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Lingua publica

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

web posted December 17, 2012

"First, this conservative success in Michigan is ... largely the result of liberal overreach. If the Dems and organized labor hadn't been so greedy in the election ... this probably wouldn't have happened, or at least not so fast. When the left goes too far it creates a counter-reaction from the right. That's what the 2010 midterms were about (but, alas, not the 2012 election). ... Second, and perhaps more important, facts will always drive public policy -- eventually. The plight of certain states will naturally lead to homegrown reforms. ... The fight in Washington may be bogged down, but the fights on the ground in the various states are going better than we might of hoped. Except of course in California, where you people are doomed." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

"Not so many moons ago, President Obama urged us all to 'make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.' He Who Heals advocated 'a more civil and honest public discourse' in the wake of the January 2011 Tucson massacre. As usual, though, the White House has granted Big Labor bullies a permanent waiver from the lofty edicts it issues to everyone else. ... Obama met the initial outbreak of violence with the same response he's given to every other union outbreak of violence under his reign: dead silence. ... We should 'do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations,' Obama lectured just over a year ago from his politeness pulpit. In the age of Obama, it's Opposite Day 365 days a year." --columnist Michelle Malkin

"The only reason the president insists on raising [tax] rates is because he knows it will destroy Republican unity, it will cause a complete fracture of the Republican majority in the house, it will hand him a Congress that he can then manipulate for the next two years at least because the Republicans will be neutered. ... This is entirely a political action, a way to get a surrender from the Republicans." --columnist Charles Krauthammer

"In a remarkable demonstration of political tone-deafness, a source at the naval air base in Fort Worth told Fox News that 20 F-16 fighter jets -- paid for by U.S. taxpayers as part of a foreign aid deal made in 2010 when Mubarak ruled -- will still be delivered to Egypt. ... Such a move represents an overt slap-down of opposition leaders desperate to prevent Egypt's steady march towards Sharia statehood. Moreover, it reveals that Obama's call to Morsi last Thursday, expressing 'deep concern' about the deaths and injuries of protesters, was nothing more than the kind of empty rhetoric this president often uses to obscure his true intentions. Morsi's dictatorial ambitions are clear. Tragically, it appears that Barack Obama has no problem whatsoever with them." --columnist Arnold Ahlert

"What we shouldn't be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages or working conditions. ... These so-called right-to-work laws, they don't have to do with economics; they have everything to do with politics. What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money." --Barack Obama, who would rather people just didn't work

"As far as the unemployment insurance is concerned, that is something that is really a safety net for our whole economy. It's not just a safety net for individuals. It's a safety net for our economy. ... [W]hen [the economy] is down, people have paid into an unemployment insurance program and then they have those benefits, which probably are one of the most important stimuli for the economy. The economists tell us that dollar-for-dollar there's more demand injected into the economy by unemployment insurance than almost anything you can name, food stamps being another one of those." --House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

"The fact is that the president has -- and Democrats agree with him -- agreed to ... $1.6 trillion in cuts, in the Budget Control Act and other acts of Congress. ... Where are the cuts? They're in bills that you, Mr. Speaker, have voted for." --Nancy Pelosi

"The beauty of the 39.6 -- the Clinton tax rates -- was the following: it produces the revenue we need to have a fair and balanced solution that also helps reduce the deficit. It stops the hostage taking of the middle income tax cut." --Nancy Pelosi, who has no intention of reducing the deficit

"The debt limit ought not to be held hostage to anything. It hurt our economy. We were downgraded for the first time in my career, and I think in history, by one of the rating agencies. The credit worthiness of America ought not to be put at risk. It ought not to be a negotiating item." --Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

"[W]hat [Republicans have] actually put on the table is almost nothing. All of the rest is just big talk. So how is the president supposed to negotiate with people who say, 'Here's my demands. By the way, I can't give you any specifics. Just make me happy'?" --New York Times columnist Paul Krugman

"The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys. ... Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count." --New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd

"[W]hy don't these companies making big profits just pay people better than $14 an hour? It's kind of simple. When you're making record profits, why not? I don't get it." --MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski

"Guns escalate anger and escalate situations. They are the most efficient killing machines we have. Yes, there are other things that we use to kill, but Bob Costas and for once Jason Whitlock was absolutely right to say that allowing this gun culture is problematic for all of us. When you have a gun, you are more likely to get shot. You're not more likely to shoot an intruder." --MSNBC's Touré

"When this president was sworn into office, he was handed a deficit of over a trillion dollars. Republicans were in control of Congress for much of the time that President George W. Bush was in office, and they didn't do a great job of controlling spending." --White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

"Really, the one thing that actually works -- you know, state-run communism may not be your cup of tea, but [China's] government works." --Obama's Jobs Council head and GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt

"I hope and understand that people are getting a better recognition that [food stamps] is a program that really helps America, helps families in need. It's not a government handout. If anything, it's a safety net that helps people through difficult times and bridges them towards stability." --Newark Mayor Cory Booker

"I got a movie coming out, 'Django,' check it out. ... And in the movie I had to wear chains. How whack is that? But don't be worried about it because I get out the chains, I get free, I save my wife, and I kill all the white people in the movie. How great is that?" --actor Jamie Foxx

"I so admire the president for standing up for Ambassador Rice. ... I'm happy with where the president has gone; I'm positive that he's going to have a lot of women in his cabinet. Clearly, it should be 50 percent." --NOW president Terry O'Neill

"President Obama met with leaders of the American Indian tribes and they honored the president by giving him his own Indian name: Running Deficits." --comedian Jay Leno

"When did Republicans start insisting on approving only competent, honest people, especially with regard to the Obama administration? Is it just me, or did that come completely out of left field? ... Really, looking at the administration as a whole, Obama did better than we could have expected by appointing only one czar who was a Communist truther. So, to be fair to [Susan] Rice, Republicans should at least grade her on a curve. Is she really that awful ... for an Obama appointee? ... [A]s long as Rice is reasonably loyal to the United States (i.e., identifies it as one of her five favorite countries) and probably won't accidentally start any wars (or, given recent history, not more than one), we can declare her as 'good enough.' And what more can we expect from government?" --humorist Frank J. Fleming

"U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz accused Republicans of trying to make it a crime to be an illegal alien. Democrats see a conspiracy plot. First Republicans want to say that illegal aliens are illegal, next they're going to want to take away their voting rights." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"It's so cold outside I just saw a Democrat with his hands in his own pockets." --blogger Casey Kelley

web posted December 10, 2012

"I have several pet peeves, and one of them is the idea that when Americans get to keep their own money, it somehow 'costs' the government." --columnist John J. Miller

"[T]he message coming out of Washington, especially from our leftist politicians and the news media, is that we solve our budget problems by raising taxes on the rich. If Americans were more informed, such a message would be insulting to our intelligence. There are not enough rich people to satisfy Congress' appetite." --economist Walter E. Williams

"When President Obama put forth his first offer on the fiscal cliff, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said, 'You can't be serious.' We could say the same thing to the Speaker after his counteroffer [Monday]. In a letter signed by House Republican leadership ... Boehner offered to raise taxes by $800 billion and cut spending by $1.4 trillion, with no substantive reforms to the entitlement programs that are driving U.S. spending and debt. ... [T]hey said, 'we recognize it would be counterproductive to publicly or privately propose entitlement reforms that you and the leaders of your party appear unwilling to support in the near-term.' ... [T]he leadership pointed to a plan they said was suggested by Erskine Bowles, the co-chair of President Obama's debt commission and formerly Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff. It raises taxes, but not by raising tax rates -- instead, by lowering the amount or number of tax deductions or exemptions available. ... Now is the time for leaders to get serious. That means serious entitlement reforms that will deliver real savings and improve the programs." --Heritage Foundation's Amy Payne

"[T]he most frightening aspect of the White House proposal is that it wasn't an error. Perhaps the proposal was thoroughly calculated. This suggests a president who doesn't care about the outcome of the cliff negotiations -- who thinks that he wins politically no matter what. He's betting that either the GOP will be far more responsible than he is and do anything to avert a crisis, or that the cliff gives him the tax hikes his partisans are demanding. Win-win, save for the enormous pain to average families across the country." --columnist Kimberly A. Strassel

"With a chip on his shoulder larger than his margin of victory, Barack Obama is approaching his second term by replicating the mistake of his first. Then his overreaching involved health care -- expanding the entitlement state at the expense of economic growth. Now he seeks another surge of statism, enlarging the portion of gross domestic product grasped by government and dispensed by politics. The occasion is the misnamed 'fiscal cliff,' the proper name for which is: the Democratic Party's agenda." --columnist George Will

"As I travel around the world, it's fascinating; European leaders, Asian leaders, they all say to me, America is actually poised to be the world leader for another century -- if we can fix some of this political dysfunction. ... We've got a lot of national security challenges, but if we get our economy together, and if we can get our political system to work well, I am really confident about our future." --Barack Obama

"I'll go anywhere and I'll do whatever it takes to get this done. It's too important for Washington to screw this up. Now's the time for us to work on what we all agree to, which is let's keep middle-class taxes low. That's what our economy needs. That's what the American people deserve." --Barack Obama

"I've been keeping my own naughty and nice list for Washington." --Barack Obama

"We would be somewhat foolish to work out something on stopping us from going over the cliff and then a month or six weeks later Republicans pull the same game they did before and say, 'We're not going to do anything -- unless this happens, we're not going to agree to increasing the debt ceiling.' I agree with the president, it has to be a package deal." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

"Now remember, we've already done more than a billion dollars worth of cuts. We've already done that. So we need to get some credit for that." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who neglects to mention that reduction in growth is up against $1 trillion deficits each year

"Entitlements is not [sic] the issue. And if so, cool heads can sit down and engage the American people and tell us how many seniors in nursing homes do we want to throw out in the street? ... And then who wants to make a fuss about Medicare when it's solvent until 2024? ... Who wants to make a fuss about Social Security when it's solvent -- and it's about, 'You earned it'?" --Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) (Social Security has run a deficit for the last two years, and that won't change without reform.)

"Remember, we had a $5.6 trillion surplus in 2000-2001 from the Clinton administration." --Sheila Jackson Lee (The actual "surplus" was $127 billion.)

"Our current gun culture ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead. Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, [Kansas City Chiefs linebacker] Jovan Belcher's actions, and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. ... But here is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today." --Fox sports writer Jason Whitlock, quoted by NBC's Bob Costas during "Sunday Night Football"

"You know, I did not go as far as I'd like to go because my thoughts on the NRA and America's gun culture -- I believe the NRA is the new KKK. And that the arming of so many black youths, uh, and loading up our community with drugs, and then just having an open shooting gallery, is the work of people who obviously don't have our best interests [at heart]." --sportswriter Jason Whitlock, who first blamed guns for the murder/suicide committed by an NFL player last weekend

"[America's gun culture] demonstrates itself in the Wild West, Dirty Harry mentality of people who actually believe that if a number of people were armed in the theater in Aurora, they would have been able to take down this nutjob in body armor and military style artillery. When in fact almost every policeman in the country would tell you that that would have only increased the tragedy and added to the carnage." --NBC's Bob Costas

"Will Obama Push a 'Black Agenda' Now?" --headline from The Root

"Black Friday, in reality, is a symptom of the plight that 30 years of Reaganomics has brought to working people in America. Right along with the frenzied rise of shoppers willing to fight each other at retail outlets across America, we've been steadily, for the last 30 years, watching the destruction of organized labor ... of decent pay and wages and conditions for working people. ... We have Black Friday today because the wealthy elite have strangled their workers for 32 years, ever since Ronald Reagan's election." --radio talk-show host Thom Hartmann

"Michelle [Obama] is Superwoman. What can't she do? That's why people love her. She can be on the Supreme Court and anywhere else she wants. She can be the president. She's history and she'll stay history because she is so amazingly smart and together." --actor Samuel L. Jackson

"We weren't making an argument ... that Bain was bad. We were making an argument that [Mitt Romney's] experience does not qualify you to be president of the United States or to understand the real economy. We obviously worked hard to tear that down, and they never built it back up. I never understood why." --Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, who basically accused Romney of being a felon during the campaign

"I'm not making excuses for the missed opportunities of the Israelis, or the lack of generosity, the lack of empathy that I think goes hand-in-hand with the suspicion. So, yes, there is more that the Israelis need to do to really demonstrate that they do understand the pain of an oppressed people in their minds, and they want to figure out, within the bounds of security and a Jewish democratic state, what can be accomplished." --Hillary Clinton

"You know, all of us have fallen short of our dreams in life on occasion, but it is part of the Judeo-Christian spirit to give people the opportunity to show what they can do. The most important thing, I believe, for a person when they make mistakes is what they do after they've made mistakes." --former Congressman Mel Reynolds (Having resigned in disgrace 17 years ago from the Illinois 2nd Congressional District after being convicted of having sex with an underage campaign worker, Reynolds now wants to replace Jesse Jackson Jr.)

"I have said countless times that unless you are delivering a product and service that is really needed and unless you are doing it really well, you don't stick around for 80 years." --actress Ashley Judd on behalf of 80-year-old Planned Parenthood

"Last year, our plucky heroine, the wholesome apple-cheeked American republic, was trapped in an express elevator hurtling out of control toward the debt ceiling. Would she crash into it? Or would she make some miraculous escape? Yes! At the very last minute of her white-knuckle thrill ride to her rendezvous with destiny, she was rescued by Congress' decision to set up ... a Super Committee! Those who can, do. Those who can't, form a committee. Those who really can't, form a Super Committee -- and then put John Kerry on it for good measure." --columnist Mark Steyn

"President Clinton and President Obama played a round of golf over the weekend. President Clinton asked Obama what his handicap was, and Obama said, 'Joe Biden.'" --comedian Jay Leno

"President Obama shopped at a book store to help support Small Business Saturday. He bought fifteen books. His tax policies and his health care law have been so brutal on small businesses the only way they can survive is if he shops there personally." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"A new report shows that, in Virginia, gun violence has fallen as the sale of firearms has soared to a new record. In other news, a recent study shows that most criminals don't like getting shot at." --Fred Thompson

"So just to be clear, I'm not going to sign any package that somehow prevents the top rate from going up for folks at the top 2 percent." --Barack Obama

"[D]ebt is not caused by spending, it is caused by buying things that you don't pay for. Or, it's caused by cutting revenues that you don't offset ... by cuts in spending." --Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

"Entitlements is not [sic] the issue. And if so, cool heads can sit down and engage the American people and tell us how many seniors in nursing homes do we want to throw out in the street? ... And then who wants to make a fuss about Medicare when it's solvent until 2024? ... Who wants to make a fuss about Social Security when it's solvent -- and it's about, 'You earned it'?" --Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)

web posted December 3, 2012

"[I]f the Democrats are really serious about soaking the rich, why don't they come out in favor of replacing the income tax -- which is basically a mechanism to prevent the upper-middle class from becoming wealthy -- with a wealth tax? Holders of great family fortunes can easily live off their inheritances, with no taxable 'income' whatsoever, but imagine if the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, and those who grabbed the swag by marrying the widow of a rich Republican senator, were forced to cough up a sizable percentage of their estates to the feds each year. Then you'd see real tax reform, and in a hurry." --columnist Michael Walsh

"[R]aising taxes would result in less economic activity, not more. Herein lies the key to understanding why the left wants higher taxes for 'the rich.' To the rich-should-pay-more crowd, the question of whether raising taxes hurts economic growth is less important than the issue of 'fairness.' ... Andy Stern, the former head of the Service Employees International Union, the fastest-growing American union, describes the economic philosophy of the left: If raising taxes on 'the rich' hurts the economy, that is an acceptable price. 'Western Europe,' says Stern, 'as much as we used to make fun of it, has made different trade-offs which may have ended with a little more unemployment but a lot more equality.' Any questions?" --columnist and radio talk-show host Larry Elder

"The Left misunderstands conservatives when it believes the argument over tax rates is an argument about greed -- that wealthier Americans simply want to grab all the money we can. In fact, many of the top 5 percent are among the most generous people in the world; they just tend to give their money to charities that actually produce results. Leaving aside -- for the moment -- the increasingly inverse correlation between taxation and individual liberty (a crucial consideration all its own), we conservatives look at the vast bureaucratic beast with a sense of utter futility. We opt out of government projects and seek personal independence in part because we see government fail time and again -- and not for lack of resources. For millions, government is less 'the thing we do together' than it is the 'monster inflicted upon us,' and the taxes we pay are less a contribution to the well-being of the community than a ransom payment to keep the monster away from our door." --columnist David French

"Emboldened by U.S. backing and funding, Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood heavyweight Egyptians elected to be their president, has essentially declared dictatorial powers -- i.e., that his 'sovereign' actions are beyond judicial review. ... His objective is to clear the field of secular interference so the Islamist-dominated 'constituent assembly' can finish writing and ramming through a new constitution that further suffocates Egypt in the classical sharia framework favored by the Brothers and their allies.... [T]he Brotherhood in Egypt is following an easily accessible, albeit widely ignored, game-plan. It is the one by which Islamists moved Turkey back into their column, away from real democracy. It took Erdogan's Islamist government a decade to flip Turkey. I predicted that things would go much faster in Egypt, where they never tried an 80-year secularization project, where Islamic supremacism has deep roots, and where the Brotherhood has always been a powerhouse. It's happening. Fast." --former DoJ attorney Andrew C. McCarthy

"The president of the United States, the most famous person in the world, maybe in the whole galaxy -- in a long time -- he had to spend like a billion dollars to set the record straight." --House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

"As we move forward to debate our economic and fiscal challenges in the weeks and months ahead, one thing is clear: Our economic agenda, choices and decisions, will be viewed through the perspective and the eyes of our nation's women and their needs and those of their families." --Nancy Pelosi

"The benefits and [$174,000 per year] salary that we get, we earn. It's not elaborate, it's just a bunch of poppycock that a lot of people have spread around trying to get us to hate our own government and our government representatives." --Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) (Perhaps he's giving himself credit for preventing Guam from capsizing.)

"We cannot allow the Senate to be dysfunctional by the use of filibusters. We've had over 300 filibusters in the last six years -- it's unprecedented. What we're talking about is very basic -- you want to start a filibuster, you want to stop the business of the Senate, by goodness' sake, park your fanny on the floor of the Senate and speak. If you want to go to dinner and go home over the weekend, be prepared, the Senate is moving forward." --Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL)

"What is clear is that despite lingering questions about Benghazi, [Hillary] Clinton is more beloved than at any point in her long and at times controversial career, commanding soaring approval ratings, a vast fundraising machine and supporters who gush more than ever that she should run for president again." --Washington Post reporter Stephanie McCrummen

"I think that the ultimate message of that wonderful movie ['Lincoln'], I thought that it was an act of patriotism on Spielberg's part to make it in that way. The ultimate message is bring back earmarks! ... Earmarks have always been the grease, you know, that greases the wheels that gets things done. I think John McCain did a tremendous disservice to this country by making such a huge campaign about earmarks when there are far bigger and more important targets to be met on deficit reduction." --TIME Magazine's Joe Klein

"Word to the wise: Thanksgiving is the proper holiday to tell your family that you're a homosexual. It's arguably secular, so you're confronting tradition, not faith. ... If it helps, think of homosexuals as the rightly worried tribe sitting across from the Puritans. I'm just saying the table should be set for them, in the borderless world that is gay America. Gays and lesbians are in every family, somehow. Make them a plate." --The Washington Post's Ned Martel

"The 'pro-life' movement is absolutely anything BUT 'pro-life.' This hypocritical and misleading nomenclature should be discontinued immediately. 'Anti-choice' is also far too tame. They're slut-shaming slimebuckets: This group of thugs, hiding behind declarations of piety about 'the sanctity of life,' needs to be labeled exactly as they ARE: Forced-birth slut-shamers, advocates of murder, hypocrites, pedophiles, enablers of rape and incest, and generally all-around lying slimebuckets." --Daily Kos blogger BadKitties

"First of all, give an honor to God and our lord and savior Barack Obama." --actor Jamie Foxx

"The Affordable Care Act reduces the deficit considerably. I would simply point out to you that the Supreme Court has spoken, the American people have spoken, congressional leaders of both parties have spoken, and we're going to continue with implementation." --White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

"[I]n the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the genocide of indigenous people -- is of special importance today. ... Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers. ... How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis?" --Robert Jensen, journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin

"There are now reports that President Obama will name Massachusetts Senator John Kerry to be the next secretary of defense. Apparently this is part of America's new defense strategy to bore our enemies to death." --comedian Jay Leno

"Attorney General Eric Holder said he will remain on the job only 'for about a year.' That should be enough time to finish all the necessary document-shredding." --Fred Thompson

"So are we still trying to end racial politics or are there just too many advantages to some political parties for that?" --humorist Frank J. Fleming

"Hostess Bakery plants shut down due to a workers' strike. It was split up. The State Department hired all the Twinkies, the Secret Service hired all the HoHos, the generals are sleeping with the Cupcakes and the voters sent all the Ding Dongs to Congress." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"We need a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to control the so-called free speech rights of corporations." --Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Guam)

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