Quick Fact for the Day – Best Song Lyrics and Movie Lines – Fancypants Word
Blog No 130
May 25, 2021
READING TIME: Just 6 Minutes
By Mack W. Borgen
Author, The Writings of a Lifetime (2021); Dead Serious and Lighthearted – The Memorable Words of Modern America (3 Volumes) (2018-2019); and The Relevance of Reason – The Hard Facts and Real Data about the State of Current America (2 Volumes) (2013). As Advertised in The New York Review of Books and Recipient of Eight National Book Awards.
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-Starting Again Soon – My Blog Series “Fixing America”-
(Today’s) Quick Fact
A Short History of Corporate Tax Rates
Reagan 34%
Clinton 35%
Bush 35%
Obama 35%
Trump 21% (Lowest since 1929)
Biden’s Original Plan: 28%
Biden’s “compromise” plan: 25%
All-Time High: 1968 – 52.8%
Average 1909-2021: 32.37%
See tradingeconomics.com; thebalance.com.
Best Song Lyrics – Part 19
Song lyrics are the real poetry of Modern America. The lyrics of our favorite songs roll around in our heads for decades. Almost unconsciously, every day we honor the words of America’s songwriters who said something in that perfect, poetic, or clever way.
Here is Part 19 of my assembled list — done over the last nine years in conjunction with my research for my last series of books, Dead Serious and Lighthearted.
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But now, … The Best Lyrics of Modern America
– From 1957 through 2015 –
I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool (1981) (Barbara Mandrell) (B: 1948, Houston, TX).
I took a lot of kiddin’; cause I never did fit in
Now look at everybody tryin’ to be what I was than
I was country when country wasn’t cool.”
– –
Po’ Folks (1961) (Bill Anderson) (B: 1937, Columbia, SC).
There’s a whole lotta people lookin’ down their noses at me
Cause I didn’t come from a wealthy family
There was ten of us livin’ in a two-room shack
On the banks of the river by the railroad track.
Best (or At Least Most Memorable) Movie Lines of All Time
“I don’t want to survive. I want to live.”
Chiwetel Ejiofor in his role as Solomon Northup in the film 12 Years a Slave. The movie was directed by Steve McQueen and was based upon Northrup’s 1853 slave narrative by the same name. The period drama, about a New York-born free African American who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, was a financial success and won three Academy Awards including Best Picture. Excerpted from Mack W. Borgen’s Dead Serious and Lighthearted – The Memorable Words of Modern America (Vol III) (1994-2015), p. 331.
Fancypants Word of the Day
Otiose (Adjective): 1) Having no real purpose; 2) Useless; pointless.
Examples of uses in sentences:
Serious Example: “With the invention of the iPod, my CD collection has been rendered otiose.”
More Humorous Example: “I listened to the news last night, but I turned it off again when I determined that – once again – it was otiose.”
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