The Patriot Post Brief 09-11

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief 09-11
From The Federalist Patriot
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THE FOUNDATION

"A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the object of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained." --James Madison

INSIGHT

"I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. -- From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy." --U.S. Senator Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

Rahm Emanuel the ballerina says, "Never allow a crisis to go to waste."

LIBERTY

"I'm trying to come to terms with Rule No. 1 of the Obama administration. 'Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,' White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told the New York Times right after the election. 'They are opportunities to do big things.' Over the weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience at the European Parliament, 'Never waste a good crisis.' Then President Obama explained in his Saturday radio and Internet address that there is 'great opportunity in the midst of' the 'great crisis' befalling America. Numerous commentators, including me, have pointed to this never-waste-a-crisis mantra as ideological evidence that Obama's budget priorities are a great bait-and-switch. He says he wants to fix the financial crisis, but he's focusing on selling his long-standing liberal agenda on health care, energy and education as the way to do it, even though his proposals have absolutely nothing to do with addressing the housing and toxic-debt problems that are the direct causes of our predicament. Indeed, some -- particularly on Wall Street -- would argue that his policies are making the crisis worse. But those policies aren't the real scandal, even though they're bad enough. The real scandal is that this administration thinks crises are opportunities for governmental power-grabs." --National Review editor Jonah Goldberg

FOR THE RECORD

"Obama's proposed budget shows all the vision, restraint and grace of a grasping committee chairman, using the cover of a still-unresolved banking crisis to push through a broad liberal wish list before anyone notices its costs and complications. The pledge of 'responsibility' has become the massive expansion of debt, the constant allocation of blame to others and the childish cultivation of controversy with conservative media figures to favorably polarize the electorate. The pledge of 'honesty' and 'sacrifice' has become the deceptive guarantee of apparently limitless public benefits at the expense of a very few. The pledge of 'bipartisan' cooperation has become an attempt to shove Republicans until their backs reach some wall of outrage and humiliation. None of this is new or exceptional -- which is the point. It is exactly the way things have always been done." --columnist Michael Gerson

THE GIPPER

"When I took the oath of office, I pledged loyalty to only one special interest group -- 'We the People.' Those people -- neighbors and friends, shopkeepers and laborers, farmers and craftsmen -- do not have infinite patience. As a matter of fact, some 80 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt wrote these instructive words in his first message to the Congress: 'The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled, it burns like a consuming flame.' Well, perhaps that kind of wrath will be deserved if our answer to these serious problems is to repeat the mistakes of the past." --Ronald Reagan

OPINION IN BRIEF

"Obama is ratcheting up his class warfare to levels that would make Marxists blush. This self-professed uniter is sowing distrust and divisiveness among Americans by demonizing groups of people and appealing to our baser instincts of envy and jealousy, in defiance of God's commandments against coveting. Obama is sending unmistakable signals that he has an unconventional notion -- to say the least -- about the American dream. It's as if he's saying, 'It's fine to aspire to financial success, but only to a point, beyond which you'll incur the punitive wrath of the federal government.' It's one thing to maintain that upper-income earners should pay higher tax rates because they are better able to shoulder the burden for essential government services. But it's constitutional blasphemy to claim that the tax code should be used as a weapon against the wealthy and that the state should be the tyrannical arbiter of how income is distributed." --columnist David Limbaugh

FAITH AND FAMILY

"What President Obama did when he reversed President Bush's executive order banning embryonic stem cell research was based not on solid science, but his desire to cater to the anti-life, pro-abortion forces and their media allies who helped elect him. In doing this, he created the potential for an outbreak of potentially fatal cancerous tumors caused by the therapeutic use of embryonic stem cells. Moreover, he killed another Bush presidential order that funded some of the most promising research on the creation of embryonic-like stem cells from harmless but potent adult stem cells. ... What most people are unaware of is that there are three types of stem cell research: there is embryonic stem cell research (ESC), there is induced pluripotent (IPSC) research, and adult stem cell research (ASC). When Barack Obama rescinded George Bush's ban on federal funding on certain types of embryonic stem cell research he also rescinded Bush's Executive Order 13435 which had provided federal funding for induced pluripotent stem cell research using harmless adult stem cells manipulated into mimicking embryonic stem cells without the risk ESC cells entail. This is where 72 different diseases are now being remedied or cured. There are no embryonic stem cells being used anywhere in the world on humans, with one tragic exception. A boy treated with embryonic stem cells for a rare genetic disease developed benign tumors, casting doubt on claims of the therapy's safety and effectiveness. ... There is a 100 percent mortality rate among lab animals that develop these tumors. That's why George Bush banned this lethal form of research that Barack Obama, who should have known better, has now legitimized by overturning this life-saving ban." --radio talk-show host and columnist Michael Reagan

[nChrist]

____________________________
The Patriot Post Brief 09-11
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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CULTURE

"What will constrain science? The president says it will be up to the National Institutes of Health to come up with 'guidelines' for the use of embryonic stem cells. He specifically came out against creating embryos for the purpose of human cloning. But the question is this, if there are to be no moral, ethical, or religious restraints on the initial experiments, why should anyone expect them to be invoked later? One can only be a virgin once. After a moral or ethical line has been erased, it is nearly impossible to re-draw it." --columnist Cal Thomas

GOVERNMENT

"What is new is the current notion of indulging people who refused to save for a rainy day or to live within their means. In politics, it is called 'compassion' -- which comes in both the standard liberal version and 'compassionate conservatism.' The one person toward whom there is no compassion is the taxpayer. The current political stampede to stop mortgage foreclosures proceeds as if foreclosures are just something that strikes people like a bolt of lightning from the blue -- and as if the people facing foreclosures are the only people that matter. What if the foreclosures are not stopped? Will millions of homes just sit empty? Or will new people move into those homes, now selling for lower prices -- prices perhaps more within the means of the new occupants? The same politicians who have been talking about a need for 'affordable housing' for years are now suddenly alarmed that home prices are falling. How can housing become more affordable unless prices fall? The political meaning of 'affordable housing' is housing that is made more affordable by politicians intervening to create government subsidies, rent control or other gimmicks for which politicians can take credit. Affordable housing produced by market forces provides no benefit to politicians and has no attraction for them. Study after study, not only here but in other countries, show that the most affordable housing is where there has been the least government interference with the market -- contrary to rhetoric." --Hoover Institution economist Thomas Sowell

RE: THE LEFT

"The White House war room ... has decided that the one burning issue on the minds of the American people in this time of economic uncertainty is (drum roll, please) who is the titular head of the Republican Party? They have decided it's Rush Limbaugh. If only it were true. Do you think for a second Rush Limbaugh would have nominated John McCain as the party's 2008 standard-bearer? Do you believe Rush would have signed off on the bailout bill George Bush and Henry Paulson cooked up last fall? Do you think Rush Limbaugh would have let Ted Kennedy write the 'No Child Left Behind' education bill, or pushed through the massive Medicare prescription drug program or campaigned for Arlen Specter for re-election? Rush Limbaugh believes in the U.S. Constitution -- including the Second Amendment -- and in limited government. He believes in low taxes. He is pro-life. He does not believe that marriage should be redefined to include two men, two women or any other bizarre combination. He believes in defending this country, and in controlling our borders. And he has a firm belief that our rights come from God, not from government. Anyone taking the time to read the Republican Party platform will quickly discover that these are the very principles advanced within it. It is a platform that has been carefully crafted over many years by grassroots volunteers who start in county conventions, then advance to state conventions, and finally to national conventions, where they spend their own time and money advancing a principled agenda they hope their candidates will champion on their behalf. Only to see it trashed by the likes of Bob Dole, George Bush or John McCain. The GOP should be so lucky as to have someone with Rush Limbaugh's ideology and passion running their party." --columnist Doug Patton

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

(To submit or to view reader comments visit our Letters to the Editor page.)

"No true patriot should ever forget what one of our Founders once remarked (and I paraphrase): He who would give up Freedom for security will find he shall have neither Freedom nor security." --Tool, Texas

"In the last edition you stated, 'Several Social Security Administration officials pleaded guilty Thursday to running 'a massive, decades-long Ponzi scheme ... Silly mistake on our part -- that was Bernard Madoff that bilked investors out of billions of dollars...' Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme. Two important differences: You get a better return in a Ponzi scheme and no one is forced to join a Ponzi scheme. Just call it the 'FDR Scheme' or the 'Bismark, Adolph, FDR Scheme.' FDR fits right in with those two great humanitarians." --Cheyenne, Wyoming

"I'm glad you brought up the episode of Sec. Clinton and the mistranslated word on that button she gave Russian Foreign Minister Lvov. But the mistake is even more egregious. That button didn't have 'the Russian word "pregruzka"...' as you reported. It had an English transliteration -- in other words, a phonetic rendering of a language into the alphabet used by another language. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet. That the secretary of state and none of her staff even recognized that they had the wrong alphabet on that button makes this even more disturbing. Not only is it the rankest incompetence, it sends a message to the other nations of the world that the U.S.A is hideously uneducated about and uninterested in any other culture. The treatment of British Prime Minister Brown serves to underscore that." --Longmont, Colorado

THE LAST WORD

"Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is the Jennifer Lopez of congressional travel -- fickle, demanding and notoriously insensitive to the time, costs and energy needed to accommodate her endless demands. On Tuesday, the indispensable government watchdog Judicial Watch released a trove of public records through the Freedom of Information Act on Pelosi's travel arrangements with the U.S. military. As speaker of the House, Pelosi is entitled to a reasonable level of military protection and transport. But it's the size of the planes, the frequency of requests and last-minute cancellations, and the political nature of many of her trips that scream out for accountability. And, of course, it's the double-barreled hypocrisy. There's the eco-hypocrisy of the Democratic leader who wags her finger at the rest of us for our too-big carbon footprints, and crusades for massive taxes and regulation to reduce global warming. Then there's the Bay Area hypocrisy of the woman who represents one of the most anti-military areas of the country soaking up military resources to shuttle her (and her many family members) across the country almost every weekend. ... Apparently, those anti-war protesters have no problem with evil military jets currying Pelosi and her massive entourages to the funerals of the late Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Charlie Norwood; foreign junkets to Rome; and politicized stops to Iowa flood sites to bash the Bush administration." --columnist Michelle Malkin

*****

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.)