Political Quotes of the Day

[Savonarola]

This woman is so goddamn stupid she has to write crib notes on her hand?

Somebody rightfully pointed out that there's nothing automatically awful about having a reminder, even if it has to be written on a hand. (It's not even as dishonest as having a wireless radio receiver in one's ear.) However, it should be pointed out that Palin took a shot at Obama's use of a teleprompter while the writing was on her hand! And let's not forget that Obama kicked House Republican ass on the fly with no notes or teleprompter just a few days ago.

We'd love to be outraged at the blatant dishonesty and shameless hypocrisy, but this is exactly what we expect from neocons, particularly Palin. (If I call her a dumbass, will she be outraged at my insulting dumbasses everywhere?) It's hard to be outraged when you can set you watch by it.

And what does she write?

This is the kicker, though. She needed to be reminded on the fly of the most important issues facing the country according to the Tea Party crowd. This is like me needing to be reminded what an atom is while teaching chemistry; if my understanding of chemistry is so bereft that I simply don't know the most major points, I shouldn't be teaching chemistry. Why do people think she'd be a good person to lead the country in addressing these "problems"?

This leaves only one question: Who has greater mental problems, Palin, or her supporters?

[Dardedar]

That's true. Having a card with notes would be no big deal. But writing the word "Tax" on your hand? I say again W.T.F.? It's like we live in a Saturday Night Live sketch.

[Betsy]

go to comedy central's website and watch jon stewart's bit on Sarah Palin's speech that was on last night - hilarious

[Dardedar]

Spotted at Sarah Palin's rally for Rick Perry in Houston on Sunday by Bryan Fotographer at the Houston Press

Link

[Dardedar]

Jonathan Kay at Newsweek -- a self-identified mainstream conservative:

"After I spent the weekend at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, Tenn., it has become clear to me that the movement is dominated by people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality. It's more John Birch than John Adams. ...

That doesn't say much for the state of the right in America. The tea partiers' tricornered hat is supposed to be a symbol of patriotism and constitutional first principles. But when you take a closer look, all you find is a helmet made of tin foil."

Link

[Dardedar]

"[Bill] Gates said the deadline for the world to cut all of its carbon emissions is 2050. He suggested that researchers spend the next 20 years inventing and perfecting clean-energy technologies, and then the next 20 years implementing them.

The world's energy portfolio should not include coal or natural gas, he said, and must include carbon capture and storage technology as well as nuclear, wind and both solar photovoltaics and solar thermal power.

According to CNN, Gates spent a large portion of his speech endorsing technology that could turn spent uranium fuel rods into clean energy. Gates told the audience that the technology could power the world indefinitely, and that the U.S. could be powered for 100 years using the spent fuel rods already in its possession.

Gates told the audience that climate change will cause poverty and famine that will disproportionately affect the world's poorest people."

Huff Po

[Dardedar]

Bill Maher notes:

Palin's crib notes to "cut taxes" were like Wile E. Coyote having "Roadrunner" written on his palm.

[Dardedar]

Liz Cheney, while bitching about how we followed the rule of law and implemented due process for the people we prosecuted, stumbles into giving us the non sequiter of the week:

"...when we prosecuted and convicted people after the '93 World Trade Center bombing and East Africa bombing, what it got us was 9/11 and 3,000 dead Americans." Link

Papa Cheney was on This Week (ABC) this morning. I thought he did very poorly and the host had him on defense most of the time. Biden was on Meet the Press letting Cheney have it with both barrels:

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Let me choose my words carefully here. Dick Cheney's a fine fellow. He's entitled to his own opinion. He's not entitled to rewrite history. He's not entitled to his own facts. The Christmas Day Bomber was treated the exact way that he suggested that the Shoe Bomber was treated. Absolutely the same way. Under the Bush Administration there were three trials in military courts. Two of those people are now walking the streets. They are free.

There were 300 trials of so-called terrorists and those who engage in terror against the United States of America who are in federal prison and have not seen the light of day. Prosecuted under the last Administration. Dick Cheney's a fine fellow, but he is not entitled to rewrite history without it being challenged. I don't know where he has been. Where was he the last four years of the last Administration?...

I'm not gonna guess about his motive. All I know is he's factually, substantively wrong. On the major criticisms he is asserting. Why he's insisting on that. He either is misinformed or he is misinforming. But the facts are that his assertions are not accurate.

...I'm not being facetious. Maybe he's not fully informed of what's going on. I mean, the progress we have made. There has never been as much emphasis and resources brought against Al Qaeda. The success rate exceeds anything that occurred in the last Administration. And they did their best. I'm not-- I'm not impugning their effort. It's simply not true that the President of the United States is not prosecuting the war against Al Qaeda with a vigor that's never been seen before. It's real. It's deep. It's successful." C & R

[Dardedar]

Big Dog's... Quote of the Day:

"The liberals were the KKK and they were the Democrats. The progressives as you call them are evil and will move us closer to socialism. Conservatism is not about conserving the past (you libs wanted that when you opposed the end of slavery and allowing civil rights). Conservatism is about continuity and conserving the Constitution."

LINK

[kwlyon]

Ouch...that is more than a little bit of fail...hey do me a favor would you? Ask him if he is the same bigdog that used to show up on FreeHovind.com before he tucked tail and ducked out. If so tell him he is a raving coward for me. And that he needs to grow up. When we discover that we are wrong, we accept it and adapt our beliefs. We do NOT tuck tail and duck out of a board and then continue to spew that which we now know to be bullshit even louder in an evident attempt to re-delude ourselves.

Kevin.

[Dardedar]

Ask him if he is the same bigdog that used to show up on FreeHovind.com before he tucked tail and ducked out.

DAR
Quite certain it is not him, he doesn't have much interest in (or knowledge of) creationism. But ask him, I gave the link to the post.

[Dardedar]

"26 years ago,... I was the youngest elected member of the state delegation to the Republican National Convention, but not today. I'm not sure if I left the Republican Party or the party left me. All I know is that I no longer feel comfortable.

The national GOP is a party of exclusion and litmus tests, dominated on social issues by the religious right, with zero discernible outreach by the national party to anyone who doesn't fit neatly within its parameters. Instead, the GOP has extended itself to its fringe while throwing under the bus long-standing members like New York Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, a McCain-Palin supporter in 2008 who told me she voted with her Republican leadership 90 percent of the time before running for Congress last fall."

former republican Michael Smerconish on "why the party is over for me"

[Dardedar]

"Well, you shouldn't have broken your wrist."

--Limbaugh's advice to a caller who couldn't afford the $6,000 cost to treat his broken wrist

Bonus: Also says health care prices will come down if we "[g]et the government out of it, get the government and their stupid regulations, get the government out of Medicare." --ibid

[Savonarola]

"Well, you shouldn't have broken your wrist."

--Limbaugh's advice to a caller who couldn't afford the $6,000 cost to treat his broken wrist

Right. I saw a video of a Congressman at the summit talking about how a Health Savings Account is the best way to go and can help everyone. Obama pointed out that people making $40,000 a year don't have the "disposable" income to shunt into an HSA. (I wondered why he picked a number so high.)
I know that anecdotes don't always mean much logically, but they make for good politics. Here's mine worded for an anti-government rightwinger receiver: I have one of those "overpaying" government jobs with "bloated" benefits including "taxpayer funded" "top of the line" insurance. The bills for my standard, complication-free emergency appendectomy totaled almost my yearly salary, and even my "comprehensive" insurance doesn't cover it all.

[kwlyon]

Yeah I can't afford my 600 leftover bill from my five minute conversation with an emergency room dr:) But I learned a good lesson from it. I now know where to go if I need a prescription or to see a dr. over a holiday...but what if I break a bone?...What if I NEED an emergency room. I got the itemized bill. There was no mistake or double billing. They charged me almost $150 to CHECK MY FN PULSE! I shit you not! I am trying to get them on the phone to see if, seeing as how I am a poor graduate student, there is any way they could shift some of this burden onto Rush's account. Its either that or they accept random payments of $100 per month (less during the summer) until I get around to paying it off.

[Dardedar]

"It's very different from earlier patterns that we've seen in recessions."

For those who once worked in the auto industry, housing and manufacturing, new jobs could be a long time coming,... "Ten years ago, we had 18 million or so people in manufacturing; now, it's a little over 10 million. So you have 8 million jobs gone and there not coming back, ever."
--Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute.

[Dardedar]

However, Nate Silver responds and rebuts the comment in the above post:

[see image at link]

"There is a common theme across the internet: US manufacturing is dead and it's never coming back. Well, there's a big problem with that analysis: it's not true. In fact, as the chart above indicates, it's actually false. Note that since 1960, the index of industrial production has risen from a little below 30 to its current level of about 100. And note the increase is continual -- meaning the number didn't just hover around 30 for most of that time only to spike up in one big move."

Link

[Dardedar]

"Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.

...Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist and author of "Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life," and his fellow social scientists are building the case that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits.

In one recent study,... participants who acted more generously received more gifts, respect and cooperation from their peers and wielded more influence over them.

"The findings suggest that anyone who acts only in his or her narrow self-interest will be shunned, disrespected, even hated," Willer said. "But those who behave generously with others are held in high esteem by their peers and thus rise in status."

Science Daily

[Dardedar]

Karl Rove Book Exposes Lies of the Bush White House


Excerpt:

"What's the moral of this tale? A top White House official can lie about a national security investigation with impunity and then go on to make money writing a book showing that the president didn't care about this lie. Don't share this lesson with your children.

Meanwhile, one of the key points in Rove's book is that Bush did not "lie us" into the Iraq war by making false assertions about Iraq's WMD capabilities. Yet as I detailed at MotherJones.com, in the run-up to that war, Bush, Cheney and Co. repeatedly overstated the iffy intelligence, declaring that there was no doubt when the available intelligence was loaded with uncertainty. In several instances, they went further and just made up stuff. All told, they held a reckless disregard for accuracy and waged a willful campaign of misrepresentation. These lies were far more consequential than anything the White House said about the CIA leak case. But it's not a coincidence that in both instances Bush and Rove didn't tell the truth. The widely accepted view of the Iraq war, as Rove now acknowledges, is that Bush greased the way with lies and mischaracterizations. But no book written by Rove, who has already proven he's willing to lie to protect himself, will change that."

David Corn

[Dardedar]

Yet another reason to pass health care. This time provided by Rush Limbaugh:

Rush Promises If Health Care Legislation Passes, "I'm Leaving The Country"

Media Matters