NotesWarren rejects the concept that it is possible for Americans to become wealthy in isolation.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you," she says. "But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did."
She continues: "Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."FeedUnfurl
NotesMitt Romney has said, in effect, âIâm rich and I donât apologize for it.â Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us wantâthose who arenât blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn moneyâis for you to acknowledge that you couldnât have made it in America without America.FeedUnfurl
NotesTruck nuts case not seen as low-hanging fruit by court
Americans on the horns of a constitutional dilemma over their right to hang simulated, over-sized testicles from the back of their pickups will have to wait even longer for the issue to be decided.âŚFeedUnfurl
Notes"For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness. All you have to do is look around to see what it has done to the country. The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy. As a country, we have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich."Unfurl
Notes"The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government. Senators themselves should recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster. This is something they could and should do, by majority vote, on the first day of the next Senate session.
Donât hold your breath. As it is, Democrats donât even seem able to score political points by highlighting their opponentsâ obstructionism.
Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it. "Unfurl
Notes"No amount of statistical evidence, however, will make any difference to those who give themselves over to almost completely irrational fears. Such people, and there are apparently a lot of them in America right now, are in fact real victims of terrorism. They also make possible the current ascendancy of the politics of cowardiceâthe cynical exploitation of fear for political gain. ... It's a remarkable fact that a nation founded, fought for, built by, and transformed through the extraordinary courage of figures such as George Washington, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. now often seems reduced to a pitiful whimpering giant by a handful of mostly incompetent criminals, whose main weapons consist of scary-sounding Web sites and shoe- and underwear-concealed bombs that fail to detonate."Unfurl
Notes"Someone, sometime soon is going to start describing the climb out of this impressive hole weâve dug for ourselves, and theyâre going to call it âAmerica 2.0â. Clever, yes. We need a new version of ourselves and thatâs going to involve bright, unexpected ideas from those we least expect them from, and theyâre going to strike you as impossible. All you need to do to understand these terrifyingly ambitious ideas is to look back at what weâve already done to understand what we can do."Unfurl
Notes"The point that I do want to stress is that when this economy collapses, it is bound to be much worse. Another point I would like to stress is that collapse here is likely to be permanent. The factors that allowed Russia and the other former Soviet republics to recover are not present here."Unfurl
Notes"Athens failed in Syracuse â and doomed their democracy â not because they fought in the wrong place and at the wrong time, but because they werenât ruthless enough."Unfurl
NotesI want to think that this is just a weird funny video, but what I really think is that there are a lot of Americans like this. But what I really hope is that I'm mistaken.Unfurl
Notes"The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters. Hicks root for hicks, moms for moms, born-agains for born-agains."Unfurl
Notes"This is it folks. If McCain takes power we fade and become Australia in the seventies: a backwoods country with occasional flashes of relevance. Except we've got a way bigger military and we're angrier. People will get hurt and we'll pay the bill for the bullets. I'm telling you, unless we wake up, we're gonna lose this frickin' thing."Unfurl
Notes"Obama's plan gives the biggest cuts to those who make the least, while McCain would give the largest cuts to the very wealthy. For the approximately 147,000 families that make up the top 0.1 percent of the income scale, the difference between the two plans is stark. While McCain offers a $269,364 tax cut, Obama would raise their taxes, on average, by $701,885 - a difference of nearly $1 million."Unfurl
Notes"There is no such thing as a Homeland. The United States is not Franco's Spain, the National Socialist Party's Germany, or Mussolini's Italy. We do not face imminent destruction of our country or way of life."Unfurl
Notes"I am just, I guess, well and truly tired of being told what "Middle America" wants, when Middle America is my age and lives in a goddam city, just like I have for my entire life."Unfurl
Notes"These developments would be disturbing enough, but what they point to is an interruption in this nation's most important public tradition - the movement from recognition of a problem to its attempted resolution."Unfurl
Notes"We canât afford to keep being this stupid! We have got to get our groove back. We need a president who will unite us around a common purpose, not a common enemy."Unfurl
Notes"At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people's inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process."Unfurl
Notes"It is a movement built on the growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans, who watched helplessly as their communities were plunged into poverty by the flight of manufacturing jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn apart bUnfurl
Notes"âThe Customer is Always Rightâ ... until we banish that phrase from American culture forever, I suggest we quit looking the other way when people behave like scumbags."Unfurl
Notes"Maybe this, then, is the most pressing question of our time: How to get the vast majority of Americans to care? To pay attention? To read?"Unfurl
Elizabeth Warren: "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own" - CBS News
Americans' right to hang fake balls on trucks left dangling ⢠The Register