Insight

“Communism never sleeps, never changes its objectives, nor must we. Our first duty to freedom is to defend our own. Then one day we might export a little to those peoples who have to live without it.” —Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)

For the Record

“People say the federal government seems big, maybe bigger than ever. Well, it actually is the largest employer in the world. The federal government, nothing else comes close — not Google, not Amazon, not the Communist Party of China, nothing. How many people work for the United States government? Let’s put it this way. There are more than 100 countries around the world whose total populations (that is, every man, woman and child) are smaller than our federal workforce — entire countries, many of them. … So, what do all those people who work there do every day? You may be wondering that. Well, it’s a good question. Actually, nobody’s really sure, including many of the employees themselves. Fundamentally, the federal government is a mystery. Like the universe, it goes on forever. It makes you feel small thinking about it, which is probably the point.” —Tucker Carlson

“If a subsequent administration withdrew from the [Iran nuclear] deal, they’d have to pay damages to Iran. That’s been reported in the press in the past couple of weeks. … If the Biden administration negotiated those kinds of provisions to harm the United States of America if a future president withdrew from the deal, that verges on treasonous. It’s one thing to say we want to go into this deal and we hope future presidents stay. It’s another to impair the United States itself to reduce the possibility of leaving the deal.” —former National Security Adviser John Bolton

“If the Inflation Reduction Act truly reduces inflation, then we can start with a conversation about the nuts and bolts of the bill. But we’ve come to the point where nothing actually means what it says. And that gets us into an emperor’s new clothes kind of mentality, where it’s not one kid in the crowd going, ‘Hey, that guy’s naked.’ It’s the whole country going, ‘Wait. Again with this? Again with the name of a thing that doesn’t seem to reflect the thing?’” —television host Mike Rowe

The BIG Lie

“Democrats voted to cut the deficit to fight inflation by having the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share. Every single Republican opposed requiring big corporations to pay a minimum tax of 15%, instead of some getting away with paying $0 in federal income taxes.” —President Joe Biden

Non Compos Mentis Awards

“I’ve covered extremism and violent ideologies around the world over my career. Have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous & contemptible than today’s Republicans. Nothing close.” —Financial Times Associate Editor Edward Luce | “I agree. And I was the CIA Director.” —General Michael Hayden

“Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared. … Whatever [the] scope of Joe Biden’s corruption is … it is infinitesimal compared to the corruption we know Trump is involved in. … Trump University, as a story, is worse than anything that could be in Hunter Biden’s laptop, in my view. Right? Now that doesn’t answer the people who say, ‘It’s still completely unfair to not have looked at the laptop in a timely way and to have shut down the New York Post’s Twitter account. Like … that’s a left-wing conspiracy to deny the presidency to Donald Trump.’ Absolutely it was. … But I think it was warranted.” —author Sam Harris