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THE FOUNDATION: FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

“Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”  - Thomas Jefferson

FOR THE RECORD

“The most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year. And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They’re all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%. These are trends that have been in place for some time. And if you are hoping they will pass, here’s the bad news: They may actually accelerate. The reason? The prices of many underlying raw materials have risen much more quickly still. Wheat prices, for example, have roughly tripled in the past three years. Sooner or later, the food companies are going to have to pass those costs on. Kraft saw its raw material costs soar by about $1.25 billion last year, squeezing profit margins. The company recently warned that higher prices are here to stay. Last month the chief executive of General Mills, Kendall Powell, made a similar point. The main reason for rising prices, of course, is the surge in demand from China and India. Hundreds of millions of people are joining the middle class each year, and that means they want to eat more and better food. A secondary reason has been the growing demand for ethanol as a fuel additive. That’s soaking up some of the corn supply... The emerging bull market in agricultural products is following in the footsteps of oil. A few years ago, many Americans hoped $2 gas was a temporary spike. Now it’s the rosy memory of a bygone age.”  - Brett Arends

RE: THE LEFT

“[Al] Gore’s new climate-change campaign calls itself ‘We,’ as in ‘wecansolveit.org.’ But its focus is not on how We can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions now. No, it focuses on how We can tell others how They should think about global warming. We’s focus is not on what We can do to reduce emissions, but what We can do to get Them to walk and talk in lockstep with the crowd. So when you click on ‘We are Succeeding,’ you don’t read about how entire towns have begun to carpool or that Hollywood biggies are giving up private jets to save the planet. No. For the most part, success is tallied by a convert count. As in: ‘Thousands Urge the Press to Ask Questions on Global Warming,’ ‘Stunning Response to Calls for a Global Treaty,’ ‘State Department Feels Public Pressure in Run-Up to Climate Conference.’ Then again, the global warming movement always has been more about symbols and professing belief than results.”  - Debra Saunders

INSIGHT

“We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money.”  - Davy Crockett

THE GIPPER

“[W]hen we talk about federalism here in Washington, we’re really talking about putting the States more and more in charge. And that means that if what we conservatives believe in, if the principles that we stand for, are to succeed and prevail, we will need more conservatives... in our State legislatures... I can’t help wondering about that old argument for federalism. It used to be said that if we gave the States more power they’d show that they had the maturity to handle as well as Congress handles its power. Talk about faint praise.”  - Ronald Reagan
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CULTURE

“Perhaps the greatest secular gift to the world by Judeo-Christian civilization is its seminal concept of the individual, which it raises above the tribe or the collective. In Genesis, we are told that man is made in the image of God. Deuteronomy tells us that ‘each human by his own sin is to be judged’ and ‘do not punish children for the sins of their fathers.’ And of course, the biblical life and teachings of Jesus reflect the deep importance of the individual. Thus was planted in the soil of the West our uniquely heightened respect for the individual. It is impossible to imagine Western civilization - and particularly America - without the existence in our culture of the instinctive respect for the individual to offset the more general human instinct to be subordinated in the tribe or the group. Conversely, there is no more dangerous incubus inserted into a Western nation than hostility or indifference to the inherent value and rights of the individual. But radicalized Islam places little value on the individual, while holding up for supreme value the interests of the group, particularly their view of the group called Islam. And it is this aggressive, assertive insistence by radicalized Muslims in the West to subordinate our inherent rights to their collective demands that slowly and more or less quietly is forcing Westerners to take sides in the radicals’ demands. The resolution of this developing conflict - if not managed by the elites in Western countries on behalf of indigenous Western rights - inevitably will result in unnecessary violence.”  - Tony Blankley

OPINION IN BRIEF

“The Democrats are eager to move on to an Obama-McCain race. But they can’t because no one seems to be able to show Hillary the door. Despite all his incandescent gifts, Obama has missed several opportunities to smash the ball over the net and end the game. Again and again, he has seemed stuck at deuce. He complains about the politics of scoring points, but to win, you’ve got to score points. ...[T]his is clearly a man who can’t wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites. That was made plain with his cri de coeur at the Glider Diner in Scranton when a reporter asked him about Jimmy Carter and Hamas. ’Why’ he pleaded, sounding a bit, dare we say, bitter, ‘can’t I just eat my waffle?’ His subtext was obvious: Why can’t I just be president? Why do I have to keep eating these gooey waffles and answering these gotcha questions and debating this gonzo woman? Before they devour themselves once more, perhaps the Democrats will take a cue from Dr. Seuss’s ‘Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!’... They could sing: ’The time has come. The time has come. The time is now. Just go... I don’t care how. You can go by foot. You can go by cow. Hillary R. Clinton, will you please go now! You can go on skates. You can go on skis... You can go in an old blue shoe. Just go, go, GO!”  - Maureen Dowd

GOVERNMENT

“Politicians love a ‘crisis.’ John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all think that the government should bail out homeowners who can’t pay their mortgages. When they say the government should do this, they mean the taxpayers, including those who are paying their mortgages. They also think the government should regulate the lending and investment industries further. Why? Because ‘crisis’ justifies making big government bigger. It’s why we now have a global warming ‘crisis’ and in previous years we had ‘crises’ over avian flu, the Y2K threat to computers, imaginary cancer spikes caused by pesticides, killer bees flying up from Mexico, and uncontrolled population growth leading to a ‘Population Bomb’ that will bring ‘riots and mass starvation’ by the year 2000. This is not to say that lots of homebuyers aren’t having a hard time. But the rapid rise and fall in housing values in some parts of the country - and the rippling consequences at each stage - do not justify scrapping what we know about economic success and turning to government control. Prosperity and stability come from people being free to innovate and produce - and yes, fail... The best regulator of economic activity and source of knowledge is free competition. Of course, government inhibits that in many ways. If we want to avoid disruptions like the current one, let’s undertake a wholesale examination of government intervention in the economy. Freedom, not control, is the ticket to success.”  - John Stossel

CAMPAIGN WATCH

“Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama’s problem. America is Mr. Obama’s problem. He has been tagged as a snooty lefty, as the glamorous, ambivalent candidate from Men’s Vogue, the candidate who loves America because of the great progress it has made in terms of racial fairness. Fine, good. But has he ever gotten misty-eyed over ... the Wright Brothers and what kind of country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything? How about D-Day, or George Washington, or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who flocked to Sutter’s Mill, who pushed their way west because there was gold in them thar hills? There’s gold in that history. John McCain carries it in his bones. Mr. McCain learned it in school, in the Naval Academy, and, literally, at grandpa’s knee. Mrs. Clinton learned at least its importance in her long slog through Arkansas, circa 1977-92. Mr. Obama? What does he think about all that history? Which is another way of saying: What does he think of America? That’s why people talk about the flag pin absent from the lapel. They wonder if it means something. Not that the presence of the pin proves love of country any cynic can wear a pin, and many cynics do. But what about Obama and America? Who would have taught him to love it, and what did he learn was loveable, and what does he think about it all?”  - Peggy Noonan
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POLITICAL FUTURES

“Take [William] Ayers. Obama makes it sound as if the relationship consists of having run into each other at the DMV. In fact, Obama’s political career was launched in a 1995 meeting at Ayers’ home. Obama’s own campaign says that they maintain ‘friendly’ relations. Obama’s defense is that he was 8 when Ayers and his Weather Underground comrades were planting bombs at the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol and other buildings. True. But Obama was 40 when Ayers said publicly that he doesn’t regret setting bombs. Indeed, he said, ‘I feel we didn’t do enough.’ Would you maintain friendly relations with an unrepentant terrorist?... As people begin to learn about this just-arrived pretender, the magic dissipates. He spent six weeks in Pennsylvania. Outspent Hillary more than two to one. Ran close to 10,000 television ads - spending more than anyone in any race in the history of the state - and lost by 10 points. And not because he insufficiently demagogued NAFTA or the other ‘issues.’ It was because of those ‘distractions’  - i.e., the things that most reveal character and core beliefs.”  - Charles Krauthammer

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“Mark Alexander’s three part ‘No ObamaNation’ series has been very revealing. While I am familiar with much of the material, there were a few surprises. I was especially pleased to see that you noted Accuracy In Media’s Cliff Kincaid’s exposure of ‘Frank’ as Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party-USA. It’s nice to see that the word is spreading. One day, we will probably have a black president, but Obama simply isn’t the one.”  - Locust, North Carolina

“You mention that ‘Barack Obama is the most radical leftist to ever make it this far in a presidential primary.’ Later in the issue, you refer to the Department of Education as ‘a cabinet-level department that shouldn’t even exist on the federal level. That’s an idea that I could not more wholeheartedly agree with, because I believe there is a correlation between federal meddling in education and the degradation of it to the point that the people cannot even recognize Obama and most of his party for the socialists they are.”  - Vancouver, Washington

“Bill Ayers said at the 2007 SDS reunion that the revolution could continue by talking nice, warm and fuzzy until ‘they were in a position to act...’ I don’t think it is accidental that Ayers would say this and have been launch director (of sorts) of Obama’s political career. It also was abundantly clear in his discussion with Charles Gibson about marginal tax rates on capital gains that Obama cannot or will not look at the results of rate changes, he is preoccupied with using high marginal rates to soak the ‘rich.’ Doctrine, not reality, is how the man acts. I would say thinks, but he isn’t. A good Marxist, right down the line.” - Pasadena, California

THE LAST WORD

“Asked why he would be friends with the likes of Weatherman Bill Ayers, Obama said: ‘The notion that... me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense.’ That’s a slick answer - even ‘Clintonian’! - but the problem is, Ayers and his Weatherman wife, Bernadine Dohrn, won’t stop boasting about their days as Weathermen. It’s not simply that they haven’t repented. To the contrary, those were their glory days! And Ayers isn’t just someone who lives in the neighborhood: He and Dohrn were there at the inception of Obama’s political career, hosting a fundraiser for Obama at their home back in 1995. Besides wanton violence, including a dozen bombings of buildings such as the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, historic statues and various police stations, the Weathermen’s ‘revolutionary’ activity consisted primarily of using the word ‘motherf -  - -’ a lot, dropping LSD, coming up with cutesy phrases - like ‘the Weather Underground’  - and competing over who could make the most offensive statements in public. (I also believe Dohrn may have set the North American record for longest stretch without bathing.) At one rally, Dohrn famously praised the Manson family for murdering Sharon Tate and others... Would that Timothy McVeigh had been so inept! If he had only said he bombed the building in Oklahoma City to protest American ‘imperialism,’ McVeigh, too, could be teaching at Northwestern University, sitting on a board with and holding fundraisers for presidential candidate B. Hussein Obama.” - Ann Coulter

Veritas vos Liberabit - Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot’s editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families - especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)