When U Assume Quotes

when you assume you make an ass out of u and me !

When you assume you make a you-know-what out of U and me. Yep, so let's stop assuming so much. We are often quick to explain details to strangers, who we understand might not be reading our minds, but we often assume that those people closest to us, those who share our household such as spouses, children parents and siblings, can read our minds. And we get upset with them when they don't go figure. I wonder how many angry words are directed not at an action or inaction as would at first appear, but simply at the fact that somebody did not read our minds. So let's give those people we care most about the benefit of the doubt and do a little less assuming and a little more explaining.

Whoa, don't assume, dude," Marco said. "My mom always said, when you assume you make an ass of u and me--

Have you ever heard the saying, when you assume, you make an ass of u and me?

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary. Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history. Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people. At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95). Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME.

Crawford began to underline. “If you assume when I send you on a job, Starling, you can make an ass out of u and me both.

Has this situation made you fearful of cops?" she eventually asks. "I don't know," I say truthfully. "My uncle's a cop. I know not all cops are bad. And they risk their lives, you know? I'm always scared for my uncle. But I'm tired of them assuming. Especially when it comes to black people.

The goal of all leaders should be to work themselves out of a job. This means leaders must be heavily engaged in training and mentoring their junior leaders to prepare them to step up and assume greater responsibilities. When mentored and coached properly, the junior leader can eventually replace the senior leader, allowing the senior leader to move on to the next level of leadership.

I sat at a lunch table with a professor of premonotheistic spirituality, plus several women from some of the tribes in this state that has more Native Americans than any other. All agreed that the paradigm of human organization had been the circle, not the pyramid or hierarchy—and it could be again. I’d never known there was a paradigm that linked instead of ranked. It was as if I’d been assuming opposition—and suddenly found myself in a welcoming world; like putting one’s foot down for a steep stair and discovering level ground. Still, when a Laguna law student from New Mexico complained that her courses didn’t cite the Iroquois Confederacy as the model for the U.S. Constitution—or explain that this still existing Confederacy was the oldest continuing democracy in the world—I thought she was being romantic. But I read about the Constitutional Convention and discovered that Benjamin Franklin had indeed cited the Iroquois Confederacy as a model. He was well aware of its success in unifying vast areas of the United States and Canada by bringing together Native nations for mutual decisions but also allowing autonomy in local ones. He hoped the Constitution could do the same for the thirteen states. That’s why he invited two Iroquois men to Philadelphia as advisers. Among their first questions was said to be: Where are the women?

EB: 'Ll showed me a long verse-letter, very obscene, he’d received from Dylan T[Thomas] before D’s last trip here [New York]—very clever, but it really can’t be published for a long, long time, he’s decided. About people D. met in the U.S. etc.—one small sample: A Streetcar Named Desire is referred to as 'A truck called F———.' RL: 'Psycho-therapy is rather amazing—something like stirring up the bottom of an aquarium—chunks of the past coming up at unfamiliar angles, distinct and then indistinct.' RL: 'I have just finished the Yeats Letters—900 & something pages—although some I’d read before. He is so Olympian always, so calm, so really unrevealing, and yet I was fascinated.' RL: 'Probably you forget, and anyway all that is mercifully changed and all has come right since you found Lota. But at the time everything, I guess (I don’t want to overdramatize) our relations seemed to have reached a new place. I assumed that would be just a matter of time before I proposed and I half believed that you would accept. Yet I wanted it all to have the right build-up. Well, I didn’t say anything then.' EB: 'so I suppose I am just a born worrier, and that when the personal worries of adolescence and the years after it have more or less disappeared I promptly have to start worrying about the decline of nations . . . But I really can’t bear much of American life these days—surely no country has ever been so filthy rich and so hideously uncomfortable at the same time.

On December 1, 2006, federal deputies were brawling in Mexico’s Congress hours before Felipe Calderón was due to enter the chamber to be sworn in as president. It was a fight for space. The leftist deputies claimed their candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had really won the election but been robbed of his rightful victory. They were trying to gain control of the podium to stop Calderón from taking the oath and assuming office. The conservative deputies were defending the podium to allow the presidential accession. The conservatives won the scrap. There were more of them, and they seemed to be better fed. Among those attending the ceremony were former U.S. president George Bush (Bush the First) and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was covering the Congress door, snatching interviews as guests went in. The elderly Bush hobbled past with six bodyguards with bald heads and microphones at their mouths. I asked him what he thought about the ruckus in the chamber. “Well, I hope that Mexicans can resolve their differences,” he replied diplomatically. Schwarzenegger strolled past with no bodyguards at all. I asked what he thought about the fisticuffs. The Terminator turned round, stared intensely, and uttered three words: “It’s good action!” I phoned the quote back to headquarters and it went out on a wire story. Suddenly, Schwarznegger’s statement was being bounced around California TV stations. Then the BBC led their newscast with it: “It takes a lot to impress Arnold Schwarznegger but today when he was in Mexico …” I got frantic phone calls from the governor’s office in Los Angeles. Was his quote perhaps being used out of context? Well, I replied, I asked him straight and he told me straight.

EPHESIANS 3 For this reason I, Paul,  o a prisoner for Christ Jesus  p on behalf of you Gentiles— 2assuming that you have heard of  q the stewardship of  r God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3 s how the mystery was made known to me  t by revelation,  u as I have written briefly. 4 v When you read this, you can perceive my insight into  w the mystery of Christ, 5which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. 6This mystery is [1] that the Gentiles are  x fellow heirs,  y members of the same body, and  z partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 7 a Of this gospel I was made  b a minister according to the gift of  c God’s grace, which was given me  d by the working of his power. 8To me,  e though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given,  f to preach to the Gentiles the  g unsearchable  h riches of Christ, 9and  i to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery  j hidden for ages in [2] God  k who created all things, 10so that through the church the manifold  l wisdom of God  m might now be made known to  n the rulers and authorities  o in the heavenly places. 11This was  p according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12in whom we have  q boldness and  r access with  s confidence through our  t faith in him. 13So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering  u for you,  v which is your glory.

Every day, the markets were driven less directly by human beings and more directly by machines. The machines were overseen by people, of course, but few of them knew how the machines worked. He knew that RBC’s machines—not the computers themselves, but the instructions to run them—were third-rate, but he had assumed it was because the company’s new electronic trading unit was bumbling and inept. As he interviewed people from the major banks on Wall Street, he came to realize that they had more in common with RBC than he had supposed. “I’d always been a trader,” he said. “And as a trader you’re kind of inside a bubble. You’re just watching your screens all day. Now I stepped back and for the first time started to watch other traders.” He had a good friend who traded stocks at a big-time hedge fund in Stamford, Connecticut, called SAC Capital. SAC Capital was famous (and soon to be infamous) for being one step ahead of the U.S. stock market. If anyone was going to know something about the market that Brad didn’t know, he figured, it would be them. One spring morning he took the train up to Stamford and spent the day watching his friend trade. Right away he saw that, even though his friend was using technology given to him by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and the other big firms, he was experiencing exactly the same problem as RBC: The market on his screens was no longer the market. His friend would hit a button to buy or sell a stock and the market would move away from him. “When I see this guy trading and he was getting screwed—I now see that it isn’t just me. My frustration is the market’s frustration. And I was like, Whoa, this is serious.” Brad’s problem wasn’t just Brad’s problem. What people saw when they looked at the U.S. stock market—the numbers on the screens of the professional traders, the ticker tape running across the bottom of the CNBC screen—was an illusion. “That’s when I realized the markets are rigged. And I knew it had to do with the technology. That the answer lay beneath the surface of the technology. I had absolutely no idea where. But that’s when the lightbulb went off that the only way I’m going to find out what’s going on is if I go beneath the surface.

As Graedon scrutinized the FDA’s standards for bioequivalence and the data that companies had to submit, he found that generics were much less equivalent than commonly assumed. The FDA’s statistical formula that defined bioequivalence as a range—a generic drug’s concentration in the blood could not fall below 80 percent or rise above 125 percent of the brand name’s concentration, using a 90 percent confidence interval—still allowed for a potential outside range of 45 percent among generics labeled as being the same. Patients getting switched from one generic to another might be on the low end one day, the high end the next. The FDA allowed drug companies to use different additional ingredients, known as excipients, that could be of lower quality. Those differences could affect a drug’s bioavailability, the amount of drug potentially absorbed into the bloodstream. But there was another problem that really drew Graedon’s attention. Generic drug companies submitted the results of patients’ blood tests in the form of bioequivalence curves. The graphs consisted of a vertical axis called Cmax, which mapped the maximum concentration of drug in the blood, and a horizontal axis called Tmax, the time to maximum concentration. The resulting curve looked like an upside-down U. The FDA was using the highest point on that curve, peak drug concentration, to assess the rate of absorption into the blood. But peak drug concentration, the point at which the blood had absorbed the largest amount of drug, was a single number at one point in time. The FDA was using that point as a stand-in for “rate of absorption.” So long as the generic hit a similar peak of drug concentration in the blood as the brand name, it could be deemed bioequivalent, even if the two curves reflecting the time to that peak looked totally different. Two different curves indicated two entirely different experiences in the body, Graedon realized. The measurement of time to maximum concentration, the horizontal axis, was crucial for time-release drugs, which had not been widely available when the FDA first created its bioequivalence standard in 1992. That standard had not been meaningfully updated since then. “The time to Tmax can vary all over the place and they don’t give a damn,” Graedon emailed a reporter. That “seems pretty bizarre to us.” Though the FDA asserted that it wouldn’t approve generics with “clinically significant” differences in release rates, the agency didn’t disclose data filed by the companies, so it was impossible to know how dramatic the differences were.

Irony in postwar art and culture started out the same way youthful rebellion did. It was difficult and painful, and productive—a grim diagnosis of a long-denied disease. The assumptions behind early postmodern irony, on the other hand, were still frankly idealistic: it was assumed that etiology and diagnosis pointed toward cure, that a revelation of imprisonment led to freedom. So then how have irony, irreverence, and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today’s avant-garde tries to write about? One clue’s to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It’s not a rhetorical mode that wears well. As Hyde (whom I pretty obviously like) puts it, “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.” 32 This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. This is why Hyde seems right about persistent irony being tiresome. It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly fun to listen to at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I’ve had several radical surgical procedures. And as for actually driving cross-country with a gifted ironist, or sitting through a 300 page novel full of nothing but trendy sardonic exhaustion, one ends up feeling not only empty but somehow… oppressed. Think, for a moment, of Third World rebels and coups. Third World rebels are great at exposing and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem noticeably less great at the mundane, non-negative task of then establishing a superior governing alternative. Victorious rebels, in fact, seem best at using their tough, cynical rebel-skills to avoid being rebelled against themselves—in other words, they just become better tyrants. And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit “I don’t really mean what I’m saying.” So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: “How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.” Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.

The goal of all leaders should be to work themselves out of a job. This means leaders must be heavily engaged in training and mentoring their junior leaders to prepare them to step up and assume greater responsibilities. When

Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states, “[A]lthough the total energy in the cosmos remains constant, the amount of energy available to do useful work is always getting smaller.” 70 The second law of thermodynamics assumes that the universe is a closed system because there is nothing outside of it. The amount of useful energy is decreasing, therefore there must have been a time when the energy clock began ticking. 71 Walter Brown holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT and for many years was a professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy. “If the entire universe is an isolated system, then, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the energy in the universe that is available for useful work has always been decreasing,” he says. “However, as one goes back in time, the amount of energy available for useful work would eventually exceed the total energy in the universe, which, according to the First Law of Thermodynamics, remains constant. This is an impossible condition, implying that the universe had a beginning.

Mr. Snow, why did you assume?" I asked. "As Gran used to say, when you assume, you make an A-S-S out of U and ME.

Humans going into altered states of consciousness all react the same way, no matter where they come from. It is part of the way the human brain is wired. There are three stages of altered consciousness that have been recognised by laboratory experiment (Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1989: 60–67). In the first stage, people see zig-zags, dots and whorls. In the second stage this develops into a deeper trance experience, and the subjects see and feel a world more familiar to them, and can hear water, experience thirst, etc. The third stage is the deepest, and people in deep trance talk about entering a hole in the ground and seeing ‘real world’ imagery of animals and people. These different stages have been recognised in the rock art: stage one with grids, zig-zags, mesh shapes (such as nets); stage two with nested ‘U’ shapes and buzzing (interpreted as beehives); stage three with snakes coming out of the rock face, people with animal heads, etc. This last stage accompanies visual images of trancers in the dance, which include the ‘bent-over posture’ assumed by the shaman when dancing, and bleeding from the nose, which would occur when the shaman was physically under stress when entering the spirit world (Figure 4.4). Interviews with shamans have reported that at the moment of the climax, the power shoots up the spine and out of the top of the head. This, among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen of Nyae Nyae, is called kia (Katz 1982), as we have seen in Chapter 3.

when the EPA issued its first-ever plan to limit carbon emissions from power plants and five conservative justices (then including Justice Scalia) blocked the law while it was still under review in the lower courts, before it had even reached them. This was a procedural eyebrow-raiser of a ruling without precedent in U.S. history, one that I reckon saved the fossil fuel industry $100 billion per year (assuming it would have cost them about one-sixth of their annual federal pollution subsidy).3

This is the fundamental game of the Secret Team. They have this power because they control secrecy and secret intelligence and because they have the ability to take advantage of the most modern communications system in the world, of global transportation systems, of quantities of weapons of all kinds, and when needed, the full support of a world-wide U.S. military supporting base structure. They can use the finest intelligence system in the world, and most importantly, they have been able to operate under the canopy of an assumed, ever-present enemy called “Communism.” It will be interesting to see what “enemy” develops in the years ahead. It appears that “UFO’s and Aliens” are being primed to fulfill that role for the future. To top all of this, there is the fact that the CIA, itself, has assumed the right to generate and direct secret operations.

The Scheffe test is the most conservative, the Tukey test is best when many comparisons are made (when there are many groups), and the Bonferroni test is preferred when few comparisons are made. However, these post-hoc tests often support the same conclusions.3 To illustrate, let’s say the independent variable has three categories. Then, a post-hoc test will examine hypotheses for whether . In addition, these tests will also examine which categories have means that are not significantly different from each other, hence, providing homogeneous subsets. An example of this approach is given later in this chapter. Knowing such subsets can be useful when the independent variable has many categories (for example, classes of employees). Figure 13.1 ANOVA: Significant and Insignificant Differences Eta-squared (η2) is a measure of association for mixed nominal-interval variables and is appropriate for ANOVA. Its values range from zero to one, and it is interpreted as the percentage of variation explained. It is a directional measure, and computer programs produce two statistics, alternating specification of the dependent variable. Finally, ANOVA can be used for testing interval-ordinal relationships. We can ask whether the change in means follows a linear pattern that is either increasing or decreasing. For example, assume we want to know whether incomes increase according to the political orientation of respondents, when measured on a seven-point Likert scale that ranges from very liberal to very conservative. If a linear pattern of increase exists, then a linear relationship is said to exist between these variables. Most statistical software packages can test for a variety of progressive relationships. ANOVA Assumptions ANOVA assumptions are essentially the same as those of the t-test: (1) the dependent variable is continuous, and the independent variable is ordinal or nominal, (2) the groups have equal variances, (3) observations are independent, and (4) the variable is normally distributed in each of the groups. The assumptions are tested in a similar manner. Relative to the t-test, ANOVA requires a little more concern regarding the assumptions of normality and homogeneity. First, like the t-test, ANOVA is not robust for the presence of outliers, and analysts examine the presence of outliers for each group. Also, ANOVA appears to be less robust than the t-test for deviations from normality. Second, regarding groups having equal variances, our main concern with homogeneity is that there are no substantial differences in the amount of variance across the groups; the test of homogeneity is a strict test, testing for any departure from equal variances, and in practice, groups may have neither equal variances nor substantial differences in the amount of variances. In these instances, a visual finding of no substantial differences suffices. Other strategies for dealing with heterogeneity are variable transformations and the removal of outliers, which increase variance, especially in small groups. Such outliers are detected by examining boxplots for each group separately. Also, some statistical software packages (such as SPSS), now offer post-hoc tests when equal variances are not assumed.4 A Working Example The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) measured the percentage of wetland loss in watersheds between 1982 and 1992, the most recent period for which data are available (government statistics are sometimes a little old).5 An analyst wants to know whether watersheds with large surrounding populations have

Guidelines for ROE 1. When on post, mobile, or foot patrol, keep loaded magazine in weapon, bolt closed, weapon on safe, no round in the chamber. 2. Do not chamber a round unless told to do so by a commissioned officer unless you must act in immediate self-defense where deadly force is authorized. 3. Keep ammo for crew-served weapons readily available but not loaded. Weapon is on safe. 4. Call local forces to assist in self-defense effort. Notify headquarters. 5. Use only minimum degree of force to accomplish any mission. 6. Stop the use of force when it is no longer needed to accomplish the mission. 7. If you receive effective hostile fire, direct your fire at the source. If possible, use friendly snipers. 8. Respect civilian property; do not attack it unless absolutely necessary to protect friendly forces. 9. Protect innocent civilians from harm. 10. Respect and protect recognized medical agencies such as Red Cross, Red Crescent, etc. Col. Jim Mead’s 32nd MAU was relieved by Col. Tom Stokes’s 24th MAU on October 30, 1982. The transition was seamless, morale was high, and all hands assumed their responsibilities enthusiastically. Colonel Stokes also honored the Ministry of Defense’s request to help train the LAF. The government of Lebanon (GOL) introduced conscription, and young men from all over Lebanon answered the call to colors. The various religious groups—the Christians, Druze, Sunnis, and Shiites—were being trained and integrated into the Lebanese Army. Although the U.S. Army already had an ongoing training mission in effect, it was viewed that the Marines’ additional training would quickly improve the LAF’s combat capabilities. The results of the training courses led to their expansion, particularly among the noncommissioned officers (NCOs). The religious integration of the LAF was a major goal of its commander, Gen. Ibrahim Tannous, who wanted to produce a true national army. The Marine training was contributing to that end.

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation. WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Religious entities have the capacity for great good and great evil, and society is not duty-bound by any constitutional principle to let them avoid duly enacted laws, especially when their actions harm others. To say that religious liberty must encompass the right to harm others is to radicalize the First Amendment. The Framers did not intend to create extreme religious liberty, to turn the U.S. into a collection of mini-theocracies, or to give believers the power to impose their beliefs on others. They, instead, assumed acts harming safety and public welfare, and licentious acts, would be illegal for everyone.

The meanness that first bothered me, though, when I encountered it a decade ago, long before I was married, was in a short story in Pigeon Feathers in which a young husband returns with hamburgers and eats them happily with his family in front of the fire, and thinks lovingly of his wife’s Joyceanly “smackwarm” thighs, and then, in the next paragraph, says as narrator (the “you” directed at the narrator’s wife), “In the morning, to my relief, you are ugly.… The skin between your breasts is a sad yellow.” And a little later, “Seven years have worn this woman.” This hit me as inexcusably brutal when I read it. I couldn’t imagine Updike’s real, nonfictional wife reading that paragraph and not being made very unhappy. You never know, though; the internal mechanics of marriages are shielded from us, and maybe in the months after that story came out the two of them enjoyed a wry private joke whenever they went to a party and she wore a dress with a high neckline and they noticed some interlocutor’s gaze drop to her breasts and they saw together the little knowing look cross his unpleasantly salacious features as he thought to himself, Ho ho: high neckline to cover up all that canary-yellow, eh? Updike knows that people are going to assume that the fictional wife of an Updike-like male character corresponds closely with Updike’s own real-life wife — after all, Updike himself angered Nabokov by suggesting that Ada was Vera. How can Updike have the whatever, the disempathy, I used frequently to ask myself, and ask myself right now, to put in print that his wife appeared ugly to him that morning, especially in so vivid a way? It just oughtn’t to be done! It makes us readers imagine her speculating as she read it: “Which morning was he thinking that? He sat at the kitchen table eating breakfast and thinking I was ugly and worn! And I had no idea.

I think the United States' mission community, by sheer weight of numbers, and because the U.S. churches and missions are so wealthy, probably find it even harder than we do to stand back from power and leadership, and from assuming that some of the ideas and strategies that originate with us are just what the Global South is longing to receive. "The painful fact is that much of the Global South simply does not want our ideas and strategies, and prefers to work in ways far better suited to their contexts-and we need to learn far more profoundlyto serve gladly underSouthern leadership, even when what we are asked to do doesn't seem to us to be the best way to do things.

In sum, part I has shown that administrative law revives prerogative legislation, together with the prerogative of suspending and dispensing with law—thus restoring an extralegal regime of making and unmaking law. And lest it be thought that this is improbable, it should be recalled that some leading advocates of administrative law candidly admitted that their project was to return to prerogative power. John Dickinson, for example, observed that “the question of whether or not the king can issue ordinances parallels our modern question as to whether or not an executive body or officer can establish regulations; and the arguments used pro and con have followed much the same lines.”25 Put more theoretically, administrative lawmaking is not a power exercised through law, but a power outside it. Indeed, as will become more fully apparent in part III, it is a power above the law. But even when considered simply as a power outside the law, this extralegal regime revives what once was considered absolute power. Administrative law thus returns to the very sort of power that constitutions developed in order to prohibit. The prerogative to issue law-like commands was the primary point of contention in the English constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century. In response, the English developed a constitution and Americans enacted a constitution that placed all legislative power in the legislature. It therefore is mistaken to assume that American administrative law is a novel mode of governance, which could not have been anticipated or barred by the U.S. Constitution. On the contrary, administrative power revives extralegal rulemaking, interpretation, dispensing, and suspending, and thus almost the entire regime of extralegal lawmaking once associated with absolute prerogative power. It thereby restores what constitutions barred when they located legislative power in their legislatures.

This breadth of constitutional law in barring extralegal legislation is revealing about more than the past. The reader will have to wait patiently until chapter 7 for details of the current regime of extralegal lawmaking, but the significance of the history can already be anticipated. In an era of administrative legislation, it often is assumed that when the U.S. Constitution grants legislative power to Congress, it does not bar the executive from issuing binding rules, making interpretations, or setting taxes—as long as the executive has legislative authorization or at least acquiescence. The history of constitutional law, however, reveals that constitutions developed to bar all extralegal lawmaking—the point being to confine government to ruling through the law. Thus, administrative legislation—whether by proclamation, rulemaking, interpretation, or taxation—is not a novel form of lawmaking, and it cannot, on account of its alleged novelty, escape constitutional restrictions. On the contrary, it is a return to the extralegal legislation that constitutions were established to prohibit.

HPM stands for High Power Microwaves. Eureka Aerospace in Pasadena, California developed a device to be used by police to stop a car during high-speed chases. Since the 1970s, every car is built with some sort of microprocessor-controlled system—like the ignition control and fuel pump, the microprocessor controls a lot of vital car systems. When a two second blast from a HPM device is shot at a vehicle, the electric current affects the wires and leads to a power surge which, in turn, burns out those microprocessors and burns up the wiring in the vehicle. Eureka Aerospace is partially funded by the US military. In effect, the same microwave radiation that reheats pizza in a microwave can be used to fry the electrical systems in cars, stopping them dead in their tracks. The document states that HPM was used to incapacitate our van, and can be used against “residents and parties involved.” I assumed “residents” was a misspelling and was supposed to be “residence.” In my research of how HPM works, however, I learned that the word “residents” in the document was not a misspelling; it can and is used against people as well.   U.S. to Use Microwave Weapons On

Mr. Premier, we’re running out of time,” I said, “so let me cut to the chase. Before I walked into this room, I assume, the plan was for all of you to leave here and announce that the U.S. was responsible for the failure to arrive at a new agreement. You think that if you hold out long enough, the Europeans will get desperate and sign another Kyoto-style treaty. The thing is, I’ve been very clear to them that I can’t get our Congress to ratify the treaty you want. And there is no guarantee Europe’s voters, or Canada’s voters, or Japan’s voters, are going to be willing to keep putting their industries at a competitive disadvantage and paying money to help poor countries deal with climate change when the world’s biggest emitters are sitting on the sidelines. “Of course, I may be wrong,” I said. “Maybe you can convince everyone that we’re to blame. But that won’t stop the planet from getting warmer. And remember, I’ve got my own megaphone, and it’s pretty big. If I leave this room without an agreement, then my first stop is the hall downstairs where all the international press is waiting for news. And I’m going to tell them that I was prepared to commit to a big reduction in our greenhouse gases, and billions of dollars in new assistance, and that each of you decided it was better to do nothing. I’m going to say the same thing to all the poor countries that stood to benefit from that new money. And to all the people in your own countries that stand to suffer the most from climate change. And we’ll see who they believe.

I felt sad when I heard the President’s words. I assumed that he believed what he was saying, but if that were true, he was profoundly ignorant of the real thoughts and feelings of people in other parts of the world. If he wanted to hear the truth, he should have listened to Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda, who was well-informed concerning the origins of the kind of fanatical hatred of the U.S. which had led to such treachery. This is his version of events: Every Muslim must rise to defend his religion. The wind of faith is blowing and the wind of change is blowing to remove evil from the Peninsula of Muhammad, peace be upon him. As to America, I say to it and its people a few words: I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him.

The text is published at the back of Ryan S. Wood’s book Majic Eyes Only: Earth’s Encounters with Extraterrestrial Technology.6 Dr. Michael Wolf, who was associated with the MJ-12, confirmed its existence and said that it now has 36 members.7 Another source suggested that the enlarged group is an international board of directors. The contact pace picked up on February 20, 1954 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower met with an extraterrestrial contingent at Edwards Air Force Base in California, then called Muroc Air Base.8 The visitors offered their assistance in the development of incredible new technology. All we (the U.S.) had to do in return was to ‘beat our swords into plowshares,’ that is, give up our nuclear weapons. Apparently the top generals at the Pentagon believed this to be some sort of ruse that would leave us defenseless in very dangerous times. So we had to say ‘no thanks.’ It seems evident now that the president and his advisors had their conclusions confirmed, at that point, that one or more of the extraterrestrial groups that had reached Earth were hostile and that we had to assume a defensive posture against a possible interplanetary war. After all, Eisenhower, as supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe, had undoubtedly been privy to the information about extraterrestrial involvement in World War II. That defensive posture, of course, required ultra-secrecy, just as in wartime. That basically sealed the deal as regards disclosure. From that point on, all negotiations with extraterrestrials of every stripe was deemed too sensitive for public consumption, and the curtain of secrecy descended for the foreseeable future.

When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.

Lauer then asked the rest of the group: “Ladies, you complained to the U.S. Soccer Federation in the past. What’s been their response when you talk about these equal pay issues?” “You know, Matt, I’ve been on this team for a decade and a half,” said Hope Solo. “I’ve been through numerous CBA negotiations and, honestly, not much has changed. We continue to be told we should be grateful just to have the opportunity to play professional soccer and to be paid for doing it.” Officials from U.S. Soccer braced themselves for the appearance. The Today show had reached out to head of communications Neil Buethe the night before to get a statement. Lauer read the statement on air: “While we have not seen this complaint and can’t comment on the specifics of it, we are disappointed about this action. We have been a world leader in women’s soccer and are proud of the commitment we have made to building the women’s game in the United States over the past 30 years.” With the short heads-up, the federation arranged a conference call with a small, select group of trusted reporters to take place after the Today show aired. They sent information to those reporters showing how the men’s team brought in more revenue and more value to the federation. The men’s team had higher gate receipts and higher TV ratings, which made the men more attractive to sponsors, the federation said. Sunil Gulati—the U.S. Soccer president who had avoided some of the very public fights of his predecessors with the women’s national team—told reporters he was surprised by the filing. “I’m cordial with Sunil, and this wasn’t to spite him,” Lloyd says now. “We just knew we had to step up as a leadership group to make things better for the future. The only way that was going to happen was if we spoke our minds.” Meanwhile, the reaction to the Today show appearance was already spreading quickly on social media—and it was largely in the favor of the women. After all, a record audience had watched them win the World Cup not even a year earlier. Many fans surely assumed the women were being treated like champions. “The

Many Americans assume that part of maintaining quality of life in the country means that we should do whatever we can to maintain the status quo situation of the dollar as the world reserve currency. However, I view it differently. The status quo of the dollar’s hegemony has directly contributed to the domestic hollowing-out that we’ve experienced for decades — especially after the Cold War ended. The system that has been in place since the 1970s is antiquated monetary technology and is inherently unsustainable due to the accrued imbalances that it creates. Losing dollar hegemony at this point would harm special interests in the United States, would reduce the country’s imperial reach, and would require a shift of priorities, but ultimately it would lead toward a more natural and balanced global economy and provide the opportunity for U.S. domestic revitalization. The risk comes when we fail to recognize that and thus fail to make proactive changes from a position of strength. And so far, that’s the path we’ve chosen.

You assumed. When you assume, you make an ass out of U and Me,

Equity Office was the largest REIT in the country. We had spent a decade acquiring an irreplaceable collection of over five hundred of the best office buildings in every major market in the U.S. It was my baby. Truth is, had I kept the company private, I probably would have never considered selling. But when I took EOP public, I assumed a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. In exchange for their capital, I made a commitment to give them the best return possible on their investment. That was my primary obligation. Nothing stood before that.

when you assume you make an ass out of u and me,

The most dramatic consequence of the new constitution [of 1901] was the one most desired by its drafters, the sudden and dramatic decline in voting. [...] What makes the 1901 suffrage provisions even more significant is comparison with the state's first constitution. Otherwise one might assume that the operative principle in Alabama public policy had always been anti-democratic. Actually, the opposite was true. The 1819 constitution, which ushered Alabama into the Union, was a projection of the towering presence of Thomas Jefferson and the democratic aspirations of the American Revolution. Delegates to that convention had pointedly refused to restrict suffrage based on literacy, ownership of property, or even church affiliation. Any white male 21 years of age or older could vote, whether or not he could read, write, owned property, belonged to a church or even believed in God. But the democratic assumptions of that first gathering of founding fathers at Huntsville in July 1819 were not shared by their successors in Montgomery in the summer of 1901. Nor was the democratic assumption of Alabama's own past the only principle violated in 1901. So was the dominant democratic thrust of the 20th century both in America and throughout the world. It was the federal government and not the state of Alabama that enfranchised women in 1919. It was the Supreme Court that demanded that every vote count the same by compelling reapportionment after the Alabama legislature refused to do so for six decades. It was Congress in the 1965 Voting Rights Act that finally enfranchised Alabama blacks. And it was the U.S. Supreme Court in 1966 that ensured the right to vote for all the state's poor of whatever color when it struck down the poll tax. If the century-long wail for states' rights by Alabama's white elite struck many Americans as hollow and hypocritical, perhaps it was because that otherwise noble ideal for restricting tyranny was so often employed in Alabama on behalf of tyranny. For in Alabama, the constitution did not empower the people; it empowered the legislature. Without recall, initiative, referendum, or home rule, power was vested was vested in government, not in citizens. Democracy was forfeited to the federal Congress and to federal courts.

when you assume you make an ass of u and me—