Found at House of Eratosthenes:
Can I get an “AMEN!”?
Tag: QotD
Quote of the Day – Silicon Graybeard
From this excellent post:
The reason MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – worked was that at heart the Soviets didn’t want to kill off all of their population just as the US didn’t want to kill off all of its population. When push came to shove, nobody wanted to destroy the world and wash it in blood.
Most modern mailings of this story end with something like, “This was back in the days when there was honour in being a warrior. They proudly wore uniforms, and they didn’t hide behind women and children, nor did they plant bombs amidst innocent crowds. How times have changed..” And this difference in value systems, this willingness to kill innocent bystanders, and the eagerness to wash the world in blood – this is the main difference we face today.
Eric Sevareid – Last of the True Journalists
I’ve quoted several times from one of Eric Sevareid‘s books, Conversations with Eric Sevareid: Interviews with Notable Americans. It’s an interesting book that followed his short-lived interview program of the same name.
A reader sent me an email this evening with the link to this YouTube clip of Eric’s farewell address, “Just to contrast how far we’ve fallen.”
I think he’s right.
From November 30, 1977:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHGHm8iPeUY?rel=0]
Pullquote:
A friend and teacher of the late Walter Lippmann described the role of the professional reporter and observer of the news in this manner: “We make it our business,” he said, “to find out what is going on under the surface and beyond the horizon; to infer, to deduce, to imagine and to guess what is going on inside, and what this meant yesterday and what it could mean tomorrow. In this way we do what every sovereign citizen is supposed to do, but has not the time or the interest to do it for himself. This is our job. It is no mean calling. We have a right to be proud of it and to be glad it is our work.”
In the end, of course, it is not ones employers or colleagues that sustain one quite so much as a listening public, when it be so minded. And I have found it applies only one consistent test, not agreement with one on substance, but the perception of honesty and fair intent. There is, in the American people, a tough, undiminished instinct for what is fair. Rightly or wrongly, I have the feeling that I have passed that test. I shall wear this like a medal.
How far they have fallen, indeed.
Agenda? What Agenda?
Pat Caddell on media bias and the 2012 election.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brDZJA8j-8c&w=560&h=315]
Full transcript available at AIM.ORG
Pullquote:
When we see what happened this week in Libya—and when I said I was more frightened than I’ve ever been, this is true, because I think it’s one thing that, as they did in 2008, when the mainstream press, the mainstream media and all the press, jumped on the Obama bandwagon and made it a moral commitment on their part to help him get elected in a way that has never happened, whatever the biases in the past. To give you an example of the difference, I’ll just shortly tell you this: In 1980, when [Jimmy] Carter was running for reelection, the press—even though 80% of them, after the election, reporters said they voted for Carter over [Ronald] Reagan, or 70% percent of them, a very high percentage—they believed, so much, that the Carter campaign and the Carter White House had abused the Rose Garden against [Ted] Kennedy that they made a commitment, as they discussed, that they would not serve as the attack dogs on Reagan for the Carter White House because they thought it was unfair and they weren’t to be manipulated. I totally disagree with their analysis, but that was when you actually had a press corps. Whatever their own personal feelings, they made judgments that were, “We’re not going to be manipulated.” This press corps serves at the pleasure of this White House and President, led by people like Ezra Klein and JournoList, where they plot the stories together.
Pat, Pat, Pat.
You poor racist….
It’s a LEGAL System, Not a JUSTICE System
Today’s Quote of the Day comes from Professor Victor Davis Hanson’s latest, Life with the Vandals:
Law enforcement seems not so much overburdened as brilliantly entrepreneurial. Patrol cars flood the highways as never before, looking for the tiniest revenue-raising infraction; the police realize that going after the man who throws a freezer into the local pond is costly and futile, while citing the cell-phone-using but otherwise responsible driver is profitable. In 2009, the most recent year for which traffic statistics have been released, the highway patrol issued 200,000 more violations than in 2006.
RTWT.
I’m reminded of something the Geekwitha.45 said just before he moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania:
We’ll be starting the house hunt after the first of the year. With the miniGeeks, we need a bigger place anyway, and shortly, this will all be a bad dream.
The thing is, I don’t think that’ll be the happy end of the story. I think the story is just beginning to be told.
As I mentioned to Kim, there is a hidden exodus that you won’t read about in the papers:
“People are moving away from certain states: not because they’ve got a job offer, not because they want to be closer to family, but because the state they are living in doesn’t measure up to the level of freedom they believe is appropriate for Americans. We are internal refugees.”
The fact that things have gone so far south in some places that people actually feel compelled to move the fuck out should frighten the almighty piss out of you.
Ten or fifteen years ago, I would’ve dismissed that notion, that people were relocating themselves for freedom within America as the wild rantings of a fringe lunatic, but today, I’m looking for a real estate agent.
It is a symptom of a deep schism in the American scene, one that has been building bit by bit for at least fifty, and probably more like seventy years, and whose effects are now visibly bubbling to the surface.
Just open your eyes and take a long look around you.
If you’re an informed firearms enthusiast, you know how much has been lost since 1934.
Even if you lay aside gun rights issues, let me ask you some questions.
No, on second thought, let’s save the 50 questions for another posting, for now, lets just ask one:
When was the last time you built a bonfire on a beach, openly drank a beer and the presence of a policeman was absolutely no cause for concern? Hmmm?
Professor Hanson will not willingly abandon his ancestral home to the vandals, but a lot of people are bailing out of California, and Professor Hanson has been patiently explaining why. And it should frighten the almighty piss out of you.
Update: The Manhattan Institute reports on the Great California Exodus.
In Lieu of Original Content… Thomas Sowell!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPEQMJ0w2qI]
Quote of the day:
This election is not just a test of opposing candidates, but of the voting public.
UPDATE: I’ve just had the time to sit and listen to this entire interview for the first time. I’m struck that Dr. Sowell refutes pretty much every Markadelphia talking point in this single interview – Obama, taxation, economics, the federal budget, education, etc.
It’s uncanny!
Quote of the Day – Markadelphia’s Back!
From the comment thread to Bitter Clingers, Unix Jedi gets the nod for today’s Quote of the Day:
You’re lecturing, and you’re telling us that 2+2 = yellow. Further, if you multiply by Pie, you get Jasmine scent.
Let’s break down your broken-down thought.
that there are very wealthy
Wealth does not equal income.
people in the 47 percent who also don’t pay federal income tax
So you admit that the 47 percent figure is only discussing “federal income tax”, so your strawmen of other people’s “confusion” and “incorrectness” are deliberate obfuscations and deceptions.
so the tax cuts argument will most certainly reach them.
Why? If they’re not paying income tax, why would a further reduction matter to them, personally?
Lemme restate what you just said:
People who have a lot of stuff, don’t pay income taxes, but the chance they might pay less would affect them.
Mark, and you’ve got the effrontery to try and “Furthermore”, lecture us?
You can’t even keep your own “facts” coherent for 20 sentences!
You, sir, win one Internet! Where would you like it delivered?
Quote of the Day – Mark Steyn Edition
The men who organized this attack knew the ambassador would be at the consulate in Benghazi rather than at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli. How did that happen? They knew when he had been moved from the consulate to a “safe house,” and switched their attentions accordingly. How did that happen? The United States government lost track of its ambassador for 10 hours. How did that happen? Perhaps, when they’ve investigated Mitt Romney’s press release for another three or four weeks, the court eunuchs of the American media might like to look into some of these fascinating questions, instead of leaving the only interesting reporting on an American story to the foreign press. — Mark Steyn: An act of war, not a movie protest
Quote of the Day – Tyler Cowen Edition
But you won’t hear the words “Supreme Court Justice Eric Holder.”
What the (Blank) Could Possibly Go Worng?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdnY8r7_fLw?rel=0]