Political Quotes of the Day

[Dardedar]

[Dardedar]

"Bush/Cheney policies failed so spectacularly, Republican candidates and officeholders are generally reluctant to associate themselves with the tarnished name of the previous administration. But Bush/Cheney policies are still those of the contemporary Republican Party. Nothing has changed. Failure and defeat haven't chastened the GOP at all, and if given a chance to govern again, Republican leaders are quite anxious to return to the exact same agenda they embraced when they were in the majority.

And the political mainstream seems to think this is sane.

The same Republicans -- literally, the self-same individual people -- who were astonishingly wrong about pretty much every area of public policy in recent years, are the same Republicans who feel confident that they're still credible, knowledgeable, and correct. Not because they've changed their larger agenda or worldview, but because a brief period of time has elapsed.

They feel justified proposing a five-year spending freeze in response to the economic crisis. They feel comfortable pretending to care about the "death panels" policy they already endorsed, promoted, and voted for. They have no qualms making bitter complaints about deficits and debts after having spent most of the decade increasing the size of government, increasing federal spending, and creating of some of the largest deficits in American history.

We're not supposed to point and laugh at their humiliating ideas and attacks -- we're supposed to negotiate with them.

What's more, rejected in large numbers by voters nine months ago, and after spending the last seven months acting like confused children, these same Republicans now insist what they really deserve is to be back in the majority again. Seriously.

I suppose the word that keeps coming to mind is "consequences." The Republican Party of the Bush era failed in ways few have even tried, burdening the nation with challenges and crises that are difficult to address and painful to even think about. They believe, however, there should be no consequences for this. There's no need, they say, to alter their political beliefs at all. Indeed, they see their main goal as the loyal opposition to undermine efforts to clean up the mess they left. They're the arsonists hoping to convince the public not to have confidence in the fire department.

No penance, no consequences, no self-reflection -- only the expectation that they be treated as a serious group with a credible agenda."

Washington Monthly

[Savonarola]

[pic]

I love it, but I get a whiff of PhotoShop. Can anyone confirm?

[Doug]

[pic]

I love it, but I get a whiff of PhotoShop. Can anyone confirm?

DOUG
It looks like Toby McGuire with his hands up. Note that his fingers do not come in front of the sign. So how is he holding it? Are there handles on the back side?

[Dardedar]

"It must finally be clear to us all that the stumbling block to successful health/disease care reform has been definitively reduced to two words. They're not "public option" or "single payer", they're "Max Baucus".

He was not elected to eliminate the Democratic Majority in the Finance Committee, but that's what he's done. It was not mandated that he exclude a representative expert on single payer from his 15-person advisory board but that's what he did. More than that, he's filled his campaign coffers with millions of dollars of Insurance Company money, for heaven's sake."

Donald Sutherland

[Dardedar]

Well said:

***
"Indeed, if you spend any time with American right-wingers -- as I have, reporting undercover on events like the National Review cruise and the Christian Coalition Solidarity Tour of Israel -- you soon find that your arguments don't center on philosophy. You have to concentrate on correcting basic factual errors about the real world.

They insist Europe has fallen to Islam, since Muslims immigrants are becoming a majority and are imposing sharia law. In reality, Muslims make up 3 percent of the population of Europe, and most of them oppose sharia law. They insist Franklin Roosevelt caused the Great Depression, and should have cut government spending. In reality, whenever he did cut spending -- as he tried periodically throughout the 1930s -- the economy began to tank. But explain this patiently -- with a thousand sources -- and they simply shriek that you are lying, and they know "in their heart" what is true. They insist gay marriage would cause the institution of the family to collapse. In reality, where it has already been introduced in Europe, heterosexual families continue just as before. On the list goes: evolution is a lie, a blastocyst is akin to a baby, torture produces actionable intelligence...

How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality? It begins, I suspect, with religion. They are taught from a young age that it is good to have "faith" -- which is, by definition, a belief without any evidence to back it up. You don't have "faith" Australia exists, or fire burns: you have evidence. You only need "faith" to believe the untrue or unprovable. Indeed, they are taught that faith is the highest aspiration and most noble cause. Is it any surprise this then percolates into their political views? Faith-based thinking spreads and contaminates the rational."

The Republican Party Is Turning Into A Cult

DAR
Turning into?!

[Dardedar]

Joe Klein in TIME, talking about the crazy republicans:

The GOP Has Become a Party of Nihilists

Excerpt:

"There are conservatives — Senator Lamar Alexander, Representative Mike Pence, among many others — who make their arguments based on facts. But they have been overwhelmed by nihilists and hypocrites more interested in destroying the opposition and gaining power than in the public weal. The philosophically supple party that existed as recently as George H.W. Bush's presidency has been obliterated. The party's putative intellectuals — people like the Weekly Standard's William Kristol — are prosaic tacticians who make precious few substantive arguments but oppose health-care reform mostly because passage would help Barack Obama's political prospects. In 1993, when the Clintons tried health-care reform, the Republican John Chafee offered a creative (in fact, superior) alternative — which Kristol quashed with his famous "Don't Help Clinton" fax to the troops. There is no Republican health-care alternative in 2009. The same people who rail against a government takeover of health care tried to enforce a government takeover of Terri Schiavo's end-of-life decisions. And when Palin floated the "death panel" canard, the number of prominent Republicans who rose up to call her out could be counted on one hand. ...

An argument can be made that this is nothing new. Dwight Eisenhower tiptoed around Joe McCarthy. Obama reminded an audience in Colorado that opponents of Social Security in the 1930s "said that everybody was going to have to wear dog tags and that this was a plot for the government to keep track of everybody ... These struggles have always boiled down to a contest between hope and fear." True enough. There was McCarthyism in the 1950s, the John Birch Society in the 1960s. But there was a difference in those times: the crazies were a faction — often a powerful faction — of the Republican Party, but they didn't run it. The neofascist Father Coughlin had a huge radio audience in the 1930s, but he didn't have the power to control and silence the elected leaders of the party that Limbaugh — who, if not the party's leader, is certainly the most powerful Republican extant — does now. Until recently, the Republican Party contained a strong moderate wing. It was a Republican, the lawyer Joseph Welch, who delivered the coup de grâce to Senator McCarthy when he said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" Where is the Republican who would dare say that to Rush Limbaugh, who has compared the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler?"

TIME

[Dardedar]

'Truth' vs. 'facts' from America's media

Excerpt:

"...journalists would no doubt say that it isn't really their job to ferret out the "truth." It is their job to report "facts." If Palin says that Obama intends to euthanize her child, they report it. If Limbaugh says that Obama's healthcare plan smacks of Nazism, they report it. And if riled citizens begin shouting down their representatives, they report it, and report it, and report it. The more noise and the bigger the controversy, the greater the coverage. This creates a situation in which not only is the truth subordinate to lies, but one in which shameless lies are actually privileged over reasoned debate.

Don't think the militants don't know this and take full advantage of it. They know that the media, especially the so-called liberal mainstream media -- which are hardly liberal if assessed honestly -- refrain from attempting to referee arguments for fear that they will be accused by the right of taking sides. So rather than be battered, the media -- and I am talking about the respectable media, not the carnival barkers on cable -- increasingly strive for the simplest sort of balance rather than real objectivity. They marshal facts, but they don't seek truth. They behave as if every argument must be heard and has equal merit, when some are simply specious. That is how global warming, WMD and "end of life" counseling have become part of silly reportorial ping-pong at best and badly misleading information at worst."

LA Times

[Dardedar]

"You know, last time I checked, pharmaceutical companies don't make a lot of money."


--MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, the mayor of New York City and its wealthiest resident, saying drug companies have become scapegoats in the health-care debate, LINK

[L.Wood]

.

Warning: This is not a joke.


Cheney Accuses Obama Of Politicizing Justice Department

In a statement Monday evening, former Vice President Dick Cheney accused the Obama White House of politicizing the Justice Department and insisted that a new report on interrogation policies by the CIA proved the efficacy of torture.

Neither statement was correct.

Sending his remarks to the conservative Weekly Standard, Cheney insisted that President Obama had "allow[ed] the Justice Department to investigate and possibly prosecute CIA personnel."

Coming from members of an administration that put well-documented pressure on U.S. Attorneys to launch electorally-motivated investigations into Democrats, charges of politicizing the DOJ are slightly rich. But, more importantly, Cheney's remark ignores a consistent (and for progressives, irritating) theme of the Obama presidency. The White House has repeatedly stressed its preference not to launch an investigation into the use of torture. It would rather look forward, not back.

continue reading on HufPo

[Dardedar]

"And this is the cause of my life -- new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American -- north, south, east, west, young, old -- will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege."
--Ted Kennedy, Democratic convention, 2008 (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009)

[Dardedar]

Mike Enzi, Gang Of Six Republican, Admits He's Simply Blocking Health Care Reform

Enzi found himself under attack at the town hall simply for sitting in the same room as the three Finance Committee Democrats. Republicans in the crowd called for him to exit the talks. He assured conservatives that his presence was delaying health care reform.

"If I hadn't been involved in this process as long as I have and to the depth as I have, you would already have national health care," he said.

LINK

[Dardedar]

"The public option is hardly a cure-all: Among other things, it does nothing to reduce the $350 billion a year in unnecessary paperwork and administrative overhead that makes the current system so expensive and maddening. "That's one of the big issues," says an aide to a member of the progressive caucus. "None of this addresses the paperwork issue. It might even make it worse." But the basic idea of the public option is sound enough: create a government health plan that citizens could buy through regulated marketplaces called insurance "exchanges" run at the state level. Simply by removing the profit motive, the government plan would be cheaper than private insurance. "The goal here was to offer the rock-bottom price, the Walmart price, so that people could buy insurance practically at cost," says one Senate aide.

The logic behind the idea was so unassailable that its opponents often inadvertently found themselves arguing for it. "Assurances that the government plan would play by the rules that private insurers play by are implausible," groused right-wing douchebag George Will. "Competition from the public option must be unfair, because government does not need to make a profit and has enormous pricing and negotiating powers." In other words, if you offer a public plan that doesn't systematically fuck every single person in the country by selling health care at inflated prices and raking in monster profits, private insurers just won't be able to compete.

Will wasn't the only prominent opponent of reform openly arguing in favor of the insurance industry's right to continue doing business inefficiently. Sen. Ben Nelson, who together with Baucus are the Laverne and Shirley of turncoat Democrats, complained that the public option "would win the game." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell admitted that "private insurance will not be able to compete with a government option." This is a little like complaining that Keanu Reeves was robbed of an Oscar just because he can't act."

Sick and Wrong

[Dardedar]

"Once upon a time, the Senate was a shining beacon of at least semi-intelligent discourse -- living, breathing,
debating proof of the success of America's experiment in democracy. It was Rome, when Rome was in its heyday.
These days it's more like Rome right before the fall of the empire -- brimming with arrogance, stupidity, influence-peddling
and near-constant partisan hackery, and overrun by self-serving clowns drunk on their own grandiose sense of importance
and always on the lookout for the next illicit sexual encounter."
--Chez Pazienza, LINK


"The juxtaposition of President Obama with the disrespectful Joe Wilson is a true example of where this country's political system stands today.

One major party is not perfect by a longshot but has a true leader with a plan, dignity, poise, intelligence, passion and respect.

A marginalized little party of angry Southern white men who have no arguments so they propagate lies." LINK

[Dardedar]

From my Media Matters summary of Limbaugh's show today:

"Rush's adjectives for Obama's speech: Disgusting, reprehensible, predictable, grossly inappropriate, filled with lies and distortions, fraudulent, awful, petulant, childish, divisive, crude, disgusting"

And then:

Rush says "vitriol" in health care discussion coming from others, not himself

LIMBAUGH: "Mr. President, if you're gonna stop the name-calling, look inward, look inside the White House and the Old Executive Office Building and you tell your people to shut up. You tell your people to stop it. You get a hold of Paul Begala, you get a hold of James Carville, and you tell them to shut up. You get hold of your buddies over at MSNBC and you tell them to shut up. That's where the name-calling and the vitriol is coming from."

[Dardedar]

President Clinton's address regarding his health care plan from September 22, 1993.

Excerpt:

"Under our plan, every American would receive a health care security card that will guarantee a comprehensive package of benefits over the course of an entire lifetime, roughly comparable to the benefit package offered by most Fortune 500 companies. This health care security card will offer this package of benefits in a way that can never be taken away. So let us agree on this: Whatever else we disagree on, before this Congress finishes its work next year, you will pass and I will sign legislation to guarantee this security to every citizen of this country.

With this card, if you lose your job or you switch jobs, you're covered. If you leave your job to start a small business, you're covered. If you're an early retiree, you're covered. If someone in your family has unfortunately had an illness that qualifies as a preexisting condition, you're still covered. If you get sick or a member of your family gets sick, even if it's a life-threatening illness, you're covered. And if an insurance company tries to drop you for any reason, you will still be covered, because that will be illegal. This card will give comprehensive coverage. It will cover people for hospital care, doctor visits, emergency and lab services, diagnostic services like Pap smears and mammograms and cholesterol tests, substance abuse, and mental health treatment.

And equally important, for both health care and economic reasons, this program for the first time would provide a broad range of preventive services including regular checkups and well baby visits. Now, it's just common sense. We know, any family doctor will tell you, that people will stay healthier and long-term costs of the health system will be lower if we have comprehensive preventive services. You know how all of our mothers told us that an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure? Our mothers were right. And it's a lesson, like so many lessons from our mothers, that we have waited too long to live by. It is time to start doing it.

...

The second principle is simplicity. Our heath care system must be simpler for the patients and simpler for those who actually deliver health care: our doctors, our nurses, our other medical professionals. Today we have more than 1,500 insurers, with hundreds and hundreds of different forms. No other nation has a system like this. These forms are time consuming for health care providers. They're expensive for health care consumers. They're exasperating for anyone who's ever tried to sit down around a table and wade through them and figure them out.

The medical care industry is literally drowning in paperwork. In recent years, the number of administrators in our hospitals has grown by 4 times the rate that the number of doctors has grown. A hospital ought to be a house of healing, not a monument to paperwork and bureaucracy."

Crooks & Liars

[Dardedar]

"New Rule: The Obama Birthers, the 9/11 Truthers, and the moon landing deniers must merge their theories so we can have all the batshit in the same place. And then we'll take away the Internet so that you can communicate your theories the old fashioned way: by sitting on a park bench yelling at a pigeon." --Bill Maher

[Dardedar]

"Community service is the first step toward fascism." --Rush Limbaugh, Sept 14, 2009

[Doug]

Congressman Joe Wilson's wife Roxanne has waded into the fray with this campaign video supporting her husband as he continues to be criticized for his outburst during president Obama's speech to Congress. She says she spoke with her husband after Obama's speech and asked him, "Joe, who's the nut that hollered out, 'you lie'?'" When he told her it was him she says she didn't believe him at first.

See here.

[Savonarola]

When he told her it was him she says she didn't believe him at first.

Right. It was such a dumbass thing to do, even the dumbass's wife didn't think that her husband's dumbassery extended to that level.