Strangly familiar

This quote from Atrios-

It's pretty damn easy to be moral when all it requires is worrying about the morality of other people and not actually adjusting one's own behavior.
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Now where I have seen that before?....Oh Yeah!

Matt 7:3-5
7:3 Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? 7:4 Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye? 7:5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.

Other Link

LA Times headline

Bush says, leaving, "Iraq would be a mistake"

Its all in how you say it!

Nothing says "freedom" quite like passing through the metal detectors on the way to the rally!

Q: Where do I check in for the America Supports You Freedom Walk?
R: Participants are encouraged to arrive at the Pentagon South parking lot between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. for screening to avoid long lines. The first 1,000 to arrive for screening at the Pentagon on September 11, will receive the official America Supports You campaign lapel pin.

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Great post from The Green Knight

Well, the crucial element in the right-wing attack is that the modern American right doesn't live in the real world. For them, you can't change your mind about a real-world politician or policy, because for them, the real world doesn't exist. All that exists for them is a set of unchanging, idealized fictions. If you change your mind about one of those, well, it must be because you're weak or perverse: you've lost the faith and become evil.


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From Anthony Gregory

The American right has long dedicated itself to the promotion of limited government – limited to its key functions of cracking skulls, caging sinners and leveling cities. Helpful to this program of state violence is the fact that most people, left, right, center and libertarian, believe that protecting people’s rights to life, liberty and property against foreign and domestic threats is the one unquestionable purpose of government. People tend to consider organized force a legitimate means to defend the innocent against violent criminals, terrorists, and the like.

Read The Whole Thing

Inspiration

This inspired me to give my quarterly contribution to antiwar.com even though the original is from Daily Kos Link here

A less discussed reason the war in Iraq is misguided.

"The Bush administration has decided to topple the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein despite the fact that the war against al Qaeda is unfinished because the White House has concluded that a successful campaign against Iraq would "shatter the psychological advantage within the Islamist movement and demonstrate U.S. power,"
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What effect do you suppose a failed campaign will have?

Digby on libertarians.

Instead, the Republicans are creating a national government that seeks to intrude in the most personal of ways, interfering with people's religious and moral choices. That wasn't what the independent, individualistic western style libertarian signed on for. They are ours for the taking if we have the nerve to say what Paul Hackett said up there.

Someone actually GETS IT!

The tragedy of September 11th shook our sense of security and made us realize that we, too, are vulnerable to acts of terrorism. Unfortunately, some believe that this threat renders our Constitution obsolete. This is a Constitution for which men and women have died and continue to die and which has made us a model among nations. If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won.

It is my sworn duty, and as long as there is breath in my body I'll perform it, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

We will be in recess.
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Whooda thunk

Who would have thought as I was growing up in the Sixties that at some time in a future political conflict, my sympathies would come down squarely on the side of the CIA!

An excellent Plame case summary here

via e-mail

I get a lot of spam but I must say that today was my first ever opportunity to "Authorizate my PayPal account"

Van Jones on the Huffington Post

Somewhere, in all of these stirrings, I see the seeds of a wisdom-based, Earth-honoring, pro-democracy movement – one that affirms and applauds religious and spiritual impulses, while opposing fundamentalism, chauvinism and theocracy. Over time, that kind of progressive movement has the potential to win – and win big – in the United States. To be honest: it is probably the ONLY type of progressive movement that stands a chance in a country as religious as ours.

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from Mark Morford

Rove, with his meager education and porcine sheen and this-one's-for-all-the-girls-who-shunned-me-in-high-school revenge demeanor, essentially reinvented American politics, created a new language of hate and fear, rewrote the GOP rule book to include the notion that actual facts don't matter and a politician can get away with absolutely anything if the denials are orchestrated just right and if the accusers are immediately counterattacked and mistakes are admitted absolutely never.

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Billmon on Coulter

I know Ilse's just trying to stand out in a crowd here, which isn't as easy as it used to be, now that nuking Mecca has gone mainstream.
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From The Green Knight

Jesus once upon a time threw the money-changers out of the temple. The problem is, in America today, the money-changers have built their own.
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From Paul Krugman

"Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker."

Losing all the modifiers and extracting the meat of the sentence yields -

"Mr. Rove is a thug."

It's about time someone said it out loud.

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From Kevin Drum

Who would have thought that one day the White House would be run by someone who made Richard Nixon look responsible and forbearing?

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Just a Thought

Any enterprise that depends on the stupidity of its customers for its success is inherently evil. (Think lottery tickets and infomercials)

Now consider the Bush administration.

Anthony Gregory goes to the heart of the matter.

Conscription is slavery, and if it returns, any arguments over whether America is a free country become obsolete.
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From Riverbend

Don’t Americans know that this vast wasteland of terror and terrorists otherwise known as ‘Abroad’ was home to the first civilizations and is home now to some of the most sophisticated, educated people in the region?

Don’t Americans realize that ‘abroad’ is a country full of people- men, women and children who are dying hourly? ‘Abroad’ is home for millions of us. It’s the place we were raised and the place we hope to raise our children- your field of war and terror.

The war was brought to us here, and now we have to watch the country disintegrate before our very eyes. We watch as towns are bombed and gunned down and evacuated of their people. We watch as friends and loved ones are detained, or killed or pressured out of the country with fear and intimidation.
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