Say What? November 29, 2011 Edition [Reader Post]

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Liberals:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg: “All the president has to do – and I’m not trying to hold him more responsible, but he is the chief executive, he was elected to lead this country – all he’s got to do is stand up and say, `I will veto any extension of any of the Bush-era tax cuts.’  Everybody. Not just the rich, but everybody.”

Barack Obama to Reverend Al Sharpton: “Look, there’s no doubt that I’m disappointed that not just Congress generally, but the Republicans in particular, are not willing to put serious revenue on the table as part of a balanced plan. . . So the position they’re taking is short-sighted. Uh, but, uh, you know, I, uh, it, it, it must be my, uh, religious faith, reverend, cause, uh, hope springs eternal and I continue to believe that at some point common sense will prevail and we’ll be able to work something out…we’ve got to have a balanced plan that’s fair, which everybody is sacrificing for the greater good.”

Senate leader Harry Reid:  “The American people are tired of their elected leaders listening to the extreme voices in their party instead of the voices of reason. I am disappointed that Republicans never found the courage to ignore Tea Party extremists and millionaire lobbyists such as Grover Norquist, and listen instead to the millions of Americans – including the vast majority of Republicans – who want a balanced approach to deficit reduction.  For the good of our country, Democrats were prepared to strike a grand bargain that would make painful cuts while asking millionaires to pay their fair share, and we put our willingness on paper. But Republicans never came close to meeting us halfway.”

Occupy WalMart sign: “DON’T BE A CONSUMER WHORE.  STEP FEEDING THE BEAST.”

Jennifer, at Occupy Macy’s NYC: “We’re here to let people know about corporate greed, and Macy’s is a major corporate place.”

Older demonstrator in Occupy Oakland: “The SDS is back by popular demand.”  He was not an actual member of SDS, but of MOBE (?) which came later (I don’t know who they are either).  “We want to make sure that we’re not seen as scary to the 99%.”

Note from Occupier handed to Barack Obama: “Mr. President: Over 4000 peaceful protesters have been arrested. While bankers continue to destroy the American economy. You must stop the assault on our 1st amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out. ”

Natasha Lennard, explaining why she has left the main stream media: “Journalism must break the chains of objectivity and report truth — and the Occupy movement led me to do just that”

The Reverend Al Sharpton speaking of what he was thankful for this Thanksgiving: “Last year we had just come out of the midterm elections where the Republicans gained 61 seats and we were under siege by the tea party.  This year, Occupy Wall Street, whatever its shortcomings, it changed the conversation to where we are now talking about economic inequality – 1 percent versus 99. I am grateful for that.”

President Barack Obama’s Thanksgiving message: “We’re also grateful for the Americans who are taking time out of their holiday to serve in soup kitchens and shelters, making sure their neighbors have a hot meal and a place to stay. This sense of mutual responsibility – the idea that I am my brother’s keeper; that I am my sister’s keeper – has always been a part of what makes our country special. And it’s one of the reasons the Thanksgiving tradition has endured.  I know that for many of you, this Thanksgiving is more difficult than most. But no matter how tough things are right now, we still give thanks for that most American of blessings, the chance to determine our own destiny. The problems we face didn’t develop overnight, and we won’t solve them overnight. But we will solve them. All it takes is for each of us to do our part.”

Democrat Dennis Kucinich on the occupy movement: “What we’re looking at here is a burgeoning social and economic movement that is a sharp protest to the maldistribution of wealth, to the practices of Wall Street that have helped collapse this economy. It’s an authentic expression of the concern that the American people have about the direction that the country is going in. We need to listen to that, rather than just denigrate it.”

Planned Parenthood holiday message: “The holidays are upon us! Going home or getting together with relatives for the holidays is always a stressful time, but if your family members are the type who regularly protest outside the local Planned Parenthood, you know that this holiday is going to be a doozy.  Luckily, we have some tips for surviving those awkward conversations. So read on, and bring some diplomacy and understanding to the table along with that pumpkin pie.”  And then PP gives tips on how to score points for abortion without seeming to be too confrontational.  Just correct all the errors in the thinking of your conservative family members.

President Cecile Richards of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund: “We know that the challenges ahead are real, and that the work of protecting access to reproductive health care will be difficult. We will need you with us, and I can’t tell you how much it means to me and to everyone at Planned Parenthood to know that we have you with us.”

Comedienne and actress Janeane Garofalo on the TEA party types: “It always works on a certain segment of the population. If you are trying to appeal to the worst in us. Quite literally, the worst in us and you’re trying to go to the limbic brain of anxiety, fear, intolerance, hatred, bitterness, ignorance, you have to just use these very simple, as they say, dog whistle words…But they [TEA party types] do love a black man like Herman Cain, and Michael Steele, and is it Ron Christie? Any of these pundits who pretend we’re in a post-racial society. They like that kind of black person.”

Film maker Michael Moore: “The images of this [the UC Davis Pepper Spray Incident] have resonated around the world in the same way that the lone young man standing in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square.”

Minister Louis Farrakhan said that the failure of a bi-partisan economic commission: “The confusion is the sign of the end…And as you are witnessing partisan politics is killing democracy and killing the United States of America as a world power.”

The Compliant Obama Press Corps:

CNN Hostette to John Kerry: “Senator Kerry, just yesterday on Meet the Press you said there were things you agreed to that you didn’t want to talk about public, which sounded very sexy I might add. People want to know, what were the concessions? And would it have been enough to strike a deal here?”

CNN analyst Roland Martin: “If there is one institution that has made a point of desperately trying to keep women in their place, it’s organized religion.”

Piers Morgan to Jon Huntsman: “Are you frustrated that you are still lagging in the polls when the credentials that you seem to offer at this very challenging time for America, particularly in the international stage, seem so much more impressive than many of your rivals?” In case you are unaware, liberals first choice for Republican candidate is Jon Huntsman and their 2nd choice is Mitt Romney.

Piers Morgan: “When I hear you talk, Jon Huntsman, about foreign affairs in particular, it’s always very impressive. You’re smart about it. You’re articulate. I even spoke to you once and you talked to me in Mandarin from your time in China.”

Piers Morgan: “Herman Cain…stumbled about Libya – well he didn’t appear to know what Libya was, let alone where it is.”
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MSNBC contributor Melissa Harris-Perry: “I’ve been thinking a lot about Thanksgiving and the moment that we’re in because, you know, our economic crisis right now is highly tied to the European economic crisis and so I was thinking about kind of what is that first Thanksgiving when these illegal immigrants from Europe come over and are fed by the people of the actual Americas, the Native and indigenous people, you know, here on this land, that they are trying to escape religious prosecution and persecution in Europe and then you have the Europeans basically calling them dirty, no good, worthless, basically 99 percenters, right? And all of that is now playing out in a different way as we see the 99 percent pushing back against this idea that the elites are the only one that deserve to have a Thanksgiving dinner. All of that.”

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “I think it is this audience – I think he knows who he is playing.  He’s very commercial, Rush is. But let me ask you about this. I don’t think it was a dog whistle. I think it was a bugle call. Let’s narrow this down to the politics, get away from the ethnicity. Working-class whites and the way they call it in the polling is `non-college whites.’ He’s going to have a problem with them, because in hard times – you know how prejudice rises during hard times – it’s clear that he sees those people as angry and workable, Rush Limbaugh.”
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Piers Morgan of Sarah Palin not contacting Mark Kelly about the shooting of Gabby Giffords, perpetuating the myth that Palin targeting certain voting districts led to the shooting of Ms. Giffords: `In her haste to take no responsibility, [she—Sarah Palin] didn’t even bother to pick the phone up, to write, to do anything.  I find that extraordinary.”

Mark Kelly, Gifford’s husband: “Yeah, I was surprised too. You know, certainly the targets that she put over Gabby’s and other people’s districts, in our opinion, was not the right thing to do. She is not the first person to do that. And it hasn’t always been Republicans that have done that.”  It does not matter to liberals whether some has been clearly shown to be false; they will perpetuate unreality as fact nevertheless.  This is why we continue to vilify Joe McCarthy for finding communists under every bed and celebrate FDR as bringing us out of the Great Depression.


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MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “The national media, which leans a little to the left, I could argue, could smash him [Mitt Romney].”

Liberals from the past:

Joy Behar: Isn’t it a little racist to call it Black Friday?

Whoopie Goldberg: Well, I would have called it African American Friday, but I feel that’s taking something away from it.

Behar: But there’s a negative connotation to it? Or does it mean something else?

Goldberg: No, it’s like when you make all the money. You’re in the black.

Behar: So it’s positive?

Goldberg: Yeah. It’s in the black, so it’s a huge, great thing.

Behar: A lot of times, like blackmail is negative, black sheep.

Goldberg: Black people.
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Vice President Joe Biden: “One of the early discussions we [Obama and Biden] had, in Chicago, in preparation for  the administration, our transition team out there, we got together, I think it was 30, 35 economists, all left, right center, and what did we talk about?  …back then…we were on the phone calling Jon Corzine, literally.  I literally picked up the phone and called Jon Corzine. And said, ‘Jon, what do you think we should do?’  The reason that we called Jon is, we knew that he knew about the economy, about world markets, about how we had to respond, almost unlike anyone else that we knew…and we trusted his judgement…and what we heard from Jon is what we needed to do, and what we needed to do was a serious economic recovery plan.”  That very expensive economic recovery plan is believed to have worked by about 6% of the voting population.  Jon Corzine recently resigned from MF Global, a huge company that went bankrupt, where there is anywhere from $600,000 to $1.2 billion of investor money unaccounted for.

Liberal civility (spreading Thanksgiving and holiday cheer throughout the world):

MSNBC’s Martin Bashir: “But if anyone’s dirty, it’s Newt Gingrich — a man whose personal morality has been drawn from the sewer, a man who pontificates about his Catholic faith and morality but repeatedly commits adultery.”

Mohammad Malik, CAIR member and Occupy Miami organizer, led chants saying: “Nuke Israel” and “Go back to the oven”

26-year-old Nathan Shafer to Gov. Nikki Haley on Facebook, after he heard about the arrests of 19 Occupy Columbia members outside the State House: “I hope someone murders you before I do.  How’s that for freedom of speech?”

Crazy Muslims:

Several speakers at an anti-Israel rally in Cairo: “one day we shall kill all the Jews”  According to the article I read, this is a quote from the Koran.

CAIR National Legislative Director Corey Saylor: “Last night, Rick Santorum casually tossed aside every American’s constitutional right to equal protection under the law in favor of discriminatory profiling of Muslims.  Mr. Santorum’s obvious lack of appreciation for the Constitution and for the rejection of profiling by top law enforcement experts raises reasonable questions about his ability to lead our multi-faith nation…We remind Mr. Santorum that the Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him), a man of Middle Eastern heritage, would fit his `profile.'”

Liberals making sense:

ACORN founder Wade Rathke:, “…in no way has it [the Occupy movement] had the political impact that the tea party movement has.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta: “If Congress fails to act over the next year, the Department of Defense will face devastating, automatic, across-the-board cuts that will tear a seam in the nation’s defense…The half-trillion in additional cuts demanded by sequester would lead to a hollow force incapable of sustaining the missions it is assigned.”

Moderates/Affiliation Unknown:

An unnamed longtime Washington editor, about “reporter” Ezra Klein briefing top Democrats: “I have never heard of a reporter briefing staffers. It’s supposed to be the other way around. This arrangement seems highly unusual.”

Crosstalk:

Michael Gerson, Washington Post: It’s a serious point. The budget process that was designed in 1974 was designed for presidential leadership. The Congress reacts to the president’s priorities. If you look at past budget deals, whether Reagan or Bush One or Clinton, these were active presidents. You had to have an energetic executive to get a budget deal. And we’ve really had a power outage here, a president that alternates between indifference and being out of the country.

Cokie Roberts: Well, some of it was out of the country, to be fair, was dealing with foreign leaders and preset meetings.

Gerson: But he was not engaged in this process, and most Democrats on the Hill would tell you that as well.

Sam Donaldson: You’ve accurately, I believe, described what’s happened in the past when budget deals were made between a president and another party on the Hill. This was different. This committee was set up by Congress, and expressly – you won’t find it in the legislation – all of them said, “We want the President to butt out, we’re going to take this. Don’t have him come down here and try to tell us what to do.”
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Christiane Amanpour, Host: What about this tone in the country right now? It’s still very divisive. It’s still very sort of brash, some say poisonous. I mean, you can barely get anything done on Capitol Hill, just behind me there. What needs to be done, to actually improve the tone and the ability of people to work together?

Former Secretary of State, Colin Powell: The tone is not — is not good right now, and our political system here in Washington, particularly up on The Hill — Congress — has become very, very tense in that two sides, Republicans and Democrats, are focusing more and more on their extreme left and extreme right. And we have to come back toward the center in order to compromise…

Amanpour: I get your point about heat and light, but what about the fact that, in fact, it is one of the political parties, although — or rather the big political influence, which is the Tea Party, which quotes left and right the Founding Fathers? They say compromise is a dirty word, and they try to point to the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.

Powell: They compromised — the Founding Fathers compromised on slavery. They had to in order to create a country. They compromised on the composition of the Senate, of the House, of the Supreme Court, of a president — what are the president’s powers? Can you imagine more difficult compromises today?  Compromise is how this country was founded, and unless two people in disagreement with each other don’t find a way to reach out to one another and make compromises, you don’t get a consensus that allows you to move forward.  But the Tea Party point of view of no compromise whatsoever is not a point of view that will eventually produce a presidential candidate who will win.

Amanpour: General Powell, thank you very much indeed.

Powell: Thank you, dear.

In the entire interview, there was no discussion of the Occupy movement, of Democratic support for that movement, or of Obama’s continued attempt to pit the poor and middle class against the rich, time after time after time.  I have not seen the entire interview yet, but was there any discussion of what the Republicans brought to the table and what the Democrats brought to the table in the Supercommittee talks?
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Paul Krugman: We have a long term deficit problem. And part of the problem is this got framed in terms of short-term austerity. And so actually, I’m celebrating the fact that this committee has not reached a agreement.

George Will: The Bowles-Simpson commission that the president called into existence and then ignored recommended a package that had 30 percent deficit reduction through new revenues and 70 percent straight cuts.  The Toomey proposal was 24 percent through revenue and 76 percent through cats very similar to Bowles-Simpson and the Democrats ignored it.

Conservatives:

Republican candidate Newt Gingrich: “I already said that if he wants to use a teleprompter, then it would be fine with me. It has to be fair. If you [were] to defend ObamaCare, wouldn’t you want a teleprompter?  Now, just for a second I’m going to go in the detour and I’ll try to explain why I’ve been and he’ll say yes. There are two reasons. The first, is ego. Can you imagine him looking in the mirror? Graduate from Columbia, Harvard Law, editor of the Law Review journal. [Against] the greatest articulator in a Democratic book?  How is he going to say that he’s afraid to be on the same podium as a West Georgia College student?”

George Will, on gridlock in Washington: “This is a transaction cost of democracy. It’s untidy, of course it is. That’s supposed to be that way. The congress far from being dysfunctional is functioning as a representative institute representing a country that is of two minds about its government. ”

Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich: “I am for deporting all recent unattached illegals.  I am for a local citizen panel to consider certification of those who have been here 25 years and have family and community and have been law-abiding and tax-paying.”

Gingrich: “I am prepared to take the heat for saying, let’s be humane in enforcing the law.”

FoxNews contributor Rich Karlgaard: “Anything come out of the NLRB [the National Labor Relations Board] hurts jobs by definition.”

FoxNews contributor Valerie Barret: “We need jobs in this country, not unions.”

Matthew Vadum, a conservative investigative reporter, on the TEA party movement versus the occupy movement: “The only point upon which both agree is their hate of bailouts.  But that’s it. Zuccotti Park is a small park. The tea party attracted thousands and tens of thousands to their rallies; OWS attracts tens and maybe hundreds. When the tea party rally was over, the tea party left. OWS refuses to leave.”


Sign put up by Bill Looman, Georgia businessman: “New Company Policy: We are not hiring until Obama is gone.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s not often that we have guests on this program here at the EIB Network.  But today, as it can often happen, we have an exception.  And I am proud and I am honored and I want to introduce to the microphones of this program the first lady of the United States, Michelle Moochelle Obama.”  The song “I Like Big Butts” by Sir Mix-a-Lot is then played, as a “theme” song.

Rush Limbaugh: “Every second- and third-tier Republican candidate gets an anal exam, a media anal exam. We know about their marriages. We know about their friends. We know about their enemies. We learn about their barmaids and their floozies. We know everything about their kids. We know about their grades. You name it, we’re told everything that we want to know or don’t want to know and more about every Republican.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Is it any wonder that parents get a little worried when they send the little tykes off to school, because I’ll tell you, folks, what’s happening, especially in these blue states, what’s happening in these public schools, the last thing going on is what we’ve all thought of as traditional education.”

Rush Limbaugh: “The Obama strategy is to exacerbate the problem and then get together with the media and blame the Republicans for it.”

Rush Limbaugh: “We can’t go on this way. We cannot go on with half the country being paid by the other half of the country lifetime pensions, lifetime health care, when the people doing the paying don’t have any of that themselves. It can’t sustain itself, and it won’t.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Obama’s killing factory jobs. He’s killing every kind of job this country has. He’s killing energy jobs. He’s killing jobs for Boeing. He’s killing retail jobs. He’s investing in phony industries that do not create any jobs, slush funds, Solyndra.”

Rush Limbaugh: “You compare Michele Bachmann’s life experiences to Obama and how can it be said that she is not up to the job, after the job he has done wrecking this country? How can it be said that she or Herman Cain or any one of our candidates is not up to the job when the alternative is a one-man wrecking crew named Barack Obama?”

Rush Limbaugh: “The reason nobody’s talking about spending cuts is because there aren’t any.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Folks, budgets don’t get whacked in Washington. We actually need for some budgets to get whacked. That’s what doesn’t happen! There really never are genuine spending cuts. There are only reductions in the rate of growth or spending amounts that are less than projected, which then equals a cut from what was expected to be spent.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Now, I’m telling you, when you have a bunch of people who study for three years and conclude that water does not solve dehydration, and then prevent water companies from advertising that water promotes a healthy hydrated lifestyle, I’m sorry. These are liberals. They’re insane, they’re stupid, they’re crazy, whatever else you want to say, but it is important and it matters to understand and accept the ideology that makes these people do and believe this kind of absolutely insane thing.”

Conservatives from the Past:

Milton Friedman: “In the long run government will spend whatever the tax system will raise, plus as much more as it can get away with.”

Conservatives not making any sense:

Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, considering a run as a third-party candidate: “I feel abandoned by the Republican Party.”

Mitt Romney: “This may sound a little overconfident, but I honestly believe I’m the only guy on the stage who has a real good chance of defeating President Obama.”

From Conservative Review #205 (HTML)  (PDF)

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Seeing all those Planned Parenthood remarks about how great it is to have unprotected sex, get pregnant (or get someone pregnant) then use abortion links up nicely with these newly released numbers on AIDS/HIV.

One in five U.S. adult infected with HIV do not know it.
20% of them.
WHY?
Because people can be infected with the AIDS virus for years without developing symptoms.

Of those who are aware that they are infected…….only half receive ongoing medical care and treatment.
WHY?
Do they think it will cure itself, like a cold?

Taking treatment for HIV can prevent people from progressing to AIDS and from developing many of the serious complications of HIV, which unfortunately is still incurable.

Maybe Obama should talk to his constituents.
WHY?
Obama is targeting mainly black and Hispanics.
While the number of Americans newly infected with HIV remained stable between 2006 and 2009, infections rose nearly 50 percent among young black gay and bisexual men, according to the CDC report.

Men who have sex with men — which includes openly gay and bisexual men and those who do not identify themselves as gay or bisexual represents 2 percent of the overall U.S. population, yet they accounted for 61 percent of all new HIV infections in 2009.