Lingua publica
The
good and the bad...presented with permission from The Patriot E-Journal
web posted January 21, 2008
"What [the GOP] is lacking right now is that sturdy grass-roots movement which is the mechanism that wins presidential and congressional elections... When the Rockefeller-wing philosophy prevails, the GOP loses. When the Reagan wing is in control, we win." -- Michael Reagan
"The [media] will always tell you... who is a conservative and who isn't by virtue of who they try to destroy and by virtue of who they try to prop up. And right now they're trying to prop up McCain... [and] Huckabee." -- Rush Limbaugh
"The intent of the Founding Fathers was to have an armed population that would ensure the ‘security of a free state.' The armed population would be able to defend itself from abuses of a tyrannical government or foreign invaders, and would have the means of self-defense against the criminal element." -- Charles Bloomer
"We are long past the point of believing that any set piece battle will be decisive in this war. Instead, we are in the middle of a long process known as ‘clear and hold.' Success is not defined by the number of insurgents killed (though it is always nice to hurt the enemy) but by the number of cities, towns, and villages rendered steadily more secure, more ‘normal'." -- David French
"The bottom line here is that the surge [in Iraq] is succeeding. Yet for the most part, these stories of success are going unreported in the media. Why this lack of reporting is so important is that war is a test of will between two sides, in which each side is trying to break the other's will to continue the struggle." -- Roger Carstens
"Environmentalists often talk as if they are trying to save the last few patches of greeney from being paved over, when in fact 90 percent of the land in the United States is undeveloped and forests alone cover more area than all the cities and towns in the country combined." -- Thomas Sowell
"So you guys tried to fake another Gulf of Tonkin incident using some clown with a CB radio and the lethal threat posed by the S.S. Minnow? Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen, on behalf of the Bush administration, today's ‘Worst Person in the World'!" -- MSNBC anchorhead Keith Olbermann accusing our military leaders of faking the incident in which Iranian speedboats challenged U.S. Navy vessels transiting international waters in the Strait of Hormuz
"Almost a couple years ago, you would send a reporter out with Obama, and it was like they needed to go through detox when they came back: ‘Oh, he's so impressive, he's so charismatic,' and we're kind of like, ‘Down Boy'." -- Politico founder John Harris on his former Washington Post colleagues suffering from Obama infatuation
"What do you think the bigger obstacle is for you in becoming President, the Clinton campaign machine or America's inherent racism?" -- ABC's Chris Cuomo to Barack Obama
"The point of the surge was to quickly move the Iraqi government and Iraqi people. That is only now beginning to happen, and I believe in large measure because the Iraqi government, they watch us, they listen to us. I know very well that they follow everything that I say." -- Hillary Clinton
"This is the most exciting election we've had in such a long time because you have an African-American, an extraordinary man, a person of tremendous talents and abilities, running to become our president. You have a woman running to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling. I don't think either of us want to inject race or gender in this campaign. We are running as individuals..." -- Hillary Clinton, injecting race and gender into the debate
"[T]here is a growing gap between the rich and the poor. If we were all rich, that would be very nice. If we were all poor, it would be too bad, but we would be the same." -- former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
"An old political adage states that yard signs don't vote. This is only partially true. In Chicago, they sometimes do vote and this year I bet they all vote for Hillary Clinton, as will the dead." -- Mac Johnson
"Innovation drives change, the market drives change. Government ‘change' just drives things away: You could ask many of the New Hampshire primary voters who formerly resided in Massachusetts." -- Mark Steyn
"The candidates should never keep shouting the word change to three hundred million people with a TV remote in their hands." -- Argus Hamilton
"The Democratic primary campaign has been breathtakingly empty. What passes for substance is an absurd contest of hopeful change (Obama) vs. experienced change (Clinton) vs. angry change (John Edwards playing Hugo Chavez in English)." -- Charles Krauthammer
"There is no electorate as amnesiac as the American one." -- Paul Greenberg
"If ‘Fourth Estate' news organizations become political actors, we need a ‘Fifth Estate,' another group of writers and thinkers who police the press. Internet news has gained tremendous power and influence in recent years precisely because Americans distrust many television and print press outlets. With lightning speed, the incessant bloggers on the Internet call attention to distortions in the mainstream press. Furthermore, there is a body of original information available on the Internet that does not appear elsewhere. In short, the New Media is becoming the ‘Fifth Estate'." -- Jeffrey Kuhner, editor of Insight on the News
web posted January 14, 2008
"As you know by now, Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary and John McCain won the Republican primary in New Hampshire thus jumbling both the Republican and Democratic nomination pictures like your three-year-old tipping over the card table with that 2,000 piece jigsaw puzzle you've been working on since Christmas." -- Rich Galen
"A political alliance isn't a marriage. You don't have to take a presidential candidate for better or worse. Only when they're right." -- W. James Antle III
"The question of what kind of President each candidate would make is infinitely more important than all the ‘horse race' handicapping that dominates the media." -- Thomas Sowell
"Liberal voters want desperately to cast a history-making vote and, if that's your priority, Barack Obama is a much more appealing way to cast it than Hillary. Don't worry about this ‘Change You Can Believe In' shtick. Obama doesn't believe in it, and neither should you. He's a fresh face on the same-old-same-old -- which is the only change Democrats are looking for." -- Mark Steyn
"These are hard days for democracy. That is not a reason for giving up on it... For the spread of democracy today, we need to practice our own brand of syncretism and learn not to abandon the field when forced to settle for regional adaptations that fall short of the Jeffersonian ideal." -- Charles Krauthammer
"The titans of the major media don't see themselves as in need of reform. They think the voters have to be reformed, not the media." -- Brent Bozell
"It's getting lonelier all the time at the top for America, which with a corporate tax rate of 35% is one of the few developed nations left with a rate of more than 30%... Foreign leaders have learned that, in a world of easy global capital flows, high tax rates chase away investment and entrepreneurs." -- The Wall Street Journal
"There's no doubt about it. And there's no way to read it except as a rebuke to President Bush." -- MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Barack Obama's caucus win in Iowa
"[Hillary] claimed that she disliked the red state, blue state terminology -- 'We are one country,' she said, echoing Obama -- even as she added that she should be the nominee because she's the best one ‘to withstand the Republican attack machine.' What she doesn't mention is that she knows how to fight off the Republican attack machine because she and her husband were so adept at revving it up." -- New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd
"After 9/11, I would never have taken us to war in Iraq. I would have stayed focused on Afghanistan because the real threat was coming from there." -- Hillary Clinton, who voted to go to war in Iraq
"The Clinton campaign has no conscience." -- John Edwards
"I want to make change, but I've already made change. I will continue to make change. I'm not just running on a promise of change. I'm running on 35 years of change." -- Hillary Clinton
"It's not easy, and I couldn't do it if I didn't passionately believe it was the right thing to do. I have so many opportunities from this country just don't want to see us fall backwards [fake tears]..." -- Hillary Clinton, who, according to Rush Limbaugh, just "set back feminism back 50 years"
"With Barack Obama and John Edwards constantly bashing her, how is it that Hillary Clinton hasn't yet complained about the vast left-wing conspiracy?" -- Burt Prelutsky
"[Mike] Huckabee likes to head-fake people into thinking he's Gomer Pyle, but he's more like the barefoot boy of the green room. He's more James Carville than Jim Nabors." -- Peggy Noonan
"Rudy Giuliani's team are betting that after a Huck/McCain seesaw through the early states, by Jan. 29 Florida voters will be ready to unite their party behind a less divisive figure, if by ‘less divisive figure' you mean a pro-abortion gun-grabbing cross-dresser." -- Mark Steyn
"Everybody in this race, Democrat and Republican, is now officially for Change. They get more fervent about Change every day; it's only a matter of time before they start calling for tactical air strikes on Washington. I'll be honest with you: I'm getting tired of Change. I think it'd be nice, for a change, if a candidate came out against Change, maybe with a catchy slogan like, ‘Remember: It Could Get Worse,' or ‘Hey, At Least You're Not Dead'." -- Dave Barry
"Would some change-minded candidate or other kindly inform the American people what this business amounts to? Change what into what? We're durned if we know." -- William Murchison
"Isn't it about time reporters stopped asking stupid questions? [To Barack Obama] 'Do you think America is ready for a black president?' Like he's gonna go, 'Oh you got me! C'mon honey, let's go home.'" -- Jay Leno
"The question of what kind of President each candidate would make is infinitely more important than all the ‘horse race' handicapping that dominates the media." -- Thomas Sowell
"The Democrat Party is telling we-the-people that it will continue to force the U.S. out of Iraq and, presumably, the Middle East as a whole. It is also telling al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations: ‘We've got your back, guys, and if we can seize all three branches of government -- we'll give you Iraq and you'll be home free!"' -- Sher Zieve
web posted January 7, 2008
"My central problem [with Hillary Clinton's candidacy] is that the next American president will very likely face another big bad thing, a terrible day, or days, and in that time it will be crucial -- crucial -- that our nation be led by a man or woman who can be, at least for the moment and at least in general, trusted. Mrs. Clinton is the most dramatically polarizing, the most instinctively distrusted, political figure of my lifetime. Yes, I include Nixon. Would she be able to speak the nation through the trauma? I do not think so. And if I am right, that simple fact would do as much damage to America as the terrible thing itself." -- Peggy Noonan
"Sen. Clinton -- the incredible shrinking candidate -- seems at times almost a bystander at her husband's campaign, merely playing a somewhat more active role than she did in ‘92... The [Bill-Hillary] merger is working against her. Voters are wondering for which Clinton they will be voting when they pull the lever... As Bill campaigns all over all the time, Americans are wondering, ‘Whose presidency will it be, anyway?"' -- Dick Morris
"A tax increase in a recession is usually not a good idea. And Republicans will say that when Democrats promise to tax the rich, they end up raising taxes on the ordinary person, as Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress did in 1993." -- Michael Barone
"The assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is just another message -- if any more are needed -- that we are involved in a global war with an enemy that has no morals, no scruples and no respect for human life. We can expect that the message will go undelivered to the national leadership of the Democratic party, which has shown a reckless disregard to any hints that hard-headed U.S. policy vis- -vis Islamic terrorism is right and is justified." -- Michael Reagan
"[W]e are agnostic as to where a story may lead; we do not go into a story with an agenda or a pre-conceived notion. We do not manipulate or hide facts to advance an agenda. We strive to preserve our independence from political and economic interests, including our own advertisers. We do not work in the service of a party, or an industry, or even a country. When there are competing views of a situation, we aim to reflect them as clearly and fairly as we can." -- New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller
"The leading Republican contenders have gone out of their way to assure voters that they will not deviate an inch from the Bush path. Why? Because the G.O.P. is still controlled by a conservative movement that does not tolerate deviations from tax-cutting, free-market, greed-is-good orthodoxy." -- former Enron advisor and current New York Times columnist Paul Krugman
"I'm just saying, if he did die, other people, more people, would live. That's a fact." -- HBO's Bill Maher on the failed attempt to assassinate Vice President Dick Cheney in Afghanistan
"Is there such a thing as a man-made stroke? In other words, did someone do this to him?... I know what this [Republican] party is capable of." -- ABC's Joy Behar on "The View" discussing Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson's illness
"You could argue that even the world's worst fascist dictators at least meant well. They honestly thought [they] were doing good for their countries by suppressing blacks/eliminating Jews/eradicating free enterprise/repressing individual thought/killing off rivals/invading neighbors, etc... Bush set a new precedent. He came into office with the attitude of ‘I'm so tired of the public good. What about my good? What about my rich friends' good?"' -- ex-Washington Post sports reporter and Seinfeld writer Peter Mehlman
"But the idea that, for the last ten or 15 years, because you've been next to events as they've unfolded somehow qualifies you to do this job is an exaggeration. That's not experience. That's witnessing experience." -- Chris Dodd on Hillary Clinton's claims of experience
"I predict to you, the oil-producing countries will drop the price of oil. They will once again assume, once the cost pressure is off, Americans and our political process will recede." -- Hillary Clinton, claiming that the price of oil will drop if she's elected president
"[Mike] Huckabee is a ‘compassionate conservative' only in the sense that calling him a conservative is being compassionate. Huckabee opposes school choice, earning him the coveted endorsement of the National Education Association of New Hampshire, which is like the sheriff being endorsed by the local whorehouse. Huckabee has said illegal immigration gives Americans a chance to make up for slavery. I thought letting O.J. walk for murdering two people was payback for slavery." -- Ann Coulter
"The thought of having to choose between Huckabee and Hillary (or whomever the Left tosses up) come November 2008 is about as appealing to me as the option of watching Rosie O'Donnell river dance naked at 11:00 PM verses watching Rosie O'Donnell river dance naked at 11:15 PM." -- Doug Giles
web posted December 17, 2007
"After three days of screaming headlines about the CIA destroying videotapes in 2005 of the ‘harsh' interrogation of two terrorists, it now comes to light that in 2002 key members of Congress were fully briefed by the CIA about those interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. One member of that Congressional delegation was the future House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi... Porter Goss, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee who later served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006 is explicit about what happened in these meetings: ‘Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing. And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.' In all, the CIA provided Congress with some 30 briefings on waterboarding before it became a public issue... One certainly may hold as abhorrent the idea of aggressively interrogating any terrorists ever, either for fear of what they might do to our people, as John McCain does, or because one thinks this violates our values. What one may not do -- at least not if one wants the system to function -- is assent to such a policy in 2002 and then, when the policy is made public, put up the pretense that one is ‘shocked' and appalled to learn of it. This is bad faith." -- The Wall Street Journal
"According to The Washington Post, [Nancy] Pelosi may have been joined by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) who is now the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee [for briefing on waterboarding]. SIDEBAR: Although, the juxtaposition of the name ‘Jay Rockefeller' and the word ‘Intelligence' has caused many thousands of dollars worth of beer to be wasted on Capitol Hill as it came spurting out of the noses of generations of Senate staffers of both parties." -- Rich Galen
"[W]ith the surge in Iraq and the level of American deaths declining, it is off the front pages." -- NBC's Tim Russert
"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is sending Bill Clinton to South Carolina on Saturday, the day before Oprah Winfrey arrives. The former president has spoken here often on behalf of his wife and has proved enormously popular with South Carolina voters." -- New York Times reporter Katharine Seelye
"That's like saying George W. Bush ‘has proved enormously popular' with New York voters. Bush got 40.1% of the New York state vote in 2004, slightly more than Clinton's 39.9% in South Carolina in 1992." -- James Taranto
"Five members of the Senate are Mormon. Are there any intimations that the Mormonism of Harry Reid, Orrin Hatch, Gordon Smith, Michael Crapo or Robert Bennett corrupts, distorts or in any way diminishes their ability to perform their constitutional duties? Mormonism should be a total irrelevancy in any political campaign. It is not. Which is why Mitt Romney had to deliver his JFK ‘religion speech'." -- Charles Krauthammer
"Raising taxes on capital formation reduces the rate of capital formation. Raising taxes on income reduces incentives to work. Unfortunately, because so many Americans buy into the politics of envy, politicians have a leg up in enacting measures that cripple economic growth." -- Walter Williams
"I practice charity regularly. I believe in sharing. But when government takes our money by force and gives it to others, that's not sharing." -- John Stossel
"I'd like somebody to get rid of the death tax. That's what I want. I don't want to get taxed just because I died... If I give something to my kid, I already paid the tax. Why should I have to pay it again because I died?" -- Whoopi Goldberg, who took Rosie O'Donnell's spot on "The View"
"Climate change is a non problem. The right answer to a non problem is to have the courage to do nothing. The UN conference is a complete waste of our time and your money and we should no longer pay the slightest attention to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)." -- UK climate researcher Lord Christopher Monckton
"Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing, but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society. Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and thereby rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behavior, a ‘Baby Levy' in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the ‘polluter pays' principle." -- Australian academician Barry Walters calling for a tax on parents for the carbon emissions of their children
"The United Nations Global Warming Conference got underway on the island of Bali. It's located in the Indonesian archipelago. Who else but the United Nations would go to a tropical island in December and then complain about warm weather." -- Argus Hamilton
"Algore ‘shunned the traditional airport motorcade in favor of climate-friendly public transportation' when he went to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize. Well, big deal! Whoop-de-doo, how did he get there, on a magic carpet, or on a private plane?" -- Rush Limbaugh
"My feeling is we've bowed too far to the idiots. This is true in politics, journalism, and just about everything else." -- Peggy Noonan
"Every silver lining, it seems, comes with at least a little bit of cloud." -- Ed Feulner
"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it best himself in Monday's Roll Call: ‘Have we stopped the war in Iraq? No. Have we gotten health care? No. Have we improved education? No. But we have been able to do what we've done. We've done a lot of things.' If I were a netrooter, I'd be so frustrated that I might post a really, really angry comment on a blog in ALL CAPS." -- Jonah Goldberg