January 2012
26 posts
“The younger people, party label — what is it that’s going to make them go for us? What is it we have to sell them? We hope we have to sell them prosperity but for the average guy, the prosperity is nil… And the people who really are well off hate our guts.”
—
President John F. Kennedy, speaking of the upcoming 1964 election
“Children’s ability to roam has basically been destroyed. “Letting your child out to bike around the neighborhood is seen as terrifying now, even though by all measures, life is safer for kids today.”
—Danah Boyd, Microsoft’s Anthropoligist - Cracking Teenagers’ Online Codes - NYTimes.com
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff”
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Lee Atwater, George H.W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign manager, on how to use a “southern strategy” as quoted in “Southern Politics in the 1990s”
GOP campaign rhetoric raising racial concerns - Yahoo! News
[apologies for quoting the n-word, but this is happening again in the 2012 Republican primaries]
“One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.”
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All jobs ought to be open to people with degrees “or equivalent skill & experience.” This isn’t just a class issue; it’s a gender issue and a race issue as well. — Ankhorite
“Harder for Americans to Rise from Lower Rungs” by Jason DeParle, published January 4, 2012
“If King could see America now, I believe that he would be disappointed, and feel that his work was nowhere near done. He dreamed of a nation in which his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” But what we actually became is a nation that judges people not by the color of their skin — or at least not as much as in the past — but by the size of their paychecks. And in America, more than in most other wealthy nations, the size of your paycheck is strongly correlated with the size of your father’s paycheck.”
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Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman
January 15, 2012
“Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.”
—White Oleander by Janet Fitch. (via mllekeri)
“…I am always shocked to see a Republican candidate talk about the American dream, they should be ashamed to tease people that way. It’s like dangling a lollipop at a child but never intending on giving it to the child. It is impossible. People are poor by design, and they had no say in the design, and no power to change the design. George Carlin nailed the ‘American Dream’ definition when he said that it is a dream because you would have to be asleep to believe it.”
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Comment by Bridget from Asheville, NC on
“…it’s legal in 36 states for prisons to shackle pregnant inmates while they’re giving birth…”
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How Many Stephen Colberts Are There? - NYTimes.com
Yes, it is. And it will happen to a great many women who are not yet prisoners if the Republican candidates get their way and re-criminalize abortion.
“Muscle biopsies taken before, during and after weight loss show that once a person drops weight, their muscle fibers undergo a transformation, making them more like highly efficient “slow twitch” muscle fibers. A result is that after losing weight, your muscles burn 20 to 25 percent fewer calories during everyday activity and moderate aerobic exercise than those of a person who is naturally at the same weight. That means a dieter who thinks she is burning 200 calories during a brisk half-hour walk is probably using closer to 150 to 160 calories.”
—The Fat Trap - NYTimes.com
“I do not practise religion in accordance with the sacred rites. I have made mysterious Nature my religion. I do not believe that a man is any nearer to God for being clad in priestly garments, nor that one place in a town is better adapted to meditation than another. When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvelous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening the meadow, the gentle grass-carpetted earth, … and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration. … To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! … that is what I call prayer.”
—Claude Debussy: His Life and Works by Léon Vallas (via Wikiquote)
