How is it that the Most Perceptive Commentators on the American Political Scene are Canadian?
“Talk about lipstick on a pig: the bailout measure, which began as a modest, $700-billion, three-page oink, reached the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday wearing about 450 pages of lipstick. Its maximum final cost was no longer calculable — after bipartisan negotiations to add “sweeteners” to the thing, to buy it support from various congressional factions.
“It is worth adding that not one of the politicians voting on the 450-odd-page bill can possibly have read the whole thing, let alone deeply considered the implications of its parts. Few of them have an understanding of the crisis they are legislating for. The blind are leading the blind.
Yes, These Two Sentences Really Are From the Same Column by Cynthia Tucker:
“In campaign seasons such as this, when victory may turn on a handful of votes, none of those claims is more important to Republican activists than overhyped allegations of voter fraud.
“In this election season, the Republican Party has stepped up its efforts to restrict the franchise across the country, intimidating voters, purging voter rolls and filing dubious claims in court.”
John Fund, Unfortunately Already Revealed by Cynthia Tucker to be a Cynical Republican Hack
“Political bosses such as Richard Daley or George Wallace may have died, but they have successors. Party machines in Hawaii and south Texas intimidate critics and journalists as they harvest votes from illegal aliens and the dead. A left-wing “community organizing” group called ACORN has seen its employees frequently convicted of voter registration fraud. This year its employees are under active investigation in several states. Perhaps one reason for ACORN’s go-for-broke behavior is that Barack Obama used to be a lawyer and top trainer for the group. In August, the Obama campaign was caught misidentifying an $800,000 payment it had made to an ACORN subsidiary for “election services.”
“Barack D. Roosevelt”, hopes David Ignatius
“Roosevelt understood that it was a confidence game. He surrounded himself with smart people and good ideas. But his real success in 1933 was that he conveyed to a frightened country that he knew what he was doing, and never let on the fact that he was, as his biographer Burns says, “playing by ear.” It’s that sense of pitch that the public wants to see in Obama.”
“John McRoosevelt”, sighs George Will
TR’s collectivist nationalism became unhinged, polluted by sinister advocacy of eugenics, and by statist sentiments such as: “The woman must bear and rear the children, as her first duty to the state.” McCain’s Rooseveltian interest in our moral reclamation is at least better than that.
Quite a wonderful collection, Quin.
Wow — that’s a lot of lipstick!