Welcome once again to a $27-group / Political Revolution open thread — a weekly place where you can sit back, relax, and enjoy some inspiring quotes, good music, and (most importantly) a picture or two of Noble Fur.
Before you read tonight’s $27 Quotes diary, however, I’d like to encourage you to read and recommend what I think is the best diary of the week, which posted about an hour before this one will. It’s the 3rd edition of These Revolutionary Times. This week’s edition is by Brecht, and it features 7 excellent extended quotes and some very good commentary in between. If you like thought-provoking quotes and well-written commentary, that diary is an excellent place to spend some time tonight.
I’ve been running late and short on time when typing up these $27 Quotes diaries the past few months, and I’m running even later on things I need to get done and even shorter on time this week. So it’s another week without any cryptoquotes, and I only had time to assemble some quotes from one person. (For your puzzle this week, I’ll let you guess who that person is.)
First, though, perhaps a little music. I should be able to find and post a good song pretty quickly…
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Let’s start with some quick short quotes:
Happy Valentine's day to all the millionaires who will not have to pay into Social Security for the rest of the year. Let's lift the cap and end this absurdity.
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One of the great crises we face is the rise of authoritarianism. Whether it's Putin, Trump, Duterte or Viktor Orban in Hungary, we are seeing attacks against freedom of the press, democratic election laws and an independent judiciary.
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Why does Mick Mulvaney think it's OK to cut heating assistance for low-income Americans while giving massive tax breaks to the Koch brothers?
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Donald Trump will receive a tax break of up to $11 million a year as a result of the Republican tax plan he signed into law. Meanwhile, President Trump’s budget would eliminate after school programs for more than 1 million children.
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Hmmm. Those last two short quotes are about the budget, but really the budget is a serious enough matter that it probably deserves a longer quote. Like this one…
The Trump budget introduced today is morally bankrupt and bad economic policy. During the campaign, Donald Trump promised that the wealthy would not get a tax break and that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would not be cut. But his budget does the exact opposite of what Trump pledged to the American people. Trump’s budget pays for his huge tax breaks for the rich and large corporations by slashing Medicaid by $1.3 trillion, cutting Medicare by $554 billion and slicing $10 billion from the Social Security Disability Insurance Program. This budget is nothing less than a major transfer of wealth from the middle class and working families to the top 1 percent and large corporations.
Meanwhile, at a time when the U.S. spends more on defense than the next 12 countries combined, the Trump budget calls for a massive increase in military spending paid for by cutting $57 billion in domestic spending from the bipartisan budget agreement that was signed into law just a few days ago.
This is a budget for the billionaire class, for Wall Street, for corporate CEOs, for defense contractors and for the wealthiest people in this country. It must be defeated.
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And while we’re doing longer quotes, here’s another important one:
With an extremely anti-immigrant president in office who precipitated the current DACA crisis, I fear very much about the fate of 800,000 Dreamers who will soon be losing their legal protections under DACA and be subject to deportation.
The Rounds-King compromise bill, vigorously opposed by the Trump administration, would have provided legal protection and a path toward citizenship for 1.8 million young immigrants. I am sorry that it was not passed.
That said, this clearly is not the bill I would have written. What we should be doing is passing a clean Dream Act with a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and their parents. We also need to move forward and pass comprehensive immigration reform that will allow people to come out of the shadows and will unite families – not divide them.
While we need strong border security, President Trump's idea of spending $25 billion to build a wall on the Mexican border is totally absurd and a waste of money. I will do everything I can to prevent that from ever happening.
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And let’s close out tonight’s quotes with an extremely important one:
I do not want to see what the history books will say about this Congress if we allow 800,000 Dreamers to be deported. It would be an indelible moral stain on our country if we fail to act.
As a result of Trump’s decision to revoke DACA, 122 people every day are losing their legal status. We have a moral responsibility today to stand up for the Dreamers and their families.
You can't get 80 percent of the American people to agree on what type of ice cream is best, and yet you have an even larger majority now who agree on giving Dreamers protection and a path towards citizenship.
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And here’s a video to enjoy while thinking about some of tonight’s quotes. I hope Noble Fur will approve...
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Hope you’re enjoying a good Sunday evening. And don’t forget to drop by tonight’s These Revolutionary Times diary if you haven’t already done so for some very good quotes from Kirsten Gillibrand, Reece Jones, Gary Younge, Masha Gessen, Bernie Sanders and Pramila Jayapal, and some top-notch writing from Brecht.