The Patriot Post Brief 9-35

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief 9-35
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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THE FOUNDATION

"Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be..." --John Adams

CULTURE

"Chicago politics is not about ideology. It is about, 'Who Gets What, When, and How,' to quote the inimitable Harold D. Laswell, one of the outstanding political theorists of the last century. The sine qua non of Chicago politics is power, getting it and keeping it. Everything else is incidental. Even corruption is a byproduct of power and is functional only if it enables you to stay in power. In Chicago politics, you don't make waves, you don't back losers, and you 'don't talk to nobody nobody sent.' Chicago politics is always about hierarchy and centralization. ... If you want to understand Obama's health care policy, you need to start where Obama starts. You need to start with Chicago. You need to look at constituent interests. Obama won in 2008 because, among other things, he mobilized the electoral periphery. He mobilized young voters and minority voters, people who traditionally had a lower probability of showing up on Election Day. Chicago politics is about mobilizing the vote. 'Vote early and often' is the city's sardonic refrain. Obama needs his newly socialized base. He needs them to keep coming to the polls. In the vein of Chicago politics, he needs to deliver benefits to them. Unrewarded, the electoral periphery will revert back to apathy. Health care is a reward to this base of people who are on the economic as well as political periphery. ... Obama understands that his objective is to provide his base with the spoils of power -- in this case insurance. ... If all that Obama wanted were to insure those who fall between the cracks, he could put them into the same wonderful program that Congress created for itself by subsidizing their premiums. This would neither require a thousand pages of legislation nor a new series of bureaucracies. But building a new power base resulting from the mobilization of the political and economic periphery requires redefining the nation's health problems as the nation's health catastrophe. Health reform is Chicago politics on a national level." --University of Cincinnati emeritus professor of political science Abraham Miller

INSIGHT

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. ... We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" --George Orwell, "1984"

FAITH AND FAMILY

"I only want the best for everyone. My beliefs in the Bible, and freedom and capitalism are only ideals that bless people. And, they worked real good from 1776 to 2008 ... with a hitch in the 60s where immorality, free love, the pill, drugs, divorce, and the breakup of the family started the thread of morality unraveling. You can't have a great country without the spirit of The Ten Commandments hovering in the hearts of its citizens. ... Our house was always immaculate and our front yard always had freshly mown grass. My father took us to church 3 times a week. ... My father taught me how to read when I was 5, so that when I started first grade I was the best reader. I skipped second grade. My father played the piano every night and taught us show tunes, and how to harmonize. My father taught us how to water ski. ... My father made us feel safe. He gave us confidence and a history and a future. ... Obama didn't have a father. Maybe that's why he sees the government as Daddy." --Big Hollywood blogger Victoria Jackson

GOVERNMENT

"'Choice, competition, reducing costs -- those are the things that I want to see accomplished in this health reform bill,' President Obama told talk-show host Michael Smerconish last week. Choice and competition would be good. They would indeed reduce costs. If only the president meant it. Or understood it. In a free market, a business that is complacent about costs learns that its prices are too high when it sees lower-cost competitors winning over its customers. The market -- actually, the consumer -- holds businesses accountable and keeps them honest. No 'public option' is needed. So the hope for reducing medical costs indeed lies in competition and choice. Today competition is squelched by government regulation and privilege. But Obama's so-called reforms would not create real competition and choice. They would prohibit it." --ABC's "20/20" co-anchor John Stossel

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief 9-35
From The Federalist Patriot
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RE: THE LEFT

"Ultimately, the Left's 'scaled back' version of health-care reform will sprout other ominous features. For starters, we'll need armies of federal bureaucrats to draw up and enforce thousands of pages of new insurance regulations. And then we'll need some government muscle to enforce the individual and employer mandates -- everything from penalties, fees, and fines to the use of collection agencies and garnishment of wages. As candidate Obama himself said: 'Without an enforcement mechanism, there is no mandate. It's just a political talking point.' So there we have it: the slippery slope of health reform." --Heritage Foundation vice president Michael G. Franc

POLITICAL FUTURES

"After the lionization [of Ted Kennedy] is over; the casket is removed from the Capitol Rotunda, and the senator is laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery next to his brothers, the Democrats at the prodding of Rahm 'never waste a crisis' Emanuel will come out with a revised health care plan in honor of the late and 'great' Ted Kennedy. As Thomas Paine once wrote, 'these are the times that try men's souls', our elected Republican representatives in Congress are going to be tested. Will they be able to stand up to the vitriol sure to come if they oppose TeddyCare? Will they be able to overcome the wave of emotion during the Teddy hero-worship that will no doubt come from the Democrats and their public relations firm, the mainstream media? The Republican Party will no doubt crumble under the pressure if we the people are not there to man the ramparts of their crumbling spines. We conservatives are going to have to be the badge of courage our Republican Cowardly Lions are going to need in the days ahead." --columnist David Jeffers

FOR THE RECORD

"Ever notice how Henry Waxman's cherubic face pops up so often? Most recently, he's been in the news with his letter to 52 health insurance executives demanding that they cough up mountains of data about their compensation, expense accounts, retirement benefits, travel schedules, and shoe sizes. Okay, not that last item, but you get the drift here. Recipients of the Waxman letter -- which was co-signed by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-MI -- have no choice but to comply. So if Waxman -- who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee -- finds even the faintest whiff of scandal in the furthest corner of the health insurance industry, expect to be treated to the hollow spectacle of yet another congressional show trial. Soft tyranny is never so happy as when its beaming countenance is brightened by possession of a federal subpoena and the prospect of jail it poses for those who defy the order from on high to produce whatever is demanded." --Washington Examiner editorial page editor Mark Tapscott

LIBERTY

"There is now just one group of people exempt from President Obama's worldwide ban on torture: the men and women of the CIA. By authorizing Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to determine whether a full criminal investigation of CIA employees and contractors is warranted for the manner in which they interrogated captured terrorists, the President has thrown his power and support behind those far-left ideologues -- in Congress and elsewhere -- who believe that the CIA is a bigger threat to our country than al Qaeda. ... Look hard at everything President Obama has said and done -- [last] week's attack on the CIA, his banishment of the phrase 'Global War on Terrorism' and its replacement with the milquetoast 'overseas contingency operations,' his apologetic Cairo speech, his seeming indifference to the recent bombings in Iraq, his unwillingness to seize the opportunity of the students' uprising in Iran to knock over that dangerous regime, his trashing of our special relationship with Israel, and all the rest including his longtime personal relationships with vicious America-haters like Bill Ayers and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright -- and the conclusion is inescapable: President Obama is throwing the switch from offense back to defense, and returning the US to its September 10 mindset." --author and former Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence (Reagan administration) Herbert E. Meyer

THE GIPPER

"Now more than ever it is vital that the United States not back down from its efforts to develop and deploy strategic defenses. It is technologically feasible, strategically necessary and morally imperative. For if our nation and our precious freedoms are worth defending with the threat of annihilation, we are surely worth defending by defensive means that ensure our survival." --Ronald Reagan

[nChrist]

____________________________
The Patriot Post Brief 9-35
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
____________________________

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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

"Thank you for your honesty in reporting after Ted Kennedy's death. As a Massachusetts resident, it appalled me that we continued to elect him to term after term, especially after he killed Mary Jo Kopechne. The fawning coverage has been nauseating since his death. Finally some truth about him." --Braintree, Massachusetts

"I have just read Mark Alexander's article on Ted Kennedy and wish that he shown some restraint in going after a man who just died. I disagreed with many of Mr. Kennedy's actions and positions but there will be plenty of time to examine his life in the weeks to come." --Park Ridge, Illinois

Editor's Reply: We are inclined to use the same lens to examine Kennedy's life after his death that we did before his death.

"The greatest insult here is to those interred in National Cemetery who fought, bled and died for their country; they now shall be forced to spend eternity with a man of inherited privilege whose greatest achievement was to have spent nearly half a century suckling at the public teat." --Jupiter, Florida

"Let's see how much of the 'liberal lion's' wealth is given to all those liberal welfare programs he so espoused and supposedly had such affection for. Oh wait, he shifted the majority of his wealth to trusts and other shelters to shield it from the federal and estate taxes he was also so fond of! Typical leftist, liberal philanthropy: keep it for yourself, shelter it from government taxes, and instead take it from others for self-serving purposes." --Fredericksburg, Pennsylvania

"My office is near the Kennedy Library in Boston. Friday, the The New York Times reported, 'For the second straight day, immigrants, tourists and Bostonians alike stood in long, snaking lines around the presidential library -- some waiting hours for only a minute or so to view the closed coffin.' (Amazingly, it was draped with an American flag!) Indeed, Thursday evening, there were some folks lined up to see the casket. But I can tell you that Friday morning, the day the Times article was published, there were NO lines waiting to see the casket a couple hours after the library opened for visitors. There were lots of stanchions outside on this beautiful morning, but no crowd to control. Inside, there were about 15 visitors, four of whom were Park Rangers." --Boston, Massachusetts

Editor's Reply: Well, you would think that Kennedy had enough supporters without jobs, or wealthy enough not to need jobs, that the crowd would have been overflowing.

THE LAST WORD

"With the Democrats getting slaughtered -- or should I say, 'receiving mandatory end-of-life counseling' -- in the debate over national health care, the Obama administration has decided to change the subject by indicting CIA interrogators for talking tough to three of the world's leading Muslim terrorists. Had I been asked, I would have advised them against reinforcing the idea that Democrats are hysterical bed-wetters who can't be trusted with national defense while also reminding people of the one thing everyone still admires about President George W. Bush. But I guess the Democrats really want to change the subject. Thus, here is Part 2 in our series of liberal lies about national health care. There will be no rationing under national health care. Anyone who says that is a liar. And all Democrats are saying it. (Hey, look -- I have two-thirds of a syllogism!) Apparently, promising to cut costs by having a panel of Washington bureaucrats (for short, 'The Death Panel') deny medical treatment wasn't a popular idea with most Americans. So liberals started claiming that they are going to cover an additional 47 million uninsured Americans and cut costs ... without ever denying a single medical treatment! Also on the agenda is a delicious all-you-can-eat chocolate cake that will actually help you lose weight! ... These are Trojan Horse bills. Of course, they don't include the words 'abortion,' 'death panels' or 'three-year waits for hip-replacement surgery.' That proves nothing -- the bills set up unaccountable, unelected federal commissions to fill in the horrible details. Notably, the Democrats rejected an amendment to the bill that would specifically deny coverage for abortions. After the bill is passed, the Federal Health Commission will find that abortion is covered, pro-lifers will sue, and a court will say it's within the regulatory authority of the health commission to require coverage for abortions. Then we'll watch a parade of senators and congressmen indignantly announcing, 'Well, I'm pro-life, and if I had had any idea this bill would cover abortions, I never would have voted for it!' No wonder Democrats want to remind us that they can't be trusted with foreign policy. They want us to forget that they can't be trusted with domestic policy." --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 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.)