Recent kwiples

Monday 29th of April 2024

Kwiple.com Available without prescription™ © 2015 Kwiple.com
2020 Presidential election The American psyche has not recognised we were one vice-president away from a coup. Jay Inslee © 2021 Kwiple.com
2020 Presidential election It may be beyond the imagination of Americans to accept that their system is in jeopardy.  Countries with radically different histories, such as South Korea, find it much easier. But the facts are staring the US in the face. What happened on January 6 has so far gone unpunished, which means it is likely to be tried again. Edward Luce, Financial Times, December 16, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
2020 Presidential election On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all Jim Jordan to Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, suggesting that vice presidents have the authority to simply refuse to count electoral votes from states his party lost © 2021 Kwiple.com
Change Not the nation but its customs get old. Its institutions petrify into rigidity; there is social arterial sclerosis. Then some people not overburdened with elaborate and stiff habits take up and carry on the moving process of life. John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct © 2021 Kwiple.com
Christmas Merry Christmas! 🎄 ps. Santa, please bring ammo. 🎁 Thomas Massie and family, 1:22 PM – Dec 4, 2021, four days after the November 30 mass shooting at Oxford High School outside Detroit, MI, and ten days before the ninth anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, CT © 2021 Kwiple.com
The Constitution of the United States  What's the Constitution between friends? Timothy J. Campbell, purported reponse to Grover Cleveland after Cleveland refused to support a bill Campbell favored on the grounds that it was unconstitutional © 2021 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Every single year more than 600,000 people in the US die from cancer. The country has never once shut down. Not a single school has closed. And every year, over 600,000 people, of all ages and all races will continue to die from cancer. Marjorie Taylor Greene, 9:27 AM – Dec 4, 2021, who believes cancer is contagious like COVID-19, whooping cough or sexually transmitted infections © 2021 Kwiple.com
Democracy Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. Clement Attlee, speech at Oxfrd University, June 14, 1957 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Democracy Democracy never lasts long.  It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide. John Adams, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Democracy If and when US democracy falls, giggling complacency, not moustache-twirling villainy, will be the presiding atmosphere. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, December 7, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Farming How we treat farm animals today will be seen, I believe, as a defining moral failing of our age. Ezra Klein, New York Times, December 16, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Food In 1930 the average US family spent 24.3 per cent of its income on food. By 2007 that number had fallen to 9.8 per cent. This is because America’s food system, like most of the world's, became dramatically more concentrated, industrialised and globalised over that period. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, December 11/12, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Food Pile it high and sell it cheap  Grocers' maxim © 2021 Kwiple.com
Food Since the 1950s, broiler chickens have roughly quadrupled in size, and it now takes them six weeks, not 15, to grow to slaughter weight. These are inventions, not just chickens. Ezra Klein, New York Times, December 16, 2021 © 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
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 It's a good maxim that if you have a good dog you don't bark yourself. attributed to Clement Attlee © 2021 Kwiple.com
Republican Party The Republican Party today is a zombie party. Robert Kagan, Washington Post, September 23, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Rights A country where “I'll see you in court” is the first response to any dispute isn't healthy. But one where someone says “I can’t see you in court because I had to sign away my rights to do so” is surely worse. Sarah O'Connor, Financial Times, November 25, 2021, on mandatory arbitration © 2021 Kwiple.com
Snapshot A modest man who has much to be modest about. Clement Attlee portrayed by Winston Churchill © 2021 Kwiple.com
The South Any southern white man worth a pinch of salt would give his all to maintain white supremacy. Richard Russell © 2021 Kwiple.com
The South Every country has a South. adage © 2021 Kwiple.com
Success Garlanded go-getters like Midgley are walking arguments against success. There's a lesson for us all here. It's worth asking every morning: am I Thomas Midgley? Should I go to work today, or will the world be better off if I stay in bed playing League of Legends  in my underwear? “Did little damage” is a good line to have on one’s tombstone. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, December 11/12, 2021 [Midgley invented leaded gasoline, which ended “knocking” in engines but killed millions, and chlorofluorocarbon, used in air conditioning but depleted ozone in the upper atmosphere] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Technology Social media’s mutation from Speaker’s Corner to Gin Lane roughly tracks the smartphone’s conquest of BlackBerry. It comes down, I think, to the diffuculty of typing anything of length, and therefore of nuance, on a touch screen. The currency of the internet changed from the paragraph to the sentence, from the blog to the tweet, from the word to the image. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, September 25, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Trump fans should be happy he lost; it might’ve kept him alive. /end Darryl Cooper, a.k.a. MartyrMade, 2:27 PM – Jul 8, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say We came here and created a blank slate. We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans, but candidly, there isn't much Native American culture in American culture. Rick Santorum © 2021 Kwiple.com
 
the West To regard anything in public life as “inevitable” is to succumb to teleology. Still, with the passing of [Bob] Dole and much of his generation, it is hard to avoid the thought that societies grow rasher and more reckless as their memories of past crises fade. In other words, for the west, whose last existential mess is now a human lifetime ago, there is no avoiding the wages of success. It should expect its politics to wobble and lurch until such time as citizens taste the consequences again. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, December 7, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com