Observations

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Books by Mark on sale online & in bookstores everywhere

WASHINGTON BABYLON:  From George Washington to Donald Trump Scandals That Rocked the Nation 

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1130887112 

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PARDONGATE: How Bill & Hillary Clinton and Their Brothers Profited from Pardons

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Comments, quotes & observations that caught our attention.

America

"[D]espite its flaws, both past and present, the United States sparkles as mankind's finest hour. It features the greatest legal, political and social equality; freedom of inquiry and expression; domestic tranquility; economic opportunity, and impartial law enforcement in the annals of history. The United States is a magnet for the plighted fleeing persecution or economic destitution. The best and the brightest in less developed nations overwhelmingly flock to our country for permanent residence or citizenship. We uniquely have fought to liberate tens of millions from the yokes of slavery, tyranny or barbarism with no territorial or imperial calculations."
Bruce Fein, August 5, 2003, The Washington Times

America's Role

"America's most important role in the world, almost from the day our country was born, has been the role of moral leadership. . .  Teach our young people to believe in the responsibility of one to another; their responsibility to God; to the peoples of the world.  Teach them to believe in themselves; to believe in their worth as human beings; to believe in leading the world out of the darkness of oppression.  Teach them to believe that no one owes us a living, but that we owe much to others.  Teach them to believe in the priceless heritage of freedom, and that it must be won anew by every generation.  And teach them to believe in the United States of America.  The hope of the world lies here, in our physical power, our moral strength, our integrity, and our will to assume the responsibilities that history plainly intends us to bear."
Admiral Arleigh Burke, US Navy, Chief of Naval Operations (1955-1961)

The wisdom of Ronald Reagan

"Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose."

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

"Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong."

"I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress."

"The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination."

"Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."

"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program."

"It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first."

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it"

"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book."

"No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world , is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women."

"If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."

Ten Quotes by Barack Obama about Islam

#1 "Islam has always been part of America."

#2 "We will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities."

#3 "These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings."

#4 "America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings."

#5 "So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed."

#6 "Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality."

#7 "As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith."

#8 "I look forward to hosting an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan here at the White House later this week, and wish you a blessed month."

#9 "That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn't. And I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."

#10 "I also know that Islam has always been a part of America's story."

Ten Quotes by Barack Obama about Christianity

#1 "Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation."

#2 "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation."

#3 "Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith?"

#4 "Even those who claim the Bible's inerrancy make distinctions between Scriptural edicts, sensing that some passages - the Ten Commandments, say, or a belief in Christ's divinity - are central to Christian faith, while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to accommodate modern life."

#5 "The American people intuitively understand this, which is why the majority of Catholics practice birth control and some of those opposed to gay marriage nevertheless are opposed to a Constitutional amendment to ban it. Religious leadership need not accept such wisdom in counseling their flocks, but they should recognize this wisdom in their politics."

#6 From Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope: "I am not willing to have the state deny American citizens a civil union that confers equivalent rights on such basic matters as hospital visitation or health insurance coverage simply because the people they love are of the same sex—nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount."

#7 "I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can't imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That's just not part of my religious makeup."

#8 "Those opposed to abortion cannot simply invoke God’s will--they have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths."

#9 On his support for civil unions for gay couples: "If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount."

#10 "I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people."

Various Quotes

"The rarest gift that God bestows on man is the capacity for reason." Dean Acheson, US Secretary of State (1949-1953)

"It's not true that liberals have no moral system. It's just that their moral system is so depraved as to be incomprehensible to a sensible person. There's nothing wrong with killing your own baby, siding with terrorists and dictators against your own country, stealing from the productive to finance the shiftless, blaspheming Christianity, or indulging in every sexual perversion imaginable." 
Anonymous

"I take exception when people say that Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi spend money like drunken sailors.  When I was a drunken sailor I quit spending when I ran out of money." 
Anonymous sailor, 2010

"Life is not about the breaths you take.  It is about the moments that take your breath away."
Anonymous, 2010

"We must not get soft. War must be destructive and to a certain extent inhuman and ruthless."
General Henry "Hap" Arnold, US Army, Commanding General US Army Air Force

"Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age.  It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost.  In our time, that may mean social disapporoval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself.  The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for?  What is worth living for?"
William J. Bennet, U.S. Naval Academy, November 24, 1997

“Truth isn’t mean. It’s truth.”
Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)

"I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University."
William F. Buckley

"Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness with others." Samuel Butler, 1890

"Television is not the truth.  TV is a God-damned amusement park.  TV is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers and football players.  We're in the boredom-killing business." 
Paddy Chayefsky

"I contend that a nation attempting to tax itself into prosperity, is like throwing an anchor to a drowning man."
Winston Churchill

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last."
Winston Churchill in Readers Digest (Dec 1954)

"The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it."
Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) French critic, novelist

"Playing football for Navy today means fighting in a war tomorrow. Playing football for Navy is literally a matter of life and death.  Playing for Notre Dame only seems that way."
Gregg Doyel, CBSSports.com, November 11, 2007

"No one can really guarantee the future.  The most we can do is size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them and then make  our plans with confidence." 
Henry Ford

"Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late."
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter (1/30/39-8/28/62), dissenting, Henslee v. Union Planters Bank, 335 U.S. 600 (1948).

"Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who do not."
Benjamin Franklin

"When you men get home and face an anti-war protester, look him in the eyes and shake his hand. Then, wink at his girlfriend, because she knows she's dating a pussy." 
Attributed to General Tommy Franks, US Army, Commander US Central Command (2000-2003)

Political Correctness is "a rigid orthodoxy, usually of a doctrinaire liberal tilt, which precludes the acceptability of a contrary point of viewpoint and allows those who insist on raising a contrary view to be ridiculed, shunned, denounced, attacked or silenced." 
Bob Haiman, Director the Poynter Institute at ASNE Convention 1994

"Liberals have an unlimited supply of schemes to spend other people's money."  Mark Hyman, October 10, 2010

"Liberals support supremacy of the state at the expense of the independence and freedom of the individual."
Mark Hyman, January 21, 2009

"The easiest thing for viewers to do is to stop watching."
Mark Hyman,  September 16, 2005

"There are billionaire liberals out there who believe they can truly change the world.  And they will do whatever it takes, including spending every dollar you earn to make it happen."
Mark Hyman, March 8, 2003

"The government big enough to give you everything you want, is also powerful enough to take away everything you have."
Thomas Jefferson

"He who will not risk cannot win."
John Paul Jones

"I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon."
Pauline Kael, New Yorker film critic, following Richard Nixon's 49-state landslide election victory over George McGovern in 1972

"There's a reason why in New York Harbor we have the Statue of Liberty, not the Statue of Equality." Charles Krauthammer, syndicated columnist, January 25, 2013

“I like Marines because being a Marine is serious business.  We're not a social club or a fraternal organization and we don't pretend to be one.  We're a brotherhood of 'warriors' -- nothing more, nothing less, pure and simple.  We are in the ass-kicking business, and unfortunately, these days business is good." 
Colonel James M. Lowe, USMC, Commander, Marine Corps Base Quantico, 2004

"There is only one way to kill capitalism – by taxes, taxes, and more taxes."
Karl Marx

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too."
William Somerset Maugham, British playwright, novelist (1874-1965)

"As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.  On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright moron."
H. L. Mencken, The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight: nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety: is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions and blood of better men than himself."
John Stuart Mill, British philosopher (1806-1873)

"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."
P.J. O'Rourke, Cato Institute, May 6, 1993

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.  Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power.  What pure power means you will understand presently.  We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing.  All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.  The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.  They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.  We are not like that.  We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.  Power is not a means; it is an end.  One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.  The object of persecution is persecution.  The object of torture is torture.  The object of power is power."
George Orwell '1984'

"The face will always be there to be stamped upon.  The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again.  Everything that you have undergone since you have been in our hands -- all that will continue, and worse.  The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease.  It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph.  The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant; the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism.  Goldstein and his heresies will live forever.  Every day, at every moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon -- and yet they will always survive.  This drama that I have played out with you during seven years will be out over and over again, generation after generation, always in subtler forms.  Always we shall have the heretic here at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible -- and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord.  That is the world we are preparing, Winston.  A world of victory after victory, triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power.  You are beginning, I can see, to realize what that world will be like.  But in the end yo will do more than understand it.  You will accept it, welcome it, become part of it."
George Orwell '1984'

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
Thomas Paine, American philosopher,  (1737-1809)

"Are you serious?  Are you serious?"
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responding to a reporter's question on precisely where in the U.S. Constitution does it authorize the Congress to mandate health insurance coverage. October 22, 2009

"Pleasure used to be something we paid for by ourselves.  Now it's supposed to be covered by everyone who's not partaking of it."  Wlady Pleszczynski, The American Spectator, Jan/Feb 2014

"You can't engrave 'thou shalt not steal' or even 'thou shalt not commit adultery' and certainly not 'thou shalt not lie' on the walls inside a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians without creating a hostile work environment."
Wesley Pruden, Washington Times, July 1, 2005.

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.  What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.  The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.  When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.  You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."
Dr. Adrian Rogers, President, Southern Baptist Convention, (1931 to 2005)

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt
"The Man In The Arena"
Speech at the Sorbonne
Paris, France
April 23, 1910

"He wraps them in a warm Snuggie of his rhetoric."
Senate staffer on how President Barack Obama handles the liberal media, 16 December 2009

"When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children." 
Albert Shanker, President, American Federation of Teachers, 1985.

"Today's multicultural societies tolerate the explicitly intolerant and avowedly unicultural, while refusing to tolerate anyone pointing out that intolerance." 
Mark Steyn, Hillsdale College, March 13, 2008

"It's easy to give your all when victory appears to be around the corner.  The real hero is the man whose sacrifices for his brothers-in-arms come from a sense of duty, even though he knows his efforts are probably doomed to failure."
Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN (Ret), Foreword to "The Bridge at Dong Ha"

"Self-esteem" devalues achievement and responsibility, which are the sources of genuine self-respect.
James Taranto, Best of the Web, April 6, 2007

“I am not a consensus politician. I am a conviction politician." Margaret Thatcher

Hollywood is the "land of moral imbeciles." 
Aaron Tonken, Hollywood con artist & Democratic fundraiser.

"Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life.  It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR.  That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse." 
Mark Twain

"Too much bourbon is not enough."
Mark Twain

“Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay its price.”
Sun Tzu

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
Oscar Wilde, circa 1890

"Wearing a flag lapel pin in front of a liberal is like holding a cross in front of a vampire."
Tom Wolfe, American Spectator 40th anniversary dinner, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Washington, DC, November 6, 2007

"Morals, values & ethics originate with the family.  They are not mandated by the government."
Joe "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, February 25, 2009

The Liberal Media

"Hollywood is actually closer to 'the heart and soul of America' than most Washington Democrats realize." 
Matt Bai, "Beverly Hills Coup?", The New York Times Magazine,  November 13, 2005
 

"To the extent that there has been a bias in the establishment media, it has been less a liberal tilt than a preference for the values of the educated professional class -- which, surprise, surprise, is roughly the class position of most journalists."
E.J. Dionne, The Washington Post, December 6, 2002

"I hate to say there's a political correctness that guides us, but I think there is. We tend to give more credibility to groups on the liberal side of the spectrum than on the conservative side . . . We have to guard against falling into a groupthink."
Tom Fiedler, Executive Editor, Miami Herald, May 17, 2002

"The problem is that so many TV journalists simply don't know what to think about certain issues until the New York Times and the Washington Post tell them what to think. Those big, important newspapers set the agenda that network news people follow."
Bernard Goldberg, Bias, p. 18.

"For better or worse, too many Washington correspondents must respond to people in New York or Atlanta without nearly as much news experience who take cues from the New York Times or Washington Post."
John King, CNN, 3/15/01 Annenberg Public Policy Center panelist

"Even if you don't read the [New York] Times yourself, you get your news from journalists at other media who do. The Times sets the news agenda that everyone else follows. The Washington Post and maybe one or two other papers also play this role, but even as a writer who appears in the Washington Post - a damned fine newspaper run by superb editors who are graced with every kind of brilliance, charm, and physical beauty - I would have to concede that the Times is more influential."
Michael Kinsley, Editor, Slate,com, Sympathy for the New York Times, May 21, 2003

"[I]t is the imprimatur of the [New York] Times or the [Washington] Post that stamps the story as important before sending it back down to other papers - as well as up to the media gods of television."
Michael Kinsley, Editor, Slate.com, Sympathy for the New York Times, May 21, 2003

"That'll be fantastic news.  Uh, it'll be huge news, I should say."
Chris Matthews, Election Day, November 7, 2006, reacting to Chuck Todd's prediction that a Democratic takeover of the House could presage the same in the Senate

“There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous. That's different from the media doing its job of challenging the exercise of power without fear or favor.”
Terry Moran, ABC White House Correspondent, appearing on Hugh Hewitt Radio Show, May 15, 2005

"Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is."
Daniel Okrent, Public Editor, New York Times, July 25, 2004.

"But I think it's undeniable that the Times is a liberal paper."
Daniel Okrent, NY Times Public Editor to Salon magazine, May 12, 2005

"If I suspect there is an agenda then I stop listening." 
Serge Schmemann, Editor of Editorial Page, Int'l Herald Tribune, December 1, 2005

"The standard operating procedure at most publications - Slate included - is to commence the reporting of a new piece with a healthy Nexis dump, one that draws on the major dailies but especially from the [New York] Times."
Jack Shafer, The Same River Twice, Slate.com, December 16, 2003

"The narrative was properly about race, sex and class. . . We went a beat too fast in assuming that a rape took place. . .  We got the facts wrong.  The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong." 
Evan Thomas, Managing Editor, Newsweek, commenting on the Duke lacrosse team "rape" case in American Journalism Review (July/August 2007)

"We all work here in Washington.  We sort of look to the New York Times every day and the Washington Post and USA Today and CBS News and the networks to get our news and that's what we think is important."
Vaughn Ververs, editor of National Journal's The Hotline, December 3, 2004, Hotel Washington, Washington, DC

Top 10 Obamaisms

10. "No, no. I have been practicing...I bowled a 129. It's like -- it was like Special Olympics, or something." –making an off-hand joke during an appearance on "The Tonight Show", March 19, 2009 (Obama later called the head of the Special Olympics to apologize)

9. "I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any seances." -–after saying he had spoken with all the living presidents as he prepared to take office, Washington, D.C., Nov. 7, 2008 (Obama later called Nancy Reagan to apologize)

8. "The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system." Remarks after a health care roundtable with physicians, nurses and health care providers, Washington, D.C., July 20, 2009

7. "What I was suggesting -- you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith..." Interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, who jumped in to correct Obama by saying "your Christian faith," which Obama quickly clarified, Sept. 7, 2008

6. "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? It's the Post Office that's always having problems." Attempting to make the case for government-run healthcare, while simultaneously undercutting his own argument, Portsmouth, N.H., Aug. 11, 2009

5. "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." -- defending his tax plan to Joe the Plumber, who argued that Obama's policy hurts small-business owners like himself, Toledo, Ohio, Oct. 12, 2008

4. "The Cambridge police acted stupidly." Commenting on a white police officer's arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. at his home in Cambridge, Mass., at a news conference, July 22, 2009. Obama later had to convene a "Beer Summit" at the White House to help tamp down the controversy stirred by his remark

3. "It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Speaking at a San Francisco fundraiser about his troubles winning over some small-town, working-class voters, April 11, 2008

2. "One such translator was an American of Haitian descent, representative of the extraordinary work that our men and women in uniform do all around the world -- Navy Corpse-Man Christian Brossard." Mispronouncing "Corpsman" (the "ps" is silent) during a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, D.C., Feb. 5, 2010 (The Corpsman's name is also Christopher, not Christian)

1. "I've now been in 57 states — I think one left to go." At a campaign event in Beaverton, Oregon, May 9, 2008