Political Quotes of the Day

[Dardedar]

Santorum refers to language of Qur’an as ‘Islamic.’»

Yesterday, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) delivered “a lecture on Islam” at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Santorum argued that the American public knows too little about the Islamic faith, and to prove his point, he asked the students whether they knew the difference between Sunnis and Shias. Only three audience members raised their hands. He continued:

Santorum said he believes Muslims’ religious views cannot be changed or altered, so Middle Easterners reject American, democratic ideals.

“A democracy could not exist because Mohammed already made the perfect law,” Santorum said. “The Quran is perfect just the way it is, that’s why it is only written in Islamic.”

As a self-anointed scholar of Islam, it’s surprising that Santorum would assert that the Qur’an is “written in Islamic.” It is, of course, originally written in Arabic. Islam is not a language, but rather a religion. Santorum concluded, “I think that if every citizen was fully informed about the war, it would create a commonality between faiths.” Indeed, much work remains to be done.

Link

[Dardedar]

"So, will the highest level of government be receptive to the bank-nationalization idea? "I think it will," Mr. Roubini says, unhesitatingly. "People like Graham and Greenspan have already given their explicit blessing. This gives Obama cover." And how long will it be before the administration goes in formally for nationalization? "I think that we're going to see the policy adopted in the next few months . . . in six months or so."

That long? I ask. "Six months from now," he replies, "even firms that today look solvent are going to look insolvent. Most of the major banks -- almost all of them -- are going to look insolvent. In which case, if you take them all over all at once, you cause less damage than if you would if you took over a couple now, and created so much confusion and panic and nervousness."

Nouriel Roubini, Wall Street Journal

[Dardedar]

"In the end, however, if we want to rebuild our economy and restore discipline and honesty to our budget, we will need to change the way we do business here in Washington. We're not going to be able to fall back into the same old habits, and make the same inexcusable mistakes: The repeated failure to act as our economy spiraled deeper into crisis. The casual dishonesty of hiding irresponsible spending with clever accounting tricks. The costly overruns, the fraud and abuse, the endless excuses. This is exactly what the American people rejected when they went to the polls. They sent us here to usher in a new era of responsibility in Washington, to start living within our means again, and being straight with them about where their tax dollars are going, and empowering them with all the information they need to hold all of us, their representatives, accountable." --Obama, today


"Obama is a radical communist, and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois and now everybody realizes it's true," said Keyes, who ran unsuccessfully against Obama for the state's open Senate seat in 2004. "He is going to destroy this country, and we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist." --Alan Keyes, a clinically insane person and hopefully a future leader in the republican party, Link

[Dardedar]

DAR
You can tell who has been getting their talking points from Limbaugh. Chris Matthews takes Darrell Issa to task on Hardball for using the term "Democrat Party."

***
"Matthews: Well, I think the Democratic Party calls itself the Democratic Party, not the Democrat Party. Do we have to do this every night? Why do people talk like this? Is this just fighting words to get the name wrong?

Issa: This isn't intended to be fighting words.

Matthews: They call themselves the Democratic Party. Let's just call people what they call themselves and stop the uh, the Mickey Mouse here. Save that for the stump-seriously.

Issa: Chris, Chris."

link

[L.Wood]

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-Alan Keyes, a clinically insane person and hopefully a future leader in the republican party,

Let's rephrase that: 'A future leader of a clinically insane party.'

.

[Dardedar]

"It's about time a presidential budget uneqivocally redistributed income from the very rich to the middle class and poor. The incomes of the top 1 percent have soared for thirty years while median wages have slowed or declined in real terms. As economists Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez have shown, in the 1970s the top-earning 1 percent of Americans took home 8 percent of total income; as recently as 1980 they took home 9 percent. After that, total income became more and more concentrated at the top. By 2007, the top 1 percent took home over 22 percent. Meanwhile, even as their incomes dramatically increased, the total federal tax rates paid by the top 1 percent dropped. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 1 percent paid a total federal tax rate of 37 percent three decades ago; now it's paying 31 percent." --Robert Reich

[L.Wood]

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Reich-
the top 1 percent paid a total federal tax rate of 37 percent three decades ago; now it's paying 31 percent.

This is true. However, the devil is in the details but the macro effect of cutting taxes=economic stimulus is a myth
as the article indirectly reveals.

Thirty years ago I was a finance-accounting major and worked part time in a CPA firm doing income tax returns.
It was a top flight firm and so were the fees so mostly higher income people used the services. Thirty years ago
there were not the numerous deductions and opportunities for complete avoidance that exist today. Deferred compensation
was not a tool of tax avoidance back then. Today it is. Back then the capital gains tax was an effective 20-22%. Today it
is 15%. That's how many wealthy people's income flows to them, via capital gains, especially if they are in a buy/sell
activity. Off-shoring businesses to completely evade income taxes were almost unheard of thirty years ago. Now it is
celebrated.

From my limited individual and corporate experience I can tell you that back thirty years ago few paid the full 37%. If they
did they had a poor accountant. I haven't been involved with the tax code for many years but my guess is the tiger has
not changed stripes.

It's very doubtful very many actually pay today's top 31% rate.

There's truth in the rates but the special deductions and provisions, too numerous to mention, have increased out of proportion.

.

[Dardedar]

DAR
Exactly right Larry.

A book review of Joe the plumber's new book:

"RINO spinmeisters, aided and abetted by the liberal media, have promoted Joe the Plumber as being an everyman, the archetypical "average American." This book shatters that image.

Joe the Plumber is not the "average American." He's the "average conservative," and I thank God for that.

Last year, the "average American" elected an Harvard educated constitutional law professor to the presidency. Average conservatives knew better. They rallied behind Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin, people like ourselves; people I proudly call "mediocre Americans."

And that's why Joe is still so immensely popular. He's angry, vicious, ignorant, and intellectually incurious. He's one of us, and like us, he didn't learn about public policy and international relations at a university or from books or journals; he learned everything he needed to know by tuning into Rush, Hannity, Savage, and Ingraham.

This is a great book, one every true conservative should buy, and more importantly, read. Yes, I know that sounds like a tall order, but it's an easy read. Joe uses one and two syllable words (many of them, written forms of various grunts) almost exclusively. If I have one complaint, it's that the publisher, Pearlgate, printed it in ink rather than crayon like the original manuscript. Other than that, I think it truly is the perfect book for the average conservative."

Jesus General

[Betsy]

Governor Jindal: "I think Rush is a great leader for conservatives."

Chairman Michael Steele: "I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh."

Congressman Mike Pence: "I think Rush Limbaugh -- who I admire, and like millions of Americans, I cherish his voice in the public debate."

Why the GOP is Screwing Itself

[Dardedar]

I wonder if estimates of how big the deficit is going to be take into consideration the tremendous decrease in revenue the government is going to experience when so many less people are working (and paying taxes) and less taxes are paid due to lower profits and less people paying on capital gains (stock market cut in half).

And the Stimulus probably isn't big enough:

"Analysts increasingly view the administration's actions so far as insufficient given the scope of the problem. The stimulus package was designed to "save or create" 3.5 million jobs, according to the administration. But the nation has already lost 4.4 million jobs since the start of the recession. Many banks and other financial institutions, whose health is critical to the economy, are teetering, and the Treasury Department has yet to finalize the details of its plans to remove from their balance sheets the toxic assets dragging them down.

"It's premature to say we need another stimulus, but the economy is performing much worse than when [the law] was signed, and the odds are increasing that we'll need a bigger policy response," said Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com, who has advised Democratic lawmakers. "What we've learned is policy has been a step behind this whole downturn. It's important to get a step ahead."

Washington Post

[Dardedar]

"An ugly, terrifying big picture of an ugly, terrifying little man. The premise, apparently, is that the Republican Party needs a Gingrich-like politician to reinvigorate the party, and the man himself is more than willing. To be sure, Gingrich is the right man for the job… but not why you think.

Gingrich embodies the anti-intellectual, hypocritical, catchprase-soaked Sarah Palin wing of the Republican Party. This is the man who tried to ride Bill Clinton out of town for marital infidelity, all the while carrying on with a young lady of his own; the man who invented the beguilingly over-simplifying “drill here, drill now”; and the man who spends his time (erroneously) mythologizing Ronald Reagan rather than coming up with new ideas. He won’t reinvigorate the GOP. Rather, he’ll evaluate the hole the party’s dug for itself, and happily tell them to keep digging. There’s almost no reason to think his experience fighting the last Democratic president has any application to fighting this one. Bill Clinton’s victory came on the heels of a (sadly) successful conservative revolution, a legacy that Gingrich kept alive and required Clinton to fight every step of the way. Gingrich then had a glorious recent conservative past to hearken back to, to sway moderates and enliven the base. Gingrich now has to look back twenty years to get the first glimmer of new blood in the party’s veins. It’s not an enviable place to be in, for sure, and there’s no sign that Gingrich has the wherewithal to turn it around."

a candid world

[Dardedar]

"Until Limbaugh gets real, weans himself off the big salary and runs for office, he will always be nothing more than a poorly educated, marginally talented buffoon who has developed a real talent for manipulating the G-spot of the neocon consciousness and massaging the hate gland of so many economically displaced white voters in America." --Alec Baldwin, Link

[Dardedar]

"We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010,..." "Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint." --Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., describing the Republican strategy right now. Destruction politics.

[Dardedar]

"I'm being driven nearly mad by the new Republican line propagated by McCain and Shelby that we need to "let these banks fail" instead of nationalizing them.

On Shuster today, Krugman very calmly explained that if what they mean by "letting them fail" is that we put them into receivership, then they're right. After all that's what the FDIC is doing about twice a week now with banks all over the country. If it makes these bozos feel better to call it "letting them fail" rather than "nationalization" that's fine with me. Maybe that's a good way to phrase it. Unfortunately, it's pretty obvious that they don't understand it that way. They think these banks can go "bankrupt," just close the doors and stop operating like the corner hardware store. Apparently they don't understand that the government has to take over banks that are deemed to have failed

The campaign showed that McCain is one of the dumbest members of congress on economics and it's clearer ever day that the world dodged a bullet with that one. It's bad enough that we are all feel like our minds are swimming in quicksand when it comes to understanding this banking crisis. To have these "leaders" out there saying completely stupid things in the face of it is simply breathtaking."
--Digby

[Dardedar]

Republican strategists have [a] strategy [of]: portraying the president, with each passing day, as more and more responsible for the current crisis.

Asked about this line of attack, replete with phrases like the "Obama recession," Secretary LaHood [a republican] offered a similarly ardent rebuke. If blame is to be cast, he declared, it can only, at this point, lie with the previous White House.

"This is not an Obama recession," he said. "He inherited all of this. He inherited a $1 trillion dollar debt. He inherited the recession. He inherited the lousy stock market. All of this was inherited. The guy has been in office a little over a month and what he has tried to do is listen to every economist he could listen to. And he put in place some opportunities to get people to work quickly through the transportation bill portion of it, to help the banks, and to help the real estate industry. And it is going to take time." Link

[Dardedar]

"After September 11th having been hit once how could we take a chance that Saddam might strike again? And that's the threat that has been removed and I think we are all safer with that threat removed."
--former GW Bush spokesman, Ari Fleischer, still passing along the baldfaced lie that 9/11 was an attack by Saddam. Huff Po

[Savonarola]

Fleischer, still passing along the baldfaced lie that 9/11 was an attack by Saddam. Huff Po

I watched this on Hardball. The thing is that Fleischer did it so well, so straight-faced, that it was totally believable, and Chris Matthews didn't go apeshit about it the way he should have. Plus, Fleischer busted Matthews on multiple occasions for mildly sloppy terminology, such that Fleischer really came away looking good, I thought. Matthews got beaten at his own game.

[Dardedar]

"No, Glenn, look, I'm not going to soft-pedal this with you, I'm not going to try to blow smoke either. The reality of it is you are absolutely right. You have absolutely no reason -- none -- to trust our word or our actions at this point"
--Michael Steele to Glenn Beck, speaking for republicans as the chairman of the Republican National Committee Link

[Doug]

The thing is that Fleischer did it so well, so straight-faced, that it was totally believable, and Chris Matthews didn't go apeshit about it the way he should have.

DOUG
I saw it too. In Tweetybird's defense, I think he was just so digusted by Fleischer by the end of the interview he just wanted it to be over. He probably wasn't even listening closely by that time.

[Dardedar]

DOUG
I saw it too. In Tweetybird's defense, I think he was just so digusted by Fleischer by the end of the interview he just wanted it to be over. He probably wasn't even listening closely by that time.

DAR
Well I think he did respond to the obvious whopper from Fleischer but perhaps he thought it was so obvious he could do it rather subtly. Here is what he said in response:

"Matthews: "I'm proud that we no longer have an administration that uses that kind of argument...and the American people are too."

By "that kind" he may have meant "completely bogus/dishonest."

So he used a softball after tossing quite a few (I agree mostly ineffective) hardballs.

D.