“”
“We have desert tortoises and beautiful paintings of flora and fauna. These punks come along and deface it. I’m saying maybe you put them on TV and cut off a thumb. That may be the right thing to do.”
“”
“The only reasons for these facilities are to subvert domestic and foreign law. And no one gives a shit. And it does not makes us safer to have a clandestine service indiscriminately detaining, abusing, and torturing people around the world in secret prisons.”
“”
“In my administration, we will ask not only what is legal, but what is right — not just what the lawyers allow, but what the public deserves.”
“”
“First, we must always maintain the highest ethical standards. We must always ask ourselves not only what is legal, but what is right. There is no goal of government worth accomplishing if it cannot be accomplished with integrity.”
“”
“The best result of this latest scandal, and the hypocrisy and finger-pointing exhibited on both sides, would be for voters to say, ‘A pox on both your houses,’ reject the scandal culture and gotcha politics of both parties and seek new politics of common cause, collegiality and the public interest. The alternative is that most people will conclude that in American politics today the only standard is the double standard, and the cycles of conflict and rancor will continue.”
“”
“One of the reasons some of us have felt discomfort regarding President Bush’s leadership the past year or so is that he makes more than the usual number of decisions that seem to be looking for trouble. He makes startling choices, as in the Miers case. But you don’t have to look for trouble in life, it will find you, especially when you’re president. It knows your address. A White House is a castle surrounded by a moat, and the moat is called trouble, and the rain will come and the moat will rise. You should buy some boots, do your work, hope for the best.”
“”
“I think that the Republican Party fairly recently has been taken over by the Christian conservatives, by the Christian right. I don’t think that this is a permanent condition, but I think this has happened, and that it’s divisive for the country.”
“”
“Conservatives live in fear of being betrayed ideologically. They particularly distrust nonpartisan technocrats — experts — who they suspect will be seduced by the ‘liberal establishment.’ The result, in government, journalism and think tanks alike, is a profusion of second-raters whose chief virtue is that they are undeniably ‘sound.’”
“”
“Given the choice, I’d choose a frustrating bureaucracy over an efficient cabal every time.”
“”
“Finally, any Republican senator who supinely acquiesces in President Bush’s reckless abuse of presidential discretion — or who does not recognize the Miers nomination as such — can never be considered presidential material.”
“”
“And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence. Read it some time again.”
“”
“Who would have believed the wheels would be coming off this early in the second term, and with our own people firing at us?”
“”
“Fed by what are to me very cheap arguments by RNC spokesmen and independent stalwarts of the administration — chiefly, it seems, Hugh Hewitt — there is now this permanently established belief in some quarters that people around here and elsewhere oppose Miers based purely on bad motives — elitism, cowardice, sexism etc. I find this horribly disappointing and the sort of thing I normally expect from leftwingers.”
“”
“The only sexism involved in the Miers nomination is the administration’s claim that once they decided they wanted a woman, Miers was the best they could do. Let me just say, if the top male lawyer in the country is John Roberts and the top female lawyer is Harriet Miers, we may as well stop allowing girls to go to law school.”
“”
“The problem is that congress has line-item control over our tax code and that they’re, well, congress. If I gave them line-item control over what I ate for dinner tonight I’d have seventeen courses, beginning with dessert and ending with motor oil from a powerful Senator’s district.”
“”
“How did Judith Miller get to be the martyr in all this? It was, after all, Valerie Plame who got caught in the cross fire between a vindictive White House and an angry diplomat. Someone might spare a thought for her. And if you want journalistic martyrs — well, there are a whole bunch of them in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, risking their lives to tell the story of their wars. Those are the journalists I stand in awe of.”
“”
“We spend our blogging time raising our heads out of the foxholes to note the inbound missiles coming from both sides, and wishing the war would stop — really soon.”
“”
“There is a gaping disproportion between the stakes associated with this vacancy and the stature of the person nominated to fill it.”
“”
“No, I think people are enraged in large measure because, given a terribly important appointment opportunity, Bush has made himself look like the dumb, parochial, cronyist hack that his enemies have always said he was. That makes anyone who actively supported him look like a fool.”
“”
“If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her.”
“”
“He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their pre-presidential careers, and this president particularly is not disposed to such reflections.”
“”
“I don’t think it’s important to show loyalty to the president by backing his decision. This choice will live beyond his presidency. It’s important to get a justice who will add to the wisdom of the court, who will make it more likely that America will get a fair hearing before the bench.”
“”
“I eagerly await the announcement of President Bush’s real nominee to the Supreme Court. If the president meant Harriet Miers seriously, I have to assume Bush wants to go back to Crawford and let Dick Cheney run the country.”
“”
“He’s not the nominee, and it’s not enough to just say ‘Trust me.’”
“”
“I’m sorry, but the Republicans richly deserve to lose control over the House and the Senate in 2006. There is no excuse whatsoever for their profligate spending, and no excuse for Tom Delay’s absurd claim that there is no fat in the federal budget. Every American should be disgusted at this spending spectacle.”
“”
“Tom Delay has been out of his leadership post for exactly seven days.
We’ve seen more public right-wing complaining this week than in the past 240 weeks. Probably a coincidence. Probably.”
“”
“Bush had a chance for greatness in remaking the Supreme Court, a chance to succeed where his Republican precedessors from Nixon to his father all failed. He instinctively recoiled from it. He blew it.”
“”
“Nothing has changed. Nothing will change. Not unless it comes in the form of something akin to the French Revolution. We need terror. We need horror. We need the streets running awash in rivers of blood of these thugs and criminals and zealots.”
“”
“I would argue that the most powerful voices of change in the country, from Lincoln to King, have been those who can speak with the utmost conviction about the great issues of the day without ever belittling those who opposed them, and without denying the limits of their own perspectives.”
“”
“I am convinced that, our mutual frustrations and strongly-held beliefs notwithstanding, the strategy driving much of Democratic advocacy, and the tone of much of our rhetoric, is an impediment to creating a workable progressive majority in this country.”
“”
“Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time. New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.”
“”
“Unless we use the word ‘failure’ and be up front about it, you can’t solve the problem. The government failed in New Orleans. There are no circumstances where 34 senior citizens should die alone, where an American body should lay in the streets for three days. Either, it’s totally unacceptable and has to be changed, or it’s somehow excusable.”
“”
“I don’t know how you sleep at night.”
“”
“The former FEMA director says fault lies with his bosses, the Louisiana governor, the New Orleans mayor, the media and victims.”
“”
“Either we raise taxes and pay as we go — or we run deficits until foreigners cease to lend us the money and the dollar goes the way of the peso. When Republican leaders are saying there is no more fat in the federal budget, the proper political translation is that the Grand Old Party of Taft, Goldwater, Reagan and Helms is no more. We have become the very people we went into politics to run out of town.”
“”
“Even if every hardcore liberal in the country votes Democratic, we have to win about three-quarters of the moderates to gain a majority. That means we have to win support pretty far into the conservative end of that moderate center, and people like that simply aren’t going to respond to anti-war rallies and screaming campaigns against John Roberts.”
“”
“We can work with everybody, including the administration, or against them, and I’m prepared to go either way. But I’m going to look after our people first.”
“”
“It’s part of Georgia’s new education policy, ‘Every Child Left Behind.’”
Jon Stewart, on the closing of Georgia schools to save gas
“”
“The
porkbusters fight is fun now, but not since early cave men tried to train grizzly bears to give them tongue baths has a project seemed more obviously doomed to end in disappointment. Expecting Congress — of either party — to give back pork which has already been approved and passed into law is like expecting crack whores to give refunds days after services have been rendered.”
“”
“When Congress approves $12 billion in two to three days of the hurricane, and two weeks later, none of the communities whose population has swollen by 25,000 has received any of that money, you have to wonder what is going on.”
“”
“George W. Bush is a big spender. He has never vetoed a spending bill. When Congress serves up a big slab of fat, crackling pork, Mr. Bush responds with one big question:
Got any barbecue sauce?”
“”
“We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don’t think it makes any sense. I think it’s wrong.”
“”
“Observe our national politics. Observe politics around the world. Observe politics through the ages. Does it look like God’s handiwork? When it comes to having a role in politics, that would be the Other Fellow.”
“”
“[Arizona Sen.] Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with.”
“”
“We allowed people to cross ... because they were dying in the convention center. We made a decision to protect people. They made a decision to protect property.”
“”
“Does anybody in this building know anything about
buses?”
“”
“What is the real story of Katrina is (I suggest) not so much that nature wrought fury on land, water, people, property, and animals, not at all anything about racism, not much about federal government incompetence. The real story is that the mainstream media rioted. They used the storm and its attendant sorrows to continue their endless attack on George W. Bush.”
“”
“I’ve been a supporter of President Bush, but I just got to come back to the fact that this is a failure of leadership and I’ll tell you I’m personally angry ... I don’t want a president who is taking six week vacations anywhere when Americans are dying ... whether they are dying in Iraq or LA.”
“”
“The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.”
“”
“Michael Brown has been acting like a private instead of a general. When you’re in the middle of a disaster, you can’t stop to check the legal niceties or to review FEMA regulations before deciding to help Mississippians knocked flat on their backs.”
“”
“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”
“”
“No administration could credibly investigate such an immense failure on its own watch. And we have learned through bitter experience — the Abu Ghraib nightmare is just one example — that when this administration begins an internal investigation, it means a whitewash in which no one important is held accountable and no real change occurs.”
“”
“I never thought Sensenbrenner and Tancredo could prove themselves to be more horrible congressmen than I thought they were — but I stand corrected.”
“”
“[T]he path from post-9/11 unity to the rancor and finger-pointing in the aftermath of Katrina’s fury charts a clear deterioration in political consensus in the United States and a growing willingness to interpret events through a partisan prism. It is a problem that now appears destined to follow Bush through the final years of his presidency — a clear failure of his 2000 campaign promise to be a ‘uniter, not a divider.’”
“”
“Mr. Bush is going to have to recognize the obvious initial failure of the Department of Homeland Security in its first big post-9/11 test. The President created this latest huge federal bureaucracy, against the advice of many of us, and we’re still waiting for evidence that it has done anything but reshuffle the Beltway furniture. If FEMA can’t now handle the diaspora out of New Orleans to Houston, Baton Rouge and other cities, the political retribution will be fierce.”
“”
“If I read ONE MORE article in which a science-hating red state pundit attacks progressives, I’m going to take the money I was going to donate to disaster relief and spend it on a nice Thai meal. And I’m going to suggest that all other progressives do likewise. I’m going to say ‘DROWN AND DIE, YOU ARROGANT HILLBILLY SOUTHERN-FRIED LEECHES!!’”
“”
“The City of New Orleans and its residents owe the President a profound debt of gratitude.”
“”
“Those Bush-loving Darwin-hating quasi-retarded brutishly-primitive
hillbillies want us to fork over more of our hard-earned money in order to get them out of a deadly fix they brought upon themselves [...] BUSH CAUSED THIS DISASTER. And YOU caused this disaster, you southern soft-heads, because you voted for that ape.”
“”
“First of all it is a national humiliation to see bodies floating in a river for five days in a major American city. But second, you have to remember, this was really a de-legitimization of institutions. Our institutions completely failed us and it is not as if it is the first in the past three years — this follows Abu Ghraib, the failure of planning in Iraq, the intelligence failures, the corporate scandals, the media scandals.”
“”
“I’m angry at the guy and maybe it will pass for me. But a lot of people and a lot of Republicans are furious right now.”
“”
“This is ridiculous. And I don’t want to see anybody do anymore goddamned press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don’t do another press conference until the resources are in this city and then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can’t even count. Don’t tell me 40,000 people are coming here! They’re not here! It’s too doggone late. Now get off your asses and let’s do something! Let’s fix the biggest goddamned crisis in the history of this country.”
“”
“Or you can be a political looter, hovering over the wreckage and despair, scrabbling to snatch out some shiny baubles or little scraps of bloody meat for some kind of perverse personal or political satisfaction or advantage.”
“”
“The usual right wing nutcases were a bit flummoxed because I was tweaking their favorite whipping boy, the media, so they were uncharacteristically quiet. The leftie nutcases were off balance because I also had a dig at the Bush subterfuges while digging at the media for ignoring them. Split the difference and you get e-mail peace.”
“”
“We don’t need a Manhattan Project to find our way out of our current energy trap. The technologies already exist. But what we’re searching for is perhaps even harder — political leadership and vision.”
“”
“A country that displays an almost ruthless commitment to efficiency and performance in every aspect of its economy — a country that switched to Japanese cars the moment they were more reliable, and to Chinese T-shirts the moment they were five cents cheaper — has loyally stuck with a health-care system that leaves its citizenry pulling out their teeth with pliers.”
“”
“Two more weeks, folks, before we take them on, head on. No calls for a truce will be brooked. The DLC has used those pauses in the past to bide their time between offensives. Appeals to party unity will fall on deaf ears ... We need to make the DLC radioactive.”
“”
“Why are they charging higher prices for gas? Because people will pay it. Apparently, we’re not changing our driving habits much. Blame this on ourselves. This country has not built a new refinery in 30 years, we stopped new oil exploration ... and put a moratorium on offshore drilling.”
“”
“The House Rules Committee is perhaps the free world’s outstanding bureaucratic abomination — a tiny, airless closet deep in the labyrinth of the Capitol where some of the very meanest people on earth spend their days cleaning democracy like a fish.”
“”
“I’m struck by the irony in a march for freedom that requires registration — it seems that freedom is only for those who provide their personal details before walking down a public street in our nations capitol.”
“”
“By jettisoning any pretense to free-market principles, the GOP is defining itself entirely as the party of the religious right.”
“”
“Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”
Ambrose Bierce
“”
“On the left, we’ve always talked about the need to have an echo chamber. We believe the right has a whole media network, from talk radio to Fox News to Matt Drudge. The left doesn’t have that because the left doesn’t play well with others.”
“”
“It wasn’t political. It was a way of demonstrating your good faith as a member of the club. Most your tribe vs. my tribe ‘political’ discussion you see these days is in the same type of mold. The content doesn’t matter all that much; it merely provides you with an opportunity to prove you belong. Those who feel like opting out of the whole scheme don’t compute to the others. That’s centrism, maybe.”
“”
“Suppose that the heat of political rhetoric could be charted on a scale of spicy foods. What you hear and read most days in the mainstream media ranges from unseasoned oatmeal to Franco-American Spaghetti-Os in a can. Whereas the political blogs pick up somewhere around a Taco Bell burrito and range all the way to the vindaloo you might be served by a sadist chef in Bangalore.”
“”
“We’ve become mad in our pursuit of drug-law violations. Generations to come will look back and scarcely believe what we’ve done to sick people.”
“”
“Can anything said from the White House podium be taken at face value, or does the White House just deny automatically anything that reflects badly on it?”
“”
“There is, in my opinion, a struggle to find the Center in cultures across the world. We can see this struggle within Islam, within Christianity, within the West, within China, within Europe and America. And within ourselves.”
“”
“If I could have one small wish for today, it would be for the blogosphere on both left and right to refrain from political point scoring over the London attacks. Just for a day. Isn’t tomorrow soon enough to return to our usual arguments?”
“”
“As a Democrat, I’m very happy that the lefty blogosphere wasn’t around much on September 11. Because if they were, and they uncorked the response they are uncorking to the London bombings, Democrats might never be electable again in my lifetime.”
“”
“Only in Washington does a ‘truce’ on ethics make sense”
“”
“The spectacle we have made of confirmation hearings reinforces the public notion that the justices exist to decide cases the way political movements want them to. Liberals think the right started it, and conservatives think the left started it, but the important question is not who started it but who is going to stop it.”
“”
“I think once you do achieve a certain degree of traffic, influence, notoriety — however you want to call it — eventually the outsider label is not perfectly applicable anymore.”
“”
“The tone has been too much of a permanent campaign. When you’re the minority, you need to fight. When you’re the governing majority, you need to produce.”
“”
“Your Government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst, without flinching or losing heart. You must, in turn, have complete confidence that your Government is keeping nothing from you except information that will help the enemy in his attempt to destroy us.”
“”
“The Constitution this week is being nibbled to death by small men with press secretaries.”
“”
“A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that’s not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can’t stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business.”
“”
“Words are important. When Amnesty spokesmen use the word ‘gulag’ to describe U.S. human rights violations, they allow the Bush administration to dismiss justified criticism and undermine Amnesty’s credibility.”
“”
“Things aren’t getting better; they’re getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality. It’s like they’re just making it up as they go along.”
“”
“Senators are endlessly polished and briefed; they spend their days relentlessly speechifying. The White House beckons, and some come to seem less like human beings and more like nation-states. Opinions turn into positions. Beliefs grow more abstract. Individual traits become parts of the brand. Since 1961, more than 50 senators have run for president and they have all lost.”
“”
“When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.”
John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson
“”
“If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything — and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.”
“”
“Except for the ideologically devout, voters likewise are shaking loose the bonds of party loyalty and more and more joining the third party, the independents, either figuratively or literally. To a degree, the process becomes self-fulfilling. As voters less and less need the party to tell them what to think and whom to vote for, the parties more and more retreat to their hardcore ideological bases, thus further alienating mainstream voters who are less doctrinaire partisans and more eclectic individuals.”
“”
“For more than a half-year now since the presidential election, liberal Democrats have held endless rounds of closed-loop, self-referential meetings, meet-ups, rallies and conferences with each other vowing to win a new majority. So when are they going to go out there and start talking to all those others folks they have to convince?”
“”
“‘You’re with us or against us’ works well when you’re fighting al Qaeda, but it doesn’t with Social Security, and they don’t seem to have another play in the book.”
“”
“At a time when the Army and Marine Corps are struggling to fill their ranks, many conservatives are determined to limit the ability of women and gays to contribute to the war effort. Are they more concerned with winning culture wars at home or winning the war on terrorism abroad?”
“”
“In our free society, they took their best shot and they didn’t succeed. When you have people on the far right and far left unhappy, you may be in about the right position.”
“”
“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”
“”
“James Dobson: Who does he think he is, questioning my conservative credentials? Some of his language and conduct is quite un-Christian, and I don’t appreciate it.”
“”
“Pat had high ideals about the country; that’s why he did what he did. The military let him down. The administration let him down. It was a sign of disrespect. The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic. The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting.”
“”
“I was watching Dr. Frist’s speech on the Senate floor regarding the compromise over judicial filibusters and had decided to create my own drinking game based around his usage of the term ‘up or down vote.’ I am currently in the emergency room of St. Joseph’s hospital in Burbank with alcohol poisoning.”
“”
“The American people have no idea what we’re passing. And we have plenty of time to show them what we’re passing. Polls mean nothing.”
“”
“I’m leaving the left — more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together. I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives — people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere — reciting all the ways Iraq’s democratic experiment might yet implode.”
“”
“In a nutshell, I can’t figure out why half of America thinks Bush is the enemy and the other half wants to blame the fags for everything, and I am tired of being polite to either group.”
“”
“We’re in the middle of an ideological war against people who want to destroy us, and what have the most powerful people on earth become? Whining media bashers.”
“”
“Frankly, the election of the president drew from Americans who describe themselves as moderates, which is about 45 percent of Americans today. That’s something we overlook at our own peril.”
“”
“I don’t believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans aren’t that desperate for victory. While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican Party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican Party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one-party system.”
“”
“Since 1789, the Senate has rejected nearly 20 percent of all nominees to the Supreme Court, many without an up-or-down vote [...] But 208 of the president’s 218 judicial nominees have been approved. That’s right: the Senate has confirmed 95 percent of Mr. Bush’s judicial nominees. That’s a higher percentage of approval than any of his three predecessors achieved.”
“”
“President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson. Even after excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush is still the biggest-spending president in 30 years.”
“”
“The greatest danger for those of us who dislike George Bush is that our instincts may tip over into a desire to see his foreign policy objectives fail. No reasonable person can oppose the president’s commitment to Islamic democracy.”
“”
“In any given political discussion, if religion is mentioned, the probability of the discussion shifting to a flame war about religion and the Founding Fathers approaches one.”
“”
“Now, the Republicans in the Senate, instead of dealing with his litany of failures, are threatening to claim ownership of the Supreme Court and other federal courts, hoping to achieve political results on subjects like abortion, stem cells, the environment and civil rights that they can not get from the proper political bodies: the Congress and the presidency.”
“”
“Once an election is over, one guy gets tagged with the loser label. Much like Al Gore after the 2000 race, Senator Kerry has been working diligently since November to make sure everyone now knows that this label really fits him as well.”
“”
“The left has the race card and the gender card; the right has the ‘faith card.’”
“”
“I just look at this institution as really the last bastion of protecting the rights of the minority, and we should be very careful before we try and make any changes.”
“”
“I grow more and more convinced the Republican majority will end itself by 2006 if the Left will just shut up for five minutes.”
C.J. Burch
“”
“To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want ‘em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot ‘em.”
Ted Nugent on “due process,” at the NRA Convention
“”
“The values alleged so far in this scandal — greed, hypocrisy, favor-selling, dissembling — belong to no creed except the ruthless pursuit of power. They are not exclusive to either political party. But the religious trappings add a note that distinguishes these Beltway creeps from those who have come before: a supreme righteousness that often spirals into anger and fire-and-brimstone zealotry that can do far more damage to America than ill-begotten golf junkets.”
“”
“PATHETIC AND DISHONEST. Those are the only words I can think of to describe a major media event portraying Democrats as ‘against people of faith’ for blocking President Bush’s nominees. And I am thoroughly disgusted that the Senate majority leader is taking part. I can think of few better ways to drive me and my fellow independents into the arms of the Democrats.”
“”
“If he does it, it’ll be a watershed moment — a transformational moment for the GOP ... marking the political death of a dominant part of its party. Forget Democrats. Anyone who is a libertarian Republican, centrist, or independent voter has to be extremely concerned — and angered — by this.”
“”
“I may have voted for my last Republican in a long time. These wingnut, know-nothing, fundamentalist creeps are scaring the shit out of me, and liberty is at stake when it comes to these law and order goons.”
“”
“The truth hurts. But Eric Robert Rudolph, the man who had no apologies to make when he was pleading guilty to bombing women’s clinics, gay nightclubs and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, is the ideological cousin to Randall Terry, the so-called ‘spokesman’ for the Schindler family and the media darling of the Terri Schiavo debacle of three weeks ago.”
“”
“Democrats should save their money. Why murder someone who is committing suicide?”
“”
“Rather than being serious about reforming the judiciary, I think that some Republicans are more interested in intimidating judges while bolstering direct-mail fundraising for advocacy groups and politicians.”
“”
“For decades I have argued that the negative effects of deficits are generally exaggerated. But unless spending is checked or revenue raised, we are facing deficits of historic proportions. It is simply unrealistic to think we can finance a 50 percent increase in spending as a share of gross domestic product — which is what is in the pipeline — just by running ever-larger deficits.”
“”
“In 1945, corporations paid more than one-third of the government’s revenues. Now they pay only 11 percent because corporations, especially multinationals, are voluntary taxpayers. In a world increasingly without borders that block capital movements, corporations pay where the burden is lowest.”
“”
“As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around. The historic principles of the Republican Party offer America its best hope for a prosperous and secure future. Our current fixation on a religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction.”
“”
“Apparently, the religious right is not necessarily more representative of the general population than the ‘Beserkely’ beads and sandals crowd. The right has taken on some of the worst characteristics of the New Left — morally self-righteous, making the personal, political and valuing ends over means.”
“”
“This Congress is getting involved in things they shouldn’t be getting involved in, and not getting involved in things they should be.”
“”
“The day will come when we will outlaw smoking in its entirety. This is a beginning.”
“”
“Conservatism is a philosophy without a party in America any more. It has been hijacked by zealots and statists.”
“”
“How about this for a bellwether? When you read
Maureen Dowd, and say to your self, ‘Shit. She is 100% right,’ it is time for some serious soul-searching.”
“”
“There are probably some smart folks on Capitol Hill who are supporting this legislation knowing that ultimately the courts will strike it down. That way, being the politicians that they are, they will be able to blame the heartless judiciary for the result and still will be able to say to their constituents that they tried their best. It is the politics of cynicism at its very best (or very worst).”
“”
“I do not favor extreme remedies — unless no moderate remedies can be found.”
“”
“Georgian Reid Stott — who might fairly be described as a ‘militant independent’...”
“”
“Soon there are going to be more neoconservative magazines than there are neoconservatives.”
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“Because of this fight, there will be no quiet, smooth passage for this bill. Instead, folks are now on record:
58 voted against giving just a little protection for military families set upon by predatory lenders. 74
voted against a 30% usury cap, saying the credit card companies are free to take whatever they can get. 58
voted against treating families beset by cancer and diabetes differently from those that run up bills on fancy vacations and over-priced nonsense.”
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“The majority’s cynicism in pushing the bill has been as deep as the pockets of the high-powered lobbyists behind it. Even a proposal to exempt soldiers fighting in Iraq from the tougher bankruptcy rules was defeated, but the egregious ‘millionaire’s loophole’ still stands, allowing wealthy Americans in bankruptcy to shelter huge assets in safe-haven states.”
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“Frankly, we expect smoking bans from the folks running New York and California and Cuba. What’s the Georgia GOP’s excuse?”
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“If you still want to play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules, fine — but I’ve moved on to brass knuckles.”
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“I say we tell those liberal, tree-hugging, Birkenstock wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies and their music and whine somewhere else.”
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“If we’re exporting detainees for the express purpose that they be tortured under interrogation by another regime, it’s a terrible idea. Any short-term gain that might come out of it won’t be worth the long-term ill impression created by it. We’re promoting democracy across the region, and you can’t have torture by a dictatorial government. You just can’t do it. If you’re an idealist and you believe in democracy, it’s bad policy. It’s hypocritical, and it will blow up in your face.”
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“Ward Churchill is a far left idiot, but Jeff Jarvis is Glenn Reynolds’ sucker. Megadittos, Jeff, megadittos. Maybe the cool kids will invite you to the lunch table now.”
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“Only an imbecile nation could possibly have elected Bush after what he did to us the first four years. Our fellow citizens are greedy, hateful spiteful bigots. 51% of the voters anyway.”
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“Republicans have lost their way.”
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“Right now, the DNC desperately needs to find a message that appeals to people who aren’t dyed-in-the-wool Democrats. The Democrats need to reach out, not look in. Dean proved remarkably good at looking in and remarkably poor at reaching out. So, naturally, Dean is taking over the DNC. Sigh.”
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“Candidate Dean’s ‘communities’ swept him away, literally, from his intriguing slot as a gun-toting fiscal conservative who had supported four consecutive American interventions, to a New Old Left that looked suspiciously like a Ralph Nader rally with more laptops.”
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“Bosnia buried my pacifism. But it did not bury my liberalism.”
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“The ‘persistence of memory’ capability provided by technology, omnipresent video, and the web will no longer allow major leaders, as well as the rest of us, to ever escape what we say or do. Like the Biblical concept of the eye that sees all, and the scroll that records all, we are entering an era of informational accountability.”
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“Puppeting a belief for social or financial gain, without seeking the truth within one’s heart is real, real wrong. The level of discourse in America has plummeted to a name-calling ping-pong match with a turd for a ball. It doesn’t matter how wicked the serve is, both sides are still smacking a bunch of shit around.”
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“Until names are named, we can assume every conservative pundit is on the White House’s payola rolls.”
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“Until names are named, we can assume every Daily Kos candidate this past election wrote him a check for his consulting work.”
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“But how much evidence is there that Bush’s actions generally turn out more responsible than his rhetoric? Iraq? Immigration? Medicare drug benefits? Tax cuts during war time? No Child Left Behind?”
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“The prevailing democratic system in the world is not suitable for us in this region. We have our own Muslim faith, which is a complete system and complete religion. Elections do not fall within the sphere of the Muslim religion.”
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“When are both sides going to realize that it’s not only about them! That there are millions of Iraqis, Afghanis, Iranians Etc who are suffering daily and who are trying to find a solution and a way to achieve their dreams (with the help they are getting from America) and who do not have the slightest interest in supporting any party in America. The world is bigger than you and your partisan conflicts and frankly I’m getting sick of it.”
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“We are about to embark on a 10-year period in which recent tax cuts and runaway spending are expected to add $5 trillion to the cumulative deficit. In my lifetime we will have gone from the Greatest Generation to the Profligate Generation to the Bankrupt Generation. Yes, I’m talking to you 20-year-olds. President Bush has called for sacrifice — but not by his generation. He’s passing the bill onto your generation.”
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“A reconstruction of what happened suggests less a sinister conspiracy than problems arising from the legislative practices of the present Congress, in which sleep-deprived staffers often take on much of the burden of writing major bills under deadline pressure, and legislation drafted in secret is rushed through both chambers before lawmakers, let alone the general public, have a chance for review.”
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“I could not disagree more with the public policy that underlies the California law. I think it’s flawed. I think it’s bad public policy. But if somebody can go in and tell California you can’t regulate drugs the way you want to regulate them in California, the next step is they could come to Alabama and tell us we can’t do it.”
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“With one party controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress, and having little fear of retaliation by the opposing party, the House leadership is changing the way laws are made in America, favoring secrecy and speed over open debate and negotiation.”
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“Prominent examples from the 108th Congress include the Medicare prescription drug bill, the energy bill, the intelligence bill and the defense authorization bill. These important pieces of legislation total more than 2,900 pages of text and authorize more than $1 trillion of spending. Yet, collectively they were available to members for less than 48 hours total for reading.”
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“What is more comforting to the terrorists around the world: the failure to pass the 9/11 legislation because we lacked ‘a majority of the majority,’ or putting aside partisan politics to enact tough new legislation with America’s security foremost in mind?”
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“I was totally guilty of doing what I accused many of my adversaries of doing. I was writing about what I was against, not what I was for. I was writing with long, broad strokes. I was engaging in the worst of unsocial discourse. And I was fueling ten thousand people a day while I was doing it.”
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“On both sides, discourse now moves swiftly from disagreement into demonizing, from contrast to caricature. The worst motives are always assumed. Both camps have polemicists who win popularity, ratings, and book sales by devising ever more clever ways of ripping the eyelids off their opponents. We all know the visceral satisfactions of hanging out with our home-team blogs and watching the TV or radio stations that fit our worldview. Our politicians and pundits happily supply us with the voodoo dolls and the pins. But we’d be smarter not to use them.”
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“It seemed that the
technical mechanisms of reputation, such as blog-rolls and Technorati, had codified
social inequalities in charisma and popularity (the politics of groups), until they had actually become institutionalised political forms.”
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“Anybody who thought that a ‘Bush 2’ foreign policy would be a more moderate, multilateral, Kerry-like foreign policy just doesn’t understand this president, or this election.”
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“Look, I’m as ‘militaristic’ as the next person when it comes to actually defending ourselves, but I’m somewhat bothered when a disease like cancer kills 500,000 people a year in the US, afflicts another million, and the National Cancer Institute has a total budget of 6 billion this last year, which is about 1/10 the CIA’s budget, and 1/70th of what was spent by the Pentagon. I guess it’s just easier to blow stuff up.”
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“In your re-election, God has graciously granted America — though she doesn’t deserve it — a reprieve from the agenda of paganism.”
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“We both represent aspects of the American psyche that need each other, the jock and the intellectual, the Boy Scout and the renegade, the guardian and the wild card. We both love this great and terrible country, even as we fear one another’s excessive influence on it, and part of what we love is the creative fever that arises from our division. As we need each other, however unwillingly, so America needs us both.”
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“I can indulge your manic rage and self-pitying up to a point, because I’d be rending my garments and biting the heads off of chickens had Bush lost. When you’re done wallowing, figure out how you’re going to defend the beliefs of 48% of America with honor and dignity.”
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“I have family in Idaho, but I told my wife we’re not going to visit them now. It’s all Republicans there. We have family in Indiana and I don’t want to go there either.”
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“Their army is how much bigger than mine? Three percent? Well shucks, Bubba. Now is the time to establish a network and an attitude.”
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“Liberals are nice people, but we make shitty generals. Everytime we try make headlong charge and get slaughtered, we regroup, try to figure out what went wrong, and decide we just didn’t charge hard enough. We convince ourselves that there’s this big army of Deaniacs or young voters or whatever who are going to ride to the rescue, and we call that a strategy.”
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“Wow. There sure are a bunch of working class white people voting these days. Perhaps it might be useful to try to get some of them to vote for Democrats. I’m just sayin’.”
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“The blogosphere had no clue ... This goes for the big pro-Bush sites AND the pro-Kerry sites. (Shall we call it the Main Stream Blogosphere, or ‘MSB?’) This wasn’t ‘The Year of the Blogger’ at all. It was the year the Blogger saw himself and mistook the vision for the election.”
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“There is a divide in this country today, miles wide and fathoms deep. It has cleaved our great nation, and has only grown — and will only continue to grow. But it’s not a left/right split, or Democrat/Republican one. It’s lunatic/non-lunatic [...] The Web is a festering cesspool of lunacy and emotion: Free Republic, Daily Kos, Little Green Footballs, Atrios, Instapundit, on and on and on. Facts only enter the picture when they’re favorable. Emotion rules. There is no common ground, nor a desire for any.”
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“Screaming that the 58MM or so folks who voted for Bush were idiots, dupes, or evil homophobic crypto-fascist theocratic thugs, is neither helpful nor likely to decrease their number. Threatening to move elsewhere is only going to earn you a ticket, with their gratitude. If you want to sway those folks, you need to change your tactics.”
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“I don’t just feel beaten; I feel like I’ve lived a fundamentally foolish turn of mind, like I’ve been defrauding my friends with an amped-up similitude of rational optimism, and that I can’t imagine why anyone should henceforth care what I think about anything.”
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“But I, like most of us, fell for the echo chamber. Daily Kos, MyDD, Steve Soto, Pandagon, and all the other blogs are run by good people with positive intentions, but if they’re you’re primary source for information, you’re outlook is perverted by an overwhelming amount of good news and a general disdain for the factual accuracy of bad news. It perverts your perspective and, because the sample group is so totally different than most of America, it begins to twist your political predictions and assumptions of what works.”
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“There is something seriously wrong with a party that gets spotted $200 million, a solid candidate, wins every debate, has an opponent with sub-50% approval rating, an unpopular war, the worst economic record since The Great Depression, and a boatload of scandals, and loses by 3 million votes.”
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“Bush has no re-election worries, no divided government, and (Ohio recounts willing) no whiff of illegitimacy surrounding his second term. The next two and probably four years will be as pure an expression of his governing beliefs as he could have ever dreamed. If nothing else, we can be thankful for the rare opportunity to see a president and a political party in such sharp, even naked, relief.”
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“Never in my lifetime have I seen the electorate so passionate, and never before have the two sides seemed so utterly, unshakeably certain of themselves. Campaigns are not the best places to seek out public confessions of self-doubt, but the certitude on display in this race has long since crossed the threshold from confidence to delusion, and whoever is elected on Tuesday (or whenever it ends) will soon be smacked in the face with the cold hard truth.”
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“I’ve been disillusioned with the political process ever since John Hoffmeyer won the student council presidency by ten votes in sixth grade and my request for a recount was denied.”
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“Elsewhere, Bin Laden has vowed to bankrupt the US. Given Bush’s prescription drug plan and Kerry’s proposed ‘reforms,’ all we can say is, back of the line, buddy.”
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“To put it plainly, if European public opinion about the U.S. depends primarily on us electing a president who doesn’t offend their sensibilities, then the Transatlantic relationship may have already become too pathological to repair any time in the foreseeable future.”
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“The 2004 presidential election is shaping up to be uglier than an octogenarian stripper convention.”
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“Set aside what the mass of people think. Some things are so bad for them that you cannot allow them to have them. One of them is war in the context of terrorism in the United States. Therefore, we have to abridge individual rights, change the societal conditions, and act in ways that heretofore were not in accordance with our values and traditions, like giving a police officer or security official the right to search you without a judicial finding of probable cause.”
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“The hardest thing to understand is why haven’t we put this guy away a long time ago.”
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“I don’t watch the national news, and I don’t read the paper. I haven’t done that for the last six weeks. I watch Fox News to get my information.”
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“Had conservatives spoken up loudly a year ago and said what both of Mr. Bush’s senior Iraq envoys, Jay Garner and Paul Bremer, have now said (and what many of us who believed in the importance of Iraq were saying) — that we never had enough troops to control Iraq’s borders, keep the terrorists out, prevent looting and establish authority — the president might have changed course. Instead, they served as a Greek chorus, applauding Mr. Bush’s missteps and mocking anyone who challenged them.”
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“Mr. Stewart’s Howard Beal (of “Network”) outburst stood out because he said what a lot of viewers feel helpless to correct: that news programs, particularly on cable, have become echo chambers for political attacks, amplifying the noise instead of parsing the misinformation.”