This Week In Quotes: Nov 29 – Dec 5

Obama on ObamaCare: There’s no way we’re repealing this boondoggle while I’m president, America….Is this really the message Democrats wanted him to put out today, when news outlets are filled with stories about rate shock, glitchy enrollments, and catastrophic security lapses? I thought the headline was supposed to be “ObamaCare is wonderful,” not “There’s nothing you can do.” Good lord. This feels like a communique from Two-Face to Gotham city. — AllahPundit

According to the FBI, between 1976 and 2005, blacks, who are about 12 percent of the population, committed 53 percent of all felony murders and 56 percent of non-felony murders. The Centers for Disease Control recently reported that young black men are 14 times more likely to commit murder than young white men. — Ann Coulter

Now with President Obama, it is true. He should have been more forthright with how the Affordable Care Act was going to impact the country. But with that being said, all Americans know politicians lie. The question is, which lies can you live with? And, time and time again, Americans have said we can deal with the lies that President Obama tells us because we believe in his heart, he has the best interest for the American people. Every president is going to lie to you. Every politician is going to lie to you. The question is, which lies can you live with? — L.Z. Granderson

For all the gnashing of teeth over the lack of comity and civility in Washington, the real problem is not etiquette but the breakdown of political norms, legislative and constitutional. — Charles Krauthammer

The law remains unchanged. The regulations governing that law remain unchanged. Nothing is changed except for a president proposing to unilaterally change his own law from the White House press room. That’s banana republic stuff, except that there the dictator proclaims from the presidential balcony. — Charles Krauthammer

After indignant denunciation of Republicans for trying to amend “the law of the land” constitutionally (i.e. in Congress assembled), Democrats turn utterly silent when the president lawlessly tries to do so by executive fiat. — Charles Krauthammer

Reagan himself couldn’t have made a better case for conservative ideas than Obamacare is making daily. — Johnathan Last

And this president wasn’t. I think part of the reason he wasn’t careful is because he sort of lives in words. That’s been his whole professional life–books, speeches. Say something and it magically exists as something said, and if it’s been said and publicized it must be real. He never had to push a lever, see the machine not respond, puzzle it out and fix it. It’s all been pretty abstract for him, not concrete. He never had to stock a store, run a sale and see lots of people come but the expenses turn out to be larger than you’d expected and the profits smaller, and you have to figure out what went wrong and do better next time.

People say Mr. Obama never had to run anything, but it may be more important that he never worked for the guy who had to run something, and things got fouled up along the way and he had to turn it around. He never had to meet a payroll, never knew that stress. — Peggy Noonan

From what I have seen the administration is full of young people who’ve seen the movie but not read the book. They act bright, they know the reference, they’re credentialed. But they’ve only seen the movie about, say, the Cuban missile crisis, and then they get into a foreign-policy question and they’re seeing movies in their heads. They haven’t read the histories, the texts, which carry more information, more texture, data and subtlety, and different points of view. They’ve only seen the movie–the Cubans had the missiles and Jack said “Not another war” and Bobby said “Pearl Harbor in reverse” and dreadful old Curtis LeMay chomped his cigar and said “We can fry a million of ‘em by this afternoon, Mr. President.” Grrr, grrr, good guys beat bad guys.

It’s as if history isn’t real to them. They run around tweeting, all of them, even those in substantial positions. “Darfur government inadequate. Genocide unacceptable.” They share their feelings — that happens to be one of the things they seem to think is real, what they feel. “Unjust treatment of women–scourge that hurts my heart.” This is the dialogue to the movies in their heads.

There’s a sense that they’re all freelancing, not really part of anything coherent. — Peggy Noonan

Commentators like to decry low-information voters–the stupid are picking our leaders. I think the real problem is low-information leaders. They have so little experience of life and have so much faith in magic–in media, in words–that they don’t understand people will get angry at you when you mislead them, and never see you the same way again. — Peggy Noonan

This is every generation’s fate. It’s a matter of power and privilege and demography. Whenever anything happens anywhere, somebody over 50 signs the bill for it. And the baby boom, seated as we are at the head of life’s table, is hearing Generation X, Generation Y and the Millennials all saying, “Check, please!” — P.J. O’Rourke

Fifty percent of the country is getting a free lunch, but nobody wants a sh*t sandwich anymore. And that’s what you’re getting in terms of education, health care and retirement. — Nick Gillespie

As the Instapundit likes to remind us, Barack Obama has “joked” publicly about siccing the IRS on his enemies. With all this coincidence about, we should be grateful the president is not (yet) doing prison-rape gags. — Mark Steyn

Few persons are fond of their tax collectors, but, from my experience, America is the only developed nation in which the mass of the population is fearful of its revenue agency. This is unbecoming to a supposedly free people. — Mark Steyn

Obama’s electoral success further confirms what I’ve often held: The civil rights struggle in America is over, and it’s won. At one time, black Americans did not have the constitutional guarantees enjoyed by white Americans; now we do. The fact that the civil rights struggle is over and won does not mean that there are not major problems confronting many members of the black community, but they are not civil rights problems and have little or nothing to do with racial discrimination. — Walter Williams

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