Columnists From The United States

"The fact that black voters have voted over 90 percent Democratic for decades leaves them almost wholly without power. Democrats—paradigmatically, the Clintons—feint in their direction during general elections, trying to assure turnout and using them to bash Republicans as bigots and—in the usual fashion—as emblems of their own goodness."

"I think American white conservatives and white liberals are, by and large, both racist. But the liberals believe they’re not racists—in fact, they believe in nothing else with so much commitment. They insist they don't have a racist bone in their bodies; they don't even see race; they were over that a long time ago."

"The Democratic Party has exploited black leadership."

"The entrapment of black voters in the Democratic party has been a disaster, and it’s one of the reasons that progress on has been infinitesimal or at best incremental since the ."

"There's no reason for Republicans to waste any time on black voters; there are no votes there under any conditions. Rand Paul went to Ferguson and Baltimore to talk racial healing: no one cared or even noticed."

"It is high time for both advertisers and network bosses, from Rupert Murdoch on down, to search their souls about their complicity in injecting this poison into the body politic. Carlson has a right to say whatever he wants — but he doesn't have a right to say it on the most-watched cable channel in the country. He needs to go. Now."

"Carlson’s defenders point out that his conversations with Bubba the Love Sponge occurred years ago and not on Fox News. But he defended statutory rape — female teachers having sex with underage boys — as recently as a 2015 podcast. And on his Fox News show, Carlson regularly rages against immigration and diversity. In December, he said that immigration "makes our own country poorer and dirtier." White supremacists have become avid fans of Carlson; the white supremacist website Daily Stormer called him "literally our greatest ally.""

"Many Democrats took all this at face value and congratulated themselves for being smarter than the benighted Republicans. Here’s the thing, though: The Republican embrace of was, to a large extent, a put-on. At least until now."

"There is no evidence that Republican leaders have been demonstrably dumber than their Democratic counterparts. During the Reagan years, the G.O.P. briefly became known as the "party of ideas," because it harvested so effectively the intellectual labor of conservative think tanks. ... In recent years, however, the Republicans' relationship to the realm of ideas has become more and more attenuated as talk-radio hosts and television personalities have taken over the role of defining the conservative movement that once belonged to thinkers."

"Trump is an ignorant demagogue who traffics in racist and misogynistic slurs and crazy conspiracy theories. He champions protectionism and isolationism — the policies that brought us the Great Depression and World War II. He wants to undertake a police-state roundup of undocumented immigrants and to bar Muslims from coming to this country. He encourages his followers to assault protesters and threatens to sue or smear critics. He would abandon Japan and South Korea and break up the most successful alliance in history — . But he has kind words for tyrants such as Vladimir Putin. There has never been a major party nominee in U.S. history as unqualified for the presidency. The risk of Trump winning, however remote, represents the biggest national security threat that the United States faces today."

"As media scramble to figure out Trump's evolving position on immigration, remember he cares *only* about feeding his ego. Policy irrelevant."

"Trump is a fascist. And that's not a term I use loosely or often. But he's earned it."

"What the heck is a neocon anyway in 2003? A friend of mine suggests it means the kind of right-winger a liberal wouldn't be embarrassed to have over for cocktails. That's as good a definition as any, since the term has clearly come unmoored from its original meaning. ... In social policy, it stands for a broad sympathy with a traditionalist agenda and a rejection of extreme libertarianism. Neocons have led the charge to combat some of the wilder excesses of academia and the arts. But there is hardly an laid down by Neocon Central. I, for one, am not eager to ban either abortion or cloning, two hot-button issues on the religious right. On economic matters, neocons--like pretty much all other Republicans, except for Mr. Buchanan and his five followers--embrace a laissez-faire line, though they are not as troubled by the size of the welfare state as libertarians are."

"Catering to populist anger with proposals that are certain to fail is not a viable strategy for political success."

"Adversaries including the self-declared Islamic State and the Kremlin are free to spread lies and conspiracy theories, while the U.S. government generally feels compelled to hew to the truth in its public pronouncements (even as it often tries to conceal scandalous misconduct)."

"Journalists are naturally skeptical of the U.S. intelligence, given the U.S. government's history making claims that did not pan out—most notoriously about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was used to justify the U.S. invasion in 2003. But there is indeed a long history of Russia using so-called false-flag operations to justify aggression."

"Listed in one place, Boot's many calls for U.S.-led war around the world come off as a parody of mindless warlike noises, something you might write if you got mad at a country while drunk."

"One thing that every late-stage ruling class has in common is a high tolerance for mediocrity. Standards decline, the edges fray, but nobody in charge seems to notice. They're happy in their sinecures and getting richer. In a culture like this, there's no penalty for being wrong. The talentless prosper, rising inexorably toward positions of greater power, and breaking things along the way. It happened to the Ottomans. Max Boot is living proof that it’s happening in America."

"Trump was running against more armed conflicts. ... Boot hated him. As Trump found himself accused of improper ties to Vladimir Putin, Boot agitated for more aggressive confrontation with Russia. Boot demanded larger weapons shipments to Ukraine. He called for effectively expelling Russia from the global financial system, a move that might be construed as an act of war against a nuclear-armed power. The stakes were high, but with signature aplomb Boot assured readers it was "hard to imagine" the Russian government would react badly to the provocation."

"A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness."

"Most businesses -— like most of anything else in life -— fall somewhere between mediocre and good. Few are great. When you compare great companies with good ones, many widely practiced business norms turn out to correlate with mediocrity, not greatness. So, then, why would we want to import the practices of mediocrity into the social sectors?"

"Good is the enemy of great. That good is the enemy of great is not just a business problem. It is a human problem"

"For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with."

"The most effective leaders of companies in transition are the quiet, unassuming people whose inner wiring is such that the worst circumstances bring out their best. They're unflappable, they're ready to die if they have to. But you can trust that, when bad things are happening, they will become clearheaded and focused."

"It is better to first get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats, and then figure out where to drive."

"This is not a book about charismatic visionary leaders. It is not about visionary product concepts or visionary market insights. Nor even is it about having a corporate vision. This is a book about something far more important, enduring, and substantial. This is a book about visionary companies. What is a visionary company? Visionary companies are premier institutions -- the crown jewels -- in their industries, widely admired by their peers and having a long track record of making a significant impact on the world around them. The key point is that a visionary company is an organization -- an institution. All individual leaders, no matter how charismatic or visionary, eventually die; and all visionary products and services -- all "great ideas" -- eventually become obsolete. Indeed, entire markets can become obsolete and disappear. Yet visionary companies prosper over long periods of time, through multiple product life cycles and multiple generations of active leaders."

"There is a direct relationship between the absence of celebrity and the presence of good-to-great results. Why? First, when you have a celebrity, the company turns into “the one genius with 1,000 helpers.” It creates a sense that the whole thing is really about the CEO. At a deeper level, we found that for leaders to make something great, their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work and the company, rather than for themselves."

"Those who built the visionary companies wisely understood that it is better to understand who you are than where you are going — for where you are going will almost certainly change"

"Core values = The organization’s essential and enduring tenets – a small set of general guiding principles, not to be confused with specific cultural or operating practices, and not to be compromised for financial gain or short-term expediency."

"The good news is that one of the key elements of being a visionary company is strikingly simple: Good old-fashioned hard work, dedication to improvement, and continually building for the future will take you a long way... The bad news is that creating a visionary company requires huge quantities of good old-fashioned hard work, dedication to improvement, and continually building for the future. There are no shortcuts. There are no magic potions. There are no work-arounds. To build a visionary company, you’ve got to be ready for the long, hard pull. Success is never final."

"A majority of Republican caucusgoers are white, native-born and believe that electing a demagogue will make American white again."

"You’re supposed to be vetting, Iowa. You’re supposed to be culling out the crazies. You’re supposed to recognize the fraud of Ted Cruz and how Donald Trump is playing you. For all your touted small-town verities, you’re not doing your job. Your bull manure detector is broken."

"At least we’ll hear less about corn subsidies and Corinthians II, or is it Two Corinthians? Discuss. No, don’t! Stupid, stupid people. Again, that’s Trump talking, not me. He uses that word to describe nearly everyone not named Donald J. Trump. He’s presented no governing philosophy, no policy details, nothing resembling even-keeled judgment. He’s running a combustible celebrity feud fest, and you love it."

"Armenians are balking because they are skeptical of their own figures and accusations."

"The good people of Iowa have debated issues ranging from nuclear Armageddon to universal health care. And then there’s 2016, when the top two Republican candidates in the dwindling hours before caucusgoers pick a nominee are throwing around this question: “How stupid are the people of Iowa?” It was Donald Trump who first raised the issue of Hawkeye State imbecility, in a mocking reference to a crush that Iowans had on Ben Carson last fall. And it’s the odious Ted Cruz who has been using Trump’s very words to goad Iowans into proving that they are not, in fact, so stupid as to back an ego-inflamed reality television star who makes fun of them."

"The problem is not that the people of Iowa are stupid. They are not, by most measurements. It’s that Iowa looks nothing like the rest of America. As a result, the winners, more often than not, are nationally unelectable extremists."

"After statehood was lost, Armenians turned to their genocide playbook which exploited Christian bigotries and contempt for Ottoman Muslims. They remembered earlier successful anti-Ottoman propaganda."

"Henry Morganthau, was openly racist and devoted to propaganda."

"Immediately after the war, when events and memories were fresh, Armenians had no incentive to concoct high casualty figures or genocidal motivations for their deaths. Their objective was statehood."

"To make their case more convincing, Armenians hiked the number of deaths. They also altered their story line from having died as belligerents against the Turks to having perished like unarmed helpless lambs."

"From 280,000-750,000, Armenians initially raised their death count to 800,000 to test the credibility waters. ... They are now testing the waters at 2.5-3 million killed as their chances for a congressional genocide resolution recede. It speaks volumes that champions of the inflated death figures have no explanation for why Armenians on the scene would have erred. Think of the absurdity of discarding the current death count of Afghan civilians in the United States-Afghan war in favor of a number deduced in the year 2109!"

"Congress should reject that cynicism in defense of historical truth."

"To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and the number of Armenians who are claimed by Armenians and their echo chambers to have died in an alleged World War I genocide."

"Not a single one of those deaths necessarily falls within the definition of genocide in the authoritative of 1948. It requires proof that the accused was responsible for the physical destruction of a group in whole or in substantial part specifically because of their race, nationality, religion, or ethnicity. A political or military motivation for a death falls outside the definition."

"Armenians have a genuine tale of woe. It largely overlaps with the tale of tragedy and suffering that can be told by Ottoman Muslims during the war years."

"In parts of Europe, disbelief in the Armenian genocide allegation is a crime on par with Holocaust denial. But the Holocaust was proven before the Nuremburg Tribunal with the trappings of due process. Armenians, in contrast, have forgone bringing their genocide allegation before the International Court of Justice because it is unsupported by historical facts."

"A historically supportable resolution would have condemned massacres against Armenians with the same vigor, as it should have condemned massacres by Armenians against the innocent Muslim populations of the crumbling Ottoman Empire."

"Armenian crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Ottoman Turkish and Kurdish populations of eastern and southern Anatolia during World War I and its aftermath have been forgotten amidst congressional preoccupation with placating the vocal and richly financed Armenian lobby."

"The Iowa caucuses are no more predictive than a gasbag on an ethanol high swaying from a bridge in Madison County."

"Nothing seems to have changed from those days, when Christian lives were more precious than the lives of the “infidels.”"