The Patriot Post Chronicle 7-7-2010

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 7-7-2010
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." --Benjamin Franklin

Editorial Exegesis

"'Next year when I start presenting some very difficult choices to the country, I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficits step up. Because I'm calling their bluff.' That was President Barack Obama, the heretofore unknown deficit hawk, all but announcing the other day the tax trap that he's been laying for Republicans. From what we hear about intra-GOP debates, more than a few will be happy to walk right into it. You don't need a Mensa IQ to figure this one out. Mr. Obama's plan has been to increase spending to new, and what he hopes will be permanent, heights. Then as the public and financial markets begin to fret about deficits and debt, he'll claim that the debt is 'unsustainable' and that the only 'responsible' policy is to raise taxes. ... We think the last thing the U.S. economy needs at the moment -- and the worst policy for the deficit -- is the big tax increase that will hit on January 1 with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. ... Under Congress's perverse budget rules, extending those tax cuts will 'cost' the Treasury revenue, even though extending those tax rates would only prevent a tax increase. And because Congress still uses static revenue scoring -- meaning no change in economic behavior from tax changes -- the Joint Tax Committee thinks it will raise nearly $1 trillion over 10 years from the higher tax rates on incomes, dividends and capital gains. That's highly improbable. After those tax rates were cut in 2003, total federal tax revenue increased by 44%, or $743 billion, from 2003-2007. In other words, Democrats have rigged the rules so that merely stopping a tax increase will be scored to increase the deficit. These are the same Democrats who haven't 'paid for' trillions of spending in the last four years, but watch them soon denounce Republicans as fiscally irresponsible merely for trying to stop a tax increase. Orwell would love modern Washington." --The Wall Street Journal1

Upright

"The federal government wants more and more to tell us, by law and by bureaucratic regulation, what's good for us -- what to eat, what to spend our own money on, to whether and where to smoke a cigarette or eat a burger. When a senator asked Elena Kagan, the president's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, whether she believed Congress had the power 'to tell people what to eat every day,' she was stumped for an answer. The personal has become the political. The Founding Fathers are spinning." --columnist Suzanne Fields

"In the past few days, we've ... heard from former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams, who has confirmed -- from the belly of the beast -- our worst suspicions about Obama and Eric Holder's Justice Department's dismissing a slam-dunk case for voter intimidation against New Black Panther Party members for racial reasons. This is an egregious trampling on the rule of law, an outrage that would subject any Republican president to charges of high crimes and misdemeanors, a scandal of the first order for which this administration isn't even bothering to develop 'plausible deniability.'" --columnist David Limbaugh

"As I've noted many times over the years when debating both Democrats and Republicans who fall back on empty phrases to justify putting the amnesty cart before the enforcement horse, we are not a 'nation of immigrants.' This is both a factual error and a warm-and-fuzzy non sequitur. Eighty-five percent of the residents currently in the United States were born here. Yes, we are almost all descendants of immigrants. But we are not a 'nation of immigrants.' (And the politically correct president certainly wouldn't argue that Native American Indians, Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians and descendants of black slaves 'immigrated' here in any common sense of the word, would he?)" --columnist Michelle Malkin

"President Obama's National Security Strategy insists on calling the enemy -- how else do you define those seeking your destruction? -- 'a loose network of violent extremists.' But this is utterly meaningless. This is not an anger-management therapy group gone rogue. These are people professing a powerful ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam, in whose name they propagandize, proselytize, terrorize and kill. Why is this important? Because the first rule of war is to know your enemy. If you don't, you wander into intellectual cul-de-sacs and ignore the real causes that might allow you to prevent recurrences." --columnist Charles Krauthammer

Dezinformatsia

That's the spirit: "It's July 4th, my least favorite holiday. ... You see, I don't believe in patriotism. You can call me unpatriotic if you'd like, but really I'm anti-patriotic. I've been studying fascism lately, and there is one inescapable fact about it: Nationalism is the egg that hatches fascism. And patriotism is but the father of nationalism. Patriotism is not something to play with. It's highly toxic. When ingested, it corrodes the rational faculties." --Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive

Not exactly: "I think most economists would say the stimulus did work in the sense it would have been a lot worse if there hadn't been one." --Bloomberg's Al Hunt

Cruelty it's not: "We're facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused." --New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Republicans unwilling to extend unemployment benefits

What jobs? "Many members of Congress especially those in tough re-election campaigns are home right now, trying to figure out the spending issue: Will voters support more stimulus spending if it directly leads to jobs, or has deficit spending itself become political Kryptonite?" --CBS's Wyatt Andrews

Getting it right: "You know the United States has gone way, way down the path to unsustainable debt when governments in Europe -- spendaholic Europe -- lecture the administration on fiscal restraint and ultimately carry the day." --Chicago Tribune

What's really important: "The almost unknown, practically under the radar, the Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, before committees this week being funny. She was downright funny." --CBS's Harry Smith

"So, apart from the fact that she has got a sense of humor, what did we really learn today about Elena Kagan?" --CNN's Campbell Brown