THOUGHTS ON THE POLITICAL SITUATION

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FROM THE PATRIOT POST

http://patriotpost.us/edition/2012/01/04/chronicle/


"Public debt has increased by 67 percent over the past three years, and too many Americans refuse even to see it as a problem. For most of us, '$16.4 trillion' has no real meaning, any more than '$17.9 trillion' or '$28.3 trillion' or '$147.8 bazillion.' It doesn't even have much meaning for the guys spending the dough: Look into the eyes of Barack Obama or Harry Reid or Barney Frank, and you realize that, even as they're borrowing all this money, they have no serious intention of paying any of it back. That's to say, there is no politically plausible scenario under which the 16.4 trillion is reduced to 13.7 trillion, and then 7.9 trillion and, eventually, 173 dollars and 48 cents. At the deepest levels within our governing structures, we are committed to living beyond our means on a scale no civilization has ever done." --columnist Mark Steyn
"[I]f you tax people who work, and you pay people who don't work, don't be surprised if you find a lot of people not working. I have never heard of a poor person spending himself or herself to prosperity. It doesn't work." --economist Arthur Laffer

Essential Liberty

"Judges are not divine and their opinions are not holy writ. As every American schoolchild learns, the judiciary is intended to be a co-equal branch of government, not a paramount one. If the Supreme Court wrongly decides a constitutional case, nothing obliges Congress or the president -- or the states or the people, for that matter -- to simply bow and accept it. Naturally this isn't something the courts have been eager to concede. Judges are no more immune to the lure of power than anybody else, and their assertion of judicial supremacy ... has won them an extraordinary degree of clout and authority. That aggrandizement, in turn, they have attempted to cast as historically unassailable. ... But the heart and soul of American democracy is that power derives from the consent of the governed, and that no branch of government -- executive, legislative, or judicial -- rules by unchallenged fiat." --columnist Jeff Jacoby

Insight

"Courage is the greatest of all the virtues. Because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others." --English author Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
"Nothing is easier than spending public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody." --President Calvin Coolidge (1873-1933)

The Demo-gogues

The BIG Lie, Part I: "I'm a hundred percent confident that the people of Iowa and the American people will win the day on November 6th of this year when President Obama is re-elected because of his policies, because of the fact that he has brought this country out of the worst economic disaster that we faced since the Great Depression and the people of America know." --DNC Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)
The BIG Lie, Part II: "If there is anyone who has set an example about making sure that we reduce the influence of lobbyists and of corporate and outside special interests on campaigns it is President Obama." --Debbie Wasserman Schultz
All the world is a stage: "People who know me know that I am a softie. I mean, stuff can choke me up very easily. The challenge for me is that in this job, I think, a lot of times the press or how you come off on TV, people want you to be very demonstrative in your emotions. And if you're not sort of showing it in a very theatrical way, then somehow it doesn't translate over the screen." --Barack Obama
Mockery: "Remember Yogi Berra. I don't like the food at that table and the servings are too small. [Republicans] don't like the tax cut and now they are claiming that it is too small." --House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi