How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide
our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the
ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow
creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by
the wounds of others...But even more important is the love
that arises among us when we share, both ways, our
woundedness.
--M. Scott Peck, A Different Drum; he died 09/25/05

Once again, nothing is new!!

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that
our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred
in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and
nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.
--General Douglas MacArthur, Speech, May 15, 1951

Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridge-
head of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts,
there remains a small corner of evil. It is impossible to
expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible
to constrict it within each person.
--Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being
run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane
for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.

~John Lennon

In my mind I can fairly easy imagine an aging, yet active Lennon as elder statesman for peace,
and imagine how he would have been an experienced and respected leader in these times.

There are men - now in power in this country - who do not
respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who be-
lieve that the people of America are ready to support
repression as long as it is done with a quiet voice and a
business suit.
--John Lindsay, former Mayor of New York City

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error;
it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.
-- U.S. Supreme Court, in American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382,442

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
-- U.S. Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

is this any less of value today than it was 230 years ago?

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."-Napoleon

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark;
the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
--Plato

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American,
it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
--Thomas Jefferson

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression,
while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.
--George W. Bush UN Speech Sept 2004

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views
beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing
God's service when it is violating all his laws.
--John Adams

The reason the world today is becoming increasingly
besmirched is that the evil that resides in all of us is
winning. Our inherent goodness is losing the race.
Wickedness has tied its shoelaces together. Let us vow
today, right now, to scrape off these hateful scales and
try to be as good as we can be. Let's not harbor any ill
will for anyone. Let us be the first of a new order to be
charitable and caring. Let's break away from the flock of
black sheep and graze the clean grass, show them how good
it tastes. Not the bitter thistle that most are content to
chew through.
-- Andrew Holt (Quote A Day subscriber)

"WORKING MEN OF ALL NATIONS, UNITE!"-Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto.

Justice DeLayed, is justice denied.
William Gladstone
British politician (1809 - 1898)

Amazing, that he would know about "Hottub Tom" so far in advance.

"
And therefore, all of those for whom authentic transformation has deeply unseated their souls must, I believe, wrestle with the profound moral obligation to shout from the heart-perhaps quietly and gently, with tears of reluctance; perhaps with fierce fire and angry wisdom; perhaps with slow and careful analysis; perhaps by unshakable public example-but authenticity always and absolutely carries a demand and duty: you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through your veins and rattle those around you.

Alas, if you fail to do so, you are betraying your own authenticity.You are hiding your true estate. You don't want to upset others because you don't want to upset your self. You are acting in bad faith, the taste of a bad infinity.

Because, you see, the alarming fact is that any realization of depth carries a terrible burden: Those who are allowed to see are simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision in no uncertain terms. That is the bargain. You were allowed to see the truth under the agreement that you would communicate it to others (that is the ultimate meaning of the bodhisattva vow). And therefore, if you have seen, you simply must speak out. Speak out with compassion, or speak out with angry wisdom, or speak out with skillful means, but speak out you must.

This is truly a terrible burden, a horrible burden, because in anycase there is no room for timidity. The fact that you might be wrong is simply no excuse: you might be right in your communication, and you might be wrong, but that doesn't matter. What does matter, as Kierkegaard so rudely reminded us, is that only by investing and speaking your vision with passion, can the truth, one way or another, finally penetrate the reluctance of the world. If you are right, or if you are wrong, it is only your passion that will force either to be discovered. It is your duty to promote that discovery-either way-and therefore it is your duty to speak your truth with whatever passion and courage you can find in your heart.

You must shout, in whatever way you can."
Ken Wilbur

If there must be trouble let it be in my day,
that my child may have peace.
--Thomas Paine

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but
rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of
him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any
cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be
fulfilled by him.
--Victor Frankl, Psychoanalyst & Concentration Camp Survivor

In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They
want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them.
And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one
in order to mobilize us.
--Thich Nhat Hanh - Vietnamese monk, activist and writer

If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk
to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to
laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life?
It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning.
This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other,
the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.
--Mitsugi Saotome

Many are they who are touched at the heart by these things.
Those they sent forth they knew; now in place of the young
men urns and ashes are carried home to the houses of the
fighters.... The citizens speak: their voice is dull with
hatred. The curse of the people must be paid for.
--Agamemnon (432-436, 456-7, Grene and Lattimore)

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears
toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or
to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his
life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able
to bear almost any "how."
--Victor Frankl, Psychoanalyst & Concentration Camp Survivor

"ARE THE PEOPLE WHO RUN FOR PRESIDENT REALLY THE BEST IN A COUNTRY OF OVER 240 MILLION? IF SO, SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED TO THE GENE POOL!"
___Bob McKenzie


Catherine

"Bush/Cheney: Restoring dignity and honor to the White House,
one indictment at a time."
anon

Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which
recognizes justice and reasonableness in the claims of
others and which lead our country into comradeship with...
the other nations of the world. The first step to this end
is to develop peace and goodwill within our borders, by
training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their
habit of life, so that the jealousies of town against town,
class against class and sect against sect no longer exist;
and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers
towards our neighbors.
--Lord Robert Baden-Powell

Teach our children to have faith in humanity and to know
the dignity of all human beings. Reaffirm America's basic
belief that all people are created equal - that we all are
children of the Universe. There is no nonsense about that –
it is universally obvious and fundamentally American.
--Everett Woodman's short speech at Dartmouth July 4th

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their
people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that
the good of the people was the object.
--Abraham Lincoln

The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop
into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have.
--John Locke

Profundity of thought belongs to youth,
clarity of thought to old age.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

The Americans will always do the right thing,
after they've exhausted all the alternatives.
Winston Churchill

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting;
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating;
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;


If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;


If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings- nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina
or softened the fiber of a free people.
A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads
in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair.
The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a
smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed,
but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road,
the one "less traveled by", offers our last, our only chance
to reach a destination that assures the preservation of
the earth.
-- Rachel Carson, Environmentalist

It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think
that's what I get from these older black women, that every
soul is to be cherished, that every flower is to bloom.
--Alice Walker, Author of The Color Purple

Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve
their reputation or social standards never can bring about
reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be
anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly
and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies
with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the
consequences.
--Susan B. Anthony, Abolitionist, Suffragist

If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote. As with the face on Mars and alien abductions, better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.
-- Carl Sagan

But your flag decal won't get you Into Heaven any more.
They're already overcrowded From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin' No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you Into Heaven any more.
JOHN PRINE 1976

The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that
a financial element in the large centers has owned the
government of the United States since the days of Andrew Jackson.
--President Franklin Roosevelt,
said 72 years ago to this date on Nov. 21, 1933

The Sheepdogs

Most humans truly are like sheep
Wanting nothing more than peace to keep
To graze, grow fat and raise their young,
Sweet taste of clover on the tongue.
Their lives serene upon Life’s farm,
They sense no threat nor fear no harm.
On verdant meadows, they forage free
With naught to fear, with naught to flee.
They pay their sheepdogs little heed
For there is no threat; there is no need.

To the flock, sheepdog’s are mysteries,
Roaming watchful round the peripheries.
These fang-toothed creatures bark, they roar
With the fetid reek of the carnivore,
Too like the wolf of legends told,
To be amongst our docile fold.
Who needs sheepdogs? What good are they?
They have no use, not in this day.
Lock them away, out of our sight
We have no need of their fierce might.

But sudden in their midst a beast
Has come to kill, has come to feast
The wolves attack; they give no warning
Upon that calm September morning
They slash and kill with frenzied glee
Their passive helpless enemy
Who had no clue the wolves were there
Far roaming from their Eastern lair.
Then from the carnage, from the rout,
Comes the cry, “Turn the sheepdogs out!”

Thus is our nature but too our plight
To keep our dogs on leashes tight
And live a life of illusive bliss
Hearing not the beast, his growl, his hiss.
Until he has us by the throat,
We pay no heed; we take no note.
Not until he strikes us at our core
Will we unleash the Dogs of War
Only having felt the wolf pack’s wrath
Do we loose the sheepdogs on its path.
And the wolves will learn what we’ve shown before;
We love our sheep, we Dogs of War.

Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66

The Link

Underwear Goes Inside the Pants

Why is marijuana not legal? Why is marijuana not legal?
It's a natural plant that grows in the dirt.
You know what's not natural?
80 year old dudes with hard-ons. That's not natural.
But we got pills for that.
We're dedicating all our medical resources into keeping the old guys erect,
but we're putting people in jail for smoking something that grows in the dirt

You know we have more prescription drugs now.
Every commercial on TV is a prescription drug ad.
I can't watch TV for four minutes without thinking I have five serious diseases.
Like: “Do you ever wake up tired in the mornings?”
Oh my god I have this, write this down. Whatever it is, I have this.
Half the time I don't even know what the commercial is…
There are people running in fields or flying kites or swimming in the ocean.
That is the greatest disease ever. How did you get that?
That disease comes with a hot chick and a puppy.

The schools now… It's all about self-esteem in schools.
Build the kids' self-esteem, make them feel good about themselves.
If everybody grows up with high self-esteem, who's gonna dance in our strip clubs?
What's gonna happen to our porno industry?
These women don't just grown on trees.
It takes lots of drunk daddies missing a lot of dance recitals before you decide to go
blow a goat on the internet for fifty bucks.
And if that disappears, where does that leave me on a Friday night with my new high speed connection?

CHORUS:
If you sing, sing, sing
Sing your song,
Sing for me, come on sing
Sing sing sing
Sing your song,
Sing for me

Mastermind is another word that comes up all the time.
You keep hearing about these terrorist masterminds that are being killed over in the middle east.
Terrorists masterminds.
Masterminds sort of a lofty way to describe what these people do, don't you think?
They're not masterminds.
“Okay, you take bomb right and you put in backpack. And you get on bus and you blow yourself up.”
“Why do I have to blow myself up? Why don't I put…”
“Who's the fucking mastermind here? Me or you?”

Americans, let's face it: We've been a spoiled country for a long time.
Do you know what the number one health risk in America is?
Obesity, obesity
They say we're in the middle of an obesity epidemic.
An epidemic like its polio.
Like we'll be telling our grand kids about it one day.
The Great Obesity Epidemic of 2004.
“How'd you get through it grandpa?”
“Oh, it was horrible Johnny, but there was cheesecake and pork chops everywhere.”

Nobody knows why we're getting fatter? Look at our lifestyles.
I'll sit at a drive through.
I'll sit there behind fifteen other cars instead of getting up and making the eight foot walk over to the totally empty counter.
Everything is mega meal, supersize. You want biggy fries with that, you want a jumbo fry, you wanna go large.
You wanna biggie fry,
You want thirty burgers for a nickel you fat mother fucker. There's room in the bag. Take it!
You want a 55 gallon drum coke with that? It's only three more cents.

CHORUS:
If you sing, sing, sing
Sing your song,
sing for me,come on sing

Sing sing sing, sing your song,
sing for me

Sometimes you got to suffer a little in your youth to motivate you to succeed later in life.
Do you think if Bill Gates got laid in high school, do you think there'd be a Microsoft?
Of course not.
You gotta spend a lot of time stuffin your own locker with your underwear wedged up your arse before you think I'm gona take over the world with computers! You'll see I'll show them.”

We're in one of the richest countries in the world,
And the minimum wage is lower now than it was thirty five years ago.
There are homeless people everywhere.
This homeless guy asked me for some money the other day.
And I was gonna give it to him but then I thought you're just gonna use it on drugs or alcohol.
And then I thought, that's what I'm gonna use it on.
Why am I judging this poor bastard.
People love to judge homeless guys. Like, your giving him money
He's just gonna waste it.
He's just gonna waste the money
Well, he lives in a box, what do you want him to do? Save up and buy a wall unit?
Take a little run to the store for a throw rug and a CD rack? He's homeless.
I walked behind this guy the other day.
A homeless guy asked him for money.
He looked right at the homeless guy and goes why don't you go and get a job you bum.
People always say that to homeless guys, get a job like it's that easy.
This guy was wearing his underwear outside his pants.
I'm guessing his resume isn't all up to date.
I'm predicting some problems during the interview process.
I'm pretty sure even McDonalds has a “underwear goes inside the pants” policy.
Not that they enforce it very strictly, but technically I'm sure it's on the books.

CHORUS:
If you sing, sing, sing
Sing your song,
sing for me, come on sing

Sing sing sing
Sing your song,
sing for me

True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess.
-- Louis Nizer (1902-1994) American Lawyer

The weapons of mass destruction and mass deception reside
in this town: They are the neocons who pull the strings and
the members of Congress who have loosened the purse strings
with reckless abandon and have practically given George and
company a blank check to run our country into monetary and
moral bankruptcy.
--Cindy Sheehan

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by
nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who
fear the consequences and detest the reality of the
attempt to impose American hegemony.
--Noam Chomsky

The only index by which to judge a government or a way of
life is by the quality of the people it acts upon. No matter
how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs
decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill
will and suspicion - it is an evil government.
-Eric Hoffer

"I'd been a subscriber to The Dothan Eagle for 50 years, so I thought maybe they could help me."

- A local little old lady, trying her best to understand the new prescription drug benefit. She called our local paper, hoping they could help her.

It is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read
sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to
respect others' religions as we would have them respect our
own, a friendly study of the world's religions is a sacred
duty.
--Mahatma Gandhi

Bush's favourite:

White Man's Burden
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward--
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.

Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days--
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.

Rudyard Kipling

Now we look ahead and our prayer is that our young people
and their children will develop the courage and wisdom to
find victorious living in ways other than war - that their
lives in a contracting world will eliminate fear of
cultural differences - the mindless prejudice that often
twists proper patriotism into negative nasty nationalism
that turns otherwise civil societies into warring tribes.
--Everett Woodman's short speech at Dartmouth July 4th

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak
is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.
--Eleanor Holmes Norton