P. J. O'Rourke Quotefest 2004

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Tue May 30, 2006 8:44 am

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." - Kenneth Boulding, economist

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 9:44 pm

S.I. Hayakawa, 197? He was a one term senator.
"Let the price of gas go to $5.00 a gallon. Then the poor people won't be able to drive. They don't have anywhere to go anyway."

joel the ornery · Post by **joel the ornery** » Thu Jun 15, 2006 7:12 am

"When I grew up, everyone was a veteran and they really, truly understood what service to the nation was, The country is straying from that. When you come here and see young men get killed, and the terrible ways they get killed, it consecrates democracy for you." " Maj. Mike McNamara, USMC Reserve) said by phone from Iraq, where he works in a combat operations center.

Magikal · Post by **Magikal** » Thu Jun 15, 2006 9:17 pm

Dennis Miller, on Michael Moore:

"He's going to wake up every day for the rest of his life, and he's going to tell us how he hates everything about this country except his right to hate it. And then we say that we love it and he's going to tell us what naive sheep we are and that he's the true patriot because he hates it and he sees all the problems in it. Yeah, right, Mike. You know something, if my yawn got any bigger they'd have to assign it a hurricane name, okay?

"Michael Moore simultaneously represents everything I detest in a human being and everything I feel obligated to defend in an American. Quite simply, it is that stupid moron's right to be that utterly, completely wrong."

Ya know, I detest most comedians. The fart joke was really pretty much done by 6th grade, no matter what Howard thinks. But I just might have to look up this Miller feller.

PrincessCharming · Post by **PrincessCharming** » Thu Jun 15, 2006 9:31 pm

Man, I love Michael Moore.. he's such a fucking rock star. And John Ralston Saul..
Whenever governments adopt a moral tone -- as opposed to an ethical one -- you know something is wrong. -- John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization

Magikal · Post by **Magikal** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 8:16 pm

I don't think much more can be said about that.

And getting back to the genisis of this little thread:

"And France is a treasure to mankind. French ideas, French beliefs, and
French actions form a sort of moral lodestone for humanity. A moral compass
needle needs a butt end. Whatever direction France is pointing-toward
collaboration with Nazis, accommodation with communists, existentialism,
Jerry Lewis, or UN resolution veto-we can go the other way with a quiet
conscience."-PJ O'Rourke

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 8:01 pm

Magical, you're brilliant as usual.

"I think politics is the only field in which the more experience you have, the worse you get," Friedman

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 8:03 pm

Magical, you're brilliant as usual.

"I think politics is the only field in which the more experience you have, the more you double click, Dan

Magikal · Post by **Magikal** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 9:25 pm

Why, thank you, CSS.

I'm blushin'. It's one thing to present a legitimately opposing viewpoint, which is both the right & duty of every American. It's something else altogether to be a canker sore on the buttocks of humanity, which I would contend Michael Moore (and, in large part, France) is. Make your case, present your facts, and I will listen to you. Spew vile filth, half-truths, and paranoid ramblings, and I will ignore & ridicule you. Pretty simple, really.

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 6:33 pm

Here's some ramblings;

"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” – Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.

David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): ” If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them?" ,,,yes snipped

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 9:06 pm

Dick Chenny, CEO of Halliburton

By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent

annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead,

along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline

in production from existing reserves.That means by 2010 we

will need on the order of anadditional 50 million barrels a

day.

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 12:59 pm

"Of course, the U.S. government is not going to print money and distribute it willy-nilly (although as we will see later, there are practical policies that approximate this behavior).8"
Barnanke

Ben Bernanke said in a speech in 2003: â€œ"The US government has a technology called a printing press that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.â€

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:02 pm

AGELESS WIT AND OBSERVATIONS

"If you don't read the newspaper
you are uninformed, if you do
read the newspaper you are
misinformed."
Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot.
And suppose you were a member of Congress....
But then I repeat myself.
-Mark Twain

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
- George Bernard Shaw

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
-G Gordon Liddy

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
-James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
-Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
-Ronald Reagan (1986)

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
-Will Rogers

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free!
-P.J. O'Rourke

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-Voltaire (1764)

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!
-Pericles (430 B.C.)

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
-Mark Twain (1866 )

Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it.
-Unknown

The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
-Ronald Reagan

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
-Winston Churchill

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
-Mark Twain

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

There is no distinctly Native American criminal class...save Congress.
-Mark Twain

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
-Edward Langley, Artist (1928 - 1995)

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
-Thomas Jefferson

Remember this statement:
"When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people fear the government [or the IRS, for that matter], you have Tyranny."
(Thomas Jefferson, author of the Constitution of the United States)

The less people know about what is really going on, the easier it is to wield power and authority.
(Prince of Wales Charles)

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 7:11 pm

The Promises Men Live By, p. 362): "Government, it might be said, is the one area of human activity that constitutes the last stronghold of scoundrelism in human nature."

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:26 pm

We will not have any more crashes in our time."

John Maynard Keynes in 1927 (The authenticity of this one is a little suspect) DOW ~ 175

"There will be no interruption of our permanent prosperity."

Myron E. Forbes, President, Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co., January 12, 1928 â€“ DOW ~ 200

"There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash." - Irving Fisher, leading U.S. economist, New York Times, Sept. 5, 1929 â€“ DOW ~ 375

"All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed... and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S." - President F.D. Roosevelt, 1933 â€“ DOW ~ 65

This last one is incorporated in the patriot act. The banks won't let you take anything but papers,,, reportedly.

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 8:35 am

The Govenator; "We know that every month, our revenues are coming in short by around $500 million to $600 million"

20 million a day shortfall??

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Fri May 02, 2008 7:32 pm

History;

Rome was conceived in good faith and in justice, and in the worship of God, and in the name of the manhood of man. Return our country to the rule of law and strike down the rule by men.

"Restore the treasuries. Withdraw our legions from foreign lands which hate us, and will destroy us at a moment's notice when it serves their interests. Repeal the taxes which crush those who work hard and industriously.

"Tell your multitudes that they must work or they shall starve. Drive from the Palatine itself the masses of toadies and self-seekers and thieves! Drive from the Palatine the puny freedmen who say 'Yes, yes!' to Caesar, and bow before him as though he were a god and not human flesh. Cleanse this chamber of rascals and mountebanks and demagogues who declaim in rounded phrases that the welfare of the people is close to their hearts, but who really mean that they will do the will of the mob in exchange for vile plaudits and power, and bribery!

"Romans! In the name of God, in the name of Cincinnatus, the Father of this Country, in the name of heroism and peace and manliness and freedom and justice, I beg of you to restore yourselves as the guardians of Rome, to cast out the usurper of the powers which rightfully belong to you, to impeach and to punish those who seized those powers in order to pervert the laws of our fathers! Let your Roman hearts speak and your Roman spirits cry out against the expedient and the corrupt, against the vainglorious and the traitors, against Caesars who anoint themselves as gods and hold court for the depraved and the ambitious and those who would dissipate the strength of our people, our Constitution, and our traditions! If you turn from your country, then she will die, and a thousand thousand legions shall not save her and a thousand bloody Caesars will vainly blow to the winds."

"Tiberius, the Caesar of the time, responded to this attack:

"I am a soldier. I am surrounded by sycophants and liars, and in that Diodorus speaks truth. What is lavish and uncomprehending praise given out of self-seeking and fear?

"What is flattery if lips that speak it only fawn, and in that fawning profit? The dull ear is servant to a duller tongue. As a I solider I prefer men of simple truth and without complexities who speak in honor and of patriotism. But where are men today in Rome?

"Let me tell you this," said Tiberius, quietly. "Venal Caesars, power-mad Caesars, never seize power, never destroy law and their country. Their power is forced on them by an evil and despicable people, a selfish and cowardly people. Where are the guardians of the people's liberty then? You are silent, you are slaves in spirit, you are thieves and cowards. But a people deserve their lawmakers.

"Rome!" he said. "Do I recognize this Rome of polyglot slaves, of Scythians, Britons, Gauls, barbarians, Greeks, Assyrians, Egyptians, and the scum of a whole world? Where are the Romans? They have lost their identity. They have lost their tongues, their minds, their souls, their virility. What have I to do with such a Rome? I am not an honorable man! I am what my people have made me. I am their captive, not their Emperor. Here is no escaping the evil of a debased people.

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 4:27 pm

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children."
Eisenhower

Magikal · Post by **Magikal** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 7:41 pm

Whew! Almost two years to the day since I've been on here, just thot I'd stop by & see what was up. Can't Sit Still, glad to see you're still around. Now a quote to justify my existence:

"--The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.--"
-Ray Bradbury

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 8:58 pm

Magikal,,, good to see you. 2 years without E-Playa. You missed some good threads. You must have some good stories. Dan

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:38 am

Benedictio: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for youâ€”beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.
Edward Abbey

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:39 am

Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.
T.E. Lawrence

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 5:24 pm

Ugly, Re; Benedictio. He paints a picture that is pleasing to the mind and the senses. The last 2 1/2 million years has seen man completely immersed in nature. Now, most of mankind has turned his back on nature. We generally look for beauty in the manufactured world and the written word. Our senses are numbed. The idiot box is our god and our guide. We've lost the rythm of the seasons and the whispered messages of our mother. We look for happiness in the gold mine and not in the alpine meadow.
We equate honest toil with stupidity and double dealing with shrewdness. Our lives are a mad dash to experience everything before the reaper calls. We deny/are denied our heritage and our birthright and call it progress. With more progress, we have less peace and tranquility.
Has the tradeoff been worth the price?
If 1 week in a hellish desert can be such a catharsis, what would be the effect of 1 month in Benedictio's heaven?

Toolmaker · Post by **Toolmaker** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 7:04 pm

Is this is the same PJ that helped write Easy Money with Rodney Dangerfield?

Magikal · Post by **Magikal** » Sun Aug 17, 2008 8:12 pm

can't sit still wrote:Magikal,,, good to see you. 2 years without E-Playa. You missed some good threads. You must have some good stories. Dan

CSS, don't even get me started (tho you already have

). Joined an SM club, found they were (mostly) posturing fools, with (as you would expect) few single females. Compuker has been giving me grief, finally replaced it last night. Been studying hard for real estate, even tho the market is tanked right now (my instructor says this is a good time to get back in, the SoKal RE market will NEVER be zero). Took a drawing class to help out with my henna art, but it'll never pay my rent. Speaking of which, paying money handoverfiste so I won't be doing The Burn for some years yet to come.

Working as crew with a Public Access group, have even written a few of their scripts, but I'm running into the "glass ceiling" in terms of getting more involved with the group. Oh, and I'm involved with folx doing porn, and a few months ago I "lost my cherry" and did my first adult shoot.

And how have you been?

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 6:45 pm

Well,,, Haven't you been busy. Taking classes sounds good. Breaking into porn sounds OK. If it pays the bills, it's a career. Porn has a better short-term viability than real estate. An SM club,,, I can't think of what that may be outside of sado-masichism. Do you have a Citroen SM maybe?

I haven't done anything worth repeating. In sept '05, I figured out that GOV had trashed the dollar and the economy. I got talked into leaving Oregon and coming back to L.A. I want to get a grub-stake. The most cogent projections for the recession/depression are 3 years going down and 3 years at the bottom. If Japan is any example, it will be longer than 6 years. I want to avoid pushing a shopping cart and eating dog food, so I'm working hard,,,,,,,,,,,,,, actually, I'm not working hard the way that you work hard

So, life is boring but fruitful. I broke a few more bones a year ago. My total is getting close to 20, so it's slowing me down a bit. Got no complaints,,, Dan

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 10:36 am

can't sit still wrote:Ugly, Re; Benedictio. He paints a picture that is pleasing to the mind and the senses. The last 2 1/2 million years has seen man completely immersed in nature. Now, most of mankind has turned his back on nature. We generally look for beauty in the manufactured world and the written word. Our senses are numbed. The idiot box is our god and our guide. We've lost the rythm of the seasons and the whispered messages of our mother. We look for happiness in the gold mine and not in the alpine meadow.
We equate honest toil with stupidity and double dealing with shrewdness. Our lives are a mad dash to experience everything before the reaper calls. We deny/are denied our heritage and our birthright and call it progress. With more progress, we have less peace and tranquility.
Has the tradeoff been worth the price?
If 1 week in a hellish desert can be such a catharsis, what would be the effect of 1 month in Benedictio's heaven?

Nature Deficit Disorder is real:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_deficit_disorder

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 5:21 pm

Churchill; â€œThe United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative,

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:49 am

â€œ The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public
debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered
and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed
lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of
living on public assistance.â€

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 8:22 am

While at a rally during Adlai Stevenson's run for president, a woman
stood up and yelled, "All thinking people should vote for Governor
Stevenson!"

To which Stevenson drily replied, "Thank you, madame, but I would
prefer to have the majority vote for me."

P. J. O'Rourke Quotefest 2004

red, white and blue!

peak oil