Monday Short Cuts
The Gipper: “We are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We are not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline.”
For the record: “We’ve known that Russia is a very sophisticated bad actor in the cyber realm. Many members of Congress, not just members of the House Intelligence Committee, have been warning the Obama administration about Russia’s continued cyberattacks on this country, and they did nothing.” —Rep. Devin Nunes
Delusions of grandeur, part I: “I don’t think I underestimated [Vladimir Putin], but I think that I underestimated the degree to which, in this new information age, it is possible for misinformation, for cyber-hacking and so forth, to have an impact on our open societies, our open systems, to insinuate themselves into our democratic practices in ways that I think are accelerating.” —Barack Obama
Delusions of grandeur, part II: “I am absolutely convinced that race relations on the whole are actually better now than they were 20 years [ago].” —Barack Obama
Demo-gogues: “I think [ObamaCare] will [survive]. It may be called something else. And as I said, I don’t mind. If in fact the Republicans make some modifications — some of which I may have been seeking previously, but they wouldn’t cooperate because they didn’t want to — make the system work, and relabel it as TrumpCare, I’m fine with that.” —Barack Obama
Non Compos Mentis: “The Affordable Care Act was passed not under reconciliation when it first came to the Congress. So the main part of the bill — House and Senate — was not under reconciliation. The final version, which was just some tweaks … were what were done under reconciliation.” —Nancy Pelosi insinuating ObamaCare was really bipartisan
Braying Jenny: “I really say to you, my friends in the press, with all due respect for the guardians of the First Amendment that you are, that you were accomplices in this. It was every single day you reported that there was an email that was embarrassing to the Clinton [campaign] without saying, ‘We know this because of disruption by a foreign power into our electoral system.’ You knew that. You knew it was the Russians.” —Nancy Pelosi
And last… “Obama would’ve done more to stop Russia from interfering in our election, but he was too busy interfering in the Israel and British elections.” —Twitter satirist @weknowwhatsbest