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

web posted November 25, 2013

"A free society requires the free flow of information. In any public policy dispute, if only one side is heard from, we are likely to get further and further away from the truth. The attackers will find there is no penalty for getting minor facts wrong or shading the truth. That will embolden them to make more serious errors, eventually resorting to downright lying. If the only entity providing any push back is the Washington Post fact checker, we are in real trouble. ... [W]hat threatens the foundations of a free society most of all is when it is the government (and its allies in the private sector) who are doing the attacking, and when the reason there is no response is that the victims of the attacks have been threatened and bullied into silence." -- Columnist John C. Goodman

"[O]n ABC's 'This Week' on Sunday, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., outright admitted that Obama's 'keep your plan' promises were false. She said: 'We all knew. The whole point of the plan is to cover things people need, like preventive care, birth control, pregnancy.' So, you see, the entire national Democratic Party apparatus has conspired to deceive Americans about a vital matter -- their own health care -- in order to advance its agenda. You still think this is just about health care? Well, another Democratic leader, Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, admitted that with Obamacare, what Democrats are 'trying to do is change a values system in our country.' That pretty much sums up modern liberalism as embodied in the Democratic Party. Come hell or high water, Democrats will coerce us, via the power of the federal government, into thinking and believing as they do and living under their utopian Leviathan state." -- Columnist David Limbaugh

"If you are obsessed with equality, as they are in Europe, what you end up with is chronic unemployment. Because the real engine of growth is low regulation, low taxation and you allow the golden goose, meaning the private economy, to go ahead and to flourish. And when you over-regulate and you over-tax it, especially if you are doing it in the name of reducing inequality, you are going to get the opposite effect." -- Political analyst Charles Krauthammer

"I think that we probably underestimated the complexities of building out a website that needed to work the way it should. There is a larger problem that I probably -- speaking personally, but also as the administration -- could have identified earlier, and that is the way the federal government does procurement and does IT is just generally not very efficient." -- Barack Obama

"[T]hat we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." -- Barack Obama reciting the Gettysburg Address. The official transcript reads, "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom."

"I strongly oppose any attempt to increase sanctions against Iran while [international] negotiations are ongoing. I am baffled by the insistence of some senators to undermine ... talks. I will continue to support these negotiations and oppose any new sanctions as long as we are making progress toward a genuine solution." -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein

"3,000 Americans were murdered [on 9/11], because the Republican administration didn't have the discipline or the good sense to read a presidential briefing." -- Radio talk-show host Mike Papantonio

"I'm a black man. I use the 'N' word. I'm going to continue to use the 'N' word with my black friends, with my white friends. They are my friends. ... Listen, what I do with my black friends is not up to white America to dictate to me what's appropriate and inappropriate." -- NBA analyst Charles Barkley

"I think the Second Amendment is misunderstood and I think it's time today, in our drastic measures, to repeal and replace that Second Amendment. ... Why do we keep such an allegiance to a constitution that was driven by 18th Century concerns? How many of you recognize that the main concern of the 18th Century was a standing army? That's what motivated the Second Amendment: fear of a standing army." -- Texas A&M law professor Mary Margaret Penrose

"The Dow Jones average hit 16,000 for the first time. How about that? The bad news? It took us going $17 trillion in debt to get there." -- Jay Leno

"The Obama administration once gave us 'man-caused disasters' for acts of terrorism and 'workplace violence' for the Fort Hood shootings. Now it has trumped those past linguistic contortions by changing words to mask the Obamacare disaster. ... The newly canceled health plans are suddenly rebranded by the administration as 'subpar.' Only in autumn 2013 is the supposedly unaware public told that, years ago, 'bad apple' insurance companies sold them 'substandard' plans. ... From the very beginning, Obamacare defied the laws of common sense and basic logic. Providing more coverage for more people cannot result in radical reductions in costs, as promised -- unless a shopper normally can buy more and better groceries for cheaper prices. How logical was expecting indebted young people to voluntarily pay more for insurance they would rarely use in order to pay for others to use it a lot?" -- Historian Victor Davis Hanson

"The [insurance] cancellation notice[s] was not the truth. It should have been: 'We intend to or expect to modify your insurance.' [Cancellations happen] when you don't pay your premium, or something has happened in the bad old days. A cancellation notice was the inappropriate document to send without notice. All they had to do is [say] that, 'This is a notice to say that we're going to improve your insurance, not, in essence, eliminate your insurance.'" -- Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

"Did I ever tell my constituents that if they liked their plan they could keep it? I would have if I'd ever met anybody who liked his or her plan. But that was not my experience." -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

"[S]enior officials at the White House ... are in full fight mode over the Affordable Care Act right now. What you hear from these senior officials is, you know, they're concerned about what happened with insurance companies. They wish the insurance companies hadn't sent out the cancellation notices and if they had, that they simply call them renewals. ... They feel they have to turn that around, as the first step in trying to repair the damage that's been done to this president." -- Juan Williams

"We don't believe in handouts. We don't think anyone should get a free ride." -- Michelle Obama

"Yes, we initially wanted single-payer, and we had to compromise back in 2009 for the Affordable Care Act. But, it is a da-- good piece of legislation that has already saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives." -- Hip hop mogul Russell Simmons

"The ratings for Al Jazeera America has now dipped even lower than Al Gore's Current TV, which it replaced. That's how you know you're boring, OK? When Al Gore is considered more entertaining to people than what you have." -- Jay Leno

web posted November 18, 2013

"With the chances of making a dent in ObamaCare by trying to defund it being virtually zero, and the Republican Party's chances of gaining power in either the 2014 or 2016 elections being reduced by the public's backlash against that futile attempt, there was virtually nothing to gain politically and much to lose. However difficult it might be to repeal ObamaCare after it gets up and running, the odds against repeal, after the 2014 and 2016 elections, are certainly no worse than the odds against defunding it in 2013. Winning those elections would improve the odds. If the Tea Party made a tactical mistake, that is not necessarily fatal in politics. People can even learn from their mistakes -- but only if they admit to themselves that they were mistaken. Whether the Tea Party can do that may determine not only its fate but the fate of an America that still needs the principles that brought Tea Party members together in the first place." -- Thomas Sowell

"At its core, the government exists to do certain things that people aren't equipped to do on their own. The list of those things has gotten longer and longer over the years. In 1776, the federal government's portfolio could have easily fit in a file folder: maintain an army and navy, a few federal courts, the post office, the patent office and maybe a dozen or two other pretty obvious things. Now, the file folder of things the federal government does is much bigger. ... The number of civilians (i.e., not counting the military) who work for the executive branch alone is today nearly equal to the entire population of the United States in 1776. The Federal Register, the federal government's fun-filled journal of new rules, regulations and the like, was about 2,600 pages in 1936 (a year after it was created). Today it's over 80,000 pages. And that's just at the federal level. ... The justifications for all of these laws and all of these workers -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- have one thing in common: the assumption that the rest of us couldn't get by without them, whether we like it or not." -- Jonah Goldberg

"The aim [of progressivism] is to produce the sort of citizen for whom 'I am human' no longer essentially means 'I am free.' The goal is to degrade your natural perception of freedom to the level of being content with your bowl of rice -- or, at the intermediate stage, with your smartphones, music videos, and entitlement programs -- purchased with your daughter's future, your reason, your self-ownership. That this goal is as close to global achievement as it is today is astonishing -- though no more so than the fact that there are still men left who are able to perceive what has been lost, and to mount a resistance." -- Daren Jonescu

"It is a real significant distortion to say that hundreds of thousands of people are being cancelled. What's actually happening is that they are very likely to get a better plan for less money." -- DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

"The mainstream media, I believe, wants ObamaCare to fail. They look for every negative number they can find. They're afraid to do a positive story because they're afraid that somebody might not watch. The media is just cherry-picking the bad facts that are out there, repeating them over and over again, and in many cases, they're making stuff up." -- MSNBC's Ed Schultz

"You know life has changed when you're hanging out with Jane Fonda backstage. There is no greater embodiment of being outspoken on behalf of what you believe in -- and being 'all in' in every way -- than Jane Fonda. And it's a huge honor just to even briefly have shared the stage with her." -- Ambassador Samantha Power

"[L]et me do what I probably should do more often -- just say thanks. Thank you for the opportunity to serve. Thank you for helping me to promote justice, equality and peace." -- Rep. Alan Grayson

"[I]f you just looked objectively at what the Democratic Party and Democratic senators stand for right now, it's a lot more aligned with what the American people believe and what they care about then what a small faction of the other party is trying to promote. And I'm confident that there's going to be an adjustment process where the Republican Party kind of moves back to reason and common sense. ... [W]hen they aren't looking out for the interests of the American people, there are some consequences. And that's why elections matter. That's why they count." -- Barack Obama

"President Obama said he is sorry that some Americans have lost their existing health coverage due to ObamaCare. I think he's getting a little desperate. Today he said if you like your complete lack of coverage, you can keep your complete lack of coverage." -- Jay Leno

"At a private event [recently], President Obama bragged that he was 'remaking the courts.' And if his nomination of controversial professor Cornelia Pillard had succeeded, he would have taken a major step toward that goal. ... Fortunately, the U.S. Senate was as shocked by her resume as the rest of us and refused to give her nomination a final vote. ... But if Pillard's nomination has taught us anything, it is what's at stake for America in this overlooked debate. If the President can't get the legislature to embrace his big government vision, then he'll appoint judges to do it for him. As FRC's Ken Klukowski points out, 'President Obama understands that so much of what he wants to accomplish runs afoul of the historical understanding of the limits on federal power and the proper meaning of the Bill of Rights that he can only achieve that agenda if a critical mass of federal judges agree with his idea that the words of the Constitution can be completely redefined to grant such sweeping and transformational power to the federal government.'" -- FRC's Tony Perkins

"[W]e've got to move forward on [ObamaCare]. It took 100 years for us to even get to the point where we could start talking about and implementing a law to make sure everybody's got health insurance. And my pledge to the American people is, is that we're going to solve the problems that are there, we're going to get it right, and the Affordable Care Act is going to work for the American people." -- Barack Obama

"There's nothing in the Affordable Care Act that says that your insurance company should cancel you. That's not what the Affordable Care Act is about. It simply didn't happen." -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

"You understand that if you had a policy on the day that this bill was adopted, you got to keep it. Now, you didn't get to keep it if the insurance companies didn't want to offer it to you." -- House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer

"There isn't an American who isn't going to be touched in a positive way by the Affordable Care Act. Change is difficult. Even change for the better is difficult." -- Obama adviser Valerie Jarret

"Nearly a million people have been approved for a private plan under ObamaCare. They're still shopping. They haven't chosen. It's the shopping season. ... This is the way the law was designed to work. They give you options. Nobody's holding a gun to your head that you have to do it in the next six hours." -- MSNBC's Ed Schultz

"[Republicans] keep looking for ways to keep this president from doing his job. ... We need to call out these [Republican] filibusters for what they are: naked attempts to nullify the results of the last presidential election -- to force us to govern as though President Obama hadn't won the 2012 election." -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren

"There's a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he's African American. There's no question about that and it's the kind of thing nobody ever says but everybody's thinking it." -- Oprah Winfrey

"The actual name of the legislation is not Obamacare, but the Affordable Care Act, named in the same playful manner as how the bald stooge is called 'Curly.' Not to imply that Obamacare is as capable or helpful as any of the three stooges." -- Frank J. Fleming

web posted November 11, 2013

"This ObamaCare lie is lying about the most personal thing in many people's minds: Their relationship with their doctor and their health. Not only that, the health of their entire family. This is as personal a lie as this president or any president could have told people." -- Rush Limbaugh

“Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you could keep it if it hasn't changed since the law passed. So we wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you're grandfathered in on that plan. But if the insurance company changes it, then what we're saying is they've got to change it to a higher standard." -- Barack Obama

"[W]hat we're talking about here is insurance companies who chose not to keep the plan they could have grandfathered, and they chose to change the plan that they were making available to people that they already insured in the individual market. ... So, no. there was nothing about what President Obama or that I or any other Democrat supporting the affordable care act said that was not true." -- DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz

"We [passed ObamaCare] to put to end the days when the individual market had no standards, when every year, thousands of Americans would be dropped from their coverage. People are acting like this is some new phenomenon." -- Barack Obama

"Well, as I understand it, you can keep [your insurance plan] up to the time -- and I hope this is correct, but this is what I've been told -- up to the time the bill was enacted, and after that, it's a different story. I think that part of it, if true, was never made clear." -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein

"[I]f the president were to allow people to have those [insurance] plans be downgraded, or insurance companies to keep selling barebones plans ... he'd be violating [an] even more important promise to the American people -- that everyone would have a guarantee to access of quality affordable health insurance." -- Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer

"America, we've got some bad news: Our Constitution isn't going to make it. ... [T]he Constitution simply isn't cut out for 21st-century governance. ... As we've learned what works and what doesn't, constitutions have started to look and more alike. Not surprisingly, the U.S. has one of the world's least generic constitutions. ... American exceptionalism is a fine thing, but there are still things we can learn from other places." -- National Journal's Alex Seitz-Wald

??"The TSA ... is an agency of the DHS charged with ensuring the security of transportation, most notably air transportation. Although it has not been widely singled out by Patriots, it has been subjected to criticism by far-right homophobes, among others, who have alleged that TSA agents engaging in hand searches are really sexually groping travelers." -- Southern Poverty Law Center's Mark Potok

"Maybe Obama speeches should have that guy at the end of prescription drug ads who quickly explains all the side effects. ... Obama and the Democrats lied about how Obamacare would force people off their plans, and the only way to deny that is more lies. ... If you like your lies, you can repeat them." -- Humorist Frank J. Fleming

"Some things ought to be done by government: things like running courts, policing pollution and protecting the border. But most everything else should be left to private actors. Government offers guarantees on paper and promises in speeches. But government rarely delivers. Private companies did brilliant Internet work for President Obama's election campaign. But when it came to his health insurance website, the president put government in charge. We saw the result. Markets aren't perfect, but they allow for a world where prudence is rewarded and sloth punished, a world in which more people take risks and innovate. That's a world where people prosper. Some prosper instead of waiting -- and sometimes dying -- while hoping government will eventually get things right." -- John Stossel

"The president now is toxic. The thing is called ObamaCare. There's no running away from it. It's got his name on it. You see the president, you think about the policy and you know it's a disaster." -- Commentator Charles Krauthammer

"Nothing drives me more crazy than the fact that right now, there is great insurance to be had out there, choice and competition, where people can save money for a better product, except too many folks have not been able to get through the website. Now, this is like having a really good product in the store and the cash registers don't work and there aren't enough parking spots and nobody can get through the door. So we are working overtime to get this fixed." -- Barack Obama

: "[The '5%' of Americans receiving insurance termination notices] can choose a different plan being offered by their insurer or they can shop for coverage in the marketplace or outside the marketplace. As insurers have made clear, they are not dropping consumers; they're improving their coverage options, often offering better-value plans with additional benefits." -- Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director Marilyn Tavenner

"Immigration reform will reduce the deficit by $850 billion over the first 20 years. It's good for the economy and the right thing to do. We hope the House will follow the Senate and take action." -- White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

"When you have military flyovers and the military symbolism that goes on in sports, I think you've got a problem." -- ESPN analyst Kevin Blackistone, who criticized the national anthem as a "war anthem"

"[W]hat do Christian values mean to Republicans? It's just a stepping stone, a footstool, to get exactly what they want in the political arena. They hide behind their plastic Jesus, quite often." -- MSNBC's Ed Schultz

"There's too many Godd--- people on the planet. You know, I'm pro-choice, I believe that women should have a right to control their bodies. Sometimes in my darker moments, I'm anti-choice. I think abortion should be mandatory for about 30 years." -- Dan Savage

"According to a new study out of Harvard, it is easier for people to be moral in the morning. They say people are more moral at the beginning of the day, but they become more dishonest as the day goes on. So when people say Congress is as dishonest as the day is long, we now have scientific proof." -- Jay Leno

web posted November 4, 2013

"The ObamaCare rollout is a disaster for the White House, not a problem or a challenge or an embarrassment, not a gaffe or a bad few weeks. ... It was Bill Daley ... who Thursday, on 'CBS This Morning,' admitted the scale of the problem. Asked whether Kathleen Sebelius should be fired, he said: 'To me that's kind of like firing Captain Smith on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg.' The Titanic. Some will see his comments as disloyal. Actually they were candid and realistic. Although in fairness, the Titanic at least had three good days, and Edward Smith chose to go down with the ship." -- Peggy Noonan

"FACT: Nothing in Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans." -- White House adviser Valerie Jarret

"The majority of people in this country -- the vast majority of people in this country -- are keeping their plan." -- Former White House adviser David Axelrod

"[W]hat I can guarantee is that we have a system [Healthcare.gov] that's working. ... It's just not working at the speed that we want and at the success rate that want. Those are the things we're working on." -- Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director Marilyn Tavenner

"One year ago, Hurricane Sandy's landfall devastated communities up and down the East Coast -- a tragedy that demanded massive rescue, recovery, and rebuilding efforts. ... Over the past year, my administration has fought for these communities throughout the response, and the federal government will remain by their side as our fellow citizens rebuild. ... That's who we are as Americans -- we take care of our own. We leave nobody behind." -- Barack Obama

"No matter how much security we have, things like [the Benghazi terrorist attack] can happen. Let's keep in mind, Ambassador Stevens was the one who wanted to be in Benghazi; Ambassador Stevens was the one who wanted to branch out from Tripoli to Benghazi." -- Radio talk-show host Leslie Marshall

"Since 1980 the policies in this country have been driven by the Christian right. They took over and they turned this country into the dark ages and we're so far behind now with science, education, health care, everything." -- Filmmaker Michael Moore

"According to a new report, more than 700 fake ObamaCare websites have been created. Security experts say it's simple to identify the phony sites because they are easy to log on to. ... The ObamaCare website is not the only one crashing. The NSA website went offline Friday after suspected hackers broke into it. Hey, NSA: It's not so much fun when people are sneaking into YOUR computer, is it?" -- Jay Leno

"Just in the last month, hundreds of thousands have been notified by their insurers that their policies will be canceled. ... At least Darth Vader was honest about his bait-and-switch: 'I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.' Obama won't even admit he lied. At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Obama talked at great length about the middle class and not once about the poor. His critics on the right said he was lying, that he was really more interested in income distribution. Such charges were dismissed as paranoid and even racist. But the critics were right. Obama was either lying to himself or to the rest of us -- because he was playing the game to win." -- Jonah Goldberg

"The Fed, created to shore up capitalism, has become an instrument of government economic management not so different from a socialist planning board: a tiny handful of powerful people attempt to fine-tune the entire economy. Its main mission has become continually goosing economic activity through infusions of new cash to maintain the illusion that good times will never falter. The result isn't stability, but one economic bubble after another. The Fed's manipulations fit well with President Obama's 'stimulus spending' efforts. But neither seems to do the trick. This post-recession 'recovery' is among the weakest ever. ... [T]hose banks and the Federal Reserve that dominates them are too big and too powerful, so much so that they risk dragging us all down with them if they fail. No dozen people should be granted so much power." -- John Stossel

"Only under the Obama administration would the law protect the criminal and punish the innocent. Unfortunately, that's been the effect of one of the most explosive IRS abuse cases in years. For months, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has tried to find the IRS agent responsible for leaking their confidential donor list to their biggest political opponent, the pro-homosexual Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Turns out, the agency knows who did it -- but because of a loophole in the law, they don't have to reveal it. That's right -- the same part of the IRS code that outlaws the crime this person committed also protects his identity. ... Of course, the IRS' refusal to cooperate is no surprise, especially since the same office that committed the crime was under the corrupt direction of Lois Lerner, author of the anti-conservative crackdown that denied so many organizations' tax-exempt status. It will take the Justice Department's involvement to hold the guilty accountable. And based on the Obama DOJ's pattern of lawlessness, I don't think many people are holding their breath." -- FRC's Tony Perkins

"[I]f you're getting one of these letters [canceling your insurance policy], just shop around in the new marketplace. That's what it's for... For the fewer than 5% of Americans who buy insurance on your own, you will be getting a better deal." -- Barack Obama

"[W]hat we're talking about here is the 5 percent in the country who currently purchase insurance on the individual market. And that market has been like the Wild West. It has been under regulated." -- Jay Carney

"We were under the impression that [Healthcare.gov] was ready to go. We had the president, to his credit, almost seven weeks out was saying, 'is it going to be ready?' and to be told by the pros that, 'yeah, this is all ready to go, all in line.' Neither he or I are technology geeks and we assumed that it was up and ready to run, but the good news is that although it's not, and we apologize for that, we're confident that by the end of November it will be and there will still be plenty of time for people to register to get online." -- Joe Biden

"If you compare [the O'Care exchange] to all kinds of other programs of large magnitude, it's actually ahead of schedule, including Social Security, Medicare and a whole lot of other things." -- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)

"Had Democrats stuck to the original Democratic vision and built comprehensive health insurance on Social Security and Medicare, it would have been cheaper, simpler, and more widely accepted by the public. And Republicans would be hollering anyway." -- Robert Reich

"I don't want to 'grab' anyone's guns, or tell Americans how to lead their lives. I do, however, want to try and stop the endless, senseless slaughter of Americans through gun violence." -- CNN's Piers Morgan

"[T]here's a mental health problem in Congress. This would be solved by committing [the Tea Party] by executive order, I think. Because these are our American brothers and sisters, we shouldn't be criticizing them, attacking them. ??? This is a cry for help." -- Sean Penn

"Since its launch, HealthCare.gov has spawned over 700 fake scam sites that ask for your personal information. They're easy to spot, though. They're the sites that actually work." -- Fred Thompson

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