If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.
— Mark Twain
Nobody believes the official spokesman … but everybody trusts an unidentified source. — Ron Nesen
“Wow, Brazil is big! — George Bush at a summit meeting in Brazil, after the President of Brazil showed him the map in his office.
“I just love to fly. I’m going to fly ’til I die.” — Jessica Dubroff, 7, killed 4-11-96 in a plane she was flying. The 55-pound Jessica, who carried a wallet with an ace of spades in it for luck while she flew, had attracted international attention even before her death. In an interview with The Times of London she had said she could not wait until she turned 16 and could fly solo.
“Clearly, I would want all my children to die in a state of joy. I mean, what more could I ask for? I would prefer it was not at age 7 but, God, she went with her joy and her passion, and her life was in her hands,” Ms. Hathaway, her mother, said.
“I was shocked to see an airplane taking off in these weather conditions — my wipers on high speed could barely keep up,” said Mel Montoya, a clerk at a Sam’s Club store who was stopped in his car at an intersection near the airport. “The plane was struggling and dipping.”
I wish I had a wife and children! — Theodore John Kaczynski, the man suspected of being the Unabomber.
In a letter to Juan Sanchez, his pen pal of many years, Kaczynski railed against the US Government and longed for a different life. He wrote over fifty letters to Sanchez, who either threw them away or lost all but five.
Jessica, her father, and her flight instructor were attempting to set the TransAmerican flight record for the youngest person ever to fly coast to coast. All three were killed.
If they won’t allow me to put up the actual flag, I will take my own. — Deshun Deysel, member of the current Everest Assault Team
The morally unthinkable killing of children has not only become routine, but it is increasing in the world’s leading democracy. What will it take for parents and religious, community and political leaders to stand up and say enough? — Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children’s Defense Fund. An article in The New York Times stated that death by gunfire is now the #2 cause of death among the young in America.
Count Your Blessings.
If we could shrink the earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like this:
• 57 Asians
• 21 Europeans
• 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
• 8 Africans
• 52 would be female
• 48 would be male
• 70 would be non-white
• 30 would be white
• 70 would be non-Christian
• 30 would be Christian
• 89 would be heterosexual
• 11 would be homosexual
• 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world’s wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
• 80 would live in substandard housing
• 70 would be unable to read
• 50 would suffer from malnutrition
• 1 would be near death
• 1 would be near birth
• 1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
• 1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
The following is also something to ponder…
• If you woke up this morning with more health than illness…you are way ahead of the million who will unnecessarily not survive this week.
• If you have never experienced the danger of mortal combat, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation … you are ahead of 500 million people who know these things all too well in the world.
• If you can attend a religious event without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death…you are more fortunate than three billion people in the world who cannot.
• If you have some food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep…you are way richer than 75% of other people in this world.
• If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace … you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthiest people.
• If your parents are still alive and still married … you are very rare, even in the advanced United States and Canada.
• If you can read this message, you are fortunate because over two billion people in the world cannot read at all, and never will. Sources: United Nations World Census Reports
The Election of 2000 Bush v. Gore
“It is the confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today’s decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”– Justice Stevens, December 12, 2000
Stevens, John Paul, 1920, Associate Justice of the U.S.. Supreme Court (1975). After receiving his law degree from Northwestern Univ. (1947), he clerked with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge (1947-48). After many years of private practice in Chicago, he was named to the federal Court of Appeals in 1970. In 1975, President Ford named him to the U.S. Supreme Court. As a Justice, he was allied with neither the liberal nor the conservative wings of the court, maintaining a moderate and independent voting record. The replacement of liberal justices by more conservative appointees made Stevens one of the more liberal members of the court in the 1990s.
The vote count on Tuesday night showed Governor Bush won Florida’s election and a recount has now confirmed his victory. We hope Vice President Gore and his campaign will reconsider their threats of lawsuits or still more recounts which could undermine the constitutional process of selecting a president and have no foreseeable end.– Karen Hughes, Bush campaign spokeswoman
This is just the beginning. — The Gore Campaign
More than 19,000 ballots in Palm Beach County included votes for at least two presidential candidates, and 10,000 ballots had no names punched according to records released today by the county’s Supervisor of Elections. Democratic aides and lawyers said that the 29,000 ballots that were thrown out — about 4 percent of the votes cast in the county — were compelling evidence that the ballot was too confusing and possibly illegal. — The New York Times, 11/9/00, front page
Sometimes I think about dismembering him. — Eileen McGann, wife of Dick Morris, the Clinton political advisor accused of having a year-long affair with a Washington prostitute, in response to a question about how she is coping with the situation. Morris resigned in disgrace amid the presidential campaign. As reported, somewhat out of context, in a column in The New York Times by Maureen Dowd.
They are an effete corps of impudent snobs, a tiny fraternity of privileged men elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by the government. They are nattering nabobs of negativism.
— Spiro T. Agnew, former Vice President, died 9/24/96, talking about the American press.
They might as well dismiss this impeachment hearing, and get on with something else, because it’s over as far as I’m concerned. He’s won. — Pat Robertson, the conservative and influencial television evangelist, speaking on his famous “700 Club,” after the President’s State of the Union Speech, and yesterday’s Senate presentations. Robertson described Clinton’s speech as a “Home Run.”
This is our moment. — President William Jefferson Clinton, in his State Of The Union Speech January 19, 1999. The speech was interupted by applause over 100 times, setting a new record.
Every person has only so much attention to give, and politics and government takes up only a fraction of what it did 25 years ago. Look at the declining television coverage. Look at the declining voting rate. Economics and economic news is what moves the country now, not politics. — Robert Teeter, A Republican campaign consultant
The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.– Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos speaking on Larry King Live
What Clinton does is what any good sailor does: he tacks. The wind is blowing this way, so he goes toward the exit sign, but he goes like this way. And then it’s blowing this way, so he shifts his sails and goes that way. He’s still working his way toward the exit sign, but he’s not being an idiot about it. And then he goes a little this way and a little that way, and he ends up where he wants to go. — Dick Morris, former Presidential Political Consultant for the Clinton ’96 Campaign.
I was married at 28, and I’m 52 now. How could I have been married all these years and not beaten my wife? I would hit her, and she would grab on me, and then I would go out and drink and calm down. For me it’s better to release that anger and get it over with. Otherwise, I just get sick inside. Of course, you have to apologize afterward, otherwise, you can have bad feelings in your relationship with your wife. — Lee Un Kee, Punsooilri, South Korea. As reported in The New York Times, in an article about the Korean male-dominated society. 42% of all Korean women stated in a survey that they had been beaten by their husbands. “Women should be beaten at least once every three days,” states an old Korean saying. Another states, “Dried fish and women both are better after they are beaten.” One woman was reported as saying, “Of course my husband beats me, but it was my fault because I scolded him.”
We should show them whether Taiwan will be bullied by them — President Lee Teng-hui, on the day before Chinese “missile tests” begin off the coasts of Keelung and Kaohsiung. Taiwanese shipping companies were already changing schedules and the stock market lost 1.40 percent and needed to be stabilized by the government. The Chinese have indicated that President Lee’s campaign for independence is not going to succeed and that the Chinese government wants Taiwan back in the fold.
I believe in the American Dream. I feel it fading. But, I still believe.
–James Sharlow, a “downsized” executive, formerly earning $130,000 a year, Mr. Sharlow is now living off his wife’s secretary salary, and withdrawals from his life’s savings. More than anything else, the Sharlows want the layoff to be only a ripple in their old life, not the beginning of a new one. But more and more, people like the Sharlows are discovering that the “Downsizing of America” isn’t all it is cracked up to be.
(Taken in part from The New York Times, 3/5/96, third installment of the seven-part series, The Downsizing of America.)
It so coincided that Marcos had money. After the Bretton Woods agreement he started buying gold from Fort Knox. Three thousand tons, then 4000 tons. I have documents for these: 7000 tons. Marcos was so smart. He had it all. It’s funny, America didn’t understand him.
I had 101 pairs of sunglasses. I thought they were so glamorous looking. But whenever I was in public people would shout, ‘Ma’am, we want to see your face.’ I could not wear my sunglasses for one minute.
— Philippine Congresswoman Imelda Marcos, as reported in The New York Times.
Air Traffic Transcript:
MIG-23: We have it in lock-on. Give us authorization.
MIG-29: It is a Cessna 337.
MIG-23: That one, that one! Give us the [expletive] authorization!
GROUND CONTROL: Fire.
MIG-23: Give us the [expletive] that we have!
GROUND CONTROL: Authorized to destroy.
Air Traffic Transcript:
MIG-29: We took out his cojones!
MIG-23: This one won’t mess around any more.
I was struck by the joy of these pilots in committing coldblooded murder. — Madeleine K. Albright, Chief American Delegate to the United Nations.