Physicist Steven Weinberg on the importance of the 2004 presidential election:
…When I argue that we need to elect a president and Congress willing to raise taxes and spend more on searching for nuclear weapons in container ships, decreasing public school class sizes, subsidizing secular education in Islamic countries, rebuilding Afghanistan, expanding scientific research, helping the Russians to control their stocks of fissionable material, and providing universal access to health care (perhaps by offering Medicare to anyone who wants it), my conservative friends claim that we can afford these things only if we first “grow the economy” by cutting taxes. They (and many liberals) are in the grip of an economic fallacy, that a dollar spent on consumer goods stimulates the economy more than a dollar spent on public goods. They actually believe that holding government spending down by not hiring enough policemen and patent inspectors is the way to fight unemployment! (From New York Review of Books, November 4, 2004).
Overheard at the Walgreens in Medway, Massachusetts. Mother to teenager: “So what kind of Christmas lights should I buy?” Teenager (pointing) “How about these LED ones. They use lots less electricity.” Mother: “I’m not buying those, Al Gore’s just getting rich off them.”
“Péter plus haut que son cul” Translation: “You fart higher than your ass.” Excellent and ancient French expression. Applicability? How about, for a start, the termite mound of Boston-area right-wing talk show hosts?
On a related note (“not-making-this-up” Dept): From the Globe – Rockport – “School officials have refused a literacy group’s request to hand out copies of a best-selling children’s book to first-graders because it ends with a mouse calling a donkey a jackass.”
This woman actually thinks Al Gore is personally selling energy-efficient light bulbs! Where do people get these ideas?