Mark Speaks

Mark Cuban is a billionaire, and as such, I'm sworn to shit on him.

That said, at least he makes an effort not to be the kind of parasitic power freak that way too many billionaires seem to excel at.

And he knows Trump for the worthless slug that he is:

"As bad as the lack of ethics, lack of character, and lack of honesty, is the fact that he makes no effort to learn anything. He's one of the few human beings on the planet who gets dumber right in front of our faces every day."

From John Fugelsang

(with a tiny bit of editing because I'm egotistical, and I need to "make things a little better")

Here’s the dirty little secret we came to understand in 2025, and it’s not as depressing as it seems:

Losing faith in institutions isn’t nihilism.

It's discernment. It's an informed response by an adult with a living thinking brain to watching dudebro arsonists assume control of the fire department.

A Quote

If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely.

                                                            --Carl Jung

Paraphrasing A Quote

The world is my country,

every human is my kin,

and doing good is my religion.

--Thomas Paine

A Quote

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means, "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge".

--Isaac Asimov

A Quote

A beggar's mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king's mistake, however, harms everyone but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number who obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity.

--R Scott Bakker, from The Judging Eye

A Quote

(paraphrasing)

"You seem not to understand -

if I'm starving, you're in danger."

--James Baldwin

A Quote

It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.

--GK Chesterton

Quote

Truth can walk naked.

But a lie needs to be dressed.

Quote

I am far less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than I am in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

--Stephen Jay Gould

A Quote

Don't Let them fuckers get ya down.

A Quote

American fascists claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

                                            --VP Henry Wallace, 1944

A Quote

Cesar Chavez

It was never about grapes or lettuce.

It was always about people.

--Cesar Chavez

Today's Quote

I still love America. I just don't know

how to get there anymore.

--John Prine

A Quote

"If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cuz he feels awful poor inside hisself. And if he's poor inside hisself, ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich."

Casy in The Grapes Of Wrath

--John Steinbeck

A Parable

St Thomas of Waits

My kids noticed I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. 

I told them this story:

In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me ... I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you ... you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest."

So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.

--Tom Waits

A Quote

I am a warrior so my son can be a merchant, and his son can be a poet.

--John Quincy Adams

A Quote

"When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history."

--John Brennan, former CIA Director, to Donald Trump

A Picture & A Quote

The appreciation of the natural scene should not be limited only to the grandeurs. The intimate details and qualities of our immediate environment can be revealed and appreciated. To protect these qualities will require a new planning approach of the highest order of sensitivity and effectiveness. We are prone to think of natural beauty - parks, reserves, ‘dedicated areas,’ etc - in terms of locations on maps, restricted by borders and boundaries and viewed ‘vertically.’ This pseudo-aerial view can be misleading; our vision is usually projected horizontally and the vistas of the world are as important as the actual contact with rock and soil and growing things. Hence, the prospects, the glades, the lines of the hills, and the vast expanses of shore and ocean, these too must be preserved.

“We must take ALL resources under consideration; all resources, because they relate fatefully to our life on earth, reflect certain grandeurs, and deserve not only our attention, but our reverence.     --Ansel Adams

Quote

Man is quite insane.

He doesn't know how to create a maggot,

but he creates gods by the dozen.

--Michel de Montaign