Posts Tagged ‘ Quote ’

Today’s Quote: Well-Paid National Tea Party Organizers “Use and Abuse” Local Tea Party Volunteers

February 17, 2011
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What a shock – greedy Republicans at the top scamming the gullible lower on the ladder for money! Somebody tell Fox News! “[The national] Tea Party Patriots don’t really do anything for the local groups … There are a lot of frustrated people. There are a lot of other people in the country who’ve done events and have gotten screwed over. We are all volunteers. We do not get paid like [Jenny Beth Martin, national TPP director] does. They don’t say, ‘Thank you.’ They use you and abuse you.” – Joy McGraw, Georgia state Tea Party Patriots coordinator, as quoted by Stephanie Mencimer at Mother Jones.com. McGraw was stuck with a $5,000 bill for catering that was supposed to be paid by the national TPP organization.

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Today’s Quote: Deere Depositors

December 23, 2010
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I thought of LTSaloon columnist Ana Grarian when I read this quote on the extent small family farmers have been squeezed out of their livelihoods by Big Agra: “The only difference between a pigeon and the American farmer today is that a pigeon can still make a deposit on a John Deere.” – Jim Hightower

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Today Quote: America’s Crumby Future?

December 4, 2010
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With all of the Republicans and some of the Democrats currently running the country apparently addicted to dragging us back to the age of indigent serfs and moneyed aristocrats, abetted by a president who still seems to think you can negotiate with the Inner Circle of Hell and not get burned, how long before this little playlet becomes a reality? Peasant: “Sir, your tables are groaning under the weight of the banquet upon them. My children are starving and all I can give them are your crumbs. Won’t you help us, please?” Overlord: “Give me back my crumbs.” – Posted by ctrl-z November 22nd, 2010, to “There Will Be Blood,” by Paul Krugman, Common Dreams, Nov. 22, 2010.

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Today’s Quotes: Despite Their Cries for Liberty, the Teabaggers Are Right-Wing Authoritarian Followers

October 3, 2010
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Dr. Bob Altemeyer, author of the massive 50-year study on the Authoritarian Follower personality, offers his opinion on the Tea Partiers. “Suppose slavery still existed in the United States, but the federal government was trying to end it. However Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and so on told their audiences that slavery was a good thing, recognized by the Founding Fathers, endorsed in the Old Testament, the natural order of things, an issue for individual states to decide, protected by an individual’s inalienable right to do what he wanted with his property, and so on. I doubt Abraham Lincoln would find these arguments compelling. But how much trouble do you think the Patriotic Association of Slave Owners would have getting today’s Tea Partiers out to campaign for slavery in America?” – Dr. Bob Altemeyer, author of “The Authoritarians,” from “Comment on the Tea Party Movement“ [.pdf file]. “According to research by Altemeyer, right-wing authoritarians tend to exhibit cognitive errors and symptoms of faulty reasoning. Specifically, they are more likely to make incorrect inferences from evidence and to hold contradictory ideas that result from compartmentalized thinking. They are also more likely to uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs, and they…

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Today’s Quote: Who Does This Sound Like?

September 6, 2010
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“[He] was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his ‘ideas’ almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store.” “He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts — figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect.” “Aside from his dramatic glory, [He] was a Professional Common Man. “Oh, he was common enough. He had every prejudice and aspiration of every American Common Man. He believed in the desirability and therefore the sanctity  [and] superiority of anyone who possessed a million dollars.” “But he was the Common Man twenty-times-magnified by his oratory, so that while the other Commoners could understand his every purpose, which was exactly the same…

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Today’s Quote: Revealing the True Class Differences in America

August 10, 2010
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And it’s no doubt gotten worse since this was written in 1984 — just look at the shabby way the heroic workers who became ill from Ground Zero have been treated: “Every year 100,000 workers are killed or die of work-related accidents or disease; 400,000 are disabled; 6 million are hurt at work. In The Working-Class Majority (1974), Andrew Levison says, ‘All the clich豠and pleasant notions of how the old class divisionshave disappeared are exposed as hollow phrases by the simple fact that American workers must accept serious injury and even death as part of their daily reality while the middle class does not.’ And he goes on: ‘Imagine the universal outcry that would occur if every year several corporate headquarters routinely collapsed like mines, crushing sixty or seventy executives. Or suppose that all the banks were filled with an invisible noxious dust that constantly produced cancer in the managers, clerks, and tellers. Finally, try to imagine the horrorif thousands of university professors were deafened every year or lost fingers, hands, sometimes eyes, while on their jobs.’” – Paul Fussell, from his book “Class,” Ballantine Books (1984).

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Today’s Quote: Why Indeed?

June 27, 2010
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“Why would Fox News so vociferously and ardently defend BP when even Republicans were fighting to get in front of microphones to denounce Rep. Barton’s apology and the company’s approval rating is, quite literally, somewhere between O.J. Simpson and Saddam Hussein? It’s the same reason they attacked Obama when he sent 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and the same reason they attacked him for asking that the country pray for the Gulf coast. It doesn’t matter what Obama does, Fox News will automatically gainsay it. It doesn’t matter if they make no sense, look foolish, or wildly contradict themselves — if Obama does it, it’s wrong. He could replace Teddy Roosevelt’s face on Mount Rushmore with Ronald Reagan’s and they’d attack him for desecrating an American landmark.” – Simon Maloy, Eric Hananoki, Ben Dimiero, “Fox News’ Oily Sheen,” Media Matters, June 25, 2010. Watch For It! The latest Noise Machine Strawman-from-the-Ozone accusation: There are blind, unquestioning Obama supporters out there who want him to declare himself dictator, just like that Hitler fella! Except for a comment from Woody Allen (hint to humorless righties: he’s a satirist as well as a director) from a Spanish newspaper, I have found no progressive…

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Today’s Quote-to-Quote: BP ‘Cares’ About the ‘Small People’

June 16, 2010
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“I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are really companies that don’t care, but that is not the case in BP. We care about the small people.” – Carl-Henric Svanberg, Board Chairman of BP Sweden, as quoted by the Washington Post, June 16, 2010. “Only the little people pay taxes.” – Leona Helmsley, the ‘Queen of Mean.’ Yes, and the little people also bail out Wall Street, the banks, and provide large tax breaks for the big oil companies. On MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Show this afternoon, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said ExxonMobil made $19 billion in profit last year (it was a slow period) and paid zero dollars in taxes. Not only that, but they received $165 million back from the IRS of the ‘small people’s’ money. Rest easy, fellow Lilliputians.

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Today’s Quote: Glenn Beck, the Ignorant, Drugged-Up, Dry-Drunk Mess

June 6, 2010
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“ I think his primary motivations are, and have always been, money and fame. That’s a constant throughout his career. Long before he found God and George Washington during his early transition to talk radio, he dreamt of making it big as a syndicated Top 40 guy. His media empire has been a dream since childhood, although the content is probably a surprise even to him. But just because he’s a businessman who knows exactly what he’s doing does not mean that everything coming out of his mouth is part of a charade. I think he really does have the twisted hard-right politics he professes to hold. He doesn’t know enough to know better. He learned just about everything he knows about history and politics from AM radio and crazy Mormon Birchers like Cleon Skousen. A lot of what people find hard to understand about Beck is a result of rank ignorance.” [] “ But [Glenn] Beck is clearly full of hatred to this day, for himself, for the world, for his political opponents. More than one former colleague believes he was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder in the 90s, likely bipolar, and that he took lithium on top of…

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Today’s Quote: BP Coughs Up $70 Million For Oil Spill ‘Advertising Campaigns’?

May 28, 2010
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“And while BP has repeatedly stated that it will pay all necessary and appropriate clean-up costs and verifiable claims for other loss and damage caused by the spill, the Florida Congressional delegation has repeatedly asked BP to place $1 billion in an escrow account to reimburse states and countiesinstead the states have received $25 million block grants, plus $70 million to help with advertising campaigns.” – Rick Outzen, “Shocking BP Memo, and the Oil Spill in the Gulf,” The Daily Beast, May 25, 2010. $70 million for ‘advertising campaigns’ while people in the Gulf region are suffering the effects of the worst oil disaster in history? What are they going to ‘advertise’ that massive oil spills are good for you?

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