Oh, just random collections of thoughts, I guess.

Obama just said that although he will maintain the Cuban embargo, he will open travel so Cuban-Americans can visit their relatives. That is very good news to hear.

Random quotes to ponder:

1. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it.-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
2. The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.-ibid
3. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws, but conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.-ibid
4. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.-ibid
5. Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity.-ibid
6. Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.-John Adams
7. Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.-Dwight Eisenhower
8. It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.-Thomas Paine
9. The most important political office is that of the private citizen.-Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis
10. We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts--not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution.-Abraham Lincoln
11. It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.-Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson
12. The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts ... the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.-Edmund Burke
13. The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty.-Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
14. Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.-Kurt Vonnegut
15. Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of. -Douglas Adams
16. I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.-Mahatma Gandhi
17. The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles.-Mahatma Gandhi
18. You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result.-Mahatma Gandhi

I missed, yet again, another doctor's appointment. I think I must be willfully forgetting the damn things. I see so many doctors for so many things over the course of a year, that it is very tiresome. Dermatologist(2X/year), Immunologist (2X/year), Psychiatrist(1X/month), Counsellor(1X/month), Rheumatologist (2X/year), Internist(2X/year), Dentist(2X/year--plus three this past year for broken teeth/fillings), Gynecologist (1X/year), Opthamologist (1X/year for field of vision tests due to a medication I take). That's 38 appointments without even counting if I actually "get sick" (it's all relative) or have some other emergency. Last year, obviously, was much more what with the depression and need for weekly counselling, hospitalization pre-appointments, inpatient and outpatient ECT, etc. (That looks funny: ECT, etc.) I've rescheduled. Wish me luck in remembering.

In other news, Phil Spector is on one of the Obama discussion lists I am on. Weird, huh? I've been thinking of asking when his next trial is, but nixed it. I'll google it.

On another list (Feminists for Obama, which is a very active list which is making name for itself in various ways) is the wonderful author (and TV writer, comedian, pundit of sorts, etc., along with very nice person) Cathryn Michon AKA Grrlgenius.

The founder of the Feminists for Obama group was quoted in this article today. I love her quote, so I'm sharing.

At Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Michele Glorioso, a graduate student in women's studies who started the Feminists for Obama group on the campaign Web site my.barackobama.com, agrees. "I tell people that if Bill Clinton was the first black president, then maybe Barack Obama will be the first woman president."

I also wanted to highlight the quote from a so-called boomer "feminist" who says the most unfeminist thing she could have said.

White believes it will be up to Obama, between now and the Democratic Convention, to be properly solicitous in his relationship with Sen. Clinton and the millions of women who see themselves in her. "It's diamonds, candy and flowers time," she said.

Yeah, and high heels and makeup and chick flick dates and lots and lots of shopping and gossip. Whatever.

Don't miss Recount on HBO, Sunday, May 25 at 9 p.m. Looks like rollicking good fun and a fairly accurate replay of the debacle. You might learn something you didn't already know. (Don't forget the plural of chad is chad. Seriously.)

Which reminds me of this article. As someone who had voted in a primary for the first time in years due to my being disenfranchised as a former registered Green, I truly appreciated this brief reminder to the world.

And I don't normally watch commercials, but I had seen the first ETrade commercial featuring the talking baby, but not this second one made for the Super Bowl, apparently.

Clowns are creepy, no two ways about it.

I guess that is it for now. TAH!