If asked [by younger colleagues at NPR], I tell them what lessons I have learned over the past 60-odd years. And since there are today more pressures than ever to conform, to avoid rocking the boat, I’m prone to advise: At least once in your lifetime take a risk for a principle you believe in, even if it brings you up against your bosses.
- Daniel Schorr,
a great journalist committed to America’s greatest values,
in a 2003 interview,
who passed away yesterday
His peers should be ashamed.
We feel, as Christians, one of our jobs is to warn.
- Pastor Terry Jones
of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida,
explaining lawn signs he is distributing that say
“Islam is of the devil” and announce “International Burn A Quran Day.”
July 21, 2010
WWJD?
“Refudiate,” “misunderestimate,” “wee-wee’d up.” English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!
- GOP leader Sarah Palin
Rationalizing her use of bad English
Twitter on July 18, 2010
“Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?” (King Richard)
We Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop! … Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government ’stop raising our taxes.’ That is outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide-screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society? Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.
- Mark Williams
Founder of “Tea Party Express”
and Republican news commentator
in a “satire” letter to Abraham Lincoln
July 2010
But be careful not to point out that some members of the “Tea Party” are racist.
Keep in mind, again, federal candidates: this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This was not something that the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in. … Well, if [Obama] is such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?
- GOP Chairman Michael Steele
July 2, 2010
Please, please give that man a microphone.
Trappe uses scissors to release balloons in order to land.
I believe there is near universal magic in a cluster balloon flight.
- Johnathan Trappe
American “cluster balloonist”
and first person to fly
across the English Channel
in a chair,
May 28, 2010
Wow!
It’s simply getting harder to commit crime. Cameras are everywhere. Anytime there’s a bank robbery, you can bet there’s a number of pictures taken.
– Ted Kirkpatrick
University of New Hampshire
on one reason why violent crime in the US has
declined three years in a row
Sales in ski masks declining too?
The Texas “State Board of Education” on May 21 voted 9-5 to impose members’ rightwing views on students throughout the state and, because publishers seek the lowest-common denominator in their textbooks, great swaths of the nation.
The self-denominated “conservatives” failed in efforts to rename the slave trade the “Atlantic triangular trade” and failed to force books to use President Obama’s middle name on every mention. But the Texas state government will now require students to study Confederate leader Jefferson Davis as an equal of Abraham Lincoln in U.S. history. The state government denigrates Thomas Jefferson; casts separation of church and state as incompatible with the Founders’ intentions and the Constitution; presents Christianity (presumably their narrow interpretation of it) as informal national religion; and attacks government programs such as Social Security and Medicare. The state government also indoctrinates children to reject any government regulation (including presumably consumer protection) as unnecessary hindrance on “capitalism.”
Seems they want to make sure their kids don’t outshine them.
The views of Rand Paul, Kentucky candidate for the U.S. Senate, on civil rights defy brief summary. They ramble, double back on themselves, and obfuscate. He clearly states that he opposes “institutional” discrimination and Jim Crow laws, but he also claims that citizens’ First Amendment rights entitle them to engage in certain discriminatory actions. Specifically, Paul argues that the government and courts cannot intervene in the policies of private businesses that, say, declare that blacks, Latinos, Asians, whomever, will not be served in their establishments.
Click below to see the full text of Paul’s interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC on May 19 and try to make sense of it yourself.
Couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.
Read the rest of this entry »
The delay [in stanching the flow of oil in the Gulf of Mexico] was this. It’s pure politics. This president has never supported big oil, he’s never supported offshore drilling, and now he has an excuse to shut it back down.
This is exactly what they want, because now [Obama] can pander to the environmentalists and say, ‘I’m gonna shut it down because it’s too dangerous.’
- Ex-FEMA director Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown
on Fox news
May 3, 2010
Is that an act, or do they really think that way?