#america

The metaphor of Trump crushing a portion of the White House as he aims bulldozers at democracy itself is almost too obvious to note. But it’s not just a symbolic parallel: both are rooted in the same indifference to what these American institutions mean to Americans and to America. Both are rooted in Trump wanting to treat those things as his own and now feeling empowered to do precisely that.

Warren 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."

The fact that the farm, not the transportation, came first is important. It was a geographic case of the tail wagging the dog.

The fact that the farm, not the transportation, came first is important. It was a geographic case of the tail wagging the dog.

Mitt Romney has said, in effect, “I’m rich and I don’t apologize for it.” Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America.

Truck 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.…

"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."

"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. Don’t hold your breath. As it is, Democrats don’t even seem able to score political points by highlighting their opponents’ obstructionism. Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it. "

"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 cowardice—the 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."

"Someone, sometime soon is going to start describing the climb out of this impressive hole we’ve dug for ourselves, and they’re going to call it “America 2.0”. Clever, yes. We need a new version of ourselves and that’s going to involve bright, unexpected ideas from those we least expect them from, and they’re going to strike you as impossible. All you need to do to understand these terrifyingly ambitious ideas is to look back at what we’ve already done to understand what we can do."

"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."

"Athens failed in Syracuse – and doomed their democracy – not because they fought in the wrong place and at the wrong time, but because they weren’t ruthless enough."

I 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.

"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."

"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."

"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."

"And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted."

"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."

"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."

"The founders were not anti-religion. ... But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country’s tapestry, not the whole tapestry."

"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."

"We can’t 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."

"But look now what we have lost. Now when a bad guy crosses our threshhold, America becomes a pants-piddling mess."

"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."

"When did America become a nation of frightened wimps? When did we cross the line from courage to cowardice?"

"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 b

"‘The Customer is Always Right’ ... until we banish that phrase from American culture forever, I suggest we quit looking the other way when people behave like scumbags."

"The New York Times declines to publish the Danish Mohammed Cartoons out of, it says, respect for Islam. This is, of course, a crock."

"I care about Amnesty International. And as I've said, I would not have used That Word. But I care about my country more."

"What if the fetus you were going to abort would grow up to be a soldier bringing democracy to a godless dictatorship?" Run screaming.

"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?"