No one has had more quotes misattributed to him than Thomas Jefferson – click here for a list of misattributions compiled by the historians @ Monticello. Makes me wonder if TJ ever said anything @ all other than what he spoke directly to a young Ronald Reagan about age being unimportant. Early in his administration Reagan said, speaking of Jefferson – "We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works. And ever since Jefferson told me that, I stopped worrying."
I have also seen one of my favorites - "I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm; and that three or more become a Congress!" – attributed to Ben Franklin or John Adams. Actually it was neither – it was the character John Adams in the Broadway play 1776 that said it as the opening line of the play.
But we probably never will know whether Lenin or Lord Keynes was the originator of the famous saying that Keynes (Essays In Persuasion, p 78 – 1931) attributed to Lenin, although later researchers attributed to Keynes, – "Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and it does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."
Ever since first reading Lenin's thought decades ago I took inspiration from it & have tried to live my life with the people I thought could diagnose those hidden forces of destruction. I always told Carol we want to spend our time with the one tenth of one percent who could figure out what Lenin was talking about. No, its not that I got the arithmetic wrong, it is that I always remembered it as one man in a thousand, not million.
No matter the author the sentiment is certainly true – just look @ America today where it takes a husband & wife going into the workplace to bring home two paychecks of debased currency so that ends can @ least see each other if not totally meet. The purchasing power of the middle class has not increased in over 40 years. The median earnings for men working full time year round were stagnate @ $50,000 per year in constant 2014 dollars from 1972 to the present.
There are 94 million Americans who do not have jobs & are not looking for one – see graph below for breakdown of U-6 unemployment/underemployment rate as of July 2015. U-6 was still 9.7% in September (up from 9.6% in June). Some of the 94 million people are too young to work & some are too old but it still is a record number & these people need a growing economy to sustain them in their youth & their old age.
The U.S. GDP inflation-adjusted (real) annual growth rate of 2% under BO's first seven years in office is the weakest expansion since World War II - with a slowing in the first half of 2016 to a 1% annual growth rate & projections of 1.8% for all of 2016. At 2% growth it takes 35 years for the economy to double & @ 1% growth it takes 70 years to double so people favoring Democrat party government-dependent policies are asking for little to no increases in their standard of living during their entire lifetimes.
The Census Bureau reports that fewer people own their own home than in any time in the last 50 years.
None of the above is the stuff that prosperity & wealth creation are made of & Hillary Clinton will not only continue but will expand BO's policies that brought us the deliberate continuous unrelenting underemployment, stagnate standard of living, & misery that is turning into the new normal for America.
click on graph to enlarge
All of this means that people are increasingly living by spending down the wealth accumulated over their lifetimes &/or their parents lifetimes – exactly what Lenin had in mind whether he said it or not.
With the above background I submit below a six question quiz that requires you to identify "who said it"?
Following the questions I present the answers – unlike the above three examples all of these six quotations have been positively identified as to speaker, date, place, & context with which they were said.
Please don't peek – answer all of the questions before looking @ the answers.
I am interested to know how you make out – so please let me know.
1) "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
A. Karl Marx B. Adolph Hitler C. Joseph Stalin D. Barack Obama E. None of the above
2) "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, & for the few . . . & to replace it with shared responsibility, for shared prosperity."
A. Lenin B. Mussolini C. Idi Amin D. Barack Obama E. None of the above
3) "(We) . . . can't just let business as usual go on, & that means something has to be taken away from some people."
A. Nikita Khrushchev B. Joseph Goebbels C. Boris Yeltsin D. Barack Obama E. None of the above
4) "We have to build a political consensus & that requires people to give up a little bit of their own . . . in order to create this common ground."
A. Mao Zedong B. Hugo Chavez C. Kim Jong II D. Barack Obama E. None of the above
5) "I certainly think the free-market has failed."
A. Karl Marx B. Lenin C. Molotov D. Barack Obama E. None of the above
6) "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched."
A. Pinochet B. Milosevic C. Saddam Hussein D. Barack Obama E. None of the above
No peeking!
Scroll down for answers . . .
(1) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/29/2004
(2) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 5/29/2007
(3) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007
(4) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007
(5) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007
(6) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 9/2/2005
Click here & here to see the statist context with which each of the six quotations was made. But whatever the context the point is they were Hillary's words.
America is off the rails as Trump falls further & further behind Hillary Clinton in the polls, who along with her husband are the most corrupt, crooked, & scripted-to-say-anything people imaginable; whereas Trump is a multi-billionaire who told Oprah many decades ago that he would run for president only if he thought "it got so bad" that his leadership was needed.
For voters to abandon Trump for his alleged, & highly possible if not probable, misdeeds in favor of the Clintons misses the entire point of where the country is headed. Over their years in Arkansas & then in the White House we know for sure that both Clintons were involved with the actual deeds described by the same sort of allegations being made against Trump. Why should we side with the Clintons to our continued statist government-dependent detriment when we have a chance with Trump to undo the politically correct things that are destroying our country? It is many of the same people who feign offense @ Trump's alleged racist & sexist statements who go to the raunchiest movies they can find for entertainment, could only hope to be in charge of beauty contests, listen to the Howard Stern radio program where Trump has been a guest, & engage in locker room talk that makes me wonder what example they are themselves for their daughters & granddaughters.
Trump has surrounded himself with advisers representing all sides especially on the economy – from protectionist professor Peter Navarro of the University of California, Irvine, to Larry Kudlow & Steve Moore, both advocates of free market policies & supply side economics, to Judy Shelton, an advocate for sound money & return to the gold standard. This mixture of policies certainly has a better chance of improving America than the Clintons' socialist plan of higher taxes on the job creators if for no other reason than Trump really wants to help & the Clintons don't.
We had better be very sure that Trump's transgressions warrant electing Hillary & continuing the path that two thirds of Americans think is the wrong one. It is best to look past the titillating talk of the women claiming sexual harassment by Trump & look @ the more substantive list of WikiLeaks news dumps that show the Clintons for what they are – connivers who will do or say anything to return to the White House.
Democrats show that they are politically playing the rest of us for fools when they say that Trump should be disqualified from becoming president for his words but did not think that Bill Clinton should have been removed from office for his actions after the proven Lewinski affair of oral sex in the White House with a 22 year old intern.
To fall for the Democrats' political strategy is to surrender the presidency to Hillary Clinton who has calculatingly stood by her man, to a fault, attacking Bill Clinton's accusers even as she now supports Trump's accusers. Where would Hillary be if not for Bill? Certainly not the Democrat nominee & that is what she has focused on & worked for all of these years.
If Hillary wins Trump will return to the luxurious life he left 16 months ago while an ever increasing percentage of Americans will continue to become dependent on government for larger portions of their incomes – the Death Of Democracy spiral that ends liberty in America as we have known it all of our lives. Hillary will continue, or worse yet expand, both BO's government-dependent policies that will ensure slow or no economic or job growth & the federal regulations that result in more than $2 trillion in annual compliance costs that ensure poor productivity increases & lackluster job growth.
But getting back to the quotes: Jerry Falwell Jr. summed the election up nicely – "concentrate on America's future – not Trump's past."
And even more basic & to the point Dr. Franklin replied when asked what members of the Constitutional Convention had brought - "A Republic, madam – if you can keep it."
click on photo to enlarge
