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Lingua publica

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

web posted February 20, 2012

"Legend has it that prior to embarking on his mission to conquer the known world, Alexander the Great, who had not yet established his greatness, visited the oracle at Delphi seeking a good omen. ... When he finally found her, he forced her to accompany him to the temple. Upon arriving at the temple, in his eagerness to receive the oracle, he was literally shoving her down the ramp toward the crypt when she turned abruptly toward him and exclaimed, 'Boy, there's no resisting you.' With that, Alexander took his hands off her, stepped back and said, with great satisfaction, 'That's the only oracle I wanted to hear.' This is precisely the attitude that possesses President Obama." --columnist David Limbaugh

"The federal debt has increased by $4.47 trillion since President Barack Obama released his first federal budget on Feb. 26, 2009. That budget was entitled, 'A New Era of Responsibility.' On Feb. 26, 2009, as Obama released his budget for fiscal 2010, the national debt stood at $10.88 trillion.... At the close of business on Feb. 9, 2012, the national debt stood at $15.36 trillion.... The $4.47-trillion increase in the debt since Obama released his first budget is more than the national debt increased from President George Washington through President George H. W. Bush." --columnist Terence Jeffrey

"Over the weekend it was revealed that MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, the chief architect of ObamaCare, backtracked on the analysis he performed two years ago. He told officials in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Colorado the price of insurance premiums will 'dramatically increase' under the reforms. ... How far we have come since that day in 2009 when the president also said that 'the Congressional Budget Office ... says that as a consequence of this act, the deficit is going to be over a trillion dollars lower over the course of the next two decades than it would be if this wasn't passed.' ... Yet it is quite understandable why so many progressives, whose ideology is based on the the triumph of hope over experience, cannot understand the growing unaffordability of the misnamed Affordable Care Act. Chances are, they never will." --columnist Arnold Ahlert

"The Obama administration's ham-fisted attempt to require that contraceptives and abortifacients be offered to employees of Catholic and other religious institutions is a serious threat to our civil liberties. ... This issue was always about more than contraceptives and who pays for them. It is about individual liberty and whether the government under 'Obamacare' has the constitutional right to dictate to private businesses and church-related entities when such orders violate conscience and religious beliefs. ... If the administration can get away with this, there will be no stopping it." --columnist Cal Thomas

"Obama did not make a mistake in this mandate. It's a deliberately calculated move on his part. The Democrats realize that abortion is no longer a winner for them. ... So what they're trying to do now is replace it with contraception. ... [I]t's no coincidence, that he came out with it after Minnesota and Colorado which [were] Santorum's victories. They want to create the impression that the Republicans will ban contraception, which is totally insane, but they're floating it out and they're bringing it out there." --columnist Dick Morris

"Right now, we're scheduled to spend more than $1 trillion more on what was intended to be a temporary tax cut for the wealthiest two percent of Americans. We've already spent about that much. Now we're expected to spend another $1 trillion." --Barack Obama, who thinks that letting people keep their own money is a form of government spending

"The budget does one thing and really only one thing: It sets the parameters of spending and discretionary caps. Other than that, the Appropriations Committee [is] not bound by the Budget Committee's priorities.The fact is, you don't need a budget. We can adopt appropriations bills." --House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

"[I]f you look back at what their estimates were in terms of how many jobs had been lost, how bad the economy had contracted when I took office, everybody underestimated it. People thought that the economy contracted 3 percent -- it turns out it contracted close to 9 percent. ... So, the die had been cast but a lot of us didn't understand at that point how bad it was gonna get. That increases the deficit because less tax revenues come in and it means that more people are getting unemployment insurance, we're helping states more so they don't lay off teachers, etc. The key though is we're setting ourselves on a path where we can get our debt under control." --Barack Obama

"We've used the Internet more effectively to create more transparency so people know where their tax dollars are going. If they need a government service they don't have to navigate through 50 websites, they can go to one website. So on those fronts we've done a lot -- we've made a lot of progress. Where I have not been able to succeed so far -- but I haven't given up -- is changing the tone in Congress." --Barack Obama

"The vast majority of Catholic women are on birth control, support birth control and think it should be part of their health care plan. So, it just seems striking to me that someone would say this is a risky decision because it's the right thing to do and it's mainstream." --Rep. Michael Quigley (D-IL)

"In 2012, I stand here in complete amazement that in a country known for its medical breakthroughs and advancements, Republicans would have us go back to the medical dark ages." --Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

"[I]n a sense you feel that some part of this Republican opposition to an additional stimulus is just cynical. They want the economy to stay weak in an election year." --CNN's Fareed Zakaria to billionaire leftist financier George Soros

"If you listen carefully to Rick Santorum, he sounds more like [Soviet dictator Joseph] Stalin than Pope Innocent III." --MSNBC's Martin Bashir

"The thinking inside the Beltway seems to be that religious voters will turn against Democrats unless the White House drops the basic idea that insurance should cover contraception. Time will tell on the political impact of this fight, but the relevant political context here is more than just a 2012 measure of Catholic bishops' influence on moral issues. It's also this year's mainstream Republican embrace of an antiabortion movement that no longer just marches on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade to criminalize abortion; it now marches on the anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, holding signs that say 'The Pill Kills.'" --MSNBC's Rachel Maddow

"I very rarely take a political position because I work for ABC News. ... [T]here was a time when feminists made the woman who stayed home and had children feel inferior. I think we are finally changing so that we realize younger ones, you can make a choice." --Barbara Walters of "The View"

"You can't pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can't get 60 votes without bipartisan support. So ... unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed." --White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew

"The American people should be pleased that we now have a recovery that's taking root. The job growth is across all the sectors of the economy -- it's not the result of people leaving the workforce, it's the result of private sector job creation. This is good." --Jack Lew

"[A]s we have the Buffett Rule and the individual tax reform, we need a global minimum tax so that people have the assurance that nobody is escaping doing their fair share as part of a race to the bottom or having our tax code actually subsidized and facilitate people moving their funds to tax havens." --White House economic adviser Gene Sperling

"The president's vision for fulfilling the moral obligation to tackle the debt is contained within the budget he presented [this week]. He certainly did not mean last summer that we should contract spending in a way that threw the very fragile recovery at that point into reverse and caused further job loss and inflicted further economic pain on the American people." --White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

"Any morally acceptable pathway to prevent catastrophic global warming includes broad access to affordable birth control for the world's women. ... Researchers have found that empowering women to reduce unplanned pregnancies is one of the most cost-effective ways to combat greenhouse pollution.... The more world leaders focus on giving women and girls the tools of empowerment -- access to family planning, education, and the political and economic system -- the better future all of us will have." --ThinkProgress's Brad Johnson

"The Obama administration will continue forcing Catholic institutions to provide contraceptive services which violate church doctrine. The next step? Requiring Kosher Meals on Wheels programs to deliver ham sandwiches." --NewsBusted's Jodi Miller

"It was a bad [week] for Newt Gingrich. In terms that Newt can understand, I think the voters told him they want to start seeing other candidates. ... Have you noticed [Mitt] Romney doesn't even blow dry his hair anymore? He dries naturally from Rick Santorum breathing down his neck." --comedian Jay Leno

"President Obama's former Chrysler was put up for auction on eBay Thursday by the Illinois woman who now owns the car. You can tell that the car once belonged to the president. It starts off fast and then it stalls and starts calling for rich people to help push it." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"I don't want a lot from politics. I just don't want people dumber than me telling me what to do. I guess that's asking a lot, actually." --humorist Frank J. Fleming

"Our party firmly believes in the safety net. We reject the idea of the safety net becoming a hammock. ... What Republicans have long understood is that poor communities are best served when they're empowered to care for themselves. The more they come to rely on government checks, the less they learn to rely on their own ability and ingenuity. For this reason, the Republican value of minimizing government dependence is particularly beneficial to the poorest among us. Conversely, the Democratic appetite for ever-increasing redistributionary handouts is in fact the most insidious form of slavery remaining in the world today, and it does not promote economic freedom." --Rep. Allen West (R-FL)

web posted February 13, 2012

"Last night when discussing the trends in the three non-binding Republican contests, I tweeted that Rick Santorum's win in Missouri was only surprising in gaining a majority, but that a win in Minnesota would be surprising -- and a win in Colorado would be shocking. ... Santorum shocked the Republican race with a clean sweep of Tuesday's caucuses and primary, and may have pushed himself into serious consideration as the long-sought conservative consolidation alternative to Mitt Romney." --blogger Ed Morrissey

"Republicans are worried sick that the Democrats will be able to use all the nasty sound bites from the GOP debates in the general election. I'm not too concerned for a number of reasons, but the main one is that the GOP will merely have to produce ads in which we show Barack Obama saying, 'I'm pledging to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office' and 'If I don't get the unemployment rate under 7%, I deserve to be a one-term president.' For good measure, I would produce another ad in which I showed Obama and jobs czar Jeffrey Immelt giggling as the president says, 'I guess shovel-ready jobs weren't quite as shovel-ready as we thought.' The viewer would be reminded that this came a long time after Obama, Pelosi and Reid, shoved through a trillion dollar stimulus that they promised would turn around the economy." --columnist Burt Prelutsky

"As in Chicago, Obama seems to live in a cocoon in which Republicans are largely absent, offscreen actors that no one pays any attention to. ... Two decisions in particular seem tilted toward rich liberals. One was the disapproval of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, even after it survived two environmental impact statements. ... The other astonishing decision was the decree requiring Catholic hospitals and charities' health insurance policies to include coverage for abortion and birth control. Here Obama was spitting in the eyes of millions of Americans and threatening the existence of charitable programs that help millions of people of all faiths. ... Who's on the other side? The designer-clad ladies Obama encounters at every fundraiser. They want to impose their views on abortion on everyone else." --political analyst Michael Barone

"The majority of the American people, but in particular those who identify themselves as conservative, are overwhelmingly aware of the true nature of the nation's problems and the crossroad the country is facing in 2012. The grassroots rebellion that is the Tea Party movement was the first manifestation of this awareness. Despite the success of the Tea Party working within the Republican Party in the 2010 mid-term elections, most of the Republican elites downplayed their success and fell in with the mainstream media and the Democrats in their well-worn and gratuitous aspersions against those in fly-over country." --columnist Steve McCann

"In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called the pursuit of happiness an unalienable right. This was a radical idea. For most of history, most people didn't think much about pursuing happiness. They were too busy just trying to survive. Then came the liberal revolution based on the idea of individual freedom. Only then did they start thinking that happiness might be possible on earth. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the right to pursue happiness has been perverted into a government-backed entitlement to happiness." --columnist John Stossel

"I deserve a second term, but we're not done. When you and I sat down, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month ... now we're creating 250,000 jobs. We've made progress. The key now is to make sure we don't start turning in the wrong direction." --Barack Obama

"What's frustrated people is that I've not been able to implement every aspect of what I said in 2008. Well, it turns out our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes. But what we have been able to do is move in the right direction. And you know what? One of the things about being president is you get better as time goes on." --Barack Obama

"I do think the vast majority of the American people understand ... we want everyone to be successful, and nobody begrudges people who have been successful because they're making things, creating new products and services, that's the American way -- but what people also want to see is that everybody is doing their fair share, that we're all pulling together, that we're creating ladders of opportunity for all Americans. Whoever the Republican nominee is, I fundamentally disagree with the formula that would go back to the same policies that got us into this mess in the first place." --Barack Obama

"We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year -- it's done, we don't need to do it." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

"[T]he government doesn't have the racism and discrimination that the private sector enjoys." --Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)

"You'd think that if a congresswoman got shot in the head, that would have changed Congress' views [on guns]. I can tell you how to change it, just get Congress to come with me to the hospital when I've gotta somebody that their son or daughter, their spouse, their parent is not gonna come home ever again. ... I don't know who has to get killed for people to start saying, 'Wait a second, this is enough.'" --New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, shamelessly using Gabrielle Giffords to argue for more gun control

"In 2010, we averaged about a million jobs. Okay? A million jobs that were created. In 2011, it was 1.8 million jobs. Now, in 2012, we are average 200,000 jobs a month that are being created. So [Obama] can run on his record. The jobs are coming up. And he's done so much in the past four years I can't even tell you." --CNBC's Suze Orman

"What programs for the poor? [Republicans] keep acting as if poor people have all of these things that are helping them." --MSNBC's Al Sharpton

"[B]arack Obama has not put anyone on food stamps." --The Huffington Post's Barbra Streisand

"Will voters hold Republicans accountable for trying to kill the American auto industry?" --MSNBC's Ed Schultz (Not bailing them out doesn't equal "trying to kill" them.)

"[George Washington] began the political tradition that produced a Union victory in the Civil War, the Federal Reserve Board, Social Security, Medicare, and most recently, Obamacare. He had no patience in his own time with a states' rights interpretation of the Constitution and would have found the conservative agenda of the modern Republican Party and its Tea Party allies a repudiation of all he stood for." --professor and historian Joseph J. Ellis in Time magazine

"You should certainly be aided by all the constitution-writing that has gone one since the end of World War II. I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. ... Yes, why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world?" --U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who doesn't bother looking to the U.S. Constitution either when ruling from the bench

"It took me a month, or less than a month, [to say] that gun-walking was inappropriate. It came to my attention, [and it was a] fairly rapid response, to say don't do that." --Attorney General Eric Holder wanting credit for his "quick" response to ending gun-walking operations in Fast and Furious

"We're here because our families worked hard to make sure that we had the opportunities that everyone should have. Barack and I are both motivated by a desire to pay those blessings forward. Your president lives by the principle that to whom much is given, much is expected. ... We are blessed to have someone not just of his intellectual caliber but with such a strong grounding of values that all of us identify with -- these basic American values that have made our country great and will continue to make us the strongest country in the world." --Michelle Obama

"And when our kids get older and they graduate from school, we all know how hard it is for them to find jobs, let alone jobs with insurance. And that's why, as part of health reform, kids can now stay on their parents' insurance until they're 26 years old. So will we take that insurance away from our kids?" --Michelle Obama

"If you needed more proof of liberal media bias, just look at the orgasms created by Friday's announcement that unemployment in January dropped to 8.3 percent. By contrast, these same folks were practically suicidal as the jobless rate dropped to 5.6 percent when George W. Bush was President in January 2004." --Newsbusters' Noel Sheppard

"Last week the left was in an uproar when the Susan G. Komen Cancer Research Foundation indicated it may withhold funds from Planned Parenthood -- which proves once and for all that liberals support abortion more than cancer research." --NewsBusted's Jodi Miller

"It may be halftime in America, but China's got the ball and we're down by $15 trillion!" --comedian Jay Leno

"Kodak had to ask that its name be taken off the Hollywood theater that hosts Oscar night due to Kodak's bankruptcy. There's a lesson here for the Democrats. After twelve years of being associated with the biggest names in Hollywood, Kodak has lost everything." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"Obama says he's getting better at being president and deserves a second term. Well, for the first claim, maybe he is getting better. He had the advantage of starting so poorly, it was hard for him to do any worse. As for the second part, it's more a question of whether we as a country deserve him. And since we haven't genocided anyone recently, I'm going to say 'No.'" --humorist Frank J. Fleming

"[T]o show how the Republicans never lose an opportunity to mess up a good piece of legislation, listen to this: They're talking about First Amendment rights, the Constitution. That is so senseless." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) objecting to Republican efforts to block the administration's mandate through amendments to other legislation

"This is about women's health. ... We shouldn't have to be to a place where people are saying -- when the overwhelming practice is going in favor of women's health -- 'we want to pull that back,' and use the excuse of religious freedom, which, of course, this is not." --House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who claims to be Catholic, slamming her own church for defending religious liberty

web posted February 6, 2012

"Last week Mitt Romney got skunked in South Carolina by Newt Gingrich. Over the course of five days and two debates Gingrich returned a punt, a fumble, and an interception, scored on a safety and pinned Obama deep in his own territory -- everything an opposing candidate could have done within the football metaphors of Superbowl week. Then came Florida. Big. Diverse. Expensive. Romney and his campaign righted the ship and put the big hurt on Gingrich. ... The problem Gingrich faces now is there is not much on the horizon for the next three weeks that can change the story line ... from his big loss last night. ... If the Obama campaign learned anything this week it was this: Mitt Romney didn't get to be Mitt Romney by rolling over and whimpering in the face of adversity." --political analyst Rich Galen

"To counteract Romney's money and organization, Gingrich needed electrifying debate performances but didn't deliver them, a blow to his chances in Florida and to his electability argument, which is heavily dependent on the notion that he would effortlessly flatten President Obama on the debate stage. ... Romney is now the dominant frontrunner again without having yet made a compellingly positive case for himself, although his victory speech promising 'a new era of prosperity' was a start. ... Conventional wisdom holds that the stiff challenge from Gingrich has made Romney a better candidate. If that's true, he's going to get the chance to get better still." --columnist Rich Lowry

"These endless debates have allowed front-runners to stumble and dark horses to catch up -- up to a point. Now as the primaries begin to come thick and fast, and debates wane, organization and money matter more and more, and that favors Romney. ... [T]hat said, the race is not over -- or rather, in terms of primaries and delegate counts, it has hardly begun, especially in the age of disastrous gaffe or embarrassing disclosure. ... Meanwhile, the candidates have to cut the suicidal 'you're a liar!' back and forth, and demand from Obama an explanation for the continued massive borrowing amid the latest dismal news." --historian Victor Davis Hanson

"To me, the real split among conservative voters is about whether it's actually important that a politician 'loves' us or is 'one of' us. Count me with the conservatives who could not care less. Notice this is different from saying character doesn't matter. Indeed, I look past the basic condescension common to most politicians to other, more important virtues of personal and professional conduct. The point is that, if politicians look at voters instrumentally, then we should return the favor. I don't care about wanting to have a beer with you, I care about whether you can be compelled or cajoled into enacting conservative policies." --columnist Daniel Foster

"Now I hear folks running around calling this class warfare. This is not class warfare, let me tell you something. Asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as a secretary, that's just common sense." --Barack Obama

"What I can say is this: That whoever [the Republican] nominee is, they represent ideas that I think are wrong for America. On a whole range of issues I think that whether it's Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich or Mr. Santorum or whoever else they might decide to select, they represent a fundamentally different vision of America. And it's not the bold generous forward looking optimistic America that I think built this country." --Barack Obama

"[Republicans] want to use legislation as a way to act like terrorists. They hold things as hostage. ... That is so stupid already for them to be pushing the Keystone pipeline issue in this [payroll tax cut extension] bill, in this conference. Republicans have been so mean-spirited, and I think that's coming across to the American people." --Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)

"It's hard to believe how far the Tea Party has taken us away from making the kind of progress our country so greatly deserves. Republicans have launched an all-out assault on women, the middle class and our seniors in the name of protecting billionaires and Big Oil. ... With your support, Democrats can win in 2012 and once again produce the progressive change our country needs." --House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in a fundraising email

"I think the unemployment rate ... is lower now than it was when [Obama] inherited it from President George W. Bush." --MSNBC's Chris Matthews

"Five trillion [dollars in debt] is what Bush did. Obama's 1.5. These are the facts. These are the facts." --HBO's Bill Maher ("According to the Treasury Department ... the total federal debt was $10.6 trillion when Obama was inaugurated. It is now $15.2 trillion, a $4.6 trillion increase. This is not up for debate. To quote Maher, these are the facts." --Newsbuster's Noel Sheppard)

"There was a tax, a small tax raise that [Bill Clinton] put forward that not one Republican voted for. The economy turned around. Turned out that that tax raise really did a lot of good things for the economy." --HBO's Bill Maher

"[H]as the Tea Party made compromise a dirty word, and is that why Congress can't seem to get anything done?" --CBS's Bob Schieffer to Rep. Michelle Bachmann

"The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are 'entitlement society' -- as used by Mitt Romney -- and 'poor work ethic' and 'food stamp president' -- as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the 'Founding Fathers' and the 'Constitution' also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core 'old-fashioned American values.'" --Fox News' Juan Williams

"The thing that's dragging down the economy is the government is shrinking so rapidly that it's pulling the overall growth rate to 2.8 percent." --White House adviser Austan Goolsbee

"Obviously I think if the question is referring to things like Fast and Furious, I think everyone has acknowledged that mistakes, serious mistakes, were made there. The key question [is] to make sure that those mistakes, from my standpoint, are never again repeated." --Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on the biggest scandal in years

"The Obama administration has undertaken the most serious and sustained actions to secure our borders in our nation's history. And it is clear from every measure we currently have that this approach is working." --Janet Napolitano

"[I] don't remember anything coming from the Democratic Party about George W. Bush being equated to a terrorist or George W. Bush being equated to somebody who's been accused of manslaughter. I don't remember anybody questioning, you know, some of the things about George W. Bush that have been questioned about the president. I don't remember an opposing governor wagging his or her finger in president George W. Bush's face. I mean, the truth is, is that the Republican Party starts from a core of extreme positions and it seems that that leads to extreme rhetoric when things don't seem to be work out for them with the voters." --DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse

"There is also a negative underside to that history with respect to slavery, manifest destiny, to war, you know, to empires, so I, frankly, am glad American civil religion is dying. But it does raise the practical question, what does bind us together in some way as a country? We need some substitute for that and I don't think we've found it yet." --Obama's former "faith adviser" Shaun Casey

"President Obama halted the Keystone pipeline, citing its potential harm to underground aquifers in Nebraska. He said he's a committed environmentalist. Barack Obama is so committed to recycling that he's promising hope and change in his next term." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"The worst thing about the political debates isn't the format or the content, but that it magnifies debating skills to such an extent. I keep hearing that Gingrich would demolish Obama in a debate. I disagree. Republicans would watch such a debate and decide that Newt had mopped the floor with Barack; Democrats would see it the other way around. And the next day, the liberal media would announce that Obama won by a knockout in the first round. As we all know, a president no more needs to be a great debater than he needs to know how to juggle plates, play the accordion or yodel." --columnist Burt Prelutsky

"Had I been asked to deliver the State of the Union address, it would not have delayed your dinner plans: 'The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and goodnight! You've been a terrific crowd!'" --columnist Mark Steyn

"During an interview with ABC, President Obama said, 'I make a mistake every hour, every day.' I wouldn't mind that so much if he didn't keep signing them into law." --Fred Thompson

web posted January 30, 2012

"I went ... I know ... My ... My ... I took office ... I'm president ... I will work ... I intend ... I will oppose ... I want to speak ... I took office ... I refused ... told me ... My message ... Send me ... I'll sign ... I set ... I signed ... I will go ... I will not stand ... It's not fair ... I'm announcing ... I promise you ... I also hear ... I want ... Join me ... My administration ... I want to cut ... I call on ... I spoke ... let me put ... I believe ... my administration ... I took office ... I will sign ... I'm directing ... my administration ... I'm requiring ... I will not walk away ... I will not walk away ... I will not cede ... I will ... I'm directing ... I'm proud ... Send me ... I will sign ... I'm sending ... I've approved ... my presidency ... I've ordered ... I guess ... I'm confident ... I will not back down ... I will not back down ... I will not go back ... I will not go back ... I'm asking ... fair play ... So do I ... I told ... I'm prepared ... fair share ... my fair share ... I get tax breaks I don't need ... I recognize ... I bet ... I've talked ... Send me a bill ... I will sign ... I ask the Senate ... I've asked ... I'm a Democrat ... I believe ... my education reform ... I will keep taking ... I can do ... I have no doubt ... I will take ... I'm president ... I intend ... I have proposed ... I have already ... I'm proposing ... brings me ... my proudest ... I sat ... I look at ... I'm reminded." -- Barack Obama during the State of the Union address

"On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. ... Today, General Motors is back on top as the world's number one automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S. than any major car company. ... We bet on American workers. We bet on American ingenuity. And tonight, the American auto industry is back." --Barack Obama

"It's time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody." --Barack Obama, later in the same SOTU

"We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules." --Barack Obama

"The state of our union is getting stronger. And we've come too far to turn back now. As long as I'm president, I will work with anyone in this chamber to build on this momentum. But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place." --Barack Obama

"[W]e need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes. Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule: If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes. ... On the other hand, if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn't go up." --Barack Obama

"The point I was making is that black people hold the president in such high esteem, that they would not dare march on the White House even though unemployment is at 15 percent and higher and if there was a white president we would do that because we've had white presidents since George Washington." --Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO)

"[T]his president has reached out as seriously and sincerely as any president with whom I've served over the last 30 years, to work together in a bipartisan fashion. No president with whom I've served over those last 30 years has spent as much time working with Republicans and Democrats in the room, exchanging ideas, evidencing a willingness to compromise as President Obama has." --House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

"[Newt Gingrich is] not going to be president of the United States. That's not going to happen. Let me just make my prediction and stand by it, it isn't going to happen. There is something I know. The Republicans, if they choose to nominate him that's their prerogative. I don't even think that's going to happen." --House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

"If you want a good distillation of this president's wrongheaded view of the United States of America, look no further than this rhetorical bit from the end of tonight's State of the Union address: 'No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other's backs.' Unity is central to American identity, but not the way Obama envisions it. E pluribus unum is not Latin for, 'Hey, bro, let's invest in some infrastructure together.' The notion that this nation is one big team that acts collectively toward shared goals set by the state would be completely foreign to the men who founded it. But that is Obama's concept of America." --columnist Andrew Cline

"Has Barack Obama learned nothing in three years? Last night, during his State of the Union address, he promised 'a blueprint for an economy.' But economies are crushed by blueprints. An economy is really nothing more than people participating in an unfathomably complex spontaneous network of exchanges aimed at improving their material circumstances. It can't even be diagrammed, much less planned. And any attempt at it will come to grief. Politicians like Obama believe they are the best judges of how we should conduct our lives. Of course a word like 'blueprint' would occur to the president. He, like most who want his job, aspires to be the architect of a new society. But we who love our lives and our freedom say: No, thanks. We need no social architect. We need liberty under law. That's it." --columnist John Stossel

"If you wonder why unemployment is so high in the U.S., check out the brain-dead economics in the SOTU address. People with high incomes pay lower taxes because an optimal tax policy taxes consumption not income. While our code is not optimal, it tilts in that direction. I doubt that Warren Buffett understands that the 'Buffett Rule' is economically illiterate, and marks him for all of history, after posterity forgets his billions, as an ignorant rube who pushed the U.S. toward inefficient tax policy. I doubt that President Obama understands that the academic community that previously embraced him will have a hard time maintaining the fiction that he is a significant intellectual when he decides to jettison decades of academic literature in favor of a populist Hail Mary pass that is indefensible." --American Enterprise Institute's Kevin Hassett

"By many measures, Barack Obama has left the State of the Union in tatters, but the liberal media, led by the highly rated Big Three network (ABC, CBS, NBC) news shows, have attempted to cover up those holes in the Union by mostly ignoring the Obama administration's greatest failings. From record numbers of people on food stamps, to the administration's support of failed energy companies while rejecting an oil pipeline that would result in thousands of jobs, the Big Three networks haven't told their viewers the full story of Obama's pathetic track record." --Media Research Center's Geoffrey Dickens

"There's a tremendous amount of cynicism in Gingrich's use of food stamps because of what he actually knows that his Republican debate audiences do not know. His Republican audiences do not know that most people on food stamps are white." --MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell

"George W. Bush had more people on food stamps, not this president." --MSNBC's Martin Bashir

\"Do you really believe, in every case, it should be totally wrong, in the sense that -- I know that you believe, even in cases of rape and incest -- and you've got two daughters. You know, if you have a daughter that came to you who had been raped and was pregnant and was begging you to let her have an abortion -- would you really be able to look her in the eye and say, no, as her father?" --CNN host Piers Morgan to GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum

"[I]t would be a disservice to [Rep. Gabrielle Gifford's] life and that of the others directly affected by [the Tucson tragedy], and tragedies like it, to ignore the factors that precipitated the violence: the easy access to guns; the availability of accessories such as extended clips that make deadly weapons all the more lethal; and a porous and shoddy regulatory system that too often fails to keep these weapons out of the hands of dangerous or dangerously unstable individuals. Mr. Obama last year delivered his State of the Union just weeks after the Tucson massacre and in the presence of victims' family members. Yet he, like so many politicians intimidated by the gun lobby's muscle, could not muster a single word about the need for reasonable gun control measures to ward off such violence in the future. Perhaps he will find the courage to speak up this year, as Ms. Giffords looks on during her last State of the Union as a member of Congress." --Washington Post editorial

"Our children and grandchildren will judge those who have misled the public, allowing fossil fuel emissions to continue almost unfettered, as guilty of crimes against humanity and nature. But the eventual conviction of these people in the court of public opinion will do little to ease the burdens that will have been created for today's young people and future generations." --James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

"[T]he president's background as a community organizer is well documented in the president's own books, so his experience in that field obviously contributed to who he is today. But his experience is a broad-based one that includes a lot of other areas in his life." --White House spokesman Jay Carney

"[T]he president's commitment to job creation has been amply demonstrated by the policies that he has pursued, that he has signed into law, that have contributed considerably to the creation of 3.2 million private sector jobs." --Jay Carney

"We're just going to support what we like to call 'universal values' -- not American values, not Western values, universal values." --Michael McFaul, Obama's new U.S. ambassador to Russia, when asked about democracy in Russia

"Pittsburgh medical researchers discovered Tuesday that a person's adult stem cells could possibly be used to make them grow younger. Many doctors have been tinkering with it. Ron Paul has used it on his supporters for years and now they all look twenty-five." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"Warren Buffett now says that his offer to help pay down the national debt was merely 'symbolic.' Ah ... sorta like an Obama 'stimulus' program." --Fred Thompson

"[E]very President's SOTU speeches follows a very predictable pattern: 1. The State of the Union is strong. 2. Applause. 3. It's stronger because I'm up here and you're not. 4. Applause. 5. Attack the Supreme Court [Obama only]. 6. Here's why my political party is awesome. 7. Applause from one side of room. 8. Here's why the other party is a bunch of doody-heads. 9. Applause from the same side of the room. 10. Here's a program I want you to pass. 11. Applause. 12. Here's an Ordinary Average Guy whose story should convince you to pass my program. 13. Television shot of Ordinary Average Guy. 14. Applause. 15. Repeat steps 6-14 about 874 times. 16. Here's a couple more reasons why I'm awesome. 17. Applause." --blogger Ed Morrissey

"I make a mistake, you know, every hour, every day." --Barack Obama

"Twenty thousand jobs [created by the Keystone XL pipeline] is really not that many jobs and investing in green technologies will produce that and more." --Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)

 

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