The Patriot Post® · Chronicle

The Foundation

“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” –Thomas Jefferson

Editorial Exegesis

“Well, so much for dodging entitlements. This year’s trendy complaint, shared by the left and the tea party, that Republicans hadn’t tackled the toughest budget issues was blown away yesterday with the release of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget for 2012. We’ll now separate the real reformers from the fiscal chickenhawks. Mr. Ryan’s budget rollout is an important political and policy moment because it is the most serious attempt to reform government in at least a generation. The plan offers what voters have been saying they want – a blueprint to address the roots of Washington’s fiscal disorder. It does so … by going to the heart of the spending problem, especially on the vast and rapidly growing health-care entitlements of Medicaid and Medicare. The Wisconsin Republican’s plan is a generational choice, not the usual Beltway echo. That choice is clear enough by comparing the Ryan blueprint with the 2012 budget that President Obama rolled out only two months ago. … Mr. Ryan proposes to spend $6.2 trillion less, return spending to its modern average of roughly 20% of GDP, and add $4.7 trillion less to the national debt. Mr. Obama would keep spending at 24% of GDP even before ObamaCare fully kicks in, while running annual deficits of $600 billion a year or more despite trillions of dollars in tax increases. … Since they only control the House, Republicans can’t expect to pass all or even most of these reforms this year. But in rising to meet our main fiscal challenges, they are honoring their pledge to voters last year and offering voters a serious governing platform. Mr. Ryan is showing Americans that there is an alternative to Mr. Obama’s vision of the U.S. as a high-tax, slow-growth, European-style entitlement state.” –The Wall Street Journal

Upright

“When someone gives you a check and the bank informs you that there are insufficient funds, who do you get mad at? In your own life, you get mad at the guy who gave you a check that bounced, not at the bank. But, in politics, you get mad at whoever tells you that there is no money. … Anyone who says that we don’t have the money to pay what was promised is accused of trying to destroy Social Security, Medicare or Obamacare – or whatever other unfunded promises have been made. It is like blaming the bank for saying that the check bounced.” –economist Thomas Sowell

“Syria is a partner in nuclear proliferation with North Korea. It is Iran’s agent and closest Arab ally, granting it an outlet on the Mediterranean. Those two Iranian warships that went through the Suez Canal in February docked at the Syrian port of Latakia, a long-sought Iranian penetration of the Mediterranean. Yet here was the secretary of state covering for the Syrian dictator against his own opposition. And it doesn’t help that Clinton tried to walk it back two days later by saying she was simply quoting others. Rubbish. Of the myriad opinions of Assad, she chose to cite precisely one: reformer. That’s an endorsement, no matter how much she later pretends otherwise.” –columnist Charles Krauthammer

“The protests in Afghanistan about the burning of the Koran in Florida … are [continuing]. Never mind that nobody even knew about the burning of the Koran – it happened more than two weeks ago – until these devout Muslims brought it up. And never mind that the Koran gets burned all the time when Muslims blow each other up in their mosques. And never mind that the U.S. burned Bibles in Afghanistan back in 2009. Do you remember that? … The U.S. burned Bibles in Afghanistan in 2009 so as not to offend the locals.” –radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh

“The pathetically weak responses from within mainstream, i.e., liberal, Christianity and Judaism have only added to the contempt for the Almighty and religion sown by beheadings and suicide bombings in Allah’s name. The liberal Christian and Jewish responses have been to attack fellow Christians and Jews who have focused on Islamist terror. Instead of drawing attention to the damage radical Islam does to the name of the Almighty, liberal Christians and Jews focus their anger on co-religionists who do speak out on this issue and label them ‘Islamophobes.’ That the Almighty is not doing well in the Western world may trouble the Almighty. But it is we humans who should be most troubled. The moral, intellectual, artistic and demographic decline in Western Europe … is only gaining momentum. And the consequences of that decline will be far more devastating than all the tsunamis and all the earthquakes that may come our way.” –columnist Dennis Prager

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Insight

“Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.” –English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

“The worst form of tyranny the world has ever known: the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.” –Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

The Demo-gogues

If by successful he means destructive: “[I] have had the most successful legislative initiative of any president over the last 50 years.” –the Most Humble Barack Obama, who kicked off his 2012 campaign Monday

The BIG Lie: “We’ve bent over backwards and tried to be fair and reasonable. But we have one party that can’t be fair and reasonable.” –Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

More Lies: “[Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget plan will] protect tax breaks for millionaires, oil companies and other big money special interests, while slashing our investment in education, ending the current health guarantee for seniors on Medicare, and denying health care to tens of millions of Americans.” –Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

Blame game: “Nobody wants to see a government shutdown and this really highlights one issue: If we avoid a government shutdown on Saturday it will be because John Boehner, at last, has figured out a way to gain control of his caucus. He needs to figure out a working majority, which probably means cutting loose the radical members on [the Right] wing – the quote-unquote Tea Partiers.” –Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT)

Non compos mentis: “It’s millions of people saying, Mr. President, we voted for you because you told us you were going to defend working Americans. Now is the time to stand up to the big-money interests, ask for shared sacrifice, don’t balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the poor and the sick. If you do that, you’re going to have tremendous popular support. I would like to see a couple of hundred thousand people come here to Washington, say hello to the president, say hello to the Republicans, say do not balance the budget on the middle class, the working families in this country, when the richest people are getting richer. They have not contributed one nickel to deficit reduction.” –Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Dezinformatsia

Scribblings from an illogical parallel universe: “Americans are about to learn how much is at stake in our larger budget fight, how radical the new conservatives in Washington are, and the extent to which some politicians would transfer even more resources from the have-nots and have-a-littles to the have-a-lots.” –Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne

Softball questions: “I have to ask you about what’s happening here in Washington. Negotiations are going on to avoid a possible government shutdown. Do you think the president is not doing enough and he’s giving in too much to Republican demands?” –ABC’s Bianna Golodryga to Bill Clinton

Taxes and more taxes: “Remember, that there’s been extension of the Bush tax cuts. And you’re going on as if, ‘you know what, we don’t know in America how to help our own deficit problems.’ We do. We just have to tax people.” –Fox News’ Juan Williams

Don’t know much about religion: “The thing to keep in mind that’s very important here is that the Koran to Muslims, it is not – it is not the same as the Bible to Christians. The Bible is a book written by men. It is acknowledged by Christians that it is written by men. It’s the story of Jesus. But the Koran, if you are a believer, if you’re a Muslim, the Koran is directly the word of God, not written by man. It is transcribed, is directly the word of God. That makes it sacred in a way that it’s hard to understand if you’re not Muslim. So the act of burning a Koran is much more – potentially much, much more inflammatory than – than if you were to burn a Bible.” –Time Magazine’s World Editor Bobby Ghosh

Newspulper Headlines:

Breaking News From 2004: “Kerry Hopes to Remain Alive” –Press Association (England)

A Victory for Mrs. Obama: “Senate Panel Advances Bill to Slow Citizens Growth” –Associated Press

Answers to Questions Nobody Is Asking: “John Phillips: Why Hillary Clinton Must Run in 2012” –Los Angeles Times

We Blame Global Warming: “‘Israel Using Int'l Climate to Abandon Two-State Solution’” –Jerusalem Post

Bottom Story of the Day: “Obama Re-Election Drive to Tap Big-Money Donors” –Arizona Republic

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

Village Idiots

Hypocrisy: “I would be inclined to [arm the Libyan rebels]. … We’re trying to build a world in which people resolve their differences in nonviolent ways. And we’re trying to build a world where no ruler can cavalierly kill its unarmed civilians.” –Bill Clinton, who disarmed the American public with his 1994 gun ban

Belly Laugh of the Week: “This president has demonstrated a commitment to transparency and openness that is greater than any administration has shown in the past, and he’s been committed to that since he ran for president and he’s taken a significant number of measures to demonstrate that.” –White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

Another gut buster: “The president is committed to reducing spending – cutting spending and reducing the deficit.” –Jay Carney

Alarm over just part of the problem: “The longer Congress fails to act, the more we risk that investors here and around the world will lose confidence in our ability to meet our commitments and our obligations. Default by the United States is unthinkable.” –Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner

Short Cuts

“‘The problem is not solely the [Libyan] rebels’ lack of more powerful weapons,‘ says Chris McGreal of the Guardian. 'In the past [week] their disorganization has shown as they have been badly outmaneuvered by better-trained forces that have outflanked them with sweeps through the desert. The revolutionaries lack any defensive plan. Instead they fire wildly at the enemy and argue among themselves about what to do next and who should be giving orders – before turning and fleeing.’ That sounds a lot like what’s going on among the aimless ‘leaders’ of the coalition of the grudging.” –Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden

“[O]bama and the media are effectively reinforcing the principle that violent intimidation works: They knew that somewhere in the world Muslims were going to behave like rabid dogs because of the burned Koran, and instead of telling them to grow up and act like civilized people, they are demanding that free people change the way they behave to adjust to this case of rabies.” –author Robert Spencer

“According to a poll, 55 percent of college students approve of the job President Obama is doing. That may change once they graduate and try to find a job.” –comedian Jay Leno

“Hillary Clinton notched her highest job approval rating ever in the Gallup Poll Friday at sixty-seven percent. She’s twenty-five points ahead of Obama’s number. President Obama is so unpopular that Kenyans have begun claiming he was born in the United States.” –comedian Argus Hamilton