The Foundation

“Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America.” –Joseph Warren

Editorial Exegesis

“Democrats last week began a well-orchestrated campaign to change the subject from Obamacare by declaring Republicans the newest terrorist threat. House Majority leader Steny H. Hoyer claimed that Democrats faced threats of violence in their home districts. He demanded that Republicans take a stand against it. ‘Silence gives consent,’ added Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, who accused Republicans of ‘aiding and abetting this kind of terrorism.’ Democrats promptly exploited their own fear-mongering by rushing out a fundraising letter. Meanwhile, a shot was fired through the window of Republican House Minority Whip Eric Cantor’s Richmond office. Instead of attempting to fill his campaign coffers over the incident, Mr. Cantor denounced Democratic recklessness in creating ‘media vehicles for political gain.’ To hear Mr. Clyburn talk, you’d think the Capitol had been bombed – like President Obama’s spiritual mentor Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground did in 1971 or the communist Revolutionary Fighting Group did in 1983. We don’t recall Republicans placing the blame on Democrats for those bona fide terror attacks committed by the Democrats’ ideological cousins. For the party’s leaders to make such insinuations now rings hollow. The Democrats and their supporters have consistently demeaned and mischaracterized the broad, nationwide, nonviolent grass-roots movement that arose in opposition to their radical agenda. A willing press establishment relays baseless claims that these protesters are violent uncritically and without investigation. … Any leftist thug is now free to toss a brick through a Democratic congressional district office window secure in the knowledge that the act of vandalism will be blamed automatically on Tea Partiers or Republicans. Such hoaxes are tickets to instant press coverage. … This victimization sideshow is meant to hide the fact that Democrats are pursuing policies that the American people oppose, and they are beginning to face a political price.” –The Washington Times

Dezinformatsia

Anger, venom and bile: “I know how the ‘tea party’ people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their ‘Obama Plan White Slavery’ signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.” –Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy

That’s racist! “[T]he current surge of anger – and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism – predates the entire health care debate. … If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House – topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman – would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play.” –New York Times columnist Frank Rich with a tired refrain

“[W]hat are the tea partiers really angry about? Health care reform or the fact that it was an African-American president and a woman Speaker of the House who pushed through major change?” –MSNBC host Chris Matthews

Which one of these is not like the other? “[The ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags are] the same imagery that was on [Oklahoma City bomber] Timothy McVeigh, you know? I mean, this is the kind of thing that’s worrisome to me. I don’t see how you can get away from it.” –Fox News contributor Juan Williams, trying desperately to make a connection between the Tea Parties and terrorism

Non Compos Mentis: “Because I think there’s been very consistent strategy from the right to racialize public policies so that poor white people who are often most vulnerable or most in need of those policies will vote against it to align themselves with a certain kind of whiteness, whiteness of property. So the poor white guy in Mississippi who needs welfare votes against welfare because he thinks he’s voting against a poor black woman in Harlem.” –CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill

It’s not fair: “[M]aybe we have reached the point where the Congress needs to equal it out. Equal out the audience. … I think that, you know, hell, if we’re going to be socialist, let’s be socialist all across the board.” –MSNBC radio host Ed Schultz, advocating for the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” simply because Rush Limbaugh has far more listeners than he does

Newspulper Headlines:

See No Evil (Except on the Other Side): “Albermarle County GOP’s Headquarters Vandalized” –WBDJ-TV Web site (Roanoke, VA)
“Brick Smashes Michigan GOP Office Window” –Associated Press
“Norman Leboon, Accused of Threatening to Kill Rep. Eric Cantor, Donated to Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign” –OpenSecrets.org

“The danger of political violence in this country comes overwhelmingly from one direction – the right, not the left.” –Eugene Robinson, Washington Post

Questions Nobody Is Asking: “Is Obama Now a ‘Great’ President?” –TheWeek.com

We Blame Global Warming: “President Signs D.C. Snowstorm Disaster Declaration” –Associated Press

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: “Flaming Cat Lights Up B.C. Environment Minister’s Earth Hour” –Victoria (British Columbia) Times Colonist

Dog Blames Expert for Human Bites – Now That Would Be News: “Expert: Humans Often to Blame for Dog Bites” –Tallahassee Democrat

Bottom Stories of the Day: “Biden Says Obama’s Troubles Rooted in Failures of Bush Years” –Dallas Morning News

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

Upright

“The leftists in the media would do well to remember that their liberty to be a free press comes from the same constitutional amendment as the tea party crowd’s liberty to gather together. And our elected leaders would do well to remember that the First Amendment exists to protect average people from the government, not the other way around.” –columnist Ken Blackwell

“The basic issue of health care reform was simple: Who decides? The Democrats’ answer: The government. But the battle is not over. The fight continues.” –columnist Doug Bandow

“History will remember how often and adamantly President Barack Obama insisted that the socialized medicine law he signed last week would reduce the federal deficit. It will be his defining lie.” –columnist Terence Jeffrey

“Results count, and the expansion of the welfare state has been an unmitigated disaster. Unless you’re a bureaucrat. For bureaucrats, the failure of liberalism, rather than demonstrating the bankruptcy of its ideology, demonstrates the need for more of it – and more of them.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert

“Obama’s decision to postpone his trip to Indonesia and Australia – to a democracy with the world’s largest Muslim population and to the only nation that has fought alongside us in all the wars of the last century – is of a piece with his foreign policy generally: Attack America’s friends and kowtow to our enemies. … Obama proclaims that through persistence he can make the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Russia, China and the Palestinians see things our way. The evidence so far is that they are making him do things their way – and that our friends are wondering whether it pays to be on America’s side.” –political analyst Michael Barone

Insight

“Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.” –Roman philosopher Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

“A great many people mistake opinions for thoughts.” –banking executive and author Herbert Victor Prochnow (1897-1998)

The Demo-gogues

Arrogance: “Go for it.” –Barack Obama challenging Republicans to campaign for repeal of his health care bill

More mockery: “There’s been plenty of fear-mongering, plenty of overheated rhetoric. You turn on the news and you’ll see the same folks are still shouting about there’s going to be an end of the world because this bill passed. I’m not exaggerating. Leaders of the Republican Party, they called the passage of this bill Armageddon! Armageddon, end of freedom as we know it! So after I signed the bill I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling or some cracks opening up in the earth. Turned out it was a nice day. Birds were chipping, folks were strolling down the mall. People still have their doctors.” –Barack Obama

Belly Laugh of thee week: “No one has been more of an advocate for bipartisanship than the president of the United States.” –House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco)

Now we can find out what’s in the bill: “We didn’t come here to self-perpetuate ourselves in office. We came here to make a difference in the public’s life. Now we have to go out there and – and tell people what is in the legislation. I have confidence that my members can do that. And, again, I wear two hats, by day, a speaker of the House, and, by evening, making sure that we have a strong Democratic majority.” –Nancy Pelosi (Boy, have they ever made “a difference in the public’s life.”)

Defining terms: “Calling me a ‘socialist’ has as much basis in fact as calling health reform a ‘government takeover’ – none at all.” –Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Socialist-NV) on the health care takeover

Village Idiots

Touching, really: “It was incredibly moving to be in that room today. This was such an emotional high that I actually saw congressmen hugging senators. People are so used to low expectations around here that the idea that you could do something big and meaningful is exhilarating.” –White House adviser David Axelrod on Obama signing the unconstitutional health care bill

Bipartisan attitude: “Democrats in America were put on earth to do one thing: Drag the ignorant hillbilly half of this country into the next century, which in their case is the 19th.” –HBO’s Bill Maher

Shootout at the Climategate Corral: “I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads. … Anybody that is a global warming denier at this point in time has got their head so deeply up their a– I’m not sure they could hear me.” –“Avatar” director James Cameron

Tyranny of “science”: “I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. … I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.” –British scientist James Lovelock, who developed Gaia theory, which says that the entire planet is a single organism

Freedom from religion: “We merely made a recommendation that the name be changed to something other than Good Friday. Our Constitution calls for separation of church and state. Davenport touts itself as a diverse city and given all the different types of religious and ethnic backgrounds we represent, we suggested the change.” –Tim Hart, Chairman of the Iowa city Davenport’s Civil Rights Commission, on the city’s nixing the actual holiday name of “Good Friday” in favor of “Spring Holiday” (By the way, Tim, “separation of church and state” is NOT in the Constitution.)

Useful idiot: “Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama bin Ladin and say, ‘Listen man, what is it that you’re so angry at me about that you’re willing to have people strap bombs to themselves, or get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings?’ That would be the miracle if we can get – sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us.” –actor Matthew Modine

Short Cuts

“Congress is now preparing to pass yet another jobs bill. You know how to create more jobs in this country? Fire the people that wrote the first jobs bill. That obviously didn’t work.” –Jay Leno

“President Obama signed the health care reform bill [last] Tuesday. He’s taken over the auto industry, banking industry and health care industry. As a child he used to play Monopoly by seizing the box and accusing the other children of scare tactics.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“I have a 27” TV in the bedroom and the two things that don’t fit on its relatively small screen are CinemaScope movies from the 1950s and Barack Obama’s ego.“ –columnist Burt Prelutsky

"I am surprised that the numbers [in favor of ObamaCare] in the Washington Post poll weren’t better. I mean, since this thing passed last weekend, we’ve been seeing the longest wet kiss in political history given to the Obama administration by the liberal media elite.” –Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour

“[Vice President Joe Biden] is the man who, perhaps without intending, has given historical context to this presidency. After all, Obama sees himself as a successor to FDR and Truman, so now we have the historical procession: the New Deal, the Square Deal, and the Big [expletive] Deal. It would make a great T-shirt.” –columnist Charles Krauthammer