The Patriot Post® · Wednesday Short Cuts

The BIG Lies

“I had a cranial aneurysm. … President Reagan was nice enough to send … Helicopter One to take me down [to Walter Reed], but it couldn’t fly.” —President Joe Biden

“[Republicans] are asking for very severe, very draconian immigration policy changes.” —Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT)

“I feel like the underlying trend lines in inflation are good. We’ve seen grocery prices come down. We’ve seen prices at the pump come down. We’ve seen some of the core areas moving back down to pre-pandemic levels.” —National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard

Hot Air

“We are again witnessing another moment in which the persuasive force of evidence, and with it Earth’s future, hangs in the balance — all because some extremist political voices, holdout nations, and vastly vested interests have declared war on facts and science; all because they distort, for political and personal gain, what science and common sense dictate we humans must do in order to put our house in order.” —climate czar John Kerry

“There’s a mental health crisis around the world … that we hear people talking about. I think that one of the main reasons for that is that young people look at the fact that we are not yet solving the climate crisis. … Solving the climate crisis is a poly-solution. We know what to do.” —Al Gore

A Blind Squirrel Finds a Nut

“Elite universities … have gone from being centers of excellence to institutions pushing political agendas. … Good intentions have morphed into a dogmatic ideology and turned these universities into places where the pervasive goals are political and social engineering, not academic merit. … They should abandon this long misadventure into politics, retrain their gaze on their core strengths, and rebuild their reputations as centers of research and learning.” —CNN’s Fareed Zakaria

For the Record

“I have confirmed now from multiple sources that the search committee that led to President [Claudine] Gay’s appointment excluded non-DEI eligible candidates from the process.” —Harvard alumnus and billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman

“Even if Harvard’s Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth step down, and even if the presidents of the top 200 leftist universities all resigned, it wouldn’t solve the problem. … Anti-Semitism will continue to fester on these campuses after they are gone unless and until we deal with the neo-Marxist indoctrination that is being pushed on our children and grandchildren at these colleges and universities.” —Gary Bauer

“Regarding the current pool of women heading Ivy League universities, there are very smart women in the academic marketplace, but apparently they have to dumb down the pool when the selection process comports with the leftist DEI narrative.” —Mark Alexander

“As secretary of state, MIT canceled my campus speech about the CCP because it ‘risked offending’ Chinese students. Now these schools justify rampant antisemitism because of a ‘commitment’ to free speech?” —Mike Pompeo

“Anti-Zionists claim that Israel’s origins are illegitimate. Of all the world’s 200-plus countries, the only country anti-Zionists declare illegitimate is also the only Jewish one. That’s pretty much all you need to know about their motives.” —Dennis Prager

Useful Idiot

“[Israel’s] starting to lose … support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place.” —Joe Biden

“I think [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] has to change … this government in Israel is making it very difficult for him to move.” —Joe Biden

Non Compos Mentis

“It’s been 65 years [days] since the deadliest day of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. 65 years [days].” —Joe Biden

“We also need Ukraine to make changes to fix the broken immigration system here — we also need Congress to make the changes to fix the broken immigration system here at home.” —Joe Biden

Belly Laugh of the Day

“We for sure gonna lose if we don’t have Joe [Biden].” —Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)

Dumb & Dumber

“With lax Republican gun laws across the country, we’ve gotta take very seriously anybody who’s making any kind of violent threats, especially genocidal threats. Having said that, where does Elise Stefanik get off lecturing anybody about anti-Semitism when she’s the hugest supporter of Donald Trump, who traffics in anti-Semitism all the time?” —Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD)

“I think what you’re seeing … is absolutely the result of capitalism and what happens in capitalism to the people at the bottom rungs. The biggest driver of why folks are on the street is because they lost their jobs, income or were evicted from their homes, usually for not being able to pay the rent. So you have major landlords literally causing folks to lose their homes, and real estate speculation making it impossible for folks to find an affordable place to live.” —San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston

“I’m a Michigander. This is football season. I don’t usually compliment Ohio, but hats off to the people of Ohio who rejected all the [abortion] misinformation and codified this right for women in that state just south of us.” —Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D)

“Anyone who’s worked as a journalist at the [New York Times] knows that journalists there are absolutely allowed to loudly espouse political opinions, you just have to espouse the right political opinions. Right wing opinions are fine, left wing opinions are not.” —The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz

“My own personal ethics on life are, I think, enough to keep me going on the right path.” —Anthony Fauci on no longer being a practicing Catholic

Political Futures

“It doesn’t make any difference to the public whether this case gets tried before or after Election Day. It makes a difference to Democrats.” —former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy shooting down Trump special prosecutor Jack Smith’s rationale for attempting to bypass the normal appeals process

“Ron DeSantis is running as the true-blue conservative in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. And he’s learning the hard way that Republicans don’t nominate true-blue conservatives. … It’s not that Republican voters aren’t generally conservative. It’s simply that they’re not thoroughly, consistently and single-mindedly conservative.” —Daniel McCarthy