Recent kwiples

Monday 29th of July 2024

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Hate Let them hate so long as they fear. Accius © 2022 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
Local politics All politics is local. Thomas (“Tip”) O'Neill, New York Review of Books, March 13, 1989 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Local politics I would rather have a thousand school board members than one president and no school board members. Ralph Reed, 1996 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Oligarchs What you end up doing as an oligarch is deliberately hurting your own followers and asking them to applaud you. Timothy Snyder © 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
Power Although they have amassed immense power and wealth, Putin and his immediate circle remain intensely resentful of the way in which the Soviet Union, Russia and their own service [the KGB] collapsed in the 1990s — and  great power mixed with great resentment is one of the most dangerous mixtures in both domestic and international politics. Anatol Lieven, Financial Times, March 11, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Profiles in courage The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride. Volodymyr Zelensky's response to an offer by the US to evacuate him and his family from Kyiv after Russia invaded Ukraine with overwhelming force on February 24, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Russia  In Soviet days most of us were really quite  happy with a  dacha, a colour TV and access  to special shops with some western goods, and holidays in Sochi. We were perfectly comfortable, and we only compared ourselves with the rest of  the population, not with the western elites. … It used to be that official rank gave you top status. Now you have to have huge amounts of money too. That is what the 1990s did to Russian society. A “senior former Soviet official” quoted by Anatol Lieven, Financial Times, Nov. 30, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Social media I'd still rather do this than work 9-5 somewhere. A Cameroonian immigrant quoted in Get Rich or Lie Trying, Symeon Brown's book about social media  influencers, who starred in a live-streaming show where Americans paid to racially abuse him © 2022 Kwiple.com
Social media If you don't have haters, you ain't poppin'. A woman quoted in Get Rich or Lie Trying, Symeon Brown's book about social media influencers, who was trolled for a video that went viral of her performing a sex act on a robot © 2022 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Pity them or not, according to taste, but be afraid of what the falling can take down with them. Janan Ganesh,  “Beware the downwardly mobile,” Financial Times, March 3, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union But anocracy, not autocracy, is our most immediate threat. Anocracy is usually transitional  — a repressive government allows reforms, or a democracy begins to unravel — and it is volatile. When a country moves into the anocracy zone, the risk of political violence reaches its peak; citizens feel uncertain about their government's power and legitimacy. Compared with democracies, anocracies with more democratic than autocratic features are three times more likely to experience political instability or civil war. Barbara F. Walter, Washington Post, January 24, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Technology To put the matter bluntly, if we had the polarized politics of today  but the information technology of the 1950s, we almost certainly would not have seen the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, at the United States Capitol. Millions of Republican voters would  probably not have believed the false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump and demanded from state legislatures new restrictive voting rules and fake election “audits” to counter phantom voter fraud. Richard Hasen, New York Times, March 7, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I've never really felt it was society's responsibility to take care of other people's children. Ron Johnson, defending his oposition to government helping families afford childcare © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Why do we assume that the body’s natural immune system isn’t the marvel that it really is? Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease? Ron Johnson, anti-vaxxer © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trust Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time. It can be plausibly argued that much of the economic backwardness in the world can be explained by the lack of mutual confidence. Kenneth Arrow, “Gifts and Exchanges,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1(4), 1972 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Ukraine Слава Україні  [Slava Ukrayini] [Glory to Urkraine]  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Ukraine  I hope others can help keep Ukraine alive. Learn the history. Light a candle on  Holodomor Remembrance Day in November. Mourn the dead. Remember Ukraine. Lev Golinkin, New York Times, March 2, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Ukraine Obama looked at Ukraine [after Russia seized Crimea in 2014] and asked, “What’s in it for us?” Trump looked at Ukraine and asked [in trying to shake down Zelensky], “What’s in it for me?” For neither president was the question of staving off another Russian invasion, much less of encouraging Ukraine's democratic development, a particular priority. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin looked at Ukraine and concluded: “It's all for me.” Bret Stephens, New York Times, March 8, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Ukraine Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Zbigniew Brzezinski © 2022 Kwiple.com
Ukraine War Every one of us has got a list of things that we will never forgive this war and its occupying forces for. Oleksandr Mykhed, a Ukrainian writer, Financial Times, March 4, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Ukraine War I will venture only one prediction about Putin: Vladimir, the first day of this war was the best day of the rest of your life. … I wish that I could blithely predict that Ukraine will be Putin’s Waterloo — and his alone. But I can't, because in our wired world, what happens in Waterloo doesn’t stay in Waterloo. Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, February 25, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Ukraine War  One disturbing effect of this cruel madness and invasion of an innocent and sovereign state is that an entire generation of children will have a clearly defined enemy, an irreversible consequence. Haska Shyyan, a Ukrainian writer, Financial Times, March 4, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Ukraine War Welcome to World War Wired — the first war in a totally interconnected world. This will be the Cossacks meet the World Wide Web. Like I said, you haven't been here before. Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, February 25, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Voting rights  The laws are there, and the rules are there,  and basically the government, the government will stand behind them and give them the the right to vote. We have that. The things they're talking about now are in court. Marc Elias has an awful lot of that that in court. The courts have struck down,  like in Ohio, they struck down gerrymandering. Things are happening. We act like we are going to obstruct people from voting; that is not going to happen. Joe Manchin, January 18,2022, when asked about fears of voter suppression [There is no Constitutional right to vote. Elias is a voting rights lawyer and may not win in court. Ohio's map was overturned because it had a law prohibiting gerrymandering.] © 2022 Kwiple.com
 
Voting rights We should all support the right to vote – everyone – but not by breaking the rules  to make new rules. Joe Manchin, January 18,2022, supporting voter suppression efforts led by Senate Republicans by sacrificing a voting rights bill sponsored by Democrats on the alter of keeping the filibuster rule as it is © 2022 Kwiple.com