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THE FOUNDATION: POVERTY

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”  - James Madison

FOR THE RECORD

“It wasn’t Bush, it wasn’t greedy corporations, or free trade, or history’s most over-predicted recession. It was not the oil companies, income inequality, or the excesses of cowboy capitalism. None of these things caused the unemployment rate to jump a half a percentage point in one month. Ask yourself a few questions: Why did unemployment surge at a time when unemployment compensation claims are historically low? More to the point, how could unemployment spike this much without a coinciding spike in corporate lay-offs? The answer to all of these questions is same: because very few people lost jobs last month. This huge jump in the size of the unemployed comes from new entrants to the economy - hundreds of thousands of them. In short, well over 600,000 people who were not job seekers in April became job seekers in May. And who starts looking for work at the end of Spring? That’s right - students. Hundreds of thousands of students are looking for work right now, and they’re not finding it. Congress is to blame. Last year Congressional Democrats (along with some Stockholm-Syndromed Republicans) passed the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which started a phased hike of the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25. Free market economists warned them that this would increase unemployment - that rapid increases in unemployment compensation hit teens and minorities the hardest. But the class-warriors are running the people’s house now, and they would hear none of that, so they took to the floor, let loose the dogs of demagoguery, and saddled America’s pizza parlors, municipal swimming pools, house painting businesses and lawn mowing services with a huge cost increase. Now, we see the perfectly logical outcome of wage controls - rising unemployment among the most economically vulnerable.”  - Jerry Bowyer

FAMILY

“Of those everyone loves to hate, few can compete with the deadbeat dad for longevity. How much do we hate him? While we’re counting the ways, Fox TV may try to help America organize its contempt and put a face on this loathsome character. ‘Bad Dads,’ redundant in these male-bashing times, is the name of a new reality show Fox is considering... As proposed, the show features a bounty hunter sort of character, which is not an entirely fictional device. Bounty hunters do exist and pursue noncustodial parents who are behind in child support payments - for a cut of the proceeds, sometimes as much as a third. In the pilot, Jim Durham, director of the National Child Support Center, tracks a struggling mother’s wealthy ex, whom he confronts at a country club. According to the program’s description, showdowns typically would be preceded by phone calls urging Dad to be a do-right man. When appeals to conscience fail, Durham investigates assets and does whatever is necessary - getting mortgages foreclosed and cars repossessed - until everybody gets paid. Executive producer JD Roth describes his creation as ‘justice.’ ‘It’s a show that depicts the sacrifice and heartache of incredibly brave women on behalf of their kids and then ends in the most gratifying way possible.’ Really? How gratifying can it be for children watching television to see fathers humiliated in front of the world?... Clearly, some men are sinners and some women are saints. But sometimes the reverse is true. In fact, noncustodial mothers are 20 percent more likely to default on child support than noncustodial fathers, according to U.S. Census data. But we don’t see a reality show aimed at humiliating moms. Is this because women, who have had fewer opportunities historically, are viewed as more deserving of the benefit of the doubt? Or is it because civilized people would strenuously object to the public ridicule of moms whose children may be watching? It’s preferable to imagine the latter. The question is why we feel no such decency toward men and the children who love them.”  - Kathleen Parker

CULTURE

“Almost the entire liberal-left Weltanschauung is predicated on portraying every group in America except white, male, heterosexual Christians as oppressed. Women are oppressed by men. Blacks and Hispanics are oppressed by whites. Gays are oppressed by straights. Non-Christians are oppressed by Christians. Of course, the fact is that American women have more opportunity and more equality than just about any women in the world today and certainly in history. Moreover, if either sex is ‘oppressed’ today, it is far more likely to be males. If women were incarcerated, let alone murdered, as disproportionately as men are; if only 40 percent of those getting a bachelor’s degree were female; if girls dropped out of high school at the rate males do, there would be a national outcry. It is men who are, in fact, suffering... What this thinking leads to is girls and women seeing themselves as victims, and almost as often to the emasculation of boys. (And then women looking to marry a man wonder where all the masculine men are).”  - Dennis Prager
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LIBERTY

“Average life expectancy is very highly correlated with per capita income, and income growth is very highly correlated with economic freedom... When politicians enact anti-economic growth regulations and taxes, even in the name of ‘global warming,’ ‘environmentalism,’ and ‘fairness,’ they are, in fact, shortening the lives of many of their fellow citizens and those in other countries... The political requirements to use corn and other food plants for fuel have driven up the price of food again for billions of people in the world, and those at the bottom of the income ladder are increasingly suffering from malnutrition. In sum, millions, if not billions, of people right now are unnecessarily having their lifespans reduced because of an overreaction to a projected climate change which may or may not have an affect on the lifespans of humans living sometime in the future... Probably many politicians think they are being responsible when they do things like imposing costly environmental taxes, prohibiting new mining for needed metals, and coming up with costly CO2 trading schemes as the Europeans have done, and which are now being debated in the U.S. Congress. Yet, all these actions impede the proper functioning of the market, reduce economic growth and lower life expectancies, in part, by reducing the funds available for medical research and treatments... The fundamental problem is that many politicians do not understand or, perhaps, do not wish to understand tradeoffs. That is, every time they increase a regulation or a tax, or require a government expenditure that reduces economic freedom and does not meet a reasonable cost benefit test, they are not engaged in just some annoyance, but they are costing real human life years.”  - Richard Rahn

THE GIPPER

“We should always remember that our strength still lies in our faith in the good sense of the American people. And that the climate in Washington is still opposed to those enduring values, those ‘permanent things’ that we’ve always believed in... Washington is a place of fads and one-week stories. It’s also a company town, and the company’s name is government, big government... In the discussion of federal spending, the time has come to put to rest the sob sister attempts to portray our desire to get government spending under control as a hard-hearted attack on the poor people of America.”  - Ronald Reagan

GOVERNMENT

“In April, the annual report for Planned Parenthood Federation of America revealed that the abortion giant had a total income of $1.02 billion - with reported profits of nearly $115 million. Taxpayers kick in more than $336 million worth of government grants and contracts at both the state and federal levels. That’s a third of Planned Parenthood’s budget. And what market-distorting results do we get for those government incentives? In 2006 alone: 289,750 abortions. Oil execs, tobacco execs, banking execs, pharmaceutical company execs and baseball players have all been hauled up before Congress for highly publicized whippings by crusading lawmakers. But the executives of Planned Parenthood have escaped government scrutiny and public accountability for their predatory behavior, dangerous medical practices, deception and deadly windfall... For whatever reason, Washington has turned a blind bipartisan eye to this bloody, government-funded business - and pro-life, limited-government conservatives in the Beltway have gone along with subsidizing it. ‘Obscene profits,’ indeed.”  - Michelle Malkin

OPINION IN BRIEF

“The irony too bitter to swallow is that Barack Obama’s identity politics trumped Hillary Clinton’s identity politics... No real disagreement over identity goals and targets would ever emerge in a debate between Obama and Hillary, who after all was coaching first base in 1993 when her husband nominated the identity-rights theorist Lani Guinier (now a Harvard Law professor) to head the Justice department’s civil rights division. It could come up in an Obama-McCain debate. I suspect these two have profoundly different notions of how America works. John McCain by instinct, biography and upbringing is prone to see America as a common civic culture. The vocabulary of ‘unjust’ class distinctions familiar to Obama is alien to the McCain worldview. Sen. McCain should think about this and figure out a way to talk about it. If Americans are going to affirm a president making appointments on the basis of race, gender, class and sexuality, they should know it in 2008, rather than 2009-2012.”  - Daniel Henninger
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POLITICAL FUTURES

“Obama’s unique persona and talents will have to be countered with a laser focus on his leftist views and radical history. If the race comes down to speaking ability, or likeability, Obama will win. No amount of charm, however, will change the fact that Obama is the most liberal candidate for president in a generation. He is a committed leftist with historical ties to radical organizations and parties. He offers nothing but the failed big government solutions of the past dressed up with fancy words and vague symbolism... Obama’s leftist positions should come as no surprise. After all, Obama sought the support of the far left New Party when he ran for state senate in Illinois. This is a party who felt the Democrats were not liberal enough and was organized by a collection of Marxist/socialists seeking government control of the economy. Obama has a clear history of working with these leftist groups in Chicago, and steering money and power their way. The question of this election is whether the American people are going to mistake Obama’s charm and charisma for real leadership and effective solutions; if they are going to ignore his troubling past because he gives a good speech and looks good on TV; if they are going to fall for the promise of a government who can give them everything.”  - Richard Collins

RE: THE LEFT

“It is the most amazing thing that a young black man who was just a few short years ago unknown to most of his countrymen - really, unknown - could... win the presidential nomination of one of our two great political parties. It is even more amazing that this historic news could be overshadowed by the personal drama and spite of the woman who lost to him. I like it that she spent the campaign accusing America of being sexist, of treating her differently because she is a woman, and then, when she lacked the grace to congratulate the victor, she sent her stewards out to tell the press she just needs time, it’s so emotional. In other words, she needs space because she’s a woman.”  - Peggy Noonan

CAMPAIGN WATCH

“An axiom. When voters watch a presumptive presidential nominee considering this or that running mate, they think: What if the president dies? When the presumptive nominee considers this or that running mate, he thinks: What if I live? Which brings us to the dotty idea that Barack Obama should choose to have Hillary Clinton down the hall in the West Wing, nursing her disappointments, her grievances and her future presidential ambitions while her excitable husband wanders in the wings of America’s political theater with his increasingly Vesuvian temper, his proclivity for verbal fender benders and his interesting business associates. That this idea survived her off-putting speech Tuesday night, after Obama won the right to choose a running mate, is evidence that many Democrats do not fathom the gratitude that less-blinkered Americans feel for Obama because he has closed the Clinton parenthesis in our presidential history.”  - George Will

THE LAST WORD

“Words mean nothing to liberals. They say whatever will help advance their cause at the moment, switch talking points in a heartbeat, and then act indignant if anyone uses the exact same argument they were using five minutes ago. When Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election by half a percentage point, but lost the Electoral College - or, for short, ‘the constitutionally prescribed method for choosing presidents’  - anyone who denied the sacred importance of the popular vote was either an idiot or a dangerous partisan. But now Hillary has won the popular vote in a Democratic primary, while Obambi has won under the rules. In a spectacular turnabout, media commentators are heaping sarcasm on our plucky Hillary for imagining the ‘popular vote’ has any relevance whatsoever. It’s the exact same situation as in 2000, with Hillary in the position of Gore and Obama in the position of Bush. The only difference is: Hillary has a much stronger argument than Gore ever did (and Hillary’s more of a man than Gore ever was).”  - 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.)