John F Kennedy : 'Even though we never like it', On the importance of the press to a free society - 1962

December 1962, Washington DC, USA

President Kennedy had been on the end of much press criticism for the botched Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. 

Sandor Vanocur (NBC): You once said that you were reading more and enjoying it less. Are you still as avid a newspaper reader, magazine—I remember those of us who traveled with you on the campaign, a magazine wasn't safe around you.

JFK: Oh, yes. No, no, I think it is invaluable, even though it may cause you—it is never pleasant to be reading things that are not agreeable news, but I would say that it is an invaluable arm of the presidency, as a check really on what is going on in the administration, and more things come to my attention that cause me concern or give me information. So I would think that Mr. Khrushchev operating a totalitarian system, which has many advantages as far as being able to move in secret, and all the rest—there is a terrific disadvantage not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily, to an administration, even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn't write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn't any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.

Charles Haughey: 'We are living away beyond our means', televised address -

9 January 1980,

I wish to talk to you this evening about the state of the nation’s affairs and the picture I have to paint is not, unfortunately, a very cheerful one.

The figures which are now just becoming available to us show one thing very clearly. As a community we are living away beyond our means. I do not mean that everyone in the community is living too well. Clearly many are not and have barely enough to get by. But taking us all together, we have been living at a rate which is simply not justified by the amount of goods and services we are producing.

To make up the difference, we have been borrowing enormous amounts of money, borrowing at a rat which just cannot continue. As few simple figures will make this very clear.

At home, the government’s current income from taxes and all other sources in 1979 fell short of what was needed to pay the running costs of the state by about £520m million. To meet this and our capital programme, we had to borrow in 1979 over £1000 million. That amount equals to one-seventh of our entire national output.

The situation in regard to our trading with the outside world in 1979 was bad also. Our income from abroad fell short of what we had to pay out by about £760 million which led to a fall in our reserves.

To fully understand our situation, we must look not just on the home scene but also on the troubled and unstable world around us. There are wars and rumours or wars. There is political instability in some of the most important areas of the world. A very serious threat exists to the world’s future supply of energy. We can no longer be sure that we will be able to go on paying the prices now being demanded for all the oil and other fuels we require to keep our factories going and to keep our homes and institutions supplied with light, heat and power they need. We will, of course push exploration for our own oil ahead as rapidly as possible but in the short term the burden of oil prices will continue to be a crushing one.

All this indicates that we must, first of all, as a matter of urgency, set about putting our domestic affairs in order and secondly, improving our trade with the rest of the world on so far as we can do so.

We will have to continue to cut down on government spending. The government is taking far too much by way of taxes from individual members of the community. But even this amount is not enough to meet our commitments. We will just have to reorganise government spending so that we can only undertake the things which we can afford.

In trying to bring government expenditure within manageable proportions, we will, of course, be paying particular attention to the needs of the poorer and weaker sections of the community and make sure they are looked after. Other essential community expenditure will have to be undertaken also. But there are many things which will just have to be curtailed or postponed, until such time as we can get the financial situation right.

There is one things above all else which we can do to help get the situation right and which is entirely within our control. I refer to industrial relations. Any further serious interruption in production, or in the provision of essential services, in 1980 would be a major disaster. I believe that everyone listening to me tonight shares my anxiety about our situation in that respect.

Strikes, go-slows, work-to-rule, stoppages in key industries and essentials services, were too often a feature of life in 1979. They caused suffering and hardship; at time it looked as if we were becoming one of those countries where basic services could not be relied upon to operate as part of normal life.

Immediately following my election as Taoiseach, I received countless messages from all over the country from people in every walk of life, appealing to me to do something about this situation.

Let us clearly understand, however that this is not a one-sided affair. Managements that do not give first-class attention to their firm’s industrial relations, who ignore situations and let them drift into confrontation, are just as blameworthy as the handful of wild men who slap an unofficial picket and stop thousands of workers from earning their living.

Apportioning blame, however, is not going to get us anywhere. What we need is a new way forward and that is my primary purpose, as head of government, in talking to you tonight.

Stephen Colbert: 'Whether your side won or lost, we don't have to do this sh*t for a while', Election Night Live - 2016

8 November 2016, New York, USA

Now, I think we can agree that this has been an absolutely exhausting, bruising election for everyone and it has come to an ending that I did not imagine. We now all feel the way that Rudy Giuliani looks. Seeing this election, everyone's going to be saying has America lost its mind? And the answer is evidently 'back off buddy, we got 300 million guns and we're kind of stressed right now.'

By every metric, we are more divided than ever as a nation.... More than four in 10 voters say the other party's policies are so misguided they post a threat to the nation, but you know what? Everybody feels that way. And not only that, more than half of Democrats say the Republican party makes them afraid, while 49 percent of Republicans say the same about the Democratic party. So both sides are terrified of the other side, and I think that's why the voting booth has a curtain so you have some place to hide after the election is over.

So how did our politics get so poisonous? I think it's because we overdosed, especially this year. We drank too much of the poison. You take a little bit of it so you can hate the other side and it tastes kind of good and you like how it feels and there's a gentle high to the condemnation. And you know you're right, right? You know you're right.

When I was a kid, we didn't think about politics this much. A lot, but not this much. I grew up in Watergate. My first president was Nixon. I'd come home from school, couldn't watch The Beverly Hillbillies because there was Senator Sam Ervin with the big eyebrows talking about crimes committed in the White House. That was a great, dividing moment in American politics. That's the 'err' moment where we all stopped trusting each other, because Vietnam was wrapped up in that too. People were dying for political expediency... a cause they believed in. But as a kid, even with all that, we didn't talk about politics this much. We stuck with safe subjects.

Back then, you'd talk about religion at the dinner table or trying to guess which family member was gay, back when it mattered. Politics used to be something we thought about every four years, maybe every two years if you didn't have a lot of social life. You cared about the midterm elections. And that's good that we didn't think about it that much because it left room in our lives for other things and other people. I'm from a big family. Jimmy, Eddie, Mary, Billy, Margot, Jay, Peter, Paul, and Steven.
My mother was born two days before women could vote the first time in a presidential election. Again, we don't know what's going to happen, but I was thinking this was going to be the time that she got what she wanted. She told me at age 92, shortly before she died, 'oh I think I would vote for Hillary, this time, it's time.' She only voted for one Democrat in her entire life and that was Kennedy because spoiler alert: we're Catholic.
Politics is a lot of horse race, and horse race is gambling, and gambling is, according to the Bible, a sin. Because it itself is a poison. Worrying about winning and not what the consequences of winning is. And I think the people who designed our democracy didn't want us in it all the time. Informed, yes. Politicking all the time, I don't think so. Not divided that way. They designed an election that was meant to confuse us and bore us a little bit. That's why the electoral college exists. And CPSAN. And why the State of the Union begins with 20 minutes of shaking hands with grandpas.

But now politics is everywhere and that takes up precious brain space we could be using to remember all the things we actually have in common, so whether your side won or lost, we don't have to do this sh*t for a while.
So keep your American flag up, but you can take off your American flag hat. You can put away your 'I Voted' stickers, and you can get back to your life. And I'd like to try to end this election season right now by voting unanimously on a few things that all bring us together.

Fair warning: some of these are silly. But in the face of something that might strike you as horrible, I think laughter is the best medicine. You cannot laugh and be afraid at the same time, and the devil cannot stand mockery.