no. 511

"Taking all criticism of a group you're a part of personally and being unable to handle it is the hot new look for 2018"

Gin and Tacos, on Facebook, Dec, 31, 2017

no. 510

Retweeted AltHomelandSecurity🇺🇸 (@AltHomelandSec):

The American people should not be using politics to determine their morals, but using their morals to determine their politics.

no. 509

“The death of our political process is going to be a bunch of technocrats and DLC-style Liberals wonking themselves into a frenzy while the right steals or destroys everything that isn't nailed down. And they'll smile and say, sure, go do some more research and get some CBO scores or whatever, and while they're distracted the handful of interests that are returning us to the era of Robber Baron capitalism will empty the last of the till into their briefcases and laugh their asses off on the way to their offshore havens.”

Gin & Tacos

no. 508

“Someday, you may be at peace with your enemies. Make sure you can look them in the face, and not down on them.”

From the book “The Bad Company”, by Craig Martelle and Michael Anderle.

no. 507

"I'm too lazy to distinguish between an imperfect candidate and a fascist toddler. Haven't you seen South Park?"

Nick Bernard's sarcastic response to some still complaining, over a year later, about the "lousy" choice between Trump and Clinton.

no. 506

"No one goes there any more, it's too crowded"

Yogi Berra

no. 505

“The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.” 

Dwight D. Eisenhower

no. 504

“I don’t think there’s any need to have essays advocating selfishness among human beings; I don’t know what your impression has been, but some things require no further reinforcement.”

Christopher Hitchens, discussing Ayn Rand. 

no. 503

“I don't know how to feel about Donald Trump," Noah said. "There is terror and there is joy. You know what it feels like? There's a giant asteroid headed towards the Earth, but it's shaped like a penis."

Trevor Noah

no. 502

"Tits may be life, but ass is hometown."

Terrence Smith

no. 501

Carl Jung Psychoanalyzes Hitler:
“He’s the Unconscious of 78 Million Germans.” “Without the German People He’d Be Nothing” (1938)


Not to go all Godwin, on y’all, but, Trump, anyone?

no. 500

“Humanity's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but humanity's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” 

Reinhold Niebuhr

no. 499

"It still wasn’t particularly easy, but she’d reached the point where she could delve around in a murdered corpse for an hour and then go have a hamburger without feeling any guilt or nausea. The key, as when one interacted with kindergartners, was not to acknowledge the immeasurable horror of what you were dealing with."

From Stiletto by Daniel O'Malley

no. 498

“When Hamilton wanted to start a national bank, Madison told him that it was unconstitutional. Both men had been in the room when the Constitution was written. And now today there are politicians and judges who claim that they know the original meaning of the Constitution. Are you kidding?”

Ed Asner

no. 497

“Judith hated nostalgia. It was just the waiting room for death.”

Paul Cornell, Witches of Lychford

no. 496

"TED talks are the k-cups of thinking"

Unknown (by me, at least)

no. 495

"There is no group in the United States less attached to its own ideals or more eager for its own exploitation than religious conservatives."

Michael Gerson

no. 494

"I always wanted to know why Hermione didn't just use the Time Turner to also take more naps so she wasn't so strung out."

from a site about Harry Potter plot holes.

no. 493

Pence: "We need more non-abortion alternatives for women"
World: "Like contraceptives, affordable healthcare, daycare, family leave?"
Pence: "lol fuck no, I meant like, ultrasounds and calling them whores."

Gin and Tacos

no. 492

"We created a whole new huge Department of Homeland Security with a $70b budget after 14 lunatics killed 3300 people in 2001. Yet we witness the daily slaughter by guns in our country and do nothing but pass more laws to give citizens more guns. What are we doing?"

- Melinda Carroll

no. 491

“We are still so far from considering illness as anything beyond a private misfortune against which each individual and each family should protect itself, as best it may, that Germany’s heroic method of attacking it as a national evil through government machinery seems to us to belong almost to another planet.” 

- Henry Seager (1917)

No. 490

“The other problem you’re facing,” Von explained gently, “is that these people walk around thinking they already know everything about everything. If you look at improving policies to help the masses, they call you a socialist. If you talk about not killing and not going to war for the sake of it, they say that you’re unrealistic. They take no time to consider what you’re actually talking about because they bring all their filters and pre-formed ideas to the table.” She shook her head, her eyes showing how hard this had been for all the years she’d been trying to make a difference with her work. “It just makes them unwilling -and in a lot of cases unable -to even hear what you’re suggesting. They just filter it out and decide what you mean based on their sound bites and prejudices.”

From "Cloaked: Age of Expansion" by Ell Leigh Clarke and Michael Anderle

no. 489

"Almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. Only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement." 

From the movie  "Joe Versus The Volcano"

no. 488

"Don't hiss at me like a raptor, I'm your mom."

My wife, to my 16-year old daughter; not words I ever expected to hear.

no. 487

"A good friend posted this to his site today. naylandblake.net
This has to be the one of the most reasoned explanations I've read on this massacre.

What to say after Pulse

June 14, 2016
This is what I have to say post the Pulse massacre.

The problem is not that this man was a demon, an outsider, some sort of outlier on the continuum of human American experience. This man was a citizen of this country. He was what is held up as the norm: young, religious, husband, father.

The problems are the systems that surrounded this man, that taught him that the normal reaction to seeing people different from himself was disgust.
The systems that taught him that his disgust was normal.
The systems that taught him to rationalize his disgust as an expression of faith. The systems that cloaked that rationalization in a rhetoric of nobility.
The economic systems that allowed him to weaponize that disgust, to turn that disgust into bullets and mutilation. At every step he made decisions that he is responsible for, but at every step those decisions were made easier by hundreds of other people whose words and actions told him : Yes, you are right to be disgusted, and the righteous way to deal with your disgust is to deal death to people you don’t know and to crow about it. Here is a gun that lets you do that, here is a system that will laud you for doing that.

When politicians pray after these things, pray after killing bill after bill that would break these systems, pray after taking money from people whose incomes come from making it easy for these men to spray death, I can only think that they are praying that people don’t connect the dots, that people don’t try to say to them, you continue to teach people that their disgust is normal, that their violence is normal and right and good, that their deadly actions are normal.
They are praying that people don’t wake up to the fact that you have said to all of those families and lovers of the people who died at Pulse that you would rather have your gun today than to have any of those victims still alive.

The killer was merely the agent of your contempt. When you put your righteousness above those lives, when you put your gun above those lives, you make a sham of the Constitution and the country and the god you claim to serve and revere.

The problem is not that the killer is beyond the pale: The problem is that the killer was an apt pupil for all the teaching that you left for him and which you are still maintaining today." 




Bric 1101 commenting at The Rant

no. 486

as Will and Ariel Durant wrote in The Story of Civilization:

"…the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.” 

no. 485

"I hate my job!"
"There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY. We meet at the bar."

From the Drew Carey Show.

no. 484

"As for the election, it's sometimes about winning, and sometimes it's about losing as little as possible."

Kaleberg commenting at ginandtacos

no. 483

"He who wants a rose must respect the thorn."

Persian Proverb

no. 482

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

G. B. Shaw 

no. 481

"Boy, if I didn't want to regret, I wouldn't volunteer to be in charge of kids."

Daven in Something Positive

no. 480

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

John Galbraith (1908 - 2006)



Pretty sure I've posted this before, but it's a good one, so...

no. 479

"Every conviction of error is a violence done to the mind, inasmuch as the forcible eradication of a prejudice must be attended with a painful sensation. The blind man is happy in his blindness, and the ignorant content with his ignorance. The wisest of men has somewhere told us that the increase of wisdom is the increase of sorrow."

- Francis Hopkinson

no. 478

"Today is the sort of day where the Sun only comes up to humiliate you."

- Chuck Palahniuk

no. 477

TAKEN FROM "HOW TO BE MAN" WRITTEN BY KAJIWARA IKKI SOMETIME DURING THE 60'S:

Rule. 1
Never create superficial work.
Pour your blood into the ink.

Rule. 2
Never chase after popularity, which is transcient as a flower.
Dig deep in the earth and pull down the roots.

Rule. 3
No matter how much status you attain, you must never have regrets.
If the choice is between peace and the storm, choose the storm.

Rule. 4
If you should fail, never cry.
Study your failure and let it give birth to succcess.

Rule. 5
Even if you obey the previous rules, never think you alone are right.
Learn from everything and everyone around you.


A well known shonen author, the reference can be found in Bakuman manga chapter 5 page 16-17

no. 476

"Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue." 

François de La Rochefoucauld

no. 475

"Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." 

Jacob Bronowski

no. 474

"the truth is like poetry, and most people fucking hate poetry"

Unknown

no. 473

"* In the chit-chat of the checkup, as I lay back in the chair with the suction tube in my mouth, he asked: “What are you majoring in at college?” When I replied that I was majoring in philosophy, he said: “What are you going to do with that?” 
“Think,” I replied."

By David Silbersweig, in The Washington Post, December 24, 2015

no. 472

"it quickly becomes clear that your party is so focused on born again Christians that you have forgotten those of us who were born once and got it right the first time."

Helen @ "Margaret and Helen" talking about the Republican Party

no. 471

"The mouth is the basis for calamity" 

Japanese saying

no. 470

"The GOP is so lacking in anything like a legitimate moral center that the most immoral asshole in the room is going to be your standard bearer. Congratulations on nearly eight years of delegitimizing the presidency and several decades of saying that government itself is bad. You've finally gotten your perfect candidate."

The Rude Pundit, "Note to Republican Voters Post-New Hampshire: Are You Really This Dumb?", Feb 10, 2016

Make that, "perfect president".

no. 469

"Oh, he had been rascally drunk occasionally, but while it had looked a good idea at the time, it never looked quite the same later on when you woke up"

Terry Pratchett in "Dodger"

no. 468

"This is good for a man because responsibilities are the anvil on which a man is forged."

Terry Pratchett in "Dodger"

no. 467

“What’s the difference when you are seven years old?... the games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we change make us what we become.”

Terry Pratchett in "Dodger"

no. 466

Carol was making revolutionary stew in her all-around cooker when Leonard finished work the next morning and wandered into the stoveroom for chicory. There was nothing truly revolutionary about Carol's stew except that (1) the ingredients remind us of our agrarian past, wherein lie the ancient roots of revolution; (2) all flavors have their say in stew, as they must in any socialist system; and (3) like history, it takes a long time to cook but it's worth it in the end.

Rachel Cantor, from A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or, A Neetsa Pizza employee's guide to saving the world