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Lingua publica The good and the bad...presented with permission from The Patriot E-Journal web posted April 26, 2010 "Every day we don't act, the same system that led to bailouts remains in place, with the exact same loopholes and the exact same liabilities. And if we don't change what led to the crisis, we'll doom ourselves to repeat it." --Barack Obama, calling for piling on more of the regulations that helped cause the financial meltdown "Can I just say again Barbara [Boxer] and I are supportive of repealing don't ask, don't tell." --Barack Obama at a California fundraiser for Boxer, being "yelled down" by homosexual protesters "Democrats are for protecting the peoples' interest; Republicans are protecting the special interests." --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), representative of the trial lawyers, unions, homosexual activists, race baiters, envirofascists, Hollywood loonies, corporate fat cats, etc., etc., etc. "While President Obama assails the culture of greed and recklessness practiced by the men of Goldman Sachs, his administration is infested with them. The White House can no more disown Government Sachs than Da Boss-in-chief can disown Chicago politics." --columnist Michelle Malkin "President Obama is nothing if not a clever operator. He accepts $994,795 in campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs -- then turns around when it's convenient and uses them as a model for why we need to heavily regulate the financial sector." --columnist Ben Shapiro "The tea partiers ... recognize, correctly, that the Obama Democrats are trying to permanently enlarge government and increase citizens' dependence on it. And, invoking the language of the Founding Fathers, they believe that this will destroy the culture of independence which has enabled Americans over the past two centuries to make this the most productive and prosperous -- and the most charitably generous -- nation in the world." --political analyst Michael Barone "When liberals advocate a value-added tax, conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it -- after the 16th Amendment is repealed. A VAT will be rationalized as necessary to restore fiscal equilibrium. But without ending the income tax, a VAT would be just a gargantuan instrument for further subjugating Americans to government." --columnist George Will "In years to come -- assuming, for the purposes of argument, there are any years to come -- scholars will look back at President Barack Obama's Nuclear Security Summit and marvel. ... He held a nuclear gabfest in 2010, the biggest meeting of world leaders on American soil since the founding of the United Nations 65 years ago -- and Iran wasn't on the agenda." --columnist Mark Steyn "Speaking of those huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the Obama administration, led by Sec. Clinton, is pressuring Kenya to adopt abortion on demand. Kenya, like many African states, abhors the destruction of unborn life. Obama and Mrs. Clinton are unwilling to 'interfere' with Iran's internal affairs, but they are most willing to muscle pro-life Kenya." --columnist Ken Blackwell "[L]iberals who like [Justice] Stevens' rulings insist he understands the plight of the downtrodden, despite the fact that the nearly 90-year-old justice was born rich and has served on the court for almost 35 years, becoming more liberal as he has become more distant from life as lived by the little guys. Meanwhile, Clarence Thomas was born dirt poor and black in rural Georgia and spends his vacations exploring America in an RV. But those same liberals insist he doesn't understand poverty and race the way Stevens does. How do they know? Because they don't like his rulings." --columnist Jonah Goldberg "Thursday night I saw a political minstrel show devised for the entertainment of those on the rim of obliviousness and for those engaged in the subterfuge of intolerance. I was not amused." --New York Times columnist Charles Blow on the "abundance of diversity on the stage and a dearth of it in the crowd" at a Tea Party event Thursday "There aren't a lot of African-American men at these events. Have you ever felt uncomfortable?" --NBC reporter Kelly O'Donnell to Tea Party activist Darryl Postell, who is black -- Postell replied, "No, no, these are my people: Americans." "The idea that Barack Obama is un-American, the idea that he does not believe in American exceptionalism is ridiculous. ... They just want to stay on, 'It's un-American. It's unconstitutional. They don't like the Constitution.' And these are loaded words. These are words that are whipping people up with fear." --Salon.com editor Joan Walsh, 4/14/10 ++ Way back in December 2009, however, Walsh sang a different tune: "The climate right now is that Republicans use everything they can to undermine and delegitimize this President. And it's actually un-American. It's traitorous in my opinion. Do you want to give aid and comfort to our enemies?" "I did a little bit of research just before this show -- it's on this little napkin here. I looked up the definition of sedition which is conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state. And a lot of these statements, especially the ones coming from people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right up close to being seditious." --Time Magazine's Joe Klein "Joe's right and I'll name another person, I'll name Rush Limbaugh, who uses this phrase constantly and talks about the Obama administration as a 'regime,' that phrase which has connotations of tyranny." --New York Times Magazine's John Heilemann (Byron York of The Washington Examiner highlights the hypocrisy here.) "I don't know whether he was Republican or Democrat. I'm assuming he was probably a Republican." --MSNBC's Donny Deutsch on Joe Stack, a Leftist who flew his plane into an IRS building in Austin "[W]hen you think of a volcano, you think of Hawaii and long words like that. You don't think of Iceland. You think it's too cold to have a volcano there." --CNN's Rick Sanchez, who later claimed "I was kidding" "[T]he words we use really do matter, because there's this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike. ... By all means keep fighting, by all means, keep arguing. But remember, words have consequences as much as actions do, and what we advocate, commensurate with our position and responsibility, we have to take responsibility for. We owe that to Oklahoma City." -- Bill Clinton on the Tea Party movement and radio talk-show hosts "You know, and I think that the point that the Chinese are the world leaders in renewable energy technology. Right now, 60 percent of the solar cells are made in China. They're employing, you know, hundreds of thousands of people in the renewable energy sector and they don't need to -- they're a dictatorship, essentially. You know, they don't need to answer to their public. They are doing it for very pragmatic, Machiavellian reasons. You know, why aren't we doing it?" --James Cameron "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which consequently increases earthquakes. ... What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble? There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes." --senior Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi "Iceland's volcano eruption last week caused the biggest disruption ever in aviation history throughout Europe. Ash and smoke came roaring out of the Eyjafjallajokull Glacier. The volcano erupted suddenly and spewed Scrabble tiles all over the atmosphere." --comedian Argus Hamilton "The strongest volcanic eruption in the past 1,000 years is believed to have been Mt. Tamborain Indonesia in April of 1815. According to the Christian Science Monitor: 'The eruption of Mt. Tambora cast a veil of ash around the world, lowering global temperatures by more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit.' The result was the 'year without a summer' in 1816. A couple of decent volcanoes per decade and our global warming problem would appear to be solved. Get me Al Gore on the phone." --political analyst Rich Galen "When he ran for president, then-Sen. Barack Obama argued that earmarks account for a mere '0.5 percent of the total federal budget,' so eliminating earmarks would not solve the problem. With that attitude, they ought to put up a new Welcome to Washington sign that reads: Prodigo ergo prodigo. I spend, therefore I keep spending." --columnist Debra Saunders "President Obama turned in his tax return [Thursday]. He didn't owe a lot because he has a lot of dependents: his wife, two daughters, AIG, General Motors, Goldman Sachs." --comedian Jay Leno "Good bill, tough bill with teeth. It constrains risk taking so these guys can't take on this huge risk which [would] imperil the system again. But if they do, we get to put them out of their misery, unwind them, you know, organize the elegant funeral for them." --Treasury Secretary Timothy "Tax Cheat" Geithner on the "elegant funeral" for free-market capitalism web posted April 19, 2010 "No one likes a spoiled brat. The national leaders who just rammed socialist health care mandates down our throats and many of their compatriots in the liberal media have revealed their selfish, bratty, bully, true selves as they have unloaded a barrage of attacks on the courageous tea party activists around the nation. The socialist policies being forced on America are deplorable to most Americans. The liberals in leadership, just like spoiled bullies, want this, they want that -- and they want it all right now -- oh, and according to their specific dictates. They are the big bullies who rule the block, and they will not be challenged by small town Americans who try to thwart their plans." --columnist Rebecca Hagelin "The radical acolytes of Chicago's late left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky also understand the importance of manufacturing demons. 'Before men can act,' Alinsky preached, 'an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced their cause is 100 percent on the side of the angels, and that the opposition are 100 percent on the side of the devil.' This explains the left's relentless campaign to sabotage the anti-tax, anti-bailout movement from Day One." --columnist Michelle Malkin "When Supreme Court Justices retire, there is usually some pious talk about their 'service,' especially when it has been a long 'service.' But the careers of all too many of these retiring jurists, including currently retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, have been an enormous disservice to this country." --economist Thomas Sowell "The world is about to get a lot more dangerous. For more than 60 years, the United States has been the pre-eminent nuclear power in the world, and the world has been safer as a result. While anti-nuclear fanatics warned of an apocalypse if the U.S. continued to expand and improve its nuclear arsenal during the Cold War, the reality was that our superiority over our enemy and our unwillingness to foreswear the use of nuclear weapons prevented the conflagration many feared. Now, President Barack Obama is determined to abandon six decades of proven nuclear deterrent policy in favor of a fantasy that he can rid the world of these dangerous weapons by tying America's hands behind our backs." --columnist Linda Chavez "What rankles, though, is Obama's habit of putting down America while praising himself. The laughable assertion that Obama has taken 'historic steps to improve our own democracy' shows not humility but an extreme vanity. A truly humble president would occasionally evince some doubt as to whether he is worthy to lead America. Obama seems to doubt whether America is worthy of being led by him." --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto "[W]e have seen it on the Republican and the conservative side much, much more than on the Democratic side. The name calling in groups, with signs, calling people, you know, epithets, comparing them to Hitler. We've seen it much more from the conservatives, from the tea party movement." --CNN anchor Don Lemon in what must be an alternate universe "The McVeigh Tapes puts into perspective the threat posed by anti-government extremism. It doesn't have to lead to violence, but it can and it has. We ignore this, our own very recent history of anti-government violence and the dangers of domestic terrorism, at our peril." --MSNBC's Rachel Maddow attempting to connect tea partiers and conservative activists to terrorism "You have these 14 states' attorneys general saying that they want to have the court overturn the recently passed health care law. I must say, I was just with my grandkids at Fort Sumter, and the notion of nullification made me extremely nervous because it was, of course, the first step toward the Civil War." --ABC's Cokie Roberts "Justice John Paul Stevens ... may be the last justice from a time when ability and independence, rather than perceived ideology, were viewed as the crucial qualifications for a seat on the court." --New York Times "reporter" Adam Liptak "If this president decides that his main criteria is to nominate someone to avoid a big fight, he's betrayed the people who elected him and I think he's betrayed what a lot of people think are his own feelings about who should be on the [Supreme] Court. He should nominate, no not someone who is an extremist, off the cliff, but someone that he thinks, at least, let's see how it evolves, is going to stand up for the principles -- on the left, if you will -- that he believes in." --ABC news dinosaur Sam Donaldson "Well, 'activist' is one of those epithets that's thrown around when it comes to Supreme Court justices, but, as it turns out, everybody likes a certain kind of activist. Liberals like Roe v. Wade, which was a decision to overturn abortion laws in every -- in many states in the union. That is certainly an activist decision, but conservatives like activism, too. They like the Heller decision two years ago that overturned gun control laws -- democratically passed and democratically elected officials passed gun control laws, and in an activist decision, the Supreme Court struck that down. The Supreme Court struck down part of the McCain-Feingold law. That was certainly an activist decision. So there are liberal activists and there are conservative activists. I think that term should be retired, frankly, because it's not terribly helpful." --CNN's Jeffrey Toobin (Apparently, upholding the First and Second Amendments is now considered "activist.") "For nearly half a century, we were willing to pay any price and bear any burden to win the Cold War. The threat from Soviet nuclear warheads was a clear and present danger in our lives. Just as clear and present is the danger climate change poses to our economy and national security." --Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) "It will also be someone who, like Justice Stevens, knows that in a democracy, powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens." --Barack Obama on his upcoming Supreme Court nominee "We actually have not required in this law that you carry health insurance." --Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) "I just made the tea party people spend a lot of money that wasn't necessary on all these ads they had to use against me so they can't use it on somebody else. I'll take credit in sucking their treasury dry." --Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), supposed "pro-life stalwart" who easily caved and voted for ObamaCare and then announced his retirement "Here's what every Democrat who's running and supported the president ought to be thinking. They ought to be thinking, here's a president, and we supported him, who stood up in a very difficult time, made some tough decisions, has a vision not just for how to solve the problem in the short term, but is doing things to strengthen the economy for the long run. And on the other side you have a Republican Party that has essentially said, 'We're going to sit on the sidelines and root for failure, and that's our political strategy.'" --White House adviser David Axelrod "The White House issued its Nuclear Posture Review Tuesday. It told our enemies that the U.S. won't respond to a biological attack with nukes. From now on if we want to destroy a country, we're just going to send them the White House economic advisers." --comedian Argus Hamilton "Another day, another meaningless Obama summit, this one on nuclear proliferation, at least we hope it's meaningless. The only thing that would be worse than a meaningless Obama summit is one that makes some real difference." --radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh "If you're still struggling over your tax return, wondering why you pay so much to finance a dysfunctional and wasteful government, maybe it's time you adopted the same rules used by government number crunchers. ... So why not use the same type of make-believe methodology on your tax return?" --columnist Daniel J. Mitchell "We are nearing the climax of 'tax season.' That's the problem right there, by the way: Summer should have a season, and baseball should have a season, but not tax." --columnist Mark Steyn "Imagine combining a straightforward tax law, a single and low tax rate, and the freedom to choose between that approach and the status quo. Talk about a stimulus package! Even better, such a reform would turn April 15 into a relatively pleasant spring date rather than the scariest day of the year." --columnist Deroy Murdock "You would think they'd be saying thank you." --Barack Obama on the Tea Party protesters "I think the work that we've done in recent days around nuclear security and nuclear disarmament are intrinsically good. So many of the challenges that we face internationally can't be solved by one nation alone. It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because, whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out one way or another, we get pulled into them, and that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure." --Barack Obama (emphasis added) web posted April 12, 2010 "I don't worry about the Constitution on this. ... What I care more about, I care more about the people dying every day that don't have health care." --Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL), on video talking about health care "So now that this bill is finally law and all the folks who have been playing politics will finally have to confront the reality of what this reform is, they're also going to have to confront the reality of what it isn't. They'll have to finally acknowledge that this isn't a government takeover of our health care system. They'll see that if Americans like their doctor, they will keep their doctor. And if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn't happened yet. It won't happen in the future. What this reform represents is basically a middle-of-the-road solution to a very serious problem." --Barack Obama "[T]he loud minority made a lot of noise [opposing ObamaCare]. Now that the legislation passed, it's amazing how much different people's attitude is. ... So everybody acknowledges, with rare exception, that what we did was terrific and if there's some problems in the out years, we'll be happy to take a look at that." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "The Tea Party emerges as not only outrageous, but they have turned up the volume in ways that even Code Pink have not been able to do." --Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) "The truth is, some of these comments, when you actually ask 'well, this is based on what? This notion that Obama's a socialist, for example?' Nobody can really give you a good answer." --Barack Obama "It's a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care. If you call that a 'redistribution of income' -- well, so be it. I don't call it that. I call it just being fair -- giving the middle class taxpayers an even break that the wealthy have been getting." --Joe Biden "[Health reform is] an income shift. It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower-income, middle-income Americans. ... [T]he maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. [The new health care legislation] will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America." --Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), who knows how much money you need better than you do "Number one is that we are the only -- we have been, up until last week, the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance." --Barack Obama on what he "allows" his subjects "The founders of our great nation recognized that, after a few thousand years of civilization and multiple, painful attempts by governmental leaders to create 'fair' societies, the best hope for humankind was to construct a society of freedom, where individuals can freely chose to do business with one-another (or choose not to). This characterization of freedom and 'fairness' runs counter to the type of governmental constructs that Barack Obama grew-up with in Indonesia, and bares little resemblance to the world he knew in Chicago, but it is, nonetheless, distinctly American. I suspect that President Obama has no interest in this type of freedom and 'fairness.'" --columnist Austin Hill "Far too many Americans are already willing to trade integrity for 'free' health care, a 'government modified' mortgage, or a host of other carrots held in front of them by a federal government whose resemblance to a pimp grows sharper every day. Much of human nature is about taking the path of least resistance -- which is why it is so important to resist such instincts, especially when they're portrayed as virtues." --columnist Arnold Ahlert "This week the DNC group Organizing for America offered a commemorative certificate to supporters who helped pass the health care bill. The certificate said, 'We achieved the dream of generations -- high-quality, affordable health care is no longer the privilege of a few, but the right of all.' The privilege of a few? It is widely accepted that about 85 percent of all Americans have health care coverage, and the overwhelming majority are happy with it. There's simply no way anyone could plausibly claim that health coverage is the privilege of a few. " --columnist Byron York "Tea partiers must be racist, Democrats imply, because why else would anyone oppose Barack Obama's agenda? But Mr. Obama's skin color was well known in 2008, when he was elected president by a comfortable margin, and at his inauguration, when he began his presidency with the highest approval rating (68 percent) since John F. Kennedy. What wasn't known by most then was that Mr. Obama is a left wing radical who is spending us into bankruptcy." --columnist Jack Kelly "Accusing the [health care] bill's critics of racism and comparing them to the segregationist mobs of the 1960s is about silencing and delegitimizing them. It expropriates the unquestioned moral authority of the civil-rights movement and then uses it as a political bludgeon. It substitutes rhetorical thuggery for argument." --National Review editor Rich Lowry "But right now, the division, the hatred, the venom over a policy of something close to universal health care for citizens -- I would sooner jab my hand into a food processor than take a side -- in my line of work I never engage in opinions anyway -- but this has proven one of those catch-all issues. ... We've had a lot of anger building in this country. A lot of it goes back to Bill Clinton's affair with an intern, then from the attacks of 9/11. But whatever the cause, the source, however long it's been building, people chose this issue [the health care bill] for it to boil over." --NBC's Brian Williams, feigning objectivity "After spending time, out and about, listening to talk radio, the kindest of terms you're sometimes referred to out in America is a 'socialist,' the worst of which I've heard is called a 'Nazi.' Are you aware of the level of enmity that crosses the airwaves and that people have made part of their daily conversation about you?" --CBS's Harry Smith to Barack Obama "What do you guys have to talk about positively? What do you guys got in your barrel? You got anything to sell or are just running against this guy? Just pee all over Obama everyday. You got anything to sell? Positively? What? What are your bills?" --MSNBC's Chris Matthews to GOP consultant Todd Harris "President Barack Obama is learning to be a strong president. Yes, he can. ... In the closing weeks of the national debate over health care, Obama ended up using his powers of persuasion with his own wavering Democrats by making it clear that their political future was at stake, too. And it paid off." --White House press corpse reporter Helen Thomas "One [factor in opposition to government taking over health care] is clearly there's a racial component. Some members of Congress you know, had epithets hurled at them as protesters marched around the Capitol on the day of the big House vote." --New York Times scribbler David Herszenhorn, regurgitating the unproven smear that Tea Partiers chant racist slogans "The question is, in a democracy, what is the right balance between those at the top ... and those at the bottom? When it gets out of whack, as it did in the 1920s, and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. This is a form of redistribution." --former DNC Chief Howard Dean on the unconstitutional health care bill "The predominant moral issue of the 21st century, almost surely, will be climate change, comparable to Nazism faced by Churchill in the 20th century and slavery faced by Lincoln in the 19th century." --James Hansen, leading global warmists at the NASA Goddard Institute "If you're one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this: We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many, but you be few." --Greenpeace blogger Gene Hashmi "No, it's about the myth, you know, why it is that 300 people went to North Vietnam, people, many people before me, why me, why have they created this myth? You know, when I came back from North Vietnam, there was maybe a quarter of an inch of media about it in the New York Times. Nobody made any big deal out of it. It was created ... by right-wingers. There are some people who are like stuck there, you know, they're still stuck in the past. ... The myths are now true." --"Hanoi Jane" Fonda with some hysterical revisionism on how she earned her nickname "Half a century ago, Khrushchev and Nixon had what was dubbed the kitchen debate. Nixon predicted that the Russians would become capitalists, while Khrushchev insisted that socialism would bury us. Who would ever have guessed that they would both be right?" --columnist Burt Prelutsky "[T]hose bitten by the Obama bug can be healed. Indeed many of them as I type and smoke a cigar are waking up from the mindless allegiance to a president who promised them the moon but instead mooned them." --columnist Doug Giles "Whereas you [Ronald Reagan] are remembered for, 'Tear down this wall,' Obama may be remembered for, 'Tear down this country.'" --columnist Doug Gamble "The legendary King Midas was given the gift of the golden touch; everything he touched would turn to gold. Excited at first, he learned the price of greed when the food he tried to eat turned to gold and when he even turned his own daughter into a hunk of gold. King Obama, twentieth century America, has a magic touch, too. Everything he touches turns to ... well ... donkey dust ... owl hockey ... bull shavings ... bunny pellets ... that sort of thing." --Tony Gallardo "This is my favorite story of the week. The Republican National Committee is in trouble after spending nearly $2,000 at a bondage club in Hollywood. You know what I call a Republican that spends a lot of money in a strip club? A Democrat." --comedian Jay Leno web posted April 5, 2010 "I know how the 'tea party' people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their 'Obama Plan White Slavery' signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads." --Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy "[T]he current surge of anger -- and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism -- predates the entire health care debate. ... If Obama's first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House -- topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman -- would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play." --New York Times columnist Frank Rich with a tired refrain "[W]hat are the tea partiers really angry about? Health care reform or the fact that it was an African-American president and a woman Speaker of the House who pushed through major change?" --MSNBC host Chris Matthews "[The 'Don't Tread on Me' flags are] the same imagery that was on [Oklahoma City bomber] Timothy McVeigh, you know? I mean, this is the kind of thing that's worrisome to me. I don't see how you can get away from it." --Fox News contributor Juan Williams, trying desperately to make a connection between the Tea Parties and terrorism "Because I think there's been very consistent strategy from the right to racialize public policies so that poor white people who are often most vulnerable or most in need of those policies will vote against it to align themselves with a certain kind of whiteness, whiteness of property. So the poor white guy in Mississippi who needs welfare votes against welfare because he thinks he's voting against a poor black woman in Harlem." --CNN's Marc Lamont Hill "[M]aybe we have reached the point where the Congress needs to equal it out. Equal out the audience. ... I think that, you know, hell, if we're going to be socialist, let's be socialist all across the board." --MSNBC radio host Ed Schultz, advocating for the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" simply because Rush Limbaugh has far more listeners than he does "The leftists in the media would do well to remember that their liberty to be a free press comes from the same constitutional amendment as the tea party crowd's liberty to gather together. And our elected leaders would do well to remember that the First Amendment exists to protect average people from the government, not the other way around." --columnist Ken Blackwell "The basic issue of health care reform was simple: Who decides? The Democrats' answer: The government. But the battle is not over. The fight continues." --columnist Doug Bandow "History will remember how often and adamantly President Barack Obama insisted that the socialized medicine law he signed last week would reduce the federal deficit. It will be his defining lie." --columnist Terence Jeffrey "Results count, and the expansion of the welfare state has been an unmitigated disaster. Unless you're a bureaucrat. For bureaucrats, the failure of liberalism, rather than demonstrating the bankruptcy of its ideology, demonstrates the need for more of it -- and more of them." --columnist Arnold Ahlert "Obama's decision to postpone his trip to Indonesia and Australia -- to a democracy with the world's largest Muslim population and to the only nation that has fought alongside us in all the wars of the last century -- is of a piece with his foreign policy generally: Attack America's friends and kowtow to our enemies. ... Obama proclaims that through persistence he can make the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Russia, China and the Palestinians see things our way. The evidence so far is that they are making him do things their way -- and that our friends are wondering whether it pays to be on America's side." --political analyst Michael Barone "Go for it." --Barack Obama challenging Republicans to campaign for repeal of his health care bill "There's been plenty of fear-mongering, plenty of overheated rhetoric. You turn on the news and you'll see the same folks are still shouting about there's going to be an end of the world because this bill passed. I'm not exaggerating. Leaders of the Republican Party, they called the passage of this bill Armageddon! Armageddon, end of freedom as we know it! So after I signed the bill I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling or some cracks opening up in the earth. Turned out it was a nice day. Birds were chipping, folks were strolling down the mall. People still have their doctors." --Barack Obama "No one has been more of an advocate for bipartisanship than the president of the United States." --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) "Calling me a 'socialist' has as much basis in fact as calling health reform a 'government takeover' -- none at all." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on the health care takeover "It was incredibly moving to be in that room today. This was such an emotional high that I actually saw congressmen hugging senators. People are so used to low expectations around here that the idea that you could do something big and meaningful is exhilarating." --White House adviser David Axelrod on Obama signing the unconstitutional health care bill "Democrats in America were put on earth to do one thing: Drag the ignorant hillbilly half of this country into the next century, which in their case is the 19th." --HBO's Bill Maher "I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads. ... Anybody that is a global warming denier at this point in time has got their head so deeply up their a-- I'm not sure they could hear me." --"Avatar" director James Cameron "I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. ... I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while." --British scientist James Lovelock, who developed Gaia theory, which says that the entire planet is a single organism "We merely made a recommendation that the name be changed to something other than Good Friday. Our Constitution calls for separation of church and state. Davenport touts itself as a diverse city and given all the different types of religious and ethnic backgrounds we represent, we suggested the change." --Tim Hart, Chairman of the Iowa city Davenport's Civil Rights Commission, on the city's nixing the actual holiday name of "Good Friday" in favor of "Spring Holiday" "Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama bin Ladin and say, 'Listen man, what is it that you're so angry at me about that you're willing to have people strap bombs to themselves, or get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings?' That would be the miracle if we can get -- sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us." --actor Matthew Modine "Congress is now preparing to pass yet another jobs bill. You know how to create more jobs in this country? Fire the people that wrote the first jobs bill. That obviously didn't work." --Jay Leno "President Obama signed the health care reform bill [last] Tuesday. He's taken over the auto industry, banking industry and health care industry. As a child he used to play Monopoly by seizing the box and accusing the other children of scare tactics." --comedian Argus Hamilton "I have a 27'' TV in the bedroom and the two things that don't fit on its relatively small screen are CinemaScope movies from the 1950s and Barack Obama's ego." --columnist Burt Prelutsky "I am surprised that the numbers [in favor of ObamaCare] in the Washington Post poll weren't better. I mean, since this thing passed last weekend, we've been seeing the longest wet kiss in political history given to the Obama administration by the liberal media elite." --Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour "[Vice President Joe Biden] is the man who, perhaps without intending, has given historical context to this presidency. After all, Obama sees himself as a successor to FDR and Truman, so now we have the historical procession: the New Deal, the Square Deal, and the Big [expletive] Deal. It would make a great T-shirt." --columnist Charles Krauthammer web posted March 29, 2010 "A terrible thing happened to America on Sunday, March 21, 2010. The country took its biggest step ever down a road diametrically opposed to its original intent of keeping the state small so that the individual can be free and great." --columnist Dennis Prager "If there is anything good to say about Democrat control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, it's that their extraordinarily brazen, heavy-handed acts have aroused a level of constitutional interest among the American people that has been dormant for far too long." --economist Walter E. Williams "The fact that we conservatives were able to fend off this health-care monster for so long is amazing. But the reality is, until true constitutional conservatives recapture Congress, the growth of government and the incineration of liberty will only continue apace." --radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham "Often the politicians who talk about health care the most believe in the Hippocratic Oath the least. Barack Obama falls into this category. He promises that his health care plan will protect the weak and vulnerable. This would be a little bit more credible if his policies weren't already killing and exploiting them." --columnist George Neumayr "As America's teetering tower of unkeepable promises grows, so does the weight of government, in taxes and mandates that limit investments and discourage job creation. America's dynamism, and hence upward social mobility, will slow, as the economy becomes what the party of government wants it to be -- increasingly dependent on government-created demand." --columnist George Will "On health care, [Obama's] most alluring promises will soon be discredited, as costs, premiums and the number of uninsured (in the near term) remain high. To paraphrase Colin Powell, if you reform it, you own it, and all the discontents with the health-care system will now adhere to Democrats. A more cautious and shrewd leader would avoid making easily falsifiable representations or putting himself on the hook in this way. Not Obama. On health care, he's immoderate in his substance, his risk-taking and his rhetoric. He's all in, and he doesn't care." --National Review editor Rich Lowry "As of today, it is the law of the land that every man, woman and child in America will have health care coverage." --ABC's Dianne Sawyer, who would have more accurately said "nearly every American will be forced to have health insurance" "Yes, we did. Finally, President Obama can use those words. The passage of health-care reform provided the first piece of incontestable evidence that Washington has changed. Congress is, indeed, capable of carrying through fundamental social reform. No longer will the United States be the outlier among wealthy nations in leaving so many of its citizens without basic health coverage." --Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. "Historians will see this health care bill as a masterfully crafted piece of legislation." --Jonathan Chait of the New Republic "Democrats are using words like 'historic' to describe the sweeping overhaul that was approved, but Republicans are saying the bill does not reflect the will of most Americans." --NBC's Meredith Vieira "So this is incredible social transformation, but this will be put to the test in terms of whether [BO] can actually go out and campaign on this and win the argument. He may have won the vote but he hasn't yet won the argument and the president knows that. So he's gonna be spending yet more political capital trying to turn around public opinion." --NBC's David Gregory "In many ways, President Barack Obama has run up against a Republican iron curtain in his attempts to get the country moving again. This has been painfully on display almost daily during the long health care debate when the Republicans have strived in unison to defeat Obama's reform proposals, despite the president's accommodating concessions." --White House press corpse reporter Helen Thomas (What concessions?) "I just don't believe in these ridiculous names, what's communism and what's socialism. People probably can't even spell communism and socialism, much less identify it." --CNN commentator Roland Martin "The bill I am signing will set in motion reforms that generations of Americans have fought for and marched for and hungered to see." --Barack Obama at the signing ceremony Tuesday "You will be joining those who established Medicare and Social Security and now, tonight, health care for all Americans. ... This is an American proposal that honors the tradition of our country." --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) "No money changed hands, of course." --Nancy Pelosi "This is not about health care. It's about trying to extend a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful." --House Democrat Whip James Clyburn (SC) "Make no doubt about it. There will be no public funds for abortion." --Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who made a grand show of being "pro-life" before voting for a bill that will almost certainly allow funding for abortions, despite Obama's promise of an executive order to the contrary "In the wake of health care's passage, we have a strong case to make that [cap and trade] can be the next breakthrough legislative fight." --Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) "I think there's pretty longstanding precedent on the constitutionality of this." --White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on the Obama health care bill "I think what's been going on for the better part of a year is a lot of attempts to confuse and scare Americans. ... I am convinced that once people understand what's in the bill and the fact that a lot of what they've been hearing has never been contemplated, has never been in the bill, that they'll be very enthusiastic about what Congress did." --Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius "I think they'll be rewarded. ... A 'yes' vote hurts Democrats much less as a party than a 'no' vote." --former DNC chief Howard Dean "The hard partisanship and division that now exists [between Democrats and Republicans in DC] is unprecedented." --Jimmy Carter, the man who until recently held the title of worst president ever "Given how long we have been debating the need for comprehensive immigration reform, the American people want and deserve nothing less." --Frank Sharry, executive director of the immigration group American's Voice "Every so often, I read something written by other people that I wish I had written. For instance, Thomas Paine observed over two centuries ago: 'To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, is like administering medicine to the dead.' In 21 words, Paine perfectly summed up the frustration faced by a conservative every time he attempts to debate an issue with a liberal." --columnist Burt Prelutsky "First: Congratulations to President Obama and the Democratic leadership. You won dirty against bipartisan opposition from both Congress and the majority of Americans. You've definitely polarized the country even more, and quite possibly bankrupted us, too. But hey, you won. Bubbly for everyone." --columnist Jonah Goldberg "Pork is the preferred legislative meat for members of Congress, but this weekend they opted for bologna as they tried to convince the public -- and themselves -- that their so-called 'health care' or health insurance 'reform' monstrosity will be good for us. At least Castor oil was supposed to work even though it tasted awful." --columnist Cal Thomas "The health-care vote reconfirms that conservative Democrats, much like the Loch Ness Monster, are widely discussed but rarely leave evidence of their existence." --columnist Jim Geraghty "President Obama must hit the road this week trying to sell his health care reform law. He's working hard with his speechwriters. They're trying to get an applause line out of telling Americans the IRS is going to fine them for not buying health insurance." --comedian Argus Hamilton "Do you know who will be in charge of health care? The IRS. You thought getting audited was bad? Wait until your next prostate exam." --comedian Jay Leno "[T]his hour of liberal political victory is a good time to adapt the 'Pottery Barn' rule that Colin Powell once invoked on Iraq: You break it, you own it. This week's votes don't end our health-care debates. By making medical care a subsidiary of Washington, they guarantee such debates will never end. And by ramming the vote through Congress on a narrow partisan majority, and against so much popular opposition, Democrats have taken responsibility for what comes next -- to insurance premiums, government spending, doctor shortages and the quality of care. They are now the rulers of American medicine." --The Wall Street Journal "[T]he American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected President Obama. Let's not act as though the president didn't tell the American people -- the president offered the American people health reform when he ran. He was overwhelmingly elected running on that and he has delivered what he promised. ... They voted for President Obama who said this was going to be one of the first things he would do.... This was not some concept the president introduced after he won." --the "Reverend" Al Sharpton "We clearly believe that the bill's provisions are, in fact, constitutional and will be so held." --House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) "This is a big f---ing deal." --the ever-classy, ever-eloquent, ever-obsequious Joe Biden to Barack Obama after introducing him at Tuesday's White House signing ceremony. Biden had just finished telling his boss in front of the assembled minions, "You're the reason we're here." "If you're making over $200,000 a year, you're going to pay slightly more in taxes. It's the cost, I think, of having the kind of America that we want to have." --Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who by "we" means "congressional Democrats" |
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