Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The Foundation“Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.” –Samuel Adams
The Demo-gogues
Former Rep. Eric Massa
Political bathhouse: “I was in the congressional gym, and I went into the showers which, by the way, I for the life of me can’t figure out why they took all the shower curtains off the shower stalls in the congressional shower. The last thing I want to look at is my fellow colleagues naked, but they don’t have shower curtains down in the gym, and I’m sitting there showering naked as a jaybird and here comes Rahm Emanuel not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest yelling at me because I wasn’t going to vote for the president’s budget. Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?” –former Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), who is accused of sexually harassing male staffers and resigned Monday
More accusations: “Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil’s spawn. He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive.” –Eric Massa
Changing the tune: “I wasn’t forced out. I forced myself out.” –Massa on Tuesday night
Non Compos Mentis: “[W]e have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.” –House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), confirming that too much Botox can kill brain cells …
Tell a lie often enough: “Health insurance reform is about jobs. This legislation alone will create 4 million jobs.” –Pelosi, repeating her lie from the summit
Changing the climate: “What we have to do is go on the offensive. [The science on climate change] has been maligned and misinterpreted, and we need to fight back… [P]eople [need to] stop being moved by these talk show [hosts] and start looking for the facts themselves.” –Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)
It’s all about jobs: “What we are talking about is a jobs bill. It is not a climate bill. It is a jobs bill, and it is a clean air bill. It is a national security, energy independence bill.” –John Kerry on cap-n-tax
“[E]very decision, every debate, no matter how important it is, with the same question: ‘What does this mean for the next election? What does it mean for your poll numbers? Is this good for the Democrats or good for the Republicans? Who won the news cycle?’ That’s just how Washington is. They can’t help it. They’re obsessed with the sport of politics.” –Barack Obama, who isn’t a bit different
“Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good.” –Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (See the video.)
Editorial Exegesis“The strange case of New York Democrat Eric Massa keeps getting stranger. Rep. Massa resigned last week under a cloud of ethics charges, but he now claims he was pushed out for opposing health care reform. Massa claims he’s being investigated by the House Ethics Committee on trumped-up charges that he sexually harassed a male aide. If true, it shows the White House and Congress are indeed being run the ‘Chicago Way’ — with bluster, threats and even physical intimidation. Wasn’t this administration supposed to be different? Let’s be clear: We don’t know for sure the White House did anything illegal. But if any of Massa’s claims is true, it speaks volumes about the thuggery of an administration desperately trying to pass its wildly unpopular health care bill. For his part, Massa says Obama aide Rahm Emanuel went ballistic when he dared to vote against ObamaCare last November. With health care hanging by a string, Emanuel and the House leadership bullied him into resigning last Wednesday, Massa now claims. ‘Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill,’ the one-term congressman told radio station WKPQ Sunday. ‘And this administration and this House leadership have said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. And now they’ve gotten rid of me, and it will pass. You connect the dots.’ … White House and House Democratic leaders have all issued denials. So, for now, the political row has a ‘he said-she said’ quality. But if what Massa says is even partly true, and it certainly seems plausible, this is gangsta politics, Chicago-style — a case of political bullies making an example of someone to get others to fall into line. Al Capone would be proud.” –Investor’s Business Daily
Upright
“The more we come to rely on government, the fewer freedoms we will enjoy. Government will start dictating what we can own, eat and drive, how much of our money they will let us keep, how we run our businesses, how many — if any — guns we can own, and what we may and may not say. Oh, wait! They are already doing that. To preserve freedom we must fight for it.” –columnist Cal Thomas
“True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another.” –economist Walter E. Williams
“With their backs to the wall, Democratic leaders are preparing a complicated plan to pass their national health care bill. Standing in the way are Democrats who oppose the bill, whether on principle or out of fear that voting for a wildly unpopular measure will spell defeat for them in November. If you think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to let them off easy, allowing them to kill the party’s top policy priority in more than a generation — well, that’s not gonna happen. Democrats who are considering voting against the bill are about to experience arm-twisting, threats, and pressure like they’ve never experienced.” –columnist Byron York
“In my entire career, I have never been as confounded as I am over President Obama and the Democratic leadership’s obsession with a piece of legislation that not one major national poll has shown to be popular. … So I have to ask, why are the president and the leaders of Congress willing to see their entire party and a multitude of other policy proposals go down in flames over something that the public can’t stand? … Folks, this is nothing more than a power grab. It’s an effort to take one of the most essential elements of every person’s life — their health — and put it under the control of government.” –columnist Matt Towery
“The president cannot show us he is looking out for our interests and our future by forcing a quick, partisan vote on an issue that will impact not only this time but generations to come. This is especially true since he was so adamant in his opposition to using this very parliamentary measure in governance during his campaign. And he cannot show us that he is listening when polls show that only 35-40 percent of Americans support this bill.” –radio talk-show host Michael Reagan
DezinformatsiaDelusions from a parallel universe: “Campaign promises are about getting elected; once there, they are quickly forgotten. Courage is not a word you hear very often in discussions about politics. Not Barack Obama. Whether or not you support or even understand his health care plan — and the polls suggest that right now most Americans don’t — you must admit this: Obama is a man who does everything humanly possible to keep his promises. He promised health care reform, and he is risking his presidency to deliver it. If that’s not courage, what is?” –political commentator Susan Estrich (Try blind ideology.)
Oh no! “Now that we have finally arrived at the do-or-die moment for Obama’s signature issue, we face the alarming prospect that his presidency could be toast if he doesn’t make good on a year’s worth of false starts. And it won’t even be the opposition’s fault. If too many Democrats in the House defect, health care will be dead.” –New York Times columnist Frank Rich
Propaganda FAIL: “John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings.” –Christian Science Monitor staff writer Peter Grier (Oops, Bedell was a registered Democrat and an anti-Bush 9/11 “truther.”)
Rather racist: “One, part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama’s leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. ‘Listen he just hasn’t been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death.’ And a version of, ‘Listen he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate’ — this is what’s been used against him — ‘but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.’” –HDNet’s Dan Rather trying to put words in Republicans’ mouths
Newspulper Headlines:
Now All We Have Left Is Change: “Closure of Hope Plant to Cost 50-60 Jobs” –Associated Press
We Blame Global Warming: “Obama Turns Up Heat for Health Care Overhaul Plan” –Associated Press
Wide Ends, Poor Hardest Hit: “Obesity Hits New York’s Poor Neighborhoods Hardest” –Reuters
Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: “Subprime Mortgage Crisis Hits Whorehouses” –Human Events
Bottom Stories of the Day: “Gore Still Hot on His Doomsday Rhetoric” –Boston Globe
(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)
Village IdiotsYou don’t say: “I have thus far failed, and our world has thus fair failed to respond adequately to this crisis.” –Algore on his efforts to educate the world about climate change
Unsolicited advice: “I understand you may be looking to replace Rahm Emanuel as your chief of staff. I would like to humbly offer myself, yours truly, as his replacement. I will come to D.C. and clean up the mess that’s been created around you. I will work for $1 a year. I will help the Dems on Capitol Hill find their spines and I will teach them how to nonviolently beat the Republicans to a pulp. And I will help you get done what the American people sent you there to do.” –from an open letter to BO from crockumentarian Michael Moore
Useful idiot: “Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. … [T]ruly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.” –actor Sean Penn on his buddy Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan dictator (No wonder they get along so well!)
In need of remedial history: “Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?” –actor Tom Hanks promoting his upcoming HBO miniseries “The Pacific”
Somehow not comforting: “Believe me, if we were charting this administration as a political exercise, the first thing we would have done would not have been a massive recovery act, stabilizing the banks and helping to keep the auto companies from collapsing. Those would not even be the first hundred things he would want to do.” –White House adviser David Axelrod
Short Cuts“Nancy Pelosi, the speaker and leader of the San Francisco Democrats, says her members ‘are very excited about what comes next.’ For many of them, that’s ‘excited’ as in ‘hysterical.’” –Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden
“So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that ‘now is the hour when we must seize the moment,’ the same moment he’s been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats.” –columnist Mark Steyn
“President Obama met with ten House Democrats opposed to the health care bill. He did all he could to get their votes. He promised to campaign for them in their districts and when that didn’t work, he threatened to campaign for them in their districts.” –comedian Argus Hamilton
“These self-anointed intellectuals are people who think that those who believe in God and Jesus Christ, those who ‘cling to their guns and their religion,’ are a lower form of animal life, while they, themselves, have no problem whatever accepting Obama as a messiah and, in the past, deifying the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Let’s face it, when you kneel in a church, you’re accepting that there is something greater and wiser than yourself in the universe. When, on the other hand, you kneel to a left-wing politician, you’re merely emulating Monica Lewinsky.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky
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