Quotes of the day

My understanding is that Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao Tse Tung were not motivated by profits.--Fred Smith

Hank Paulson and his team at Treasury are really incredible public servants. I wish the public could see how smart, focused, practical and creative they are behind the scenes, working under enormous pressure. It’s been impressive to watch. There’s no political agendas there, they’re just leveraging all of their experience and training to do whatever they can to stabilize the markets and financial system.--Ed Herlihy

Two readers wrote in this morning to suggest “Joe the Plumber” knows more about economics than do most VCs (many of whom are predisposed to Obama). I’m not in sync with their larger political point, but will grant this: A lot more plumbers have turned a profit in the past five years than have venture capitalists.--Dan Primack

Getting China to cooperate with "The West" to do anything is a tricky affair. After the whole "Those fireworks are absolutely not CGI" thing, and the "She's 18 17 15 14 13 years old. Wait, what's the age of consent again?" debacle, well, seeing them act in a concerted way with the West to preserve capitalism, well, that scares me quite a bit. Plus, it just plain looks bad.--Equity Private

In terms of sheer political talent, Obama is among the best candidates we have seen during the last half-century; he ranks, in my estimation, with JFK, Reagan, and Clinton. At times one could feel McCain’s frustration at his inability to land a direct shot against Obama; it reminds me in some respects of the frustration Republicans felt when doing political battle against President Clinton.--Peter Wehner

To be honest with you, that infuriates me. It's not right for someone to decide you made too much---that you've done too good and now we're going to take some of it back. That's just completely wrong. If you worked for it, if it was your idea, and you implemented it, it's not right for someone to decide you made too much.--Joe Wurzelbacher, on Barack Obama's tax plan

By the way, when Senator Obama said he would unilaterally renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Canadians said, 'Yeah, and we'll sell our oil to China.' You don't tell countries you're going to unilaterally renegotiate agreements with them.--John McCain

If there is any class of people who have a higher opinion of themselves than Wall Streeters, it's probably teachers. We've never met a teacher who didn't think teachers were underpaid and underappreciated. The truth is that education is overrated, teachers are overpaid and much of what passes for schooling is time-wasting warehousing of the young, with a bit of brain washing mixed in.--John Carney

Barack Obama may actually believe, as he stated yesterday, that Roe v. Wade "was rightly decided." But it may be very lucky for him, as the son born of that woman, that it hadn't been decided a dozen or so years earlier. That Obama may owe his very life to a pre-Roe legal regime that banned abortion is, to be sure, not necessarily a reason that he should favor that regime (though I can't help noting that Justice Thomas's critics recklessly accuse him of hypocrisy for opposing racial-preference plans that they say he benefited from). But it ought to lead Obama and others to think more carefully about the valuable role that protective abortion laws play.--Ed Whelan