QOTD: Screw you. My mom worked.

Quote of the Day:

The last one may be one of my least favorite of meaningless platitudes in circulation in the U.S., the whole "stay-at-home moms are the hardest working, bestest people that ever worked!" one. It's a common feature on STFU Parents, with housewives braying about how, unlike everyone else, they work 24/7 and don't get vacations and blah blah.

There's a very serious and insulting problem with this platitude: It carries with it the assumption that working mothers (a term that is commonly understood to mean women who have paid employment while raising children at home) don't raise their children.

Think about it: [Ann] Romney is saying she made the "choice" to raise her five boys by staying home, as if her boys would have gone unraised if she'd had a job outside of the home. To which I say, screw you. My mom worked. [WCG: My mom worked, too. And screw anyone who says she didn't work twice as hard as Ann Romney.] In this country, most moms work. Their kids don't run around like wild animals, naked and barefoot and killing pigeons to survive. Hell, in some families, believe it or not, dads some times pitch in and raise their kids. (That last bit was mega-sarcasm, for the utterly literal.)

[Hillary] Rosen's point stands. Romney's tweet actually confirms that she has no idea what it's like for most women to be out there, worrying about how to make enough money to take care of themselves and their families. That she had the choice to stay home makes that very clear. And that's even if you don't know about Romney's financial situation. The reality is that she could afford economic dependence, because if she ever got divorced, her alimony payments would be enough to keep a whole neighborhood of single mother-led households afloat. Hell, Romney doesn't even have much in common with most stay-at-home moms. In the real world, many stay-at-home moms are living in poverty, unable to afford a job because of the costs of child care, and often living on a patchwork of family help, food stamps, and under-the-table employment. Even those who don't live in poverty are often living in a much more financially precarious situation than the "choice" stay-at-home mothers the media loves so much. The reality is that most mothers work, since most middle class families rely on women holding paid employment to stay afloat. More than 3/4 of women with children under age 15 at home have paid employment outside of the home. - Amanda Marcotte

QOTD: the divine will of God

Quote of the Day:

My parents were both Presbyterians and very devoted church people of that faith. When I was old enough to understand a moderate amount of the English language my mother gave me a history of my very early youth. She informed me that when a few weeks old I was baptized by their pastor at the Presbyterian church and dedicated to God and his service.

Later on, when several months old [my emphasis], they broke my will after the ritual of the Scottish Covenanters to prepare me for service with the divine will of God. This was done by whipping me with switches, until even under the application of the whips, I stopped crying and moaned in submission, or that I had not vocal power to cry. That was called breaking my will, which paid the interest on part of the original sin.

When I was a little older, I was instructed how to say my prayers and taught a few New Testament verses, which I was obliged to repeat Sunday morning and say the prayer soon after retiring for the night. At the age of between four and five, I was taken to Sunday school and was taught oral lessons from the Testament, as I could not read yet. ...

About this age [between four and five], my father would whip me for the least departure from what he called the right way of doing to satisfy God's demands upon parents for the right way of bringing up children. To show me that he had high authority for the punishments, he would read occasionally from the Bible that Solomon said, "Spare the rod, spoil the child." Then he would comment upon the passage saying that he did not desire to whip me, but it was his solemn duty, as Solomon was inspired to write the passage, and, if he did not comply, God would bring him to an account for not doing his duty, which was to save me from an awful hereafter. At one time, father whipped me every Monday morning, after Solomon's and God's plan, to keep me good during the week. In my heart, I cursed God and Solomon. At about five, I contemplated burning the Bible; it was kept on a shelf over the fireplace; nearly every time I passed it I made faces at it. I tried to think of some way that I could destroy the awful book that was the means of keeping my back scarred and sore.

But my resolution was not put in practice because I imagined that father would nearly kill me,... - Bushnell A. Wright, M.D., Los Angeles, California

Note: This is an excerpt from the last letter in Letters from an Atheist Nation by Thomas Lawson, which I reviewed here.

QOTD: the rich creamery butter of social panic

Quote of the Day:

Public Policy Polling has a pretty convincing rundown of the political ramifications of the contraception controversy:

-Republican agitating on this issue could cause themselves trouble at the polls this year. 40% of voters say Mitt Romney’s stance makes them less likely to vote for him, while only 23% consider it a positive. With the Catholic oversample [of almost 400 Catholics] it’s 46% less likely and 28% more likely. And Congressional Republicans are imperiling themselves as well. 58% of voters oppose them trying to take the benefit away, while only 33% are supportive.

Republicans will win this fall if they can convince voters that the economy stinks and it’s Barack Obama’s fault and putting them in power will fix the problem. If they want to make it about social issues and making it easy and affordable for women to access birth control, Democrats win.

Run away, GOP! Run away!

Obviously, questions of whether and how and why the the Republican Party and the many independent actors that constitute it attempt to exhume certain “values” issues are complicated and multifaceted, especially during primary season.

But on some fundamental level, there have to be a lot of otherwise levelheaded people in the GOP who, when faced with the prospect of wading back into these waters, can’t help but react the same way Homer Simpson did to the Good Morning Burger. As long as you don’t take the time to actually understand public opinion and how it is changing, these issues just look so good, so tasty, so loaded with the rich creamery butter of cultural panic. - Jesse Singal

QOTD: impeachment is not a toy

Quote of the Day:

Grover Norquist, the Republican uber-activist, sat down with National Journal last week, and shared some thoughts on what he expects to see in Washington after the November elections. His use of the "I" word was rather striking.

NORQUIST: If the Republicans have the House, Senate, and the presidency, I'm told that they could do an early budget vote -- a reconciliation vote where you extend the Bush tax cuts out for a decade or five years.... And, if you have a Republican president to go with a Republican House and Senate, then they pass the [Paul] Ryan plan [on Medicare].

NJ: What if the Democrats still have control? What's your scenario then?

NORQUIST: Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach.

By all indications, Norquist wasn't kidding. From the perspective of this leading GOP powerbroker, presidential impeachment is on the table in 2014 unless Obama extends Bush-era tax cuts.

There are three larger angles to this to consider. The first is that Republicans, 14 years after an impeachment crusade against President Clinton, seem a little preoccupied with the subject. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) has raised the specter of Obama impeachment over DOMA; Fox News has brought up impeachment over immigration policy; Herman Cain wants to see the president impeached over the Affordable Care Act; and not too long ago, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) said he likes the idea of impeaching Obama simply because "it would tie things up" in Washington for a while.

The second angle to keep in mind is that if GOP officials and their allies are serious about this, they might want to give additional thought to the meaning of the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors."

And third, Norquist's impeachment talk may seem ridiculous on its face -- and it is -- but that doesn't change the fact that this is a powerful figure in Republican politics. It was, after all, Norquist's anti-tax pledge that played a direct role in scuttling any possible super-committee agreement.

The point isn't that presidential impeachment is a serious idea; it clearly is not. Rather, the point is it's unsettling to have a major GOP insider, with considerable influence throughout the party, talking up nutty ideas like this.

As Ed Kilgore explained, "[W]hen it comes to taxes and the long-term drive to 'starve the beast' of the New Deal/Great Society legacy, Norquist still walks tall in the GOP. So when he lays out getting rid of Medicare as we know it, or a drive to impeach Barack Obama, as strong alternative possibilities for the years just ahead, we should probably pay attention." - Steve Benen

QOTD: a dogfight with... this guy?

Quote of the Day:

Buzzfeed reporter McKay Coppins asked an anonymous Mitt Romney adviser tonight if he’s worried about the South Carolina primary results. "Oh God, no," he sneered. "I mean, to face Newt Gingrich?"

The man has a point. Newt Gingrich? Tubby, philandering (and note that the most famous philandering pols, unlike Newt, generally have the compensating trait of physical attractiveness) has-been, unelectable, distrusted by conservatives Newt Gingrich?

But if you turn the same thought around, it leaves you wondering: How can Romney be in a dogfight with this guy?

My view all along has been that any remotely plausible candidate could beat Mitt Romney. My current view is that there are no remotely plausible candidates, which leaves us with Newt. So we have the immovable object meeting the irresistible force, except the exact opposite. Like almost everybody outside Gingrich's immediate family, I had already written him off twice. But he really seems okay. If some really crazy rich conservatives decide to write him some seven- or eight-figure checks, who knows? - Jonathan Chait

QOTD: the GOP's radical transformation

Quote of the Day:

The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy."

Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?"

The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!"

The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Today's Republican Party may revere Reagan as the patron saint of low taxation. But the party of Reagan – which understood that higher taxes on the rich are sometimes required to cure ruinous deficits – is dead and gone. Instead, the modern GOP has undergone a radical transformation, reorganizing itself around a grotesque proposition: that the wealthy should grow wealthier still, whatever the consequences for the rest of us. ...

The staggering economic inequality that has led Americans across the country to take to the streets in protest is no accident. It has been fueled to a large extent by the GOP's all-out war on behalf of the rich. Since Republicans rededicated themselves to slashing taxes for the wealthy in 1997, the average annual income of the 400 richest Americans has more than tripled, to $345 million – while their share of the tax burden has plunged by 40 percent. Today, a billionaire in the top 400 pays less than 17 percent of his income in taxes – five percentage points less than a bus driver earning $26,000 a year. - Tim Dickinson

QOTD: a bipartisan consensus on health care

Quote of the Day:

Igor Volsky flagged a great piece from Nancy French, who reported the other day that Rick Santorum supported an individual health care mandate when he ran for the Senate in 1994. His primary opponent, Joe Watkins, supported the same policy.

French highlighted this report from April 1994:

Santorum and Watkins both oppose having businesses provide health care for their employees. Instead, they would require individuals to purchase insurance.

And this report, published a month later:

Santorum and Watkins would require individuals to buy health insurance rather than forcing employers to pay for employee benefits.

For those keeping score at home, that means there are six Republican presidential candidates, and four of them, at one time or another, supported an individual health care mandate — an idea GOP officials now consider an unconstitutional, authoritarian nightmare.

Given Santorum’s far-right ideology, does this news come as something of a surprise? Actually, no. Santorum’s position in 1994, and that of his primary challenger, was entirely in line with mainstream Republican thought.

In case anyone’s forgotten, this was a Republican idea in the first place. Nixon embraced the mandate in the 1970s, and George H.W. Bush supported the idea in the 1980s. When Bob Dole endorsed the mandate in 1994, it was in keeping with the party’s prevailing attitudes at the time. Mitt Romney embraced the mandate as governor and it was largely ignored during the 2008 campaign, since it was such a common GOP position.

In recent years, the mandate has been embraced by the likes of John McCain, Orrin Hatch, Bob Bennett, Tommy Thompson, Lamar Alexander, Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Scott Brown, and Judd Gregg, among many others. Indeed, several of them not only endorsed the policy, they literally co-sponsored legislation that included a mandate.

In the summer of 2009, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), one of the leading Republican lawmakers in the talks over health care reform, told Fox News, “I believe that there is a bipartisan consensus to have an individual mandate.” Did Fox News freak out? Did GOP leaders immediately distance themselves from the comments? Was Grassley forced to immediately backpedal? No, none of those things happened. Grassley said there was a bipartisan consensus to have an individual mandate because there was a bipartisan consensus to have an individual mandate.

But that was before Republicans decided they’re against the ideas they’re for, and this issue could be twisted into a political weapon to be used against the president. - Steve Benen

QOTD: The role of anger, ridicule, and passion

Quote of the Day:

There is a very important role that anger, ridicule and passion play in any social movement. While intellectual understanding is key to a movement that is well-grounded, it is the primary emotions that provide the impetus for social organization. Without this, atheism would simply remain an idea to be discussed in academia and in private settings.

Let me give you an example. Secular Humanism has been around for more than a century. Humanists often deride the ‘New Atheists’ for their bitterness. In fact, the argument from many humanists has been that their tactics are more effective! But how many people knew about secular humanism before the ‘New Atheists’? Their whole movement was an academic one, restricted to an elite group of people who had the time and inclination for such intellectualisms. While the humanists were debating about human rights and ethics for over a century, atheists continued to remain in the shadows, in a cultural environment where they were unable to realize many of their fundamental rights. The only community that was available to most atheists was society at large. As you may well know, one of the most important functions of religion is to provide a common cultural ground to enable a common morality and social code to bring together people and form a functioning and content community. We atheists did not have this - not until a few years ago. It is easy to ignore the freedoms (from the point of view of social acceptance) we have gained towards expressing our beliefs in public and for gathering in the name of reason. It is easy to forget that millions of atheists crave the kind of social contact that religions have traditionally provided. It is even more easy to forget the role that anger, ridicule and passion have played in creating this global community of freethinkers. Without the ‘new atheists’, secular humanism would have remained irrelevant in the public sphere. Today we can meaningfully talk about replacing religion with a secular morality derived from humanistic principles only because of the social impetus that the ‘New Atheists’ like [Richard] Dawkins have provided humanity with.

... Ideas die in a culture when it becomes embarrassing to hold on to them. Social conformity is achieved not through intellectual discourse as much as through the need to belong. If your ridiculous beliefs are laughed at, you begin to question them. This may not apply to you or me or many in this group, assuming that we are more evidence-based on our thinking, but this certainly applies to the majority of people on earth.

Do not think that I am advocating personal attacks. I am talking about ridiculing irrational beliefs, not people.

In fact, I do not engage in debate with believers any more. At least, I try not to. This is the least effective strategy for someone like myself, since many religious folk seem to be unable to make the distinction between personal attacks and criticism of ideas. I think that what really works is for atheists to be visible to the community at large. If religious people actually see that atheists are a happy, moral and well-organized community, obtaining the same social benefits from cooperation and emotional fulfillment that religious people do, that is more effective in making them question their own beliefs. In the process, let’s have some fun laughing at absurd and false beliefs, even as we expose them for the dangers that they represent. - Ajita Kamal

QOTD: In what universe?

Quote of the Day:

As much as [John] McCain dislikes Romney and Santorum, he hates President Obama with the heat of a thousand suns.

McCain took the microphone and delivered a full-throated rebuke to Obama: “My friends, our message to President Barack Obama is you can run, but you can’t hide from your record of making this country bankrupt, from destroying our national security and for making this nation one that we have to restore with Mitt Romney as president of the United States of America.”

That struck me as a curious indictment, especially for a prepared speech.

The country is “bankrupt”? What does that even mean? We have the world’s largest economy; we pay our debts; and the world is still eager to loan us an enormous amount of money at extremely low interest rates. Is McCain just throwing around words again without understanding them?

But even more interesting is the notion that the president is “destroying our national security.” Now, I can understand why Obama’s liberal detractors criticize the administration’s policies when it comes to the national security state, prosecution of wars, detainees, etc. But from McCain’s perspective, what is it, exactly, that the senator finds worthy of whining?

Concerns surrounding civil liberties notwithstanding, the president and his team can take credit for killing Osama bin Laden, decimating al Qaeda, helping bring down the Gadhafi regime in Libya (a guy McCain literally used to bow to), and preventing many terrorist plots.

Maybe McCain would take issue with some of the developments, maybe not. But either way, in what universe is the president “destroying our national security”? - Steve Benen

QOTD: Ross Douthat, gravedigger

Quote of the Day:

For the sheer magnitude of its horsepucky, this column may well stand forever. Generations yet unborn will come and read it, just to stare out of the magnificent vista of presumption, self-regard, and tinpot piety the way people bring their children to look at the Grand Canyon. It takes an unusual amount of juice-box hubris to put your thoughts in a dead man's head. It takes towering presumption to put into a dead man's head your thoughts with which he would scabrously disagree. Here, we have a New York Times columnist, a god-bothering newsboy on his best day, presuming to think — let alone speak — for a guy who is no longer here to think or speak for himself. Ross Douthat now stands as the Pope Stephen VII of letters, digging up the recently deceased and putting his corpse on trial in Douthat's own, Colorforms version of the Cadaver Synod. I guess we can be grateful that Douthat only gums away futilely at his argument. Stephen threw the convicted remains of Pope Formosus into the Tiber. Douthat just tosses Christopher Hitchens's corpse into the shallow end of his intellect. - Charles P. Pierce

QOTD: "Say anything" conservatives

Quote of the Day:

[Newt] Gingrich did more than just move the Republican party to the right, as he built power for his congressional allies beginning in the mid-1980s and culminating in his four tumultuous years as Speaker of the House; he brought to the party a “say anything” style of politics that lives on long after his heyday, and that makes it a tactically formidable opposition force. While traditional conservatism had a stern attachment to continuity and an “eat your peas” commitment to principles even when they came at a short-term political cost, Gingrich was untethered, content to propose massive social initiatives—the most famous being to give a laptop computer to every schoolchild, back when laptops cost $5,000—at the same time that he would propose to shut down large government agencies and massively chop government spending. He was able to create a broad appeal by combining his optimistic, techno-visionary liberalism with angry shrink-government conservatism. His secret: He didn’t really mean any of it. He didn’t stick with any initiative long enough to confront the conflicts and contradictions between them.

“Say anything” conservatism allowed the Republicans to initiate a constitutional crisis by impeaching President Clinton and then casually move on as if admitting it was mere political theater; to promise spending cuts and then pass Medicare Part D instead; to denounce any Obama proposal as socialism even if it’s something their own party supported years or even months earlier. It allowed them to simultaneously pass Paul Ryan’s poorly designed proposal to end Medicare and attack Democrats for cutting Medicare.

The daring, improvisational style of the modern Republican Party is in many ways Newt Gingrich’s creation. And his flip-flops, unlike Romney’s nuanced legalisms, are perfectly suited to it. - Mark Schmitt

QOTD: The mindset of authoritarian regimes

Quote of the Day:

I was surrounded by political exiles in my youth, many of whom, after having lived either under Stalin or Hitler, or in some cases both, never lost their vigilance. Even after twenty or thirty years in the United States, they gave the impression of keeping a suitcase packed under their beds, ready to flee at a moment’s notice should hippies or some variety of American fascists come [to] power.

Lucky for them, they are all long dead, so they can’t read some opinion piece or hear a congressman or a senator today clamor for the very same police state measures they barely escaped from. Watching the government of the country they grew to love curtailing liberties, spying on its citizens, militarizing its police forces, imprisoning both foreigners and Americans indefinitely without having to prove their guilt, and coming to admire the mindset of authoritarian regimes it used to despise, would have been both terrifying and depressing. They could not help but note that some of their fellow Americans who cheer for the death penalty and for torture, and call the people demonstrating against Wall Street lice-infested misfits and degenerates, are no better than the ones they knew back home and are as eager to persecute, imprison, and even commit murder should they be called upon (I think people who clap for death, love war without end, and adore guns are perfectly capable of it). My mother, who never recalled anything but trouble, and was sure the worst was yet to come, would be saying, I told you so, all day long.

Her generation at least didn’t have the Internet to torment themselves with. This morning, for example, reading around on the web, I discovered that our top political commentators are in complete agreement that the so-called “Grand Bargain” that the two parties failed to agree on last summer and again in November, must be enacted sooner or later. Either geezers like me tighten their belts, stop heating their homes in winter, forget about the cost of living and future social security increases, don’t run to the doctor every time something hurts them and allow their teeth to rot and fall out, or the United States won’t have enough money to fight wars and bail out the big banks. - Charles Simic

QOTD: They deserved to die

Quote of the Day:

I was dismayed at one bit of conversation with Dr Rod Butterworth, head of the place. He was trying to explain how the bloody god of the Old Testament really wasn’t such a bad fellow after all.

“You don’t understand: all those people he had to kill, were horrible people. They deserved to be killed!”

To which I replied, “But that’s exactly the excuse Hitler used to murder the Jews!”

“No…” He seemed slightly nonplussed.

One of Mattir’s spawn was there, and she explained to him that it was true, that Jews were accused of blood libel, and the Nazis claimed they used Jesus’ blood in evil rituals.

“Oh, well, there probably were Jews who did that, who hated Christianity, and those Jews would have deserved it.”

You could have knocked me flat with a feather.

I pointed out that his god, according to his myth, exterminated the entire population of the planet, except for 8 people. Was he really arguing that all of those people, even the babies, were all so wretchedly evil that they deserved death?

He replied that yes, they did, because they refused to worship god, and god as their creator had every right to do with them as he will. - PZ Myers

QOTD: Penn State saved!

Quote of the Day:

Penn State’s reputation will be saved now! They’ve got an ally willing to work with them to get over the stigma of pedophilia: the Catholic church. Whaaa…?

The Roman Catholic Church is willing to partner with American educational institutions to educate the public about child sex abuse after the Penn State scandal, according to the head of the U.S. church.

Well, sure, that makes sense. It’s like if you’re caught stealing cars, you do restitution by volunteering to work in the biggest chop shop in the state. You bring together two groups renowned for a crime, and they magically cancel each other out and return to a state of probity, right? - PZ Myers

QOTD: Capitalist Jesus

Quote of the Day:

Michele Bachmann addressing the conservative Christian lobbying organization Family Research Council on the virtue of denying food to the hungry…

"Our nation needs to stop doing for people what they can and should do for themselves. That provides the principle of a national work ethic that we have sadly forgotten. That means an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. Self reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat."

Very inspiring! Reminds me of the Biblical story in which Jesus miraculously creates all the loaves of bread and then sells them to the hungry masses at market value and pulls in a tidy profit for him and his apostles. - Dennis DiClaudio

QOTD: Evidence-based history

Quote of the Day:

Keith Ward sounds just like Ken Ham. It's remarkable. You see, Ken Ham has this schtick in which he basically denies all of history: you weren't there (the only valid evidence is eyewitness evidence captured through your biological senses), and because history isn't repeatable, its study isn't a real science, isn't empirically verifiable, and is subject to whims and fads and therefore lacks any substantial objective core. ...

I agree that not every thing in the universe is scientifically verifiable or repeatable, but this cavalier attitude towards history is reprehensible. Yes, there are history laboratories: there are historians who do archaeology, chemistry, biology, astronomy and all kinds of hard sciences to confirm and test historical claims. The provenance and authenticity of documents is a major historical interest.

A discrete historical event may not be repeatable, but it is amenable to confirmation and validation. The source information can be independently verified. Multiple approaches can be taken to test a claim. Did Caesar invade Gaul? It only happened once, you don't get to repeat the invasion, and no one alive was there, after all. But we can look at the archaeology of France, we can see the linguistic evidence, we've got documents from the time, and every time someone digs up a Roman cache from the first century BCE we are getting more information on the event.

I do consider it scientifically tractable. Evidence-based, empirical study and logical analysis are right there at the heart of the discipline of history.

But you know why Ward is doing this, right? It's so he can claim Jesus, as a historical figure, is totally exempt from scientific examination. - PZ Myers

QOTD: Marco Rubio haunted by his immigrant past

Quote of the Day:

Fortunately for Marco Rubio, he is a handsome, up-and-coming star within the Republican Party, whose Cuban roots have a particular appeal in South Florida and assisted his rise to national prominence. Unfortunately for Marco Rubio…

He was the son of exiles, [Rubio] told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after "a thug," Fidel Castro, took power. But a review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that Rubio's dramatic account of his family saga embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than 2 1/2 years before Castro's forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year's Day 1959.

...
I think I know why this matters so much. According to some, if you escaped from Castro's Cuba after the Revolution, you're a sexy anti-communist exile, ready to work hard and defend freedom. But if you emigrated from Cuba while Castro was still hanging out in Mexico, you're just another Hispanic immigrant, coming to steal our jobs and take our welfare (somehow at the same time).

In fact, there's one U.S. Senator who has become particularly adept at distinguishing between different kinds of deserving and undeserving immigrants. - Ilya Gerner

QOTD: A tale of two presidents

Quote of the Day:

A reader writes:

Bush and Saddam - One Trillion dollars and thousands of US lives.

Obama and Qaddafi - One Billion dollars and zero US lives.

Meep Meep indeed.

And this time, the Arab world loves us as well.

To rid the world of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and Moammar Qaddafi within six months: if Obama were a Republican, he'd be on Mount Rushmore by now. - Andrew Sullivan

QOTD: Rick Perry's problem

Quote of the Day:

Stuart Stevens — Mitt Romney's senior adviser — on the major issue dragging down Rick Perry's campaign recently…

"Rick Perry has a Rick Perry problem, not a Mitt Romney or Herman Cain problem."

So, that means that Perry only has to change that one thing, and he'll be right back on track.

It worked really well for Romney. - Dennis DiClaudio

QOTD: The illusion of American exceptionalism

Quote of the Day:

Former airman Keith Boyea explores how war reshaped his worldview...

I have not faced the consequences of war up-close and have nothing but awe for those who have. But my own, much more cloistered experience as a war supporter is similar. I will never think of America the same way after the Bush-Cheney administration. They ripped the scales off my eyes; they proved that America isn't, in the end, different; that its core moral principles, such as the prohibition of torture, are nostrums to be tossed aside at the whim of a few very scared and incompetent men; that the rule of law ends when it comes to presidential power, when he can simply order dipshit lawyers to say black is white; when no regret is ever truly expressed about the tens of thousands of Iraqis who died under US occupation; when the architects of these strategic and moral disasters are given legal immunity and peddle books on talkshows defending and bragging of their own awful legacy.

It has sickened me - the lack of morality, the lack of accountability, the constant recourse to mass amnesia. And in a man like Perry, you see all the characteristics of this belligerent, diplomatically autistic, aggressively stupid, and fundamentalist psyche. The dragon we thought we had slain is stalking the land again. - Andrew Sullivan