Morning Mistress
1 hour ago
...we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president.
Starting tomorrow, if not sooner.
"It is not enough for us to worry about Westerners being killed and Americans being killed...every life is precious..."
"...our soldiers don't see what's happening and innocent people are being killed...
terrorism is a term you apply to the other."
As a matter of practical politics, contemporary liberalism amounts to a coalitional ideology, while conservatism remains an ideological coalition. The Democratic Party is the party of various groups promising to scratch each other’s backs. Gay rights activists and longshoreman coexist in the same party because they promise support on each other’s issues.
Obama: There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell.
Falsani: You don’t believe that?
Obama: I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup.”
For, what do you have that is not a gift?
"Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature."
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.-Surprised by Joy
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
...it is reasonable to say that with the possible exception of the White House, the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument, the Star-Spangled Banner – the mammoth American flag that in 1814 inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the national anthem – may be this country's most precious icon of nationhood.
The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.
I was judging Barack Obama, not by the color of his skin, but by his lack of character!
"A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."
You remember the Second Amendment: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Despite years of fog created by the NRA and right-wing organizations, that isn`t very complicated: For the purposes of forming a state militia, you're entitled to keep and bear arms. Obviously, those would have to be the kind of arms in use in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was passed -- the musket, the wheel-lock, the flint lock, the 13th century Chinese hand canon. Stuff like that. Scalia, of course, simply decided that the militia part of the Second Amendment is some sort of quaint anachronism that he could happily ignore.
"It was the financial institutions that drove America into the ditch..."
It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
Returning to Texas, I am struck again by those so unlike the redneck stereotype, in spite of the burden of a form of brainwashing placed on most Americans from a tender age: that theirs is the most superior society in the world, and all means are justified, including the spilling of copious blood, in maintaining that superiority.
That is the subtext of Barack Obama's "oratory". He says he wants to build up US military power; and he threatens to ignite a new war in Pakistan, killing yet more brown-skinned people.
...Two years ago, this anti-war vote installed a Democratic majority in Congress, only to watch the Democrats hand over more money to George W Bush to continue his blood-fest. For his part, the "anti-war" Obama voted to give Bush what he wanted.
...Obama's first two crucial appointments represent a denial of the wishes of his supporters on the principal issues on which they voted. The vice-president-elect, Joe Biden, is a proud warmaker and Zionist. Rahm Emanuel, who is to be the all-important White House chief of staff, is a fervent "neoliberal" devoted to the doctrine that led to the present economic collapse and impoverishment of millions. He is also an "Israel-first" Zionist who served in the Israeli army and opposes meaningful justice for the Palestinians - an injustice that is at the root of Muslim people's loathing of the US and the spawning of jihadism.
The Observer, which supported Bush's war in Iraq, echoing his fabricated evidence, now announces, without evidence, that "America has restored the world's faith in its ideals". These "ideals", which Obama will swear to uphold, have overseen, since 1945, the destruction of 50 governments, including democracies, and 30 popular liberation movements, causing the deaths of countless men, women and children.
None of this was uttered during the election campaign. Had that been allowed, there might even have been recognition that liberalism as a narrow, supremely arrogant, war-making ideology is destroying liberalism as a reality.
"The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back."
Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology — contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.
In a new afterword to his memoir, 1960s radical William Ayers describes himself as a "family friend" of President-elect Barack Obama and writes that the campaign controversy over their relationship was an effort by Obama's political enemies to "deepen a dishonest narrative" about the candidate.
"Do you or any members of your immediate family own a gun?" (page 7, question 59).
As you know, President-elect Obama promised his daughters a puppy if they moved to the White House. He’s already getting advice on what the best breed of dog to get. For example, today Bill Clinton told him that the Oval Office is a great place for a husky female.
Oh, and by the way, Brunner has extensive connections to both ACORN and the Obama campaign.
This entire process is being overseen by Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who isn't exactly a nonpartisan observer. One of Mr. Ritchie's financial supporters during his 2006 run for office was a 527 group called the Secretary of State Project, which was co-founded by James Rucker, who came from MoveOn.org. The group says it is devoted to putting Democrats in jobs where they can "protect elections."
Reform-minded Secretaries of State - like SoS Project success stories Mark Ritchie in Minnesota and Jennifer Brunner in Ohio - are running on platforms that specifically reject this kind of double dealing. But unfortunately SoS Project values are in the minority among today's Secretaries of State.
Mr. Ritchie is also an ally of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, of fraudulent voter-registration fame. That relationship might explain why prior to the election Mr. Ritchie waved off evidence of thousands of irregularities on Minnesota voter rolls, claiming that accusations of fraud were nothing more than "desperateness" from Republicans.
"you can't be both a player and a referee"
The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal.
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
"How can they expect one black man to run the White House when it takes eleven to run a White Castle?"
The most cynical jokes tend to relate to the idea of this identikit saint who visits his dying granny to win the votes of the elderly in Florida, and then makes sure of an extra sympathy vote the day before election day by having her life support machine turned off.
Michael Crichton was a man of formidable intelligence and boundless curiosity. The two don't go together quite as often as they should. For years, when I picked up his latest novel, I'd find myself sighing, "Of course." The books had the inevitability of all the truly great ideas - as if they had not been cooked up in his study but had always been lying there, like truffles out in the woods, and he'd just been the first hound to get to them and snuffle them out. But, of course, he got to them again and again, for over 30 years. To be sure, the characters and the prose didn't always rise to life, but the concept, the premise, the hit title usually saw him through. The critics were snippy about Crichton, but then he had the measure of the media far more than they had it of him.
I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
WALLACE: Does Mr. Obama feel he won a mandate in this election?
PODESTA: I think he feels like there was a strong vote for change. And I think that if you look at that from the perspective of where he won across the board, his appeal to independents, to Republicans, which I think will be reflected in the kind of government he builds — and you saw not just red states turning blue.
You saw red counties turning blue. You saw young people embracing the Obama presidency in great numbers, a lot of people going to the polls and then voting for President Obama. Again, across the board, across the country, Democrats, independents and Republicans...
WALLACE: But the question...
PODESTA: ... voted for him. So I think that he feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set.
WALLACE: But the question, of course, is what kind of change. I want to put up something that the liberal economist Paul Krugman wrote in a column in the New York Times this week. Let's put it up.
He wrote, "This year's presidential election was a clear referendum on political philosophies, and the progressive philosophy won." Do you agree?
PODESTA: Yes, I do. I think that the program that that — again, that was — that — that the Obama-Biden ticket put forth in the campaign focused on providing opportunity for everyone, focused on the common good.
And I think that's in the progressive tradition in this country. It was alive and well in both parties. It sort of got extinguished in the Republican Party over the course of the last couple of decades, but I think that that progressive vision of providing opportunity for people who work hard, providing for the common good, to helping people succeed in their own lives — I think was what he laid before the American people.
It's in that great tradition of progressive politics in this country. And it's a tradition of reform. And I think he'll deliver on all those elements.
Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.
Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
I've been making the case the last couple of weeks that we can't just focus on winning in November, but that we have an imperative to take advantage of a historic opportunity to break the conservative movement's backs and crush their spirits.
Indeed, shocking as this may be to people naive enough to believe that a woman with no executive experience, no security clearance, no significant successes under her belt, who was catapulted to presidential prominence solely because her husband treated her like a cautionary tale in a country-music song, was nonetheless a co-president for eight years: It turns out that the Bride of Clintonstein was an awful chief executive. Infected by her husband’s passive-aggressiveness, she stood paralyzed as the HMS Hillary took on more and more water, until even the string quartet on the deck was leaping for the flotation devices.
You don’t evolve past being a cowboy. Being a cowboy is the pinnacle of evolution. Once you’re at cowboy, there’s nowhere to go but down. Cowboys don’t look for fights, but they don’t run away from them either. They do what they have to do, when they have to do it. And they usually have to do it alone, because everyone wants Black Bart’s gang out of town, but no one wants to walk down the street alongside the sheriff and get shot doing it.