THE FOUNDATION

“Wish not so much to live long as to live well.” —Benjamin Franklin

INSIGHT

“You want to make every pundit look bad? Then stand tall for what you believe. Don’t be shy. You want to stun the establishment? Then become a mighty force for conservative principles, and tackle the task with confidence and cheer... This may be a time of testing. But it’s not our swan song. Not by a long shot. Instead... this is our moment. This is the time to do what we do best—turn adversity into strength.” —the late Tony Snow, former White House Press Secretary

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

“A regrettable by-product of modern media proliferation is its frequent lack of restraint and good humor, especially on the Web. Tony Snow rose above such vituperation as a happy political combatant, which is one reason so many who knew him or watched him in action are now mourning his death from cancer on Saturday at age 53. As a columnist and radio talk show host, Snow was principled but never nasty. As the host of ‘Fox News Sunday,’ he exuded good will... And as White House press secretary, he cheerfully but forcefully sparred with reporters in making the President’s case on policy. No doubt because he was confident in his own convictions, he wasn’t defensive about his answers. This has not been universally true during the Bush Presidency. Above all, he took ideas and politics seriously... Tony Snow... set the right example.” —The Wall Street Journal

UPRIGHT

“One of the most naive notions is that politicians are trying to solve the country’s problems, just because they say so—or say so loudly or inspiringly. Politicians’ top priority is to solve their own problem, which is how to get elected and then re-elected. Barack Obama is a politician through and through, even though pretending that he is not is his special strategy to get elected.” —Thomas Sowell

“I am not aware of anything remotely comparable to Sen. Obama’s recent reversals of positions. To my knowledge, it is without moral precedent in modern American presidential elections. It is an act of political cynicism, compounded in its audacity by Sen. Obama’s explicit claim to being above politics as usual.” —Tony Blankley ++ “Whenever Obama moves ‘to the middle,’ it is not to stay there, but to collect new voters and bring them back with him to the Left.” —George Neumayr

“John McCain and Barack Obama both gave speeches at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention in Washington, and in the 4,600 words they spoke between them didn’t mention assimilation once. Never mind that assimilation is the key to the historic success of American immigration.” —Rich Lowry

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession... We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet... We have sort of become a nation of whiners.” —former senator Phil Gramm

“I don’t think our legal system should be that complex. I think that any system that requires that many of the country’s best minds, and they are the best minds, is too complex.” —Justice Antonin Scalia

DEZINFORMATSIA

No sense of humor: “If I see this [New Yorker] magazine cover, okay? And I mean, this is pretty racial... You’ve got Michelle Obama in an Afro...Barack Obama, in a turban. We’re talking about racism and terrorism... and burning of the flag. These are the most sensitive issues in our country right now. If I see that, I’m going to think... is this who we want in the White House?... Do you think in any way that this cover sets us back, that it’s more divisive than anything else and only proves that we’re still pretty racially insensitive?” —CNN’s Kyra Phillips ++ “The intent of the cover is to satirize the vicious and racist attacks and rumors and misconceptions about the Obamas that have been floating around in the blogosphere and are reflected in public opinion polls. What we set out to do was to throw all these images together, which are all over the top and to shine a kind of harsh light on them, to satirize them.” —New Yorker editor David Remnick

Speaking of race: “Does it frost Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an ‘Oreo’ —a black on the outside, a white on the inside—that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?” —PBS’s John McLaughlin

Inquiring minds want to know: “What do you say to those folks out there who are saying, ‘I voted for this guy because he told me he was going to bring the troops home in 16 months now he says he wants to refine his position’?” —CBS’s Russ Mitchell ++ “And on Iraq when, when throughout the primaries you did talk about this, this idea of getting U.S. troops out within 16 months of being elected and now you say, ‘Look I’ll talk to commanders and generals on the ground and my, my ideas are being refined.’ People do get nervous about that senator, you understand that?” —NBC’s Matt Lauer

Getting it (partly) right: “Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s lurching right when it suits him, he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.” —New York Times columnist Bob Herbert

Newspulper Headlines: Breaking News From 1864: “Yankees Raid Atlanta’s Cheap Housing, Spurn Pizza” —Bloomberg

Gasoline Is So Expensive, They’re Resorting to Pedal-By Shootings: “Two Alleged Gang Members Shot by Bicyclist on Northwest Side” —Chicago Sun-Times

French ‘News’ Service Calls Terrorists ‘Rebels’: “US Ex-Hostage Calls FARC Rebels ‘Terrorists”’ —Agence France-Presse

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: “Naked Man Hijacks Bus” —Las Vegas Review-Journal ++ “Bad Economy Hurting Strippers, Too” —Associated Press ++ “Cow Burps Help Argentines Study Climate Change” —Reuters ++ “Cow Farts Collected in Plastic Tank for Global Warming Study” —Daily Telegraph (London) ++ “Six-Year-Old Hit by Flying Sofa” —Local (Berlin) ++ “Seattle-Area Children Falling From Windows With Alarming Frequency” —Seattle Times

Bottom Stories of the Day: “Obama Makes Unscheduled Stop at DC Office Building” —Associated Press (Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

THE DEMO-GOGUES

Offended: “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.” —Obama spokesman Bill Burton

Non compos mentis: “I’m going to call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff and give them a new mission, and that is to bring the war in Iraq to a close. We are going to get out.” —would-be commander in chief Barack Obama, who doesn’t understand that the Joint Chiefs don’t have operational command of U.S. forces

Mr. Bilingual: “Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English—they’ll learn English—you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish.” —el presidential candidito Barack Obama ++ “I don’t speak a foreign language. It’s embarrassing!” —Barack Obama

Just blame America: “When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when all that is happening, the system just isn’t working, and we need to change it.” —Barack Obama

Just blame global warming: “In Somalia back in 1993, climate change, according to 11 three- and four-star generals, resulted in a drought which led to famine. That famine translated to international aid we sent in to Somalia, which then led to the U.S. having to send in forces to separate all the groups that were fighting over the aid, which led to Black Hawk Down. There was this scene where we have all of our American troops under fire because they have been put into the middle of this terrible situation.” —Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA)

Just blame Bush: “I’m disappointed. ... We need to remember that InBev could afford this All-American company [Anheuser-Busch] because of the weak dollar created by the economic policies of the last seven years.” —Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) on the sale of Anheuser-Busch to Belgian brewer InBev

Just blame “Big Oil”: “Once again, the oilman in the White House is echoing the demands of Big Oil. The Bush plan [to open more offshore oil drilling] is a hoax. It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence... If the President wants to bring down prices in the next two weeks, not the next two decades, he should free our oil by releasing a small portion of the more than 700 million barrels of oil we have put in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.” —House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-OPEC)

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