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. -Sarah Vowell
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
All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side... The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. -George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism [article link]
One of the key things to understand about US politics is that there are a lot of people who are described - or who even describe themselves - as being liberals, progressives, left-wingers, etc., who hold few if any actual left-wing views. They just really, really hate Republicans, and that hatred can make them seem "extreme" even when their views are well within the mainstream neoliberal/neoconservative consensus. I'm sure something similar can be said about many on the right. Hence, a corporatist and militarist like Barack Obama can be denounced by conservatives as a socialist and hippie peacenik, and Mitt Romney can be denounced by liberals as a far-right nutjob, even though the two only differ in details for the most part. What we really have are two competing factions of conservatives. -Kevin Wagner
The Occupy movement has been a game changer, and it has opened up space for us to put more radical solutions on the table. I think the political discourse in the United States is centered around what we tell ourselves the American public can handle. The experience of seeing these groups of young people put radical ideas on the table, and seeing the country get excited by it, has been a wake up call for a lot of people who feel they support those solutions—and for those who have said, “That’s all we can do.” It has challenged the sense of what is possible. -Naomi Klein [article link]
In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot. -Mark Twain
One criticism of Kucinich that is not unreasonable per se is that he has no real legislative accomplishments to show for his 9 terms in Congress. [...] I find this unpersuasive on multiple levels. For one, enacting legislation is not the only way to have an important impact on our political culture. Shining light on otherwise-ignored issues, advocating rarely-heard political positions, using one’s platform to highlight the corruption of those in power and to challenge their warped belief systems are all vitally important functions. Advocacy of that sort may not produce immediate, tangible successes, but it is a prerequisite for changing prevailing political mores and persuading citizens to think differently. “Talking a lot” is a synonym for persuasion, advocacy and debate. It’s far from “doing very little.” Those are all critical steps in changing a political system. It’s true that Kucinich cannot point to any law he passed that, say, guts the National Security State or corporate-lobbyist control over Washington, but that hardly means his work was inconsequential. Those types of changes often take years, even decades, of advocacy, and urgently need those with public platforms to amplify the underlying views to change how citizens think. [...]
Would it have been better if he had won more fights? Sure. Could he have been a more shrewd and calculating political operative? Probably. But his failure to get Washington to see the wretched errors of its ways reflects far more on them than it does on him. Faced with a militarized and corporatized state and a cowardly political and media class that enables it, Kucinich did what he should have done: opposed it loudly, courageously, consistently, and passionately. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Yes, [Dennis Kucinich] was by mainstream political standards 'wacky' in his policy views, but then so am I. And it's true that he said some embarrassing things at times, but so what? There really are worse things than being embarrassing --- in fact, it's often a brave and necessary thing to do. Frankly, I think we could use a few more people who are willing to be embarrassing on our side. This pusillanimous unwillingness to be uncool or unrespectable is a shortcoming not a strength. It limits our creativity and turns liberalism into a cramped and inflexible ideology, smaller and less interesting all the time. -Digby [article link]
Each such act perpetuates the cycle of violence, the horrific dynamic of blowback: a self-perpetuating feedback loop that uses itself to engender more violence, in new and expanding forms. We are living today in the midst of a particularly virulent form of this dynamic, the so-called "War on Terror," which I think has been designed -- more or less deliberately so, although the obscene ignorance and arrogance of the powerful have also played their fateful part in unwittingly exacerbating these evils -- to rage on without chronological end, without geographical, limits, and without any moral, social, legal or financial restraints. ...Alex Cox uses an apt term borrowed from systems analysis -- POSIWID: The Purpose of a System is What It Does.
The Terror War is not an event, or a campaign, or even a crusade; it is a system. Its purpose is not to eliminate "terrorism" (however this infinitely elastic term is defined) but to perpetuate itself, to do what it does: make war. This system can be immensely rewarding, in many different ways, for those who operate or assist it, whether in government, media, academia, or business. This too is a self-sustaining dynamic, a feedback loop that gives money, power and attention to those who serve the system; this elevated position then allows them to accrue even more money, power and attention, until in the end -- as we can plainly see today -- any alternative voices and viewpoints are relegated to the margins. They are "unserious." They are unimportant. They are not allowed to penetrate or alter the operations of the system. -Chris Floyd [article link]
[re: the decision of Green Party Mayor Jason West of New Paltz, NY, to crack down on the city's Occupy encampment] What causes progressive politicians to take actions so contrary to their stated principles? Occupiers dealing with local politicians everywhere should ask themselves this question. No matter how progressive you claim to be, the pressures of participating in the capitalist state are great, especially if you are not attached to a mass workers' movement. You have pressures on your position from people of various class backgrounds, especially those antagonistic to the interests of the 99 percent (pressures from landlords, owners, bankers, and so on). The structures of government force you to carry out policies that violate your principles and, over time, you begin to apologize for those policies. That is why we must understand change as coming from below, from the people themselves, and not from politicians from on high. -Brian Kelly [article link]
[re: the often stormy relationship between two competing Occupy groups in Washington, DC, the McPherson Square occupation and the Freedom Plaza group led by left-wing activist Kevin Zeese, and Zeese's recent public criticisms of both McPherson and occupiers generally for alleged "violent" actions. Zeese and others like Chris Hedges and David Swanson seem to adopt an incredibly broad view of violence, including everything from property destruction and fights with police to disrupting traffic and merely saying mean things to police or causing "needless" confrontation with them. They also strongly imply that many of the people who engage in such actions are infiltrators and provocateurs seeking to discredit the movement.]
Zeese and has cadre of aging activists, too timid to engage in anything confrontational, preferring Jackson Brown concerts to activism, were likewise critical of each and every McPherson-embraced action during my time back in DC. The kids at McPherson -- or "McOccupy," if you're a smug asshole -- are after all doing something, and doing something always brings with it the possibility of alienation. Block rush hour traffic? Why, that K Street lobbyist you inconvenienced is now going to go out and club an African child out of spite. Occupy an abandoned homeless shelter? Dunno, looks like vigilantism to me. Anything that entails any sort of threat of confrontation, particularly with the law, is to be condemned; after all, the police officers pepper spraying and evicting Occupy camps across the U.S. are "part of the 99%." And with just the right mix of folk music and deference to illegitimate authority, guys, they could become class conscious.
Such is the advantage of inaction, of being a critic: when the only time you and your friends are in the news is because a provocateur had the cojones to do more than just sing kumbaya, it's easy to wallow in your own perceived greater commitment to non-violence. And when you conflate saying a naughty word to a cop with "violence," it's easy to see yourself as Gandhi's lovechild. [...]
There's something to these recent rash of articles bashing the idea that a social movement ought to involve, gosh, "conflict" with the powers that be: They are almost all coming from old-school activists and commentators whose tactics have been employed for decades now and found wanting. The Occupy movement, by contrast, represents the rise of a new generation of activists who, while not without fault, are when at their best at lleast trying something new. That might anger some (though certainly not all) of the older, professional activists who feel their influence waning, but passivity in the face of injustice has been tried, folks. And it has failed. -Charles Davis [article link]
In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by 1) how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians; and 2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not. [...]
Gaining acceptance into graduate school or medical school and achieving a PhD or MD and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist means jumping through many hoops, all of which require much behavioral and attentional compliance with authorities, even those authorities one lacks respect for. The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians. Degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance. Those with extended schooling have lived for many years in a world where one routinely conforms to the demands of authorities. Thus for many MDs and PhDs, people different from them who reject this attentional and behavioral compliance appear to be from another world—a diagnosable one.
I have found that most psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are not only extraordinarily compliant with authorities but also unaware of the magnitude of their obedience. And it also has become clear to me that the anti-authoritarianism of their patients creates enormous anxiety for these professionals, and their anxiety fuels diagnoses and treatments. -Bruce E. Levine [article link]
Libertarianism: the belief that, since capitalists took over the gov't, we should get rid of gov't and let capitalists rule us directly rather than by proxy. -The Punk Patriot
For a very long time, the United States government has specialized in the pattern pursued by Israel. The vastly more powerful nation wishes to act on a certain policy -- almost always territorial expansion, for purposes of access to resources, or to force itself into new markets, or to pursue the evil notion that economic and ideological success depend on brutality and conquest -- but a specifically moral justification for its planned actions does not lie easily to hand.
So the powerful nation embarks on a course designed to make life intolerable for the country and/or those people that stand in its way. The more powerful nation is confident that, given sufficient time and sufficient provocation, the weaker country and people will finally do something that the actual aggressor can seize on as a pretext for the policy upon which it had already decided. In this way, what then unfolds becomes the victim's fault.
The United States government has utilized this tactic with Mexico, to begin the Spanish-American War, even, dear reader, in connection with the U.S. entrance into World War II, most recently in Iraq, possibly (perhaps probably) with Iran in the future, and in numerous other conflicts. It's always the fault of the other side, never the fault of the United States itself. Yet the United States has always been much more powerful than those it victimizes in this manner. The United States always claims that its victims represented a dire threat to its very survival, a threat that must be brought under U.S. control, or eliminated altogether. The claim has almost never been true. -Arthur Silber [article link]
[re: polls results showing widespread support for Obama's counterterrorism policies, even among liberals] Liberals may not really be supportive of keeping Guantanamo open or that they do not support holding Bush Administration officials accountable for torture... because they think either should continue in a democratic and free society. They may be showing support because they are weak and timid. They probably do not see Obama as someone capable of closing Guantanamo or prosecuting officials that committed war crimes so it becomes difficult for them to advocate for these moral (and legal) objectives. [...]
Bipartisan consensus is further entrenched, but it is further entrenched because of the gutless political mindset, which many liberals operate under. They may not necessarily support all of the policies, which those concerned with civil liberties condemn, but they appear to support them because they are focused on expediency—what agenda items can be advanced in the rotten political environment in Washington, DC.
The two-party system in America plays a key role. When neither a Democratic or Republican candidate is taking up certain issues because they have bipartisan consensus, liberals do not have the fortitude to push them into debates. When the incumbent candidate refuses to open up conversation on important issues, liberals are hesitant to run primary challengers that will put the issues on the table. Do not even broach the subject of supporting third party candidates during elections so that pressure can be put on politicians. They will lash out at you in such a way that you might think you just betrayed a military oath. [...]
Too many liberals let what political leaders think is impossible set the boundaries for the values or principles they routinely promote in conversations with others on social media, comments threads and, more generally, the Internet. This is why civil liberties are scarcely ever a primary issue for liberals. [...]
All of which suggests that the biggest take away from the poll results is confirmation or affirmation that these liberals will not be on the vanguard of any push to restore civil liberties. They will wait in the wings until others have shown great moral courage and made great sacrifice. They will let marginalized communities fight these battles on their own, sometimes paying them lip service. Then, when it becomes fashionable to speak out, they will offer some semblance of a defense of civil liberties—at least, until another political figurehead comes along to tamp down their concern. -Kevin Gosztola [article link]
Progressives should also stop and consider what it is like for people around the world to have their rights and civil liberties subverted and undermined by American efforts to “police the world” and make it “more safe” through wars and nation-building (all basically a cover for expanding empire to maintain and solidify control as the number one superpower in the world). [Ron] Paul rejects the idea of waging empire and meddling in other country’s affairs. Given America’s track record under Bush and Obama, America has lost a lot of moral authority. Progressives worry a Paul presidency would mean America was not engaged in diplomatic “peacekeeping” efforts. For much of the world’s population, after reading documents released by WikiLeaks, this might not be that much of a problem. They might be more than happy if America would just focus on America’s national defense at home and stop trying to “help” them “build democracy” and tell them how to “address” human rights issues. -Kevin Gosztola [article link]
As one of the authors of the original Gandhian strategy [of Occupy Wall Street], I can recall how well aware we were, when we framed this strategy, that we were taking an enormous risk. Gandhian strategies have not historically worked in the US; in fact, they haven’t really worked on a mass scale since the civil rights movement. This is because the US media is simply constitutionally incapable of reporting acts of police repression as “violence.” (One reason the civil rights movement was an exception is so many Americans at the time didn’t view the Deep South as part of the same country.) Many of the young men and women who formed the famous Black Bloc in Seattle were in fact eco-activists who had been involved in tree-sits and forest defense lock-downs that operated on purely Gandhian principles—only to find that in the US of the 1990s, non-violent protesters could be brutalized, tortured (have pepper spray directly rubbed in their eyes), or even killed, without serious objection from the national media. So they turned to other tactics. We knew all this. We decided it was worth the risk.
However, we are also aware that when the repression begins, some will break ranks and respond with greater militancy. Even if this doesn’t happen in a systematic and organized fashion, some violent acts will take place. [...] The question is how one responds.
If the police decide to attack a group of protesters, they will claim to have been provoked, and the media will repeat whatever the police say, no matter how implausible, as the basic initial facts of what happened. This will happen whether or not anyone at the protest does anything that can be remotely described as violence. Many police claims will be obviously ridiculous – as at the recent Oakland march where police accused participants of throwing “improvised explosive devices”—but no matter how many times the police lie about such matters, the national media will still report their claims as true, and it will be up to protesters to provide evidence to the contrary. Sometimes, with the help of social media, we can demonstrate that particular police attacks were absolutely unjustified, as with the famous Tony Bologna pepper-spray incident. But we cannot by definition prove all police attacks were unjustified, even all attacks at one particular march; it’s simply physically impossible to film every thing that happens from every possible angle all the time. Therefore we can expect that whatever we do, the media will dutifully report “protesters engaged in clashes with police” rather than “police attacked non-violent protesters.” What’s more, when someone does throw back a tear-gas canister, or toss a bottle, or even spray-paint something, we can assume that act will be employed as retroactive justification for whatever police violence occurred before the act took place.
All this will be true whether or not a Black Bloc is present. -David Graeber [article link]
[S]omething I've really grown to appreciate about the Greens is that - you see the glass half empty or half full. You can see the Greens as weak and fringe or, on the other hand, you can see them as incredibly heroic survivors who've managed to withstand the barrage from corporate America, and the fear campaigns and the smear campaigns, and being kept off the ballot, and censored and away from the microphone and all of that. I mean, it's impressive that the Greens have survived when the New Party and the Progressive Party and the Labor Party and the Socialist Party as electoral organizations have all folded. It's not because they do not have compelling positions and really dedicated people - it's extremely hard to survive in this extremely repressive political environment. -Jill Stein, Green Party candidate for president (2012) [article link]
Plainly, the American obsession with Awlaki has virtually everything to do with his advocacy and, especially, the fear that it’s effective because he can speak to English-speaking Muslims. In other words, the U.S. Government is trying to kill him primarily because of his constitutionally-protected speech in advocating the justifiability and necessity of violence.
This is not an academic question. The right at stake here is absolutely vital. It is crucial to protect and preserve the right to argue that a government has become so tyrannical or dangerous that violence is justified against it. That, after all, was the argument on which the American Founding was based; it is pure political speech; and criminalizing the expression of that idea poses a grave danger to free speech generally and the specific ability to organize against abusive governments. To allow the government to punish citizens — let alone to kill them — because their political advocacy is threatening to the government is infinitely more dangerous than whatever ideas are being targeted for punishment, even if that idea is violent jihad. [...] One can find that view odious and repugnant. One can find it dangerous and frightening. But what one cannot do is dispute that it is pure political speech squarely within the zone of First Amendment protection, as established by [Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444]. And to punish or kill an American citizen for expressing those views — which is exactly what the Obama administration is attempting to do with Awlaki — is a grave assault on core free speech rights (let alone to do so without any judicial process). -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Despite the low regard that Americans have for politicians, there is a surprising tendency to assume that everything will be OK once we toss out the current leaders and bring in a new team. When Bush was elected in 2000, some of my Republican friends were positively gleeful in announcing that the "grownups" were back in charge once again. They saw the Clinton team as a bunch of amateurs who didn't know how to do foreign policy, and they were certain that Bush's victory had put the pros back where they belonged. (It would have been nice if it had been true, but Bush's first term managed to make Clinton's performance look good.) And then in 2008, it was the Democrats' turn to go euphoric about Obama, and to argue that his administration would quickly reverse Bush's blunders and lead the United States back to its rightful position as the (much-loved) Leader of the Free World.
Both hopes were illusory, of course. As I've noted before, there's just not that much difference between the Democratic and Republican foreign policy establishments, which means that tossing one party out doesn't affect the mainstream consensus on foreign affairs. Furthermore, the other forces that drive U.S. policy (interest groups, lobbies, alliance commitments, legal constraints, geopolitics, etc.) don't disappear just because there's a new resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Which is why Obama's policy on a host of issues is remarkably similar to Bush's (especially in the latter's second term), even in those areas (e.g., Guantanamo, war powers, etc.) where candidate Obama took a different view. -Stephen Walt article link]
Ever since 9/11, there's been a tendency to assume that anti-Americanism in the world was mostly due to poor marketing, and that it would decline if we just came up with a better sales pitch. So the Bush administration appointed a former advertising executive to work on polishing America's "brand" (without success). This response is understandable, because Americans (and some other countries) don't want to admit that a lot of the opposition they face isn't due to a misunderstanding about what they stand for or what they are doing. On the contrary, opposition has arisen because other societies do understand what we are doing, and they don't like it anymore than we would if someone were doing the same thing to us. To be sure, President Obama is more popular in many parts of the world than President Bush was (admittedly a low bar to clear), but in the areas where opposition to U.S. policy is most apparent (i.e., most of the Middle East), he has had little positive impact. Bottom line: To believe that you can fool people into liking policies that are contrary to their interests is a pernicious form of wishful thinking, because it discourages us from asking whether it is the policies themselves that ought to change. -Stephen Walt [article link]
Most Americans are like badly damaged children: they expect evil to announce itself in advance, with the aid of thundering, ominous music on the soundtrack of their increasingly desperate lives. But that is not how evil most commonly arrives. It comes with a gentle, reassuring smile. It insinuates itself with soothing platitudes. It speaks of "threats" to our "security" that cannot be countenanced. It says it only wants to make you "safe."
And the murders go on, and they increase in number. Later on, those who manage to survive will be heard to say, "But we never knew it would come to that." Or they insist that most people "went along," and ask: Who was I to stand against that tide? Yet they will not be able to say they were not warned, or that no one had ever seen such horrors before.
No, evil does not come to us proclaiming its true nature. Evil is not committed only by screaming, psychopathic maniacs. Most of the time, and certainly in the beginning, it seems completely ordinary. It is, as Auden said, "unspectacular and always human." It appears to be entirely normal. The greatest danger is not the person whom you view as obviously "crazy." The greatest danger is the person you regard as normal, thoughtful and well-spoken, the person who claims to be opposed to the horrors and who says he's on your side. This is precisely why Obama (and the Democrats generally) constitute a singular threat to those of us who genuinely value the sanctity of a single life -- and this is what a few of us said before the last presidential election... -Arthur Silber [article link]
The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner. On the negative side, it has been proved beyond peradventure that no primitive State could possibly have had any other origins. Moreover, the sole invariable characteristic of the State is the economic exploitation of one class by another. In this sense, every State known to history is a class-State. Oppenheimer defines the State, in respect of its origin, as an institution "forced on a defeated group by a conquering group, with a view only to systematizing the domination of the conquered by the conquerors, and safeguarding itself against insurrection from within and attack from without. This domination had no other final purpose than the economic exploitation of the conquered group by the victorious group." -Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State [source]
Thus, the essence of the State is domination, oppression, brutalization and exploitation. This is true even of these glorious and free United States of America... From time to time, the State may act in ways that benefit, at least temporarily, those who are not members of the ruling class. It is critical to see that such actions are only another means of control. They are the means of momentarily placating those who might threaten the ruling class's hold on power if events were allowed to run out of control. -Arthur Silber [article link]
When confronting establishment progressives with the reality of our conduct and how much it has cost some of the poorest and most defenseless people on earth, the conversation never stays about our victims; it inevitably changes to those attempting to talk about them, a knee-jerk defense that progressives have made an art form. That's why Ron Paul is so perfect, for establishment liberals. He is an open invitation to change the subject. The United States keeps killing innocent people, keeps propping up horrific regimes, keeps violating international law, keeps trampling on the lives of those who lack the power to defend themselves-- but Ron Paul is a racist, and believes in the gold standard, and opposes abortion, and in general supports some of the most odious domestic policies imaginable. What I insist, and what people like Glenn Greenwald keep insisting, is that Ron Paul's endless failings shouldn't and can't exist as an excuse to look away from the dead bodies that we keep on piling up. What I have wanted is to grab a hold of mainstream progressivism and force it to look the dead in the face. But the effort to avoid exactly that is mighty, and what we have on our hands is an epidemic of not seeing.
I could never vote for Ron Paul, for a thousand reasons. I have been arguing against many of his policies and the worldview that generated them for the entirety of my adult life. But I have to value his voice in the national debate because almost no other national political figures will raise these issues at all. I would love if these issues were being expressed by politicians and pundits who combined them with righteous views on domestic policy. But here, too, mainstream progressivism deserves a great deal of blame. Left wing politicians like Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich have embraced discussion of foreign policy and civil liberties, and for their trouble they have been dismissed as unserious by the self-same progressives who now dismiss Ron Paul's ideas. For far too long, mainstream progressives have signaled their "seriousness" precisely by denying the validity of people like Kucinich or Sanders, so taken with some bizarre definition of the reasonable that they effectively silence the leftist non-interventionists they say they want. If you want left wing criticism of our militarism and surveillance state, stop ridiculing those who express it. [...]
I want those who profess belief in liberalism and egalitarianism to recognize that they are failing those principles every time they ignore our conduct overseas, or ridicule those who criticize it. What I will settle for is an answer to the question: what would they have us do? If you can't find it in you to accept our premises, at least consider what you would do if you did. For those of us who oppose our country's destructive behavior, there is no place to turn that does not result in ridicule. Every conceivable political option has not only been denied by establishment progressives, but entirely dismissed. The idea that one should criticize the President from the left is not just wrong but self-evidently ridiculous. The notion of primarying President Obama is not just wrong but self-evidently ridiculous. The idea of supporting a candidate from a different party is not just wrong but self-evidently ridiculous. Every conceivable path forward, for those of us who demand change in our conduct overseas, is preemptively denied. I want my country to stop killing innocent people. What am I supposed to do? -Freddie De Boer [article link]
The notion that there is something less disqualifying about support for murder and oppression than support for regressive and racist policies cannot stand scrutiny. The right to not be killed precedes all other rights. It is the foundation on which all other rights rest. What value can any rights have if they are not protected by a right to not be killed? Freedom of expression is no solace to a corpse. Likewise, what value do other rights have if those rights are not protected by rights of the accused? There is no value in freedom of assembly or religion if you can be thrown into a cage without a trial where you can invoke those rights. The right to protest has no meaning if the executive can respond to that protest by killing you without accountability, legal challenge, or review. Civil liberties are not merely right on principle. They are the necessary bedrock on which all conduct in a free society must rest. -Freddie De Boer [article link]
Ron Paul is such a dilemma for many liberals because he doesn’t fit nicely into the current narrow political continuum. It is easy for liberals to ignore how bad Democrats are on many issues because Republicans are almost always equally as bad on those issues or marginally worse. This makes comparing a Democrat to a Republican from the standpoint of a liberal incredibly easy.
Paul, by being way better than Democrats on some issues and way worse on others issues, forces progressives to actually think. They are confronted with the question of what policies are more important to them. [...]
In a Romney versus Obama fight liberals can quickly just point to ‘Obama is better’, even if it is only 15 percent better on just 20 percent of the issues.
To decide if Obama is better than Paul you must first face the reality that Obama is terrible on some issues and then weigh that against the issues he is good on, or at least better than, Paul. It forces liberals to do the hard work, prioritize what they claim to believe in. In this situation, to defend Obama, you most defend many of his horrific positions as an acceptable sacrifice for a better all around package. -Jon Walker [article link]
Civil libertarians have long had a dysfunctional relationship with the Democratic Party, which treats them as a captive voting bloc with nowhere else to turn in elections. Not even this history, however, prepared civil libertarians for Obama. After the George W. Bush years, they were ready to fight to regain ground lost after Sept. 11. Historically, this country has tended to correct periods of heightened police powers with a pendulum swing back toward greater individual rights. Many were questioning the extreme measures taken by the Bush administration, especially after the disclosure of abuses and illegalities. Candidate Obama capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil liberties. However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. [...]
But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama's personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush. [...] In time, the election of Barack Obama may stand as one of the single most devastating events in our history for civil liberties. -Jonathan Turley [article link]
Senators and congressmen may or may not fool around any more than the rest of the population, but one would expect elected officials to be a lot more careful about cheating on their wives than ordinary people, because the consequences of getting caught are so much more extreme and lasting than they are for other people. An ordinary person may lose his marriage, but a politician loses not only his marriage but his livelihood, particularly if he's a conservative. So you'd think that sexual infidelity scandals would be relatively rarer, especially for Senators and/or presidential candidates, who face a relatively constant amount of scrutiny. But they're not all that rare, which tells you that these guys are kind of used to getting away with things they'd prefer to keep secret.
It's sort of like having a bad drug problem. In the beginning, when you first start down the road to addiction, you wouldn't think about going to work high, or doing lines in your office bathroom, or texting your dealer from an office Blackberry in the middle of an important meeting. But after you make it through a few conference calls whacked out of your mind you start to feel like you're never going to get caught, and you start to take liberties... coming in late, leaving early, forgetting to wipe the puke off your mouth after a bathroom break, etc.
It's the same thing with these guys. After you spend day after day handing millions and millions of dollars over to your campaign contributors, live on CSPAN, robbing the body armor budget for troops in the field to pay for Brown Tree Snake programs or $133,000 streetlights and not ever getting called on it, you must start to get cocky almost against your will. You're basically walking out of the Capitol building with your suit stuffed with taxpayer cash every single day, right past a small army of reporters, and no one ever says anything, so... why not have sex with an aide on the way home, or better yet, with a stranger in the men's room of Union Station? -Matt Taibbi [article link]
That is, of course, the point of Jersey Shore. We need Snooki, and the Situation, and Stinky, and Fat Joey (OK, I only know two of their names) to perfectly define for us in stark detail exactly what kind of humans we don't want to be: shallow, stupid, promiscuous, arrogant, lazy, devoid of useful skills. "Look at them! Go stand in the spotlight, Snooki, so everybody can see how much you suck. No, stay there, we're going to talk endlessly about your suckiness as if we're the only ones who have figured it out."
A society dies without villains -- we think of our life as a story, and a story doesn't make sense without a bad guy. The Jersey Shore cast members are the highest grade of villain -- the kind who are objectively repulsive, yet have enormous popular support from ... somebody. Enough that the Situation made $5 million last year and Snooki became a New York Times best-selling author. So we get to first revel in how much better we are than the shrieking, drunken Snooki, and then congratulate ourselves a second time for being better than the millions of adoring, approving fans that we imagine Snooki must have (but that we have never actually met).
And make no mistake; everyone involved knows exactly what they're doing. MTV knows, the producers know, the cast knows. That's why they're always trying to top themselves ("OMG, this time Snooki TOOK OFF HER PANTIES AT THE DANCE and then VOMITED ON HER PANTIES!"). I mean, you know this isn't a hidden camera situation, right? When Snooki danced and passed out and showed everyone her vagina, she did it in front of a camera crew, and a sound guy, and a director, and other people holding equipment. She knows she's the star of a TV show, and that the only thing standing between her and having to get a real job is acting in a way that society finds shockingly inappropriate. Ann Coulter knows the same thing. So does Charlie Sheen. So do the Kardashians. -David Wong [article link]
The hanging of the "poor man" William Fly [a pirate executed in Boston in 1726] was a moment of terror. Indeed, it might be said that the occasion represented a clash of two different kinds of terror. One was practiced by the likes of Cotton Mather - namely, ministers, royal officials, wealthy men - in short, rulers - as they sought to eliminate piracy as a crime against mercantile property. They consciously used terror to accomplish their aims: to protect property, to punish those who resisted its law, to take vengeance against those they considered their enemies, and to instill fear in sailors who might wish to become pirates. They did this in the name of social order... In truth, the keepers of the state in this era were themselves terrorists of a sort, decades before the word terrorist would acquire its modern meaning (as it would do in the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution). And yet we do not think of them in this way. They have become, over the years, cultural heroes, even founding fathers of sorts. Theirs was a terror of the strong against the weak.
The other kind of terror was practiced by commen seamen like Willian Fly who sailed beneath the Jolly Roger, the flag designed to terrify the captains of merchant ships and persuade them to surrender their cargo. Pirates consciously used terror to accomplish their aims - to obtain money, to punish those who resisted them, to take vengeance against those they considered their enemies, and to instill fear in sailors, captains, merchants, and officials who might wish to attack or resist pirates. This they did in the name of a different social order... In truth, pirates were terrorists of a sort. And yet we do not think of them in this way. They have become, over the years, cultural heroes, perhaps antiheroes, and at the very least romantic and powerful figures in an American and increasingly global popular culture. Theirs was a terror of the weak against the strong. It formed one essential part of a dialectic of terror, which was summarized in the decision of the authorities to raise the Jolly Roger above the gallows when hanging pirates: one terror trumped the other.
Police need only the flimsiest of suspicions to stop you on the street, detain you, and search you. But even if they don’t even have that, they aren’t likely to suffer any serious sanction for an illegal search. Nor is a court likely to believe you should you try to complain. If you resist—physically or verbally, whether the search was legal or illegal—they can bring the hammer down, with damn-near impunity. And after the violence, you’ll be the one going to jail. -Radley Balko [article link]
That is the heart and soul of the U.S. Government’s framework: we can do what we want, in total secrecy and with no checks, including to U.S. citizens, and you don’t need to know anything about it and we need no checks: you should just trust us. That, of course, was precisely the rationale long offered by the neocon Right to justify the radical, transparency-free powers of detention, surveillance and militarism seized by the Bush administration: maybe these powers could theoretically be abused one day by a Bad Leader, but right now, we have a good, noble, Christian family man in office who only wants to Keep us Safe, so we can trust him. That has now been replaced by: maybe these powers could theoretically be abused one day by a Bad Leader, but right now, we have a good, noble, urbane, progressive Constitutional scholar and family man in office who only wants to Keep us Safe, so we can trust him (see, for instance, CAP’s Ken Gude dismissing concerns about the indefinite detention bill by expressly invoking the Goodness of President Obama: “if the president does not believe it is necessary or appropriate to order military operations in the United States, then there is no military detention authority in the United States”; “President Obama has made clear he does not want military detention in the United States. . . . Yes, a future president may interpret that authority differently, but that is [] a fight for another day . . .”). -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Never forget that the war in Iraq and the ensuing occupation, which isn't really ending no matter what the president says, were horrific crimes against humanity -- that hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children died horrific, violent deaths because the Washington establishment chose to exploit the horrific, violent deaths of 3,000 Americans in order to carry out a horrific, long-planned "shock and awe" invasion of a country that had nothing to do with it. Anyone who supported that war and hasn't spent the last eight years begging forgiveness should be treated as a pariah, their lives made miserable as every day they are loudly and impolitely reminded that they have the blood of countless innocents on their hands. -Charles Davis [article link]
[re: Obama's response to GOP criticism that he engages in "appeasement" in foreign policy: "Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement. Or whoever’s left out there. Ask them about that."]
Watch the video at the link provided above. It's instructive, particularly Obama's expression when he adds, "Or whoever's left out there." He speaks of murder, yet the words are breezy and casual: this is a murderer so used to killing that he talks of his past and future victims interchangeably, and in terms of approximation. Just "whoever's left out there." He wants to be sure you know he'll order all of them killed in time. His face is expressionless, the eyes dead. This is a man without a soul in any healthy, positive sense. He murders -- and he's proud of it. -Arthur Silber [article link]
If you have ever wondered how a serial murderer -- a murderer who is sane and fully aware of the acts he has committed -- can remain steadfastly convinced of his own moral superiority and show not even the slightest glimmer of remorse, you should not wonder any longer. The United States government is such a murderer. It conducts its murders in full view of the entire world. It even boasts of them. Our government, and all our leading commentators, still maintain that the end justifies the means -- and that even the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents is of no moral consequence, provided a sufficient number of people can delude themselves into believing the final result is a "success." -Arthur Silber [article link]
[re: Obama's flip-flop on horse slaughter, in which he signed a bill making horse meat legal for human consumption despite his 2008 campaign pledge to keep it illegal] So why is Obama’s marching of Mr. Ed into the terror and cruelty of the slaughterhouse any more irritating than numerous other things he does? It probably has to do with the fact that he keeps pretending, just like his liberal supporters keep pretending, that he and they are some kind of superior enlightened humane beings wholly unlike their barbarous right wing opponents who we’re supposed to be petrified of. It’s the liberals who shop around for both “humane meat” and “humanitarian” “good wars” and other oxymorons — and that grates. The lack of revolutionary class/vegan-conciousness among people on the left — revealing their cowardice, shallowness, hypocrisy and stupidity, and the attachment they have to failure — is one of the biggest impediments to anything positive happening in America. What’s true of health is also true of ethics and revolution: you can’t buy it, you have to live it. -Randy Shields [article link]
There is also an increasing awareness that the Democrats and Republicans who get elected are not that different in some fundamental ways. People are waking up to the fact that they are forced to choose between one candidate who will support policies that help corporations at the expense of the middle and working classes while telling you they will protect your gun rights, and another candidate who will support policies that help corporations at the expense of the middle and working classes while telling you they will protect your abortion rights. Abortion rights and gun rights are not going to be changed in Vermont any time soon. Budgets and tax bills get passed every year, and both the Democrats and Republicans currently worship at the altar of austerity and tax cuts for the wealthiest. -Morgan Daybell, Party Director of the Vermont Progressive Party [article link]
Whenever I write about Israel, I get accused of double standards because I don’t spill as much ink denouncing worse abuses by, say, Syria. I plead guilty. I demand more of Israel partly because my tax dollars supply arms and aid to Israel. I hold democratic allies like Israel to a higher standard — just as I do the U.S. -Nicolas Kristof [article link]
If Obama wanted to nuke 9 countries and the GOP candidate (whoever it ends up being) wanted to nuke 10 countries, liberals would argue that "practicality" demands that we vote for Obama to stop those CRAZY Republican warmongers from winning; conservatives, on the other hand, would denounce Obama as a hippie peacenik. -inspired by this and this from the webcomic American Extremists
As far as I can tell, there’s barely any difference in goals within the foreign policy establishment. They just disagree on the best methods to achieve the goals. My guess is that everyone agrees we have to continue defending the mideast from outside interference (I love that Hillary line), and the [Democrats] just think that best path is four overt wars and three covert actions, while the neocons want to jump straight to seven wars. -Jonathan Schwarz
[I]f he loses the presidency next year, Obama’s failure to deal with the legacy of torture that he inherited may turn out to be a huge problem. He has left the door open for state-sanctioned torture to be part of the next administration’s tool kit for dealing with the “global war on terror.” The leading Republican candidates understand that in many circles advocating torture is good politics. In their debates and in their foreign policy pronouncements, they are effectively capitalizing on a series of decisions that the Obama administration made as it failed to enshrine its own ban on torture as an absolute legal norm. Torture remains on the table as a future policy choice.
So what happened? The president has rejected three clear opportunities to erect a high legal wall against the return of torture: he has made it clear that criminal prosecutions for torture will not go forward; he has opposed the creation of a truth commission to examine events comprehensively; and he has affirmatively intervened to stop civil litigation by detainees against their torturers. -Eric Lewis [article link]
And we are stuck now with this fundamental conflict, whereby most of us are insisting that the law should apply equally to everyone, while the people running this country for years now have been operating according to the completely opposite principle that different people have different rights, and who deserves what protections is a completely subjective matter, determined by those in power, on a case-by-case basis. [...] The state wants to retain the power to make these subjective decisions, because being allowed to selectively enforce the law effectively means they have despotic power. And who wants to lose that? -Matt Taibbi [article link]
[re: violent police crackdowns on the Occupy movement] The intent and effect of such abuse is that it renders those guaranteed freedoms meaningless. If a population becomes bullied or intimidated out of exercising rights offered on paper, those rights effectively cease to exist. Every time the citizenry watches peaceful protesters getting pepper-sprayed — or hears that an Occupy protester suffered brain damage and almost died after being shot in the skull with a rubber bullet — many become increasingly fearful of participating in this citizen movement, and also become fearful in general of exercising their rights in a way that is bothersome or threatening to those in power. That’s a natural response, and it’s exactly what the climate of fear imposed by all abusive police state actions is intended to achieve: to coerce citizens to “decide” on their own to be passive and compliant — to refrain from exercising their rights — out of fear of what will happen if they don’t.
The genius of this approach is how insidious its effects are: because the rights continue to be offered on paper, the citizenry continues to believe it is free. They believe that they are free to do everything they choose to do, because they have been “persuaded” — through fear and intimidation — to passively accept the status quo. As Rosa Luxemburg so perfectly put it: “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” Someone who sits at home and never protests or effectively challenges power factions will not realize that their rights of speech and assembly have been effectively eroded because they never seek to exercise those rights; it’s only when we see steadfast, courageous resistance from the likes of these UC-Davis students is this erosion of rights manifest. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Cynical law students tend to dismiss their classmates’ interest in doing anything but trying to make money by pointing out how these noble ideals soon crumble in the face of the realities of On Campus Interviewing. But that’s the point: It turns out there’s very little money in law for doing anything other than representing the interests of the rich and powerful. That doesn’t mean people who claimed to want to do something else were disingenuous: more likely they were merely naïve. If you want to go to law school to help poor people, please keep in mind that in America in 2011 nobody who matters gives a rat’s ass about the interests of poor people, so unless you’re independently wealthy or extremely lucky you will not be able to help poor people by going to law school. -Paul Campos [article link]
[re: the killing of civilians by NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan] We're trained simply to accept these incidents as though they carry no meaning: we're just supposed to chalk them up to regrettable accidents (oops), agree that they don't compel a cessation to the war, and then get back to the glorious fighting. Every time that happens, this just becomes more normalized, less worthy of notice. It's just like background noise: two families of children wiped out by an American missile (yawn: at least we don't target them on purpose like those evil Terrorists: we just keep killing them year after year after year without meaning to).
It's acceptable to make arguments that American wars should end because they're costing too much money or American lives or otherwise harming American strategic interests, but piles of corpses of innocent children are something only the shrill, shallow and unSerious -- pacifists! -- point to as though they have any meaning in terms of what should be done. [...]
At some point, doesn’t a country’s ongoing willingness year after year to extinguish the lives of innocent human beings in multiple countries, for no good reason, seriously mar the character of the country and the political leaders responsible for it, to say nothing of the way it inexorably degrades the political culture of the nation and the minds of the citizens who acquiesce to it? -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Telling the story of Obama's first term without including [his civil liberties abuses and executive power excesses] is a shocking failure of liberalism. It's akin to conservatism's unforgivable myopia and apologia during the Bush Administration. Are liberals really more discontented with Obama's failure to reverse the Bush tax cuts than the citizen death warrants he is signing? Is his ham-handed handling of the debt-ceiling really more worthy of mention than the illegal war he waged? Is his willingness to sign deficit reduction that cuts entitlement spending more objectionable than the fact that he outsourced drone strikes to a CIA that often didn't even know the names of the people it was killing? These are the priorities of a perverted liberalism. -Conor Friedersdorf [article link]
Public opinion does not matter. It is irrelevant. A large majority of the population wanted a public option added to the healthcare bill. A small majority wanted single payor. Calls against TARP were running 100:1 to 1200:1 against. There is no public option, there is no single payer, and TARP passed.
In Europe every government other than Iceland has been sure to never allow a referendum on austerity. Members of the Euro-zone like Spain and Greece and Italy have not had referendums on whether to leave the Euro. They have had elections in some cases, but both major parties are FOR austerity...
Most countries in the developed world do not have functioning democracies in any meaningful sense. You can vote for party A, B, or C, but they will all do substantially the same things, differing only in how fast they do them and the degree of gratuitous cruelty they engage in. [...]
Until politicians fear you more than they fear the rich and covet the favors and money of the rich, they will continue to serve the rich first. ... But that won’t change because of “opinion”. Opinions don’t matter in aristocracies or oligarchies, and that’s what we are creating, what we’re heading towards. What matters isn’t what the public thinks, what matters is what the public does which has a tangible, real, cost to politicians or their masters. -Ian Welsh [article link]
The Democrats don't object and they completely fail to mount serious opposition to our inevitable course toward widening war and an attack on Iran, not because they are cowards, not because they're afraid of being portrayed as "weak" in the fight against terrorism, and not because of any of the other excuses that are regularly offered by their defenders. They don't object because -- they don't object. That is: they agree -- they agree that the United States is the "indispensable" nation, that we have the "right" to tell every other country how it is "permitted" to act, that we must pursue a policy of aggressive interventionism supported by an empire of military bases. They agree about all of it; moreover, in most critical respects, they devised these policies in the first instance, and they implemented and defended them more vigorously and more consistently than Republicans... -Arthur Silber [article link]
[re: intelligence reports about about Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons] I therefore repeat my major admonition, and give it special emphasis: NEVER, EVER ARGUE IN TERMS OF INTELLIGENCE AT ALL. It is always irrelevant to major policy decisions, and such decisions are reached for different reasons altogether. This is true whether the intelligence is correct or not, and it is almost always wrong. On those very rare occasions when intelligence is accurate, it is likely to be disregarded in any case. It will certainly be disregarded if it runs counter to a course to which policymakers are already committed.
The intelligence does not matter. It is primarily used as propaganda, to provide alleged justification to a public that still remains disturbingly gullible and pliable -- and it is used after the fact, to justify decisions that have already been made. -Arthur Silber [article link]
Almost every time I'm interviewed by a mainstream journalist about OWS, I get some variation of the same lecture: "How are you going to get anywhere if you refuse to create a leadership structure or make a practical list of demands? And what's with all this anarchist nonsense – the consensus, the sparkly fingers … ? You're never going to be able to reach regular, mainstream Americans with this sort of thing!" It is hard to imagine worse advice. After all, since 2007, just about every previous attempt to kick off a nationwide movement against Wall Street took exactly the course such people would have recommended – and failed miserably. It is only when a small group of anarchists in New York decided to adopt the opposite approach – refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the existing political authorities by making demands of them; refusing to accept the legitimacy of the existing legal order by occupying a public space without asking for permission, refusing to elect leaders that could then be bribed or co-opted; declaring, however non-violently, that the entire system was corrupt and they rejected it; being willing to stand firm against the state's inevitable violent response – that hundreds of thousands of Americans from Portland to Tuscaloosa began rallying in support, and a majority declared their sympathies. -David Graeber [article link]
[E]ducation – not condescension or expulsion – is the best way of dealing with those in the Occupy movement who still have faith, however misplaced, in the Democratic Party. Many people still want to believe that a good person in politics, a kind-hearted, do-gooding Reformer, will save us. And given the narrow range of permissible debate on TV and even in supposedly leftist publications, it's not surprise a lot of people can't think outside of electoral politics and the futility of electing more and better politicians.
The goal of the radical should be to educate people, to show them how those determined to work within the system of electoral politics – within a stacked system designed by and for those who with the most money and power – are more often than not destined to be subsumed by it, with the occasional reformer who does get into office and doesn't lose his or her way destined to have as much power and influence as, say, Dennis Kucinich. -Charles Davis [article link]
Too often, though, the brothers Koch seem to fill the same role for partisan Democrats that George Soros and union “thugs” serve for idiot Republicans: as catch-all evil, James Bond-style villains whose nefarious doings are to blame for all that is wrong with the world – which have the added bonus of absolving one's preferred faction in the ruling establishment of their share of the blame for the status quo. -Charles Davis [article link]
Violence on its own right is neither moral nor immoral, just or unjust. Nor is every instance of violence identical to every other. Violence is not fungible. It is not always aggression. It's not even always clearly defined as such.
When a man strikes a woman across the face, he's done violence to her. When she stabs him in the chest, she has returned violence. When a parent refuses to feed a child - even if he never strikes her - he has done violence to her. When she breaks a window to escape, she has responded with violence.
It serves our earthly rulers to differentiate between "violence," which they criminalize, and all the other acts of violence which are their ordinary methods of accumulating wealth and power, and enforcing it. That they call these violent deeds by such names as policing, policy, law enforcement, education, politics, business practice, rent, insurance or treatment is no small matter. It serves their purposes to have us believe that our violence is criminal, but theirs is the natural and inexorable order of the world. -Jack Crow [article link]
Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.
I am not disappointed in Obama. I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t wonder when he is going to be Obama. I did not vote for the man. I vote socialist, which in my case meant Ralph Nader, but could have meant Cynthia McKinney. How can an organization with the oxymoronic title Progressives for Obama even exist? Liberal groups like these make political satire obsolete. Obama was and is a brand. He is a product of the Chicago political machine. He has been skillfully packaged as the new face of the corporate state. I don’t dislike Obama—I would much rather listen to him than his smug and venal predecessor—though I expected nothing but a continuation of the corporate rape of the country. And that is what he has delivered. -Chris Hedges [article link]
In line with the occupy movement, we must not extol the power of the state as an agent of change or define progress by increased comfort, wealth, imperial expansion or consumption. The trust in the beneficence of the state—which led most liberal reformers to back the wars in Vietnam and Iraq at their inceptions, as well as place faith in electoral politics long after electoral politics had been hijacked by corporate power—ceded uncontested power to the corporate state. Liberals and liberal groups, such as MoveOn, which urge us to appeal to formal structures of power that no longer concern themselves with the needs or rights of citizens have become forces of disempowerment.
The only effective tool for change will come through movements such as those that stand in direct opposition to state power and seek through the sheer force of numbers and civil disobedience to discredit and weaken the corporate state. The corporate state cannot be the repository of our hopes and dreams. And the liberal establishment has, by making concession after concession, merged itself into the corporate apparatus and has nothing left to say to us. It is part of the elaborate and hollow political theater that has replaced genuine political participation. -Chris Hedges [article link]
There's a reason that women since the dawn of time have dated a bunch of assholes. Assholes provide everything they want during their "dating around" period: drama, mental torment, frustration, anger... and excitement, conquest, challenge, and passion.
After a particularly bad asshole relationship goes south, many women rebound to a nicer guy. He's not as handsome, not as dangerous, not as exciting, not as dashing (whatever that means). But he's so nice and chilvalrous. He opens car doors. He calls to make sure she got home safely. He does little awkward things that are so charming.
She also has a 130-decibel alarm going off in her head at all times saying, "We are not going to have any sexual chemistry. This guy isn't going to rip my clothes off - he's going to take them off and fold them neatly on the bureau." So unless you prove you can bring the fastball in bed as well as you bring the bouquet of flowers, she's done with you. -Sam Greenspan, 11 Points Guide to Hooking Up
In Slate, Anne Applebaum actually argues that the Wall Street protests are anti-democratic because of their “refusal to engage with existing democratic institutions.” In other words, it’s undemocratic to protest oligarchic rule; if these protesters truly believed in democracy, they would raise a few million dollars, hire lobbying firms filled with ex-political officials, purchase access to and influence over political leaders, and then use their financial clout to extract the outcomes they want. Instead, they’re attempting to persuade their fellow citizens that we live under oligarchy, that our democratic institutions are corrupted and broken, and that fundamental change is urgent — an activity which, according to Applebaum, will “simply weaken the [political system] further.”
Could someone please explain to her that this is precisely the point? Protesting a political system and attempting to achieve change outside of it is “anti-democratic” only when the political system is a healthy and functioning democracy. Oligarchies and plutocracies don’t qualify. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Whenever people work together cooperatively without the need for coercion, that's anarchy in action. Twenty-eight families collectively working the same farm for their mutual benefit? That, my friends, is anarchy; a small window into a world where peoples' lives are based on consensus and cooperation, no coercion. And it's why I think every decent person ought to be anarchist. Hear me out: While we can argue and bicker over how to get to anarchtopia, or how long it might take or the details of who will deliver the mail and make sure the neighbor kid stays off your lawn, why shouldn't every person's goal be a society that minimizes the use of violence? Go ahead, say pure anarchy is unworkable, incompatible with human nature – to which I'd rejoin that governments with their mass murdering wars and nuclear weapons seem to be incompatible with human kind – shouldn't we at least strive to create a society that minimizes the use of violence to the greatest extent possible?
Anarchism is not about Molotov cocktails and car bombs, it's about cooperation; it's about order built from the bottom up, rather than imposed from the top down. And the people at the bottom have to want it for it to succeed. An anarchist society, if it is ever to come about, won't be the result of a mere political revolution like in Egypt or Libya, where the institutions of power are maintained, just staffed with different people. It will come from a social revolution -- from creating a society of anarchists who reject the notion of coercive power and the use of violence as a means of material and political gain. It will come from people coming to see... the empowerment that comes from voluntary collectivism and from learning to appreciate the wisdom of devolving power from states and presidents to communities and individuals.
Already, most people reject the use of violence not because the government tells them that, say, murder is bad, but because they believe in their hearts it is wrong. ... The next step, and it's an admittedly difficult one that won't happen overnight, is convincing a critical mass of people that violence isn't just wrong in their personal life, but in their political life too. Murder by proxy – murder by politician – is just as evil as if you personally bashed an Afghan child's head open with a rock. Don't support and don't enable it. And that means rejecting the idea that any person or institution can or should claim a monopoly on the “legitimate” use of violence. -Charles Davis [article link]
At this point in time only radical solutions will work. That means radical: everything must go. Every institution in American society has failed. Every single one. They must all be shut down and the purposes they were meant to serve must be assigned to new institutions. You cannot save the Fed in its current form. You cannot save the banks. You cannot save the military or the police or the judiciary or the universities. And, most importantly, you cannot trust or do business with the elites who currently run society. They must be run out of power entirely, their riches taken away from them, and those who have committed crimes (virtually all of them) must be thrown in prison. -Ian Welsh [article link]
The reason many liberal and progressive elites hate the occupy wall street folks is simple: they have bypassed the old left leadership. The old left is not making any money off this, is not leading it, so they hate it because it challenges them. The old left exists to bring in money and keep paying themselves. This is as true of union leadership as it is of the majority of environmental organizations. The leadership of almost all of these organizations is deeply corrupt. All they care about is whether they can fundraise off of something. If they can’t, they despise it. They will, and do, regularly sell out of the interests of their own supposed constituents, in order to make their personal lives easier, to get richer, and to keep hobnobbing with important people. -Ian Welsh [article link]
Although the stereotype imagines vegetarians sententiously screaming at any meat eater they see at the lunch counter or dinner table, I've found quite the opposite to be true. In my personal life, I go out of my way to avoid talking about my vegetarianism while I'm eating with friends, family or work colleagues, but nonetheless regularly find myself being interrogated by carnivores when they happen to notice that I'm not wolfing down a plate of meat. -David Sirota [article link]
[Juan] Cole is a fine example of a liberal, and when I say a liberal, I mean a conservative. Insofar as there is a liberalism in America today, it represents conservatism far more than the brunch-buffet nativism of the ostensible right in this country. It is fidelity to the fixed institutions and authority of the past; its philosophy of progress is a strict diet of revanchism; its lodestar is traditional authority. -IOZ [article link]
Ordinary people, what we call “sane” in our society, are really shitty analysts. Really, really shitty analysts. Their bias to the upside is tiresome, predictable and makes them wrong, over and over and over again. ... Of course optimism is wonderfully adaptive as long as optimists aren’t your leaders or analysts, and don’t run your nuclear power plants, or plan your economies, or make any decisions about anything which if it goes wrong can go catastrophically wrong. Optimists are happier, they live longer, they’re healthier, they “get up and go”, blah, blah, blah. Optimism is good for optimists and hey, they’re generally more pleasant to be around, too. There are time periods when they’re even right a lot (say during the 50s). But basically, they’re blind. ... [Y]ou can tell people what will happen, in advance, and be right, over and over and over again. And what that will do is get you marginalized. “Oh, he’s so negative! Such a downer. He should make us feel good about ourselves and our future, and if he doesn’t, we won’t listen. Let’s watch some TV!” [...]
Likewise I am beyond tired of the excessive stigmatization of anger and hatred. It is appropriate to hate some people. If you don’t hate a man who has killed tens to hundreds of thousands of people (you don’t know because he refused to count) for a war based on lies, while gutting your civil rights, you are either a saint or your values are so fucked up I don’t even know what to say. -Ian Welsh [article link]
Everywhere I go I keep hearing people say, “How come Obama is letting X happen or Y happen, how come he’s letting his underlings do Z? It seems so unlike him!” It reminds me of the way people view leaders in Russia. Going back centuries, Russian peasants wrote impassioned letters to the Tsar, sure he was completely unaware that his Grand Dukes were all thieves and his okhranka agents were rapists and torturers. Now that Obama’s on the scene a lot of Americans are demonstrating a similar public desire to believe in the good king. Obama seems so decent and intelligent, it’s hard to imagine that his act is just a big sales job, that he’s really just a smooth-talking shill for a bunch of Wall Street bankers and Pentagon generals. So people tend to scramble for the exculpatory explanation: he’s being tricked, he’s unaware, his hands are tied, and so on. -Matt Taibbi [article link]
Throughout American history, the Christians have repeatedly been dragged into modernity kicking and screaming. Once it became apparent, despite the words of the bible, that slavery was inhuman, the Christians forgot the swath of religious fervor in its favor from millennia before. The next generation of believers then attempted to invert reality in full by claiming that followers of Christ were not the power base for defending slavery, but that they instead actually led the charge for emancipation. They did this by frantically pointing to the handful of religious leaders who, for the same bad reasons that other Christians held contrary beliefs, thought slavery was not the will of god. The same occurred after the patriarchal Christian culture of the early 20th century made up the bulk of hostility to women’s rights.
We are moving toward a day, not far off, when it will be all-but-unanimously accepted that a dislike of gay rights makes you a bigot and a bad person (whether or not you think you have god’s approval). When that time comes, the Christians will attempt to wash away the fact that such sentiments emanated directly from the pulpit for the breadth of human history, including the state of New York in 2011. They will try to say that the noble Christians were not the cause, but the solution! -JT Eberhard [article link]
Obama, the black liberal, the politically correct exemplar, the marketing dream, is as much a warmonger as George W. Bush. His score is six wars. Never in US history has a president prosecuted as many whistleblowers... Obama's greatest achievement is having seduced, co-opted and silenced much of liberal opinion in the United States, including the anti-war movement. -John Pilger [article link]
[Three jokes about the Democratic Party, by Jonathan Schwarz (link)]
1. There would still be a Soviet Union if they'd been smart enough to have two communist parties that agreed about everything except abortion.
2. Democrats : Republicans :: Getting stabbed : Getting shot. Why aren't you enthusiastic about getting stabbed? WOULD YOU RATHER GET SHOT?
3. The Republican vision is that 20 white male billionaires will own everything and rule the world with an iron whip. The Democratic vision is completely different, in that not all the billionaires will be white men.
I always especially enjoy that argument from liberals and progressives. "Oh, the Democrats might be doing most of the same things, well, practically all the same things, and maybe some of the things Obama's doing are even worse ... but the Republicans are crazy!"Yeah, I see how that works. Obama and the Democrats do all this -- and they're entirely sane. They know exactly what they're doing, why, and even what the effects will be. This, we are repeatedly assured, is a notable improvement, for which we should be properly grateful. -Arthur Silber [article link]
Moderation is no option. Moderation in the face of present realities is worse than surrender. At least with surrender, illusion is dead. You know you've lost, are underfoot, and ideally find fresh ways to assert yourself. Moderation feeds the fantasy of reform in an age where reform is nearly impossible. Too many forces against it, which is why reform is touted as the "mature" route. Moderation is a voluntary leash.
Does this leave extremism? Yes, but not violent or hateful versions. There's enough violence and political hatred already. Reactionaries are defined by their hatred; liberals even more so. In fact, hatred is about all that liberals have left to offer. Hatred and fear. Rejecting these negative, destructive mindsets is, by current standards, decidedly extremist. Developing peaceful alternatives deepens the extreme. -Dennis Perrin [article link]
Obviously, we ought to enact sane immigration laws that make it easy for people like [Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and undocumented immigrant] Jose Vargas to get a green card. But given that we haven’t done that, it’s a good thing—both for him and for the rest of us—that our enforcement system wasn’t effective enough to prevent him from taking a job here.
Again, there’s a huge double standard here. We American citizens take a strictly moralistic tone toward laws that we don’t personally have to follow. But “the rule of law” goes out the window when it comes to that pot you smoked in college, or the use taxes you haven’t paid on your Amazon purchases, or those pirated MP3s on your hard drive. When we’re talking about laws that actually affect us, we’re glad there’s some breathing room between the law on the books and what people actually get punished for.
We should display the same kind of magnanimity toward people who have to deal with our immigration system, which is much, much more screwed up than our copyright and traffic laws. Jose Vargas didn’t hurt anyone when he illegally entered the country as a teenager, just as Barack Obama didn’t hurt anyone when he illegally smoked pot in college. Law enforcement has, correctly, turned a blind eye to Obama’s youthful lawbreaking. It should do the same for Vargas and thousands of others like him. -Timothy B. Lee [article link]
[in reference to Hezbollah's 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut] Whatever else you might say about those bombings, they weren't terrorism, at least if words have any meaning. They were attacks on military targets.But this goes really, really deep in U.S. political culture. The basic idea is: we are allowed to send our military anywhere on earth to do anything to anyone. And if someone tries to fight back—even by targeting our military when it's stationed in their country and killing them—that is fundamentally AGAINST THE RULES. -Jonathan Schwarz [article link]
Just consider: in American political discourse, it's not remotely criminal that the U.S. attacked Iraq, spent 7 years destroying the country, and left at least 100,000 people dead. To even suggest that American officials responsible for that attack should be held criminally liable is to marginalize oneself as a fringe and unSerious radical. It's not an idea that's even heard, let alone accepted. After all, all Good Patriotic Americans were horrified that an Iraqi citizen would so much as throw a shoe at George Bush; what did he do to deserve such treatment? The U.S. is endowed with the inalienable right to commit violence against anyone it wants without any consequences of any kind.
By contrast, any Iraqi who fights back in any way against the U.S. invasion -- even by fighting against exclusively military targets -- is not only a criminal, but a Terrorist: one who should be shipped to Guantanamo. And this notion is so engrained that no media account discussing this case would dare question the application of the "Terrorism" label to what they've done, even though it applies in no conceivable way. [...]
It's hardly unusual that an empire declares that its violence and aggression are inherently legitimate, and that any resistance to it -- or the very same acts aimed at it -- are inherently illegitimate. That double-standard decree, more or less, is a defining feature of an empire. But the nationalistic conceit that all of that is justified by coherent, consistent principles of "law" -- or can be resolved by meaningful application of terms such as "Terrorism" -- is really too ludicrous to endure. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
The White House desperately wants liberal dollars but I can't imagine they're particularly worried about liberal votes. Democrats are never scared of their base, because liberals are terrified of Republicans... A Republican president will most likely do what the last three Republican presidents have done: Starve the government of revenue, allow industries to capture regulators, launch pointless and bloody foreign misadventures, and threaten to gut the welfare state. I mean, all of those things might be happening now, with a Democrat, but they would happen so much worse with Mitt Romney, probably! So vote Obama again!" -Alex Pareene [article link]
You can't run a highly interventionist foreign policy without a large, permanent and well-funded national security bureaucracy, spending hundreds of billions of dollars each year. ... And just as corporations don't like government regulation, government agencies don't really like transparency, accountability, and full disclosure.
Not surprisingly, the national security bureaucracy prefers to keep us in the dark about what it is doing. Some level of secrecy is justifiable, because there are obviously some things we don't want potential enemies to know. But government agencies also like to keep things secret in order to cover up policy failures, or to make it easier to do things that might be stopped if people knew more about them (e.g., torture, targeted killings, or other forms of covert action). Or public officials may just want to avoid having to answer a lot of pesky questions. The more things you can classify and keep secret, therefore, the easier it is to get things done, even if the things you are doing aren't optimal. Hence the enormous furor over Wikileaks. [...]
What I am suggesting, in short, is that there is a direct connection between our present strategy of global intervention -- a strategy supported by the foreign policy elites in both parties -- and the current campaign against anyone who tries to pull back the curtain on a lot of these activities. And as long as we have the same global strategy, I wouldn't expect any those restrictive tendencies to change. -Stephen Walt [article link]
[Re: the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya] Despite the differences in these wars, all are proceeding in ways that were unanticipated by their most prominent backers. In every case, the unwelcome surprises are so significant that they totally change the nature of the conflict. And had Americans had better forecasts about what would actually be involved in these military operations, opposition to launching them might have been far more widespread. [...]
The next time the occupant of the Oval Office, the opposition leadership in Congress, or the Weekly Standard editorial board is agitating for war, it's worth recalling that America's ruling class has been impressively consistent in its ability to underestimate the costs and difficulty of its military campaigns. One might even say America is unexceptional in this regard. -Conor Friedersdorf [article link]
Is there really genuine anti-war sentiment growing among the GOP? I sincerely doubt it. If the last two years have taught us anything, it's that the true test of the authenticity of claimed political convictions is whether they endure regardless of which party controls the White House. Democratic loyalists spent many years pretending to care about civil liberties and wars because doing so allowed them opportunistically to bash a GOP President; as soon as a Democratic President adopted those policies, the purported concerns for such matters all but vanished (just imagine the sustained progressive outcry if George Bush -- rather than Barack Obama -- were conducting an illegal war without Congressional approval, or if Bush had tripled the detainee population at Bagram while insisting that detainees there have no rights of any kind). Obviously, widespread Democratic opposition to Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies was motivated primarily by partisan advantage, not actual conviction.
Identically, the intense fear of expanded federal power incessantly touted by "small-government" conservatives in the 1990s -- dark tales of black U.N. helicopters, Janet Reno's goon squads (i.e., federal law enforcement agencies), and domestic eavesdropping warrants issued by the secret and nefarious FISA court -- instantly vanished as soon as a GOP administration began wildly expanding federal powers in the name of 9/11. With rare exception, there was no new federal power these "small-government" conservatives weren't willing to cheer on once their party was the one wielding the power (just as there is no civil-liberties assault Democratic loyalists are unwilling to defend now). -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
For a long time now, every time I hear an Israeli patriot or apologist complaining that such-and-such a group or government won't recognize Israel as a Jewish state, I always wonder -- even if there is a good reason the Christians, Muslims and atheists of Palestine should live under some form of Jewish rule, how does one go about recognizing the legitimacy of a state that itself won't disclose exactly what its borders are? How does that work? Nobody seems to know. Ask the next Israeli you meet and see what they say. Where are your country's borders? -David Rovics [video link (from the video's description)]
Imagine you have a friend -- let’s call him Barry -- who seems like a swell guy, a real class act. He’s got a beautiful wife, two kids, gives blood, volunteers at the local health clinic on the weekends, even gives a pretty good motivational speech from time to time. Sure, he slaughters the occasional family here, wipes out a funeral procession there, but unlike some cold-blooded murderer, some monster, he does not revel in the senseless violence. No, he laments every death caused by his regrettable but escalating savagery. Did I mention he plays a pretty mean game of basketball?
Now hold up, most people with functioning brain stems and consciences might say. Nice guy though he may be, the whole killing of innocent men, women and children thing? Yeah, not cool. Kind of a buzz kill, actually. Bit of a deal breaker.
Unless you’re talking about Barack Obama. Then complicity in murder -- and the extrajudicial killing of not just precious blonde-haired, blue-eyed American citizens, but hundreds of Afghans and Pakistanis -- becomes an unfortunate, maybe even a tragic thing, but not bad in a I’m-not-going-to-vote-and-campaign-for-you sort of way. -Charles Davis [article link]
The tradeoff seems to be this: in exchange for a president that can speak in complete sentences and not embarrass Americans in front of Western European audiences, and who is willing to throw a few more crumbs to the middle and lower classes, liberals will accept a little murder abroad. Oh, there might be an open letter or two, but few are willing to call the current occupant of the White House what he is -- a war criminal with a million dollar smile -- instead going to great lengths to defend this administration, working earnestly to support Obama’s agenda even when it’s entirely at odds with their own stated views. [...]
Of course, this probably isn’t the trade-off the president's liberal supporters imagine they're making, and I don’t doubt that people like Moore and Kucinich are sincere in their opposition to the Afghan war, if misguided in how to end it. But their view of the president as a man, or rather what they imagine him to be, colors -- distorts -- their views of his policies, resulting in some embarrassing attempts to excuse Obama, The Man We Thought We Voted For, for the policies enacted by Obama, The Man You Actually Got. Sadly, all too many liberals and progressives remain captivated by the former Obama ™, the persona they’ve been marketed these last couple years: the philosopher-king who probably right this moment is sitting by a fireplace, taking notes and sipping Earl Grey while absorbed in his reading of Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, though, it’s a shame it doesn’t really exist. -Charles Davis [article link]
The rationale for continued Black and progressive support of the Obama administration has been reduced to one factor: a primal fear of the Tea Party boogeyman. Yet, the sheer economic and political devastation wrought under Obama’s brief tenure has made it plausible to make the case... that the First Black President is not the lesser of two evils, but the more effective evil, having facilitated more of the right-wing agenda at home and abroad than George Bush ever attempted or envisioned. What does it matter that Obama is not a white Republican, if he can tear down the social safety net, privatize education and wage aggressive war more effectively than the GOP? -Glen Ford [article link]
My biggest problem with autotuning isn't actually that it makes all pop singers sound like identical robots. Although that does suck. My biggest problem with autotuning is this: It seems to me that the bare minimum required to be a pop singer should be the ability to carry a tune. If you can't do that, perhaps you should be in another line of work. -Greta Christina
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. -William Lloyd Garrison, in first issue of the anti-slavery newspaper “The Liberator”
[Re: the killing of Osama bin Laden] This was a week for flag-waving, fist-pumping, and nationalistic chanting: even -- especially -- among liberals, who were able to take the lead and show the world (and themselves) that they are no wilting, delicate wimps; it's not merely swaggering right-wing Texans, but they, too, who can put bullets in people's heads and dump corpses into the ocean and then joke and cheer about it afterwards. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
See, I have news for ya, folks: there's other reasons not to vote for George Bush than taxes, OK? I don't know what's happened to us as a world - maybe twelve years of Republicanism has made us think this way. But the reason I didn't vote for George Bush is because George Bush, along with Ronald Reagan, presided over an administration whose policies towards South America included genocide. So, yeah, you see... the reason I didn't vote for him is 'cause he's a mass murderer. [...] I'll pay that extra nickel on, you know, a litre of petrol just knowing little brown kids aren't being clubbed to death like baby seals in Honduras so Pepsi can put a plant down there. -Bill Hicks, from the album "Salvation"
At this point in the history of the republic, it should come as no surprise that people working in the Executive Branch tend to think the President has the power to use military force just about any time the he and his advisors deem it necessary or advisable. It is equally unsurprising that politicians and pundits tend to be hypocritical about this issue: they think the President ought to have broad powers when they agree with the particular use to which it is being put, and they think those powers ought to be limited when they think the President is doing something foolish or unnecessary. -Stephen Walt [article link]
You are just as likely to hear the argument for the infiltration of the major parties [i.e. the argument for working within a given party and reforming it from the inside rather than supporting 3rd-party or independent candidates -ed.] from Rush Limbaugh as you are from Markos Moulitsas. The reason for this is quite simple. The likes of Markos Moulitsas and Rush Limbaugh share the self-same goal: ensuring the reproduction of the Democrat-Republican two-party state and duopoly system of government. The infiltration of the major parties by free thinking, independently-minded individuals and groups is not the means by which the major parties are reformed and resuscitated. Rather it is the means by which free-thinking, independently-minded individuals and groups are smothered and castrated by the entrenched interests represented by the ruling party establishment. -d.eris [article link]
I don't have to prove that God doesn't exist, however, show me how you would prove Zeus and Ra don't exist and I'll use your method. -Brian Darkone
while the trend toward undeclared military incursions is often described as a kind of presidential “power grab” it’s much more accurately described as a congressional abdication of responsibility. Even if you completely leave the declaration of war business aside, congress’ control over the purse strings still gives a determined congressional majority ample latitude to restrain presidential foreign policy. The main reason congress tends, in practice, not to use this authority is that congress rarely wants to. Congressional Democrats didn’t block the “surge” in Iraq, congressional Republicans didn’t block the air war in Kosovo, etc. And for congress, it’s quite convenient to be able to duck these issues. Handling Libya this way means that those members of congress who want to go on cable and complain about the president’s conduct are free to do so, but those who don’t want to talk about Libya can say nothing or stay vague. Nobody’s forced to take a vote that may look bad in retrospect, and nobody in congress needs to take responsibility for the success or failure of the mission. If things work out well in Libya, John McCain will say he presciently urged the White House to act. If things work out poorly in Libya, McCain will say he consistently criticized the White House’s fecklessness. Nobody needs to face a binary “I endorse what Obama’s doing / I oppose what Obama’s doing” choice. -Matthew Yglesias [article link]
Theistic evolution, shorter version: "I think I'll create a complex system of interconnected and sometimes sentient life... but just to keep it interesting, I'll do it through a brutal and inefficient method that screws up frequently, that results in most lives ending horribly and painfully, and that's 100% guaranteed to result in a fair amount of suffering even for the most successful. That's just how I roll." -Greta Christina
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. -John Steinbeck
We live in a culture where eating only plant-based foods is seen as 'radical' or 'extreme,' but having your chest cut open for a triple bypass or taking lifelong regimens of liver-damaging medicines to combat the cholesterol present only in animal foods is seen as 'easy.' -Dr. Dean Ornish
He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means 'I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve.' It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help. -Isaac Asimov
The turn will come when we entrust the conduct of our affairs to men who understand that their first duty as public officials is to divest themselves of the power they have been given. -Barry Goldwater
My personal loathing for American politicians and pundits who support dictators is actually greater than the loathing I feel for the dictators themselves. Petty tyrants like Mubarak (and less petty ones, like Stalin) are pure sociopathic killing machines whose only agenda is themselves, the human equivalent of sharks or Ebola. Evil is just what they do. It’s altogether more distasteful to see people who know better, who profess to intellectually understand humane and democratic values, explaining coolly why, in this case, we have to make an exception and side with the secret police and stick-wielding thugs. In a very real sense, the non-assholes who enable assholes are more contemptible and worthy of our condemnation. These people are not true assholes; they’re something more like monsters. -Timothy Kreider [source]
People who torture people suck, but people who drink Chardonnay and do photo ops with people who torture people suck even worse, I’m pretty sure. -Matt Taibbi [source]
Fascism is capitalism plus murder. -Upton Sinclair
So hey, you catch the game last night? This giant dude in spandex pants totally threw a ball made of dead pork skin at another dude in shiny pants and then he ran super fast across a bunch of painted lines while more shiny-pant-wearing dudes chased him and leaped for his glistening spandex buttocks until he eventually crossed this other line which is apparently magical and makes the crowd stand up, bump chests, and clink bud-lights with each other. from this comic by The Oatmeal [Like the author, I don't watch sports and this is about what football looks like to me. -ed.]
I have a question for Obama supporters--if you were to look a mother of a child that was killed by Obama's continuation and worsening of Bush's policies right in her eyes and focus on the never ending pain, would you say: 'At least he can pronounce nuclear and what about the Supreme Court?' -Cindy Sheehan
What I’ve come to realize lately is that I’m not on the same side as a lot of people. [...] Through the Bush years opposition to Bush made a lot of people seem like friends, who weren’t. Sure, we all hated Bush (yes, hated. I hate people who torture and engage in aggressive war, and I think that’s the appropriate response), but that hatred, that opposition, concealed the fact that a lot of people didn’t really object to what Bush was doing, they just objected to the fact that it was being done by a Republican, or that it was being done incompetently. They would have been ok with the same policies if they’d worked out, as with all the “liberals” and “progressives” who were pro-Iraq war until it turned into a clusterfuck. [...] I have no time for these people. I have no politeness or kindness for them. They are traitors and in many cases cowards, and their actions or lack of actions are, objectively, killing or impoverishing people, both in America or abroad. -Ian Welsh [article link]
The standard diet of a meat-eater is blood, flesh, veins, muscles, tendons, cow secretions, hen periods and bee vomit. And... once a year during a certain holiday in November, meat-eaters use the hollowed-out rectum of a dead bird as a pressure cooker for stuffing. And people think vegans are weird because we eat tofu? -Robert Cheeke, vegan bodybuilder
The psychology of partisanship doesn’t make people immediately abandon positions they’ve spent years staking out. (True cynics excepted, at least.) Rather, it does its work more gradually, by shaping the way people respond to new controversies and new proposals, and the way these responses shape the next response, and so forth. So the great T.S.A. debate doesn’t show that conservatives are about to repudiate everything the Bush administration did on national security. ... Republicans voted in lockstep to reauthorize the Patriot Act earlier this year, and conservative partisans are clearly most comfortable when they can maintain consistency with their Bush-era arguments, and either attack Obama for being soft on terrorism or for taking too long to come around to a more right-wing perspective. What it does show, though, is that conservatives are increasingly open to criticizing security policies that are specific to Obama from a libertarian rather than a national-security perspective (something you could also see happening a bit in the debate over assassinating Anwar al-Awlaki), if the libertarian argument offers the more plausible and popular case. -Ross Douthat [article link]
There's a fundamental distinction between progressives and groups that wield actual power in Washington: namely, the latter are willing (by definition) to use their resources and energies to punish politicians who do not accommodate their views, while the former unconditionally support the Democratic Party and their leaders no matter what they do. The groups which Obama cares about pleasing -- Wall Street, corporate interests, conservative Democrats, the establishment media, independent voters -- all have one thing in common: they will support only those politicians who advance their agenda, but will vigorously oppose those who do not. Similarly, the GOP began caring about the Tea Party only once that movement proved it will bring down GOP incumbents even if it means losing a few elections to Democrats.
That is exactly what progressives will never do. They do the opposite; they proudly announce: we'll probably be angry a lot, and we'll be over here doing a lot complaining, but don't worry: no matter what, when you need us to stay in power (or to acquire it), we're going to be there to give you our full and cheering support. [...]
I'm not arguing here with that decision. Progressives who do this will tell you that this unconditional Party support is necessary and justifiable because no matter how bad Democrats are, the GOP is worse. That's a different debate. The point here is that -- whether justified or not -- telling politicians that you will do everything possible to work for their re-election no matter how much they scorn you, ignore your political priorities, and trample on your political values is a guaranteed ticket to irrelevance and impotence. Any self-interested, rational politician -- meaning one motivated by a desire to maintain power rather than by ideology or principle -- will ignore those who behave this way every time and instead care only about those whose support is conditional. And they're well-advised to do exactly that. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Using Terrorism on behalf of American interests is always permissible, because the actual definition of a Terrorist -- the one that our political and media class universally embraces -- is nothing more than this: "someone who impedes or defies U.S. will with any degree of efficacy." -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Most votes in Congress are Kabuki. There was never any chance that Bush tax cuts weren’t going to be extended, and this was obvious far before the election, for example. Unions were never going to get the Employee Free Choice Act.
Also, stop paying attention to who votes for what. If a Dem votes against an obnoxious bill, it is almost always because leadership has released them to vote against it. Close votes almost never really are. [...]
There is no constituency in Congress for liberal policy. None. Even those who prefer liberal policy, like Sanders and Pelosi, will not do anything to actually make sure it happens, or to stop conservative policy.
This is why I generally don’t write about legislative fights any more. There is no point, the outcome is usually determined long before the actual vote, and everything you see is just theater for the rubes. -Ian Welsh [article link]
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. -John Rogers
I am hard put to find something to say to people who still think libertarianism has something to do with liberty. A libertarian is just a Republican who takes drugs. -Bob Black [article link]
There's a long tradition of Anarchism — libertarian thought outside the United States, which is diametrically opposed to the positions of the Libertarian Party — but it's unknown here. That's the dominant position of what's always been considered Socialist Anarchism. Now, the Libertarian Party, is a capitalist party. It's in favor of what I would regard a particular form of authoritarian control. Namely, the kind that comes through private ownership and control, which is an extremely rigid system of domination — people have to... people can survive, by renting themselves to it, and basically in no other way... I do disagree with them very sharply, and I think that they are not … understanding the fundamental doctrine, that you should be free from domination and control, including the control of the manager and the owner. -Noam Chomsky [source]
In other words, millions of liberals can live with indefinite detention for accused terrorists and intimate body scans for everyone else, so long as a Democrat is overseeing them. And millions of conservatives find wartime security measures vastly more frightening when they’re pushed by Janet “Big Sis” Napolitano (as the Drudge Report calls her) rather than a Republican like Tom Ridge. -Ross Douthat [article link]
My column emphasized the more blatant and remarkable examples of the power of partisan psychology — the cases where partisans on either side explicitly misjudged the state of the economy because they disliked the president. But partisanship’s influence is often more subtle, visible less in what you believe than in how strongly you seem to care about it.
Thus... most liberals haven’t suddenly fallen in love with the anti-terrorism measures — wiretapping and Guantanamo, drone attacks and assassinations — that Barack Obama has either accepted or expanded. [...] But what they’ve done instead — with many honorable exceptions, obviously — is downgraded the importance of those issues, in much the same way that conservatives downgraded the importance of being against “big government” when a big-government Republican occupied the Oval Office.
It wasn’t that most right-wingers explicitly changed their opinions on the wisdom of, say, expanding Medicare just because George W. Bush was championing a new prescription drug benefit: Conservative journals still editorialized against Medicare Part D, and conservative activists stored away the issue as an example of why Bush fell short of the Reaganite ideal. But if you followed the national political conversation from 2000 through roughly 2006, it was clear that most Republican partisans learned to live with spending and deficits that would have inspired, well, Tea Party-style activism if they had been the work of a Democratic administration. And the same thing has happened with many, many Democrats today: They aren’t happy, exactly, that Obama has expanded drone attacks ... along the AfPak frontier, but they seem to have downgraded these kind of policies from “grave threat to the very foundation of the republic” to “unfortunate failure that we have to learn to live with, because the Republicans are worse.” Ross Douthat [article link]
I am sad to report that I have concluded that the relative silence on our Afghanistan war dead has to do with the workings of our two-party system. Americans are great followers of sports where two teams oppose one another. They become fierce partisans of one team over the other. They have the same approach to economic life (iPhone vs. Android, Kindle vs. Google ebooks, X-Box vs. Playstation, etc.) They join a “team” in their minds and grow absolutely scathing about the other side. Republicans and Democrats are teams for them. It may be the real reason a third party is so hard to mount; it does have to do with the first past the post electoral system, but it may be also that you can’t root for more than one team at a time, so it is more convenient to have just two parties if you have a binary mindset.
So here’s the reason the whole bloody Afghanistan war is off the radar: it isn’t a partisan issue. The Republican Party, except for a few Liberatarians, is solidly in favor of the war and would apparently like to go on fighting it for decades if only they could. But the Democrats cannot oppose the war (as they eventually opposed the Iraq War) because their own president has implemented a surge and is dedicated to prosecuting the war. The rank and file Democrats may not be very happy about Obama’s adoption of the war, but they are loathe to attack their own party leader (i.e. many of them feel as though they have to support their team).
In the United States of America, if you cannot get an argument going on a partisan party basis, then it just tends to be ignored and to generate no buzz. [...]
If I am right, then the next time we’ll hear a lot about Afghanistan will be if a Republican wins the presidency in 2012. By mid-2013, the Democrats will likely be holding big anti-war rallies and carrying posters of the dead soldiers about whom we have so much trouble hearing in 2010. All of a sudden, their faith in their party and dislike of the other Team will line up with opposition to the Afghanistan War. -Juan Cole [article link]
A proposal that is popular sounding and plays to both American fears and American exceptionalism while being both completely impractical AND unrealistic to ever be implemented is a political goldmine. -Ian Welsh [article link]
I prayed for freedom twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. -Frederick Douglass
It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it. -Eugene V. Debs
The choice between the Democrats and Republicans is one between slow torture and a quick beheading. -inspired by (and paraphrased from) Rich Whitney, Green candidate for governor of Illinois [source]
In practice though, [progressives] cannot seem to divorce themselves from Democrats mostly because of this notion of “viability.” We forget that “viable candidates” are not born as such, nor do the magically appear, but rather they are created by the support of constituents who believe in a candidate's message and positions. There is nothing essential about a viable candidate like some immutable personality trait: Al Gore, who many thought was uncharismatic and personality-less, was still a viable candidate. Viable, or “electable,” is ultimately a matter of numbers: how many are willing to put themselves on the line to support a specific candidate. And in the case of minor political parties that just might very well be more in line with one’s political convictions, it is qualitatively and quantitatively how many have the courage to vote for them. -Daniel W.K. Lee [article link]
[V]oters don't think the way that cable TV personalities think. Voters don't run around basing their vote on this type of vapid sloganeering: who is a liberal? who is a conservative? who wants big government and who wants small government? It's true that the word "liberal" has been poisoned and it's thus hardly surprising that few people embrace it as their political identity. But ... large majorities support positions routinely identified as "liberal," including the public option, greater restraints on Wall Street, preservation of Social Security and Medicare, etc. They can say they are not "liberal" but their specific views on substance prove otherwise. ...
The answer is that voters make choices based on their assessment of the outcomes from the political class. They revolted against the Republican Party in the prior two elections because they hated the Iraq War and GOP corruption (not because they thought the GOP was "too conservative"), and they revolted against Democrats this year because they have no jobs, are having their homes foreclosed by the millions, are suffering severe economic anxiety, and see no plan or promise for that to change (not because they think Democrats are "too liberal").-Glenn Greenwald [article link]
It's dishonest to claim there's no difference between Democrat and Republican. But the parties stand for a very narrow range of ideas, with positions on important issues of the day that often coincide.
Sometimes, Democrats and Republicans seem to disagree sharply, but the premises underlying their respective arguments are the same. Consider the health care reform debate. Although Dems passed a health care bill over the objections of anti-reform Republicans, both parties agreed that our health care should remain under the control of the for-profit insurance industry, which flooded both parties' congressional and presidential candidates with generous campaign checks.
Obamacare imposes mandates, requiring Americans to purchase insurance from for-profit insurers, a legally questionable idea first proposed by Republicans during the mid 1990s, and does nothing to hold down medical costs. The debate was rigged from the start. Whether Democrats passed their bill or the GOP succeeded in blocking it, the real winners would be the insurance and pharmaceutical cartels. -Scott McLarty [article link]
...Democrats are among the least independent thinkers and voters of any partisan or ideological bloc in the United States. They are most likely to believe all or most of what they see or read in any news source and they are least likely to consider voting for an independent or third party candidate for any office. Faced with the record of the current Democratic legislative majority and presidential administration (not to mention those of the past), these duopolist dead-enders still think the answer is "more and better Democrats." They really do believe, against all the evidence, that the Democratic Party stands for something other than the consolidation of power in the hands of political and economic elites and the expansion of the global warfare and corporate welfare state. They are like badly abused dogs, and in this they resemble nothing so much as die-hard partisans of the GOP: no matter how many times they are driven out to the middle of nowhere and left for dead, they always happily limp their way back home to the party, wagging their tails in the false expectation that, this time, they will not receive yet another beating. -d.eris [article link]
Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
What the Democratic and Republican parties and their candidates really represent are slightly different versions of the same corporatist agenda. That is, they push the agenda of the same financial institutions and multinational corporations that fund both parties and their candidates. Thus, while they seem to differ on ideology, that’s just for show. There is very little difference between what Democratic and Republican officeholders actually do in office. -Rich Whitney, Green candidate for governor of Illinois [article link]
Many people are indifferent to the disappearance of privacy -- even with regard to government officials -- because they don't perceive any real value to it. The ways in which the loss of privacy destroys a society are somewhat abstract and difficult to articulate, though very real. A society in which people know they are constantly being monitored is one that breeds conformism and submission, and which squashes innovation, deviation, and real dissent.
The old cliché is often mocked though basically true: there's no reason to worry about surveillance if you have nothing to hide. That mindset creates the incentive to be as compliant and inconspicuous as possible: those who think that way decide it's in their best interests to provide authorities with as little reason as possible to care about them. That's accomplished by never stepping out of line. Those willing to live their lives that way will be indifferent to the loss of privacy because they feel that they lose nothing from it. Above all else, that's what a Surveillance State does: it breeds fear of doing anything out of the ordinary by creating a class of meek citizens who know they are being constantly watched. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
[in reference to the media's frequent use of some variation of the phrase "thousands of rockets" to describe the "threat" the Hamas government in Gaza poses to Israel]
If you described the threat of rockets from Gaza in terms of lives lost, it would sound much less impressive: Rockets fired from Gaza have killed some 16 people in Israel, going back to 2001. It's difficult to present that as a legitimate rationale for killing more than 3,000 Gazan civilians over the same time period.
If you describe the problem in terms of rockets launched, though, it sounds much more serious. Who wouldn't take extreme action to stop thousands of potentially deadly attacks?
The problem is, if you're going to describe Palestinian attacks on Israel that way, shouldn't you describe Israeli attacks on Gaza the same way? How many bombs and bullets do you have to drop or fire before you kill 3,000 civilians? Surely some enterprising reporter with good sources in the Israeli military could make a credible ballpark estimate of the amount of ordnance used by Israel on Gaza, and then stories discussing the conflict could include a line like, "Israel, which has fired millions of rounds of ammunition into Gaza...." Or however many the total turns out to be.
Until they have that figure, however, perhaps journalists could stick to giving the number of lives lost on each side as a means of conveying the degree of threat each faces. -Jim Naureckas [article link]
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the oppressor's side. -Desmond Tutu
In matters of politics I have rarely found it possible to be "too cynical." Options are "cynical" and "not cynical enough." -Tom Tomorrow
[The animal-rights movement] seeks to end human tyranny over other animals, not make our tyranny more 'humane.' -Tom Regan
The consistent anarchist, then, should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat. -Noam Chomsky, from the forward to Anarchism: From Theory to Practice by Daniel Guérin
And so tonight, a night when some seek to name names and others seek to hide names, let me do some naming. Let me call things by their proper names. Let me cut through the jargon, the euphemisms we use to mask human suffering and war crimes. “Closures” mean heavily armed soldiers who ring Palestinian ghettos, deny those trapped inside food or basic amenities—including toys, razors, chocolate, fishing rods and musical instruments—and carry out a brutal policy of collective punishment, which is a crime under international law. “Disputed land” means land stolen from the Palestinians. “Clashes” mean, almost always, the killing or wounding of unarmed Palestinians, including children. “Jewish neighborhoods in the West Bank” mean fortress-like compounds that serve as military outposts in the campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. “Targeted assassinations” mean extrajudicial murder. “Air strikes on militant bomb-making posts” mean the dropping of huge iron fragmentation bombs from fighter jets on densely crowded neighborhoods that always leaves scores of dead and wounded, whose only contact with a bomb was the one manufactured in the United States and given to the Israeli Air Force as part of our complicity in the occupation. “The peace process” means the cynical, one-way route to the crushing of the Palestinians as a people. ...
Let me close tonight with one last name. Let me name those who send these tanks and fighter jets to bomb the concrete hovels in Gaza with families crouching, helpless, inside, let me name those who deny children the right to a childhood and the sick a right to care, those who torture, those who carry out assassinations in hotel rooms in Dubai and on the streets of Gaza City, those who deny the hungry food, the oppressed justice and foul the truth with official propaganda and state lies. Let me call them, not by their honorific titles and positions of power, but by the name they have earned for themselves by draining the blood of the innocent into the sands of Gaza. Let me name them for who they are: terrorists. -Chris Hedges [article link]
There is absolutely nothing the Democrats could do which would cause dedicated partisan hacks like Krugman, or the major liberal and progressive voices in the media and on blogs, to abandon them. The Democrats could launch a nuclear attack and invasion of Iran, establish detention camps in the United States and start populating them with allegedly "dangerous" U.S. citizens, restrict internet access to "approved" sites, proudly announce a system of rewards for friends and family members who denounce "dissidents" with possible ties to terrorism, and pursue a host of other despicable and vile policies, and Krugman, et al. would still say you have to vote for Democrats.
Because the Republicans are still more evil -- and they're crazy!
Face it: some people just love the taste of shit. It's their favorite food. -Arthur Silber [article link]
I'll be blunt, even rude: You can call it Republican shit. You can call it Democratic shit. You can call it progressive shit. It's still shit. It's still murder, and torture, and criminal war, and a growing surveillance state. If you vote for the Democratic or the Republican candidate for president -- and if you vote for almost any of the candidates for national office -- you're voting for murder. You're voting for torture. You're voting for criminal war. You're voting for the growing surveillance state. Is that what you choose to do? Is that what you choose to support? Is it? -Arthur Silber [article link]
It takes more effort to hate than to love. Something to keep in mind if you're looking to burn off some calories and improve cardiovascular fitness. -The Covert Comic
The bad news is that the 308 congress members who defied public opinion and voted for war funding are not afraid of us. The Republicans think their supporters are happy to put their grandchildren into debt to China as long as it funds wars, even if it makes us all less safe and wrecks our economy. And they're right. The Democrats think their supporters are outraged and offended by such behavior but will meekly turn around and vote for them anyway, out of fear that a Republican would be worse. And they're right.
We need a new approach that not only seeks to keep anti-war representatives in power, and to replace Republicans with anti-war Democrats, and to replace pro-war Democrats in primaries with anti-war Democrats, and to replace pro-war Republicans in primaries with anti-war Republicans, but also to defeat pro-war incumbents even if their opponent is pro-war too and even if it means replacing a Democrat with a Republican. I don't see any other way of making these people listen to us in the coming months and years. And you can't get much worse than anyone who keeps funding wars. -David Swanson [article link]
Question for creationists: Who on the ark had all the STDs? -Angie Jackson
If Bush was a war criminal that deserved impeachment (or imprisonment), then so is Obama. If Obama is not, then neither was Bush. -Cindy Sheehan
It would be really easy to be angry at young black teenage boys, but when you know the truth about drugs, when you know what the CIA is up to, when you know what they're doing in places like Afghanistan and Colombia, when you know gang members who have police officers and judges on their payrolls, when you've met an Air Force pilot who transported drugs for the government, when you see the big picture, you can't be so mad at some kid living on welfare who was long ago written off by our society anyway. You got to realize that these problems have root causes, that the violence is symptomatic of something much uglier and much more insidious and violent. -Tonya Sneed
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate. -Bertrand Russell
Proposal for resolving the "paper defeats rock" controversy: Eliminate paper, rock and scissors altogether, and replace them with the following more realistic hierarchy: intercontinental ballistic missile -– pellet gun -– mouse chewing on power cord. -The Covert Comic
Considered historically, it will become clear that the job of Republican governments is to invent novel, ad hoc expansions of state power, while the job of Democratic governments is to consolidate and systematize them. Far from repudiating supposed Bush-era "excesses," the Obama regime has sought--usually successfully--to entrench and to codify them. -IOZ [article link]
[T]he "freedom to choose your own destiny" has historically been an incredibly rare freedom, limited only to the wealthiest. The rich, for example, have always had, and will always have, full, unfettered access to safe abortion on demand, the middle class much less access, while the poor must resort to coathangers and lye. The struggle over abortion rights, in other words, is class warfare, pitting egalitarians against aristocrats. It is no wonder, therefore, that wealthy fiscal conservatives are such enthusiastic proponents of christianists and their efforts to coerce births - or are, at the very least, willing to find common cause with them. They have the same ultimate objectives: preserve and extend the privilege and wealth of upper class whites while limiting privilege and wealth - and freedom - for the rest of us. -tristero [article link]
Americans in particular, and westerners in general are horrendously overmedicated. In part I suspect this is simply because American lives, for all the material splendor, suck. Working 9-5 + overtime + 2 hour commute, always knowing that if you lose your job you’ll lose everything, eating (too much) manufactured food denatured of proper nutrients while not getting enough exercise puts people under constant stress. Added to that is the strong pressure to act “normal” and to never be seen to be sad or anxious or moody. Act in unexpected and socially unacceptable ways and pretty soon that job you need, no matter how good you are at it, starts becoming insecure.
So people medicate. Heavily. It’s the only way they can get through their lives. Anti-depressants are more addictive than opiates. More addictive that cocaine.
But hey, that’s a good business to be in. For pharma. Get people hooked on your legal drugs, make the cheap natural stuff (pot and opiates and coca leaves rather than cocaine) illegal, and clean up. -Ian Welsh [article link]
Sixty percent of law students come looking for money. Twenty percent figure it beat playing Dungeons & Dragons and masturbating to MrSkin.com in their parents’ basements for the rest of their lives. Fifteen percent picked their heads up from a bong senior year of college and were struck with the epiphany, “Shit… I need a career.” All are deluded, of course, but none as much as the type of woman you’ll find in that last five percent: The Social Worker. She came to law school seeking to change the world. And now she’s facing the cruel realization that if there’s one place this will never happen—somewhere terminally, absolutely constipated on a ceaseless diet of risk aversion, mental masturbation, pettiness, tradition for tradition’s sake and senseless worship of precedent—it’s Law. -PhilaLawyer [article link]
We know that Barack Obama, in his heart of hearts, truly wants Real Change. We can tell this by examining the furrows of his brow as he squints meaningfully into the middle distance, by carefully measuring the sincerity-per-pixel count of his campaign posters, by reflecting on the inspirational Martin Luther King quotes he delicately intones before carpet-bombing an Afghan village. But we also know that despite his best efforts, Barack Obama can't achieve Real Change, confounded as he is by such institutional barriers as Congress and the Pentagon and Barack Obama. We know, for example, that Barack Obama wants nothing less than a sweeping overhaul of America's health care system, but has been hopelessly blocked at every turn by conservative Democrats like Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and Barack Obama. And we know that Barack Obama did everything he could to oppose a trillion-dollar no-strings-attached bailout of a corrupt finance industry, but was helpless to stop it, boosted as it was by notorious corporate whore Barack Obama. And we know that Nobel Laureate Barack Obama is a devout lover of peace, but has been powerless to prevent the American military's rampant bloodletting throughout the Muslim world, as the nation's armed forces remain in the hands of that bloodthirsty warmonger Barack Obama. [...]
And we know that as disappointed as we might be in Barack Obama - in his little failings, in his petty slights, in his odd betrayals, in his unseemly habit of dancing naked through the streets of Oslo smeared with the blood and entrails of Afghan children - we also know that the alternative would be far worse. Why, with a Republican president, we might be at war with Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and possibly Iran, or facing some hideously draconian corporatist scheme to compel poor people to buy private insurance they can't afford, with a government that not only excuses the torture regimes of the past but dramatically expands them while giving itself license to murder anyone it likes anywhere on the planet. With Barack Obama, on the other hand, we have all that plus a man who can sparkle wittily on late night television. Now, I think that has to be worth at least a couple thousand dead Muslims, don't you? -The Medium Lobster [article link]
The American obsession with guns is another thing that just looks weird here. German gun laws are strict. Permits are barred to people with histories of violent behavior or addiction to drugs or alcohol: to get a hunting license requires taking a challenging course on weapons and wildlife and passing a stiff exam (many fail); don’t even think about carrying that licensed gun in public unless it is unloaded and in a locked container. As for the political value of the Second Amendment in defending the Republic, the idea that homeowners could hold off a tyrannical government with their individual weapons is bound to look ridiculous to people who have actually experienced fascism. By the time the government is able to put you in a concentration camp, it has overwhelming force behind it—and much, if not most, of the populace as well. Pro-gun people like to use the example of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, but the thing about that noble act of defiance is that’s all it was: the Nazis smashed the resistance and shipped the survivors off to Treblinka in no time. Because of that history, it’s clearer here that if you want to preserve democracy, you don’t need a lot of do-it-yourselfers clomping about in the woods; you need a strong civil society, including respect for elections that don’t happen to go your way. -Katha Pollitt article link]
[I]t is hard to overstate the authoritarian impulses necessary for someone... to place blind faith in government accusations without needing to see any evidence or have that evidence subjected to adversarial scrutiny. Yet that is exactly the blind faith that dominates so many of our political debates.
Throughout the Bush years, anyone who argued against warrantless surveillance, or torture, or lawless detention and rendition, was met with this response: but this is all being done to Terrorists. What they actually meant was: these are people accused by the Government, with no evidence or trials, of being Terrorists. But the authoritarian mind, by definition, recognizes no distinction between "Our leaders claim X" and "X is true." For them, the former is proof of the latter. Identically, those who now argue against due-process-free presidential assassinations of American citizens and charge-less indefinite detentions are met with a similar response: but these are dangerous people who are trying to kill Americans, when what they actually mean is: Obama officials claim, with no evidence shown and no process given, that these are dangerous people trying to kill Americans. The authoritarian mind refuses to recognize any distinction between those two very different propositions. . . .
... No matter how many times it is shown how unreliable those kinds of untested government accusations are (either due to abuse or error), there is no shortage of people willing to place blind faith in such pronouncements and to vest political leaders with all sorts of unchecked powers to act on them. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Here’s a simple fact about credentials, economics, and economists. The majority of economists, the vast majority, did not see the crash of 07 and 08 until it was occurring.
Economics is not a science. It is not even close to a science. Economists often act as if it is, because it uses math, but the fact is that it is more like sociology than physics, except that most sociologists know that they aren’t practicing anything like physics, and most economists, while they might say they aren’t, act as if they know what they’re talking about when they clearly don’t. . . .
Economics is not a craft. Put in ingredients X and Y, get Z. If you think it is, you will go wrong every time. -Ian Welsh [article link]
The difference between actual Libertarians and Republicans hiding from their tarnished name is quite easy. Actual Libertarians are concerned about the freedom of individuals. Conservatives use Libertarian as a code word meaning "I want to continue to enjoy all the privileges I do now, but I don't want to share them with you and most of all I don't want to pay any taxes." Push come to shove, they're happy to abbreviate that to "Screw freedom. I just don't want to pay taxes." -Devilstower [article link]
The test for speciesism is simple: If the victims were human, would you be speaking and acting as you are? If not, don't speak and act that way when the victims are nonhuman." -Joan Dunayer, Speciesism
Why are so many teen pregnancy ads all scare tactics? Why not show a happy 30-year-old that avoided teen pregnancy as a role model? Why not do ads like showing a woman getting her degree, and saying, "Thanks, condoms!" -Amanda Marcotte (via Twitter)
[re: the Obama administration's claim of power to assassinate American citizens suspected of involvement in terrorism away from any battlefield] What's most striking to me about all of this is that... George Bush's decision merely to eavesdrop on American citizens without oversight, or to detain without due process Americans such as Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, provoked years of vehement, vocal and intense complaints from Democrats and progressives. All of that was disparaged as Bush claiming the powers of a King, a vicious attack on the Constitution, a violation of Our Values, the trampling on the Rule of Law. Yet here you have Barack Obama not merely eavesdropping on or detaining Americans without oversight, but ordering them killed with no oversight and no due process of any kind. And the reaction among leading Democrats and progressives is largely non-existent... Just imagine what the reaction would have been among progressive editorial pages, liberal opinion-makers and Democratic politicians if this story had been about George Bush and Dick Cheney targeting American citizens for due-process-free and oversight-less CIA assassinations.
Republicans are not going to object to any of this. With rare exception, they believe in unlimited executive authority and denial of due process. They see Obama's adoption of the core Bush/Cheney approach as a vindication of what they did for eight years (and also see it, not unreasonably, as proof that progressive complaints about Bush's "shredding of the Constitution" were not genuine but rather opportunistic, cynical and motivated by desire for partisan gain). As a result, even the most Obama-hating right-wing extremists will praise him and cheer for what he's doing. At the same time, the people who spent eight years screaming about things like this (when Bush/Cheney were doing them) are now mostly silent if not finding ways to justify and defend it (we don't need due process because the President said this is an American-Hating Terrorist). [...]
Here again, we see one of the principal and longest-lasting effects of the Obama presidency: to put a pretty, eloquent, progressive face on what (until quite recently) was ostensibly considered by a large segment of the citizenry to be tyrannical right-wing extremism (e.g., indefinite detention, military commissions, "state secrets" used to block judicial review, an endless and always-expanding "War on Terror," immunity for war criminals, rampant corporatism -- and now unchecked presidential assassinations of American citizens), and thus to transform what were once bitter, partisan controversies into harmonious, bipartisan consensus[.] -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
From a civil libertarian point of view, we're in a much worse place than we were during the Bush administration, when Democrats were willing to oppose Bush's expansive claims of executive authority. Now we have only muted criticism from Democratic legislators and hysterical cries from Republicans that Obama isn't going far enough. -Adam Serwer [article link]
[I]n order to hold politicians accountable, you need to be able to threaten their access to power. No amount of protesting, organizing, chanting, sign waving, is going to have any sway over a politician unless you can turn that organizing into a way to threaten their access to that seat of power. Until you can threaten a politician's chances of being reelected, they have no reason to pay any attention to you. -The Punk Patriot [video link]
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. -M.Auerelius
What emerges from the first review is this: the Ten Commandments were derived from situational ethics. They show every symptom of having been man-made and improvised under pressure. They are addressed to a nomadic tribe whose main economy is primitive agriculture and whose wealth is sometimes counted in people as well as animals. They are also addressed to a group that has been promised the land and flocks of other people: the Amalekites and Midianites and others whom God orders them to kill, rape, enslave, or exterminate. And this, too, is important because at every step of their arduous journey the Israelites are reminded to keep to the laws, not because they are right but just because they will lead them to become conquerors (of, as it happens, almost the only part of the Middle East that has no oil). -Christopher Hitchens [article link]
The engines of social reform are dead. Liberal apologists, who long ago should have abandoned the Democratic Party, continue to make pathetic appeals to a tone-deaf corporate state and Barack Obama while the working and middle class are ruthlessly stripped of rights, income and jobs. Liberals self-righteously condemn imperial wars and the looting of the U.S. Treasury by Wall Street but not the Democrats who are responsible. And the longer the liberal class dithers and speaks in the bloodless language of policies and programs, the more hated and irrelevant it becomes. No one has discredited American liberalism more than liberals themselves. And I do not hold out any hope for their reform. We have entered an age in which, as William Butler Yeats wrote, “the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.” -Chris Hedges [article link]
The rebel... stands with the oppressed—the unemployed workers being thrust into impoverishment and misery by the corporate state, the Palestinians in Gaza, the civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, the disappeared who are held in our global black sites, the poor in our inner cities and depressed rural communities, immigrants and those locked away in our prison system. And to stand with them does not mean to collaborate with parties, such as the Democrats, who can mouth the words of justice while carrying out acts of oppression. It means open and direct defiance.
The power structure and its liberal apologists dismiss the rebel as impractical and see the rebel’s outsider stance as counterproductive. They condemn the rebel for expressing anger at injustice. The elites and their apologists call for calm and patience. They use the hypocritical language of spirituality, compromise, generosity and compassion to argue that the only alternative is to accept and work with the systems of power. The rebel, however, is beholden to a moral commitment that makes it impossible to stand with the power elite. The rebel refuses to be bought off with foundation grants, invitations to the White House, television appearances, book contracts, academic appointments or empty rhetoric. The rebel is not concerned with self-promotion or public opinion. The rebel knows that, as Augustine wrote, hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage—anger at the way things are and the courage to see that they do not remain the way they are. The rebel is aware that virtue is not rewarded. The act of rebellion defines itself. -Chris Hedges [article link]
The timidity of the left exposes its cowardice, lack of a moral compass and mounting political impotence. The left stands for nothing. The damage Obama and the Democrats have done is immense. But the damage liberals do the longer they beg Obama and the Democrats for a few scraps is worse. It is time to walk out on the Democrats. It is time to back alternative third-party candidates and grass-roots movements, no matter how marginal such support may be. If we do not take a stand soon we must prepare for the rise of a frightening protofascist movement, one that is already gaining huge ground among the permanently unemployed, a frightened middle class and frustrated low-wage workers. We are, even more than Glenn Beck or tea-party protesters, responsible for the gusts fanning the flames of right-wing revolt because we have failed to articulate a credible alternative.
A shift to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader, along with genuine grass-roots movements, will not be a quick fix. It will require years in the wilderness. We will again be told by the Democrats that the least-worse candidate they select for office is better than the Republican troll trotted out as an alternative. We will be bombarded with slick commercials about hope and change and spoken to in a cloying feel-your-pain language. We will be made afraid. But if we again acquiesce we will be reduced to sad and pathetic footnotes in our accelerating transformation from a democracy to a totalitarian corporate state. Isolation and ridicule—ask Nader or McKinney—is the cost of defying power, speaking truth and building movements. Anger at injustice, as Martin Luther King wrote, is the political expression of love. And it is vital that this anger become our own. Chris Hedges [article link]
Here in the United States, the beginning of the twentieth century, before there was a Soviet Union to spoil it, you see, socialism had a good name. Millions of people in the United States read socialist newspapers. They elected socialist members of Congress and socialist members of state legislatures. You know, there were like fourteen socialist chapters in Oklahoma. Really. I mean, you know, socialism—who stood for socialism? Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, socialism had a good name. It needs to be restored. -Howard Zinn [article link]
Our president is not a bully; in fact, he is the victim of bullying. He is bullied by Republicans on health care. He is bullied by congressional Democrats on everything. He is bullied by his own Cabinet. Dick Cheney pauses in his bullying of Obama only for the occasional heart attack...
His predecessor got a narrowly divided Congress to pass his tax cuts, authorize the Iraq war and give him the Patriot Act, not through logic or eloquence but by bludgeoning, intimidating and threatening holdouts (remember Jim Jeffords or Max Cleland?). Lawmakers weren’t swayed by George W. Bush’s arguments; they feared retribution.
But now, the world’s most powerful man too often plays the 98-pound weakling; he gets sand kicked in his face and responds with moot-court zingers. That’s what Mr. Cool did at the White House health-care summit on Thursday. For seven hours, he racked up debating points as he parried Republican attacks without so much as raising his voice, but the performance didn’t exactly intimidate his foes. -Dana Milbank [article link]
[in reference to Joseph Stack, who intentionally flew a plane into an IRS building in Austin, TX, and whom the media has been reluctant to label a terrorist]
All of this underscores, yet again, that Terrorism is simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity. It has really come to mean: "a Muslim who fights against or even expresses hostility towards the United States, Israel and their allies." That's why all of this confusion and doubt arose yesterday over whether a person who perpetrated a classic act of Terrorism should, in fact, be called a Terrorist: he's not a Muslim and isn't acting on behalf of standard Muslim grievances against the U.S. or Israel, and thus does not fit the "definition." [...]
Contrast the collective hesitance to call Stack a Terrorist with the extremely dubious circumstances under which that term is reflexively applied to Muslims... In sum: a Muslim who attacks military targets, including in war zones or even in their own countries that have been invaded by a foreign army, are Terrorists. A non-Muslim who flies an airplane into a government building in pursuit of a political agenda is not, or at least is not a Real Terrorist with a capital T -- not the kind who should be tortured and thrown in a cage with no charges and assassinated with no due process. Nor are Christians who stand outside abortion clinics and murder doctors and clinic workers. Nor are acts undertaken by us or our favored allies designed to kill large numbers of civilians or which will recklessly cause such deaths as a means of terrorizing the population into desired behavioral change -- the Glorious Shock and Awe campaign and the pummeling of Gaza. Except as a means for demonizing Muslims, the word is used so inconsistently and manipulatively that it is impoverished of any discernible meaning. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
One person's delusion of grandeur may be several other people's Monday morning staff meeting. -The Covert Comic
Every day I wake up, it gives me comfort to realize that there's at least one thing upon which all faiths and creeds around the world can agree: There are serious and obvious flaws in all religions except their own. -Michael Cunningham
The most tragic part of J.D. Salinger's passing is that disaffected curmudgeons now no longer have someone at whom they can point and say, "Well, at least I'm not *that* much of a dick." -Mark D. Sabien
If terrible, corporatist senators don't hate us -- from both parties -- then we're not doing our jobs. -Markos Moulitsas Zúniga
Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard. -Mrs. Mulverhill, Transition by Iain Banks [via PZ Myers]
Let us not forget, there is a reason why human rights groups do not develop or endorse "humane" methods of torturing and executing political prisoners, and why children's rights advocates do not collaborate with the international pornography industry to develop standards and special labeling for films that make "compassionate" use of runaway teens. To do such things is to introduce moral ambiguity into situations where the boundaries between right and wrong must never be allowed to blur. To be the agent of such blurring is to become complicit oneself in the violence and abuse. -James LaVeck [article link]
I came of voting age just a little before 2000, and could never really understand why people would “waste” a vote on someone like Nader. And although I was a supporter of Kucinich in 2004, once he was out, favoring Kerry made sense to me. But I’d never really had a real opportunity to see the modern Democratic Party running things in my adult lifetime.
Now I understand why people vote third-party. When the country is teetering on the brink and can’t get by on non-solutions anymore, and avoiding failed-state status actually depends on starting to fix the problems rather than just pretending it’s trying, and EVEN THEN the Democratic Party can only respond by offering trillions to Wall Street and legally requiring people who can’t afford health insurance to buy it from private, oligopolistic, profit-maximizing companies, all because of industry’s hold on Congress… then there’s nothing else you can do. In such a sick system, all you have left is your integrity as the country goes to hell, and I understand with crystal clarity why people vote third-party. -kall, commenting on this post
You don't change unjust institutions by tidying them up. -Tom Regan
If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you, as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals? -George Bernard Shaw
Recently, I asked in comments what now-Senator, then-candidate Scott Brown’s [R-MA] position on same-sex marriage. Robert replied: "Same as Barack Obama’s. So he’s either a sensible centrist doing what he can, or a hate-filled gay-killing bigot, depending on whether you know he’s a Republican or not. :)" -Barry Deutsch [article link]
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 is 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 could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills 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 C. Davis Coates
In the modern United States, “left” doesn’t have any concrete meaning that I can see, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know what it means – it’s like pornography, people know it when they see it.
In 2004, on the Dean campaign plane, after seeing reporters throw the words “left” and “liberal” with Dean in a way that I didn’t really understand given the governor’s history, I polled the press corps on what its definition of “left” was. I got very few answers. While it was well understood that Howard Dean was “left” (and not just “left” but “too left” to win the White House, according to many reporters) no one could really say which of his policy ideas qualified him for that title.
In the end it was pretty clear to me anyway that “left” was basically a shorthand term for “pointy-headed weenie dissident.” Except for his stance on the war, Dean’s policies were much less traditionally “liberal” than, say, those of John Kerry — but Kerry made up for it by being much more full of shit than Dean.
Kerry was willing to say anything to get elected; he was willing to toe the Democratic Party’s absurdly vacillating non-stance on the war (We like war in general, we’re not wimps, but Bush should have invaded on a Tuesday, not a Thursday!), he nearly killed himself trying to give the press goofy photo-ops of the candidate playing manly sports like football and baseball, and was even willing to pose in a duck-hunting costume carrying a rifle.
Kerry’s willingness to jump through all the usual idiotic hoops set out for him by the political media made him less “left” among those in the press corps than an economic centrist governor from Vermont who was openly critical of the media’s war coverage and did not even have a Nerf ball on his plane. Which is normal and somehow made sense to all of us. If you scratch the surface of “left” you’ll find that it has a lot more to do with attitudes and cultural markers relative to the bourgeois norm than it does to do with political beliefs, ideas about the role of government, taxes, and so on.
It’s much easier to figure out who’s “left” and who isn’t using cultural litmus tests than it is using position papers. What’s the left position on monetary policy? I have no idea. What’s the left’s position on American Idol? Easy: it rolls its eyes. -Matt Taibbi [article link]
"Mary Poppins" teaches us that upper-class children from very wealthy families will somehow, someway find a way to be happy in their lives. -Mitchell Kobriger
I’ve gotten some letters lately from people complaining about this whole concept of “purity,” i.e. critics of Obama (like me) slapping him with some unrealistic “purity test.” According to these letter-writers, such demands are unfair and journalists and politicians who are critical of Obama should recognize that a president sometimes has to make tough political decisions and is often forced to “work with” unsavory characters in order to “get things done.”
First of all, we should get one thing out of the way — it’s not any citizen’s job to give a politician credit for his political calculations. In fact, that should rightly be part of the calculus of any political calculation; a politician should have to weigh the benefits of making, say, an unsavory insider alliance against the negative of public criticism for that move. If a leader doesn’t have to earn the admiration you give him, then a) that admiration doesn’t mean anything, and b) he will surely spend all his political capital on the people who do make him earn it.
Anyone who wonders why the Obama administration seems to be bending over so far backwards to appease conservatives and industry leaders in the health care debate and Wall Street in the financial regulatory reform debate can find their answer there: those groups make Obama pay for their financial/political support with real actions and policy concessions, while Obama’s “base” will continue their feverish support in exchange for mere gestures and marketing hocus-pocus, for news about the new family puppy or an appearance on Jay Leno. -Matt Taibbi [article link]
I think that sometimes the legal profession can venerate judges so much that it feels uncomfortably like idolatry. -Prof. Don Kreis
A liberal is 10 degrees to the left of center in good times, and 10 degrees to the right of center when it affects them personally. -Phil Ochs
The White House is banking on sycophancy - specifically banking on throwing progressives a rhetorical bone here and there and having progressives respond by citing that bone as justification to continue cultishly backing the president no matter what he does, no matter what campaign promises are broken, no matter how much flipping and flopping there is on core issues. People like Rahm Emanuel are 100 relying on progressives to be absolutely pathetically weak - to respond to news like this with more apologism and more "give the president a break!" propaganda. They are expecting the sycophants to simply shout everyone down by screaming, "Look! Look! You see! Even though his administration is doing exactly the opposite of what he is promising, President Obama isn't breaking any [prescription drug] importation promise or Afghanistan exit strategy promise because he put out a throwaway line saying he's not breaking any promise!" -David Sirota [article link]
While some refer to it alcohol or booze, this time of year, it's more accurate to call it "Family Holiday Survival Fluid." -James Knowles
It seems to me that the problem with our side isn't necessarily fighting. It is faith. Not in a religious sense, but in the sense of believing in your ideals even when things look darkest. Too many on our side doubt too quickly. They give up because they start thinking too much about how things could possibly go wrong. We forget too readily that possible is not probable. What I saw as a hopeful sign last year was that many in the Democratic party decided to finally believe that things we believe in can win. That's why Obama's win was so powerful. Not necessarily because he's the first black president, but because of the months that preceded it. All of our history and all of the pundits kept reiterating with such uninformed self-evidence that a black man couldn't win. We decided to believe that he could and it happened, even in spite of all the obstacles thrown in the way. That didn't happen in 2004. We decided to follow Kerry based on calculations that he could win, not because we believed in him. We "brilliantly" calculated that a Vietnam War Vet would be able to take down the Pretender in Chief. But we didn't believe in him. We could have gone with Dean because we believed in his message but were too afraid he wouldn't win. And that's what is destroying us right now. Our leadership could choose to believe in the Public Option or even Single Payer and fight for it all the way, but they keep choosing to follow the path they think is "smarter" and "more achievable," but which is really more cowardly. We need to have more courage of faith. -smcclurk [quoted in this article]
What's good about the Afghanistan escalation is precisely that it's a wakeup call. Before, it was possible to think that Obama believed in what he projected, but was just being smart in marketing himself in the commercial language of the day--or better yet, allowing, even encouraging others to do so for him. It was possible to say, "Well, he'd like to do better, but he's constrained." I didn't buy these arguments at all. The fact that he never seriously considered using his mass base to pressure Snowe and Collins on the Stimulus was all the proof I needed--and more--that he was an insider true believer, not the man he sold himself as. From then on, my only hope had been that reality would give him a wakeup call that he needed to at least partially be who he had pretended to be simply for his own political well-being.
No dice. No dice. No dice.
That was the message he repeatedly sent after that. That was the message he screamed with his Afghanistan escalation speech.
And so now we know. -Paul Rosenberg [article link]
[Re: The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act and the application of the "terrorist" label to nonviolent activists] This should give all Americans pause. People who engage in nonviolent protests and civil disobedience are sitting in jail cells, stigmatized by one of the most politically charged and discrediting labels of our time, while people who wake up every morning and go to jobs in which they torment and kill animals in laboratories continue to enjoy their freedom, paychecks, social lives and families. -Justin Goodman [source]
[Re: Obama's escalation in Afghanistan] The worst part is that Obama is sending them off on the basis of a political calculation, not a military one. With his announcement, it became clear that Obama’s talk of delaying a decision for so long because he wanted to carefully weigh all the military options was bogus. He’s been mostly weighing the political costs and benefits: The situation in Afghanistan is hopeless and we can’t win there in any meaningful sense. But I can’t pull out because I don’t want to look weak and risk having the Republicans paint me as being too liberal. So I’ll send 30,000 troops for the sake of appearances and promise to pull them out in 18 months — which I can always change my mind about later if the political consequences appear too damaging. -Ken Silverstein [article link]
The "Battle in Seattle" [the 1999 protest against the World Trade Organization] touched off a series of protests against corporate globalization and neoliberal ideology which meet with intense levels of political repression, police violence and massive media disinformation--all of which was seemingly quite at odds with the neoliberal mythology that "free trade" was, in fact, an expression of "freedom" that purportedly abhored the sort of paramilitary force displayed and the arbitrary suspension of basic democratic rights, which were, in fact, necessary in order to defend the actually existing nature of neoliberal "freedom." It would be years before Naomi Klein would detail the contradictions involved in her book, The Shock Doctrine, but the stark contradiction of police repression in defense of "free trade" was fully visible in police repression of a series of major demonstrations in Canada and Europe as well as America over a period of almost two years.
The wave of protests touched off in Seattle would not subside until the terrorist attacks of 9/11 provided a pretext for the much more hardline repression of neoconservatism to take over from its neoliberal predecessors. However, the nature of the repressive tactics seen before 9/11 is but one of several lines of evidence that strongly suggests that there is much more in common between neoconservtism and neoliberalism than there is that divides them, despite the purported differences in their ideological justifications. This, in turn, may help to explain why the presidency of Barack Obama has begun to show much more striking signs of continuity with the Bush regime than the promised "change you can believe in" that Obama campaigned on. -Paul Rosenberg [article link]
I could understand and accept a lot more easily this blithe acquiescence to Obama's record if it weren't for the fact that progressives and Democrats spent so many years screaming bloody murder over Bush's use of indefinite detention, military commissions, state secrets, renditions, and extreme secrecy -- policies Obama has largely and/or completely adopted as his own. One can't help but wonder, at least in some cases, how genuine those objections were, as opposed to their just having been effective tools to discredit a Republican president for partisan and political gain. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
At best, [humane treatment laws] make living conditions for animals marginally better than they would be otherwise — right up to the point when we send them to the slaughterhouse. Think about that when you’re picking out your free-range turkey, which has absolutely nothing to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. All it ever had was a short and miserable life, thanks to us intelligent, compassionate humans. -Gary Steiner [article link]
They may concede the stupidity of American policy, and even its savagery, but not the illegitimacy inherent in the entire enterprise. ... One may criticize the intellectual failure of planners, their moral failures, and even the generalized and abstract ‘will to exercise domination’ to which they have regrettably but understandably succumbed. But the principle that the United States may exercise force to guarantee a certain global order that will be ‘open’ to transnational corporations—that is beyond the bounds of polite discourse. -Noam Chomsky [source]
So far, the dominant narrative among liberal and progressives is that President Obama is on their side and accomplishing what he can. Any shortfalls are the fault of Republicans, conservative Democrats, the media, corporate lobbies, or anyone who is not President Obama. This can be seen in the actions of most progressive grassroots organizations, such as MoveOn.org. The basic idea is that progressives are pushing conservative Democrats to fall in line with President Obama's agenda, not that President Obama himself is failing to push hard enough (or actually opposed to progressive ideas). -Chris Bowers [article link]
Law school is like unprotected sex, you're glad that you're in, but you hate that you came. -Ronnie Bowling
Busch beer is the official beer of NASCAR, but I don't think people who drive that fast and recklessly should have an official beer. That would be like Wild Turkey becoming the official whiskey of domestic disturbances. -Anthony Myers
It's usually funny to hum the theme from "Jeopardy!" while people are concentrating to make a difficult quick decision. I guess the other members of my bomb squad just don't have a sense of humor. -Brad Wilkerson
Here's a household tip I discovered by accident: If you simply put crystal meth in your cat's food and spray him with Endust once a day, you'll never need to dust again. -Bob Van Voris
As a child, while other boys were playing with GI Joe action figures, I played with what appeared to be a GI Joe action figure, but in reality was a CIA Case Officer action figure operating under military cover. -The Covert Comic
In order to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, it will be necessary to convert certain people to sopranos. -The Covert Comic
You know what's funny? Stuffing your pockets with Alka Seltzer, then jumping in the pool and screaming, "ARRRGGGGHH!!!!! Somebody filled the pool with acid!!!" You know what's not funny? Lifeguards. No sense of humor, those guys. -Ken Foster
If one needs to reduce my point to a single sentence, one can try this: "if you constantly cheer on one war after the next that results in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings and the extreme suffering of millions more (as Brooks has done -- beyond Iraq and Afghanistan -- and continues to do), then you can't coherently claim that the targets of your wars have a unique disregard for human life; that they -- but not you -- "don’t see others as fully human"; that they -- but not you -- "cause incredible amounts of suffering"; and that they -- but not you -- "come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so." -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
I’m personally of the opinion that our main problem lay with the fact that the Democratic Party as currently constituted is more afraid of losing the financial support of Wall Street and the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry than it is of losing progressive voters. In fact, I think I’ve put that wrong, because it implies that the Democratic Party pushes the agenda of industry insiders out of fear. That is a misread of the situation, I think. I think they prefer those people to their voters. I think they feel more comfortable with them. -Matt Taibbi [article link]
On these financial issues, not just the issue of financial regulation on Wall Street but the larger issue of income distribution and what kind of country we want to be — the Democratic Party no longer has a policy that makes any sense. They do not seem to understand or even recognize that real wages in this country have not grown for most people for decades. Or if they do understand, they refuse to imagine any solutions that are not in some way a compromise with their major campaign contributors. They talk about closing tax loopholes and phony corporate addresses in the Caribbean as solutions to economic problems, policy initiatives as absurd and inconsequential as then-comic Al Franken’s fictional decision (in the novel Why Not Me?) to run on a campaign promise of “ending ATM fees.” -Matt Taibbi [article link]
...we have problems whose solutions involve taking on powerful interests, political challenges that will necessarily involve prolonged and hard-fought conflicts, but what we have in the Democratic Party is an organization dedicated to avoiding such conflicts and resolving issues in the manner of a corporate board, in closed meetings with the chief cardholders where things get hashed out to the satisfaction of everyone present.
The problem from the standpoint of the typical voter is that he is not terribly present in those discussions. When Rahm Emmanuel met with Billy Tauzin and Merck and Pfizer in the Roosevelt Room (how ironic!) of the White House earlier this summer to work out the details of exactly how much of a bite the new health bill was going to take out of the pharmaceutical industry — the answer turned out to be none, and all the insane subsidies of big Pharma are going to remain in the final bill — were you there? Was anyone representing you there?
The Democrats feel safe in leaving you and me out of that room for two big reasons. One, our main electoral alternative is the party that put George W. Bush in office. Two, the last time significant quantities of Democrats decided to buck and send the party a message, they helped get George Bush elected by giving Ralph Nader the deciding votes of what turned out to be the tightest of elections. Or at least that’s the storyline that’s been popular since that incident. The Nader “debacle” forever closed the notion of third-party progressive challenges to mainstream Democrats, at least in the minds of the Democratic Party bigwigs, anyway. -Matt Taibbi [article link]
When I can go into the woods with a Smith and Wesson and shoot back on behalf of the defenseless animals, then we can consider it a sport. -Bruce Zeman Jr.
The belief that the press should keep political leaders from doing things that should not be done often depends on who those political leaders are, or more specifically, which party controls the White House. Currently, in the midst of the Obama administration, two-thirds of Republicans (65%) support the so-called "watchdog role" for the press, compared with 55% of Democrats. But last year, while Bush was still in office, only 44% of Republicans felt it was good that press criticism keeps political leaders honest, and Democrats were much more pro watchdog (71% supported press criticism). This partisan pattern has existed since the question was first asked by Pew Research in 1985. -Pew Research Center [article link]
Monkey-wrench a bulldozer and they call you a vandal, spike a tree and they call you a terrorist. Destroy a forest, a mountain, or a river, and they call you a logger, a miner, an engineer. -Paul Watson
The topic of race in general, and charges of racism in particular, is political dynamite that typically explodes in the hands of the accuser -- just ask [Harvard] Professor Skip Gates, [New York] Gov. David Paterson, or Obama...
Unless someone is wearing a Klan hood while yelling, "Nigger, Go Back to Africa," the charge of racism seems to offend the accused these days more than the actual victims.
This is true, in part, due to the most prevalent view of the problem of race and racism in this country. In the eyes of many, the responsibility of moving beyond racial conflict in America is placed at the feet of minority communities of color, as opposed to the dominant society.
We've all heard it. America will move beyond race to a colorblind society only when minority groups cease dwelling on difference. Such a view permeates the melting pot ideal of American folklore, the myth of meritocracy and even the "post-racial" dimension of electoral politics. -Jonathan L. Walton [article link]
The current Israeli government is even more resistant to proposals for a viable two state solution than its recalcitrant predecessors. It may bend but not break unless Obama threatens a rupture of Washington's all purpose commitment to the Jewish state. There is nothing in his performance to date that suggests he has either the necessary conviction or courage to do that. On issue after issue, he has shown a strong reluctance to challenge established thinking and to confront powerful interests. Just the opposite. Retreat from positions boldly declared has become the hallmark of his administration. At times, the retreat follows brief skirmishes. At other times, it is preemptive -- prompted by skirmishes in the president's own mind. This is the singular Obama style evident on major domestic issues. The process begins with a firm statement of the problem, a clarion call for action, and a pledge to force change. Then, there is the period of eerie calm -- no plan is unveiled, no strategy executed beyond entreaties that the protagonists act in the reasonable manner the president has outlined. Obama makes brief public appearances punctuated by further proclamations of the imperative to act, still without any specifics or sustained effort. Whatever comes out of this muddle is declared historic and promising. In this case, so blunt and public was Netanyahu's rejection of the American proposal to do something on the key settlement issue that such a declaration is impossible. In the same vein, though, Obama rushed to say that the settlement matter is not so important after all, just a piece of a complex problem. Just as the "public option" was redefined as "just a sliver" of the overall package.
There is no virtue in this approach. It is classic avoidance behavior. Vintage Obama, as we have come to recognize it. He is a man of personal audacity, but little courage; one of that rare breed who say everything with strong conviction, but whose conviction is only genuine at the moment he speaks. -Michael Brenner [article link]
...as far as the big-time Democrats go, if a leader's words and actions seem stupid to you, it's probably because their goals are different than yours and they're just stringing you along. ...
The party leaders have their own goals, with maintaining control of the party at the head of the list, and they don't need to win every election. They don't necessarily want a bunch of unruly new Congressmen, especially not if they threaten to mess up the leadership's corporate strategy. They don't necessarily want new blocks of enthusiastic voters, who might make demands inconveniencing their big donors.
By and large, the Democratic leadership is perfectly happy to use gerrymanding and local deals to cede 40%-45% of the country to the Republicans. This makes the future more predictable and makes the leadership's job easier, and as the safe Congressmen settle into their assigned roles, it makes the party more controllable. The party pros absolutely hated the fifty-state strategy, and Howard Dean was immediately banished when Obama took over. -John Emerson [article link]
If you're not a centrist machine Democrat, never give money to any national or state Democratic organization. I really think that this should be an absolute principle. If at some point we're in a position where the Dems need us and come asking, then we can deal. But not while they're treating us with contempt. -John Emerson [article link]
If those who blamed me knew how many destroyed houses I walked over with those shoes that I threw, and how many times those shoes mixed with the blood of the innocent, and how many times those shoes went into homes where the honor of those who lived there was disgraced, then it was probably the proper response. -Muntazer al-Zaidi, Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George W. Bush during a press conference [article link]
Oliver has the best roundup of this weekend's 9/12 rally in Washington DC, which had almost nothing to do with the September 11 attacks and almost everything to do with several thousand people really being angry that the president's black. At some point, this is going to escalate to a degree where TV news reporters actually have no choice but to point out how these rallies seem to be large collectives of angry white people complaining that there might be a chance someone other than them is getting a break. That might be fun. I dunno. -August J. Pollak [article link] (emphasis added)
[O]ur political mores demand vehement repudiation of petty acts of incivility (not all, but most) while tolerating and even approving of extremely consequential acts of indecency as long as they're advocated with superficial civility. Those who use curse words to oppose torture, wars and lawbreaking are evil and unSerious (The Angry Left); those who politely and soberly advocate morally repugnant, indecent policies are respected and Serious. As long as one adheres to Beltway decorum, one can advocate the most amoral and even murderous policies without any repercussions whatsoever; it is only disruptive and impolite behavior that generates intense upset. Beltway culture hates "incivility" (public use of bad words) but embraces full-scale substantive indecency (torture, lawbreaking, unjustified wars, ownership of government by corporations, etc.). -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
Excessive secrecy is one of the prime afflictions of Beltway culture -- among both politicians and, especially, journalists. Secrecy is supposed to be anathema to journalism. The whole point of journalism is to uncover secrets, not to find new ways to preserve it. But secrecy is the prime currency in Washington. Your importance is determined by what you are allowed to know -- what you're allowed to access -- that the masses are blocked from knowing. That was the most amazing part of the Plame scandal: all of the Important People in Washington -- including journalists -- knew what happened, knew who the leakers were. But none of them told, including the journalists. It was their little Village secret. And they loved having their private scandal that only they knew about but not the "public." Whether someone had access to those secrets determined whether they mattered, and so the last thing they wanted was to have that secret exposed and have the masses know about it, because that would destroy their specialness. And that dynamic repeats itself over and over, where the most powerful people in Washington get together with the most influential journalists and constantly agree to keep everything secret, away from the masses, reserved only for those who matter. That's how Washington stays opaque and how it is able so easily to mislead. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Sometimes it's a bit hard to remember just how nutty the world was in those post-9/11 days. Suggesting that Bush was using the terror alert for political purposes would have made you a crazy person, the mere suggestion of it would've put you outside the bounds of acceptable discourse. -Atrios [article link]
There's little question that when people look back at this period in American history, it will be difficult to comprehend what happened in the Bush era -- and especially how we blithely started a devastating war over complete fiction, while simultaneously instituting a criminal torture regime and breaking whatever laws we wanted. But far more remarkable still will be the fact that, other than a handful of low-level sacrificial lambs, those responsible -- both in politics and the establishment media -- not only suffered no consequences, but continued to wield exactly the same power, with exactly the same level of pompous self-regard, as they did before all of that happened. Looking back several decades or more from now, who will possibly be able to understand how that happened: the almost perfect inverse relationship between one's culpability and the price they paid for what they unleashed? -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
As the 2006 election and these subsequent events conclusively demonstrate, mindlessly supporting and electing more Democrats for its own sake doesn't solve or even mitigate anything. Grounded in the premise that the Democrats are going to control both houses of Congress for the foreseeable future -- a premise virtually nobody disputes -- the primary objective has to be to alter the behavior of those who control the Congress.
Increasing the Democrats' margin of control doesn't achieve that goal. It does the opposite. Conveying to Democrats that you will support all of them no matter what they do, no matter how egregiously they trample on your values, only ensures that they will ignore your political priorities and values even more. Working to expand the margin of control Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emanuel and Harry Reid already enjoy -- further entrenching them in power -- only ensures that they will be less responsive and accountable. Only by attaching a serious price to their enabling of these extremist, destructive policies will their behavior change. If they are rewarded with greater control and greater comfort for doing what they've been doing, then it's just guaranteed that they'll continue to do the same thing. Only if they suffer losses and have their power threatened from this behavior will the behavior change. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
If health care reform can't pass now, then a filibuster-proof Democratic majority isn't worth having. At that point you have to consider blowing up the party and waiting a decade or two to rebuild a new one that's able to address the country's actual needs. [or, I would argue, you could support such a party that already exists -ed.] -Jonathan Chait, The New Republic [source]
If the Democrats run for cover, if we become pale carbon copies of the opposition, we will lose--and deserve to lose. The last thing this country needs is two Republican parties. -Ted Kennedy, 1994 [article link]
[in reference to the claim from Democrats that they need to compromise health care reform in order to attract bipartisan GOP support] From the start, it's been obvious to everyone -- the Obama White House and Senate Democrats included -- that the GOP would not help Obama pass health care reform. Why would the GOP want to help Obama achieve one of his most important and politically profitable goals? Of course they were going to try to sabotage the entire project and would oppose health care reform no matter what form it took...
The attempt to attract GOP support was the pretext which Democrats used to compromise continuously and water down the bill. But -- given the impossibility of achieving that goal -- isn't it fairly obvious that a desire for GOP support wasn't really the reason the Democrats were constantly watering down their own bill? Given the White House's central role in negotiating a secret deal with the pharmaceutical industry, its betrayal of Obama's clear promise to conduct negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN no less), Rahm's protection of Blue Dogs and accompanying attacks on progressives, and the complete lack of any pressure exerted on allegedly obstructionists "centrists," it seems rather clear that the bill has been watered down, and the "public option" jettisoned, because that's the bill they want -- this was the plan all along.
The Obama White House isn't sitting impotently by while Democratic Senators shove a bad bill down its throat. This is the bill because this is the bill which Democratic leaders are happy to have. It's the bill they believe in. As important, by giving the insurance and pharmaceutical industries most everything they want, it ensures that the GOP doesn't become the repository for the largesse of those industries (and, converesly, that the Democratic Party retains that status).
This is how things always work. The industry interests which own and control our government always get their way. When is the last time they didn't? The "public option" was something that was designed to excite and placate progressives (who gave up from the start on a single-payer approach) -- and the vast, vast majority of progressives (all but the most loyal Obama supporters) who are invested in this issue have been emphatic about how central a public option is to their support for health care reform. But it seems clear that the White House and key Democrats were always planning on negotiating it away in exchange for industry support. Isn't that how it always works in Washington? No matter how many Democrats are elected, no matter which party controls the levers of government, the same set of narrow monied interests and right-wing values dictate outcomes, even if it means running roughshod over the interests of ordinary citizens (securing lower costs and expanding coverage) and/or what large majorities want. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
If one were to analyze matters from a purely utilitarian perspective, one could find ways to justify the White House's attempt to write a health care plan that accommodates the desires of the pharmaceutical and drug industries [mandates (i.e., 50 million forced new customers) plus government subsidies to pay their premiums plus no meaningful cost controls (i.e., no public option)]. All other things being equal, it's better -- from the White House's political perspective -- that those industries not spend vast sums of money trying to defeat Obama's health care proposal, that they not pour their resources into the GOP's 2010 midterm effort, that they not unleash their fully army of lobbyists and strategists to sabotage the Democratic Party. That's the same calculating mindset that leads the White House to loyally serve the interests of the banking industry that caused the financial crisis (we don't want to make enemies out of of Goldman Sachs or turn investment bankers into GOP funders). Indeed, that's the same mindset that leads the White House to avoid any fights with the Right -- and/or with the intelligence community and permanent military establishment -- over Terrorism policies (there's no political benefit to subjecting ourselves to accusations of being Soft on Terror and there's plenty of reasons to cling to those executive powers of secrecy, detention and war-making).
In essence, this is the mindset of Rahm Emanuel, and its precepts are as toxic as they are familiar: The only calculation that matters is maximizing political power. The only "change" that's meaningful is converting more Republican seats into Democratic ones. A legislative "win" is determined by whether Democrats can claim victory, not by whether anything constructive was achieved. The smart approach is to serve and thus curry favor with the most powerful corporate factions, not change the rules to make them less powerful. The primary tactic of Democrats should be to be more indispensable to corporate interests so as to deny the GOP that money and instead direct it to Democrats. The overriding strategy is to scorn progressives while keeping them in their place and then expand the party by making it more conservative and more reliant on Blue Dogs. Democrats should replicate Republican policies on Terrorism and national security -- not abandon them -- in order to remove that issue as a political weapon.
If those Emanuelian premises are the ones that you accept, if you believe that Obama should be guided by base concerns of political power, then you're likely to be satisfied with the White House's approach thus far -- both in general and on health care specifically. That would also likely mean that you're basically satisfied with the behavior of Democrats during the Bush era, and especially since 2006 when they won a majority in Congress, since that is what has driven them for the last decade: all that matters is that we beat the Republicans and we should do anything to achieve that, including serving corporate donors to ensure they fund Us and not Them and turning ourselves into war-making, civil-liberties-abridging, secrecy-loving GOP clones in the national security realm. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Celebrating the second amendment by carrying a loaded gun is like celebrating the first amendment by screaming profanities at children. -Greg Saunders
What defines Michelle Malkin's extremism is not her position on the issues--it's her take no prisoners attitude toward political discourse as war, and her total disregard for the truth, except for when it can get her into trouble. This is what she shares in common with an entire legion of similar figures on the right. It's not a question of whether Michael Moore or some other figure on the left is equally far from the center. Such figures simply do not lie pervasively and consistently the way figures like Malkin do.
There are many reasons for this, so I'll just mention one I haven't focused on for a while: lies are simple, truth is complicated. If you want to get your point across quickly, and vividly, so that people remember it, then just make it up.
Think about it. How much time does it take to tell someone that Obama's health care reform will kill grandma? Versus how much time does it take to refute that lie?
So long as there are no consequences for lying, then lying will be favored all the time, simply because of this strategic advantage, if for no other reasons...
Now, of course, Malkin does much, much more than simply lie. She demonizes, advocates for mass incarceration of political undesirables, and incites followers towards violence. But simply examining media figures for their propensities to lie is a very good first cut baseline to start judging them on. Truth be told, it's very, very hard to do the rest of the nasty stuff that Malkin does if you're not a habitual liar first. -Paul Rosenberg [article link]
No one can earn a million dollars honestly. -William Jennings Bryan
There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work. -Irving Kristol, godfather of neoconservatism
For [political philosopher and major influence on neoconservatism Leo] Strauss, as for Plato, the virtue of the lie depends on who is doing the lying. If a poor woman lies on her application for welfare benefits, the lie cannot be countenanced. The woman has committed fraud and must be punished. The woman is not noble, therefore the lie cannot be noble. When the leader of the free world says that "free nations do not have weapons of mass destruction," this is but a noble lie, a fable told by the aristocratic president of a country with enough nuclear weapons to leave the earth a desert less welcoming than the surface of the moon. -Earl Shorris [article link]
As journalists have become more affluent -- a trend to which I don't necessarily object -- they are more likely to hobnob with the big shots, send their kids to the same private schools, and hang out at the same parties. This undoubtedly affects their view of the world and the people they cover. -Howard Kurtz [source]
Law school taught me one thing: how to take two situations that are exactly the same and show how they are different. -Hart Pomerantz
The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.
"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?"
But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests. -Matt Taibbi [article link]
[explaining why, in his book Your Relgion Is False, he includes Pastafarianism, a parody of religion] Part of me suspects that Pastafarianism is not a serious religion but was designed primarily to mock some of the more prominent religions. On the other hand, this suspicion is rooted primarily in the ridiculousness of the notion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Using this sort of ridiculousness as a criterion I could just as easily mount the same suspicion against any of the other religions in this book. As I have first-hand experience that those other ridiculous religions are practiced in earnest, I am forced to assume that the same is true of Pastafarianism, and I am forced to point out that Pastafarianism is (like every other kind of food-worship) false. -Joel Grus [source]
If we've learned one thing in this decade, it's how dangerous it is to allow elites to make decisions based solely on conversations they have with themselves. -Christopher Hayes [article link]
I also understand the term used often by our hero Ted Kennedy, that "the perfect is the enemy of the good". However, in this case, I'd like to turn that spin around and say that, in the instance of the public option, half-assed and inadequate is the enemy of the necessary and the acceptable. -Steve Steffens [article link]
Well, I think the argument you're making is politics is the art of the possible. But I actually disagree with that. I actually think politics is the art of creating the possible, and what's possible is what people believe is possible. -Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler [article link]
[Atheists] We do not insist a priori that gods cannot exist, we instead turn to all those people who insist that they do, and ask, "how do you know that?"
Would you believe that for all the fervor of their certainty, none of them have ever adequately answered the question? -PZ Myers [article link]
The most consistent finding in polls is that a majority of Americans have not thought very hard about public policy questions. -Ezra Klein
[in reference to this story on a (non-Jewish) journalist attacked by a mob of ultra-Orthodox Jews for violating the Sabbath by turning on her tape recorder]
This is something too many religious people fail to understand — you can practice your religion, other people can practice their religion, but you don't get to tell other people that they must practice your religion. If your crazy superstition says you aren't allowed to push a button on a certain day of the week, then don't. If your old myths claim that your god turns into a cracker when the right ritual is carried out, go ahead and believe that. If your dogma dictates that you should visit a certain magic rock before you die, then go ahead, make your pilgrimage.
But excuse us, everyone who doesn't have these wacky ideas has a perfect right to push the button, disrespect your cracker, or stay home and skip the crowds…and we also have the right to point and laugh at you. And if you are so intolerant, so irrational, and so vicious as to try and impose your foolishness on others, especially in such disgusting ways, then we have an obligation to use civic law and the power of the state to protect those others' liberties. -PZ Myers [article link]
We often get this vague claim that religion [as opposed to science] is a different methodology and a different way of knowing things, and that judging religion as a science is a category error. Very well: different way of knowing what? What are these different questions that they are asking, how do they propose answering them, and why should we think these questions are even worth asking, and that their answers are valid? They never seem to get around to the specifics.
I mean, religion might well be the only avenue for addressing the question of how many bicycles are being peddled by angels right now, but that's because it's an irrelevant question that doesn't affect our lives or the universe in any way, doesn't have any way of being answered, and is built around imaginary referents, "angels", for which we don't even have evidence of their existence. But if religion is a way of knowing, how do they know what the answer is? What is their methodology? How do they verify their answers? Why is it that every religion, and even every individual within a religion, comes up with different answers?
That's an example of a trivial question, but the same problems apply to the big questions central to their beliefs. How do we even know that we need redemption from sin? Is sin even a valid concept? They can't answer these questions in an independently verifiable way.
Even when they try to get specific, they are hopelessly vague. -PZ Myers [article link]
In his Sunday sermon, the pastor at my church urged us all to be more God-like. So today I dynamited a hydro dam and flooded an entire valley. -Ian Dauphinee
[from The Daily Show, 8/23/04 (source)] Jon Stewart: Here's what puzzles me most, Rob. John Kerry's record in Vietnam is pretty much right there in the official records of the U.S. military, and hasn't been disputed for 35 years. Rob Corddry: That's right, Jon, and that's certainly the spin you'll be hearing coming from the Kerry campaign over the next few days. Stewart: That's not a spin thing, that's a fact. That's established. Corddry: Exactly, Jon, and that established, incontrovertible fact is one side of the story. Stewart: But isn't that the end of the story? I mean, you've seen the records, haven't you? What's your opinion? Corddry: I'm sorry, "my opinion"? I don't have opinions. I'm a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called "objectivity"—might want to look it up some day. Stewart: Doesn't objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence, and calling out what's credible and what isn't? Corddry: Whoa-ho! Sounds like someone wants the media to act as a filter! Listen, buddy: Not my job to stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me.
But remember: don't ever call [mainstream journalists] "stenographers." That's insulting and offensive. Rather, what they do is called "reporting," by which they mean: "We call people in power and write down what they say really accurately and then we faithfully repeat what 'each side says' without commenting on it or judging it (except where it's our Government's claims against some foreign country, in which case we state our Government's claims as fact)." -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent. -Napoleon Bonaparte
I’m aware that some people feel that it’s a journalist’s responsibility to “give both sides of the story” and be “even-handed” and “objective.” A person who believes that will naturally find serious flaws with any article like the one I wrote about Goldman. I personally don’t subscribe to that point of view. My feeling is that companies like Goldman Sachs have a virtual monopoly on mainstream-news public relations; for every one reporter like me, or like far more knowledgeable critics like Tyler Durden, there are a thousand hacks out there willing to pimp Goldman’s viewpoint on things in the front pages and ledes of the major news organizations. And there are probably another thousand poor working stiffs who are nudged into pushing the Goldman party line by their editors and superiors (how many political reporters with no experience reporting on financial issues have swallowed whole the news cliche about Goldman being the “smart guys” on Wall Street? A lot, for sure).
Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows. They have the ear of the president if they want it. Given all of this, I personally think it’s absurd to talk about the need for “balance” in every single magazine and news article. I understand that some people feel differently, but that’s my take on things. -Matt Taibbi [article link]
For all the chatter about "judicial activism" and that dreadful Roberts metaphor of "a neutral umpire calling balls and strikes," it is so striking how frequently conservative judges invalidate policies which conservatives dislike as a political matter. Here we have the conservative wing of the Court declaring illegal the employment decisions of local government officials, who used a political approach -- diversity -- which conservatives dislike on policy grounds. So often, the outcomes of the allegedly neutral conservative judges are completely consistent with (and aggressively advance) the political preferences of conservatives (Bush v. Gore being only the most obvious example). Indeed, few things are rarer than conservatives Justices invalidating policies that conservatives like politically, or upholding policies they despise -- the true test for whether one applies the law independently of political and outcome preferences. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
I often wondered whether we were doing a bit of a disservice to Bush and Cheney for constantly criticizing them for implementing the unitary executive theory so openly. For such a secretive regime, they were surprisingly honest about what they were doing. They said they believed the constitution meant for the president to be all powerful and above the other two branches and they acted on that premise. And the debate over that, once engaged, was pretty robust and very public.
This was in contrast to previous presidencies which pretended, as Obama is doing now, that they believed in the balance of power between the the branches even as they subverted it as often as they deemed necessary. It's not a partisan thing. Presidents of both parties have done this. Bush and Cheney were actually quite unique in their rare "principled" approach to the American security state dictatorship...
The irony, of course, is that the man who ran on transparency is actually turning out to be less transparent than the president he excoriated on the campaign trail for his secrecy. Bush and Cheney were pretty upfront about the fact that they believed they had the constitutional right to act in any way they saw fit, regardless of the accepted understanding of the constitution or congressional and judicial prerogatives. Bush declared "I'm the decider" and he meant it. This administration obviously believes it has that right as well --- it just pretends otherwise.
I suspect they understand that keeping the folks from losing that freedom loving, patriotic illusion of American exceptionalism is an important part of exercising American political power. And they're probably right. Bush and Cheney's biggest mistakes were in being honest about something nobody wants to know. -Digby [article link]
These blatantly contradictory statements aren't considered contradictions because of the core premises of our political culture: We don't really consider torture and mass pointless slaughter -- when we do it -- to be all that bad. Those who advocated, defended and ordered it are still highly respectable -- "honorable." Those who were so humiliatingly wrong that it cannot be adequately expressed in words still prance around, and are still treated as, wise experts, while those were right are naive and unSerious. The U.S stands for freedom, democracy and human rights -- even when we don't. People who advocate unprovoked wars of aggression, torture and mass violence are irredeemable monsters -- except when they're American or our allies. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
[Obama] seems to be working for the corporatists that got fed up with Bush's bible thumping. -RC, commenter on this article
[on Obama's Iraq withdrawal plan] ...by August of next year we'll withdraw every single one of our troops, leaving behind only memories and 50,000 troops. -Stephen Colbert
We don't have a left and a right party in this country anymore, we have a center-right party and a crazy party. And over the last thirty odd years, Democrats have moved to the right, and the Right has moved into a mental hospital.
What we have is one perfectly good party for hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture, and the pharmaceutical lobby, that's the Democrats. And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-earthers and Civil War reenactors who mostly communicate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans, and who actually worry that Obama is a socialist. Socialist? He's not even a liberal. -Bill Maher [video link]
It’s difficult not to feel despair at the increasing banality of journalism in the US. A couple of days ago, I had the privilege of spending the evening with Lord Carlile of Berriew, who has served as the UK’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation since 9/11. He has no binding authority, but he insisted that his power to "name and shame" gives him a great deal of actual influence over the content of antiterrorism legislation. And indeed, it seems clear that many of the UK’s imperfect antiterrorism laws would have been far less perfect but for his efforts.
I found Lord Carlile’s discussion of his "soft power" fascinating, so I asked him why he thinks the power to name-and-shame has almost no effect in the United States, where those who are named as the intellectual authors of repressive legislation feel no shame and suffer no consequences for their actions. He gave a very simple answer: journalists. I won't repeat some of the words that he used to describe just how pathetic he considers US political journalism, but it’s clear that he believes it has completely abdicated its duty to... call bullshit on the government. -Kevin Jon Heller [article link]
Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do.
What is it about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert that makes them so refreshing and attractive to a wide variety of viewers (including those so-important younger ones)? I would argue that, more than anything else, it is that they enthusiastically call bullshit.
Calling bullshit, of course, used to be central to journalism as well as to comedy. And we happen to be in a period in our history in which the substance in question is running particularly deep... Calling bullshit has never been more vital to our democracy. It also resonates with readers and viewers a lot more than passionless stenography...
I’m not sure why calling bullshit has gone out of vogue in so many newsrooms — why, in fact, it’s so often consciously avoided. There are lots of possible reasons. There’s the increased corporate stultification of our industry, to the point where rocking the boat is seen as threatening rather than invigorating. There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s bullshit-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum.
If mainstream-media political journalists don’t start calling bullshit more often, then we do risk losing our primacy — if not to the comedians then to the bloggers. -Dan Froomkin [article link]
...many people in the news media, especially at the managerial level, decided a long time ago that movement conservatism was The Future — and that the sensible thing, whether or not you yourself were a conservative, was to go with the wave...
And anyone who didn’t treat the right with great respect, who didn’t get with the program, was a flake, a moonbat...
Now, you might think that the way things turned out — the total failure of movement conservatism in government, and the abrupt, humiliating end to the Permanent Republican Majority — would lead to some soul-searching. But that’s not how human nature works. Instead, it became more urgent than ever to assert that those who didn’t get with the program were flakes and moonbats, not worthy of being listened to, while those who believed in the right to the bitter end were “serious”.
Thus we still live in an era in which you have to have been wrong to be respectable. You’re not considered serious about national security unless you were for invading Iraq; you’re not considered a serious political analyst unless you spent the last 3 years of the Bush administration predicting a Republican comeback; you’re not considered a serious economic analyst unless you dismissed the idea that the Bush Boom, such as it was, rested on a housing bubble. -Paul Krugman [article link]
What people, I think, misunderstand about Barack Obama is that this is a man who is a brilliant supporter of empire--who has figured out a way to essentially trick a lot of people into believing they're supporting radical change, when in effect what they're doing is supporting a radical expansion of the U.S. empire.
I think that it's a bit disingenuous for people to act as if though they were somehow hoodwinked by Barack Obama about this.
If people were playing close attention during the election--not just to the rhetoric of his canned speech that he gave repeatedly, and the commercials, and the perception of his supporters was that he somehow was this transformative figure in U.S. politics, but also to the documents being produced by the Obama campaign and the specific policies he outlined--you realized that Barack Obama was very much a part of the bipartisan war machine that has governed this country for many, many decades.
What we see with Obama's policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and the broader Arab and Muslim world, as well as his global economic policies, are a continuation of the most devastating and violent policies of the Bush administration--while placing a face on it that makes it easier to expand the iron fist of U.S. militarism and the hidden hand of the free market in a way that Republicans, I think, would have been unable to do at this point in history. ...
I think that Obama is showing himself to be a master of misdirection--almost like a magician. He'll say a few things in his speech that sound like they're new, like a totally different U.S. approach, but then he'll also at the same time roll out a policy that is further than even Bush took things. ...
So while the Cairo speech was interpreted by some people as sending a new message to the Middle East and the Arab world, the reality is that there was nothing in that speech indicating any shift whatsoever for the better in U.S. policy. It's just that we now have a president who can pronounce Arabic words and speak in complete sentences and carry a speech for about an hour, something which Bush was unable to do. -Jeremy Scahill [article link]
Politics is a life and death game that is mostly played by people who care more about the game than the life and death. -Jon Henke
When I was a kid and our dog got to be too hard to handle, we drove him out to the country and let him out of the car. I was very sad when we got home, so my mom cheered me up by telling me some farmer would surely give the dog a good home. I went back out to that area just last week, and once again felt that overwhelming sadness -- but I keep telling myself that my mom has probably fared as well as the dog did. -Shawn Stephens
...I think the one healthcare reform that would make a difference is to cancel govt health insurance for all senators, representatives, cabinet members, etc.
It's been proposed many times, but I do think it's long past time. Have the very senators and representatives who are against public health insurance spend the next few years trying to get healthcare on their own like the rest of us -- waiting months to see doctors, having to comb through lists of doctors too see which specialists you are "allowed" to see, spending countless hours on the phone with insurance companies fighting over individual bills -- I absolutely believe you'll have them socializing all of healthcare, no matter how much the goddamn lobbyists spend to woo them. For most of us in the ranks of the self-employed or -- heaven forfend -- the wrong age bracket, it's that infuriating. -Hunter [article link]
Our ability to render invisible the people we kill when cheering on our wars is one of the primary mechanisms which make it so easy to embrace that option. Glenn Greenwald [article link]
I’m really sick of people in the US talking about the “twitter revolution” in Iran. I especially hate when it’s US liberals who would NEVER get off their asses and away from their computers to protest anything in their own country. They’d never face down tear gas or baton-wielding thugs at home. Some of these liberals (you know who you are) were poo-pooing activists protesting at the Republican and Democratic Conventions and scorn activism in general. This whole commentary about the “twitter revolution” when it comes from these lizards is narcissistic crap. -Jeremy Scahill [article link]
You will notice that in all disputes between Christians since the birth of the Church, Rome has always favored the doctrine which most completely subjugated the human mind and annihilated reason. -Voltaire
A critique of liberal identity politics is not wrong on its face, but it almost always is unconcerned with the identity politics of power. Thus Sotomayor's focus on her identity as a "wise Latina" pose is seen as the disturbing result of multiculturalism run amok, not having been raised in a country where the tangible mechanisms of white supremacy were in full effect.
It isn't, for instance, the fact that Sotomayor was raised in an era where government-backed redlining was still legal, it's the fact that some students at Yale demanded a Chicano history course that's the issue. Likewise, it isn't the oppressive identity politics practiced by conservatives for the past 30 years that's disturbing, but Sotomayor's response to it. To be a true conservative is to be more disturbed by victimology, than actual victimizing. It is to claim to abhor evil--but to abhor the response to evil even more. -Ta-Nehisi Coates [article link]
It's funny how our tastes change as we grow up. I hated tomatoes as a kid but can't get enough of them now. And the same goes for spankings! -Stephanie S. Thompson
The IHOP waitress called it horseplay, but I doubt a pony ever came up with an idea as cool as my blindfolded waffle and syrup battle. -John Gephart IV
It's time, too, to stop the pretense that the "debate" over abortion consists of two equally extreme positions, and that wisdom resides in the mushy middle, where everybody disapproves of abortion except when they want one for themselves or someone they care about. There's only one set of extremists here, the one that uses language like "babykiller," " Nazi," "murderer," and "death mill," kidnaps and murders providers and clinic workers,burns and bombs clinics and drives cars into them, posts pictures of clinic workers and their families on the internet, and harrasses patients on their way to get care...
People mock the word "choice" --it's consumerist, euphemistic, wimpy, calculated. But one thing you can say for it: It honors the individual conscience. If a desperately ill pregnant woman wants to risk her life to give birth, if she wants to carry an anencephalic fetus to term so it can die in her arms, or have her rapist's baby, or become a mother at 14, or produce octuplets, pro-choicers are not going to compel her to abort. Pro-choicers don't go around lecturing girls and women that they will blame themselves forever if they have a baby they may not be equipped to raise well. They don't paint gory pictures of the horrors and dangers of childbirth to scare pregnant girls and women into ending their pregnancies with a quick and safe termination. They don't tell women Jesus is going to send them to Hell if they sacrifice their futures to the whims of a wayward sperm -- although they might mention from time to time that the Bible nowhere mentions abortion. Pro-choicers don't blow up churches or assassinate the leaders of Operation Rescue.
Only one side wants to force women to live by its so-called morality, and only one side murders and bombs to make its point. Only one side has a terrorist wing. -Katha Pollitt [article link]
But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. -Umberto Eco
The steadfast, ongoing refusal of our leading media institutions to refer to what the Bush administration did as "torture" -- even in the face of more than 100 detainee deaths; the use of that term by a leading Bush official to describe what was done at Guantanamo; and the fact that media outlets frequently use the word "torture" to describe the exact same methods when used by other countries -- reveals much about how the modern journalist thinks. These are their governing principles:
There are two sides and only two sides to every "debate" -- the Beltway Democratic establishment and the Beltway Republican establishment. If those two sides agree on X, then X is deemed true, no matter how false it actually is. If one side disputes X, then X cannot be asserted as fact, no matter how indisputably true it is. The mere fact that another country's behavior is described as X doesn't mean that this is how identical behavior by the U.S. should be described. They do everything except investigate and state what is true. In their view, that -- stating what is and is not true -- is not their role.
The whole world knows that the U.S. tortured detainees in the "War on Terror." Yet American newspapers refuse to say so. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Keeping preventive detention and extrajudicial punishment illegal puts a brake on their use: it forces the government that would use these tactics to enter a legal gray area, to risk scandal and exposure, and to take all the responsibility for crossing the line. When a thing is illegal and has to be hidden from the general public, one assumes that governments will try to exhaust every conceivable alternative before resorting to its use, or better yet will avoid using it at all. But making it legal not only transforms preventive detention into a part of all of us, a conscious expression of who we are, it suddenly makes it an easy option for governments to choose.
If they don't have to hide it, and just throwing velvet bags over suspects' heads and carting them to Gitmo (or whatever replaces Gitmo) remains easier than crafting a case and building evidence and making a real arrest, the government will use the former technique more and more, until eventually it becomes routine. And next thing you know it'll become a basic fact of our society, this idea that our government snatches people off the streets and dumps them in faraway jails without trials. -Matt Taibbi [article link]
I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night. -Tony Campolo, evangelical pastor [source]
God must hate common people, because he made them so common. -Philip Wylie
Conservatives complain of a liberal bias in the news. They call this a leftist conspiracy, when in reality there aren't many right-wing reporters for the same reason there aren't many left-wing owners of military surplus stores. -David Wong [article link]
It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. -Henry Ford
In some black communities [coming out as an atheist is] akin to donning a white sheet and a Confederate flag. In others, it’s ostensibly tolerated yet whispered about, branded culturally incorrect and bad form, if not outright sacrilege...
No matter one’s actual deeds, life path or personal mores, to be unquestioningly religious in some quarters is to be inoculated from criticism. Noting this historical irony in his blog “The Black Atheist,” Wrath James White states, “In these (black) communities you find more tolerance towards gangbangers, drug addicts, and prostitutes, who pray to God for forgiveness than for honest productive citizens who deny the existence of God. This, for me, is one of the most embarrassing elements of Black culture, our zealous embrace of the God of our kidnappers, murderers, slave masters and oppressors.” -Sikivu Hutchinson [article link]
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. -Charles Darwin
[T]he kind of language that's decried as intolerant and insulting in atheist critique of religion is accepted with barely a blink in political commentary or restaurant reviews. -Greta Christina (paraphrasing Richard Dawkins) [article link]
Jacob's Joke maxim A cursory inspection of the world indicates that God or the gods should not be worshiped so much as blamed. -T.G. Browning
Small wonder that President Obama advises us to look forward, not backward--a convenient doctrine for those who hold the clubs. Those who are beaten by them tend to see the world differently, much to our annoyance. -Noam Chomsky [article link]
[in reference to cases of religious parents facing legal action for denying medical treatment to their children] These are cases of religion gone pathological, of belief so absurd and so deep that it denies truth and has overt negative consequences. Moderate Christian believers will read about this and dismiss it as irrelevant to their faith; sure, they'd pray, but they'd also get their children in to legitimate doctors who would give them effective treatment.
I have to say something that is heartfelt, and is also meant to offend. I do not absolve you mealy-mouthed moderates, I do not regard your beliefs as harmless. If Colleen Hauser or Leilani Neumann were in your church, you'd tell them to get medical care, but you'd also validate their belief in prayers. You would provide the soothing background muzak that says prayer is good, prayer is virtuous, prayer will connect you to the great lord who can do anything, prayer will give you solace in your time of worry. You would not raise your voice to say that prayer is useless, prayer is self-defeating, that while prayer might make you feel better while your child is suffering, that is no virtue. You pray yourselves. You think it is a noble and generous act for your representatives to prowl the corridors of hospitals, preying on the desperation of the sick. You abase yourselves before false hopes, and sacrifice human dignity on an altar built from the bones of the dead. You would spread the poison, piously excusing yourselves because you only want to administer sub-lethal doses.
You are Abraham's enablers. I hope you all feel a small tremor of guilt when you sit your own children down at bedtime to beg a nonexistent being for aid, when you plant the seed of futile supplication and surrender to delusions in their trusting minds. Damn you all. -PZ Myers [article link]
I am astonished at how ordinarily decent people whose hearts are otherwise "in the right place" beat about the bush when it comes to Israel and the dispossession and suffering of the Palestinians. And now I wonder about the nature of "decency." Do "objectivity," "moderation," and seeing "both sides" not have limits? Is moderation in matters of clear injustice really a virtue? Do both parties deserve an "equal hearing" in a situation of domestic violence -- wherein a woman is beaten up by a male who was abused by his father some time ago -- because he, too, is a "victim?" -Farid Esack [article link]
This happens all the time in our political debates. Rather than argue the substance of the issue, there is this virtually compulsive need to assert -- with no evidence -- that "the American people" believes a certain way and that anyone who believes otherwise is fringe and isolated. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here…
I don't have to know the answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me. -Richard Feynman [via Pharyngula]
[in reference to Obama's backsliding on civil liberties issues] The American people right now are actually not interested in this sideshow and this discussion. The American people are interested in looking forward -- nobody is concerned anymore with what the Bush administration was doing and did. We decided it was torture. Conservatives may or may not disagree. None of that matters at this point and time. -Erica Williams (of the Center for American Progress) [video link] [Note: Williams has recanted and apologized for making this comment, but it's still a fact that all too many "progressives" make arguments exactly like this, so I'm leaving this up as an example. -ed.]
The argument against torture is slipping away from us. In fact, I'm getting the sinking feeling that it's over. What was once taboo is now publicly acknowledged as completely acceptable by many people. Indeed, disapproval of torture is now being characterized as a strictly partisan issue, like welfare reform or taxes. -Digby [article link]
[in reference to Obama's plan for "kinder, gentler" military commissions] What makes military commission so pernicious is that they signal that anytime the government wants to imprison people but can't obtain convictions under our normal system of justice, we'll just create a brand new system that diminishes due process just enough to ensure that the government wins. It tells the world that we don't trust our own justice system, that we're willing to use sham trials to imprison people for life or even execute them, and that what Bush did in perverting American justice was not fundamentally or radically wrong, but just was in need of a little tweaking. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
I come from a land [South Africa] where people braved onslaughts of bulldozers, bullets, machine guns and tear gas for the sake of freedom. We resisted at a time when it was not fashionable. And now that we have been liberated everyone declares that they were always on our side. It's a bit like Europe after the Second World War. During the war only a few people resisted. After the war not a single supporter of the Nazis could be found and the vast majority claimed that they always supported the resistance to the Nazis. -Farid Esack [article link]
The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision. -Lynn Lavner
"I believe that the Bible is the literal word of God." And I say no, it's not, Dad. "Well I believe that it is." Well, you know, some people believe they're Napoleon. That's fine. Beliefs are neat. Cherish them, but don't share them like they're the truth. -Bill Hicks
People suck, and that's my contention. I can prove it on a scratch of paper with a pen. Give me a fucking Etch-a-sketch, I'll do it in three minutes. The proof, the fact, the factorum. I'll show my work, case closed. I'm tired of this back-slapping "aren't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. -Bill Hicks
I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. "I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!" "Shut up! Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control. Here's Love Connection. Watch this and get fat and stupid. By the way, keep drinking beer, you fucking morons." -Bill Hicks
There's a new party being born: The People Who Hate People Party. People who hate people, come together! "No!" We're kind of having trouble getting off the boards. Come to our meeting! "Are you gonna be there?" Yeah. "Then I ain't fucking coming." But you're our strongest member! "Fuck you!" That's what I'm talking about, you asshole! Fuck off! Damn, we almost had a meeting going. It's so hard to get my people together. -Bill Hicks
The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Believe or die! "Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options." -Bill Hicks
Obama's political calculus throughout his life has been to avoid making enemies. He seems to believe that he can make lots of different interests happy - and on many issues, that's certainly possible. But on some issues, like health care, it's a binary fight: Either you appease the health industry and preserve the status quo they are making big bucks off of, or you take on the health industry and make real change. -David Sirota [article link]
We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity. -Rachel Carson
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. -Bertrand Russell
Do you get offended when someone says “I’ll pray for you”?
While I understand that 1) their praying for me does nothing but waste their own time and 2) they are trying do what they think is good, I replied that yes, I DO take offense.
I’ve been married to a theist for 18 years and have never tried to convert her. My daughter is an atheist, not from my drumming it into her, but through thought and contemplation. There is no need or desire for me to try to change anyone against their wishes.
But when someone prays for me, they are trying to change me against my wishes. Yes, of course it will fail, but as the old saying goes “it’s the thought that counts”, and this thought is negative. They are trying to convince their god to “open my heart” or whatever other metaphor they wish to use for “convert by force using your supernatural powers”.
Indeed, praying for someone is an act of religious intolerance. -Dave Silverman [article link]
Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope. -P.J. O'Rourke
When you don’t believe in God or the soul or any sort of afterlife — when you believe that this short life is all that we have — then making the most of that short life, and taking advantage of the joyful experiences it has to offer, suddenly becomes a whole lot more important. It’s almost a moral obligation. The odds against you, personally, having been born into this life, are beyond astronomical. Are you going to waste that life by not giving yourself, and other people, as much joy as you possibly can?
Now, this doesn’t mean, as many anti- atheists claim, that without a belief in God or an afterlife, we can and would behave entirely selfishly and with no moral compass. It doesn’t mean that even a little bit. But it does mean than we can base our morality — including our sexual morality — on how our behavior demonstrably affects people in this life, and not on how it supposedly affects invisible beings in an unproven hypothetical life after this one. And it means that — as long as we don’t cause harm to people in this life — it is not only acceptable, but a positive and meaningful good, to engage in any activities that bring joy and epiphany and meaning to ourselves and the people around us. Including, and maybe even especially, sex. -Greta Christina [article link]
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. -Carl Sagan
Last week, conservatives were complaining Obama was establishing a socialistic fascist dictatorship. This week, conservatives are complaining Obama does not want to torture his opponents. -"MM," a Reader at Talking Points Memo
...[T]he reason the winger crowd can’t find a way to be coherently angry right now is because this country has no healthy avenues for genuine populist outrage. It never has. The setup always goes the other way: when the excesses of business interests and their political proteges in Washington leave the regular guy broke and screwed, the response is always for the lower and middle classes to split down the middle and find reasons to get pissed off not at their greedy bosses but at each other. That’s why even people like Beck’s audience, who I’d wager are mostly lower-income people, can’t imagine themselves protesting against the Wall Street barons who in actuality are the ones who fucked them over... Beck has an audience that’s been trained that the rich are not appropriate targets for anger, unless of course they’re Hollywood liberals, or George Soros, or in some other way linked to some acceptable class of villain, to liberals, immigrants, atheists, etc....
But actual rich people can’t ever be the target. It’s a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master’s carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you’re on board. When you get frisky, he sticks a big cross in the middle of your village, and you spend the rest of your life praying to it with big googly eyes. Or he puts out newspapers full of innuendo about this or that faraway group and you immediately salute and rush off to join the hate squad. A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded, and full of misdirected anger. And that’s what we’ve got now, a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish… can’t be mad at AIG, can’t be mad at Citi or Goldman Sachs. The real villains have to be the anti-AIG protesters! After all, those people earned those bonuses! If ever there was a textbook case of peasant thinking, it’s struggling middle-class Americans burned up in defense of taxpayer-funded bonuses to millionaires. It’s really weird stuff. And bound to get weirder, I imagine, as this crisis gets worse and more complicated. -Matt Taibbi [article link]
I'm pretty sure the Germans don't have the filibuster, but if they did, they'd have a word for the soul-wrenching misery you feel watching a press conference convened by a handful of preening, self-congratulatory "moderate" senators who have just succeeded in making a bill decidedly worse in deference to some incoherent, abstract notion of "moderateness."
We should have killed off the filibuster when we had a chance. It's got a sorry history: marshaled ignominiously to defeat civil rights and labor legislation. When it comes to the much-needed large-scale reorientation of the American social contract involved in passing universal healthcare and cap-and-trade, the fate of the nation rests largely in the hands of about five senators. -Christopher Hayes [article link]
Prayer seems to be helping everyone else in this room cope with their sadness, but I'm having problems mustering any petitions of my own. After all, if God is really listening to these prayers, if he really is an omnipotent manager, then why didn't he just prevent the killing in the first place? If comforting the victims families isn't too much to ask of God, why couldn't he have spared them the grief altogether? [...] [N]eedless to say, millions of believers have made peace with the issue using a variety of theological work-arounds... But I can't do it. For me, no amount of theological massaging can resolve the central issue - if God could have stopped the Virginia Tech killings from happening, he would have. I can't see any way around it. -Kevin Roose, The Unlikely Disciple
At Liberty, I've met hundreds of people whose lives have been made better and more virtuous by their faith. But I've also seen a process whereby some reasonable, humble believers are taught to put their religious goals above everything else. This is how you get gentle Christian kids condemning strangers to hell in Daytona Beach, and it's how you end up with a group of Liberty students sitting around a prayer room talking about the ideological crops that can be reaped from a national tragedy. -Kevin Roose, The Unlikely Disciple
The dirty secret of the neoliberal era is that these ideas [meaning democratic socialism] were never defeated in a great battle of ideas, nor were they voted down in elections. They were shocked out of the way at key political junctures. When resistance was fierce, they were defeated with overt violence - rolled over by Pinochet's, Yeltsin's and Deng Xiaoping's tanks. At other times, they were simply betrayed through what John Williamson called "voodoo politics": the Bolivian president Victor Paz Estenssoro's postelection secret economic team (and mass kidnapping of union leaders); the ANC's backroom bargaining-away of the Freedom Charter in favor of Thabo Mbeki's top-secret economic program; Solidarity's exhausted adherents succumbing to economic shock therapy after the elections in exchange for a bailout. It is precisely because the dream of economic equality is so popular, and so difficult to defeat in a fair fight, that the shock doctrine was embraced in the first place. -Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine
Bush officials didn't commit these crimes by themselves. Virtually the entire Washington establishment supported or at least enabled most of it... As confirmed accounts emerged years ago of chronic presidential lawbreaking, warrantless eavesdropping, systematic torture, rendition, "black site" prisons, corruption in every realm, and all sorts of other dark crimes, where were journalists and other opinion-making elites? Very few of them with any significant platform can point to anything they did or said to oppose or stop any of it -- and they know that...
So when these media and political elites are defending Bush officials, mitigating their crimes, and arguing that they shouldn't be held accountable, they're actually defending themselves... They can't indict Bush officials for what they did because to do so would be to indict themselves. Bush officials need to be exonerated, or at least have their crimes forgotten (look to the future and ignore the past, they all chime in unison), so that their own involvement in it will also be cleansed and then forgotten. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
[T]he truth, which I think everyone in the political/media establishments knows in their hearts, is that the nine months or so between the summer of 2002 and the beginning of the Iraq insurgency were a great national moral test — a test that most people in influential positions failed.
The Bush administration was obviously — yes, obviously — telling tall tales in order to promote the war it wanted: the constant insinuations of an Iraq-9/11 link, the hyping of discredited claims about a nuclear program, etc.. And the question was, should you stand up against that? Not many did — and those who did were treated as if they were crazy.
For me and many others that was a radicalizing experience; I’ll never trust “sensible” opinion again. But for those who stayed “sensible” through the test, it’s a moment they’d like to see forgotten. That, I believe, is the real reason so many want to let torture and everything else go down the memory hole. -Paul Krugman [article link]
The trick to being a rebel at Liberty [University, the ultraconservative college founded by Jerry Falwell], I've learned, is knowing which parts of the Liberty social code are non-negotiable. For example, Joey and his friends listen to vulgarity-filled secular hip-hop, but you'll never catch them defending homosexuality. (On the contrary, Joey's insults of choice are "queer" and "gaywad.") And although they might harass the naive pastor's kids in the hall by stealing their towels from the shower stalls - leaving them naked, wet, and stranded - they'd be the first people to tell you why Mormonism is a false religion. In other words, Liberty's true social code, the one they don't put in a forty-six-page manual, has everything to do with being a social and religious conservative and not a whole lot to do with acting in any traditionally virtuous way. -Kevin Roose, The Unlikely Disciple
Open criminality is a cancer on democracy. It implicates all who know of the conduct and fail to act. Such compliance presents a practical crisis, in that a government that is allowed to torture will inevitably transgress other legal limits. But it also presents an existential political crisis. Many democracies have simply collapsed as the people permitted their leaders to abandon the rule of law in the face of alleged external threats. The turn to torture was rapid, for instance, in Argentina at the time of the Dirty War and in Chile after the American-directed coup against Salvador Allende. In both cases, that turn had little to do with a perceived benefit from the use of torture in interrogation. To the contrary, the very criminality of the act had a talismanic significance. It asserted the primacy of the will of the torturer. It made the claim, for all to accept or reject, that the ruler was the law. Such a claim is, of course, intolerable to democracy, which presupposes, as Thomas Paine wrote, that "the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other." -Scott Horton
If government is necessary, bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable, and conservatives have been exceptionally good at showing just how bad it can be. Hence the truth revealed by the Bush years: Bad government--indeed, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair government--is the only kind of conservative government there is. Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well. -Alan Wolfe [article link]
[in reference to this quote from Time's Joe Klein: "This is an extremely serious claim in the intelligence culture, where some operators are asked to behave extra-legally for the greater good of the nation."]
That's what government crimes are called in the eyes of our press corps: they're just acting "extra-legally" -- and not just "extra-legally," but "for the greater good of the nation." You should try that at home. Go rob a bank and when the police try to arrest you, just tell them: "I was just making an extra-legal withdrawal; what's the problem"? That's also how the media (and Democrats) constantly talked about Bush's illegal spying on Americans. What he did was never a "crime" or even "illegal" (even though the law criminalizes the very conduct he got caught engaging in with prison terms and fines); at worst, it was: "he was engaged in eavesdropping in circumvention of the FISA framework." That works, too, if you want to rob a bank: "I was just making a withdrawal in circumvention of the banking regulatory framework."
Similarly, Politico's Mike Allen -- in the same article where he granted anonymity to a cowardly "top Bush official" to do nothing other than smear Obama as a friend of Al Qaeda (and marvel at Allen's pathetic "justification" for doing that) -- proceeded to describe conduct authorized by the OLC memos this way: "aggressive interrogation practices critics decried as torture." I think I know how to speak Politicoese: the attack on Iraq was "aggressive diplomatic outreach critics decried as an invasion"; Lewis Libby's lying was "spirited and inventive story-telling critics decried as obstruction of justice..."
George Orwell mistakenly assumed that obfuscating language designed to glorify criminal acts would be invented and normalized by government. At least in the U.S., that function is outsourced to government's most loyal and eager servants: establishment journalists. A principal reason why the government has been able to engage with impunity in the extremism and lawlessness of the last decade is because most journalists refuse even to describe it as what it is. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
[in reference to increased cigarette prices causing people to contemplate quitting smoking] You read that right. Lung cancer, heart disease, rotted gums, emphysema, reeking clothes, sallow skin, impotence, shriveled lung capacity and the general skull-crushing obviousness of it all, combined with all manner of heart-wrenching ad campaigns for the past 20 years apparently couldn't do what a measly 62-cent tax increase could. WTF indeed.
It is, you could say, a simple regurgitation of the age-old American truism: there is no more powerful stimulant/deterrent in our society than the pocketbook. Not sex, not God, not a plea from your weeping child, not death itself, nothing comes close to changing human behavior faster and more effectively than forcing us to pay a lot for something for which we used to pay very little.
(Notable exceptions: Coffee, jeans, water. OK, follow-up truism: We are nothing if not wildly inconsistent). -Mark Morford [article link]
Science was never my forte, and heated debates over Darwinism, evolution, creationism and Intelligent Design never piqued my interest. As far as I was concerned, all that mattered was my belief that God created the universe and everything in it. How He did it, when He did it, and what complex processes were involved were beyond my extremely limited understanding. They still are. And what continues to matter most to me is that God get the credit for creation. -Marcia Segelstein [article link]
How come so many conservative Christians insist the only method of birth control that is 100% effective is abstinence? I can think of one documented case where even THAT didn't work -- and you'd think they'd all be familiar with it. -Chris Irby
This seems to be a common problem with liberal Christians: They keep wanting to redefine religion and its holy texts in such a way as to justify what they want to be true without realizing that the chief power of religion and holy texts resides in their being absolute dictates from gOd himself that do not allow for personal revision. If liberal Christians ever successfully make the case that the Bible doesn’t really mean what it clearly says, it can be interpreted to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean and their victory will be a Pyrrhic one. -Atheist Under Ur Bed [article link]
I don't think enough people have a fair understanding of just how many members of Congress are complete and total idiots. The gerrymandering of districts has a lot to do with it- I mean, when you can customize your voting base with laser-like precision, obviously a district of morons will elect one of their own- but I also think that sadly it's just because so many people don't care.
David Cross made a point once that it's not fair to say that all Republicans are racist, homophobic, greedy idiots... it's just the people Republicans elect to represent them in Congress. We'd have a much better Washington if people had to defend their electoral decisions in a little more detail. -August J. Pollak [article link]
Whoever said that money can't buy friends obviously never brought donuts to the office. -Wendy Weiner Runge
Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Law never made man a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice. -Henry David Thoreau
Because we hear so often that there are two sides to an issue, we've become accustomed to thinking there are two equal sides to most of them, especially the ones on which people scream the loudest. You can see this reflected in coverage of demonstrations, in which tens of thousands can march against the war, or for gay rights, and a chunk of the story will be taken up by quotes from 11 people with American flags or verses from Leviticus on their signs.
In Washington this fallacy is taken as gospel because there really are two sides to every issue, and both of them belong to lobbyists. Even if they are arguing nonsense, as they once did when they said that tobacco didn't cause cancer, as they still do when they say cigarettes are not marketed to the underage, they do it in nice shoes, sometimes at a cocktail party. Good grooming and mini-quiches make their arguments seem plausible. -Anna Quindlen [article link]
David Shuster was making fun of Glenn Beck's preoccupation with militia-style right-wing conspiracy theories yesterday on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and wondering why mainstream conservatives have so much trouble standing up to and denouncing this stuff.
There's actually a reason why mainstream conservatives never stand up to the far-right elements within their own coalition: they find them very useful.
It has ever been so. Harkening back to the days when Monarchists attacked the Enlightenment's pro-democracy thinkers as a plotting cabal of elites (which is where the old Illuminati conspiracy theories originate), the wealthy and those otherwise invested in maintaining the status quo in our civilization have always found these kinds of conspiracy theories a handy way of stirring up working-class resentment against progressive reformers.
That's why they'll be gaining in popularity as long as Democrats are in power: Because mainstream conservatives need them to make their wedge politics work. -David Neiwert [article link]
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. -Susan B. Anthony
Gross National Product measures neither the health of our children, the quality of their education, nor the joy of their play. It measures neither the beauty of our poetry, nor the strength of our marriages. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It measures neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our wit nor our courage, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worth living, and it can tell us everything about our country except those things that make us proud to be part of it. -Robert F. Kennedy
I respect animals. I have more sympathy for an injured or dead animal than I do for an injured or dead human being, because human beings participate and cooperate in their own undoing. Animals are completely innocent. There are no innocent human beings...
Some people seem shocked and say, "You care more about animals than you do humans!" Fuckin'-A well told!
I do not torture animals, and I do not support the torture of animals, such as that which goes on at rodeos: cowardly men in big hats abusing simple beasts in a fruitless search for manhood. In fact, I regularly pray for serious, life-threatening rodeo injuries. I wish for a cowboy to walk crooked, and with great pain, for the rest of his life. I cheer when a bull at Pamplona sinks one of his horns deep into the lower intestines of some drunken European macho swine. And my cheers grow louder when a victim is a young American macho-jock tourist asshole. Especially if the bull is able to swing that second horn around and catch the guy right in the nuts. -George Carlin [source]
Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come. -Albert Schweitzer
Barack Obama has perfected a three-step maneuver that could never even be attempted by a politician lacking his rhetorical skill or cool cynicism.
First: Denounce your presidential predecessor for a given policy, energizing your party’s base and capitalizing on his abiding unpopularity. Second: Pretend to have reversed that policy upon taking office with a symbolic act or high-profile statement. Third: Adopt a version of that same policy, knowing that it’s the only way to govern responsibly or believing that doing otherwise is too difficult. -Rich Lowry [article link]
So much wealth was being made in [post-Communist Russia] that some of the "reformers" couldn't resist getting in on the action. Indeed, more than anywhere else up to this point, the situation in Russia exposed the myth of the technocrat, the egghead free-market economist supposedly imposing textbook models out of pure conviction. As in Chile and China, where rampant corruption and shock therapy went hand in hand, several of Yeltsin's Chicago School ministers and deputy ministers ended up losing their posts in high-profile corruption scandals...
This points to a nagging and important question about free-market ideologues: Are they "true believers," driven by ideology and faith that free markets will cure underdevelopment, as is often asserted, or do the ideas and theories frequently serve as an elaborate rationale to allow people to act on unfettered greed while still invoking an altruistic motive? All ideologies are corruptible, of course (as Russia's apparatchiks made abundantly clear when, during the Communist era, they collected their abundant privileges), and there are certainly honest neoliberals. But Chicago School economics does seem particularly conducive to corruption. Once you accept that profit and greed as practiced on a mass scale create the greatest possible benefits for any society, pretty much any act of personal enrichment can be justified as a contribution to the great creative cauldron of capitalism, generating wealth and spurring economic growth - even if it's only for yourself and your colleagues. -Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine
What always happens in a fascist shift is that the state will start by abusing people that no one in the mainstream really identifies with much. In Germany it was anarchists, communists, homosexuals…then what always happens is that there’s a blurring of the lines, and the noose starts to catch up more and more members of mainstream society, and it’s always the same cast of characters: us. -Naomi Wolf
I've notice that when life hands you lemons, it doesn't really hand them to you so much as shove them straight up your ass. -Nick Smith
I began the Bible as a hopeful, but indifferent, agnostic. I wished for a God, but I didn't really care. I leave the Bible as a hopeless and angry agnostic. I'm brokenhearted about God.
After reading about the genocides, the plagues, the murders, the mass enslavements, the ruthless vengeance for minor sins (or none at all), and all that smiting—every bit of it directly performed, authorized, or approved by God—I can only conclude that the God of the Hebrew Bible, if He existed, was awful, cruel, and capricious. He gives us moments of beauty—such sublime beauty and grace!—but taken as a whole, He is no God I want to obey and no God I can love. -David Plotz [article link]
I lost my job, and then lost my house, and then my wife left me. So, here I am in the park, drinking cheap wine early in the morning. This must be what the economists mean by the bad economy's Ripple Effect. -Wiley
Excellent black people have always been compensated for excellence. Always. The real equality is when we can have a black president as dumb as George Bush. That's when we're really equal. That's when the dream has come true. -Chris Rock, Jan. 20, 2009
James Michener said: 'If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might as well stay home.' The problem is, that’s how I feel about my home. -The Covert Comic
I don't get the popularity of the [near-death experience] "evidence". I had a friend once who told me that he had the most awesome experience on 'shrooms — he'd melted into a purple puddle that soaked into the earth, and he had spiritual sex with tree roots. I'm pretty sure that didn't actually happen, and I wouldn't use it to argue that human beings were capable of phase changes into a fluid state or that intimate congress with plants was fun and rewarding, but people use the same logic all the time in arguing that while they were in a brain-damaged state, befuddled by anoxia, their perception of the hallucinatory state afterwards is evidence that there is a heaven. -PZ Myers [article link]
My mother is so erratic. One minute she lectures that, as members of a family, we all must make certain sacrifices, and the next she's freaking out about my hooded ceremony involving the neighbor's cat. -Brad Simanek
One is guilty of the sin of "shrillness" [in the eyes of the mainstream media] if one: (a) argues that there is something fundamentally -- rather than marginally -- wrong with our political and media establishment and/or (b) fails to use suitably restrained, muted and respectful language when expressing those critiques. Thus, one is "shrill" if one says that George Bush committed felonies by spying on Americans without warrants and torturing people and should be treated like any other accused criminal (rather than saying: "Bush might have circumvented some legal constraints and gone a little too far in trying to keep us safe"). One is "shrill" if one says that establishment journalism, at its core and by design, is principally devoted to serving the interests and amplifying the claims of the Washington establishment (rather than saying: "Journalists could do a better job of reporting some stories"), etc. etc.
"Shrillness" – the first cousin of "Unseriousness" – is the conceptual instrument used to deter and (when that fails) demonize those who view the political and media establishment as corrupt at its core. It's a way of demanding that everyone just calm down, avoid impetuous and inflammatory language, and stop acting as though there's anything seriously wrong with our political and media elites:
Sure, they've made some mistakes; nobody's perfect. But it's not as though there's anything to get excited or angry about. And fine: there are some narrow disagreements among people of good faith and some small problems here and there that require some modifications -- little things like torture, chronic high-level lawbreaking, immunity for the political class (juxtaposed with the sprawling prison industry for ordinary Americans), rampant domestic spying, sky-high walls of government secrecy, full-scale economic meltdown, massive and growing inequities in wealth, endless wars, sleaze and corruption oozing from every Beltway pore, complete media complicity with all of it -- but there's no reason to get all indignant or agitated by it or act as though crimes are being committed or radical changes are needed or anything.
By definition, only people who are "shrill" would do that.
Under these circumstances, and with that definition, there are probably few worse sins than failing to be "shrill." -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Let Catholic writers take care when defending the cause of the proletariat and the poor not to use language calculated to inspire among the people aversion to the upper classes of society. -Pope Pius X, letter to the bishops of Italy, 18 December 1903
Someone please explain to me why we haven't had a revolution in this country yet, because I don't fully understand it -- given that our political and business elites both seem to have a death wish bigger than Marie Antoinette's...
My question was rhetorical, of course -- if we got through 1933 without a revolution, then presumably the system will muddle through its latest exercise in human misery, too.
What I was really wondering is how the American elites could feel so confident in their own entrenched positions that they could so blatantly ignore or defy reality -- as illustrated by the two Washington Post stories juxtaposed above.
The answer, I suppose is either that they have lived so long in the bubble of power and privilege that they no longer realize that moments like July 1789 or October 1917 can happen, or that they are supremely confident that populist rage can always be channeled to the right, where it can be easily controlled.
Either way, it amounts to the same thing: A total unawareness that at the end of the day, the only thing standing between them and the guillotine is sheer social inertia. -Billmon [article link]
[in reference to why few mainstream economists were able to predict the current recession/financial crisis, despite ample evidence] Well, I think economists have very little incentive to really think for themselves. If you just say the exact same thing as everyone else, there's not really a downside to it. So just think of the incentives. Think about economists the way economists would think about economists -- or should think about economists. People respond to incentives. And, in this scenario, their incentives are all just to repeat, say the same exact same stuff as Alan Greenspan and everyone else is saying, and don't think about it.
Because, if you step out of line, if you get out there and say, "There's a real big bubble. It's going to be real bad news. It's going to wreck the economy, and we're going to have the worst recession since the Great Depression," well, you're taking a real big risk. Because obviously you don't know for sure that you're right. You might think you're right, but you don't know for sure. And if you're wrong, well, everyone's going to laugh at you. You'll be humiliated. You'll be ignored. No one's going to take you seriously. You won't get promoted. Who knows? You could even get fired.
So, economists shouldn't be trusted to ever step out of line, they shouldn't be trusted to think originally, creatively, because there's no reason for them to. It's all risk and very little upside. So, what we should expect is that all these economists, including many highly paid economists, are going to say exactly what every other economist will say, whether they agree with it or not. It doesn't even matter, because that's the incentive structure. -Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research [article link]
You just know that journey of a thousand miles is going to feel even longer when that first step lands smack in a fresh, still-steaming pile of dog doo. -Brad Simanek
[The blacklisting of progressives from positions in the Obama administration] highlights how, regardless of election hoopla, Washington is the same one-party town it always has been - controlled not by Democrats or Republicans, but by Kleptocrats (i.e., thieves). Their ties to money make them the undead zombies in the slash-and-burn horror flick that is American politics: No matter how many times their discredited theologies are stabbed, torched and shot down by verifiable failure, their careers cannot be killed. Somehow, these political immortals are allowed to mindlessly lunge forward, never answering to rivals - even if that rival is the president himself. -David Sirota [article link]
Life is a series of lessons. For instance, when asked at an interview what my greatest weakness is, I will never again bring up strippers in leather. -Wayne Lloyd
I had a dream last night that I drank the largest Margarita in Texas. When I woke up, there was salt on the toilet lid and rim. Sure, it sounds gross, but at least now I have an explanation for the blue tongue. -P. Salyer
[in reference to this article, in response to claims along the lines of, "The majority of Mormons aren't like that"] It simply doesn't matter if a majority of Mormons are nice people - if the nasty ones are in charge, it's because the nice ones are allowing an extremist minority to speak and act on their behalf. And just stepping up and saying 'Most of us don't agree' is a rather impotent response while the ones you don't agree with (after being elected by majority vote) are beating children in your name. -asteranx [commenting at Pharyngula]
It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong. The good news: you’re being paid by the hour. -The Covert Comic
Just as they treated Bush with extraordinary respect in reaction to their heinous behavior during the Clinton years, the villagers are now preparing to treat Obama with skepticism in reaction to the failures that resulted from their fawning obsequiousness.
Oddly, these lurches always seem to disfavor the Democrats. -Digby [via Jamison Foser]
The chains men bear they forged themselves. Strike off their chains and they will weep for their lost security. -John Passmore
[in reference to attempts by theistic scientists to reconcile religious belief with acceptance of evolutionary theory] ...[T]hey fail for the same reason that people always fail: a true harmony between science and religion requires either doing away with most people's religion and replacing it with a watered-down deism, or polluting science with unnecessary, untestable, and unreasonable spiritual claims...
It would appear, then, that one cannot be coherently religious and scientific at the same time. That alleged synthesis requires that with one part of your brain you accept only those things that are tested and supported by agreed-upon evidence, logic, and reason, while with the other part of your brain you accept things that are unsupportable or even falsified. In other words, the price of philosophical harmony is cognitive dissonance. Accepting both science and conventional faith leaves you with a double standard: rational on the origin of blood clotting, irrational on the Resurrection; rational on dinosaurs, irrational on virgin births. Without good cause, Giberson and Miller pick and choose what they believe. At least the young-earth creationists are consistent, for they embrace supernatural causation across the board. -Jerry Coyne [article link]
When I die, I'd like to be scattered over my hometown. But not, like, cremated or anything. -Mitch Berg
[in reference to Obama's far-right positions on the Israel/Palestine conflict] If anyone is surprised by any of this, he has only himself to blame. On many occasions, Obama told you precisely what he believed and what he would and would not do -- and many people, out of a stupidly misguided "hope" or, much more contemptibly, out of a desire to acquire power for "their" gang of criminals, chose not to believe Obama's own words (or to disregard them)... [I]f you didn't believe what he said and preferred to believe he actually meant something else -- that something else being what you contend you believe -- that can only mean you thought he was a liar, which indeed he is. And yet many people still voted for him, even after concluding Obama was a calculating manipulator of the first order, one who was primarily interested in acquiring power and nothing else at all. -Arthur Silbur [article link]
This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” -Rashid Khalidi [article link]
Europe has ceded dealing with the Israelis to the United States.
The people of the United States have ceded dealing with the Israelis to the US Congress.
The US Congress generally abdicates its responsibilities when faced with large powerful single-issue lobbies such as the National Rifle Association, the Cuban-American pro-boycott organizations, and the Israel lobbies.
So Congress has ceded Israel, and indeed, most Middle East, policy to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its myriad organizational supporters, from the Southern Baptist churches to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. The Israel lobbies take their cue on what is good policy from the Israeli government and the Likud Party.
So, US Israel policy is driven by . . . the Israeli rightwing. That is why Congress voted 309 to five to support Israel's war on the people of Gaza, with 22 abstaining. Juan Cole [article link]
If those who want fundamental reform in these areas adopt the view that they will not criticize Barack Obama because to do so is to "help Republicans," or because he deserves more time, or because criticisms are unnecessary because we can trust in him to do the right thing, or because criticizing him is to "tear him down" or "create a circular firing squad" or "be a Naderite purist" or any of those other empty platitudes, then they are ceding the field to the very powerful factions who are going to fight vehemently against any changes. Do you think that those who want the CIA to retain "robust" interrogation powers and who want the federal surveillance state maintained, or want a hard-line towards Iran and a continuation of our Middle East policies, or who want to maintain corporate-lobbyist-domination of Washington, are sitting back saying: "it's not right to pressure Obama too much right now; give him some time"? -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
...[F]or an American citizen to criticize Israel's wars without criticizing every similar or worse act of aggression is not to "hold Israel to a higher or different standard." The U.S. Government funds Israel's actions, specifically provides the arms for their various bombing campaigns and invasions, and continuously uses its U.N. veto power to protect what Israel does. American citizens therefore bear a responsibility for Israel's actions that is not the case for actions which the U.S. Government does not fund and otherwise enable. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Given the West Bank Fatah leadership's cooperation with Israel, one might have expected a change in the situation in the West Bank, but everywhere I visited the occupation continued as usual, sometimes enhanced. There is no reason for Palestinians—-or us—-to believe that an end to rocket attacks and suicide bombs would bring real change to Israel's continued occupation since neither has in the past. Rather, Hamas's violence provides a convenient, and unfortunate, excuse for Israel to continue what it has been doing all along: expanding and expanding, destroying any obstacle—-be it a home, an olive tree, or a boy with a rock-—in its way. -Anna Baltzer
There's usually no shortage of people willing to defend Obama's statements and explain what he really means. I recall, after Obama voted for warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity back last August, reading in numerous places -- for the first time ever -- that the FISA controversy wasn't really all that important, that warrantless eavesdropping wasn't much of a threat, that Democrats had no choice but to support this bill lest they lose the election, that nobody will die or starve if the Government eavesdrops, etc. etc.
And yesterday -- after Obama signaled his reluctance to investigate Bush lawbreaking and explained that he can't close Guantanamo until there is a new "process" allowing "tainted" evidence to be used -- my comment section was full of people explaining why Obama can't possibly investigate (let alone prosecute) Bush officials for crimes, and that it's more important to keep Dangerous Terrorists imprisoned than it is to abide by long-standing principles of American law and Western justice which prohibit the use of "tainted" evidence (meaning, at least in part, confessions and other evidence obtained by torture), even though we have repeatedly been successful in obtaining convictions of Dangerous Terrorists in our federal court system both before and after 9/11. Some pro-Obama bloggers echoed those claims. [So much for all those promises from various progressives that they'd hold Obama's feet to the fire after the election! This is exactly what I said would happen - they're just going to find some bullshit way to rationalize everything he does. -ed.] -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Today I realized the hour I extend my life by working out an hour every day has already been spent working out. -Daniel Bokor
In 1996, Israeli jets bombed a UN building where civilians had taken refuge at Cana/ Qana in south Lebanon, killing 102 persons; in the place where Jesus is said to have made water into wine, Israeli bombs wrought a different sort of transformation. In the distant, picturesque port of Hamburg, a young graduate student studying traditional architecture of Aleppo saw footage like this on the news. He was consumed with anguish and the desire for revenge. As soon as operation Grapes of Wrath had begun the week before, he had written out a martyrdom will, indicating his willingness to die avenging the victims, killed in that operation--with airplanes and bombs that were a free gift from the United States. His name was Muhammad Atta. Five years later he piloted American Airlines 11 into the World Trade Center...
On Tuesday, the Israeli military shelled a United Nations school to which terrified Gazans had fled for refuge, killing at least 42 persons and wounding 55, virtually all of them civilians, and many of them children. The Palestinian death toll rose to 660.
You wonder if someone somewhere is writing out a will today. -Juan Cole [article link]
But LaHaye, Wine, Falwell, and their associates magnify beyond all reason the control Humanism exerts. In my view the Moral Majority is a demagogic assembly of religious fanatics and, like demagogic politicians, needs a demonic scapegoat to rally its followers and to provide a simple, one-word solution for the serious problems disrupting America and the world. The Moral Majority has chosen the social-minded Humanists as its target and aims to destroy them. This malicious campaign is not unlike the wild witchhunt against Communism and alleged Communists in the heyday of Senator Joseph McCarthy. -Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism
[In reference to the 2008-2009 Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, and President-Elect Barack Obama's detachment on the issue, claiming through a spokesman that "There's only one president at a time" - in stark contrast to Obama's public positions on other issues. Obama's position here isn't hard to figure out - he's been a hardcore supporter of Israel's occupation in numerous instances since entering national politics. -ed.]
Perhaps Obama's inaction will finally put to rest the idea that he's a man who is seriously committed to justice or change. He's not. He's nothing more than an ambitious and well-spoken young man who's being used to conceal the genocidal operation of the imperial machine... The truth is Obama is a "cool guy" who doesn't really feel that strongly about anything. That's why Obama's moral authority has been gravely eroded before he's even been sworn in. The bloody streets of Gaza are an indictment of Obama not Hamas.
When people see the photos of the Palestinian children being extracted from the debris of bombed-out buildings in Gaza; they should ask themselves whether Obama could have saved a few lives by just speaking out. The fact is, he had a chance to defend the people who can't defend themselves, but chose silence and complicity instead. -Mike Whitney [article link]
People often ask, "If there is no afterlife, what is the purpose of this life?" — But wouldn’t it make more sense to ask, "If there is an afterlife, what is the purpose of this life?" -DanCorb [link]
Not many people in the west are aware of the devastating fact that killing Arabs and Palestinians in particular is a very effective Israeli political recipe. The Israelis are indeed confused people. As much as they insist upon seeing themselves as a 'Shalom seeking’ nation, they also love to be led by politicians with an astonishing record of unlawful murderous activity. Whether it was Sharon, Rabin, Begin, Shamir or Ben Gurion, Israelis love their 'democratically elected leaders’ to be belligerent hawks with their hands dripping with blood and backed by a solid record of crimes against humanity. -Gilad Atzmon
Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose. -Nir Rosen [article link]
There was, as Letelier wrote, an "inner harmony" between the drive to cleanse sectors of society and the ideology at the heart of the project. The Chicago Boys and their professors, who provided advice and took up top posts in the military regimes of the Southern Cone, believed in a form of capitalism that is purist by its very nature. Theirs is a system based entirely on a belief in "balance" and "order" and the need to be free of interferences and "distortions" in order to succeed. Because of these traits, a regime committed to the faithful application of this ideal cannot accept the presence of competing or tempering worldviews. In order for the ideal to be achieved, it requires a monopoly on ideology; otherwise, according to the central theory, the economic signals become distorted and the entire system is thrown out of balance. [Hence, free-market economic policies almost invariably tend to be implemented either under authoritarian regimes or in an authoritarian manner, with little input from the public. -ed.] -Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine
I’m beginning to think that movement conservatism is, at base, a kind of psychological-sexual dysfunction. You know these guys are terrified of women’s sexuality. They’d have us women in burqas and condone stoning of rape victims if they could get away with it. They’d deny that, but in fact, what is the difference between denying a rape victim reproductive rights and stoning her for unchastity? It’s a difference purely in degree, not in kind, rooted in the same twisted views of women and sexuality. -Barbara O'Brien [article link]
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
I think Intelligent Design as a whole is a zombie philosophy at this point — it's dead, its brain is rotting, and it has no glamor or appeal to most people anymore. It's still shuffling about, and it will continue to get mentioned now and then as people struggle to find some pretense of a non-religious motive for creationism, but really, we're all just waiting for someone with a metaphorical shotgun to put it down with a metaphorical blast to its metaphorical head. -PZ Myers [article link]
Like all fundamentalist faiths, Chicago School economics is, for its true believers, a closed loop. The starting premise is that the free market is a perfect scientific system, one in which individuals, acting on their own self-interested desires, create the maximum benefits for all. In follows ineluctably that if something is wrong within a free-market economy - high inflation or soaring unemployment - it has to be because the market is not truly free. There must be some interference, some distortion in the system. The Chicago solution is always the same: a stricter and more complex application of the fundamentals. -Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine
A large part of the appeal of Chicago School economics was that, at a time when radical-left ideas about workers' power were gaining ground around the world, it provided a way to defend the interests of owners that was just as radical and was infused with its own claims to idealism. To hear Friedman tell it, his ideas were not about defending the right of factory owners to pay low wages but, rather, all about a quest for the purest possible form of "participatory democracy" because in the free market, "each man can vote, as it were, for the color of tie he wants." Where leftists promised freedom for workers from bosses, citizens from dictatorship, countries from colonialism, Friedman promised "individual freedom," a project that elevated atomized citizens above any collective enterprise and liberated them to express their absolute free will through their consumer choices... The Marxists had their workers' utopia, and the Chicagoans had their entrepreneurs' utopia, both claiming that if they got their way, perfection and balance would follow. -Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine
A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect. he becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all-knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified. -Karen Armstrong
You know, grandparents are happy with the stupidest things: macaroni picture-frames, Popsicle stick coasters, Play-Doh ashtrays. But just mention a Guns 'n' Roses theme wedding and it's bye-bye, inheritance. -Dakota Shepard
There's a saying: 'If 99 percent was good enough, gravity wouldn't work for 14 minutes every day.' I did the calculation, and it's actually 14 minutes and 24 seconds. Which can only mean that, for the person who wrote that saying, 97.2 percent was good enough. -The Covert Comic
Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. -The New Testement, Romans 13 [link] [I quote this passage because it highlights one of the biggest reasons I dislike Christianity: not only has the church throughout history been a key supporter of authoritarian governments, but that support is actually built right into the doctrine. It makes sense if you think about it; to paraphrase Mikhael Bakunin (quoted below), submission to God's authority would naturally incline people to submit to earthly authority. This deference to power helps explain why the church has been on the wrong side of virtually every liberation struggle in its history. -ed.]
It is this, it seems to me, that is at the heart of what is wrong with most calls for "pragmatism." At every stage, the "impractical" purist hears that he should not withhold his support from the marginally preferable candidate under any circumstances. He is urged to be realistic, and so he and those like him do not insist that the candidate make strong commitments on policy positions that are deemed by someone to be out of the mainstream. The candidate pays some minimal lip service to the purist’s "values," and this is supposed to count for something. In the name of pragmatism, the purist decides that he has to support the candidate, because the candidate represents the best chance of advancing his views, but even before the election is held the purist has already given so much away in the name of pragmatism and realism that he and those like him have no leverage at all. Having yielded and given away their support in exchange for nothing more than lip service, the purists are scarcely in a much better position than before. They can take satisfaction in being on the winning side, but for the most part this means that they will bear the burden if the public turns against the candidate after he is elected and otherwise they will scarcely get much of anything. The purists-turned-pragmatists will receive the blame for enabling the administration in whatever it does, but they will receive no credit or acknowledgment that their support was important enough to merit meaningful concessions to their concerns. Having refused in the first place to exact a price for their support, they have made their support worthless and ensured that they will have no influence. -Daniel Larison [article link]
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged. -Noam Chomsky [article link]
[I]n a 2006 radio interview, Dick Cheney said simply that the use of waterboarding to obtain intelligence was a "no-brainer." Cheney at the time declined to refer to this practice as torture, preferring instead to describe it as "robust interrogation," and that reluctance has been echoed in the press. I myself was twice warned by PBS producers, in advance of appearances on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, that I could use the word "torture" in the abstract but that I was to refrain from applying it to the administration’s policies. And after an interview with CNN in which I spoke of the administration’s torture policy, I was told by the producer, "That’s okay for CNN International, but we can’t use it on the domestic feed." -Scott Horton [article link]
People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times." -Isaac Bashevis Singer
The faith in which I was brought up assured me that I was better than other people; I was saved, they were damned.... Our hymns were loaded with arrogance -- self-congratulation on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us, what hell everybody else would catch come Judgment Day. -Robert A. Heinlein
You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches, and then pull it out six inches, and say you're making progress. -Malcolm X
Whenever people say "we mustn't be sentimental", you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, "we must be realistic", they mean they are going to make money out of it. -Brigid Brophy
But our political establishment venerates "centrism" and "bi-partisanship" as the highest religious concepts. Those terms are, in reality, nothing more than vehicles to insulate government officials and the political establishment generally from any accountability. Their only real meaning is that cooperation within the political establishment is paramount, regardless of political principles and the rule of law. Hence, investigations and especially prosecutions are scorned as terribly divisive and partisan, even when they involve crimes; good "non-partisans" and "centrists" eschew such unpleasantries, by definition. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
At their core, corporate media are deeply suspicious of progressive movements, and when these look like they might gain enough power to threaten the interests of their owners, you begin to hear a lot of media talk about bipartisanship and centrism. -Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [article link]
[in response to the meme going around since the election that black people can't use racism as an "excuse" anymore because Obama proves that one can accomplish anything with enough hard work]
The problem is: racism is not an “excuse,” it’s a condition of life, it’s built into the systems of finance, education, culture, and government that have evolved since Europeans brought Africans to North America and enslaved them, gradually displaced native peoples through invasion and genocide, and developed legal frameworks that excluded people of color from political, economic and social participation. People of color have fought back, they have struggled, and continue to struggle, winning rights, liberties and improvements in their lives along the way, educating white people enough so that, at the very least, a young bi-racial politician who didn’t act “too black” or “too angry” could raise $750 million dollars and fight for their votes.
I get what [Will] Smith, et al. are trying to do. Barack Obama is a role model, a positive representative of what young people of color can achieve if they work hard and make the right decisions... When they are confronted with racism, we want our kids to fight it, to confront “back” and to not tolerate it. And we don’t want it to affect their self-esteem.
But the election of Barack Obama did not magically undo the legacy of 500 years of racism and oppression. It was one more yellow brick on the road to Oz, to be sure; hopefully he will seize the opportunity to undo the social and economic affects of that legacy, while also addressing the class-based structure of our society that exacerbates racism. A few of the things mentioned in today’s cartoon — neglected neighborhoods, failing schools, predatory lenders and check-”cashing” establishments, poverty — afflict everyone in the working poor, a demographic that encompasses all ethnicities. Certainly people of color are hit harder by poverty and social injustice; and whites enjoy privileges that are more subtle yet no less advantageous. Nonetheless, as the middle class finds itself slipping into the ranks of the working poor, privileged folks like Will Smith or lesser privileged folks whom the economy has not (yet) punished should be wary of naiveté and assuming victim-blaming postures regarding the poor. Leave the “no excuses” lecture at home and keep fighting for social justice and equality. -Kevin Moore [article link]
The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule: we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us, were any other species in our dominant position." -Christine Stevens
In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me-and by that time no one was left to speak up. -Rev. Martin Niemoller
ambiguous adj. Anything one wishes to misunderstand. -T.G. Browning
bipartisan adj. Taking bribes from either side of the aisle. -T.G. Browning
denial n. An emotional state wherein one refuses to acknowledge that the person speaking to them is infallible and possesses unique
insights into their private thoughts. -T.G. Browning
dog n. 1: A domesticated animal with all of the characteristics
required of any good citizen of any large, industrial nation. That is
to say, it will obey orders, eat what is available, speak when
commanded, shut-up when desired, work diligently for minimal praise,
foam-at-the-mouth when required, accept both a choke-collar and a
leash, get excited on demand and expire quietly when appropriately
drugged. 2: A domesticated animal found in most societies,
especially those that have a lot of jobs for anything that likes to
run around. Examples would be tracking (fox, deer, people,
explosives), herding (cows, goats, sheep, people) or pulling (sleds,
chew toys). Dogs are thought to be the oldest domesticated animal
which just goes to show that doing something right the first time,
certainly is no assurance of doing so again. Witness cats, ferrets,
llamas and children. -T.G. Browning
Whenever my young son cries too much, I show him his birth video in reverse and telling him that's what happens to kids who don't stop crying. -J. Murphy
There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life. -From UK bus advertisements by the British Humanist Association [article link]
Opinions are like genitals: if you force others to swallow yours, something is seriously wrong with you. -Marty Beckerman, Dumbocracy
Neil Cavuto [of Fox News]: "You are going to take votes away from John McCain, presumably ... [and] that would probably hand the White House ... to a Democrat. What do you say [to that]?" Bob Barr [former Congressman (R-GA) and 2008 Libertarian candidate for President]: "Well, frankly, I would worry about John McCain siphoning votes away from my candidacy, if I run, but I am not going to whine about that."
And, as with Negros, the foreign-born were on the one hand denied advantages and on the other scorned for being without them. Denied running water, they were said to be against bathing. Forced to live in dark and dilapidated tenaments, they were accused of shiftlessness and a lack of neatness. Denied the vote, they were charged with lacking public spirit. Confined to ghettoes, they were charged with clanishness, with being willfully un-American. Because most of them were laborers, they were held to lack intelligence. For years a ditch was regarded as the proper place for an Irishman; that is, if he was working and had a shovel in his hand. This view was later held as to Italians. [And now of course it's Hispanics. -ed.] -Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais, Labor's Untold Story
[in reference to a Washington Post op-ed by former Sens. Chuck Robb (D) and Dan Coats (R) advocating war with Iran] It's just objectively true that there is no country in the world -- anywhere -- that threatens to attack and bomb other countries as routinely and blithely as the U.S. does. What rational leader wouldn't want to obtain nuclear weapons in a world where the "superpower" is run by people like Dan Coats and Chuck Robb who threaten to attack and bomb whatever countries they want? Even the Coats/Robb Op-Ed argues that Iranian proliferation would be so threatening to the U.S. because "the ability to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon would effectively give Iran a nuclear deterrent" -- in other words, they'd have the ability to deter a U.S. attack on their country, and we can't have that. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children. -Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can't bomb it into peace. -Michael Franti
There is always a charge that socialism does not fit human nature. We've encountered that for a long time. Maybe that's true. But can't people be educated? Can't people learn to cooperate with each other? Surely that must be our goal, because the alternative is redolent with war and poverty and all the ills of the world. -Frank Zeidler, Socialist mayor of Milwaukee WI, 1948-1960 [article link]
[H]istorically, it has been third parties, not the major parties, that have supported and are responsible for the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, public schools, public power, unemployment compensation, minimum wage, child labor laws. The list goes on and on. The two parties fail to address a particular issue; a third party rises up, and it’s supported by tens of millions of Americans, forcing the Republican and Democratic parties to co-opt that issue, or the third party rises and succeeds, which is why the Republican Party jumped from being a third party to being a major party of the United States of America. -George Farah, founder of Open Debates [qtd. by Amy Goodman]
After the initial embarrassment, I tried to laugh it off by comparing it to that scene from "American Pie." But he pointed out that he was my boss, not my dad, and that it was his wife, not an apple pie. I guess he would have laughed if we'd told him what I was doing when she stumbled in on me ten minutes earlier. -Andy Ihnatko
Here's my defense for eating meat: Mmmm. I rest my case. [When you cut through the rationalizations and other BS, this is what the argument against animal rights comes down to, I think; at least there's one meat-eater who realizes it. I'm not criticizing her when I say that; most vegetarians and vegans have been there at some point, where we've realized eating meat is wrong but haven't been able to kick the habit yet. In fact, that's pretty much where I am now in regard to veganism. -ed.]-Lisa from Reasonable Comics [link]
What is the difference between eating an animal for pleasure and beating an animal for pleasure? -Brad from Reasonable Comics [link]
[in reference to statements on America's relationship with Israel from the VP debate between Biden and Palin] They don't just consider Israel an ally. They don't just both support Israel. No, that's woefully inadequate. Instead: Biden has a "passion" for Israel and is its best friend, while Palin declares how excited she is that they "both love Israel."
They "love Israel"? I'm asking this literally, not rhetorically: is there any other country in the world where presidential candidates are required to -- or even could -- proclaim their "passion" and "love" for another country in a national election? And other than Israel, is there any country for which candidates for the American presidency could get away with proclaiming their "passion" and "love"? It's not exactly healthy or rational for someone who wants to lead one country to swear their fealty, passion and love for another. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
You can’t be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and think you’re drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god. That doesn’t make you a person of faith…. That makes you a schizophrenic. -Bill Maher [via the Catholic League]
They accuse me of being a Catholic bigot. First of all, I don’t have it out especially for the Catholics. I think all religious are coo-coo. OK? It’s not just the Catholics. I’m not a bigot. Just because I wish for the demise of an organization that I think is entirely destructive to the human race, that doesn’t make me a bigot. I also wish for the demise of Hamas and the KKK. Not that on every score the Catholic Church is the same as those two organizations. I’m not a bigot because I root for their downfall. -Bill Maher [via the Catholic League]
But I think it is much more likely that there could be space ships from outer space, than what a lot of things people believe. People still believe, you know--excuse me I know I may inject religion into every show but UFO’s are a lot more likely than a space god flew down bodily and, you know, who was the Son of God and, you know, had sex with a Palestinian woman. -Bill Maher [via the Catholic League]
What's missing from most discussions about endangered species is that preserving other species is not an act of charity; it is essential to our own survival. "Endangered species issues are usually seen as humans versus nature--we act in favor of one or the other--and that's just not the case," says Aaron Bernstein, a fellow at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard and an editor (with Eric Chivian) of Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. "Polar bears hold tremendous value to medicine, for example," explains Bernstein. "There is something about the metabolism of female polar bears that allows them to put on tremendous amounts of fat before winter but not become Type 2 diabetic. We don't understand how they do it yet, but this research is hugely important for the tens of millions of people who suffer from Type 2 diabetes."
But human dependence on other species is even broader. "We need [ants] to survive, but they don't need us at all," notes naturalist E.O. Wilson in a quote Bernstein and Chivian include in Sustaining Life. Without ants (and countless other underground species that will never be the subject of impassioned environmental appeals) to ventilate the soil, the earth would rot, halting food production. Without trees and other elements of a healthy forest, water supplies would shrink. Take away coral reefs and you destroy the bottom of the marine food chain. Global warming is on track to make as much as one-quarter of all plant and animal species on earth extinct by 2040, threatening general ecosystem collapse. To study the natural world is to realize, in the words of the environmental axiom, that everything is connected. What we do to the polar bears, we do to ourselves. -Mark Hertsgaard [article link]
The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy. -Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope
The difference between a man saving the world and a woman saving the world is that a woman wouldn't brag about it in a bar afterward while trying to pick up someone. -John Kendrick
Severalpeople, including me, wrote yesterday about many of the cynical motives behind opposition on the Right to the Paulson plan [to bail out the financial industry by essentially handing Wall Street $700B with no checks or oversight], but there is an element of authenticity to that opposition as well. One can look at these economic disputes in terms of "Republican v. Democrat" but, when it comes to economic policy, that is often unhelpful because the core leadership factions of both parties are funded and controlled by the same corporate interests. The same framework shapes foreign policy as well... Often, and certainly now, the more relevant dichotomy is "Plutocrat (or 'kleptocrat') v. Populist," and there are angry populists in the rank-and-file of both parties -- meaning the ordinary voters -- who haven't shared in the very limited and increasingly unequal prosperity created by corporate control of our Government... [W]hile cultural wedge issues have divided ordinary American on the Left and Right, there is a growing, angry populism among both factions against the dominant Washington establishment elite that is so transparently running the Federal Government on behalf of the tiny group of corporate elite which funds and owns them. The backlash against the Paulson plan on both the Left and Right is a function of that same anger and resentment. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
[from a story on Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, in reference to his job out of college as scheduling secretary for California Democratic Senator Alan Cranston] Once, a woman called up crying that Mexicans were moving into her neighborhood at an alarming rate and asked if he could tell the Congressman. When Morello called her a racist and told her to go to hell, he was rebuked for four days straight. "That's when I realized," Morello exclaimed, "if in my job I can't tell a racist to go to hell, I'm not in the right job." -ZP Heller [article link]
I get that candidates are going to run slightly shady campaigns. I get that, because I’m not an idiot and that’s just politics as usual. I can learn about the shadiness of their campaigns by watching their commercials. They’re going to lie. It’s your [the media's] job to get the truth and to hold someone accountable when they lie, not just weakly point out ‘Hey, that might possibly be construed as slightly perhaps being not so forward in the field of truth. Let’s take a poll to see how the American people feel about possibly perhaps being lied to maybe.’ Don’t just point it out, do something about it.
Have you ever been fucked violently in the ear? And then your friend comes in and, instead of helping, starts telling you what the guy’s balls look like? That’s you. You’re that friend. I want you to protect me from getting fucked, and all you’re saying is “Balls, balls balls.”-Daniel O'Brien [article link]
It's not that all Christians are crazy, it's just that the religion seems to give certain types of crazy people a chance to shine. These are the ones who can't worry about the homeless because they're too busy doing things like decoding secret gay propaganda in cartoons. -Ian Fortey [article link]
I was pretending that my computer mouse was a real mouse, and that the two buttons were his little butt cheeks. But then I went to use the wheel and got totally grossed out, so I don't think I'll pretend that any more. -Nick Danger
Religionists have a built in "persecution complex." The hypocrisy
goes like this. It's OK for them to make fun of the thousands of
gods worshiped by other religions, but poke fun at or deny their
god, then they act like they're being herded into cattle cars and
taken to a concentration camp. Reason #10 why I loathe religion. -Pat from the Illinois Atheists list
Seek justice from tyrants not with your hat in your hand, but with a rifle in your fist. -Emiliano Zapata
It is better to die standing on one's feet, than to live on your knees. -Emiliano Zapata
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. -Ambrose Bierce
ID abbr. Stands for Intelligent Design which is the amusing conceit
that a superior being actually employed all of its advance knowledge,
skill, intellect to design the wisdom teeth, prostrate and appendix. This is, of course, perfectly reasonable if one assumes the aforementioned superior being has a nasty sense of humor and the character of a malign thug. -T.G. Browning
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, she is a restaurant manager and we'd never really talked about politics at all, but something came up and she said, 'Atheism and anarchist theory were the first things that gave me any hope in this world. They were the things that said we had the power within us to make things better. Everything else said we were either evil or helpless to fate.' -Cindy Ovenrack, Doris Zine [via Greta Christina]
Quite typically, the very idea that media corporations and their "journalist" employees are -- first and foremost -- eager to avoid offending those in political power and that they (therefore) particularly fear alienating the Right is something that, even after the last eight years, causes people like Time Warner employee Ana Marie Cox to scoff and cackle in disbelief, followed by empty-headed giggling at her own self-defensive "jokes". What is painfully self-evident to so many people -- that establishment media outlets exist to serve and curry favor with those in power -- is something that produces shocked disbelief from most of those in that "profession." They actually continue to believe that they're tough, independent-minded, adversarial checks on political power. The strength of that delusion -- the total inability to engage in even the most minimal self-reflection or self-criticism -- is one of the principal reasons why reforming the establishment press is virtually impossible and the creation of competing alternatives is the only real solution. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the “Who would you like to have a beer with?” poll question in 2004, and won reelection.
This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages – and loses – both necessary and unnecessary wars. -Sam Harris [article link]
Rudy Giuliani. There's only three things he mentions in a sentence -- a noun, a verb, and 9/11. There's nothing else! -Sen. Joe Biden [video link]
People like me, lucky enough to go to fancy schools, get taught that from a very early age that we can do anything, and that whenever we have an idea, people are going to want to listen to it. But there are millions of people in this country who go through life with people--their bosses, or spouses or parents--saying "Who cares what you think?" And one of the most profound effects of union organizing is to help people believe that others should care what they think... American capitalism has been good at a lot of things--creating wealth, pushing forward technological innovation--but it doesn't have a very strong record of providing dignity. We need a labor movement in this country because people deserve a living wage and healthcare, but we also need it more than ever because people have a right to feel like they matter. -Christopher Hayes [article link]
It's a funny thing about this election: in his campaign speeches, Barack Obama often includes a riff that steps through the great progressive social movements of the last few centuries--union organizing, women who reached for the ballot box and civil rights marchers who faced down dogs and firehoses. Watching the scene unfold in the intersection, where the young protesters danced to an instrumental version of Like a Virgin while being charged by increasingly angry police officers on horseback, it occurred to me that everyone likes protesters when they've been dead for a hundred years, and their radical agenda (like, say, the eight-hour work day, or women having the right to vote) has become normal and moderate. But when the protests are actually happening, not so much. -Christopher Hayes [article link]
We on the left, those who should be out there fighting for universal health care and total and immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, sit like lap dogs on the short leashes of our Democratic (read corporate) masters. We yap now and then, but we have forgotten how to snarl and bite. We have been domesticated. And until we punish the two main parties the way big corporations do, by withdrawing support and funding when our issues are ignored, we will remain irrelevant and impotent. I detest Bill O’Reilly, but he is right on one thing—we liberals are a spineless lot... The Democrats, who promise to end the war in Iraq, create jobs and provide universal health care, ignore these promises once election cycles are over. And we never make them pay. They gave us NAFTA, the destruction of welfare and increased military spending, and we gave them our vote... These politicians, including Obama, must begin to feel heat. They must learn that there is a cost to be paid for working on behalf of corporations and disempowering citizens. -Chris Hedges [article link]
Poe's Law: Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing. -Urban Dictionary [article link]
[in response to the "atheism is arrogant" meme being being pushed by Pastor Rick Warren and others]
Let me get this straight. You think the Creator of the Universe cares personally about your life, and that you know, with absolute certainty, what he wants for all of humankind. While I think that we’re basically alone, not very special, and are just fumbling through our random existence trying to do the best we can. And I’m the arrogant one? -Daniel Miessler [article link]
A Southern physician, Samuel Cartwright, argued that many of the slaves -- in America -- suffered from a form of mental illness, which he called 'drapetomania', diagnosed as the uncontrollable urge to escape from slavery. In the second half of the 20th-century, this illness, in the Third World, has usually been called communism. -William Blum
God is often likened to a loving father: He gives you life, He provides for your every need, and He silently watches over you while you and your boyfriend are having sex. -The Covert Comic
Oh, come on. If we only had sex with people we actually respected, most us would even have to give up masturbating. -The Covert Comic
Funny how times change. Had I clubbed two women and set fire to a large, foul, hairy beast 250,000 years ago, I'd likely have been chosen leader of my tribe. But just because I happen to be born at the wrong time, nightclub security called the cops and next thing you know, I'm Diablo's cell bitch for a few years. -Jerry L. Embry
[in reference to the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates] I would be with a bunch of Kennedy fans watching the debate and their comment would be, “He’s really slaughtering Nixon.” Then we would all go to another apartment, and the Nixon fans would say, “How do you like the shellacking he gave Kennedy?” And then I realized that each group loved their candidate so that a guy would have to be this blatant - he would have to look into the camera and say: “I am a thief, a crook, do you hear me, I am the worst choice you could ever make for the Presidency!” And even then his following would say, “Now there’s an honest man for you. It takes a big guy to admit that. There’s the kind of guy we need for President.” -Lenny Bruce
Though it is taboo to even say it, let's just admit it: if American politics and culture still react to the mass public at all, they react almost exclusively to the upper-middle professional class, and to almost no one else. That's not a good thing at all - in fact, it's pretty awful. But it is absolutely true.
For example, many historians believe antiwar pressure during the Vietnam War only started changing public policy after the draft lottery was created and upper-middle-class parents began worrying about their kids being sent off to battle. Business misbehavior was rarely a congressional focus when CEOs were cutting blue-collar wages. But when Enron's collapse hit the stock market and undermined the retirement savings of the upper middle class, lawmakers raced to pass corporate accountability legislation. Housing affordability and predatory lending received little attention in Washington when only the working poor couldn't pay the rent. But only now that mortgage defaults are roiling Wall Street is the problem deemed a crisis. -David Sirota, The Uprising
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal. -Karl Popper
When we say [conservatives are] 'market fundamentalists,' we're acting like they're willing to accept market outcomes. [In reality, conservatives have] rigged the deck. They've made sure that certain people come out ahead, that income flows upward, and that other people are put at a disadvantage -- and these things are built into the rules of the system. -Dean Baker [qtd. in this article]
[in reference to the desecration of a communion wafer by atheist blogger PZ Myers, for which he received a large volume of hate mail (and some death threats) from Catholics]
I won't mince words. Myers is an evil man. And as evil men, particularly evil intellectuals, tend to be, he is also a mad man as are most of his acolytes and followers.
Myers and Co. are enmeshed in these lies because they have chosen evil. It is evil--archetypally evil--to desecrate the Eucharist. It's the sort of stuff archetypal bad guys in the movies do. It's completely unnecessary gratuitous evil. -Mark Shea [article link]
We find the actions of University of Minnesota (Morris) Professor Paul Myers reprehensible, inexcusable, and unconstitutional. His flagrant display of irreverence by profaning a consecrated Host from a Catholic church goes beyond the limit of academic freedom and free speech... Attacking the most sacred elements of a religion is not free speech anymore than would be perjury in a court or libel in a newspaper... The freedom of religion means that no one has the right to attack, malign or grossly offend a faith tradition they personally do not have membership or ascribe allegiance. -an odd interpretation of the First Amendment from a statement by the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy [article link]
When my son turned 21, I thought we would do some manly ritual like go to a strip club and get wasted together, father and son, but he said all he wanted was some Tang. What a boring bachelor party that was. -Tidewater Joe
Rock and roll will never die, but that doesn't seem to stop it from begging me, for the love of God, to smother it with a pillow before VH1 reruns that damn Osmonds movie again. -Bob Van Voris
Why is it that when christians come to me with a computer problem, and I tell them to try prayer to fix it, that they won't even consider that as a plausible option. -Master_Rux [link]
These kind of fat jokes are rebellion for the gutless — offensive enough so that people can pretend to be daring, but not so offensive that they’re risking pissing off anyone who matters. Fat jokes today are what Polish jokes were in the 1970s. -Barry Deutsch [article link]
One of the most common claims about atheists (other than we're evil sinners) is that we hate god. The usual reply is that you can't hate something that doesn't exist. Well, yes and no. There is no being "God" that I direct my hatred toward, but I can hate the concept of such a god.
I hate the concept of a god who would create imperfect humanity, tempt them when they don't know the difference between good and evil, and then punish them and their descendents forever because they disobeyed when they didn't even yet know what that was. I hate teh concept of a god who would condone genocide and rape. I hate the concept of a god who would have rebellious teenagers and gay people stoned. I hate the concept of a god who would have the power to create the universe, but not the motivation to intervene in it to prevent suffering. I hate the concept of a god who would punish someone infinitely for a finite crime.
I hate what the concept of a god does to people. I hate how it makes them kill others who do not believe the same things as they do. I hate how it stifles their intellectual curiosity. I hate how it represses their natural sexuality. I hate how it wastes their time and their lives.
So yes, go ahead and accuse me of hating god. If theists were to prove the existence of god tomorrow, their job would not be done. The mere existence of a god (which is so unlikely anyway) does not mean that god would be worthy of worship. Don't tell me about god's plan, unless god's plan is to hide all evidence of himself, allow massive suffering, and just see what happens. In that case, god is just a big kid with ants and a magnifying glass. And we would all be justified in hating him, IF he existed. -Microbiologychick [article link]
For a group of people who are often dubbed "radical" by the mainstream media, most of the Green Party positions don't seem very radical at all. The beliefs espoused by the four candidates, as well as other delegates and observers, sound exactly like the kind of platforms that would be supported by the average Nation subscriber or Keith Olbermann fan. With the exception of some vague talk about how environmental policy and U.S. disengagement could lead to peace in the Middle East, the Greens steadfastly support almost all of the policies that Democrats vainly plead with their candidates to pursue. It does beg the niggling question, is it the Greens or the Democrats who are throwing their votes away every election year?
[...]
Despite some protests to the contrary, [2004 Green presidential candidate David] Cobb ran an unofficial "safe states" campaign and generally tried not to get in Democratic nominee John Kerry's way in swing states like Ohio, but Kerry blew it anyway. If Barack Obama wins the election this November, the Greens will have to continue building their party from the ground up, seeking to construct an expanding base from victories in school-board and city-council elections while pushing for spots in governors' mansions and state legislatures. If Obama loses, however, 2008 will represent the third consecutive election the Democrats should have won handily, and his rush toward the center on important issues like the FISA reauthorization and federal funding of faith-based initiatives may seem like a proven failure of a strategy trotted out for another embarrassing loss. Such consistent, catastrophic defeats would almost have to inspire reorganization on the left, and it could leave the Green Party in good strategic position. At the very least, it would be hard for Democrats to argue that voting Green is a waste of a ballot, when voting Democrat for twelve straight years netted left-wing voters next to nothing. -Bryan Miller [article link]
Critical political debates are at least as often driven not by the GOP/Democrat dichotomy, but by the split between the Beltway political establishment and the rest of the country. ...[A]ll of these assaults on our core civil liberties and the rule of law are not Republican attacks with Democrats fighting against them. They are attacks launched by the political establishment against the citizenry, and they ought to be responded to as such. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
When I was first running for Congress and it was the year of the woman, women all over the country were saying, "We want our seat at the table." And when I got to Washington, I saw that policy was really made in a room, at a table. There were real seats at the table. Well, imagine what has happened to public policy making now.
There is a real room, with a window and a door and there's two seats at the table. The window is for us to look through while our representatives make policy for us so we can see what they're doing. At the table, one seat is for the Democrats and one seat is for the Republicans. Now, we don't know who did it, but one of them put a lock on the door and slipped a key to the corporate lobbyists who can come and go at will and whisper what they want to the Democrats, and then whisper what they want to the Republicans, and the result is that we the people, who pay for those seats and determine who sits in them, want one thing, but because the corporate lobbyists can come and go at will, our values get overridden and our representatives give us something else. That's how we end up with everyone saying they're against the war and occupation, but war and occupation still gets funding. -Cynthia McKinney, 2008 Green Party presidential candidate [article link]
Don't expect me to keep a count of the major party flip flops from now to November. I'm sure there will be many. But, in the end, that's not the important issue to understand. What is more fundamental to understand is this: the other political parties find themselves in this flip-flop predicament because they have to appear to share our values while they serve someone else's. -Cynthia McKinney, 2008 Green Party presidential candidate [article link]
I never thought I would say this, but I think it might, in fact, be time for the United States to be held internationally to a tribunal. I never thought, in my lifetime, that I would say that, that we have become like Serbia, where an international tribunal has to come to force us to apply the rule of law. I never imagined that a Congress, a Democratic-led Congress would refuse to take actions, even with the preeminent institution of the Red Cross saying, this is clearly torture and torture is a war crime. They are still refusing to take meaningful action. So, we've come to this ignoble moment where we could be forced into a tribunal and forced to face the rule of law that we've refused to apply to ourselves. -Jonathan Turley, constitutional law professor at George Washington University [article link]
Given the situation of Iraq more than five years after the invasion, to speak of this urge to surge and its results as "success" or as "good news" is essentially obscene. Think of Iraq instead as a cocked gun. It's loaded, it's held to your head, and things are improving only to the extent that, recently, it hasn't gone off. -Tom Engelhardt [article link]
Good rule of thumb for gauging the success of a bachelor party: If the wedding is still on afterwards, it could have been better. -Scott E. Frank
[In reference to the recently-passed FISA bill, which gave the Bush administration almost everything it wanted on warrantless wiretapping and for all intents and purposes granted immunity to telecom companies that participated in it. The bill passed with support from many Democrats - including Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).]
What is most striking is that when the Congress was controlled by the GOP -- when the Senate was run by Bill Frist and the House by Denny Hastert -- the Bush administration attempted to have a bill passed very similar to the one that just passed today. But they were unable to do so. The administration had to wait until Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over Congress before being able to put a corrupt end to the scandal that began when, in December of 2005, the New York Times revealed that the President had been breaking the law for years by spying on Americans without the warrants required by law...
Will Democrats ever learn that the reason they are so easily depicted as "weak" isn't because they don't copy the Republican policies on national security enough, but rather, because they do so too much, and thus appear (accurately) to stand for nothing? Of course, many Democrats vote for these policies because they believe in them, not because they are "surrendering." Still, terms such as "bowing," "surrendering," "capitulating," and "losing" aren't exactly Verbs of Strength. They're verbs of extreme weakness --- yet, bizarrely, Democrats believe that if they "bow" and "surrender," then they will avoid appearing "weak." Somehow, at some point, someone convinced them that the best way to avoid appearing weak is to be as weak as possible. -Glenn Greenwald [article link
A 'Shrapnel Ceiling'? An analysis of terror attacks over the most recent five-year period reveals that female suicide bombers inflict less than 30% of the casualties attributed to their male counterparts. Is this glaring discrepancy the result of systematic inequalities in training and access to infrastructural support for female terrorists, or are the most lucrative terrorism targets being reserved primarily for suicide bombers who are men? -The Covert Comic
As an American conservative, while I oppose the invasion of privacy, I support the privatization of that invasion. -The Covert Comic
If you want to pull the major party that is closest to your way of thinking to the way you’re thinking, you must – you must – show them that you’re capable of not voting for them. If you don’t show them that you’re capable of not voting for them, they don’t have to listen to you, I promise you that. I worked within the Democratic party; I didn’t listen, or have to listen, to anything on the Left while I was working within the Democratic party, because the Left had nowhere to go. -Laurence O’Donnell, political analyst [qtd. in the movie An Unreasonable Man]
[in reference to the declaration by NPR's Mara Liasson that only Obama's "left-wing base" wants to withdraw from Iraq ASAP, despite a large amount of polling data showing the opposite, that it's actually a pretty mainstream position] This is the standard propaganda tactic of establishment media stars like Liasson, and she's hardly unique -- in this way or in any other. This is how they manipulate public opinion and coerce political officials to disregard the views of most Americans in favor of the fringe, establishment view. The views of the establishment pundit class are automatically labeled "the Center" even when they're rejected by majorities of "the American people." By contrast, views that are actually held by majorities but which the pundit class dislikes are demonized as those of "the Left." Thus, they argue, political candidates, in order to win elections, must embrace the views of the establishment and reject the view of most Americans. That's how a candidate "moves to the Center."
[...]
The fact that Mara Liasson feels perfectly comfortable going on television and baldly uttering a clear-cut falsehood -- that only "the left-wing base" favors unconditional withdrawal while "the American people" only want to leave Iraq when "facts on the ground" allow it -- demonstrates how pervasive this deceit is. She likely isn't even aware that what she's saying is false. The establishment class is so self-absorbed, so inculcated with faith in their own wisdom, that they automatically think that whatever they and their comrades believe is, by definition, what "the American people" believe, even when all empirical data proves that the opposite is true. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Today's uprising faces its own form of opposition from the politicians, pundits, and business executives who make up this nation's ruling class. There may be less physical brutality, but the stridency from the Establishment is just as pronounced - and the tactics may be more effective in their sophistication. David Sirota, The Uprising
If there's a lesson of the Howard Dean campaign, it is that the younger generation's definition of "progressive" is anyone who rips apart the other side. Dean was a moderate, yet he became the progressive candidate for president because people get off on stridency. -Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), qtd. in The Uprising by David Sirota
As hungry and desperate as people become when they are stranded, I can't imagine that the other castaways didn't at least discuss how satisfying a plate full of barbecued Gilligan might be. -Brad Simanek
Plenty of Beltway institutions already existed for the purpose of cheering on any and all Democrats no matter what they do. If that's all that blogs are supposed to do, then there is no need for them. From the beginning, blogs have been devoted to opposing Democratic complicity and capitulation -- to protesting the lack of Democratic responsiveness to their supporters -- every bit as much as opposing GOP corruption and media malfeasance. That role is at least as important as the others. -Glenn Greenwald [article link]
Even though she didn't have cable, had never seen the show and didn't know the characters, my girlfriend made me take her to see the "Sex and the City" movie. She couldn't figure out how the girls got their mutant superpowers. Turns out she had never seen "X-Men" either. -Ken Advent
The four-year-olds at my son's birthday party mistakenly thought it was a pinata, but I was actually just hanging Curious George in effigy. -Bob Van Voris
[in reference to the Fifth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill"] When you think about it, religion has never really had a big problem with murder. Not really. More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason. All you have to do is look at Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Kashmir, the Inquisition, the Crusades and the World Trade Center to see how seriously the religious folks take "Thou shalt not kill." The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable. It's negotiable, you know, it depends. It depends on who's doing the killing and who's getting killed. -George Carlin [video link]
Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.' -George Carlin
It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. -George Carlin
The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying – lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. You know what they want? Obedient workers – people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. -George Carlin [video link]
I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. -George Carlin
[From Seinfeld, "The Race"]
[Coleman's Department Store]
KID: I want a racing car set.
KRAMER: Ho ho ho ho A racing car set! (whisper) Those are assembled in Taiwan by kids like you. And these Coleman pigs, they sell it at triple the cost.
KID: But I want a racing car set.
KRAMER: You see kid, you're being bamboozled. These capitalist fat cats are inflating the profit margin and reducing your total number of toys.
KID: Hey, this guy's a COMMIE!
MICKEY: Hey, kid, quiet. Were did a nice little boy like you learn such a bad word like that? Huh?
KID: Commie!, Commie!, Commie! . . .
MICKEY: Santa is not a Commie. He just forgot how his good friend stuck his neck out for him to get him a good job like this. Didn't he Santa!
When I was back in college it was thrilling to see a woman's bra hanging from my doorknob. But now that I've been married for more than 20 years, it's kind of lost its luster. Now it just means the damn door isn't going to close properly. -Donald Johnson
Why is it that with all the advancements in technology over the last century, we're still using the advent of sliced bread as our comparison high-water mark? -Doug Sykes
Certainly, no evangelical or even fundamentalist today lives as Christians did in the centuries right after Christ was crucified -- no one, for example, is putting adulterers to death, as the Bible advises (Deuteronomy 22:22 and Leviticus 20:10). Among other practical problems, that would wipe out at least half of the country's Republican politicians and destroy the spiritual leadership of the evangelical community. -Jeremy Adam Smith [article link]
Now I know what you’re thinking, Bill. You can’t be saying that the Catholic Church is no better than this creepy (radical Mormon polygamist) Texas cult. For one thing, alter boys can’t even get pregnant. But really, what tripped up the little cult on the prairie was that they only abused hundreds of kids, not thousands all over the world. Cults get raided; religions get parades… If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you Pope. -Bill Maher
I was watching Andrea Mitchell… talking about debates, and she said, 'A sighing Gore, a sweating Nixon, a seemingly bored Bush, those unfortunate, unscripted moments that voters sometimes remember most.' And I thought, yeah, they remember most because you show it on a loop on your media 24 hours a friggin' day! That's why they remember it most! It's not the voters who — it's what the media pick — the media picks out a few moments and they show it over and over again. And then people go, 'Well, Gore sighed; he's toast.' -Bill Maher, on the media's influence on voter's perceptions
He went to Vietnam because as a young man, he thought that was the right thing to do. He saw what was going on in Vietnam, came back, threw his medals away, changed his mind. Is it wrong that a guy goes to the slaughterhouse and comes back a vegetarian? Isn't that what thinking people do? -Bill Maher, re: Senator John Kerry as "flip-flopper"
If I thought the Lord was speaking to me I'd check myself into Bellevue, and I think you should too. -Bill Maher on Larry King Live, in response to a called-in question if he would become a believer if the Lord spoke to him
If you can look at the war in Iraq, the melting environments and the descent of America into "idiocracy," and still think our biggest problems are boobies during the Super Bowl and the "war on Christmas," then you don't have values, you have issues. -Bill Maher
Whenever you combine a secretive compound, religion, and weirdos in pioneer outfits, there's gonna be some child fucking going on. -Bill Maher
The people who are to blame are the Democrats for not having the Ralph Nader platform. Ralph Nader is right. I would welcome the Democratic Party co-opting Ralph Nader instead of blaming Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader's big issue is that America, our democracy, is being slowly strangled by the influence of corporations and lobbyists and money in politics. And that is the root of all our problems. Nothing in this country ever gets done without somebody getting paid off. Everybody talks about how everything changed after 9/11. No, nothing really changed after 9/11. We don't really have adequate protection of the homeland because it's still a matter of pork-barrel politics. -Bill Maher
I have a high state of resentment for the conformity in this country. If you're not married and having children, it's like your life is empty or you're a communist meanie. -Bill Maher
Women cannot complain about men anymore until they start getting better taste in them. -Bill Maher
This week, an ailing American bald eagle was found to be dying from mercury poisoning. Republicans immediately tried to blame it on the eagle's lifestyle choices. But it's worth noting that also this week, the White House threatened to veto limits on mercury pollution. Now, pure evil would be if George Bush sat around the White House saying, "Let's poison eagles!" And even I don't believe George Bush would do that. Cheney would do that. And even he is not pure evil. Dick Cheney doesn't hate poor children and caribou. They're just in the way. -Bill Maher
Perhaps the most amazing thing to me about the belief of many that George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns. Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That's almost too self-evident to state. But he deserves much more than impeachment. I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That's just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he'd still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths? For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did...
If Bush, in fact, intentionally misled this nation into war, what is the proper punishment for him? Since many Americans routinely want criminal defendants to be executed for murdering only one person, if we weren't speaking of the president of the United States as the defendant here, to discuss anything less than the death penalty for someone responsible for over 100,000 deaths would on its face seem ludicrous. But we are dealing with the president of the United States here. -Vincent Bugliosi [article link]
Some days you’re the dog, some days you’re the fire hydrant. And some days, when the matter transference machine malfunctions, you’re the dog and the fire hydrant, screaming in unimaginable pain. -The Covert Comic
When I was a little boy, like a lot of kids at that age I had a special friend who was imaginary. But time passes, and you grow up and realize all your friends are imaginary. -The Covert Comic
[in reference to John McCain] It is dangerous for a democracy when a presidential candidate can lie with impunity, change positions on a whim, and physically and verbally threaten others and virtually none of it is reported by a besotted media eagerly awaiting the next moment when he might slap their backs in friendship. -Cliff Schecter, author of The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn't
My support for divestment comes from my belief in the way change happens. I used to think it was about convincing Jews and Israelis to come to their senses, but take the Israeli population-- they are sympathetic, but that's not enough to make things happen. I think circumstances need to be created that render the status quo not only "unpleasant" (as many Israelis would call it now) but "difficult" or even "painful" (not necessarily physically) before you see change happen. Boycotts and divestment are nonviolent ways of pressuring Israel to comply, not simply hoping it will or asking for it to happen. I think we need to use the same framework in addressing mainstream Jewish people in the U.S. The change will not be voluntary. Remember the Martin Luther King quotation: "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." If we focused as much on Palestinian rights as pleasing the oppressing community in this case, we could have justice already. I think we need to acknowledge that it will not be comfortable; we need to be ready to step out of our comfort zones, even to be called "anti-Semitic." -Anna Baltzer [article link]
I watch what I do to see what I really believe. -Sr. Helen Prejean
I read that children in America’s inner city schools confront death and hopelessness on a daily basis. It’s good to know they’re finally teaching existentialist philosophy in America’s inner city schools. -The Covert Comic
A wise saying in a trying moment is like bread during a famine: better keep it to yourself, or people will tear you apart. -The Covert Comic
I heard [Edward Peck, former US Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of ROnald Reagan's terrorism task force] on an interview yesterday did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end, he pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said Americas chickens, are coming home to roost.
We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.
We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.
We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.
We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.
We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock.
We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.
We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.
Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.
We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.
Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that. -Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sept. 16, 2001 [source]
If democracy is so good, why do we have to go to other countries and try to jam it down their throats with a gun? Stay here and make democracy work. If it’s good you don’t have to force it on others, they’ll steal it. -Dick Gregory
...even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge. - H.L. Mencken
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 kills 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 protesters 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 defense 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. Defenseless 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 people as possible. -August J. Pollak [article link]
There is a nasty conspiracy theory going around that your country is run by Jews — a cabal of Jews who set the domestic agenda and run the media. Would you like to put that to rest now? -John Oliver from The Daily Show, to Dan Gillerman, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. [video link]
Admitting you have a problem is the first step toward getting medicated for it. -Jim Evarts
Four years into a war fought to eliminate a nonexistent threat, we all have renewed appreciation for the power of the Big Lie: people tend to believe false official claims about big issues, because they can't picture their leaders being dishonest about such things. But there's another political lesson I don't think has sunk in: the power of the Little Lie - the small accusation invented out of thin air, followed by another, and another, and another. Little Lies aren't meant to have staying power. Instead, they create a sort of background hum, a sense that the person facing all these accusations must have done something wrong. -Paul Krugman
CNN would give a show to a Klansman if it they could sell enough advertising. All of the hypocrisy swirling around the Don Imus “controversy” is driving me nuts. The media as a whole (especially CNN & Fox) have no place to criticize Imus for the offensive things he said. That’s why they hire loudmouths like Imus in the first place. We’ve seen this same cycle repeat itself ad infinitum and if it’s not Imus, it’s Glenn Beck, or Nancy Grace, or Howard Stern, or those pinheads at Fox News. When all of the forced apologizes have been doled out and the boycotts lose steam, everyone knows this is a net positive for the entertainment news industry because people are going to tune in just to see what the racist asshole in the cowboy hat says next. -Greg Saunders [ article link]
Man, the white man thinks he's losing the country. You watch the news: "We're losing everything. We're fucking losing. Affirmative action, and illegal aliens... and we're fucking losing the country." Losing? Shut the fuck up. White people ain't losing shit. If y'all losing, who's winning? It ain't us. It ain't us. Have you driven around this motherfucker? It ain't us. Shit, there ain't a white man in this room that would change places with me. None of you would change places with me. And I'm rich! That's how good it is to be white. -Chris Rock
One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be appreciated in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while condemning scientists and other non-believers for their intellectual arrogance. There is, in fact, no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer: the creator of the universe takes an interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend eternity in hell... An average Christian, in an average church, listening to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse - and there have been some extraordinarily arrogant scientists. -Sam Harris, Letter to a Chrsitian Nation
...[W]e should remember why American health financing is in its current mess. It's not because Americans are medical moochers -- we visit the doctor and hospital less often than do people in other rich nations, despite having poorer overall health on many measures. It's not because we burden employers with regulations -- the United States is the only rich country where there isn't a basic requirement of coverage. And it's not because our insurance is overly generous -- ask the millions of uninsured and underinsured whether they feel coddled. The problem is that health security in the United States is hostage to the choices of insurers and employers, rather than to the choices of the American people. If and when that finally changes, affordable, quality health care for all Americans will no longer be a pipe dream. It will be the American dream. -Jacob Hacker [article link]
I agree with the libertarians that freedom from government intrusion is a good thing - reproductive freedom, for example, and freedom from goverment censoring boards. But other freedoms matter as well - freedom from the threat of hunger and poverty, for example. Freedom from having a political process dominated entirely by the wealthy and by corporations. Freedom from discrimination. None of these freedoms, however, seem worth protecting to libertarians. -Barry Deutsch [article link]
The danger of creationism is that, like the pseudo-science of Nazi eugenics, it allows facts to be accepted or discarded according to the dictates of a preordained ideology. Creationism removes the follower from the rational, reality-based world. Signs, miracles and wonders occur not only in the daily life of Christians but in history, science, medicine and logic. The belief system becomes the basis to understand the world. Random facts and data are collected and made to fit into this belief system or discarded. When facts are treated as if they were opinions, when there is no universal standard to determine truth, in law, in science, in scholarship, or in the reporting of the events of the day, the world becomes a place where people can believe what they want to believe, where there is no possibility of reaching any conclusion not predetermined by those who interpret the official, divinely inspired text. This is the goal of creationists. -Chris Hedges [article link]
I still think one of mankind's greatest inventions is that little brown strip that appears in the bottom of my underwear to tell me when it's time to wash them. -Michael F.
Originally the term "cowboy" was probably an insult. And most likely a few early cowboys protested, saying, "I'm not a 'cowboy,' I'm a mounted livestock management professional." Those guys were probably shot. -The Covert Comic
Arrogance has been the most consistent hallmark of George W. Bush's presidency. His administration's philosophy has been consistent: We can do any damn thing we want. We can invade Iraq. We can blow off the Geneva Conventions. We can listen to your private phone calls, Mr. and Ms. America. We can arrest anybody we want, hold them as long as we want, and we don't even have to tell them why, much less file formal charges or hold a trial. We can even defy the laws of science, or at least ignore the ones that annoy us, like that whole greenhouse effect thing. We can pose with the troops for photo-ops when they come back from war grievously wounded, and then basically forget about them. And we don't have to explain ourselves, either. The nerve of anyone to even ask us. -Gene Robinson
[at the end of a long report on Israeli actions in a West Bank town] I apologize if these reports of detention, raids, human shields, and the obstruction of medical treatment seem repetitive. I tell them
not only because I believe they each deserve to be heard, but more
crucially because with enough reports the seemingly arbitrary
harassment can no longer be dismissed as isolated incidents or
simply unfortunate side effects of conflict, but must be recognized
as unspoken policies of the Israeli Army. If the intention is
security for Israeli citizens, these policies are not only
ineffective but counter-productive in my opinion. If the intention
is to scare the people of Nablus, then this is terrorism and should
be recognized and condemned as such. -Anna Baltzer
Can anyone help me figure this out? Every month or so, my wife becomes very irritable and for a few days wants nothing to do with me. Call me naive or superstitious, but I think she maybe turning into a werewolf. -Wiley
I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it. -George Carlin
What we have to remember about America's half-baked propaganda machine is that, dumb as it is, it always keeps its eye on the ball. The war in Iraq is lost, everyone knows that, but there are future wars to think about. When a war goes wrong, the reason can never that the invasion was simply a bad, immoral decision, a hopelessly fucked-up idea that even a child could have seen through. No, we always have to make sure that the excuse for the next war is woven into the autopsy of the current military failure. That's why to this day we're still hearing about how Vietnam was lost because a) the media abandoned the war effort b) the peace movement undermined the national will and c) the public, and the Pentagon, misread the results of the Tet offensive, seeing defeat where there actually was a victory.
After a few decades of that, we were ready to go to war again -- all we had to do, we figured, was keep the cameras away from the bloody bits, ignore the peace movement, and blow off any and all bad news from the battlefield. And we did all of these things for quite a long time in Iraq, but, maddeningly, Iraq still turned out to be a failure.
That left the war apologists in a bind. If after fixing all of the long-held Vietnam excuses Iraq could still blow up in our faces, that must mean that we not only misjudged Iraq, but we were wrong about why Vietnam failed, too. Now, if we're ever going to pull one of these stunts again, we're going to need to come up with a grander, even more outlandish excuse for why both wars were horrible, bloody failures. -Matt Taibbi [article link]
Rico's Raelian Revelation obs. The only difference between a religion and a cult is clout. -T.G. Browning
Youngerman's Concern maxim Faith and purity are inadequate substitutes for Kevlar and good cover. -T.G. Browning
Standing in the back of the church, clad in my beautiful designer gown, looking at the expressions of awe on the guests' faces, it occurred to me the bride might be really upset that we both showed up wearing the same dress. -Kimberly Ciesiolka
The message from Washington, D.C. to all of us out here in the heartland is very clear: Our government is the exclusive gated community of Big Money interests, their appointed pawns in Congress, and a select group of self-declared "experts" in the media and at think tanks (which are, of course, funded by many of those same Big Money interests). Inside this gated community, actually listening to or shaping policy on behalf of the vast majority of Americans is considered either laughably outdated or disgustingly unsavory. This is why we have a House lawmaker [Rep. Stephanie Herseth (D-SD)] running to reporters attacking efforts to end the war as "overreacting to public opinion." This is why we have a Vice President who goes on national television declaring that what the public wants "doesn't matter." This is why the largest newspaper in America continues to publish a columnist [David Brooks of the NYT] who says voters shouldn't decide elections. This is why, months after being elected to the majority on an antiwar mandate, we have a congressional Democratic Party that still refuses to do anything to end - or even slow down - the war. Because underneath all the platitudes and rhetoric, Washington, D.C. is a place that hates democracy. -David Sirota [article link]
I don't care how optimistic you may be, a diaper is never half empty. -Cornelius Robinson
[from The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins]
David Mills, in his admirable book Atheist Universe, tells a story which you would dismiss as an unrealistic caricature of police bigotry if it were fiction. A Christian faith-healer ran a 'Miracle Crusade' which came to Mills's home town once a year. Among other things, the faith-healer encouraged diabetics to throw away their insulin, and cancer patients to give up their chemotherapy and pray for a miracle instead. Reasonably enough, Mills decided to organize a peaceful demonstration to warn people. But he made the mistake of going to the police to tell them of his intention and ask for police protection against possible attacks from supporters of the faith-healer. The first police officer to whom he spoke asked, 'Is you gonna protest fir him or 'gin him?' (Meaning for or against the faith-healer). When Mills replied 'Against him,' the policeman said that he himself planned to attend the rally and intended to spit personally in Mills's face as he marched past Mills's demonstration.
Mills decided to try his luck with a second police officer. This one said that if any of the faith-healer's supporters violently confronted Mills, the officer would arrest Mills because he was 'trying to interfere with God's work.' Mills went home and tried telephoning the police station, in the hope of finding more sympathy at a senior level. He finally connected to a sergeant who said, 'To hell with you, Buddy. No policeman wants to protect a goddamned atheist. I hope somebody bloodies you up good.' Apparently adverbs were in short supply at this police station, along with the milk of human kindness and a sense of duty. Mills relates that he spoke to about seven or eight police officers that day. None of them was helpful, and most of them directly threatened Mills with violence.
[This is an actual unmodified letter to the editor which appeared in the Peoria Journal Star, in case you're unconvinced of the harm that religious dogma does to our society. Alas, I didn't happen to take the date down - all I remember is that it was from mid-2007. -ed.]
Global warming has never been proven. The North Pole is losing ice but the South Pole is freezing over. I believe that the Earth needs a balance. God is correcting the balance so the Earth doesn't wobble out of orbit. God said He would never flood the Earth again and He is in control. The liberals just want control.
Ken Juchems
Pekin
Christian values should dominate our government... Politicians who do not use the Bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office. -Beverly LaHaye, Concerned Women for America
megakill n. During slow news days or imploding public scandals, the amount of coverage CNN and Fox News will assign to a news story, often non-stop and very similar to being inside an infinite loop in a computer. -T.G. Browning
The time to ask ‘Cat got your tongue?’ isn’t when someone’s being silent; it’s when they’re screaming incoherently with a line of blood dribbling down their chin. -The Covert Comic
I wonder how people would feel if they saw animal ‘fashion models’ parading down a runway dressed in human skins... Because if people like that sort of thing, I’m in possession of a video that could make some serious money. -The Covert Comic
[Chris] Bowers wrote an impassioned piece on MyDD expressing his frustration with Obama's habit of setting up unnamed left-wingers as foils to his own sober moderation. (In front of a New York magazine reporter, Obama told supporters that he's "not one of those people who cynically believes Bush went in only for the oil.") "Why," Bowers asks, "is it necessary for Obama to preface his opposition to the war by saying he isn't like some crazy, left-wing stereotype that he never names or quotes?" -Christopher Hayes, quoted out of context [article link]
Because Tom Friedman keeps saying "just wait another few months" on Iraq, many have started referring short-hand to "Friedmans" as time periods of doing the same thing that people in Washington perpetually ask the public to accept as our country goes down the drain. A "Friedman" is the political version of the mantra from the movie the Money Pit where the builder keeps telling Tom Hanks to wait "just another two weeks" before everything is OK. Now, as President Bush this week asks Congress to reauthorize his "fast track" authority to negotiate trade deals with no labor/enviro/human rights standards, the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party is on the Hill begging Congress to accept the demand in order to let our current trade policy "work" for a few more Friedmans. -David Sirota [article link]
Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who had to drown His own? -Bertrand Russell
Can a single man force a nation to fight a war it does not want to fight, expand a war it does not want to expand - possibly to other countries? If he can, is that nation any longer a democracy in any meaningful sense? -The Nation editors [article link]
When I turned 40, I decided to clean up my act and gave up drinking and smoking. Man, it was tough -- there's no way I'd have gotten through that period without my heroin. -Kevin Freels
I think of all the personal, potentially embarrassing questions a teenage daughter might ask her father, the scariest has got to be, "Daddy, why are you watching that stupid Olsen twins movie on TV again?" -Chris MacEachen
I look to nature to find which diets actually work. I suggest the squirrel diet, because you almost never see a fat squirrel. It's easy: Just lose 99 percent of the food you hid around the house. -Carolyn Mansager
[in reference to College Republican chickenhawks] The thought of enlisting isn't even an issue of avoidance... it's not even something that crosses their mind. -August J. Pollak
It's encouraging to know the makers of Soylent Green would be forced by today's FDA guidelines to include the phrase "Ingredients: People" in the nutritional disclosure. However, I sense most shoppers would just see "Now with no trans fats!" splashed on the front and drop a few cans in their carts anyway. -Brad Simanek
So what will happen if Bush's new plan "succeeds" militarily over the next six months? Sunnis will become less secure as their militias are dismantled. Shiite militias will lower their profile on the streets and remain as they are now, ensconced within the Iraqi army and police. That will surely make Sunnis less likely to support the new Iraq. Shiite political leaders, on the other hand, will be emboldened. They refused to make any compromises - on federalism, de-Baathification, oil revenues and jobs - in 2003 when the United States was dominant, in 2005 when the insurgency was raging, and in 2006 when they took over the government fully. Why would they do so as they gain the upper hand militarily? -Fareed Zakaria
I think "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a wonderful philosophy, but I'll bet it just confuses masochists. -Kent Davidson
[Senate majority leader Harry Reid's] strategy [endorsing escalation of the occupation of Iraq] is as obvious as it is opportunistic: This is a Republican war, goes the thinking, and the Dems will give the Republicans all the rope they need to hang themselves in '08. This seems a deeply cynical position, when you consider that the Pentagon just announced that attacks on American and Iraqi targets are at their highest levels, with a 22 percent leap from just this summer. The difference between taking a position and positioning oneself is what determines leadership; if the Dems fail to provide real leadership on ending this war, they will deservedly lose the next election. -Robert Scheer [article link]
If experience has taught me anything, there are two words to remember when staging a live nativity scene: no dingoes. -Bob Van voris
How long a minute lasts depends on what side of the bathroom door
you're on.
The next time you feel like complaining, remember: Your garbage
disposal probably eats better than thirty percent of the people in
this world.
I worked at a factory owned by Germans, at coal pits owned by Frenchmen, and at a chemical plant owned by Belgians. There I discovered something about capitalists. They are all alike, whatever the nationality. All they wanted from me was the most work for the least money that kept me alive. So I became a communist. –Nikita Khrushchev
citizen n. Any person over the age of 18 and gullible enough to
believe that the main purpose of government is to govern, not tax. -T.G. Browning
habeas corpus legal term (from Medieval Latin, literally produce the
body) One of the legal foundations of law as practiced in Europe and
North America. Some modern legal experts, including former
Attorney-General John Ashcroft, whose legal scholarship is
unquestioned in timid circles, have taken the position that the word
habeas should be used in the sense of manufacture, rather then
deliver. The current Attorney-General, Alberto Gonsales is of the
opinion that the constitution of the United States only allows the
revocation of the right of habeas corpus, not the existence, thereby
establishing a catch 22 situation for posterity and official amusement. -T.G. Browning
sweet sixteen: TV show. A display of diseased decadence wherein a Paris Hilton wannabe is given full sway to exhibit her puerile petulance for roughly thirty minutes. This show is probably the best argument for class warfare in existence. -T.G. Browning
If we were to judge the United States by its penal policies, we would perceive a strange beast: a Christian society that believes in neither forgiveness nor redemption. -George Monbiot [article link
It's also the role of elections in properly run Western democracies to remind people that things won't really change at all. You can set your watch by the speed with which the new crowd lowers expectations and announces What Is Not to Be Done. Nowhere is there an item on the Democrats' "must do" list saying, "Reverse plunge toward fascism, Restore habeus corpus and the Bill of Rights." Pelosi says impeachment is off the table. "Bold new vision" these days means Pelosi pledging a drive to notch up the minimum wage. -Alexander Cockburn, in reference to the Democratic victory in the 2006 midterms [article link]
Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate. –Graham Greene
"Free market" and "free trade" are both marketing phrases. There is no such thing as a "free market" because every corporation in America profits thanks to subsidized public goods like education, roads, the electric power grid, and (albeit, too permissive) regulatory management of the stock market, which imposes stability and deters dishonest behavior. So-called "free trade" is a mirage -- nothing is free about a global trading regime that has iron-clad protection for capital investment and corporate intellectual property, and thrives on controlling and suppressing wages of workers, particularly in China. -Johnathan Tasini [article link]
Why not change horses in mid stream? It's not like you're going to get any wetter. -The Covert Comic
Just my luck -- judging by the itching and the rash, I think I'm allergic to prostitutes. -Wiley
A man doesn't realize what evil he's capable of rendering with his bare hands until he reaches day six of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" as sung by Muppets. -Brad Simanek
There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning. -Warren Buffett
When I'm in doubt, I always ask myself, "What would Jesus do?" I should have also reminded myself that this isn't Galilee and handing out free fish to everyone would cost me my job at Long John Silver's. -Brad Simanek
If the IRS wanted to put something really useful on their website, how about a list of countries that *don't* have an extradition treaty with the U.S.? -Brad Osberg
For over a year now, polls have shown that the majority of Americans believe President Bush deliberately misrepresented prewar intelligence. Executive branch officials who deliberately mislead Congress and the public intending to influence congressional action have committed a federal crime. That means that roughly 100 million Americans believe Bush has committed a crime, yet most, like Kitty Genovese's neighbors, are just passive bystanders -- although not, I believe, due to indifference.
Indeed, many of us are just watching it happen because we feel powerless to stop it. Hundreds of thousands of people have, in effect, called 911, but not even Democrats in Congress have been willing to answer the phone. It is not that they don't have enough information; it is, our Democratic representatives say, because it is not good political strategy.
The proposition that it is not good political strategy to insist that government officials obey the law is highly debatable. More important, strategizing in the face of an ongoing crime is wrong. Ask any legislator whether he would strategize about possible political fallout before intervening to stop a crime that was occurring in front of his eyes and the response would be, "Of course not." But that is exactly what's happening right now. -Elizabeth de la Vega [article link]
Race may be a fiction... but so what? Somehow, realtors know which houses not to show "black" people, car salesmen know to charge "blacks" more and cops can spot a "black youth" blocks away... Even if they wanted to, most blacks can't walk away from their identity. Too many nonblacks want to keep them there. -Katha Pollitt [article link]
Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, "atheist" is a term that should not ever exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non astrologer" or a "non-alchemist". We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. An atheist is simply a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87 percent of the population) claiming to "never doubt the existence of God" should be obliged to present evidence for his existence-and, indeed, for his BENEVOLENCE, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. -Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. -Dan Barker
While the popular understanding of anarchism is of a violent, anti-State movement, anarchism is a much more subtle and nuanced tradition then a simple opposition to government power. Anarchists oppose the idea that power and domination are necessary for society, and instead advocate more co-operative, anti-hierarchical forms of social, political and economic organisation. -L. Susan Brown
Never get in a shit fight with an idiot. Even if you win you're covered with shit, and the idiot thinks it's funny. -via Dan Kalnes
How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? Here's how "respectable" politicians, pundits, and professors play the game: When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand wringing about the younger generations' lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history. In the United States, we hear constantly about the deep wisdom of the founding fathers, the adventurous spirit of the early explorers, the gritty determination of those who "settled" the country -- and about how crucial it is for children to learn these things. But when one brings into historical discussions any facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable -- such as the genocide of indigenous people as the foundational act in the creation of the United States -- suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, "Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?" -Robert Jensen [article link]
The argument that we are failing in competitiveness because of regulations is incomplete. We’re failing in competitiveness because of failed business models and the lack of smart investment in technology. General Motors is not failing because of regulations but because it hasn’t produced good products. -Eliot Spitzer, New York Attorney General and governor-elect
You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough to open the gates of opportunity. -Lyndon Johnson
"The state can't give you freedom, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free... -Utah Phillips
Bill Hicks: You do a commercial, you're off the artistic rollcall forever, end of story. Ok? You're another corporate fucking shill, you're another whore at the capitalist gangbang, and if you do a commercial, there's a price on your head, everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink... [Jay Leno] selling Doritos on fucking TV, what a fucking whore, and not even when he needed the money, either. I mean, if you're a young actor, ok, I'll look the other way. But, guy makes three million a year, he decides to hawk Doritos to make more money. You don't got enough money, you fucking whore? You gotta sell snacks to fucking bovine America now? [...] And yes, I have been offered commercials, so I'm not jealous. And I turned them all down because, I'm not a salesman. And I don't need money that is built on blood. Audience member: Who offered to you? Bill Hicks: Well, in England I did this, this is really classic England, I got offered, this is the product, ready? "Orange Drink." I'm going, what's the name of it? "Orange Drink!" [...] I said, "Yeah, you've really got my act down good, guys! That'll be great: 'You know, when I'm done ranting about elite power that rules the planet under a totalitarian government that uses the media in order to keep people stupid, my throat gets parched! And that's why I drink Orange Drink!'"
So, anyhoo, how 'bout that President of ours, huh? This week continues the observation from the comedy spectacle of the year that was Bush's Rumsfeld-go-bye-bye press conference that, quite inarguably, he lied his ass off for political purposes. To accentuate this, he actually said, directly to a reporter asking about it, that he lied his ass off for political purposes. And the media, much like our protagonist, feels it is still an unholy sacrelidge to consider the possibily that, perhaps, the President lied his ass off for political purposes. -August J. Pollak
Perhaps what the nation has liked most is not what Obama has said or done but what he is. In short, Obama is a black man who does not scare white people. This is mostly not Obama's fault. He is who he is. He has a life to live, a job to do and a book to promote. He cannot be held responsible for a white paranoia that - outside the music, sports and entertainment industries - demands: If you have to be black, then please don't be too black. -Gary Younge [article link]
I decided not to take my company up on that life insurance offer. My wife has incentive enough as it is. -Tidewater Joe
Better to be asked what drug you're on, than what drug you're off. -The Covert Comic
Religion is the one area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give good evidence and valid arguments in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet these beliefs regularly determine what they live for, what they will die for, and - all too often - what they will kill for. Consequently, we are living in a world in which millions of grown men and women can rationalize the violent sacrifice of their own children by recourse to fairy tales. -Sam Harris [article link]
There's no sense beating a dead horse -- but if you've reached the point where you even seriously consider that abusing a dead animal might improve your lot in life, I say go ahead and give it a shot. -Anthony Myers
The major parties could conduct live human sacrifices on their podiums during prime time, and I doubt that anybody would notice. -Dave Barry
Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver. -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills. -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Christian, n. One who follows the teachings of Christ so long as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin. -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
...if ANYONE should be touting the Environmental Line it's Conservatives. What part of Environmentalism ISN'T essentially conservative??? "Conservation". "Efficiency". "Zero-Waste". "Minimal imputs and outputs". It's fucking ECONOMY. -Charlotte Ashley
If churches don't have to pay taxes, they also can't call the fire
department when they catch fire. "Sorry Reverend, that's one of those
services that goes along with with paying in. I'll use the fire
department I pay for, YOU can pray for rain." -Bill Maher [video link]
It's a truism that most American Jews are liberal Democrats. For decades, neoconservatives have argued that they are bucking their own interests in staying true to these values and should join the Republicans, where, together with right-wing conservatives they will insure that support for a fair settlement for the Palestinians will remain as low as taxes on the extremely wealthy. So far, these arguments have had almost no effect on Jews, who supported Democrats as loyally as any single constituency in the last election. But the argument has worked on the leaders of many Jewish organizations. What we are left with, therefore, is a paradox. American Jews are liberals; they support Democrats. But Jewish organizations strategize with Republicans on how to smear these same Democrats, supported by the funds of these same liberal Democratic Jews. -Eric Alterman [article link]
To speak of "limits to growth" under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be "persuaded" to limit growth than a human being can be "persuaded" to stop breathing. Attempts to "green" capitalism, to make it "ecological", are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth. -Murray Bookchin
The creepy spectacle of watching one warrior after the next insist that we must risk other people's lives and bomb more people so that we don't feel girlish and scared and submissive is repugnant enough, in itself, to have to witness on a daily basis. But the fact that these same people are the ones whose deep, irrational fears of The Terrorist override virtually all other considerations, and who demand that we change our nation and relinquish all of the values and liberties which have always defined it and which make it worth fighting for, all because they believe that doing so is necessary to allow them some marginally greater chance of avoiding death, renders their accusations and warrior dances -- on top of everything else -- an exercise in the grossest and most absurd hypocrisy. -Glenn Greenwald
While more strippers and more beer are undoubtedly a good thing, I've found it's much easier to convince your boss that you deserve a raise if you just leave that part out. -Davejames
A boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a boss on earth, therefore if God did exist, he would have to be abolished. -Mikhail Bakunin
If the capitol building were on fire, the Democrats would be talking about possibly installing a firehose sometime next week, and the Republicans would be saying that we shouldn't do anything because there's no scientific consensus that fire damages buildings. -Rich Whitney, Green candidate for Illinois governor
This principle is just axiomatic -- the fact that someone is accused by the Bush administration of being a terrorist or suspected by the administration of working with terrorists does not, in fact, mean that they are a "terrorist." There is a distinction between (a) being accused or suspected by the Bush administration of working with Al Qaeda and (b) actually being in cahoots with Al Qaeda and being a "terrorist." -Glenn Greenwald
quoted out of context phr. Correctly quoted but generally incompletely so, if characterized by scientists, consumer advocates or
evangelically enhanced public advocates. If so characterized by
creationists, politicians, faith healers, police spokesmen, religious
figures, mafia bosses, or wandering gypsies, the quote is not only
accurate, complete, and unambiguous, but also remarkably easy to
understand. -T.G. Browning
The President of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to someone through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim anymore ludicous or offensive. -Sam Harris
Each of the material comforts I enjoy, each thought which I have had the leisure to acquire, has been bought with the blood, suffering, or toil of millions. -Petr Lavrov, 1868
[T]here is... overwhelming evidence that most people don't take time to read their own Bibles. People will listen to their pastors and to Christian radio broadcasters. They will skim through easy-to-read pamphlets and perhaps look up the one or two verses printed therein, but they don't actually read their Bibles and make up their own minds on issues such as abortion. They merely listen to others who quote a verse to support a view they heard from someone else. By definition, most Christians, rather than reading for themselves, follow the beliefs of a Culture of Christianity -- and many of the Culture's beliefs are based on one or two verses of the Bible, often taken out of context. -Brian Elroy McKinley [article link]
The candidate can choose one of two platforms, but remember - no substitutions. For example, do you support universal health care? Then you must also want a ban on assault weapons. Pro-limited government? Congratulations, you are also anti-abortion. Luckily, all human opinion falls neatly into one of the two clearly defined camps. Thus, the two-party system elegantly reflects the bichromatic rainbow that is American political thought. -Jon Stewart, "America: The Book"
"My country right or wrong" is like saying, "My mother drunk or sober." -G.K. Chesterson
If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace. -John Lennon
Our only crime consisted of decreeing our own laws and applying them to all without exception. Our crime is having enacted an agrarian reform which affected the interests of the United Fruit Company. Our crime is wanting to have our own route to the Atlantic, our own electric power and our own docks and ports. Our crime is our patriotic wish to advance, to progress, to win economic independence to match our political independence. We are condemned because we have given our peasant population land and rights. -Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, democratically-elected president of Guatemala, during a United States sponsored coup of his country in 1954
"Islamo-fascism" looks like an analytic term, but really it's an emotional one, intended to get us to think less and fear more. It presents the bewildering politics of the Muslim world as a simple matter of Us versus Them, with war to the end the only answer, as with Hitler. If you doubt that every other British Muslim under the age of 30 is ready to blow himself up for Allah, or that shredding the Constitution is the way to protect ourselves from suicide bombers, if you think that Hamas might be less popular if Palestinians were less miserable, you get cast as Neville Chamberlain, while Bush plays FDR. "Islamo-fascism" rescues the neocons from harsh verdicts on the invasion of Iraq ("cakewalk... roses... sweetmeats... Chalabi") by reframing that ongoing debacle as a minor chapter in a much larger story of evil madmen who want to fly the green flag of Islam over the capitals of the West. Suddenly it's just a detail that Saddam wasn't connected with 9/11, had no WMDs, was not poised to attack the United States or Israel -- he hated freedom, and that was enough. It doesn't matter, either, that Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites seem less interested in uniting the umma than in murdering one another. With luck we'll be so scared we won't ask why anyone should listen to another word from people who were spectacularly wrong about the biggest politico-military initiative of the past thirty years, and their balding heads will continue to glow on our TV screens for many nights to come. On to Tehran! -Katha Pollitt [article link]
What are you implying Jon? That O’Reilly and Geraldo are narcissists enthralled in their own overblown egos - projecting their own petty insecurities on to the world around them, inventing false enemies for the sole purpose of bolstering their sense of self-importance, itty bitty Nixons minus the relevance or a hint of vision? How dare you!" -Stephen Colbert
What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing ... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance ... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he'll get all the great women. -Aaron Altman, from the movie Broadcast News
Consumers of news lack the time, expertise, and, in many cases, ability to determine which of two contradictory statements by competing political figures is true. They often lack the resources to determine if, for example, President Bush's claim to have "delivered" on the promises he made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is true. That's where news organizations should -- but, with depressing frequency, have not -- come in. They have -- or should have -- the expertise and the time to assess those claims, and to report the facts. That's what readers, viewers, and listeners need. That's what journalism should be all about. -Jamison Foser, Media Matter for America
liberator n. One who lifts the yoke of oppression from a people and
holds it aloft in the bright, brief glare of media scrutiny before
replacing it with a new one of personal design. -T.G. Browning
law n. 1. arch. Any code of conduct comprised of formally agreed upon community standards of morality, enforced by implacable, unreasonable, and exempt authority. 2. A statute; what the powers that be figure you need in order to be safe, secure, docile, and quiet. Particularly quiet. 3: A blunt object occasionally found at the scene of a mistrial.-T.G. Browning
logic n. The study of the principles of reasoning, insofar as one can hammer them into something one already believes. 2. A systematic
method whereby one establishes the truth and validity of one's current
beliefs. See justify.-T.G. Browning
Much as I'd like to see all these miscreants brought to justice, I tend to think the emphasis on bad bosses is a little misguided. The problem isn't particular bosses, but what I call Bossism -- the hierarchical system that governs all known bureaucracies, both public and private. Giving one person huge power over others is like a giving a three-year-old a hose: not everyone will get soaked, but the chances of coming out dry are slender. -Barbara Ehrenreich [article link]
The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with words of courage and comradeship. They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war. -Chris Hedges
Should the plural of 'doofus' be 'doofuses,' or should it have the Greek ending 'doofae?' To me, 'doofae' doesn’t really fit, plus it sounds totally stupid. So I'm assuming 'doofae' is the correct choice. The Covert Comic
I would not lead you into the promised land even if I could, for, if anybody leads you in, someone else can lead you out. -Eugene V. Debs
You know what bugs me about abortion, though, is even people who are pro-choice waffling on the idea of abortion. You know, pro-choice people are like, "You know, we're not pro-abortion, we're pro-choice. We just don't believe the government has a right to tell us what we can or cannot do with our own bodies. We're not pro-abortion, we're pro-choice." Hey, just say it, just fucking say it: People suck, there's too many of them, and they're easier to kill when they're fetuses than when they're grown up. Just say it! People suck! -Bill Hicks, from the album Salvation
Here's one of my most fundamental beliefs: the criminal law should not be used to enforce morality. I am a strong believer that the criminal powers should be reserved for protecting the public from harm, whether that's the robber in the alley with the cudgel and the big bag with a dollar sign on it, or the corporate crook laying waste to the environment. In criminal law, this is referred to as "the harm principle." In other words: if there is no public harm in the activity, it might be just to have some law or regulation governing the activity, but it shouldn't be a criminal offence. To do otherwise, in my mind, simply enforces morality with the biggest hammer the state has, clogging courts and wasting the overtaxed resources of the police and the prosecutors in the meantime. And, of course, putting people in risk of a permanent criminal record, and possibly worse, for committing an offence whose main harm is that it upsets people. -Rob Fairchild
I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. -Alexis de Toqueville
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. -Upton Sinclair
Do you realize that there's actually people in the world who did not think Bush and Quayle were conservative enough? This is the Republican Party that's been hiding out in South America since 1944, I think. -Bill Hicks
The iPod was not developed by Baptists in Waco. There may be a reason for this. Creative people thrive in a climate of openness and tolerance, since some great ideas start out sounding ridiculous. -Garrison Keillor [article link]
Even if meat is murder, I don't think we should call hamburgers 'murderburgers,' because something tells me this would only make people eat more of them. The Covert Comic
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is, in reality, instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have property against those who have none at all. -Adam Smith
Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies. As the United States staggers past the third anniversary of its misadventure in Iraq, the dagger is already poised, the myth is already being perpetuated. -Kevin Baker [article link]
We should not be required to prove our case [in Iraq ] beyond a reasonable doubt, as if the defense of a nation were akin to the tawdry O.J. Simpson trial. When thousands, perhaps millions, of American lives are at stake, we must require not a higher standard of proof, but a much lower threshold — a subjective judgment. -John Gibson (Once again, I post this just to show how the other side thinks. In this case, a great example of truthiness at work.)
It is also ridiculous to claim that conservatives don’t like government or that they don’t run it well. It is true that conservatives don’t like big government social programs, but that is because they want to redistribute income upward and big government social programs are designed to provide security for the entire population. But conservatives are enthusiastic supporters of the big government policies that send income flowing upward, and they are quite effective in running the sectors of government that bring about this end... The reality is that the nanny state conservatives want a big role for the government in the economy and they are very effective in managing the government when it comes to having it do the things that they care about. They might not do a good job in saving the people of New Orleans from a hurricane, but saving poor people is not the agenda of the nanny state conservatives. Their agenda is making sure that no one mass produces copies of Windows without Microsoft’s permission. Enforcing this type of monopoly, and other interventions that distribute income upward, is the role for government preferred by the nanny state conservatives, and the government performs these functions very well under their watch. -Dean Baker, The Conservative Nanny State
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy? -Mahatma Gandhi
Never be deceived that the rich will permit you to vote away their wealth. —Lucy Parsons
What then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be an equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal, who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him, and who from that moment onward had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life. -Albert Camus
The Democrats... don't want to be anything other than better caretakers for that museum of human history. They don't try to imagine a fundamentally better world, because they actually believe that there isn't one. They're buffoons straight out of Voltaire, running on a platform of "Our mild improvements to this best of all possible worlds." -Matt Taibbi
The federal government's lethal ineptitude [re: Hurricane Katrina] wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming? -Paul Krugman
The administration's philosophy seems to be that the best way to discourage risky behavior is to take away the safety net... I suppose that if we replaced air bags with sharpened spikes on dashboards, people might drive more carefully—but it still doesn't seem like a great idea. -Nicholas Kristof
Freedom, n. Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half dozen of restraint's infinite multitude of methods. A political condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly. Liberty. The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen of either. -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
civil disobedience n. The art of rendering rabid super-patriots, rednecks and right-wingers while selling copious amounts of advertising. -T.G. Browning
The right wing thinks we can still drill our way out of this, if only the nature freaks would allow them to. The "green" folks thinks that we can devote crops to the production of gasoline substitutes, even though a scarcity of fossil fuel-based fertilizers will sharply cut crop yields for human food. Nobody, it seems, can imagine an American life not centered on cars... Can we bust out of this narrow tunnel of fantasy? Can we imagine living differently? -James Howard Kunstler [article link (scroll down to the April 24 entry)]
The newly-publicized gospels of Thomas and Judas once again show a differing mindset between Atheists and theists. An Atheist sees this as new evidence -- stuff to be considered, like a new piece of scientific data - about how the bible was formed and assembled two millenia ago. Christians are quick to launch press releases stating that nothing, including hard evidence, would ever change their mind about their mythos. -Dave Silverman
Still, every year since 2002, this sad anniversary [of the Oklahoma City bombing] reminds me of a question I still haven't heard answered: Why wasn't April 19, 1995 the "day that changed everything"? -David Neiwert
The minimum that most minimalists want leaves in place just the institutions who protect their interests. That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves. -Coyote in Green Mars (1992) by Kim Stanley Robinson
It is in the nature of revolutions that they consume their most passionate advocates. The vanguard's ideals are replaced by the faction's brass knuckles. The chain of events that Robespierre set in motion led to his death by guillotine in 1794. Trotsky fled from Stalin and met his fate with an ice pick to the head in Mexico in 1940. The dynamics of political revolutions in a constitutional republic such as the United States are nonviolent, but the parallels between political insurgencies remain. One group comes to power pledging reform; the reformers' newfound power attracts a troop of opportunists and hangers-on; the opportunists eat away at the reformist impulse from within. -Matthew Continetti, The K Street Gang
It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile. -John Hindraker [I post this not because I agree with it, obviously, but because it demonstrates how modern conservatism really is a personality cult around George W. Bush. -ed.]
If you cut out all the passages [of the Bible] where Jesus talks about helping the poor, helping the least among us... you’d have the perfect box to smuggle Rush Limbaugh’s drugs in. -Al Franken
The Bush administration has followed a disturbing pattern in its approach to the war on terror. It has been perpetually willing to sacrifice individual rights in favor of security. But it has been loath to do the same thing when it comes to business interests. It has not imposed reasonable safety requirements on chemical plants, one of the nation's greatest points of vulnerability, or on the transport of toxic materials. The ports deal is another decision that has made the corporations involved happy, and has made ordinary Americans worry about whether they are being adequately protected. -The New York Times
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. -George Bernard Shaw
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume. -Noam Chomsky
[Money shouldn't equal free speech] because I'll guarantee you this, if you're in a debate, and one side is arguing reasonably and the other side is handing out $10,000 a person, that debate team will typically win. -Jon Stewert
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them. -Karl Marx
If you look at the course of western history you'll see that we're slowly granting basic rights to everyone. A long time ago only kings had rights. Then rights were extended to property-owning white men. Then all men. Then women. Then children. Then the mentally retarded. Now we're agonizing over the extension of basic rights to homosexuals and animals. We need to finally accept that all sentient creatures are deserving of basic rights. I define basic rights as this --the ability to pursue life without having someone else's will involuntarily forced upon you. Or, as the framers of the constitution put it, the ability to have "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." By what criteria can you justify denying basic rights to any living thing? Realize that by whatever criteria you employ someone could deny basic rights to you if they objected to your species, sexual preferences, color, religion, ideology etc. Would you eat your housecat, or force a mentally retarded child to ingest oven cleaner? If not, then why is it ok to eat cows and test products on sentient animals? I believe that to knowingly commit actions that cause or condone suffering is reprehensible in the extreme. I call upon you to be compassionate and treat others as you want to be treated. If you don't want to be beaten, imprisoned, mutilated, killed or tortured then you shouldn't condone such behavior towards anyone, be they human or not. -Moby
I actually get hit on more in Washington DC, by Republicans that are drunk than I do by porno fans in Vegas. -Mary Carey
To bring aid to the sick, protection to the victims of discrimination, and a better life to those who suffer, we must pray that those in power are afflicted with the worst possible diseases, tragedies, and circumstances in life. As soon as it's their ass on the line, we're all on the way to being saved. -Michael Moore
I'd like to teach Iraq about Democracy because we're so experienced with it. First they should know that after 100 years they should free their slaves. Then after 150 years they should give their women the right to vote. Oh, and of course when they start it all they should begin with some genocide and ethnic cleansing. -Kurt Vonnegut
We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should. -Kurt Vonnegut
I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I cant help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That’s why we’ve got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap. -Kurt Vonnegut
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break! -Kurt Vonnegut
Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas. -Kurt Vonnegut
Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on. -Kurt Vonnegut
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country. -Kurt Vonnegut
Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out…and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel ... and in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" — with his mouth. -Mark Twain
In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination. -Mark Twain
The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first…The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: "It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war." Then the few will shout even louder…Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it ... Next, statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. -Mark Twain
The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. -Mark Twain
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities. -H.L. Mencken
When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. -H.L. Mencken
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. -H.L. Mencken
No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. -H.L. Mencken
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. -H.L. Mencken
State Senator Robert Hagan (D-Ohio) says he will introduce legislation to ban Republican couples from adopting children. According to Hagan, "credible research" shows that adopted children raised in GOP households are more at risk for developing "emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, and alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities." Hagan agrees there is no scientific evidence backing his claims about Republican parents — just, as Hagan notes, there is none backing State Representative Ron Hood’s (R) bill banning gay parents from adopting. Hood claims children purportedly suffer from emotional "harm" when they are adopted by gay couples. Hagen admits he created his proposal to mock Hood's proposed ban on gay adoption in a way that people would see the "blatantly discriminatory and extremely divisive" nature of the bill. The GOP House leadership does not support Hood’s proposal. -via the Progressive Democratic Council of Kendall County
Funny that Bush wants to fight the Islamic fundamentalists abroad but tries to turn the United States into a country with a gentler and kinder version of the very same values. Funny that he wants to have wars against them but votes en bloc in the United Nations with them when it comes to taking women's rights away or shunning gays. -Echidne
The disadvantage the pro-choice faction is laboring under is that very few people now remember the pre-Roe era personally. Very few people have personal experiences of someone bleeding to death in a hotel room, of women being kicked out of their homes for becoming pregnant, of the double-standards that let a pregnant woman be lectured at in a church while the man who got her pregnant sits smugly in the choir. All stories that I have been told by older relatives. Young women today have not heard such stories, on the whole, and they have Roe v. Wade to thank for it. But it is hard to be grateful for something you take for granted, hard to see how the world would change if Roe was no longer there to be taken for granted. Hard, but we still have to find a way to tell these stories, to make it clear what is at stake at least for the poorest women if states like South Dakota become the rule. -Echidne
[in reference to the UAE ports scandal] So why did this latest case of sloppiness and indifference finally catch the public's attention? Because this time the administration has become a victim of its own campaign of fearmongering and insinuation. The administration successfully linked Iraq and 9/11 in public perceptions through a campaign of constant insinuation and occasional outright lies. In the process, it also created a state of mind in which all Arabs were lumped together in the camp of evildoers. Osama, Saddam — what's the difference? But more to the point, after years of systematically suggesting that Arabs who didn't attack us are the same as Arabs who did, the administration can't suddenly turn around and say, "But these are good Arabs." -Paul Krugman
It is a distinctive characteristic of an ideology that it resists refutation. If the foundations of an ideological position are knocked out, new foundations will be found, or else the ideological position will just hang there, defying the logical equivalent of the laws of gravity. -Peter Singer, Animal Liberation
Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity. -Peter Singer, Animal Liberation
What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. -Christopher Hitchens, in reference to religion
It is often said, mainly by the 'no-contests', that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies? -Richard Dawkins
[Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY), when asked what he thought about George W. Bush's 2006 State of the Union address] It shatters the myth of white supremacy forever.
Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until the major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy. -Noam Chomsky
One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. The P.S.U.C. militiamen whom I knew in the line, the Communists from the International Brigade whom I met from time to time, never called me a Trotskyist or a traitor; they left that kind of thing to the journalists in the rear. The people who wrote pamphlets against us and vilified us in the newspapers all remained safe at home, or at worst in the newspaper offices of Valencia, hundreds of miles from the bullets and the mud. And apart from the libels of the inter-party feud, all the usual war-stuff, the tub-thumping, the heroics, the vilification of the enemy—all these were done, as usual, by people who were not fighting and who in many cases would have run a hundred miles sooner than fight. […] Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him. -George Orwell
I suppose I can understand the callous, selfish disregard of the conservatives. It is their pride in it that passes me by. -Rack Jite
If the mating game worked fine when women were ignorant and helpless and breaks down when they smarten up, that certainly tells us something about marriage. -Katha Pollitt [article link]
We have to work on our vocabulary. "Minorities": a high-class way of calling you a nigger to your face. "Get away from my car, you minority!" -Dave Chappelle
Posting the Ten Commandments is as effective as posting "Employees Must Wash Hands." -Jon Stewert
True compassion is more than throwing a coin to a beggar. It demands of our humanity that if we live in a society that produces beggars, we are morally commanded to restructure that society. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Talking of patriotism, what humbug it is; it is a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn't a foot of land in the world which doesn't represent the ousting and re-ousting of a long line of successive owners. -Mark Twain
bankruptcy n. Legal justification by corporations for the theft of millions of dollars via cancelled contracts with workers. See United Airlines. See Delta. See Delphi. -T.G. Browning
terrorist adj. Anyone with a loud voice who is not a member of the
current power structure and is too poor to purchase justice at the
going market rate. -T.G. Browning
Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition. -Emma Goldman
We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism. -Emma Goldman
The chief, overarching argument of the conservative movement, in essence, has been that liberals are the sole and primary cause of everything that is wrong both with America and with the world at large. What kind of reasonable discourse is possible, really, when that is the starting point of the conversation? -David Neiwert
In a world as interconnected and complex as ours, the simple act of buying a t-shirt has far-reaching effects: sweatshop labor, environmental destruction, media brainwashing, corporate corruption, support of Third World dictatorships, depletion of fossil fuels, cruelty to animals, wars over resources, the list goes on. And many of us don't think about any of this when we take our items to the counter and hand them our credit card. -Axis of Justice
There's nothing better than waking up to your girlfriend giving you a blowjob. Unless, maybe, it was your wife giving you the blowjob. Or maybe your wife watching *her* girlfriend give you a blowjob. Better yet, your wife and her girlfriend *and* your girlfriend all fighting over who gets to give you a blowjob and they all decide to tag team on the blowjob. The common theme, though, would be getting a blowjob. -Nick Smith
I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom. -Noam Chomsky
Every person who ever had a plan to do anything, and went and did it, or who laid his plan before others, and won their co-operation to do it with him, without going to external authorities to please do the thing for them, was a direct actionist. -Voltairine de Cleyre
laziness n. When the poor are not working
leisure time n. When the wealthy are not working -Justin Rezzonico, quoted in The Dictionary of Republicanisms by Katrina vanden Heuvel
The establishment people tell us that if the workers wanted to share the profits, it was called communism. When management wants to share profits, it's called a bonus. -Phil Donahue
Some religionists seem to delight in ascribing to "God" the credit for having made apple trees in fields of green, under a blue sky; but where is their creator when we remember that there are tapeworms in the world? I think I would be embarassed to have to admit that I believed in an "all-wise God" who made tapeworms. -Fred Woodworth
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. -Noam Chomsky
Propaganda exploits a strong human tendency: the automatic and strong tendency to believe what we're told. Believing what one's government tells one is relatively easy. It takes no effort at all. Disbelief, on the other hand, seems to run contrary to human nature. We are, it would seem, inherently lazy in such matters. It actually requires considerable intellectual and psychological effort to disbelieve what our leaders tell us. Added to that is the commonly applied social stigma that comes with disbelief. Disbelievers -- may God save them -- lack patriotism, a sin seen by most Americans as being on the order of patricide. -Richard L. Franklin
To the fervent proponents of ruthless corporate capitalism I say: make a millionaire CEO live as a poor sweatshop worker in Indonesia for one month and then ask him about the merits of the world economic system. -Vassilis Epaminondou
PATRIOTISM, n. 1) The inability to distinguish between the government and one's "country"; 2) A highly praiseworthy virtue characterized by the desire to dominate and kill; 3) A feeling of exultation experienced when contemplating heaps of charred "enemy" corpses; 4) The first, last, and perennial refuge of scoundrels.
PATRIOT, n. A dangerous tool of the powers that be. A herd member who compensates for lack of self-respect by indentifying with an abstraction. An enemy of individual freedom. A fancier of the rich, satisfying flavor of boot leather. -from The American Heretic's Dictionary
Agricultural technology is built on the assumption that world hunger is caused by a scarcity of food and a lack of technology, and that therefore new technologies are needed to produce more food for the world's growing population. However, hunger is caused not by scarcity, but by free market economic policies that undermine food security and local self-reliance and create a system of institutionalized economic justice. These policies, whose effects are worsened by economic globalization, allocate food not to the needy, but to oligopolistic global markets where one dollar equals one vote. Agro-biotechnology will only exacerbate this situation. -Carmelo Ruiz
Actually, I've met very few conservatives in my life. Mostly what I meet are liberals who don't want to pay for the services they expect the government to provide and who don't want to feel like "girlie men" when they tell people who they voted for and want to be able to tell racist and sexist jokes without feeling guilty about it. So they vote Republican, tell their jokes, and rant and rave like hell when their streets don't get plowed and their sewers back up and their grandmother's social security check is late and their cousin comes home from Iraq without a leg and the Army charges him for the loss of his gun. -Lance Mannion
You've got to rattle your cage door. You've got to let them know that you're there, and that you want out ... You may not win right away, but you'll sure have a lot more fun. -Florence Kennedy
Have you ever wondered why Republicans are so interested in encouraging people to volunteer in their communities? It's because volunteers work for no pay. Republicans have been trying to get people to work for no pay for a long time. -George Carlin
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose. -Don Marquis
Some observers claim to have found something paradoxical in the fact that the Thatcher regime combines liberal individualist rhetoric with authoritarian action. But there is no paradox at all. Even under the most repressive conditions... people seek to act collectively in order to improve things for themselves, and it requires an enormous exercise of brutal power to fragment these efforts at organisation and to force people to pursue their interests individually... left to themselves, people will inevitably tend to pursue their interests through collective action - in trade unions, tenants' associations, community organisations and local government. Only the pretty ruthless exercise of central power can defeat these tendencies: hence the common association between individualism and authoritarianism, well exemplified in the fact that the countries held up as models by the free-marketers are, without exception, authoritarian regimes -Brian Barry
Whiny, bitching, cry-baby conservatives love to prattle on and on about the "liberal media." To be fair, except for FOX News (Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, John Gibson, Neil Cavuto, Steve Doocy, E.D. Hill, Brian Kilmeade, Brit Hume), Clear Channel, Laura Ingraham, Dr. Laura, Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter, Newsmax, G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Reagan, Michael Savage, The New York Post, Sinclair Broadcast Group (WLOS13, Fox 45, WTTO21, WB49, KGAN, WICD, WICS, WCHS, WVAH, WTAT, WSTR, WSYX, WTTE, WKEF, WRGT, KDSM, WSMH, WXLV, WURN, KVWB, KFBT, WDKY, WMSN, WVTV, WEAR, WZTV, KOTH, WYZZ, WPGH, WGME, WLFL, WRLH, WUHF, KABB, WGGB, WSYT, WTTA), David Horowitz, Rupert Murdoch, PAX, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, they're right. -Maddox
Look, politics, and debate in general, tends to discourage thinking in absolutes... But I'm hard-pressed to see how there aren't absolutes in [the torture issue]. You either support torturing people or not. If you support torturing terrorists, than to not be a hypocrite you also have to support actually proving they're terrorists, not using torture to find out if they're terrorists, thus making it okay to torture them. -August J. Pollak
I'm a friendly enough sort of chap, I'm not a hostile person to meet. But I think it's important to realize that when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. -Richard Dawkins
The establishment people tell us that if the workers wanted to share the profits, it was called communism. When management wants to share profits, it's called a bonus. -Phil Donahue
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. -Noam Chomsky
Actually, I've met very few conservatives in my life. Mostly what I meet are liberals who don't want to pay for the services they expect the government to provide and who don't want to feel like 'girlie men' when they tell people who they voted for and want to be able to tell racist and sexist jokes without feeling guilty about it. So they vote Republican, tell their jokes, and rant and rave like hell when their streets don't get plowed and their sewers back up and their grandmother's social security check is late and their cousin comes home from Iraq without a leg and the Army charges him for the loss of his gun. -Lance Mannion
By the time Richard Milhous Nixon goes on trial in the Senate, the only real reason for trying him will be to understand how he ever became president of the United States at all ... and the real defendant, at that point, will be the American Political System. -Hunter S. Thompson, 1973
[in reference to the withdrawl of Harriet Mier's Supreme Court nomination] It is clear that, absent an unambiguous pledge to overturn Roe, the right holds women nominees to a different standard. They do it because they fear a woman justice will feel empathy towards other women making the agonizing choice of whether to have an abortion. They fear that a woman justice would not be willing to use criminal sanctions to regulate other women’s decisions. -John Podesta, President of the Center for American Progress
It's no longer possible to count the times I've heard someone say that idiotic thing about guns not killing people but people killing people. Sure. But it's only true in the same way as saying that it's not airplanes that take me across the Atlantic but people. Without the planes I wouldn't get there very fast and without the guns the people who do the killing would have a much harder time to kill. -Echidne
Have you noticed how the soundbites are somehow distributed through Wingnuttia? Suddenly all wingnuts talk about the same thing, be it Social Security or something Bill Clinton did in 1958. Often I can see why the topic is up for renewed chewing but equally often I can't see where they get a particular topic from. So I am semi-convinced that all wingnuts have little wires to their brains, and every Monday morning a message is sent about what to write and talk about that week. -Echidne
...{W]hat is hilarious is this sudden turnaround of many of the wingnuts. It was only a week or two ago that they told us how no nominee should answer questions about how they will decide, say, Roe vs. Wade -related cases. Now the very same wingnuts want guarantees that Miers would decide them the way the wingnuts want. It's the way little children argue. -Echidne
Why do they call it 'sobering news,' when it causes you to get drunk? -The Covert Comic
It's noteworthy, to say the least, that lawyers who represent the interests of regular folks are routinely attacked by the president as the cause of everything from ballooning health care costs to male-pattern baldness. But lawyers who spend a lifetime litigating on behalf of wealthy corporate clients, as Miers has done, are somehow "distinguished" and worthy of the nation's highest court. That inconsistency speaks volumes about the priorities of this administration and the values the president wants to see represented on the Supreme Court. -Bill Shein
Nobody who has wealth to distribute ever omits himself. Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed [This was obviously written in reference to the Soviet Union under Stalin, but I think it applies equally well to capitalist societies where corporate executives just "happen" to value themselves above their workers.]
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. -Rebecca West
The best thing about telling a woman up front that you're a pervert is never having to apologize for masturbating in her fridge. Or in her shampoo bottle. Or on her cat. -Nick Smith
If Harriet Miers becomes a Supreme Court Judge she will be the third female on the bench ever. Women are the majority of Americans but almost as rare as hen's teeth in positions of great societal power. To many on the right this is quite acceptable, and any attempt to change it amounts to affirmative action, interpreted as appointing someone incompetent just because the person is not a white Christian male. White Christian males are assumed to be competent because they are the default option: almost all past Supreme Court justices were white and Christian and male, so these characteristics are fine. On the other hand, someone who is not white, Christian or male is automatically under suspicion as a "diversity hire". That this person might be competent must be proven, and proven separately for each case. -Echidne of the Snakes
According to the conservative wingnuts at the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the superiority of Wal-Mart's Katrina response shows that the private sector is simply more effective than the government. Well, yes, oddly enough, when you starve a government by draining its resources and electing officials who don't believe in it, nothing seems to work. -Liza Featherstone
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -George Bernard Shaw
No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed. -Clarence Darrow
Whenever a religious person challenges me about religion and morality, they always insist that, as an atheist, I should not be afraid of committing some horrible crime -- no eternal consequences and all that. My response is always, "if the only thing keeping you from driving into a McDonalds and mowing down a bunch of people with an automatic weapon is your religion, then I'm glad you're religious." -Mr. Upright
To dream of being Superman is only crazy if you're Superman. -The Covert Comic
It's much harder to be a liberal than a conservative. Why? Because it is easier to give someone the finger than a helping hand."
"Live and let live" would be my motto if there weren't so many fucking assholes who want nothing less than a world in which everyone lives the way THEY want them to. So my motto is, "Fuck them." -Maryscott O'Conner
If your father is a dangerous zealot who describes homosexuals as "sinners" who practice "selfish hedonism," you have a moral duty to become a lesbian. Congratulations to Alan Keyes's daughter Maya, who did just that. Now, if you can just get yourself impregnated by David Crosby and then immediately get an abortion, I think we can drive Daddy right over the edge. -Bill Maher, "New Rules"
The big oil companies must stop running ads telling us how much they're doing for the environment. We get it: You rape the earth, but you cuddle afterward. It's insulting - like a serial killer dumping a body by the roadside and then adopting a highway. -Bill Maher, "New Rules"
Know your enemies. The National Rifle Association posted a list of antigun organizations on its Web site so NRA members would know who's against the NRA. The list includes: the Ambulatory Pediatric Association, the American Medical Association, the American Association of Surgury, the American Trauma Society, the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, the Children's Defense Fund, the COngress of Neurological Surgeons, the National Association of School Psychologists.
Hmm. What could all these organizations have in common? Oh yeah! They're sick of cleaning up after the NRA!-Bill Maher, "New Rules"
Stop claiming [conservatives] have an "agenda." It's not an agenda;
It's a random collection of laws that your corporate donors paid you to pass. The American people aren't clamoring for a cap on medical malpractice awards. If a surgeon leaves an Altoids box in my chest cavity, I want to see him in debtor's prison. -Bill Maher, "New Rules"
It's a strange GOD that creates a Universe of 100
billion galaxies each with 100 billion stars just so he can wait 14
billion years for a small primate to evolve and worship him.
What is so intelligent about that? -Erik Shutvet
WASHINGTON, DC - A genie freed from a battered oil lamp by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia granted the conservative jurist a strict constructionist interpretation of his wish for "a hundred billion bucks" Monday. "Sim sim salabim! Your wish is my command!" the genie proclaimed amid flashes of light and purple smoke, immediately filling the Supreme Court building with a massive herd of wild male antelopes. When Justice Scalia complained that the "bucks" had razed the U.S. Supreme Court building, trampling and killing several of his clerks and bringing traffic in the nation's capital to a standstill for hours, the genie said, "Your honor, your wish is a sacred and unalterable document whose interpretation is not subject to the whims of society and changing social context." The Onion
The Republicans have managed a nifty trick over the last twenty-five years. They have worked ceaselessly to make government less effective, while at the same time deriving political benefit from inadequate government. The Republican attack on good governance involves the cutting of necessary funding, the wholesale transfer of critical government capabilities to the private sector, the stocking of government agencies with inept, corrupt, and obstructionist appointees, and the sellout of regulatory agencies to the industries they're supposed to observe. In a fair world, all of this would result in the Republican party taking some degree of blame for bad governance. In this world, the exact opposite seems to happen. Government fails by design. Government failure feeds into an anti-statist narrative that allows the Republicans to further slash funding, to further gut federal agencies, and to further cripple the capacity of the government to do anything useful. -Robert Farley
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -Bertrand Russell
Rising unemployment was a very desirable way of reducing the strength of the working classes... What was engineered - in Marxist terms - was a crisis in capitalism which recreated a reserve army of labor, and has allowed the capitalists to make high profits ever since. -Alan Budd, chief economic advisor to Margaret Thatcher, 1992
However spectacular its effects, the wreck of Enron is a far more ordinary matter than such moralizing makes it appear. This is not the result of sin; this is the way markets work. It is simply what happens when regulatory oversight is systematically shut down, bought off and defunded; when business journalism becomes salesmanship; when investment banking becomes salesmanship; and when political power is a prize that goes to the highest bidder. There can be little doubt that the kind of microscopic scrutiny that Enron is now undergoing would uncover similar accounting and compensation scandals at many other companies in America. And it is well-known that industry lobbyists routinely craft the legislation that is supposed to regulate their industries. Credit-card lobbyists write the bankruptcy laws; broadcasting lobbyists write the telecommunications laws. It's not because they're greedy, it's because they can. -Thomas Frank [article link]
The assumptions that one's political positions are crafted from a reasonable assessment of reality and history is false as most of us know. Political positions are mainly the result of personal psychological repsonses to social trama as well as privilege (class), shaped by organized institutional actors. What this means is that political positions are not changed by rational language, thought or actions, but rather through emotional situations, personal experiences, and affiliations with groups. When one's experiences which have shaped your emotions are in-line with your logic or thinking process one feels
content; when not, cognitive dissonance will most likely lead to the rejection of reality over faith every time. -Talmadge Wright
Everyone at work was very surprised when they found out that I smoke. They'll be even more surprised when they find out I only smoke when I drink. -Jenn McNanna
It's a supreme irony to me when I hear conservatives waxing poetic about stem cells and potential lives cut short, particularly when many of these same Republicans are staunchly against educating our youth about embryos and babies happen. Or helping young and unprepared parents once the child is born.
Or when many of these same conservatives have no problems cutting short the lives of innocents who happen to live in war zones. Who is it who believes that some lives are worthless?
Or when these folks send men barely old enough to shave and women just beginning their adult lives to die in a hot war against a country that had few terrorists of its own until we got there.
Or when they complain about extending a helping hand to the already born among us who have made poor choices and messes of their lives. Or to the victims of simple bad luck and timing.
It's a supreme irony that stem cell research may have far reaching impact on the lives of the next generation, and in a very positive way, as opposed to the future impact of our current economic, international, and environmental policies. It's ironic that many conservatives want to curtail one of the positive things we're working on and have no difficulty supporting the negative things.
I find it ironic that people who give lip service to individual rights and demand personal responsibility from the the little guy don't ask for the same thing from men like DeLay or Bush or Rumsfeld. And that they don't seem to care if corporate America is held accountable for anything except keeping the paychecks coming.
And isn't it ironic that liberals get blamed for supporting birth control and abortion, when it's the conservatives who don't want our kids to know where babies come from?
If we agree to agree that all life is precious, why is some of it so cheap to some of our leaders? Why in our race to embrace our common humanity do we ignore mistreated prisoners, innocent victims and the unfortunate among us? We don't get to pick and choose what lives are sacred and which are not. We don't get to feel all self righteous about one and sneer at the other. -"Dr. Guitar," a poster at the DeKalb COunty Democrats Blog
The true axis of evil in America is the genius of our marketing combined with the stupidity of our people. -Bill Maher
The fact that people murder each other over the pettiest things, and yet almost never jump on their cheap, filthy, noisy roommates and wrap a plastic bag around their heads until they stop kicking is a true testament to the importance of having someone to share the cable bill with. -R.B. Fairchild
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than blacks were made for whites or women for men. -Alice Walker
When grilled by reporters over his reaction to the Supreme Court's ruling in two pivotal cases involving display of the Ten Commandments, [American Atheists Communications Director Dave Silverman] adroitly cited his 'Three Reindeer Rule' for religionists and other First Amendment obfuscationists. He likened the decisions to what invariably takes place during the 'Christmas' season when municipalities and other governments, inevitably in collusion with Christian religious groups, drag out musty displays of 'the Nativity' and erect them in public parks, foyers and other government venues. Referring to the Commandments rulings (which permit such displays if they are generously mixed with secular symbols or documents), Mr. Silverman noted: 'If you have a nativity scene with three reindeer, automatically it becomes a non-religious statement.'" -the American Atheists mailing list
The Democratic party leadership's persistent and bizarre campaign of self-condemnation and Republican bootlicking is one of those things that, on its face, makes very little logical sense. It makes cultural sense; we have come to expect that the cultural figures we call the Democrats will respond to electoral failure first by sniveling and finger-pointing, and then by puffing up their chests and telling their dates they know how to handle themselves in a bar fight. From the Republicans we expect just the opposite; beaten at the polls, they immediately start cozying up to snake-handlers and gun freaks and denouncing school lunches as socialism. It is impossible to imagine a Newt Gingrich responding, say, to LBJ's Great Society by concocting its own expensive plan to feed the poor black man � but we fully expect that a Democrat who loses an election will suddenly start to reconsider his opposition to pre-emptive invasion and Reaganomics. -Matt Taibbi
Conservatives often base their argument for the status quo on a fictional character I like to call the Unique Individual. The UI -- let's call him Mr. Bootstrap -- is the 0.2%er. He beats the odds. He's the exceptional single parent. He's the ghetto-escapee. He's the recovered addict-cum-sucessful business owner. He's the Walmart worker who "made it big." The UI does indeed exist, but progressives have failed to point out that not every working man can be a UI. It's statistically impossible under our system. Yet, millions of Americans are chasing after Mr. Bootstrap, goaded by the misinformation of conservatives and fallaciously convinced that if they just work hard enough and sacrifice a little more, that they will become a UI. They waste a lifetime trying to beat the odds without ever stopping to ask just what the odds are or why the system is set up so that "happiness" is only achieved by the odds-beating few. It's progressives' job to make people ask, "Why is the UI held up as the model when 99.8% of us will never be one? Why are we chasing the dream we are?" -"bettsoff," a commenter at AlterNet
When people visit to this country, from nations around the world, they walk away with a sense of disconnect. They see how puritanical we are, as a nation, about drugs, sex, and religion- some even call it stultifying, and chalk it up to our puritan founders. What confuses them, in relation to our relative conservatism on such matters, is the violence of our culture. We don't allow four-letter words on our TV, we send anyone caught with a few grams of pot to prison, we appoint an attorney general that spends thousands of tax dollars to cover up a naked breast on an abstract statue, and in many of our states, alcohol and pornography are saddled with a "sin tax." But, you can walk into one of a few thousand wal-marts, and buy a gun, with the most cursory of investigations. -Eric Blumrich
The danger of the Internet is, one wrong click and you're suddenly viewing pornographic images that are completely different from the kind you wanted. -The Covert Comic
A nation's success or failure in achieving democracy is judged in part by how well it responds to those at the bottom and the margins of the social order... The very problems that democratic change brings -- social tension, heightened expectations, political unrest -- are also strengths. Discord is a sign of progress afoot; unease is an indication that a society has let go of what it knows and is working out something better and new. -Sandra Day O'Connor
All religions have flaws. They all can be argued to the point where logic forces the proponent to claim "well, you just have to have faith". Since Atheism never requires faith and cannot be disproven logically (despite countless tries), it has no flaws. Atheism is perfect. -Dave Silverman
If there was ANY proof ANYwhere AT ALL that any god ever existed, I wouldn't be an Atheist. I'm stubborn -- not stupid. -Dave Silverman
[In reference to a scandal surrounding a college in NYC appointing an atheist to chair its sociology department, specifically the contention that his opposition to religion would bias his judgement of job candidates] Predictions of bias, absent any evidence, are just a backhanded way of attacking his beliefs. You might as well say no Southern Baptist should be chair, since someone who believes that women should be subject to their husbands, homosexuality is evil and Jews are doomed to hell won't be fair to female, gay or Jewish job candidates. Or no Orthodox Jew or Muslim should be chair because religious restrictions on contact with the opposite sex would privilege some job candidates over others. But nobody ever does say that. As long as a believer ascribes his views to his faith, he can say anything he wants and if you don't like it, you're the bigot. -Katha Pollitt [article link]
If we [meaning Canadians -ed.] lose the ability to be �competitive� with �economic giants� like the US and Britain, GOOD. Are you listening to yourselves?! Are you seriously contending that the US and Britain are the ideals of economic models? The model is: very few rich are extremely rich because of all the hard work put in by a large working-poor class. Did I miss anything? Cause I don�t think I did. WE DON�T WANT TO BE THAT KIND OF COMPETITIVE. Why doesn�t anyone ever compare us to Holland, Germany, Australia, or some other realistic comparison? We�re a country of 25 million people. We can keep good care of those people. We CAN NOT prop up big business to compete with Americans because they are built on the backs of 250 million people. I think I speak for The People Of Canada when I say PLEASE DON�T MAKE US WORK TEN TIMES AS HARD TO KEEP UP WITH A ROLE MODEL WHO ISN�T EVEN DESIRABLE. -Charlotte Ashley
I've read all those studies that show people on the Right lack the gift of empathy. I can see they have a real hard time imagining themselves as people on welfare or as blacks in East Texas -- that's quite a stretch even for white bleeding hearts like me. What I don't get is their inability to do the simplest exercise in elementary fairness -- how would you feel if the shoe were on the other foot? -Molly Ivins
Truth is, Wal-Mart could not survive in a real free market: It would, for example, have to pay Chinese workers more (which would ruin its low-wage business model) and spurn any offers of government subsidies. Indeed, it's fitting that Wal-Mart, the business model fawned over by free-marketeers, exposes the so-called 'free market' as a lie, no more than a crude, albeit effective, marketing phrase. -Jonathan Tasini
I'm not a Marxist, but I do believe our capitalist, free-market culture is primarily responsible for the way we as a nation abuse the natural world and endanger human health. The capitalist culture values wealth above all things. Accordingly, a society governed by it -- as ours is to a remarkable degree -- will put considerations of prosperity over considerations of the commonwealth. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it will equate prosperity with the commonwealth.
On the corporate level, this can lead to practices that show a reckless disregard for human health even among companies whose primary business is relieving illness and saving lives. Just think of Merck, Pfizer and... Johnson and Johnson, all of whom knowingly sold drugs that put people's lives at risk.
On the government level, it can lead to policies that encourage economic growth at all costs -- for example, policies that relieve industry of the cost of ensuring that their practices are safe or that actively promote the use -- and using up -- of irreplaceable natural resources.
Finally, on the individual level, it can lead to the belief that an SUV is crucial to your well-being while clean air is an intangible you can afford to do without -- and the related feeling that all that matters in the voting booth is "the economy, stupid," as Clinton's campaign team famously observed.
Republicans are relentless. They're like the zombies in Dawn of the Dead. Stop one at the door, you've got five more clawing through the window. They just never give up. -Tom TOmorrow
The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. -George Orwell
Shorter right-wing blogosphere: The fact that John Kerry's military records provide no incriminating evidence we can use against him proves he has not released all of them. -August J. Pollak
Imagine if the U.S. media showed uncensored, hellish images of war - even for one week. What impact would that have? I think we would be able to abolish war. -Amy Goodman, The Exception to the Rulers
I would say that many, I could say thousands, but it's really hundreds of thousands, and when we include the Vietnamese, millions, have died in the last century because American politicians were unwilling to be called names. They were unwilling to face, however invalid, however ridiculous, the charge that they were weak, unmanly, cowardly, defeatist, losers, and whatnot. -Daniel Ellsberg [article link]
I keep hearing people say that Howard Dean should be more careful not to say things that the Republicans can twist around and make into something that sounds bad. They say that Dean is 'just giving them ammunition.' I call this the 'being afraid that Rush Limbaugh is going to say something bad about them' syndrome. I have some news. Sit down. Prepare yourself. Take a breath. Here it comes. Rush Limbaugh is going to say something bad about you. Republicans are going to twist whatever you say. It doesn't matter what it is that you actually say. As much as Howard Dean is able to advance a narrative that the Republican Party is a party of white male Christians, it forces Hispanics, women, blacks and Jews to return to the Democrats. As much as Howard Dean is able to advance a narrative that Republicans only work for the interests of the rich that brings blue collar and middle class people back to the Democrats. Why do you THINK the Republicans are trying to get him to stop saying that? -Dave Johnson, Seeing the Forest
Here is the contradiction in the tiny, dark heart of American conservatism: Its values are solidly "pro-life," but its economic policies lean toward death. While upholding the right of each stem cell to blossom into a human, conservatives have curtailed the lives of all multicellular citizens - by weakening environmental regulations, for instance, and cutting social programs. Right-wing ambivalence on life-and-death issues exploded into a schizophrenic breakdown in the case of Terri Schiavo. With one hand, the Republicans held her feeding tube firmly in place, while the other hand reached for the ax to cut off the flow of Medicaid dollars that were keeping that poor shell of woman alive. -Barbara Ehrenreich
This explains why Democrats never seem to get to the center, no matter how far they move. Swing voters aren�t waiting for us to say something different, they just doubt that we mean what we say. The more we change our message to court them, the more our slickness turns them off. -Doug Muder
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. -Gandhi
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. -Henry David Thoreau
If tomorrow the Times ran an article on its front page headlined "Bush is Second Coming of Christ," conservative activists would charge that it proved the paper's liberal bias because it didn't compliment the color of the president's tie. -Media Matters
As they flex their political muscle, right-wing Christians increasingly reveal their condescending view of women as moral children who need to be kept in line sexually by fear. That's why antichoicers will never answer the call of prochoicers to join them in reducing abortions by making birth control more widely available: They want it to be less available. Their real interest goes way beyond protecting fetuses--it's in keeping sex tied to reproduction to keep women in their place. If preventing abortion was what they cared about, they'd be giving birth control and emergency contraception away on street corners instead of supporting pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions and hospitals that don't tell rape victims about the existence of EC... How sexist is denial of Plan B? Antichoicers may pooh-pooh the effectiveness of condoms, but they aren't calling to restrict their sale in order to keep boys chaste. -Katha Pollitt [article link]
History ends at least once and occationally more often in the history of every civilization. As the civilization's universal state emerges, its people become blinded by what Toynbee called "the mirage of immortality" and convinced that theirs is the final form of human society. So it was with the Roman Empire, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Mughal Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. The citizens of such universal states "in defiance of apparently plain facts... are prone to regard it, not as a night's shelter in the wilderness, but as the Promised Land, the goal of human endeavors." The same was true at the peak of the Pax Britannica. For the English middle class in 1897, "as they saw it, history for them, was over... And they had every reason to congratualte themselves on the permanent state of felicity which this ending of history had conferred on them." Societies that assume their history has ended, however, are usually societies whose history is about to decline. -from "The Clash of Civilizations" by Samuel P. Huntington
Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now.
We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.
Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in the ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with, as they used to say, but they were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men. None of them were the men we knew. The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives. -from "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood (via Echidne)
[from this article about the goings-on in Kyrgyzstan] Ben Bush: There's a couple of different reactionary versions of what's going on and one is that it's a triumph of democracy which doesn't seem dead on to me and the other is that it's some sort of Western conspiracy. Tom Bissal: Are people really saying it's a Western conspiracy? I think if you really look at a cost benefit analysis of this stuff and when you weigh it the way a president or a department of state guy is really going to think about these countries-- Just put yourself in his position, no one was sitting around talking about Kyrgyzstan when this happened. Trust me, they weren't. What I hate about thoughtless anti-Americanism is the same thing I hate about thoughtless pro-Americanism. They're essentially the same position: nothing happens that America didn't create or cause. It's the same delusion. It just boggles my mind that Noam Chomsky and George Bush basically have the same worldview, one is a transvestite of the other. It's like the right using Lebanon to vindicate their policy in Iraq. It would be foolish to say they're completely unrelated but it would be equally foolish to say they're inexorably related. People say Ronald Reagan won the cold war. That's the biggest load of fucking horseshit anyone has ever peddled. The Soviets had so many problems. The fact that Reagan happened to expand our military at the moment when the Soviet Union's unworkable system was finally collapsing on itself, and that collapse had almost nothing to do with Reagan. It was incidental. There was a million tributaries--cultural, political, historical--leading to the USSR's collapse. It's folly to go around looking at these events in the interest of figuring out how they benefit whatever president or political party happens to be in power. It's actually kind of evil, as all it does is create this vision of America as the puppet-master. The right can't have it both ways: they can't decry all this leftist conspiracy talk and then just take credit for every good thing that happens as a result of their own policy. It doesn't make sense. It's the simplest contradiction you can imagine.
It's a shame it's that second-hand smoke that stinks so bad, because that stuff we're sucking up is fucking great, man. -Bill Hicks
The "vast right wing conspiracy" was a term used to describe all the backroom players who were trying to destroy Clinton by various devious methods behind the scenes. Judging the book by its cover--admittedly something one is often advised not to do-- the "vast left wing conspiracy" appears to be a term used to describe various citizens who are deviously making movies and publishing websites and broadcasting radio shows in an underhanded attempt to sway people through the force of their arguments. -Tom Tomorrow
How many more of these goddam elections are we going to have to write off as lame but "regrettably necessary" holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give at the least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils? I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing, this year, is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 -- and as far as I can tell, we've gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same. -Hunter S. Thompson
[The following two quotes are from T.G. Browning.]
misanthrope: A person with who holds a cautious, realistic, and
justifiable assessment of humanity. See misogynist.
misogynist: An incautious person who�s half right. See misanthrope.
Waging an aggressive war: 1500 dead soldiers and 100,000 dead Iraqis.
Ordering more executions (including minors) than any other governor in history: 152 deaths
Deaths per year caused by a lack of healthcare in the US: 18,000
Rallying to extend the life of one brain-dead woman who wanted to die: That's pro-life.-R.B. Fairchild
[in reference to the Terri Schiavo case] Wow. If you ever asked me if it were even remotely possible that one day I would read a Freeper thread in which torture is condemned, a boycott of Florida is urged (I shit thee not!,) not feeding the hungry is deemed murder, MLK's 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail' is invoked, the tyranny of a judicial system with life-and-death power is decried, Federal Marshals are called upon to defend civil rights, and a Fox News legal analyst is labeled a 'Death-o-crat', I'd tell you 'no fucking way,' then demand a hit off of whatever you were smoking. -via August Pollak
My girlfriend refers to me in bed as the "Energizer Bunny." It's not because I can go for hours or anything -- it's because I'm really good at rolling over and handing her fresh batteries for her vibrator. -Kim Moser
Frankly, the only thing more galling than the brazenness with which the White House abrogates the public's right to know is the sheeplike docility with which we accept it, with which we become complicit in our own hoodwinking. When the history of this era is written, people will wonder why we didn't challenge its excesses, why we didn't know the things we should have. If you're still around, remember the uproar you do not hear right this moment and tell them the truth. Ignorance was easier. -Leonard Pitts, Jr.
Seeing isn't believing. But believing all too often is seeing. -T.G. Browning
Since the November elections, I feel like the woman whose husband refused to listen when she told him not to sell the family cow for magic beans. She's still forced to consider his welfare, but it's neurochemically impossible to be more angry. And she can see that, irresponsible as he was to do it, as soon as it dawns on him that he's been rooked, he won't repent or apologize -- he'll blame her. -"Molly," a commenter at Digby's Blog
I really wonder how the residents of Wingnuttia and their media mouthpieces sleep at night. I hate when I make a mistake. I hate when I get things wrong - it makes me feel like a fool and I feel responsible for making others who might not see the correction look like fools too if they pass it on. But, for some reason these people never get tired of being wrong. They must really get off on it. -Atrios
As I walk into the room full of monkeys on typewriters, it dawns on me that if they were to stay in here long enough, they could write some Shakespeare or something. Then again, if they stay in here long enough, they'll probably unionize and go on strike, and then where are you? -BigDogDano
[in reference to George Bush inviting Rush Limbaugh to the White House] Media Matters isn't sure why the Bush White House invited Limbaugh; perhaps it was out of admiration for his April 2004 statement that women "actually wish" to be sexually harassed. Or maybe it was in appreciation of his March 2004 comment (about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and American labor leader Cesar Chavez) that "[a] Chavez is a Chavez. We've always had problems with them." Or are we being too cynical in thinking that the invitation was to thank him for his claim that "John Kerry really doesn't think 3,000 Americans dead in one day is that big a deal"? ... Perhaps Bush invited Limbaugh to the White House to thank him for calling the torture at Abu Ghraib "brilliant." -Media Matters For America
amoral: 1. Someone unable to rationalize convincingly. 2. Someone
incapable of following your rationalizations. -T.G. Browning
Minimum wage means that we would pay you less if we could, but it's against the law! -Chris Rock
Whatever doesn't kill me only makes me stronger. Except a crippling illness that leaves me comatose and on a respirator, that is. -Ben Bass
My dad was right: Supermodels are no more bulletproof than regular models. I think I'm finally starting to figure out this whole "learning from his mistakes" thing. -Christopher Rostan
It's really cool when you and your girlfriend finish each other's sentences. It sucks, though, when you break up to discover you're no longer capable of speaking in complete... uh... help me out here.... -Kim Moser
If hell is having to watch your worst decisions over and over forever, I really hope they give you a better judgment system than you had when you made those decisions. If they don't, they'll have to sit and explain to you why you were wrong. And chances are that they still won't get through to you. Then they'll have to think up some new punishment. Probably something involving bees. -Christopher Rostan
When I face a problem, I stop and ask myself, "What Would Jesus Do?" It works! Drinking wine, sitting around talking, drinking more wine, telling parables, drinking more wine and talking to God really does pretty much solve any problem I have. Now if only I could recruit a few disciples. -Wendy Bartram
What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols.... Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for. Is the person who prescribes your eyeglasses qualified to do so? How deep will you be buried when you die? What textbooks are your children learning from at school? What will happen if you become seriously ill? Is the meat you're eating tainted? Will you be able to afford to go to college or to send your kids? Would you like a vacation? Expect to retire before you die? Can you find a job? Drive a car? Afford insurance? Is your credit card company or your banker or your broker ripping you off? It's all politics, Bubba. You don't get to opt out for lack of interest. -Molly Ivins
I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives. -Molly Ivins
Sieg heil, y'all. -Molly Ivins
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, can never bring about a reform. -Susan B. Anthony
The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done." -George Carlin
They're all in favor of the unborn ... but once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception 'til nine months. After that, they don't want to hear from you. No neo-natal care, no day care, no Head Start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. -George Carlin
I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race. -Bertrand Russell
Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped,
but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment. -Mark Twain
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that is often considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business. -Robert Rice
The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television, that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of industrial waste? -Dave Barry
Sometimes I wonder why I am burning $5,000/yr on school when I approach it with nothing but apathy, and accomplish only slightly above the curve. Why? If one is going to do something, shouldn't one do it right? It just numbs my brain, I find it hard to attend for weeks at a time. Bleh. When I said I wanted a challenging school experience, I didn't think the challenge would be "how to get out of bed" and "how not to outwardly show your contempt for your peers". -Charlotte Ashley
[in reference to comments from prominent Republicans that a gay marriage ban will take time to pass] But of course it will take time! So will the abortion ban. The Republicans have no intention of actually getting these bans passed swiftly and decisively, noooh. Because then they'd have to invent something even crazier to keep their base happy, and they are not quite ready to go there yet ("there" being the banning of all contraception, probably). Without this, the successful banning of same-sex marriage and all abortions would kill the wingnut movement in the Republican Party, and the Republicans would lose seats all over the country. -Echidne
When is the revolution scheduled to begin? Because I've heard "The Second Amendment RULEZ!!!" types go on and on about fighting against tyranny, and yet, most of them just sit on their fat asses, waiting for someone else to start the battle. When are they going to bring it?
Let's be realistic for a second. If those jack-booted thugs came knocking at your door, you'd do what every other kooky gun owner does: Hurry to Free Republic and somehow blame Clinton for it. The revolution won't be televised because the revolution isn't going to happen. -The Misanthropic Bitch
Lord Acton said, "The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free, is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities." In America, our minorities enjoy maximum security, if you know what I'm saying. -The Covert Comic
Any sufficiently advanced coup is indistinguishable from an election. -The Covert Comic
War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed. Peace is preferable to war in almost every contingency. -William McKinley
Remember the feeling of panic you had as a child when you couldn't find your house? And remember the feeling you had when you finally found your house, and you were safe inside with your family? Remember how much scarier that feeling was? -The Covert Comic
I may not know much about marketing, but if I manufactured a machine that generated warm, brown, steaming liquid for people to gulp down when they're barely awake, I might rethink naming the company "Bunn." -Brad Simanek
Reason editor Nick Gillespie recently wrote about how, surprise, he sorta doesn't like all the places which top Forbes magazine's "US Freedom index" which is simply a bunch of low tax places. Gillespie realizes that maybe there are more important things to worry about than taxes and regulations, and, well, hey, he likes New York City.
All of that is well and good, but what he doesn't quite do is take it all the way to the conclusion. New York City isn't as good as it is in spite of its high taxes and regulations, it could not exist without them. That's not to say all taxes/expenditures/regulations are good, but a densely populated place like NYC just simply would not exist and would not function without a pretty active government.
NYC couldn't exist without an immense public transit system. It couldn't exist without a rather large public sector keeping the place relatively clean and safe and functioning. It couldn't exist without pesky zoning and other regulations in such a dense environment, property rights are always going to be somewhat fuzzy. Frankly, it couldn't exist without all the things libertarians tend to get upset about.
I like New York. I don't think all people do or should. Not all people want to live in a place like New York. But, New York isn't and couldn't be a libertarian paradise and still be New York. And, nor could the rest of the country... -Atrios
When it comes to women's boobs, believe me, size matters. If they're not at least 90 x 60 pixels, I'm clickin' on the next thumbnail. -The Covert Comic
I've been thinking of trading in my office job for a truck-driving position. The only thing I'm worried about is if they make a big deal about drinking on the job like my current company does. -Karl Bean
In Mr. Bush's case, his administration has already shown ominous signs of "group-think" in its handling of Iraq and the nation's finances. By closing down dissent and centralizing power in a few hands, he is acting as if he truly believes that he and his team have a perfect track record, that they know best, and that they don't need any infusion of new heavyweights. He has every right to take this course, but as he knows from his Bible, pride goeth before. -David Gergen
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose... You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us" but he will say to you, "be silent; I see it, if you don't." -Abraham Lincoln, 1848, in reference to President James K. Polk's waging of the Mexican War
Next time my cat sneaks up on me in a dark alley, sticks a gun in my ribs, and takes off with my car, I'm going to have a little talk with him about boundaries. And no more Fancy Feast. -Dakota Shepard
neo-con: A recent addition to the political lexicon, denoting someone who is compassionately totalitarian, yet pro-life for Homo sapiens under a minute old or dying in excruciating pain. -T.G. Browning
The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bush Promises To Unite Nation For Real This Time
WASHINGTON, DC - A week after winning a narrow victory over Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, President Bush promised to "unite the divided nation, but for real this time." "Just as I pledged in 2000, I promise to bring the two halves of this nation together - only this time I'm really gonna do it," Bush said Tuesday. "I'll work hard to put an end to partisan politics. Seriously, though. This term, I will." Bush then requested the support of all Americans for his agenda of cutting taxes and extending America's presence in Iraq. -The Onion
Despite massive job losses in the state, Ohio residents gave the crucial winning electoral votes to Bush by voting based on "moral values," specifically in opposition to gay marriage. They will now have the comfort of knowing there will be no married homosexual couples standing next to them in line at the unemployment office. -Gary Tunstall
Anti-feminist, anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-secular, anti-gun control, anti-foreigner, anti-human rights, anti-science, and anti-speech. Religion shouldn't promote hatred, and it can never justify violence. So why is it that, other than Jesus, the only thing that extreme fundamentalists of all faiths really disagree about is where to put the bombs? -Rob Fairchild
[The following three quotes are from T.G. Browning]
justify: One's weak attempt to provide some rationale, no matter how
silly, for any preconceived notion currently squatting in the squalor
of one's mind. See rationalize. See logic.
logic: The study of the principles of reasoning, insofar as one can
hammer them into something one already believes. 2. A systematic
method whereby one establishes the truth and validity of one's current
beliefs. See justify.
pro-life: A person who hold the curious belief that all life is
precious, in marked conflict with the closing Consumer Price Index
which shows a human life to be worth about $0.32--the price of a
7.62mm bullet.
[from bash.org]
DragonflyBlade21: A woman has a close male friend. This means that he is probably interested in her, which is why he hangs around so much. She sees him strictly as a friend. This always starts out with, you're a great guy, but I don't like you in that way. This is roughly the equivalent for the guy of going to a job interview and the company saying, You have a great resume, you have all the qualifications we are looking for, but we're not going to hire you. We will, however, use your resume as the basis for comparison for all other applicants. But, we're going to hire somebody who is far less qualified and is probably an alcoholic. And if he doesn't work out, we'll hire somebody else, but still not you. In fact, we will never hire you. But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person that we hired.
Now, regular readers are well aware that one of my recurring themes -- so much so that I sound like a stuck record, in fact -- is the fact that Americans generically, and the media/pundit class particularly, have a peculiar blind spot when it comes to terrorism. When they're white right-wing extremist Christians, they're just "aberrations" and "isolated incidents." When it's committed by brown-skinned foreigners of another religion, we declare a "war on terror." -David Neiwert
The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. -Adam Smith
Putting $1000 in the pockets of 310,000 families with urgent needs is going to provide far more stimulus to the economy than putting the same $310 million in my pockets. -Warren Buffet, re: the Bush tax cuts
If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, what's the first refuge of scoundrels? My theory: the Internet. -The Covert Comic
While inevitable, the oft-repeated comparisons between McCarthyism and Ashcroftism are doomed to fall flat. As bad as McCarthy's tactics were, remarkably few people ended up in prison because of them. Ashcroft, on the other hand, imprisoned thousands of Arab-Americans after September 11 with no charge and apparently solely on the basis of their ethnicity, with no pesky public hearings and thus no risk that anyone might embarrassingly inquire after his sense of decency. -the rotten.com library
Voting disability ("Hard to Pin Down Syndrome") affects more than a million families in this country. Doctors claim the victims are of normal intelligence, yet lag behind even severely retarded children in decision-making ability. -Bad Reporter
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify,
for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. -John Maynard Keynes
Webloggers telling the mainstream media about being partisan and non-objective is like John Wayne Gacy telling Ronald McDonald how to be a clown. -August J. Pollak
Did you ever wonder what it felt like to have a blowjob from Anna Kournikova interrupted by the shrill screechy wail of Mariah Carey circa 1990? Well, then maybe *you* can explain to my wife why our alarm clock radio is now in 17 pieces. -Mark D. Sabien
Yesterday I was in the grocery store and saw this girl bend over to pick up something from the bottom shelf, and I saw straight down her shirt, and it made me really horny. Then it made me realize that I haven't had sex for, like, months. Hmmmm... somehow I thought this would turn out funnier than it did. -Bill Ervin
The Bush administration claims vindication from an extensive report which definitively states that although Saddam Hussein had not acquired weapons of mass destruction, he wanted them. In other news, nearly 90 million American men have been arrested and charged with rape for wanting to have sex with Britney Spears. -Charles Knorr
May our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise always right. I disclaim as unsound all patriotism incompatable with the principles of eternal justice. -John Quincy Adams
The combination of extreme poverty and inequality between countries, and often also within them, is an affront to our common humanity. -UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
Poverty is not created by poor people. It is produced by our failure to create institutions to support human capabilities. -Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh
Domestic issues can only lose elections, but foreign policy issues can kill us all. -John F. Kennedy
If you ever get a chance to participate in the Olympic trials for the 100-meter dash, don't run it "balls out" -- you'll wind up being labeled "The Janet Jackson of Olympic Runners." -Jerry L. Embry
I hate it when I give a homeless guy money and the wife says, "He's only going to drink it up!" What did she think *I* was going to do with it? -Jerry L. Embry
To think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just another attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand the question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action; fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man... Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect. -Thucydides
One of every three lakes in the United States, and nearly one quarter of the nation's rivers contain enough pollution that people should limit or avoid eating fish caught there, according to the EPA. The number of advisories has been steadily rising, but EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt said the increase was due to more monitoring, not more pollution. Luckily, the country's supply of beef, pork, and poultry are still considered safe because of inadequate monitoring. -James Floyd
You know you hate your job when you spill soda on your computer and you're more concerned about the lost soda. -Steve Nathans
I keep seeing advertisements on TV for "male enhancement" pills. Thanks just the same, but I'm one of those lucky guys who has no need for that sort of thing. I have a girlfriend with a really small vagina. -Chris MacEachen
It's one thing to read it all in books, but being here I'm getting a much more profound sense of just how many grand civilizations before our own have thrived briefly, fallen, and been completely forgotten, even though they were completely certain that their gods were real, their customs were the highest evolution of human development, and their future was necessary for the very destiny of life on earth. Now we barely even remember their names. Of course, this time it's different...
We've got a whole planet in serious trouble from global warming, well-armed religious fanaticism, WMD proliferation into countries which, unlike Iraq, actually have them, and a dozen other things of unprecedented scale. And every great civilization which didn't actively address its problems has fallen as surely as Helios.
I turned on CNN in my hotel today, the first time I've seen it on the trip. They said absolutely nothing of any importance, really urgently, for about ten minutes.
Man, if there's one thing I'm learning: human beings are really good at simply "solving" their problems by killing each other with complete certainty that it's the will of God, using us in a divine struggle to project our own egos onto the world, against all evidence in the whole of human experience.
It's actually funny, the whole pageant, when you look at it on a time line. What a bunch of maroons we are. -Bob Harris
When life has got me down and I'm ready to give up, I try to remind myself: "I'm the one in control here. I have the gun and the hostages. So just back off, man, okay?" -Dan Brennan
We popularly refer to extreme prudishness in the face of something even only mildly naughty as "Puritan." Those with a slightly greater sense of historical understanding would use the term "Victorian." Someday, the most astute of cultural observers will refer to it as being "American." -Rob Fairchild
That may be one of my biggest gripes about centrist Democrats. They act as if amelioration -- both economic and social -- is embarrassing and has to be handled under cover. Let's not talk about poverty. Let's pretend racism is now confined to the kind of white trash that dragged James Byrd to his death, but that drug wars and disenfranchising African-American voters have nothing to do with it. Let's not talk about gay rights because it makes some voters squirm. (Could all you gay people just try to blend it and shut up, so no one notices you're here?) Just trust us that we'll do whatever is politically feasible to make things better, but let's keep it quiet so we don't offend anyone. You may actually get a few positive things done that way, but over the long term, by taking those issues out of the public's consciousness, you solidify the idea that there's no problem, that people are poor because they have no initiative, that racism has disappeared and any reference to it is just offering excuses. And the Republican Party is going to build on that opening. -Jeanne D'Arc
(from bash.org)
ZS: Ouranophobia- Fear of heaven.
Kevyn: What's scary about heaven?
Phantomlord: dude, christians hang out there
I think sites like matchmaker.com would be more successful if they had yes/no check boxes for pragmatic characteristics like "enjoys farting loudly in public" and "sucks one mean-ass cock." -Mark D. Sabien
Some would say that harsh penalties have the potential to reduce crime and restore public faith in the justice system. Others would say this depends on whether or not Kenneth Lay gets the chair. -Rob Fairchild
We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people--whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth--is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure. -Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation. -Albert Einstein
It is very hard to talk about the promise of America without falling into self-congratulation and delusions, or worse, into a sense of entitlement. The language has been sullied, maybe beyond cleansing, by too many speeches in which our "values" are a nicely wrapped package we can hand someone else, or even force on someone who doesn't want them. America as an inheritence from a rich daddy, which allows you to take whatever you want, screw up repeatedly, and never pay for your mistakes, and still believe that your the best piece of work God ever created. -Jeanne D'Arc, quoted out of context
It is not possible to find a leader more foolish than Bush, who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom. Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embrace blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization. Because of this we desire Bush to be elected. -al-Qaeda statement, March 17, 2004.
One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law. -Justice Stevens (SCOTUS), Bush v. Gore
[in a post on Bush and the global gag rule] There's something I don't get. How come the same administration that believes we will be tainted by any association with abortion, no matter how much good can be accomplished, also works with and financially supports brutal governments on the grounds that some greater, long term good will come from it? In other words, why is it anathema to have a three times removed connection to a doctor in Africa telling a woman whose body can't take any more pregnancies how to get an abortion, but it isn't wrong to directly finance a government that boils people alive? [in reference to Uzbekistan, one of our closest allies] Maybe the Bushies could provide us with a list of government-approved sins. -Jeanne D'Arc
My priest said I might find spiritual guidance if I gave up something important for 40 days of Lent. So I gave up sobriety, and guess what? It worked! -Greg Preece
When I was young I used to pray for a bike. Then I realized that God doesn't work that way, so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness. -Dan Gadino
My dream is to someday be a member of the White House press corps and begin every question, "Riddle me this, Mr. President..." -Bob Van Voris
We have polluted the earth, the air, the water. Therefore, according to the ancient Greeks, we won't be perfect polluters until we figure out a way to pollute fire. -The Covert Comic
This commandment [honor thy father and mother] is often interpreted as a general order to obey and respect those who are older and/or in positions of authority. It is interesting that no corresponding commandment exists about honoring ones children, or people who are younger and/or below us in the pecking order. Why is this commandment missing? I suspect that it is missing on purpose. If a religion is to be acceptable to the rulers of an era, its tenets must not contradict their powers, and if a religion is to be acceptable to a large number of believers, its tenets must not deviate too much from too many of the existing social norms. Understanding this little practical fact makes it much easier to see why the big religions reflect the societal biases of the times when they were written down. Of course, it doesn't make it any easier to comprehend why everybody can't see this. -Echidne
I used to think that the worst feeling in the world was being lonely until I remembered that sliding down a giant cheese grater naked is also pretty bad. So it hit me what would be worst of all: sliding down a giant cheese grater naked and having no one to share it with. -Silas Knight
Looking at these photographs, you ask yourself, How can someone grin at the sufferings and humiliation of another human being? Set guard dogs at the genitals and legs of cowering naked prisoners? Force shackled, hooded prisoners to masturbate or simulate oral sex with one another? And you feel naive for asking, since the answer is, self-evidently, People do these things to other people. Rape and pain inflicted on the genitals are among the most common forms of torture. Not just in Nazi concentration camps and in Abu Ghraib when it was run by Saddam Hussein. Americans, too, have done and do them when they are told, or made to feel, that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be humiliated, tormented. They do them when they are led to believe that the people they are torturing belong to an inferior race or religion. For the meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators apparently had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show. -Susan Sontag
Students of history are familiar with these complaints, since they have been leveled against virtually every group of immigrants to come to the United States. Of course, the language complaint also bespeaks a peculiarly American bit of unthinking arrogance about other languages; Americans are possibly the only people on Earth who are positively insulted that people from other nations have failed to learn how to speak English. -David Neiwert
While I fit the Zeiss 12x56 scope to my new Weatherby .460 big-game gun with its custom ultra-mag rounds, I chuckle ruefully to myself as I recall how this all started as a simple Fourth of July squirt-gun fight. -Michael Cunningham
When I heard on the news that George Bush and Teresa Heinz Kerry were campaigning in Lansing while John Kerry and Laura Bush were in Detroit, I was shocked. But then I remembered that in this year's election, Michigan is a swing state. -Jerry Embry
As I stood there tired and sweating, my frustration building, my father's words came back to me: "Never give up! Never do a half-assed job! Always finish what you start!" With his wisdom still in the back of my mind, I lifted my 5-iron and took aim at the near-lifeless body one last time. -Stephanie Shiner-Thompson
President Bush said that the intelligence briefing he received on al-Qaeda one month before the 9/11 strike contained no specific indication of a terrorist attack. The president added, "There was not a time and place of an attack" in the briefing. An al-Qaeda spokesperson apologized, saying the attack notification -- including the time, place, date and map -- must have gotten lost in the mail. -Mark Funk
You make fifty thousand dollars a year, you pay nine thousand in income taxes - that doesn't put you in the poorhouse, but it sure as hell tightens your budget. I make a million dollars a year, I pay four hundred thousand in income taxes - that leaves me six hundred thousand to live on. That doesn't cramp my lifestyle. I'm still rich. You gonna feel sorry for me? -Bernard Rapoport, quoted in "Bushwhacked" by Molly Ivins
Unfortunately, it wasn't until after I had spent three days eating nothing but beets and asparagus and downing enough Karo syrup to kill a horse that I realized maybe it was actually during a dream when I came up with my super-secret formula for "pissing Skittles." -Brad Simanek
(in reference to going to war over religion) You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend. -Richard Jeni
Things you'll never hear a woman say: 'My, what an attractive
scrotum!' -Patricia Arquette
The Web brings people together because no matter what kind of a
twisted sexual mutant you happen to be, you've got millions of pals
out there. Type in 'Find people that have sex with goats that are on
fire' and the computer will ask, 'Specify type of goat.' -Jason Alexander
[from from bash.org CharoNoMe: Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall. CharoNoMe: Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
To summarize [Condi Rice's testimony to the 9-11 commision]: they did not know al Qaeda was planning to attack within the United States, even though they knew there were al Qaeda cells within the United States and the title of the August 6 PDB--a document prepared at the request of the President--was "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." However, the document was apparently one of the most grossly misnamed reports in the history of governance, because, according to Rice's testimony, it "did not warn of attacks inside the United States." Except, of course, for the part where it talked about suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijacking. And anyway there was nothing they could have done because they weren't specifically told when and where the hijackers were going to strike, and it's not like they could have hardened the cockpits in time even if they'd tried, which they didn't. -Tom Tomorrow
Why is it that Republicans understand so clearly that they have to keep the base happy, while the Democrats seem to delight in insulting theirs in order to court some temperamental sliver of voters who don't like them very much? Which are there more of? So-called progressive pro-lifers who care so much about forcing pregnant women to bear children that they would pull the lever for Bush, maker of dishonest war and champion of death row? Or women and men who want abortion to be legal and who fear the encroachments of sectarian religion on private life? -Katha Pollitt
The problem, as I see it, is that no one in the Bush Administration (or the press, for that matter) seems able to say, "We fucked up. We'll learn from our mistakes." About anything. Instead, all the time, it's, "We had a plan. Not just any plan, but a really cool plan. In fact, we implemented the plan! And the plan is working perfectly." I keep expecting one of them to tell us that the World Trade Center is still standing because their really cool plan� worked. Just you wait. -Martial
I think anyone who preaches the joys of bipartisanship is a fool who has little understanding of how American politics does and should work. Partisanship is a good thing. If the opening position is compromise then the public never receives a healthy debate over the merits of a particular policy. Sometimes I wonder if that's really what members of the Broder school of political analysis really want - to cut the pesky people out of the process. Of course, well-run government does require that there are a few responsible adults on both sides who can, at the end of the day, come together and iron out their differences. But, bipartisanship is not an end in itself. Democracy requires healthy debate and disagreement. -Atrios
I found that once I came to accept the fact that my very existence on the earth was an abomination in the eyes of God Himself, that I truly *am* an unclean being, I've been able to make some really good progress on my underlying self-esteem issues. -Chris MacEachen
Sometimes, too much of a good thing can end up being bad. Take flatulence, for example. -Marshall
I gave my wife something that made her moan all night. Who needs a "bigger man-tool" when you've got a contagious stomach flu? Take that, spammers! -Clynch Varnadore
Visiting your parents should have an expiration date; when your patience for putting up with overbearing advice expires, you should go home. That or two days, whichever comes first. -Jenn McNanna
It might be time to change the meaning of anti-Semitic. Because, apparently the only way to be anti-Semitic in some people's eyes is to portray the Jews as people with the word "Evil" tatooed on their forehead. Because portraying Jews as an unruly mob, slobbering for the death and torture of an icon of peace and love apparently isn't a negative portrayal under our current definition. -an email to the author of Orcinus, in reference to The Passion of the Christ
I believe the true power of the Internet lies in the fact that I could -- by citing a fictitious "study" touting their amazing weight-loss effects -- convince more than one person to don a banana-peel helmet and put a lightbulb in his rectum. -Brad Simanek
Getting a girlfriend is a lot like getting a new dog. Sure you can spend a lot of money and get a nice one, but if you're patient, and not so picky, sometimes you can find one hanging around the dumpsters behind Burger King looking for something to eat. -Anthony Myers
Yeah, that's exactly what we need on our airplanes these days, people arguing about *religion.* -Jay Leno, in reference to this news story
Anyone find it amazing how the people who insist on God existing without any proof whatsoever demand disclaimers on textbooks about the proof of evolution? I'll support disclaimers on the science books if the bibles can all have "Warning: your results may vary" stickers. -August J. Pollak
Driving in to work this morning, heard a quote on the radio by Eric Hoffer: You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. Reflected that this may explain why people in the Middle East threaten America with weapons of mass destruction, and we Americans threaten people in the Middle East with freedom and democracy. -The Covert Comic
I don't have anything against celebrity athletes endorsing products, but what makes them think I'd buy soup from a millionaire who still wears jerseys as shirts and hangs out with his mom at the grocery store? -Brad Simanek
Some conservative writers have been comparing the US war against Iraq to the epic struggles of the Lord of the Rings. Since we all know that the Black Gates of Mordor opened only to reveal an unarmed army of deserting orcs and a cowering Sauron, and we discovered that the One Ring was actually a bad forgery, and finally concluded that Gandalf was a shameless, war-crazy liar, I guess I'd have to agree with them. -R.B. Fairchild
What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know; it's what we know for sure that just ain't so.
Is it just me, or does it sometimes seem like God is being a big baby about little stuff? -Ian Samuel
Silence is never misquoted, but often misinterpreted. -unknown, found on Megan's profile
If these walls could talk, they'd probably say, "No! Not the nails again! Not the hammer! NOT THE HAMMER!!!!" -Jennifer A. Ford
I disagree with my psychiatrist's assertion that I'm depressed because I have a serotonin imbalance. I'm pretty sure the real reason is: My life sucks. -Scott Carpenter
Give an undertaker a dead body and you feed him for a day. Teach an undertaker how to kill people and you feed him for a lifetime. -Bob Van Voris
I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Every year when they hold the New York City Marathon, I like to stand on the sidelines holding out a cup of bleach. You know, in case one of the exhausted runners needs to clean a spot on his shirt or something. -Bob Van Voris
Republicans have learned through hard experiences that most Americans do not actually want their government sharply cut. Voters are skeptical of government, but they elect candidates who promise solutions for their problems, not ones who tear down departments. They do not respond to politicians whose primary message is "No, no, no." -David Brooks
A conservative is a man who wants the rules changed so that no one can make a
pile the way he did. -Gregory Nunn
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. -John Stuart Mill
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral
philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for
selfishness. -John Kenneth Galbraith
Reaganomics, that makes sense to me. It means if you don't have enough money,
it's because poor people are hoarding it. -Kevin Rooney
God doesn't have a legislative agenda. -Colin Powell
With all the violence and murder and killings we've had in the United States,
I think you will agree that we must keep firearms from people who have no
business with guns. -Robert F. Kennedy
All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humor, of honor, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men. -Rose Macaulay
Fetuses are now called unborn children. I like the logic behind this innovation; from now on I shall call living adults undead corpses. And for breakfast I will no longer order fried eggs but fried unborn chickens. -Echidne
One day it struck me that it's just not right that we eat certain animals, yet treat others as pets. And *that's* when I invented Kitten McNuggets. -Bob Van Voris
I'll bet people who aren't as bitter as I am don't have nearly as much fun with telemarketers. -Pam Pickard
Despite the obvious merits of an internationally led tribunal, Washington is adamantly opposed, which largely explains the path chosen by the Iraqi Governing Council. But Washington's opposition reflects its ideology, not concern for the Iraqi people. The Bush administration calculates that a tribunal of Iraqis selected by its hand-picked Governing Council will be less likely to reveal embarrassing aspects of Washington's past support for Saddam Hussein, more likely to impose the death penalty despite broad international condemnation, and, most important, less likely to enhance even indirectly the legitimacy of the detested International Criminal Court. -Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch
The last time I needed a cavity filled I tried one of those new places where the whole time the guy's working on you he spouts language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state. You know, sedition dentistry. -Sandra Hull
When I was a kid, my parents used to tell me that Santa Claus was really an escaped mental patient who murdered one bad little boy every Christmas. Other kids got presents, but when I woke up Christmas morning, I was glad just to be alive. So don't tell me about Christmas spirit, Mr. Psychiatrist! -Bob Van Voris
An apt and true reply was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been siezed. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride. "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor." -St. Augustine, The City of God
There never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented... The common man, I think, is the greatest protection against war. -Ernest Bevin, British Foreign Minister, November 23, 1945
To us un-Americans, an American conservative is a guy who doesn�t give a damn about you because you are a foreigner, whereas a liberal is a guy who makes an earnest effort to give a damn about you even though you are inferior. -a letter to the author of Orcinus (article link)
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Frame a man for murder and the state will feed him every day for 25-to-life. -Bob Van Voris
In hindsight, showing my mom how to do a Google search using the example phrase "Ella Fitzgerald scat" was probably a bad idea. -Patrick Crispen
If the supermarket workers are on strike, is it okay to cross the picket line if you only plan on shoplifting? -James Floyd
I think there is nothing sadder than a crying clown -- unless the clown is crying because he got hit in the crotch with a football, which would be hilarious. -Brad Wilkerson
You know work is slow when your most productive moments take place in the rest room. -Flatbush Escapee [Ah, yes, I remember that feeling well from my Chuck E Cheese days. :-) -ed.]
No way in hell is the NRA some sort of noble defender of "key Constitutional rights." What, you think it's all Waco and David Koresh? Get over it. The NRA is, and always has been, about one thing and one thing only: fear. Promotion, dissemination, and paranoid endorsement of. Fear of minorities. Fear of foreigners. Fear of muggers and rapists and hoodlums breaking in and stealing all your beer. Such idiocy. You know what? I'm not some fairlyland utopian pleading for the banning of all guns everywhere. That is simply foolish. What I wish for is an immediate criminal outlawing of the very brand of ultra-conservative paranoid hate-filled fearmongering the NRA so desperately tried to drill into the nation's soul. -Mark Morford
A useless message in my in-box trumpeted, "Satisfy the girls with a bigger dick!" Hey, I wouldn't be caught dead with a girl with a dick, especially if it's bigger than mine. -Clyde Varnadore
duty: 1. If one�s duty, that which hurts the least. 2. If another�s duty,
that which benefits you the most. -T.G. Browning
fair play: 1. Any legally sanctioned monopoly. 2. Marvelous concept
peculiar to thirteen year olds and Americans, which is said to describe even
handed, equal treatment for everyone. No concrete examples are actually
known to exist. -T.G. Browning
Such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not
compatible with military efficiency. -George Orwell, Homage To Catalonia
I don't like to tell potential employers I was downsized from my last job, because that makes me seem like a loser who couldn't adapt to the changing business environment. So I tell them instead that I quit to spend more quality time with my kitty cats. -Andrea Crain
Just once I'd like the answer to the question, "Honey, why are you crying?" to be "Because you know too much and I have to kill you." Instead, it's "You watch too much football and never take me shopping" that I always get. -Adam Altman
In retrospect, my plan to get out of jury duty by screaming, "Kill all the white people!" might have worked better had the defendant been white, had it not been the sentencing phase, and had I not been the defendant. -Andrew Kennedy
Your husband's noble and indeed wondrous medical assistance aside, I have to heartily and passionately disagree with "the individuals who enlist in the military cannot be held to even the smallest amount of responsibility for supporting the political regime in power." I realize they join with personal or maybe even benevolent intent. But this is not how they are used. Takes incredible levels of naivete to say "I had no idea I might be used as a disposable henchman for the current admin's violent and brutal corporate and petrochem strategies overseas." I mean, please. Sort of like joining the swim team and then feigning shocked ignorance about the whole getting wet thing. This is what they *do.* -Mark Morford, in response to a reader email
Nothing says "feisty" like a painfully distended bladder. -Bonnie Margay Burke
I am intolerant as hell. I do not tolerate rabid ignorance, or homophobia, or misogyny, or lib-bashing, or lies about war, or snide religious doctrine adherents who tell me if I don't live by a certain ethos or support a particular angry god or warmongering worldview I will burn, or suffer, or not be "saved," and I will pay; nor do I tolerate the spewing of misinformation meant to induce fear and rage in an increasingly numbed, thoughtless populace. Hey, doesn't that just about sum up the conservative agenda? You're damn right it does. What, too bitter? Too intolerant? As if. -Mark Morford
Even if we were to accept the premise that a fetus is a person, it may have a right to life, but it doesn't have the right to subject another person against her will to painful and dangerous medical consequences. If I needed a kidney transplant, I might be able to get the organ I needed to survive by stabbing someone and forcibly removing one of theirs. But even if they recovered with no ill health effects after the attack, I'd be guilty of a moral (and legal) wrong for subjecting them to it in the first place. Those people who want to consider fetuses person must remember that even another person with a right to life doesn't have the right to that life at the expense of another person, not even if that person is the child's parent. Being pro-life can't mean being in favor of saving one life by allowing it to hold another hostage for 9 months." -Amy Phillips (link)
Everywhere I look I see people driving fancy new cars and it just makes me sick. Why should I have to drive a piece of junk just because I've made a few dumb financial decisions? -Bill Stovall
I don't doubt that Easterbrook [note: the conservative columnist recently fired for referring to Michael Eisner as a "money-worshipping Jew" in one of his columns -ed.] no more thinks he is an anti-semite than Rush Limbaugh thinks he is a racist. Most anti-semites and racists don't think they are anti-semites and racists. Sometimes it comes out in anger, when they aren't thinking clearly and they kind of clap their hands over their mouths like Easterbrook did and whisper, "did I say that?" Others think they are making reasonable observations and that those who object are being peculiarly sensitive. They search for justifications and usually claim victim status themselves at the hands of the PC police. -Digby
There's nothing worse than listening to the sniveling crybaby in the cubicle next to mine whine and complain about his allergies all day. And then, of course, he blames it all on my cigar smoke, the inconsiderate bastard. -Charles Gulledge
I used to visit newsgroups on the Internet a lot, but I recently thought, "Why bother? If I want to be ignored when I speak, I can go hang out with my friends." -Eric Spratling
People like Ann Coulter, for instance, would say that we hate America. We don�t hate America. We want America to live up to its potential. We want this to be a better place than it is. And when you have, especially as you do right now, a gang of cutthroats and thieves running everything, then the only way this country�s going to be a better place and live up to its potential is if we are out there, jumping up and down and shouting and screaming and pointing out -- and this is a clich� -- that the Emperor has no damn clothes on. -Tom Tomorrow
Infomercials should only be viewed between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. That's when you're desperate for sleep and watching George Foreman grill meat somehow makes sense on a higher metaphysical plane. -JerseyTomato
The whole idea that cats are finicky eaters is just a lie perpetuated by marketing professionals. If you have some thick leather gloves, some duct tape and a funnel, you can pretty much make cats eat anything you want them to. -Anthony Meyers
Learning how to drive a stick is important, but learning it from your undersexed mother can be an uncomfortably harrowing experience. -Jenn McNanna
We have been regularly and deeply and incessantly hammered with one overwhelming command, and one command only, of how we are supposed to respond to 9/11, and that is with revenge. Attack. War. Kill the bastards. Do not re-evaluate your position, to not see it as a chance for self-reflection either personally or as a nation. Just kill. Just bomb. And shut up. Do not question. Do not wonder at the reasons why. They are evil. We are good. This is why they hate us. End of story. As Dick and Rumsfeld quietly snicker. Ain't that America. -Mark Morford
It's not whether you win or lose -- it's the amount of money and material possessions you have that you can use to make others feel hopelessly inadequate. -Tom Sims
I don't fit in with either political party. I can't be a Democrat because I like to keep the money I make, but I can't be a Republican because I like to spend that money on drugs. -Conor Regan
Those bastards at the dating service rejected my application because the three adjectives I chose to describe myself were "intense," "trigger-happy" and "loner." Oh, wait... silly me: "Loner" is a noun! Well, *that* explains it. -Brad Hamer
faith: Belief in something without proof, logic, context, or monetary
reward. If a monetary reward is involved, it�s called fraud. -T.G. Browning
[I'm assuming this is in response to someone asking something along the lines of why he's always so hard on Christians. -ed.] Because Christianity has the endlessly appalling gall to consider itself the One True Way and anyone who thinks differently is going to hell and the religion makes a point of evangelizing and trying to convert, and attempts to change the laws of the nation to fit its narrow doctrines of behavior and sex and marriage and belief, and how dangerous and easy to hand your power over to some vague deity, blind faith just way too easy and wimpy in how it absolves you from taking personal responsibility and while there are plenty of Good Upstanding Christians who don't wish to shove their beliefs down anyone's throat, far too many do, and far too many misunderstand its true pagan history anyway, and restricting yourself to one generally misogynistic patriarchal religious belief is akin to restricting yourself to one type of car or one sub-genre of music or one boring sexual position or one brand of scratchy underwear for the rest of your life. -Mark Morford
...While they do suck but a fraction of the global oil supply, the SUV plague represents far more than just petroleum glutton; they are our excess consumerist culture incarnate, a decidedly thoughtless, screw-the-world, bigger-is-better, kill-em-all, bloat for bloat's sake sort of Supersize-everything gluttony which is currently despoiling the planet. SUVs pollute, kill, ruin roads, hog parking, and engender a totally bogus sense of faux-macho security. Plus they are, by and large, butt ugly. But then again, so are Honda Accords. Oh well. -Mark Morford
Show me a man who claims that squirrels aren't dangerous and I'll show you a man who has never lost a toe while shooting at one after spending the entire afternoon drinking malt liquor. -Brab Osberg
My boss is like a fine wine. All I want to do is drive a corkscrew into him but my co-workers keep saying, "Not yet, let's wait for a special occasion." -Brab Osberg
In retrospect, answering "Wallowing in the bowels of despondency and floating in the sea of inebriation" when asked what I was doing on the night of March 10th didn't seem nearly as funny to the judge at my murder trial as it did to the regulars down at the bar. Paul Hitz
Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... The working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. -Eugene Debs
How can there be order in the state without religion? When a man is dying with hunger beside another who is stuffing himself, he cannot accept this difference if there is not an authority who tells him: "God wishes it so." -Napoleon Bonaparte
why the fuck does every crisis our country has have to have a catchy title, graphic, and it's own theme song? -from bash.org
Is there a pill my wife can take that'll make her do something that makes me *want* to take Viagra? -The Covert Comic
I have an imaginary girlfriend with whom I have screaming arguments in crowded shopping malls, probably because she hates it when I call her my "imaginary girlfriend." -Scott Griffin
Sometimes I lie on the grass in my back yard, staring at the night sky with its billions of twinkling stars wondering, "What did I do that was so bad that she'd change the locks on me?" -Brad Osberg
My friend Bill is such a hypocrite. First he says I can stay at his house for a while, then he gets all mad when I try to have sex with his wife. -Kevin Bonnay
And I would venture that yes, you are absolutely right, there are many gentle Christians who quietly follow Jesus' humble and Buddha-like teachings, and do not, like BushCo, leverage God's name to bomb and kill and get all pious and self-righteous and homophobic and misogynistic and anti-everything. But I would sadly venture that they are, sadly, the minority, and do not represent the church today, and do not control the thoughts of millions, not to mention doing a disservice to their own personal divine natures by blindly forking over such power to an outside diety, but that's an arguement for a much longer, and more wine- and Joseph Campbell-infused, email debate. -Mark Morford, in response to a reader email
How many deaths of other people's children by bombing or starvation are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent, and (supposedly) at peace? -Wendell Berry
As my date stormed off, I was rather relieved I hadn't yet invested much in a relationship with a woman who didn't even understand that "voluptuously chunky" was a compliment. -Brad Simanek
It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. -Anne Frank
There is nothing finer than the love of a good woman. But the love of two bad women is nothing to sneeze at. -Lev L Spiro
paleocon: college is for liberal sissies [from #politics on IRC; I think this was a serious comment, and comments like this are the reason I generally shy away from that channel -ed.]
One thing I've learned since the campaign kicked off is that the funniest thing you can say to someone on the street is, "Hi, I'm running for President of the United States." Guaranteed yuks, my friends. -Will Markson
It's a really sad state of affairs when a human being's freedom is treated as nothing more than an asset or liability. -Corporate Avenger, "FBI File"
Kline's Rule: Enthusiasm can hide a multitude of defects, but stupidity ain't one of them. -T.G. Browning
angelic: Anyone capable of tolerating your presence. See saint.
saint: One able to tolerate the presence of human beings without going postal. See angelic. -T.G. Browning
The most frustrating part about barricading yourself in your home and having an armed standoff with police is that when you call for pizza delivery, they never show up! You'd think the place would be easy enough to find, what with the flashing lights and all those cops to provide directions. -Ken Foster
As I perused the estimate, I wondered if the special this month at Jiffy Lube was irony. Given what it's going to cost to fix my car, it sure looked like the ass-reaming I was going to receive would be both dry and slow. -Brad Simanek
(in reference to the effort now underway to write a constitution for Iraq) Hey, why don't we send them ours? It worked well for us for over two hundred years... and we're not using it anymore... -Jay Leno
Dennis Halliday, the former head of the UN's "oil-for-food" program, who resigned in protest over the sanctions, says that UN headquarters in Baghdad was bombed because it is seen as an extention of US foreign policy. That sentence would probably make no sense whatsoever to the vast majority of Americans. It's one of the biggest disconnects I know of between America's vision and the rest of the world's: Most Americans see the UN as -- at best -- a fundamentally well-meaning, but weak institution, whose biggest flaw is that it's full of crazy foreigners who can't recognize that America only wants good things for all the world. The rest of the world sees an institution that does some good, but whose major flaw is that it is too much under the thumb of its richest and most powerful member. Is there any hope that it can ever be used for good when no one can even agree on what's wrong with it? -Jeanne D'Arc
I came up with a great cardio routine that's action-packed, always different and never gets boring. I call it "Kick a Stranger." -John Gephart
I don't understand what my girlfriend was so upset about -- her mom's tits *are* much nicer than hers. And certainly her mom should have liked the compliment. Man, what a crazy family. -Tim H. Richweis
A person who is nice to you, but not nice to animals is not a nice person. -Dave Barry
Everquest is a great game because it allows players to experience things in the virtual world that they might never experience in the real world, like going outside and talking to other people. -Luna Daisy
It struck me the other day exactly where my position is in the corporate hierarchy when I realized that the disabled stall in the men's room has more space than my cubicle. Donald Tribble
Wouldn't it be great if hookers accepted credit cards, just like gas stations? That way, if you were in a hurry you could use the convenient pay-at-the-pimp feature. -Kim Moser
The American, in other words, thinks that the sinner has no rights that any one is bound to respect, and he is prone to mistake an unsupported charge of sinning, provided it be made violently enough, for actual proof and confession. -H.L. Mencken
For every complex natural phenomenon there is a simple, elegant, compelling, wrong explanation. -Thomas Gold
Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that The State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied. -Arthur Miller
(in reference to the fact that fewer and fewer Christians are actually bothering to read the Bible) One reason my friend doesn't feel a gaping vacuum where the Bible should be is that she is stuffed full of Christian media of other types. She is a "fan" of contemporary Christian music, a medium that will never be faulted for being bashful in claiming that it contains all the essential vitamins and nutrients for healthy Christianity. Listening to the current crop of Christian alternative rockers, hip-hoppers and rappers, the average Christian young person gets a version of truth that looks something like this: God is my girlfriend, one for whom I have romantic feelings of constant warm fuzziness. He loves me like the ideal girlfriend, except he won't dump me or ask anything of me. There are no real moral issues or dilemmas that ought to rally my generation, other than we ought to love people and share Jesus with our friends. Staying on a buzz with the Holy Spirit is the real point of worship. Jesus is better than drugs, but only because he feels better. And so on... -Michael Spencer
Movie life: Michael Douglas throws Glenn Close on the kitchen counter and they have the best sex of their lives. Real life: I throw my wife on the kitchen counter and I get a hernia and a dislocated shoulder while she gets a twisted ankle and an ice cream scoop up her ass. -Mike Ranston
More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly. -Woody Allen
One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community. -Albert Einstein
Even while we speak of spreading American-style freedom and democracy around the world, we continue to ignore a growing crisis in our political system here at home. Of course, when we tell the world about the virtues of democracy and freedom, we describe a utopian system where citizens are engaged, politicians responsive, elections fair, and the free press responsible and balanced. That certainly sounds more attractive than, "Hey, how about we come in and help you build a 'democracy' in which fewer than half of your citizens vote, monied interests have undue influence, politicians focus mostly on their own re-election, the free press irresponsibly uses fear and spectacle in pursuit of ratings and profit, and the government increasingly ignores the issues of concern to a majority of your population. So, whaddya say? Should we get the paperwork started? We'd sure love to see you drive home today in a brand new American-style democracy." -Will Markson
Do you ever notice in this country that when we have a problem with something, we always have to declare war on it? The War on Illiteracy, the War on AIDS, the War on Homelessness, the War on Drugs... We don't actually do anything about it, but we've declared war on it. -George Carlin
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper. -Rod Serling
I have always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific. -Lily Tomlin
bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain. -Ambrose Bierce
loyalty: 1. Faithfulness and support of one�s employees in so far as there is no risk, no personal commitment and no capital outlay involved. 2. A one way street. -T.G. Browning
In order to send a more positive message, I think rock stars could, instead of smashing their guitars at the end of a concert, reconstruct guitars out of broken parts and play a song on them. -The Covert Comic
One morning my wife said, "I had the weirdest dream. I dreamed I was helping Halle Berry have a baby." "What a coincidence," I said. "I dreamed I was helping Halle Berry have a baby, too." Then my wife got all tweaked! Talk about a double standard! -Ken Foster
If you're a musician hired to play at a rich couple's house for dinner, and they get into a huge fight while they're eating, what kind of music should you play while they're screaming at each other? Also, after one of them stomps out of the room and the other is eating alone, should you play something happy, or sad? -The Covert Comic
stupid: 1. In olden times one limited in intellect. 2. In modern
times an individual who either makes less than you do, or is larger
than you and out of earshot. 3. Anyone able to draw incorrect
conclusions from sufficient data. -T.G. Browning
Nothing in life brings quite as much pleasure as watching children at play. Of course, a close second would be watching a cat with a wad of duct tape stuck to his paw. -Dave Tucker
We are not evil. We don't harm or seduce people. We are not dangerous. We are ordinary people like you. We have families, jobs, hopes, and dreams. We are not a cult. This religion is not a joke. We are not what you think we are from looking at TV. We are real. We laugh, we cry. We are serious. We have a sense of humor. You don't have to be afraid of us. We don't want to convert you. And please don't try to convert us. Just give us the same right we give you -- to live in peace. We are much more similar to you than you think. - Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon
That whole "act crazy and beat someone senseless with a chair" thing might may work on your first day in prison, but it makes a lousy impression at a new job. -Dan Johnson
Good friends are like toasters -- if you throw them down the stairs, they won't make you toast any more.
Kill one, it's murder. Kill millions, it's conquest. -a game on Newgrounds
We are all the rodeo bull: our balls tied up by cowboys, we flail in an arena of rednecks, and are finally harassed by clowns. -Matzerath
Newsweek Editors Argue Over What To Make Readers Fear Next NEW YORK - Having devoted cover stories to the threats of Hepatitis C, identity theft, and airport security, the editors of Newsweek spent Monday arguing over what they should stoke fears of next. "We could do the dangers of caffeine�that'd get people pretty worked up," managing editor Jon Meacham said. "Or how about daycare workers? There must be some alarming new study revealing just how few of them undergo background checks." Among the other ideas the editors proposed: the possible link between laptop computers and stomach cancer, the potential threat of water-supply poisoning by terrorists, and stunning new Biblical evidence pointing to April 4, 2004, as the date of the apocalypse. -The Onion
Here's some good advice for the guys: If you like a girl and you want to see if she likes you, put your hand on her crotch. If she gets an erection, she likes you! Only now you have a different problem. -Susie Swanton
I hate being hungry and horny at the same time, because then I have to decide whether to eat or masturbate first, and it seems like I always choose wrong because the guy from Domino's arrives before I can finish up. -Rabbi Crut
The pursuit of knowledge, unless sanctified by a holy mission, is a pagan act and therefore vile. -Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. -James Madison
A moderate Republican is someone who is moderate when Tom DeLay lets them be. -James Carville
My open and vehement distaste for goodly Christians is essentially aimed squarely and the Bush-esque born-agains and the Bible-clutching dogma adherents and the insanely literal-minded psalm-quoters who actually think every single scene in the book actually happened and who believe the thing is anything but a wondrous piece of myth-making swiped directly from ancient pagan goddess-centric sources and deeply mutated. Joseph Campbell had it right. But you are absolutely right: Well do I realize there are many beautiful open-hearted extant Christians. I simply recoil when faced with any claim to be the One and Only Way. -Mark Morford
After the paramedics left, the blood was cleaned up and the excitement died down, my boss took my scissors away. So much for my "Violent Friday" idea. -James Knowles
Browning's Razor maxim Rarely attribute to malice what can be as easily explained by stupidity. See Occam's Razor.-T.G. Browning [American foreign policy makes so much more sense once you realize this, doesn't it? -ed.]
Humanity's capacity to believe in nonsense is only exceeded by the depth and ferocity with which they hold it. -T.G. Browning
Whenever I'm at a crossroads and struggling for moral guidance, I just ask myself, "What would Keith Moon do?" Because hey, if I ask "What would Jesus do?" I'm less likely to wind up drinking a whole case of whiskey and then throwing a TV off a balcony. -Andy Ihnatko
If you ever have to flee police by car, try to start in the Rhode Island area, because nothing embellishes a clip on "America's Wildest Auto Chases" like the term "multi-state." -Brad Simanek
In retrospect, maybe "I'd rather be driving sober!" wasn't the best idea for a license plate frame. -J. Hutter
"Psychopatriot" (noun): One whose rabid gun-lickin' homophobic xenophobic pseudo-love of country has reached such a ridiculous and knuckle-draggin' degree so as to actually run in absolute direct opposition to what freedom actually means to the point where they exist only in drooling lockstep support of everything BushCo hurls their way. See also: NASCAR beer hat; fear-drugged NRA president; Dallas. -Mark Morford
I used to think it would cool if women found Marxist idealists sexy, because then I'd be rolling in pussy -- until I realized that I'd have to share it equally with my neighbors. -Michael Nassberg
Oh my dear. I am grateful every single day. I do love this country, despite its deep and flagrant flaws. I have been around the world (a little), realize how blessed and fortunate we are and etc. This does not mean blind lockstep patriotism, however. This does not mean shut up and be grateful and let them do whatever the hell they want. With the gnarly double-edged title of The Greatest Country comes massive responsibility, precedent, honor, intelligence. And BushCo is abusing that privilege at almost every turn. The very reason I am so frequently angry about it all is exactly because we have the freedom and the potential to be so much better, go so much deeper. And we do the opposite. -Mark Morford, in response to a reader email
Whenever my fiancee asks me why I love her, I always feel like I'm in eighth-grade math class, and my teacher just told me I have to show my work. I know I've got the right answer, but I'll be damned if I know why or how I got it. -Rabbi Crut
It was only after I untied my girlfriend from being face down on the bed that I learned her screaming, "Asshole!" was a statement about my character and not an invitation or request. -Dave Henry
The voice of protest is essential even if it is not effective "pragmatically." Don't despair by the fact that you're ineffective. We live in a merciless period; who knows what will bring a change. But meanwhile, keeping alive the spirit of protest is vital! Don't let the crimes pass without even being pointed at. -Anat Matar, philosophy lecturer at Tel Aviv University and mother of a boy currently being court-martialed in Israel for his refusal to serve in the Israeli Defense Force
I'm not sure what the guy driving the car with the bumper sticker reading "Bowlers have Bigger Balls" is trying to accomplish. Even acknowledging the innuendo, does he really think women crave having their asses repeatedly slapped by two oversized testicles? -Brad Simanek
When she asked, "Is that a roll of quarters in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?" we both just had to laugh, because, being a peep-show girl, it really didn't matter to her either way. -Brad Simanek
When you see "smothered chicken" on a menu, do you get a mental picture of a chef suffocating a chicken with a tiny pillow back in the kitchen, or is it just me? -Blaine Hofmockel
Know what I hate? That sinking feeling you get when you suddenly realize that you've gotten into the wrong car, which was why your key didn't work, so you really didn't have to break the window or hot-wire the ignition, and you *know* the cop pulling up behind you is not going to buy your explanation. That's a feeling you just never quite get used to. -Maurizio Mariotti
You can say anything you want in a debate, and 80 million people hear it. If reporters then document that you spoke untruthfully, so what? Maybe 200 people read it, or 2,000, or 20,000. -press secretary of Vice President George H.W. Bush speaking to reporters after a 1984 debate with his then vice presidential opponent
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction. Therefore there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only under that law would well-ordered society be intelligible and life worth living. If that is the law of life we must work it out in daily exisitance. Wherever there are wars, wherever we are confronted with an opponent, conquer by love. I have found that the certain law of love has answered in my own life as the law of destruction has never done. -Mahatma Ghandi
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As for money buying happiness, do you really think a guy with 250 million is any happier at all than a guy with only 240 million?
You how everyone laughs when one of your friends makes you promise to shoot her in the head if you ever catch her doing the "The Electric Slide?" Turns out she was just kidding. -Will Middelaer
When I bragged to my wife about how a woman dropped her fur-lined hand-warmer in the water and I heroically leapt in to retrieve it, she went ballistic. Maybe I should have elaborated, rather than simply saying I "dove for her muff." -Brad Simanek
It gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them. What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think. -Adolph Hitler
I just can't bring myself to wear turtlenecks, because they make me feel like I am being strangled by a very weak man all day long. -Kathy Littleton
My publisher didn't like the idea, but personally, I thought "Improving Low Self-Esteem for Dummies" would be something every loser would read.
To hell with fishing, golfing, or skiing. I want a bumper sticker that says, "I'd rather be fucking." -Stephanie Shiner-Thompson
Judging from all the gagging and vomiting, I'm guessing the other passengers had never seen somebody eat a bunch of melted Reese's cups before. At least not out of a diaper. -Bob Van Voris
I used to think that eating a package of Oreos before I went to the dentist was a pretty funny joke to play on the hygienist. Then I realized that with a little ingenuity, I could play the same joke on my gynecologist! -Kim Walker-Daniels
Nutritionists claim that you can reduce the calories in a dish by substituting applesauce for the fat in the recipe. Maybe I'm picky, but the French fries I boiled in applesauce sure sucked. -Kim Walker-Daniels
Schools shouldn't cut arts budgets in hard times -- any more than they should cut sports -- because art like sport helps turn troublemakers into better human beings, the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia, a poet and critic from CA, said last Friday, in this sort of dejected, resigned tone of utter disbelief, probably, recognizing just how pathetic and sad it that in this day and age, in the year 2003, basic, skull-bonking statements about the need for arts and culture still need to be restated, even more than ever in fact, and what a miserable commentary it is, really, the head of the NEA begging for fiscal scraps while sports programs rake in billions, and gosh you think there might be just a slight parallel between the antagonistic conflictive grunting sports culture and our outright faux-patriotic bogus ass-kicking aggro American mentality? Between the lack of arts and culture education and our monosyllabic kill-em-all approach to the world? Is that too damn depressing to think about? More books less NFL! More wine fewer Bud Lights! More dance less hockey! More painting classes for kids, fewer priests! Enough? -Mark Morford
As I sit in my third-floor office and frustratingly attempt to concentrate in order to meet my 5 o'clock deadline, the concept of "Honk for Peace" playing out on the street corner below seems rather ironic. -Brad Simanek
I think that my favorite childhood rhyme was: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but your mother does truckers for gas money." -Eric Hamer
What "Gone With the Wind" lacked in full-frontal nudity, it almost made up for in sweeping panoramas of stuff on fire. -Joseph Moore
I always get uncomfortable when other guys start talking to me when I'm trying to use the urinal, especially when they say things like, "Hey! What the...?! Wait your turn, you freakin' pervert!!" -Brad Simanek
"What Would Jesus Do?" may be a good philosophy of life for some, but I find that it rarely helps me decide how much to tip a hooker. -Charles Gulledge
You learn something new every day. Today I learned that if you put a whoopee cushion on the judge's seat, he can jail you for contempt. -John English
Since I can't afford to drive a bright yellow Hummer, I'm going to get a big flashing sign for my car that says, "I'm in serious need of your attention!" -Bernie Spencer
I've found that it's really hard to give gifts to fish, seeing as how nearly everything you put in their tank ends up killing them. -John Gephart IV
If you ever have a question, remember that it never hurts to ask. Unless the question is, "Which aisle are the throat lozenges in?" That question hurts almost every time. -Frank Weisbly
Winning a war is like winning an earthquake. -Jeanette Rankin
I thought the cotton swabs would feel kinda cool, but apparently I'm an "insensitive jerk" to suggest a blow job right after she had a couple of wisdom teeth extracted. -Michael Cunningham
I have a feeling that my utter contempt for those who know less than me will come in real handy when I become a teacher. -Nick Ehart
On lonely nights, I take great comfort in knowing that I come from a long line of people who have had sex at least once. -R.B. Fairchild
There is nothing inconsistent about being opposed to war and hoping for the safety of all the soldiers and civilians involved. There is, conversely, something very hypocritical about rushing into war, and then being suprised and appalled when the casualties and prisoners begin to accrue. That's why it's called "war." -R.B. Fairchild
I wish I were less awkward around strangers. I never know what to say when someone asks me who I am and what the hell I'm doing in their house. -Andy Ihnatko
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Young newspaper boy gets throat slit by time-traveling psycho! Young newspaper -- gurgle, gurgle... -Brayden Simms
Working at CIA has taught me that any American boy or girl really can grow up to be President. Although which Middle Eastern country you wind up being President of may or may not be something you can control. -The Covert Comic
Its been said that "living well is the best revenge," but my guess is that "sleeping with your enemy's mom" had to be a close second. -Andy Krakowski
Role-playing "Military Dictator and U.N. Weapons Inspector" with my girlfriend isn't nearly as much fun since she was ordered to leave the country for her own safety. -Jeffery Anbinder
War has brought little change to the regulated, by-the-numbers life of the Shrubster, isn't that nice. He is not worried or plagued by doubts, aides say, and is hewing closely to his usual routines and habits, including but not limited to "riding" around the war room on a wooden stick horsey while yelping like a drunk puppy and making explosion sounds with his mouth, regular sing-along spongebaths by Momma Barbara, actively decimating the very heart of a nation via innumerable odious domestic policies that reek of corporate greedmongering, and sneaking up to Uncle Dick every five minutes and yelling "sodomy!" to try and get his defibrillator to make that funny high-pitched humming noise -- even as American bombs pelt Baghdad and allied tanks dash across the Iraqi desert. "The president is following his normal routine," Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, actually said, as small angry worms ate at his shriveled soul, just before the president left to spend the weekend, as he has often throughout his term, at the secluded Camp David presidential retreat, because there's nothing like that nice feeling a nation gets when its president launches a big nasty ultraviolent war and he runs off every weekend to take long naps and play checkers. Don't let that little war disturb your jogging routine, Mr. President. You little dink. -Mark Morford
One of the saddest things about living in a militaristic society is the way its values feed some of the ugliest human instincts. You have to turn off something decent and caring inside yourself in order to go to war without going mad. That's true, I think, even for decent people fighting an unavoidable war. It is even more true of an illegal and unjustifiable war. A conscience just gets in a bully's way. -Jeanne D'Arc
To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you too may one day be president of the United States. -George W. Bush, at the Yale 2001 commencement specch ["He of course left out the part about having an ex-President father, a brother as governor of a state with missing ballots, and a Supreme Court full of his dad's buddies." -Michael Moore]
Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering, and it's all over much too soon. -Woody Allen
I recently switched my business cards from paper to Chinese throwing stars. I think the extra danger is greatly offset by how much fun I have passing them out. -John Gephart IV
If I were an infant again, forced to spent all my time lying flat on my back, I'd probably spend the whole day masturbating. -Zachary
I have found a sure-fire way to win any argument with my girlfriend. It's simple: I say, "I'll do anything you want, just take your fingernails out of my penis!" -Kris
Sometimes there's a fine line between participating in an extreme sport and just playing a conventional sport very, very badly. -Andy Ihnatko
I'm starting to think the Palm Pilot I bought for my cat was the worst $3000 I ever spent. -Mark Neibuhr
The U.S. Congress food service is no longer serving French fries, but rather "freedom fries," in response to France refusing to jump on the attack-Iraq bandwagon. In related news, members of the French Parliament no longer get American cheese on their sandwiches and instead are being served "Fromage de Warmonger." -Roger Leduc
One of the things that confuses me when I read overly enthusiastic proponents of war is the way they revel in Saddam's atrocities, as if they've never heard of civilian massacres or people tortured in prison. I don't know whether to pity their ignorance or envy their innocence. They want to see themselves as realists, in contrast to all us hopelessly dreamy liberals, and yet I wonder what kind of cozy bubble they all must dwell in, never, it would seem, to have heard news from Liberia, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Chechnya, or Myanmar. Or from the prisons of Turkey and Egypt, for that matter. -Jeanne D'Arc
With the success of his grills combined with his age, it's only a matter of time till we see a George Foreman Lean Mean Cremation Machine hit the marketplace. -John Gephart IV
My girlfriend loves to express her devotion to me physically, and I can appreciate that, but I really wish she'd come up with another way of doing it than grabbing my nuts and screaming, "These belong to ME!!!" -Mystic7
(in response to charges that liberals hate devout Christians) Liberals have contempt for people who try and mandate the teaching of creationism. We have contempt for people that have built an entire political movement by demonizing gays and lesbians. We have contempt for people who wish to install a theocracy. We have contempt for people who think a good use of government money is funding abstinence programs set up by the Moonies. We have contempt for people don't respect OUR religion. We have contempt for supposedly devout people like George Bush who upon travelling to the Middle East "joked" that he was going to inform Israelis that they were all going to hell. We have contempt for high ranking public officials like James Watt whose belief in impending armageddon drove his environmental policy. We have contempt for the fact that the media have turned Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell into the public faces of religion in this country. We have contempt for people who wish to ban contraception and prevent women from getting adequate medical care.
Christians are great. Devout Christians are great. Devout fundamentalist Christians are great. Devout evangelical Christians who are light on the evangelical are fine. Theocrats are not. People shoving their religious beliefs down my throat, giving me no respect for mine, and wishing to put religion into the public schools are not fine. People who would rather violate federal anti-dscrimination regulations than receive federal funding are not fine. People whose sick beliefs make them want to inflict torture on others by attempting to "cure" young gay and lesbian kids in "conversion camps" are not fine. -Atrios
Question: Will I go to hell for pointing out that with each passing day, the Pope looks more and more like Mr. Magoo? -Jim Rosenberg
Those new Chrysler commercials with Celine Dion are kind of abstract, so it's hard to know what the point is supposed to be. But if they wanted me to roll my eyes a lot, lose my appetite, and buy a Honda, then that's one advertising budget that's well-spent. -Jeffery Anbinder
I named my cat "Thwap", because that's the noise it makes when he slides head-first into the fridge. -Jason Boone
(don't know exactly what this is in reference to, sorry - ed.) Well yes, this is essentially the intent of any prescription med for kids, take the edge off, calm down the creative/destructive fires, make them "normal," the irony being how we as a culture pretend to champion individuality while simultaneously our absolute biggest dread is of course for our kids to turn out somehow different or anti-establishment or anti-authority or weird. Ten years of those noxious drugs will kill the spark in just about any would-be brilliant kid. The legal doping of America. You think it's just happenstance? How do you think Shrub got to power? -Mark Morford
Forgiving Third World debt sounds like a great idea, until you start asking some basic questions, like: Do we really want Bono to win a Nobel Peace Prize? -The Covert Comic
When the going gets tough, pointing out their grammatical mistakes to people gets you slapped more often. -Tim Hunt
My girlfriend always wants to have make love at the same EXACT time, in the same EXACT position, while listening to the same EXACT music, with the same EXACT incense burning. I guess that's what they mean when they talk about "anal" sex. -Tim H. Richweis
The agony of having spilled acid down my pants was quickly tempered by the breathtaking, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch a penis melt.
At a wedding last week, my wife said, "Isn't
the bride beautiful?" When I responded by saying, "Yeah, but her blowjobs aren't half as good as yours," she got all pissed off. Women -- they can't take a compliment! -Dave Henry
What's the male equivalent of women's intuition? Most likely, it's hitting something really hard and seeing if it still causes a problem. -The Covert Comic
France was willing to put ground troops at risk - and lose a number of soldiers - in the former Yugoslavia; we weren't. The U.S. didn't make good on its promises to provide security and aid to post-Taliban Afghanistan. Those Americans, they are very brave when it comes to bombing from 10,000 meters, but they expect other people to clean up the mess they make, no? -Paul Krugman
Police Action: Warfare lite. A twentieth century innovation of great versatility. Unlike a formally declared war, a police action can be picked up and moved to a new location should interest wane, requires no formal permission from anybody, affords a perfect venue for field testing new weapons and weapon systems and never can be lost. -T.G. Browning
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it. -Dwight D. Eisenhower
I try not to despise people. Unless you call wishing certain slug-like politicos or religious zealots or puling abstinence advocates a rash of painful debilitating brain warts to go with the red-hot poker jammed in their big toe in Hell's alcohol-filled wading pool, despising. Nah. -Mark Morford
Haiku:
Use Bush war logic:
Neighbor's dog crapped on your lawn?
Key the mayor's car! -Carl Knorr
We've been observing your pathetic planet since it was created. Five thousand years ago. By God. -Kang and Kodos, from the Simpsons
Particular states or groups of states that set themselves up as the authoritative judges of the world common good, in disregard of the views of others, are in fact a menace to international order. -Hedley Bull
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. -Dwight D. Eisenhower
Suppose poison gas or a bio agent is able to kill 5,000 people. It is classified as a WMD. Now suppose a routine bombing sortie by the USAF kills 5,000 people. Question: has the U.S. used a weapon of mass destruction? (Extra credit: if using the bio agent is a war crime, is the bombing sortie?) -Max Sawicky
The surest way to become a pacifist is to join the infantry. -Bill Mauldin
I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true: for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all of my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine. -Charles Darwin
One day, I spent several hours walking around telling people that I was "a little tea-pot." Some people asked me if I was also short and stout, and I punched those people out, because that kind of disrespect is totally uncalled for. -C.B. Droege
People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either of them being made. -Unknown
I never know what to say to a pretty girl, but yesterday's experience taught me that "Is this big guy your boyfriend?" might be a good opening line. -Brad Osberg
Women who have been with me often find they no longer need a vibrator. Maybe it's because they've been turned off sex for good, but still....
One night when I was a bartender, I gave a female customer sex on the beach, a screaming orgasm, slippery nipples and a pulsating cock. Unfortunately, the fact that the last one isn't a mixed drink got me fired.
Remember, kids, with great power comes great opportunity to abuse that power. -Black Mage, 8-Bit Theatre
Remember: No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, you can always cheer yourself up by scaring the daylights out of the cat with the vacuum cleaner. -Tom Sims
Given that men can be as vain as women, I've developed new "enhancing" boxer shorts called "Wonderbulge." The only problem is making sure the tag in the back is clearly visible, because nothing sours a first impression more than a woman thinking you've pooed your shorts. -Brab Simanek
Many people express the desire to have capital punishment. Few, however, seem prepared to address the tough questions that arise when the system fails. It is easier and more comfortable for politicians to be tough on crime and support the death penalty. It wins votes. But when it comes to admitting that we have a problem, most run for cover. -former Illinois governor George Ryan
All American politicians are liars and hypocrites about race, from Democrats like Hillary Clinton posing as champions of the downtrodden black masses while buying a house in the whitest town they can find, to Republicans pretending not to know that (a) many millions of nonblack Americans seriously dislike black people, (b) well-nigh every one of those people votes Republican, and (c) without those votes no Republican would ever win any election above the county level.-John Derbyshire
Some people are like slinkies; useless, but you can't help but laugh when you see one tumble down the stairs. -Unknown, found on Hazel's AIM profile
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. -George Orwell, 1984
This is a commercial enterprise. This is not PBS. We're not here as a public service. We're here to make money. We sell advertising, and we do it on the premise that people are going to watch. If you don't cover the miners because you want to do a story about a debt crisis in Brazil at the time everybody else is covering the miners, then Citibank calls up and says, "You know what? We're not renewing the commercial contract." I mean it's a business. -CNN anchor Jack Cafferty
We're no longer a superpower. We're a super-duper power. -Tom Delay
I know they say Hitler died in that bunker, but if there was an alternate universe where he survived, Ann Coulter would likely be his granddaughter. Or be the granddaughter's best friend who stabbed her with a steak knife and then ate her face to become her. Yes, this woman is that evil. -Jesse Taylor
Assume that all governments lie. Do not accept the idea that the violence of war can be justified by claiming to prevent a larger violence. Understand that all war is a war against children, and therefore can not be justified, whatever the reason. -Howard Zinn
Everything comes back in style eventually, but I bet those little Hitler mustaches will take a while.
Once, when I was a kid, I was eating a hot-dog and my grandfather told me that he had toured the factory, and that hot dogs were made of pig lips and rectums. I thought to myself, "That's gross! What kind of twisted bastard tours a pig lip and rectum factory?!?"
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves "who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of the Universe. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do... we were born to make manifest the Universe that is within us. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. -Marianne Williamson
I want to buy a catapult and only launch cows from it. The animal rights people wouldn't like it very much, but I'm not too worried because I don't think they'd mess with a guy who's got a catapult.
Sometimes on quiet, peaceful mornings like today, I look out my window at the sleepy neighborhood and wonder if I still have that big pack of firecrackers left over from last summer, because that would really get things moving. -Dave Brennan
I used to think that workaholism and alcoholism were the same thing -- until they canned my ass.
If you ever want to get away with murdering someone, just tickle them to death. What jury would convict you for that?
Before I fuck my girlfriend on the hood of my car, I always run the engine for a few minutes to warm it up -- because that's the kind of thing you do when you care.
I decided I'm going to use this year's "Secret Santa" gift exchange at the office to express my true feelings for one of my coworkers. Now I need to find a 14-karat gold "World's Biggest Bitch" pendant for under 20 bucks.
The holidays always stir up some very strong emotions in me. Unfortunately, those emotions have less to do with the holiday spirit and more to do with the time when I was 6 and I saw the mall Santa taking a dump behind Sears.
Sometimes I think I'd like to kidnap Mr. T. and tie him up in a sack in the back of my car. But I drive a station wagon, so everyone would see the big Mr. T.-shaped sack and I'd get in trouble. So I usually just make some soup instead.
This is the time of year we should remember those who are less fortunate. For me, that means buying a small unwrapped gift for all the guys at work who HAVEN'T had a threesome with the twins in accounting.
Nothing says "I love you" like six hours of nonstop sex.
If I ever run into a really good looking zombie, I sure hope she doesn't start hitting on me. Cause, man, that's one decision I don't want to have to make. -Jim Ross
My neighbors are always complaining. Two weeks ago it was, "Knock off all that screaming!" Now it's, "What on earth is that ungodly smell?" I hate them nearly as much as I hated my late roommate.
Sometimes I just want to scream, "Get your hands off of me!! I was going to pay for that! I was just holding it in my coat!" Friggin' security guards.
Dan's Law: Anytime you catch yourself thinking, "Man, I can't believe I'm getting paid while I'm doing this," your boss is about to walk in. -Dan Beavers
My wife likes to watch the maternity shows on The Learning Channel because she loves the beauty of a tiny new life coming into the world. I like to watch it with her because if I close my eyes it sounds a lot like really intense porn. -Damon Milhem
I think kids appreciate it when adults actually treat them like people. Little, stupid people who cry a lot. -Bob Van Voris
If lawyers were required to present each case as an opera, I bet people would think twice before going to divorce court.
My only Christmas wish besides peace and love and happiness throughout the world is for that customer who got pissy with me at McDonald's to burn in hell. -Brandy Warden
I wish I had my own defibrillator. I would shock the ever-loving shit out of some people, that's for damn sure! Clear! -Jim Rosenberg
Life is like Minesweeper. How? I have no idea, but I bet some wiseass out there was nodding like he knew what I was talking about.
Well-behaved women rarely make history.
I'm glad that life isn't like a Christmas song, because if my friends and I were building a snowman and it suddenly came alive when we put a hat on it, I'd probably freak and stab it to death with an icicle. -Matt Perry
The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for five seconds and think for ten minutes.
Always be wary of someone who brings a spoon to a knife fight. That means they're either crazy or really good at killing people with spoons, both of which you usually want to avoid. -John Gephart
...there needs to be more media education in this country. Too many people believe in things like "journalistic integrity" and believe that the mere presence of the First Amendment guarantees a free press. I bet it would be a surprise to many that the US does not even rank in the top-ten for press freedom. Too many Americans have no clue as to who people like Richard Mellon-Scaife, the Reverned Moon, Rupert Murdoch, or corporations like Clear Channel and Viacom are. Too few people know that much of the media market is owned by handful of corporations and/or how much these few influence what we see on TV, read in newspapers and magazines, or hear on the radio.
An addiction is technically defined as requiring three of the following conditions: "Preoccupation with the drug; unintentional overuse; requiring progressively larger doses to achieve the same effect; withdrawal symptoms when the drug is not used; persistent efforts to control use, followed by relapse; abandonment of important social, occupational, or recreational activities that interfere with drug use; and continued use despite serious drug-related problems."
Now, I hate to be a party pooper during a "war on terror," but if you substituted "Arab oil" in place of the word "drug" in this definition, then suddenly I'm curiously reminded of someone in dire need of an intervention. -R.B. Fairchild
The fundamental problem with representative government is that the people who would be best for the job least want it, and vice versa.
Never use the words 'Evil Diabolical Plan' on your resume.
If I had to choose which of the five senses I'd least like to lose, I think I'd use the "Boob Test" -- because you can't hear breasts, no matter how hard you try, I'm afraid I'd have to go with hearing. All of the other senses I would need, boob-wise. -Randy Lee
Doesn't placing an "Out of Order" sign then make sense of the situation, placing it back in order and negating the need for a sign?
Sex, and ruling Third World countries, are two things you can enjoy and not be very good at. -The Covert Comic
Even if winning isn't everything, it beats losing. Except losing your virginity; nothing beats that. -Randy Lee
When I'm on the morning bus going to work, sometimes I hear a little kid whining and complaining that she wants to go home. Then I realize it's me.
I hate it when the dog sneaks into the bedroom
while my girlfriend and I are having sex. Inevitably, he'll start licking his balls right there in front of us. It's just his way of rubbing my nose in the fact that he can have as much fun as me without first having to buy someone an expensive dinner.
There is harmony in the universe everywhere you look. For instance, the sad fact that I can't lick my own back is tempered by the knowledge that I would rarely need to. -John Gephart
Love means never having to explain to your wife why your AOL screenname is HUNGJOCK. -Jim Rosenberg
Pride is what we have. Vanity is what others have.
I think there'd be a lot more Christians if Jesus had spoken more plainly. For instance, when he said, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone," it would have been a lot easier to understand if he had just said, "It's okay to have sex with hookers." -Scott E. Frank
My wife and I just found out there's no such country as "Blavakia," nor is there a tradition of having your neighbors come over and suck your pregnant wife's boobs. Man, talk about some sick, lying neighbors. -The Covert Comic
I think all guys have doubts about their
heterosexuality at some time in their life.
Especially the times they're touching another guy's penis.
If it is not obvious by now, the UN vote makes war a certainty, absent an upsurge of citizen outrage in the U.S. The UN is no obstacle at all. George Bush has destroyed it. When there is only one superpower, that power can choose to supercede the authority of any mere consultative body. That's what Bush did in his speech before the General Assembly. He said the U.S. is not bound by any collective decisions. You either go along or be rendered irrelevant in name as well as fact. No longer is there cause to assign any measure of legitimacy to whatever the UN takes into its head to resolve. A noted economist, the late Rudy Dornbusch, once described the International Monetary Fund as the plaything of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. So goes the UN. In essence we have a kind of world government now. Where some right-wingers go astray, or deliberate try to mislead, is in the implication that this world government is rooted in some elite council of European financiers and collectivists. No, the capital of world government is Washington, D.C. Its ruling ideology says that corporativism and protectionism are o.k. for the U.S., but economic liberalization is required for everyone else. Selective exemptions will be granted by the U.S. on a case-by-case basis, if the U.S. needs the nation's cooperation in some enterprise. One consequence is that we will see the emptiness of many Democratic critiques of the Bush war plans, namely that the problem is the Administration's so-called unilateralism. Or that inspections have not been given a chance to work. In a world with one superpower, multilateralism is simply a matter of cracking the whip with sufficient seriousness. And the Administration can decide any time it likes when the Iraqis have failed to cooperate with UN inspectors. War is just a shot away. In short, imperial overstretch is now on the agenda. I heard one commentator suggest that going by historic ratios, it would be reasonable for the U.S. to have thirty million persons under arms, as opposed to one and a half million. There's a lot of world to subjugate. What the empire builders fail to appreciate is the dissent of the governed, here and abroad. Encouraged by the newest generation of weapons, they reduce everything to military force. They think a compliant press, a cowering UN, and 52 senators are a lever that can move the world. I think not. -Max Sawicky
The devil came to me last night and asked what I wanted in exchange for my soul. I still can't believe I said pizza. Friggin' cravings.
Here's a tip on auto safety I learned recently: If you're driving through one of those traffic checkpoints and a police officer yells at you to slow down, don't slow down *too* quickly or he'll go flying right off the hood. -The Covert Comic
At some point in your life you make such a monumental ass of yourself that you can't escape the thought that perhaps you are a total idiot. Maybe you get smashed at a party and pass out in the jacuzi, but not before you put on a bubble wrap toga and run around asking the ladies to "pop" you. Not that this happened to me. Cuz it didn't. Really, it didn't. Anyway, it's at this moment, when you stop and realize what a fool you are, that you approach something called wisdom. It's sort of like a hazing ritual for enlightenment. You must endure much embarrassment before you achieve enlightenment. Before you can know yourself you must first learn to laugh at yourself. Except me. I have no embarrassing stories about me whatsoever. All that stuff about getting smashed and bubble wrap togas--not me. I just made it up. Really. -Tatsuya Ishida
(in reference to the NATO assault on Kosovo) A standard argument is that we had to do something: we could not simply stand by as atrocities continued. The argument is so absurd that it is rather surprising to hear it voiced. Suppose you see a crime in the streets, and feel that you can't just stand by silently, so you pick up an assault rifle and kill everyone involved: criminal, victim, bystanders. Are we to understand that to be the rational and moral response? -Noam Chomsky, Rouge States
I bet the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II wouldn't carry the stigma it does today if Norman Rockwell had painted a few pictures of it.
Along with the profound sense of responsibility I feel in possessing the authority to spy on American citizens, comes the sobering realization that my neighbor's wife's boobs are fake. -The Covert Comic
As people increasingly come to view the human race as a single great family, one concept I assume will change is the concept of incest. -The Covert Comic
Imagine if the Soviet Union had never existed. Then all those years I spent at CIA spying on "the Soviets," boy, would I have been crazy or what? -The Covert Comic
They've got this "whistleblower" law in the Federal Government now. You can't be fired or prosecuted if you report an improper activity by a Government employee. So I sold top secret information about our nuclear weapons to China for three million dollars. Then I reported myself. -The Covert Comic
I believe it should be a federal crime to tell offensive jokes about women. Furthermore, I think the determination of which jokes are offensive to women should obviously be made by women, rather than by men. For this reason, I think every potentially offensive joke about women should be published in a large book, and all women everywhere should read this book, you know, so they can collectively determine - as a single, unified feminine mass - just which jokes about women are offensive. Oh, and of course, as new potentially offensive jokes about women come into existence, this book should be updated and all women should be required to read each new update, you know, just to make sure the process of determining which jokes are offensive to women remains truly and fully participatory and woman-like. Therefore, every woman should be legally required to read this book of potentially offensive jokes about women for, maybe, six hours a day, seven days a week. In this way I'm confident that the ongoing advancement of women toward real social, political and economic empowerment shall continue. Hopefully forever. You're welcome. -The Covert Comic
There are some things you just can't teach. For example, teaching kindergarten students how to have oral sex. Sorry, but according to Federal Law you just can't teach that. -The Covert Comic
Now, I appreciate the problem of crime - and the corresponding loss of that sacred sense of community which used to typify our society - every bit as much as the next organism. Nevertheless, I have to admit I'm frankly amazed by those people who, when talking about this subject, declare "Where I come from we used to leave our front doors unlocked at night." When they tell me this I always reply "So where you come from, if I was your neighbor I could come over to your house, open the front door, walk right in, and watch you and your spouse having sex, is that what you're saying?" They always say "No, you wouldn't do that because, being a good neighbor, you'd honor our privacy in such a special moment." To which I respond "Hey, how would I know it was a special moment unless I walked into your house and saw you and your spouse having sex?" Then they say "Well, if you saw us embracing, or gazing meaningfully into each other's eyes, you would know enough to leave us alone." Then I say "Whoa! Time out! Wait just a minute here! Just because you embrace someone or gaze meaningfully into that person's eyes doesn't mean you're actually going to have sexual intercourse with that person." Then they say "Well, all right. I guess you could stay for the first few minutes of coitus, as long as you left before we actually climaxed." God, those people are idiots. -The Covert Comic
Thursday at CIA I single-handedly prevented the overthrow of a democratically elected foreign government. I called in sick that day. -The Covert Comic
Mental note: Develop self-esteem. If I fail to develop self-esteem, remember to take lots of illegal drugs and commit many violent felonies. -The Covert Comic
Sometimes you just have to kick off your shoes, toss away those stuffy work clothes, and start dancing. Like right now, when I'm pointing my gun at you. -The Covert Comic
My grandfather once told me: Happiness isn't something you "experience." It's something you "never experience." -The Covert Comic
The Genocide Defense: I couldn't possibly have violated Security and Exchange Commission rules on insider trading, because I was busy committing genocide at the time. -The Covert Comic
Celebrity boxing is an affront to every principle of human dignity -- but on the bright side, at least the celebrities get punched for participating. -The Covert Comic
Zero tolerance: In the latter part of the 20th Century, a principle employed to reduce the number of overworked neurons in the cerebral cortex, by reducing the need to think, judge, reason, or evaluate. Based upon the firm, combined principles pioneered by both Pavlov and Lenin, all reasoning judgement is rendered immaterial and only yes/no dichotomies are allowed. See "Les Miserables" by Hugo. Interestingly enough, the main proponents of this rather mediaeval behavior generally also favor standardization of the celebration of diversity to all public forums. -T.G. Browning
What's the difference between a cub scout and the Army? Cub scouts have adult leadership.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think my life would turn out the way it has -- mainly because in my wildest dreams, that guard at the bank never had the cojones to go for his gun when I started taking hostages. -Mike Lopez
Chicken: preferred method of U.S. diplomacy. -T.G. Browning
O'Brien's Law: The amount of response by governments is inversely proportional to the necessity or utility of the response. -via T.G. Browning
Browning's Adjustment to O'Brien's Law: The urgency of that response is proportional to the depth of duplicity involved. -T.G. Browning
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
It's amazing how much goofing off one can do when one sets one's mind to it.
Far too many are working far to hard to make far too few rich.
A trick for the men: Before you play with yourself,
sit on your hand until it becomes numb. That way,
it's like someone else is giving you a hand job, but it's cheaper than paying for dinner and a movie.
If you're ever in need of a seven-syllable
middle line for a haiku, I've found that "in the motherfuckin' house" works quite nicely.
Word to the wise: Fellas, if your girlfriend casually mentions that she wants a facial, don't get your hopes up -- it's probably not what you think it is.
You know when you feel like you have to defecate,
but when you get to the commode, it turns out to be merely flatulence, then you return to what you were doing before, and the feeling that you need to defecate returns, and you figure it's just flatulence, but it turns out that it isn't? Man, I hate that!
As they say, "Any port in a storm." Unless it's a shit-storm and the port is the rectum of some giant creature. Then you're probably only temporarily out of trouble.
When I die, I want to be turned into a pinata. They could hang me from a tree and blindfolded little kids could hit me with a stick, and the first one to bust me open gets to keep whatever's inside. Maybe I'll even eat a puppy or something first. -Adrienne Zercher
Whenever my teenage daughter comes down the stairs dressed like a tramp for her date, I think to myself, "Damn, why won't her mother wear something like that?" -Dave Henry
And suddenly from the sky there came a mighty bolt of lightning which smote the cute little girl playing in the sandbox. Then a booming voice was heard: "Oops, my bad."
"Oh yeah? Well if you hate America so much then why don't you move to another country?"
"Because I don't want to be a victim of our foreign policy."
Yesterday my coworkers here at the post office started calling the new guy "Chewbacca" because he's really hairy. Today, he came into work grunting and growling, carrying some kind of weapon. Man, he's really enjoying his new nickname! -Hugh Ringling
When my girlfriend is mad at me, she refers to me as her "half-ass boyfriend." I get my revenge by referring to her as my "ass-and-a-half girlfriend." -Hugh Ringling
Next time I go back to that biker bar, I'm bringing my friends along to help me out. Sure, they might laugh at *one*, but I bet those chain-swinging morons would cower before *three* Jedi knights. -Hugh Ringling
You know that phase when you're embarrassed of your parents and you just can't take them anywhere? And you can't believe you're related to them and you're convinced you must've been adopted and your real parents must be somewhere worried sick about you? And you wonder why your folks had you at all and why in the world isn't there some qualifying exam to become a parent in the first place? You know, like some American Idol-ish Bachelor-type competition where couples compete for the right to have a kid. Call it "Copulation Island." The contestants would have to go through a battery of tests, each round eliminating one couple and removing their reproductive organs. But they will receive a lovely parting gift: a "You--Out of the Gene Pool!" bumper sticker. Thanks for playing. -Tatsuya Ishida
A fanatic is one who cannot change his mind and will not change the subject. -Winston Churchill
I was doing a late-night project with my big paper cutter, and I thought about how much the slicing blade sounds like a guillotine. So I started humming death marches and parading the scraps around the room on the end of a sharp pencil. If you ask me, they should assign major projects the day after Bastille Day. But nobody asked. -Amie June Brumble
I'm not against guns, and I'm definitely not against their use and portrayal in the bit-o-the-old-ultraviolence movies and video games I absorb into, just their inherent concept. I do believe it's your right to own a gun, I just think it's inherently stupid and reflects one's cowardice, not their bravery. Something 40 times more likely to be used against me or a member of my family (either directly or accidentally) than an intruding criminal doesn't make me feel safer. The only way people are going to feel safer is when they stop joining their Club for White Men Frightened of the Big Scary Black People So We Want to Have Lots of Guns, stop acting as if the military is suddenly going to develop the abilty to activate their ninja powers and magically take away all the guns in this country and that everyone is really just out to kill everyone else, and start looking for productive ways to make everyone in the country happier and nicer to each other. Maybe we can start by getting rid of a few guns. Sell them and build some more damn schools. -August Pollack
If loving you is wrong, then baby, it goes a long way towards explaining the concussion and crushed left testicle. -Dan, the crazy Croat
(Wiegraf, from Final Fantasy Tactics) Governments falsify history only so it favors them. People always hope for a "miracle." Endlessly complaining, lazy, nuisances, that's what the masses really are. Governments give the people what they want... and history repeats itself. Governments might well have taken advantage of their insecurity. But then again, people are satisfied being used. "God" is nothing but an image created out of their insecurity. It's their fault for knowing they're comfortably numb, and not doing anything about it.
(Tom Morello, on fearing for his safety because of his political beliefs) That's part of the job! There's a long, rich and savage history of dissidents in the United States being persecuted by law enforcement, so it's something we take for granted. But the second that you find the police department and government agencies patting you on the back and telling you to "keep up the good work", that's when you break up the band.
Things like rebellion and resistance to authority are absolutely as much a part of the human experience as love and cars are, and it's a part that doesn't get covered very much in pop music. -Tom Morello
(Zack de la Rocha referring to a Sheriff who tried to get a RATM concert banned) He has the nerve to call us violent when last year there were 80,000 cases of police brutality filed against departments all over the country! This sheriff pig is poppin' off, poppin' off about how we're violent. Well, shit, he belongs to the most violent gang in US history.
I knew this one girl who always went for guys she couldn't have. Something about wanting a challenge. So naturally I told her she couldn't have me. "I'm off limits, baby. Sorry." And she was all, "Oh really?" And I was like, "Really." And she went, "Why?" And I went, "Because I don't agree with the whole notion of pursuing someone out of some desire to feel challenged. That cheapens the very concept of romance, as if it's all just a game and the goal is to win. No, baby. The goal is to love." And I meant it, too. Cuz, you know, I'm all heart and shit. So anyway, we went out a couple times, but then she met a guy she really couldn't have, and it was game over for me. And I thought to myself: Damn, I played it all wrong. -Tatsuya Ishida
A study published in the journal of Psychosomatic Medicine suggests ignoring trauma may be healthier than pouring out your heart about it. [...] The study said that people who tended to repress their anxiety had the lowest levels of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS). That means they keep working and don't complain. But what about their blood pressure and their drug and alcohol consumption. Telling a trauma victim to "repress their anxiety" sounds like advice from "Dr. Phil". "Dr. Phil" a Texan likes to answer the plea of the sufferer with words such as, "That dog won't hunt" or "What is it about him that just galls your butt?" Dr. McGraw holds himself up as a beacon of candor and common sense, an antidote to what he described as a prevailing culture of self-pity and psychobabble. "'Former child,' `inner child' are words designed to sell books," he said scornfully in a recent television interview. Doesn't "Dr. Phil" sell something - or he doing what he does as a public service? There are many ordinary people who repress their anxiety. They are all those who must work to provide food and shelter for their family. Or those who attempt to provide and do not have the necessary skills. Trauma is not just 9/11 - trauma happens to individuals every day. The person who has his job eliminated or who is "let go" is traumatized, the person who realizes he or she does not have the skills needed for today's labor market is traumatized, the hungry amongst the satiated live in a constant state of trauma. And these experts say, "Repress your complaints!" Or are they really saying, "You know what - we don't want to listen to you." A good example of a group who has "repressed their complaints" is Black Americans. Stroke and diabetes killed black men between 55 and 64 at about three times the rate for white men their age in 2000, according to the National Centers for Health Statistics, while cancer and heart disease killed black men in that group at rates 50 percent above those for their white peers. It is healthy to complain. It is the reason God gave us voices! -the Political Jokes mailing list
Sometimes at the office, my co-worker tells me I drink too much coffee and makes fun of me by saying I'm "shaking like a crack whore." Good thing she doesn't know what I do in my off-hours.
If I were a ghost, I'd dress up as a kid on Halloween so I could scare everybody with my frighteningly obsessive need for irony. -Jeff Chastain
Evil is in everyone, not just "bad guys". It's because we've grown up watching Disney movies that we think there is a definite Good side and Bad side. There are good and bad bits in every person.
So how would we react if there were suddenly a very powerful country, both militarily and economically, that decided they wanted to "oust" our president? They don't like the way we ignore the UN when it suits our purpose; they list all the crimes our government has committed against its citizens (the death penalty, the drug war, racial profiling, whatever) and other countries; they point out that we're the only country that's ever used nuclear weapons against another country and therefore those weapons of mass destruction should really be overseen by an international body since we can't be trusted and have already talked about making "pre-emptive strikes" (i.e., attacking countries first, countries who haven't yet done anything aggressive); and besides, our current president isn't even duly elected by the people (not to mention our system doesn't allow for direct from-the-people presidential elections anyway). So it's their right, by virtue of being so powerful, to "oust" him.
I mean, we'd be horrified, wouldn't we? Even those of us who don't care for Bush would see this as a gross violation of international law. You don't waltz your army into another country and oust their leader.
Does anyone besides me ever listen to what we plan to do to other countries, turn it around and imagine what it might be like if we were on the receiving end of such arrogance? I imagine that we'd be infuriated, and rightly so, were this sort of thing directed against us.
Or is it just too much trouble for most people to "walk a mile in another's moccasins," fearing they might find them a little uncomfortable? -Elayne Riggs
(in reference to McDonald's paying to advertise in EA's upcoming "Sims Online") The cynical response is that this is nothing new. The pragmatic response is that it is probably better than having your eyes eaten by ravens, a la Excalibur. But I think it's hard to deny that ad agencies - on the web and otherwise - have at least gotten more brazen about what they do. I didn't just pick up a copy of AdBusters and come up with this. You've got the ladies with the cell phones over at the Space Needle, "hanging out and having fun," delivering subliminal pitches. People changing their names to products and advertising on tombstones. My favorite one is more recent - this Starburst thing is awesome. I mean, it's super vile, but it is so eager to be vile that you kind of root for it. Let me paraphrase the article. Let's say you want to advertise your candy - or "lolly" - on the radio and television. You can pay a set amount of money for access to thirty-second or minute slots, let's say. Or, and here's an idea, you can make a song by a "band" whose name is the product you're trying to sell, and get it into rotation on stations and have them play it for you. In the case of Starburst, you write a song called "Get Your Juices Going," which exhausts every possible fruit-related sexual innuendo over the course of four excruciating minutes. The production of Pop Hits being a largely mechanical enterprise, it will not be difficult to suitably emulate the music of the moment. I don't know what the going rate is for payola, but my hunch tells me it compares favorably with actual ad spots. Customers can then go out and purchase your advertising, and they will, because they're fucking retards. The Starburst issue reveals so much about radio, marketing, and human nature that it casts a shadow over my entire life. It is cold in my heart. Future robots have nothing on these guys in the grim efficiency department. So, eh, whaddya do. Maintain a generally cynical air and stoke a rabid xenophobia that borders on a mental disorder. Download that Starburst song, and experience your own psychotic break today! You will stare at the palm of your hand for a half an hour, wondering if you're actually alive or not. That's what I did. -Penny Arcade
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority is wrong. -Eugene Debs
They say if you have positive thoughts about something, it will happen. Well, I've been thinking positively about my neighbor's 19-year-old daughter, but so far, no luck. I think maybe my wife's negative thoughts are interfering. -Maurizio Mariotti
Here's how you cure cancer: make it more cool for a kid to grow up to be a scientist than it is for him to be an athlete or a Pop Star. That's how you cure cancer. Also, teach your girls to dig scientists, that'll do it.
I think the best actors are those who can convince you that a life of free sex is worth a diamond ring, and then convince you that you don't really want much free sex after all, but that you DO want to stick around and pay for the kids.
Of course size doesn't matter, unless, you know, she wants an orgasm.
Hard as it is to believe, sometimes bloody, proletariat revolution just isn't the answer. Like in Algebra class, for example.
If I have one complaint about being a man, it's probably my inability to experience the joys of child bearing. That, and women's suffrage.
If angels existed, they'd probably be considered big game.
I think, deep down inside, little children *want* to be told the truth about Santa Claus. Why else would they stand in line for an hour just to sit on my lap?
One of the saddest days of my life was the day we put my Aunt Nettie in a rest home. But if it weren't for sad times like that, I couldn't have truly appreciated the good times, like taking her wallet while she was crying. -Donald J. Hunter
Those teenage girls at the mall call me a "dirty old man" when they catch me trying to peek down their blouses, but the joke's on them -- I'm only 31! -Woody Walker
If it's stupid but it works, it ain't stupid.
It is interesting that the oligarchy presents Iraq as (a) a terrible threat to the world with unlimited capacity for raining down death and (b) a nation with a demoralized and scattered army that we can take over in a matter of weeks using our fine new weapons systems and maybe a soldier or two.
(from Boondocks) "Huey, what's the first thing you'd do if you were elected President?"
"You mean following my untimely demise during inauguration?"
When faced with hardship, it's much easier to complain than to mature.
I can never seem to get ahead in life no matter how hard I try, but I've gotten really good at just barely getting by.
When the Denny's menu says, "Two Eggs, Any Style," don't believe it -- they're lying. Today I tried to order two eggs "doggy style" and they refused. Tomorrow I'm going to try "execution style." -James Rice
I'd bet that if you put a million monkeys in front of a million computers, they'd eventually come up with something more stable and bug-free than Windows. Of course, then you'd have to deal with that nasty "Flinging Poop Screen of Death."
In college I took a course in local current events, but since the school was in Kansas, there wasn't much going on. Mostly, we just looked out the window. If a squirrel showed up, we'd have a quiz.
The human body is amazing. Did you know that if you were to take the small intestine of an average person and spread it around the bases at Yankee Stadium, you'd be committing at least three felonies?
Last night I got off earlier than usual and was able to watch Crossfire. Can someone explain moronic people to me? How can anyone really believe that our allies' opinions are meaningless and that the French are a bunch of cheese eating, wine guzzling bafoons? I mean, seriously, how can anyone believe that crap?? Sometimes I'm glad I don't have time to really pay attention to national politics - it just scares me and angers me. -C.J. Minster
And not to discredit the seriousness of child abduction tragedies, but why is it the news story of the month on national news? Shouldn't the media pay more attention to, oh I don't know, the World Summit on Sustainable Development currently taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa? Experts say there have been less child abductions this year than in previous years, and yet Americans have been riled up into a frenzy worrying about our kids. It's absolutely pointless. Why don't we worry about our lack of quality, affordable healthcare? About the fact that people quit working for hospitals, not b.c they'd rather do something else, but because the patient load is so unreasonable? Why do we waste our time instead of discussing real issues? -C.J. Minster
It's just an old superstition that when you snap someone's photo you steal their soul. But there's no way I'm gonna tell that to my grandmother. Not until I can afford to hire a real maid, anyway. -Andy Ihnatko
Know what you get if you cross a Buddhist monk with a 16-year-old blonde cheerleader? Arrested for procurement of a minor, that's what you get -- trust me on this one.
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have always been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. -Buddha
I told my boyfriend I wanted the first time to be special -- I can't help it if I thought it would be even more special if it ended with him giving me a large sum of money.
Seldom is heard a discouraging word if you live on the range, I'm told. But when that rare event occurs, I'll bet it's a good one, like "Hey, the barn-shoveling loser wants to be a writer!" or "Die, bumpkin, die!" -Doug Vargas
I was there when my grandfather died; it was very peaceful, almost surreal. I decided then and there that when they strap *me* into that chair and throw the switch, I'm taking somebody with me. -Kim Moser
It's a good thing Kid Rock became successful in the music business. With a name like that, it'd be a shame for him to mop floors all day.
(in reference to the the L5R tourney scene becoming like that of Magic: The Gathering) Have you ever played tournament Magic? If you have, you should realize how ridiculous the fear of this game "becoming" Magic is. I've played both, on moderately high levels. The tournament mechanics are meaningless compared to the people who play this game. I've played countless Magic tournaments and never, NEVER did anyone offer me to reshuffle if I got a bad hand, or let me take something back, or sincerely wish me luck, or simply had FUN. I've started playing this game (L5R) again just recently, and I've realized that
what makes this game amazing is the people, not the tournament mechanics, not the rules - the people. At the Koteis, I've had fun in a major tournament for the first time since I last played L5R. People were friendly, interesting to play with, and there was actual interaction, unlike in tournament level Magic. People in this game actually have passion for the game, and their clan, and how their clan does overall, which diversifies this game, and brings it to a point where at a tournament you'll see representatives from every single clan available for play, regardless of their power value. As a contrast, at the most recent medium-level Magic event the field was 50% (yes, fifty percent) the same deck. Not just the same color-combination - the SAME DECK, to within probably ~10 cards. Now THAT is dull. Here's another
example, Magic World Championships is happening this weekend. The top decktypes for the top 8 are:
Psychatog
Psychatog
Psychatog
Psychatog
Psychatog
Psychatog
Squirrel-Opposition
Squirrel-Opposition
I believe there were 6 clans represented in the top 8 for L5R. That doesn't say anything about how "balanced" this game is, because if nobody cared what clan they were playing, I assure you 1 or 2 clans would surface as "best" and that's what everybody would be playing. That says something about how devoted people are to their clan, and how far they are willing to go to support it. To wrap this up, cause it's already to freakin' long, I don't think any
change to the tournament rules can bring about the transformation of this game into Magic, cause no tournament mechanic - be it 2 out of 3, or sideboard, or what-have-you - is going to change the passion that the people that play this game have, and that's what sets this game aside from every other game that I've ever played.
It's always important to not look too eager on a date. The women I ask on dates hide their enthusiasm with immediate displays of nausea, sudden international travel plans or an intense desire to wash their hair.
Buying candy was a good idea to divert the attention away from my condom purchase. In retrospect, though, Gobstoppers probably wasn't the best choice. -Travis Ruetenik
He who fights and runs away, gets his arse kicked twice as hard the next time we meet. -The General, 7th Sea
Live life to the fullest. Think of all the people on the Titanic who passed up chocolate dessert.
Household tip: Don't have a cup? Just stick a tea bag in your mouth, pour in some boiling water, wait two minutes and swallow. The only hard part is holding onto the water while you're screaming.
Removing [Saddam] from power would be more dangerous to the American public and I think it's pointless. There are all kinds of terrible leaders in the world that we pay no attention to because they don't have oil. That's the whole issue: oil. Follow the money. It's about Bush's war of terrorism against oil-rich states that don't cooperate with us.
I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame it on you.
President Bush revealed [...] that there is a shadow government run by people who live outside Washington in bunkers in case Washington is ever attacked. I thought the shadow government was the one Enron bought with all those contributions. -Jay Leno
The wife of Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, Linda Lay, was on the "Today" show. [...] She says her husband is an honest, moral man who has done nothing wrong. [...] She went on to say they've lost all their money. Luckily, they've still got plenty of everyone else's. -Jay Leno
CDs cost nothing to produce. $18 is unthinkable as a price; prices were supposed to be lower than LPs, and they aren't. Filesharing cannot be stopped, and will not be - it's foolish to not accept that. So the artists make *less* money and maybe have to tour more, so what? People will still buy CDs; downloading an individual song even entices some to buy the entire album. And people would certainly buy many more CDs if the price were around where it should be: About 5 bucks, at the most.
In regards to the issue of "stealing MP3s", let me offer this bit of actual real information: the artist makes less than ten cents per CD sold in the store, the label and the store get the rest. If I steal a song, I'm stealing less than a penny from the artist and stealing about a buck from the label. You know how much guilt I feel stealing a buck from one of the big five record labels? Less than zero. In fact, I enjoy contributing to the destruction of what I feel is an evil, unethical, selfish and greedy industry, who's sins against society in general and music in particular are many, varied, and egregious. They've recently killed internet radio and are not going to be happy until we all pay for every song we want to hear, each time we hear it.
(in reference to advertising on Bank of America ATM's in California) The irony of this or any other "innovative"--i.e., invasive--advertising technique is that advertising doesn't work. That's the dirty little secret which those of us who earn our living from any commercial print or broadcast medium would probably be wise to leave unspoken, but think about it--it's really one of the major lessons of the dot-com bust, the one inarguable lesson of the past ten years. For the first time in history, advertisers were actually able to track the effectiveness of their ads, to count the exact number of people who were paying any attention whatsoever to their sales pitches--and it turned out that for the most part, no one was. No one's been able to make any money online using an advertising-supported model because tracking the response to a given ad is no longer a matter of guesswork and sales charts and demographic profiles and chicken entrails--it's a simple matter of looking at server logs. And--surprise, surprise--the vast majority of human beings will go out of their way to ignore advertising. We don't click on your damned popup ads, and we mute your commercials, and we skip over your magazine supplements. (Is this theft, as the ad industry argues? Well, given the hefty chunk I pay for cable tv and magazine and newspaper subscriptions each month, I sure don't feel like a thief.)
And okay, sure, I'm overstating the case. Advertising has some degree of effectiveness. Coke and Pepsi have each spent untold billions to establish brand awareness, and at some point early in my life, I decided that I prefer the taste of Coke, and that's what I tend to buy when I'm in the mood for a refreshing can of carbonated sugar water. So Coke's investment paid off in some small way, and Pepsi's did not. But the ratio of return for dollar invested is, I would bet, far smaller than the advertising industry pretends, and this is what the failure of online advertising has made clear.
So they look for new ways to grab our attention, blaring their pitches before you make an ATM withdrawal or a cell call or use a public bathroom, or whatever it may be. And it becomes part of the landscape, one more thing to tune out--a skill at which we are all becoming increasingly adept. It becomes an escalating cycle; the more they shove it down our throats, the more inured we become to it all. And as long as we all pretend that online advertising was just some sort of weird aberration, from which no larger lessons can possibly be drawn, then we can all keep rolling along, playing our respective roles. -Tom Tomorrow
Alchemy is tedious work. Making stuff blow up is merely an entertaining bonus. Tamori Shosei aka Matt Dalen
Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff. -Frank Zappa
A funny thing to do is, if you're out hiking and your friend gets bitten by a poisonous snake, tell him you're going to go for help, then go about ten feet and pretend that *you* got bit by a snake. Then start an argument with him about who's going to go get help. A lot of guys will start crying. That's why it makes you feel good when you tell them it was just a joke.
As I bit into the nectarine, it had a crisp juiciness about it that was very pleasurable -- until I realized it wasn't a nectarine at all, but A HUMAN HEAD!!
As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.
Even though he was an enemy of mine, I had to admit that what he had accomplished was a brilliant piece of strategy. First, he punched me, then he kicked me, then he punched me again.
Fear can sometimes be a useful emotion. For instance, let's say you're an astronaut on the moon and you fear that your partner has been turned into Dracula. The next time he goes out for the moon pieces, wham!, you just slam the door behind him and blast off. He might call you on the radio and say he's not Dracula, but you just say, "Think again, bat man."
He was a cowboy, mister, and he loved the land. He loved it so much he made a woman out of dirt and married her. But when he kissed her, she disintegrated. Later, at the funeral, when the preacher said, "Dust to dust," some people laughed, and the cowboy shot them. At his hanging, he told the others, "I'll be waiting for you in heaven -- with a gun."
I bet one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every culture, is the story of Popeye.
I guess we were all guilty, in a way. We all shot him, we all skinned him, and we all got a complimentary bumper sticker that said, "I helped skin Bob."
I remember one day I was at Grandpa's farm and I asked him about sex. He sort of smiled and said, "Maybe instead of telling you what sex is, why don't we go out to the horse pasture and I'll show you." So we did, and there on the ground were my parents having sex.
I think a good gift for the President would be a chocolate revolver. and since he is so busy, you'd probably have to run up to him real quick and give it to him.
I wish I had a Kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula AND Superman away.
If I ever opened a trampoline store, I don't think I'd call it Trampo-Land, because you might think it was a store for tramps, which is not the impression we are trying to convey with our store. On the other hand, we would not prohibit tramps from browsing, or testing the trampolines, unless a tramp's gyrations seemed to be getting out of control.
If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.
If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mr. Brave man, I guess I'm a coward.
If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong, though. It's Hambone.
I scrambled to the top of the precipice where Nick was waiting. "That was fun," I said. "You bet it was," said Nick. "Let's climb higher." "No," I said. "I think we should be heading back now." "We have time," Nick insisted. I said we didn't, and Nick said we did. We argued back and forth like that for about 20 minutes, then finally decided to head back. I didn't say it was an interesting story.
If you're at Thanksgiving dinner, but you don't like the stuffing or the cranberry sauce or anything else, just pretend like you're eating it, but instead, put it all in your lap and form it into a big mushy ball. Then, later, when you're out back having cigars with the boys, let out a big fake cough and throw the ball to the ground. Then say, "Boy, these are good cigars!"
It's too bad that whole families have to be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs.
It's true that every time you hear a bell, an angel gets its wings. But what they don't tell you is that every time you hear a mouse trap snap, and Angel gets set on fire.
Laurie got offended that I used the word "puke." But to me, that's what her dinner tasted like.
Most people don't realize that large pieces of coral, which have been painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer.
To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.
To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kind of scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad.
To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And, at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between, plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing." This is truth, to me.
We used to laugh at Grandpa when he'd head off and go fishing. But we wouldn't be laughing that evening when he'd come back with some whore he picked up in town.
When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it's not, mmmmmmm, boy.
If it weren't for stress I'd have no energy at all.
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore than standing in a garage makes you a car.
There is ALWAYS one more imbecile than you counted on.
And if you ever again believe anyone who hails the neo-liberal virtues of an unfettered free market system, well boy do I have some hot stocks for you.
In keeping with other conservative rhetoric, I insist that in the Enron, WorldCom, Xerox, and Martha Stewart cases we make the punishment fit the crime. Personally, I suspect capitalism might behave itself a bit better if we simply made corporate crimes punishable by death, instead of fining executives a fraction of what they pilfered in the first place. -Rob Fairchild
As I get older, I'm getting much more liberal when it comes to corporations. The love of money is the root of all evil and the only goal a corporation ever has is to make more money. Why, if Microsoft makes $20 billion in profits this year, but only makes $19 billion next year, then is that bad? They made $19 billion! They could have their employees only work half a year and still survive for years to come. Instead, if that really happened, they'd have to make $21 billion to even be considered successful. Further, with all the accounting fraud going on at WorldCom and Enron, there needs to be stiffer penatlies. 17,000 people were laid off at WorldCom last Friday. I have to compete with a few of these people because of corrupt accounting firms. Because of their fraud, 17,000 people who had jobs last week don't this week, and more will follow them. People who commit fraud on such a large level need to be put away. Life in blue-collar-get-fucked-in-the-ass-by-darkie prison. They do far more damage to society than any petty thief could ever do. The other thing I've learned after working in such huge corporations is that most people who are "good churchgoers" in society, put them in a place of leadership and they become tyrants. People who would never be so disrespectful to their next door neighbor are treating their employees like puke. In Corporate America, there is this whole mentality that exists that anything you do wrong at work isn't really wrong. If you're told by your VP to try to steal some documents from your competitor, hey, it's just business. If you're told by your director to get your employees to work overtime but not pay them for it, again, because it's for my job, it's not wrong. I'm doing it for the company. Make someone work a 24-hour day and four hours after they go home call them and chew them out for fucking up last night? Well, she's just a contractor. And it's business. And these are the same people that would never think of stealing from a store. And they don't tell their kids what to do. In fact, their kids tell them what to do. Contractors are the niggers of this millenium, and if something isn't done, we're all going to be contractors one day. The days of people working for the same company for 30 years are over. Unless you're a government worker.
I'm sure by now you've all heard about 14 year old Elizabeth Smart, the missing girl from Utah. She was kidnapped on June 5th while her parents were asleep. The media has been spewing images of her for the past few weeks, allegedly to aid in her recovery. While I am pissed that they're focusing all of the attention on this one girl while there are still many other missing children out there, that's not what my argument is today. I could count the major news stories from this year on my fingers, what I mean to say is there aren't very many. All the media does is pick one or two headlines every month and do the same story night after night on every damn channel over and over again. There is no investigating, the news stations steal the same stories from each other and recycle them until nobody cares anymore. There is a lot of shit happening around the world, the Middle East is not the only place where people are getting killed. Elizabeth Smart is not the most important missing child in America. KABOOM! [a popular Flash game where you play a suicide bomber -ed.] is not the most obscene game on the internet. My game KABOOM! appeared in newspapers and shows around the world, my e-mail address appears right at the beginning of the game and I was contacted from about 4 different newspapers, and 3 stations. The rest of them either misquoted what I had said in the description of the game or made something up on their own. This demonstrates to me how little the media cares about the truth, all they care about is buzz, what are all the other news stations saying, who's the current villain. Why do we need CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC when they all say the same damn thing. I know that Palestine and Israel are fighting, I know Elizabeth Smart is still missing, I know there's a big ass fire out West, I know America is the world leader of fat asses, you already told me that, Wolf. If you're a journalist and you're reading this, stop half-assing it and go find something I don't fucking know, it's called journalism not plagiarism so stop stealing other people's god damn stories and find something else to report, and how about some good news instead of all this depressing shit. Am I the only person who cares about this?
(Bill Hicks, in reference to guys like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson) I don't trust anyone who begins a sentance with, "What God really meant to say was..."
Of all the qualities we associate with leadership, ambition is the most common and least desirable.
Coaltion: (Political) A fusion of disparate odds and ends, welded together by three things: fear, greed, and hate. Those that last, anyway. -T.G. Browning
Sure, I accepted the dare -- but I had no idea how powerful a firecracker can be, nor how sensitive the rectum is.
Soup is pretty worthless. The National Soup Board's slogan should be: "Soup -- it gives you the energy to eat other food."
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck got his friggin' head blown off for screwing up my landscaped property?
People say to me, "Danielle, you're such a wonderful person. Why are you single?" How the hell do I know? Why don't you ask the people who aren't dating me?!?
(from Saturday Night Live) George W. Bush didn't reveal the drunk driving charge because of what his daughters might think of him. He had preferred that they think of him as a man with numerous failed business ventures who now executes people.
When my nephew asked why bad things sometimes happen to good people, I told him that it's because, deep down, those people are really, really evil.
As near as I can tell, Dilbert cartoons are a fragile panacea that dissolve just enough workplace frustration to prevent the millions of people who really do hate their jobs, despise office politics, and loathe their bosses, from showing up to work with a gun or a chainsaw, and slaughtering the masses of gossipy, lazy, incompetent pinheads they must work with every day. Or, at the very least, quitting. I am not convinced this is a good thing. -Rob Fairchild
(George W. Bush, June 14 2001, speaking to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Perrson, unaware that a live television camera is still rolling) It's amazing I won. I was running against peace, prosperity, and incumbency.
(Bill Hicks, 1993, in reference to the Waco siege) If child molestation is actually your concern, how come we don't see Bradley tanks knocking down Catholic churches?
I think to anybody with a web page, e-mail is a form of personal validation. Part of every web page involves just begging people to write, and let the author(s) know that someone's out there, and that this theoretical someone read their page, loves their page, and has justified the page's existence, and all the corresponding work entailed, for another day. People are whores for attention. They want to be told they're doing a good job, and be made to feel that in this way they are better than so many others before them. That's why even when I get two words, mis-spelled, in all capital letters, like -- 'YOU ROOL!!!!!' in a letter, I feel all warm and glowy-like. Even if I do just delete it. -Rob Fairchild
(former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes) We are under a constitution, but the constitution is what the judges say it is.
(U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, from a speech on the British-French invasion of Egypt and the Soviet invasion of Hungary, October 30, 1956) We believe these actions to have been taken in error [...] The actions taken can scarcely be reconciled with the principles and purposes of the United Nations to which we have all subscribed. And beyond this, we are forced to doubt if even resort to war will for long serve the permanent interests of the attacking nations [...] There can be no peace- without law. And there can be no law- if we were to invoke one code of international conduct for those who oppose us and another for our friends.
(John Africa, May 1967) When a gang member is beatn by persons unknown in a mixed neighborhood, and the black gangs begin terrorizing *whites*, it is called racism, and a bunch of cops can ride through black neighborhoods all day beatin' ass, and call it law, when a bunch of blacks beat one of these cops' ass it's called mob violence.
Because self-preservation takes precedence over niceties of morality, the law of nations has tended to be the laws of the jungle, although this truth is slurred over with polite phrases.
Information is the raw material for new ideas; if you get misinformation, you get some pretty fucked-up ideas.
Every time those cops get caught doin' somethin' to somebody [...] they come out with that word, 'investigation." That's just a word that the system uses to get people to be cooled out, to stop fighting the system, and to trust them. It's just a word they use to buy time, so that people can, after a few months, forget about it.
I drove by the fire department the other day, and they had a big public awareness sign that read, "Are your house numbers visible?" I thought, "Who the hell cares? How about you just stop at the house that's on fire?!"
The other night I had a dream that I was eating a baby. My wife says it's because I actually want to become pregnant and have a baby of my own. It also might be because I've always wanted to eat a baby.
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
Time flies when you're roasting in the boiling cesspools of your own personal hell.
You can't insult me if I don't value your opinion.
Sin: Any thought or deed that fails to adhere to the moral codes of people with far too much free time on their hands and not enough sense to mind their own bloody business. -T.G. Browning
Be afraid. At their convention over the weekend, Texas Republicans approved a party platform that called for the repeal of the state lottery, favored the posting of the Ten Commandments on public property and declared the United States of America a "Christian" nation. But they didn't stop there. They reaffirmed their state party's belief that our country needs to "dispel the myth of the separation of church and state." Also covered were guidelines by which to profile potential terrorists and deny student visas. Have these men (and perhaps a token smattering of women) no sense of irony? Do they not see the correlation between themselves and those bilious Islamists who seek to convert every Arab nation into an oppressive Islamic state? Are they so caught up in all their self-congratulatory notions of one true God and the Lord Jesus so and so that they fail to recognize they're living in a secular democracy? Keep your e-mails assailing me as a liberal. I don't want 'em. Save your anti-semitic diatribes for your fellow Klansmen. They've lost their charm. This is not an issue for just left-wingers to shout about on Meet The Press. What's happening in Texas right now is a dangerous backward slide all Americans should plainly see as dangerous and anti-American. The Texas GOP is our president's party. The next time you hear the phrase "faith-based initiatives" don't think progress, think Taliban.
Reading e-mail can be such an emotional roller-coaster. Sure, I can make thousands of dollars a week from the comfort of my own home, but what's the point? Even with all that money, I'll NEVER get a girlfriend, what with all the penis-enhancing it seems I need.
Like monsters, advertising can't get you if you don't believe in it. People are paid to lie to you every day, and they win when you don't notice. For instance, despite their claims to be "real fruit beverages," most fruit drinks contain 10% real juice or less, and more calories than beer. So the next time you see fruit dancing on the screen during a Fruitopia commercial, forget what anyone tells you about lawyers and remember: no one is less honest than the bastards in marketing. -Rob Fairchild
There's no "I" in "team", but there are three "I's" in "multiple personality disorder."
If I can make just one person laugh, then it must've been a pretty good eulogy.
If the CIA were smart, they'd give secret operations names like "ARRRRRGH!", so when agents were captured and tortured, the enemy would never figure it out.
It is a welcome visitor and a ruthless intruder, depending on where it goes and who it visits. It can be a toy, an object of desire and a blunt weapon. It can wander, stray, and cause division, although it's always in the same place. It can be hard to come by, yet difficult to share. It may cause bleeding. It may cause yearning. It may cause tears. I do not believe any one thing can be responsible for both more pleasure and more pain than the human penis. -Rob Fairchild
What people mean when they complain about Political Correctness: "A request to apply the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) which the speaker finds unwelcome, usually because of the risk of suffering personal inconvenience, expense, or guilt."
What people mean when they call themselves Politically Incorrect: "bad manners, selfishness, and occasional bigotry, when marketed as a lifestyle that some people just aren't cool enough to get." -via Rob Fairchild
Talk to your kids about sex. Tell them just how absolutely incredible it can be. -The Covert Comic
If it's really a supercomputer, how come the bullets don't bounce off when I shoot it? -The Covert Comic
I believe sex is the most fun you can have without vomiting.
Illegal aliens are a problem in America. Ask any Indian.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. -George Bernard Shaw
Forgive the pundits, wags, critics, and talking heads for their simplistic quips and lopsided analyses. You'll do anything for a paycheck too. -Rob Fairchild
If I had a nickel for every time some homeless person asked me for change, I'd probably feel even more guilty as I walked right past them, eyes fixed on the ground. But to soothe my guilt, I'd go buy a hot cup of coffee, come back to that same homeless person, sit down beside them, and drink it nice and slow. Then I'd stand up, slap 'em on the shoulder and say, "Hey man, thanks for the coffee!" -- because nothing takes the edge off of guilt better than a good dose of comedic irony.
I would never want to be the king of the monkey world because I'd have to sit around naked all day, eating bananas and flinging poo at my subjects. Sure, it sounds like a dream come true, but the problem is that I'm allergic to bananas. -Donald Junter
I'll say this for vegans: they make a difficult and principled choice, and stick to it with passion and dedication despite all the derision they face in a society that regards meat lover's pizzas and high-speed internet connections as symbols of conviction and commitment. -Rob Fairchild
(In reference to the L5R Story Team) Whenever they submit a story, Raymond Lau (L5R Brand Manager) apparently asks if they killed any Cranes this time. A "yes" is met with a nod of approval." -Rich Wulf
I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don't have any clean laundry because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life?
Give a man a fish, he won't go hungry for a day. Take away the fish before he has chance to eat it and you could send him into a pit of depression and despair. How cool is that?
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you a truckload of hand grenades... now *that's* a sign.
If we could just get everyone to close their eyes and visualize world peace for an hour, imagine how serene and quiet it would be until the looting started.
(John Zinser, head of Alderac Entertainment Group, which created L5R) "Let's make a game about samurai."
"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" makes a pretty good philosophy of justice, but take my word for it -- it sucks royally as a theme for the senior prom.
A freak accident during my recent LASIK surgery resulted in me having x-ray vision. Either that or the doctor was naked.
Today, representatives of the Swedish government announced that they believe the inherent bias of the United Nations and it's dominating members will unfairly view the status of their nation in light of an upcoming investigation into said military practices of the Swedish. The UN, which fears Sweden may be overstepping its military power, is now being told by Sweden that inspectors will not be allowed into their country. Considering the relations the UN has with Sweden to provide aid, it's questionable what kind of incident may develop. So, when do the bombers fly in? Maybe they won't. See, I'm lying. I changed the country. And you're not going to get a story link to find out which country is really doing this. You don't get to pick which side you're on just because of who you think is 'evil' or not. First tell me if what the country doing is wrong. Then you get to decide if it's Iraq, or Iran, or Israel, or the United States, or whatever. Maybe it's none of those countries... maybe I worded it so that it actually applies to more than one country... uh-oh! It's a lot harder to call an action 'evil' when you don't get to be told who's making the play, isn't it? -August J. Pollak
The Defense Secretary of the United States- the man who pretty much answers only to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President himself over the military actions of the country, announced today, without immediately resigning afterwards, that although we bombed an entire country, killed thousands of people, and intervened in specific governmental regime changes because it might have hosted a man from a different country, we didn't really have enough information to merit doing it. I can't even attempt to feign some mellow rational tone of voice. I just can't do it. It's psychotic nutcase liberal hippie commie tree-hugger go-back-to-Russia screaming time. -August J. Pollak
Anyone whose life can be changed by books like "The Celestine Prophecy" obviously hasn't been reading enough books. -Rob Fairchild
Jury: Twelve people who determine which client has the better attorney.
For me there is no more reassuring proof that America is not fundamentally changed since September 11, than the stirring site of a shiny, suited executive simultaneously screaming into his cellphone, flipping me the bird, and screeching through an 80mph left turn through a red light in his black sperm whale size SUV, sporting two tiny American flags. -Dennis Miller
Way over half the murders committed in this country are by close friends or relatives of the deceased. A gun makes a loud and satisfying noise in a moment of passion and requires no agility and very little strength. How many murders wouldn't happen, if they all had to use hammers and knives?
One great and growing sin of a national character is an inordinate desire to get rich and rich in a hurry. As wealth is the only aristocracy in America, every man seems bent on attaining to that important distinction. The 'haste to get rich' fosters a speculative spirit, and men rush hap-hazard into schemes for the sudden acquisition of wealth. Bubbles are blown, consequently, all around us. The man who amasses wealth thus suddenly rarely retains it, while his momentary success lures thousands to the same delusive pursuits. What can be more fatal to society than such practices?
Even the best psychiatrist is like a blindfolded auto mechanic poking around under your hood with a giant foam "We're #1" finger.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act.... Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
The most valuable function performed by the federal government is entertainment.
Companionate Conservatism -- Making the streets safer before people are kicked out onto them.
We are great mysteries. No matter what we imagine we may know, even for all the facts we might gather, we don't know each other. Never do, probably never will. Our reputations depend on the opinions of the ill informed. We all have better moments than anybody ever knows, and so do all the others. We are, each one of us, books that are read by critics who only glanced at the chapter headings and the jacket flap. Each one of us is a secret, and on that basis we ought to treat each other with the deepest respect.
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance ... logic can be happily tossed out the window.
People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them. -Dave Barry
There apparently exists, somewhere in L.A., a computer that generates concepts for television sitcoms. When TV executives need a new concept, they turn on this computer. After sorting through millions of possible plot premises, it spits out "THREE QUIRKY BUT ATTRACTIVE YOUNG PEOPLE LIVING IN AN APARTMENT," and the executives turn this concept into a show. The next time they need an idea, the computer spits out "SIX QUIRKY BUT ATTRACTIVE YOUNG PEOPLE LIVING IN AN APARTMENT." Then, the next time it spits out "FOUR QUIRKY BUT ATTRACTIVE YOUNG PEOPLE LIVING IN AN APARTMENT." And so on. We need to locate that computer and destroy it with hammers.
The value of advertising is that it tells you the exact opposite of what the ad actually thinks. For example, If the advertisement says "This is not your father's Oldsmobile," the advertiser is desperately concerned that this Oldsmobile, like all other Oldsmobiles, appeals to old farts like your father. If Coke and Pepsi spend billions of dollars to convince you that there are significant differences between these two products, both companies realize that Pepsi and Coke are virtually identical. If an advertisement shows a group of cool, attractive youngsters getting excited and high-fiving each other because the refrigerator contains Sunny Delight, the advertiser knows that any real youngster who reacted in this way to this beverage would be considered by his peers to be the world's biggest dip... And so on. On those rare occasions when advertising dares to poke fun at the product, as in the classic Volkswagen Beetle campaign, it's because the advertiser actually thinks the product is pretty good. If a politician ever ran for president under a slogan such as "Harlan Frubert: Basically, He Wants Attention," I would quit my job to work for his campaign.
No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
You should not confuse your career with your life.
The badness of a movie is directly proportional to the number of helicopters in it.
You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe Daylight Saving Time.
(from the Crab list) Kakita Kaori: "I especially feel offended if the players of the [Crane] clan are stereotyped. So I would understand if players of the Crab would feel the same." Hida Keitko: "Ahhh unfortunately, it is quite easy to stereotype a group, especially when humor is involved. It makes for the quick joke and an easily won laugh. I should think I'm guilty of this. And it's far easier for players' characters to "hate" a given clan when all you deal with are the stereotypes. Our own country has dealt with that time and time again, and I see it today (how many times have I heard that all Afganis' are living in caves?) Recalling a poem I once wrote, I am sure it would be far easier to kill a gray coat in the civil war era than to think of that person as a fellow countryman who has a life, perhaps a wife, and some children to care for. To go to an extreme, would you rather hate the Hitler who was a
bloodthirsty butcher who slaughtered what millions and committed genocide on a grand scale or the man who cared for his lover and was sweet to the children? Would you rather hate the dictator or the man who pulled his country out of its depression and unified it?"
(excerpt from a speech by USMC Major General Smedly Butler, 1933) War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
Russell's Reflection maxim Reasoning with religious fundamentalists
is like trying to dehydrate water. It's an extraordinarily difficult and dangerous task, yielding meager results. -T.G. Browning
I used to worry about what we'd do if someone with an identical twin was elected president, but I bet Congress would pass a law saying they had to have different haircuts so we could tell them apart.
Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. -Segal's Law
If I could have a magic power, I'd choose to be able to read minds. That way I could differentiate between who's mentally undressing me and who's been stealing my chocolate bars. -Jennifer Taylor
Horoscopes are totally bogus. Not once have I seen one that goes something like, "Cycle low, your enemies conspire to kill you today; Libra plays major role." And boy, are there a bunch of people who could have used that advice.
Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
The computer is mightier than the pen, the sword and usually, the programmer.
I think that's how Chicago got started. A bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go west.
Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Afghanistan.
To me, sex is about *intimacy*. And penetration. Man, I love the penetration.
I don't believe in organized religion, so I joined a disorganized religion. Last Sunday, the preacher overslept and arrived thirty minutes late with no sermon, and then the Ladies' Auxiliary lost the names of people volunteering for next week's bake sale.
The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.
The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.
Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for.
(From "River of Blood, Path to Ruin" by Hida Togeriso) As I look back, I see that it had been a mistake to send the letter. If you look far enough back, you will find that everything starts at some minor point. Something small becomes something very big. Something simple becomes complex. A brief moment of time becomes the focus of a tragedy. The letter was the minor point - something of no consequence that became the start of something of... importance.
(the Chicks Suck Guy, referring to the campaign to shut down the Hooters in his town) Other people want to shut down the place because the women wear skimpy outfits. I say that we shut down the malls too, because at least the girls at Hooters are over 18. I see more cleavage and poon on the 12-year-old girls at the mall than I do on the waitresses at Hooters, and I don't have to tip them!
The holy word of God is on everyone's lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do.
When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.
I don't know if I'll ever discover the meaning of life, but if some of the clues are visible on the upper torsos of women wearing halter tops, I like my odds.
This Sunday millions of Catholics will go to mass to celebrate Easter - the most significant holiday of their faith. VOTP urges all Catholics to be extra generous this Easter when dropping those bills and envelopes in the collection basket. Your church needs you now more than ever. It seems that more and more victims of child sexual abuse at the hands of randy priests are coming out of the woodwork every day. Buying their silence isn't as cheap as it used to be, just read the papers. An estimated 1 billion dollars has already been spent in hush money for those who were raped, groped or otherwise molested by members of the clergy. Expect that figure to rise. So consider a bake sale after services on Sunday or maybe a car wash. Don't force your diocese to mortgage some of its vast land holdings. Pitch in and do your part. With a little teamwork and togetherness you can sweep this whole mess back under the rug where it belongs!
The worst part about multiplayer games is that you have to play them with other people.
It's said that women aren't as apt to get into pissing contests as men because they're not as competitive. Personally, I think it's just because it would be too messy.
After intravenously injecting the chocolatey, peanut-buttery substance that had been marinating for a week in a mixture of vinegar, rubbing alcohol and sea salt, I was sick for days. Apparently, there IS a wrong way to eat a Reese's. -The Word Nerd
I used to think PCs were the greatest things since sliced bread... then someone showed me sliced bread.
Save water- take a bath with your neighbor's daughter.
I tell you what: if that Kool-Aid guy ever busts through *my* wall, I'm kicking his ass. Well, unless I'm really thirsty. Then I guess it'd be okay.
The most important revelation to come out of the Enron scandal is not that top execs routinely cook the books. I think we knew that. It's not that thousands of employees were defrauded out of their 401k savings. That's a big deal, but there's something bigger. For four years Enron, at the time a filthy rich corporate Goliath, paid no federal taxes. Some how they worked around it. Unlike many of us wage slaves from whose paychecks taxes are automatically deducted, large corporations (which remain faceless to us workaday drones until a Congressional hearing airs on C-Span) have a choice as to whether or not they'd like to be a part of the American tax base. Sure they might pay payroll taxes and the like. But that's peanuts. They don't pay a percentage of their gross like we must do. And it ain't like Enron's the only one. Why does this not anger us more? Have we become resigned to it as a simple fact of life like not being able to buy booze on Sunday before 2pm? Were those $400 checks we found in the mail last year to keep us sated and quiet? There's a reason why the Federal tax code is co complex, convoluted and impossible to comprehend. Now it might sound naïve and simplistic to say that reason is to protect the interests of the powerfully rich. But is there really any other?
Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third. -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments ... The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments ... that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. -H.L. Mencken
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has. -Margaret Mead
Decades of indoctrination, manipulation, censorship and KGB excursions haven't altered this fact: People want a piece of their own little Something-or-Other, and, if they don't get it, have a tendency to initiate counterrevolution. Frank Zappa
There are seven sins in the world: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice and politics without principle. -Mahatma Gandhi
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. -George Orwell
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. -Dom Hélder Câmara, Brazilian archbishop
The law identifies drug users through their blood. Also through their excreta . . . All that matters is a person's blood and excreta. All that matters is the makeup of a person's physical body. Drug law does not care if an illicit user is a beloved schoolteacher who improves a community or a vicious psychopath who tortures victims to death. . . . The law does not care if tests used to detect illicit drug users fail to demonstrate that users are impaired. The law does not care if users behave in ordinary ways. A statute creating a status crime targets ordinary people. That is its purpose. If illicit drug users acted in ways that distinguished them from nonusers, a status crime statute would be unnecessary.
"These students are going to find out what law and order is all about." --Robert Canterbury, Commanding General of the Ohio State National Guard, minutes before his troops fired on students at Kent State, 1970
As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.
7% unemployment is no problem, according to 93% of the population.
If finding amusement in giving homeless people low-value, hard to exchange, foreign currency is wrong, then I don't want to be right.
It hurts to love some and not be loved in return; but what is more painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let that person know.
* KuniKlay has never played a RPG of any type Fuzake: Then by all means play a spellcaster. The best way to start a new RPG is to be as confused as possible right from the start. Fuzake: Then you're not responsible for your actions. 8)
I had this great idea. Remember that crappy, sensationalist ad during the Super Bowl, the one where the kids are talking about their drug habits/helping terrorists? How about an ad about how one's OIL habit helps terrorists? Instead of "It's my body" "I'm just having a good time" "I helped kill a judge and three police officers" it becomes "I like the size of SUV's" "If I don't carpool or use mass transit, that's my decision" "I help keep Saddam in power".
It is good policy to teach kids things they later find are true. Otherwise, the word spreads and the "teachers" earn disrespect. Kids' respect for official anti-drug policy was destroyed years ago by teaching kids that smoking pot leads to hard drugs -i.e., the "gateway effect." Today, the only kids who say they believe that would never try pot anyhow or are just telling their elders what the kids think they want to hear. Now our "teachers" are telling us that drug offenses are the gateway to international terrorism; that if you smoke pot, you are helping terrorists. Who believes that? I suggest we try to regain some credibility, stop insulting kids' intelligence and teach them the truth, warts and all. Tell them the government knows that 90 percent of illegal drug tonnage is consumed by addicts, that no addict is going to quit because of a Super Bowl ad and that half of all addicts seeking treatment are turned away because they have no money. Then tell them the government cuts funding for drug treatment and uses part of the savings for a Super Bowl ad.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
(from one of my mailing lists; someone had said something along the lines of being glad Gore wasn't President post-9/11) I think it's a mistake for the people to think they are safer under
an aggressive, or more warlike, leader. So many peoples make that mistake. Were the Germans safe under Hitler? They sure thought they were. The Serbs under Milosevich? They sure thought they were. The Iraqis under Saddam? They sure thought they were. The Israelis under Ariel Sharon? They sure thought they were. ...And now, the Americans under Bush? They sure think they are? It's basically the same nationalistic arrogance that is shared by all these hardline right-wing leaders. I believe that the less aggressive, less warlike, leader is more capable of providing security for the people.
Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed. -Mao Zedong
When the people fear the government, you have tyranny. When the government fears the people, you have freedom.
America is at that awkward stage; it's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.
Proponents say the antiflag-burning amendment is necessary in order to get us to respect the flag. But our culture is in truly bad shape if we have come to define respecting something as the failure to set it on fire. True, torching something is often a clear sign of disrespect, but the converse does not hold. As they proceed with their weighty deliberations, our Congress members should realize that just because someone does not douse them in kerosene and hold a match to their pants cuffs is no reason to think they are held in respect.
They that start by burning books will end by burning men.
Do you love Mondays? The wonderful bliss of waking up to your alarm clock, rushing to get ready for work, and sitting at a boring desk for 8 hours? Well, maybe just for some people, not for me at least. Awhile ago I wrote about the American Dream, about being in control of your time, and doing all the things you've always wanted to do. I can't remember when, but well...it was awhile ago. But the dream is still alive. Finding that dream is the challenge. I used to live on a college campus and it was not pretty. People being asked to choose a major as a way to determine what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Now that's just silly. SILLY.
Here's what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to learn things that I will actually use day to day. I want to be in action, not sitting in a hard chair listening to some guy talk about things he doesn't even care about, but talks about just because he gets paid to do it. I want to travel, not because I have to, but just because I want to. I want to meet interesting people and remind myself how there is a whole world out there outside this island.
The Republican party has degenerated into stiff little groups: Stick-up-the-butt, strangling-on-their-ties hypocritical suit-men; Loud, dumb, and angry young men; and shrill, frustrated, anorexic blondes on tv talk shows. Did I miss anyone? The GOP used to have dignity and substance; it used to have members
with actual intelligence. It has deteriorated into a "shut up and goose-step along with the oil companies" cheerleading squad, and it's terribly sad.
It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.
The most patriotic act in time of war is to ask questions.
Hitler once said that governments could safely tell huge lies to ordinary people, because they themselves would never tell lies so huge, and therefore wouldn't believe that their government could.
Just because someone agrees with you doesn't make you right. It just means there's some one else out there as stupid as you.
Law of Procrastination #6: It may eliminate the job if the need passes before the job can be done.
If you do a job badly enough the first time, chances are you won't be asked to do it again.
Patience is a virtue I don't have time for.
2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which can not easily be disturbing it -- the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.
Law of Procrastination #5: procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do.
No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her shit.
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. -Emma Goldman
I was going to attempt to be the laziest person on
earth, but I just couldn't bring myself to put forth the effort. Then I realized that this makes me the laziest person on earth by default -- and if anyone even TRIES to out-do me, they've already lost. Cool, huh?
Sometimes I think I've totally wasted my life. That's when I call my Mom, and she always reassures me: "You're not a failure, boy. That's just the crystal meth talking!" Mothers are great that way.
Why are New Yorkers always depressed? The light at the end of their tunnel is New Jersey.
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.
My contribution to productivity at my job is to refrain from giving my co-"workers" the severe beatings they so richly deserve.
When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs.
When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent.
When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun.
Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet.
Valentine's Day is good because tomorrow, chocolate will be really cheap. -one of my professors from ICC
So let's see. President I'm-Not-Going-To-Discuss-Things-I-May-Or-May-Not-Have-Done-in-the-Past is lecturing the youth of today on the perils of drug use, while his administration, in a truly Orwellian twist, links drug use to terrorism, despite the fact that opium production has reportedly shot through the roof in Afghanistan since the defeat of the Taliban. Meanwhile, we're all on High Terror Alert, coincidentally on the same day that Ken Lay takes the Fifth before Congress and stories about Afghan civilian deaths and American mistreatment of Afghan POW's--excuse me, detainees--start to hit some sort of critical mass. Not that we give a damn about that, of course, because they're all guilty until proven innocent, even the guys who were apparently on our side and who were nonetheless hogtied and beaten with rifle stocks, though the Pentagon denies this and Fox News anchors dutifully repeat the denials with their earnest God-Bless-Us-Every-One patriotism, while smirking and raising the disbelieving eyebrow at stories which contradict the official government view of reality, because god knows there's absolutely no historical precedent to indicate that the government would ever, ever lie to the citizenry it purports to represent. And the radio talkers justify every idiotic misrepresentation of reality that spews out of the White House briefing room, defending the moronic "axis of evil" catchphrase as if there is actually some sort of alliance between the isolationist North Korean government and those long time bitter enemies, Iran and Iraq, and the irony is, we may actually end up driving them to band together in an enemy-of-my-enemy scenario, and will certainly do irreperable damage to the democratic reformers in Iran....all the while ignoring the fact that much of the terrorists' funding and training comes from fundamentalist factions in Saudi Arabia, our good friend and ally, and more importantly, source of an oil reserve which is to ANWR as the Grand Canyon is to that annoying pothole in the street in front of your house. And probably half of you who write me make some comment to the effect that my cartoon is one of the few voices of sanity out there any more, and god help us for that, because as flattering as that may be, sanity in a goddamn weekly cartoon is not exactly as important as, say, sanity among our theoretically-elected leaders who sit in their isolated chambers and decide what kind of world we will all be living in, whether we like it or not, or even among the media who help shape our perception of that world through selective reporting and strategic omission and general timidity in the face of the mindless patriotic fervor which has swept the land like a virus. And spare me the sanctimony--hey asshole, maybe you didn't hear about the attack on the World Trade Center--because September 11 wasn't just a tv show for me. I watched those towers fall, choked on the vile cloud that rose in their wake, and frankly, I've still got a big red target painted on my ass, because if you want to kill large numbers of civilians and simultaneously strike another symbolic blow against America, the city I call home is still the number one most likely target (with the possible temporary exception of Salt Lake City)--and none of that changes the fact that I am also terribly afraid for the future of our democracy, as I watch the eagerness with which my fellow citizens trade off their liberties piecemeal, like survivors trapped in a cabin after a winter storm chopping up the furniture for firewood until one day they find that there is no furniture left to burn and damn, it's cold outside.
I do have a question to put to you all. Why do I get an insane desire to burst into laughter every time I watch the TV Guide Channel to see what dreck I can dredge up, and spot one channel running "Crisis Coverage" six or ten hours a day? Specifically, September 11th of last year. I don't figure anything can be a crisis for that long--it ought to be called something else, wouldn't you think? The only substitute word that comes to mind, however, is the word *war* and what we're currently using *that* word for is something of a mystery as well. America is probably the only country that declares war on things for fun. We don't declare war on people or nations, we just blow them to hell and gone. We *do* declare on things like poverty, drugs, injustice, terrorism, and hemorrhoids. God I love this country.
The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
"Well, certainly from the title itself, in terms of employment discrimination I am very much for ensuring that there is no discrimination. I'm not sure that I know the details of that piece of legislation. But I would support... I'm against any sort of discrimination, of any sort. Um.... Okay, we're talking about legislation that would, ah, be supportive of, um, privileges for, uh, gays and lesbians in terms of, uh, as I ... I'm... I'm not for, uh, .. I'm against discrimination in any form for any reason. I'm not for special privileges, though, because of one's sexual orientation." -Elizabeth Dole, 06/99 (You can't beat her for honesty, can you?)
Today's New York Times and Washington Post both have articles on the Afghan villagers who were misidentified as al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Somewhere between 15-21 men were killed in the raid; those who were taken prisoner were repeatedly beaten and kicked so severely that two men lost consciousness, while others had their ribs cracked,their kidneys damaged and their teeth loosened. One man reports being held in solitary confinement in a metal shipping container for eight days. There's more, but you'll have to look up the links yourself, I'm pressed for time this morning. It makes you wonder about the allegedly humanitarian treatment of the "detainees" at Guantanamo Bay. I'm not saying that they should be staying in luxury hotels with mints on their pillows at night, but this is just appalling. The Bushies keep saying that the prisoners are being treated in accordance with the values of our nation . Does that include beating hogtied men with rifle stocks? Does that represent your values?
Everything about the Superbowl is so over the top you gotta love it. That pregame show was a riot. Barry Manilow and Patti LaBelle! Hundreds of kids dressed up as red, white, and blue Lady Liberties! Former Presidents quoting Lincoln! Mariah Carey straight outta rehab! What the hell is going on? Who cares? I could almost see the director gesticulating wildly, imploring: "More outrageous! I want more OUTRAGEOUS!" It was like a big F.U. aimed at anti- American sentiments, a message to all the haters and perpetrators. You don't like our way of life? You think we're shallow and materialistic and prone to excess? Watch this. Yes. 'Twas a big overproduced glitzy star-spangled middle finger in the face of terror. And there's even a moral to the whole thing: Patriots win. Pure Hollywood. You gotta love it. -Tatsuya Ishida
Looking for the right girl in high school is like looking for the meaning in a Pauly Shore movie.
Okay, let's see. We've got wealthy executives making off with millions while their investors and employees get the shaft, a laughably hamfisted parable of class warfare and corporate excess--except that it's true. Ken Lay might as well be wearing a top hat and a monocle, lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills. We've got the Vice President of the United States refusing to release information pertaining to his secret talks with Enron. (As, you know, a matter of principle. "What we've told the GAO we won't do," he explains, "is make it impossible for me or future vice presidents to ever have a conversation in confidence with anybody without having, ultimately, to tell a member of Congress what we talked about and what we said." In other words, if Cheney bends on this, our elected leaders may actually be forced to endure some measure of accountability for their actions, god forbid.) We've got at least one mysterious death--the apparent suicide of a former Enron executive who, from all reports, had nothing to hide, but was expected to be a major whistleblower in the case. And soon, we'll have sex. As the London Telegraph reports this morning, "Enron was a company in love with itself. Office affairs were rampant, divorce among senior executives an epidemic, and stories of couples steaming up glass- walled offices after late-night meetings were the talk of Houston." Villainy, fraud, sex, death and a stonewalling White House. You think this thing is just going to blow over? Excuse me while I wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes.
I think your problem is low self esteem. It's very common among losers.
(from a message board I was checking out) I'm an Atheist, so I'm gonna sound like a hypocrite of sorts.... Religion, in my opinion, is fine. A belief structure based on a fictitious or abstract entity CAN be a source of strength for the weak of spirit/mind/body. Religion , in a way , gave society its first set of laws which in one form or another are still on the books today: Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Those shoes don't go with those pants.... I don't have a problem with people practicing a faith. What I have a problem with is The Institution of Organized Religion. Faiths that are already made and a hierarchy that demands complience, and to an extent subservitude. The Salvation Army does a great deal of good for communities and those in need but asks for 10% of their parishioner's net income. Giving the masses something to believe in ain't a bad thing. Wanting ten per cent? Blowme. The Catholic Church is the richest institution in the world, yet every day they pass that fucking plate around. If I were to drop a buck or two in there, would they tell me something new? If little Johnny doesn't blow his classmates away today because he believes his God is gonna be pissed, great. Belief in God is ok. On the flip side , The Taliban tells the followers of the Q'ran that they are at war with the U.S.... stupid shit happens because of the demands of an institution. Let little Johnny believe in God or Dog or whatever. Let the lady on the street say a Novena for you when you let rip with that morning- after Tequila fart. Let the individual be the individual and worship whatever God they want, even if it isn't Me. Don't, however, let the Church of whatever create a society of individuals who have lost all of their ability to think for themselves and follow blindly one interpretation of some ancient work of fiction.
Working with UNIX is like wrestling a worthy opponent. Working with Windows is like attacking a small whining child who is carrying a .38.
Education is a great shield against experience. It offers so much, ready made from all the best shops, that there's a temptation to miss your own life in pursuing the lives of your betters. It makes you wise in some ways, but it can make you a blind-folded fool in others.
If liberty menas anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear. -George Orwell
A lot of you have said that you'll stand by your president, no matter what. Well what are you, a bunch of sheep? This isn't a totalitarian state! It's a free society! The right to disagree is what defines us... and it's more important now than ever! We need a reasoned consensus, not the false unity of a dictatorship! A democracy is constantly at odds with itself, constantly pulling in different directions. That's not treason- it's the purest form of patriotism! If your neighbor doesn't want to display a flag- hell, if he wants to BURN a flag- well, that's great! That's what America is all about! Think about it. If this becomes a society in which students are afraid to speak their minds for fear of retribution- then the terrorists win! This isn't rocket science, people!
I bet people would enjoy bowling more if they'd cut out the ball and pins part and increase the drinking part.
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you've forgotten your aim.
Mom always said, "I hate you! Your father wouldn't have left if it weren't for you! You were an accident!" I used to cry, but deep down I know that if it weren't for mom's tough love, I never would've gotten the courage to shoot that fifth cop and make it all the way to Panama. -Jacqui Kennelly
On the front page of Friday's Wall Street Journal, in that middle column where they always run the wacky trend stories, there's a piece about the current popularity of wide rim chrome hubcaps, which sometimes cost more than the car itself-- though not always; the trend apparently cuts across class lines. From low-wage earners driving junkers to soccer moms in SUVs, fancy hubcaps are evidently all the rage. Maybe this is old news to you; the culture of New York City is not especially car-oriented, so I have to admit, this isn't one I'd already picked up on. A woman who lives in some small town somewhere (the paper seems to have vanished magically from my apartment, or else I'd look it up) complains that, because the hubcap fashion thing has been largely inspired by rap videos, people in her town are concerned that the chrome hubcaps on her SUV are "un-Christian." It is entirely possible that I will leave this city at some point in the next few years, depending on various circumstances, but I think this is my new rule of thumb: I never, ever, ever want to live in a place where people worry about whether or not my hubcaps are Christian enough.
We're going to hear a lot more about John Walker Lindh over the next few weeks. We don't know where Osama bin Laden is, we don't know where Mullah Omar is--but by god, an al Qaeda fighter in the hand is worth however many have evaded the Bush.
Conservatives have--ludicrously enough-- been beating liberals over the head with this guy for weeks now. Marin County, parents with alternative lifestyles, permissiveness, hot tubs, Clinton-era moral relativism, yadda yadda yadda. Nothing discredits liberalism like an aberrant goofball-turned-right-wing-religious-fundamentalist, that's what I always say.
Of course, there are probably hundreds of thousands of kids who have been raised in similarly permissive households over the past few decades. If the moral relativism of John Walker Lindh's childhood is to blame for his peculiar path in life, then surely we should have seen thousands and thousands of confused young Americans joining him in his quest for the structure and moral certainty which apparently only al Qaeda could provide. Hell, half the Taliban should have been carrying American passports.
And, let's see, how Americans actually joined al Qaeda?
Oh yes, that's right. One.
This is a silly and losing game for conservative pundits to play. After all, the kid who crashed the plane into the skyscraper in Florida, after allegedly leaving behind a note expressing sympathy for Osama bin Laden, was a member of the Young Republicans. And let's not forget Timothy McVeigh, who was not exactly a poster boy for the absolute and unwavering moral steadfastness of conservativism.
There will always be those who carry a darkness within them, a cancer of thought and belief, which can be nurtured and sustained by any idiotic belief system--but the darkness has to be there to begin with. None of these cases--Walker or McVeigh or anyone else--are about ideology as much as they are about that cancer of the human spirit.
Conservatives would do well to keep this in mind, before this guilt-by-association nonsense turns around and bites them on the ass.
According to the newly-released book "Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth," by French journalists Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, the Bush administration was blocking investigations into Al Qaeda terrorism last year, as it bargained with the Taliban in an effort to gain access to the vast oil reserves of Central Asia. (A pipeline running through Afghanistan would of course negate the need to deal with the Russians in the delivery of this oil). The authors claim that the Bush administration was actually hoping to consolidate the Taliban's position, which they saw a source of stability in the region. (Yes, you read that right.) Interestingly, when the Taliban refused to accept U.S. conditions, they were told (before September 11, remember), "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we bury you under a carpet of bombs."
Former FBI Deputy Director John O'Neill--who resigned in July in protest of the Bush Administration's obstructionist policy--was interviewed at length for the book. According to the authors, O'Neill said that "the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it."
The authors further allege that the Bushies started negotiating with the Taliban almost immediately after the inauguration. US and Taliban representatives are said to have met several times, in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. The Taliban apparently even hired a PR person to help spruce up their image--Laila Helms, niece of former CIA director Richard Helms. (I guess it's a small world after all.)
The last meeting between Taliban and Bush administration officials took place five weeks before September 11, according to the authors.
I haven't read this book--I'm not even sure it's out in English yet--but from what I can tell from the various summaries I've read, the authors do not claim that the war in Afghanistan has been primarily motivated by the desire of the oilmen in the administration to build their pipeline. And to be clear, that's not what I'm suggesting either--though it does seem more than remotely possible that the pipeline will turn out to be--how should I put this?--a happy side effect of the war. Particularly given Bush's nomination of a former Unocal advisor as the US special envoy to Afghanistan.
But this is the thing: what if it's true that the Bushies told the FBI to back off Al Qaeda last year, as they pursued their little pipe(line) dream? What might the investigators have learned if they hadn't been hobbled by oil company priorities? What if the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon could have been prevented?
John O'Neill is no longer able to address these questions. After he resigned his position at the FBI, he took a job as head of security at the World Trade Center. He was killed on September 11.
We come to love not by finding the perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
What do you get when you put 50 lesbians and 50 polititians in the same room? 100 people who don't do dick.
I used to think that there was no greater pain than losing the woman you love. All of that changed, however, when I got kicked in the groin.
Men and women are different in the morning.
The men wake up aroused in the morning. We can't help it. We just wake up and we want you. And the women are thinking, 'How can he want me the way I look in the morning?' It's because we can't see you. We have no blood anywhere near our optic nerve.
You know those shows where people call in and
vote on different issues? Did you ever notice there's always like 18% that say "I don't know". It costs 90 cents to call up and vote... They're voting "I don't know." "Honey, I feel very strongly about this. Give me the phone. (Into Phone) I DON'T KNOW!" (Hangs up looking proud.) "Sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe you're not sure about." This guy probably calls up phone sex girls for $2.95 to say "I'm not in the mood."
All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.
The best argument againt democracy is a fifteen-minute conversation with the average voter. -Winston Churchill
If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever. -Goerge Orwell
Arguing on the internet is like running in the special olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded.
You laugh at me because I'm different. I laugh at you because you're all the same. (seen on a bumper sticker on a "punk's" car, but it's still a good saying)
I will laugh if, decades from now, there are cheezy specials on the History Channel with overdramatic background music, memorializing September 11th. This will all be narrated by some old man with a generic voice, and he will say "It was the day that defined a generation." First, I'd like to know what generation it defined. My parent's? My parents generation is full of a lot of worthless people who have done this world many, many injustices. They are extremely petty, selfish individuals who were jaded early on by things like the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. I don't think that they have an ounce of sympathy left, and I'm really surprised their own bitterness hasn't consumed them. Generation X isn't much better off. A lot of post-'Nam babies they are, and have been hit with a national depression, and the Cold War from the start. After that was the BIG rise of the drug culture while they were teenagers (it was worse in the 80's. Check your stats.) and then AIDS. They hate everything about as much as the boomers, only with more angst and less malice. Most of this Millenial Generation (as they're now calling it, I believe) is going to be too young to remember much of anything. They'll probably remember a lot of paranoia, and I wait in anticipation to see the psychology industry BOOM by the time the younger ones are out of college. Heh heh heh. So, what generation does it define? Damned if I know, but I'm pretty tired of hearing these old men talk about "Protecting liberty for our children." For your information, it's your children that are doing the fighting. Old men, I swear.
Vandalism is as beautiful as a rock in a cop's face.
A criminal is a person no different from the rest, except that he got caught.
Hatred is self-punishment. Hatred is a coward's revenge for being intimidated.
Procrastinators dont wait for the last minute to get the job done, they just do the job EXACTLY on time!
You can't fight city hall but you can goddamn sure blow it up.
And when God, who created the entire universe with all of its glories, decides to deliver a message to humanity, He WILL NOT use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle.
They blow themselves up in order to get at us, and we launch 3 million dollar missles off of giant floating iron islands 2000 miles away- Who are the real cowards? -Bill Hicks, 1993
Why could Jesus walk on water? Because shit floats.
Age doesn't always bring wisdom. Sometimes age comes alone.
If you think you're too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito. -Anita Riddick
A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.
If a vacuum cleaner is working, does that mean it sucks?
Cultural tolerance and inclusiveness is most widely criticized by those who were included first. -Rob Fairchild
Sleep is an inadequate substitute for caffine.
It's ironic that in a nation founded upon its guarantee of freedom of speech, assembly, and the press for all citizens, we find so little meaningful political dissent. What I believe is that we're jaded as hell from all the media we consume, so blinded by the promise of paradise that we fail to really evaluate our real condition. The institution of the "vote" is obviously a game of smoke and mirrors in a system run by two political parties dominated by rich, old white men. Our economy is a giant racist and sexist pyramid scheme. People spend their entire lives in shitty jobs, and then go home and watch TV ads all night. Our media is only in it for the money, and it does its best to drown out independent voices. Ecologically and educationally, our society is approaching a precipice, and damned if it ain't the American way to jump off. -Srini Kumar
To me, the system is everything that holds you back. Every check on your individual power, every technique to brainwash you into pursuing PRODUCTS instead of freedom, every annoying bill you have to pay, every time a black man is harrassed unfairly by a policeman or a Denny's manager - it's all part of a systematic effort to keep us broken and to destroy our joy. Because the cop and the Denny's manager probably buy each other drinks after work, and the entertainment industry is teaching you how and what to act, buy, and BELIEVE. -Srini Kumar
My friends keep telling me that I'm "doing it" with Mary Palmer. That's not true -- I'm too busy masturbating to meet anyone new.
Never argue with idiots, they just bring you down to their level, and then they beat you with experience.
I'm trying to see from your point of view but I can't shove my head that far up my ass.
I think unrequited love is the best kind, because you get all the waiting, pining, longing, queasy stomach feelings without ruining it by having to talk to the person, remember things about them, and apologize after burning down their house.
Ann Landers said that you are addicted to sex if you have sex more than 3 times a day, and that you should seek professional help. I have news for Ann Landers: The only way I am going to get sex 3 times a day is if I seek professional help. -Jay Leno
A friend is someone who will bail you outta jail. A best friend is the person sitting next to you in jail, sayin "Damn, that was cool!"
If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got.
Instead of committing random acts of kindness this holiday season, I'm going to commit random acts of drunken debauchery. Sure, it might not have the same socially redeeming value, but it'll be a lot more fun than another afternoon serving cookies at the retirement home.
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of the people I had to kill because they pissed me off.
Why is it if you're poor & mentally unstable you're a nutcase, but if you're rich & mentally unstable you're an eccentric?
What if they had a race just for nice guys? -Paul Wiley
The Moral Majority is neither.
If a mime shoots you, would he use a silencer?
Love is trasitory, but herpes is forever.
Anything is legal if you can get away with it.
I think if you really like a girl, you have to pay a LOT of attention to her. But try telling that to those jerks on the jury. -Dave George
Ever wonder why Santa's so jolly? He knows where the bad girls live.
I bet if they made an ice cream with beef chunks wrapped in leather, they'd call it something like "Triple Cow."
"The members of this administration do not want to be dictators. They simply do not want anyone getting in their way. They do not want to be autocrats. They simply do not want to be second-guessed when they
know they are right." -Professor Jack M. Balkin, Yale, in the New York Times. (This was in reference to the congressional reaction to the policy decision of W's administration to convene secret military tribunals. Can we all say Bill of Rights?)
Analyzing humor is like analyzing a frog: you can do it, but the frog tends to die in the process.
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't, and a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
I think baseball would be a much more challenging sport if batters had to use their arms instead of a stick of wood.
Sure, the nurses at the Red Cross are willing to lie you down on a vinyl table and tie a rubber strap around your arm and cut a hole in you and watch you bleed for ten minutes, but they freak out if you ask them to gag you and call you a Naughty Little Piggy, too.
Watching the Britney Spears concert made me feel like a kid again -- mostly because my wife kept telling me I was sitting too close to the TV.
If I had the chance to go on the Jerry Springer Show, I would kill everyone I knew the night before, so that when Jerry says, "Well, Andrew, we've got a surprise for you," I could say, "No, Jerry -- I have a surprise for you!!" -Andrew
They may call me weak. They may call me scrawny. I prefer to think of myself as a Gap commercial candidate. -John Gephart
I love deadlines. I like the wooshing sound they make as they fly by.
What do women and spaghetti have in common? They both wiggle when you eat 'em.
I'd smack you, but shit splatters.
It's only fun until someone gets hurt.... then it's hilarious!
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell and make you feel happy to be on your way.
Kleptomaniac: a rich thief. -Ambrose Bierce
I'm not crazy, I'm creative.
I'd like to do my part to make the world a better place, but murder is illegal.
Why do croutons come in airtight packages, when they're already stale to begin with?
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
A boss is like a diaper: always on your ass and full of shit.
You can always judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
When in doubt, mumble.
When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.
There's nothing like a state-mandated "violent offender" lawn sign for saving you candy money on Halloween!
You know, it'd be cool to be able to run really fast. But it would be even cooler if, when you ran, you made that neat sound like when they run on "Scooby Doo."
The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.
I'd love to do the Hokey Pokey with a bunch of Canadians, just so I could crack up every time they said, "...and that's what it's all aboooot."
Stress is when you wake up screaming and realize you havn't fallen asleep yet.
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man. -Jack Handey
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your actions.
We all like to think that we've got more sense than to pay a loud and opinionated compulsive liar $50 a month just to be our friend. Then the cable bill comes in. -Rob Fairchild
The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.
It is said that if you line up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them.
When you go into court you are putting yourself in the hands of 12 people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.
As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in public schools.
If I won the lottery, I wouldn't quit my job. I'd just sit there doing nothing and see how long it took them to fire me.
If you're singing Christmas songs on your neighbor's lawn at night with your church group, it's called "caroling." But if you're doing it alone with no pants on, it's called "drunk and disorderly."
I was happy this morning when I woke up and realized I didn't have to go to school today. But my happiness was short-lived when I realized that I'm 42 and have no job.
It turns out that sometimes no news is more accurate news. Vincent Laforet, a staff photographer for the New York Times in Pakistan, has these words of advice: "I have but one thing to tell you. Don't trust anything you see on TV and be wary of some of the things you read. I witnessed how sensationalistic the media can be. We covered a pro-Taliban demonstration last week attended by maybe 5,000 protesters. CNN stated there were 50,000. The BBC estimated 40,000. We're continually hearing of 'violent clashes with police' when the [local] TV stations report on non-violent demonstrations we covered ourselves."
"Children were decapitated, there were bodies with no legs. We could do nothing, we just fled. We hate the Taliban yet we are suffering for a government we could not choose." -Malluf Rahman, who witnessed two US bombs wipe out the farming village of Doori in Afghanistan. There are no military installations at Doori.
"Civilians are getting in the way of our air strikes." -Kerry Sanders, reporting for MSNBC, 10-25-01
I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy. -Steve Martin
You know that look women get when they want sex? Me neither. -Drew Carrey
Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty damned good. -Woody Allen
I remember when I was only 4 and my dad decided to teach me to swim by grabbing me and tossing me in the pool. Looking back on it now, it does seem a little cruel, seeing as how the bastard didn't bother filling it with water first. -Fabian Narittris
Life is a two-lane highway with tons of potholes and that one person in front of you who just won't move.
If you don't care where you are, then you're not lost.
Be careful of the toes you step on today, they could be attached to the ass you kiss tomorrow.
I decided to make my fortune by writing the ultimate love song -- a metaphor for the pain of lost love. But the record companies just didn't go for "Pencil In My Urethra" the way I thought they would. -Chris Walker
I'm not hard to please, just easy to piss off.
The good thing about having a death wish is that
you're much more likely to get that wish than, say, the one about a lingerie-clad Nicole Kidman stopping by your apartment with beer and pizza. -Maurizio Mariotti
Our eyes met, and the ground lurched beneath my feet and bells rang out. "My God!", I thought, "I've finally found her!!!" Then I remembered we were in an elevator.
Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.
Never miss an opportunity to shut up.
Never take a laxative and a sleeping pill in the same night.
I was so embarrassed the time I tried to ask for "goat cheese" in French but accidentally said "goat sex." It also happened once the other way around, but it wasn't as embarrassing. -Bob Van Voris
Optimist: A college student who opens his wallet and expects to find money.
I just watched two anchors on Fair and Balanced Fox News express their disgust that anyone could bring up the word "quagmire" at this early stage of the game. "The war just started!" they exclaimed. I guess you can't use the word "quagmire" until you're actually in one. You know: like when you see someone about to get hit by a car. It hasn't actually happened yet, so it would certainly be unseemly to shout, "Hey, you're about to get hit by a car!" Better to wait until it's happened, and then you can usefully exclaim, "Hey, you've just been hit by a car!"
MSNBC.com ran a story in which the Pentagon's admission that the Red Cross bombings were deliberate (because the Taliban was "stealing food" from them) was mentioned, if briefly. By the end of the day, the story contained no mention of the Red Cross bombings at all. Orwell looks more prescient with every passing hour.
A question: if it turns out, as the FBI and CIA believe probable, that the anthrax letters are the work of home-grown right-wing terrorists, will people get a grip and stop declaring that left-wing commentators such as Noam Chomsky are "just as bad as the terrorists"? Will they finally understand the distinction between a critique of US foreign policy and--well--*terrorism*? Probably not.
The mind boggles at the craven insistence of House Republicans that airport security not be "federalized." Excuse me, but aren't the firefighters and police officers who are the heroes of the hour all effectively part of a "federalized" workforce? Along with the men and women of the U.S. military? In the name of anti-government ideology, are we really going to leave airport security in the hands of the private sector--arguably the people who got us into this mess to start with, and who have apparently remained just as incompetent in the days since September 11? Sure, my 85-year-old father in law had his tweezers confiscated at some security checkpoint--a real security threat there, let me tell you--but in other airports around the country, guns, box cutters, meat cleavers and all sorts of things have been slipped past security in the past few weeks. Boy do I feel reassured about flying.
There have been several instances of F-16s scrambled to "escort" planes back to airports--which is exactly what should happen, in terms of preventing another September 11-style massacre, don't get me wrong--but this isn't something that should in any way reassure the flying public. Say you're on that plane with an unruly passenger and the captain radios it in and suddenly you've got an F-16 "escort" on your wingtip. You're being "escorted" in the way that a large bouncer "escorts" an unwelcome patron out of a nightclub. You'd better pray to whatever god you believe in that the plane you're on doesn't suffer a sudden altitude loss or lose an engine or have any other sort of mishap that the F-16 pilots might misinterpret.
The war on information continues unabated. Yesterday it was revealed that the Bush Administration intends to clamp down on the relase of Presidential papers, by Executive Order. "The proposed order, dated Oct. 29, grew out of a decision by the Bush administration early this year to block the release of 68,000 pages of confidential communications between President Ronald Reagan and his advisers that officials at the National Archives, including the Reagan library, had wanted to make public. Relying on an obscure executive order that Reagan issued just before leaving office, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales prescribed a series of delays so that Bush could decide whether to invoke "a constitutionally based privilege or take other appropriate action." The papers in question, some dealing with Reagan-era officials who now have high posts in the Bush administration, were to have been disclosed last January under the 1978 law, which said that the documents could be restricted at the most for 12 years after Reagan left office." Not only is this an open admission that the Administration intends to pursue courses of action which it feels necessary to hide from the American people, it also makes it clear that the "Reagan-era officials" now back in the saddle still have some skeletons in their closets. No surprise there, at least not to anyone who was paying attention back then.
The conventional narrative goes like this: the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, leading the U.S. to fund the resistance fighters who would later become the Taliban. In other words, the U.S. only acted in response to Soviet aggression. There is the official version of history, and then there is the reality. In a 1998 interview, Zbiegniew Brezenski offered a glimpse of the latter:
Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76,
translation Bill Blum
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs, From the Shadows, that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they [entendaient] to fight against a secret [ing�rence] of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [int�grisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
On the same day that the President goes on a p.r. offensive to convince Americans that it's safe to fly, he gives two generals authority to shoot down civilian airliners if necessary. Can you say "mixed signals"?
Disturbing incidents, as related in the New York Times:
"Community reaction was swift and furious when the newspaper columnists in Texas City, Tex., and Grants Pass, Ore., criticized the president's actions the day of the attacks. Tom Gutting, the columnist for The Texas City Sun, wrote that the president was 'flying around the country like a scared child, seeking refuge in his mother's bed after having a nightmare.' The paper received scores of letters and phone calls. Les Daughtry Jr., the publisher of The Sun, later apologized on the front page saying, the column had made him sick. 'The opinion piece which I refer to was not appropriate to publish during this time our country and our leaders find themselves in.' Mr. Gutting lost his job... In Oregon, Dan Guthrie, 61, said that on Monday he was called into the office of Dennis Mack, publisher of The Daily Courier in Grants Pass, and fired for a column criticizing the president, saying he "skedaddled" after the attacks. Mr. Mack said in a telephone interview of the offending column, "we felt it turned into a personal attack as opposed to expanding the concept of the president being on the front line.'"
Fired for criticizing the president. Jesus Christ. And so begins the kneejerk wartime assault on freedom of speech. You either bite your tongue or you lose your job. We don't need censorship mandated from above, we're all too happy to impose it on ourselves-- at precisely the moment we can least afford it.
There was a sense over the last few years that politics just weren't all that important, that everyone was too busy pursuing their dot-com dreams to pay attention to those tedious political types in Washington. Meaningless self-referentiality became the flavor of the month. The world would take care of itself, the only common frame of reference we needed were old Brady Bunch episodes. Well, gosh, you know what? Politics matter. And anyone who doesn't get that now needs to have a friend grasp them firmly by the shoulders and try to pull their head out of their ass.
Truth is always the first casualty of war.
Here is something to ponder. I think more people should follow their instincts and emotions, and pursue in life what they are truly interested in. Often people are encouraged by their family or friends to be something just for the money. But the truth is, when you do that, one day you realize you are doing something you are bored with, and dread Monday mornings. What kind of life is that? No matter what your talent is, there is something out there for you.
All you have to do is make an opportunity for yourself. Especially when I see fellow college students trying to narrow their sights in at what they want to do with the rest of their lives, at the age of 18-21. How can you possibly know with great certainty what you want to do with the rest of your life when you have so many years left to experience?
Willie was in the bathroom at Justin's house taking a shit. In the process he feels the need to give everyone a running commentary, and describes his grumpy in detail. Justin's mom then comes downstairs to let the dog out. At this point Willie, not knowing she is there, bursts out of the bathroom and shouts, "I need a camera!" In retrospect, at least he didn't say something like, "I need paper towels!" or "I need a plunger!"
This last week has been instructive. If our leaders can be believed, a na�ve assessment in my book, we're barely staving off a deluge of anthrax spores. We have to be diligent and report any suspicious activity by anybody who is:
1) of Middle Eastern extraction.
2) carries anything sharper than lettuce.
3) owns a camera and isn't afraid to use it.
4) has ever been observed to spit on a sidewalk. (Whether tobacco chewing might be a mitigating circumstance hasn't been determined as yet, since the Tobacco Institute still has money in the bank.)
You think I'm kidding. Would that I were. I quote US Attorney General John Ashcroft: "Spitting on the sidewalk is reason enough." This was in reference to the question of what might be sufficient grounds for detaining someone for questioning, spoken at a news conference. The reason for the above quote was because "...detentions are an effective way to prevent crime." Excuse me? Is Ashcroft aware that owning a pocket knife is not a crime? Or
that in the State of Oregon, owning a switchblade knife is not a crime? (I have several--why? Because they're useful) It's supremely fortunate that I
don't wear a beard, have brown eyes, or spit on sidewalks. If I didn't have a profound confidence that there is always SOME segment of the American public who has all oars in the water, I'd be petrified. -T.G. Browning
Alibi: 1) Alternate explanation when the
first one fails. 2) Mid-level management jargon for damage control, spoken to lower echelon workers about higher level abuses. -T.G. Browning
Traitor: Any bozo who insists that such formalistic, paltry, petty quibbles like due process, presumed innocence, opportunity, or motive should
be observed. -T.G. Browning
The only way to get rid of temptation is to give in to it.
A friend that will lie for you will also lie to you.
I feel your pain. Alas, I do not care.
Good girls are just bad girls that don't get caught.
A snake in the grass is an asp, but a grasp in the ass is a goose.
Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.
If you can smile when things go wrong, you have someone in mind to blame.
War doesn't determine who's right but who's left.
No need crying over spilt milk. Unless, of course, you're a truck driver and you just lost nearly 3800 gallons on the interstate - then it's okay to cry.
I think that beauty pageants should have a "Miss Promiscuity" award, to reward the girl who slept with the most judges.
I don't think it's wrong to lie to women and tell them I'm a doctor, because they're probably lying to me when they say they need a gall bladder operation anyway.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Ghost: A feeble representation of something not present, like ethics in business. -T.G. Browning
Ghoul: A species of television reporter, readily identified due to the fact they are most often observed holding black cylindrical objects, which they poke into people's faces. Almost invariably, the targets of this behavior are people who've just received word that their home, sister, father, daughter, husband and all pets has been air lifted over the rainbow via a twister. New legislation in several Midwestern states will establish a hunting season during fall and spring in the year 2003. -T.G. Browning
Halloween: Peculiar holiday in the United States. Children and young adults get to go door to door threatening neighbors and strangers alike. Bribes are given and received. All in all, it's an accurate facsimile of life in the economic sphere. As holidays go, this particular one is probably the most endangered by political correctness but as yet, no great movement has been observed by PC forces. -T.G. Browning
I'd never go to that part of New York, I might run into Canadians.
The conversation ends when you can't remember what the other person said.
If you bought $1000 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49. If you bought $1000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, and traded in the cans for the nickel deposit, you would have $79. My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.
Big sports news today. New world record in the 100-yard dash. It was set by 435 congressmen running from the Capitol.
Sometimes it's easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
If you can't learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly.
Let's say that there's a CD out called "The Worst of Jefferson Airplane." If you buy it, take it home, and enjoy it, should you take it back and demand a refund?
He who dies with the most toys is nonetheless dead.
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
They say you can do anything if you put your mind to it. It also helps to have giant breasts.
Downsizing: Convenient double-speak for management-style ethic and ethnic cleansing. -T.G. Browning
You really are asking for me to send large and muscular individuals to kick your door down and beat you like a whore's unwanted, red-headed stepchild, aren't you?
How do you tell the difference between a Crane male and female from a distance? The female stands with more dignity.
I'm NOT a pervert. That is NOT me in those photos. You can't even see my face-- HIS face, I mean. Yeah.
When I was a boy I was told that anyone could become President. Now that Bush is in office, I'm starting to believe it.
The worst thing about getting your penis caught in the bicycle chain isn't the overwhelming pain, but that long, sickening moment, when you're stuck there in that awkward position, and you suddenly realize that you're going to have to describe the entire event on an insurance claim form. Again.
One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
Interesting week, I thought. The US pioneers a new art-form in total warfare by not only bombing caves, terrorist camps, and possibly empty deserts, while at the same time, bombing other parts of the same country with food packages that we couldn't get American GI's to eat. I suspect that neither instance was covered in any of the Geneva accords. Don't get me wrong. I applaud the idea if for no other reason than the fact that it's so typically American. We never have practiced war the way the rest of the world did. Even during the Revolutional War. To paraphrase Bill Cosby's routine of Coin Toss, we're hide behind rocks and trees wearing brown and green colored clothes while the other side has to wear red and march in a straight line. But, then again, the Afghanis have never practiced war the way anybody else did either, as the Russians found out. In point of fact, the Afghanis and the citizens of the US have a lot more in common than many would think. I recall reading a lengthy article in *The Smithsonian* back just about the time the Russian took over Kabul, which detailed the tribal mores of the Afghanis. The big point I remember was that if they didn't have any outside force to fight with, they'd fight with the neighboring clans. If that wasn't an option, then they'd break up into smaller family groups and fight each other. In the extremely small chance that that wasn't an option, that left, of course, husband and wife warfare which could *always* be counted upon. Since the September 11th bombing, it certainly appears to me that a similar
process is ingrained in the American psyche. The average US citizen has to have *something* to demonize or he/she/it isn't happy. Over the past twenty or thirty years, we've seen the American political scene fragment into some of the most destructive political demonizing that the nation has ever seen. Anyone remember lines like "...and you're no Jack Kennedy!"?
Did anybody ever think they'd see Bob Dole and Bill Clinton sitting side by side and not only polite to each other, but jointly pushing a policy that benefits neither them personally nor the Republican or Democratic parties. It's enough to make you wonder if you're in the right universe. -T.G. Browning
If I were a Christian, I'd probably love Jesus. He's not a bad-looking guy, and he can turn water into wine. But I'd like to think my love of The Guy would be more subtle than that of my co-workers. Maybe I'd go as far as working at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. Before the 11 September attack, I thought my Bible-banging officemates were tolerable in an it's-hard-to-hate-retards way, but after the black eye the country received, they've crossed the line. I'm drawing a pentagram in the sand, and standing my ground. Between the photos of Osama bin Laden as a 7-11 clerk and that damn crying eagle are the "God is Great" e-mails. Scripture quotes. Invitations to prayer groups. Interviews with God (I suspect they're fake; someone check Snopes). Recycled pabulum about Billy Graham's alleged appearance on Oprah Winfrey. And my favorite: battle cries for the return of prayer in schools. Prayer in schools! Mein Gott, do Muslim children not pray in their schools? And it's done
them a lot of good. Clearly, their god can kick our god's ass. Allah's got our number, thanks to the heartfelt prayers of Muslim kids around the world. If only we can schedule a National Day of Prayer when all of America's kids close their eyes and pray to God (no, not THAT god, kid) for the Islamic fundamentalists to embrace Unitarian Universalism, maybe we can win. Just maybe. How about teaching American kids hand-to-hand combat and the importance
of keeping one's gun clean? To not turn to writing bad poetry at the sign of troubled times? That MTV is not a legitimate source of news? American kids are soft, and no amount of prayer is going to turn them
into bad asses. You know what turns them into psychopaths with a death wish? Make fun of their personal style. Allah says that you wear clothes from K-Mart and your facepaint is really stupid! *bam, bam*
Just look at America's terrorists. They're pussies. The Unabomber sent mailbombs, Eric Rudolph is hiding from the godless infidels, and Timothy McVeigh's soul belongs to the federal penal system because none of them -- not one -- went down with the ship. They lit the fuse, and got the fuck out of the way. Living in a country with technology, hedonism and a big, bad scary government might chap their hides, but not enough to die for the cause. And if nutjobs can't be convinced to embrace death, what chance do we have? -The Misanthropic Bitch
Puck from #L5R on women: Oh you're not to be blamed. You're a woman. You've got to keep up with fashion and the latest pie recipies. It's a rough job.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is choosing not to win.
College is like a 24/7 orgy, where everyone but me is invited.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Any sufficiently advanced bureacracy is indistinguisable from molasses.
You never realize how short a month is until you have to pay alimony.
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
I'm celibate by choice, just not by my choice.
How to prove that you're not gay: Find the hottest girl in school, bring her home while your parents are around, and have loud, hot sex on the living room couch. Then say "You wanted evidence, HERE'S your fucking evidence."
If we are what we eat, then I guess my friends were right: I'm just a little pussy. -Brandon "Hawke" Flores
In case you were worried about the Internet causing a slowdown in the adult video market, take comfort in knowing that, on average, there are 21 new adult videos released every single day in the United States; most of which seem to feature the same five people.
Now this really annoys me; all these people getting on the Internet and saying Nostradamus predicted [9-11]. If Nostradamus were alive today his name would be Miss Cleo and he'd be charging $2.99 a minute. -Jay Leno
If we can't defend the country for $300 billion a year, we ought to get some new generals.
Looking for an innovative way to delay orgasm? Just get into Dungeons and Dragons while you're still in high school. That'll delay it by about 30 years or so. -Jason Anderson
Of all the thoughts that could run through your head at the instant you awaken, none is a surer indication of the onset of a bad day than, "I hope that's not urine." -Chris Lipe
A wise man once told me, "How the hell did you get past the dogs?"
My wife wanted us to go to marriage counseling. Then she discovered tennis. Now she goes to her private lessons with some guy named Lars, and I get to stay home and watch sports. Tennis rules! -Brad Osberg
Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a seat has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch it to be sure.
Accomplishing the impossible only means the boss will add it to your duties.
The object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war. -"1984" by George Orwell
Is football just an excuse to sit on the couch and eat junk food? And if that's the case, how come I don't like it more?
Does anybody else wonder if cats do it doggie style? And if they do, did they learn it from watching dogs? And is that why we call them copycats? Oh, there's just so much we don't know about science.
The three two-letter words that denote the word "small": "Is it in?"
Amazingly enough, the American public still has the right to carry Swiss Army knives on their person, sport a beard if said beard doesn't adorn a face which also sports dark brown eyes and a tan, or go where they please. That will, no doubt, change. I think the most depressing thing I've seen since the September 11th bombing is the huge number of gutless, whining comments from people who now feel threatened and afraid if an airplane passes overhead. I suppose I should have more or less expected it, seeing how many people are such passionate proponents of *zero tolerance*, another concept based on lousy risk assessment. Maybe we should blame the New Math movement of the 60's for the average American's inability to figure odds. Apparently, the only risk the average American is willing to take is that their brains won't be turned into guava jelly watching TV programs like "Cheaters" and "Deadly Cop Chases". Perhaps I'm being pessimistic. I'm probably going to catch hell for this column and fully expect a quarter of my subscribers will terminate. Tough. I can no more sit back and watch the public dump *liberty* down the toilet in the name of *justice* and *safety* than I can condone the ruthless, evil murder of thousands of New Yorkers September 11th. Besides, I'm going to upchuck all over my TV if I hear one more person telling me that they feel violated by the September 11th attack. For the love of Mike, people, show some guts, will you? It's depressing and embarrassing as hell to watch. Some of you may want to accept the mantle of victim but I do not. -T.G. Browning
Superpatriot: One who uses patriotism as a cloaking device for bigotry, veniality, viciousness, and stupidity. Quite a few of them are bedwetters to boot. -T.G. Browning
War: The preferred, practical, and plutocratic method to spur technological advancement. -T.G. Browning
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. -Samual Johnson
Sir, I have found you an argument, but I'm not obliged to find you an understanding.
If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a noose around your neck?
When an American gives his life for "his country," we call him a hero, we hold memorial services, we name babies after him. When a Muslim gives his life for "his god," we call him insane, evil, "a f**," "raghead," "sand n**"... Does anyone see a disparity? I do. I do not condone terrorism, but we must all realize that what happened in NY and DC was more or less our fault, too. The Taliban and Osama bin Ladin don't hate us for no apparent reason. Get that stupid idea that Islam is a religion for evil people or fanatics out of your head. And remember, when the Catholic church loses a member of its organization because that person died to defend what they believed in... they call that person a "saint."
By the way, has anyone seen Dick Cheney since this whole thing started? Isn't it a little strange that he's always "off at Camp David for security reasons" -- even as the rest of the Administration and several ex-presidents to boot are able to gather under one roof? Are we to believe that if terrorists had targeted the National Cathedral, Dick Cheney would now be running the government single handedly from some unspecified bunker? He's like the sitcom actress who gets pregnant and the writers scramble to try to explain her absence from the show. -Tom Tomorrow
As for what the Civilized world must do, if Bin Laden is the individual behind this, he must be arrested and given a fair trial. We set the precedent with the Nuremburg trials, when it comes to crimes against humanity. With the war crimes trials in The Hague and the arrest of Slobodon Milosovich, as well as the arrest and aborted prosecution of Augusto Pinochet, we have reaffirmed that precedent and expanded it to make state leaders answerable for their actions. Civilization stands or falls, based on if it chooses law or anarchy. We MUST choose to stand in the light. We MUST choose to observe the law and to be the agents of justice, not vengeance. Bin Laden MUST be given a fair trial, a trial televised for all to see and hear. It must be plainly seen that Law and Justice are the pillars and walls that support and protect Civilization. And yes, Civilization MUST also endure the atrocities that will be committed against it by those who would seek the release of Bin Laden. Civilization has fought many bloody wars to uphold the rules of Law & Civilization. Osama Bin Laden must be brought to trial. It is the only Civilized thing to do.
The obvious lesson that missile defense is useless against an enemy who can wreak such devastation armed only with box cutters and a willingness to die seems to have been lost on our political leaders. The New York Times reports: "Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said that even though the attacks showed that the biggest threat to the nation was from terrorism, Congressional reluctance to oppose the president at this time seemed likely to overwhelm that circumstance. One Democratic senator after another, while stopping short of Mr. Obey's blunt prediction, said they felt that this was no time for partisanship - and the ballistic missile issue is inevitably partisan. Moreover, the money issue has all but disappeared, swept away by Congress's sudden post-attack willingness to tap the Social Security surplus for all forms of defense. That has weakened the argument that the president's request for $8.3 billion for an antimissile system would divert needed money from more pressing dangers like terrorism, critics of the plan concede." I have also heard a second-hand report that the administration intends to use this tragedy as an excuse to repeal environmental regulations--because we can't have anything hobbling business in what is being described as a wartime economy.
It should go without saying that no decent person believes this act should go unpunished, that the men responsible should not be brought to justice. Anyone who confuses a desire to avoid responding to the senseless slaughter of civilians with more of the same--a desire to, perhaps, avoid World War III--anyone who confuses this with a desire to do nothing...sees the world in much too simple of terms. This is not "appeasement," as some have claimed. We are not at war with a nation state. We are up against a loose network of what is estimated to be perhaps three thousand right wing religious fanatics, spread across two dozen countries on five continents. Tell me, exactly, who we should bomb to make it all better.
I was strangely comforted to see Dick Cheney alive and well on Meet the Press yesterday morning. I may not like or trust or support the man or what he may do, but at least our fate is not solely in the hands of George W. Bush, but rather people who privately understand exactly what is going on, even as the public is whipped into a lather about the incomprehensible evil which has somehow sprung fully formed from the void to visit such madness upon us.
The painful truth we must face here is that they understand the nature of this enemy because they helped to create it (and spare me the "blame America first" stuff--we will never understand what has happened here if we are willfully blind to history). Osama bin Laden was our surrogate in Afghanistan during the Cold War. It has been reported by many credible, mainstream news organizations that he was trained in the art of terrorism by our very own CIA. And in words that will certainly come back to haunt him, Orrin Hatch--a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee--said in 1998 that even knowing what would come later, it was worth it to support these men because it helped to destabilize the Soviet Union. And of course, the Bush Administration recently gave the Taliban $43 million dollars as an incentive in the war on drugs. This is what is known as "blowback."
(And on the "having a wee bit of trouble keeping things in perspective" front, a report from a reader in San Francisco...) Last Wednesday, the day after the attacks on New York and Washington, my neighbor erected the following sign in front of his house. In it, he compares the person who scratched his SUV to the people who destroyed the world trade center. I would not have believed it if I had not seen it with my own eyes, and had not talked to the sign's author (a middle aged white man who lives in an upper income neighborhood in San Francisco, someone who frankly has nothing to complain about). Despite many complaints from neighbors on my street, some of whom who have lost friends in the attacks, this individual continues on his crusade against "urban terrorism". His neighbors know people who are dead, and he is complaining about the paint job on his SUV. What a loser! I was really quite stunned and offended that someone who is so very lucky could be so self-centered. A titanic display of narcissism, perhaps an unrivaled one in light of what has happened this week... [text of sign sighted in upper market area of San Francisco, Wed Sept 12th & Thurs Sept 13th] "To the person who keyed my car I feel sorry for you You are a coward It is a cowardly to destroy property (his misspelling not mine) You are in a form a terrorist There is little difference between you and those who killed all those people in the world trade center Same kind of thinking Your mother would be ashamed You are an evil person."
Over the airplane's public-address system came a most incredible announcement from the captain of United Flight 564 as it was about to pull out of the gate at Denver International Airport last Saturday, writes Peter Hannaford, a public-affairs consultant in Washington and former adviser to President Reagan. "I want to thank you brave folks for coming out today," the pilot began. "We don't have any new instructions from the federal government, so from now on, we're on our own." The passengers listened in total silence. "Sometimes a potential hijacker will announce that he has a bomb. There are no bombs on this aircraft and if someone were to get up and make that claim, don't believe him. If someone were to stand up, brandish something such as a plastic knife and say, 'This is a hijacking' or words to that effect, here is what you should do: "Every one of you should stand up and immediately throw things at that person - pillows, books, magazines, eyeglasses, shoes - anything that will throw him off balance and distract his attention. If he has a confederate or two, do the same with them. Most important: get a blanket over him, then wrestle him to the floor and keep him there. We'll land the plane at the nearest airport and the authorities will take it from there. "Remember, there will be one of him and maybe a few confederates, but there are 200 of you. Now, since we're a family for the next few hours, I'll ask you to turn to the person next to you, introduce yourself, tell them a little about yourself and ask them to do the same." The end of this remarkable speech, Mr. Hannaford says, brought sustained clapping from the passengers.
Some American politicians now argue that criminal justice is inadequate because the events of September 11 were an act of war. But according to international law, we must know what State committed it. A group of individuals, even numbering in the hundreds, cannot commit an act of war. Perhaps those who harbor terrorists may themselves be accomplices in an act of war. But let us remember the last time this bold claim was made, in 1914, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia because a Serb nationalist had assassinated its archduke. It unleashed a cascade of belligerent declarations justified by an earlier equivalent of article 5 of the NATO treaty. We now look back in horror and bewilderment at how an overreaction to terrorism, in the name of punishment and retribution, provoked a chain of events that ultimately slaughtered an entire generation of European youth.
It's time to stand united behind the president. If, in the face of an enemy armed with box cutters and fanatacism, he pushes ahead with missile defense, well, who are we to question him? If he says that a capital gains tax cut for the wealthy is the best way to kick off a new era of shared national sacrifice, then by god, that's what we're going to do. Because the last thing we want to do at a time like this is let our enemies observe a functioning democracy. All that partisanship, all that disagreement -- we don't have time for any of that now. Where do we go to sign our loyalty oaths?
The trouble with finding your perfect soulmate is that she would probably want to get married, then four weeks after the wedding you would meet another perfect soulmate, with larger breasts.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and before long the whole world will look like hockey players.
If the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.
Jesus hates me, this I know, 'cause the nuns they told me so. -Ciaran O'Shea
Friends don't let friends watch Friends.
Children: You spend the first two years of their lives teaching them to walk and talk. You then spend the next 16 teaching them to sit down and shut up.
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word everything you shouldn't have said.
If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn?
What I'm missing in experience I make up for in lack of common sense.
Lesson learned from hentai: The vaginal lining of the typical anime schoolgirl is the most elastic substance in the universe. -Michael Poe
Independant: What you parents want you to be as long as you do everything they say.
I write messages on money. It's my own form of social protest. A letter printed on paper that no one will destroy, passed indiscriminately across race, class, and gender lines, and written in the blood that keeps the beast alive. A quiet little hijacking on the way to the check-out counter. And a federal crime. -the insert accompanying the Rage Against the Machine album "Renegades"
I'd like to join a cult sometime, so that my wife would have to track me down and "deprogram" me. You just *know* the makeup sex would be great.
I'm not a psychopath, I'm a sociopath. Get it right. -Ciaran O'Shea
My parents always used to ask me, "How was school?" That's like asking, "How was the drive-by shooting?" You're just happy to get out alive.
Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is. -Barbara Bush
According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful. -Jay Leno
There's very little advice in men's magazines, because men think, I know what I'm doing. Just show me somebody naked. -Jerry Seinfeld
There's a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what's the problem?
Things could be worse. A woman could cut off your penis in your sleep and throw it out the window of a moving car. -Tyler Durden, "Fight Club"
Oral tradition: Any knowledge passed down verbally from one generation to another, even if it makes no sense at all. Current academic thought holds that anything preserved by oral tradition is twelve times more important than any written document. -T.G. Browning
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
Ever notice how nobody ever says, "It's only a game," when their team is winning?
If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, would it be considered a hostage situation?
What ever happended to Preparations A through G? Wouldn't you hate to have been the guy testing those?
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
What exactly is "viewer discretion? If viewers had discretion, most television shows would not be on the air. -George Carlin
Men reach their sexual peak at eighteen. Women reach theirs at forty-five. Do you get the feeling God is playing a practical joke?
Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.
Ethnic cleansing: A vigorous, spirited game of the Balkans. Currently franchise opportunities are being granted by the United Nations. -T.G. Browning
Xenophobe: Any person who has an unreasoning fear of strangers, foreigners, or aliens. People who have a reasoning fear of strangers, etc. are called bigots or conservatives. -T.G. Browning
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in open sewer and die.
I knew what was coming when Coach pulled me aside: "I'm off the team, aren't I?" Imagine my relief when he just wanted me to go to his office and perform unspeakable acts.
Sometimes I feel like a fly. I spend half the day banging my head against the screen to get in, and the rest of the day banging on it to get out.
The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. -Lilly Tomlin
No one can carry on a sane relationship with anyone, because getting involved in a relationship is insane.
Money can't buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
Deja moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.
Psychiatrists say that 1 of 4 people is mentally ill. Check three friends. If they're OK, you're it.
It has recently been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by moving from where you left them to where you can't find them.
Whenever I get a day off, I like to program some
mindless do-forever loop for my computer to execute. I then head outside and drink pina coladas all day, happier knowing that that bastard machine isn't getting a day off just because I am.
If it's not funny the first time, repeat it until it is.
There's enough room in the sandbox for two. Unless you're Microsoft, in which case you make a royalty off of each grain of sand in use and others are just jealous that you've named yourself "Supreme Ultimate King of the World's Most Important Sandbox."
Life: That span of time between birth and death, generally made up of minor fluctuations of fortune otherwise known as unconsolidated debt. -T.G. Browning
Death: (clinical) The cessation of all brain wave activity. It is often preceded by either termination of heart action or a religious conversion. See born again. (observational) A minor but interesting reordering of priorities. -T.G. Browning
Utopia: A place where science and technology provide solutions (such as cheap power, creature comforts, education) without repercussions (such as toxic waste, drug addiction, daytime television). -T.G. Browning
I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.
The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop. -P.J. O'Rourke
A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested. A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.
Liberals don't believe they deserve anything they own; conservatives think they're entitled to everything they've stolen.
Quantum Express: When you absolutely, positively, don't know where it's going or when it needs to be there.
Women are like busses: there's always another one on the way. Also, their superstructures are usually made of some rock-hard, no-bounce substance that guarantees uniformity and brand recognition.
If it was up to me, there would be a video game where you toast fully-3D bagels in outer space. You could toast them co-operatively or competitively, and there would be a variety of spreads and appliances to upgrade as you climbed the tech tree (spreads of varying thickness, toasting equipment that loads from the front or services a greater payload). No one has ever combined the breakfast and strategy genres in the way I'm proposing - mainly because the whole thing is sort of strange, when you think about it. -Penny Arcade
When my Dad died, I was sad that I never told him that I loved him. But I was kind of proud that I had managed to keep my mouth shut about Mom's affair with her golf instructor. I mean, a deal's a deal.
I think a really funny joke would be for NASA to send up rockets and push a bunch of planets out of alignment. Then they could sit back and laugh when everyone realizes that their horoscopes aren't coming true.
A person that learns from their mistakes is smart. A person that learns from other people's mistakes is smarter.
Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.
If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
As a joke, we left my sister at an orphanage when she was four years old. She'll probably be so happy tomorrow when we pick her up that she'll forget all about her 21st birthday, so I won't even have to spend money on a present.
I'd always wondered what it would be like to live on the sun, until my mother-in-law suggested that pressing my face against a hot frying pan might give me an idea. Trust me, you *don't* want to move there.
(Norm Stamper Chief of Police, Seattle, 1994-2000) If I were king for a day and was going to learn from history, I would, in fact, decriminalize drug possession.... We decriminalized the possession of booze. We criminalized other substances and demonized those who use them and, in the process, created an outlaw class that includes everybody from a senator's wife to the addict curled up in a storefront doorway.
When you develop a sense of humor about your gender, sexuality, race, and beliefs, I'll develop one about mine. -Rob Fairchild
Whether they're listening to heavy metal music while having noisy, screaming sex, or arguing like crazed animals at 3 in the morning, your loud, white trash neighbors are still cheaper late-night entertainment than a new TV. -Rob Fairchild
"I guess the 19th century is over now." -- Democratic campaign pollster Sam Watts, upon Senator Jesse Helms' announcement that he will not run for a sixth term
Do you ever wish the people who are supposed to care cared as much as the people who aren't supposed to care at all?
Not all women are annoying. Some are dead.
There are two major products to come out of UC Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. This is not a coincidence.
College is a fountain of knowledge, and the students are there to drink.
"The soldiers say they are searching for drugs, but there are no drugs -- we are poor people. There are a lot of drug growers to the north of our valley. When the soldiers go there, they get shot at with machine guns, so they look for drugs in our villages." -A farmer of Oaxaca state, in southern Mexico
Getting high on marijuana means you're rebellious, while getting drunk on beer means you're a good old boy. But ask any cop whether he'd rather go into a house full of people high on marijuana or one full of people drunk on beer. They'll tell you they'd much rather deal with people on marijuana.
When I hear on the news about someone being killed "execution style", it makes me wonder what other styles there are.
Anarchist: A person who believes that all government is dishonest, corrupt, and intrinsically unfair. In other times, this has been called wisdom. -T.G. Browning
Fascist: Any person who is two steps to the political right of the speaker, unless the speaker is an anarcho-syndicalist, in which case, everyone is a fascist. -T.G. Browning
Reactionary: a person with muscular political beliefs. -T.G. Browning
My friend says that if I'm going to remove someone's spleen and replace it with an egg timer, I should wire it with TNT. But you can only blow someone up once, and the expression on people's faces when they hear dinging coming from someone's abdomen is priceless.
They say for every five stars in the sky, there's a set of planets and within every one of those planets could be a set of lifeforms just like us, which could mean that life elsewhere in the universe is far more advanced than us. But I bet men on those planets still can't unhook bras any better than Earth guys can.
What's the diffenence between sex for money and sex for free? Sex for free costs a lot more.
If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vauge.
I'm in love with a girl who doesn't even know I'm alive -- she thinks she got me with her long range rifle, but she missed.
Little known fact: The eleventh and least-publicized plague that God rained down upon the Egyptians was that "Not-so-fresh feeling"
Have you ever been driving down the road, when suddenly you are struck by a devilish urge to ram a police car and squeal away, cackling? Doesn't every law-abiding person have a secret wish to be in a high-speed car chase through six counties - just once to see what it was like? Well, doesn't everyone, judge?
When I used to get invited to Christmas parties, I thought it was so impersonal to bring a big bag of store-bought gifts for everyone. So instead, I would get drunk and go around giving everyone their own special Christmas Goose.
When I finally met my online sweetheart PRINCESS_butterfly26 face to face, she was everything she had described and more. More bulges, more facial hair, more chromosomes. More of everything. Excluding teeth. Less teeth.
The best parties are the ones where you wake up wearing someone else's pants.
I believe that it was Neitsche who said: "That which does not kill us gives us an abominable case of diarrhea."
I do not require constant sexual gratification to make me feel good about myself. I require constant sexual gratification because I love it, baby! -Jim Rosenberg
Sometimes it's hard for me to express to my girlfriend how much I love her, especially with that restraining order.
I have a bad memory, so I make up little rhymes to help me remember things. Like this: "You're on parole for those things you stole so stop and think before you go hold up that truck-stop on the interstate."
I get very nervous when I have to speak in front of a large group, especially when I bust into a crowded theatre drunk and naked.
As I sat in the supermarket office and waited for the cops to arrive, a thought came to me. Maybe when they say "No purchase necessary," it's like some kind of code or something, and you're not supposed to dump cereal all over the aisle to get the prize. Maybe if they hadn't taken away my little "Crunch-Berry Decoder," I could have figured it out.
I find that little kids are just ungrateful. You try to do something fun for them and they repay you by vomiting on your shoes or something. Hey, weren't you just laughing hysterically for ten minutes while I was spinning you around in that chair?
I try to be calm with people who frighten very easily, because patience is a virtue. For example, once I had to wait patiently under this girl's bed for eight hours before she finally came home.
Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet. -Dave Barry
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. -Ambrose Bierce
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. -Ambrose Bierce
Karate is a form of marital arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world. -Dave Barry
"Fair" is one of the most dangerous concepts in politics. Since no two people are likely to agree on what is "fair," this means that there must be some third party with power -- the government -- to impose its will. The road to despotism is paved with "fairness". -Thomas Sowell
It is wrong to discriminate based on skin color, when there are so many other reasons to dislike someone. -Dennis Miller
Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask "Why me?" Then a voice answers Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up. -Charlie Brown
Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors. -Francious de la Rochefoucauld
How much fame, money, and power does a woman have to achieve on her own before you can punch her in the face? -P.J. O'Rourke
I think, therefore I'm single. -Liz Winston
Conscience doesn't stop you from doing what you shouldn't, it just stops you from enjoying it. -Cleveland Amory
I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. -J. Edgar Hoover, former head of the FBI
Adolf Hitler: Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer. A Microsoft Promotional Ad: One World, One Web, One Program.
An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.
I believe that Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was -- an Arctic region covered with ice. -Steve Martin
The trouble with Baptists is they don't hold them under long enough.
I want a girl just like the girl who married dear old Dad. Just so we're clear: not you, Mom -- I'm talking about Wife 3, who could stay up all night doing tequila shooters with Dad in the trailer and still manage to rouse herself at 10:45 AM to send him off to work orally satisfied.
A lot of people face adversity by asking, "How would Jesus have dealt with this?" But that doesn't help me much, because I doubt Jesus ever had bad credit.
So there I was, in the bus station restroom, when I got this great idea for a novel: It's about a girl who's sitting there, broken-hearted, waiting for some guy to call her for a good time.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learned in Kindergarten: If you go to the bathroom in your pants, they let you go home.
The word bipartisan usually means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out. -George Carlin
Generally, a man has two reasons for doing something. One that sounds good, and a real one.
If you start thinking you're a person of influence, try ordering somebody else's dog around.
It was after I woke up in a Calcutta flophouse in between two dead Thai prostitutes that I finally realized the truth: I was in a rut.
Forget love, I'd rather fall into chocolate.
Never get into fights with ugly people, they have nothing to lose.
Creativity is great, but plagarism is faster.
Nothing is impossible for a man who doesn't have to do it himself.
Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
For every action, there is an equal but opposite government program.
For every winner, there are dozens of losers. Chances are you're one of them.
You know what makes me laugh uncontrollably whenever I visit the Supreme Court? It's that goofy slogan at the top: 'Equal Justice Under Law.' That totally buckles me! Especially since December pf 2000!
If you want to wear fur, STOP SHAVING!
There's no government like no government.
America needs a SECOND party.
Polititians and diapers need to be changed often and for the same reason.
Join the Army! Travel to exotic lands; meet exciting and unusual people and kill them.
It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.
If guns are outlawed only outlaws will shoot their kids accidentally.
Pee for enjoyment, not for employment.
Warning, due to the shortage of robots, workers here are human beings and may react unpredictably if abused.
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue. -Voltaire
A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to take it off of you.
Why kill yourself when there are so many other people that have to die?
Smile, it scares the shit out of people.
We will never have great leaders as long as we mistake education for intellegence, ambition for ability, and lack of transgression for integrity.
Do autoparanoid schizophrenic agnostic dyslexic insomniacs lie awake at night wondering if they might be the dog that's out to get them?
Never trust a government that doesn't trust you.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
I am getting so tired of slitting the throats of people who say I'm a violent psychopath.
Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it.
My chief problem with democracy: Sometimes the majority means that all the fools are on the same side.
If the Bible proves that Jesus exists, that would mean that comic books prove Spiderman exists.
Laundry is the only thing that should be seperated by color.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Lord help me to be the person my dog thinks I am.
Mini-vans are tangible evidence of evil.
Against abortion? Then don't have one.
Humans aren't the only species on earth. We just act like it.
Last time we mixed poltics with religion, people got burned at the stake.
I wasn't born an asshole, people like you made me this way.
Of course you can trust the government! Just ask an Indian!
It's not premarital sex if you don't plan on getting married. -Matt Barry
Stop repeat offenders. Don't re-elect them!
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
If you want to know how stupid people really are, just think how stupid the average person is and realize that half of them are stupider.
Annoy a politian today: THINK!
The more I learn about terrorism, the better I understand a phone company.
Once you pull the pin from Mr. Grenade he is no longer your friend.
Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more.
I love my country. It's my government I hate.
Question authority before authority questions you!
I hate talking to people on the phone. Why do phone conversations so often make me feel like a trained seal at Sea World, trying desperately to keep the multi-colored beach ball in the air?
It always amazes me how many people out there are smarter than I am, as well as how many people out there are dumber than I am.
It's amazing how late you can stay up doing absolutely nothing, yet falling asleep in class or in the library takes an average of two seconds.
(This one is from a political humor list I'm on that also posts people's opinions on various issues) I don't know if your interested in what a non-American has to say but over here in Europe you're a laughing stock - especially after Bush's recent trip. You refuse to give a damn about the environment and sign Koyoto even though you are the biggest polluters on the planet. You want to use our countries to place the early warning stations for the star wars program but a) it won't protect us b) your biggest treat is terrorism rather than a thermo-nuclear attack. You are doing nothing to get closer to free health care, stop the death penalty or increase social spending. How many of you are aware that if you were a European country you would be illegible for membership of the European Union because your record on human rights is so bad. I am not some leftist nutter - just an ordinary European fed up with the insular small mindedness of American politics. Well done for the West Wing though - now that is something good you have done.
Nine times out of ten, a hero is only someone desperate enough not to give a damn. -Hawkeye from M*A*S*H
Life is like a line of waiting taxi cabs pulled up to the curb in front of a fancy hotel. You never know which raving lunatic is going to get you to your destination - or for that matter, whether you'll get your destination at all.
Guns don't kill people, but people who kill people seem to like guns an awful lot.
One time I believed I was Jesus, and tried to heal a blind child. I guess Jesus didn't use sulferic acid to heal people, though.
Rock paper scissors L5R was fun! Phoenix wins, except against dishonor. Dishonor loses to Shadowlands. Shadowlands loses to Phoenix.
Never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.
I like to go to art museums and name the untitled paintings... Boy With Pail... Kitten On Fire.
Who's the black mutual fund manager whose tremendous personal success and selfless commitment to community service has created lifelong feelings of inadequacy and low self esteem in his younger siblings... feelings that they sublimate through the empty pursuit of hollow pleasures and quick gratification, to the detriment of their development as mature total beings? Shaft's older brother! Daaammmmn right!
It's important to pay close attention in school -- for years I thought that bears masturbated all winter.
A cop stopped me for speeding. He said, "Why were you going so fast?" I said, "See this thing my foot is on? It's called an accelerator. When you push down on it, it sends more gas to the engine. The whole car just takes right off. And see this thing? This steers it."
When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I'm leaving.
There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore looking like an idiot.
I have two very rare photographs. One is a picture of Houdini locking his keys in his car. The other is a rare photograph of Norman Rockwell beating up a child.
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and doesn't stop until you get to work.
I'm kinda tired. I was up all night trying to round off infinity. Then I got bored and went out and painted passing lines on curved roads.
Money will make a man do stupid things, but women will make a man do a thousand stupid things.
If you woke up every morning and everything was exactly the same, why would you need to get out of bed?
"Just say no!" prevents drug abuse and teen pregnancy in the same way that "Have a nice day," cures chronic depression.
There are three kinds of men: the one that learns by reading, the few that learn through observation, and the many that have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
My mom always complains about my lack of a boyfriend. Well, next time she asks I'm going to tell her I'm dating two different guys -- Mr. Duracell and Mr. Energizer.
Anything worth knowing is never taught.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
The most violent element in society is ignorance.
Women: You can't live with them, you can't live without them. That's probably why you can rent one for the night.
I have no trouble with my enemies. But my goddamn friends.... they are the ones that keep me walking the floor nights.
You can't have the freedom of religion without the freedom from religion.
When ignorance reigns, life is lost. - Rage Against the Machine
Better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.
Porn: It's cheaper than dating.
Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy. -H.L. Mencken
Smile, it's the second best thing you can do with your lips.
Wisdom is made of two parts: having a lot to say, and not saying it.
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
Aim for the stars! But first, aim for their bodyguards.
Going into the Shadowlands is like hunting Aliens (yes, those Aliens). With swords. When the Aliens are living inside the Chernobyl Reactor No. 3 Containment Structure. And the facehuggers are invisible. And the Aliens are serving Great Cthulhu himself. And Great Cthulhu isn't an indifferent horror. He hates you and your family personally with all the venom of a thousand years of rejection and imprisonment.
Just out of curiosity, exactly how much body hair do you have to have before it is socially acceptable to throw feces?
I remember when the first time I went to the movies with my friends here: "Dude! I thought you said this was matinee time!" "It is!" "What the hell? I just paid $5.50 for a matinee ticket? Evening movies were $5 where I used to live! Do they ask for a pound of flesh past four o'clock?"
It takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown, and fewer still to ignore someone completely.
I believe no problem is so large or so difficult that it can't be blamed on someone else.
My father always said laughter is the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us ended up dying of tuberculosis.
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
When an ad has to boast that what they're selling is legal, it's not.
A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.
The scariest thing I ever saw was the time I saw that man on fire. "There's something you don't see everyday," I thought to myself. Until the next day, when I saw another man on fire.
I believe the children are our future. Because if the average "child" is, say, 5-years old, and the average "adult" is, say 45-years old, then the "child" will be alive in the future when the "adult" is dead, so, I'm pretty sure I'm right.
If a man took as long to upload as a computer takes to download, there would be a lot of happy women walking around!
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
It is very dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else. -From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
Tis better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them. -from "Catch 22" by Joseph Heller
When Gary told me he had found Jesus, I though, 'Yahoo! We're rich!'... but it turned out to be something different.
It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept.
Why do people who know the least know it the loudest?
Sometimes I wish I was dead.... oh wait not me, you.
I contend we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, then you will understand why I dismiss yours. -Stephen F. Roberts
Children, there's a time and a place for everything and it's called college. Chef, "South Park"
Remember the time he ate my goldfish, and you lied to me and said I never had any goldfish? Then why did I have the bowl Bart? Why did I have the bowl? Milhouse, "The Simpsons"
And what if we picked the wrong religion? Every week, we're just making God madder and madder! -Homer Simpson
If you don't like your job, you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way. -Homer Simpson
I'm a lonely, insignificant speck on a has-been planet orbited by a cold, indifferent sun. -Homer Simpson
I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are. -Homer Simpson
Ralph, what is your fascination with my forbidden closet of mystery? Chief Wiggum, "The Simpsons"
If my spirit is condemned to walk the earth when I die, I think I'll haunt a sorority house. Let 'em try calling the cops on me again!
Whenever one of NBC's public service spots comes on and a TV star is warning me that I can't escape my problems through drugs and alcohol, I think, "I bet he'll be singing a different tune a year from now, after they've cancelled his sitcom."
I no longer need to punish, deceive or compromise myself. Unless, of course, I want to stay employed.
Having control over myself is nearly as good as having control over others.
My intuition nearly makes up for my lack of good judgment.
I need not suffer in silence while I can still moan, whimper and complain.
When someone hurts me, forgiveness is cheaper than a lawsuit. But not nearly as gratifying.
A good scapegoat is nearly as welcome as a solution to the problem.
I am learning that criticism is not nearly as effective as sabotage.
Becoming aware of my character defects leads me to the next step- blaming my parents.
We can afford either new schools or new prisons, and since it's no coincidence that in the absence of one, the other will always fill up, we'd better choose wisely. -R.B. Fairchild
Wouldn't it be ironic if we breed ourselves into extinction?
Why can't Disney make one stinkin' animated porno?
Where would "C" batteries be today without vibrators?
I will live my life so that when I die, my enemies will breathe a sigh of relief.
People always complain that the only email you ever get is junk email. And yet, every time I log on, I find a mailbox full of message from naked women who want to talk dirty to me. Junk email, my ass! -Michael Beatie
Sometimes while watching Judge Judy, I'd be willing to bet a couple thousand bucks that she's not getting any.
Last night, as I sat alone in my moment of deepest, darkest despair, trying to summon the courage to pull the trigger, Jesus appeared before me. He laid a gentle hand on my shoulder and asked, "Do you happen to know how the season finale of 'The West Wing' ended last week?" I said, "No, o Lord, I don't." He said, "Well, thanks anyway," and then He left.
The haunting fragrance of her mysterious perfume lingered with me long after the blinding sting of her pepper spray had faded.
We tell lies when we are afraid, . . . afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
(NY State Senator Allan K. Race (D), in a written response to a racist group's letter) So in conclusion, gentlemen, fuck you.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
What does my conscience have against me?
When American bombs are particularly destructive, does Rocketdyne enjoy a sense of inner satisfaction?
You can trust the Americans to do the right thing,
after they have tried every other alternative. -Winston Churchill
Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.
Ska bands are much like any other band, except that in addition to the normal band lineup with a vocalist, they include a horn section and one man whose only job is to wear a hat.
Don't tell me God works in mysterious ways. There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about,
a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain? -from "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. -Henry David Thoreau
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. -Bertrand Russell
The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was based upon the view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life.
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death....Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.
Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true.
If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket then giving Fido only two of them.
When I go to hell, I'm going to delight in saying, "But at least it's a dry heat." -Chris Lipe
I think a good commercial would be to show how Tide Detergent can wash the stain out of the Shroud of Turin. The slogan could be: "Tide, more powerful than God!" -Damon Milhem
I'm not really a big fan of porno movies, but hey, they keep the kids I babysit occupied. -Rick Slick
When I was a kid, my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we'd all go play in his cave, and every once in awhile he would eat one of us. It wasn't until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear.
Half of the world's misery comes from ignorance.
The other half comes from intelligence.
Religion is the opiate of the masses. -Karl Marx
Mom and Dad say I should make my life an example of the principles I believe in. But every time I do, they tell me to stop it. -Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes"
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. -Arthur Schopenhauer
When a child hits the ground with that melon-like thud, am I wrong to laugh inside?
Are there cops in Utopia?
I think anybody who surveys past history in an impartial manner will be driven to the conclusion that religion has caused more suffering than it has prevented.
Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower
than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than
you is a maniac. -George Carlin
When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.
We rarely think that people have good sense unless they agree with us.
That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria! -Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes"
Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism - and wars.
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.
An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man's knowledge is more of a miracle than the parting of waters.
You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. -Henry David Thoreau
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.
Ernest Hemmingway once wrote that the world was a fine place and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part.
You can present the material, but you can't make me care. -Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes"
We're like actors, turned loose in this world to wander in search of a phantom, endlessly searching for a half-formed shadow of our lost reality. When others demand that we become the people they want us to be, they force us to destroy the person we really are. It's a subtle kind of murder. The most loving parents and relatives commit this murder with smiles on their faces.
Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it, religion has actually convinced people that there's an INVISIBLE MAN...LIVING IN THE SKY...who watches everything you do, every minute of everyday. And the invisible man has a list of ten special things that he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time... BUT.. he loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit! -George Carlin[video link]
Perhaps people who don't vote have devoted their lives to finding an honest candidate.
There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
What consenting adults choose to do in the privacy of their own bedrooms isn't worth watching half the time. -R.B. Fairchild
To answer the question of how I manage, day by day, to refrain from snapping and savagely murdering all who oppose me in new and more sickeningly creative ways, I can only say that if I were angry all the time, I couldn't be happy. -R.B. Fairchild
If God had meant for people to annoy me through their obsessions with anime, Beanie Babies, or the welfare of my immortal soul, He wouldn't have invented abortions. -R.B. Fairchild
The sweetest music in the world is the delicate sound of a pretentious wanker being punched in the nose. -R.B. Fairchild
I think they should put a disclaimer on the packaging of a laser pointer which clearly reads in enormous letters: "Caution: Prolonged use of a laser pointer may cause you to become an asshole." -R.B. Fairchild
If you ask someone to tell you what they believe, they usually will.
If you ask someone to justify what they believe, they usually can't. -R.B. Fairchild
It's probably good that I never get anything I really want, because I always want sharp, pointy things. -R.B. Fairchild
Most human problems can be cured with a sufficiently liberal application of dynamite. When you consider how many unpleasant side effects modern psychoactive pharmaceuticals have, I'm surprised it isn't prescribed more often. -R.B. Fairchild
The difference between humans and robots is that robots will ultimately turn on their creators and destroy the human race, whereas all we'll do is beg God for mercy while they're splitting open our skulls and digitizing our babies. -R.B. Fairchild
To explain why I hate Hollywood, let's compare the summer blockbuster "Armageddon" with, say, any porno movie ever made. Both feature ridiculous plots, horrible acting, lame, cheesy dialogue and perhaps the worst, token, soundtracks you'll ever hear. The only difference is that one has a lot of naked people having lots of loud, messy sex, and the other is about asteroids destroying the earth. I hope you feel pretty silly for spending that $8.50 now. -R.B. Fairchild
The average woman requires a mean of about seventeen minutes of stimulation to reach orgasm. Dividing a single day up into 84.7 screaming orgasms is such a pleasant thought for me that quite frankly it makes me wonder why anybody ever does anything else at all. -R.B. Fairchild
People might be more humble if they spent a couple of minutes each day thinking about the fact that most likely they were conceived under the pretense of a faked orgasm. -R.B. Fairchild
And even if there were a God, it would be a sorry God indeed if He cared more about who my soul belonged to, or how many times I masturbated each night, over how freely I gave of myself, or how many lives I've changed, or how the world is at all better for my having been in it. -R.B. Fairchild
The Volkswagon Beetle only exists at all because Hitler wanted to develop a reliable, mass-production car which could be afforded by the masses. He personally designed it. I guess it would be kind of like if Satan had invented the Macintosh. All it takes is a lot of petty, stupid, middle-aged hippies with money, power, and a fear of growing old to reduce your magnum opus of evil into this cute, cuddly bastion of strained hipness. Hitler must be spinning in his grave. -R.B. Fairchild
I bet that if you actually were hit by a bus while crossing the street, you'd be so horribly squashed and bloody and soaked in the many messy contents of your body that you could have the dirtiest pair of underwear in the world on, and no one would ever know.
So there, mom. -R.B. Fairchild
Paying someone to write your web page for you is a lot like flying to Bangkok to have sex with a child prostitute. Sure, everybody's doing it, but I don't have to be able to create a spinny animated gif that lights up when you move your mouse over it to know that you're still a goddamn pedophile. -R.B. Fairchild
An engineering graduate could probably design a tank, but only a liberal arts student could use it to take over the world. -R.B. Fairchild
If you can't think of anything clever to say, shut up and punch someone in the face. -R.B. Fairchild
You can spend three thousand dollars on a Pentium II with a 21-inch monitor and a five gigabyte hard drive, and until your friend one-ups you with his phallic extension upgrade next year, you can enjoy your fleeting penile adequacy. I'm going to spend $120 on a Kong Dong from the gay porn store, work a strap-on harness over my jeans, and sodomize the fear of God into anyone who tries to impress me with their toys. -R.B. Fairchild
If God had meant for man to worship Him, He wouldn't have given us brains.
Spitting or swallowing isn't so much the issue that defines love for me as much as the fact that someone is for even a second willing to entertain the dubious thought of my genitals belonging in their mouth in the first place. -R.B. Fairchild
People will often forgive a person who, stranded and starving, resorts to cannibalism -- but just you try to convince someone to eat the end piece of a loaf of bread instead of digging way into the back.
The moral lesson of St. Patrick's Day is that you can do whatsoever you like, no matter how vile or illegal, so long as you do it in a green hat.
There seems to be a fair deal made about the fact that, having the use of such a multidirectional hose of a urethra as comes equipped with the penis, that men can urinate wherever and whenever they wish. However, I say to you, oh my sisters, that this is not to be bemoaned, and indeed I can point out at least one major disadvantage. Men, in public washrooms, tend to feel that their flexibility somehow gives them license to go pretty crazy with the purpose and direction by which they relieve themselves, because after all, it's not their bathroom, and they don't have to clean it. -R.B. Fairchild
Money can't buy everything, but it can buy guns. And you can get all kinds of things with a gun.
If aliens from a distant civilization visited earth and offered mankind knowledge regarding either the secret of repairing the hole in the ozone layer or the ultimate sex position, there would be a lot of happy people out there. With skin cancer. -R.B. Fairchild
The surgical procedure used to removed stupidity from the brain is called a gun. -R.B. Fairchild
There's a certain look you get on your face when you trip and stumble in public. When you get up, you look around right away to see who, exactly, might have seen you. This is the very same look on the face of a man who has just stepped out from a porn shop. -R.B. Fairchild
It is perhaps only after facing a room of horrible silence emanating from twenty or thirty pale people that we learn that actually honesty isn't the best policy. -R.B. Fairchild
In the ignorant, an open mind can sometimes only be obtained with the judicious application of patience and a heavy, blunt, object. -R.B. Fairchild
No, I'm not a doctor, but if I could write prescriptions in general, I'd have to say people aren't getting nearly enough of their daily dosage of snipers. -R.B. Fairchild
It is perhaps due to the fact that under "Objectives" on my resumes I state that I wish to conquer the world and enslave humanity, that I'm generally free to sleep in till four or five in the afternoon. -R.B. Fairchild
Learning to cry on demand is the best escape clause in every awkward situation, and often makes the people around you feel like total crap. -R.B. Fairchild
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. -P.J. O'Rourke
Conservative: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -Ambrose Bierce
It is dangerous for a national candidate to say something people might remember.
Eminem's freedom to express himself as a misogynistic, homophobic idiot is the most important thing in the world when millions of people want to pay $20 for his CD, but just you try downloading his "artistic expression" for free with Napster. -R.B. Fairchild
If your life is so dull and unfulfilling that it's actually a high point to spy on the dull, unfulfilling lives of stupid people clutching desperately at the only fame they'll ever know in the contrived, predictable, money-driven antfarm of so-called "Reality TV," well, all I can say is: you deserve each other. -R.B. Fairchild
For one hundred dollars you can buy sex, drugs, or murder. You can buy another human's dignity. You cannot buy shoes.
Remember, if you smile, no one will suspect you.
Show me a talking dog that promises to cut taxes, and I'll show you the winner of the next election.
A warning label is just a cheerful way of saying that stupidity is the most lethal weapon known to man.
The average person has more in common with a serial killer than she does with the CEO of a large corporation. We've all fantasized about killing someone, but nobody normal likes laying people off.
You can buy love, but you can't beg for it in the streets. Frigid capitalists.
This New Year's Eve, get it right. Find the person you love most, cuddle naked under the blankets, and let the world burn for all you care.
If Christmas were a drug, it would be an expensive, depressing drug that made you feel angry and lonely and guilty and suicidal. It would put you in debt and make you feel like a failure for not being able to buy more. The side effects would include anxiety, weight gain and hearing the same terrible music over and over in your head. If Christmas were a drug, no one would use it. That's how bad Christmas is. -R.B. Fairchild
When you consider that animals don't kill for pleasure, animals don't judge, they don't have shareholders, and they don't lie, you begin to understand why we're in such a hurry to eat them. -R.B. Fairchild
Whether you hate a sappy, obvious marketing ploy like Jar Jar Binks, or love even more insipid and obvious marketing ploy like a Pikachu, you can't tell me that if either one of the horrible things ran into your house, you wouldn't scream and try to kill it.
Personally, if I wanted obnoxiously cute things telling me how to spend my money, I'd have children. -R.B. Fairchild
It tragic that the first thing we notice about a person usually matters the least. The example would be meeting a person wearing a t-shirt with the phrase "I love Marxist theory" stretched across her enormous breasts. I don't care how much you love breasts -- Marxist theorists are jerks. -R.B. Fairchild
The proliferation of voyeur websites suggests that it is really no longer safe to shower, change, suntan, try on an outfit, wear a skirt, have sex indoors, have sex outdoors, go to the beach, bend over, trip, visit a friend for a day or two, go to the bathroom, break up with someone, play with yourself, walk past your window, fall asleep, get drunk, wear less than two layers of clothing, appear in public, or let your guard down for even one second. To do otherwise pretty much means you'll be all over the internet the next morning. In fact, the only thing left that you really can do without fear anymore is look at voyeur websites. -R.B. Fairchild
For the next election, I am going to nominate the first brutally efficient army of unfeeling robots I find. Unaffected by human emotions like greed, ambition, prejudice, fear and lust, it is ironic that only heartless robots are capable of forming a government which truly cares about people. Plus they would probably win the devastating war they must otherwise wage to seize control of our human government anyway. -R.B. Fairchild
Two paths diverged in the woods, and I took the one less traveled. Now, I'm eating bugs and berries, and if the Park Ranger doesn't find me soon, I'm a dead man. -Jim Rosenberg
If you're ever in the newspaper, try to make sure it's for the right reasons. -Mr. Lang, my high school trig teacher
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. -Thomas Paine
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
Are cats lazy? Well, more power to them if they are. Which one of us has not entertained the dream of doing just as he likes, when and how he likes, and as much as he likes?
An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer.
Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exists because of their silent consent.
The enemy is anyone who's trying to get you killed, no matter what side he's on.
When any government... undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything--you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up these defenses, you build this whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life. You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They do something dumb on day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own any more. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darknes, so working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. -Albert Einstein
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.
All religions are founded on fear of the many and cleverness of the few.
No, really, I always yawn like that when I climax!
I'm not saying you're stupid, but I could see you standing on top of a hill during a thunderstorm, wearing copper armor, and screaming, "All gods are bastards!"
When you leave a brothel, do they say, "Thanks for coming?"
Never let a machine know that you're in a hurry.
Silk was invented so women could go naked in clothes.
You learn something useless every day.
You live and learn. Or you don't live long.
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency.
The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.
An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life.
The ultimate Psych doc paper: A study of the causal relationship between groundward tropism and lachrimatory behavior forms in prematurated isolates. (trans: "Why kids cry when they fall down")
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
I think, therefore I'm single.
A man who cannot reason is a fool; a man who will not reason is a bigot; a man who dare not reason is a slave.
There isn't much justice in the world. Perhaps that's why it's so satisfying to occationally make some.
Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people... Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom...nor suffer youselves to be wheedled out of your liberty by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice.
A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to Farce, or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Ben Franklin
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common.
Wouldn't it be easier to have one long month with 365 days?
Did Jesus's friends just call him Jeez?
Are there insomniacs in sleepy towns?
Ever have the feeling that God has a sick sense of humor and only pairs us together to see what will happen?
Can we pass a law to prevent advertisers from using the word "quality?"
Are pennies still lucky, or has inflation ruined that too?
Why would women envy the penis when they have what the penis most wants?
Why didn't my dad ever give me credit for doing a "full-assed" job?
Can a person be scared "half to death" twice?
How many entrees can Taco Bell make with the same five ingedients?
What style do missionary dogs use?
How much, exactly, is a shitload?
Is it considered a speech impediment if a Hispanic can't roll his r's?
Did you ever consider that the Leaning Tower of Pisa is verticle and the rest of the world is crooked?
Why don't drugstores just call the body massager by it's proper name: vibrator?
Why is it called "common sense" when people hardly ever use it?
Why can't cars have multiple horns to reflect varying degrees of motion?
Isn't it time to rename the "glove" compartment the "gun" compartment?
Is there any shame in being the daughter of a bitch?
Why don't they make aspirin twice as big and have us just take one?
It's all fun and games until you get so drunk, you wake up married to another woman. -Homer Simpson
Kids today have so many advantages I never had. There's no telling what I could've accomplished with a home computer and a handgun. -LeMel Hebert-Williams
I finally stopped asking "What Would Jesus Do?" when I realized the answers were coming in first-century Aramaic. Fat lot of good *that* did me! -Mark Spence
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer. -Henry Kissinger
When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear.
Why do men go to war? Because women are watching.
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's inability to be quiet and sit still in a room alone.
Whenever someone hits me, I'm all like "I'm gonna pop a cap in yo' ass!", but it always comes out sounding like "Owwww!!" -Rob Ahnemann
If the world gives you lemons, you can make lemonade... or you can make a biologically engineered virulent air-born pathogenic virus that will wipe out the entire population of the planet, which would be a whole lot cooler.-Quan Choi
Why is it considered neccessary to nail down the lid of a coffin?
Why is it that when you're driving and looking for an address, you turn down the volume on the radio?
Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?
If I ever get married, I think it would be funny to hire a stuntwoman to run through the church in a burning wedding dress. Then I would put her out with a bottle of seltzer and everyone would have a good laugh.
I'm having kind of a hard time finding a girlfriend, though.
Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Poop
on your boss' desk because he called you a bumbling idiot and takes all the credit for your work and blames you when he screws up and... well, you see where this is headed. -Ian Terry
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me because I set your car on fire.
Last summer, I was walking through the forest when an elf appeared and said he would grant me 3 wishes if I completed a perilous task. I kicked him in the head and stole his hat.
If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
From the movie Fight Club: "Man, I havn't been fucked like that since grade school!"
Some people are only alive because it's illegal to shoot them.
The more you complain, the longer God lets you live.
Hard work pays off later. Laziness pays off now.
Keep honking while I reload.
God must love stupid people; he made so many.
If there is one thing I know about women, it's that you should never laugh until you absolutely -- I repeat, absolutely -- know that they're joking. -Mark Dockham
If Adam had had a real hairy back, we probably wouldn't be here today. -Dave Henry
When trying to impress your boss when you're invited to their home for dinner, it's probably best not to overuse the phrase "man-titties." -Bob Roth
Your enemy is not a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind, it may offer a way to make him a friend. If not, you can kill him without hate.... and quickly.
Think today's interest rates are high? The Pilgrims borrowed $7000 from a London company of 70 investors in 1620, and devoted the next 23 years to repaying it at 43 percent.
I was a pilot flying an airplane and it just so happened that where I was flying made what I was doing spying. (Francis Gary Power, U-2 reconnaissance pilot held by the Soviets for spying, in an interview after he was returned to the US)
There is no sweeter sound than the crumbling of your fellow man. -Groucho Marx
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. -Groucho Marx
I installed a skylight in my apartment. The people who live above me are furious!
In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Germany. She said, "Cut it out."
Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world...perhaps you've seen it.
I was on a ski lift with another person...no one I knew...and he didn't say a word until we were half way up the mountain...then he said, "I haven't been skiing in ten years." I said "How come?" He said "I was in jail." I didn't say anything. He said, "You wanna know why?" I said, "Not really." He said, "I'll tell you anyway... I was jailed for pushing a complete stranger off a ferris wheel." I said, "I remember you."
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
The victor will never be asked if he told the truth. -Aldolf Hitler
The old law about "eye for an eye" leaves everyone blind.
One who condones evil is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I think a cool ability would be to make your head explode at will. Although, I guess you could only do it once. -Adam Rakich
Many people say it's insane to resist the system, but actually, it's insane not to. -Mumia Abu-Jamal
I think Bill Gates got so rich because he got his wish when he said, "I wish I had a nickel for everytime I've had to reboot this computer!"
They say that if you want to get to know someone better, the one thing you shouldn't do is set them on fire. Well, actually they don't say that, but I think we can all agree that it's one of those little "unspoken rules." -Ian McCowan
My car won't start. I'm broke. I'm hungry, and I'm cold. But I still have 3.5 gigs of porn on my computer.
Whoever said the Good Lord doesn't provide is a fool.
I think if I ran over my boss in the parking lot, I'd stop. To make sure it wasn't a dog or something, 'cause, hey... ya wouldn't want to run over a dog.
The problem with pessimists is that they're right too much.
Virtue is one thing that doesn't seem to become worth more when less is in circulation.
Looks might not matter in the long run, but without them you won't take a single step.
The only minority that isn't oppressed is the rich.
It's who we don't say no too that defines who we are.
It doesn't matter if the cup is half-full or half-empty, what's inside is evaporating anyway.
A real friend is someone who would feel loss if you jumped on a train, or in front of one.
Money makes the world go round, but love keeps it from blowing up.
You don't have to conform to the values of your peers, although it gets pretty boring at home every night.
The nice thing about having nothing is that you don't have to worry about losing it.
Girls are like parking spots. The good ones are always taken.
While some people need friends, most people just need someone they can be better than.
Indifference is evil's bodyguard. Without it, evil would have to do a much better job of hiding.
The red nose might get Santa's sleigh through the fog, but the brown nose can get you anywhere.
If you be yourself you'll find that you'll be by yourself too.
It's kind of ironic that the "losers" are the people more likely to accept something new or different.
The more you know the less you care. The more you have the less you love.
If you cared about yourself as much as everyone else did, you would never be depressed.
If I were going to burglurize a place with guard dogs, I'd do it during a thunderstorm and bring a vacuum cleaner.
The first thing you should do when you get up is read the obituaries. You never know when you'll see a name that will just make your day.
Laughter truly is the best medicine, unless of course you're vomiting at the time.
Someday I know I will look in a child's eyes,
all full of wonder and opportunity, and say, "Don't shoot! My wallet's in my left coat pocket!"
My elderly aunts used to come up to me at family weddings, poke me in the ribs, cackle and tell me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.
An idea for a movie, Party or Not, Here I Come: Jack is a young man who'll let nothing get in the way of a good time, not even death by suffocation during the opening credits. The rest of the film concerns his corpse and the stray dogs that depend on it for food. Heed No Master--an alternate title?
Morning realization: I can't keep running from my problems, because my problems are in much better shape. They also drive nicer cars and have perfect hair. By all indications, my problems work in marketing. I feel like this is true for most of America.
A new ad just went up on TheSpark. It promises that you can "get your own attorney for less than the price of a cup of coffee a day," which means that a person can either feed or sue a starving child for the same low price.
Question: If Jesus returns this Christmas, and he turns out to be black like some people say, is that good or bad for Kwanzaa?
It's snowing like crazy here in Boston, but, even so, I just saw a full bus of kids headed off to class. Back home in Arkansas, if it had snowed just half this bad, they would've not only closed the schools, but also shot all the blacks.
Heroes are born and die, like ordinary samurai. They live, breath, love, and serve their lords. Only one thing sets them apart from other men: the telling of their tale. -Doji Shizue, L5R
While you rest, your enemy practices.
Each thing you are is reflected in each thing you do.
Do not be wary of men who take risks with lands and titles. Be wary of men who have nothing left to lose.
The road of revenge leads straight to the sun, hanging on the horizon. There are no wayside inns to give the traveler rest, there are no detours, byways, deviations. It is a long, bloody path that can only end in a grave. -Shinsei, L5R
I ran out of ice cream bars the other day, and I cried. Then I remembered Alexander the Great, and how he wept when there were no more worlds to conquer. How very much alike we are, I thought.
Every opinion provokes an equal but opposite opinion, whether you want it to or not.
I think that the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
I'm in the process of writing a letter to my Congressman; is "candy ass" one word or two?
Given the recent trends in music, I'd like to
officially predict that the #1 singer of 2015 will be a computer-generated 8 year old Latina with artificial breasts the size of two Volkswagen bugs. -John Gephart
Nothing is as wonderful as a clear summer day, especially if that day includes some heavy boozing and hooking up with a hot supermodel. -Tom Loushine
Am I the only one who sees irony in a bunch of polititians getting into a fit over another polititian lying?
I think deep down, all any of us really wants is to be accepted, especially by young, attractive models with plenty of money and an unquenchable desire for sex.
An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his friends.
Reality is an illusion that occurs due to lack of alcohol.
At this time of the year, with the holidays upon us, nothing says she cares about how I am, where I am, or what I'm doing like a restraining order.
If you think no one cares about you, try missing a couple mortgage payments.
Chastity is curable, if detected early.
Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.
Your conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
My wife always warns me about all that cholesterol in the French fries I eat. I just laugh at her, though, because I know with all the salt I put on them, my blood pressure is high enough to push through any clogged arteries.
I hope I don't turn out like my parents, because I don't want to be a bald, fat, pervert who chases after little girls -- and I definitely don't want to be like my father!
I prefer to describe my profession as that of a "Contemporary Anthropological Interactive Observer," because it has just the right amount of flair. Besides, "stalker" is such an ugly word.
Answering the door on Halloween as "the dirty old pedophile" may have been my boyfriend's idea of a great costume, but the cops disagreed. As did the DA... and the judge... and the jury.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I put a cap in your sorry ass.
When I see the word, "manslaughter," I like to think, "man's laughter," and then I don't feel so bad. Unfortunately, Grandpa was charged with aggrevated homicide.
I think I learned a couple of valuable life lessons that night. One: The old adage about setting your sights on something and just grabbing for it doesn't necessarily apply in topless bars. Two: Metal toilets are cold. -Tristan Fabriani
My lifelong dream has always been to own a little bakery in a remote provincial French town, something small and quaint. Then I'd close all the windows, and watch pornography all day long. A man can dream, can't he?
Sometimes when I witness a horrible car-pedestrian accident, I think that maybe I should take time from
my busy day to stop and help the innocent victim. Usually, though, I panic and speed away to the nearest car wash to clean the blood from my bumper.
The goal was to inhale so much helium that only dogs could hear me speak. The result was I got so disoriented I messed my pants. Life is funny sometimes. -George MacMillan
A barrel of monkeys would be a lot of fun, unless it's been sealed for 6 or 7 months. Then it's just 55 gallons of Ebola virus. -Dan Johnson
I had a big project at work, and my boss told me to give it the old college try. So I did: I drank until I passed out and woke up next to a confused sheep. -James Konow
I stayed home alone on Thanksgiving and made a turkey sandwich. I thought the irony would be delicious, but it was just so-so.
From what I can tell, women don't seem to appreciate belching. I guess that means I'll have to practice until I can do some of that REALLY impressive belching.
If Jesus truly died for our sins, do we dare to render his sacrifice meaningless by not committing them?
I'm thinking maybe I should finally give in and buy a handgun, because you never know when you might find yourself alone downtown at night on the streets in need of money.
I've looked at love from both sides now- but I still like it on top best. -Jim Rosenberg
If Jerry Springer isn't educational TV, then why does it make me feel so much smarter?
A TV can insult your intelligence, but nothing rubs it in like a computer.
Whenever I'm in a mood to watch the world go by, I just keep to the posted speed limit.
Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogehter.
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm the rest of his life.
Oh sure, if you're in the union, it's known as a "sanctioned job action." But I'm NOT in the union, so they call it "just another senseless workplace shooting."
I hated it when the big kids would toss me for my lunch money. But now I walk another route to work, and avoid the schoolyard alltogether.
I took up jogging to experience the "runner's high" everyone talks about, but I found it somehow lacks the intensity of sitting on my couch and smoking crack. -Ken Peterson
Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you went there? I think that's how dogs spend their lives.
Ever consider what dogs must think of us? I mean, here we come back from the store with the most amazing haul: chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!
If I have any beliefs about immortality, it's that many of the dogs I know will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
In order to keep a true perspective of one's importance,everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
I've seen a look in a dog's eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this.
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get 8 cats to pull a sled through snow.
As every cat owner knows, no one owns a cat.
Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you later.
Cats are rather delicate creatures are are subject to a good many ailments, but I've never heard of one who suffers from insomnia.
Cats have too much spirit to have no heart.
Cats seem to go on the principle that it never hurts to ask for what you want.
The more people I meet, the more I like my cats.
Wisdom is earned, not given.
It is easier to stab people in the back than to look people in the eye. Society is built upon this principle, and it is universal amongst those who rule.
To me, sex is a way of communicating. A way of communicating: "Damn, that feels good!"
They say you can't pick your family... but with a little practice, you *can* pick them off one by one from the top of a hill at the family reunion.
Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused.
A sharp blade dulls quickly without a sharp mind to guide it.
Waking up in the morning would be a whole lot easier if it involved flopping into bed, burying my head into my pillow, and closing my eyes.
I've heard that living well is the best revenge against an ex, but I'd also have to recommend a good fart on their head.
Life's like a ten-dollar hooker; you never know what you're gonna get.
Beware girls in the night that own rope. -Tina Vo
A man makes his own destiny. Each wave that tears its mark upon the shore can show you that.
A man need not wield a sword to be a man, only honor his word and mean what he says.
*What* you know is not as important as *who* you know. But what you know about who you know is where the REAL money is.
To every bad situation, there is a solution. Occationally, that solution is to drink heavily and then move to another country. Okay, more than occationally.
Sometimes the key to success is not in knowing the answer, but knowing where to find it. -Mr. Lang, my high school trigonometry teacher
Summer is my favorite time of year. Bright sunny skies, warm temperatures, and beautiful women in swimsuits. During the summer I often stop what I'm doing and think, "I wonder if she can see me through these blinds?" -Gary Kee
Whenever I have a birthday, I think back over the past year, how I've spent my time, what I've accomplished, what regrets I have, how I've tried to make the world a better place, and what exactly I've been doing with my life over the past 365 days, and I think to myself, "Man, I wish I'd gotten laid more."
As a kid, whenever I got sick my mom would say, "Don't worry, son. There's nothing so bad that it can't be fixed with a bottle of cheap Scotch and a couple of hookers." Or was that the old crusty guy who hung around the schoolyard? No matter -- either way, it's terrific advice. -Bob Van Voris
If I ever *did* see an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of computers, I'd probably be at the Gateway Tech Support offices.
Trying is only the first step in failing. -Homer Simpson
Word to the wise for men: Although meant as a compliment, "You make love like a professional!" isn't always recieved as such.
Honesty is the best lie.
When you are certain you have learned all there is to learn, you have failed.
Spend little time planning, because the only thing that is certain is that everything could go wrong.
Enemies you threaten make armies. Enemies you destroy make graves.
How easily people are corrupted, and how difficult it is to make them just.
Life isn't fair. That doesn't mean you can't win.
The only box that can hold a secret is a coffin.
He who speaks with anger makes his anger heard, but his words forgotten.
A man in love, a man in hate; both are willing to believe anything to accomplish their cause.
People sometimes say, "Forgive and forget." Why? So you can fool me again?
If you can't kill a man, make him impotent.
Women learn to weep because husbands always assume it was their actions that caused the tears.
The best place to hide is in plain sight.
We tell the tales of heroes to remind ourselves that we too can be great.
I can't wait until I'm older and have children, because then I can say, "Your mom's great in the sack!" to someone and actually mean it.
It tastes like burning! -Ralph Wiggum, "The Simpsons"
While it may be true that the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach, sometimes it can be much more satisfying hacking your way through the ribcage.
I got fired today. Oh well, life goes on.... except my boss', that is.
Only a small percentage of male elephant seals ever get to mate -- most spend their lives growing fat while watching the action from a distance. All this goes to show, I think, that we're just TV and some beer from a total brotherhood of nature.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
Prayer has no place in public schools, just like facts have no place in organized religion. -Superintendant Chalmers from "The Simpsons"
Genocide is the most stressful activity one can engage in, next to soccer. -Loki from the movie "Dogma"
I know the rule: if you're dreaming and you're about to pee, wake up! But last night I found myself about to pee on Britney Spears, and man, I just had to see where that one was going. -Brian Jones
You can pay for sex, but you can't pay for love. But hey, you can still pay for sex!
I think that the religious world could be united if there were one central figure to worship. He would be a conglomerate of all current religious figures, with a name like Jebuddha or Allahesus. And he would have to be a pie, 'cause who doesn't like pie?
As a parent, I believe in the concept of "tough love." Yesterday, I finally had to say to my child: "WILL YOU SHUT UP ABOUT THE DAMN CARE BEARS!?!?!" Jim Rosenberg
Relationships should come with those little black boxes that airplanes have. That way, when they crash and burn, we'd actually get some answers. -Corrina Bunch
Everyone should try to find a job that interests them, like mine: manually masturbating zoo animals for artificial insimination. -Some chick from the movie "Clerks"
Although I can accept talking scarecrows, lions and great wizards of emerald cities, I find it hard to believe there is no paperwork involved when your house lands on a witch.
When men complain about a woman losing her sex drive, they don't stop to think that maybe the woman in question just doesn't like the car she's driving.
I'm sexually harrassing myself, and I like it!
El Nino taught me that some of the most beautiful
things in nature are also the most dangerous. Like 30 foot waves, giant thunderstorms, and topless blondes driving on rain-soaked highways.
One of my fondest childhood memories is of old Mrs. Pinchunk, who lived next door. She never called me by my first name -- it was always "Master Wickart" --until right before she died. Then it was "Please, Kevin, don't shoot!" -Kevin Wickart
When I saw a bully picking on a little guy, I wanted to go up to that jerk and smack him around until he learned that there are people in this world that will stand up for the little guy. But what I did was laugh along with everyone else. In fact, I still chuckle when I think about it today.
I think I was infected with the ILOVEYOU virus, but my docter insists on calling in genital herpes.
I'm very upset with Metallica for having 300,000 users banned from Napster. To get my revenge, I'm banning the members of Metallica from accessing my homepage. I guess they'll have to get complete Sailor Moon character bios elsewhere.
I would probably start laughing if I looked at a milk carton and saw my little brother, but I would probably stop when I realized that we never finished our game of hide and seek.
Sometimes I find myself lying awake at night, wondering what the hell I'm doing in bed while my house is on fire.
If life begins at conception, would that make a blowjob cannibalism?
"If you can dream it," I have heard said, "you can do it." Maybe so, but that's really up to Tyra Banks and Reece Witherspoon.
My mother used to tell me, "The early bird gets the worm." The message seemed pretty clear: If you sleep late, you're a lot less likely to get killed by a bird.
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Why didn't Noah swat those two mosquitos?
If one syncronized swimmer drowns, do the rest drown too?
If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
Whose cruel idea was it for the word "lisp" to have an "s" in it?
The main problem with being an atheist is that there's no one to talk to during an orgasm.
Kids in high school can be really mean. All the kids used to tease me by saying my mother was a cheap whore that anyone in town could have for a quarter. Of course, I didn't let it bother me. I would just laugh quietly to myself, knowing they were being over-charged.
I just want to set the records straight: I thought the cop was a prostitute. -Homer Simpson
Alright brain, you don't like me, and I don't like you, but lets get this over with so that I can go back to killing you with beer. -Homer Simpson
From the show Futureama: "Good thing global warming never happened." "It did happen, but nuclear winter canceled it out."
Technology is simply a means of manipulating the world so you don't have to experience it.
Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.
People will accept you ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first.
In a world of chaos and confusion, it's good to know that we're only two mouse clicks away from pornography.
Handy tip: Traffic lights set for 35 mph. are also set for 70- or 105 if the Man is after you.
I have a copy of "The Serenity Prayer" on my desk. Sometimes, when things are at their worst, I'll look at it and think, "I wonder what it would be like to have sex with Reece Witherspoon?" Then again, I always think that.
If I ever saw a hooker in Los Angeles that looked like Julia Roberts, I'd immediately say to myself, "Hey, what the hell am I doing in Califoria?"
If you're curious as to whether it's safe to put your hand in, it probably isn't.
In retrospect, "Let's get the goat drunk," should've been my cue to leave the party.
The Bronx was a seething hive of scum and villany.... until Grandma moved there and did some spankin'.
Safety tip of the day: Never pet a burning dog.
Why are the pretty ones always insane? -Chief Wiggum, "The Simpsons"
I really think folks are missing the point. While Microsoft's alliance with Satan and subsequent plans for world domination are kinda bad, the *real* evil which needs to be exposed is the fact that the Windows operating system cheats at "Hearts."
Give a man a fish and you've fed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you've wasted his time unless he lives near water.
I was sick and tired of my dog humping my leg, so one day, I humped his. He didn't like that one bit and learned his lesson. Too bad we're not allowed in the park anymore.
Sometimes, while I'm watching my 3 beautiful children as they sleep, I feel a sense of awe at how many sperm can fit through a pinhole in latex.
I get all excited when I think that someone's 1-900 sex call from a cellular phone might be passing through my body right now.
Our date ended shortly after the first lapdance. Evidently, she thought I said we were going to a tapas restaurant.
The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions.
Life isn't fair. During her senior year in high school, Britney Spears had a growth spurt in her mammary area. During *my* senior year, I had a growth spurt in my ass area. -Neva R. Huddleston
Whoever said "Money can't buy happiness," didn't see the little flop-eared, brown-eyed puppy in the pet store window... or the six-foot Chinese hooker in the red miniskirt standing next to it."
Give a man food, and he'll eat for a day. Give a man a job, and he can only eat for 30 minutes on a break.
Isn't it great to live in a country where anyone can grow up to sleep with the president?
Either I called the wrong number, or my hearing sucks, but I could swear that Pizza Hut just asked me if I wanted pornography on my pizza.
Why do fools fall in love? To reproduce and outnumber us.
I sometimes wonder what's better: to give 100% effort and risk failure or not to try at all. Then I think, "Who cares, I still get paid over $30,000 a year to surf internet porn and shoot rubber-bands at my co-workers!"
The world would be a happier place if we'd all just laugh when someone gets hurt.
Follow your dreams! Unless it's the one where you're naked at school during a fire drill.
Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me, either, just leave me the fuck alone.
If you don't like my driving, don't call anyone. Just take another road. That's why the highway department made so many of them.
If a motorist cuts you off, just turn the other cheek. Nothing gets the message across like a good mooning.
It's a small world. So you gotta use your elbows a lot.
Love is like a roller coaster: When it's good you don't want to get off, and when it isn't you can't wait to throw up.
