This Week In Quotes: Sept 11 – Sept 17.
It’s easier for the left to play the race card than address the public’s legitimate concerns, but what the left and the media are doing is damaging and dangerous. It’s damaging because when everything is racist, then nothing is. Those who cry racism without evidence will cause people to tune out in cases in which there is evidence. It’s dangerous also to send a message that racism is behind everything. What does that tell young black men and women? It tells them they will never get a fair shake and that white people who have never met them dislike them. — Deneen Borelli, Project 21
That’s the double standard of the left. If it’s a conservative, like Michael Steele, he gets Oreos thrown at him. But if it’s a liberal then they circle the wagons and say it’s about race. — Caller from the Rush Limbaugh show
There is something wrong with Charlie Rangel. Either he did not notice that he was worth about twice as much as he said he was — which is downright worrisome in a congressional leader — or he thinks that he’s above the law, which is downright worrisome in a congressional leader. — Richard Cohen
It’s “silly season” according to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. You know silly season. It’s the time when all of the ridiculous stuff the administration is doing gets revealed – no matter how little the media actually reports any of it. — Dan Gainor
In July, Clarence Page, EJ Dionne, Joe Conason, The New Republic, The Nation, the entire lefty blogosphere were all insisting that the Birthers were a cancer on conservatism and the GOP, a sign of racism and fascism and lord knows what else metastasizing on the Right. Now, when it turns out that Van Jones is a Truther, belief in a vastly more evil and crazy conspiracy theory is no big deal. — Jonah Goldberg
I’m less disturbed by Glenn Beck’s paranoia than I am by those who, like an eighteen-year-old who thinks he’ll live forever, view the republic as an unsinkable ship that faces no threat other than an al-Qaeda dirty bomb. They ignore world history from Caesar to Hugo Chavez and imagine any fears of America losing its freedom from within to be unprecedented paranoia. — Adam Graham
Umbrage is itself, generally, a lie. The ostensible victim of the offensive remark (call him or her the “umbragee”) is actually delighted at the opportunity, while the ostensible offense giver (call him or her the “umbragor”) is sorry to have wandered into this thicket, or is made to feel sorry as the umbrage game plays itself out. The rules of the game are perverse but simple: I scream with pain until you cry “uncle.” — Michael Kinsley
OLD SPIN: Nobody’s Talking About Killing Granny! New Spin: What’s Wrong With Killing Granny? Plus, Old Spin: Nobody’s Talking about Health Care for Illegals! New Spin: What’s Wrong With Health Care for Illegals? — Glenn Reynolds
“I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn’t be worth wasting the urine.” — Pete Stark, to a constituent
Characterizing Americans’ disapproval of President Obama’s policies as being based on race is an outrage and a troubling sign about the lengths Democrats will go to disparage all who disagree with them. — Michael Steele
For most of the previous presidency, the Left accused George W. Bush of using 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq. Since January, his successor has used the economic slump as a pretext to “reform” health care. Most voters don’t buy it: They see it as Obama’s “war of choice,” and the more frantically he talks about it as a matter of urgency the weirder it seems. If he’s having difficulty selling it, that’s because it’s not about “health.” As I’ve written before, the appeal of this issue to him and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, et al., is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture – one in which elections are always fought on the Left’s issues and on the Left’s terms, and in which “conservative” parties no longer talk about small government and individual liberty but find themselves retreating to one last pitiful rationale: that they can run the left-wing state more effectively than the Left can. — Mark Steyn
The other day (David Brooks) was tutting that the Obama administration is in trouble because “it joined itself at the hip to the liberal leadership in Congress.” My National Review colleague Jay Nordlinger was reminded of an old observation by the great Theodore Dalrymple. During his time as an English prison doctor, Dalrymple frequently met ne’er-do-wells who said they’d “fallen in with the wrong crowd,” but, oddly enough, in all those years, he never met the wrong crowd. — Mark Steyn
“We knew the president would at some point say something like, ‘and the other side has no ideas,’ ” Price says. So Price and his Republican colleagues brought with them copies of the more than 30 health care reform bills they have proposed in the House this year.
Obama didn’t directly accuse Republicans of not having a plan. But he did say he would welcome “serious” health care proposals. “My door is always open,” Obama said.
That’s when Price held up the sheaf of papers he was carrying — a copy of H.R. 3400, the Empowering Patients First Act, which Price and the Republican Study Committee proposed in July. Other GOP lawmakers held up their own bills. Some raised a list of all the health care bills — there are more than 30 — proposed by members of the Study Committee. — Byron York