News:

PD.com: You wont believe our bullshit

Main Menu

Political quotes of the moment

Started by Cain, September 13, 2009, 03:10:36 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Jasper

Quote from: Doktor Howl on October 17, 2011, 03:19:47 PM
HST lives!  :lulz:

We need to send this man a variety of random objects including aviator shades, an acapulco shirt, and a cigarette holder.  If he picks up those items first, we will be sure that he is the incarnate.

Jenne


Cramulus

Did Paul Krugman really write this article???



This Sure Is A Spooky Time For The Economy

By Paul Krugman
October 25, 2011 | ISSUE 47•43

Greetings...it's your favorite dead-itorial writer, Paul "Bearer" Krugman, here to talk to you again about some rather, shall we say, chilling developments in the national economy. Ah, yes, it is a very dark and stormy night indeed for our financial system, dear readers, the kind of night that sends shivers up one's spine and sends the national unemployment rate soaring to nearly 10 percent. So curl up under your covers, and keep the candlelight close, because I will now tell a tale of economic woe so terrifying it may just make your hair stand on end.

Remember when the economy was BOO-ming? When predatory lenders were sucking the blood of homeowners and confidence in the market was ghoulishly high? Little did we know about the creeping, malevolent spirit of fiduciary calamity that lurked in the dark shadows, ready to pop out and gut the $230 billion federal surplus reported by the Congressional Budget Office for fiscal year 2000. What poor, damned fools we were over the next decade to let our national balance sheet slip so far into the deep, bloody red! Now it seems our economy has been buried alive, and the day may never come when it will once again rise from the dead.

Or should I say rise from the debt?

Sometimes I lie awake in bed having frightful nightmares about the demons and monsters that creep and crawl through Wall Street. Even holy water can't ward off these depraved madmen, I'm afraid. I ask you, how long must the American people pay for the spooktacular failures of the Bush administration? Until we find a way to wrest power away from the top 1 percent favored by the Bush-era tax cuts, I'm afraid we may be headed for a grave calamity that would make John Maynard Keynes himself spin in his coffin...

Once the witching hour comes for the U.S. economy, beware! Who knows what sort of evil forces might go bump in the night. (And by "night," I am referring to what most economists predict will either be a double-dip recession or what I would characterize as a "lesser depression," defined as a prolonged period of high unemployment and economic stagnation following the initial recession—less dire perhaps than the depression of the 1930s but still, I would argue, bloodcurdlingly frightening!)

Am I scaring you, readers? Am I chilling you to the bone with my tales of the supernaturally minimal government spending initiatives engineered to remedy decreased revenues both domestically and abroad?

If we're ever to have a ghost of a chance for recovery, the federal government will have to invest heavily in the economy again, and the American people will have to be reassured they won't be R.I.P.-ped off again. Obama may have cobbled his Frankenstein's monster of a jobs plan together from spare parts, but it is nevertheless monstrously important that a bill like this passes.

But don't take my word for it. After all, I am just one lone voice in the darkness. In fact, perhaps none of this is real. Perhaps it's all just a bad dream. A very, very bad dream, indeed. That is...you hope. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Sweet dreams, readers...

Jenne

:lol:  :lulz:  Say what you want about him, but at least this economist has imagination.

Cain

Jonathan Schwarz does some historical comparison:

QuoteThe book Confidence Men by Ron Suskind describes an Obama interview with Rolling Stone from September, 2010 that I didn't read at the time. Here's some of it:

RS: There's also a concern when it comes to financial reform that your economic team is closely identified with Wall Street and the deregulation that caused the collapse. These are the folks who were supposed to have had oversight of Wall Street, and many of them worked for or were close to banks like Goldman Sachs...

OBAMA: I read some of the articles that Tim Dickinson and others have produced in Rolling Stone. I understand the point of view that they're bringing. But look: Tim Geithner never worked for Goldman; Larry Summers didn't work for Goldman. There is no doubt that I brought in a bunch of folks who understand the financial markets, the same way, by the way, that FDR brought in a lot of folks who understood the financial markets after the crash, including Joe Kennedy...


This is from the book The Money and the Power by Sally Denton and Roger Morris:

Through purloined information and speculative connivance, what a later generation outlawed as "insider trading," [Joe Kennedy] took millions from Wall Street before the Crash...For helping to finance Franklin Roosevelt's presidential commission in 1932, he was rewarded with the chairmanship of the new Securities and Exchange Commission, which began to police some of the same stock exchange abuses he had just practiced so profitably, "a crook to catch a crook," as Roosevelt once quipped to his adviser James Farley.

It would be nice if we had presidents, or music magazines, who were able to remember the past. But then we wouldn't get this kind of accidental honesty, so I guess it all works out in the end.


Cain

Oh, those Egyptian security services and their wacky ways...

Quote from: Lawrence Wright, The Looming TowerTo deal with Zawahiri, Egyptian intelligence agents devised a fiendish plan. They lured a thirteen year-old boy named Ahmed into an apartment with the promise of juice and videos. Ahmed was the son of Mohammed Sharraf, a well-known Egyptian fundamentalist and a senior member of al-Jihad. The boy was drugged and sodomized; when he awakened, he was confronted with photographs of the homosexual activity and threatened with the prospect of having them shown to his father. For the child, the consequences of such a disclosure were overwhelming. "It could even be that the father would kill him," a source close Zawahiri admitted.

The Egyptians used these tactics on two boys and made them spy on Zawahiri.  Predictably, Zawahiri figured out they were spying on him, and had them both shot.

This plot was devised as a response to the 1995 plot to assassinate Murbarak while he was visiting Ethiopia.  This is the same Murbarak who is a "close family friend" of Hillary Clinton and whom Joe Biden "would not refer to...as a dictator".

Scribbly

Quote from: Cain on December 06, 2011, 08:22:59 AM
Oh, those Egyptian security services and their wacky ways...

Quote from: Lawrence Wright, The Looming TowerTo deal with Zawahiri, Egyptian intelligence agents devised a fiendish plan. They lured a thirteen year-old boy named Ahmed into an apartment with the promise of juice and videos. Ahmed was the son of Mohammed Sharraf, a well-known Egyptian fundamentalist and a senior member of al-Jihad. The boy was drugged and sodomized; when he awakened, he was confronted with photographs of the homosexual activity and threatened with the prospect of having them shown to his father. For the child, the consequences of such a disclosure were overwhelming. "It could even be that the father would kill him," a source close Zawahiri admitted.

The Egyptians used these tactics on two boys and made them spy on Zawahiri.  Predictably, Zawahiri figured out they were spying on him, and had them both shot.

This plot was devised as a response to the 1995 plot to assassinate Murbarak while he was visiting Ethiopia.  This is the same Murbarak who is a "close family friend" of Hillary Clinton and whom Joe Biden "would not refer to...as a dictator".

Fucking...  :x
I had an existential crisis and all I got was this stupid gender.

Cain

Quoth IOZ:

QuoteWell now apparently the great moral angoisse à propos Iraq is not whether or not an immense and powerful nation ought to instigate an unprovoked invasion and occupation of another country, killing many thousands through direct military action and a million or more as an immediate consequence of those actions, but whether or not the people we conquered will, upon our partial withdrawal, will express sufficient gratitude for having been billeted with a gang of well-armed fatamericans lo this past decade. But we got rid of Saddam! It's like date-raping your girlfriend and then being upset that she didn't thank you for not doing anal.

Cain

One of my favourite quotes, from the introduction to Anti-Oedipus:

QuoteThe major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism (whereas Anti-Oedipus' opposition to the others is more of a tactical engagement). And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini - which was able to mobilize and use the desire of the masses so effectively - but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.

Cain

Russian political writing!

Quote from: Yulia LatyninaIt is possible that Georgia will get one more chance. In that one short moment, when a confused people will look on with astonishment as the band of thieves returning to power brings back its lawlessness – but at a point of time when the army and police are not yet wholly purged of respectable people, who care for the fate of their country – in that moment, Georgia will get another window of opportunity. Like the one, for instance, that Pinochet got on September 11, 1973. But maybe, this chance will never come.

Republican Americans and certain Russians are pissing themselves in fear since the fall of Saakashvili in Georgia - who was becoming increasingly bizarre and authoritarian in his rule.  But this is a new low - opening agitating for a bloody coup.

Cain

American justice!

QuoteMohammed's lawyer, Air Force Captain Michael Schwartz, said forcibly removing them from their cells and hauling them into court would subject them to physical and emotional strain reminiscent of their time in CIA custody.

"We have to talk about torture," Schwartz said.

"No we don't," the judge replied.

"I think we do," Schwartz said.

"I'm telling you I don't think that's relevant to this issue. That's the end of that," Pohl snapped.

When Schwartz persisted, Pohl said angrily, "Are you having trouble hearing me? Move on to something else!"

Unlike previous sessions at the high-security war crimes courtroom at the Guantanamo base in Cuba, the court security officer did not muffle the audio feed that spectators hear when the word "torture" was uttered.

Colonel Pohl is sounding a little shrill....also, nice move by the court security officer.

One would almost think the American political elite are being tortured, their reaction to the word "torture".  Don't talk about it!  Don't even mention it by name!  Time to move on!

Cain

Robert Gibbs, on the targeted assassination of Anwar al-Walaki's 16 year old son:

Quote"I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father."

I think Jehovah said it better

Quote from: Exodus 20:5You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

Quote from: Exodus 34:6-7"The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation."

Al-Walaki's hated God America so much they had to kill his son for his crime.

LMNO

I hate the majority of humanity.  There, I said it.

Cain

This might make you feel better, then.

Paul Carr - Travis Shrugged: The creepy, dangerous ideology behind Silicon Valley's Cult of Disruption (subscription needed).

QuoteLaws don't exist merely to frustrate the business ambitions of coastal hipsters: They also exist to protect the more vulnerable members of society. Back home in London (where such statistics are available), 11 women a month are attacked in unlicensed cabs, and unlicensed drivers are responsible for a horrifying 80 percent of all stranger rapes. If Uber doesn't have to follow licensing laws, then neither does any Tom, Dick, or Harry who chooses to paint the word "TAXI" on the side of his car, and start offering rides via the Internet. A disruptive CEO will shrug (and there's a foreshadowing word) and insist that it's not his fault that such criminals exist. "Just because there are people who want to rape, murder, or rob you shouldn't prevent me from making another million dollars," he'll argue.

Remarkably, a large part of the Internet community — by which I mean that tiny number of social media fanatics who spend their days on Twitter, looking for the next cause to rally behind or the next bad guy to boycott — will agree with him.

Sure enough, when I Retweeted Mott's PandoDaily post, I was immediately inundated with @replies accusing me of being "anti-free market" and insisting that the only thing the government should do for technology companies is "get out of the way." What was curious about those most loudly defending Kalanick -- apart from the fact that they all were idiots -- was that almost all of them directly or obliquely referenced the same author in their Twitter bio...

Ayn fucking Rand.

I'm actually embarrassed that it took me until then to make the connection, particularly given I used to host the startup competition at a technology conference called "TechCrunch Disrupt." The original Silicon Valley meaning of a disruptive company was one that used its small size to shake up a bigger industry or bloated competitor. Increasingly, though, the conference stage was filled with brash, Millennial entrepreneurs vowing to "Disrupt" real-world laws and regulations in the same way that me stealing your dog is Disrupting the idea of pet ownership. On more than one occasion a judge would ask an entrepreneur "Is this legal?" to which the reply would inevitably come: "Not yet." The audience would laugh and applaud. What chutzpah! So Disruptive!

Juana

"I dispose of obsolete meat machines.  Not because I hate them (I do) and not because they deserve it (they do), but because they are in the way and those older ones don't meet emissions codes.  They emit too much.  You don't like them and I don't like them, so spare me the hysteria."