Quote of the Day: Rick Perry

Gotta love this "Perryism of the Day" as noted by Andrew Sullivan:

“Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil that we don’t have to buy from a foreign source,” governor Rick Perry

Quote of the Day

"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

Quote of the Day

"I wish it hadn't come to this. But Obama, to my mind, has successfully demonstrated he has been willing to compromise, and the GOP has successfully demonstrated they cannot. I think most Americans get that. I think they get that if there has been a sap in all this, it isn't David Brooks for hoping for bipartisan reform, but Obama for hoping for sanity from today's GOP." Andrew Sullivan

Quote of the Day

Another salvo in the "pithy quotation" war:

"It is not the constructive criticism of human behavior, but the respectful, dignified, and loving treatment of the human being that is the essence of Christianity. A true Christian can practice the former while maintaining the latter; but the person who practices the former at the expense of the latter is no Christian." -- Jimmy Huck (1968- ), contemporary activist, righteous moral philosopher, defender of the marginalized, and expert "pithy quotation" warrior.

And, yes, there's a bit of arrogance in the whole idea of quoting myself, but it's really part of my effort to poke a bit of fun at the pettiness of expressing conflict not through direct and forthright honesty, but through the self-righteous use of cryptic and pithy quotations.

Quote of the Day

"There is nothing admirable about silence in the face of either bullying or injustice. In such cases, silence is neither courteous nor polite, but rather an indication of acquiescence to or complicity in the bullying or the injustice." -- Jimmy Huck (1968- ), contemporary activist, righteous moral philosopher, defender of the marginalized, and expert "pithy quotation" warrior.

[NOTE: This is a bit of an inside joke. There's an internecine struggle taking place at my B-2/3's church and it's bubbled over into a battle of "pithy quotations" on Facebook. I just thought I'd throw my part silly/part serious hat into this ring.]

Quote of the Day

"Under the logic of the people challenging the judge's fitness to rule on a case involving gay rights because he or she was gay, one would have to find a eunuch to serve on the case, because one could just as easily argue that a heterosexual judge couldn't rule on it either." -- William G. Ross, an expert on judicial ethics and law professor at Samford University in Alabama.

Here's the thing that I find curious about the argument being made by social conservatives that the judge's sexual orientation is a de facto disqualifying characteristic in his ability to be a fair and impartial judge in a case like the Prop 8 one. It is usually these very same conservatives who often trumpet the principle of judging a person's worth in his profession on the merits of his performance as opposed to a personally defining characteristic such as race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Conservatives who argue that the judge's sexual orientation, whatever it may be, in and of itself, is reason enough to challenge his competency to judge over this case, and yet fail to make any mention of the quality of the judge's decisions in any of the previous cases he has heard, are not only being hypocritical but are also resorting to the ugly practice of playing the "gay" card in the game of identity politics much the same way that they often lament and criticize certain liberals for playing the "race" card.

Quote of the Day: Rand Paul on "Accidents"

Rand Paul said:

"And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be somebody's fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen."

Rand Paul needs to know that, yes, sometimes accidents happen; but when these accidents involve man-made equipment or human error, it's also always somebody's fault.

Quote of the Day

"Conservatives have become used to the idea that their ideology allows them to break the law. Because their ideology is above the law. Just ask Cheney."

-- Andrew Sullivan, commenting on rightwing hack nutcase pimp-impersonator James O'Keefe's brazenly criminal attempt to wiretap U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu's phones.

Quote of the Day

"Perhaps he's worried the kids will grow up and be president." Bill Quigley, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Justice, on Tangipahoa Parish Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell, who refuses to issue a marriage license to interracial couples because he's supposedly worried about their children's futures. Of course, Quigley is referring to Barack Obama, the child of an interracial couple, whose "worrisome" future included being a Harvard Law School graduate, a U.S. Senator, and President of the United States.

Conservative Pansies

A reader at Andrew Sullivan's site had this choice comment about the NIMBY (Not-in-my-backyard) folks who get all apoplectic about transferring detainees from Guantanamo to maximum-security prisons in the United States:

The Republican Party has gone from the party of fear to the party of being afraid. If the left ever acted like pansies about something the way the right has about this, they'd be taken to task and labeled "weak" or "soft".

I thought this was perhaps the most succinct capturing of the irrational thinking behind conservative opposition to the plan for closing Gitmo and dealing with its prisoners. Conservatives are nothing but irrational these days, it seems.

Quote of the Day

"Treat a person ill, and he will become wicked. Requite affection with scorn;--let one being be selected, for whatever cause, as the refuse of his kind--divide him, a social being, from society, and you impose upon him the irresistable obligations--malevolence and selfishness." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley, writing in the Athenaeum on November 10, 1832, in review of his wife Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Percy Bysshe Shelley's comment is taken from page 217 of the 2003 Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, with an Introduction and Notes by Karen Karbiener.

Quote of the Day

"But surely, when it comes to combating teen pregnancy, the Palin family has done enough damage already. What worse message could you send to teenage girls than the one they delivered at the Republican convention: If your handsome but somewhat thuglike boyfriend gets you with child, he will clean up nicely, propose marriage, and show up at an important family event wearing a suit and holding your hand. At which point you will get a standing ovation." New York Times Op-Ed Columnist, Gail Collins

Quote of the Day

"And why does Sarah Palin's Alaska seem like Alabama with penguins polar bears?" Andrew Sullivan, responding to (and relating to the current moment) a selection from Christopher Caldwell's 1998 Atlantic Monthly article on how Southern Conservative Christians hijacked the Republican Party.

Quote of the Day

"The promise of making public the work we do in the world is the promise of a new and deeper political engagement with the world." Harry C. Boyte, Everyday Politics: Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004): 133.

I'm still going to deliver on my review of this work. I started the blog posting on this some time ago, but have been distracted by other things and haven't had the time to really develop what I have structured as a four part review. But it's still coming.

Quote of the Day

"We impeached a president for perjury in a civil lawsuit. We're going to proactively pardon a president who authorized torture?" Andrew Sullivan, discussing torture, the Bush Administration, and the idea of proactively and pre-emptively issuing pardons for Bush Adminstration officials regarding possible charges of violations of the Geneva Convention.

I'm not one that would go so far as Andrew Sullivan does of calling some members of the Bush Administration war criminals; but the evidence is pretty overwhelming that the Bush Administration consciously engaged in measures even it considered of questionable legality, albeit perhaps considered necessary in the war against terrorism. Where Andrew Sullivan's argument is really persuasive is when he asks why the Bush Administration didn't press the argument for the compelling need for "enhanced interrogation techniques" (i.e. what otherwise would be called "torture") and seek some kind of legislative or judicial branch sanction for its policies? If there's nothing to hide, why be so squirrely? If there's nothing to be "pardoned" for, why advocate for a pardon? If "waterboarding" is not torture, why not say so publicly?

Quote of the Day

"Between Barack and a hard place, I chose Barack."

Minnesota Senator and Democratic Superdelegate Amy Klobuchar, upon endorsing Barack Obama today.

"A hard place" -- Hmmmmm... I guess we know now what Klobuchar thinks of Sen. Clinton.

Quote of the Day

"Thinking politically in higher education is difficult for both practical and conceptual reasons. As a practical matter, it runs against the grain of academic cultures. Conceptually, thinking politically differs from other approaches to cultural and institutional change. Indeed, conventional approaches disdain politics.

"Practically, thinking politically means building political coalitions or alliances, and this requires recognizing what different political perspectives, interests, and disciplines have to offer. It means building extensive relationships across silo cultures. It means turning hidden, privately felt discontents into objects for public discussion. It means developing public leadership through experiences of public work, cooperative, successful effort with others. It means learning to share credit and public recognition. It means creating space for reflection and collective evaluation. Yet all these steps go directly against the grain of the free-wheeling individual entrepreneurship, disciplinary turf wars, argument culture, hierarchies, and competitiveness that both structure and fragment academia."

Harry C. Boyte, Everyday Politics: Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004): 141.

Quote of the Day

"It's not unique to Louisiana. It's just brazen down here. Machine politics in the north will skim the cream. Here in Louisiana, they skim the cream, they steal the milk, hijack the bottles and look for the cow."
-- James Bernazanni, the special agent in charge of the FBI's New Orleans field office, commenting after New Orleans City Councilman Oliver Thomas's public admission of illegal and corrupt behavior.