Thought for Today

"A farmer traveling with his load
Picked up a horseshoe on the road,
And nailed it fast to his barn door,
That luck might down upon him pour;
That every blessing known in life
Might crown his homestead and his wife,
And never any kind of harm
Descend upon his growing farm."

~~~~~ James Thomas Fields

Thought for Today

"A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better."

~~~~~ Stephen Leacock (anticipating Donald Trump?)

Thought for Today

"Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects."

~~~~~ Andrew Johnson

Thought for Today

"Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate.
One thing at least is certain, light has weight.
One thing is certain and the rest debate.
Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight."

~~~~~ Arthur Eddington

Thought for Today

"Fortune favors the prepared mind."

~~~~~ Louis Pasteur

Thought for Today

"The accumulation of skill and science which has been directed to diminish the difficulty of producing manufactured goods, has not been beneficial to that country alone in which it is concentrated; distant kingdoms have participated in its advantages."

~~~~~ Charles Babbage

Thought for Today

"Economy, prudence, and a simple life are the sure masters of need, and will often accomplish that which, their opposites, with a fortune at hand, will fail to do."

~~~~~ Clara Barton

Thought for Today

"Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error."

~~~~~ Benjamin Rush

Thought for Today

"We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery."

~~~~~ Samuel Smiles

Thought for Today

"I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, 'Give, give.'"

~~~~~ Abigail Adams

Thought for Today

"There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour."

~~~~~ Benjamin Disraeli

Thought for Today

"I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature."

~~~~~ Sidney Hook

Thought for Today

"In the long run, there is not much discrimination against superior talent."

~~~~~ Carter G. Woodson

Thought for Today

"An atheist is a man who believes himself an accident."

~~~~~ Francis Thompson

Thought for Today

"When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead."

~~~~~ John Greenleaf Whittier

Thought for Today

"Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him."

~~~~~ George Santayana

Thought for Today

"The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm."

~~~~~ Freeman Dyson

Thought for Today

"If we should have to fight, we should be prepared to so so from the neck up instead of from the neck down."

~~~~~ Jimmy Doolittle

Thought for Today

"Communism possesses a language which every people can understand - its elements are hunger, envy, and death."

~~~~~ Heinrich Heine

Thought for Today

"Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependent upon popular opinion?"

~~~~~ William Lloyd Garrison

Thought for Today

"A few years' experience will convince us that those things which at the time they happened we regarded as our greatest misfortunes have proved our greatest blessings."

~~~~~ George Mason

Thought for Today

"It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellow men."

~~~~~ George MacDonald

Thought for Today

"He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day:
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself his own dungeon."

~~~~~ John Milton

Thought for Today

"Watch out when you're getting all you want. Fattening hogs ain't in luck."

~~~~~ Joel Chandler Harris

Thought for Today

"Conscience is our magnetic compass; reason our chart."

~~~~~ Joseph Cook

Thought for Today

"When things come to the worse, they generally mend."

~~~~~ Susanna Moodie

Thought for Today

"The need for Government is the need for force; where force is unnecessary, there is no need for Government."

~~~~~ Rose Wilder Lane

Thought for Today

"If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?"

~~~~~ Thomas Carlyle

Thought for Today

"The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat oneself."

~~~~~ Gamaliel Bailey

Thought for Today

"If you can't ignore an insult, top it; if you can't top it, laugh it off; and if you can't laugh it off, it's probably deserved."

~~~~~ Russell Lynes

Thought for Today

"Authors are ordinary people who usually start to live apart, in the imagination, because they don't fit in with normal, healthy people."

~~~~~ Henry Williamson

Thought for Today

"It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not."

~~~~~ Jonathan Swift

Thought for Today

"You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency."

~~~~~ Wendell Phillips

Thought for Today

"It would be foolhardy to count on the conscience of the world."

~~~~~ Stefan Zweig

Thought for Today

"Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world is power without humor."

~~~~~ Eric Sevareid

Thought for Today

"I do beseech you to direct your efforts more to preparing youth for the path and less to preparing the path for the youth."

~~~~~ Ben Lindsey

Thought for Today

"'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause, and of obstinacy in a bad one."

~~~~~ Laurence Sterne

Thought for Today

"Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion."

~~~~~ Franklin Pierce

Thought for Today

"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant."

~~~~~ Charles de Gaulle

Thought for Today

"We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their acts."

~~~~~ Harold Nicolson

Thought for Today

"Don't tell your friends about your indigestion. 'How are you' is a greeting, not a question."

~~~~~ Arthur Guiterman

Thought for Today

"I have had many troubles in my life, but the worst of them never came."

~~~~~ James A. Garfield

Thought for Today

"The antiquity and general acceptance of an opinion is not assurance of its truth."

~~~~~ Pierre Bayle

Thought for Today

"I think that everything you do helps you to write if you're a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don't experience either one of those, you're being deprived of something."

~~~~~ Shelby Foote

Thought for Today

"The kind of doctor I want is one who when he's not examining me is home studying medicine."

~~~~~ George S. Kaufman

Thought for Today

"I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way."

~~~~~ Franklin Pierce Adams

Thought for Today

"Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood."

~~~~~ Norman MacCaig

Thought for Today

"Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it."

~~~~~ William Shenstone

Thought for Today

"We must Think what we Say, and Mean what we Profess."

~~~~~ Mary Astell

Thought for Today

"Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad."

~~~~~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Thought for Today

"He who considers too much will perform little."

~~~~~ Friedrich Schiller

Thought for Today

"The old man, of whom we know how he has become what he is, is more of an individual than the young man; for it is only in the course of an eventful life that men are differentiated into full individuality."

~~~~~ Erich Auerbach

Thought for Today

"Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false."

~~~~~ Richard Cecil

Thought for Today

"We go on in our pleasures thinking they're going to last forever."

~~~~~ Billy Graham

Thought for Today

"Governmental aid is a drawback rather than an assistance, as, although it may facilitate in the routine of artistic production, it is an impediment to the development of true artistic genius."

~~~~~ John Philip Sousa

Thought for Today

"We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries."

~~~~~ Will Durant

Thought for Today

"There are many causes why a people politically ignorant cannot be roused to action. Perfect political ignorance must be accompanied by indifference to the general interests of society, and thus one of the most powerful motives which can act on the human mind is totally destroyed."

~~~~~ Benjamin Robbins Curtis

Thought for Today

"Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger."

~~~~~ William Cullen Bryant

Thought for Today

"America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration."

~~~~~ Warren G. Harding

Thought for Today

"A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion."

~~~~~ Grantland Rice

Thought for Today

"A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts."

~~~~~ Axel Munthe

Thought for Today

"In politics the middle way is none at all."

~~~~~ John Adams

Thought for Today

"As for the assertion that nuclear weapons prevent wars, how many more wars are needed to refute this arguments? Tens of millions have died in the many wars that have taken place since 1945."

~~~~~ Joseph Rotblat

Thought for Today

"Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything."

~~~~~ Evelyn Waugh

Thought for Today

"I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear."

~~~~~ Benjamin F. Wade

Thought for Today

"No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person's enemies say about him."

~~~~~ Napoleon Hill

Thought for Today

"Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self."

~~~~~ Max Stirner

Thought for Today

"Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations."

~~~~~ James Mackintosh

Thought for Today

"Beware prejudices. They are like rats, and men's minds are like traps; prejudices get in easily, but it is doubtful if they ever get out."

~~~~~ Francis Jeffrey

Thought for Today

"Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day."

~~~~~ Franz Liszt

Thought for Today

"Lying is the greatest of all sins."

~~~~~ Alfred Nobel

Thought for Today

"Have the courage to face a difficulty lest it kick you harder than you bargain for."

~~~~~ Stanislaus I

Thought for Today

"By the breaking in of enraged merciless armies, flourishing countries have been laid waste, great numbers of people have perished in a short time, and many more have been pressed with poverty and grief."

~~~~~ John Woolman

Thought for Today

"Not drunk is he who from the floor -
Can rise alone and still drink more;
But drunk is They, who prostrate lies,
Without the power to drink or rise."

~~~~~ Thomas Love Peacock

Thought for Today

"What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small."

~~~~~ Richard Mentor Johnson

Thought for Today

"Israel has created a new image of the Jew in the world - the image of a working and an intellectual people, of a people that can fight with heroism."

~~~~~ David Ben-Gurion

Thought for Today

"It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them."

~~~~~ P. G. Wodehouse

Thought for Today

"I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?"

~~~~~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower

"The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important."

~~~~~ Albert J. Nock

Thought for Today

"A big part of the problem that we face today is that our children have been taught at schools that every idea is right, that no one should criticize others' positions, no matter how odious."

~~~~~ Ed Royce

Thought for Today

"Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality."

~~~~~ Justice Harlan Stone

Thought for Today

"People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do."

~~~~~ Lewis Cass

Thought for Today

"Friends are the sunshine of life."

~~~~~ John Hay

Thought for Today

"He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity."

~~~~~ William Samuel Johnson

Thought for Today

"A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way."

~~~~~ Caroline Gordon

Thought for Today

"We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter."

~~~~~ Denis Diderot

Thought for Today

"Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times."

~~~~~ Rutherford B. Hayes

Thought for Today

"I could do terrible things to people who dump unwanted animals by the roadside."

~~~~~ James Herriot

Thought for Today

"I endeavor to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended and patient when there be no redress."

~~~~~ Elizabeth Montagu

Thought for Today

"Our forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation."

~~~~~ Fletcher Knebel

Thought for Today

"Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it."

~~~~~ Truman Capote

Thought for Today

"The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments."

~~~~~ Ludwig von Mises

Thought for Today

"Begin to free yourself at once by doing all that is possible with the means you have, and as you proceed in this spirit the way will open for you to do more."

~~~~~ Georges Clemenceau

Thought for Today

"To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius."

~~~~~ Henri Frederic Amiel

Thought for Today

"That every person is desirous to obtain, with as little sacrifice as possible, as much as possible of the articles of wealth."

~~~~~ Nassau William Senior

Thought for Today

"Some things you'll never know, and some things you'll wish you never knew."

~~~~~ Eric Williams

Thought for Today

"The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well."

~~~~~ Horace Walpole

Thought for Today

"Though man a thinking being is defined,
Few use the grand prerogative of mind.
How few think justly of the thinking few!
How many never think, who think they do!"

~~~~~ Jane Taylor

Thought for Today - Tuesday, September 22, 2015

"I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later."

~~~~~ Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Thought for Today

"Go into something because you really like it, and then do it with a drive and enthusiasm so that it isn't work."

~~~~~ John Kluge

Thought for Today

"All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable, which makes you see something you weren't noticing, which makes you see something that isn't even visible."

~~~~~ Leo Strauss

Thought for Today

"And if you cannot remain indifferent, you must resolve to throw your weight into that balance in which the fate and condition of man is weighed."

~~~~~ Lajos Kossuth

Thought for Today

"Liberty does not exist where rights are on one side and power on the other. To be liberty, rights must be armed with vital powers. A people cannot be free who do not participate in the control of the government which operates upon them."

~~~~~ Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

Thought for Today

"Determine to do some thinking for yourself. Don't live entirely upon the thoughts of others. Don't be an automaton."

~~~~~ James Cash Penney

Thought for Today

"All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity."

~~~~~ James Fenimore Cooper

Thought for Today

"A lecture is an occasion when you numb one end to benefit the other."

~~~~~ John Gould

Thought for Today

"The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men."

~~~~~ Julius Charles Hare

Thought for Today

"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar."

~~~~~ H. L. Mencken

Thought for Today

"One sheds one's sicknesses in books – repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them."

~~~~~ D. H. Lawrence

Thought for Today

"The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity."

~~~~~ Carl Clinton Van Doren

Thought for Today

"To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it."

~~~~~ Leo Tolstoy

Thought for Today

"In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed."

~~~~~ Sid Caesar

Thought for Today

"The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth."

~~~~~ Edith Sitwell

Thought for Today

"When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties."

~~~~~ Marquis de Lafayette

Thought for Today

"Too oft is transient pleasure the source of long woes."

~~~~~ Christoph Martin Wieland

Thought for Today

"Every pessimist who ever lived has been buried in an unmarked grave. Tomorrow has always been better than today, and it always will be."

~~~~~ Paul Harvey

Thought for Today

"God knows how many things a man misses by becoming smug and assuming that matters will take their own course."

~~~~~ Loren Eiseley

Thought for Today

"If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters."

~~~~~ Alan K. Simpson

Thought for Today

"Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people."

~~~~~ Kin Hubbard

Thought for Today

"If you are worthy of its affection, a cat will be your friend but never your slave."

~~~~~ Theophile Gautier

Thought for Today

"Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall."

~~~~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Thought for Today

"There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables."

~~~~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (presciently writing about Obama?)

Thought for Today

"I report to you that our country is challenged at home and abroad: that it is our will that is being tried and not our strength; our sense of purpose and not our ability to achieve a better America."

~~~~~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Thought for Today

"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."

~~~~~ Mother Teresa (on abortion)

Thought for Today

"Books open your mind, broaden your mind, and strengthen you as nothing else can."

~~~~~ William Feather

Thought for Today

"Don't let the opinions of the average man sway you. Dream, and he thinks you're crazy. Succeed, and he thinks you're lucky. Acquire wealth, and he thinks you're greedy. Pay no attention. He simply doesn't understand."

~~~~~ Robert G. Allen

Thought for Today

"What you think means more than anything else in your life. More than what you earn, more than where you live, more than your social position, and more than what anyone else may think about you."

~~~~~ George Matthew Adams

Thought for Today

"Words are also seeds, and when dropped into the invisible spiritual substance, they grow and bring forth after their kind."

~~~~~ Charles Fillmore

Thought for Today

"He who knows how to be poor knows everything."

~~~~~ Jules Michelet

Thought for Today

"Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it."

~~~~~ Al Lopez

Thought for Today

"To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up."

~~~~~ Ogden Nash

Thought for Today

"A man with a surplus can control circumstances, but a man without a surplus is controlled by them, and often has no opportunity to exercise judgment."

~~~~~ Marshall Field

Thought for Today

"Let your tongue speak what your heart thinks."

~~~~~ Davy Crockett

Thought for Today

"Never let an inventor run a company. You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market."

~~~~~ E. F. Schumacher

Thought for Today

"Cows are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their young when deprived of them; and, in short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these quiet creatures."

~~~~~ Thomas de Quincey

Thought for Today

"Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem."

~~~~~ John Galsworthy

Thought for Today

"Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt."

~~~~~ Felix Adler

Thought for Today

"Do not be fooled into believing that because a man is rich he is necessarily smart. There is ample proof to the contrary."

~~~~~ Julius Rosenwald

Thought for Today

"The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart."

~~~~~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Thought for Today

"I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth and they never believe me."

~~~~~ Camillo di Cavour

Thought for Today

"God has two dwellings; one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart."

~~~~~ Izaak Walton

Thought for Today

"A proverb is the wisdom of many and the wit of one."

~~~~~ Lord John Russell

Thought for Today

"These are the days for strong men to courageously expose wrong."

~~~~~ Powell Clayton

Thought for Today

"Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong."

~~~~~ Daniel O'Connell

Thought for Today

"If you can give your child only one gift, let it be enthusiasm."

~~~~~ Bruce Barton

Thought for Today

"The more we study the more we discover our ignorance."

~~~~~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thought for Today

"You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of false motive. Never complain and never explain."

~~~~~ Stanley Baldwin

Thought for Today

"The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards."

~~~~~ Irving Babbitt

Thought for Today

"Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow."

~~~~~ Maria Mitchell

Thought for Today

"Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another."

~~~~~ Milton Friedman

Thought for Today

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government."

~~~~~ John Sharp Williams

Thought for Today

"The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through."

~~~~~ Alexis de Tocqueville

Thought for Today

"I don't think that science is complete at all. We don't understand everything, and one can see, within science itself, there are many inconsistencies. We just have to accept that we don't understand."

~~~~~ Charles H. Townes

Thought for Today

"When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
His sins were scarlet, but his books were read."

~~~~~ Hilaire Belloc

Thought for Today

"We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them."

~~~~~ Carl Jung

Thought for Today

"I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind."

~~~~~ Eric Hoffer

Thought for Today

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."

~~~~~ John Philpot Curran

Thought for Today

"People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway."

~~~~~ Simeon Strunsky

Thought for Today

"Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great."

~~~~~ Edward Hopper

Thought for Today

"They never taste who always drink:
They always talk, who never think."

~~~~~ Matthew Prior

Thought for Today

"How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!"

~~~~~ Petrarch

Guest post from Mark West of the Chattanooga Tea Party.

When Evil Visited Our City

It was another quiet, sunny day in beautiful Chattanooga, affectionally known as “Scenic City” Tennessee.  Just a few weeks earlier our city with such charm and character was voted “Best Town Ever” by hundreds of thousands of Americans.  And yet, on the morning of July 16 at 10:45  the peace in our city was tragically shattered in a sudden and violent manner.  In the moments that followed, our city was drawn into a worldwide battle between good and evil.  Previous to July 16, our sleepy neighborhoods, bustling shops, busy ballfields and overflowing restaurants seemed to insulate us from this enemy, which to date had been advancing in their one-sided war, with very little opposition.  

Our leaders, entrusted with the security of the world’s sole superpower, like too many Americans, have wished this evil away.  Many of our leaders at all levels, both federal and state, have refused to acknowledge the truth of the ideology known as “radical islam” or “islamic terrorism.” 

Ignoring a deadly virus in one’s body does not eliminate the certain death that virus will cause. Likewise, refusing to mouth the words “islamic terrorist” does not insulate innocent citizens from the evil that most certainly awaits them. 

Unfortunately my fellow Chattanoogans and I know the truth of this evil ideology.  We have seen it first hand.  We have witnessed the physical effects.  And tragically, there are four families whose lives have been forever changed with the reality that their beloved Marine will never return home.   

But, did this have to happen?  Could this virus evil have been stopped?  As importantly, will our state and national leaders once and for all place the lives of their citizens above their stubbornness and political correctness? 

We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf for some time to a point that folks around him stopped listening to him so that when the wolf finally showed up, there was no one to kill the wolf and save the boy. 

For many years now there have been many in our nation crying wolf.  The wolf is radical islam.  Here in Chattanooga our organization has been warning our community of this evil for years.  And our movement across Tennessee has been expressing a dire warning to our political leaders, both in Nashville as well as Washington.   

In 2013 a group of over 500 concerned Tennesseans met US Attorney Bill Killian in Manchester, TN to express our opposition to his veiled threat that if citizens expressed an “inappropriate” negative sentiment towards Islam that they could be charged and prosecuted.  For many of us, the extent of our comments was to assert that Islam is not a religion of peace, in opposition to what we’ve heard regurgitated since a few days after 9/11.  Truthfully, our assertion is backed up with irrefutable evidence at infinitum.  The meeting with Killian was a volatile gathering because of Killian’s antagonistic attitude towards citizens who, while perhaps unruly at times, believed that their cry of “wolf” was unquestionably justified. 

Fast forward to yesterday and we heard from the same US Attorney Bill Killian at a news conference in Chattanooga just a few hours after 4 marines were killed.  Ironically, or perhaps sadly, the warning by hundreds of citizens who cried “wolf” about the threat of radical islam was tragically validated when Killian admitted that Chattanooga was struck by domestic terrorism.  

There’s no jubilation in being right about a tragedy.  In fact, there is sadness, frustration and anger.  Too many of us are experiencing these emotions because once again the policies of our nation, guided by men like Killian, Governors, Congress and the Commander in Chief continue to result in dead Americans.  

Whether it’s the fourteen murdered and twenty-nine wounded by Nidal Hasan (which was falsely documented as “workplace violence”) or now our own four tragic deaths and several wounded in Chattanooga, these senseless deaths might have been prevented if we merely had a Commander in Chief and many other elected officials who would speak truth.  

Wishing a war or an enemy away will not cause them to dissipate.  Rather, such behavior only emboldens and enables terrorists like Abdulazeez.  Only an aggressive pursuit of our enemy with the intent of total victory will insure their destruction and secure the lives of our citizens. 

So, will this happen?  I can see only one way this will occur.  You and I must recommit ourselves to never, ever allow this to occur again.  We must remember the ache within our soul on July 16 at 10:45am.  We must never allow that pain to diminish or depart.  And with that understanding that this threat continues, we must step up today, tomorrow and the next day to demand truthfulness by our leaders in identifying our enemy and action by the same in pursuing those enemies to the gates of hell to defeat them… or else, evil will once again visit our community, our state, our nation.  

But then, it will be too late. 

Posted on July 17, 2015 by Mark West

Thought for Today

"There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write."

~~~~~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Thought for Today

"'Tis the voice of the sluggard;
I heard him complain,
You have waked me too soon,
I must slumber again."

~~~~~ Isaac Watts

Thought for Today

"Every once in a while, someone will mail me a single popcorn kernel that didn't pop. I'll get out a fresh kernel, tape it to a piece of paper and mail it back to them."

~~~~~ Orville Redenbacher

Thought for Today

"Journalism: A profession whose business is to explain to others what it personally does not understand."

~~~~~ Lord Northcliffe

Thought for Today

"When you can't have what you choose, you just choose what you have."

~~~~~ Owen Wister

Thought for Today

"We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment. Many things have been said about me which are wrong, and which white and black persons here, who stood by me through the war, can contradict."

~~~~~ Nathan Bedford Forrest

Thought for Today

"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism."

~~~~~ Dr. William Osler

Thought for Today

"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people."

~~~~~ John Quincy Adams

Thought for Today

"A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew the facts of the case."

~~~~~ Finley Peter Dunne

Thought for Today

"Reduce the number of lawyers. They are like beavers – they get in the middle of the stream and dam it up."

~~~~~ Donald Rumsfeld

Thought for Today

"Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities – because it is the quality which guarantees all others."

~~~~~ Joseph Chamberlain

Thought for Today

"Truth is mighty and will prevail."

~~~~~ Thomas Brooks

Thought for Today

"Where you have no religion, you are sure to have no government, for as religion disappears, anarchy takes place and fixes a compleat Hell on earth till religion returns."

~~~~~ Daniel Morgan

Thought for Today

"I have found out one thing and that is, if you have an idea, and it is a good idea, if you only stick to it you will come out all right."

~~~~~ Cecil Rhodes

Thought for Today

"Any man who does not like dogs and want them about does not deserve to be in the White House."

~~~~~ Calvin Coolidge

Thought for Today

"Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning."

~~~~~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Thought for Today

"The State Department desperately needs to be vigorously harnessed. It has too big a role to play in the formulation of foreign policy, and foreign policy is too important to be left up to foreign service officers."

~~~~~ Evan G. Galbraith

Thought for Today

"It is vain to expect a well-balanced government without a well-balanced society."

~~~~~ Gideon Welles

Thought for Today

"Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism – including, of course, legal despotism?"

~~~~~ Frédéric Bastiat

Thought for Today

"Lord, deliver me from the man who never makes a mistake, and also from the man who makes the same mistake twice."

~~~~~ Dr. William J. Mayo

Thought for Today

"The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become."

~~~~~ Ashley Montagu

Thought for Today

"The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth."

~~~~~ Gaston Bachelard

Thought for Today

"If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything that one permits oneself, life would be unbearable."

~~~~~ Georges Courteline

Thought for Today

"The most dangerous people are the ignorant."

~~~~~ Henry Ward Beecher

Thought for Today

"If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers."

~~~~~ Irvin S. Cobb

Thought for Today

"I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves."

~~~~~ Wilhelm von Humboldt

Thought for Today

"If you live for fame, men may turn against you."

~~~~~ Matthew Simpson

Thought for Today

"Those that set in motion the forces of evil cannot always control them afterwards."

~~~~~ Charles W. Chesnutt

Thought for Today

"If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names."

~~~~~ Elbert Hubbard

Thought for Today

"We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do."

~~~~~ Auberon Herbert

Thought for Today

"Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education."

~~~~~ John Hersey

Thought for Today

"Well I just figure any man who risks his neck to save a dog's life isn't going to kill someone for gold teeth."

~~~~~ Alvin Adams

Thought for Today

"The first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise... and cultivate the delightfully vague."

~~~~~ John C. Crosby

Thought for Today

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."

~~~~~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Thought for Today

"One's age should be tranquil, as childhood should be playful. Hard work at either extremity of life seems out of place. At midday the sun may burn, and men labor under it; but the morning and evening should be alike calm and cheerful."

~~~~~ Thomas Arnold

Thought for Today

"There's no use doing a kindness if you do it a day too late."

~~~~~ Charles Kingsley

Thought for Today

"Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception."

~~~~~ E. V. Lucas

Thought for Today

"Within yourself deliverance must be searched for, because each man makes his own prison."

~~~~~ Edwin Arnold

Who are You? And Should I Listen to You?

Guest Post by a COS Tennessee Supporter

 Joanna Scutari, a self-proclaimed “logician” and self-trained constitutional "expert", has been running around the South for a few years giving presentations to small conservative groups on the U.S. Constitution. She operates under the pseudonym "Publius Huldah".

Her conclusions on many topics are not only controversial, they are considered by real constitutional experts to be flat wrong, particularly regarding the Article V state convention method of proposing amendments.

The question has arisen as to whether her choice to hide behind a pseudonym matters or not. The question behind the question: who is Ms. Scutari and should I listen to her?

Lest you think the use of a pseudonym and knowing the true identity of a speaker is not a question for serious discussion, be aware that some of the issues Ms. Scutari discusses in her presentations are very serious indeed. When it comes to how the states should address federal overreach, the very future of our constitutional republic hangs in the balance. This is about what lawful, moral and civil methods all citizens should and could use to prevent our country from falling off a political cliff or a financial cliff -- an event that most people believe is not too far in our country’s future unless there is a quick and thorough course correction.

When having serious presentations on such a serious topic, does hiding behind a pseudonym matter? Does hiding your background matter? Does knowing your speaker matter? Yes to all three questions.

First, just think about Ms. Scutari’s choice to use a pseudonym. If you decided you wanted to learn about the constitution and then start making public presentations about what you have learned, would you have chosen to use a pseudonym? Have any of you heard any speakers who make serious, live presentations on how to save our country, or on any constitutional law topic, using a pseudonym? Of course not. Most people who want to be taken seriously on serious topics in live presentations use their real names. Why use a pseudonym? To hide your lack of training or recognized expertise? To hide something in your past? To provide entertainment value to your presentations? Why? At best, the choice to use any pseudonym is just bizarre. At worst, it could be used to hide sinister motives and objectives.

Ms. Scutari recently attempted to justify her use of a pseudonym by comparing her choice to that of Samuel Clemens choosing to use the pseudonym Mark Twain. By making this comparison, of course, she slyly implies to our subconscious that we should take her as seriously on political matters as Mark Twain was taken as a non-fiction author. Further, by choosing to use this analogy, she wants us to take the innocence and even "fun" of Samuel Clemens and his writings and subconsciously transfer those characteristics to her choice to do likewise. This analogy is pompous and egregious.

Further, is that analogy true? Flatly, no. Samuel Clemens used a pen name to write fictional stories for entertainment. That purpose is MUCH different from someone who is engaging in political discourse on a public stage and who is attempting to influence a group of people to take real action (or take no action) on matters of great importance. The topics about which Ms. Scutari speaks are much different (fiction versus non-fiction) and of much greater significance (entertainment versus saving our Republic). Thus the entire analogy simply fails. Samuel Clemens’ use of a pseudonym does not support Ms. Scutari’s use of a pseudonym. This supposed “logician" uses extremely flawed logic. Specifically, she uses a false analogy – and by doing so manipulates her audience. Neither is it a correct analogy to say that the Founding Fathers used pseudonyms and thus it is acceptable for her to use one. First, she is nowhere near being on the level of the Founding Fathers – and I hope she would admit to that. Second, the Founding Fathers did not use pseudonyms EVERYWHERE. When they appeared in public, they used their real names. The only time they used pseudonyms was in the authoring of the Federalist Papers, but the reader knew that the author was at least one of the authors of the Constitution.

Should we know who is speaking to us? Yes.

Personal backgrounds of speakers are the source of bias – and all of us have at least a little bias built in from our personal backgrounds. On matters of such importance, the background of the speaker needs to be well known. Openness and transparency matter.

Further, one cannot simply claim expertise and expect everyone to believe that claim just because you say you have it. The best way to demonstrate expertise is to have others who have similar expertise publicly recognize you as a fellow expert. Real names are needed to search public records and validate claimed credentials.

Further, real names are needed to search the organizations in which the speaker and their prior and current associates and family members may have participated or shown interest. In other words, real names are needed to be able to verify who you are and “where you come from”.

Ms. Scutari has vehemently kept her identity a complete secret for many years – even refusing to give her real name when asked by a Tennessee State lawmaker in a formal hearing. Why? She claims innocence, but can we accept that claim?

Now that her real identity has been revealed, we know that she married into a family with a sketchy history. The fact that she chose to keep this information secret should certainly cause everyone to at least pause and consider what biases she brings to her presentations because of that background.

Further, now that her real name is known, we can confirm that she actually was a lawyer. But that is it. Constitutional law is a specialty within the law -- lawyers are not trained in constitutional law in the course of getting a standard law degree. To learn constitutional law requires specialized training and many years of experience under the tutelage of other experts. In other words, a "lawyer" is NOT necessarily a "constitutional expert." As far as anyone has been able to determine, Ms. Scutari has no known formal training on constitutional law.

Further, now that we have her name, many searches conducted by several people have come up empty as to whether she has argued in front of any courts on constitutional law issues. In fact, no one has been able to identify that she has any significant courtroom experience on any topics, other than helping her husband obtain a divorce.

In short, no other recognized experts on constitutional law (neither educators at universities nor any courts nor any other experts) have confirmed her expertise.

In fact, the opposite is true. At least a few constitutional experts (with significant training, experience and public recognition, including recognition from the U.S. Supreme Court) have stated that she is wrong on Article V and the state convention method of proposing amendments and also wrong on the concept of nullification.

Some of her sycophants have argued that Ms. Scutari’s lack of formal training in constitutional law should not matter; that one should just focus on her arguments. Hogwash. Formal training does matter. Formal training allows one to:

1. become aware of and include all of the arguments on both sides of a whole host of issues,
   
2. fully understand the context and meaning of the arguments regarding those issues,
   
3. weigh the arguments against each other accurately and
   
4. accurately assemble all of this information to reach the correct conclusions.

Just one gap in any of these steps and your conclusions can be very wrong. To be clear, formal training does not guarantee correct conclusions. However, the lack of formal training, because of failures which may occur at any one of the four steps above, will greatly increase the chance for incorrect conclusions, especially on a topic as broad and complex as constitutional law. If you examine their complaints, you will find that the constitutional experts have complained about issues with Ms. Scutari’s logic at all four steps of this process.

We mentioned earlier how one’s personal background will always introduce some amount of bias. One of the additional values of formal training is to allow others to help you identify personal bias and remove that bias from your arguments and conclusions.

What’s interesting is that when Ms. Scutari is being compared to real scholars, some argue that these comparisons do not matter. But on the front page of her blog she highlights her law degree and when she is introduced in public, her law degree is always mentioned. You can't have it both ways. Either her training matters or it does not. The fact is that training, degrees, experience, and public recognition by other experts do matter. Ms. Scutari confirms that herself by claiming her law degree at all points.

To be fair, Ms. Scutari is to be commended for her efforts to self-train in the constitution. However, regardless of her ability to memorize and quote many aspects of the constitution and the federalist papers, Ms. Scutari’s conclusions can still be very wrong, particularly when we know that they come from a lack of serious constitutional law training and experience and  potentially with some very serious biases. When you combine all of that with her insistence on hiding behind a pseudonym for several years, it is not only warranted, but prudent to have significant doubt concerning her conclusions.

If she wants to be taken seriously on a public stage, she should:

1. engage in some serious, formal education and obtain a degree or other formal recognitions in constitutional law from people who are confirmed experts,
   
2. work under the tutelage of confirmed constitutional experts to gain at least a few years of real experience and allow “steel to sharpen steel”,
   
3. publicly list the groups with whom she is affiliated now and in the past (and to formally deny the tenets of organizations with whom she does not agree.) and
   
4. use her real name, at least as a by-line.

After all of these steps, maybe, at some point, we can begin to take her seriously. Ms. Scutari has a lot to overcome because her choices up until now, particularly hiding behind a pseudonym, will cast a long shadow on any potential future as a serious speaker on these topics.

Until she has taken the steps above, her presentations should be considered nothing much more than interesting theater - a performance. You may learn some things, but be very wary of any conclusions she reaches.

We know more about Ms. Scutari than we did just a few months ago. However, even now, we really don't know Ms. Scutari’s full background. She has a sketchy family history. Her “self-taught” constitutional law training is sketchy. Real experts indicate she uses sketchy logic and reaches sketchy conclusions, particularly regarding Article V and amending state conventions. It is all just sketchy.

To the leaders of conservative groups who have scheduled Ms. Scutari to perform in the past, prior to her background and lack of training becoming known, please think hard about that decision and consider strongly having others who can fairly and completely represent opposite conclusions also present to your groups.

If you are a leader who is considering scheduling Ms. Scutari for a performance, think deeply about whether this is a wise idea. At a minimum, make sure to study and understand what confirmed experts have to say about Ms. Scutari’s arguments, logic and conclusions. Please also ensure that opposing views from confirmed experts are presented fairly and completely after Ms. Scutari’s performance, to root out and reverse her questionable conclusions.

Before attending one of her performances, consider strongly whether your group’s time would be better spent listening to confirmed experts, instead of having to undo conclusions after the fact, particularly on issues as important as legal, civil, moral, and constitutional methods to restore our constitutional republic.

Who is she? We really don’t know. Should you listen to her? You decide. If you do, make sure you review the content of her performances against the arguments and conclusions of confirmed experts.

Thought for Today

Paging Governor Moonbeam! Paging Governor Moonbeam!

"The rage for railroads is so great that many will be laid in parts where they will not pay."

~~~~~ George Stephenson (Letter to Joseph Sandars; December, 1824)

Thought for Today

"The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution."

~~~~~ Justice Byron White

Thought for Today

"Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways."

~~~~~ Samuel McChord Crothers

Thought for Today

"The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot."

~~~~~ William Ralph Inge

Thought for Today

"Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition."

~~~~~ Adam Smith

Thought for Today

"Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts."

~~~~~ Robert Fulghum

Thought for Today

"There are two ways to slice easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking."

~~~~~ Alfred Korzybski

Thought for Today

"Those who wish to pet and baby wild animals 'love' them. But those who respect their natures and wish to let them live normal lives, love them more."

~~~~~ Edwin Way Teale

Thought for Today

"Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead."

~~~~~ Carl von Clausewitz

Thought for Today

"If you put off everything till you're sure of it, you'll never get anything done."

~~~~~ Norman Vincent Peale

Thought for Today

"Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think."

~~~~~ Alfred Austin

Thought for Today

"How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win."

~~~~~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Thought for Today

"Every scientific truth goes through three states: first, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it."

~~~~~ Louis Agassiz

Thought for Today

"I have always served the public to the best of my ability. Why? Because, like every other man, it is to my interest to do so."

~~~~~ Cornelius Vanderbilt

Thought for Today

"No nation ever yet found any inconvenience from too close an inspection into the conduct of its officers, but many have been brought to ruin and reduced to slavery by suffering gradual impositions and abuses."

~~~~~ Edward Livingston

Thought for Today

"Middle age is when your old classmates are so grey and wrinkled and bald they don't recognize you."

~~~~~ Bennett Cerf

Thought for Today

"I own that it is a good deal of a mystery to me how judges, of all persons in the world, should put their faith in dicta. A brief experience on the bench was enough to reveal to me all sorts of cracks and crevices and loopholes in my own opinions when picked up a few months after delivery and reread with due contrition."

~~~~~ Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo

Thought for Today

"A certain portion of the human race has certainly a taste for being diddled."

~~~~~ Thomas Hood

Thought for Today

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius."

~~~~~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Thought for Today

"No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday."

~~~~~ Alexander Pope

Thought for Today

"A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity."

~~~~~ Honoré de Balzac

Thought for Today

"A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not."

~~~~~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Thought for Today

"Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it."

~~~~~ Josephus Daniels

Thought for Today

"In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil."

~~~~~ Anna Jameson

Thought for Today

"Two points that are very important points to remember and ask: Is it real and does it work?"

~~~~~ Edward T. Hall

Thought for Today

"It is such a relief to be told the truth."

~~~~~ Katherine Anne Porter

Thought for Today

"History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats."

~~~~~ B. C. Forbes

Thought for Today

"Art is made to disturb, science reassures."

~~~~~ Georges Braque

Thought for Today

"Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet."

~~~~~ Robert Charles Winthrop

Thought for Today

"The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age."

~~~~~ Isaac D'Israeli

Thought for Today

"I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming that I have never made one."

~~~~~ James Gordon Bennett

Thought for Today

"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt."

~~~~~ Henry J. Kaiser

Thought for Today

"Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals."

~~~~~ Edmund Wilson

Thought for Today

"Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons."

~~~~~ Joseph Cannon

Thought for Today

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy."

~~~~~ Rabindranath Tagore

Thought for Today

"A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him."

~~~~~ Soren Kierkegaard

Thought for Today

"If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?"

~~~~~ Thomas Huxley

Thought for Today

"The way I look at it is, cancer research is absolutely nonpartisan. Cancer is very democratic in the sense that it attacks people regardless of their race, their gender, their national background, or their political persuasions."

~~~~~ David H. Koch

Thought for Today

"One we discover how to appreciate the timeless values in our daily experiences, we can enjoy the best things in life."

~~~~~ Jerome K. Jerome

Thought for Today

"Whatever you want too much you can't have, so when you really want something, try to want it a little less."

~~~~~ Joel Rosenberg

Thought for Today

"Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil's propagation."

~~~~~ Hosea Ballou

Thought for Today

"Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle."

~~~~~ Sir Thomas Beecham

Thought for Today

"If you saw a dog going to be crushed under a car, wouldn't you help him?"

~~~~~ Oskar Schindler

Thought for Today

"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate."

~~~~~ Ulysses S. Grant

Thought for Today

"Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself."

~~~~~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Not Under Command

If the United States were a ship, it would be displaying its "Not under command" signal -- two red balls (by day) or lights (by night) in a vertical line indicating that the ship cannot control its movements because of problems with its steering gear or propulsion system. Other vessels who observe the signal know that they must take action to stay out of the ship's way because it is incapable of fulfilling its obligations under the International Rules of the Road.

During my Navy days, in order to remember the meaning of three similar signals, white over red (a pilot boat on station), red over white (a fishing boat engaged in fishing), and the aforementioned red over red, we used this mnemonic: 

"White over red: Pilot ahead; 

Red over white: Fishing at night; 

Red over red: Captain is dead."

Thought for Today

"After a big war a nation doesn't want another for a generation or more."

~~~~~ Edward Grey

Thought for Today

"Be discreet in all things, and so render it unnecessary to be mysterious."

~~~~~ Arthur Wellesley

Thought for Today

"Let us all be happy, and live within our means, even if we have to borrow the money to do it with."

~~~~~ Charles Farrar Browne

Thought for Today

"Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from Hell."

~~~~~ Philip James Bailey

Thought for Today

"I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior."

~~~~~ Hippolyte Taine

Thought for Today

"Obamacare is simply incapable of doing what it is supposed to do - provide nearly universal care at an affordable and sustainable cost."

~~~~~ Dr. Marcia Angell

Thought for Today

"A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way."

~~~~~ Fisher Ames

Thought for Today

"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it."

~~~~~ Clarence Darrow

Thought for Today

"I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for."

~~~~~ Thornton Wilder

Thought for Today

"He who leaves nothing to chance will do few things poorly, but he will do few things."

~~~~~ E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

Thought for Today

"History shows how feeble are barriers of paper."

~~~~~ John Lothrop Motley

Thought for Today

"While it is well enough to leave footprints on the sands of time, it is even more important to make sure they point in a commendable direction."

~~~~~ James Branch Cabell

Thought for Today

"Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great."

~~~~~ Roger de Rabutin

Thought for Today

"Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character."

~~~~~ Henry Clay

Thought for Today

"We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our property and our liberty and our property under the Constitution."

~~~~~ Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes

Thought for Today

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves."

~~~~~ William Hazlitt

Thought for Today

"There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start."

~~~~~ Charles Baudelaire

Thought for Today

"Standardization of our educational systems is apt to stamp out individualism and defeat the very ends of education by leveling the product down rather than up."

~~~~~ Dr. Harvey Cushing (foreseeing Common Core?)

Thought for Today

"God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages."

~~~~~ William Ellery Channing

Thought for Today

"Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate."

~~~~~ Nicolas Chamfort

Thought for Today

"No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts."

~~~~~ Booker T. Washington on what we now call "Affirmative Action"

Thought for the Century

"There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity."

~~~~~ Robertson Davies

Thought for Today

"Earnestness is stupidity sent to college."

~~~~~ P. J. O'Rourke

Thought for Today

"Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles."

~~~~~ Washington Irving (anticipating Dr. Benjamin Carson?)

Thought for Today

"The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men."

~~~~~ Emile Zola

Thought for Today

"False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing."

~~~~~ Joseph de Maistre

Thought for Today

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."

~~~~~ Edward Fitzgerald

Thought for Today

"While one man can discover a certain thing by himself, another is never able to understand it, even if taught by means of all possible expressions and metaphors, and during a long period; his mind can in no way grasp it, his capacity is insufficient for it."

~~~~~ Maimonides

Thought for Today

"The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency."

~~~~~ Eugene McCarthy

Thought for Today

"Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."

~~~~~ Nelson Algren

Thought for Today

"There are many people in the world who feel that if only they had a bigger car, a nicer house, better vacations, a more understanding boss, or a more interesting partner, then their life would work. We all go through that one. Slowly we wear out most of our 'if onlies.'"

~~~~~ Joko Beck

Thought for Today

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

~~~~~ Viktor E. Frankl

Thought for Today

"Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history."

~~~~~ Norman Borlaug

Thought for Today

"No good work is ever done while the heart is hot and anxious and fretted."

~~~~~ Olive Schreiner

Thought for Today

"Each generation must recreate liberty for its own times."

~~~~~ Florence Ellinwood Allen

Thought for Today

"Fullness of knowledge always means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance; and that is always conducive to humility and reverence."

~~~~~ Robert Andrews Millikan

Thought for Today

"Seventy is wormwood,
Seventy is gall
But it's better to be seventy,
Than not alive at all."

~~~~~ Phyllis McGinley

Thought for Today

"It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians."

~~~~~ Henrik Ibsen

Thought for Today

"An idea can be as flawless as can be, but its execution will always be full of mistakes."

~~~~~ Brent Scowcroft

Thought for Today

"Learn from your mistakes and build on your successes."

~~~~~ John C. Calhoun

Thought for Today

"A healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life."

~~~~~ Jean Ingelow

Thought for Today

"When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery."

~~~~~ Maxim Gorky

Thought for Today

"It's best make changes little by little, the same as you'd put clothes upon a growing child."

~~~~~ Augusta, Lady Gregory

Thought for Today

"When a man has emerged from slavery, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws."

~~~~~ Joseph P. Bradley

Thought for Today

"The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate."

~~~~~ Joseph Priestley

Thought for Today

"He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave."

~~~~~ George Berkeley

Thought for Today

"To pursue science is not to disparage the things of the spirit. In fact, to pursue science rightly is to furnish the framework on which the spirit may rise."

~~~~~ Vannevar Bush

Thought for Today

"Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth."

~~~~~ Chuck Norris

Thought for Today

"All legislative experiments in the way of making forcible distribution of the wealth produced in any country have failed."

~~~~~ Leland Stanford

Thought for Today

"Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think."

~~~~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Thought for Today

"The mill cannot grind with the water that is past."

~~~~~ Daniel D. Palmer

Thought for Today

"The weakest link in a chain is the strongest because it can break it."

~~~~~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Thought for Today

"The curse of covetousness is that it destroys manhood by substituting money for character."

~~~~~ Lucy Larcom

Thought for Today

"We can all be geniuses because one definition of genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains."

~~~~~ Knute Rockne

Thought for Today

"The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself."

~~~~~ William Godwin

Thought for Today

"Ideals are like the stars: we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our course by them."

~~~~~ Carl Schurz

Thought for Today

"You'll find as you grow older that you weren't born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up."

~~~~~ William Dean Howells

Thought for Today

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

~~~~~ Berthold Auerbach

Thought for Today

"Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat."

~~~~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thought for Today

"Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men."

~~~~~ Victor Hugo

Thought for Today

"Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence."

~~~~~ John Foster Dulles

Thought for Today

"God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless."

~~~~~ Chester W. Nimitz

Thought for Today

"Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought."

~~~~~ Karl Jaspers

Thought for Today

"My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty... it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein."

~~~~~ George Washington

Thought for Today

"We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe."

~~~~~ John Henry Newman

Thought for Today

"The nicest thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from."

~~~~~ Ken Olsen

Thought for Today

"Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the heavens as its center, would, I reflected, regard it as an insane pronouncement if I made the opposite assertion that the earth moves."

~~~~~ Nicolaus Copernicus

Thought for Today

"A man who trims himself to suit everybody will soon whittle himself away."

~~~~~ Charles M. Schwab

Thought for Today

"It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism."

~~~~~ Chaim Potok

Thought for Today

"The press is the hired agent of a moneyed system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing."

~~~~~ Henry Adams

Thought for Today

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."

~~~~~ Susan B. Anthony

Thought for Today

"Strong people are made by opposition like kites that go up against the wind."

~~~~~ Frank Harris

Thought for Today

"We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action."

~~~~~ Sarojini Naidu

Thought for Today

"When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say."

~~~~~ Abraham Lincoln

Thought for Today

"If you want to succeed in the world, you don't have to be much cleverer than other people. You just have to be one day earlier."

~~~~~ Leo Szilard

Thought for Today

"I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today!"

~~~~~ William Allen White

Thought for Today

"There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power."

~~~~~ William Henry Harrison

Thought for Today

"The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it."

~~~~~ John Ruskin

Thought for Today

"The trouble with organizing a thing is that pretty soon folks get to paying more attention to the organization than to what they're organized for."

~~~~~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

Thought for Today

"Oh mortal man, is there anything you cannot be made to believe?"

~~~~~ Adam Weishaupt

Thought for Today

"It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own."

~~~~~ James Otis

Thought for Today

"A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece."

~~~~~ Ludwig Erhard

Thought for Today

"The darkest hour in any man's life is when he sits down to plan how to get money without earning it."

~~~~~ Horace Greeley

Thought for Today

"A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest."

~~~~~ Havelock Ellis

Thought for Today

"Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one."

~~~~~ Richard Whately

Stop Governor Haslam's Expansion of Obamacare in Tennessee through Medicaid

Petition Background (Preamble):

In accordance with Public Chapter 662 of the State Tennessee, Governor Haslam has called the 109th Tennessee General Assembly into special session for the purpose of passing a resolution authorizing him as governor to enact a wavier for Medicaid, known as Insure Tennessee.

Insure Tennessee as determined by the Tennessee Attorney General is Medicaid Expansion.

The funding mechanism for Medicaid Expansion is the Affordable Care Act commonly referred to as Obamacare. Obamacare is both immoral and unconstitutional and any effort to legitimize it should be defeated without reservation or cause.

By expanding Medicaid the state of Tennessee further legitimizes an unconstitutional act and increases the federal debt by over $22.5 billion over the next ten years.

Petition:

For these reasons we the undersigned request in the strongest terms possible that the members of the 109th Tennessee General Assembly vote NO on Governor Haslam's request for authorization to expand Medicaid.

Stop Governor Haslam's Expansion of Obamacare in Tennessee through Medicaid Petition | GoPetition

Thought for Today

"Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation."

~~~~~ Gouverneur Morris

Thought for Today

"If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead."

~~~~~ Gelett Burgess

Thought for Today

"Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit."

~~~~~ Anton Chekhov

Thought for Today

"Logic sometimes has very little to do with political action."

~~~~~ Alexander Mackenzie

Thought for Today

"I can't go back to yesterday – because I was a different person then."

~~~~~ Lewis Carroll

Thought for Today

"It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it."

~~~~~ Douglas MacArthur

Thought for Today

"Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams."

~~~~~ W. Somerset Maugham

Thought for Today

"Boys should not play with weapons more dangerous than they understand."

~~~~~ E. T. A. Hoffmann

Thought for Today

"If one were to bring ten of the wisest men in the world together and ask them what was the most stupid thing in existence, they would not be able to discover anything so stupid as astrology."

~~~~~ David Hilbert

Thought for Today

"A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state."

~~~~~ Isabel Paterson

Thought for Today

"He that hath knowledge spareth his words."

~~~~~ Francis Bacon

Thought for Today

"I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate."

~~~~~ George Burns

Thought for Today

"Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or to keep one."

~~~~~ Robert E. Lee

Thought for Today

"When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner."

~~~~~ Charles de Secondat

Thought for Today

"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."

~~~~~ Robert M. Hutchins

Thought for Today

"It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the grain of sand in your shoe."

~~~~~ Robert W. Service

Thought for Today

"No shortcomings of other people cause us to be more intolerant than those which are caricatures of our own."

~~~~~ Franz Grillparzer

Thought for Today

"Homeopathy – an invention of the Father of Lies! I have tried it and found it wanting. I would swallow their whole doles' medicine chest for sixpence, and be sure of finding myself neither better nor worse for it."

~~~~~ Jane Welsh Carlyle

Thought for Today

"Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave."

~~~~~ George Gurdjieff

Thought for Today

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."

~~~~~ Edmund Burke

Thought for Today

"Idleness is to the human mind like rust to iron."

~~~~~ Ezra Cornell

Thought for Today

"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses."

~~~~~ George Washington Carver

Thought for Today

"Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse."

~~~~~ Arthur Baer

Thought for Today

"Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it."

~~~~~ Baltasar Gracian

Thought for Today

"A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run."

~~~~~ Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé)

Thought for Today

"From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned."

~~~~~ Charles Sumner

Thought for Today

"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure – which is: Try to please everybody."

~~~~~ Herbert Bayard Swope

Thought for Today

"I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times."

~~~~~ Everett Dirksen

Thought for Today

"The sharp employ the sharp."

~~~~~ Douglas William Jerrold

Somebody tell Obama.

Thought for Today

"If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible."

~~~~~ William Lyon Phelps

Thought for Today

"Surely it is much more generous to forgive and remember, than to forgive and forget."

~~~~~ Maria Edgeworth