The Patriot Post Chronicle 10-14-2009

____________________________
The Patriot Post Chronicle 10-14-2009
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
____________________________

The Foundation

"It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions." --Samuel Adams

Snowe is the very definition of a RINO -- Republican In Name Only
Editorial Exegesis

"After hemming and hawing for weeks, Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe did what many knew she'd do: support the abominable Baucus health care overhaul. The GOP has a big problem. Some who march under its banner don't really accept the basic philosophy it espouses -- one of low taxes, small government and support of the Constitution. Snowe is one of those. Her decision to vote 'aye' on the Baucus [health care] bill, which passed out of the Senate Finance Committee on an otherwise partisan 14-9 vote, was called a 'surprise' by some. It wasn't. She's done this for years, undercutting her party and lending support to the opposition. Don't look for some transcendent reason. 'My vote today is my vote today,' Snowe said, clarifying nothing. 'It doesn't forecast what my vote will be tomorrow.' Nothing like standing firmly on principle. What's galling is Democrats could have passed this without Snowe's help. By lending her voice and senatorial prestige, she weakened her party's otherwise resolute stance against the health care bill. In short, she gave Democrats badly needed bipartisan cover to ram Baucus -- or something worse -- down all our throats. As we've said before, the Baucus bill will lead, inevitably, to higher taxes, lower-quality care, rationing and the intrusion of government into the most sensitive decisions we make. ... There are lines in the sand for both parties, and this bill should be one. A person can't support Baucus and still say he or she's for small, or limited, government. This is Leviathan writ large. ... The GOP must be wondering: With members like [this], who needs Democrats?" --Investor's Business Daily

Upright

"The CBO provides 10- year projections of a bill's cost. But most provisions of the health bill don't take effect until 2014. So the '10-year' cost projection only includes six years of the bill. Plus, the costs ramp up slowly. In its first year, the House bill would only cost about $6 billion; in its first three, less than $100 billion. The big costs are in the final years of the 10-year budget window -- and beyond. In fact, over the first 10 years that the House bill would be in existence (2014 to 2024), its costs would be closer to $2.4 trillion." --Cato Institute scholar Michael Tanner

"If the Medicare cuts won't materialize, and the revenues won't grow as expected, and the subsidies (already projected to grow at 8 percent per year) will expand, the Baucus bill is merely the thin wedge of another out-of-control entitlement. We already have several of those, and already are slated to run $1 trillion annual deficits before the advent of a new one. The Baucus bill is faux fiscal restraint on the road to budgetary Armageddon." --columnist Rich Lowry

"The best thing government can do for us is to get out of the way and let us care for ourselves. These [deficit] numbers are unsustainable. They are outrageous. And they will become a reality unless enough Americans rise up and say they are not going to take it anymore. It's our money, not theirs. They are now stealing it before we make it. Let's hear some outrage about this." --columnist Cal Thomas

"I'm not all for Americans winning international prizes, especially the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, I'm vigorously against it. The transnational progressives who pass out these accolades believe America is the problem in the world, the main threat to peace, the impediment to 'progress,' etc. The award is a symbolic statement of opposition to American exceptionalism, American might, American capitalism, American self-determinism, and American pursuit of America's interests in the world." --columnist Andy McCarthy

"The Peace Prize judges won't see it this way, but America has gone to Europe twice in the past century to fight for peace. This is an old concept, and has to do with killing killers so they can't kill anymore. It cost America a lot to do this, and we kept no territory, as they say, beyond the graves where our soldiers lie. America then taxed itself and gave its wealth not only to its allies but to its former adversaries, to help them rebuild. We didn't actually have to do this. We did it to make the world better. We did it to foster peace. (They should give us a prize.)" --columnist Peggy Noonan

"Over the weekend, still another outpost was attacked in the distant reaches of Afghanistan, and still more American soldiers -- and Afghan ones -- were lost. An undermanned and overstretched international force struggles on in that graveyard of empires. And waits for word from Washington. And waits and waits. ... All wait to see what course the president will choose, or will let others choose for him. In the meantime he dithers -- and Americans fight and die." --columnist Paul Greenberg

Editor's Note: Don't miss out on many of these and other great conservative writers at The Patriot's opinion page Read 'em and share your thoughts.

Insight

"The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state." --economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)

"The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, including classical Aristotelian and Thomist philosophers, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State." --economist Murray Rothbard (1926-1995)

"I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden." --British colonel Richard Rumbold (1622-1685)

Dezinformatsia

Right wing = Taliban: "I also think it's important to know who is actually sounding off against this [Nobel Prize for Obama]. Everybody agrees it was premature -- maybe undeserved. But who's actually attacking it? Well, you've got the mullahs in the Taliban, and then you've got Mullah Rush [Limbaugh] -- you know, you have [Obama's] critics here at home. ... Reasonable Republicans would agree that when a president of the United States is recognized with probably the most prestigious award in the world, it's not something to attack." --Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter

"Somebody explain this to me: The president of the United States wins the Nobel Peace Prize and Rush Limbaugh joins with the Taliban in bitterly denouncing the award? ... Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?" --Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson

"When the President himself was saying, 'Look, I didn't deserve to be in the company of these people who have won,' it makes the harsh comments from Michael Steele, from Rush Limbaugh, the rest, seem even more extreme and, as some would argue, un-American." --MSNBC's David Shuster

Freudian slip: "President Obama, nine months into his presidency, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. And it's really, kind of, the Olympic gold of international diplomacy." --ABC's Diane Sawyer, with an interesting choice of words considering Obama just lost out in getting the 2016 Olympic Games in Chicago

Sometimes they get it right:

NBC's Matt Lauer: "We're less than a year into the first term of this president and there are no -- I'm not trying to be, you know, rude here -- no major foreign policy achievements, to date. So why did he win?"

Meet the Press moderator David Gregory: "Well, I think, as the citation points out, this is a lot more about tone than it is substantive accomplishment. In many ways, this is a European body who is more left-leaning, certainly, and opposed to the administration of George W. Bush...."

Lauer: "So, what you're saying in some ways and, again, not to be rude here or sarcastic, that in some ways he wins this award for not being George W. Bush."