#washing

We owe Clint Eastwood a debt of thanks. Not only because it was truly a hilarious twelve minutes of improvised "awesome" in a week of scripted "blah". But because it advanced our understanding. This president has issues, and there are very legitimate debates about his policies and actions, and successes and or failures as president - I mean, tune in next week. But I could never wrap my head around why the world, and the president republicans describe, bears so little resemblance to the world and the president that I experience. And now I know why : There is a president Obama that only republicans can see ↗

— Jon Stewart

#current-events #politics #presidents #republicans #tea-party

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then? ↗

— George Orwell

#perspective #totalitarianism #experience

We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness. ↗

— Booker T. Washington

#ignorance #narrowness #selfishness #life

: “[George] Washington possessed the superb self-confidence that comes only to those men whose inner life is faint. ↗

— William E. Woodward

#life

Some types of environmental restoration projects are well-known; restored wetlands, for instance, or coal mine reclamation projects. Recently though, larger dam removal projects have started, a number of them in Washington state. ↗

— Matt Gonzalez

#dam #environmental #instance #larger #mine

Later, I went down to the Washington field office and an onsite polygraph was administered. ↗

— Steven Hatfill

#down #field #i #later #office

In Washington, success is just a training course for failure. ↗

— Simon Hoggart

#failure #just #success #success is #training

Washington's all abstraction. It's about access to power and nothing else. I mean, I'm sure it's fun if you're living next door to Seinfeld, or To Wolfe, or Mike Bloomberg, but living next door to them isn't what New York is about, In Washington people literally talk about how many feet away from John Kerry's house their own house is. The neighborhoods are all so blah, the only thing that turns people on is proximity to power. It's a total fetish culture. People get this kind of orgasmic shiver when they tell you they sat next to Paul Wolfowitz at a conference or got invited to Grover Norquist's breakfast. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#freedom #humor #washington #freedom

People have said to me 'I hope you won't let happen in Washington what is happening in Kansas.' ↗

— Dennis Moore

#happening #hope #i #kansas #me

I've been in Washington ever since 1981, trying to get out! ↗

— Pat Oliphant

#ever #get #i #out #since