The Foundation

“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.” –Thomas Jefferson

Editorial Exegesis

“Democratic leaders reportedly plan to forge a final reform bill behind closed doors. They should not be able to get away with hiding public policy from the public it will adversely affect. Both the House and Senate must pass identical bills before the president can sign the legislation into law. When differences pop up, as with separate health care bills, the legislation traditionally goes to a conference committee where lawmakers iron them out. The committees are made up of members from both chambers and often from both parties. The committee meetings have typically been conducted in public, as they should be. They can be moved out of public view only when a majority of conferees, in a vote in an open session, agree to hold closed meetings. House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, has called the Democrats’ plan to bypass a conference committee a ‘shady backroom deal.’ An overstatement? Hardly. One House Democratic aide told a blogger that ‘this process cuts out the Republicans.’ The Democrats fear that if they follow the traditional route, the GOP could use the Senate filibuster rule to shut down the process of organizing the committee. Bypassing a conference committee also cuts out a public that will suffer losses from whatever monstrosity is produced by the cover of darkness. Americans stand to lose their power of choice over health care decisions and be stripped of a significant portion of their earnings to pay for a plan most don’t want. They deserve to see in an open forum what is being done to them. Instead, they’re likely to get whatever the Democrats want to force on them.” –Investor’s Business Daily

The Demo-gogues

“There has never been a more open process for any legislation.” –House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on the “transparency” of legislating the health care bill (The only thing transparent about the process is Democrats’ motive to nationalize private health care.)

The world’s oldest profession: “I don’t know if there is a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that was important to them. And if they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them.” –Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Godfather) on making offers that Democrats couldn’t refuse

That’s racist: “Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? All to break the momentum of our new young president. [Republicans] are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist. That is one powerful reason. It is not the only one.” –Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) calling opponents of the health care bill racists

The BIG Lie on all counts: “I listened to you and took a common-sense approach to improve the bill. Now it lowers costs for families and small business, protects Medicare, finally guarantees coverage for pre-existing conditions and reduces the deficit. And it’s not run by the government. I’m convinced this is right for Nebraska.” –Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) on voting for the health care bill after a grand show of playing hard to get

Principled Democrats? “They think I shouldn’t be expressing my views on this bill until they get a chance to try to sell me the language [on an abortion compromise]. Well, I don’t need anyone to sell me the language. I can read it. I’ve seen it. I’ve worked with it. I know what it says. I don’t need to have a conference with the White House. I have the legislation in front of me here. … A review of the Senate language indicates a dramatic shift in federal policy that would allow the federal government to subsidize insurance policies with abortion coverage. … We’re getting a lot of pressure not to say anything, to try to compromise this principle or belief. … We are not just going to abandon it in the name of health care.” –Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI)

On the undi-bomber: “This was a screw up that could have been disastrous. We dodged a bullet but just barely. It was averted by brave individuals – not because the system worked – and that is not acceptable. While there will be a tendency for finger pointing, I will not tolerate it.” –Barack Obama, who tolerates the blame game well enough when his finger is forever pointed at George W. Bush

Savior of the world: “The most important thing we did this year was to ensure that the financial system did not collapse.” –Barack Obama

Insight

“We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.” –philosopher and writer Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

“There should be a tax on every man that wanted to get a government appointment, or be elected to office. In two years that tax alone would pay our national debt.” –American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Upright

“Barack Obama’s quest for historic health care legislation has turned into a parody of leadership. We usually associate presidential leadership with the pursuit of goals that, though initially unpopular, serve America’s long-term interests. Obama has reversed this. He’s championing increasingly unpopular legislation that threatens the country’s long-term interests. ‘This isn’t about me,’ he likes to say, ‘I have great health insurance.’ But of course, it is about him: about the legacy he covets as the president who achieved ‘universal’ health insurance.” –columnist Robert Samuelson

“The president’s health care monstrosity is an even more unwieldy government effort than Homeland Security. Its goals are more various and vaguer. Its protocols are already in chaos. The lesson the president should have learned from last week’s ‘systemic failure’ is that government is a very imperfect instrument. A government that takes over 16 percent of our economy promising to bring us good health at a reasonable cost is an instrument doomed to failure and at a catastrophic cost.” –American Spectator editor in chief R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.

“It’s a (literally) bloody disgrace that our ragtag enemies innovate faster and more effectively than our armed forces and the legion of overpaid contractors behind them. They ask themselves, ‘What works?’ We ask ourselves what the lawyers will say. The crucial difference? Our enemies believe in victory, even if we don’t.” –columnist Ralph Peters

“The question should not be how to make terrorists like us, but how to find them, eliminate them and, most important of all, keep them from entering the country in the first place. The Obama administration, like the Clinton administration, continues to view terrorists as criminals who ought to be subject to the American judicial system. In fact, they are soldiers in a war unlike any this country has ever faced. Until we start treating these people as soldiers and not criminals, there will be more incidents like this, as there have been previous ones. Without a serious approach to domestic terrorism, the next attempted attack on an airliner might succeed, as did the ones during another less serious time which gave us 9-11.” –columnist Cal Thomas

“For its part, the Obama administration should frankly acknowledge that the ‘war on terror’ wasn’t a Bush-Cheney construct to scare and manipulate the American public. The same Napolitano who initially portrayed the near-miss on Christmas as a vindication did her utmost to avoid even uttering the word ‘terror’ at a congressional hearing earlier this year, preferring the absurd neologism ‘man-caused disaster.’ That’s a phrase best applied to the shoeless shuffle at the airport security lines, not the heinous acts of war plotted by Abdulmutallab and his inevitable successors.” –National Review editor Rich Lowry

“[A]s we approach this new year and reflect upon 2009 and think of ways to improve our situations in 2010, I ask that my fellow Republicans join together to have a respectful debate during our upcoming primary process and then give their full support to our selected nominees even if there remain some philosophical differences. I know this is the approach my father personally took and I cannot think of a better beacon of light than his legacy to help us once again find our way.” –radio talk-show host Michael Reagan

Dezinformatsia

Alpha Jackass: “What … if terrorists were killing 45,000 people every year in this country? Well, the current health care system, the insurance companies, and those who support them are doing just that. … Those fighting health care reform – not those debating its shape or its nuance – people who demand the status quo, they are killing 45,000 Americans a year. … Remind me again, who are the terrorists?” –MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann

What are we waiting for? “The law [in Switzerland], finally approved in a 1994 national referendum, guaranteed health care for everyone by requiring everyone to have insurance. It amounted to a law recognizing health care as a human right…. They choose their own doctors and their own insurance company, and the whole country is covered. True to its national reputation, Switzerland devised a health care system that’s been praised as efficient and neutral. Basic insurance is the same price for everyone. Also true to the Swiss reputation, it’s turned out to be expensive. … Given an aging population and high-tech medicine, some say costs are bound to rise three percent or four percent a year. Health care reform [in Switzerland] has been more expensive than reformers predicted.” –CBS’s Richard Roth

From the Commie Pinko Department: “The most overrated [political concept] is freedom. When faced with economic uncertainty, people don’t want freedom. When they can’t see their economic future, they want the nanny state.” –John McLaughlin, long-time moderator of ‘The McLaughlin Group’

Poor guy: “[Obama] had hoped to spend this vacation recharging his batteries, but now he appears to be spending most of it working. For New Year’s Eve, he’ll be reviewing nearly a dozen new reports from homeland security agencies, all part of a massive effort to figure out what went wrong.” –CBS’s Chip Reid, lamenting that Obama actually has to do the job he signed up for

Sometimes they get it right: “If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch? We are headed toward the moment when screeners will watch watch-listers sashay through while we have to come to the airport in hospital gowns, flapping open in the back.” –New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd

Newspulper Headlines:

Life Imitates the Onion: “Suicide Bombing a Cry for Help, Vengeance Against the Infidel” –The Onion, April 28, 2004 ++ “Web Posts Suggest Lonely, Depressed Terror Suspect” –Associated Press, Dec. 30, 2009

What Would We Do Without Sources?: “Explosives in Detroit Terror Case Could Have Blown Hole in Airplane, Sources Say” –The Washington Post

Yes We Can: “Obama: We Can’t Treat Tax Dollars Like ‘Monopoly Money’” –RealClearPolitics.com

We Blame Global Warming: “Earth’s Upper Atmosphere Cooling Dramatically” –Space.com

News You Can Use: “Meat May Be the Reason Humans Outlive Apes” –MSNBC.com

Bottom Story of the Year: “Democrats See Greater Role for Government in Health Care” –New York Times Web site

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

Village Idiots

Trust her! “The system worked.” ++ “In many ways, this system has worked.” ++ “Once the incident occurred, the system worked.” –Homeland “Security” chief Janet Napolitano on the undi-bomber’s attempt to blow up an American airliner on Christmas

Then again… “Why wasn’t he flagged at a higher screening level? How did he get an explosive substance on to the plane? All of those are serious questions that we are now looking at. … Our system did not work in this instance. No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way.” –Janet Napolitano

Welcome to the job: “I want to know how this individual got on this plane with this material. I want to know so we can figure out what we should be doing to defeat that.” –Janet Napolitano (How about profiling?)

Can’t we all just get along? “This should not be a tug-of-war between the two political parties. I hope that everyone will resolve in the new year to make protecting our nation a nonpartisan issue.” –White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (It’s a partisan issue because Democrats are completely wrong, not because Republicans are just “mean-spirited.”)

Village Idiot, California style – with an accent: “When it comes to effort, [Obama] should get a straight A. He’s out there with tremendous energy and he’s selling his ideas. And he has great enthusiasm there. He’s a great speaker, a great communicator. He has to hang in there, be tough, just continue on, never give up, eventually he’s going to get all those things done.” –California RINO Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Short Cuts

“Put enough money on the table and just about any Democratic U.S. Senator will think, gulp, blink, and drag the pot with the rationalization that ‘this is all for the greater good.’ Pelican Pellets. This is no different than putting a horse’s head into Jack Woltz’ bed to force him into giving Johnny Fontaine a part in his movie in The Godfather. It was a deal [Senator Ben] Nelson couldn’t refuse.” –political analyst Rich Galen

“And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term ‘war on terror.’ It’s over – that is, if it ever existed. Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately al-Qa'ida has not. Which gives new meaning to the term ‘asymmetric warfare.’ … More jarring still were Obama’s references to the terrorist as a ‘suspect’ who ‘allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device.’ You can hear the echo of FDR: ‘Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor.’” –columnist Charles Krauthammer

“President Obama was ripped Tuesday for responding slowly to the failed airline bombing. He did everything he could. When word got to him on the fifteenth hole that the country had been attacked he asked the next three groups if he could play through.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“All I know is that at my age, I can do without blankets, pillows and even honey-roasted peanuts. But I think the airlines better rethink those bathroom restrictions. The last thing they’re going to want is a planeload of seniors sounding like cranky four-year-olds, screaming for the last 500 miles of the flight, ‘Are we there yet?’” –columnist Burt Prelutsky