Lingua publica
The
good and the bad...presented with permission from The Patriot E-Journal
web posted July 23, 2007
"The Islamists believe we can't win; so does The New York Times. But it falls to the American people to decide the issue." -- Victor Davis Hanson
"We are seeking to create order in Iraq, while al-Qaida seeks to create disorder. It is orders of magnitude easier to create chaos than it is to create order. That doesn't mean it is impossible. But it will require patience and above all, will." -- Mona Charen
"How the threat of a resurgent al-Qaida is ameliorated by a hasty U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, no Democrat, liberal Republican or member of the media has yet explained." -- Oliver North
"No one knows in his gut that the guy he supports will do any good. But at least you can oppose with enthusiasm and passion the guy you feel in your gut will cause more trouble than is needed! This is what happens when the pickings are slim: The greatest passion gets funneled into opposition." -- Peggy Noonan
"[Michael Moore] is practically the Leni Riefenstahl of socialism. Anyone in a country with government-provided health insurance is portrayed as tripping through daisies to the hospital, where everything is free and the care is perfect. America, in contrast, is a vista of unrelieved gloom. Moore is adept at the propagandist's art -- keep it simple and keep it dishonest." -- Rich Lowry
"Before we panic about ‘global warming,' we should take a look at six-day weather forecasts and see how much they change during those six days -- quite aside from how much they differ from what the weather actually turns out to be." -- Thomas Sowell
"Our political leaders failed to grasp that we consider citizenship a privilege, not a political chip to curry favor with Hispanic voters." -- Dick Yarbrough
"You know, I wanted to sit on a jury once and I was taken off the jury. And the judge said to me, ‘Can, you know, can you tell the truth and be fair?' And I said, ‘That's what journalists do.' And everybody in the courtroom laughed. It was the most hurtful moment I think I've ever had." -- ABC's Diane Sawyer
"Right now, I could kill George Bush. No, I don't mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that." -- Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams
"In some ways, it gets to the fundamentals of the American society, namely what... are the shortcomings of that [American] ideology? I would argue that to take good care of its children is not part of that ideology." -- John Komlos, an economic historian at the University of Munich on why Americans are not the tallest people in the world any longer
"For all intents and purposes, McCain's campaign is over. The physicians have pulled up the sheet; the executors of the estate are taking over." -- Charlie Cook
"Next month, the Democratic presidential candidates... will participate in the first ever debate focused entirely on gay issues. Yeah, apparently in the gay debate when one candidate disagrees with another, they'll be required to begin their rebuttal with ‘Girlfriend, please!"' -- Conan O'Brien
"Congress's latest move, reported by Reuters: ‘The U.S. Senate on Friday voted to double the bounty on Osama bin Laden to $50 million and require President George W. Bush to refocus on capturing him after reports al Qaeda is gaining strength.' If $50 million isn't enough, maybe they can pass legislation offering a million billion trillion zillion squillion dollars." -- James Taranto
"When a conservative appears on talk radio, liberals cry for the Fairness Doctrine. Seventy-five free hours for Archbishop Gore's Church of Climate Change? Not a peep." -- Investor's Business Daily
"For the brave few who stuck with all 174 hours of Live Al, there was something oddly touching about seeing rock gazillionaires who'd flown in by private jet tell Joe Schmoe all the stuff he doesn't need. Your own car? A washer and dryer? Ha! Why can't you take the bus and beat your underwear on the rocks down by the river with the native women all morning long?" -- Mark Steyn
"Former President Bill Clinton said he is backing his wife because she is the most qualified and not be cause of any spousal obligation. And believe me, if there's one guy who's not swayed by spousal obligation, it's Bill Clinton. ... Bill Clinton is about to publish a new book called Giving. Giving? Shouldn't Getting be the name of his new book?" -- Jay Leno
web posted July 16, 2007
"Get rid of all these rotten politicians that we have in Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies. This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors." -- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. , at "Live Earth" on what to do about global warming doubters
"In order to get beyond race, you have to go to race. To suggest race neutrality as a remedy for racial discrimination is sophistry of the highest order." -- NAACP Chairman Julian Bond responding to a recent Supreme Court decision
"So much of what you say just grabs people like me, because it sounds like Bobby Kennedy. It sounds like the ‘60s at its absolute best." -- MSNBC's Chris Matthews to Barack Obama
"The real tragedy of the whole Valerie Plame-Wilson affair is that more people didn't get tagged with the crime of exposing her identity as an undercover CIA operative." -- Newsweek's Eleanor Clift continuing to lie about Plame's status
"Promoters [of Live Earth] had predicted that 2 billion people would tune in via television, radio and internet, but a small fraction actually did. One inconvenient truth is that Live Earth was a bit of a flop from a PR perspective. But hundreds of thousands of rock fans did drive and fly to see the shows live in venues like Giants Stadium. All of this entertainment came with a healthy dose of moralizing against Big Oil and any human activity that produces carbon dioxide." -- Matt Kibbe
"[I]n the post-civil-rights era, two competing ideas about discrimination, particularly racial discrimination, have arisen. The ‘conservative' view is that discrimination is wrong, period. The ‘liberal' view is that discriminatory means are acceptable in pursuing a noble end." -- James Taranto
"If the American public wants the border closed first, and discussion of everything else later, is that really such a bad thing?" -- Victor Davis Hanson
"Referring to opponents of the [Senate immigration] bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S. C., said, ‘We've been down this road before. No Catholics, no Jews, Irish, need not apply. That's not the America I want.' One could get bogged down in pointing out that few people have problems with immigrants applying. It's the part where they skip the application process and illegally jump the line that rankles." -- Jonah Goldberg
"We don't give federal grants to tobacco companies to teach students ‘low-risk' forms of smoking on the grounds that ‘kids are going to smoke anyway.' We shouldn't be giving federal grants to groups that sell contraception, to teach kids to use contraception." -- Jennifer Roback Morse
"In politics, there are few skills more richly rewarded than the ability to misstate issues in a way that will sound plausible and attractive." -- Thomas Sowell
"I'm not happy with Congress, either." -- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
"I got tested for AIDS!" -- Sen. Joe Biden on why he should be president
"[W]e ought to vote to dissolve the Congress and go home and wait for the next election." -- Sen. Trent Lott
"Al Gore's son was pulled over by police on the San Diego Freeway Tuesday with marijuana, Valium, Xanax and Vicodin on him. The kid never had a chance. He got hooked on downers at an early age listening to his father read him bedtime stories." -- Argus Hamilton
"Some of the coverage of Live Earth was unintentionally amusing. One report from the NY Times told of the point during the concert at Giants Stadium in New Jersey ‘when Al Gore bounded onto the stage wearing jeans and a black shirt.' Gore in a black shirt: A human eclipse of the sun. Another bit of unintentional irony was when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. exhorted the same crowd to ‘get rid of all those rotten politicians we have in Washington, D. C.'...[O]ne assumes he was tacitly exempting his Uncle Ted." -- Rich Galen
"'If you want to save the planet, I want you to start jumping up and down...' Madonna railed from the stage at London's Live Earth concert Saturday. ‘If you want to save the planet, let me see you jump!' You just can't beat that. What else could capture the canned juvenilia of a 48-year-old centimillionaire -- who owns nine homes and has a ‘carbon footprint' nearly 100 times larger than the norm -- hectoring a bunch of well-off aging hipsters to show their Earth-love by jumping up and down like children?" -- Jonah Goldberg
"Did you watch the Live Earth concert against global warming? Neither did I! I was shoveling coal into my Styrofoam factory, enjoying roast penguin." -- Craig Ferguson
"President Bush told British reporters last week he wishes he was a better speaker -- at least that's what they think he said. They're not quite sure." -- Jay Leno
web posted July 2, 2007
"The biggest battle since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime is under way in Iraq. Its outcome could determine whether the war is won or lost... The heart of the offensive is Operation Arrowhead Ripper, in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, involving some 8,000 American and 2,000 Iraqi troops...[I]f Arrowhead Ripper succeeds, you may not hear much about it. A U.S. victory would be too embarrassing for those in the media who have staked their reputations on defeat." -- Jack Kelly
"These are grim times, but we must resist indulging ourselves in hopeful fantasies. Every piece of our national security calculations must be realistically assessed against the available facts. What is working, what isn't, what to do?" -- Tony Blankley
"Hillary's candidacy is a conflict between the kind of woman she is and the kind of leader she wants us to believe she would be. Nurture doesn't fit with nature, and her nature doesn't reflect a sense of wholeness or trustworthiness as a leader." -- Suzanne Fields
"I find it hard to interpret a drop in Congressional approval when liberals and Democrats take over as an indication that the public is going to want them even stronger in 2008. I think if anything, this bodes ill for Democrats." -- Charles Krauthammer
"Everything that liberalism is, is contained in this [amnesty] legislation. It's sort of like a big, concentrated dose. That's what's so frustrating about it, to see the Republicans just dive headlong into this as though they haven't the slightest clue what will happen to them and their party and the country..." -- Rush Limbaugh
"[I]t's frustrating because nobody believes me." -- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) on running for president
"There's no question that Karl Rove's fingerprints are all over this case, from the inception." -- convicted former Democrat Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, blaming Rove for his own conviction for bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud
"[Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards] has become nearly irrelevant. With the exception of Iowa, where he leads by a few points in the poll averages, Edwards is a non-story. He trails Hillary and her sky high unfavorables. He lags behind Obama and his ultra-thin resume. He's even finds himself looking up at Al Gore, a horse so stale he's been on the national stage since Britney was sober and in the mouseketeers." -- Jason Wright
"[Dick Cheney] may be more popular than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but that's like saying, ‘This head cheese is tastier than carpet mold'." -- Jonah Goldberg
"According to a new poll, 15 percent of Americans say that Hillary Clinton gives them the creeps. The other 85 percent say she gives them the willies or the heebie jeebies." -- Conan O'Brien
"Stupid and envious is a bad combo platter." -- Ann Coulter
"I have let you down, and I think it's best to just admit it and move on. ‘Face the Nation' did not get the big interview with Paris Hilton. I feel terrible about it. I haven't felt so low since one of our competitors broke into programming to report that the embalming of Anna Nicole Smith's body had begun... There's nothing left for me to do but stop making excuses and ‘fess up. The truth is I never asked Paris Hilton to be on ‘Face the Nation', and for one reason, I couldn't think of anything I wanted to ask her. Can you?" -- CBS's Bob Schieffer
"Hillary Clinton has finally picked a theme song for her campaign. Now if she could just pick out a position on Iraq. That would be great." -- Jay Leno