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Bill Clinton pandered by telling you what you wanted to hear. John Kerry panders by never telling you what you don't want to hear. This is negative pandering; he talks a lot without really ruling anything out so you can draw your own conclusions.....Kerry has been talking for years, and yet such is the thicket of his verbiage that he has achieved almost complete strategic ambiguity.
There are a variety of groups, Human Rights Campaign, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Sierra Club, that are groups that do very good work, that do a lot of things that I personally believe in, that are also as a descriptive matter they`re part of what you`re going to call an establishment in Washington of the sort of center-left probably, Center for American Progress. They are part of it.
Because many people remembered a time when the Republican Party was not so extreme, and hadn't full grasped how much it had changed, people blamed Obama for his failure to get Republicans to agree with him. That blame coloured so much of how the public saw Obama during his presidency. The public thought he was dealing with a brand of Republican leader that just didn't exist any more.
I read Nicholas Kristof columns. I think it was in September [2016] had he this piece look who is endorsing [Donald] Trump, who is behind him. It was the North Korean government, it was Islamic terrorists. It's the Klan. It's the American Nazi party. It seems very uncharitable to me. There was no room for people who are decent but economically beleaguered to maybe want to support him.
Dogs are intelligent beings; they are not human beings. The life of a dog - there's no equivalency with the life of a person, and if you are putting a dog in the line of danger to save human life, and they can do the job reasonably well, I mean, seriously, what about dignity and self-respect? I feel like going out to dinner, I think I will have my cocker spaniel host the show tonight.
Obama said, 'Now let me be clear, issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam.' No, he said, 'the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life.' So on one hand, 12-year-old girls are stoned to death for the crime of being raped in Muslim countries. But on the other hand, we still don't have enough female firefighters here in America.
Walking back from the convention site I chatted with a normal Bostonian for several blocks -- who must have identified me through our covert system of signals. He was mostly bemused by the Democrats' primetime speakers and told me he used to be an independent, but for the last 20 years found himself voting mostly Republican. Then he corrected himself and said he votes for the American.
The party cannot be competitive nationally unless it's competitive in California, Oregon, Washington, New England, Pennsylvania, along the coasts. And the problem for the party is, you can't get there from here. You can't start out where the current Republicans are and win back those places. To me, what you have to do is create a different Republican Party that can win in those places.
I was talking to a friend of mine who's a teacher in Iowa and, you know, she teaches kids - English is their second language, and they're scared that they're going to get sent home, their family's going to get broken up. Regardless of whether [Donald Trump] does it or not, whether it's true or not, the rhetoric creates a climate of fear and tension, and that's not good for the country.
The exploitation agenda advocated by liberals is modeled after the dependency-inducing design of the drug dealer's business model: "We'll supply the first hit for free, and after that, you'll need us forever in order to survive." In order for the liberal scheme to succeed, all attempts at self-empowerment or individual initiative are to be met with fierce resistance and social sanction.
Generally the impulse to find justice through punitive measures can be a kind of quicksand. What James Whitman, the scholar I cite in the chapter of my book, talks about as an urge to level down, I think you see that everywhere. We're going to be a punitive society, so we might as well level out that punitiveness. Bankers and college swim stars and everyone face that same kind of wrath.
It's pretty clear that Hillary Clinton was a deeply, deeply flawed alternative. She had the wrong combination of the internal political chops to muscle out all the mainstream nominations from the field, leaving only Bernie Sanders, who was unacceptable to the Democrats' party establishment. But she also had a real lack of political skill that would enable her to win the general election.
Donald Trump understands sense of belonging. And a lot of people think globalization, any time you make any particularity, you're sort of offending some other group. And a lot of people in this country think they belong to America anymore, and he at least appeals to some sense of belonging. I like the idea that we belong to Western traditions, so I'm glad he appeals to that sort of thing.
I would wipe my tears, and walk out of the stall and the bathroom, and march myself back into that courtroom because the only way that I could deal with Keith's [ Griffin] murder was to feel like I was doing something about it. In retrospect, what did I do? I know that I put a lot of bad guys in jail and if I kept them off the street one day more, that may have been one less crime victim.
And yet, winning is like a welcome drink going down your throat, like a beautiful embrace. It is brilliant while it lasts but it isn't forever. The high eventually melts away and the journey of life begins afresh. The truly remarkable among us visit these highs periodically; winning then becomes a journey, a graph where each point is crucial but is in reality merely part of a larger curve.
I think every coach has to adapt to what they have, because they're what you get. You can't just go out to the player tree and pick all the great ones. That doesn't happen. You get a Barry Sanders every now and then. You get a Billy Sims every once in a while. And when you have it, you adapt to their strengths. Whoever comes in here and whoever has this job needs to adapt and will do that.
Antiwar protestors actually sabotaged and caused a huge amount of damage to military installations and military property during the war. I'm related to someone who caused some of that damage. I mean, it was real. I mean, there was a reason. I'm not defending it, but I'm saying it was not because they didn't like the politics of the protesters. The protesters were violent in a lot of cases.
I think reading intelligent expressions of different points of view is a good thing, and there is a way in which being in academia in a classroom at the University probably gives you, can give you an academic view of things, and reading actual real time debates about what should we do in Syria or the Buffett rule, budget issues...gives you a kind of sense that's hard to get in a classroom.
I`ve been spending a fair amount of time in the recesses of white nationalist, white supremacist social media online areas, what called itself is the "alt right", which is sort of the euphemistic term they use for what is essentially modern day white supremacy. And they are some of [Donald]Trump - this has been reported from the beginning but they are very excited about [anti-Muslim] proposal.
Donald Trump is sort of an Orwellian figure, an authoritarian figure who is twisting words in an Orwellian manner, "1984," to exercise power and control people's minds, or is he a 5-year-old who has an ego that needs to be fed, and the universe has to warp around his ego needs so he can feel good about himself, and everybody has to produce photos to make the monarch feel like he's made of gold.
I, personally, think Trump improved pretty dramatically and certainly changed pretty dramatically over the last hundred days. He's less of the populist. He's more of the corporatist. He's less incompetent. He's trying to at least turn toward people who can put a decision-making process. And he's trying to adjust to the job. And so whatever one thinks of him, he is certainly a learning creature.
There certainly is a pattern of administrations that have good transitions, George W. Bush to Barack Obama, and administrations that have really bad transitions, I would say Dwight Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy. I would say this is beginning to look like a bad transition, from Barack Obama to Donald Trump as they begin to argue even at the presidential level, which is more or less unprecedented.
There's just a law to the universe. We can have the San Andreas rip tonight. You've nothing to do with that. We could have had that super hurricane, that, look what it did to South Carolina two or three hundred miles offshore! Imagine if a category 5 eye wall went right up the Chesapeake Bay. They can say "well, mankind did that." No, mother nature decides. So, will we survive? I'm sure we will.
In June 2002, airport security searched Al Gore. There's a lot not to like about Gore, but he's not a terrorist. Gore said he was glad he was searched. Why? To spare a terrorist the trouble? This is a serious national issue; why must liberals lie? Searching Al Gore is purely a religious act. It is the purposeless fetishistic performance of ritual in accordance with the civic religion of liberalism.
Ron Karenga wrote a book back in 1968, and in that book, he said that the reason, part of his motivation for starting Kwanzaa was because he felt that Christianity was the white man religion, and he didn't like Jews, and so he made up this lie. And he called it an African holiday because he was concerned that if he didn't call it an African holiday, that black Americans would not participate in it.
Stairway to Wisdom”) David Brooks detailed the needed ingredients to gaining a deep understanding of a social problem, beginning with the data and moving on to first-hand accounts. The highest rung on his stairway, though, went beyond those: “Empathy opens you up to absorb the good and the bad. Love impels you not just to observe but to seek union—to think as another thinks and feel as another feels.
I'd signed up not just for Christianity but the established Church of England. That has a particular history and I think we rather lost it in the 19th Century, we became so much part of empire and colonialism, the language of the Church Of England still reflects that Victorian time. As the 20th Century developed, not surprisingly people left the church and I can see the church's role in losing people.
Crimes are being committed 24/7, 365 days a year. My show aired one hour a day, and then a repeat at 2 a.m. So I am launching a website, a crime-fighting website, a community. I will be writing for the website and curating content. Also, we'll have social media, Facebook Live, and a podcast. I'm really excited about it, and I believe we will help people - find missing people, solve unsolved homicides.
Married women vote Republican; single women vote Democratic. That's why liberals promote policies to break up families. Every social malady is a victory for the left. A couple gets divorced and liberals say, "Yay! Another Democratic voter!" A child is born out of wedlock and liberals say, "Yay! Another Democratic voter!" A person gets addicted to drugs and liberals say, "Yay! Another Democratic voter!"
Even if corners were cut, (Iran-Contra) was a brilliant scheme. There is no possibility that anyone in any Democratic administration would have gone to such lengths to fund anti-Communist forces. When Democrats scheme from the White House, it's to cover up the President's affair with an intern. When Republicans scheme, it's to support embattled anti-Communist freedom fighters sold out by the Democrats.
It's often said that the Democrats fight 'for the little guy.' That's true: liberals fight to make sure the little guy stays little! Think about it. What if all the little guys were to prosper and become big guys? Then what? Who would liberals pretend to fight for? If the bamboozlers fight for anything, it's to ensure that the little guy stays angry at those nasty conservatives who are holding him down.
Liberals don't care. Their approach is to rip out society's foundations without asking if they serve any purpose. Why do we have immigration laws? What's with these borders? Why do we have the institution of marriage, anyway? What do we need standardized tests for? Hey, I like Keith Richards - why not make heroin legal? Let's take a sledgehammer to all these load-bearing walls and just see what happens!
Pope John Paul II was fascinated by the United States. And I think he was initially surprised at the vigor of the Catholic Church in the United States. Maybe some of the press that we had gotten he found wasn't true. No, I think he suspected the church in the United States. Did he challenge us to some things? Sure, he did. But, no, I always - I think there was a good alliance. There was a good gel there.
Just as we're always told that schoolyard bullies are actually deeply insecure, liberals rationalize their own ferocious behavior by claiming to have been wounded somehow. What about the little guy our poor, insecure bully is beating the living daylights out of? How's his self-esteem coming along? That is the essence of liberals: They viciously attack everyone else, while wailing that they are the victims.
The Prime Minister, a specialist in calling in the locksmith after the horses had fled - the whole herd in fact - and the barn in ruins, ended the week with a great raft of ethics proposals for cabinet, leadership candidates, backbenchers and lobbyists. I think it is more than fair to ask: Why wait for the middle of his third term to institute what the public would have welcomed at the beginning of his first?
Twilight of the Elites main thesis has been borne out far past what I could ever have imagined. The major idea was that these series of elite failures created this crisis of authority which was fertilizing distrust in the pillars and institutions of American society. In the absence of that authority there's this vacuum which is easily filled by authoritarian solutions, and I think that's exactly what happened.
What's curious about the left's current obsession with Timothy McVeigh is that it proves that - despite a frantic search for 15 years - liberals have come across no better evidence of burgeoning "right-wing extremist" violence than a drug-taking, self-described "agnostic" who was thrown out of the Michigan Militia and who proclaimed, "Science is my religion." That sounds more like Bill Maher than Rush Limbaugh.
We still are America though. We're still a country that is a country of social mobility. We're still a country of immigrants. We're still a country with common ancestors. And reviving the civics of America and the idea that we're going to be united, at least not right now, but in some common future, and talking in that hopeful way that Martin Luther King did, that Abraham Lincoln did, seems to me that's the way.
The degree to which I try to be honest that there's some Donald Trump in all of us. The seduction of the promise of order, the politics of white fear, it's not just some other group of uneducated white people who are susceptible to those appeals. It's everyone. And not just white people, frankly. All Americans have this susceptibility to a politics of fear and order that I think we have to be really honest about.
I'm convinced after spending three weeks in China and Tibet, unless the United States gets its act together, our grandchildren will be living in a world dominated by the People's Republic. China is simply inexorable in its pursuit of wealth, growth and power. It cares little about human rights, democracy, labor protections, fair trade rules or the environment. It is relentless in advancing its national interests.
Of course I don't know what's going on in that meeting on in the mind of Donald Trump. But I do know one of the things President Barack Obama was struck by was how much time he spent on cyber-security as president. And one of the things he said was that, in the years ahead, the next president will be spending even more time. And cyber-security isn't a thing that goes away after this election. It's a constant flow.
The Afghan "negotiation phase" immediately precedes the traditional Afghan "surrender phase." This entails the following: The defeated party surrenders and then comes out shooting. This is repeated several times. Finally, the vanquished party runs out of ammunition and is forced to surrender ' but seriously this time ' at which point the victors kill the foreigners and hug their fellow Afghans like long-lost brothers.
Judging by their positions at the time, rather than their post hoc allegations, Democrats adored the Soviet Union. Congressional Democrats repeatedly opposed funding anti-Communist rebels, they opposed Reagan's military build-up, they opposed building a shield to protect America from incoming missiles, they opposed putting missiles in Europe. As a rule, Democrats opposed anything opposed by their cherished Soviet Union.
Obama took 20 million people from the category of ignorables and put them into the category of unignorables. No one had to do anything for these 20 million people because they were outside the system. Now they're inside the system. Taking away their health care imposes all kind of political pain. We don't know the outcome, but every passing day it show how difficult it is for Trump to deprive them of what they now have.
Liberals compare Jerry Falwell to the Taliban, but then are furious with George Bush for not being Jesus Christ. Evidently, what a president is supposed to do when the girls are scared is develop complete omniscience and omnipotence. Thus, the media repeatedly expound upon the proposition that what Bush should have done in response to the anthrax mailings is: Instantly produce the culprits and put an end to this madness!
If you can somehow force a liberal into a point-counterpoint argument, his retorts will bear no relation to what you’ve said - unless you were in fact talking about your looks, your age, your weight, your personal obsessions, or whether you are a fascist. In the famous liberal two-step, they leap from one idiotic point to the next, so you can never nail them. It’s like arguing with someone with Attention Deficit Disorder.
If you look at the statistics of fratricide or intra-sibling homicide, it's extremely rare. And look at Burke [Ramsey] and JonBenet at the time of her murder. She was the powerhouse, the firecracker; she's the dominant one, not him. I just don't see it. And as I recall, John Ramsey passed a lie detector test. I can unequivocally say that Burke is not the killer nor do I think John Ramsey is the killer. Let's leave it there.
If it were true that conservatives were racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist, stupid, inflexible, angry, and self-righteous, shouldn't their arguments be easy to deconstruct? Someone who is making a point out of anger, ideology, inflexibility, or resentment would presumably construct a flimsy argument. So why can't the argument itself be dismembered rather than the speaker's personal style or hidden motives? Why the evasions?
In a comprehensive study of all public multiple shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that the only public policy that reduced both the incidence and casualties of such shootings were concealed-carry laws. Not only are there 60 percent fewer gun massacres after states adopt concealed-carry laws, but the death and injury rate of such rampages are reduced by 80 percent.
It is a law of nature that everything run by the government will get more expensive and worse over time. Everything run by the private sector will get better and cheaper over time. The fact that [Obamacare] starts this badly does not bode well....We want healthcare run on the same system that gave us cell phones, flat screens, Jerry Garcia chia pets. Everything you submit to the free market...keeps getting better and better.