Political Quotes of the Day

[Dardedar]

"I love the sound of Republicans whining in the morning. Boo-hoo-hoo. The GOP lost the presidency and a big congressional election back in 2008. With the passage of President Obama's healthcare bill, they've now lost the most significant domestic political battle since the 1960s. So naturally the light of freedom has been extinguished, the U.S. Constitution voided, capitalism doomed and the nation fallen into a dark totalitarian nightmare...

Neither Limbaugh nor Chicken Little had anything on Fox News' Glenn Beck, who actually compared the bill's passage to Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor! Not to be outdone, Mark Steyn, writing in the formerly respectable National Review, envisions "fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon."

According to Steyn, America's "global military capacity" will need to be sacrificed to the ruinous expense of paying for grandpa's health insurance. Nuclear holocaust can only follow.

Conservative blogger Matthew Vadum tweets a different outcome: "Fascist House Democrats are preparing to euthanize America."

So which is it, boys? Fire or ice? Make up your minds...

...13 percent of the 59 percent who opposed the Democrats' bill in that famous CNN poll did so because it wasn't liberal enough? Asked who they trusted more to fix healthcare, President Obama or congressional Republicans, respondents chose the White House 51-39."

Gene Lyons at Salon

Link fixed.

[Betsy]

the link took me to a weather website...which was interesting, but not what I had planned to read...

[Dardedar]

"I want to thank the Teabaggers for helping us pass health care, for resurrecting the
Obama presidency. I know they're saying, 'Why are you thanking me? I was so against it,
I marched on Washington with tea bags hanging off my Founding Fathers costume, with a
gun on my hip and a picture of Obama dressed as Hitler, screaming about his birth certificate.'
And America saw that and said, 'I think I'll go with the calm black man.'"
-- Bill Maher

[Dardedar]

Media Matter notes:

"Never one to be humbled by the truth, Rush then went on to backtrack on his claim that insurers will not cover children with pre-existing conditions until 2016, saying,...

"I wasn't wrong, I was just uninformed."

[Dardedar]

[L.Wood]

Republican Fears:

...

.

[Dardedar]

"I never considered myself a maverick," [McCain] told me. "I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities." --McCain interview in Newsweek

McCain-Palin '08 Slogan: 'Team Of Mavericks' --Many more examples here

[Dardedar]

"I really have no response. Because last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues," Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "If the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I'm probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin,"

At a Minnesota rally on Wednesday, Palin told Fox News that the White House's vow to limit future use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states made the U.S. less safe. The former Republican vice presidential candidate compared the move to "a school kid asking to be hit."

Link

[Dardedar]

***
STEPHANOPOULOS: "What do you make of Barack Obama the man?"

Russian president MEDVEDEV: He's very comfortable partner, it's very interesting to be with him. The most important thing that distinguishes him from many other people – I won't name anyone by name – he's a thinker, he thinks when he speaks. Which is already pretty good.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You had somebody in your mind, I think. (LAUGHS)

MEDVEDEV: "Obviously I do have someone on my mind. I don't want to offend anyone. He's eager to listen to his partner, which is a pretty good quality for a politician. Because any politician is to a certain degree a mentor. They preach something. And the ability to listen to their partner is very important for the politician. And he is pretty deeply emerged in the subject, so he has a good knowledge of what he's talking about. There was no instance in our meetings with Mr. Obama where he wasn't well prepared for the questions. This is very good. And after all, he's simply a very pleasant man with whom it's a pleasure to deal with."

Link.

[Dardedar]

"Obama passed 25 separate tax cuts," Sheryl Stein, founding member of "The Other 95%" said in a statement announcing the group's plans, "including $300 billion in middle class tax cuts -- one of the largest in history - as part of the stimulus package. Unlike President Bush's 2001 tax cuts, which went to the wealthiest 2.2%, President Obama's tax cuts overwhelmingly benefit working and middle class families -- in fact, 95% of all Americans." Link

[Dardedar]

Bartcop says the TEABAGGERS are a DIVERSE bunch:

- militia men
- racists
- xenophobes
- birthers
- klan members
- confederate reenacters
- middle school dropouts
- rednecks
- war mongers
- seniors on 'social' security who hate 'social'ism
- lovers of unfettered capitalism on food stamps
- closeted homophobes
- morons
- sean hanninazis
- gun clutchers
- white seperatists
- paranoid homeschoolers
- limbaugh dittoheads
- minute men
- tongues chanting snake handlers
- bible bangers who like to watch lesbian bondage
- flat earthers
- ruby ridge secessionists
- greedy pricks
- bored retirees who long for the days of white only water fountains
- global warming deniers
- survivalists
- faux news $h!t kickers
- neofascists
- ayn randians born on 3rd base who think they hit a triple
- creationists
- wingnut yokels
- reactionaries
- neocons
- GlennBeck bots
- john birchers
- red baiters
- and illiterate goobers who think Jesus rode on the back of a triceratops

[Dardedar]

U.S. Military Report Warns of 'Serious' Oil Shortages By 2015

"The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact.

The energy crisis outlined in a Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command, comes as the price of petrol in Britain reaches record levels and the cost of crude is predicted to soon top $100 a barrel.

"By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day," says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis."

Link

[Dardedar]

"It's not just because he's black,..." --Teabagger explaining why he hates Obama

[Dardedar]

I really enjoyed this:

Stewart to FOX News, Go Fuck Yourself, Part two.

"Look I'm sorry I told you to go fuck yourself last week. I know that I criticize you and Fox News a lot,
but only because you're truly a terrible, cynical, disingenuous news organization."
-- Jon Stewart

[Dardedar]

"Bell relates how as a subscriber to Snopes' updates, he thought he was discerning a pattern in the way he seemed to be seeing "a lot more rumors about President Obama, and a lot more false rumors." So, Bell dug deep into the archives to do a comparative analysis of the rumor-mongering of the still-young Obama presidency and the two terms of his predecessor. The results will probably not surprise you in the least:

After eight years in the White House (with Snopes.com around all that time), George W. Bush has been the subject of 47 internet rumors. After less than two years in office, Barack Obama has been the subject of 87, or nearly twice as many.

Even more telling is the relative accuracy of those stories. For Bush, 20 rumors, or 43%, are true. Only 17, or 36%, are false. The remainder are of mixed veracity (4), undetermined (4), or unclassifiable (2).

In contrast, for Obama only 8 of the 87 rumors, or 9%, are true, and a whopping 59, or 68%, are whoppers. There are 17 of mixed veracity and 3 undetermined.

In other words, a precipitous slide into the chasm of pure wackitude."

Huff Po

[Dardedar]

[Dardedar]

"This week, Arizona signed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country which will allow police to demand identification papers from anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. I know there’s some people in Arizona worried that Obama is acting like Hitler, but could we all agree that there’s nothing more Nazi than saying "Show me your papers?" There’s never been a World War II movie that didn’t include the line "show me your papers." It’s their catchphrase. Every time someone says "show me your papers," Hitler’s family gets a residual check. So heads up, Arizona; that’s fascism. I know, I know, it’s a dry fascism, but it’s still fascism." Seth Meyers, Saturday Night Live

[Dardedar]

"You even called drilling -- safe, environmentally-friendly drilling offshore -- as raping the outer continental shelf. There -- with new technology, with tiny footprints even on land, it is safe to drill and we need to do more of that." --Palin telling Joe Biden what's what, during the VP debates.

[Doug]

Bill Moyers: A thoughtful guy with a great love for his country and an interest in changing things for the better.

The last broadcast (!) of his Journal show ended with an Eisenhoweresque warning that is true, timely, and to the point. A few minutes that will haunt you.

See here.

[Dardedar]

Excerpt from:

INFINITE DEBT: How unlimited interest rates destroyed the economy, by Thomas Geoghegan (Harper's Magazine, April 2009)

"Some people still think our financial collapse was the result of a technical glitch—a failure, say, to regulate derivatives or hedge funds. All we need is a better chairman of the SEC, like brass-knuckled Joe Kennedy, FDR’s first pick. It’s personnel—it’s Senator Gramm’s fault. Or it’s Robert Rubin’s fault.

In fact, no amount of New Deal regulation or SEC-watching could have stopped what happened. Hedge funds in themselves did not cause Wall Street to collapse. Some New Deal–type regulation was actually introduced in recent years, but it failed to do much: think of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, which made CEOs swear an oath that their financial statements were not fraudulent. No, the deregulation that led to our Time of Troubles was of a deeper, darker kind. The problem was not that we “deregulated the New Deal” but that we deregulated a much older, even ancient, set of laws.

First, we removed the possibility of creating real, binding contracts by allowing employers to bust the unions that had been entering into these agreements for millions of people. Second, we allowed those same employers to cancel existing contracts, virtually at will, by transferring liability from one corporate shell to another, or letting a subsidiary go into Chapter 11 and then moving to “cancel” the contract rights, including lifetime health benefits and pensions. As one company after another “reorganized” in Chapter 11 to shed contract rights, working people learned that it was not rational to count on those rights and guarantees, or even to think in these future-oriented ways. No wonder people in our country began to live for the moment and take out loans and start running up debts.

And then we dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury, which had existed in some form in every civilization from the time of the Babylonian Empire to the end of Jimmy Carter’s term, and which had been so taken for granted that no one ever even mentioned it to us in law school. That’s when we found out what happens when an advanced industrial economy tries to function with no cap at all on interest rates.

Here’s what happens: the financial sector bloats up. With no law capping interest, the evil is not only that banks prey on the poor (they have always done so) but that capital gushes out of manufacturing and into banking. When banks get 25 percent to 30 percent on credit cards, and 500 or more percent on payday loans, capital flees from honest pursuits, like auto manufacturing. Sure, GM is awful. Sure, it doesn’t innovate. But the people who could have saved GM and Ford went off to work at AIG, or Merrill Lynch, or even Goldman Sachs. All of this used to be so obvious as not to merit comment. What is history, really, but a turf war between manufacturing, labor, and the banks? In the United States, we shrank manufacturing. We got rid of labor. Now it’s just the banks.

Which is why the middle class is shrinking. Basically, we’re all waiters now; we’re bowing and scraping and working for the banks. Look closely at any American, and it’s even odds that he or she, directly or indirectly, is somehow employed by the “financial services sector,” which covers insurance and real estate and financial instruments of any kind. As brokers, lawyers, loan collectors, loan consolidators, secretaries at big investment firms, chauffeurs of private limousines, or even the high-tech types who exist solely to service banks—all of us, millions of us, are part of it, living off it in some way, as three generations ago we lived off manufacturing.

Yes, we should have more regulators, many more; but as long as capital gushes into the financial sector, the speculators, the gamblers, will continue to outnumber the regulators who can watch them. In 2002 and 2003, financial firms took more than 40 percent of the profits that accrued to U.S. corporations—that’s according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Anyway, the point is that 40 percent is more than double the share the financial industry was taking—about 18 percent—when Ronald Reagan left office and interest rates were just beginning to really climb. And the Bureau of Economic Analysis may be understating how much of the economy is now based on finance. Think of the growth of the health-insurance industry, for example. Or think of GM, which, like GE, really makes its money by running a bank on the side. “After a while,” said a friend from Detroit, “the only reason they were making cars was so they could make loans.”

--Excerpt from: INFINITE DEBT: How unlimited interest rates destroyed the economy, by Thomas Geoghegan (subscription required)