2016 Elections Quotes

Fear sticks like a barb in the mind. Someone cold enough to take advantage of it can attach strings to those barbs and make puppets of men and women. ~ Lance Conrad

Consider all tabulation systems infected by bad actors until a third party, not affiliated with the manufacturer or election officials, proves they are secure. ~ James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute For Critical Infrastructure Technology

I've heard so many people, particularly people of faith, say they could look past his wrongdoings. When they're pressed further, the reply is always some variation of "He doesn't mean what he says," "It's just to get a rise out of people," or "It's all for show." When you turn a blind eye and a deaf ear and say nothing, you are in fact saying everything. You are telling others you approve of immorality and injustice. You are telling them you support the marginalization and vilification of those who are different from you. You are telling them that fear reigns supreme and that you will tolerate nefarious behavior. As President John F. Kennedy said in a speech: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality."

- Amy Erickson ~ Erin Passons

And I get angry. Because we've tried so hard. Ninety-six percent of Black women tried so hard in voting against him. And not only did this country not elect Clinton, it elected a person who publicly supported sexual assault, a man one accused of rape by his daughter Ivanka's mother. I am angry with the Democratic Party for not knowing that there could have been and should have been a better candidate and angry that a better campaign -- a campaign that honored the journey, that included community in real and transformative ways -- was not launched. I am angry I didn't realize -- or accept on a cellular level -- how wedded to racism and misogyny average Americans are. I am angry at my own naiveté. Our own naiveté. There was a real and substantive difference between these two candidates and we didn't take that seriously enough. ~ Patrisse Khan-Cullors

But even when Facebook isn't deliberately exploiting its users, it is exploiting its users - its business model requires it. Even if you distance yourself from Facebook, you still live in the world that Facebook is shaping. Facebook, using our native narcissism and our desire to connect with other people, captured our attention and our behavioral data; it used this attention and data to manipulate our behavior, to the point that nearly half of America began relying on Facebook for news. Then, with the media both reliant on Facebook as a way of reaching readers and powerless against the platform's ability to suck up digital advertising revenue - it was like a paperboy who pocketed all the subscription money - Facebook bent the media's economic model to match its own practices: publications needed to capture attention quickly and consistently trigger high emotional responses to be seen at all. The result, in 2016, was an unending stream of Trump stories, both from the mainstream news and from the fringe outlets that were buoyed by Facebook's algorithm. What began as a way for Zuckerberg to harness collegiate misogyny and self-interest has become the fuel for our whole contemporary nightmare, for a world that fundamentally and systematically misrepresents human needs. ~ Jia Tolentino

For their optimism, these few spent years being disparaged as futurists, as impractical dreamers, as kids playing in a sandbox - until suddenly, in the fall of 2015 and the spring of 2016, the industry recognized that the future the visionaries described wasn't just possible. It was practical and desirable, and coming sooner than anyone might have ever thought. ~ Lawrence Burns

In the same way I had managed to overlook the truth of my state's history in the rosy optimism of my worldview, I never really had cause to notice my whiteness. I didn't have any impetus to until November 8, 2016, happened. I thought that I understood privilege; I'd studied it in college and pushed against injustice where I saw it. I volunteered for organizations like Planned Parenthood, argued in the face of conservatives who rolled their eyes at Black Lives Matter, and marveled in my gorgeous awakening. But my whiteness, up until that day in November, had allowed me to believe we were ultimately moving forward. Yes, people of color were being shot in the street, conservative lawmakers were trying to push anti-LGBTQ legislation in other states and on the national level, but we were waking up. We had a black president and the recognition of same-sex marriage, and my little activist heart, in all of its whiteness, just believed that things always get better. Because in whiteland, that's the way it goes. The bad guy will always lose. But then we elected the bad guy, and everything I've ever believed to be fundamentally true was incinerated and pissed on.

- Sarah Saterlee ~ Erin Passons

The ballot is stronger than the bullet. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. ~ George Bernard Shaw

As long as I do not give in to tension,
I hold on to tension.
P.C.M. Hermans
Worldpoet 546
August 18, 2016 ~ Petra Hermans

Love is love when it has not been pronounced.
So, very loud.
Petra Hermans
September 16, 2016
Amen ~ Petra Hermans

The winner of the elections which saw the participation of almsot 30 million people was the Iranian nation and the losers were those who tried to keep people away from the polls. ~ Ali Khamenei

As someone who is in awe and grateful every day to be in a country where freedom of the press, free speech and free elections are a way of life, I am wowed, amazed and excited by the opportunity to moderate a 2012 presidential debate. ~ Candy Crowley

Peace of silence,
Petra Hermans
November 10, 2016 ~ Petra Hermans

The idea that corporations have the same First Amendment protections of free speech as people is troubling. Corporations are not people. They don't attend our schools, get married and have children. They don't vote in our elections. ~ Hank Johnson

We have seen voters denied their rights in recent elections as they have been incorrectly purged from lists, their absentee votes not counted, and voting machine integrity and security not assured. ~ Marcy Kaptur

A criminal was already lost
by lost anger and frustration.
Petra Hermans
Babaji
September 25, 2016
Amen ~ Petra Hermans

As of early 2016, the sixty-two richest people in the world were worth as much as the poorest 3.6 billion people! Since the world's population is about 7.2 billion, it means that these sixty-two billionaires together hold as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humankind.37 The ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Corruption is the bane of Nigeria. Buhari is against corruption. Buhari is not corrupt. He is very clean and disciplined. Election rigging is worse than armed robbery. Buhari wants free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria. ~ Tam David-West

Republicans should save the clip of Jonathan Gruber and run it over and over again in the run-up to the 2016 election. This attitude that government is better at making decisions than you are because you are too stupid to know what is good for you is a hallmark of patronizing, arrogant and condescending liberalism. ~ Cal Thomas

After one party loses two elections in a row, there's sort of blood in the water. ~ Robert Dallek

I think we have more good players today [2016] than we've ever had in the game of golf. And I think that's saying a lot because we had a lot of good players when I played. I think you had a bit of a lag in there for a while, that Tiger was just so much better than everybody else that he really didn't put anybody in with him. ~ Jack Nicklaus

I know words. I have the best words. ~ Donald J. Trump

The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television. ~ Noam Chomsky

When all is said and done and the e-book is written about politics and the Internet, it is not going to be about the presidential election. It will be about the smaller elections in aggregate that have a huge effect on people's lives. ~ Joe Green

The real truth is, I just want to keep the voice of dissent alive in all of our elections. I don't really want to hang out with politicians. ~ Roseanne Barr

Well my briefing was that Honduras was a small and vulnerable country just back on the path towards democracy it was about to have just before I arrived, the first elections for a civilian president in more than 9 years. ~ John Negroponte

The best game ever played was in Monday 3/21/2016, 2 games were played for 40 minutes class sport and in both I win and I and my friend we were going on the 3 game, but unfortunately we didn't finished it. But from here it can be see that I'm the winner! ~ Deyth Banger

U may be afraid of my severe love.
Religion of Blue Circle
Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
September 12, 2016
Amen ~ Petra Hermans

the government both in the executive and the legislative branches must carry out in good faith the platforms upon which the party was entrusted with power. But the government is that of the whole people; the party is the instrument through which policies are determined and men chosen to bring them into being. The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal. ~ George Washington

Regulate the banks, get money out of elections; raise the minimum wage, environmental issues. They're all very important and the Occupy movement made a difference. It shifted not only the discourse but to some extent, action on these issues. ~ Noam Chomsky

Politics knows no currency. ~ Ljupka Cvetanova

Elections in Nigeria Under My Watch Have Been Credible and Transparent ~ Goodluck Jonathan

If our democracy worked as it should, we would elect wise women and men who made laws for the good of the people and enforced those laws.
That, though, is not the way things work. Greedy, power–mad billionaires spend money so that politicians such as George W. Bush can buy elections. Corrupt corporations such as Enron defraud old ladies and commit crimes. And they get away with it. They get away with it because most of us are so afraid of losing the security of our nice, normal lives that we are not willing to risk anything about those lives. We are either afraid to fight or we don't know how. Or we believe that bad things won't happen to us.
And so, in the end, too many people lose their lives anyway. In Nazi Germany, millions of men who acquiesced to Hitler's murderous rise to power wound up marching into Russia's icy wasteland - into the Soviet Army's machine guns and cannon - to themselves be murdered. In America after 9–11, trusting teenagers who had joined the National Guard found themselves sent to Iraq on extended and additional tours. Our enemy killed many of them because we, citizens of the richest country in the world, did not provide them with body armor.
Grieving mothers protested the wasting of their sons' lives. Nadia McCaffrey defied Bush's shameful ban on the filming of U.S. soldiers' coffins returning home from Iraq. She knew, as we all did, that this tyrannical dictum of Bush dishonored our soldiers' sacrifice. And so she invited the press to ~ David Zindell

Now that the midterm elections are over, President Obama has invited congressional leaders from both parties to a meeting at the White House tomorrow. When asked if he's nervous, Obama said, 'Oh, I'm not going to be there. I just invited them over. They can figure it out themselves.' ~ Jimmy Fallon

I do think that the elections of 2010 and 2012 are going to determine the trajectory of the country. Either we're going to be aspiring and improving opportunities based on freedom and responsibility, or we're going to go down the path that dictates and mandates a dependency on government. ~ George Allen

The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa, or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge of the wants or feelings of the day laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages ... unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes ... ~ James Madison

A government has the duty to preserve the order as well as the truth which it represents; when a Gnostic leader appears and proclaims that God or progress, race or dialectic, has ordained him to become the existential ruler, a government is not supposed to betray its trust and to abdicate. And this rule suffers no exception for governments which operate under a democratic constitution and a bill of rights. Justice Jackson in his dissent in the Terminiello case formulated the point: the Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact. A democratic government is not supposed to become an accomplice in its own overthrow by letting Gnostic movements grow prodigiously in the shelter of a muddy interpretation of civil rights; and if through inadvertence such a movement has grown to the danger point of capturing existential representation by the famous "legality" of popular elections, a democratic government is not supposed to bow to the "will of the people" but to put down the danger by force and, if necessary, to break the letter of the constitution in order to save its spirit. ~ Eric Voegelin

A librarian for president is exactly what this country needs. ~ Richard Castle

To straddle the middle ground and win elections, we have to be in charge of the political agenda. This can only be done by not being beaten in the argument with our critics. They complain that I come down too hard on their arguments. But wrong ideas have to be challenged before they influence public opinion and make for problems. Those who try to be clever at the expense of the government should not complain if my replies are as sharp as their criticisms. ~ Lee Kuan Yew