Thoughts for the Day 6

From Wolfshield:
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"A wise prince will seek means by which his subjects will always and in every possible condition of things have need of his government, and then they will always be faithful to him." --Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

"You know how Congress is. They'll vote for anything if the thing they vote for will turn around and vote for them. Politics ain't nothing but reciprocity." --Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"The new kind of politics of hope. Eight hours of debate in the House of Representatives to pass a bill spending $820 billion -- or roughly $102 billion per hour of debate. Only 10 percent of the 'stimulus' [is] to be spent on 2009. Close to half goes to entities that sponsor or employ (or both) members of the Service Employees International Union, federal, state, and municipal employee unions or other Democrat-controlled unions. This bill is sent to Congress after President Obama has been in office for seven days. It is 680 pages long. According to my calculations, not one member of Congress read the entire bill before this vote. Obviously, it would have been impossible, given his schedule, for the president to have read the whole thing. For the amount spent, we could have given every unemployed person in the United States roughly $75,000. We could give every person who had lost a job and is now passing through long-term unemployment of six months or longer roughly $300,000. There has been pork-barrel politics since there has been politics, but the scale of this pork is beyond what had ever been imagined before -- and no one can be sure it will actually do much stimulation. ... This is more than pork-barrel -- this is a coup for the constituencies of the party in power and against the idea of a responsible government itself. A bleak day. Unfortunately, it is only the latest in a long series of such days stretching across decades of rule by both parties, to the point where truly responsible government is only a distant echo of our forgotten ancestors." --Ben Stein

"When moralizing conservatives get caught, say, cheating on their wives or challenging stall mates to robust Greco-Roman wrestling in airport bathrooms, liberals justifiably howl at the hypocrisy of it all. When liberals fail to pay taxes it's merely, to borrow an old catchphrase from Daschle, 'sad and disappointing,' but ultimately not that big a deal. If Democrats are serious about their arguments for raising taxes, shouldn't they be downright giddy about paying what they already owe? And shouldn't they loathe tax cheating more than anything?" --columnist Jonah Goldberg

"Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package, 500 million Americans lose their jobs. I don't think we can go fast enough." --Nancy Pelosi (Um--pardon?)

"I didn't come here to be partisan, I didn't come here to be bipartisan. I came here ... to be nonpartisan, to work for the American people, to do what is in their interest." --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

"For those on the right who still cling to the fantasy that Obama is a bipartisan centrist, I refer you to his recent statement that FDR did not do enough by way of government spending to end the Depression ... and his government-expansion-on-

steroids, non-stimulus pork bill. The inevitable explosion of federal debt this legislation would cause is reason enough to oppose it, even if it were likely to stimulate the economy. But even some liberals are disputing its potential to stimulate. The hastily crafted bill, with its corrupt funding of ACORN and other favors, is a disgracefully irresponsible effort to expand the public sector, diminish the private sector, empower the autocrats, and further divest us of our individual liberties -- all at the expense of present and future generations." --David Limbaugh