Obama Archives - neal umphred dot com

what will you tell God when you stand before Him?

May 6, 2020August 31, 2014 by Neal

TELL IT LIKE IT IS: For the past few decades, a rule-of-thumb for the never-ending “conflict” between these peoples has been for every one (1) Israeli killed, approximately one-hundred (100) Palestinians are killed. For the past few years, the ratio has been even higher, about 115/1. What follows is an abridged and edited version of a newsletter issued by Alan Elsner, Vice President for Communications for J Street (”the Political Home for Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace Americans”):

“For the first time in two months, the skies above Israel and Gaza are quiet, and Israelis and Palestinians are finally beginning to get back to at least some semblance of normalcy. Tuesday’s READ MORE

about this so-called liberals-being-rude-to-the-right thing

March 31, 2018February 2, 2014 by Neal

A FEW DAYS AGO, in another post here, I said that as a liberal, I have NEVER received a viral liberal email passing along pro-left or anti-right lies or propaganda. One would think by now I would be tired of such things, as I am the perfect receptacle for those attempting to lie for their cause. But while I have received plenty of rightwing messages of dubious intent, I have yet to see a single leftwing message in my emailbox. READ MORE

what happened in Iceland should be happening in america

March 31, 2018January 27, 2014 by Neal

AFTER THE PRIVATIZATION of Iceland’s banking sector, private bankers borrowed $3,500,000,000 in 2000. This was ten times the size of the tiny nation’s economy! This created an immediate economic “bubble” that had two effects: a few wealthy people became exceedingly wealthy people, and it left Iceland on the verge of bankruptcy.

The rest of the citizens were left with a debt to other nations that they could not pay. READ MORE

it’s our job to do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again!

August 6, 2018January 19, 2014 by Neal

EVERYWHERE I TURN, whether in conversation, via emails from my Republican contacts, and especially on the internet, I hear people “quoting” then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the effect that she said that the raid deaths reason whatever in Benghazi “didn’t matter” or “doesn’t matter.”

As much as the righties hate all things Clintonian, they (and those Dems who take the corporate media at their word) could at least get the quote correct and in context. READ MORE

looks like we will be needing more snowdens

May 9, 2018July 19, 2013 by Neal

FROM TODAY’S SEATTLE TIMES (July 19, 2013) and a piece titled “U.S. Officials says NSA taking steps to stop leaks” (page A2): an AP article acknowledges that “The information revealed [by Edward Snowden] that the agency was gathering millions of US phone records and intercepting some US Internet traffic.” Which, if you care about government transparency—an absurd expectation to many—then it looks like we will be needing more Snowdens. READ MORE

FAVORITE QUOTES

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. We should, therefore, claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant." – Karl Popper

"So long as opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses instability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh intrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old." – John Stuart Mill

“A state of scepticism and suspense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision.” – Edward Gibbon

"Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind." – Virginia Woolf

“When you speak truth to power, power fights back." – Alexandria Octavia-Cortez

"Time is a created thing. To say, ‘I don’t have time,’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.’” ~ Lao Tzu

"Clearly, any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have length, breadth, thickness, and duration." – H.G. Wells

"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." –Albert Einstein

"Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it." – M. Scott Peck

"The future has a way of arriving unannounced." – George F. Will

"Right now, I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before." – Steven Wright

“How did it get so late so soon?” ― Dr. Seuss

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.” – Philip K. Dick

"While all acronyms are initialisms, most initialisms are not acronyms." – Q (lol)

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble—it's what you know that just ain't so." – Mark Twain

"I don't trust anybody I'm not close enough to kill." – Kelly Burkhardt

"I have lived with many Zen masters, all of them cats." – Eckhart Tolle