Political Quotes of the Day

Discussing all things political in NW Arkansas and beyond.
L.Wood
Posts: 677
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2008 12:21 am

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by L.Wood »

.
Image

.
"Blessed is the Lord for he avoids Evil just like the Godfather, he delegates."
Betty Bowers
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

Obama, addressing the nation's children:

"I know that there is going to be a segment of people for which no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest," Obama said. "But I am speaking for the vast majority of the American people as well as for the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve."

"We are not going to be able to do it if we are distracted, we are not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other ... if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, we are not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by side shows and carnival barkers,"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/2 ... 54248.html
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

Increasingly, one of our two great political parties appears to be governed by what Charles P. Pierce calls the“Three Great Premises” of talk radio: “First Great Premise: Any theory is valid if it moves units. . . . Second Great Premise: Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough. . . . Third GreatPremise: Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.” --Gene Lyons

http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2011/apr/ ... wa-opinion
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and
really don't care. It's not that important. It's not
our priority." - G.W. Bush, 3/13/02

"I'll repeat what I said. I am truly not that concerned about him."
-- G.W. Bush, responding to a question about bin
Laden's whereabouts, 3/13/02 (The New American, 4/8/02)

"Uhh—Gosh, I —don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden.
It's kind of one of those, uhh, exaggerations." — Bush-Kerry Debate, Tempe, AZ, 10/13/2004.

"...shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network." --Obama, today.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

The most important thing to remember about Atlas Shrugged is that it's bad. Very, very, very bad. Obviously, consistently, blatantly, incontrovertibly bad. The writing is bad, the characters are loathsome, the action is doled out as if by an eyedropper, the morality is corrupt and the Ubermensch are about as Uber as your basic mouth-breathing, mother-hating serial killer. (More on him later.) Therefore, anyone who enjoyed Atlas Shrugged, or modeled his life philosophy on it, or gave herself a nom de cretin modelled after one of Shrugged's characters, is an idiot whose thoughts do not deserve a single moment of consideration. Randians have all the intellectual heft of someone who read Madam Bovary and thought it would be a swell idea to have affairs and swallow arsenic. Or someone who read Animal Farm and put on a piggy costume and overworked a farm horse. Or someone who read John Carter Of Mars and spent the rest of his life dreaming of bedding alien women. To paraphrase Neil Simon, Atlas Shrugged sucks and its fans are the suck-ees. And we have 1,168 pages of proof. Let's take a look.

Let the mocking begin.

Chapter 1 The Theme

The rest...
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Doug
Posts: 3388
Joined: Sat Jan 21, 2006 10:05 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville, AR
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Doug »

Image
Fox News just couldn't resist.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

"The only thing that I couldn’t understand is why this man with such a curious mind,
who in briefings always asked the question you wish you thought of, why that quality
didn’t come across. And I fully admit that it didn’t come across."

--Condi Rice trying to explain that while Bush came across as a moron, he really wasn't a moron.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

Via Crooksandliars:
HANNITY: "I agree but this is where I find myself a little conflicted here because
this is almost the opposite of what candidate Obama said he would do. And maybe
for the first time he's grown in office." --Hannity, lying on FOX, today
Image
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Savonarola
Mod@Large
Posts: 1475
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 10:11 pm
antispam: human non-spammer
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 50
Location: NW Arkansas

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Savonarola »

... --Hannity, lying on FOX, today
Writing tip: When possible, be as succinct as possible without losing information. For example:
... --Hannity
See? Means the same thing.
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

The Trillion Dollar Sinkhole

"By most calculations, the U.S. spends more on national security than the rest of the world combined, and six times what second-place China spends on its military.

We presently station 300,000 troops abroad in more than 800 sites in 39 nations, plus 90,000 sailors and marines at sea, a world-wide military empire. The Pentagon budget is $700 billion per year but the late Chalmers Johnson calculated the true cost at over a trillion dollars, including the nuclear weapons complex (run by the Department of Energy), the intelligence community (16 agencies, 80% controlled by DOD) the Coast Guard, customs, border patrol, DEA,FBI, and other security agencies which collectively spend hundreds of billions. The Washington Post investigative project, “Top Secret America,” reported that the U.S. government has created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations since 9/11 and that intelligence spending has risen by 250 percent, to $75 billion, since then.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost more than a trillion dollars in direct costs, not including veterans' benefits and disability, interest on war-related debt, replacement of military equipment, or assistance to allies. Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes calculate that long-run costs will total at least $5 trillion and could reach $7 trillion. We are spending $10 billion per month on foreign wars while our domestic infrastructure crumbles.

Despite all the money and the thousands of casualties, an ABC News/Washington Post poll released last fall shows that the percentage of people who say that the country is safer now from terrorism compared with before Sept. 11, 2001 has reached a new low."

The Trillion Dollar Sinkhole
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

The Unwisdom of Elites
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: May 8, 2011

Excerpt:

These days Americans get constant lectures about the need to reduce the budget deficit. That focus in itself represents distorted priorities, since our immediate concern should be job creation. But suppose we restrict ourselves to talking about the deficit, and ask: What happened to the budget surplus the federal government had in 2000?

The answer is, three main things. First, there were the Bush tax cuts, which added roughly $2 trillion to the national debt over the last decade. Second, there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which added an additional $1.1 trillion or so. And third was the Great Recession, which led both to a collapse in revenue and to a sharp rise in spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs.

So who was responsible for these budget busters? It wasn’t the man in the street.

President George W. Bush cut taxes in the service of his party’s ideology, not in response to a groundswell of popular demand — and the bulk of the cuts went to a small, affluent minority.

Similarly, Mr. Bush chose to invade Iraq because that was something he and his advisers wanted to do, not because Americans were clamoring for war against a regime that had nothing to do with 9/11. In fact, it took a highly deceptive sales campaign to get Americans to support the invasion, and even so, voters were never as solidly behind the war as America’s political and pundit elite.

Finally, the Great Recession was brought on by a runaway financial sector, empowered by reckless deregulation. And who was responsible for that deregulation? Powerful people in Washington with close ties to the financial industry, that’s who. Let me give a particular shout-out to Alan Greenspan, who played a crucial role both in financial deregulation and in the passage of the Bush tax cuts — and who is now, of course, among those hectoring us about the deficit.

So it was the bad judgment of the elite, not the greediness of the common man, that caused America’s deficit.

The rest... New York Times
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

So much truth, packed in to five sentences:

"Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus says he doesn't think Congress will address Social Security as part of an effort to reduce government borrowing. The Montana Democrat said Tuesday that Social Security has not added to the budget deficit, so it should not be included in a deficit reduction package. Baucus is part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Vice President Joe Biden, who are trying to negotiate such a package. Baucus said Social Security's finances should be addressed in the next couple of years. But he also said the program is not in a crisis."

AP
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

All first world nations and all of our peer countries provide health care to their citizens. Other than in an emergency, stabilizing your condition, and sending you along your way (or if you are very poor, qualify, and have all of your medicaid papers in order), the US does not. Rand Paul weighs in on what providing health care to all citizens, really means: "Slavery."

PAUL: With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.

Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery.

I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care. You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be."

http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/rand-p ... ugly-logic

I've about had it with these insane libertarians.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

John McCain, completely demolishing the "torture led to Bin Laden" canard:

"But this must be an informed debate. Former attorney general Michael Mukasey recently claimed that “the intelligence that led to bin Laden . . . began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information — including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.” That is false.

I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.

In fact, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced false and misleading information. He specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an al-Qaeda facilitator — none of which was true. According to the staff of the Senate intelligence committee, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee — information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in al-Qaeda and his true relationship to bin Laden — was obtained through standard, noncoercive means."

Washington Post
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

Image
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

Image

"Can she [Palin] win the Republican nomination and can she beat Barack Obama?" Fox News' Chris Wallace asked McCain Sunday.

"Of course she can -- she can," McCain insisted. "Now whether she will or not, whether she'll even run or not, I don't know."


LINK
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

Re healthcare:

"...if Paul Ryan [or anyone] is kidding himself into thinking there aren't panels out there now making decisions on everyone's health care in the private sector (HIS plan), he's nuts. Every day someone at an insurance company will make a decision about price controls and rationing for their insureds. It may mean they deny a procedure, or they decline to include a specific medication in their formulary, or whatever. The only difference between that panel and the one established under the ACA is that the motive for decision-making will not be profit, but outcomes. That's a big difference."
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

June 06, 2011 03:00 PM
The Tea-Party Utopia
By nonny mouse

"Nicholas Kristof had quite an interesting rumination imagining just what the ideal American society should look like according to the values of ultra-patriotic Tea-Partiers. Our country should have the lowest tax burdens of any major country: fewer than two percent of the people would ever pay any taxes. Government would be so limited that burdensome regulations could never kill jobs. Our American rightwing Eden would embrace traditional religious values and a conservative sensibility, where school prayer is mandatory, same-sex marriage is unthinkable, and criminals are never coddled.

Our economy policies would make a strong military, the nation’s most respected institution, the number-one budget priority, and politicians would defer to the advice of military generals. Citizens would be deeply patriotic, and nobody would ever burn the flag. Sounds like the perfect society according to the opinions of Tea Party Republicans and their champions, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, etc. Right?

The problem is, this Republican Utopia already exists.

It’s Pakistan."

Crooks and Liars

New York Times article here.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
User avatar
Dardedar
Site Admin
Posts: 8191
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 9:18 pm
Designate the number of cents in half a dollar: 0
Location: Fayetteville
Contact:

Re: Political Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

Barton: Founding Fathers Were Against Teaching Evolution;
Revolution Was Fought To End Slavery


Image

June 8, 2011

Pseudo-historian David Barton visited the Christian television program Celebration on the Daystar Television Network with host Jodi Lamb on Monday to discuss his right-wing, pro-GOP view of American history.

Barton, who says that the Founding Fathers like Ben Franklin opposed Net Neutrality, claims he also knows the views of the Founding Fathers in the debate over whether schools should teach Creationism alongside evolution in public schools. Naturally, Barton says that the Founding Fathers “already had the entire debate on creation and evolution,” and sided with Creationism. Of course, Charles Darwin wrote On The Origin of Species in 1859 andThe Descent of Man in 1871 – but apparently the Founding Fathers knew about evolution science:

[video]

"Barton continues to lash out at “deconstructionism” in the education system for distorting the truth about the Founding Fathers, arguing that the Founding Fathers did not support slavery or engage in the practice themselves. While Founding Fathers like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Patrick Henry were all slaveholders, Barton has created his own theory of the cause of the American Revolution: the Founding Fathers’ desire to reject the British Empire’s endorsement of slavery. “That’s why we said we want to separate from Britain, so we can end slavery,” Barton said:"

[video]

Rightwing Watch

As this Mother Jones article puts it:

"Barton explains that one of the main reasons that the colonies wanted to break away from England was because it would then become easier to abolish slavery. Anybody who has studied the basics of the American Revolution knows that the issue of slavery was tabled in order to secure approval of the Declaration of Independence. (For the record, Britain abolished slavery in 1833—32 years before the United States.)"

LINK
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
Post Reply