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Lingua publica

The good and the bad...presented with permission from The Patriot E-Journal

web posted November 16, 2009

"On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting, 'Allahu akbar!' ('God is great!') committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam. What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Fort Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of nondenominational shoplifting. This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it's an act of terror. Period." --columnist Ralph Peters

"Maj. Hasan is not a card-carrying member of the Texas branch of al-Qa'ida reporting to a control officer in Yemen or Waziristan. If he were, things would be a lot easier. Yet the same pathologies that drive al-Qa'ida beat within Maj. Hasan, too, and in the end his Islamic impulses trumped his expensive Western education, his psychiatric training, his military discipline -- his entire American identity." --columnist Mark Steyn

"Among the things that people complain about under the present medical care system are the costs, insurance company bureaucrats' denials of reimbursements for some treatments and the free loaders at hospital emergency rooms whose costs have to be paid by others. Will a government-run medical system make these things better or worse? This very basic question seldom seems to get asked, much less answered." --economist Thomas Sowell

"Advocates of government control want you to believe that the serious shortcomings of our medical and insurance system are failures of the free market. But that's impossible because our market is not free. Each state operates a cozy medical and insurance cartel that restricts competition through licensing and keeps prices higher than they would be in a genuine free market. But the planners won't talk about that. After all, if government is the problem in the first place, how can they justify a government takeover?" --columnist John Stossel

"Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights, it doesn't care about the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, it doesn't even read the laws it writes. America, this is not an academic issue. If this health care bill becomes law, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it, privacy as you have enjoyed it, will cease to be." --Judge Andrew Napolitano

"Where in the U.S. Constitution does it authorize Congress to force Americans to buy health insurance? If Congress gets away with forcing us to buy health insurance, down the line, what else will they force us to buy; or do you naively think they will stop with health insurance?" --economist Walter E. Williams

"It's looking more and more like [Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan] was just, sort of, a religious nut. And you know Islam doesn't have a majority -- or the Christian religion has its full, you know, full helping of nuts too." --CBS's Bob Schieffer

"It really is tragic that he was a Muslim." --NPR's Nina Totenberg

"I cringe that he's a Muslim. I mean, because it inflames all the fears. I think he's probably just a nut case. But with that label attached to him, it will get the right wing going and it just -- I mean these things are tragic, but that makes it much worse." --Newsweek's Evan Thomas

"[Hasan] makes a phone call or whatever, according to Reuters right now. Apparently he tried to contact al-Qa'ida. Is that the point at which you say, 'This guy is dangerous?' That's not a crime to call up al-Qa'ida, is it? Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?" --MSNBC's Chris Matthews

"Many who were raised in the East are still adjusting to the harsh economic realities, especially during this economic downturn." --NBC's Tom Brokaw, taking the opportunity of the anniversary Berlin Wall's demise to trash capitalism

"Nnn, Constitution doesn't have a Preamble. Not. Nope. Stop it. That would be the Declaration of Independence. Ooh." --MSNBC host Rachel Maddow responding to House Minority Leader John Boehner, who actually did quote the preamble to the Declaration

"The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment. Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration ... is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind." --New Yorker columnist John Cassidy

"Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support [Democrats who vote against the health care bill] if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit [Democrat voters] and it will encourage the extremists." --Barack Obama in a pep talk to Democrats, using the homosexual slur "teabag" (look it up at your own risk) to describe limited-government protesters

"The reason the tea-baggers are so inflamed is because we are winning." --Bill Clinton, using the same slur

"What I think is appropriate is that in the same way that everybody has to get auto insurance and if you don't, you're subject to some penalty, that in this situation, if you have the ability to buy insurance, it's affordable and you choose not to do so, forcing you and me and everybody else to subsidize you ... you know, there's nothing wrong with a penalty. ... Penalties are appropriate for people who try to free ride the system and force others to pay for their health insurance." --Barack Obama when asked if the up to $250,000 fine and jail time for not buying insurance was appropriate

"Unfortunately, America loves guns. We love guns to a point that, uh, we see the devastation on a daily basis." --Chicago mayor Richard Daley on the Fort Hood massacre

"I'd like to extend my congratulations to the people of Germany and the people of Europe on this 20th anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall. I'm sorry I could not stand there today with so many friends. ... Few would have foreseen on that day that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it."-- Barack Obama making the anniversary about himself

"Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. ... Nidal opened fire on soldiers who were on their way to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done? In fact, the only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the U.S. army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal." --Anwar al-Awlaki, former Muslim cleric who led the Northern Virginia mosque that Hasan attended -- and which 9/11 terrorists Nawaf al-Hazmi, Hani Hanjour and Khalid al-Mihdhar also attended in 2001

"It's still premature to draw the terrorism conclusion." --NBC terrorism analyst Roger Cressy on Hasan

"America needs to do something about idiots with handguns. How many more Fort Hoods and Orlandos do there have to be before our political leaders have the guts to severely restrict access to murderous weapons?" --sportswriter Peter King, blaming the implement instead of the attacker

"President Obama taped a speech to show to the crowd at the Berlin Wall gala Monday. He reminded the viewing audience he too made history as the first black president. The earth wobbled on its axis from the gravitational pull of three billion people rolling their eyes simultaneously." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"At 69, Pelosi stands a good chance of facing a death panel before she leads a majority of this size again." --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

"Waiting weeks to get an MRI to find out why you are sick, and then waiting months for an operation, as happens in countries with government-run medical systems, can be not only painful but dangerous. You can be dead by the time they find out what is wrong with you and do something about it. But that will 'bring down the cost of medical care' because you won't be around to require any." --economist Thomas Sowell

"Diversity is good. Maybe not as good as the ability to shoot straight, though in the modern, politically correct Army, you never can tell." --columnist Wesley Pruden

web posted November 9, 2009

"Advice to readers about the coming orgy of analysis about the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections: Ignore it. Disquisitions on The Meaning of It All for President Obama or the 2009 results as a harbinger for Congress in 2010 have scant basis in reality." --Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus

"There's growing concern among some GOP leaders that controversial commentators and far-right conservatives have hijacked the message." --CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric

"Since the far right did get into that race in upstate New York, is this a legitimate defeat for them tonight?" --CNN's Larry King

"The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement's undisputed leaders, [Sarah] Palin and [Glen] Beck, neither of whom has what Palin once called the 'actual responsibilities' of public office, would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity. Over the short term, at least, their wish could come true." --New York Times columnist Frank Rich under the title, "The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York"

"What's most interesting here is civil war inside the Republican Party. You saw this conservative candidate just come in and swamp the Republican who was pro-choice, pro-gay rights. And what the White House is trying to do even if they lose here is exploit -- is fan the flames of this civil war." --ABC's George Stephanopoulos

"A public plan does not provide a new entitlement. It just doesn't. It's a different form of providing an entitlement." --New Republic senior editor Jonathan Chait

"Howard, is [Obama] smarter, Howard is he smarter than us?" --MSNBC's Chris Matthews to Newsweek's Howard Fineman, who answered, "Of course he is! Much smarter!"

"Among the most pathetic letters and e-mails I receive are those from people who ask why I don't write more 'positively' about Obama or 'give him the benefit of the doubt.' No one -- not even the President of the United States -- has an entitlement to a 'positive' response to his actions. The entitlement mentality has eroded the once common belief that you earned things, including respect, instead of being given them. As for the benefit of the doubt, no one -- especially not the President of the United States -- is entitled to that, when his actions can jeopardize the rights of 300 million Americans domestically and the security of the nation in an international jungle, where nuclear weapons may soon be in the hands of people with suicidal fanaticism. Will it take a mushroom cloud over an American city to make that clear? Was 9/11 not enough?" --economist Thomas Sowell

"I am ... nostalgic for the days when the American President seemed to be fond of his country, and its people. This is largely because I have increasing doubts that our current President is fond of either one. ... Can anyone -- even Barack Obama's most ardent supporters -- honestly say that our current President believes that Americans are, in a general sense, 'good people,' and worthy of defense? Both his words and actions would suggest that America might someday become good, but only if he can first bring us to justice." --columnist Austin Hill

"Does anyone in Washington tell the truth? Why should Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid be believed when he promises that states can 'opt out' of a public option on health care? This isn't like opting out of sex-education class. Individuals won't be able to avoid the consequences of national health care once the government puts the insurance companies out of business, because there will be no other choice than the government program." --columnist Cal Thomas

"This is not about insuring the uninsured. This is not about health care. This is about stealing one-sixth of the U.S. private sector and putting it under the control of the federal government. And when they get this health care bill, if they do, that's the easiest, fastest way for them to be able to regulate every aspect of human behavior, because it will all have some related cost to health care -- what you drive, what you eat, where you live, what you do. And there'll be penalties for violating regulations. It's going to be the biggest snatch of freedom and liberty that has yet occurred in this country." --radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh

"Scholarly debate about its various clauses has been non-stop since the document became the law of the land. But one aspect of the Constitution is beyond debate: it is a document entirely constructed to limit the power of the government, not the people." --Arnold Ahlert

"The bottom line is that the idea that government bureaucrats have enough knowledge to manage an economy well is the height of conceit -- what Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek called the 'fatal conceit.'" --economist Walter E. Williams

"I view my work in politics and government as an extension of my role as a mom." --House Speaker Nanny Pelosi (D-CA) in a rare moment of honesty

"'Nothing' is better than getting that. We ought to follow the doctors' oath and say, 'First, let's do no harm.'" --Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) on the "public option"

"We [the United States] tax everything that moves and doesn't move, and that's not what we see in Pakistan." --Hillary Clinton, advocating tax hikes in Pakistan

"The fact of the matter is, Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy was drill, baby, drill. No. It's a lot more complicated, Sarah, than drill, baby, drill. ... I know what these guys are against. I know what Bill's [Owens] opponents are against. I know what Rush Limbaugh is against. I know what Dick Armey is against. I know what all these folks are against. I'm not being a wise guy. But I don't know what they're for." --Vice President Joe Biden

"Having brought the economy back from the brink, the question is how are we going to make sure that people are getting back to work and able to support their families. It's not going to happen overnight, but we will not rest until we are succeeding in generating the jobs that this economy needs." --Barack Obama

"Oh, I'm confident we've hit bottom. ... We're getting to the end of this toboggan run. We're no longer talking about a depression. We're talking about the shape of a recovery." --Joe Biden

"Sometimes when I hear the crazy ideas being dispensed by the Right, I think, 'Have these people totally lost their minds?' Congress wants to create death panels? America is on a slippery slope to socialism? Fascists are loose in the White House? It's tempting to just tune it all out, to write it off as the outrageous rants of a fanatical fringe." --Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)

"When this all comes down, a vote for real reform, which is the public option, means you're on the side of the American people and giving them choices. A vote against the bill and against the public option means you're in favor of the insurance companies." -- Howard Dean

"When a, when a school does not have to fire a teacher, when a city doesn't have to fire a fireman, when it can keep teachers in the classroom, cops on the streets, firemen in the firehouse, that's a job saved. ... When businesses cut fewer jobs, that's a job saved. ... The government's doing exactly what it should be doing." --Treasure Secretary Timothy Geithner on "saved jobs"

"Obama has created an atmosphere of no fear. Nobody is really worried about the revenge of Barack Obama, because he is not a vengeful man. That's what we love about him; he is so high-minded, and a conciliatory guy, and he tries to govern with a sense of consensus--all noble goals, but they don't get you very far in this Washington knifing environment." --Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University and political biographer who has apparently missed the entire kerfuffle over White House Enemy No. 1, Fox News

"If the U.S. passed a cap and trade and other countries did not, it wouldn't work. It would ruin the U.S. economy and it wouldn't save the climate either." --Dr. Steve Running, co-author of the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report on global warming

"How many people are stuck in jobs they hate and aren't good at, rather than going out and doing something useful, because they need the health insurance from their employers? I'm not just talking about MSNBC anchors -- I mean throughout the entire economy." --columnist Ann Coulter

"The new president -- OK, newish president -- has been drifter in chief for almost a year, but he's too busy speaking truth to the former power to get on top of the situation. It could be a while yet. In his more self-regarding moments, such as his speech to the United Nations, he gives the strong impression that the 'long years of drift' began in 1776." --columnist Mark Steyn

"I think it behooves us to come up with ways to make politics a less attractive option. The one notion that popped into my head was to take a leaf out of the Aztec playbook and initiate human sacrifices. Would any of us really have strong objections to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Arlen Spector, Susan Collins, Henry Waxman, Charles Schumer, Olympia Snowe, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, being offered up to pacify the angry spirits of the Founding Fathers?" --columnist Burt Prelutsky

"By the way, it was reported well after the polls closed that the former candidate for President of Afghanistan, Abdullah Abdullah, had endorsed Chris Christy on the grounds that he was for anyone whose first and last names were about the same." --political analyst Rich Galen

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi produced a health care reform bill on Thursday. She called opposition to the bill heartless. Democrats possess a finely honed sense of tragedy and outrage which sustains them through life's brief moments of happiness." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"Well, that's under certainly the laws of the -- protect the health, welfare of the country. That's under the Constitution. We're not even dealing with any constitutionality here. Should we move in that direction? What does the Constitution say? To provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country." -- Roland Burris, temporary senator from Illinois, on the constitutional authority for a federal mandate that individuals must buy health insurance

web posted November 2, 2009

"Much of what government does is based on the premise that people can't do things for themselves. So government must do it for them. More often than not, the result is a ham-handed, bumbling, one-size-fits-all approach that leaves the intended beneficiaries worse off. Of course, this resulting failure is never blamed on the political approach -- on the contrary, failure is taken to mean the government solution was not extravagant enough." --columnist John Stossel

"What is most frightening about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. All problems seem to them to be due to other people not being as wise or as noble as they are." --economist Thomas Sowell

"Under every plausible analysis, it seems, ObamaCare will deliver lower-quality care at higher prices, increasing the federal debt while reducing Americans' freedom. Why are they so determined to do this to us?" --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

"Amendment X: 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.' ... New York Times: 'The Senate health care legislation will include a government-run insurance plan, but states would be allowed to "opt out" of it, the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, announced Monday afternoon.' ... If the American press corps were as concerned about the Tenth Amendment as it has been protecting the First and trying to get rid of the Second, this would be a far different country." --political analyst Rich Galen

"Communism is nothing more than Nazism with better PR. Its track record of atrocities dwarf those of Hitler, and its core philosophy is every bit as repugnant, if not more so. That anyone in America would even attempt to put 'lipstick on this pig' is an unmitigated disgrace. That they can do it with such relative ease -- under the banner of 'social justice,' no less -- is truly frightening." --columnist Arnold Ahlert

"Polls show public sentiment increasing for a public option. A Washington Post-ABC poll found nearly six out of 10 favor a public option; 73 percent of doctors want it, too. ... A public option is the right thing to do morally..." --Newsweek's Eleanor Clift

"People in administrations make short-term decisions, and I think the one to sort of go on the offensive publicly against Fox was not too bright. Now, the Bush White House did that, it just cut people dead, it froze them out, you know it froze whole institutions out, didn't talk about it. It was much more like the Mob. When you talk about it, you diminish your influence." --NPR's Nina Totenberg

"Next to the other hoaxes and fantasies that have been abetted by the news media in recent years, both the 'balloon boy' and Chamber of Commerce ruses are benign. The Colorado balloon may have led to the rerouting of flights and the wasteful deployment of law enforcement resources, but at least it didn't lead the country into fiasco the way George W. Bush's flyboy spectacle on an aircraft carrier helped beguile most of the Beltway press and too much of the public into believing that the mission had been accomplished in Iraq." --New York Times columnist Frank Rich

"The benefits for the White House of having Dick Cheney come out and [accuse the Obama of] 'dithering' [on Afghanistan] is ... it puts Cheney out there as a kind of boogieman the administration can point to. He's not terribly popular outside of conservative circles. And also, it allows the administration to talk about the situation they inherited, and the neglect of the Bush-Cheney years. ... So in some ways, Dick Cheney is a gift for the White House." --CBS's John Dickerson

"I've had Republicans from across the spectrum today say that Cheney shouldn't have weighed in, should have butted out too. One Republican even suggested it was so bizarre for Cheney to be the one making this argument and noted that Cheney didn't look well, that maybe there's something medically wrong with the vice president or his emotional state." --MSNBC's David Shuster (An incredible statement without naming any of the "Republicans from across the spectrum.")

"[Democrats] are trying on every front to increase the role of government." --Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)

"You'll hear everyone say, 'There's got to be a better name for this.' When people think of the public option, public is being misrepresented, that this is being paid for with their public dollars." --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) who now wants to con Americans into believing the "public option" would sell better if re-named "the consumer option"

"What I reject is when some people sit on the sidelines and root for failure on health care, or they root for failure on reforming our energy system, or they root for failure on getting the Olympics. ... I mean, who's against the Olympics? What's up with that? You know it's a sad thing, isn't it? I mean, I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican, you know, it's the Olympics, come on!" --Barack Obama

"Democrats are an opinionated bunch. You know, the other side, they just kinda sometimes do what they're told. Democrats, ya'll thinkin' for yourselves." --Barack Obama

"President [Barack] Obama is marginalizing not just his enemies but those of the American people. He is attacking organizations standing in the way of progress toward reforming health care or cleaning up the conditions that led to the financial crisis. He is putting on notice advocates of greed -- instead of the greater good -- that they no longer have public legitimacy." --Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School, likening ObamaCare dissenters to America's real enemies

"And the president is asking the questions that have never been asked on the civilian side, the political side, the military side, and the strategic side." --White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel on Afghanistan

"It's no surprise the Glenn Becks of the world have been attacking Obama since the moment he stepped into the Oval Office. Beck and his blathering buddies on the right -- you know, the stinky kids in the coatroom who eat their own boogers." --Joy Behar of ABC's "The View" with enlightening commentary on the substantive issues at hand

"Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world's resources. A vegetarian diet is better." --British climate chief Lord Stern, who says he's not a "strict" vegetarian himself, advocating a vegetarian diet to "save" the planet

"If Obama's 'smart diplomacy' is so smart that even Hamid Karzai ignores it with impunity, why should anyone else pay attention? The strange disparity between the heavy-handed community organization at home and the ever cockier untouchables abroad risks making the commander in chief look like a weenie -- like 'President Pantywaist,' as Britain's Daily Telegraph has taken to calling him. The Chicago way? Don't bring a knife to a gunfight? In Iran, this administration won't bring a knife to a nuke fight. In Eastern Europe, it won't bring missile defense to a nuke fight. In Sudan, it won't bring a knife to a machete fight. But, if you're doing the overnight show on WZZZ-AM, Mister Tough Guy's got your number." --columnist Mark Steyn

"The strangest thing about all the invective against Fox is that it is happening in a world that contains MSNBC. At least Fox News primetime hosts, and many of their guests, know something about politics. MSNBC's primetime lineup presents an array of people who sound like earnest college kids who just walked up to a Common Cause table, and the sum-total of what they know about politics is what they read in the brochures." --columnist Ann Coulter

"Throwing rotten eggs at 'them lyin' newspapers' has always been great sport in America, and sometimes even effective politics. But it has to be done with wit and humor, which may be above Barack Obama's pay grade." --Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden

"The University of Chicago disclosed it would someday like to be home to Barack Obama's future presidential library. The president was a professor at the Chicago Law School for a dozen years. He taught the How to Get Around Constitutional Law class." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"It's not free. ... Someone's going to have to pay for it and you bet it's going to be the taxpayer." --Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) on the "public option"

web posted October 26, 2009

"We are laying a foundation to build on and create a new economy. We [as a government] have an overwhelming obligation." -- U.S. Vice President Joe Biden

"Counting the numbers of troops is not going to define our success here. ... There is no military success ultimately to Afghanistan." --John Francois Kerry, who served in Vietnam

"Non-presidential contests often go badly for the party in power, and there are indications that 2010 may be even more painful than most. The extremely high turnout among African-Americans that marked the 2008 race is unlikely to be repeated without Obama on the ballot. Democrats in general seem less enthusiastic this time than Republicans. ... Election maven Charlie Cook envisions 2010 as the year of the 'angry white seniors' as older voters turn out in force to oppose health care reform. Much can change in a year of course. But for now, the tide is running very much against the Democrats." --columnist Mona Charen

"The Administration has decided to start a fight to re-energize the base. It doesn't do any good to fight with someone who is not worthy, if you want to make this strategy work you have to have the fight with someone your base already knows -- and already hates. Fox News Channel fits that bill. If Obama can make the point stick, that Fox News is not 'news', and gets his base to buy into the theory that Obama is the victim of unfair coverage, it gives the White House a rallying point. I don't think it's having the desired effect." --political analyst Rich Galen

"The problem with Iran is its regime; its nuclear program is merely a symptom of that problem. Do you lay awake at night worrying about Britain's nuclear weapons? France's? Israel's? Of course not, because stable democracies in general, and stable democratic allies in particular, aren't a threat. If your neighbor is an upright and responsible citizen, who cares if he has a gun? If your neighbor is a complete whackjob and criminal, you sure as Shinola care if he has a gun. Armed neighbors aren't a problem, dangerous ones are. The same logic applies to nations." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

"Twenty years ago this fall, the Iron Curtain was coming down in Europe. Across the Warsaw Pact, the jailers of the Communist prison states lost their nerve, and the cell walls crumbled. Matt Welch, the editor of Reason magazine, wonders why the anniversary is going all but unobserved: Why aren't we making more of the biggest mass liberation in history? Well, because to celebrate it would involve recognizing it as a victory over Communism. And, after the left's long march through the institutions of the west, most are not willing to do that. There's the bad totalitarianism (Nazism) and the good totalitarianism (Communism), whose apologists and, indeed, fetishists can still be found everywhere, even unto the White House." --columnist Mark Steyn

"Only 20 percent of the country now consider themselves Republican. That is the lowest level of support in 26 years." --ABC's Charles Gibson, who missed that 26 years ago was just before the Reagan landslide of 1984

"Talk radio, especially conservative talk, is so powerful, some say it's made our country viciously partisan. Ten of the top 11 radio talk shows are conservative. The king? Rush Limbaugh, with 15 million [sic -- 20 million] listeners." --CNN's Carol Costello

"The White House trying to dictate who's a news organization. Democrats out to gut a business group. Obama media allies damning Americans as racist, unpatriotic and treasonous. Is this the America Obama promised when he campaigned to end the cynical and divisive politics of the past?" --Chicago Sun-Times columnist Steve Huntley

"It's escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations 'not a news organization' and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it's appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one?" --ABC's Jake Tapper to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs

"So the president's aides appear on other news channels to say that Fox, unlike those outlets, is really not a news organization but an arm of the Republican Party. One wonders how our colleagues at CNN and elsewhere like being patted on the head and given the seal of approval by the White House." --Fox News political analyst Brit Hume

"It is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective." --White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel on Fox News

"[T]hey're not really a news station. ... It's not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming. It's really not news. It's pushing a point of view." --White House adviser David Axelrod on Fox News

"It is fair to say there are individuals in the United States who ascribe to al-Qaeda-type beliefs." --Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, seeming to be aware that we have enemies

"Last week, when conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh lost his bid for partial ownership of the St. Louis Rams, many adjectives were used to describe his possible state of mind. Several news outlets commented on his anger and frustration, while the right wing had a field day with the 'injustice' of it all. But perhaps the most precise word to summarize Mr. Limbaugh's reaction to news that his inflammatory commentary of the past excluded him from ownership in the NFL is pure and simple 'fear.' Fear that activism is alive and well, and fear that activism worked." --race hustler Al Sharpton, who's made a career out of keeping fear alive and well

"You talk about systemic risk. The systemic risk today is the Congress of the United States." --Republican Senator Judd Gregg

"Speaking of Congress, although the research isn't yet complete, the early indicators are that, rumors to the contrary, you can not get swine flu from exposure to Henry Waxman." --columnist Burt Prelutsky

"It's not the color of Obama's skin that we oppose. It's the color of his policies. It's not his blackness. It's his redness." --radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh

"White House communications director Anita Dunn was videotaped telling a college crowd her favorite political philosopher is Mao Tse Tung, the founder of Communist China. She said she turns to him often. She just took the lead in the White House competition to see who can make the best Republican campaign commercial for next year." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"It's always something with the Muslims. You either have mostly sane people governed by a crazy dictator -- Iraq, Iran and Syria (also California and Michigan) -- or a crazy people governed by relatively sane leaders -- Pakistan and Afghanistan, post-U.S. invasion (also Vermont and Minnesota). There are also insane people ruled by insane leaders (but enough about the House Democratic Caucus). Sane people with sane rulers has not been fully tried yet." --columnist Ann Coulter

web posted October 19, 2009

"The CBO provides 10- year projections of a bill's cost. But most provisions of the health bill don't take effect until 2014. So the '10-year' cost projection only includes six years of the bill. Plus, the costs ramp up slowly. In its first year, the House bill would only cost about $6 billion; in its first three, less than $100 billion. The big costs are in the final years of the 10-year budget window -- and beyond. In fact, over the first 10 years that the House bill would be in existence (2014 to 2024), its costs would be closer to $2.4 trillion." --Cato Institute scholar Michael Tanner

"If the Medicare cuts won't materialize, and the revenues won't grow as expected, and the subsidies (already projected to grow at 8 percent per year) will expand, the Baucus bill is merely the thin wedge of another out-of-control entitlement. We already have several of those, and already are slated to run $1 trillion annual deficits before the advent of a new one. The Baucus bill is faux fiscal restraint on the road to budgetary Armageddon." --columnist Rich Lowry

"The best thing government can do for us is to get out of the way and let us care for ourselves. These [deficit] numbers are unsustainable. They are outrageous. And they will become a reality unless enough Americans rise up and say they are not going to take it anymore. It's our money, not theirs. They are now stealing it before we make it. Let's hear some outrage about this." --columnist Cal Thomas

"I'm not all for Americans winning international prizes, especially the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, I'm vigorously against it. The transnational progressives who pass out these accolades believe America is the problem in the world, the main threat to peace, the impediment to 'progress,' etc. The award is a symbolic statement of opposition to American exceptionalism, American might, American capitalism, American self-determinism, and American pursuit of America's interests in the world." --columnist Andy McCarthy

"The Peace Prize judges won't see it this way, but America has gone to Europe twice in the past century to fight for peace. This is an old concept, and has to do with killing killers so they can't kill anymore. It cost America a lot to do this, and we kept no territory, as they say, beyond the graves where our soldiers lie. America then taxed itself and gave its wealth not only to its allies but to its former adversaries, to help them rebuild. We didn't actually have to do this. We did it to make the world better. We did it to foster peace. (They should give us a prize.)" --columnist Peggy Noonan

"Over the weekend, still another outpost was attacked in the distant reaches of Afghanistan, and still more American soldiers -- and Afghan ones -- were lost. An undermanned and overstretched international force struggles on in that graveyard of empires. And waits for word from Washington. And waits and waits. ... All wait to see what course the president will choose, or will let others choose for him. In the meantime he dithers -- and Americans fight and die." --columnist Paul Greenberg

"I also think it's important to know who is actually sounding off against this [Nobel Prize for Obama]. Everybody agrees it was premature -- maybe undeserved. But who's actually attacking it? Well, you've got the mullahs in the Taliban, and then you've got Mullah Rush [Limbaugh] -- you know, you have [Obama's] critics here at home. ... [R]easonable Republicans would agree that when a president of the United States is recognized with probably the most prestigious award in the world, it's not something to attack." --Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter

"Somebody explain this to me: The president of the United States wins the Nobel Peace Prize and Rush Limbaugh joins with the Taliban in bitterly denouncing the award? ... Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?" --Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson

"When the President himself was saying, 'Look, I didn't deserve to be in the company of these people who have won,' it makes the harsh comments from Michael Steele, from Rush Limbaugh, the rest, seem even more extreme and, as some would argue, un-American." --MSNBC's David Shuster

"Throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement, it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes, and that is why I will accept this award as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century." --Barack Obama, admitting that the Nobel Prize didn't acknowledge any actual accomplishments, only "hopes"

"[W]e simply disagree that [Barack Obama] has done nothing. He got the [Nobel Peace] Prize for what he has done." --Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland

"I think what is fair to say about FOX and certainly the way we view it is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party... [When President Obama] goes on FOX, he understands that he is not going on -- it really is not a news network at this point. He's going to debate the opposition." --White House communications director Anita Dunn

"I've always said -- [Barack Obama] is a man who is full of hope and he really is. I mean, and that's what was so attractive. ... He actually ... his nipples are bursting with hope. He's the first man and the first president in my life who is lactating hope. He continues to lactate hope." --comedian Lewis Black

"In a decision as shocking as Friday's surprise peace prize win, President Obama failed to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Monday. While few observers think Obama has done anything for world peace in the nearly nine months he's been in office, the same clearly can't be said for economics. The president has worked tirelessly since even before his inauguration to wrest control of the U.S. economy from failed free markets, and the evil CEOs who profit from them, and to turn it over to wise, fair and benevolent bureaucrats. ... It is unclear whether the president will now refuse his peace prize in protest against the obvious slight to his real achievements this year." --MarketWatch assistant managing editor Tom Bemis

"[T]he Nobel Prize committee would with this decision have forfeited its reputation for seriousness if it had a reputation for seriousness." --columnist George Will

"It is said that great men often stand upon the shoulders of giants, but Obama is a first -- a man who has ridden to greatness on the shoulders of an army of fawning dwarves -- and now the Nobel committee can be counted among this low-slung throng." --columnist Mac Johnson

"The word czar, which came from Caesar, traditionally referred to an emperor, a singular leader. It makes no more sense to describe people assigned specific fiefs within the government as 'czars' than it would to describe each one of them as a 'president.' Shouldn't we call them something else instead -- say, commissars or liege lords?" --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

"As the old saying goes: Life doesn't last longer in socialist countries; it just feels like it." --columnist Ann Coulter

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