THE FOUNDATION

“Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.” –Benjamin Franklin

THE DEMO-GOGUES

Lies and statistics: “[I]n this budget, we have made the tough choices necessary to cut our deficit in half by the end of my first term – even under the most pessimistic estimates.” –President Barack Obama, who doubled the budget deficit before he could halve it

Says the pot to the kettle: “[O]ne of the things that I’m trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.” –Barack Obama

Mentally challenged: “I bowled a 129. … It’s like – it was like Special Olympics or something.” –Barack Obama making fun of the Special Olympics on “The Tonight Show”

Pick socialism: “[W]e need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people.” –Barack Obama

Regulatory Commissars: “I think the most important thing that we can do is make sure that we put in a bunch of financial regulatory mechanisms to prevent companies like an AIG holding the rest of us hostage. Because that’s —- that’s the real problem.“ –Barack Obama

This week’s "Quid Pro Homo” Award: “At some point, [the Defense of Marriage Act] is going to have to go to the United States Supreme Court. I wouldn’t want it to go to the United States Supreme Court now because that homophobe Antonin Scalia has too many votes on this current court.” –Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), an open homosexual Scalia has more than one vote?

Global warmism: “When we talk about drilling, the new thing we have to think about is the Arctic. There is a dangerous irony occurring. We are drilling, burning oil, sending CO2 up into the atmosphere, creating global warming – and it’s melting the Arctic making it possible for people to drill. Now there is this gold rush to start punching oil wells in a place we just desecrated because of global warming. That’s one place we have to get a new moratorium where there hasn’t been one before, because there has always been ice there before.” –Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA)

Vocabulary police: “This Administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT]. Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’” –email from Dave Riedel of the Office of Security Review

UPRIGHT

“The more the Fed takes on its balance sheet, the more the long-run independence of the central bank is damaged. Monetizing so much government debt is what Third World nations do. Draining the new money from the system will someday be a problem. It may introduce a round of ‘beggar-thy-neighbor,’ central bank-engineered currency depreciations.” –economist Tyler Cowen

“[Treasury] Secretary Geithner wants AIG and executives at other companies that receive tax dollars to be paid according to performance. That is a standard most of us would like to see applied to Congress, which enjoys annual pay increases no matter how much incompetence, malfeasance and misfeasance it demonstrates.” –columnist Cal Thomas

“This whole AIG fiasco – where the entire political class is suddenly screaming over bonuses paid to derivative traders in AIG’s financial-products division – is just a complete farce. What it really shows is how the government has completely bungled the AIG takeover. Blame the Bush administration and the Obama administration. It also shows, once again, why the government shouldn’t run anything, because it cannot run anything.” –economist Lawrence Kudlow

“What do we learn about Obama from the ‘Special Olympics’ gaffe? We learn, first and foremost, what we already knew: Obama is an elitist with a high school sense of humor.” –columnist Ben Shapiro

“This country no longer has any enemy combatants to worry about. There, don’t you feel better? Probably not, because you know that, although the new administration has decided to drop the legal designation Enemy Combatants, they’re all too real. Only the name is gone.” –columnist Paul Greenberg

“[W]hen I think of my children and my grandchild, I’m not worried that they will suffer for lack of money. I worry they’ll suffer a much worse fate: lack of freedom. … We have to fight our way – not back, but forward – to a country in which self-dealing politicians control less of our economy and less of our lives.” –columnist Paul Jacob

“We can recall that the founders of our country intended the role of government to protect our lives and property, not violate them. And that in times when we have respected that proper use of government, our country has prospered.” –columnist Star Parker

INSIGHT

“The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery.” –former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

“There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers." –American physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988)

"When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.” –Chinese writer Lin Yutang (1895-1976)

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

“There should be no hurdles to restoring freedom. But when Congress attempts to restrict it, the hurdle should be high, if not impossible to clear. It’s chilling to watch as men with authority and influence prefer to instead crash their way through. The power to tax is the power to destroy, as is the power to regulate and limit choices. These powers should be wielded judiciously, and only within a system that safeguards against excess and demands accountability. The overly ambitious and unelected can’t be allowed to govern by walking over the governed.” –Investor’s Business Daily

DEZINFORMATSIA

Wipe the drool off your chin: “Whether it’s creating commissions for women and girls, ordering the investigation of President Bush’s use of signing statements, or jamming a huge stimulus package through Congress, the man is working his tail off. And he seems to be loving every minute of it. It’s almost as though our president was born to do exactly what he’s doing. He’s leading, and boy, is that refreshing.” –CNN’s Jack Cafferty

Obamamania: “When I heard [Obama] was going to [be on "The Tonight Show”] I thought, should a president really do that? Then I actually stayed up and watched it and he calmed me down. I’ve really been getting pretty upset in the last week, just like every other American I think. And he calmed me down. And he was presidential. I thought it was just a masterful performance.“ –NPR’s Nina Totenberg

Covering the president: "Nothing goes unescaped when it comes to the president. He did talk about the Special Olympics. Some people took that as an offensive remark. However, this morning on a radio show, the director of the Special Olympics for the state of Illinois, a man by the name of Doug Snyder, talked about that, and he thinks he knows where all this came from, because he remembers a couple years back introducing the president to a little girl named Caitlyn, who showed the president how to bowl, and did a darn better job of doing it at the time than the president was able to do it. He thinks Caitlyn is actually perhaps the inspiration for the president deciding to be a bit better as a bowler.” –MSNBC’s Alex Witt covering for Obama’s tasteless “Special Olympics” comment on the “Tonight Show”

Getting it right: “Obama is on track to accomplish exactly what he promised to change during the campaign, creating a massive burden for the next generation to fund politically popular policies in the short term.” –Time magazine writer Michael Scherer

Newspulper Headlines:

Now He Tells Us!: “Obama Asks Americans Not to Expect Too Much From Him” –Associated Press

What an Insensitive Headline: “Chinks Exposed in Obama’s Taliban Plan” –Asia Times

No One Knows for Sure: “Guess Profit Falls 13 Percent” –Los Angeles Business Journal

Drinking and Driving Don’t Mix: “Wild Turkey Sends Maine Motorcyclist to Hospital” –Associated Press

News You Can Use: “Scientists: We’re Doomed. Or Are We?” –Greenpeace UK Web site

Bottom Stories of the Day: “Animal Rights, Circus Lawyers Differ on Elephants” –Associated Press ++ “Gore to Revisit Climate Crisis in New Book” –New York Times Web site

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

VILLAGE IDIOTS

Name that standard: “The desirable goal of reforming the international monetary system, therefore, is to create an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.” –Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China Didn’t that used to be called “gold”?

Village Academic Curriculum: “If you make it a practice of killing other people’s babies for personal gain … eventually they’re going to give you a taste of the same thing.” –former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who once called the victims of 9/11 “little Eichmanns” after one of the architects of the Holocaust, testifying in his lawsuit seeking to get his job back

Non Compos Mentis: “Barack Obama is the first Hispanic president the same way Bill Clinton was the first black [president].” –Geraldo Rivera discussing immigration

Say what?: “The kids love to say SheetzuCacaPoopoo. Well, that was the key. But, the book is really about Barack Obama. Okay? Let me explain. … The dog – Max is in trouble. They send him to obedience school, okay? When he’s in obedience school is when he becomes Barack. He becomes a community organizer. And he organizes the big dogs around the little dogs. ‘Cause at first, the big dogs, also known as the Republicans, don’t like him. See? And so, he finds ways, pragmatically, to help the big dogs. … They can reach itches for them. They can go underneath to get to spots. They can scare the cats away. And so, he becomes popular. And everybody loves each other. … It’s all about pragmatism and change, and trying to find a solution in your situation, which is Barack Obama.” –Joy Behar of “The View” promoting her new children’s book **Well, SheetzuCacaPoopoo IS the perfect name…

SHORT CUTS

“[Obama] might be 'a fairly sensitive and compassionate man.’ Alternatively, he could be a mean, self-absorbed S.O.B. who regards anyone other than himself as intellectually disabled. The truth is we don’t know, because in the course of the presidential campaign the press declined to do even the most elementary due diligence on him. And, like Congress with the stimulus, the electorate didn’t bother to find out what’s in there before they voted for it.” –columnist Mark Steyn

“One of the things that concerns me about Obama’s presidency is that every time he opens his yap, he sounds so darn naive. Just recently, he spoke about reaching out to moderates in the ranks of the Taliban. A moderate in that society is a cretin who wants to murder Christians, Jews and any woman who refuses to wrap herself in a bed sheet before leaving the house, but who draws the line at beheading his victims for Al-Jazeera’s TV cameras.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

“I can’t believe we’ve decided to do battle with al-Qaida by vernacular-ing them to death.” –comedian Dennis Miller

“The New York Times reported Sunday that President Obama is planning to regulate salaries paid by every company in the financial services industry. Already he’s insulted Britain and Special Olympians while making nice to Iran and North Korea. One more week of this and everybody’s going to be searching for the birth certificate.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

Jay Leno:

People made a big deal out of the fact this is the first time a sitting president has done a late-night show. We tried to have other presidents on, but President Bush went to bed every night at 9:00. And President Clinton always seemed to have other late-night plans.

More problems for AIG: It turns out that the bonus money was actually $218 million, not $165 million as originally reported. AIG says they misplaced $53 million in bonus money. Today Sen. Chris Dodd said, “You mean that wasn’t a campaign contribution?”

Senator Chris Dodd – or ‘Chris Dodge,’ as they’re calling him now – after first denying it, now admits he’s the one who eliminated the provision in the stimulus package that outlawed excessive bonuses. And coincidentally, he just happened to receive $280,000 from AIG in campaign contributions. What are the odds of that?

Congress is now investigating the special treatment that “Senator Dodge” … received from Countrywide Mortgage for a couple of mortgages. Senator Dodd has contended he didn’t know he was getting special rates on the mortgages. And, really, to be fair, how would the Senate chairman of the banking committee have any idea what the normal lending rate would be?