“It’s like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food, as worried attendants tried to catch him. You’re stunned, amused, and embarrassed all at the same time. Only your uncle probably wouldn’t do it every single day, his words aren’t broadcast to the public, and he doesn’t have to lead the US government once he puts his pants on.”
— Phillip Rucker, Book by ‘Anonymous’ describes Trump as cruel, inept and a danger to the nation [11/7]
*****
“Sweet mother of God. Sondland is shoveling them under the bus wholesale.”
— Rick Wilson, Conservative Rick Wilson astonished as Gordon Sondland tosses Trump and his crew ‘under the bus wholesale’
*****
“That’s right, the slicked-back sperm sample who never served anybody is questioning the integrity of a lieutenant colonel with a Purple Heart. Daddy Bone Spurs must be very proud of him.”
— Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Kimmel Shreds ‘Slicked-Back Sperm Sample’ Donald Trump Jr. Over Testimony Smears
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
— Desmond Tutu
*****
“If you’re looking for a hotel owned by a Trump supporter who gave the campaign a million dollars in exchange for an ambassadorship that he’s unqualified for so he can extort foreign leaders into attacking fellow Americans, look no further. “BONUS: plush bath robes and white hoods available in each room.”
— Tweet regarding Gordon Sonland’s Revolution Hotel, Sondland hotels are facing backlash over Trump ties: ‘Do you want to support him?’
*****
“This is not a matter of one’s political party preferences. It is a matter of basic structural sociology. Institutions, like animal species, have limits to how fast they can change. To get rapid change they have to be replaced with new social systems of policy, practice and culture. It is a terrible and painful realization, but it is time to accept our reality.”
— Roger Hallam, How to Save the Planet and Ourselves
*****
“Economics dominates politics—and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness. The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed.”
— Sheldon Wolin, Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism
*****
“We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.”
— Edward R. Murrow (1958)
*****
“The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”
— Justice William O. Douglas
*****
“By defending Julian Assange we defend our most sacred rights. Speak up now or wake up one morning to the silence of a new kind of tyranny.”
— John Pilger, investigative journalist, ‘All of us are in danger’: John Pilger delivers a chilling warning from Julian Assange
*****
“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.”
— Howard Zinn