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The Foundation

“National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.” –John Adams

Editorial Exegesis

“One of the media’s least accurate tropes is that, with the President’s speech last night, Afghanistan is now ‘Obama’s war.’ No, it isn’t. Nations go to war, not merely Administrations, and President Obama’s commitment of 30,000 more troops to that Southwest Asian theater is a national investment in blood and treasure on behalf of vital U.S. security interests. We support Mr. Obama’s decision, and this national effort, notwithstanding our concerns about the determination of the President and his party to see it through. Now that he’s committed, so is the country, and one of our abiding principles is that nations should never start (much less escalate) wars they don’t intend to win.” –The Wall Street Journal

Upright

“The full transcript of President Obama’s long-delayed speech on Afghanistan is here. You can watch it in full here. Bush-bashing? Check. Noxious complaining about the cost of fighting a necessary war? Check. Disingenuous denial that he dithered? Check. ‘Let me be clear’s = 9. Self-congratulations for sticking to Gitmo closure policy = 1. Self-referential 'As your Commander-in-Chief’s = 2. References to global jihad = 0.” –columnist Michelle Malkin

“[In his speech Tuesday night,] Obama did what he could to mollify those [on the Left] by blaming Bush – always a safe bet when trying to curry favor from the Left – and by declaring there would be a time limit on the new deployment and they would be withdrawn starting in July 2011 – just as the 2012 re-election campaign would be getting underway.” –political analyst Rich Galen

“The issue isn’t whether a war is popular: either it has to be fought or it doesn’t. It is a president’s duty to define the war and lead the nation to victory. And if a war is worth one American life, it is – by definition – worth however many dollars it takes to win. Domestic spending must be curtailed to fund a war, not the other way around.” –columnist Jed Babbin

“[S]trategic success isn’t Obama’s ultimate concern. He wants political cover and is doing all he can to ensure that he’s not on the blame-line, no matter what happens. He wants to appear strong – but without unleashing our strength. He’ll send more troops – but won’t let them do more.” –columnist Ralph Peters

“The blunt truth is: The United States needs to win in Afghanistan. Defeating the Taliban and destroying al-Qa'ida is in our vital interests. It is the price of peace in South Asia. It is the only way to prevent another 9/11. By dedicating the resources needed to win and by getting our fiscal house in order, we can keep our nation safe, free and prosperous. Any other talk is just politics.” –James Jay Carafano of The Heritage Foundation

“The reason the Democratic leadership and the White House are rushing to pass the [health care] bill is that they know it is killing them and believe doing it quickly will kill fewer of them than doing it slowly. If they pass it by year’s end, perhaps voters will move on to other concerns by the November 2010 midterm elections.” –columnist Byron York

“How many times has a liberal touted this or that government agenda with the idea that they’re doing it 'for the children.’ When more Americans begin to understand that the more accurate phrase it ‘to the children,’ it will be the beginning of the end for these power-hungry thugs. Here’s hoping it happens sooner rather than later.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert

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Insight

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” –Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180)

“It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, and to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake.” –British writer Norman Douglas (1868-1952)

“The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.” –French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

Dezinformatsia

Non Compos Mentis: “[Obama] went to maybe the enemy camp tonight to make his case. I mean, that’s where Paul Wolfowitz used to write speeches for, back in the old Bush days. That’s where he went to rabble rouse the 'we’re going to democratize the world’ campaign back in ‘02. So, I thought it was a strange venue.” –MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on West Point (Matthews later said that “maybe” he “used the wrong phrase, 'enemy camp,’ but…” Some apology.)

Fretting: “Is this the last time the president is going to ask for American troops from the American people?” –ABC’s Diane Sawyer to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs

Oh those heartless Republicans: “Who would deny health care to all Americans? Well, there are a lot of those folks in Congress, including nearly all Republican lawmakers, none of whom have rejected their own generous government health care plans. The United States is the only country in the developed world that does not provide affordable health care for all its citizens.” –Hearst White House correspondent Helen Thomas

Will wonders never cease? “Is the honeymoon over? … Although President Obama has been in office less than a year, many Americans are growing disenchanted with his handling of the enormous problems he and the country are facing, from health care to unemployment to Afghanistan. His poll numbers are sliding, and at least one poll shows his job approval rating has fallen, for the first time, below 50 percent.” –CBS’s Katie Couric

“The American people are increasingly questioning the president’s credibility. He says the stimulus has saved or created 640,000 jobs, but only 7 percent of Americans believe it has created any. And he’s repeatedly promised health care reform will not increase the deficit, but a mere 19 percent believe him.” –CBS’s Chip Reid

“The more [Obama] talks about these hard issues, the less people are buying it. … People want something to be done about the deficit, and here he’s talking about spending a trillion more dollars.” –CBS News analyst John Dickerson

Newspulper Headlines:

Too Much Information: “Liberals Vow to ‘Spank’ Obama for Sending More Troops to Afghanistan” –FoxNews.com

We Blame Global Warming: “Hezbollah Blames U.S. for All Terrorism” –CNN.com

That’s Enough for 2.48 Meetings With Al Gore: “Nancy Pelosi Spends $2,993 on Flowers” –Politico ++ “Meet Al Gore at Copenhagen, for $1,209” –The Washington Times

Breaking News From 1998: “White House Officials: Clinton Embarrassing Us” –Arutz Sheva (Israel)

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: “ABC Announces Oprah-Obama Christmas Special” –THRfeed.com

News You Can Use: “Be Careful While Leaving Parking Lots” –Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, VA)

Bottom Stories of the Day: “Rosie O'Donnell Does Not Enjoy Being Single” –People.com

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

The Demo-gogues

Leadership? “I will end the war successfully.” –Barack Obama (“[T]he President’s goal is not to succeed in Afghanistan, but to end the war in Afghanistan.” –political analyst Rich Galen)

That’s the spirit: “The key here is an Afghan surge, not an American surge. We cannot, by ourselves, win [the] war.” –Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI)

“I’ve got a real problem about expanding this war where the rest of the world is sitting around and saying, ‘Isn’t it a nice thing that the taxpayers of the United States and the U.S. military are doing the work that the rest of the world should be doing?’” –Sen. Bernie Sanders (S-VT)

Get outta here: “We have tried terrorists in our courts and done so very successfully in the past and that is our system. So if people don’t believe in our system, maybe they ought to go somewhere else. I believe in America.” –Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) on KSM and his fellow slaughterers being tried in a U.S. civilian court

Save the world: “I will not rest until businesses are investing again and businesses are hiring again and people have work again.” –Barack Obama

Bad news: “If we are to seize this opportunity, this debate must be on facts, not fear. … [T]here is not an issue more important than finishing this legislation.” –Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on the Senate’s attempt to take over health care (Then why won’t it be implemented until 2013?)

A chip off the old blockhead: “I can’t understand for the life of me how the Catholic Church could be against the biggest social justice issue of our time, where the very dignity of the human person is being respected by the fact that we’re caring and giving health care to the human person – that right now we have 50 million people [sic] who are uninsured. You mean to tell me the Catholic Church is going to be denying those people life-saving health care? I thought they were pro-life. If the church is pro-life, then they ought to be for health care reform because it’s going to provide health care that are [sic] going to keep people alive.” –Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-UI) with something less than friendly fire toward his own church

Village Idiots

Hate is a strong word: “Don’t be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn’t be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can’t change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge. The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can’t be won over by abandoning the rest of us.” –Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore penning an open letter to Barack Hussein Obama, and yet again defining any disagreement with extremist-Leftist Obama as “hate”

Patronizing the Armed Forces: “Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals.” –Michael Moore on the men and women who serve our country

Don’t worry about that fake data scandal: “In the order of several thousand scientists have come to the conclusion that climate change is happening. I don’t think that any of that is, quite frankly among most people, in dispute.” –White House press secretary Robert Gibbs

Don’t miss The Patriot’s synopsis of the “Climategate” scandal here.

The BIG Lie: “Global warming is occurring at a pace roughly twice as fast as had been previously thought, so I believe if we don’t change things by the end of the century, instead of going up four degrees, the earth’s temperature will go up nine degrees. And if that happens, we’re in trouble here. Eight percent of the whole Earth’s freshwater is on top of Greenland. As it begins to melt, if it melts faster, it could change the composition of the north Atlantic and interrupt the normal flow of currents, and ironically global warming could make some places colder.” –Bill Clinton, the BIG Liar

We disagree: “Stop fighting about the things we can’t agree on and do something about the things we do agree on because they are unbelievably important and the things we don’t agree on should not be used as an excuse anymore to avoid doing what ought to be done and we do agree on.” –former DNC chief Howard Dean

Short Cuts

“A liberal mistrusts lessons bought with experience. For him, theory is all. He’s the only man who would sit down on a red-hot stove twice. That makes well-meaning Democrats marks for shysters selling health-care ‘reform,’ global warming and appeasement of radical Islamists.” –columnist Wesley Pruden

“No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems – of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.” –economist Thomas Sowell

“President Obama was shown in photos Friday smiling with the couple who crashed his state dinner. The photos showed the husband, the wife and the president. If it’s a crime to talk your way into the White House without a background check, all three of them could face charges.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“I have some advice for President Obama. The tough tactics being deployed against his perceived domestic political enemies should be redeployed overseas. Let me assure you that Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela are a lot more dangerous than Fox News and the health insurance industry.” –columnist Bruce Bialosky

“Barack Obama [has] never seen a TV camera or a teleprompter he didn’t lust after. Come to think of it, it’s too bad that his administration isn’t a TV show. If it were, we could at least hope it would be canceled after one season instead of four.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky