Upright

WSJ’s James Taranto: “NBC’s Michael O'Brien had some fun … paraphrasing President Obama’s latest infliction on the ears of America: ‘Obama said his signature health care reform law is going nowhere as long as he’s in office.’ ‘Going nowhere’ could mean either ‘here to stay’ or ‘unable to progress.’ A look at the text of the president’s remarks makes clear, as if you have any doubt, that he means it in the former sense: ‘We’re not repealing it as long as I’m president, and I want everybody to be clear about that. … We’re not going to walk away from it.’ I’m not a crook. I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

Belly Laugh of the Week

Barack Obama: “The interesting thing about now having been president for five years is it makes you humbler as opposed to cockier.”

The BIG Lie

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: “What [Obama] said was true: If you want to keep the insurance you have, you can keep it. The problem is we did not put the bill into effect that way. There’s a lot of administrative fixes [that] kicked in, and there have been three changes in anyone’s policy since then. It’s not the same policy.”

Non Compos Mentis

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver: “Republicans saw a calamity in every glitch [on Healthcare.gov]. And, you know, I’ve got a one-year-old granddaughter, and even on Thanksgiving Day she had a number of little glitches, but we’re not ready to throw her away because of a glitch here and there. Most things in the beginning stages are going to be difficult to pull off.”

Dezinformatsia

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz: “I’ll tell you what I think God thinks of the Affordable Care Act. It’s a big amen!”

Braying Jackass

Barack Obama on unemployment “insurance”: “Christmas time is no time for Congress to tell more than one million … Americans that they have lost their … insurance, which is what will happen if Congress does not act before they leave on their holiday vacation.”

Village Idiots

“Twerking” twit Miley Cyrus: “I’m proud of the person I’ve become. Not what people think I’ve turned myself into, but who I’ve actually become, which is a happier person. … I said 2013 was going to be the best year of my life, and I think what you put out into the universe you get back. I proved that to myself this year.”

Demo-gogues

Barack Obama: “[Income inequality] is the defining challenge of our time. … And while we don’t promise equal outcomes, we have strived to deliver equal opportunity – the idea that success doesn’t depend on being born into wealth or privilege, it depends on effort and merit. … Together, we forged a New Deal, declared a War on Poverty in a great society. We built a ladder of opportunity to climb, and stretched out a safety net beneath so that if we fell, it wouldn’t be too far, and we could bounce back. And as a result, America built the largest middle class the world has ever known. … Look, I’ve never believed that government can solve every problem or should – and neither do you. … But government can’t stand on the sidelines in our efforts. Because government is us.”

Short Cuts

Humorist Frank J. Fleming: “Are we talking about making income equality within America or within the whole world? I don’t think I can live on $12k a year.”