Say What? February 19, 2012 Edition (a lot of quotes this week) [Reader Post]

Liberals:

President Barack Obama on the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade: “As we mark the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must remember that this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman’s health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters…And as we remember this historic anniversary, we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”  But not their babies.

President Obama: “I’m a chauvinist; I want America to have the best stuff. I don’t want to go to China and see their airports better than ours, or go to Europe and see their railroads faster than ours.”  And if President Bush said this….?

President Obama: “And what I’ve said consistently is, we’re not going to just unilaterally disarm.”  Unfortunately, the President was not talking about unilaterally reducing our nuclear arsenal; he was indicating that he is all for SuperPAC’s to support his upcoming campaign.

President Obama on the payroll tax holiday: “I thank the many Americans who lent their voices to this debate in recent months. You made all the difference. This is real money that will make a real difference in people’s lives. It includes important reforms that I proposed in the American Jobs Act to help discourage businesses from laying off workers and to connect workers with jobs. It includes a critical element in the plan I outlined in the State of the Union to out-innovate the rest of the world by unleashing mobile broadband, investing in innovation, and building a nationwide public safety network. It will mean a stronger economy and hundreds of thousands of new jobs. And as soon as Congress sends this bipartisan agreement to my desk, I will sign it into law right away. But this must be only the start of what we do together this year. There’s much more the American people need and expect from us – to help our businesses keep creating jobs, to help restore security for middle class families, and to leave an economy that’s built to last.”

President Obama: “We’ve gone through the toughest economy…since the great depression…[for many people] their concept of the American dream feels like it’s slipping away from them.”

Obama: “We did not fully comprehend at that point how deep this crisis would be.  Don’t underestimate the changes we made.”

Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in a statement, when being faced with a potential bill that would expand oil drilling in Alaska and offshore reserves and greenlight the Keystone XL pipeline construction: “Because this bill jeopardizes safety, weakens environmental and labor protections, and fails to make the investments needed to strengthen the Nation’s roads, bridges, rail, and transit systems, the President’s senior advisors would recommend that he veto this legislation.”

President Obama: “And when gas prices are on the rise again – because as the economy strengthens, global demand for oil increases – and if we start seeing big increases in gas prices, losing that $40 could not come at a worse time.”

President Obama: “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. Keep in mind, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle class households. You’ve heard me say it: Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.”  This is $100 billion each year, which is not even a tenth of the deficit.  And, again, this is suggesting that all money belongs to the government, and whatever they choose not to spend, can be returned to the person who made that money.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner: “Even if Congress were to enact this budget, we would still be left with-in the outer decades as millions of Americans retire-what are still unsustainable commitments in Medicare and Medicaid.”  Geithner admitted the same thing last year.

Gene Sperling, director of the White House’s national economic council: “[Obama] supports corporate tax reform that would reduce expenditures and loopholes, lower rates for people investing and creating jobs in the U.S., due so further for manufacturing, and that we need to, as 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.”

President Obama‘s chief of staff Jacob “Jack” J. Lew: “No institution that has – [no] non-profit institution – that has religious principles that we violated has to pay for or directly offer these services.”

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “You’re talking about birth control, you’re talking about women’s health. I firmly believe – I want to remove all doubt in anyone’s mind where I am on this subject. This is an issue about women’s health, and I believe that women’s health should be covered in all of the insurance plans that are there.”

Rep. Gerry Connolly: “I believe that today’s hearing is a sham.  Here you are being asked to testify about your rights being trampled on — an overstatement if there ever was one — while you’re on a panel, and your participation on the panel makes you complicit in of course the trampling of freedom, because we were denied, on this side of the aisle, any witness who might have a differing point of view. And I think that’s shameful…This is a panel designed, with your conscious participation or not, to try one more time to embarrass the President of the United States and his Administration by overstating an issue which is sacred to all Americans — religious freedom.  But, of course, in order to do it, we have to — in an almost Stalinist-like fashion — have signs of Democratic icons to rub Democratic faces in it”

Rep. Jan Schakowsky: “…there’s been a lot of male punditry, um, saying, oh, you know, we act as if this is a matter of religious freedom… forgetting that it’s also a matter of women’s health and women’s lives….And you know what? The case is closed, too. There’s no controversy around, uh, around contraceptives for almost 100 percent of Americans.  You know, there’s few in the, uh, some in the Catholic Church and maybe some other Evangelical churches, I don’t know, that think that it’s wrong, but none of the American people follow that.”

Democratic chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “[Contraception costs] about $700 a year. That’s real money. And to say to hundreds of thousands of women who work for religious organizations, `No, because of your employers objections, whether or not you choose to use contraception, you aren’t going to be able to get the same access as other employers’ employees can get access to,’ that’s not right.”  No one, insofar as I know, is deprived of contraceptive products, many of which can be gotten free through Planned Parenthood.  What Wasserman Schultz is arguing for is free contraception, which has suddenly become a right of womanhood.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: “[Free contraception] is a no-cost benefit, that the National Business Council on Health, that our actuaries, a variety of people in group plans say having contraception as part of a group insurance plan actually lowers the overall cost, doesn’t increase it, because, on balance, preventive services around family planning, avoiding what may be unhealthy pregnancies, avoiding the health consequences of that actually is a cost reducer.”

Press Secretary Jay Carney about President Obama’s promise to cut the budget deficit in half by the end of his first term in office: “It was a promise based on what we knew about the economy at the time as has been well established in this briefing and many other places. The economy turns out to have been far worse and in far greater distress when the president was running for office and then took office than we knew at the time.”

Senator Frank Lautenberg: “The GOP agenda gives women one option: barefoot and pregnant.  It’s time to tell the Republicans to mind their own business.  Our side believes that women should be able to choose the paths in life that’s best for them and that’s why President Obama wants to make birth control more affordable. Contraception is basic health care, and it’s essential for individuals to choose when they want to have a career and when they want to start a family.”

Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson: “…the only thing I can figure out, Rachel, is that’s based on a wrong and frankly insane belief that a fertilized egg is a fully formed person and has personhood and that, you know, preventing the implantation of that egg is some-, is murder. I don’t, you know, it baffles me as to what other explanation there could be. They can be sincerely mad on this, on this subject, I think, and maybe they are.”

Planned Parenthood‘s tweets, meant for teens:
“Ever have one of those moments in school where you learned something REALLY worth knowing? #TellUs”
“Freaked out about asking yr parents about birth control? You can totally do this. We can help.”
“Are you super obvious when you’re #crushing on someone. or super stealth?”

Why not, “Let us kill ur baby–LOL!!!!” ?

Sen. Barbara Boxer: “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.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the House’s transportation bill: “[This is a] love note to the tea party…The House bill reverses 30 years of good policy, of dedicating funding each year for mass transit. The policy was enacted in 1982 by that ultraliberal Ronald Reagan.”

Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver: “This budget is a nervous breakdown on paper.  We’re still in a recession, we’re still struggling. Unemployment is still too high…We do have a serious ailment as a nation and certainly as Congress; we suffer from `spendicitis.'”  Cleaver’s point was, Obama’s budget cut way, way too much.

Keith Ellison in fund raising email: “It took Eric Cantor less than an hour to start lying about President Obama‘s budget.  Cantor and Republicans in Congress are so desperate to protect special tax breaks for billionaires and Big Oil companies that they’re claiming that President Obama‘s budget, ‘calls for massive tax increases on hardworking families and small businesses.’  That’s a bold-faced lie and they know it.  President Obama‘s plan would simply ensure that the top 1% aren’t paying less in taxes than middle class families.  With the right-wing attack machine already running at full speed, we must set the record straight. We have a hard deadline of Wednesday night to raise the $150,000 we need to get our accountability campaign off the ground.” Most small businesses, which do much of the hiring, file tax returns that are taxed at this higher rate.

Obama appointee, U.S. Judge Sue Myerscough: “[Although the] plaintiffs argue that the Second Amendment protects a general right to carry guns that include a right to carry operable guns in public . [the] Supreme Court has not recognized a right to bear firearms outside the home.”  For some reason, the right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment is a little fuzzy?

Rep. Maxine Waters: “Let me let you in on a secret. I am the senior-most person serving on the Financial Services Committee.  Barney Frank is about to retire and guess who’s shaking in their boots? The too-big-to-fail banks, and financial institutions and all of Wall Street because Maxine Waters is going to be the next chair of the Financial Services Committee!”

Maxine Waters: “On Immigration policy and reform they are on the wrong side of the track. They would have you believe that if they get into office, they are going to make sure that they are going to get rid of everyone in our society who was not born in America”

American Federation of Government Employees National President John Gage, after being informed that employees may have to cough up an additional 0.8% in their contribution to their own pension fund:”Working class men and women who have dedicated their lives to serve their country should not be on the hook for solving a crisis they did not create.”  We are all in this together, unless, of course, you are in a federal union.

Former President Jimmy Carter on the occupy movement: “It’s been relatively successful even acknowledging there’s no leadership, there’s no coherence and there’s no single list of issues they want to succeed.”

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas: “They [Occupiers] can be as filthy and they can rape people – if you want to make stuff up – but the fact is nobody really cares about it because that message isn’t about the messenger, it’s not about who’s delivering a message, but it’s about the message itself which really resonates at a very core emotional level with people who are suffering in this economy.”

It’s all about race:

Rep. Keith Ellison: “The time has come for white people, when they see racist ads, against Black folks—food stamp president—that’s wrong!”

Toure: “[There is] an epidemic of death that’s tragic among prematurely dying massive black singers. Michael Jackson was just 50. Now, Whitney at 48. Heavy D was 44, Nate Dogg was 41. Why are so many of these people dying early? And he talked about that there’s an extraordinary pressure and stress on them to continue to succeed year after year because it is embarrassing to fall. But they also have a fear of going back to poverty.”

Ari Berman: “And what Republicans are doing with redistricting now, following the 2010 election, is they’re trying to draw as many Democrats as possible into as few heavily-minority districts as possible to maximize Republican turnout elsewhere and basically turn the Republican Party into the quote-unquote “white Party” and the Democratic Party into the quote-unquote “black Party,” and ensure that there are Republican majorities in all of the South, including in crucial swing states, like North Carolina, for the next decade.”

I believe that this is a real Democrat ad.

 
The Compliant Obama Press Corps:

Washington Post political writer Aaron Blake on Newt Gingrich‘s high unfavorable ratings: “Sarah Palin, even at her most divisive, never saw her unfavorable rating rise above 60 percent in the CNN poll. And even when Republicans were demonizing Nancy Pelosi in the runup to the 2010 election, her unfavorable rating never climbed beyond the high-50s.”

NBC’s David Gregory: “Are Republicans depending too much upon the social issues to ignite the base?”  It has been liberal news commentator/interviewer who have asked conservatives again and again and again about social issues.  George Stephanopoulos spent 5 minutes during a debate a month or so ago asking Mitt Romney about the states being able to ban contraception.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Rick Santorum: “I mean, you’re talking about a guy from the Cro-Magnon era, in terms of politics.”  My hearing of this, identifies the Cro-Magnon guy as being Santorum and not Foster Frieze.

CNN‘s Candy Crowley to chief of staff Jacob Lew about the healthcare edict from the White House: ”You are an observant Jew, I know, was there anything about this that made you think twice when it first went out?”  For those who need this explained, Jews are very frugal and they watch every penny.  Imagine if Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity said this.

Andrew Sullivan, of the Daily Beast: “So I think a lot of this was ginned up by the Bishops. They were the ones that set a trap for Obama. They’re like Wile E. Coyote trying to blow up the Roadrunner only it blew up on them.”

Josh Bazell [Author, Wild Thing], on NBC: “…there’s certain things that it’s hard to do realistically in a novel. For instance, if I were to create a character who, say, had been the senator from Pennsylvania, as Rick Santorum was – Rick Santorum does not appear in the novel – and I had this character get up at a debate and say that global warming was a hoax and that we had to change the Constitution to limit the rights of gay people. No one would believe that…And if I said then, you know, that the entire Republican establishment sat quietly through this, no one stood up and said, ‘You know, that’s a crazy man talking,’ it would just seem like I was being biased.”  Apparently, this had almost nothing to do with the book he was selling, but then again, he is on MSNBC.

Washington Post editor Melinda Henneberger on MSNBC: “Maybe the Founders were wrong to guarantee free exercise of religion in the First Amendment but that is what they did and I don’t think we have to choose here.”

ESPN‘s mobile website headline of basketball star Jeremy Lin: “Chink in the Armor”

Liberal Celebrities:

Joy Behar on an impending Virginia Abortion Law which requires an ultrasound (there is the possibility that this could be an invasive ultrasound): “It’s like, what are we?  What is this, the Taliban now?  What are we, in Afghanistan?  Where are we exactly in this country?”

Actress Julienne Moore, who plays Sarah Palin in an HBO movie: “She wasn’t qualified to be vice president. She wasn’t a qualified candidate.”

Bruce Springsteen, when asked if he thought the United States should be changed into something closer to a Swedish-style welfare state: “Exactly! That’s my dream! It’s written between the lines. But you have to listen very closely,”

Oprah Winfrey tweet: “Every 1 who can please turn to OWN especially if u have a Nielsen box.”

Actor Sean Penn while visiting socialist President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela: “It’s never predictable what can happen in an American election, but we certainly believe at this point that it’s becoming increasingly clear to the American people that the policies of the far right are the policies of the rich, and that they are to the exclusion of the middle class and the poor, and that no society has a future on that basis.”

Sean Stone, son of American Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone: “I’ve studied history and my study of the Islamic teachings helped me understand that Islam can lead the humanity to happiness.”

Fred Amrisen as Obama/Cosby on SNL: “I hereby veto the rice cakes that Michelle said were healthier than the hoagie.”

Liberals from the past:

Media Matters “senior fellow” Karl Frisch in a 2009 internal memo to his bosses, just unearthed: “Simply put, the progressive movement is in need of an enemy. George W. Bush is gone. We really don’t have John McCain to kick around any more. Filling the lack of leadership on the right, Fox News has emerged as the central enemy and antagonist of the Obama administration, our Congressional majorities and the progressive movement as a whole.  We must take Fox News head-on in a well funded, presidential-style campaign to discredit and embarrass the network, making it illegitimate in the eyes of news consumers.”  The Daily Caller is just beginning to unearth these memos and the relationship between Media Matters, the White House and the mainstream media.

Liberal civility:

Bill Maher: “Something unprecedented is happening with the way conservatives are disrespecting this president.  And I’m not talking about mere words uttered hundreds of thousands of miles away. Sean Hannity can say anything that he wants. No one looks to him as a model human being, or even a human being.  Of course I’m very guilty and actually proud of innumerable insults to former President Bush, calling him `a rube, a cypher, a shit kicker, a yokel on the world stage, a catastrophe that walks like a man, the cowboy from toy story, Drinky McDumbass, and President Larry The Cable Guy.’ But I wouldn’t call him that to his face, and that is the difference.”

MSNBC’s Martin Bashir: “If you listen carefully to Rick Santorum, he sounds more like Stalin than Pope Innocent III.”

The “token” is Craig Mitchell, an Associate Professor of Ethics for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Bill Maher: “That’s why, when the idea of states outlawing contraception came up, he said, well, maybe that’s a good idea. But he can’t be to the right to Rick Santorum because there’s nothing to the right except Kirk Cameron and the Neonazi party.”

Muslims:

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast: “Israel perpetrated the terror actions to launch psychological warfare against Iran.”  This refers to the recent attacks against Israeli embassies in New Dehli and Tbilisi which have been tied to Iran.

Sheikh Saleh bin Fowzan Al Fowzan, a member of the 7-man supreme committee of scholars in Saudi Arabia: “Repenting will not work; any man who insults God or our Prophet (PBUH) should be killed.”  This is about the guy who allegedly insulted Mohammed on twitter.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh: “[The] Gun is our only response to Zionist regime In time, we have come to understand that we can obtain our goals only through fighting and armed resistance and no compromise should be made with the enemy.”

Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghuzlan: “Concerning the Islamic caliphate, this is our dream, and we hope to achieve it, even after centuries.”

Taliban official, Abdullah al Wazir: “They [al Qaeda] are among the first groups and banners that pledged allegiance to the Emir of the Believers [Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban], and they operate in Afghanistan under the flag of the Islamic Emirate,”

Liberals making sense:

Sen. Tom Harkin on the payroll tax holiday: “This Congress will be making a grave mistake — a grave mistake — and reinforcing a dangerous precedent.  And I’m dismayed that Democrats, including a Democratic president and a Democratic vice president, have proposed this, and are willing to sign off on a deal that could begin the unraveling of Social Security…Make no mistake about it. This is the beginning of the end of the sanctity of Social Security.”

Sen. Joe Manchin: “I didn’t come here to put the next generation into more debt; I came here to get them out of it…I know that going back home and saying we voted for tax cuts is popular, but this is not a tax cut – this is a Social Security cut. Plain and simple.  And knowing that we add 10,000 new beneficiaries a day, and knowing that last year Social Security took in less than it paid out – how does that make any sense?”

Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders: “My concern is diverting hundreds of billions of dollars from the Social Security trust fund into that immediate tax relief … I would love to see tax relief, but done in a different way.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta: “I think, in weighing how you address this issue, you’ve also got to take into consideration the national security threat that comes from the huge deficits and the huge debt that we’re running. We’re running a debt now that is comparable to our GDP.”

Leon Panetta: “You can’t take a half a trillion out of the defense budget with some risks.”  [quoted from memory]

Leon Panetta: “This budget bites.”

Rep. Barney Frank: “The tea party has been much more effective than occupy. The people in tea party do a much better job of organizing to get their policy views made apart of this process than occupy people.”

Moderates/Affiliation Unknown:

An Israeli Cabinet minister regarding Iran’s bombing attempt in Bangkok: “We know who carried out the terror attacks, we know who sent them, and Israel will settle the score with them,”

Heather from Texas on Obama’s #40dollars Twitter campaign: “$40 a paycheck means I have to choose which medication my daughter takes gets put off, and not like something simple we are talking choice or of life or death. My daughter is a liver transplant [patient] and is waiting for another transplant.”

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia [an edited statement]: “Many Catholics are confused and angry. They should be.  Quite a few Catholics supported President Obama in the last election, so the ironies here are bitter. Many feel betrayed. They’re baffled that the Obama administration would seek to coerce Catholic employers, private and corporate, to violate their religious convictions…Critics may characterize my words here as partisan or political. These are my personal views, and of course people are free to disagree. But it is this administration – not Catholic ministries, or institutions, or bishops – that chose the timing and nature of the fight. The onus is entirely on the White House, which also has the power to remove the issue from public conflict. Catholics should not be misled into accepting feeble compromises on issues of principle. The HHS mandate is bad law; and not merely bad, but dangerous and insulting. It needs to be withdrawn – now.”

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan: “I want to take him [Obama] at his word, [but] it’s getting harder and harder.  Does the federal government have the right to tell a religious individual or a religious entity how to define yourself?  This is what gives us greater chill.”

Fake Obama commercial: “The first four years were about change; now it’s about dollars.”

David Brooks: “We’ve become accustomed to the faith-driven athlete and coach, from Billy Sunday to Tim Tebow. But we shouldn’t forget how problematic this is…The modern sports hero is competitive and ambitious…But there’s no use denying – though many do deny it – that this ethos violates the religious ethos on many levels.”  David Brooks, who long ago proved that he has no idea what conservatism is, now proves that he has no idea what Christianity is.

Sharon posting to a recent Jake Tapper story: “What did we as a nation ever do before Obama? How did we function? Who knew I was responsible for birth control for the lady who I stood behind in Target today? Do she have to pay for my tampons & pads? They are a necessity, therefore somebody else should pay. What about diapers for my babies? Can’t raise a kid w/out diapers – shouldn’t they be free too?”  Probably a conservative.

Crosstalk:

Newsweek‘s Eleanor Clift on PBS‘s McLaughlin Group on President Obama‘s budget: “[you can’t] drastically cut a deficit before you invigorate the economy or you’re going to look at a lost decade.”

National Review’s Rich Lowry: “This isn’t a Keynesian budget. It’s a flat out tax and spend big government liberal budget”  The entire exchange can be found here.

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MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell: “Do you have any concerns with some of his [Santorum’s] comments on social issues, on contraception on women in combat and whether or not it would hurt his viability in a general election campaign were he to be the nominee?”

Foster Friess, a Rick Santorum supporter: “Here we have millions of our fellow Americans unemployed. We have jihadist camps being set up in Latin America, which Rick has been warning about, and people seem to be so preoccupied with sex. I think it says something about our culture. We maybe need a massive therapy session so we can concentrate on what the real issues are… On this contraceptive thing, my Gosh it’s such [sic] inexpensive. You know, back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.”

Mitchell, shocked that anyone could suggest abstinence as birth control: “Excuse me, I’m just trying to catch my breath from that, Mr. Friess, frankly… Let’s change the subject.”
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Congresswoman Maxine Waters: “I saw pictures of Boehner and Cantor on our screens; don’t ever let me see again in life those Republicans in our hall, on our screens, talking about anything. These are demons.  These are legislators who are destroying this country.”

Eric Bolling on Fox&Friends: “Congresswoman, you saw what happened to Whitney Houston; step away from the crack pipe, step away from the Xanax, step away from the Lorazepam, because it’s going to get you in trouble.”

Eric C. Bauman, chairman of the L.A. County Democratic Party, called for the network to remove Bolling, and said: “At worst, Bolling‘s comment oozes racism, which serves to discredit a strong African American woman by perpetrating racial stereotypes. Regardless of whether this remark was deliberate or offhand – it was irresponsible, despicable and reprehensible.”

Big Journalism writer Dana Loesch: “That’s the difference between conservatives and progressives: conservatives want the diversity of voices, even if they disagree with the thought or if the thought is offensively over-the-top sensational. They’re eager to debate it out in the open and prove it wrong. They desire nothing more than to win converts by proving how illogical or immoral the opposite viewpoint is while using logic and reason. Progressives, on the other hand, desire none of those things, regardless whether or not the opposing viewpoint is sensational or simply one with which they disagree. Their idea of debate is quasi-censorship: blacklisting diversity from the airwaves. They’re either too lazy or too incompetent to debate the issues, so they resort to hiding them altogether. They don’t engage, they persecute and suppress.”  This was in a story about Pat Buchanan being forced off MSNBC.
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Interviewer: “You’re getting pelted in the media; they’re showing this video of you over and over again in February of 09 saying by the end of your first term, that you’re going to reduce the deficit by half—we’re not there.”

President Obama: “Well, we’re not there because this recession turned out to be a lot deeper than any of us realized.  Everybody who is out there back in 2009, if you look back what their estimates were in terms of how many jobs had been lost, how bad the economy had contracted when I took office everybody had underestimated it. People thought that the economy contracted 3%, it turns it was close to 9%. We lost 8 million jobs just in a year’s span, about half a year before I took office and about a half a year after I took office”

Follow up question: “9% contraction?  I have not seen that reported anywhere.  Can you provide us with some proof of this?”

Follow up question: “During the Reagan recovery, the private sector created 1 million jobs a month; will we ever see this as a part of the Obama recovery?”

Just kidding; there were no such follow up questions.
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Paul Ryan: “Here’s the point, if you’ll allow me. This is your time, so we’ll just take a long time. Here’s the point. Leaders are supposed to fix problems. We have a $99.4 trillion unfunded liability. Our government is making promises to Americans that it has no way of accounting for. And so you’re saying yeah, we’re stabilizing it but we’re not fixing it in the long run. That means we’re just going to keep lying to people. We’re going to keep all these empty promises going.”

Tim Geithner: “We have millions of Americans retiring every day, and that will drive substantially the rate of growth of healthcare costs. You are right to say we’re not coming before you today to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is, we don’t like yours.”

The entire exchange, unedited, with text.

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Democratic strategist Bob Frum: “Catholic leaders are self-righteously trying to infringe on the liberty of all Americans.”

Glenn Reynolds tries to come up with an equally stupid statement, to illustrate: “It’s as if we passed a law requiring mosques to sell bacon and then, when people objected, responded by saying `What’s wrong with bacon? You’re trying to ban bacon!!!!`”
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The National Journal: “What kind of chauvinism have you faced in Congress?”

Former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi: “At first the men thought having women in the House was nice. Then they started to get a little threatened-it wasn’t as cute. When I decided to run for leadership, they said, “Who said she could run?” And I thought, “Perfect. That is exactly right. Who said she could run? Not you.” That is how they thought not that long ago.”
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Rick Santorum suggested on CNN that a child conceived in rape is an innocent child, so a woman could “make the best of a bad situation.”

Radio personality Randi Rhodes:  “It’s a gift! God gives you a gift of a rape baby, that’s what God gives you. Uh – God also gives people cancer – I wonder if Rick Santorum thinks that uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, cancer is given by God and AIDS is given by God – or, in your case, a shocking lack of empathy is given by God. Or in my case – you know, ridiculously acute bronchitis was given to me by God! It’s to show me how tough I am! It’s to show me just exactly how many steroids I can take before I want to bump your eyes out! Oh my God, look on the bright side rape victims! It was given to you by a man, therefore it must be a gift! It’s a gift!”
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CBS’s Charlie Rose: “There’s no question that those issues are very important, and they’re very important to the voters of Michigan. But also, you have been identified as a social conservative, and those issues have been part of what you have said to the country. So this is not gotcha. What this is, is trying to understand exactly what Rick Santorum stands for, and what he might say or do as president-“

Rick Santorum: “Well, Charlie, when you quote- hold on, Charlie. When you quote a supporter of mine who tells a bad off-color joke, and somehow, I’m responsible for that shall, that’s gotcha. I mean, the bottom line is, we’re- we’ve been- we’ve been-“

Rose: “But nobody said you were responsible, Senator. Nobody said you were responsible. They said, how would you characterize it and what have you said to him, not that you were responsible. It’s to understand how you differ from what this person said. So let me quote you-“

Santorum: “Okay. So I’m now going to have respond to every supporter who says something. Now, I’m going to have to respond to it. Look, this is what you guys do. I mean, I don’t- you don’t do this with President Obama. In fact, with President Obama, what you did was you went out and defended him against someone who- he sat in a church for- for 20 years, and defended him- that, oh, he can’t possibly believe what he listened to for 20 years. It’s a double standard, this is what you’re pulling off, and I’m going to call you on it.”

Conservatives:

News columnist James Tarantino: “The president is negotiating with the Taliban, [but] he will not negotiate with the Catholics.”

Radio personality Mark Levin: “[Obama’s] telling people who are having a tough time with their mortgages, ‘I’m going to take care of you.’  No, he’s not.  He’s telling kids with student loans, ‘I’m going to take care of you’ and no, he’s not.  He’s telling people who can’t read credit card information, ‘I’m gonna take care of you.’  Now this is the guy who runs the IRS—have you ever read the Internal Revenue codes?  He’s not going to take care of you.  He’s more about these promises, more about these abstractions, these fantasies, these arguments about equality.” [quoted from memory]

FoxBusiness person Gary B. Smith: “Income inequality is what made America great.”

Republican presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich: “It is truly astounding that you have an administration, the Obama administration, that refuses to even use the words radical Islam, which behaves as though terrorism is a random behavior, and literally has censored national security documents to eliminate accurate facts so that when a psychiatrist at Ft. Hood kills 13 Americans and wounds 30 others while yelling Allah-Akbar and having in his wallet, ‘warrior of Allah’.  The administration manages to write a report with no mention of radical Islamists.”

Rep. Allen West: “Our party firmly believes in the safety net.  “We reject the idea of the safety net becoming a hammock.  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.”

Newt Gingrich on Romney’s negative ads: “[This] negative junk…It drove down participation.  We have a target, it’s called Barack Obama. The Romney people don’t seem to get that.”

CRNC video on Obama: “He wanted to be my doctor, my banker.”

Rep. Phil Gingery: “I cannot and I will not support legislation that extends the payroll tax holiday without paying for it,  This will add $100 billion to the deficit and it will create an even greater shortfall within the Social Security trust fund that already has over $100 billion shortfall just in the last two years.”

Lamar Alexander, one of the other Republicans to speak up on this: “Getting rid of the way we fund Social Security through the payroll tax is a dangerous idea.”

Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum: “[Obama’s agenda is based on] some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.”

Rick Santelli: “While the vandals are on the street corners, the Tea Party conservatives they’re working state houses, the governorships, the mayorships, the Senate, the House. See, they understand, they’ve read the Constitution. If you want to make a difference, don’t go break windows, okay? Break some phony arguments that things like austerity are going to put you in the hole. What put you in the hole is borrowing 38 cents of every dollar you spent. That’s what put you in the hole, pure and simple. Everything else is political spin.”  I think he is conservative?

Foster Friess to Andrea Mitchell: “Do you honestly think that if Senator Santorum becomes president that we are going to get rid of contraceptives?”

Foster Friess: “I walked in the Country Club and said, you gotta get behind this guy, Rick Santorum—he’s what America’s all about; he’s standing on the shoulders of the founding fathers…and he said, ‘He’s too extreme.’  I said, ‘What do you mean by that?’  And he said, ‘The same-sex marriage.’  So I said to this guy, `You know, through the beginning of time, not just the major religions but various African tribal people have said man is marrying a woman. At what point in your life did that suddenly become an extreme idea?’ Well, obviously, he couldn’t answer. So the whole idea of extremism, it’s kind of a bizarre terminology for someone that believes marriage is between a man and a woman. Why is that extreme?”

Republican National Committee Communications Director Sean Spicer about the possibility of a brokered GOP convention in Tampa: “The last time we had a brokered convention was in the 1940’s, and we’re four contests in that have awarded delegates.  We are four weeks and four states into a process. I get that it’s the buzz, but I literally spend as much time worrying if some space alien attack happens.”

Greg Gutfeld of Obama: “The first term, he had to be nice.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Most Americans I think by now realize the AP is no longer a news outlet. It’s just part of the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.”

Rush Limbaugh: “You know, it’s funny what offends liberals, and the liberal media. Bill Clinton abusing and ruining the life of an intern. JFK, ditto. It’s admirable. That’s behavior they want to emulate. But an aspirin joke, boy, look how that offends them. Just really funny these people are.”

Rush Limbaugh: “You boil it all down, what you end up with is something very simple. Liberals want life without consequences.”

Rush Limbaugh: “I don’t know what percentage, but a portion of the population will believe, at the end of the day today or whenever they watch the news, that the Republicans wanted to have a hearing on banning contraception. That’s what the news will be.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Because of the bailout and the special deals, General Motors does not pay any income tax. They pay no corporate tax for ten years on whatever profits they earn.”

Rush Limbaugh: “The whole point of bringing up contraception and trying to make it look like the Republicans want to ban birth control is simply something to excite the Democrat base, which has been depressed as it can be because their president has done a rotten job.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Why is contraception so important that it must be paid for by somebody else? It’s so important that you have contraceptives. It can’t be left up to you to even take the initiative to provide them for yourself. They have to be provided for you. Why not toothpaste? Why not hotel rooms? Why not a car? What is it, as far as liberals are concerned, that makes contraceptives a must-have?”

Rush Limbaugh: “Obamacare could ban contraception or abortion. Once Obamacare is implemented, the government can make any change unilaterally it wants. Because, if it is implemented and if this mandate is found to be constitutional — if the government can tell you that you’ve got to buy an insurance policy or you get fined or you go to jail — then they can tell you anything.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Conventional wisdom is a bunch of know-nothings agreeing. When everybody agrees on something, something’s wrong.”

Rush Limbaugh: “The Washington Post, New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, LA Times, it’s all oriented toward two things: advancing the Democrat Party and whoever runs it — in this case, Barack Obama — and at the same time defeating, embarrassing, and humiliating the Republicans and conservatives.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Obama is campaigning on the notion there are more takers than there are producers, that there are more people dependent on government than there are not, and that they will vote for whoever they think is going to keep that gravy train flowing.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Barack Obama and the Democrat Party are aiming at the lowest common denominator. They have spent decades dumbing down the American people in the education system that they run and that they have run. Campaign for the stupid. Get the votes, buy the votes of the stupid.”

Rush Limbaugh: “We have a president for whom the Constitution is an impediment. The Constitution is a roadblock. The Constitution is a problem. The Constitution, for Obama and his boys, is a worthless document.”

Rush Limbaugh: “The arms race was not about total numbers. It was about having more than all of your enemies because of the deterrent factor. None of these weapons were ever built with the hope that they would have to be used.”

Rush Limbaugh: “The United States had an AAA credit rating when Obama was immaculated. It was $1.61-a-gallon gas, 7.2% unemployment, a deficit four times smaller than it is today. And Obama, as a senator, voted for every spending increase put before him. Every one! Everything he ‘inherited,’ he voted for.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Barack Obama is attempting to occupy a position that essentially is, ‘I haven’t been president for three years. I’m running for office for the first time here. It’s worse than anybody ever told us!’ When does he get blamed? Name for me any other president, three years after a disaster like this, who would not be blamed at least for some of it? You can’t.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Every problem we are having in housing is directly traceable to Barack Obama. He owns it! As a Senator, as a community organizer, the only thing Obama didn’t like about Bush‘s big spending policies is that the spending was never enough.”

The Conservative Press:

Charles Krauthammer on PBS’s Inside Washington: “This tells you how bad our politics have become. Everybody here is so delighted that we finally have a bipartisan agreement and are celebrating it over what? We have just, we have, for 16 billion-trillion dollars in debt. We just added 100 billion, on a payroll tax cut that every economist will tell you is not going to have any influence on the creation of jobs or helping our economy. It’s temporary, will have no effect. And you know how we are paying for some of the goodies in there? We are auctioning off spectrum.  Now, you ought to auction off spectrum anyway. However, the idea that you’re going to do that – this is a priceless commodity that the government is selling it off – is selling crown jewels, it’s selling the jewels to buy crack. A payroll tax cut has no effect at all, it’s going to make people smile for, you know, eight or nine months. It’ll be $100 billion, and we are selling auction to do that. That’s the state of our politics today, and we’re all happy because it was done on a bipartisan basis.”  The video.

FoxNews’ Lou Dobbs: “These are choices that are going to be made individually by voters, and it’s awfully nice of the national media and the Democratic Party to help everyone understand the dangers of Rick Santorum. But the Republican primary process will make that evaluation irrespective of our assistance genuine or manufactured.”

Bill O’Reilly on an SNL skit: “I’m not sure what happened here.”

Republican Infighting:

Colonel Martha McSally (USAF-RET), who is a Republican candidate running for Gabrielle Giffords‘ old seat, was on Fox and Friends discussing Rick Santorum‘s recent comments about women in combat: “When I heard this, I really just wanted to kick him in the Jimmy.”

From Conservative Review #216  (HTML)  (PDF)