Political Quotes of the Day

[Dardedar]

Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy

"In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama's appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday witnessed the president-elect's unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.

But Mr. Obama's decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring.

According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, some Americans might find it "alienating" to have a president who speaks English as if it were his first language.

"Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement," says Mr. Logsdon. "If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist."

The historian said that if Mr. Obama insists on using complete sentences in his speeches, the public may find itself saying, "Okay, subject, predicate, subject predicate -- we get it, stop showing off."

The president-elect's stubborn insistence on using complete sentences has already attracted a rebuke from one of his harshest critics, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

"Talking with complete sentences there and also too talking in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder can't really do there, I think needing to do that isn't tapping into what Americans are needing also," she said.

***
Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and at his award-winning humor site, BorowitzReport.com.

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[Dardedar]

"...a combined total of at least $711 billion will be appropriated for national defense and military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in FY 2009. This means the United States will spend significantly more, in inflation-adjusted dollars, for defense in FY 2009 than it did during the peak years of the Korean War (1953; $545 billion), the Vietnam War (1968; $550 billion), or the 1980s Reagan-era buildup (1989; $522 billion).[19] The United States is also projected to spend more on defense in FY 2009 than the next 45 highest spending countries combined, including 5.8 times more than China (second highest), 10.2 times more than Russia (third highest), and 98.6 times more than Iran (22d highest). Indeed, the United States is expected to account for 48 percent of the world’s total military spending in FY 2009." [20]

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19. Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2009
20. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2008 (London: Routledge, 2008), 443-50.

[Dardedar]

"To anyone familiar with socialism, Obama's programs fit comfortably within the pages of Karl Marx's playbook, the root of which is the redistribution of the wealth, the key to the entire Obamian vault." -- Michael Reagan, Oct. 30, NewsMax.com,

"That's why maybe 30% of conservatives voted for barack obama or didn't vote at all because his message literally — at the end of the campaign — was a conservative campaign. It was Ronald Reaganesque." --Michael Reagan, this morning.

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[L.Wood]

.


Michael Reagan is bullshit. The entire Rwingnut collection, to save them from fair taxation, must constantly
invent something new, as in fear, for the masses to be distracted over. In fact, according to the distinguished professor
of Linguistics at MIT, Noam Chomsky, the population of the U.S. is not so conservative:

Actually what happened here [BHO election] is understood by elite elements. The public relations industry which runs elections here-quadrennial extravaganzas essentially- makes sure to keep issues in the margins and focus on personalities and character and so on–and-so forth. They do that for good reasons. They know- they look at public opinion studies and they know perfectly well that on a host of major issues both parties are well to the right of the population. That’s one good reason to keep issues off the table. And they recognize the success.

So, every year, the advertising industry gives a prize to, you know, to the best marketing campaign of the year. This year, Obama won the prize. Beat out Apple company. The best marketing campaign of 2008. Which is correct, it is essentially what happened. Now that’s quite different from what happens in a functioning democracy like say Bolivia or Haiti, except for the fact that it was crushed.

Democracy Now Interview, Nov 24, 2008

.

[Dardedar]

Karen DeYoung at the WaPo:

"...according to several senior officers and civilian Pentagon officials who would speak about their incoming leader only on the condition of anonymity, is the expectation of renewed respect for the chain of command and greater realism about U.S. military goals and capabilities, which many found lacking during the Bush years.

"Open and serious debate versus ideological certitude will be a great relief to the military leaders," said retired Maj. Gen. William L. Nash of the Council on Foreign Relations. Senior officers are aware that few in their ranks voiced misgivings over the Iraq war, but they counter that they were not encouraged to do so by the Bush White House or the Pentagon under Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"The joke was that when you leave a meeting, everybody is supposed to drink the Kool-Aid," Nash said. "In the Bush administration, you had to drink the Kool-Aid before you got to go to the meeting."

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[Dardedar]

Requiem for a Maverick

John McCain ran one of the most incompetent, schizo campaigns in history — and for that we owe him big-time

MATT TAIBBI
Posted Nov 27, 2008

Excerpt:

"It sounds strange to say, but this election season may have done to the word "Republican" what 1972 did for the word "liberal": turned it into a poisonous sobriquet that no politician with bipartisan aspirations will ever again welcome. The Republicans didn't just break the party — they left it smashed into space dust. They weren't just beaten; the very idea of Republican conservatism was massively rejected in virtually every state where large chunks of the population do not believe in the literal existence of a horned devil, and even in some that do.

They lost in every way imaginable, on every political front. The symbol of their anti-gay crusade, Colorado congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, was beheaded. The party that had made so much hay running against Mexicans saw noted anti-immigration crusader Bill Sali of Idaho ousted along with several other members of the Immigration Reform Caucus. The GOP's grasp on the so-called "moral values" issue likewise went up in roaring flames, with Rep. Vito Fossella of Staten Island the poster child — his morals were once so perfect that he refused to be seen with his gay sister, and now he's a national joke, bounced after being caught drunk driving and having unprotected, babymaking sex with a married Air Force officer.

The ironic thing is that the destruction of the Republican Party was a two-part process. Their president, George W. Bush, did most of the work by making virtually every mistake possible in his two terms, reducing the mightiest economy on Earth to the status of a beggar-debtor nation like Pakistan or Zambia. This was fucking up on a scale known only to a select few groups in history, your Romanovs, your Habsburgs, maybe the Han Dynasty, which pissed away a golden age of Chinese history by letting eunuchs take over the state. But John McCain and Sarah Palin made their own unique contribution to the disaster by running perhaps the most incompetent presidential campaign in modern times. They compounded a millionfold Bush's legacy of incompetence by soiling both possible Republican ideological strategies going forward: They killed off Bush-style neoconservatism as well as the more traditional fiscal conservatism McCain himself was once known for by trying to fuse both approaches into one gorgeously incoherent ticket. It was like trying to follow the recipes for Texas 10-alarm chili and a three-layer Black Forest chocolate cake in the same pan at the same time. The result — well, just take a bite!"

Rolling Stone

[Dardedar]

"Last night, on Fox News, Sean Hannity insisted that United States needs to "take out" Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. [Pastor Rick] Warren said he agreed. Hannity asked, "Am I advocating something dark, evil or something righteous?" Warren responded, "Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped.... In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers."

Read the rest here...

[Dardedar]

"In 2012, we'll have Sarah Palin to clean up Obama's mess
and remind us again of America's exceptionalism.
-- Z. Dwight Billingsly, Link

[The Physicist]

Link to mr. bigglesworth: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/c ... enDocument

"COMMENTING RULES: We encourage an open exchange of ideas in the STLtoday community, but we ask you to follow our guidelines. Basically, be civil, smart, on-topic and free from profanity. Don't say anything you wouldn't want your mother to read! And remember: We may miss some, so we need your help to police these comments. Please identify the comment, the story and why you think it's objectionable. "

This was posted at the bottom of the blog that Mr. Billingsly is quoted from above. You should read this blog and then ask yourself...would you want YOUR mother to hear you commence on such an ignorant and racist rant? Who the hell is this guy! Mr. Billingsly here gives cause to regret the fact that people don't often implement racial slurs in public speech any longer. Sometimes racial slurs serve to substantially increase the effectiveness of communication. For example, if Mr. Billingsly would have begun his rant by simply stating "We got us a nigger in office", he would have successfully conveyed his thoughts and I would have been able to immediately access the quality of his character as well as his intellectual prowess and would not have wasted the next ten minutes of my valuable time reading what he had to say.

[L.Wood]

TAXING COW FARTS
Farmers vow to fight proposed tax on cow flatulence

Story By: Jamie Smith
Source:NBC
4 day(s) ago

You might see cows as a source of milk, but the Environmental Protection Agency sees them as a source of methane gas, the kind that traps heat in the earth's atmosphere and contributes to global warming.

"You can hear them burp as they ruminate, when they bring back up to chew it again. That's what emits the methane," explained dairy farmer Charlie Hanehan of Saratoga, New York. The EPA has floated the idea of taxing farmers for each of their cows.

Hanehan estimates it would cost about $175 per cow, per year. He milks 1,300 cows. "It would probably be around $230,000 per year for our dairies," Hanehan said. "You can figure that that's pretty much going to wipe us out."

So Hanehan and other New York farmers are asking Congress to step in to make sure this idea of taxing farms for flatulence is expelled swiftly.

New York Representative Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, says the whole idea stinks. "The first thing I'm going to do is call the chairman of our Agriculture Committee and talk to him about this and how it's upset my farmers and ask him how quickly we can get this done," she said.

The idea of a gas tax on cows has been raised in other countries, but was blocked by the farming community.

[Dardedar]

[Dardedar]

"Bush told Charlie Gibson, "Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in
to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld." Bush has been
peddling this brazen falsehood for years. It's even possible he's come to believe it.

In reality, Iraq produced a 12,000-page document on Dec. 7, 2002, explaining the destruction
of its chemical and biological weapons. Despite some foot-dragging, Saddam then allowed U.N.
inspectors to travel at will inside Iraq searching for forbidden weapons. The inspectors remained
until March 2003 when Bush ordered them out ahead of his "shock and awe" bombing campaign.

The U.N. inspectors' activities were broadcast on TV daily for weeks. The same kinds of easily
manipulated patriots doubtless infuriated by this column were then focusing their ire on chief arms
inspector Hans Blix.

All conveniently forgotten by Bush, his followers and our intrepid press corps,
no longer so much covering for a failed president as for themselves."

--Gene Lyons, NWA News

[Doug]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Nearly $9 billion of money spent on Iraqi reconstruction is unaccounted for because of inefficiencies and bad management, according to a watchdog report published Sunday.

An inspector general's report said the U.S.-led administration that ran Iraq until June 2004 is unable to account for the funds.

"Severe inefficiencies and poor management" by the Coalition Provisional Authority has left auditors with no guarantee the money was properly used," the report said.

"The CPA did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial and contractual controls to ensure that [Development Fund for Iraq] funds were used in a transparent manner," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., director of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

The $8.8 billion was reported to have been spent on salaries, operating and capital expenditures, and reconstruction projects between October 2003 and June 2004, Bowen's report concluded.

The money came from revenues from the United Nations' former oil-for-food program, oil sales and seized assets -- all Iraqi money. The audit did not examine the use of U.S. funds appropriated for reconstruction.

Auditors were unable to verify that the Iraqi money was spent for its intended purpose. In one case, they raised the possibility that thousands of "ghost employees" were on an unnamed ministry's payroll.

"CPA staff identified at one ministry that although 8,206 guards were on the payroll, only 602 guards could be validated," the audit report states. "Consequently, there was no assurance funds were not provided for ghost employees."

See here.

[Dardedar]

"The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq. “What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.

“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said. “My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”

NY Times

[The Physicist]

"Bush told Charlie Gibson, "Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in
to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld."

This isn't true? I thought this was actually the case. I would loke to know a bit more....where should I look.

[Doug]

This isn't true? I thought this was actually the case. I would loke to know a bit more....where should I look.

Here.

Here too.

[Doug]

Al Qaeda was not in Iraq before we invaded. Bush response: So what?

Bush interviewed on ABC:

BUSH: One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take–

MARTHA RADDATZ: But not until after the U.S. invaded.

BUSH: Yeah, that’s right. So what? The point is that al Qaeda said they’re going to take a stand. Well, first of all in the post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat. And then upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a stand.

See here.

Of course, don't forget that Bush has already admitted that the war in Iraq has "nothing" to do with 9/11:

See video clip here.

[Dardedar]

"Many of the familiar figures and institutions that should be permanently discredited by their roles in
the Clinton drama have emerged again to smear Obama. Newsmax, the big right-wing Web site
founded by Richard Mellon Scaife, sugar daddy of the Arkansas Project, dispatches daily news alerts
with blaring headlines: "Obama Birth Certificate Battle Not Over" and "Obama, Blagojevich Tied to
Same 'Godfather.'" Rush Limbaugh, who has never stopped hinting that the Clintons murdered
Vince Foster, no matter how many investigations concluded that Foster's death was a tragic suicide,
now wonders how Obama could be unaware of "all this stuff swirling around him."

Such are the "questions" darkening the great forensic brains of the right. "Did Barack Obama's transition
team know this was going on? Heck, did Barack Obama himself know this was going on?" demands radio
talker Neal Boortz. And asking a question is tantamount to winning a conviction, or at least an indictment,
according to the perverse norms of discourse established during the last Democratic administration
-- or what my friend and coauthor Gene Lyons calls 'the Clinton rules.'" --Joe Conason

Bartcop adds:
"We knew this would happen. The Nazi right will vilify Obama and they'll fabricate
scandal after scandal just like they did with the Clintons.

The worst part is - the Left will believe half of it - just like they did with the Clintons.
In eight years, Obama will hated by the Left - because we eat our own."

DAR
Yesterday, Lynn Samuels, a radio commentator and Obama hater on Sirus Left said that Obama having pastor Rick Warren involved in his inauguration was the same as having a nazi in the event. She said there was "no difference." She asked, "is he going to require Jews at the event to wear gold stars too?"

This is insane. America's problems are systemic, huge and far larger than any politician or any political party or all political parties put together. The US has to get past this divisive tit for tat, right hates left, left hates right mentality that has thrived under Bush. It's a waste of time and energy. It's childish and stupid.

[Doug]

Republican National Committee chief says: The GOP needs new ideas and has not been helping the middle class.


In a frank and private memo sent today to Republican National Commitee members, the RNC chairman acknowledges that the GOP has grown too addicted to ideology, places politics before policy, and is bereft of ideas -- and that it's imperative that the party shift towards a genuine effort to develop concrete policy solutions to people's problems in order to rescue itself.

The memo, which we obtained from a Republican operative. was written by RNC chief Mike Duncan to explain the RNC's decision -- first reported by Politico -- to create a new in-house think tank called the "Center for Republican Renewal," which is devoted to coming up with new policies and ideas to chart a new direction for the party after November's devastating losses.

"...It was in light of this history that I decided in early November to commit the RNC to a similar, policy-focused effort. Republicans have grown accustomed to having our party recognized as the "Party of Ideas," but we must acknowledge that many Americans today believe the party is stale and does not deserve that label. This is not a critique of our principles of a strong national defense, growth-focused economics, constitutionally-limited government, and a defense of traditional values. Rather, it is a reflection that we have not used our principles to provide solutions to the kitchen table concerns of middle-class America."

See here.

[Dardedar]

Scientists eager for stem cell policy change
By Jeffrey Young

Although President-elect Obama’s pledge to change federal policy on stem cell research is not likely to lead to new cures by the end of his first year — or even first term — the scientific community is eager to get moving....

During the campaign, Obama pledged to take swift action:

“As president, I will lift the current administration’s ban on federal funding of research on embryonic stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001 through executive order, and I will ensure that all research on stem cells is conducted ethically and with rigorous oversight,” Obama wrote to the website ScienceDebate2008.com.

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