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THE FOUNDATION

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." --Thomas Paine

UPRIGHT

"At some point someone is going to file a suit in Federal court asking for clarity as to just where in the U.S. Constitution it is provided that the Executive Branch can buy a bankrupt car company." --political analyst Rich Galen

"So far, the Obama administration has yet to lay out its magical thinking on how the homegrown auto makers are to become 'viable' when required to subordinate every auto attribute that consumers find desirable in favor of achieving a passenger-car average of 39 miles per gallon by 2016. Nonetheless the answer has quietly seeped out: Taxpayers will write $5,000 or $7,000 rebate checks to other taxpayers to bribe them to buy hybrids and plug-ins at a price that lets Detroit claim it's earning a 'profit' on its Obamamobiles." --columnist Holman Jenkins Jr.

"The Obama administration is bent on becoming a major player in -- if not taking over entirely -- America's health-care, automobile and banking industries. Before that happens, it might be a good idea to look at the government's track record in running economic enterprises. It is terrible." --author John Steele Gordon

"Does anybody really believe that adding 50 million people to the public health-care rolls will not cost the government more money? About $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion more? At least. So let's be serious when evaluating President Obama's goal of universal health care, and the idea that it's a cost-cutter. Can't happen. Won't happen. Costs are going to explode." --economist Larry Kudlow

"Just how much government debt does a president have to endorse before he's labeled 'irresponsible'"? --columnist Robert Samuelson

"We live in an era in which conservatives have not effectively outlined the proper and limited role of government, and as a direct consequence of our failures, more and more of our citizens are turning to an ever-encroaching government in times of crisis. Yet to allow the balance of power in this nation to continue to shift further and further toward government and thus further and further from liberty is to surrender the very thing that makes America so historically unique." --South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

"Barack Obama was not the candidate in last year's presidential race who reminded us the most of a used-car salesman -- that distinction went to his eventual running mate, Joe Biden. Since taking office, though, President Obama has sounded increasingly like the nation's car-salesman-in-chief. Announcing his plan to instate strict caps on auto emissions -- a move his own administration says could add around $2,000 to the cost of each new vehicle by 2016 -- Obama said, 'If you buy a car, your investment in a more fuel-efficient vehicle as a result of this standard will pay off in just three years.' Obama's hard sell -- 'This is a winning proposition for folks looking to buy a car' -- is premised on some sketchy math. For one thing, experts outside the administration say the added per-vehicle cost could go as high as $8,000. You can't save money getting more miles to the gallon if you can't afford the car in the first place. For another, those estimated savings are based on the administration's ability to predict gas prices seven to ten years into the future. ... Then there is the evidence that tighter fuel-economy standards yield auto fleets that are more dangerous in accidents. The easiest way to make a car more fuel efficient is to make it lighter. Researchers from institutions as diverse as the Brookings Institution, the National Research Council, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute have shown that after the first federal fuel-economy standards went into effect in the 1970s, cars got lighter and traffic fatalities increased as a result. The National Research Council study found that federal fuel-economy standards contribute to about 2,000 deaths per year. The Rose Garden ceremony during which Obama announced his plan featured the participation of auto-industry leaders, who just a few years ago were adamantly opposed to stricter standards on the grounds that compliance would be too costly. A few nationalizations later, everyone is on board. ... This should serve as a lesson on the dangers of what the Troubled Asset Relief Program has become. The Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress. Now, thanks to the transformation of TARP into an all-purpose slush fund, they control a growing slice of the private sector, too." --National Review

INSIGHT

"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it." --President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)

"Every measure which establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives to it an administrative form creates thereby a class unproductive and idle, living at the expense of the class which is industrious and given to work." --French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

"The world ain't going to be saved by nobody's scheme. It's fellows with schemes that got us into this mess. Plans can get you into things, but you got to work your way out." --American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

DEZINFORMATSIA

Obamaism in a nutshell: "I don't think that, left to its own devices, capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: If you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child." --PBS's Tavis Smiley

More taxes, please: "If the gas tax reduces dependence on foreign oil and changes the foreign political dependency immediately, why not be for it, right now?" --ABC's Diane Sawyer

Cheney bashing continues: "Well some say [Dick] Cheney's refusal to move on reminds them of 'Groundhog Day' but you could also say it's like that more frighteningly relentless Glenn Close in 'Fatal Attraction.' Like Cheney, she was not gonna be ignored." --MSNBC's Chris Matthews ++ "Cheney has replaced Sarah Palin as Rogue Diva. Just as Jeb Bush and other Republicans are trying to get kinder and gentler, Cheney has popped out of his dungeon, scary organ music blaring, to carry on his nasty campaign of fear and loathing." --New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd

Belly laugh of the week: "A stupid, silly, one-line aside. I think it's an incorrect statement to say I was, in any way, trying to disparage legitimate protests. I don't think it's my job to disparage, or encourage, which oddly other networks seemed to be doing. Protest is the great right of all Americans, and it's not my job in any way to make fun of people or disparage what they're doing. If people took offense to that and felt that I was disparaging their legitimate right to protest, and what they were doing, then that is something I truly regret, because I don't believe in doing that." --CNN's Anderson Cooper claiming to regret -- but not actually apologizing for his vile comments last month about the participants of the Tea Parties

Newspulper Headlines:

Just So They Don't Waterboard Her: "Gingrich: Pelosi Should Be Suspended, Probed" --NewsMax.com

Aren't They Great Enough Already?: "Obama Seeks $475M to Improve the Great Lakes" --Detroit Free Press

Breaking News From 1971: "Savage Appeals to Hillary Clinton" --WorldNetDaily.com

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: "Cops: NY Amish Youth Had Beer in Horse-Drawn Buggy" --Associated Press

News of the Tautological: "Industry Breathes Life Into Economy" --Indianapolis Star

News You Can Use: "One Way to Kill Fire Ants: Turn Them Into Headless Zombies" --Houston Chronicle

Bottom Stories of the Day: "Al Gore's Hypocrisy Astounding" --RealClearPolitics.com

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)

THE DEMO-GOGUES

If only he'd take his own advice: "We can't keep on just borrowing from China. We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children's future with more and more debt." --Barack Obama **"This is the guy who has just saddled us with $11 trillion in budget deficits for the next 10 years, warning that his own policies have wrecked the U.S. economy and that they cannot be continued. He threw himself under the bus." --radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh

Speak for yourself: "We've become accustomed to our economic dominance in the world, forgetting that it wasn't reckless deals and get-rich-quick schemes that got us where we are, but hard work and smart ideas -- quality products and wise investments. We started taking shortcuts. We started living on credit, instead of building up savings." --Barack Obama **"Uh, what do you mean 'we,' kemo sabe?" --WSJ columnist James Taranto

Making up numbers: "In the first 77 days of the two-year Recovery Act program, 150,000 jobs have been created or saved." --Vice President Joe Biden, who, with the caveat "saved," can pretty well claim whatever he wants

Who's house?: "Now, movies I've been doing OK [with] because it turns out we got this nice theater on the ground floor of my house." --Barack Obama, who lives in the people's White House

Again, take your own advice, Barack: "We too often seek advantage over others. We cling to outworn prejudice and fear those who are unfamiliar. Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice." --B.O. at Notre Dame

VILLAGE IDIOTS

Liberal feel-good rhetoric: "Remember that you are blessed. Remember that in exchange for those blessings, you must give something back. You must reach back and pull someone up. You must bend down and let someone else stand on your shoulders so that they can see a brighter future." --Michelle Obama at the University of California, Merced commencement **"In our society, there are people who should give back. These are the thieves and social parasites who live forcibly at the expense of others. They prey on their fellow man. Some do it privately through theft, fraud and robbery. Others use the political mechanism whereby Congress enriches them at the expense of others. If giving back means anything, it should apply to thieves and social parasites, not those who became wealthy by serving us." --economist Walter E. Williams

From the scaremongering gun grabbers: "Families should not have to stare down loaded AK-47s on nature hikes." --Brady campaign president Paul Helmke on the credit card bill that passed the Senate Tuesday, which contains a provision allowing concealed carry (of pistols, we might add) in national parks

Look who's talking: "I waited two years after I left office to make statements that were critical. Talk about somebody that shouldn't be talking about making the country less safe, invading a country that did not attack us and posed no serious threat to us at all." --Al Gore on Dick Cheney

Speaking of terrorism: "I believe sometimes the war on terror is really a euphemism for the wars for oil and natural gas. Maybe if it were the Hindus who had oil under their feet there would be Hindu fundamentalists and extremists. ... America has the opportunity once again to lead -- to lead the world against the new terror: climate change." --Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, director of outreach at the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Virginia

SHORT CUTS

"Let's summarize the situation: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was embarrassed by Dana Bash of CNN; was teased by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post; was taken to task by Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal; and, was called a liar by CIA director Leon Panetta. How's that for about five days in the life of the Speaker?" --political analyst Rich Galen

"In discussing the sort of person he'd like to appoint to the Supreme Court, replacing Justice Souter, who, in announcing his retirement, made his first good decision in 19 years, President Obama emphasized compassion. I'm afraid that's exactly the sort of statement you have to expect when you put an ex-community organizer in a job above his pay grade. Compassion should no more be a prerequisite for sitting on the Supreme Court than the ability to balance a basketball on one's nose or to juggle flatware." --columnist Burt Prelutsky

"The U.S. Mint honored Abe Lincoln Friday with a new image of him on the penny. It shows him sitting on a log as a young man, studying a textbook. The teachers' union is angry at the mint for advertising that you can get a better education without them." --humorist Argus Hamilton

Jay Leno:

This week marks the 54th anniversary of the invention of the credit card. See, before that, people practiced something called "living within their means" -- a foolish, foolish, outmoded way of life.

General Motors announced they're closing over a thousand dealerships. A lot of people are blaming GM's new CEO, some guy named Barack Obama.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that she was misled by the CIA on waterboarding. She spent eight years complaining about how dumb President Bush was and the minute she's in trouble, she says he fooled her.

[California's] governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, wants to "legalize the marijuana." He says that taxes on it will help raise money to balance the budget. Now, see, this can go one of two ways. Either California raises some revenue and balanced the budget, or California still goes broke, but everybody is too stoned to care. So, you see, it is a win-win, really.

*****

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.)