Here are a bunch of my favorite funny and/or profound quotes, I find them
all over, like from people I know, TV, books, etc. There are occasionally quotes that I don't necessarily agree with but post to show how the other side thinks; I'll leave it up to you to figure out which ones. You'll have to excuse the complete disorganization, which is almost characteristic of this site. BTW, some of these might be considered offensive, so consider yourself warned. And just so she'll stop bitching at me, Tina was the one that came up with that name for this section.
New quotes are always at the top! Except with the favorites, the new ones there are at the bottom.
NOTE: The Favorites section will no longer be updated. When I redo this page of the site, that section will be eliminated entirely and the quotes contained therein moved to other sections.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: Many of the quotes here are unattributed, because for some reason I thought it was a good idea when I started this site. All of the newer quotes are attributed where possible, and I also slowly go through and attribute older quotes as I stumble on the sources. If you know the source for a quote that lacks one, feel free to contact me.
Nobody is totally useless. They can always be used as a bad example.
Word to the wise: Women want men with flat stomachs and fat wallets. My sex life still hasn't recovered from getting it backwards.
It's funny because it's true.
I'd rather be disliked for what I am than liked for what I'm not.
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up,
walk over or around it, and carry on.
The only thing standing between me and complete happiness is reality.
Sometimes my job sucks. Yet other times it sucks more. -Scott Carpenter
When I meet God, I'm gonna ask him one question: Why did you make me so unattractive, yet so horny? -Lindsay Acord
It's easier to fight for one's principles then to live up to them.
There are 2 kinds of guys: those who masturbate, and those who lie.
I'm sure the list of embarrassing ways to die has to be long indeed, but having a heart attack while masturbating to a picture of Hitler has to be way up there.
When the police asked why I killed the guy, I had to laugh; I didn't know either! -Rick Wiesner
Sometimes I get really depressed and I think life isn't worth living. Then I look around and see all the wonder and miracles around me and I realize life is worth living... just not *my* life. -Lili Von Schtupp
If you take life too seriously you won't get to laugh along with everyone else when you fail.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
All that evil requires to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
The most wasted day is one in which we do not laugh.
The more crap you put up with, the more you're going to get.
What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
Laws are only words words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool.
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention!
Hate isn't the opposite of love. Hate can keep you warm at night, too. -Rob Fairchild
Religion and philosophy are essentially expressions of a fear that life has no meaning. A naked person waiting for me in bed is all the beauty I need to know the answer of the smarter ultimate question, which is whether or not life has value.
The best things in life require cleaning afterwards. -Rob Fairchild
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
A sense of humor is the only thing that keeps intelligent people from hanging themselves.
What if the person you want to sleep with isn't the same as the one you want to wake up with?
You only have as much or as little power as you and everyone else thinks you have.
Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating and religion.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
Life is short. Unless, of course, you're hanging by your eyelids from two metal chains attached to a crane, waiting for help to arrive, in which case time tends to drag a bit.
No problem is so small that it can't be solved with excessive violence.
I've recently returned after a relaxing stay in the beautiful island nation of Barbados. Reflecting on my time away, I have to say that extradition treaties really suck. -Brad Osberg
Power concedes nothing without a demand. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.... Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. -Fredrick Douglass
You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.
I could, in theory, make up a God, claim that He commands people to be intelligent, compassionate, eat healthy foods, and help the poor every chance they get. With a lot of hard work, and even more luck (and some good scare tactics), I might convince a lot of people to believe in this God. The believers might very well make more of an effort to be compassionate, intelligent, healthy, and charitable than non-believers, but that doesn?t make my made-up God any more real than the tooth fairy.
If you really insist on behaving like an asshole, I honestly don't see how you can be surprised to wind up covered in shit. -Rob Fairchild
I'm not sure why it's good to compare something to the fun potential of "a barrel of monkeys." Like, "Scrabble is more fun than a barrel of monkeys!"
Actually a barrel of monkeys would have to be the most terrifying thing, ever. Imagine prying off the top of the barrel, only to see six pairs of eyes glinting from the darkness, fixated with fury upon you and nothing else. All you can smell is monkey semen, sprayed everywhere from hours and hours of their combined total masturbation. The monkeys are matted and sticky, cold and wet, the fresh air and light causes them to start screaming and howling at you. They're extremely hungry, and hideously angry, and you've just let them free.
That's when the lead monkey leaps into the air and starts smashing your skull with the very crowbar you freed him with.
Now what could be less fun than that? -Rob Fairchild
Medical science is a good thing, but I think hospitals should be much more wary of the laws of natural selection. For instance, if you show up with your penis in a bucket of ice, they should ask you "So, why is your penis in a bucket of ice?" before they decide whether or not to sew it back on. -Rob Fairchild
People always say they 'slept like a baby,' when you ask them how they slept, except that babies probably aren't the models of sound sleeping. Generally they drool an awful lot and wake up in 6 hours, soaked in their own urine. -Rob Fairchild
Lawyers deserve some credit. We complain that they're dishonest and greedy, but we're the ones who hire them. Lawyers clean up our messes, and at our behest they inflict misery upon anyone we consider an enemy. They exist because we can't live our lives decently. I'm not sure it's lawyers who are the problem. -Rob Fairchild
I think, therefore I am dangerous.
Some people are assholes. But science also tells us that you wouldn't know if you're one of them, so pipe down.
When you're having a bad day and it seems like people are trying to piss you off, remember that it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to extend your finger and flip them off.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
Why do we kill people for killing people to show that killing people is wrong?
Life is good. Well, it's may not seem so good when you're living it, but I bet when you're dying and your life is flashing before your eyes, you think, "Man, I ate a lot of good stuff."
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men. -Plato
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.
All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the world to do the fighting for them. -Emma Goldman
Too many people are only willing to to defend rights that are personally important to them. It's selfish ignorance, and it's exactly why totalitarian governments are able to get away with trampling on people. Freedom does not mean freedom just for the things *I* think I should be able to do. Freedom is for all of us. If people will not speak up for other's people's rights, there will come a day when they will lose their own.
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it. -Malcolm X
Stop tolerating in your leaders what you would not tolerate in your friends.
It would be easier to pay off the national debt overnight than to neutralize the long-range effects of our national stupidity.
What's stopping you from doing something so cool it renders you immortal?
(an essay written by a Charlotte Aldebron, a 12-year old schoolgirl, about the true importance of the symbol of our nation) The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain. School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge loyalty to justice and equality and human decency. No one has to promise that people will get a fair wage, or enough food to eat, or affordable medicine, or clean water, or air free of harmful chemicals. But we all have to promise to love a rectangle of red, white, and blue cloth. Betsy Ross would be quite surprised to see how successful her creation has become. But Thomas Jefferson would be disappointed to see how little of the flag's real meaning remains.
While some people think that dissent is unpatriotic, I would argue that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. In fact, if patriotism means being true to the principles for which your country is supposed to stand, then certainly the right to dissent is one of those principles. And if we're exercising that right to dissent, it's a patriotic act. One of the great mistakes made in discussing patriotism -- a very common mistake -- is to think that patriotism means support for your government. And that view of patriotism ignores the founding principles of the country expressed in the Declaration of Independence. That is: the Declaration of Independence makes it clear that governments are artificial creations set up to achieve certain ends -- equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness -- and when governments become destructive of those ends it is the right of the people in the words of the Declaration, to alter or abolish the government. -Howard Zinn
Student councils and class elections are the biggest smokescreen the school throws up, fostering the illusion that you actually have any say in the running of the school. Most students who run for these offices either take the charade too seriously- or they just think it'll look good on their college applications. -Michael Moore
I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.
(in reference to Bush's speech at the Ohio State University graduation ceremony, by one of the graduating seniors) I was quite upset ever since I read in the campus paper that Bush had been invited to speak at my graduation. That man signifies everything that is wrong in this nation: the abuse of power, the privatization of profit and the socialization of burdens, the destruction and dismantling of what I call progress without any consideration of the consequences, but most especially the Bush Administration's foreign policy and actions around the 9-11 issues.
For anyone who just needed a little bit of convincing that the world is a cruel and horrible place to live in and that this alleged post-9/11 baby boom is the exact opposite of the way to better society, I would like to point out that in Santa Cruz, California today (note: 5/31/02), a man bled to death in a convenience store from a gunshot wound to the head while other customers stepped over him to pay for their merchandise. [...] The main thought going through my head while reading this was somewhere around the lines of, "The only way I will ever be convinced God actually exists right now is if every single customer in the store who did that then had their lives ruined, preferably by the same robbers who shot the guy in some bizarre allusion to Spider-Man except they don't get to become super-heroes in the end and instead live out the rest of their lives with horrific, physical evidence of their complete lack of a soul, and maybe the loss of vision and/or sense of smell for good measure. -August J. Pollak
I was sitting outside one cloudy day, reminiscing on all the bad luck I was having. Everything was going wrong. Feeling bad, I looked up to the heavens with outstretched arms and said "Why me, Lord, Why me?" All of a sudden there was a clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning, and as the clouds parted, a booming voice came down from the sky, and said: "Because, Susan, there's something about you that just ticks me off!"
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense. -Buddha
I am enormously proud to be an American. I would say that the things that our corporate-controlled government has done at best are shameful and at worst genocidal-but there's an incredible and a permanent culture of resistance in this country that I'm very proud to be a part of. It's not the tradition of slave-owning founding fathers, it's the tradition of the Frederick Douglasses, the Underground Railroads, the Chief Josephs, the Joe Hills, and the Huey P. Newtons. There's so much to be proud of when you're American that's hidden from you. The incredible courage and bravery of the union organizers in the late 1800's and early 1900's-that's amazing. People often get tricked into going overseas and fighting Uncle Sam's Wall Street wars, but these are people who knew what they were fighting for here at home. I think that that's so much more courageous and brave. -Tom Morello
To know that an act is right and not do it is the greatest cowardice. -Confucius
I fear Bush because he is rapidly eroding the constitutional rights of Americans and assuming dictatorial powers. Not only is he ignorant of the consequences of his insane foreign policy, he doesn't care. In the long run this will destroy your country. In a very short time in office he has made the U.S a declining economic power that relies on it's military to gain advantage. This is the classic pattern of a falling empire.
[A political e-mail list is] the all-time nerdiest thing I've ever been involved in, and I say that as a person who has been involved with public radio and marching band.
There are no sins against the gods, for mortals cannot be expected to know what the immortals would have of them. There are, however, sins against humans; for only the insane or the foolish can fail to know what their fellow beings require.
(Tommy Vercetti from GTA: Vice City) Nobody does whatever they want; they do what you let them do.
Let face facts, shall we? There is a very real possibility that this could also be the *last* day of the rest of your life.
I don't want to believe. I want to know. -Carl Sagan on religion
Personally speaking, the sexiest quality any woman can possibly possess is willingness. -Lev L. Spiro
Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage -- torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians -- which does not change its moral color when it is committed by "our" side. [...] The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. -George Orwell
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
atheist n. 1: Someone not to be trusted with moral questions because they have no morals by the common agreement of religious people. 2: A Christian who makes the mistake of wondering how the bloody hell Noah got over 40,000 pairs of critters onto an Ark in less than a century of time and before the advent of modern geography, steel supertankers and anti-psychotic drugs from Smith-Kline. 3: An intemperate, foolish, egotistical zealot, addicted to the false prophet of rationalism. -T.G. Browning
martyr n. 1: Any person with two pounds of C4, copper wire, and a switch plus the sense God gave radishes. Islam apparently gives Ph.D.s in radishes. 2: A person with poor reaction time. -T.G. Browning
McCarthy’s Law maxim The fault lies not with our stars, but with the Communist Party. -T.G. Browning
Mother Teresa pers. Catholic nun on the fast track for canonization. She’s already been beatified with one miracle (thanks to prescription drugs and misdiagnosis), and an even dozen should be forthcoming in a few years time, if the current pope and the late pope John-Paul II have anything to say about it. Of Albanian extraction, she was a big fan of Charles Keating, “Baby Doc” Jean-Claude Duvalier, and end of life treatment of often agonizing diseases with prayer, homilies, and keen observations that excruciating pain constitutes the kisses of Jesus. Oddly, many dying people requested less spiritual kissing and more analgesics. -T.G. Browning
Remember: Reverence for life includes reverence for firm, young, naked life. -The Covert Comic
When I awoke in a puddle of my own vomit after a night of Halloween candy binging, I suddenly realized why no one would ever market creamed-style candy corn. -Stephanie Thompson
Just counting the zeroes on the $3 trillion price tag of the Iraq War is enough to induce hyperventilation. But what does $3 trillion really mean? It's difficult even to comprehend a number that big. Well, try filling your shopping cart with what the cost of the Iraq War could buy: healthcare for every American? A new home for every subprime borrower now facing foreclosure? An Ivy League university? You haven't even gotten started. -Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winning economist
What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children -- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women -- not merely peace in our time but peace for all time. -John F. Kennedy (1963)
Women are hard to figure out. They love lingerie and they love garage sales, but they don't seem to like getting garage-sale lingerie as a gift. -Brad Osberg
stoic adj. What one is when one is subjected to less than one desires and complains only half as much as one wishes. -T.G. Browning
It's amazing Larry, Moe and Curly remained friends all those years. If one on my friends kept hitting me with a hammer on purpose, I'd likely stop hanging out with him. -Anthony Myers
I can't decide who's the bigger geek, the person who used "FF0000" for the vanity plate on their red car, or me because I knew that FF0000 is the hexadecimal value for red. -Bill Hewins
I tried to tell my son how important it is to work hard, do well in school, avoid drugs and serve in the military. I told him if he doesn't do those things he might end up being president, and then no one would like him. -Jim Evarts
My own view, frequently expressed (for example in the The Selfish Gene and especially in the title chapter of A Devil's Chaplain) is that there are two reasons why we need to take Darwinian natural selection seriously. Firstly, it is the most important element in the explanation for our own existence and that of all life. Secondly, natural selection is a good object lesson in how NOT to organize a society. As I have often said before, as a scientist I am a passionate Darwinian. But as a citizen and a human being, I want to construct a society which is about as un-Darwinian as we can make it. I approve of looking after the poor (very un-Darwinian). I approve of universal medical care (very un-Darwinian). It is one of the classic philosophical fallacies to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'... If we look at more recent history, the closest representatives you'll find to Darwinian politics are uncompassionate conservatives like Margaret Thatcher, George W Bush, or... Richard Nixon. Maybe all these people, along with the Social Darwinists from Herbert Spencer to John D Rockefeller, committed the is/ought fallacy and justified their unpleasant social views by invoking garbled Darwinism. Anyone who thinks that has any bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsity of Darwin's theory of evolution is either an unreasoning fool or a cynical manipulator of unreasoning fools. -Richard Dawkins [article link]
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be President. -Kurt Vonnegut
Parenthood is amazing. At this time last year, I was just an actuary. Today, I'm an actuary whose meals are routinely interrupted by needing to digitally cram ointment in another human being's ass-crack. -Brad Simanek
Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be -- and these are his words -- 'the first president to lose a war.' We are asking Americans to think about that, because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? -John Kerry, 1971
Since woman's greatest misfortunes has been that she was looked upon as either angel or devil, her true salvation lies ... in being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies and mistakes. -Emma Goldman
While they innocently stand in line in slaughterhouses throughout the world waiting for their lives to be violently destroyed, innocent and frightened animals desperately try to communicate with humans. If you listen carefully you can hear them now. Please let me live, please do not kill me. What did I do wrong that you want to kill me? -Arthur Poletti, from the book, God Does Not Eat Meat
Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative-and fatal-health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they cold eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kils so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out cards praying for "Peace on Earth." -Preface from Old MacDonald's Factory Farm by David Coates
If a company's most valuable resource is its people, how come the employees aren't locked up, but the toilet paper is in a reinforced steel box with a lock, bolted to the stall? -Mark Severin
And to take a good look at ourselves. A first observation is that we can easily overestimate our national conscience. A major part of the protest against the war springs simply from the fact that we are losing it. If it were not for the heavy cost, politicians like the Kennedys [Robert and Edward] and organizations like the ADA [the liberal Americans for Democratic Action] would still be as complacent about the war as they were a few years ago. -I.F. Stone, 1968
[in reference to neoliberal Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria] Like the rest of his well-paid cronies in the media Establishment who rail on populism, he expects us to believe - without a shred of actual factual proof or "reporting" - that the poor farmer in the developing world is eager to be thrown off his land by subsidized multinational agribusiness companies; thrilled that the protectionist provisions in America's trade policy make medicine prices unaffordable for him and his family; upset that any American political leaders would talk about protecting his labor and human rights so as to prevent ongoing exploitation; and in awe of that supposedly great economic and political utopia known as Mexico - a place where economic inequality, poverty and political unrest runs rampant.
This is the "expertise" of Fareed Zakaria - the Very Important Person who helps dictate the terms of debate on international economic issues. And this is why that debate is so divorced from reality. -David Sirota [article link]
A cult is a religion with no power. -Tom Wolfe
Thousands of people who say they "love" animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs (slaughterhouses). -Dr. Jane Goodall
If they’re ever filming a hunting show, and a guy shoots at an animal and misses, and then oil starts bubbling up from the ground where the bullet hit, I just hope the director has the good sense to keep the cameras rolling – because something tells me he could have a major hit reality series on his hands. -The Covert Comic
The more vulgar apologists for U.S. and Israeli crimes solemnly explain that, while Arabs purposely kill people, the U.S. and Israel, being democratic societies, do not intend to do so. Their killings are just accidental ones, hence not at the level of moral depravity of their adversaries. That was, for example, the stand of Israel's High Court when it recently authorized severe collective punishment of the people of Gaza by depriving them of electricity (hence water, sewage disposal, and other such basics of civilized life).
The same line of defense is common with regard to some of Washington's past peccadilloes, like the destruction in 1998 of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The attack apparently led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, but without intent to kill them, hence not a crime on the order of intentional killing -- so we are instructed by moralists who consistently suppress the response that had already been given to these vulgar efforts at self-justification.
To repeat once again, we can distinguish three categories of crimes: murder with intent, accidental killing, and murder with foreknowledge but without specific intent. Israeli and U.S. atrocities typically fall into the third category. Thus, when Israel destroys Gaza's power supply or sets up barriers to travel in the West Bank, it does not specifically intend to murder the particular people who will die from polluted water or in ambulances that cannot reach hospitals. And when Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of the al-Shifa plant, it was obvious that it would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe. Human Rights Watch immediately informed him of this, providing details; nevertheless, he and his advisers did not intend to kill specific people among those who would inevitably die when half the pharmaceutical supplies were destroyed in a poor African country that could not replenish them.
Rather, they and their apologists regarded Africans much as we do the ants we crush while walking down a street. We are aware that it is likely to happen (if we bother to think about it), but we do not intend to kill them because they are not worthy of such consideration. Needless to say, comparable attacks by Araboushim in areas inhabited by human beings would be regarded rather differently. -Noam Chomsky [article link]
[in reference the storming of the US embassy in Belgrade by Serb protestors angry over American support for Kosovo's independence] [G]iven that the Serbs are Eastern Orthodox Christians, will the Republican Party and Fox Cable News now start fulminating against "Christofascism?" -Juan Cole [article link]
Imagine, for a moment, what the world looks like to Iran. The country is surrounded by powerful states with nuclear weapons—Israel, India, Pakistan, China and Russia. Across one of its borders stand some 170,000 American troops (in Iraq), across another are more than 50,000 NATO troops (in Afghanistan). The United States has been bitterly opposed to the Iranian regime for three decades. The current American president has made clear time and again that he regards the Tehran government as evil and wishes that it would fall, and Congress set aside $75 million last year to "promote democracy" in Iran. Now, if you were in Tehran, wouldn't you buy some insurance? And in the world of international politics, a nuclear program is the ultimate insurance policy. -Fareed Zakaria [article link]
I thought it would be fun doing a bondage-and-discipline session with Wonder Woman. Unfortunately, her "rope of truth" made it impossible to acknowledge her as my master without having to be truthful about the fact that the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution prohibit master/slave relationships. -Kevin Freels
[T]orture does migrate, and there are some good examples of it both in American and French history. The basic idea here is that soldiers who get ahead torturing come back and take jobs as policemen, and private security, and they get ahead doing the same things they did in the army. And so torture comes home. Everyone knows waterboarding, but no one remembers that it was American soldiers coming back from the Philippines that introduced it to police in the early twentieth century. During the Philippine Insurgency in 1902, soldiers learned the old Spanish technique of using water tortures, and soon these same techniques appeared in police stations, especially throughout the South, as well as in military lockups during World War I. Likewise, the electrical techniques used in Vietnam appeared in the 1960s appeared in torturing African Americans on the south side of Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s, and, as I argue in the book, that wasn’t just an accident.
So torture always comes home. And the techniques of this war are likely to show up in a neighborhood near you. -Darius Rejali [article link]
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. -Thomas Paine
There is a very real and perverse possibility that the NFL will face tougher sanctions for spying on practice squads and covering it up than the telecoms and this President will face for spying on the citizenry and lying about it. -John Cole [article link]
Begrudgingly, I have to give credit to the Republicans for being much more open in the primary process. The Democrats engage in this merry dance of triangulating, backtracking on their previous votes, refusing to actually take a definitive stand on anything, and generally just talking about platforms and policies that are worded like the closing statements of lawyers defending serial killers. Republicans just come out and say they're fucking nuts and want to destroy you. -August J. Pollak [article link]
From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. -George Orwell
In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. -George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"
In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. -George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. -George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"
Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. -George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"
If you don't believe that kids can think, or should think, it seems unlikely that you will educate them in a way that may help them do it better.
If young people are not trained to think and pay attention to language - and in particular to the language being used to form their ideas and opinions - it seems obvious that they will be more susceptible to the techniques of advertising (repetition, volume, reductive sloganeering, and so on) than to the more challenging processes of reason, common sense, and logic. Clarity of thought and attention to nuance are essential tools in subverting propoganda. And surely it's not only a few paranoids who have noticed that systematically under-educating a population is one way to insure future generations of men and women qualified to work at the McDonald's or serve on a corporate board without stepping out of line, or asking too many questions, or asking the wrong questions, or knowing what questions to ask. -Francine Prose, What Orwell Didn't Know
Barring a rash of immaculate conceptions, you've got to think we're on our last generation of on-line gamers and role playing geeks. -Steve Bacon
All sunglasses, no matter how expensive, pretty much look the same after you sit on them. -Ivy Rosier
Note to employees: The statement "Think outside the box" does *not* constitute permission to leave it. -The Covert Comic
To put the point the other way, which will hopefully penetrate the wall of resistance erected by so many people: the only reason you aren't in a concentration camp right now is because Bush hasn't decided to send you to one -- yet. But he claims he has the power to do so -- and there are almost no voices of any prominence to dispute the contention... Given the hysteria that followed 9/11 -- and the hysteria that would certainly follow another terrorist attack in the U.S. of the same or even greater magnitude -- protesting against round-ups at that point would be entirely futile, and would come far too late. -Arthur Silbur [article link]
[when asked what he thought of Western civilization] I think it would be a good idea. -Mahatma Gandhi
After all these years in public life, the only time Hillary Clinton sheds a tear is when her own political career is on the line? I didn't notice her crying when kids started coming home from Fallujah in rubber bags because of a war she voted for. -Matt Taibbi [article link]
A feminist is a person who answers "yes" to the question, "Are women human?" Feminism is not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men. And it's certainly not about trading personal liberty - abortion, divorce, sexual self-expression - for social protection as wives and mothers, as pro-life feminists propose. It's about justice, fairness, and access to the broad range of human experience. It's about women consulting their own well-being and being judged as individuals rather than as members of a class with one personality, one social function, one road to happiness. It's about women having intrinsic value as persons rather than contingent value as a means to an end for others: fetuses, children, the "family," men. -Katha Pollitt
[John] Edwards and his campaign point out that they've been fighting uphill: out-fundraised and outspent in Iowa six to one (probably closer to three to one, when independent 527 expenditures are figured in) and constantly contending with a press corps that, in the words of one Edwards staffer, "has never found a place for us in their story." These disadvantages are compounded by the shortcomings of Edwards's message. He almost never, unprompted, says a word about foreign policy; his pugilism can get the better of him (as when he took a cheap, sexist shot at Clinton for tearing up); and his stump speech, sharp and focused and righteous as it may be, is also so full of pathos it prompted something close to muted despair in me every time I heard it. Watching Nataline Sarkisyan's family give a raw, emotional account of their daughter's death in a hospital after Cigna waited too long to approve a liver transplant, I felt like someone had driven a railroad spike through my sternum. I couldn't imagine calling voters or knocking on doors or even going to polls. And I don't think it was just me. Unlike at Obama and Clinton rallies, where the crowds cheer at the slightest provocation, during most of Edwards's stump speech you can hear a pin drop. It's a bit like attending a funeral for the American dream. -Christopher Hayes [article link]
Even though the vast majority of believers apply rational thought processes in most areas of their lives, there is a corner of their minds, especially for religious conservatives, in which they refuse to shine the light of reason. Every scrap of information they process is run through religious filters. If it does not threaten to undermine the religious scaffold around which they’ve built their lives, then normal reasoning processes can be applied safely. If a bit of information contradicts the scaffold, then it must be rejected. Religious liberals, on the other hand, frequently bend the scaffold so that it will accommodate new information. Whatever process one applies, the fact remains that there are points at which reason and religion conflict. How one handles those conflicts determines the extent to which religious belief is harmful. Sometimes the harm is confined to believers. Other times, however, that harm spills over and affects others, believers and nonbelievers alike. -The Chaplain [article link]
The facts do have a liberal bias, and conservatives have reacted to that by building an alternate reality, the creation of which is aided by the pseudo-scholars at shops like [the American Enterprise Institute]. Fox is balanced, the rest of the media is biased to the left; Wikipedia has a liberal bias, so they set up Conservapedia to balance it; 99.9% of the world's climatologists believe man-made global warming is a huge problem, so Exxon-Mobile funds a network of climate change deniers to offer an "alternate" view. For over 30 years, scholars at think-tanks like AEI and Heritage have been the ostensible antidote to the liberal academy. The truth, of course, is that they're corporate-funded hacks whose ideologically-driven "research" would never hold up to peer review. They exist to muddy the waters, and they do it quite well. -Joshua Holland [article link]
Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Americans love our rich. We love rich people the same way we love porn. Most of us aren't getting enough money or sex, so we enjoy watching those who are getting it on a regular basis. Just seeing them or reading about their excesses reminds us that one day we might just get lucky, too. There is no other explanation as to why we lavish attention onto The Donald and his issue. Bloomberg, Romney, remember Ross Perot? A big part of their appeal is their enormous wealth, which we can't help but respect. -Annabelle Gurwitch [article link]
Those who claim the United States is "winning" in Iraq must define exactly what they mean by "winning." Does "win" mean we have a pro-U.S. government successfully running Baghdad without American military assistance? Or does "winning" mean the U.S. stays in Iraq until 2018 or 2025 or 2085 or longer? Or does "winning" mean the Iraqis accomplish some form of lasting "reconciliation" among the various political, tribal, religious, ethnic, and class factions? Or does "winning" simply mean that more Iraqis die in the fighting than Americans? What exactly has the United State accomplished in Iraq? In other words, I wonder what Kristol, Barone, Pollack, and O'Hanlon think the U.S. has gotten for all of those taxpayer billions and American lives thrown at that country... The current status quo in Iraq could lumber along in the form of what we used to call "low intensity conflict" for decades or even centuries. -Joseph A Palmero [article link]
I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And thats what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family. -Mike Huckabee article link
I'm really pissed off that this year's presidential ballot offers no candidates who are against education, healthcare, families and children. -Brian Perbix
Just as I was about to slip some more company pens and note pads into my pocket, that small inner voice stopped me, saying, "Jerry, don't do that. It's wrong." Then it added, "Why don't you kill everybody here instead?" -Jerry L. Embry
My grandmother taught my mother how to drive, and she, in turn, taught me. Luckily, my mother didn't also pass down the knowledge of how to get pregnant in the back seat, because some family traditions should just fade away. -Jenn McNanna
As the screaming woman in front of me lunged through the small opening in the Plexiglas, trying to claw the eyes out of the server who she claimed skimped on her sprinkles, I began to regret having stopped for a treat at Drama Queen. -Brad Simanek
[from the book Nuremburg Diary by Gustave Gilbert (source), recounting an exchange with Hermann Goering, Luftwaffe commander and high-ranking Nazi] We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
See, we're lucky here in America. We live in a free market society. Think of it as a ladder. No matter what rung you're born on, you have the exact same opportunity as everyone else to get to the top. Sure, you might say that some folks have less distance to climb than others, or that many of the lower rungs are slippery because they're covered with garbage and your high school didn't have an AP Ladder Climbing Class, and the rung right above you is out of order and your landlord keeps saying he's going to fix it and never does and all the while the guy who hangs out on the corner of your rung is constantly trying to get you high, and you're wondering if maybe you could get a little help up the ladder? Well, Mister, all the help you need is at your fingertips, if your fingertips are touching your ankles. I'm talking about bootstraps. -Stephen Colbert, I Am America (And So Can You!)
Now some people might say it's callous not giving food stamps to poor people. They would say it's just another example of class warfare. Well, there is no class warfare in this country. The Upper class has such a tactical advantage that if the Lower class makes a sudden move we'll have a class massacre. -Stephen Colbert, I Am America (And So Can You!)
I want to be certified as an abortion clinic, so pro-life activists will have to stay at least 150 feet away from me. -The Covert Comic
Some people come from nothing to being wildly successful and their response is, 'I did this on my own.' I came to a different conclusion. I believe that I did work hard, and I think people should work hard, but I think my country was there for me every step of the way. -John Edwards [article link]
I guess what I like most about being sarcastic is the knowledge that, even if people don't understand my sarcasm, at least I'm helping them feel better about their lives. -The Covert Comic
[in reference to Mitt Romney's recent major speech on his Mormonism, interpreted by many in the mainstream media as a call for religious tolerance but in reality an attempt to reassure Christian evangelical voters, many of whom consider Mormonism heresy] There was one significant mistake in the speech. I do not know why Romney did not include nonbelievers in his moving portrait of the great American family. We were founded by believing Christians, but soon enough Jeremiah Johnson, and the old proud agnostic mountain men, and the village atheist, and the Brahmin doubter, were there, and they too are part of us, part of this wonderful thing we have. Why did Mr. Romney not do the obvious thing and include them? My guess: It would have been reported, and some idiots would have seen it and been offended that this Romney character likes to laud atheists. And he would have lost the idiot vote.
My feeling is we've bowed too far to the idiots. This is true in politics, journalism, and just about everything else. -Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter [not exactly a radical leftist or militant atheist] [article link]
Both the American public and the Iraqi public want us to leave Iraq. However, both the American government and the Iraqi government want us to stay. So we're staying. This is called "democracy promotion." -Kevin Drum [article link]
There are two types of conservative... There are the predator cons. These people, probably because of some variation on obsessive compulsive disorder that has focused itself on money, are willing to harm others, to steal from others in order to enrich themselves, and they're so sociopathic that they can still sleep at night.
I think a lot of the larger and more very well-paid CEOs fall into that category. That's why they're paid so much. There is something to supply and demand. So the question arises: Why would any corporation have to pay somebody $200 million a year? It makes no sense. You think that there'd be a huge supply of people who would do the same job for three million a year. Take someone like old "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap who went to Sunbeam and then a series of companies. He made himself famous for going into companies and laying off 10,000 people and then just moving on to the next company and doing the same. I personally believe that it takes a sociopath to do that.
Sociopaths are people who are not capable of experiencing the emotions of others, a person who thinks they're the only real person in the world and everybody else is a cardboard cutout. I think the supply of sociopaths who are high-functioning, are able to graduate from college, understand business, can pass as normal people, and who have management and leadership skills, is actually pretty small. When you figure that the percentage of sociopaths in our population is, according to most studies, between two and five percent, the percentage of high-functioning sociopaths is going to be very, very low. You've got the Ted Bundy variety of sociopaths, and then you've got the CEO variety of sociopaths. So I think we need to acknowledge that some of these conservatives are actually predators. They're sick people. -Thom Hartmann [article link]
Of course character is important in choosing a president; of course personality will always play a role. The problem isn't that journalists think character and personality matter, it is that they are spectacularly bad at assessing these traits, and even worse at predicting how the candidates will govern as a result.
Remember: During the 2000 campaign, the journalists and pundits told us that George W. Bush was the honest one. The straight-talking Texan. They told us this over and over and over again, until many Americans believed it. They told us that George W. Bush could unite the country, unlike the divisive Al Gore. Heck of a job, Dowd.
The argument that journalists should focus on things like facts and policy isn't based on the premise that character and personality don't matter. It's based on the simple fact that the American people are far better at assessing character and personality than Chris Matthews and Maureen Dowd and Matt Drudge and Mark Halperin. And it's based on the fact that NBC and The New York Times have the time and resources to determine if the candidates' statements are true and consistent and logical -- but voters don't.
That's where we need journalists: to help us sort out what the candidates have done, what they say they'll do, how likely it is to work, and who will benefit. We don't need them to speculate about why they chose to wear brown shoes or three-button suits or what the music on their iPods says about their character. We can figure that out on our own. And we don't need them to tell us who is likely to win; we need them to tell us information that will help us decide who should win. -Jamison Foser [article link]
illegal adj. A term rendered largely meaningless via a mechanism called selective enforcement. -T.G. Browning
The idea of scat porn makes me very uncomfortable. Sure, naked women are appealing, but I can do without the improvised jazz-singing part. -Kim Moser
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. -Voltaire
Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him. -Colonel Potter, M*A*S*H
Political scientists have known for a long time that while people respond positively to the idea of limited government in the abstract, when it comes to specifics people love big government and most, if not all of what it does. They want a government that will educate their children and put out forest fires and pay for their million-dollar cancer treatments and make sure that big chemical companies aren't poisoning their water and keep them from having to eat cat food after they've busted their asses working for 50 years. They expect cheap student loans and meat inspections and smooth highways, and even the lowest of "low information" voters know they're not going to get that stuff from the private sector.
Much more importantly, most people won't vote for politicians who honestly endorse a scorched earth, slash-and-burn libertarianism. Just ask Congress's loneliest (and most frustrated) man, Ron Paul, R-Texas, the Republican Party's only real libertarian...
For decades, Republicans have dealt with this reality with bullshit social issues, flag-waving demonstrations of patriotism that give even the worst of their economic victims a sense of self-respect and, most of all, by facing the American people squarely and just lying to their faces.
The Big Lie -- the deceit that's won them so many elections -- is that they can offer government that's just as big, but Americans won't ever have to pay for it. All the services you want and half the taxes! Eat ice-cream all day long and never put on a pound! Who wouldn't vote for such a utopian crock? -Joshua Holland [article link]
...[I]f the conservative movement has any political lesson to teach to those who disagree with its motives and goals, it should be that sometimes only a willingness to be radical really brings about change. -Kim Phillips-Fein [article link]
The real bad thing with the antiwar movement was that the Democrats got elected and the entire apparatus of the non-profit so-called peace groups basically was taken over by Democratic Party operatives who used the energy of the antiwar movement to further their own legislative goals. And even though the Democratic Congress was elected almost specifically to end the war, they haven’t done it, even though they could have. We got sold out, basically. -Matt Taibbi [article link]
[I]f the misbegotten Iraq war proves anything, it is the foolhardiness of allowing an autistic clique that reads its own newspapers and watches its own cable news channel to decide, without outsider input, where to expend American blood and treasure -- that is, to decide which looming threats to stress and which to downplay or ignore. -Stephen Holmes, The Matador's Cape: America's Reckless Response to Terror
Atheist - n. A person to be pitied in that he is unable to believe things for which there is no evidence, and who has thus deprived himself of a convenient means of feeling superior to others. -Ambrose Bierce
I think the act of looking at religion as just another hypothesis about the way the world works -- and asking it to defend itself with evidence and logic just like any other hypothesis -- is a radical act. All by itself, completely apart from any of the specific arguments against religion's accuracy and morality. The mere act of shoving religion into the marketplace of ideas, and expecting it to fight it out with all the other ideas about why things are the way they are... I think people who are deeply attached to religion have every reason to be afraid of that. I think that act has more potential to eventually dismantle religious beliefs than any of the specific arguments leveled against those beliefs. -Greta Christina [article link]
The media’s the most powerful entity on earth... The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal... If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. -Malcolm X
Although we honor Gore's singular contribution as a citizen crusader, we also remember that as a politician he was often eager to settle for watered-down compromises. It was Vice President Gore, after all, who allowed glacier-sized loopholes for US polluters when he negotiated the final terms of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, and it was the Clinton/Gore Administration that pandered to the timber industry. The author of Earth in the Balance helped tilt the scales toward big business during the Clinton years, when free-trade agreements flourished and global environmental standards dropped significantly.
Gore didn't mobilize support for effective climate change legislation until he left office. It is a telling commentary on the corrupting influence of our political system that only after he was freed from big-money pressures and cautious consultants did he find a way to speak out on the issue with a sense of moral conviction. -The Nation editors [article link]
The very different ways the battle over phthalates [an additive in plastic toys with concerns about its toxicity] has unfolded in Europe and America reflect the vastly different approaches taken by the EU and US governments to protecting citizens from chemical hazards. Here, concern about a product's safety is not enough to justify regulation; irrefutable evidence of harmful effects--a scientific standard that is elusive at best--is required, as is a cost-benefit analysis weighing the "benefits" to society against the "costs" to industry of making the change. The EU, in marked contrast, operates according to the "precautionary principle." As Robert Donkers, who served as the EU's environment counselor in Washington until September, explained to me, "Unlike in the United States, we don't wait until we have 100 percent proof. Rather, if there's fear, scientific suspicions that [a chemical] could cause irreversible damage in the future, we don't want to wait. By the time it's proven, it could be much too late." This was the perspective of [California] Assemblywoman Chan and the advocates of her bill [which would have banned phthalates]; the risks of doing nothing, they argued, were far greater than the risks of doing something. But that argument would not immediately hold sway in Sacramento. After heavy lobbying by the industry, Chan's bill was defeated by one vote...
For phthalates, the United States looked at the time children may be exposed and determined it was not long enough for concern. The Europeans looked at phthalates' toxicity and decided to limit a potential route of exposure: toys. -Mark Schapiro [article link]
How do we explain the fact that most people's stated philosophical and theological systems are rooted in concepts of justice, equality, and the inherent dignity of all people, yet we allow violence, exploitation, and oppression to flourish? Only a small percentage of people in any given society are truly sociopaths, engaging in cruel and oppressive behavior openly and with relish. Feminism helped me understand the complex process, which tends to work like this:
* The systems and structures in which we live are hierarchical.
* Hierarchical systems and structures deliver to those in the dominant class certain privileges, pleasures, and material benefits.
* People are typically hesitant to give up such privileges, pleasures, and benefits.
* But, those benefits clearly come at the expense of those in the subordinated class.
* Given the widespread acceptance of basic notions of equality and human rights, the existence of hierarchy has to be justified in some way other than crass self-interest.
* One of the most persuasive arguments for systems of domination and subordination is that they are "natural."
So, oppressive systems work hard to make it appear that the hierarchy -- and the disparity in power and resources that flow from hierarchy -- is natural and, therefore, beyond modification. If men are naturally smarter and stronger than women, then patriarchy is inevitable and justifiable. If white people are naturally smarter and more virtuous than people of color, then white supremacy is inevitable and justifiable. If rich people are naturally smarter and harder working than poor people, then economic injustice is inevitable and justifiable. And, if human beings have special status in the universe, justified either on theological or biological grounds, then humans' right to extract from the rest of Creation whatever they like is inevitable and justifiable.
For unjust hierarchies, and the illegitimate authority that is exercised in them, maintaining their own naturalness is essential. Not surprisingly, people in the dominant class exercising the power gravitate easily to such a view. And because of their power to control key story-telling institutions (especially education and mass communication), those in the dominant class can fashion a story about the world that leads some portion of the people in the subordinate class to internalize the ideology. -Robert Jensen [article link]
One hundred seventeen consecutive losing games of computer solitaire is nature's way of saying, "Get back to work!" -Richard Skora
People at work used to think I was strange for not drinking coffee -- until they caught me snorting lines of coffee grounds, that is. -J. Hutter
[Rudy Giuliani] lies with staggering impunity. But here's the thing: he does it with such conviction and such seeming authority that people who are not inclined to study the matter will believe him -- will in fact be utterly convinced that Giuliani is speaking the gospel truth, and they will prove almost impossible to shake from this conviction. -Michael Tomasky [article link]
Women are like diamonds: The ones you see on TV are always nicer than the ones you can actually afford. -Brad Osberg
If you're not willing to vote based on real beliefs, why should your representatives be expected to act on them? -J.R. Jones
All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are 'enlightened' all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living and hence our 'enlightenment,' demands that the robbery shall continue. -George Orwell [article link]
The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it. -Edward Dowling, editor and priest, Chicago Daily News, July 28, 1941
To pro-Bush war supporters, the world is forever stuck in the 1930s. Every leader we don't like is Adolf Hitler, a crazed and irrational lunatic who wants to dominate the world. Every country opposed to our interests is Nazi Germany.
From this it follows that every warmonger is the glorious reincarnation of the brave and resolute Winston Churchill. And one who opposes or even questions any proposed war becomes the lowly and cowardly appeaser, Neville Chamberlain. For any and every conflict that arises, the U.S. is in the identical position of France and England in 1937 – faced with an aggressive and militaristic Nazi Germany, will we shrink from our grand fighting duties in appeasement and fear, or will we stand tall and strong and wage glorious war?
With that cartoonish framework in place, war is always the best option. It is the only option for those who are noble, strong, and fearless. Conversely, the sole reason for opposing a war is that one is a weak-minded and weak-willed appeaser who harbors dangerous fantasies of negotiating with madmen. Diplomacy and containment are simply elevated, PC terms for “appeasement.” War is the only option that works. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
One of the most disconcerting aspects of the endless war the United States is fighting now is that it started because Iraq was there: it appeared to be a made-to-order target for an easy invasion that would have great symbolic (indeed, philosophic) significance for the thinkers around Bush. After 9/11, the capture of the terrorists who plotted the attack and the destruction of the Taliban government in Afghanistan that gave them shelter just hadn't seemed a weighty enough challenge for these would-be supermen. "There's a feeling we've got to do something that counts—and bombing caves is not something that counts," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a confidante of Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, told NEWSEEK in November 2001. -Christopher Dickey [article link]
The trouble with SCHIP from Bush's point of view is that it works too well. In providing necessary health care for kids, it would lead people to say, "Why not more?" You can see where that line goes. So he's chosen to fight it out over 12-year-old kids. -Paul Krugman [article link]
Americans too often teach their children to despise those who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place - the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. -Mark Twain
All work and no play make you your boss's wet dream. -Tom Sims
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. --John Maynard Keynes
[in reference to this comic] I guess there's a chance that some of you reading this might not have pets with leaky butts. I do, and let me tell you it's no fun. Every time we take our cat to get her butt squeezed the doctor tells me she can show me how to do it at home. She suggests it would save me some money. There are certain things I am willing to do at home to save money. For example, I ask my wife to cut my hair. Something I won't do is reach into my cats asshole and wring out its butt juice. I'm willing to pay a professional for that. -Gabe, Penny Arcade
I bet the reason chipmunks are always darting back and forth in utter fear is because they're afraid of being mistaken for that one chipmunk who slept with the preacher chipmunk's virgin daughter and robbed the Chipmunk Bank. 'Cause, dude, they all look the same. -Amber Martinelli
In our discussion of the inevitability of time, I brought up the fact that the students' parents would all eventually die. However, I certainly didn't expect them to whine and cry and act like babies. Friggin' kindergarteners -- grow up! -Lori Petterson
[in reference to efforts to give telecom companies retroactive immunity from lawsuits relating to their participation in Bush's warrantless wiretapping] This provision is not primarily about protecting patriotic businessmen, as Mr. Bush claims. It's about ensuring that Mr. Bush and his aides never have to go to court to explain how many laws they've broken. It is a collusion between lawmakers and the White House that means that no one is ever held accountable. -The New York Times [article link]
[from this interview on Democracy Now! with then-Representative (now Senator) Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a self-described socialist]
AMY GOODMAN: And if people ask, “What do you mean, ‘socialist’?” what would you say?
REP. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, I think it means the government has got to play a very important role in making sure that as a right of citizenship, all of our people have healthcare; that as a right, all of our kids, regardless of income, have quality childcare, are able to go to college without going deeply into debt; that it means we do not allow large corporations and moneyed interests to destroy our environment; that we create a government in which it is not dominated by big money interest. I mean, to me, it means democracy, frankly. That's all it means. And we are living in an increasingly undemocratic society in which decisions are made by people who have huge sums of money. And that's the goal that we have to achieve.
I have credit my mom for my unique and amazing personality. After all, she's the one who dropped all that acid while she was pregnant. -Jerry L. Embry
Resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal. -Emma Goldman
[Remember this whenever you hear a Friedman-wannabe neoliberal spouting off about "freedom" and remember that they mean something very different by it than most Americans do. -ed.] The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. -Tom Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree
[in reference to a plan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) to strip a law protecting gays and lesbians from workplace discrimination of reference to the transgendered in an attempt to make the bill more likely to pass, a move that has caused many GLBT rights groups to withdraw support for it]
As a gay man, I don’t mind saying, I have no interest at all in becoming a “first-class citizen” if it comes at the expense of someone else’s status. I’ll happily take my chances with the current law before I’ll passively support the hideous assertion that gays and lesbians are kind of ok now, but transgendered Americans are still very much not ok. That folks can’t see why that’s so offensive to many gay folks suggests to my mind they don’t see why the current lack of protection is offensive to us either. It’s not about us. It’s about what’s right.
What this boils down to, quite frankly (no pun intended), is that I trust the motives of the transgendered community in this battle much, much, much more than I trust the motives of those among general public who are coming around and now ready to condescend to suggest I might be worthy of some of the same civil liberties they take for granted. In other words, if the sh*t hits the fan again, I’d rather stay aligned with the folks who’ve shown me constant, genuine support, regardless of how small a minority they may be, than be worried my new allies are still harboring bigotry and might turn against me again. -"Edward" [via Ampersand]
Thursday, October 4 [2007]: Displaying his ongoing commitment to reasoned discourse, Limbaugh puts up a picture on his website of Josef Stalin sporting Media Matters' logo on his chest. Because posting audio and transcripts of Rush Limbaugh so people can see what he says is pretty much like heading up one of history's most brutally repressive regimes and murdering 20 million or so people. Just about, anyway. -Paul Waldman [article link]
The Bush administration and the Republican Party are often criticized for refusing to aggressively use the "soft power" of international diplomacy. But alas, the attacks are misguided... The GOP may be diplomatically immoral, but it is not diplomatically inept. Whether ensuring permanent war in Iraq or economic oppression in Central America, Republicans do, in fact, know how to get what they want. It is what they want that is the problem. -David Sirota [article link]
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I'm the third Antichrist Nostradamus predicted. I know one thing for sure: My mom would be pissed, 'cause she always wanted me to be a dentist! -John Smiley
Honestly, nothing should surprise us anymore. But if we can't be shocked, we can at least have the decency to be outraged. -Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women [article link]
I recall a relative of mine arguing in favor of extensive war in the Middle East, saying that if we didn't bomb the Arabs into submission, they would come over here and "fuck us in the ass." That's a direct quote, by the way. I remember that line well because I had no real come back to it. I mean, what do you say to that: "To the contrary, they won't fuck us in the ass"? Not exactly Oxford debate material. -Dennis Perrin [article link]
While I don't really have a clear answer when I get asked, "WWJD?" I have to think that "Start a multi-million-dollar marketing campaign with bracelets and bumper stickers" probably isn't the answer. -David O'Shea
One of the most frequent talking points you hear in opposition to hate crimes legislation is that giving specific consideration to crimes committed against people on the basis of some specific part of their identity amounts to "special rights" and some kind of preferential treatment... The prosecution of hate crimes requires special consideration because when someone is targeted for her/his race, nationality, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, it has the potential to affect everyone who shares that identity across the entire nation.
A whole community isn't suddenly considered unsafe because a husband murders his wife, because we recognize the difference between domestic violence and community violence. That murder wasn't random; it was specific. The victim was chosen for a reason. It doesn't make the crime any less horrific, but it doesn't reverberate. It stops with that murderer and that victim.
Hate crimes are the opposite of that; we recognize that when someone is targeted just because s/he is black, for example, that can make all black Americans feel that much less safe, irrespective of the safety of their physical community, because their race community has been attacked. In a hate crime, it doesn't matter which black person/gay person/woman/Jew/quadriplegic had been there; it's so nonspecific that it inevitably reverberates. Suddenly blacks/gays/women/Jews/quadriplegics are staying indoors a little more, feeling a little less able to go out after dark alone...lives of people not directly touched by the crime are affected--and that's why hate crimes legislation is needed, so that freedom can be equally experienced by everyone. -Melissa McEwan [article link]
[Ayn] Rand has played this role of greed-enabler for countless disciples. According to the New York Times, Atlas Shrugged, her novel that ends with the hero tracing a dollar sign in the air like a benediction, stands as "one of the most influential business books ever written." Since Rand is simply pulped-up Adam Smith, her influence on men like Greenspan suggests an interesting possibility. Perhaps the true purpose of the entire literature of trickle-down theory is to liberate entrepreneurs to pursue their narrowest advantage while claiming global altruistic motives -- not so much an economic philosophy as an elaborate, retroactive rationale.
What Greenspan teaches us is that trickle-down isn't really an ideology after all. It's more like the friend we call after some embarrassing excess so that they will tell us, "Don't beat yourself up: You deserve it." -Naomi Klein [article link]
[from this Campus Progress interview] Jesse Singal: It seems like it’s hard for a country to function well and have intelligent debates if it doesn’t have a clear sense of what constitutes expertise. But as we’ve seen time and time again with Iraq, the people who are most wrong are handed the microphone again and again. How do you account for this phenomenon where people like Bill Kristol are repeatedly held up as experts and people who are most right about the war, like Robert Scheer of the LA Times, are ignored and have in some cases have even lost their jobs? Glenn Greenwald: There are people like Scott Ritter who were as right as anybody, but who are marginalized and impossible to find in any mainstream publications. We have a foreign policy establishment that holds itself out as being this passionate, apolitical pool of geopolitical experts, and in fact they’re the opposite. They are a highly politicized and ideological group, and they’ve uniformly embraced the idea that the application of U.S. military force is inherently justifiable, is inherently a good thing.
Anybody who disputes that is deemed to be an unserious person, someone not worthy of listening to. And the fact that the people who question those premises and challenge that hawkish ideology prove to be right, and those who embrace that ideology prove to be so devastatingly wrong, over and over, hasn’t changed that in the slightest. That ideology still prevails and the same orthodoxies are still enforced, and the only way to be heard within that mainstream community is to embrace this very militarized worldview — and the way to ensure you will be castigated and excluded it is to challenge it.
I often wonder if the voices in my head ever get frustrated because I'm just too damn lazy to climb that clock tower. -Brad Osberg
Today at work, I was walking down the hall with a tape gun in my hand, and I gave in to the overwhelming desire to tape everything and everyone I saw. I guess it's a good thing it wasn't a real gun. -Deadeye Dave
I hid my cat in the mailbox as a joke for the postman. The summer heat must have gotten to her, though, as she was dead when he opened the door. Guess the joke was on me! -Nick Danger
Here I must reveal a trade secret and risk puncturing the mystique of intelligence analysis. Generally speaking, 80 percent of the information one needs to form judgments on key intelligence targets or issues is available in open media. It helps to have been trained - as my contemporaries and I had the good fortune to be trained - by past masters of the discipline of media analysis, which began in a structured way in targeting Japanese and German media in the 1940s. But, truth be told, anyone with a high school education can do it. It is not rocket science. -Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst [article link]
As a general rule for understanding public policies, I insist that there are no persistent "failed" policies. Policies that do not achieve their desired outcomes for the actual powers-that-be are quickly changed. If you want to know why the U.S. policies have been what they have been for the past sixty years, you need only comply with that invaluable rule of inquiry in politics: follow the money.
When you do so, I believe you will find U.S. policies in the Middle East to have been wildly successful, so successful that the gains they have produced for the movers and shakers in the petrochemical, financial, and weapons industries (which is approximately to say, for those who have the greatest influence in determining U.S. foreign policies) must surely be counted in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
So U.S. soldiers get killed, so Palestinians get insulted, robbed, and confined to a set of squalid concentration areas, so the "peace process" never gets far from square one, etc., etc. – none of this makes the policies failures; these things are all surface froth, costs not born by the policy makers themselves but by the cannon-fodder masses, the bovine taxpayers at large, and foreigners who count for nothing. -Robert Higgs [article link]
At the end of the day, Washington's strategic class is frozen, unable to concede defeat because to admit that the U.S. project in Iraq has failed is to admit that in the 21st century, the most powerful country in the history of humanity can be humbled by a small dysfunctional state whose armed forces it destroyed more than a decade earlier, a country that it spent 12 years slowly and leisurely strangling under some of the harshest sanctions in history before shocking and awing it a second time, dismantling its government and hanging its erstwhile dictator in the process.
To admit that is to beg the question of whether maintaining all that costly hard power is really worth it in the first place. Leaving Iraq means begging the question of whether America is comfortable with its neocolonial policies, and that's a debate that Bush -- like every imperial-minded U.S. president since Thomas Jefferson -- wants desperately to avoid. -Joshua Holland [article link]
Once this truth is acknowledged, it is easy to understand why the philosophy of animal rights is uncompromising in its response to each and every injustice other animals are made to suffer.
It is not larger, cleaner cages that justice demands in the case of animals used in science, for example, but empty cages: not "traditional" animal agriculture, but a complete end to all commerce in the flesh of dead animals; not "more humane" hunting and trapping, but the total eradication of these barbarous practices.
For when an injustice is absolute, one must oppose it absolutely. It was not "reformed" slavery that justice demanded, not "reformed" child labor, not "reformed" subjugation of women. In each of these cases, abolition was the only moral answer. Merely to reform injustice is to prolong injustice.
The philosophy of animal rights demands this same answer - abolition - in response to the unjust exploitation of other animals. It is not the details of unjust exploitation that must be changed. It is the unjust exploitation itself that must be ended, whether on the farm, in the lab, or among the wild, for example. The philosophy of animal rights asks for nothing more, but neither will it be satisfied with anything less. -Dr. Tom Regan [article link]
There's a powerful political faction in this country that's determined to draw exactly the wrong lesson from the Katrina debacle - namely, that the government always fails when it attempts to help people in need, so it shouldn't even try. "I don't want the people who ran the Katrina cleanup to manage our health care system," says Mitt Romney, as if the Bush administration's practice of appointing incompetent cronies to key positions and refusing to hold them accountable no matter how badly they perform - did I mention that Mr. Chertoff still has his job? - were the way government always works.
And I'm not sure that faction is losing the argument. The thing about conservative governance is that it can succeed by failing: when conservative politicians mess up, they foster a cynicism about government that may actually help their cause.
Future historians will, without doubt, see Katrina as a turning point. The question is whether it will be seen as the moment when America remembered the importance of good government, or the moment when neglect and obliviousness to the needs of others became the new American way. -Paul Krugman
I'll bet cops get really annoyed when they get stuck in traffic behind some guy who's driving way too slow because there's a cop behind him. -Wade Huggins
It's strange how you can never drink the last swallow of soda in the can, but your toddler can always spill it on the carpet. -Scott Charles, Sr.
The cruel deception of diaper makers is that names like Pampers, Huggies and Luvs in no way prepare you for the horror you find inside. -Brad Simanek
Every week it's the same damned argument. I say our toddler is old enough to use a cup, but my wife says he'll stop drinking out of the toilet when he's ready. -Kevin Wickart
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. -Richard Dawkins
marketing n. 1. In business, the highest calling of the huckster. 2.
In government, deceit, hypocrisy and misrepresentation as an art form.
3. The art of selling the inexplicable to the uninterested for an
ungodly amount.
marketing ploy n. Scam. -T.G. Browning
That’s the brilliance of conservatives’ Catch-22 formula, after all: They create problems that they then use as rationales for the very ideologies that created the problems in the first place. How many times have we heard conservatives cite an underfinanced government program’s failure to fulfill its mandate as a rationale to further cut the budget of the program, thus making it even more impossible for that program to succeed? -David Sirota [article link]
Why is God considered an explanation for anything? It's not - it's a failure to explain, a shrug of the shoulders, an 'I dunno' dressed up in spirituality and ritual. If someone credits something to God, generally what they mean is that they haven't a clue, so they're attributing it to an unreachable, unknowable sky fairy. Ask for an explanation of where that bloke came from, and odds are you'll get a vague, pseudo-philosophical reply about having always existed, or being outside nature. Which, of course, explains nothing. -"Ben" [article link]
My cousin from West Virginia and his wife are coal miners. Guess what: It turns out there's a Mile *Low* Club, too. -The Covert Comic
If you're ever staring down the barrel of a gun, I think it would be funny to blow on the end of it, tap it a few times, and say, "Hello? Is this thing on?" Sure, it could cost you your life -- but, hey, who knows when you'll get another chance to use that gag? -Scott E. Frank
At this point, you'd have to be blind to miss the pattern. Every prominent progressive leader who comes along is openly derided in the media as fake, dishonest, conniving, out-of-the-mainstream, and weak. We simply can't continue to chalk this up to shortcomings on the part of Democratic candidates or their staff and consultants. It's all too clear that this will happen regardless of who the candidate or leader is; regardless of who works for him or her... Meanwhile, any conservative who comes along is going to be praised for being strong and authentic and likable. Ask yourself: What prominent Republican is routinely portrayed in the media as a phony the way Al Gore and Hillary Rodham Clinton are? [The media's treatment of John Edwards re: "Haircutgate" lends further credence to this statement, as this quote's author has noted elsewhere. -ed] -Jamison Foser [article link]
The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed, and examined through the processes of government that are designed to improve policy. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents overreaching and checks the accretion of power.
By the same token, whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable, it almost inevitably leads to mistakes and abuses. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes. Dishonesty is encouraged and rewarded. -Al Gore, The Assault on Reason
We now begin to see that what we call Christianity - and what we identify as Christian tradition - actually represents only a small selection of specific sources, chosen from among dozens of others. Who made that selection, and for what reasons? Why were these other writings excluded and banned as "heresy" What made them so dangerous? -Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels
Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. -Ambrose Bierce
The Pope traditionally prays for peace every Easter and the fact that it has never had any effect whatsoever in preventing or ending a war never deters him. What goes through the Pope's mind about being rejected all the time? Does God have it in for him? -Andy Rooney
Any creative encounter with evil requires that we not distance ourself from it by simply demonizing those who commit evil acts. In order to write about evil, a writer has to try to comprehend it, from the inside out; to understand the perpetrators and not necessarily sympathize with them. But Americans seem to have a very difficult time recognizing that there is a distinction between understanding and sympathizing. Somehow we believe that an attempt to inform ourselves about what leads to evil is an attempt to explain it away. I believe that just the opposite is true, and that when it comes to coping with evil, ignorance is our worst enemy. -Kathleen Norris
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking. -H. L. Mencken
Nearly all peoples have developed their own creation myth, and the Genesis story is just the one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants.” -Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker
Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. -Thomas Jefferson
This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves. -Robert Ingersoll
It's pretty funny seeing Bush's former worshippers suddenly pretending as if they never really liked him, and if Bush was never really a conservative... Now that the conservative trifecta in government has led our country to ruin, and destroyed Bush's presidency, the culprit isn't Bush's solid record of conservative governance. No, the boogeyman, as always, is those damn liberals.
As Digby once perceptively noted: "Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. (And a conservative can only fail because he is too liberal.)"
Of course, conservatives also believe that kangaroos got to Australia by building rafts after the Great Flood (though to be fair, there is still some debate over this matter).
So the best we can do is to remind people that an ideology that says "government can't work" cannot possibly run a government that works, no more so than "2+2" can equal "5". To remain consistent, conservatives must run a shitty government. Horse lawyers need to be appointed to head important disaster management agencies. Graduates of wingnutty law "schools" need to be placed high up at the Justice Department. All governing must be subjugated to that most important principle -- keeping Democrats from retaking our government, lest they actually run it effectively.
And when a conservative does his job and trashes government, praise him to the high heavens. That is, until the American people start turning on him. Then cut him loose, call him a "liberal", and turn to your next "daddy figure" (as Atrios put it) to foist onto the American people.
Will that be Fred Thompson? Giuliani? Gingrich?
We all know by now that not a single one of those Republicans on stage last night will call themselves a "Bush Republican". The big question is whether they'll let Bush speak in Minnesota at the Republican National Convention in 2008.
Talk about a delicious dilemma for their side! -Markos Moulitsas Zúniga [article link]
Do you believe that compromise, triangulation will bring about big change? I don't. I think the people who are powerful in Washington -- big insurance companies, big drug companies, big oil companies -- they are not going to negotiate. They are not going to give away their power. The only way that they are going to give away their power is if we take it away from them...We can't trade our insiders for their insiders. That doesn't work. What we need is somebody who will take these people on, these big banks, these mortgage companies, big insurance companies, big drug companies. That's the only way we're going to bring about change. -John Edwards
Say what you want, but depression does have its benefits. For instance, I used to have a fear of flying, but now when I get on a plane, I really don't give a crap if it reaches its destination. -Ian Dauphinee
The future is going to suck when everybody gets a lawyer robot. Unless, of course, the court system is discarded in favor of lawyer robot gladiator duels to the death. -John Gephart IV
I try to live each day like it's my last. It's a pretty good way to live, except for the bad check fees. -Anthony Myers
Growing up, my mom always claimed to feel bad when a bird would slam head-first into our living room window. If she *really* felt bad, though, she'd have moved the bird feeder outside. -Rich Johnson
It took some doing, but I'm finally in the Guinness Book of Records as the first blind guy to go over Niagra Falls in a barrel. The hardest part was putting my eyes out. -Jerry L. Embry
Jurgis had come there, and thought he was going to make himself useful, and rise and become a skilled man; but he would soon find out his error - for nobody rose in Packingtown by doing good work. You could lay that down for a rule - if you met a man who was rising in Packingtown, you met a knave. That man who had been sent to Jurgis's father by the boss, he would rise; the man who told tales and spied upon his fellows would rise; but the man who minded his own business and did his work - why, they would 'speed him up' till they had worn him out, and then they would throw him into the gutter. -The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
[from an interview with Sam Harris on Campus Progress] Ben Adler: We’ve run a lot of articles on CampusProgress.org about how you can be a good Christian and accept homosexuality, or reproductive freedom, or evolution. What do you think? Sam Harris: It’s a bit of a paradox. On one level I want to support these people and I argue that we do need more interfaith dialogue, more religious moderation. So religious moderation is the goal on one level, and it’s certainly better than religious fundamentalism.
But religious moderates are just reliably deluding themselves about as to where their moderation is coming from. Their moderation is not coming from looking more closely at their holy books. It’s not coming from God. It’s not coming from a plausible reading of their texts. It’s coming from the hammer blows their religious tradition is suffering from modernity. It’s coming from a collision with science and secular politics and a larger world of discourse, which is eroding the basis for their religious certainty. The reason we’re not burning religious heretics on street corners under the name of Christendom, Christianity now, like we were in Europe for five centuries, is because Christianity has been mastered and subjugated by post-enlightenment discourse to a significant degree.
[article link]
I think that racists and those who discriminate just don't get the big picture, because at the sub-atomic level, we're all pretty much the same. -Hugh Green
Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived. -Oscar Wilde
I think it's important for us to stand our ground and take our licks rather than what's sometimes our habit, which is to cave and then whine about it afterwards. -U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) [granted, I don't think his actions thus far in the Senate and on the campaign trail have really matched this, but it's still a statement I agree with -ed.]
White-boy angst: You're full of the anger one can only feel when one is a perfectly comfortable, unoppressed member of a class of people who have never been in anything but a position of power. It's quite the bummer, but it does make you eager to beat the stuffing out of anyone who crosses your path. -in-game description for an effect in Kingdom of Loathing [source]
[in reference to the Libby pardon] Anyway, all of this proves yet again how profoundly anti-American members of this administration (and their supporters) truly are. And it seems like an appropriate time to retract the argument I made some months ago against impeachment...
Actually, I haven't flip-flopped on the basic argument: I still think impeachment is all but impossible and I still believe that there would be little taste for cleaning up the rest of the rat's nest after the fact. None of that matters, however, because this administration needs to be held accountable somehow. There are no other ways to do that -- the Constitution was pretty specific -- and they've left us no choice but to try.
At this point, I think they need to be impeached, whether or not they are actually removed from office, for two reasons. The first is to keep them tied up so they have something to keep them busy aside from shredding the Constitution, bombing them some Arabs and lining their cronies' pockets with lucre. Keep 'em busy. Maybe keep 'em from bombing Iran. The second reason is simple: future generations, yet unborn, demand it. Some of the worst thugs in this administration are vets of the Nixon administration -- well-schooled in the ugly brand of politics that drove him -- and I am increasingly of the belief that had Ford not pardoned Nixon -- had Nixon truly been held accountable -- we might not have seen such unchecked extremism as we've experienced in recent years. This bunch of Repubs -- and, let's be clear: entirely too many like them on the other side of the aisle -- are the epitome of elitists. They believe, simply, that they should stand above the law. When you take some of their fellows and you frog-march them down to the penitentiary for a while, it can have a salutary effect on your future governance.
(A third and much less important reason is that I'd like to travel abroad without wearing the Maple Leaf all over my body -- without going in Canadian drag.) -Joshua Holland [article link]
[in reference to claims by two Anglican bishops that destructive flooding in the UK was caused God's anger over damage to the environment and "moral degradation" (read: increasing tolerance for gays)] Now just hold on a minute here. God left thousands of innocent Britons homeless-- to say nothing of other recent flood victims from Texas to Pakistan -- to make a point about something those people had nothing to do with? A point no one, except a handful of clergymen, seemed to get? If God is powerful enough to cause floods, why isn't he powerful enough to target his smitings to, say, the annual meeting of Exxon shareholders or Friends of the Incandescent Light Bulb? Surely God is aware that environmental catastrophes hit the most vulnerable hardest. The CEOs and superconsumers in their 4000-square-foot mansions have insurance, to say nothing of Hummers in which to make a quick escape to their condo in the city.
As for the gay thing, if a human being somehow managed to flood whole neighborhoods, destroying the lives of multitudes, and when asked why replied that he was furious, just furious, at growing tolerance for homosexuality, we would think he was insane. And he would be.
So maybe God exists, but is clinically mad. That would explain just about everything. -Katha Pollitt [article link]
The whole gay marriage thing is pretty stupid. Why would anyone ever want to get married to someone who isn't even pregnant? -Anthony Myers
Whatever happened to "don't do the crime if you can't do the time," which allows tough-love conservatives to cheerfully sentence petty criminals to incarceration? Suddenly, no prison time for perjury and obstruction of justice is termed by this president to be a "harsh" penalty, because I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby will suffer enough with his reputation "forever damaged." Poor baby... Once again, we have an example of politicians championing the slogans of law and order -- until the criminal is one of their own, at which point they suddenly become bleeding-heart liberals eager to ease the pain of the misjudged underdog. Blame the victim for Libby's troubles; it was that outed CIA agent, Valerie Plame, who made him do it. Who told her to be married to a guy who dared to publicly criticize Libby's boss? -Robert Scheer [article link]
The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable. -Arundhati Roy
[in reference to the occupation of Iraq] The only way we'll lose is if we leave, so if we never leave then we'll never lose. -Stephen Colbert
For now, immigration reform has died an inglorious death in the US Senate, beaten to death by John Cronyn, Republican from Texas, and others of his party who seem to think that behind every effort to facilitate the entry of foreigners seeking employment in this country, and to legalize the status of nearly 12 million hardworking immigrants already here, lurks an open invitation to criminals, terrorists and other undesirables from whom the country needs protection. Given this decidedly unflattering view of the character and motivation of America's immigrant population, it comes as no surprise that Senator Cronyn and others in his party of family values also see no reason to provide additional visas for foreigners who seek to be reunited with close family members already in the country as US citizens or lawful permanent residents, another stumbling block to passage of compromise legislation. -Ellen Chesler [article link]
[in reference to Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire, the recent Supreme Court case limiting the ability of people to sue for pay discrimination] So, one moral of this Court's ridiculous story is that we'd all better start fine-tuning our mind-reading skills. That way, we'll know the moment when our bosses decide to pay us less than the guy in the next cubicle, and off to the EEOC we'll merrily go. -Kim Gandy, Presiendnt of the National Organization for Women [article link]
Groups like the Cato Institute and Americans for Tax Reform, which are funded by some of America's wealthiest corporations, have for years pushed to eliminate all corporate taxes. They claim 'the federal government takes 35 percent' of corporate income for taxes, that such a rate is the fourth highest in the industrialized world, and therefore oppresses U.S. companies and hurts the economy. Yes, it is true, the official corporate tax rate in America is 35 percent. It is also true, however, that because of lax enforcement, loopholes and evasion, most corporations never come close to paying that rate. As the Government Accountability Office reported in 2004, 94 percent of corporations pay less than 5 percent of their income in taxes, and corporate tax payments are at their second lowest level in 60 years – lower than in every other industrialized country other than Iceland. -David Sirota, Hostile Takeover [article link]
Exercise is like a religion for me. I go to the gym twice a year, and even then, I grumble about it. -Ian Dauphinee
Talk about wasted technology. Until they also perfect pee-at-the-pump, you still have to go inside the store. -Kevin Green
Okay, so there's no "I" in "team" -- but there *is* one at the very beginning of "incompetent management." -Bad Macaw
You know it's been a rough day for your girlfriend when she takes the ice cream out of the freezer, then removes the lid and throws it directly in the garbage. She's given up all pretense that she might leave some ice cream to put back afterwards. -Andy Blau
So much for that gambling hotline promising "no lectures, just help" -- how much help can they really be if they aren't going to float me an emergency loan with my bookie about to post? -Brad Simanek
They tell me that I am a danger to the security of the region. Yet for years, I have worked with Israelis. I have Israeli friends. I always emphasize the fact that on this land it is possible to live in peace. How am I dangerous exactly? -Ahmad Abu Haniya, a nonviolent Palestinian activist who was until recently was held by Israel as an "administrative detainee," the Israeli version of an enemy combatant [for more info on administrative detention in Israel, click here]
Nietzsche said: "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith doesn't prove anything." And therein lies the question: Should we believe a guy who took casual strolls through lunatic asylums? -The Covert Comic
[in reference to Gonzales v. Carhart, the Supreme Court decision upholding the federal "partial birth" abortion ban] ...[A]nother thing this decision demonstrates is how deeply antichoice disinformation has penetrated the worlds of power and influence. Kennedy's regretful woman comes straight from the antichoice playbook, in which women who choose abortion are invariably bewildered, heedless, misled, manipulated and in need of guidance from wiser heads. When Kennedy refers to the gynecologists and obstetricians who perform abortions as "abortion doctors," he's repeating antichoice language intended to impugn the professionalism of these physicians and make it easier to disregard their judgment about how best to care for their patients. Abortion doctors! What do they know? The ban itself--calling the procedure "partial birth abortion," as if the fetus were days from being born (it's actually performed in the second trimester); singling out a method and using the emotions it arouses to violate the trimester distinctions of Roe and the pre-viability and post-viability distinction of Casey is part of the antichoice strategy to shut down legal abortion one restriction, one legal precedent at a time. -Katha Pollitt [article link]
The biggest problem of cryogenics isn't whether future advances in technology will enable you to be unfrozen and brought back to life 10,000 years from now; it's whether 250 consecutive generations of security guards earning $6.50 an hour will remember to check the thermostat every night. -The Covert Comic
A sure-fire way to win "best costume" at the next Halloween party is to have somebody embed a real chainsaw blade into your shoulder. Timing is crucial, though -- you don't want to pass out from loss of blood after 10 minutes, long before the costume judging begins, like I did. -Vince Grewe
What is peculiar about the Palestine conflict is that the world has listened to the party that has committed the offense and has turned a deaf ear to the victims. -Arnold Toynbee
In this world of non-stop reality TV, I often find myself yearning for some good old-fashioned scripted larceny, comedy and intrigue. Thank God for C-SPAN. -Brad Osberg
I guess I should be grateful that the therapist from the stress hotline talked me out of bringing a gun to work today, but I gotta say it's a bitch trying to make arrests with a banana in my hand. -Col. Klink
If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck and knocks you out with a single karate kick to the head, it probably is a duck -- an awesomely BADASS ninja duck! -Brad Hamer
I find that a very slow recitation of the Lord's Prayer works wonders when I'm about to lose my temper. As it turns out, that takes exactly the same amount of time as it takes for the tequila and pills to kick in. -Michael Cunningham
When I first met Vinnie, I thought he was a living ad for birth control. -someone in the movie Casual Sex?
I think it would be really cute to remake the movie "Gladiator," only this time with babies. And the end -- when L'il Emperor Commodus stabs L'il Maximus, who dies and joins his murdered family -- would be the cutest part, 'cause they're *babies*! -Bob Van Voris
I wonder if the guy who invented the expression "smoother than a baby's bottom" had kids, because if he didn't, you gotta be concerned about how he tested his hypothesis. -David Kass
When George Washington and Abraham Lincoln posed for their portraits that ended up on U.S. currency, do you think the engraver urged them to "make this one count because it's the money shot?" -Kim Moser
There's something odd about a political movement that demands accountability in public schools under the auspices of "educating" America's youth, but at the same time, insults anyone they think has "too much" education. -The Misanthropic Bitch
[in reference to the shootings at Virginia Tech] The part of this I really do find the most truly, unfathomably disgusting are the people who are already, much as they did following the 9/11 attacks, declaring a kneejerk declaration that this all wouldn't have been a problem if everyone on the VT campus was allowed to carry a gun. I truly fail to understand how people with the motor skills required to speak and type can actually believe something like that. If you want to debate gun control, by all means. But to suggest that there would be no potential complications to a situation where a madman with a gun was running around, and everyone else also had guns and knew nothing about the situation except they should kill whoever they see with a gun, is a failure of understanding of the human condition at its highest level. It's not an assault on the Second Amendment to suggest our militia, whatever your definition you think that means, isn't being that well-regulated these days.
As Duncan noted already, there is nothing we can do to stop people who want to kill people from killing people if they really, really want to kill people. What we have to do is find out why people want to kill people and try to help them not want to. If that's naive and simplistic, I'd rather be naive and simplistic with hope for the future than naive and simplistic with a paranoia-induced terror requiring the purchase of as many devices to kill
