THE FOUNDATION

“He that waits upon fortune is never sure of a dinner.” –Benjamin Franklin

INSIGHT

“Look well into thyself; there is a source which will always spring up if thou wilt always search there.” –Marcus Aurelius

“He, O men, is wisest of you all who has learned, like Socrates, that his wisdom is worth nothing.” –Plato

“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.” –Louis Pasteur

“All is disgust when one leaves his own nature and does things that misfit it.” –Sophocles

“Moderation in war is imbecility.” –Admiral John Fisher

“Inches make a champion.” –Vince Lombardi

“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.” – Horace

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.” –Havelock Ellis

“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.” –William Hazlitt

“Wisdom comes by disillusionment.” –George Santayana

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” –Will Rogers

UPRIGHT

“The First Amendment…begins with the five loveliest words in the English language: ‘Congress shall make no law’.” –George Will

“…[T]he purposes of government are derived from unchanging human nature, namely the protection of individual natural rights.” –Thomas L. Krannawitter

“We must reassert that the Supreme Court is the court of highest authority for our nation, and that every American citizen enjoys protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.” –Rep. Ron Paul

“This is a land of freedom. Intolerant oppressors hate freedom and reject liberty of conscience because it deprives them of power over others.” –Cal Thomas

“The Constitution and the Bill of Rights limit the government, not the people. But liberalism limits the people, favors government, grows and expands it.” –Rush Limbaugh

“The Palestinian leadership that is there now, the Authority, is not the kind of leadership that can lead to the Palestinian state that we need.” –Condoleezza Rice

“If winning is the only value, why debate when you can suppress?” –John Leo

“Government is generally a zero-sum game: Politicians can’t pay Paul except by robbing Peter.” –Steve Chapman

“Yes, conservatives are more likely to see black and white in the sense of believing in moral absolutes. But that doesn’t mean they fail to appreciate the complexity of the world and its subtle nuances.” –David Limbaugh

“Reducing the human embryo to nothing more than a manufactured thing sets a fearsome desensitizing precedent that jeopardizes all the other ethical barriers we have constructed around embryonic research.” –Charles Krauthammer

“It is the destroyer of the soul, not the flesh, who does greatest harm, and a child molester is a spiritual seducer, seeking to lead his victim down a path of moral and spiritual destruction.” –Alan Keyes

“The fact is that at the root of these scandals is the homosexual subculture that has grown up among priests, but to say this is anathema to many commentators and reporters.” –Chuck Colson

“Common sense, after all, can be highly contagious.” –Kathleen Parker

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

“Public school officials nationwide are banning children from playing ‘cops and robbers,’ citing zero-tolerance policies for anything resembling violence at school…. Other games recently banned from school playgrounds include duck, duck, goose; musical chairs; steal the bacon; and tag because they encourage exclusion, theft, bullying, aggression and competition.” –Washington Times

DEZINFORMATSIA

From the “See You in C-U-B-A” File: “The other thing we were looking at is the health care system and how every Cuban has a family doctor. You cannot go without health care here because there’s a system set up, a safety net, where, if you live in a neighborhood, you’re covered by somebody.” –CNN’s Kate Snow trumpeting the benefits of Castro’s Cuba

“But President Bush is taking an especially hard line on Cuba. Just this week the administration accused Castro of developing biological weapons and collaborating with rogue states who are making weapons for germ warfare.” –CNN’s Joie Chen on Bush’s “especially hard line.”

Our colleagues at the Media Research Center evaluated 212 CNN (Communist News Network) reports on Jimmy Carter’s visit to Cuba, and found that the network gave six times more airplay to Castro or communist spokesmen than to noncommunist spokesmen, such as Catholic leaders or dissidents. “CNN gave six times as much airplay to Cubans who supported Castro policies than to those who did not. Only seven CNN stories reported on political dissidents, two covered the lack of press freedom and four centered on lack of democracy in Cuba. This left American audiences with the impression that Castro’s government is overwhelmingly popular among the Cuban public.”

And the other Leftmedia networks were not much better: “[Former President Jimmy] Carter is the first President to go to the island since the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro more than 40 years ago now. And after all these years, Cuba is still a sensitive subject for some Americans.” –ABC talkinghead Peter Jennings **The implication, of course, is that anyone finding fault with Red Cuba “after all these years,” must be at fault.

This week’s “Propagandum Magnum” Award: “But to a majority of American doctors, guns have become more than a constitutional argument; they’ve become a health issue. …[A] growing number of [doctors] are no longer just asking patients if they smoke or drink or diet and exercise, they’re asking if there’s a gun in the house.” –Morley Safer on “60 Minutes”

“I completely agree … that anything that makes it easier to get guns is a bad thing.” –Cokie Roberts on ABC’s “This Week” **Now we know how Cokie feels about the U.S. Constitution!

“You know, but Mr. President you know, you know how I feel about you, you know how I feel about you and the Palestinian people….” –Fox’s Geraldo Rivera gushing over Yasser Arafat

SOCIOCRATS

This week’s “Ignarus Perpetuus” Award: “There’s a lot of people who know we won the popular vote last election. A lot of us think we won in Florida last time; I’m one of them. I’m one of them.” –Former Prevaricator-in-Chief Bill Clinton

“Insisting on the supremacy of the neocortex exacts a high price, because the unnatural task of a disembodied mind is to somehow ignore the intense psychic pain that comes from the constant nagging awareness of what is missing: the experience of living in one’s body as a fully integrated physical and mental being.” –‘04’s Albert Gore with a useful insight for his supporters in Florida.

“Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has been going around promising an activist government that will help all of us Marylanders achieve what she calls our 'indispensable destiny.’ … To me, ‘indispensable destiny’ sounds like a bad name for a bad rock band.” –Baltimore Sun Lefty Dan Rodricks

This week’s “Maximus Marxist” Award: “The administration is attempting to perpetuate a super hoax on the American public to secure Cuban-American electoral support for the Bush brothers and blunt the upcoming visit of the Carter delegation to the island. Havana’s biotechnology industry is grotesquely transformed by administration ideologues into a terrorist menace, reflecting Washington’s bio-terror hysteria. The situation is quickly developing into one of the most dangerous confrontations between the two ancient adversaries witnessed since the Cuban missile crisis. Senior administration policymakers distort, pass on rumors, concoct fables and tell tall tales, as well as flatly lie in order to breed conflict between Havana and Washington.” –The Council on Hemispheric Affairs official statement

VILLAGE IDIOTS

This week’s “Homo Leftus Americanus” Award: “We had to realize that the [9-11 terrorists] were brilliant. It showed that the ego we could hold up until September 10 was inadequate. Americans can’t admit that you need courage to do such a thing. … But what if those perpetrators were right and we were not? We have long ago lost the capability to take a calm look at the enormity of our enemy’s position.” –Red Hollywonk Norman Mailer opining abroad about “brilliant” terrorists who arguably might be right in “the enormity of … [their] position.”

This week’s “TheoLib” Award: “It is shocking that our most high-ranking leaders cannot even agree that a priest who even once abuses a child must leave the priesthood. A lawyer who violates the canons of his profession is no longer a lawyer, ditto a doctor.” –Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice. **Memo to Ms. Kissling: First, some may find that advocating for killing unborn children while condemning child abuse comes under the rubric “hypocrisy.” And if you think lawyers and doctors lose their jobs for violating the canons of their profession, you obviously missed the impeachment trial of W. J. Clinton, and slept through the Kevorkian years.

This week’s “Hyper-Hypocrisy” Award: “Every child should be wanted and loved.” –The words of a Mother’s Day e-card provided by Planned Parenthood as a part of a fund-raiser – Planned Parenthood clinics are responsible for the abortion of over 3 million children over the past 25 years, grossing $69 million in abortion income for 2000 alone.

From the “Village Academic Curriculum” File: “‘No tolerance’ means more than just a warning, because that would mean tolerance.” –Dry Creek Elementary School Principal Darci Mickle, of Centennial, Colorado, discussing seven fourth-graders sent home from school, then sentenced to a week’s lunchtime detention, for violating “zero tolerance” policies; the boys, playing a game of soldiers and aliens, pointed their fingers like firearms during the mock battles.

SHORT CUTS

“Getting us to understand that is like asking black people to understand why the Klan puts on pointy white hats.” –The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart responding to the suggestion by Hollywonk Villager Susan Sarandon that Jews should be more sensitive and understanding in regards to Palestinian homicide bombers.

“In the media world, precise distinctions are for sissies.” –Wesley Pruden

“The Taliban even banned kite-flying in Afghanistan. What were they worried about? That someone would discover electricity?” –Jerry Seinfeld

“Never bring a box cutter to a Jihad.” –Anonymous

“At one level, Bill Clinton is so September 10th. On the other hand, so are many of the most influential figures in the American media, and in recent days they’ve been doing their best to persuade the world that Bill is still the coming man.” –Mark Steyn

“The last time Jimmy Carter went mano-a-mano with Fidel, does anybody remember what happened? That’s right, my friends: the United States ended up with a boatlift of felons and loony toons to Florida.” –Rush Limbaugh

“Sometimes, when I look at all my children, I say to myself, ‘Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin.’” –Lillian Carter **A whole lot of us agree!

“Life sometimes just isn’t fair. A homosexual who’s rejected as a Scoutmaster can always become a priest but pity the poor homosexual priest who if defrocked has no place to go.” –Lyn Nofziger

“Hell needs no further paving.” –Kathleen Parker

“Occasionally, even judges are capable of reading the Constitution.” –Don Feder

Jay Leno…. Bose Labs says it has recorded the lowest decibel sound ever made. The softest sounds ever heard – that would be Yasser Arafat denouncing terrorism. …. Sad news, the horse Seattle Slew has died. At the funeral the priest said that the horse was the glue that held the family together. …. Luke Helder, the suspected pipe bomber, is in custody. The reason for the pipe bombs was that he didn’t like how the government was run. Now it looks like he’ll get to see how the prison system is run! …. Did you see him on TV? He’s a nice-looking 21-year-old. He doesn’t even look that old, he looks 15. When I first saw him on TV, I thought some kid had come forward to testify against a priest. …. The FBI says that the suspected mailbox pipe bomber has been working day and night to plant the bombs. Day and night – that pretty much says it wasn’t an inside job with someone at the postal service, and it couldn’t have been a government worker. …. The Rolling Stones are going back out on tour! The theme of the tour is going to be sex, prescription drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

David Letterman…. Top Ways The Taliban Is Celebrating Their 10th Anniversary: Wet-burqa contest; Goat jumping out of a cake; Ticking “Congratulations!” bouquet from Donald Rumsfeld; Raffling off a busted TV; Dinner at their favorite restaurant “Thank-Allah-It’s-Friday”; With the traditional tenth anniversary gift, sand; Flying in Don Rickles to roast Osama; Lively game of “Pin the Beard on the Deranged, Cave-Dwelling Madman”; Serving a special dessert called “Death To America By Chocolate”; Running for their lives.

Argus Hamilton…. Jimmy Carter said Monday he saw no evidence that Cuba makes biological weapons. Last year he saw no evidence North Korea makes nuclear weapons. It doesn’t look dignified when a former president campaigns that openly to be Archbishop of Boston. … Under their [Cuban] system, education is free, medical care is free, and prescription medicine is free. Picture a Congressional spending bill surrounded by barbed wire and sharks. …. Cuba played the Star Spangled Banner when Jimmy Carter landed at the Havana Airport on Sunday. Cuba and the United States are less different than they are alike. In both countries, Swim with the Sharks is a book of advice for capitalists. …. President Bush signed the Farm Bill into law on Monday. It doles out $190 billion over ten years. The farmers don’t want a hand-out, they only want enough money from the government to maintain their sense of frontier independence and rugged individualism. …. The New York Daily News said Monday that Bill Clinton still owes his lawyers over three million dollars. The former president owes a million to Robert Bennett, and a million to David Kendall, and he hasn’t paid a dime in over a year. Now we know who ran over his dog. …. NBC previewed the fall shows to station owners Friday amid public pressure to clean up TV. Surveys show Democrats object more to violence while Republicans object more to sex. This may explain why there are more Democrats than Republicans.