The Patriot Post Brief 08-49

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief 08-49
From The Federalist Patriot
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THE FOUNDATION

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

INSIGHT

"All socialism involves slavery.... That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is -- How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit?" --Herbert Spencer

OPINION IN BRIEF

"One kind of economic distortion ... will come from the political directives issued by newly empowered politicians. First, bank presidents are gravely warned by one senator after another about 'hoarding' their bailout money. But hoarding is another word for recapitalizing to shore up your balance sheet to ensure solvency. Is that not the fiduciary responsibility of bank directors? And isn't pushing money out the window with too little capital precisely the lending laxity that produced this crisis in the first place? Never mind. The banks will knuckle under to the commissars of Capitol Hill. They control the purse. Prudence will yield to politics. Even more egregious will be the directives to a nationalized Detroit. Sen. Charles Schumer, the noted automotive engineer, declared 'unacceptable' last week 'a business model based on gas.' Instead, 'We need a business model based on cars of the future, and we already know what that future is: the plug-in hybrid electric car.' The Chevy Volt, for example? It has huge remaining technological hurdles, gets 40 miles on a charge and will sell for about $40,000, necessitating a $7,500 outright government subsidy. Who but the rich and politically correct will choose that over a $12,000 gas-powered Hyundai? The new Detroit churning out Schumer-mobiles will make the steel mills of the Soviet Union look the model of efficiency. The ruling Democrats have a choice: Rescue this economy to return it to market control. Or use this crisis to seize the commanding heights of the economy for the greater social good. Note: The latter has already been tried. The results are filed under 'History, ash heap of.' " --columnist Charles Krauthammer

CULTURE

"We are witnessing a new hysterical style, in which the Baby Boomer 'me generation' that now runs America jettisons knowledge of the past and daily proclaims that each new development requires both a radical solution and another bogeyman to blame for being mean or unfair to them. We haven't seen such frenzy since the Y2K sham, when we were warned to stock up on flashlights and bottled water as our nation's computers would simply shut down on Jan. 1, 2000 -- and with them the country itself. Get a grip. Much of our current panic is psychological, and hyped by instantaneous electronic communications and second-by-second 24-hour news blasts. There has not been a nationwide plague that felled our workers. No earthquake has destroyed American infrastructure. The material United States before the September 2008 financial panic is largely the same as the one after. Once we tighten our belts and pay off the debts run up by Wall Street speculators and millions of borrowers who walked away from what they owed others -- and we can do this in a $13 trillion annual economy -- sanity will return." --Hoover Institution historian Victor Davis Hanson

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief 08-49
From The Federalist Patriot
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GOVERNMENT

"For years, using the powers of the Community Reinvestment Act and other regulatory powers, along with threats of legal action if the loan approval rates varied from the population profile, politicians have pressured banks and other lending institutions into lending to people they would not lend to otherwise. Yet, when all this blows up in our faces and the economy turns down, what is the answer? To have more economic decisions made by politicians, because they choose to say that 'deregulation' is the cause of our problems. Regardless of how much suffocating regulation may have been responsible for an economic debacle, politicians have learned that they can get away with it if they call it 'deregulation.' No matter what happens, for politicians it is 'heads I win and tails you lose.' If we keep listening to the politicians and their media allies, we are all going to keep losing, big time." --Hoover Institute economist Thomas Sowell

GOD GRANTS LIBERTY

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever." --Thomas Jefferson

THE GIPPER

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream--the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.' " --Ronald Reagan

LIBERTY

"Congratulations, tolerance mau-mauers: Your shakedown of a Christian-targeted dating website worked. Homosexuals will no longer be denied the inalienable 'right' to hook up with same-sex partners on eHarmony. What a landmark triumph for social progress, eh? New Jersey plaintiff Eric McKinley can now crown himself the new Rosa Parks -- heroically breaking down inhumane barriers to Internet matchmaking by forcing a law-abiding private company to provide services it was never created to provide. 'Men seeking men' has now been enshrined with 'I have a dream' as a civil rights rallying cry of the 21st century. Bully for you, Mr. McKinley. You bully. Neil Warren, eHarmony's founder, is a gentle, grandfatherly businessman who launched his popular dating site to support heterosexual marriage. A 'Focus on the Family' author with a divinity degree, Warren encourages healthy, lasting unions between men and women of all faiths, mixed faiths or no faith at all. Don't like what eHarmony sells? Go somewhere else. There are thousands upon thousands of dating sites on the Internet that cater to gays, lesbians, Jews, Muslims, Trekkies, runners, you name it. No matter. In the name of tolerance, McKinley refused to tolerate eHarmony's right to operate a lawful business that didn't give him what he wanted. He filed a discrimination complaint against eHarmony with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights in 2005. To be clear: eHarmony never, ever refused to do business with anyone. The company broke no laws. Their great 'sin' was not providing a politically correct service that a publicity-seeking gay plaintiff demanded they provide." --columnist Michelle Malkin

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief 08-49
From The Federalist Patriot
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RE: THE LEFT

"On ABC's 'Good Morning America,' co-host Robin Roberts couldn't stop gushing about the Obama cabinet picks: 'Some would say it's a team of rivals, a la President Lincoln, or is a better comparison a team of geniuses as FDR did?' George Stephanopoulos unsurprisingly agreed: 'We have not seen this kind of combination of star power and brain power and political muscle this early in a cabinet in our lifetimes.' Smelling salts all around, please. If this proposed incoming Obama administration wasn't so stuffed with Clintonites, starting with Hillary, that line might have sounded insulting to Bill Clinton. Sixteen years ago, all these same tributes were being offered to Bill Clinton's superior intelligence, Bill Clinton's grace under pressure and a superior incoming Clinton staff. Even Stephanopoulos was ogled back then over the charisma of his 'power whisper.' ... Conservatives and Republicans have a very important role to play now in holding this alleged Team of Geniuses accountable. This disgraceful 'news' media won't, period. They will line up to serve Obama only slightly less explicitly than Chris Matthews, who typically blurted out that his new job as a television host was to ensure President Obama's success. We say 'blurted out' because Matthews tends to ... blurt. But give him credit for one thing: the courage to admit the attitude of servitude that his colleagues so piously deny." --Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell

FAITH AND FAMILY

"Writing at Slate, a Catholic, Melinda Hennenberger (who apparently voted for Obama), worries about the President-elect's strong pro-abortion views -- suddenly realizing that if he was serious about his promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, it might well mean either that staff at Catholic hospitals are forced to perform abortions against their will or (in her view, the more likely scenario) Catholic hospitals across the country will simply close their doors. Well, yes. Could it be that pro-life Obama supporters are suddenly realizing that pro-lifers -- including Archbishop Charles Chaput and other prominent Catholic clergy -- weren't kidding when they called Barack Obama the most extreme pro-abortion politician ever in mainstream American politics? She ends her piece like this: 'At the very moment when Obama and his party have won the trust of so many Catholics who favor at least some limits on abortion, I hope he does not prove them wrong. I hope he does not make a fool out of that nice Doug Kmiec, who led the pro-life charge on his behalf. I hope he does not spit on the rest of us -- though I don't take him for the spitting sort -- on his way in the door. I hope that his appointment of Ellen Moran, formerly of EMILY's List, as his communications director is followed by the appointment of some equally good Democrats who hold pro-life views.' It's not clear what in the substance of President-elect Obama's voting record makes such hopes at all reasonable. And somehow, I doubt this was the kind of 'hope' Obama supporters had in mind when they voted for him." --Carol Platt Liebau

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

"Thank you for a truly inspired and encouraging Thanksgiving edition. I wish to point out that John Winthrop acquired his "shining city on a hill" from none other than the Greatest Teacher, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Winthrop's phrase is a slight adaptation of Jesus' words in Matthew 5:14: "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden;" (New American Standard Bible). Our beloved President Reagan never wore his religion on his sleeve. He was too clever for those who were seeking quick and easy ways to slander and criticize him. Rather than quoting from The Book, he quoted others who quoted from or paraphrased The Book, thus confounding his opponents. The more you educate me about Ronald Reagan's wit and political acumen, the more I feel privileged and honored to have been a active duty Soldier serving him as Commander and Chief, while we fought together and won the longest war, and arguably the costliest war (in terms of dollars and GDP) in our nation's history, the Cold War. (The current Global War on Terror may exceed the length and costs of the Cold War. Certainly has already in terms of U.S. service members killed and wounded.) But for now, let me express that among the many blessings I am thankful to God are the arrival of your erudite and perspicacious editorials and selected news. Without a doubt, your publication is the best concise summary of the best in conservative principles along with most precise and explicit warnings of liberal madness. Thank you. May God bless you, your staff, and all your dear ones. May God bless the USA." --Col. U.S. Army

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief 08-49
From The Federalist Patriot
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FOR THE RECORD

"Candidate Obama maligned the Bush tax cuts for benefiting the rich. But President-elect Obama now intends to retain all the tax cuts, keeping the lower rates on the 'rich' until they expire in 2011 -- a far cry from his campaign promises. What about Bush's 'stupid' Iraq war? Obama now wants Bush's secretary of defense, Robert Gates, to stay. Huh? Gates supported the successful surge and the change in counterinsurgent strategy. Obama opposed the surge, attempted to stop it, and predicted failure. Candidate Obama promised to have combat troops out within a year or 16 months of his administration, but President Bush and the Iraqi government now tentatively agree to have all troops out by 2011, a timetable unfathomable but for Bush's courageous and ultimately successful decision to surge. What about the Guantanamo Bay detainees, the 'evil' interrogation techniques and 'unlawful' wiretaps? Obama -- actually faced with governing -- seems now to understand the complex legal questions Bush grappled with. Gitmo contains some really, really bad people, and Obama's security advisers now appreciate the complex legal and logistical problems. ... So where does this leave us? Bush wasn't so evil after all. And running for and governing as president are two different things. But don't expect the Obama-loving media to notice or care." --radio talk show host and author Larry Elder

THE LAST WORD

"If Obama wants his detention of Islamic terrorists to be dramatically different from Bush's Guantanamo, my suggestion is that he cut off -- so to speak -- the expensive prosthetic limb procedures now being granted the detained terrorists. Far from being sodomized and tortured by U.S. forces -- as Obama's base has wailed for the past seven years -- the innocent scholars and philanthropists being held at Guantanamo have been given expensive, high-tech medical procedures at taxpayer expense. If we're not careful, multitudes of Muslims will be going to fight Americans in Afghanistan just so they can go to Guantanamo and get proper treatment for attention deficit disorder and gotcha143. After being captured fighting with Taliban forces against Americans in 2001, Abdullah Massoud was sent to Guantanamo, where the one-legged terrorist was fitted with a special prosthetic leg, at a cost of $50,000-$75,000 to the U.S. taxpayer. Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, Massoud would now be able to park his car bomb in a handicapped parking space! No, you didn't read that wrong, because the VA won't pay for your new glasses. I said $75,000. I would have gone with hanging at sunrise, but what do I know? Upon his release in March 2004, Massoud hippity-hopped back to Afghanistan and quickly resumed his war against the U.S. Aided by his new artificial leg, just months later, in October 2004, Massoud masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan working on the Gomal Zam Dam project. This proved, to me at least, that people with disabilities can do anything they put their minds to. Way to go, you plucky extremist! Massoud said he had nothing against the Chinese but wanted to embarrass Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for cooperating with the Americans. You know, the Americans who had just footed -- you should pardon the expression -- a $75,000 bill for his prosthetic leg." --columnist 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.)