Thursday Short Cuts
Notable quotables from Kevin McCarthy, Steve Harvey, USA Today, and more.
Insight
“We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more — we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” —Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
Re: Biden’s Big ‘Voting Rights’ Lie
“The president of the United State could have gone to Chicago or any other of the 5,400 schools that started off this year closed to send a clear signal that kids belong in the classroom. Instead, he was in Atlanta [Tuesday] delivering a speech that was so self-serving and out of touch that even Stacey Abrams kept her distance.” —House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy
“Twelve months ago, this president said disagreement must not lead to disunion. But [Tuesday], he invoked the bloody disunion of the Civil War — the Civil War — to demonize Americans who disagree with him. He compared … a bipartisan majority of senators to literal traitors. How profoundly, profoundly unpresidential.” —Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
“A president shouting that 52 senators and millions of Americans are racist unless he gets whatever he wants is proving exactly why the framers built the Senate to check his power.” —Mitch McConnell
Friendly fire: “Perhaps the president went a little too far in his rhetoric.” —Senator Dick Durbin
Friendly fire II: “Hillary’s calling tens of millions of Americans deplorables was divisive & disgusting. But Biden has gone further, calling those who disagree with his actions & policies domestic enemies, traitors, and racists. Biden promised to unite us, but he is doing all he can to divide us.” —Tulsi Gabbard
COVID
“The media should reflect long and hard on the irresponsible and uncalled for way in which they used Covid to gaslight people they don’t like. Covid was deployed as an excuse to hit Ron DeSantis or Greg Abbott or Trump voters or Southerners or anyone who the press, writ large, looks down upon, and I think that is a real shame.” —Charles C. W. Cooke
“If Biden is going to beat the pandemic rather than be undone by it, he is going to have to acknowledge the new reality, which is that our public policy is way too weighted toward a bunch of people who made the wrong choice. It’s his own Democratic constituencies — teachers unions, local governments, ultra-leftist Trump haters who refuse to let go of the culture war over the virus — who would continue to hold the country hostage to what now is a manageable public health risk. Biden needs to take these people on and steer his party toward a more sensible course.” —Washington Post’s Matt Bai (who has COVID)
Lack of self-awareness: “You are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain.” —Swamp Doctor Anthony Fauci to Senator Rand Paul
Braying jenny: “At some point, I feel like people who are willfully unvaccinated, fine, don’t get vaccinated. But they need to start to pay a little bit more of the cost of what this is doing to our system.” —MSNBC’s Joy Reid
Non compos mentis: “Those who have deliberately flouted sober medical advice by refusing a vaccine known to reduce the risk of serious disease from the virus, including the risk to others, and end up in the hospital or the grave can be viewed as receiving their just deserts.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik, whose article title bristles: “Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes — but may be necessary.”
Cancel Culture
“We’re in the cancel culture now. Nobody can say anything he wants to — Chris Rock can’t, Kevin Hart can’t, Cedric the Entertainer can’t, D.L. Hughley can’t. I can go down the list. The only person that can say what they want to say on stage is Dave Chappelle because he’s not sponsor-driven. He’s subscription. If I had tried to continue as a stand-up, there’s no way I could maintain it because political correctness has killed comedy, has killed it. Every joke now, it hurts somebody’s feelings.” —Steve Harvey
“Cancel culture is invading many circles and public institutions. As a result, agendas are increasingly dictated by a mindset that rejects the natural foundations of humanity and the cultural roots that constitute the identity of many people. … Diplomacy is called to be truly inclusive, not canceling but cherishing the differences and sensibilities that have historically marked various peoples.” —Pope Francis
Dezinformatsiya
“When most of the public thinks of pedophilia, they assume it’s synonymous with child sexual abuse. A pedophile is an adult who is sexually attracted to children, but not all pedophiles abuse kids, and some people who sexually abuse kids are not pedophiles.” —USA Today
And Last…
“If you think it’s racist to ask for an ID to vote, you might also think it’s ‘science’ to ask for an ID to eat. Leftist logic is something to behold.” —Congressman Dan Crenshaw
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