This Week In Quotes: Aug 5 – Aug 11

12 Aug, 2011 by John Hawkins

Print this article Font size -16+

But like Louis XVI, British authorities are paralyzed by their indifference to their own civilization. A half-century of berating themselves for the crime of being British has left them morally defenseless. They see nothing about England worth saving, certainly not worth fighting for — which is fortunate since most of their cops don’t have guns.

This is how civilizations die. It can happen overnight, as it did in Revolutionary France. If Britain of 1939 were composed of the current British population, the entirety of Europe would today be doing the “Heil Hitler” salute and singing the “Horst Wessel Song.” — Ann Coulter

A general correction of the imbalance between wealth production and wealth redistribution is now a matter of basic necessity, not ideological preference. The hardest obstacle to overcome will be the idea that anyone who challenges the prevailing consensus of the past 50 years is irrational and irresponsible. That is what is being said about the Tea Partiers. In fact, what is irrational and irresponsible is the assumption that we can go on as we are. — Janet Daley

[The Tea Party] has to be the first “Totalitarian” movement in the history of mankind that, if it gets everything it wants…will leave you the hell alone. — Ed Driscoll

If you’ve ever known anyone with a serious addiction, the easiest thing for friends and family to do is pretend it’s not a big deal. Who wants to have a confrontation? Far easier to let things slide and have a good time. “Let’s have a nice Thanksgiving without any arguments, OK?”

The tea party is like the cousin who’s been through AA and refuses to pretend anymore. As a result, he spoils everyone’s good time. For the enablers, and others in denial, he’s the guy ruining everything, not the drunk.

Uncle Sam is the drunk and the tea partiers are the annoyingly sober — and a bit self-righteous — cousin. Measured by spending, and adjusted for inflation, the federal government has increased by more than 50 percent in 10 years. Some have enabled the drunken spending, others continue to deny it’s even a problem.

The tea party is sounding the wake-up call. If America didn’t have a problem, then there really would be good cause to be furious with the forces of sobriety. Nobody likes a party-pooper, especially the people hooked on partying. — Jonah Goldberg

Well, we were talking here about how detached and disengaged he appears and how disturbing it is particularly to Obama’s allies in the press. But the irony is that even if he were undetached and concerned and involved, the markets have shown that he is the anti-E.F. Hutton. When he speaks, no one listens. The markets take no notice whatsoever of what he does. And the reason is he has no ideas. He’s out of bullets, he’s out of arrows, he doesn’t have a clue. — Charles Krauthammer

“The 8,274 people with incomes of $10 million per year or more earned a total of $240 billion in 2009.

“Even of you confiscated every dime they earned, you would barely have enough money to cover government spending for 24 days.” In fact, this $240 billion, I mean that’s pretty close to the actual real number of budget cuts in the debt deal when you strip everything away. Now, about 25% of that money already goes to the federal government for federal income. So actually that $240 billion would run the government for 18 days.

“Another 227,000 people earned $1 million or more in 2009. Millionaires averaged taxes of 24.4% of their income — up from 23.1% in 2008.” Now, you might be asking, how did that happen? Well, the Bush tax cuts, folks. Obama’s tax increases hadn’t started, and Obama’s not immaculated yet. “They, too, did not earn enough money to come anywhere close to covering the annual deficits that are $1.5 trillion a year.” So 8,274 people who earn $10 million per year or more, earn a total of $240 billion in 2009. Another 227,000 people earned a million dollars or more in 2009. But it doesn’t come anywhere close to covering the deficit of $1.5 trillion.” — Rush Limbaugh

I don’t care what credit ratings agencies say. We always have been and always will be a AAA country. — Barack Obama

America will be cutting federal spending by $900 billion over ten years. “Cutting federal spending by $900 billion over ten years” is Washington-speak for increasing federal spending by $7 trillion over ten years. And, as they’d originally planned to increase it by eight trillion, that counts as a cut. If they’d planned to increase it by $20 trillion and then settled for merely $15 trillion, they could have saved five trillion. See how easy this is? — Mark Steyn

By 2020 just the interest payments on the debt will be larger than the U.S. military budget. That’s not paying down the debt, but merely staying current on the servicing – like when you get your MasterCard statement and you can’t afford to pay off any of what you borrowed but you can just about cover the monthly interest charge. Except in this case the interest charge for U.S. taxpayers will be greater than the military budgets of China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel combined. — Mark Steyn

When interest payments consume about 20 percent of federal revenues, that means a fifth of your taxes are entirely wasted. Pious celebrities often simper that they’d be willing to pay more in taxes for better government services. But a fifth of what you pay won’t be going to government services at all, unless by “government services” you mean the People’s Liberation Army of China, which will be entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers by about 2015. When the Visigoths laid siege to Rome in 408, the imperial Senate hastily bought off the barbarian king Alaric with 5,000 pounds of gold and 30,000 pounds of silver. But they didn’t budget for Roman taxpayers picking up the tab for the entire Visigoth military as a permanent feature of life. — Mark Steyn

It’s time to acknowledge that Ponzi schemes don’t work, and that entitlement programs are destined for collapse under current parameters. We can’t possibly tax enough to cover their costs; the problem in this case isn’t revenue as much as it is a lack of suckers on the front end of these schemes. They worked when the worker-to-beneficiary ratio was 16:1, but not when it’s 3:1 or less. Most Americans want a safety net for the elderly and the truly disabled, but in order to have that, we have to severely limit the pool of recipients to those who absolutely cannot work to support themselves, not to those who choose not to work to support themselves. Retirement needs to be self-funded, or not taken at all. We also need to revamp public-sector pension systems that threaten their own tidal waves of default at the state level to get on top of our national liabilities once and for all. — Ed Morrissey

“Corporations are people, my friend. Ultimately everything corporations earn goes to people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? People’s pockets. Human beings, my friend.” — Mitt Romney

Blame the Tea Party? Geez, no wonder Kerry did so well in an election. If it wasn’t for the Tea Party, they would have passed the debt ceiling thumbs up, we would have been rated BBB. — Rick Santelli

Many liberals who consider themselves friends or allies of blacks are usually friends or allies of those particular blacks who are doing wrong things, often at the expense of other blacks. — Thomas Sowell

Take those God-darn hoodies down, especially in the summer. Pull your pants up and buy a belt ‘cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt. If you walk into somebody’s office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won’t hire you? They don’t hire you ‘cause you look like you’re crazy. You have damaged your own race. — Mayor Michael A. Nutter