Political Quotes of the Day

[Dardedar]

"Living in Arizona, I’m disappointed that we came up with the law...I’m very disappointed in John McCain.
He used to be somebody I really admired and respected...Most of those immigrants here are busting their hump,
doing a great job, and to go after them every couple years to get re-elected, that’s disrespectful and disgusting."
-- Charles Barkley

[Dardedar]

"Despite all the firepower that Fox has devoted to this progressive bashing, America isn’t buying it. The Pew Research Center just released a study that asked respondents to say whether they had a positive or negative view of a variety of terms. About two thirds (68%) said that they have a positive reaction to the term “progressive.” That’s 16 percentage points higher than those who reacted positively to “capitalism.” Even a majority of Republicans (56%) have a positive impression of the curse of progress." More Proof That No One Pays Attention To Fox News

[Savonarola]

Even a majority of Republicans (56%) have a positive impression of the curse of progress."

I disagree with the interpretation. I suspect that most Republicans are too stupid to know what "Progressive" means in the political context.

[Doug]

I disagree with the interpretation. I suspect that most Republicans are too stupid to know what "Progressive" means in the political context.

DOUG
True, but they also have no clue what capitalism, socialism, civil liberties and civil rights are, and those were on the survey too.

Here's the Republican view of each:

Capitalism--"I make money by screwing someone out of their money. It's good."

Socialism--"The government makes me help starving, lazy people. It's bad."

Civil liberties--"An excuse by whiney liberals to keep me from torturing and killing our enemies. Bad."

Civil rights--"An excuse to pretend that N----s are equal to me. Very bad."

Progressive--"That new insurance company in the TV commercials. OK."

[Dardedar]

"New Rule: This Mother's Day, all Americans must pause and extend a special thanks to the women who maintain our homes, who take care of our kids, and who still make time for sex with Dad. I'm talking, of course, about our nannies. Lost in this whole immigration debate is why Americans want to be so harsh on the people who, in so many and varied ways, enable them to sit on their fat asses. Nannies, valet parkers, gardeners, all the people who do the things we're a little too busy or important to do. There are plenty of people to be mad at our there -- the jerks at Goldman Sachs, the idiots at BP, the guy who charged you fifty bucks for these tickets -- why set our crosshairs on the humble, servile people?

I'll tell you why. Because we're bullies. Instead of confronting real threats, like the debt or the environment or Utah, we pick out the poorest, most defenseless kid on the block -- illegal immigrants -- and say, "What are you looking at?" But I'll tell you something, you anti-immigrant hoopies -- as usual you're mad at the wrong people. It was corporate America that busted your unions and didn't keep your pay up to the cost of living, causing your wife to have to go to work and Esmeralda to have to come in to watch the kids. Your problem is low wages, not low riders. A middle class life can now only be maintained with the presence of an underpaid underclass. In the 1940s, fewer than one in five moms worked outside the home. Ironically, mostly in bomber factories, to beat Nazi Germany, a place, like Arizona, where you always had to show your papers. I kid, that's an unfair comparison. The Germans knew how to dress." --Bill Maher

[Dardedar]

The group of people that are impressed with this kind of stupidity grows smaller every day.

"Go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant -- they're quite clear -- that we would create law based on the God of the bible and the ten commandments." --Sarah Palin

"The obvious first step in seeking out our nation's origins is to read its founding documents. In doing so, one is struck immediately by the total absence of any mention of Jesus, Christ or Christianity. There is also no reference to any Christian church-Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopal, Calvinist-nothing. Not a word, nor a hint. If our Founding Fathers had intended to make this a Christian nation, they could not have hidden that intention more completely, or done a worse job of it." --Judith Hayes

"The nation has offended Providence. We formed our Constitution without any
acknowledgment of God; without any recognition of His mercies to us, as a
people, of His government, or even of His existence. The [Constitutional]
Convention, by which it was formed, never asked even once, His direction,
or His blessings, upon their labours. Thus we commenced our national
existence under the present system, without God."
(Address by Yale Seminary President Timothy Dwight, July 23, 1812)

[Dardedar]

"Graduating from one of the three most elite Ivy League law schools is not the sole criteria to attain the "God-given potential" for the high court. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, more than half of Americans are Protestants and about one in four is Catholic or Jewish. The composition of the Supreme Court will be 0 percent Protestant and 100 percent Catholic or Jewish. Apparently God-given potential to dispense justice is vested unevenly among the religious faiths."
--Morris Davis, Attorney and Former Chief Prosecutor for Guantanamo Military Commissions, LINK

[Dardedar]

Fresh scoop of rightwing horsemanure from the Huckster:

***
Huckabee falsely asserts debt has increased "eight times" under Obama

Huckabee: "[A]n unbelievable debt -- eight times in President Obama's administration of what it was under George Bush." On the May 7 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, Huckabee said:

People aren't into ideology right now. What they're into is the practical solution to real problems: overspending, overborrowing, and dealing with this train wreck that we see coming as a result of an unbelievable debt -- eight times in President Obama's administration of what it was under George Bush, when people were mad at Bush for running it up.

Federal statistics: Debt was $10.6 trillion under Bush, is now $12.9 trillion

Treasury website: Debt on January 20, 2009, was $10.6 trillion; debt is now $12.9 trillion. According to a search of the "Daily History of the Debt" application on TreasuryDirect.gov, the total outstanding public debt on January 20, 2009 -- the day Obama was inaugurated -- was $10,626,877,048,913.08. The total debt on May 6 was $12,932,913,325,200.66.

$12.9 trillion is 1.2 times larger than $10.6 trillion. If the total national debt had increased "eight times" under Obama, the current debt would be $84.8 trillion.

Media Matters

BONUS: Limbaugh today: "Limbaugh falsely claims Obama has "tripled our debt in less than one year"

Detailed reference and roast of the above claims

[Dardedar]

Obama, talking about republicans:

"After they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. No. You can't drive. We don't want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out."

[amyweaver29]

I always believe that everything should start and end with God. Meaning, it may not be written in the founding documents that Jesus is there but take a closer look, all laws are somehow meant to follow the laws of nature - which one is the recognition that someone is supreme and looking on how we fare here on earth.

Yes, I like that statement of Pres. Obama. Why commit the same mistake when we had the chance of removing ourselves from it.

I wish that the people running our government, in my country, most especially, will see God and His hand on us. That they seek God first.

Regards and God bless,
Amy

[Savonarola]

I always believe that everything should start and end with God.

Why commit the same mistake when we had the chance of removing ourselves from it.

Yes, why indeed?

I wish that the people running our government, in my country, most especially, will see God and His hand on us. That they seek God first.

I ask that the people running our government run our government properly and not pretend than an invisible sky man will make everything better.

[Dardedar]

Hello Amy. I am guessing you might be visiting from Bigdog's site where we are having a discussion about the beliefs of the founders? Thanks for dropping by.

I always believe that everything should start and end with God.

DAR
I have no idea what that means.

Meaning, it may not be written in the founding documents that Jesus is there but take a closer look, all laws are somehow meant to follow the laws of nature - which one is the recognition that someone is supreme and looking on how we fare here on earth.

DAR
That "someone is supreme and looking on how we fare here on earth" is a "law of nature?" I don't think the deists of the time would agree with that. Here's a little blurb about deism:

"Deism is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme being created the universe, and that this (and religious truth in general) can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without the need for either faith or organized religion. Many Deists reject the notion that God intervenes in human affairs, for example through miracles and revelations." --wiki

I think they left Jesus and Christianity out of the founding documents because they didn't want to establish the nation as a Christian country thus leading to the disastrous mess they had just escaped in Europe.

I wish that the people running our government, in my country, most especially, will see God and His hand on us.

DAR
If you look around the world at the countries that have most religion intermingled with government, you will consistently find that these are the hell holes where the people have the least rights and the most religious restrictions and abuses. The women suffer, the children suffer and the non-believers suffer. See Iran, see Afghanistan, see the religious and Taliban controlled parts of Pakistan, etc. No one sees "God and His hand on us" more clear than a Taliban leader. That God also informs him to beat the women if they reveal their ankles and also, make sure they stay pregnant and out of school.

If you want to see the most freedom, where humans are flourishing, living longer and healthier with better education and higher literacy, look to the most secular nations, Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada. Having "people running our government" who "see God" in any way, and think they are having interactions with him, or (God forbid) are doing his will has been tried extensively throughout history and it has always been disastrous.

D.

[Dardedar]

Bartcop.com bits:



Oh, and Sarah has a new book:

"Clearly, it's about her favorite subject: Sarah Palin. It's also about how Sarah Palin inspired
Sarah Palin's favorite people, what Sarah Palin thinks of Sarah Palin's favorite book and how much
Sarah Palin enjoyed Sarah Palin's favorite movie. Also: Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin.
Oh! And Triggggg!"

[Dardedar]

Factoid:

"...the GOP has lost the national popular vote in four of past five presidential elections, and in 2004 Bush won by about 2.5 points." --Nate Silver

[Dardedar]

Bill Maher on Rand Paul:

"The shit doesn't fall far from the bat."

***
In his new book, FOX News contributor Newt Gingrich compared President Obama's administration to Nazi Germany saying his "secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did."

The American Jewish Committee has condemned the statement saying, "By invoking the current Administration in the same breath as two murderous totalitarian states, Newt Gingrich has drawn a foolish and dangerous analogy. Gingrich's linkage not only diminishes the horror of the Holocaust, it also licenses the use of extremist language in contemporary America."
***

Gingrich, what a prick.

[Dardedar]

GOPers Try To Derail Tea Party Favorite

"North Carolina Republicans are circulating court documents that suggest a far-right Tea-Party-backed congressional candidate claimed to be the Messiah, tried to raise his stepfather from the dead, believed God would drop a 1,000-mile high pyramid as the New Jerusalem on Greenland, and found the Ark of the Covenant in Arizona." TPM

[Dardedar]

From the Media Matters daily Limbaugh summary:

"Walter Williams [sitting in for Rush today] ranted about "salt tyrants," stating that a tyrannical precedent was set by "anti-tobacco zealots." He claimed in passing that an FDA study finding secondhand smoke to be harmful to your health was "fraudulent," and said that the FDA and the Obama administration have taken the position that what the American public wants is irrelevant -- if you disagree with them they'll fine you, put you in jail, or put you out of business. He suggested that we will reach a point at which salt will be so regulated that schoolchildren will be asked to inform on their parents' salt intake, and told a caller who said she had a medical condition requiring extra salt consumption that she might have to get a prescription for salt."

[Dardedar]

"I tend to think she wishes she'd never heard my name. I have become her legacy. Mary Beth Loose Cannon is now looking for a job. She blew her last job busting me. Karma is so sweet! She's looking for work while Cheech and I start our second multi-million dollar tour thanks to the publicity she created for us! Thank you Mary Beth - may you find peace and happiness in your search for your soul."
-- Tommy Chong, gloating that Mary Beth Buchanan, the anti-science, religiously-insane crank who put him in prison for nine months for selling harmless plastic pipes, lost her primary by getting only 33% of the vote

***

"Lincoln was a liberal from the Northern liberal party. At that time, it was called the Republican Party.
The Southern Conservatives were Democrats. Since the Civil War, the parties have switched places.
If Lincoln were alive today, he would be a Northern Liberal, ie, a Democrat." --Olepi

[Dardedar]

"Global energy consumption will rise 49% between 2007 and 2035, led by economic growth in developing nations, the US Energy Information Administration said Tuesday. (5/26, #6) [Editor’s note: under any reasonable scenario, can supply rise by 49% in 25 years? Over the last 25 years, world energy consumption grew about 60%, but oil supply in 2035 will be notably lower than it is today.] --Peak Oil Review

Anyone care to do the math on that?

"Currently the federal government is offering a $7500 tax credit to purchasers of electric cars with batteries as large or larger than the Chevy Volt. This tax credit can be applied to the first 250,000 electric vehicles each manufacturer sells. Now the Senate and House have submitted new proposed bipartisan legislation which seeks to spend up to $11 billion to spur the adoption of electric cars." --ibid

Bonus:

"Offshore oil now accounts for 1.7 million barrels per day (mbpd), or over 30%, of our domestic production of 5.5 mbpd

What would it take to substitute wind for offshore oil? At 5.8 MBtu heat value in a barrel of oil and 3412 BTU in a kWh, 1.7 mbpd is equivalent to 2.9 billion kWh per day, or 1,059 billion kWh a year. By comparison, total 2008 wind generation was 14.23 billion kWh in Texas, and 5.42 billion kWh in California.

Therefore, to replace our offshore oil with wind, you’d need 195 Californias, or 74 Texases of wind, and probably 20 years to build it." --ibid

We, are so screwed.

[kwlyon]

We, are so screwed.

Your error in judgment here stints from seeking out a single alternative technology to replace our oil dependancy. There will be no one solution. There will need to be massive development of multiple technologies in order to obtain sustainability. Oh...and yes....we will likely have to forfeit certain amenities. There is, however, no reason to believe at present that we can not solve this problem. The screwed part only becomes a possible reality with the consideration of human nature....we may well not begin to seek solutions to our current clusterfuck until the bell has tolled.