Recent kwiples

Tuesday 14th of May 2024

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2020 Presidential election What I'm asking you to do is just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen. Donald Trump, to acting attorney general Richard Donoghue © 2023 Kwiple.com
2022 midterm elections  The Democrats averted a midterm catastrophe, yes, but it is rather startling to consider that Republicans spent the past two years defending a corrupt demagogue, attacking the democratic process, banning abortion across much of the land, offering few considered policy ideas of their own — and having taken the House, come so close ot claiming the Senate too. Given all this, Democrats would be wise to treat the 2022 elections not as a vindication but as a stay of execution. Alexander Burns, New York Review of Books, January 19, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Change There happened in the Middle Ages what has happened so often since then. Those who were the beneficiaries of the established order were bent upon defending it, not so much, perhaps, because it guaranteed their interests, as because it seemed to them  indispensable to the preservation of society. Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities © 2023 Kwiple.com
Christianity According to a recent Pew Research poll,  60 percent of Americans believe the country was founded to be a Christian nation, and nearly half (including 81 percent of white evangelicals) think it should be one today. Linda Greenhouse, New York Review of Books, February 8, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Christianity Evangelism created a safe harbor for white people who wanted to be counted as Christian without having to accept what ecumenical leaders said were the  social obligations demanded by the gospel, especially the imperative to extend civil equaliiy to nonwhites. David A. Hollinger, Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular © 2023 Kwiple.com
Conservatism Conservatism is to a large extent self-eroding. A philosophy that (rightly) salutes enterprise will not attract enough people who want to serve in the culture-shaping institutions. Sure enugh, the culture becomes less and less conservative. This problem is all the more acute in the US,  where conservatism so exalts the profit motive that it is itself an industry. Burning away in the Republican gut is a historic grievance. Even as the “movement” achieved electoral  success over half a century, the texture of life in the country went the other way.  Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, January 31, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Discrimination The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination. As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action © 2023 Kwiple.com
Discrimination The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. John Roberts, plurality decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Energy Thanks to an unseasonably warm winter in  Europe, Putin's moment of maximum leverage has passed uneventfully, and … the biggest  victim of Putin's gas gambit was Russia itself.  Putin's natural gas leverage is now noneistent, as the world — and, most importantly, Europe — no longer needs Russian gas. Far from freezing to death, Europe quickly secured alternative gas supplies by pivoting to global liquefied natural gas (LNG). …  Putin … has zero remaining leverage and no way to replace his erstwhile primary customer; he is finding out the hard way that it is much easier for consumers to replace unreliable commodity suppliers than it is for suppliers to find new markets.  Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Foreign Policy, Jan. 19, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Farming In 1935, when there were about 127 million Americans, there were six million farms. By 2017 the population had gone up to 325 million, and the number of farms had gone down to two million. Four million had shut down in the space of a single lifetime; many millions of farmers lost their farms. In 1940 the population of Greene County, Iowa, in the center of the Corn Belt, was 16,599. It had fallen to about half that by 2020. Ian Frazier, New York Review of Books, February 9, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Fashion What's the difference between a tie and a cow's tail? The cow's tail covers up the whole of the arsehole. Robert Habeck © 2023 Kwiple.com
Housing The Fuenteses’ fall from homeownership into housing instability offers a preview of how climate change will affect us over the century to come: It will alter not just where we live, but how we live. Long-term homeownership will become more difficult and more expensive in many places, and many communities will find themselves upended or erased, separating millions of people from the places they call home. By the end of the century, our ideas about what “home” means will have been substantially unsettled. Jack Bittle, New York Times, February 4, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The shocks of the past three years have hit all countries, but they have hit emerging and developing countries particularly hard. As a result, according to Global Economic Prospects 2023, just out from the World Bank, the convergence of average incomes between poor and rich countries has stalled. Worse, it might not soon return, given the damage already done and likely to persist in the years ahead. … According to the bank,  the number of people suffering “food insecurity” (that is, on the borders of starvation) in low-income countries jumped from 56mn in 2019 to 105mn in 2022. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, January 10, 2023 © 2023 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
Politial inequality In the age of Trump, Democrats have developed a great sense of pride in their role protecting America's frayed democratic norms.  But there may come  a moment when the euphoria of a better-than-expected midterm election is only a memory and the sense of righteous virtue that comes from defending democracy begins to wear thin. When that day arrives, many of the voters who who make up the party's base and a majority of the country … might find that it is no longer tolerable to be ruled by a dwindling and overempowered minority. There is only so much satisfaction to be drawn from being the sole party with an unblemished record of dutifully surrendering power. Alexander Burns, New York Review of Books, January 19, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Political inequality No iron rule in American politics says an electoral majority greatly disadvantaged by the country's political institutions has to operate with effusive respect for them.  A Democratic presidential candidate who  wins the popular vote and loses the Electoral College — like Hillary Clinton and Al Gore — is not bound by law to concede promptly. A popular president constrained by the Senate's rural majority does not have to keep private his view that the institution is obsolete. Alexander Burns, New York Review of Books, January 19, 2023 © 2023 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 I don't want to give somebody my input and get their feedback. I'd be glad to offer my ideas and hear what he thinks of them. William Zinsser, On Writing Well © 2023 Kwiple.com
Reading According to a  2022 Department of Education assessment, 67 percent of American fourth graders are not proficient readers. “The problem is even worse when you look beyond the average and focus on specific groups of children,” [Emily] Hanford  [creator of the “Sold a Story” podcast] says. “The most alarming statistic: 82 percent of Black fourth graders are not proficient readers.” Some of these children will never get the help they need. ProPublica recently reported that one fifth of adults in the United States struggle with reading — a “silent literacy crisis.” Christine Smallwood, New York Review of Books, February 9, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Reading For thiry years, very young children have gone to schools and been told that reading is an exercise in seeking confirmation of what they already know — these chikdren who are  at the beginning of knowing anything at all. It's as it we've been training them to be algorithms, honing their ability to make predictions rather than their capacity to enter the minds of others. Christine Smallwood, New York Review of Books, February 9, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Selfie I'm obsessed with the fact that my mother genuinely resembles Groucho Marx. Woody Allen © 2023 Kwiple.com
Snapshot You could fuck everyone and trust no one. Life in East Germany portrayed by the writer Annegret Gollin © 2023 Kwiple.com
Thinking If you don't think too good, don't think too much. Ted Williams © 2023 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Father, we just claim Oklahoma for you. Every square inch, we claim it for you in the name of Jesus. … We just thank you and we claim Oklahoma for you as the authority that I have as governor and the spiritual authority and the physical authority that you give me. I claim Oklahoma for you that we will be a light to our country and to the world. We thank you that your will was done on Tuesday and Father, that you will have your way with our state, with our education system, with everything within the walls behind me. Kevin Stitt, November 10, 3022, after being reelected Oklahoma's governor © 2023 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Will Republicans use power? This is my question. Will they wield power, because if you have a single takeaway as the result stands right now, it is that what the Republican electorate wants is a strong executive who utilizes and wields power over his enemies and then destroys his enemies and makes them grovel — makes molten, salty tears flow from their faces, as Ron DeSantis did with Disney. Benny Johnson, the "Godfather of Conservative internet," Nov. 8, 2022, when Republicans won a slim majority in the House in the midterm elections © 2023 Kwiple.com
Waste management The 23 million hogs in Iowa (about a third of the hogs in the US) along with Iowa's other livestock produce as much excrement every year as 168 million humans, or the “fecal equivalent” of the world's eleven biggest cities. Ian Frazier, New York Review of Books, February 9, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
 
Writing But writing has been around for only six thousand years or so, and most people didn't see much if it — it wasn't omnipresent in daily life — before the invention of the printing press and the rise of the modern nation-state. There is no particular reason to think it will long outlive them. Josephine Quinn, New York Review of Books, January 19, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com