Recently in Quote of the Day Category

PETER KIRSANOW: "Judging from the local drive time radio shows, we bitter, religious pistol-packers here in flyover country remembered only two things from Obama's Berlin visit: the phrase 'citizen of the world' and Obama's failure to visit wounded troops at Landstuhl and Ramstein."

Today on CBS's Face the Nation, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in Afghanistan, told the paparazzi-pursued correspondent Lara Logan that "the objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years. . . .

The notion that Obama will be dealing with world leaders for eight-to-ten years, possibly up through July 2018, suggests that either (a) he believes that not only will he be elected and re-elected, but the 22nd amendment will be repealed and he will be elected for a third term, OR (b) he was speaking casually and just meant two terms.

...and be President of 57 States to boot.

What really distinguishes veteran's reunions isn't the stories they tell but the secrets they keep. - Richard Fernandez

America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards - Clair Wolfe

What Is A Veteran? A Veteran -- whether active duty, discharged, retired, or reserve - is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to 'The United States of America', for an amount up to and including his life. That is honor, and there are way too many people in this country today who no longer understand that fact. - Theo Spark

When Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election by half a percentage point, but lost the Electoral College -- or, for short, "the constitutionally prescribed method for choosing presidents" -- anyone who denied the sacred importance of the popular vote was either an idiot or a dangerous partisan.

But now Hillary has won the popular vote in a Democratic primary, while Obambi has won under the rules. In a spectacular turnabout, media commentators are heaping sarcasm on our plucky Hillary for imagining the "popular vote" has any relevance whatsoever.

- Ann Coulter

Liberalism is emotion posing as reason.

So now my last choice has the Republican nomination, and my last choice has the Democrat nomination...sucks to be me. I can't think of anything more likely to get conservatives out to vote for McLame than his lordship the O'bama.

A beautiful thing happened on the way to a 2008 Democratic nominee. Hillary Clinton obtained the feminist dream: She was treated equally. - Kathryn Jean Lopez

Might this election be the first ever to be decided by people on both sides voting against their party's own candidate? - Cold Fury

    The rise of invisible competition has implications for nations as well as individuals and corporations. For the United States, those implications are overwhelmingly positive. Although Americans fret endlessly about the invisible threat of outsourcing, the rest of the world often sees the United States as the deadliest source of invisible competition. From information technology to cutting-edge medical research to higher education, Americans have achieved exceptional results relatively quickly, before the rest of the world had much chance to ­respond.

    While American culture glorifies the competitive spirit, Americans are good competitors in part because they don’t always need that last-minute adrenalin rush. They tend to value change and innovation for their own sake, and they imagine themselves to be pioneers. The idea of striking out into unknown territory to build a better world is deeply embedded in the national psyche. The Protestant ethic also lives on, expressed in a commitment not only to hard work but to the idea that we fulfill ourselves through our labors. This helps explain why, to the vexation and puzzlement of Europeans, millions of Americans prefer to stay at their jobs rather than take all of their allotted vacation ­time.  - Maggies Farm

Posted by SayUncle

Electile Dysfunction:  The inability to become aroused by any of the choices for President put forth by either of the parties in the 2008 election. - Riverdog

The number of casualties at the site of an attempted mass shooting is usually determined by whether the gun used to stop the killer is already at the site, or whether it must be carried there in the holster of a police officer. - Marko

It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world. Antoine de Saint Exupery (from Terre des Homme, trans. Wind, Sand and Stars,1943)

"It's a sad state of affairs when the Pakistani government, a government that is trying to portray itself to the West as democratic, tries to harass and deport U.S. human rights activists," Ms. Benjamin said at the press club before her arrest. "If they do this to us, who have the protection of being U.S. citizens, imagine what they do to their own citizens." - Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, on getting deported from Pakistan

You can cut the irony of that statement with a knife.  And refresh my memory...what protections do barking moonbats have when they leave the US to try their dog and pony show in 3rd world shitholes?

I would like to say one thing, in what is my conception of the Republic, security is the responsibility of the State, I am against militias, I am against the private ownership of firearms, and I'm trying to make you think about that. If you are assaulted by an armed burglar, he'll use his weapon more effectively than you anyway so you're risking your life. If the criminal is not armed and you are and you shoot, your life will be ruined, because killing someone over a theft is not in line with the republican values that are mine. The private ownership of firearms is dangerous. I understand your exasperation for having been burglarized two times, I understand the fear that your wife and daughter may have but the answer is in the efficiency of the police and the efficiency of the judiciary process, the answer is not in having guns at home. - Nicolas Sarkozy on RTL radio, 22 September 2006

You should never point a loaded gun at anyone. This is not a hard and fast rule, however. A hard and fast rule is that you should never, ever, point an unloaded gun at anyone. - P.J. O'Rourke

The indiscriminate use of vulgar language is the linguistic crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker. - Foul language disclaimer on the Guns Network Forum

I think we've gotten to the point where anything bad, that can't be
directly linked to George Bush, is going to be blamed on Global Warming - Lumberjacks

Formidable, tough, intelligent, and resilient, American women make their European counterparts seem a little tame despite the long time presence of women in continental politics. The fact is, American women have had to be tougher, smarter, and more inventive than their male counterparts at every turn to get ahead. And it is best that our enemies keep that in mind when the day comes that an American woman is elected president.

The question isn't so much are American men ready for a woman president. The question should be is the rest of the world ready for an American woman as president?

If the polls are any indication, we're all going to find out the answer that question soon enough.

- Rick Moran

One thing I have learned about myself since I've been out here is that everything I professed to you about what I want for the world and what I am willing to do to achieve it was true. ... My desire to "save the world" is really just an extension of trying to make a world fit for you.

Lt. Mark Daily, 21, killied by IED Jan, 2007, in a letter to his wife.

Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt;

He only lived but till he was a man;

The which no sooner had his prowess confirm'd

In the unshrinking station where he fought,

But like a man he died.

Your cause of sorrow

Must not be measured by his worth, for then

It hath no end.

MacBeth Act V Scene VIII

Well, a recent survey showed that at the age of twenty 90% of men have sex four times a week and that by the time they reach 40 they are still capable of telling the same pathetic lie. - Dissident Frogman

     when the left ceaselessly repeats the mantra "Bush lied," it may simply be projecting onto George W. Bush what comes quite naturally to the left — when it offers false Iraqi death statistics, false homeless data, false rape statistics, false secondhand smoke statistics, false claims about the percentage of gays in the population, and false claims of just about everything else the left cares about. - Dennis Prager

...and don't forget gerbil worming

thanx to No Pasaran

The First Amendment to the US Constitution is not the source of any right, it is just a legal tool used by Americans in America to secure the natural right all people have to express themselves. But in this networked world we have, it actually has the unlooked for effect of extending a significant degree of that protection to other people across the world who write from foreign keyboards about foreign things for foreign audiences, hosted on a server in the USA. I find that quite interesting. -Samizdata

One hundred and three days after their general election, life goes on in Belgium. People go to work, they meet their friends, the beer is world class, the food is good, folks go about life as they always have. And there is still no government.

Hopefully the country will provide an inspirational example to the rest of the EU and split under the pressure caused by increasing Flemish unwillingness to pay the parasitic leftists who dominate Wallonia. Of course things might get messy but more likely it will be a velvet divorce... but the really interesting thing for me is that society and the economy continues to function just fine without any active government at all. No new laws, no cabinet meetings, and yet somehow the sky has not caved in and the world keeps turning.

- Perry de Havilland, Samizdata

Go ugly early.

Motto of the A-10 Warthog Air Groups

But that's one of the benefits of a multicultural world: There are so many fascinating diverse cultures, and most of them look best reduced to rubble strewn with body parts. - Mark Steyn

And from Frank J of IMAO

So, remember, while you may bring a pocket translator to better communicate with people of other languages and cultures, I pack a Colt .45.

Isaiah 6:8

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"
 And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"

US Navy SEALS

The United States was born through war, reunited by war, and saved from destruction by war. No future generation, however comfortable and affluent, should escape that terrible knowledge. - VDH

A winning message is simple-quit spending money we don't have, stop flouting our immigration laws, free us from Middle East oil blackmail, and cease equating politics with profit. Americans may not agree on the war in Iraq, gay marriage, or abortion, but there is plenty of common ground on which a sober politician can still find a bipartisan majority.

- Victor Davis Hanson discussing things that most Americans agree on.

To read contemporary journalism is to learn of Russian anger at Eastern Europe and E.U. morality lectures, Chinese frustration with E.U. tariffs, al Qaeda's hatred of a soft, 'decadent' European lifestyle, and missile proximity to Tehran - and a growing American weariness with all of the above.

For Britain and Europe, it is a classic case of "be careful of what you wish for..." VDC on TS

Don't tell anybody, but I actually read blogs. - Hillary Clinton at the Yearly Kos Convention

OK, cool.

Dear the Honorable Senator Clinton. 

Please get nominated.   Please continue your relationship with the Kos Kids.  Please, please, please, and double please with sugar and lard on top.  These people are your true base...you must do everything you can to please them and aline yourself up with their agenda. 

(Please do not read anything on the Daily Kos tho...you don't need to know and would just be embarrassed by the effusive praise for America in all of it's grand diversity.  Just be satisfied that you are being supported by a huge group of engaged young people famous for their high level of political discourse and their evenhanded treatment of the issues of the day.)

I very much enjoyed the McGovern nominating convention in Chicago back in '68 as I'm sure you did also.  I would be thrilled to enjoy another just exactly like it.

Your's truly in admiration

The Trainer

The Democrats' Dilemma: "There is a fundamental problem with a strategy based on losing. Only by losing can you win. And what you have won is a loss. You can come at it from every side, but there's just no way around it." - Jules Crittenden

After four years of effort in Iraq, Americans may well tire of that cost and bring Gen. Petraeus and the troops home. We can then go back to the shorter-term remedies of the past. Well and good.

But at least remember what that past policy was: Democratic appeasement of terrorists, interrupted by cynical Republican business with terrorist-sponsoring regimes.

Then came September 11, and we determined to get tougher than the Democrats by taking out the savage Taliban and Saddam Hussein - and more principled than the Republicans by staying on after our victories to foster something better.

The jihadists are now fighting a desperate war against the new stick of American military power and carrot of American-inspired political reform. They want us, in defeat, to go back to turning a blind eye to both terrorism and corrupt dictatorships.

That's the only way they got power in the first place and now desperately count on keeping it.

Victor Davis Hanson in Town Hall

Michael Moore set out to make a movie attacking the American insurance industry and ended up attacking the American character. By the end of his movie SiCKO, his plaint is less about American resistance to government-run health care than its overarching rejection of collectivism. As Moore puts it, everywhere else it's "a world of we," but here a "world of me."

His voice thus joins a vast, age-old chorus of left-wing bafflement and disillusion at American exceptionalism ...

- Rich Lowry NRO

"In truth, a state that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous, becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs and revealing its totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that the disorganized, random havoc created by criminals is far less a threat than are men and women who believe themselves free and independent, and act accordingly."

- Jeffrey Snyder, A Nation of Cowards

Democrats are the only reason to vote Republican - Thomas Sowell

And here is one reason right here....

Everyone will be happy, except for the schmuck you shmikeled into becoming a terrorist, and no one really cares about him anyway. So congratulations. You have foiled a terrorist plot. Way to go. - Huffington Post denigrating catching terrorists

Edwards' new campaign slogan going to be: Edwards - As Incoherent As Jimmy Carter, But Prettier. - Xran, Alien Overlord

"It is now clear that George Bush's misnamed 'War on Terror' has backfired - and is now part of the problem," Edwards told the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. "The War on Terror is a slogan designed only for politics, not a strategy to make America safe. It's a bumper sticker, not a plan." - John Edwards

...and this shampoo model wants to be the President of all Americans.  This is the twit that charges $50 grand for a half hour speech at a University where the parents of students are mortgaging their homes just to keep their kids in school.

Yes John, there are two Americas...you and your buds live in one, and the rest of us live in the other.

A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all - Tacitus

Mr. FM succinctly sums up the slight of hand that has put Gordon Brown in No. 10.

When deploying the big-lie technique there are rules to be followed: be audacious; never admit fault; never accept the possibility of alternatives; and repeat the falsehood so often that people end up accepting it as truth.  - Environmentalist Clive Hamilton

Speaking at an Islamic rally in Niger, Libya's Colonel Muammar Qaddafi claimed that Jesus was not crucified, and that Christianity is not a true world religion.

"Christianity is not a faith for people in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas," Qaddafy said. He said that Islam is the only faith that is destined to have worldwide application, and "all those believers who do not follow Islam are losers."

The Libyan leader said that Jesus was a prophet sent to the people of Israel. He was not crucified, Qaddafy claimed, because another man with a similar appearance was executed in his place. Qaddafy said that he was hoping to correct popular misunderstandings about the history of religions, to demonstrate that only Islam is true. - Libya's Colonel Muammar Qaddafi

You learn something new every day

Discussing with a British officer:

British Officer -  "You French fight for money, while we British fight for honour."
Surcouf - "A man fights for what he lacks the most!"

[Britain] used to wonder if they'd left a navy big enough to defend Great Britain. Now the question is do they have a navy big enough to defend the navy. - Arthur Herman

...and what do we get from the Brits?

"It was deplorable that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people."  - UK Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt

What am I missing here?  They can't possibly be that out if it.  This is Britain, people.  They owned the world and it's oceans, and stood against the Axis alone for years. 

"A narrow majority in the House of Representatives abdicated its responsibility by passing a war spending bill that has no chance of becoming law and brings us no closer to getting the troops the resoures they need to do their job," the president said. "These Democrats believe that the longer they can delay funding for our troops, the more likely they are to force me to accept restrictions on our commanders, an artificial timetable for withdrawal and their pet spending projects. This is not going to happen." - George Bush

House OKs Timetable for Troop Withdrawal

...and here is just some of the pork that Ms. Pelosi used to get enough votes on board - until yesterday she didn't have the votes.

-- $25 million for payments to spinach producers

-- $120 million to the shrimp industry

-- $74 million for peanut storage

-- $5 million for shellfish, oyster and clam producers

To the tune of about $18 billion in the House and Senate.

How your representative voted.

So what is the consistent logic behind the Democrats' baffling position of louder and louder rhetoric and more and more inaction? They confirm the surging General Petraeus unanimously, but then try to discourage the surge? Cry out for withdrawals and redeployments, but do nothing to manifest to see that happen?

In fine, the answer of course is partisan and twofold: the polls show that the American people don't want us in Iraq-and don't what us to lose either. So scream about the conduct of the war, but do nothing yet until the surge is clearly working or failing, and then adjust accordingly by August: "I warned this foolishness wouldn't work" or "Thanks to my criticism, they made the necessary adjustments." - Victor Davis Hanson, Works and Days

You heard it here first.

All questions of whether this passes the Constitutionality sniff test aside, it's stuff like this that really erodes what little faith in government I have, (...and that ain't much, folks.) If they're this astoundingly inept when writing legislation about an industry I'm familiar with, then they are probably also equally clueless when writing legislation to muck up other industries I don't know anything about, such as agriculture or banking. Now that's scary. - Tam

Tam is discussing HB 1022, the latest attempt to re-institute the AWB and ban all guns designed in the last 100 years, including the safety features that many of them incorporate.

The easiest way to tell the difference between a liberal and a leftist is that a liberal cheers against his country only when a Republican is in the White House, while a leftist cheers against his country all of the time

Simply change the party in power, and liberals will change their minds on just about everything. Leftists on the other hand, are a lot more consistent. They're consistently wrong, venomous, anti-American and misguided, but at least they're consistent.

 - Benjamin Duffy of the University of Massachusetts. (found on No Pasaran)

All that is nice and mildly humorous, but today, right now, there is no difference between a liberal and a leftist.

What does it matter if a liberal might possibly be slightly less venomous in a couple of years when they are doing their damage now, today?

I find no clean end on a turd - no matter which party polishes it.

"I want to take those profits and put them into an alternative energy fund that will begin to fund alternative smart energy alternatives that will actually begin to move us toward the direction of independence." -  Hugo Chavez Oops, sorry. - Hillary Clinton

2008 presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton blatantly threw down her gauntlet on Friday. In an apparent attempt to outdo Venezuela's Marxist leader Hugo Chavez, Hillary announced that - if elected president of the United States - she will seize (in a true and pure communistic manner) all profits made by oil companies and redirect them into her [own] programs.

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber. -Sir Winston Churchill

These men and women are not fighting for money with little regard for the nation. The situation might be much worse than that: Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people. - William Arkin, Washington Post

I thought the enviro-weenies were arrogant, with their obsession that
human activity causes cycles in solar energy output,  but this guy
takes the cake.  Of course this isn't the first time he's jumped the shark...and he's still working at the Washington comPost.  Says a lot for that paper.

Update: And here Arkin is answered in verse...

Maybe, deep down or not so deep down, the American public realizes the
problems of our time are not remotely like Vietnam and the comparisons
to that war being made by these aging protesters (Dick Gregory?) have
nothing to do with the world situation and everything to do with them.
Whatever one thinks about the War in Iraq, the situation we are in now
- the global rise of Islamism, which is quickly overtaking Europe and
has, as we all know, reached our own shores in a way Vietnam never did
- is a hugely serious phenomenon with drastic consequences for our
civilization (although evidently not for Jane Fonda). - Roger Simon

In response to this article in Newsday on a rough and tumble forum, commenter EUFinland stated in part:

Fortunately, it has been a great chance for EU to step in and replace US in the world stage.

Oh Man oh Man, go for it. I am blinded by the possibilities. We'd pull all
our troops out of the [now] grateful world - goodbye Korea, goodbye
Japan, goodbye Europe, goodbye Middle East. We'd save a freakin'
fortune. We wouldn't need to prop up 198 other [now] grateful
kleptocracies in the world with aid - We'd save 198 freakin' fortunes.

The deficit would disappear overnight. The Navy could be used to give rides to kiddies on their birthday. The 82nd Airborne could be retrained to be jumping Santa's at Christmas, and the 10th Mountain could be used to run climbing walls at malls.

The world would love us and we could bask in the loving light of billions of peaceful people. We could join them in complaining bitterly about the damn aggressive and arrogant EU and all the problems they cause the world. We could carp about how the EU is too simplisme and doesn't realize they world has nuanced solutions.

Please, please, please, please, please.

I am freaking dying to be able to call the EU COWBOYS. It gives me the shivers all over.

Damn, I need a cigarette.

Stepping into a voting booth is like being taken to the adult novelty store at gunpoint: The question is “which one of these dildoes is going to cause me the least amount of pain. - Bobcat Goldthwait

This is the feeling I get thinking about the possible 2008 candidates who have surfaced to date.

From our perspective of a society that takes for granted the prevailing rule of law and basks in limitless freedom to express oneself and make as much money as we endeavour, there is little difference between one dictator responsible for killing a few thousand of his countrymen for the sake of permanent political stability, rule of law and prosperity for his country and another totalitarian ruler who exterminated several hundred thousands of his own subjects for the sake of sowing permanent tribal division, economic degradation and political anarchy. Jeanne Kirkpatrick pointed to this difference, and urged that American foreign policy acknowledge it. But due to the extraordinary circumstance of growing up in a country where one hasn't experienced any degree of authoritarian rule for more than 230 years, many Americans are naive to the fact that most of the populations of the world are subject regimes that are far more invasive and deterministic in one's individual life than we can imagine. - Corbusier via No Pasaran

Emphasis mine.

People of liberal sympathies, stupefied by relativism, have become the apologists for a creedal wave that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperialist and genocidal. To put it another way, they are up the arse of those that want them dead. - Martin Amis

I don't know if the President's plan will work because I am not a military specialist. I am a political specialist and I DO know that politicians who root for America to fail are buying a ticket to retirement. - Rich Galen, Mullings

The message is simple: get out now.

Chavez is calling for 'Socialism or Death' and that in fact means 'Socialism and Death'. As it appears a majority actually supports him, not much will be gained by putting a bullet between this man's eyes as clearly the problem lies deeper than the life of a single tyrant (though that is not to say that shooting tyrants is ever a bad idea).

If you are have property, sell it if you can, but get the hell out. If you are creative and intelligent, there is a whole world out there in which to rebuild your life. There may come a time in the future when you can come back, either to help pick up the wreckage of the totalitarian experiment voted for by a kleptomaniac majority, or to woo back your nation at bayonet point, but for now, for God's sake get out with what you can as soon as you can.

And if you are a shareholder in a multi-national company... feeling a little stupid now, eh? At least try and do the decent thing and torch as much infrastructure you own tonight to leave as little to sustain the parasites who are about to nationalise your operations in Venezuela.

- Perry de Havilland, Samizdata

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!! What a ride!" - Dean Karnazes, 50 marathons in 50 days....

You won't believe what this guy has been doing. Hat tip to Insty

Friends help you move - real friends help you move bodies. - Senior Sargeant Jelsie C. Romar - Freehold

The History of the USA: No nation has ever dominated the globe like the USA. And its people could care less about the rest of humanity.

The first line in a long running series on Der Stern. With comment by Davids Medienkritik

Probably right on when it comes to Germans. They've only been worthwhile as targets in the Twentieth Century.

Conservative Reserves: the reserves in national energy and self-confidence, primitiveness and generosity, wealth and potential of every kind. Every so often I travel to the U.S. to recharge my batteries, and I am not the only European Conservative to do so. From time to time one needs to breathe the air of freedom before submerging again in the stifling atmosphere of Europe. - German sociologist Arnold Gehlen, 30 years ago.

Please. Give me a guy with a “good ole Bible” who knows the difference between right and wrong and knows how to shoot a rifle. God save us from the world-centric, morally post-conventional, post-patriotic green pacifists. If that’s “reality” or “evolution,” then give me myth. At least I’ll live to mythologize another day.

Remember that sniper in Saving Private Ryan, the sharp-shooting country boy who would kiss his crucifix every time he blew away a nazi? That's who I want on my team.

Tony Blair summed it up when asked by one of his Parliament members why he believes so much in America: “A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in... And how many want out. Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you: 1) Jesus Christ 2) The American G. I. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.”

One Cosmos - Gagdad Bob - Let's Hear it for Dead Amber Males

Political Correctness: A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, holding forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

- Mr Free Market from the Human Remains Director

Bolton Resigns - President Bush, in a statement, said he was "deeply disappointed that a handful of United States senators prevented Ambassador Bolton from receiving the up or down vote he deserved in the Senate." "They chose to obstruct his confirmation, even though he enjoys majority support in the Senate, and even though their tactics will disrupt our diplomatic work at a sensitive and important time," Bush said. "This stubborn obstructionism ill serves our country, and discourages men and women of talent from serving their nation."

I'm sure the French are happy...and Kofi must be doing handsprings. Is there anything that the UN does well? George Michell as ambassador - Yikes.

Sneakin' the Amnesty Bill thru... The Senate Judiciary Committee last night approved a plan that would put millions of illegal aliens on a path to U.S. citizenship, would let them stay here while applying and would not punish their unlawful entry as a felony, contrary to a House-passed bill. Many House Republicans -- and most U.S. voters -- oppose any new immigration legislation until the borders are secured and existing immigration laws are enforced.

Fine. Put 'em on a citizenship track. Give them each a little red, white, and blue ribbon to wear in their hair. Register every one of them automatically as a Democrat even if they don't want to be. But. Close the borders FIRST.

Ah, the greens strike back - Two senior American politicians, one a Republican, one a Democrat, have sent a snotty letter to ExxonMobil in order to tell that firm that it should cease funding views that challenge the Green consensus.

Quit disagreeing with us or we'll shut off your funding.

You cannot hope to bribe or twist

--thank God!--the British journalist

But seeing what the man will do

Unbribed, there's no occasion to.

- Humbert Wolfe

Brought to mind by this in the Spectator. Found on LGF.

An important difference between a military operation and a surgical operation is that the patient is not tied down. But it is a common fault of generalship to assume that he is. - Captain Sir Basil H. Liddell Hart

...the great struggle in the world is between those nations, cultures and religions that hate and fear women and those in which women, and women’s rights thrive. I think it’s an astute way to divide the world. I’m not optimistic about the outcome of that struggle alas. - Ron Rosenbaum

Governor Jon Corzine commenting on Bob Menendez’ win over Tom Kean: "George Bush and Karl Rove can take it and put it in a place where it doesn't show." Found on Enlightened New Jersey

You can see why I love this state so much. Our politicians are such statesmen.

In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free. - Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1909

We can no longer afford to be a nation of the craven, allowing our public policies to be driven by the cowardly and the pusillanimous who seek the illusion of zero risk and absolute safety. We are called to be a nation of heroes, each and every one of us, to practice in our everyday lives the traits we find noble and admirable, until we awaken one day to find that we accept and embrace our own magnificence. - Geek with a .45

...we have always felt that the ultimate expression of "a woman's right to choose" was whether they preferred a revolver or an automatic. - Posse Incitatus

"The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America's children." - Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif

If the Dims win the midterms, I couldn't agree more. The children will be in charge.

We've got Monica on our side.... And Bob at the Democrat Hall of Fame...

If it weren’t for the tireless and hysterical efforts of the mainstream propaganda machine, chanting for the Left at the top of their lungs-- 24/7, year after year after year--the inherent unpopularity of the Left would be exposed in all its poverty. - Protein Wisdom

I note today that the President mentioned that the current stage of the Iraq war has something in common with Tet. The moonbats loved it. Everyone else with a brain in their heads knows that we were winning that war, that Tet was a major victory for us, that the North was a hairs breath away from quitting (by their own words), and that we only were beaten by the Media/Moonbat frenzy (by the North's words again). Only the illiberal leftist rat-bastard media lost that war. The North considered our media fellow travelers. I consider them traitors. Which I think is why the President said it. We'll see how it plays in two weeks, but if the MSM was anywhere near evenhanded, the moonbats could hold conventions in a closet. The Dims better win the House at least...with everything they've put into this race this time, the current shape of the party will have to change if they lose again. Or Die. The fucking evil bastards are picking out curtains. My prediction: Republicrats keep the Senate by a couple, Republicrats keep the House by 6....and it makes no difference what so ever. Conservatives will get nothing out of it.

"The meek don't want it." - Frank Zappa

[Politics}...It's blood sport performed by truly uninteresting performers-basketball without Kobe, Shaq or Jordan. People like Reid, Hastert, Pelosi are complete mediocrities who should be at much lower levels in our society. Something is fundamentally wrong on both sides of the aisle if they are the upper leadership of our Congress. - Roger Simon

Here's a banal example. You tell me if you simply disagree with this man, or if you might as well belong to a different species. The New Yorker calls this Princeton professor, Peter Singer, the world's "most influential living philosopher." It is Singer's belief that "middle class families in the United States have a moral obligation to pay 33 percent of the first $30,000 they make to combat poverty around the globe." After the first $30,000, they should pay 100 percent. He explicitly rejects the theory of property rights as an 'unacceptable ethical view,'" and argues that certain animals are "persons" that have "the same special claim to be protected" as humans. He also maintains that infanticide is in some cases morally obligatory (Larry Arn, in a special edition of the Hillsdale College Imprimus). - One Cosmos

Gagdad Bob discusses liberalism (et al) from a distinctly erudite position. As we know, all psychologists are crazy. The above is from a discussion on the possibility that God created two types of humans.

Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions. It's the only way to make progress. - Lord Ventinari

I know when I rail on here about the weakness of our two party system, many attack me for casting aspersions on our big tents. But let me ask you one thing, if the best those tents can come up with to lead the largest deliberative body of the most powerful country on Earth are Dennis Hastert and Nancy Pelosi, isn't it time to start asking some serious questions? - Roger Simon

The more the left fades from the scene, the more the national political debate will be a debate within the right. The American system is not friendly to monolithic one-party rule. The moment one party begins to dominate; it tends to split apart along its internal fault lines. The more the Republicans dominate American politics, therefore, the more intensely they will debate among themselves ... I can't guarantee that such a debate would produce the best result--I would like to see the emergence of a small-government, pro-immigration, pro-war, secular right--but I can guarantee that such a debate would be more interesting and much more productive than the debate we're having with the left right now. - Robert Tracinski

I don't debate the left anymore. My children are grown and I don't wish to return to that level of discourse. This could very well happen to the Republicans. A small right wing keeping a larger left wing from straying too far. Illiberal leftists with be left with as much power as libertarians. Of course this cannot happen until the present generation of legislative moonbats is dead or gone. Perhaps it is because the pendulum is swinging back after 40 years, but the leaders of the left seem much more strident to me than they ever did before. They are probably just showing up more against a brighter background that's becoming conservative.

"It is a shame because it is a waste of energy to see that the entire world five years later is still convulsed in the grip of 9/11. "It's a waste of energy away from things that do matter which is poverty, death, disease, the planet itself and fixing things in our own homes rather than fighting wars with others. Mr. Bush has set America back 10 years, maybe more." "If there had been a better sense of preparation, if we had a leadership that was more mature. We did not fight back in the same way that the British fought the IRA or the Spanish government fought the Basques here. Terrorism is a manageable action. It can be lived with." Read it, it gets worse. Fucking Moonbat Asshole Oliver Stone

The world should not worry when the half-educated, fueled by zealotry and nursed on conspiracy theory, starts chanting; but it should when a rational and patient American slowly fumes and decides he has had it with the Iranian “President”, Hezbollah’s fascism, the various thugs on the West Bank, the Sunni Triangle’s murderers, the primordial of the Hindu Kush, or some subsidized dictator in Pakistan or Egypt lecturing us. Just remember, should democratization falter, none of us will ever worry much about the cries for reform and democracy from a then truly whiny Arab dissident population, who flees to the West to damn the West for not doing what they themselves, in the manner of our own Founding Fathers, should have done long ago on their own. Nothing to the American character is more grating than perpetual scapegoating for self-induced pathologies, along with constant whining and victimization—and nowhere is that syndrome more common than in the radical Islamic Middle East. Victor Davis Hanson - Works and Days

I have said the same on this blog and in comments on dozens of others and especially this: Again from VDH -

But one thing is rather frightening: the political pendulum in Europe always swings much more widely and quickly than here. Unless these legitimate worries about radical Islam are addressed by EU politicians, a frustrated public—note the recent elections in Germany—will address them on their own in ways that are historically scary in their own right. The fuze is lit and the day will come. The sooner, the less bloody.

So I think this anger arises over acceptance that the country does not wish what Democrats have to offer, and thus drives them to scream and scare the country into thinking we are in a 1930s Depression, Vietnam redux, a Watergate of illegal wiring tapping—almost anything to get back over that 50% hump—without having to reform and adopt more moderate policies—and to do to Michael Moore & Co. what the Republicans once did to the Birch die-hards and Neo-Confederates. - VDH Works and Days

If the European Union project could be called putting a French jockey atop a German horse, the attempt to create an "international" world order might be described as a scheme to harness American muscle to a transnational agenda. Unfortunately and to the everlasting resentment of internationalists, the US refused to put its economy and military at the service of its environmental, cultural and political projects. And although certain legal scholars now consider the US Constitution subordinate to International Law, that movement probably won't go anywhere either. Eventually blame for the ruin of Kyoto, the UN and probably the EU -- those shining international palaces in the sky -- will probably be put down to American reluctance to play along. As Eros said in Plan 9 from Outer Space to the earthlings after they refused to appreicate the brilliance of his scheme to turn the dead from Southern California cemetaries into zombies: "You see? You see? You're stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!" - The Belmont Club

American writer James C. Bennett, ‘democracy, immigration, multiculturalism … pick any two’.

Decisions about motherhood and abortion, schooling, cosmetic surgery, treatment of veneral disease, or employment, and others where the decision or lack of one will significantly affect the child’s future should not be made unilaterally by parents. - Hillary Clinton, 1978, Children’s Rights: A Legal Perspective

With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost. - William Lloyd Garrison What progress we have made since 9/11 — thousands of terrorists killed, al Qaeda scattered, Europe galvanized about Islamism and sobered about the consequences of its cheap U.S. rhetoric, Iran’s nuclear antics revealed, democracy birthed in the Middle East, Palestinian radicals exposed for their fraud, the United Nations under overdue scrutiny, America much better defended at home — all that came as a result of an often unilateralist posture that risked global alienation by challenging the easy appeasement of the rest of the world. Nothing there to apologize for or change — but much accomplished to be proud of. Of course, it is possible, and perhaps even understandable, to coast for a while and advisable to cool the rhetoric about bringing democratic change through “smoking out” and hunting down terrorists “dead or alive.” But we shouldn’t forget that the global village gets back to normal only after a Shane or Marshall Will Cane is willing to take on the outlaws alone and save those who can’t or won’t save themselves. So, remember, when, to everyone’s relief, such mavericks put down their six-shooters and ride off into the sunset, the killers often creep back into town. Victor Davis Hanson

The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe. - Tom Wolfe