The Patriot Post Chronicle 8-31-2011

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 8-31-2011
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"The problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect." --James Madison

Editorial Exegesis

"Ben Bernanke's annual Jackson Hole policy speech on Friday ... contained little news about monetary policy. But such is the Federal Reserve Chairman's influence among the Wall Street-media establishment that his speech is being celebrated as a rebuke of Congress for its fiscal drama. ... Mr. Bernanke is shrewd enough not to take overt partisan sides, but his words were quickly interpreted as a rebuke to Republicans for their recent debt-limit showdown with President Obama. ... Mr. Bernanke also lectured that 'U.S. fiscal policy must be placed on a sustainable path,' though not by cutting spending in the short-term. So the Fed chief joins the Keynesian queue of spending St. Augustines -- Lord, make us fiscally chaste, but not yet. The Fed chief must not understand Congress if he thinks you can encourage it to spend more now and somehow expect it to discover discipline later. The natural instinct of any legislature is to spend, so whenever a Congress is willing to cut domestic outlays you have to grab the offer. Mr. Bernanke's riff undercuts the few reformers who really do want to put spending 'on a sustainable path.' ... The remarks also sound like an alibi for the Fed's own inability to midwife a faster recovery. Republicans have run the House for fewer than eight months. Mr. Bernanke has been Fed Chairman since February 2006 and has presided over 32 months of historically easy monetary policy in the name of spurring faster growth and avoiding deflation. What we have instead is a mild stagflation -- 1% GDP growth, 9.1% unemployment, and a commodity price bubble that has robbed middle-class real incomes. Is this John Boehner's fault? We certainly hope Republicans in Congress and on the Presidential trail are paying attention, though not in the way Mr. Bernanke intends. The Chairman's speech continues his habit of taking the Fed into political territory far beyond its mandate, and Republicans should be thinking carefully about ways to rein it back in." --The Wall Street Journal1

Upright

"The debt stood at $10.6 trillion when Barack Obama took office in January 2009. Now, it's about $14.4 trillion. ... By the time Obama finishes his first term, he will have increased the national debt by somewhere in the $5 trillion-to-$6 trillion range -- more than Bush did in two terms. None of this is to say that George W. Bush had a good record on spending. He didn't, and he's fair game for criticism. But is it honest to condemn reckless spending in 'eight years of Republican rule' when Democrats controlled the Senate for four of those years and the House for two? Is it honest to talk about the 'cost' of the Bush tax cuts when federal revenues increased significantly while they were in effect? And is it honest to refer to Bush's ballooning deficits when deficits actually trended down for much of his presidency -- at least before Democrats won control of Congress? Of course Obama partisans would like to pin the president's troubles on Bush. But they should get their facts straight first." --columnist Byron York

"Obama doesn't meditate, cogitate, contemplate or deliberate about job creation, because he thinks he's already got it figured out. The only thing he's doing is strategizing how best to convince the people, against all their reason and instincts, that his failed policies will work if he keeps trying. Meanwhile, he continues to wreak havoc on the market with his onerous tax, regulatory and administrative policies. We know better than to fall for his promise to cut $10 billion through regulatory relaxation. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said the proposal was 'underwhelming,' and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the changes 'will not have a material impact on the economy.' Just more smoke and mirrors." --columnist David Limbaugh

"The vast uncertainties created by ObamaCare create a special problem. If employers knew that ObamaCare would add $1,000 to their costs of hiring an employee, then they could simply reduce the salaries they offer by $1,000 and start hiring. But, since it will take years to create all the regulations required to carry out ObamaCare, employers today don't know whether the ObamaCare costs that will hit them down the road will be $500 per employee or $5,000 per employee. Many businesses work their existing employees overtime or hire temporary workers, rather than get stuck with unknown and unknowable costs for expanding their permanent work force." --economist Thomas Sowell

"There are interesting stories that you have to catch up with when you can, like a moving train. The Justice Department's raid on four Gibson guitar factories [over supposedly illegal wood] is in that category. The raid took place last Wednesday. ... [CEO Henry] Juszkiewicz says that the government of the country where [their] rosewood comes from certified it for export, and Gibson jumps through rather elaborate hoops before it buys the wood after it is imported to the U.S. ... One of the ironies, as you might expect, is that America is a trivial importer of rosewood from Madagascar and India. ... If nothing else, this incident illustrates the misguided priorities of the Obama administration. Harassing American businesses on frivolous grounds is not exactly what our economy needs at the moment. But the anti-business Obama administration just can't help itself." --blogger John Hinderaker

Insight

"The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts." --English professor Bergan Evans (1904-1978 )

"Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery." --President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

The Demo-gogues

All he needs is time: "What we went through, was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and typically after financial recessions, financial crises like this, it takes a long time for the patient to heal. This is a situation where the economy essentially had a heart attack, and the patient lived, and the patient is getting better, but it's getting better very slowly." --Barack Obama

Blame Game: "All these ideas [for jobs] are ones that have been presented to Congress. We'll be putting out several other additional ideas. We've got to do it, unfortunately, at a time when money is tight. George Bush left us a $1 trillion deficit." --Barack Obama, blaming Bush

Blame Game II: "My attitude is that my job is to present the best plans possible. Congress needs to act. If Congress does not act, then I'm going to be going on the road and talking to folks, and this next election very well may end up being a referendum on whose vision of America is better." --Barack Obama, blaming Congress

Blame Game III: "The Tea-Party driven Republicans -- it's made it very difficult to get progressive things done for this Congress." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), blaming the Tea Party

Government is the answer: "Government and politics are two different things. ... So don't be confused, as frustrated as you are about politics. Don't buy into this notion that somehow government is what's holding us back." --Barack Obama, blaming the voters

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 8-31-2011
From The Federalist Patriot
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Dezinformatsia

"Federal Family" -- the new talking point: "Since the end of last year's hurricane season, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been working with the nation's entire emergency management team to get ready for this year's hurricane season. That team includes the entire federal family, state, local and tribal governments, the faith-based and non-profit communities, and the private sector." --McClatchy Newspapers op-ed by Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Jack Hayes, director of the National Weather Service, using a talking point from the White House

Hot air: "When we add all of these risk factors together, we can say with a great deal of confidence that in the future, there will be more and more events like Irene. We can comfort ourselves by saying that this particular storm was not necessarily caused by global warming. Or we can acknowledge the truth, which is that we are making the world a more dangerous place and, what's more, that we know it." --The New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert

Hope 'n' Climate Change: "How do you maintain hope? Because sometimes I read about the climate, and I just sort of despair, or I want to throw in the towel. And I wonder since you're out there every day, you're here talking to me now, how do you avoid that?" --MSNBC's Chris Hayes to environmental activist Bill McKibben

Information gatekeepers: "People are scared. We have to be on target in terms of the information that we're giving. There is comfort in knowing. There is more fear when there is ignorance. Our job is to fight fear by telling them what they need to know." --NBC's Today Show co-host Ann Curry

Newspulper Headlines:

Out on a Limb: "Zogby: Voters Might Be Tuning Obama Out" --U.S. News & World Report website

So Much for the War on Drugs: "4-Foot Crack Found in Washington Monument" --WRC-TV website (Washington)

True, but That's a Low Standard: "'The Free Enterprise System Has Lifted More People Out of Poverty Than All Government Programs Combined'" --National Review Online

He's Always Reading Fiction off the Teleprompter: "Obama Summer Reading List Leans Toward Fiction" --Reuters

Questions Nobody Is Asking: "Can Another Speech Really Help Obama?" --New York Times website

Breaking News From 2012: "S&P Replaces President After U.S. Downgrade" --Reuters

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto2)

Village Idiots

Keen sense of the obvious: "It is clear that the recovery from the crisis has been much less robust than we had hoped." --Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke

The BIG Lie: "America is imperiled not because we're broke but because Americans are being fed continuous lies by Fox News and [The Wall Street Journal] editorial page." --former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich

Sometimes they get it right: "The best ideas, I've always said, in education are never going to come from me or frankly from anyone else in Washington." --Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (Finally -- somebody in this administration who can tell the truth!)

That's racist! "My generation watched Bull Connor turning the hose on civil rights demonstrators and we went, 'Whoa! How gross and evil is that?' My generation asked old people, 'Explain to me again why it is okay to discriminate against people because their skin color is different?' And when they couldn't really answer that question with integrity, the change really started. ... We still have racism, God knows, but it's so different now, it's so much better. And we have to win the conversation on climate. In some quarters is has become almost politically incorrect [sic] to use the word." --populist potentate of eco-theology Al Gore comparing present day warming skeptics to racists3

That's racist, too! "When we see some of the opposition to [ObamaCare], we really ought to go back and remember the opposition to the civil rights law in the '60s to see what we've come through and to see that the fight's worth it. I don't want to say that the health care law is as important as the civil rights law. But there really are some analogies." --Jay Angoff, Health and Human Services bureaucrat

History lessons: "As I close, I close with the recognition that [MLK] is standing, Lincoln is seated. Lincoln remembered for signing the Declaration of Independence. Daddy being remembered as standing up for truth and standing up for justice and standing up for righteousness and standing up for peace and standing up for freedom. Daddy is now standing on the National Mall in our nation's capital." --Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., at the dedication of the new memorial for her father in Washington, DC (Lincoln, of course, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, not the Declaration of Independence.)

Short Cuts

"Just 17 percent of Americans said they have a positive overall view of the federal government, compared to 63 percent who have a negative view. ... Public sentiment toward the federal government is at its lowest point in eight years. Apart from a slight bump following Obama's election in 2008, it's been on a steady decline, which has resumed now that people don't seem to be as 'hopeful' about 'change they can believe in.'" --columnist Andrew Stiles

"Washington D.C.'s earthquake prompted an immediate evacuation of all federal office buildings. No one's hurt. The government came to a complete halt at twelve o'clock noon and by sundown the United States was debt-free and the budget was balanced." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"Meanwhile, an aimless depression from the tropics stalled in Washington, D.C. But enough about Barack Obama, let's talk about Hurricane Irene." --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

"Hurricane Irene wasn't that bad. In fact, it was downgraded to a tropical storm. Even our hurricanes are getting downgraded. Maybe Irene owed money to China too." --comedian Jay Leno

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
The Patriot Post Editorial Team

(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.)

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