This Week In Quotes: December 11 – December 17

by John Hawkins | December 18, 2009 8:01 am

People just don’t want this bill. I think the big mistake was skipping the step of winning public support for a particular plan. It wasn’t enough that people believed there was a problem. People needed to believe the solution wasn’t worse than the problem. We were supposed to look away and trust them. The trust was never won, never earned. It’s been a horrific mess, and it just looks messier and messier as time wears on. — Ann Althouse[1]

It’s true that I’m not crazy about the Kyoto climate negotiation process, of which the Copenhagen summit is the latest stage. But I’m even more disturbed by the apocalyptic and the anti-human prejudices of the climate change movement, some of which do indeed filter down to children as young as 9.

Over the years there have been many radical statements of this latter creed. In the infamous words of a National Park Service ecologist, “We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” A former leader of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals once declared that “humans have grown like a cancer; we’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth.” But it is a mistake to think that this is the language of only a crazy fringe. — Anne Applebaum[2]

“It is business as usual, spending money like a drunken sailor, ” said Sen. John McCain. “And the bar is still open.”

But when sailors get drunk and spend crazily, they are on shore leave and spending their own money. When they get back aboard ship, they sober up and shape up, and do the vital work they enlisted to do.

These congressmen never stop bingeing. They are addicts. They are alcoholics. And they are spending our money. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, there are 5,200 earmarks in that one Senate bill, which averages out to 12 pork projects for every House member — and 52 for every senator. — Pat Buchanan[3]

Eighty-five percent of Americans are happy with their health care, but Democrats have a plan to make it worse for more money. As a bonus, national health care will add trillions of dollars to the national debt, and your insurance rates will skyrocket. — Ann Coulter[4]

Obama has proven himself another corporate shill whose idea of Change turned out to be replacing Karl Rove with Rahm Emanuel; his idea of Hope was that no would would notice that only the names and faces have changed– nothing else. We’ve been had! The healthcare reform bill is an abomination that doesn’t seem worth saving. In fact, its a disaster in the making and really should be killed. [Presumably, Bernie Sanders will rise above the partisan din and do just that.] Olbermann pointed out that Liebermann is a “senatorial prostitute… bought and sold by the insurance industry.” Without going there, he makes it obvious that the anti-democratic Senate has lost not just any moral authority but any semblance of relevance. Does Obama have what it takes to pull himself out of this and lead? There is not a thing in his history to make anyone believe he would, let alone could. — Down With Tyranny[5]

“The whole world needs to adopt China’s one-child policy,” writes Canadian journalist Diane Francis, mother of two. — Jim Geraghty[6]

Indeed, some of loudest voices have a weird habit of telegraphing their priorities. Tim Wirth, a former senator and now chairman of the United Nations Foundation, once said: “We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” New York Times columnist and prominent warm-monger Thomas Friedman has repeatedly said (most recently this week) that he doesn’t care if global warming is a “hoax” because, even if it is, the fear of it will force us to do what we need to do.

And it just so happens that with the exception of nuclear power – which most greens still won’t support – global warming fuels nearly every progressive ambition. Wealth transfers from rich to poor nations: Check. The rise of “global governance” and the decline of American sovereignty: Check. A secular fatwa not only to erode capitalism but to intrude on every aspect of our lives (Greenpeace offers a guide to carbon-neutral sex): Check. Weaning us off of oil (which, don’t let the Goregonauts fool you, was a priority back when we were still worried about global cooling): Check. The checks go on for as far as the eye can see, and we will be writing them for years to come. — Jonah Goldberg[7]

British historian Arnold Toynbee argued that civilizations thrive when the lower classes aspire to be like the upper classes, and they decay when the upper classes try to be like the lower classes. Looked at through this prism, it’s hard not to see America in a prolonged period of decay. — Jonah Goldberg[8]

Today we hear from an objective actuary from inside the administration that the Reid bill will increase the debt by a quarter trillion.

Secondly, we hear that the half a trillion dollars in cuts in Medicare are going to cause one in ten hospitals or nursing homes to become insolvent, which means they will either have to close or they’re going to shift all of those extra costs onto the other folks using their services, which means people with the private insurance will be increasing their premiums and their costs.

Now, we get every week another report – whether it’s from an actuary in the administration [or] from CBO – which is simply a report to prove the obvious from the beginning: There’s no free lunch. You cannot expand health-care coverage by 30 million uninsured and expect it will have the curve going down. It is going to increase costs. That is obvious. — Charles Krauthammer[9]

President Obama’s hometown cronies lost their bid to bring the 2016 Olympic Games to the Windy City. But this week they got a consolation prize: the Gitmolympics. On Tuesday, the White House went public with its official plans to purchase the Thomson Correctional Facility from financially strapped Illinois to house Guantanamo Bay detainees. The War on Terror meets the Chicago Way. — Michelle Malkin[10]

Given the enormity and complexity, I don’t see anything magical about the Christmas deadline if this bill is going to become law in 2014. — Olympia Snowe[11]

The Obama speechwriting team don’t seem to realize that. They seem to be the last guys on the planet in love with the sound of his voice and their one interminable tinny tune with its catchpenny hooks. The usual trick is to position their man as the uniquely insightful leader pitching his tent between two extremes no sane person has ever believed: “There are those who say there is no evil in the world. There are others who argue that pink fluffy bunnies are the spawn of Satan and conspiring to overthrow civilization. Let me be clear: I believe people of goodwill on all sides can find common ground between the absurdly implausible caricatures I attribute to them on a daily basis. We must begin by finding the courage to acknowledge the hard truth that I am living testimony to the power of nuance to triumph over hard truth and come to the end of the sentence on a note of sonorous, polysyllabic, if somewhat hollow, uplift. Pause for applause.” — Mark Steyn[12]

It is really quite astonishing, then, that Democrats are trying to ram through one of the largest pieces of domestic legislation in the history of our nation – and no one knows exactly what’s in it or what it will cost. — Peter Wehner[13]

Endnotes:
  1. Ann Althouse: http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/12/congressional-democrats-turn-on-obama.html
  2. Anne Applebaum: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121402719.html
  3. Pat Buchanan: http://townhall.com/columnists/PatBuchanan/2009/12/15/fat_city
  4. Ann Coulter: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34873
  5. Down With Tyranny: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/12/keith-olbermann-puts-into-words-whats.html
  6. Jim Geraghty: http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTI1OTE3ZjE5OGQwMDAyZjE1ZWVmMzg1MDY5N2MyYTY=
  7. Jonah Goldberg: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Nzk2ZDYzMmY2N2VkODEzMjE3YjhmM2IzNjA3MTU1MTA=
  8. Jonah Goldberg: http://townhall.com/columnists/JonahGoldberg/2009/12/16/america_through_the_reality_lens?page=2
  9. Charles Krauthammer: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDk1MzZiMTAyNTg4MWYzYjVmY2ZhNmMxYTQ5MmNmYTI=
  10. Michelle Malkin: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/2009/12/an-interview-with-dating-advice-columnist-cristan-marashio/
  11. Olympia Snowe: http://mcconnell.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=320943&start=1
  12. Mark Steyn: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTI3OTEwYTE1MTIyOTM2ZjZlYmFjYTJiNTRhYmRiYzY=
  13. Peter Wehner: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/198431

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