Say What? 09/30/2010 Edition [Reader Post]

Liberals:

President Obama: “Long before America was even an idea, this land of plenty was home to many peoples. The British and French, the Dutch and Spanish, to Mexicans, to countless Indian tribes. We all shared the same land.”  Spain originally conquered and colonized New Spain in 1521, and Mexicans gained their independence in 1821, almost 50 years after American became an sovereign nation.

Newsweek’s Howard Fineman said, “Barack Obama probably should have joined a church here…some things in politics you have to do at least for the symbolism.”

Bill Clinton: “The people that are funding this Tea Party are trying to weaken the government. so that they can have unaccountable private power.”  On another occasion, he said, “The wealthy are funding these TEA parties so that the big companies can run American life.” [the second quote is form memory].

Rep. Loretta Sanchez speaking in Spanish to a Spanish speaking audience: “The Vietnamese and the Republicans are, with an intensity, trying to take away this seat, this seat that we have done so much for our community; take away this seat from us and give it to this Van Tran, who’s very anti-immigrant and very anti-Latino.”  Tran is an immigrant from Vietnam.  Sanchez has since apologized for these remarks.  She said that she “used a poor choice of words that some people have taken as offensive.”

John Kerry: “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.”

Ed Schultz: “What we are seeing from this governor out of New Jersey is just, go to the money, cut whoever you have to cut, there is no ramification for any of this, because he’s a cold-hearted fat slob anyway.”

Radio Host Mike Malloy : “Back to Cheney, whose father is responsible for every single death in Iraq, since the invasion and occupation that he championed in 2003…he is responsible for the deaths in Afghanistan…he is responsible for the death in New York City [and] the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania.  Dick Cheney is one of the bloodiest sons of bitches ever to have held power…in this government…you oughtta be out there planning your father’s funeral, Liz…do at least one thing in your useless life that will have some meaning; go plan his funeral.”

Speaking of incendiary remarks, Chris Redfern said, in reference to those TEA party members who opposed healthcare, said: “If your kids are going to graduate from college, now he or she gets health care, your heath care, while he or she looks for a new job.  It’s in the very base terms we win these arguments. Every time one of these f**** says, excuse my language…”  [I don’t have the rest of the quote]  He later sent an email to supporters with the heading, No Apologies.  Part of the email reads “These [TEA party] tactics have no place in our politics, and I will NEVER apologize for speaking out forcefully against them.”

Adrianna Huffington [about people who support Christine O’Donnell]: “We have a lot of surveys that show people are making decisions from their lizard brains, and when people operate from their lizard brains which means they’re operating from anger, from fear, from panic.  They’re not operating from rationality.  Who knows what they will decide?  I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Liberal talk show host Bill Press: “I tell you the other thing, Ed, the fact that Glenn Beck likes Chris Christie? Of course he does. He’s a bully too. You’ve got people every night on this show that disagree with you, and you have a good dialogue. Have ever heard anybody or seen anybody who disagrees on Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity? No. They’re all bullies, they’re all cowards, they’re all alike. That’s why they like Christie.”

Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane [about his desire to have rough sex with Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell]: “I would, I would wreck that chick.”  [The idiom comes from a Family Guy episode].

Maureen Dowd: “Evolution is no myth, but we may be evolving backward. Christine O’Donnell had better hope they don’t bring back witch burning.”

Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Speaker of the House: “The momentum is with us. We are out there to dispel many of the misrepresentations that have been going out there for nearly two years by the Republicans and the special interests, the oil industry, the health insurance industry, the banks and their allies.  We’re out there. Our members are great articulate spokespersons for their point of view into their districts. And district by district we feel very confident about the election.  And we believe that six weeks from today, six weeks from Wednesday of this week we will have no regrets but instead we will have a great Democratic victory.”

Senator Harry Reid calls New York state’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, “the hottest member” of the U.S. Senate.

Jon Stewart on his gathering: “We will gather on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. A million moderate march, where we take to the streets to send a message to our leaders and our national media that says, ‘We are here! We’re here, though, until six, because we have a sitter!’ ”

Colin Powell: “[Illegal aliens are] all over my house, doing things whenever I call for repairs, and I’m sure you’ve seen them at your house.”  He has since walked these remarks back by clarifying them.

Liberals making sense:

Chris Matthews: “I have one small tweak to make to what the president said today – he should stop saying that giving people tax cuts is giving people money. It`s their money! A tax cut is when the government doesn’t take our money. It`s an important distinction.  He talked today, for example, about people getting a check from the government in the form of a tax cut. That`s not the way it works. If tax rates are kept lower, it`s a matter of the check going to the government being smaller.”

Question for Obama from a supporter: “I’m one of your middle class Americans. And quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for.  My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot dogs and beans era of our lives, but, quite frankly, it’s starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we’re headed again, and, quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly. Is this my new reality?”

Steve Colbert: “We’ve ignored this issue [or exploited aliens] for way too long.  It’s time to roll up our sleeves and face this issue mano to – whatever the Spanish word for `mano’ is.”

Gavin Newoms: “That is not something that I’m proud to say as a Democrat, it’s not something I want to say, but it’s true…It’s not wrong to criticize parts of that stimulus as disproportionately saving jobs in the public sector and not stimulating private sector economic growth.”

Now, perhaps there are more liberals sounding intelligent right about this time because it is a month away from the elections?

Crosstalk:

Paul Volcker on Obama: “He is not a wild-eyed leftist radical. It’s ridiculous. Since he has been in office he has been a defender of open markets.”

Neil on Forbes on Fox: “[Obama] is not so much anti-business as economically clueless.”

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Leslie Stall: “With everything that President Obama’s going through, almost the worst insult that people say is that ‘My God, he could be worse than Jimmy Carter.'”

Jimmy Carter: “I can’t control what people say about comparing me with Obama. But I hope that Obama will have as successful a term as I had in dealing with our nation’s domestic and international affairs. And if he does, I’ll be very proud of him, as I happen to be proud of myself, having had a successful administration when I was in office.”

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Charles Krauthammer on the effectiveness of Obama’s stimulus bill: “These guys have had a year and a half and people are not happy with the results.  $1 trillion of stimulus it disappeared and there is nothing to show.”

Washington Post’s Colby King “They had 3 million jobs to show for it.”

Krauthammer: “Yeah, saved, saved, how do you measure a saved job?”

Conservatives:

Jim DeMint: “I don’t want the [Republican] majority back if we don’t believe anything.  When I came in to the Senate, we had 55 Senators, a large majority in the House and a Republican in the White house.  We didn’t do what we said we were going to do.”

Christine O’Donnell: “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

While the round table fretted about the so-called Civil War within the Republican Party, George Will (as usual) brings some sanity and clear thinking to the table: “At the beginning of the year, the question was, will the Tea Party people play nicely with others and will they obey the rules of politics?  Who’s sort of not playing nicely?  Mr. Crist starts losing the primary to a Tea Party favorite Rubio. He suddenly discovers that he’s an independent and changes all his views overnight.  Mrs. Murkowski loses a primary and suddenly discovers that she has a property right in her Senate seat and she’s going to run as a write-in. Senator Bennett thought of that in Utah, Senator Castle in Delaware is thinking of a write-in candidate. Who are the extremists?”

Noel Sheppard writes: “As [George] Will accurately stated, the media have been ‘writing this story for eight months about what a problem the Tea Party is for the Republican Party.’ The liberal press are always trying to figure out a narrative that paints the GOP in the most negative light.  First we were told the Tea Party represented an inconsequential fringe of racists and homophobes that will have no impact on elections.  Now that its candidates have produced shocking results across the fruited plain, and have reinvigorated conservative voters like nothing we’ve seen in many years, the movement is going to produce a Civil War within the Republican Party that will either hurt it in November or make it impossible for it to govern if its successful at the polls.  This is clearly why you could see Will either shaking his head or seemingly laughing to himself as his colleagues waxed philosophically about some as yet unrealized though oft-predicted calamity associated with this movement.  Less than two years after Barack Obama and the Democrat Party won a landslide victory that had the potential of being a political realignment shifting the balance of power in this country to the left for many years nay decades, the Republicans are on the precipice of shocking the world by taking back the Congress.  Is it any wonder the media are doing their darnedest to figure out a way to undermine it or that Will is getting such a kick out of watching them try?”

Chris Christie: “I had an Irish father and I had, before she passed away 6 years ago, a Sicilian mother.   Now, for those of you who have been exposed to the combination of Irish and Sicilian—it has made me not unfamiliar with conflict.  In my house, my parents left nothing unsaid; we heard most of it, and most of it was at a pretty high volume.”

Ben Stein (tongue-in-cheek): “Aces to Oliver Stone for standing up for Hitler.”

Mike Murphy: “Jerry Brown is a time machine back to failure.” (Quoted from memory)

Charles Krauthammer: “The president has delivered more for liberalism in a year and a half than any president in 50 years.  He’s given them national health care. He’s given them heavy regulation on finance. He gave them $1 trillion to spend on every wish list that liberals have had for the last 20 years.  He has given them two appointments for the Supreme Court, each of which will yield a quarter-century of liberal opinions. He bailed out unions in the auto takeover. He bailed out the teachers’ unions just this week by supporting state and local governments. He has given them everything he could possibly do – and they’re [liberals are] whining about him? It’s unbelievable.”

Michael Eden (on Obama’s recent townhall meeting): “It was billed as Investing In America…But it sounded like a therapy session for disillusioned Obama supporters.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan”: “Obama did exactly the opposite of what should have been done.  He surrounded himself with people who exacerbated the problem. You have a person who has cancer and instead of removing the cancer, you give him tranquilizers. When you give tranquilizers to a cancer patient, they feel better but the cancer gets worse.”

Noel Sheppard: “If James Madison were alive today, he’d be a Tea Partier.”

Mitt Romney: “We have serious enemies and growing threats throughout the world.  Unfortunately, we have an administration whose idea of a rogue state is Arizona.”

Taken from

Conservative Review #145

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