my current favorite quotes on my facebook page:

I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.
~ Socrates

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has.
~ Margaret Mead

It's not that complicated. The good guys are the ones who want more people to vote. The bad guys are the ones who want fewer people to vote.
~Joel Finkelstein

A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy.
~ Theodore Roosevelt

It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
~ Mark Twain

It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know that just ain't so.
~ Artemus Ward

No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.
~ John Stuart Mill

The only way some of us exercise our minds is by jumping to conclusions.
~ Cullen Hightower

NEVER underestimate an opponent.
~ Sunzi

Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
~ Voltaire

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
~ Francis Bacon

You really only know when you know little; doubt grows with knowledge.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
~ Albert Einstein

All firm belief is a sickness.
~ Francis Picabia

Believe those who seek truth. Doubt those who find it.
~ Andre Gide

Doubt is the yeast of cognition.
~ Alessandro Morandotti

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.
~ Pablo Picasso

The truth alone has never made anyone free. It is only doubt which will bring mental emancipation.
~ Anton LaVey

A witty saying proves nothing.
~ Voltaire

Words are the source of misunderstandings.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

waste no words.
~ david matthew

Our natural benevolence accounts, in great part, for the origin of morality.
~ David Hume

An unjust law is itself a species of violence.
~ Gandhi

Poverty is the worst form of violence.
~ Gandhi

Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.
~ Gandhi

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
~ Gandhi

The day we see the truth and do not speak is the day we begin to die.
~ Martin Luther King

True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
~ Martin Luther King

The time is always right to do what’s right.
~ Martin Luther King

Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.
~ Martin Luther King

We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
~ Martin Luther King

Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.
~ Martin Luther King

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
~ Martin Luther King

I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom.
~ Martin Luther King

In a pluralistic society such as ours, who is to determine what prayer shall be spoken and by whom? Legally, constitutionally or otherwise, the state certainly has no such right.
~ Martin Luther King

The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
~ Martin Luther King

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
~ Martin Luther King

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
~ Martin Luther King

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
~ Martin Luther King

One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
~ Martin Luther King

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
~ Martin Luther King

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.
~ Martin Luther King

There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.
~ Martin Luther King

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.
~ Martin Luther King

The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty. The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled, and feed the unfed. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for "the least of these".
~ Martin Luther King

In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich. We are inevitably our brothers' keeper because of the interrelated structure of reality.
~ Martin Luther King

... no nation can claim victory in war. A so-called limited war will leave little more than a calamitous legacy of human suffering, political turmoil, and spiritual disillusionment.
~ Martin Luther King

We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world.
~ Martin Luther King

The course of true love never did run smooth.
~ Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

We are such stuff
as dreams are made on, and our little life
is rounded with a sleep.
~ Shakespeare, The Tempest

Empathy is the mortar that holds society together.
~ Chuck Close

haven't been posting here much lately

look for me at
https://www.facebook.com/novadust
and
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Socrates-Caf%C3%A9-AbingtonGlenside/308377552592682
plus
https://twitter.com/n0vadust
and of course you can still see older posts here.

thanks.

we scoop reuters

looks like i ought to tweet more. yesterday "the lookout" blog on yahoo posted this story, which begins:

A partially redacted police report detailing the initial investigation in the Feb. 26 shooting death of Trayvon Martin has surfaced.

Reuters reporter Matthew Keys first posted scanned copies of the report to his Twitter account. As the Chicago Tribune noted, the report contains details that conflict with several rumors surrounding the case.

here's a screenshot of matthew keys' tweet, also dated 3 april:

and here's a screenshot of a little bit of my facebook timeline, dated march 31:

the only problem is that the chicago tribune beat me by 4 days.

business insider

Meet The Georgetown Law Student Rush Limbaugh Called A 'Slut'

hillary clinton in 1994 on right wing ideologues

Reporter: You told Peter Maier that there are right-wing radical ideologues who don't want people to have health care in this country. Who are you talking about? Who are these folks?

Mrs. Clinton: Well, you know I think they are a combination of the same kind of people who have been around in our country since its beginnings, the sort of ideologically-opposed who think that nobody should get anything from anybody else. And there's a streak of that in American politics. There always has been.

There are people who opposed social security, opposed civil rights, opposed minimum wage, opposed Medicare, opposed Medicaid. I mean at every step along the way, there is this small core of people who do not believe that government should do anything. Now they're the same people who drive down highways paid for by government funds. They are the same people who love the Defense Department which is funded by government money, but they have a different mind set when it comes to social policy in trying to be a compassionate and caring nation.

Then there are the people who for opportunistic reasons are opposing health care reform both because it is in their financial interest to do so because they want to be able to maintain the status quo and they are not above inciting other people to be very emotional about helping them to sustain their favored position. And then there are those who are for political reasons opposing health care reform because there are lots of people who don't want any changes and particularly don't want changes by this President to occur.

Now, most of the people I've just described are ones who pull the strings of others and inflame people by making charges of socialized medicine, for example, or the government is going to take over the health care system. And there's a very well-organized and well-financed effort to convey that message so that, for example, when you see people protesting in the streets as we saw a couple of weeks ago, as I personally saw in Seattle, they were there in large measure because they'd been inflamed by a local radio talk show host who finds it in his own personal financial opportunistic interest to take this position. I had no idea whether the man was insured or not, but he inflames people who are sitting at home that somehow the Clintons are going to take over the government and they're going to find themselves without a doctor or whatever their arguments are.

And if you talk to these people very often they don't have a clue about what health care reform is about. They are responding to these emotional kinds of attacks. And I just think that's part and parcel of what you always find when you look at moments of a lot of change converging at the same point in American history. You will find that strain of people. And I think it's very unfortunate, but it's something that is part of our political scene.

What I do not like and what I find regrettable is the amount of hatred that is being conveyed and really injected into our political system. I don't have any problem with anybody disagreeing with this President on any policy position. I don't have a problem with any member of Congress opposing health care reform because he doesn't think it's a good idea or he wants to use it as a political weapon. I mean, that's politics.

But this personal, vicious hatred that for the time being is aimed primarily at the President, and to a lesser extent myself, I think is very dangerous for our political process. And I think those who are encouraging it should think long and hard about the consequences of such encouragement. And in a free society, certainly people are free to say or do what they think furthers their political agenda.

But we have to draw the line on violence, and you have to draw the line on protests that incite violence. And a lot of the talk that is coming out is, to me, very sad, and I think we'll have very unfortunate consequences for our entire body politic and not just for this Administration. [more]

wapo
justice, justice everywhere
& not a drop to drink

Racy, vulgar texts

hurt Justice Department’s largest sting operation

targeting foreign bribery

Congress looks for ways around Supreme Court

Supreme Court justices are being served

on late-night television

can you blame them?

breitbart v #ows

wow! i don't think breitbart could have given the movement better publicity if he'd been trying!

rwnj

thinkprogress

JC Penney CEO: ‘Ellen Represents
The Values Of Our Company’

JC Penney CEO Ron Johnson spoke out this morning in defense of the company’s new partnership with Ellen DeGeneres. The conservative group One Million Moms has called for a boycott against the store for “jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon,” but both JC Penney and DeGeneres have defended the partnership. Johnson told CBS News that he sees no controversy.... [more]

nationalmemo/ap

With Birth Control Course Correction,
Obama Splinters Opposition

...
Obama caved to the pressure on Friday, announcing a compromise that allows employees at religious-affiliated institutions to get free contraception directly from health insurance companies rather than employers who say it would violate their long-held convictions.

Almost immediately, Democrats who had disagreed with the White House backed the revised policy. So did Sister Carol Keehan, president and chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association of the United States and a crucial player in both this debate and the fierce fight over Obama's health care overhaul law. The head of the nation's bishops called it a good first step but reserved final judgment.

The once formidable coalition against the president had splintered. Factions that had stood with the GOP cautiously backed Obama's midcourse correction. It was a necessary policy change that reversed the political dynamic. [more]

RWNJs idea of fairness is that they get an exclusive right to move goalposts

two weeks ago i became aware of a right-wing response to the state of the union speech on the human events website. the column by john hayward claimed obama misquoted lincoln and strongly suggested that he did so in order to usurp our freedom. i looked at the comments, saw that nearly all supported hayward, and jumped in to defend the one commenter who pled for reality. naturally i got sucked into responding to counterattacks and wound up posting about 75 comments over the next few days.

along the way i looked at the original transcript of the SOTU and saw that obama did not represent lincoln's idea as a quote. then i did a google search on a few words from hayward's excerpt of what he 3 times called lincoln's speech and found out it wasn't even a speech but some notes lincoln made in 1854. obama had paraphrased a short passage.

if you're interested in the combat, check it out here.

breitbart

DISGUSTING: NBC NEWS ACCUSES ROMNEY OF USING KKK SLOGAN; MATTHEWS APOLOGIZES ON BEHALF OF NETWORK

MSNBC's Thomas Roberts, 11AM: So you may not hear Mitt Romney say "Keep America American" anymore. That’s because it was a central theme of the KKK in the 1920s, it was a rallying cry for the group’s campaign of violence and intimidation against blacks, gays and Jews.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5PM: During the 11AM hour on MSNBC we reported on a blog item that compared a phrase used by the Romney campaign to one used by the KKK in the 1920s. It was irresponsible and incendiary of us to do this and showed an appalling lack of judgment. We apologize to the Romney campaign.

that's breitbart's idea of disgusting? then what's this?:

In the hours immediately following Senator Ted Kennedy's death, Breitbart called Kennedy a "villain", a "duplicitous bastard", a "prick" and "a special pile of human excrement."

and did breitbart apologize? MSNBC did, tho perhaps they shouldn't have.

then again, which did he mean is "disgusting," the accusation or the apology?

it must have been the latter. breitbart has nothing against accusing people. he's accused obama of trying to "foment a revolution."

npr

'Occupy':
Geoff Nunberg's 2011 Word Of The Year

Fresh Air's resident linguist explains how the magic of metonymy gave "occupy" its symbolism — and how the word implies a culture that made a bunch of protests feel like a movement. [more]

#occupylondon

rwnj

almost missed this one from a couple days ago

No. 314 of 365 ways to drive a liberal crazy

Pick a fight with a liberal on:

LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS.

Quote the "great"—and remember to use the air quotes—Walter Cronkite: "I think most newspaper men by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, they can hardly be good newspapermen."

hey! what's the fight about? not only was cronkite entitled to his opinion, he was closer to right than the "right" ever was.

berlusconi = murdoch + cain