BITS &PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE

For all those who attempted my name game challenges:

BELIEVE IT OR NOT’S ROBERT RIPLEY once received a birthday

greeting from a Chicago resident named Zeke Zzzpt.

NEW ANALOGY IN TOWN:

William Barr: Justice::Aaron Burr:tap dancing.

IT IS DIFFICULT TO PREDICT THE FUTURE
The following sentence appeared in The Quarterly
Review in 1825: "What can be more palpably absurd
than the prospect held out of locomotion traveling
twice as fast as stage coaches?"
**
POLITICIANS/POLITICS

No matter how paranoid you are, what the government 
is actually doing is worse than you can imagine.
        William Blum
 
Don’t believe anything until it’s been officially denied.
         William Blum
 
 
People used to complain that selling a president was 
like selling a bar of soap. But when you buy soap, at least 
you get the soap. In this campaign you just get two guys 
telling you that they really value cleanliness.
 
David Brooks
 

   Somewhere out in the audience may even be someone 
who will one day follow in my footsteps, and presides over
 the White House as the President’s spouse. I wish him well.
 
  Barbara Bush. College address at Wellsley College 
on June 1, 1990
 
 
Politics? Politics are just like women: get into them seriously 
and you’re going to come out looking like an earthworm 
stepped on by a longshoreman’s boot.
 
Charles Bukowski  in a letter to Gerald Locklin 
(August 2, 1981)
 
 
Political conflicts are merely surface manifestations.
 If conflicts arise you may be sure that certain powers intend 
to keep this conflict under operation since they hope to profit 
from the situation. To concern yourself with surface political 
conflicts is to make the mistake of he bull in the ring, you are 
changing the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you 
the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him
 to obey the cloth. 
      William Burroughs
 
Journal for the Protection of All Beings (City Lights Bookstore)
 
 
 
…one of the terrible truths of presidential politics: it changes 
everybody who gets into it, generally for the worse, frequently 
for the awful.
 
  Gail Collins. The New York Times (February 7, 2015)
 
 
As early as 1923 it had become clear that world revolution was 
no longer on history’s agenda, at any rate not in the form
 envisioned by Marxism.
 
George C. Eckstein, reviewing Bukharin and the
Bolshevik Revolution in The Nation (February 8, 1975)
 
**
 
The exiled tyrant Pisistratus , planning his return to Athens 
in the early sixth century BC, hired an unusually tall woman 
named Phye to ride beside him in his in his chariot. She was 
to pretend to be the manifestation of the goddess Athena, 
the Patron of Athens. Herodotus gives her height as some 
four cubits---around 5’11”, more than a foot taller than the 
average woman at the time—and notes that not only was she 
dressed in full armour but was instructed of the bearing in 
which she might best beseem her part (according  to 
Macauley’s inimitable translation . As Pisistratus and Phye
 trundled through the fields of Attica, fell over themselves 
to pay their respects., Herodotus notes that Pisistratus was 
immediately returned to power.
 
Claire Hall. “The Day a God Rode In,”: reviewing “The Realness 
of Things Past: Ancient Greece  and Ontological History” 
by Greg Anderson (London Review of Books)
 

I have just received the following telegram from my 
generous  Daddy, It says, “Dear Jack: Don’t  buy a 
single vote more than  is necessary. I’ll be damned 
if I’m going to pay for a landslide.”
 
             John F. Kennedy at the Gridiron Dinner (1958)

**
 
If you agree with me on nine out of 12 issues, you 
should vote  for me. If you agree with me on 12 out 
of 12 issues, you should  see a psychiatrist.
                  Ed Koch, Mayor of NYC
 
 
Al Gore never claimed that he invented the internet, 
Howard Dean didn’t scream. Hillary Clinton didn’t say 
she was staying in  the race because Barack Obama 
might be assassinated.  And Wesley Clark didn’t impugn 
John McCain’s military service. Scott McClellan, the former 
White House press secretary  in his tell-all memoir “What  
Happened.” But a true account  of modern American 
politics should “What Didn’t Happen.”  again and again 
we’ve had media firestorms over supposedly 
revealing incidents that never actually took place.
 
Paul Krugman (NY TIMES.  July 4,2008)
 
**
 
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
 diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
 
Groucho Marx
 
 
       …I haven’t studied politics that much really. It just seems 
that you have to be in a constant state of revolution, or you’re dead.  
There  always has to be a revolution, it has to be a constant thing, 
not something that’s going to change things, and that’s it, you know, 
the revolution’s going to solve everything. It has to be every day.”
 
         Jim Morrison, in an interview with John Tobler
 
 \
Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, 
go out and buy some more tunnel.
                       John Quinton
 
 
 Teddy Kennedy says, “These are times that will test all people. 
Are we up to the test?” And the people say, “The question is,
can we get someone to take the test for us?”
 
    Mort Sahl
 
**
 
   In that first four weeks (AFTER OBAMA’S ELECTION), you probably 
remember, effigies were burned. Obama supporters were being 
beat up, all sorts if things like that. For me, it was all captured in 
the amazing case of the second and third graders in Idaho who 
were riding their bus on the way to school and chanting
 “Assassinate Obama!” It was an incredible moment. I think  
that –very much  like David Duke, the ex-Klan leader, predicted
 – Americans woke up  on November 5 and to some of them it 
was a rude shock. This  black guy was going to be their president, 
and, by God, he was  going to take his wife and kids and move 
into the White House.
 
     David Schimke. “Hate,Ink.” in  UTNE READER 
(Jan-Feb. 10, 2010)
 
**
 
 
Arguing with the Tea Party is like playing chess with a pigeon. 
No matter  how good your argument the pigeon is going to knock 
all the pieces over, crap all over the board and strut around 
like it’s victorious.
 
   Charles Simmons
 
**
 
Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party
 they work for people who don’t need help. That’s all there is to it.
 
       Harry S Truman
 
**
 NEW APP: HOW YOU CAN TELL RIGHT AWAY IF THE PERSON YOU 
ARE TALKING TO HAS ENOUGH MONEY TO MAKE IT WORTHWHILE
FOR YOU TO BE THEIR FRIEND. AFTER ALL WHO WANTS TO
WASTE THEIR TIME WITH POOR PEOPLE?

TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION
  
 ASKING THE SUPREME COURT TO VOTE UPON
THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE     CONSTITUTION 
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
   Although many Americans are aware that the Supreme 
Court  has been asked to deprive some 9 to 11 million 
Americans of  their health insurance on the basis of an 
ambiguous four word  phrase in the health-care provision
, few Americans are aware of a case that will soon follow suit
 – - Americans Who Hate The  General Welfare vs. The
 Constitution of the United States of America. 
       Attorneys for the state rights have pointed out (and 
rightly so)  that the majority of our 50 States were not in 
existence at the time  the Constitution was approved  
(sometime in the l8th century we  believe, although many 
citizens believe the Constitutional Congress, like the 
moon-landings, was a hoax). Here are the phrases called 
into question:
 
       " We the People of the United States, in Order to form a 
more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic 
Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote 
the general Welfare, and secure he Blessings of Liberty 
to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain  and establish 
this Constitution for the United States of America."
 

           First of all the phrase “We the people of the United States” 
was a blatant falsehood at the timeThe Constitution was drafted.  
many so-called people (women, slaves, children, and anyone 
who did not own property) were in no position to ordain anything. 
these disenfranchised chattle did not establish the Constitution. 
They could barely establish  that they existed.  Did any of the persons 
who voted for ratification of the Constitution produce voter IDs? 
How many tainted votes were cast?  There should be a revote, 
with a prior ruling on how to count or not count hanging chads.
 
 Second:  What about all the new States that have become  part 
of the United States since.  Each new State should be allowed to 
rewrite the Constitution to fit the needs of its citizens.

Third, what  about the phrase “promote the general welfare"? 
Anyone who did not own property could not vote, thus  were in 
no position to ordain anything. These disenfranchised chattles
 did not establish the Constitution. They could barely establish  
that they existed. Now that is ambiguous. Does our Constitution 
endorse “The Welfare State”.  We know we need guns to promote 
the general welfare, but do we really need Social Security and 
National Healthcare? The phrase "promote the general
welfare" must be struck from the Constitution.
 
          Last, but not least, The Supreme Court will be asked 
to rule on whether the phrase “common defence” is spelled 
correctly .  Since the usual spelling is defense, did the persons 
who drafted the Constitution have something sinister in mind. 
 Were the Founding  Fathers mocking the notion that there is 
such a thing as a   “common defence” since Americans seem 
not to agree on many  “common: issues.” This two word phrase
 should cause the Constitution  to be nullified.
 
            Once again, we expect the court to be divided down along party 
lines and that the decision will come down to the vote one Supreme 
Court Justice. Yes, Justice.
 
      
 
And last, but not least, The Supreme Court will be asked to rule on whether the phrase “common defence” is spelled correctly . Since the usual spelling is defense, did the persons who drafted the Constitution have something sinister in mind.  Were the Founding Fathers mocking the notion that there is such a thing as a  “common defence” since Americans seem not to agree on many “common: issues.” This two word phrase should cause the Constitution should
Be nullified.
 
Once again, we expect the court to be divided down along party lines and that the decision will come down to the vote one Supreme Court Justice. Yes, Justice.