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Wednesday 15th of May 2024

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Children The most adult conversations I have are with the childless. They read more, attend more, travel more and (through lack of mental distraction, I stress, not higher intellect) notice more. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, December 4, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Death Venki Ramakrishnan, former president of the Royal Society and a chemistry Nobel laureate, nurses a more fundamental objection to killing off death. While bacteria and cancer cells are in effect immortal, he explained in an interview recently, whole organisms are not. All animals die, suggesting that death co-evolved with sex: “[Reproduction] is like a lottery. You're tossing different combinations of genes out at life to see which one can do better but, in order to give them a shot, the older generation has to get out of the way.” Death, in other words, is the price we pay for sex. Financial Times, October 29, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Ethics The time has come for all good men to rise above principle. attributed to Huey Long  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Global warming Years ago, Roger Pielke Jr, political scientist at the University of Colorado,  formulated the Iron Law of Climate Policy: “When policies on emissions reductions collide with policies focused on economic growth,  economic growth will win out every time.” That law still holds, and not because our leaders are bad people or in hock to fossil-fuel lobbies. It holds because economic growth is what electorates want. We vote for emissions. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, November 11, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Governance Policy may be based on knowledge, but its conduct is an art. Henry Kissinger © 2021 Kwiple.com
Hypocrites say The mob takes the Fifth. If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth? Donald Trump, who invoked it when asked about adultery during divorce proceedings from Ivana, blew off congressional subpoenas often during his administration and instructed dozens of staff to do the same © 2021 Kwiple.com
Impeachment  These are not grounds for impeachment. They are grounds for divorce. Maureen Dowd, on the Lewinsky affair © 2021 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Count votes in Congress by: 1. Calculating a Member's Proportional Vote (MPV) for each member, as follows: MPV = SPNP / NLRS where: SPNP = State's Percentage of the National Population NLRS = Number of Legislators Representing the State (in that legislature) 2. Totaling “yes” MPVs and “no” MPVs 3. Passing if total MPV is more than 50 OTHERWISE Abolish the Senate © 2019 Kwiple.com
Money in politics It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not undertanding it. Upton Sinclair © 2021 Kwiple.com
Parenting LOL, I'm not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught. Text message from Jennifer Crumbley, to her 15-year-old son Ethan Crumbley, after being informed by his school that a teacher saw him using his cellphone to search for ammunition during class, and a day before he used the 9mm semi- automatic handgun they bought for him as a gift to kill four students and wound six others and a teacher at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, outside Detroit, Michigan © 2021 Kwiple.com
Police Show me the man, and I will find the crime. Laventri Beria, Stalin's secret police chief © 2021 Kwiple.com
Political parties Party is organized opinion. Benjamin Disraeli, speech at Oxford, November 25, 1864 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Populism Populist parties that do not do so well at the polls have to face an obvious contradiction: How can it be the case that the populists are the people's only morally legitimate representatives and yet fail to gain overwhelming majorities at the ballot box? Jan-Werner Müller, Democracy Rules © 2021 Kwiple.com
Post-2020 Senate shituation 15 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming) 2020 population: 40,085,414 Senators: 30 Republicans 1 Senator per 1,336,180 people — 1 state (California) 2020 population: 39,368,075 Senators: 2 Democrats 1 Senator per 19,684,037 people 19,684,037 / 1,336,180 = 14.7, therefore: average 15er's vote is worth nearly 15 times a Californian's, a Californian's vote is worth less than 7% of an average 15er's — 1 state (Wyoming) 2020 population = 582,328, therefore: 1 Senator per 291,164 Wyomians, a Wyomian's vote is worth 68 times a Californian's, a Californian's vote is worth 1.5% of a Wyomian's  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Seventy percent of Democratic partisans and leaners said was never acceptable for elected officials to call their opponents stupid, while only 51 percent of Republicans same the same. Fifty-three percent of Democrats said it was never acceptable to call opponents “anti-American”; only 25 percent of Republicans same the same. And 42 percent of Democrats said is was never acceptable to call an opponent's policy positions “evil” — a minority this time, but, here again, a larger proportion than the 26 percent of Republicans who said the same. Osita Nwanevu, The New Republic, Oct. 2021, reporting on the findings of a 2019 poll by Pew Research Center © 2021 Kwiple.com
Russia Land is the only thing we've got too much of. An old woman quoted by Colin Thubron in The Amur River: Between Russia and China © 2021 Kwiple.com
Russia There is very little that Russia can do to the US, say, that the US doesn't do to itself. Even the most ingenious outside force can only ignite the kindling that a country leaves lying around. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, November 30, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Selfie My alma mater was books, a good library. … I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity. Malcolm X, in Autobiography of Malcolm X  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Selfie Do you know it's my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore? Donald Trump to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem © 2021 Kwiple.com
Snapshot While many men in the Reublican Party do a lot of talking about “strength”, Cheney is the one walking the walk. Beyond the labels of “Never Trump” or “RINO”, she has carried the most important mantle: “Never Coup”. She has fought for what is right, at great personal cost — the truest definition of leadership there is. Liz Cheney portrayed by Christine Todd Whitman in Financial Times, December 4, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Donald was the Republican Party without the pretense. Donald Trump portrayed by Mary Trump in The Reckoning  © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union The Trump movement was always authoritarian and illiberal. It indulged periodically in the rhetoric of violence. Trump himself chafed against the restraints of law. But what the United States did not have  before 2020 was a large national movement willing to justify mob violence to claim political power. Now it does. David Frum, The Atlantic, July 13, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court A system of government that makes the people subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy. Antonin Scalia © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court There is an important corollary to his [Justice William J. Brennan Jr.'s] famous Rule of Five, one powerfully at work in the current Supreme Court. That is the Rule of Six. A five-justice majority is inherently fragile. It necessitates compromise and discourages overreach. Five justices tend to proceed with baby steps. A six-justice majority is a different animal. A six-justice majority, such as the one now firmly in control, is the judicial equivalent of the monarchy’s “heir and a spare.” The pathways to victory are enlarged. The overall impact is far greater than the single-digit difference suggests. Ruth Marcus, Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts? I don’t see how it is possible. Sonia Sotomajor, December 1, 2021, during oral arguments in the Mississippi abortion case, the latest in a series of cases conservatives on the Court are using to whittle away the right to an abortion © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Can we be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing in the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games? Josh Hawley © 2021 Kwiple.com
 
Trumpists say Oh my gosh, I love you! There he is! There he is! God bless our president. I will die for him. I will die for that man, happily. Anybody want to mess with him, you mess with me first. He is a hero, that man. Trump supporter watching him ride around Walter Reed Hospital in an SUV, quoted by Mary Trump in The Reckoning  © 2021 Kwiple.com