"In the spring of 2003, shortly after the start of the war in Iraq, the state of affairs on veterans funding in the Republican controlled House was by all accounts surprisingly hostile to veterans. The Bush administration sent to the House its proposal for cutting $844 million from veterans health care from the 2004 budget. Over a 10-year period the cuts would total approximately $10 billion. When the proposal reached the House Budget Committee, all 18 Democrats opposed the cuts, and they proposed an amendment to restore the $844 million and add another billion for VA discretionary health care. Led by their chairman, Jim Nussle of Iowa, Republicans on the committee, in an almost perfect party-line vote, 22-19, rejected the amendment and proceeded with the Bush proposal."
"In early May I took a taxi from Amman to Baghdad. After passing through Jordanian customs and approaching the Iraqi border post, my driver warned me to remain in the car. The Iraqi resistance had people working for it at the border post, he said, and if they saw my US passport they would contact their friends on the road ahead. They would welcome us with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire. I pushed the seat back as he said and closed my eyes. Soon we were driving east to Baghdad on Iraq's Highway 10, and I had sneaked into the country without any US or Iraqi officials cognizance. As we drove past the charred hulks of sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) whose drivers had been less savvy than mine, and whose passengers had been less lucky than me, I wondered who else was infiltrating Iraq with the same ease I did...
"Near the old bridge where the charred bodies were strung up is the Julan neighborhood on the northwestern border of the town. I found the neighborhood's people sorting through the rubble of their destroyed homes, flattened as if by an earthquake. AC-130 gunships, attack helicopters, and even fighter planes had pummeled the neighborhood where Mujahideen held out. I found one man standing in the center of an immense crater that had been his home, his children playing on piles of bricks. Another man sat collapsed in despair in front of the gate leading to his home that had been crushed as if by a giant foot. He played with his worry beads indolently. One by one the men of the neighborhood asked me to photograph the damage US marines had inflicted upon them. As I was doing so a white sedan pulled up and two men covering their faces with checkered scarves emerged, demanding to know my identity. They were afraid of spies, they told me. I convinced them I was just a journalist and they escorted me to a mosque whose tower had collapsed from a US attack. In the still-seething Julan neighborhood, fighters were bitter about the compromise reached with the Americans that ended the fighting, and threatened to kill the leaders who had negotiated and approved the settlement."
"'I come from Florida, where you and others participated in what I call the United States coup d'etat. We need to make sure it doesn't happen again,' Brown said. 'Over and over again after the election when you stole the election, you came back here and said, "Get over it." No, we're not going to get over it. And we want verification from the world.'
"At that point, Buyer demanded that Brown's words be 'taken down,' or removed from the debate's permanent record.
"The House's presiding officer, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, ruled that Brown's words violated a House rule.
"'Members should not accuse other members of committing a crime such as, quote, stealing, end quote, an election,' Thornberry said.
"When Brown objected to his ruling, the Republican-run House voted 219-187 along party lines to strike her words."
"For the most part, we live in a free country. An example: Even though it's generally illegal to drive faster than 75mph on any road in the country, car manufacturers don't install electronic speed enforcers on vehicles. If you get caught driving too fast, resolving the matter is up to you and the highway patrol, and the police can't automatically collect money from Volvo every time your station wagon hits 71mph. But imagine what would happen if, before you were ever caught speeding, the highway patrol preemptively brought lawsuits against every entity responsible for your driving too fast.. Volvo, your tire manufacturer, the movie Speed, the ad firm who made the car look fast, and even NASCAR could be sued for 'inducing' you to speed.
"Sound ludicrous? Consider Orrin Hatch's ill-conceived
INDUCE Act 0f 2004, which essentially enforces similar rules in the world of digital music. (Quite bizarrely, the term
INDUCE stands for
inducement devolves into unlawful child exploitation --if you discover the connection between copyright infringement and the exploitation of children, please let me know.)
"The act would illegalize anything that might make you more likely to infringe copyright. It's written in such overly broad language that you can't tell whether it would outlaw the iPod, tape recorders, libraries, the Internet, or just technology in general. After all, one could argue that all of these have made people more likely to commit copyright infringement."
"Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong."
- George Carlin -
"Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world."
- Arthur Schopenhauer -
"I no longer respect Whoopi Goldberg."
"Christ, I just spent an hour searching and couldn't find one single accurate quote of what she actually said. The best I could come up with was she pointed to her crotch while referencing 'Bush.'"
- MD -
"I'm afraid you're going to have to be a little more specific."
- Whoopi Goldberg on The Whoopi Goldberg Show in answer to the question "Could you point me to the Bush affair?" on a day when her hotel was simultaneously hosting a lesbian wedding and a Republican dinner. -
"Boycott Slim-Fast! They also distribute Suave and Dove products. Walmart sells a lot of Unilever products. They will be very unhappy campers if we boycott all Unilever and Slim Fast products. Let Walmart know it's because Slim Fast fired Whoopi Goldberg."
"Boycott Whoopi!"
"After reading about the 'Hatefest' Democrat Party in Manhattan, N.Y., and the words that were spoken by the participants, including Whoopie Goldberg, I and my wife wish you to know we will not be purchasing Slim Fast any longer.. We, instead will be opting for Wal-Mart Equate brand, or some other product that is more to our liking, and way of thinking."
"I happen to use slim fast bars..but will not be buying anymore, until Whoopi apologizes to our President."
"Kuwait refused to allow a radioactive material-bound truck to enter the country as demanded by the US army, Kuwait Times reported Sunday. Kuwaiti customs department on Thursday impounded four trucks coming from Iraq for suspicion that they were loaded with radioactive material. After checkup, three of them were found not containing any radioactive material, while the fourth was found to be carrying a container of highly radioactive substance."
"In the daily lives most of us lead, if you take responsibility for someone else's debt, it means you pay it; if you take responsibility for another's crime, you do the time; if you take responsibility for an utter disaster occurring that destroys the lives of others, you pay the price.
"But 9/11, as the neocons are quick to remind us, changed everything; including, obviously, the meaning of common English words like responsibility.
"In their new lexicon, it apparently means an empty confession of guilt without accepting any of the consequences, and a quick end to the matter: "There, I've accepted responsibility; now let's move on."
"You might call it 'Responsibility Lite'; all of the desirable focus-group-tested mea culpa public proteins, without the troublesome weight of disgraceful long-term calories."
- R.S. Janes: The Neocon Notion of Responsibility -
"I know it's a terrible thing when Whoopi Goldberg makes salacious fun of C-Plus Augustus's last name. I know that society may simply collapse. But Tucker Carlson is a professional communicator at the top of his profession who, because he couldn't come up with anything else to say at the moment, smugly dispatches the tragedy of a child whose guts were ripped out. (Later in the same show, he told co-host James Carville to 'Lighten up,' about his comments.) It was an interesting evening -- not only should Tucker Carlson have lost every job in the professional media that he has, and not only did he lose forever any right to criticize anyone for intemperate speech, he at that moment should have been shunned by decent people for the rest of his sorry life. Jacuzzi cases. Christ."
"Earlier this year, the Transportation Security Administration tried to retroactively restrict two pages of public congressional testimony that had revealed how its undercover agents managed to smuggle some guns past screeners. Presumably they were afraid a terrorist would read about it and try the method himself - but it would have made a lot more sense to seek some outsiders' input on how to resolve the putative problem than to try to hide it from our prying eyes. Especially when the information had already been sitting in the public record."
"Martha Stewart got what she deserved for perfectly folding fitted sheets. Anybody who does anything but roll those mothers into a ball and cram them in the closet has too much time on their hands. Might as well spend some in a cell block."