"Now, people ask me all the time how we got four surplus budgets in a row. What new ideas did we bring to Washington? I always give a one-word answer: Arithmetic."

Former President Bill Clinton

"In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to
observe the law scrupulously . . . If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds
contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites
anarchy."

Justice Louis Brandeis Olmstead v. United States (1928)

"All administrations sometimes hide, shade or slant the truth-and occasionally lie outright. The present administration is different in that it lies regularly, blatantly, heedlessly."

Richard Primus

So we're paying billions so we can pollute more and speed climate change.

"The message I have for climate deniers is this: you are endangering humankind. It is time for climate deniers to face reality, because the body of evidence is overwhelming and the world's leading scientists agree. Wishing that climate change will go away by clinging to a tiny minority view is not a policy, it is a fantasy. Problems do not go away by pretending they do not exist."
Senator Barbara Boxer

A galleon would make about as much sense as the "battleship." There's a reason none have been built for over 80 years.

"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule in not the convinced Nazi or dedicated Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists."

Hannah Arendt "Origins of Totalitarianism.

"Far too many of those in power today are basing critical decisions that affect our lives and the lives of future generations not on rigorous science or even the most basic of facts - but on ideology, political opportunism and, most disturbing of all, willful misinformation."

Kevin Knobloch, President, Union of Concerned Scientists

No one in Texas will be hurt by Ken Paxton not being Senator.
#2 | Posted by Zed

Everyone in the nation will be helped by Paxton not being Senator.

"Trump's Big Lie was about the 2020 election, but his Big Myth was about his competence - the delusion that the man who bankrupted a casino, ran Trump University into the ground, and presided over the serial botches of Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, the Trump Shuttle, Trump Mortgage, the Tour de Trump, Trump the Game, and Trump Magazine, actually knew how to run anything more complicated than a bottle of spray tan. It's only gotten worse as he purges experts and grownups from his government, and surrounds himself with toadies, ------, and zealots who tell him what he wants to hear and never, even suggest that the emperor's shortcomings are dangling in the breeze."

Charlie Sykes

"Never forget, the press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it."

Richard Nixon, talking with Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office, December 1972.

Firing hundreds of people for no particular reason will make it harder to recruit replacements.

"A nuclear power plant produces power for decades; the nuclear waste it leaves behind will remain lethal for 10,000 years. Put on a blackboard the year the EPA has determined these materials will be safe, 11,993.

Daniel Ellsberg, 1993.

And there is not a thing any Russian citizen can do about it.

"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Denis Diderot (French man of letters and philosopher, 1713-1784)

"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty."

Hannah Arendt

If you ignore a problem like climate change it will no doubt go away.

Where will that $80 billion come from? More debt? Heaven forbid there should be taxes to pay for it.

"I don't want my staff educated!"

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)

"Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as the truth' exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as Science' ... If the Leader says of such and such an event, It never happened'-well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five-well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs."

George Orwell

"I don't want my staff educated!"

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)

"There are lots of people who lack education but who have great natural intelligence and a desire to learn, including most of the people I grew up with. Stupid is different. To win a degree in stupid, you have to willfully reject facts in favor of superstitions, myths, fears and conspiracy theories. And then get all your news from fake or biased news sites targeted at the stupid."

Alan Caron

They're not rich and don't make big campaign contributions (aka bribes) so they don't count.