fayfreethinkers.com

Republican presidential candidate Tommy Thompson, speaking to an audience at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington D.C.,:

"I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money. You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that."

Thompson later apologized for the comments that had caused a stir in the audience, saying that he had meant it as a compliment, and had only wanted to highlight the "accomplishments" of the Jewish people and Jewish religion.

"I just want to clarify something because I didn't [by] any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things," he said.
"What I was referring to, ladies and gentlemen, is the accomplishments of the Jewish religion and the Jewish people. You've been outstanding business people and I compliment you for that and if anybody took what I said wrong, I apologize. I may have mischaracterized it. You are very successful. I applaud you for that."

His calling Israel Bonds "Jewish Bonds" and saying that some of his best friends are Jewish didn't help either.
link

“Why is it that I’m considered controversial? What have I done? I made a movie about people in my hometown that suffered as a result of GM pulling out. I made another movie because a bunch of kids were killed at Columbine High School and I didn’t want that to happen again. And I made a movie because, early on I took a guess and told the American people from the stage of the Oscars that we were being lied to about weapons of mass destruction and I got booed. These days, I got a lot of Republicans stopping me on the street and apologizing to me. They now see I was trying to warn them the Emperor has no clothes. At this point, I’m very squarely in the middle of the mainstream majority.”

Michael Moore
America June 2007

Bonus:

"Moore suggests that part of our problem is that Americans are completely ignorant of the world around them. “Overall, it reminded me about the importance of getting out of the house. About 80% of Americans don’t have a passport, so most of us don’t get to see the whole world and what’s going on. Ignorance is never a healthy thing – you can’t make the best decisions without having all the information.” --Ibid

"The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war." — Sidney J. Harris

"Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill and calling for larger spurs and brighter beaks. I fear that nationalism is one of England’s many spurious gifts to the world." — Richard Aldington

For the Bush White House, the real definition of victory has become “anything they can get away with without taking blame for defeat,” said the retired Army Gen. William Odom, a national security official in the Reagan and Carter administrations, when I spoke with him recently.

See here.

Dueling quotes:

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday accused former President Clinton of not responding forcefully enough to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or later terrorist attacks:

Giuliani argued that Clinton treated the World Trade Center bombing as a criminal act instead of a terrorist attack, calling it "a big mistake" that emboldened other strikes...

"The United States government, then President Clinton, did not respond," Giuliani said. "(Osama) bin Laden declared war on us. We didn't hear it."

Snip...

Last September, Giuliani defended Clinton's record amid political bickering over which president — Clinton or George W. Bush — missed more opportunities to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The idea of trying to cast blame on President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don't think he deserves it," Giuliani said during a stop in Florida.

Demo response:

"Rudy's arrogance has gotten the best of him," the Democratic National Committee said in a one-paragraph response. "How can a man who failed to prepare New York City for a second attack after the first one, who sent firefighters and emergency workers into Ground Zero without respirators and quit the Iraq Study Group to raise money keep America safe?"

snip...

"Don't expect to agree with me on everything because that would be unrealistic. I don't even agree with me on everything," Giuliani said.

link

"I wasn't ready to make that commitment. The vow of celibacy was something I wasn't sure I could keep."
--Thrice-married cross-dresser Rudy, on why he's not a priest

***

"It's the incredible shrinking presidency. He's lost battles in the courts. He's lost battles in Iraq. He's lost battles on Capitol Hill. His bank account is empty and there's nowhere to go for more. I think his presidency is essentially over."

--NYU Professor Paul Light at the end of the week in which George W. Bush has seen the collapse of the immigration deal he wanted, increased Republican opposition to the war in Iraq, new subpoenas from Congress, the beginning of a legal fight over existing subpoenas from Congress, the assignment of Scooter Libby's inmate number, new revelations about Dick Cheney and a sign that the Supreme Court might be reversing course on Guantánamo Bay link

"The problem with retaining the current U.S. insurance industry is that it has proven itself to be utterly corrupt and irredeemable, in my opinion. My mother has worked in the health care industry for close to 40 years now, and has seen the results of the health insurance industry moving from the mutual model to the profit model first-hand. In my opinion, health insurance corporations which are publicly traded should be *OUTLAWED* as a menace to society, no different from cluster bombs and handguns in their ability to kill innocents. Because the moment you become a publicly traded corporation, your first allegiance is not to health care. Your first allegiance is now to your stock holders, who don't care about health care, they just want profit, moh profit, moh profit, and if you don't deny coverage of sick people in order to increase profit, you get fired and people more vicious get hired to replace you."

--LINK

"I think I dislike Libertarians even more than I dislike neoconservatives. They are the ultimate spoiled, narcissistic brats, unwilling to admit or acknowledge the existence of other people and that they, no matter how much they try to smoke it away, are NOT self-sufficient. Their denial of interdependence is based on the tired and banal critique of socialism - there will always be some jerks who won’t do their part to bring benefit to everyone - they’re talking about themselves.
Even worse, their jargon is so thickly troweled on and is so preachy that they sound like Scientologists or old Communists." --Milo

From Cooks & Liars:

On September 30, 2003, just after this investigation began, the President said:
“If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is . . . If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.”

Today, after Libby's commuted sentence, we now know exactly what he meant be "taken care of."

Papa Bush quote:

“I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.”

"Is there anyone--anyone who actually believes that Bush plucked Libby from the iron jaws of jail for any other reason than, well...to make sure he keeps his lying mouth shut on the encyclopedia of felonies and crimes committed by Bush and Cheney?" -- Jeffrey Feldman

Question to fourth-string White House spokesperson Scott Stanzel:

Q: Scott, is Scooter Libby getting more than equal justice under the law? Is he getting special treatment?

STANZEL: Well, I guess I don’t know what you mean by “equal justice under the law.”

“I think ‘rape and incest’ is a buzzword. It’s a bit of a throwaway line and not everybody who says that really understands what that means. How are you going to define that?” -–South Dakota state Rep. Joel Dykstra

Joel Dykstra (R), has just officially entered the race for the Republican nomination to face Sen. Tim Johnson (D) in 2008.

With Tim Johnson still so sick, Tom Dashele and John Kerry have already started campaigning for him, but even a dead man shouldn't have a problem with someone who doesn't know what rape and incest mean.

"The Middle East looked nice and cozy for a while. Everything looked fine on the surface, but beneath the surface, there was a lot of resentment, there was a lot of frustration, such that 19 kids got on airplanes and killed 3,000 Americans. It's in the long-term interest of this country to address the root causes of these extremists and radicals..." --G. W. Bush, May 23, link

DAR
An extended excerpt (about half) from a small town Op-ed:

***
THE WAY IT IS: Typewriters hurled over Scooter Libby fiasco
By Steve Thomas
Saturday, July 7, 2007

"Now Bush has commuted the jail sentence of former aide Scooter Libby. After being convicted by a jury and sentenced by a judge to 30 months for obstruction of justice, Bush pulled the plug on incarceration after a higher court ruled that Scooter had to start doing time while his appeals progressed through the system. Bush exercised his Constitutional authority and kept Scooter out of jail, saying the sentence was excessive.

...

Libby should have gone to jail, period. He was found guilty, sentenced by a judge and his bid to put off his jail time during appeals was rejected by a panel of judges. I think the man who prosecuted the Libby case, Patrick Fitzgerald, put it well in his statement after the commutation:

“We fully recognize that the Constitution provides that commutation decisions are a matter of presidential prerogative and we do not comment on the exercise of that prerogative.

“We comment only on the statement in which the President termed the sentence imposed by the judge as ‘excessive.’ The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country. In this case, an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws. It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.

“Although the President’s decision eliminates Mr. Libby’s sentence of imprisonment, Mr. Libby remains convicted by a jury of serious felonies, and we will continue to seek to preserve those convictions through the appeals process.”

At least one sentence of that statement is worth repeating: “It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals.”

It reminds me of another quote, but this one from a fictional character, attorney Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s classic, “To Kill A Mockingbird:”

"Now gentlemen, in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system. That's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality.”

The president’s action in the Libby case has made this living, working reality into a debased, sad fantasy. Unless all men are equal before the bar of justice, no man is equal before the bar of justice. The commutation of Libby’s sentence undermines the faith of the American people in the system of justice, underscoring a growing perception that this nation is increasingly unequal, that there is not one American dream but instead many American nightmares, that we are no longer a nation where competition and compassion can coexist in a unique if sometimes uncomfortable fashion.

Instead we are faced with some ugly questions and answers:

-Among the American military, who is dying in Iraq and Afghanistan? For the most part, people who found their best economic opportunities in the armed services, though love of country has always outweighed dollar signs among soldiers I have known.

-Who has been left to sink into despair in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? The poor, who had little to lose, but lost it all anyway.

-Whose jobs are disappearing overseas as the result of trade policies? The working poor and the lower middle class who are finding fewer and fewer opportunities for work.

-Who is having the hardest time finding health care coverage? The people who can least afford it.

-Who is most likely to go to jail? Anyone who isn’t Scooter Libby, a guy with a lot of dirty secrets about the man who had the power to commute his sentence and who, with a stroke of a pen, did just that.

America has never been a perfect, fair, country motivated only by unconditional love. It has never been a paradise or without its great flaws. However, no matter how big the flaws, there have always been even greater strengths to light the way into the future.

Now, George Bush and his cronies are showing America in the worst possible light. They are illuminating the chasm between the weak and the powerful, the rich and the poor, the connected and the disconnected. They are doing all they can to find a death row cell for the American Dream and when crunch time comes, giving none of us hope for a commutation of that sentence.

I guess it’s no surprise. This administration has found comfort in secret courts, domestic spying, defying Congressional subpoenas, smudging the protective line between church and state, developing policies behind closed doors, ignoring corruption and treating compromise with contempt. When it comes to the big things, they have learned all the wrong lessons from the past. When it comes to getting away with things, they have learned how to succeed on a grand scale.

It’s unlikely this Congress will ever impeach George Bush because his people - some of who were close at hand during Watergate - didn’t make any Watergate-like tactical errors: no tapes, no smoking gun, no hard evidence of deliberate wrongdoing. That doesn’t make them any less guilty of what Theodore H. White described as the underlying deed that undid Nixon:

“The true crime of Richard Nixon was simple: he destroyed the myth that binds America together, and for this he was driven from power.

“The myth he broke was critical - that somewhere in American life there is at least one man who stands for the law, the President . . . That faith holds that all men are equal before the law and protected by it; and that no matter how the faith may be betrayed elsewhere, at one particular point - the Presidency - justice will done beyond prejudice, beyond rancor, beyond the possibility of a fix.”

Cops will continue to do their duty, prosecutors will continue to do theirs and judges will do likewise, but guilty men everywhere will find comfort in knowing that the justice system can be treated like a whore, if you have enough money or clout or both. Mob bosses will admire Bush’s loyalty to a closed-mouth soldier and petty criminals may well want to do better than small crime because they’ll realize that big crime pays big dividends.

Pass a bad check and go to jail. Attempt to subvert the justice system and never see the inside of a cell. Thanks a lot, George Bush.

Yet a small part of me won’t give up on our country. I think it can be brought into a better future with a healthy application of more democracy via the ballot box. I don’t know who will get my vote in the future, but I won’t surrender to the anger and cynicism that grip me right now."

...

Lake Expo Online

"America has never been a perfect, fair, country motivated only by unconditional love. It has never been a paradise or without its great flaws. However, no matter how big the flaws, there have always been even greater strengths to light the way into the future. "

That's what I keep trying to say - and to remember - even though I know more than I am happy about of the imperialist evils America has perpetrated since her inception. That "piece of paper" that was the law of the land - a free society, becoming freer as it expanded to include all races, both genders. To watch this constitutional rock upon which we built America being crunched into so much gravel by the corporate oligarchy is very painful. I do not know if we can reverse the process. Too bad prayer doesn't work. Maybe if somebody showed up with the constitution chiseled into granite tablets...

Wow, just learned this interesting tidbit. The US was afraid of Canada going to a universal health care system and actually interfered, to no avail (they also meddle with the drug war too).

***
“As Premier, Lloyd was responsible for implementing the universal health care plan that [Tommy] Douglas had introduced. Lloyd’s government had to cope with the doctors strike of July 1962, in which the province’s physicians, backed by the resources of the American Medical Association, withdrew service in an attempt to defeat the Medicare initiative.
Lloyd and his government refused to back down on the concept of a universal public health care system, and persuaded the doctors to settle after 23 days.”

“You know, Harry Reid said a while ago that the war in Iraq is lost. It’s wrong. It’s not lost. In fact, I would say we’re beginning to win it. We’ve turned the tide with the new strategy. And in fact, I cannot conceive of a circumstance in which American forces would lose the war in Iraq, on the ground in Iraq."
--Lieberman, 7/10/07

Michael Ware, long time CNN war reporter in Iraq responds to Lieberman:

"America doesn’t face just one opponent in this country, but a whole multitude, many of whom are becoming stronger, the longer the U.S. occupation here, or presence here, in Iraq continues. So, unfortunately, I’m afraid that Senator Lieberman has taken an excursion into fantasy."

Excerpt:

"Each inhabitant of the North consumes ten times as much energy, nineteen times as much aluminum, fourteen times as much paper, and thirteen times as much iron and steel as someone in the South." But the United States assumes no responsibility for the environmental disasters wrought by all that consumption. "Explaining why the United States refused to sign the Convention on Biodiversity at the Rio summit in 1992," Galeano writes, "President George Bush was unequivocal: 'It is important to protect our rights, our business rights.'" In short, Galeano asserts with fitting exasperation, the chemical companies, oil companies and car companies dictate U.S. environmental policy. Of course, this is a truism that remains too subtle for the American masses, like the notion that wrecking nature is not just an accidental side effect of these industries but central to their interdependent existences."

--"Upside Down" by Eduardo Galeano
The author of "Memory of Fire" delivers a scathing, mischievous indictment of North America's hypocrisy and consumer culture.

LINK

Bush's Pakistan Paradox

"As Iraq continues to disintegrate, and our top generals and in-country ambassador predict that US troops will need to die there for decades in order to prevent a full-scale regional blood bath, it is important to recall the reasons why we got into this mess. The marker of what will go down in history as 'Bush's folly' is that this idiot of a president invaded a country that had absolutely nothing to do with terrorist attacks on the United States or WMD threats to America while coddling the military junta in Pakistan, which was guilty on both counts."
--Robert Scheer writing for Truthdig.com LINK