From AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:
This is a moment that working people and quite frankly history will judge President Obama on his presidency; will he commit all his energy and focus on bold solutions on the job crisis or will he continue to work with the Tea Party to offer cuts to middle class programs like Social Security all the while pretending the deficit is where our economic problems really lie?
Good question.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on the debt ceiling debate ..
I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.
It’s economic terrorism plain and simple. The GOP held the nation hostage until its ransom demands were met. The Senate Minority Leader even uses that same metaphor to describe his party’s strategy. And what they learned is this: It works. Crime pays.
Rep. Todd Akin recently remarked to Family Research Council president Tony Perkins that “at the heart of liberalism really is a hatred of God.” Unitarian Rev. Krista Taves of St. Louis had the appropriate response …
You know very little about liberals, and sadly enough, you also seem to know very little about God and his son Jesus.
Amen.
Just how radical is The American Legislative Exchange Council I wrote about yesterday? Here’s a classic clip from Paul Weyrich, one of its founding members:
Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome — good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.
Their philosophy is anti-American and anti-democratic. It’s a form of fascism. This is where Nieves is getting his ideas.
Sen. Barack Obama, Second presidential debate on foreign policy, Oct. 7, 2008
What I have said is we’re going to encourage democracy in Pakistan, expand our non-military aid to Pakistan so that they have more of a stake in working with us, but insisting that they go after these militants. And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority.
Republicans called him naive and irresponsible. But President Obama kept his promise and got the job done.
I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is the people of this area elected an ultra-conservative to represent them in the Missouri Senate. The bad news is the people elected an ultra-conservative to represent them in the Missouri Senate.
Indeed. The good news is for Nieves. The bad news is for the rest of us.
Michael Moore on the three major lies of the last decade …
Wisconsin is broke. There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the Packers need Favre to win the Super Bowl.
Watch Moore’s entire speech in Madison, WI on March 5 here.
And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States. — Democratic Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, in Spartanburg, SC. Nov. 3rd, 2007.
There are three things you need to know about the current budget debate. First, it’s essentially fraudulent. Second, most people posing as deficit hawks are faking it. Third, while President Obama hasn’t fully avoided the fraudulence, he’s less bad than his opponents — and he deserves much more credit for fiscal responsibility than he’s getting.
Speaking of people posing as deficit hawks who are faking it …
President Barack Obama’s remarks on Egypt
This is the power of human dignity, and it could never be denied. Egyptians have inspired us, and they’ve done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence.
For in Egypt, it was the moral force of non-violence — not terrorism, not mindless killing — but non-violence, moral force, that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.
