Quotations

Quote of the Day

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Richard Fernandez:

To the relevant political audience cause and effect in matters of public policy are matters of indifference. What really counts is who shows himself king of the hill. Things some conservatives would regard as shameful are paradoxically impressive to Hillary’s voter base precisely because she can carry it off with impunity.
 
Benghazi wasn’t a screen test for the part of Ronald Reagan. It was for Richard Daley.
 
In some environments it is not following the law that impresses, but the ability to slug a cop and have him rise from the pavement only to clean your shoes. Hillary showed beyond any shadow of a doubt that she could utter the most improbable nonsense and make it stick, able to shrug off the puny efforts by Congress to bring her to book. In a world where power is the coin of the realm, her immense fortune was on display. All too often conservatives think that the prize goes to the fittest. In truth it often goes to the most ruthless.

Not much to add to this. Watch the videos accompanying Fernandez’s post.

Quote of the Day

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J. E. Dyer on Russia in Syria:

Get used to it. This is the world as it is without American power setting standards and boundaries. After a 70-year hiatus from history, nothing you think you know applies to this situation. This is the world of 1900 800 500 B.C. but with much more destructive weapons, and much faster ways to get around.

Interesting times ahead.

Quote of the Day

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Thomas Sowell:

The Republican establishment needs to understand why someone with all Trump’s faults could attract so many people who are sick of the approach that Jeb Bush represents. No small part of the internal degeneration of American society has been a result of supposedly responsible officials caving in to whatever group is currently in vogue, and allowing them to trample on everyone else’s rights.

Quote of the Day

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Richard Fernandez:

President Obama was right when he said that the coming years would be about fundamentally transforming things. Ironically Trump both understands and fails to articulate it. He claims people prefer him because he is “more competent” than his rivals. But he’s wrong. They are supporting him because he’s leading, however indirectly and uncertainly, a kind of rebellion against the status quo. The source of his appeal lies in his revolutionary aspects rather than his public administration qualities.
 
The spotlight is therefore in the right place. The tragedies unfolding in the world are for the moment a side-show. The real drama is the crisis of Western social democracy and the international security framework that has obtained since World War 2. People are still acting like it can be business as usual when in fact business is most unusual. The forces causing whole regions to implode or destabilize themselves are not the cause but the result of a revolutionary dynamic in the globalized world.

Worth reading in full.

Quote of the Day

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Richard Fernandez:

If you had to name ten things “which changed everything” in the last 2 decades nearly all the good stuff will have crept out of woodwork from the inner pages while all the bad stuff was parading above the fold. You can even think of the inner pages as being in an endless war with the front page, in an unending battle between the ordinary working stiff and the self-important leaders. The working stiff makes and the self-important leader taxes and wastes. Booms happen when the regular Joe can temporarily outpace the great men and the years of the locust occur when the opposite is true.

This is a nice post that touches a number of important themes about progress and how people perceive it. Worth reading.