The Patriot Post Chronicle 2-9-2011

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 2-9-2011
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty." --Thomas Jefferson

Editorial Exegesis

"An administration that has no respect for Congress, the courts or the Constitution has been found in contempt for reissuing a drilling moratorium that a U.S. district judge found overly broad. The Obama administration's trouble with the courts has continued with a judge's ruling last week that the Interior Department's reinstating of a drilling moratorium followed by a de facto moratorium via an overly restrictive permitting process constituted contempt. The administration had issued a drilling moratorium in May in waters deeper than 500 feet after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off Louisiana that resulted in the spill of more than 4.1 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. In June, Martin Feldman of the Eastern District Court of Louisiana struck down Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's original moratorium, saying it was overkill based on flawed reasoning. ... So the administration went back, rearranged a few words and a few deck chairs, and reissued its moratorium. That one was officially lifted in October, although the permitting process, which mysteriously includes shallow-water wells, has had the effect of continuing the moratorium. Feldman was not amused. 'Each step the government took following the court's imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,' the judge said in his ruling. 'Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the reimposition of a second moratorium ... provides this court with clear and convincing evidence of its contempt.' ... It is not so much that the Obama administration differs with the law, but that it considers itself above it -- even above the Constitution." --Investor's Business Daily1

The Demo-gogues

There, he fixed it: "I know that many of you [small businesses] have told me that you are waiting for demand to rise before you get off the sidelines and expand, and that with millions of Americans out of work, demand has risen more slowly than any of us would like. But many of your own economists and salespeople are now forecasting a healthy increase in demand. So I want to encourage you to get in the game. So if I've got one message, my message is now is the time to invest in America." --regulator in chief Barack Obama with a pep talk to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Spread the wealth: "If we're fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports, the benefits cannot just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that opening markets will lift their standard of living as well as your bottom line'" --Barack Obama

"There's nothing socialist about [the health care law]. That's saying to Americans, we're going each of us be responsible for our own health care." --Barack Obama

The BIG Lie: "I didn't raise taxes once." --Barack Obama ("Once" is the only true part of that statement. According to The Heritage Foundation2, "All told Obamacare contains 18 separate tax increases that will cost taxpayers $503 billion between 2010 and 2019.")

Class warfare: "The president laid out significant cuts to deal with the long-term debt. We are going to once again attempt to repeal the unnecessary $700 billion tax cut for people who make the top 2 percent." --Joe Biden, announcing a major tax increase on small business owners

Still the same old leftist: "I haven't -- I didn't move to [the center]. I'm the same guy." --Barack Obama

Keen sense of the obvious: "Over the first two years of my presidency, we had a complete disaster. Right?" --Barack Obama, who would have stumbled into the truth had he stopped there

Insight

"Beware the temptation to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil." --Ronald Reagan

"We're a nation with global responsibilities. We're not somewhere else in the world protecting someone else's interests; we're there protecting our own." --Ronald Reagan

Upright

"First, Reagan actually believed he could win the Cold War. He committed himself to that goal early and unequivocally. ... Reagan was seen as the ultimate Cold Warrior, giving no quarter to the 'Evil Empire.' Yet, his care for the everyday lives of human beings languishing in the USSR went largely unnoticed. That's too bad, as that concern is a moving testimony of where this president's heart guided him. That's something worth remembering as a nation remembers the life of Ronald Reagan this February 2011." --author and columnist Paul Kengor

"He didn't see himself as 'the great communicator.' It was so famous a moniker that he could do nothing but graciously accept the compliment, but he well understood it was bestowed in part by foes and in part to undercut the seriousness of his philosophy: 'It's not what he says, it's how he says it.' He answered in his farewell address: 'I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: it was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things.' It wasn't his eloquence people supported, it was his stands -- opposition to the too-big state, to its intrusions and demands, to Soviet communism. Voters weren't charmed, they were convinced." --columnist and Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan

"Now that two different federal courts have declared ObamaCare unconstitutional, the administration's answer is to call the courts guilty of 'judicial activism.' Barack Obama has a rhetorical solution for every problem. Remember the repeated claims of 'shovel-ready' projects that needed only federal stimulus money to get started? Last year the President quietly admitted that there were not many 'shovel-ready' projects, after all. But the phrase served its political purpose at the time -- and that was obviously all that mattered. Now, in the wake of rulings by two different courts that ObamaCare is unconstitutional, rhetoric is being mobilized again, without any fussy worries about facts." --economist Thomas Sowell

"Senate Republican efforts to repeal ObamaCare went down on a strict party-line vote [last week], with every single Democrat voting against (except for independent caucus member Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and Mark Warner of Virginia, who didn't vote.) ... What Republicans are carrying into the 2012 election season is a lockstep vote from a Party desperately trying to defend a badly broken law that is hated by the people, unlawful in the judgment of a federal court, devastating to the economy, and beaten to the ground by the 26 states filing suit against it. It was already looking like a bad election for the Democrats, but now they have to run from the twisted monstrosity dragging itself behind them and vomiting waivers. [Last week's] vote was much more than a symbolic act." --columnist John Hayward