People From New York State

"The man who saw his fellow US citizens burned alive, torn apart by a mob, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah, and responded by writing “Screw Them,” is now claiming to be the messenger of truth to the citizens of the US."

"I seem to vaguely remember a time when America had confidence. And guts. And soldiers fighting a war didn’t need to be given “permission” to defend themselves from enemies trying to kill them."

"I’d just like to say “thank you” to President Bush and to the men and women of the US military, who—by the New York Times’ own admission—took out a terror-sponsoring regime in Iraq that could have constructed a nuclear weapon within months, as soon as sanctions were lifted enough for them to obtain sufficient fissile material."

"Inevitably, whenever Israel takes action to protect themselves against openly genocidal Arab terror gangs, the accusations start bubbling up from antisemitic sewers that Israel is using diabolical weapons never seen before by mankind, evil chemicals that cause bizarre mutations and/or mysterious wounds."

"In a lifetime filled with despicable statements and support for history’s worst regimes, MIT professor Noam Chomsky has finally hit absolute bottom as he visits the leader of the Hizballah terror gang, calls the United States a “leading terrorist state,” and supports Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons—to deter “Israeli aggression.”"

"Allahpundit says Stephen Colbert bombed. (Angry lefties think he was brilliant, of course.)"

"On the subject of the left’s latest cause du jour, the “white phosphorus” fairy tale, Michael Moynihan asks a question to which LGF readers probably already know the answer: How Credible is Jeff Englehart?"

"Yesterday the Soros-funded far left group Media Matters made a big issue of Pat Robertson’s idiotic statement that the US should assassinate Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Today Robertson’s comment is all over mainstream media. Are we supposed to think it’s news that Robertson has a few screws loose?"

"Zuniga Hides the Evidence … Like the craven coward he is, Markos Zuniga, rising young star of the Democrats, has now removed the page at Daily Kos where he wrote “Screw them” about the four Americans torn apart and hung from a bridge in Fallujah."

"President Bush did nothing of the sort; he declared an end to major hostilities."

"Hamas is an openly genocidal, disgustingly bloodthirsty, racist Islamic death cult that brainwashes Palestinian children to be mindless Jew-killing jihadi suicide missiles. Is there something else we need to know about them? Oh yeah, they also run some hospitals."

"We got email today from an LGF reader who was browsing the Lexis research system and discovered that anti-American, anti-capitalist icon Noam Chomsky has embarrassingly capitalist tastes; among other expensive property he owns a 36,155 square foot home near Cambridge, a 13,503 square foot vacation home, and four boats. And we won’t even mention the cars. Teaching kids to hate their own country seems to pay quite well."

"When a scientist writes about God, his colleagues assume he is either over the hill or going bonkers. In my case it should be understood from the start that I am an agnostic in religious matters. My views on this question are close to those of Darwin, who wrote, "My theology is a simple muddle. I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I see no evidence of beneficent design in the details.""

"At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

"We can assume that in a relatively short time — perhaps within 100 million years — the one celled organism evolved into a colony of cells. With the further passage of time, groups of cells within those colonies assumed specialized functions of food-gathering, digestion, the structural features of an outer skin, and so on; thus began the stage of evolution leading to the complex, many-celled creatures which dominate life today. The fossil record contains no trace of these preliminary stages in the development of many-celled organisms. The first clues to the existence of relatively advanced forms of life consist of a few barely discernible tracks, presumably made in the primeval slime by soft, wriggling wormlike animals. These are found in rocks about one billion years old. These meager remains are the earliest traces of many-celled animal life on the planet."

"[On 2006 Israel-Lebanese war] "..the net result is you have an Israeli government in disarray and a United States administration so identified with Israeli failure right now that it hurts the United States around the world.""

"All his gold speculations, his stock speculations—I speak of those which were purely speculative as brokers use the term—generally resulted in losses.… He did not make money … out of those crises of 1869, 1873 and the Erie manipulations of 1868, which have been most strongly condemned."

"One of the most sinister figures that ever flitted, bat-like, across the vision of the American people"

"I do not believe that since man was in the habit of living on this planet anyone has ever lived possessed of the impudence of Jay Gould."

"Gould, with his seventy millions, was one of the colossal failures of our time. He was a purely selfish man. His greed consumed his charity. He was like death and hell - gathering in all, giving back nothing. To build up an immense fortune for one's self by fraud is a disgrace to the age, a mockery to virtue, a menace to public welfare. The love of money was the root of all evil in him. The motive that softens the footsteps of the burglar, that nerves the arm of the highwayman, was the same that prompted Gould to break his neighbor up to build himself up."

"During the war of the rebellion Gould's firm did a large business in railway securities, and also made a great deal of money speculating in gold. Gould had private sources of information in the field, and he was able to turn almost every success or defeat of the Union army to profitable account."

"He was never a stock gambler. He had no more to do with Black Friday than you had."

"I have always found, even to the most trivial detail, that Mr. Gould lived up to the whole nature of his obligations. Of course he was always careful and reticent about what he promised, but that promise was invariably fulfilled."

"I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."

"I have the disadvantage of not being sociable. Wall Street men are fond of company and sport. A man makes one hundred thousand dollars there and immediately buys a yacht, begins to race fast horses, and becomes a sport generally. My tastes lie in a different direction. When business hours are over I go home and spend the remainder of the day with my wife, my children, and books of my library. Every man has natural inclinations of his own. Mine are domestic. They are not calculated to make me particularly popular in Wall Street, and I cannot help that."

"I never notice what is said about me. I am credited with things I have never done, and abused for them. It would be idle to attempt to contradict newspaper talk and street rumors."

"No man can control Wall Street. Wall Street is like the ocean. No man can govern it. It is too vast. Wall Street is full of eddies and currents. The thing to do is to watch them, to exercise a little common sense, and … to come out on top."

"Corporations are going, we are told, to destroy the country. But what would this country be but for corporations? Who have developed it? Corporations. Who transact the most marvelous business the world has ever seen? Corporations."

"My idea is, that if capital and labor are left alone they will mutually regulate each other. People who think they can regulate all mankind and get wrong ideas which they believe to be panaceas for every ill cause much trouble to both employers and employees by their interference."

"I judge property myself by its net earning power; that is the only rule I have been able to get.… This whole island Manhattan] was once bought for a few strings of beads. But now you will find this property valued by its earning power, by its rent power, and that is the way to value a railroad or telegraph."

"It was the custom when men received nominations to come to me for contributions, and I made them and considered them good paying investments for the company. In a Republican district I was a strong Republican; in a Democratic district I was Democratic, and in doubtful districts I was doubtful. In politics I was an Erie Railroad man all the time."

"I sometimes think I should like to give up business entirely. The care and worriment attending large business interests are very great, but besides that fact the manner in which motives are impugned and characters assailed is most unpleasant"

"The ultimate result will be to annihilate the Indians & open up the Big Horn & Black Hills to development & settlement & in this way greatly benefit us."

"One of the most important factors in his execution of a deal was concealing from others even the intimation of what he was going to do. In these accomplishments he never professed a regard for truthfulness. He was quite indifferent to the moral question of misleading people."

"Each generation repeats its leaders. Each sees men endowed with superior inventiveness, energy, and genius for business, inspired by love of power and possession, launch selfish schemes-Carnegies, Rockefellers, Goulds…Each generation has had its Henry George, its Bellamy, its Bryan, intent on persuading mankind that he had found the way, could lead men to the good life. In each generation employer and employee have faced the decision-war or cooperation."

"My name has been associated with that of Mr. Jay Gould and others in connection with the speculation, and gross injustice has been done me thereby.… You have my authority for stating that I consider Mr. Jay Gould a damned villain."

"…the microwave is an individualistic serial machine – it can only do one at a time so if you've got four people eating four different entrees, each has to be individually heated. So our microwave dinner, which was supposed to save us so much time, took about an hour to get to the table."

"We forget how much time it can take simply to avoid cooking: all that time spent driving to restaurants or waiting for our orders, none of which gets counted as 'food preparation'. And much of the half-hour saved by not cooking is spent watching screens."

"It's [a kitchen/dining table] where we teach our children the manners they need to get along in society. We teach them how to share. To take turns. To argue without fighting and insulting other people. They learn the art of adult conversation. The family meal is the nursery of democracy."

"Of course it’s also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness."

"The industrial animal factory offers a nightmarish glimpse of what capitalism is capable of in the absence of any moral or regulatory constraint whatsoever."

"The industrialization — and brutalization — of animals in America is a relatively new, evitable, and local phenomenon: No other country raises and slaughters its food animals quite as intensively or as brutally as we do. No other people in history has lived at quite so great a remove from the animals they eat. Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do."

"Nutrition science is where surgery was in about 1650, you know, really interesting and promising, but would you want to have them operate on you yet? I don’t think so."

"Ten years after the first Breaking Convention, here we all are in a psychedelic movement that has changed beyond recognition. Suddenly, psychedelics are considered viable mental health treatments and they're popular. Michael Pollan's book How to Change your Mind has brought psychedelics into the homes of people who might otherwise have thought these substances were exclusively harmful. These are wonderful advances, but with this increasing popularity has arrived the potential for big business interest and the promise of psychedelic-fueled status, fame, and fortune-if you're willing to do what it takes to get it."

"a growing number of popular books and public lectures tout the benefits of psychedelic use. Michael Pollan, in How to Change Your Mind, persuasively makes the case that psychedelics, such as LSD and psilocybin, can be personally transformative? A growing amount of scientific data backs him up."

"There is a ton of literature now—including TED Talks and Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind—about psilocybin and MDMA being highly effective medications for PTSD."

"I was starting to appreciate that the conventional journalistic narrative that usually organizes a story like this—evil technology foisted by greedy corporation—leaves out an important element, which is us and our desire for control and uniformity."

"Monoculture is the single most powerful simplification of modern agriculture, the key move in reconfiguring nature as a machine, yet nothing else in agriculture is so poorly fitted to the way nature seems to work. Very simply, a vast field of identical plants will always be exquisitely vulnerable to insects, weeds, and disease—to all the vicissitudes of nature. Monoculture is at the root of virtually every problem that bedevils the modern farmer, and from which virtually every agricultural product is designed to deliver him."

"At a certain point, a point already long past, the farmer’s attempt at the perfect control of nature evolved into the control of the farmer by the corporations that promoted that dream in the first place. It is only because that dream is so elusive that the control of farmers by its merchants became so inescapable."

"What, then, was the knowledge that God wanted to keep from Adam and Eve in the Garden? Theologians will debate this question without end, but it seems to me the most important answer is hidden in plain sight. The content of the knowledge that Adam and Eve could gain by tasting of the fruit does not matter nearly as much as its form—that is, the very fact that there was spiritual knowledge of any kind to be had from a tree: from nature. The new faith sought to break the human bond with magic nature, to disenchant the world of plants and animals by directing our attention to a single God in the sky. Yet Jehovah couldn’t very well pretend the tree of knowledge didn’t exist, not when generations of plant-worshiping pagans knew better. So the pagan tree is allowed to grow even in Eden, though ringed around now with a strong taboo. Yes, there is spiritual knowledge in nature, the new God is acknowledging, and its temptations are fierce, but I am fiercer still. Yield to it, and you will be punished. So unfolds the drug war’s first battle."