The Patriot Post® · Chronicle

The Foundation

“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.” –Alexander Hamilton

Upright

“It took nine years, seven months and 21 days to pinpoint the man who plotted, paid for and perpetrated the terror attacks of 9-11-01. When a U.S. Navy SEAL team finally found Osama bin Laden in the third-floor bedroom of a comfortable house in a suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan, they killed him. Last Sunday’s complex and highly successful operation validates Ronald Reagan’s maxim for terrorists after U.S. Navy SEALs captured the murderous hijackers of the Achille Lauro in October 1985: ‘You can run, but you can’t hide.’ Afterward, one of the participants penned a corollary: ‘Don’t bother to run – you will only die tired.’” –columnist Oliver North

“Whence came the intelligence that led to Abbottabad? Many places, including from secret prisons in Romania and Poland; from terrorists seized and kidnapped, then subjected to interrogations, sometimes ‘harsh’ or ‘enhanced’; from Gitmo detainees; from a huge bureaucratic apparatus of surveillance and eavesdropping. In other words, from a Global War on Terror infrastructure that critics, including Barack Obama himself, deplored as a tragic detour from American rectitude.” –columnist Charles Krauthammer

“If you think I’m being unfair to liberals, let me remind you that when Obama’s predecessor was in office, not a day went by when the MSM didn’t let us know how many American soldiers were dying in Bush’s wars. Garry Trudeau even devoted Sunday editions of Doonesbury to listing the names of the fallen. Anyone find it odd that now that Obama is in charge, you don’t get a daily, weekly or even monthly, update of numbers and names? Well, just for the record, nearly 1,500 American warriors have died in Afghanistan over the past 10 years, with two-thirds of the fatalities occurring since it became Obama’s war in 2009!” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

“[W]hen the federal deficit is mentioned, so many people suggest we pay for it by raising taxes on the working rich. How perverse is that? Look at how we got the huge deficit in the first place – entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. Were these instituted for the benefit of the working rich? Of course not, so why should the people who already benefited this country by producing jobs and our awesome consumer goods have to pay for it? In what bizarro, bearded-Spock universe is that fair?” –columnist Frank J. Fleming

The Demo-gogues

Even thought I opposed it the entire time… “The reason that I concluded [that the mission to kill Osama bin Laden] was worth it was that we have devoted enormous blood and treasure in fighting back against al-Qa'ida ever since 2001. I said to myself that if we have a good chance of not completely defeating but badly disabling al-Qa'ida, then it was worth both the political risks, as well as the risks to our men.” –Barack Obama

Security theater: “Anyone, even a member of al-Qa'ida, could purchase a train ticket and board an Amtrak train without so much as a question asked. So that’s why I’m calling for the creation of an Amtrak no-ride list. That would take the secure flight program and apply it to Amtrak trains.” –Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) calling for an excuse to get the TSA involved in molesting and/or radiating train passengers

Nothing to worry about: “Some in our country see China’s progress as a threat to the United States; some in China worry that America seeks to constrain China’s growth. We reject both those views. We both have much more to gain from cooperation than from conflict.” –Hillary Clinton

Victimitis: “Republicans voted unanimously on an extremist anti-choice bill that would deny millions of women access to reproductive health care. For the first time ever, restrictions would be placed on how women with private insurance choose to spend their private dollars on health insurance. We cannot sit silent in the face of this extremist agenda.” –House Minority Leader Nanny Pelosi (D-CA) calling Republicans “extremist” for preventing taxpayer dollars from being commingled to pay for abortions

Editorial Exegesis

“President Obama either doesn’t realize a debt crisis is looming, or he just doesn’t care. [On Sunday], he dispatched his transportation chief, Ray LaHood, to herald the expenditure of another $2 billion on ‘high-speed’ rail. This reckless profligacy has the country on a one-way track to the poorhouse. On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the federal budget deficit is up 9 percent for the year. Despite impressive rhetoric about ‘tough choices’ and ‘deep cuts,’ the administration has, so far, spent $181 billion more – not less – this year than it did last year. The government is spending more now than it ever has. … As evidence of the demand, Mr. LaHood said he received more than $10 billion in requests from cities and states looking to get their hands on a big slice of the $2 billion in federal largesse. So the demand isn’t actually from the public; it’s coming from politicians. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, for example, put out a pair of press releases Monday triumphantly announcing the millions headed to his state. With Mr. LaHood standing behind him, the New York Democrat also insisted that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) boost its involvement in train security with a ‘no ride’ list that would, in theory, keep terrorists off the tracks. Although this idea was presented as a response to evidence of a potential locomotive plot found on Osama bin Laden’s captured computer, TSA has long been looking to expand its role. … Such schemes won’t make anyone safer. Nor does it make sense to create transportation ‘alternatives’ that encourage Americans to abandon their automobiles so they can be packed into the confined space of a vulnerable train or trolley. Spiking the president’s railroad boondoggle is the right thing to do not just for the country’s fiscal health, but for homeland security as well.” –The Washington Times

Insight

“Without education we are in the horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.” –English writer G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

“I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.” –American author and commentator William F. Buckley (1925-2008)

Dezinformatsia

Nothing like ignoring the real reasons: “Why haven’t the media reported as many plots and terror alerts under the Obama administration? It can’t be that we’re suddenly that much safer. … But is it also possible that the Bush administration, for political reasons, chose to play up the war on terror in a way that the Obama administration has chosen not to?” –CNN’s Howard Kurtz

Drool on the chin: “Meanwhile along comes Barack Obama. No military experience. Never even pretended to be a duck hunter. And yet he shows the kind of quiet strength that doesn’t need to prove itself, except in the act of doing what needs to be done. No gloating or boasting (think of that silent visit to Ground Zero). Just taking responsibility, while giving the credit to those who risked the most. In other words, the cowboy way. Funny how truly modern that turned out to be.” –Business Insider’s Spencer Critchley (Remember when the Leftmedia mocked Bush as a “cowboy”?)

Dire predictions: “The one thing that conservatives cannot rant and rave about is what has been their most predictable refrain since the Cold War: national security. Of all the things President Obama has done to conservatives in America, this may be the cruelest. He has taken away their national security argument. … So imagine the predicament for Republicans. Their best strategists are already telling them it’s time to back away from the wedge issues that defined the party for decades. Opposing abortion doesn’t get you to 51 percent – and may cost you that prize. Neither does opposing gay rights. Gays in the military is history. Even immigration has a politically dangerous downside. And now you’re taking away ‘weak on terrorism.’ What is an independent group loaded with dough to do? Ask people to trust that the Republicans will be better on Social Security? I don’t think so.” –Fox News commentator Susan Estrich

Alpha Jackass: “I don’t know if you could, had a monitor there, you could see who actually appeared at the National Press Club today in Washington, but it is a new low. He appeared in costume as a pretend Founding Father outraged at the notion of raising the debt ceiling which of course the Founding Fathers would have understood would be imperative to maintain the credit rating of the United States of America.” –MSNBC’s Lawrence O'Donnell (The Founding Fathers would not have understood how we dug ourselves into so much debt in the first place…)

Newspulper Headlines:

So Much for the War on Drugs: “The President’s Crack Team” –New York Review of Books website

Osama Imitates Obama:
“‘I Won’t Smoke in White House,’ Obama Vows” –Newser.com, 2008
“Osama bin Laden Banned Smoking in Compound” –Daily Telegraph (London), 2011

Out on a Limb: “The Post-bin Laden Outlook? Anybody’s Guess” –WashingtonJewishWeek.com

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: “Eerie Links Between Harry Potter, bin Laden” –Reuters

Questions Nobody Is Asking: “What if Sanity Prevails in Washington?” –New York Times magazine

Bottom Story of the Day: “Michael Moore Not Happy About bin Laden ‘Execution’” –Reuters

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

Village Idiots

Bull headed: “Although we have not closed Guantanamo within the time period that we initially indicated … it is still the intention of the president, and it is still my intention, to close the facility that exists in Guantanamo. We think that by closing that facility the national security of the United States will be enhanced.” –Attorney General Eric Holder

Sick dream: “So when does SEAL Unit 6, or whatever it’s called, drop in on George Bush? Bush was responsible for a lot more death, innocent death, than bin Laden. Wasn’t he, or am I wrong here?” –radio talk-show host Mike Malloy (Um, you’re definitely wrong. And psycho.)

Blame global warming: “Our economy is built on effective transport and communications networks and reliable energy and water supplies. But the economy cannot grow if there are repeated power failures, or goods cannot be transported because roads are flooded and railways have buckled, or if intense rainfall or high temperatures disrupt Wi-Fi signals. … But if the facilities which support our society cannot cope with floods, droughts or freezing winters then that money will have been wasted.” –Caroline Spelman, Britain’s Environment Secretary, coming up with more doomsday prophecies of climate change destruction of the economy

Unhinged: “Right now, almost all of the world’s governments are criminals, not because they create nuclear plants, but because they keep pushing people to have more children – and those additional want to have more electricity and hence more facilities like Fukushima. The Fukushima crisis is a result of overpopulation! … The United Nations should force every country on Earth to impose limits of one child per family or per person, everywhere in the world. Remember, when you make babies, you are committing a crime against humanity. We have arrived at this kind of funny state of affairs where giving life is giving death. For every time you give birth to a baby, you cause more death in the future because additional babies will need power.” –Rael, spiritual leader of the International Raelian Movement

Short Cuts

“Sensitive Obama’s order was to kill or capture [bin Laden] – and that’s why the SEAL team gave him a chance to surrender, upon which he resisted with arms, or actually didn’t resist with arms, but sort of resisted without arms, except there was an AK-47 nearby, sort of, or maybe not, thus making it possible to assert that while Decisive Obama did tell the SEALs to kill bin Laden and should claim all credit for doing so, Progressive Obama can also be absolved by bleeding hearts because of the painstakingly concocted post facto possibility that bin Laden somehow threatened our military – telepathically or something – before being taken out. … ‘We’ve been as forthcoming with facts as we can be,’ said an irritated [Jay] Carney on Wednesday. And they wonder why Americans of all political stripes think they’re blowing smoke.” –columnist Michelle Malkin

“Torture is not nice. Nice people do not torture (except in rare circumstances). We can all agree on that much – depending, of course, on the definition of ‘torture’. The New York Times, for example, says it hates torture but having to read a New York Times editorial is the pure torture forbidden by the Geneva Convention.” –Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden

“BP paid a fine to the U.S. government to settle an old offshore spill in Alaska. It was the last fine for a while. President Obama lost the moral high ground on offshore drilling last week when he started dumping fish food into the ocean that may contain lead.” –Argus Hamilton

“Osama Bin Laden’s supporters want to rename the Arabian Sea where his body was dumped Martyr Sea. Really? Martyr Sea? Hiding in your bedroom for six years? How about Chicken of the Sea?” –comedian Jay Leno

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
The Patriot Post Editorial Team