The Patriot Post® · Monday Short Cuts

The Gipper: “Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, ‘What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.’ But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.”

For the record I: “Fewer homicides were committed by political terrorists of any stripe in the United States in 2017 than were committed by undocumented immigrants in the state of Texas alone.” —David Harsanyi

For the record II: “I look at these documents and I don’t see any evidence of conspiracy between members of the Trump team and the Russian government to interfere in the election.” —CNN’s Jake Tapper

Upright I: “California just defies logic to me. … This election system they have, I can’t begin to understand what ballot harvesting is. … When you win the absentee ballots and you win the in-person vote, where I come from, you win the election.” —House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI)

Upright II: “As a conservative, I don’t dispute that President Trump has done more to advance the conservative policy sphere than President George H. W. Bush did. As a conservative, I also note that President Trump has done far more to corrupt and pervert conservatism than President Bush did.” —Erick Erickson

Friendly fire: “This demand for purity, this looking down your nose at people who want to compromise, is a recipe for disaster for the Democrats. Will we ever get to a majority in the Senate again, much less to 60, if we do not have some moderates in our party?” —Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO)

Non Compos Mentis: “We’ve done what we thought was impossible. We went to the moon. We electrified the nation. We established civil rights. We enfranchised the country. We dug deep and we did it. We did it, when no one else thought that we could. That’s what we did when so many of us won an election this year. That’s what so many of us did.” —Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Feminist infighting: “Marriage still ain’t equal, y'all. It ain’t equal. I tell women that whole ‘you can have it all’ mmm, nope, not at the same time; that’s a lie. It’s not always enough to lean in because that s—t doesn’t work.” —Michelle Obama rejecting Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s assertion in a book titled Lean In, invoking her fake Southern drawl when trying to incite outrage among her emotionally incontinent female fans. She later walked back the comment, saying, “I thought we were at home, y'all. I was gettin’ real comfortable up in here.”

And last… “Lying to Congress is a very bad thing to do — but apparently only if you are a Republican. There are all kinds of people walking around Washington from the previous administration who repeatedly misled Congress and none of them have been brought to justice. Lois Lerner, John Brennan, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey come to mind.” —Gary Bauer