Today's quote ...

What’s new is the public acknowledgment that this is what we do, and how we behave, that it’s routine, and the implicit acceptance that it’s okay. And all that has occurred with no recognition whatsoever that if an agent from another country did that here, it would be called a terrorist act carried out by a people without soul or morality.

-- Becoming 9/11: CIA Expands Drone Attacks Inside Pakistan by Scarecrow, firedoglake.com

Today's quote ...

Obama. Competing with Hoover for his place in history?

... Obama would rather listen to losers like Larry Summers who was dismissed from the Presidency of Harvard because he couldn’t run the largely self-running university. Or to Timothy Geithner, whom W. appointed to the New York Fed Presidency and who helped usher in this economic nightmare. In this sense, Obama is looking less and less like the president he admires so much (Lincoln) and more and more like Herbert Hoover. Obama’s even beginning to sound like Hoover.

Armistice Day ...

Quote from a Comment by aimei to this Post:

I, too, detest the transformation of Armistice Day into Veteran's Day. Where one memorialized the end of war, the other memorializes the soldier as victim and sacrifice without condemning the war itself. Its like the transformation of Mother's Day from a statement of grief and power against war into a chocolate box holiday of gift cards and flowers.

Today's quote ...

Why is it that "realism" is always and inevitably at the expense of women, gays and minorities? Is that the new Democratic value?

-- In MA Race, Martha Coakley Opposes Health-Care Bill Over Stupak Amendment by Susie Madrak, Crooks and Liars

Today's quote ...

Health care reform is extremely likely to pass in some form. But let's not kid ourselves that it's passing because the Democrats and the public have seen the light and understand that we need to be a more decent society. It's passing because medical industry has been greedy to the point where it's now unsustainable. That presented an opening for liberals to enact some policies they have believed in for a long time. But they didn't do it by making the liberal arguments straight up and have created some kind of strange hybrid system for which the best argument is that it might lead to opportunities for more reform. It's better than nothing. But it isn't liberal and it wasn't designed to be. And just in case, the powers-that-be stuck it to the pro-choicers to make sure nobody got the idea that it was.

-- The Lesson by digby, Hullabaloo

Today's quote ...

... This is a base problem, and this is what Democrats better take from tonight:

1. If you abandon Democratic principles in a bid for unnecessary "bipartisanship", you will lose votes.

2. If you water down reform in favor of Blue Dogs and their corporate benefactors, you will lose votes.

3. If you forget why you were elected -- health care, financial services, energy policy and immigration reform -- you will lose votes.

-- Lessons by John Amato, Crooks and Liars quoting Tonight's big lesson by kos, Dailykos

Today's quote ...

If this election serves as a reminder that pandering to right wingers is not a successful electoral strategy [for Dems], then Creigh Deeds will have done even more good for Democrats than if he had won the Governorship today.

-- What Happened in Virginia? by Ben Tribbett, firedoglake.com

Today's quote ...

. . . people with privilege treat everyone else as their personal jokes.

-- Disability and feminism: one person's experience by katemoore at feministing.com

Today's quote ...

All this money makes Obama's top financial advisors veritable poster boys for the Wall Street culture that the president in his speeches has publicly decried as a "house of cards" and a "Ponzi scheme" in which "a relatively few do spectacularly well while the middle class loses ground".

I'm not doubting the smarts of Obama's financial team -- but I do feel that the vast majority of people who take the kind of money we're talking about here can't help but be warped by it, and that in choosing to cash in, they essentially disqualified themselves from public service.

Unless they are willing to assertively act in ways that redeem themselves and show that their allegiances have not been purchased, they should step down and make way for people who see the people's side of things a little more clearly.

-- Bankers Vs. The People: Which Side Is The White House On? by Dan Froomkin, Huffington Post

Today's quote ... and a second one ...

... Someone in the Obama administration is hiding and manipulating behind secret identity and this “journalist” is their co-conspirator of bullshit. ...

--Didn’t Work, Senior Administration Official by paradox, The Left Coaster
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But for Washington's real journalists to rush to the defense of Fox News would be extremely short-sighted, and yet another dismal example of inside-the-Beltway camaraderie run amok. Sure, some of these people may be our friends -- and there are a few journalists at Fox who have maintained a modicum of integrity -- but the fact is that overall, these are people who have made a conscious decision to get out of the truth business. They don't deserve our support -- or our silence about what they really are.

--Why Journalists Shouldn't Be Defending Fox News by Dan Froomkin, The Huffington Post

Today's quote ...

... That is so very, very unexpected: that policies designed by former Goldman CEO Hank Paulson, ultimate Wall Street servant Tim Geithner, and the banking-owned United States Congress would redound to the personal benefit of investment banking executives but not the general public. ...

-- Another Goldman executive named to key government post as its profits skyrocket by Glenn Greenwald, salon.com

Today's quote ...

I now see that it does not matter how many Democrats are elected. The Democratic leadership values “bipartisanship” above principles, the needs of working class Americans, or keeping their promises. The Democratic party in Washington insists on handing over complete control to whichever Republican senator will take it.

-- My Apology To Former Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee by Jon Walker

Today's quote ...

It's often forgotten or obscured, but the central political fact now is that the Democratic Party controls everything in Washington -- from the branches of government to favors doled out to lobbyists to the policies that Congress and the President enact. Wars that are fought and bills that are or are not passed and policies that are maintained are, by definition, Democratic actions. The dreaded Right can't dictate or stop anything. That's the burden of having massive majorities in all areas -- everything that happens is the result of what the Democratic Party does, and that's why the divisions and conflicts that truly matter are ones with the party itself. The "right v. left" and even "Democrat v. GOP" drama dominates most of our discourse, yet at this point it is a distracting and largely irrelevant food fight. It's the Democrats who have won the last two elections by large margins and wield all the power, and increasingly the defining conflict is between those whose overarching allegiance is to Obama and the Party as ends in themselves, and those who see those things as mere means to more important ends.

-- Gay issues, the "Fringe Left" and the liberal veal pen by Glenn Greenwald, salon.com

Today's quote ...

The whole thing is disgusting: Obama sneaking these in in a last-minute classified briefing. Doing so under cover from Jeff Sessions (what? DiFi and Pat Leahy don’t want responsibility for this??). Pat Leahy letting that happen. A voice vote, so no one will ever hold Leahy and DiFi and Whitehouse and Franken and others responsible for doing this.

-- Obama’s Bipartisanship: Hiding Behind Jeff Sessions’ Skirts When Eliminating Privacy Protections by emptywheel, firedoglake.com

Today's quote ...

You may have noticed that a lot of Liberty Counsel's claims are flat-out lies. Don't let that disturb you! There is, after all, nothing in the Bible/Torah about lying.

-- ARE YOU "THE UNKNOWN LIBERAL"? Pick me, pick me! at Amygdala

Today's quote ... Washington Doesn't Get It: We Need More Jobs

A whopping 83 percent see unemployment as either a fairly big or very big problem; and 81 percent say the Obama administration hasn't done enough to deal with it.

And there just aren't a whole lot of things that more than 80 percent of Americans agree about.

Not coincidentally, large majorities of voters also see the government's economic policies as helping banks and Wall Street -- while few see themselves or average working families in general as benefiting.

So why isn't political Washington fully engaged in addressing the unemployment problem? For the same reasons it can't seem to get much of anything done these days: most notably the abject lack of boldness from the Democrats and persistent obstructionism from the Republicans.

Democrats have been particularly terrified for decades now of doing anything that can be said to actually cost the government money. (Republicans, ironically, have no such scruples.) So our modern ruling party has found itself boxed in by its own president's support for "pay-as-you-go budget rules". And the fact is that very serious concern about the deficit -- even now, when it's the least of our troubles -- is considered a hallmark of serious thinking in Washington. Those who don't toe the line are written off as crazy, wild-eyed radicals.

-- Washington Doesn't Get It: We Need More Jobs by Dan Froomkin

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-news/reporting/dan-froomkin,

Today's quote ...

The point isn't that Obama is as bad as Bush, overall. It's that he's not much better on some seriously important issues. Being better than Bush, or better than McCain would have been, are extremely low thresholds. Obama himself set very high ones for himself. Given the nature of the beast that is politics, no one should have expected Obama to clear those very high thresholds of his loftiest rhetoric; but there's no excuse for his not clearing those extremely low thresholds by a much greater margin.

-- Standards by Turkana, The Left Coaster

Today's quote ...

Over time Americans will learn that in order to maintain their liberty, they must instantly comply with everything those in authority tell them to do. The police will follow the edicts of their civilian leaders, who sanction torture on many different levels "to keep the people safe." The population will learn eventually that they will automatically be shocked with electricity if they fail to comply and over time they will be conditioned to fall in line regardless of their constitutional right to speak or resist unwarranted intrusion. And then we will truly be free.

-- Following Orders by digby, Hullabaloo

Today's quote ...

The idea that these alleged Democrats would actually insist that uninsured people be forced by law to write huge checks to to the loathed insurance companies is mind-boggling. They seem intent upon taking what should be an historic progressive achievement and turning it into a hated, regressive tax on their own constituents, which is so politically obtuse I don't know how to process it.

... The problem seems to be that political considerations and consequences are irrelevant to the political system. What do we do about that?

-- Politics Without Politics by digby, Hullabaloo

Yesterdays' quotes ...

Today's QUOTES:


Ultimately, we will put the banks back in their regulatory box or they will bankrupt us all. -- Obama And Brandeis by Simon Johnson, The Baseline Scenario

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... by a vote of 345-75, the Democratic-led House just joined the Senate in voting to cut off all funds to ACORN; I'm sure the courageous Congress will be doing that to Blackwater, KBR, Citibank, lawbreaking telecoms and many other corrupt corporations who own them any moment now ... -- The distracting benefits of ACORN hysteria by Glenn Greenwald, salon.com

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Did Obama intend to make himself a lackey of the Banker Robber Barons, almost a court jester whose considerable power can be safely ignored until they need him to hand them some more taxpayer funds?
... this presumably uncoordinated failure to show up speaks volumes about current attitudes on Wall Street. The CEOs of our biggest banks have weighed the man and done the trade. They have no more use for this President, no fear for what he can do to them, and see no reason to show support. They have moved on – presumably back to whatever they were doing before the events of September 2008 so rudely interrupted. And their obvious presumption, contrary to the words and body language of the President on Monday, is that next time – when they need it – the representative of the taxpayer will be there for them again, with generous bailout packages and extraordinary kindness. -- Why Didn’t The Major Bank CEOs Show Up On Monday? by Simon Johnson, The Baseline Scenario

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