Your Quote of the Day

“The Constitution. . . illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law--all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present

Mr Zinn's problem. ed, is that he offers no alternative and the undermining of the status quo requires that there be one and a route to it.

If you have not read his book, you cannot know if that is or is not so.

I agree ed. But that will apply to most quotes on here.

What is his alternative?

I have not read his book and do not presume to know what he has written about it.

"It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an 'information highway' but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies."
Mike Royko

How can one disagree with that after 8 years on A2K.

Bob is a very tolerant and patient man with a utopian streak. I often wonder what he thinks when he reads through some of the threads. I suppose his bottom line must be that there's no money in overestimating the intelligence of the general public.

The only people who are not as shagged out as I am and who come on here are not intelligent by definition. I would never have even thought of coming on here in the days when I didn't need to sit down most of the day. I would have thought the idea crackers had someone suggested it to me.

Alas--my glory days are gone with the passage of the time the all-merciful and Divine Providence granted us all.

What we need is a Shagged Out Old Hasbeen's thread. Nobody allowed who can do two press-ups or run further than from the couch to the dunny tin.

Mr Zinn merely points up the charade that the US has been. It's not, never was, never will be, government of the people, by the people, for the people.

It's all a grand deception that has duped millions - "all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity".

“The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population the intelligent ones or the fool”
Henrik Ibsen

My wife Mary and I have been married for forty-seven years and not once have we had an argument serious enough to consider divorce; murder, yes, but divorce, never.

Jack Benny

" One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly."

Andy Rooney

( i drink to that ! )

“America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.”
― Walter Cronkite

“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as a sorry state as the souls who live under tyranny.”
― Thomas Jefferson

I bet the FDA approves of that ed.

Mr Jefferson lived a fat cat's life in a society which we would find very difficult to either recognise or understand.

He hit the nail squarely on the head and sank it all the way in one blow.

Except, Ed, that it is crap like this,

“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as a sorry state as the souls who live under tyranny.”
― Thomas Jefferson

that gives so many Americans that "we're so much better than the rest of the world" attitude. It contributes to that great fount of ignorance that besets America.

Of course Jefferson could easily have been describing the tyranny that he himself inflicted upon Native Americans.

American Hypocrisy sure has a long history, does it not?

The FDA does not want me to ingest some of my daily diet. They act to suppress much knowledge regarding certain of these things. They allow certain poisons into our diet in the interest of making money. It's an issue that has nothing to do with the starving poor, of which I was one in childhood. Likely a claim you cannot make.

But they are counseled by scientists who have done rigorous scientific tests with the results being peer-reviewed just as farmerman recommends.

And you know how much store you set by science.

While they have been operating life expectancy has gone up by leaps and bounds and creeping staggerings. (well- leaps and bounds seemed a bit awkward for increased life expectancy.)

There is science, junk science and fraud. Take your pick.

Cop out ed. Wordplay. It might impress some folks but it doesn't impress me.

I have Mr Apisa at it on another thread. To name but one.