From The Patriot Post, of course!
Wednesday Chronicle
August 12, 2009
Vol. 09 No. 32
THE FOUNDATION
“Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them.” –Thomas Jefferson
The pinkos are coming — with health “care”
EDITORIAL EXEGESIS
“Democrats, bloodied over their attempt to force health care ‘reform’ on Americans, are looking more unreasonable and hysterical by the day. This isn’t healthy for the republic. Their increasing anxiety and fear of failure are typified in the words of the leader of their party, who wants Republicans to keep their mouths shut while he ‘fixes’ health care. ‘I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking,’ the president said Thursday at a political rally in Virginia. ‘I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.’ So much for the promises of bipartisan lawmaking. So much for open discussion. So much for understanding who really caused the ‘mess’ in the first place. Like Al Gore claiming the debate about global warming is over, the White House simply wants to shut down dialogue over who controls more than one-seventh of the economy. … Truth is, there’s nothing more American than revolting against heavy-handed authority, be it a long train of abuses from a king or the lawmaking of elected officials with strong authoritarian urges. This is a nation founded on independence, and there is a large portion of it that wants to retain that priceless heritage. This seems to confuse some lawmakers. … Voters’ deep anger is justifiable. They have every right to disrupt and shout down public figures who, as the protesters can be heard chanting, work for them. At dispute is not a mere difference of opinion that can and should be discussed in a civil manner, but a fundamental question of who is in charge of peoples’ lives. We are not advocating violence, though coercive government is at its core violent as the state is required to resort to force to ensure that its directives aren’t violated. But we do support our fellow citizens’ right to express their rage at an injustice, particularly if it makes lawmakers uncomfortable. Shouldn’t Americans bristle when their independence is threatened, when a federal official, in this case White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, says party leaders ‘will punch back twice as hard’ when voters merely show their displeasure? The freedom the protesters are defending can sometimes be messy and imperfect. A lack of freedom, however, is eternally oppressive. It is an unrelenting prison that poisons the human spirit, even when cloaked in allegedly humane programs such as government-run health care.” —Investors’ Business Daily
UPRIGHT
“The health debate, which now has moved beyond the Beltway and into raucous town halls across the land, is so intense in part because it’s not really about health care at all. On a deeper level, it’s about the role of government in America’s economy. And that is a raw and unresolved topic, only made more so by months of exceptional government intervention amid a deep recession.” –columnist Gerald Seib
“Today’s ruling Democrats propose to fix our extremely high quality (but inefficient and therefore expensive) health care system with 1,000 pages of additional curlicued complexity — employer mandates, individual mandates, insurance company mandates, allocation formulas, political payoffs and myriad other conjured regulations and interventions — with the promise that this massive concoction will lower costs. This is all quite mad. It creates a Rube Goldberg system that simply multiplies the current inefficiencies and arbitrariness, thus producing staggering deficits with less choice and lower-quality care. That’s why the administration can’t sell Obamacare.” –columnist Charles Krauthammer
“Ever since Congress created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health politics has followed a simple logic: Expand benefits and talk about controlling costs. That’s the status quo, and Obama faithfully adheres to it. While denouncing skyrocketing health spending, he would increase it by extending government health insurance to millions more Americans.” –columnist Robert Samuelson
“[Barack] Obama seems to think the country owes it to him to accept ObamaCare because he was kind enough to agree to be our president.” –Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto
INSIGHT
“The history of the race, and each individual’s experience, are thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.” –American author and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910)
“If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field.” –French writer Michel Eyquem De Montaigne (1533-1592)
“Men hate those to whom they have to lie.” –French author Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
DEZINFORMATSIA
When right-wing extremists attack: “If you thought the health care debate was heated in Washington, outside the Beltway it’s gotten downright hostile. From Tampa, Florida, to Austin, Texas, to Romulus, Michigan, town hall meetings over health care have turned chaotic; death threats against members of Congress, taunting and shouting, even fistfights. Democrats claim it’s all political theater organized by reform opponents.” –NBC’s David Gregory
Nothing like hyperbole: “The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They’ve become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.” –Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein
Race bait: “I think 45 to 65 percent of the people who appear at these groups are people who will never be comfortable with the idea of a black president.” –Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker
“[W]hat concerns me is when in some of those town hall meetings including the one that we saw in Missouri recently where there were jokes made about lynching, etc., you start to wonder whether in fact the word socialist is becoming a code word, whether or not ‘socialist’ is becoming the new N-word.” –MSNBC’s Carlos Watson
Stupid white people: “Angry old white folks are storming into town halls all across the country spewing lies about health care reform. Let me set the record straight early on: These folks [are] dumber than Joe the Plumber.” –MSNBC’s Ed Schultz
Democrats are usually so innocent: “The nation’s drugmakers stand ready to spend $150 million to help President Barack Obama overhaul health care this fall…. The White House and allies in Congress are well aware of the effort by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a somewhat surprising political alliance, given the industry’s recent history of siding with Republicans and the Democrats’ disdain for special interests.” –Associated Press writer David Espo (Democrats are the Party of special interests — unions, trial lawyers, homosexual activists, environmentalists, etc., ad nauseum.)
ObamaCare in Action?: “Thousands of Clunkers Line Up to Be Poisoned and Killed” –Detroit News
Aren’t There Cheaper Ways to Hurt a Region?: “Obama Ventures Back to Hurting Region — With Money” –Associated Press
Who Ya Gonna Call? Ghostbusters!: “Specter Holds Lebanon Town Meeting” –WGAL-TV Web site (Lancaster, PA)
Talk About Packing the Court!: “Sotomayor Sworn In as 111th Justice” –National Law Journal
What Kind of Sicko Hates Ice Cream?: “3 Charged With Hate Crime in Ice Cream Truck Attack” –Houston Chronicle
Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: “Senator Franken, at Center Stage, Presides Over Sotomayor Vote” –FoxNews.com
News You Can Use: “Whisky: A Cure for Swine Flu, and So Much More” –Daily Telegraph (London)
Bottom Stories of the Day: “Obama May Abandon Bipartisanship on Health-Care Plan” –Bloomberg
(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)
SOURCE
Conservative Libertarian Outpost 