The Patriot Post Brief · May 10, 2010

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief · May 10, 2010
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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The Foundation

"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife." --Thomas Jefferson

Government
The hammer and sickle got Greece here in the first place

"Greece has cultural problems that contribute to its economic implosion. But there are similarities to the U.S. as well -- and because we have elected Democrats, they are growing. By the end of 2011, Greece's debt will be 150 percent of its GDP. According to a March report by the Congressional Budget Office, President Obama's 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years -- $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected -- which will increase our debt to GDP ratio to 90 percent by 2020. One in three Greeks works for the government. Government employees enjoy higher wages, more munificent benefits, and earlier retirements than private sector employees. ... Public sector unions are growing in the U.S. More than 50 percent of all union members are now public employees who have negotiated sweet deals with local, state, and federal governments. As economic historian John Steele Gordon points out, 'Federal workers now earn, in wages and benefits, about twice what their private-sector equivalents get paid. State workers often have Cadillac health plans and retirement benefits far above the private sector average: 80 percent of public-sector workers have pension benefits, only 50 percent in the private sector. Many can retire at age 50.' While private employers were shedding jobs during the recession, state and local governments hired 110,000 new workers. Obama's new spending will result in a 14.5 percent increase in the number of federal employees in just two years. ... And in a corrupt feedback loop that may not be so very different after all from the Greek practice, public employee unions give generously to Democratic candidates, both in cash contributions and by manning phone banks, getting out the vote, and so on. It's no coincidence that the states with the most powerful public sector unions -- New Jersey, California, and New York -- are facing the most severe budget crises. Greece is in flames, but if you look around, you can smell the smoke here as well." --columnist Mona Charen

For the Record

"[Friday] the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor and Statistics released its monthly jobs report showing that the nation's unemployment rose to 9.9% in April despite the addition of 290,000 jobs, 66,000 of which were temporary Census 2010 jobs. The rise in unemployment was driven by the entrance of 195,000 previously discouraged Americans reentering the workforce. In total, the U.S. economy has now lost a net of 2.6 million jobs since President Barack Obama signed his $862 billion stimulus plan. We are 7.6 million jobs short of the 137.8 million he promised the American economy would support by 2010. It is encouraging to see the American economy beginning to recover, but these numbers again indicate that the Obama administration's heavy government hand has retarded and deformed what otherwise would have been a more robust recovery. The White House may tout Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports showing their $862 billion stimulus created jobs, but the CBO has also admitted their computer simulation didn't take any actual new real world data into account. To the contrary, an independent study of real world stimulus facts found: 1) no statistical correlation between unemployment and how the $862 billion was spent; 2) that Democratic districts received one-and-a-half times as many awards as Republican ones; and 3) an average cost of $286,000 was awarded per job created. ... What kind of jobs were created? According to Gallup the federal government is hiring at a significantly faster pace than the private sector. And data from BLS confirms that governments are increasing public sector pay at far faster rates than the private sector. None of this should be a surprise. President Obama specifically designed his stimulus to preserve government union jobs. ... The more the Obama agenda is implemented, the slower our recovery will be." --Heritage Foundation's Morning Bell

Insight

"Feudalism, serfdom, slavery, all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kind to rule, springing out of, and necessarily to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is the same in all cases -- less government." --British author and philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

Re: The Left

"There has been one high-profile violent incident perpetrated by a right-winger since Obama took office: the May 31, 2009 shooting of abortionist George Tiller. There have been a bevy of high-profile violent incidents by registered Democrats or liberals: the suicide airplane attack by Joseph Stack of Austin, Texas, against the IRS; the liberal who bit off the finger of an ObamaCare opponent in Thousand Oaks, Calif.; the murderous rampage by Obama-lover Amy Bishop at the University of Alabama; the beating of black man Kenneth Gladney by Service Employee International Union thugs in St. Louis; the Earth Liberation Front's destruction of KRKO-AM's radio towers in Seattle. None of these incidents by non-Muslim Americans were designed to create mass casualties among random Americans or members of the American military. All of the radical Muslim attacks were. Using rudimentary reasoning skills, it wouldn't take long to hit on the hypothesis that perhaps the Times Square attempted bombing was linked to a radical Muslim. But we live in a country where rudimentary reasoning skills have been banned if they offend politically correct sensibilities. So our politicians suggest that tea partiers were behind the attempted bombing (that suggestion, not coincidentally, fits with President Obama's attempts to label his domestic political opponents terrorists). They suggest that it could have been anybody -- anybody! -- behind the propane, gas and gunpowder. Meanwhile, they don't place radical Muslim terrorists on no-fly lists. Only when the proof is indisputable do they finally confirm what everybody with half a brain suspected all along -- and then they hope to get lucky." --columnist Ben Shapiro

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief · May 10, 2010
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Opinion in Brief

"So now, I gather, our only strategy is to hope the terrorists' bombs keep fizzling. There's no other line of defense. In the case of the Times Square car bomber, the Department of Homeland Security failed, the Immigration and Naturalization Service failed, the CIA failed and the TSA failed. (However, the Department of Alert T-Shirt Vendors came through with flying colors, as it always does.) Only the New York Police Department, a New York street vendor and Shahzad's Rube Goldberg bomb (I do hope he's not offended by how Jewish that sounds -- Obama can apologize) prevented a major explosion in Times Square. Even after the NYPD de-wired the smoking car bomb, produced enough information to identify the bomb-maker, and handed it all to federal law enforcement authorities tied up in a bow, the federal government's crack 'no-fly' list failed to stop Shahzad from boarding a plane to Dubai. To be fair, at Emirates Airlines, being on a 'no-fly' list makes you eligible for pre-boarding. Perhaps the Department of Homeland Security should consider creating a 'Really, REALLY No-Fly' list." --columnist Ann Coulter

The Gipper

"In the days ahead we need to systematically redevelop our approach to this [terrorism] problem, recognizing that the worst outcome of all is one in which terrorists succeed in transforming an open democracy into a closed fortress." --Ronald Reagan

Liberty

"Our Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution to create a federal government that would primarily carry out functions state governments could not. Paramount among them: 1) defending the country against foreign enemies, 2) regulating commerce with foreign nations, 3) regulating commerce among the states and 4) regulating immigration. Today we have illegal immigrants hauling massive quantities of illegal drugs across our international border, engaging in firefights with U.S. law enforcement officers on our sovereign territory, and distributing their deadly contraband and destroying the lives of American teenagers in communities in every state of the union. President Obama and Congress are failing in their most fundamental duties." --CNSNews.com editor in chief Terence P. Jeffrey

Culture

"At a high school south of San Jose, Calif., five students were sent home for causing offense to Hispanic classmates by wearing clothes emblazoned with American flags on Cinco de Mayo. ... When displaying your country's flag becomes a political statement, something is amiss. While Santa Clara County is not indicative of the American norm, the fact that there is anyplace in the country where expressions of national identity have become offensive should give us pause. That administrators would allow a claque of students to bully them into punishing other classmates is a sign of real weakness. That they would allow the American flag to be deemed an offensive symbol indicates that their weakness is rooted in a multicultural attitude that holds that all cultures are equal, except their own. Most troubling, though, is the fact that the students of Hispanic ancestry who were interviewed did not feel a part of the American experience and that they saw the two flags as antithetical. ... California continues to point to an unhappy future for the rest of the nation." --Washington Examiner political editor Chris Stirewalt

Reader Comments

"I have lived and worked in South America for many years and I currently reside in Celaya, Mexico. For the record, 5 de Mayo is not an official holiday here as all banks and public offices are open. It is nothing more than an excuse for slackers to take the day off." --Robert

"Cinco de Mayo marks a minor, though first Mexican victory over the French. I guess if you're Mexican beating the French is a big deal. The fact that it's more a creation of beer companies' advertising in this country is sad but it figures. Most people of Mexican ancestry can't even tell you what May 5th represents, just that it's a Mexican holiday. The fact we even tolerate it here is tragic. I wonder what the response would be if we had a 4th of July rally in Mexico City. I don't think Mexicans have any right to expect a more tolerant reaction to Cinco de Mayo celebrations here than they would grant us in an American independence rally in their country." --Texan

"To The Patriot staff: The Shield of Strength package arrived in Afghanistan today, and the guys are arguing over who gets to be the next one to take the flag on mission. The Essential Liberty Guides have all been distributed and the young soldiers in my command were very enthusiastic about this booklet. The excellent introduction was an outstanding civics lesson for them. Our young war fighters are defending the Constitution with their lives, yet some had never even read it -- but then few schools teach civics or 'real' American history anymore. Many had little understanding of the full meaning of their oath to our Constitution, but Essential Liberty moved them to a much better comprehension of what we have sworn to 'support and defend.' Thanks for all you do, fellow Patriots." --Major, USA, Afghanistan

"I am not a religious person, but even I have seen a steady decline in the morality of this country since the ultra liberal and now deceased Madeline Murray O'Hare convinced the courts that prayer in schools was a conflict with regard to the separation between church and state. The more God is removed, the more our rights are taken away. The tighter the government regulates every aspect of our lives, the more liberties we forfeit. When will the madness end? God only knows." --Texas Gal

The Last Word

"The Associated Press has a list of the 20 most and least 'economically distressed' counties in the country. The most-stressed county is Imperial, in southeastern California (between San Diego and Yuma, Ariz.). Least-stressed? Ford County, Kan., home of Dodge City. Of the 20 most-stressed counties, 12 are in California, 3 each in Michigan and Nevada, and 1 each in New Mexico and Illinois. Of the 20 least-stressed, 4 are in Kansas; 3 each in Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota; 2 each in Louisiana and Oklahoma; and 1 each in Iowa, Virginia and Wyoming.

Didn't somebody once write a book called 'What's the Matter With Kansas?'? Seems as though 'What's the Matter With California?' would be a more fruitful line of inquiry." --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

(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.)