I proudly count myself as an "ordinary person"– you know, the working-stiff, blue collar sort that is mostly what makes up America. I consider the people that I meet in daily life to be just as (if not more) smart and discerning as any of the more famous members of the chattering classes. Here are a few examples of thoughts and words that I have recently come across. Ordinary folks speaking notable quotes…
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Friend Jorge Mesa Tejada of Hampstead, while discussing the potential of the New Media, including the Blogosphere:
"The strength of a dictator is not armies or secret police. It is the fact that they control information, which keeps people ignorant. The result is fear and compliance."
Having escaped a dictatorship in Colombia for a better life in America, as a citizen by choice, he should know. The New Media and the rise of citizen journalism means independence and the free, unfettered flow of information back and forth between people.
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The Citizen reports on one family affected by this week’s generally expected flooding of nearby Jewett Brook–Ordinary folks who I see at Church every week:
Kevin and Cheryl Laurent also live on Winter Street and are well aware, from past storms, that the brook can quickly turn into a river with heavy rains. "We saw a computer monitor float by," said Cheryl Laurent. Kevin Laurent was trying to keep his sump pump throwing water out of the basement faster than it could get in but he managed to joke,"We are just hoping the city doesn’t start charging us for waterfront property."
Shhh! Don’t give them any ideas!
Finally, there was this from Jim Beaumont of New Boston, who wrote in a letter to the editor in the dead-tree version of the Union Leader, on the "Moms of Fury" military families’ visit to Rep. Hodes’ office:
I had to chuckle. Not for the families upset with Rep. Paul Hodes, but for the majority of voters who sent this nitwit to Washington. Hodes and Rep. Carol Shea Porter are two Democrat liberals who pretended to be moderates so they could get their cushy jobs in Washington and rubber stamp all the moonbat policies of Pelosi and Reid.
Well said gentlemen!