May 31, 2004

From Todd Richissin in the Baltimore Sun:
…D-Day, in so many ways, lives on here, in villages like this, on this farm, where this man, Andre Legallois, was born.
Leaders from at least a dozen countries, including President Bush, are scheduled to be here June 6 to mark the 60th anniversary of the Allied landing. The ceremony [...]


May 30, 2004

Borrowing the words of Abraham Lincoln, the brave men and women who “gave the last full measure of devotion” in World War II deserve our thanks. From the Washington Post:
This is the season of our collective remembrances – of bygone wars and warriors whose lives helped to shape our own, whose acts of heroism, [...]


From Reuters:
Tensions between the civilian leaders of the Pentagon, led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and the U.S. military’s top brass have deepened amid the deteriorating situation in Iraq .
Even before the Iraq war some senior officers chafed under the guidance of Rumsfeld and his team, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Under Secretary of [...]


From Reuters:
A Pentagon e-mail said Vice President Dick Cheney’s office “coordinated” a multibillion-dollar Iraq reconstruction contract awarded to his former employer Halliburton, Time magazine reported on Sunday.
The e-mail, sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official on March 5, 2003, said Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, provided arrangements for the RIO contract, or Restore [...]


May 29, 2004

From Stanley Greenberg, author of Two Americas is a fascinating report on the Republican and Democratic bases:


From Asia Times:
MIDLAND, Texas – God is everywhere. The First Baptist Church. The Universalist Church. The First Presbyterian Church. The First Methodist Church. Even the Cowboy Church (“a new way to experience Jesus!”).
It’s a long, straight road from El Paso to Midland. The temptation to fall asleep at the wheel on I-20 is enormous. Then, [...]


May 27, 2004

Yet another reason to switch to Apple. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Apple Computer Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs and stock market mogul Warren Buffett have been tapped by Sen. John Kerry to be part of the Democratic presidential candidate’s team of economic advisers, a campaign spokeswoman said Monday.
Jobs and Buffett, perhaps two of the [...]


A full transcript is at Common Dreams:
George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.
He promised to “restore honor and integrity to the White House.” Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most [...]


May 25, 2004

As many have said all along, the invasion of Iraq has left the middle east less stable, rather than more stable. And Americans in greater danger from terrorism, not less. As Ehsan Ahrari said in another Asia Times article, “Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was not the focus of terrorism, violence and instability, contrary [...]


Some excerpts from reactions to Bush’s speech last night:
Michael Lind, senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of “Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics”:
“Before the war, Bush, Cheney and the neoconservatives did all they could to convince the American people that there was some link [...]


May 24, 2004

Now for women voters. If more single women vote, it could make the difference between Bush and Kerry in November. From Ruth Rosen in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Forget the angry white men of 1994, the soccer moms of 1998 or the NASCAR dads of 2002. This year, Democrats believe that single women ? [...]


Now for Mexican-American hispanics, who tend to vote Democratic in significant numbers. From the Arizona Republic:
…The presumptive Democratic nominee holds a 59 percent to 30 percent lead over Bush among Arizona’s enrolled Hispanic voters, according to the poll commissioned by the New Democrat Network..
The poll of 400 likely Arizona Hispanic voters was part of [...]


Now for voting preferences among hispanic Americans. In this case, a look at Cuban-Americans. From the St. Petersburg Times:
America’s Cuban policy, centered as it is around the exile community here, has always been guided by two often-competing interests: the desire to strangle dictator Fidel Castro, while supporting the family members left behind.
Now, a [...]


Women and minorities vote for Democratic candidates in greater numbers than white men. To examine this, a series of articles. First, a look at African-Americans. From USA Today:
Visiting Topeka Monday for the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing school segregation isn’t likely to help President [...]


More on the poll numbers. Some insightful analysis by Ruy Teixeira at the Emerging Democratic Majority:
Wow! Not only has Bush’s approval rating on handling the war on terrorism been dropping like a stone, the Annenberg Election Survey has now measured it in net negative territory: 46 percent approval/50 percent disapproval (May 17-23). [...]


From ABC News:
Public assessments of President Bush’s job performance have fallen to new lows, pushed by concerns about the military and political situation in Iraq, unhappiness with the prisoner abuse scandal and lingering discontent with his economic stewardship at home.
For the first time in ABCNEWS/Washington Post polls, fewer than half of Americans, 47 percent, approve [...]


May 23, 2004

This is one of the saddest things I’ve ever read. From the AP:
A videotape obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early Wednesday, killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, [...]


And please, let’s not leave out the many more who suffered devastating injury. From the UK Independent:
America and Britain have the statistical resources to compute with clinical accuracy the number of pollen grains floating in the air. Yet these two states say they cannot tell anyone how many Iraqi civilians have died in [...]


From the UK Independent:
Bill Clinton said yesterday that the UN, not America, should be taking Iraq towards democracy, and that George Bush erred in forcing out UN weapons inspectors and going to war without UN support.
“There are so many people who suspect our motives,” the former US president said in an address in Brazil. [...]


May 22, 2004

Has the term “top secret” lost all meaning under the Bush Administration? The Saudi Prince (and the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, too, for that matter – apparently he helped himself to stacks of classified documents while playing stenographer to Bush) learns of top secret war plans before Secretary of State Colin Powell. The [...]


I wish every voter would read this artice by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek:
America is ushering in a new responsibility era,” says President Bush as part of his standard stump speech, “where each of us understands we’re responsible for the decisions we make in life.” When speaking about bad CEOs he’s even clearer as to what [...]


This is from a great article in by Eyal Press in The Nation. Please read the full article, but for reference, I went through and pulled out some quotes:
Clyde Prestowitz, who served in the Reagan Administration:
“Historically, conservatism in the United States has meant support for small government, balanced budgets, fiscal prudence and great skepticism [...]


From Jonathan Schell in The Nation:
The Bush Administration, in the person of Paul Clement, Deputy Solicitor General, was asserting the President’s right to designate, at his sole discretion, US citizens as “enemy combatants” (a legal neologism), and then imprison them indefinitely without the right to see counsel or to have any other communication with the [...]


From the New York Times:
…For all the power of his voice and stature, however, Mr. Giuliani’s account must compete with a substantial and diverse body of evidence that flatly contradicts much of what he and his aides say happened that day, particularly on matters that could be seen as reflecting on the performance of his [...]


May 21, 2004

There isn’t one good thing about this country Bush hasn’t managed to muck up. All for the pigs at the trough who are never satiated – Bush’s corporate cronies. To hell with our health and well-being. The pigs call out for “More, more, more” – and the pig-in-chief answers “It’s all yours.” [...]


May 20, 2004

From DrKoop.com:
Bush administration TV ads to promote changes in Medicare’s prescription drug coverage broke two federal laws because they were disguised as news reports but didn’t identify who was sponsoring them, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress has ruled.
The General Accounting Office (GAO) said the ads, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human [...]


Bush – Cheney sure know how to pick ‘em. From the Christian Science Monitor:
A year ago, Ahmed Chalabi was the darling of American policymakers, a political powerhouse with unprecedented access to the highest levels of the Pentagon.
It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that he changed the course of Iraqi history: the information he and [...]


May 19, 2004

Former NYC Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, a shameless Bush apologist, got an earful at the 9/11 Commission hearings, but not from the panel; rather, from the outraged families of the victims. Bush’s rubberstamp Republicans in Congress have slashed largely Democratic, densely populated NYC’s homeland security funding for the 2004 by nearly 50 percent. While [...]


From Reuters:
The situation in Iraq could become more violent after the June 30 handover leading up to elections, which could require the deployment of more U.S. forces, the head of U.S. Central Command said on Wednesday.
Gen. John Abizaid was asked at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing whether the roughly 130,000 troops in Iraq would [...]


May 18, 2004

From the Boston Globe:
Almost three-quarters of President Bush’s top campaign fund-raisers are corporate executives or business owners, and about 1 in 5 work for a financial services company, according to a study by a public interest group.
Texans for Public Justice, a group that tracks campaign finance, said that 358 of Bush’s top 511 fund-raisers are [...]


From Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker:
The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to [...]


You’ve got to love the way Michael Moore tells it like it is. That someone – anyone – would choose Tom Daschle to be the leader who represents the Democratic party in the Senate (and he’s a big reason why Democrats are the minority in the Senate and not the majority) – has always [...]


May 17, 2004

George W. Bush, who ducked combat in Vietnam, then went AWOL from a stateside berth, has the nerve to call John Kerry’s loyalty and service into question. Yes, John Kerry who volunteered for combat duty in the same war, performed his duty courageously, then returned with a mission. His mission: to prevent [...]


May 15, 2004

From Steven Ruggles comes this chart of Bush’s approval ratings since taking office.
The peaks are: 9/11, the start of the Iraq War, and the discovery of Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole. Apart from that, it’s been a steady decline since day one in office.


The costs of the Iraq War to American taxpayers have already exceeded estimates by three times. So far, it has cost $150 billion, and is expected to reach $300 billion.
Check out what the latest $25 million installment for Bush’s war will cost your state at the National Priorities Project.


From Arianna Huffington:
To hear Don Rumsfeld tell it, even though the Bush administration had been told back in January about the abuse and torture going on at Abu Ghraib ? and that there were photos documenting it ? the idea that this might be a very bad thing didn?t really hit home until recently because [...]


Note: Updates – 12 Generals and Admirals Endorse Kerry, Kerry’s Band of Brothers, McCain says group slandering Kerry is “dishonest and dishonorable” and “it was the same kind of deal that was pulled on me”, Swift Republican Operatives for Lies.
From an important article by Joe Conason in Salon:
When the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” [...]


John Kerry already has the endorsement of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF.) Now the International Brotherhood of Police Officers (IBPO) has done the same. From the IBPO:
The International Brotherhood of Police Officers (IBPO) proudly endorsed Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry for President Friday, citing his commitment to law enforcement and public [...]


May 14, 2004

From Ruy Teixeira’s (author of “The Emerging Democratic Majority”) excellent blog, Donkey Rising:
If the Economy’s Doing So Well, Why Do Voters Think He’s Doing Such a Lousy Job?
Greeted with the usual histrionics by the press (exceeds expectations! second straight month of strong growth!), today’s jobs report indicates that 288,000 jobs were added to the economy [...]


And a chance for Democrats to compete against an opponent with the largest campaign warchest in history. From Bloomberg:
The Federal Election Commission refused to put limits on independent political groups that can take unlimited contributions from donors such as billionaire George Soros to spend on influencing the presidential election.
The 4-2 decision by the Federal [...]


From the Cincinnati Post:
The White House had hoped to hold off asking for more money to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan until after the election, but with costs rising faster than expected, it sent a request for an early installment of $25 billion to Congress this week.
The terse, three-page request came with a [...]


May 12, 2004

The Nation held a forum to address this question, and this excerpt is by John Brady Kiesling, a career diplomat who served in US embassies in Tel Aviv, Casablanca, Athens and Yerevan. In February 2003 he resigned from the Foreign Service in protest against Bush Administration foreign policy. From The Nation:
President Bush promised the [...]


The responses from Bush and his supporters to recent events follow the same pattern as usual – not only does the buck never stop anywhere near this bunch, but they never learn from their mistakes (nor admit them.) In the Bush camp are those who are in the know and those who are foolishly [...]


May 11, 2004

From Reuters:
The abuse of Iraqi prisoners reflected a failure of leadership and discipline in the U.S. armed forces, the general who investigated the mistreatment testified on Tuesday, but he said he found no evidence that American soldiers had acted on direct orders of higher-ups.
Asked directly in “your own soldier’s language” what had caused the [...]


May 10, 2004

From CNN:
…Bush holds a single-point lead over Democratic challenger John Kerry in the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of likely voters, but voters’ approval of Bush’s performance and support for the war in Iraq dropped to new lows in the survey…
The survey found that among all adults – not just likely voters – only 46 percent [...]


May 9, 2004

From Reuters:
Former First Lady Nancy Reagan made an impassioned call for taking controversial stem cell research out of the political arena, saying it could help cure illnesses like Alzheimer’s which so sorely afflicts her husband.
With the Bush administration and anti-abortion groups strongly opposing stem cell research, Mrs. Reagan at a celebrity-packed dinner in Beverly [...]


Bad policies have bad consequences. From Terrence Hunt, who has covered every president since Ronald Reagan, comes this story from the AP:
In one of the darkest weeks of his administration, President Bush saw America’s reputation sullied, the U.S. effort in Iraq damaged and his own campaign for re-election clouded. And more bad news may [...]


May 8, 2004

A Washington Post writer called Bush “America’s Ayatollah.” Well, Ayatollah Bush, head of the so-called Christian Right in America, has decided women can’t have access birth control pills when they need them most. From March for Women’s Lives organizer Alice Cohan:
In a last-ditch effort, we tried to stop the FDA from rejecting over-the-counter [...]


May 7, 2004

From Dan Ackman in Forbes Magazine:
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan yesterday, speaking via satellite to bankers in Chicago, warned that America’s soaring federal budget deficits were a threat to long-term U.S. economic stability even though interest rates remain at historic lows.
Greenspan said he wasn’t worried about the short term, but he was concerned about the [...]


Nader is drawing enough support from Kerry to give Bush the edge in some battleground states. I was asked recently if I’m ABB. No, I’m voting for Kerry because I like Kerry. But even if you have reservations about Kerry, I urge you to reconsider voting for Nader. As Arianna Huffington [...]


May 6, 2004

From David Westphal in the Sacramento Bee:
Week by week, events in Iraq and throughout the Middle East are threatening President Bush’s most valuable political asset: his high standing among American voters as commander in chief.
The president’s re-election campaign is built around the premise that he is the right man – bold, decisive and unwavering – [...]


From the AP:
The Bush administration asked Congress Wednesday for a $25 billion down payment for next year’s U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a retreat from the White House’s earlier plans not to seek the money until after the November elections.
The money – half of what White House officials have said they expect to need [...]


From the New York Times:
Give the Walt Disney Company a gold medal for cowardice for blocking its Miramax division from distributing a film that criticizes President Bush and his family. A company that ought to be championing free expression has instead chosen to censor a documentary that clearly falls within the bounds of acceptable political [...]


May 5, 2004

From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Sixty former U.S. diplomats have signed a letter to President Bush contending that his “unabashed support” for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is costing the United States “credibility, prestige and friends.”
The letter expresses deep concern over Bush’s April 14 endorsement of Sharon’s proposal to pull out of Gaza [...]


Dr. Robert Bowman was a Col. in the USAF and was Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under President Jimmy Carter. He is Presiding Archbishop, United Catholic Church. From the Baltimore Chronicle:
…Here’s what the first President Bush wrote … in his memoirs:
“Trying to eliminate Saddam would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending [...]


Vote View found that John Kerry is the 25th most liberal voter, which places him right in the center of the Democratic Party.


May 3, 2004

From the Washington Post:
Don’t look now, but is the Bush administration creeping toward John Kerry’s position on Iraq?
…the administration has been moving closer to acknowledging the desirability – and at times, the necessity – of letting the United Nations do the work of nation-building that George Bush once assumed the United States should undertake. [...]


Joseph Wilson is yet another insider who dared to speak the truth about the Bush Administration. This time the Bush Crime Family may have gone too far; in retribution, they outed his wife, an undercover CIA operative, and a grand jury must decide if they have committed a crime in doing so. The [...]


May 2, 2004

From a new CBS News/New York Times poll as analyzed by Ruy Teixeira in the Emerging Democratic Majority:
…Bush’s approval rating is down to 46 percent approve/47 percent disapprove (40/47 among independents), the lowest of his presidency. Bush’s approval rating on foreign policy is now 40/51 (36/52 among independents), also the lowest of his presidency, as [...]


May 1, 2004

From the AP:
An Iraq war veteran expressed disappointment with President Bush on Saturday, saying the nation’s leaders refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of continuing violence in Iraq.
“I don’t expect our leaders to be free of mistakes. I expect our leaders to own up to them,” said Army National Guard 1st Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, who was [...]


What a mess Bush has gotten us into, with a military stretched to the breaking point sent on the wrong mission. Entries from his diary, and a letter to his wife, are found at the Guardian:
After an investigation was launched into the alleged abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, Staff Sergeant Ivan “Chip” [...]


These measures to help ensure America’s votes count are long overdue, and I applaud California’s Secretary of State. From Reuters:
California set tough new standards for electronic voting on Friday, barring a third of existing machines from November’s ballot and ordering new security measures before thousands of others already purchased can be used.
California Secretary of [...]


This was an interesting look at the U.S. media, from John Stacks in World Policy Journal:
…One of the ways the larger public understands the world is through its own government and the reporting from Washington about the government?s foreign policy. But the Bush administration, in the words of one long-time Washington bureau chief, is the [...]



Reference
Recommended Sites
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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