The Foundation

“It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.” –Samuel Adams

Editorial Exegesis

“After hemming and hawing for weeks, Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe did what many knew she’d do: support the abominable Baucus health care overhaul. The GOP has a big problem. Some who march under its banner don’t really accept the basic philosophy it espouses – one of low taxes, small government and support of the Constitution. Snowe is one of those. Her decision to vote ‘aye’ on the Baucus [health care] bill, which passed out of the Senate Finance Committee on an otherwise partisan 14-9 vote, was called a ‘surprise’ by some. It wasn’t. She’s done this for years, undercutting her party and lending support to the opposition. Don’t look for some transcendent reason. ‘My vote today is my vote today,’ Snowe said, clarifying nothing. ‘It doesn’t forecast what my vote will be tomorrow.’ Nothing like standing firmly on principle. What’s galling is Democrats could have passed this without Snowe’s help. By lending her voice and senatorial prestige, she weakened her party’s otherwise resolute stance against the health care bill. In short, she gave Democrats badly needed bipartisan cover to ram Baucus – or something worse – down all our throats. As we’ve said before, the Baucus bill will lead, inevitably, to higher taxes, lower-quality care, rationing and the intrusion of government into the most sensitive decisions we make. … There are lines in the sand for both parties, and this bill should be one. A person can’t support Baucus and still say he or she’s for small, or limited, government. This is Leviathan writ large. … The GOP must be wondering: With members like [this], who needs Democrats?” –Investor’s Business Daily

Upright

“The CBO provides 10- year projections of a bill’s cost. But most provisions of the health bill don’t take effect until 2014. So the ‘10-year’ cost projection only includes six years of the bill. Plus, the costs ramp up slowly. In its first year, the House bill would only cost about $6 billion; in its first three, less than $100 billion. The big costs are in the final years of the 10-year budget window – and beyond. In fact, over the first 10 years that the House bill would be in existence (2014 to 2024), its costs would be closer to $2.4 trillion.” –Cato Institute scholar Michael Tanner

“If the Medicare cuts won’t materialize, and the revenues won’t grow as expected, and the subsidies (already projected to grow at 8 percent per year) will expand, the Baucus bill is merely the thin wedge of another out-of-control entitlement. We already have several of those, and already are slated to run $1 trillion annual deficits before the advent of a new one. The Baucus bill is faux fiscal restraint on the road to budgetary Armageddon.” –columnist Rich Lowry

“The best thing government can do for us is to get out of the way and let us care for ourselves. These [deficit] numbers are unsustainable. They are outrageous. And they will become a reality unless enough Americans rise up and say they are not going to take it anymore. It’s our money, not theirs. They are now stealing it before we make it. Let’s hear some outrage about this.” –columnist Cal Thomas

“I’m not all for Americans winning international prizes, especially the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, I’m vigorously against it. The transnational progressives who pass out these accolades believe America is the problem in the world, the main threat to peace, the impediment to ‘progress,’ etc. The award is a symbolic statement of opposition to American exceptionalism, American might, American capitalism, American self-determinism, and American pursuit of America’s interests in the world.” –columnist Andy McCarthy

“The Peace Prize judges won’t see it this way, but America has gone to Europe twice in the past century to fight for peace. This is an old concept, and has to do with killing killers so they can’t kill anymore. It cost America a lot to do this, and we kept no territory, as they say, beyond the graves where our soldiers lie. America then taxed itself and gave its wealth not only to its allies but to its former adversaries, to help them rebuild. We didn’t actually have to do this. We did it to make the world better. We did it to foster peace. (They should give us a prize.)” –columnist Peggy Noonan

“Over the weekend, still another outpost was attacked in the distant reaches of Afghanistan, and still more American soldiers – and Afghan ones – were lost. An undermanned and overstretched international force struggles on in that graveyard of empires. And waits for word from Washington. And waits and waits. … All wait to see what course the president will choose, or will let others choose for him. In the meantime he dithers – and Americans fight and die.” –columnist Paul Greenberg

Editor’s Note: Don’t miss out on many of these and other great conservative writers at The Patriot’s opinion page Read ‘em and share your thoughts.

Insight

“The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state.” –economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)

“The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, including classical Aristotelian and Thomist philosophers, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.” –economist Murray Rothbard (1926-1995)

“I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.” –British colonel Richard Rumbold (1622-1685)

Dezinformatsia

Right wing = Taliban: “I also think it’s important to know who is actually sounding off against this [Nobel Prize for Obama]. Everybody agrees it was premature – maybe undeserved. But who’s actually attacking it? Well, you’ve got the mullahs in the Taliban, and then you’ve got Mullah Rush [Limbaugh] – you know, you have [Obama’s] critics here at home. … [R]easonable Republicans would agree that when a president of the United States is recognized with probably the most prestigious award in the world, it’s not something to attack.” –Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter

“Somebody explain this to me: The president of the United States wins the Nobel Peace Prize and Rush Limbaugh joins with the Taliban in bitterly denouncing the award? … Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?” –Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson

“When the President himself was saying, 'Look, I didn’t deserve to be in the company of these people who have won,’ it makes the harsh comments from Michael Steele, from Rush Limbaugh, the rest, seem even more extreme and, as some would argue, un-American.” –MSNBC’s David Shuster

Freudian slip: “President Obama, nine months into his presidency, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. And it’s really, kind of, the Olympic gold of international diplomacy.” –ABC’s Diane Sawyer, with an interesting choice of words considering Obama just lost out in getting the 2016 Olympic Games in Chicago

Sometimes they get it right:

NBC’s Matt Lauer: “We’re less than a year into the first term of this president and there are no – I’m not trying to be, you know, rude here – no major foreign policy achievements, to date. So why did he win?”

Meet the Press moderator David Gregory: “Well, I think, as the citation points out, this is a lot more about tone than it is substantive accomplishment. In many ways, this is a European body who is more left-leaning, certainly, and opposed to the administration of George W. Bush….”

Lauer: “So, what you’re saying in some ways and, again, not to be rude here or sarcastic, that in some ways he wins this award for not being George W. Bush.”

Non Compos Mentis: “Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like [the James Bond villain] Mr. Big, and at some point somebody’s going to jam a CO₂ pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp. … Are you watching, Rush?” –MSNBC’s Chris Matthews (In answer to Chris’s question, no, Rush wasn’t watching – neither does anyone else.)

Newspulper Headlines:

Another Award for Obama!: “American Wins World Porridge Title” –Sunday Telegraph (London)

We Blame Global Warming: “Calif. Wildfire Stalled by Record Low Temperatures” –Associated Press · “Some Idaho School Kids Enjoy an Early Snow Day” –KTVB-TV Web site (Boise) · “Cold Temperatures Threaten Seed Potato Crop” –Associated Press

The World’s Smallest Violin: “Director Polanski Feels Depressed in Jail: Lawyer” –Reuters

Questions Nobody Is Asking: “Do We Need a 37-Cent Coin?” –New York Times Web site

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: “Car Accident Victim Miraculously Grows New Skull” –FoxNews.com

Bottom Stories of the Day: “AP Newsbreak: Nobel Jury Defends Obama Decision” –Associated Press

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

The Demo-gogues

Such humility: “I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel committee. Let me be clear, I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.” –Barack Obama

Said through gritted teeth? “His willingness to really kind of challenge everyone … restores a kind of image and appreciation of our country.” –Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explaining why she believes Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

“Maybe I better do something now”: “Throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement, it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes, and that is why I will accept this award as a call to action – a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.” –Barack Obama, admitting that the Nobel Prize didn’t acknowledge any actual accomplishments, only “hopes”

Just blame Bush: “Every major policy enacted during this period [the Bush administration] violated the principle of paying for new proposals. These policy decisions were the primary driver that turned historic projected surpluses into record deficits.” –White House chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers

Village Idiots

Grasping at straws: “[W]e simply disagree that [Barack Obama] has done nothing. He got the [Nobel Peace] Prize for what he has done.” –Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland

More terrorist comparison: “The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the president for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.” –DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse on a prize previously given to terrorists

War on Fox: “I think what is fair to say about FOX and certainly the way we view it is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party… [When President Obama] goes on FOX, he understands that he is not going on – it really is not a news network at this point. He’s going to debate the opposition.” –White House communications director Anita Dunn

Too much information: “I’ve always said – [Barack Obama] is a man who is full of hope and he really is. I mean, and that’s what was so attractive. … He actually … his nipples are bursting with hope. He’s the first man and the first president in my life who is lactating hope. He continues to lactate hope.” –comedian Lewis Black

Broken record plays again: “We’re very close to that political tipping point. Never before in human history has a single generation been asked to make such difficult and consequential decisions. … I am optimistic. I think there has been a very powerful recognition, not only in this country, but in many countries, that there is a linkage between the climate crisis and the economic crisis and the national security crisis that is in part derivative of the world’s ridiculous over-dependence on carbon-based fuels.” –Algore

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Short Cuts

“In a decision as shocking as Friday’s surprise peace prize win, President Obama failed to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Monday. While few observers think Obama has done anything for world peace in the nearly nine months he’s been in office, the same clearly can’t be said for economics. The president has worked tirelessly since even before his inauguration to wrest control of the U.S. economy from failed free markets, and the evil CEOs who profit from them, and to turn it over to wise, fair and benevolent bureaucrats. … It is unclear whether the president will now refuse his peace prize in protest against the obvious slight to his real achievements this year.” –MarketWatch assistant managing editor Tom Bemis

“[T]he Nobel Prize committee would with this decision have forfeited its reputation for seriousness if it had a reputation for seriousness.” –columnist George Will

“It is said that great men often stand upon the shoulders of giants, but Obama is a first – a man who has ridden to greatness on the shoulders of an army of fawning dwarves – and now the Nobel committee can be counted among this low-slung throng.” –columnist Mac Johnson

“The word czar, which came from Caesar, traditionally referred to an emperor, a singular leader. It makes no more sense to describe people assigned specific fiefs within the government as ‘czars’ than it would to describe each one of them as a ‘president.’ Shouldn’t we call them something else instead – say, commissars or liege lords?” –Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

“As the old saying goes: Life doesn’t last longer in socialist countries; it just feels like it.” –columnist Ann Coulter