– 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.
...
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.
,,,
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?
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-- 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.
