The Patriot Post Brief 01-04-2010

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The Patriot Post Brief 01-04-2010
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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The Foundation

"National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman." --John Adams

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian Muslim who tried to blow up a plane on Christmas
Culture

"In response to a Nigerian Muslim trying to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, the government will now prohibit international travelers from going to the bathroom in the last hour before the plane lands. Terrorists who plan to bomb planes during the first seven hours of the eight-hour flight, however, should face no difficulties, provided they wait until after the complimentary beverage service has been concluded. How do they know Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab didn't wait until the end of the flight to try to detonate explosives because he heard the stewardess announce that the food service was over and seats would have to be placed in their upright position? I can't finish my snack? This plane is going down! Also prohibited in the last hour of international flights will be: blankets, pillows, computers and in-flight entertainment. Another triumph in Janet Napolitano's 'Let's stay one step behind the terrorists' policy! For the past eight years, approximately 2 million Americans a day have been subjected to humiliating searches at airport security checkpoints, forced to remove their shoes and jackets, to open their computers, and to remove all liquids from their carry-on bags, except minuscule amounts in marked 3-ounce containers placed in Ziploc plastic bags -- folding sandwich bags are verboten -- among other indignities. This, allegedly, was the price we had to pay for safe airplanes. The one security precaution the government refused to consider was to require extra screening for passengers who looked like the last three-dozen terrorists to attack airplanes. Since Muslims took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, every attack on a commercial airliner has been committed by foreign-born Muslim men with the same hair color, eye color and skin color. Half of them have been named Mohammed. An alien from the planet 'Not Politically Correct' would have surveyed the situation after 9/11 and said: 'You are at war with an enemy without uniforms, without morals, without a country and without a leader -- but the one advantage you have is they all look alike. ... What? ... What did I say?' The only advantage we have in a war with stateless terrorists was ruled out of order ab initio by political correctness. And so, despite 5 trillion Americans opening laptops, surrendering lip gloss and drinking breast milk in airports day after day for the past eight years, the government still couldn't stop a Nigerian Muslim from nearly blowing up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day." --columnist Ann Coulter

Opinion in Brief

"If Barack Obama wants to reassure a nervous public that bureaucratic incompetence won't be tolerated, he might look to the example of what happened to the director of FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But no one expects the president to sack Janet Napolitano, the secretary of something the government insists on calling Homeland Security. That's not how an administration that regards words and deeds as equals actually works. The lessons in the latest Islamist attempt to bring down a Western airliner could be useful, but such lessons are too painful for the guvvies to think about. Mzz Napolitano's early assurance, since amended, that 'the system worked' was either dopey beyond belief, or an unintended ringing endorsement of the ancient folk ethic that 'God helps those who help themselves.' Better God than a guvvie, but not everyone can count on having as a fellow passenger a young Dutchman with quick instincts, athletic grace, a sharp eye and a full complement of bravery and courage. That's not really a 'system' for securing the homeland. President Obama, interrupting a day at the beach, told reporters in Hawaii that he would pursue the plotters in Arabia and he would not rest until they are caught. This time he did not promise they would be executed, as he did of the Guantanamo plotters who are to be tried in New York City. But the attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it approached Detroit was 'a serious reminder' of the dangers George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and other Republicans warned us about. (Of course, he couldn't afford to say it quite that way.) ... Mr. Obama's tough-guy rhetoric, his words plain, pretty and well-parsed, is more reassuring than his deeds, or would be if there was evidence that he really understands what must be done. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young jihadist from Nigeria by way of Yemen, was quickly indicted on federal charges of trying to destroy an aircraft, which means that he will have the full array of rights accorded to every defendant in an American court. Someone will have to read his Miranda rights, and he will have the right to a lawyer. This will please the civil rights radicals who imagine the Constitution to be a suicide pact, and who don't, or can't, understand that the most important civil right of all is the right not to be murdered." --columnist Wesley Pruden

Liberty

"Obama didn't undertake his radical agenda to turn America into a full-blown socialist state because of 'the size of the problems (he) inherited.' That was just a convenient excuse. He has been groomed, mentored and polished for this very task since he was a little boy. He is taking out his grudge against America, an America he views as fundamentally unfair, inequitable, imperialistic and exploitive, but as a powerful resource for change -- if only he can fundamentally transform it. ... Obama's agenda didn't significantly change with the unfolding of the financial crisis that led to TARP. He has had his sights on a single-payer health care system for years. He had plans to 'spread the wealth around' long before TARP became an acronym. He and his wife were trashing America as arrogant and dismissive long before this economic crisis fell into their laps just months before the 2008 election. So, yes, Obama's standing with the American people is related to 'the battles he chose to take on during his first year,' but not in a positive way. Those battles don't qualify as mitigating factors ... because they were undertaken not to improve the economy, but to consummate, in substance, a Cold War victory for the communists after they had otherwise been defeated. The fainthearted among us can blanch at the suggestion that Obama is a Marxist -- and accuse me of name-calling or incivility -- but my intention is not to inflame. It is to communicate the truth in accurate terms to help people understand the magnitude of the threat we face by this assault on our liberties. Obama didn't impose his Draconian stimulus bill or omnibus spending bills to jump-start the economy. He did it to transfer wealth and establish slush funds for re-election. He didn't push cap and trade to reduce 'global warming,' but to bring America down to size with the 'underdeveloped' nations of the world. He didn't obsessively promote Obamacare to improve the economy, 'bend the cost curve' (what a joke!), achieve universal coverage or improve the quality of health care. He did it to amplify the federal government's power over all aspects of our lives. ... Obama isn't even trying to 'get serious about the deficit and spending.' That's a cruel ruse. Look at his projected deficits in the out-years. He is planning on deficits in excess of a trillion dollars from here forward, even after the economy fully recovers. The country cannot sustain this. The public knows it and is outraged and horrified by it. Our children cannot live in freedom if this insane recklessness is not stopped." --columnist David Limbaugh

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The Patriot Post Brief 01-04-2010
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

The Gipper

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits." --Ronald Reagan

Government

"If Congress and the president are successful in making the Pre-existing Condition Patient Protection Act the law of the land, their treachery won't stop there. Insurance companies will attempt to charge people with pre-existing health conditions a higher price to compensate for their higher expected cost. Those people will complain to Congress. Then Congress will enact insurance premium price controls. Insurance companies might try to restrict just what treatments they will cover under such restrictions. That means Congress will play a greater role in managing what insurance companies can and cannot do. The dilemma Congress always faces, when it messes with the economy, was aptly described in a Negro spiritual play by Marcus Cook Connelly titled 'Green Pastures.' In it, G0d laments to the angel Gabriel, 'Every time Ah passes a miracle, Ah has to pass fo' or five mo' to ketch up wid it,' adding, 'Even bein G0d ain't no bed of roses.' When Congress creates a miracle for one American, it creates a non-miracle for another. After that, Congress has to create a compensatory miracle. Many years ago, I used to testify before Congress, something I refuse to do now. At several of the hearings, I urged Congress to get out of the miracle business and leave miracle making up to G0d. For a president and congressman to shamelessly propose something like the Pre-existing Condition Patient Protection Act demonstrates just how far we've gone down the road to perdition. The most tragic thing is that most Americans have no idea that such an act violates every principle of insurance and it's something that not even yesteryear's lunatics would have thought up." --George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams

Re: The Left

"The liberals keep telling us that, thanks to Obama's policy of speaking endlessly and carrying a very small stick, America has gained renewed respect around the world. But, as usual, they don't specify which countries respect us more these days now that they have good reason to fear us less. We know pretty darn well they're not referring to Russia, Iran, Somalia, North Korea, Syria or China. They're not even able to point to such erstwhile allies as Poland, Israel and the Czech Republic, all of whom are staggering around these days with American-made switchblades in their back. Liberals, as well as a great many conservatives, were upset with George W. Bush for his massive spending. But these days, when Obama is quadrupling the deficit, the Left is cheering him on. Can you imagine what liberals would be saying if a Republican president announced something as nutty as Obama's promise to spend his way to solvency? For that matter, what would a typical liberal say if, after he broke the news that they were on the brink of bankruptcy, his wife's response was to head out the front door, and when he asked her where she was going, she replied, 'I'll be back in a minute, honey, I'm just running out to pick up a few things at Tiffany's'? Is there a jury in America that would find him guilty if he busted a chair over her head? But when it's Obama going out the door to drop a few trillion on cap and trade and Obamacare, the liberals just shake their heads like besotted newlyweds and say, 'Isn't he just cute as a button?'" --columnist Burt Prelutsky

For the Record

"On the last day of 2009, that awful year, I was listening to a report on National Public Radio (yes, I'm a listener). Reporter Tamara Keith presented a by-now-familiar recap of the worst financial and corporate scandals of the decade, from Enron and Martha Stewart to Tyco and Bernie Madoff. It was a depressing slog of greed, venality and theft. When the report was over, 'Morning Edition' host Steve Inskeep summarized the report with a tart: 'The decade in capitalism.' I don't want to single out Inskeep, since he was doing what pretty much the entire media establishment has done, particularly of late: reducing 'capitalism' to its alleged sins. And that's the point. There are few areas of life where a thing responsible for so much good gets so little credit for it. Imagine if I were to collect the most infamous deeds of African-Americans over the last decade -- say, Michael Vick's dog-fighting scandal and O.J. Simpson's most recent criminal exploit -- and then put a bow on it with the phrase 'the decade in black America.' What if I did the same thing with Jews? Bernie Madoff, the face of Jewish America! Do the scandals of Rod Blagojevich, Charlie Rangel and John Edwards define the Democratic Party from 2000 to 2010? Do Abu Ghraib and the balloon boy sum up America? ... Every good thing capitalism helps produce -- from singing careers to cures for diseases to staggering charity -- is credited to some other sphere of our lives. Every problem with capitalism, meanwhile, is laid at her feet. Except the problems with capitalism -- greed, theft, etc. -- aren't capitalism's fault, they're humanity's. Socialist countries have greedy thieves, too. Free markets are in disrepute these days, particularly by the people running Washington. For them, government is the solution and capitalism is the problem. If they have their way over the next decade, they won't cure what allegedly ails capitalism -- people will still steal and lie -- but they will impede everything that makes capitalism great. And that will be bad for everyone, even NPR." --National Review editor Jonah Goldberg

The Last Word

"On Christmas Day, a gentleman from Nigeria succeeded (effortlessly) in boarding a flight to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. Pretty funny, huh? But the Pantybomber wasn't the big joke. The real laugh was the United States government. The global hyperpower spent the next week making itself a laughingstock to the entire planet. First, the bureaucrats at the TSA swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions. Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you. At Heathrow last week, they were permitting only one item of carry-on on U.S. flights. In Toronto, no large purses. Um, the Pantybomber didn't have a purse. He brought the bomb on board under his private parts, and his private parts weren't part of his carry-on (although, if reports of injuries sustained in his failed mission are correct, they may well have been part of his carry-off). But no matter. If in doubt, blame the victim. The TSA announced that for the last hour of the flight no passenger can use the toilets or have anything on his lap -- not a laptop, not a blanket, not a stewardess, not even a paperback book. ... The only good news was that the derision was so universal that the TSA promptly reined in some of their wackier impositions a couple of days later. But by then Janet Incompetano, the Homeland Security secretary, had gone on TV and declared to the world that there was nothing to worry about: 'The system worked.' Indeed, it worked 'smoothly.' The al-Qaida trainee on a terrorist watch list, a man banned from the United Kingdom and reported to the CIA by his own father, got on board the plane, assembled the bomb, and attempted to detonate it. But don't worry 'bout a thing; the system worked. ... A thwarted terror attack at Christmas is bad enough. Spending the following week making yourself a global joke is worse. Every A-list despot and dime store jihadist got that message loud and clear -- and so did American allies already feeling semi-abandoned by this most parochial of presidents. Expect a bumpy 12 months ahead. Happy New Year." --columnist Mark Steyn

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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.)