Old Fogey's Quotes for Saturday and Sunday

"Creating democracy where it has never existed is a long and painstaking process. You can't whip it up by buying a cake mix or holding a single election and declaring victory."
E. J. Dionne, Jr. , in WaPo
An Ideal In Need Of Rescue
[Yet Americans have tended to support politicians who offer quick fixes. Perhaps Bush's most positive legacy is the growing realization that the world is far too complex for quick fixes, as appealing as they may be.]

"They are leaving us with a tremendous mess."
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., referring to the unfinished budget
Republicans Push Tax Bill Through House
[Just as the Republican Congress slipped out of town without solving the messy problems often created by their own misguided policies, King George the Weasel seems to be trying to keep Iraq and other foreign policy disasters afloat long enough to blame his successors for the failures. The guy just can't stand to admit defeat, even if that requires delusion. At last, however, he seems increasingly unable to sell his delusions to the public.]

"I had an awakening. It's not totally free enterprise in the United States."
Hein Hettinga, a maverick dairyman in southern California who began selling milk for as much as 20 cents a gallon less, only to be crushed by the Milk Lobby and Congress
Dairy Industry Crushed Innovator Who Bested Price-Control System
[For Big Business, laissez-faire has always meant "leave us alone--except to help." For all the exhortations of the abilities of the market to regulate itself, most major industries have worked far harder to eliminate competition than to enhance it. But, guess what folks--this whole market economy thing doesn't work without competition.]

“If Bangladesh can do it, anyone can do it.”
Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner for lending small amounts of money to destitute people, claiming that his country is on the way to halving the poverty rate by 2015
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Will Urge Banks to Lend to the Poor
[We tend to spend a lot of energy debating the causes of poverty, while Yuunus made the answer obvious. Poverty's root cause is lack of money, often buttressed by discrimination.]