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Lingua publica

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

web posted July 26, 2010

"Too often, the Republican leadership in the United States Senate chooses to filibuster our recovery and obstruct our progress. Think about what these stalling tactics mean for the millions of Americans who've lost their jobs since the recession began. Over the past several weeks, more than two million of them have seen their unemployment insurance expire. ... They say we shouldn't provide unemployment insurance because it costs money. So after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, including a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, they've finally decided to make their stand on the backs of the unemployed." --Barack Obama

"The vast majority of the American people and a lot of people really involved don't even know what's inside the packages." --Vice President Joe Biden, when asked by ABC's Jake Tapper if the administration "is getting enough credit" for the financial bill, the health care bill and the "stimulus"

"I don't think the losses are going to be bad at all. I think we're going to shock the heck out of everybody." --Vice President Joe Biden on the November elections

"[Democrats] are against anything that could cut off a path to citizenship for hard-working people in this country. I'm talking about people that just -- don't just work hard, many of these people have served in the military. They have been injured. They have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. ... Let's not punish these people who have given so much so you and I can enjoy the freedoms we currently have." --Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) claiming that Demos oppose Arizona's immigration law because illegals serve in the military -- except they can't

"I think that any information you have in that regard is absolutely without foundation. That may be someplace, but it's not here in Nevada." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claiming there aren't illegal construction workers in Nevada

"Cap and trade has certainly been demonized. I think that's unfortunate. ... So we'll just call it something different." --Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD)

"America is struggling with a sputtering economy and high unemployment -- but times are booming for Washington's governing class. The massive expansion of government under President Barack Obama has basically guaranteed a robust job market for policy professionals, regulators and contractors for years to come. The housing market, boosted by the large number of high-income earners in the area, many working in politics and government, is easily outpacing the markets in most of the country. And there are few signs of economic distress in hotels, restaurants or stores in the D.C. metro area. As a result, there is a yawning gap between the American people and D.C.'s powerful when it comes to their economic reality -- and their economic perceptions." --columnists Jim VandeHei and Zachary Abrahamson

"It seems quite possible that the NAACP has now lost whatever moral clout it had among Americans. It is now seen by more and more Americans as what in fact it became some time ago -- an abuser of its civil rights moral cachet. The charge of racism leveled by liberal organizations, whether black or white, is now regarded as the politically motivated falsehood that it is. It is rightly seen, along with its six siblings -- sexism, xenophobia, intolerance, bigotry, homophobia and 'Islamophobia' -- as the Left's way of avoiding argument by demeaning its opponents." --columnist Dennis Prager

"There is not now, nor has there ever been, anything post-racial about Barack Obama, except for the people who voted for him in the mistaken belief that he shared their desire to be post-racial. When he leaves office, especially if it is after one term, he will leave this country more racially polarized than before. Hopefully, he may also leave the voters wiser, though sadder, after they learn from painful experience that you can't judge politicians by their rhetoric, or ignore their past because of your hopes for the future. Voters may even wise up to race card fraud." --economist Thomas Sowell

"Barack Obama will not be on the ballot in November. Neither will George W. Bush be in the White House. You can be certain, though, that the Democratic National Committee will do everything it can to remind you of how unhappy you were when GWB was in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Obama will not be running, but if the GOP does its job properly the November election will be a referendum on Obama's policies." --political analyst Rich Galen

"By balancing a stern demand for constitutional, limited government with a strong, positive, active commitment to voluntary betterment, the Republican Party can stand confidently to ask for the privilege of leading America back to our greatness and our goodness." --columnist Tony Blankley

"Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann [is] spearheading a campaign to create a House Tea Party Caucus. Bachman [filed] paperwork ... to found the caucus herself and become its chairwoman. She says the informal group would be dedicated to promoting Tea Party ideals like fiscal responsibility and limited government. Then again, the Tea Partiers were nowhere when it came to ending the mass extraction in Wall Street, so I think they're actually full of crap. But they have nice words." --MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan

"[Bachmann] is so full of crap. I mean, she might be the queen of crap. What is she talking about? All she's ever done is protect the bankers. And these Tea Party guys, 'rah, rah, let's cut taxes.' Obama already cut taxes for [those] making under a quarter of a million dollars. So I guess the Tea Party movement, in essence, is actually about protecting the richest people in America. Wow, what a populist movement you have there." --MSNBC's Cenk Uygur

"Is America in danger of the current debt crisis becoming a sovereign debt crisis ... like the one that is now hitting Greece, yes or no?" --John McLaughlin ++
"No, because we can print money and Greece can't. And the Bush tax cuts are for the people at the upper-end of the income scale, not the middle class." --Newsweek's Eleanor Clift

"Some Democrats have been grumbling that the public is not giving the President enough credit for all he's accomplished in such a short time. After all, Democrats argue, 18 months into his presidency, Mr. Obama has chalked up a number of legislative victories -- an $862 billion stimulus bill that many economists say staved off a depression; a major overhaul of America's health care system; and just [last week], the biggest reform of Wall Street and the nation's financial system since right after the Great Depression. So what's going on?" --ABC's Jake Tapper

"[I]f you set aside the Fort Hood bombing in Texas and the failed Christmas bomber, there has not been a major attack that's been anything close to successful on American soil." --ABC's George Stephanopoulos

"If Mrs. Clinton has her way in the months and years to come, Pakistan will export more of its delicious and very juicy mangoes. Americans will eat them. It will all be a part of the fight against militants." --CNN's Reza Sayah, on the real solution to terrorism

"I think Tea Party people are unpatriotic, short sighted and selfish. It is a pattern here. ... I mean you got to look at it. If it's furry and it has a tail and pointy ears and it meows, it's probably a cat. You know? So you look at this, I wouldn't want to stand next to any of those signs. I wouldn't want to be associated with any of that language. If you are associated with it, it says something about you. ... Let's be honest about this. I mean you can't go to any of these rallies and not see the negative signs. What's that tell you about the organization?" --"diversity consultant" Luke Visconti commenting on CNN about racism in the Tea Party

"We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples. As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them." --former Republican senator-turned-lobbyist Trent Lott, dissing conservative Sen. DeMint and Tea Party candidates

"I think we're now going through a phase in which there is a sense of pervasive malaise, which affects different groups in society in different ways. So people are dissatisfied; they're slightly worried; they don't see a good certain future for themselves or for the country, but in their own narrow sphere. There's no grand mobilizing idea." --Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski

"As much as I would like pharmaceutical companies to rot in hell for their support of ObamaCare, I might need their drugs someday. Now, drug prices will not only have to incorporate R&D costs, but also the cost of paying for trial lawyers' Ferraris. (Perhaps that should be listed as a side effect: 'Caution! Improper use may cause nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath, and six new houses for John Edwards.')" --columnist Ann Coulter

"The race card. So useful to play when you're losing an argument. Democrats don't leave home without it." --columnist Jack Kelly

"The NAACP is like a Talking GI Joe doll with a cord coiled into his back. Pull it, and GI Joe says something manly and combative. Pull the NAACP's string. 'Racism!' squawks the shopworn voice. Pull it again. 'Bigotry!' it squeals, as it has so many times before." --columnist Deroy Murdock

"[Barack Obama says the November elections represent] 'a choice between the policies that got us into this mess and my policies that got us out of this mess.' Waah, he inherited a mess again! Oh, and by the way, his policies haven't gotten us out of it. ... Obama's self-pitying attitude is getting tiresome, piling ennui on top of malaise. Heck, let's go with the portmanteau and call it Obamennui." --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

web posted July 19, 2010

"We're deeply concerned about elements that are trying to move the country back, trying to reverse progress that we've made. We are asking that the law-abiding members of the Tea Party repudiate those racist elements, that they recognize the historic and present racist elements that are within the Tea Party movement." --NAACP spokeswoman Leila McDowell on the resolution condemning Tea Party "racism"

"We have to close the enthusiasm gap. The danger of the Tea Party is that people see them and think about periods in history when groups like them were much more powerful than they are now, and so a lot of what we spend energy doing is explaining to people what reality is, and that the reality is that the majority from 2008 still exists." --NAACP president Ben Jealous

"This debt is like a cancer. It is truly going to destroy the country from within. ... What we do is not so hard to figure out; it's the political consequences of doing it that makes it really tough." --Erskine Bowles, Demo head of Obama's debt panel, laying the groundwork for attacking your wallet

"We were forced to do things from the start to deal with this economic crisis that helped create a false narrative about spending and deficits that's had some impact on independent voters. And that's something we have to work on." --White House adviser David Axelrod, on the "false narrative" that emanates from their own media

"It doesn't mean that if the law for whatever reason happened to go into effect, that six months from now, a year from now, we might not look at the impact the law has had ... and see whether or not there has been that racial profiling impact. If that was the case, we would have the tools and we would bring suit on that basis." --Attorney General Eric Holder, threatening further legal action against Arizona

"[T]hey need to sit in our chairs and worry about these nut jobs that go around with guns." --West Burlington, Iowa, Mayor Hans Mayor Trousil, responding to an NRA letter opposing the city's "firearm ban" ordinance

"In just a few short decades, the stalwart strivers for equality have turned into coddled whiners for hypersensitivity. The NAACP is a laughingstock. The group no longer represents the best interests of oppressed minorities, but the thin-skinned whims of the black elite and the ravenous appetite of the Nanny State. Establishment civil rights leaders now use their once-compelling moral authority to hector, bully and shake down corporate and political targets." --columnist Michelle Malkin

"Beware when the political class preens about protecting us from 'special interests.' The most powerful, persistent and anti-constitutional interest is the political class. Bradley Smith, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, says that Disclose should stand for Democratic Incumbents Seeking to Contain Losses by Outlawing Speech in Elections. It is a reason for voters to multiply those losses." --columnist George Will

"The political rationale for the lawsuit the Obama administration has filed to overturn Arizona's immigration law is clear. ... [T]he lawsuit likely is an effort to boost the president's standing among Hispanics. ... Since federal appellate courts -- including the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1976 case -- have held that state laws which enforce federal statutes are not unconstitutional intrusions into federal jurisdiction, the administration is unlikely to prevail in court. But since the purpose of this lawsuit is political, that may not matter much to this scofflaw president." --columnist Jack Kelly

"Have you heard about the administration's propaganda campaign to adorn each federal 'stimulus' project with taxpayer-funded signs to remind us that these projects have been bestowed on us by the beneficence of the Obama administration? The signs read, 'Project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.' In the first place, they're not funded by any act, but by the American taxpayer. This type of government self-promotion is eerily reminiscent of dictatorial governments in modern history that not only deprived their citizens of freedom and private property but also demanded to be glorified for the morsels they doled back out to them." --columnist David Limbaugh

"We've all seen the signs. There have been signs that compare Barack Obama to a monkey, there have been signs that have had the 'n' word on them. When you see those signs, how do you feel?" --ABC's Dan Harris to a black Tea Party leader

"Concentrating on the deficits, I didn't realize we voted for a Republican president. Obama seems to have bought into the Republican talking point on deficits when Americans are definitely more concerned with jobs right now. Polls show that the public wants more government spending, not less. According to the recent USA Today/Gallup poll, 60 percent of Americans favor additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy. The only people who oppose more stimulus spending by the government, Republicans. Once again, I thought they lost the election. Why are they still in charge in DC?" --MSNBC's Cenk Uygur

"The GOP's internal feuding could help the Democrats on the road to November if it interferes with the party's ability to deliver a consistent message that Obama has overpromised and underdelivered, and to avoid getting sidetracked by some of the more outlandish things today's GOP revolutionaries like to blurt out. (My favorite is GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle in Nevada, who maintains that separation of church and state is not in the Constitution, and that Thomas Jefferson was misquoted.)" --Newsweek's Eleanor Clift (Is she saying it IS in the Constitution?)

"What percentage of the Republican Party would you put in the nut bag right now? The party that, not just conservatives, but people that are just really crazy out there, even beyond the Tea Partiers?" --MSNBC's Chris Matthews to Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

"Let's say that the American people ... are perfectly happy basically with a slave culture of illegals and outsourced slaves in China making iPhones at Foxconn and that for as much as we talk about the liberation of the slaves and we like to pat ourselves on the back for the Civil War -- got a big statue of Abe Lincoln -- all we've really done is alter the color of some of our slaves and moved them to other countries. Is that too extreme on my part?" --MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan, a candidate for the "nut bag"

"It is a little odd getting lectures on sobriety from folks that spent like drunken sailors." --Barack Obama on the previous spendthrift Republican Congress

"What you want to do is stimulate at this point in time, so you certainly do not want to increase taxes on the middle class, middle-income working Americans." --House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), neglecting to explain why tax increases on those making more than $200,000 stimulate the economy

"Our job is to focus not on the next election but on the next generation." --Barack Obama, the perpetual campaigner, on the stump for Sen. Harry Reid

"Policy-wise it makes sense, and Obama is popular with Hispanic voters and this is going to be a popular move with them nationally." --New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D, of course) on the DoJ lawsuit against Arizona

"[S]ome of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion." --Barack Hussein Obama on why the Israelis may not fully trust him

"Democrats have no interest in fighting any war that would serve America's interests. (They're too jammed with their wars against Evangelicals, Wal-Mart, the Pledge of Allegiance, SUVs and the middle class.)" --columnist Ann Coulter

"Obama is boldly going where no president has gone before. [NASA's new Muslim-outreach priority] is a continuation of the president's subjugation of himself (bowing to foreign leaders) and the country he is charged with leading by obsequiously kowtowing to a people for whom advancement to the Middle Ages would be a step up." --columnist Cal Thomas

"Given how poorly Obama appointees seem grounded on earth, it would make sense for them to be better suited for NASA -- once also called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Unfortunately, they are so far out in space that even the Hubble has no idea what they are doing and why." --Business & Media Institute vice president Dan Gainor

"Government policies designed to stimulate the economy seem to be having the opposite effect. Consumers aren't buying, businesses aren't hiring, and those fortunate enough to have some cash on hand don't seem to be investing. I call it the mattress economy. People seem to be following this investment strategy. Step one: Go to Mattress Discounters and buy the biggest mattress you can find. Step two: Take it home, and stuff all your money in it. Step three: Lie down, and get some rest." --political analyst Michael Barone

"There's always going to be a downside to even the best policies, because the experts don't know as much as they think they do. Sometimes, they don't even know they're not experts at all." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

"The Tea Party, as a political philosophy, is to reverse what civil rights did and that is saying the federal government must protect people." --the "Reverend" Al Sharpton, calling states' rights a racist issue

web posted July 12, 2010

"The federal government wants more and more to tell us, by law and by bureaucratic regulation, what's good for us -- what to eat, what to spend our own money on, to whether and where to smoke a cigarette or eat a burger. When a senator asked Elena Kagan, the president's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, whether she believed Congress had the power 'to tell people what to eat every day,' she was stumped for an answer. The personal has become the political. The Founding Fathers are spinning." --columnist Suzanne Fields

"In the past few days, we've ... heard from former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams, who has confirmed -- from the belly of the beast -- our worst suspicions about Obama and Eric Holder's Justice Department's dismissing a slam-dunk case for voter intimidation against New Black Panther Party members for racial reasons. This is an egregious trampling on the rule of law, an outrage that would subject any Republican president to charges of high crimes and misdemeanors, a scandal of the first order for which this administration isn't even bothering to develop 'plausible deniability.'" --columnist David Limbaugh

"As I've noted many times over the years when debating both Democrats and Republicans who fall back on empty phrases to justify putting the amnesty cart before the enforcement horse, we are not a 'nation of immigrants.' This is both a factual error and a warm-and-fuzzy non sequitur. Eighty-five percent of the residents currently in the United States were born here. Yes, we are almost all descendants of immigrants. But we are not a 'nation of immigrants.' (And the politically correct president certainly wouldn't argue that Native American Indians, Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians and descendants of black slaves 'immigrated' here in any common sense of the word, would he?)" --columnist Michelle Malkin

"President Obama's National Security Strategy insists on calling the enemy -- how else do you define those seeking your destruction? -- 'a loose network of violent extremists.' But this is utterly meaningless. This is not an anger-management therapy group gone rogue. These are people professing a powerful ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam, in whose name they propagandize, proselytize, terrorize and kill. Why is this important? Because the first rule of war is to know your enemy. If you don't, you wander into intellectual cul-de-sacs and ignore the real causes that might allow you to prevent recurrences." --columnist Charles Krauthammer

"It's July 4th, my least favorite holiday. ... You see, I don't believe in patriotism. You can call me unpatriotic if you'd like, but really I'm anti-patriotic. I've been studying fascism lately, and there is one inescapable fact about it: Nationalism is the egg that hatches fascism. And patriotism is but the father of nationalism. Patriotism is not something to play with. It's highly toxic. When ingested, it corrodes the rational faculties." --Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive

"I think most economists would say the stimulus did work in the sense it would have been a lot worse if there hadn't been one." --Bloomberg's Al Hunt

"We're facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused." --New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Republicans unwilling to extend unemployment benefits

"Many members of Congress especially those in tough re-election campaigns are home right now, trying to figure out the spending issue: Will voters support more stimulus spending if it directly leads to jobs, or has deficit spending itself become political Kryptonite?" --CBS's Wyatt Andrews

"You know the United States has gone way, way down the path to unsustainable debt when governments in Europe -- spendaholic Europe -- lecture the administration on fiscal restraint and ultimately carry the day." --Chicago Tribune

"The almost unknown, practically under the radar, the Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, before committees this week being funny. She was downright funny." --CBS's Harry Smith

"So, apart from the fact that she has got a sense of humor, what did we really learn today about Elena Kagan?" --CNN's Campbell Brown

"I've never believed that government has all the answers.... Government can't and should not replace businesses as the engines of growth and job creation in our economy." --Barack Obama

"Unemployment is still at 9.6 [percent]. Yes, but it's not 12 or 13 -- or 15." --Barack Obama, the guy who promised to keep it below 8 percent

"[Giving unemployment benefits] injects demand into the economy. It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name." --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

"One of the problems in societies around the world today is that too much of the productivity of the economies are going to too few. Too few people, the political and economic elite, are realizing the vast majority of benefits from economic activity. It's true in my own country where, unfortunately, economic inequality is increasing. And it's true in Ukraine. It's true in Europe and Asia and Africa and South America. So part of the challenge of economic growth and prosperity is to make sure it gets down and equally spread among people." --Hillary Clinton in the Ukraine trashing America

"[Parts of the Constitution] were meant to be interpreted over time, to be applied to new situations and new factual contexts." --Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan

"[Newspapers] mention that [Robert Byrd] once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan, and what does that mean? I'll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollows of West Virginia. He was trying to get elected. And maybe he did something he shouldn't have done, and he spent the rest of his life making it up. And that's what a good person does. There are no perfect people. There certainly are no perfect politicians." --Bill Clinton, speaking at Byrd's funeral in Charleston

"Keep in mind, again, federal candidates: [Afghanistan] was a war of Obama's choosing. This was not something that the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in. ... [If Obama] is such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?" --Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele

"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- [Obama] charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering." --NASA Administrator Charles Bolden

"President Obama likes to say 'if we could put a man on the moon' we can do anything, from socializing medicine to abandoning fossil fuels. That's nonsense on stilts for a host of reasons. But it's also ironic, given that we can't even put a man on the moon anymore. Not when NASA's foremost priority is boosting the self-esteem of children and Muslims." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

"It's time to call Obama what he is: The Great Jobs Killer. With his massive spending and tax hikes -- rewarding big government and big unions, while punishing taxpayers and business owners -- Obama has killed jobs, he has killed motivation to create new jobs, he has killed the motivation to invest in new businesses, or expand old ones. With all this killing, Obama should be given the top spot on the FBI's Most Wanted List." --columnist Wayne Allyn Root

"But this [G-8/G-20] summit was noteworthy in that for the first time ever, nobody else paid much attention to the president of the United States. Reuters published a list of 'winners and losers' at the G-20. There were just two losers, according to the British news service. One was Brazil, because its president didn't show up. The other was America, whose president did." --columnist Jack Kelly

"The U.S. Mint released a new depiction of Abe Lincoln on the U.S. penny Monday. It shows Abe as a boy sitting on a log and studying a textbook. The Teachers Union is furious at the U.S. mint for advertising that you can get a better education without them." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"I loved America more when Supreme Court justices were expected to be experts when it came to the U.S. Constitution, not a bunch of bleeding hearts who could moonlight as social workers or, God forbid, community organizers." --columnist Burt Prelutsky

web posted July 5, 2010

"The [Supreme] Court found that if the Second Amendment indeed protects an individual right to own a gun, the notion that the government can't ban all handguns is the minimum protection the Constitution can offer." --economist John R. Lott Jr.

"Strict gun-control policies have failed to deliver on their essential promise: that denying law-abiding citizens access to the means of self-defense will somehow make them safer. This should come as no surprise, since gun control has always been about control, not guns." --Cato Institute policy analyst David Rittgers

"Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that the Second Amendment to the Constitution means that individual Americans have a right to bear arms, what can we expect? Those who have no confidence in ordinary Americans may expect a bloodbath, as the benighted masses start shooting each other, now that they can no longer be denied guns by their betters. People who think we shouldn't be allowed to make our own medical decisions, or decisions about which schools our children attend, certainly are not likely to be happy with the idea that we can make our own decisions about how to defend ourselves." --economist Thomas Sowell

"[Elena] Kagan has less real legal experience of any nominee in at least 50 years, and it's not just that the nominee has not been a judge. She has barely practiced law, and not with the intensity and duration from which I think a real legal understanding occurs. Her actions [as Dean at Harvard] punished the military, and demeaned our soldiers as they were courageously fighting for our country in two wars overseas. Ms. Kagan has associated herself with well-known activist judges who have used their power to re-define the meaning of words of our Constitution and laws in ways that, not surprisingly, have the result of advancing that judge's preferred social policies and agendas." --Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions

"Recently, the secretary of labor, Hilda Solis, produced a video advising workers to contact her office should they feel that they have been shorted wages by their employers. Fair enough. But then she goes on to explicitly include workers who are not documented and to promise them confidentiality, i.e., de facto federal protection for their illegality: 'Every worker has a right to be paid fairly, whether documented or not.' 'Undocumented' is part of the current circumlocution for breaking federal law and residing here illegally. In short, although Solis is a federal executive sworn to uphold existing federal law, she has decided which laws suit her and which do not. She rightly promises to pursue lawbreaking employers, but quite wrongly not to pursue lawbreaking employees. Yet when we become unequal before the law, the entire notion of a lawful society starts to erode." --historian Victor Davis Hanson

"Some Republicans paid a heavy price for being tough with Anita Hill when she came to testify in the Clarence Thomas hearings. Have we gotten past that era of sensitivity about a bunch of guys going after a single woman here just bashing her? ... Can these guys like Jeff Sessions just go at her like this without any fear of rebuke? ... They've turned this nominee into a voodoo doll, and they keep putting pins in her, as a way of getting at President Obama." --MSNBC's Chris Matthews

"We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost -- to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs -- will nonetheless be immense. And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world -- most recently at last weekend's deeply discouraging G-20 meeting -- governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending." --New York Times columnist Paul Krugman

"Like the Constitution and the Bible, Robert Byrd will be a permanent fixture of the Senate." --ABC's Cokie Roberts

"Cheney's in the hospital. Ah, the first good news all day. ... I'm not going to feel anything but intense gratitude that this miserable bastard has stepped off this earthly coil! Really! ... Cheney is a murderer. He's a killer. He's a torturer. He is evil personified! He is a walking mass of horror and when he's gone, this planet will be cleaner!" --liberal talk radio host Mike Malloy on Dick Cheney's hospitalization

"Once upon a time, marriage made sense. It was how women ensured their financial security, got the fathers of their children to stick around, and gained access to a host of legal rights. But 40 years after the feminist movement established our rights in the workplace, a generation after the divorce rate peaked, and a decade after Sex and the City made singledom chic, marriage is -- from a legal and practical standpoint, anyway -- no longer necessary." --Jessica Bennett and Jesse Ellison in a Newsweek article trashing marriage

"Somehow people say, 'Why are you doing that? I'm not sure that's good politics.' I'm doing it because I said I was going to do it and I think it's the right thing to do. People should learn that lesson about me because next year when I start presenting some very difficult choices to the country, I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficits and debt step-up because I'm calling their bluff. We'll see how much of that, how much of the political arguments that they're making right now are real and how much of it was just politics." --Barack Obama, talking tough about fiscal responsibility

"A strong and durable recovery also requires countries not having an undue advantage." --Barack Obama at the G20 summit in Canada

"What did middle-class families ever do to Republicans in the Senate that they would snuff out every opportunity for job creation that has been sent to them?" --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who seeks to let tax cuts on those middle-class families expire at year's end

"Why don't you say something nice instead of being a smart-ass all the time? Say something nice." --Vice President Joe "BFD" Biden to a Wisconsin custard shop manager, who made a joke about lowering their taxes

"I believe the fair-minded people will find [Elena Kagan's] philosophy well within the legal mainstream. I welcome questions but urge senators on both sides to be fair. No one should presume that this intelligent woman who has excelled during every part of her varied and distinguished career, lacks independence." --Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) (For context, Kagan thinks Robert Bork had a "fair" hearing: "I loved what happened in the Bork hearings.... The Bork hearings were great, the Bork hearings were educational, the Bork hearings were the best thing that ever happened to Constitutional democracy.")

"Please tell us why you want to serve on the Supreme Court and what excites you about the job." --Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI) to Elena Kagan

"Our borders are quite secure, thank you." --Rep. Pete Snark (D-CA)

"It's a big border. It's 1,960 miles across that Southwest border. It's some of the roughest, toughest geographical terrain in the world across that border. And so, the notion that you're going to seal that border somehow is something that anybody who's been involved in the actual doing of law enforcement ... would say, 'You're never going to totally seal that border.'" --Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano

"If this was Texas, which is a state that is directly on the border with Mexico, and they were calling for a measure like this, saying that they have a major issue with, you know, undocumented people flooding their borders, I would say, I would have to look twice at this, but this is a state that's a ways removed from the border..." --Milwaukee County Board Supervisor Peggy West on Arizona's immigration law

"As a city we must continue to stand up ... and fight for a ban on assault weapons ... as well as a crackdown on gun shops. We are a country of laws not a nation of guns." --Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, remaining defiant after the SCOTUS decision

"People will die because of this decision. It is a victory only for the gun lobby and America's fading firearms industry." --Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, on the Supreme Court's ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago

"Some people don't believe in climate warming -- like those who don't believe there was a Holocaust." --singer Paul McCartney

"With each failure of gun control, the rejoinder was to do it again, this time with feeling." --David Rittgers

"President Obama insisted ... that General McChrystal's departure signals a change in personnel but not in policy. It's a policy the president can call his own. Our purpose remains not to kill the Taliban but to register them to vote in Chicago." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"[H]ere are some questions it would be fun to ask a New York liberal like Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan at her hearings [this] week: -- Roughly one-third of Americans are Evangelical Christians. Do you personally know any Evangelical Christians? Name two. -- In 1972, Richard Nixon was elected president with more than 60 percent of the vote, winning every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. How many people do you know who voted for Nixon? -- Appropriate or inappropriate: Schools passing out condoms to seventh-graders? Schools passing out cigarettes to seventh-graders? -- Who is a greater threat to America, Sarah Palin or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?" --columnist Ann Coulter

web posted June 28, 2010

"There's no doubt Obama would be fully justified in firing his top general [Stanley McChrystal]. But at the same time Obama has committed himself to a rigid timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan. Changing commanders could complicate that enormously. Right now, because of his own policy decisions, the president has no good choice." --columnist Byron York

"In wartime, generals become public heroes. In some cases -- in Stanley McChrystal's -- they really may be heroes. But that does not change the fundamental imperative of maintaining order and discipline. And if doing so means relieving a hero of command, so be it." --author Eliot Cohen

"While McChrystal's comments were highly improper, they will strike many observers as having a ring of truth. Even if the president gives the general the ax, the whole episode is further grist for the developing media narrative of an administration that is incompetent and adrift." --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

"Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere. And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico." --columnist Thomas Sowell

"Thuggery is unattractive. Ineffective thuggery even more so. Which may be one reason so many Americans have been reacting negatively to the response of Barack Obama and his administration to BP's gulf oil spill." --political analyst Michael Barone

"Obama believes in the rule of law -- his law. No other law is relevant. No other law matters. When Obama speaks, he expects the world to obey. ... Obama can't comprehend any limitations on his power. ... There have been arrogant presidents before, but none that can compare to the sickening self-centered narcissism that exudes from this man." --columnist Henry Lamb

"I think that governments have become like a cancer, they have expanded in the financial system. I think the biggest problem is too much intervention. Whatever the government touches is usually done worse than in the private sector." --author Marc Faber

"[T]hey think it was a good week. The president's trip down to the Gulf, the speech, the $20 billion escrow fund and then this gift from Joe Barton, which has really been a lightning rod for the Left, far more than the White House. So I think they feel like they had a good week. Perhaps their first good week since this crisis began." --ABC's Jake Tapper (Why is good news for Democrats always bad news for America?)

"[O]ne of the differences between the '50's when Sputnik was launched and now, that was a battle against Communism. It's always much easier to rally Americans against an external threat, an external enemy. In this case, the enemy is us. Americans are addicted to petroleum. We use way too much oil. So it's a little harder for the president to turn around and call on Americans to sacrifice." --Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Cynthia Tucker

"First the Right appropriated God, equating churchgoing with party affiliation and demonizing Democrats as secularists. Now they're trying to hijack the Constitution, as though their reading of the Founders' intent is the only true one." --Newsweek's Eleanor Clift

"As the House and Senate debate what to do with the expiring Bush tax cuts in the coming weeks, we need to have a serious discussion about their implications for our fiscal outlook, including whether we can afford to permanently extend them before we have a real plan for long-term deficit reduction." --House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) on whether Democrats can "afford" to let Americans keep their money

"If 'out-of-control spending' refers to the Recovery Act and other jobs programs that are responsible for more than two million jobs and only a small fraction of our deficit, I'd ask what the alternatives were. Whether we are spending or cutting taxes, creating jobs in a recession means adding to the deficit in the short term." --Steny Hoyer, who can certainly afford to spend your money

"That's what we try to instill in a new ethic in the federal government -- individuals, all of us being personally responsible at every level for making sure we handle the taxpayers' dollars well." --VP Joe Biden

"[Climate change legislation] is a defense, a security issue, a health issue, an environmental issue, it is an economic issue, and it is a moral issue for us to honor the obligation we have to pass this planet on to future generations intact. And, if you believe, as I do, that it is also -- that this is God's beautiful creation, we have a moral responsibility to preserve it." --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who is right that we have a moral responsibility to steward the planet, but wrong that intrusive government regulation is the way to do it

"There can be no doubt that the president is rolling up his sleeves to ensure we establish a market mechanism to tackle carbon pollution." --Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) calling his government mechanism a market mechanism

"The problem is ... if we secure the border, then you all won't have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform." --Barack Obama to Republican Sen. John Kyl of Arizona

"I've never been unemployed. ... I've been very fortunate." -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who is in a tough re-election fight this year

"I loved what happened in the [Robert] Bork hearings.... The Bork hearings were great, the Bork hearings were educational, the Bork hearings were the best thing that ever happened to constitutional democracy." --Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in a 1997 speech that just surfaced

"Yup [Tea Party activists are just mad that there is an African-American president], and the fact that they chose to call themselves 'teabaggers,' which is slang for a certain act involving b---s. It sort of says a lot. I would say a mouthful. Looks like it's very upsetting for them, but [Obama is] brilliant. The thing is, he's half white but that's still not enough -- for them it's all white or f--k off. I think we don't deserve him and certainly teabaggers don't deserve him." --actress Carrie Fisher

"[T]he approach here expressed and supported by other voices in the Republican Party sees the aggrieved party as BP, not the American -- not the fishermen and the communities down there affected. And that would [be] the governing philosophy. And I think what Joe Barton did is remind the American people, in case they've forgotten, this is how the Republicans would govern." --WH Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on Rep. Barton's apology, since withdrawn, to BP for the White House "shakedown"

"[T]his is exactly why the conservatives keep harping on spending, spending, spending as the problem: Because they know spending, spending, spending is the solution, and they don't want this solved! They don't want this solved because they hate government! They hate teachers. They hate police officers. They hate first responders. They hate firemen. They hate EMT workers. They want it all to be privatized! That's when you gonna get the haves having police protection and excellent schools and the have-nots having no police protection and no schools! And therein is the dreamworld for them. This is nirvana for them!" --leftist radio talk-show host Randi Rhodes

"[Last Thursday] was the 36th anniversary of the Watergate scandal, when the Republicans broke into the Democratic headquarters looking for their long-term plans and strategies. It also marks the last time anyone thought the Democrats had a plan worth stealing." --comedian Jay Leno

"That's what liberalism is -- promises and pronouncements untethered to reality. It is cotton candy rhetoric; spun to taste good for a moment. But then it dissolves in an instant, leaving you feeling sick and disgusted that you tried it in the first place." --radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham

"Welcome to soggy reality. The great liberal disenchantment is the realization that it's beyond Obama's powers to turn back an oil spill, let along the tides. He's just a president, and not even a particularly good one." --columnist Rich Lowry

"The president directed his Nobel Prize-winning head of meetings to assemble a meeting to tackle the challenge of mobilizing the assembling of the tackling of the challenge of mobilization, at the end of which they directed BP to order up some new tackle and connect it to the thingummy next to the whachamacallit. Thank you, Mr. President. That and $4.95 will get you a venti at Starbucks." --columnist Mark Steyn

"President Obama has spoken out against the law because he thinks the federal government should be determining immigration policy. The Justice Department, under his direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act." --Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Arizona's immigration law in an interview in Ecuador

"To learn of this lawsuit through an Ecuadorian interview with the secretary of state is just outrageous. If our own government intends to sue our state to prevent illegal immigration enforcement, the least it can do is inform us before it informs the citizens of another nation." --Arizona Governor Jan Brewer

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