Votable Quotables for $1000

WTF Stops Here?

March 22, 2020

President Harry S. Truman and his famous quote

We hope you enjoyed our special Paying Attention Spring Break From Endless Virus Panic.  It was almost as much fun as getting the new coronavirus on a Florida beach.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled ongoing catastrophe, commonly referred to as Donald Chrump.  Chrump continues to alternate between delusional happy talk, spraying blame and his forte, abject pathological lying as he pretends to deal with the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic.

America is on her 45^th president like a bitch.  We have had some great ones.  There have been memorable ones.  There have been forgettable ones.  We have had disastrous ones.  The current one makes the worst presidents we have ever had look pretty damn good, with the exception of George W. Bush, who still looks horrible though occasionally slightly less so under the ever more darkening shadow of Donald Jabba-the-Hut Chrump.  A number of our presidents have managed to utter phrases that will likely never be forgotten, either for their inspirational value, or in some cases something closer to comedic value.

Take a guess: “We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety clouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.” What president said this? *

George Washington: “Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.”

Abraham Lincoln: ““You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Dwight Eisenhower: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

John F. Kennedy: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Richard Nixon: “People have got to know whether or not their president’s a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”  Turns out a crook would have been an improvement.

Gerald Ford (after pardoning Nixon): “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”  He was wrong.  It was not.

Ronald Reagan: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.” and “I don’t recall.”

Circa 1980 – sound familiar?

George H.W. Bush (on the trans-Alaska oil pipeline): “The caribou love it. They rub against it and they have babies. There are more caribou in Alaska than you can shake a stick at.”

Bill Clinton: “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.” and “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

George W. Bush: “Mission accomplished.” and “I know the human being and fish can co-exist peacefully.”  and “If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier... as long as I'm the dictator. Hehehe.”

Barack Obama: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Donald Chrump: “I don’t take responsibility at all.” **

The recent disgraceful selfishness that caused Senate Republicant’s to ignore the facts and the consistently damning testimony of more than a dozen non-partisan career public servants, and the horrific refusal of Republican’ts to hear for themselves and allow the American public to hear testimony from first-hand witnesses could not provide better proof of the veracity and prescience of the warning George Washington provided in his farewell address, after refusing to serve a third term as the new nation’s first president:

"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."  September 17, 1796

We close with one more from Abraham Lincoln, who also seemed to foreshadow Donald Chrump with this quote:

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

I. Mangrey remembering.  The only thing we have to fear is Chrump himself.

There’s nothing in here. Believe me.

Special Bonus Presidential Quote:

We did get fooled again

*Abraham Lincoln

**In fairness, we did not include Chrump’s inimitable “grab ‘em by the pussy” quote because we thought we were still living in a world where he would never be president when he spit that one out.