The Patriot Post Digest 10-16-2009

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 10-16-2009
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." --James Madison

Baucus and Pelosi work on their health care potion
Government & Politics
Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

The headlines triumphantly announced Tuesday that the Senate Finance Committee had passed its version of the health care takeover bill with the help of Republican-In-Name-Only Olympia Snowe of Maine. But as the Heritage Foundation's Brian Darling writes, there is no bill. In fact, Darling says, "The Senate is using a non-transparent and rare -- if not unique -- process to pass Obamacare."

Though Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) gathered Democrats and Republicans to craft a bill, they couldn't do it, even after weeks of meetings. So, Darling continues, "Baucus then scheduled a markup of an outline of his version of health care reform. Many call it a 'Vapor Bill,' because it's only a description of legislation. No member of the Committee has seen actual legislation, just a 262-page description. That Vapor Bill never will be voted on in the Senate, so many detractors are calling this a 'make believe markup.' It's to fool people into thinking the Senate is actually crafting a bill."

Not only that, but Darling adds, "I have called around Capitol Hill to find out who has a copy of the bill and none of my high-level contacts know." Now that's transparency.

Meanwhile, based on what language is actually accessible, the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm performed an analysis commissioned by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a group representing the industry. Warning that the Baucus bill will saddle everyone who has insurance (including the Democrats' beloved middle class) with a load of new taxes in various forms, the report highlights an excise tax on employer-provided high-value health plans, Medicare payment cuts that would result in cost-shifting to the private market, and new taxes on the health industry that will inevitably be passed on to consumers.

According to Investor's Business Daily, "The study estimates that the average family-coverage cost of about $12,300 [per year] could reach $17,200 in 2013 if these provisions were implemented, $21,300 in 2016 and $25,900 in 2019. Meanwhile, average single coverage -- $4,600 today -- could reach nearly $10,000 in 2019." No wonder Democrats are afraid to discuss the details of this witch's brew.

Still, AHIP is no stalwart defender of the Constitution and Rule of Law. As The Wall Street Journal writes, "The irony is that AHIP is now arguing for a more left-wing bill, claiming the Baucus plan isn't 'universal' enough." Obviously, insurance companies are looking out for their own best interests. It's too bad they don't understand that those interests are best served by the free market.

The BIG Lie

"[The AHIP report is a] hatchet job ... bought and paid for by the same health insurance companies that have been gouging too many consumers for too long as they stand in the way of reform yet again." --Sen. Max "The Gouger" Baucus, who predicts that all Democrats and possibly more than one Republican will support his bill

This Week's 'Braying Jenny' Award

"When you think of the campaign that's been launched against the public option by the insurance industry -- because they can't take the competition. Anyone who had any doubts about the need for such an option need only look at the health insurance industry this week." --House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

Pelosi is reduced to taunting and threatening anyone opposed to her schemes, saying that it only further makes the case for a government-run "public option" for health insurance. But how could any industry compete with the federal government's ability to run at a deficit forever? She went on to mock the "discredited" AHIP report. No one has actually discredited the report, mind you, Pelosi only says it's been discredited.

Hope 'n' Change: About That Free Lunch

Creative accounting allows Washington to get away with a lot, and the current health care debacle is no exception. Recent analyses of House and Senate proposals by the Congressional Budget Office rely upon static scoring (i.e., not factoring in behavioral changes caused by the legislation,) fantastically optimistic projections and simple omissions of unfavorable facts that trumpet deficit-neutral bills having no basis in reality. The libertarian Cato Institute, for example, took a close look at the CBO's numbers and discovered a variety of unsupportable claims.

For starters, the 10-year projection that measures out the trillion-dollar House bill in itself is misleading. Most of the bill's major provisions don't kick in until 2014, making for a 6-year projection in which costs ramp up slowly. After the first three years of the program, around the time of the 2012 election, costs would accumulate to about $100 billion, relative chump change that will allow Obama's re-election campaign the opportunity to pledge that health care has been a cost-saving success. But four years beyond that, long after the current president passes the threshold of electoral accountability (assuming he wins, perish the thought), costs catch a fever. Cato estimates a $2.4 trillion tab (even Sen. Harry Reid admits as much), double what the House bill and the CBO project. And what happens after 2019 is a true horror story.

The Baucus bill, all the rage on Capitol Hill these days, is another fraud of epic proportions. It claims to have no impact on the deficit by assuming, in part, that growth rate cuts in Medicare's physician payments will help offset its $829 billion price tag. All well and good, but Congress never makes those cuts because no one wants to be on record as cutting an entitlement for one of America's most powerful voting blocs. Just by taking these cuts out of the equation, the bill automatically goes $200 billion into the red. Additionally, there is no reckoning of the built-in costs that will hit consumers, including penalties for high-price insurance plans, penalties for not having insurance and the general rise in cost of various health care procedures over the span of several years.

Obama and his Democrat lackeys have either bullied or beguiled the CBO, once a reliably non-partisan entity, into fabricating analyses concluding that Congress has produced sweeping legislation that does not negatively affect the deficit. If ever the phrase "voodoo economics" applied, it's now.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 10-16-2009
From The Federalist Patriot
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This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award

"I will actually give you a speech made up entirely -- almost at the spur of the moment, of what a candidate for president would say if that candidate did not care about becoming president. In other words, this is what the truth is, and a candidate will never say, but what candidates should say if we were in a kind of democracy where citizens were honored in terms of their practice of citizenship, and they were educated in terms of what the issues were, and they could separate myth from reality in terms of what candidates would tell them:

'Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I'm so glad to see you, and I would like to be president. Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. [laughter] That's true, and what I'm going to do is I am going to try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people. But that means you -- particularly you young people, particularly you young, healthy people -- you're going to have to pay more. [applause] Thank you.'

'And by the way, we are going to have to -- if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive, so we're going to let you die.' [applause]

'Also, I'm going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid -- we already have a lot of bargaining leverage -- to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. But that means less innovation, and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market, which means you are probably not going to live that much longer than your parents. [applause] Thank you.'" --Robert Reich, President Clinton's labor secretary, in a speech at Berkeley in 2007. Democrats, death panels and dying early -- it's all in there, folks.

From the Left: The War on Fox News

The Obama administration is clearly not content to have a majority of American news media in its back pocket. It wants total obedience and has now openly declared war on Fox News Channel, which White House Communications Director Anita Dunn recently accused of being "a wing of the Republican Party." She added that from here forward, "We're going to treat [Fox News] the way we would treat an opponent. ... We don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave."

Consider the source, though. Dunn is also on the record saying that one of her "favorite political philosophers" was Mao Tse Tung, who was responsible for more than 70 million deaths in Communist China.

Obamanauts are furious with Fox for being the only major broadcast news outlet that has not toed the party line. Apparently, the administration thinks the way "legitimate news organizations behave" is to out-and-out lie about the opposition, like CBS News with its "fake but accurate" hatchet job on President George W. Bush just prior to the 2004 election, and like the outrageously phony quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh in recent days (more on that later).

Fox, on the other hand, has recently exposed the corruption of ACORN and the extreme leftism of former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, but this doesn't make it anti-Obama. Rather, it makes Fox pro-information, as the ACORN exposé and Van Jones's public insults about Republicans were real and noteworthy events, though most of the media chose not to report them.

The White House attack on Fox News goes beyond the simple cowardice of the Obama administration. Not only are they afraid to field tough questions from an aggressive news organization but government appointees in high places like Mark Lloyd, the FCC's Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer, are calling for ways to address the "structural imbalance" of talk radio and, presumably, the manner in which FNC does business. For his part, Lloyd is on record as being enamored of Hugo Chavez's "democratic revolution" and his takeover of the Venezuelan media. All aboard for the "Fairness Doctrine."

Message to GOP: Don't Take Tea Partiers For Granted

It's the dream of every political strategist: a large and highly motivated group of voters ready to get out, work for, and financially support a slate of candidates whom they align with politically. True to form, the national Republican Party missed the opportunity to take full advantage of the Tea Party movement, mainly because the GOP is continuing to back candidates who don't always work for lower taxation and less government.

Tea Party protesters angered by Republicans supporting Wall Street bailouts and the Waxman-Malarkey cap-n-tax bill are also bitter at the GOP establishment -- particularly the National Republican Senatorial Committee -- for backing certain incumbent or anointed candidates who are working with Leftists in Congress.

To that end, conservatives and political activist groups such as Club for Growth are throwing their support behind candidates whom the GOP establishment has shunned, such as Chuck DeVore in California for U.S. Senate; Marco Rubio in Florida for U.S. Senate (who is in a primary battle against the "moderate" outgoing governor Charlie Crist); and Doug Hoffman of New York, who, as we reported last week, opted to run under the Conservative Party banner after being spurned by local Republican officials. Instead, ACORN-backed Dede Scozzafava, whose positions make the Democrat candidate look like Ronald Reagan, is the official Republican candidate running in the upcoming Nov. 3 special election in New York's 23rd Congressional District, though her campaign is out of cash. Backing ACORN candidates is unfortunately illustrative of the elite GOP's mindset.

In a year where the political winds and poor performance of Democrats both favor a Republican resurgence, their treatment of this motivated voter bloc shows the national party is doing itself no favors by listening to the Beltway insiders rather than the people. GOP big shots may look back after next November and lament a lost opportunity.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 10-16-2009
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National Security
Warfront With Jihadistan: Troop Increase

While the Teleprompter-in-Chief dithers over whether to win the war in Afghanistan by increasing the number of combat troops requested by his commanders, more troops have already started to join the fight. These troops were already in the deployment pipeline before the recent request by General Stanley McChrystal for up to 80,000 additional combat troops. Most of the new troops are support and logistics forces, including engineers and medical personnel, as well as intelligence officials and military police. They will sustain the 21,000 combat troops Obama sent in March. Total U.S troop strength in Afghanistan now numbers about 65,000.

Great Britain also appears ready to raise its troop levels in response to the increased Taliban resistance, according to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Five hundred additional British troops may join the 9,000 already in Afghanistan, providing "certain conditions" are met by the Afghan government. Why isn't the presence of jihadis enough of a condition?

As for the jihadis, it appears that the Taliban are in a better financial situation than their al-Qa'ida brethren. David Cohen, a Treasury Department specialist on terrorist financing, recently said that the Taliban use bribery to raise significant funding from Afghanistan's poppy farmers and heroin traffickers. They also earn money by offering "protection," for a price, from legitimate Afghan businesses. On the other hand, al-Qa'ida is apparently cash-starved and losing power and influence, the product of, according to Cohen, a long-running effort by the U.S. and its allies to target rich donors and interfere with the group's ability to move money between borders. Sounds like a good strategy to apply to the Taliban.

Department of Military Correctness: Show & Tell

For those thinking tyranny comes dressed solely in economic packages, think again: evidently it now comes in hot pink, too. This, after The Anointed One's announcement at a human-rights dinner that he remains firmly committed to scrapping the military's 16-year-old "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. That policy was itself an erosion of the military's rule completely barring homosexuals, a policy spanning more than two centuries, notwithstanding leftist arguments to the contrary. What's next: a "Show & Tell" policy?

This week's Wall Street Journal covered the announcement and debate under the headline, "Support Grows to End 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'" Evidently, "don't tell" includes not telling DoD leadership that the military "supports" ending the policy. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Andromeda) also stated as much, claiming it was now possible "to get a buy-in from the military."

From our own analysis, however, we think most in the military favor getting a "Bi-out" over giving a "buy-in," but the ultra-left senator has already shown his contempt for the opinions of the military, so offering these would yield no fruit -- or fruits, for that matter. We would also like to know which "military" the senator is referring to -- the Gay Army? The Flower Brigade? Lambda Defense? In any case, it's not the U.S. military.

Considering that advocacy groups and the homosexual community at large heavily supported Obama during his campaign, it's no wonder that many homosexual activists are now demanding payback. Though Obama did not provide a timetable for repealing Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell, he affirmed his support for legislation ending the policy.

From a strategic standpoint, we actually welcome the introduction of that legislation, too. Of course, it would be thrown into the rest of the heap, included with the additional government bailouts and bailout regulation, ObamaCare, imminent inflation and tax increases, and a host of other distinguishing legislative missteps from an ideologically bankrupt cesspool of statists. In turn, this mound of legislative buffoonery currently coursing through the corridors of Congress and the White House will serve to draw clear lines for the American public between the two sides of these issues, and highlight the urgent need to correct past mistakes made at the voting booths.

Bunker Buster Bomb

MOP up on aisle 3... A new conventional bomb, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), is about to join the Air Force inventory, and not a moment too soon. Designed to penetrate farther into solid rock than previous 2,000-pound bombs, the MOP will dress out at a staggering 30,000 pounds, of which more than 5,000 pounds is high explosive. Dropped from a B-2 bomber at 30,000 feet, with a GPS guidance system steering it onto the target, the MOP can reportedly penetrate more than 120 feet of solid rock before detonating. Patriot readers can probably recommend some initial targets for the MOP -- Iranian and North Korean buried nuclear programs, mountain cave hideouts in Tora Bora, and the like. While the Defense Department denies any specific targeting requirements that would call for the MOP, the timing is certainly interesting.

In other news this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried and failed to make lemonade out of lemons when the Russians refused even to pretend to favor additional sanctions on Iran. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov could only bring himself to say that "all efforts should be made to support further talks." Clinton then cited this clear rebuff as proof of the "reset" in U.S.-Russian relations. Guess it depends how you define "reset." See what dropping our missile defense plans and betraying our Polish and Czech allies got us?

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 10-16-2009
From The Federalist Patriot
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Business & Economy
Income Redistribution: Taxing the Patience of Business

Realizing its free-money-for-everyone policy has become problematic now that it has met the enemy -- that is, reality -- the Obama administration has been putting the full-court press on ways to pay for its government-granted bounty. The latest proposal, beamed down directly from Planet Obama, was to raise taxes more than $200 billion on those "evil" multinational companies -- you know, like Microsoft, General Electric, IBM and the others that led Western civilization to be the first out of the back-breaking Industrial Age and into the Information Age. Wait, we're getting a mental flash: something about goose ... golden egg -- well, whatever, it escapes us at the moment. It was nothing, really.

Never mind the fact that the existing confiscatory taxes against U.S.-based multinational corporations have helped to make them as competitive as "Team Prius" at the Funny Car Nationals. No, Obama's answer is not to lower domestic corporate taxes to entice businesses to operate principally within the U.S., but rather to raise taxes for all companies that do business here, wherever they are based. Um, brilliant.

Business is a particularly juicy target for the administration, because liberals suffer from a love-hate relationship with business: namely, they love to hate it. However, they also realize that "big business" also implies jobs (read: votes) and "big money," which can wield big political power, especially when provoked.

Accordingly, the administration has tabled -- for now, at least -- the squeeze-more-blood-from-business-turnips proposal. Still, faced with a $12 trillion national debt -- $2 trillion of which accrued just this year alone -- don't look for the administration to scrap these money-grabbing schemes for long. In fact, aides have pointed out that although the administration has ditched the idea for now, it may (read: will) revisit the plan as part of a "broader tax overhaul sometime next year."

In defending their position, business critics -- including the president -- swipe that U.S. multinationals "ship jobs overseas" and ought to get no tax breaks, period. They further label these companies "tax cheats." Of course, even the most basic, emperor-has-no-clothes introspection would beg the question as to why these companies had shipped any jobs overseas, but apparently answering that question amounts to tensor calculus for Capitol Hill's smooth-brains.

We hope, however, that this answer will reduce to simple math, once legislators start learning first-hand from the thinning of their ranks about how subtraction works.

Payroll Parodies

Driven by a sense of panic over the need to be seen doing something about the high unemployment rate, Democrats are working hard to prove the truth of Ronald Reagan's observation that the most frightening words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Instead of pursuing tried-and-true methods of job creation by making a favorable business environment via low taxes and low regulation, liberals think businesses would rather put their time to "good use," filling out government forms. Complete enough forms, jump through enough hoops and comply with arcane regulations, and employers will eventually receive a gubmint check as part of a payroll tax reimbursement scheme only a bureaucrat could love. Although this ridiculous idea validates the utter failure of the Democrats $787 billion stimulus debacle to rescue the economy, it's worth noting this same idea was tried without success by the Carter administration.

Not content with merely serving out Carter's second term, the Obama administration pretends to be mystified about the future recovery predicted by some economists as being jobless despite the normalization of credit markets. More similarities with the economic implosion of the late '70s are sure to follow so long as the government continues to believe the economy is nothing more than a command-and-control phenomenon. As President Reagan once presciently quipped, "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. When it stops moving, subsidize it." What we need are free-market politicians and fewer bureaucratic meddlers to get in our way.

U.S. Cedes Control of Internet

Global access to the Internet is poised to become global control of the Internet. With little fanfare, Washington has quietly ceded control over the technology the United States developed and shared with the rest of the world in the first place. According to the UK Guardian, the change came in the form of a contract negotiated between the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN, the California-based company that "ultimately controls the development of the internet thanks to its oversight of web addresses such as .com, .net and .org." In essence, the new agreement ended the old one between ICANN and the U.S. government, "opening the door for a virtual United Nations, where many officials gather to discuss potential changes to the internet."

This means that, while the United States previously held some sway over ICANN's actions, decision-making authority will now be expanded internationally, including to countries with histories of censorship and human rights abuse as well as to those with a penchant for global regulation and taxation.

Of course, the EU welcomed the cession, no doubt satisfied that its recent whining over too much American control was rewarded (surprise!) with appeasement from the Obama administration.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 10-16-2009
From The Federalist Patriot
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Culture & Policy
Climate Change This Week: Follies Continue

There's something about climate change that brings it to headline status at a time when parts of our nation are enduring colder-than-normal weather. With the early onset of fall in the East, naturally we have plenty of news about the scam called man-made global warming.

But what happened to global warming? So asked none other than the BBC. With the now-11 year trend toward cooler global temperatures, believers are reduced to saying that this cooling is simply a temporary retreat in a long-term pattern that their models continue to show will occur. It'll warm up, just you wait. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

The warmers claim that even research that ties global temperature to Pacific Ocean cycles of warming and cooling is part of the model. Their excuses are just more fabrications: They never expected this cooling.

Skeptics ask: What is wrong with having a slightly higher quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Geologist H. Leighton Steward notes that since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in 1860, plant growth and tree growth worldwide have increased 12 percent and 18 percent, respectively. He also asserted, "There is ... not one instance in which carbon dioxide is a pollutant."

What does global warming lead cheerleader Al Gore have to say? In the middle of a rare question-and-answer session at a Society of Environmental Journalists (read: friendly crowd) meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, filmmaker and anthropogenic warming skeptic Phelim McAleer asked about a British court case involving the showing in British schools of Gore's 2007 Nobel Peace Prize-winning film, "An Inconvenient Truth." Gore claimed his side won in court when, in truth, the objecting parent substantially won. Event organizers then rebuked McAleer by cutting off his microphone before he could finish a follow-up question regarding Gore's claim that the polar bear population is declining despite evidence that it's actually increasing.

Apparently it's inconvenient only when Gore and his allies are asked about facts rebutting their discredited theories.

Second Amendment: Illogical Study Reaches Bad Conclusion

In a study cited by the anti-gun lobby as showing "the risks of gun ownership," University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine epidemiologists found that people with guns were 4.5 times more likely to get shot than those who were unarmed. Examining 677 shootings in Philadelphia from 2003 to 2006, the study found six percent of victims had a gun in their possession when they were shot. Of course, that means that 94 percent of victims did not have a gun, which, in our humble shop, provides proof positive for our favorite mode of defense.

As blogger Clayton Cramer notes, however, beyond the bias or ignorance of conducting the study in a homicide hotbed where gang violence is no secret (but unaccounted for in the study), researchers apparently failed to ask two pivotal questions: "Are you more likely to be shot because you own a gun? Or do people buy guns because they perceive that they are in danger of being attacked?" Post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) may sound intelligent, but as logical fallacies go, it's among the most elementary.

Jumping to the Left Coast, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (RINO-CA) made glad the gun-control zealots this week by signing legislation regulating the sale of ammunition. Individuals buying ammo will now have to be fingerprinted, and dealers will have to keep sales records for at least five years. The governor claims, "Utilized properly, this type of information is invaluable for keeping communities safe." Ah, the utilitarian approach to Second Amendment encroachment. Now there's a new one -- or not.

Finally, the State Department announced that it will abandon U.S. opposition to the so-called Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty and commence negotiations. The treaty would regulate conventional arms sales. The communists at Amnesty International are pleased; The Patriots at the Heritage Foundation and the NRA are not.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 10-16-2009
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From the 'Non Compos Mentis' File

Conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has endured attacks from the Left for decades. But wild-eyed leftists took it a step further by derailing the Missouri native's bid to buy the St. Louis Rams' NFL franchise (as a minority partner, yet). On Wednesday, the group attempting the purchase dropped Limbaugh.

The anti-Limbaugh charge was led by a lineup of CNN and MSNBC "journalists," race hustler Al Sharpton and other dimwitted leftists (but we repeat ourselves). MSNBC's tingly-legged Chris Matthews fantasized that, like James Bond villain Mr. Big, "at some point somebody's going to jam a CO2 pellet into [Limbaugh's] head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp." But that's not the end of it.

These two networks, along with the sports channels and who knows how many locals, repeated a concocted quote attributed to Rush as evidence of his racism: "Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark." The only problem is Limbaugh never said it. Retractions or corrections of the record have been relegated to such places as Twitter, where CNN's Rick Sanchez tweeted, "we didn't confirm quote. our bad." Classy.

The minor detail of the quote being fake didn't stop David Zirin, sports editor of The Nation, a magazine described by its staff as the "flagship of the left," from calling Limbaugh an "unreconstructed racist" and a "swine" who views black players "with naked and open contempt because of the color of their skin." Nor did it stop Al Sharpton from crowing that the group's decision to drop the radio host "is a moral victory for all Americans -- especially the players that have been unfairly castigated by Rush Limbaugh."

(Newsbusters has more on this character assassination here, here, here and here.)

So to recap, Rush has been on the air 15 hours a week for 21 years and the best the media could come up with was a fake quote? And that's a "moral victory"? It reminds us of the "Two Minutes Hate" in George Orwell's "1984," in which the "Enemy of the People had flashed onto the screen" and the people were conditioned to hate him, even using the word "swine." David Zirin, call your office.

On Cross-Examination

"The CNN and MSNBC 'news' networks are guilty of promoting outright falsehoods and purposely using fabricated disinformation created by left-wing radicals to destroy a conservative leader. There is no grey area here. ... Perhaps if they spent less time fact-checking SNL comedy skits and more time fact-checking what they laughably call 'news,' they would have a chance to salvage their tattered reputations, sinking even faster with this intentional character assassination." --Media Research Center president Brent Bozell

And Last...

"Police say an Ohio woman being driven around in a limousine announced at a coat store she'd won the lottery and would pay for everyone's purchases but ended up causing a riot when customers realized it was a hoax," reports the Associated Press. For some reason, that made us think of the limousine liberals in Congress promising health insurance for everyone. More from the AP: "Columbus police Lt. Michael Deakins says the woman announced Tuesday she'd spend $500 on everyone at a Burlington Coat Factory, prompting customers to gather at registers and call relatives. When police arrived, 500 people filled the store and another 1,000 were outside." That's nothing. According to Democrats, 47 million "Americans" (or is it 30 million -- we never can keep track of their statistics) are beating down the doors and demanding ObamaCare for all.

"Cashiers rang up sales before discovering the woman had no money. Angry customers grabbed clothes without paying," said the AP report. These thieves, no doubt, were Democrat constituents. And finally, the woman was arrested on three other warrants but hasn't yet been charged for the coat chaos, "pending a mental health evaluation." Before any more is done with ObamaCare, perhaps we should schedule 535 of those same evaluations for Congress.

*****

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.)