon usage — oil, gas, coal — increased by 110 exajoules, vs. 32 for wind and solar." —New York Post editorial board, July 15, 2023
"Going green is putting more and more people in the red." —Ashley Webster, February 22, 2024
"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." —Abraham Lincoln
"You can fool some of the people some of the time -- and that's enough to make a decent living." —W. C. Fields
'President Biden versus U.S. oil': "One million fewer barrels of oil per day since Biden's inauguration; Interior Department raising drilling fees; Reversing plan to drill in Alaska National Petroleum Reserve; Banning new drilling leases on Federal lands; [Cancelled Keystone XL pipeline; Worsened environmental regulation permitting;] Gas prices reach seven year high." —Biden's energy crisis, February 8, 2022
President's economic illiteracy for failing to grasp that prices are determined by supply and demand: "Biden's 'price gouging' warning to oil and gas companies is 'mind-boggling'. [Biden threatened,] 'I want to add one more warning ... to the oil and gas industry executives. Do not — let me repeat, do not — use [Hurricane Ian] as an excuse to raise gasoline prices or gouge the American people.'" —Breck Dumas, September 28, 2022
["Biden's oil windfall tax would backfire, warns Larry Summers. 'If you reduce profitability, you will discourage investment which is the opposite of our objective.'" —CNN, November 1, 2022]
UberLIE: "It's simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production.[sic] That is simply not true." —Joe Biden, March 8, 2022
['STOP THREATENING THE EXISTENCE OF THE OIL INDUSTRY': "Politicians around the world, including US Democrats, have opposed and threatened the oil and gas industry's existence. Now they are denying responsibility for the consequences: higher prices. [Using dishonest 'business decisions', 'windfall profits', '9000 leases', and 'price gouging' denial tactics.]" —Alex Epstein]
Poll: "70% Disapprove of Biden's handling of gas prices, inflation." —ABC News/Ipsos Poll, March 13, 2022
Biden's plan to tackle the 'climate crisis': "Since taking office, President Joe Biden has waged a war on fossil fuels [ending U.S. energy independence, and endangering the U.S. economy and competitiveness, rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement], nixing the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ditching an oil drilling project in Alaska [ANWR with more oil than Saudi Arabia], introducing sweeping fossil fuel regulations and making it harder for utilities to gain approval for natural gas projects [also preventing the United States from supplying Europe's energy needs from liquified natural gas terminals]. His administration has also defied multiple court-ordered deadlines to restart the federal oil and gas leasing program after Biden attempted to halt the program altogether." —Thomas Catenacci, March 9, 2022
"Biden's attacks on the industry have created an uncertain environment that prevents investment." —CEO of a large, publicly traded energy company, June 2022
Biden's not-so-clean energy transition: " ... requires mining industries and infrastructure that don't exist [and that leftist 'environmentalists' won't allow]. ... demand for key minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel and rare-earth metals would explode, rising by 4,200%, 2,500%, 1,900% and 700%, respectively, by 2040. The world doesn't have the capacity to meet such demand." —Mark P. Mills, The Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2021
"Electric cars will not save the climate. It is completely wrong." —Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency
"Electric vehicles are much heavier than gas vehicles, and that's posing safety problems." —Nathan Bomey
Electric vehicle battery fantasy: "Put very simply, all the world's cell production combined represents well under 10% of what we will need in 10 years ... Meaning, 90% to 95% of the supply chain does not exist." —RJ Scaringe, Rivian Automotive Inc. CEO
'25 States blast Biden's EV push': " ... the proposed rule, if left uncorrected, would damage our economy, tax our electrical grids ... and threaten our national security." —Letter to U.S. EPA from Attorneys General of 25 States, July 5, 2023
Building electric cars: "Prototypes are easy, volume production is hard, positive cash flow is excruciating." —Tesla CEO Elon Musk
Electric vehicle revolt: "More than 3,000 auto dealers sign letter opposing Biden's electric vehicle mandate ... Electric vehicles 'are stacking up on our lots' ... they are not selling nearly as fast as they are arriving at our dealerships -- even with deep price cuts, manufacturer incentives, and generous government incentives. 'Mr. President, it is time to tap the brakes on the unrealistic government electric vehicle mandate.'" —Thomas Catenacci, November 28, 2023
'Glacial EV charger rollout': "Pete Buttigieg has a very tough time trying to explain why ’only 7 or 8 [electric vehicle] charging stations have been produced with the $7.5 billion investment the taxpayer made back in 2021.’" —RNC Research, May 26, 2024 [Wow! That's a billion dollars per charger!]
‘FCC Commissioner Just Scorched Harris for Her $42 Billion Fail’: "In 2021, Vice President Harris agreed to lead a $42 billion effort to expand internet access to millions. It's been 1,039 days, and no one has been connected – no homes, no businesses, not even a shovel in the ground." —FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, September 19, 2024
"Denmark’s Ørsted has cancelled two big offshore [New Jersey] windfarm projects in the US at a cost of more than £3bn [$3.8 billion loss] amid surging costs [and supply chain issues] facing the global wind industry." —Jillian Ambrose, November 1, 2023
Transmission of electricity: "The U.S. loses more than 67.8% of the electricity that is generated in our Grid." —3DFS
["How about instead achieving high energy efficiency from buildings having on-site natural gas (piston or turbine) engines, or fuel cells that continuously power an electrical generator and then use the exhaust heat to heat hot water and the building in winter, and to power an air conditioner (remember mid-twentieth century natural gas powered refrigerators) in summer (or that powers a heat exchanger that both heats and cools, as needed)." ... "Or, how about distributing server computers (especially those with energy intensive AI chips) into buildings that could use that otherwise wasted heat." —John Gаrrideb]
Disparate Impact Thinking Is Destroying Our Civilization: "Everything is connected. There would be no climate crisis if it wasn't for racism. ... 'nice tits' ... [sic]" —Jane Fonda, at age 85, January, 2023
Promoting energy poverty: "It's all about reducing our standard of living so that we can contribute to the future climate of the planet." —Chuck Devore, Texas Public Policy Foundation, May 11, 2021
["America's strangled natural gas potential: Urgently needed American natural gas pipeline infrastructure should be built to supply clean energy, reduce carbon emissons, enrich America with both profit from producing energy and reduced energy cost, boost American employment and manufacturing, fuel unserved U.S. states like Massachusetts that are forced to import expensive energy from our adversaries, and allow U.S. coastal liquified natural gas terminals to supply the world, allowing halving the carbon dioxide emission when replacing coal." —Lisa Martin]
"A Promise Kept: Biden's War on American Energy. [Eighty-one steps taken to cripple our energy production.]" —Rep. Jim Banks, March 25, 2022
Some sacrifice—from you: "We must face the fact that the energy shortage is permanent [sic]. ... keeping our thermostats ... at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night ... " —President Jimmy Carter, February 2, 1977
["What an utterly false and ridiculous claim, especially from a nuclear engineer! Even matter is condensed energy. Making energy increasingly available is the principal driver of achieving prosperity and abudanace." —Patricia Harris]
Green Religion: "Nature is my religion. The earth is my temple. ... Many people who have rejected more traditional religion have embraced environmentalism as their big picture belief system." —Bill Muehlenberg
"Environmentalism is a watermelon: Green on the outside and red on the inside." —David Horowitz
Oil producer calls out Biden's energy policies: "President Biden, on day one of his presidency, made it his top priority to cripple American oil and gas producers. His administration has axed progress on the Keystone pipeline, shut down leases on federal lands, encouraged Woke Wall Street to divest from fossil fuels, and installed absolute antagonists in leadership at Federal Reserve, the EPA and Department of Interior." —Cecil O'Brate, CEO of American Warrior Oil
Biden canceling the Keystone XL and other pipeline construction was a serious mistake: "It's kind of insane that we have trucks and trains carrying oil all over this country, rather than constructing pipelines, which would permit accessing more resources and cheaper, safer transmission." —Larry Summers (D), former Obama administration Economist, Boston Globe's Globe Summit, September 15, 2022
"In January [2021], President Biden imposed a ban on new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters. ... it is a ban with no end in sight. ... A ban on oil and gas leasing will simply push production to other countries. That means fewer jobs for Americans, less revenue for states and the federal government, and more imports of foreign oil. ... " —Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), May 13, 2021 Build back worse: "Joe Biden killed the Keystone Pipeline. Russia wins. The Colonial Pipeline gets shut down by Russia. Russia wins. And now the response from the Biden administration is to give Vladimir Putin a brand new shiny natural gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2. Russia wins, again. So it's really hard to believe how we've gone from from America first to America worst in such a short period of time." —John Ratcliffe, Former U.S. Director of National Intelligence, May 23, 2021
Destroying America's Energy Independence and Standard of Living: "Your pursuit of this radical agenda continues to hurt Americans not insulated from the consequences of your decisions by geography or privilege. Maybe one day, down the road, we will obtain the Utopian energy profile you desire. But in the meantime, Americans want practical, effective leadership – not visionary deprivations." —Letter to President Biden from 19 State Attorneys General urging him to reinstate the Keystone XL Pipeline, May 17, 2021 The ultimate debunking of 'solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels': "China, despite being the world's leading producer of solar and wind (using coal) is also using record amounts of oil. Why not just use solar and wind instead, since 'solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels'? Because solar and wind aren't cheaper. In most cases, they're totally incapable of replacing oil. To deny the blatant reality that solar and wind cannot outcompete fossil fuels, opponents of fossil fuels use a fallacy ... 'false generalization'—taking something that's true in rare circumstances and falsely generalizing it to all circumstances." —Alex Epstein's 'Energy Talking Points', July 19, 2023
"Apple, like nearly every other international technology company in the world, gets the overwhelming percentage of its power from cheap, plentiful, reliable coal and almost none from expensive, unreliable solar and wind." —Forbes
"Right now about 40% of American electricity is 'clean,' with unreliable solar and wind providing about 10%. Given nuclear and hydro realities in the US, 80% 'clean' by 2030 means quintupling unreliable solar and wind, from 10% to 50% of our electricity in 8 years! ... The facts are clear. 10% solar and wind in the US is disastrous. 50+% solar and wind would guarantee unaffordable prices, constant shortages, frequent blackouts – and the fleeing of industry and jobs, once companies realize the US no longer has low-cost, reliable electricity." —Alex Epstein's 'Energy Talking Points', October 22, 2021
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." —Richard Feynman
The Hard Math of Minerals: "Today's plans to decarbonize global energy systems, which center on a massive expansion in the use of solar, wind, and battery technologies, need to better account for the high environmental and economic costs of materials and minerals. ... It has long been known that building solar and wind systems requires roughly a tenfold increase in the total tonnage of common materials—concrete, steel, glass, etc.—to deliver the same quantity of energy compared to building a natural gas or other hydrocarbon-fueled power plant." —Mark P. Mills, January 27, 2022
"Solar and wind, the politically favored alternative, has intractable problems with cost (unreliability requires costly infrastructure duplication), versatility (only electricity) and scalability (depends on 'reliables' and diluteness causes unprecedented material needs)." —Alex Epstein, October 20, 2022
"The Keystone Cops in the White House are deliberately destroying our fossil fuel industry and America's energy independence, which is raising prices, creating an insidious inflation tax hurting the poor the most, making energy unreliable, making America less competitive, empowering America's adversaries, forcing the U.S. to import energy from Russia and the unstable middle east, while endangering the national security of the United States and its allies, and actually increasing carbon dioxide emissions." —Christopher Davis
How 'the experts' can be totally wrong about energy: "The whole climate crisis is not only fake news, it's fake science." —Patrick Moore, Ph.D., Greenpeace Founder "Over the last two decades ... as a direct result of the shale gas boom, the United States has given the model for how the world can make the most meaningful contribution to addressing climate change: replacing coal consumption with natural gas. This is the most impactful green initiative available in the world, and it is not even close. It is proven, it is actionable using today's technologies, and it can be executed rapidly." —Toby Z. Rice, President and CEO, EQT Corporation. the largest producer of natural gas in the United States
"New York bans fracking and pipelines [and natural gas hookups for new construction]." —Mary Miller
"It's not about climate change, it's about wealth redistribution." —Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, Former U.S. Secretary of Energy
'No trend in tornado frequency or intensity': "In the United States ... The mean annual number of tornadoes has remained relatively constant." —UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2021
How far photographs can travel aloft in tornadoes: "A photograph ... was returned to its owner after being found 219 miles away from where it started out." —Study by John Knox, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Georgia
Climate Science Is Not Settled – We are very far from the knowledge needed to make good climate policy: "Yes, it's true that the globe is warming, and that humans are exerting a warming influence upon it. But beyond that ... 'I do not think The Science says what you think it says.' For example, both research literature and government reports state clearly that heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years. ... Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century. Greenland's ice sheet isn't shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago. The global area burned by wildfires has declined more than 25 percent since 2003 and 2020 was one of the lowest years on record." —New York University (formerly CalTech) Professor of Physics and Engineering Steven Koonin, Ph.D., former Undersecretary for Science, U.S. Department of Energy, in the Obama Administration Council of Economic Advisers and the Office of Management and Budget assess that the economic effects of climate change will be trivial: "White House Tells the Truth About Climate Change ...[The White House Report says that] While the estimates differ, each shows an economic impact of less than a few percentage points for a few degrees of warming. The consensus, apart from two counterbalancing outliers, is that today’s warming of 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit has reduced GDP by less than 0.5%. That is trivial, considering real GDP has grown by more than 800% since 1950. If warming reaches 4.5 degrees—about what the United Nation’s climate panel projects for 2100 under plausible scenarios for future global emissions—the consensus reduction amounts to less than 2%. In other words, if the average annual GDP growth rate is 1.5% for the next 80 years, the economy would grow 232%. A 2% climate-change effect would reduce that growth to 225%. As physicists say, that's a difference 'in the noise.'" —Steven E. Koonin, Ph.D., Professor at New York University, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, 'Wall Street Journal', July 6, 2023
'It’s True: Kamala Harris was an original backer of the Green New Deal': "Kamala Harris co-sponsored, fully sponsored the [$93 trillion] Green New Deal." —Byron Donalds, July 7, 2024
■ 'Green Bad Deal': " ... we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. ... One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy ... " —Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes Working Group III, and lead author of the IPCC's 2007 Report
■ "The Green New Deal ... wasn't originally a climate thing at all "All warfare is based on deception." —Sun Tsu "It's not easy being green." —Kermit the Frog
Green New Deal FAQ: "Economic security to all who are ... unwilling to work. Upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency. Build out highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary." —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) NY, February 5, 2019 "We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean." —Joe Biden, June 16, 2023
Q. "Does your bank have a policy against funding new oil and gas products?" —Rep. Rashida Tlaib, House Financial Services Committee hearing, September 21, 2022
"We'll be back. ... Don't damage the economy too much for us to fix it later." —Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, June 13, 2021
"Is Maoism Coming to America?" [Click for Video] —James Lindsay, September 16, 2024
Go Woke, Go, Broke! "Market value lost: Ben & Jerry's/Unilever –$2.5 billion; Target –$13.9 billion; Bud Light –$19.88 billion; Disney –$18.1 billion." —July, 2023
"Miss Universe parent company goes bankrupt after allowing men to compete as women." —PragerU
"Being Woke means never knowing what you'll be required to believe tomorrow." —Professor Robert P. George
'Progressively Worse': “We have to stay woke. Everybody needs to be woke." —Kamala Harris, May 2017
Biden's woke economics are perverse: "These things [destructive tax hikes, wild fiscal stimulus, out of control entitlement spending] are all disincentives. ... The Biden group doesn't understand the incentive model of growth. That's too bad because economics is all about real world incentives. ... He's got the story exactly in reverse. ... This is the worst most perverse economic recitation I can ever recall. ... His so called 'government investment' which is a progressive euphemism for government spending, indeed, massive social spending, without work requirements or employment incentives, somehow that's going to boost the economy. But it won't. ... This kind of financing does in fact risk permanently higher inflation. ... " —Larry Kudlow ["The Sage of the West Wing" according to Rick Perry], July 19-20, 2021
Biden economy forces half of 'Gen Z' Americans to live with their parents: "At least 54 percent of adults aged 18–25 are opting to live with their parents out of economic necessity, according to a new study of over 300 participants conducted by The Harris Poll." —Tyler Durden, November, 2022
Profound and grave damage [from Biden's incompetent and shameful withdrawl from Afghanistan]: "The commander-in-chief is demonstrating cowardice to our allies and to our adversaries. ... We've got to survive the next three years with a President [Biden] and a national security team that has ... literally created one disaster or tragedy or humiliation or debacle after another." —John Ratcliffe, former Director of U.S. National Intelligence, September 12, 2021
'Dereliction of Duty': "In just a few short months, the Biden administration has created a disaster on the southern border of the United States. It did so by methodically—and by all indications intentionally—undoing every meaningful border security measure that had been in place. As a result, we have had five straight months of over 170,000 illegal immigrants apprehended at the border. The number in June [2021] was the highest in over 20 years. And Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been effectively shut down." —Mark Morgan, former Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, July 22, 2021
"I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." —General Douglas MacArthur
Abundance – The Future is Better Than You Think: "We humans are wired to pay 10x more attention to negative news than positive news. ... The truth is, driven by advances in exponential technologies, things are getting much better around the world at an accelerating rate." —Peter H. Diamandis, M.D.
"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." —H. L. Mencken
"The road to the nomination for the Democratic party runs through Venezuela." —Senator Lindsey Graham, February 5, 2019 Democratic presidential debate fossil fuel energy question: Vow to constituent: "I want you to look in my eyes, I guarantee you, I guarantee you we're going to end fossil fuel." —Joe Biden, New Castle, New Hampshire, September 6, 2019
Biden plan to destroy the oil industry, end energy independence, and cripple the U.S. economy: "I'm not banning fracking, no matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me.[sic]" —Joe Biden, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 31, 2020
"[Biden's] lies are driving me crazy." —Larry Kudlow, September 27, 2021
Oil company response to Biden's letter: "ExxonMobil has been investing ... more than $50 billion over the past five years, resulting in an almost 50% increase in our U.S. production of oil during this period. Globally, we've invested double what we've earned over the past five years -- $118 billion on new oil and gas supplies compared to net income of $55 billion. ... We kept investing even during the pandemic, when we lost more than $20 billion and had to borrow more than $30 billion ... In 2021, total taxes ... were $40.6 billion ... " —ExxonMobil, June 15, 2022
Q. "Would you ban offshore drilling?" Q. "Would there be any place for fossil fuels including coal and fracking in a Biden administration?" —CNN, July, 2019 "There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking." —Kamala Harris, CNN, September 4, 2019
"Climate change is the single greatest threat facing our world today. That's why I am committed to passing a Green New Deal, creating clean jobs, and finally putting an end to fracking, once and for all." —Kamala Harris, ‘The Tonight Show’, NBC, September 10, 2019
Q. "Would there be any place for fossil fuels including coal and fracking in a Biden administration?" Ban all internal combustion engine vehicles: "Zero emission vehicles ONLY, 100%." —Kamala Harris, CNN, September 4, 2019
"No one is going to build another coal burning [plant] ... We gotta shut down the ones we have. But no one is going to build a new one." —Joe Biden, CNN, September 4, 2019 [Meanwhile, China is building "two new coal power plants per week."] Coal: "We're going to be shutting these plants down all across America ... " —Joe Biden, November 4, 2022
Fossil Fuels: "No more drilling. There is no more drilling. I haven't formed any new drilling." —Joe Biden, November 6, 2022
"Anybody who can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine, sure as hell can learn how to [computer] program as well. ... Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for god's sake." —Joe Biden "There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible and wrong." —Henry Louis Mencken
"There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult." —Warren Buffett
"The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left, the choice is between normal or crazy." —Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AK), Little Rock, Arkansas, February 7, 2023
" ... It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. ... " —Winston Churchill, from an Oct. 1939 radio broadcast
'An old anti-burglar classic': "A hand-written note on the door that says, 'Larry, the snake got loose again. Be careful.'" —John Camp
"Nobody should be in jail for a nonviolent crime." —Joe Biden "Would I like to debate this gentleman [Donald Trump]? No ... I'd ... beat the hell out of him." —Joe Biden, Miami, March 20, 2018 [Biden repeating his desire to assault Trump, previously stated at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, October 21, 2016.]
'Sometimes alarmingly incoherent': "Play the radio, make sure that ... you have the record player on at night. ... " —Joe Biden, September 12, 2019 " ... Trump won significantly the last two [sic] times." —Joe Biden, Cincinnati, October 12, 2020
We hold these truths to be self evident: "All men and women created by go you know you know the thing you know how we talk about we the people." —Joe Biden, Houston Texas, March 2, 2020 [also confusing his wife of 28 years with his sister] "I say to every young man thinking of getting married: ‘Marry into a family with five or more daughters.’ (I did. My wife is the oldest of five sisters.) Do you know why? One of them will always love you. And not the same one." —Joe Biden, Nashua, New Hampshire, May 21, 2024
"I'm running as a proud Democrat for the Senate [sic]." —Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, Toledo Ohio, October 12, 2020 ["Biden calls himself 'Vice President' in latest job-title screwup." —Steven Nelson, August 4, 2022]
"Four more years of George [sic] ... " —Joe Biden, October 26. 2020
"Are there people in the Republican party who think we are sucking the blood out of kids?" —Joe Biden, July 23, 2021
"I don't care if you think I'm Satan reincarnated." —Joe Biden, CNN, July 21, 2021
"I had nurses at Walter Reed Hospital ... they actually breathed in my nostrils to get me moving." —Joe Biden, July 23, 2020
"The President [Obama] put me in charge of getting out the recovery money which was 800 and, I don't know, excuse me, was 80, almost $89 billion, I guess it came to 84 at the end, 84 billion [sic] ... But we declared our independence on December 7th [sic], by the way, and it's not just D-day [sic]." —Joe Biden, May 27, 2020
["By raising the cost of energy, it also functions as a hidden 'regressive' tax on every American, and on every product produced or transported in the U.S., hurting the poor the most."]
[Hurricanes: "From 1970 to present ... no overall increase in ... Accumulated Cyclone Energy." —William D. Balgord, January 14, 2023]
A. "Absolutely not, and that would be the road to hell for America." —Jamie Dimon, Bank Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Anti-capitalism: "Go woke, go broke." —Andy Kessler, July 18, 2021
[Dividing people (the opposite of E Pluribus Unum - 'From many, one'): "Disneyland posts woke ‘Wheel of Privilege’ in employee kitchen ... [Photo, Left]" —Ashe Schow, January 29, 2024]
Also see other versions.
"Would you be willing to sacrifice some of that growth even knowing that potentially it could displace thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers in the interest of transforming to that greener economy?"
"The answer is YES." —Joe Biden, PBS NewsHour/Politico, December 19, 2019
"No more subsidies for fossil fuel industry. No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill. Period. End. Number one."
—Joe Biden, Democratic presidential primary debate, CNN, March 15, 2020
A. "Yes [I would ban offshore drilling], and, I again worked on that. Ha ha ha ha." —Kamala Harris, CNN, September 4, 2019
A. "No, we would work it out, we would make sure it's eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those." —Joe Biden
A. "NO." —Joe Biden, CNN, July 31, 2019
["If innovation could economically sequester underground the carbon dioxide from burning coal to produce reliable inexpensive non-polluting 'green' energy, why would't that be terrific?" —Mary Thomas]
["President Biden's comments are not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs." —Senator Joe Manchin, (D-WV), November 5, 2022]
not a White guy named [Thomas A.] Edison [1880]. [sic]" —Joe Biden, Kenosha, Wisconsin, September 3, 2020
'Earth at Night.' [Enlarge] Courtesy of NASA.
[What is the
bottom edge of this image? ... and Why?]
Most voters say Biden is mentally unfit: "Is Biden mentally up for the job of president? YES 36%; NO 60%." —'Wall Street Journal' Poll, August 24-30, 2023
What year is it? "We are going to deal with climate change, end end at zero emissions, net emissions by 2050, by 2020 [sic] make sure all our electricity is zero emissions." —Joe Biden, September 7, 2021, Queens, NY
Net-zero by 2050 myths refuted: "Net zero by 2050, by failing to recognize the unique benefits of fossil fuels, is catastrophic when barely implemented and would be apocalyptic if fully implemented. Energy freedom gives billions more people the energy they need to flourish and unleashes truly cost-effective alternatives." —Alex Epstein
"U.S. troops died in Iran [sic] and Afghanistan ... You could take care, people who were quartermaster, you can sure in hell take care of running a, you know, a department store, a thing where in the second floor of a ladies department or, you know what I mean?" —Joe Biden, Tampa, Florida, September, 2020
"If you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask." —Joe Biden, May 13, 2021
"No, I didn't say that." —Joe Biden, July 29, 2021
Truck driver delusion: "I used to drive an 18 wheeler." —Joe Biden, Macungie Pennsylvania, July 28, 2021
'Yeshiva boy': "I also want to acknowledge someone else who means a great deal to our family, Rabbi Michael Beals of the Congregation Beth Shalom in Wilmington, Delaware. ... That's where I received my education. I probably went to shul more than many of you did. [Audience laughter.] Y'all think I'm kidding." —Joe Biden
Puerto Rican upbringing: "We have a very, in relative terms, large Puerto Rican population in Delaware. ... I was sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home." —Joe Biden
Civil rights activist: "I got my education, for real, in the black church. That's not hyperbole, that's a fact." —Joe Biden
'Outrageous and dishonest': "Four different people in Wilmington expressed to me that these claims of Biden are so outrageous and dishonest that it caused them to truly worry for his mental health." —Civil rights activist Shaun King
'Build back debtor!': " ... Pass our bipartisan my bipartisan infrastructure agreement and my build back better plan which is being debated now and I'm going to be heading over there quickly shortly after I do this press conference back to my office to make some calls." —Joe Biden, The White House, November 5, 2021
"A visibly confused, tired-looking Joe Biden [~Robin Where?] mixes up Libya, Syria three times in speech on Russia." —Greg Price, June 13, 2021
"I had these terrible headaches was diagnosed with having an a, well anyway. They had to take the top of my head off couple of times. See if I had a brain." —Joe Biden, March 6, 2023
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." —Thomas Paine
Biden tells Townhall Covid-19 whopper: "If the President [Trump] had done his job, had done his job from the beginning, all the people would still be alive[sic]. All the people. I'm not making this up, just look at the data. Look at the data." —Joe Biden, Moosic, PA, Presidential Townhall, CNN, September, 2020
['Even if this whopper made any sense, more Americans died of Covid-19 in 2021 under Biden than did in 2020 under Trump." —Robert Martinez]
"The public is lied to every day by the President, by his spokespeople, by his officers. If you can't handle the thought that the President lies to the public for all kinds of reasons, you couldn't stay in the government at that level, or you're made aware of it, a week. ... The fact is Presidents rarely say the whole truth—essentially, never say the whole truth—of what they expect and what they're doing and what they believe and why they're doing it and rarely refrain from lying, actually, about these matters." —Daniel Ellsberg, 'Presidential Decisions and Public Dissent', Conversations with History, July 29, 1998
☭ "Telling the truth is a petty - bourgeois prejudice. Deception, on the other hand, is often justified by the goal." —Vladimir Lenin, November, 1917
"The arrogance of lying by a politician leads to bad policy making every time." —Larry Kudlow, April 6, 2022
'Biden's litany of lies':
● Cost of Democrat spending plan is 'Zero'.—Larry Kudlow, September 27, 2021
● Rich don't pay their fair share.
● No crisis at the border.
● Border patrol 'whipped' migrants.
● Won't leave Americans in Afghanistan.
'Biden loves to retell certain stories. Some aren't credible': "As president, Biden has continued a tradition of embellishing his personal tales, in ways that cannot be verified or are directly refuted by contemporary accounts." —Glenn Kessler, 'The Washington Post', August 31, 2023
'Biden Loves to Tell Tall Tales — We Cut Them Down to Size': "By President Biden’s account, he was a fierce civil rights activist in his youth, had an uncle who fell prey to cannibals and used to drive an 18-wheeler." —New York Times, Fact Check, June 9, 2024
'Fact-Checking the Two Presidents': "It’s bizarre reporting. Concerning Trump, the critics often seize upon a single misstatement of fact, while ignoring the larger truth connected to that fact. For Biden, they can’t seem to find the misstatement to begin with." [More] —John C. Goodman, July 1, 2024
"What a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive." —Sir Walter Scott, 'Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field', 1808
'Lying Liars': " ... The mainstream Democratic Party has no values whatsoever. They have compromised any principles they may have stood for in the past. So it’s kind of fitting that their commander and chief is nothing really but a spineless coward that lies about everything, that is now emboldening radical Islamic terrorists worldwide. As the New York Post pointed out, Biden lied once every single minute during his recent and rare sit down interview on fake news CNN." —Sean Hannity, May 10, 2024
"More Democrats watch Fox News during prime time than CNN." —Nielsen MRI Fusion polling data, November 4, 2021
'Democrat Strategist Demands Media Give "Slanted Coverage" Against Trump': "I don’t have anything against slanted coverage ... right now. F*** your objectivity." —James Carville, June 6, 2024
Most expensive falsehood in history?: " ... the truth is ... it's going to cost nothing, because we're going to raise the revenue.[sic]" —Joe Biden, September 24, 2021 – [aka Robin Ware, aka Robert L. Peters and aka JRB Ware]
[The actual cost will exceed that of World War II plus the Marshall Plan which rebuilt Europe.]
"I don't believe that deficit spending is one of the main causes of inflation." —Janet Yellen, U.S. Treasury Secretary znd Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, March, 2023
Absurd zero cost claim: "We talk about price tags. It is zero price tag on the debt. [sic]" ... "There is nothing in any of these pieces of legislation that's radical ... that is unreasonable. [sic]" —Joe Biden September 24, 2021
From the Fabricator-in-Chief, another Whopper: "I have known every — every [Israeli] prime minister well since Golda Meir, including Golda Meir ... And during the Six-Day War, I had an opportunity to — she invited me to come over because I was going to be the liaison between, she and the Egyptians about the Suez, and so on and so forth.[sic] " —Joe Biden
[Golda 'Meir however, was not elected prime minister until 1969, two years after the Six-Day War. The Israeli prime minister in 1967 was Levi Eshkol, who served between 1963-1969.']
'There used to be a lot of cannibals': “US President Joe Biden’s apparent suggestion his uncle may have been eaten by cannibals during World War II [sic] has sparked uproar in Papua New Guinea ... " —CNN, April 24, 2024
■ "Marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that." —Joe Biden, ‘Meet the Press’, 2006
Delaware Petroleum Malignancy Syndrome: "You'd have to put on your windshield wipers to get, literally, the oil slick off the window. That's why I, and so damn many other people I grew up with, have cancer [sic]. And why, for the longest time, Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation." —Joe Biden, July 20, 2022
"I never considered voting for Trump in 2016. I may be forced to vote for him this year. ... Joe Biden would be a figurehead president, incapable of focus or leadership, who would run a Teleprompter presidency with the words drafted by his party's hard-left ideologues." —Danielle Pletka, AEI Senior Fellow, Washington Post, September, 2020
"The Green New Deal is a Trojan Horse for Socialism." —U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Climate Apocalypse: "Without clear coordinated and committed approach from the other 85% of the carbon emitters, the world will continue to warm, storms will continue to worsen, climate change will continue to threaten lives and livelihoods, public health, and economics of our existence, and literally the very existence of our planet. [sic]" —Joe Biden
"This city is headed for disaster of biblical proportions ... old testament ... real wrath of God type stuff, fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and the seas boiling, 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria." —'Ghostbusters', Columbia Pictures
"I'm stocking up on ... freeze-dried water." —jebmke
"China would prefer Joe Biden." —House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, CNN, August 9, 2020
" ... We stand with the people of Hong Kong & continue to support their human rights & fundamental freedoms." —U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Tweet, September 16, 2021 [Posted and then promptly deleted by Blinken.]
Hong Kong: "The British gave us the institutions of freedom ... Rule of law, free speech, the free market ... That created the best in the world." —Jimmy Lai
"When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will." —Frédéric Bastiat
"We are at risk of losing a war today because too few of us know that we are engaged with an enemy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that means to destroy us." —Brian T. Kennedy
"The Chinese people will absolutely not allow any foreign force to bully, oppress or enslave us and anyone who attempts to do so will face broken heads and bloodshed in front of the iron Great Wall of the 1.4 billion Chinese people." —Chinese President Xi Jinping, Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, Tiananmen Square, July 1, 2021
"Hold dear to your parents for it is a scary and confusing world without them." —Emily Dickinson
The "USA birth rate has been below minimum sustainable levels for approximately 50 years." —Elon Musk, May 24, 2022 (See graph of 'fertility rate slump')
["Is it a coincidence that 50 years exactly corresponds to the onset of the ridiculous and completely wrong earth day catastrophe predictions?" —Joseph Thomas]
"If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either." —Dick Cavett
"Is it OK to still have children?" —Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) NY
"Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference." —Mark Twain
Plants will suffocate, ending life on earth in 1-2 million years, if the 250 million year trend continues of dropping atmospheric CO2 levels to below 150ppm, as sea shells accumulating on the ocean floor sequester carbon dioxide:
■ 'Completely crazy' Green New Deal 'insanity' would 'cause people to starve:' "It would be the end of civilization if 85% of the world's and 85% of the US's energy in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas was phased out over the next few years. ... We do not have anything to replace them with. ... [Green New Deal advocates] are opposed to approximately 98.5% of all the electricity we are using and nearly 100% of all the vehicle and transportation and ships' and planes' energy that we are using. ... You don't have a plan to feed 8 billion people without fossil fuels ... or get the food into the cities. ... If we ban fossil fuels ... agricultural production would collapse .. and half the population would die in a very short period of time ... and there wouldn't be a tree left on this planet." —Patrick Moore, Greenpeace co-founder, March 11, 2019
Nanny state – Biden takes on valiant fight against ... gas stoves: "Considering a ban on gas stoves." —U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, c. January 10, 2023
["You'll have to pry my gas stove from my cold dead oven mitts." —Chip Bok, Political Cartoon, January 13, 2023]
["If indoor air pollution is an actual first-world issue, rather than an anti-fossil fuel pretext, the solution is better ventilation standards (also needed to reduce spread of respiratory viruses), not such a stupid anti-environment standard-of-living-reducing ban. The U.S. extraordinary success in innovating fracking for natural gas production is the reason that the United States was the nation that achieved the greatest reduction in CO2 emission." —Paul Lopez]
No pain, no gain: "Anesthesiologists can play a role in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming by decreasing the amount of anesthetic gas provided during procedures ... " —Research being presented at the American Society of Anesthesiologists, Orlando, Florida, January 27, 2023 [Research redacted as 'inaccurate.']
"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse." —Chris Hatfield, Astronaut mantra
Electrical power grid instability causes California blackouts: "We have a much more risky supply of energy now because the sun doesn't always shine when we want and the wind doesn't always blow when we want." —Professor Frank Wolak, Economics, Stanford University
"The annual output of Tesla's Gigafactory, the world's largest battery factory, could store three minutes' worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days' worth of U.S. electricity demand." —Mark P. Mills, The 'New Energy Economy': An Exercise in Magical Thinking
Breakthough Solid-State Battery?: "Compared with conventional lithium-ion battery technology, solid-state batteries will be lighter, smaller, more powerful, charge faster, last longer, and be safer." —Clint Demeritt, April 7, 2021
White House Science 'Czar' Tells Students: "We [the United States] can’t expect to be number one in everything indefinitely." —Dr. John P. Holdren, Director, Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, April, 2010
"Stay on target ... Stay on target ... " —Star Wars
War with Radical Islamists: "Mr. Obama indicated that he did not see enough cable television to fully appreciate the anxiety after the [terrorist] attacks in Paris and San Bernardino." —Redacted by The New York Times
Terrorism: "It can happen here almost any time. ... If [you] knew what I know about terrorism, [you] would never leave the house ... " —Marine Corps General John F. Kelly, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, May 26, 2017
"Q. What keeps you awake at night?
A. Nothing – I keep other people awake at night."
—Marine Corps General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 'Face the Nation', May 28, 2017
"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." —Sun Tzu, 'The Art of War'
"Today's consumer protection hurts consumers more than it helps us. Competition and the open society protects us far better than government ever can or ever will." —John Stossel
"A citizen's right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public place is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment." —Federal First Circus Court of Appeals, Boston, MA, 2011
Clueless: " ... there are these incredibly hot rocks, 'cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees [sic] ... " —Al Gore, Nobel Laureate ["The temperature of the earth's inner core is 9,392°F." —Stuart Varney]
"Caution: Cape does not enable user to fly." —Warning label on a Batman costume
"Who told you to think? I don't give you enough information to think." —'Total Recall' (movie)
'¿Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?':
"No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence [sic]." —Nancy Pelosi, Twitter, March 30, 2023
"If you want to create jobs the quickest way to do it is to provide more funding for food stamps ... it's the biggest bang for the buck. [sic]" —House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat - California)
"Our country was founded by geniuses, but it's being run by idiots." —Senator Kennedy, R-Louisiana
Language Police: "[Speaker Nancy] Pelosi, House [of Representative Democrats] move to ban 'Father, Mother, Son, Daughter' and other 'Gendered' words." —C. Douglas Golden
"Avoid the terms 'mothers' and 'women' ... 'breast milk' ... " —Natalie O'Neill, February 10, 2021
'Thought police' ('political correctness gone mad'?): "Commonly used [sic] gender-neutral pronouns [neopronoun neologisms] include Ze/zir/zem/zeir, Xe/Xir/Xem/Xeir, and hir/hirself." —Liz Sommer, January 8, 2019
Impermissibly compelling speech: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." —W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943).
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." —Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, Presidential Nomination, July 16, 1964
The new 'extremism' = Groupthink = tyranny of the majority: "When you are not with where a majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking. [sic]" —Biden White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
"Silencing of minority voices doesn't make the majority correct; it just makes them louder." —Connor Boyack
"We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage." —Friedrich August von Hayek, 'Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics', 1967
"Justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done." —Lord Gordon Hewart, The Lord Chief Justice of England, 1924
"Do you catch lyme disease at night from a luna tick?" —Anon
"Homeowner: You charge more than a lawyer."
"Plumber: Yes, I didn't make as much when I was a lawyer." —Joke
"After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels." —Texas Governor Ann Richards, Democratic National Convention keynote, Atlanta, Georgia, July 18, 1988
Unverified claim by Humane Society: "There are more tigers in Texas than the rest of the world." —BuzzFeed
'Make him feel special': "She pursued him until he caught her." —Anonymous
"Economists report that a college education adds many thousands of dollars to a man's lifetime income – which he then spends sending his son to college." —Bill Vaughn
'Failure to launch': "45% of young Americans age 19 - 29 are still living with parents." —Harris Poll via Bloomberg, September, 2023
"College graduates should not have to live out their twenties in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters, and wondering when they can move out and get going with life." —Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), 2012
"What if they gave a war and nobody came?" —Paraphrasing Carl Sandburg
"The first casualty, when war comes, is truth." —Hiram Johnson (1866-1945)
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity." —George Carlin
"Never get involved in a land war in Asia." —Advice from General of the Army, Douglas MacArthur to President John F. Kennedy in 1961
The shape of the table: "One of my earliest recognitions of the madness of politics was the discussions of the shape of the table of the Paris Peace Talks designed to end the Vietnam war. It took over 6 months to decided on the shape of the table, hampered by the unwillingness of some of the parties to sit at the same table with others. Ultimately 3 separate adjacent tables were used – with North and South Vietnam in the center circular table." —Paxus Calta ["Arguing about a triviality, as used by Ho Chi Minh, in this example, is an incredibly useful negotiating tactic to utilize, when delay is to your advantage." —Lisa Rodriguez]
Vietnam War: "It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker." —Anonymous former Trump administration officials, claiming to quote President Trump
[Vietnam War Protester chant: "Hell no, we won't go!"]
Draft Resistance in the Vietnam Era: "In 1972, there were more conscientious objectors[*] than actual draftees ... " —Jessie Kindig
[*"Thereby responding to then President Richard M. Nixon's greetings in the manner of the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram."]
"The most fundamental objection to [military] draft registration is moral. ... The notion of involuntary servitude, in whatever form, is simply incompatible with a free society." —President Ronald Reagan
"In the 1960's women learned to burn their bras. In the 2020's women will need to learn to burn their draft cards." —Gloria Richmond
WW II: "During the war an Italian girl saved my life. She hid me in her basement in Cleveland." —Henny Youngman
"Dictatorial Powers: The sad truth is that government does everything incompetently, whether it is something trivial or something on which the fate of the country depends. War is the health of the state because the government uses war to fighten us into surrendering our liberties and our property." —Judge Andrew Nepolitano
"When men become locked in battle, there should be no artifice under the name of politics, which should handicap your own men, decrease their chances for winning, and increase their losses." —General Douglas MacArthur
To the German Commander: "NUTS!" —The American Commander, A.C. McAufiffe, Bastogne, Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, December 22, 1944
"I think I shredded most of that. Did I get them all? ... " —Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, Iran-contra hearings, 1987
"Never confuse genius with luck and a bull market." —John C. Bogle
"Investors everywhere are checking their accounts to see how much money they made. That's the way it is, you know, when stocks go up you look, when they go down, you tend not to look, you look away." —Stuart Varney, September 3, 2020
Investments: "In really bad markets, the only thing that goes up is correlation. ... If you want the return, you have to accept the volatility." —nedsaid
"Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill." —W. C. Fields
"Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen." —Mark Twain
"I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself." —Ronald Reagan
"There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice." —Mark Twain
"Keep her warm. Don't forget to hold hands and snuggle in the tent. Tell her you love her." —Ben Miller
"When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea that his first name was Always." —Rita Rudner
Reading: "American adults ... spend a mere 15 to 17 minutes daily reading for pleasure. This decline contrasts sharply with the staggering 7 to 13 ... hours ... consuming digital media and entertainment each day." —Connor Boyack
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." —Mark Twain
"I'm trying to read a book on how to relax, but I keep falling asleep." —Jim Loy
"I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where's the self-help section?' She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose." —George Carlin
"Russians are always red. Fire engines are always rushin'. So fire engines are always red." —USSR Joke
"Nothing's perfect and you'll be a lot happier if you accept that." —ProfHankD
"I do not want to 'upgrade' ... Paying money to buy headaches is a stupid idea ... " —Lloyd Chambers
"If you can't make it good, make it big, and if you can't make it big, make it RED!" —Paul Rand, who taught design at Yale
"A big blow from a stranger hurts less than a small blow from a friend." —Yiddish proverb
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." —Groucho Marx
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the uneven division of blessings, while the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal division of misery." —Winston Churchill
"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried." —Winston Churchill
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." —H.L. Mencken
"No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby." —H.L. Mencken
Principle of defensive design: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." —Edward Aloysius Murphy, Jr., aerospace engineer who worked on safety-critical systems
Anchor your furniture: "Since 2000 there have been at least 580 deaths resulting from furniture tip-overs – 81% were children. Tip-overs also cause roughly 22,500 emergency room visits each year. Securing your furniture to the wall can avert tragedy." —U.S. Senator Bob Casey, September 8, 2023
"If everything seems to be going well, you probably don't know what's going on." —Paraphrasing Murphy's Eighth Law
"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler." —Albert Einstein
KISS: "Keep it simple, stupid!" —Kelly Johnson, lead engineer, Lockheed Skunk Works
Peter Principle – Why Things Always Go Wrong: "People are promoted to their level of incompetence." —Laurence J. Peter
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." —Confucius
"May the farce be with you." —Mel Brooks
"The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size." —Albert Einstein
" ... repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny ... HE has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance." —Declaration of Independence
"The Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document – still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world. ... If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. Any change from the Declaration's eternal truths would be reactionary, not progressive." —Calvin Coolidge
"It's all rigged." —Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colorado)
"It ain't bragging if you can do it." —Dizzy Dean
"The press' job is to ... protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from ... organized governmental power. When they ... decide ... what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and ... made themselves the enemy of the American people." —Pat Caddell, Democrat strategist and Jimmy Carter's pollster
"They Did It 'Cause We Said 'No'": "Your daughter brings a young man home, says 'Do you like him, pa?' | Just say that he's a fool, and then, you've got a son-in-law!" —Song that the two fathers sing in 'The Fantasticks!'
"I believe [John B.] Gurdon has ideas about becoming a scientist; on his present showing this is quite ridiculous ... he would have no chance of doing the work ... and it would be a sheer waste of time, both on his part and of those who would have to teach him." —His high school biology teacher writing about the future Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine [After cloning the first animal, a frog, Dr. Gurdon then had to wait 50 years to receive that recognition for his breakthrough, commenting "I am lucky to be still alive."]
'After shunning scientist, University of Pennsylvania celebrates her Nobel Prize – [discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19]': " ... demoted Katalin Karikó ... made millions of dollars from patenting her work ... while cutting her pay. ... Karikó’s colleagues denigrated her mRNA research ... Katalin Karikó stuck with her mRNA research despite a struggle to publish her work and obtain big grants. ... Karikó and Weissman tried to license [their own mRNA invention] ... for their biotech company but couldn't afford the price the school demanded ... " —'Wall Street Journal', October 4, 2023
"This concept [for Federal Express overnight package delivery] is interesting but not feasible." —Yale Economics Professor to his student, FEDEX founder, Fred Smith, on why his proposal was only worth a grade of "C," 1965
"Difficult to predict the future is!" —Yoda
"The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time." —Abraham Lincoln
"Seen at a coffee shop: Sleep is the primary symptom of caffeine deprivation." —Travis Saling
"The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep." —W. C. Fields
"All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth." —Richard Avedon
"There is no real magic in photography, just the sloppy intersection of physics and art." —Kirk Tuck
"Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine." —Ludwig van Beethoven
"Use a picture. It is worth a thousand words." —Arthur Brisbane, newspaper man, 1911
"It's a lot easier to post a photo than it is to write 1,000 words ... " —Mathieu Parvin
'The Humane Interface': "An interface is humane if it is responsive to human needs and considerate of human frailties." —Jef Raskin
"A computer shall not waste your time or require you to do more work than is strictly necessary." —Jef Raskin
"We’re Apple. We don't wear suits. We don't even own suits." —Steve Jobs, Apple CEO
"Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! ... " —Tyler Durden
"We don't have a domestic spying program." —Barack Obama to Jay Leno
Senate Church Committee: "I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency [the NSA] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return." —Senator Frank Church, 1975
"No one has willfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacies ... there were no mistakes ... we don't hold data on U.S. citizens." —NSA Director General Keith Alexander, 2012
NSA Violated Fourth Amendment and the FISA: "Illegal searches conducted by the National Security Agency under Obama were 'widespread' and created a 'very serious Fourth Amendment issue." —U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, April 26, 2017
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes." —Dwight David Eisenhower, Presidential farewell address, 1961
"In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. These messages are between ships at sea, they could be between units, military units in the field. We have a very extensive capability of intercepting messages wherever they may be in the airwaves. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology." —Senator Frank Church, NBC's 'Meet the Press', August 17, 1975
"Amazon awarded secret [ten billion dollar National Security Agency] cloud computing contract." —Chris Mills Rodrigo, August 10, 2021
"Liberalism means A and B decide what C shall do for D. Oh, and they charge a commission for having done so." —Milton Friedman
¿Land of the free?: "Although the United States is home to 5 percent of the world's population, almost a quarter of the world's prisoners are incarcerated in American prisons." —U.S. Department of Justice
"It's called 'the American Dream' 'cause you have to be asleep to believe it.[sic]" —George Carlin
"I am less interested in the return on my money than the return of my money." —Will Rogers
"A dog teaches a boy three things: Fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down." —Robert Benchley
"The stock trading symbol for Petco?" —WOOF
"Does Popeye suffer from exOphthalmOs?" —Significant other
"On top of all my other medical problems, now they tell me I have hypochondria ... " —Rick Oleson
"Habits are either the best of friends or the bitterest of foes." —Margaret Thatcher
"If you repeat an action for 28 days, it will become a habit." —Dr. Robert Anthony
"Rise early, that by habit it may become familiar, agreeable, healthy, and profitable. It may, for a while, be irksome to do this, but that will wear off; and the practice will produce a rich harvest forever thereafter." —George Washington
"Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." —Idiom
"Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny." —Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
'Still the Best Hope': "Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph." —Dennis Prager
"Over 20% of what William Shakespeare wrote consists of just ten words: the, and, I, to, of, a, you, my, in, and that." —nisiprius
"Can a Ship 'Flounder'? The difference between 'flounder' and 'founder'." —Merriam Webster
Flock / herd / gaggle / clowder / pod / brood / glaring / chowder / parade / shrewdness / unkindness / husk / bloat / tower / obstinacy / kettle / murder / troop / brace / cluster / paddling / pitying:
A colony of penguins: "A flock of penguins on land is called a 'waddle,' but the same flock of penguins at sea is called a 'raft'" —paraphrased from 'Penguin Town' video
"I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive." —Gilda Radner
"I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intellect, your drive, and your honesty, and that I consider myself lucky to have made your personal acquaintance in Brussels." —Albert Einstein writing to support Marie Curie during her time of personal crisis, 1911
"Photography is not like painting. There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera." —Henri Cartier-Bresson
"Identify the dominant philosophy of a society and you can predict its future." —Ayn Rand
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." —Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887
"Once you learn how the government has historically manipulated information to guide people to adopt certain beliefs or behaviors, it you simply can't watch the news and not question nearly everything you see. ... what is going on behind the scenes, what information is deliberately being kept from the public, and what narratives are being carefully crafted." —Connor Boyack
"We have a greater responsibility to act than those who live in ignorance. Once you become knowledgeable, you have an obligation to do something about it." —Ron Paul
"The 17th century Salem Witch Trials, rife with convictions based on flimsy evidence, hearsay, and an inverted burden of proof, stand as a chilling reminder of the dark corners of humanity's pursuit of justice." —Pacific Legal Foundation
Zero Aggression Principle: "It is always wrong to initiate force to achieve a social or political goal." —Jim Babka
'Failure of Big Government Socialism': "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." —Winston Churchill
"The left is concerned with only one thing, control, and they disguise this control as charity." —Elbert Guillory
"Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution– the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off." —Ayn Rand
Four Trillion Dollar Oops: "Our home ownership strategy will not cost the taxpayers one extra cent." —William Jefferson Clinton, June 5, 1995
"President Barack Obama was a pioneering contributor to the national subprime real estate bubble, and roughly half of the 186 African-American clients in his landmark 1995 mortgage discrimination lawsuit against Citibank have since gone bankrupt or received foreclosure notices. As few as 19 of those 186 clients still own homes with clean credit ratings ... " —Daily Caller
What caused the 2008 financial crisis?: "There was a lot of pressure on banks to make loans to everyone. 'Red lining,' if you remember, was the term where banks took whole neighborhoods and said 'people in these neighborhoods are poor and they're not going to be able to pay off their mortgages.' Tell your salesman 'don't go into those areas.' And then Congress got involved, and local elected officials as well, and said 'Oh that’s not fair, these people should be able to get credit.' And once you started pushing in that direction, banks started making more and more loans where the credit of the person buying the house wasn't as good as you would like." —New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, 2008
‘Fed Chair Says Cyberattacks Main Risk to U.S. Economy ... more worried about the risk of a large-scale cyberattack than another financial crisis like that of 2008’: "The risk that we keep our eyes on the most now is cyber risk ... There are scenarios in which a large payment utility ... breaks down and the payment system can’t work. Payments can’t be completed. ... a large financial institution would lose the ability to track the payments that it’s making ... There are cyber-attacks every day on all major institutions ... " —Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, April 12, 2021
Bank bailouts = moral hazard: "Americans are done with government bailouts, especially when caused by the government's own policies. Out-of-control spending in Washington and Federal Reserve interventions have fueled skyrocketing inflation. Any universal guarantee on all bank deposits, whether implicit or explicit, enshrines a dangerous precedent that simply encourages future irresponsible behavior ... " —House Freedom Caucus, March 20, 2023
'Taming the Megabanks': "As of December 31, 2023, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., Citigroup’s Citibank and Bank of America held a staggering total of $168.26 trillion in derivatives ... " —Pam Martens and Russ Martens, August 20, 2024
"Mark my words ... Medicare in about eight to nine years goes into the red ... It is going broke. ... What is truly scary – what is truly risky – is if we do nothing [because Medicare is] unsustainable ... [and] running out of money. ... [Medicare must be reformed] to be there for the next generation, not just for this generation." —President Obama, 2012
"A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say." —Michael Kinsley
Give the perspective: "[From] someone who has seen the intelligence and can tell the American people they [the Biden Administration] are lying to you. They're not telling you the truth about what our intelligence says ... They can't be trusted and they shouldn't be trusted." —John Ratcliffe, former Director of U.S. National Intelligence, September 12, 2021
"Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen." —Bob Edwards
"I'm into painting with light – not painting by numbers!" —Allan Swindles
✓ "The United States abolished involuntary servitude (slavery) with the 13th amendment only to reinstate it with the 16th amendment." —John Galt
✓ "Lincoln said 'government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free' but a tax burden approaching 50% now approximates half slave and half free." —Antonio Rodrigues
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." —Johann Goethe
Eliminate the Income Tax: "About 45 percent of all federal revenue comes from the personal income tax. That means that about 55 percent – over half of all revenue – comes from other sources, like excise taxes, fees, and corporate taxes. We could eliminate the income tax, replace it with nothing, and still fund the same level of big government we had in the late 1990's [about a decade earlier]. We don't need to 'replace' the income tax at all." —Ron Paul, New York Times, November 20, 2008
"Silence like a cancer grows." —Simon and Garfunkel, "The Sound Of Silence" Lyrics
"This week I got an iPhone. This weekend I got four chargers so I can keep it charged everywhere I go and a land line so I can actually make phone calls." —Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO
"Why is it that with over 60 years of improvements in cameras, lens sharpness and film grain, resolution and dynamic range that no one has been able to equal what Ansel Adams did back in the 1940s?" —Ken Rockwell
"Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has no problem calling for the destruction of Israel and blaming it for attacks linked to his own party, but when his [sister's husband] needs life-saving heart surgery, only Israeli doctors will do." —Paul Alster
"The world is divided between the people who resent those who have been more successful and those who want to emulate them." —Dennis Prager summarizing George Gilder
Q. "How many gallons of blood, on average, does your heart pump in a day?"
A. "2,000." —Varney & Co., Trivia
Q. "How many rooms are in Buckingham Palace?"
A. "775" —Varney & Co., Trivia
Q. "How long is the Great Wall of China?"
A. "13,171 miles." —Varney & Co., Trivia
"The function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." —John Kenneth Galbraith
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." —Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" —Carl Sagan
"Measure twice, cut once." —Old carpenters' rule
"I challenge the growing trend in our society to give numbers a credence that they simply don't deserve, all the while assigning far less importance to the things that can't be expressed with numbers – qualities such as wisdom, integrity, ethics, and commitment." —Jack Bogle
"The milliHelen (the amount of beauty required to launch 1 ship)." —Patrick Perez
'Nerd fail': "Jedi mind meld." —President Barack Obama
[Star Wars ≠ Star Trek: "I am Darth Vader ... from the Planet Vulcan." —'Back to the Future 1']
"The greatest teacher, failure is." —Yoda, 'The Last Jedi'
"Always pass on what you have learned." —Yoda, 'Return of the Jedi'
"The Force is strong with this one." —Darth Vader, 'A New Hope'
"Great, kid, don't get cocky." —Han Solo, 'A New Hope'
"I find your lack of faith disturbing." —Darth Vader, 'A New Hope'
"Try not. Do or do not. There is no try." —Yoda, 'The Empire Strikes Back'
"I like firsts. Good or bad, they're always memorable." —Ahsoka Tano, 'The Mandalorian'
" ... many of the truths that we cling to depend on our viewpoint." —Obi-Wan Kenobi, 'Return of the Jedi'
"Difficult to see; always in motion is the future." —Yoda, 'The Empire Strikes Back'
"Your focus determines your reality." —Qui-Gon Jinn, 'The Phantom Menace'
"In my experience, there's no such thing as luck." —Obi-Wan Kenobi, 'A New Hope'
"You have failed me for the last time ... " —Darth Vader, 'The Empire Strikes Back'
"I never ask that question until after I've done it!" —Han Solo, 'The Force Awakens'
Funny, derogatory, mildly offensive ways of saying mentally impaired, dense, unintelligent, nuts, loony, stupid, slightly crazy, a bit slow, a bit thick, or merely eccentric [so many ways to be mean]; Also see 'ablest micro-aggressions':
• A few fries short of a Happy Meal.
• A few bricks shy of a load.
• A few sandwiches short of a picnic.
• Half a bubble off plumb.
• A few spanners short of a tool box.
• A few cards shy of a full deck.
• A few cans short of a six-pack.
• A few crumbs short of a biscuit.
• A few trucks short of a convoy.
• A few clowns short of a circus.
• A photographic memory with the lenscap on.
• His driveway doesn't go all the way to the road.
• His elevator does not go all the way to the top.
• The lights are on but no one's home.
• Not the full bottle.
• A sausage short of a barbie.
• The butter's slipped off the noodles.
• The cheese slid off the cracker.
• A few slices short of a loaf.
• Out to lunch.
• Not the full tin of bikkies (or box of chocolates).
• Wouldn't know what day it was unless he had two baked potatoes on his plate.
• 24¢ short of a quarter.
• Only two bob in the pound.
• 60¢ in the dollar.
• He's the full quid, but it's all small change.
• A few roos loose in the top paddock.
• Not too tightly wrapped.
• A shingle short.
• Not all there.
• Not playing with the full deck.
• A couple of buttons missing.
• Not running on all cylinders.
• A couple of ribs short of a cage.
• His river doesn't run all the way to the sea.
• Hasn't got them all in a row.
• Hasn't got both oars in the water.
• A bit of light gets in.
• Not the full tube of Dencorub.
• If brains were dynamite, he couldn't blow his hat off.
• His flag is at half staff.
• A deficiency in the marbles department.
• Not quite enough coupons for the coffee percolator and matching set of cups.
• Not got all their chairs at home.
• Not the full shilling.
• A few points short of promotion.
• A few points short of a council flat.
• One condom short of an orgy.
• He's a 6-pack, but he's missing the plastic bit that holds it all together.
• When they were handing out brains, he was at the back of the queue.
• Dumber than a box of rocks.
• Not the brightest candle in the chandelier.
• Dumb as a doornail.
• Not the brightest color in the crayon box.
• Two plums short of a fruit pie.
• One prescription shy of a full medicine cabinet.
• One burrito shy of a combo plate.
• Three ants shy of a picnic.
• One cow shy of a full barn.
• A couple drops shy of a full glass.
• One shirt shy of a full closet.
• One horse shy of a herd.
• One rose shy of a bouquet.
• One song shy of a CD.
• One inch shy of a foot.
• One painting short of an art gallery.
• One dog short of a kennel.
• One meatball shy of a plate of spaghetti.
• One bandaid shy of a first aid kit.
• A couple quarts short of an oil change.
• A black and white mind, working on a color coded problem.
• A cup and saucer short of a place setting.
• A deadbolt with a broken cylinder.
• Three pieces short of a jigsaw puzzle.
• A few cups shy of a tea service.
• A brownie shy of a bake sale.
• One tree shy of a forest.
• One brick short of a load.
• A few bees short of a hive.
• Couldn't find their butt with both hands if it had a bell on it.
• His wheel is spinning, but the hamster is dead.
• Some drink from the fountain of knowledge, they just gargled.
• Their antenna does not pick up all the channels.
• One coffee bean short of a latte.
• As nutty as a fruit cake.
• The lights are on but nobody's home.
• Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
• One peanut short of a snickers.
• Has a hole in their bag of marbles.
• Their screen is missing a few pixels.
• Their cord does not reach the outlet.
• They're a few channels short of cable.
• If clues were shoes they would be barefoot.
• About as sharp as a marble.
• Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.
• A few peas short of a casserole.
• One fruit loop shy of a full bowl.
• Did your dad drop you on your head when you were a baby?
• One lime short of a Margarita
• No grain in the silo.
• Too much yardage between the goal posts.
• One petal shy of a flower.
• Duller than a butter knife.
• The gate is down, the lights are flashing, but the train is not coming.
• One ant shy of a colony.
• Brilliant as a burned out light bulb.
• A book full of blank pages.
• Christmas tree without an angel on top.
• The cornbread did not get baked.
• Dipstick doesn't quite hit the oil.
• Driving with the engine off.
• From the shallow end of the gene pool.
• Having a blond moment?
• If you looked up 'stupid' in the dictionary you'd see your picture.
• Not the sharpest tool in the shed.
"People look at Joe Biden and they know that the tray table is not in its upright and locked position. They see that for themselves." —Kellyanne Conway, November 8, 2021
"Let me start off with two words, 'MADE IN AMERICA'." —Joe Biden, Hagerstown, Maryland, October 7, 2022
"A three letter word, 'JOBS'." —Joe Biden, Athens, Ohio, October 15, 2008
"I have been in 57 states [sic] ... " —B. Hussein Obama
Protests have now "spread to 1,000 countries [sic]." —Diane Sawyer, ABC News
"Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package, 500 million Americans [sic] will lose their jobs." —Nancy Pelosi
"But you can't erase what you've already done ... giving a five hundred trillion dollar [sic] tax cut to 120,000 families." —Joe Biden
"Now we have over 120 million dead [sic] from COVID." —Joe Biden, June 25, 2020
"It costs you 12 to 14 thousand dollars a month for child care.[sic]" —Joe Biden, June 14, 2022
Warning signs of dementia: "trouble knowing what the numbers mean" —Dementia Helpline
"From the time I got to the Senate, 180 years ago [sic]." —Joe Biden, September 27, 2020
"I could drop dead tomorrow." —Joe Biden, October 23, 2022
"You get a tax break for a racehorse, why in God's name couldn't we provide [a] tax credit for everybody who has childcare costs? ... It would put 720 million women [sic] back in the workforce. ... " —Joe Biden, March 2, 2020
Guns: "One-hundred-fifty million people [sic] have been killed since 2007 ... more than all the wars, including Vietnam from that point on." —Joe Biden, February, 2020
"There's four rules of firearm safety that you follow with any gun:
● Treat every weapon as if it's loaded;If you follow those rules, no one is in danger, and no one gets hurt."● Never point a gun at anything you're not willing to kill or destroy;
● Never put your finger on the trigger unless you're willing to kill or destroy; and,
● Always be aware of what's in front of, behind, and around your target.
—Tim Clemente, Hollywood technical consultant
"Over 170 million jobs [sic]" could be lost due to sequestration. —Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), March 1, 2013
Heroic police prevent massacre: "We lose 93 million Americans [sic] a day to gun violence." —Gov. Terry McAuliffe
Build Back Bolshevik:
"The build back better is three baskets:
It's •climate, •health, •jobs, •security, and •moral responsibility."
—Nancy Pelosi
["How about instead of Building Back Better, you just put everything back the way it was and leave it alone." —Michael Smith]
'Word Salad': "Today the business of our work is for the council to report on the work that has occurred since our last meeting across these areas. We will today also discuss the work yet ahead, the work we must still do to continue to move forward." —'Space nerd' Vice President Kamala Harris, NASA, September 8, 2022
["She [Kamala Harris] sounds ... like someone giving a book report on a book she has not read, ... Complacency and arrogance make a ruinous compound." —George F. Will]
"The United States shares a very important relationship, which is an alliance with the Republic of North Korea, and it is an alliance that is strong and enduring. [sic]" —Vice President Kamala Harris, Korea Demilitarized Zone, September 29, 2022
'Word salad' aka 'Middle level nothing': "We know community banks are in the community." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"It is time for us to. Do what we have been doing, and that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree. That there are things and tools that are available to us. To slow this thing down." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"We've got to take this stuff seriously, as seriously as you are because you have been forced to take this seriously." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"Our allies have stood firm and unified in a way... to ensure that we are unified." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"So I think it's very important, as you have heard from so many incredible leaders for us at every moment in time and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"I love Venn diagrams. I do. I love Venn diagrams. So, the three circles — and you can do more! Nobody says a Venn diagram has to only be three circles, right?" —Vice President Kamala Harris
"In the Western hemisphere, that is where the Caribbean is. We are also in the Western Hemisphere. They are our neighbors." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"We were all doing a tour of the library here and talking about the significance of the passage of time, right? ... The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to passage of time. There is such great significance to the passage of time when you think of a day in the life of our children." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"We must, together, work together to see where we are, where we are headed, where we are going and our vision for where we should be, but also see it as a moment, yes, to, together, address the challenges." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time ... there is such great significance to the passage of time." —Vice President Kamala Harris
" ... to continue to do the work that we have that is a priority ... as it relates to what we must do in terms of continuing to work together." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"Um, we have definitely extended the — and I, it's something that I think we need to keep doing, awareness about what we have to do on Pell grants, and I can follow up with you on specifically what we've been doing." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"So I am here because this is a community in the Mississippi Delta that has a long history of being part of America's history, um, including having the needs that should be met ... " —Vice President Kamala Harris
"Space is exciting!" —Vice President Kamala Harris
"So, during Women's History Month, we celebrate and we honor the women who made history throughout history, who saw what could be unburdened by what had been ... We see the suffragists, the riveters, the marchers, the mothers and sisters and aunts and grandmothers and daughters, all the giants upon whose broad shoulders we stand." —
"You need to get to go and need to be able to get where you need to go to do the work and get home." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"Great aspiration of our nation has been to expand freedom. ... But the expansion of freedom clearly is not inevitable, and it certainly is not something that just happens." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"We also recognize just as it has been in the United States, for Jamaica, one of the issues that has been presented as an issue that is economic in the way of its impact has been the pandemic ... So, to that end, we are announcing today also that we will assist Jamaica in COVID recovery by assisting in terms of the recovery efforts in Jamaica that have been essential to, I believe, what is necessary to strengthen not only the issue of public health but also the economy." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"I think that, to be very honest with you, I do believe that we should have rightly believed, but we certainly believe that certain issues are just settled. Certain issues are just settled," —Vice President Kamala Harris
"That's on top of everything else that we know and don't know yet based on what we've just been able to see and because we've seen it or not doesn't mean it hasn't happened. But just limit it to what we have seen." —Vice President Kamala Harris
"Culture is a reflection of our moment and our time, right? And present culture is the way we express how we're feeling about the moment and we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment that is a reflection of joy ‘cause you know — it comes in the morning." —Vice President Kamala Harris, New Orleans, June 30, 2023
"I have fought for many who have harmed other human beings." —Kamala Harris, November 2, 2024
"Democrats could regret calling Trump and his supporters ‘weird.’" —Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, July 29, 2024
"I'm excited about electric school buses. I LOVE electric school buses. I just love them! For so many reasons. Maybe because I went to school on a school bus. Hey, raise your hand if you went to school on a school bus!" —Vice President Kamala Harris
"So here’s the thing. Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus? Right? Can you raise your hand if you love a yellow school bus? Right?" —Kamala Harris, Seattle, October 26, 2022
Billion$ on electric $chool bu$e$: "Three years after the $5 billion electric school bus program was started ... entrusted to Vice President Kamala Harris ... just 60 school buses, across 27 school districts have been deployed." —Thomas Catenacci, July 30, 2024
"We cannot let this, we've never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around, 16, we have never, never let our democracy sakes second fiddle, way they, we can both have a democracy and ... correct the public health." —Joe Biden
"One, we have to uh, depend on what the president's going to do right now. And first of all, he has to, uh, tell uh, uh—wait til the case is before anything happens. Look the whole idea is he's got to get in place things that were shortages of." —Joe Biden
"South Korea is ... within miles of the border of North Korea." —Hillary Clinton
"If ignorance is bliss, then why aren't there more happy people?" —graffiti
"It's much easier to be critical than correct." —Benjamin Disreali
"I would love to spend a lot of my time venting and yelling at people." ... "I ... talk to experts ... so I know whose [tuchus] to kick." —Barack Hussein Obama, II, 44th President of the United States [Reading the audiobook of his third autobiography has Obama speaking for an astounding 29 hours straight.]
✓ "You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream – the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order – or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism." —Ronald Wilson Reagan, 'A Time For Choosing'
"Look it UP to write it DOWN so what is RIGHT> is <LEFT." —John Gаrrideb
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." —United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
"62% of Americans say the political climate prevents them from sharing their political views." —Cato Institute national survey, 2020
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." —President Harry S Truman, Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950
■ "When true democracy goes away people get hurt. It has real consequences. This is not an abstraction. ... Government starts telling you what books you can read and which ones you can't. Dissidents start getting locked up. Reporters start getting locked up if they're not towing the party line. ... Corruption reigns because there's no accountability." —Barack Hussein Obama, Philadelphia, November 5, 2022
"There's something amazing about America's democracy, it's got a gyroscope and just when you think it's going to go off the cliff, it rights itself." —Albert Einstein writing to his son, c. 1950's
Using fear and deception to achieve government control:
"Terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat for the homeland today. Not ISIS, not Al-Qaeda, white supremacists.[sic]" —Joe Biden, Tulsa Oklahoma, June 2, 2021
"My statement is that domestic violent extremism represents the greatest terrorism related threat to the homeland." —Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Capitol Hill, April 28, 2022
"In the FBI's view, the top domestic violence extremist threat we face comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocate for superiority of the white race." —Attorney General Merrick Garland, Capitol Hill, May 12, 2021
["The federal government is proceeding with plans to build a new FBI headquarters complex twice the size of the Pentagon building." —J. Michael Waller, February 1, 2023]
Wrongthink Thoughtcrime Doubleplusungood: "The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by ... false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information ... "
—Department of Homeland Security Bulletin, February 7, 2022 [See above; Click here for complete DHS Bulletin.]
"We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor we're aware of." —'Men in Black', 1997
"No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is an opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression. Such must be the rule if authority is to be reconciled with freedom·" —Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Whitney v. California, 1927
"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down." —Frederick Douglass
'The most commonly banned science book': "Darwin, Charles. 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.'" —James Cummins Bookseller, 'Banned and Burned' Catalog of censored books
Censorship is 'the first step into a thousand years of darkness'.
Censorship is Un-American.
Courtesy Smithsonian Museum of
American History and Rock the Vote.
"In a free state every man may think what he likes, and say what he thinks." —Baruch Spinoza
"Internet culture ... has a marked petty-and-vindictive streak. People can get criticized severely for almost anything, because ... well, because they can, I guess." —Michael C. Johnston
Culture War: " ... for the Democratic Party's liberal adherents, silencing their adversaries has become their primary project. ... In modern-day American liberalism ... censorship is a virtual religion. They simply cannot abide the idea that anyone who thinks differently or sees the world differently than they should be heard." —Glenn Greenwald, January 29, 2022
Big Business & Big Brother: "A government that can censor its critics has license for every atrocity. It is the beginning of totalitarianism. There's never been a time in history when we look back, and the guys who were censoring people were the good guys! Once you start censoring, you're on your way to dystopia and totalitarianism!" —Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., July 21, 2023
What to believe?: "I don’t believe the side that censors." —Dennis Prager
Censorship using 'Fact Checkers': "Political and corporate elites empower NewsGuard to censor anyone that doesn't comply with their agenda. That's why they hate anyone who fights for the truth, like PragerU. We have educated millions of Americans about NewsGuard—one of the largest and most influential 'fact-checkers' employed by Big Tech. ... NewsGuard wants to control the narrative on any and every topic." —PragerU
['Fight to Save America!': "PragerU's age-appropriate and educational materials are only problematic to those who want to teach Critical Race Theory, gender fluidity, that math and objective truth are racist, and that America is a terrible place." —PragerU CEO Marissa Streit]
"Over the past few years, Americans have lived through an unprecedented surge in censorship. ... Big Tech companies silenced Americans for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights. ... This censorship cartel is an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms and must be completely dismantled." —Commissioner Brendan Carr, Federal Communications Commission, November 13, 2024
"We're being censored." —Manhattan Institute
"Our reading lists would be very short, indeed, if we reserved our sources to only those we could prove to be perfect." —Connor Boyack
"When I complain about Google's censorship, my wife tells me to 'shut up'." —Husband
Western Values: "The Left doesn't care 'cause they love ideas, not people." —Dennis Prager, August 3, 2018
Gaslighting: "Psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories ... " —Merriam Webster Dictionary
"Media helped hide the real Joe Biden by censoring Hunter stories." —Miranda Devine, 'New York Post', November 28, 2021
"... Twitter ... has interfered in elections." —Elon Musk, November 30, 2022
'Twitter Files': "Shortly after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the billionaire entrepreneur pledged to release internal documents that would reveal how Twitter engaged in free speech suppression under previous ownership. The files were released to two independent journalists ... " —'The Western Journal', December 9, 2022
The Twitter Files: "An existential threat ... One of the most important news stories of our time. The Twitter Files story encompasses, and to a large extent connects, every major political scandal of the Trump-Biden era. ... the Twitter Files reveal an unholy alliance between Big Tech and the deep state designed to throttle free speech and maintain an official narrative through censorship and propaganda. ... going back years: the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, Twitter's secret policy of shadow banning, President Trump's suspension from Twitter after the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot, the co-opting of Twitter by the FBI to suppress 'election disinformation' ahead of the 2020 election, Twitter's involvement in a Pentagon overseas psy-op campaign, its silencing of dissent from the official Covid narrative, its complicity in the Russiagate hoax, and its gradual capitulation to the direct involvement of the U.S. intelligence community—with the FBI as a go-between—in content moderation. ... " —John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist, January 2023
"The Hill has removed its comment section, as there are many other forums for readers to participate in the conversation ... on Facebook and Twitter." —The Hill
'UN Official: We Own the Science': "World Economic Forum member brags about partnership with Google to censor critics. ... 'CNN is ... part of a political war on who owns the narrative.' ... 'Great Narrative' project to accelerate propaganda by merging government and corporate power to censor any viewpoints they deem politically undesirable." —Jamie White, October 2, 2022
★ News Censorship = Election Tampering: "If unaware Biden voters knew about the Hunter Biden laptop probe, 16% would not have voted for Biden." —Media Research Center, poll, November 9-18, 2020
'Media's Bias of Omission': "Biden Scandals Get the Silent Treatment. ... National evening newscasts on ABC, NBC and CBS. From June 8 to June 12 ... the three major networks dedicated 291 minutes to scandals involving former President Trump and exactly zero minutes to scandals involving the current president." —Joe Concha, July 9, 2023
Main stream media ignores Biden scandals: "Network coverage last week: Trump January 6 indictment – 162 minutes; Biden scandals/Devin Archer – 8 minutes." —Media Research Center, July 30 – August 5, 2023
Final Presidential debate, 2020: "I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.[sic] ... I've not taken a single penny from any country whatsoever.[sic]" —Joe Biden
"This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead." —Elon Musk, November 28, 2022
"Whoever controls the media controls the mind." —Jim Morrison
'Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy':
[Poll:] "Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle? – Yes 29.6%; No 70.4%. ...
Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy." ... "Seize the memes of production!" —Elon Musk, March 26-27, 2022, [who then purchased 9.2% of Twitter's stock, becoming its largest shareholder! ... later becoming Twitter's owner.]
'Wikipedia co-founder says site is now 'propaganda' for left-leaning 'establishment'': "If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power ... There's a global enforcement of a certain point of view on issues ... " —Larry Sanger, Wikipedia Co-founder
"Google's Gmail censorship cost GOP candidates $2B since 2019, Republicans say, citing new study [that] found that Gmail flagged most GOP fundraising emails as spam, while allowing through most Democrat emails." —Peter Hasson, April 13, 2022
"Don't be evil." —Its corporate code of conduct which, by engaging in censorship, Google has failed to follow
Elite capture: "Peter Schweizer says that, in a quarter-century as an investigative journalist, this is the scariest investigation he has ever conducted. That the Chinese government seeks to infiltrate American institutions is hardly surprising. What is wholly new, however, are the number of American elites who are eager to help the Chinese dictatorship in its quest for global hegemony. Presidential families [$31 million from the top of communist China's intelligence service to the Bidens], Silicon Valley gurus, Wall Street high rollers, Ivy League universities, even professional athletes—all willing to sacrifice American strength and security on the altar of personal enrichment." —'Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win'
"Hunter Biden, partners aided Chinese bid to corner nuclear energy market with U.S. tech, memos show. Detailed plan obtained by congressional investigators show Biden sought to help CEFC China Energy buy Westinghouse, the premier maker of U.S. nuclear reactors." —Steven Richards and John Solomon, March 13, 2024
Hunter Biden's Laptop From Hell: "I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years ... It's really hard. But don't worry, unlike Pop [Joe Biden, aka the Big Guy, aka Robert L. Peters, aka Robin Ware, aka JRB Ware], I won't make you give me half your salary." —Hunter Biden text to his daughter Naomi, January 2019, New Year Post
"The Big Guy: How a President and His Son Sold Out America." —Miranda Devine
"I concede that we need some new conspiracy theories, but it’s because all the old ones turned out to be true." —Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana), October 7, 2024
★ Deplatforming = Election Tampering: "Censorship, cancel culture intimidation, wokeism, viewpoint discrimination and deplatforming are Un-American because the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court all guarantee your natural unalienable right to free speech." —Charles Culpepper
"Facebook and Twitter Limit Sharing New York Post Story about Joe Biden." —Shannon Bond, NPR, October 14, 2020
"Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny. " —Simone Weil, 'Lectures in Philosophy'
Left's Ideological conformity enforcement mechanism: "First, activists create a panic about misinformation or offensive speech. Second, the social media platforms try to meet them halfway by introducing measures like warning labels. Third, the activists realize they've drawn blood, and continue to push for outright censorship. Finally, the social media platforms give in and remove the offending voice from their platforms altogether." —Zaid Jilani, 'The Blue Stack Strikes Back', February 8, 2022
A Twitter Mob is a Religious Experience: " ... To put it simply, social media mobs transmute painful emotions into a belief in one's own righteousness. This is also what religious experiences do. ... these social media systems very clearly furnish people with pre-packaged, group virtue. In the end, the whole exercise boils down to a simple assumption: that complaining in the prescribed way makes you righteous. And that's just foolish." —Paul Rosenberg
"Disinformation" = Censorship: "Facebook Banned 1.3 BILLION Accounts Over Three Months to Combat 'Fake' and 'Harmful' Content." —Melissa Holzberg, 'Forbes', March 22, 2021
["22 Million tweets labeled 'misinformation' on Twitter;
859 Million tweets collected in databases for 'misinformation' analysis;
120 analysts monitoring social media 'misinformation' in up to 20-hour shifts;
15 tech platforms monitored for 'misinformation' often in real-time;
<1 hour average response time between government partners and tech platforms;
Dozens of 'misinformation narratives' targeted for platform-wide throttling; and
Hundreds of millions of individual Facebook posts, YouTube videos, TikToks, and tweets impacted, due to 'misinformation' Terms of Service policy changes that DHS partners openly plotted and bragged tech companies would never have done without DHS partner insistence and 'huge regulatory pressure' from government." —Mike Benz, November 9, 2022]
'The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch': "Facebook bans Trump for at least two years." —Musadiq Bidar, CBS News, June 5, 2021
"The answer to 1984 is 1776." —PSA33_3
Poll: "75% Don't trust social media to make fair content moderation decisions." —Cato, December 15, 2021
The corporate Big Tech censors are failing: "Facebook shares are getting crushed today, down almost 25%. The company's value has fallen today by more than Boeing and General Motors are WORTH. Why? For the first time ever, the number of Facebook users is shrinking. (The ridiculous rebranding to 'Meta Platforms' probably doesn't help.) Apparently deplatforming every person and group who has a non-woke thought isn't working out as well as Mark Zuckerberg had hoped." —Alex Berenson, February 3, 2022
["Zuckerberg's net worth drops by $70 billion [i.e., in half, in 2022] after censoring President Trump and pursuing idiotic 'Metaverse'." —Reed Cooper, September 23, 2022]
"Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude." —Viktor E. Frankl
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?·" —Thomas Jefferson
"You shall not criticize anything or anybody in the government any longer or you shall go to jail." —Progressive California Senator Hiram Johnson explaining President Woodrow Wilson's (D) Sedition Act, 1918
"Federal investigators asked banks to search and filter customer transactions by using terms like 'MAGA' and 'Trump' as part of an investigation into Jan. 6, warning that purchases of 'religious texts' could indicate 'extremism'." —House Judiciary Committee, January 8, 2024
"FinCEN used large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression." —House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan
"Keywords FinCEN recommended banks search to find ‘Extremism Indicators’: Trump, MAGA, Bass Pro Shops, Cabela’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Antifa, Biden, Kamala, Pelosi, Schumer, Pence, Capitol."
"Leaked NSA document reveals massive woke glossary pushing critical race theory, gender ideology at intelligence agency ... 34 page glossary defines hundreds of social justice terms including 'white fragility,' 'transmisogyny,' and 'settler colonialism'." —Spencer Lindquist, November 15, 2023
Progressive Woke Tyranny — Turning America into Communist China: "In the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong. Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values.[sic]" —Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods, 'The Atlantic', April 25, 2020
Debate: "This House Believes Wokeness Has Gone Too Far." —Konstantin Kisin, Oxford Union, January 13, 2023
Leftism – America's Cultural Revolution: "Victimhood replaces accomplishment as the standard of merit; accusation replaces disagreement as the means of settling disputes; false compassion becomes the primary method of manipulating citizens into compliance; and the whole scheme is enforced with the threat of violence: obey, or suffer the consequences. ... " [More] —Christopher F. Rufo, Manhattan Institute 'City Journal', September 24, 2023
'A BIG threat...': "The left is indoctrinating 5-year-olds with perverse sexualization propaganda. Changing the definition of words and phrases like 'woman,' 'vote by mail,' and 'recession' to fit their fanatical agenda. Calling parents 'domestic terrorists.' And convincing an entire generation of young boys and girls that they can change their gender if they 'think' they were 'born in the wrong body.'" —Marissa Streit, CEO, PragerU ["Videos viewed more than 7 BILLION times, even with Google and YouTube censoring."]
"Politics is downstream from culture." —Andrew Breitbart
Replacing western culture: "Europe is committing suicide." —Douglas Murray
"Unwoke, Inc. proves that you can push back and make a cultural impact by providing non-woke alternatives in academia, culture, and business." —Amala Ekpunobi
'The lunacy of the left': "Constant woke agendas in every facet of culture—from gender confusion and overt sexualization of young kids to demanding reparations for slavery and stoking fear about a climate crisis. ... We don’t rely on incendiary rhetoric or clickbait headlines that have poisoned so much of the news and culture. We simply promote truth, reason, and goodness – and we do it in a way that’s fun, entertaining, and engaging for young people." —PragerU
'Position of the American Left': "'Men give birth'; sexual identity is 'nonbinary'; young children should attend drag queen events; a person's sex or 'gender' is not a biological fact, but a subjective feeling; men who say they are women must be allowed to compete against women in sports and be placed with women in women's prisons; young girls who say they are boys and want their breasts surgically removed should have their breasts removed ... among the many examples of left-wing nihilism." —Dennis Prager, February 21, 2023
'Fighting for Common Sense in a World That’s Lost its Mind': "It was the most terrifying experience I ever had. I had just given a speech when agitators stormed the room. A man – wearing a woman's dress – punched me twice. Then I spent three hours barricaded in a classroom while leftist college students just outside the door yelled the most obscene things at me, including 'f*cking transphobic b*tch!' All because I said things like ... men are men – and men are not women. ... there are only two sexes. ... men have no business being in women's locker rooms and playing women's sports. ... " —Riley Gains, champion swimmer
"Since 2003, biological men (who self-identify as females) have captured at least 28 women’s sports titles. Girls are being deprived of championship titles, college scholarships, the opportunity to compete in the Olympics—and the simple sense of accomplishment. This will continue unless something is done to push back against the radical left-wing gender activists." —PragerU
"Biden's CDC is urging schools to avoid the words 'male' and 'female' in sexual health education." —Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK)
'Equitable Math' – 'Dismantling Racism in Mathematics' – 'Latest Plan to Collapse Civilization': "White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms [sic] when ... the focus is on getting the 'right' answer." —Paul Bond, 'Newsweek', February 23, 2021
"US Navy used drag queen influencer to attract a 'wide range' of new troops as recruitment plummets." —Micaela Burrow, May 1, 2023
"We shouldn't get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can't. A man is a man, and a woman is a woman. That's just common sense." —British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak
The San Francisco 'Guaranteed Income for Trans People (GIFT) Program Application' lists alternative
"Pronouns (Check all that apply): She/her/hers; He/him/his; They/them/theirs; It/its/its; Co/co/cos; Zie/zim/zis; Ze/hir/hirs; Xe/xem/xyrs; Ey/em/eirs; E/em/eirs; Per/per/pers; Fae/faer/faers; Ae/aer/aers; Tey/ter/ters; Ve/ver/vis; No pronouns/just name; Declined; Not Listed:_________ ".
The San Francisco 'Guaranteed Income for Trans People (GIFT) Program Application' also lists 97 alternative
"Gender Identity (Check all that apply): Cis-gender woman; Woman; Transgender Woman; Woman of Trans experience; Woman with a history of gender transition; Trans feminine; Feminine-of-center; MTF (male-to-female); Demigirl; T-girl; Transgirl; Sistergirl; Cis-gender man; Man; Transgender man; Man of Trans experience; Man with a history of gender transition; Trans masculine; Masculine-of-center; FTM (female-to-male); Demiboy; T-boy; Transguy; Brotherboy; Trans; Transgender; Transsexual; Non-binary; Genderqueer; Agender; Xenogender; Fem; Femme; Butch; Boi; Stud; Aggressive (AG); Androgyne; Tomboy; Gender outlaw; Gender non-conforming; Gender variant; Gender fluid; Genderfuck; Bi-gender; Multi-gender; Pangender; Gender creative; Gender expansive; Third gender; Neutrois; Omnigender; Polygender; Graygender; Intergender; Maverique; Novigender; Two-spirit; Hijra; Kathoey; Muxe; Khanith/Xanith; X-gender; MTX; FTX; Bakla; Mahu; Fa’afafine; Waria; Palao’ana; Ashtime; Mashoga; Mangaiko; Chibados; Tida wena; Bixa’ah; Alyha; Hwame; Lhamana; Nadleehi; Dilbaa; Winkte; Ninauposkitzipxpe; Machi-embra; Quariwarmi; Chuckchi; Whakawahine; Fakaleiti; Calabai; Calalai; Bissu; Acault; Travesti; Questioning; I don't use labels; Declined; Not Listed:_________ ".
"The United States of America has long been the lone beacon of freedom and sensibility in a chaotic world. Now, she is under threat from a lethal ideology that seeks to humiliate and erase anyone who does not bow at its altar. The threat in question? Wokeism. ... Wokeism has already seeped into every aspect of American society." —Charlie Kirk
"One person's socialism is another person's neighborliness." —Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, August 6, 2024
Required Woke Medical Student Oath [Harmful substitute Hippocratic Oath]: " ... Our institution is located on Dakota land. ... We commit to uprooting the legacy and perpetuation of structural violence deeply embedded within the health care system. We recognize inequities built by past and present traumas rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, the gender binary, ableism and all forms of oppression. ... we commit to promoting a culture of antiracism ... We pledge to honor all indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by western medicine. Knowing that health is intimately connected with our environment, we commit to healing our planet and communities. ... We commit to collaborating with social, political and additional systems to advance health equity. ... and hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes and biases. ... " —The University of Minnesota School of Medicine, Twin Cities, Incoming Class of 2026, White Coat Ceremony, August, 2022
[Making activists instead of doctors:
• "Top med school putting wokeism ahead of giving America good doctors: Elite medical schools are deliberately recruiting woke activists, jeopardizing their mission of training physicians. ... Medical schools are rushing down a dangerous road. These institutions have long lowered application and educational standards in the name of diversity; now they are enacting an ideological litmus test for future physicians. Recruiting woke activists instead of the most qualified candidates will both undermine trust in health care and lead to worse health outcomes for patients. That’s the last thing medical schools should do." —Stanley Goldfarb, M.D. and Laura L. Morgan, R.N., September 2, 2022
• "It's past time for reasonable doctors to stand up and denounce this poison. Western medical science and shamanic healing are not equally valid cancer treatments. ... " ... "They are being inducted in the cult of [Critical Race Theory]." —Christopher F. Rufo, October 9, 2022
• "SHOCK: ... The medical students swore an oath to wokeness. ... It appears the entire Class of 2026 is infected with a raging case of woke microaggressions. ... there is an effort afoot to jumpstart a race war in this nation ... " —Now Liberty
• "What arguably stands out most is the group’s denouncement of science." —Alex Parker, October 3, 2022]
What’s Behind America’s Doctor Crisis?: " ... DEI ... You have to be out of your mind to become a doctor—and that’s whose signing up. ... There will be no good doctors within 10 years." —Lloyd Chambers
'New England Journal of Medicine promotes racially-segregated teaching': "Racial Affinity Group Caucusing in Medical Education — A Key Supplement to Antiracism Curricula." —University of California San Francisco Medical School, NEJM, 2023 ["Do No Harm, called the idea of [racially] segregated [medical school] classes 'morally abhorrent.'"]
"There is nothing more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Americans' confidence in higher education has fallen to 36%, sharply lower than in two prior readings." —Gallop Poll, 2023
'Why I'm Leaving the University [of California]': "Signs of ... fear are omnipresent. ... UCLA as a whole is showing all the signs of Woke capture that typify the contemporary U.S. university. ... [colleagues] fired, all for dissenting ... from Woke orthodoxy ... Statements recounting one's activities on behalf of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion are mandatory in faculty job applications and in promotion dossiers. ... Also typical of elite U.S. universities, UCLA is awash in anti-Zionism, a.k.a. thinly disguised Jew-hatred [anti-semitism]. ... it's a good bet that the grip of Woke orthodoxy on the University of California, and most other U.S. universities, will tighten in the years to come. The younger faculty tend to be more Woke than their elders. Administrators and student 'protesters' perform elaborately choreographed routines that end with the former enacting policies that they wanted to enact anyway, for which the latter's public temper tantrums serve as a pretext. ... I strongly suspect that mainstream U.S. higher education is morally and intellectually corrupt, beyond the possibility of self-repair ... increasingly brazen rejection of two values ... meritocracy and free debate." —'Refugee' UCLA Professor Joseph H. Manson, July 4, 2022
"UCLA medical students are taught ‘Anti-white, anti-American hatred.’ ... mandated to learn about 'colonialism' and 'liberation' during their first year in medical school. ... have to take a class called 'Structural Racism and Health Equity' which teaches them about 'Indigenous resistance' and 'white colonialism.' ... If you want to understand how DEI and anti-white, anti-American hatred have been mainlined into the medical profession, you need to see this. ... they put lives at risk. Medical students are being taught to disregard science, and instead to build resentment towards many of their patients" —Ben Shapiro, March 2, 2024
‘DEI official at UCLA School of Medicine massively plagiarized her dissertation on DEI’: “Recent headlines about UCLA School of Medicine suggest that the institution has lost its focus. Instead of brushing up on organic chemistry, its students were subjected to lessons on 'Indigenous womxn' and 'two-spirits.' Future doctors had to take a class on 'structural racism' and were led in a 'Free Palestine' chant by a Hamas-praising guest speaker. The school made plans to segregate students by race for courses on left-wing ideology, and two of its psychiatry residents championed 'revolutionary suicide.'" —Luke Rosiak and Christopher F. Rufo
['UCLA remains silent': "Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School, said that the course was promoting 'dangerous misinformation' and that the medical school had substituted 'Marxist ideology' for medicine." ... "'Pedagogical Malpractice' ... UCLA 'has centered this required course on a socialist/Marxist ideology that is totally inappropriate.'" ... ]
'Up to half of UCLA med students are failing basic medical competency tests, affirmative action to blame': "Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a 'failed medical school' ... 'I have students on their rotation who don't know anything' ... UCLA dropped from 6th to 18th place in ... rankings ... more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics ... basic medical knowledge ... ['23.8% of a class FAIL 3 ( THREE!!! ) OR MORE ... EXAMS'] ... only 5 percent of students fail each test nationally, the rates are much higher at UCLA, having increased tenfold in some subjects since 2020 ... students have never been more poorly prepared ... 'Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students.' ... affirmative action, illegal in California since 1996, is to blame ... " —Aaron Sibarium, May 23, 2024
Out with the Dean of Meritocracy, in with the Dean of Mediocrity: "We need courage to reject what American Universities have become." —Stuart Varney, January 4, 2024
'On The Road To Dystopia': "['political indoctrination ... and systemic antisemitism'] UCLA med school forced first-year students to attend lecture of Hamas supporter who blasted modern medicine as ‘white science,’ made them pray to ‘mama Earth’." —Melissa Koenig, April 4, 2024
"The Academy Has Fallen. The Children Are Lost. Get your money and your kids out of this institution. It is infested. It is sick. And it is the world's leading social problem. ... " [More] —Max Borders, Novovember 9, 2023
'The University of California revives Cold War loyalty oaths as DEI statements': "Our institutions are being lost completely. You can either just passively sit by or you can push back." —John D. Haltigan, Ph.D.
"A former English writing professor at the Pennsylvania State University, is suing the institution after being subject to racially discriminatory policies at the campus for being white. Penn State has implemented a university-wide policy and so-called strategic plan, euphemistically labeled anti-racism, ... singles out white employees for harassment and discrimination under the label of white privilege, white supremacy, and other racial stereotypes that attribute negative values and characteristics to employees ... based upon the color of their skin rather than the content of their character." —Naveen Athrappully, July 1, 2023
"For the first time, women make up 50% of Caltech's incoming undergraduate class. This accomplishment is the result of sustained efforts to improve gender equity on campus and in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)." —California Institute of Technology, August 1, 2024
"Starbucks is paying its executives to make sure that the company discriminates against white people to keep white employment below a maximum established by the company. That is discrimination by race, flat out. It is very, very illegal." —Scott Shepard
'Your Pilot Is a DEI Hire. Good Luck!'
Woke 'United Airlines Announces They Will No Longer Hire the Best Pilots': "United Airlines [the only major U.S. airline to own a flight school] is taking a bizarre business risk and announcing to the world that it will no longer hire the best pilots available but will instead make sure that 50% of their trainees for flying you around the world will be women and minorities—talent and skill be damned. I'm not making this up. I wish I were." —Megan Fox, April 7, 2021
FAA website on DEI hiring practices: "Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring ... They include ... severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability ... " —FAA.gov
["What could possibly go wrong when people carefully selected for being extremely stupid or very crazy are in charge of the safety of airplanes?... I mean it’s not like the doors are falling off the planes ... Oh, wait!" —George Clark]
Woke skies: "British Royal Air Force no longer offering pilot jobs to white men — only women and ethnic minorities may apply." —Jim Hoft, August 16, 2022
"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." —George Orwell, 'Animal Farm' ('The most celebrated political satire of the Twentieth Century.')
"DEI is garbage. It’s fascist totalitarianism." —Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet
Run on the bank: "Management incompetence rises as the square of DEI+ESG." —Lloyd Chambers
'Rebranding': “Have you guys heard of DEI? It stands for ‘Dumb Evil Idiots' ... Environmental Social Governance (ESG), 'Exploiting Seems Good.'" —Sean Ono Lennon, son of Beatles' John Lennon, January 3, 2024
ESG: "'Elitists, Socialists, and Grifters,' as well as 'Erasing Savings and Growth.'" —Consumers’ Research
DEI = 'Didn’t Earn It': "If you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for Discrimination, Exclusion and Indoctrination." —Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
"Dozens of major investment houses embraced ESG proposals at the expense of shareholders. ... ESG investing strategies may be costing tens of thousands of dollars per client in lost retirement income." —PR Newswire, May 17, 2023
"ESG ... or environmental, social, and corporate governance ... is liberal activisim masquerading as corporate responsibility – and it's bad for investors ... for business and your retirement account ... If you're a middle-class American, chances are your retirement account quietly funds far-left priorities like climate alarmism, racial hiring quotas, and other Democratic hobby horses." —Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Andy Barr, July 25, 2023
"Florida is the place where woke goes to die." —Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, August 16, 2022
"University of Florida fires all DEI employees: ‘No place in our public Universities.’" —Spencer Lindquist, March 1, 2024
'University of North Carolina repeals DEI mandates, pledges to focus on institutional neutrality': "I think that DEI in a lot of people’s minds is divisiveness, exclusion and indoctrination." —Marty Kotis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, May, 2024
"Harvard nixes DEI statements as requirement for faculty employment applications. ... eliminating the requirement for prospective tenure-track faculty members to submit a statement on how they will promote diversity, inclusion, and belonging." —Kassy Akiva, June 4, 2024
"Diversity, equity, inclusion workers fret companies aren't hiring them anymore ... The high-priced jobs faced massive cuts in tech layoffs ... industries are letting go of these high-priced positions in 2023. Companies are gutting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) jobs while workers were leaving these fields at a higher rate than non-DEI positions ... " —Kristine Parks, February 20, 2023
'Dangerous trajectory!': "Students across our nation are being cheated from attaining a quality education by misguided bureaucrats, corrupt teachers unions, and anti-American activists infiltrating our schools. While political leaders promote 'gender fluid' restrooms and abandon academic standards, our communities continue to fall apart." —PragerU
'Removing Woke [Marxist propaganda] from High Schools': "We are also going to eliminate all DEI [diversity, inclusion, and equity] and CRT [critical race theory] bureaucracies in the state of Florida. No funding, and that will wither on the vine." —Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), January 31, 2023
['DeSantis deals blow to woke takeover of education': "College Board removes CRT ['cultural Marxism'] topics from AP African-American studies course: Teachings on black lives matter, the case for reparations, and black queer studies."]
["Neo-Marxist ideas are not only false but dangerous."]
"Elite institutions are waging a war on the West. The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion bureaucracies that are enabling that war must be dismantled. ... My colleagues and I at the Manhattan Institute and City Journal are fighting to restore meritocratic standards and colorblind equality. ... unleash the potential of all Americans and dismantle the disparate-impact thinking that jeopardizes civilizational achievement." —Heather Mac Donald
Affirmative action: "Just 20 percent of Black Americans said [Pew poll] they felt ... efforts to increase racial and ethnic diversity... had put them at an advantage. And strikingly, significantly more — 35 percent — actually said they felt such Affirmative Action policies had put them at a disadvantage." —Matt Vespa, July 6, 2023
Beijing Winter Olympics Athlete Censorship Warning: "Do not risk incurring the anger of the Chinese government because they are ruthless." —House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, February 3, 2022
War Censorship: "The United Nations has advised ... against using the terms 'war' or 'invasion' to describe Russia's attack on Ukraine. ... refer to the fighting as a 'conflict' or 'military offensive' — even as Russian troops target Ukrainian civilians and more than 2 million people flee to neighboring countries. ... Roskomnadzor, the agency that regulates Russian media, ordered local outlets to delete the words 'assault,' 'invasion' or 'declaration of war' two days after the attack was launched. The Russian parliament then passed a new law imposing prison terms of up to 15 years and a fine of up to $14,000 for spreading 'fake' news about the military, which led a number of international news organizations to go dark or suspend operations in Russia." —Mark Moore, March 8, 2022
Biden White House admits censorship collusion with social media companies: 
"We are in regular touch with the social media platforms and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff ... This is a big issue of misinformation ... We have increased disinformation research and tracking ... We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation ... " —Jen Psaki, President Biden's Press Secretary, The White House, July 15, 2021
"I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets, please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that's on your shows. It has to stop." —Joe Biden, January 13, 2022
Facebook confirmation: "We have partnered with government experts, health authorities and researchers to take aggressive action against misinformation [sic] about COVID-19 and vaccines to protect public health. So far, we've removed more than 18 million pieces of COVID misinformation, removed accounts that repeatedly break these rules ... " —Facebook spokesperson, c. July 15, 2021
"Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:
1. Biden-Harris Admin 'pressured' Facebook to censor Americans.
2. Facebook censored Americans.
3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Big win for free speech." —House Judiciary GOP, August 26, 2024
"One of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press ... most audacious, manipulative, secretive, and gravest abuses of power and infringements of First Amendment rights by the federal government in American history ... " —Daily Wire/Federalist/Texas Lawsuit
"How the world’s biggest brands seek to control online speech." [More] —Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, July 10, 2024
How can a Supreme Court Justice not understand that the purpose of the Bill of Rights is to intentionally hamstring the government?: "My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government [censorship] in significant ways ... " —Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, March 18, 2024
["Journalist Glenn Greenwald pointed out on Twitter that 'hamstringing the government' in its ability to censor speech is 'quite literally the entire point of the First Amendment and Bill of Rights.'"]
'Election Integrity Partnership': "The Weaponization of 'Disinformation' ... How the Federal Government Partnered With Universities to Censor Americans' Political Speech. ... The report reveals how the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Global Engagement Center (GEC, within the State Department) coordinated with Stanford University and other entities to create the Election Integrity Partnership to censor Americans' speech in the lead-up to the 2020 election. It outlines how the Election Integrity Project (EIP) was created in the summer of 2020 to provide a way for the federal government to launder its censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny. The report also reveals for the first time internal emails from EIP members stating that the EIP was created 'at the request of DHS/CISA'." —Committee on the Judiciary
and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, U.S. House of Representatives, November 6, 2023
"Fact-checkers with too much power ... control the narrative on any and every topic." —Marissa Streit
Advocating for Censorship: "The issue is not that the companies before us today are taking too many posts down. The issue is that they are leaving too many dangerous posts up." —Senator Edward Markey (D-MA), Capitol Hill, October 28, 2020
'FBI bragging about spying and censoring Americans': "The sophistication of the private sector is improving and particularly important, the level of cooperation between the private sector and the government, especially the FBI, I think, has made significant strides." —FBI Director Christopher Wray, World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 19, 2023
["FBI influence was considerably more significant than just James Baker, the FBI’s former general counsel who later worked in the same role for Twitter."]
"To protect free speech, Congress must prohibit the government's collusion with Big Tech and other media organizations." —Senator Rand Paul, M.D. (R-KY)
"The US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals found that ... the White House ... Surgeon General, FBI, and US Centers for Disease Control 'coerced or significantly encouraged social media platforms to moderate content' to curb COVID-19 disinformation, a move that violated the First Amendment." —Emily Price, September 10, 2023
"Truth can get you fired." —Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., former Professor of Medicine at Harvard
Declining Academic Freedom at Universities: "Over the course of a long lifetime, I have witnessed a serious decline in tolerance and respect for freedom of speech in the academy." —Milton Friedman
Intolerance: "78.3% of millennials block family on Facebook over political posts." —Time2Play
Frightening that a growing majority of Americans now are against the first amendment guarantee of freedom of speech: "Most Americans say the U.S. government and technology companies should each take steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits freedom of information. In 2018 39%, in 2021 48%, and in 2023 55%." —Pew Research Poll, July 20, 2023
'Young Dems more likely to despise the other party – College students who would not ____ someone who voted for the opposing presidential candidate': "5% of Republicans said they wouldn't be friends with someone from the opposite party, compared to 37% of Democrats. 71% of Democrats wouldn't go on a date with someone with opposing views, versus 31% of Republicans. 30% of Democrats — and 7% of Republicans — wouldn't work for someone who voted differently from them." —Generation Lab Poll, November 18–22, 2021
★ Viewpoint discrimination = Election Tampering: "One of the gravest threats to our democracy today is a powerful group of Big Tech corporations that have teamed up with government to 
censor the free speech of the American people. This is not only wrong—it is unconstitutional. ... Big Tech and government agencies are actively coordinating to remove content from the platforms ... The tech companies are doing the government's bidding, colluding to censor unapproved ideas. This coercion and coordination is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has held that Congress can't use private actors to achieve what the Constitution prohibits it from doing itself. In effect, Big Tech has been illegally deputized as the censorship arm of the U.S. government. This should alarm you no matter your political persuasion. It is unacceptable, unlawful and un-American. ... " —Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States, 'Why I'm Suing Big Tech', Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2021
"To stop the spread of disinformation on the Internet, do away with the current advertising-driven business model and instead let consumers sell their own data. The crux of the problem is that model ... you encourage people to spread falsities to get advertising and make money ... " —Siavash Alamouti, winner of IEEE 2022 Marconi Prize
Paypal fine for promoting 'misinformation' or 'hate': "For each violation, PayPal says users are subject to ... 'liquated damages' of $2,500 per violation – with the money being taken directly from a person's PayPal account." —PayPal stock 'fined' 6% [$5 billion] after flood of users cancel over $2,500 'misinformation' debacle
Stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech: "We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable. ... I am excited to send out my first TRUTH on TRUTH Social very soon." —Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States, October 21, 2021
Biden White House demands total silencing on all platforms: " ... create robust enforcement strategies that bridge their properties ... You shouldn't be banned from one [social media] platform and not others for providing misinformation ... " —Jen Psaki, President Biden's Press Secretary, The White House, July 16, 2021
Once upon a time in America: "It's a free country." ... "Land of the free, home of the brave." —Anonymous
"War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength" —1984
Disinformation Governance Board: "We have just established a misinformation and disinformation governance board in the 
Department of Homeland Security to more effectively combat this threat not only to election security but to our homeland security ... " —Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary, Department of Homeland Security, testimony to the House Homeland Security Committee, April 27, 2022
["I confess, I at first thought this announcement was satire. Surely, no American administration would ever use the power of government to sit in judgment on the First Amendment speech of its own citizens. Sadly, I was mistaken. Rather than protecting our border or the American homeland, you have chosen to make policing Americans' speech your priority. This new board is most certainly unconstitutional and should be dissolved immediately." —Senator Josh Hawley, April 28, 2022]
"What's Wrong with Censorship?"
"Truth Cops: Leaked documents outline DHS's plans to police disinformation." —Ken Klippenstein and Lee Fang, October 31, 2022 ["Facebook went as far as creating a special portal for the Department of Homeland Security and government partners where they could log in to report 'disinformation' directly to the company. In order to gain access to the back-door portal, a government or law enforcement email was required." —Marisa Herman, November 1, 2022]
Exploring legal action against Homeland Security: "It's just so un-American, so right out of Russia or China, that they would actually have an agency of disinformation headed up by someone who is one of the biggest propagators of this." —Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, May 4, 2022
["Nina Jankowicz [aka TikTok 'Scary Poppins'] ... the new 'disinformation czar' called Hunter's laptop Russian disinformation and pushed the debunked Steele dossier."; Forced to resign by public outcry.]
'Fundamentally un-American': "I wake up in the morning worried about my country. That is not an exaggeration. ... The government has no role defining what is true and false. This is a blatant violation of the first amendment. ... It is an attack on free speech ... and it is completely unconstitutional. ... This is a gross, extremely dangerous violation of free speech when the government sets up an agency to determine what's true and false. If we are not on our way to communism, we may be there. ... The incredible destruction this does to our fundamental values. ... These people ... want to destroy your form of government, and they want to destroy your way of life, and they want to completely destroy your fundamental values and make you an amoral, evil country, and they're doing it, and this is about as clear as it gets." —Rudy Giuliani, April 30, 2022
Ministry of Truth: "Unless you hear it from us it is not the truth>>. ... We will share with you the most up-to-date information daily ... otherwise dismiss anything else." —New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, March 19, 2020
Martial Law: "Australia's Victoria state to deploy military, impose A$5,000 fines to enforce coronavirus isolation." —The Straits Times, August 4, 2020
Reversal: "We've got to get past the heavy hand of government and we've got to treat Australians like adults ... We have to move from a culture of mandates to a culture of responsibility." —Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, December 20, 2021
"I'm going to shut down the virus." —Joe Biden, Wilmington, Delaware, October 23, 2020; Atlanta, Georgia, October 24, 2020; Wilmington, Delaware, October 28, 2020; Coconut Creek, Florida, October 29, 2020; Tampa, Florida, October 29, 2020; Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 30, 2020; Des Moines, Iowa, October 30, 2020; St. Paul, MN, October 30, 2020; Broward County, Florida, October 29, 2020
"Look, there is no federal solution. This gets solved at a state level." —Joe Biden, December 27, 2021
Center for Disease Control stalking entire population: "CDC used phone location data to monitor churches and schools to determine whether Americans followed Covid lockdown orders. ... The CDC monitored curfew zones, churches, schools, neighbor-to-neighbor visits and trips to pharmacies through SafeGraph, a controversial data broker. ... CDC paid $420,000 for access to one year of ... location data harvested from tens of millions of phones in the United States ... " —Cristina Laila, May 3, 2022
Shanghai Covid lockdown: "Control your soul's desire for freedom." —Orwellian propaganda being yelled at people locked in their apartments from Chinese Communist Party drones flying overhead, April 8, 2022
"Biden is giving control of our public health to [The] World Health Organization with [the] Pandemic Treaty." —Tucker Carlson, May 19, 2022
['Move on, nothing to see here.']
"America should NOT cede one inch of sovereignty to the World Health Organization. Not one." —Eric Schmitt, Missouri Attorney General, May 20, 2022
'Fauci openly admits Biden [airplane] mask mandate is about preserving AUTHORITY': "It's less about mandates on the plane than it is about who has the right and the authority and the capability of making public health decisions. ... decisions that are public health decisions belong with the public health agency, in this case, the CDC. So it's more of a matter of principle of where the authority lies than it is about whether or not there's gonna be a mandate on a plane or not." —Anthony Fauci, M.D., June 1, 2022
"Definitely choose to get the vaccination (if you are vulnerable)! Definitely don't destroy the U.S. Constitution's system of federalism, separation of powers, and checks and balances that preserves the freedom and protects the rights of Americans. Oppose executive branch overreach and authoritarianism: Presidents, governors, mayors, and executive agency officials at CDC, OSHA, EPA, SEC, DHS, DOJ, etc., DO NOT have the authority to pass laws, invent new powers, or ignore existing laws or the science. Additionally, do not permit politicians to cede U.S. sovereignty by treaty to any world government entity such as the Chinese communist controlled World Health Organization. Being on an unAmerican abusive power trip should cause the offender that is violating the law and their oath of office by denying rights and usurping powers denied to them by the constitution to be promptly fired, recalled, impeached, prosecuted, and/or voted out of office." —Ohana Dikranian
"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." —Thomas Paine, 'A Dissertation on the First Principles of Government,' 1795
Free speech absolutist: "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated ... " —Elon Musk, upon purchasing Twitter, April 25, 2022
"If I am not for myself who will be for me, but if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" —Hillel the Elder, Pirkei Avot 1:14
"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act." —Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Morality is doing what's right regardless of what you're told. Obedience is doing what is told regardless of what is right." —H.L. Menken
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." —Albert Einstein
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." —Edmund Burke
"'Try to understand things,' and 'Don't go around hurting people.'" —Two Commandments of the Hopi
"Let's make better mistakes next time." —Poster
"Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others." —Otto von Bismarck
"The best way out is always through." —Robert Frost
"The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing." —Edmund Burke
"Dispair is a sin." —Biblical
Rioting mob: "People do what they do." —House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Capitol Hill, July 9, 2020
The weird new normal: " ... police protecting rioters as they burn down cities ... " —Connor Boyack
"But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear?" —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1967
'Larry Fink's Blackrock Doubles Down on Woke Capitalism': "The retirement savings and investment accounts of millions of Americans are being used to pressure corporate Americans into adopting the left's climate agenda and divisive racial politics. Blackrock, the world's largest asset manager, has been moving steadily leftward for years and has been putting pressure on public companies to comply ... " —John Carney, December 17, 2020
'Texas pulls $8.5 Billion from BlackRock in stunning blow to ESG movement': "Texas is joining Georgia, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and more than 15 other states in prioritizing Americans’ fiscal priorities over the Left’s political agenda with this historic move ... The action also represents by far the largest divestment of its kind since Republican-led states began terminating their financial ties to BlackRock and other financial institutions over their pursuit of so-called environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards." —Heritage Foundation, March 27, 2024
Blackrock Investments in China: "Larry Fink wanted the world to think he was woke until we called him out for violating his fiduciary duty to America's pensioners. ... He's using American investment dollars to cozy up to Chinese communists and woke politicians, betraying the American consumer in the process." —Will Hild, February 10, 2022
Former Twitter CEO tweets: "Me-first capitalists who think you can separate society from business are going to be the first people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution. I'll happily provide video commentary." —Dick Costolo, October 1, 2020
"History is a pack of lies agreed upon." —Napoleon Bonapart
■"Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy and #FollowTheFacts." —House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Twitter, May 16, 2017
'Election Integrity — Europe vs. America': "In recent European elections, there were few concerns about integrity or contested results, unlike in the U.S. Could the lack of voter ID requirements in America, the replacement of paper ballots with electronic voting, and the shift from an election day to an election month suggest potential manipulation?" —Dennis Prager, June 20, 2024
★ Changing election laws to eliminate voting fraud protections = Election tampering: "Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud." —Bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, former President Jimmy Carter and former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, co-chairs, 2005
★ Scheduling vaccine results = Election tampering: "[The Pfizer Coronavirus vaccine] independent experts' committee, independent from Pfizer, that unblinded the data and reviewed, they met at 11 [AM] and they finished their meeting at 1:30 [PM on November 8, 2020, giving us a Covid-19 vaccine in 'Warp Speed' but announced less than 24 hours after the polls closed for the Presidential election.]" —Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla
"As I have long said, Pfizer and the others would only announce a Vaccine after the Election ... " —Donald J. Trump
"It seems clear Dems pressured the FDA to delay the COVID vaccine to hurt Trump ... and causing thousands of unnecessary deaths." —Dr. Joel Zinberg, September 12, 2022
"Facebook censored a claim in October [2020] by President Donald Trump that a covid vaccine was imminent, which it was." —Michael Shellenberger
★ Unconstitutional voting procedures (or in violation of state law) = Election Tampering: "Democrats and the liberal media have a shocking double standard when it comes to disputed elections." —Gerry Baker, Wall Street Journal at Large, July 9, 2021
Projection – Making the accusation of exactly what you are doing: "Today our freedom to vote is under assault. ... They are also working to interfere with our elections." —Vice President Kamala Harris (D), Alexandria, Virginia, January 17, 2022
Scott Rasmussen national survey, October, 2021:
• 85% want all voters to show photo ID before casting a ballot
• 82% want all ballots to be received by Election Day
• 81% of voters want all voting machines made in the United States
• 88% want ... states to remove ... from voter registration lists ... people who have died or moved
Pulitzer Prizes for Fabrications
The Democrats' dark campaign master: "What is really extraordinary, as [Mollie] Hemingway points out ... [in her] important new book, Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections ... is that one man, [attorney Marc] Elias, was responsible for both the [Russia, Russia, Russia!!! Hoax] Steele dossier, which was the covert Democratic disinformation operation designed to bring down Trump during the 2016 campaign, and those wide-ranging changes in state election procedures, designed to make sure he did not win reelection in 2020." —Byron York, October 11, 2021
'Hillary Clinton Did It': "The Russia-Trump collusion narrative of 2016 and beyond was a dirty trick for the ages, and now we know it came from the top—candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. That was the testimony ... by 2016 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook in federal court ... she [Hillary Clinton] approved a plan to plant a false Russia claim with a reporter." —Editorial Board, 'The Wall Street Journal', May 20, 2022
"Christopher Steele created the dossier. Glenn Simpson sold it to the press. Michael Sussman took it to the FBI. And Democrats and the media lied to you about it all." —Rep. Jim Jordan, May 16, 2022
"All true. Bet most people still don't know that a [Hillary] Clinton campaign lawyer [Marc Elias], using campaign funds, created an elaborate hoax about Trump and Russia. Makes you wonder what else is fake." —Elon Musk, May 20, 2022
Subornation of perjury: "FBI offered Steele $1 Million for proof of dossier claims." —Durham witness
["Igor Danchenko ... primary contributor to the ['Russia! Russia! Russia!' Hoax, fake] Steele dossier, was ... on [the] FBI Payroll." —Brittany Bernstein, September 14, 2022]
"Perkins Coie, the legal arm of the DNC and Hillary Clinton, admits they have been operating an FBI workspace in their Washington, D.C. [law] office since 2012." —Response to a letter sent by Rep. Matt Gaetz and Rep. Jim Jordan
"The Clintons represent the highest level of corruption, but no one has the courage to mention it. Instead they talk about Rudy Giuliani. Over a lifetime of excellent service, there's never been a hint of corruption in his behavior but everybody investigates him." —Jackie Mason
'Russia, Russia, Russia!!!' Collusion Hoax RICO Lawsuit: "In the run-up to the 2016 Presidential Election, Hillary Clinton and her cohorts orchestrated an unthinkable plot – one that shocks the conscience and is an affront to this nation's democracy. Acting in concert, the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty. The actions taken in furtherance of their scheme—falsifying evidence, deceiving law enforcement, and exploiting access to highly-sensitive data sources - are so outrageous, subversive and incendiary that even the events of Watergate pale in comparison. ... [108 pages]" —Donald J. Trump v. Hillary Clinton, DNC, FBI conspirators, et al., March 24, 2022 [Dismissed]
'Endorsing fake news': "Newsrooms that move beyond 'objectivity' can build trust." —Leonard Downie, Jr., 'The Washington Post', January 23, 2023
"Legacy media lied and misinformed us for decades." —Ashley Rindsberg
"I don't trust words. I trust pictures." —Gilles Peress
Rough Time for Fake News: "Trust in media in the sewer – majority of americans now believe media intends to 'mislead, misinform or persuade the public' ... Only 26% of Americans view news media favorably overall." —Gallup and the Knight Foundation, survey of 5,593 adults, February 21, 2023
'Thirty ex-FBI agents stand up to support whistleblower': "The FBI has been collapsed into nothing more than a police agency for the Democratic Party." —Former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, Terry Turchie, the FBI's first head of counterterrorism
Threatening President Trump: "Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you." —Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader, told MSNBC's host Rachel Maddow, January, 2017
Threatening the Supreme Court: "I want to tell you Gorsuch, and I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. ... You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions." —Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader, standing in fromt of the Supreme Court building, Washington, D.C., c. March 4, 2020
"Russian collusion fraud is a hoax, the Steel dossier, another hoax, misleading FISA requests for this Carter Page, that was another hoax, the Mueller whitewash, another hoax, there's other hoaxes, the Muslim ban was a hoax, the WikiLeaks connection was a hoax, the Trump Tower Meeting with Russian lawyers was a hoax, the Russian server at the Trump Tower was a hoax, kids in cages was a hoax. There's a pattern here that people will say anything, the Democrats will say anything, and now that they've taken over the Justice Department, they're gonna say anything." —Larry Kudlow, August 12, 2022
"No one f***s with a Biden." —Joe Biden, Florida, October 5, 2022
Mar-a-Lago FBI Raid: "Nuclear weapons ['classified documents'] issue is a Hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a Hoax, two Impeachments were a Hoax, the Mueller investigation was a Hoax, and much more. Same sleazy people involved. ... " —Donald J. Trump, August 12, 2022
'Tonight, the Democrats re-elected Donald Trump': "The country is in a very dangerous position. There is tremendous anger, like I've never seen before, over all of the scams, and this new one — years of scams and witch hunts, and now this ... People are so angry at what is taking place ... Whatever we can do to help — because the temperature has to be brought down in the country. If it isn't, terrible things are going to happen. ... The people of this country are not going to stand for another scam." —Donald J. Trump, August 15, 2022
["The FBI will be serving 50 approximately search warrants or subpoenas on Trump supporters." —Attorney Harmeet Dhillon, September 9, 2022]
'The Politicization of the Department of Justice': " ... from December 2020 through November 2021 the FBI conducted over 3.3 million U.S. person queries ... " —Jim Jordan, House Committee on the Judiciary and Michael R. Turner, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
" ... our Government, through the FBI, RIGGED the 2020 Presidential Election!" —Donald J. Trump, December 20, 2022
"The fact that nearly half of the country believes the [2020] election was stolen should come as no surprise. President Trump prevailed on nearly every historical indicia of success in presidential elections. For example, he won both Florida and Ohio; no candidate in history—Republican or Democrat—has ever lost the election after winning both States. And he won these traditional swing states by large margins—Ohio by 8 percentage points and 475,660 votes; Florida by 3.4 percentage points and 371,686 votes. He won 18 of the country's 19 so-called 'bellwether' counties—counties whose vote, historically, almost always goes for the candidate who wins the election. Initial analysis indicates that he won 26 percent of non-white voters, the highest percentage for any Republican candidate since 1960 ... Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House, down to Republican candidates [at] the state and local level, all out-performed expectations and won in much larger numbers than predicted, yet the candidate for President at the top of the ticket who provided those coattails did not himself get over his finish line in first place. This, despite the fact that the nearly 75 million votes he received—a record for any incumbent President—was nearly 12 million more than he received in the 2016 election ... " —U.S. Supreme Court Motion
■ Demagogic and dangerous: "There's an unfolding assault taking place in America today, an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections. An assault on democracy, an assault on liberty. An assault on who we are ... We're facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. This is not hyperbole. Since the Civil War." —President Joe Biden, July 13, 2021
Wisconsin 2020 election: "This is not the rule of law; it is the rule of judicial activism through inaction." —Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler, Wisconsin Supreme Court, dissent
"Wisconsin ... Circuit Court Judge Michael Bohren ... bans ballot drop boxes, says election officials broke the law. ... ballot drop boxes and ballot harvesting violate state law. ... 'there is no statutory authority' to allow for either practice ... " —Dan O'Donnell, 'The Federalist', January 17, 2022
"Wisconsin Supreme Court says absentee voter drop boxes are illegal." —Erin Doherty, July 8, 2022
★ 'Granny Farming' = Election Tampering: " ... $8,800,000 Zuckerberg plan grant with the cities of Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay (the Zuckerberg 5 Cities) ... violates Wisconsin law prohibiting election bribery. The motive for these grants was impermissible and partisan get out the vote efforts ... Government oversight has been obstructed by governmental and outside corporate collusion. ... Use of absentee ballot drop boxes ... violated Wisconsin law. The Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) unlawfully directed clerks to violate rules pr