Your Quote of the Day

Jack E. Smith ⚖️
7Veritas4
·
The culture wars, the race wars, the gender wars...all smoke screens for the war they don't want you to fight.

The class wars.

“It finally came to me from Jimmy [Baldwin], who was so good at setting me straight. Happiness, he told me, is a very typical pursuit of the spoiled, who have, for the most part, had things brought to their tables, their attention, their inspection. I needed to pursue not happiness, he told me, but discernment.
“You understand, he said to me, the ability and the art of editing a film. You can transform a performance by what you clip or elide or move. A stunningly bad actor or performance can be transformed by how and where you place it. It has been edited, and so it is not an honest—or realistic—presentation of what took place.
“Well, we don’t understand reality too well. We think that what is placed before us is real, because we are either lazy or stupid—we don’t look around for what else is out there or within us or within each other, so we say, This is real. But if we remove the negative friend, the toxic thought, the temptations that topple us, then a new ‘reality’ appears. We get the reality we build, edit, post, print, distribute.
“Don’t accept the evil thought, the prejudiced view, the pessimistic view of the world. Accept a role in making the world better, and go out and edit it. That is what Jimmy always sought to do: Edit the world; edit his friends; edit himself.”—Marlon Brando\Interview with James Grissom/1990

"I think it's a deep consolation to know that spiders dream, that monkeys tease predators, that dolphins have accents, that
lions can be scared silly by a lone mongoose, that otters hold hands, and ants bury their dead. That there isn't their life and our life. Nor your life and my life. That it's just one teetering and endless thread and all of us, all of us, are entangled with it as deep as entanglement goes." ~Kate Forster

𝗟𝘂𝗶𝗴𝗶 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗲‘𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀...
The Allopathic Complex and Its Consequences
The second amendment means I am my own chief executive and commander in chief of my own military. I authorize my own act of self-defense in response to a hostile entity making war on me and my family.
Nelson Mandela says no form of viooence can be excused. Camus says it’s all the same, whether you live or die or have a cup of coffee. MLK says violence never brings permanent peace. Gandhi says that non-violence is the mightiest power available to mankind.
That’s who they tell you are heroes. That’s who our revolutionaries are.
Yet is that not capitalistic? Non-violence keeps the system working at full speed ahead.
What did it get us. Look in the mirror.
They want us to be non-violent, so that they can grow fat off the blood they take from us.
The only way out is through. Not all of us will make it. Each of us is our own chief executive. You have to decide what you will tolerate.
In Gladiator 1 Maximus cuts into the military tattoo that identifies him as part of the roman legion. His friend asks “Is that the sign of your god?” As Maximus carves deeper into his own flesh, as his own blood drips down his skin, Maximus smiles and nods yes. The tattoo represents the emperor, who is god. The god emperor has made himself part of Maximus’s own flesh. The only way to destroy the emperor is to destroy himself. Maximus smiles through the pain because he knows it is worth it.
These might be my last words. I don’t know when they will come for me. I will resist them at any cost. That’s why I smile through the pain.
They diagnosed my mother with severe neuropathy when she was forty-one years old. She said it started ten years before that with burning sensations in her feet and occasional sharp stabbing pains. At first the pain would last a few moments, then fade to tingling, then numbness, then fade to nothing a few days later.
The first time the pain came she ignored it. Then it came a couple times a year and she ignored it. Then every couple months. Then a couple times a month. Then a couple times a week. At that point by the time the tingling faded to numbness, the pain would start, and the discomfort was constant. At that point even going from the couch to the kitchen to make her own lunch became a major endeavor.
She started with ibuprofen, until the stomach aches and acid reflux made her switch to acetaminophen. Then the headaches and barely sleeping made her switch back to ibuprofen.
The first doctor said it was psychosomatic. Nothing was wrong. She needed to relax, destress, sleep more.
The second doctor said it was a compressed nerve in her spine. She needed back surgery. It would cost $180,000. Recovery would be six months minimum before walking again. Twelve months for full potential recovery, and she would never lift more than ten pounds of weight again.
The third doctor performed a Nerve Conduction Study, Electromyography, MRI, and blood tests. Each test cost $800 to $1200. She hit the $6000 deductible of her UnitedHealthcare plan in October. Then the doctor went on vacation, and my mother wasn’t able to resume tests until January when her deductible reset.
The tests showed severe neuropathy. The $180,000 surgery would have had no effect.
They prescribed opioids for the pain. At first the pain relief was worth the price of constant mental fog and constipation. She didn’t tell me about that until later. All I remember is we took a trip for the first time in years, when she drove me to Monterey to go to the aquarium. I saw an otter in real life, swimming on its back. We left at 7am and listened to Green Day on the four-hour car ride. Over time, the opioids stopped working. They made her MORE sensitive to pain, and she felt withdrawal symptoms after just two or three hours.
Then gabapentin. By now the pain was so bad she couldn’t exercise, which compounded the weight gain from the slowed metabolic rate and hormonal shifts. And it barely helped the pain, and made her so fatigued she would go an entire day without getting out of bed.
Then Corticosteroids. Which didn’t even work.
The pain was so bad I would hear my mother wake up in the night screaming in pain. I would run into her room, asking if she’s OK. Eventually I stopped getting up. She’d yell out anguished shrieks of wordless pain or the word “****” stretched and distended to its limits. I’d turn over and go back to sleep.
All of this while they bled us dry with follow-up appointment after follow-up appointment, specialist consultations, and more imagine scans. Each appointment was promised to be fully covered, until the insurance claims were delayed and denied. Allopathic medicine did nothing to help my mother’s suffering. Yet it is the foundation of our entire society.
My mother told me that on a good day the nerve pain was like her legs were immersed in ice water. On a bad day it felt like her legs were clamped in a machine shop vice, screwed down to where the cranks stopped turning, then crushed further until her ankle bones sprintered and cracked to accommodate the tightening clamp. She had more bad days than good.
My mother crawled to the bathroom on her hands and knees. I slept in the living room to create more distance from her cries in the night. I still woke up, and still went back to sleep.
Back then I thought there was nothing I could do.
The high copays made consistent treatment impossible. New treatments were denied as “not medically necessary.” Old treatments didn’t work, and still put us out for thousands of dollars.
UnitedHealthcare limited specialist consultations to twice a year.
Then they refused to cover advanced imaging, which the specialists required for an appointment.
Prior authorizations took weeks, then months.
UnitedHealthcare constantly changed their claim filing procedure. They said my mother’s doctor needed to fax his notes. Then UnitedHealthcare said they did not save faxed patient correspondence, and required a hardcopy of the doctor’s typed notes to be mailed. Then they said they never received the notes. They were unable to approve the claim until they had received and filed the notes.
They promised coverage, and broke their word to my mother.
With every delay, my anger surged. With every denial, I wanted to throw the doctor through the glass wall of their hospital waiting room.
But it wasn’t them. It wasn’t the doctors, the receptionists, administrators, pharmacists, imaging technicians, or anyone we ever met. It was UnitedHealthcare.
People are dying. Evil has become institutionalized. Corporations make billions of dollars off the pain, suffering, death, and anguished cries in the night of millions of Americans.
We entered into an agreement for healthcare with a legally binding contract that promised care commensurate with our insurance payments and medical needs. Then UnitedHealthcare changes the rules to suit their own profits. They think they make the rules, and think that because it’s legal that no one can punish them.
They think there’s no one out there who will stop them.
Now my own chronic back pain wakes me in the night, screaming in pain. I sought out another type of healing that showed me the real antidote to what ails us.
I bide my time, saving the last of my strength to strike my final blows. All extractors must be forced to swallow the bitter pain they deal out to millions.
As our own chief executives, it’s our obligation to make our own lives better. First and foremost, we must seek to improve our own circumstances and defend ourselves. As we do so, our actions have ripple effects that can improve the lives of others.
Rules exist between two individuals, in a network that covers the entire earth. Some of these rules are written down. Some of these rules emerge from natural respect between two individuals. Some of these rules are defined in physical laws, like the properties of gravity, magnetism or the potential energy stored in the chemical bonds of potassium nitrate.
No single document better encapsulates the belief that all people are equal in fundamental worth and moral status and the frameworks for fostering collective well-being than the US constitution.
Writing a rule down makes it into a law. I don’t give a **** about the law. Law means nothing. What does matter is following the guidance of our own logic and what we learn from those before us to maximize our own well-being, which will then maximize the well-being of our loved ones and community.
That’s where UnitedHealthcare went wrong. They violated their contract with my mother, with me, and tens of millions of other Americans. This threat to my own health, my family’s health, and the health of our country’s people requires me to respond with an act of war.
END

@Luigi

I have to say Edgar, I really like the quote in your signature. As I go about my days, I've found it has sneaked into my thoughts several times, to the point I thought I'd just mention it here now. .. for whatever that's worth.

Thank you. I had searched for the perfect one for years.

“Intellectuals are doomed to disappear when artificial intelligence bursts on the scene, just as the heroes of silent cinema disappeared with the coming of the talkies. We are all Buster Keatons.”
― Jean Baudrillard

The Lefty Canadian Radical 🇵🇸
Tori_TLCR
·
The biggest shock about the shooting of the CEO for me is seeing the ruling class be absolutely taken aback about how most of us ******* hate them.

They really seem to think their **** doesn't stink and that we all want to kiss the ring.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

- Walt Whitman

They cut down all the trees then blamed the cows for farting.
unknown

I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.
~ Charles Bukowski

Amen, bro.

Benito Mussolini created the word 'fascism.' He defined it as 'the merging of the state and the corporation.' He also said a more accurate word would be 'corporatism.' This was the definition in Webster's up until 1987 when a corporation bought Webster's and changed it to exclude any mention of corporations.
Adam McKay

The title "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" (1941) is derived from lines from two earlier W.C. Fields films. In "Poppy" (1936), he tells his daughter "If we should ever separate, my little plum, I want to give you just one bit of fatherly advice: Never give a sucker an even break!" In "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man" (1939), he tells a customer that his grandfather's last words, "just before they sprung the trap," were "You can't cheat an honest man; never give a sucker an even break, or smarten up a chump."
Fields wanted to call the film "The Great Man." When Universal executives insisted on the eventual title, he said, "What does it matter, they'll never get that on a marquee. It'll probably boil down to 'W.C. Fields - Sucker.'"
Fields fought with studio producers, directors, and writers over the content of his films. He was determined to make a movie his way, with his own script and staging, and his choice of supporting players. Universal finally gave him the chance, and "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" was the result. The studio paid Fields $25,000 for the story (written under the pseudonym Otis Criblecoblis) and $125,000 for his performance.
According to Fields' 2003 biography, the vehicle crashing into the drugstore was a real accident that occurred during filming. The director decided to leave it in to give the film the appearance of having a bigger budget.
When a rewritten script was submitted to Joseph Breen, the head of the MPPDA censor board, he exploded with a torrent of outrage and demanded changes. Breen took particular offense to the "vulgar and suggestive scenes and dialogue" and "jocular references to drinking and liquor." After Universal's rewrite, Fields commented, "They produced the worst script I ever read. I was going to throw it in their faces when the director (Edward F. Cline) told me not to. He said, 'We'll shoot your own script. They won't know the difference.' We did - and they didn't."
Well, they MOSTLY did. In the soda-shop scene, Fields turns to the camera and announces that the scene was supposed to have been filmed in a saloon "but the censor cut it out." He was telling the truth. (Wikipedia/IMDb)

“After the killing of the CEO of United HealthCare,” wrote Moore, “the largest of these billion dollar insurance companies, there was an immediate OUTPOURING of anger toward the health insurance industry. Some people have stepped forward to condemn this anger. I am not one of them.
“The anger is 1000% justified. It is long overdue for the media to cover it. It is not new. It has been boiling. And I’m not going to tamp it down or ask people to shut up. I want to pour gasoline on that anger.”
Moore continued: “Because this anger is not about the killing of a CEO. If everyone who was angry was ready to kill the CEOs, the CEOs would already be dead. That is not what this reaction is about. It is about the mass death and misery – the physical pain, the mental abuse, the medical debt, the bankruptcies in the face of denied claims and denied care and bottomless deductibles on top of ballooning premiums – that this ‘health care’ industry has levied against the American people for decades. With no one standing in their way! Just a government – two broken parties – enabling this INDUSTRY’s theft and, yes, murder.
“And now the press is calling me to ask, ‘Why are people angry, Mike? Do you condemn murder, Mike?’
“Yes, I condemn murder, and that’s why I condemn America’s broken, vile, rapacious, bloodthirsty, unethical, immoral health care industry …”
“But don’t get me wrong. No one needs to die,” added Moore. “In fact, that’s my point. No one needs to die – no one should die because they don’t ‘have’ health insurance. Not one single person should die because their ‘health insurance’ denies their health care in order to make a buck or Thirty Two Billion Bucks.”

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) hated people like few others and spent the last thirty years of his life almost in solitude!!
.
.
Here are extracted snippets of words from his writings as if from the fishmonger, some clever publishers have created bestsellers such as «The art of being right», «The art of this», «The art of that». Maybe his hatred wasn't so misplaced!
In his last years he only had his dog for company, which he had called "Atma", i.e. the Sanskrit word (atman) or Brahmin (atma) which means "vital breath", "vital essence"... that is, everything that most he hated and against whom he had written «The world as will and representation». I guess it was ironic.
Her little girl was quite aggressive and so her fellow citizens called her... the young Schopenhauer!
It is said that he used to dine at the Englischer Hof, a restaurant frequented by English officers. Before eating he would place a gold coin on the table in front of him. And he put it back in his pocket when he finished.
A waiter finally asked him the meaning of that scene and he replied that it was a silent bet with himself. Despite being an atheist, he would have left the gold coin in the donation box of the nearest church...
...the first day that the English officers dining there would talk about anything other than horses, women and dogs.
Well, I see that after 150 years the situation is the same: football, women and cars.
“We give up three-quarters of ourselves,” he added, “to resemble others. A man can only be himself when he is alone. And if he doesn't like solitude it means that he doesn't love freedom. Because he is only when he is alone that he is truly free."
Credit goes to respective owner

being the German kid in the 20's in Los Angeles
was difficult.
there was much anti-German feeling then,
a carry-over from World War 1.
gangs of kids chased me through the neighborhood
yelling, "Hieneie! Hieneie! Hienie!"
they never caught me.
I was like a cat.
I knew all the paths through brush and alleys.
I scaled 6-foot back fences in a flash and was off through
backyards and around blocks
and onto garage roofs and other hiding places.
then too, they didn't really want to catch me.
they were afraid I might bayonet them
or gouge out their eyes.
this went on for about 18 months
then all of a sudden it seemed to stop.
I was more or less accepted (but never really)
which was all right with me.
those sons-of-bitches were Americans,
they and their parents had been born here.
they had names like Jones and Sullivan and
Baker.
they were pale and often fat with runny
noses and big belt buckles.
I decided never to become an American.
my hero was Baron Manfred von Richthofen
the German air ace;
he'd shot down 80 of their best
and there was nothing they could do about
that now.
their parents didn't like my parents
(I didn't either) and
I decided when I got big I'd go live in some place
like Iceland,
never open my door to anybody and live on my
luck, live with a beautiful wife and a bunch of wild
animals:
which is, more or less, what
happened
“German” by Charles Bukowski

“None of my work has met my own standards.” —William Faulkner

Me too - eb

Harry Belafonte's last conversation with Martin Luther King, Jr.:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mlk-capitalism-flow/#:~:text=%22The%20trouble%2C%22%20Martin%20went%20on%2C%20%22is%20that%20we,are%20doomed%20to%20be%20poor%20at%20some%20level.%22

"The trouble," Martin went on, "is that we lived in a failed system. Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level." Taking a sip from his glass, he continued, "That's the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we're going to have to change the system."


It's a long piece but well worth the read - eb

“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.”
― Bertrand Russell, New Hopes for a Changing World

We are at a point where they actually are that stupid. - eb