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

web posted October 22, 2012

"The last time Mitt Romney and Barack Obama debated, the press was itching to write the Romney Comeback story. Now they're itching to write the Obama Comeback story. This matters because people tend to see what they expect to see and have trouble seeing the unexpected even when it unfolds before their eyes." --columnist Peggy Noonan

"I found this debate deeply frustrating and unedifying. I thought the questions, prescreened by Candy Crowley, were for the most part indistinguishable from questions the Obama campaign might as well have drafted for her. Nearly every one was asked from a fundamentally liberal premise. Why on earth this debate was handed to undecided voters in a state where Obama is leading by nearly 30 points is beyond me. These weren't undecided voters; they were at best dyspeptic Democrats." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

"The biggest losers? The pathetic staged town-hall format: The questions are preselected and the questioners not spontaneous and often clumsy. They seemed unenthusiastic and their presence impeded a fuller exchange of views. Ms. Crowley was out of bounds by selectively attempting to offer real-time fact-checking -- endorsed by Obama ('Say that a little louder, Candy!') -- and fact-checking, no less, that was not quite factual. ... Final verdict: Again, I think polls and post-debate focus and reflection will suggest Romney did better than the immediate consensus of a draw." --historian Victor Davis Hanson

"Candy Crowley, the CNN moderator in charge of tonight's debate, covered for President Obama by endorsing his false narrative of the killings in Libya. She stepped out of the role of moderator to play an alleged 'fact-checker.' She corrected Mitt Romney's statement that Obama had referred to the Libyan attacks as a reaction to an anti-Muslim video, rather than a terrorist attack. Obama allowed his administration to claim that for days afterwards. He did refer obliquely to 'acts of terror' but also allowed the myth of the anti-video demonstrations to be perpetuated. Crowley's intervention will leave an incomplete and false impression with many debate viewers. The time for 'fact-checking' is after a debate, not during it. Previous debate moderators knew better." --columnist John Fund

"I mean, we are seeing right now that we are in the midst of a huge recovery. Right? Because of what this president has done -- pulled this economy from the brink of collapse when we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. Now were gaining every -- throughout most of his presidency, we've been adding jobs to this economy because of what he's been doing." --Michelle Obama

"You know, Barack doesn't have a big ego. You see this in, you know, how he leads the country. I mean, he is very open to other people's opinions. And he's always willing to compromise and he's always, always listening. So that would kind of be the last thing that I would think of when I talk about my husband is big ego." --Michelle Obama

"President Obama vowed to work with Republicans to solve the country's problems if he's given a second term. It's not a reflexive action. He said compromise has become a dirty word in Washington and then he told the Republicans to go compromise themselves." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"Obama did fine, as long as people remember that Romney is the incumbent." --iowahawkblog

"Is Obama suggesting he'll revive the 'assault weapons' ban news? Didn't do wonders for Clinton, and we're even more pro-gun now." --humorist Frank J. Fleming

web posted October 15, 2012

"Romney is finally succeeding in setting himself apart from Obama and giving voters a sense of something to look forward to with a Romney presidency. ... Moreover, Romney would unabashedly move to restore U.S. international leadership, saying our allies crave it and the world needs it. He sent a very clear signal that ... the days of deference to international organizations and the ideologies and goals of others would be over. The battle lines are clear." --columnist Keith Koffler

"A look at the president's career shows he has never stayed in a job four years without looking to move on to something better. ... Now Obama has been president for nearly four years. ... And his entire career suggests that by now he should be angling for a bigger, better job. The problem is, there isn't such a position -- and a second term in the same old job doesn't count. The chief benefit of winning re-election to a second term might simply be to avoid being labeled a loser, to avoid joining Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush as presidents who couldn't win a second time." --The Washington Examiner's Byron York

"Unlike Mitt, I loathe Sesame Street. It bears primary responsibility for what the Canadian blogger Binky calls the de-monsterization of childhood -- the idea that there are no evil monsters out there at the edges of the map, just shaggy creatures who look a little funny and can sometimes be a bit grouchy about it because people prejudge them until they learn to celebrate diversity and help Cranky the Friendly Monster go recycling. That is not unrelated to the infantilization of our society. Marinate three generations of Americans in that pabulum, and it's no surprise you wind up with unprotected diplomats dragged to their deaths from their 'safe house' in Benghazi." --columnist Mark Steyn

"The Obama campaign has put out a series of creepy e-cards. One incredibly irresponsible one encourages young female students to write home to their parents: 'Dear Mom, Mitt Romney says he would repeal the Affordable Care Act. So here's a quick question: Can I borrow $18,000 to help pay for my birth control?' The Family Research Center writes that, 'If your daughter needs $18,000 worth of birth control, you have far more serious issues to deal with than the cost.' At that level of promiscuity, as encouraged by the Obama administration, it is not only 'uncool,' it is creepy. What's next, e-cards detailing how to deal with the aftermath of venereal disease and shattered self-respect? Immaturity + creepy = 51-year-old Obama and his Liberal pals running your college student's sex life." --columnist Sharon Sebastian

"The classic blowhard is the loud blusterer, who always retells his own arguments and run-ins from the perspective of his own genius, thereby offering the embarrassing proof that he regrets just how poorly he was outfoxed and outargued without a script." --historian Victor Davis Hanson

"This country does not just succeed when just a few are doing well at the top. It succeeds when the middle class gets bigger. Our economy does not grow from the top down, it grows from the middle-out. We don't believe that anybody is entitled to success in this country. But we do believe in opportunity. We believe in a country where hard work pays off and responsibilities are rewarded and everybody is getting a fair shot and everybody's doing their fair share and everybody's playing by the same rules." --Barack Obama, emphasis added

"[O]n Friday, we learned that the unemployment rate is now at its lowest level since I took office. More Americans are entering the workforce. More Americans are getting jobs." --Barack Obama (Actually, the only reason the unemployment rate is so low is that so many Americans are leaving the workforce.)

"We still have a lot of work to do, but w/unemployment dropping below 8% to the lowest level in 4 years, our economy's on the right track. There are still far too many people looking for work, but the policies advanced by Pres. Obama & Democrats are helping move our economy fwd. We could move faster if Republicans dropped obstruction, yet Sen. McConnell said his 'single most important' goal was defeating Pres. Obama. It's time for Republicans to put politics aside, and put the middle class first." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in a series of tweets

"We've come too far to turn back now." --Barack Obama

"[W]e've made too much progress to return to the policies that led to the crisis in the first place. I can't allow that to happen, I won't allow that to happen, and that is why I'm running for a second term as president of the United States." --Barack Obama

"Now, four years ago, I made a few commitments to you. I told you I'd end the war in Iraq, and I did. I said I'd end the war in Afghanistan, and we are. I said we'd refocus on the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 -- and today, al-Qa'ida is on its heels and Osama bin Laden is no more." --Barack Obama, who must have missed the memo that al-Qa'ida attacked three of our embassies, including the one in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11

"[Mitt Romney] said he'd bring down our deficit by going after what has been the biggest driver of our debt and deficits over the last decade -- public television, PBS. You didn't know this, but for all you moms and kids out there, you should have confidence that finally somebody is cracking down on Big Bird." --Barack Obama

"If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things." --Barack Obama in 2008

"The U.S. military is preparing to retaliate for the Libyan attack. But, even if [Ambassador] Stevens is avenged, will the president get the credit he deserves if his acolytes have left the impression that they're willing to rewrite the story for political advantage?" --New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd

"I think that there were so many lies coming across that stage [during the debate], and so many inaccuracies, it was hard for the president to comprehend it and decide which one he wanted to attack first. ... He has not had as many debates as Mitt Romney. Romney knows where President Obama is weak. ... He was the guy in the board room, he was the corporate shark, he knew how to get this audience done and he was going to run over everybody." --MSNBC's Ed Schultz

"You do have to step back and understand that Mitt Romney has spent, literally, two months, almost every night, rehearsing every answer for this very moment. He practiced hours and hours and hours, did multiple -- literally, double-digit rehearsals -- to be able to practice for this moment. The president had to be the president, and had to be a candidate, and so he didn't have nearly as much prep time." --Politico editor Jim VandeHei

"First of all, I think that Twitter and the whole blogosphere thing made that the first presidential debate that was scored minute by minute. And it drove the consensus that exists today, that -- 'Oh my gosh, Obama was crushed, Obama was devastated.' You know this is such hokum. It was a social media phenomenon." --Fox News contributor Juan Williams

"The president showed up [at last week's debate] with the intent of answering questions and having a discussion, an honest discussion of where we will go as a country, and Romney showed up to deliver a performance, and he delivered a very good performance. It was completely un-rooted in fact, it was completely un-rooted in the positions he's taken before and he spent 90 minutes trying to undo two years of campaigning on that stage, but he did it very well." --Obama adviser David Axelrod

"I rarely step foot in the West Wing. In fact, people are shocked when they see me there. I rarely walk in that office because the truth is, [Obama's] got so many wonderful advisers. He's got a phenomenal cabinet. He's got people who are in the trenches on these issues every single day, and I'm kind of stepping in and out, and I've got my own set of issues." --Michelle Obama

"The Venezuelan National Elections Commission has declared that President Hugo Chavez won reelection, I believe roughly 54 to 45 percent, with 90 percent reporting. We congratulate the Venezuelan people on the high level of participation, as well as on what was a relatively peaceful election process." --White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

"If we were to pursue a tax on something like guns and ammo, clearly that wouldn't be popular with the [gun lobby] out there, and it may not generate $50 million, but ... it is consistent with our commitment to pursuing violence reduction in the city and in the county." --Kurt Summers, chief of staff to Cook County (Chicago) Board President Toni Preckwinkle

"What people don't understand is sometimes we have to step outside the boundaries of the Constitution to get things done. Laws are made to protect corporations and we need laws that protect Mother Earth." --envirofascist Paula Hern

"Harry Reid announced plans to try to legalize online poker nationally. The game is a valuable educational tool. Poker teaches children to keep a straight face and act confident when all you're holding is your parents' mortgage and the national debt." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"Vice President Joe Biden said that the middle class has been 'buried' for the last four years. So THAT'S what Obama meant by 'shovel-ready jobs.'" --Fred Thompson

"Yesterday I went to see Taken 2, one of those films in which Liam Neeson spends 90 minutes gunning down half the inhabitants of a foreign city. Funniest line: 'Go to the US Embassy. You'll be safe there.'" --columnist Mark Steyn

"They're saying close to 60 million people may have watched the debate. In fact, the only person who didn't tune in was President Obama. ... President Obama talked ... about finding other sources of energy for the future. Other sources? He couldn't muster up enough energy for the 90-minute debate!" --comedian Jay Leno

"I guess Obama told himself before the debate, 'This should be easy ... unless he brings up how I was president the past four years.'" --humorist Frank J. Fleming

"On nearly every specific issue on which Mr. Biden attacked, he was demonstrably wrong. The Administration's Medicare actuary really does say that 15% of hospitals will take on operating deficits as a result of ObamaCare's cuts in payments to Medicare providers. The American Enterprise Institute study doesn't say that Mr. Romney's plan will raise taxes on the middle class, and Mr. Ryan's Medicare plan doesn't raise costs for seniors by $6,400. Mr. Biden never even tried to offer a second-term agenda. But this 90 minutes wasn't about an exchange of ideas or a debate over policies. It was a Democratic show of contempt for the opposition, an attempt to claim by repetitive assertion that Messrs. Ryan and Romney are radicals who want to destroy 'the middle class.' Mr. Ryan's cool under assault was a visual rebuttal of that claim, and we certainly know who looked more presidential." --The Wall Street Journal

web posted October 8, 2012

"[A]BC, CBS and NBC have yet to report the Spanish-language network's findings. ... The blackout on ABC's broadcasts is particularly confounding since they have an excerpt from Univision's September 30 report on ABC's official Web site. The refusal by ABC, CBS or NBC to report the findings is remarkable since the Univision report not only contains politically explosive information to a sitting administration at the height of the election season but also compelling human tragedy. ... The lack of coverage by the Big Three ... networks continues their trend of mostly ignoring major events in the scandal that has led to calls for Attorney General Eric Holder's resignation." --Newsbuster's Geoffrey Dickens

"Some media outlets are painting [Tuesday's] Pennsylvania court decision on the state's new voter-ID law as a win for opponents of the legislation, including the NAACP and the League of Women Voters. ... Indeed, once again, most of the law was upheld. The judge ordered that voters without ID still be allowed to vote in the upcoming election because, from the evidence it reviewed, it didn't look like the new ID requirement could be fully implemented before the election. ... But the court issued no permanent injunction. Today's preliminary injunction, the judge specified, 'is limited to the upcoming election.' ... So, yes, [Tuesday's] ruling was a temporary victory for the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, in the context of this election. But they completely failed in their main goal of getting a permanent injunction that would declare the voter-ID law unconstitutional." --Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spakosky

"Mitt Romney's main advantage in his first debate with President Obama on Wednesday may be that the president will be speaking without a teleprompter. His second advantage is the president's record and how he has failed to fulfill many of his promises. While the president will probably recycle his class warfare themes, Romney should focus on the president's domestic failures and on Republican initiatives that have worked in the past. We Americans didn't just crawl out of a cave. There is history. ... True patriotism flows from liberty, not government dependency. We the people are America. Government isn't America. ... How important are these debates? The country's survival rides on them." --columnist Cal Thomas

"Mitt Romney must use the debates to spotlight President Obama's disastrous record -- with no mercy. ... Romney mustn't dare understate his case; he cannot pull any punches in describing the gravity of our national predicament and in drawing the sharpest contrast between his agenda and Obama's record and plans for the next four years. I am convinced that for a number of reasons, far too many Americans don't realize how damaging Obama's policies have been and how dangerous his continued presidency would be for the future of this nation. Romney must not let Obama get away with claiming that he and other Republicans don't care about minorities or the poor -- and explain that his pro-growth message is for all Americans, irrespective of race, gender or one's income level." --columnist David Limbaugh

"[T]he middle class has been buried the last four years. How in [the] Lord's name can [Republicans] justify raising their taxes with these tax cuts?" --Joe Biden, who seems to forget both who has been president the last four years, and that Romney doesn't plan to raise taxes, but rather as even Biden slipped, plans to cut them

"Governor Romney, he's a good debater. I'm just okay." --Barack Obama

"[B]asically they're keeping me indoors all the time. It's a drag. They're making me do my homework." --Barack Obama on his preparation for tonight's debate

"Top-down economics never works. The country doesn't succeed when only the rich get richer. We succeed when the middle-class gets bigger; when more people have a chance to get ahead; [when] more people have a chance to live up to their God-given potential. Look, I don't believe we can get very far with leaders who write off half the nation as a bunch of victims who never take responsibility for their own lives." --Barack Obama

"How did we get this debt? Ladies and gentlemen, [Republicans] put two wars on a credit card. ... Two, they voted for a new entitlement program without paying one penny for it, and that was clear. Number 3, they added another trillion dollars in the tax cut for the very wealthy, so what's the result? ... The result was by the time the reins got turned back over to Barack and me, they had doubled the national debt in eight years" --Joe Biden repeating his boss's lies

"I know the Obama campaign is ready to act on this. But I realized that there are two important federal laws, the Voting Rights Act, passed in the 60s, [and] the Voter Registration Act passed in the 90s, that have criminal and civil penalties for people who try to intimidate a voter. ... [A]nyone in this country who feels they're being intimidated can call their nearest FBI office because it is a federal offense to harass someone, to intimidate someone. Think about all the people that worked so hard and struggled and went to prison and put their life on the line for the right to vote." --Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) who we don't recall making a peep when the Black Panthers intimidated Philadelphia voters and the Justice Department swept it under the rug

"Voter suppression efforts continue to impact transgender Americans. They don't look like what their photo IDs are. So if they are self-presenting in front of an election official and they have an ID that says male or female and they're sort of gender self-presenting in a non-conforming way, of course you end up with the possibility of shame or embarrassment or not being believed to be who you are." --MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry

"If you were to somehow beat the first African-American president, what would you say to the black community to assure them that you would be their president also?" --CNN'S Jim Acosta to Romney

"Will Romney Reach out to Racists in Debates?" --article in The Root, a publication owned by The Washington Post

"[O]n the issue of Libya, actually, I'm not sure that who said what, when, and when the intelligence came out, as, you know, David Plouffe was -- kept talking about the intelligence community and what they knew about Libya, I'm not sure that that's going to be a huge issue for voters in the course of this election. It feels to me like, you know, a short-term issue in terms of American voters." --BBC's Katty Kay pitifully covering for the White House's bungling of the embassy attacks and murders

"Many Republicans see bias lurking in every live shot, but the growing hegemony of conservative voices makes manufacturing a partisan conspiracy a practical impossibility. ... It's hard to picture conservatives as disenfranchised in the fight for attention from the news media, not after a campaign season in which the audition for the Republican nomination seemed to include some combination of hosting and making guest appearances on Fox News." --New York Times columnist David Carr

"In fact, we're taking credit for the 5.1 million private-sector jobs that have been created over the past four years despite being handed the worst economy since the Great Depression. We're taking credit for the million jobs that were protected under the president's efforts to save the auto industry and the increase in manufacturing jobs for the first time in decades. We're not blaming our predecessor by any means, but we don't think we should return to the same policies that crashed the economy." --Obama campaign aid Stephanie Cutter, who in August was bogusly bragging about 4.5 million jobs created -- we didn't know September was so epic!

"We know that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan unapologetically support an extreme budget plan that would end Medicare as we know it and turn it into a voucher program, shred the health care safety net that exists for our seniors and increase their premiums, your premiums, by more than $6,300 a year. That is unacceptable." --DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) again making a debunked claim

"I hope this doesn't harm Obama, but if I was from the United States, I'd vote for Obama. Obama is a good guy. ... I think that if Obama was from Barlovento or some Caracas neighborhood, he'd vote for Chavez." --Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who once called President George W. Bush the "devil" and a "drunk"

"[E]very dead gay kid is a victory for the Family Research Council. ... Tony Perkins sits on a pile of dead gay kids every day when he goes to work -- and he calls himself a Christian. I don't understand how real Christians let that little f--ker get away with that." --homosexual activist Dan Savage

"[It's] [e]asy to see how Bush would be caught off-guard by the 9-11-01 attack. But what kind of maroon gets caught off-guard by 9-11-12 attacks?" --columnist Ann Coulter

"Barack Obama wakes up every morning and thinks about Barack Obama." --former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich

"Mitt Romney was accused by Democrats of upping his tax payments by not subtracting all his charity deductions. Imagine the opposition's fury. Democrats say Mitt gave four million dollars to charity last year and all that money could have gone to helping the needy." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"In Florida, school officials in Marion County are considering bringing the practice of paddling back. If that's not effective, they could always threaten to let Michelle Obama write their lunch menu." --Fred Thompson

"A new survey out today shows how much time we waste every day in our lives. For example, we waste seven minutes in line every time we go to get coffee, 28 minutes getting through airport security, four years waiting for Obama to do something about the economy." --comedian Jay Leno

"Why wouldn't we eliminate tax breaks for corporate jets? My attitude is, if you got a corporate jet, you can probably afford to pay full freight, not get a special break for it." --Barack Obama, who flies free

"You know the phrase they always use? 'Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars.' Guess what? Yes, we do, in one regard: We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn't have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super wealthy. That's not a tax raiser. That's called fairness where I come from." --Joe Biden once again helping the cause

"[Y]ou said you get a deduction for taking a plant overseas. Look, I've been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you're talking about. I maybe need to get a new accountant." --Mitt Romney

"You put $90 billion ... into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tester and Ener1. I mean, I had a friend who said you don't just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers." --Mitt Romney

"Jim, I -- you may want to move on to another topic..." --Barack Obama

"They're still hosing down the stage, washing all the blood off of it. I don't know if you watched the debate [Wednesday] night, but it was horrific. For two hours, we watched a rich, privileged white man savagely beat and humiliate a black man as an audience of millions cheered on. It's hard even to contemplate. ... Who am I kidding... THAT WAS AWESOME!!! ... We've been waiting forever for someone to smack that little arrogant twerp Obama around. And who can we thank for that lovely massacre? The MSM, for keeping Obama so sheltered he had no idea how to defend his horrible record." --humorist Frank J. Fleming

web posted October 1, 2012

"[Obama's] objective between now and November is that nothing happens in the world, as if he can stop it -- ignore the Middle East, ignore the Iranian problem, ignore the debt ceiling and the cliff. Ignore everything so you can get over the finish line and then expect the world to respond to us." --columnist Charles Krauthammer

"[P]resident Obama lives in a world of words. His presidency is marked by his worship of his own rhetoric; he's said repeatedly that his worst mistake as president is a failure to communicate with the American people, as though his actions are secondary to his mellifluous statements. Obama believes that words drove Muslims to murder our ambassador in Libya, storm our embassy in Tunisia and burn American flags in Cairo. He thinks that words and actions can be equated. ... He believes in a restricted vision of free speech, a politically correct vision. That's not free speech at all. It's tyranny." --columnist Ben Shapiro

"We must ... remember that taxes are not meant for the government to milk as much income from taxpayers as possible to pay its gigantic bills. The level of taxes that a government aspires to collect should have some connection to the necessary goods and services it has to provide to individuals. And by necessary, I don't mean all the spending promised to every possible interest group out there. We shouldn't be having a conversation about taxes, and whether someone pays enough or too much, without also considering what services should be provided by the government. As we stand now, the government is overreaching and overspending and it's no surprise that it doesn't have enough revenue to pay for it all." --columnist Veronique de Rugy

"Our media doesn't just report 'news' unfavorable to Romney. They obsess over it; complete with repetitive and thoroughly useless incantations that Romney's campaign is hopeless. ... I will wager a million dollars that Barack Obama has held a meeting with his major donors where he has told them his job is not to worry about the 47 percent of greedy right-wing rich Republican voters who won't vote for him. It's the way politicians talk to donors in private. ... This Romney tape was recorded in May, but the activists who recorded it obviously wanted to delay its release until the fall campaign. ... We know by now that to these 'news' manufacturers, nothing can be a 'big story' unless it makes Obama look good and helps him win a second term." --Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell

"The bigger the state, the smaller the citizen. Every Republican candidate should be repeating that truth in every speech. Why? Because the American experiment is on trial this November: Are we to remain the heirs of the American Revolution or become heirs to the French Revolution? Do we want to take care of ourselves, our families, and our communities -- or do we want, as in Europe, the government to do so? Is it moral or compassionate to saddle our children and grandchildren with a crippling national debt? Is it moral or compassionate to keep printing dollars, which both devalues the savings of all Americans and imposes a tax on all Americans, especially on the poorest? These are the questions Romney must pose every day and in many of his ads. Only when Americans have to answer these questions will a sufficient number of them vote Republican this November." --columnist Dennis Prager

"I have conversations with Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu all the time. And I understand and share [his] insistence that Iran should not obtain a nuclear weapon, because it would threaten us, it would threaten Israel, and it would threaten the world and kick off a nuclear arms race. ... When it comes to our national security decisions -- any pressure that I feel is simply to do what's right for the American people. And I am going to block out any noise that's out there." --Barack Obama, responding to whether he feels "pressure" from Netanyahu

"Oh I think that, you know, as president I bear responsibility for everything -- to some degree." --Barack Obama

"The information released ... by Mitt Romney reveals he manipulated one of the only two [years] of tax returns he's seen fit to show the country. That raises the question: What else in those returns has Romney manipulated? ... [Romney] says he wants to be president for only half the people but he acts like he only cares for the top two percent." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

"[T]he Republican Party has done Romney no favors by forcing him so far to the right that he may not be able to scramble back by November 6th." --former ABC news anchor Charles Gibson

"President Obama's time in office ... has given rise to a new approach. Republicans decided to do all they could to make the president unsuccessful. Their not-so-subliminal message has been: We will make the country ungovernable unless you hand us every bit of legislative, executive and judicial power so we can do what we want." --Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, complaining about the very approach Democrats actually took

"If Obama wins, to put it bluntly, he will become the Democrats' Reagan. The narrative writes itself. He will emerge as an iconic figure who struggled through a recession and a terrorized world, reshaping the economy within it, passing universal health care, strafing the ranks of al -Qaeda, presiding over a civil-rights revolution, and then enjoying the fruits of the recovery." --columnist Andrew Sullivan

"When your guy left town, Dubya -- who nobody asked him to come back by the way at the Republican convention -- unemployment was well past 10 percent and skyrocketing." --MSNBC's Christ Matthews to talk-show radio host Roger Hedgecock (Unemployment was just over 7 percent when Bush left office.)

"There are rich people everywhere. And yet they do not contribute to the growth of their own countries. They don't invest in public schools, in public hospitals, in other kinds of development internally." --Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, preaching to the UN about "collecting taxes in an equitable manner," by which she means soaking the "rich"

"[Women are] not really concerned about what's happened over the last four years, they really want to know what's going to happen in the next four years." --Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter implying that all women just want free contraception and abortion

"[Last week] began with Governor Romney basically slandering 47 percent of America saying that they were, you know, hooked on dependency, didn't pay their taxes, and so on. And at the end of the week we saw him manipulating his own tax returns to try and plump up his portion of taxes to 14 percent." --Obama adviser David Axelrod

"No one either intentionally or unintentionally misled anyone involved in this [explanation about attacks in Benghazi, Libya]. No one wants to get to the bottom of this more than we do." --Obama adviser Robert Gibbs

"Y'all better vote for f-----g Obama, OK? For better or for worse, we have a black Muslim in the White House." --Madonna

"As part of the strategy for the upcoming presidential debates, the Obama campaign is attempting to lower expectations. And believe [me], if there's one thing that President Obama is good at lately, it's lowering expectations." --comedian Jay Leno

"The Middle East is in chaos, Americans are murdered, and the economy continues to crumble, and Obama is going on The View after his fun time with Letterman. You ever get this feeling that the problems facing America just aren't that interesting to Obama?" --humorist Frank J. Fleming

"Democrats need to change their party mascot from the donkey to the squirrel. They divert the media's and the electorate's short attention spans with fleeting, fuzzy objects -- like the main canine character in the animated Pixar movie 'Up,' who was easily distracted from his main thoughts and serious duties by every last little moving trifle." --columnist Michelle Malkin

"U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice claimed the attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya was a spontaneous reaction to a video. The protesters just happened to be carrying their rocket launchers on September 11th when they felt insulted over a video released on YouTube in June. That's what the president told Rice, and as we know, rice goes with anything." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"Intelligence sources now say the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi involved a former Gitmo detainee. Great. And these are the only illegals Obama wants to ship out of the country." --Fred Thompson

"My statement to the United Nations would have been, 'The future does not belong to those who attack our Embassies and Consulates and kill our Ambassadors. The Angel of Death in the form of an American Bald Eagle will visit you and wreak havoc and destruction upon your existence.'" --Rep. Allen West (R-FL)

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