Food for thought from a baker's dozen
• Edward Bellamy: "As political equality is the remedy for political tyranny, so is economic equality the way of putting an end to the economic tyranny exercised by the few over the many through the superiority of wealth." (1891)
• John Kenneth Galbraith: "People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage." (1977)
• Euripides: "The god of war hates him who hesitates." (5th Century BCE)
• Bertrand Russell: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible." (1930)
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn: "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" (The Gulag Archipelago)
• Margaret Sanger: "No woman can call herself free who does not own or control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother." (1963)
• Helen Keller: "The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters." (1911)
• Edward Dowling: "The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor is that we have a democracy; and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it." (1941)
• Marshall McLuhan: "The medium is the message because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action." (1964)
• Malcolm X: "Power recognizes only power, and all of them who realize this have made gains." (1960s)
• Sinclair Lewis: "Between the Pulitzer Prize, the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the inquisition of earnest literary ladies, every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient and sterile." (Letter refusing the Pulitzer, 1926)
• Henry Kissinger: Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power, and is often, in point of fact, useless." (1975)
• Harriet Tubman: "I freed thousands of slaves, and could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves." (c. 1901)
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2002:
Another blow against administration secrecy
A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to release the names of those arrested and detained in its 9/11 investigation. This order will likely get appealed, but it is further evidence that the courts are stripping the Bush Administration of the extraordinary powers it seized in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
Tweet of the Day:
RT @Marmel: Black first lady asks Americans to eat healthy: Socialist. Heavy white Gov asks Americans to eat crap to hate gays: Hero.
— @liberalchik via TweetDeck
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National Journal's "Conversation Nation," which might be this year's "snap poll," forcing pundits off pre-determined narratives. Plus, the craziness at Chick-Fil-A, and a revealing
Bloomberg News article showing how class warfare gets fought from above, disguised as outcome-neutral analysis. But surprise! It's really rigged to benefit wealthy Wall Street rip-off artists most of all! Today's
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