Scott County DFL
Good Quotes
"The Republicans are worried about the flag, gay marriage, and the terrible burden of the estate tax on the rich. The rest of us are obviously unnecessarily worried about the war, peace, the economy, the environment, and civilization. Another reason to vote Republican—they have a shorter list."
— Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate, 6/8/06
"There has never been an administration, I don't believe, in our history more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their own agenda. . . We are living in a time when the other side doesn't want us to see the facts. Facts are inconvenient - facts about global warming, facts about mercury in the air, facts about people staying unemployed longer."
— Hillary Clinton, AP, 6/8/05
"To avert the danger of future cuts in benefits, Bush wants to commit now to, um, future cuts in benefits. This accomplishes nothing, except, possibly, to ensure that benefit cuts take place even if they aren't necessary."
— Paul Krugman, New York Times, 5/9/05
"If by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal' then I'm proud to say I'm a 'Liberal.'"
— John F. Kennedy, Democrat
Because the [Social Security] payroll tax is not levied on higher incomes, low and middle-income workers pay higher effective tax rates than wealthy citizens. Today's workers pay both for current retirees and a little extra for the tough years ahead when the baby boomers will retire. Right now the surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund is nearly $1.5 trillion.

If the surplus is squandered, then workers are paying higher taxes now -- not for future Social Security benefits, but for current spending and tax relief that disproportionately benefits the wealthy. This is not a crisis -- it's a fraud perpetrated on the poor and middle class.
— Professor Dan Hofrenning, St. Olaf College, writing in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, 4/5/05
"War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations."
— Pope John Paul II, 1/13/03
"How will future historians explain it? How will they possibly explain why President George W. Bush decided to ignore the energy crisis staring us in the face and chose instead to spend all his electoral capital on a futile effort to undo the New Deal, by partially privatizing Social Security? We are, quite simply, witnessing one of the greatest examples of misplaced priorities in the history of the US presidency."
— Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 3/27/05
"I'm opposed to abortion. But I do NOT believe that just because you're opposed to abortion that that makes you prolife. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking. If all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed and why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not prolife. That's probirth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of prolife is."
— Sister Joan Chittister, Benedictine nun, on PBS's Now, 11/12/04
"Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country."
— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
"President Bush says he's going to simplify the tax code. Only the states that are blue will have to pay."
— David Letterman
"The Republican Party is now in charge of the presidency, the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court. You know how they got there? They got there by saying the liberals control everything."
— Jay Leno
"Defending the powerless against the powerful is a basic task of government, an article of faith in the America that I grew up in. Walking into the supermarket, you are powerless to investigate the meatpacker who packaged these Glo-Brite wieners so the government does it for you. The government is there to do battle with those who would sell you cars that are firebombs to TV sets that cause cancer in small children or vitamins that make hair sprout on your hands or hamburgers made from deceased springer spaniels."
— Garrison Keillor
"Back in 2000, a Republican friend of mine warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Al Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all those things didn't come true."
— James Carville
"People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge."
— Lao-tzu
"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I don't need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation. "
— George W. Bush (Washington Post, 11-19-02)
"Most of our members are rank-and-file Republican voters. We would be a lot larger as an organization except we keep losing people—not because they don't like what we're doing, but because they're so fed up with the Republican Party that they keep bailing out. "
— Martha Marks, founder and president of REP America, an advocacy group of
Republicans for environmental protection (in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, 3/14/04)
"There has been an ethic in the Republican Party that you are conservative and you don't eat your seed corn—you don't consume your capital. But that's exactly what we're doing. [One] definition of an immoral society is one that passes its debts down to the next generation. Well, that's what we're doing. That's not what we stand for as a party."
— Theodore Roosevelt IV, great-grandson of the Republican president   
"... the Taxpayers League isn't about solving problems. It's about finding excuses not to pay for solving problems."
— Ron Meador, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 3/14/04  
"You may consider it churlish of me to still be holding a grudge over the fact that at least 45% of Bush's tax cut went to the richest 1% of the people in this country, but it's the kind of thing I get reminded of frequently. For example, the news that 375,000 people exhausted their unemployment in January [2004], the highest number ever recorded for a single month, reminds me of that top 1%."
— Molly Ivins, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 3/8/04  
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
— Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States  
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked [and] denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
— Herman Goering, German Luftwaffe commander,
at the Nuremberg trials, 1946  
"Have we given up on the whole notion that the federal government shouldn't have a role in local education? I refuse to be the monkey for the organ grinder of big government. If that is what it means to be a good Republican, I'm turning in my little red hat and my little cup."
— Rep. Marty Seifert, R-Marshall, on the federal No Child Left Behind Act,
which is championed by the Bush Administration  
"Faith is private. It demonstrates itself in good works and love of neighbors but it doesn't need to puff up and blow a horn and bang on kitchen pans. ... When you try to find the love of Christ at work in the Republican Party, it may take awhile. The Christian Coalition was a Republican outfit with about as much to do with the Christian faith as the Elks Club has to do with large hoofed animals."
— Garrison Keillor
“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
— Thomas Jefferson  
“We have to decide today whether we will design the future or resign ourselves to it.”
— Hubert H. Humphrey  
“The future will belong to those who have passion and to those who are willing to make the personal commitment to make our community better.”
— Senator Paul Wellstone  
“There isn't a single measure in which the U.S. excels in the health arena. We spend half of the world's health care bill and we are less healthy than all the other rich countries... Fifty five years ago, we were one of the healthiest countries in the world. What changed? We have increased the gap between rich and poor. Nothing determines the health of a population more than the gap between rich and poor.”
— Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, School of Public Health, University of Washington  
“It should be clear to all by now that what we have in the Bush team is a faith-based administration. It launched a faith-based war in Iraq, on the basis of faith-based intelligence, with a faith-based plan for Iraqi reconstruction, supported by faith-based tax cuts to generate faith-based revenues. This group believes that what matters in politics and economics are conviction and will — not facts, social science or history.”
— Thomas L. Friedman, 2/1/04, New York Times  
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
— Edmund Burke  
“Over the years, I've learned much about agriculture. I've also learned much about people. Some of it I didn't want to know. I learned there is a fear of change, whether it's in agriculture or anything else. Especially as you move upward in income, there seems to be an innate fear in some people that someone might tip over their canoes—and those canoes are pretty comfortable. This is widespread, and it's dangerous.”
— Norman Borlaug, agricultural researcher and Nobel Laureate  
“It's all about doubt and curiosity. They sound so weak, but thery're the cornerstones of political action. It takes a purposeful minority with enough guts and daring and smarts to believe this could be changed, to see a different future than all these people around us—al these powerful people, all these powerful institutions—and then set out to change it. That's the process of history.”
— William Greider, responding to the question "what can we
do to get a kinder, gentler capitalism."  
"We are reaping the poison fruit of our misguided and arrogant foreign policy. The [Bush] administration capitalized on the fear created by 9/11 and put a spin on the truth to justify a war that could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy."
— Senator Edward Kennedy (in a speech at the Center for American Progress, 1/14/04)   
"Don't worry about being deported, Mr. and Mrs. Illegal Worker. We'll let you stay three years—maybe three more. We need the labor. But then you'll get a special parting gift. It's something we call 'automatic deportation.' Thanks for playing."
— Nick Coleman (1/9/04)   
"Weakening the Clean Air Act was Bush's ugly little payoff to the utilities industry at the expense of public health. Speaking of which, is anyone actually surprised to find mad cow disease among us? I was amused to hear a television pundit conclude that mad cow is 'not a partisan issue,' in that the R's and the D's can be found on both sides of the effort to prevent this very thing from happening. I assure you, this is profoundly political. Mad cow disease is exactly about how our political system is corrupted by special interest money. It is also a perfect example of how greed leads directly to boneheaded stupidity."
— Molly Ivins (1/8/04)   
"People are calling this the most fiscally irresponsible period in American history, and they're right. We have taken the values of discipline and sacrifice and thrown them out the window. The guiding principle in Washington is get what you can today and to hell with tomorrow. We are saying to our children: Here, you pay the bill."
— Leon Panetta (1/7/04 at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute)   
"... it is a sad but undeniable fact that for the past two decades the right wing of the Republican Party has worked closely with the fast food industry and the meatpacking industry to oppose food safety laws, worker safety laws, and increases in the minimum wage... One of the Bush's administration's first food safety decisions was to stop testing the National School Lunch Program's ground beef for Salmonella. The meatpacking industry's lobbyists were delighted."
— Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation (2002)   
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
— Abraham Lincoln, Annual Message to Congress (Dec. 3, 1861)   
"I don't belong to any organized political party; I'm a Democrat."
— Will Rogers   
"Republicans have perfectly nice manners, normal hair, pleasant smiles, good deodorants, but when it comes right down to it, you do not want them to be monitoring your oxygen tube or running your child's school. Like the hall of mirrors at the carnival, they are all about perceptions, the party of Personal Responsibility, which conceals enormous glittering malice and is led by brilliant bandits who are dividing and conquering the sweet land I grew up in. I don't accept this.

Liberals stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit, the defense of the weak against the powerful, love of learning, all American values worth conserving. The people who call themselves conservatives stand for tax cuts, and further tax cuts, annual tax cuts, the only policy they know. Cut taxes. Use the money you save to buy a gun and an attack dog to take with you when you drive the Hummer out of the security gate of Republicanville ..."
— Garrison Keillor
"Taxes are the price we pay for civilization."
— Oliver Wendell Holmes   
"The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then get elected and prove it."
— P.J. O'Rourke   
"If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush's head."
— Jim Hightower, former Texas Commissioner of Agriculture, referring to the elder Bush   
 
 
 
 
 
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