For 3/21: “War seems to me to be a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.”– Albert Einstein (from ICH).

For 3/20: “We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor.” — Rev. Joseph Lowery, at Coretta Scott King’s funeral, 2006 (source here).

For 3/19: “A nation divided by lines of race and class is not sustainable as a democracy.” — Jonathan Kozol, at F&M College, 10/8/03.

For 3/18: “Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.” — Abraham Flexner (from ICH)

For 3/17: “Of all net job growth from 2002 to 2007, up to 40 percent was housing-sector related: mortgage brokers, appraisers, real-estate agents, call-center employees, loan officers, construction and home-improvement store workers, etc.” — from Financial Meltdown 101 by Arun Gupta, October 13, 2008.

For 3/16: “…you need to make a clean break from the Bush regime’s law of rule to our declared commitment to the rule of law…” — Ralph Nader, “Open Letter to President-Elect Obama,” 1/9/09

For 3/15: “Poppy Bush was deeply involved with an array of CIA covert operators, Bay of Pigs veterans and right-wing Texas oil industry characters linked to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Baker shows that Bush was actually in Dallas on November 21, 1963, and was probably there on the day of the assassination as well. Baker draws no particular conclusions from the fact, except to document, describe, and underscore the great lengths he took to conceal it. — from a summary of Russ Baker, Family of Secrets, at ReligionDispatches, 1/4/09

For 3/14: “Thank God we have a government.” — inscribed by Jonathan Dillon, watchmaker, inside Lincoln’s pocket watch, 4/13/1861, after the attack on Fort Sumter.

For 3/13: “From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.” — Denis Diderot 1713-1784

For 3/12: “I would be embarrassed to say that I’m in charge of the Republican party in the sad-sack condition it’s in.” — Rush Limbaugh, 3/2/09.

For 3/11: “For generations, the American Dream meant knowing that our children would be better off. It is time to return to that kind of future.” — Susan Gobreski, executive director of Education Voters PA, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 3/10/09.

For 3/10: “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” — Frederick Douglass

For 3/9: “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” — Albert Einstein.

For 3/8: “This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.” — Barack Obama

For 3/7: “Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires.” — Edward W. Said – “Orientalism 25 Years Later,” Counterpunch.org website, 4 August 2003.

For 3/6: “Afghanistan is no longer a downward spiral, it has hit rock bottom. It is, as Bob Herbert put it in The New York Times this week, a total quagmire, one that we’re up to our waists in thanks to Bush. However, if the Obama administration escalates this war, we will be up to our necks. The fact is we simply can’t afford to sink any deeper. Right now we’re facing an economic crisis whose sole comparison is the Great Depression. And yet we’re currently dropping $2 billion a month on military operations in Afghanistan — a figure that stands to double if the Obama administration doubles our troop presence with an additional 30,000 soldiers, as members of his administration have stated. How dare the US spend billions a month on a war that has no military solution, when our nation’s public schools go unfunded, our children go uninsured, and our lower and middle class go from underpaid to unemployed.” —Z.P. Heller, “We Can’t Afford to Sink Deeper into the Afghan Quagmire,” 1/9/09.

For 3/5: “We thought the enemy was Mr. Madoff. I think it’s you. You were the shield; you were the protector.” — Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) to SEC Acting General Counsel Andrew Vollmer (source here>).

For 3/4: “Do we want to be a moderately more equal country or not? This is the question Obama has put before the nation. Let’s debate it without the distracting rhetorical sideshows designed to obscure the stakes in the coming battle.” — E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 3/2/09

For 3/3: “If we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy. I do not think it will be hard to make it clear to Americans that their well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face.” — Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), in a 2/09 op-ed in The Nation (source).

For 3/2: “Japanese citizens go to the doctor anywhere from twice to three times more frequently than Americans. Going to the doctor makes you healthier – who knew! That’s something else to ponder while realizing that despite their frequency, Japanese per capita health care spending is 1/3 of the U.S.” — Tim Foley at Change.org, 2/22/09.

For 3/1: “The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long. But I don’t. I work for the American people…. I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight…. My message to them is this: So am I.” — Barack Obama, 2/28/09 radio address.

For 2/28: “The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did… they always will. They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper spheres.” — Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816; represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, author of large sections of the Constitution for the United States, credited as the author of its Preamble. (From International Clearing House email, 2/26.)

For 2/27: “The lobbyists are fighting health care tooth and nail. And so are Republicans in Congress. They say we can’t afford health care right now. But with health insurance costs driving employers out of business or overseas, we can’t afford NOT to pass health care for every American this year!” — email from MoveOn, 2/26/09.

For 2/26 (“Who’d have ever thought it?” department): “A report by the Institute of Medicine confirmed this week that the uninsured get sicker and die sooner.” — “Attacks mount on ‘preexisting conditions,’” Phila Inquirer 2/26/09

For 2/25: “All I ask is a chance to prove that money won’t make me happy.” — internet lore.

For 2/24: “It may take some time before we see exactly what is going on — whether this is just a transitory policy or whether this is really their policy: ‘No to Guantánamo, but we can just create Guantánamo in some other place.’” — Jack Balkin, Yale Law School professor, commenting on the Obama administration’s continuation of Bush’s policy on detainees in Afghanistan, in NYTimes, 2/22/09, p. 6.

For 2/23: “I could never believe in a God who was not better than I am.” — Mark Twain.

For 2/22: “The right wing extremists have hijacked the Republican party and now want to hijack the WCASD. They got the endorsement based on interviews and not qualifications. That’s scary! What’s more scary is that Sean Carpenter does not have a resume. This will not fly with Republicans and Democrats in that area. Here comes Intelligent Design to the classroom, people. Wake up!” — bmac Feb 22, 2009 11:02 AM, online comment on “Board president upset over endorsements,” Daily Local News, 2/22/09.

For 2/21: “Republicans’ stated concern about the stimulus plan adding to the deficit doesn’t wash. They presided over a near doubling of the national debt to more than $10 trillion.” — Phila Inquirer editorial, 2/18/09 p. A10.

For 2/20: “It’s said that the worst job in the circus is cleaning up after the elephants. There’s a great deal of cleaning up to do.” — Jim Hightower in The Progressive, 2/09, p. 46.

For 2/19: “You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people.” — Colin Powell to George Bush, before the occupation of Iraq.
For 2/18: “Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” — African proverb.

For 2/17: “The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.” — Georges Bernanos.

For 2/16: “…elections aren’t democracy, as we understand it.” Barack Obama, 1/15/09, in the Washington Post, 1/19/09, p. A19.

For 2/15: “Whatever benefits American working people have today didn’t come from the big-heartedness of those who employed them. They were hard-fought gains, through hard-fought battles.” — Studs Terkel, The Progressive 12/06, p. 41.

For 2/14: “The one who rides the horse of greed at a gallop will arrive at the door of shame.” — Malian proverb.

For 2/13:”Do not separate your mind from your tongue.” — African proverb

For 2/12: “Palin’s unending emissions of baffling, evasive incoherence should have disqualified her for any position that involved a desk, let alone placing her one erratic heartbeat from the presidency.” — “15 Most Loathsome People of 2008,” 1/31/09

For 2/11: “I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” — Thomas Jefferson.

For 2/10: “Were the Social Security surplus sequestered for accounting purposes, reflecting the truth that it is already obligated, and were there similar treatment of the other entitlement programs’ liabilities, the deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 would have been $3 trillion rather than $454.8 billion. The report’s numbers show that the true national debt is $56 trillion, not the widely reported $10 trillion.” — George Will, Daily Local News, 2/1/09, p. A12.

For 2/9: “Nobody did a better job on health care than he did as governor of Vermont. I thank him for that.” — President Bill Clinton, about Howard Dean, now being proposed by progressives for Secretary of HHS.

For 2/8: “… in the light of the long history of the common law and democracy which we share with the United States, it was, in our view, very difficult to conceive that a democratically elected and accountable government could possibly have any rational objection to placing into the public domain such a summary of what its own officials reported as to how a detainee was treated by them and which made no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters.” — British judges’ reaction to US threats to cut off intelligence cooperation with UK, which forced them to keep evidence secret on a torture case (source).

For 2/7: “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” — Abraham Lincoln, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, November 21, 1864.

For 2/6: “I don’t see anyone holding this government of Hamid Karzai accountable for what is absolutely endemic corruption. You talk to any women’s groups and they will tell you that in order to go to a meeting in any ministry, just to get into the door, you have to pay a bribe. To go to the 1st floor you have to pay a bribe, to get into the room you have to pay a bribe. It is at a level of corruption that is truly extraordinary…. Do we want a situation in which the Afghani people will actually welcome the return of the Taliban because it will finally usher in some kind of law and order?” — Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, quoted in The Nation, 2/2/09.

For 2/5: “Fiat justitia, ruat coelum (Let justice be done, though the skies may fall).” — Anti-slavery judge William Mansfield, 1768.

For 2/4: Putin reminded the World Economic Forum that “just a year ago, American delegates speaking from this rostrum emphasized the US economy’s fundamental stability and its cloudless prospects. Today, investment banks, the pride of Wall Street, have virtually ceased to exist. In just 12 months, they have posted losses exceeding the profits they made in the last 25 years.” source

For 2/3: “I support this bill because in order to restore a sense of shared prosperity and security, we need to help working Americans exercise their right to organize under a fair and free process and bargain for their fair share of the wealth our country creates. The current process for organizing a workplace denies too many workers the ability to do so. The Employee Free Choice Act offers to make binding an alternative process under which a majority of employees can sign up to join a union. Currently, employers can choose to accept–but are not bound by law to accept–the signed decision of a majority of workers. That choice should be left up to workers and workers alone.” — Barack Obama, as Senator, 2007. Source.

For 2/2: “So, let’s hear it, President Obama: What are our goals in Afghanistan? We’re sending tens of thousands more U.S. troops there, to what end? Uncle Billy here has no idea where all this is going, and he really wants to know what is the truth.” — Harold Jackson, 1/30/09

For 2/1: “As things stand right now, Rush Limbaugh appears to be the de facto head of the Republican party.” — Susan Keith, 1/30/09 (source).

For 1/31: “What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility,… a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.” — Barack Obama, 1/20/09

For 1/30: “War is an equal opportunity destroyer.” — Gordon Bennett, 1/19/09

For 1/29: “Our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.” — Barack Obama, 1/20/09

For 1/28: “I firmly believe that the health security of our citizens, like education, is not just an individual responsibility, but is critical for America’s collective prosperity and broader national security. To meet the challenges of the future we need healthy, educated Americans.” —Congressman Joe Sestak (PA-07)

For 1/27: “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” — Alice Walker

For 1/26: “We’ve long-since given up on the African-American vote. We’re forfeiting the Hispanic vote with unwarranted and unsavory vitriol against immigrants. Youth vote? Gone. We ask for nothing from these idealistic voters, we offer little except chastisement of their lifestyle choices and denial of global warming, and we are woefully behind the Democrats in learning how to connect with them. Soccer moms? They’re not comfortable with much of our social policy agenda, so many are gone as well. NASCAR dads? They’re our last redoubt, and the trends even there are not encouraging as unemployment rises and 401 (k)s are decimated.” — Tom Davis, former congressman, Chairman of the Republican Main Street Partnership, 1/15/09 (source)

For 1/25: “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.” — Abraham Lincoln

For 1/24: “Those who supported Obama got a President and those who supported Hillary got a job.” — anonymous.

For 1/23: “Mr. President, the bright promise of your brilliant campaign for the White House and the high hopes of the millions who thronged the Mall on Tuesday to watch you be sworn in could easily be lost in the mountains and wastelands of Afghanistan.” — George McGovern, 1/22/09.

For 1/22: “O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will bless us with tears, tears for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women in many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS. Bless this nation with anger, anger at discrimination at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Bless us with discomfort, at the easy, simplistic answers we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth about ourselves and our world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.” — from Bishop Eugene Robinson’s invocation at the “We are one” concert, 1/18/09, at Democracy Now!

For 1/21: “…we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” — Barack Obama, 1/20/09.

For 1/20: “We do not want a PAX Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women — not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” — John F. Kennedy (1963)

For 1/19: “We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war.” — Albert Einstein

For 1/18: “It is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return.” — Socrates.

For 1/17: “A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.” — Daniel Webster

For 1/16: “Two years ago, my daughter was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. After brain surgery, she began chemotherapy in a cancer ward where her roommate was a two and half year old boy diagnosed with acute leukemia. My wife and I overheard social workers discussing over a period of six hours whether the boy could stay and receive treatment because he didn’t have health insurance. I am very fortunate that this nation, through my military health care plan, saved my daughter’s life. This was the reason I wanted to serve in Congress — to ensure every child, including that two and a half year old boy, would have that opportunity to live a healthy productive life. I strongly believe in SCHIP and in enhancing the program.” — Conressman Joe Sestak (D-PA7), 1/14, explaining his vote for SCHIP (source).

For 1/15: “I never thought I would see the day when a Justice Department would claim that only the most extreme infliction of pain and physical abuse constitutes torture and that acts that are merely cruel, inhuman and degrading are consistent with United States law and policy, that the Supreme Court would have to order the president of the United States to treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention, never thought that I would see that a president would act in direct defiance of federal law by authorizing warrantless NSA surveillance of American citizens. This disrespect for the rule of law is not only wrong, it is destructive in our struggle against terrorism.” —Eric Holder, minee for Attorney General, 6/08.

For 1/13: “Defenseless populations are always the ones who pay. Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp.” — Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican’s Council for Justice and Peace, 1/8/09 (source: PressTV).

For 1/12: “Few things could reflect better on Panetta’s selection than the fact that Feinstein and Rockefeller — two of the most Bush-enabling Senators — are unhappy with it.” — Glenn Greenwald, 1/5/09, at salon.com.

For 1/11: “This is an emergency. There is one overriding mission for the incoming Obama administration when it comes to dealing with the economy, and that’s putting Americans back to work. Forget the G.O.P.’s mania for tax cuts. Forget, for the time being (but not forever), the ballooning budget deficits. Forget the feel-good but doomed-to-fail effort to play nice-nice with the rabid partisans of the right who were the ones most responsible for ruining the economy in the first place. Put the people back to work! — Bob Herbert, Obama’s Biggest Challenge,” NYTimes 1/10/09.

For 1/10: “Israel’s intervention in the Gaza Strip has been fueled largely by U.S. supplied weapons paid for with U.S. tax dollars.” — background briefing released 1/8/09 by the Arms and Security Initiative of the New York-based New America Foundation (source).

For 1/9: “Few seem to realize that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them.” — Dr. James Lovelock, lecture to the Royal Society, October 29, 2007.

For 1/8: “…an investigation into Warren’s involvement in Africa reveals a web of alliances with right-wing clergymen who have sidelined science-based approaches to combating AIDS in favor of abstinence-only education. More disturbingly, Warren’s allies have rolled back key elements of one of the continent’s most successful initiative, the so-called ABC program in Uganda. Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, told the New York Times their activism is ‘resulting in great damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections which should never have occurred.’” — Max Blumenthal, 1/8/09 (source here).

For 1/7: “I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture.”  — President-elect Barack Obama, November 16, 2008.

For 1/6: “…the United States has the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and sexual coercion in the developed world, the lowest contraceptive use, and the highest rate of abortion.” — Dagmar Herzog, in Utne Reader 1-2/09 p. 9, from New Humanist.

For 1/5 (how we got where we got): “Spread the truth—the laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere.” — Lawrence Summers, while chief economist at the World Bank (1991-93), quoted in Matthew Rothschild, “The Great Recession,” The Progressive, Jan. 09, p. 8.

For 1/4: “Charity is not a substitute for justice.” — Jonathan Kozol, at F&M College, 10/8/03.

For 1/3: “…we need an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that not only creates jobs in the short-term but spurs economic growth and competitiveness in the long-term. And this plan must be designed in a new way – we can’t just fall into the old Washington habit of throwing money at the problem. We must make strategic investments that will serve as a down payment on our long-term economic future. We must demand vigorous oversight and strict accountability for achieving results. And we must restore fiscal responsibility and make the tough choices so that as the economy recovers, the deficit starts to come down.” — Barack Obama, in his 1/3/09 radio address.

For 1/2: “Every form of externally imposed poverty has at its root a lack of respect for the transcendent dignity of the human person.” — Pope Benedict XVI, 1/1/09.

For 1/1: “if people look only to their own interests, our world will certainly fall apart…. It’s not enough, as Jesus said, to put patches on an old suit…. Are we ready to make a profound revision in the dominant development model, to correct it in a farsighted and concerted way. The state of the planet’s environment and above all the cultural and moral crisis demand this, even more than the immediate financial problems.” — Pope Benedict XVI, 1/1/09.

For 12/31: “If they can keep you asking the wrong questions, they never have to worry about the right answers.” — attributed to Thomas Pynchon.

For 12/30: “While not a great banker, Greenspan was definitely a great Republican. He will be remembered for encouraging Democrats to dispense the harsh medicine needed to deal with budget deficits, then helping Republicans fill the punch bowl. ” — Froma Harrop, in “Greenspan’s Tarnished Legacy,” 1/25/06

For 12/29: “The Pentagon is currently set to receive $515 billion for 2009, and $527 billion for 2010. Each sum is roughly five times what the federal government will spend annually on education, housing assistance and environmental protection combined.” — from “Pentagon Tries to Lock Obama Into an Outrageously Bloated Budget,” by Mark Engler, In These Times 12/24/08.

For 12/28: “There are many other, better options that were proposed: avoiding the poisonous mortgage-backed securities and buying equity stakes directly in troubled banks, re-regulating the industry, sending in teams of government auditors to decide the real worth of financial companies and which should live and die, creating a Home Owners’ Loan Corporation to allow the government to buy troubled mortgages directly, allowing local governments to seize foreclosed homes and turn them into subsidized housing to minimize abandonment (which creates ghost neighborhoods, driving down the price of still-occupied homes), public works program, alternative energy investments, a Green New Deal. But these are political questions that depend on organizing and political power to propose, legislate, fund and enact. That’s what will determine if there is a 21st-century New Deal or if Wall Street will get away with the biggest financial crime in world history.” — from “Financial Meltdown 101” by Arun Gupta, October 13, 2008.

For 12/27: “We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’.” — Harold Pinter (died 12/24/08), in his Nobel Prize talk, 12/07/05, at ICH.

For 12/26: “My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest… No country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak… Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism…. True democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village.” — Gandhi

For 12/25: “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.” –Albert Schweitzer.

For 12/24: “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like the evil spirits at the dawn of day.” — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Pierre S. du Pont de Nemours, 24 April 1816.

For 12/23: “I just would prefer if you wouldn’t say that we’re not going to discuss those details.” — Kevin Heine, spokesman for Bank of New York Mellon, in declining to reveal how his employer had used about $3 billion of bailout money, quoted in “Where’d the Bailout Money Go? Shhhh, It’s a Secret,” by Matt Apuzzo, AP, 12/22/08.

For 12/22: “The idea that the market is always right is a crazy idea.” — Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France.

For 12/21: “The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.” Theodore Roosevelt (who ran for president as a populist third-party candidate in 1912).

For 12/20: “He is serving the parochial interest of a very small group of financial people, bankers, investment bankers, fund managers, private equity firms, rather than serving the public. It has hurt the American investor first and the average American taxpayer.” — John C. Bogle, founder and former chair of Vanguard, about Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), quoted in the NYTimes 12/14/08, p. 36.

For 12/19: “Nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees.” — Pope Benedict XVI, Easter message, 2007.

For 12/18: “Public plans like Medicare do a better job of controlling costs. Private insurers are always looking for ways to avoid paying claims or covering sick people. Their mission is not to provide health care, but to increase shareholders’ profits.” — Richard J. Kirsch, national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now.

For 12/17: “He’d rather pay a prostitute than pay auto workers.” — Morgan Johnson, president of the United Auto Workers local representing General Motors workers in Shreveport LA, of Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), client of a Washington prostitution ring and a leader of Senate resistance to assistance to US automakers, 12/12/08. Source.

For 12/16: “The journalism profession was a full-blown disaster and an utter disgrace during the Bush administration, and with all the crises facing the country and the world, in part because of that failure on their part, we cannot afford to have them continue that failure into the Obama administration. With the Bush administration reduced to a running joke at this point, it gives the journalism profession a chance to redeem itself by using these few remaining weeks to establish a new tradition for presidential press conferences and photo-ops—one that can continue on into the new presidency.” — Dave Lindorff, in “Muntadar al-Zaidi Did What We Journalists Should Have Done Long Ago,” at AfterDowningSt.org, 12/15/08.

For 12/15: “After Detroit, Mr. Obama will be asked to bail out Afghanistan. Watch out. The tide has turned against us there because too many Afghans don’t want to buy our politics, or, more precisely, the politics of our ally, the corrupt government of President Hamid Karzai.” — Thomas Friedman, in the NYTimes 12/14/08, p. 10.

For 12/14: “I think we’re literally running the risk of unintentionally doing what the Russians did. And that, if it happens, would be a tragedy.” — Zbigniew Brzezinski, about US forces in Afghanistan, quoted in “Brzezinski: Surge In Afghanistan Risky, Some McCain Backers Want World War IV,” 7/25/08.

“For 12/13: “The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at [Guantanamo].” — Executive summary, Senate Armed Services Committee report released by Senators Levin and McCain, 12/11/08.


For 12/12: “I don’t think it’s malicious: it comes from ignorance and stupidity, definitely.” — British Museum curator John Curtis, about irrecuperable US military destruction at the archeological site of Babylon. Source.

For 12/11: “…likely effects of global warming: arid regions will grow dryer, rising seas will flood coastal areas, melting glaciers will flood communities downstream and then dry up the source of future water supplies, and up to 30 percent of all plant and animal species may become extinct.” —  9/12/08 AP summary of IPCC projections.

For 12/10: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” — Noam Chomsky (1928- ) MIT Professor Emeritus of Linguistics

For 12/9: “No one has ever succeeded in keeping nations at war except by lies.” — Salvador de Madariaga (1886-1978 ), Spanish writer, diplomat, and historian, noted for his service at the League of Nations.

For 12/8: “…if we are to bail out the auto industry, which we should — millions of jobs, businesses, communities, and what’s left of once powerful and proud unions are at stake — then why not talk about its nationalization, too? Why not create a representative body of workers, consumers, environmentalists, suppliers, and other interested parties to supervise the industry’s reorganization and retooling to produce, just as the president-elect says he wants, new green means of transportation — and not just cars?” — Steve Fraser, 12/1/08.

For 12/7: “This focus on money and power may do wonders in the marketplace, but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society. People who have spent all day learning how to sell themselves and to manipulate others are in no position to form lasting friendships or intimate relationships… Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society — one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security.” — Michael Lerner.

For 12/6: “[General] Jim Jones is basically the representative of what President Eisenhower cautioned us about, the military-industrial complex. He is experienced. He’s clever. And now he’s in the White House. So the question is, who’s going to run what? Is Obama going to transform Jim Jones? Is Obama going to transform all these establishment appointees? Or are they going to, in effect, transform him, in contrast to his more liberal rhetoric?” — Ralph Nader, 12/5/08, on DemocracyNow!.

For 12/5: “The International Energy Agency says the world needs to invest $45 trillion between now and 2025 to create clean, energy-efficient systems around the world. Experts tell us that, to ward off climate change, we need the green revolution to happen three times faster than the industrial revolution. This is a crisis, and here is our opportunity.” — John Kerry, 12/4/08.

For 12/4: “…the United States has only one party, the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican.” — Gore Vidal

For 12/3: “We can say goodbye to an administration whose misdeeds have piled so high that the size of the mountain no longer shocks us. In our lifetimes, we will see administrations of varying degrees of competence and integrity, some we’ll agree with and some we won’t. But we will probably never see another quite like the one now finally reaching its end, so mind-boggling a parade of incompetence and malice, dishonesty, and immorality. So at last – at long, long last – we can say goodbye. And good riddance.” — Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, 11/11/08.

For 12/2: “A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property.” — Harold Laski (1930).

For 12/1: “I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain…. This all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators, and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign … [Hillary] Clinton and [James] Steinberg at State should be powerful voices for ‘neo-liberalism’ which is not so different in many respects from ‘neo-conservativism.’” — Max Boot, neoconservative activist, former McCain staffer. Quoted by Jeremy Scahill, 11/30/08.

For 11/30: “America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home.” — Mark Twain.

For 11/29: “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” — James Madison, letter to W.T. Barry 4 August 1822.

For 11/28: “[U]nderstand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost: it comes from me. That’s my job, to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure that my team is implementing it.” — Barack Obama, 11/26/08.

For 11/27: “It’s ludicrous to have people who do not have a scientific background, who are not trained and skilled in the ways of science, make decisions that involve resources, that involve facilities in the scientific infrastructure. You’d just like to think people have more respect for the institution of government than to leave wreckage behind with these appointments.” — James McCarthy, president, American Association for the Advancement of Science, quoted in the Washington Post, 11/22/08.

For 11/26: “The largess of Congress to Wall Street bankers and investors does not extend to the growing ranks of the poor. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Emergency Food Assistance Program donated $240 million in surplus food in 2003 to food banks and other programs. Those donations fell last year to $59 million. States, facing dramatic budget shortfalls, are slashing social assistance programs, including Medicaid, social services and education.” — Chris Hedges, in “Starving for Change,” Truthdig, 11/24/08.

For 11/25: “Americans cannot escape a certain responsibility for what is done in our name around the world. In a democracy, even one as corrupted as ours, ultimate authority rests with the people. We empower the government with our votes, finance it with our taxes, bolster it with our silent acquiescence. If we are passive in the face of America’s official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them.” — Mark Hertzgaard.

For 11/24: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” — Frederick Douglass, 1857.

For 11/23: “For almost two centuries American Christianity, including BJU in its early stages, was characterized by the segregationist ethos of American culture. Consequently, for far too long, we allowed institutional policies regarding race to be shaped more directly by that ethos than by the principles and precepts of the Scriptures. We conformed to the culture rather than provide a clear Christian counterpoint to it. In so doing, we failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandment to love others as ourselves. For these failures we are profoundly sorry.” — Statement about Race at Bob Jones University, posted 11/20/.08

For 11/22: “Mr. Obama was elected a little over two weeks ago. But already it may be dawning on him that keeping promises is harder than making them and setting expectations is easier than meeting them. If he doesn’t know this yet, he’ll know it on Jan. 20.” — Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal, 11/21/08.

For 11/21: “I will close Guantánamo, I will restore habeas corpus. And we will end torture and rendition.” — Barack Obama as candidate.

For 11/20: “Twenty-three senators and 133 House members who voted against the war — and countless other notable individuals who spoke out against it and the dubious claims leading to war — are apparently not even being considered for these crucial positions.” — Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy, about pending appointments to the incoming administration, quoted by Jeremy Scahill, “This is change?,” 11/20/08.

For 11/19: “The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.” — James Madison 1751-1836 American Statesman, Fourth President of the US.

For 11/18: “The 2001 attacks that roused our fury and unleashed the “war on terror” also unleashed a worldwide revulsion against al-Qaida and Islamic terrorism, including throughout the Muslim world, where I was working as a reporter at the time. If we had had the courage to be vulnerable, to build on this empathy rather than drop explosive ordinance all over the Middle East, we would be far safer and more secure today. If we had reached out for allies and partners instead of arrogantly assuming that American military power would restore our sense of invulnerability and mitigate our collective humiliation, we would have done much to defeat al-Qaida. But we did not.” Chris Hedges, 11/17/08, in “America’s Wars of Self-Destruction.”

For 11/17: “This constitutes exactly the scenario which landed these banks in their dilemma in the first place. The Fed is making sub-prime loans to these banks and taking their portfolio of subprime loans as collateral. Where and when does this stop?’’ — ‘’ William Nein, an accountant from Woodland Park, Colorado, quoted in “Lawmakers, Investors Ask Fed for Lending Disclosure (Update 2),” 11/13/08.

For 11/16: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” — John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and author.

For 11/15: “To reward Senator Lieberman with a major committee chairmanship would be a slap in the face of millions of Americans who worked tirelessly for Barack Obama and who want to see real change in our country. Appointing someone to a major post who led the opposition to everything we are fighting for is not ‘change we can believe in.’ I very much hope that Senator Lieberman stays in the Democratic caucus and is successful in regaining the confidence of those whom he has disappointed. This is not a time, however, in which he should be rewarded with a major committee chairmanship.” — Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), 11/14/08.

For 11/14: “The United States and its NATO allies are engaged in a war against a fanatical religious group that is backed by many of the 40-million-member Pathan ethnic group; the U.S.-NATO effort supports a weak, and by general acknowledgment corrupt, American-sponsored government in Kabul. — William Pfaff, in “How Many Villages Must We Bomb Before We Find bin Laden?”

For 11/13: “Life must be lived forwards; however, it can only be understood backwards.” — Soren Kierkegaard.

For 11/12: “Is this the United States Congress or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs? — Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). Full speech here.

For 11/11: “With him, we get a president with the intelligence of a Bill Clinton harnessed to the steely self-discipline of a Vladimir Putin. (I say this admiringly.) With these qualities, Obama will now bestride the political stage as largely as did Reagan.” Charles Krauthammer, “The Campaign Autopsy,” 11/7/08.

For 11/10: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary” — Publius, 1788 (in The Federalist, written by Madison, Jay, Hamilton).

For 11/9: “Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope. That’s the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we’ve already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.” — Barack Obama, Victory Speech, Nov 4, 2008.

For 11/8: “All Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday. They showed a watching world the vitality of America’s democracy and the strides we have made toward a more perfect union. Obama’s life story, and his election, are a testament to the fulfillment of the American story.” — George Bush, in the Rose Garden, November 5.

For 11/7: They’re trying to keep us from voting by holding this in this little building. They don’t want our votes.” — Jessica Perpignan, Lincoln University sophomore, referring to the Republican commissioners’ refusal to approve a more adequate polling place at the historically black university.

For 11/6: “No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower, born 1890, president 1952-60.

For 11/5: “… this is the week for all of us to revel in this great moment. Be humble about it. Do not treat the Republicans in your life the way they have treated you the past eight years. Show them the grace and goodness that Barack Obama exuded throughout the campaign. Though called every name in the book, he refused to lower himself to the gutter and sling the mud back. Can we follow his example? I know, it will be hard.” — Michael Moore, 11/5/08.

For 11/4: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” — Martin Luther King. Jr.

For 11/3: “Our best revenge is to be who we are.” — Cecilia Holland, Chronicle of Higher Ed, 9/28/01, p. B7

For 11/2: “Little is riskier to the national interest than more of the same.” — Jim Leach, former congressman (R – Iowa, from 1977-1907).

For 11/1: “Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer-reaches of American politics.” — John McCain, 8 long years ago, per his cousin’s non-endorsement of him.

For 10/31: “The United States has the world’s best universities and attracts the world’s finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.” — Jacques Monbiot, 10/31/08. Source.

For 10/30: “History is a battle between education and catastrophe.” — HG Wells

For 10/29:“We see things not as they are but as we are.”— Anaïs Nin

For 10/28: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility”
— Longfellow

For 10/27: “One of the Republican Party’s major successes over the last few decades has been to persuade many of the working poor to vote for tax breaks for billionaires.” — Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, 11/3/04.

For 10/26: “…the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him. ‘From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for recruiting,’ said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.” —Nicholas Kristof, 10/26/08

For 10/25: “The time is always right to do what is right.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

For 10/24: “The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.” — John Flynn, 1944

For 10/23: “When in countries we call civilized, we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong in the system of government…. Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor?” — Thomas Paine.

For 10/22: “Campaign and party officials on both sides of the aisle say they are well-positioned to win the county. Republicans point to an expanded campaign volunteer force that has moved beyond the conservative base that propelled Bush to victory, to a better-rounded group flush with independent voters who support McCain. Democrats point to a campaign and party ground organization that has never been stronger, along with demographics and a national political atmosphere that favors their candidates.” — Dan Hirschhorn, in “Chester County: Pennsylvania’s very own ‘swing state,’” 10/22/08.

For 10/21/08: “I asked former president Jimmy Carter what he thinks the next US president might have to do in his first 100 days. He said it would take 10 minutes, not 100 days. I can do no beter than paraphrase his reply: ‘My country will never again torture a prisoner. We will never again attack another country unless our security is directly threatened. Human rights will be the foundation of our foreign policy. We will act on global warming. We will honor international agreements. We will bring security and peace to Israel and all its neighbors and treat them all on an equal basis.” — Philippe Sands, author, Torture Team, quoted in Mother Jones, 8-9/08, p. 40.

For 10/20: “Over the weekend, a false statement claiming to be from the Obama campaign declared that voting for the straight Democratic ticket would negate a vote for Sen. Barack Obama, a complete lie that has made its way across the Internet. No one has accepted claimed responsibility for the false claims.” T. J.Rooney, chair, PA Dem Committee.

For 10/19: “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.” — Goya

For 10/18: “No, I’m not anti-Bush; I’m anti-Bush behavior. In other words, I’m against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his Administration.” —Viggo Mortensen (actor), in The Progressive, 11/05, p. 41.

For 10/17: “Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quoted by Barb McIlvaine Smith, 10/12/08.

For 10/16: “Republicans aren’t saying anything about another more serious voter-registration scandal: the fact that about one-third of eligible voters are not registered. The racial gaps are significant and particularly disturbing. According to a study by Project Vote, a voting-rights group, in 2006, 71 percent of eligible whites were registered, compared with 61 percent of blacks, 54 percent of Latinos and 49 percent of Asian-Americans.” — NYTimes Editorial, 10/16/08.

For 10/15: “…conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me. While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of ‘conservative’ government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case. So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.” — Christopher Buckley, 10/14/08, on resigning from the National Review.

For 10/14: “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” — John McCain, about the evolution of Republican mentality in Washington. after 1994.

or 10/13: “And then John selected Sarah Palin as his running mate…. This was the sign that McCain had completely morphed from the part of him that was decent and a war hero, into the part of him that was a desperate, anchorless man, descending into the kind of blind panic that would allow him to do anything, no matter how base, how ugly, how counter-productive.” DocJess at DemConWatch, 10/11/08.

For 10/12: “Just as they were wrong about trickle down, conservative Republican politicians and their closest buddies in the commentariat have been wrong on one important national issue after another, from Social Security (conservatives opposed it from the start and have been trying to undermine it ever since) to Medicare (Ronald Reagan saw it as the first wave of socialism) to the environment, energy policy and global warming.” — Bob Herbert, 10/11/08.

For 10/11: “Instead of prosperity trickling down, pain has trickled up.” — Barack Obama.

For 10/10: “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

For 10/9 (family tax values, or, how to game the system): “The tax returns indicated that Palin paid no taxes on $16,951 in state payments she received as meal and incidental expenses when she stayed at her home in Wasilla instead of at the governor’s mansion in Juneau…. Palin stayed in her Wasilla home 312 nights, or 54 percent of the time, when she claimed reimbursements from Dec. 4, 2006, through June 30, 2008. Although her staff has said most of her work as governor is performed in Anchorage, 45 miles from Wasilla, Finance Director Kim Garnero said the state capital in Juneau is considered her duty station, making her eligible for the non-taxable meal and expense payments.” — Dan Morgan, “Palins’ Assets Are Worth Up to $2.1 Million” in the NYTimes editorial posted 10/2/08.

For 10/3: “Soon after George W. Bush became president in 2001, meetings at the White House between Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and administration officials became more frequent. According to mortgage industry insiders I have interviewed, direction soon began to come down from the banks to mortgage brokers to falsify borrower income information to allow them to qualify for loans that were otherwise out of reach. Someone at a very high level had to start the ball rolling. The banks would not have done it on their own without political clearance. That is not the way the system works.” — Richard C. Cook, 10/1/08

For 10/2: “But is not man to man a prey? / Beasts kill for hunger, men for pay.” — John Gay, “The Elephant the the Bookseller” (Fable X).

For 10/1: “For, when we risque no contradiction, / It prompts the tongue to deal in fiction.” — John Gay, “The Elephant the the Bookseller” (Fable X).

For 9/30: “When people get engaged, they will get the kind of government they deserve and respect.” —Barbara McIlvaine Smith (D-156)

For 9/29: “When President Bush went on television last week to drum up support for the bailout package, he looked almost dazed, like someone who’d just climbed out of an auto wreck. Our entire economy is in danger, he said. He should have said that he, along with his irresponsible Republican colleagues and their running buddies in the corporate and financial sectors, put the entire economy in danger. John McCain and his economic main man, Phil (this is a mental recession) Gramm, were right there running with them.” Bob Herbert, “When madmen reign,” 9/29/08.

For 9/28: “She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first. Do it for your country.” Kathleen Parker, in National Review online, 9/28/08.

For 9/27: “If by ‘Liberal’ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal.’” — John Fitzgerald Kennedy

For 9/26: “There are about 30 scams the Republicans are deliberately using, particularly in the swing states to get Democratic voters off the rolls. These scams originate in the so-called Help America Vote Act which was passed after the Florida debacle in the year 2000. It was originally suggested by Democrats and Republicans but it was passed by a Republican congress with a Republican senate and a Republican president. And instead of reforming what happened in Florida it basically institutionalized all the problems that happened in Florida. And institutionalized a series of impediments that make it very difficult for Democrats to register, for Democrats to vote and then for Democrats to have their vote counted.” — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 9/22/08. Source.

For 9/25: “This doesn’t smell right. This is not the way a tested hero behaves. Somebody’s putting something in his Metamucil. You don’t suspend your campaign. Do you suspend your campaign? No, because that makes me think, well, you know, maybe there will be other things down the road –- if he’s in the White House, he might just suspend being president. I mean, we’ve got a guy like that now! Are we suspending the campaign because there’s an economic crisis, or because the poll numbers are sliding?” — David Letterman of John McCain, 9/24

For 9/24: “We are already fighting World War III and I am sorry to say we are winning. It is the war against the earth.”
— Raymond Dasmann.

For 9/23: “Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked The Wall Street Journal to editorialize that “McCain untethered” — disconnected from knowledge and principle — had made a “false and deeply unfair” attack on Cox that was “unpresidential”…. — George Will, 9/23.

For 9/22: “The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.” — Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) 28th US President

For 9/21:”The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent and labour power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen. [...] There is none that disperses its control more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media – none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.” — Howard Zinn, from ‘A People’s History of the United States,’ first published 1981.

For 9/20: “If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.” — Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), 9/19. Source.

For 9/19 (Religion and Politics department): 1) “People should straighten out their religious beliefs before they start making political decisions.” 2) “She is anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage, anti-Big Oil, a lifetime member of the N.R.A., she hunts, she fishes — she is the perfect woman!” 3) “Are they going to make it the Black House?” — three parishioners at Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church, quoted in NYTimes article “Abortion Issue Again Dividing Catholic Votes”, 9/16/08.

For 9/18: “Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared.” — David Brooks, 9/16/08.

For 9/17: “It is not the function of our government to keep the citizens from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.” — Justice Robert H. Jackson, quoted by Judge Marjorie O. Rendell, “U.S. needs an educated citizenry,” Phila Inquirer, 9/15/08, p. A17.

For 9/16: “Taxpayers in the 6th Congressional District will pay $1.8 billion for Iraq spending approved to date.” — Liz Conroy, in a press release as Bob Roggio’s campaign manager, 9/16/08

For 9/15: “Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere? These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign – and they’re all out-and-out lies.” — Paul Krugman, in “Blizzard of Lies,” NYTimes, 9/11/08.

For 9/14: “…the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.” — Paul Krugman, in “Blizzard of Lies,” NYTimes, 9/11/08.

For 9/13: “You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy, but you cannot have both.”
– Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

For 9/12: “Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.” — Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

For 9/11: “…the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.” — Paul Krugman, “Blizzard of Lies,” NYTimes,9/11/08.

For 9/10: “On Oct. 22, 2006, the Anchorage Daily News asked Palin and the other candidates: “Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?” Her response: “Yes. I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now – while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.” — Alaska journalist Dermot Cole, documenting Sarah Palin’s support for the “bridge to nowhere” (AKA Gravina Island bridge). Full story here.

For 9/9: “People are out there saying ‘Drill, baby, drill!’ What planet are they inhabiting?” — Thomas Friedman, on Fresh Air, 9/8/08.

For 9/8: “Harry Truman followed his Cold War advisers and fell in behind the French militarists who wished to re-colonize Vietnam. That decision led to a long tragic and bloody history that eventually included John McCain, who, to break the Vietnamese of their audacious desire for independence, flew a supersonic jet over the city of Hanoi and dropped bombs on whatever the targets of the day might be. The fact is, from the altitude he worked, McCain knew little of the consequences of his bombs. While doing this, he was shot down.” — John Grant, in “The Humiliated Warrior and the Frontier Mom,” 9/8.

For 9/7: “Philosophy should always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down the walls of cities and murders the women and children amid the flames and the purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children’s pastime like mere highway robbery.” — Stephen Crane

For 9/6: “Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states are prepared for the next war.” — Wendell Berry

For 9/5: “I can virtually guarantee you, without a legislative basis, federal courts are not going to be willing to uphold the indefinite detention of unlawful combatants.” — John B. Bellinger II, top lawyer at the State Dept. to senior White House officials, 8/06, quoted in “White House Dismissed Legal Advice On Detainees,” Washington Post, 6/21/08, p. A1.

For 9/4: “If you’ve got George Bush’s track record, and John McCain voting 90 percent of the time in agreement with George Bush, then you probably don’t want to talk about issues either. If you don’t have any issues to run on, I guess you want it to be about personalities.” — Barack Obama, 9/3/08, replying to McCain campaign manager Rick Davis saying “This election is not about issues.”

For 9/3: “I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.” — Philip Butler, 8-year prisoner of war in North Vietnam, about his Naval Academy friend John McCain.

For 9/2: ËœDemocracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her…. Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who were being unlawfully detained…. Goodman’s crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press…. — Democracy Now!, 9/1/08.

For 9/1: Three quotes about Sarah Palin’s unmarried daughter’s pregnancy: 1) “Life happens.” — McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt. 2) “An American family.” — McCain adviser Mark Salter. 3) “We’re all sinners.” — Mathew Staver, dean of Liberty University School of Law. Source.

For 8/31: “When government is controlled by private economic interests, that is fascism.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938.

For 8/30: “Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies – that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same.” — Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, 8/30 (source).

For 8/29: “America, we are better than the last eight years. We are a better country than this…. The record’s clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Sen. McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change….” — Barack Obama, 8/28/08

For 8/28: “Barack Obama knows the world will be more impressed with the power of our example than the examples of our power.” — Bill Clinton, 8/27/08.

For 8/27: “After eight years of a White House waiting hand and foot on big oil, John McCain offers more of the same. At a time of skyrocketing fuel prices, when American families are struggling to keep their gas tanks full, John McCain voted 25 times against renewable and alternative energy. Against clean biofuels. Against solar power. Against wind energy.” — Brian Schweitzer, Governor of Montana, 8/26/08.

For 8/26: “The list of foreign policy failures this week is breathtaking,” noted a statement released on Friday by the National Security Network (NSN), a mainstream group of former high-ranking officials critical of the Bush administration’s more-aggressive policies. Prominent New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued that the Russian move on Georgia, in particular, signaled “the end of the Pax Americana – the era in which the United States more or less maintained a monopoly on the use of military force”. — Jim Lobe, in “A Really Rough Stretch for Pax Americana.”

For 8/25: “You can’t change America when you supported George Bush’s policies 95% of the time.” Senator Joe Biden, email, 8/24/08, about John McCain.

For 8/24: “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

For 8/23: “He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David.” — Maureen Dowd of George W. Bush, NYTimes 8/17/08, p. 11.

For 8/22: “McCain would lift after-tax incomes an average of about 3 percent, or $1,400 annually, for middle-income taxpayers by 2012. But, in sharp contrast to Obama, he would cut taxes for those in the top 1% by more than $125,000, raising their after-tax income an average 9.5 percent.” — Roberton Williams and Howard Gleckman, in “A Updated Analysis of the 2008 Presidential Candidates’ Tax Plans: Executive Summary – August 18, 2008.” More here.

For 8/21: “John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father and grandfather were four star admirals in the Navy. Some have suggested that might have played a role in McCain being admitted. His academic record was awful. And it shows over and over again whenever McCain is called upon to think on his feet.” — Jack Cafferty at cnn.com, 8/18/08

For 8/20: “It’s all a lot of sword-rattling, but…it’s a sham.” — Philip Coyle, former top US weapons tester, about Washington’s missile agreement with Poland. Source.

For 8/19: “Most working families today do not have homes that have anywhere near ten rooms. John McCain has ten houses. Many working people in America have to work two and three jobs to provide for their families and pay their car loans. John McCain hops on a private jet. Is it any wonder why McCain champions a George Bush agenda of cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, helping oil companies turn record profits, and leaving working families to fend for themselves? McCain’s velvet world leaves him utterly unprepared to make the tough choices we need to restore the middle class and ensure that everyone in America has quality, affordable health insurance.” — Andy Stern, President, Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

For 8/18: “During the past eight years, our energy policy has been directed by the two oil men in the White House. Their failed policy has increased our dependence on foreign oil, damaged our economy, and left consumers paying record prices at the pump.” — Nancy Pelosi, 8/16/08, quoted in NYTimes 8/17, p. 15.

For 8/17: “… I have agreed with President Bush far more than I have disagreed. And on the transcendent issues, the most important issues of our day, I’ve been totally in agreement and support of President Bush.” — John McCain, 2005.

For 8/16: “The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.” — Democratic platform 2008. More here.

For 8/15: “”What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” — Christopher Hitchens.

For 8/14: “Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity. Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities. Outlawed by all governments everywhere. Possession is normally punishable by death.” — John Gilmore, author (1935- )

For 8/13: “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.” — John F. Kennedy to the UN, 1961.

For 8/12: “The administration adopted something of a “my way or the highway” philosophy in foreign affairs when it took office 7 1/2 years ago. I never liked that. All that talk of the “last remaining superpower.” Sounded too arrogant. The world is too dangerous for that…. The “last remaining superpower” in world history has a bad habit of becoming the “former superpower,” whether it was the Greeks, Persians, Egyptians or Romans.” — Jim Callahan, Daily Local News, in “Another superpower heard from,” p. A8.

For 8/11: “No fight for civil liberties ever stays won.” — Roger Baldwin.

For 8/10: “The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.” — Bertrand Russell: Freedom, Harcourt Brace, 1940.

For 8/9: “Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.” — Bertrand Russell

For 8/8: “Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to
unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred.” – Bertrand Russell, Unpopular essays

For 8/7: “The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

For 8/6: “The war is over and now we are just an occupation force.” — John Grant, 8/4/08.

For 8/5: “Well before Senators Barack Obama and John McCain rose to the top of their parties, a partisan shift was under way at the local and state level. For more than three years starting in 2005, there has been a reduction in the number of voters who register with the Republican Party and a rise among those who affiliate with Democrats and, almost as often, with no party at all….” Jennifer Steinhauer, in the NYTimes, 8/5. Full article here.

For 8/4: “Usury, to be clear about it, is rich people taking advantage of poor people by lending them money on terms that are sure to make them fail. All three of the great religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, had a moral prohibition against usury because they recognized that society can’t function like that. People of great wealth and their institutions like banks naturally have the power to overwhelm people of lesser means. And you can’t allow that in a decent society. It won’t survive.” — 7/19/08

For 8/3: “…the way to deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and some others like it is to nationalize them. Make them agencies of the federal government. That’s what they were originally. And they performed for many years a really valuable service to housing markets.” — 7/19/08

For 8/2: “I think in the next year, two years, five years, you’re going to see both political parties floundering. What do we believe about all this stuff? We’ve told folks this, you know, lovely story for 20, 25 years about the magic of the marketplace. Do we still want to kind of prop that up? That’s where they are now. They’re still trying to prop up the marketplace vision and make it work again. It’s over. I think events will demonstrate that.” — 7/19/08

For 7/27: “Our colleagues hold that the president can order the military to seize from his home and indefinitely detain anyone in this country — including an American citizen — even though he has never affiliated with an enemy nation, fought alongside any nation’s armed forces, or borne arms against the United States anywhere in the world.” — Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, quoted in NYTimes editorial, 7/20.

For 7/26: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” — George Orwell

For 7/25: “Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.” — George Orwell

For 7/24: “Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.” — George Orwell

For 7/23: “Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends…I believe that as soon as people want peace in the world they can have it. The only trouble is they are not aware they can get it.” — John Lennon

For 7/22: “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” — George Orwell

For 7/21: “All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” — George Orwell.

For 7/20: “If a Democratic House of Representatives will pass a retroactive law in order to legalize the criminal violations of a Republican regime, the same House will pass a retroactive law making illegal what you did legally yesterday. No one is any longer safe in America. By abandoning the US Constitution, Republicans and Democrats have made America as potentially unsafe as Zimbabwe for anyone who takes exception to the government.” — Paul Craig Roberts, in “A Totally Lawless Regime,” 6/20/08.

For 7/19: “I don’t remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously.More… Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly.” — Al Gore, 7/17/08.

For 7/18: “We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet.” — Al Gore, 7/17/08.

For 7/17: “I am prepared to sacrifice every so-called privilege I possess in order to have a few rights.” — Inez Milholland, Suffragist, 1909.

For 7/16: “A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it’s going to get. — Ian Williams Goddard.

For 7/15: “There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq.” — General David Petraeus.

For 7/14:”I have long learned not to be shocked at the cravenness, the cowardice, the stupidity and the corruption of the Bush Administration… but they still manage to shock me with the small-minded pettiness that governs them.” — Posted by Oregon Activist at TPM.com, 7/11/08

For 7/13 ["On Bush's desk" department]: “A federal court confirmed that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind behind the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa by convicting four of his operatives for those crimes. Bin Laden, who continues to plot against Americans from Afghanistan, almost certainly ordered the bombing of the USS Cole, which makes him responsible for more American deaths in the past eight years than any other foreign actor. Ahmad Ressam, an Afghanistan-trained operative who was apprehended bringing bomb material into the United States before the millennium, testified this month that his target was Los Angeles International Airport — a clear sign of these terrorists’ desire to attack Americans at home.” — Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, in “Defusing a Time Bomb; A more effective approach to Afghanistan,” Washington Post, July 16, 2001.

For 7/12: “Media portray wealthy candidates who advocate progressive economic proposals as out-of-touch hypocrites. Bizarrely, wealthy candidates who advocate conservative economic policies that would actually enrich themselves often escape similar scrutiny of their personal finances.” — Jamison Foser, at Media Matters, 5/11/07

For 7/11: “My position on Iraq is going to separate me from the other candidates. I do not believe in leaving any residual troops. I would bring them back within a year, starting with my first day in office.” — Bill Richardson, October 2007.

For 7/10: “I sit on the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, and I am one of the few members of this body who has been fully briefed on the warrantless wiretapping program. And, based on what I know, I can promise that if more information is declassified about the program in the future, as is likely to happen either due to the Inspector General report, the election of a new president, or simply the passage of time, members of this body will regret that we passed this legislation.” — Senator Russ Feingold on the Senate floor, 7/9/08. Source.

For 7/9: “If you want freedom of the press, you have to own one.” — H.L. Mencken.

For 7/8: “We have always known that greed was bad ethics; now we know it is bad economics.” — FDR.

For 7/7: “Jesse Helms may have started as a Democrat and finished as a Republican. But he always sang “Dixie.” And those who sang it with him are now working for John McCain. Alex Castellanos, the veteran Republican media consultant who produced the so-called “White Hands” commercial that Helms used against Gantt, has according to the Washington Post been advising McCain’s campaign on media strategy.” — John Nichols, “Jesse Helms, John McCain and the Mark of the White Hands,” in The Nation 7/5/08.

For 7/6: “It should be understood that the children of Iraq, of China, and of Africa, children everywhere in the world, have the same right to life as American children.” — Howard Zinn.

For 7/5: “Even though I’m a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.” — George Herbert Walker Bush, 1999 [cf. the Valerie Plame case].

For 7/4: “Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation and a nation of nonbelievers.” — Barack Obama, 2006.

For 7/3: “As to myself, I love peace, and I am anxious that we should give the world still another useful lesson, by showing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.” — Thomas Jefferson.

For 7/2: “If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.” — Thomas Jefferson.

For 7/1: “Football games are won & lost, Mr.Thomas. Wars never have winners.” — Fred Rothman, refuting an analogy of Cal Thomas, 6/28/08.

For 6/30: “if you think FISA is the last bastion of the Fourth Amendment, I have bad news for you. If FISA is indeed the last bastion, the Fourth Amendment is already gone. The current bill will not fix the problem, no matter whether telecoms are given the affirmative defense of acting under color of law. The problem exists in the USA PATRIOT Act, not in FISA.” — NCrissieB, 6/26/08

For 6/29: [warning for the day] “The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.” — Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages.

For 6/28: “When will Congress find their spine? They voted for more money for war, they passed the FISA bill, dangerously eroding our privacy, and now they’re coming out with more legislation to increase the likelihood of war with Iran!” — email from CodePink, 6/27/08.

For 6/27: “I think you’ve got to give one to the terrorists for a notch on our Fourth Amendment. They really did some damage today in this so-called compromise. Contrary to what the speaker [Pelosi] said, it really does hurt the Constitution so it’s very troubling and it’s not a good day for civil liberties particularly.” — John Dean, 6/20/08; source here

For 6/26: “The core of patriotism comes down to the questions, Are we caring for each other? Are we upholding the values of our founders? Are we willing to sacrifice on behalf of future generations?’” — Barack Obama.

For 6/25: “The Pennsylvania League of Women Voters calls Pennsylvania one of most gerrymandered states in all the country. That’s saying something. Who would have thought the Pennsylvania Legislature was that competent at anything?” — Jim Callahan, columnist, Daily Local News, 6/22/08.

For 6/24: “No matter where I’ve gone in this country, I’ve met working Americans who feel like the American dream is slipping out of reach. They’re working harder for less. The cost of everything from a tank of gas to a bag of groceries, from health care to college tuition, is going up and up. It’s getting harder to save and harder to retire. And that’s why so many Americans are counting on us to win in November and bring about the change they so desperately need.” — Barack Obama, email to supporters, 6/23/08.

For 6/23: “In big cities and small towns; among men and women; young and old; black, white, and brown – Americans share a faith in simple dreams. A job with wages that can support a family. Health care that we can count on and afford. A retirement that is dignified and secure. Education and opportunity for our kids. Common hopes. American dreams.” — Barack Obama, May 9, 2008

For 6/22: “Gerrymandering is a corrupt system of incumbent-coddling, which the Capitol’s old guard is deploying its tricks to preserve. A public clamor supports several reform measures now in play that call for sane, nonpartisan rules for shaping election districts. But the bills have been stranded in committee.” — Chris Satullo, “Sliced, diced and gerrymandered,” Phila Inquirer, 6/21/08.

For 6/21: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” — 4th Amendment.

For 6/20: ["Good Old Days of Democracy" department] “Our government … is necessarily identified with the interests of its people.” — historian and secretary of the navy George Bancroft (1800-1891)

For 6/19: “After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” — Major Gen. Antonio Taguba (retired; author of a report on abuses at Abu Ghraib prison), 6/18/08

For 6/18: “Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running and robbing the country. That’s our problem.” —Howard Zinn, from Failure to Quit.

For 6/17: “Even dogs and cats know we need change.” — Al Gore, 6/16/08.

For 6/16: “McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory.” — Ross Perot, quoted in Sharon Churcher, “The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind,” 6/9/08

For 6/15: “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law.” — Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy, in majority opinion upholding habeas corpus for Guantánamo detainees, 6/12/08.

For 6/14: “Article II: Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression.” — Dennis Kucinich, 2nd of 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush, presented to Congress 6/9/08.

For 6/13: “Our physical strength has come to be seen not as a solace but as a threat, not as a guarantee of stability and order but as a source of intimidation, violence and torture. We have dangerously depleted what (former president Ulysses S.) Grant … identified as our greatest source of international power – our reputation for what he called conscience.” — Bill Delahunt, chairman of the congressional subcommittee on international organizations, human rights and oversight, 6/10.

For 6/12: “It’s an international network of evangelical activists in government, military and business. The Family is dedicated to this idea that Christianity has gotten it all wrong for two thousand years by focusing on the poor, the suffering and the weak. The Family says that instead, what Christians should do is minister to the up-and-out — as opposed to the down-and-out — to those that are already powerful.” — Jeff Sharlet, about his book “The Family,” 6/12/08.

For 6/11: “War, at first, is the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn’t any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone’s being worse off.” — Karl Kraus, writer (1874-1936).

For 6/10: “McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory.” — Ross Perot, quoted in Sharon Churcher, ““The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind,” 6/9/08

For 6/9: “It’s hurting America that journalists consider their first loyalty to be to their subjects, and not to the people they’re reporting for.” — Jane Hamscher, quoted in Jacques Steinberg, “For New Journalists, All Bets, but Not Mikes, Are Off,” NYTimes, 6/8/08

for 6/8: “There are 100 voting members of the US Senate, 2 from each state in the Union…. Theoretically, … there are either 33 or 34 seats up each even year. However, this year, there are 35 Senate seats up for election, due to people having been appointed to fill the seat of others (due to death or retirement)…. So let’s look at who’s up this year…. We have 23 Republicans and 13 Democrats…. If we parse the list, and take out the safe seats (or as reasonably sure as we can be 5 months out, you never know where those indictments will come from), we’re left with 18 Republicans, and 1 Democrat….

for 6/7: “…A good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.” Sen. Edward Kennedy, eulogy for his brother Robert, 1968.

For 6/6: For 5/8: “WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.” — Major Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler (born in West Chester PA, 1881), “War is a Racket.”