Political Quotes of the Day

[Doug]

Limbaugh said he's not going to 'bend over' and grab his ankles just because Obama is black.
Do you think there's any chance in hell Rush Limbaugh could bend over and grab his ankles?"
--Jay Leno

[Dardedar]

DAR
Heard this on the radio today. Finally he is kicking back:

***
"As we are meeting, in the halls of Congress just down the street from here, there is a debate going on about the plan I have proposed, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan. This isn't some abstract debate. Last week we learned that many of America's largest corporations are planning to lay off tens of thousands of workers. Today we learned that last week the number of new unemployment claims jumped to 626,000. Tomorrow we're expecting another dismal jobs report. On top of the 2.6 million jobs that we lost last year, we've lost half a million jobs each month for the last two months.

Now, I believe that legislation of such magnitude as has been proposed deserves the scrutiny that it has received over the last month. I think that's a good thing, that's the way democracy is supposed to work. But these numbers that we're seeing are sending an unmistakable message, and so are the American people. The time for talk is over. The time for action is now. Because we know that if we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse. Crisis could turn into catastrophe for families and businesses across the country, and I refuse to let that happen.

We can't delay, and we can't go back to the same, worn-out ideas that led us here in the first place. In the last few days we've seen proposals arise from some in Congress that you may not have read, but you'd be very familiar with, because you've been hearing them the last ten years -- maybe longer. They're rooted in the idea that tax cuts alone can solve all our problems, that government doesn't have a role to play, that half-measures and tinkering are somehow enough. That we can afford to ignore our most fundamental economic challenges -- the crushing cost of health care, the inadequate state of so many of our schools, our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

So let me be clear: Those ideas have been tested, and they have failed. They have taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars. And they have brought our economy to a halt. And that's precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American people have rendered their judgment. And now it is time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action.

...

Now, I read the other day that critics of this plan ridiculed our notion that we should use part of the money to modernize the entire fleet of federal vehicles to take advantage of state-of-the-art fuel efficiency. This is what they called pork. You know the truth. It will not only save the government significant money over time, it will not only create manufacturing jobs for folks who are making these cars, it will set a standard for private industry to match.

And so when you hear these attacks, deriding something of such obvious importance as this, you have to ask yourself: Are these folks serious? Is it any wonder we haven't had a real energy policy in this country?"
--Obama

[Dardedar]

Scarborough: Let me just say though, George Bush over the past eight years had the most disastrous spending policy. They decided to cut taxes. They decided to increase the deficit. They decided to increase entitlement spending while they were fighting two wars. They made no tough decisions what so ever. You can't say that that's the traditional conservative approach to economics. It was a disaster and I think we can all agree with that can we not?

Krugman: You've got some mythical image of what a modern conservative is. Reagan increased spending while cutting taxes. Bush increased spending while cutting taxes... Who is your ideal here?

LINK

[Dardedar]

O'Reilly: The White House press corps looked intimidated to me... Except for that, what's her name? The old lady, Helen Thomas. [squawking sound]

Colmes: Is that your Helen Thomas impression?

O'Reilly: Yea! [squawking sound]

Colmes: I didn't know you did impersonations.

O'Reilly: It's like the wicked witch of the east! If I were Obama, I would've poured water on her, and she would dissolve!

Colmes: It's not nice to impersonate an old woman, Bill.

O'Reilly: It doesn't matter.

Link

[Dardedar]

DAR
Thanks to L. Wood for passing this along:

**
Recall John Kenneth Galbraith, the famous economist of the JFK and LBJ era who wrote "The Affluent Society?" This article is by his son.

****
James K. Galbraith
Posted December 9, 2008 | 11:03 PM (EST)

The Johnson Legacy and the Obama Challenge: Remarks to the LBJ Centennial Conference

"We have spent a generation trying to repeal the New Deal and the Great Society, and the fact that the results are disastrous is now clear to all. On December 4, 2008, the LBJ Presidential Library hosted a symposium honoring President Johnson's centennial. Invited to speak, I chose to reflect on the thought that our chief hope in this crisis is to build further, on the foundation that Roosevelt and Johnson laid down.

This is my father's centennial year, as well as Lyndon Johnson's. They were friends, fellow New Dealers, and allies in the quest for the Great Society. My father felt that it was a debt of honor, for him to come to Austin, to this library, in the 1990s to pay tribute to President Johnson, to heal the rift over Vietnam, and to honor the immense achievements of the Johnson administration in the economic and social sphere.

I regret that the press of events this fall, including the financial crisis and the passing of my mother - who danced the Charleston with President Johnson on Bermuda in 1961 - impeded the preparation of a full paper for this conference. But perhaps it is just as well. Last summer we were discussing, with hope but also some skepticism, projects like universal health insurance and universal pre-kindergarten, which would help fulfill the promise of the Great Society. Today we are on to a more ambitious agenda, the resurrection of the New Deal. ....

We have been thrown back to this by events in the financial sector, eerily prefigured by the follies of the 1920s, as detailed in my father's classic, and current bestseller, The Great Crash. Amazingly, it took just nine years from the repeal of Glass-Steagall to reproduce the central pathology of that earlier time: the rampant peddling of toxic securities confected from worthless assets to an investing public that never quite gets the word. The deep springs of human folly flow ever into the wells of finance. But when the wells are poisoned - as they were then and are now - many years can pass before we drink from them again."

Rest of the article here.

[Doug]

Recall John Kenneth Galbraith, the famous economist of the JFK and LBJ era who wrote "The Affluent Society?"

DOUG
He spoke at my graduation from Grinnell College.

[Dardedar]

DAR
Three posts up the transcript shows O'Reilly saying Helen Thomas is like a witch. Again:

O'Reilly: ...what's her name? The old lady, Helen Thomas....

It's like the wicked witch of the east! If I were Obama, I would've poured water on her, and she would dissolve!

DAR
Now he is getting complaints. So what does he do? He lies and says he didn't say it. Observe, today:

Courtney Martin: I think we both know that Helen Thomas is fine with being criticized for her work, for her actual journalism. But to take a tack at her appearance is just disrespectful.

O'Reilly: Where was the appearance attack?

Martin: When was the last time you complimented someone by calling her a witch?

O'Reilly: I didn't call her a witch. I said her voice sounded like -- and I did the voice. That was clear.

Martin: Bill, come on. We all know the physical connotations of what a witch looks like.

O'Reilly: OK, so you think, sitting there, that I wanted to call Helen Thomas a witch.

Martin: You did call her -- I don't need to think anything, you did!

O'Reilly: No I didn't. I absolutely didn't. The transcript will show that it was a voice deal.

Link

[Doug]

O'Reilly: No I didn't. I absolutely didn't. The transcript will show that it was a voice deal.

DOUG
Two problems:
1. O'Reilly said "If I were Obama, I would've poured water on her, and she would dissolve!"

Talk of dissolving is not talk about her voice. So it was not "a voice deal" exclusively.

2. O'Reilly called her "the wicked witch of the east." The wicked witch of the east NEVER SPOKE in the Wizard of Oz movie. He must be referring to the wicked witch of the WEST. If he meant "east," it is definitely not a "voice deal" since she never spoke. The witch of the east was the one that was killed by Dorothy's house at the beginning of her adventure in Oz. We never got to hear her voice.

[Dardedar]

"The press today continues to focus on the GOP doomsday scenarios about what Obama's economic initiative will mean to America and how it's going to gut the economy. How it will put America on the road to "financial disaster," as Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) declared last weekend. And of course, his dire rhetoric generated headlines. (“We’re taking an enormous risk -- an enormous risk -- with other people’s money,” added Sen. Mitch McConnell this week.)...

Just like the GOP knew economics back in 1993 when the new Democratic president Bill Clinton struggled to get his centerpiece economic legislation passed. Back then the GOP was sure the bill was a recipe for disaster. At the time Newt Gingrich announced "The tax increase will kill jobs and lead to a recession, and the recession will force people off of work and onto unemployment and will actually increase the deficit." He was positive a recession would ruin America's economy within the "next year," or even "over the next 60 days."

And Newt wasn't alone. The whole GOP crew was in Chicken Little mode and the press back then, just like today, made sure to record and amplify every dire warning: "A recipe for economic disaster," warned Phil Crane of Illinois. "It is going to lead to a Clintastrophy, an economic Clintastrophy," added Indiana's Dan Burton.

That rhetoric, which clearly failed to foresee the 1990's decade worth of prosperity under Clinton, is eerily similar to the GOP rhetoric today."

Media Matters

[Betsy]

Bill O'Reilly sent flowers to Helen Thomas for valentines day....I'm sure that will fix everything.

source

[Dardedar]

DAR
O'Really tries to nail Obama on how he conducted his press conference. Bush's former spokesman is honest enough to set him straight:

***
After President Obama's press conference last night, Fox host Bill O'Reilly saw one to score points against the White House--by mocking Obama for relying on a list of pre-approved journalists when he took questions.

O'REILLY: Look, he had those guys listed, written down, who he was going to call. Now, in other press conferences, they just look around, and they go, "Oh, right, right, right!" And they go, "This one, that one, this one." Correct?

FLEISCHER: Well, George Bush never did that. I don't know how Bill Clinton did it, but it's a bad idea to reward the guy with the loudest voice.

O'REILLY: OK. So....

FLEISCHER: Writing it down gives the president what to call (ph).

O'REILLY: George Bush came in with a list of guys he was going to call on?

FLEISCHER: Yes, I used to prepare it for him. I would give him a grid, show him where every reporter is seated. And there are some reporters, you know, in that briefing room, you can imagine, Bill, you get a lot of dot coms and other oddballs who come in there. They're screened....

FLEISCHER: And I used to seat them all in one section. I would call it Siberia. And I told the president, "Don't call on Siberia. Just stay right here and call on these people on the grid in front of you."

FAIR

[Savonarola]

O'REILLY: George Bush came in with a list of guys he was going to call on?

Totally unbelievable. No, really. No sane person could deny that Dumbya frequently had scripted questions and pre-chosen favorites in the press-corps. For O'Reilly to ask the question shows that he is either oblivious to the obvious or delusional enough to think that such shenanigans didn't go on.

Now the question is: Is he that oblivious, or is he just that delusional? Or is it both? Or maybe he's just a lying, revisionist hack.
Nevermind, I just answered the question.

[Doug]

No sane person could deny that Dumbya frequently had scripted questions and pre-chosen favorites in the press-corps.

DOUG
One of the favorite "journalists" for Ari Fleischer to call on, remember, was Jeff Gannon, the gay male prostitute who pretended to be a journalist, and who visited the White House HUNDREDS of times. No good explanation was ever forthcoming from the Bush administration as to why this gay male prostitute had to visit the White House so many times. Or why he was not required to put the time he signed in for his visit (so no one would know how many hours he was there?).

[Dardedar]

Question: So you don't subscribe to Rush Limbaugh's "I hope he fails" school of thought?

Pat Robertson: That was a terrible thing to say. I mean, he's the president of all the country. If he succeeds, the country succeeds. And if he doesn't, it hurts us all. Anybody who would pull against our president is not exactly thinking rationally.

Link

[Dardedar]

"Robert Haston's book The Origin of the Political Species presents the view that in fact, people are evolved to be "two tribes" or to have two political leanings - and we're talking hard-wired, in the genes. This would mean possibly roughly half of homo sapiens are liberal, and half conservative. Although it's not really that simple, the striking point here is that looking at the number of people tending to accept evolution as scientific fact vs. the number of those rejecting it outright, you get a similar rough 50-50 breakdown.

The "political species" theory goes that two opposing tendencies, genetically expressed, have evolved in our struggle for survival: the "conservative", alpha male, authoritarian, hierarchical, tradition-preserving, paternalistic, militaristic, "rule from the gut", macho, emotional (especially fear and anger), "in-group" protecting type on the one hand;
and the "liberal", forward-looking, rational, empathetic, universal-thinking, peace and diplomacy-bringing, "outside-the-box" looking, artistic, egalitarian and compassionate type on the other hand.

Of course, these labels are somewhat simplistic, because everyone has a mix of each type of gene. But some people are definitely more on one side and some are definitely more on the other. Then there are the folks on the fence; the in-betweens, the people targeted in elections, the swing voters."

Link

[Doug]

Although it's not really that simple, the striking point here is that looking at the number of people tending to accept evolution as scientific fact vs. the number of those rejecting it outright, you get a similar rough 50-50 breakdown.

DOUG
I guess people in other countries must have different genes.

The author of this book seems to be a moron.

[Dardedar]

DAR
No no, read the context and the article at the link. Turns out about half of the UK doesn't believe in evolution either. The US hardly has the market cornered on dumb asses.

D.

[Dardedar]

Roberts: "What do you think of the job that President Obama did on steering the stimulus plan through Congress, and does he in fact have the experience necessary to be a good president, reach across party lines and craft a bipartisan bill?

Clinton: Well first of all, he has reached across, and it takes two to tango. I find it amazing that the Republicans who doubled the debt of the country in eight years and produced no new jobs doing it, gave us an economic record that was totally bereft of any productive result are now criticizing him for spending money. You know, I'm a fiscal conservative, I balanced the budget, I ran surpluses. If I were in his position today, I would be doing what he's doing. Why? Because the problem with the economy is the housing decline led to the general decline in values. Assets are going down. This stimulus is our bridge over troubled waters till the bank reforms kick in. He did the right thing, he did everything he could to get Republican support. He took some of their tax-cutting ideas.

But if you look at this bill, it is designed do three things. And it does all three. It puts money in the hands of people who need money to survive -- unemployment benefits, food stamp benefits, tax cuts. Second thing it does is to give money to state and local governments so they don't have to lay a million people off or raise taxes. Either one would be bad for the economy. The third thing is it does is create new jobs. Given the Congress he had and the environment and the speed with which they had to move, I think he did a fine job with this."

CNN

[Dardedar]

"Since the Republicans are out of power, FOX News has pulled back the curtain to reveal itself without any restrictions whatsoever and has not left a stone unturned in its quest to undermine president Obama's stimulus bill. They pepper a segment here and there with the use of their token liberals and democratic analysts still under contract. It's a 24 hour propaganda mill of lies and distortions like never before. This putrid attempt at originality makes it painfully evident that the Sean Hannity film school is located at the Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson Institute of direct to VHS movies. The music sounds like it came from one of those Army recruiting commercials." --John Amato, crooksandliars.com

[Dardedar]

DAR
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

Soros sees no bottom for world financial "collapse"
Fri Feb 20, 2009

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.

Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.

He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.

"We witnessed the collapse of the financial system," Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. "It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."

His comments echoed those made earlier at the same conference by Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman who is now a top adviser to President Barack Obama.

Volcker said industrial production around the world was declining even more rapidly than in the United States, which is itself under severe strain.

"I don't remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world," Volcker said.

Link