Linux Politics

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish.  Don't overdo it.
                -- Lao Tsu

Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.
                -- John Updike, "Couples"

Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are different lies.

Government spending?  I don't know what it's all about.  I don't know
any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he
doesn't know much.
                -- Will Rogers

        Graduating seniors, parents and friends...
        Let me begin by reassuring you that my remarks today will stand up
to the most stringent requirements of the new appropriateness.
        The intra-college sensitivity advisory committee has vetted the
text of even trace amounts of subconscious racism, sexism and classism.
        Moreover, a faculty panel of deconstructionists have reconfigured
the rhetorical components within a post-structuralist framework, so as to
expunge any offensive elements of western rationalism and linear logic.
        Finally, all references flowing from a white, male, eurocentric
perspective have been eliminated, as have any other ruminations deemed
denigrating to the political consensus of the moment.

        Thank you and good luck.
                -- Doonesbury, the University Chancellor's graduation speech.

Great Moments in History: #3

August 27, 1949:
        A Hall of Fame opened to honor outstanding members of the
        Women's Air Corp.  It was a WAC's Museum.

        Grover Cleveland, though constantly at loggerheads with the
Senate, got on better with the House of Representatives.  A popular
story circulating during his presidency concerned the night he was
roused by his wife crying, "Wake up!  I think there are burglars in the
house."
        "No, no, my dear," said the president sleepily, "in the Senate maybe,
but not in the House."

Grub first, then ethics.
                -- Bertolt Brecht

Hark ye, Clinker, you are a most notorious offender.  You stand convicted of
sickness, hunger, wretchedness, and want.
                -- Tobias Smollet

Has the great art and mystery of politics no apparent utility? Does it
appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene and low down,
and its salient virtuosi a gang of umitigated scoundrels?  Then let us
not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickel the midriff, its
incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.
                -- H.L. Mencken, "A Carnival of Buncombe"