Old Fogey's Quotes for Wednesday

"So the party of big ideas, of Milton Friedman and the neoconservatives, is now just one big Swift Boat flotilla, its ideas sunk of their own dead weight, kept afloat solely by its opposition research."
Harold Meyerson in WaPo editorial
With No Ideas, The GOP Seeks to Scare
[As a historian, I've seen numerous ideologies overtake the craft, with torturous fashioning of facts around the idea du jour. Thus I am very suspicious of most ideology. Why not return to the days of FDR, who kept seeking simply to find what would work? Oh, and by the way, if it ain't broke, don't fix it]

"A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me."
George W. Bush, the Protestant Pope of America
Bush Tells Group He Sees a 'Third Awakening'
[I'm sure when he was a cheerleader, he believed God was on his team's side. That's the problem with the religious right--their God is much too small]

"I listen to my Democrat friends, and I wonder if they're more interested in protecting terrorists than in protecting the American people."
House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio)
Milbank: Reprise of Party Line
[I guess only people we like are supposed to have rights?!]

". . . a lot of well-heeled folks cashing in their stocks."
David A. Rosenberg, an economist for Merrill Lynch, describing who benefited from the huge upward revision in first-quarter labor costs
Look Who Got a Raise
[Pointing this out in the past has been called 'class warfare' but this guy doesn't seem to be a unwashed rabble rouser]

"We generally tried not to include regulators. We would not want to put people in the position who had formulated these rules in the past. They may have a lack of objectivity."
Hal S. Scott, Harvard law professor who will be the director of the newly formed Committee on Capital Markets Regulation
Panel of Executives and Academics to Consider Regulation and Competitiveness
[They seem to be looking for the kind of 'objectivity' found in the Bush White House]

"Now, if that mission statement changes -- if there is seen a larger role for coalition forces out here to win that insurgency fight -- then that is going to change the metrics of what we need out here."
Marine Maj. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer, reporting from his headquarters in Fallujah that he has enough troops for now to do the training mission assigned to him
U.S. Facing Diverse Security Challenges
[Note that his assigned mission is not to control the bloody insurgency--just to 'train.' Given that standard, I guess commanders would be reluctant to ask for more troops]