Lingua publica
The
good and the bad...presented with permission from The Patriot E-Journal
web posted August 25, 2008
"I would not have nominated, uhhh, Clarence Thomas. Uh, I don't think that he's -- uhhh... uhhh... I -- I -- I -- I -- I -- I don't think that he was an exper... uh, a strong enough jurist or legal thinker, uh, at the time, uh, for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the Constitution." -- Barack Obama when asked by Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren which Supreme Court Justice he would not have nominated
"[Barack Obama is] a leader that God has blessed us with at this time." -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
"I believe there are a lot of supporters for Hillary among the superdelegates, especially now that they've agreed to place her name in nomination. I think half the House Democrats would probably be Hillary supporters, especially women... I felt she was the most experienced and the best candidate and I still feel that way." -- Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA)
"[Republicans] say this other guy is unpatriotic, or this guy likes French people. That's what they said about [2004 Demo presidential contender John] Kerry. They try to make it out like Democrats aren't tough enough, aren't macho enough." -- Barack Obama
"When asked what America's greatest moral failing was, theological Obama said it was our collective failure to ‘abide by that basic precept in [the Book of] Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me.' For Obama the politician, such scriptural quotations often serve as an all-inclusive writ to impose his religious views on others when it comes to fighting poverty, global warming, racism, etc. But when the question turns to abortion, political Obama insists on a policy of moral agnosticism and political laissez-faire." -- Jonah Goldberg
"Obama is the only elected official on record to ever vote in favor of denying life-saving medical care to children who had been born but that were struggling for life. Is that a decision too confusing so as to be ‘above the pay grade' as well?" -- Kevin McCullough
"It is now clear why Barack Obama has refused John McCain's offer of joint town hall appearances during the fall campaign. McCain is obviously better at them." -- Michael Gerson
"Candidly talking about racial issues doesn't make you a racist any more than being aware of gender differences makes you a sexist." -- Terry Paulson
"The overwhelming votes for Obama in some virtually all-white states show that many Americans are ready to move beyond race. But Obama himself wants to have it both ways, by attributing racist notions to the McCain camp that has never made race an issue. The problem with clever people is that they don't know when to stop being clever -- and Senator Obama is a very clever man, perhaps ‘too clever by half' as the British say." -- Thomas Sowell
"The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to [at Saddleback Church], because that -- what they're putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well prepared." -- ABC's Andrea Mitchell repeating the canard that McCain cheated in the interview with Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren
"The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to [at Saddleback Church], because that -- what they're putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well prepared." -- ABC's Andrea Mitchell repeating the canard that McCain cheated in the interview with Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren
"[Jerome Corsi's book Obama Nation] is a compilation of all the innuendo and false rumors against Obama -- that he was raised a Muslim, attended a radical, black church and secretly has a ‘black rage' hidden beneath the surface. In fact, Obama is a Christian who attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago." -- Associated Press writer Nedra Pickler, the last person to have not heard of Rev. Jeremiah Wright
"Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in [Washington] Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party's presumptive nominee June 4... The disparity is so wide that it doesn't look good... This is not just a Post phenomenon... Its latest report, [The Project for Excellence] for the week of Aug. 4-10, shows that for the eighth time in nine weeks, Obama received significantly more coverage than McCain... Readers deserve comparable coverage of the candidates." -- Washington Post writer Deborah Howell
"Is that a cool thing to say in this day and age? That you love your country, and that you're fighting for the red, white and blue? It seems sort of like a day gone by." -- NBC's Chris Collinsworth interviewing Olympic basketball player Kobe Bryant, who called the U.S. "the greatest country in the world" and that playing in the Olympics for the U.S. is "a tremendous honor"
"That's the way it's been for a long, long time -- we are the party of opportunity, so the demographic trends favor the Democrats because we are an inclusive and accepting party. If you look at folks of color -- even women -- are more successful in the Democratic Party than they are in the white -- excuse me [giggles] -- in the Republican Party." -- DNC Chief Howard Dean
"[Angelina] Jolie says she likes McCain too and hasn't decided who to endorse... huh? Aren't you supposed to be somewhat enlightened, or do you not know that the African daughter you hold in every picture had parents who suffered and died because of the Republican Party's worldwide economic assault on Africa over the last few decades since Reagan?" -- former comedienne Roseanne Barr
"The Democratic Party platform is like a bag of pork rinds. You never know what high-fat liberal government morsel you're gonna get." -- Michelle Malkin
"Police in Denver are getting ready for the Democratic Convention. They're ordering the stun guns, the barbed wire, the plastic handcuffs... and that's just for Bill Clinton's room." -- Craig Ferguson
"Nancy Pelosi threatened to strip Joe Lieberman of his Homeland Security chairmanship if he doesn't stop criticizing Barack Obama. She's in the House and he's in the Senate. The only power Nancy Pelosi has to strip Joe Lieberman is if she decides to moonlight as an airport screener and he comes through her checkpoint." -- Argus Hamilton
"I could care less about the color of Barack Obama's skin, but the thinness of it is starting to wear on me." -- Dennis Miller
"Mr. Obama has a deep, rich voice. Coming from his mouth, nonsense sounds good. But it's still nonsense." -- Jack Kelly
"Poor Caroline Kennedy... as you know, she's vetting Obama's veep choices. How difficult must it be for her to find somebody less qualified than Obama? Every resume she looks at makes his look like a first grade report card." -- Rush Limbaugh
"Now I must say: I don't find myself particularly scary or particularly risky." -- Barack Obama
web posted August 18, 2008
"If we had a stronger relationship with Russia, we could exercise strong diplomacy to stop this effort against Georgia. We should immediately go to the United Nations Security Council, condemn Russia's action, and then get the Security Council to pass a strong resolution getting the Russians to show some restraint." -- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former UN ambassador who should know better by forgetting Russia's veto power
"We should continue to push for a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate end to the violence. It's a clear violation of the sovereignty and internationally recognized borders of Georgia." -- Barack Obama
"[Barack Obama's] goal was to be tough and smart, and so when the [Russian] action happened on Thursday, he immediately called for a ceasefire, condemned the unwarranted use of force by Russia. It was a bad crisis for the world. It required tough words, but also a smart approach to call on the international community to step in -- and I'm very, very happy that the senator's request for a ceasefire has been complied with by [Russian] President [Dmitry] Medvedev." -- Gov. Tim Kaine (D-VA)
"America is -- is no longer, uh, what it -- it could be, what it was once was. And I say to myself, ‘I don't want that future for my children'." -- Barack Obama to a seven-year old
"This Republican hoax is unworthy of the serious debate we must have to reduce the price at the pump and promote energy independence." -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sticking by her story that increasing supply won't lower prices
"To pretend we can ever get hold of this without dealing with that -- the idea of unprotected sexual relations with unlimited numbers of partners -- I think would be naive." -- Bill Clinton advocating monogamy to prevent AIDS
"Here's the record when it comes to Georgia. Obama, on learning of the Soviet invasion, played it cool. It was ‘important... for all sides to show restraint.' McCain, by contrast, demanded that Russia ‘immediately and unconditionally' pull its forces out of Georgia... McCain... understood the stakes in the affair... Does Obama understand...?" -- William Murchison
"Georgia, whose desire for NATO membership had U.S. support, is not in NATO because some prospective members of McCain's league of democracies, e.g. Germany, thought that starting membership talks with Georgia would complicate the project of propitiating Russia. NATO is scheduled to review the question of Georgia's membership in December... If Georgia were in NATO, would NATO now be at war with Russia? More likely, Russia would not be in Georgia." -- George Will
"Truthfully, an Obama presidency should scare the pants off 70 percent of Americans... Across the board, Obama is dramatically out of sync with this center-right nation... Obama's entire campaign theme is fraudulent. How can a man unite America when his views are so far out of line with average Americans for whom he has revealed unbridled contempt? How can he inspire America when he advertises his disdain for what he believes America has become?" -- David Limbaugh
"[T]he bigger government gets and the more powerful the state becomes, the greater the threat to individual liberty and the greater the likelihood that evil will ensue. In the 20th century, the powerful state, not religion, was the greatest purveyor of evil in the world." -- Dennis Prager
"Congressional Democrats demand... a clampdown on ‘speculators.' The Democrats proposed this a month ago. In the meantime, ‘speculators' have driven the price down by $25 a barrel. Still want to stop them? In what universe do traders only bet on the price going up?" -- Charles Krauthammer
"Nazi Germany hosted the Games in Berlin in 1936. Now that country is one of the world's proudest democracies. Communist Moscow was the host city in 1980. Now Russia has moved close to true democracy, although it's not quite there yet. This is not a prediction that communism will disappear from China quickly. But betcha the Olympic Games will bring 1.3 billion closer to that goal. So China and the world will win. Ping-pong might even become a global pastime." -- USA Today founder Al Neuharth
"From designer clothes to new cars, China is getting rich. Democracies once bragged that theirs was the only way to economic success. China is doing it the Communist way." -- CBS correspondent Barry Petersen
"One is because of the evidence. You have to have your own solid sourcing to go with this. And the other is that John Edwards was at no point a top contender for the presidency. I mean, before the campaign started this got a little bit of traction. As soon as it was clear that he really wasn't going to be in the running after Iowa, there's no real public interest of need to know here." -- CNN's Jessica Yellin on why the media ignored reports of John Edwards' affair
"I was taught when I was a young reporter that it's news when we say it is. I think that's still true -- it's news when ‘we' say it is. It's just who ‘we' is has changed. Members of the public, people with modems, people with cell phones are now producers, editors. They can push and push and push on a story until it ends up being acknowledged by everyone." -- New York Times columnist David Carr
"In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic." -- John Edwards
"Scrap national allocations and place a single global cap on greenhouse gas emissions, applied ‘upstream' -- for instance, at the oil refinery, coal-washing station and cement factory. Sell permits up to that cap in a global auction, and use the proceeds to finance solutions to climate change -- accelerating the use of renewable energy, raising energy efficiency, protecting forests, promoting climate-friendly farming, and researching geoengineering technologies. And commit hundreds of billions of dollars per year to finance adaptation to climate change, especially in poor countries. Such a package of measures would allow us to achieve zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050." -- Oliver Tickell, author of Kyoto2, on how to combat a predicted four degrees of global warming
"I assume it would be jejune to point out that the MSM would be taking the wall-to-wall approach, rather than the total blackout approach, to the love child story if it were a story about Mitt Romney's love child or, indeed, Larry Craig's love child. They'd bring Ted Koppel out of retirement to cover that. Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charles Gibson would be anchoring the evening news from Romney's front yard. They might even get Dan Rather to produce some forged documents for the occasion." -- Ann Coulter
"There's a quick campaign ad on the two parties in a nutshell. Republican George Bush took on Osama bin Laden and took out Saddam Hussein. Democrat John Edwards hides in a bathroom from the tabloids." -- Brent Bozell
"Elizabeth Edwards agreed to speak at the Democratic convention and John Edwards said he was promised a speech. Bill and Hillary will also speak. The Pledge of Allegiance that night could provide one of the funniest moments in television history." -- Argus Hamilton
"In an interview recorded by the BBC in Africa, Bill Clinton told people in Africa to practice monogamy and that we need to control unprotected sexual relations with unlimited numbers of partners. In fact, the minute he said that, the Secret Service wrestled him to the ground and said, 'Who are you and what have you done with the real Bill Clinton?'" -- Jay Leno
"I believe [Hillary Clinton] would have won Iowa, and Clinton today would therefore have been the nominee. Our voters and Edwards' voters were the same people. They were older, pro-union. Not all, but maybe two-thirds of them would have been for us and we would have barely beaten Obama." -- former Hillary Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson on the impact of the media's refusal to cover John Edwards' sex scandal
web posted August 11, 2008
"What you saw in the Congress this week was the war dance of the handmaidens of the oil companies. That's what you saw on the Republican side of the aisle." -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Republican congressmen staying on the job to debate energy while Democrats went home and ignored the problem
"What I don't want to do is for the best to be the enemy of the good. And if we can come up with a genuine bipartisan compromise, in which I have to accept some things that I don't like or the Democrats have to accept some things that they don't like in exchange for actually moving us in the direction of actual energy independence, then that's something I'm open to." -- Barack Obama on...something
"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, ‘he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name,' you know, ‘he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills'." -- Barack Obama, not playing the race card again
"It's one thing [for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] to not allow a vote on more energy production. It's another to not even allow people to speak about it... You can turn off the lights, but you cannot silence the will of the American people." -- John Campbell
"I really believe that the reason why the Democratic leadership has not brought [The American Energy Act] or a compromise bill like that to the floor is because it would pass." -- Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN)
"What exactly has the Democrat-controlled House done for us lately? Well, it authorized the FDA to regulate tobacco, it apologized for slavery and Jim Crow laws, and let's not forget, the House Transportation Committee moved to ban in-flight cell phone use." -- Laura Ingraham
"Does Obama have the sort of adviser a candidate most needs -- someone sufficiently unenthralled to tell him when he has worked one pedal on the organ too much? If so, Obama should be told: Enough, already, with the we-are-who-we-have-been-waiting-for rhetorical cotton candy that elevates narcissism to a political philosophy." -- George Will
"When one side sees their own country as the problem, and the other side sees their own country as the solution, somebody tell me where you compromise with that?" -- Rush Limbaugh
"Any news account, biography or political history of the twentieth Century that talks about who ‘won' the Cold War -- a complicated historical reality for sure -- and does not include [Alexander] Solzhenitsyn with Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II is not only incomplete but wrong. Solzhenitsyn was the inside man." -- John Couretas
"Most criticism of John McCain's decision to follow the Bush administration's lead and embrace offshore drilling as the answer to high gas prices has focused on the accusation that it's junk economics -- which it is." -- former Enron advisor Paul Krugman, who knows a bit about junk economics, in The New York Times
"It seems like that Obama should be miles ahead of McCain when you consider the political climate. Americans can no longer stand President Bush or the Republican Party or the war in Iraq, and, of course, there's the deteriorating economy... Obama has run a pretty flawless campaign..." -- CNN's unbiased Jack Cafferty
"[O]ne big question for Obama now is how long can he continue to take the high road with McCain increasingly on the attack?" -- CBS's Chip Reid
"The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir... It's driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches -- a man who obviously does not know his place. Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this -- the sole reason -- is that he is black." -- New York Times columnist Bob Herbert
"[O]rganizations like the NRA... are trying to increase deaths by gun in this country." -- MSNBC's Keith Olberman
"There aren't a lot of role models for us in the world, or people we can look up to. People who are not afraid to stick their neck out, people who are not afraid to stand up for things and be unpopular, to go against the grain, think outside the box. And we need, and I need, Michael Moore in my life." -- Madonna
"[The vice president] not an independent position, to put it mildly. I would rather see [Hillary] as the president of the Senate." -- Gloria Steinem on why Hillary should not take the VP slot on Obama's ticket -- not knowing that the vice president is the president of the Senate
"It doesn't seem to occur to Obama that the oil companies would pass the "windfall profits tax" on to consumers. What a great plan: You get relief from $4-a-gallon gas, and the only downside is $5- or $6-a-gallon gas!" -- James Taranto
"President Bush urged Congress to pass offshore drilling, with the vast majority of the nation behind him. We aren't about to change our lifestyles. The day before, Detroit introduced a six-hundred-horsepower Corvette which runs on ground-up Priuses." -- Argus Hamilton
"The exclamation of a journalist at the UNITY minority news media gathering this weekend sums up the star-struck reverence that fuels the Obama phenomenon: ‘He touched me!' And yet, he's sooo ‘down to earth.' Hurtling toward a government of the stupid, by the stupid, for the stupid we go." -- Michelle Malkin
"In McCain's universe, the planets rotate around the sun in a predictable pattern. In Obama's universe, he is the sun." -- Kathleen Parker
"In a speech [recently], Barack Obama said he's distantly related to the famous 19th century gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok. After hearing this, John McCain said, ‘Big deal, I went to high school with him'." -- Conan O'Brien
"Barack Obama may still pick a woman for VP, but not Hillary Clinton. Yeah. Well today, a top Hillary Clinton supporter named Lanny Davis said it was "inconceivable" that Obama would pick another woman over Hillary, to which Bill said, "It's not that inconceivable." ... Yeah that's the big talk, they say Barack Obama could decide to go with another woman. See that's what killed John Edwards' chances of being VP -- he decided to go with another woman." -- Jay Leno
web posted August 4, 2008
"Obama has benefited from a week of good images. But substantively, optimism without reality isn't eloquence. It's just Disney." -- New York Times columnist David Brooks
"What, what do you make of this? Let's take another bite here because it was quite a speech. You have to judge for yourself but the speech had its thrill factor, certainly once again. Here he was." -- MSNBC's Chris Matthews
"[Obama] doesn't have to equal McCain in [foreign policy and national security issues], he just has to make voters seem like he's okay, he knows what he's talking about." -- CBS's Jeff Greenfield
"So the point that I was making at the time was that the political dynamic [in Iraq] was the driving force between that sectarian violence. And we could try to keep a lid on it, but if these underlining dynamic continued to bubble up and explode the way they were, then we would be in a difficult situation. I am glad that in fact those political dynamic shifted at the same time that our troops did outstanding work." -- Barack Obama on the surge
"Why can't Obama bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics, including this page, thought it would? What does that stubbornness say about the kind of president he'd be?" -- USA Today
"I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions." -- Barack Obama to House members
"Let us... answer our destiny and remake the world once again." -- Barack Obama in Berlin
"Many of the crisises [sic] that we face are the, uh, a direct result of putting off tough decisions for too many years." -- Barack Obama
"Throughout our history, America's confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world." -- Barack Obama
"I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet. I will not have this [energy] debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy. I respect the office that I hold. And when you win the election, you win the majority, and what is the power of the speaker? To set the agenda, the power of recognition, and I am not giving the gavel away to anyone." -- Nancy Pelosi, who refuses to allow offshore drilling
"What is amazing this year is how many people have bought the fundamentally childish notion that, if you don't like the way things are going, the answer is to write a blank check for generic ‘change,' empowering someone chosen not on the basis of any track record but on the basis of his skill with words." -- Thomas Sowell
"Barack Obama concedes that America's troops have contributed to improvements on the ground in Iraq, but he still stands by his vote against the surge. Why not just admit that he was wrong?... Obama has fallen to pride in part because he has bought his own myth. By staking his future on a past of supernatural vision, he has made it difficult to admit human fault. The magic isn't working anymore. And Obama, the visionary one, can't even see what everyone else sees: He was wrong." -- Kathleen Parker
"So Senator Obama and his campaign decided that it would be inappropriate to visit wounded soldiers in Germany while touring Europe as a candidate for the presidency. Senator McCain hit this one right on the head: it is never inappropriate to visit our wounded men and women in uniform." -- Bobby Eberle
"Barack Obama represents an obnoxiously elitist attitude that reeks of paternalistic government..." -- Kathryn Lopez
"Sen. Obama owes it to the public to let us know how much of our hard-earned money he, in his wisdom, believes we have a moral obligation to give away to poor people around the world -- and how much of our money that he has a moral obligation to extract from our wages forcefully, through federal taxation." -- Tony Blankley
"The time may be coming when our lunatic environmental policies are swept away by a rising tide of common sense." -- Michael Barone
"I think in general [Barack Obama has] shown people he's not a left-wing ideologue. If anything, he's center, even center-right, on foreign policy issues in the way he was talking on this trip." -- Fred Kempe, President of the Atlantic Council of the United States
"If [Obama] picks Hillary he gets her 18 million supporters and we would win in a cakewalk and control the White House for 16 years." -- former DNC chief Terry McAuliffe
From the Moonbat files: "You've ruled against impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney, and now Kucinich is trying to pass that. Why do you, why do you insist on not impeaching these people so that the world and America can really see the crimes that they've committed?" -- Joy Behar of "The View" to Nancy Pelosi
"Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted ‘present' nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself." -- Charles Krauthammer
"Barack Obama wrote a prayer to God which he placed in Jerusalem's Wailing Wall last week. The prayer note was retrieved by a seminary student and published in an Israeli newspaper. Everybody in Israel wanted to know if it was addressed, ‘Dear Dad'." -- Argus Hamilton
"Barack Obama finally played the Palace, or at least the Tiergarten, and he left a lot of promises in his wake. He'll get Christians, Muslims and Jews to hit the sawdust trail together, to repent their sins and suspicions and remake the world. He'll tear down walls between nations, between races, tribes and immigrants; between East and West, between the haves and the have-nots. And with his spare change he'll buy the world a Coke." -- Wesley Pruden
"Obama was in Germany [last week], and 200,000 people showed up. There was so many Germans shouting and screaming that France surrendered just in case." -- Craig Ferguson
"The National Enquirer caught former presidential candidate John Edwards sneaking out of his girlfriend's hotel room at the 2:40 in the morning. See, Edwards got caught ‘cause the reporters were there waiting for him...[I]f Edwards didn't want to get caught, he should have met this woman at the hotel where John McCain was staying. There are no reporters. ... If this story turns out to be true, there go his chances at becoming vice president. He could still be governor of New York." -- Jay Leno