x"The fact that Terrorism has no fixed meaning does not mean it is inconsequential. The opposite is true. Terrorism is one of the most consequential words in our political lexicon. The term designates Supreme, Unmitigated Evil. Once someone is successfully branded a Terrorist, it means that anything and everything can and should be done to them without constraints (e.g., sure, I don’t love the idea that the President — in secret and with no due process – can target my fellow citizens for assassination, but I support its being done to Anwar Awlaki because he’s a Terrorist; I don’t like detention without trial but I can live with it as it’s being used to imprison Terrorists; it’s terrible when we slaughter children with drones but it has to be done to get the Terrorists, etc. etc.).
As I’ve said before, Terrorism is simultaneously the term that means nothing and justifies everything. That’s why such strong emotions are evoked when it is used in a way that deviates from mandated orthodoxies. It’s a meaningless term, but incredibly (perhaps incomparably) significant in governing how power and violence can be wielded and against whom."
— Glenn Greenwald
As I’ve said before, Terrorism is simultaneously the term that means nothing and justifies everything. That’s why such strong emotions are evoked when it is used in a way that deviates from mandated orthodoxies. It’s a meaningless term, but incredibly (perhaps incomparably) significant in governing how power and violence can be wielded and against whom."
— Glenn Greenwald
x"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
— John Kenneth Galbraith (via ratak-monodosico)
— John Kenneth Galbraith (via ratak-monodosico)
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The typical U.S. historical marker raises more questions than it answers, and many of the signs are rife with errors and bias. Artist Norm Magnusson’s I-75 Project uses the form for a different sort of provocation. (via utnereader)
x"Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth."
— Lucy Parsons (via bradicalmang)
— Lucy Parsons (via bradicalmang)
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Jon Stewart debates Bill O’Reilly about the invitation rapper Common received to read poetry at the White House last week. (watch part two here, via brooklynmutt)
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Seth Meyers at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner
“Donald Trump said recently he had a ‘great relationship with the blacks.’ Though unless ‘the Blacks’ are a family of white people, I bet he’s mistaken.” (via brooklynmutt)
x"Yes, Obama duped the young people of this country by not doing every single thing they want, so now they’ll all vote Republican. It’s like when I want some bread I will not settle for half a loaf, I will instead have a muffin made of broken glass."
— Stephen Colbert (via therecipe)
— Stephen Colbert (via therecipe)
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“How can I get by on one house? I need five houses, ten houses! I need three jet planes to take me all over the world! Sorry, American people. We’ve got the money, we’ve got the power, we’ve got the lobbyists here and on Wall Street. Tough luck. That’s the world, get used to it. Rich get richer. Middle-class shrinks…
So these crybabies, the multi-millionaires and billionaires, these people who are making out like bandits, they are crying and crying and crying, but their effective tax rates for the top 400 income earners in America was cut almost in half from 1992 to 2007. The point that needs to be made is when is enough enough? That really is the essence of what we are talking about. When does greed— and greed is, in my view, it’s like a sickness, it’s like an addiction. We know people on heroin, they can’t stop, they need more and more.
I would hope that for these people who are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, they will look around them and say, ‘There is something more important in life than the richest people becoming richer when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world.’ Maybe they will understand that they are Americans, part of a great nation which is in trouble today. Maybe they’ve got to go back to the Bible or whatever they believe in understanding that there is virtue in sharing, in reaching out, that you can’t get it all.
How can anybody be proud to say that I am an multimillionaire and I’ve been getting a huge tax break and one-quarter of the kids in this country is on food stamps?”
― Bernie Sanders
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Bill O’Reilly: “A lot of Americans feel you’re a big government liberal who wants to intrude on their freedom. Now, they also say that you’ve been moving—.”
President Obama: “I think that a lot of the folks who watch you, Bill, believe that.”
