Guess the speaker of the following quotes. Is it Adolf Hitler or Jerry Falwell? Answers after the jump.

1. My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter.

2. This ‘turn the other cheek’ business is all well and good but it’s not what Jesus fought and died for.

3. Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith…. We need believing people.

4. I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!

5. Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.

6. We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.

7. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press. . .we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess.

8. This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our people. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our people and state, under its firm protection….May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our people.

9. Remain strong in your faith, as you were in former years. In this faith, in its close-knit unity our people to-day goes straight forward on its way and no power on earth will avail to stop it.

10. We’re fighting against humanism, we’re fighting against liberalism … we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today.

Read the rest…

I believe that if we would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own — and if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the “haves” refuse to share with the “have-nots” by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don’t want and above all don’t want crammed down their throats by Americans.

- General David M. Shoup, Commandant of the Marine Corps 1960-63, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I’m pretty critical of Fox News, and I make no apologies for that. Fox News, as an entity, as a business, and as a news outlet is almost completely devoid of integrity of any kind. Their most popular anchors are all far-Right radicals (yes, radicals) and the vast majority of their daily reporting contains a gross conservative bias they’re not even trying to hide anymore.

That said, this guy Shepard Smith has gotten my attention recently. He appears to be the lone voice of reason in the black hole of Fox News insanity. I’m sure he’s just as personally conservative as the rest of the crew over there, and I’m sure he and I would disagree on countless issues. But he seems to at least display the kind of sense and sensibility that one would hope for from all prominent journalists.

If you have a few minutes, visit this link and watch both of the embedded videos. In the first video (the YouTube embed) Smith goes up against Iraq War cheerleader Judy Miller (formerly of the New York Times) and some conservo-douchebag who does nothing but equivocate about what is and isn’t torture. Shepard Smith is rightfully dismissive of said douchebag, who keeps citing the meritless and oft-debunked “24 scenario” so popular with torture advocates.

The second video clip is from a discussion on FoxNews.com’s online show The Strategy Room. Smith pretty much goes off, slamming his hand on the desk and yelling, “I don’t give a rat’s ass if it helps. We are AMERICA! We do not fucking torture!!”

(Torture doesn’t “help,” by the way.)

And Smith’s admonishment to anyone who thinks torture is no big deal: “If we are going to be Ronald Reagan’s Shining City on the Hill, we don’t get to torture. We don’t do it.”

Nothing gets the conservo-sphere’s attention like invoking Saint Ronnie. (Actually, the notion of a “Shining City on the Hill” was first proffered in a sermon by 17th century Puritan leader John Winthrop and later cited in speeches by Kennedy and Reagan. It is one of the few ideas on which I agree with Reagan. That is, if I understand it correctly to mean that the United States must lead by example and be a government and a society that others would want to emulate rather than fear. As such, yeah, torture is pretty much off the table.)

“Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you’re about as likely to find someone else interested in it.” — Lore Sjöberg

[Creationists] make it sound as though a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

- Isaac Asimov in remarks made to the National Center Against Censorship (NCAC), 1980

Language is a slippery beast that will twist beneath your efforts to tame it.

“We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life. Liberty, Freedom. And the pursuit of happiness.” —Rush Limbaugh in his address to CPAC

The “endowed by their creator” bit is in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.

This is the leader of the Republican Party? What a fucking idiot.

Bob Cesca

“Candy doesn’t have to have a point. That’s why it’s candy.”
- Charlie Bucket

“You know, the average Chinese factory worker must think Americans are insane. Picture this: you work at a plant that makes Halloween stuff—you know, like, rubber severed heads. And you’re all like: Americans decorate their homes with severed heads? These fuckers are savages, man.”

- Daniel Suarez, Daemon

“By the way, Pooh, how do you spell Tuesday?”
“Spell what?” asked Pooh.
“Tuesday. You know—Monday, Tuesday…”
“My dear Pooh,” said Owl “everybody knows that it’s spelled with a Two.”
“Is it?” asked Pooh.
“Of course”, said Owl. “After all, it’s the second day of the week.”
“Oh, is that the way it works?” asked Pooh.
“All right, Owl,” I said. “Then what comes after Twosday?”
“Thirdsday.” said Owl.
“Owl, you’re just confusing things,” I said. “This is the day after Tuesday, and it’s not Thirds – I mean Thursday.”
“Then what is it?” asked Owl.
“It’s Today!” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh.

– Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh