The Patriot Post Chronicle 1-27-2010

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 1-27-2010
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and unjustifiable." --James Madison

Obama's spending "freeze" is just another game
Editorial Exegesis

"[Barack] Obama's touted spending freeze for some domestic agencies is the politics of gesture. It would apply to only 17% of the budget, and these programs have already had a 22% increase in their annual appropriations in the past two years, and another 25% increase including stimulus. As for the deficit, CBO shows that over the first three years of the Obama Presidency, 2009-2011, the federal government will borrow an estimated $3.7 trillion. That is more than the entire accumulated national debt for the first 225 years of U.S. history. By 2019, the interest payments on this debt will be larger than the budget for education, roads and all other nondefense discretionary spending. If this borrowing were financing defense investments or tax rate reductions to spur the U.S. economy, we wouldn't be worried. But most of this money is going to transfer payments to individuals, or subsidies to home buyers and inefficient businesses that do little for wealth creation. As it always does, CBO forecasts that deficits will decline in the later years of its 10-year budget window. But this forecast depends on assumptions about Congress so fanciful that James Cameron couldn't make them up. ... If the President and his party really are serious, they can do more than promise a spending freeze after 2012. They can stop spending more now: Drop the health-care bill, cancel the unspent stimulus spending from last year, kill the $150 billion new stimulus that has already passed the House, and bar all repaid bailout cash from being re-spent. Everything else is marketing." --The Wall Street Journal

Upright

"The problem is not the 'crises' Obama inherited. It's the ones he's creating. He has lived in such a socialist policy shell all his life that he doesn't have a clue that he's on a different planet than most of us. If he were just slightly less narcissistic, he might be able to figure this out. But ... no matter what adjustments he promises to make following the Boston Massacre, he still intends to govern like a socialist. He only wants to do a better job of figuring out how to do it less visibly, hoping we won't 'get it' before it's too late." --columnist David Limbaugh

"An across-the-board tax cut is the fairest pro-growth message of them all. Lower tax rates for everybody. Get out of the box of rich people and class warfare. ... Republicans must now be bold and fight for across-the-board tax relief, for families, individuals and businesses, along with smaller government, fewer services and across-the-board spending cuts." --economist Larry Kudlow

"The President could wait months before deciding to give a general the troops he asked for to fight the war in Afghanistan but there was never to be enough time for the health care bill to be exposed in the light of day to the usual Congressional hearings and debate. Moreover, despite all the haste, the health care program would not actually go into effect until after the 2012 presidential election. In other words, the public was not supposed to find out whether the government's takeover of medical care actually made things better or worse until after it was too late." --economist Thomas Sowell

"The result in Massachusetts last Tuesday showed that for yet another segment of the population which has had the opportunity to express itself at the ballot box, Obama's policies have diminished from a lack of resonance to active dissonance. Obama can tinker with the political shop all he wants, but to misquote my neighbor James Carville: It's the policies, stupid." --political analyst Rich Galen

"As even Massachusetts demonstrated ... most Americans believe Americans know how to solve their problems through initiative, limited government and hard work, not through the nanny state." --American Spectator editor R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.

"There is a simple way to get corporate money out of politics: get the government out of our lives and economic affairs. If government has no favors to sell, no one will spend money trying to win them." --columnist John Stossel

Dezinformatsia

Head in the sand: "Last spring, the polls said people wanted health care reform. They even wanted the public option. ... One third of that majority is on a government health program. I'm on Medicare. People who've been in the military are on a government health program. And yet the Republicans were able the make the idea that being on a government health program is terrible. How absurd." --retired ABC newsman Sam Donaldson

Surely, you can't be serious: "Instead of loudly fighting back, the president tried to bring Republicans into the fold, and it backfired.... On health care reform, instead of telling Americans exactly what he wanted in a health care bill, President Obama left it up to lawmakers. Republicans used the president's strategy to create fear and confusion among voters." --CNN's Carol Costello

We can hope: "Do you think maybe one term is enough?" --ABC's Diane Sawyer to Barack Obama (No, it's one term too many.)

Elitism: "Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted. On second thought, they may be right: it's been wasted on them. ... This is yet further evidence that Americans are flagrantly ill-informed ... and, for those watching Fox News, misinformed." --Time mag's Joe Klein

Non Compos Mentis: "This is a Supreme Court-sanctioned murder of what little actual democracy is left in this democracy. It is government of the people by the corporations for the corporations. It is the Dark Ages. It is our Dred Scott. ... Be prepared, then, for the ban on same-sex marriage, on abortion, on evolution, on separation of church and state ... for racial and religious profiling, because you've got to blame somebody for all the reductions in domestic spending and civil liberties, just to make sure the agitators against the United Corporate States of America are kept unheard." --MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, hosting his show funded by a giant media corporation, yet reviling the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations have a free speech right to participate in elections

Newspulper Headlines:

Life Imitates the Onion: "Obama's Home Teleprompter Malfunctions During Family Dinner" --Onion News Network, Nov. 16 ++ "Obama Uses Teleprompters During Speech at Elementary School" --RealClearPolitics.com, Jan. 24

We Blame Global Warming: "Pelicans Treated for Hypothermia From Calif. Storm" --Associated Press

Questions Nobody Is Asking: "Are You Surprised John Edwards Dropped His Denial and Admitted to Fathering a Child With Rielle Hunter?" --ABCNews.com ++ "Can John Edwards' Dreadful Image Be Rehabilitated?" --Time.com

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: "Police Investigating Michael Jackson Giraffe Deaths" --CNSNews.com

Bottom Stories of the Day: "Liberal Talk-Radio Station Air America Files for Bankruptcy, Will Go off the Air" --The Washington Post

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)