Lunaville (11/25/11): I believe in the positive power of fire. I can cook my food with it and heat my home with it. But I'm not going to break out the marshmallows and build a great big fire dead in the middle of my living room floor. No, I'm going to contain the fire with a fire place, and appliances such as a stove, heater and water heater so that fire serves me instead of burning down my house.

That's what we've got to do with Capitalism: make it serve the largest number of people with the least amount of harm done.
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Gdalescrboz: Talking to either [political] side bi-partisanly is like trying to pick up a piece of shiat by the clean end.
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...having a debate with creationists is equivalent to playing a chess match against a pigeon who knocks over all the pieces, takes a crap on the board and flies back to his flock and claims victory...
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From thread 4576852: Chemical Angel: I think most of what's left of "the American Dream" is this fantasy that some day you're magically going to "make it". A lot of these people somehow think that fortune and glory is going to fall out of the sky and into their laps and because of this they froth at the mouth when they percieve a threat to that God given right.
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Mentat: 400 years ago, Europe gathered up most of its religious nutballs and sent them here. A bit later, they gathered up their criminals and sent them to Australia. [...] America got a raw deal on that one.
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Rosetta StoneI used to think that the 24-hour news cycle would be good for democracy. It would bring even more transparency. I didn't foresee that people don't want that much information. The want their biases to be confirmed, and they want to know who sang what on American Idol.
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The Paradoxical Commandments
by Dr. Kent M. Keith (1968)

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

No one (new window)[in America] is above the outrage cycle. We have now, in our culture, synthesized the two worst elements of pre-9/11 and post-9/11 media: the pre-9/11 obsession with meaningless bullshiat; and the post-9/11 obsession with filling every story with apocalyptic portent and over the top, tween-girl-at-a-Jonas-brothers-concert hysteria. We still care too much about J-Lo's dress and the Summer of the Shark. Now, we get around the idea that we are shallow for giving a shiat about such things by infusing them with pseudo-political importance and our current national drug of choice, outrage. Everything is an outrage. Everyone is outraged. Every turn of the news cycle gives us a new opportunity to pound the table.
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"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 Kenneth Galbraith
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"The only way to restore [America's honor] is to bring the war criminals and the war profiteers, in service to whose interests the illegal wars of aggression were started in the first place, to justice. This of course will not happen. So we just add it to the national book of shame with our other dishonorable, inhuman and evil acts that have characterized our entire history, like slavery, the genocide committed against the indian nations, the other wars that were instigated under false pretenses in order to further enrich the already wealthy...like Vietnam, the war against Mexico, all of the indian wars. Since our earliest days this country has been an epicenter of sociopathic injustice and cruelty, none of which has ever been adequately atoned for or even acknowledged.

There is practically zero chance that this nation will ever achieve to the state of being honorable."
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John Dickinson, during a conversation with John Hancock: "...most men without property would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich, than face the reality of being poor."

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A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below on a lake. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 1,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

"She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be an Obama Democrat."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault."

(From Karl Kroeber)