home > archive > 2010 > this article

Lingua publica

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

web posted March 22, 2010

"It speaks to the sturdiness of the system our founders installed that it is, as intended, so resistant to passing major legal and cultural changes against the overwhelming will of the public. So resistant that, in frustration, the Democratic speaker of the House has been driven to consider breaking her oath of office and violate the Constitution in order to get her way." --columnist Tony Blankley

"The debate over health care reform has been messy and often chaotic, but here we are a year later and Barack Obama and his radical agenda might yet win. If it does, he will have put in place the structure for taking over everything else." --Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden

"Though the two issues may seem utterly unrelated, they do have this in common -- both health care and higher education are realms of American life in which government has undermined the operation of market forces and caused artificially high prices. These are two arenas in which the Democrats now propose to do exactly the wrong thing. Their reform reinforces old errors and will infinitely compound the problem of rising prices." --columnist Mona Charen

"In his book Dreams From My Father Obama gives the distinct impression that his gifts are too great for the smallness of our political stage. He regrets not having been born during the civil rights era when the grandness of the cause would have measured up to the grandness of his ambition. He is in search of something big that will allow him to make his mark on the world as Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King did. Hence, the defeat of ObamaCare would not just be par for the course in the rough-and-tumble world of politics for him. It would be sign of his ordinariness, his mortality, and that, to him, is unendurable." --Forbes columnist Shikha Dalmia

"Bottom line, what happens if you don't get health care for this president? This is really all-or-nothing for the sense of his power, for his legacy. He's invested so much in this in this first year. You've got to get this for him!" --NBC's Andrea Mitchell to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD)

"Why not be part of the process? Why not take what you consider to be an imperfect [health care] bill and at least attach some proposals that you support? ... How are we going to fix Congress and empower Congress to be able to pass the sweeping kinds of changes that we need in the country?" --ABC's Elizabeth Vargas interrogating Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN)

"Democrats will lose their seats over process, but they will take the chance because of the substance." --ABC's Cokie Roberts on health care

"[I]t might take more than arm-twisting with some of the Democrats who voted against [health care] the first time around. It may take waterboarding or something of that nature..." --CBS's Bob Schieffer

"I've never seen the Republican Party so narrow in its appeal. It's basically come out and said, 'Dis-invest in America, watch your pocketbook. Don't do anything, don't have any government.' It's forgotten eight years of sort of spendthrift behavior by President Bush. ... What do you make of the fact the Republican Party now isn't a party of grand conservatism, any more? It's a party of this narrow, little, nasty, don't do anything party." --MSNBC's Chris Matthews

"The American people want to know if it's still possible for Washington to look out for their interests and their future. They are waiting for us to act. They are waiting for us to lead. And as long as I hold this office, I intend to provide that leadership. I don't know about the politics. But I know what's right." --Barack Obama

"Well, a lot of those folks, your employer it's estimated would see premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent [sic], which means they could give you a raise." --Barack Obama

"Senator Brown comes from a state that has a health care plan that's similar to the one we're trying to enact here. We're just trying to give the rest of America the same opportunities that the people of Massachusetts have." --White House adviser David Axelrod

"[I]nstead of spending your energy attacking the parts of the president's [health care] proposal you don't like, you can use it to strengthen the parts you do." --Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

"The odds have shifted toward much larger downpours. And we have seen that happen in the Northeast, we've seen it happen in the Northwest -- in both of those regions are among those that scientists have predicted for a long time would begin to experience much larger downpours." --Al Gore

"I think the people running climate change denial campaigns are sociopaths." --actress Lucy Lawless

"House Democrats conjured a strategy Monday that would allow the House to avoid a vote on the health care bill. Instead they would deem the bill passed and send it to the president. We ordered Iraq not to look, this is for mature democracies only." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"Last year, the House was passing bills without reading them. This year, they're passing bills without voting on them." --former House Speaker Newt Gingrich

"What kind of leader sends congressmen out on a kamikaze mission in an election year and right before a recess? The kind of leader whose followers are diminishing in number." --Human Events editor Jed Babbin

"Democrats, though, continue to close their eyes and cover their ears while loudly singing the la la song." --The Washington Times' Kerry Picket

"President Obama would like the House to vote on his health care plan on either St. Patrick's Day or the day after. That means Congress will be voting on health care either when they're drunk, or when they're hung over." --comedian Jay Leno

"I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or Senate. What I can tell you is that the vote that's taken in the House will be a vote for health care reform. And if people vote yes, whatever form that takes, that is going to be a vote for health care reform. And I don't think we should pretend otherwise. And if they don't, if they vote against it, then they're going to be voting against health care reform, and they're going to be voting in favor of the status quo. So Washington gets very concerned with these procedures in Congress, whether Republicans are in charge or Democrats are in charge. ... By the time the vote has taken place, not only I will know what's in it, you'll know what's in it because it's going to be posted and everybody's going to be able to evaluate it on the merits." --Barack Obama

"Politically speaking, [the Slaughter Rule] is beyond sleazy. It's meant to protect House Democrats, who are all running for re-election in November, from having to make a tough vote up or down on health care reform. Pelosi says of this process, quote, 'I like it, because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill,' unquote. In Nancy Pelosi's world, accountability is a dirty word. ... This tactic has been used in the past, but never -- never -- for something as big and important as the $900 billion health care reform bill -- never. Republicans are jumping all over this, rightfully so. They're painting it as a way for Democrats to avoid taking responsibility, which is exactly what it is. Some even suggest it's unconstitutional. Meanwhile, President Obama's campaigning relentlessly, calling on lawmakers to pass health care reform, quote, 'I want some courage. I want us to do the right thing,' unquote. Well, the irony here is if Nancy Pelosi gets her way, it won't take much courage at all on the part of our so-called representatives, will it?" --CNN commentator Jack Cafferty, who is by no means a conservative

"You know we're going to control the insurance companies." --Joe Biden

web posted March 15, 2010

"I was in the congressional gym, and I went into the showers which, by the way, I for the life of me can't figure out why they took all the shower curtains off the shower stalls in the congressional shower. The last thing I want to look at is my fellow colleagues naked, but they don't have shower curtains down in the gym, and I'm sitting there showering naked as a jaybird and here comes Rahm Emanuel not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest yelling at me because I wasn't going to vote for the president's budget. Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?" --former Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), who is accused of sexually harassing male staffers and resigned Monday

"Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil's spawn. He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive." --Eric Massa

"[W]e have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy." --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on the health care bill

"Health insurance reform is about jobs. This legislation alone will create 4 million jobs." --Pelosi, repeating her lie from the summit

"What we have to do is go on the offensive. [The science on climate change] has been maligned and misinterpreted, and we need to fight back... [P]eople [need to] stop being moved by these talk show [hosts] and start looking for the facts themselves." --Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)

"What we are talking about is a jobs bill. It is not a climate bill. It is a jobs bill, and it is a clean air bill. It is a national security, energy independence bill." --John Kerry on cap-n-tax

"[E]very decision, every debate, no matter how important it is, with the same question: 'What does this mean for the next election? What does it mean for your poll numbers? Is this good for the Democrats or good for the Republicans? Who won the news cycle?' That's just how Washington is. They can't help it. They're obsessed with the sport of politics." --Barack Obama, who isn't a bit different

"Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (See the video.)

"The more we come to rely on government, the fewer freedoms we will enjoy. Government will start dictating what we can own, eat and drive, how much of our money they will let us keep, how we run our businesses, how many -- if any -- guns we can own, and what we may and may not say. Oh, wait! They are already doing that. To preserve freedom we must fight for it." --columnist Cal Thomas

"True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another." --economist Walter E. Williams

"With their backs to the wall, Democratic leaders are preparing a complicated plan to pass their national health care bill. Standing in the way are Democrats who oppose the bill, whether on principle or out of fear that voting for a wildly unpopular measure will spell defeat for them in November. If you think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to let them off easy, allowing them to kill the party's top policy priority in more than a generation -- well, that's not gonna happen. Democrats who are considering voting against the bill are about to experience arm-twisting, threats, and pressure like they've never experienced." --columnist Byron York

"In my entire career, I have never been as confounded as I am over President Obama and the Democratic leadership's obsession with a piece of legislation that not one major national poll has shown to be popular. ... So I have to ask, why are the president and the leaders of Congress willing to see their entire party and a multitude of other policy proposals go down in flames over something that the public can't stand? ... Folks, this is nothing more than a power grab. It's an effort to take one of the most essential elements of every person's life -- their health -- and put it under the control of government." --columnist Matt Towery

"The president cannot show us he is looking out for our interests and our future by forcing a quick, partisan vote on an issue that will impact not only this time but generations to come. This is especially true since he was so adamant in his opposition to using this very parliamentary measure in governance during his campaign. And he cannot show us that he is listening when polls show that only 35-40 percent of Americans support this bill." --radio talk-show host Michael Reagan

"Now that we have finally arrived at the do-or-die moment for Obama's signature issue, we face the alarming prospect that his presidency could be toast if he doesn't make good on a year's worth of false starts. And it won't even be the opposition's fault. If too many Democrats in the House defect, health care will be dead." --New York Times columnist Frank Rich

"John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings." --Christian Science Monitor staff writer Peter Grier (Bedell was a registered Democrat and an anti-Bush 9/11 "truther.")

"One, part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama's leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. 'Listen he just hasn't been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death.' And a version of, 'Listen he's a nice person, he's very articulate' -- this is what's been used against him -- 'but he couldn't sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.'" --HDNet's Dan Rather trying to put words in Republicans' mouths

"I have thus far failed, and our world has thus fair failed to respond adequately to this crisis." --Al Gore on his efforts to educate the world about climate change

"I understand you may be looking to replace Rahm Emanuel as your chief of staff. I would like to humbly offer myself, yours truly, as his replacement. I will come to D.C. and clean up the mess that's been created around you. I will work for $1 a year. I will help the Dems on Capitol Hill find their spines and I will teach them how to nonviolently beat the Republicans to a pulp. And I will help you get done what the American people sent you there to do." --from an open letter to Barack Obama from Michael Moore

"Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. ... [T]ruly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies." --actor Sean Penn on his buddy Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan dictator

"Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?" --actor Tom Hanks promoting his upcoming HBO miniseries "The Pacific"

"Believe me, if we were charting this administration as a political exercise, the first thing we would have done would not have been a massive recovery act, stabilizing the banks and helping to keep the auto companies from collapsing. Those would not even be the first hundred things he would want to do." --White House adviser David Axelrod

"Nancy Pelosi, the speaker and leader of the San Francisco Democrats, says her members 'are very excited about what comes next.' For many of them, that's 'excited' as in 'hysterical.'" --Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden

"So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that 'now is the hour when we must seize the moment,' the same moment he's been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats." --columnist Mark Steyn

"President Obama met with ten House Democrats opposed to the health care bill. He did all he could to get their votes. He promised to campaign for them in their districts and when that didn't work, he threatened to campaign for them in their districts." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"These self-anointed intellectuals are people who think that those who believe in God and Jesus Christ, those who 'cling to their guns and their religion,' are a lower form of animal life, while they, themselves, have no problem whatever accepting Obama as a messiah and, in the past, deifying the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Let's face it, when you kneel in a church, you're accepting that there is something greater and wiser than yourself in the universe. When, on the other hand, you kneel to a left-wing politician, you're merely emulating Monica Lewinsky." --columnist Burt Prelutsky

"I guess what we all underestimated was the degree, the depths of dishonesty, and dirtiness, and cynicism to which the climate change denial movement would be willing to stoop to advance their agenda." --Michael Mann, author of the dirty, dishonest and cynical "hockey stick" graph showing a recent spike in warming

web posted March 8, 2010

"[Those] who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others." --economist Walter E. Williams

"In the Democrat leadership, we are not dealing with conventional politicians for whom the goal of being reelected is paramount and will rein in their radicalism. They want socialized medicine and all it entails about government control even more than they want to win elections. After all, if the party of government transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state, its power over our lives will be vast even in those cycles when it is not in the majority. This is about power, and there is more to power than winning elections, especially if you've calculated that your opposition does not have the gumption to dismantle your ballooning welfare state." --columnist Andy McCarthy

"One of the biggest reasons for higher medical costs is that somebody else is paying those costs, whether an insurance company or the government. What is the politicians' answer? To have more costs paid by insurance companies and the government. ... [H]aving someone else pay for medical care virtually guarantees that a lot more of it will be used. Nothing would lower costs more than having each patient pay those costs. And nothing is less likely to happen." --economist Thomas Sowell

"While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care 'summit,' thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen - because they're part of the same story. It's just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe." --columnist Mark Steyn

"Too many Americans now believe that the checks they receive every month from the unemployment office -- like the checks they get from the welfare office, from Medicare, from Social Security -- are inalienable rights. They are not." --columnist Ben Shapiro

"What [Barack Obama] really wanted to do [with the health care summit] was convince the American people, and more importantly wavering Democrats in Congress, that the Republicans are the 'Party of No.' They won't compromise and he now has no choice but to move ahead with Democrats alone." --CBS's Chip Reid

"What the Democrats have to do now is pass the bill. Put back the public option, since it's their bill, and pass it.... The president has to drop his George B. McClellan mask and become Ulysses Grant. Be ruthless." --ABC's Sam Donaldson

"The Democrats in the White House who are pushing for this [reconciliation] strategy, pushing for passage, say that once this does pass, the country will get it. Democrats will be unified. They'll get a huge benefit." --ABC's George Stephanopoulos on ObamaCare

"President Obama is so much smarter and a better communicator than members of Congress in either party. The contrast, side by side, is almost ridiculous...." --The New Republic's Jonathan Chait

"One man's stand. A single Senator stops the whole Congress, denying thousands of people unemployment benefits. We confront him to ask why." --ABC's Diane Sawyer on Sen. Jim Bunning's (R-KY) hold on an extension of unemployment benefits to force Democrats to figure out how to pay for them under "pay-go" rules

"I think no one knows my politics." --ABC News left anchor Diane Sawyer

"[T]here's a good reason to stay pessimistic about deficits as far as the eye can see. It's called the 'news' media. Legislators who want to get re-elected will clearly want to avoid any spending decision that will create bad national publicity, and our news media, the manufacturers of bad national publicity, will send crying victims down the assembly line at the slightest thought of a social spending cut or freeze. Exhibit A is Sen. Jim Bunning." --L. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center

"Bipartisanship is a two-way street. A bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes. Republicans have left their imprint." --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

"We share some of the views of the Tea Partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, DC, as -- it just has to stop. And that's why I've fought the special interest, whether it's on energy, whether it's on health insurance, whether it's on pharmaceuticals and the rest." --Nancy Pelosi

"When the public sees what is in this bill ... when we show them what the priorities are and what it's been boiled down to, what it means to them sitting around their kitchen table rather than us sitting around a table at Blair House, the response will be positive." --Nancy Pelosi

"It's easy being vice president -- you don't have to do anything." --Vice President Joe Biden

"I served on the budget committee in the Senate, and I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday when we had a hearing in which Alan Greenspan came and justified increasing spending and cutting taxes, saying that we didn't really need to pay down the debt -- outrageous in my view." --Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

"[T]he scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged." --Al Gore in a New York Times op-ed

"I'm willing to engage or indulge real ideas, but if we don't do something [about global warming], we're all going to die! What's it going to take, a big f---ing disaster with all kinds of people dying? We need to change our priorities fast." --"Avatar" director James Cameron

"The white right is trying to set Barack up to be assassinated... There are Christians praying for God to kill Obama." --Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan

"President Obama hosted lawmakers Thursday saying he wanted bipartisan input on health care reform. Nobody's mind was changed. At the summit's end he threatened to go with the nuclear option, showing he's tougher on Republicans than he is on Iran." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"The best that can be said for those like Senators Nelson and Landrieu is that they held out until Obama and Reid met their price. By now, I can't even recall what it took to make Joe Lieberman say 'Uncle!' But it just goes to prove that when politicians like these three refer to themselves as moderate Democrats, we should recognize that it's similar to the distinction made in a related field when call girls insist they're not streetwalkers. It's the same profession; only the prices differ." --columnist Burt Prelutsky

"The longest week I ever spent was the six hours I spent watching Thursday's health-care summit." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

"We are repeatedly being told that we need to have a government-controlled medical care system, because other countries have it -- as if our policies on something as serious as medical care should be based on the principle of monkey see, monkey do." --economist Thomas Sowell

"Consider the oddity of those drug commercials on television. Fifteen seconds of the purported therapeutic effort, followed by about 45 seconds of a rapidly muttered list of horrific possible side effects. When the ad is over, I can't remember a thing about what the pill is supposed to do, except perhaps cause nausea, liver damage, projectile vomiting, a nasty rash, a four-hour erection, and sudden death. Sudden death is my favorite because there is something comical about it being a side effect. What exactly is the main effect in that case? Relief from abdominal bloating?" --columnist Charles Krauthammer

web posted March 1, 2010

"Offering 'comprehensive' reform usually means years of arguing and horse-trading among pressure groups to get anything done. By the time all the special interests are appeased or bought off, the resulting elephantine legislation typically looks nothing like what was intended. In short, big-government medicine usually doesn't work on big-government sickness. If President Obama wants 'comprehensive' change, it would be better simply not to spend any more money we don't have." --historian Victor Davis Hanson

"[Barack Obama failed to sell a health care reform plan to American voters] because the utter implausibility of its central promise -- expanded coverage at lower cost -- led voters to conclude that it would lead ultimately to more government, more taxes and more debt." --columnist Charles Krauthammer

"Don't ever let anyone tell you that history doesn't repeat. For 70 years, liberals have been spinning the yarn that FDR's New Deal, despite all the evidence that it exacerbated and prolonged the Great Depression, quickened our economic recovery. Indeed, I remember scratching my head when one of my college history professors in the 1970s tried to convince us of that theory and its corollary -- an even better howler -- that FDR was actually a conservative, because if he hadn't implemented his socialist programs, the republic would have died right there." --columnist David Limbaugh

"This is a perfect snapshot of the West at twilight. On the one hand, governments of developed nations microregulate every aspect of your life in the interests of 'keeping you safe.' ... On the other hand, when it comes to 'keeping you safe' from real threats, such as a millenarian theocracy that claims universal jurisdiction, America and its allies do nothing. ... It is now certain that Tehran will get its nukes, and very soon. This is the biggest abdication of responsibility by the Western powers since the 1930s." --columnist Mark Steyn

"In the early aftermath of the suicidal pilot's attack [in Austin], there was no evidence that Stack belonged to a Tea Party organization. In any case, no law-abiding Tea Party group would ever condone what he did. But it didn't stop the haters from immediately smearing advocates of limited government. And it's just the latest in a long line of calculated attempts to paint the vast majority of peaceful Tea Party activists as terrorist threats to civil society. ... The smear merchants, of course, are simply following Rahm Emanuel's advice to exploit every crisis." --columnist Michelle Malkin

"Why should we capitalists go green? To do so is simply to exchange our technological, industrial, and energy superiority for a lie. ... Capitalism is about progressing via the ingenuity and excellence of minds unfettered by government regulations and interference. But environmentalism based on the man-made global warming theory is about regressing from the advances that unfettered minds have made. It's also about pushing the government to regulate and interfere at every step along the way." --columnist AWR Hawkins

"After a decade of profligacy, the American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don't walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility. It's easy to get up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits. What's hard is actually getting deficits under control. But that's what we must do. Like families across the country, we have to take responsibility for every dollar we spend." --Barack Obama

"Everything's on the table. That's how this thing is going to work." --Barack Obama after creating a deficit commission on whether he would raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 a year

"So I do believe that there is more fertile soil today than when we first took this up." --House Democrat Whip James Clyburn, of South Carolina, weighing in not on all those "shovel ready" supposed job-starting projects of the "stimulus" but on the Demo plan for the government takeover of U.S. medical care.

"Men, when they're out of work, tend to become abusive." --Harry Reid

"We have countries like China, which don't have to go through the democratic processes that we do, that order factories to move to deal with their air pollution." --Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), urging his fellow senators to pass cap-n-tax

"[A]s a condition of receiving access to Title I funds we will ax all states to put in place a plan to adopt and certify standards that are college and career ready in reading and math." --the eloquent orator Barack Obama, emphasis added, because yes, he did say "ax" -- see the video

"Democrats and Republicans agree that Republicans are picking up seats in the mid-term elections. What the White House can do -- what they're trying to do -- is to achieve a health care bill. People still want that." --ABC's George Stephanopoulos

"White House adjusts strategy on Republicans -- The Obama administration aims to put members of the GOP on the spot, forcing them to compromise on issues or be portrayed as obstructionists." --Los Angeles Times headline and sub-headline

"Big fanfare this week. The Obama administration fanned out across the country, 'the stimulus worked.' The president made speeches, sounded a little frustrated that people don't get it, at least polls show, that they don't understand there were tax cuts and things like that. What did they do wrong? They're playing defense on what was one of their major accomplishments. What did the White House, the president do wrong in explaining, presenting and selling it?" --ABC's Terry Moran

"In trying to explain our political paralysis, analysts cite President Obama's tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for important legislation. These are large factors to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit of all: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large." --Newsweek's Jacob Weisberg, revealing what the elitists think of the American people

"When a news executive goes out there and states a crazy accusation like that ... it only ends up probably hurting what they're trying to do, but ... it only denigrates all of us.... And, I'm sorry, there are certain news organizations out here whose agenda is to undermine the 90 percent of journalists who are just simply trying to cover stories out there." --MSNBC'S Chuck Todd reacting to Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon's statement that "the mainstream media hates the Tea Party movement almost as much as it hates Sarah Palin."

"I would caution my Republican friends that [Obama has] three years to go, and in that three years the American people are going to want to see some progress and not just claims that this guy is out of office and we're going to do everything to destroy him or that somehow he is a 'socialist' taking over the country. Have we so lost our faith in this country that we think one person, one man can be can suddenly change our entire system? That's kind of absurd." --retired Gen. Colin Powell

"The Tea Baggers, they're not a movement, they're a cult.... Cults tend to populate from within, encouraging members to have huge broods of children and to give them strange names, like Moonbeam, and Trig." --HBO's Bill Maher

"The president says he doesn't want to make a theatrical production of it, but since the president himself is a theatrical production, it's difficult to see how the great health care summit can be anything but. Mr. Obama is fond of saying how he wants his presidency to be 'transparent,' and he's making it easy to see through what he and the Democrats are doing. The Democratic task at hand is to animate a corpse with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and who wants to volunteer for that? But Mr. Obama is determined to prop it up for a vote." --Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden

"Secretary of State Clinton dared Iran on Monday to let her hold a town hall meeting in Tehran. That's telling 'em. If the ayatollahs had a sense of humor, they'd call her bluff." --columnist Mark Steyn

"Remember that great scene from the Oscar-robbed classic 'The Blues Brothers'? Jake and Elwood (John Belushi and Dan Akroyd) are finally cornered by Jake's former fiancée (Carrie Fisher). Jake left her at the altar with 300 guests and the best Romanian caterers in the state waiting. 'You betrayed me!' she exclaims. 'No I didn't. Honest,' Jake explains. 'I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!' This is pretty much how Democrats sound these days. None of their problems are their fault. ... Coming soon: A terrible flood! Locusts! Anything and everything to avoid admitting their problems are their own fault." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

"It's about jobs. In its life, [the health bill] will create four million jobs -- 400,000 jobs almost immediately." --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

"[The climate change debate] reminds me in some ways of the debate taking place in this country and around the world in the late 1930s. And during that period with Nazism and fascism growing -- a real danger to the United States and democratic countries all over the world -- there were people in this Congress, in the British parliament saying, 'Don't worry! Hitler is not real! It'll disappear! We don't have to be prepared to take it on.'" --Socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders

Home

Site Map

Email ESR

Home