June 29, 2005

From Gary Kamiya in Salon:
After 9/11 Bush told Americans that they were embarked on a great struggle, the “war on terror,” and he periodically appealed to their fear and anger. But he has demanded no sacrifice — unless slapping a $1 yellow “Support Our Troops” sticker on the back of your car counts as a [...]


From Media Life:
When the White House said Monday that President Bush would be giving a speech Tuesday night, several networks balked, wondering if carrying the speech would be worth rearranging their entire schedule.
NBC, Fox and CBS finally relented late yesterday, but the speech did indeed throw off television viewership, with low numbers [...]


From the Washington Post:
…For the first time, a majority of Americans said the administration “intentionally misled” the public in going to war and nearly 75 percent said it underestimated the challenges involved, the poll of 1,004 adults found.
On Iraq specifically, 56 percent said they disapproved of Bush’s work and 62 percent said they thought the [...]


US Energy Policy…
True disrespect for the flag…
Memo to Bill Frist: Physician, heal thyself…
Absolute power corrupts absolutely…
The irony of the administration talking about Newsweek…
Republicans or pod people?…


June 28, 2005

If we actually had a democracy instead of one party rule, something might be done about all the blatant Republican corruption. From Steven Bodzin in the Los Angeles Times:
A top Army Corps of Engineers official charged Monday that Halliburton Co. was able to receive no-bid contracts for work in Iraq because of repeated [...]


From Danielle DiMartino in the Dallas Morning News:
Unprecedented access to credit has gone a long way to enabling home buyers to offer more than they otherwise could.
Evidence of credit-enabled speculation has finally forced regulators to clamp down, worried that this de facto subsidy is contributing to runaway prices.
Consider these 2004 figures:
* One in four [...]


From Lew Rockwell:
From the beginning, the Bush administration has placed all its hopes on the glorious results that flow from the application of power and violence. This represents a deep form of intellectual corruption that has afflicted the American right wing since the early days of the Cold War, when an entire movement put its [...]


From AFP:
Vehicles powered by hybrid or clean diesel engines will double their US market share by 2012 as drivers shun gas-guzzlers because of high oil prices, new research predicted.
Such environmentally friendly engines are on course for 11 percent of auto sales by 2012 from 4.8 percent this year, according to the research study by JD [...]


June 27, 2005

First, a cartoon that says it all…
From Rep. Mike Capuano:
America will be left behind. If our current political leadership continues to restrict research as other countries embrace it – we risk losing not only our research edge, but also our scientists. American scientists will pursue their research in places like Korea and Israel, and international [...]


Some numbers for comparison:
Annual cost of all 16 U.N. peacekeeping missions currently underway: $3,870,000,000
Monthly cost of the U.S. occupation of Iraq: $4,100,000,000
Revenue from Iraqi oil sales that the Coalition Provisional Authority led by Paul Bremer, who was subsequently awarded the presidential medal of freedom by George W. Bush, could not account for, according to [...]



June 26, 2005

From Yahoo Finance:
-Billionaire investor Warren Buffett expects the dollar to eventually renew its softening and said the government must address the question of deficits.
In an extensive CNBC interview Thursday, Buffett spoke on a range of topics, including the dollar, the trade deficit, his plans to invest in the energy sector, the Gen Re investigation and [...]


How many more American soldiers and Iraqi civilians dead? How much more taxpayer money that could have been better spent on homeland security? How many more terrorist recruits as a result of our ongoing occupation? From the AP:
Suicide bombers struck a police headquarters, an army base and a hospital around Mosul [...]


And the punchline is priceless…
Flame Retarded…


From the AP:
The United States’ image is so tattered overseas two years after the Iraq invasion that communist China is viewed more favorably than the U.S. in many long-time Western European allies, an international poll has found.
The poor image persists even though the Bush administration has been promoting freedom and democracy throughout the world in [...]


From the AP:
U.S. officials held secret talks in Iraq with the commanders of several Iraqi insurgent groups recently in an attempt to open a dialogue with them, a British newspaper reported Sunday.
The commanders ?apparently came face to face? with four American officials during meetings on June 3 and June 13 at a summer villa near [...]


“We have always understood that the battles about abortion were just the tip of a larger ideological iceberg, and that it’s really birth control that they’re after also.” ~ Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Stop the war on contraception and choice – a woman’s jurisdiction over her own body – by [...]


June 24, 2005

From Mark Mazzetti in the Los Angeles Times:
With the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan making it increasingly hard for the U.S. military to fill its ranks with recruits, the Pentagon has hired an outside marketing firm to help compile an extensive database about teenagers and college students that the military services could use to target [...]


June 22, 2005

From John Vidal in the Guardian:
President’s George Bush’s decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world’s most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian.
The documents, which emerged as Tony Blair [...]


June 21, 2005

From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suddenly ranks among the most unpopular governors in modern California history, as residents grow increasingly unhappy about the action hero-turned-politician’s budget plans and his call for a special election, according to a new Field Poll.
Less than a third — 31 percent — of the state’s adults approve of [...]


From Dean Calbreath in the San Diego Union-Tribune:
By the end of the year, America’s bubbling housing prices will likely flatten or pop, causing an economic slowdown, economists warned in a flurry of reports yesterday and today.
Red flags issued by such diverse sources as the Merrill Lynch investment firm, the University of Maryland and the UCLA [...]


From the Los Angeles Times:
The chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington is worried enough about the torrid housing market to get out of it.
“I’m going to rent for a while,” said Douglas Duncan, who expects “significant reversal” in regions that have enjoyed strong home price appreciation, including Washington, D.C., Florida and California.
He [...]


The bit about having to deal with the Irish Republican Army is an excuse for not knowing jack about Al Qaeda is priceless. From John Solomon in the AP:
Those who have held the bureau’s top terrorism-fighting jobs since Sept. 11 often said in their testimony that they ? and many they have promoted since [...]


June 20, 2005

From Carol Leonnig in the Washington Post:
A top Justice Department official threatened to remove a government expert from its witness list if he did not water down his recommended penalties for the tobacco industry, the witness said in an interview yesterday.
Harvard University business professor Max H. Bazerman said a career trial lawyer told him senior [...]


From in the Washington Post:
For the past three years, the Air Force has described its $30 billion proposal to convert passenger planes into military refueling tankers and lease them from Boeing Co. as an efficient way to obtain aircraft the military urgently needs.
But a very different account of the deal is shown in an August [...]


June 19, 2005

From Ruy Teixeira in the Emerging Democratic Majority:
SurveyUSA has just released a report on the approval ratings of U.S. Senators, and the news is good. Of the 25 US Senators with the highest approval ratings, 17 are Democrats, plus Independent Jim Jeffords. Stated in reverse terms, only 7 of the 25 senators with the highest [...]


Here is the nasty Washington Post article by Dana Milbank. Here is Rep. John Conyers’ response to the “journalist” (from Raw Story:
June 17, 2005
Mr. Michael Abramowitz, National Editor; Mr. Michael Getler, Ombudsman; Mr. Dana Milbank; The Washington Post, 1150 15th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20071
Dear Sirs:
I write to express my profound disappointment with [...]


From Think Progress:
This morning on Fox News Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked if ?the Bush administration fairly [can] be criticized for failing to level with the American people about how long and difficult this commitment will be?? Rice responded:
[T]he administration, I think, has said to the American people that it is a [...]


The AP article discusses six Downing Street Memos. What say our nation’s top newspapers about this? I checked the NY Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times websites (the front page and international sections), and all I came up with was a link to the AP story on the LA Times [...]


From the conservative magazine US News:
Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He’s upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He’s also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent remark that the insurgency is in [...]


From David Spero in The Desert Sun:
On May 1, The London Times dropped an atomic bomb on the Bush administration, the Downing Street Memo.
Largely ignored by our country’s corporate-owned media, the memo states that “Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. But [...]


June 18, 2005

From Joe Conason in Salon:
Only a Post editorial would refer to Sir Richard Dearlove, the chief of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service who reported the fixing of intelligence to fit Bush’s war plans, as merely “a British official.” To judge by their responses, the leading lights of the Washington press corps are more embarrassed than the [...]


From Reuters:
The Downing Street memo produced for British Prime Minister Tony Blair in July 2002 portrayed President George W. Bush as inevitably invading Iraq and said “intelligence and facts” were being fixed eight months before the March 2003 invasion. Bush and Blair dismissed this.
Here are some key facts on the Memo:
** Blair’s staff produced the [...]


June 16, 2005

From Eric Lichtblau in the New York Times:
McCallum, the third-ranking official at the Justice Department, is a close friend of President Bush from their days as fellow Skull & Bones members at Yale University and was also a partner at an Atlanta law firm, Alston & Bird, which has done legal work for RJ Reynolds [...]


I hadn’t heard about this – just saw the video on The Daily Show. Here are Nancy Pelosi’s comments from Raw Story:
“The Republicans’ abuse of power reached a new low this morning when they tried to silence Democrats at a hearing on the Patriot Act by cutting the microphones.
“Chairman Sensenbrenner proved again today that [...]


C-SPAN sent this email to those inquiring about whether the network would re-air the congressional hearings on the Downing Street documents held by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).
The network will rebroadcast the hearings carried live on C-SPAN 3 Thursday on Friday night on C-SPAN2 at 8 p.m. ET.
#
Thanks for your inquiry about C-SPAN’s coverage of Thursday’s [...]


“Liberal bias” = Not Fox News. From Lenore Skenazy in the New York Daily News:
ITEM: The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias. — New York Times, May 2.
Below, some PBS programming in the not-too-distant future:
Upstairs, Downstairs: [...]


June 15, 2005

Also there was no sign of trauma or abuse, despite the cruel insinuations of Frist, DeLay, and Co., who conveniently forget all about the “sanctity of marriage” when it suits them. From the AP:
An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband’s contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had [...]


From Bloomberg:
The U.S. Interior Department inspector general concluded that the Bush administration offered in 2002 to overpay a prominent Florida family for oil and gas rights on Everglades land, according to people familiar with the matter.
In a report to the Senate Finance Committee to be made public today, Inspector General Earl Devaney says the [...]


June 14, 2005

The Bush dynasty made their fortune in oil, Dick Cheney amassed $60 million as CEO of Haliburton Oil Company, and Chevron named an oil tanker the “Condoleezza Rice” after their former director. And that’s just the tip of the oil well. From Pure Energy Systems:
A new Yale University research survey of 1,000 adults [...]


June 13, 2005

From Greg Ip in the Wall Street Journal:
Five years ago, the bull market for stocks came crashing to a halt after a glorious run. Now, many worry that the roaring housing market may be headed for a train wreck as well.
What’s the likelihood this could happen? For his part, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said [...]


The ones who objected before the war are gone. The ones who went along with it are speaking up 1,700 dead and 12,000 severely wounded too late. Bush’s own father said it all back in the days when Junior was playing around with other toys – “I firmly believed we should not march [...]


Rap along with Bush – Four more wars… Check out this animation.
Best line: “Yeah, I might sound dumb, but if you’re dumb, too, you probably won’t notice.”


June 12, 2005

From the AP:
A Republican congressman who voted for the Iraq war said Sunday that ”we’ve done about as much as we can do” in the country and that the reason for invading Iraq has proven false.
Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina will be among the lawmakers introducing legislation this week calling for a timetable [...]


Don’t you just love having to hear about American news from a British newspaper? From Michael Smith in The Times:
The complaints of media self-censorship have been backed up by the ombudsmen of The Washington Post, The New York Times and National Public Radio, who have questioned the lack of attention the minutes have received [...]


Remember Reagan PR hack Michael Deaver’s infamous quote: “The media I’ve had a lot to do with is lazy. We fed them and they ate it every day.” From Frank Rich in the New York Times:
The main difference is that in the Nixon White House, the president’s men plotted behind closed doors. The current [...]


June 11, 2005

From Peter Coy in Business Week:
Based on the initial monthly payments, borrowers may be able to buy a more expensive house than they might otherwise afford. Trouble is, when borrowers do have to start making principal payments — after anywhere from 2 years to 10 years — the monthly payment could jump by up to [...]


June 9, 2005

From Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books:
…On July 23, 2002, eight months before American and British forces invaded, senior British officials met with Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss Iraq. The gathering, similar to an American “principals meeting,” brought together Geoffrey Hoon, the defense secretary; Jack Straw, the foreign secretary; Lord Goldsmith, [...]


From the Washington Post:
Six in 10 respondents said Bush and GOP leaders are not making good progress on the nation’s problems; of those, 67 percent blamed the president and Republicans while 13 percent blamed congressional Democrats. …For the first time since the war in Iraq began, more than half of the American public believes the [...]


Learn about the memo…
and
Do something about it…


The lack of consistency in the Republican position on parental rights, marital rights, property rights, etc. is making my head spin. The only rhyme and reason to it all is that if it pays back corporate cronies or “Christian” fundamentalists for electing Bush and his rubberstamp congress, then it’s a good thing. From [...]


How are your tax dollars are spent…
Distribution of security dollars: 91% is spent on the military, 3% on preventative measures, 5% on homeland security…
How much are you paying for the Iraq War…


June 8, 2005

From the BBC:
The number of US army officers getting divorced has soared in the past few years, the Pentagon says, a trend blamed on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2004 the rate of divorce was more than three times as high as in 2002, figures showed.
“The stressors are extreme in the officer corps, especially when [...]


From Andrew Revkin in the New York Times:
A White House official who once led the oil industry’s fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.
In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 [...]


You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, and to hell with the American people. Once again, Bush Co. disregards scientific experts to pay back campaign donors. From Carol Leonnig in the Washington Post:
After eight months of courtroom argument, Justice Department lawyers abruptly upset a landmark civil racketeering case against the tobacco industry [...]


The provision for restricting abortion was that only if the woman’s life is in danger (not health, so if she spends the rest of her life blind, disabled, or in a hospital as a result of the pregnancy, that’s OK) and only if the fetus has severe brain damage (not another horrific fetal abnormality [...]


June 6, 2005

From Thomas Ricks in the Washington Post:
Heavy deployment to Iraq is raising concerns about the Guard’s long-term ability to recruit and retain troops, and it is provoking more immediate worries in states that rely on the Guard to deal with fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. With almost 40,000 troops serving in the unexpectedly violent [...]


From Robert Burns of the AP:
May was the deadliest month of the Iraq war for part-time American servicemen. Thirty-one of them died: 14 members of the Army National Guard, 12 from the Marine Corps Reserve, four from the Army Reserve and one Navy Reserve hospital corpsman attached to a Marine combat unit.
The overall U.S. death [...]


June 5, 2005

Bush took an obligatory swipe to avenge 9/11 in Afghanistan, never caught the one responsible for 9/11 (bin Laden.) Then diverted attention and resources on a country that wasn’t a threat to us, but had a heck of a lot of oil. From Carlotta Gall in the New York Times:
The intensity of the [...]


When the Civil War began, people brought chairs and refreshments to the battlefield, thinking they’d watch – they were that removed from the realities of war. Then Matthew Brady photographed the carnage of the Civil War, and reality was brought home as never before. When I was a child, I remember my parents [...]


Graphic – who got the most tax breaks
Graphic – incomes for the wealthies highest since the late 20’s
From David Cay Johnston in the New York Times:
Such a concentration of wealth can turn a meritocracy into an aristocracy and ultimately stifle economic growth by putting too much of the nation’s capital in the hands of inheritors [...]


From Damien Cave in the New York Times:
Mothers and fathers around the country said they were terrified that their children would have to be killed – or kill – in a war that many see as unnecessary and without end. Rachel Rogers, a single mother of four in upstate New York, did not worry about [...]


While the US has been passing tax breaks for the rich while conducting an endless war in Iraq, the Chinese are making hay while the sun shines. From Mark Mazzetti in the Los Angeles Times:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Saturday that the rapid development of China’s missile capabilities, air force and navy put Asia’s [...]


June 4, 2005

Come and get it! Firefox will set you free. Download the best browser on the web in a flash, and then start experiencing the web the way it was meant to be. Firefox is free, designed by the best programmers in the world, standards compliant, and makes browsing the web fun and [...]


So, a little magazine in a rack in the supermarket wasn’t responsible for the fallout from failed Bush Co. policy after all. They were forced to admit it, after smearing Amnesty International all week, but didn’t have the guts (or respect for American citizens) to stand up and face the music, so they slipped [...]


June 2, 2005

And women suffer the most with this “abstinence only” game Bush Co. is playing, since often sex is not a matter of choice for them in third world countries. From Geraldine Sealey in Salon:
Bush has enacted policies that will redirect millions of dollars away from groups that have experience fighting HIV and AIDS and [...]


The Daily Show had a good time last night mocking them. From Avery Walker in Raw Story:
One would think that, living in the times of the Bush Administration, we would have seen all the moral hypocrisy one could imagine. After all, just weeks ago, the President was privately blaming a newsmagazine for deaths caused [...]


From Margaret Carlson in the Los Angeles Times:
On Memorial Day, I watched the A&E movie about former Navy Lt. Cmdr. John McCain’s 5½ years in a Vietnam prison. McCain’s face was beaten to a bloody pulp, his bones shattered, his teeth knocked out. Guards hung him from the ceiling by his arms, one of which [...]


Winning hearts and minds with rape and cholera outbreaks. From Dahr Jamail in Asia Times:
Residents in the city say the treatment they receive from both the US military and Iraqi security forces operating inside Fallujah is both degrading and humiliating. “There are plenty of women in Fallujah who have testified they were raped [...]


June 1, 2005

From Paul Krugman in the American Prospect:
At this point, income inequality is right back where it was in the 1920s. Just about all that?s left of the New Deal legacy is Social Security — and they?re trying to get rid of that, too. Back when I wrote ?The Rich, the Right, and the Facts? for [...]



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
About
Democratic Wings is a personal blog expressing the personal opinions of the author. The site is nonprofit and accepts no advertising. Fair Use Notice.

Contact: blogmail at democraticwings dot com

© 2003-2010 DemocraticWings.com

Powered by WordPress
Evolve