Something To Think About Archive

Tennis great John McEnroe believes that “…one of the hallmarks of a champion — any champion — is the ability to absorb losses and regain confidence immediately.”

Benjamin Franklin once noted that “All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.”

It’s been said that running into debt isn’t so rough, it’s running into your creditors, that’s the problem.

It’s only math: The National Debt is $40 trillion. A trillion is a thousand billion which is a thousand million. So, if you taxed a thousand billionaires $1 billion or a million millionaires $1 million you would reduce the deficit by 2.5%. And then, at present spending rates, you would have to do that every 4 months just to keep up with the ever-expanding national debt. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

Artist and author Charles Mackesy asks: ‘Imagine how we would be if we were less afraid.”

The latest price tag for California’s high-speed rail line that was supposed to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles is now $126 billion nearly four times its original estimated cost of $33 billion. Approved by voters 18 years ago with a 2020 completion target, the project has been bogged down by legal battles, cost overruns and politics. Crews have yet to lay a single track, even though they’ve already spent $15 billion and the project isn’t expected to be fully operational until 2040. By then we’ll all be flying in personal electric flying machines.

Writer Richard Yates advises us to “Never say anything that doesn’t improve on silence.”

Remember that “There is nothing better than the encouragement of a good friend.”

Peruvian-American writer Carlos Castaneda believed that “We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”

According to Teddy Roosevelt: “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done. And self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”

W.A. Nance wrote: “No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.”

We admit that we have an issue with the proliferation and endless marketing of online sports betting as something that may not end well.  Given the lack of control social media has over its users how can we be sure who is betting, how old they are and whether or not they have a gambling problem? And now, with a proposed crypto bill in the Senate, there’s the possibility that so-called “prediction-market operators” like Kalshi will be allowed to treat sports betting like it was commodities trading poses even greater risks with none of the guardrails of legal gaming and it will be especially damaging to the recognized tribes whose profits go to support the welfare of their members as well as their communities at large.

We’ve recently read that one of Eisenhower’s early biographers was “… struck by how Eisenhower never saw power as belonging to him. Instead, he treated it as something he was responsible for – but not entitled to.”

Remember that “No one is a failure who keeps trying.”

It’s been said that “Half a fact is a whole falsehood.”

James L. Phillips believed that “You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”

It’s been said that “In politics, friends may come and go but enemies accumulate.”

Environmentalist Bjorn Lomberg notes that despite the media claims of environmental destruction from “climate change” causing wildfires, both the U.S. and Canada are below their ten and five year averages respectively for acreage burned year to date. Wildfires are terrifying and massively destructive; but the fact remains that the recent spate of fires both here and throughout the west are either arson or lighting caused often in overgrown forests.  As to people setting fires, we don’t understand that or pretend to know what the answer is. But nature will be helped by the feds recent approval of more harvesting and thinning to reduce fuels in, and improve the health of, our national forests.

According to Samuel Johnson, “Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.”