Evolution Of The "Republican Establishment" Since Goldwater

A long but worthwhile article on the evolution of the "Republican establishment" since the Goldwater years entitled Does Anyone Have A Grip On The G.O.P.?"

Who Are The 47%?

Who Are The 47%? is the name of a posting by digby at Hullabaloo.

The zero-tax filers will be largely low-income. Indeed, 75 percent of them will earn less than $20,000 per year and 97 percent will earn less than $40,000. Fewer than 1 percent will earn more than $75,000 per year – a group comprised largely of business owners whose tax liabilities will be erased due to business losses, carry-overs from prior year AMT payments, or foreign tax credits.

Lightning Round!

The Essential Eric Cantor

Eric Cantor's America, New York magazine.  Important article that I don't have time to get into it right now. But it shows what a dangerous political performer Eric Cantor is.

Model Airplanes Ain't What They Used To Be!

AMAZING! Incredible video of a model SR-71 Air Force reconnaissance jet (Blackbird).

Notable Quotes

James Madison on perpetual war:

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
— Political Observations, 1795
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Friedrich Nietzsche in “Beyond Good and Evil”:

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”

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John Jay Gould: a robber baron connected with many of the largest railway financial operations in the United States from 1868-1888. During the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886 he hired strikebreakers; according to labor unionists, he said at the time, "I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half."
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William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming:”

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Remind you at all of today's political situation and the Republican race?
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John Kenneth Galbraith (Canadian-born administrator & economist,
1908 - 2006):

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

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Anatole France (1844 - 1924):

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

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