Power Of Attorney Form Nc For Minor Child: Fill & Download for Free

My dad was born in 1924. I was born in 1974. So I guess I qualify.Now, my mom was born in 1942, so Daddy robbed the cradle there. She wore the pants in the family and manipulated us to meet her needs in her way. The best way to explain it is to say my dad and I weren’t allowed much time alone together. But we made up for it after my mom died. He was my favorite person ever when I lost him.So, how was it to have an old Daddy-O?Fascinating - Part 1. James Joseph McCrea was 5 when the Great Depression hit. He was a Ginger Irish American kid who helped his dad run cons to make ends meet. They made bank at the horse races and baseball games, reselling tickets. My dad was one of four kids. He had a brother who died from an ear infection because the family couldn’t afford penicillin. He was drafted for WWII. (His other brother created a heart murmur to get out of the draft. Pres Bone Spurs actually reminds me of my uncle. Black sheep.) Anyway, my dad ran telephone lines throughout Europe during the war. He clearly remembered the day he and his company were advised to move out of the area as “something big was coming soon”. The conversation took place on June 4, 1944, and they were just about to step foot on Juno Beach. My presence on this planet is most likely due to that conversation. My dad also liked to tell the story of the day he and some other company members were eating lunch on the back of their truck, watching a firefight taking place up above them. Until one of the German planes seemed to notice them and came gunning. My dad liked to say it was the only time he shit his pants until old age got the best of him.Fascinating - Part 2. After the war, my dad worked on the ships in San Francisco Bay for a while. Then he got into Credit and Collections. He had some of the most hilarious stories about repossessing items. He repossessed an airplane once, riding in the cockpit and waving at the irate customer as they taxied down the runway. He was sent to Hawaii once to repossess a forklift. This was about a year after I was born. Dad’s boss said he’d go to Hawaii for free if he got either the money or the forklift back. My dad asked if he could take my mom, and his boss said sure - you get the money or the forklift and you both go all expenses paid. You come back with nothing and you have to pay for your wife’s share. My mom flipped out! They couldn’t afford this, this was insane, blah blah blah. But my dad was sure, so they got on the plane to fly out. After my dad sat in the seat, he took out the client file and started reading. Before the plane even took off, he closed the file and said he knew what to do. My parents enjoyed a week-long second honeymoon in Hawaii on the company dime.Embarrassing. Now we get to my dad and I and how the age difference made life…”interesting”. My dad retired from work at age 62 (he could do that in those days - Social Security came earlier in the 80’s) and we moved from San Jose, CA, to Grants Pass, OR. In 1985, my dad was asked if he’d like to join the local chapter of the KKK in Grants Pass. I believe there was a curfew still in effect. The town was 50% hippie leftovers, 50% redneck loggers, and 100% white. It was a culture shock to say the least, and Silicon Valley was still barely in its infancy then. So I went from a private, Episcopalian elementary school with a uniform to a public junior high with no uniform. Where I was used to 44 kids per grade maximum, I now had at least 200 fellow kids in my grade. I was never very athletic, but from my dad’s encouragement, I played volleyball and basketball throughout junior high. And my retired dad would come to every single one of my games. Now my friends thought he was cool - having a dad who was their grandfather’s age seemed awesome. But OMG (before OMG was a thing), he embarrassed the hell out of me. First, he drove the most uncool car ever - it was only two years younger than I was, it was army green, it was a 70’s style station wagon (thank god there were no panels!), and there was sawdust everywhere because he would fill up the back weekly for my mom’s gardening plans. Then, he’d flirt with the moms at the games! He was a charmer, and he never meant anything by it, and I think the moms were flattered, but to my hormone-riddled preteen self, he couldn’t have been more embarrassing. In 8th grade, I had this big slumber party and all the popular girls came. So did four boys from our class to “crash” the party. It was fun. My dad drove the boys home and us girls finished the party. On Monday, all four of those boys ran up to me first thing and told me how cool my dad was. Apparently, he’d regaled them with stories of buying condoms back when he was young, including some story of not realizing once that the condoms he was purchasing were for a date with the daughter of the pharmacist he was purchasing them from. I was mortified. Also, my mom got a new 8 to 5, M-F job when we moved to Oregon. That meant my dad was home (retired remember) when I’d get home from school, so he had to deal with all those emotional outbursts first as I went through puberty. He was also lucky enough to be the only person present when I got my first period. So I’m sure I returned the favor of embarrassing him as much as he did me.Frustrating. My dad was chill. He was the nurturer in the family. He did all the grocery shopping, 95% of the cooking, and 99% of the home repairs. He was very laid back, too. Nothing much got to him. But you still had to be careful, because what he was actually doing was suppressing everything until some minor infraction would blow his lid, and you definitely didn’t want to be around for that. I remember once I was excited about something or other - no big deal, but little girl + excitement = lots of energy. My dad blew - he screamed at me to STFU right now, sit still in a chair, and just be quiet! Wow. So unlike my dad. But we gave him his quiet, we stayed out of his way for a few hours and he was fine again. Another example: when my mom caught me giggling over the cartoons in his Playboy magazine, she told him it was time for him to cancel his subscription. His retaliation was to explain to me that Santa didn’t exist - less than a month before Christmas when I was only 5. In hindsight, that’s hilarious. At the time, my mom was livid. Now let’s talk about high school. I was a know-it-all teenager that didn’t need no stinkin’ rules and lived on my terms. (Again - hindsight - I can’t believe I actually thought that way.) My parents raised me with what were already being seen as old-fashioned values in the 80’s. I respected my elders, I never ever ever spoke back to them, and I followed their rules. But I was such an angel (cough cough) that there really weren’t that many hard and fast rules to follow. So I just did my own thing. Until my dad had one of his blowups. I told him I was going somewhere and he just flipped out. “You don’t tell ME where you’re going, you ask permission! You seem to think you know everything and have the run of this house but you don’t. If you don’t start showing more respect, you’ll be out on the streets!” WTF?!?! Where had THAT come from? Even my mom couldn’t calm him down - she made it out like I’d be living in a van down by the river by midnight. (Drama queen.) But we got past it and life went back to normal soon after, though I made extra sure to ask/not tell and use my pleases and thank yous for quite a while. See - as a teen, I thought I knew everything. But as a certified senior citizen, my dad KNEW he knew everything. Made for a few shakeups.Heartbreaking. Now for the hard part. My dad being 18 years older than my mom, it was always assumed that he’d go first. But life had other plans. Mom was diagnosed with cancer in September and was gone in March, right after I turned 26. My dad picked himself up and went on. See, he wasn’t just the nurturer, he needed to be needed. Within months of my mom’s death, my dad had a new girlfriend he’d found in the Penny Saver ads. She was…something. But my dad had someone he seemed happy with, so I never said anything bad about her to him. He and I bought a townhouse together. He spent most nights at her house, but we had our times together. I really got to know him and appreciate him. He cooked breakfast for me when he was home. He was the perfect roommate and the greatest dad ever. A few years later, I moved to Boston for a new job. A year later, my dad had a fight with his gf and decided to come live with me indefinitely. Just as he was about to move back to Portland, his gf passed away in her sleep. I think that stole his will to live. He knew I’d planned to move to NC the following year with work, and he expressed a desire to help me get settled there before he “moved on”. I knew what he meant, and I accepted that. He was 83 and knew what was best for him. But his lack of will had his health decline pretty rapidly. The next thing I knew, I was given medical power of attorney and all that entailed. He caught pneumonia and was put on a ventilator, which I knew he didn’t want. But the doctor made it clear that if he was taken off the ventilator, he’d die. I looked into his eyes and made the most difficult decision in my life. I was with him when he took his last breath less than 24 hours later. I was 34, he was 84.My dad was my dad. From the outside, he may have looked like my granddad, but no - he was my Daddy. I loved him for being my dad, and I admired and respected who he was as a person. Sure, our age difference made life interesting a few times, but I’m thankful for being raised as I was with those old-fashioned values. I’m proud of my level of empathy and I credit a lot of that to him. My dad was a great man who lived an apparently boring life, but he sure had some great stories to share and he knew how to be the life of the party.

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop (620-560 BC)"Just because you (do not take an interest in politics)* doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." - Pericles (495-429 BC) (*)original Greek definition of a village idiot, according to JFK"The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread in the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of emperors." - Plutarch"A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise." - Niccolo Machiavelli"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." - Cardinal Richelieu 1641"The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts." - Edmund Burke (1729-97)"...Neither body to jail nor soul to damn." - Lord Edward Thurlow (1731-1806) describing a new British invention, the corporation. One might add, nowadays, "nor conscience to pique, nor death to ponder.""Devil take the hindmost." - Colonial Record of Georgia (1742, when the majority of its population were slaves)"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." - Thomas Jefferson - "There is...an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents.... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy.""The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." - Patrick Henry"The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country." - John Adams"Ignorant, restless desperadoes, without conscience or principles, have led a deluded multitude to follow their standard, under pretense of grievances which have no existence but in their own imaginations." - Abigail Adams"[America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benign' sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit." - John Quincy Adams, US House, 7/4/1821"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frederic Bastiat"Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful." - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher regard those who think alike than those who think differently.""Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid ..., it is true that most stupid people are conservative." - John Stewart Mill (1806-1873) "I never meant to say that the conservatives are ... stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.""There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." and "There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity." and "Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.""The nose of a mob is its [dimmed] imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led." - Edgar Allen Poe"You'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." - P. T. Barnum (1810-91)"It is the weakness and danger of republics that the vices as well as virtues of the people are represented in their legislation." - Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-85)"TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY.(title of a section in his book, Democracy in America, Volume I, Chapter XV, 1835) ... In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them." - Alexis de Tocqueville - "The President ... may err ... Congress may decide amiss ... But if the Supreme Court is ever composed of imprudent or bad men, the Union may be plunged into anarchy or civil war." Bk 1, Ch 8."(Jefferson's) ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. ... Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition." Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens, Savannah, March 21, 1861."Fear is the parent of cruelty." - James Anthony Froude (1818-94)"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." - attributed to A.Lincoln, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864."The great mistake of my life was taking a military education." - Robert E Lee"Let them eat grass." - Andrew Myrick, a white trader to the starving Sioux, at a meeting of US Bureau of Indian Affairs agents, Indians and traders, in August 1862. Afterward Myrick was found dead with grass in his mouth."Any nation which by means of protective duties and restrictions on navigation has raised her manufacturing power and her navigation to such a degree of development that no other nation can sustain free competition with her, can do nothing wiser than to throw away these ladders of her greatness, to preach to other nations the benefits of free trade, and to declare in penitent tones that she has hitherto wandered in the paths of error, and has now for the first time succeeded in discovering the truth." - Friedrich List (1789-1846) US Consul to Germany, describing the source of Britain's wealth in his book, The National System of Political Economy, 1841."There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey." - John Ruskin (1819-1900)"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." - Anatole France (1844-1924)"I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half." - attributed to Jay Gould, US railroad developer and speculator, circa 1886."The Commission is, or can be made, of great use to the railroads. It satisfies the popular clamor for a government supervision of the railroads, while at the same time that supervision is almost entirely nominal." - Richard Olney, railroad attorney and US Attorney General, circa 1889, re the first US regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission."No sport is wholesome in which ungenerous or mean acts which easily escape detection contribute to victory." - Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard (1869-1909) opposing football."To disagree with three-fourths of the public is one of the first requisites of sanity." - Oscar Wilde"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899"There are three ways in which we may rule, by force, by fraud, or by law. We have ruled by force, we can rule by fraud, but we want to rule by law." - Charles Aycock, white-supremacist soon to be Gov. of NC, to his supporters, 1900, later to pass a state constitutional amendment that would, in effect, disenfranchise most black voters."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"I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land." Mark Twain, New York Herald, Oct. 15, 1900."There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them." - William Jennings Bryan, 1896"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them." - Paul Valery (1871-1945)"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." - Theodore Roosevelt, 1912 Platform of Progressive Party."Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the capitalist and you will sweep war from the earth." - Henry Ford"If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people He gives it to." - Dorothy Parker"Things have come to a hell of a pass, when a man can't whip his own jackass." (i.e. Democratic Party) - Henry Watterson (1840-1921), editor Louisville Courier-Journal, US Congressman (KY-D)."We will get everything out of her that you can squeeze out of a lemon and a bit more.... I will squeeze her until you can hear the pips squeak. My only doubt is not whether we can squeeze hard enough, but whether there is enough juice." - Sir Eric Geddes (1875-1937), British Conservative politician, speech on German war reparations, 12/10/1918"Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?" 1919 - Woodrow Wilson - "If you want to make enemies, try to change something.""I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using poisonous gas against uncivilized tribes." - Winston Churchill, in a letter about the Iraqi and Kurdish rebellion against British occupation, 1920"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." - attributed to Sinclair Lewis"The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization." - Sigmund Freud"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity." - George Bernard Shaw"There is always room at the top - after the investigation." - Oliver Herford (1863-1935) British born American writer"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that." - Thomas Edison, in conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, 1931"We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. But we can't have both." - Justice Louis Brandeis"...the very rich... are different from you and me." - F. Scott Fitzgerald"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes." - Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler, simultaneously highest ranking and most decorated U.S. Marine, two Congressional Medals of Honor, for capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914, and for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917, Distinguished Service Medal, 1919. Republican candidate for Senate, 1932. "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." "I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested." in 'Common Sense', Nov., 1935."It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)"Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference." - Franklin D Roosevelt, 1936"The Democrats and the Republicans are equally corrupt where money is concerned. It's only in the amount (therefore extent) where the Republicans excel." - Will Rogers"The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury." - John Maynard Keynes, 1937"The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people.... To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober." - Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946), U.S. essayist"All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." - Charles Beard (1874-1948), American historian."The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice." - Mahatma Gandhi - "I think it would be a good idea." when asked by a reporter for his opinion of Western civilization."The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking." - A.A. Milne (1882-1956)"Puritanism -- The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." and "I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office." - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) "Most people want security in this world, not liberty." and "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed ...by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." and "Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.""Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt - "You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.""Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." - Joseph Stalin, and the counting starts with who's most enabled to vote."The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)During troubled conditions experienced by large numbers of people "explosive and dangerous forces hidden in the archetype come into action, frequently with unpredictable consequences. There is no lunacy people under the domination of an archetype will not fall prey to." - Carl Jung"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism, because it is a merger of State and corporate power." - attributed to Mussolini, 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana."The victor will never be asked if he told the truth." - Adolf Hitler - "The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it." and "The basic feature of our economic theory is that we have no theory at all.""Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many... The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. They hate not wickedness but weakness. When it is in their power to do so, the weak destroy (what they're told is) weakness wherever they see it." - Eric Hoffer - "It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil... attracts the weak.""Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary." - Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), US theologian, 1944"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells." - John T. Flynn (1882-1964, American writer), 1944"The people don't want war, but" they "can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." - Hermann Goering during the Nuremberg Trials"The nature of the breakdowns of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole." - Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) in A Study of History, V.4, part B, p.6, 1948. - "Civilizations in decline are consistently characterised by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.""Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services." - Article 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948"An honest public servant can't become rich in politics." - H. Truman, 1954"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing." - Dwight D. Eisenhower - "All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time...I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing." 1953 press conference, about being presented with plans to wage preventive war to disarm Stalin's Soviet Union."If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat." - Jean-Paul Sartre"Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens - and then everybody disagrees." - Boris Marshalov (1902-67) Russian observer, after visiting the House of Representatives in 1947."Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate." - Victor Lebow, retail analyst, a few years after WWII"Our willingness to part with something before it is completely worn out is a phenomenon noticeable in no other society in history... It is soundly based on our economy of abundance. It must be further nurtured even though it runs contrary to one of the oldest inbred laws of humanity - the law of thrift." J. Gordon Lippincott, industrial designer. 1947"Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium." - Cyril Connolly, British critic, 1951The American economy's "ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods." (not better health care, education, housing, transportation, or recreation or less poverty and hunger, but providing more stuff to consumers.) - Arthur F. Burns, Chairman of Pres. Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers, 1953"It is our job to make women unhappy with what they have." - B. Earl Puckett, Allied Stores Corp. 1953"Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who rarely and under the lurid glare of obloquy upset our moral complaisance, or shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those, the mass of us, who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers." - Learned Hand (1872-1961), noted federal judge (1909-1951)."More and more I come to value charity and love of one's fellow being above everything else. All our lauded technological progress - our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)"But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness--each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked--each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity." - Herbert Butterfield (1900-79) in Christianity, Diplomacy and War, p. 43 (1953)."You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" - Joseph Welch to Joseph McCarthy."... a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland." and "In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." - Adlai E Stevenson"We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular." - Edward R. Murrow"For the corporation executives, the military metaphysic often coincides with their interest in a stable and planned flow of profit; it enables them to have their risk underwritten by public money; it enables them reasonably to expect that they can exploit for private profit now and later, the risky research developments paid for by public money. It is, in brief, a mask of the subsidized capitalism from which they extract profit and upon which their power is based." - C. Wright Mills, Causes of World War 3, 1960."We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security." and "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961"The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious. From one day to another, another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one's own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard - every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve." - Erich Fromm(A just society is the one in which a reasonable person would choose to live, without knowing, in advance, with what advantages he'd be born.) - John Rawls, Harvard philosophy professor"As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash." - Harper Lee"Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality." and "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." - John F Kennedy"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." - Lyndon Johnson, 1960, to Bill Moyers."The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment." - Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), U.S. political philosopher. One-Dimensional Man, 1964"We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning." - George Steiner, 1967On campaign contributions: "Money is the mother's milk of politics." - Jesse Unruh, Calif. Speaker of the House and State Treasurer - on lobbyists: "If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women, take their money, and then vote against them you've got no business being up here.""The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this." - Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, MD (1928-1967) "I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man.""I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word." and "The time is always right to do what is right." - Martin Luther King Jr."In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." - Robert Kennedy, quoting Aeschylus to those whom he'd just told of Martin Luther King's murder, at a rally in Indianapolis, April 4, 1968."If we believe men have any personal rights at all, then they must have an absolute moral right to such a measure of good health as society can provide." - attributed to Aristotle by Robert Kennedy and others."All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Sergei Bondarchuk in 1968 film of "War and Peace"."In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club - the 'hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.' " - Spiro T. Agnew, 9/11/70, felon and Republican VP. (written for him by Wm. Safire, speechwriter for Pres. Nixon)"The less care they give them, the more money they make." - John Ehrlichman, describing Kaiser Permanente to Pres. Nixon, who replied "Fine." - White House tapes, 2/17/71. Kaiser and his family were Nixon supporters."Follow the money. Always follow the money." - Deep Throat"If they can get you asking the wrong questions,* they don't have to worry about the answers." - Thomas Pynchon *such as "How do we get gov't off 'our' backs?"An historical record suggesting the US has fallen short of its "transcendent ideals" is "an abuse of reality," i.e., we must not "confound the abuse of reality with reality itself." - Hans Morgenthau (1904-1980) (O yeah?)"In each cultural era, the medium in which information is recorded and transmitted is decisive in determining the character of that culture." - Marshall McLuhan (1911-80) - "Madison Avenue is a very powerful aggression against private consciousness. A demand that you yield your private consciousness to public manipulation.""The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that (if found to be lies, many) would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness." - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1976, p. 382."The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre." - Frank Zappa, 1977"I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - GHW Bush, in FREE INQUIRY magazine, Fall 1988."Two party system like two geraniums in outhouse window, look pretty but still big stink." - Taiwanese proverb"History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure." - Thurgood Marshall (1908-93) US lawyer and Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court (1967-91)"It is not our affluence, or our plumbing, or our clogged freeways that grip the imagination of others. Rather, it is the values upon which our system is built. These values imply our adherence not only to liberty and individual freedom, but also to international peace, law and order, and constructive social purpose. When we depart from these values, we do so at our peril." - James William Fulbright (1905-95)"In history, the man in the ruffled shirt and gold-coated waistcoat levitates above the blood he has ordered to be spilled by dirty-handed underlings." - Francis Jennings (1918-2000) American historian"I have seen the Octopus." - Danny Casolaro (1947-1991) to his family just before he died under mysterious circumstances."[T]he long-term political effects of a successful... health care bill will be even worse — much worse... It will revive the reputation of... Democrats as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class..." - William Kristol memo, "Defeating President Clinton's Healthcare Proposal" 12/93"The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." - Alex Carey, Australian social scientist, 1995"Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them (aggrieved or comfortable) to deceive themselves." - Eric Hoffer"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." - Milan Kundera"The greatest threat to democracy is the increasing concentration of major electronic media in ever fewer hands." - Rep. David Price (D-NC)"I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian." - Dick Cheney, 1998, when Hamid Karzai, working for Unocal, was negotiating with the Taliban for an oil pipeline from the Caspian through Afghanistan. Henry Kissinger also worked for Unocal. A.F.Sec. under GHW Bush, Donald Rice, was on Unocal's board of directors. Unocal has since merged with Chevron/Texaco."Here is a list of the countries that the U.S. has been at war with - and bombed - since the Second World War: China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), the Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999), and now Afghanistan." - Arundhati Roy, Manchester Guardian, 10/23/01 (Extending this to the present, one sees our warring and bombing increased AFTER the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.)The future is "up for grabs". - Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz, 1991."Liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." - DoD advisor Ken Adelman, 2/02."We need to execute people like John Walker (Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." - Ann Coulter, 1/02, applauded by NSA Condoleeza Rice, HHS Sec. Tommy Thompson, and Lynne Cheney (wife of the VP), all of whom were present."If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky - "Corporations, which previously had been considered artificial entities with no rights, were accorded all the rights of persons, and far more, since they are 'immortal persons', and 'persons' of extraordinary wealth and power. Furthermore, they were no longer bound to the specific purposes designated by State charter, but could act as they choose, with few constraints."(The Bible teaches and Christians believe) "...that government ...derives its moral authority from God. Government is the 'minister of God' with powers to 'revenge,' to 'execute wrath,' including even wrath by the sword..." - Justice Antonin Scalia, 5/02."An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head." - Eric Hoffer"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." - GW Bush, 9/13/01 - "I don't know where he is and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." - 9/13/02 - "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." - 10/02 - "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties" to Pat Robertson, 2/03."Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" - Barbara Bush, ABC's Good Morning America, March 18, 2003."The corporation is an externalizing machine (moving its operating costs and risks to external organizations and people), in the same way that a shark is a killing machine." - Robert Monks (2003) Republican candidate for Senate from Maine and corporate governance adviser in the film "The Corporation"."We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens." - Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, HAMDI et al. v. RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, et al., on writ of certiorari to the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, 6/28/04"(Reagan) has the most fraudulent reputation of any who has ever served in public office. He was certainly genial, a decent guy, a 3rd rate actor that had his career revived by the advice by his new father-in-law, Dr. Davis (a supporter the John Birch Society) 'Go where the money is!' In other words flack for 20 Mule Team Borax and GE. This confused guy even voted for FDR four times by his own admission. He learned that it was 'good business' to give up a lifetime of supposed ideals. He was a quick study, but basically a 'dope' who was lost without a script. ... He even thought that the CO2 from a tree was equivalent to a car's emissions. He was a 'stiff' built up by his handlers. His last term was a disaster, and to cap it off, during the Poindexter and McFarlane Trials, he said under oath over 400 times that he did not remember! With a history of Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Nixon I can understand easily that the 'flat-earth' luddites of the new GOP love to worship the memory of the 'Gipper' whose understanding of the problems of this country matched his inability to answer a question 'off the cuff.' Maybe that's why he ran out after every press conference yelling over his shoulder. They couldn't wait to get him away." - Richard J. Garfunkel, American Daily, Phoenix, AZ, 5/1/07"... leadership begins on Madison Avenue, on the desks and in the offices of people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying what will get them ratings." - Norman Lear"Profits, like sausages... are esteemed most by those who know least about what goes into them." - Alvin Toffler(Iraq has the third largest reserves of conventional oil in the world.) - Country Analysis Briefs (2007) US Energy Information Administration, and Gal Luft (2003) "How Much Oil Does Iraq Have?" The Brookings Institution.The invasion of Iraq caused a "seven-fold increase in jihadism." - the RAND Corporation"Alan Greenspan has proclaimed himself 'shocked' that 'the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders equity' proved to be an illusion... The Reagan-Thatcher model, which favored finance over domestic manufacturing, has collapsed. ... The mutually reinforcing rise of financialization and globalization broke the bond between American capitalism and America's interests. ...we should take a cue from Scandinavia's social capitalism, which is less manufacturing-centered than the German model. The Scandinavians have upgraded the skills and wages of their workers in the retail and service sectors -- the sectors that employ the majority of our own workforce. In consequence, fully employed impoverished workers, of which there are millions in the United States, do not exist in Scandinavia." - Harold Meyerson, "Building a Better Capitalism"], The Washington Post, March 12, 2009."If we're able to stop Obama on this (health care reform), it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." - Sen. Jim DeMint (SC-R) 7/09"Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly."- Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) summarizing the Republican health care plan, 10/6/09"It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be." - Warren Buffett"I refuse to live in a country like this, and I'm not leaving." - Michael Moore"People have the odd characteristic of objecting to the slaughter of family members and friends." - Noam Chomsky, on new rebellions in Afghanistan, 2010."I doubt there's ever been a true thing said on Fox. Maybe the weather report, maybe not." - Fran Lebowitz - "Contrary to popular opinion, the hustle is not a new dance step -- it is an old business procedure." and "In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy.""A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can't be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship." - Chalmers Johnson (1931-2010) UC professor and analyst for the CIA."I was involved deeply in a system of bribery - legalized bribery for the most part" that "still to a large part exists today." - Jack Abramoff, 2013"The poorest half of the population still owns nothing." - Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century, Part III, 2014."No one has the guts to just let them wither and die." - John Johnston, GOP candidate for Indiana's 10th District, June 2014, referring to the poor."If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition." - Bernice Johnson Reagon"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu." - Elizabeth Warren"Can't govern people if you win by dividing them." - Obama, 10/19/17."A well-regulated militia will not come into our schools and kill our children." - LTE Raleigh News & Observer, 2/26/18."The promise of America, Jefferson thought, was that 'the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of the country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone.'" - Jill LePore's These Truths, 2018."Fascism = Crony Capitalism + Murder." - Antifa slogan, 2020.

My mother told me she was dying but didn't want to die in Charlotte, she wanted to die in NYC where she'd been born and buried with her mother and sister. Oh, by then she'd had a leg amputated, several mini-strokes, was 250lbs at 5'2 and going on her 2nd year in a diabetic rehab because the state thought her and her husband couldn't maintains healthy habits at home. They couldn't. I'd been visiting nearly monthly and helping to bolster them financially when finally cousins begged me to come long term.I cleaned the house, top to bottom, took plastic tarps and nailed blackout curtains down, pine sol, bleach, late at night incense and prayers, visited the rehab and for year tried to supplement, manage and help two insane people. Finally I had to take stepfather to court to get money out of his control and to the rehab she was about to be kicked out for $9k in arrears. Pulled together family meetings to try and reason with him. No avail. Finally talking to my mother I understood her desire to leave. I got an extra job at WalMart of all places because I could have my check directly buy stock that was increasing for holidays then cashed out, had savings and an adult student come down to help pack and drive truck. My mothers part was to regularly have nurses get her up and dressed for my visits and Sunday church services. Because she was a loudmouth I told her one Sunday we'll just go but I need time to get everything set in two states. Two months in, she had a cancer scare but it turned out benign. Somehow she knew stepfather was cheating on her and told me to watch him, to not go back to NYC without her.He and I are now regularly back and forth in court as he pulled a gun on me demanding money. I stared him down and threw him out of the house. I secretly visit NYC one weekend to get things ready here, to hire a private nurse and talk to mentors to see if I'm really going to try this.I had week of Xmas in mind because court action would end by then and traveling could be by plane with her in a wheelchair and we could settle up here, have all the power of attorney and DNR done in charlotte, filed for two months and then move.Tuesday I'm unsure, money/stock is cashed out, I've worked crazy to have two big checks coming, nurse on call, lawyer on call, nee credit cards for student to travel under---my lawyer was like get out of NC you're home free but traveling stepfather could create drama, get NYC and you're both safe.I'm doubting doing it. It's a lot. A lot a lot. I go to sleep and dream of five people coming to me, realize it's my grandmother, two aunts, closest cousin and uncle. They tell me sometime ms you must break the rules to do the right thing. I wake up and realize that's my fear.Saturday night, I work double shift at WalMart and finally tell one little old lady in going, another diabetic coworker had helped me put together a supply of meds, taught me how to change adult diapers, move a large person, clean, inject insulin (a nurse at rehab I think sensed the plan or my mother said something and directly would teach me what she was doing), wash a large person, build supply bags, etc..I'm now near diarrhea nervous but I get to rehab at 10pm (truck packed, student helped tremendously, 1 cousin knew plan, 1 didn't) and as I am about to ask her if she's sure about leaving my mother hysterically begins howling not to leave her, begging, terrified, saying we'll never see each other again if I leave. I had privately considered just moving back to NYC then going back her or moving out of house and waiting madness out.I don't know if any of you have ever had a person beg you, truly beg you in terror, pain fear. But I was mind blown trying to calm her down as folk are coming in but I hadn't said a word about divergent plan she sensed it. I calmed her down told her to up and dressed for lunch/church by request like other Sundays.Sunday morning I walked in and by midnight they thought she'd gone home for weekend. Monday morning fax arrived to director of paperwork and release forms. Stepfather freaked out we made local and national news as missing. Lawyer and I negotiated health check on her and I in Pennsylvania (it became a two week road trip....we met Ashley Judd....okay she stared at me as I waved excitedly at her, wanting to talk about her Harvard and UN work...my student later pointed out AJs horrified look probably had to do with the adult diaper I was holding after park employees closed off restroom \U0001f610).State troopers met us at Super 8 and together and separately they questioned us then left, deactivating "missing persons" he'd falsely put out. We spent two weeks making our way to NYC.I was in it for at least 6more months to years I thought as we stayed with friends till apartment was ready. I realized in hotels that no one had held her, wrapped their arms around her for years, she hadn't been in a normal bed.Oh we argued and laughed and as her adult son our relationship deepened especially twice day diaper changes and baths.So I figured we'd have a good year...she died in my arms one morning getting ready for the doctors. Her last words were I love you,Kyle.The best thing I've ever done for someone that brought together all my ingenuity, faith, strength and patience, as much as it saddened me, or I miss her, I'm an only child, I learned then how to be a gladiator for someone else...and myself. All the years of her pressing me not to so introverted to stand up to her and my father's chess lessons (and Thomas Perry novels starring Jane Whitefield about how to travel with your own cloak of invisibility came to head . I feel such peace at her death because I feel like a deep karmic work agreement was between us. I'd always felt she was spiritually my child, maybe a sister, never too much mother. My godmother told me it would have destroyed me if I'd left because she would've died alone .