-- Patty Murray, Senator from Washington and co-chair of the supercommittee that has been tasked to develop a plan to reduce the U.S. deficit by at least $1.2 trillionThere is one sticking divide. And that's the issue of what I call shared sacrifice ... And that line in the sand, we haven't seen Republicans willing to cross yet.
I read somewhere that pepper spray down the throat can kill and that some of the students were coughing up blood hours after having been sprayed.~~~If God told Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, and Herman Cain to run for president, then God obviously wants Barack Obama to win.
-- Randi Rhodes
-- YDANIS RODRÍGUEZ, New York City Councilman, after his arrest during the NYPD's raid on Occupy Wall Street protestors camp in Zuccotti ParkI went down to the park to observe the situation... Unfortunately, I was assaulted by a police officer.
-- Beppe Severgnini, Italian author, on his country's new prime minister, Mario Monti.The man is the most un-Berlusconiesque person you can think of...He's like clean water after you've been drinking too much.
So, China is now the standard we're trying to live up to????If you look at China, they don't have food stamps.
~~~Chinese don't need food stamps, they are supporting themselves on all those jobs we offshore to them.
- Kim Knowlton, a senior scientist at Natural Resources Defense Council, co-author of study estimating that deaths and health problems from floods, drought, and other U.S. disasters related to climate change cost an estimated $14 billion over the last decadeWhen extreme weather hits, we hear about the property damage and insurance costs. The healthcare costs never end up on the tab.
Unions are largely responsible for the middle class, even if you aren't in one. Unions historically represented workers who individually had no bargaining power, typically people who are easily replaced. Without the power of collective bargaining those workers would never have achieved reasonable wages and benefits.Even nonunion workers benefit from unions in a couple of ways. First, in industries where workers are known to unionize, employers have an incentive to keep them happy so they won't unionize. Second, higher wages and benefits for one segment of the workforce bleed over into other segments. You and union workers are both part of a larger workforce and what affects one finds ways to affect the other.
They just consider production, not safety. If someone dies, he can be replaced tomorrow.
– South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, on why he’s working to protect foreign aid from budget cuts.I advocate military engagement when I think it’s necessary, but really you can get more bang for your buck from civilian programs than you can from military engagement most of the time. You’ve got to have more options than just dropping bombs on people.
-- Samuel Wurzelbacher, known as Joe the Plumber, announcing in a video that he will run for Congress in Ohio; he became famous after asking Barack Obama several questions during the 2008 Presidential electionIf I'm coming off as angry, it's because I am.
-- Dan Savage, columnist and co-founder of the It Gets Better campaign, propositioning Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain — who has said that being gay is a choice — in an explicit open letterIf being gay is a choice, show us the proof. Choose it. Choose to be gay yourself. Show America how that's done.
One of the most striking images I witnessed at the demonstration was a young black man holding a sign that read "End NYPD Violence!" in front of a group of police officers.
The officers quickly challenged his accusation. But the young man didn't leave. Next, the police turned away and ignored him. But he still didn't leave. Then the officers chuckled and let out an unexpected laugh when they realized the man wasn't going away. The scene was confrontational, but definitely not violent.
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Although I supported the concept of the Occupy Wall Street movement when I first heard of it, I admit I didn't think the group had much to offer me. From what I could see in the media, they were well-educated, well-intentioned young white people...
I was wrong.
What I found was a wide-ranging group of people from various backgrounds, young and old, male and female, black, white, Latin, Asian and mixed. It was the essence of New York, the reason why I moved to this city 10 years ago.
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To watch some of the media coverage of the movement, you would think the protest was filled with long-haired hippies left over from the 1960s.... There were high school-aged kids with their parents, college students in their school sweatshirts, men in business suits, mothers with baby carriages, people with jobs, people who were unemployed, white-haired retirees...
You will not be surprised to learn that there are comments from people who are just fine with it.Since April, the New York Times reports, inmates have not been provided lunches on Saturdays and Sundays.
It's a cost-cutting measure: an effort to trim $2.8 million in food-related expenses from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's 2011 budget, which makes up just a small part of the state's multi-billion-dollar budget shortfall.
Here's a very interesting article about the language concerning December holidays:Seriously? Seriously? God punished people with a massive hurricane because we don't have government coerced prayer in public schools? (Because that's what school official-led audible prayer would be.) How about God is a gentleman and doesn't intervene with the consequences of our actions - like building major cities on flood plains, destroying the coastal wetlands that protect us from the severity of hurricanes, neglecting to keep the levees repaired, and not bothering to take at least some responsibility for the climate change that is increasing the severity of extreme weather events.
Jesus himself made it very clear that natural calamities are NOT God's punishment for human sin: "The rain falls on the just and unjust..." and "His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus...... You know, it is simply not true that people have been forbidden to pray in school. People do it all the time. They just don't get to impose that prayer on others. For those who insist that such prayer be official, formal and audible they need to remember that Jesus told us to go in our room and shut the door when we pray and to pray in secret. (He had very harsh words for the Pharisees who prayed publicly in order to be seen by others.)
Finally, I'd like to say that there are places in this world where Christians really are persecuted and, I'm sorry, but hearing someone call a decorated tree a "holiday tree" simply does not begin to rise to that level.
In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.
- Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize WinnerIf you have a situation and it seems endless, and it's a negative situation, don't wait for a Gandhi, don't wait for a King, don't wait for a Mandela. You, you, are your own Mandela, you are your own Gandhi, you are your own King. You know your issues, you know your concerns, and you know the solution. Rise up, and do something to change your situation around.
-- Stanley McChrystal, retired Army general and former commander of U.S. and NATO forces, reflecting on the 10-year anniversary of the fighting in AfghanistanWe didn't know enough and we still don't know enough.
Wow. This is from Fox News. Imagine!
Do 'Occupy Wall Street' protesters represent your views about the nation's economic problems?
Share your thoughts, answer our question then click "Leave a Comment."
-- Barack Obama, U.S. President, in response to his GOP rivals not speaking out against the booing of a gay soldier during one of their presidential debatesYou want to be Commander in Chief? You can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, even when it's not politically convenient.
I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.
-------------------------------------------------------- Malcolm X
I do recommend that you read the rest of it. For me it's offers the reassuring perspective that being critical of Israel is not necessarily the same as being anti-semitic - no matter what some people may claim about the matter.My mom has a master's degree in Jewish history and is the program director of a large synagogue. Her youthful experiences in Israel, volunteering on a kibbutz and meeting descendants of my great-grandmother's siblings, are part of my own mythology. Raised within the Conservative movement, I learned at Hebrew school that Israel was the "land of milk and honey," where Holocaust survivors irrigated the deserts and made flowers bloom.
What I didn't hear much about was the lives of Palestinians. It was only after I went to college, met Muslim friends and enrolled in a Middle Eastern history and politics course that I was challenged to reconcile my liberal, humanist worldview with the fact that the Jewish state of which I was so proud was occupying the land of 4.4 million stateless Palestinians, many of them refugees displaced by Israel's creation.
It is embarrassing. The gridlock and partisanship in Washington right now is disgusting.
I get so tired of people believing and asserting that Social Security is somehow in trouble. It's not. And all we need to do is raise that cap on the tax.Republicans hate Social Security because it has been an extraordinary success and has done exactly what it was designed to do. It is the most successful government program in our nation's history and is enormously popular.
When Social Security was developed, 50 percent of seniors lived in poverty. Today, that number is 10 percent -- still too high, but a testament to the success of Social Security.
Republicans have spent years demonizing Social Security and spreading lies about its sustainability. They want to scare Americans and build support for making drastic cuts to the program or privatizing it entirely. Their long-term goal is to end Social Security as we know it, and convert it into a private account system which will enable Wall Street to make hundreds of billions in profits.
The truth is that, today, according to the Social Security Administration, Social Security has a $2.7 trillion surplus and can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 25 years.
Further, because it is funded by the payroll tax and not the U.S. Treasury, Social Security has not contributed one nickel to our deficit.
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Right now, someone who earns $106,800 pays the same amount of money into Social Security as billionaires like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. That is because today, all income above $106,800 is exempt from the Social Security tax. As a result, 94% of Americans pay Social Security tax on all of their income, but the wealthiest 6% do not.
That makes no sense.
-- Troy Davis, to the prison employees who would be conducting the execution.To those about to take my life, may God have mercy on your souls; and may God bless your souls.
You know, we`re 50th in the world now in life expectancy. Canadians live about two years longer. Japanese people live about four years longer. And yet, we pay 30 percent more for our health care than any other country in the entire world. Are you telling me we can`t do better than this?
-- Alan Grayson
These types of messages in this climate have the capacity to do enormous public-health harm.
We have lit one candle today. It's going to be a bonfire pretty soon.
So.The amount of Arctic sea ice has melted to a historic low, with the area of land covered by ice at the smallest level since scientists began observing it with satellites in 1972, researchers from the University of Bremen in Germany report.
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They said their studies indicated that continuing ice decline was related to man-made global warming.
"It seems to be clear that this is a further consequence of the man-made global warming with global consequences," researchers said in their report. "Directly, the livehood of small animals, algae, fishes and mammals like polar bears and seals is more and more reduced."
And the source is, needless to say, The Catholic Worker paper.The world would be better off if people tried to become better. And people would become better if they stopped trying to become better off. For when everybody tries to become better off, nobody is better off. But when everybody tries to become better, everybody is better off.
Everybody would be rich if nobody tried to become richer. And nobody would be poor if everybody tried to be the poorest. And everybody would be what he ought to be if everybody tried to be what he wants the other fellow to be.
There's more and it's really worth reading.Compare who we were then with what we've become, and we have to ask; whatever happened to that "can-do" American spirit? Why have we gone from gung-ho idealists, capable of solving any problem, to a country of naysayers, who can't seem to solve problems without tearing ourselves apart in the process? In the forty years from 1929 to 1969, we solved the problems of an economic system that had once caused us to slide into Depression on a regular basis; we wired almost every home in the country with electricity; we created an infrastructure that was the envy of the world; we created an educational system that turned us from a largely illiterate society into a literate one; we made it possible for everyone who wanted to, to go to college; we created a mortgage system that allowed everyone who could afford one to buy a home; and we became the preeminent manufacturing power in the world. Between 1929 to 1969, a span of 40 years, we went from one of the most devastated nations in the world to being the premier economic superpower in the world. And we did it through sheer force of will.
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Look at what's happened in the subsequent 40 years. We've shipped almost all of our manufacturing overseas, and we make almost nothing that has an American name on it, and we have pretty much given up on the prospect of ever competing with the rest of the world. We have gone from being the largest creditor nation in the world to being the largest debtor nation in the world. We're more addicted to oil than ever before, and more dependent on others for it than at any other time in our history, despite the fact that technology exists to free ourselves from that addiction and dependence. And we are the only country in the industrialized world (although I guess we're more post-industrialized these days) that hasn't managed to cover everyone with health insurance.
-- Gus Faucher, managing director for macroeconomics at Moody's Analytics, on reports that President Obama will introduce a plan for $300 billion to jump start the economy in a speech before Congress on ThursdayThree hundred billion dollars is better than nothing.
When are we going to get it that the government is "us"? If any aspect of government isn't functioning well, we need to vote in people who believe in government, not those who don't!!In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, men and women proudly wore hats and shirts labeled “FDNY” and “NYPD.” When we wept for our nation, it was the bravery of the first responders that reminded us of our national character. There was a newfound respect for public service and a heartening change in how Americans viewed their government. Fire and police departments, and organizations such as the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, saw a surge in applicants. We didn’t just want to believe in those workers. We wanted to be them.
In the 10 years since, those and other public workers haven’t been any less heroic or any less essential. But they have been significantly less appreciated, even demonized. “There are a lot of government employees that need to go find a real job,” Rep. Paul Broun (Ga.), a Tea Party favorite, snorted in June. For too many on the right, a government worker isn’t a worker at all.
-- Rep. Jim Cooper, Democrat from Tennessee, on the entrenched dysfunction he has seen develop during his 11 terms in CongressWe no longer search for the best ideas or the best policies. Now you are either an ally or a traitor.
But we're still probably not going to do anything to stop this or slow it down. (By "we", I mean humanity, of course.)A block of ice four times the size of Manhattan has split off from a Greenland glacier and melted--an event so dramatic that it's shocked the scientists who study the area.
Alun Hubbard of Aberystwyth University, Wales, said he was rendered "speechless" when he saw the now much smaller Petermann glacier. The break happened in 2010, but this is the first time photos have been available.
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Greenland's ice sheet may be melting at the rate of 400 billion tons per year. According to MSNBC, Greenland has lost "592.6 square miles of ice between 2000 and 2010.
-- Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkish Foreign Minister, saying Turkey would expel its Israeli ambassador ahead of the formal publication of a U.N. report about the 2010 incident in which Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish ship in the Gaza Strip, killing nine peopleThe time has come for Israel to pay for its stance that sees it above international laws and disregards human conscience.
This is heartbreaking, really:
"I don't think of it as stealing. These things were planted by a person who was going to harvest them. That person no longer has the ability to. It's not like the bank people who sit in their offices are going to come out here and pick figs."
-- Kelly Callahan, Atlanta, on why she forages for fruits and vegetables in the yards of her neighborhood’s vacant properties (Source: New York Times)
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For an average retiree who can expect to get benefits for 20 years, President Obama’s plan would cut their lifetime Social Security benefits by roughly 3 percent. By comparison, his much feared tax increases on the rich would reduce the after-tax income of someone earning $300,000 a year by just 0.5 percent. In this case, a beneficiary who will be mostly dependent on their Social Security income in retirement will take about six times as large a hit relative to their income under President Obama’s plan to cut to Social Security than a couple earning $300,000 would from his plan to raise their taxes.
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The determination to cut Social Security is especially strange given the finances of the program. Under the law, Social Security is financed by the designated Social Security tax. It does not contribute to the deficit, since the law prohibits payments from being made if there is not money in the Social Security trust fund. That means that if the trust fund were drained, rather than contributing to the deficit, full benefits would not be paid.
