The Patriot Post Brief 9-37

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The Patriot Post Brief 9-37
From The Federalist Patriot
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THE FOUNDATION

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson

Sept. 12 march in DC
POLITICAL FUTURES

"None of the national evening news anchors were there to bring you breathless coverage. None of the networks suspended regular programming to show the event in real time. A number of the weekend shows were taped on Thursday or Friday and didn't even mention it. The Washington, DC subway -- called the Metro -- which regularly puts on extra trains for large events announced it would actually close stations if they became too crowded. The Washington Times said, 'Rally leaders estimated the crowd at about 75,000' the Washington Post said it was 'in the many tens of thousands.' It is one thing for Democrats to have ridiculed the people who turned out to those town-hall meetings as isolated groups of extremists. It is something else to have 'many tens of thousands' of people show up on a Saturday afternoon on the West Front of the Capitol to express their dismay over how their government is being run. The issue for Republicans is simple. Conservatives have shown you the parade route. The question is: Who, if anyone, will be able to race to the front and lead it?" --political analyst Rich Galen

THE GIPPER

"We warned of things to come, of the danger inherent in unwarranted government involvement in things not its proper province. What we warned against has come to pass. And today more than two-thirds of our citizens are telling us, and each other, that social engineering by the federal government has failed. The Great Society is great only in power, in size and in cost. And so are the problems it set out to solve. Freedom has been diminished and we stand on the brink of economic ruin. Our task now is not to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home. We are not a cult, we are members of a majority. Let's act and talk like it. The job is ours and the job must be done. If not by us, who? If not now, when? Our party must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group. No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society. Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, galloping inflation, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite. Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people." --Ronald Reagan

LIBERTY

"As the late Nobel Laureate Professor Milton Friedman said, 'Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.' Thinking of inflation as rising prices permits politicians to deceive us and escape culpability. They shift the blame saying that inflation is caused by greedy businessmen, rapacious unions or Arab sheiks. Instead, it is increases in the money supply that cause inflation, and who is in charge of the money supply? It's the government operating through the Federal Reserve Bank and the U.S. Treasury. ... The founders of our nation feared paper currency because it gave government the means to steal from its citizens. When inflation is unanticipated, as it so often is, there's a redistribution of wealth from creditors to debtors. If you lend me $100, and over the term of the loan prices double, I pay you back with dollars worth only half of the purchasing power they had when I borrowed the money. Since inflation redistributes (steals) wealth from creditors to debtors, we can identify inflation's primary beneficiary by asking: Who is the nation's largest debtor? If you said, 'It's the U.S. government,' go to the head of the class. ... Profligate spending burdens future generations by making them recipients of a smaller amount of capital and hence less wealth." --George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams

GOVERNMENT

"Only national health care can provide 'coverage that will stay with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job' -- as Obama said in a New York Times op-ed. This is obviously a matter of great importance to all Americans, because, with Obama's economic policies, none of us may have jobs by year's end. The only reason you can't keep -- or often obtain -- health insurance if you move or lose your job now is because of ... government intrusion into the free market. You will notice that if you move or lose your job, you can obtain car and home insurance, hairdressers, baby sitters, dog walkers, computer technicians, cars, houses, food and every other product and service not heavily regulated by the government. (Although it does become a bit harder to obtain free office supplies.) Federal tax incentives have created a world in which the vast majority of people get health insurance through their employers. Then to really screw ordinary Americans, the tax code actually punishes people who don't get their health insurance through an employer by denying individuals the tax deduction for health insurance that their employers get. ... If Democrats really wanted people to be able to purchase health insurance when they move or lose a job as easily as they purchase car insurance and home insurance (or haircuts, dog walkers, cars, food, computers), they could do it in a one-page bill lifting the government controls and allowing interstate commerce in health insurance. This is known as 'allowing the free market to operate.' Plus, think of all the paper a one-page bill would save! Don't Democrats care about saving the planet anymore? Go green!" --columnist Ann Coulter

RE: THE LEFT

"One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess -- for a program that would not take effect until 2013! Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years -- more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election? If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next Presidential election? If it is not urgent that the legislation goes into effect immediately, then why don't we have time to go through the normal process of holding Congressional hearings on the pros and cons, accompanied by public discussions of its innumerable provisions? What sense does it make to 'hurry up and wait' on something that is literally a matter of life and death? If we do not believe that the President is stupid, then what do we believe? The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it. Moreover, he wanted to get re-elected in 2012 before the public experienced what its actual consequences would be. Unfortunately, this way of doing things is all too typical of the way this administration has acted on a wide range of issues." --economist Thomas Sowell

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The Patriot Post Brief 9-37
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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INSIGHT

"There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory." --American author and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910)

OPINION IN BRIEF

"Barack Obama will not stop committing serial dishonesty with the American people until the media expose his false figures and bogus exaggerations for what they are: fraudulent scare tactics. Last night Obama told a litany of lies. He said the total cost of his health reform would be $900 billion over ten years, but even the government-run Congressional Budget Office found it would cost $1.6 trillion. He claimed his reform would not cover illegal immigrants or abortions, but nothing in any of the Democrat bills requires citizen verification and several organizations including the National Right to Life Committee have shown exactly how federal funds would be used to pay for abortion-on-demand. He knows these are lies and he tells them because he is confident the left wing 'news' media will let him get away with it. Worst still, Obama used these lies to play on Americans greatest fears and vulnerabilities. He warned that more people would die unless we passed his sweeping plan and threatened that our country's economic pulse would weaken with American businesses closing. And still, the media let him get away with it. This must stop. The media must expose Obama's calculated scare tactics and lying on 'reform.' Failing to do so gives him a green light to lie and cry wolf about whatever he wants, whenever he wants. And it will aid in the most radical government takeover ever attempted in America." --Media Research Center President Brent Bozell

FAITH AND FAMILY

"The latest of many examples of government arrogance has come in New Hampshire, of all places, where the state motto is 'Live Free or Die.' A state judge has ordered a girl who was being educated at home by her mother to begin attending a public school because of the 'rigidity' of her mother's religious views. The judge, Lucinda V. Sadler, said that the 10-year-old girl needed to consider other worldviews as she matures. ... There are a number of issues in this case, not the least of which is the court's attempt to define what represents an 'extreme' religious view and what is more 'mainstream.' A growing number of parents, including some in my family, home-school their children. My personal experience is that these kids get a better education, are better adjusted and easily gain entry into college because of their superior grades and seriousness of purpose, not to mention their character. Another issue is the apparent one-way street constructed by Judge Sadler. If a Christian girl ought to go to public school to learn about other views (this presumes she does not know about them through study at home, reading a newspaper or turning on the television), why shouldn't the judge order a public school student to get a Christian-Jewish-Islamic-based education so that such a student might become acquainted with the Bible-Talmud-Koran? ... Amanda's mother retained the Alliance Defense Fund, the conservative legal alliance that works to defend religious liberty, but meanwhile, the girl has been forced by the court to sit in a fifth-grade classroom, which is a violation of her and her mother's consciences and the First Amendment. ... I'm on the side of the people. The New Hampshire judge and the Obama administration are on the side of the elites. And that's why so many are justifiably angry." --columnist Cal Thomas

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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

"After seeing the Democrats demand yet another apology from Rep. Joe Wilson, I called his office and told him I was 110% behind him, and that he told the truth, namely that Obama is a liar. So he violated 'House decorum' -- big deal. Many members of Congress violate their oath of office every single day and you don't hear about it. Did Barney Frank not violate some House rule by allowing a homosexual prostitution ring to operate in his DC home? I suggested he should tell the Democrats he will apologize on the floor of Congress when Congress apologizes to the American people for trampling on our Constitution." --Geneva, Illinois

"While I cannot argue that Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst in the hallowed halls of Congress was out of step with traditional decorum, the central point has not been addressed -- was the president lying in his address? If Wilson was wrong -- if the president was not lying -- then to do anything other than resign his office shows Wilson to be the basest sort of politician. If, on the other hand, the president was indeed lying and Wilson was doing his American duty in pointing that out, how could he think of apologizing? Perhaps Wilson should assemble his evidence and publicize it or, if wrong, fade into the merciful obscurity that awaits cowards." --Redding, California

"I had to laugh out loud during silent reading today (yes, I'm a teacher and I had a room full of students surprised by my outburst) when I read the Obama quotes in the above article, specifically 'If you misrepresent what's in the [health] plan, we will call you out.' The news around here rings with how inappropriate Representative Joe Wilson's comments were, but it seems to me, he was just doing what the president stated he would do: call out the misrepresentations. Once again, Mr. Obama is proving that he is bilingual -- able to speak out of both sides of his mouth quite easily." --Newman, California

THE LAST WORD

"So why can't the silver-tongued post-partisan healer seal the deal on this health care business? Surely it should be the work of moments for the greatest orator in American history to whip up a little medicinal Gettysburg, a touch of Henry V-in-the-Agincourt-casualty-tent, and put this thing away. Yet there he was the other night with the usual leaden medley of tinny grandiosity (all the this-is-the-moment, now-is-the-hour stuff), slippery reassurances (don't worry, you won't be 'required' to change your present health arrangements), imputations of bad faith to anyone who takes a different view (they're playing 'games'), and the copper-bottomed guarantee that you can have it all for no money down, no interest, no monthly payments, no nuthin' ('I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit'). This would barely have passed muster four months back. After a summer of seething town halls and sliding approval numbers, it was a joke. Or, rather, it would be a joke if the president's intention was to persuade an increasingly skeptical, if not downright hostile, electorate. On the other hand, if the intention is to ram it down America's throat whatever the citizenry thinks, then the joke's on us." --columnist Mark Steyn

*****

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.)