March 31, 2004

The death toll of American soldiers is 599 as of this writing, and the wounded/maimed number close to 3,500. Journalists, contractors, and of course, innocent Iraqi civilians are also being killed at alarming rates. Bush’s War – the war that never should have been – is taking a horrific toll. From the [...]


Must hear interview from the Diane Rehm Show this morining:
11:06 – Zbigniew Brzezinski: “The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership” (Basic Books)
The former national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter takes a look at the strategic challenges America faces and offers alternatives to the Bush foreign policy doctrine.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Counselor at the Center for Strategic [...]


It’s the jobs, stupid. Yes, Bush, I’m talking to you, with your “outsourcing American jobs is good for America” talk while we are in the midst of a jobless economic recovery, with more and more people losing good jobs and being forced to work for less pay and benefits. From the Boston Globe:
Treasury [...]


Shades of Nixon. This is a fascinating interview about the Bush Administration, and includes a look at Bush’s political strategist, Karl Rove, including his Watergate involvement. From Salon:
…Karl Rove also plays a unique role in the Bush administration. One close observer says in your book that he’s “Haldeman and Ehrlichman all in one.” [...]


From the Chicago Tribune:
Last November, a group of reluctant Republican House members were strong-armed by their leaders to vote for the Medicare prescription drug benefit. The conservatives were skeptical about the huge cost of the law, fearing how much it would add to an already bloated federal budget deficit. But finally they were convinced, in [...]


Must see cartoon by David Horsey!


March 30, 2004

From Salon:
If stem cells are sacred because they can develop into humans, then isn’t the DNA that has the blueprint for those future humans also sacred? Moreover, aren’t the eggs and sperm that contribute the DNA to make the stem cells sacred? Then aren’t the organs that make the eggs and sperm sacred? Isn’t the [...]


March 29, 2004

From the San Francisco Chrnonicle:
…American jobs have been moving offshore for years, primarily manufacturing work seeking out lower-paid workers abroad. The outsourcing of people’s personal information, though, is a relatively new phenomenon – opening the door to identity theft, fraud and other criminal activities.
“We’ve reached the point where American companies ship personal information outside the [...]


From Reuters:
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Sunday he had no reason to suspect President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan of past involvement in an international nuclear black market but declined to rule out other possible high-level military complicity…
Abdul Qader Khan, the so-called father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, admitted in February to having given nuclear [...]


From Time Magazine:
When Richard Clarke appeared before the 9/11 commission last week, Republican panelist James Thompson abruptly challenged him to reconcile his damning book with a contradictory pro-Bush Administration statement. “We have your book, and we have your press briefing … Which is true?” Is Clarke, terrorism czar for the past two Administrations, a truth [...]


From Cooperative Research:
A fascinating video relating to an important unheeded warning of the 9/11 attacks was shown on WPTV, an NBC TV station in Florida on October 7, 2002. This video has been overlooked and forgotten until now.
…In this video, Randy Glass, a private US citizen working as an undercover agent in a government sting [...]


Don’t worry, George. Thanks to your FCC appointees, soon your cronies will own all the news stations, and you won’t have to go to such lengths to sneak fake news reports in. From ABC News:
The Bush administration has rolled out a $100 million campaign to publicize its new Medicare law, which is supposed [...]


March 28, 2004

If Bush is elected in November, there will be nothing holding the neoconservatives back from their radical agenda. The Bush administration and the neoconservative Republicans controlling Congress will no longer feel the need to hide their hand quite so well from an uninformed American public. More empire-building wars. Reinstating the draft and [...]


March 27, 2004

What a web we weave when we seek to deceive. Richard Clarke, who served under both Bush administrations and the Reagan administration, criticized the Bush Administration with respect to national security in public testimony. Republican Senate leader Bill Frist said of Clarke’s earlier positive statements about Bush while employed as his aide, “Loyalty [...]


Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke were respected administration insiders – Republicans – who spoke out against the Bush Administration and were promptly character assasinated and smeared as “partisan.” Richard Foster, who said he’s voted Republican since 1970, is getting the same treatment. From the Guardian:
A top Medicare official told Congress Wednesday he [...]


Thank God, some people are seeing the light before it is too late. From MSNBC:
Richard Clarke?s charge that George W. Bush largely ignored the Al Qaeda threat before the September 11 attacks has dealt a sharp blow to the president?s ratings on a crucial issue. According to the latest NEWSWEEK poll, the percentage of [...]


March 26, 2004

From Salon:
…Moderate Republicans are often fiscal conservatives but social liberals – in many ways, the exact opposite of this administration. They believe in balanced budgets, environmental conservation and a foreign policy that’s strong without being needlessly belligerent. They see themselves as the heirs of former President Teddy Roosevelt, the avid conservationist and trustbuster, and former [...]


March 25, 2004

Straight from the Republicans’ very own “fair and balanced” news channel:
From a new Fox News poll, Bush and Kerry are even at 44%. But adding John Edwards to the Democratic ticket gives Kerry a 5 point edge over Bush/Cheney.
From another new Fox News poll, Bush’s job approval is at 47%, his lowest since first [...]


An important article in Newsweek:
…the real significance of Clarke?s testimony is that he “connected the dots” in a way that for the first time demonstrated how the plot might well have been disrupted – if only the Bush administration had recognized the urgency of the Al Qaeda threat.
The Clarke scenario builds on prior disclosures that [...]


From Salon:
Medical research is poised to make a quantum leap that will benefit sufferers from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, muscular dystrophy, diabetes and other diseases. But George W. Bush’s religious convictions stand in its way…
embryos are already being destroyed or are slated for destruction as part of the routine business of in vitro fertilization. In the United [...]


March 22, 2004

“In the wake of Richard Clarke’s well-supported assertions that the Bush Administration neglected counterterrorism in the face of repeated terror warnings before 9/11, the Bush Administration has launched a frantic misinformation campaign ? often contradicting itself in the process.” From the Center for American Progress, a point by point rebuttal of the misinformation.


This is a fascinating behind the scenes look at the Bush Administration from another insider. Richard Clarke, who advised presidents (mostly Republicans) for the past 30 years and is the author of “Against All Enemies” was recently interviewed on 60 Minutes. From CBS News:
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush ordered his [...]


From Tom Paine:
Dear Senator Kerry,
In the interests of your campaign and your party’s desire to unseat George W. Bush, you have some explaining to do. During the primary campaign, your Democratic opponents accused you of flip-flopping on several important issues, such as your vote in favor of the Iraq War resolution.
Certainly your sensitivity to nuance, [...]


From Times of India:
Pakistan hasn’t yet delivered al-Qaeda No 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri to the United States in exchange for its recognition as a major ally, but the diplomatic bonanza will yield rich pickings, including arms and ammunition, in the coming days.
Reports from Pakistan say accounts of the Pakistani military having cornered a “high-value target” now [...]


March 21, 2004

Historians will have a fine time documenting the corruption and ineptitude of this administration. There is just so much evidence (much of it from Republicans themselves.) So much of the electorate is living in a world of delusional propaganda, but reality has a way of commanding one’s attention, sooner or later. From [...]


From the New York Times:
…Below are excerpts from among the last letters that some Army soldiers had sent home to their families.
Excerpts from letters to his wife from Second Lt. Todd J. Bryant, 23, of Riverside, Calif. Lieutenant Bryant was killed on Oct. 31 by a homemade bomb while on patrol near Fallujah.
Friday, Sept. 19, [...]


March 20, 2004

The war in Iraq was never popular in other countries, as most people are less easily manipulated by those in power than in America. Some foreign leaders went ahead with support of the Bush Administration despite a lack of support by their constituents, largely in fear of retribution from the Administration. But [...]


Way to go, Bush. From the Christian Science Monitor:
A poll conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center a few days before the Madrid bombings last week shows that anti-US sentiment is growing across Europe, accompanied by widespread opposition to the war in Iraq and increasing skepticism about the war on terrorism.
Perceptions of American unilateralism [...]


From the AP:
Elizabeth Blackburn’s dramatic laboratory discovery made her a scientific superstar and launched a burgeoning cancer research field.
Yet it’s not her lauded laboratory work that has led to her recent renown in the scientific community.
These days, Blackburn is better known as the outspoken advocate of human embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning whom [...]


From Salon:
…Today, a year after the invasion, the dream of a democratic Iraq sits on a foundation that is fractured by rivalries, conflicts and schisms. Will Iraq be a secular state or governed by Islamic law? Will it have a strong central government or a loose federalism? Will women retain their legal rights or face [...]


Buzz Flash
Common Dreams
Rolling Stone
Enron’s Washington
Bush Watch


March 19, 2004

Pakistan, with links to the financing of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the harboring of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and the sales of nuclear technology to rogue nations, is Bush’s best friend. No wonder the Al Qaeda letter in the wire services yesterday says they want four more years of Bush. From the [...]


Seen on Yahoo News: Shiites and Sunni worshippers join forces in a large protest in Baghdad against the American occupation of Iraq following the traditional Friday noon prayer, Friday, March 19, 2004.


From The Emerging Democratic Majority:
I had a brief note in DR on March 2nd about the latest Newsweek “GENext” poll that showed young voters leaning toward the Democrats. The full results of that poll have now been released, so a more complete account of these pro-Democratic leanings-and strong leanings they are-is given below.
In the poll, [...]


A fascinating article by Ruy Teixeira, co-author of “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” describes the way Bush and the Republicans strategists use fear to manipulate the masses into voting against their own interests. He argues this may delay the trend toward a Democratic majority, but not for long, since the more pressing issues that affect [...]


From the Times of India:
The myth that A Q Khan?s proliferation activities were conducted without the knowledge of the Pakistani army chiefs and prime ministers and further that the US administration was fully satisfied with this explanation stands demolished. Consider the following.
One, in an interview to the Far Eastern Economic Review US deputy secretary Wolfowitz [...]


March 18, 2004

Please support House Bill 53, which requires a voter-verified paper ballot for all Maryland voting systems. It is currently in the House Ways and Means Committee.
From a recent Baltimore Sun ad by Delegate Hixon and Senator Hollinger:
“In September 2002, new computer voting systems used in Florida are reported to have misplaced nearly all the votes [...]


Lies and the lying liars who tell them. Watch Rumsfeld lie about the liars here:
Moveon.org


From the Washington Post:
Tension between the executive and legislative branches is inevitable, but the Bush administration has tended to treat Congress with an arrogance bordering on contempt. The latest illustration involves the report that the Medicare chief actuary was threatened with firing if he gave lawmakers his analysis of the likely costs of the new [...]


From Eric Alterman:
…Did you know that he received four 2-S draft deferments – granted to students – from 1963 through 1965 while he was a student at the University of Wyoming. He married Lynne in 1964, and was thus banned from the draft.
But in October 1965, the Selective Service announced that married men without children [...]


From the New York Times:
Hans Blix, the former chief United Nations weapons inspector, said Monday that the Bush administration convinced itself of the existence of banned weapons based on dubious findings before invading Iraq and was not interested in hearing evidence to the contrary.
“I think they had a set mind,” Mr. Blix said on the [...]


March 17, 2004

Presented by Rep. Henry Waxman, Ranking Member, Committee on Government Reform:
Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration’s Public Statements on Iraq


From Robert Scheer, co-author of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq in The Nation:
…The Spanish people, like most of the world, knew all along that the Bush policy of preemptive war against Iraq, which had nothing to do with the terrorist attack of 9/11, was all wrong, but their craven leaders were [...]


From the AP:
U.N. investigators are increasingly certain that Pakistan government leaders knew the country’s top atomic scientist was supplying other nations with nuclear technology and designs, particularly North Korea, diplomats told the Associated Press.
Although rogue nations were the main customers of the nuclear black market, sales of enriched uranium and warhead drawings have fed international [...]


From Common Dreams:
I think we can expect that, between now and November, the “reasonable, moderate” George will at long last come out of hibernation; you remember, the famed uniter, not the divider… All will be righter with the world – assuming, of course, that, from Ayatollah Sistani to the Plame investigation, the world doesn’t insist [...]


March 16, 2004

Bush is looking after Bush again. So he and his pals in the Carlyle Group can continue to reap in the profits from their investments in India IT companies, he had Colin Powell assure India that outsourcing of American jobs will continue. From the New York Times:
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, encountering [...]


March 15, 2004

Time will tell if the Iraqi people are better off as a result of the US-led invasion. There is much instability in the country – and violence. The CIA warns of the possibility of civil war, and there is a real danger fundamentalists may take hold in government once the Americans relinquish power. [...]


March 14, 2004

Ah, the hypocrisy of the “moral values” crowd revealed – what they really value is not morals at all. From FMQB:
…from a speech by NY Congressman José E. Serrano from yesterday’s debate prior to the House vote [on H.R. 3717, the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004:] “The big question on this bill [...]


March 12, 2004

The fictitious president makes a fictitious campaign stop. From Newsday:
It was upbeat, precise, as organized as a meeting of the board of directors, framed at beginning and end with rousing music – a near-perfect campaign stop:
President George W. Bush arrived on schedule. He gave his speech. He moderated a panel of five people on [...]


From the Baltimore Sun:
Halliburton Co., the biggest contractor for rebuilding Iraq, faced escalating scrutiny yesterday over allegations that it had systematically overbilled the U.S. government. The company absorbed sharp questions on Capitol Hill, and the Justice Department launched an inquiry that could bring civil or criminal charges.
At issue is whether Halliburton, formerly led by Vice [...]


March 11, 2004

Three dead, two wounded. Someone’s father. Someone’s son. Someone’s husband. Dead or disabled for life. Add that to yesterday’s dead and the dead from the day before. 560 dead, 3190 wounded. Many of the wounded had limbs amputated from explosions. This is the “unwinnable guerilla war” that [...]


Come on, Rove, you can do better than this. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. This brings to mind the famous Bush vs. Bush debate on The Daily Show (see it here) where Governor Bush (that’s the “guy next door” on the campaign trail in 2000 making the “We have [...]


Here’s a very clearly presented case by Charles Pena of Cato that going to war with Iraq was the wrong decision by Bush. The executive summary follows, go to Cato.org for the full document:
President Bush asserts that U.S. military action against Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein was in material breach of United Nations [...]


An article from the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy by Christopher Preble contrasts Eisenhower’s decision making with Bush’s when faced with a difficult foreign policy situation:
…By taking the country to war, the Bush administration erred on many levels. But their principal error was their inability or unwillingness to come to grips with the true [...]


March 10, 2004

If only more people on the right knew that Bush is against contraception. Personally, I’ve encountered very few people on the right who are against contraception or who are radical religious extremists – so why do they want a president who is both? This issue cuts at the very core of womens’ rights, and [...]


Rush Limbaugh has sunk to new lows, attacking 9-11 widows. I read about it from a news link listed on the 9-11 Visibility Project. The Rush Limbaugh Show transcript and the widows’ responses are here.


When I hear people say Bush’s shining moment leading the country was 9/11, I have to wonder if they get out much. Bush failed to act immediately when notified about the attacks on 9/11 (he stayed twenty minutes reading to school children after being told the second plane hit the World Trade Center.) [...]


The Washington bureau of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain received praise for their reporting in The Nation this week. The article discussed a sstudy by the Columbia Journalism Review of reporting prior to the Iraq War. “The only national news organization that emerges unscathed from Massing’s inquiry is the low-profile Washington bureau of [...]


March 9, 2004

“I firmly believed we should not march into Baghdad…. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and making a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero…. [I opposed] assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what [...]


This is a great cartoon to pass along.
Picture 1: Bush with his hat covering his T shirt slogan: “We refuse to show footage of coffins returning from Iraq out of respect for the families…”
Picture 2: Bush dancing on top of a coffin of 9/11 victims with his T shirt slogan [...]


Ralph Nader, not content with helping Bush take election 2000, is doing his darndest to help Bush take election 2004. A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. From the Washington Post:
…A majority of Americans – 57 percent – say they want their next president to steer the country away from the [...]


March 8, 2004

A must see graph:
US Military Deaths in the Conquest of Iraq


There is something about those “God Bless America” bumper stickers that started appearing on cars just after 9/11 that just doesn’t ring true.
These cars became billboards for the Bush Administration’s campaign to make America a “Christian” state – in name only, since Bush & Co. threw away all but a handful of the [...]


From US Newswire:
The General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters, AFL-CIO (IAFF), Harold Schaitberger, issued the following statement today after President Bush unveiled new political ads that use images of fire fighters in September 11, 2001 attacks for political gain:
“I’m disappointed but not surprised that the President would try to trade on the [...]


From The Daily Brew:
Unemployment
Deficits


March 7, 2004

Of course, Jesus was a feminist, so if we truly follow his teachings, we must accept that the Christian perspective is pro-choice.
Even 60% of Catholics are pro-choice! This doesn’t surprise me. I was raised Catholic (with an Irish mother and an Italian father, what else?) And you know what? Catholics are [...]


From cartoonist Mike Smith and cartoonist Jeff Stahler.


From cartoonist Bill Day and cartoonist David Horsey.


From cartoonist Don Wright.


From Noah Leavitt at FindLaw:
In 1976, Supreme Court Justice William Douglas wrote: “As night fall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air, however slight, [...]


March 6, 2004

Senator Ted Kennedy gave a powerful speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on March 5. He included many detailed quotes from Bush Administration officials to support his charges. I’m only reprinting about half of his speech here just so there is another record, but Salon has printed the full text [...]


Please take the time to read this and pass the link along. From Intervention Magazine:
…Profoundly patriotic and committed to protecting his country, he is deeply concerned that the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, which has resulted in the deaths of over 500 American soldiers and uncounted thousands of Iraqis, may now be [...]


I love it when Rush Limbaugh fans say things like, “Afghanistan was a success for Bush.” It just shows once again that they are living in a fantasy world of ignorance. RAWA reports women in much of the country are afraid to leave their homes, and if they do, they can only do [...]


March 5, 2004

Family members of 9/11 victims are upset about Bush’s exploitive campaign ads, but also are concerned that Bush and the Republicans will further exploit the 9/11 attacks, as they have chosen an unlikely place for the Repulbican Convention in September – New York City. I don’t care what party you are in – to [...]


Still unable to grasp the concept “the buck stops here” and to take responsibility for his own actions, Bush’s latest tactic is to say he inherited a recession from Clinton. Economic experts say the recession started in March 2001, which was during Bush’s term of office. Bush’s economists say it started in Clinton’s term [...]


From Reuters:
President Bush’s campaign argument that “America is turning the corner” under his leadership suffered a setback on Friday with a report that the labor market mustered only 21,000 new jobs last month, far fewer than anticipated.
The small gain disappointed White House officials who had hoped for stronger evidence of a recovering labor market [...]


From the AFP:
The Capitol Police accused two Republican congressional assistants of spying on confidential computerized files of Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that examines President George W. Bush’s judicial appointments, according to a report released late Thursday.
The 65-page report says at least two assistants to Republican senators read and downloaded without clearance [...]


From the AP:
A federal grand jury probing the leak of a CIA officer’s identity has subpoenaed the records of phone calls from Air Force One made the week before the name of the officer was published in a July newspaper column, Newsday reported Friday.
The three subpoenas to President Bush’s Executive Office [...]


March 4, 2004

As a guest commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition pointed out, Bush’s budget borrows from America’s children to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, leaves out the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (to be submitted after the 2004 election!), and doesn’t include Social Security costs beyond the next 5 years (which is just [...]


As usual, the Bush Administration is ignoring good advice. From the Guardian:
David Kay, the man who led the CIA’s postwar effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has called on the Bush administration to “come clean with the American people” and admit it was wrong about the existence of the weapons.
In an [...]


To use 9/11 for political gain would be shameful and immoral. There is little surprise then, that Bush is doing it. To the left is a still from Bush’s latest television campaign ad. From the AP:
President Bush ’s day-old campaign commercials drew sharp criticism Thursday from relatives of the victims of the [...]


You will like this one!
Bush Mail


Howard Stern, master of sleaze, was suspended from his radio show on Clear Channel three days after criticizing George Bush. Yes, he’s been sleazy all along, but three days after actively criticizing Bush for the first time, he was yanked off the air. Other broadcasters on Clear Channel have also felt the pressure [...]


This article contains a nice summary of recent activity in Bush’s culture crusade. From Salon:
George W. Bush has the worst job-creation record, 2.6 million lost, of any president since Herbert Hoover in the depth of the Great Depression. The self-proclaimed “war president” finds himself embattled in a crisis of trust and credibility over the [...]


March 2, 2004

Today I voted in the Maryland presidential primary on a Diebold touch screen voting machine. I knew there were problems with the Diebold machines, and no paper trail for a recount, but I wasn’t prepared for the truly awful feeling of knowing that the vote I just cast for selecting the next President of [...]


March 1, 2004

From Salon:
…to Henry Bunting, a veteran procurement specialist who worked for Halliburton’s subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root in Kuwait last summer, this saccharine picture of Halliburton as a beneficent do-gooder doesn’t ring true. According to Bunting, Halliburton’s personnel in the Middle East weren’t looking out for the government as much as they were looking out [...]


From David Isenberg in Asia Times:
When planning war, military officials have various targets: enemy combatants, their support forces, the surrounding civilian population, and their national infrastructure. But there are other targets as well, although these are not always discussed publicly. Among the most important of these is public opinion, both the world at large, [...]


The case for recusal from the Cheney case gets stronger. Yet another blatant lack of integrity from Antonin Scalia. From the New York Times:
Justice Antonin Scalia went duck hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney in January, just weeks after the Supreme Court accepted an important case involving Mr. Cheney. There were widespread calls [...]


From Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker:
On February 4th, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is revered in Pakistan as the father of the country?s nuclear bomb, appeared on a state-run television network in Islamabad and confessed that he had been solely responsible for operating an international black market in nuclear-weapons materials. His confession was accepted [...]


From the Chicago Tribune:
Tim Robbins is one of Hollywood’s loudest voices against President Bush and the U.S.-led war in Iraq, but he saved his political comments for backstage.
“I actually didn’t know what I was going to say when I went up there,” said Robbins, who won the Oscar for best supporting actor for “Mystic [...]


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Reference
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Quotations
Women

"Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear." ~ Zora Neale Hurston

"Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got to not forget to laugh." ~ Katharine Hepburn

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." ~ Maya Angelou

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time." ~ Edith Wharton

"Mistakes are the dues one pays for a full life." ~ Sophia Loren

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." ~ Virginia Woolf

"Woman must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression." ~ Margaret Sanger

"Probably, hanging onto the past brings more destruction than any other single cause. ...It's the Muslim fundamentalists who worship the past and ignore the reformist spirit with which Muhammad viewed women. It's the backward-looking Christian literalists who interpret religious teachings in a way that consolidates their power..." ~ Gloria Steinem

"'Inherent differences' between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity." ~ Ruth Bader Ginsberg

"Feminism is and always has been about women acting in the world as full-fledged citizens, as real participants in the world of ideas and policy and history." ~ Susan Faludi

"As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the world." ~ Virginia Woolf

"...remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors... If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." ~ Abigail Adams

"Bloody treason, murderous act
Not by women were designed.
Bells o'erthrown nor churches sacked
Speak not ill of womenkind."
~ Gearoid Iarla Fitzgerald

"We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room. We want an equal share in government and we mean to get it." ~ Bella Abzug

"Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"There cannot be true democracy unless women's voices are heard. There cannot be true democracy unless women are given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives." ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place." ~ Margaret Mead

"Of my two 'handicaps' being female put more obstacles in my path than being black." ~ Shirley Chisholm

"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?" ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Nature

"Eventually, all things merge into one; and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs..." ~ Norman Maclean

"There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example - where had they gone?... It was a spring without voices." ~ Rachel Carson

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." ~ St. Francis of Assisi

"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but He cannot save them from fools." ~ John Muir

"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders." ~ Edward Abbey

"We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it... Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love." ~ George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

"Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life." ~ Rachel Carson

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." ~ John Muir

Freedom

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." ~ John F. Kennedy

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." ~ James Madison

"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion." ~ C. P. Snow

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." ~ Albert Einstein

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." ~ William Pitt

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise." ~ Marian Anderson

Truth

"Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"If somebody tells you you ought to quit, it's because they're afraid you won't." ~ Bill Clinton

"The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Find things that shine and move toward them." ~ Mia Farrow

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But the good Samaritan reversed the question: If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Abuse of Power

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth in a few hands, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis

"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things." ~ Russell Baker

"O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." ~ William Shakespeare

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." ~ Thomas Jefferson

Violence

"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." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think." ~ Patricia Schroeder

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"What difference does it make to the dead whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind... War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." ~ John F. Kennedy

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." ~ Jesus

"Every gun that is fired, 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. The 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." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. 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 by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hypocrisy

"And thus I clothe my naked villany with odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil." ~ William Shakespeare

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing... in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men... But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret..." ~ Jesus

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, ... legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law." ~ Thomas Paine

"I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.... There is no place in this country for practicing religion in politics." ~ Barry Goldwater

"Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard." ~ Hllary Rodham Clinton

Politics

"I never was surer of my position that no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her political rights." ~ Susan B. Anthony "In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." ~ Adlai Stevenson

"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

"All political movements are like this - we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility." ~ Doris Lessing

Pretended Patriotism

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." ~ George Washington

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!" ~ Albert Einstein

"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else." ~ Clarence Darrow

"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." ~ George Orwell

"To (say) that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it's morally treasonable to the American public." ~ Theodore Roosevelt
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