Yesterday's QUOTES ...

Republican are scared to death that Democrats will do the right thing and Republicans will do everything they can, including cheating, lying and violence, to destroy the Democrats ability to do so!
... [The Republicans] greatest fear is that if the Democrats do win,

It would probably also mean a national health-insurance program that would irrevocably expand government involvement in the economy and American life, and itself make voters less likely to turn toward conservatism in the future.

I think that sentence contains a grim truth for progressives: the right will fight any health reform tooth and nail. They believe — and so do I — that the implications of universal coverage would extend far beyond health care, that it would revitalize the New Deal idea. And so they’ll do anything to stop it. ... will the Democrats and the people of the United States let the Republicans destroy the American peoples' future to further line the pockets of the greedy and the corrupt?


The Plot to Seize the White House" by Jules Archer It's an incredible 1974 book, re-released earlier this year (2007, about the conspiracy of US financial barons to stage a military coup to overthrow FDR in 1934. The connections to current corporate ambitions make it very pertinent to US politics today. And it's a very good read, very detailed and well researched by historian Archer.


... Under the Republican faux-libertarianism that finds its current crown princes in figures like Grover Norquist and Ron Paul, government can indeed be ably used as an enforcing tool of bigotry, but not of tolerance; government can indeed be used as a valid tool of industry against citizenry, but not the reverse; government, most of all, is a failure by its mere existence -- unless it serves their own thinly drawn purposes, of course. It is the shallowest and most crass interpretation possible of societal good and, indeed, of civilization, which goes to explain why it is so popular among certain groups.


Calling Bush stupid is certainly satisfying. It is, in a number of respects true; for Bush’s ideas are original in approximately the way tape recorders play back sounds never heard before. And originality is a sign of genius. Furthermore, it is a habit of the educated middle class meritocracy to equate stupidity with failure. So by calling Bush stupid we call him a failure. There certainly are ways in which the Bush administration failed. But we do ourselves a great disservice in dwelling on this idea; for it is not the ways in which Bush has failed but the ways he has succeeded that will define the most dangerous legacy of the administration. [...] I have long argued that the Iraq war is nothing but a distraction. It is what we talk about because we understand it. But the Iraq war is not the central thrust of the Dubya administration. It is the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the remarkably blatant attempts to undermine or subvert every part of the federal government that have been the main business of the administration. The remarkable level of success came, in part, because we have for the duration of his term seen Dubya as an idiot, an underachiever, a spoilt golden-boy.

It’s time we behave more intelligently.


... being less crazy than the Republicans is not a policy. ... nor a recommendation. If only Democratic politicians would allow this concept through their skulls.