"The civil rights movement and the space program always shared a strange juxtaposition of 19th century agrarianism and 20th century technological achievement. So maybe it should be no surprise that we're currently confronting our civil rights demons in the parking lots of fried chicken joints while one of our spacecraft makes its final approach to Mars. But still … what the hell, America?" ~ David Kurtz, TPM
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Barry Goldwater would be branded a liberal communist usurper by today's crop of batshit crazy Republicans.
Agreed!
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"It is inappropriate to call Ms. Romney a cunt. She lacks the required warmth and depth." ~ Charles Pierce
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"Oh come on, because we thought that Sarah Palin was the better candidate." ~ John McCain on Monday on why he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate over Mitt Romney in 2008.
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He pulled the words right out of my mouth.
"People are increasingly lousy drivers—which I think goes hand in hand with people becoming increasingly lousy human beings. America's litigiousness is a reflection of a larger entitlement problem in this country—everyone thinks they're oppressed, and acts accordingly. And not oppressed in the civil rights way, but in the Republican way. For Republicans, oppression is 'not getting your way 100% of the time, to hell with how your desires impinge on the rights of others.' It's selfish. And it's destructive.
"It also doesn't help that popular culture glorifies some of the worst dregs of society, that glorifies destruction—be it couples acting violently to each other on TV, or thugs being violent to their women, towards gays, and more. The trash who go on Judge Judy or Jerry Springer come to mind. Though Fox News and Limbaugh and the GOP play their part as well in teaching Americans to hate pro-actively.
"Starting around 2004, in the middle of the Bush years, I started to become increasingly concerned about the future of our country. My concerns haven't lessened nearly enough with the Obama years. There's a trashiness (and a meanness) to our culture, our politics, our driving, our health care system, and, more generally, the way we treat, and mistreat, each other." ~ John Aravosis, AMERICAblog
Thought for the Day
Wet Paint
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"The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner." ~ General Omar Bradley
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"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." ~ Stephen Roberts
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The Fall of Rome
"If you want the American Dream, go to Finland." ~ Ed Miliband, UK Labor Leader
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"Think of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren't there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Every bit of you has been replaced many times over (which is why you eat, of course). You are not even the same shape as you were then. The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, while simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that doesn't make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important." ~ Steve Grand (Creation: Life and How To Make It)
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"The problem—often not discovered until late in life—is that when you look for things like love, meaning, motivation, it implies that they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people recognize that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, and they generate their own emotion." ~ Neil deGrassi Tyson
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"The good things don't always soften the bad things but vice-versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things, or make them unimportant" ~ The Eleventh Doctor
Stolen from a Famous Person
"I guess it comes down to deciding which you find more offensive:
1) Using profanity to point out that there are plenty of things in the Bible we all ignore, or
2) Calling the Bible the absolute, unerring, infallible word of God, and then only obeying the chunks that let you feel superior to other human beings.
I say #2."~ Dave Holmes
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"It's a saying from thousands of years ago, written in a language called Latin about a place called Rome," he explains. "'Panem et Circenses' translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power." ~ Suzanne Collins in her book "Mockingjay" pg. 223
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"Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of the astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy." ~ Carl Sagan (1934-1996), American astronomer, astrophysicist, and author
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"It seems all religion now has a fixation with homosexuality. This is because religion has not done the hard work of evolving and accepting modern day reality. So, they look for a reason to reject modernity and a scapegoat for the gullible to blame. Religion really needs to look within and ask why thousand year old myths trump truth, science and reality. They need to ask themselves why religion increasingly only appeals to the desperate, fearful and retarded. They need to ask why any conscious non-sociopathic human these days will reject everything religion stands for." ~ Sampy, in a comment left at Joe.My.God.
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"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." ~ Mark Twain
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"Everyone has the right to believe in anything they want. And everyone else has the right to find it fucking ridiculous." ~ Ricky Gervais
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"Long ago, homosexuality was something refined, sublimated. Concerned with reaching for the greatest heights of artistic expression and often achieving them. Now it's just a bunch of musclebound idiots running around in t-shirts." ~ Fred, in Damsels In Distress.
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Stolen in its entirety From Bill in Exile:
"All those people who supported the war, and most especially all those who voted for it, bear the moral responsibility for the results of the war. At least 100,000 dead Iraqis (and probably closer to a million). 4,000 and rising dead US soldiers. Rape. Murder. Torture. Orphans who got to watch their parents being killed. Husbands who saw their wives die, or wives who watched their husbands gunned down or blown into bloody carrion. Families who have buried multiple children.
All because members of Congress didn't care and because they were gutless. Because they thought to themselves "I might have to face attack ads if I vote against this war." Can you think of anything more weak, anything more pathetically evil, than to care more about your reelection than about thousands dying? Than about the certainty that from your vote will come rape and torture and murder?
And can you think of anything more pathetic, more redolent of bad judgment than to say "but I didn't know. I trusted George Bush?"
As far as I am concerned most of Congress doesn't just have blood on their hands, they are in it up to their chins. Their gutlessness, cupidity and selfishness is such that most of them, in a just world, would be preparing their defenses for a Nuremburg trial. They attacked a country which had not attacked the US, based on lies that were debunked at the time, for petty personal reasons of political ambition or cowardice.
We all know that won't happen, but what I will tell you is this. Without the Iraq war, the financial crisis happening right now either wouldn't be, or would be much less harsh. It is quite likely that Iraq is the last mistake of the American century and marks the end of America as a superpower.
This is only fitting. Those who have proven they cannot be trusted with power must have that power taken away. America had its chance, in 2004, to take that power away from the worst of its elites. It didn't. For an outsider, whether the election was stolen in 2004 or not is irrelevant, all that matters was the lesson of the result—that Americans are no longer capable of disciplining their own elites."
Ian Welsh in a re-posted blog post from 2008 titled It is in Blood that Empires, Like Humans, Are Born, It is in Blood That They Die.
Go read it.
Because I think Ian is absolutely correct: America can no longer be trusted with the power and influence it has wielded since the end of World War II.
And therefore we must have it taken from us.
We've abrogated our responsibilities as a nation and as a people and are therefore now no longer deserving of the leadership position we once held.
We allow war criminals to run free — and make a good living as tee vee pundits on Fox.
We normalize torture as a legitimate means of interrogation.
We have a president who claims for himself the right to order the murder of American citizens without trial or even charges being brought.
We see trillions of dollars stolen by malefactors of great wealth who not only get off without even so much as a slap on the wrist but who then get paid billions in bonus money from the pockets of the very citizens that they robbed, while the people whom they defrauded lose their homes and their life savings.
I adore the idea of the country we were supposed to be, and perhaps one day we'll find our way back from the wilderness that we now inhabit.
But I have little respect for the country we've become for what we have become is toxic.
I will live out my life here deeply saddened that we all, every single one of us, allowed it to come to this.
We are, in a word, spent.
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"The churches used to win their arguments against atheism, agnosticism, and other burning issues by burning the ismists, which is fine proof that there is a devil but hardly evidence that there is a God." ~ Benjamin Barr Lindsey (1869-1943), American judge and social reformer