Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“Why do swindled citizens applaud trillions squandered on programs to buy small business cyanide and economy-sized nooses? The trick, as usual, lies in a carefully plotted economic public relations campaign. It's in the way these schemes are sold. As George Orwell once noted, "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." People seldom riot while waiting in line for a free lunch. Recognizing this, politicians and their lackey economists go about convincing people that a nation really can spend its way to riches.”
Joel Bowman

“When there's significant government allocation of resources, the most effective means of organizing for the gains are those proven most divisive, such as race, ethnicity, religion and region.”
Walter Williams

“Predator drones are a progressive example of current military technology blurring the distinction between real and the digitally contrived. These technological terrors desensitize the inherent human aversion to violence by reverting harsh reality into an entertaining simulation. Such technology encourages a delusional mindset that killing in war can be sanitized, without the unpleasant experience of suffering the emotions of remorse or revulsion.”
Ron Shirtz

“Countries can't attack countries, as this would simply be a battle between ideas. The physical manifestation of the state resides in its agents, the swelling ranks of professional busy-bodies, bureaucrats, and armed thugs who invoke petty nationalist sentiment and bigoted paranoia to gull their subjects into conducting or supporting these pointless acts of wholesale slaughter.”
Cal Bittersmore

“Borders are gang turf boundaries, usually drawn by conquest and upheld through repressive measures. Those who cross lines drawn across the earth should not have to ask permission from the tyrants who created those lines.”
Darian Worden

“We all know that politics and politicians are dishonest, no matter what their alleged ideological stance; they lie and no one is shocked, especially their supporters. 'He has to say that to get elected!' We all have different standards for politicians than for business associates, friends, and family, which indicates our real, if inchoate, view of the state. No one defends the crooked plumber, but almost everyone will defend the crooked politician, so long as he belongs to their tribe.”
Lew Rockwell

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From the Darkness:

"NASA must continue at the frontiers of human space exploration in order to develop the technology and set the standards of excellence that will enable commercial space ventures to eventually succeed. Canceling NASA's human space operations, after 50 years of unparalleled achievement, makes that objective impossible."

From a letter authored by a group of 27 NASA astronauts, flight instructors and other employees, in an open letter published by the Orlando Sentinel.

“If we accept second or third place in the space race ... behind China and India, for example ... we may as well go ahead and accept that the sun has set on a part of what has made us great."
Tom Foreman, CNN

“We do wonder whether there’s human involvement in all of these eruptions, earthquakes, storms.”
Diana Rehm, National Public Radio.

“You know we’ve seen a lot of wacky weather but that’s just a microcosm for what’s happening around the world and how much climate change is contributing to earthquakes and volcanic ash – it’s a really good question.”
Elise Labott, senior State Department producer for CNN.

“We will rise or we will fall together — as one nation."

B. Obama, speaking about Wall Street “reform.”

“It's looking like this may be a long decade. And if we don't pull carbon out of the way we energize our lives soon, a small clump of our not-too-distant surviving descendants may find themselves, as Gaia scientist James Lovelock has direly predicted, like the first Icelanders: gathered on some near-barren hunk of rock near one of the still-habitable poles, trying yet anew to eke out a plan for human civilization.”
Alan Weisman, CNN, blaming human caused global warming for causing the Iceland volcano and all the recent worldwide earthquakes.

"In my opinion, we have waited long enough for the diplomacy to work. Iran is a festering sore in the world."
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, keeping up the enthusiasm for war.

“When a tobacco product that looks like candy is potentially deadly to children, government needs to act. These tobacco candies could hook a new generation of teenagers. We need to consider clearing them from store shelves until the effect on young children and teenagers is better understood.”
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, pushing to yank Camel’s dissolvable tobacco products from store shelves.