#and if i tell them just a fraction of what a piece of work trump is they will be like 'of course he's awful' like they're aware | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thatharringrovehoe · 3 years ago

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So I've been playing Dishonored which is my favorite game and this popped into my head so now you all have to suffer with me. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*.✧

He's so fucking cold. Like he’s been plunged into a lake mid winter and can’t find his way to the surface. Hands shaking, Billy sifts clumsily through the box of his mother’s things he keeps hidden in the back of his closet. He's found that if he thinks about the good times, picnics at the beach under the California sun, the thing oozing it's way though his brain losses just a bit of it's grip. Leaves Billy with enough motor function to stumble around his bedroom, trying to find the right pieces. And fucking hell it’s been so long since he's done this. He can remember helping his Ma when he was little, chubby fingers clenched tight in her cotton sundress as she arranged the items on the table just right. Pricked her finger to draw sigils in a language long forgotten, her voice a soft cadence through the bedroom as she hummed Billy’s favorite lullaby. No words, just a beautiful mournful thing. Humming a song of grieving loss. Billy doesn't know why he likes it so much.

“Remember baby. When you offer your gifts they have to be special. Well loved. Something that brings you joy every time you use it.”

His mother kept a pair of earrings on the cloth covered table. She never wore them when his father was home. Took them out and put them back on the little rickety stand in the back of her closet every day before he came back from work. Dangling silver daggers with the onyx beads. Billy shoved one straight through his left earlobe when he turned fifteen and has barely taken it out since.

His Ma told him that everything he built his shrine with had to mean something. Had to be something he treasured. From the fabric to the stand itself. So Billy tried his best. Draped his best leather jacket over the milk crate that held all of his favorite hair products. Placed his Ma's Fleetwood Mac album next to one of his mother's silver earrings (the one he always wears), arranged as neatly as he can manage. He’d had to prick his thumb seven times because to his dawning horror it kept healing over. Just another tally mark towards something being really fucking wrong. And he remembers the warehouse. Can still feel the slimy caustic sludge being pumped down his throat by a fucking tentacle. But he’d hoped it had been a dream, a nightmare from reading to many Lovecraft novels. Billy curses as he slices open his thumb for what feels like the millionth time.

Apparently not.

He's drawn the characters just how he remembers. His mother had made him practice every day, showing him each and every shape and line, drawn in colorful crayon. She gave him a cookie every time he got them right. Never hung them up on the fridge though. Didn't want his father to see.

He can feel the shadow creeping through his blood, dragging it’s claws against his veins. It might not know exactly what he’s doing yet, but it must be able to feel the intention. Billy thinks of ocean waves and a soft hand running through his curls. Fights the pull at the back of his mind to just give in. To sleep. His hands shake harder.

Fuck, where is it?! Billy combs through records and trinkets, a bottle of her perfume. He’s desperately hoping it didn't get lost in the move because his mother never taught him how to make one. Hell, he's pretty certain that he wouldn't be able to find the pieces he needs in Hawkins anyway. Not like Melvalds has a supernatural voodoo isle.

Then finally, finally he finds it. Lifting up his mother’s satin scarf it comes tumbling out to land on the floor with a clatter. Bleached white and beaten smooth by the waves, it's about the size of a sand dollar. Billy picks it up, places it in the palm of his hand. He still remembers the day he found it out on the shore. Washed up between some sea glass, the leather bindings still somehow soft even soaked with salt water. Etched with symbols and shapes Billy will never understand. When Billy showed it to his mother an unreadable expression crossed her face. It was that evening she showed him her shrine.

The rune seems to hum against his skin, an otherworldly song from far away ghosting past his ears. The thing that’s trying to Shanghai Billy’s brain writhes. It's angry, but more than that it’s fucking terrified and Billy has never been more sure of anything in his life. This was a good idea. But his limbs are getting colder, heavier. Whatever this evil piece of shit is it doesn’t like what Billy’s doing. He has to fight against the deadening of his limbs, crawling towards his shitty attempt at a shrine from his place on the floor. His vision is starting to grow dark when he finally clutches on to the milk crate, placing the rune between the earring and his cassette tape. And he knows that there's no guarantee. That whatever his Ma prayed to every night never shielded her from Neil’s fists, didn’t do a damn thing as the cancer slowly drained her down to nothing. That sometimes (most times) when someone would call out to the void the only thing they heard in return was their own disappointment. But he's got no other options. This is his trump card. His last resort. If this hocus pocus bullshit doesn’t work then Billy is up shit creek without a paddle. With a frustrated shout against the nightmare pulling him in, Billy begs.

“Please! Fuck, help me! I'll do anything, c’mon just- please!”

The air in Billy’s bedroom all of a sudden seems to shudder. The shadows flicker and meld together, reaching outwards. The sound of dry fall leaves blowing in the wind, a wail of a thousand dying worlds ricochets off the walls. Then nothing. Billy scrunches his eyes shut against the sting of tears. Fuck, of course it didn’t work. Story of his life. He called for help and just like always it doesn't mean shit. No one is coming to save him.

“Well well well. Certainly been a long time since someone summoned me like that. Very old school.”

Billy’s eyes snap open, the surprise and adrenaline enough to fight the heaving weight of his limbs to raise his head. And there, perched on his shitty milk crate shrine, sits the most beautiful boy he's ever seen. He's got hair the color of soil after it rains. High cheekbones and full lips, milky white skin dotted with a constellation of beauty marks. Billy didn't know what he expected but it certainly wasn't this. The boy god is dressed in a swanky leather coat the color of charcoal with pants to match. Eyes like an oil spill, inky black and endless. With a good look at Billy, they narrow dangerously.

“I thought I fucking told you not to touch this world. You want a repeat of last time?”

Whatever deity he summoned looks pissed as hell. Did he not do it right? Maybe the items weren’t good enough. That would be just his luck. He's so confused he almost doesn’t notice it right away. The shadow slowly working it’s way through his body has stopped, retreated a little even.

“I-... I don't know what you’re talking about. Please, there's something wrong with me. Something got put inside of me and I need it out. Please, help me.”

Billy hasn’t begged since his Ma was takin her last breath in that damn hospice bed. Didn't see the point when it always got you nowhere. But now he can't make himself stop. Cuz he's never been this scared before. The things this monster inside him wants him to do. It's so strong, like he’s fighting a steam roller. He's got no hope on his own.

The boy sitting on his best leather jacket stills. Cocks his head to the side slightly, considering. Then those pretty pink lips are spreading out into a gleeful smirk. Slides off the shrine to settle on his knees in front of Billy. Reaches out his hand to cup Billy’s jaw gentle enough it makes him want to cry.

“You can't get a good enough hold of this one can you? Interesting. Tell me trouble maker, what's your name?”

That voice, deep and ethereal, seems to echo from all around him. He can feel it vibrate in his bones. He wants, no, needs to answer.

“Billy. Billy Hargrove.”

The boy smiles now, all gleaming pearly whites. If Billy looks long enough reality starts to flicker. And for just a second all he can see is teeth sharp like knives in a Cheshire grin. There for a moment and gone in a flash. The hand on his jaw tightens just the slightest fraction.

“Well Billy Hargrove. You seem to find yourself in quite the predicament. That parasite sucking on your soul is an old acquaintance of mine. He's one nasty little shit.”

If a brain washing shadow monster could feel indignant he’s pretty sure that’s what's happening now. Whatever was hijacking Billy's mind has curled up somewhere tight, sunk it’s teeth in deep. Cornered like a threatened animal.

“Please, I’ll do anything you want. I can’t… I can’t fight it. It's too much.”

There’s enough tears leakin down his face that it's soaking the front of his shirt. The boy is giving him this look, almost amused. The longer he holds Billy’s jaw the more the monster losses his grip, and Billy is ready to do anything at this point. Because that thing stuck to his brain wants him to find people. Feed it people. Wants Billy to drink all the chemicals in the supply shed at the pool. Told Billy that if he tried to fight it would take Max first and he can't let that happen.

The boy seems to come to a decision, grabs Billy’s hands to help him shakily to this feet. He doesn’t let go even when they’re both standing.

“You know there’s not many who can fight his hold for this long. I'm impressed.”

He steps forward until his chest is practically pressed up against Billy's. He smells like ozone and smoke, bottomless black eyes trained on stormy blue. Reaches up to tangle his fingers into Billy’s curls, sending tingles across his scalp. Smiles wider at the small noise that escapes Billy's throat.

“I'll help you Billy Hargrove. But in return, you have to do something for me.”

Billy's nodding before he can even really register what’s being said. Anything. He'd do whatever this pretty boy asked as long as he keeps touching Billy like this. Gentle, with a reverence no one has ever bothered to show.

“I need you to kick this little shit back into the hole he crawled out of. Can you do that for me Billy? I wanna see how your story pans out trouble maker. Wanna see what you do when someone gives you a chance.”

Billy nods again, breathless. The boy chuckles, the sound saccharine. Like warm honey dripping down his spine.

“Gunna have to use your words baby.”

Billy swallows, the click of his dry throat loud in the warm personal bubble they’ve created.

“Yes. Yeah. I’ll do it. Whatever you want pretty boy, please.”

It comes out a whisper but the boy hears it all the same. The boy smiles bright, pulls Billy forward. Soft warm lips press against his own and Billy is floating. He's never been kissed like this before. Slow and deep, the boy's tongue pressing in to curl and slide. Stuff him full. Billy's shaking for a whole other reason now. Reaches out to grip the boy's coat, cool to the touch where Billy is burning. Fire rushing through his veins, and he's already so close just from this. Whimpers brokenly into the kiss.

The boy pulls him in impossibly closer, slots his thigh between Billy’s legs, pushes up up up. And Billy is right fucking there, grinds down as he swaps spit with an old god in his shitty bedroom with the peeling yellow paint and the door that locks from the outside. Can feel the tell tale tingle spreading behind his navel.

“ ‘m gunna cum! Fuck, more please!” Billy mumbles curses into the kiss, breath hitching as his balls draw tight. The boy smiles against his mouth, yanks his curls back to bite into the meat of his neck and Billy’s gone, pulsing rope after rope of cum into his underwear.

“Oh my- .. Fuuuuuck. Yes! Uhhhnn!” He's panting like a dog as he slumps forward into the boys shoulder. Gentle fingers card through his hair as aftershocks zap up and down his body. A kiss is pressed behind his ear, a soft warmth flooding his core. He can't feel the shadow anywhere.

“So good for me sweet thing. Makes me want to keep you.”

It's said so quiet, like the boy doesn’t intend for it to be heard. Billy presses his face into his neck. There's no heartbeat under the boy's skin.

“You could. I want you to.” Whoever this is, whatever he is, he came for Billy. Answered his literal cry for help when no one else did. He doesn't know what he has to offer but he wants to give this impossible boy everything.

The boy in question hums. Brings Billy's left hand up to kiss the back of it. His skin feels hot under his lips, bordering on uncomfortable. Like stepping on sun scorched pavement. When the boy pulls back there’s a tattoo on his hand. A strange design that looks vaguely like a compass. It's the same mark as the one on the middle of the rune sitting behind them.

“I haven't given my mark to someone quite so special in a while. Try not to disappoint me Billy Hargrove.”

The boy goes to pull away but Billy still has his hand clenched tight on his coat. Panic wells up in his chest. Doesn't want to end whatever this is quite yet.

“Wait! What’s-…what's your name?” Which is a valid question he thinks. And probably one he should have asked at some point before he started grinding his dick on the guys leg. Oh well.

“I've had many names, none if which would hold any significance for you. Call me what you want trouble maker. I'll be there when you need me.”

Billy believes him. Then between one blink and the next the boy is gone, tendrils of dissipating smoke the only evidence he was ever there. A deep voice whispers from nowhere and everywhere.

“Ask your sister about the monsters in the woods.”

On the shrine the only thing that remains is the rune, both his gifts having apparently been accepted. Billy gives a hysterical bark of laughter at the thought of some higher being listening to Fleetwood Mac somewhere out in the void. It gives him an idea. He drags his lips across the fresh mark on his hand, mumbles into his skin.

“Thanks Stevie.”

#i don't know what this is but here ya go!#Outsider!Steve #Billy Hargrove #harringrove #dishonored au #yes Billy gets powers but i haven't decided what they are yet #that hoe writes #stranger things #Neil you better watch out my boy has a literal old god for a boyfriend now

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odinsblog · 5 years ago

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Once upon a time, I was an artist who paid my bills by selling artwork on the sidewalk. It was for less than 18 months, but I did it. Starving artist? Yeah, I was all about that life.

Most of my art was just pictures I saw in magazines and put my own spin on them, usually in in,k or charcoal, or if I was feeling really adventurous, in Cra Pas.

Sometimes, the pieces I drew took me hours and hours to do. 15 hours or 20 or 30 hours. But I loved drawing, so the time was well spent for me.

Now, when I first sold my art on the street, there was no “artist’s guide on how much new artists should charge for their blood sweat and tears,” so I wasn’t really sure how much to charge, or how much I could get away with charging.

But eventually the streets taught me a lesson, and I did learn a very important lesson.

One day I put up a black and white drawing. It was a headshot of a woman. I decided that it took me 15 hours to complete it, plus the cost of paper, charcoal and a frame. My asking price was $150.

Now you gotta remember, I had never done this before. I ended up selling art on the streets of downtown Boston because I made a hasty, not very well thought out move to “live my dream” after college. I got a place to stay, but lied to my landlord about being employed. I needed money (a lot of it) and I needed it fast, and I was beyond desperate.

So my first piece I sold ........

All kinds of people were giving me advice on how to price my artwork. Some people were telling me to give it away, so that if word spread on what a great artist I was, it would help me set up “a name” for myself. Others were telling me that if I was asking $150 and someone offered me $10, then I should just take that and be happy: “at least you aren’t giving it away for free,” they reasoned.

So just to recap: my choices were to seek $150, a fair price for my art, or give it away, or accept a fraction of what I knew my work was worth.

Well, that first day was EXTREMELY skressful for me. I’m getting palpitations just thinking about it. But in the end, I decided to hold firm at $150. Even though I was fully expecting failure, I committed to myself that either I was going to make $150 on that first piece, or I was going to go home broke. In other words, I decided to vote on myself and believe in my talents.

Cut to chase: my very first piece sold in less than 30 minutes. And the person who bought it thought my sign said $1,500 and was prepared to pay that for it, until they repeatedly asked me what my sign said.

I quickly jacked up my prices, although I never did work up the cajones to ask for more than $1,000 per piece. Rent and utilities were never a problem for me after that.

It’s a bit of a plot twist, but the moral of my story is this: ASK FOR MORE. DEMAND BETTER.

The worst someone can say is no, but you might be surprised.

Whenever I hear centrist Dems saying that voters should be happy with literally anyone because, “Any Democratic candidate is better than Trump,” it reminds me of the people who told me, “getting $10 or $15 is better than giving it away for free.”

They were wrong. My artwork was worth more than that. Contrary to what they were saying, I didn’t need to settle for less.

“Better than Trump” is such a low bar. Especially right now, even before the primaries have even begun.

Think of ALL the people you know, or have ever met in your life before. They’re literally ALL “better than Trump”. All of them. Does that mean they deserve your commitment? Are they presidential material?

“Better than Trump” is such a low bar. I’M better than Trump, and I can promise you, I wouldn’t make a good president. The Democratic leadership has convinced centrists that the *only* bar to clear is “better than Trump,” and not a candidate’s political policies.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND: Not all Democrats are progressive.

The primaries haven’t even started yet.

RIGHT NOW is *precisely* when we should be asking for more from our would-be political leaders. We need the courage to demand better.

If we settle for less now, less is exactly what we will get. Demand honest-to-God progressive Democrats in the primaries. Progressives with a rock solid record of progressivism.

#politics #joe biden #odin rants #centrism #settling #settling for less #electability #clinton democrats #centrism sucks #clintonism

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neverwatchedonepiece · 6 years ago

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617: "Caesar's Defeat! The Powerful Grizzly Magnum!"

Basically Caesar: “REEEEEEEEEEEEE, SCIENCE!!!”

Only had time for one episode today but caught a snippet of the preview and it seems like posting for one episode here will fit in terms of the story arc.

Caesar is down and out, Law has done what he came to do, and Luffy has executed step one of his plan to kick ass and kidnap! Now all he needs is the fantastically badass Usopp to come through with the cuffs and step two will be on the cards!

It’s all a matter of escaping Punk Hazard with Caesar in tow, plus Law, the Strawhats, a bunch of kids and maybe some surviving Minions and the G5 and Smoker and Tashigi and Foxfire and Momonosuke and Brownbeard.

Yeah, I hope Franky has some extra bed rolls hidden away in storage because that is a lot of extra bodies on Sunny.

Sanji will be fine. He worked at Baratie. He’s used to mass catering.

Law Tries Out His Stand Up Material On Vergo

In other news, Vergo is still alive. I kind of hoped Law might have taken him out but this is One Piece and you guys have always said that Oda sees a future for most of his characters. (Even Wapol. Yes, I am still salty about Wapol.) Smoker was on the ground, breathing hard. Getting fresh air for once, instead of dat tasty tobacco.

Vergo is also still shit-talking. “You broke the gear? There’s no turning back? That’s hysterical.”

Brave for a guy who was (at that point) in two pieces with a building crumbling rapidly around him. Not to mention the noxious clouds of gas.

Then he used his hands to spring from the ground and attack Law. He was Roomed and doomed in two seconds, chopped into fractions and hung on the railings. (Approaching Nightmare Fuel territory if you think too much about it.)

Vergo totally reminds me of the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. If you’ve never heard of it, he’s basically this dude who keeps getting up and shit-talking his opponents even after the removal of all his limbs. It’s funny. Vergo even made a joke about it. “How will I eat breakfast tomorrow?” Yeah, he almost went full Black Knight there.

Except for the little serious turn when he threatened Law with Doflamingo’s past.

“How dare you, Law? This is an upset. But I know you’re going to regret it. Keep that in mind. You don’t know Joker’s past and that will cost you your life. Upstarts like you can’t hope to take over the world. It’s filled with those who are much stronger. Tell him, Smoker!”

First of all, why was he appealing to Smoker to back him up like a kid in a playground? The brazen cheek of it. As if. I’m glad Smoker blanked him and sparked up a fat Cuban cigar.

Secondly, what is all this about Doflamingo’s past? Why would that matter to Law? I’m trying to think what could possibly affect Law as much as Vergo says and I’m drawing a blank.The only thing that might be a bit meh is if Doflamingo was once a Marine. We already had that twist with Vergo.

At any rate, Law had had enough with Vergo running his mouth, and chopped his head into two pieces.

“Don’t worry about me. Just worry about yourself. This room will explode soon. Goodbye, Vergo the pirate.”

I ain’t bothered about Vergo. That guy is too arrogant for his own good and Law gave him a well-deserved taste of defeat. I just hope Law took Smoker with him.(It’d be hilarious if Law carried Smoker over his shoulder and they ran into Zoro carrying Tashigi over his shoulder. xD)

Speaking of Well-Deserved Tastes of Defeat...

This guy...

I love a charismatic, melodramatic, total piece of crap villain, but Oda did a great job of making me loathe Caesar here. I think Luffy lamping him square on the chops unhinged him a little. Law destroying the SAD factory and the labs as a result probably finished Caesar off. His arrogance and cruelty was off the charts! I thought Spandam was bad. Caesar makes Spanda look like a playground bully.

I loved how when he realised Law had unleashed merry hell, Caesar’s reaction was, “Damn! Who caused that? I bet it was Law. What is Vergo doing? You Strawhats RUINED MY PARADISE!”

His paradise. Wow, that sure does give you a little peek into this dude’s mind.

And it gets better.

Caesar had a last-ditch plan to defeat Luffy. He called his Minions in the Secret Room. “R-Building, can you hear me? Secret Room, come in! Open the air vents now! Let Shinokuni flow into this room.”

The Minions, understandably, were reticent to do this because they are the kind of people who, like the Strawhats, look after their own. They asked, “but wouldn’t it kill our guys?”

Caesar was like, “Well, I’m a gas man. I’m not gonna die. You’re just guinea pigs. No one would care if hundreds of you died. You are just the dregs of society! What are you doing? Hurry up. I can find replacements for you fools so easily.”

Uh oh.

The mask came off. Caesar must have been so riled that he didn’t care if everyone saw his true nature. The poor, deluded Minions still clung to their vision of Caesar as their benevolent Master, their saviour.

“Oh, the Master is trying to fool the enemies. He must have a plan to do with the gas. It would hurt him to know we suspected him.”

Hurt him? Mate, Caesar has no feelings to be hurt. He has an ego the size of Laboon. That’s not the same thing.

So, of course the Minions pulled the lever. Shinokuni flowed into the room. And I had a facepalm moment at those poor, brainwashed Minions.

Caesar Does A Moria

“Yes! About time,” Caesar shouted. “Dregs shouldn’t think. Now, become my power, Shinokuni. Look, Strawhat! Look at his amazing appearance. This is my scientific power. Through this experiment, two countries have already expressed interest in the weapon. They are both quite peaceful but when humans get serious about defending themselves, they’ll look for any way possible to kill their enemies. Everybody needs me! I’ll spread weapons all over the world and become King of the Land of Death.”

There are a couple of things to unpack here.

First of all, Caesar is completely demented. I mean, that was always obvious. But that ambition of his is twisted and terrifying. Worse, that Doflamingo gave him the traction to actually make it happen.

Secondly, he’s insane but he’s not stupid. Caesar has an eye for business and is, weirdly, able to charm people into believing his bullshit. He also knows the darker side of human nature and how to exploit it, like he has done with those peaceful islands. He is also smug in the knowledge that big shots in governments everywhere will always want him in their corner, so there will always be a place for someone like him. That was a definite Art Mirroring Life moment right there. Harsh but true, I guess. The guy who first split the atom and invented the atomic bomb was a hot commodity, right?

Third, Caesar basically did a Gekko Moria. Caesar took it a step further because he actually gleefully killed all his Minions. Moria just took the shadows back from already dead bodies. This was the logical conclusion of Caesar seeing other people as objects or commodities to be manipulated, used or destroyed as he sees fit. The way he happily killed them all was just nasty. “It’s amazing, if I do say so myself. Look at how fast it acts on their nerves. It’s almost an art!” And when they begged him to stop, “I am your saviour and I can make efficient use of you good-for-nothings. You are just crumbs. You should not stand against your Master. Die like dogs!”

Crumbs. Dogs. Guinea pigs. Caesar always uses dehumanising language on his poor Minions. And everyone else for that matter. He really is a psychotic, nasty piece of work. If this guy is working for Doflamingo, I cannot wait to see what a horrible bastard Doflamingo turns out to be. xD

Caesar’s Off The Deep End Behaviour and his treatment of his own people caused Luffy to have the veiniest, super frown I have seen on his face so far. Luffy does not like people who betray and used their own crew/soldiers/comrades.

Luffy said to Momo, “Look after Brownbeard.” Then ran in the opposite direction. Of course, I knew Luffy was just looking to gain some distance. Caesar, of course, mistook it for Luffy chickening out all of a sudden.

There was one person who knew with absolute certainty that this was not the case.

Usopp Was Awesome Here

Can I just talk for a moment about how awesome Usopp was here?

All through this arc, he’s been ridiculously brave. He volunteered to split up with Brook and Foxfire so he could work on his own to find the Sea Prism Stone cuffs for Luffy. He was creeping round the labs on his own and when he found the Secret Room, he did not run upon being confronted with a full squad of Minions. He simply used his smarts to evade capture. Because he knew there was something in there of value and Luffy needed his help.

When the Minions saw Caesar’s true nature over the DDM feed and were finally like, “OMG this guy is awful.” Usopp just walked up to them and said, “I know you’re all broken hearted here but could I sit in that control seat for a second? I wanna save my friends from the gas.”

See that? Usopp’s loyalty to his friends trumps all sense of fear.

When the Minions tried to shake Usopp by saying, “Yeah, you’ll never escape because your Captain just cut and run. He left you guys behind.“ Usopp was Not Having One Bit Of It.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa... Are you dissing our captain right in front of me? If he were the kind of person who’d betray us, this whole thing would’ve been much easier for me. I would’ve just run away with my tail between my legs. But he never, ever stops believing in us. So we have no choice but to support him. We pledged to live up to his expectations as long as we can breathe!”

There you have it. Right from the horse’s mouth. Luffy’s faith in his crew inspires them to greater heights. And in Usopp, this is bravery. Absolutely beautiful.

And when the Minions said, “But what can we do? We can’t beat such a powerful man?” (Referring to Caesar) Usopp replied, “Yes, you can. You guys should just believe in our Captain. Caesar is the type of person that Luffy hates the most. Luffy won’t forgive Caesar.”

Usopp knows Luffy pretty well.

That Grizzly Magnum was really something else. I was expecting it to take out Caesar straight awayt but I liked that it didn’t. Caesar is the kind of villain who needs to have his pride thoroughly broken and to taste bitter, bitter defeat. If not, he’ll just tank the hit, pick himself up again and it’s back to his same old tricks.

The best portrayal of that was when Caesar was wrestling with Luffy, the Shinokuni slowly turning his hands to white powder, and he screamed, “Kneel before my power!”

Luffy will never kneel to anyone. Now, I’m not sure what those pulses of power were that drove Caesar back (Conqueror’s Haki?) but Luffy’s hit finally landed and, in a perfect moment of symbolism, Caesar’s self-made crown shattered.

He is no longer the tyrannical ruler of Punk Hazard. Caesar’s reign has come to an end.

And I can’t wait to see what happens next, because Doflamingo sent one of his lackeys to help him out.

The plot chickens.

Well, you’re gonna kidnap him, so that might be a tough one to get round.

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sophisticateddesign · 6 years ago

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Serenity

INVOLVED: Mercedes Jones, Titus Wilkerson, Leanna Mitchell LOCATION: Mercedes Atlanta Home. TIME FRAME: December 29 NOTES: n/a AUTHOR’S NOTE: n/a

There was sound. Noise. Chatter. It was all around her. Mercedes could feel the vibrations of it as she sat absently holding a mug of hot chocolate. She could see it in Titus broad gestures as him and Leanna spoke animatedly in front of her. What she could not do was hear it. Her thoughts were to loud. Her worries to numerous and her fears to heavy. If she focused, she would be able to hear them. Understand their conversation. But at present she was deep in thought, mulling over the terse words, Samuel Dean Evans’ said to her. Were they to much? Was he right? They all played on repeat. However, it was the amplification of his words. The way they harmonized, with others. Sung in at least three-part harmony. He might be, at present taking up the melody, but Titus and Dominic were holding the chords.

“Just these 3 pieces together cost in excess of 8 thousand, adding in the baby bag and the crib. He must have spent a small fortune on the baby.” Leanna said, in hurried, clipped tones. She always spoke as if someone was about to cut her off. Fast, as if she needed to get her statements out before they did.

Mercedes eyes moved to Titus. He wasn’t speaking at the moment. He’d seated himself and now held the Gucci baby bag cradling it to his chest, rocking as if it was a new born baby. “You have no idea.” Mercedes said, lean forward she took the check from the table top and handed it to Titus.

The bald man looked down and his eyes bugged at the amount. He all but snatched it from her fingers. “This can’t be right?” He said forced himself to look at Mercedes only his eyes kept wondering back to the check on their own. “

Mercedes sat back and sipped her coco, eyebrow raised as she stared at the man.

“And you are going to send it all back? Even the check?” Titus folded the paper and slipped it into imagined breast. “Hell No! Over my dead body.”

Leanna came over and sat down beside Mercedes, hand going to her stomach, “You need to think about the baby Mercedes. Most women don’t get a fraction of the help you have. This man must be loaded. What’s his name again.” She said in what seemed like one breath.

“Stop that!” Mercedes sucked her teeth and removed the woman’s hand from her body. “I didn’t tell you his name, Leanna. When I want the whole world to know my business. You’ll be the first one I tell.” Leanna pouted. ‘What kind of grown woman pouts?’ Mercedes thought with a sighed. She sat her drink down on the coffee table. “I am sorry.” She said squeezing the woman’s hand. “But all of this. The baby will still have access to it, when visiting the father. The money is really a trust fund for their college. So, even that’s covered.” She said, holding her hand out to Titus.

Titus sighed and drew the check out looking at it once more before slapping it down into her hand. “You’re not being fair to the child.”

“I am not doing anything to jeopardize the baby. So, if everyone would please cover their shining armor for a moment.” She said voice bitter. Mercedes slipped the check back between the magazines and stood. She rang her hands, pacing. “I had accepted it. Accepted him. But now…” she shook her head. “I can always say I was hormonal, which I wasn’t. But he… I am nothing but a huge incubator for that man. Period. I don’t trust him. All that fake compassion. It’s all about him, what I should say to him, what I shouldn’t feel or expect. And I don’t have the money or means to fight him. By the time he was finished, I felt like an object. Not even a person.” She whispered, standing still.

“Mercedes…” Titus moved to his feet placing his arms around her shoulder. “I read those texts. Nowhere in there did he ever say he’d take your baby. He just said you’re stuck with him until that baby crowns.” Titus said rubbing her tummy.

Leanna looked around the room, confused by half of what was going on. “There are text messages?” She asked hungrily.

Mercedes shook her head. Honey kissed eyes, holding Titus in place. “His threats weren’t even thinly veiled. They were clear and very present. ‘you don’t have full custody of anything…” She laughed bitterly. “A whole white man basically giving me the I have a dream speech. She couldn’t help the tear that came without permission. “All I wanted was a family.” She wrapped her arms around herself and held her mid-section, “I didn’t ask for him or any of this. Now I’m having a child with a man who changes like a gust of wind. Who I don’t know nothing about. I felt so… helpless.” She finished low enough that only Titus could here.

Titus cast an evil eye at Leanna but continued to rub Mercedes shoulders. “Baby girl. I would love to tell you this would be easy, but that would be a whole lie. Now you have been skipping over some crucial evidence that would have let me be of better service to you.” He sighed looking around the room, “If this man is as powerful as you say, then sending any of this back will be pointless. You need to find some of that self-control and common sense you used to use all the time.” He looked to the woman sitting motionless on the couch. “Leanna make yourself useful and go upstairs and get a wet cloth for her.”

Leanna jumped as if goosed and hurried to her feet rushing up the stairs.

Titus watch the woman go, then placed both hands on Mercedes shoulder turning her towards him, “What’s your real problem? I know that couldn’t have been a pleasant experience but that’s not everything.”

Mercedes hesitated, she’d actually liked Samuel. Trusted him after a fashion. She’d exposed herself to a stranger. And it felt like he’d used her confidence to violate her somehow. But maybe that was just the hormones talking. “It seems so stupid. I did all of this alone to avoid another person’s whims. Now I can’t help but wonder why? You’ve said it, Samuel weaponized it and don’t get me started on Dom. I don’t want to apologize for my actions, but you all are making it hard.” If it hadn’t been for her wanting this, Samuel wouldn’t even have the child, he pressed her so hard to parent.

“What’s he got to do with this.” Titus asked as he sat crossing his legs.

“We’ll talk about it later.” Mercedes sat down, beside her friend and took a deep breath. “Here is what I do know. He’s an ass. But considering I already thought most men were. I haven’t really lost anything. Secondly, I don’t have to worry about him for the next few months. We’ll work out a schedule when the baby comes.”

“You still trust him with the baby?” Titus asked.

Mercedes sighed, “He was right about one thing, I don’t really have a choice.” She said with a broken smile. “I’m used to dealing with people like him. In a way he helped me.” She snuggled in close to Titus’ arm, “I think I was getting a little attached to him.” She admitted. Mercedes looked up as Leanne, returned. “Why did you bring her?”

Titus pursed his lips, “Attached? How so.” Mercedes didn’t often use words like attached. She’d actually never used those words. He thought squinting. He cut his eyes looking down at the woman. “I knew she would make you laugh.” He said with a chuckle. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I don’t know…” She confessed, “It bugged me when he disappeared. You know I can go forever without talking to Dom, but him… I thought about it. He is weird like a nerd at times, other times charming. Sweet really. I don’t know. The combination threw me off.” Mercedes said shaking her head against his side. She looked back into the man’s eyes as Leanna placed the warm rag on her forehead. She sighed, smiling at the woman. “No. But I can’t change this. If I’m honest, I trust him with the baby. He is aware of the struggles a mixed child will have. That’s the important part. Right?”

Titus opened out his other arm letting Leanna join the cuddle circle. “Maybe he was just afraid you’d cut him out of the child’s life.”

Mercedes shrugged, “Maybe. But I don’t think so. He knows his power. He knows he holds all the real Trump cards. This was him putting me in my place.” She shook her head, “Whatever…”

“Mhm… I guess.” Titus said rubbing her arm. “You know you aren’t sending any of this shit back right?”

Mercedes snorted, laughing. Despite feeling sad.

#thread: serenity #thread: mercedes jones #Thread: Titus Wilkerson #mercedes jones rp

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theliberaltony · 6 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

At a rally last month, President Trump endorsed voter ID laws, saying this to the audience: “Only American citizens should vote in American elections. Which is why the time has come for voter ID, like everything else. You know, if you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card.”

Many jumped on the head-scratching line about groceries, but the more significant piece of the president’s speech may have been his unfounded implication that many noncitizens are voting. Trump’s comment is likely to add fuel to the long-running debate among citizens, elected officials, courts and researchers about the motivations behind and impact of voter ID laws. With some credible new evidence on these questions from political science — and the midterms fast approaching — it’s a good time to take stock of what we do and don’t know.

Estimating the effects of voter ID laws is a tricky business, but the most credible estimates suggest the laws’ turnout effects haven’t been large enough to swing many elections.

First, while voter ID laws are often discussed as a single class of laws, they differ in subtle but crucial ways. Different laws require different kinds of ID, for example. In Wisconsin and Virginia, only a photo ID will pass muster. In Ohio and Arizona, identification without a photo — like a utility bill — will suffice. States including Texas don’t allow student IDs, a policy that clearly hinders younger voters. Second, if voter ID laws reduce turnout, they are likely to do so both by preventing some people who show up at the polls from voting and by deterring others from showing up in the first place. While we can sometimes count the number of people who are turned away at the polls, we are left to infer the laws’ deterrent effects. Also, it’s difficult to untangle whether a given change in turnout was the result of the law itself or some other state-specific factor. Turnout was down in Wisconsin in 2016 relative to 2012, for instance, but was that because of the state’s voter ID law, or was it because of the absence of President Obama on the ballot, changes in mobilization by the political campaigns or other factors?

So, when we evaluate research on voter ID laws, it’s critical to assess the strength of the underlying research design. Summarizing a wide range of studies in a 2017 review, Benjamin Highton concluded that “a small number of studies have employed suitable research designs and generally find modest, if any, turnout effects of voter identification laws.”1 Some of the newest evidence reinforces that conclusion and uses high-quality administrative data that can address at least some of the problems that have bedeviled prior studies.

For example, Bernard Fraga and Michael Miller have a new working paper that examines Texas in 2014 and 2016. In 2014, Texas had a strict law that required voters to use specific forms of photo ID. In 2016, however, a federal court forced Texas to provide an alternative way to vote for those who showed up at the polling place lacking appropriate ID. As a result, voters in 2016 could file a “reasonable impediment declaration” and then vote after providing a different form of ID such as a utility bill or a birth certificate. Fraga and Miller collected those declarations and matched them to the Texas voter file, allowing them to characterize the group of more than 16,000 people who would have been prevented from voting under a strict voter ID law.

That’s a small slice of the electorate in a state in which nearly 9 million ballots were cast — though admittedly, this estimate is a lower bound: There were many voters who were unlikely to know about this alternative channel. But this research design is valuable because it enables individual-level characterizations of precisely who would be barred from voting under the strict policy in place in 2014. Which brings us to something else we can say confidently about voter ID laws:

Voter ID laws disproportionately disenfranchise minority communities.

Fraga and Miller found that black voters constituted 11.4 percent of those voting in Texas in 2016 with ID but 16.1 percent of those voting without ID, which shows clear evidence of a disparate racial impact. Likewise, Latino voters made up 19.8 percent of those voting with an ID but 20.7 percent of those voting without an ID. So even if voter ID laws haven’t swung election outcomes, they can deny thousands of people their right to vote — denials that fall disproportionately on black and Latino citizens. Whether voter ID laws swing elections is far from their only important consequence.

Those disparate impacts are clear from a second newly released study, too, which also used individual-level records to provide a more granular view of precisely who is affected by voter ID policies. In Michigan’s 2016 general election, voters who arrived at the polls without ID were able to vote after they signed an affidavit. Researchers Phoebe Henninger, Marc Meredith and Michael Morse2 collected these affidavits to identify a set of voters who would have been turned away under a stricter policy, like the laws in Georgia, Virginia and Wisconsin. By their calculation, about 28,000 voters — or 0.6 percent of 2016 Michigan voters — lacked photo identification.

Those 28,000 voters were more nonwhite and more Democratic than the Michigan electorate overall. Henninger and her co-authors estimated that nonwhite voters were between 2.5 and 6 times as likely as white voters to lack voter ID. And while Michigan doesn’t record partisan registration, the researchers’ model-based estimates suggest that more than 70 percent of those filing affidavits would be Democratic primary voters.

Older voters can be affected by voter ID laws, too.

In another study, this one published in 2017 by the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, I teamed up with Meredith, Morse, Sarah Smith and Jesse Yonder to estimate the effects of a policy change in Virginia between the 2013 gubernatorial election and the 2014 midterm election. Virgina went from a law that required identification but accepted IDs without photos to a law that demanded specific forms of photo ID.3 In 2014, there were just 474 provisional ballots cast statewide for lack of photo ID, which is a small fraction of the 2.19 million voters who voted in the election.4 So implementation matters: That muted impact may have been partly the product of a statewide mailer telling registered voters without driver’s licenses about the new law.

Still, the provisional ballots were more common in precincts where there were more voters without a driver’s license and more voters over 85. That makes sense: Those are places where fewer voters are likely to have the requisite photo ID. As Matt Barreto and his co-authors have found in multiple surveys, elderly voters — like black and Latino voters — are more likely to lack photo ID than the voting population overall. In fact, in the Virginia study, the share of voters in a precinct who were 85 or older was much more strongly associated with the percentage of provisional ballots cast by voters lacking ID than were other demographic factors, such as the share of voters who were black or Hispanic. That, in turn, leads to another observation about voter ID laws:

The long-term effects of voter ID laws are likely to differ from the short-term effects.

As Nicholas Valentino and Fabian Neuner found via survey data, voter ID laws are likely to produce a strong emotional response among Democrats and thus lead to a counter-mobilization that galvanizes them to vote, at least in the short term. But that may fade, along with the one-time effect of states informing voters about the laws as they are being phased in.

Over time, the partisan effects of voter ID laws have the potential to shift as well. Some age cohorts are reliably more Democratic or Republican than others. The silent generation, which has been pro-Republican relative to the generations before and after, is now filling the ranks of America’s oldest voters. As members of that GOP-leaning generation stop driving, they will be less likely to have photo IDs, and so more likely to be affected by voter ID laws. It’s plausible, then, that the partisan impacts of voter ID laws may shift to affect more GOP voters. The same would be true if the leanings of black or Hispanic voters shifted.

While the impact of these laws is debated, the intent is clear.

In 2012, a Republican legislative leader in Pennsylvania made headlines by saying that the state’s voter ID law — which was later overturned by the courts — was “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” But even when the law’s authors are more circumspect about their motivations, the evidence is clear: It’s Republican legislatures and legislators that tend to pass them. There’s also a racial dynamic: Seth McKee found that Republican legislators are more likely to back voter ID laws — and Democratic legislators less so — as their districts have more black voters. It’s also no accident that the states whose voter ID laws make headlines — Wisconsin, North Carolina, Virginia — are often swing states with diverse electorates.

It’s important, too, to underscore that Trump promoted voter ID laws for a reason: They tend to poll reasonably well, especially among Republicans. A 2016 AP-NORC poll found that 79 percent of those surveyed favored requiring all voters to provide photo ID, with Republicans especially supportive.

It’s certainly not a consensus, but the weight of recent research suggests that even if voter ID laws have limited effects on which party wins specific elections, they still affect tens of thousands of voters in larger states, particularly black, Latino, Democratic and elderly voters. And importantly, these laws’ long-term impacts may well differ from their immediate effects upon implementation. So as politicians, lawyers and social scientists continue to debate these laws, the very effects themselves are likely to change beneath our feet.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Dan Hopkins

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rapeculturerealities · 7 years ago

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As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Baldwin released a series of tweets comparing the accusations of Dylan Farrow against her father, Woody Allen, to be similar to the false rape accusation that takes place in Harper Lee‘s To Kill a Mockingbird.

“[One] of the most effective things Dylan Farrow has in her arsenal is the ‘persistence of emotion,'” Baldwin tweeted. “Like Mayella in [“To Kill a Mockingbird”], her tears/exhortations [are] meant [to] shame u [into] belief in her story. But I need more than that before I destroy [someone], regardless of their fame. I need a lot more.”

Baldwin followed that tweeted shortly after with: “To say that @RealDylanFarrow is telling the truth is to say that (brother) @MosesFarrow is lying. Which of Mia’s kids got the honesty gene and which did not?” He also shared a Sunday New York Times piece that discussed whether Allen would work in the business again.

Baldwin concluded with “If my defense of Woody Allen offends you, it’s real simple. Unfollow. Condemn. Move on.”

Now my rage about this is twofold. Firstly, trying to act as though Dylan Farrow is shedding crocodile tears when her story has been consistent over the years says more about Baldwin than it does about Farrow. I’m sorry that her story seems so unbelievable to you when Allen is married to his own former step-daughter. I’m sorry that seeing Dylan Farrow cry and show genuine emotion in her first major interview about this traumatic event that she says took place seems to you like a “persistence of emotion.” But how sad for you that you are so willing to dismiss a woman’s pain because it is inconvenient for you to give up some sorry idolization for Woody Allen.

In another tweet, Baldwin said: “Is it possible to support survivors of pedophilia and sexual assault/abuse and also believe that WA is innocent? I think so. The intention is not to dismiss or ignore such complaints. But accusing ppl of such crimes should be treated carefully. On behalf of the victims, as well.”

Really? What more exactly do you need to believe Farrow? Furthermore both Moses and Dylan can be correct. Both of them could have suffered about from different parents and had different experiences with their parent of choice. That is not uncommon, and if you did even an iota of research about sexual abuse that takes place within families you’d know that. Breaking it all down to an “honesty gene” and making it about “Mia’s kids” ignores that Allen was their parent too. Just because you want to work with Woody Allen again, doesn’t mean you have to call Dylan Farrow a liar.

How can you stand with survivors while ignoring the fact that most survivors of this type of molestation were molested by someone within their own family, while dismissing that Woody Allen, by being Farrow’s father, would have that type of access to her?

Secondly, and I’ll admit that part that makes my blood boil even hotter, is the comparison between a black man who gets sentenced to jail due to racism and the false testimony of a white woman to what is happening to Woody Allen.

Woody Allen is not going to jail, in fact, he can’t be for what he did to Farrow because of the statute of limitations. Woody Allen is also not at risk of being lynched by an angry mob. And most importantly, what is happening to Woody Allen isn’t happening to him because of his race, ethnicity, or religion.

While To Kill a Mockingbird is a work of fiction, the reality of the hundreds of black men who were lynched and towns destroyed due to the false accusations of white women is not something to be used to prop up a man accused of sexually assaulting his own daughter! We may never know the exact number of black men killed due to lynching, but looking at cases like the Scottsboro Boys, where nine teenage black boys between 13 and 19 were accused of raping two white women on a train. Or the case of George Stinney, a fourteen-year-old boy who was sentenced to death in South Carolina for raping and murdering two girls, and was so small for his age, they had problems strapping him to the electric chair when he was put to death. It was was only last year that the woman who falsely accused Emmett Till of harassing her, an accusation that led to his death, admitted she lied about it.

To pretend that Woody Allen is getting even a fraction of the complete and utter destruction that was brought against other men of color, or minorities, is outrageous and insulting. Baldwin may have been referencing a piece of fiction, but it was based on real injustices that took place in this country.

If Woody Allen is guilty of what he has done, and I personally do believe he is and stand with Dylan Farrow, he has escaped justice in almost every way possible. People like Baldwin who use their platform to defend these men for the sake of justifying their own decisions are transparent.

Maybe playing Trump so much has finally gotten into his brain. Time to give the wig a breather.

#Racism #Baldwin #Farrow #victim blaming #To Kill a Mockingbird

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the-firebird69 · 2 years ago

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This guy next door is a complete a****** he doesn't understand what the hell he's doing no he knows he's a complete a****** on purpose or messing him up and killing him if you're hunting it any way please let us know. Today we counted 35 in fractions and it's going up rapidly against our son by him and it's this person Donald Trump in disguise he's a huge a****** to our son a massive sinner tons of talking blasphemy about our people come out of him everyday and people don't mention a word in this guy says it 100,000 times a day on average he's considered to be a massive loser and they put him right up as president and I'm thinking of doing it again what he says this to us and you're losing your territory faster than Tommy F could ever take it he's a huge spaz I mean what he's doing right now is illegal he's trying to harm our son constantly he's trying to break through the wall he's trying to steal things from him all sorts of things that he does every day that our pasty and low level very low level and our son says it this is below a laborers crap he's such a piece of junk it's true too cuz there are people out there with little jobs who don't do this he's an amazing little a****** though he's disgusting repulsive and we need to get rid of him we don't know why he's so stupid should we do he's gotten hit and he's an a****** he's an a****** before us and says it is always been this way he's very mean and we agree but this is who he is and the GOP has revoked support does 20 comments from each of them say we're not going to support him and it's 75% of GOP 15% say they'd rather not comment but they're not going to support and 10% are his people and shrinking they're killing them rather than to listen to them what he says it's gibberish and illegal. As a host CNN Town Hall was illegal he said that Russia could go to war with us and some other things then he said we should start a war with them and that's illegal they didn't say the USA Might be in default it said we should go into default on purpose. If you to do stuff and you force it we're going to be forced to run what you're doing otherwise we're not going to do anything with you because you suck so bad I should see you three you going to movie you can count on being dead cuz that's what we're trying to do we said it because it's true if you don't like it who cares we want you out of here. If you're not out of here you're also going to die.

The whole point is that the GOP is pulling the support completely that means that all the people who are Republicans they work for or elected or have involvement with the Republicans in office and those who are not in office I suggesting to others not to vote for you in any way or support you as someone running for president. In other words they pulled your support and pretty soon they're going to pull you off the Republican card that'll send a strong message to people

Thor Freya

Well we've almost got him off the ticket he needs more than 8% and his teetering right there a few more and he's going to be gone and what a waste of time we spend all day getting him off him like he's just rabid dog I can't stand that guy what is disgusting a****** and Joe watts you fired. He's right too you're a useless jerk just go around and do it all sorts of mean things to people saying mean s*** getting them angry who are you with a little girl you're going to get f***** up today we're going to take you out or take your people down I don't need you as a check or a balance of any kind it gets anything you're small and useless you don't fight either you sit there what's it happen get creams mostly you're useless I'm writing up orders now

Mac daddy

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sosayssmedley · 4 years ago

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Words Are Meaningless

In the age of “safe spaces” and cancelations, many words and phrases have lost all meaning. Words change over time, there is no disputing that, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. New words get added to our vernacular – and that can be good or bad. For example, we all know what someone means when they say “google it”. That isn’t necessarily dumbing anything down, its just a new expression we have all accepted. However, in a society that values outrage and feelings above all else, words and phrases with radically significant meaning are losing all intensity.

For example, let’s look at the term “white supremacy” or “white supremacist.” Everyone is so quick to label anything or anyone that does not define the African American community as a homogonous, victim group as white supremacy. This cheapens the term. Its like the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Yell it every day, and no one is going to believe you when the wolf actually shows up at your door. White supremacy is obviously evil, and if you show me an example of actually white supremacy, I’ll stand right there beside you and fight it. But everything isn’t actually white supremacy, in fact, almost nothing actually is.

But the Left has labelled wanting boarder security as white supremacy. Somehow not wanting human trafficking, drug smuggling, and gang activity coming across the boarder is racist. Wanting to protect American citizens is a form of white supremacy. Not flogging yourself daily for the sin of sharing the same skin color as people who at one time owned slaves, regardless if they were or were not a distant, distant ancestor, is white supremacy. Anything other than daily, public flagellation is a form of white supremacy. This is obviously ridiculous, but this is the current state of affairs in America. It does not matter one iota if you are a poor white kid who group up in an Appalachian trailer park, you have privilege that even billionaire Lebron James could only dream of. Thinking otherwise is racist.

But have you ever actually met a white supremacist? Have you ever actually encountered a member of the clan? Seen a burning cross in someone’s yard? Maybe you have. And if you have, then you have truly seen evil. You have seen the lowest of the low. You have seen the scum of the earth. Show me those people, and I’ll stand at your side and fight them with you. There is no place in any society for these people. But I, a person who twice voted for Trump, am not one of those people. Appreciating your heritage is important, but it isn’t what makes our country great. It is our sameness that makes us great. Diversity isn’t our strength. Our ability to unite over common values is our strength. Black, white, blue, or purple. The skin color isn’t what should unite us, nor should it be what divides us. Our love of America, and valuing of simple freedoms, our boldness to stand up to tyranny is our strength. I’m about as white as a person can be. If I spend more than a few minutes in direct sunlight, I’m going to end up in the burn unit. But even I have, and should have, more in common with Snoop Dogg than say a person from Hong Kong would have with a person from Tokyo.

White, southern democrats, who took part in lynching people of color are not the same as republicans who view Affirmative Action as a problem. White supremacists want to see an entire race of people wiped off the face of the planet. I want people to stop viewing people by their color, but by what unites us as Americans. These two things are not equal. Yet, the media would tell you otherwise. By saying that what gets you ahead in this country is hard work, and what actually gets you started behind everyone else is coming from a single-parent household, I am actually committing a hate crime by today’s standards.

So in just a matter of years, we have brought true hate and evil down to such a low level, that the term means nothing. There is no word or phrase anymore when you encounter true hate. No word to use to call out complete, unadulterated bigotry.

There is another example out there though that I find even more egregious. There is one other expression, that is so obtuse, so disrespectful, that it makes the speaker appear to be just slightly above braindead. There is no other phrase that circulates our media these days that is more disgusting than “like Hitler.” Sometimes you hear someone say that someone or something (usually Donald Trump) is “Literally Hitler.” First, stop saying “literally”. You are literally using it wrong. Literally almost nothing is ever literally anything else. The only thing that would literally be Hitler would be Hitler. And he is dead. As he should be. Look up the word “figurative” you dingbat.

During the height of the era of the Trump Derangement Syndrome, the comparison between Hitler and President Donald Trump was made daily. And this wasn’t made by you and me, but by the media, by people who should know better. We all had elementary level history classes, we all learned about the national socialist party. People should know better. And they probably do, but they think using such inflammatory terms helps get their point across. But it does not. It just shows their ineptitude. You may hate Donald Trump. You may hate conservatives. You may hate anything. But NOTHING, not one person or group, inside the United States (outside of an incredibly small fraction of one percent of one percent of one percent of actual white supremacist) is anything coming even close to being “like Hitler”.

Trump said dumb things. Trump said mean things. Trump Tweeted a lot. Trump said everyone is America has the chance to make it if they would only pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Everything he did or said was deemed to be on the level of one of the most vicious, vile, pieces of human waste to ever inhabit human form. Do you comprehend how dumb this is? Do you not see a problem with this?

This is going to get VERY dark, but it needs to. Let me ask you a question. Which is worse in the following two examples?

· One - Trump said central American countries aren’t sending their best to cross into this country illegally.

· Or two - A mass extermination of millions of people based on their heritage and religious belief? Standing at the edge of pit with hundreds of bodies behind you while you face a firing line before you? Holding your crying child tight to your chest as a dark room slowly fills with poisonous gas or the floors and walls of that room become so hot your skin starts to melt and you look at your child’s face knowing there is nothing you can do to relieve their agony?

Which of these two examples is worse? They aren’t even close. They aren’t even in the same ballpark. They aren’t on the same planet. To use “like Hitler” to describe anything, is disgusting. And you are an evil, immoral monster if you do. This is the only phrase that should be cancelled. An entire race of people was almost extinguished from this planet, and you use it to describe a guy you disagree with it. There is a special place in hell for people who don’t see the problem with this.

There ONLY modern example you have of anything coming close to the atrocities of this and that is the CCP with their systematic persecution of Chinese Muslims. But that ok, because Disney, the NBA, and Joe Biden love China so pay no attention to the racism and genocide behind the curtain.

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thefabulousfulcrum · 6 years ago

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Why can’t the world’s best military win its wars?

via Salon

ARNOLD R. ISAACS

"This time, they think they have it right."

So declared an Associated Press story reporting an upbeat assessment by this country's top military officer at the end of a five-day visit to Afghanistan earlier this spring. Marine General Joseph Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was heading home from the war zone, the AP reporter wrote, "with a palpable sense of optimism" about the U.S.-supported war against Taliban and Islamic State fighters there.

Light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps?

The story didn't say whether any of the reporters listening to General Dunford asked why it had taken more than 16 years for the world's leading military power to come up with the "fundamentally different approach" that the general believes has put U.S. and Afghan forces on the path to success. (None of the changes he mentioned really sounded fundamental, either.) Still, it's a question worth asking: If Americans are right in ceaselessly telling themselves that theirs is the most powerful country the world has ever seen and that their military is the "greatest fighting force ever," as President Trump calls it, should it have been this hard and taken this long to find a way — if they really have — to defeat enemies whose war-making resources are a tiny fraction of ours?

As has happened often during our current conflicts, that piece of news from Afghanistan got me thinking about an earlier war that I witnessed first-hand as a correspondent for the Baltimore Sun during its final three years.

In Vietnam, as in subsequent American wars, the United States and its local allies had staggering advantages in all the conventional measures of military strength, yet failed to win. It makes me wonder: If U.S. political and military leaders and the American public remembered Vietnam more honestly, if painful truths hadn’t been cloaked in comforting mythologies, might this country have responded more intelligently and effectively to the violent challenges we’ve faced in the current century?

Consider, for example, the persistent story that America lost in Vietnam because U.S. troops fought with one hand tied behind their backs — because, that is, the politicians were "afraid to let them win," as Ronald Reagan once put it. The implication is clear: we could and should have won that war by doing more of what we were already doing or keeping at it longer (and should do the same in other conflicts, if military force does not seem to be succeeding).

But did the United States really lose in Vietnam for lack of force?

Not exactly a limited war

Plenty of facts suggest otherwise. Take the amount of destructive power the U.S. employed. "Devastating conventional firepower unparalleled in military history," a study by the Army’s logistics command called it, adding that, along with extraordinary tonnages of air and ground ordnance, American commanders fought with virtually no restrictions on mobility, equipment, or supplies: "The logistics scene was characterized by almost unlimited supply, remarkable high operational readiness rates as applied to equipment, a seemingly endless flow of ammunition and petroleum, and immunity for the most part from external fiscal restraints."

Even to one who heard a bit of the gunfire from time to time, the statistics on U.S. firepower are mind-boggling. Pentagon records show that, for long periods, the American military and Saigon government forces fired ammunition at rates up to an astonishing 600 times higher than the enemy's — 100,000 tons of ground munitions a month for all of 1969, for example, compared to just 150 tons from the Communist side. In 1974, with U.S. forces no longer directly engaged in combat and allied South Vietnamese commanders moaning nonstop about shortages caused by reductions in American military aid, Saigon's forces still used 65 tons of ammunition for every ton fired by the enemy.

Those figures don’t include air ordnance, which would make the ratios even more grotesquely one-sided. Over the course of the war, U.S. aircraft dropped approximately twice as many tons of bombs on North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia as combined Allied forces dropped on Germany and Japan in World War II.

In light of those numbers, the claim that America's war in Vietnam was fought under undue restrictions is less than convincing. If U.S. troops couldn't win — or leave our ally in a position to win — after fighting for seven years with an almost unimaginable edge in firepower, technology, and mobility, the much more logical conclusion is that U.S. military doctrine and Washington’s concept of military strength simply did not apply to that conflict.

And what about the doctrine that a later generation of U.S. soldiers took with them into Afghanistan and Iraq?

"Full spectrum dominance" was the watchword in a 2000 document, “Joint Vision 2020” (updated from a 1996 version), which the authors described as a "conceptual template" for the U.S. military's evolution over the two decades to come. Its language was even more hubristic than that slogan suggests: "a force that is dominant across the full spectrum of military operations -- persuasive in peace, decisive in war, preeminent in any form of conflict... prepared to win across the full range of military operations in any part of the world... [with the ability] to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the full range of military operations."

Defeat any adversary? Control any situation?

Nine-tenths of the way to the year 2020, U.S. soldiers, with all of their firepower and technology, have not achieved anything close to total dominance on the battlefields where they have been engaged. They have not dominated poorly armed fighters. Or insurgents planting low-tech, low-costexplosive devices. Or local cops and officials whom we would like to stop shaking down citizens and undermining the public support we say is crucial for counterinsurgency warfare.

To put it bluntly, the experience of the last nearly 17 years makes "full spectrum dominance" sound like a delusional fantasy.

When the large-scale U.S. intervention in Vietnam began, the great triumph of World War II was just 20 years in the past. That war was the formative experience for the generation of senior officers who led the American military into Vietnam, so perhaps their arrogance was understandable. The inventors of full spectrum dominance and the commanders they influenced came along almost exactly the same number of years after Vietnam, which makes their illusion of omnipotence harder to understand.

At the other end of their respective wars, members of both groups insisted (and continue to insist) that the fault was not in their strategy or how they conducted it. Instead, they claim, they were denied success because the politicians limited them too much or made them stop too soon. There's no way to prove or disprove counterfactual statements of that sort, but given the length of time they had to win those wars — twice as long (in Vietnam) or three times (in Iraq) or close to four times as many years (in Afghanistan) as it took to reach victory in World War II — that claim, like the one-hand-behind-the-back argument, has a very hollow ring to it.

Time to revise Sun Tzu: Know your friend

If my computer's search function is working properly, the words "ally," "allied," "host government," and "local forces" appear nowhere in the "Joint Vision 2020" paper. That's a telling omission. In Vietnam and our more recent wars, the weaknesses of Washington’s local partners — which U.S. officials have been stunningly reluctant to — should be seen as the fundamental reason those wars have been so unsuccessful despite the overwhelming advantage in material resources that U.S. forces and their allies possessed.

There's an implication here for the American approach to intelligence (in both the narrow and broad senses of the word). While rethinking what military power means, perhaps we should reconsider what intelligence means, too. In particular, it would be useful to revisit the classic premise — stated more than 2,500 years ago by the Chinese sage Sun Tzu — that the first goal of intelligence is to "know your enemy." It certainly would have been helpful in the last half-century's wars if American commanders had known their opponents better. In Vietnam and since, though, by far the most damaging intelligence failure wasn’t not knowing our enemies well enough, but not knowing our friends. Consistently in these wars, Americans have overestimated their local ally's capabilities while remaining blind, whether purposely or not, to the grave weaknesses of those forces.

In Vietnam, American weapons, dollars, and advice created a South Vietnamese army that, on paper, should have easily defended its country, as Americans told themselves it could. But U.S. money and material did not make that ally's commanders effective or competent, or compensate for the inadequate leadership that was, in the end, the critical reason for South Vietnam's defeat by a much poorer but more skillful, disciplined, and resourceful opponent.

A strong case can be made that the American-allied Saigon regime's single most toxic weakness was pervasive corruption. It wasn't just that corruption angered and alienated the South Vietnamese populace, including the regime's own soldiers. That was damaging enough, but the greater damage was that corruption fatally undermined the ability of both the government and the army to do their jobs. A 1966 memorandum by a study group in the U.S. mission in Saigon made that point in sharp terms:

"There is a deadly correlation between corruption at high levels in an administrative system and the spread throughout the system of incompetence, as higher-ups encourage and promote corrupt subordinates, and protect them from the consequences of poor performance of duty or direct disobedience of orders. Such a system demoralizes and 'selects out' the able and the dedicated who do not play the game."

An author of that paper and the principal drafter of the section on corruption was Frank Scotton, one of the longest-serving and most knowledgeable U.S. officials in Vietnam. Writing on that theme in his memoir, "Uphill Battle," Scotton quoted a Vietnamese general who told him that "he could name many corrupt officers, but not a single one who was both corrupt and an effective commander." That general was eventually fired for his criticisms of the regime and sent into exile.

The study group put a "marked reduction of corruption" first on its list of recommendations for necessary reforms in South Vietnam. But in my time there, beginning nearly six years after that memorandum was written, the South Vietnamese system I observed still perfectly matched Scotton's description. Exactly as he had noted years earlier, the most honest and capable officers I met were also the most frustrated and demoralized. By the time I left in the final evacuation from a defeated South Vietnam nearly three years later, I was convinced that corruption was the single biggest reason the Saigon government had lost the war. Nothing I’ve learned since has changed my mind on that.

Return of the ghost soldiers

I don’t have the same firsthand knowledge of Iraq or Afghanistan. But even from afar, it's hard not to hear history rhyming, if not repeating itself.

Occasionally, news from those wars comes with a shock of absolute recognition, as when it was revealed — after the Islamic State offensive in Iraq exploded in the fall of 2014 and city after city fell to relatively small groups of — that the American-trained Iraqi army's real strength was far lower than its strength on paper. That was because as many as 50,000 of the troops on that army's rosters — the equivalent of four full — were “ghost soldiers,” men who did not actually exist or had deserted but were still being paid, with their commanders pocketing their salaries. The city of Mosul, for example, was ostensibly defended by 25,000 government troops when the Islamic State militants attacked. The actual number was less than half that many -- in some units, an even smaller fraction. This, it should be noted, in a force that had received something like $25 billion in U.S. support in the decade after the 2003 invasion.

The same practice — along with the broader pattern of corruption that it exemplifies — has been evident in Afghanistan. In one contested province, officials acknowledged in 2016 that almost half the soldiers and police on government payrolls did not exist or were not present for duty — even though improving the effectiveness of Afghan security forces was supposed to be a top priority for the Americans offering training, advice, and funds.

The story in Vietnam, for all intents and purposes, was identical. In an army where every dollar of soldiers' pay, as well as every weapon, vehicle, bullet, and pair of boots, was funded by U.S. aid, the Vietnamese had names for two variations of payroll padding: "ghost soldiers," men who had been killed but whose deaths were not reported so that their commanders could keep collecting and pocketing their salaries; and "flower soldiers" (that is, ornamental ones) who stayed home with their families while kicking back their pay to their superiors. That meant South Vietnam's real fighting strength was considerably less than official reports indicated. Routinely, battalions that nominally had 300 men had only half or a third of that number on hand — exactly as in the case of those Iraqi units filled with “ghost soldiers” that were defeated in Mosul.

The broader parallels between the army and government we supported in Vietnam and those we have backed in our twenty-first-century wars are also clear. In all of them, corruption and poor governance in general were rife and would prove crippling obstacles to achieving U.S. objectives. And in all of them, Americans were almost completely ineffective in doing anything about either problem.

As journalist Douglas Wissing wrote in his book "Funding the Enemy," a massively researched report on far-reaching corruption in Afghanistan, instead of taking any meaningful action against corruption, the U.S. government for the most part "either ignored it or enabled it." That conclusion is borne out, though phrased more diplomatically, in numerous reports by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. After describing one of many ways the Taliban were able to tap into American funds, Wissing noted that all the money they got their hands on was spent for weapons, motorcycles, and mobile phones; their religious scruples stopped them from keeping any of it for themselves. Mordantly but aptly, Wissing added, "at least the Taliban made honest use of the U.S. taxpayers' cash."

New plays, same script

The world of 2018 is vastly different from the world of a half-century ago. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are very different countries, and the wars in each reflect different origins and circumstances. The U.S. military today bears almost no resemblance to the American force that fought in Vietnam. So comparisons are hardly simple. Still, the boiled-down narratives of those wars look strikingly similar: large-scale U.S. military forces with limitless firepower are sent to defeat a far more poorly armed enemy and spend years trying to do so; meanwhile, American aid officials dole out hefty amounts of money and advice intended to create a good government and a prosperous country, or at least good enough and prosperous enough so that most citizens will choose the side of the war we want them to support.

In the end, however, the goal the Americans fought to reach — a stable local regime that is able to effectively defend itself, legitimate in the eyes of its citizens, and friendly to U.S. interests — is not achieved. Eventually, after we stop trying to accomplish the mission ourselves, we assume we can help a client force reach the same objectives by teaching them how to fight essentially the same way we did, except with even slimmer resources (a lot fewer helicopters to lift out their wounded, for example, which their soldiers got accustomed to while the rich Americans were still there). Not surprisingly, that policy doesn't work so well either.

It's hard to fathom why those scenarios weren't more quickly and widely seen as illusory, especially the second or third time around. In part, no doubt, it was a case of being lowered into water reaching the boiling point too slowly to realize what was happening. And Washington’s and the Pentagon'sthinking surely also reflected the sugar coating Americans tend to spray over painful memories — the Pentagon website commemorating the Vietnam Waris a prime — to avoid remembering them accurately. Even so, after Vietnam you'd think military professionals and the rest of us wouldn't have gone on as long as we did in subsequent conflicts without realizing that America’s very idea of war in these last decades needs reexamination and so do the stories U.S. commanders keep telling themselves, their superiors, and the rest of us about our accomplishments and our allies' capabilities.

As is almost always the case, describing the problem is easier — much easier — than solving it. This one will take a big and wrenching change in deeply rooted structures and beliefs, and in personal and institutional perceptions of self-interest. (Can we really stop telling ourselves that the United States has the best military in the world?) We have already paid a monumental price for our faulty understanding of war and of the real world. Failing to learn those lessons, even at this late date, will only drive that price tragically higher.

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enby-hawke · 7 years ago

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Brooke’s Get Her Life BackOn Track Fund-

Using this piece instead cause I really do love it. And if you followed me for drama know I hate it and maybe help someone and commit to helping them to in the smallest ways. And I can feel a little happier.

Brooke needs help. I’ve been crapping on white people a lot. Did I make you feel crappy? If you understand what I’m trying to teach you about balance but still in this time of great uncertainty knowing you can count on your neighbor means talking to the neighbor whose dog might have killed your dog. Or whose lawn is always messy and is bringing the property value down but she’s white and doesn;’t understand the four agreements as much as I think she’s trying to force me to read. And I am because I love her. And I am open to new ideas. Just a heads up if you’re wondering what I’m reading.

BROOKE NEEDS HELP. She’s white, but white people take care of your own. She’s your own no matter what you think of her as a human being. I don’t know her history. I think why people like me is that I don’t care. I’m too autistic and fighting too many battles to fight yours too. But I’m happy to show you how I fought mine. This is hard. I’m trying to give space but this is hard. Understand how hard it is for you and it is like 10000%

Little dumping so maybe I can force you to connect and tell you why she needs you to help.

Now many of you have been going is she worthy of such treatment. Did I choose some mighty whitey or something. Let me know if you are my friend if I don’t like something about you I will let you know. Always. So the things I say about you. The wonderful things I see. I don’t say these things to trap you. I’m saying it cause I think you’re a person that could help spread my voice but I think some of you can but are afraid of what you could possibly bring in this world.

It’s terrifying to understand how connected we are and how mean I am means I lose one of you meaning I lose a life maybe of a poc. maybe white. but I’m trying to get my people moving cause I see you’re already exhausted but I’m manic and on 40 hours of sleep and I’m manic but people don’t realize cause I forced myself to be functional. I forced myself to care when it’s hard. When you get out of bed every day, and you look yourself in the mirror and try to force yourself to love yourself.

I know black people have been calling out nonblack people and that needs to happen cause those are the conversations I’m concerned about. Those are the ones I see poc unknowingly using nazi rhetoric. Once you understand nazism in anticommunity everything starts making sense.

I hate my family sometimes. But I love them cause they choose to understand me. They choose to stay by my side. White people you let go too easy. You give up too easy. This is your white culture. I’m just critiquing you as a culture how you are leading us into ruin and ya’ll like lead us lead leauld leadu s. Whatever I’m manic. Ya’ll never stop to think why do I even deserve to pay attention to you when I’ve been gifted this struggle since birth.

The thing is I don’t Brooke to feel the pressure of being some revolutionary. I’m helping her cause she needs it immediately from people who can afford to help her which isn’t always me but damn it she is funny. She makes me laugh. She makes me forget that she’s white. White people don’t let me forget they are white. White is a synonym with aggressive chaotic selfishness. Change where you can but keep loving. Don’t stop loving. You can’t throw away the solution at me. Don’t shit a solution at me. Come up with something better if you don’t like this situation but this is where I’m at. Show me you can care about someone other than your fucking selves. In the littlest ways

Be kind when you can crush someone out of existence. Know there is power in that too and I am not weak for choosing it. But don’t me to expect me to always choose it if you’re being fucking shits.

My mother in law is a kind generous soul. What she did was super shitty. It hurts when I trust someone with a boundary and they break it. I don’t feel comfortable dishing out rules cause everyone has their own so I have mine that lets me sleep at night. It makes you made but if I have ability to curse I want that guilt you to eat you. I want you to feel a fraction of my fear

But I need to be harsh. I told her. but like you want to show me white people are better. Show me. Do the fucking work. I don’t care if you think I suck. You made me your teacher and I’m a bitter one that wants to retire and fuck my wife in peace and maybe have a huge gay lesbian orgie to celebrate when this is over. I’m thinking of new creative ways to say fuck you but give me reasons to live so I can work towards peace. Not even my closest white friends can get this. You probably suck somewhere. I’m not gonna absolve yo of whatever you percieve your sins to be. But if you actually try to manifest some peace with me and hold some space in my discomfort and maybe not wish this on me. Maybe wish me some peace too. I’m trying to learn forgiveness as you try to earn back my trust. But you failed with Trump. All the white people who voted for this mess I am demanding reeducation where you’re forced to talk to people outside this mess of tumblr and also this mess of life and find some fucking peace before you kill everybody.

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weapon13whitefang · 7 years ago

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Liz Talks TWD 8x01 [Possible Spoilers]

So I went back and rewatched S08E01 and here are my few opinions on some things that caught my eye or that went through my mind. Keep in mind, these thoughts will be all over the place because I have so many things in my head.

But before I really get into that, let me just say that – for the 100th episode – I wasn’t too impressed. Now that’s not to say this was a bad episode. No as a story piece it was pretty good. It set up the top half of TWD and seeing all these different factions come together was needed. My favorite line was “I got your back” and the guy goes “you just met me” (or something like that) and I was happy because THAT is an important message in the show. Right next to “It’s not about you”.

And why is that important? Because later – in the next episode preview – we see Tara say “we have a job to do” and Jesus goes “we’re not here for revenge”. Each character has a motivation for why they’re fighting Negan. Whether to protect family, themselves, the future or whatever. And each fraction – Kingdom, Alexander, and Hilltop – have a different person they stand for (again either for themselves or for Maggie or Ezekiel or Rick). And hell some of them don’t even know what they’re fighting for, but they’re there and they’re gonna fight.

This season is called All Out War. A war doesn’t have to be just about what’s happening physically. In fact, a war can also mean what’s going on inside ones self. When people go to war, they start out one way. In the beginning of a war you see boys. By the end of a war, you see men with troubled or peaceful faces. War happens to the body and the mind as much as on a battlefield and I think that’s a big thing to keep in mind for this season and for each character; what is their own war and how is it going?

But anyway, the reason I wasn’t that impressed with this episode is that I was… Bored. Like the first half of the episode, until they drove the vehicles to the Savior Compound, I was bored. Because as someone who writes scripts and who studied scripts and film, I understand what’s going on and I just find it frustrating. What’s happening is the setup. We are setting up the season. We are setting up what’s going on and whose with us. We have three fractions vs one giant fraction. Rick and Maggie and Ezekiel’s team VS Negan’s team. We have the three fraction coming together and meeting for the first time and it’s one of those “hi nice to meet you this is awkward but I guess we’re partners” moments one might feel in high school or college when you have to partner up with someone you’ve never once talked to or even paid attention to. It’s awkward and uncertain… But this time you’re partners to survive in an apocalyptic world war of survival… No pressure.

So we have this set up happening… And that’s so boring. I’m not saying it isn’t needed! By God no, it’s needed. We can’t just suddenly be standing in the middle of the battlefield with Rick and Maggie and Ezekiel screaming orders while Negan is laughing and yelling about his dick (btw that scene was stupid but I laughed a little because JDM gets all the stupid lines) as he swings Lucille around. I mean I get that… They could do that but it wouldn’t work as well and all the crazy shit happening at once could leave people just as confused as it not happening at all.

But here’s the thing… They’ve been setting up this war since the beginning of Season 7 with Abraham and Glenn’s death. And it was topped off with Sasha’s death at the end of last season and Shiva coming into save Rick and Carl. I mean we’ve been ready for this war since season seven… More build up is… It’s kind of getting ridiculous at this point. It’s frustrating because I REALLY DO GET WHAT THEY’RE DOING but I do not like it because I’m getting tired of all this stacking and building. I love this shit but after a whole goddamn season of it, I’m just… I’m done.

But that said, I get it and I’m like “fine, fine okay whatever” right now. And when we see Negan step out of the Savior compound, I wasn’t as bored. Because now we were getting something fun. Negan’s swagger wasn’t as… Swag. He actually was slowly showing frustration because his call out plan didn’t work. Gregory didn’t come through because everyone had fallen behind Maggie (for the most part anyway) and Jesus. Gregory (Fuck this motherfucker by the way) was a useless trump card for Simon and Negan… Same with Eugene and Sasha last season. Negan is losing his trump cards slowly. Which THAT I found fascinating and fun to watch. Little by little he’s getting picked away.

Anyway, my main thought on this episode – my overall feel – is that it could’ve given us a lot more. I get building up the theme and the season. I get that they’re waiting to give us something big to chomp down on. But I need them to at least give me some meat on this pile of ribs because a girl can only lick a bone for so long you know? That’s my frustration with it. Not the episode itself. Not the storytelling device that it is. Just the lack of more.

And a lot of that might be that it’s the 100th episode. Episode 1 gave more than the 100th and that’s just kinda like “wtf”. Yes I know it was a brand new show back then. But that’s an excuse more than anything to me. I’ve seen this show give us amazing over the line episodes. This was a chance to do that while also setting up the season. They could’ve used next weeks episode as the kind of extra build up. That would’ve been more satisfying for me personally. You can still build up without taking away from the hype.

That said, I don’t hate this episode at all. The first part bored me but overall I liked seeing the visions of Old Man Rick (I don’t wanna call it future Rick or daydream Rick or whatever because that whole set up didn’t feel like a daydream or future view but more like a hallucination but not… So I’m just calling it a vision and Old Man Rick). I’m also laughing because people pointed out that older Judith’s eyes went blue from the brown they were when she was a baby and also wondering if that’s because Rick’s eyes are blue and Shane’s eyes were dark brown and Lori’s eyes were a very light brown and this is part of Rick’s vision that Judith is fully his child instead of falling on that belief that she’s Shane’s daughter. Either way, it made me kind of laugh but also go hmm.

I also liked the shot for shot image of Carl mimicking Rick in Season 1 and then Rick turning to see a young woman zombie with her face ripped open and wearing a light bathrobe and looking just like Summer – the little girl zombie Rick kills in the first season that was played by Addy Miller – only older. Was curious and looked her up on Twitter and sure enough, she’s the walker we see walking to Rick and Carl. Very very nice touch and that made me grin!

Eugene getting cut off was kind of deserved. I mean I believe he’s just grabbing information and playing a part because, hey, Eugene is good at that kind of shit like he did against Abe and his old crew. But I still think he’s being a real big piece of shit coward and needs to be SIT THE FUCK DOWN from time to time.

So no I didn’t hate this episode. Just got a bit frustrated with it.

Now for some fun little TD shit because I gotta nudge the water sometimes. I’ll probably do this any chance I can. Because I like TDers. Most of them have been nice to me and I find their metas fascinating sometimes.

Ticking clock noise in this episode and in next weeks episode and lots and lots of clocks.

Here’s a little fun nudges I wrote awhile back dealing with the trailer that I think is important for us to note. This is talking about the trailer In the trailer, we have the beating of an instrument in a sort of tribal-like setup. I found out from a friend – who is more musically trained than I am – that the instrument is most likely what is called a clave. AKA those wooden stick instruments a music teacher gives young kids to teach them how to learn music rhythm, to keep a beat. Since music is important, I decided to look into the clave. I did some research. Probably not needed and probably a bit excessive, but blame the scriptwriter in me. I found a blog that talks heavily about the clave and the first thing it discusses – besides telling us that the clave looks like a hot dog without the bun… So a hot dog – is that the clave “also refers to the 2/3 or 3/2 rhythmic glue that holds all the different polyrhythms together. You hear the rhythmic pattern and sound in all Cuban music, most Puerto Rican salsa, and a great deal of African music as well… The hardwood sticks have a sharp, penetrating sound that can be heard even over a large orchestra of loud, blazing horns.” (x) I found this information fascinating. As I said, trailer music I number one on the list of three important things in a trailer. That is because music – as well known – sets a mood. It sets a rhythm for the chosen images and cut-list of the trailer. A good example of how music can set a trailer is the infamous “Scary Mary” trailer (x) that can be found on Youtube – turning Mary Poppins from the whimsical musical and into a horror film. Simply by changing the music, they had an outline for a way to choose clips and make it seem that the classic Disney film Mary Poppins was instead a horror thriller. It’s still the same story, but the change in music makes it a whole other level of cinematography. That in mind, why the clave for this trailer? My thoughts go first back to the line “…The hardwood sticks have a sharp, penetrating sound that can be heard even over a large orchestra of loud, blazing horns.” Which is true. From 0:41 to 2:14 of the AMC posted trailer (x) we can hear the clave being played alone. No other instrument is with it. The music is the only clave’s being beaten to different rhythms to create a single sound/song. As rick begins to talk at 2:14, the clave’s – even muted, are not blocked by Rick’s speech. From 2:14 to 3:04, Rick’s speech is undertoned by the clave’s… This is important. This music – this instrument that can even be heard over larger sounds and can penetrate through it all – was chosen for a reason. What reason? Well, in my personal opinion, because it sounds like a clock and it sets up a feeling of anxiety. Also, according to my research and stated in the website above, the clave was created when slaves – who missed music – took two cuban carved pegs – pegs made to hold the ship together since nails were very expensive back in the late 1400s – and beat them together and discovered their sharp sound. “The Aricans started fashioning these pegs into smooth, round sticks that could be used as rhythm instruments.” (x). This sound also – to me – gives the whole things a sort of tribal feel. It makes me think I’m off running with a tribe. It’s like I’m on a hunt… And that’s what is happening. There is a hunt going on. Negan vs Rick. I mentioned that the clave also sounds like clocks. Like clocks ticking away. This show does love its time and clock. A ticking of a clock symbolizes many things. In media, it is often like that old saying “the clock is ticking”, meaning “time is running out”. This could be someones clock is ticking away to their death. A good example I like to use is ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN and how Charlie the Dog has a watch that represents his time on earth and he’s told his watch has stopped and meant his time is up. The clock stopped ticking for Glenn and he was eventually lost… Now it doesn’t all mean bad. “The clock is ticking” is also a saying that yes, your time is up. But that doesn’t mean your time is up in a bad sense. It could also symbolize an approach of someone or something. And since season 8 is supposed to be about the war with the Saviors (so it seems anyway), then the ticking clock sound can mean the time of approach of the war. A ticking away of a clock is also used in media to give narrative tension. To me – personally – we do get this. There’s something tensing about hearing the clave’s beat away like a clock. Like we’re Captain Hook and we hear the clock of the crocodile coming to get us. A post by Julie Eshbaugh gave the best example of explaining this tension. She said the ticking of a clock creating tension is a simple concept. And the concept is that “a certain task must be completed by a certain deadline or the character will fail and suffer the consequences of that failure… The addition of a ticking clock instantly creates increased tension. A challenge may feel relatively easy to overcome if time is not an issue. But take away the luxury of unlimited time and you immediately turn up the heat on your characters.” (x) Team Family is out of time. Negan has rallied together his Saviors and rallied Jadis with her Scavengers (a union that may have its own ticking clock hanging over it; a ticking bomb clock with how bull-headed Jadis and Negan seem to be just from their last seen exchange) and they have to rally together their plan of attack or risk their loss. The clock is ticking on the approach – on the drop – of the war.Now as for that little bit of Team Defiance / Team Delusional in me that likes to peak out? Well, maybe this is the ticking – the final tick-tock – of Beth’s approach to team Family. She’s been linked with clocks and time before. Wouldn’t surprise me if this ticking clock was Beth’s clock ticking over team family… But again, that’s just me being a speculator.

The Weird Al song made me so confused/baffled, but @dynamicsymmetry pointed out how it’s interesting they used a Weird Al Song for a background song. Because a Weird Al song is a cover and a distorted version of an original song. Another One Rides the Bus is a parody of Another One Bites The Dust. He takes the songs and basically rewrites them with a new feel. The parody song resembles the original but it’s been altered to give a whole new mood. And to me, that’s kind of a good example of what they did with WHAWGO because they gave us this feel of a funeral for Beth but the feel was wrong because it was actually supposed to be a feel for Tyreese. See what I mean? Now of course not all music relates to Beth but Sunny pointing that out made me kinda pause and nod because yeah lol

Carl left a sorry note. Which can also be a nudge to Beth wanting to leave a Thank You note at the funeral home.

Carl talking about them needing hope because without it everything else isn’t enough. And I find it fascinating that it’s CARL that’s talking about Hope while driving around in the damn Phoenix van. I once said I think Carl is going to have a hand in finding Beth again and I still believe that if she’s gonna come back y'all.

#the walking dead #long post #the walking dead season 8 #twd #s08e01 #mercy #td #music #team delusional #team whatever happens will happen #team acceptance #team defiance

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networkingdefinition · 5 years ago

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Surveys Quotes

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• A good aim surveys the present state of experience of pupils, and forming a tentative plan of treatment, keeps the plan constantly in view and yet modifies it as conditions develop. The aim, in short, is experimental, and hence constantly growing as it is tested in action. – John Dewey • A man with deep far-sightedness will survey both the beginning and the end of a situation and continually consider its every facet as important. – Takeda Shingen • A man’s feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.- George Santayana • A new survey found that 12 percent of parents punish their kids by banning social networking sites. The other 88 percent punish their kids by joining social networking sites. – Jimmy Fallon • A new survey indicates that Obama supporters love iPhones. So if you have an iPhone, chances are you are going to be supporting President Obama. In a related story, if you support Governor Chris Christie from New Jersey, chances are you love IHOP. – David Letterman • A new survey out says 64 percent of Americans own a smartphone. Which is interesting because in a related survey, 100 percent of smart phones say they own an American. – Jimmy Fallon • A new survey reveals that women would rather give up sex than give up the remote control for the TV. Men, on the other hand, would be willing to have sex with the remote for the TV. – Conan O’Brien • A new survey shows that the American public is more conservative now than at any point since 1952. The bad news is that all the liberals that died since then are still voting. – Fred Thompson • A perfect Judge will read each work of Wit With the same spirit that its author writ: Survey the Whole, nor seek slight faults to find Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind. – Alexander Pope • A recent Pew Hispanic survey found that more than 70 percent of illegal immigrants from Mexico are interested in a guest-worker program and then returning home. – John Shadegg • A recent survey or North American males found 42% were overweight, 34% were critically obese and 8% ate the survey. – Banksy • A recent survey stated that the average person’s greatest fear is having to give a speech in public. Somehow this ranked even higher than death which was third on the list. So, you’re telling me that at a funeral, most people would rather be the guy in the coffin than have to stand up and give a eulogy. – Jerry Seinfeld • A stunning survey of the latest evidence for intelligent life on Mars. Mac Tonnies brings a thoughtful, balanced and highly accessible approach to one of the most fascinating enigmas of our time. – Herbie Brennan • A survey asked married women when they most want to have sex. 84 per cent of them said right after their husband is finished. – Jay Leno • A survey carried out across the U.S. between 2004 and 2006 showed that frequent church- or synagogue-goers are more likely to give money to charity.- Jonathan Sacks • A survey has shown that the average man has had sex in a car 15 times. Something to keep in mind next time you’re looking for a used car. – Jay Leno • A survey released today found that men spend twice as much on their mistresses for Christmas as they do on their wives. On the other hand, men spend half their income on the wives when the wife finds out about the mistress. So it all balances out. – Jay Leno • A technical survey that systematize, digest, and appraise the mid century state of psychology. – Stanley Smith Stevens • A telephone survey says that 51 percent of college students drink until they pass out at least once a month. The other 49 percent didn’t answer the phone. – Craig Kilborn • Academics, who work for long periods in a self-directed fashion, may be especially prone to putting things off: surveys suggest that the vast majority of college students procrastinate, and articles in the literature of procrastination often allude to the author’s own problems with finishing the piece. – James Surowiecki • According to a new survey, 40 percent of adults in Mexico say they would move to the United States if they got a chance. The number would have been higher, but the other 60 percent already live here. – Conan O’Brien • According to a new survey, 90% of men say their lover is also their best friend. Which is really kind of disturbing when you consider man’s best friend is his dog. – Jay Leno • According to a new survey, almost half of the voters in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania say that they do not trust Hillary Clinton. Republicans immediately got together and said, ‘OK, this is a huge opportunity for us. How are we going to screw it up?’ – Jimmy Fallon • According to a new survey, people who get divorced die early. People who stay married live longer. The difference is they just wish they were dead. – David Letterman • According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful. – Robert De Niro • According to a Public Policy Polling survey, most Americans find lice and colonoscopies more appealing than Capitol Hill. – Ron Fournier • According to a recent survey, kids are receiving an average of 40 cents less from the tooth fairy. That’s right, the economy is so bad that even make-believe people are feeling the pinch. – Conan O’Brien • According to a recent survey, men say the first thing they notice about women is their eyes. And women say the first thing they notice about men is they’re a bunch of liars. – Jay Leno • According to a survey in this week’s Time magazine, 85% of Americans think global warming is happening. The other 15% work for the White House. – Jay Leno • According to one study by the United States Geological survey, 86 percent of oil reserves in the United States are the result not of what is estimated at the time of discovery but of the revisions and additions that come with further development. – Daniel Yergin • According to the National Crime Survey administered by the Bureau of the Census and the National Institute of Justice, it was found that only 12 percent of those who use a gun to resist assault are injured, as are 17 percent of those who use a gun to resist robbery. These percentages are 27 and 25 percent, respectively, if they passively comply with the felon’s demands. Three times as many were injured if they used other means of resistance. – Gary Kleck • Additional federal studies are under way to see if any contamination reaches taps or ground water used for drinking, but the program under which they are conducted, the toxic substances hydrology program of the geological survey, is slated to be eliminated under budget cuts proposed by the Bush administration, government officials said… estrogens and similar compounds are increasingly the focus of research by the Environmental Protection Agency and many scientists because of hints that they alter sexual characteristics in fish and other aquatic species. – Andrew Revkin • After all, a creature without passionate conviction doesn’t cling to extremes. He surveys the scenery and makes sure his outfit doesn’t clash. – Frank Bruni • After starting a blood feud with Fox News, something no Republican presidential candidate has dared to do before, [Donald] Trump seems to have successfully undermine the network in the eyes of its core audience with perception of the Fox News brand among Republican adults hitting its lowest point in three years according to a new YouGov survey. – Chris Hayes • All great expression, which on a superficial survey seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes after a while, to the faithful observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it. – Margaret Fuller • All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95% of Americans are “scientifically illiterate.” That’s…the same fraction…of slaves who were illiterate before the Civil War. – Carl Sagan • Along the way, I’ve worked as a waitress, I’ve done phone surveys, and worked as a receptionist, and for the last twenty years I’ve taught. When I was an actor, the key was to find a job that kept your days free to audition. – Debra Dean • Although the traditional focus of Valentine’s Day is on women and the gifts they desire, this survey found that not only do men like to get gifts for Valentine’s Day, but they also like those gifts to be luxurious. Sixty-three percent of the people we surveyed agreed that this Valentine’s Day, Johnnie Walker Blue Label is a great gift for the men in their lives. – Christopher Parsons • And when midst fallen London, they survey The stone where Alexander’s ashes lay, Shall own with humbled pride the lesson must By Time’s slow finger written in the dust. – Anna Letitia Barbauld • Any survey of the free world’s defense structure cannot fail to impart a feeling of regret that so much of our effort and resources must be devoted to armaments. – Dwight D. Eisenhower • As a great man’s influence never ends, so also there is not definite finality, no end, to a great survey; it runs along for centuries, ever responsive to the strain of the increasing needs of a growing population and an enlarging domain. – Cleveland Abbe • As a Mark brand ambassador, I became extremely cognizant of the devastating statistics about dating abuse and partner violence via the mPowerment campaign and knew I wanted to help change those statistics. mPowerment by Mark and the Avon Foundation for Women funded the No More study, which explored dating abuse, partner violence, and sexual assault. I was honored to be part of it and report the results of the survey in a Capitol Hill briefing. – Ashley Greene • As a scholar who regularly surveys archival material, I think that, a century from now, cultural historians will find David Horowitz’s spiritual and political odyssey paradigmatic for our time. – Camille Paglia • As the most romantic day of the year approaches, and as a brand that is uniquely male, we wanted to find out how men really feel about Valentines Day, and how they want to celebrate it. The Johnnie Walker Blue Label Luxury Survey tells us what gifts men really want versus what gifts women think men want for Valentine’s Day – and the reality is that we’re not as far apart as we like to think. – Christopher Parsons • As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency-or, rather, Agency-must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit? – George Greenstein • As you may recall, Truman was extremely unpopular when he finally left Washington in 1953, thanks largely to the Korean War. Today, however, he is thought to have been a solidly good president, a ‘Near Great’ even, in the terminology of those surveys of historians they do every now and then. – Thomas Frank • Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. – Paul Nitze • Based on current surveys of public opinion in the United States, it turns out that the majority of Americans think I’ve done a pretty good job. -Barack Obama • Biblical social scientists have an advantage because they know truths about human nature. Those who dismiss the Bible and create surveys that don’t measure crucial factors are the ones who have closed minds. Sometimes the Bible gives us clear answers and sometimes it doesn’t, but it always helps us to ask the right questions. – Marvin Olasky • But because we accept the sanctity of life, the responsibility that comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ expressed so well in the hymn: ‘When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died. My richest gain I count but loss and pour contempt on all my pride.’ – Margaret Thatcher • But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I’ll bet you’ll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science. – David Brin • By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one…. Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature–for instance in a biological survey of evolution–we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer. – Owen Barfield • Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation. – Samuel Johnson • Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:- so various yet so uniform-so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature’s laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy. – Roderick Murchison • Completing a large or difficult survey can be a very satisfying thing, especially if there have been hurdles or setbacks along the way. In our work, we get to “tick” off jobs quite often, so the sense of completion can also be rewarding. – Mark Mason • Cultural tourism surveys consistently rate San Francisco’s art industry as a core reason for visiting – Gavin Newsom • Don’t wait till you get bigger to put in place key items, such as staff surveys, peer interviewing for hiring and clear standards of behavior [developed by staff]. – Quint Studer • Even when educators survey grade school texts and create new bibliographies to help teachers include Asians, Eskimos, and other Americans, females in and out of those groups may be down-played or forgotten. – Gloria Steinem • Everyone takes surveys. Whoever makes a statement about human behavior has engaged in a survey of some sort. – Andrew Greeley • Experiencing a massage therapy session is its own best advertisement for changing perceptions. A recent national consumer survey found Americans had overwhelmingly positive feelings about their massage experience. Ninety-four percent express favorable feelings. Fully 85 percent expressed very favorable feelings about their most recent massage, with 37 percent rating it a perfect ten-out-of-ten. What is striking is that there are very few detractors. Most of those who haven’t yet received a massage simply haven’t felt a need for it – Bob Benson • Faults are beauties, when survey’d by love. – Theocritus • Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor. – Samuel Johnson • Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favour, which an artful flatterer may gradually strengthen, till wishes for a particular qualification are improved to hopes of attainment, and hopes of attainment to belief of possession. – Samuel Johnson • Financial literacy is not an end in itself, but a step-by-step process. It begins in childhood and continues throughout a person’s life all the way to retirement. Instilling the financial-literacy message in children is especially important, because they will carry it for the rest of their lives. The results of the survey are very encouraging, and we want to do our part to make sure all children develop and strengthen their financial-literacy skills. – George Karl • For Hades is mighty in calling men to account below the earth, and with a mind that records in tablets he surveys all things. – Aeschylus • Forget romantic fiction, a survey has found that most women would rather read a good book than go shopping, have sex, or sleep. – Janet Street-Porter • Forget socialism, capitalism, just-in-time deliveries, salary surveys, and the rest … concentrate on building organizations that accomplish that most difficult of all challenges: to make people look forward to coming to work in the morning. – Ricardo Semler • Global warming activists claim a serious public concern presently exists and the overwhelming majority of scientists agrees humans are creating a global warming crisis. The survey of AMS meteorologists, however, shows no such overwhelming majority exists. Indeed, to the extent we can assign a majority scientific opinion to whether all the necessary components of a global warming crisis exist, the AMS survey shows the majority does not agree humans are creating a global warming crisis. – James Taylor • God gave man an upright countenance to survey the heavens, and to look upward to the stars. – Ovid • He with a graceful pride, While his rider every hand survey’d, Sprung loose, and flew into an escapade; Not moving forward, yet with every bound Pressing, and seeming still to quit his ground. – John Dryden • History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys. – Lord Acton • Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore. – Ambrose Bierce • How sublime Upon a time-blanch’d cliff to muse, and, while The eagle glories in a sea of air, To mingle with the scene around! – Survey The sun-warm heaven. – Robert Montgomery • Human beings are compelled to adopt a belief system; some paradigm to provide meaning, purpose, and understanding to our lives. A quick survey of the world shows that pretty much any idea will do – it need not reflect reality or truth, merely function to fascinate, distract, and compel. We are designed for belief, not for truth. – Terry Rossio • Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic and he true, by whose light it surveys and shape s their opposites. It is a humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the space which separates the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble. – Edwin Percy Whipple • I actually did a quick survey of how caste plays out in contemporary India. The idea that democracy and development have in some ways eroded caste turned out not to be the case, that it has in fact been entrenched and modernised. – Arundhati Roy • I am somewhat influenced by the years that I’ve spent trying to actually get things done, whether it was reforming education in Arkansas or a survey and Legal Services Corporation board when President [Jimmy ]Carter appointed me and trying to get lawyers for poor people. I have worked in these areas. I know it’s more than just a hope. You’ve got to translate it into a policy that leads to action. – Hillary Clinton • I am the first person to go to Barnes & Noble and buy the new self-help book. I like to fill out the surveys, then I get my friends’ opinions on how I answered to see if I was being honest with myself or not. – Jessica Simpson �� I automate some tasks and delegate many others. Doing research, job organization, data processing, field surveys, and plan preparation can be tedious, detailed work. – Mark Mason • I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was a child. I did want to be a cartographer but that was partly because I liked Ordnance Survey maps and when I used to go to my grandparents’ house from Southampton Station one went past the headquarters of the Ordnance Survey. – Jonathan Meades • I don’t hire a lot of number-crunchers, and I don’t trust fancy marketing surveys. I do my own surveys and draw my own conclusions. – Donald Trump • I don’t know if [Barack Obama] saw the latest religion survey, but almost a quarter of the country are Nones. I don’t mean the ones who hit me on the knuckles with a ruler in Sunday School – I mean they put “None” for religion. – Bill Maher • I don’t need somebody behind a desk to tell me what a marketing survey says is funny. I got 3 million miles and 70,000 tickets sold, telling me that I know how to make people laugh. – D. L. Hughley • I don’t think it’s surprising we will have to look for them. I’m confident that when the Iraq Survey Group has done its work we will find what’s happened to those weapons because he had them. – Tony Blair • I feel pain everywhere. A lot of guys in chairs do feel their legs. But if you don’t, there’s a thing called disreflex, so you know if something happens, say, you can’t feel your foot or your leg and your body reacts. You know something’s not right and you survey what’s going on. – Mark Zupan • I had a survey done on my house. 8 out of 10 people said they really rather liked it – Jimmy Carr • I have a lack of fear, whereas in the past the fear of failure was a powerful motivator. Anyway, I have great expectations for the future, but I just don’t know if I’m the monarch of all I survey. – Sylvester Stallone • I maintain an ongoing survey of Internet Publishing and self publishing, so that it is now possible for any writer with a book to get it published at nominal cost or free, and to have it on sale at booksellers like Amazon.com. – Piers Anthony • I saw a survey and it is that NFL fans are fed up with listening to players talk about politics. – Rush Limbaugh • I sometimes think we ought to bring a bill before Congress changing our national symbol from the eagle to the buffalo, because we are more like the buffalo than the eagle. The eagle is a powerful bird. It flies alone. It rises up into the sky with authority. It is master of all it surveys. The eagle is an individualist and was selected from among the rest of the birds to be our symbol. But the buffalo was never alone. It always ran in a herd with other buffaloes. And, friends, I call your attention that the buffaloes are gone from the open range, but the eagles are still soaring. – Norman Vincent Peale • I speak as a private citizen and not as a representative of the Executive Branch of the United States government. The impression that people of faith are uniformly opposed to stem-cell research is not documented by surveys. In fact, many people of strong religious conviction think this can be a morally supportable approach. – Richard Dawkins • I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song. – Charles Hartshorne • I think somebody ought to do a survey as to how many great, important men have quit to spend time with their families who spent any more time with their family. Probably less. – Walter Cronkite • I think that if anyone bothered to take a survey, they would find a sharp decline in atheism during the winters in Cleveland, Ohio. – Drew Carey • I was rather discouraged when I discovered that Paul and Hotch had no marketing survey, no business plan, no budget, no organized strategy for the introduction of the sauce. When asked about this lack of preparation, the haphazard nature of their business, Paul said, ‘Me in this business is just part of life’s great folly. Stay loose, men, keep ’em off balance.'” – Paul Newman • I’m always fascinated when people really fervently believe, because I have such a hard time believing anything. When people have real faith in something, it’s fascinating to me. And the fact that so many people, in surveys, so many people say they do. It kind of blows my mind. – Conor Oberst • If a man could mount to Heaven and survey the mighty universe, his admiration of its beauties would be much diminished unless he had someone to share in his pleasure. – Marcus Tullius Cicero • If I were to peruse a survey of label options, as they exist now, they either sound like a time bomb disorder or manic depression or Bipolar divide or mental illness. How can I find an identity in that? It certainly isn’t something I can bring up in conversation, without a reaction of judgement or even fear. – Paul Dalio • If we take a survey of the greatest actions…in the world…we shall find the authors of them all to have been persons whose Brains had been shaken out of their natural position. – John Adams • I’m required to do every job well enough that I’d use it as evidence in court – that doesn’t come cheaply! Property is a critical asset for individuals. Maintaining the cadastre (legal survey fabric) is an important job and a valuable service. – Mark Mason • I’m sure if you could survey the unborn they would prefer the chance for life over the options of solar power. – Greg Gutfeld • Immense deposits of kimmeridge clay, containing the oil-bearing bands or seams, stretch across England from Dorsetshire to Lincolnshire. [An early political recognition of the native resource. The Geological Survey had identified the inflammable oil shale in reports since at least 1888.] – Winston Churchill • In 1989, I started the National Association of Business Women. We incorporated microfinance and different job training for women. We did a survey, with USAID, that found women lacked training, credit and information. – Joyce Banda • In a bird’s eye view you tend to survey everything and decide on a particular point, then you swoop down and pick it up. In a worms eye view you don’t have that advantage of looking at everything. – Muhammad Yunus • In all our academies we attempt far too much. … In earlier times lectures were delivered upon chemistry and botany as branches of medicine, and the medical student learned enough of them. Now, however, chemistry and botany are become sciences of themselves, incapable of comprehension by a hasty survey, and each demanding the study of a whole life, yet we expect the medical student to understand them. He who is prudent, accordingly declines all distracting claims upon his time, and limits himself to a single branch and becomes expert in one thing. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of U.N.Resolution 1441. – David Kay • In my totally unscientific yet enthusiastic survey of Communal Experiments Throughout American History, I’ve discovered that the thing most likely to break up said experiments is: Sex, all that murky, dark, dirty gunk simmering beneath human relations. – Lauren Groff • In one survey, respondents listed Princeton as one of the country’s top ten law schools. The problem? Princeton doesn’t have a law school – Alexandra Robbins • In survey after survey, people report that the greatest dangers they face are, in this order: terrorist attack, plane crashes and nuclear accidents. This despite the fact that these three combined have killed fewer people in the past half-century than car accidents do in any given year. – Will Self • In survey after survey, the Iraqi people say, ‘We want to choose our leaders.’ – Scott McClellan • In this country, the health concerns and the environmental concerns are as deep as in Europe. All the surveys show that. But here, we didn’t have the cultural dimension. This is a fast-food culture. – Jeremy Rifkin • Interesting survey in the current Journal of Abnormal Psychology: New York City has a higher percentage of people you shouldn’t make any sudden moves around than any other city in the world. – David Letterman • Ironically, survey after survey shows that married men are happier and healthier than unmarried men. Oh, and they also have more sex. – Michael Kimmel • It is an inherent property of intelligence that it can jump out of a task which it is performing and survey what it has done. – Douglas Hofstadter • It is in the field of prayer that life’s critical battles are lost or won. We must conquer all our circumstances there. We must first of all bring them there. We must survey them there. We must master them there. In prayer we bring our spiritual enemies into the Presence of God and we fight them there. Have you tried that? Or have you been satisfied to meet and fight your foes in the open spaces of the world? – John Henry Jowett • It is one of the defects of modern higher education that it has become too much a training in the acquisition of certain kinds of skill, and too little an enlargement of the mind and heart by an impartial survey of the world. – Bertrand Russell • It is proved by surveys that happiness does not come from love, wealth, or power but the pursuit of attainable goals. – Helen Fielding • It is true that the path of human destiny cannot but appal him who surveys a section of it. But he will do well to keep his small personal commentarie to himself, as one does at the sight of the sea or of majestic mountains, unless he knows himself to be called and gifted to give them expression in artistic or prophetic form. In most other cases, the voluminous talk about intuition does nothing but conceal a lack of perspective toward the object, which merits the same judgement as a similar lack of perspective toward men. – Max Weber • It is vain and useless to survey everything that goes on in the world if our study does not help us mend our ways. – Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable • It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no survey to remove repressions. – Harvey Milk • It would be very interesting to make a survey around the world, from wealthy countries to the most advanced countries to see what influence Americans have had. IEmilio Pucci • It’s about average for us. Behavior always draws more than survey. We’re the sexy ones,’ Nate said with a grin. Amy snorted. ‘Oh, yeah, you guys are the Mae Wests of the nerd world.’ We’re action nerds,’ Nate said. ‘Adventure nerds. Nerds of romance. – Christopher Moore • It’s not possible to present an accurate picture of our culture without all the voices of the people in the culture. So at the emerging level, you can’t have a good survey art show without women and artists of color. – Frida Kahlo • I’ve done an informal, anecdotal survey about marriage, and I’ve found no evidence that it brings happiness. – Mary McCormack • I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The U.S. Geological Survey has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia. – Ronald Reagan • Jocelyn Bell joined the project as a graduate student in 1965, helping as a member of the construction team and then analysing the paper charts of the sky survey. – Antony Hewish • Latest survey shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the world’s population. – Stephen Hawking • Laws, it is said, are for the protection of the people. It’s unfortunate that there are no statistics on the number of lives that are clobbered yearly as a result of laws: outmoded laws; laws that found their way onto the books as a result of ignorance, hysteria or political haymaking; antilife laws; biased laws; laws that pretend that reality is fixed and nature is definable; laws that deny people the right to refuse protection. A survey such as that could keep a dozen dull sociologists out of mischief for months. – Tom Robbins • Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life. – Samuel Johnson • Look back to 1948 when the British Medical Association denounced Aneurin Bevan as ‘a would-be Führer’ for wanting them to join a National Health Service. And Bevan himself described the BMA as ‘politically poisoned people’. A survey at the time showed only 10 per cent of doctors backed the plans … But where would we be today if my predecessors had caved in? – Andrew Lansley • Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs! – Diana Wynne Jones • Luckily, a recent survey published in the American Sociological Review revealed that atheists are the least trusted group in America—less trusted, even, than homosexuals. It makes sense at least we trust the homosexuals with our hair. – Stephen Colbert • My colleagues and I have done a survey of 13,000 students on more than 17 campuses, and we found that while sex in college has always been a bit more casual, “hooking up” has pretty much replaced other traditional forms of dating.- Michael Kimmel • My father was a soil scientist with the Geological Survey. – Jim Fowler • My mind was once the true survey Of all these meadows fresh and gay; And in the greenness of the grass Did see its hopes as in a glass. – Andrew Marvell • My zest for exhibition has over a long career become increasingly a mania. The ecstasy I feel as I survey work I have done I want to share with the world – not the whole world which couldn’t care less, but my private world, which is my country, Canada. – Joseph Plaskett • No man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. – John Calvin • No one likes doing chores. In happiness surveys, housework is ranked down there with commuting as activities that people enjoy the least. Maybe that’s why figuring out who does which chores usually prompts, at best, tense discussion in a household and, at worst, outright fighting. – Emily Oster • Oh! that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves. – William Shakespeare • Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise. By mountains pil’d on mountains to the skies? Heav’n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raise. – Alexander Pope • One survey found that ten percent of Americans thought Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. – Rita Mae Brown • One survey that I saw that was published I think in Variety or Electronic Media within the last three weeks says that now the average hour of radio in the United States has 18 minutes of commercials. – Robert Waterman McChesney • Only by being suspended aloft, by dangling my mind in the heavens and mingling my rare thought with the ethereal air, could I ever achieve strict scientific accuracy in my survey of the vast empyrean. Had I pursued my inquiries from down there on the ground, my data would be worthless. The earth, you see, pulls down the delicate essence of thought to its own gross level. – Aristophanes • Osama bin Laden’s organization has spun out from him and is now probably independent of him. There will be others who will appear and reappear. This is why we need a much more precise, a much more defined, a much more patiently constructed campaign, as well as one that surveys not just the terrorists’ presence but the root causes of terrorism, which are ascertainable. – Edward Said • Our objective is to begin a national conversation to better support individuals and families living with ASD in Canada. The Summit will review the recent National Needs Assessment Survey and provide leaders with a better understanding of ASD surveillance across the country. We are pleased that Minister Bergen will be part of this important discussion. – Cynthia Carroll • Perhaps, in retrospect, there would be little motivation even for malevolent extraterrestrials to attack the Earth; perhaps, after a preliminary survey, they might decide it is more expedient just to be patient for a little while and wait for us to self-destruct. – Carl Sagan • Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons. The possession of a good rifle, as well as the skill to use it well, truly makes a man the monarch of all he surveys. It realizes the ancient dream of the Jovian thunderbolt, and as such it is the embodiment of personal power. For this reason it exercises a curious influence over the minds of most men, and in its best examples it constitutes an object of affection unmatched by any other inanimate object. – Jeff Cooper • Philosophy, most broadly viewed, is the critical survey of existence from the standpoint of value. – Sidney Hook • Physiology is the basis of all medical improvement and in precise proportion as our survey of it becomes more accurate and extended, it is rendered more solid. – John Gorrie • Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence. – Samuel Johnson • Readers, on the other hand, have at least 7.5 books going all the time. Actually, the number of books a reader takes on is usually directly related to the number of bathrooms he has in his home and office. I am working on a survey that will show that, over a lifetime, readers are in bathrooms seven years and three months longer than nonreaders. – Calvin Miller • Recent surveys of Church members have shown a serious erosion in the number of families who have a year’s supply of life’s necessities. Most members plan to do it. Too few have begun… It is our sacred duty to care for our families, including our extended families. – Thomas S. Monson • Recent surveys show 3 out of 10 men have a problem with premature ejaculation. The rest just didn’t really think it was a problem! – Frankie Boyle • Roberto Calasso’s survey of the renewed interest in myth demonstrates how decisive the gods’ influence was on modern literature. Calasso is not only immensely learned; he is one of the most original thinkers and writers we have today. – Charles Simic • San Francisco can start right now to become number one. We can set examples so that others will follow. We can start overnight. We don’t have to wait for budgets to be passed, surveys to be made, political wheelings and dealings … for it takes no money … It takes no compromising to give the people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression. – Harvey Milk • School choice opponents are also dishonest when they speak of saving public schools. A Heritage Foundation survey found that 47 percent of House members and 51 percent of senators with school-age children enrolled them in private schools in 2001. Public school teachers enroll their children in private schools to a much greater extent than the general public, in some cities close to 50 percent. – Walter E. Williams • She couldn’t survey the wreck of the world with an air of casual unconcern. – Margaret Mitchell • So their combinations with themselves and with each other give rise to endless complexities, which anyone who is to give a likely account of reality must survey. – Plato • Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain – which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad – old churches, country lanes, people saying ‘Mustn’t grumble,’ and ‘I’m terribly sorry but,’ people apologizing to ME when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, tea and crumpets, summer showers and foggy winter evenings – every bit of it. – Bill Bryson • Survey 2001: Men who never married, never had a child, worked full time and were college educated earn only 85% of what women with the same criteria earn. – Warren Farrell • Survey and test a prospective action before undertaking it. Before you proceed, step back and look at the big picture, lest you act rashly on raw impulse. – Epictetus • Survey data suggest that war has become more unpopular. The majority of the American people now think it was a mistake, in a shift away from the 51 percent that endorsed it on Election Day. Admittedly this is only a small change in the population, from a majority to a minority. Nor do the changers earn grace for their new opinions. They still endorsed the war on Election Day and are still responsible for it. – Andrew Greeley • Survey says: one more for the bad guys. – Scott Hall • Surveys have shown going back as far as you and I can remember that people have perceived a leftward tilt in the basic coverage that they get on TV news. – Brit Hume • Surveys show that many talented and committed young people are reluctant to enter teaching for the long haul because they think the profession is low-paying and not prestigious enough. – Arne Duncan • Surveys show that more than 50 percent of people in the U.S. have prayed the sinner’s prayer and think they’re going to heaven because of it even though there is no detectable difference in their lifestyles from those outside of the church. On this issue- the most important issue on earth- we have to be absolutely clear. We need to preach salvation by repentance before God and faith in the finished work of Christ. – J. D. Greear • Surveys show that surveys never lie. – Natalie Angier • Surveys show that the #1 fear of Americans is public speaking. #2 is death. That means that at a funeral, the average American would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy. – Jerry Seinfeld • Take the back door,” she said. “Claire, you and your strang friend-” “Eve,” they both said simultaneously, and Eve held out her fst for a bump. “Or, you could call me Eve the Great, Mistress of All She Surveys. Eve for short. – Rachel Caine • That I had never heard of such a bird did not surprise me…. But others more experienced also did not know of the Carolina Parakeet. The more I spoke of the bird, the more it seemed that, somehow, its existence had been a chimera. Admittedly, my survey was small and unscientific, but intelligent people who could reel off the names of various dinosaurs and identify sparrows at epic distances could not name the forgotten parakeet. I realized, forcefully, what I suppose I knew abstractly: Histories, like species, can go extinct. – Christopher Cokinos • The American people want to make sure that the rules of the game are fair. And what that means is that if you look at surveys around Americans’ attitudes on trade, the majority of the American people still support trade. But they’re concerned about whether or not trade is fair, and whether we get the same access to other countries’ markets that they have with us. Is there just a race to the bottom when it comes to wages, and so forth. – Barack Obama • The BBC did a survey of the top 50 things to do before we die. Not while we’re still alive, before we die.- Bill Bailey • The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget. – John Berger • The distribution of wealth is even more unequal than that of income. …The wealthiest 5% of American households held 54% of all wealth reported in the 1989 survey. Their share rose to 61% in 2010 and reached 63% in 2013. By contrast, the rest of those in the top half of the wealth distribution —families that in 2013 had a net worth between $81,000 and $1.9 million —held 43% of wealth in 1989 and only 36% in 2013. – Janet Yellen • The drys seemingly are afraid of the truth. Why not take inventory and ascertain the true conditions. Let us not leave it to the charge of an antiprohibition organization, or to any other private association, let us have an official survey and let the American people know what is going on. A complete and honest and impartial survey would reveal incredible conditions. – Fiorello H. La Guardia • The earliest religious texts in the West ascribe to humankind both a prehistory and a destiny among the gods. M. David Litwa presents a striking survey of the varieties the latter of these beliefs has had, both within and outside the Christian tradition. Becoming Divine reconstructs an accessible and fascinating mosaic of this too-long neglected idea, utilizing figures as disparate as Orphic cultists, Augustine, and Nietzsche. – Terryl L. Givens • The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have been wrong must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong. – Herbert Spencer • The fact is that surveys which media people openly admit to show that fewer than twelve percent of their customers believe they’re doing a good job, while the average profit margin in television is in the neighborhood of eighty percent. – L. Neil Smith • The good news from the U.S. military survey of focus groups is that Iraqis do accept the Nuremberg principles. They understand that sectarian violence and the other postwar horrors are contained within the supreme international crime committed by the invaders. – Noam Chomsky • The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea. – Henry David Thoreau • The Iraq Survey Group has already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories. – Tony Blair • The Italian historian Armando Petrucci has done more than anyone else to revive interest in public writing. His groundbreaking Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture surveys the forms and uses of epigraphic writing from classical antiquity to the twentieth century. – Geoffrey Nunberg • The leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, ‘Wrong jungle!’ … Busy, efficient producers and managers often respond … ‘Shut up! We’re making progress!’ – Stephen Covey • The main object of the work was to present such a survey of the advances already made in physical knowledge, and of the mode in which they have been made, as might serve as a real and firm basis for our speculations concerning the progress of human knowledge, and the processes by which sciences are formed. – William Whewell • The majority of surveys throughout this Nation show that the American people are advocating for a comprehensive and realistic approach to immigration reform. – Raul Grijalva • The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere. – Michel de Certeau • The much-vaunted sex appeal of American women is drawn from films, reviews and pin-ups, and is in large print fictitious. A recent medical survey in the United States showed that 75% of young American women are without strong sexual feeling and instead of satisfying their libido they seek pleasure narcissistically in exhibitionism, vanity, and the cult of fitness and health in a sterile sense. – Julius Evola • The other three incoming calls were from his building superintendent, his pharmacy and a telephone survey company.” “Bastards. They always call during dinner.” Liv laughed as I slid the sliced steak onto a platter and topped it with sautéed vegetables. “Forget crime lords and corrupt politicians – telemarketers are the root of all evil.” “Now you’re getting it. – Rachel Vincent • The Place of Religion in Chicago is a clearly written account of a little-studied aspect of American landscape. Based on unique field surveys and supported by photographs, tables, and beautifully crafted maps, the book will form a lasting contribution to our understanding of an overlooked element of the American urban scene: the religious landscape of a major metropolis. – Peter Haggett • The Playtex Secrets survey truly uncovered some thought-provoking and provocative secrets of real American housewives. In fact, many of the findings would make great fodder for a storyline on the show! – Alfre Woodard • The pool of illegal immigrants is like a qualified bunch of people. You don’t have to do surveys. You don’t have to interview them. You know they are ready-made Democrat voters. Not only that, they are readymade Democrat constituents. – Rush Limbaugh • The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of ’49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific. – John Moody • The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga. – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar • The repeat run of Fawlty Towers (BBC2) drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so. Statistical surveys reveal that only the television critic of the Spectator is incapable of seeing the joke, which is that Basil Fawlty has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor, just as some other people have the wrong temperament to be television critics. – Clive James • The spirit’s there and that’s not just my imagination. I think if you look at surveys and attitudes among young people, you see it. – Barack Obama • The survey findings reflect the growing trend toward incentive compensation programs as a way for employers to share the wealth with workers, … Roughly 80 percent of those surveyed offer bonus programs and 401(k) or profit-sharing plans . . . as they compete for the best and brightest workforce. – Jerry Jasinowski • The survey of more than 100 waterways downstream from treatment plants and animal feedlots in 30 states found minute amounts of dozens of antibiotics, hormones, pain relievers, cough suppressants, disinfectants and other products. It is not known whether they are harmful to plants, animals or people. The findings were released yesterday on the Web site of the United States Geological Survey, which conducted the research, and in an online journal, Environmental Science and Technology. – Andrew Revkin • The task of getting the Gospel in an adequate way to every ethnic person is tremedous. There is but one solution. I’m sure that it isn’t man, money, surveys, not talk. They all have their place, but if the basis of all of it isn’t fervent, believing prayer, they are in vain. And prayer should not only be the basis but it should permeate and vitalize the whole work. – William Cameron Townsend • The teachings or the information in the Venus project is not what Jacque Fresco dictates. It’s first doing a survey of the carrying capacity of a given environment and maintaining a population in accordance of the Earth’s resources, not Fresco’s opinion. – Jacque Fresco • The truth is that relative income is not directly related to happiness. Nonpartisan social-survey data clearly show that the big driver of happiness is earned success: a person’s belief that he has created value in his life or the life of others. – Arthur C. Brooks • The whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind so that I can survey it at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What delight this is I cannot tell! – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart • There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony. In such poemsthere lives a real transcendental buffoonery. Their interior is permeated by the mood which surveys everything and rises infinitely above everything limited, even above the poet’s own art, virtue, and genius; and their exterior form by the histrionic style of an ordinary good Italian buffo. – Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel • There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • There are literally thousands of sites. As I was told in Iraq, information is coming in the entire time, but it is only now that the Iraq survey group has been put together that a dedicated team of people, which includes former UN inspectors, scientists and experts, will be able to go in and do the job properly. – Tony Blair • There is a kind, I might almost say, of artistic satisfaction, when we are able to survey the enormous wealth of Nature as a regularly ordered whole a kosmos, an image of the logical thought of our own mind. – Hermann von Helmholtz • There is a new survey out about the happiest professions. I think the whole premise is flawed. You’re supposed to find true happiness outside of work. From friends, family, and YouTube videos of old people falling down. – Craig Ferguson • There isn’t a clear goal in sight. Osama bin Laden’s organization has spun out from him and is now probably independent of him. There will be others who will appear and reappear. This is why we need a much more precise, a much more defined, a much more patiently constructed campaign, as well as one that surveys not just the terrorists’ presence but the root causes of terrorism, which are ascertainable. – Edward Said • There once was a demographic survey done to determine if money was connected to happiness and Ireland was the only place where this did not turn out to be true. – Fiona Shaw • There was a research I think team, which conducted a survey about what Indians think of Americans, and 71 percent I believe said, well, I think all the nice things about our working together with the United States. But there are people I think that are old mind-sets, who still I think remain mired in the Cold War ideology. – Manmohan Singh • There was a survey done a few years ago that affected me greatly. it was discovered that intelligent people either estimate their intelligence accurately or slightly underestimate themselves, but stupid people overestimate their intelligence and by huge margins. (And these were things like straight up math tests, not controversial IQ tests.) – Harvey Pekar • There`s plenty of other evidence Trump is in sync with the base, including a major survey released that found that 76 percent of Republicans think Islam is incompatible with the American way of life. – Donald Trump • They say the full potential of the human being is called enlightenment, which is infinite consciousness, infinite happiness, zero negativity, zero dying, complete freedom, total fulfillment, and being at one with everything. You can say it’s God realization, or you can say you sit at the feet of the Lord as master of all you survey. You could say it’s totality, total knowledge, and that you are that totality. This is every human being’s birthright: to one day enjoy supreme enlightenment, unity. It’s like the big graduation. – David Lynch • They took a survey: Why do men get up in the middle of the night? Ten percent get up to go to the bathroom and 90 percent get up to go home. – Rodney Dangerfield • This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based on focus groups. We will not take a stand based on phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of pubic opinion. – Stephen Harper • Though it is very easy to do valuations, eyeballs and brand prominence surveys, you should never allow any of them to influence the balance sheet. – Ashwin Sanghi • Though with those streams he no resemblance hold, Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold; His genuine and less guilty wealth t’ explore, Search not his bottom, but survey his shore. – John Denham • Time, that takes survey of all the world, Must have a stop. – William Shakespeare • To glorify the past and paint the future is easy, to survey the present and emerge with some light and understanding is difficult. – Lin Yutang • To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; ad if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility. – Samuel Johnson • USA Today has come out with a new survey – apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population. – David Letterman • Verse is the natural speech of men, as singing is of birds’The Week’s Survey, 18 June 1904 – Edward Thomas • Very strange bridges are used to make the passage from one state of things to another; we may lose sight of them in our surveys of general history, but their discovery is the glory of historical research. History is not the study of origins; rather it is the analysis of all the mediations by which the past was turned into our present. – Herbert Butterfield • We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by human kind. – William J. Clinton • We constantly see surveys that reveal this ignorance, especially among our high school students,78 percent of whom, in a recent nationwide multiple-choice test, identified Abraham Lincoln as ‘a kind of lobster.’ That’s right: more than three quarters of our nation’s youth could not correctly identify the man who invented the telephone. – Dave Barry • We must, like a painter, take time to stand back from our work, to be still, and thus see what’s what. . . True repose is standing back to survey the activities that fill our days. – William McNamara • We of the third sphere are unable to look at Europe or at Asia as they may survey each other. Wherever we go, across Pacific or Atlantic, we meet, not similarity so much as ‘the bizarre.’ Things astonish us, when we travel, that surprise nobody else. – Mary Ritter Beard • Well for everyone to make a study of astrology for, as indicated, while many individuals have set about to prove the astrological aspects and astrological survey enable one to determine future as well as the past conditions, these are well to the point where the individual understands that these act upon individuals because of their sojourn or correlation of their associations with the environs through which these are shown – see? Rather than the star directing the life, the life of the individual directs the courses of the stars, see? – Edgar Cayce • Well, first of all the Dominion Bureau of Statistics made a survey in the spring of 1970, which showed that on balance the difference in the cost of living between Canadian cities and American cities was 5 % to the advantage, of course, to the Canadian cities. – Leonard Woodcock • What is true about (ex-Iraq Survey Group head) David Kay’s evidence, and this is something I have to accept, and is one of the reasons why I think we now need a new inquiry – it is true David Kay is saying we have not found large stockpiles of actual weapons. – Tony Blair • What we also know is we haven’t found them [weapons of mass destruction] in Iraq – now let the survey group complete its work and give us the report… They will not report that there was no threat from Saddam, I don’t believe. – Tony Blair • When a lion stalks a herd, he sneaks in close, lies down, and surveys them to choose his victim. He takes his time. The deer or buffalo have no idea he’s near. He finds his prey and then he explodes from his hiding place and grabs it. Even if another, perfectly serviceable animal ends up within his reach, he isn’t going to alter his course. He has chosen, and he would rather go hungry than change his mind.- Ilona Andrews • When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view I’m lost, in wonder, love and praise. – Joseph Addison • When Gordon the Brown, in London in 1997, commissioned a great inquisition or survey of his new realm, the result was the so-called national asset register (NAR), which was immediately dubbed by the boomers of the UK Treasury “the modern Domesday Book”. – James Buchan • When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. – Blaise Pascal • When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC news poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported al-Qaeda. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there isn’t any). – Arundhati Roy • When they take surveys of women in business, of the Fortune 500, the successful women, 80% of them, say they were in sports as a young woman. – Billie Jean King • When we mean to build, We first survey the plot, then draw the model; And when we see the figure of the house, Then must we rate the cost of the erection. – William Shakespeare • When we started NFL Films, there were no focus groups, there were no demographic studies, there were no surveys. Every decision that we made, we made with our hearts, not with our heads. And, in the very beginning, we really didn’t even have a business plan. – Steve Sabol • When we survey our lives, seeking to fulfil our creativity, we often see we had a dream that went glimmering because we believed, and those around us believed, that the dream was beyond our reach. – Julia Cameron • When we take a slight survey of the surface of our globe a thousand objects offer themselves which, though long known, yet still demand our curiosity. – Oliver Goldsmith • When William the Conqueror commissioned a great survey of his English realm at Gloucester in 1085, the result was a work so thorough, fair, dispassionate, and wide-ranging that it seemed to the succeeding generations to have come from another world. – James Buchan • With respect to trust, people tell me that it is essential for organizational functioning. Maybe, but most surveys of trust find that trust in leaders is low and nonetheless, organizations role along quite nicely.- Jeffrey Pfeffer • With Twitter and other social networking tools, you can get a lot of advice from great people. I learn more from Twitter than any survey or discussion with a big company.- Daniel Ek • Write, if you must; not otherwise. Do not write, if you can earn a fair living at teaching or dressmaking, at electricity or hod-carrying. Make shoes, weed cabbages, survey land, keep house, make ice-cream, sell cake, climb a telephone pole. Nay, be a lightning-rod peddler or a book agent, before you set your heart upon it that you shall write for a living…. Living? It is more likely to be dying by your pen; despairing by your pen; burying hope and heart and youth and courage in your ink-stand. – Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward • You know all the surveys say that evangelicals have the best sex life of any other group. – Ted Haggard • You may have read that I went to M.I.T. In 1982 I filled out a Who’s Who survey with joking responses, and they never bothered to check the facts. – Chevy Chase • You’d think experienced political professionals would know better than to place their trust in exit polls, notoriously inaccurate surveys that had John Kerry winning the 2004 election by five points when he actually lost by three. – John Podhoretz

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