REWIND - A Week of Quotes & Cartoons

SUNDAY

Quote of the Day
October 17, 2010

'In 1906, early in the Progressive era, the humorist
Finley Peter Dunne's fictional barroom sage, Mr.
Dooley, put the social and political tumult of the day
into perspective. "Th' noise ye hear is not th' first
gun iv a revolution," Dooley remarked. "It's on'y th'
people iv th' United States batin' a carpet." A century
from now, or even a year from now, Americans may say
the same about the Tea Party. For the moment, though,
it appears that the extreme right wing is on the verge
of securing a degree of power over Congress and the
Republican Party that is unprecedented in modern
American history. For defenders of national cohesion
and tempered adversity in our politics, it is an
alarming state of affairs

New Yorker
'Confounding Fathers'
October 18, 2010
http://tinyurl.com/26moh5t

Toon of the Day
http://tinyurl.com/29bqkhk
Real Estate
Mike Luckovich

MONDAY

Quote of the Day
October 18, 2010

'Charting a new course for our economy requires that we
understand the causes behind wage stagnation and
growing inequality over the past 35 years. And
prominent among those causes is the free market
orthodoxy that has served the interests of our nation's
wealthiest families and most powerful institutions but
left the vast majority of working families behind.

'We have to wage a sustained war of ideas to challenge
free market fundamentalism and fight for our own
strategy to recover, rebalance and rebuild an economy
that works for all.'

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka
afl-cio blog
October 18, 2010
http://tinyurl.com/23d8hpl

Toon of the Day
http://tinyurl.com/2fsog6u
Monopoly
Tom Toles - Washington Post

TUESDAY

Quote of the Day
October 19, 2010

'However the elections turn out, the Obama
administration needs to begin focusing much more
intently on the economic plight of ordinary Americans.
Nearly 44 million are living in poverty. A third of all
Hispanic children and more than a third of black
children are poor.

'Job security and benefits like paid vacations, health
insurance and a secure retirement are going the way of
the typewriter. More than 11 million new jobs would
have to be created just to get us back to where we were
when the Great Recession began. No one sees that
happening anytime soon.

'Democrats are in trouble because they have not been
nearly aggressive enough in confronting this profound
economic crisis facing so many millions of ordinary
Americans.'

Columnist Bob Herbert
New York Times
October 19, 2010
http://tinyurl.com/2crvnvr

Toon of the Day
http://tinyurl.com/2alhxrc
Hand of Free Market
Tom Tomorrow - Salon

WEDNESDAY

Quote of the Day
October 20, 2010

'We know the majority of Tea Party supporters are
sincere, principled people of good will. That is why
the NAACP-an organization that has worked to expose and
combat racism in all its forms for more than 100
years-is thankful Devin Burghart, Leonard Zeskind and
the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights
prepared this report that exposes the links between
certain Tea Party factions and acknowledged racist hate
groups in the United States. These links should give
all patriotic Americans pause.

'I hope the leadership and members of the Tea Party
movement will read this report and take additional
steps to distance themselves from those Tea Party
leaders who espouse racist ideas, advocate violence, or
are formally affiliated with white supremacist
organizations. In our effort to strengthen our
democracy and ensure rights for all, it is important
that we have a reasoned political debate without the
use of epithets, the threat of violence, or the
resurrection of long discredited racial hierarchies.'

NAACP President Ben Jealous
Introduction to: 'Tea Party Report
Exposing the Link Between Tea Party
Leaders and Racism'
October 20, 2010
http://www.teapartynationalism.com/

http://tinyurl.com/2884v3y
Throw the Bums Out
Stuart Carlson

THURSDAY

Quote of the Day
October 21, 2010

'Margaret Thatcher is lying sick in a private hospital
bed in Belgravia but her political children have just
pushed her agenda further and harder and deeper than
she ever dreamed of. When was the last time Britain's
public spending was slashed by more than 20 per cent?
Not in my mother's lifetime. Not even in my
grandmother's lifetime. No, it was in 1918, when a
Conservative-Liberal coalition said the best response
to a global economic crisis was to rapidly pay off this
country's debts. The result? Unemployment soared from 6
per cent to 19 per cent, and the country's economy
collapsed so severely that they lost all ability to pay
their bills and the debt actually rose from 114 per
cent to 180 per cent. "History doesn't repeat itself,"
Mark Twain said, "but it does rhyme".'

Johann Hari:
'A colder, crueller country - for no gain'
The Independent (UK)
October 21, 2010
http://tinyurl.com/2fy7yr4

Toon of the Day
http://tinyurl.com/396zj9p
British Government's Budget Cuts
Steve Bell - Guardian (UK)

FRIDAY

Quote of the Day
October 22, 2010

'Is there a vast corporate conspiracy behind the Tea
Party and the midterm resurgence of the far right? The
most suggestive evidence involves the well-documented
role of the billionaire Koch brothers, their Americans
for Prosperity front group and other Koch-funded
entities - but now a secret letter* from Charles Koch
shows that the tentacles of the "Kochtopus" include a
high-level "network" of corporate, lobbying, nonprofit,
and media organizations that meet regularly to plot
right-wing strategy. The letter and accompanying
documents first appeared on Think Progress in a post by
Lee Fang** that is well worth reading in full'

Joe Conason
Salon
October 22, 2010
http://tinyurl.com/23aky3z

* http://tinyurl.com/25oge3p

** http://tinyurl.com/29pvaln

Toon of the Day
http://tinyurl.com/24f34n6
Your Money
Tom Toles - Washington Post

SATURDAY

Quote of the Day
October 23, 2010

'So, we ought to have a homeowners' Chapter 11. Let me
explain what that idea is. You know, when corporations
have trouble paying what they have to pay, what we say
is we can write down the debt. It's so important to
keep those enterprises going, keep the jobs, keep the
suppliers going, that we allow them to write down the
debt and restructure. Well, keeping American families
going is even more important, I think, than keeping
corporations going. So, that should be part of the
philosophy, that we ought to say, look at, the banks
were really derelict in the loans that they made. They
should have known that there was a bubble going on. I
certainly talked about it; other people talked about
it. They were really engaged in predation. So let's use
a homeowners' Chapter 11 that allows a speedy write-
down of what is owed, converting some of the debt into
equity, so that when they sell the loans sometime-when
they repay-sell their house sometime in the future, if
the market recovers, some of the capital gain will go
to the bank. But meanwhile, the payments that the
homeowners will have to make will go way down. And that
will mean that they can stay in their home. And that
will be good for the families. It'll be good for the
communities. When people are thrown out of their homes,
it's bad for the family, it's bad for the community.
And we have this, you know, real evidence that our
market system isn't working when we have empty homes
and homeless people. That's not the way a market
economy is supposed to operate.'

Economist Joseph Stiglitz
Democracy Now !
October 20, 2010
http://tinyurl.com/242q55d

Toon of the Day
http://tinyurl.com/2ema87q
No Loan
Pat Oliphant

_____________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]
Submit via the Web: portside.org/submit
Frequently asked questions: portside.org/faq
Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
Unsubscribe: portside.org/unsubscribe
Account assistance: portside.org/contact
Search the archives: portside.org/archive