ANOTHER CASE OF THE BOSTON VIRUS INFECTING AMERICA

Looting Lorillard

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
December 22, 2010

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/8493/looting-lorillard

A BOSTON JURY last week ordered Lorillard Inc., the tobacco company, to pay $71 million as compensation -- and another $81 million in punitive damages -- for the death of lifelong smoker Marie Evans, who died of lung cancer in 2002. Evans's son William, a Harvard-trained lawyer, claimed that Lorillard had hooked his mother on cigarettes by giving out free samples of Newports in the Boston neighborhood where she lived as a child in the 1950's and 1960's.

Marie Evans in 2002 at age 54 with her son William, a Harvard-trained lawyer.

Lorillard denied the allegation, and apparently the only direct evidence for it was a videotaped deposition in which Marie Evans described how she began smoking at 13. But it doesn't seem implausible to me. The great majority of smokers take up the habit before turning 18, and even I can recall packs of cigarettes being handed out on Cleveland's Public Square in the late 1970's.

Yet even if it were true, how can it be just or moral to expropriate tens of millions of dollars from a company for distributing free samples of a lawful product? Why should Marie Evans's decision to smoke -- something she always knew was bad for her health -- entitle her son and estate to be showered with money? Reasonable people can debate whether cigarettes, already heavily regulated, should be banned outright. But it is not reasonable to hold tobacco companies liable for the foreseeable risks that smokers assume.

Lorillard never forced or tricked Marie Evans to use cigarettes; she became a smoker willingly. By her own account, she first received those free cigarettes when she was 9, and for years traded them for candy. Plainly it wasn't Lorillard that eventually got Evans to start smoking; if she could resist the lure of tobacco until she was 12, she could have resisted it at 13.

The demonizing of tobacco companies is popular, and who wouldn't rather think ill of Big Bad Tobacco than of a devoted mother who lost a terrible fight with lung cancer at the age of 54? But sorrow for Marie Evans and sympathy for her son don't alter reality: What turned her into a smoker was not a wicked corporation. It was a foolish choice she made as a teen-ager. People who willingly make foolish choices -- a category that includes most human beings, especially those of the teen-age persuasion -- ought not to be enriched for their foolishness.

Yes, smoking is addictive, but the addiction is not inescapable: Tens of millions of Americans have kicked the habit and nowadays most never start. Among those who do, there may conceivably be some so weak-willed, suggestible, or mentally deficient that they were literally incapable of refusing an invitation to smoke. Marie Evans -- a single mother who earned a degree from Northeastern University, rose through the ranks at Verizon to become a human-resources manager, and is described as "the determined one" by Michael Weisman, the lead plaintiff's lawyer in the suit against Lorillard -- was clearly not such a smoker.

"It's awful, what they did to my mom," Willie Evans told an interviewer this week. But "they" -- Lorillard -- did nothing very different from the countless other vendors who tempt us with products we would be well advised to resist, or at least to use in moderation. As a son who loved his mother and hated to see her suffer, Evans understandably hates the cigarettes that sickened and killed her. It's even understandable that he might hate the company that makes the cigarettes she favored. However, to turn her death into a legal pretext for looting that company does her memory no honor. Neither does Evans's claim that his mother "had no free will." Of course she had free will. And one of the ways she exercised it had tragic consequences.

What if Marie Evans had died from cirrhosis of the liver after drinking a six-pack of Budweiser every day for 40 years? Would her son be entitled to a fortune in damages from Anheuser-Busch? If she had been an incorrigibly reckless driver, who died in a crash caused by her speeding, would Willie Evans have sued the auto manufacturer whose commercials made fast cars so irresistible to his mother? If she had eaten her way to an early grave, would her son have gone after Nestle, Mars, and Hershey for getting her hooked on sweets long ago with a marketing strategy that targeted children?

The urge to blame others for our own self-destructive choices is as old as the power to choose. There is nothing admirable in yielding to that urge. Still less in rewarding those who do with $152 million.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).

-- ## --

TIME FLIES LIKE AN ARROW. FRUIT FLIES LIKE A BANANA.

OUR NATION'S SECURITY IS MORE AT RISK THAN YOU REALIZE!

Eight Days a Week

Does Janet Napolitano suffer from a rare dissociative disorder?

By JAMES TARANTO

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE

• BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
• DECEMBER 21, 2010

Evidence has emerged suggesting that the U.S. secretary of homeland security may suffer from a rare dissociative disorder called Ganser syndrome. As described by WebMD.com:

The most well-recognized symptom of Ganser syndrome is the so-called symptom of approximate answers (alternately designated in the literature by the German terms vorbeireden [talking past], vorbeigehen [to pass by], or danebenreden [talking next to]). Here, the patient responds to questions with an incorrect answer, but by the nature of the answer reveals an understanding of the question posed. This can be illustrated by the patient answering "3" when asked, "How many legs has a horse?" or "black" when asked "What color is snow?" or "Tuesday" when asked "What is the day after Sunday?" Frequently, the patient answers a number of questions with these odd approximate answers. This is in direct contrast to answers that are simply nonsensical, perseverative, or otherwise inappropriate.

To be clear, an example of a perseverative answer would be "Failure is not an option." A nonsensical one would be just about anything Vice President Biden says. But Janet Napolitano's latest utterance falls into the approximate category.

In a much-discussed interview with ABC's "World News Tonight," Mediaite.com reports, Diane Sawyer asked Napolitano about the possibility of a terror attack over the holidays. The secretary answered: "What I say to the American people is that . . . thousands of people are working 24/7, 364 days a year to keep the American people safe."

She's had a long year.

The minimum number of days in a year is 365. So what was Napolitano trying to say? Our first thought was that the Homeland Security Department doesn't work on--pardon the expression, Miss Totenberg--Christmas, which would explain how that guy managed to get on a plane last year with a bomb in his drawers. This would be consistent with a Ganser diagnosis. WebMD notes that questions have been raised about Ganser's "status as a true mental illness versus a specific form of malingering." But while those questions have "been the subject of multiple journal articles and book chapters," they have yet to be answered with precision.

In a 2003 article for the Journal of Medical Humanities, Mady Schutzman offered a provocative hypothesis. In the course of researching "hysteria as a cultural and relational phenomenon rather than a disorder belonging to women's bodies," Schutzman stumbled upon a curious phenomenon known as "humor," which bears an uncanny resemblance to the symptoms of Ganser syndrome:

I discovered a performative trope--a slippery kind of verbal humor--that epitomized "talking past the point" and relocated its dynamic outside the boundaries of medical science. . . .

Jokes rely upon "getting the point" just at the boundaries of the point; that is, jokes are about sidestepping the point, a kind of punning, taking the literal and tweeking [sic] it, bending it so that we are made precisely aware of what was "past," what was expected, precisely from the vantage point of the unexpected. A master of this form of comedic repartee was Groucho Marx. "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." Or, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

And inside of a plane, the underwear bomber flies on Christmas.

If Napolitano is suffering from Ganser syndrome, what are the implications for homeland security? The good news, according to WebMD: "Symptoms usually resolve spontaneously." The bad news: "Occasionally, they may be followed by a major depressive episode."

"The full Ganser syndrome is considered very rare," WedMD reports, noting that "fewer than 100 cases have been described and documented in the literature." But we wonder if the disorder doesn't often go undiagnosed. Remember the Beatles song "Eight Days a Week"? Maybe the Fab Five had it.

IF YOU LIKE MITT ROMNEY YOU LIKE OBAMACARE. BEWARE!

Mitt Romney does the health-care straddle

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
December 19, 2010

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/8479/mitt-romney-does-the-health-care-straddle

Q: WHEN IT COMES to a government overhaul of health care, what is the difference between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney?

A: Obama was against an individual insurance mandate before he was for it. Romney was for the mandate before he was against it.

Actually, that's not precisely accurate. The real difference is that Obama acknowledges reversing his position, while Romney seems to be trying to have it both ways.

As a candidate for president in 2008, then-Senator Obama blasted Hillary Clinton's health-care plan because, as one of his campaign ads put it, "It forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it, and you pay a penalty if you don't."

But within six months of being sworn in as president, Obama had embraced a mandate. Asked in an interview with CBS whether "each individual American should be required to have health insurance," Obama owned up to his 180-degree shift:

"I have come to that conclusion," Obama said. "During the campaign I was opposed to this idea [but] I am now in favor of some sort of individual mandate as long as there's a hardship exemption."

Compelling nearly everyone to obtain health insurance (or pay a stiff penalty for failing to do so) is the heart of ObamaCare, the linchpin without which the whole scheme falls apart. That's why US District Judge Henry Hudson's ruling last week that the individual mandate is unconstitutional -- and that allowing the federal government to force citizens to buy a private product would "invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers" -- was so significant. The White House immediately fired back -- "We disagree with the ruling," the president's spokesman said. In a Washington Post column the next day, Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius extolled ObamaCare's "individual responsibility provision," and insisted that it would be upheld on appeal.

That euphemism for mandating the purchase of health insurance -- "individual responsibility provision" -- may sound familiar to Massachusetts ears. It is essentially the same term Romney used in selling his own health-care overhaul, which also requires everyone to buy health coverage and penalizes those who don't.

"It's a personal responsibility principle," Romney maintained, arguing over and over that an individual mandate was the only alternative to letting uninsured "free riders" show up at hospital emergency rooms and get medical care at public expense. In 2006, as he was gearing up for a presidential run, Romney called it "the Republican approach" to say: "Everybody should have insurance. They should pay what they can afford to pay. If they need help, we will be there to help them, but no more free ride."

Republican Governor Mitt Romney signs the Massachusetts health-care overhaul into law, April 12, 2006. Among those flanking him are US Senator Ted Kennedy, Massachusetts House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi and Senate President Robert Travaglini, all Democrats.

Calling RomneyCare "the Republican approach" didn't make it so, of course. Democrats were closely involved in drafting the legislation, and the late Senator Ted Kennedy -- whom Romney called his "collaborator" on the measure -- headlined the phalanx of politicians surrounding the governor as he signed the bill into law. In most important respects, including the individual mandate, RomneyCare became the model for ObamaCare. MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who helped prepare the Massachusetts law, told The Wall Street Journal in April that "if any one person in the world deserves credit for where we are now [with the passage of the new federal law], it's Mitt Romney. He designed the structure of the federal bill."

If ObamaCare were popular, Romney would presumably be delighted to take credit for siring it. But it isn't popular, and so Romney insists that "there's a big difference" between the law he signed in 2006 and the similar one signed by the president earlier this year. He applauded the court decision last week that struck down the individual mandate as impermissible under the Commerce Clause. "'ObamaCare' is an unconstitutional power grab by Washington," Romney's spokesman said. "We should repeal the law and return to the states the power to determine their own health care solutions."

Is it Romney's position that coercive insurance directives are fine when they are imposed by states, and a "power grab" only when imposed by Congress? Does he oppose ObamaCare, with its maze of controls and penalties, as a matter of federalism -- or as a matter of liberty? With medical costs and premiums rising even faster in Massachusetts since health-care "reform" took effect, where exactly does Romney stand? Is an individual mandate still his idea of "the Republican approach?" Most Republicans can answer that question. What isn't clear is, can Romney?

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).

-- ## --

MICHELLE SAYS "THANKS" TO THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER

Dear American Taxpayer

For only the second time in my adult life, I am not ashamed of my country. I want to thank the hard working American people for paying $242 thousand dollars for my vacation in Spain . My daughter Sasha, several long-time family friends, my personal staff and various guests had a wonderful time. Honestly, you just haven't lived until you have stayed in a $2,500.00 per night suite at a 5-Star luxury hotel. Thank you also for the use of Air Force 2 and the 70 Secret Service personnel who tagged along to be sure we were safe and cared for at all times.

Air Force 2 only used 47,500 gallons of jet fuel for this trip and carbon emissions were a mere 1,031 tons of CO2. These are only rough estimates, but they are close. That's quite a carbon footprint as my good friend Al Gore would say, so we must ask the American citizens to drive smaller, more fuel efficient cars and drive less too, so we can lessen our combined carbon footprint.

I know times are hard and millions of you are struggling to put food on the table and trying to make ends meet. I do appreciate your sacrifice and do hope you find work soon. I was really exhausted after Barack took our family on a luxury vacation in Maine a few weeks ago. I just had to get away for a few days.

Cordially,



Michelle (Moochelle) Obama

P.S. Thank you as well for the $2 BILLION trip to India we are currently on! Love ya, mean it.

BODY SCAN OR INVASIVE PAT-DOWN - YOUR CHOICE

Body scan or invasive pat-down — your choice

Body scan or invasive pat-down — your choice

THE TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION'S demeaning new 'enhanced pat-down procedures are a direct result of the Obama administration's willful blindness to the threat from Islamic radicals.

While better tools are available to keep air travelers safe, they would involve recognizing the threat for what it is, which is something the White House will never do.

El Al, Israel's national airline, employs a smarter approach. Any airline representing the state of Israel is a natural -- some might say preeminent -- target for terrorist attacks. Yet El Al has one of the best security records in the world and doesn't resort to wide-scale use of methods that would under other circumstances constitute sexual assault. The Israelis have achieved this track record of safety by employing sophisticated intelligence analysis which allows them to predict which travelers constitute a possible threat and which do not. Resources are then focused on the more probable threats with minimal intrusion on those who are likely not to be terrorists.

Here in the United States, these sophisticated techniques have roundly been denounced as discriminatory 'profiling.' ... TSA believes an 80-year-old grandmother deserves the same level of scrutiny at an airport terminal checkpoint as a 19-year-old male exchange student from Yemen.

This policy not only is a waste of time and resources, it denies reality. ... Despite all the government bureaucracy and TSA's intrusive inspection practices, [al Qaeda underwear bomber Umar Farouk] Abdulmutallab's attack was only foiled because of a faulty bomb and the actions of alert passengers.

Now all passengers have to pay the price by having their privacy (and their privates) invaded, which is the Obama administration's alternative to instituting a policy that will target the source of the problem."

--The Washington Times

HERE IS AN INTERESTING YOUTUBE THAT WILL MAKE YOUR DAY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwhKuunp8D8&feature=player_embedded

THEY SAY ELEPHANTS NEVER FORGET, IN 1996 THEY FORGOT WHO THEY WERE; LET'S HOPE THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT IN 2011

The GOP gets a second chance

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
November 7, 2010

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/8304/the-gop-gets-a-second-chance

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THE MOST encouraging thing about the Republican triumph in last week's midterm elections is that so many Republicans acknowledge that it wasn't a Republican triumph.

"We make a great mistake if we believe that tonight these results are somehow an embrace of the Republican Party," Florida's impressive senator-elect, Marco Rubio, said in his victory speech Tuesday night. "What they are is a second chance, a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long ago."

The same sentiment was expressed by the likely next House majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia. "There isn't a lot of confidence focused on the Republicans yet," he told CBS the morning after the election. "It isn't necessarily a vote of confidence for Republican leadership."

Outside Congress, too, influential Republican strategists have been warning the victors against hubris and the temptation to gloat. "Republicans must not delude themselves," wrote political mastermind Karl Rove. "The voters didn't throw out the Democrats because they are enraptured with the GOP. . . . Republicans are on probation."

So they are. Voters have been betrayed in the past by Republicans who ran for office vowing to shrink the scope and cost and intrusiveness of government, only to end up presiding over ever-more-bloated budgets, record-setting deficits, increasingly unaffordable entitlements, and disgraceful ethical lapses.

The last time a GOP majority took control of the US House of Representatives -- under Newt Gingrich in January 1995 -- Republicans produced a list of more than 300 unnecessary federal agencies, funds, and programs that they intended to "zero out" as proof of their fiscal responsibility. Yet nearly every item on that list was still alive and well when the Republicans lost their majority 12 years later. By then the GOP had grown as addicted to pork-barrel spending and the perks of power as the Democrats they had campaigned against. In Cantor's words, Republicans had become "a party on the Bridge to Nowhere" -- a biting reference to the proposed Alaska bridge that became a national symbol of earmark sleaze and irresponsible pork-barrel politics.

Florida Senator-elect Marco Rubio on Election Night: "We make a great mistake if we believe that tonight these results are somehow an embrace of the Republican Party."

The tidal wave that swept so many Democrats out to sea last week was a repudiation of the extremely liberal Obama-Pelosi agenda of the past two years -- the tax increases, the massive health-care overhaul, the trillion-dollar deficits, the regulatory explosion, and the condescending, we-know-best disdain for anyone who opposed them. As the lesser of two evils, Republicans ended up the big winners on Election Day. But they will not regain the trust they squandered the last time around without proving that they deserve it.

Indeed, according to a Rasmussen survey conducted last week, 59 percent of voters say it's likely -- 38 percent say very likely -- that Americans "will be disappointed with Republicans in Congress before the next national elections."

Intelligent Republicans know this only too well, which is why their historic gains on Nov. 2 triggered so little jubilation. "This is not a time for celebration," said John Boehner, who will become Speaker of the House when the 112^th Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3.

What is it time for, then? First and foremost, it is time to reverse the destructive Obama policies that have alarmed so many voters and made businesses so uneasy. It is essential that Republicans keep tax rates from rising. They must roll back spending decisively. And they must dismantle as much of the misbegotten health-care law as a party in control of just one house of Congress can.

They must also make it clear that they have learned from the failure of the previous GOP majority. That means permanently ending the pork-and-earmark culture that has so corrupted the budgeting process. It means defunding, not perpetuating, the corporate welfare and agriculture subsidies that violate every free-market principle Republicans claim to stand for. It means keeping their promise that no legislation will be voted on until members have had sufficient time to read and understand it. It means an end to automatic congressional pay raises, which are both obnoxious and a violation of the 28^th Amendment.

Power tends to corrupt, Lord Acton said. It certainly corrupted the last Republican majority, which got hooked on the pleasures of authority and came to resemble the corrupt Democratic majority it had replaced. Now Republicans are being given another opportunity to govern. Let's hope this time they stay true to their values.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).

A PATIENT PEOPLE SHOULD LEARN TO LOVE ALL THE 'GOODIES' IN OBAMACARE IF THEY WOULD JUST WAIT A DECADE OR TWO

At his post-defeat press conference, Barack Obama worked hard to project an air of somber reflection, even as his remarks revealed that he had learned nothing from the defeat.

Amidst the practiced pauses and detached narration of the crash came a litany of excuses, evasions, and arrogant denials. He more or less cast himself as the victim of a "bad economy," as if two years of sending anti-business signals to employers had nothing to do with the high jobless rate. He made sure to note that other presidents had gotten similarly clocked after two years. And he essentially blamed the American people for a lack of perception and patience.

But since he couldn't say that directly, he had to couch his self-justification in the form of patronizing blather about how he could have "accomplished" more, made better "progress," and "communicated" more effectively with the American people. He tried to make some sort of phony distinction between his "policy decisions" and his "policy outcomes," implying that the people objected to the latter but not to the former. Never mind that the exit polls demonstrated that they repudiated both.

Obama couldn't bring himself to admit the obvious, that his liberalism leaves the American people unafraid of alternatives, so instead we got the usual self-serving nonsense about how the American people like the content of liberalism but just resist it in times of distress when Democrats fall down at salesmanship and implementation. In one answer, he even had the audacity to suggest that the American people were too dumb to realize that his bailout-style socialism was only temporary and not a permanent policy. Where could they have possibly gotten that idea?

Obama was in effect saying at the press conference what Joe Biden said on the campaign trail (that liberalism is hard "to explain," but somehow wonderful to behold over time in its results) and what Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid said after the passage of the health care bill (that a patient people will learn to love all the goodies contained within it if they just wait a decade or so).

Obama received praise after the press conference for his "pensive" demeanor, but what's stunning about him is his utter lack of reflection. He either has no capacity for critical thinking or what little he once possessed has dissipated in ideological reliance upon mindless cliché and sophistry. In any case, it is scary. At the end of the day, he is nothing more than a shallow pol with little interest in or knowledge of governing. He backed into the White House through effortless luck (he ran against one of the worst Republican presidential candidates ever), and apparently assumed that running the White House would be just as easy.

His shallowness also makes him obtuse, even from a rawly political and self-interested standpoint. He suffered one of the worst defeats in decades because of his environmental, socialist, and Brave New World dilettantism, yet spent much of the press conference talking about "electric cars," gays in the military, and 26-year-olds who, thanks to his largesse, will get to stay on the health care plans of their "parents."

Obama's metaphorical "car in the ditch" is apparently an electric car which, if it ever gets out, will drive America into a glorious future by picking up 26-year-olds and depositing them at job interviews for work made possible through the "Stimulus" package.

Obama admitted that he lives in a "bubble," but that too was the fault of others. He presented himself as the passive victim of his own presidency. Near the end of the press conference, he allowed himself a particularly absurd and maudlin moment, complaining that because of the presidency's inherently insular character no one can see the depth of his concern for the people. He said that "no one is filming him reading those letters" from them which leave him so anguished and inspired. Perhaps he needs his own reality show.

The Observer at His Own Funeral

By George Neumayr on 11.4.10 @ 6:09AM

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

SOME REPUBLICAN MODERATES WERE CAST ONTO THE TRASH HEAP OF MEDIOCRITY ON NOVEMBER 2

2012 Battle Plan

The Cause of Liberty

"Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions. The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the tyranny mediated against them." --George Washington

Having taken a moment to account for the considerable battleground gained in the most significant political offensive between Liberty and tyranny in three decades -- the fight being led by the Tea Party movement against the institution of statism headed by Barack Hussein Obama and his Socialist Bourgeoisie -- we must now press on, as there is no time for rest.

The ranks of conservatives in our national Congress, and in our state executive and legislative branches across the nation, were greatly strengthened in Tuesday's midterm election, but those campaigns were just the beginning of a movement to restore Liberty.

Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Excessive taxation ... will carry reason and reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election."

Indeed, taxation was a factor in the seating of House and Senate conservatives, but as was the case with the original Tea Party in December of 1773, these victories were driven by a renewed concern for not just taxation, but taxation without representation.

The new Tea Party movement is much more than a coalition of fiscally conservative Independents and those still under the banner of the Republican Party. This movement is, at its foundation, a philosophical federation of American Patriots who are, first and foremost, bound together by a devotion to the Essential Liberty defined in our Declaration of Independence and the Rule of Law enshrined in our Constitution.

The renewal of this timeless battle between Liberty and tyranny has reanimated the political contests of our era, yet the conventional spin from pundits and news-cycle talkingheads indicates that they have yet to realize that there is much more than "a political pendulum swing" afoot with the legions of American Patriots who now identify with the organic Tea Party movement.

Of course, Obama and his Leftist cadres can't comprehend it either. He insists, "The reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument do not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared." He says further that those who do not support statism have an inability to "think clearly," and that his detractors' "basic political strategy has been to count on you having amnesia."

May Obama and his ilk continue to cling to those delusions...

Likewise, there are some so-called "moderate" House and Senate Republicans who are nearly as delusional -- those who think they'll be able to return to "business as usual" with a restored Republican majority. If they try to do just that, they'll face the same formidable challenge Democrats now face, because the ranks of conservatives in the House and Senate have been refortified with outspoken constitutional constructionists like Allen West, Rand Paul, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio and dozens of others. Some of these Patriots unseated Democrats who had held office for decades, and others tossed Republican moderates onto the trash heap of mediocrity.

Establishment Republicans in the GOP are poised to declare "Mission Accomplished" and insist that the "New and Improved GOP" will hold to its stated principles this time around. Patriots won't adopt a "wait and see" strategy, however. Establishment Republicans had their opportunity when they held both the House and Senate under George W. Bush -- and they failed miserably. Instead, we'll insist that they revitalize the Reagan Model for Restoration now.

The re-energized movement for Liberty demands that our elected representatives, regardless of their political affiliation, act in accordance with their sacred oaths to "Support and Defend" our Constitution, and that they reduce the bloated size, function and cost of the central government to comport with its limited constitutional mandate and limited authority.

In the 2012 election and those which follow, we will root up and toss out Democrats and Republicans who fail to honor their oaths. There can be no doubt, though, that Obama and his party will do everything in their power to prevent the decentralization of the Socialist regime they have created.

Beyond these entrenched threats posed by the adversaries of Liberty, there exist other more subtle dangers to the Tea Party movement.

The most significant hazard is the natural tendency by well-meaning Patriots to contain the movement, to bottle it up, to organize it under one umbrella, which would erode its grassroots strength and render it subject to the same corruption that organized political parties now embody.

To keep the Tea Party movement true to its roots, we must avoid centralization and continue to strengthen every individual link in the chain. The strength of that chain is a unified understanding and articulation of what is at stake: the contest between Rule of Law and rule of men.

To that end, The Patriot Post, since its inception, has been plowing the fields and sewing the seed for this Great Awakening, and we have a vital and essential role to ensure that the movement remains, first and foremost, about the restoration of constitutional integrity, and to support its momentum.

We have much more ground to take if we are to restore the cause of Liberty, and we need your help. For we can only restore constitutional Rule of Law if our growing tide of conservative voices makes it so. We cannot undo generations of civic negligence in one or two election cycles, but we can -- no, we must -- halt our nation's downward spiral toward the tyranny of Democratic Socialism.

Among the character traits that distinguish you, as a Patriot Post reader, from too many other Americans is the mission you share with other Patriot readers who are, in the words of Samuel Adams, "keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."

I thank you for your vigilance, strength, preparedness and faithfulness.

We rely upon your generosity to help us maintain the clarion call for Liberty for countless thousands of our military, collegiate, political and mission field readers -- all of whom are vital links in the chain to hold back tyranny and restore Liberty.

So, it is with due respect to the urgency of our times that I announce our 2010 Annual Fund campaign. We typically raise about 50 percent of our annual operating revenues in the last eight weeks of each year. We do so on faith in the goodwill of Patriots like you.

I humbly request that you support The Patriot Post online today by making a contribution -- however large or small. (If you prefer to support us by mail, please use our printable donor form or print the donor guide below.) We are not sustained by any political, special interest or parent organization. Our mission and operations are funded by -- and depend entirely upon -- the voluntary financial support of American Patriots like YOU.

As always, I thank you for the honor and privilege of serving you as editor and publisher of The Patriot Post. We are humbled to count you among our ranks. On behalf of our National Advisory Committee and staff, thank you and may God bless you and your family, and may He grant us victory over the formidable challenges to Liberty just ahead!

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!

Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post

Your support is more critical than ever before, and as a measure of our thanks, for a donation of $26 we will send you our newest edition Tea Party Primer. Donors of $52 or more will receive four Primers and those giving $100 or more will receive 10 Primers, which you can distribute to family, friends, and associates -- spreading the flame of liberty ever wider. (Please allow approximately six weeks for delivery.)

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THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT HAS INITIATED THE RESCUE OF THE REPUBLIC !

Congratulations to the Citizens of our Nation - Tea Party Patriots Salutes You!

November 2nd was a victory for Liberty!!!! Congratulations! Victories across the country happened because of your hard work and your dedication to our core values, our Constitution, and our country! Your efforts to spread our message throughout the country have resonated with millions of Americans! Time after time you melted the phone lines, showed up at rallies, made signs, protested outside of Congressmen and Senator’s offices, lobbying the halls of Congress, and so much more. Each and every time you took one of these actions our message spread further throughout the country.

On the night of the final health care vote in the House of Representatives, so many of you were in DC protesting while millions more were emailing, calling and faxing their Representatives. You were disgusted that your government ignored your will so egregiously. For almost thirty six hours straight you stood against those who refused to listen. Those who were in DC, sang with hoarse voices, “We’ll Remember in November! Hey! Hey! Good Bye!” They thought that when November came you wouldn’t remember. But we did remember. And those who ignored you have paid the price. Take pleasure in this feeling of victory.


You deserve the accolades and you deserve to take pleasure in this feeling. Tea Party Patriots wishes to extend a special thank you to Rick Santelli for his rant on February 19, 2009, which started this entire movement. Without Rick’s rant, this movement would never have started. Many others will try to take credit but don’t be fooled. He was the spark that began this fire.

Tea Party Patriots would also like to extend a special thank you to Top Conservatives on Twitter (#tcot), Smart Girl Politics (#sgp), and DontGo (#dontgo) for taking Santelli’s rant and actually acting on it. The leaders of these three organizations planned the original local coordinator conference call on February 20, 2009. They fanned the flames that Santelli lit to begin this movement and keep it going. Without their groundwork and vision, the movement would not have spread.

Finally, and most importantly, Tea Party Patriots thanks each and every one of you for being committed to our core values. Thank you for showing up time after time even when it seemed pointless and hopeless.

The warm up is complete. Now the real fight begins!

As Samuel Adams said, “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.”

Tea Party Patriots is launching a Perpetual Legislative Watch/Congressional Accountability Project. We have already been watching the legislators for the past 20 months. We have no intention of letting up now. On the weekend of November 12 – 14, local coordinators from around the country will meet with the incoming Congressional freshmen for an orientation. We will have legislative experts who will guide the freshmen on how to first defund and ultimately repeal government controlled health care. We will have economic experts to help them understand the things they will need to do to reduce the federal deficit and restore fiscal sanity to the country. We will have experts who can provide guidance on how to restore Constitutional governance to the country. We will help them to bond together to restore the Constitution in the upcoming legislative session. Finally, we want them to know that if they do the right thing, they will have the support of the people.

Again, congratulations on your hard work! We are making a difference in this country and together we will continue to make a difference in this country.


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Tea Party Patriots Mission Statement and Core Values

Mission Statement

The impetus for the Tea Party movement is excessive government spending and taxation. Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.

Core Values

• Fiscal Responsibility
• Constitutionally Limited Government
• Free Markets

Fiscal Responsibility: Fiscal Responsibility by government honors and respects the freedom of the individual to spend the money that is the fruit of their own labor. A constitutionally limited government, designed to protect the blessings of liberty, must be fiscally responsible or it must subject its citizenry to high levels of taxation that unjustly restrict the liberty our Constitution was designed to protect. Such runaway deficit spending as we now see in Washington D.C. compels us to take action as the increasing national debt is a grave threat to our national sovereignty and the personal and economic liberty of future generations.

Constitutionally Limited Government: We, the members of The Tea Party Patriots, are inspired by our founding documents and regard the Constitution of the United States to be the supreme law of the land. We believe that it is possible to know the original intent of the government our founders set forth, and stand in support of that intent. Like the founders, we support states' rights for those powers not expressly stated in the Constitution. As the government is of the people, by the people and for the people, in all other matters we support the personal liberty of the individual, within the rule of law.

Free Markets: A free market is the economic consequence of personal liberty. The founders believed that personal and economic freedom were indivisible, as do we. Our current government's interference distorts the free market and inhibits the pursuit of individual and economic liberty. Therefore, we support a return to the free market principles on which this nation was founded and oppose government intervention into the operations of private business.

Our Philosophy

Tea Party Patriots, Inc. as an organization believes in the Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets. Tea Party Patriots, Inc. is a non-partisan grassroots organization of individuals united by our core values derived from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America, the Bill Of Rights as explained in the Federalist Papers. We recognize and support the strength of grassroots organization powered by activism and civic responsibility at a local level. We hold that the United States is a republic conceived by its architects as a nation whose people were granted "unalienable rights" by our Creator. Chiefly among these are the rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The Tea Party Patriots stand with our founders, as heirs to the republic, to claim our rights and duties which preserve their legacy and our own. We hold, as did the founders, that there exists an inherent benefit to our country when private property and prosperity are secured by natural law and the rights of the individual.

http://www.teapartypatriots.org/

WHAT HAS HE BEEN SMOKING ?

Obama to Hip Hop Radio: ‘Across the Board, Things Have Gotten Better Over the Last Two Years’

Tuesday, November 02, 2010
By Fred Lucas

President Obama on the campaign trail in Boston on Oct. 16, 2010. At various times, he has described Americans as angry, frustrated, scared, anxious, uncertain, nervous, discouraged and shaken up. He says they're also confused and not thinking clearly. (AP File Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

(CNSNews.com) -- Doing last minute campaigning on hip hop radio station KPWR 106 FM in Los Angeles today, President Barack Obama said that things have gotten better across the board in America since he has been president.

KPWR’s slogan is: “Where Hip Hop Lives.”

“Across the board, things have gotten better over the last two years,” Obama said on KPWR. “The question is can we keep that up. We can only keep it up if I’ve got the friends and allies in Congress, in statehouses. So even though my name is not on the ballot, my agenda--our agenda--is going to be dependent on whether folks turn out to vote today.”

The president made similar comments during three other interviews on hip hop and contemporary music stations in Las Vegas, Chicago and Jacksonville, Fla.

Obama cited improvements in the economy—despite the fact that unemployment has risen from 7.6 percent in January 2009 when he came into office to 9.6 percent now.

Obama also said that 100,000 troops are back from Iraq, a measure taken largely in compliance with the Bush administration’s Status of Forces Agreement in late 2008.

Obama additionally cited his health-care reform legislation and more money going for higher education funding.

“We put money that was going to big banks and we actually put it to student loan programs and the Pell Grant program so that young people can afford to go to college,” Obama told KPWR. “We passed health care reform, which means that young people can stay on their parents' health care until they are 26 if they don’t have health care, so insurance companies can’t jack you around. We passed credit card reform so that when you're out there with your credit card, the company can’t jack up your rates.”

Big Boy, the KPWR DJ who interviewed Obama, asked, “What’s your next big goal for America, Mr. President?”

Obama pointed to making college more affordable, creating more green jobs and immigration reform.

“My next big goal right now is to make sure we keep up our policies that improve education. Make college more accessible. Make college more affordable. Number one,” Obama said.

“Number two, stay focused on jobs. Creating jobs,” Obama continued. “Rebuilding our infrastructure, our bridges, our roads, transportation systems, making sure we’re working on things like clean energy, so folks can get work weatherizing buildings and building solar panels and creating whole new industries in that area. Those two things, if we can focus on those two things over the next couple of years, along with a couple of areas like immigration reform, all that stuff can make a big difference in terms of getting this country moving on the right track.”

The president encouraged voters to vote today for Sen. Barbara Boxer, facing a challenge from Republican Carly Fiorina, and asked Californians to vote for Democrat Jerry Brown over Meg Whitman in the state’s governor’s race.

He had a similar message for listeners of KVEG Hot 97.5 FM, a contemporary music station in Las Vegas, as he encouraged them to vote for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, struggling in polls against Republican challenger Sharon Angle.

“You look at Nevada, every poll shows that the race between Harry Reid and his opponent neck and neck,” Obama said. “So you know that if people who voted in 2008 turn out to vote in 2010, Harry will win. If they don’t turn out, he will lose.

"If I don’t have Harry Reid in the United States Senate, it is going to be much harder for me to keep making improvement in the economy that need to be made,” said Obama.

He also told WGCI in Chicago, 107.5 that Republicans would roll back new education funding because “they want to roll that back to help pay for a tax cut for millionaires and billionaires.”

“So if Republicans have their way, they would be able to cut the budget by 20 percent, and that means young people directly would see their Pell Grants reduced by 20 percent, or their loans reduced by a certain percentage, especially at a time when education is expensive and necessary,” Obama said. “That’s just one example of the kinds of things that are at stake here if we’re not serious about this election and people aren’t turning out to vote.”

GOOD ADVICE FOR THE NEWLY ELECTED CONSERVATIVES

Congratulations to all the tea party-backed candidates who overcame a determined, partisan opposition to win their elections. The next campaign begins today. Because you must now overcome determined party insiders if this nation is going to be spared from fiscal disaster.

Many of the people who will be welcoming the new class of Senate conservatives to Washington never wanted you here in the first place. The establishment is much more likely to try to buy off your votes than to buy into your limited-government philosophy. Consider what former GOP senator-turned-lobbyist Trent Lott told the Washington Post earlier this year: "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them."

Don't let them. Co-option is coercion. Washington operates on a favor-based economy and for every earmark, committee assignment or fancy title that's given, payback is expected in return. The chits come due when the roll call votes begin. This is how big-spending bills that everyone always decries in public always manage to pass with just enough votes.

But someone can't be bribed if they aren't for sale. Here is some humble advice on how to recognize and refuse such offers.

First, don't request earmarks. If you do, you'll vote for legislation based on what's in it for your state, not what's best for the country. You will lose the ability to criticize wasteful spending. And, if you dare to oppose other pork-barrel projects, the earmarkers will retaliate against you.

In 2005, Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) offered a measure to kill funding for the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere." Before the vote, Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), an appropriator, issued a warning on the Senate floor.

"If we start cutting funding for individual projects, your project may be next," she said. "When Members come down to the floor to vote on this amendment, they need to know if they support stripping out this project, Senator Bond [a Republican appropriator] and I are likely to be taking a long, serious look at their projects to determine whether they should be preserved during our upcoming conference negotiations."

The threat worked. Hardly anyone wanted to risk losing earmarks. The Senate voted 82-15 to protect funding for the Bridge to Nowhere.

Second, hire conservative staff. The old saying "personnel is policy" is true. You don't need Beltway strategists and consultants running your office. Find people who share your values and believe in advancing the same policy reforms. Staff who are driven by conservative instincts can protect you from unwanted, outside influences when the pressure is on.

Third, beware of committees. Committee assignments can be used as bait to make senators compromise on other matters. Rookie senators are often told they must be a member of a particular committee to advance a certain piece of legislation. This may be true in the House, but a senator can legislate on any matter from the Senate floor.

Fourth, don't seek titles. The word "Senator" before your name carries plenty of clout. All senators have the power to object to bad legislation, speak on the floor and offer amendments, regardless of how they are ranked in party hierarchy.
Election Night at Opinion Journal

Lastly, don't let your re-election become more important than your job. You've campaigned long and hard for the opportunity to go to Washington and restore freedom in America. People will try to convince you to moderate conservative positions and break campaign promises, all in the name of winning the next race. Resist the temptation to do so. There are worse things than losing an election-like breaking your word to voters.

At your swearing-in ceremony, you will, as all senators do, take an oath to "support and defend the Constitution." Most will fail to keep their oath. Doing these five things will help you maintain a focus on national priorities and be one who does.

Congress will never fix entitlements, simplify the tax code or balance the budget as long as members are more concerned with their own narrow, parochial interests. Time spent securing earmarks and serving personal ambitions is time that should be spent working on big-picture reforms.

When you are in Washington, remember what the voters back home want-less government and more freedom. Millions of people are out of work, the government is going bankrupt and the country is trillions in debt. Americans have watched in disgust as billions of their tax dollars have been wasted on failed jobs plans, bailouts and takeovers. It's up to us to stop the spending spree and make sure we have a government that benefits America instead of being a burden to it.

Tea party Republicans were elected to go to Washington and save the country-not be co-opted by the club. So put on your boxing gloves. The fight begins today.


AN OPEN LETTER TO THE NEWLY ELECTED CONGRESSIONAL CONSERVATIVES

by Jim DeMint

Mr. DeMint is a Republican senator from South Carolina.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Wednesday, 03 November 2010

LET'S HOPE WE CAN BEGIN NOW TO DIG OURSELVES OUT OF THE HOLE OBAMA DUG

Europe has turned its back on John Maynard Keynes's approach -- with good results.

MORE STIMULUS, ANYONE? Should Washington order another hefty round of Keynesian deficit spending in order to spur the limping US economy?

Absolutely, say many prominent economists.

Peter Diamond, a 2010 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics, argues in favor of "pursuing valuable expenditures now," by subsidizing state and local government payrolls and pouring money into "a vast amount" of construction projects. "Between the error of doing too little and doing too much," Diamond says, "doing too little seems to me to be the much greater risk." Joseph Stiglitz, another economics laureate, agrees: "We will see in the next two years the real cost of there not being a second round of stimulus," he told the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. "We will see the economy slow down at a very high economic cost."

So a big new stimulus package is the way to go?

Absolutely not, say many prominent economists.

"Please, no more government spending!" exclaims Vernon Smith, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002. Far from being the key to economic recovery, he insists, deficit "stimulus" will only make the economy worse. His skepticism echoes that of yet another winner of the economics Nobel, Gary Becker: "There is no serious evidence," Becker wrote in July, "that the $800 billion stimulus package passed over a year ago has had much stimulating effect on unemployment or GDP."

In short, there is no consensus. And if even the world's most esteemed economic theorists cannot decide whether a huge new spending bill would make the current crisis better or worse, guidance will have to come from somewhere else.

Perhaps that somewhere is Europe, where governments have deliberately rejected Washington's embrace of massive deficit spending as the best way to rev up an ailing economy -- with better outcomes than Americans have seen.

Britain was the birthplace of John Maynard Keynes, but the British government is pursuing precisely the opposite of a Keynesian approach to fiscal policy. Rather than trying to boost demand and create more jobs through extravagant increases in spending and debt, London is practicing austerity. The coalition government headed by Prime Minister David Cameron is sharply cutting public spending, pruning back everything from welfare benefits to the military. Even the sums allocated to maintain the Queen's household will be shrunk. About 8 percent of Britain's roughly 6 million public-sector jobs, or 490,000, will be eliminated.

"We have taken our country back from the brink of bankruptcy," George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, told the House of Commons. "There is nothing fair about running huge budget deficits and burdening future generations with the debts we ourselves are not prepared to pay."

Britain is not an outlier. Across Europe, The New York Times reports, "governments from Germany to Greece are slashing public outlays. . . . The debate in Europe is more on how fast to cut government spending rather than whether such reductions are the right thing to do. . . . In Europe there is hardly a policymaker to be found who is making the argument that governments need to spend more, not less."

Results so far? Economic growth in the United States has been weaker, and the loss of jobs steeper, than in the 16-country euro zone. Especially striking is the contrast with Germany, which resisted heavy US pressure to undertake substantial new deficit spending. While the US economy has been growing at an anemic annual rate of barely 2 percent in recent month, Germany's economy is currently soaring at a 9 percent annual rate. Unemployment in Germany has fallen to 7.5 percent, the lowest it has been in 18 years. Here, it has scarcely fallen at all. What does Berlin understand that Washington doesn't?

"Governments should not become addicted to borrowing as a quick fix to stimulate demand," the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said in June, in response to the Obama administration's criticism of Germany's austerity measures. "Deficit spending cannot become a permanent state of affairs." President Obama, on the other hand, speaks blithely of "trillion-dollar deficits for years to come."

You can find economists to back up any point of view. Some will even tell you that the best way out of a hole brought on by too much debt is to dig even deeper into debt. The feeble US recovery suggests that the real world doesn't agree with those economists. Yesterday's election suggests that the voters don't, either.

EUROPE SAYS "NO: TO DEFICIT SPENDING STIMULUS

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
November 3, 2010

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/8287/europe-says-no-to-deficit-spending-stimulus

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).