Sunday, May 18, 2008

A nice poem for a change

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach for another is to risk involvement
To expose your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd is to risk loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return
To live is to risk dying
To believe is to risk failure
But risk must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing
The people who risk nothing do nothing, have nothing, and are nothing
They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live
Chained by their attitudes, they are slaves; they have forfeited their freedom
Only a person who risk is free.

- I don't know the author

Saturday, May 17, 2008

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.”

—H. L. Mencken

Saturday, May 03, 2008

WAR IS A RACKET


"Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?

What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?

Yes, and what does it profit the nation?

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit."

-excerpt from 'War is a Racket' by

USMC Major General Smedley D. Butler (1881-1940)
published 1935


Total Current U.S. Public Debt Outstanding
9,682,116,996,293.84