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

no. 465

Cranky Agnes column #116

"Sedate Your Family With Love And Gravy"

In an attempt to bring health to the holidays, I adapted a recipe for dressing using using olive oil and high-fiber whole-wheat bread, and ended up with a pan of something that had a definite this-is-good-for-you vibe that lacked the all-right-I'll-go-to-hell flavor of true celebration food. But it doesn't matter, because while I like dressing a lot, it's really just a delivery system for the gravy. In fact, the Cranky Agnes Theory of Holiday Cooking can be summed up in two words: More Gravy.

from Agnes And The Hit-man by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Meyer

no. 464

"Screw soccer, ignorance is the official sport of humanity"

from Jeph Jacques' comic "Questionable Content".

no. 463

"Determination, of course, being nothing more than anger with brakes and a steering wheel."

from The Last American Vampire (pg 31) by Seth Grahame-Smith

no. 462

"In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."

Dan Hodges @DPJHodges

no. 461

"Viewed through the lens of history, the main job of U.S. presidents is to be mature and wise enough to stand up to the permanent war machine."

Jeffrey Sachs, Director, Earth Institute at Columbia University

no. 460

"The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you."

Neil De Grasse Tyson

no. 459

I'm just going to steal a whole post here, reprinted whole cloth from the Rude Pundit:

Abraham Lincoln Would Still Fuck Tea Partiers Shit Up (Immigration Edition)
Yeah, yeah, Abraham Lincoln wasn't really thinking about immigrants from Mexico when he talked up the good of diversifying our population through an influx of newbies. But considering that whole freeing-the-slaves thing, there's a good chance he wouldn't have cared where the immigrants came from. In fact, regarding freeing slaves, during a speech in Chicago on July 10, 1858, he responded to his opponent for the Senate, Stephen Douglas, by kicking him in the taint with those long legs: "I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit logic which presumes that because I did not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I need not have her for either, but, as, God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and do one another much good thereby." This is followed by some uncomfortable talk about mixed-race marriages, but at least Lincoln put himself and the "negro woman" on equal footing.

In that same speech, given as part of 4th of July celebrations, in a section that is often cited by conservatives for its affirmation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln lays down some logs of truth about the necessity of immigrants to the still-growing country:

"We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty, or about thirty, millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years, and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now enjoy has come to us.

"We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors—among us, perhaps half our people, who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things.

"If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."

A little later, after saying that he disagreed with the Dred Scott decision, Lincoln added, "I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it, and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true let us tear it out! (The audience yelled, 'No') Let us stick to it, then; let us stand firmly by it, then." Lincoln believed, and he expressed it often, that you either mean "equal" or you don't and can go fuck yourself.

But the tall man with squeaky voice didn't just talk the talk. As president, he called on Congress to pass legislation to encourage immigration. When he was nominated for reelection in 1864, the Republican Party platform contained this resolution: "That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to this nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy." The act was passed, which allowed Lincoln to appoint a Commissioner of Immigration.

And in his final annual message to Congress, Lincoln wrote, "The act passed at the last session for the encouragement of immigration has so far as was possible been put into operation. It seems to need amendment which will enable the officers of the Government to prevent the practice of frauds against the immigrants while on their way and on their arrival in the ports, so as to secure them here a free choice of avocations and places of settlement. A liberal disposition toward this great national policy is manifested by most of the European States, and ought to be reciprocated on our part by giving the immigrants effective national protection. I regard our immigrants as one of the principal replenishing streams which are appointed by Providence to repair the ravages of internal war and its wastes of national strength and health. All that is necessary is to secure the flow of that stream in its present fullness, and to that end the Government must in every way make it manifest that it neither needs nor designs to impose involuntary military service upon those who come from other lands to cast their lot in our country."

Now, you can also argue that Lincoln was talking about legal immigration, but, actually, he was for creating a system to make immigration easier and to treat those who came here with dignity. Republicans, of course, won't talk about that Lincoln.

no. 458

"If teenagers were called 'incompetent adults', we'd avoid a lot of these misunderstandings."

John Allison

no. 457

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

Groucho Marx