Liberals:
Jesse Lagreca, Wall Street protester/leader, who seems pretty coherent and level-headed: “We actually had our own volunteer cleaning crew doing the best we can to maintain the sanitation in the area.”
Jesse Lagreca: “Actually, the relationship with the NYPD has been tremendous; I think they’ve done a tremendous job of protecting us and we’ve been doing as much as we can to facilitate them in their protecting us.”
Occupy Portland Leader in a chant: “There will be no urinating in public.”
Occupy Portland attendee: “F__ the police…The police are a government-run gang; they’re there to protect the hidden political interests of the politicians, period.”
50 members of the Occupy Wall Street movement chanting: “Surveillance is violence, we won’t remain silent!”
Occupy Nashville person who crashes former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld speaking even at the Hilton Hotel: “I call upon you to surrender yourself as a war criminal.”
40 Occupy protesters waited outside the same building chanting: “Hey Donald, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!”
OccupyWallStreet.org “Goodbye life and freedom. License to kill is here. James Bond and Darth Vader is in your nabourhood.”
Dem Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Occupy Wall Street, “I believe that movement is unstoppable.”
Anne Hathaway, who is worth $58 million, holds up a sign at Occupy Wall Street: “Blackboards not bullets.”
Shepard Fairey, creator of the iconic 2008 poster of Obama: “As flawed as the system is, I see Obama as a potential ally of the Occupy movement if the energy of the movement is perceived as constructive, not destructive. I still see Obama as the closest thing to “a man on the inside” that we have presently.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about the super-committee: “I was hoping there would be a lot of hand-holding and hugs and pats on the back; we’d be headed home for Thanksgiving.”
Nancy Pelosi: “but the truth is what I said. I’m a devout Catholic and I honor my faith and love it …but they have this conscience thing”
Harry Reid: “While it’s proper to guard against and remove onerous regulations, and we need to do that, my Republican friends have yet to produce a single shred of evidence that the regulations they hate so much do the broad economic harms they claim. That’s because there aren’t any.”
Senator John Kerry on a debt deal: “To have something on the table that does not ask the wealthiest people in the country to share (the burden) … is unconscionable.”
Nancy Pelosi on Herman Cain calling her “Princess Nancy”: “Really, it’s another one of those clueless statements – clueless in that you don’t say something like that.”
Senator John Kerry on Mitt Romney: “There are few people I’ve met in public life who have changed on as many issues as he has. Every major touchstone of American politics – from abortion to guns to war to God to gays, you name it.” This is the Senator who voted against the Iraq war funding after he voted for it.
From Vice President Joe Biden‘s schedule: “At 1:00 PM, the Vice President will attend a meeting of the Government Accountability and Transparency Board in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. At 2:30 PM, the Vice President will meet with representatives of the National Sheriffs’ Association in the Roosevelt Room. These meetings are closed press.”
Rep. Maxine Waters on deaths and crime taking place in the midst of the occupy movement: “that’s life and it happens.”
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “State legislatures are attempting to impose voting restrictions that are the modern day equivalent of poll taxes and literacy tests. We cannot allow state legislatures to drag our nation backward in what is nothing more than a political quest to protect their governing majority’s interests.”
Michael Moore struggling with Obama conspiracy theories: “This [the many simultaneous shutdowns of the occupy movements] is not some coincidence. This was planned and I think the question really has to be asked of the federal government and of the Obama administration. Why? Why? Why are you participating in this against a non-violent mass movement of people who are upset at what Wall Street and the banks have done to their lives?”
Former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones: “You’re going to see an evolution now as you go from protests, keep the protests, but now expand into politics. And if you thought there was an earthquake in 2010 when the Tea Party moved into politics, wait until this 99 percent movement moves over into politics. You haven’t seen anything yet…[this evolving movement is] going to be recruiting 2,000 candidates to run for office now under this 99 percent banner [in] phase two.”
Stephanie Miller, radio host: “Oh, by the way, speaking of disrespecting the Reagan, this is one of America’s funniest liberal pranks.”
Chris Lavoie, Miller sidekick: “Oh yeah in Newport Beach vandals vandalized the Ronald Reagan statue and made it lean left. Seriously. That really happened.”
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard: “She [Mrs. Obama] said to him {President Obama] that you often don’t eat because you are so focused on your work that you forget to eat, and she wanted to make sure that we feed you well in Australia.”
Daily Kos columnist and occupy-phile Troubadour: “It’s worse than you think. With the evolution of Occupy Wall Street, the threat that made George W. Bush reticent to go for full-blown dictatorship is now out of the bag: People are actively resisting and disrupting the money and power structure that underlies the Republican Party and, sadly, major portions of our own party – structures that now completely define the ideology, rhetoric, and policies of a huge proportion of our government without even a pretense of addressing the American people. We are resisting this state of affairs with increasing sophistication, volume, and success, while government institutions are flailing to stop us without even pretending to address our grievances. But all of what we do is dependent on a few, fragile liberties and lines of communication that a sufficiently ruthless, shameless, and desperate regime could easily shatter.” I had to check the date of this column to make sure it was current. [Photograph above is from Berkeley, this past week, also living in the past]
Brad Spitzer, California-based analyst who has been taking part in the OWS protests: “Tents are not for me,” He has been staying, apparently, in a $700/night hotel.
Climate scientist and activist James Hansen: “…we can say with a high degree of confidence that events such as the extreme summer heat in the Moscow region in 2010 and Texas in 2011 were a consequence of global warming.” So, I guess if it agrees with global warming, it is climate, but if it doesn’t, it is just weather?
Film director and multi-millionaire Oliver Stone: “Americans are not really interested in problems abroad. They have no empathy.” Completely ignoring that contributions from Americans for any crisis anywhere in the world is always way more than contributions from anyone else from any other country.
Oliver Stone about why there is no discussion about American support for Israel: “There is such power, money, media and lobbying are so (powerful) that the truth can’t come out.”
Gladys Knight (without the Pips): “There’s a governing body up there. And sometimes he [Obama] can’t do what he wants to do. His hands are tied. And when we get those little social things coming back into play that we had in the ’60s – ah-ha! – then you get the kind of results that we’re having today. We’ve got to come back up to where we were and start supporting each other and loving each other. Because we can change the world if we come together.”
The Compliant Obama Press Corps:
NBC news anchor Brian Williams: “And out to lunch. Does pizza really look like a vegetable to anybody? The better question may be what does Congress have against healthier lunches for kids?”
NPR’s Nina Totenberg: “It doesn’t look good when half a billion dollars goes down the drain. On the other hand, this program, which was originally in the Bush administration and Solyndra was originally okayed in the Bush administration, actually allocates $10 billion for losses, because it was supposed to be a seed money program. It was endorsed by every Republican and I believe every Democratic member of the House committee that originally approved it. It was, you know, many people think it’s a good idea. Many people don’t. But there is nothing illegal about what went on here, or even probably very political except that somebody wanted the layoffs delayed…They shouldn’t have done that, but there is no evidence that there was any political anything about the awarding of this contract.”
AP story: “Letting extended jobless assistance expire would mean that more than 6 million people would lose benefits averaging $296 a week next year, with 1.8 million cut off within a month. Economist say those jobless benefits – up to 99 weeks of them in high unemployment states – are among the most effective way to stimulate the economy because unemployed people generally spend the money right away.”
Kathleen Parker on Face the Nation: “Well, he’s [Newt Gingrich]– he’s certainly the flavor of the week. And– and Newt Gingrich does very, very well in debates. You know, he’s not really much of a campaigner. In fact, he’s been described as sort of a misanthrope. That would be sort of interesting wouldn’t it to have a misanthropic President.” A misanthrope is someone that hates mankind.
Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker: “Gingrich, who, whatever his flaws and despite the weight of his considerable baggage, is…a populist professor – a bombastic smarty-pants.” In the context of this piece, Parker was actually paying some respect to Gingrich’s intelligence, yet managed to attack him for being intelligent just as, a few paragraphs earlier, she attacked Herman Cain for being stupid.
Paul Begala of the Daily Beast: “But today’s Republican Party is more the party of Sarah Palin‘s defiant know-nothingness than the brainy conservatism of Bill Bennett. The GOP is a party of ideologues, not ideas.”
MSNBC’s Al Sharpton on a Balanced Budget Amendment: “This extreme piece of Republican mean-spiritedness could have destroyed up to 15 million jobs and slashed social programs.”
MSNBC morning anchor Thomas Roberts: “With members of the Occupy Wall Street movement identifying themselves as the 99 percent, it leaves the question, who makes up the one percent? The easy answer — billionaire bankers, well-known CEOs. But what about one percenters who may not know that they fall into that category? And it seems that some wealthy Americans who have been outspoken in support for the Occupy movement are unaware that they do. Our “Flipside” today takes a look at some unexpected one percenters. First up, though, 57 members of Congress who fall into the top one percent of earners in the U.S. This includes, yeah, right there, that lady, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who has come out in support of the Occupy movement. Next, we go to Hollywood where celebrities like filmmaker Michael Moore, actor Alec Baldwin and business mogul Russell Simmons have all voiced their separate support for the Occupy Wall Street movements, yet they are among the elite one percent. So it’s good to know that the Occupy Wall Streeters have some friends in high places.”
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “Obama is wonderfully skilled at evoking what America’s all about. I think he’s great at it. He thrills me when he does it. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I was inspired by him.”
MSNBC’s Chris Matthew’s admitting to be a bit adrift, without a clear rudder in his life, speaking to Obama: “There’s nothing to root for. What are we trying to do in this administration? Why does he want a second administration? We he tell us? What’s he going to do with a second term? This? Is this it? Is this as good as it gets? Where do we go? Are we about to do something in this second term? He’s as yet to tell us. He has not said one thing about what he’d do in a second term. . . Is he going to deal with the long term debt system? How? Is he going to reform the tax system? How? Just tell us. Why are we in this fight with him? Just tell us commander, give us our orders and tell us where we’re going. Give us the mission. And, he hasn’t done it.”
Liberals from the past:
President Obama from last month: “The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded.” This is capitalism, right? Isn’t that the system that rewards hard work, responsibility and doing what you’re supposed to do?
Woodrow Wilson: “Nothing has spread socialistic feeling in this country more than the use of the automobile. To the countryman, they are a picture of the arrogance of wealth, with all its independence and carelessness.” Yes, this is real. Driving around in cars was an arrogant show of riches (Wilson said this before he was elected president, when cars were a new thing).
Liberal civility:
Former CNN host Bill Press: “I think it’s pretty clear to me and to you that the Republicans have dug in their heels. Their loyalty is to Grover Norquist and the American Tax Reform Association,” he said, mangling the name of the group. (It’s Americans for Tax Reform.) “Their loyalty is not to the American people, it’s not to the Constitution of the United States. I know that’s a strong statement, but I think they’re guilty of treason. I think they really do care more about Grover Norquist than they do about you or me.”
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews of Newt Gingrich: “He’s not a human being, he’s a gaseous state. Isn’t he? I mean Joan, this is like a gaseous state around the world. I mean, this is Newtism.”
Occupy Berkeley protester to a female student who declined to join the OWS protest: “People like you are the reason that California is in debt.” Then he threw a full aluminum water container at her, hitting her in the face.
Crazy Muslims:
The new head of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, of the late Osama Bin Laden: “People don’t know that this man was tender, gentle, kind, with refined feelings, even when life was hard…We never saw a man like him.”
Libyan rebels sing a new song: “We will go in groups to stop them; We will bring back the purity of Islam to Tripoli; After all our humiliations, after all our humiliations.”
Mohammed Javad Larivani, Secretary General for the High Council for Human Rights of Iran: “We are not pursuing the nuclear armament for two basic reasons. Number one, there is a fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader [of Iran], that it is against Islam[ic views of] prudence to build and use mass destruction weapons. Secondly, it doesn’t aid our security. It is more of a liability than an asset for us. Our military muscle is strong enough to deter or repel any imminent threat.”
Liberals making sense:
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg about the Occupy Wall Street protestors: “No right is absolute and with every right comes responsibilities. The First Amendment gives every New Yorker the right to speak out?-?but it does not give anyone the right to sleep in a park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others?-?nor does it permit anyone in our society to live outside the law. There is no ambiguity in the law here?-?the First Amendment protects speech?-?it does not protect the use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space.” He’s right. He should have said this 2 months ago.
Senator Dick Durbin about “going big” (having a $4 trillion reduction in the next 10 years): “This is our chance to make a difference.”
MSNBC’s Chris Matthew’s making sense: “But once having won the office he [Obama] thought that was the end of it in connection to the American people. Don’t you feel – I think everybody feels an absence of communication from the time he’s been elected. It’s not about not being left wing or too left. That’s not his problem. It’s connection. Mrs. Obama, she’s an amazing asset. What has she done? Obesity? How about connecting with the American people about being Americans? I don’t think she’s – I don’t think she’s happy. I don’t think they like being in the White House. The American people can tell that. They don’t seem thrilled at the fact the American people selected them as our first family. I don’t sense the gratitude, happiness level, the thrill of being president. Bill Clinton loved being president every minute and you knew it.”
Crosstalk:
Larry Elder: Do you consider yourself a journalist?
Chris Matthews: Yeah, I’m a journalist. I’m a columnist. I’m a commentator.
Elder: No, no a journalist – you think you’re an objective down-the-middle journalist?
Matthews: No, I’m not down the middle. I’m slightly to the left.
Elder: Slightly to the left?
Matthews: I’d say 40-yard line.
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CBS reporter: “You’re saying you’re not going to leave until you get what you want; what do you want?”
Jesse Lagreca: “Well, I think it’s pretty obvious. I mean, you see all the overarching conversations that we’re having right now, but they all tie in together, that corporate greed has just trashed our economy, that lawlessness of the very wealthiest 1% has just put all of our lives at risk. So, it’s not really demands we should be discussing right now; it’s grievances. It’s almost like giving a diagnosis to a patient when you haven’t quite figured out what he’s sick of. We need to talk about what we’re sick of first, and then we’ll start talking about demands.”
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MSNBC‘s Ed Schultz, on the repeal of Gov. John Kasich‘s collective bargaining reform in Ohio: “Great work in Ohio, Congressman.”
Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio: “Thank you. And thank you on behalf of everybody in Ohio for all you did to help us.”
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Meghan Mccain: You know, it’s really sad to see the primary process turn into this, this kind of anything but Romney scenario that’s happening.
Jay Leno, Host: Yeah, because Newt Gingrich was just out of it, and now he seems to be rising.
Mccain: Yeah.
Leno: And well hot air balloons do that, but yeah. That’s my joke.
Conservatives:
Charles Krauthammer, to a couple of liberals, repeatedly explaining that revenue increases have been offered by the Republicans: “I mean, what planet are you guys living on? This week, forget about the ’90s, Pat Toomey, a Club of Rome Republican, proposed an increase in tax revenues. I’m trying to explain to you that if you’re a Republican and you’re a conservative, a Club of Rome conservative, you can propose raising revenues as long as the rates, the marginal rates stay the same or go down. The way that you square that is by eliminating loopholes, which is what he proposed. This isn’t history, it isn’t hypothetical, it’s real, and the Democrats have said, No.”
Republican Senator Tom Coburn: “America is already tired of Occupy Wall Street. They’ve seen the vast majority are great people but they have attracted a fringe group that are both law breakers, inconsistent with their message, they haven’t controlled it and the fact is, you’ve never seen violence like this, law breaking like this and some of the vile stuff that’s occurred in any other political group in this country in my lifetime.”
Greg Gutfeld, during a discussion about how the Berkeley City Council was unhappy about the name Operation Geronimo used when taking out Bin Laden: “Geronimo looks like your typical gender studies teacher.”
Cashin’ In’s Jonathon Honig: “Government is not charity…it’s not government’s role.”
Frank Luntz: “I feel like Dr. Phil.”
Dana Perino: “Demi and Ashton have broken up. I mean, the world is spinning out of control.”
Rush Limbaugh: “‘United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on world leaders Monday to collaborate in financing a multibillion-dollar fund to combat global warming.’ Does Mr. Ban Ki-moon not understand that the world now knows, at least America now knows that this whole global warming thing is a manufactured left-wing hoax?”
Rush Limbaugh: “Any attempt to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, any attempt to bring them in line and make them behave in a standard, common-sense business way was looked at as an assault on the poor. And the left did everything they could with their media to stand up and defend Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as great institutions helping the poor, the great unwashed.”
Rush Limbaugh: “Here we have Barack Obama, who’s traveling the world and this country and telling everybody he’s focused like a laser on job creation. He’s doing his level best to prevent the creation of jobs, particularly in the oil industry because if he does he runs the risk of losing his base.”
Presidential candidate Herman Cain: “Who knows every detail of every country on the planet? The people that get on the Cain train, they don’t get off because of that crap.”
Rush Limbaugh: “Herman Cain, in remarks yesterday, ranked US ally India with China as a rising threat to the United States in Asia. No, wait, wait. That was Leon Panetta that said that.”
Rush Limbaugh: “Why would a 700 or almost $850 billion stimulus shrink the economy over ten years? Because it can do nothing else. It takes that money out of the private sector. Before you can spend $850 billion of the government you gotta take it out. It’s a net wash.”
Rush Limbaugh: “Folks, it is a real possibility our economy could collapse. What’s so frustrating to us is that members of our own party don’t even see that.”
Rush Limbaugh: “The stimulus was a slush fund designed to keep union workers employed during the recession so that their dues were collected, so that Democrat campaign coffers were continually replenished.”
Rush Limbaugh: “This administration is just a giant roadblock to growth, everything they’ve done. They’re taking money out of the private sector and giving it to the public sector, unions, more bureaucracy, EPA, I don’t care what agency you want to talk about, they’re getting more money.”
Rush: “Every photo from the Occupy protests looks like a campaign add for conservatism, and this is why they had to be cleared out of there. This is why they had to go.”
Rush: “These people at Occupy whatever, they are the perfect representatives of the Democrat Party. What they did to Zuccotti Park is what the Democrats would end up doing to the whole country if every one of their policies survived unchecked.”
Rush: “We are three years into Barack Obama‘s war on prosperity and I think Americans are coming to grips with the upside, if not the necessity, of limited government.”
Rush: “We don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem, and raising taxes is only going to exacerbate that.”
Conservatives not making any sense:
Presidential candidate Ron Paul: “Just remember that immediately after 9/11, we removed the base in Saudi Arabia, our policies definitely had an influence. To argue the case they want to do us harm because we’re free and prosperous I think is a very dangerous notion, because it’s not true.”
Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Romneycare: “I am sure there are many people who have calculated, and perhaps correctly, that thehealthcare plan I put in place in Massachusetts is not good for me politically, and if I want to encourage my political future, I should say it was a mistake and walk away from it.”
Megan McCain on Newt Gingrich: “I said that [Newt] was running for president purely for vanity purposes – to sell books, to sell DVDs, which I still believe. Someone told him that, and he was like `What would she know?’ and his implication was, like, `dumb blond chick, get off TV, what do you know?’ And he just was so – I’m so sick of being talked to like that.”
From the Conservative Review #204 (HTML) (PDF)
A retired math teacher who spends most of his time exegeting the Old Testament and, once a week, puts out an ezeen.