“[Olympia Snowe] has graced Congress since 1978 with the kind of balance and fortitude necessary to make compromise happen and we’re going to miss her. The challenge is going to be that I’m not sure it’s an inside job anymore, it’s got to be done by the American people.” — Peter D. Kiernan, author of Becoming China’s Bitch
“I have made the decision not to run for re-election to the United States Senate and to pursue other opportunities outside the Senate that perhaps I can give voice to the frustrations that exist with the political system here in Washington where it’s dysfunctional and the political paralysis has overtaken the environment to the detriment of this country.” — Senator Olympia Snowe, (R – Maine)
President Obama in last night’s State of the Union:
Those of us who’ve been sent here to serve can learn from the service of our troops. When you put on that uniform, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; Asian or Latino; conservative or liberal; rich or poor; gay or straight. When you’re marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails. When you’re in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one Nation, leaving no one behind.
One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden. On it are each of their names. Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates – a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary; and Hillary Clinton, a woman who ran against me for president.
All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves. One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission. It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job – the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs. More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other – because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back.
So it is with America. Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes. No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Photo credit.)
“I think – as President Kennedy pointed out – sometimes when you try to ride the tiger, you wind up inside of it. And you’ve seen this over the last couple of years: Any insult to Rush Limbaugh is greeted with an immediate apology from whatever offending Republican, no matter their rank or stature. When you have someone who yells “you lie” in the middle of the State of the Union, donations flood into the website. So there has been a reward system based on the intemperance of the rhetoric, not on the substance of the ideas, the strength of conservatism as the solution to the problems. So this carnival atmosphere, once started, it isn’t that easy to shut off. And we may be about to pay a high price for it.” – Steve Schmidt, Republican strategist on Morning Joe (Photo credit)
“The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand… the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.” — Eric Schmidt, Google
(Photo credit: KAZ Vorpal)
“The late great Patrick Moynihan said that everyone’s entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts. I’m not sure that’s true anymore in the social media age. It seems that everyone lives in their own reality.” — Steve Schmidt
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday on This Week with Christiane Amanpour:
“The tone is not good right now. And our political system here in Washington, particularly up on the Hill, Congress, has become very, very tense, in that the two sides, the Republicans and the Democrats, are focusing more and more on their extreme left and extreme right. And we have to come back toward the center in order to compromise.
A story I like to tell is our founding fathers were able to sit in Philadelphia and make some of the greatest compromises known to man — tough, tough issues.
But they did it. Why? Because they were there to create a country, whereas we have a Congress now that can’t even pass an appropriations bill, and we’re running this country on a continuing resolution, which — what else are they here for but to pass appropriations bills?
And so we have got to find a way to start coming back together. And let me say this directly. The media has to help us. The media loves this game where everyone is on the extreme. It makes for great television. It makes for great chatter. It makes for great talk shows all day long with commentators commenting on commentators about the latest little mini-flap up on Capitol Hill.
So what we have to do is, sort of, take some of the heat out of our political life in terms of the coverage of it so these folks can get to work quietly.”
(Photo credit: Josh Self)
“Maybe the drug companies could come up with a pill that would cure of the the evil in our nature… things like hate, jealousy, dishonesty, selfishness.” — Andy Rooney
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Photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly… This is the interrelated structure of reality. –Martin Luther King, Jr.
‘This is not going to be fixed quickly. It’s going to be a long, complicated conversation. And if we just put our heads back into the sand and say “You’re bad, I’m good” we’re going to be right back in the same place.’ J.C. Chandor, Writer and Director of Margin Call on what he learned about our economic crisis
“The world is waiting for us to see: Are we going to be Greece in two years or are we going to be grownups? And our problem is our political class in this country refuses to take the responsibility and actually maybe lose an election to do the right thing for the country. And we don’t have that leadership. In either party, it’s how do we protect our own? What we ought to be asking is how do we protect our future.” – Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn (R) on MSNBC’s Morning Joe
“In all the calculations, the future is undervalued.” — Vanity Fair’s Michael Lewis on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS (Lewis is the author of “Boomerang” and “The Big Short.”)