The Foundation

“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.” –Thomas Jefferson

Editorial Exegesis

“Perhaps you’ve already noticed around the neighborhood, but this is a rotten summer for young Americans to find a job. The Department of Labor reported last week that a smaller share of 16-19 year-olds are working than at anytime since records began to be kept in 1948. … Only 24% of teens, one in four, have jobs, compared to 42% as recently as the summer of 2001. … So instead of learning valuable job skills – getting out of bed before noon, showing up on time, being courteous to customers, operating a cash register or fork lift – millions of kids will spend the summer playing computer games or hanging out. … Congress … contributed by passing one of the most ill-timed minimum wage increases in history. One of the first acts of the gone-but-not-forgotten Nancy Pelosi ascendancy was to raise the minimum wage in stages to $7.25 an hour in 2009 from $5.15 in 2007. Even liberals ought to understand that raising the cost of hiring the young and unskilled while employers are slashing payrolls is loopy economics. Or maybe not. The Center for American Progress, often called the think tank for the Obama White House, recently recommended another increase to $8.25 an hour. Though the U.S. unemployment rate is 9.1%, the thinkers assert that a rising wage would ‘stimulate economic growth to the tune of 50,000 new jobs.’ So if the government orders employers to pay more to hire workers when they’re already not hiring, they’ll somehow hire more workers. By this logic, if we raised the minimum wage to $25 an hour we’d have full employment. Back on planet Earth, the minimum wage increase has coincided with the plunge in the percentage of working teens. Before the most recent wage hikes, roughly seven million teens were working. Now there are closer to five million with a job and paycheck.” –The Wall Street Journal

Editor’s Note

As of this morning, our 2011 Independence Day Campaign stands at 96 percent and if our estimates of incoming support by mail are accurate, we believe our goal will be met. Until this past weekend, we feared that we would not make budget. However, our faithful Patriot readers answered the call and we offer our heartfelt thanks for aiding our cause – the cause of Liberty.

Patriot News Review

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Upright

“[P]resident Obama is not going to lead on the debt ceiling issue. Nor is he going to compromise or play a mediating role. He is more interested in blaming others for his troubles, demagoguing other solutions and running for re-election. This is why conservatives need to be reminded not to yield to scare tactics. … President Obama is intent on laying the groundwork to blame Congress if a deal is not reached. It’s why the President pointed his finger at Congress several times [last week], saying it was ‘their job’ and ‘these are bills that Congress ran up’ and finally excusing himself: ‘I’ve been doing Afghanistan, bin Laden and the Greek crisis.’ Apparently for the President, the economy of Greece is more important than preventing the American economy from collapsing … like Greece’s.” –Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper

“As a result of lower tax rates on the top income earners, not only do they pay a much larger share of all taxes, but they pay much more taxes total – and revenue to the government has increased. This is because lowering taxes on the rich creates more rich people and richer rich people. The federal government gets much more revenue if you impose a 40 percent tax on a large number of very wealthy millionaires than if you impose a 70 percent tax on a small number of less wealthy millionaires.” –Mario Loyola, director of the Center for Tenth Amendment Studies

“With Obama’s statements, are we witnessing larger symptoms of a progressive push to reshape and redefine the Declaration’s inalienable rights and, even more fundamentally, their very source? … Progressivism is nothing more than moral relativism at the political level. Truth is never constant, with no fixed starting point, whether (theologically) in Sacred Scripture or (politically) in sacred political documents like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Truth is determined not by an absolute, single authority but by the individual – or, here, progressive individuals en masse – who are always marching and ever-advancing toward evolving truths revealed somewhere down the road.” –author and columnist Paul Kengor

“I saw a poll recently that insisted that only 16% of voters think that congressional incumbents should be re-elected. But that’s entirely misleading. The real question is whether they want to replace their own congressman. … In politics, clearly love is blind. So the fact that five out of six American voters think incumbents should be evicted from Congress is meaningless because they’re referring to every incumbent but their own. That, in a nutshell, is how incumbents become incumbents.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

Insight

“Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.” –American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

The Demo-gogues

Failing the giggle test: “It’s time we return to the type of fiscal discipline Democrats brought to Washington in the 90s when Democrats in Congress and the White House balanced the budget and used the surplus to do what Mr. President? To pay down the debt.” –Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who was with the minority Democrats in the 90s

Non Compos Mentis: “When the … unemployment rate is high, it’s hard for the incumbent to win. I remind you though, we’re not the incumbent. The Republicans are the incumbent. … I feel comfortable about our ability to win it back. I have a sense of responsibility to win it back, a plan to do so, and a confidence that it is very much possible to do so.” –House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on the 2012 election

Accusations: “We need to start asking yourselves an uncomfortable question: Are Republicans slowing down the recovery on purpose for political gain in 2012? And now it’s becoming clear that insisting on a slash-and-burn approach may be part of this plan. It has a double benefit for Republicans: It’s ideologically tidy, and it undermines economic recovery which they think only helps them in 2012. If the public comes to believe that Republicans are deliberately sabotaging the economy, it will backfire politically.” –Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

We’ll have a gay old time: “‘I am proud to be one of the senators cosponsoring the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act in the Senate because marriage equality is one of the most important things we can do to make it better for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.” –Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) on the video entitled “A Message of Hope from the United States Senate,” encouraging LGBT youth to persevere

We can’t afford five more years: “And, Philadelphia, I know there are some of you who are frustrated because we haven’t gotten everything done that we said we were going to do in two and a half years. It’s only been two and a half years. I got five and a half years more to go.” –Barack Obama at a Philadelphia fundraiser

Dezinformatsia

Historical nonsense: “So the same conservatives back then, who were called Tories, are really no different from the same conservatives we have today that call themselves teabaggers. They only can accept what they know. … Understand, it was the same kind of inflexible, frantic bunch of social political conservatives who wanted to murder Galileo. They wanted to murder Copernicus. Because those two men had ideas that were different from the world that conservative knew. And now we’re only a thousand years later and we have the same conservatives in charge of the idea that change is terrifying.” –MSNBC’s Mike Papantonio

Historical nonsense II: “The reality is that the framers – posed in paintings as though frozen on an American Olympus – they were not gods, they were guys – guys who didn’t give women the vote and let slavery stand for the time being and who, by the way, were trying to create at the time a stronger central government, of course not too strong, leaving to us a Constitution that we could fix, as needed – sorry, make that amend – which we’ve now done 27 times.” –ABC’s John Donovan

Blessed tolerance: “There may be a reckoning in the winds. Attitudes about gays and lesbians, and about same-sex marriage in particular, are now changing so fast that American culture is suffering from cognitive dissonance: still prone to habits of homophobia while simultaneously aware that overt bigotry is no longer acceptable in much of the public square.” –The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott

Blame whitey: “Well, listen to the record: The white media called me controversial … white folk called me controversial and you believe white folks. … White folks say Columbus discovered America. They lied. White folks said black people were not human beings in the Constitution. They lied. White folks said that Jesus was white. They lied. White folks said Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9-1-1 '01. They lied. White folks said Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were close buddies. They lied. White folks said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They lied. White folks said Barack Obama was not a real citizen. They lied. White folks said Barack was a Muslim. They lied. So when white folks say I’m controversial, they are still [points microphone to audience who shout, 'lying!’] If telling the truth makes me controversial then I’m going to my grave telling the truth.” –Obama’s former “spiritual mentor” Jeremiah Wright

Newspulper Headlines:

We Blame Global Warming: “Asia Pollution Blamed for Halt in Warming: Study” –Reuters

Questions Nobody Is Asking: “Can We Please Stop Talking About Huntsman?” –National Review Online

Breaking News From 1472: “Leonardo Da Vinci Painting to Be Unveiled” –The Wall Street Journal

News You Can Use: “How to Weaponize Your Personal Crisis” –TheNation.com

Bottom Story of the Day: “Tax Wealthy More, Obama Says” –Columbus Dispatch

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

Village Idiots

Scare tactics: “[The debate about climate change] lingers because, um … as I say, science is partially ideology. If there was a 1% chance that the plane you were getting into this morning to fly here was gonna crash would you get on that plane? The answer is always no. Okay. So let’s assume that there’s only a 20% chance that climate change science is right. Do you take the risk of not responding to it?” –Conservation International Cofounder and CEO Peter Seligmann

“I think there is a conscious strategy. I call it ‘ruin in order to rule.’ I think their calculation are sending into a second recession or reverse the recovery. I think their calculation is they benefit politically. It’s a reckless gamble if the Republicans do it. It’s irresponsible, but I think it is a conscious strategy.” –Democrat presidential consultant Bob Shrum

A Tweet from a Twit: “Fear Bachman bc she is raising so much money. Anyone that inarticulate and full of s— who is raising money that fast … is beholden to some mighty thuggish interests.” –actor Alec Baldwin (So what’s Obama’s excuse?)

Short Cuts

“The big-government advocates at the Center for American Progress recently released a series of charts designed to prove America is a low-tax nation. I wish this was the case. The United States does have a lower overall tax burden than Europe, which is shown in one of the CAP charts, but that doesn’t exactly demonstrate that taxes are low in America. Unless, of course, you think weighing less than an offensive lineman in the NFL is proof of being skinny.” –Cato Institute blogger Daniel J. Mitchell

“What’s left of that founding vision on this less than Glorious Fourth of July 2011 in the Brokest Nation in History? ‘You go talk to your constituents,’ President Obama taunted Republicans on Wednesday, ‘and ask them are they willing to compromise their kids’ safety so that some corporate jet owner continues to get a tax break?‘ In the Republic of Brokistan, that’s the choice, is it? Give me safe kids or give me corporate jets! No corporate aviation without safe kiddification!” –columnist Mark Steyn

“President Obama told the country Wednesday that his two daughters Sasha and Malia are more diligent than Congress. He got their ages wrong while praising them. For one reason or another the accuracy of birth information is always a problem with this particular president.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“The Senate canceled their vacation to work on the budget. Either they really can’t agree or they’re looking for an excuse to not go on vacation with their families.” –comedian Jimmy Kimmel

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