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Lingua publica

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

web posted August 5, 2013

"Have you noticed that the Internal Revenue Service scandal seems to be getting ever closer to the White House? The IRS originally tried to set up 'rogue employees in Cincinnati' as fall guys. But in congressional testimony, they revealed that the targeting of dissenting groups was directed from Washington. ... As this column has argued before, the higher this scandal goes, the better it is for the country. We say that ... but because the president can be held accountable if it turns out he or his top aides essentially instructed the IRS to steal the 2012 election. A corrupt administration can be dealt with, as Richard Nixon's was 40 years ago. By contrast, if career IRS employees acted on their own, it means the integrity of American democracy itself is threatened by an out-of-control administrative state. In that case, how to solve the problem is not at all clear." --The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto

"[Ben Bernanke] and everyone else knows that flooding the economy with market-distorting money can't go on forever and that interest rates must rise. Inflation is like the Huns and Vandals. It appears quickly and is very hard to get rid of once it appears. But it's keeping the stock market up ... artificially. So they can't keep pouring in the money forever and they can't stop without consequences. It's the same old story. Short term sugar high at the expense of a healthy diet ... and, in this case, getting past the midterm elections." --former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson

"Disgustingly, black politicians, civil rights leaders, liberals and the president are talking nonsense about 'having a conversation about race.' That's beyond useless. Tell me how a conversation with white people is going to stop black predators from preying on blacks. How is such a conversation going to eliminate the 75 percent illegitimacy rate? What will such a conversation do about the breakdown of the black family (though 'breakdown' is not the correct word, as the family doesn't form in the first place)? Only black people can solve our problems." --economist Walter E. Williams

"The family is a broken mess nationwide. Why should it remain intact among the politicians who championed its destruction? ... Shame depends on peer pressure. And peer pressure requires standards. When the standards only exist on television, then shame is an illusion, a mask that politicians can take off and put on again. And it's not as if we believe in shame anymore. Not when the media and a legion of gullible idiots celebrated the defeat of the Defense of Marriage Act. And if DOMA's death sparked some fireworks, why should we expect marriage to be sacred? ... In a society without moral values, shame is theater." --columnist Daniel Greenfield

"The triumph of liberty is not inevitable, though. And empires do crumble. Rome's lasted the longest. The Ottoman Empire lasted 623 years. China's Song, Qing and Ming dynasties each lasted about 300 years. We've lasted just 237 years so far.... In that time, we've accomplished amazing things, but we shouldn't take our continued success for granted. Freedom and prosperity are not natural. In human history, they're rare." --columnist John Stossel

"If [Republicans have] got a better plan to create jobs rebuilding our infrastructure or to help workers earn the high-tech skills that they need, then they should offer up these ideas. But I've got to tell you, just gutting our environmental protection -- that's not a jobs plan. Gutting investments in education -- that's not a jobs plan. They keep on talking about this -- an oil pipeline coming down from Canada that's estimated to create about 50 permanent jobs -- that's not a jobs plan. Wasting the country's time by taking something like 40 meaningless votes to repeal ObamaCare is not a jobs plan -- that's not a jobs plan." --Barack Obama

"If those layoffs had not happened, if public sector employees grew like they did in the past two recessions, the unemployment rate would be 6.5 instead of 7.5. Our economy would be much better off, and the deficit would still be going down because we would be getting more tax revenue." --Barack Obama

"If we don't do anything, then growth will be slower than it should be. Unemployment will not go down as fast as it should. Income inequality will continue to rise. Racial tensions won't get better; they may get worse, because people will feel as if they've got to compete with some other group to get scraps from a shrinking pot." --Barack Obama

"[Barack Obama is] one of the most practically non-partisans I have seen in the White House." --House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

"We need tax reform ... under the total understanding that it can't be revenue-neutral. It can't be even close to revenue-neutral. There has to be significant new revenues." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) essentially torpedoing tax reform with a demand for $1 trillion in revenue above the $600 million Democrats got on Jan. 1

"I think it's no exaggeration at all to say that millions will die. And in fact there's pretty good evidence that millions already have died because of climate change. ... [E]ither we take real action, or millions will die. The answer is a carbon tax, and I'm going to fight for it." --Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ)

"There are influential people out there who would like you to believe that Detroit's demise is fundamentally a tale of fiscal irresponsibility and/or greedy public employees. It isn't. For the most part, it's just one of those things that happens now and then in an ever-changing economy." --Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman

"Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell want to brainwash voters into thinking Social Security is broken and contributes to the deficit. It doesn't. ... Social Security has never contributed one penny to the deficit." --MSNBC's Ed Schultz

"If conservatives are so concerned about black-on-black crime, it's a little concerning the only time I hear them talking about it is when they want to stick it to the black community." --Daily Beast's Kristen Powers, who evidently doesn't listen the rest of the time

"This [Weiner scandal] is terribly painful. From people close to the Clintons, friends of both, they care deeply about Huma [Abedin], but this is getting to the point where it is really splashing up against the Clintons because it's almost unavoidable that people are making comparisons to the way Hillary Clinton handled Bill Clinton's difficulties in the 1992 campaign. And it's just only going to reach a further point if [Anthony Weiner] stays in this race." --NBC's Andrea Mitchell on Weinergate

"The truth is the core of the economy is strong, it's resilient, and we've been growing. We've been growing for 40 months. We've seen job growth for 40 months, GDP growth, economy growth for four years. It's not fast enough. We want to do everything we can to speed the pace of economic growth and job creation. That means we need to address the issues that the president laid out this week. We need to do things to help build the foundation for better jobs." --Treasury Secretary Jack Lew

"Can we stop talking about environmental regulations killing jobs, please?" --new EPA chief Gina McCarthy (Sure, then stop killing jobs with environmental regulations!)

"We have a long history in this country of some people exploiting differences between us for their own advantage. It's a cynical appeal to the worst instincts in our great country. And in the time since George Zimmerman's acquittal, some right-wingers have gone into overdrive to push the most negative stereotypes of the African-American community for their own gain." --master exploiter and race hustler Al Sharpton

"Trayvon [Martin]'s death -- and the subsequent trial -- have reopened the deep and unresolved wound of racism in our country. Nearly 50 years after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, we have made tremendous progress, but we still have a long way to go. Racism remains deeply rooted in American society." --AFL-CIO Executive Council statement

"Anthony Weiner has been caught in yet another sexting scandal. At the beginning of this campaign he said that other texts and photos were likely to come out. Well, they have. Finally, a politician who keeps his promises! ... Anthony Weiner said yesterday that he wants closure. If he wants closure, he should start with his zipper." ---comedian Jay Leno

"It takes a fair bit of gall to accuse the media of lying about a sex scandal. It takes even more gall to then admit to the sex scandal, resign, claim you've redeemed yourself and decide to run again. And it takes the most gall to do all of those things, even as you're engaged in a continuation of that sex scandal. But when your name is Anthony Weiner, gall is your middle name. Or perhaps Danger is." --columnist Ben Shapiro

"Instead of having an NSA, why don't we all just keep an eye out for terrorists. It's easy; they have turbans and yell, 'Allahu akbar!' " --humorist Frank J. Fleming

"I would prefer to stay with the current [health insurance] policy that I'm pleased with rather than go through a change if I don't need to go through that change." --IRS chief Daniel Werfel, whose agency is in charge of enforcing ObamaCare, and who wants to keep his plan and not switch to ObamaCare

web posted July 29, 2013

"We wonder if Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder is familiar with the case of Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville, a black woman who received a 20-year prison sentence in May 2012 for firing warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband. The judge rejected a defense under Florida's stand-your-ground law. Alexander told police it was to escape a brutal beating by her husband, against whom she'd already taken out a protective order. For defending herself, she went to jail -- as some still wish for George Zimmerman. But by standing her ground with a firearm, she may have saved her life, just like Zimmerman." --Investor's Business Daily

"You might say, 'Profiling is unfair, and individuals should be judged individually!' Taken to the limit, such a position is ludicrous. Suppose police are trying to catch the criminal who just raped a woman in a city park. Would you want them to use sex profiling -- i.e., just round up men -- or should they round up everyone, regardless of sex? I'm betting that most people would view the latter as stupid. But there is a near equivalent in government. Ninety-six percent of the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists are Muslim, and most terrorist attacks in the U.S. have been committed by young Muslim males. Despite this, the Transportation Security Administration people behave as if each person who seeks to board a plane is of equal danger. That's why they search, frighten and inconvenience 5-year-olds and elderly people. ... God, unlike us mortals, wouldn't have to do any kind of profiling, because he knows everything. We mortals, with our imperfections, must find substitutes for his omniscience." --economist Walter E. Williams

"Like Detroit, America has unfunded liabilities, to the tune of $220 trillion, according to the economist Laurence Kotlikoff. Like Detroit, it's cosseting the government class and expanding the dependency class, to the point where its bipartisan 'immigration reform' actively recruits 50-60 million low-skilled chain migrants. Like Detroit, America's governing institutions are increasingly the corrupt enforcers of a one-party state -- the IRS and Eric Holder's amusingly misnamed Department of Justice being only the most obvious examples. Like Detroit, America is bifurcating into the class of 'community organizers' and the unfortunate denizens of the communities so organized. The one good thing that could come out of bankruptcy is if those public-sector pensions are cut and government workers forced to learn what happens when, as National Review's Kevin Williamson puts it, a parasite outgrows its host." --columnist Mark Steyn

"The moral-religious outlook of an older America ... restrained some of the wilder impulses of the human species. It was acknowledged fairly regularly that actions produced consequences; that as a man sowed, so he reaped -- due to which reality it was useful to think carefully about the crop one was planting, all the while watching the weather. ... Appraisals of this character fell out of favor as politics assumed a larger and larger role in life. What politician was going to go around with dour face and wagging finger, warning happy constituents of reckonings to come? The ancient moral law fell into disuse. History as a predictor of outcomes turned into televised entertainment. And so ... Detroit. Maybe Chicago. Maybe Los Angeles. Maybe a Medicare system yoked to unrealistic promises made for the sake of political returns, the future shoved further into the future, the can kicked as far down the road as possible. A moral overhaul for a nation suffering from the neglect of sound moral teaching is, you might say, a bit overdue." --columnist William Murchison

"You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago." --Barack Obama in his impromptu press remarks Friday

"I always remind people, I've run my last campaign. ... I've got a little over 1,200 days left in office. ... I guarantee you we will continue to make progress and we will deliver on everything that we talked about in 2008 and 2012." --Barack Obama

"[B]y the time I took office, the bottom [of the economy] had fallen out. Now, the good news is over the last five years we fought alongside people like Nancy Pelosi. But most importantly, because of the grit and resilience and determination of the American people, we've been able to clear away the rubble and get back to where we were." --Barack Obama

"In effect, what [Republicans are] doing is they're taking their own child hostage, their child in this case being the United States of America's credit, taking their own child hostage, and telling [Democrats], 'If you don't pay ransom, we're gonna shoot our own child.'" --House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) on the next debt ceiling fight

"In Congress, there can be no more fitting memorial to the lives lost in Aurora, in Newtown, and across the country than a concerted effort to enact common sense gun safety legislation. We must uphold our oath to 'protect and defend' the Constitution and all Americans by expanding background checks and keeping dangerous firearms out of the wrong hands." --House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

"What is at risk is the discretion of a woman to make judgments about the size and time -- timing of her family. ... The reality is that people in our country do practice birth control and use contraception. I don't know if my colleagues need a lesson on the birds and the bees. I really don't get it." --Nancy Pelosi

"Michigan used to be a symbol of industrial strength in manufacturing in this country. But thanks to a lot of Republican policies, the city is now filing for bankruptcy." --MSNBC's Ed Schultz ("All Detroit's mayors since 1962 were Democrats who were eager to micromanage." --John Stossel)

"In the case of Detroit, the reason that the tax base [has] become so small is because of a loss of population, right? ... But this lack of tax base is also exactly the thing that many Republicans would impose on us, even when our cities have sufficient populations, even when our communities have sufficient populations. This is what it looks like when government is small enough to drown in your bathtub, and it is not a pretty picture." --MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry

"When a pregnancy is wanted ... it is easy to think of the bump as a baby. But not every pregnancy is a fairy tale. ... [A]n unwanted pregnancy can be biologically the same as a wanted one. But the experience can be entirely different. ... But when does life begin? I submit the answer depends an awful lot on the feeling of the parents. A powerful feeling -- but not science. The problem is that many of our policymakers want to base sweeping laws on those feelings." --Melissa Harris-Perry

"You know, how many times have we heard over the years a jury hung 10-2, or 10-1 -- or 11-1. ... [I]n a funny kind of way it seems to me it's very easy to manipulate six people when it's much harder when it's 12." --CBS News' Bob Schieffer on the Zimmerman verdict

"With any luck we won't be [a superpower in 20 years]. When you leave America and you go back and you look at it from like over here, and you see this giant continent with two vast oceans in between it, and it feels it's paranoid and terrified of the rest of the world, and wants to have this enormous military industrial complex to control it, you just scratch your head after a while and realize that Eisenhower was on to something. So was Washington, so was Jefferson. I think the transition to a post-imperial America is coming. I think it's overdue and I welcome it." --The Daily Beast's Andrew Sullivan

"[C]omprehensive immigration reform ... would significantly reduce our deficit, would expand economic growth, would raise wages." --White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

"[Detroit's bankruptcy filing is] cheating, sir, and it's cheating good people who work. It's also not honoring the president, who took [Detroit's auto companies] out of bankruptcy." --Ingham County Circuit Judge Rosemary Aquilina to Michigan AG Brian Devlin

"The Affordable Care Act is the most powerful law for reducing health disparities since Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965, the same year the Voting Rights Act was also enacted. ... The same arguments against change, the same fear and misinformation that opponents used then are the same ones opponents are spreading now. ... But history shows that upholding our founding principles demands continuous work toward a more perfect union... And it requires the kind of work that the NAACP has done for more than a century to move us forward." --HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

"Congress must act. And it's time to call on the United Nations Human Rights Commission [sic, Council] for an in-depth investigation of whether the U.S. is upholding its obligations under international human rights laws and treaties." --Jesse Jackson on the Zimmerman verdict

"The Obama administration's cynical campaign against Stand Your Ground laws is a racially charged weapon of mass distraction. The goal isn't public safety or community harmony. The goal is for conservative political opponents to Surrender Your Ground. Silence, as always, is complicity. Political self-defense, as with physical self-defense, begins with self-assertion." --columnist Michelle Malkin

"Attorney General Eric Holder ripped Florida's stand-your-ground law. He said anyone who is confronted by violence should be encouraged to retreat safely. Before entering law school Eric Holder was a drill instructor for the French Foreign Legion." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"You can think George Zimmerman made a horrible mistake, but you have to agree that morally he's a much much better person than Ted Kennedy." --humorist Frank J. Fleming

"An illegal alien who's been deported 11 times was caught again, this time with 220 pounds of pot in his car. He's in big trouble -- he was supposed to bring back a receipt for Eric Holder's guns." --Fred Thompson

"Detroit has become the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy. What happened was Detroit's population dropped something like 70 percent, but the government got bigger. The tax base got smaller, but the government got bigger. Thank God that kind of thing could never happen in Washington." --comedian Jay Leno

"We've got more than 100,000 bridges that are old enough to qualify for Medicare." --Barack Obama calling for more infrastructure spending to "stimulate" the economy

"If bridges are enrolling in Medicare, it's no wonder health-care costs keep rising." -- James Taranto

"In a mere three days, the Big Three network morning shows have devoted more coverage to the birth of the British royal baby than they gave to news of the IRS scandal since that story broke 74 days ago." --Scott Whitlock of Newsbusters

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