 Indeed, almost supernaturally crises will be solved with the departure of the hated Bush: no more flooding streets from cracked water mains that were a result of a President's neglect of infrastructure, and no more spontaneous crashes of Mississippi River bridges due to diversions of critical federal aid from cash-strapped states to Iraq. And when the temperatures rise or drop, the wind howls, the clouds burst forth or go away, the snow melts or piles up, it will be, well, nature that caused the havoc, not the current occupant of the White House who failed to sign Kyoto.
Victor Davis Hanson
Life at New Animal Farm Won't Be All That Bad
Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman's magazine or something?
Caroline Kennedy
to NYT "reporters" asking puff-piece questions
"If there were no losses, there would be no premiums."
Thomas Caldecott Chubb
Chubb & Son (1957)
The wonder of Rand's thought is that it coheres. It self corrects. It is the only real and unapologetic attempt at systematization since Marxism, and the most noble since that of the Greeks. Rand's original theory of concept formation and her brilliant identification of the stolen concept stand around her system like a fence; keeping in the productive fruit of her and her spiritual predecessors, and expelling weeds from the garden of thought.
Ted Keer
What is Objectivism Defined As?
Zimbabwe is Mine.
Robert Mugabe
BBC News
If you're very very rich, you can buy your Senate seat by spending as much of your money as you want. Meanwhile, your poor plebeian opponent is running around groveling for the small contributions allowed by law. . . . Having given this additional leg up to the rich, we should resist packing our legislatures with yet more privileged parachutists, the well-born. True, the Brits did it that way for centuries, but with characteristic honesty. They established a house of Parliament exclusively for highborn twits and ensconced them there for life. There they chatter away in supreme irrelevance deep into their dotage. Problem is that the U.S. Senate retains House of Commons powers even as it develops a House of Lords membership.
Charles Krauthammer
Camelot is Not a State
On a recent afternoon, while riding a rickety bus down Vali Asr Avenue, Tehran's main thoroughfare, I overheard two women discussing the grim state of Iranian politics. One of them had reached a rather desperate conclusion. "Let the Americans come," she said loudly. "Let them sort things out for us once and for all." Everyone in the women's section of the bus absorbed this casually, and her friend nodded in assent.
Azadeh Moaveni
Stars and Stripes in their Eyes
He doesn't need to become more knowledgable, he needs to become more wise.
Edward D. Thompson
How Much Rationality?
If one views ethics as a life compass, as I do, then what does it mean to guide one's life "perfectly"? Is the goal of a sailor to "perfectly" follow a compass heading in a perfectly straight line -- or is it to get to his destination, learning and adjusting as he goes, using his knowledge and skills to the best of his ability?
Robert James Bidinotto
The Passion of Barbara Branden
A single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel, while an Israeli counter-strike can only cause partial damage to the Islamic world.
Hashemi Rafsanjani
quoted in NRO
Obama the centrist? I'm not so sure. Obama was quite serious when he said he was going to change the world. And now he has a national crisis, a personal mandate, a pliant Congress, a desperate public -- and, at his disposal, the greatest pot of money in galactic history.
Charles Krauthammer
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/12/obamas_plan_to_transform_ameri.html
When I was on the bus with [McCain], I asked him a lot of questions about the bailout because most Americans did not want that to happen....I asked him some pretty direct questions. Some of the answers you guys are gonna receive -- they appalled me, absolutely. I was angry. In fact, I wanted to get off the bus after I talked to him.
Joe The Plumber
Fox News
There should not be such a thing as a big government Republican.
Jeb Bush
Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard
If you can figure out how to tame the hormones of young adults with rhetoric let me know and we'll see if we translate your magical persuasive techniques to get people to vote for free-enterprise candidates.
Steve Wolfer
When I First Became a Criminal
There is still too much Rand in Objectivism. That is why there are the "orthodox" and the "liberal" Objectivists or whatever you call them. Because of the "cult of personality" or "persona" Objectivism cannot become an independent philosophy. Oscar Wilde made a remark about literature which I think is comparable to this. "Dans la literature il faut toujours tuer son pere." (In literature one must always kill one's father.) Objectivists need to kill Rand in order for the philosophy to live, otherwise it will stagnate.
Anthony Teets
Objectivism as an Intuitive System
The rare strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross obvious thing is to miss it. Chaos is dull; because in chaos a train might go anywhere -- to Baker Street or Bagdad. But man is a magician and his whole magic is in this that he does say 'Victoria,' and lo! it is Victoria.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Man who was Thursday
Why are we bailing out Citibank? Why are 300 million Americans having to pay for Citibank's mistakes? The way the system is supposed to work [is this]: People fail. And then the competent people take over the assets from the failed people, and then you start again with a new stronger base. What we're doing this time is ... taking the assets from the competent people, giving them to the incompetent people, and saying, "OK, now you can compete with the competent people." So everybody's weakened: The whole nation is weakened, the whole economy is weakened. That's not the way it's supposed to work.
Jim Rogers
Quoted by John Stossel
Ignorance Reigns Supreme
Walter Williams
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/12/03/ignorance_reigns_supreme
Indeed, jealousy is the great unacknowledged strategic factor of our time.
Ralph Peters
Devils in Mumbai
The new Detroit, churning out Schumermobiles, will make the steel mills of the Soviet Union look the model of efficiency.
Charles Krauthammer
RCP my punctuation, brought to my attention by Steve Wolfer
We have gone from a market economy to a political economy
Irwin Stelzer
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/11/the_washington_stock_market.html
There is only one genuine protection for the public: the discipline of profit and loss. Nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of bankruptcy.
John Stossel
http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/081128-stossel-reregulation.php
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
Pablo Picasso
They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq .... Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore.
Bent Nail
Comment by a Marketwatch reader
A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, He has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
All Things Considered
It is still hard to believe but, if Hillary Clinton's "confidantes" are to be trusted, Barack Obama is about to appoint her secretary of state and she is about to accept. This appointment represents the capstone of betrayal of Obama's promise to be the "change we can believe in." ...Apart from the breathtaking cynicism of the appointment lies the total lack of foreign-policy experience in the new partnership. Neither Clinton nor Obama has spent five minutes conducting any aspect of foreign policy in the past. Neither has ever negotiated anything or dealt with diplomatic issues. It is the blonde leading the blind.
Dick Morris
"Obama Nation" (Emphasis Added)
THIEVES respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fullness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people's.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Man who was Thursday
Don't worry, I don't have low self-esteem. It's a mistake. I have low esteem for everyone else.
Daria Morgendorffer
Esteemsters, the first episode of the MTV animated series Daria, 1997
EVERYTHING is military in the sense that everything depends upon obedience. There is no perfectly epicurean corner; there is no perfectly irresponsible place. Everywhere men have made the way for us with sweat and submission. We may fling ourselves into a hammock in a fit of divine carelessness. But we are glad that the net-maker did not make the net in a fit of divine carelessness. We may jump upon a child's rocking-horse for a joke. But we are glad that the carpenter did not leave the legs of it unglued for a joke.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Heretics
A power of the individuals who compose legislatures, to fish up wealth from the People, by nets of their own weaving ... will corrupt legislative, executive, and judicial public servants.
John Adams
http://www.nhreagannetwork.com/
...we've become a nation of thieves...
Walter Williams
http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/wwilliams/2008/wew_11191.shtml#
Fortune favors the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/louispaste159478.html
Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?
Henry II
Wikipedia
We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.
Barack H. Obama
http://rebirthofreason.com/Spirit/Videos/109.shtml
So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, its that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.
Barack H. Obama
http://www.obama2008.eu/
The anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany was the first public anti-smoking campaign in modern history.
Wikipedia (Anonymous Editor)
Wikipedia portal headline, Featured Article, 11/13/2008
That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist.
Paul Broun, Rep (R)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CONGRESSMAN_OBAMA_MARXIST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-11-10-18-38-54
It is not the abundance of money but the abundance of other products in general that facilitates sales... Money performs no more than the role of a conduit in this double exchange. When the exchanges have been completed, it will be found that one has paid for products with products.
Jean-Baptiste Say
Wikipedia on Say's Law
Good evening, ladies and gentleman. Welcome to the show. In the interest of safety, please take a moment to identify the nearest marked exit. But in case of an actual emergency, please remain setaed and await the Federal Bailout.
George Will
loosely, quoting from the show "Irony Abounds"
Convincing yourself doesn't win an argument.
Robert Half
Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.
Lazarus Long
as quoted by Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
Don't count on luck or God for success, but on your own thinking.
Leonard Peikoff
Peikoff explaining Rand's version of "Goodbye" (i.e., "Good premises") in the Epilogue to VOR
The continued existence of society depends upon private property.
Ludwig von Mises
Liberalism p. 87
"Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them."
Lily Tomlin
A man that represents not simply an opposing view but the view of those who oppose America and all it stands for, will sit in the Oval Office. Worse still he did not get there through a democratic election but through fraud, voter intimidation and every dirty trick culminating in a campaign that had little in common with conventional American politics and a great deal in common with the cults of personality cultivated by totalitarian dictators.
Pamela Geller
Atlas Shrugs blog, upon election of Obama in 2008
How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
Ronald Reagan
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan
Governor Palin and I don’t agree on a lot of things, mostly social issues. But I have grown to appreciate the Governor. I was one of those initial skeptics and would laugh at the pictures. Not anymore. When someone takes on a corrupt political machine and a sitting governor, that is not done by someone with a low I.Q. or a moral core made of tissue paper. When someone fights her way to get scholarships and work her way through college even in a jagged line, that shows determination and humility you can’t learn from reading Reinhold Niebuhr. When a mother brings her son with special needs onto the national stage with love, honesty, and pride, that gives hope to families like mine as my older brother lives with a mental disability. And when someone can sit on a stage during the Sarah Palin rap on Saturday Night Live, put her hands in the air and watch someone in a moose costume get shot—that’s a sign of both humor and humanity.
Wendy Button, speechwriter until recently for Obama, Edwards, and Clinton, on why she’s voting McCain
The Daily Beast
Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.
Thomas Sowell
Ego and Mouth
John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic. You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.
Barack H. Obama
Barack H. Obama, Obama's New Attack on Those Who Don't Want Higher Taxes: ‘Selfishness’
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